kelley wrote:
> men who i've known [i've excluded acquaintances] who were abusive or
> violent or a sexual harasser:
>
> 1. my first boyfriend's father abused his wife and children
> 2. my second boyfriend's father beat his children when he got too drunk
> 3. childhood best friend's father
> 4. high school bud's father
> 5. my grandfather regularly locked my grandmother in the attic for not
> mopping the floor well enough.
> 6. a man taking me home from a stint babysitting refused to do so and
> molested me in a car at 50mph. cops finally stopped him b/c he was drunk.
> they didn't do anything about it and i was scared to say a thing. b/c they
> didn't seem to care that we were far frm my home, that he was drunk, i was
> scared to say anything and almost let them go without peeping. but
> fortunately i finally got in the cruiser. they dropped me off but didn't
> think it important to talk to my folks. big whoop that the guy was pawing
> me. a couple of years later he asked my mother for a dance at a disco, she
> agreed and then kicked him in the balls. yeah mom!!
> 8. a boy during high school tried to molest me when i was passed out drunk
> at my 16th birthday party. fortunately, his my buds intervened and let him
> know what they thought of him. [thank j.n. and j.m wherever you are]
> 9. the leader of a band that i used to hire for the local holiday inn beat
> up his wife--who i'd become friends with--in the parking lot about 4 weeks
> after she delivered their third child.
> 10. i was sexually harassed as a frosh. prof would invite me to his
> office telling me how smart i was blah blah blah. one day he just kissed
> me. i quickly left. rec'd a c in a course where i clearly deserved an A.
> i worked in his dept part time, the dept sec'y told me she was very
> relieved that i hadn't put out for him. everyone knew about his antics, he
> chose a girl each semester. he's no longer teaching because a few women
> filed a sex h. suit against him.
>
> it wasn't til i encountered a marxist feminist years later that i realized
> it wasn't my fault and that he was wrong. for years i thought it was my
> fault, largely because the entire dept. didn't seem to care.
>
> 11. 3 men in a neighborhood [13 homes on the street] where i lived from
> 1984-1994 sexually molested their daughters. one shot himself after
> getting his daughter pregnant. she had the baby. the other family split
> up after it came out. the other family is intact, all of them are in therapy.
> 12. a college chum was abducted in a parking garage, thrown in the drunk.
> the man raped and beat her several times. he finally let her go and
> dropped her off, bloodies and beaten, in one of the poorer sections of
> chicago. she was scared to approach the first people she came upon but
> finally figured that she had to. fortunately they were off duty cops. her
> husband told her not to wear such sexy workout clothes when she went to the
> gym.
> 13. my former husband beat me up as we were going through separation.
>
> by this point i was in grad school, i finally started becoming a feminist
>
> 14. the former husband of a good friend in grad school was beaten by her
> husband.
> 15 another grad school friend was sexually molested by a church deacon.
> 16. the most recent ex-beau became abusive after abusing drugs. he was
> molested by his great uncle [father's side] --police officer and a member
> of a once very wealthy family of the robber baron sort. his grandfather on
> his mother's side regularly beat his wife.
> 17. in the last town i lived in, three neighbors were abused by their
> former husbands, one current boyfriend, though i hear she dumped him finally.
>
> and guess what i still like men! i still don't think men are inherently
> violent. it's clearly something that is learned and connected to power
> dynamics that take place in the family, at work, in academe. no i'm not a
> cultural determinist...did i say all men were violent? that men raised in
> violent families inevitably became violent themselves, etc?
>
> “touch yourself and you will know that i exist.”
> ~luce irigaray
-- Gregory P. Nowell Associate Professor Department of Political Science, Milne 100 State University of New York 135 Western Ave. Albany, New York 12222
Fax 518-442-5298