>You dismissed them,
No, it questioned the importance of a couple of acts by one man who is not typical (at least I strongly suspect he's not) of his profession.
>and went on to say you would enjoy such treatment.
That's a lie, and you know it. I said I could live with it. It'd be demoralising and painful if it was part of a systematic oppression of marginalisation and belittling by sexualising, but I was speculating that what structuralist theorising frames as just that, might be more the echoes of another time. That oppression and repression might still be about, but operate in other ways, perhaps best approached via other theories.
>You repeatedly dismissed her examples by making comments on loveliness,
>furtive >glances et al.
These happen, and are not to be taken as part of a system or structure - simply because, I argued, they are not.
>Now you are saying that while I am discussing theory, you're discussing
>>specifics.
I was talking about the specific example of the staring and babbling school head - and questioning the usefulness of structuralist theory in the case as at October 2001.
>I'm specifically discussing your inability to
>contextualize sexual harassment.
We're precisely arguing about the context, and we disagree on that.
>It's foolishness, a word which
>implies you're not putting your thinking cap on properly.
It may be, but the way you go about helping someone put their thinking cap on could do with a little fine tuning, Mina.
>And the comparison to your being dissed for not thinking apartheid is a good
>thing was just priceless!
I am aware of the irony, Mina - but it was a decisive component of the cultural milieu that was doing the systematic belittling and othering at issue. And it constituted precisely one sixth of the examples I gave (towards trying to characterise a milieu in one paragraph) . I no longer am, aso no longer behave like I am, and no longer see occasional slings and arrows as part of that whole.
And the implication that all is incommensurable is no doubt still an important issue on the left, but I'm not sure I'm convinced by it - not in its harder variants anyway. I did say my position was not the same (I take Carrol's point, but still feel I had a sniff of the belittlement and othering we are discussing), but if I can not understand the quality of another's experience, you would not be able to conclude this confidently from my short e-mails on the topic, as you would not be able to grasp the quality of mine. Which doesn't get us anywhere.
Cheers, Rob.