Joanna
jrdavis wrote:
> How about wives who beat their husbands? In working class families the
> abuse often goes both ways in a culture of violence.
>
> Jesse Lemisch <utopia1 at attglobal.net> wrote:
>
> My goodness, this is just awful. James quotes the notiorious
> amti-feminist
> tract by Cornel West and Sylvia Ann Hewlett whose aim was to
> change state
> laws to force a waiting/counseling period before divorce, to
> preserve the
> family, etc. It's simply astonishing that somebody should be
> arguing on
> feminist issues utterly uninformed by feminist views and the
> critiques of
> this sad volume which I read when Barnes and Noble 82nd St. still had
> comfortable chairs. (Yes, in this sense Cornel West is indeed a social
> conservative, as is his pal Michael Lerner of Tikkun -- veteran of a
> notorious rape case in Seattle --: see my "Sociat Conservatism on
> the Left:
> The Abandonment of Radicalism and the Collapse of the Jewish Left
> into Faith
> and Family, Tikkun 1989. Lerner went crazy when he saw this and
> published a
> severely cut version as a letter to the editor. I will try to locate a
> better citation.)
>
> James proceeds to revive the hideous old myth that punishing
> sexual abusers
> is an attack on working class families. Wow, this really belongs
> in MR. How
> about it, Yoshie? Soon we'll be hearing, as we haven't in some
> years, that
> we ought to sympathize with working class males who return from
> alienated
> work and understandably beat their waves. Yes, indeed, let's save the
> family, undermine divorce, and keep legal authorities out of the
> "private"
> sphere.
>
> Jesse Lemisch
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "James Heartfield"
> To:
> Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2006 3:38 PM
> Subject: [lbo-talk] False accusations
>
>
> > Jesse, writes
> >
> > > My goodness, suppose I paraded a number of court decsions in
> the south
> in
> > > which blacks were convicted, their testimony disallowed, etc.
> > > What would such cases prove?
> >
> > But I think you missed the point. In two of three of the cases I
> cited,
> the
> > person who was originally supposed to have been molested by
> parents was
> > subsequently suing the therapist who persuaded her to make those
> charges
> > (and there are many more such cases, follow the link). In your
> anaolgy the
> > therapists and social workers are being persecuted by courts
> biassed in
> > favour of women who feel that they have been duped. That is the
> kind of
> bias
> > I think we need.
> >
> > > The stuff we have been seeing here isn't social science, it's
> ideology.
> >
> > Well, as Terry Eagleton said, ideology is what you think, what I
> think is
> > social science. Your weakness is that you do not understand the
> movement
> to
> > punish abusers has its own ideological biasses - against working
> class
> > families, against parents, in favour of greater state
> intervention into
> > domestic life, masking the exercise of state power by
> manufacturing an
> > ideological figure of the victimised child.
> >
> > To quote Cornel West and Sylvia Ann Hewlett:
> >
> > 'Over the last 30 years, thousands of professionals associated
> with our
> > burgeoning child welfare bureaucracy have developed what can only be
> > described as a parent-bashing mentality'. Many professionals
> 'are now
> firmly
> > convinced that the American family is largely dysfunctional' and
> 'that a
> > majority of parents have the potential to abuse children'. The
> War Against
> > Parents
> >
> >
> >
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
>
>
>
> Jim Davis
> Ozark Bioregion, USA
>
> http://ismailism.wordpress.com/
> New: http://www.lulu.com/content/306796
> http://shops.half.ebay.com/brothershak_W0QQmZbooks
>
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