<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1"> <title></title> </head> <body> I didn't say that a man can't be demeaned, I said that culturally it's deemed impossible. Personally, of course, it's a different story. And, as you say, a woman laughing at a man is a kind of killing partly because she's not supposed to have any power. J. andie nachgeborenen wrote: <blockquote type="cite" cite="mid20060604064923.77215.qmail@web50413.mail.yahoo.com"> <pre wrap=""> --- Charles Brown <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:cbrown@michiganlegal.org"><cbrown@michiganlegal.org></a> wrote: </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap=""> Joanna writes: </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">In this culture, a man can never be demeaned </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap="">relative </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">to a woman, therefore his relations with women can </pre> </blockquote> <pre wrap="">never </pre> <blockquote type="cite"> <pre wrap="">result in a demeaning term. </pre> </blockquote> </blockquote> <pre wrap=""> I forget where I read this, maybe in s good book I read recently called The Erotic Silence of the American Wife by Dalma Heyn, that the one thing that men said they feared most about women was that women were going to laugh at them, and the one thing that women said they feared most about men was that men would kill them. This brings out the disparity of power, but it also does cut against Joanna' claim that in our culture a man can't be demeaned relative to a woman. (At various points I've felt - been -- demeaned relative to a woman, and some of them have laughed at me, very humiliating. I've never killed any of them or wanted to, however (I'm really very gentle and pacific), although I have wished that evil things would befall Margaret Thatcher -- that God would drop a safe on her or some such. The lack of a contemptuous male counterpart to "slut" reflects something else, the double standard -- sex, lots of sex, with different people, is PK, admirable in men, but strongly disapproved in women. Heyn is very good on this, btw. And I hate open this can of worms again, but there is an obvious sociobiological explanation for the double standard, which does not of course mean it is unchangeable or justifiable. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://mail.yahoo.com">http://mail.yahoo.com</a> ___________________________________ <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk">http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk</a> </pre> </blockquote> </body> </html>