Conference turris::womannotes-v3

"It takes two to hear truth; one to speak, and one to listen"

				Thoreau

        "Just because you have a penis doesn't mean you have to be a dick"

John Stoltenberg, 
from a collection of essays 'Refusing to be a man: Essays on sex and justice'

    
    		(R-Northford, Connecticut)
    
    	"It's an important first step toward recognizing the 
    	 right of the government to be involved in the abortion
    	 issue"
    
    

    Nancy -
    
    Do you have any more of the quote, so that we can get the antecedent
    for 'it'?  I, for one, would be interested.
    
    Alison

    
    re: .4 (Alison Waskom)
    
    > Do you have any more of the quote, so that we can get the antecedent
    > for 'it'?  I, for one, would be interested.
    
    Yep, I have the newspaper article at home.  Will be glad to enter
    the context, I guess in the abortion topic.
    (briefly, the "it" referred to a new law passed in Connecticut)
    
    						nancy b.
    

    
    "There's always an easy solution to every human problem....
     neat, plausible and wrong."
    
    			-- H.L.Mencken
    
    
    dave
    

    "What is Success?"
    
   "To laugh often and much;
    
    To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of
     children;
    
    To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the
     betrayal of false friends;
    
    To appreciate beauty;
    
    To find the best in others;
    
    To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a
     garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
    
    To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived;
    
    This is to have succeeded."
    
    
    Ralph Waldo Emerson

    "If we can admit to the possibility of change, then all is not lost"
           - ..... Graham .. "Family Living"
    

    
    "There is no bigot  greater  than  a liberal who can see no view but
    their own." ... TONTO::EARLY ... 1984
    
    

    "I realize I am generalizing here, but, as is often the case when I
    generalize, I don't care."
    					-- the immortal Dave Barry
    

                   Low opinion women have of men is unfair
                                      by
                                  Dave Barry
    
	Speaking on behalf of all the guys in the world except possibly
Phil Donahue, I want to say that I am really ticked off about the
results of this recent poll of women. You probably read about it. The
Roper Organization asked 3,000 women the following question:
	``Do you agree that the average man today is a lazy selfish
opinionated egotistical sex-crazed tub of crud who never thinks about
anybody but himself and refuses to help with childrearing or housework
and wants to go to bed with practically every woman he meets who is not
legally his grandmother and tends to have the same annual output of
natural gas as Montana?''
	Eighty-seven percent of the women agreed with this. The other 13
percent noted that men also pick their noses at stoplights.
	By scientifically analyzing these results, we can conclude that
women do not appear to have a high opinion of men. This is unfair. Oh,
sure, men in the past have displayed certain unfortunate behavior
patterns that tended to produce unhappy relationships, world wars, etc.
But today's man is different. Today's man knows that he's supposed to be
a sensitive and caring relationship partner, and he's making radical
lifestyle changes such as sometimes remembering to remove the used
tissue wads from his pockets before depositing his pants on the floor to
be picked up by the Laundry Fairy.
	And so here we men are, making this kind of extreme sacrifice, and
WHAM, the Roper Organization hits us with the fact that women still
think we're jerks. This really burns my briefs. I mean, I'd like you
women to stop and think for a moment about what this world would be like
without men. Think of the vast array of cultural and scientific
achievements you'd have to do without, including:
	1. Football.
	2. Professional football.
	3. Ear hair.
	4. Betting on football.
	The list just goes on and on. And let's talk about men's alleged
obsession with sex. Do you women think that men are just ANIMALS? Do you
really think that all they want to do is get you into bed? Wrong! A lot
of guys, especially in bars, would be happy to get you into a phone
booth! Or right there on the bar! (``Nobody will notice us,'' the guy
will say, being suave. ``They're watching `Wheel of Fortune.''')
	But that doesn't mean ALL guys are like that. There are countless
examples of guys who think about things besides sex. The guys on the
U.S. Supreme Court, for example, think about important constitutional
issues, as is shown by this transcript from recent court deliberations:
	CHIEF JUSTICE WILLIAM H. REHNQUIST: Whoa! Get a load of the torts
on THAT plaintiff!
	ASSOCIATE JUSTICE BYRON R. WHITE: (Dies.)
	And I am particularly outraged by the charge that guys never help
out around the house. I happen to be a guy, and often, when my wife goes
away, I assume Total Responsibility for the household, and my wife has
such confidence in me that she will often wait for an entire half-hour
before she calls:
	MY WIFE: Is everything OK?
	ME: Fine!
	MY WIFE: Is Robert OK?
	ME: Robert?
	MY WIFE: Our child.
	ME: Robert is here?
	My wife likes to give me these helpful reminders from time to time
because once she went away for several days, and when she got home, she
determined that all Robert had eaten the entire time was chocolate
Easter-bunny heads. But other than that, I am very strong in the
homemaking department, the kind of guy who, if he gets Cheez Whiz on the
sofa, will squirt some Windex on it without even having to be told.
	So come on, women. Stop being so harsh on us guys, and start seeing
past our macho hairy exteriors, into the sensitive, thoughtful, and --
yes -- vulnerable individuals that we are deep down inside. And while
you're at it, fix us a sandwich.
	
	(C) 1990 THE MIAMI HERALD
	DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

    HAHA.... HO HO... hehe
    Shouldnt that have been in the Fem Humor note?
    

"The society of young women is the most unprofitable I have ever tried. 
They are so light and flighty that you can never be sure whether they are 
there or not there."

	-- Journal, 1851

"In the East, women religiously conceal that they have faces; in the West, 
that they have legs. In both cases they make it evident that they have but 
little brains."

	-- Journal, 1852

Words of wisdom to brides from an early nineteenth-century American 
minister:

"Bear always in mind your true situation and have the words of the apostle 
perpetually engraven on your heart. Your duty is submission -- 'Submission 
and obedience are the lessons of your life and peace and happiness will be 
your reward.' Your husband is, by the laws of God and of man, your 
superior; do not ever give him cause to remind you of it."

	-- quoted in For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts' Advice to 
           Women, by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, 1979

    Re:  -1
    
    Everybody duck!!  I'm building a bomb shelter as we speak!!

 	It is a wonderful advantage to a man 
	in every pursuit or avocation ,
	to secure an adviser in a sensible woman.
	In a woman there is at once a subtle delicacy
	of tact and a plain soundness of judgement
	which are rarely found to an equal degree in a man.

	A woman, if she really be your friend,
	will have a sensitive regard for your character, honor, repute.
	She will seldom counsel you to do a shabby thing;
	for a woman friend always desires to be proud of you.

			The Earl of Lytton (1831-91)
	

	"Some day there will be girls and women whose names will no longer 
	signify merely an opposite of the masculine, but something in itself, 
	something that makes one think not of any complement and limit, but 
	only of life and existence: the feminine human being."

			-- Rainer Maria Rilke

"Until now it has been thought that the level of testosterone in men is 
normal simple because they have it. But if you consider how abnormal their 
*behavior* is, then you are led to the hypothesis that almost all men are 
suffering from *testosterone poisoning.* The symptoms are easy to spot. 
Sufferers are reported to show an early preference (while still in the crib) 
for geometric shapes. Later, they become obsessed with machinery and 
objects to the exclusion of human values. They have an intense need to rank 
everything, and are obsessed with size. (At some point in his life, nearly 
every male measures his penis)... The pathological violence of most men 
hardly needs to be mentioned. They are responsible for more wars than any 
other leading sex. Testosterone poisoning is particularly cruel because its 
sufferers usually don't know they have it."

	-- Alan Alda, "What Every Woman Should Know About Men," MS Magazine 
	1975, quoted in A Feminist Dictionary

    
    "You don't think President Bush would let us step into the batter's box
    and not let us swing the bat, do you?"
    
     	-- American military officer in Saudi Arabia, quoted on p. 1 of
    	today's Boston Globe on the likelihood of war with Iraq.

    
    charming
    

    "I continue to believe with all my mind and heart that the death
    penalty will not help us but will debase us; that it will not protect
    us but will make us weaker.  We should refuse to allow this time to be
    marked forever in the pages of history as the time that we were not
    strong enough, not intelligent enough, not civilized enough to find a
    better answer to violence than violence."

    	Mario Cuomo

    Thanks for posting that, Mike.
    
    Makes me glad that I worked my tookus off to help elect him gov of
    NY the first time (1982).
    
       Margaret  

    It's not often (it seems to me) that I hear *any* political figure
    staunchly defend the right to not kill.  Especially in these violent
    times, when it seems we hear the call for capital punishment more and
    more.  Do you suppose Mario Cuomo has a Friend (Quaker) lurking 
    somewhere in his history? (*8
    
    E Grace

    I certainly hope Pres. Bush WOULD 'let us step into the batters box
    without swinging the bat'.
    
    I agree with .21   We must learn that the death penalty debases us all
    and makes the statement that 'its ok to kill people in some contexts'
    as long as its socially approved.
    
    I don't remember the Bible saying 'Thou shall not kill... UNLESS'.
    
    Jeff

    
    "Systematic reasoning is something we could not, as a species or as
    individuals, possibly do without.  But neither, if we are to remain
    sane, can we possibly do without direct perception, the more
    unsystematic, the better, of the inner and outer worlds into which we
    have been born.  This given reality is an infinite which passes all
    understanding and yet admits of being directly and in some sort totally
    apprehended."
    
    					- Aldous Huxley, 1954
    					  "The Doors of Perception"
    
    

	"We're all looking for a fight," he said. "You see, it's like being 
	a brain surgeon. You go to school for years and years. You want to 
	use your specialty." 

		--  19-year-old paratrooper from Tulsa, Okla., interviewed in
		 the Saudi Arabian desert, quoted in today's Boston Globe


	"We're all ready for combat, and that's what we want."

		-- paratrooper from Tampa, Fla., same article

	"To me, as to all men, the nature of friendship between women 
	remains a mystery, which is probably a wise provision of nature.
	If we ever discovered what women say to each other when we are not 
	there, our male vanity might receive such a shock that the human race 
	would die out."  

		-- W. H. Auden

    "We have to repeat continuously, "no" to violence, "yes" to peace.
    
    	Archbishop Oscar Romero (El Salvador)

    There is no half way between truth and non-violence on the one hand and
    untruth and violence on the other.  We may never be strong enough to be
    entirely non-violent in thought, word and deed.  But we must keep
    non-violence as our goal and make steady progress towards it.  The
    attainment of freedom, whether for a man, a nation or the world, must
    be in exact proportion to the attainment of non-violence by each.

    		Mahatma Gandhi, "Non-Violence in Peace and War"

    Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will.  Its seat
    is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our very being.
    
    		Mahatma Gandhi

    Mankind has to get out of violence only through non-violence.  Hatred
    can be overcome only by love.  Counter-hatred only increases the
    surface as well as the depth of hatred.

    		Mahatma Gandhi

	"I think we're getting the point."

			Paul Beck

    "Unfortunately, society isn't."
    
    			Mike Valenza

    "Please stop the interpersonal remarks here, feel free to use
    the 'rathole'
    
    thankyou"
    
    Bonnie J
    =wn= comod

    
    	"I was raised to be Charming, not Sincere."
    
    			Prince Charming
    			Into the Woods
    

    "A placid woman can go on knitting longer than an angry man can go
    on fuming"
			G. B. Shaw

    "I don't want Bob Smith or his kind having any influence or any control
    over the reproductive systems of my two daughters or the women of New
    Hampshire. You keep your hands off my daughters and the women of New
    Hampshire and the women of this country."
    
    -- John Durkin, Democratic U. S. Senate candidate, to his Republican
    opponent Bob Smith.
    
    

	"The important thing is that we get rid of the sexual hassles that
	have obsessed the human race since the dawn of civilization, that
	have totally dominated our music, our art, our literature, our
	conversations, our thoughts, our dreams, and our very souls so we
	can get on with what we were really put on this earth to do.
	Whatever the H*ll THAT is."

			- Dave Barry
			  Pulitzer prize winning humorist

    "Do you know why there are no jokes in the Bible?
    Because laughter is the gift of the devil!"
    
    "To lose your mind is a terrible thing....
    ...assuming that you had one to begin with...."
    
    "I love you from the bottom of my ego..."
    
    "My accountant loves you too...."
    
    "How much would you pay me _not_ to play 'Yesterday?'"
    
    
    					Robyn Hitchcock
    

    
    jonathan,
    
    did you get to meet him too?
    
    did he tell the story about "lost madonna of the wasps"?
    
    carla
    

   > "Do you know why there are no jokes in the Bible?
   > Because laughter is the gift of the devil!"
    
    
    Reminds me of "The Name of the Rose" somehow....
    
    Also..
    "A sense of humour is the acceptable face of downright, bloody-minded
     optimism".
    
    

	Speech tends to divide, people cling to words rather than to their
meaning. Words give rise to dogmas claiming to be comforting certainties.
Words give rise to religions, to churches which break up the great family of
simple souls, for whom living worship should be enough, into rival fragments.

	Words split apart, Silence unites.  Words scatter, Silence gathers
together.  Words stir up, Silence brings peace.  Words engender denial,
Silence invites even the denier to find fresh hope in the confident 
expectation of a mystery which can be accomplished within. 

    
    
    	"Her body's beautiful,
    		    so I'm thinking rape.
    
    	 Shouldn't have had her curtains open,
    		    so that's her fate."
    
    

    
    RE -1
    I think I'm going to be sick....
    'gail
    

    Aptly named. "Boys" indeed.

    
    re: .47 Nancy
    
    That is simply unbelievable! 
    
    						Hank

    That is truly obscenity, IMHO
    
    Phil

> <<< Note 39.51 by CGVAX2::CONNELL "Reality, an overrated concept." >>>
>
> That is truly obscenity, IMHO


  Yeah let's run right out and arrest somebody and throw them in
  the slammer.  And burn their records, tapes, CDs, and (doubtless)
  videos.  Then we'll all feel better.  Or maybe we can shoot
  them.  Or just send them back where they came from.

  But the problem will, unfortunately, still exist.  What shall
  we do about it?  Why do lyrics like these attract anyone?  Why,
  in particular, did they attract the white, middle-or upper class
  teen-age girls who force-entertained an entire (stranded, no-
  choice-in-the-matter) parking lot full of us last summer with
  music like this?

                                   Atlant

    Could we move this discussion to topic 233 and return this note
    to quotes from men ?

"It's a lot easier to go out on a football field and smash heads than it is 
to speak up at a party when someone tells a joke about rape."

		-- Jackson Katz of the group Real Men, a group of men 
		committed to holding men responsible for male violence

		(he played all-state football in high school)

         Walt Whitman:
         
         This is what you should do:  love the earth and the sun
         and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone
         that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote
         your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not
         concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward
         people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or
         to any man or number of men . . . _re-examine all you
         have been told_ at school or church or in any book,
         dismiss what insults your own soul, and your very flesh
         shall be a great poem.
         
         From the preface to the 1855 edition of _Leaves_of_
         _Grass_, quoted in the _Utne_Reader_, no. 42, nov/dec
         1990 issue

    .56
    
    Well, of course, that's his opinion only.
    

	' Common sense is not so common. '

				Voltaire

      
    "Real beauty always makes me want to gag."
    
    		-- Woody Allen
    
    
    (He says it in "Take the Money and Run," maybe not quite exactly as
    quoted. I thought of it driving to work this morning through all the NE
    fall colors..)
    
    D.

    re .59, yeah, that must be why he hooked up with a couple of eye-sores
    like Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow. ;^)
    
    Lorna
    

    
    .60
    
    Well actually, when he says it in the movie it's a direct reference to
    the female lead, Janet Margolin (I think that's her name). He
    definitely meant it as a compliment, whenever he saw anything really
    beautiful he tended to throw up... 
    
    Seems like a reasonable criterion to me,  ;-)
    
    D.
    

    		"Anyone can sue anyone for anything."
    
    						Richard L. Katze,
    						Attorney-at-law

    
Quotes from Illusions, By Richard Bach:
 
		    Your friends 
		   will know you better
		 in the first minute you meet
		  than 
		    your acquaintances 
	      	     will know you in
			  a thousand
			      years.
				***
    
	 The bond
	that links your true family
	 is not one of blood, but
	   of respect and joy in
	       each other's life.
 
			    Rarely do members
			of one family grow up
			   under the same
			     roof.
				***
    
				A cloud does not know
			   why it moves in just such a
			    direction and at such
				a speed.
		    It feels an impulsion...this is 
		  the place to go now.  But the sky knows
	  the reasons and the patterns
	     behind all clouds,
	       and you will know, too, when 
		  you lift yourself high enough
			to see beyond 
			    horizons.
		--Richard Bach

                                SATISFACTION

          Live with a steady superiority over life - don't be afraid
          of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is, 
          after all, all the same:  The bitter doesn't last forever,
          and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing.  It is
          enough if you don't freeze in the cold and if thirst and
          hunger don't claw at your insides.  If your back isn't
          broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can work, if
          both eyes see, and if both ears hear, then whom should you
          envy? And why?  Our envy of others devours us most of all.
          Rub you eyes and purify your heart - and prize above all
          else in the world those who love you and who wish you well.


                                      - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

    
    I think the unbroken monotony of my brother Henry's goodness and
    truthfulness and obedience would have been a burden to my mother 
    but for the relief and variety I furnished in the other direction.
    
    - Mark Twain
    
    (As quoted to me by my mother, who likened it to my brother and I.
    Hint:  I was not the sibling cloaked in goodness and truthfulness 
    and obedience.)
    

    this is pulled from a comic book....thought it might go
    under "Quotable Women", but the book was written by a man,
    so.......
    
    Anne:	...  I hit rock bottom.  Now, like thousands of
    		other women with low self-image, I find my 
    		confidence in a bottle.
    
    Rick:	You mean--?
    
    Anne:	Mousse.  And plenty of it.
    

    
	"She's just a man-hater."

		-- Anon
    

    i'm willing to take credit for that
    

    The soul takes flight to the world that is invisible; and there
    arriving she is sure of bliss and forever dwells in paradise.
    
    					-- Plato
    					[commentary on the death
    					 of Socrates]

"How easy it is to shed human blood; how easy it is to persuade ourselves 
that it is our duty to do so."

	-- Sydney Smith, 1808

    From the San Francisco Chronicle, Monday, January 14, 1991...with
    no premission whatsoever:
    
    "My grandfather owned an inherited double-ought shotgun that
    hung over a mantel on his farm...Myself being a male, age 10, I
    begged him till, bored, he took me out into the woods one day...
    I saw some crows a quarter of a mile away and ued them as a target,
    sort of. The gun's kick stunned me into nearly falling backward...
    The real story is the bruise...in the next three weeks it spread till
    it covered my right chest and shoulder...I hid this bruise from
    everybody. Alone before the bathroom mirror, I watched it spread...
    The blast took half a second; its aftermath seemed eternity... Only
    after Vietnam did I understand: the concussion that a weapon visits on
    the person who fires it...The gun is not the war. War becomes the
    hidden, shameful bruise, endlessly unscrolling its terrible pastels."
    
    

    "Perhaps the best of all ways to prove you're alive is to extend
    yourself. Reach out beyond your habitual, narrow track of life and
    touch someone or something new. Get out of your cocoon."
    
    Robert Rodale

    "Scientific power has outrun spiritual power; we now have
    guided missiles and misguided men."
    
    Martin Luther King

    "How many of you have friends or relatives right now in Saudi Arabia or
    the Persian Gulf area? I wonder how they feel, so close to giving their
    lives to protect a feudal kingdom where women are stoned to death for
    adultery, where a thief is punished by having his hand amputated, where
    women can't drive cars or swim in the same pool as men? Where bibles
    are forbidden and no religion save Islam is allowed? Where Amnesty
    International reports that torture is routine, and that last year 111
    people were executed, 16 of them political prisoners, all but one by
    public beheading. And not by clean cut, with a guillotine, but with
    that long curved sword that witnesses say requires various chops. Not
    that Saudi Arabia, or Kuwait before the invasion, are any different in
    terms of political repression than any number of U.S.-supported allies.
    But to give your life for those corrupt, cruel, family dictatorships?
    Bush says we're "stopping aggression." If that were true, the first
    thing U.S. forces would have done after landing, they would have
    dethroned the Gulf emirs, sheiks, and kings, who every day are carrying
    out the worst aggression against their own people, especially women."
    
    	- Philip Agee

    re: .75
    
    "Religious power and zeal continues to outrun intellectual power; we now 
    have guided missles and misguided men, still fighting for their 'God is
    Great' as in the religious conquests of old."
    
    (me) 

"We cannot simultaneously prepare for and prevent war."

[more or less]
		Albert Einstein

 
	  Once a bitch
	Always a bitch
    
    		--William Faulkner












I discovered the above gem while going through the womannote photo album
yesterday.  While flipping through it for the third time, I saw someone wearing
the most comical expression and a T-shirt that says the above.  At that 
point, I began to laugh uncontrollably.  Even as a fervent Faulkner fan, I 
must admit that those are not the lines I am familiar with.  I remember
Faulkner tried unsuccessfully to become a poet before he hit big in 
fiction.  Now judging from the above, I am somehow not surprised.  Although 
in perfect rhyme, that poem, I am afraid, has left much to be desired.

Eugene

    Why have women got legs?
    
    To get between the bedroom and kitchen.
    
    - Fat Bloke down the pub.

"Naturally the common people don't want war ... but after all it is the
leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple
matter to drag the people along ...  All you have to do is tell them
they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of
patriotism and exposing the country to danger."  Hermann Goering, 1936

          "Sure we were young.  We were arrogant.  We were
          ridiculous.  There were excesses.  We were brash.  We
          were foolish.  We had factional fights.  But we were
          right." - Abbie Hoffman

    
    	       On September 23, with regard to the possible success
    		of the embargo:
    
 		 "I will destroy Israel and launch all out war
		before allowing the UN embargo to 'strangle' Iraq." 
    
    						Saddam Hussein
    

    "The evil results of war--hatred, brutality, callousness to suffering
    and deceit--are spiritual and moral rather than material."

    	- Howard Brinton, "Friends for 300 Years"

    re .81,
    
    This is not an exact quote:
                                                            
    People have a natural tendency to go to war.  It is the leadership's
    responsibility to prevent wars and limit the scope and damage of the war
    if war ever comes.                                
    
	    		--Henry Kissinger 
	 		  testifying at the Senate Arms' Service committee
                                                

    
    Re .79 "the T-shirt"
    
    It was probably me.  The T-shirt was issued for the Radcliffe
    College Centennial.  In the 70's (and perhaps still) Radcliffe students
    were often refered to as "Cliffie bitches" - mostly by Harvard
    students.
    
    Interestingly enough, that T-shirt was not the official Centennial
    T-shirt issued by the college.  That was a red with a Latin quote
    something to the effect of "Of the College and Women I sing".  I'm not
    sure who originated the T with the Faulkner quote, but it's much more
    to the point.
    
    							clb
    

    
    
    Gen. Schwartzkopf, showing a film of a F-117A steatlh fighter blowing a
    bridge to kindom come just after an Iraqi jeep got across:
    
    "You are now looking at the luckiest man in Iraq.  Look what he got to
    see in his rearview mirror."
    
    Smack Iraq!
    

    If man does find the solution for world peace it will be the most
    revolutionary reversal of his record we have ever known.
    
    				- Gen. George C. Marshall
    				  Sept. 1, 1945

    Our human life,
    but dies down to its root,
    and still puts forth,
    its green blade to eternity.
    
    Henry David Thoreau

     Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme 
     beauty--a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without 
     appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous 
     trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of 
     a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.  The 
     true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more 
     than man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to 
     be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.  What is best in 
     mathematics deserves not merely to be learnt as a task, but to be 
     assimilated as a part of daily thought, and brought again and 
     again before the mind with ever-renewed encouragement.  Real life 
     is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise 
     between the ideal and the possible; but the world of pure reason 
     knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the 
     creative activity embodying in the splendid edifices the passionate 
     aspiration after the perfect from which all great work springs.  
     Remote from human passions, remote even from the pitiful facts of 
     nature, the generations have gradually created an ordered cosmos, 
     where pure thought can dwell as in its natural home, and where one, 
     at least, of our nobler impulses can escape from the dreary exile 
     of the actual world.

                                           Bertrand Russell

    
    he sure did run on though... 

(I'm still mulling this over, but I thought it was worth passing on for the
connection to the men's-reaction-to-lesbianism topic, not to mention for the
list of orifices and for the link between patriarchal oppression and the price
of male prostitutes (: >,) -- Ray)


... But to discuss with any real insight what is occurring here it is necessary
to sketch out the entire substantial model of sexuality on which the novel is
based and which controls the sickness model of homosexuality; indeed, it
controls the model by which sexuality can be used as an indicator of social
health or sickness in the first place.

It is a received model.

It is a model that contours the Napoleonic code, the Freudian libidinal economy
(as well as its various revisions), most conservative thought on rape, and the
generally barbaric legal structure that governs sexuality in the West.

This model holds that sexuality is a presence, best thought of as a
visible/invisible _substance_ (or essence) that women alone possess and for
which men have an appetite.  "Female sexuality" _means_ the langurous waftings
of this visible/invisible substance around the female body, the feel of this
substance as perceived by the female.  Conversely, "male sexuality" means the
masculine behavior indulged in by men in order to see, touch, embrace, or
possess this substance: "male sexuality" refers _only_ to behavior, behavior
that arises in response to this masculine appetite.  There is, however, no such
corresponding substance in the male.  In this sense, according to the
prevailing social model, there is no real male sexuality.  There is only female
sexuality.  And there is only male appetitive behavior in response to it.

By this model, male homosexuality is "sick" because it seeks this substance
where it is not: in other men.  (This is why the "desired" homosexual male is
always portrayed in art as the feminine male, although in reality it is usually
the traditionally masculine male whom most homosexuals desire.)  The
heterosexually appetitive woman is, by this model, "sick" for the same reason
as the male homosexual....  By this model, female homosexuality is trivial
because it is merely a mixing of substance by persons who already possess it. 
For the same reason, lesbianism is exciting to men (the mixing of the substance
is displayed) and is angering to men only when this substance is specifically
denied them....  This substance is what men purchase from prostitutes; it is
what is gained by a man in marriage; it is what is pilfered in rape....

What shatters the whole model is any precise observation of any actively
desiring orifice (mouth; vagina; anus; urethral or seminal vent; prepuce
collar; mammary duct, functional [female] or vestigial [male]; ear; nostril;
navel; eye; or armpit), an orifice that, rather than containing a magic
substance (the phallus/sexuality/urine/lubricant/smegma/semen, etc.), sensually
makes us experience its own behavior in response to its own appetite.  In
short, real observations of female homosexuality, male homosexuality, female
heterosexuality, or even the currently much beleagured male heterosexuality can
reveal the elements necessary to shatter the model.  But clearly, under the
model itself the most threatening to the male establishment is male homosexual
desire: what if this search for the visible/invisible substance in what, by
that model, is clearly the wrong place actually turns out to be successful...?
The envisioned horrors define the range of male-homophobia.

(Patriarchal reasoning: "If the male homosexual's search is successful in me,
then it will mean that I have always-already possessed this substance;
therefore, I will always have been a woman," or, alternatively, "I will cheat
him and, instead of the substance he seeks, give him an orifice full of semen. 
I will mystify the deception by charging him for this replacement; but since it
is not so valuable as the real thing I will charge him less."  For at least the
last 20 years, if not the last 120, the going price for "straight" male
prostitutes catering to homosexual men in New York's 42nd Street area has been
some five to ten dollars less than that of their female counterparts.)

    - Samuel R. Delany, 1979
    

    So, from which book is the quote?   I thought I'd read most, if
    not all, of Chip's books.
    
    All's I can think of is Bridge of Lost Desire, but the date is wrong.
    
       Margaret

    Delany wrote some fine science fiction in the sixties (_Nova_, "Time
    Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones", etc.)  Then he took
    time off during the early seventies to compose his magnum opus,
    Dhalgren, a book I detested so much that I couldn't finished it after
    at least three tries.  I liked him better in the sixties, when he
    wasn't trying to be science fiction's version of James Joyce.  I
    haven't read anything of his since that time, so I don't know anything
    about his recent writing.
    
    -- Mike

    Please save this topic for quotes themselves, and feel free to discuss
    authors in a new topic if you feel motivated to start one....(a
    "responses to quotes" topic maybe?)
    
    -Jody
    

Don't know whether this belongs here or 39.

You'll have to enter a time-warp of 50-55 years.

Ginger Rogers was a better dancer than Fred Astaire.


She had to every thing Fred did..


but backwards and


in high heels.

"Feeling ill at ease? Nervous? Having trouble concentrating? Do you feel 
the need for an analysis by someone retired? If you long for the excitement 
of war reportage, you're not alone.

"These days, hour after hour, remote control in hand like some empty 
syringe, I seed the video adrenaline rush that I've become (dare I say?) 
addicted to. I miss the action, the drama. I miss feeling connected, 
plugged in. I miss getting up in the morning, turning on the television and 
seeing a military spokesman not answer a question.

"What can TV offer us now? What will surpass our wondering, at least in the 
early hours of the war, whether at any moment there might be a white flash 
and then a blank screen? That was certainly  more exciting than trading in 
a Cadillac and cash for what was behind Door No. 3.

"There is a solution: new wars and new briefings. I want the Surgeon 
General to tell me now many new beds have been made available for AIDS 
patients during the last 24 hours. I want the Mayor to tell me how many 
homeless have been placed in affordable housing. I want to break away from 
'Cheers' for a bulletin from General Motors announcing that solar-powered 
cars have just become feasible.

"I want George Bush to interrupt the Lakers-Knicks game to tell me that, 
effective immediately, he is instituting a national health care program and 
that he knows that the American people are with him and understand why we 
have to take this drastic action.

"I want CNN to come up with really neat graphics for the war on drugs. I 
want Peter Arnett to give me live updates from a rooftop in the South Bronx 
as he tells me that the night sky is lit up with street lights that work. 
And most of all, I want Peter Jennings to tell me it's really happening."

	-- Andy Valvur in the New York Times, 3/17/91

Dulce et decorum est
 
 
     Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
     Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
     Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
     And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
     Men marched asleep.  Many had lost their boots,
     But limped on, blood-shod.  All went lame, all blind;
     Drunk with fatigue;  deaf even to the hoots
     Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
 
     Gas!  GAS!  Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling,
     Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
     But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
     And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.--
     Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
     As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
 
     In all my dreams before my helpless sight
     He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
 
     If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
     Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
     And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
     His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
     If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
     Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
     Bitten as the cud
     Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
     My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
     To children ardent for some desperate glory,
     The old Lie:  Dulce et decorum est
     Pro patria mori.
 
     - Wilfred Owen
 
    [I have not studied Latin, but I am told that "Dulce et decorum est pro
    patria mori" means "It is a sweet and fitting thing to die for one's
    country." Wilfred Owen died fighting for Britain in World War I, one
    week before the armistice, at age 25.]

    
    Re -1
    I studied that poem at school - it left a lasting impression....
    Thanks for entering it Mike. I hadn't read it for years.
    'gail

    
    
    	The milk can hurt you,
    	  In the Dangerous Kitchen.
    
    				-- Frank Zappa, "The Dangerous Kitchen"
    
    

    "I'm an idea man......If you talk about stuff sometimes it means you
    don't have to do it."
    
    "As we all know, staring at things is an important part of creativity."
    
    					-Harvey Reid
    					 talented, long-haired musician

	"I don't know how to compute the number of Iraquis dead. I don't 
	have a clue, and I don't really plan to undertake any real effort 
	to find out."

		-- Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of 
		Staff, quoted in the Boston Globe, 3/23/91

    
"She begged me not to kill her, I gave her a rose
Then slit her throat, watched her shake till her eyes closed
Had sex with the corpse before I left her
And drew my name on the wall like Helter Skelter."

	-- the Geto Boys, quoted in Newsweek, April 1, 
	1991, in an article on violence in our culture.

    Re -1
    
    I seriously felt sick reading that.
    'gail

    and let's not forget
    
    "I used to love her
    but I had to kill her..."
    
    by some forgettable bunch of rock 'artists'

    I'm having a little trouble adjusting to this new
    culture...AAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
    
    Back to my Mozart, Beethoven.  
    Even Opera, which is typically tragic, is not sadistic.
    (I exclude Berg in the above sentence, of course.)
    
    	Pennie

    
    Must be the price we pay for freedom of speech.
    
    At least, some of us are paying it...
    
    D.

    mmmm

    Ain't that the truth.  A fellow in a top-down convertible was blasting
    the "Nasty" album for all to hear yesterday.  Sort of spoils the first
    springy day in Spring.  
    
    mdh

> Do you realize we're living in a time when pizza gets to our houses
> faster than the police?

          Said to me while I was handing out AWARE fliers in Harvard Square
          by a man who displayed disgust at the idea of women defending
          themselves:


			"You feminists just need a good fuck."

    -.1
    
    So...did he cite an authority on that, or was it his own original
    insight?
    
    ;-)
    
    D.

    
    
    But what was your response, Nancy????  ;-)
    
    
    (I'm sitting here thinking up some excellent comebacks!)
    
    
    kath

.117

Poor man...



my knee goes out to him.

D.

    
    RE -1
    
    HAH!
    Witty!
    

    re.117 et al.
    
    a good toss-off line might be  "Who doesn't?"
    
    still as a cure-all for what ails us, it is woefully inadequate ...

This is from the movie "Forever Female" staring Ginger Rogers. It's said by the
man who played her husband. I don't know why but I really like this.

"I have found that a woman's laugh is often a mating call"

	"Keeping women away from power is a full-time preoccupation for 
	all kinds of men."

		--  David Nyhan, from "How about the Mother of our Country?",
	  	column in the Boston Globe, 5/12/91

    
    	"We judge ourselves by our best intention, but we are judged
    	by our last worst act."
    
    					Michael Josephson, ethicist
    					"Time", April 15, 1991, page 63

    "Almost anything can happen in Womannotes. Most everything has."

                            Anon
                            May 20, 1991

	Although I found this to be somewhat simplistic, it has stuck with me
lately.  It's from the liner notes to John Gorka's album "Jack's Crows"...

	"Life is not fair.  Love is not enough, but it's the only thing
	 worth pursuing."

						--John Gorka

    
    
    		"I have observed that too much labour not only makes 
    		 the understanding dull, but so intrudes upon the 
    		 harmony of the body that, after ceasing from our toil,
    		 we have another to pass through before we can enjoy
    		 the sweetness of rest."
    
    
    					John Woolman
    					1720 - 1773
    

Hear, hear!!!

D!

	   "(E)ver since Akhnaton ruled Egypt, probably since before 
	then, a school of thought has held we ought to lay down our 
	weapons and rely on love. That if love doesn't work, at
	least we'll die guiltless. Usually even its opponents have
	said this is a noble idea. I say it stinks. I say it's not
	just unrealistic, not just infantile, it's evil. It denies
	we have any duty to _act_ in this life. Because how can we,
	if we let go of our capability?
	   No...we're mortal - which is to say, we're ignorant,
	stupid, and sinful - but those are only handicaps. Our
	pride is that nevertheless, now and then, we do our best.
	A few times we succeed. What more dare we ask for?"

	Poul Anderson

     <<< Note 39.131 by SA1794::CHARBONND "forget the miles, take steps" >>>

>	That if love doesn't work, at
>	least we'll die guiltless. Usually even its opponents have
>	said this is a noble idea. I say it stinks. I say it's not
>	just unrealistic, not just infantile, it's evil. It denies
>	we have any duty to _act_ in this life. 

>	Poul Anderson

    Sorry, I don't recognise the name, but I would disagree with the 
concept above.......Seems to me Jesus, Ghandi, and various other figures in 
history, both recent and distant past, have used love, not weapons, to 
change the world. To admit that I am not strong enough to lay down my 
weapons should not keep me from admiring those who have......And their act 
of love has usually been more powerful, more lasting, and more enlightening 
than most others in history that someone can name......

    Vic H

    "Ask yourself seriously whether the world is the better for the moral
    teaching traditionally given to the young.  Consider how much of
    unadulterated superstition goes into the make-up of the conventionally
    virtuous man, and reflect that while all kinds of imaginary moral
    dangers were guarded against by incredibly foolish prohibitions, the
    real moral dangers to which an adult is exposed were practically
    unmentioned.  What are the really harmful acts to which the average man
    is tempted? Sharp practice in business of the sort not punished by law,
    harshness towards employees, cruelty towards wife and children,
    malevolence towards competitors, ferocity in political conflicts -
    these are the really harmful sins that are common among respectable and
    respected citizens.  By means of these sins a man spreads misery in his
    immediate circle and does his bit towards destroying civilization."
    
                       - Bertrand Russell from The Conquest of Happiness,
                                          first pub. Liveright Pub Corp, 
                                          Oct. 1930
    

    RE: last 3
    
    It's exactly these kinds of statements that get me to thinking how nice
    it would be to find out what really *would* happen if women had the
    power in the world.
    

    
    "Men were at the helm as civilization gave us slavery, 
     colonialism, apartheid, corruption, hunger, the 'final 
     solution', budget deficits, ghettos, refugees, and 
     countless variations on environmental mismanagement and 
     pollution.  Men have led us into war after war after war."
    
     - Robert L. Steinback
    

    
    "Men are fascinated by the power to terminate life.  Men
     love war, and war games.  We love to tempt death in fast
     cars and boats.  We invented duels and sword fights and
     gun fights at the OK Corral.  We see our alter egos in
     cinema killers like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester
     Stallone, and Chuck Norris."
    
     - Robert L. Steinback
    

    
    "It seems logical to assume that the ability women have to
     interface with life at its inception would make them less
     reckless about ending it.  Men, lacking that ability, seem
     more disposed to consider life cheap.
    
     And indeed, the world as we men have shaped it places only
     marginal value on life.  Honor, nationalism, pride, vengeance,
     wealth, duty, religion, power -- we'd kill in a heartbeat in
     the name of any one of them."
    
     - Robert L. Steinback
    

    
    Of all the wild beasts of land or sea, the wildest is woman.
    					Menander (342?-291? BCE)

    
    A woman is always buying something.
    				Ovid (43 BCE-18CE)

    
    A woman talks to one man, looks at a second, and thinks of a third.
    					Bhartrihari ca 625
    

    
    Woman was God's second mistake.
    			Fredrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
    

    Neitzsche was stupid and abnormal.
    			Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) 

    Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.
    
    					Tim Leary

    Women are like elephants to me. I like to look at them but I wouldn't
    want to own one.
    				W.C. Fields (1880-1946)

    If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no
    meaning.
    
    				Aristotle Onassis (1906-1975)

    Woman: An animal...having a rudimentary susceptibility to
    domestication... The species is the most widely disributed of all
    beasts of prey... The woman is omnivorous and can be taught not to
    talk.
    					Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

    Man: an animal[whose]... chief occuation is extermination of other
    animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such
    insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.
    
    					Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

    Are you attempting to inflame?
    
    If so, take it elsewhere.  I mean it.
    
    D!

     	   The wind that makes music in November corn is in a 
	hurry. 	The stalks hum, the loose husks whisk skyward in 
	half-playful swirls, and the wind hurries on.
	   In the marsh, long windy waves surge across the grassy 
	sloughs, beat against the far willows. A tree tries to argue, 
	bare limbs waving, but there is no detaining the wind.
	   On the sandbar there is only wind, and the river sliding 
	seaward. Every wisp of grass is drawing circles on the sand. 
	I wander over the bar to a driftwood log, where I sit and 
	listen to the universal roar, and to the tinkle of wavelets 
	on the shore. The river is lifeless: not a duck, heron, marshhawk 
	or gull but has sought refuge from the wind.

             *             *           *

	   Out of the clouds I hear a faint bark, as of a faraway dog. 
	It is strange how the world cocks its ear at that sound, 
	wondering. Soon it is louder: the honk of geese, invisible, 
	but coming on.
	   The flock emerges from the low clouds, a tattered banner
	of birds, dipping and rising, blown up and blown down, blown 
	together and blown apart, but advancing, the wind wrestling lovingly
	with each winnowing wing. When the flock is a blur in the far sky
	I hear the last honk, sounding taps for summer.

            *             *            *

	   	It is warm behind the driftwood now, for the wind has gone
	with the geese. So would I - if I were the wind.

	Aldo Leopold - "A Sand County Almanac"
	November: If I Were the Wind

    Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man
    manages his affairs as well as a tree.
    
    					George Bernard Shaw

    It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a
    resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to
    physics or chemistry.
    
    						H.L. Mencken

    The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that
    they have a common enemy.
    					Sam Levenson

    I hate quotations.
    			Ralph Waldo Emerson

    Last time I tried to make love to my wife nothing was happening, so I
    said to her, "What's the matter, you can't think of anybody either?"
    
    					Rodney Dangerfield

    Sex is the biggest nothing of all time.
    
    			Andy Warhol (probably just after one of his lovers
                                     shot him.)

    Love is a grave mental disease.
    			Plato
    
    Plato is a bore.
    			Nietzsche

    I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but
    they've always worked for me.
    
    				Hunter S. Thompson

    Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
    
    				Oscar Wilde

    All life is six to five against.
    
    			Damon Runyon

    I would have made a good Pope.
    
    			Richard M. Nixon

    Any fool can make a rule.
    
    			Henry David Thoreau

    I like quotes. Quotes are cool.
    
    			Mike Morgan

    It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.
    
    				Winston Churchill

    It can be great fun to have an affair with a bit@h.
    			
    				Louis Auchincloss

    We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is
    moonshine.
    
    					H.L. Mencken

    When the going gets weird, the wierd turn pro.
    
    				Hunter S. Thompson

    Ninety percent of everything is crap.
    
    						Theodore Sturgeon

"We are not opposed to allowing woman her rights, but do protest against 
her appearing in places where her presence is calculated to destroy our 
respect for the modesty and delicacy of her sex."

	-- from a petition drawn up in 1848 by the senior class of the
	Harvard Medical School protesting (successfully) the application of 
        Harriot Hunt to be admitted to the medical school. 
	

"She [woman] has a head almost too small for intellect but just big enough 
for love."

	-- from an 1848 obstetrics textbook; quoted in *For Her Own Good:
	150 Years of the Experts' Advice to Women,* by Barbara Ehrenreich and 
	Deirdre English, 1979, p. 65.

    "We did the job.  None of the Iraqi vehicles fired back.  All were
    destroyed.  There were no survivors.  Combat was great--there just
    wasn't enough of it.  I don't envy the people who didn't get to
    experience this."

    		Staff Sgt. Carlton Jones

	On the last day of the course (referernced in 56.506), 
	while discussing how cultural predispositions affect 
	one's response to a violent attack, Ayoob urged the class 
	to encourage their female SO's to take some form of 
	"assertiveness training".

	And then he said, in a lower voice but still audible to the
	class (of 28),

	
		"For Nancy, this would be redundant."

	"You know there is no word in the English Language for a women
	that hates men. Misogynist, thats a man who hates women, but there's
	no word for women that hate men. 

	<long pause> 

	Female singer/songwriter, thats about as close as you get."

					John Stewert, between songs

    There is too, Tom: "manhater." And that's what a lot of people
    think "feminist" means.
    
    Eileen

	Don't blame me. Just reporting what John said.

				Tom_K

    Now, Tom, would I blame you?
    
    Eileen

	.174 *was* addressed to me.

					Tom_K

    Pool player Minnesota Fats, explaining why he neither drinks nor
    smokes:  "I learned everything I know not from intelligent people, but
    from imbeciles.  It's automatic.  You don't do what they do."