“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.

[Mc Mike]

53. No. I wasn't trying to put words in your mouth.

Last edited Sun Mar 4, 2018, 02:07 AM - Edit history (2)

Your first post brought up irrational phobias, like spiders and snakes. Your second post mocked my "actuarial stats" statement. So I looked up the stats to try to show you the difference in mortality rates, between irrational subconscious and conscious phobia driven fears, and rational subconsicous and conscious fears as described in Marge's archetypal phrase.

There's some things I agree with in your post 50, I'm not trying to alienate you, but do regard your statements vs the o.p. as alienating. But your "differ" ences from me, regarding my "expectations", puzzle me a bit. I don't pretend to tell women what they "should think" regarding the existence of a murderous threat from evil archetype oriented men. I observed their statements about what they do think, and assess the ideas myself. In this thread, you tell women what they should think, then say I'm doing so via my "expectations of what they should think". They say what they think, you say they think wrong, I say they think right but you think wrong, then you say I tell them what to think. At least, that's how I see things, and it confuses rather than wounds me.

One thing I notice, though, is you're sticking to your "4 or 3%" stat, and "11%" stat for men. It's helpful when you make claims like that to add a link to your source for that info. And you're brushing aside the fact that the killers of men and women are mostly always men (Over 90%, sez the Justice Dept.: http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf "Males were convicted of the vast majority of homicides in the United States, representing 90.5% of the total number of offenders." ).

I suppose everybody has a healthy fear of being killed, but this o.p. argument is about the inter-relationship between men and women, and as we already established, men do most of the killing. Once in a blue moon, you'll get your aileen wuornoses, or your squeeky frommes, but they don't factor in much overall to tip the "murderer gender" scales.

You have things a bit backwards, it's not that "women are most affected so should be most fearful of the problem", it's that "men affect the murder rates in the most negative way (by driving them up). So women (and men) should be more cognizant of the problem", and think strategically and act tactically to deal with it. The Atwood archetype statement is a tactic, a strategy. I remember one quote that defined "power" as "the ability to understand and define phenomena, and make a change". Something like that. I think Atwood (and people who agree with her) are intelligently summing up the situation with the knowledge easily available at hand, are strategically thinking, and using archetypal concepts in a tactical way.

I've already inoculated myself against your "Mike pushes mortality salience" accusation -- that I "believe women are mentally weaker and should cower in fear" -- with my Yellowbelly analysis. Enjoy:

There's a fair amount of highly negative action in the 1 min clip, but the satire was more confirmational commentary than celebration. Katherine O'Hare is comedy gold, but Andrea Martin was the Queen of broad physical comedy in that show.

The next line, after your already-defused false "sexist mortal salience promoter" charge, seems like an admonition to "toughen up, ladies", about this "whole woman man killer" thing. The admonition is part of a phrasing argument you make to further a charge vs me of "sexism vs. women", and the phrase has 4 mentions of "men" and one of "women". So to sum up, that's "toughen up ladies...men men men men ... Mike is sexist." Ironic. It's tough to wrap my head around this one, aki.

Your next sentence states that I'm more sexist against men. Some prejudiced people, when called out on it, will say "I'm not racist, I hate everybody equally." Maybe I could re-tool that phrase in response to your charges.

We're still stuck on the "women fear death men valid?" half of the debate, so it seems senseless to discuss Atwood's correct observation, which I agree with, about "men fear women laughter valid.". Long deliberative observational analysis leaves me thinking that it's the only ascertainable "threat" from the archetypal woman gender that can be seen. I know one guy's observation is antecdotal, not definitive evidence, but I'm a big-picture thinker. I say laugh it up ladies, my feelings don't get hurt that easy. If bad guys could accept womens' laughs and modify their ideas/behavior as a result, the world would be a better place. The "laugh-ee" should take it as a gentle reproof from their betters, not like it's a gang of gossipy mean little old ladies from the village sewing circle standing around dRump in stocks, pointing at his small junk and raining down jeers. But I'm sorry for being totally sexist and insulting in my previous post to you, anyway, if that's how you saw it.

(This is overlong, aki, but here's a small diversionary antecdotal story. It has the added benefit of being all true. A young lady that I knew hit 5 different businesses in an armed robbery spree in our neighborhood. (Drug problems) We were never close, she was ~ 6 years younger than me, but she grew up in the house I lived in from birth - 6 y.o., and I played football and stickball on the street with her older brother, so I always knew her as a little pee wee toddler with Polish white blond hair. She was big-boned as an adult, but had to have been armed to hit all those places spread out over a half mile, so fast. I heard about it, saw some media coverage, and was picking up some food at a pizza joint about 10 days later, and she came in the shop door. (She hadn't robbed that joint, bypassed it in her earlier spree.)

For a split second, fear crossed my mind. But it only entailed me looking at her face, her hands and orientation of her arms, and gauging the counter in "jumping over clearances" terms.

It wasn't a stick up. No trouble, I got the food and left, didn't stay to shoot the breeze with her, we've never really talked with each other. It didn't cause me a long term deeply rooted traumatic fear of the opposite gender. I did have occasion to mention it to several different community members later -- "Tammy blankblank is out", imaginary me diving over the pizza counter. She had a very good lawyer I guess, & her aunt is a repug committeewoman in district 1 of our ward. The DA is a Dem, it's a Dem stronghold city and county, but he seemed to be more interested in anti-ACORN activities than community security, a real political animal, I never vote for the wretch. Whatever, after the fact, I'm not huddled in fear like we live in a Deathwish style city, I don't go around armed, don't alter my travels or shopping in the community. That antecdote just says there was this one time, some woman who I think I could have taken in a brawl, caused me a couple of moments of uncertainty and fear, and there are no overarching conclusions to draw from that one incident. Some women can be dangerous, the cute little blond toddler could turn into a big boned druggie biker stick up woman, but there's no archetype there.)

The correct response to the question about the orange drumpfenfuhrer's assault is "He's going to kill me, he's killing me, now. I'm going to die." Everybody with even a tiny little bit on the ball knows exactly what Ivana was thinking.

Nobody laughs at the drumpfenfuhrer. I think that's what he had his mouthpiece Omarosa say on Frontline, anyhow. He's a clown, but he's more like one of those woods clowns that are so vogue these days. More of a slashing hobo than a singing one.