She had me agreeing until she wrote "Perhaps the ultimate sin for women is to show confidence and to love themselves, so critics feel that outspoken women need to be brought down a peg or two." The self-esteem crowd never seem to think that a woman has enough self confidence. If they cannot have enough self-esteem, how can they ever feel good enough?

Half of the world are socialising women to have an undisguised sky-high opinion of themselves. The rest of us just want to cut these people back to size.

If people are threatened by an argument and cannot find a logical counter argument they often become 'personal'. They can resort to attacking the physical characteristics of their opponent. This is not just something that happens to women who have less than perfect looks. It happens to everyone who has an argument that threatens. It is possible to be personally attacked for many reasons other than looks. Most people would just dismiss this for what it is and stick resolutely to their arguments. They would not be drawn into a slanging match of personal insults but continue to act with integrity by maintaining the accepted rules of logical and reasonable argument.

Personal insults work only when there exists in the mind of the recipient some degree of truth. If a person really thinks that being overweight is a bad thing and somehow lessens their value as a human being then they will be stung by attacks which target their weight. Others can simply brush it off without a thought. Why is their such a difference of reaction to the same insult? People indulge in personal insults simply because in many cases they work and the insulted person crawls back into their shell and takes their threatening ideas with them. You cannot change the fact that some people want to hurt others when they present threatening arguments. No amount of 'education' or legislation or social conditioning is going to change that behaviour. It just pushes it underground and it surfaces somewhere else in another guise.

Women who react to such insults need to work on changing the way they think about themselves. This is something that is within their power to achieve. Muzzling free speech or trying to eliminate all gender based insults is totally beyond anyone's capacity. It is amazing what lengths some people will go to in order to avoid the most obvious solution to a problem simply because it may involve some soul searching and painful but necessary revelations

phanto

That is why self confidence is so vital (to Benk's utter mortification - fearing confident women as he does).

People with a strong sense of self are less likely to be harmed by attacks on appearance. Hell, they may even realise they have the skill and ability to lead nations!

I don't see a cessation of commentary on a woman's appearance any time soon. Some nut-jobs on this forum have even cast aspersions on my appearance not even knowing what I look like - in the belief that attacking women for what they wear and how they look is considered acceptable. And this is the point of the article. Tell a women she is undesirable and that will shut her up.

It is not working, of course, and slowly the bullies will have to resign themselves to the fact that women are aware they are far more than just their appearance and most of us know it.

I have been ridiculed about my supposed appearance by people who have never met me or even seen a photograph of me. They just assumed from what I'd written that I looked a certain way, and lived in a certain suburb. They were wrong on both counts.
People will say anything about you if they find you aggravating enough.

I just wonder if Danielle was among the many women who called John Howard little Johnie or one of the multitude making comment on Tony Abbot's swimmers. Why do I smell hypocrisy?

runner you can go look for yourself, to give you a start http://www.danniellemiller.com.au/

R0bert