Oh really, Killarney,

"Actually YOU'RE the one I much prefer to be aggressive and belligerent to..."

(Quaking in my boots here, but I'll forge ahead :)

In my experience, those who act aggressively and belligerently employ the blather to disguise their lack of substance while garnering a bit of attention.

Anything to say on the subject at hand, or can we all resume normal activities while you recharge your megaphone?

Nice chatting again.

Feminist + testosterone = world domination.

Ha Killarney. What is she like:-)

Back to the topic...

'Raising children within a paradigm that holds the female as inferior, even something to be despised (Man up! What are you? ####y?), is going to inevitably have consequences. And one of those consequences is violence against women.'

This my inferior, misogynistic mind just cannot comprehend. I understand the language betrays (rather than causes IMO) an attitude of society, though I would argue it can also reflect a long gone culture. I mean even when I was a kid I had no idea what curds and whey were, or what a nigga was. I didn't end up wanting to eat the former or catch the latter.

There is also the issue of separation between the genders that is commonplace in every playground where girls don't want to be 'smelly', 'dirty' boys etc, that I think is natural part of the growing up.

And generally, in general, girls cant throw as far as boys. Deal with it man. So in an athletic context, I think that's fair enough. Men cant have babies.

But my main trouble is that from reading lots and lots of wholesome feminist commentary, its almost as if every time in society a woman experiences violence, she does so solely because she is female, and as a result of men's 'attitude to women' or misogyny.

When men experience violence, it has nothing to do with his gender.

Now for this to stand, one of these two possibilities I can muster.

a) Women are special, so the Patriarchy was right; women should be protected from experiencing any violence, and men should not.

b) When men experience violence, it is necessarily an expression of misandry.

There's no opportunistic crime, no people with anger management issues, no random acts of violence. Each and every time a woman is hit, it's because the man hates women, or society in general hates women. I call BS!

BTW: some people with gut problems would be offended by someone having to have 'guts' to do something courageous.

Correction to my last post:

That should have read:

< And one of the relatively few ARTICLE writers who comes back on their thread and gets involved in the discussion. >

Ilsa, you wrote in your last post:

<< There is only one response that even comes close to healthy debate about the subject at hand, >>

However, my previous post, written in the interests of healthy debate has gone unanswered.

Please come back and debate this subject. Thanks.

With regards to the hyperbolic 'torrent of defensive derailment', I wonder how often Killarney takes the time to write to people telling them just how much she agress with them. I know for a fact that the customer relations departments of most companies are snowed under responding to all those customers writing in just to say how much they're enjoying their purchase.

As we said last time; We're all ears! As Poirot said, 'Why don't you just come out and agree with the author? Lay out your reasons.'

As Tony said,

Everybody - especially the silent lurking likers - is free to contribute to this debate. They are free to offer their opinions, criticise other people's opinions and have their opinions criticised in turn.

... If we dare to question or criticise their arguments then we are 'intimidating' and 'silencing' them. You can see how this would make meaningful debate difficult.

But, as Stan often says at the end of South Park, I've learned something today...

When a woman experiences violence, she experiences it as a woman, and it is necessarily the result of the perpetrator's misogyny and the sexism in society. This is different to when a man experiences violence, which has nothing to do with gender, and he probably had it coming anyway as he is responsible for other violence perpetrated by others of his gender. Hence the saying 'violence against women', ie violence against the innocent; Any discussion of physical strength is as sexist as the use of the term ballsy, and feminism rails against paternalistic patriarchy, so the only explanation is women are universally pure and innocent!

It's one powerful movement that can unilaterally assign motive to each and every individual act of violence.

Most importantly, according to the author, the use of 'balls' has a 'direct' relationship with Laurie Oaks using the word 'balls'.

"They are directly related. It's that simple."

Every time Laurie uses the word balls, a woman gets immediately bashed.

The apprehension of violence encapsulated in language is far from being one-sided… On Monday's Pop Asia a tweeter, Julie, wrote "My mum called U-KISS girls because of their dance moves, but I think it's cool!"

This goes to my earlier point that language changes and whilst this is an example of the problem expressed by older women it does indicate a perceptual and conceptual change with younger females.

I don't know whether this young woman was brave enough to tell her mother off for using denigrating and sexist language against males (the context demonstrably was not a compliment) – but if she did, that would have taken gonads.