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From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: on the "need" for support groups
Message-ID: <1680@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 20-Jan-84 01:19:07 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.1680
Posted: Fri Jan 20 01:19:07 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Jan-84 01:44:58 EST
References: <6480@watmath.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
Lines: 121

Maybe Judy has been finding better support groups than I did when I went
looking. I gave up, because the monsters I found there weren't anything
like what I wanted to be.

the alternative explananation is that Judy has not been able to recognise
hatred when she's seen it. Having met Judy, I don't believe this. However,
if any of you out there say "gee -- that's just what my support group does,
it must be okay" it may be time to take another look. 'Cause there are some
out there which do nothing as far as I can see besides exchange phone numbers
and encourage hatred.


	Far more often, these groups give one ideas about how to cope with life.
	For instance, someone may suggest the snappy comeback to make to your thick-
	headed boss's remarks. 

This one I heard a lot. However, I rarely heard anything about whether the
boss was actually thick-headed. there was an unwritten assumption that anything
that any woman said about a man was the strict, literal, and unadulterated
truth, while any comments he might make were vile slander. People would
vie with each other over the "most rotten" thing that their boss had said
to them that week. I felt incredibly sorry for their bosses. I doubt that he
could have said anything which would not have been picked apart in an effort
to prove that he was a chauvinist and should be served up as pig-pie.

I remember over the course of 3 weeks hearing one group of 3, who had the
same boss. Week 1 -- boss is jerk because he says "his" rather 
than "his or hers". Solution -- bitch incessantly at boss. Week 2. Gloat.
Boss is using "his or hers" all the time, and is using male and female
prounouns throughout his memorandums. Week 3. Boss is now terribly sexist
because he has used male pronouns 60-some percent of the time and female
30-some percent. he's had one week, he should be using 50/50 now...

Everybody talks about how they keep track of such things on the tops of
their steno pads... 

Poor Boss. I am sure that if I knew my employees were counting my words
in order to rake me over the coals 2 times a week I should can the
employees and hope to get some with a sense of "company loyalty" next
time.

	Someone may tell you how they finally got it across to
	their boyfriend (awful word) what it is like to fear rape.

Boyfriends come in all shapes and sizes. I heard one get raked over the
coals. It seems that he was a psychologist, and he figured that if his
girlfriend feared rape the logical thing to do was to get her some therapy
(though not from him!) so that she would not feel frightened.  By the
time everybody had worked over that poor girl, she was convinced that her
boyfriend was the ultimate in loosers because he would not let her
"have her fear". i figured that he already knew that she already "had
her fear" and he was suggesting something constructive that she could
do about it.

Alas, as a raped person who could never get a boyfriend to understand, she
could get a lot of attention from the supportive women. They were telling
her that she didn't "need" any boyfriend, since she had them. Hmm. Maybe
she didn't (and shouldn't) need her boyfriend, but he might be nice to
have anyway. it would be rather nice if somebody had cared about him when
suggesting that she drop him for being 'callous'. 

Also, the support group clearly were making a need for them in that woman,
who might not have needed them if she could have got her life with her
boyfriend together. Cynical old me thought that there couldn't possibly
be any connection between this and the increasing "membership fees" and
the power-tripping that certain people were obviously enjoying...

	Because these
	people may be able to look at you more objectively than your family, they
	may point out the job skills you have that you didn't even realize were
	valuable (eg. because no one thought being a seamstress was valuable).

On the other hand, because they do not know you well enough, they tend to
believe all the bs you can give them. And sometimes they instruct people
to bite off far more than they can chew... 

When I was in Ottawa, the neat and new wonderful thing to do is to tell
anybody who could type (most people there) that they had all the necessary
skills to move to the well-paying job of Cobol programmer. Unfortunately,
programming Cobol requires brains. (and the field could use a whole lot
more brains -- the horrible things I have seen...) Some of these dissatisfied
secretary sorts (Ottawa -- a government town -- is full of them.) never
demonstrated any ability to think as far as I could see. Yet the embarked on
the effort. I cornered a few of them and asked what they would do if they
couldn't hack it. They said "look pretty". I don't know about you, but I
sure don't want to support the code of someone who was kept around "to be
pretty". 

	Being in women's groups has also given me the feeling that
	I am not alone!! I am so happy to find that I am not the only one who hates
	being called a "girl" (ridiculous, after all I've been through!).

The problem with this, is that if you think that it is ridiculous to hate
being called "girl", with all that support you may never get around to doing
something about that ridiculous hate.

Or any ridiculous aspect of yourself. it all becomes wonderful because
"all the girls" have it. 

One of the things that I found most annoying in Ottawa was the topics
which were absolutely and permanently off limit. Such as "how do you
get a cheap baby sitter in this darn town" and "why can't I bring my
(not female) lover to this meeting?" (the answer to that one was:
"THIS IS WOMENSPACE" which I always thought should win the most
hypocritical line of the year award, since these "womanspace lovers"
were the first to crack down on the all-male clubs in the area.)

By the way, since my last article on rape, I have met one man who was
raped. By 3 women. It was the most horrible rape story I have heard,
and I have heard lots. The threat of castration does an awful lot
of damage to a person. Also being forced to perform multiple times.
Being beaten and being crved by a knife doesn't help much. This
happened 10 years ago, and he and his male lover (who was his lover
at the time as well) have not yet recovered. He has the problem that
there isn't a psychiatrist in the world that knows how to deal with
male rape, since it either is uncommon, or is never reported out of
embarrassment.

Laura Creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura