Reality check—Dawn is an ardent feminist whose views ought to give you pause. You ought to think seriously about your views, your phrasing, your frame of reference in the context of what it means to ardent feminists. You should care if you have daughters, or a wife, or sisters, or a mother, or even if you don’t. You should care even if you disagree—I do on occasion. You should care—and be grateful—because a differing opinion and perspective is what dialogue and this particular orphaned fray is all about.

You should care because the ability to encounter a different voice (to use Gilligan’s phrasing) is important and benchmarking your position against another perspective matters!

If you have a disagreement tackle it head on and confront it with logic. If you attack the person in absence of evidence of provocation or deception you’re a fraud and a fool.

Dawn is actually trying to make this place worth reading again and more than a shrieking page of nonsense. You should thank her—even if you disagree with her. And then engager her in debate as to why you disagree (if you do—I infrequently do). It’s called dialogue.

You know—it’s easy to miss the perspective outside of your own frame of reference. It’s easy to dismiss that which you haven’t experienced. Having two 15 month old daughters (and even prior to that) I always used Dawn as my litmus test to see if I wasn’t succumbing to subconscious sexism and to triangulate on issues relating to gender. If you don’t take advantage of people’s expertise here on areas they are experienced in than you miss one of the primary benefits of this place and you lose the opportunity to enlarge your perspective and frame of reference.

In which case you pretty much get what you deserve in terms of benefit from this place.

Dawn (and like posters) are a test of your ability to make this forum a place for educational exchange. Abandon that at your peril.

A little humility and thoughtfulness would serve most of this community well.

Demosthenes2 Translation:"Dawn just e-mailed me and offered me a blow job if I'd post this."Her efforts to blow any guy on the fray are well known.Which proves she is not a feminist to begin with in spite of the fact that she attempts to pawn herself off as one.Her real goals are attention seeking and control.

Demo - I am in general agreement with you, though I have one concern which I thik may be shared by others.

"Lace-curtain" gentility has no place at the Fray.

That is not to say that vulgarity and "shock-jock" posts should be encouraged purely for their inflammatory value.

But it is to say that anyone who reads IOZ at his blog knows full well that many of his best and most intellectually provocative posts are quite frequently anything but genteel.

So there is a fine line involved here that the Fray's Mr. and Mrs. Grundy's should bear in mind when taking this or that poster to task for the crime of possibly offending someone somewhere.

If a post is not offending someone somewhere, it is probably not much of a post at all, just as a post is not a post at all if all it does is offend someone somewhere.

In this regard, one touchstone of mine has always been Paul Krasner's claim in his magazine "The Realist" that on the plane back from Dallas to Washington, LBJ was fucking JFK's corpse in the neck to try and make entry-wounds look like exit-wounds and vice-versa, along with, of couse, his pornographic Disney panorama, which was a staple on college dorm-room doors in the 60s and 70s.

Those were political satires of a high-order, and anyone who doesn't think so should ask themselves whether their own lace-curtains are perhaps giving them too filtered a view of the world.

And should also spend a good-deal of time reading back-issues of R. Crumb comics.

Interestingly, I cross-posted with the poster "NutCaseDetector", whose post might well stand as a test-case for where "lace-curtain" gentility should and should not draw the line.

I confess I am not sure myself - there seems to be some personal defamation involved if the poster's claim was not intended metaphorically.

But if the poster's claim was intended metaphorically, then it is not easy to decide whether the post falls within the bounds of allowability.

I agree Dave. Thought the other poster is amusing. He/She obviously knows nothing about me or Dawn.

I’m a happily married guy with three kids 4 and under and the least likely poster to be influenced by any overture (not that Dawn would offer one being happily involved in a stable relationship herself). Your comments are telling. And illustrative of my point.

My comments (as anyone here will attest) are my own and prompted by nothing but my own assertions.

You know me not at all.

Just exactly what I was addressing.

As for me, I’ll stand on my posting history and what I think this place ought to (and can) be. Say hi to IOZ for me.

As for allowability—that makes me chuckle. He/She hurts him/herself. Not me.

You have one post in your history. And you came here (just found this exchange, eh?) to reply. To this post? And downrate it?

Coward.

It's not easy to earn my contempt. Congratulations.

Say hi to IOZ for me.

You should leave a comment yourself once in a while - a lot of his posts are the kind that you could really sink your teeth into.

For some reason, when I try to comment, the site returns a "blog not found" message, and when I try to email him, his published email doesn't work.

I guess he's trying to tell me something.

IOZ and I were friendly. We almost met when I was in Pittsburgh on business but he got the message to late. I have enormous respect for him. When things are saner I will reach out to him. Thanks Dave. Good night.

Fuck me hard.

"a shrieking page of nonsense" is about right.

Do people even want it to be better?

Unfortunately, there is another problem apart from the more obvious "shrieking page of nonsense" problem

This is the degree of cross-conversation on the trivial and the personal. There are plenty of other Slate-provided boards specifically designed for discussion of the trivial and the personal.

And it used to be that trivial and personal posts were both the exception at BoTF.

As is well-known, I do not consider all Fray-centric posts to be trivial; in fact, quite the opposite - I think that much is to be learned from serious examination of goings-on at this microcosm, which is one reason I support your agenda, despite my one reservation about it that I mentioned to Demo above. In other words, your agenda cannot be pursued without an examination of this microcosm in a way that can teach us much when transferred to the macrocosm.

As for allowability—that makes me chuckle. He/She hurts him/herself. Not me.

It occurs to me that regarding "allowability", the guidelines for top-posts should probably be more stringent than those for response posts. The post in question here is certainly less desirable as a top-post than it is as a response post (regardless of one's opinion on the level of its desirability as a response post), and in fact, one of the reasons the Fray is suffering lately is a plethora of just such posts as top-posts.

re: A little humility and thoughtfulness would serve most of this community well.

If it be your will

I will speak no more

If it be your will to let me see

If there is a choice

Let the rivers fill-

If it be your will to make us well-

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