One section snagged me: I agree that gender desegregation can have unintended negative consequences, but hate to think that the only or primary reason there were no college rapists running rampant a generation or two ago is because those young men had so much more to lose by committing a Class A felony and they knew it. Hope it wasn't just the threat of damaging their future careers that kept them all in check. Perhaps I've misunderstood. I also think the epidemic of campus (and military) sexual assaults is "overdetermined," as they say, and a disfiguring symptom of a pervasive and pernicious devaluing of human dignity in our carnival culture.
My family has more than its share of challenging genetics that manifest as schizophrenia, depression, manic-depression, alcoholism, addiction; some lives have played out disastrously and ended devastatingly. But not all. To quote Tolkien's Samwise: "There is some good in the world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for."
Call me crazy, but some days that's the only thing that has kept me going.
Post Paris (for me) this was a controlled and passionate invocation of the sanity of depression. Lucid as a glass of spring water, now full of good reason. He speaks, I suspect for the many, afraid to articulate this deeper and imperative malaise. I salute the wisdom, and the self-control, and thank him for it.
Philippa Rees replied on Thu, 11/19/2015 - 05:24am
Oy. Beautiful, painful read.
One section snagged me: I agree that gender desegregation can have unintended negative consequences, but hate to think that the only or primary reason there were no college rapists running rampant a generation or two ago is because those young men had so much more to lose by committing a Class A felony and they knew it. Hope it wasn't just the threat of damaging their future careers that kept them all in check. Perhaps I've misunderstood. I also think the epidemic of campus (and military) sexual assaults is "overdetermined," as they say, and a disfiguring symptom of a pervasive and pernicious devaluing of human dignity in our carnival culture.
My family has more than its share of challenging genetics that manifest as schizophrenia, depression, manic-depression, alcoholism, addiction; some lives have played out disastrously and ended devastatingly. But not all. To quote Tolkien's Samwise: "There is some good in the world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for."
Call me crazy, but some days that's the only thing that has kept me going.
Post Paris (for me) this was a controlled and passionate invocation of the sanity of depression. Lucid as a glass of spring water, now full of good reason. He speaks, I suspect for the many, afraid to articulate this deeper and imperative malaise. I salute the wisdom, and the self-control, and thank him for it.
Thank you—this is very wise.