Plain talk…

I’m thinking quite a lot about phenomena in the society. Why the society and the world looks as it does. As so many else have done during the time.

Have started to read Jordan Riak’s “Plain talk about spanking” and it strikes me that yes, it HAS hurt us.

And thought further: the ones that are denying the damaging effects of spankings (and other ways of abusing a child) are the ones that are most dangerous for other people - and the society. I think we see this today (and have probably seen it before too, maybe I see it clearer today, than I did, I think, and hope). They tend to get power too, not so seldom a lot of power. Why?

Why are people voting for those persons?

The less you’re in denial the less dangerous you are to other people.

I also thought, with amazement, that you need to be reminded about what Jordan Riak writes even in a country where corporal punishment is forbidden, as the one I’m living in!

I also read a small notice in a magazine I got from the Swedish church about a black-and-white-thinking in the world. With a heading saying something in the style “Strike a blow for the uncertainty”, where you could read that feelings have always been flowing. This is nothing new. What’s new in this is that this flow, or stream, is seen in real time. “Hate this!” and “Hate that!” “Love this!” and “love that!”

Just a click away with the computer’s mouse you get an abreaction of emotions. And you find a lot of like-minded. Which can be both a good and a bad thing.

However, getting together out of admiration is better than a community in the name of hate the writer thought. But in both cases you can close your eyes for things he (she) thinks.

The author calls this phenomenon everyday-fundamentalism. And he (or she?) wants to strike a blow for the ambivalence. For being open and searching isn’t only radical. It’s to defend a whole outlook on man.

But, I don’t know, sometimes the uncertain maybe should be more certain and raise their voices more?

Just some loud and spontaneous thoughts…

Corporal punishment of children and other forms of abuse are prohibited by law...

picture from Stockholm.

The Swedish ban on corporal punishment celebrated its thirty year existence yesterday.

The Swedish Children's ombudsman writes on his blog about the ban and its anniversary:

A politician said in the debate preceding the ban:

”In a democracy as ours we use words as arguments, not blows. We talk to people and don't beat them. If we can't convince our children with words we can never convince them with violence.”

Thirty years ago, just before the ban, almost 50 percent of the children in Sweden were beaten by their parents. Today one of ten children are beaten. This is a revolutionary change. More and more countries follow in Sweden's footsteps and introduce prohibition against corporal punishment.

At the same time we can't be satisfied until ALL parents have insight, understanding and knowledge to avoid violating and abusing children. Still many thousands of children experience violence in the family, directly or indirectly.

Therefore the best way to celebrate these thirty years, with the law against corporal punishment, is to remind ourselves and others about why the law is there and that it is of an enormous interest today too, ie., it's very important today too. And will always be important.

Parents in exposed situations have to get support and methods to manage their parental responsibility. Children have to get knowledge about their rights. And we have to remind that the law is prohibiting physical violence, but ALSO that other forms of abusive treatment, as imposing shame on the child or isolating the child on its room, methods that sometimes are maintained in 'Nanny-program'' also are prohibited.

See the facebook-cause "To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Swedish ban on corporal punishment."

More on the ban on corporal punishment in Sweden 30 years...

See the article "No spanking, please!" on the site "Sweden.se - the Official Gateway to Sweden."

Also see earlier posting "The ban on corporal punishment of children in Sweden celebrates 30 years this year..." A law that was implemented July 1, 1979.

Addition May 30: First the committee asked Astrid Lindgren not to hold the speech below, just recieve the prize at the prize ceremony. But then Astrid Lindgren said she wouldn't come at all. The committee changed its mind and Lindgren held her speech. Links to the speech in Swedish and German are at the bottom of this posting.

Never Violence!

Delivered upon children's author Astrid Lindgren's acceptance of the German Booksellers Peace Prize in Frankfurt, Germany, October 22, 1978

Dear friends!

What I must do first is thank you, and this I do with all my heart. The German Booksellers' Peace Prize has such a luster around it and is such a great honor to receive that one almost totters when it is put into one's hands. And now I stand here, where so many wise men and women have stood during the years, putting their thoughts and hopes forth about the future of humanity and about the eternal peace that we all are longing for. What can I say that hasn't been said already in a better way than I can?

To talk about peace is to talk about something that doesn't exist. Real peace does not exist on our earth and has never existed other than as a goal that we evidently cannot reach. So long as humanity has lived on this orb it has dedicated itself to violence and war, and the fragile peace as it now exists is constantly threatened. At this moment the whole world is living in fear of a new war, a war that will destroy us all. At the prospect of this threat more people than ever are working for peace and disarmament—that is true. This could be a hope. But it is difficult to be hopeful. The politicians gather in large crowds at top-level meetings and talk so warmly for disarmament, but the only disarmament they desire is that of someone other than themselves. “Your land shall disarm, not mine!” No one wants to start with oneself—no one dares to start—because all are so afraid and have so little confidence in other's will to work toward peace. And while one disarmament conference replaces another, the most insane rearmament in humanity's history takes place. It is not strange that we are all afraid. Either we live in the East, North or South; either we live in a great and powerful country or a small, neutral one. But we know that a big new war would hit the whole of humanity, and whether it is in a neutral or not neutral heap of ruins that I lie dead can make no big difference.

Mustn't we, after all those thousands of years of constant wars, ask ourselves if it is because of some kind of construction fault in the whole species of man that we always take up violence? And ask if we are doomed to come to our end for our aggression's sake? We all want peace. Isn't there a possibility then that we can change before it is too late? That we can learn to dissociate ourselves from violence? Simply try to become a new strain of human beings? But how should that come about? And where should we, in that case, start?

I think we have to start from the foundation. With the children. You have given an author of children's books a peace prize; you must not expect any big political views or suggestions for international solutions to the problems. I want to talk about the children, my worries for them and my expectations for them. Those who are children now shall take over the handling of the world, if there is anything left of it. They shall decide between war and peace and what sort of society they shall have; if they prefer one in which violence continues to escalate or one in which human beings live in peace and community with each other.

Is there on the whole any hope that they shall be able to create a more peaceful world than what we have succeeded with? Why have we failed so badly in spite of all good will? I recall what a shock it was for me when, still very young, I suddenly realized that those who governed countries and the world's destiny were no Gods with a superior outfit or clear, divine sight. They were human beings with the same weaknesses as I. But they had power, and they could in each moment come to the most ill-fated decisions by the impulses that ruled them. If things were against us, it could be war because of one single human being's desire for power or revenge or vanity or triumph or—what seemed to be the most common—blind faith in violence as the most efficient aid in all situations. And in the same way, one single good human being filled with consideration could ward off catastrophes, just through being good and filled with consideration and through repudiating violence.

The conclusion from this could be: it is individual human beings who determine the destiny of the world. And why aren't all good and filled with consideration then? Why are there so many who only want violence and power? Is there an innate evil will in some? I couldn't believe it then, and I don't believe it even this day. The intelligences—the gift of reason—are innate, but in a newborn baby no seed lies within from which it will automatically grow good or evil. What determines whether a child will become a warm, open, trusting human being with the ability to commune with others or a cold, destructive loner is decided by the ones that welcome the child into the world and either teach it what love is or leave it to be shown.

Goethe has said “Überall lernt man nur von dem, den man liebt”, and then it must be true. A child that is lovingly met and who loves its parents learns a loving attitude to its surrounding world, and keeps this basic attitude throughout life. Which is good, even if he or she comes to belong to those deciding the world's destiny. And should, contrary to expectation, he or she happen to become one of those deciding the world's destiny, that's good luck for us all—if their basic attitude is love and not violence. Future statesmen and politicians are formed in their character before they are even five years old—that's horrible but it is true.

And if we now look back at how children have been treated and raised so far as we can follow it through the times, hasn't it too often been a question of breaking their will with violence of some kind, either physical or psychological? How many children haven't gotten their first lesson in violence “von denen, die man liebt”, their own parents—and then passed this teaching on from generation to generation? “Spare the rod and spoil the child” you can read in the Old Testament. This, ever since written, many fathers and mothers have believed. They have diligently swung the birch and called it “love”. But all those “ruined boys” of whom there are so many at this moment in the world—the dictators, the tyrants, the oppressors, the tormentors of human beings—how was their childhood? That you ought to do some research into. I believe that behind most of them there is a tyrannic father or other raiser with a birch or a rod in the hand.

Mustn't you then become despaired when there are voices screaming for retrogression to old authoritarian systems? That is what is going on in many places in the world. Those who blame “too much freedom” and “too little strictness” in upbringing for youthful “misbehaviors” now want “harder grips” and “tightened reins”. This is to use Beelzebub to drive out the Devil and will only lead to more violence and bigger and more dangerous gulfs between the generations in the long term. Those much longed for “harder grips” would possibly “achieve” a superficial effect that its advocates could interpret as an improvement. Until, that is, they are gradually forced to notice that violence breeds violence—as it has always done.

Many parents are worried by those new signals and have begun to wonder if perhaps they have done wrong. Is an anti-authoritarian upbringing something objectionable? It is only if it becomes misunderstood.

An anti-authoritarian upbringing doesn't mean that children shall be left to care for themselves or to do precisely what they want. It doesn't mean they shall grow up without norms, by the way, or that they will reject them. Both children and adults need norms for conduct, and children learn more from their parents' example than from anything else. Of course a child shall have respect for its parents, but indeed—parents shall also have respect for their children and not abuse their natural advantage over them. A mutual, loving respect—that one wishes for both parents and for all children.

And for all those who are now screaming so eagerly for harder grips and tighter reins, I would want to tell you what an old lady once told me. She was a young mother when the common belief was “Spare the rod and spoil the child”. She hadn't been fully convinced of it, but at one time her little boy had done something, so she decided he “needed” a spanking—the first of his life. She said to him that he had to go out and find a birch for her. The little boy left and was out for a long time. At last he came back, crying, and said:”I didn't find any birch but here you have a stone you can throw on me.” Then she too began to cry, because suddenly she saw everything with the child's eyes. The child had thought “If my mother in fact wants to hurt me, then she can as well use a stone.” She put her arms around him and they cried together for a while. And then she put the stone on a shelf in the kitchen, and there it laid as an eternal reminder of the promise she gave herself at that moment: “Never violence!”

Well, if we now raise our children without violence or tight reins of any kind, do we then get a new human species living in eternal peace? Only a child book author can hope something so silly. I know it is an utopia. And of course there is so much else in our poor, sick world that has to be changed so that there can be peace. But we have, in the here and now—even without war—so incomprehensibly much cruelty and violence on earth. The children are indeed aware of it. They see and hear and read about it daily, and must think violence is a natural state. Mustn't we, at least in our homes and through our own examples show that there are other ways of living? Maybe it would be a good idea if we were to put a stone on the kitchen shelf as a reminder for children and ourselves: Never violence! It would yet maybe at last be a small contribution to the peace of the world.

[translation from Swedish by me and Steve Thomas. Here you can read the speech in Swedish and here in German].

The ban on corporal punishment of children in Sweden celebrates 30 years this year...

happy (?) children bathing.

At Children’s ombudsman’s site you can read about this ban:

“The issue of child abuse and neglect is not only relevant to changes in legislation, but also to the changes in society that have occurred, during more than twenty years of existing legislation. There are groups of children who are deprived and in vulnerable situations and families where child abuse and neglect is more or less a constant element. These kinds of families will probably occur in any society regardless of corporal punishment bans.”

And that is really awful.

Join this facebook-group.

A little about the history of spanking in Sweden…

In the Wikipedia article about House spanking you can read (in my amateur-translation):

“House spanking was earlier a punishing method that meant that the master, housefather and housemother had the right to corporally punish (spank) children and servants. The wife was also subordinated to her husband [or if she wasn’t married she was subordinated to her father her whole life if I remember right? So talk about oppression].

The house spanking reflected the pre-industrial society where accessible sanction methods principally consisted of corporal punishment and death penalty [death penalty is forbidden in Sweden]. Since the nineteenth century this has become replaced with paying money and incarceration in Western societies.

Some Swedish county laws from the Middle Age said that the master (housefather) had the right to spank his wife, his children and servants ‘with moderation’ [and what was ‘moderate’?].

However, in the 1734 year law there were no regulations about the man’s right to spank his wife. Different soldier’s regulations came the years 1664-1833 and there the right for the housefather and housemother to spank their servants were regulated [they were allowed to spank their servants].

1858 the right to use house spanking was reduced to spanking employed boys under 18 years and employed girls under 16 years. This was abolished entirely in Sweden 1920.”

According to the Wikipedia-article on “Spanking” you can read about Sweden that

“Parents’ right to spank their children was abolished 1966 in Sweden. An explicit ban is valid since March 15, 1979.”

This means that the penalty directions about assault and battery in the Criminal Code in Sweden even includes child spanking. School spanking was banned 1958 when the new Volksschule was introduced.

House spanking was definitely forbidden 1920, when the housefather’s right to corporally spank juvenile employees was abolished. Ship’s officers’ right to spank ceased 1922.

Investigations have shown that the attitude towards spanking has changed powerfully during the twentieth century in Sweden. For instance 53 % of the adults were positive to corporal spanking of children 1965 compared to 11 % 1994.

I have used these sources: “House spanking” (or husaga), “The old Farmer society” (or det gam la bondesamhället), “Spanking” in English and “Aga” in Swedish, “The Criminal Code” and about the Swedish “Volksschule.”

All sorts of spanking should become banned wherever they occur in this world. No matter what society, religion etc. that allows or uses it.

See Miller on what happens around the world in for instance Rwanda, former Yugoslavia (Serbia), Afghanistan etc.hits on her site about spanking.

And I want to add that I don't think all people here in Sweden spanked their kids, wives, servants even if they were allowed during history. But unfortunately a lot did I guess. Because it was societally approved of. And it was the same all over the world in ancient times?

How do we deal with societies, religions etc. still allowing these things today? And on how many places in this world do such things still exist and are seen as natural?

By pointing out and showing how harmful these things are? By referring to recent findings in research and science? And not least by expressing our outrage when we hear about such things? By trying to use arguments against it? Not with showing more of the same to them (how tempting this would even be)? But no, I don't say that this is easy!

If I had more time now I would search for research showing how harmful spanking is (for instance for the brain). But here are links concerning child abuse and brain damage on Alice Miller's site. For instance see this letter by a Norwegian man. He for instance mentions "the CIC-study" or "The Children in Community Study" from New York.

My maternal grandmother grew up in a strictly religious family, they were Laestadians, and I think they used corporal punishment. And other forms of abuse to. Hypocritically talking about love and for the children's best and such things.

And all those examples, no matter how big or small the religion, society, culture, tradition, party or group supporting or using these methods or what sort of society,group, tradition, culture, should be pulled into light and condemned. Even single individuals using it, not belonging to any particular group.

Not just some of them should become brought to light, but as many as possible. And many people have also started doing this. Writing about cases occurring even in our civilized world. Yes, we should continue talking about those things and bring them up. And maybe do it even more than we do!?

And see Jonathan H. Pincus on societal approval in "Hitler and Hatred." I want to add that I think it's possible to recover! But it probably demands a lot of work (a work that COULD have been avoided and years of our lives that shouldn't have become wasted!).

Addition after lunch:see links about childhood abuse and its consequences for the latter health (not least the somatic)

• ACE-study
• CDC-site
• Child abuse and brain damage - letter to Alice Miller
• Child abuse hurts the brain
• Different articles
• Experts discuss lifelong impact of early childhood adversity
• Interview with Jack Shonkoff
• Lecture at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in February 2008
• Powerpoint and diagrams
• Professor Martin Teicher in an article in which he states 4 abnormalities that result from abuse in the first 4 years of a child’s life
• Verbal abuse hurts as much as sexual abuse

Increasing child abuse...

Göran Harnesk.

[Addition January 31, see the end of this posting]. A Swedish blogger Jenny Westerstrand, PhD in law, wrote an angry blogposting triggered by an article in one of the biggest newspapers in Sweden that the abuse of children is increasing in Sweden. Despite our ban on corporal punishment children are beaten! And this is horrible, and in fact crime! Not only a moral crime. And it causes damage, real physical (neurological) damage. Also see the ACE-study's findings (see link in the labels in the end of this posting!).

”Help, do something!”

she writes (see earlier blogpostings about her writings here). And wishes that any of our most courageous journalists, with sense for justice (and with a hidden camera), would make TV-programs about this.

“It’s so shocking so one want to cry.

Child abuse is increasing and many children are exposed to awful actions [and conditions] by their parents, almost always it’s the father that is the abuser Children’s Right in Society (in Sweden) says.

What are the Swedish men, young as old, doing? Because young women are calling Bris [Children’s Right in Society] and telling that they are abused by their boyfriends too. Why can’t we get any journalism not only telling us about innocent men for a while, but a journalism that sees it from the children’s perspective and dig into the world where violence is an everyday life context for small human beings who are totally defenseless in their own homes, with their own swine skunks to – mostly – fathers.”

Each tenth child is beaten the article says.

The number of children calling Children’s Right in Society to tell about abuse further increased during 2008 (see this report in English). And who are calling? Not the youngest. What are they exposed to?

During the last five years the number has increased with 20 percent.

The Convention of the Rights of the Child says that children has right to become protected from physical and psychological violence (Article19, see here for all the articles).

Last year Children’s Right in Society got almost 22,000 contacts from children and adolescents around Sweden, 30 years after we got the ban on corporal punishment and 20 years after the United Nations Convention of the Right of the Child.

The report from Children’s Right is gloomy reading.

In almost each tenth contact children were telling about physical and psychological abuse. The report is terrifying reading.

Children have told about routine-like violence, where they have become beaten and sometimes even been beaten with weapons like belt and sticks daily, but some have also told about more torture like violence. And some children have also told about how they have become shaken and beaten till they lost the consciousness.

When children are exposed to violence the perpetrator is often a parent, almost always the dad. My addition: but I know of cases where the mother was the main abuser.

According to the report the violence is combined with psychological violence where the children are told that they aren’t loved and worthless and that that’s the reason why they are beaten.

How horrible, and not true! Nobody “deserves” being abused how “worthless” they even are!

Many calls come from young women telling that they have become beaten by their boyfriends. The girl has often moved from home to an older boyfriend (and why is that?) and is exposed to both physical and psychological abuse.

They realize that they maybe are badly treated, but they don’t dare to tell anybody, because they think they have to blame themselves because they have chosen this relation themselves.

One of five children expresses some kind of anxiety. It can be anxiety and agony in children living with violent and abusing parents, worry for friends or anxiety as an expression for psychological ill-health (no wonder the ill-health!).

Some children experience that they are let down by the society. When they have told other adults, as teachers and personnel in social services about the abuse they haven’t gotten any reaction.

“It’s frightening realizing that the children have told something [and somebody] but nothing happens. They are not taken seriously, “

the director-.general for Children’s Rights in Society Göran Harnesk says.

Many children express a fear for the duty to report, a duty which means that all working with children has a duty or obligation to report social evils (bad conditions), because the contact with the parents then is at risk of getting worse.

I would also want to write about an article in Norwegian about “Psychologists are lacking self-knowledge (self-understanding). The psychology profession is lacking capacity to see its own political impact and has overseen the growth of the therapeutically culture.” Addition February 1: see here.

I think they (psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists etc.) too often run the errands of the power! Trying to adapt people to the “culture” in the society and at workplaces (as schools are for children and young people) where they live and work, instead of really questioning it… Are they adapting people to a sick culture that should become changed rather?

Addition January 31: also see this blogposting, about "Normalisation of abuse." I want to write about this posting later too.

More on corporal punishment and other forms of abuse - and possible outcomes of this...

from a walk just before lunch.

Loudly thinking... Actually I should practice and a lot else (should and should??). Am going to a birthday celebration 48 km (almost 30 miles, is that right??) away, and have taken a walk (needed). There's a lot working. I would like to scream!!! In protest over things, over all and everything. I long for the time when I can sit on my balcony, have the door open out there, not being forced to put on all these cloths. As comfort I have ordered new spring-cloths!!

Now some thoughts. Abuse is more than spanking. Does spanking result in another sort of suppressed anger than other forms of abuse, or is it a question of different forms of abuse? That takes its expression in aggression and brutality, in wars and other forms of violence? Together with self-destructiveness of different kinds (for instance more successful suicide-attempts?). While other forms of abuse more result in self-destruction, self-harm of different degrees, but not as much in aggression and brutality? The former in acting out and the latter in acting in? Generally?

Maybe this can explain (be one explanation) why suicide-rates are so high in Sweden, a country with a ban on corporal punishment? We act things in to a higher degree, and of some reason? While other societies are more violent?? I.e. people act things out there??

What am I trying to say? In countries and states with "acceptance" to corporal punishment you tend to behave more aggressively or at least some tend to behave in that way (earlier this behavior was "reserved" for men)… Women (and children) resorted to submissiveness?? In general?

With other forms of abuse the outcomes are (a bit) different??

So I believe it’s a good start to ban corporal punishment, do that sort of marking. But the next step is to acknowledge that there are other forms of abuse too, not least emotional and acknowledge the consequences of this form of abuse too!? And maybe also that sexual abuse occurs more often than we want to admit??? If not in real intercourse or such things, but in more subtle, but not less harmful ways. Maybe that we realize that what we as grown ups maybe see as harmless actually isn’t?? And that even "harmless" form actually aren't harmless, but harming. See Kirkengen and boundary-violations (in general and sexual in particular).

We have to start somewhere. Banning corporal punishment can maybe contribute to a raised awareness on other forms of abuse. Hopefully. The Norwegian doctor Anna-Luise Kirkengen writes about boundary violations in general and their consequences for (the latter) health and life-quality. She thinks as V. Felitti (ACE-study) that openness about those things can help many patients and maybe is the only needed help. Physicians should ask for the early childhood history when they are taking up the anamnesis, especially when it comes to unexplainable illness, but probably when it comes to other sorts of bad health?

And traumatic child-births, which wasn’t processed, contribute to later behavior… It has been shown that even experiences in the uterus can result in self-blame (and connected later tendencies to suicides)… See Bosch.

Swedes are seen as individualistic, with no tight ties to friends or family... People seem to think. (what are healthy ties? The question being too dependent or with no dependence-needs, see Pia Melody. See earlier postings with the label Pia Melody). It's little people on a big area (9 million on 450,000 km² or 174,000 sq mi, more facts about Sweden here), we can afford to have a lot of space around us!? It has been a fairly wealthy country the former decade at least, so we haven't been dependent on each others in the same manner as people in other countries?? We haven't been in war for 200 years, so not even there we have had needs for other people in a similar way as people in war? But what have we lost?

With this said I don't advocate challenges in form of worse security-nets... That war should be something good!!! Or that people need to be challenged (and hardened) through difficulties! "For their on good!!" I want to underline.

Swiftly written with all what that means...

PS. It's not only a friend that suddenly died, but a near relative is newly operated, so my thoughts are spread in different directions... Or how one shall express it?

Raised awareness...

from a morning-walk January 23, 2007.

[slightly updated January 26]. Swiftly: there's a lot I am digesting and thinking on. Many themes.

In the shower this morning I came to think about something I brought up with an American friend (we have only met by email!): that a female doctor and gestalt-therapist said once to me that she thought some sort of therapy or counseling wouldn't be wrong in a teacher's education. This friend "passed this off" with saying that he didn't want the government (or anyone like that) should come and tell anyone to do that (or other things?)...

Another one also opposed to that a government should ban corporal punishment of children (but are we allowed to punish other adults corporally??!) reacting in a similar way, that he didn't feel comfortable with a government interfering (if I interpreted this right)...

In the shower I thought about the former case: but therapists have to go in learning-therapy!! Should this be more wrong when it comes to those handling children (teachers for instance), the most valuable (are they???) we have? But it's also true that I doubt the therapy-help that is offered, that's for sure... See earlier posting about a female and male therapist in training, Brigitte and Henry...

See also earlier postings on abuse in therapy again.

---

Tillägg på kvällen: saker på jobbet fick mig att reagera och fundera... Jag skrev ner några korta meningar i onsdags. Jag tror att detta fenomen liksom också min reaktion kan ha något med tidiga upplevelser att göra och uppfostran. Att man uppfostrar pojkar och flickor olika och effekterna av detta ser vi senare i vuxenliet. Bland annat i arbetslivet.

Jag skrev: Män "får" ta lätt på saker, rycka på axlarna! Och då anses det vara något bra, berömvärt!! (eller hur man ska uttrycka det?). Men får kvinnor detta (detsamma)? Får de missa saker, göra saker sisådär? Medan samma saker (missar, mindre bra jobb från kvinnor) släpps igenom för män!? Ja, tolereras, knappt noteras, ja, kanske till och med viftas bort!?

Medan en kvinna kan få höra (när hon reagerar!?):

- Du ska inte ta så allvarligt på saker! Ta det med en klackspark!

Men jag funderade; om man verkligen gjorde det, hur skulle det då egentligen tas?? OM hon verkligen reagerade som män (om man nu ska generalisera). Tanken slog mig plötsligt av någon anledning. Om hon reagerar då är DET inte bra men om hon INTE reagera då är inte DET bra!!?? Om hon är jätteambitiös och har skyhöga krav då är inte det bra (och nej, det är det ju inte, inte minst för henne! Men VARFÖR är hon sådan? Hon ska bara tvärt ändra sig!!!?? Men såra någon och antyda att denne är okänslig...), men om hon tar saker med en klackspark (på liknande sätt som män tillåts ta saker med en klackspark) så är inte det bra!?

Det där med dubbelbestraffning ("Damned If You Do And Damned If You Don’t")!?? Och härskartekniker. Varför har man behov av att härska?? Vart detta behov än uppträder och i vilken skepnad eller form det än uppträder? Hur subtilt det än är...