Hi all,

I'm following this discussion with a great deal of interest.
I feel any classroom discussion of abuse can be sensitively framed by
the instructor with  an introduction about the pervasiveness of the
problem. In addition to validating someone's personal experience, which
may or may not be the same as the majority, I think it's helpful for
students to understand that instances of abuse can extend beyond
boundaries like sex, race, class or culture. 

Barbara Petersohn
Alpharetta Center Librarian
GSU



>>> Andrea Wilder <andreawilder at comcast.net> 9/12/2006 4:53 PM >>>

Daphne--

I read the local papers very  closely re  the priestly abuse of young 
boys.  I wanted to see whether  men had the same behavioral and 
neurological reactions as women--it seems so:  repression, drug/alcohol

problems, emotional pain, PTSD.  They are the same, if  the newspapers

are accurate.  ALSO--the wife of one abused man talked about her 
husband curllng up into a fetal position in the bed when all this came

to the surface in his own life.  That also has resonance in women's 
experience.

Andrea


On Sep 12, 2006, at 9:07 AM, Daphne Greenberg wrote:


> I am often struck by how often when we talk in our classrooms about

> survivors of abuse (especially sexual abuse), we use female pronouns



> and

> when we talk about perpetrators of abuse, we use male pronouns. I 

> wonder

> how this impacts our learners who have different experiences and how

> they may additionally feel as the "other" as a result of this. For

> example, what about our male learners who have been sexually abused

as

> children, what about our female learners who have been sexually

abused

> by their mothers, lesbian lovers who are attacked by their lesbian

> partners, etc., etc. Perhaps one of the reasons why we often talk

about

> female survivors of abuse, and male perpetrators of abuse, is

because

> statistically that is most often the case. However, I wonder, if it

> occurs more often than we realize, but people who can speak to these

> experiences are too ashamed, intimidated, etc. to speak up? I also

> wonder if it goes against our cultural mores to think about women as

> being perpetrators of abuse, and so we shy away from it. I know of a

> female learner who struggled because her teacher mentioned abuse in

the

> classroom. At first, she was really happy to hear the word said out 

> loud

> in a classroom setting. But then it became clear to her that the 

> teacher

> was only talking about male to female abuse. The teacher only

mentioned

> it for a few minutes, but the student zoned out for the rest of the

> class, because she felt like her experience had been invalidated. It



> was

> hard for her to go back to class after that, but she did, and 

> persevered

> to get her GED.

> I think that we need to be very careful when we mention/talk about

> abuse in the classroom. Use of pronouns is one of the issues that I

> think is important to think about.

> Any thoughts/reactions?

> Daphne

>

>

> Daphne Greenberg

> Assistant Professor

> Educational Psych. & Special Ed.

> Georgia State University

> P.O. Box 3979

> Atlanta, Georgia 30302-3979

> phone: 404-651-0127

> fax:404-651-4901

> dgreenberg at gsu.edu 

>

> Daphne Greenberg

> Associate Director

> Center for the Study of Adult Literacy

> Georgia State University

> P.O. Box 3977

> Atlanta, Georgia 30302-3977

> phone: 404-651-0127

> fax:404-651-4901

> dgreenberg at gsu.edu 

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