Letters to the Editor	Letters Archive

Abusing the privilege of equality?

I live near Tyson Park, site of the arrests noted in "Tennessee Sting" [February 2007, available at Guidemag.com]. It's a few blocks from University of Tennessee. It's been a gay cruising area for meaningless sex and associated drug abuse.

Gays weren't disproportionately "targeted" just because they're gay like your article says. The cops raided the park because people were being dangerously destructive with sex addictions and drug addictions there. Hello?

S

View our poll archive

ee, lesbians prefer to mate mentally at a deeper level, and nest. It's genetic, XY gene stuff. Men mate more visually, hunter-like, without women skills to talk and make it work into something lasting. That means more quick meaningless empty sex for gays than straight men, the hunt for more and more-- without a sense of completion because it's meaningless. I figure men and women evolved specialized skills to help each other out. We can't be good at everything!

Lacking female influence, gay men go off the deep end. That's where the drugs kick in-- instant gratification behavior begets more of that sort of thing.

So when cops notice gays behaving in destructive ways that straights don't, because straight men/women balance each other out, it's not unfair, it's accurate. It is proportional to the disproportional behavior of gays. These guys at Tyson Park are having way more sexual partners than straight guys do-- and more STDs and more drugs.

The funny thing is how you guys don't know the difference between junk sex and nurturing sex. Tyson Park was the candy store not the health food store. No wonder parents raised age-of-consent when gays got their equality-- Tyson gays abused the privilege of equality.

Gays have unique gifts and challenges. We need to distinguish healthy from unhealthy behavior. I think we'll go a lot further in life that way, and help a lot more people... not just skimming the surface cruising Tyson Park treating each other as sex objects looking for our next fix.

from Slipstream
via e-mail

More in Montreal

I was reading the annual Guide coverage of Montreal [February 2007, available at Guidemag.com], and I'd like to correct an omission. Absent in your list of Montreal happenings is the 4th Annual Harvest International Theater Festival-- A Cornucopia of Diversity in the Performance Arts: Fall 2007. Our web site is Villagescene.com.

Davyn Ryall
Artistic Director & Coordinator of The Harvest Theater Festival
Montreal, Quebec

Thanks for the addition to Montreal's incredibly long list of events to enjoy, and best wishes for a bountiful Fall Festival!

Memory Article Recalled

The number of mangled facts and distortions in your article "Mangled Memories" [November 2002, available at Guidemag.com] are far too numerous for me to address now, however here is one little example: the article cites one study from 1987 by Herman and Schatzow of 53 women and then misstates its findings. Sixty-four percent had some amnesia of abuse and 28 percent had severe amnesia. Further, this study is only one of seven studies cited in 1995 in Charles Whitfield's Memory and Abuse, and there have been many retrospective and collaborated studies since.

The bias of this article fits well with those of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation [Fmsfonline.org] and other organizations that have a major stake in denying abuse.

As a therapist who works with victims of abuse, this unscientific approach to a serious and difficult subject is harmful.

from Wdteague
via e-mail

Our article correctly presents the study findings you note and offers a fair and comprehensive analysis of the state of scientific research into how memory works.

You sound like a peddler of the nefarious Recovered Memory Therapy (RMT), whereby patients are coached to "remember" non-events not based in reality but rather an amalgam of the therapist's and patient's fantasies. RMT has led to fantastic stories of satanic abuse, secret torture-chambers, infant sacrifice, and bodily mutilation that have been leveled against fathers, uncles, camp counselors, clergy, daycare workers, and doctors with ruinous and tragic results. The lack of corroborating evidence is dismissed as irrelevant by RMT practitioners because, according to the RMT mantra, the accusing patient must be believed.

Like the Salem witch-hunters 300years earlier, advocates of RMT may have begun with good intentions, but their"evidence" is just as spectral and the consequences of their actions just as pernicious. Hundreds of people are still in prison unjustly because of false accusations by patients led to "remember" events that never happened.