File Name: 0016.FEM

Ä Area: FEMINISM ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
  Msg#: 856                                          Date: 08-13-98  04:31
  From: Donna.                                       Read: Yes    Replied: Yes
    To: David Rice                                   Mark:                     
  Subj: Re: "Stopping the Stalker
ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ
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From: "Donna." 
Reply-To: "Donna." 

On Sat, 18 Jul 1998, DAVID RICE wrote:

> D.> . a woman is stalked, but more screen time is given
> D.> to her husband
> 
> One was left with the impression that how her spouse felt
> about someone stalking his spouse was more important than
> how she felt about being stalked. Maybe the (male)
> audience was expected to identify with him because he was
> powerless to protect his spouse. Men are "supposed" to be

Considering it was on FOX, this makes sense, I guess.

> If I recall correctly, another stalker on the show was
> after a couple's child. The stalker would enter the house
> and poison the milk and juice in the refridgerator. They
> caught him on video tape.

Well, now I'm going on memory, cuz I've long since taped over that
special, but IIRC this was the same case as the husband reacting to wife's
stalker.  I don't remember anybody's child being targeted, except as a
side effect of the parent being stalked.

> D.> . a man is stalked, with his girlfriend threatened,
> D.> but he gets most of the screen time
> 
> This was a female stalker who had stalked other male
> friends previously. I found this part highly unlikely:
> women do not stalk people: men do.

Women most certain do stalk people.  (More on this later.)

> D.> Reality is that anybody's a potential stalking victim,
> 
> I'm not.

Do you not live in the corporeal world?

> D.> and stalkers are not all one sex or the other,
> 
> Isn't the number of female stalkers so low that they can be
> ignored, statistically speaking? What is the ratio? One
> female for every hundred males? One female to every
> thousand males? The stalker mindset seems close to the
> "serial killer" mindset to me, and the number of female
> serial killers is insignificant.

It's hard to say what the statistics are, either way, cuz not all states
even report stalking, cuz it's not a crime in every state.  I do feel it's
safe to say that women are more likely to be stalked, at least in the US,
given the nature of our gender relations in this country.  For example,
the whole idea that women are people, citizens protected under the law,
wasn't legally formalized until the US Supreme Court formally recognized
women's status as citizens barely more than 20 years ago.  And we still
largely become invisible once we're involved in relationships with men.
The entire mindset which makes this possible makes it easier for women to
be objectified as male possessions than the other way around.  

That does not, however, mean that the opposite isn't happening at an
alarmingly increasing rate.  Women are just as capable as becoming
obsessed with men as men are with women, and as our social positions
approach being level, women are more and more acting out in socially
unacceptable behavior previously associated with men only.

What does seem to be a difference between the two, far as I can tell, is
that female stalkers seem more likely to stalk the females in the life of
their stalking victims, while males seem more likely to stalk their
victims directly.

About your other comment, my understanding of serial killers is that
they're exactly opposite from stalkers.  Serial killers, as I understand
it, are focused more on a thing, symbol, idea, etc., which prompts them to
kill a variety of people who have nothing in common except for the aspect
about them which the killer is focused on.  Stalkers, on the other hand,
become obsessed with individuals.  And, killing isn't always the
inevitable conclusion to stalking; those are just the ones what make
front-page news. 

FWIW, I've picked up two stalkers over the decades.  One from romantic
jealousy, the other from professional jealousy.  The former wouldn't have
minded killing me, if given the chance, but the latter never gave me the
slightest indication that death was part of the equation.

> My mother's second spouse stalked her, even after the TRO
> was procured and served to him. He would drive up to her
> house, park, and stare at the house for hours. Every day.
> It was the cheapest, safest way he could continue his
> domination, subjegation, humiliation, and terrorism
> campaign against her. He felt he had the DUTY to do so
> because the Bible and the Book of Mormon said he did (or
> so he wished other people to believe he believed so).

What did she do about it?

> D.> Sigh.
> 
> Your "sigh" if I read it correctly is because males (the
> primary perpetrators) were represented more in the
> entertainment show that females (the primary victims),
> and that the males in the victims' support system were
> more represented that the females. I don't see how it
> matters.

My sigh was more about the presentation of misleading information than
anything else.  It was presented as an informational piece, even if you
and I recognize it more of entertainment value (although, who could be
entertained with that subject matter?), but left its audience with some
really whack ideas. 


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