A Modest Request

Judy Seigel (jseigel@panix.com)
Sat, 22 Feb 1997 18:54:12 -0500 (EST)

Terry,

Let me see if I have this straight: Under the subject line "Tween 20,
Mottling and Grain," in reply to my protests about your butchery of my
two prior messages, you assure me that you agreed with me all along!

Indeed, you write,

>> ....I agree...<<

>> ....I confirm[ed] our agreement ....<<

>> ....We are in fact agreed ....<<

But the icing on this poison cake is when you say that *I* am the one,

>> .... determined to disagree even when the facts are plain that we agree.<<

And so, once again, I am defeated by Terry-logic. Why, I can't help
wondering, if we are in such perfect agreement, did you take over my
message in the first place? Why, if "the facts are plain that we agree,"
do you comb through my words and butcher them line by line with
rephrasings, digressions, irrelevancies, grandiose claims, sudden
switches, hopeless garblings and doubletalk? Why indeed have you leapt
onto my every message these many months? Why do I grow old proving that
you have said something utterly fatuous and/or certainly wrong, only to
have you finally announce that we have been in perfect agreement all
along?

Clearly you have another agenda. What could it be?

To run the show? To show off? To be the ultimate authority? To allow my
voice only through your permission? To silence me entirely? To aggrandize
yourself? To condescend to me? To torment me? To be King of the list?

All of the above and more, no doubt. But why *me*?

Although you get on other people's nerves (day before yesterday a fellow
who has been a perfect gentleman in many trying situations told you point
blank and on-list that you were "insufferable"), you do not pursue,
harrass, use, or feed on anyone else as you do me. Whether you DARE bully
me because I am a woman, or MUST bully me because I am a woman, I cannot
say. Perhaps both. One of your countrymen suggested a propos of these
contretemps that Englishmen go bananas (my term) when women do not conform
to their idea of "19th century relations between the sexes." That seems
possible. Your finding me "the one to beat" has also been suggested, and
your behavior seems to bear that out.

But this assault on my words, latching onto, taking over, coopting,
condescending, diverting, subverting, distracting, obscuring, not to
mention changing the subject (albeit bestowing the occasional grand
"approval" of a line or two), is only half the problem. The other half is
that actual ideas and discussions die in infancy -- because all attention
flows to and from Terry King. The mutual discoveries of yore, the shared
thinking, the interactive discourse, the fruitful exchanges, are replaced
by Terry's "best" way (discovered after years of study), Terry's say-so
("I'm right"), and Terry's "information" ("it's better"), not to mention
Terry's boilerplate cliches, Terry's disquisitons, Terry's
self-congratulation, and Terry's braggadoccio. In short, by Terry. The
original subject, whatever it was, sinks under the weight of rodomontade,
actually deadlier than a hundred silly newby questions.

Thus I myself have the option, aside from silence, of letting your
onslaught remain astride my words, or wasting hours in futile efforts to
protect them. And I do mean futile. You are relentless, impervious, and
shameless, at least where I am concerned. You dodge, twist, garble, fake,
scam, switch premises and doubletalk at will. To pin you down on a point
is like trying to nail jello to the wall.

In this latest instance, for instance, I had been curious about the
washing off and "solarizing" phenomena Dick Sullivan observed. I thought
that if we examined what he saw, and compared it with what I had seen, we
might get a clue about some little-understood phenomena, even if only
what they *weren't.* And though I have stopped writing about gum since our
last episode (to avoid another blitz), I'd been lulled by your recent
silence, figuring a message NOT about gum might slip through your gantlet.

Not a chance. Leaping out of the shadows faster than a speeding bullet,
devouring my words line by line, you tell how we *should* coat VDB, and
that if we did things YOUR way we'd never see any of those old phenomena
anyhow, and in the blink of an eye change the topic of solarizing into how
you, Terry King, make dark cyanotype ("thousands reproduced"), etc.,
through the roster of our "agreement." By now, who knows, cares, or can
remember the original thoughts?

I have tried for many months (and as recently as three days ago) to make
this protest in a socially acceptable way, not out of consideration for
you, because you deserve none, but to spare the captive audience this
scene (and I apologize to them). I have even beseeched you off-list to cut
it out. I also (in a slightly different context and still hoping to reach
you by flattery) said this sort of thing isn't necessary, people respect
you greatly for your knowledge, why overreach? You replied: "I have always
thought that it is wise to think that there are more rungs to climb on
the ladder." I failed to persuade you that braggadoccio is
counterproductive. I wonder now if I only egged you on: if the extra
attention was like growth hormone.

In any event, after that, I tried on-list, "in public," hoping to shame
you into desisting -- and to signal an SOS: maybe others would tell you to
act like a citizen, not a seigneur. Alas, that, too, seems to have
backfired -- my attempts to frame the message lightly, not to make people
uncomfortable, led some to imagine the Terry-and-Judy show, a barrel of
laughs.

Which is why I now say point blank: for your own good name and the health
of the list, stay out of my messages. A fellow who knows as much as you do
can surely think up a few e-mails by himself and stop gorging on mine.
You're a big boy, write your own.

Thank you,

Judy