T. William Wells says:
: (Does anyone want to know why I'm so incensed. Check out ASAR for : awhile. Understand that this person's behavior, and excuse : making, is indistinguishable from the abuse that makes that : newsgroup necessary.)
ASAR stands for "alt.sexual.abuse.recovery", a newsgroup I run an anonymous server for. This group actually has survivors of all sorts of abuse, including the verbal abuse that rjc perpetrated.
Ray was being silly and I don't think his message was productive, but anyone who cannot deal with someone making a silly and obviously not-to-be-acted-upon threat is likely to crumple the first time a car honks at them. I would suggest that such individuals are not the ones we build society around -- were we to try to do so, almost all human activity would have to cease. Out in the world there exist people who are so damaged that the sight of a knife makes them go into a fit. (The technical name for this condition is balenophobia I belive, although I am almost sure I have the spelling wrong). We have not as a society decided to eat with chopsticks to keep such people from being confronted with things that scare them. Perry