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Some further observations about question-asking:
a.) Women tend to show considerable anxiety about asking
questions and often apologize for what tends to be thought of as a personality
problem or neurotic behaviour. For example:
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Definition: people with a paranoid personality
show hyper-sensitivity, rigidity, unwarranted |
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suspicion, jealousy, envy, excessive
self-importance, and a tendency to blame others and to ascribe evil motives to
them.1 |
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Opinion: women who ask questions are showing
unwarranted suspicion about |
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the other person; hyper-sensitivity about not
receiving an adequate answer; are really blaming the person answering the
question and are thinking of them as "the enemy". |
Belief: women who ask questions are paranoid and
should be humoured.
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Corollary: those who don't know something
which is essential to their own well-being tend to |
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use paranoid behaviours. The more they cannot
find out what it is they don't know, the more they appear to be paranoid. |
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Definition: people with a passive-aggressive
personality express their aggressiveness in |
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passive ways such as obstructionism, pouting,
intentional inefficiency, or stubbornness. Such behaviour reflects hostility
which cannot be expressed openly because of an overly dependent relationship
which provides little gratification.2 |
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Opinion: women who ask questions are hostile.
They are rejecting the person with the |
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information even though they are dependent. If
they would just trust that other person, they wouldn't need to know the answer
and they wouldn't need to ask questions. They cannot appreciate the problems
faced by the "independent" person in their dependent relationships. |
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Belief: women who ask questions are
passive-aggressive and should learn to be |
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passive-submissive. They would feel much
better. |
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Corollary: in relationships in which one
person is viewed as dependent, the other person is |
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always viewed as "independent". The reality is
that both are dependent on each other. |
b.) The group of people we should be questioning most
extensively is those we elect to public office, at all levels of government;
those who make policy: those who develop the guidelines for implementing
policy; and those responsible for supervising the implementation. CCLOW groups
could develop a list of useful questions to be asked of candidates for public
office. For example,
1. C. J. Rowe, An outline of psychiatry (sixth
edition), (Dubuque, Iowa:
Wm. C. Brown Company Publishers, 1975), p.102.
2. Ibid., p. 107 |