Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Fifty Plus Cohousing + ?

[Grant McCormick (grantmc]

Racheli,

To quote a message you sent to Howard earlier today:

        "I'm not going to get into a talmudic debate with you about what I said
or didn't say and what it meant (or didn't), since it seems  to me to be 
        a waste of my time."

So, I'll just reiterate the central point of my message: raising concerns
about children is not equivalent to disliking or not supporting children.
Perceptions that these things are equivalent contributes to polarization.

I sense from this and other discussions on this list that considerable
frustrations exist in cohousing communities with not being able to talk
openly, and safely, about children's issues. It would be nice to hear
examples from communities where there has been success in achieving
positive dialoge on children's issues. 

Grant






At 04:43 PM 2/19/03 -0700, racheli [at] sonoracohousing.com wrote:
>
>
>Grant wrote:
>
>>Racheli,
>
>>The reaction some on this list had to your comments seems similar to the 
>>reaction in our community when needs are labeled with terms like
>>"hostile".
>
>I think this might be construed to mean that I am run around
>Sonora Cohousing, calling people in my community "hostile".   I deny this
>emphatically.  
>I'd like to add that I don't need Grant or anyone else to lecture  me on
>why not calling people "hostile" when looking for 
>common ground is counter-productive.  
>
>I thought that we were having a fairly abstract discussion
>regarding attitudes of people who want to have separate
>communities, based on age segragation, and on some sub-issues. Saying in a
>general way that there are people in cohousing
>(as well as elsewhere) who have, IMO,  hostile attitudes to kids IS NOT
>THE SAME as saying that *person A has such an attitude*. (This last one
>would constitute a name-calling act).
>[An analogy would be: Assume I said that I've noticed racist
>attitudes on the part of some people in cohousing, would people say that
>I'm engaging in name-calling?  If it is "name calling", then how can we
>honestly discuss such perceptions?  If we can't  discuss negative
>perceptions because someone might take an offense, and call it "name
>calling", then why exactly are we here?] 
>
>R. (In a fairly pissed off mode)...
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------
>racheli [at] sonoracohousing.com
>-----------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>Cohousing-L mailing list
>Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
>http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L
>

_______________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list
Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L