When the topic of post modernism comes up, I always brace for the onslaught of adherents who sorta miss the point of what PoMo thought is all about. It’s been so long since I’ve dealt with an actual post modern argument, and not just people who want to replace authoritarian definitions with their own authoritarian definitions.
So perhaps we are arguing against a pale imitation of what a post modern argument actually looks like, because at least in this explanation of PoMo theory, it doesn’t sound as beyond the pale.
So, hopefully, this at least establishes the urgent need to abandon the very concept of objective truth. Objective truth is anti-democratic. There is no such thing as an unbiased statement that has not been shaped by elements of power or hierarchy. There is no such thing as a random statement, and there is no such thing as a true statement. In fact, a random statement and a true statement amount to the same thing, and it is only by connecting them that we can give meaning to either.
I can hear the grumbles now. Saying truth is the same as randomness is actually saying nothing! Really? Then why on earth react to it at all? If this statement really said nothing, wouldn’t a more adequate response be: ‘what do you think?’ or even, just in case ‘can you speak up?’ No, but truth, in how we arrive at its exact conclusions, can only retain any meaning if we acknowledge how arbitrary it is to get to that exact spot of perfection. It is only then that we can begin to unpack the biases that got us to that spot, which of course aren’t random at all, and link throughout history, sociology, geography, physics and biology. It is only after we unmask the assumption that is in authority that we can dethrone it and restore democracy.
Now, there is nothing true about democracy either. Each person operates within their own distance from the truth but at least, to borrow Marx, implies ownership of the production of truth, rather than the blind following of it. Does such a philosophy naturally imply the free market, rather than Marxism? Not necessarily. The distribution of goods, the control over the means of production, those sorts of things are not the same as ideas, let alone people. It could be very possible to have a centralized form of economics that thrived for diverse ideas and people. In fact, such a neutral form of economics—pure in its democracy and lack of discrimination—would imply absolute blindness to differences and a replacement of this hierarchy of difference with universal human rights. That doesn’t mean that each difference wouldn’t get a say, it is to say that each would have a right, no matter their say.
It is fairly obvious that an economy that has no such tools to guarantee human rights would naturally create hierarchies to (re) order distribution and create profits. The idea that one must have an objective idea of truth to reject neoliberalism implies that the neoliberalism was a cultural, not an economic counter-revolution. This seems to apply a backward order of operations. Even though the neoliberal has assaulted the cultural and the personal, it a truly perplexing leap for Marxists to make the claim that as soon as the economic theory of their “objective” choice falls out of favor, we suddenly are not talking about economics anymore, but culture that drives the economy. Just dead wrong.
The goal of the lie of objective truth is to establish power for a certain group of people, so that they can therefore profit from and exploit the people whose truth does not fit the proper definition of normality. That’s why Foucalt saw prisons so clearly. What is a prison? And who decides it?
A handy guide to prepare yourself for the onerous task of handling the inevitable arguments that crop up when men and their blue-haired handmaidens make their bullshit arguments.
Narcissism is prevalent here. Same rules as always with narcissists. Do not get embroiled in discussion of their identity, their identity is not relevant to you and outside making clear you do not see yourself reflected in their identity it serves no function but to prevent discussion.
All accusations are admissions. This is a very reliable compass. They will attribute their own motivations and actions to you because their identity is the only thing they can see and they can only see you as a reflection or threat to it. They are accusing themselves. Let them. Loudly.
Take every word at face value. Do not get dragged into debating it. They say women’s consent doesn’t matter? Take it at face value. They say they have the right to redefine lesbian to include them and they have pushed women to assert their sexual boundaries by misgendering? They are telling you they cannot recognise consent, boundaries, or female sexuality. This is an admission. Not a debate.
Do not treat a boundary as a negotiation. It is not/. You set the boundary and when they breach it, gaslighting, coercion, threats, you are receiving an admission of how far they will go to cross your boundaries. Take this at face value.
Do not be derailed from key points or boundaries, and use all admissions made. They will try to derail from the thing that injures them. Usually the reality of their identity and the threat you pose to it. Stick to their behaviour. The words they have used. Do not get embroiled in discussion of their identity. A narcissists identity is always the hill they will die. Accept when they tell you they cannot separate their identity from your reality.
You do not have to debate being a woman. You are one. Your biology, the inequality you lived, the knowledge you have that came from this. You do not need to debate whether you are a woman. Or their definition of woman. Outside being clear you do not see yourself reflected in them, you do not need to debate this. They do.
When you are discussing systems and laws that evolved over 70 years to protect women and girls you do not need to centre their identity in that discussion. It is irrelevant to that discussion. Those systems were fought for and created by women you don’t know, they did that so you don’t have to. You do not need to have arguments that are already done and are reflected in equality legislation.
Do not have arguments you don’t need to have. It is ridiculous to use failure to validate males as an insult. It is ridiculous to treat ‘you didn’t think of males when you thought about inequality so you are a TERF’ as valid. You don’t need to defend the right of women to self assembly without male supervision, it is yours already, they need to explain why they think it should end. If hearing about their male biology is offensive, that is not your fault. They are male. That cannot be altered. You are not required to repeat things you know to be untrue because of the threat of violence and coercion. You are not required to be ‘inclusive’ and ‘nice’ at a cost of your own safety and rights. EVER.
Do not defend yourself from accusations which are not accusations. It is not an accusation or a crime to refuse to ignore abusive behaviour, it is not an accusation that you didn’t orbit a males identity and validate him.
Misgendering and transphobia are insults designed to give men the right to abuse women and claim they are being oppressed. Nonsense. Stick to literal meanings, neither of this things is violent, neither metaphorical or literal and neither of these things warrant a violent response.
Remember what you are responsible for. You are not responsible for managing their well being, not responsible for their threats of violence, not responsible for harm they do themselves or threaten to do themselves to control a situation. You are entitled to boundaries, to define yourself, and anyone threatened by this is telling you something.
Remember abusive behaviour is well understood. It is always a problem. It is legally and socially unacceptable to subordinate women with abusive behaviour. Nothing in the word trans changes this and any trans women suggesting it does is telling you ‘she’ is an abusive male.
Hey folks, the woke internet is doing it’s best to deplatform and silence critical analysis and criticism of gender ideology. Here’s the thing, if your ideology wasn’t shit to start with, it could withstand critique and still be coherent. It isn’t, thus the censorship.
There’s a lot of chat around about pronouns right now. Specifically, ‘preferred’ pronouns. By which is usually meant, the pronouns a person would prefer other people to use when they are the subject being discussed by those people.
‘This is how I want you to talk about me’.
Almost without exception, the people who request, or demand, others talk about them using specific pronouns, are asking for pronouns associated with the opposite sex to their own.
A simple politeness. A courtesy.
I’ve heard many people tell me they don’t mind doing this, as a courtesy, although it takes some effort to keep up the mental gymnastics of perceiving one sex, but consistently using pronouns for the other. That’s a personal choice, and I respect the reasons why some people make it.
I’ve also heard many people declaring that anyone who won’t comply (usually directed at a woman) is obnoxious, mean, hostile, and unpleasant. ‘Misgendering’ is hate speech. They say.
But I refuse to use female pronouns for anyone male.
Because pronouns are like Rohypnol.
One of the biggest obstacles to halting the stampede over women’s rights is pronoun and preferred name ‘courtesy’. People severely underestimate the psychological impact to themselves, and to others, of compliance.
Pronouns are like Rohypnol to your brain’s defences.
You doubt this absurd claim I just made, obviously. You have the fortitude of mind to be uninfluenced by such trivia, and I have got this wrong. I understand. Bear with.
It’s a well known “name that colour” psychological phenomenon. A quick and simple experiment where you have to say the colour of the words written in front of you. Simple as that. Except the speed and accuracy of your answers is heavily impacted by any incongruence between the colour you see, and the actual word itself.
Try it HERE, if you like fun interactive tests. It takes less than a minute to complete. Compare the difference in your times between part one and part two of the experiment.
You’ll find you have to consciously fight the conflict of input to your brain each and every time. And it leaves you confused, distracted, slower, frustrated and fatigued.
Forcing our brains to ignore the evidence of our eyes, to ignore a conflict between what we see and know to be true, and what we are expected to say, affects us.
USING preferred pronouns does the same. It alters your attention, your speed of processing, your automaticity. You may find it makes you anxious. You pay less heed to what you want to say, and more to what is expected of you. It slows you down, confuses you, makes you less reactive.
That’s not a good thing.
The cost of HEARING or READING preferred pronouns from others:
Experiment 2.
For a week, re-translate all the transgender articles and comments you find, back to sex-based pronouns, nouns and original names. Rewrite them back to the blunt truth and then read them again. Doing this exercise solely in your mind will do just fine, but editing on a screen is better.
Convert female pronouns back to male; use surnames instead of first names, and convert terms like transwoman back to just ‘man’.
Better yet, if you know the original name of the subject, use it, be it David, or Rhys, or Ashton, or Jonathan.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, yes? It shouldn’t matter. No-one else will be hurt or affected by this private experiment. It’s entirely between you, and your own resilient mind.
(Try not to get banned from anywhere during this experiment)
Read your translated version again.
If those small acts of preferred pronoun compliance are truly meaningless concessions, (although, see above banning potential for contradictory evidence of import) given as a courtesy to others at no cost to you or to other women, then this private exercise will change nothing, cost nothing, affect no-one. You’ll walk away thinking, yep, as I thought, fuss about nothing.
After all, nothing *should* change, should it, simply with the alteration of pronouns and names? You already know the actual sex of the subject you’re reading about. Pronouns, male or female, add no incremental information. How can they in any way alter your perception, or influence you when you already know all the facts? They’re an irrelevance, the easiest concession to make. Not worth consideration, inconsequential. Right?
Cognitively, you should be immune to the effects of such linguistic cross-dressing. Pronouns are irrelevant, so you concede them easily, because they have no power to influence you, since you already see clearly. Yes?
[And you can confess here, it’s OK. You may already think that the minority of women who refuse to comply with pronouns are just awkward buggers, who can’t think strategically, don’t know when to let it go, probably are extremists. Do themselves no favours, damage their own ‘cause’, even. Unreasonable.]
But try the experiment. Translate pronouns and references back to male. Insert ‘dead-names’ or use surnames. (No-one will know but you) Read it a second time. And be honest with yourself.
Do you feel differently, on reading it this way?
Do you react differently?
How’s your anxiety?
Are you angrier?
Do you feel more scared?
Is your sense of injustice alerted?
What level have your natural defences armed to?
You may discover that, despite yourself, you have a viscerally different reaction to what is before your eyes.
Same story, same players, same core knowledge.
Different pronouns, different reaction.
Pronouns are like Rohypnol.
They dull your defences. They change your inhibitions. They’re meant to. You’ve had a lifetime’s experience learning to be alert to ‘him’ and relax to ‘her’. For good reason. This instinctive response keeps you safe. It’s not even a conscious thing. It’s like your hairs standing on end. Your subconscious brain is helping you not get eaten by the sabre tooth tiger that your eyes haven’t noticed yet.
Oscar probably didn’t intend the instinctive female response his words provoked
Incongruent pronouns also make your brain work much harder; not just when you are using them, but when you are receiving them as information. You are working constantly to keep that story straight in your head. Male or female? Which one, again? Concentrate harder. Ignore your instincts, ignore your reaction.
And that’s just you. You’re already aware of all the pertinent information, already alert, you know the score, no flies on you.
And you’re still affected emotionally and instinctively by incongruent pronouns, nouns, and names. Despite your efforts to be immune. You’re not immune to this effect. You can know perfectly the actual sex of a male person, and yet you will still react differently if someone calls them she instead of he.
So what then, is the impact on everyone who isn’t even aware yet, hasn’t fully comprehended yet what’s going on?
Pronouns are Rohypnol. They change our perception, lower our defences, make us react differently, alter the reality in front of us.
They’re meant to.
They numb us.
They confuse us.
They remove our instinctive safety responses.
They work.
If you do this experiment you may still decide to accept or use female pronouns for male people, perhaps a little wiser, but cognisant of their influence on you and others. That’s a choice you may make. At least now you understand that you may be voluntarily suppressing your own natural response. Your eyes are more open.
Maybe you’ll continue to mentally translate ‘preferred’ pronouns and names in your head back to reality, every time, as I do. We give ourselves the best chance to understand the reality of the situation before us. It becomes easier with practice. I want my instincts as intact as possible.
Maybe you shrug. You can live with this little phenomenon. Or it didn’t work for you, you don’t see it.
But please. Don’t judge so harshly those of us who refuse to submit, refuse to comply with preferred pronouns. There are good reasons why we might be doing that, for our own sakes, and for the sakes of others.
Pronouns are Rohypnol.
I want to be alert. I want others to be alert. I want people to see the real picture, and I want those instinctive reactions that we feel when something is wrong, to be un-blunted, un-dulled by this cheap but effective psychological trick. I feel like I owe this to myself, and I absolutely owe it to other women.
And more than anything, I owe this to girls. I don’t want to play even the tiniest part in grooming them to disregard their natural protective instincts. Those instincts are there for a reason. To keep them safe. They need those instincts intact, and sharp.
Not really surprising, but its nice to see fact emerging past the babble of his rabid dudish fanbase.
“In summary, even though the political function of Enuma Elish is obvious and important enough to have been mentioned by three of Peterson’s own sources — Heidel, Campbell, and Neumann — it only figures into Maps of Meaning in the form of a dismissive footnote that appears to miss the point of what it dismisses. In 12 Rules for Life, that dismissal resurfaces as a straw man argument that utterly fails to engage with the history all three of his sources were referencing. By Peterson’s own admission, his interest lies not in accurately grasping the historical context of myth, but in using myth to support preconceived notions about archetypes as “eternal ‘categories’ of imagination.” And yet his evidence for the primacy of those categories comes from the myths themselves, leaving us with a tail-biting bout of circular reasoning that calls to mind the illustration of the ouroboros that Peterson uses to illustrate the concept of chaos.
If Peterson effectively demonstrates anything with his reading of Enuma Elish, it’s that his personal philosophy regarding the entire nature of human consciousness maps neatly onto a patriarchal myth cobbled together from disparate sources in order to justify a power grab. He’s wrong about mapping the universe of human experience onto this story for the same reason fundamentalist Christians often have incorrect notions about the Bible—he completely ignores how the stories got here, and imagines instead that they are simply evidence of some cosmic, eternal truth that just so happens to line up with his politics.
[…]
It is not chaos, but our fear and visceral disgust toward the idea of chaos undermining civilization — often stemming from a lack of familiarity with what we fear — that drives us to build prisons, wage wars, and develop weapons which are the embodiment of all-consuming fire. Because we do not conceptualize the earth and its natural cycles as sacred, we disregard treaties made with the Indigenous peoples whose lands we have colonized and arrest those who designate themselves “water protectors.” Peterson’s philosophy, while it may inspire motivation at the individual level, is a deadly engine of status quo maintenance and self-justification at the cultural level. It is an ideology that denies it is ideology; hissing insults and flinging lawsuits at those who challenge its god-like powers of complacency.
All of that said, I do not believe that everyone who has found himself helped by Peterson’s fatherly counsel is totally deluded, at least not insurmountably. There is value in standing up straight with your shoulders back; it just can’t necessarily be read as a primal decree from ancient Mesopotamia. The cult of capitalism dictates that competitiveness is hard-wired into us to the exclusion of all other virtues, but there is also evidence that our ability to share and cooperate has played a formative role in our evolutionary development. One of Jordan Peterson’s strengths is that he seems to understand how confirmation bias and unconscious motivations structure our belief systems, at least in theory. When he fails, it’s because he has forgotten to turn this wisdom on himself.”
Apparently ‘dear the people’ is adverse to reality and being exposed to opposing points of view, so here is my response to their assertions. May as well copy/paste the original to maintain context.
Dear the People,
Today I woke up to find myself a “beleaguered dude”.
My most recent post The War on Women, was responded to by fellow WordPress user The Arbourist. Their post Clueless Commentary I Find on WordPress is public and I would encourage you to go read it if you would like to understand my rebuttal in context. For those of you who endeavor to be mature and refrain from enduring profanity, I would caution that their content is most disagreeable in nature.
That having been said, I’d like to address the major points that I thought required a response. Firstly, I’d like to formally introduce myself to my audience. For those of you who are under the mistaken impression that I am a middle-aged white dude who can remember the good old “white hood days”, let me set the record straight. I am not only not a “dude”, I am a woman and a third-generation American from a family of mixed Hispanic heritage who also happens to be conservative. So for the Arbourist, I’d encourage you to not make false assumptions about the identity of the person you’re attacking just because their views happen to be more “traditional”.
My original post was for those who recognize that radical feminism can often be toxic towards men. If one believes in modern feminism, of course one will not understand nor acknowlegde the problem of reverse sexism.
Give me an example of where women in America are oppressed by a systemic patriarchy? The notion of a systemic patriarchy is an ideological constituent of modern feminism, not a demonstrable fact defended by the author by either argument or evidence. Of course, one can always find anecdotal examples of oppressed women in both America and elsewhere. Just look at Muslim communities in the US and abroad where woman are treated as property. This is, of course, a glaring example of true oppression that is almost never addressed by modern feminists.
Conspicuously, the author seems incapable of writing without profanity or insulting those with an opposing point of view, a sign that her position suffers for want of a rational argument, e.g.“Buckle in tight, because the [sic] nothing good can come when your argumentative building blocks are made of high-octane stupid.”
Without going off on a tangent, there are two points on the point of female bodily “autonomy” I’d like to address. If a man used his “bodily autonomy” to beat and/or rape a woman, would that be acceptable, since the body is his own? If the response is that his autonomy harms another, then why does this principle not apply to a child? No one has bodily autonomy. The entire point of civil laws is to restrain some from attempting to affirm “bodily autonomy” as a pretext for harming others. And second – a point that always seems to be missed – a child’s body is not YOUR body, a scientific fact not in dispute (i.e., unborn children have their own unique DNA and are biologically alive at the moment of conception, regardless of their stage of development, which are all established facts of science).
“[No,] you’ve demonstrated an astonishing allergy to even the most basic features of society and how it works.” This claim is made without any argument or evidence offered in its support, a habit the author repeatedly makes throughout her polemic. The author claims that I make statements based on “sheer ignorance and the power of your uniformed [sic] opinion”, while dismissing the evidence provided rather than responding to it with counter arguments and evidence. It’s one thing to be skeptical of conclusions drawn from research; it’s intellectually disingenuous and intentionally obtuse, however, to state that I did not cite evidence when readers can clearly see that I cited sources.
While men have held the majority of political and economic power for most of history, women have certainly held positions of power, especially within the last century, and yet women’s lot hasn’t necessarily improved. Take, for example, abortion. The 50+ million children, statistically mostly female, who have been murdered were not killed because of men. They were slaughtered because their mothers believed in the destructive ideology of “bodily autonomy”.
More importantly, on what grounds does the author issue moral judgements? She wants to claim that a patriarchy is wrong, abortion is good, and that an equal society is a good value. Why? Why should anyone care about the author’s personal values if they are not grounded in some objective authority. I ground my values in God, because I am a Christian, a Theist, and thus take my values from a creator who has laid down a law in the interest of His creation. If the author wants others to give her moral pronouncements any serious intellectual consideration, she’ll need to provide an objective ground by which one can assess her moral judgements (assuming she has any standard at all beyond her own subjective preferences).
The author added as one of the tags on the post “they do not necessarily want to understand”, a clear act of projection.
The author is fair in calling me out on the choice of my word “designed” when referring to competition over the best resources. That was poor wording. A better statement would be to say that as a species, it can be shown that many women tend to compete for the best resources, a trait that is not singular to females.
The Arbourist cites that radical feminists don’t believe in an abusive male, but then continually repeats that there is a patriarchy that needs taking down. The author continues to insist that the patriarchy exists and needs to be toppled, but fails to support her belief. What we’re treated to is a polemic on the doctrines of feminism, about which we’re already aware. The question is, why should we believe her ideology when she constantly fails to provide a cogent, substantive defense to any of her claims? We’re givan no reason to believe such a system of “patriarchy” exists. “[Because] male violence is endemic within the structure of society”. Again, a claim made without any shred of supporting facts. I’m a woman; I don’t “mould [sic] my life around reducing the threat of rape and male violence”.
“For bonus points, historically speaking, our societies have been based around the principle of cooperation. Only when hierarchical structures have been introduced (see patriarchy) do we see competition become a virtue.”Historically speaking, societies have not been based on cooperation. For most of history, the way it worked was this: one group did what they wanted and forced their subjects to submit. In socialist, communist, monarchical, and totalitarian societies, one group with more power forced the little (and often purportedly “equal”) man to do as they liked. There was no voluntary cooperation involved. Even today we see these kinds of systems – look at Venezuela. The people and government hardly cooperate in that socialistic country. If societies were cooperative, this contradicts the notion that men oppressed women. Which way is it? Have men cooperated with women or not? This is a direct contradiction to the author’s entire ideology.
Everyone – men, women, and children – can exhibit competitiveness and ambition, regardless of a patriarchy. Most humans will naturally look to their own self-interest. These qualities are not the issue; the issue is when one seek one’s own self-interest in the absence of moral restraints.
“Oh, so if women would just shut up and let men do their thing, the problem of violent male behaviour would fix itself.” The author is attacking a straw man. My point is that radical feminism tends to shift the focus away from female violence and place the blame of all mental, emotional, and physical damage squarely on the shoulders of men.
“[,]the problems of society need to be identified, deconstructed, and replaced with ones that acknowledge the base humanity of all members of society.” If that’s the case, why does the author take issue with my article which discusses how radical feminism can harm women and that women can and do inflict harm on their fellow women? They’re committing an either/or fallacy. The argument is not that only women bully women, but that both genders are guilty.
“Being educated, or allowed to vote, or have a credit card/bank account in their name was once only in the domain of males. So one must look with a certain amount of skepticism to ‘all-guys’ clubs or organizations.” This is a non-sequitur. What does the past exclusion of women have anything to do with an all-guy or all-girl group being perfectly fine? My brother hardly finds Girl Scouts sexist. Why does this not go both ways?
“Feminists realize though that each woman must strike her own patriarchal bargain within society and do what she must to survive.” Will you die if you don’t strike a bargain with this purported patriarchy? I’m a female. I don’t find myself harmed by the so-called patriarchy. “The choice women face is how to deal with the fact that they are treated as the submissive class in society and their base humanity is always in question.” Really? When in American history did women ever face a question to their humanity? If women are viewed as so sub-human, why is it that crimes against females are considered much more horrifying than those committed against men? Yes, women are submissive – to the law. Men, women, children, adults, old, and young must submit to authority of one form or another.
“Feminists ask the question, why should there have to be a sacrifice in the first place?” To this, I have on response: sacrifice is a part of the human experience. ALL people sacrifice and none more so than men. In the case of the sinking ship, women and children are first to be saved. In the case of a military situation, men are put in danger first. In the case of a burning building, women and children are rescued first. Why? Because at the end of the day, the understanding is that someone has to make the sacrifices. And if feminists don’t want to make them, then who will? I’ll tell you: men.
In conclusion, the Arbourist’s article is less of a rational response to my article, which detailed how feminism can harm women, and instead more of a personal attack and a repetition of her ideology. Moreover, the author deals in projection. She made an assumption about my identity based on my beliefs, and then attempted to dismiss my arguments based on her false assumption, as if one’s sex or skin color has anything to do with the rational merits of their arguments.
—–
Hey, thanks for the response. Rebutting can be fun, let’s do it!
“I am not only not a “dude”, I am a woman and a third-generation American from a family of mixed Hispanic heritage who also happens to be conservative. So for the Arbourist, I’d encourage you to not make false assumptions about the identity of the person you’re attacking just because their views happen to be more “traditional”. “
Cool. In the post in question, you sound like every other generic male who has ‘important wisdom’ to share with those darn irrational females. Whether by stylistic choice or the sententious content, that is exactly how you came across.
“those who recognize that radical feminism can often be toxic towards men.”
Radical feminism threatens male privilege and status in our society. It (Radical Feminism) seeks to dismantle the patriarchal structures and norms of society the oppress women. So, if losing their ‘leg-up’ in society is toxic toward men, so be it.
“If one believes in modern feminism, of course one will not understand nor acknowlegde the problem of reverse sexism.”
See also the burgeoning problem of reverse-racism… No, it doesn’t work that way. People in the subordinate classes may indeed demonstrate discrimination, or discriminatory practices toward the dominant classes, but do not have the backing of society and its set of normative values to classify their discrimination as reverse-sexism, reverse-racism et al.
“Give me an example of where women in America are oppressed by a systemic patriarchy?”
In the Sciences -” […] brought to light the research from Yale that had scientists presented with application materials from a student applying for a lab manager position and who intended to go on to graduate school. Half the scientists were given the application with a male name attached, and half were given the exact same application with a female name attached. Results found that the “female” applicants were rated significantly lower than the “males” in competence, hireability, and whether the scientist would be willing to mentor the student.” –Article:Scientific American.Citation.
From Birth, but specifically in this study kindergarten age – “[…] Bias against women and girls in contexts where brilliance is prized emerges early and is a likely obstacle to their success.”Article:Pressherald. Citation.
We can go on, if you’d like. The fact we live in a systemic patriarchy is evident, whether you choose to acknowledge facts and evidence is solely your decision. If you’re at all curious a good study to peruse can be found on the University of Chicago Legal forum: Patriarchy and Inequality: Toward a Substantive Feminism. It contains suggestions and valid criticisms of some of the branches of feminism.
“Conspicuously, the author seems incapable of writing without profanity or insulting those with an opposing point of view, a sign that her position suffers for want of a rational argument, “
Better to insult people to than ignore readily available facts.
“If a man used his “bodily autonomy” to beat and/or rape a woman, would that be acceptable, since the body is his own?”
Umm. Dude (dude-(ess)? The concept of bodily autonomy deals with the concept of actions and freedoms regarding the individuals. When you involve another autonomous human being, it is a question of rights.
“And second – a point that always seems to be missed – a child’s body is not YOUR body, a scientific fact not in dispute (i.e., unborn children have their own unique DNA and are biologically alive at the moment of conception, regardless of their stage of development, which are all established facts of science).”
Horsepucky.
Evince your claim. And anyways, the status of being alive or not is irrelevant. If you believe that females are autonomous human beings then indeed they have the right to decide what goes on in their bodies, including being pregnant or not.
If you are into the fetus-fetish, please by all means; but do not ascribe your patriarchal ‘morality’ on other women. Thanks.
“It’s one thing to be skeptical of conclusions drawn from research; it’s intellectually disingenuous and intentionally obtuse, however, to state that I did not cite evidence when readers can clearly see that I cited sources.”
Your cited research was from dubious sources and even with a charitable reading only weakly supported you assertion. Clearly, if your readers critically evaluate the source material they will come to the same conclusion – your sources are shit.
“While men have held the majority of political and economic power for most of history, women have certainly held positions of power,[…]”
You come so close to making a good point. Half marks for sure.
“Take, for example, abortion. The 50+ million children, statistically mostly female, who have been murdered were not killed because of men.”
Your buddy jesus has killed quadruple if not quintuple that number. As this is a corollary, let’s not get into your hatred of women’s rights here. But see this paper on the murderous aspect that makes jesus the #1 abortion king.
” I ground my values in God, because I am a Christian, a Theist, and thus take my values from a creator who has laid down a law in the interest of His creation.
Ahhahahaha. Erm.. pardon me. Your pronouncements have more weight than mine because of a magic book written by scared, ignorant shepherds? Riiiiiight.
Can we please keep the risible religious nonsense out of fact based discussions? The two do not mix.
“We’re givan no reason to believe such a system of “patriarchy” exists.”
Awesome. Just a start for you, from Robert Jensen: “Complex systems produce complicated results, and still there are identifiable patterns: Patriarchy is a system that delivers material benefits to men—unequally depending on men’s other attributes (such as race, class, sexual orientation, nationality, immigration status) and on men’s willingness to adapt to patriarchal values—but patriarchy constrains all women. The physical, psychological, and spiritual suffering endured by women varies widely, again depending on other attributes and sometimes just on the luck of the draw, but no woman escapes some level of that suffering. And at the core of that system is men’s control of women’s sexuality and reproduction […]” –
Another great source to learn about patriarchy is by bell hooks calledUnderstanding Patriarchy: ” Patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence.”
Evidence for Patriarchy, provided.
“Again, a claim made without any shred of supporting facts. I’m a woman; I don’t “mould [sic] my life around reducing the threat of rape and male violence”.”
“Historically speaking, societies have not been based on cooperation.”
Bullshit. You’re wrong.
“Many unique aspects of human sociality such as language, theory of mind and cultural norms have been proposed to provide the framework for human cooperative behaviour1,2,3,4, which stands alone in its scale and ubiquity between unrelated individuals5. Cooperation has been fundamental to the demographic success of our species – resource exchange, collective action and specialisation have increased our efficiency at surmounting a vast array of environmental pressures6,7.” – Nature: Competition for Cooperation: Variability, benefits and heritability of reations wealth in hunter-gatherers. Sci. Rep.6, 29120; doi:10.1038/srep29120 (2016).
Most of human history has been spent in a cooperative societal structure: – “Hunting and gathering was humanity’s first and most successful adaptation, occupying atleast 90 percent of human history.”
“There was no voluntary cooperation involved. Even today we see these kinds of systems – look at Venezuela.”
Perhaps not using a country under US embargo and economic sanctions to illustrate ‘socialism evil’ would be good. It would seem that you are trying desperately to sound like you know things, but then don’t do the work to prove it.
Please illustrate how your arguments work by charitably choosing the best cases of socialism in action. In other words, please use Norway, Finland and Sweden to demonstrate your points as opposed to countries in which the US is actively trying to overthrow the government (economic sanctions, political meddling et cetera).
“The people and government hardly cooperate in that socialistic country. If societies were cooperative, this contradicts the notion that men oppressed women. Which way is it? Have men cooperated with women or not? This is a direct contradiction to the author’s entire ideology. “
People in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and even to a lesser extent Canada and the UK, all demonstrate a social democratic model of governance that foregrounds cooperation and the belief that society should work for the benefit of all the individuals with in it.
No contradictions present in my arguments. What is evident is your bias toward the current neo-liberal craze that dominates the US body politic. It’s a bad look, by the way.
“My point is that radical feminism tends to shift the focus away from female violence and place the blame of all mental, emotional, and physical damage squarely on the shoulders of men.”
Males account for the majority of violence in society. Fact. Please remove your head from your ass.
STATISTICAL SOURCES
1.Males are most often both the victims and the perpetrators in 90% of homicides.Source:U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics,Homicide Trends in the U.S.: Gender.http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/gender.htm
2.Over 85% of the people who commit murder are men, and the majority of women who commit murder usually do so as a defense against men who have been battering them for years. Ninety percent of the womenin jail for murder are incarcerated for killing male batterers.Source:Bass, A. (Feb 24, 1992).“Women far less likely to kill than men; no one sure why.”The Boston Globe: p. 27.
3.Women commit approximately 15% of all homicides.Source:Stark, E. (1990).Rethinking homicide: Violence, race, and the politics of gender. International Journal of Health and Services. 20 (1): 18.
4.More than 90 women were murdered every week in 1991; 9 out of 10 were murdered by men.Source: Violence Against Women: A Majority Staff Report. Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate,102nd Congress. October 1992, p. 2.
5.Ninety percent of people who commit violent physical assault are men. Males perpetrate 95% of all seriousdomestic violence.Source:U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics Online.http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/
6.The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that 95% of reported assaults on spouses or ex-spouses are committed by men against women.Source:Douglas, H. (1991).Assessing violent couples. Families in Society, 72 (9): 525-535.
7.It is estimated that 1 in 4 men will use violence against his partner in his lifetime.Source:Paymar, M. (2000).Violent no more: Helping men end domestic abuse. Alameda, CA: Hunter House Publications.
8.Close to all – 99.8% – of the people in prison convicted of rape are men.Source:National Crime Statistics.
9.Some 81% of men who beat their wives watched their fathers beat their mothers or were abused themselves.Source:U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.
10.Studies have found that men are responsible for 80% to 95% of child sexual abuse cases whether the childis male or female.Source:Thoringer, D.; Krivackska, J.; Laye-McDonough, M.; Jarrison, L.; Vincent, O.; & Hedlund, A. (1988).Prevention of child sexual abuse: An analysis of issues, educational programs and research findings.SchoolPsychology Review. 17(4): 614-636.
11.The majority of victims of men’s violence are other men (76% M, 24% F).Source:U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.12.Out of 10,000 cases of road rage, over 95% of them were committed by men.Source:AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, “Aggressive Driving.”
The focus of Radical Feminism is to name the problem, and that problem is male violence and male socialization.
“Will you die if you don’t strike a bargain with this purported patriarchy? I’m a female. I don’t find myself harmed by the so-called patriarchy.”
Glad you don’t see it. Must be nice. However, for the rest of us, who have not internalized patriarchal norms, it is quite evident, and most definitely exists. You talk of skepticism, and rational inquiry yet you don’t put their basic strictures into practice. I have a positive claim – patriarchy exists and is fundamental to how society operates. Your argument is anecdotal – I don’t see it or experience it therefore it doesn’t exist… Well bully for you. Please cite the evidence that contradicts my claim.
“Really? When in American history did women ever face a question to their humanity?”
Till the 1970’s it was legal for a husband to rape his wife.
“In the United States, prior to the mid-1970s marital rape was exempted from ordinary rape laws. The exemption is also found in the 1962 Model Penal Code, which stated that “A male who has sexual intercourse with a female not his wife is guilty of rape if: (…)”.[5]” – Wikipedia.
Yeah. A little problematic don’t you think. And yes, I’m using the wikipedia, because basic grasp of the groundwork knowledge necessary in this argument seems to be beyond you.
“If women are viewed as so sub-human, why is it that crimes against females are considered much more horrifying than those committed against men?”
Irrelevant. Clutch your pearls on your own time. The fact of the matter is that rate of which males perpetuate violence against females and other males in society. It is the root of the problem, and what Radical Feminism aspires to change in society.
“In conclusion, the Arbourist’s article is less of a rational response to my article, which detailed how feminism can harm women, and instead more of a personal attack and a repetition of her ideology”
My article is a response to the intellectual skullduggery you displayed, and continue to display. You repeat patriarchal talking points, make baseless arguments, and don’t back up your points with evidence.
“Moreover, the author deals in projection.”
You missed the sentence, “deals in verifiable fact”. A slight oversight, but given the depth of argumentative rigour demonstrated, quite unsurprising.
Sorry for the reproduction folks, but DtP isn’t really big on answering direct assertions. So, DtP… evidence provided for patriarchy, and a second round of popular, scientific, and scholarly ones waiting in the wings. Not gonna go further until this is addressed, because educating the demonstrably ignorant pro bono isn’t my cup of tea. :>
Did you ever just boggle at a comment? This snippet is from the ‘Dear the People’ blog. DtP and I are having a discussion of sorts about radical feminism and what it purportedly is, and is not. The discussion is quite, erm… interesting as DtP doesn’t seem to realize that they live withing a patriarchal society and it has, whether they acknowledge it or not, shaped who they are and how they act within said society.
Read the quote, the statements in bold are mine.
“Feminists realize though that each woman must strike her own patriarchal bargain within society and do what she must to survive.”
Will you die if you don’t strike a bargain with this purported patriarchy? I’m a female. I don’t find myself harmed by the so-called patriarchy.
“The choice women face is how to deal with the fact that they are treated as the submissive class in society and their base humanity is always in question
Really? When in American history did women ever face a question to their humanity? If women are viewed as so sub-human, why is it that crimes against females are considered much more horrifying than those committed against men? Yes, women are submissive – to the law. Men, women, children, adults, old, and young must submit to authority of one form or another.
*record skip…*
How does one even get to this place? Asserting that patriarchy hasn’t harmed them personally and what is the big deal with it? Where does one even start with that and what society did you grow up in? I want in.
Let’s be clear here, this is not to criticize DtP for the views she holds. That is not our place, but rather, how can the case be made respectfully to illustrate how patriarchy affects us all, and there is little to be gained from not acknowledging its role in society.
I think that in many cases it is easier to choose not to see the systematic obstacles and biases that severely curtail the experiences and life trajectories of women in our society. After all, who wants to plumb the depths of their subordinate status, witness their oppression, and realize that they are not regarded as fully human in society? Certainly not happy rainbows and unicorns revelations, but is it worth the psychic energy necessary to sublimate these societal realities into a happy patina of ‘things are okay in society and I’m mostly not a part of class of people who are treated as less then human’?
“Women all over the world are dealing with internalized misogyny that puts them in opposition with other women and themselves. Some of them think less of women as a whole and place their faith in the opinions of men. Others have been raised to believe that men are superior and women are inferior. Women receive misogynistic messages from all fronts, so battling against it is constant. The fight never ends. You can excise your misogyny, but first, you have to admit that you have it so that you can pinpoint the toxic behaviors and belief systems that created it in the first place.”
And of course, Andrea Dworkin from Right Wing Women:
“Right-wing women have surveyed the world: they find it a dangerous place. They see that work subjects them to more danger from more men; it increases the risk of sexual exploitation. They see that creativity and originality in their kind are ridiculed; they see women thrown out of the circle of male civilization for having ideas, plans, visions, ambitions. They see that traditional marriage means selling to one man, not hundreds: the better deal. They see that the streets are cold, and that the women on them are tired, sick, and bruised. They see that the money they can earn will not make them independent of men and that they will still have to play the sex games of their kind: at home and at work too. They see no way to make their bodies authentically their own and to survive in the world of men.
They know too that the Left has nothing better to offer: leftist men also want wives and whores; leftist men value whores too much and wives too little. Right-wing women are not wrong. They fear that the Left, in stressing impersonal sex and promiscuity as values, will make them more vulnerable to male sexual aggression, and that they will be despised for not liking it. They are not wrong. Right-wing women see that within the system in which they live they cannot make their bodies their own, but they can agree to privatized male ownership: keep it one-on-one, as it were. They know that they are valued for their sex— their sex organs and their reproductive capacity—and so they try to up their value: through cooperation, manipulation, conformity; through displays of affection or attempts at friendship; through submission and obedience; and especially through the use of euphemism—“femininity, ” “total woman, ” “good, ” “maternal instinct, ” “motherly love. ”
Their desperation is quiet; they hide their bruises of body and heart; they dress carefully and have good manners; they suffer, they love God, they follow the rules. They see that intelligence displayed in a woman is a flaw, that intelligence realized in a woman is a crime. They see the world they live in and they are not wrong. They use sex and babies to stay valuable because they need a home, food, clothing. They use the traditional intelligence of the female—animal, not human: they do what they have to to survive.”
I couldn’t find who said the quote about women not wanting to accept the reality of their situation, only because in doing so would only reveal how deeply misogyny is rooted in society. Feel free, kind readers to help me out. :)
Yelling at each other online is cool and what not (see the RPOJ) but past cartharisis for the writer, I’m thinking, not much is really accomplished. Understanding the context and where people are coming from is an important skill to foster, and as Alexander Bevilacqua (from his essay on the Aeon Website) says, we should not entirely replace the adversarial aspects of our intellectual culture, but perhaps temper our expectations with a bit of empathy and appreciation for where the arguments are coming from.
“The call for empathy might seem theoretically naive. Yet we judge people’s intentions all the time in our daily lives; we can’t function socially without making inferences about others’ motivations. Historians merely apply this approach to people who are dead. They invoke intentions not from a desire to attack, nor because they seek reasons to restrain a text’s range of meanings. Their questions about intentions stem, instead, from respect for the people whose actions and thoughts they’re trying to understand.
Reading like a historian, then, involves not just a theory of interpretation, but also a moral stance. It is an attempt to treat others generously, and to extend that generosity even to those who can’t be hic et nunc – here and now.
For many historians (as well as others in what we might call the ‘empathetic’ humanities, such as art history and literary history), empathy is a life practice. Living with the people of the past changes one’s relationship to the present. At our best, we begin to offer empathy not just to those who are distant, but to those who surround us, aiming in our daily life for ‘understanding, not judging’.
To be sure, it’s challenging to impart these lessons to students in their teens or early 20s, to whom the problems of the present seem especially urgent and compelling. The injunction to read more generously is pretty unfashionable. It can even be perceived as conservative: isn’t the past what’s holding us back, and shouldn’t we reject it? Isn’t it more useful to learn how to deconstruct a text, and to be on the lookout for latent, pernicious meanings?
Certainly, reading isn’t a zero-sum game. One can and should cultivate multiple modes of interpretation. Yet the nostrum that the humanities teach ‘critical thinking and reading skills’ obscures the profound differences in how adversarial and empathetic disciplines engage with written works – and how they teach us to respond to other human beings. If the empathetic humanities can make us more compassionate and more charitable – if they can encourage us to ‘always remember context, and never disregard intent’ – they afford something uniquely useful today.”
There isn’t much to lose in trying a slightly different approach to arguing with other people, I think it is worth a shot.
What is ad block? It is an application that, at your discretion blocks out advertising so you can browse the internet for content as opposed to ads. If you do not have it, get it here so you can enjoy my blog without the insidious advertising.
The Intransigent One
Mystro
The Arbourist
Your opinions…