Masculinity
What is a real man?
I'm tempted to keep the OP this simple. But given my expressions in various posts I obviously have some thoughts on the issue.
I grew up in what most would call a conservative environment. To the point that upon expressing I wanted long hair as an ~10 year old kid (I had a male friend who had long hair and liked it) my parents responded "Do you want to be a girl?!" to dissuade me. Something so innocuous as a child thinking his friend was cool and wanting to be like that was interpreted as a bad thing that needed to be avoided. I don't know how Morman's congregate now -- but in my youth they had separate classes at church for men and women. Sex was the excuse, but gender was the rule.
I've mentioned Kate Millet a few times on these forums. For myself her explication of gender roles liberated me. I think that having grown up in a conservative environment I relate to second wave feminism. The social forms they were criticizing and explaining mapped to the social forms I grew up with fairly well.
I am still a man. I know those patterns.
But I'm not interested in being a real man.
I've read some books, as I do, on masculinity. One thing that I remember now that leaps out is that men communicate emotionally without looking eachother in the face. So "gone fishing" is the perfect place to communicate: a couple of beers and looking at the lure while you wait makes for a masculine intimate environment. "intimate" here not in a sexual way at all -- this is what's hard to pin down, I think, with masculine persons. When are they intimate, but still real men, and not sexual?
As it turns out, often. But people with masculine gender identities don't do it the same as people with feminine gender identities. So it seems at least.
So the opening question: What is a man?
And the titular question: What is masculinity?
I'm tempted to keep the OP this simple. But given my expressions in various posts I obviously have some thoughts on the issue.
I grew up in what most would call a conservative environment. To the point that upon expressing I wanted long hair as an ~10 year old kid (I had a male friend who had long hair and liked it) my parents responded "Do you want to be a girl?!" to dissuade me. Something so innocuous as a child thinking his friend was cool and wanting to be like that was interpreted as a bad thing that needed to be avoided. I don't know how Morman's congregate now -- but in my youth they had separate classes at church for men and women. Sex was the excuse, but gender was the rule.
I've mentioned Kate Millet a few times on these forums. For myself her explication of gender roles liberated me. I think that having grown up in a conservative environment I relate to second wave feminism. The social forms they were criticizing and explaining mapped to the social forms I grew up with fairly well.
I am still a man. I know those patterns.
But I'm not interested in being a real man.
I've read some books, as I do, on masculinity. One thing that I remember now that leaps out is that men communicate emotionally without looking eachother in the face. So "gone fishing" is the perfect place to communicate: a couple of beers and looking at the lure while you wait makes for a masculine intimate environment. "intimate" here not in a sexual way at all -- this is what's hard to pin down, I think, with masculine persons. When are they intimate, but still real men, and not sexual?
As it turns out, often. But people with masculine gender identities don't do it the same as people with feminine gender identities. So it seems at least.
So the opening question: What is a man?
And the titular question: What is masculinity?
Comments (743)
Oh yes, and I have a penis.
An adult human with XY chromosomes.
Yang (re: taijitu). Unbalanced, tends to break before bending (contrary to / complementary of Yin which tends to bend before breaking). :fire:
I know the clichés and I dislike most of them. As a male I have no particular insight into my own gender and rarely think about masculinity. One of my colleagues is a trans-male and seems more overtly masculine than I am - even if I am a foot taller. :wink:
Quoting T Clark
Ask a reductionist question and you get a reductionist answer. Masculinity gets defined as being the kind of matter which possess a certain collection of properties or essences.
So a problem is created right at the start. We have to identify a set of characteristics that are then arguably just accidents and which lack any contextual justification.
This is not a good way to proceed.
As a holist, I would ask what does masculinity seek to oppose itself to? What does it dichotomously "other".
Of course, that would be the feminine. Well perhaps. We might start down this road and start to think that the masculine~feminine dichotomy isn't that massively useful after all. It kind of gets at something, but lacks strong explanatory value.
Logic demands we get down to useful dichotomies polarised limits that capture a critical axis of difference. And the truth of biology is that male and female involves considerable overlap. The truth of culture is that humans are remarkably plastic.
How are we telling the truth of the world when we allow dialectical argument to drive us to opposing extremes that are mostly about just putting small tilts one way or the other under a giant magnifying lens?
So sure, we could give an accurate answer about maleness as biological identity and masculinity as cultural trope. We can put the small statistical differences under a spotlight. That is an interesting game, especially when you are a masculine male wanting an easy check list to confirm what you suspect.
But philosophically, we have to start by realising how the current gender wars are a cultural symptom more than a metaphysical question.
The right of politics has turned its aggression and frustration outwards on migrants and liberalism because the political realm is simply stalled when it comes to addressing humanity's real problems of climate change, food insecurity, etc. And likewise the left has followed its own inbuilt dialectical tendency by turning its frustrated rage inwards on the question of identity within the social collective.
One others to construct the outsider. The other others to deconstruct the legitimacy of leaving anyone out. The right promotes over-exclusion. The left promotes over-inclusion. And for both it is the only political game left to them as real world control has been taken off the table.
To join in with a reductionist analysis is not going to help solve anything. Male~female is already a marginal kind of dialectical difference, not worthy of cashing out in the language of substance ontology what is the "right stuff" in terms of a set of metaphysical-strength properties.
What we should be more worried about is how left~right became such a politically neutered debate in terms of actual economic and institutional power, even as it became such a fevered debate in terms of gender politics and other superficial identity issues.
Personal identity counts for shit in the world of real politik. Because real politik has now institutionalised the impersonal flows of capital and entropy.
"For the self-control of the warrior, which we observe and admire in his comportment, is but the outward manifestation of the inner perfection of the man. Such virtues as patience, courage, selflessness, which the soldier seems to have acquired for the purpose of defeating the foe, are in truth for use against enemies within himselfthe eternal antagonists of inattention, greed, sloth, self-conceit, and so on.
When each of us recognizes, as we must, that we too are engaged in this struggle, we find ourselves drawn to the warrior, as the acolyte to the seer. The true man-at-arms, in fact, can overcome his enemy without even striking a blow, simply by the example of his virtue."
I found myself laughing at your post. I value your opinions and ideas when it comes to science, but in this particular situation, your opinion doesn't mean anything. I was describing my own personal experience of being a man - what being a man means to me. Maybe that doesn't fit in with what you think I ought to think and feel, but that's your issue, not mine.
Quoting apokrisis
For me, it's not. I'm not a man in opposition to anything. A man is what I am. I can't say I treat women exactly the way I treat men, but I apply the same standards - fairness, friendliness, respect. I admit I feel more protective of women in general than I do of men. I can sometimes be a pretty intimidating person for people who don't know me. I'm high energy and aggressive verbally. Women tend to be more intimidated by me than men do, so I have to be more careful.
At the same time, women tend to like me and trust me once they know me better. I treat them with respect they can sense is sincere. I'm pretty transparent. People can see I'm trustworthy and not a threat.
How men treat women, how people treat other people, is not a political question, no matter how much political ideologues try to make it one.
Quoting apokrisis
I agree with everything @apokrisis has commented, I was fussing over how to phrase my argument only to find everything I wanted to say has already been said.
At the bare minimum, we would need a context & a goal to say anything useful, such as discussing the role of masculinity in dating and highlighting some specific topics such as chivalry, for example.
Interesting thread and conversation, so far. Mixing the analytic and the personal as in this particular exchange:
Quoting apokrisis
Quoting T Clark
It reminded me of a previous discussion and definitions:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13595/what-does-real-mean/p1
@Banno introduced me to the perspective of:
Keeping that in mind and returning to Quoting Moliere we can ask:
"As opposed to what?"
I like this:
Quoting apokrisis
What differences are magnified? Who does this and for what purpose? For whose benefit?
Quoting apokrisis
How true is this? How do you know? How helpful is it to use extreme positions of 'right' and 'left'?
Quoting Moliere
Whatever that means.
Quoting Moliere
I haven't been around, so have missed this. Also, I haven't read much about philosophy and gender issues, so thanks for this thought-provoking thread. More interested now as I begin to appreciate the political implications. I found this:
[quote=""What is Masculinity?" - Philosophy Talk; https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/what-masculinity"]
Does masculinity need a makeover for the 21st century? Should your gender matter to who you are as a person? Ray thinks masculinity is a tool of the patriarchy and should be rejected, but Blakey counters by suggesting that there may be multiple definitions of masculinity that need not all rely on narrow and stereotypical expectations. Ray is skeptical of a solution that would introduce more stereotypes into the mix, and they maintain that people should simply focus on what they have in common with all human beings.
The co-hosts are joined by Robin Dembroff, Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, who argues that any idea of what someone must be or ought to be on the basis of gender is constrictive.
Ray asks how their critique differs from standard critiques of masculinity, and Robin explains that their view emphasizes the close connection between masculinity and maleness. Blakey questions the ability to separate the two concepts, which prompts Robin to define masculinity as standing in opposition to femininity. Ray then considers how men are advantaged and disadvantaged by sexism due to the intersectionality between gender, race, class, and disability. [/quote]
[emphasis added]
https://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/what-masculinity
How many still think in absolute terms of masculinity/femininity?
Talking about being a 'real' woman or man...the extremes. Is that where we want to go, to be?
So, would you agree that 'what is a human?' is a much more important question, than what is a man? or what is a woman? and it always has been. To me, man and woman is almost synonymous in every way that really matters, the differences are far more trivial, compared to the commonalities.
We can still talk till the cows come home about the differences between a man and a woman BUT, they remain trivial by comparison.
What do men do? They build, they toil, they manipulate their environment, they brave the elements, and they protect. The vehicle that got you to work was likely designed by a man, built by a man, driven on a road laid down by a man. The building you walked into was likely designed and built by a man, the sink you used, the toilet you flushed, all built and maintained by a man. The HVAC, the elevator, the electrical system, all installed by a man with dirt on his hands and his name on his shirt. The desk you sit in front of, also built by a man. And most, real men I propose, do this less so because of the great rewards that might or might not follow, but it's because what real men do.
This is meant as a celebration of the man. The celebration of the woman is just as real, but looks much different. Their hand rocks the cradle and therefore rules the world.
Such outdated thinking I know. But I also know that someone here reads this and says "Thank God there are still people who say this." I wrote this for you.
You are like Sam Elliot at the end of The Big Lebowski.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Female_Man
Or if you prefer your critique less angry, The Left Hand of Darkness.
[quote=wiki]On Gethen, the permanently male Genly Ai is an oddity, and is seen as a "pervert" by the natives; according to reviewers, this is Le Guin's way of gently critiquing masculinity.[/quote]
This is meant as a celebration of the human. The celebration of the woman and the man is real, and is not different. Their hands rock the cradle and therefore rule the world.
Such modern thinking I know. But I also know that many will read this and say "Thank goodness we no longer need to thank or blame non-existent gods, for anything people create, say or do." I wrote this for you.
I don't know if anyone noticed that I borrowed from the writing style of another poster to bring you this message. Please do credit them accordingly.
The strictly biological answer could be about how a man is an adult human with XY chromosomes, and that is easy enough. But the more one thinks about it 'being a man' is an abstraction... it's a personal identity, a social identity, and the biological answer is only the starting point, not the end point. So, there is no definitive or all encompassing answer for what masculinity is. If I tried to take a stab at it, I'd say masculinity is a set of behaviors biological males tend to exhibit and society expects men to have, both good and bad. Since men often exhibit these behaviors and also are expected to, it forms a closed circle of selective reinforcement.
Gender differences are trivial compared to the commonalities between men and women, but as we organise our language, culture, customs etc around gender, they're still nonetheless important. There's no merit in fostering an unnecessarily hostile competition between the sexes, maybe in that, we could agree. However, I'm not going to formulate my views differently just because some morons believe they're living in a patriarchy.
The link. You missed the link.
Well, don't ask Rudyard Kipling. It seems he thought a man to be a kind of demi-god, judging from his poem If, and told his (fictional) son in that poem he had to meet the impossibly high standards described in it in order to be one. He managed to arrange for his real son John to have a commission in the army in WWI, despite the fact that John had been rejected because of his eyesight was terrible. John was killed in battle, aged 18.
I doubt it's possible to define "a man" in any non-trivial sense, and think it's not worth the trouble.
Why is it moronic though?
''Patriarchy is a system of relationships, beliefs, and values embedded in political, social, and economic systems that structure gender inequality between men and women. Attributes seen as feminine or pertaining to women are undervalued, while attributes regarded as masculine or pertaining to men are privileged. '
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/patriarchy#:~:text=Patriarchy%20is%20a%20system%20of,pertaining%20to%20men%20are%20privileged.
Are not the "masculine" attributes of e. g. aggressiveness and competition generally privileged in contemporary societies? Isn't social success primarily presented as being about dominance / status / material gain rather than e. g. caring / protectiveness / cooperation etc?
(Not intended as a criticism but) for some reason that reminds me of the old Apple ad that had Einstein and Edison in it.
Thank you....Hey...Wait a minute!
More recent books I would recommend are the "Ancillary Sword" trilogy by Anne Leckie and the Murderbot books by Martha Wells. I wouldn't call them feminist, but they're pretty powerful.
Talking about stories.
Interesting to consider the enduring popularity of the Regency Romance genre. For example: The Bridgerton series. For women only?
I listened to one just t'other day - 'An Offer From a Gentleman' - by Julia Quinn.
Set in England during the period of the British Regency (18111820) or early 19th century.
From wiki:
Quoting Regency Romance - Wiki
How much has changed in the male power structure? Arguably, progress has been made in certain areas of empowerment. However, that can be swiftly swept aside.
How did ex-PM Johnson get away with telling lies in Parliament on an industrial scale? Why was it not allowed to call him out as a 'liar' in Parliament? *
Why are such individuals allowed to resign rather than be sacked? Why are dishonorable PMs allowed to produce a resignation honours list? What is that about, other than the continuation of power set in a privileged social class? The ruling classes.
The UK lives in an archaic system of structural inequalites still. But hopefully, things will change.
Listen to Dawn Butler:
https://www.channel4.com/news/our-democracy-shouldnt-grind-that-slowly-dawn-butler-on-holding-boris-johnson-to-account
* Most unacceptable is any insinuation that another member is dishonourable. So, for example, in the British House of Commons any direct reference to a member as lying is unacceptable, even if the allegation is substantively true.[1] A conventional alternative, when necessary, is to complain of a "terminological inexactitude".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_different
Not worth posting the vid here but the ambience seems similar to me. And again, not a criticism, but your piece struck me as a kind of ''advertisement'' for manhood. Which is appropriate as a 'real man' seems a thing of marketing--maybe that's the essence of it.
One is that I think the lack of really caring about one's masculinity is itself a masculine trait. Who are you to tell me what kind of man I am? I can get by on my own without your approval -- like a man. This isn't intended as a criticsm of the mindset. As I said in the opening, I'm aware of the patterns. This is a common one I come across, though not universal. Which gets to something which is probably important to acknowledge and I should have started out with it -- there isn't so much a masculinity as there are masculinities.
I don't think that undermines the phenomena, though.
Another is that in my experience of masculinity I'd say that men tend to be deeply passionate. The notion that men are without emotions or somehow less emotional than women is false. It's the mode of expression which is different, not the actual emotional life of the person.
Another is a memory, which is sure to annoy. However in the military I recall that it was the women who tended to be "tougher" than the men (especially those in leadership positions). I believe this is because of self-selection among other reasons. But what this shows me -- I know it's anecdote so I don't expect to convince here, only sharing -- is that sexual difference doesn't account for some of the cliche's associated with men like toughness and strength. I've known too many people who do or do not live up to the cliches across the sex line to think sex is very determinative of one's traits or abilities. So I try not to look at gender identity as a collection of traits at all as much as a collection of attachments, expectations, feelings, and modes of expression. We can all be tough, but a tough man expresses differently from a tough woman, even though they are both tough.
Lastly, in light of there being masculinities, I fully expect there to be some competing notions of the masculine. I think it best to look at these in concert -- an individual will probably have a masculinity, but in thinking through masculinity in general it's OK that there are different ways to express the gender identity.
Don't we all? This is a famous ad, a Clio winner, a classic.
Most of us know particular men and women who are not typical of men and women - in general. Take 1 million women and 1 million men and there will be significant differences.
I have spent many hours mulling over lists like this, trying to realistically locate myself in jobs I could do and jobs I wanted to do -- or, in roles I wanted to occupy.
Thus emasculating your respondents.
I have a mate who owns a property near Wangaratta, drives a John Deere all day, keeps his cigs tucked in the shoulder of his singlet, and always has a half-smile on his face. He saw the title of the book "Real men don't eat quiche", and murmured quietly "Real men eat whatever they fuckin' want."
Wonderful reflection. Thank you for sharing. Responsibility, action, loyalty, aggression, providing protection to the vulnerable, and sexual attraction to women are perfect explications of a masculinity.
If I'm reading you correctly you're making a hard distinction between the biological and the social in how you treat the two nouns -- a man is biologically defined, and masculinity is defined in this more psychological, spiritual, ontological, or social sense.
Heh. Maybe he is :D -- I identify as an androgenous man, though my presentation is very masculine. Once upon a time I cared about living up to the expectations, but I've let go of that now. I think it's a masculine trait to be able to claim whatever one does is manly -- or maybe a better way to say that is that the expression is a masculine expression, though other genders can certainly feel stubborn in that similar way.
Quoting apokrisis
Great response apokrisis. Much to think through and on.
Hopefully the general reflection addressed some of this. I'm still bundling, I'm just not bundling characteristics, essences, or properties.
Quoting apokrisis
I think there are masculinities which pit themselves against the feminine, absolutely. It's a darker masculinity, in that it can feed into misogyny, but feminist theory has pointed out that misogyny comes from hating that women have the power to emasculate or masculate, that their worth as men is in the hands of women who get to say whether or not they are real men -- an obviously toxic identity, but one which does occur.
There's masculinities which are softer than that ugly look, though, which still puts a hard distinction. I think I'd say my upbringing and @Hanover's exposition is along these lines.
I agree with you that the truth of biology is that male and female involve overlap, and that human beings are remarkably plastic. It's part of the difficulty in trying to put the notion to words: there's something there, but it's not crisp. (as if biology was crisp... no. It's just even more fuzzy than biology)
Quoting apokrisis
Oh yes. We're in agreement there. I put this in ethics for that very reason -- it's more a reflection on norms than a question of knowledge or ontology.
I still believe that gender identity is a real thing, though -- in spite of the culture wars. It took me a minute to get there, because I like all the second wave feminist stuff which is more about gender abolition and I like my Marxism which is impersonal rather than personal. Again, a line I've said in my general reflection, just too many people care about their gender identity and express it in various ways to dismiss it, even if it's not ontological. Maybe not quite ethical, but certainly close to value-theoretic thinking.
Quoting apokrisis
The one thing that keeps me in favor of exploring these is that I think social organisms only change because "regular" people come together to force them to -- the people who purportedly the whole organization is about. Because of that we're taught various things which dissuade people from engaging their governments.
I see the issue of gender identity coming to light because of the efforts of regular, marginalized people kept speaking up about their problems. And the whole social-movement approach to understanding the change of social organisms is pretty much my orientation.
The real politik is what the nationalists practice. And it has real effects, so it's worth paying attention to. But so do social movements, and they are likewise worth paying attention to.
As always, I'm threading needles between competing thoughts. I don't want to dismiss the realpolitik, but I think that personal identity has more influence on the real politik given how regular people speaking up have become a prominent topic by doing nothing but talking about their identities and what they need. (feminism counts here, too -- not just the recent trans stuff)
I think that's a good expression of a masculine self-image from the perspective of a man. It's the thing men often like to look up to and act towards in the sense of fully Being the Man I should be. Thanks for sharing.
Where's your thoughts now?
Quoting Amity
Here I'm riffing from @Hanover's thread but into a separate topic to see what the differences are between the thread on defining "Woman" and a thread on masculinity. Different emphasis because of our respective beliefs, but I thought it'd be interesting to explore this notion given my various commitments.
So -- it's for my benefit. Naturally. :D
I agree with this line of questioning:
Quoting Amity
However, I think the patterns point out that there is an oppositional notion -- the boy who couldn't become man. For many masculinities the oppositional point, to speak to @apokrisis's point, isn't feminity as much as boyhood. To journey to manhood is itself a story, and the question of what a real man is is a way of differentiating one's childhood, immature, or adolescent self from one's responsible, grown-up, and mature self.
It's a Bildungsroman more than an opposition to the other sex, except when it gets ugly.
Quoting Amity
Cool :). I call myself a feminist because I've read the feminist works and agree with them. (I don't call myself a feminist because most people have ideas about what a man calling themself a feminist is, and it doesn't correspond to why I like feminism)
Quoting Amity
Worldwide? Many.
If you ask what the differences are, given its cultural dimension, you'll find contradictory accounts.
But I don't think the simple demand to abolish gender roles works because it's too central for too many people. At least, so it seems.
Quoting Hanover
I accept your panegyric to manhood. Obviously I'm more on the other side, but it accords with much of my upbringing, and my commitment to masculinities makes room for this kind of masculine identity.
Quoting unenlightened
:rofl:
That's a wonderful image of the masculine imagination. :D
Quoting unenlightened
More books on the list, now. I agree with you that asking a woman or science fiction is a great method, if one is ready for the truth.
:D
OK, funny -- I laughed. There's too much interplay between the sexes, and cross-support (especially in a family structure) to define men by their occupation. The men may build things, but they don't do everything (there are women at the worksite who are just as capable), and they rely upon the network of women in the more traditional set-up.
One thing I'd note, though, is that you're equating men and women in terms of ability -- which I agree with -- but you're not setting out what it means to be a man, unlike @Hanover. We may disagree on masculinity, but he answered the question. Do you have an answer?
Quoting GRWelsh
I'm hesitant to accept "behaviors" for the reasons I've already mentioned. What men exhibit, yes -- but I'm more inclined to parse masculinity in terms of social or psychological terms rather than behaviors.
That's a perfect example of toxic masculinity. Force your son to become a real man by getting them killed in a senseless war!
I definitely don't think there's a point to providing a strict set of requirements. However I'd say that gender identity, and especially masculine gender identity, isn't oft discussed and it's worthwhile to explore.
Quoting Baden
Yup!
Quoting BC
Oh, sure. "significant" being determined by the measurer, but I don't deny difference. It's a plastic difference, in light of @apokrisis's comments, but a difference that seems to persist in our perceptions at least.
But the topic isn't difference, unless masculinity is defined by the feminine. I don't think it is. I think men have various attachments, expectations, feelings, and modes of expression.
I hope not!
:D
Perfect.
This has been a conflicted issue for me, more earlier in life than later. I didn't fit. First, I was seriously visually impaired from birth, which has been a life-long limiting factor. (I didn't hear about partially blind, partially deaf E. O. Wilson till it was way too late for him to be a model.). Second, I am gay. This isn't an impairment, but it can require extra psychic labor to locate define and locate one's self in community.
I did have good models of manhood: my father especially, and there were uncles and family friends. My father was a steady long-time worker in the post office, and a produce gardener. He had grown up on an Iowa farm when horses were still essential, and he had a lot of general skills. He was always even tempered--something I didn't become till late in life. He supported a large family of wife and 7 children. He smoked but didn't drink. He was very active in church and small-town community life. A good man.
I wanted to be "a good man" too, but with different parameters than my father's. I often found myself up against the status quo, and resisted. Successful resistance, and if not resistance then strong criticism of the status quo was a significant piece of manliness. I was a SJW before the term was coined. As a consequence, my worklife was not particularly peaceful, nor highly remunerative. A lot of the leftists and gay activists that I admired were resisters, criticizers, and in general trouble makers for the establishment. They were "real men".
On the other hand, I consider pleasure in art, film, literature, and music also a significant part of manliness, as long as it isn't too academic, too 'fussy', too rationalized. Brandon Taylor, author of The Late Americans, excoriates the academic, fussy, feminist, POMO climate he depicts in the University of Iowa's Writers' Program through a gay student frustrated with the artificiality of it all.
Ready-to-go sexuality is also a feature of manhood. Of course I realize that there are various restrictions, boundaries, limitations, and degrees of decorum that we (try to) respect, but I expect men will be sexual when and where it is possible, and that this is a good thing.
I don't consider my definition of manhood applicable to all men. Manhood varies from the refined to the rough.
I was addressing how to think. A question of epistemology. This is high on the bullet point list of things that make me a philosopher. :wink:
Quoting T Clark
Well that is silly. Even there you have those who are less of a man versus more of a man. All those who rank higher or lower than you in your atomic list of essential traits like aggression, competition, paternalism, loyalty, honour, responsibility, etc.
Quoting T Clark
What is it that attracts you to philosophy exactly? Is it the opportunity to counter all the fancy talk with your bluff and manly plain-speaking? :grin:
:up:
My family did not impose such a polarizing set of options of what makes a "real man" as yours did but the society around us was dominated by that ethos. My particular situation probably had something to do with short male life spans and abusive behavior encouraging finding new mates over several generations of mothers. I am twenty-seven years older than what my father got. I don't know what my lease agreement says. The process has not given me a strong patriarchal vibe.
Both my male and female siblings received a training based upon being able to fend for oneself rather than expecting shelter by means of another. Kind of a mixed message as far as family bonding goes. My son grew up in a much more supportive environment. That is not to say I did not make a lot of stupid situations. Parenting is a fantastic method to learn about one's limitations.
Despite those generational differences, I think there was a continuity in a belief in a balance of personality of the sort Jung talked about between animus and anima. Male and Female were mythological components that had to be explored but was not a law or something. My parents did not read Jung (as far as I know) but there was a sense that we had to find out what we were rather than being told what those roles were.
This experience causes me to reflect on how humiliation gets mixed up with all sorts of sexual distinctions. Humiliation comes in many forms. There is the Lord of the Flies, The Last Picture Show, the fetishes of Sade. I think the Metamorphosis of Kafka may be the most terrible vision of the conditions. The son turns into another species while the favored daughter is put upon display the next day to lure prospective husbands.
How people treat each other is a personal, family, social, moral and ethical question, certainly. But I don't see how it can NOT be a political question as well. Jim Crow laws involved white people treating black people very, very badly. People who hate homosexuals tend to discriminate against them. Women could not vote (in this country) until the 20th century. How have these wrongs been ameliorated? Through political action, because what people can get away with or for what they are punished for doing is determined through political processes. Women weren't granted the vote through religious means. The Civil Rights efforts by blacks were nothing if not political. Homosexuals resisting police bar raids was entirely political.
That said, I don't understand why Apokrisis' post was so caustic.
There is a ton of literature now analysing what is going on right under our collective noses. Fukuyama's book, Identity, is a good example. He tracks this back to events like the "therapeutic turn" in the US psyche, as exhibited in the 1990 Californian task force report, Toward a State of Self Esteem.
Here is a chunk of my notes on where Identity directly touches on this if you want to check it out. (I'm writing from my own "ecological economics" viewpoint, so some of the jargon may be unfamiliar.)
Thank you. I don't see those as "perfect explications of a masculinity." I see them as an explication of how I experience of the fact that I am a man. I don't expect other men to experience it the way I do and I don't generally judge, or even pay much attention to, the masculinity of other men.
Yes, I overstated my case. All those instances are political. On the other hand, once all legal restrictions to equality are removed (and I acknowledge they have not been) the battle will not have been won. How people treat each other will remain an unresolved personal, family, social, moral and ethical question. I'll go further, those non-political factors are what lead to the political obstructions.
If you had addressed your post to anyone else, I wouldn't have responded, but you didn't. So I did respond, but I was confused, I'm still confused, about why you think your post was responsive to what I wrote.
My post was based on introspection, which I consider a valid epistemological method. Perhaps you don't, but you didn't say that. You say you are a philosopher (Yes I saw the wink), but really you're a western philosopher, apparently rejecting what I find most important about philosophy - the chance to examine and understand, be more aware of, how my mind works. Not calling myself a philosopher, I'm free to do with it whatever I please. I say that approach has value. Perhaps you disagree.
Quoting apokrisis
As I noted in my response to @Moliere, I did not describe what it means to be a man, I described what it means to me for me to be a man. I wasn't speaking for anyone else and I don't generally judge anyone else.
Quoting apokrisis
As I wrote previously, I am attracted by the chance to become more self-aware about how my intellect works. Calling it "fancy talk with your bluff and manly plain-speaking" says something about you, nothing about me.
Of course. But then again, as opposed to what?
Humans need to be understood in terms of the dichotomies that give reality to the notion of life involving "choices", or at least a flexible range of options so that behaviour is not reflexive and stereotyped.
If you label yourself as X, then you are locked into "being X", and this mostly measuring yourself in terms of actually too often "failing to be perfectly X". It is a broken way of thinking when it comes to being a man, a human, an engineer, a whatever.
What you need is some intelligible spectrum that is bounded by its opposing limits. Then you are free to range over the spectrum in ways that are adaptive to a world that is increasingly changeable and complex.
So you might find it useful to have a spectrum of human behaviour that runs between the masculine and feminine. Being able to move about this range "at will" as a personally adaptive choice seems a good thing as who wants to be stuck in the rut of a stereotype?
But then the other side of this is that you need to indeed find the maximally adaptive positions on this spectrum and even largely stick to it as a general habit. That is also part of the same systems deal. Having choice, but making a choice, and sticking to it while it works. The definition of self-actualisation in the healthy sense of discovering yourself through intelligent action, not trying to live up to some cultural stereotype.
Personally, I just don't find categorisation behaviour by the masculine~feminine spectrum of supposed traits to be particularly useful when living my life. It is weakly a predictive factor at the collective statistical level, but a poor predictor at the everyday personal level of the folk you have to get along with.
Why not have a debate about the prosocial~antisocial spectrum? That would be a more general human level alternative to a gender-based dichotomy. And it would for instance capture more of what @T Clark looks to want to claim about his personal identity.
Oh the casual misogyny of celebrating the little homemakers who "are really in charge" because they tend your heirs just as your wonderful mum tended you. Pass the sick bag.
An intelligent point at last.
I didn't take it as a criticism.
You missed the last line. It wasn't written for you. It was written for @T Clark
I guess I missed it.
I don't either. By the time a child can benefit from reading about the masculine-feminine spectrum his or her location on any M-F spectrum is firmly in place and isn't going to change on the basis of a psychologist's construct.
The same thing goes for Kinsey's homosexual - heterosexual distribution scale. It has diagnostic value for someone who finds that what they want to do and what they are doing is at variance--like a person whose behavior is entirely heterosexual, but whose fantasies are entirely homosexual. Very screwed up. The spectrum is real, and most adults who are reasonably self-aware, pretty much already know what they are and would like to be doing.
I was framing my reply in the structuralist sense that the dichotomies that succeed and thus persist must be intrinsically complementary rather than antagonistic. They must embody a win/win division of some kind. Because that is just how nature works.
So human social organisation boils down to the complementary dynamic of local competition vs global cooperation. The system works by being globally closed by its laws or habits, while remains open and flexible as it also then composed of locally-enshrined creative freedoms of action.
Social democracy as "peak human politics" in a nutshell. We strive for a win/win where our legal system and economic goals provide the general cohesion that knits everything together while also doing as much as possible not to flatten out all the competitive differences between the individuals making up that society.
So same would go with the social construction of the male and female roles. They should be framed in ways that stress the complementary. The differences shouldn't be arbitrary traits but evolutionary sensible traits like the good old hunter~gatherer mobility dichotomy which saw men go out for days chasing dangerous meat while women and children hung close to camp while collecting tubers, berries and hunted small game.
There are genetic tweaks for these roles. But all that is a long time ago now. Modern society has a different economic base and so this particular division of labour lacks its evolutionary logic. It feels displaced. Instead we've gone down paths like the social construction of property rights. Ownership in the form of slavery, dowries, custody, relationship contracts are all thinkable ways of human life.
There is a lot of still quite recent social history based on race, gender, ethnicity, class, etc to work through with better framing.
That is why I am favouring a systems view of the topic one which is pretty alive in current political history and social science.
Good point. This goes to the prosocial behaviour a society must extract from the individuals that are going to compose it. It speaks to the differences that are actually going to matter in whatever is the current concept of "the world of proper grown-ups".
Again, I was pointing out that it speaks to a reductionist metaphysics. What's so confusing? That I didn't reply in the same terms as if I might accept them as analytically valid?
Quoting T Clark
Well, I'll say it now. But what would give it validity would be to add the cultural context shaping those "discovered" traits.
I share much the same list. And I can trace them to the specifics of being heir to a Scots/colonial/Presbyterian/pragmatic/settler tradition and all the values held dear for good reason within that social frame.
So even in terms of introspection, you looked inward for your encultured sense of being "a man" and I read it as far more accurately a description of your experience of coming from that familiar kind of colonial settler stock male or female.
Quoting T Clark
That is a little ridiculous as I in fact grew up in the East. So on top of recognising you immediately as the same kind of social type as myself, I am sensitised to these kinds of contrasts because I lived in five different countries before I was 12.
At 50, I eventually decided to live where my own parents grew up and was shocked to discover how much everyone was "just like me" in ways I had always thought were a bit peculiar to my parents and myself.
So I had had wide experience of many cultures with a mangled accent to match and yet suddenly felt totally at home somewhere, for the first time, in a place I had only ever paid a flying visit.
I don't look inwards to then find "the real me" though. I know from experience and science that this is just how cultural construction works. I don't have to be the epitome of the type of person that my grandparents geography would seem to dictate. And I don't have to rebel against it either.
I can just appreciate the prosocial aspects that this specific cultural history represents, along with its various shortcomings. Some of the habits are good. Others demand some ironic detachment.
Quoting T Clark
Again, my response is that at best it told me more about the specifics of your cultural identity than of your gender identity.
I'm sure you will now tell me I'm quite wrong about the Scots/colonial settler/etc heritage. :grin:
Of course they're not analytically valid. They're not analytical at all.
Quoting apokrisis
What you consider valid philosophy appears to be different than what I do. I'm not sure there's any way to bridge that gap.
Quoting apokrisis
I don't doubt or deny my attitudes are formed by my western European background, among other things. I'm responsible for being aware of those attitudes and deciding whether it is proper for me to act in accordance with them. You don't know me well enough to know whether or not I'm successful with that.
Quoting apokrisis
If you reject self-awareness as valid epistemology, your philosophy is western, even if your upbringing isn't.
Quoting apokrisis
That's just your snotty way of saying, again, you don't recognize introspection as valid epistemology.
Quoting apokrisis
I don't see how that matters. Again - I'm not responsible for my attitude or identity, I'm responsible for my behavior.
You and I have gone back and forth a couple of times and all you've really said, over and over again, is that you don't recognize the way I understand myself and my society as valid. If you think it makes sense to do that one more time, now's your chance.
Masculinity is the philosopher king, knowing best and condescending to do it to the lucky, lucky, world.
Quoting Moliere
Thanks for both your general and particular replies to all discussion participants. It helps to clarify understanding and furthers exploration.
The questions you picked from my response were not addressed to you or the motivation for your thread. Here is the full exchange:
Quoting Amity
I had been thinking of the extremism/fundamentalism in politics and the need to identify and relate a hard core message. Unambiguously from an absolute and dogmatic point of view. All the better to claim or manipulate voters. So, even though most voters might have similar personal values re the economy, how money is spent - there is a strong issue on which they will not budge. Like gun control and abortion.
In the UK, it was Brexit that took central stage and won the election for the Tories. People already convinced of their specialness, holding a hatred for the 'other', and those who were swayed by lies.
What is considered to be the most pressing of 'humanity's real problems', see above, will not be properly addressed until the world sinks or burns. Or their paying customers hurt.
Short-termism is the order of the day for whoever is in power. That is part of the problem.
We can ask if concerns are related to 'masculinities' or 'femininities' - does one attitude favour environmental concerns over eternal wars? Differences are magnified for the benefit of divide and conquer. Think colonialism. Us v Them. Males v Females.
So, as to masculinities and femininities:
Quoting Gendered Innovations - Femininities and Masculinities
Read on for more...
https://genderedinnovations.stanford.edu/terms/femininities.html
I'm interested in the whole spectrum of masculinity and femininity. Perhaps from female masculinity to male femininity. And anything in between...
Quoting Masculinity - Sociology - Oxford Bibliographies
Yes. Of that I have no doubt.
The questions Quoting Amity
related to your view of the labels 'right' and 'left' of politics.
Quoting apokrisis
Given that there are varying degrees of 'masculinities' and 'femininities' in so-called 'lefties' and 'righties' with different areas of concern, I don't see such generalizations as helpful.
I 'saw' it when I woke through the night and thought "Plato's Cave".
Quoting Plato's Cave - wiki
A brilliant ad - 'Think Different' - 1984.
But does it take violence by a single female warrior to break the illusion - the projected reality?
We are in 2023. It beggars belief that progress can be halted and new realities or rights killed off.
Is it that we know no better? Or are we convinced by others that think they do...or lie.
Quoting apokrisis
I appreciate you taking the time to provide this viewpoint. I scanned it but have yet to digest it.
Brow furrowed and question marks appeared at the
For me, a squashed and unenlightening history of apparent cause and effect.
I know about Maslow's pyramid but unsure as to the 'Maslovian enterprise' and any 'psychic rot' in its 'materialistic foundations'. What is meant by this?
To backtrack a little. The original question as to opposition related to your:
Quoting Amity
Why would you say that you are not interested in being/becoming a 'real man' in the sense of growth you describe?
The journey to a mature adult for all humans pretty much follows a natural/socio-cultural path with no clear demarcation. Unless you specify a legal age or perform a particular rite of passage.
Even then, questions remain.
Quoting Rites of passage - NY Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/24/learning/what-rites-of-passage-mark-the-transition-to-adulthood-in-your-community.html
As opposed to a "fake" man ... :confused:
Perhaps a more probative inquiry:
A socio-psychological topic, however, rather than philosophical aporia, no?
Quoting Moliere
This caught my attention. Im conscious of the effort to not explain maleness in opposition to the notion of female, and I recognise this is a personal reflection, but its difficult not to consider answers such as these without asking as opposed to ? Especially when reading it as a woman.
Aggression, for instance, is traditionally considered a masculine trait - yet young women these days, freed from learned expectations of passivity as feminine, are often (not always) more openly aggressive than their mothers and grandmothers were. They no longer need to appear ladylike.
Protection to the vulnerable, too, without these learned expectations, is increasingly recognised as a human trait, rather than a particularly masculine one. As a woman, it isnt that I have no intention to protect the vulnerable, only that in many (but by no means all) situations I recognise a lack of physical or political capacity to individually eliminate a threat. That I have and make use of other means to protect the vulnerable rarely registers as action on my part, or is dismissed as underhanded or manipulative because it lacks this physically or politically overt individual action. I gather the support of relationships, adjust the circumstances, lend my capacity to others
The maleness described here appears to prioritise individual agency and attributable action - a sense of identity and ownership found in isolating ones self from the world as the subject. Competitiveness and conflict over collaboration - my life, my decisions, my honour, my family, my desire, as opposed to others and their (dis)agreement, vulnerability, etc.
When we use this kind of language, the frustration as a woman is that it isnt as important for me to be recognised as the subject behind every event as it is for the event to occur. I, too, want protection for the vulnerable, I want less conflict, I want change, I want reliable and intimate relationships, and Im willing to do what I can to achieve this - but this maleness seems more about consolidating identity through attributable action than intentionality.
Please note - this not a criticism, but a personal reflection.
We do have common ground there.
Quoting Judaka
Their moronic views still have to be challenged though, for as long as they dare to promote them.
Quoting Baden
I think that was more true in the past than it is now. Certainly not in every town and city on the planet but I think caring/protectiveness/cooperation etc is valued much more than 'aggressive competition' in the minds of more and more men, in particular.
It's possible if you try not to read everything through your limited lens that you are the protector of women and all other things small from the men monsters of old who hate everyone not themselves, even their moms who supposedly were like June Cleaver and not far more complicated as such things tend to really be.
I responded empirically to the question of what men are. The data are remarkable really. There are a whole host of occupations that are nearly 100% male, particularly in the trades. These jobs are not particularly well paying, prestigious, or glamorous. In fact, they're backbreaking and necessary, literally assuring such things as your light bulb turning on when the switch is flipped.
Why do men take these jobs and women not? Does the patriarchy elbow out the women and save the glory for the man to solder the pipe and pull the cable? I don't think so. I think it's because women don't want those jobs.
Why do men take them? I suppose it says something about men, which I took to be the question of the OP, but then you interjected to help the women cross the street because they needed a man to help them from my maybe bad words.
Worry not. I'm only looking at what men do to answer the question of what men are.
There are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics.
Women were completely restrIcted to the jobs men decided they should do!
What about during WW II for example when women demonstrated they could do the heavy industrial jobs men did, just as well as men.
It's the same concept as the victors get to write history. The stats you highlight are the result of historical male dominance and they are not a result of what women wanted or were capable of doing.
I know. So many women wish to plumb but are held back by the bullies who force them into other professions.
It's impossible to find data unsupportive of your narrative. Such is how Gospel works.
My earnest answer to 'what is a man or what is masculinity,' lies within the answer to 'what is a human or what is humanism.' The answers to the question of what are the differences between a man and a woman or masculinity and femininity are just too trivial to me. Highlighting differences in genitalia/some internal workings and parts or chromosomes or aesthetics or strength or even in historical/traditional role play are just unimportant now. Old backwards thinking imo, we need to drop all that shit and declare men and women as equal, in every way conceivable and declare general differences in physical strength, as no longer of any significant value, in the age of modern technology.
Notions of a patriarchal or matriarchal dominance has zero value now and should be declared utterly dead and gone!
If you want me to answer the question of 'what is a human or what is humanity or what is humanism then I can and will, although I think I already have, over many posts in many threads.
If you want me to answer the question 'what in your opinion are the differences between men and women,' then I can only answer that from many different angles, traditionally, physically, psychologically, legally, politically, socially etc, etc. But, as I said, they all pale in comparison to the commonalities.
Masculinity and femininity should be part of each individual human, as each can balance and strengthen the other.
If an individual wants to nurture an internal patriarchy or matriarchy then fine, they can do so, as long as they don't impose it on anyone else, by force. If their internal identity results in an overwhelming need to change their physical biological sex, then that's ok to. They are still bound by laws, such as not raping a woman using a penis that they happen to still have, even though they are a woman themselves.
Sexual assault is sexual assault regardless of the sexual status of the perpetrator or the victim.
I argued that it was invalid and gave reasons. Simple as.
Try to be more balanced! Does the following edit help you?
So many women wish to be educated, have equal opportunity, choose their career path etc but are held back by the patriarchal bullies who force them into other roles.
:up:
It's about humans understanding other humans and humans explaining and justifying themselves to other humans. It's also about self-analysis. That's why Rabbie Burns wrote:
"O wad god the gift tae gie us
Tae see oorsels as ithers see us."
A person may see themselves as X but yes, as you suggest, they then have to convince others that they are in fact X and that X is justifiable.
Quoting apokrisis
I agree, but only as the internal spectrum you suggest and not when it overspills into a patriarchal or matriarchal identity that you think should be the dominant societal driver.
Quoting apokrisis
Sure, seems like a useful suggestion to me.
Quoting T Clark
We would have to 'interview' the women who know Mr Clark 'well,' with the Rabbie Burns quote I used above as our measure. I have often heard friends tell me how they think they are perceived by their friends and family and then I get a very different story indeed when I have spoken to those very same friends and family as they have often also been my friends and family.
Often the way my sister thinks my other sister perceives her is incorrect and vice versa and so on and so forth. I am sure this is also true of my perceptions, that I think others have of me.
I often hear from friends and family, regarding how 'intimidating' a loved one is.
Let's call the person 'husband' for example. I have had commentary such as:
"yeah, I have to stroke my husbands ego a little, now and again. He is actually quite emotionally vulnerable and fragile. You have to let him think he is in charge and that we all respect him deeply and find him intimidating. He is a little lost boy in reality, living in the residue of a bygone age when men were men and they believed all women found them exciting, rather than merely useful."
I am editorialising of course but I think many of us have heard others say similar things.
In this context, terms like "human" and "humanism" seem to me about as useful as "earthling" and "geocenrrism", respectively.
Earthling is ok by me, but are you including all fauna in that?
Does a man and a woman have total equality under the label human or humanism, in your view?
Quoting Baden
Is this your basis for saying there's a patriarchy in these "contemporary societies"? I'm not interested in a modern feminist reimagining of what patriarchy is, that defines the term in the most incredibly vague, broad and subjective terms possible. What you seem to be talking about is capitalism, because otherwise, no, I don't agree that "aggressiveness" is privileged and I'd love to see your argument for why you think so.
Characteristics that succeed in a competitive environment will naturally be celebrated within the context of that environment, whether they're masculine or feminine doesn't matter.
Even if masculine traits were overly praised, well, it's unsurprising, considering that for most of human history, women have had less competitive roles in society, and I believe men are just generally more interested in competition regardless. Success in competition might be part of masculinity itself, the desire of having the best things and being the best, fits the ultra-masculine alpha types pretty well to me.
Losing & failure can be emasculating, a man may feel the need to prove himself, to provide, to succeed, to be respected etc. Masculinity can include whatever brings about success, and women who want to succeed in competitive environments will probably need to abandon or redefine their femininity to some extent. It's not some global conspiracy against women, it's just that feminine traits aren't valuable in a competitive environment, at least in terms of producing success.
The problem with modern feminism is that sexism isn't a motivation or a belief, it's an outcome. Just saying feminine characteristics don't produce success in a competitive environment would probably be sufficient to get some of them riled up. Doesn't matter whether it makes any sense for feminine characteristics to be as competitively viable as masculine characteristics, if they aren't, it's just evidence of patriarchy, haha.
Quoting Judaka
So, a social system based on competition for status and material resources where men, according to your own analysis, are naturally advantaged and where woman are naturally disadvantaged in their ability to participate in power structures is not a patriarchy? What definition of patriarchy are you using that you think doesn't match up with the situation as you've just outlined it?
War is the traditional, historical competition that matters most, yes?
Which image do you think we should nurture, for how masculinity should progress?
That dude in your profile pic... Did evolution result in that guy having instincts that naturally result in 'patriarchy'? (Regardless of whether he approves of evolution having had such a result.)
Don't know what the relevance of this is. But you can make your point more directly if you like. I'm simply trying to figure out from those who don't believe our societies are patriarchal why they believe that. I suspect it might be because they don't like feminists and feminists say that, therefore they feel they have to disagree.
I'm curious as to how you conceive of patriarchy.
The relevance is that there are reasons to think that our species evolved with differences in physical attributes between the sexes, including instincts, which result in societies naturally tending towards 'patriarchy'.
So when you ask:
Quoting Baden
...I wonder what you think competition for status and material resources are based on, and what you mean by "patriarchy". Is patriarchy something that would require genetic engineering and eugenics to eliminate, or a conspiracy by people in power that might be eliminated by social engineering, or...?
Masculinity is whatever the current social trends are. I believe now the relative social norm is being relatively athletic if not outright strong and having a quality of what can be called "assertive" or "dominant".
Sigh. Imagine me yelling at you the following phrases:
You don't ASK for directions, you GIVE directions. You're NEVER lost. You're just somewhere you never had the care to visit before.
You don't ASK for help, you GIVE help. Whether fools want it or not.
You don't ASK for a solution. You BECOME the solution.
You don't INVITE people to a party. You ARE the party.
It just gets more and more illegal as you continue on. Crabs in a bucket? Definition of insanity? Perhaps. But you don't care! You're the MAN, man.
In this day and age of ignorance, just being as loud and annoying as possible as well as prone to violence will probably define what your looking for. Essentially being an adult child but with the distinct quality of being able to incapacitate anyone who calls you out for being such so as to emulate the quality of a god ie. omnipotence.
Or being of or having the quality of being able to "take it like a man" ie. pain tolerance. I suppose to defend that which instead solely nurtures and attack in response.
In contrast to femininity which is essentially to nurture.
The difference is in intent, what I'm describing is a natural consequence of the differences between men and women, though, I do appreciate that it isn't entirely the result of nature, and sure, it can be lessened.
Patriarchy isn't any system that produces unequal outcomes in the ability for men and women to acquire positions of power, where results skew towards men. Part of what comprises the understanding of feminists on the patriarchal nature of society is the idea that gender differences are largely the result of social engineering.
I account for the nature-based differences and the practical realities between the sexes, which I explained, that's not a justification for patriarchy. I require the unequal outcomes to be the result of sexist societal and governmental structures or societal attitudes. The competitive environment is not equal for many reasons, but unless those reasons involve our attempt to ensure that men dominate and women are subjugated, then it's not patriarchy.
In virtually every competitive environment, men dominate, whether it's board games, card games, e-sports, cooking, or whatever really. Why is that? Is it a global conspiracy against women? Or is it because men have a proclivity towards engaging more seriously with competitive activities, and have characteristics that produce success in comparison to women? When your benchmark for talking about patriarchy is equal outcomes in competitive environments, you've already completely misunderstood what you're dealing with.
Quoting universeness
It's just a question of equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome. I think almost all social groups agree, that if a woman can pass the fitness tests, and displays sufficient competence, just as any man would have to, then she should be considered for a position. If she's the best choice, then she should get the position. Just don't be surprised if these conditions don't produce equal participation in armies by gender.
Yes, there are reasons to think that, but this has nothing to do with what we should choose as the best form of society.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_nature
Quoting wonderer1
I mean what it's defined as in dictionaries, reference books etc.
E.g. ''Patriarchy is a social system in which positions of dominance and privilege are primarily held by men.'
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarchy
Quoting wonderer1
I think we can work towards a more balanced society without getting the clippers out. But one thing Judaka noted is true, patriarchy is bound up with capitalism, so isolated talk of "eliminating" it is to misunderstand it as is your ''conspiracy by people in power' notion. But I'm not trying to offer solutions, I just found it odd that some could think it "moronic" to characterise our societies as patriarchies when even by their own descriptions they fit the bill.
Again... Sorry, but can you or someone else reference the definition of patriarchy you're using that requires it to be a "global conspiracy against women". I have no idea where you are getting that definition from and we're talking at cross purposes. I'm happy to use the WIKI definition I've quoted.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary says:
I would guess from your last response that the second definition is not what you meant. However, unless I'm interpreting you incorrectly, the first definition doesn't sound to me like a good fit with what you mean either. Sure there are families which are patriarchial in the first sense, and larger societal groups that advocate for patriarchy in the first sense. However, there are lots of families, if not the majority, who don't fit the first sense of patriarchy in many nations.
So it isn't obvious to me how the dictionary definition helps all that much in understanding your view.
Are the maternal characteristics you identify the result of genetics or societal influences. It must be genetics for this to work else the system would not have resulted in this clear distinction because our XXs would be just as likely to have these paternalistic behaviors to this day. This acknowledgement seems to defeat the argument that we should not assign gender distinctions on the basis of sex. From this, the conclusion we'd draw is that the common correlation we typically see between gender and sex is likely actually causative in most people.
I have no difficulty acknowledging we live in a patriarchal society as you've described it. If our society allows men certain advantages and you insist these advantages arise from manly traits, then we're forced to that conclusion, but this is a pretty black and white binary system you've described, with women in need of help by men due to their inability or lack of desire to compete. How did we circle all the back around to women being X and men being Y, and since Y leads to greater acquisition of shit, we need to carve out a special room for X?
That sounds fucked up even to me.
Anyway, enough trying to sort through the inconsistencies and I'll just state the obvious. Women and men both compete equally in the vast number of fields in contemporary society, but for likely genetic reasons women tend toward some professions and men others, but if a man wants to work in a nursery school and a woman wants to operate a back hoe, they both can. Mostly they just don't want to.
The great equalizer is an education because outside of brute strength and perhaps some limited distinctions in intellectual interests and in certain fields, there are more than sufficient opportunities for both sexes to fully and equally enjoy their lives on this planet earth.
This isn't to say you don't have a bunch of chauvinistic men who use their increased presence in the workforce to deny women their right to compete, so we make laws to stop that. And men pass these laws too because fairness is a value both men and women prefer. No one likes an asshole.
So let's get off the idea that men and women are just the same but for a few anatomical differences, and that it makes sense to respect some amount of gender behavior is in fact caused by basic genetics, and let's all stand behind the idea that you can't subjugate anyone, especially if it means putting your boot on a woman's neck because she'll outperform you if you don't.
Huh? I was talking about board games and card games and other competitions, and why men dominated them, what you've quoted has no relevance to my view on patriarchy.
I'm not happy to use the definition you've given. I'd remark on the fact that patriarchy is a very negative term to describe a society, and that is true regardless of the definition. I'm not saying that's how it should be, just that's how it is. If we use a definition that allows us to label the West as a patriarchy, then it will be our moral obligation to rectify this so that the West is no longer a patriarchy.
Therefore, if you propose a definition of patriarchy that, depending on how one interprets it, and on you've interpreted it, isn't a problem for me whatsoever, then it would be a mistake for me to accept your definition. I can't argue for patriarchy under any circumstances, so, while I'd normally be happy to let you define a term however you liked, in this case, I can't agree to any definition that a society can qualify for without me condemning it.
If your definition of patriarchy can be established by nature-based differences playing out without any sexist motivation, then I'll reject the definition. To be frank, and I hope you don't think my view on this is silly, but objective definitions for these sorts of things are not possible. I won't accept any definition of patriarchy that omits the intentional design of a society aimed at accomplishing male dominance over women. Entirely because I am not interested in condemning disparities in gender-based outcomes, I'm only interested in condemning sexism.
Granted, humans are not universally cooperative, either on a macro scale or a very granular micro scale--the source of wars and domestic disputes about household chores.
=What I said.
Quoting wonderer1
You can just read the wiki article if you like. This is not esoteric knowledge.
Quoting Judaka
Recognising reality can be inconvenient, but that doesn't constitute an argument against doing so.
Quoting Judaka
Appreciate your honesty but you can't both invent or reject definitions to suit your agenda and also expect to have a meaningful debate. What you're telling me is, you don't care what the word means because, again, it might be inconvenient to do so. Let's just agree to disagree and leave it at that.
Quoting Hanover
I don't really know what your point is here. Gender distinctions clearly relate to biological sex but aren't absolutely bound by them because social reality is a compromise between biology and psychology. E. g. Genders are assigned on the basis of biology but it's (now) socially acceptable for them to be changed (reassigned) on the basis of psychology.
Quoting Hanover
:up:
Quoting Hanover
l never said that.
Quoting Hanover
I haven't taken a position on nature / nurture here. (I think) all I've said is that (broadly speaking) we live in patriarchies, that that's not a result of a conspiracy, and that it's related to our societies being capitalist, which mode of organization aligns well with "masculine" values. I also haven't commented on what should be done about it except that cutting off men's bits is not part of my agenda. So maybe we agree on that much and can therefore get on to putting our imaginations to work on what a more balanced society might look like and how it might be achieved.
Maybe under the modern label of libertarian socialism there is "total equality" ...
Quoting Baden
I am certain that you are working under the same principles that I've outlined. There is not a single case of sexism that you agree with, not a single case of racism that you support, not a single case of oppression you'd justify. That's not the result of you being a saint, it's because you're bound by the same circumstances that I am, we define morally charged terms in accordance with our principles of right and wrong. If I present you with a definition of sexism, it is simply unthinkable for you, or anyone, to accept that definition and use that definition to justify sexism.
"Ah, this author defines sexism as treating people differently based on gender, well, I do think people should be able to do that, sexism is fine by me". Others will substitute your use of the term with their understanding of it, and they'll just hear you say sexism is fine, and it'll cause all kinds of problems. The term reflects just a category of immoral acts related to gender, the speaker replaces that vagueness with their interpretation, every person's "sexism" always reflects their views on what should and shouldn't be okay within the overarching context that sexism refers to.
Moral arguments aren't about whether sexism is fine or not, it's already determined that sexism is wrong. Therefore, the entire moral debate is in the definition and interpretation of the term, how you define sexism represents the entirety of your argument. It's the same here, with patriarchy, the entire debate is in the definition. If you give me a definition and use it to argue that "Patriarchy is proven when there's an unequal outcome by gender in positions of power", I'm not going to play the idiot and take the position defending patriarchies.
I've outlined a view against your definition and use, by explaining that there's nothing inherently immoral with a society that creates unequal gender representation in positions of power. A fixation on definitions is pointless, there is no authority that gets to define for me, what patriarchy is, or what sexism or racism is. I've explained what I'm for and against, that should be good enough.
The roles men are expected to take on -- with the usual caveats here -- that neither women nor children are, are risky. Men go to war, not just because of their aptitude for violence, but also because there is considerable risk.
The Pony Express used to run this ad: "Wanted. Young, skinny, wiry fellows. Not over 18. Must be expert riders. Willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred." As a group essential but individually disposable.
I won't multiply examples, but I'll add that it might make sense for a society to arrange itself partly in terms of risk. There have generally been dangerous things that need doing, so you probably don't want everyone doing them. Obviously today we have women soldiers, fire fighters, and so on, and we have child soldiers too. Yay.
Ok, let's not argue about the definition for now and just examine this. Suppose a form of social organization results in 100% male representation in power. You would neither consider that immoral nor patriarchal, correct? How about at least undesirable?
I take your point. In practice, everything comes into play somehow. Ideologically, however, the focus in modern consumer societies is on the accrual of material wealth and status*. This is how success is defined and the primary means of achieving it is and must be aggressive competition, overt or otherwise, because it is not for everyone (and increasingly for fever and fewer as inequality increases).
*Not to satisfy real needs but to foster and flaunt excess.
I don't think it's inherently undesirable, we'd need to look at the process of filling those positions, and what our goal was. If we found that the processes looked at were typically impartial and reasonable, and did select the best candidates, then we can't call the process sexist, at least.
I'm generally uninterested in representation, but even if the processes were devoid of sexism, that doesn't mean they accommodate the genders equally. We could stop talking about gender and instead talk about characteristics, such as agreeableness, where men are largely less agreeable, but only on average. I could agree that more should be done to ensure agreeable people have their talents recognised and properly rewarded, even if my motivation had nothing to do with gender.
In terms of patriarchy, and power, the processes in question are mostly of entrepreneurs and politicians. Apologies, but to me, it's completely unsurprising that men dominate the field of entrepreneurship, as men dominate virtually every competitive environment as I've pointed out. I don't see a problem with this.
In terms of political representation, I'm not sure, but I think a strong case can be made against allowing 100% male representation under any circumstances. The traits that succeed in being selected don't even necessarily correlate with how competent one is at their job, which makes me care less about who is selected. To be honest, I don't think I could see 100% representation and believe the social organisation was gender-neutral, but if it was let's say 80%, I'd be okay with it in principle.
Gender just isn't the important way to divide people for me, and so my question might be, can I also mandate that a certain number of introverts hold positions of power? I guess not, right?
I could be convinced that there should be some separation by gender that would ensure some percentage of female representation. I might do some research into it sometime, but currently, I have no strong views on it.
And how useful is it to label yourself? Who benefits exactly?
My own view is shaped by systems science. That says an organism relies on a dynamical balance. Its identity is fluid in ways that make it adaptive. Its identity is not tied to some absolute constraint as that is mechanical. It is instead tied to the homeostatic ability to find a productive balance that matches the demands of its environment or larger context.
So labelling yourself is counterproductive in that it over-constrains your sense of self in a mechanical fashion. As a system, that makes you brittle. It is a shallow strength that breaks suddenly rather than a supple strength that adjusts.
But then on the other hand, at the level of humans as part of a social collective, encouraging self-labelling is useful. Society wants to fix people into predictable roles and attitudes so that they can play parts within larger political and economic scripts.
Again this is the logic of systems science. Hierarchical order is based on higher level constraints acting downward to shape the parts that construct the system. Complexity of form can arise when it is based on the simplicity of material that it can produce.
So civilisation requires humans get turned into citizens. Lists of attributes like honour, loyalty, industriousness, diligence, etc, become ways in which behaviour is restricted so as to produce the right kind of cogs for a more complex level of social machinery.
Or as we move into the modern economic paradigm, the worthy attributes become entrepreneur, self-starter, winner, influencer, etc.
This is how it is. Society finds life simplest when we do answer to labels. But society functions best when our behaviour is intelligent and expresses a dynamical balance. Labels then become the dichotomous signifiers of the conventionalised limits of behaviour. We can dance within the space defined or step back to critique the settings of social system that is seeking to over-simplify us.
I think most people would probably agree with you. When I say that being an engineer is part of my identity and that for me this means I tend to be pragmatic, focused on solving problems, process oriented, and good at math and science, that doesn't mean I consider myself as an engineer in opposition to some other category. The same is true for my attitude toward manhood.
Quoting Possibility
I would not describe any of the women I've known well, except for maybe my Aunt Katsie, as "ladylike." Katsie definitely was, but she was also strong and stood up for herself. And none of them were in any way passive.
Quoting Possibility
I'm not sure what to say to this. I'll start by saying that I didn't say anything about maleness, I only described what being a man means to me. That's not the same thing. Beyond that, what you've written is close to what I wrote, but with a dark shading of uneasiness and distrust. I'd just say that that darkness is in you, not in me.
Quoting Possibility
No. Not to be recognized, to take responsibility. To be held accountable for the things I do and don't do.
Yes. I was surprised by how one-sided the distributions were in many cases. I think the data you linked to was for the UK. I wonder how different it would in the US.
But you can't, so I guess that's the end of the discussion.
Calling our society a patriarchy as that term is normally used includes an unstated assumption that it is a bad thing. It seems to me that would be true only if men's lives are somehow better than women's. Is that true? Is our society, taken as a whole, better for men than it is for women? Happier? Safer? Healthier? More satisfying?
The answer, of course, is NO, it is not true.
Over the last 50 years, real wages have been cut and inflation has reduced purchasing power at significant levels. Neither men nor women are exempt from falling income and rising costs of living. More and more families live on the precarious edge of poverty, having to work more hours in second or third jobs to avoid falling into the pit of poverty.
The realities of class overrun our educated chatter about sex, gender, men (masculinity), and women (femininity). Educated, professional workers are just not in the same boat as blue-collar / gray collar workers. I've been both. The latter is definitely more pleasant than the latter.
Battling "Patriarchy" is a war against the distorted shadows on the wall of the academic cave. Success or failure will have no consequences.
I think you're right, but that's not the discussion we're having.
:up:
Battling ignorance on the other hand...
Regardless of whose lives are relatively better, we're all worse off. Men are not better off by being marketed a masculine ideology from a young age. The whole society is sick and we all suffer from it.
Quoting BC
You are mistaken if you think that even recognizing the reality of patriarchy means taking the side of academic feminists against the working man or some such. Patriarchy is bound up with capitalism and class oppression, not a distraction from it.
Quoting 180 Proof
:up:
At last. In a nutshell. Thank you :up: :100:
Appreciate your patience and perseverance :up: :100:
:pray:
This of course demanded an explanation, and in a somewhat typical fashion men became the scapegoat for this unfortunate state of affairs and the use of the term suggests projected misandry.
What's actually happening is that these spheres are fundamentally dictated by the dynamics of power, power structures, heirarchy and domination. Apparently, those things are equal to 'masculinity' (hence the term 'patriarchy'), and the fact that women's entry into the various fields was unable to change things for the better can squarely be attributed, of course, to men.
This view is of course nonsensical, since women wield power and create heirarchies (and thus dominate) too.
These dynamics always have, and always will, dictate the relations between people on a societal level. There's nothing about power, heirarchy and domination that's inherently masculine, and to attribute all of society's unfortunate but innate characteristics to men is, as I noted earlier, projected misandry.
Neither sex is responsible for it, and neither sex is able to change it. No one participates in it voluntarily. One might consider this view 'social realism', thinking along the lines of political realism. Simply a result of the structures and dynamics of power and mankind's flawed nature.
[b]Patriarchy:
a system of society or government in which the father or eldest male is head of the family and descent is traced through the male line:
a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it: "the dominant ideology of patriarchy"[/b]
You keep describing 'competition' as if it's always 'fair and honourable' competition. It's nothing to force another to comply with your dictates due to you possessing superior physical strength, and such is easily nullified by technological development.
You also keep attempting to cite examples of where you claim men excel over women, when the truth is that women's contribution and women's achievements are often deliberately diluted or are just not mentioned.Quoting Judaka
I could not think of 4 less important areas! and in each of those area there are women representatives, every bit as good as the men involved, especially in cooking.
Even if you were given your claim that (men are better than women), (Edit: sorry, just noticed I had typed this the wrong way round, an hour after I posted it :yikes: ) at competing (which you should not be imo) are men better than women at cooperation in your opinion? Cooperation produces far better results than competition imo.
Do you consider education a competition?
Do you think men have proven themselves more intelligent than women?
As @BC posted:
"A focus on masculine aggression and competitiveness ignores the extensive cooperative behaviors that are required to maintain a functioning complex society"
Yet we all have one! Where would you be without yours?
At least 'maybe' offers hope. :up:
You probably know that there is more to 'Patriarchy' than simple definitions.
@Baden provided this link earlier. It's worth reading:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarchy
It's as useful as giving yourself a name. What's in a name? Human intelligence is my answer.
Humans use labels to clarify and categorise etc, we all benefit from that, as it gives us a better ability to reference and it enhances or ability to memorialise. Can we have language without labels? Even glyphs and ancient cave paintings are labels.
Quoting apokrisis
So why do you use your own name or 'apokrisis' if you believe the above quote is true?
[b]The Greek word apokrisis
Found only in Lk. 2:47; 20:26; Jn. 1:22; 19:9, the Greek noun apokrisis meant separation, secretion, and answer (Kittels Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged Edition, p. 474). In the New Testament this word always means answer (ibid).[/b]
Do you use the label apokrisis to invoke what luke 2:47 states?
"Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers."
Quoting apokrisis
I agree.
Quoting apokrisis
People want/need to be understood by other people regardless of personal notions of what 'society' wants. Who are you talking about when you use the label 'society?'
Quoting apokrisis
It is also unwise to over-complicate us. Many folks on TPF use their language skills to appear to be saying stuff that's deep and meaningful, when in reality, when you 'decode' the fancy terms they employ, they are not saying anything deeper or more meaningful, than the local yokel with an average education, who has lived for long enough to come to some conclusions about some issues.
Yes, I do. But that does not invalidate the existing definitions, it just means that none of them are a prefect fit, for any given exemplification of patriarchy. This is often the case with any such terms, yes?
We can see how some prefer their own narrative of what 'patriarchy' means to them. Sometimes based on limited knowledge and understanding. This discussion has been enlightening.
:up:
I agree with this, and tip my hat to any badass man who bellies up to the biker bar in his fishnets and stilettos.
I'm pretty sure I've read versions of this 'Real Men Do Whatever The Fuck They Want' story before.
A bit of the Marion Robert Morrison about it!
Real men don't.... judge a book by its cover. And read beyond its title.
Quoting Real Men Don't Eat Quiche - wiki
Quoting universeness
You're deliberately taking me out of context.
Quoting universeness
This is all irrelevant. I was not arguing that 100% of men outcompeted all the women, or anything close to that. This is about the top 1% or 10% being male-dominated, not male-exclusive.
Quoting universeness
My claim isn't that men are better at it, just that they're dominant in competition. I could attempt to explain why, but my reasoning would be anecdotal, but it certainly isn't just "men are better" lol.
Quoting universeness
It's a valid counterargument to bring up education, this is an area where girls are not just 50-50 but just outperforming boys. Why this is happening is a complicated topic, but nonetheless, it shows girls are equally capable in competitive environments under the right circumstances.
Quoting universeness
I don't know if men are better than women at cooperation, it's too broad of a scope, very subjective.
Quoting universeness
No.
Reading your reply, it seems you've entirely taken me out of context. As if, I didn't bring up any of what I said for a particular point, I was just trying to explain why men are superior to women or some shit. The entire problem with this argument of patriarchy is that there's zero effort to look at alternative explanations. If there's an unequal gender outcome, assume sexism caused it, and if anyone objects, address them as sexist, amazing. Though, wasn't your position AGAINST the critique of the West as a patriarchy?
Do you think 'real women do whatever the fuck they want,' would offend those on this thread who consider themselves manly men?: :lol:
But to me, you type as if you don't seem to understand that the reason this is still true, in some areas of the human experience today is because historically, women were deliberately forced to comply with men's will, via physical threat and physical force, and that lever is now considered pathetic, by the majority of intelligent people imo. So why are you harping on about this top 1% or 10% who exist, only due to a nefarious history of the pathetic imposition and abuse, of a no longer important biological advantage, of male physical strength used in an imbalanced competitive manner?
Quoting Judaka
Patriarchal 'pressure,' and notions of manly men masculine identity, is a strong factor towards why any man who identifies as a woman might consider killing themselves. The 'group think' mentality of such, results in a great deal of vitriol being directed against trans folks in very nasty ways. Every bit as bad as the vitriol thrown at homosexuals in the past.
Is your use of these 1% or 10% male dominance exemplars, intended as evidence to explain why the imagery invoked by:
Quoting Moliere
is imagery we should all find ridiculous? Or are you using such exemplars, in support of such historically traditional conservative values, regarding masculinity and how it should dictate what is socially or sexually acceptable?
If it coincided with doing whatever the fuck they wanted, they would be exceedingly happy, no?
Nothing quite like mutual love :hearts:
However, it might upset any partners or those with vested interests in keeping the status quo.
Some domineering/caring parents can obstruct freedom of choice/opportunity for their offspring.
Perhaps concerned with negative influences and bad consequences. For whom?
A casual quickie on wiki revealed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Women_Have_Curves
Quoting Real Women Have Curves - wiki
You didn't answer my question.
Agree with this.
Quoting universeness
Why are you so insistent on taking me out of context? The top 1% or 10%? That was in reference to things like fucking card games, board games, computer games and other competitive environments. In what way is your response even remotely appropriate? Why do you refuse to interpret my words in the manner that I meant them, rather than whatever random bullshit makes me look bad?
Quoting universeness
What the hell are you talking about? This has absolutely nothing to do with anything I've said. Typical postmodernist, aren't you? Should I apologise? Should this long chain of logic that somehow connects me to the suicide of trans people have made me realise the error of my ways? A cheap ploy.
Quoting universeness
I know I said what the evidence was intended to explain, but I can see you don't care about that. You're a bigot, you use moral indignation as a weapon to bully others, and you use your uncharitable interpretation as a justification to judge others without evidence. I'm the furthest thing from a supporter of "historical traditional conservative values". Your moral indignation is so disingenuine, you couldn't care less who it's aimed at, just enjoy the feeling of power, do you? Well, no point trading insults, a worthwhile discussion with you is impossible.
Good point! :up:
Something, inspired by what you said, that I want to toss into the thread (and then run away)... :wink:
At least some women reward men for being aggressive with flirtation and/or sex. Should women therefore be considered responsible for 'the patriarchy'?
How would that follow?
Behavioral reinforcement.
Edit to add: ...and 'evolutionary success'.
How does anyone reinforce behaviour of a concept or thing?
Especially when it isn't one thing but a complexity of things.
How could it be dismantled?
Quoting wonderer1
Why stop there? We could rule the world :strong:
Yes, sex is a powerful reward. Being deeply in love with the other is an awesome bonus on top, but not necessary to sex being rewarding for men. (And I've been so deeply in love that I couldn't imagine wanting to have sex with anyone else, but I had to get over it.)
I don't know what you mean by "behaviour of a concept or thing". Would a tendency for aggressive behavior be a thing?
It's unfortunate you find my probes so personally painful. Your posts on this thread are open to a range of interpretations. I like to try to find out which one(s) is/are the most accurate.
Quoting Judaka
No, you did that quite poorly imo. It's the fact that I do care, that compels me to probe further.
I am not too concerned that you become uncomfortable and start to spit.
Quoting Judaka
Glad to read that this is your position. I hope your future posts are better at backing this position up.
Quoting Judaka
No, my aim is very good. Try to experience scrutiny as an opportunity to clarify your position more succinctly. But if you need to spit then spit, I am quite capable of spitting back, If I feel the need or I feel justified in doing so. I have no interest in 'feelings of power,' that merely manifested in your head, but I accept it as a probe and reject it as false.
Sex can be viewed as transactional. Giving/receiving.
Sometimes manipulated by all parties for personal gain/cost.
How does this translate into 'women being responsible for 'the patriarchy', whatever that is?
How do you define it?
Quoting wonderer1
You mentioned behavioural reinforcement of 'the patriarchy' - which I think is a concept.
That is 'an idea or mental picture of a group or class of objects formed by combining all their aspects'.
I'm interested to hear how a concept might 'behave' so that it can be changed by human action.
First off, did you see my edit?
Secondly... Thank you for being so patient, with me trying to get away without laying my worldview out in much detail. (So to speak.)
I can see I would need to start a new thread to fill in the details, and while I might be up for that, it would be a sciency explanation of how I see humans as existing within a system, and most affectingly, within a system of their fellow humans and the universe at large.
It would help motivate me to take on such a project, if I had confidence it wasn't going to feel like a waste of my time. So how interested are you?
In case it makes a difference, this youtube video conveys some of my views and ethics. However, I recommend waiting until you've got ten minutes to relax and I recommend closing your eyes and letting your mind draw it's own picture while listening.
Lmao, I can see how uninterested you are in power, your response is one big flex, you vastly exceeded my expectations. You're proud of purposefully misrepresenting the people you speak with to "probe" them, I'm sure your methods of identifying racists and sexists are just as absurd. Misrepresenting and misinterpreting people aren't investigative techniques dumbass, you can't just assume anyone saying something you don't like is guilty of some heinous view, isn't that obvious? Oh well, you keep up the crusade SJW, clean the internet of all these horrible sexists/racists, and best of luck.
Clearly I was talking about predicates and not names when talking about self-labelling. A name makes no claim about the qualities you possess.
But then when forced to pick a name on a philosophy site, it seems at least useful to adopt one that does reflect an area of interest and provide some context.
Apokrisis is the term for dichotomisation or symmetry breaking in the metaphysics of Anaximander, who I regard as the first recorded systems thinker.
And now you know. :grin:
Cool. One example I can think of on this site was making the short story competition less a competition and more an activity. My go to when organizing it first was to think of it as a competition but it worked better when this aspect was purposeIy downplayed. Part of this is just conceptualising success less in terms of results and more in terms of process. This is important because when processes disappear in favor of results, so does the present in favor of the future, and the self in favour of the image. Similarly in debate, when the process is denigrated in an effort to win, we lose a sense of what we're doing and why. But trying to ''win'' all the time is a very hard habit to shake.
There's also the problem of Goodhart's law.
Quoting Raymond Chandler
I don't think I have misinterpreted or misrepresented you in any way. But you can keep throwing your toys out of your pram if you want.
Yeah, useful things these labels!
Yes. I don't generally think of writing as competitive. Maybe that's because I have confidence in my ideas and my ability to express them and I'm not afraid of being wrong or changing my mind.
Yes... well... Perhaps I was wrong.
In my experience the writer's world is often very competitive - who gets to be interviewed and on what media, sales figures, invitations to speak, prizes. Several of my friends are successful writers and journalists. They describe a hive of competition, bitter rivalries, irrational hatreds and enmities. If it's your profession, the solitary act of writing is often subsumed by the social world of writers.
Reminds me of the poem The Book of My Enemy has Been Remaindered.
By Clive James
Don't think I've ever seen the whole poem and it's magnificent! As a bookseller, I will cherish this.
There's always Gore Vidal:
You're not eliminating competition, you're just reducing the risk of loss so that the limited reward of winning is worth entry into the contest.
The risk of loss is the stress associated with criticism or being told you rank beneath your peers. The reward of winning is a pat on the back. To get more entrants, you either need to reduce the risk of loss (e.g. don't have an objective rating system or don't permit harsh criticism) or increase the rewards of winning (e.g. give the winner $1,000).
Since we have limited resources to increase rewards, we opt to limit risk. That is, you just rewrote the rules to your competition. You didn't eliminate it.
As to stress tolerance, a critical attribute of any competitor (arguably as critical as intelligence and conscientious), if that is more a male trait, you are correct that its reduction would benefit women. That thesis would rest on the idea that women seek stability more than men, perhaps owing to their nurturing instincts, but that's an idea based on stereotype, but maybe supportable empirically. I don't know. I've certainly known many stress tolerant women.
I'm thinking selection bias.
So while maybe men have certain competitive advantages in society, they don't serve to promote happiness.
I would just keep it simple. A man has masculine physical characteristics and functions physically. Their style of communication can be anything. Their interests can be anything. I would try to extract sex from common societal roles which are more subject to change.
First off, I'll keep this short and simple. Why? Limited time, energy and patience. I sense avoidance.
Secondly, to answer my questions, there is no need to start a new thread setting out your worldview.
That's a bit overkill.
However, if that is something you want to do, then already therein lies the motivation.
Whether or not it will be productive or a waste of your time - time will tell.
Unfortunately, time is not on my side for the next week.
I will be joined by a 'real man' - a professional - for some home improvements. Some men think they are good at DIY and refuse to countenance another man taking over - not to mention the cost. My argument is that a pro generally gets the job done more efficiently with a better outcome. So worth it. IMO.
A quick first response before I go.
Quoting Hanover
Other than the well-known problems/limitations in interpreting research findings.
Measurement, reporter bias, etc.
How good are people at knowing what happiness is?
If males measure success by being a winner, then what about the perception of being a 'loser'?
Is it more about objective quantity rather than subjective quality?
How big is... a male...ego?
Sure, but that's a different kind of writing than I'm talking about. For what I write, it only matters if what I write is good, or, on a bad day, good enough.
A good, subtle insult.
Thought maybe nobody would notice that one. ;)
Just, in thinking about this a little more. Would you not agree that a human name was not normally arbitrarily chosen? It was related to your job or your place of birth or who your father was (rather than your mother) Mac Donald, O' Donnal, Von Don, etc. Indigenous peoples often named their children related to qualities they possessed such as 'Raven Hair,' or 'Sitting bull' or perhaps even 'dances with wolves.' Perhaps it could be claimed that human names can even be chosen or influenced by how patriarchal a society is, certainly the 'son of' idea would suggest this. I have not heard a name such as Mac Mary, Mac Agnes or Mac Catherine in Scotland anyway? Do you know of any strong matriarchal influences on the 'son of' method of naming children?
From wiki:
In 1963, he landed his first paying gig at Page 3, a gay and lesbian club in Greenwich Village, playing 6 hours a night and 6 nights a week for $96 per month.
'Tiny Tim,' or 'Herbert Butros Khaury' died in 1996.
Here is the masculine icon, 'The Duke Wayne' kneeling before him, for comic effect I'm sure, or perhaps Marion secretly liked one of the backing group in the picture.
Is this masculinity at it's best, as its comfortable in showing its femininity?
Or will people just do what ever pays well?
What do you think John Wayne said to his 'macho' pals when they ribbed him about him bowing to Tiny Tim? Do you think they would have ribbed him about it?
If you knew nothing about the life of Tiny Tim, would you be certain he was not a manly man after watching this?:
Was this all just good clean Amurican fun? or does it exemplify American cultural confusion as to their national notion of patriarchy and masculinity. Was it always, in truth, fluid?
Is the American notion of a man still fronted as John Wayne style or do most of them in truth (or even secretly) prefer the tiny Tim persona today compared to The Duke Wayne?
I merely refer to America in this because the Tiny Tim and the John Wayne caricatures are American products.
Well, I can't take credit. It was @unenlightened who got me thinking about it and @Caldwell who took charge of the least competitive and most successful round. Anyhow, a couple of points, the first is yes, competition wasn't eliminated, but, as I said "purposely downplayed". That is, the result, winning or losing, was made less important.
But this wasn't done in order to get more entrants (my initial concern was that being less competitive would result in less entrants because I was also looking at it overly superficially). In fact, the idea of adjusting the activity purely on that basis rather than focusing only on what would make for a good activity parallels the idea of entering such an activity to "win" as opposed to participate.
So, we're back to result over process again. We can conceptualise the competition itself as ends oriented (competing against other hypothetical or proposed competitions with the prize being the number of entrants) or we can conceptualize it as process oriented (something that is good in itself where the focus is on the experience) and so with the writing of the stories or anything worth writing or doing (including this debate we're having now). There's usually a balance to be had that doesn't involve the elimination of either aspect. The default approach tends to be skewed towards the competitive though.
Quoting Hanover
You must have taken me up wrong as this is a distortion of where I'm coming from. It's not a competition between men and women to get society to cater to their respective needs that I'm espousing. That would be unfortunately ironic. What I'm saying is first of all let's recognize that the prevailing and dominant ideology is masculine. We're infused with it and it's evident in the default way we conceptualise our interrelationships>>aggressive, competitive, ends oriented etc. Then let's ask why and what we can do about it to make things better for everyone, male and female (Just as I believe the short story competition was better for everyone when reconsidered as an "activity").
To reiterate, though the primary beneficiaries of a patriarchal society are men, they are not men in general. As@180 Proof pointed out, patriarchy (as I conceive it, simply a society dominated by masculine values) funnels wealth and power to a small cadre of a particular type who happen to be men, but theoretically could be of either sex. And the solution is not to eliminate competition or demonize men or masculine values but to recognize that the way we understand our interrelationships is infused with an arbitrary self-justifying way of looking at things that, I would argue, is deficient and in some senses destructive. (The short story "competition" vs "activity" issue is this in microcosm).
Quoting Hanover
Yes. Everyone loses.
(I haven't read the Yin/Yang thread by the way, but I suspect there's plenty of overlap with what we're talking about here.)
FWIW, I think your attempts (with the contributions of Unenlightened and Caldwell,) to dilute the 'competitive' aspects of a writing competition, is very laudable.
As a school teacher of 30+ years experience and as a person who marked, final exams and was an examiner (checked and could alter the marking of other markers) and a setter (wrote sections of final computing exams, at Scottish higher grade and advanced higher grades). I came to despair of the Scottish exam system and all 'final exam' systems. I wont go into my reasons here, which are many and detailed (probably another thread). But the competition aspect of final exam systems is very very negative, towards the mental health of the majority of able and less able pupils imo.
Imo, a final exam should only contribute a max of around 25% of a continuous course assessment of the skill level a pupil demonstrates, within a particular subject.
I had a career in education that I doubt I'll go back to. Couldn't really stand behind what I was doing or the context in which I was doing it. Similarly to the above, but it wasn't just the exams, the whole thing was drenched in an ugly instrumentalism that made it boring, transactional and stressful for both teachers and students.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I think most teachers connect best with the minds of their students when they teach the subject content, almost as a side show to the 'personality' or 'showmanship,' they can manifest and present to the pupils. I found that my constant attempts to entertain pupils as well as deliver course content was absolutely key, to what I would consider a successful lesson.
This often meant that getting through the course content involved was a challenge. I mostly managed, but the energy and time input required became unsustainable, so early retirement was the best move I ever made. I was totally burnt out by then.
Yep.
My problem with Tiny Tim is that he built his career on a joke or rather on him being the joke. As far as I could tell, he didn't have any talent beyond being willing to make a fool of himself. Just like the first few episodes every season of American Idol.
As for masculine vs. feminine, another problem I have with TT is the one I have with drag performers - men wanting to steal something from women without ever having to pay their dues. I've always found it disrespectful.
Interesting....
So in your opinion, was Tiny Tim a willing participant in an overall wish by a patriarchal American culture to parody/ridicule homosexuality?
Why do you think John Wayne acted the way he did on stage, as the host of the show guffawed at the scene?
Do you think there are any parallels between this and going to see/laugh/be entertained, at the freak show where you could be smug and self-righteous, that at least you were not as low as a gay person or a black person or a woman or a 'freak,' you were a powerful white male that could laugh at all the 'freaks'/people with disabilities? The UK had it's own equivalents, with the horrific treatment dished out to people like John Merrick (The elephant man).
Are these complaints justified and accurate, as examples of what can happen when male masculinity is unchecked, and male patriarchy is allowed to become a main societal driver?
Should such behaviour or parodies of those who are not white, heterosexual, Christian males ever be acceptable in any humane society?
Does male masculinity and how it has historically manifested in patriarchy, have any place in the future world, you would like for your children?
Do you see any parallels here with the complains I am outlining, and the current treatment of many folks in the trans community?
Should posters here, be allowed to accent only, whatever evidence they think they have, for a future positive role, for traditional/historical male role models in a patriarchy, without counter points and red flags being raised by other posters?
Do these counter points/complaints have no power or validity to them, because certain jobs in the past and even today are mainly male dominated?
Should a heterosexual man, cosplaying as a trans person or a woman (drag Queen), to entertain an audience be ok, as it means they can make a living and provide for their children (if they have any), or do you;
Quoting T Clark
think men should never parody women? or vice versa? Does it change your mind in any way, if the person in the drag Queen outfit is trans? and does identify as a woman and has had hormone treatments, professional psychological conformation/support and top and bottom surgery?
Do you have a personal 'cut off point' where you insist that any who fall below your line cannot be allowed to cosplay as a drag Queen, but it's ok for anyone above your line?
Is there anyone who should be allowed to perform a drag queen act, that was born as a male, that would get a thumbs up from you?
I am only asking you for such clarifications, to gain a clearer picture, of how your notion of your personal masculinity may affect others, perhaps even one of your own sons, if you found out they made a good amount of money, doing that extra job you never knew about, when they entertain others at the weekend as Princess Patrice. Such a person has to be someone's son, right? Would the fact that they loved the work and enjoyed the job very much, sway you in any way?
Would any members of your immediate family and friends enjoy attending such a show?
If they did, would this impact your relationship with them?
Sorry to throw all this at you in particular TClark, but you were the only one to respond to my post regarding the Tiny Tim caricature in comparison to the John Wayne caricature and how they are viewed by current American males of all ages?
My questions/probes here, are not intended as any kind of personal attack on you.
I am just interested in the issues involved.
Asking this is sort of like asking me why I'm not interested in being or becoming something I'm not. I grew up into something but I don't think it fits with "real men", whatever that is. If I happen to fit the social traits of "real man" then that's not reason to keep my expressions the same, and if I happen to not fit the social traits of "real man" then that's no reason to change myself or feel shame about myself or who I am.
Interestingly, given the prior expressions of apathy towards turning masculinity into words this fits with notions of masculinity and real manliness put forward.
But this kind of goes to what I'm trying to do with the distinction between boyhood/manhood and feminine/masculine -- our adult selves are differentiated from our childhood selves more than they are differentiated from the other gender. We look for differences between men and women because that's part of the gender game is to find differences to confirm that we're different but complementary to one another. But in coming to understand masculinity I'm suggesting that the coming-to-age story is more relevant than the game of gender differences.
If that's so then it's actually a non sequiter to bring up that women can be tough, for instance. Of course they can! That's because masculinity and feminity don't have to be defined by one another -- they can co-exist with the same traits and acknowledge that the difference is more of how we express than who we are. It's partly a social dance, but then the social dance becomes a part of who we are too so things get confusing.
So, yes, I'm good with being an adult. But whatever my notion of adulthood is this idea of real manhood doesn't really do it for me.
Quoting 180 Proof
Somewhere in-between, I think -- "in the wild" there's a difference between what we say and what we do with respect to gender roles and gender identity, which is what makes room for philosophical reflection to have a place. At the very least to demonstrate that the topic isn't clear cut, that it "needs further research" and what a real man is isn't so clear-cut if what we mean is some singular definition of masculinity. It's too dependent upon social context.
I agree with your first sentence, but I disagree with your last one. The cause is social I think, primarily, though I'm not a priori refusing genetic causal influence. Attributing social causes doesn't mean that it's not-real, or somehow lesser. Also I'll note that the language of causes differs from the language of intent, and with respect to how we self-identify or understand the identity of others then the language of intent is also important.
If we were talking genetics, though, we'd be referencing papers about such. But the truth is that we don't have enough knowledge about our biological makeup to construct something as complicated as an identity. That's kind of the mind/body problem in a nutshell.
So, given that scientific knowledge is incomplete, I propose that we "get by" through accepted social forms which can be understood by looking at their respective histories. But histories don't boil down into scientific fact very well -- they contain too much of the emotive aspect of living to do that. Which means that this genetics is, in fact, a pop-biology that's not looking at the wide range of expressions which are possible.
For instance -- I think that focusing on what a man's occupation does, that's the part that our culture generally takes for granted as being an important part of one's masculinity. But why should our occupations even be attached to our gender? I think that's because of our cultural notions of real manhood being tied to being breadwinners from the traditional roles of man/woman within a nuclear family household.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think this gets at why men are easy to coax into risky roles -- and also gets along with my notion that men are deeply passionate, rather than emotionless. I think men are deeply passionate about all kinds of things which others don't particularly care for, which is why men don't bother to share what they are passionate about -- the silence is preferable because others won't understand why I take this risk or push that boundary anyways. Something about men makes it easier to have them be attached to this aspect of life. In fact I'd say it's the deeply felt emotions of men that are their most attractive aspect.
Of course my thought is that the cause for men's masculinity is more social, but that's a causal description rather than a description of manliness and why men are masculine in their various capacities. Your answer is exactly what I'm looking for -- at the very least to let things sit beside one another.
Also why I didn't want to seem like I was emasculating. I think that masculinity is a sensitive topic, and it's good to let the views live together even if they contradict.
Well, naturally, that's where this all leads for me. :D
I agree that these questions come up, and that asking "as opposed to...?" is a good avenue -- and I'm offering childhood as opposed to feminity as the contrast-class. So that. . .
...is a perfectly acceptable form of femininity. Appearing ladylike isn't the feminine, but being an adult is. And isn't it the truth that women find ways to express their aggression when they aren't allowed?
So I suggest that it's a mode of expression rather than a trait which makes the difference (and, further, it's both pscyho-social, so the topic is naturally vague, making these conversations difficul for more than just because people are attached to them, but also because they aren't clear)
I think that's the sort of thing I want to highlight as being a very partial part of masculinity -- the part of the masculine identity that's close to the imagination of one's self and what one expects from oneself. The man, in his imagination, wants to be the provider of values to the world (what a lucky world it is!) such that even he isn't dependent but rather allows others to depend upon him. The man in his imagination can subdue even the world itself to his will. But the man in his reality shares a lot with women, even if the story gets told a certain way to make him happy.
Quoting apokrisis
Exactly! :D That's the spirit of this thread, or at least what I aimed for in my opening.
Yup.
Quoting BC
I think bringing class into the mix only heightens the notion of patriarchy, rather than downplaying it. The reason it's convenient to say that women do woman occupations and men do men occupations due to their nature is that it provides justification for the pay-gap -- they all purportedly had a choice in what they were to become (as if families don't pressure children to fit roles, or schools, or workplaces) and freely chose the professions where men are paid more and women are paid less, on whole.
The professions that need unions are often female dominated, by the numbers. Working class politics works hand in hand with feminism rather than being in opposition.
One thing that was always clear is that Tiny Tim was completely sincere. I'm not sure whether he was not aware of the fact he was used as a parody or didn't care.
Quoting universeness
Wayne was playing around with his own image as the epitome of the masculine.
Quoting universeness
I've always thought that prejudice results from people seeing in the person being looked down on traits that we are afraid to see in ourselves - weakness, shame, helplessness.
Quoting universeness
As I have expressed previously, I don't think the idea of patriarchy is useful for understanding our society and how it treats men and women.
Quoting universeness
Posters should post whatever they want within the forum guidelines and other posters should respond in whatever way they want consistent with the guidelines.
Quoting universeness
My sons are grown men. I'm comfortable they are capable of making decisions about their own lives without my help. None of my children have ever done anything that I am ashamed of. I don't think they could. That's not the way I think about my children. I don't judge them.
Quoting universeness
I have never seen a drag situation that didn't seem condescending to me.
It's not pop biology any more than it's pop sociology to favor nature or nurture as primary. I realize the impossibility of proving the cause of behavior down to the last detail, but there have been separated twin studies to show the impact genes play. https://www.livescience.com/47288-twin-study-importance-of-genetics.html
A male's Y chromosome results in increased levels of testosterone, which dramatically impacts behavior. https://www.healthline.com/health/low-testosterone/effects-on-body#Central-Nervous-System
This is just to say the obvious, which is that your physical constitution plays a major role in who you are. Being dismissive of the role of genetics on behavior is required under certain political narratives, especially those that want to attribute all successes and failures to a rigged system.
I think the opposite is just as absurd (and clearly more evil), which is to state most successes are attributable to genetics, thus leading to this idea that some groups are superior to others.
My view is simply that genes and environment matter, but still leaving independent decision making to the person. But if you look and see that close to 100% of certain trades are men, it's doubtful that's 100% environment or 100% choice.
Thanks for your answers. It's interesting to get the viewpoint of (I assume) a white, male, American father of son's, on the questions I asked.
However, I find myself confused. The source of this seems to be the ambiguity or vagueness surrounding the term 'real man'. See [*]
Starting with your:
You say you
From what I understand you identify as a male. Transitioned from boyhood to manhood.
You focus on social traits (rather than physical, mental or psychological factors) related to being a woman or a man. Why?
What do you mean by 'social traits'?
Do you mean the forming of personality or character/istics including the emotions, whether or not they are masculine/feminine? How society places expectations on how people should be if they want to fit in?
The derogatory "Don't be a big girl's blouse!" when a male infant starts crying after a fall from a wall.
Even though the child doesn't know the meaning, they have been trained not to cry when hurt.
You think that the difference between the feminine/masculine (or men and women) is less relevant than the transition from boyhood>manhood (or girlhood>womanhood) when it comes to understanding 'Masculinity'.
Have I understood you correctly? I don't think it is that simple.
Complexities arise when you consider that males (young and adult) can have a heady mix of masculinities and femininities along a spectrum of human characteristics/traits.
This becomes even more complicated in the case of Gender Dysphoria.
For example, transitioning from male to female during puberty. Growing from boyhood to womanhood.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/
and treatment (psychological and medical):
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/treatment/
Then, surgery.
This is more than 'the game of gender differences' you suggest we play.
It is certainly relevant when exploring or understanding issues of 'masculinity'.
What do you mean by 'except when it gets ugly'?
Edit to add: Fascinating as this topic is, it has taken up so much time/energy I'm exhausted!
I doubt I will participate further, thanks to you and all for this discussion !
(How can I not quote that?)
Imagine a bygone era when social roles for the sexes were more sharply distinguished. There are some paradoxes. Most households are entirely dependent on the man's income (again, unlike most households today, I believe); if anything happened to him, the wife and the kids are at least materially screwed. And yet --- if the cat gets up on the roof, who is expected to go up there and get it? I think it's not just a question of capability, but there's an expectation that the man take on this risk. And that's interesting. He is in some sense carrying his whole family up the ladder and onto the roof to get that damn cat. But that's everyone's expectation.
Yes. Though my preference is to say "adulthood", in truth. I'm a man, but I can tell that my own mode of expression differs from a lot of people who are men. Might have something to do with my theory, eh? ;)
Else, I'm not a man. But that's somehow more confusing to me. That fits even less! So -- androgenous man is the gender identity I've come to prefer, but I'm not settled on the wording. I'm surprised to find others don't feel like me -- but isn't that all part of the path of self-discovery?
Because if you compare cultures then men and women behave differently in those cultures than they do in other cultures -- suggesting that the social make-up is what accounts for variation among societies. If we expected the genetic factors, at least, you'd predict a lot more uniformity of roles across cultures than we observe. At least so my thinking goes. So I infer that the social has more influence than the biological from that, as well as because there are many people who break the expected traits to think that genetics is highly determinative of behavior.
Quoting Amity
The role which a person is to fulfill.
Nope.
The emotions are deeper than these identities, I think. Or perhaps a better phrasing is that at childhood we have undifferentiated emotions which we can relate to one another, but through development we attain differentiation as well.
The Kate Millet tripartite division is Biology:Mentality:Role, and she turns this on its head in saying that role is primary, and the mentality is grafted onto biological traits in order to make an excuse for said role. So within patriarchy the reason women (biology) fit into the role of caregiver is because the mentality that arises from the biology is one that nurtures, and the reason men are the breadwinners is because their biological makeup influences their psyche to prefer the roles of risk-taking that men are associated with.
Quoting Amity
I hope not to oversimplify. If anything the issue of gender identity is not simple.
However I think that these complexities arise at exactly the time my notion would predict -- if it's the transition from childhood to adulthood which is the defining time, then puberty is the time when differences between gender identities (for whatever causal reason) would become more prominent.
While I'm astride the gender dichotomy, I am cisgendered, so I don't want to speculate too much on the psychology here. It's complicated, but I think the heady mixture is only in the minds of those who don't understand -- if anyone is certain of their gender identity, it's the trans person willing to undergo social scrutiny just to be who they are.
Quoting Amity
I'm thinking of toxic masculinities here which are built around resentment of female power over a man -- real or imagined. Hence, ugly.
And a daughter.
A pop-biology isn't an insult as much as it's an acknowledgement of how we get by in these conversations. While I do biochemistry, it has nothing to do with the biochemistry of gender identity -- but my biochemistry background is what makes me suspicious of claiming that we're biologically this or that way. Especially if we're just referencing the genome, which is incredibly small in comparison to the proteome which arises from the genome (which is where I'd at least *predict* hormone differences to be predictable... but I don't know). The cutting-edge stuff in medicine is all about being able to [s]simultaneously[/s] tailor medicines to an individuals genome because it's acknowledged that what's actually happening in the proteome is dependent upon the actual sequence you're working with rather than a generalized description of the chromosomes.
Philosophy, even in a world run by scientific fact alone, is still relevant because we, as people, will never be able to make decisions with respect to scientific fact. It just takes too long to figure out. So it's worth noting that this is a pop-biology, at least to say that we're not really doing science here.
One of my sister's children, a biological male, identifies as non-binary. I must admit I have a hard time understanding that. Do you think that's the same thing you're talking about?
But I'm still *just* attached enough to my male-side that I prefer to say androgenous man. I, too, am attached to things no one cares about and will do it anyway without explanation because you wouldn't understand anyways and fuck it I'm a man. ;)
But I'm also ooey gooey, at times, and really don't mind sharing that side of me, and anymore prefer the predictable to the chaotic. I call it practical
So it just seems to kind of fit.
So you want to shift the argument from the general syntactical point the conventions of mathematical logic - to one of social pragmatics?
Sure, as I am arguing from the viewpoint of Peircean semiotics, I would be the first to agree that the hard distinctions of syntax always have a soft underbelly of semantics.
The syntax claims its limit distinctions. The arbitrary is not the necessary, and the necessary is not the arbitary, by dichotomistic definition. But then this claim is itself semantic. Godelian incompleteness rears its head.
The semiotician says of course. Arbitrary~necessary are the ultimate limits on being ... at least for all practical purpose in terms of a pragmatic system of measurement.
So the human use of naming as a semantic act is going to reflect the pragmatics of human discourse rather than the absolutism of mathematical logic.
But the question for you is do you want to argue that the names that humans give other humans, or even the names that humans give themselves, must come with the force of strong necessity?
To say that the arbitraryness relation can be instead merely somewhat weakened for the obvious reason that humans have semantic grounds for wanting to signify hereditary connections, job occupations, religious conventions, boastful claims about their children's supposed qualities or social status, or whatever else is quite something else, and is already covered by my semiotic approach.
Not necessarily 'shift the argument,' more to highlight social realities, so as people don't get totally restricted to thinking in mathematical logic modes.
Quoting apokrisis
I would not choose to use the word 'semantic' in the context you use it, in the above sentence, as semantic rules are representations of mathematical logic. I taught how to learn programming languages by mostly ignoring syntax and concentrate on understanding the general semantic rules of all procedural programming languages as opposed to object oriented programming languages or RAD based programming languages, for many years.
Naming a human is not a semantic act, it's an emotive act, and as you say, it's not a product of mathematical logic. It's a reference to the job, birthplace, patriarchal birth line (ie, 'son of') etc of the person or it's a statement of an aspect of the observed nature of the person, such as butch (butcher/tough guy) or Sophie (wisdom), Stephen (Crown/wreath), Mary (rebellious woman), these names are all in the same tribal tradition as 'Raven hair' or 'dances at dawn' etc.
Human naming can indeed be directly associated with societal drivers such as patriarchy so, my reasons for harping on about human naming to you is merely in response to my interpretations of some of your sentences such as:
Quoting apokrisis
Quoting apokrisis
Quoting apokrisis
Quoting apokrisis
Quoting apokrisis
No, my point is that human names reflect societal influences. Many children are named after that which influenced their parents. Some kids got called 'Neo' because of the Matrix films.
Johnny Cash wrote a song about a boy named 'Sue,' with the line:
'I gave you that name and I said goodbye and I knew you'd have to get tough or die.'
How's that for masculine, patriarchal reasoning or perhaps even Johnny's notion of 'strong necessity'?
Quoting apokrisis
Well, no, I don't think it is 'quite something else,' I think naming children can be very strongly influenced by the notions of masculinity/femininity held by the father and mother.
Signs and symbols have meanings yes. I am just trying to be very clear on what those meanings are, and to clearly establish the motivations of their source.
I have to ask, but you can of course decide not to answer, as you may feel that it's 'none of my business!' Do you have any feelings of 'disappointment,' towards this sexually non-binary person, that you are a blood relative of? Do you think that they are aware of your current status of having a hard time understanding their current sexual status?
Do you feel that it's important that you don't demonstrate any bias against this relation, in comparison with any other niece or nephew you have, purely on the basis of their non-binary sexual status?
Do you feel a 'current social pressure' to not demonstrate any such bias or do you feel you must reject any such current societal pressure and maintain/conserve the factors that contribute to your status of 'hard time understanding that.' Or, are my interpretations way off the mark here?
What confuses me is not that some people are not attached to their gender identities, but that it is important enough to them that they must reject those identities publicly at significant social cost to themselves and others.
My sister and I are not related by blood. Her mother married my father when I was about 30. The decision had very negative impacts on the family - my sister and her husband were devastated. It took them years to come to terms with what seemed like a complete rejection of their family. This was not a moral or religious reaction on their part, it was emotional, personal. I've tried to be supportive to both my sister and brother-in-law and their child. It's true though that it angers me that my sister has had to go through all that for a reason I can't understand. I've never talked to anyone about that and I don't think I show it. I don't see the child often enough that it would ever be an issue.
Quoting universeness
I would never intentionally show a negative attitude toward them and I don't think I do unintentionally. I still care about them. !@#$% a lot of my resentment is linguistic.
Quoting universeness
"...maintain/conserve the factors that contribute to your status of 'hard time understanding that." What the fuck does that mean?
Shel Silverstein wrote it; also "25 Minutes to Go"
I never knew that. Makes sense though.
So your sister in your step sister and not a blood relation and you are saying that your step sis and her husband are 'devastated' by the 'non-binary' status of their child, is that correct?
That's a tough situation. Outside support would seem to me to be the way to go but, I have had no personal or familial experience of such circumstances so my comment is only based on what advice I have heard stated by trans people on the Trans Atlantic Call In Show.
Quoting T Clark
Yeah, I pondered over the words to use for that question for a while, My choice of words were obviously not well received. Quoting universeness
I will try again, but first, a little backstory. From an early age, I experienced a male culture that was very anti non-heterosexuals.
Any suspected non-heterosexual who came anywhere near the territory or orbit of the youths I hung with and was very much a willing part of, were in serious danger of being physically attacked or verbally abused or both.
When I was around 14, I was ordered by one of the older guys (about 16) to attack his younger gay brother (who was 15 but bigger than me), I did attack him, he did not fight back, and I beat him up pretty badly. I have been involved in other nasty acts against non-heterosexual people in the past.
When I look back in shame at these acts and my thought process during my youth. I do wonder to what extent I was a product of my environment, in that a non-heterosexual was something I could not understand or at least, I had never tried to, they were alien to me and I was told their behaviour was vile. It was expected by most of my peer group, that I should hate them and hurt them, as much as I should hate and hurt a non-white or a catholic or an English guy or those who were in a rival street gang etc, etc. I would now say, I was involved in, and was influenced by, a violent manifestation of masculinity and patriarchy. I was also just a stupid, f***wit child.
I am not trying to tar you with the same brush as me, but I am intrigued by your comment 'I have a hard time understanding that.' I suppose, rather than dance around as I did, and tried and failed to find the right way to ask, I should have simply asked, Why do you have a hard time understanding that?
I appreciate the correction.
What is masculine about senseless violence?
I find it quite worrying that people attribute such things to masculinity without batting an eye. In my view, this is nothing other than misandry - man-hating.
Ironically, the view you profess fuels the problem. Apparently senseless violence is considered manly, and therefore naive, young men trying to be manly will be drawn towards it.
It does not seem senseless at the time. You are protecting your tribe and all it stands for.
Quoting Tzeentch
You better believe they will! Unless they are educated and taught how to avoid the darker sides of unfettered masculinity and patriarchy. Mankind was initially taught 'jungle style,' we can outdo the savagery of any current animal species. Do you still think it's wise to defend the excesses of unfettered masculinity with such an ineffectual defence of it, as Misandry?
Bullshit.
You're succumbing to peer pressure in a vain attempt at forming an ego. But I'm guessing you view that as something 'manly' too.
Had you felt you were protecting anything, you wouldn't be here confessing your shame.
Who are you trying to make this point to? Me now? Or me as a youth?
I was not a very socially aware teenager. I must have been aware of homosexuality, but I don't remember thinking about it much or being bothered by it. I don't remember there ever being incidents against gay people in my school. I don't know whether that was because there weren't any or because I just didn't notice them.
Quoting universeness
As I said in my previous post to @Moliere:
Quoting T Clark
Imagine for a moment, you had a powerful personal experience, that absolutely convinced you, that Allah exists and was the one true god. Would you need to tell your loved ones? Would you be compelled to declare your new faith publicly, regardless of the significant social cost to yourself and perhaps your family?
Is there any identity that you can imagineer, that could be important enough to you that you must reject your current identity, publicly at significant social cost to you and others?
Surely those deconstructing from theism choose to face that situation all the time.
Do you understand those who decide to upset their entire lives and their familial support system by rejecting their religion and choosing to become an atheist?
Is transitioning to a new sexual identity soooooooo different from that?
Can you offer anymore detail in exactly what it is that you don't understand about such decisions? Especially when I have actually heard some trans people say online, words as serious as 'I either transitioned or I killed myself.'
Can one cease to be themselves in public?
Can we just put our identities away for propriety?
Well, we can if we're being punished at least. But I don't think for long. Living up to a public image to be pleasing to others for no benefit other than the comfort of others who don't recognize your identity isn't exactly high on the priority list for most people. Seems like a whole lot of work just to feel alienated, in the long run. What it teaches is that the acceptance of others is conditional -- in which case the relationship is transactional and so it makes sense to ask, at some point "What am I getting out of this?"
Either way, whether I choose to conform for others or not, the opinions of others aren't about me but rather about how I function in their world("Be a man!" as "Do as I say!"). Which, to me, just sounds like work. And no one's paying me to make them comfortable with my identity, yet, though if the offer were right then I might accept it ;)
I don't know what I would do, but it's beside the point. Converting to Islam means you identify as a Muslim. That's really different from identifying as not being something. It takes a special effort to do that. The world is full of things I'm not. Picking one out to emphasize and advertise is a very strong statement of rejection. I have the same reaction to atheism.
Quoting universeness
No, and if there were, it would mean I'm a different person than I am.
I don't expect anyone to do what you've described. As I responded to @universeness, I can understand identifying as just about anything, it's identifying as not something that I don't get. It would have be more than you just don't feel like a man, it would mean you reject the implication of maleness. What's the point of that? What does it accomplish? These days, you can live your life just about any way you want without ever encountering questions of your manhood.
Quoting Moliere
What you say makes sense and I think it supports my position. Why go to the trouble to declare yourself not a man - it just sounds like work.
All four genders are a legitimate identity. (also, it's just one way to theorize gender to point out that the binary isn't complicated enough to really describe the phenomena of gender). It's not work to be oneself -- but if one is, say, +/+, and only respected when expressing as a +/-, then the work is in figuring out what the others respond like and only showing them what they like to see.
The person who declares they're not something has probably been treated like they are something -- so it's a correction under the assumption that others will care. When you find out that others don't care then, given the transactional nature of this relationship, why on earth would anyone declare otherwise? What benefit is there in telling you what you want to hear, or to lie about themself? That's work.
As I noted in a previous post, I don't identify myself as a man in opposition to anything. That would make me +/... I think people think that's impossible, as if the dialectic represents reality rather than human-manufactured mental process.
Quoting Moliere
No. Telling me what you're not is work. Telling me nothing is the low-effort path. I won't bring it up if you won't.
"Negation" as in "does not express" rather than "is in opposition to" -- so if you do not express femininity, then "-" would be applicable in accord with the theory.
But it is just a theory. I think it's too simple for gender.
Quoting T Clark
This would make sense if gender were simply a set of sentences or beliefs, but it's kind of wrapped up in one's whole identity, their way of presenting themselves to others and interacting. So "telling" doesn't have to be with words -- it can be done with mannerisms, dress, tone, and even unconscious actions. And that's only looking at behavior.
Telling you what I'm not, in most conversations, is an explanation that you're not treating me as I am. It's work to tell you, but it's even more work to pretend I'm something I'm not.
"In saying your identity fits with +/+ you're saying you don't know what it is to be a real man. So the entire conversation, from the opening to now, is negated by saying you're not quite a man, but this something else."
A penis is not enough, a masculine body is not enough -- what we need is for you to cut your hair, to stop talking about certain things, to stop expressing desires that are unmanly, and generally just be normal in public so that we don't have to deal with all that. You're a man! Be it! And if you're not just say you are then do the man things! Men don't care what they feel inside, they just do what is needed. So do it, son!
My thought is -- fuck you pay me.
It's easier to say that when you have a job and a place, though. And for the most part I prefer to get along, so it's just hard to say anyways. Just seemed important.
Of course I behave in ways that might be described as typical for a women. I show affection in action and words. I try to look after the emotional well-being of people I'm around. I work toward consensus. I'm empathetic. I can be passive when it's appropriate.
Quoting Moliere
I know men who have a lot of characteristics typical of women. I know women who have a lot of characteristics typical of men. I have never had any problem treating all sorts of people with respect. People who demand to be treated as not having a gender are rigidly defining what it means to be a man or a women at least as much as people who reject the idea of gender uncertainty.
For myself I don't think gender is our behavior as much -- that's pretty close to a trait, though a step removed.
Rather it's part of our identity, and a usually important part, which modifies how we behave. It's not the acts or the traits of a person, but how they act or how they express various traits.
So persons who are -/- can behave in ways typical of the other three genders, but they'd do so in their own way.
Quoting T Clark
I agree. :)
I wouldn't bother talking if I thought you desired to treat people with disrespect.
Speaking of which, I feel like I am treading dangerously close to treating you with disrespect. Perhaps we should leave it here.
What I do understand and you obviously don't, is that all human labels are significant and powerful. You have labelled my argument here, 'irrelevant' and I have labelling your analysis of my argument, misguided and wrong. So be it, but the labels stand, and are in earnest, and that does matter, because such influences the actions of both of us, which can in turn, affect the actions of others. You seem rather ignorant to the fact that small butterfly affects can change political and social landscapes in the long term. Your first words in your reply where quite accurate, 'what can you say?'
I have become much slower towards deciding to hate, the vast majority of personas that I would have been quick to hate in the past. Hate is thee most powerful human negative reaction we are capable of, so I now reserve it for a few, but I recognise that hate does still very much exist within me.
Non-heterosexual folks are now removed from my list of identities, I even disapprove of, never mind hate.
I think we all create a list of personas/attitudes/opinions/images, that we apply a response to, within the range between love and hate. But I think it's vital to be always analysing why you include a particular group or individual where you currently place them on your love/hate range.
I think that personal scrutiny of my own 'self,' is what has changed most in it's complexity, refinement and flexibility since I was young. I can only hope that I am doing a better job regarding that responsibility than I have done in the past and I hope to keep recognising the importance of acknowledging, that I have such a responsibility and that I need to always be trying to improve my approach.
That's a great response, as it demonstrates how flawed your analysis can be. :rofl: :kiss: :lol:
From Turing to Mandelbrot, I know it quite well. Even did part of my honours degree thesis on fractals.
I wouldn't put this up in such a public place if I weren't willing to engage with people who might have questions or reflections or want to voice what they actually feel.
Yeah, and you seem to be scrambling around in the dark trying to just find where the line is, whilst images of me gyrating occupy your thoughts. I can keep this fun style of exchange up as long as you like princess, it's really easy.
If you've paid any attention to my posts, you can see that voicing my actual thoughts is no problem, although sometimes I have trouble not voicing my actual thoughts.
It has been a useful discussion for me.
Or you could look it more neutrally. Aggression is often on lists of masculine traits and violence is a heightened form of aggression. None of this suggests any essential link between biological sex and violence because masculinity is a way of characterizing traits and behaviours that can apply to either sex, though they are ideologically associated with men. Or the way I've put it, marketed to men.
There's a sense then in which men are controlled and formed in ways detrimental to their personhood by the social roles that are expected of them. Viewing things that way, there's no misandry in negative characterizations or criticisms of masculinity. On the contrary, being able to separate our egos from our masculinity frees us to view ourselves as being persons before men or anything else.
It would be a very odd imbalanced view to completely reject all masculine traits, yes.
You are ignorant if you think that political and social landscapes aren't instead ruled by structural attractors. They have memories and thus place constraints on their variety. They evolve as information systems and don't simply unwind as an accumulation of accidents.
So to the degree that semiotic systems have sensitivity to initial conditions, this is a designed-in level of accident. Evolvability itself evolves. The criticality that grounds a living and mindful system is precisely tuned.
You might have familiarity with the maths of non-linear dynamics, but citing the butterfly effect in this context is yet another irrelevancy you have tossed into this thread.
Here is what the science fiction author Stanislaw Lem had to say with reference to fiction:
I quoted this in a paper I wrote a few years back. The ergodic theory of history may prevail in social landscapes. Here is a comment I made:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You have mentioned what could be seen as a kind of iterative process going from ground up, influenced, perhaps guided or corrected , by "communications" or signals from above. Elaborate on this a bit if you would. I have looked at a paper you suggested, but it's a bit too technical. I'd like to design a simple analogue in the complex plane in which the iterative process includes alterations of the generating function at each time step, these suggested by "observations" at the end of the process. I think of a plant growing upward while at the roots things are happening that more or less guide the outcome above.
Or perhaps this is just babble like that nonsense on the Andromeda Paradox. :roll:
It you want to do a pure math model as your project, you probably dont want to get bogged down in the added intricacies of biosemiotics.
Life and mind are systems of information that can impose their own arbitrary or non-holonomic constraints on the physics of dissipation. Physics just has its boundary conditions. The modelling just needs to capture the holonomic constraints that result in order out of chaos.
In simple terms, physics applies some version of the principle of least action on the system so as to close its dynamics. That is all you need. An action functional. A way to integrate in holistic fashion that is the inverse of your reductive differential equations. A global optimisation rule to bring the systems degrees of freedom alive.
Gauge invariance now seems the most generic approach. I cited a Bayesian Brain paper where even biosemiotics is now trying to align itself with that. :smile:
The link again - https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsfs.2022.0029
I also mentioned before why the complex plane might be better for modelling for real world physics. It offers the dimensionality to capture both the translations and rotations of Newtonian mechanics - wave mechanics especially.
It is hard to turn vectors into interestingly structured landscapes with macro features arise out of micro actions. But spinors offer the kind of dichotomy - of moving in a line vs spinning on a spot - that builds realistic texture into the world being described.
You can get the chaos of a turbulent flow as your landscape fills with wandering vortices of all sizes.
The dichotomy becomes one of divergence and convergence over all scales - which is what you seem to want to model.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0287101
The one-sided focus on men in these kinds of debates gives a very different impression.
Masculinity and femininity nowadays are seen as traits present in both men and women, but when discussing the so-called 'darker side' of masculinity the discussion is always about men. Not about masculinity, and (obviously(?)) not about women.
Even still, it's unhealthy to associate these essential traits with inherently negative things. The message it sends to boys and young men is that there's something wrong with them. Sadly, I think that's a message many of them have already taken to heart.
What this reminds me of is how certain religious groups like to label the woman as inherently flawed and sinful. Forgive me for being skeptical when such a group claims to be taking an open-minded, balanced approach to things.
Quoting Baden
I'm well aware. That discussion must be had, but the tone matters, and it's the tone I saw in this thread and others that reeked.
Shaming men for being men, whether explicitly or implicitly, is certainly not the way forward.
Western society in general seems to lack positive male role models and has a conflicted view of masculinity at best, so really it needs to be taking a long look in the mirror instead of complaining about the faults of its offspring.
Quoting Baden
@Tzeentch has a point in that some unreflective people can take extreme views of what 'masculinity' (or even 'femininity') means. Some are ignorant, including me to a certain degree, and don't take kindly to the term 'feminism' because they don't appreciate that it is not women against men. Also, that men can be feminists too. I think @Moliere described some discomfort in this area earlier. [see Edit]
Thanks, @Baden It's worth repeating. To take a more detached, neutral stance is quite difficult until people understand that basic point i.e. both males and females show 'masculinities and femininities'.
My interest is in the power relationships particularly the systemic inequalities in politics and how we are, or are not, governed fairly. For everyone.
So, I appreciated @180 Proof's definition of patriarchy:
'a disproportionate control of national governments and multi-state/national corporations (re: resource investments, allocations, accumulations, subsidies, etc) by "wealthy" members of the male gender primarily for the benefit (i.e. maintaining "traditions" of hierarchical dominance) of "wealthy & professional" members of the male gender'
180 Proof
***
We tend to assume what 'masculinity' might look like in a woman but I wanted more information.
Still to find out but in my exploration this caught my attention:
Quoting Gender matters - Masculinities
There follows a brief explanation of the 5 kinds:
1. Hegemonic
2. Complicit
3. Subordinate
4. Marginalised
5. Protest
***
Edit to add:
I can relate to this and wonder why. Is it still the feeling that a woman calling herself a feminist is setting herself up to be seen as either a butch lesbian or a man-hater? Perhaps it would help to start a thread on 'Feminism' ?!
You are rather naive. Political and social landscapes can be altered by a myriad of factors. Especially in a world where global communication can be achieved from almost anywhere on the planet. An individual really can start a revolution from their bed. 'Went viral,' is a common phrase in use today.
The butterfly affect is very much in play in the social and political world today, much more, in comparison with the past. Who knows what small event (perhaps even one based on patriarchy,) a person might see, by accident, on-line, which causes them to perform an action, that results in a long term cascade/recursive effect that ultimately causes or prevents a second civil war in America.
Quoting apokrisis
Yeah, you keep repeating your interpretations of irrelevancies and you keep tossing them into this thread. Are you hoping to cause your own little butterfly affect?
Just one wee point. Could you at least call it the butterfly effect. It would be less cringe.
Your link.
The erasure of females in art, and science is very familiar, but in prehistory I should have expected it, but didn't.
Men have bullets, women have beads, because you can't shoot berries. And that's why they don't call projectile weapons "equalisers".
{The butterfly affect is of course the feeling that accompanies the fluttering of strictly feminine false eyelashes at a manly man, a small act that can result in a whole new dynasty.}
No, I think you should enjoy your cringe, you are welcome to it.
Effect is the result of the change, affect is the influence that causes the change.
Stop wearing your arrogance so prominently, it makes you look desperate and petulant.
A good question then would be: What is left out when we dismiss both feminine and masculine traits of a human?
I think far too many human characters are defined as either masculine or feminine. Things like compassion, logical reasoning, basic feelings arent masculine or feminine.
Quoting ssu
If a social constructionist view is an impetus for this change, then we risk making potentially harmful changes to mitigate problems under a false assumption. Masculine traits aren't just embers of a patriarchial system, they're sometimes just the result of biological proclivities or, useful or benign cultural norms. I don't agree with organising society & education in a way that denies differences between men and women, but assuming our "dismissal" of the feminine and masculine characterisation of traits didn't do this, then what is the purpose then? Is the concept so fundamentally sexist and immoral that it must go?
The majority of criticism against these ideas has originated from the postmodernist & social constructionist view, and it's tainted the well for me. If you have a more nuanced case where the argument is explicitly not from either of these perspectives, then I could consider it more fairly.
It's Mod Rule!! :scream:
Like the video of a herring gull swallowing a squirrel whole "went viral". Neither squirrels nor sea gulls changed their behavior, despite their addiction to social media.
Who knew squirrels were so gullible?
I agree, a worse pun ever thread, would be quite entertaining.
My 'Jeopardy' pun in the shoutbox, was much better!
Guys, guys !! C'mon :roll:
Let me hear your body talk, body talk.
Let's get [s]physical, physical[/s] practical, practical.
The question is often raised about the paucity of female philosophers. Some bemoan the lack of female voices on forums such as this. Why? So many reasons, so little time.
Do we even know or care about the missing female contributions to 'Pragmatism'?
Did their bodies and minds go AWOL? Is it related to sexism or the predominant male perspective? :scream:
'Pragmatist Feminism' in Philosophy, a few excerpts:
Quoting Pragmatist Feminism - SEP
So, are you bored yet? :nerd: When did the :yawn: :yawn: :yawn: start, huh?
I'm guessin'... at the word 'Feminism'? Or just not enough editing. I know, never mind :kiss:
What is a man?
A person, a being; Which usually (but doesn't need to always) checks with most of the traits a man has in that culture. Mostly, it is an identity that the person who is identified chooses. Mostly a mix of already put traits and what the person "chooses" to see themself as. As something one identifies as, it can be a bit wonky and with fuzzy-lines at times.
What is masculinity?
Masculinity is something that is only a human idea; Something we corelate only because we were though to corelate, as these traits can be way different from culture to culture.
Again masculinity may have other traits, depending on the culture; But also might apply to anybody;
As masculinity is usually a set of moral/personality based traits, so they can be associated with any gender.
Hope you have a good day!
BTW, 'gullible squirrels' was a pun on the daily Canadian news show, As It Happens. They always end their day's lead in with a pun on one of the day's stories.
Which one are you referring to?
A pun is:
a joke exploiting the different possible meanings of a word or the fact that there are words which sound alike but have different meanings.
There's more if you need it.
All this is relevant to the Masculinity thread because Universeness and I are engaging in typical masculine rhetorical maneuvers.
Are you really wanting to claim they are simply chaotic and random outcomes like the weather? Provide some evidence.
Biosemiosis puts it the other way round. Criticality is the resource that informational structure harnesses. It takes just a spark to explode petrol, gas or even powdered coal. We then wrap the machinery of an engine around that useful fact. And control the spark with a flick of a switch.
So you are making a claim about the physical world as it is without being wrapped in its human system of mechanistic constraints - the formal and final causes represented by our notions of social, political and economic order.
The butterfly effect is already notorious as the most pop-sci hot take in non-linear dynamics. Lets see you flesh out your claims here in some fully argued way.
Sure, there is a tempting metaphor there. Any spark of unrest could be claimed as the tipping point in that it later produced the political storm. But try that on with any real life example like the Arab Spring or Jan 6. You will soon find you are hand-waving as it is the generalised criticality rather than the specific fluctuation that is the material cause.
The key is that it is any spark that will do the trick. And biosemiosis is about how to harness such criticality and milk it for scalefree growth.
Chinas belt and road policy is a good example of this in practice.
Transport networks - as systems of trade flows - are naturally fractal because of agglomeration effects (and no-one calls them affects). They reflect millions of individual decisions about where to move to and set up shop once enough economic energy is flowing through a populated landscape.
To maximise growth, the social and political constraints are tuned to maximising this freedom of free attachment over all geographic scales. For something like airports - the classic example - you have a long tail of tiny fields but also the super-hubs that - with a lot of political re-engineering - are allowed to grow to any scale.
So human infrastructure generally reflects this understanding of growth as being the smart harnessing of the vitality that the physical world already provides. Nature is organised by its dissipative structure in ways we began to understand through non-linear dynamics - the kind of dynamics in which constraints can develop or emerge from collective action. Human policies only need to work with that dynamism in a ratcheting fashion.
China is an example of a new player trying to enter an established world system. The international trade circulation system had already been colonised by others like the British Empire and the USs Bretton Woods deal. China had to impose its own fractal transport structure on all this in the hope that it could then spark the markets which would use the logistics network it provided.
Not a huge success so far. But at least Chinas understanding of the situation shows how the real world works. No one is waiting for butterfly affects to blow storms their way. Both the Arab Spring and Jan 6 were fires stoked by political actors hoping that the scalefree criticality of social media opinion could be guided in particular directions.
So sure, the physics of dissipative structure are right at the centre of a biosemiotic understanding of society and politics. And we have robust mathematical models of criticality, scalefree networks, spontaneous symmetry breaking, and much else. We can see how dynamical systems are naturally structured in terms of downward constraints acting on upwardly constructing degrees of freedom.
And it is against this sophisticated metaphysics that I am criticising your hand-waving mentions of the butterfly affect.
That any spark could have caused the explosion was a shocking idea for a hot moment there. But the worst interpretation of this sensitivity was that this meant one particular spark must thus be given the credit. Instead, the emphasis should have been on the any. The fact that the world would be better understood through the uniformity of a state of criticality where sensitivity is the property that has been maximised.
A butterflys wing beat might have done it. So might a half beat, quarter beat and even virtually no beat at all. The frog fart nearby, the bee coughing a moment later - anything can be regarded as the material/efficient cause of a storm. But then what really explains the storm are the boundary conditions rather than the initial conditions. An atmosphere driven by a solar flux and dissipating turbulently. A system of vortical motion over all scales, from the tiniest ones of no reasonable human concern like butterfly beats to ones of no reasonable human control, like weather systems.
But a well placed fan or windmill or sail? Biosemiosis can use its smarts to insert itself into the entropic flows of nature. And that is where any useful mathematics of self-organising chaos - order for free - comes in.
Hah. A fascinating analysis. We will never know how pure the masculinity cos we can't see the serial sensations of the feminine fluttering kind. Or the apparel. Who wore the fake fur and eyelashes, and who the horned helmet? A rhetorical question.
I blame @fdrake - the mad, male mod for increasing the momentum of 'The Fight of the Butterflies'.
So there. Put that in your pipe and blow smoke in your eyes. Or poke them out. I don't care.
Pikachu gets stabbed by a Jamaican man and then asks why?
The Jamaican man replies he just wanted to poke a mon.
:lol: :clap:
My puns are sooooo much bigger that your puns!
This universe is formed from the fact that chaotic systems naturally produce order.
Chaos is also demonstrated in every human, all the time, by means of 'random thought.' An ordered thought can naturally form from that process. Watch something like:
Imo, anthroposemiotics is a description of human communication, which is ordered.
Biosemiotics is all it's forms, for me invokes an image of a chaotic system, which actually has meaningful 'signs' within it, almost like wee semaphoric messages that the ordered human mind can interpret or our biology formed from. It seems to support a deterministic universe, which I do not ascribe to, do you?
Quoting apokrisis
Watch the vid I posted above!
Quoting apokrisis
This is too restricted to a cause and effect order, but I like your 'any spark will do,' as this suggests that when the spark is the cause of the beginning of a cascade, you do not say anything regarding what caused the spark or indeed, the nature of the spark. So 'any spark' may be caused by 'any event,' just like a butterfly flapping it's wings in London, ultimately causing a hurricane in Florida.
So exactly what constitutes masculine, feminine or even human, can be influenced by an unknown number of factors from biosemiotics to the butterfly effect/affect.
Quoting apokrisis
Now you're getting the idea!
What do you think about quantum fluctuations in the vacuum of space?
Do you think they exist?
Do you think they are truly random and chaotic?
Do you think they are semiotic?
Do you think that they are the main happenstance events that produce the current order in our universe?
Isn't it interesting how an exchange about masculinity can quite quickly, result in questions about quantum fluctuations. Do you think we could get from an exchange about quantum fluctuations to asking the question. 'What does a frog fart smell like and why?' Oh Wait, I think we just did!!!
Could you explain this from a purely biosemiotics viewpoint please!
Pretty pictures but like getting a postcard from the 1980s.
No. But I hear ChatGPT does some neat tricks. Try there. I think it's gender-free.
You seem to prefer asking questions to answering them, perhaps that's just your biosemiology. (sorry for that new term,) I think I received a rather chaotic semaphore message, which set out on its journey towards me, from the vacuum of space, during a duration of planck time event, in the 1980's.
My brain just interpreted the sign and gave it meaning, resulting in the term biosemiology.
Does this help prove your claims?
Tricks??? Oh! the humanity :groan:
You missed my late edit. 'I hear it's gender-free'.
Now, I'm wondering if that is the case.
Quoting Is ChatGPT Sexist? - Forbes
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomaspremuzic/2023/02/14/is-chatgpt-sexist/
Its an interesting branch to what is a man, woman, human!
Will a future AGI ....... ASI make any use of, or see any value in, our distinctions between the masculine, the feminine, gender, biological sex etc other than it's functionalities towards reproduction.
Especially when it considers asexual reproduction and the fairly wide existence of species that can switch between being biologically male and biologically female, as need dictates.
19 Animals That Can Change Gender (Updated 2022+Images)
EDIT: Sorry, I think I made typos in every second word. Hopefully I have corrected them.
:up: Doncha just love it when the flying foughts of butterfly brains spark off other trains.
Sometimes though, focus can flee oot the windae. But on TPF, it's all good...I think :chin:
Quoting universeness
Ah, how different would the world be if we could transform rich, political white males currently abusing power to...well, the opposite...? How would they feel? Would there be an increase in empathy or compassion and would it hold when they switched back? Would any pain be forgotten...
I'm sure that's not an original thought...I had Trump in mind. Unfortunately.
Back to the question of 'masculinities and femininities'; the balance thereof...
How feminine is Trump? Putin? What are they trying to prove...with all the chest thumping/dry humpin'?
I tried youtube, but I couldn't find a clip that just said 'don'tcha,' pussycat doll style and I didn't want to put you through the horror of watching the whole song. But imagine I did find a clip with just the don'tcha part and I posted it here. You know it makes sense, DON'TCHA!
Quoting Amity
How many Scots or Caledonophiles are on TPF?
Quoting Amity
Dunno, but it sound like a cheap, bad tv show we have yet to be subjected to. In a similar vein to:
We transform the current reality of a species controlled by a nefarious, rich and powerful few, by changing our societal drivers on a global scale. Might take a while yet, but we will get there.
Quoting Amity
They are trying to prove that they should be King/Messiah/God, of the planet and over our species!
They each just don't understand why we don't agree with them and so, in their mind, we have defied our one true god(s) and need to be punished for eternity. If you asked Trump or Putin, I am quite confident that they would agree, (as long as it was off the record and on the QT.)
Competitive unfettered masculinity can result in horrors like Trump and Putin seeing themselves as fully occupying and owning personal images of themselves, such as:
Grateful for your consideration.
Hope you don't mind. In the pursuit of balance. 1min 53 secs of King Elvis. No gyrations included :cry:
Elvis Presley - Doncha' Think It's Time ( take 40) with lyrics
I am a massive Elvis fan. He remains the greatest stage performer I have ever watched, with one of the greatest voices I have ever heard. He was also a dimwit when it came to politics and science and I think his theism was based on his lack of general study. I currently own 74 Elvis CD's.
Hmm. I thought I had heard that pokemon is what Jamaicans call proctologists.
Don't ask me to translate biosemiotically, or otherwise :wink:
Why doncha post your most listened-to Elvis song in the Lounge? :fire:
Any thread on masculinity is incomplete without authoritarian jouissance.
:roll: "Up yer bum!"
This is not an insult but a congenial Australian toast. But you can't go in half-assed with it.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Up%20your%20bum%21
Of yes, masterful stroke, right there :love:
Sally concludes her philosophical argument with Harry.
"Yes!" x15 - con accelerando e crescendo...until release...and then...
I had that thought too -- which is why I didn't say anything. I recognized "yup that's actually better than all of my theory -- here is a masculinity"
It hits several points of conflict for our own sexual lives, which is why it's interesting.What if I'm not man enough to even do the basic function of supplying orgasms to my partner, when I get orgasms? It doesn't seem that fair, at least if fairness is something you care about. And given the manly interest in protecting and providing, it's an anxiety.
I enjoy that scene. Here are altogether too many words about it.
The scene is ultimately conservative, except for the lady at the end. What prompts the whole dialogue is Harry's perceived transgression of female dignity, where female dignity is equated to the role of a traditional housewife. Sally's using the norm in order to undermine Harry's self esteem, out of jealousy, due to her repressed desire for Harry's romantic love, and simultaneously set her own pleasure up as the object of Harry's desire. Harry in turn is visibly flustered but attempting to repress the simultaneous shame and desire. In that regard it embodies the whole "dance" of patriarchal feminine sexuality, rather than subverting it.
Whatever subversion there is in the scene is only Sally's... vocalisation... of the shame/desire bind patriarchal sexuality demands of both of them - she ain't supposed to be that direct about it. Which opens up an interesting space of merely aesthetic adherence to post-patriarchal norms of eroticism and romance, while in fact embodying them. Like radical feminist couples defaulting to patriarchal splits of household labour when times get tough, women letting men "put them on their front again", and men expecting it. The patriarchal generation of desire tends to prove stronger, psychogenically, than transgression against it.
The crone at the end lampshades that dynamic - she's an anonymous middle aged woman. She simultaneously expresses a desire for genuine satisfaction, but it's directed toward the mere emulation of satisfaction. She instead will receive lunch, off screen.
Harry is also playing into this. Harry is boasting about how easy it is for him to find women to play into the same desirability-through-shame flirting strategy Sally is. He could be seen to devalue any potential partner if the norm above was seen as operative. That devaluation operates on the same norms that enable Sally's castigation, and it inspires her to position herself as an object of Harry's desire.
What's particularly patriarchal about this is the combination of eroticism, mutual denigration, plausible deniability and fidelity. They're both not saying quite what they mean; since their mutual attraction is suppressed. They'll nevertheless flirt through saying things that undermine the other's gender role in a romantic relationship (marked by replaceability for women/and fakeness for men). Then that denigration allows the mutual recognition of desire - Sally's flirty cake eating and Harry's look of lustful respect.
What makes this a good example of eroticism between patriarchal gender identities is as follows; they both use their expected gender role perfectly. None of the moves make sense unless Harry and Sally both feel intimately that sexual fidelity and commitment morally bind them in any relationship; this provides the ability for those norms to shame and anger. Then we have the eroticism in the scene coming from inflicting those norms "playfully" - with anger, in responsive shame, with sexual desire - toward the other. All desire in that scene is articulated in terms of those norms and their imposition. Tellingly, what allows their desire to emerge is the shame of being seen to transgress those norms - when in fact they've simply posited that those norms apply to the other.
Basically that movie wouldn't make much sense if it was set in a polycule. Would be over in about 15 minutes.
Because I doubt that many on TPF could care less.
I can listen to Elvis sing about love or even a gospel song as I love his voice so much but songs like 'In the ghetto,' 'If I can Dream,' 'American Trilogy,' and other less serious ones like 'Polk Salad Annie.'
Just takes me through my full gambit of personal emotions.
How would you compare Meg Ryan's feminine sex play with Elvis's sex moves in his polk salad annie stage performance? Do you think Elvis is suggesting a more thrusting violent sex?
He was called 'Elvis the Pelvis' by the press during the beginning of his career and was only filmed from the waist up for a while? He hated the suggestion that he was being sexually provocative on stage.
Does this not exemplify how contradictory the male patriarchy, evident in American society during Elvis's rise to celebrity, was? To me, the importance of the Meg Ryan scene was more about place and time (in a restaurant, when everyone was eating.) That was also her expose, imo, as not everyone in the restaurant would know the conversation that led up to her performance.
Almost a sex in public because it's so taboo challenge. Some people watching such an event, may assume she had a secreted sex toy in play. Would that alter the analysis you posted?
A new word, for me a least. Actually, a new use for an old word. "To intentionally call attention to the improbable, incongruent, or clichéd nature of an element or situation featured in a work of fiction within the work itself."
Also, as you suggested, you may be over-analyzing the scene and giving the movie more significance than it deserves or needs.
Poke Salad Annie because:
Pokeweed is toxic, but if prepared correctly can be eaten, which makes you wonder why anyone would. I remember it as a kid. It grows just about anywhere.
A southern US delicacy. @Hanover eats it with fried livermush and Krispee Kreeme doughnuts.
Thanks. I still don't think I'll try it.
Apparently, only the tip of the iceberg. There are multiple critical analyses of not only that scene but the whole film. Interdisciplinary theses concerning how we have been historically influenced by romantic comedy, especially from Hollywood.
One example: ( and related papers)
(PDF) Romantic comedies of Hollywood a critical analysis | Chayan Acharya - Academia.edu
https://www.academia.edu/41766394/Romantic_comedies_of_Hollywood_a_critical_analysis#:~:text=This%20thesis%20examines%20the%20history%20of%20the%20genre%2C,politics%20in%20the%20course%20of%20the%20twentieth%20century.
[ sorry, don't know how to reduce all the blue ]
When I watched the film - all those years ago - I took it at face value - an entertaining rom-com with a predictable end. No idea as to its effect or impact on people concerned with male/female roles or gender politics.
Initially, I thought you were having a bit of a laugh. Nevertheless, your post and follow-up provide much food for thought. I'll have a go at responding...
Quoting fdrake
I hadn't thought of it in terms of 'conservatism' before. But yes, I suppose humans have always danced or interacted to the tune of love and sex. Standard relationships. Stimulus/response. Hence the continuing popularity of watching romcoms, even with updated awareness of different genders and situations. Hollywood happy endings. ( I read that Nora Ephron was overruled. She wanted the ending to reflect reality)
Not sure whether the intention was to subvert 'patriarchal feminine sexuality' - whatever that is.
Is it the expectation that a woman isn't a woman unless she is married and has kids?
Or that casual sex, multiple partners and sex outside of marriage were unacceptable acts for women.
For men only. An old patriarchal taboo about to be turned on its head.
Yes, I see you have explained this in terms of 'female dignity' in the sense that Harry seems to disrespect women through serial casual sex. I can't remember if we are given the perspective of all his 'girlfriends'. And yet, from what I remember he was married and his divorce caused him all kinds of agony. Perhaps a prime example of the masculine - wanting to 'sow his wild oats' before a settled monogamy with all-important kids.
I should watch it again...perhaps.
Quoting fdrake
I'm not sure what you are saying here. Is it that there will always be the hope and expectation of mutual climax with some performance anxiety attached? Young males/females impressed/trained by the arts as to what normative roles to play in the 'dance'.
Quoting fdrake
Does this follow, given that a radical feminist couple might consist of 2 females or 2 males, or any combination of 'masculinities and femininities...?
Confused as to the description of traditional women 'letting' men put them 'on their front' again.
Quoting fdrake
An interesting transformation from 'lady' to 'crone'. Do any of the labels apply?
Is it that the quip supplied by Crystal is only about the desire for an orgasm, or even a simulation?
Quoting fdrake
Is it surprising that a woman of a certain age ( a 'crone' ?!) still has sexual drives/needs?
Is it that a post-menopausal woman is no longer seen as attractive? Dried-up. So after her man has left through death or divorce, there are fewer available options. She would like some/more of that.
Quoting fdrake
Well, a lot of things could be over in 15 minutes but I'm not sure that a polycule would qualify.
It would be more complex. With an interplay of male/female roles, hierarchies and jealousies...I imagine...
Quoting Sex and Gender - SEP
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polk_Salad_Annie
"Polk Salad Annie" is a 1968 song written and performed by Tony Joe White.[1] Its lyrics describe the lifestyle of a poor rural Southern girl and her family. Traditionally, the term to describe the type of food highlighted in the song is polk or poke salad, a cooked greens dish made from pokeweed.[2] Its 1969 single release peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. In Canada, the song made No. 10 on the RPM Magazine Hot Singles chart. Elvis Presley's version also made the song popular.
***
Polk Salad Annie - Elvis Presley
Some you all never been down South too much
Some y'all never been South too
I'm gonna tell you a little story, so you'll understand what I'm talking about
Down there we have a plant that grows out in the woods and the fields
And it looks something like a turnip green
Everybody calls it Polk salad
Now that's Polk
Salad
Used to know a girl that lived down there and she'd go out in the evenings to pick a mess of it
Carry it home and cook it for supper, 'cause that's about all they had to eat
But they did all right
Down in Louisiana
Where the alligators grow so mean
Lived a girl that I swear to the world
Made the alligators look tame
Polk salad Annie
'Gators got your granny (shook, shook)
Everybody said it was a shame
For the mama was working on the chain-gang
A mean, vicious woman
Ah!
Everyday before suppertime
She'd go down by the truck patch
And pick her a mess of Polk salad
And carry it home in a tote sack
Polk salad Annie
'Gators got you granny (Ooo)
Everybody said it was a shame
Because the mama was working on the chain-gang
A wretched, spiteful, straight razor toting woman
Lord have mercy
Sock a little Polk salad to me
You know what
Her daddy was a lazy and no-account
Claimed he had a bad back
All her brothers were fit for
Stealing watermelons out of my truck patch
Polk salad Annie
'Gators got your granny (shook, shook)
Everybody said it was a shame
Because the mama was working on the chain-gang
Oh
He sock a little Polk salad to me
You know what need a meal mention
You sock a little (hey, hey, hey, yeah, yeah)
Sock a little Polk salad to me
You know what need a meal mention
Sock a little Polk salad you know what need a meal
Chang chang a chang chang
Chang chang a chang chang laga la la
Chang chang a chang chang laga...
Poke salad is correct. Polk is wrong.
I think what matters is the context and the way in which Elvis sings this song.
He sexualises it.
Watch his use of mike, thrusting fingers and I think he sings ' suck' rather than 'sock'.
Quoting Polk Salad Annie - wiki
Tony Joe White - Polk Salad Annie
It was a nod to Mary Daly's Gyn/Ecology, she calls middle aged and up women that make their own sets of norms "crones", especially if they criticise or re-evaluate patriarchy.
Quoting Amity
I try to make my jokes serious on here.
Quoting Amity
I'm sure you know what it is if you've flirted with blokes before and felt like you were following a script. Every time one ought to do something for one's partner because it just seems right, a norm is at work.
The dynamic at play in the scene is a "chase" phase, where a man courts a woman and/or a woman invites a man to court her. She positions herself as an object of desire in an attempt to oblige the man to take her up on the offer, and he does what he can to keep the offer for the chase ongoing. It's in that dynamic that "no", rejection, denigration to keep someone at arm's length are all standard moves of the game.
Sally positions herself as an object of desire through the orgasm fake, and simultaneously denigrates Harry's sexual dalliances as trivial. What he has is construed as bad, and she shows him what he's missing. That equates herself as an object of desire with what Harry is lacking - sexual fidelity with her. It's an invitation to chase for the "something more" of a committed relationship.
Harry clearly gets turned on, and denigrated.
Quoting Amity
That's the final level. If you imagine desire as a process that ends in a woman being a housewife with kids, and the norms which guide her there - make her desire that - that's a norm in patriarchy. Or at least proximal to one. It cuts deeper than the end point though, how people flirt, what people's sexual expectations are. This affects what people desire and why; like wanting men being tall to fit in a "protector" role ("I just like tall men!"), or women being polite and supportive ("She just makes me feel at home!").
Quoting Amity
Indeed. And he's using that trope, that he's capable of it to denigrate what Sally's got to offer (what she wants to happen). That's shame and creation of desire. She blows it out of the park by showing him that he could have mindblowing mega sex with her through how hot she fakes the orgasm. While making it also a fake. Shame, creation of desire etc.
The scene may as well be:
Harry: "What you want isn't good for me, what can you offer?"
Sally flusters.
Sally: "What I have is mindblowing, and your bad choices so far preclude it"
Harry flusters.
Quoting Amity
I get the impression that she's had a long life and really wants to have, or have had, what Sally has just shown. I interpret it like she really wants to be sexually satisfied but life in general, relationships included, haven't done it. Or I dunno maybe she just got horny hearing a beautiful woman convincingly orgasm.
Quoting Amity
To me? No. I think people like to forget middle aged people are often horny as hell. I think what you said comes into it - "beauty fades" more for women (or so it's seen). Though "MILF" and "Cougar" are always popular search terms on porn sites. Motherhood and spinsterhood are also sexually objectified, equality!
Intriguing. I had never heard of Mary Daly before. I'm wondering how you came to know her and her work. Via an interest in feminism or language. Both?
From wiki:
Quoting Mary Daly - wiki
How on earth is using a term like 'witch' liberatory? Because there is no longer the threat of male persecution? Nevertheless, it still has negative connotations. Who wants to be called a 'hag'?
Interesting, how the term 'witch-hunt' is used by those being investigated for gross dismeanours.
Think Trump and Johnson and their supporters.
What effect does this have on justice and those who would uphold the law?
Is there a deep-seated male anger or fear of women becoming too powerful?
So, the ex-PM and President might present as victims (witches) but really it is those who hunt them down who are the evil witches who will kill the MAGA dream.
This, of course, is nothing, NOTHING like the terrors historically experienced by women. Perpetrated systematically by men in power. Patriarchy in practice. Just one example:
Quoting Witch-hunt - wiki
Witch-hunting was Global. Victims tortured and executed on sometimes the flimsiest of excuses.
Even in modern times:
The importance of free, legal aid. Not always available to the poor and powerless. And yet, the likes of Johnson take from the taxpayers' purse to pay for their defense. Criminal. The privileged male.
***
Quoting fdrake
Oh yeah, I am that flirty, bewitching female. Males succumb to the sprinkling of my magical prowess. Driven to lust and beyond. And so it is, the female has the power. For all of 15 minutes.
If some script is followed, any honeymoon period is soon over. Faces change. Bodies age.
History repeats with little change. Even in the rom-com genre. Physiology. Biology seems to rule.
We are, after all, human animals.
Quoting fdrake
I'll have to take your word for it. I'm too much of a lady to go searching on porn sites. Then again, for the sake of research...
I found their book in a charity shop. The pun in the title made me pick it up. The prose kept me reading it.
Quoting Amity
She uses the term, in that book, as a myth making+historical exercise. Roughly, part of the story around witches is that they were killed for their heretical knowledge. Which was false, as there was no magic. Daly turns that around, witches were indeed holders and sustainers of heretical knowledge - their status in society let them see the contours of oppression all women face. So she sees the witch as a mythical and real figure, as a woman who undermines the oppressive structures of society through wise action. It's a new flavour of womanhood, for her!
The book is also feminist theology, some of it comes from confronting highly conservative Catholic theologians and priests at various conferences with this material. Affirming the value of witches in that context, I think, is a delicious rhetorical move.
Quoting Amity
That's part of the story, yeah. We both know it's not true, even when it feels true!
I must say that I find it ironic that discussions about the essence of masculinity - or its absence - tend to orbit around the effect masculinity has on women through patriarchy. The cynic in me sees this as an internalisation of the men=active/women=passive dichotomy within feminist discourse. Of course the essence of men is the effect they have on women, despite that being a resentful/misogynist trope! And it's ultimately reductive.
Not saying you are doing this by the way, just that these discussion tend to terminate in the discussion of patriarchy, not the space criticising it opens up for men and women. A book like Connell's "Masculinities" takes this extra step for men, do you know of any which conceive of a a new femininity after patriarchy? Or find the seeds of a new femininity like Daly does?
He certainly does sexualise it, you can hear the female screams from the audience and see the approvals/appreciations from his female backing singers for the moves and gesticulations he makes.
He also certainly does say suck and not sock.
Just like Meg in the Harry met Sally scene, they both connect food and eating with sex.
But I think Meg/Sally, faking a gratefully receiving female, in awe of male sexual prowess, as all females are supposed to genuinely experience and demonstrate gratitude for :lol: , was in fact demonstrating how easy it is for a female, to fool an individual male, regarding their perceived masculine sexual prowess.
This ecstasy donated by men, that causes women to reach heights of pleasure that have been hitherto, unknown to them, must be acknowledged before, during and after the sexual act. The patriarchal, manly man will accept and acknowledge nothing less. Any woman who does not show such appreciation, every time such a manly man is even just in the same room as women, is not in touch with, and does not understand what real femininity is, from the manly man masculine pov. Such women are probably not 'fully' heterosexual. Meg/Sally was just demonstrating how easy it is to play that role.
Some theistic fables, even back up such manly men self-images of masculinity, as Yahweh itself, turned Adam's first wife Lilith into a snake, for disobeying its demand to let Adam be sexually dominant over her. Lilith insisted on sitting atop of Adam. Adam was underneath her. Yahweh would not put up with that. :lol:
I wonder how Yahweh's supposed wife/consort, Asherah reproduced? A goddess who supposedly gave birth to 70 other gods, including BAAL, who I think is refurbished for use as Satan.
She was the consort/wife of other top gods besides Yahweh, such as El, Anu, and Ugaritic. :scream:
In those days Asherah was called the mother goddess of fertility, in todays celeb world, the paparazzi would call her a slut goddess.
Quoting Baden
Very good points! Lesson in life.
I am interested in seeing how creativity develops without the "risk" of losing -- What would happen if we remove the restrictive best, and focus, instead, on "I got this!" attitude by everyone.
A variation of that victory cry is "Let's do it!" (This cry implies they know what they're doing, and they've got the drive to do it).
Education should cater to those being educated and not to the needs of commerce.
Educational qualifications being little more than currency, is just a horrible state of affairs.
Finding your personal vocation is what matters, not who you are better than at what?
Personal identity states such as gender, sexuality or age should not dictate or preclude you from a particular career path.
Do you think Daly would appreciate having a gender-neutral pronoun applied to her?
I read of one feminist who said something to the effect that after all the decades of fighting for recognition, why would she want to be called 'they'? Doesn't that reinforce invisibility?
Another discussion perhaps.
So, you were drawn to the book...because you already have a strong interest in gender theory and language and theology? Or just because.
Quoting fdrake
Daly sounds like someone that should have a thread of her own! Touches all the hot spots.
Quoting fdrake
Yes. I've been wondering about how we talked of 'opposites' earlier. Questions were raised as to what is 'Masculinity' or a 'Real Man' as opposed to what?
@Moliere gave his view that it was the transition from boyhood to man/adulthood that was most relevant. If I remember correctly.
Another 'opposite' to be considered - a 'Fake man' or perhaps a 'Real Woman' or 'Femininity'.
Then 'Feminism' with its focus on the fight against patriarchy. Not passive but active. Not only concerning females but males and others affected by such a system.
Did we talk of 'Masculinism' - whatever that is?
Quoting Masculinist - dictionary
***
Quoting fdrake
I don't know what such discussions tend to do or how they end. I get the impression that @Moliere has lost interest. Perhaps, for him, his questions have been answered adequately...
I'm glad that you and others have continued to respond. A serious but fun conversation.
Enjoyable and seductive new dance steps to take to another level?
As a newcomer to the field of 'Critical Femininities', I have no idea whether there could be any such thing as a new 'femininity after patriarchy'. What would that even look like...
There will always be seeds planted but what, where, how, when, why, and by whom?
Daly, I don't know enough about. At first glance, seems quite the mad hag :fire:
Here's something I found after a quick google:
Quoting Critical Femininities - A 'new' approach to gender theory
She probably wouldn't, no. I think there's something in Gyn/Ecology to that effect. "They" as an attempt at gender neutrality = a psyop to cover up men as the default subject = erasure of women's erasure.
Personally? I read a lot of that stuff.
Quoting Amity
Yes. And she'll be in the 70s radical feminist transphobe dumpster fire too, probably.
Quoting Amity
Is this the right question? For "real man" it makes sense to think of what a non-real man would be, a fake man or whatever. But there's nothing essential to being a man that would define it in opposition to another category, right? If the quality of being a man means you've got an antipodal (set of qualities) to another category (like woman, boy...), what places a man in an antipodal relationships with that other category needs examined. It might be a "coming of age" for the opposition of boy and man, it might be a gender stereotype for the opposition of man and women, who knows.
I'd rather say that being a man commits someone to no essential qualities - social, biological, performative. We know it can't be willies, chromosomes, cologne, assertiveness, violence or detached cognitive styles since you can remove each from a man and they stay identifiable as a man. Nor does it commit someone to special virtues - things which are virtues for men are virtues for people in general. All that there is to being a man is counting as one... you might call this no-man-ilism (nomanilism).
At that point, the discussion turns entirely on norms of expression, aesthetic styles, and the social status those both afford people. Only particular norms and social conditions would enable an opposition between a man and between another category. Like people get antsy around people who "count as men" using "women's" bathrooms, even though those people often don't "count as men" in most social circumstances. Having erectile dysfunction might make you not "count as a man", various things. The social, the biological and the aesthetic all intermingle here into an inexhaustible clusterfuck of overlapping criteria and milieux. And in that regard, no one is going to complain about a bloke using a men's bathroom if they need to use viagra to get it up... The traits which sometimes count as being necessary for masculinity activate at different times, and in that regard even what is essentially excluded from manhood is contextually volatile.
:up: :lol:
Cue glazed eyes or strabismus :nerd:
Previously, I paid little attention whenever talk turned to 'patriarchy' and 'feminism'. Gender issues.
However, my eyes have been opened. Thanks to you, others, and especially @Moliere for triggering questions and thoughts in this most informative discussion.
Important not only for the individual but for today's politics. How they turn. So easily backward.
Have you written anything? Apart from on here...
Boring essays and technical reports.
Did you consider them boring when you wrote them? What made them so? Subject matter, style...?
Lack of choice or passion? But what now...?
Your writing here has been magnificent. Strong, sensitive, even sensible. Seductive and sexy as it
shines and probes; illuminating different or new ways of thinking, and questioning.
I'm surprised you haven't written an essay elsewhere.
Inspired and a bit fired up by your question re 'new femininity after patriarchy' I turned my attention to essays from the female perspective. Wondering if what matters is the way we talk and think. The importance of language in how the world can be changed. How useful would the terms 'femininity' and 'patriarchy' be in a new societal structure?
Anyway, this is only a fumbling start. I found this:
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20191216-essays-by-women-how-do-you-use-your-rage
Still sleepy, I read the title as 'How do you use your image?' and then thought:
Why 'rage'? Is it catchier than 'outrage'? Wouldn't that be a 'turn-off' for some?
Quoting Essays by women - 'How do you use your rage?' - BBC Culture
[my emphases]
There's so much more to this article including the journalists who broke the Harvey Weinstein story and helped catalyse the #MeToo movement. The Non-disclosure agreements as a way to de-personalise female targets and stop them from telling their stories.
Reaching the end, I find the answer to my question above: 'Why 'rage' ?'.
The emphasis is on 'your'.
So, what is your story and how would you tell it? If at all...
The question can be answered by anyone, if so desired. To rage or not to rage?
Would it, does it help?
For some reason, I'm thinking of the short-story extravaganza and @Noble Dust and Marilyn Monroe.
No, it was @_db and the discussion here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12312/amnesis-by-_db
Also, others who might write semi-autobiography with a focus on the male/female relationship.
Like @Tobias and @180 Proof. Not sure that any reflect feminism but femininity...masculinity.
Love and sex more than rage. Perhaps elements of fear...?
And then @hypericin's micro story with a no gender-specified narrator. We made assumptions:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/13839/new-sun-by-hypericin
***
Follow-up re stories and fiction. Links. Mostly for myself - to be read later
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_literature
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminist_literary_criticism
History from the 17th century on:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_in_feminism
***
Perhaps the label 'profeminist' or 'pro-feminist' sits better?
If there has to be a label...
But in real life most people who aren't familiar with feminism think that a man calling themselves a feminist is trying to get sex -- most people interpret the expression as a kind of virtue signal for partners rather than a serious political or philosophical commitment with a whole body of thought behind it. And all I really mean are the books and ideas and politics, so it's just easier to not call myself a Feminist and stay at the level of books and ideas and politics.
Though there's something about Feminist thought that brings what was traditionally thought to be a personal affair into the open, into the public: Family relations, and in particular, patrilineal property inheritance and control over that property while living, and how that relates to one's identity. So I can't stay at the level of books and ideas -- I have to engage in politics, which necessarily means I am involved, rather than it just being some ideas.
So it'll come out eventually. I don't mind that, insofar that I get to say what I mean, though. I certainly am inspired by the Feminist writers! At the very least I think it makes sense to pay homage to them.
Quoting Moliere
Yes. And I've met several who believe men calling themselves feminists is an inherently entryist ploy to subvert women's institutions and discourse.
Quoting Moliere
Yes. And also in my experience this is generally what it is (for men and women). Expressing feminist views is a hobby, living by them isn't. And requires considerably more effort. I'm thinking on the spot here, but I can think of two different flavours of "personal is political" struggles. The first would be when a societal norm imposes itself upon a person (or group), the second would be when a person has internalised a norm and it's become egosyntonic.
To contrast, consider a hetero couple raising a child. Childcare costs are so expensive they can price out median income families. Because men tend to be in better paying jobs/roles than women, it can make financial sense for the woman to quit her job and take on the societal role of a tradwife, despite it being one with considerably less financial and social capital. The couple's beliefs won't let them avoid the costs that this devil's choice presents them.
But what if the norms traditional household become the couple's desires over time. And all their passionate, and maybe even virtuous, beliefs were annihilated by the merciless logic of capital and patriarchy. Who they were has been replaced by who they needed to be, moral convictions be damned. Capital and patriarchy go hand in hand. To work against this, it would be to psychically reimagine yourself and live by another set of values. To find profound discomfort in your own life. It is a hard sell.
That's a transition from finding oneself profoundly alienated from society due to intellectual convictions, to largely feeling in accordance with due to practical necessities. No matter how strong a belief is, it doesn't cut it.
There can also be a reflexive pathologisation of women who choose to live more traditionally in patriarchy-critical spaces. Something must be wrong with you if you want to live unjustly. I don't find that a fair judgement btw.
It's relatively common place to have "the personal is political" discussions about housework sharing, it's less common to have these discussions about the psychosexual aspects of patriarchy. People libidinally invest in these norms as much as they socially enforce them. Fantasies of submission to masculine authority, fantasies of being that man, thinking about how consent works in a long term relationship. [hide=*] (The latter might not be clear as a flashpoint, the usual advice nowadays is seek affirmative enthusiastic consent, people have much different ideas of how that works without intending to cause or invite harm due to variability in desires and communication styles. Was that pain or pleasure on their face? Did it matter?.)[/hide]
Luckily the latter, interpersonal kind of "feminist praxis" can be engaged in without the norms of society crushing you. So long as a space of relative equality can be created between men and women, these things can be talked about and acted upon. In the conditions where that cannot happen readily - a workplace, a boardroom, a hiring decision -, you need advocacy and collective action. That's why ideas are never enough by themselves.
And also, unfortunately, why things are slower to change than any right minded human being would like.
I had never thought of that aspect. And really struggle with it, never having had that kind of experience.
I've always admired men who have the guts to stand up and be counted as a feminist. So, I suppose yes, I can see how a male might self-describe as a feminist to show good character or social conscience if he desired the approval of a feminist (female/male/other). However, action and behaviour count more.
Quoting Moliere
That is the challenge. When any theory meets the real world and practices. So, any understanding becomes more meaningful with regard to change. Of course, you are involved. Why else would you read the stuff and think in the first place?
Quoting Moliere
It sounds like a guilty or dirty secret. What freedom lies in coming out the closet; speaking your mind, and engaging with others who want to advance positive change in society. And not be made to feel less of a man, or to be shamed by the ignorant.
You've done heaps more than I have when it comes to reading and reflecting.
So yes, I have more to learn, thanks to you! Excellent work :clap: :100:
If that doesn't sound too condescending...
***
Quoting fdrake
Again, your experience is more extensive than mine. Where did you come across this behaviour?
Any examples and how successful are such ploys?
Quoting fdrake
Thanks for the link.
Quoting fdrake
Grateful for your clear descriptions; helpful in imagining tough situations and decision-making.
It's difficult to stick to principles when circumstance throws reality in your face.
Quoting fdrake
I wonder how many on TPF have lived through this process. You? I've never held beliefs so strong that have resulted in being 'profoundly alienated from society'. The nearest is a fairly typical experience of loss of faith in the religion of upbringing. I simply stopped attending church and was never challenged by my parents. And I never felt a strong atheism, so never challenged them.
Quoting fdrake
I'm now thinking of female Republicans and a film... was it 'Mrs America'?
There's nothing wrong with women who choose to live traditionally. Just don't enforce it on others.
Quoting fdrake
Indeed. I remember a scene where the woman clearly didn't want sex but her husband did.
She laid back and let him. I guess because of her beliefs. Based on Christianity? Given her obvious lack of desire and passionate action, he must have known. What was this, other than 'relieving' himself? Or a power move. Animal.
Quoting fdrake
How long will it take before people can relax and know that any hard-won rights or equal responsibilities will not be overturned by extremist politicians? Never.
Quoting fdrake
The madness continues...
As a positive example: I've heard of a man identifying as a feminist who was chair of a disability, diversity inclusion initiative in a company. He was multiply disabled and pretty educated on disability rights, but he was pretty bad at treating women with the same respect.
That's not quite "part of an activist movement". I could find you a paper polling feminist activist groups about this attitude if you like, but it would be some effort. People worry about it. For good reasons I think, men who are feminists still aren't women, and so aren't subject to precisely the same flavours of oppression (even if sources of them may be the same). For that reason, the kind of political activity a feminist man would suggest/find adequate could (arguably) be seen as suspect due to the guy being a man and not having the right standpoint on society to guide what should be done. (See The Effeminist Manifesto for an extreme example of that perspective). Like maybe you wouldn't want a CEO deciding how much capital gains tax they pay...
Where things, I think, get dicey is if you grant that men have unique vectors of oppression from patriarchy and try to organise men to fight them in solidarity with feminists. Some of that might be against, what might be called, "the emotional objectification of men" - the kind of thing that excuses men's suffering in war, our predominance among the homeless, and what can be the emotional core (so to speak) of being expected to be an ideal protector/caretaker - a limitless, stoic repository of material support.
I like to think that feminists have done great work in uprooting interpersonal norms that subjugate women. I think as @unenlightened wrote elsewhere, "patriarchy is dying". My perspective on it is that patriarchy is dying for women (which is great!) but it's currently dying less for men (boo!). A large part of that comes from there not being anti-patriarchy men's political organisations, and some of that large part comes from that addressing "men's issues" in feminist spaces is either a hard sell or justifiably seen as entitlement and entryism.
Regardless of the reason, however, the interpersonal norms that "make men men" are dying in some sense, but those expectations of traditional male conduct still show up interpersonally quite often. Like I imagine they do for women.
But it is nice, nowadays, to be able to hug the blokes at an old man bar while commiserating about the state of the world. So I think the rot in our souls is being excised regardless.
Perhaps if there were more men willing and able to address the problems of patriarchal structures, then the required change would happen sooner. Do they think that an attack on patriarchy is an attack on males by females? And they are more defensive as a result? Do most men even recognise that they are not alone in any injustices? Perhaps they lag behind because they haven't felt the inequality gap as much as females...who tend to communicate and organise more in social groups. Or there is a fear that any push might go too far in the opposite direction...
'Hugging blokes at a bar' is that the same as Happy Hour at TPF's Shoutbox?
Quoting fdrake
Yup. And that can be strangely comforting in a way. Boys will be boys, accompanied by an eye-roll.
Boys will be girls - stranger.
For balance: Girls will be boys.
Quoting Girls will be boys - Vogue
I see there being two tendencies which result in this impression, one which is silly and unjust and one which is worth considering. The first tendency is equating feminism with man hating. Which is silly. And unjust.
The second tendency is that there is a habit, especially in online discourse, to essentialise minor/largely irrelevant misconduct and thus make someone a living symbol of all that is bad with (enemy of your choice). When that's allied with reactionary/conservative/prejudiced viewpoints [hide=*](I'm not saying that conservatives are prejudiced, I'm just explaining the trope which lumps conservatives in with neonazis and incels)[/hide] it gets called grievance politics. The same dynamic happens to individuals who say the wrong thing in left spaces. Especially online. Mark Fisher wrote a highly controversial piece on this tendency in 2008, Exiting the Vampire Castle. It's worth a read.
Because the second tendency may be nebulous - I've seen someone be branded an incel, predator through online rumours and be ostracised in person for it. It was almost all knee jerk misinterpretation, and a hefty chunk of inopportune phrasing. It is still more justified, and on a smaller scale, than what happened to Contrapoints (and her case studies) in this video here. Worth a watch!
Thanks for reminding me of Mark Fisher. I need to go back and read his books again. :pray:
I have noticed some of what you mention but I have little online discourse. No Facebook or Twitter accounts. I think I'll keep it that way.
Heh, I'm enjoying reading along. I'm contemplating, now, how to make the material dimensional aspect of a critique of gender more explicit. And I feel like the conversation has elevated at this point so I'm taking longer to think it through.
We can describe gender outside of the parameters of sexual characteristics, and we in fact do so whenever we describe a behavior or a tendency of a particular gender expression(Boys will be boys!). Further, individuals show that the sexual characteristics are in no way determinative of a person's gender, given the diversity of genders. In fact there are people who "pass", to use the straightforward but still sad term -- there are already people with different chromosomes than the traditional view of gender would predict but who are able to utilize the facilities they would prefer to use. As such I submit that we do not actually use sexual characteristics to police gendered spaces, but gender, and that gender is much older -- and more practical -- than chromosomal identifiers, given that we do not actually investigate the genome of most people we know.
So, at a minimum, we should address what we mean by gender given that this is the actual rule we use in policing.
The above should be enough to say why I think you cannot support the sex-gender link empirically. People will point out that chromosomal differences are small -- the oft-cited 99.5%/0.5%. But there are so many more genders than even these three possible chromosomal arrangements. There's the four-gender theory I pointed out which gets at a richer expression of what gender is, but it's a bit too abstract for my taste: good for research, but bad for really understanding a particular gender identity in its depth. Which is what I think a lot of this hasty generalization does is attempt to come to some conclusion based upon a small amount of evidence on a topic that, in fact, is incredibly complicated and even difficult to determine in a manner that's not merely a personal reflection on one's own life and gender. So we shouldn't be all that surprised that the traditional view of gender, a quick-and-dirty distinction that's easily filled in with the details of one's personal life so that the partner is the other gender and you complement one another, is empirically inadequate to the task.
That leaves a values approach -- which I'd say patriarchy hasn't really done all that well for itself. The pleasures of patriarchy are the pleasures of power rather than the pleasures of self-sacrifice, as the story is told. Puissance, not protection is the only rational ground to support it. That should be fairly obvious that power for its own sake doesn't exactly pass the ethical bar, or at least, not very many of them. So that leaves an aesthetic grounding -- a non-ethical value. I think most gender-identities fall into this category: they are personally rewarding in that it feels good when we do what feels right to us to do.
But in contrast to the ethical violations of patriarchy I don't think that the aesthetic grounding of traditional masculinity as provider-protector-owner of the family is strong enough. The ethical violations are seen in the statistics of violence against women. If patriarchy is not the reason -- it doesn't exist, or is a dreamed up excuse of a few political radicals with their noses in too many books -- why is it that women are disproportionally subject to violence in intimate relationships?
That is -- in setting out the traditional view of gender, given that we should set out the actual rule we use in policing gendered spaces, I think we lose any attraction said view may have. So even its aesthetic grounding is questionable.
As such I'd submit that such a traditional view of gender ought not be used in public, at least. And public restrooms are certainly public. But the public is for everyone, not just 99.5% of the population, and just because some families like to live a romanticized vision of the traditional model that's not a reason to block people from shitting in public where they'd like to.
It's this material relationship between one's personal identity and the goods of life which makes a critique of gender relevant -- gender and property have always gone hand in hand.
But I really wanted to highlight how the material conditions of our lives are, in fact, wrapped up in gender, because so far I haven't made that very explicit, especially when the original conversation concerned an incredibly practical question -- what to do about gendered bathrooms?
Now I'm trying to think on your question, @fdrake -- the possibility of masculinities after critique.
For one, given the above, I think a post-critique masculinity will be concerned with sharing property. It can even be derived from the same traditional norm -- the desire to protect is better accomplished through distributing by need.
But, well -- this pinko commie would say that, wouldn't he? Still something to chew on for me...
It might be silly and unjust but is certainly worth considering. It ties in with my feeling that most women don't identify as 'feminist' for a variety of reasons.
I have been wondering at various points throughout this discussion whether a separate thread should be started. To thresh out the meaning and understanding of 'feminism'. But I don't really have the time or knowledge to do this effectively. I haven't even had the time to follow all your recommended links!
@fdrake @Baden - your thoughts?
More than a feeling. Global findings and stats:
An excerpt:
A 2018 YouGov poll found that 34% of women in the UK said "yes" when asked whether they were a feminist, up from 27% in 2013.
It's a similar picture in Europe, with fewer than half of men and women polled in five countries agreeing they were a feminist. This ranged from 8% of respondents in Germany, to 40% in Sweden.
However, people do not appear to reject the term feminism because they are against gender equality or believe it has been achieved.
The same study found that eight out of 10 people said men and women should be treated equally in every way, with many agreeing sexism is still an issue.
[...]
Battling stereotypes and misconceptions associated with feminism.
Quoting BBC News - Why so many young women don't call themselves feminist
[ emphasis added]
AIso associated with race and class:
I think the important thing is that even if there is a rejection of the word 'feminism', people still understand the disparities in the treatment of women (and others) in e.g. the workplace. Many work hard in mentoring programmes and the like. That is active practice rather than fighting over different theories and ideologies within a movement.
First look or appearance, then, or initial 'intuitions' seems to hold an inordinate sway on how people feel about others. It was ever thus...
'Arguably, as a society we should do more to challenge narrowly defined expectations of how women should look and act.'
Gender judgement. Alive and well.
Why or How do you portray an image...even if it doesn't reflect who you are, think you are or hope to be.
Who are you, really? Could antipathy towards a specific group be a fight within oneself?
First of all, I have to make an apology to @wonderer1 for my earlier, flippant dismissal of:
Quoting wonderer1
Of course, I am interested in this. At the time, I felt there was too much onus put on me. I don't do well with perceived pressure, given my lack of all things mentioned. Basically, I didn't feel up to the job.
Given that my understanding has increased a little, are you still interested in starting a new thread as you suggested? I'd hopefully be able to participate along with others.
If behaviour modification and 'evolutionary success' are elements of maintaining patriarchal systems, then I would like to hear more. Given that we are way ahead of ourselves here with talk of 'a new femininity post-patriarchy'. How would we even dismantle it? Where is it found and what perpetuates it?
Quoting fdrake
Paying more attention to creating 'a space of relative equality' seems to be a basic necessity.
I woke up this morning thinking of how we are politically governed in the UK.
Where were most of the Tory male leaders educated? I thought Eton. Posh, private, male-only boarding school. Powerful and privileged. I think that is right:
This article gives a taster. It concerns 'emotional and ruthless coldness'.
The very architecture plays its part ( also in the adversarial Westminster Parliament).
Quoting The school that rules Britain - BBC Culture
Again, with more focus, I should have asked questions about:
Quoting fdrake
What is the 'the emotional objectification of men'? What is self-objectification?
Quoting Self-objectification and Personal Values - an exploratory study - Frontiersin
So, @wonderer1. It seems that mass media or even certain 'Tory papers' have a clear role in behaviour modification. Perpetuating patriarchy. Should they be dismantled or made less powerful? And perhaps even in 'evolutionary success'? Whatever you mean by this ...something along the lines of Eton?
Again, apologies for my earlier dismissal. I made wrong assumptions.
Indeed. A quick dip into history tells us a little. From wiki:
More here:
Quoting Women's rights and their money - Guardian
And:
Why women are still the property of men
Quoting Why women are still the property of men - Daily Telegraph
Hmmm. Interesting response from 'Disgusted of TPF'.
I guess her pushback against the sexism she encountered along her varied and fascinating life, made her what she is today. Amongst many other things, a feminist.
Excerpt from a commencement speech:
Quoting Tulane University - Helen Mirren speech
She became what she hated. What a winner. :clap:
You see what you want to see and disregard the rest.
But you don't need me to tell you that, do ya'?
No problem. It was perfectly understandable for you to respond as you did, in light of my newness here on TPF.
I'll try to get around to writing something up relatively soon. However, I'm finding it a bit difficult to keep up with all the discussions here on TPF that I am interested in, and I already feel that I owe a couple of other forum members responses that are likely to take me significant time to formulate.
In any case, I'm not going to present much (if any) of a case for what people should do. That's way above my pay grade. At best I'd hope to present some stuff that might spark some recognition of what you can do with some degree of effectiveness.
This is a thing. I could hunt up the name of the author -- believe I heard her interviewed on Intelligence Squared.
Anyway, she wrote a book about party leadership and the Oxford Union, citing Boris Johnson as an example of what you get. The Union encourages a certain performance style, a kind of charm and an ability to think on your feet, but mainly the ability to say things that have a convincing ring to them, even if you're making it up. Britain, she claimed, is run by men very good at sounding like they know what they're doing, but who in fact have only the most superficial grasp of policy.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
The thing is, this bull-shitting capability and lying is pretty much global. But yes, it is prevalent in UK politics and leads to unfortunate consequences like Boris Johnson as PM... and Brexit.
Much more besides. Difficulties persist in holding them to account. Structures of inequality rule.
***
I've been looking around for contemporary female pragmatist philosophers.
I found Charlene Haddock Siegfried.
Frustrated at the lack of access to her article: 'Where are all the pragmatist feminists?'
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3810093
I turned to this fascinating interview. Downloadable as pdf with search function. Enter the word 'bullshit'.
Also turn to p5/12 - for difficulties women philosophers faced:
Quoting Interview with Charlene Haddock Seigfried - Open Edition journals
@Ciceronianus I know for sure. @apokrisis @aletheist @t clark @universeness - anyone?
Contemporary Feminist Pragmatism
Maurice Hamington and Celia Bardwell-Jones (eds.), Contemporary Feminist Pragmatism, Routledge, 2012, 279pp., $125.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780415899918.
Reviewed by John Kaag, University of Massachusetts-Lowell.
Quoting Contemporary feminist pragmatism - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
'Feminist action research' - how's that going, I wonder...
How would it combat 'bureaucratization and simplification' of knowledge claims'. Whatever those are.
Is that about dealing with male bullshit of the political kind...or is the feminist 'goal' bullshit in and of itself?
I guess before any action can be taken with regard to any gender inequalities that @Moliere references, we need to listen to as many perspectives as possible. Solving practical problems via both normative and applied ethics?
***
Is 'Pragmatic humanism' or a version of it, the best way to critically challenge the established status quo.
Does it make sense to take responsibility for the way the world is shaped?
We all live in it and have a stake in its and our well-being, no?
The question is 'What can be done, if anything?'
Over to you:
Quoting wonderer1
For me, secular humanism and democratic socialism are practical/pragmatic goals, yes.
Do I think a female/feminine approach is the best way to nurture and advance local/national/international and global secular humanism and democratic socialism? No, I don't. Unfettered masculinity has unquestionably demonstrated, how backwards it can be. Such has been a foundational support for the establishment of autocratic elites.
I recently watched a 2.5 h, YouTube documentary about the Sumerians and the Akkadians and the early city states.
I also watched a recent 3.5 h, YouTube documentary about the foundations of China and the rise of the first emperor, the Qin dynasty and on to the Han dynasty.
These are both BC histories and demonstrate that human civilisation was well established in China and Mesopotamia way before Christ. You can trace the Mesopotamian fables directly to Christianity but during the same time in China, the larger and more powerful (imo), Han dynasty was developing, with no involvement whatsoever, of Canaanite gods like Yahweh and it's further fabled human form of blood sacrifice manifested, with the ridiculous purpose of sacrifice of itself to itself.
To me, this history demonstrates the folly of unfettered masculinity in two completely separate human developments on either side of our planet. Yet, the exact same results occurred.
Rule by a nefarious few and suffering and very poor experience of life as a human, for the majority of humans.
The influence of fabled female deities, did little to counteract the effects of unfettered masculinity in history. Female gods and female rulers were every bit as bad as male ones. From horrors such as Cleopatra or Catherine the great to modern horrors such as Margaret Thatcher or even horrible female philosophers like Ayn Rand.
The term pragmatic humanism is a better term to me, than pragmatic feminism, but I do think that the feminine approach is much slower to choose war as the way to solve major disputes between human groupings. The feminine approach does seem to offer more chance of co-operative solutions, rather than a knee jerk, quick jump towards the traditional male competitive solution of physical combat/war.
Quoting Amity
For me, it's not a matter of such making sense, it's more that we will never 'grow up' as a species, until we do fully and irreversibly accept, that we (all humans) and we alone, shape our local/national/international and global lives. Scapegoating gods has always just been a subterfuge and a delusion.
Quoting Amity
Yes!
Quoting Amity
Organise, debate, discuss, protest, direct non-violent civil disobedience, educate ourselves, advocate for secular humanism, democratic socialism, a united planet, freedom from the money trick, resource based economics, no governance via party politics (vote for a person, not a party,), pragmatic humanism (the best that feminine and masculine can muster, working in co-operation and not competition.)
I'm not seeing the obvious misandry, at least. Feminism attacks the male power structure, not the male-identity. (Unless, of course, one comes to identify as the powerful gender)
Masculinity isn't something males have a monopoly on. Women have the same characteristics, though they may be sanctioned for broadcasting it. That's why criticizing the way some males behave doesn't contribute much to understanding the animus.
I agree with your first statement, but I disagree with your second. I've come around in saying difference is a part of some gender identities. And while I don't think it's the traits or characteristics that make up a gender-identity, so that men and women can share characteristics, I'm not sure I'd go all the way and say women are the same -- some are the same, sure, and they are definitely sanctioned for not conforming to expectation in those cases, whatever that expectation happens to be in the particular cultural milieu.
But there's room for trans-identity in all this, and gender-identity is connected to a world, so I don't believe that males have some kind of special position, or standpoint, from which to speak on masculinity. In general I tend to believe that it's the dis-enfranchised who have a better eye towards the truth, because their life often times depends upon it, while the enfranchised are more prone towards fantasy, because being powerful means you can indulge in the pursuit of fantasy. If you follow me this far then it's the women who have the better standpoint, but given that gender-identity isn't as clean-cut as 2nd wave feminism puts it -- well, it's not even that easy to lay out who has the better standpoint. Are we in a position at all to speak of a post-patriarchal masculinity, while the old family laws are still in place?
Just read an article, so thought I'd share it in the meantime. It addresses issues of 'Masculinity' - Managing expectations of what it is to be a man. Wanting to fit in. Male and female collaboration. Exploring spaces creatively. A different kind of flag-waving. Giving back to the community - exploring 'modern masculinity'.
Quoting Corbin Shaw - How masculinity inspires his work
[emphases added]
***
Interesting to consider the ugly and tender side of football.
Hooliganism and Hugging in the beautiful game.
Quoting The beautiful game - is football art?
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20140203-beautiful-game-is-football-art
Predominated by males for various reasons, now women's football is popular but has its problems.
Sexism, dress codes, insufficient pay...reports of systemic gender-related abuse of players, including sexual abuse being ignored by league or federation officials; and a lack of benefits specific to women, such as maternity leave and child care - from wiki.
Quoting Women's Association Football - wiki
Money, power and control. In whose hands? The Big Man Business...
Are there characteristics we associate with masculinity (I'm talking gender identity here) that women never have? Like what?
Quoting Moliere
We aren't in a post-patriarchal world, so probably not. I think it's important to distinguish between masculinity as the portion of the human potential we traditionally associate with males, and toxic masculinity which is the result of a pathological mindset, that is, the need to look down on someone else, or fear of women. The first is a fount of creativity. The second is something all need to be aware of.
When one decides that there is no difference between the two, that's misanthropy.
Note how Mirren literally says that men are 'offered their families as sop'.
Disgusting.
And what's worse is that, apparently, there are people with a functioning(?) brain who see nothing wrong with a statement such as that one.
No, she doesn't. Perhaps read the whole article.
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/rendezview/why-women-are-still-the-property-of-men/news-story/b18f0a4d456db6967e7c05f4f309604f
Nope. That's why I've been careful to say men and women can have the same characteristics, and a difference cannot be found in differentiating characteristics.
So far I've been of the mind that it's a manner of expression, rather than a set of characteristics, that makes a gender-identity. But, then, some gender-identities get tied to characteristics in their particular way, so while in general it's better to say gender-identity is a manner of expression, a particular gender-identity may very well fixate on particular characteristics and act to put those on display more often, or improve them, or some such.
Quoting Tzeentch
Oh I wouldn't go so far as to call my brain functioning -- why would I continue to revisit the same questions with new answers in spite of knowing that my previous answers were unsatisfactory by this same method if I had a functioning brain?
I understand your sentiment, but can you make the argument that connects Mirren's statements with a hatred of men? It's possible, of course. Hatred for hatred is a pretty common exchange in the political world. It's just not what I read when I read the article.
Yes, she literally does.
Quoting Moliere
The fact that she takes fatherhood and equates it to "sop offered as compensation for not having real power".
Spare me any apologetics. If you don't condemn this type of blatant sexism for what it is, I have nothing more to say to you.
I agree that it's important to make a distinction between masculinity and a toxic masculinity. I don't think all masculinities, even traditional ones, are toxic.
This is a reason I think it's an important topic for men to talk about.
:up: @Tzeentch is not a careful reader.
A manner of expression? I mean, masculinity as a kind of archetype has been around for thousands of years in multiple cultures. It's fairly easy to discover what aspects of the human potential are usually identified as masculine and which ones aren't. So maybe we're talking at cross purposes, or maybe just about entirely different subjects. This is not fundamentally about politics. It's about the heavy hitters in the human psyche as that psyche has developed over the millennia. Current politics is a sniff in a hurricane compared to that.
Well, she wouldn't exactly know it from the standpoint of a father, would she? It's an outsider perspective -- one which is valuable if we want to see who we are, or so I'd say.
I don't think any fatherhood worthy of pursuit would equate to "sop offered as compensation for not having real power" -- this is going to follow a similar patterns to the one I set out above. This isn't a statement about All Fatherhood, etc.
It's a statement from the perspective of a person whose had to live with patriarchy as a social reality which shaped her life. The acting world is particularly bad at this because it has to sell what people like to see -- that's basically the product. I'm not surprised to find an old actress who was tough enough to make it through that world express vitriol towards the institution -- though I wouldn't go so far as to say that her perspective on the institution is the whole story either.
Careful reading isn't going to make the sexism any less obvious. :lol:
Maybe if I read this type of garbage often and carefully enough I'll start to rationalize it too.
The article might well be considered 'garbage' but you misrepresent what is being said by whom.
You know it.
I've edited my post re you being a careful reader!
This is the quote from the article. Note well the comment is made by Laurie Penny, NOT Mirren.
This mental move is exactly what Kate Millet describes as the patriarchal move -- the mental is the explanatory intermediary between biological sign and social role in her description of the patriarchal relationship.
Also, I'm not so sure about a psyche developing over millennia. Masculine-Feminine distinctions are common across cultures, for certain, but their mode of expression isn't rigid. Even what counts as something worth evaluating under Masculine-Feminine changes.
Quoting Amity
Heh, well look at that. I may be a careful reader, but I got my wires crossed all the same :D
All down to my shoddy quoting. Ooops! :smile:
I'm coming up blank trying to discern your message. But if it's working for you, :up: :grin:
The reality of patrarchy, to me, has always served as a kind of excuse for anger. Though, of course, it can be taken too far -- and one has to be ready to hear someone else's anger for it to really have an e/affect.
I expected and expect a number of defensive reactions to the topic. It really is one that cuts close to home for lots of people. So we're bound to make all kinds of mistakes along the way, I think.
Which may be true, but then the feminist critique is always bringing the psyche back to the material -- if it's truly a psychological power, rather than a material one, then we could very easily upend how families own and pass on property. It would be of no consequence.
And then there's the aspect where you express that such determinations are easy, which I just don't hold. If it were easy to determine the masculine and the feminine then what's all the fuss about? Is gender-identity a numerology or astrology in your view?
I don't know much about feminist philosophy beyond what gets out in public, which I'm sure is not representative. What I see on TV and read about is anything but pragmatic. Pragmatists focus on solving problems. I don't see that in public feminism.
Keep it up, I say.
The charge of misandry is a serious one that should be addressed, so I thought I should say something. I certainly don't want to court misandry, but I think there's room for grievance airing.
What do you think of this?
During the Han dynasty in China, the emperors chosen females could only be guarded and communicated with, by males who were eunuchs.
The male rulers of China decided that to ensure other men did not have sex with any of their chosen women, the only ones allowed anywhere near them, had to have their penis and balls cut off.
Eventually the eunuchs themselves became a very powerful group of individuals who obtained serious power and ability to influence what was happening in the country in ways that allowed them to become very rich themselves. On occasion, the Chinese army or the mountain tribes, would rebel, slaughter all the eunuchs and overthrow the emperor. :grin:
I don't see what you're not getting, it's quite simple.
Some men oppress some women, but not all men, and nothing about their being men has anything necessarily to do with it, and some of the people doing the oppressing are women, and some of the oppressed are men, and some of the men doing the oppressing it turns out are really women, and some of the women who were oppressed it turns are really men depending on how they're feeling that day.
But the important thing to remember is that it's the patriarchy.
Beware of the trap a lesser mind might fall into of just thinking that humans ought not oppress other humans and the best way of identifying victims is by their actually being, you know, victims, rather than by using chromosomes or skin colour which are obviously much better metrics.
Hope that helps.
I see that I'm as opaque to you as you are to me.
Quoting Moliere
We did upend how families own and pass on property around the time women got the vote. Prior to the early 20th Century, an American woman couldn't own a business unless she was married. Women would get married for no other reason than to allow them to participate in business ventures. That's all changed. In fact, all the things that Mary Stanton lamented have now changed, and the new way is taken for granted. There is no conflict between recognizing masculinity as a component of the psyche and recognizing how those images play out in dollars and cents.
Quoting Moliere
Every trans person on the planet knows exactly what counts as masculine. It starts with that recognition. I think you're maybe addressing something about non-binary people? I'm not sure.
I'm glad I can always count on you, , to shed light on things. :wink: :ok:
I was with you till the last phrase. I think to say white people as a class do not mistrust, disrespect, and fear black people as a class is wrong. I'm a good liberal with close black friends and I see it in myself. They do too and some of them tell me about it.
But the emphasis on the psyche over the role -- that's the patriarchal move identified by Kate Millet. At least this is what came to mind in reading you here:
Quoting frank
I'd say masculinity is fundamentally about politics: the politics of the home. And it's not fairly easy to discover what aspects of the human potential are usually identified as masculine and which ones aren't, because it's a part of one's culture. So you have to be able to understand a culture to understand a masculinity.
Quoting Isaac
I've been careful not to denigrate people who disagree with me or to intimate that they are of a lesser mind just because I happen to have some words in my head that others don't. At least, I've attempted to be careful to not insult anyone. It would definitely go against my purposes in exploring masculinity.
This has been a really useful and interesting discussion. Thanks for starting it.
I understand where you're coming from, but I think it's important to distinguish the oppressed from potential causes of oppression. The former being actual people, the latter being processes.
Racism is a form of oppression (even subconscious racism, systemic racism etc) and as such if you're of a minority race, you might be oppressed. But whether you actually are oppressed is still something to be determined, I don't think it's necessitated simply by possessing a characteristic typically used in one of the many forms of oppression.
A bit like being a wimp makes you more likely to get beaten up because that's a tool bullies use (picking on the weak), but it doesn't mean you will be beaten up, and the best way of identifying people who've actually been beaten up is still by bruises etc.
Does that make sense?
My post wasn't aimed at you specifically, my apologies if you took it that way. You will, as we all do, have to bear some of the burden of the positions you allow, or build upon. A thread 'exploring' eugenics would have to tread very carefully no matter the intention of the OP. Talk of masculinity in any sense, but particularly with regard to patriarchal oppression, is a fraught topic. Simply acknowledging the existence of these tropes carries with it commitments that entail offense to some you may not have any intention of offending.
Cool, no worries. I thought it was so I thought I ought respond -- it is my thread after all.
Quoting Isaac
True. And I'll admit that my perspective isn't exactly the most congenial one with regards to masculinity. But it is the honest one I hold...
So, yes, all true. That's why I'm trying to be careful, but you're right to point out that even my approach may be too much to not offend.
I intentionally didn't use the word "oppression" in my post because it has all sorts of meanings hanging on to it. I've told the story of one of my friends before. She is an attractive, well dressed, educated and articulate professional, my age. She lives in the northeast. She went to Hawaii with her family about 20 years ago. Her skin color is such that she was mistaken for a native Hawaiian. She told me that was the first time in her life she felt welcome - not suspected, mistrusted. Is she oppressed? She has social, financial, and personal resources most people don't and she has still spent a lifetime with that weight on her shoulders.
Quoting T Clark
How is this way of thinking not inherently racist?
Quoting T Clark
Sounds like you need some better friends.
It is for me.
At least this is where the emphasis lies. I don't want to go "all the way" in saying there's nothing psychological -- but I do prefer to look at the cultural environment that any given person might live within, which is why it's not easy to determine. There's a lot of cues in culture that can go overlooked "from the outside" of that culture, and what even counts as cultural difference is defined culturally.
Look at the sentence again:
Quoting Moliere
All you have to do is look at what things are generally identified as masculine. I think you're in the minority in not being able to do that.
A misunderstanding on the usage of "generally" then --
Generally, as in what I'd predict people to say, I have a sense for this.
Generally, as in what I'd generalize to in giving a universal (or general) theory of gender, is difficult to identify.
You're right, I read that in by mistake on account of the line of argument I was on at the time.
In that light...
Quoting T Clark
I think you've answered your own question. If "She has social, financial, and personal resources most people don't" then either she isn't oppressed, or the oppression has somehow failed. People who are oppressed don't have more than those who aren't.
I've posted this before, and it's not intended as a rebuke so much as a declaration of where I stand. This is what an oppressed person looks like.
This is what Helen Mirren looks like...
I have absolutely no respect for anyone who can't tell the difference, and until the former is sorted, any space wasted on whatever minor inconvenience the latter might have to endure is a travesty. Hopefully a position you can find some sympathy for?
(And also: is a post-patriarchal masculinity even desirable? I think so, even for men, but there's certainly resistance here, both from men and women -- but that's a separate question)
If it's a manner of expression that makes a gender, which I've been holding, then a post-patriarchal masculinity would liberate our identity from the property-relation, at least -- a man is a man regardless of his position within a family structure and the various expectations which go with that. It's a part of who he is and his way of relating to the world and others rather than control over the bank account.
In some ways this has already taken place as @frank pointed out with respect to the vote -- and second wave feminism had waves as well that have changed culture. I think that some of the anxiety around masculinity is in part due to this -- yes we don't live in the world before women could vote and were literally a part of the man's household. But acknowledging this past is what makes sense of, say, women changing their name to join their husband's family, even as bank accounts and such are open to all.
And so the confusion over a feminist analysis in the first place is understandable. I keep to it because I believe in being honest in these conversations about who we are, and it's who I am. It's very much how I relate to masculinity. Mine is a masculinity, one attached to various Feminist principles -- but I don't know if I could go so far as to say mine is a post-patriarchal masculinity to offer. Mine is mired in our world, and from my perspective at least, patriarchy is still a living, and I'm not convinced this is only momentum when I think of how popular various mens speakers are -- like Andrew Tate, et al.
But not many men who would speak up in the name of Feminism from their own perspective as men, which is what I'm at least trying to offer in a manner that's digestible, but still forthright.
It is just a masculinity. Should you be a Feminist, too? Well, I don't know. I believe in these things. I believe in political action for a more equitable world, and in general see men as the owners of that world. But for the most part I don't believe in making others believe like me -- if the arguments float then by all means, but if not I'd prefer to hear why the arguments don't float, or if they are simply flimsy reflections that don't speak to the issue, or some such.
So, yes, it's a reflection on the masculine -- but I wouldn't post my reflections in public if I didn't expect people to take issue with them and have their say about what's wrongheaded in my view, either. I don't want the reflective aspect to detract from the philosophy too much, at least when I'm posting.
It's difficult to say something definitive about ways of expressing. So we get these generalities which aren't exactly identities, but observations of an identity we already recognize. (EDIT: Always-already, even! But to me this doesn't mean that what we recognize is somehow the truth, or at least the only way -- because I think of gender as enculturated, as well -- so you have to know a culture to know a gender-identity)
If you don't recognize that black people are treated differently, worse, than white people, there is no reason for us to have this discussion. Also, this discussion is supposed to be about masculinity, not race.
Quoting Tzeentch
So, you don't think people should recognize their friends for what they are - with the good and the bad? Sounds like you need some better friends.
As I said, I won't use the word oppression. Beyond that, I strongly disagree, but this is not supposed to be a discussion of race.
It's a point well made, but I imagine you know it's not a good argument by itself. Fundamentally though the interstitial point between "general oppression", like structural stuff, and patriarchy would be whatever norms disenable men and women the world over. Some of that's class, some of that's gender. Like if you think it's fairly shite that abortion is taboo, women aren't politically represented with great frequency in most countries, and female circumcision is a-okay in some places, trying to do something about that is less class-y and more feminist-y.
Even with the poverty porn you posted, you can come at this from a post colonial angle and it starts looking like part of what keeps people poor world over, even on a class level, is patriarchy. There's some room to be intersectional.
Broadly speaking: why not both?
Though I do share your frustration with the degree of performative bile spewed out on the topic. Why, I was called a transphobic incel racist rapist yesterday morning [hide=*](For real.)[/hide]! Which is a waste of time and spleen that could be better spent doing literally anything else for the group being "protected" by the discourse. I imagine @Tzeentch shares similar frustrations. Though I think it's important to contextualise them away from being a blanket rejection of modern day women's lib. And, hopefully, men's lib.
It's true, you are a tanky!
For the sake of argument, someone might hold the view that the two sorts of oppression are related, and for evidence would point out that the child whose image you posted lives in world men have arranged to suit themselves.
You'll point out that it wasn't just men but wealthy and powerful men. And that's true, but that just brings us back to the same issue: the sort of wealth and power we see in the world, and the means of acquiring and accumulating them, the whole system traces back to men, since before there were such disparities.
Or so I imagine someone could argue.
I suppose there's something to be learned from anthropology here. Do we have examples of highly stratified but non-patriarchal societies? Do we have examples of patriarchal but (otherwise?) generally egalitarian societies?
I'm sure you've both seen that. It's worth complaining about. It's a waste of time.
There's some good work to do though. Like it's worthwhile seeing what it is about men, women, hetero relationships, domestic abuse studying methodology etc that makes domestic violence way more common when it's men on women. There'd be a lot of work to infer anything back from that into an individual's psyche, probably the best you can do is tropes. Like "emotional dysregulation is more likely to be expressed with anger in men" and "anger is more likely to be violent in men than in women". I dunno if those are true, and I'm sure they're contestable, I'm just gesturing at the space of questions.
If you'd taken two tropes like that, you can then start asking identity trope questions, like "what if I put (this type of bloke) in (this type of relationship) with (this type of woman)? What happens to the risk factors?" and you can do that. You put poor uneducated mentally ill people together with histories of crime or substance abuse and the risks for domestic incidents goes way up. Then that's more likely to be violent when it's man on women.
That latter bit maybe needs some explanation, after controlling as much as possible for the material factors. That's the space of reasons this kind of chat can happen in.
And if we start looking at types of values people hold, coping strategies, how they differ across genders, and importantly how they interact with power, you end up in the domain of patriarchy concepts.
I kinda just approach that definitionally, label as "patriarchal" systematic sufferings doled out at least in part on the basis of gender. If they come from norms, call them patriarchal norms, if they come from identities of type X, call them patriarchal X.
It's more that you can be well fed and well dressed, but still not know what it's like to be treated as an adult human being. It's called the "talking dog" syndrome, where a woman speaks, but instead of being received the way any man would be, she's just stared at and disregarded. This is what older women report experiencing. There are aspects of sexism that don't have any comparison in other kinds of oppression. In the case of women, their oppression involves brothers, fathers, sons, and husbands.
All of that's true -- I also thought of the example of Henry Louis Gates who, even before he was arrested for trying to enter his own house, lived every day of his life knowing he carried a "risk factor" for arrest he could do nothing about.
But none of that addresses @Isaac's specific claim (I mean, he wasn't actually specific) that economic oppression is more important than any of that stuff, real though it is. He might argue that all of these other sorts of oppression are just tools of capital, and addressing that is how you deal with racism, sexism, whatever. But I don't actually know what he'll say.
Historically women's rights tend to go to the back burner. As Frederick Douglass said in advocating abandoning support for women's rights after the Civil War: 'Black men are being hunted down and killed now. Women aren't experiencing that, so their problems can wait.' One of the white women answered that though the plight of black men was dire, she warranted that Frederick Douglass wouldn't change places with her. And she was probably right.
As for how we should spend our imaginary power to make the world right, I'd say that one of the most important things we can do for ourselves, the climate, and other lifeforms, is to educate women and give them equal opportunity in the workplace. Societies that do that have shown diminishing population growth all the way to zero, and in some areas it's starting to go negative. We should do that for all women all over the world. When they have opportunities to contribute as adults to their societies, they have fewer children.
So I want to say -- I know what some people usually say about masculinities, specific to a cultural milieu, but it's harder to determine gender, in a general sense.
But, sure, it may be the case that my "what some people usually say" is a minority position -- that I find it hard could very well be a me-thing.
Sure, but here's the thing. The simplest history of power seems to go like this: first comes patriarchy, then the state, then capital. We have some reason to believe that the shift from 2 to 3 was a displacement, that the state is still around but serves at the pleasure of capital.
But what about the shift from 1 to 2? Certainly it looks like men invented the state, but what's the dynamic there? Is the state just another way of advancing men's interests, or did the state move to the top of the food chain, leaving patriarchy in place but making it subservient, using it?
Does capital just build on and make use of patriarchy as it does the state? Or is it men pursuing the good of men all the way through, using the state and using capital?
Even if the state and capital use patriarchy, are they also dependent on it as a foundation? Take down patriarchy and capital falls?
All of these options are the pretty stupidly reductionist, but it may be one of them has the main story right and just needs some nuance.
Oh, I see. I agree that there can't be a definitive definition of masculinity. It varies. In our world we associate blue with boys and pink for girls. We might think there's something fundamental about that, but there isn't. Just a couple of centuries ago it was the opposite. Little boys were dressed in pink, girls in blue. So there might be other areas where we're too close to it to see that what we're assigning to masculinity is arbitrary.
I just meant that we usually do know what our own societies dictate. The value I see in applying Jungian ideas to it is that we can be free of analyzing masculinity strictly in the framework of sexism. We could see the beauty in masculine ideals. You don't have to be a Nazi to see that beauty.
True. Then you're right -- we were opaque to one another. That makes a good deal of sense to me. My bad.
But muh materialism! :D
One thing I've been thinking about as this thread rolled along is that I don't feel any desire to be a "real man" as that phrase is used today, but I'm still pretty invested in being "a good man". I don't know how women think about that sort of thing, not quite sure I could articulate what I mean by it, but I'm pretty sure I don't mean the same thing I would mean by "a good person".
That resonate with you?
Any other guys feel that way?
You know how you might find yourself reading Nietzsche's assessments of history and think: "None of this is actually true, but there is valuable truth that comes from just going with it for a while?"
That's what I see going on here. It's not true that women were excluded from power in the earliest states. In fact, in Sumerian cultures, the daughter of the king was one of the central columns of the social order as the high priestess of the religion that underpinned the legitimacy of the government. Also, there was no money. Those first states were what we would understand as socialist (though that didn't exist since there was nothing to compare it to.)
But forget all that. Let's start the clock about 4000 years later, somewhere around 1000 CE in Europe. There aren't any states per se. The king has little power. It's the dukes who own everything and set out laws. The whole scene starts moving toward the rise of nation states when feudalism starts breaking down and starts to be replaced with centers of commerce. What does any of this have to do with patriarchy?
Um. :chin: Really, the only thing is that patriarchy was a feature of old Christian religion. Patriarchy was the norm in the world that religion came from. Strangely enough, early Christian women celebrated Christian values with regard to sexuality. In Rome, women were basically used as baby machines to support the population in the face of a very high mortality rate due to disease and war. Christian women didn't have to be baby machines. They could join a convent and do other interesting things. Some of the women wrote about how wonderful that was.
Northern Europeans didn't have quite as much native sexism as Southerners. Commentators would note that Northern European women had more power and freedom, but Christianity eventually changed that. When the capitalist class started taking over, they broke with the Catholic Church and started making Protestant sects. At this point, where you see female Christian leaders, it's in those Protestant sects that have more freedom to do whatever they want.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I don't think either does use patriarchy for anything. One of the cool things about capitalism is that money is never bigoted. It doesn't matter who you are, if you have cash, you have power. That fact is directly related to the advances we've made in putting bigotry aside.
I'll have to think on it. :smile:
Sure, my simplistic history was *not* talking about the modern nation-state, which comes after and out of feudalism, but central authority. "State" the way anarchist historians talk about it.
No matter, you're much better versed in the history than I am, I think, so my thumbnail is going to be a tough sell.
Quoting frank
That's the official story, certainly, and honestly I tend to agree, but I recognize that this is not the story as some people read it. I'm thinking of anti-colonial theory in particular. From one way of looking at history, the rise of capital is an incident in the history of race. And I'm sure there are people who see it as an incident in the history of patriarchy.
I tend to see capital as indifferent. If chattel slavery's working, fine, but if it becomes a source of inefficiency then it's got to go. In the long run, capital is an acid that will eat through any institution you've got. Roughly how I see it.
Tankie!! I think it's really more like this: a young woman is flawless and full of life. An old woman is shriveled up with one foot in the grave. The capitalism you're seeing is the old woman. You don't see how beautiful she once was. You don't see how much hope she once embodied. She was the way to the glorious free society. She was hijacked by time. It happens to them all. Roughly, that's how I see it.
Interesting question. I think I will be thinking about it for awhile.
I think in some sense I know what you mean. It seems I have a more clearly delineated picture associated with "good man" (or "good woman") than associated with "good person".
I see courage as strongly associated with my "good man", and I see that I have a lesser expectation of courage associated with "good person" and "good woman".
As someone who has watched a lot of chimp documentaries, it makes some sense that I would have thinking biased in such a way.
As someone who likes to think of himself as a feminist, I likely wouldn't have recognized this in myself had you not asked the question.
For the record, no, not at all. Just realistic. I tell my son, who's further left than I am, though perennially at war online with the tankies, that as far as I'm concerned there's an empirical case for capitalism and I point at Why Nations Fail. I think that analysis is pretty sound and capitalism is fundamentally inclusive. That it eats through institutions has often been a good thing. But it'll eat through ones we don't want to, that's all, as it's eaten through American democracy.
I agree. But we're always just one catastrophe away from a fresh start.
Accelerationist!
No!!! I don't wish all that pain and suffering on the world. I just see the silver lining on the possibility.
If such criticisms are expressed with some wisdom and nuance, obviously I would not consider that man-hating.
However, some people seem to slip into these sorts of discussions and take it as a carte blanche to vent their personal grievances with men on the rest of the world. Suddenly gestures of genuine affection become symbols of male oppression, and fatherhood becomes a means of enacting a power fantasy (as per one of the articles that was linked earlier).
Such ideas are vile, destructive and sexist.
In any other context they would be immediately recognized as such, but here they seem to get a pass just because there might be some merit to the wider discussion. And they shouldn't.
When I see things like this going repeatedly unchallenged, I feel the need to speak up.
I'm not sure I would, though it would fit nicely with that thing I posted about risk long ago.
But you hit the other thing I wanted to bring up!
Everyone agrees that masculine and feminine traits and behaviors -- whatever their proximate or ultimate origin -- can manifest in both men and women. Nobody's got dibs on anything.
But it does make a difference who's doing the manifesting. The example everyone agrees on is that women who behave in masculine ways (self-assertive, whatever) are often given a hard time for it.
But I think what I mean by being "a good man" is somewhere around here, it's the specific meaning that attaches to a man manifesting masculine traits. -- I'd almost rather say that it's about the way a man manifests feminine traits as well, but that's not quite it.
A couple reference points that resonate with me, for better or worse. If they're problematic, I stand to learn something.
There's the Raymond Chandler statement I posted earlier in the thread.
There's Jack Shaefer's novel Shane, basis of the movie. I remember reading it and thinking it perfectly nailed a certain American conception of masculinity, the reluctant hero.
In a similar vein, there are these odd pairs of generals in American military history: Grant and Sherman, Bradley and Patton. Sherman and Patton both thought of themselves as warriors in the grand European tradition, flashy seekers after glory. Grant and Bradley were somewhat business-like men who hated war.
I remember as a kid reading, probably in the American Heritage history of World War II, a story, possibly apocryphal, that German troops were a little unnerved the first time they faced Americans. They had fought the British, and the British, heirs to a grand military tradition the Germans could understand, sang as they entered battle. But these Americans were silent, grim. Americans weren't there for glory, but to do the job and get back home.
And what connects Chandler to this chitchat about war is that a good man is willing even to do unpleasant things if they must be done, and does them in part so that no one else has to. Private investigation is a nasty job, but one that needs doing and Philip Marlowe does it nobly, so far as that can be done. Shane wants never to pick up a gun again, having lived by one in the past and not happy about it, but someone has to face the bad guy and he's the only one who can. He steps up, and does what's necessary, but not for glory, and even though it costs him.
There's plenty more, these are just some things I know made an impression on me. They all involve a certain kind of resolve that others can depend on.
The other side is that I think a good man shows restraint as well, and doesn't use his strength -- within which I'd include privilege, being a man in a society where men have power and status -- recklessly or out of self interest. Chandler captures a lot of that too -- particularly in the sentence I thought would raise some eyebrows:
Quoting Raymond Chandler
The thing is, that's about power and status, rather than sex. The woman of higher station than him would have to be "seduced". The virgin is presumably young and unworldly and he would be "taking advantage". Taking advantage of his position in any sphere is not something a good man does. He doesn't lord it over his employees, doesn't smack his kids, doesn't take advantage of vulnerable young women. (There are probably no good men in The Iliad, by this definition.) This is all in the "with great power comes great responsibility" vein.
There's plenty more to say, but there's something anyway.
:up:
I loved the Chandler quote the first time I saw it, as well as reading it again just now.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yeah, they are given a hard time for it, but I don't see confident, competent, and assertive women as unfeminine. I have a bad habit of falling in love with them.
"War is hell." William T. Sherman
The silent grim rugged brave tough American soldier -- definitely an American heritage theme--the Greatest Generation, etc.
IRON GUTS -- no irritable bowel syndrome for these men!
You're probably right. It's my childhood reading of history I'm referencing.
I withdraw aspersions I cast in the direction of Sherman.
Was Patton also not the jackass I took him for? Brilliant warrior, sure, but a jackass.
You understand, right, that it doesn't matter if the idea was factually accurate? It's how Americans wanted to think of themselves, and how I learned to think of the American ideal of manhood. You didn't enjoy war or seek glory; it was something you did if you had to. Maybe that was propaganda, to distract from whether you had to. Also doesn't matter.
A famous Patton quote:
Quite sensible, really.
But the slapping is not apocryphal.
Allied troops, including Americans, had a fairly high rate of desertion during WWII in the European theater. There was practically no desertion in the pacific theater. What was the difference? Were the American soldiers in the Pacific braver, gutsier, tougher than their brothers in Europe?
No. In Europe, there was some place to go after you walked away from the battle. In the pacific, the battles were mostly on islands, and if you wanted to leave -- well, it was a VERY LONG swim.
That's OK, I'm don't hold any stock in W. T. Sherman & Company.
It was the sort of bullying that has no place in my idea of being a good man.
Well. That set the cat among the pigeons...
I hope it's not rude to lump you both into the same answer, but you touch on similar themes.
Firstly, there's a missed point to address. The point I was trying to make (from just before that 'poverty porn') is that there's a distinction - missed in Mirren's comments and woefully overlooked in today's identity politics - between the form of oppression and the victims of oppression. If I invented a tool of oppression (say a new police weapon) which targeted only the tall, it would oppress only the tall. Tallness would be a risk factor. But that would not mean that if you are tall, you are oppressed. It just means that it's one of the risk factors. And we don't need a weak proxy for who is oppressed (or at risk of it). The point of the poverty porn was to show that we can see who is oppressed - they're oppressed. There's no need to 'proxy it out' to 'women', or 'blacks' or 'trans-folk', or any other group because the effects of oppression are directly measurable themselves, and if they aren't then they're just not that important right now.
To tackle the FGM example given. We know the victims of FGM, they've been violently mutilated, we don't need the proxy identifier of saying they're 'women'. They're {the violently mutilated}, it's already a group directly the victim of a tool of oppression. Yes only women are at risk from that tool, but that has no bearing on Helen Mirren, who definitely isn't, her being a women doesn't change that. She's not at risk from that kind of oppression because she's rich and socially well-placed.
We don't need Helen Mirren to be 'slightly-oppressed' because she shares a chromosome arrangement with victims of FGM, and this is important, because the next most oppressed group to the poor victim of FGM is probably the fucking monster who just carried it out, not some wealthy actress who happens to also have ovaries.
Secondly, there's the whole space-on-the-front-page question. I get that there's some intersectionality with these issues - patriarchy, racism, capitalism - but intersectionality is not what Mirren is promoting (I'm using her here as an example, I don't want to focus too heavily on the details), there's no "...and this is what fuels the oppression of the working class" at the end. Gods, she'd have to swallow a hell of a bitter pill to add that.
No, it's quite the opposite. It's a way of avoiding talk of class oppression by looking for other groups of which the ruling classes can be members and so exculpate themselves. Mirren gets to wax lyrical in her £10,000 dress without being pelted with eggs because she's seen first and foremost as a woman, not as a bourgeois elite. That's not an accident. Keep the focus on traits which the ruling class can share and so keep the focus off them.
Women's rights have made amazing progress, we have equality enshrined in some quite powerful laws. Trans activism only really took off a few years ago and already there are laws protecting that group, and social pressure among at least the liberal classes is enormous to accommodate.
Yet...The gap between rich and poor is wider than it's ever been, we've just seen the largest transfer of wealth ever, and 50 million children are still at risk of starvation in parts of Africa.
If the two issues are so intersectional - where's the progress? Doesn't this all just smack of 'trickle-down' economics? "Oh, all this first-world whinging will eventually help out the poor via some tangential proxy (gender, skin colour, sexuality...), just give it time...". We don't need a tangential proxy, nor do we need to tackle the problem sideways by dealing with sexism, racism, or transphobia. We can tackle the problem head on.
The kid in my poverty porn was mining cobalt for smartphone batteries. This phone doesn't use them. It's not complicated, we just need to stop buying products which use conflict minerals. But to do that, the possibly needs to plastered on every front page until it's done, and the social approbation currently reserved for using the wrong pronoun needs to be applied to buying a new iPhone [hide="Reveal"]I'm using iPhone rhetorically here, they've actually made some progress on conflict minerals recently, but waaay too slowly for their enormous fortunes[/hide].. And so on...
But Helen Mirren has an iPhone, and no one cares.
Turns out you do!
No I didn't!
I like the point about proxy victims. That's similar to points you've made before about how to understand the statistics of risk, stuff that's second nature to you but that I have to think through. This was very clear.
Not sure I buy the point about the elite trying to distract us from the real issues. I mean, of course that's a real thing, in many cases well organized and funded -- but shouldn't you apply the same statistical approach to whether Helen Mirren's mouthing off is necessarily part of such a scheme?
Maybe you see that a little differently, her speech as part of a regime of distraction by its effect, regardless of her personal status as co-conspirator. I'll leave that for you to sort out.
Appreciate your positive contribution. Like you, I don't know much about feminist philosophy. Haven't really been all that interested until @Moliere started this discussion. In the last 18 days, I have read and reflected on posts and useful links before attempting my own replies. Still have a lot of questions...and still to catch up on those linked to by e.g. @fdrake.
I don't know that I'd even paid attention to 'public feminism'.
What do you include in that category? Youtube videos ? Open articles by academic feminist philosophers or radical activists...? They can address or highlight problems or issues related to gender but don't necessarily solve them. Some feminists might be pragmatic, but not all are Pragmatists.
With regards to the big P of Pragmatism (philosophy) - I don't know as much as I would like.
Quoting what is pragmatism?warwick.ac.uk
I don't think that feminists and pragmatists are necessary partners.
However, a combination sounds like something I want to explore further.
This post was addressed to @fdrake as a complaint against 'some people' and their 'vile, destructive and sexist' ideas. Apparently, they have been given a 'pass' which they shouldn't have.
I am confident that @fdrake will respond to this in his usual measured way.
If any such people and ideas are found, then action will be taken.
But, as they say, "If the shoe fits..."
Yes, you're right. See our other conversation about rhetoric! Also about the way in which we can't not make judgments about motive, we can't suspend judgment here because we have to act in one way or another and that requires us to make a judgement one way or the other. I reckon Helen Mirren will probably shrug it off, I expect her $18 million mansion will help soften the blow of being unwittingly drawn as a caricature in my sketch of the bourgeois.
(as you say - fully signed up tankie, got the t-shirt and all)
All good, it's how you manage bees after punching a beehive.
Quoting Isaac
I don't think we're avoiding (in thread) talk of class oppression, it's just not the central concern here. If you're willing to accept that some kind of feminist analysis is helpful, especially along intersectional/postcolonial lines, and that broadly speaking anti-patriarchy politics is doing Good Things (tm), then there's room to talk about what's to be done. If you're on the "we should be concerned about nothing but international class based geo-politics" boat, that is fair enough. It is a respectable boat. There's another boat, which is the "international class based geo politics would be swell, and so would emancipatory politics in political north countries"... I assume you are also in that boat.
Quoting Isaac
That's not the framing I prefer. Do the "make poor people less poor" thing. But there's no guarantee you do change cultural norms in a desired way by making people less poor.
As for the points about hypothetical people stealing oppression points through hypothetical comparisons of injustices - I mean, some people do that. I think in practice people who just chatter about feminism do it. In another context it could easily be construed that I'm claiming current oppression of women in non-genital-mutilating-countries on the basis of some countries being genital-mutilating-countries. But I'm not doing that.
I'm using that to point out that there's a type of social concept which is required to understand and work on these things. Like a demographic. Trying to understand why people act the way they do. As men and women. Around relationships, cohabitation, sex and all that. There're problems. And they're not all addressed by throwing money at them.
If those problems are simultaneously interpersonal and systemic - which they seem to be - then you end up looking at norms and what enables people to act in accordance with them. That's the space this discussion operates in.
Then there's a sub discussion of masculinity in that - how are men expected to behave interpersonally, what problems does this cause, what advantages does it have, what disadvantages does it have - and so on. I also gave the example of a relational problematic in it, of domestic abuse. All of these things are going to tie together in one big normative-demographic clusterfuck.
Ultimately, I think your comments serve as an attempt to flip the table and play a new game. How would you flip the table and play the old one?
Enough already. This is becoming tedious. As such, I will no longer be responding to your comments.
Aye. There's a fine line between tarring proponents of these criticisms with this brush and being frustrated at how people articulate this stuff in general, too. I'm not going to pretend there are just a few "bad apples" who espouse things in this manner, but I will say that everyone who's sick of them tends to keep quiet for obvious reasons. And people are pretty sick of them.
In a similar vein, if you come in with the claim that what those kind of people are espousing is misandry, you end up behaving like one of their tropes. Entitled fucker unwilling to reflect on their position in the place of things. Which is a convenient equilibrium for both sides; you just have to pick your flavour of in-group shibboleth, edgy transgression (with an alleged core of prejudice) or righteous indignation (with an alleged core of insincerity).
Admittedly if you choose neither you end up looking like a wokescold to some and a bigot to others!
I don't care if people resent me for calling out their bullshit.
So long as you don't resent them for doing the same, eh?
One persons deeply held conviction, is often another persons exemplar of total bullshit.
Perhaps Ocean Colour Scene had a point when they sang; There's no profit in peace.
The Romans celebrated the story of a Roman farmer who, when discovering that marauders were attacking, put on his armor, went and kicked ass, and was back behind the plow in like 20 days. I think it's the same thing you're talking about: the Roman word for it was "gravitas." It means don't be a loud mouth jerk.
This is something I treasure, if you search for this poem, you'll come across versions that have it as "The Woman in the Arena." It's just as touching and meaningful. It's definitely something human, but we tend to associate it with masculinity.
I'm not sure what it means, exactly. I'm not sure what a feminist-pragmatist or a pragmatist-feminist might be. I know of a pragmatist I admire who is a woman. She's Susan Haack, a valiant defender of pragmatism from the vagaries of such as Rorty, who thinks Dewey was a postmodernist before postmodernism became popular. I don't know if she qualifies as a feminist.
Dewey felt that philosophy, and specifically the process of inquiry as he described it, should be applied to social problems. If that's what feminists do, I suppose that has an association with pragmatism.
For me, the word "arena" refers to the arena where the Roman ludi took place. Combat by gladiators or the killing of wild beasts for the entertainment of the public. The "man in the arena" is properly a slave engaging in blood sports to amuse others, not the romantic hero portrayed by Roosevelt. TR certainly killed his share of wild beasts for his own amusement, of course, but if he thought of himself as "the man in the arena" I wonder if he understood what it implied.
Always been an important word to me, yes.
The nasty version of "Man in the Arena" is the quote from Steinbeck: "Critics are like eunuchs gathered around the marriage bed to watch a whole man perform the act of creation." Jesus.
The one change I would make to The Man in the Arena is that I don't see any need to denigrate the weak and the timid. I get the sentiment, and I've tried to teach my kids, both the boys and the girls, that life ought to be an adventure. But there's no call to point out when anyone stumbles, whether he's strong or weak. You see what I mean? It's bad for the soul.
I agree. You never know what battles the people around you are fighting. I use that poem to silence the old internal critic.
Every story has two sides.
Yeah, contrary to the story I tell over in the intuition thread, every time I see someone driving aggressively I try to tell myself they're rushing somewhere for an emergency. I'm not always convinced by my argument, but I do it all the same.
Thanks for the introduction to Susan Haack. After reading an in-depth and lengthy interview of Susan Haack by Richard Carrier (2012) I can see why you would admire her and her work. I've just picked a few bits out:
Three papers she wrote involved a challenging look at her own career 'in uncomfortable ways' and speaking candidly.
1. The Best Man for the Job may be a Woman (1998), - her reflections on 'preferential hiring of women in our profession,' which apparently was only reviewed, appreciated and challenged a decade later.
Nobody wanted to touch it.
2. Preposterism and Its Consequences (1996), on her negative views of the culture of grants-and-research-projects.
3. Out of Step (2011) - on the erosion of academic ethics.
According to Haack, her writing represented 'something of the power of thinking things through and the value of plain speech.'
During the interview, she replies to questions as to the 'difficulties and annoyances' faced as a woman seeking an academic position and in her life of philosophy. Similar to other stories: 'the chairman opened the proceedings by assuring me that he had nothing against the employment of married women, he thought they might be quite good for the women students. I told himvamping it up just a littlethat actually I hoped to be good for the men (too). And that, naturally, was that.'
Haack also clear that any problems might not have arisen because she was female but because of her other characteristics:
Quoting Interview with Susan Haack - Richard Carrier blogs
Re the question of whether or no Haack was/is a feminist. Apparently, there was an incident when a (female) faculty member at another university, 'disapproving of my old-fashioned style of feminism', had encouraged graduate students to stay away from her lectures.
I get the impression that she would not label herself a feminist as such but instead puts certain principles into practice. A holistic perspective.
She expresses unease about the questioner's focus on getting more women into the profession of philosophy.
The interview is fascinating and cutting; delving into questions of what (real) philosophy is, atheism, criticisms of fragmentation and pretentious, self-important 'worldviews'.
I realise that this is getting away from the thread topic and my question re feminist pragmatists.
So, here's one BTL comment I found interesting. Shame no reply from Haack:
For sure, an analysis of the tools of oppression is going to be incomplete without examining patriarchy, but that doesn't always cash out well into anti-patriarchy politics doing good things, and I think the reason for that is that analysis can be quite compartmentalised, but politics can't be. Politics gets nowhere if it just swaps around who has the power, or just re-arranges the deckchairs of the institutions. So it has to be more holistic than the analysis that might inform it. Identity politics pushes in the opposite direction, seeks to divide rather than unify, so the politics is often intergroup, not class struggle (see terfs vs trans, the tension between anti-islamophobia and antisemitism), a political position has to hold power to account from a position of equal power for it to work. Theirs comes from capital; ours comes from solidarity. That's how it's always been for me. Recognising the patriarchy as a tool of oppression helps that by giving us a target. Recognising 'women' as the victims of oppression doesn't help. It sets up divisions and refocuses the fight on to reparation-based objectives, not structural ones.
Quoting fdrake
That makes a lot of sense. I wouldn't want to be read as a 'throw money at it' type. I see the problems, even of poverty, as structural not distributive.
Where I'm not completely sold is in the move from the value of identifying structural problems themselves, to the value of identifying some statistical cluster of such problems.
FGM is a structural problem of its own. It's to do with culture, religion, colonialism, gender inequality, even racial oppression and, yes, class, get a walk-on part...
Abortion rights are also a multifaceted structural problem at the intersection of religion, reproductive rights, inheritance (capitalism), gender inequality, poverty, class (again)...
One of the crossover points is that they both affect only women and both have patriarchal power structures as one of the causal factors. Other than taxonomy, I can't see much gain in focusing on that happenstance.
Sure, if we tackle patriarchal structures and, say, religious power structures, we'd make some progress on both FGM and abortion rights. But if we tackled FGM and abortion rights we'd make some progress on both FGM and abortion too. I don't see what's gained by the intersectional approach over just tackling each issue as it is.
To be clear, I'm not saying that awareness of the intersection is pointless, but I don't see much value in it politically, and I see a lot of potential harms in terms of damaging solidarity.
Quoting fdrake
I suppose I'd try to make the argument that nothing here is not useful academically. The points you raise about masculine expectations, for example, could certainly inform any strategy fighting injustices of which they were contributory factors. But I just don't think that translates well to success via a political campaign like "Hey, men! Buck up, us women have had enough". Campaigns need to build solidarity, not break it down.
There's a book of hers I have but haven't yet begun reading: Putting Philosophy to Work: Inquiry and its Place in Culture. It looks good. It may include some of the essays you mention.
A friend just returned from Kenya. He said the Chinese come in and everyone celebrates the hope that they're going to employ Kenyans. Nobody is employed, though. The work is done by unpaid prisoners and the people in the government get a little richer.
I don't see how poo pooing the struggle of some women somewhere is helping that or anything else really.
Trying to see if there's any relevant interactions between the issues that present unique challenges. Eg: Glasgow knife crime, went down a lot through police intervention in the 2010s. Community education, giving people training and jobs, giving people places to go, counselling, more investment in social workers. Public health stuff. Great! Big impact. But on who? It didn't work as well for the people most at risk - poor people in the most deprived areas with domestic issues. That's a tough nut to crack. Worth thinking about that subdemographic works differently than the broader demographic.
Which is where something like an intersectional approach would be necessary? As in, looking at interlocking systems of oppression effecting people marginalised in more than one way.
Maybe that's a weak version of intersectionality though, I'm claiming that some of the time it makes sense to try it for some problems, rather than it ought to be the primary viewpoint used for formulating those problems.
Though I do imagine the majority of the time people use the word it's just lip service. Or academic paper farming. I've never seen a political act driven by an intersectional theory in the abstract. Just people working on issues in the most local fashion they can. Or designing institutional rules that allow marginalised groups to represent themselves better.
Just to say that when you first used the word ' intersectionality' I didn't know what it meant.
I found this and emailed the link to myself for later perusal. I share it here now. Lest I forget.
https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/5/20/18542843/intersectionality-conservatism-law-race-gender-discrimination
Discrimination at SEP, Feminist Perspectives on Power at SEP. Both of them have intersectionality subsections.
Oh, thanks for that quick reply and links. SEP always good. :up: :smile:
Quoting ssu
For me nothing is left out, because I don't think the masculine or the feminine are defined by traits. I've been saying "the expression of traits" -- or a way of expression.
Quoting Tzeentch
In an attempt to bring you back, I agree with you here -- though I'll note that the discussion started as masculinity so it's worth noting the darker side, even if that's not my focus. I don't think most men are on some dark path! (obviously I'm a Feminist, but I hope to give a demonstration that this doesn't mean I hate my own masculinity, or masculine gender identities)
Especially with respect to boys and young men. One of the reasons I think it's important for men to talk about masculinity is that currently there are many people who aren't getting positive messages about the masculine, or themselves, and in fact there are positive aspects of one's masculine identity. It's important to be who you are, in my opinion, and growing men don't have a lot to look up to in this world.
Quoting Baden
I've been going back through the thread and this is a gem.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Raymond Chandler, and the whole hard boiled detective genre really, is a writer who knew how to appeal to men.
I love the stuff.
Did you ever see the first Sin City? I'd say that's a masculine movie, if you look at the male protagonist as a hero.
Quoting frank
Can you or do you care to say more on this kind of archetype?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Oh yeah. How else to explain what amounts to a thirst for justice?
Quoting wonderer1
I agree, given that expression, rather than traits, is what makes a gender. Care to say more?
Quoting Isaac
Yup.
I'm no longer active, but these are some thoughts attempting to build solidarity across common division lines.
Sure. A significant element of my thinking is related to evolutionary psychology, and I see it as naive to think that humans are born blank slates. I know there is a tendency to antipathy towards evolutionary psychology among humanities types, so I won't be surprised if there are negative reactions to this sort of thinking from some on TPF, but this is where the evidence strongly points.
Having looked into the social behavior of chimpanzees a bit, I see us as sharing similar social impulses, human behavior is not determined by instincts to the same degree as is the behavior of chimps. Furthermore, homo sapiens is a sexually dimorphic species and it is unrealistic to think that human sexual dimorphism doesn't effect our mentality as well as our physicality.
An aspect of this is that I would expect the courage of women to tend to show up most strongly in defense of their offspring (and perhaps children in general). I think the trope of the human 'mama bear' fits well with this. Men I would expect to be more inclined to band together with other men, in defense of the whole social group.
The sexual dimorphism in humans (and chimps) is not as clear as in the case of gorillas. So like not all men are taller than all women, it's unsurprising from an evolutionary psychology perspective that the mental characteristics of men and women show a degree of overlap. So as I said, "*tend* to manifest differently".
BTW, there is a four part documentary available on Netflix called Chimp Empire. It focuses on a band of chimps that shows typical sexual dimorphism of behavior. However, one of the neighboring bands of chimps is a particularly small band, and the females and males of this other group go on raids together. So it seems that even chimps show a degree of flexibility when it comes to such aspects of behavior. But see https://news.yale.edu/2023/06/08/conflicted-opinion-yale-chimpanzee-expert-weighs-chimp-empire.
Looking at, sure. I'm trying (but clearly not doing a good job) to draw distinctions between the data which informs a strategy, and the strategy itself. The risk factors for oppression, and the actual groups oppressed.
So yes, look at interlocking systems of oppression affecting the marginalised. See that race and gender (masculine expectation this time), and are drivers of knife crime but then, design a strategy using that information to tackle knife crime. Not to to tackle racism (which inevitability alienates the white working class), or tackle masculinity (which would alienate females caught up in gangs), or tackle any of the other single issues. If knife crime is truly intersectional, then it will only be solved as an issue. The victims aren't blacks, or men, they're anyone caught up in gang culture. We don't need proxies to identify them because we have access to the real thing, the actual measure of victim-hood.
The sort of target I took my initial swipe at (the Helen Mirren quote, was the (now near ubiquitous) generic lumpen attack on the specific oppression happening to affect a specific group (and the guilt/victim-hood appropriated by association). Mirren's target was 'men' (not the people who did the property theft, the people who do the circumcision, the people who abuse, etc...) and her victims were 'women' (not the people who had their property stolen, the people who had been circumcised, the people who had been abused, etc..) - it's "Women have had to suffer this...!" not "People have had to suffer this and one of the causal factors (among many) is patriarchal structures..."
To be more concrete, I'll try to use your example of knife crime (thou 'victim' here is a difficult one to define - I'm going to assume it's both attackers and the attacked who are 'victims' of knife culture). So a good thing to do, something I think capable of achieving Good Things, might be to look at how race and racism play a part in that (say community police techniques). It would be helpful to any strategy to know that role. A bad thing to do would be for some black celebrity, whose closest brush with a knife came from slicing the porchetta, to start talking about the problems 'the black community' have to face regarding knife crime, for campaign to be launched about how 'black youth' is being drawn into knife crime... etc (the equivalent of both have happened, this isn't hypothetical). Those two responses may arise from a generally positive academic investigation, but they themselves as political acts are toxic. Not only do they alienate other victim groups in knife crime by underplaying their stories, but they shift focus from where it should be, since most involved in the campaign (and certainly the black celebrity) are totally complicit in the other factors driving knife crime (such as poverty), and far from feeling guilty about their role, they get to feel, not only exculpated, but a little bit of reflected victim-hood ("I'm black too, so...").
I guess a more solid way to to look at it would be to say if you're going to take an intersectional approach, then don't abuse it to exculpate whichever group you don't happen to be investigating, use it include more groups in the blame. If both poverty and race turn out to be involved then that means the black celebrity needs to be apologising (for his role in perpetuating poverty) as much as chastising others (for their implicit racism). That - coming from Helen Mirren - would have impressed me. "I can feel something of the plight of disenfranchised women, having suffered a small part of that myself, but I'm as much a perpetrator of economic disenfranchisement because of my wealth, so sorry about that, I'll donate more to charity in future...".
How many of these 'big speeches' and identity-based campaigns are about the campaigners themselves? How many admit their own part in the intersectional factors? I'm willing to be proven wrong, but it's difficult in the absolutely black-and-white rhetoric employed, not to see them as nothing but attempts to shift blame. Rich westerners trying to focus blame on literally anyone but themselves so they don't have to feel guilty about the fact that their new trainers have been made by 11 year-olds in squalor and they just fucking bought them anyway.
Fortunate then that your lack of acumen isn't my problem.
As I've posted before, I think competition is much better understood as a result of the dynamics of power, something which all living beings are subjected to as a result of a basic drive for survival.
Why is it so important that this human flaw be labeled as 'masculine'?
OK, I read about 'intersectionality' and thought I had a grasp. However, this moving 18 min video is powerful in its presentation and its graphics. Understanding and awareness increased by :100:
A TED talk - The urgency of intersectionality | Kimberlé Crenshaw
This seems to be quite a narrow expectation of where 'courage' shows up. Especially, if we are talking about increasing social awareness of gender issues and the like. Of course, people will look to their own first and foremost. Survival of the fittest comes into it.
However, many women and men do not have or even desire offspring. Also, it's difficult to band together to deal with holistic and systemic structural inequalities and problems. Important issues perhaps not even recognised as undermining people's circumstances and abilities to progress. To fitness and wellbeing.
It takes courage to stand up for change. But even then, when a 'movement' [*] like #MeToo starts up, it can exclude significant others. The media tend to focus on prominent white women. Fair enough if it draws immediate attention but not good enough for those women who stand up but whose voices are unheard.
Quoting The #MeToo Movement: Intersectionality - Glasgow Women's Library
[*]
Quoting What has #MeToo actually changed? - BBC News
Regarding Hollywood's power structure:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-44045291
Another relevant question to consider
#MeToo or #MenToo?
What are the implications of #MeToo for understanding current expressions of backlash and masculinity politics?
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10608265211035794
Quoting The #MeToo
The list can indeed go on. So the question is, why doesn't it? Are there no oppressed men? Why does the list feel incomplete when it only contains the burdens of white women, but somehow complete once it's exhausted 'women' as a group? Once it's included intersections of race, class, sexuality and ability with women, we're apparently done with the list?
No. So we expand it out, to include men of colour, working class men, trans men, disabled men.
But then not all in these groups are oppressed, otherwise our list is just 'everyone on the planet' (the concatenation of those lists includes all people). So we say we're talking about oppressed women of colour, oppressed working class women, oppressed trans women, oppressed disabled women plus oppressed men of colour, oppressed working class men, oppressed trans men, oppressed disabled men.
That's a big group if we are to, as the author implores...
Quoting The #MeToo
So all we've done with our efforts to expand out our intersectionality, is rediscovered that the true common thread here is oppression - not gender, not race, not sexuality, not ability, not even class, but the mere act of oppression, the exercise of power over another to remove their opportunities or freedoms.
That last part is crucial. "...to remove their opportunities or freedoms". It means that victims of oppression will have neither in relation to non-victims. It means that victims of oppression are not hard to spot, they don't need proxy identifiers, they're the ones with less opportunity and freedom than most. Does that describe Helen Mirren? Someone who has less opportunity and freedom than most? Does that describe any of the Hollywood actresses in #MeToo? Does that describe, in fact, anyone living in the wealth and comfort of the western world's middle classes? People who have less freedom and opportunity than most? I don't see how anyone can honestly say it does.
What's interesting about that, from the point of view of the OP is that it relates to what said earlier. If we're not using egalitarian assessments as a guide, then it's a matter of competition. If Helen Mirren is 'oppressed' simply because she has less freedom and opportunity as a rich white woman than a rich white man would, then how is that not the exact base competitive move being associated with masculinity. How is it not just "I want what he's got"?
If she was genuinely concerned about the unequal distribution of 'freedom and opportunity' across the globe - intersectionally - then she could, with the stroke of pen on checkbook, do more to equal things out than any speech could. But she wants to keep all of her currently accumulated 'freedom and opportunity' but just wants, in addition, the extra freedom and opportunity that her rich white male counterparts enjoy. That's not an egalitarian move, it's a competitive one.
They show up in the stories we tell. In our world they'll be in formulaic movies. In the ancient world there would be a central epic tale in which various divinities would influence events, some male and some female.
Christianity is kind of odd in that the central figure doesn't really demonstrate characteristics we'd think of a masculine. Jesus is a pacifist. He's compassionate. He's a son, not a father. Maybe he represented some kind of shift? Not sure.
As I said, "An aspect of this..." I was pointing out one factor (or more accurately complex of factors) out of a great many factors, that I would expect to play a role in the courage of people manifesting differently. If you want to look at an illustration of other factors see here.
Given how common lack of recognition that we are all social primates is, I see it as a significant aspect of increasing social awareness of gender issues.
Do you think that we humans having more accurate understanding of what we are is likely to improve social awareness generally?
I agree, but consider the "muscular christianity" movement in Victorian England and beyond. Thomas Hughes, the author of Tom Brown's School Days, is credited with popularizing it. Muscular Christianity is characterized by "manliness" and "masculinity of character." Team sports figure in its development; scouting (as in boy scouts) with its emphasis on vigor and health became popular around the same time. God made men to be manly, as that is necessary to subdue the earth and protect women and the weak, you see. TR was a big fan of it, in fact.
Tom Brown's School Days at least served to inspire the marvelous Flashman series of novels by George MacDonald Frasier (Flashman was the villainous cheater and bully who was the chief opponent of the heroic Tom Brown).
It's amazing what purposes Christianity can be made to serve.
Interesting. I wasn't aware of that stuff. It reminds me of the shift in fashion associated with Beau Brummel. Rich men stopped wearing wigs, make-up, and ornate dress. They adopted the appearance we now think of as masculine.
TR's interest in being physically fit is related to the fact that he had severe asthma as a child. Childhood asthma is still potentially lethal, and since it's often exercise induced, it can be debilitating. I think for TR, when he went overboard sleeping out on the range with cowboys and spending extended periods of time out in the wilderness alone, he was proving to himself that he wasn't weak.
So later, when he sent federal troops to protect striking workers from physical abuse at the hands of their employers, he was manifesting pure optimism. Can you tell I'm a fan?
Don't we worry, we fixed that.
He's an interesting man and significant figure in U.S. History (he brought the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius along with him on his trip along the Amazon, by the way, which I think impressive). But I find his daughter Alice even more interesting.
We need to analyse the disparities in political representation, media representation, wealth equality, representation in the workplace, disparities in legal outcomes and so on. Our cultures themselves have naturally been impacted by these systems and their disparities, so we need to look at concepts of masculinity/feminity, and the influence could have spread anywhere.
The trickle-down effect and the sexist nature of our systems and culture mean, along with things such as unconscious biases, that it's no longer required to explain disparities with explanations of discrimination against women, or the relatively defunct explicit view of male superiority of men over women.
Today, what does "sexist" mean? What is a "sexist" culture? What is being referred to? What is the logic that ties it together? There isn't any.
Just a list of disparities, whoever has the will is free to interpret them as they wish. "Oppression"... what's that? A list of disparities, cause irrelevant, speculation optional. What is "patriarchy"? Ah, right, another list of disparities.
How asinine one would be, to treat with seriousness the terms of sexism, oppression or patriarchy as described by feminists. The terms are used to, without qualification, list disparities and make attempts at explanations for their existence. Use reductionist narratives or legitimate arguments, anything goes.
Who could ever support "oppression"? Who would ever support sexism? Nobody can. Therefore, these terms, are literal condemnations, with little to no indication given as to why or what is being condemned. Many of the explanations are so insipid, it's hard to believe. Suppose that's what happens when terms refer to little more than something being undesirable.
How funny it is to watch a culture condemn sexism, while also defining sexism by what they condemn, it's such a farce. Why condemn disparities? What's the philosophy for why they shouldn't exist? The goal is so unbelievably obscured, but nobody cares, it's amazing, everyone's just "Down with the patriarchy!!".
There's a female pediatric intensivist I know of. Word is that when she has a proposal to make, she hands it to a particular male surgeon and asks him to make it. She's learned that the hospital establishment will listen to him. They won't listen to her. It's sexism. I don't know if her pay is any less than a male doing the same thing. I kind of doubt she's hurting for money, though. Point is, there's more to it than income disparity.
Why do you think we particularly focus on income disparity?
:up:
Good reflections and arguments, Isaac. At least from my vantage. I'm glad to have something meatier to think through.
A measurement isn't always a good measurement, and it's particularly difficult to tease out what a good measurement is with respect to oppression because history is not repeatable in the same way that other experiments are. "Oppression" has no units, after all. It's a story. Further I'd say your measurements are good at assessing an individual's circumstances, but that the individual isn't always an appropriate place for understanding group dynamics -- so the metrics of oppression you list won't capture all of what a group faces. It's a part of the story, and important to check up on because hey maybe one day the world really will be different and our metrics will display that, but not the whole. Politics isn't done with stats as much as it's done with relationships and stories.
I think that's a pretty common point of disagreement that's missed. What these political philosophies are doing are not enforcements of a law or a principle for individuals, nor laying out some universal truth, but rather binding people together in spite of differences that seem important. Intersectionality isn't a scientific law as much as it is an organizer's tool which has already been proven. Through the history of social movements the more successful ones are usually ones that can break through group barriers: this is as true in labor as other social movements. When sexism or race can be overcome in the workplace then people can find it in themselves to bind together -- or, on the flip side, if sexism or race are not overcome then it's pretty easy to divide and conquer. And these social phenomena are so common that anyone actually organizing had better be aware of their patterns or they'll fail -- these structures are so common that even going into organizing with an open mind towards nominalism you'll wonder just why you're seeing the same patterns so often. They aren't group-wide, mind. But noticeable, and effective at disrupting anyone trying to pull a group together.
If governments acted in accord with ethical principle then it would make much more sense to look at international disparity. But governments, like people, don't have that perspective really. We are generally much more short-sighted than that. What people do care about are usually a little more homely -- stability for self and children, access to material goods, community respect and a place in the world. And that changes with our social systems such that a USian will be attached to much more material wealth as a "base line" than the poorest of the earth.
Which isn't an excuse on the ethical front -- but this is politics, and to be effective you have to understand what people really care about. The international poor just isn't that big of a rallying cry, I'd hazard that's because in our particular social system we've erected a public/private property distinction. While it's certainly true that if Helen Mirren cared about the plight of the poor she'd act differently, the fact is that not only does she not care -- most human beings don't either, but not because we're callous, but because this is how we're trained to be with our private money, and people really believe they "earned" it. (EDIT: Or, perhaps it'd be better to call it a learned callousness -- we don't perceive ourselves as callous, though I think what I've said describes a callous attitude towards others in an "objective" sense)
Now I don't think I'll ever see the likes of the wealthy and published get down into the political truth of things. But I know that there's others who see that story and like it, and it's not because there aren't people worse off -- most people, if pressed, will fess up to that.
But what people care about is themselves and theirs, and not some kind of universal ethic or geopolitics, for the most part. At least insofar that they have yet to realize that, indeed, we're all interdependent upon one another and what nations do effects what our families do.
In a big sense people will care about others they don't know, but if we're talking about what we do -- it's just a bit too far out there for most of us to reach for.
And on the international stage I'd say that's too far out of grasp for anyone to reach for. We're still basically tribal at this point, but with bigger weapons and better information technology. The only way to even have a hope of being able to control something as large as the world economy such that global disparity could be addressed is going to take something huge -- because no one really knows how to do it. No one is in charge at all, at this point, though NATO and the CIS and China are all vying for that position.
Those organizations are primarily run by men.
So on the other hand I'd say that a discussion of gender isn't sideways to the issues, but is digging at one of the many causal reasons the world is as it is now. Patriarchy -- the rule of men -- is still quite common. And healthier gender identities -- ones not obsessed with maintaining power at home or at work -- will undermine that.
The part where I'll come closer to what you say is that I agree replacing the face with a woman doing the same thing is basically a non-starter. That's patriarchy, but now a woman is doing it. It reminds me of the cartoon where the brown people celebrated a woman president because they were finally being drone-bombed in an equal world.
That's definitely a tactic of governments to appease intersectional approaches while maintaining control.
But the point of intersectionality is to build something together -- which in turn requires others to hear the grievances of others in the group.
Here, of course, we're doing philosophy and exploring ideas. So it's a bit difficult to get the notion across since it's not doing the rational thing of laying out evidence to support or deny a conclusion.
But that's politics. It's not science.
(EDIT: Or, at least, when I'm doing intersectional approaches I'm not doing science. I'm drawing on my organizer experience in addition to some philosophy -- others do it different, of course, but this is my approach)
Yeah, not sure why you interpreted "disparity" as "income disparity" but any disparity in outcomes would suffice, proven or perceived.
I think that Feminism counts as a serious body of thought that's not just doing politics -- but it is doing philosophy, rather than science. I'm not sure what a feminist science would look like other than pushing out the patriarchal forms and reflections that still reside there (especially in the physical sciences)
So what's the problem?
A term describing disparities shouldn't have a moral stigma, disparities are only immoral if they're wrong or unfair. If sexism is just disparities, what does it mean to be sexist? And isn't it a problem to have a term that describes disparities, which in all the same contexts describes the reason for those disparities being due to a bias against the competence of women?
I don't think anyone defines sexism as a set of disparities, do they? Sexism is a kind of prejudice. Disparities are the concrete outworking of historic and present day sexism. We focus on disparity because it's something we can and do address through legislation. We can't legislate how people think and feel, and we don't need to.
Quoting frank
Quoting frank
You took a disparity in outcomes and called it sexism. Which is pretty standard.
Disparities are not "concrete outworkings of historic and present-day sexism", there are a myriad of factors responsible for any outcome, and they do not belong to a single cause. You can't measure the effect of sexism, because you can't measure, for example, the effect of sexist portrayals of women in films. You could know that might've had an effect, but you can't measure that effect. It's the same for a lot of things.
You want to legislate to get rid of disparities without asking why they exist, that's hilarious. Feminism in 2023.
No, I didn't. The disparity isn't the sexism. It's the result of sexism.
Anybody who defines sexism as a set of disparities is an idiot.
No.
I'm certainly nowhere near to making a proposition for laws, at least. Not at all.
Huh? How do you know it's the result of sexism? If there's no burden on you to prove any wrongdoing that creates the disparity in outcomes, then you're free to call any disparity the result of sexism. If you describe sexism as purely interpersonal then you can't describe sexism within a nation, you can only use disparities in outcomes for that. Go ahead, call sexism exclusively interpersonal prejudice, tell me outcomes aren't sexist, and I'll prove you wrong, or maybe one of the feminists could do it for me?
Thank goodness.
Heh.
I wouldn't want to make anything I've said thus far a law.
I'm attracted to the political, but not in that way.
I'll ask again, though -- what is a real man? Or even simply a man? Or a masculine gender identity?
Those aren't laws. They're how we identify and feel.
I think this is basically correct. I'm biased and old blah blah blah but to be 'a fucking man' is to not be small and pushed around and defined by other motherfuckers who should be shoveling my snow.
More seriously, I'll shovel my own snow, because I don't need to bully folks to have a good time ( I know lots of servers, served tables myself once, and I've seen babyish games in adults.)
Anyway, a true boss can afford to be magnanimous, and prefers to be, because it feels good-- 'selfishly'. The idea of the gentleman seems to point at this. Poldy Bloom from Ulysses comes to mind. He's maybe too passive, but that artistic device is a foil against which his generous, confident, and selfsufficient soul shines.
:up:
Quoting Moliere
What these terms refer to changes based on context, and your attempt to analyse them without context is pointless. A "man" is just a word, you're dealing with words as though they're concepts, and as though the contexts are just situations where words are used.
From a biological perspective, a social perspective, a legal perspective, a cultural perspective, a person's particular interpretation, or whatever else, the answer is different, and should be different. In each case, the word refers to something different.
The entire reason why this is even a discussion is that the word "man" is written into laws, it's part of social codes, and who qualifies as a man within those contexts is relevant for transgender people.
Or will you pretend that you're unconcerned about the ramifications of the answers? Would you define masculinity in a way that promotes behaviours you don't want? Alienates people in ways you wouldn't want?
No.
I think it obvious I'm concerned about ramifications.
But I also don't think I'm The One, or somehow have a special knowledge. I'm reflecting on what I've done thus far and on what I see in the world. It's philosophy, but it's perspectival.
I certainly would not define masculinity in a way that promotes bad behaviors. I think, with everything I've said thus far, that's also obvious.
I think men are good. I think masculinity is good.
I certainly don't want to define them in a way that's against what I see good in the identities.
So -- the entire reason may not matter.
That's a thought about me, and not masculinity.
What makes a real man?
If you defined masculinity and listed the merits in terms of ramifications, I'd at least find it interesting. It's farcical to talk about what a "real" man is, each designing and keenly anticipating certain real-world outcomes our answers would produce. The word must be allowed to mean different things in different contexts. I'd rather deal with the subtext of the question directly than pretend it doesn't exist. Your question permits no nuance, it has no context, it demands an absolute, and none of this is acceptable.
My question is open-ended. You're free to say what you like. This isn't a yes-and-no style of questioning.
You're allowed as much nuance and context as you wish -- that's philosophy. Redefine the question, or however you wish to express your position.
It's fair, I think, at this point to ask you to say something about what you want when it comes to masculinity. I have and others have.
I redirect you to the question because thus far you're only complaining about feminism.
But the topic is masculinity.
Sorry, didn't realise criticising the feminism in this thread was off-limits.
It seems like you're intending to ignore my criticism, so I'll stop expecting an answer to it.
To give a very generic answer to an incredibly broad question, to me, masculinity entails among other things a focus on competence, competition, independence, assertiveness, strength and status. Looking at emasculating terms, they often target a man's lack of these things.
Thank you for your response.
I read ( mostly scrolled) a few SEP and wiki articles on the subject and can't say I'm any the wiser.
Too many sub-theories, criticisms, objections, and responses. What's new!?
Perhaps if you ever decide to start a thread, I might learn how it can be used in a practical way.
As for the 'intuition' aspect and your story, there are so many variables to take into account as to what happened, why and how...depending on which one you plug in, it could all have turned out very different.
Even 'good luck' that the drunk was compliant.
However, I think my participation in this thread has come to a natural end. I've learned a lot more than I expected but after 16 pages...yeah, enough already. Time to rest up.
Then is any claim to oppression deniable? On any grounds?
Quoting Moliere
I don't see any evidence of that. The working class seem more divided now than they've ever been, the left wing has been effectively neutered by it's own internal divisions. the rift in the American working class between the white working men and the 'identity politics' groups is basically responsible for the surge in populism (with the liberal response to covid and trans issues just deepening that divide). In my country the rift between anti-semitism and support for Palestine has effectively killed off left wing opposition with differences over trans issues between traditional feminists and modern views mopping up any remaining unity there might have been.
The world, particularly the left, is at each other's throats. Ukraine, covid, trans,... not a single big issue has been tackled recently without dividing into two warring camps with division enforced with an iron fist (or as 'iron' as lefty politics gets, anyway). I've been in left wing politics for three decades, fighting pernicious taxation, racism, environmental destruction, etc...the usual. I took a different position on covid - I was regularly called a 'murderer' (right here on this site, with absolutely no consequence). I took a different position on Ukraine - I've been listed as a war crimes collaborator, friends have had far worse. I took a different position on trans issues - I'm a bigot, again, others I know have had worse. This is all in the last three of four years, after over thirty previous years of left-wing activism with nothing of the sort happening (despite some absolutely tempestuous disagreements).
So unless you've got something to hold against that impression, I'm not buying this story that these new forms of identity politics unite. Not from where I'm standing. If they do, they unite by simply crushing dissent.
Quoting Moliere
This is neither inevitable, nor was it always the case. I agree that there's a barrier to cross here, but you're writing a thread a masculinity. Is that not also embedded? why not take the same "'twas ever thus" resigned attitude when it comes to feminism, or race, or homophobia? If we can fight against those entrenched cultural values, then why are you advocating we just accept this one?
Quoting Moliere
But not according to your principle above. You seem to see patriarchy as something entrenched but resolvable and private property sacredness as something entrenched but not resolvable. I'm not sure why.
Aren't they all deniable on any grounds?
"Oppression" is pretty abstract. And history can't be falsified. So, depending upon how we tell the story, the fact that child labor is being utilized is the fault of the employer and those individual companies which utilize that stream of value. Helen Mirren's private money is her's to keep and do with as she wills. For all her wealth she is only an individual, and even if she gave it all away the systemic problems would remain. The culpability is at the level of the company, and so our buying slave-labor goods is a private decision in a market whereas the companies decision is the one that makes that market in the first place.
That is, "responsibility" is an elastic concept that changes with the story-teller -- or historian.
In this age pictures of the suffering are utilized primarily to manipulate us. Someone is making a buck somewhere with the images of the suffering -- be it state departments, NGO's, or private charities.
Quoting Isaac
Hrmm... I don't believe I've said something to that effect. Though let me just be clearer then: I accept we can fight against entrenched values, including the entrenched values of capital.
In the above I'm telling the story from a particular viewpoint to demonstrate the elasticity of responsibility -- how "responsibility" is a view-point dependent concept. Or, relative to a point-of-view.
I'm certainly an anti-capitalist. Some of the value I see in intersectionality is there are some common resonances between the Big Structural Problems. But that's about as specific as I can think it right now on the conceptual level -- the proof of intersectionality, that capital and patriarchy interlink, is in the fights which won by overcoming barriers.
Now, in the true history of things that's a bit rosy. There are some fights that won because of that, and some which won because they were ruthlessly selfish and closed fort. The Fraternal Order of Police is a great example of the latter. The trades are barely more liberal than them, and the original AFL was formed around the notion of skilled labor being more valuable than unskilled labor.
But this is history again -- not conceptual. As clear as I can be about intersectionality is I perceive resonances between these social structures -- but there's a lot of intellectual work that I don't even know how to do to make that make sense. (hence, philosophy)
Quoting Isaac
Identity politics goes further back than the last three or four years. Trans issues have become more prominent in that time, but the notion of particular groups facing different pressures that are simultaneously related goes back at least to Martin Luther King, Jr. in his address The Three Evils of Society. I'd also claim that the LGBT alliance is an example of functional intersectionality. Both go back to the era of Feminism I've been references, 2nd wave. That whole era had an outgrowth of minority positions advocating for themselves in the public which resulted in cultural change. And I'd say that gold old fashion working class union politics is an example of intersectionality-at-work.
So what's different?
Information technology has changed our social landscape to a point that we're unable to deal with the flow of information, and economic pressures of capital are driving people into their tribal identities because of a constant state of fear and anxiety due to swimming in propaganda 24/7 is my guess.
But it's just a guess. And all the old forms are still around, on top of this new, exciting, odd, and terrifying technology.
That is -- I'm still a good Marxist. It's the material conditions!
But the specifics can matter sometimes from the perspective of organizing people, at least.
And due to the elasticity of responsibility, depending on who you are talking to, they really are in a different world and probably have a learned callousness to some issue or another because care is abused by propaganda so we're all out of it.
It takes effort to care, and there are mouths to feed, hours to clock, bills to pay, or in a word -- the grind. They grind the care out of people to the point that they have to look at what's directly ahead of them. But if they hear a story that they can connect to -- such as a sense of solidarity with women who have to endure patriarchy -- you can lift people up out of that grind so they can dare to care about something more.
At least that's the idea.
Quoting Isaac
Hopefully this goes some way to erase that impression.
There's more I want to say -- but I can tell when I'm starting to cross over into "oh shite this is a real project" and I think that's where I'm almost at now. I'm really good at over-promising because I get caught up in the excitement of an idea so no promises -- but now I want to write an essay on Brandon Darby and Fight Club as a critique of the masculine identity in activist spaces. (It will be a best seller with that riveting title, surely)
Possibly, but if so, then an argument about oppression isn't complete without an argument as to why this and not that form should be heard.
Quoting Moliere
Again, its odd that you can say this so blithely about children, but not see exactly the same with women (and trans, and people of colour, and the disabled, etc). If images of suffering can be abused to make a buck, then what does that tell us about the campaign for trans acceptance, for example (worth about a million dollars per unit to the pharmaceuticals for a lifetime of hormone therapy)? Are you equally prepared to water down their message with such words of caution?
Quoting Moliere
But they're absolutely self-evidently not. As I said to @fdrake earlier. Women's rights have leapt forward, trans rights even faster. Yet we've just had the largest single transfer of wealth ever, are living through the highest levels of wealth disparity there's ever been and 50 million children face starvation in a world of BigMacs and Sushi. It is abundantly clear that intersectionality has not linked with fights against poverty. It's done fuck all. The rights of those identities in the fight have generally been improved and the rights of the remaining poor have been ignored completely.
The recent campaigns for women's rights has benefited mostly middle class women (less sexual harassment at work, higher pay). Its done fuck all for Afghan women whose lives have deteriorated thanks to the fickle warmongering of the US.
The campaign for trans rights have benefited middle class Westerners, who now can express themselves with less fear of reprisal. Trans Yemeni's aren't any less hungry though.
The recent crap about white privilege has maybe improved job prospects and education opportunities for middle class people of colour. It's done fuck all for the massive 'people of colour' community in Sudan who still find themselves on the brink of starvation.
If you can point to a single example where any of these campaigns have helped the poor be less poor, I'm all ears, otherwise it sounds like wishful thinking at best, apologetics at worst.
That's not my callousness -- I care about anti-capitalist politics. I care about the state of the world, and it bothers me that we are so callous towards the suffering of others in what we do. But I can lay out the viewpoints of others as they would. This is a common sentiment you had to have encountered when talking about private money and the plight of the poor across the world? (Have you read Peter Singer's essay The Solution to World Poverty?)
The point of my demonstration is to show how we all come from a different perspective. Surely you are acquainted with the attitude I've laid out from your time as an activist? Anti-capitalism is about as popular as feminism.
When talking organizing usually all this theory is put to the side and you talk bread-and-butter, which means connecting what your organization is doing to what is important to a person.
Quoting Isaac
Women and trans people are included in the working class and proletariat.
The fight over birth control is a salient example that links class and patriarchy -- though I listed some other examples for the thesis that included other inter-linking systems.
And as long as people working at a call center that requires nothing more than a high school diploma counts, then I'd say I've worked with several trans working class people who have benefited from having their stories told.
Further, any workplace organizing I've done frequently runs into problems of both gender and race. So in practical terms it's required if one wants to do something about class, such as form a union or pull off a strike, because these identities will be utilized to divide your group otherwise.
The reason the left is weak isn't because we're different. It's because thems who own are good at divide-and-conquer.
But the way to overcome that isn't to say "You're issue doesn't matter, money is what matters!" -- it's to say "Your issue is connected to money in this way, and this is what we're doing about it"
The middle class don't need these protections as much as the working class -- they have the money to find private solutions to these problems. But working class people includes women, trans individuals, LGBT, and racial differences. With respect to patriarchy I think this is most prominent on the issue of abortion -- there was all of one abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas (the city I did most of my organizing in), and it helped working class women more than the middle class women who could afford a plane ticket get it taken care of. Keeping open that clinic was helping working class women deal with the facts of life in a practical way that's not Industrial Action -- but it's certainly a resource the poor need and use (and is being fought against by the patriarchs who want women to be baby factories).
As for why labor and the left are fractured -- I think it's giving up on class politics. I certainly think class politics are important. But for that I wouldn't blame the feminist organizations or trans groups or race-based organizing. I'd blame the unions and the labor leaders who are comfortable enough to be so callous. (Or, really, the whole thing. The big tamale. The international order of capital which is under no one's control -- how do you control something which no one controls?)
Addressing this more specifically -- I'm pointing to examples that I'm familiar with. In terms of the international order: they don't exist.
That's a problem of capitalism, or at least my thoughts go there.
But my final question was meant to point out how capital isn't controlled by anyone, and the various factions of the world are all wanting to be The One Who Controls. Currently the global south is the easiest to exploit by the powers that be, so we have fights over the middle-east and oil reserves to ensure trade lines for our various economic systems that are preferred -- NATO, CIS, or China. All over being able to exploit S. America and Africa.
Bringing it up is important.
What to do about it given the attitudes of most people, though?
I don't know. Feminism, as unpopular as it is, is still easier to explain to people than Marxism. Too many anti-bodies against Marxism still exist.
I'm not suggesting you agree with dismissing images of suffering that way. I'm saying that the exact same arguments can be made against modern identity politics, yet aren't. That fact that they aren't (whereas this world-weary shoulder shrug at the mention of poverty is common), is a significant fact - a matter in need of explanation.
I gave the example of a trans person (very hot topic right now). They're worth about a million dollars to a pharmaceutical company transitioning. Not worth a penny just wearing a dress and make-up. You don't think that gives the pharmaceutical company a huge financial interest in promoting this aspect of trans rights? Of course it does. But even mentioning this is absolutely toxic. It would be sufficient to have your work removed from publication, if not you banned for transphobia. Yet here you are casually making exactly the same type of comment about the charitable sector making money from exploitation of suffering, to absolutely no rebuke. Why is that?
I think it's naive in the extreme to ignore (in answering that question), the fact that most trans people are wealthy middle class westerners who, when it comes down to it, would rather keep their money than give it to the poor suffering children so heartlessly exploited by those mean NGOs.
The issue here is that this intersectionality works against the poor. It means that when Helen Mirren says what she says, instead of being horrified by her disgusting display of greed when others are starving, we actually sympathise with her as a victim of oppression. She gets a free pass on the gross property theft, because she's a woman, talking about 'women's rights'
Likewise with these other identity groups. They're acting as exculpatory devices, not progress but a means of stagnation.
"Feeling guilty about your luxury town house whilst others are homeless? No problem, as long as you're not a white male (bad luck if you are) you too can be a victim, then you don't need to do anything about the poor because everyone has to do something about your plight - poor you"
Again, if this is nothing but conspiratorial whinging, then simply point to the identity politics based campaign that has actually helped the poorest in our world. I'm all ears, ready to shown my error. Honestly, I mean it. I'm in this for the same reasons as you, I just want to get behind campaigns that actually work, but I see zero evidence that these do anything more than mildly benefit the already wealthy whilst sucking oxygen from any campaign actually trying to address poverty.
Quoting Moliere
Yes, but their problems are different and not addressed by the campaigns supposed to represent them. Proletariat women and proletariat trans-folk have their relative oppression to deal with but more pressing is the lack of shelter, or enough money to buy food. The fact that some bourgeois Hollywood actress can now enjoy her million dollar photo shoot without fear of sexual harassment doesn't put food on the table. Try walking into an Indian clothing sweatshop and see if the (undoubtedly male) owners have been affected by the social approbation generated by the #MeToo movement. Tell you what might help there though. Is if the fucking actress we're all so concerned about would stop buying the Louis Vuitton clothing she's currently prancing about in on the cover of Vogue.
Again, it's simply naive to think that this is coincidence. That the only campaigns which receive any air time (from the bought and paid for conglomerate media) are the ones which have zero impact on the ever greedy consumer machine. "Equal pay for women, equal bathroom rights for trans,... Anything you like... just DON'T STOP BUYING!"
Quoting Moliere
Exactly. Utilized by whom? Not the owning classes, they don't even need to get involved. As in...
Quoting Moliere
... just isn't true.
It wasn't the owning classes that split feminism over trans issues. It was trans campaigners who did that.
Suzanne Moore wasn't chased out of the Guardian by the CEO of Goldman Sachs, she was chased out by her fellow left-wing writers.
Kathleen Stock wasn't pelted with eggs by the Proud Boys. She was pelted with eggs by other left-wing activists who disagreed with her about trans issues.
Russell Brand (bless him!) wasn't vilified after his Jeremy Paxman interview by the Right-wing press. He was vilified by other left-wing voices (feminists) who objected to his use of the word 'bird'.
The progressive Vinay Prasad hasn't been hounded for his views about children's education during covid by Fox News. He was hounded by other progressives because they disagreed with him about masking policy.
Jeremy Corbyn wasn't kicked out of the Labour Party by the Koch empire. He was kicked out by other members of the Labour Party who disagreed with him about Israel.
The owning classes are, thus far, just leaning back in their leather-backed club chairs watching their opposition eat itself, they don't even need to lift a finger.
Quoting Moliere
Simple. Stop giving mass air time to trivial campaigns (don't stop the campaigns though, obviously), stop treating every difference of opinion over strategy as if it were defecting to the Nazis, and start campaigning on the stuff that really matters as a priority.
I fully agree with the 'lack of prioritising,' you are highlighting.
This does not mean I don't fully support trans rights, it just means that I absolutely agree that issues such as ending world hunger and ending the exploitation of people, by a nefarious capitalist global elite, etc etc deserve a higher priority.
Which problem gets focussed on globally, depends on so many factors, yes? We don't have a united species or a world government, so we will rarely get a global consensus, in such a way, that would allow us as a species, to create a correct list of priorities, in such away that we could assign the correct global focus and attention to the biggest current problems facing our species in a united way.
Possibly our best attempt to do so is on climate change and that is not going very well.
I think it's only the national 'peoples' of the world, talking to each other intensely over a medium such as this internet, that will eventually nurture more global consensus on an issue. Then we will all compel national politicians to do what we want them to do or else! they may seriously face national/international and even global, tick tick tick tick boom movements that will tear their political systems apart if they don't do what the people want them to do.
I personally think the target will eventually become something like the UN. That's the only body I know of that if it had real power, could focus global effort and power to make real change happen much more quickly and solve a problem as big as global hunger, poverty or local wars.
That's a lovely sentiment. Kind of seems to be doing the opposite just now though doesn't it?
Quoting universeness
Yes. Vive la révolution!
Quoting Isaac
Thanks. That's part of why I chose the example.
Quoting Isaac
I get the impression that you are reading that this disunity is the left's problem, whereas it's likely society's. Capital's always going to be doing that thing where any identity division is exacerbated, monetised, coopted in an attempt to create and maintain markets. This ultimately isn't a good or a bad thing, it is just a thing that happens.
So it isn't a surprise that the current formation of emancipatory politics in the west is riddled with geopolitical hypocrisy. That's ideology working as normal. The critical impulse you're providing, as always, is a necessary moment in the dialectic. The Revolution needs people like you to remind The Left that global oriented politics is necessary. As a corrective to hidden hypocrisies. Though also as always, the cry toward heightened awareness of international issues also can serve as a means of blocking emancipatory struggles in left movements in the political north - see big disputes in orgs about class first postures.
The thing is, the cry of admonishment you're providing is less of a corrective and more of a lament. Which is also fine, there is a place for that, let's just not pretend it's directed at a fractiously organised Left, it's directed at a certain image of political north Leftists largely divorced from the situation "on the ground". You and @Moliere both highlighted that when you're in an emancipatory politics org, intersectional and class based theory only matters to the extent it informs your praxis. The corollary is that intersectionality as a theoretical abstraction plays just the same role as the geopolitical corrective you're providing within the left; a lens.
Neither intersectionality, or what you're espousing, have any concrete doctrinal or practical commitments. They're not even organisational principles. They're barely even informative theory for on the ground politics. They sit at least three degrees of organisational abstraction above moving bodies into the right places at the right times. They're means of forming/criticising means of perceiving means of organising norms of praxis, and let's not pretend they're anything but.
The perceived proliferation of identities results from a systemic fragmentation of identity and a partitioning of social space, as should be evident from it being widespread over the political north. The fact that this fragmentation creates a posture in left politics, an identity politics, is as much a reflection of the underlying fragmentation as it is a way that civil liberty destabilises stultifying identities - if they can be monetised somehow, and they will, that serves to make them more accessible. In some respects that can be celebrated. It's in general a good thing that corps must cynically show their commitment to LGBTQIA+ cause, as not doing so results in a widespread loss of social capital. That is an opportunity.
On the ground, a tankie and a blue hair can put their differences aside and get a disabled access ramp for a town hall. Or disrupt government through a well placed protest for a day.
This chat is for the most part a hobby.
Well, I am sensing an underlying, emergent current of better focus on social media.
On some sites, the vitriol is lessening imo, and many are becoming more reasoned and slower to curl up into a Ninja ball of defence. Anywho!, meeting pals in Glesga for a pub session. Away to get ready! Have a good Saturday night guys!
You mean you ever took it off! It's the gulag for you m'boy.
Quoting fdrake
I was with you up to the last. Surely it is a bad thing? Are we saying that the exacerbation of disunity in order to make a fast buck is morally neutral? That doesn't seem quite right.
Quoting fdrake
That's very kind of you to say so. I might reply to The Revolution that if needs people like me it might want to refrain from sacking us, banning us, labelling us as bigoted anti-[insert minority here], and generally making us feel like we've denied the Holocaust every time we raise the smallest concern about direction. Just a suggestion, of course, it's not my place to tell The Revolution how to run its business!
Quoting fdrake
Yes I grant that some care is needed. Dialogue, rather than competition. I'm also aware that an emancipated north is much much more likely to engage in poverty reduction than one still under the yoke of various forms of (albeit minor) oppression. Getting our own house in order has merit. My concern is less with the actual focus, more with the way that focus is used. Were I to have confidence in these first-world emancipatory movements actually looking to win, I might be more able to back the idea of some mutuality or even, as I say, getting our own house in order before we try and 'change the world'.
So it's not the focus necessarily on its own that bothers me. It's the means by which that focus is maintained, the superficiality of it all, the 'buy the t-shirt' ease with which one can become a part (from someone who's looked more than a few police horses in the snout, I'm not complaining from an ivory tower). I mean - this more of metaphorical value than the main issue, but blue hair? Not exactly environmentally friendly is it? Remember the Extinction Rebellion t-shirt fiasco? And trans campaigns...? Equal pay for women (but not better pay for seamstresses)? Stamp out sexual harassment in the work place (but no mention of the increasing sex migrant atrocities)?
It's like they're not even trying. Really, really obvious intersectionalities are being missed again and again which just adds to this feeling of glib superficiality to these campaigns. Are we so numb now to poverty that the below poverty line pay for the (majority women) in clothing sweatshops didn't even cross the minds of the campaigners boisterously complaining that some offensively overpaid female TV celebrity wasn't quite as offensively overpaid as her male counterpart? I'm not even asking for a "don't forget the starving children!" announcement attached to every campaign - this was literally a campaign about women's pay, for Christ's sake. The same was true of Black Lives Matter (apart from lives of the majority black children producing your fashion items apparently which, it turns out, don't matter quite so much as trainers do).
So yes, you're right about these things being able to run alongside, and probably they should do. But alongside means something, it's not a universal solvent, that just excuses any and all campaigning strategies. We can't absolve every choice as "at least something's happening", some 'somethings' are worse than nothing. They suck the oxygen.
Quoting fdrake
I think you're partially right here. I can agree that the academic literature and practice doesn't really inform actual politics, and in that sense my ire is not really directed at academics. That said (and explaining the 'partially') there's not a bright line between the two on account of the very human fact that the people involved in each institution often overlap. The political organisations and the academics. I don't know how much that's still true, but in my day there was very strong union support among the social sciences departments (to the point of parody), but even in the anti-road protests which I was heavily involved with, there was an uncomfortable academic fringe alongside the crusties. And we certainly brought our theoretical commitments to those campaigns (certainly the union activism and tax protests, less so the anti-road stuff 'cos we were a bit scared of the crusties!). I've no idea what is happening in trans, feminist or any other minority on-the-ground action these days, but I'd be surprised if it was radically different.
Quoting fdrake
Yes. I think that's true, but I don't think the monetisation is the only motive. There was, albeit in it's infancy, quite a serious move after the 2008 crash to push back against the whole system of money, and some of this is a response to that, a diversion - look anywhere but here... Warring tribes are not only monetisable, they're also weak. And that, I think, matters more. The rainbow t-shirts aren't that much of cash cow. It's meaningful opposition that's the biggest worry, division prevents that.
Quoting fdrake
They can, but they won't. The folk getting disabled access ramps for the town hall are probably the local council these days - and that's part of the problem. With a lot of the local, human-level stuff, we've won already. We don't need to protest to get disabled ramps, it's illegal not to provide them. We don't need to protest to get equal pay, a court summons will do the job. Hell we don't need to disrupt government much since they hardly run the country any more, having handed the job over to Black Rock. What we need to do is disrupt money - capital, debt, crisis profiteering. To do that we need solidarity.
Oh. The tendency of capital to dissolve social forms also tends to dissolve stultifying ones. Disruption isn't always bad.
Quoting Isaac
That can be granted without having any import onto intersectionality as critical tool in organising practice. Ineptness, affectation, pick your poison.
Quoting Isaac
I notice that people bring political commitments too. Just that it doesn't matter if they're an anarchist or a Stalinist, since they agree on the issue. Working out how to deal with marginalised identities within an org is something an intersectional perspective will synergise with. People bring the prejudice with them as a perspective generator, that's then mediated by the "conditions on the ground". Does it really matter if a Stalinist and an identity-first anarchist disagree on almost everything if they can agree on what needs to be done?
Quoting Isaac
You still do unfortunately. Getting the authorities to follow their own laws.
The broader point I'm making is that framing a big conflict between intersectional approaches and class first ones in terms of practical consequences isn't really directed to the audience it's intended to effect. If any org ends up shitting itself for reasons like this, it's our tendency toward forming a circular firing line and bullshit office politics. Rather than treating a four steps removed abstraction from the ground as a causal factor in lack of left unity. Would that the left had enough power that our quibbles over intersectionality had any impact on society's "melting into air". We just don't.
Some derive masculinity/femininity from their view of how men/women are typically perceived, and some derive masculinity/femininity from how they think men/women should be. Both of these profiles are of course impacted by each other, but they are different nonetheless. From here on out, I will just talk about masculinity/men, since that is what your post is about, but my comment is general enough to apply to both men and women.
As for the former; before answering what is more or less masculine, one must first define what is typical of men. The most typical man would be a man who has the quantities of every trait in him that is average for men, in the eyes of the average human, right? No, that model does not take into account the synergies between the traits. Although x might be the average aggressivity of a man and although y is the most average happiness of a man, the most average combination of those two values may not be (x,y), since all these traits are not independent. So, not only is this practically very hard to quantify, it is even hard to quantify in principle.
Furthermore, who said the most average man would be regarded as the most typical man? Our perception of typicality is not a perfect representation of actual typicality.
Now, on top of the already complexity of defining what is perceived as typical for men, how does one derive what is the most manly from that? If most people perceive men as typically more disagreeable than most people, would that which we perceive as the manliest man be perceived as being as disagreeable as humanly possible? That which the perceived typical man has more/less of, the perceived manliest man has the most/least of? I do not buy that at all.
One can perhaps bite the bullet and say, actual masculinity does not perfectly align with perceived masculinity, but that doesn't fix the problem of quantifying masculinity. Some might try to get around the quantification issues by reducing it to some small number of independent factors that they purport are correlated with all the traits of masculinity (kind of like what psychometricians did with g and intelligence), but this would only worsen the disconnect between their supposed "masculinity" and perceived masculinity.
And yeah, then there's the discussion of what men ought to be, which is another doozie.
Personally, I leave it as this; I perceive people as more or less masculine and feminine, and I have intuitions about what men and women should be. These perceptions are mine and can be drastically different from other people's (especially those of different cultures). As for my deontic intuitions; I do not force them on anyone, nor do I place any weight on them. As a man, I do not find it morally important to behave as how my intuitions happen to tell me a man ought to behave; I do find it morally important to behave as how my intuitions tell me people should behave, however. I believe they're both instinctual, but at least the latter is less arbitrary.
I see. Then I misunderstood. I was talking about capital cementing social forms, concretising the differences and making convenient little units of identity in order to better market products, herd dissent, and prevent solidarity of the proletariat.
Quoting fdrake
I can be, sure. I see no reason to. Ineptness and affectation have, presumably, been around since humanity first attempted stuff. I'm looking for an explanation of the recent phenomena.
People are being ostracised, 'cancelled', as well as just flat out sacked, for disagreements about policy, minor infringements of preferred wording, and such. People whose credentials, as far as fighting for the weak against the powerful, are unimpeachable.
The scale of wealth accumulation that's being unopposed is unprecedented, exponentially higher than anything we've seen before. Action on poverty has stagnated whilst action on superficial rights in western countries has increased to the point where there's even some difficulties enacting the law (rights like speech protection, opportunity - not rights like foods, shelter, security...).
These are recent phenomena, so whatever the explanation is cannot be from the "'twas ever thus" category of human failings.
Quoting fdrake
I agree, in those cases. I'm talking about the worryingly increasing number of cases where their commitments mean they don't agree on the issue so nothing gets done. Hence the stagnation on action against poverty, the 'normalising' of starvation on the African continent, the massive shoulder shrug as corporation profit from crises (they had a hand in creating) to degrees we've never before seen. Again, I'm looking for an explanation of what is a recent phenomena in left-wing activism (insofar as it's mainstream is concerned).
Quoting fdrake
Fair point, but progress is made (having laws to refer to is better than having none). Where's the equivalent on worker's pay, access to healthcare, housing, food...?
Quoting fdrake
Again, I'm looking to explain two (possibly related) recent phenomena - namely what's dubiously termed 'cancel culture' and the disparity between the profiteering of the wealthy (unprecedented increase) and the push-back against it (basically 'nothing to see here'). These two phenomena have only arisen in the last couple of years (alongside the increased focus on identity). I might be way off the mark with what I'm suggesting as causal factors, but whatever they are, they're new, not just the same old...
That's hardly news though. Been the case since the Judean People's Front split off from the People's Front of Judea.
Quoting Isaac
Quoting fdrake
Or there's overlap between emancipatory politics and capital here. I noted earlier that capitalism's tendency to eat through whatever institutions you've got has sometimes been a good thing, and that might be what's going on here. Just consider how focused on the workplace emancipatory issues are, equal pay, hiring and firing practices, workplace conditions. Some of that bears some resemblance to labor union struggles of old, but some of it is demanding that everyone have the same opportunity to be a wage slave, right? So that might be emancipatory but it's also capitalism eating through institutions like sexism, ableism, racism. Use those divisions, destroy them, rebuild them, whatever. Capital don't care.
Quoting fdrake
Ah, so you said the same thing. Hurray for us.
So it could be that there is no successful left-wing politics anywhere; all we really see is a kind of mirror-image of capitalism's opportunism. Where people can use the universal acid of capitalism on some injustice, there's some redress possible, but only there.
Because it might not be possible to stop capitalism. ("Internal contradictions" always sounded like wish fulfillment to me.)
Possibly, but as I said to @fdrake I'm sort of looking for an explanation of this new phenomena it feels like there is. People (ones I know personally - colleagues at work) are finding themselves more constrained than they've felt before. I've felt it too. Maybe we're all just making it up and jumping at shadows, but to conclude mass delusion, I'm going to need something a bit stronger than 'twas ever thus.
I don't think that 20 years ago, I would have had the same kind of pushback I'm getting today for my 'different' views on the big topics of the day (Ukraine, Covid, Trans). Glen Greenwald is relegated to Rumble. Matt Taibbi has been hung out to dry. Seymour Hersh is a 'conspiracy theorist', Suzanne Moore is now a 'bigot'. These were big names in progressive, anti-corporate, feminist or otherwise generally leftist journalism exiled for what seem like minor disagreements over strategy. I don't recall anything similar happening over anti-apartheid campaigns, road protests, Poll tax, right up the Occupy movement. I'm clearly not alone in thinking something serious has changed (the authors I mentioned above, are saying the same thing).
So the explanation I'm looking is is for that. This new thing. "There's no new thing" is perfectly possible, but it leaves as much unanswered as answered. If there's no new thing, why do so many people think there is?
Would The Left please stop beating itself over the head for not launching a successful revolution.
The last time progressive labor (just an adjective, not the name of a party) had any power, and some of the aspirations of the left were met was during the post WWII economic expansion when government, labor, and capital cooperated to achieve a broad redistribution of of wealth. That happy time ended in the early 1970s. (Peter Turchin: End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration: 2023)
The hard core left of American communists, socialists, and so on (in the US) ended after WWII. Just like the "the labor movement didn't die a natural death; it was murdered", the left was also "murdered". The forces of capital (government, corporations, etc.) bore down hard on the left that existed before WWII. The parties were infiltrated, subjected to prosecution, massive negative propaganda, and so on. By the time the FBI's Cointelpro program was made public, the job was pretty much finished,
From the 1970s to the present, capital abandoned the government/labor coalition and returned to an earlier era of expansion, accumulation, and impoverishment of the working classes.
Capitalism was, is, and (in all likelihood) will be the overwhelming dominant paradigm in the US.
It wasn't just that. The left had no answer to stagflation other than to centralize control of the economy. Neither the US nor the UK we're ready for that solution. The right, on the other hand solved the problem robustly.
The 'slow approach' to socialism doesn't work. The door to change only opens every now and then. It has to get bad enough that there really is a revolution. There's no predicting that kind of event.
Yeah, that's kind of where I'm going. Also, I think @fdrake might have even posted it earlier, but Mark Fisher's seminal article https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vampire-castle/.
My concern really is that, if we follow the modern left, the neocons are basically right. After all we're currently seeing the largest income disparity for decades. The finance sector is making billions printing debt. Corporate lobbying is basically controlling government...
But blacks aren't oppressed by the banks, they're oppressed by white people refusing to check their privilege.
Women aren't oppressed by pernicious working practices, they're oppressed by men sitting with their legs too wide.
Worse, it's basically fine that corporations are running the government. The pharmaceuticals got it right with covid. The arms industry are on the right track with Ukraine...
Basically, left wing mainstream politics is promoting the idea that these unprecedented developments, the complete capture of government by the major corporate sectors, is just fine, not a problem.
Social democracy a la EU isn't socialism, and it isn't a revolution -- but, comparing it to sex that is just OK, it's not that bad (paraphrasing Woody Allen).
The far right, the lunatic fringe, the tea party, crypto-fascists, etc. hate all that stuff--from social security onward to Obama Care. It's all burrs up their butts.
The elderly are a powerful voting bloc though. Some elderly people are turning to Obamacare to bridge them till medicare kicks in at 65.
What helped Occupy take off was the internet. It was an emulation of the Arab Spring. The new thing is the form of media has changed -- it's the material conditions, only the material is tracked through the value form rather than through mass. People interact on the internet differently than they do in meat-space. But as the media grew -- as measured through the value form, again -- so our ways of interacting on the regular changed up to and including meat-space.
Before you could have your everday conversation evaporate into the air. Now it's cemented in the flows of electrons across the world.
Mix that in with some self-righteous moralism, which left-wing views are as easy to moralize as right-wing ones, and badda-bing: you have low-cost propaganda set up with people ready to spread it like a virus. The irony here being we had to offload this emotional work onto algorithms that really didn't care at all about the emotional effects on us but just efficiently selected the emotions which are good at spreading information regardless of ideology or effect: fear, guilt, disgust, anxiety.
Machiavelli made much the same observation a long time ago and was punished for it, so it's little wonder that we needed machine-thinking and efficiency to overcome our emotional hurdles.
At least -- this is my guess as to an explanation for the more recent phenomena. I think it's the media-form and how it relates to the flows of capital. But this is hand-wavey and uncertain (hence, philosophy).
That's very interesting, I can totally see how it could work that way. So, my question is what's the product? What is the result of this activity, this process? What does it output?
You say...
Quoting Moliere
... no argument there. And...
Quoting Moliere
... again, I've no dispute with you on that score.
So where is all this "low-cost propaganda"? If it's not Helen Mirren's speech, if it's not the bulk of #MeToo posts, if it's not the BLM knee-bending, or the the drag queen reading groups....
If we're to say all that is honest toil in the service of equality, then what's left to be your "low-cost propaganda"?
It's all of those things. I wouldn't discount those as propaganda. I mean -- if it's in a newspaper it's probably propaganda, even. It's the media-form which has changed.
I'm not saying these are an honest toil in the service of equality. I'm directly answering your question. I don't think it's the fault of intersectionality, or Feminism, if that's what you're driving at.
Though that's different from persuading you that intersectionality is a Good Thing, too. I couldn't think of anything else to say on that account so dropped it, and went to directly answering your question. In some ways, though, it feels like the old debate between radicals on which problem is the most radical when the underlying concern was trans issues in public, to which I think Feminism is pretty clearly related even if I cannot make the case to your standard for it being related to concerns of international labor.
That's fair enough. So let me put it the other way round. If all that I've just alluded to is the "low cost propaganda", but intersectional approaches are intact, then where are they, on the ground? Which campaign approaches are not "low cost propaganda"? Which have sprung from the loins of the intersectional analysis?
Or is it more like...
Quoting fdrake
...for you too?
OK, that's a good question. I don't think we're at that level. The only people I've known who take intersectionality seriously are people who have tried to put it into practice in building alliances between organizations, and to be at a level of commitment of organizing people you kind of already have to be a believer at some level. You have to have conviction from something or you'd go off to do something else.
Conceptually all I got is "resonances" which isn't clear at all. It's in this space where philosophy is good because it's so unclear to me. All I can do is point to examples, as I've done, to try and explicate. And @fdrake is right to point out there are several conceptual steps from the thought to what I'm reflecting upon.
And I can certainly acknowledge the self-righteousness that's arisen. For that I think it's a mixture of things, but often times when people are disagreeing so harshly it's either because the stakes are high and we have no power or the stakes are incredibly low and all that's at issue is some personal beef. I'm going with the first explanation as a guess.
Quoting Isaac
Oh yeah. I recognize how unpopular basically all of my commitments are
That makes sense. If the argument is 'intersectionality hasn't really been implemented', I could quite happily substitute that for 'intersectionality has failed'. I'm certainly not in a position to dispute it, being out of the loop at that level now.
Quoting Moliere
True, but, when have the stakes been lower?
I think to explain the change you need to add in what you were talking about earlier, the low cost of the key form of verbal action. It's too cheap to take actions that's too weak to work.
But I remain suspicious. This all does sound like a reasonable explanation in terms of human nature, unforeseen consequences of new tech, etc. but are we really saying that it all just so happens to act to remove meaningful opposition to capital? Did they just get lucky?
My concern is that this phenomenon isn't new, it's just out in public. The "Effeminist Manifesto" was written partly in response to perceptions of prejudice between anti-patriarchy groups, and you can see the weaponisation of the rhetoric of liberation for infighting in "Trashing, the Dark Side of Sisterhood". My impression is that the same dynamic is just louder now and is a public spectacle. Which is why I've been making the point that it's the same identity fragmentation dynamic as before. Just looks different due to the social form of organisation. We can see the factionalism out in public, so the representativeness heuristic is going to tell us the groups within movement are getting more factionalised than they were before and that this is stymying progress. Whereas, with @BC, what we're actually observing is the same "post left" period that there has been since Occupy, with the same characteristics of failure, just that the grievances get aired in public.
So I'm saying there are threee big groups of systemic effects;
1) The post left period @BC is right to point out. The institutions of solidarity we're used to imagining either died or have weakened. We should have our systemic analysis hats on after all.
2) social media pumping up the volume on extant left infighting dynamics.
There are two smaller effects:
3) This performative grievance culture mentioned in thread
4) An emphasis on intervening in the attention economy as political praxis among the most vocal
The impact of ( 3 ) looks a lot bigger than it really is because of ( 1 ), ( 2 ) and ( 4 ). ( 4 ) makes ( 2 ) broadcast ( 3 ) even louder, too!
So when I'm saying same shit different day, I'm saying ( 1 ) and ( 2 ) are the major drivers. ( 3 ) is essentially the dirty laundry which never aired in public. ( 4 ) is something we can quibble about, but there's no way it's working as the kind of driver ( 1 ) and ( 2 ) are.
With ( 4 ) I get the impression that the energy spent doing it wouldn't be spent doing grass roots work or coalition building. It's the modern day equivalent of rowdy politics chat in a bar.
I'd say the stakes are about constant, but that relative-power fluctuates. Or maybe the perception of relative-power changed as people began to seek information from the big information machine rather than from a trusted organization. With a change in technology that allows for different actors to take stage, so there can also be sour grapes in the mix from that, but my guess is more along the lines of people perceiving themselves as powerless while simultaneously perceiving the ends as high-stakes, and screaming at people who you disagree with serves as an outlet for that kind of rage.
Or, as @fdrake pointed out while I was typing this out, there has always been dirty laundry to air. Another good thing to keep in mind.
Quoting Isaac
Or, from the perspective of a campaign director, it's too cheap to not invest in. :D
With a bit of well-designed propaganda -- or, really, lucky guesses -- the media form takes care of the costs of propagating propaganda. Propaganda has been a tool for awhile. My explanation relies upon the costs of propaganda being lowered. With anonymization not even a reputation is at risk unless you spend a lot of time in an online space. But if you can write the right words -- the virus propagates.
Quoting Isaac
Partly! Though that's also partly true of a lot of significant social changes -- most social changes are unpredictable because of this multiplicity of causes. That's part of why revolutions are fascinating to historians -- they are the moments when the everyday is suspended, and it doesn't seem like they should work. (and, often, they don't -- being the weaker party rebellions are usually suppressed)
I wouldn't want to lower your suspicion of social explanations, especially mine -- this is a guess, and I believe in multiple causes even if a social explanation happens to make sense. Social explanations are the sorts of things we should always remain suspicious of because it can be too easy to think that a position is right. Since we cannot rely upon falsifiability in even a tangential sense -- politics, and history, can't even be a soft science -- it's pretty easy to add auxiliary beliefs to auxiliary beliefs to auxiliary beliefs and then have them co-refer and help each one make sense but in a vapid way. (one of the reasons I like to read the histories of multiple perspectives is to counter some of this tendency). Plus my explanation is far too clean -- it's very much a theory and not a history, which is always messier.
I've offered a Marxist explanation for the change in norms of discourse: Before the internet mass media was a fairly reliable way states retained identities across such large territorialities, after the internet (especially with social media tuned with an algorithm to maximize engagement) not so much. But that explanation doesn't change the fact that under capital people seek to dominate (and sought, prior to social media). And the media is and has been largely privately owned -- it's already produced by thems who own about what thems who own's parties care about, and the way to make waves and changes is to persuade thems who own that there's more out there to be owned in a politically acceptable way. Or, at least, it's a pretty common method. (hence the concern for the middle class: they have disposable income). So I wouldn't go so far as to say it's only luck, and the desire for a billiards-ball style causal explanation probably won't be satisfied if we decide to at the same time treat our explanations to a critical examination. Politics is done by people after all.
So it's not all dumb luck and just the movement of technology. There are also intentional plans put in place, unintentional plans put in place, consequences upon consequences from plans to counter previous plans -- and most of how we got here in the present has already faded from memory.
It's just a part. And it seems like there's something to it...
But there's also something to @fdrake's point. It's a lot harder to contain dirty laundry in an era when people vent in public on the internet.
These last many years I have found plenty of reason to say, "That whole Enlightenment thing -- big waste of time."
My first thought is that people who are afraid, guilty, disgusted, and anxious probably are low on trust.
If bad things are also happening to you, as will be the case under capitalism, you'll search for explanations for why there are bad things when you're overwhelmed from fear, guilt, disgust, or anxiety.
And those are the emotions which work to control people, which means that most successful propaganda will invoke those emotions.
If we live within propaganda echo-chambers, as my thought goes, then paranoia is a natural reaction to living in that kind of an emotional environment.
Then when you get your paranoia confirmed from a friend who you trust.... another feed-back loop.
Here's a curiosity: the crazy right, and let's pick on QAnon, has both superheroes (we've all I assume seen the images of Trump's face on Rambo's body) and supervillains (Barack and Joe and Hilary, George Soros, Bill Gates?!); the crazy left? Kathleen Stock's very presence made certain people feel unsafe, so supervillain evidently. Jo Rowling. Trump obviously. But where's the left's superhero? For some in the US back in 2016 it was kinda Bernie Sanders. Otherwise? There are heroes certainly for the left, activists, but there's not much sign of a Trump-like superhero to rally around.
Is that the difference between authoritarian and anti-authoritarian politics? No superheroes but plenty of supervillains? I suppose we could say that's a good thing, it's just that the other thing going on is that the crazy left seems to have agreed that everyone not a hero-activist is not a bystander, not an opponent, not a villain, but in fact a supervillain. The right still seems to distinguish between the evil masterminds of the new world order and the gullible cucks and libtards that they've taken in.
Also the following very much addresses your posts too, so I'm going to save repeating, if that's OK.
That's certainly true, but I think you're underestimating the ratcheting effect of this on the beliefs and behaviours of the groups receiving that representation. It may well be that in step one completely normal and pervasive splits between groups are aired and are just as you say, louder and more public now. But then there's an effect of that on the actual function of those dynamics. It would be odd in the extreme if the almost complete suffusion of the public discourse with these 'normal' splits were to have no effect on the people embedded in those discussion spaces would it not?
We see, in other areas, the ratcheting effect of constant positive feedback in social belief construction. So how could these factions remain immune to it?
So yes, I don't think something is generating unusual amounts of factionalism in left-wing politics - just the ususal. But then the very act of airing that factionalism in the one form of media over which almost all social communication takes place these days, the hyper-selection of conflict in that media's filtering process, has an effect on the beliefs of those engaged with it. They become more factionalised, and each faction becomes more opposed to the other because that's the narrative they're being presented with 24 hours a day.
And academics, though we'd love to think otherwise, are not so strong-willed as to be immune from this - which will affect their work, if only incrementally. And academic work, whilst it may not be popular, is not quarantined from public discourse, nor, more importantly, are the Tweets, Facebook posts and Media appearances of those academics who, in those formats, are going to be speaking a lot less guardedly than in their papers.
I've been at the periphery of the 'war' between factions of feminism and trans-activists, but even at this periphery, we can see the unguarded interventions of academics through social media ramping up some of the rhetoric (although it reached its peak with Covid which was an absolute bloodbath - not intersectional, but still very much a left-wing torch). Again, It'd be a miracle of human stoicism if these researchers went back to their labs/offices after an evening's diatribe on Twitter and then conducted the same dispassionate and impartial research they would have done had the previous evening contained nothing but a documentary on elephants. So with regards to...
Quoting fdrake
I don't see how any normal human can engage in the kind of 24/7 airing of dirty laundry, amped up to the max by the media platform for several moths/years and not have that show any significant amplification effect on (3). Essentially, I think (3) is underplayed in it's effects on (1) and in the likelihood of people who otherwise wouldn't have considered (4), turning to it.
And I don't see why the corporation who have complete control over this amplification tool would do us the favour of not investing heavily in anything which has the effect of dismembering meaningful opposition. We've seen far more insidious strategies which we know for a fact were discussed and planned at that level to undermine solidarity (see the breaking of the unions in the 80's). I just don't see why corporate powers wouldn't take maximum advantage of this effect.
Yes. It chimes with...
Quoting Moliere
From the Reign of Terror, the Cultural Revolution, the Great Purge. there's been a dark side to revolution which fixates of stifling not opposition, but collaborators, parties seen as weakening the message, usually either with nuance or with incompatible strategy.
I guess most of that is born of fear. Once a little power is felt, there's a fear that if one doesn't use it with iron fist right now, the opportunity will be lost. I think that's a strong motivating force behind a lot of the inter-faction warring, like as if trans-activists just let Kathleen Stock have her say, they'd lose the opportunity to push for the changes they want in the noise that such nuance would generate.
But again, I come back to how incredibly useful all this is to corporate power and refusing to see that as mere fortunate happenstance. We have 'warring' tribes, sure, but look at which 'tribes' are winning in terms of changes to the socio-economic system. It's not a random selection. It's not neither side (a pox on both your houses), it's universally the side that promotes a good steady increase in consumer culture, doesn't make a fuss about corporate lobbying, lets the militaristic control of foreign policy and trade carry on untouched... It's not an accident that Occupy has fallen silent with absolutely zero impact whilst there are actual workplace regulations about pronouns. It's because the former threatened Money, and the latter didn't. So if Money had control over the media (and they clearly do) are they going to sit on their hands and just hope for the best when it comes to which gets more air time?
But also because pronouns are just easier right? I mean, yeah, there's the cultural fight over it, but, as you note, the policy opportunities are straightforward. Even banning teachers from using a student's preferred pronouns is straightforward, if that's what you prefer.
But Occupy, that was a heavy lift. Wholesale restructuring of the world economy is not a before-the-legislature-breaks-for-Thanksgiving kind of thing.
You'd have thought... But how long did it take for women to have an option accepted for an address that didn't declare their marital status to world?
We don't seem to be that good at 'easy'.
I probably picked a bad example. The fight over puberty blockers might have been better, or affirmative action on race, or the bill to have birth certificates reflect chosen gender, or ... These were not easy. And we could compare them to even the slightest progress on monetary reform like restrictions on the issue of fiat currency, or limiting stock buybacks, or just putting the tax rate up.
I'm not really disagreeing with you. I'm just highlighting that what's 'easy' is also a function of what people will accept, which itself is driven, in part, by the very process you've outlined.
I think the idea is that we're the superheroes in the story -- rather than a jefe who brought order, the anti-authoritarian wants leaderless order, the order that comes from people working together as a group.
But given human nature with our particular history it's really hard to get that idea across to people. People are so used to hierarchy, which does have the advantage of efficiency of action, that the notion seems like a contradiction.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I can't deny what I've seen. There's a lot of interpersonal problems which get mistaken for political stances -- the great irony of the left is its belief in solidarity in conjunction with its tendency to factionalize over things that don't matter to the people at large.
Maybe some take that "we are the heroes we're waiting for" line a little too egotistically. It's supposed to shake someone to realize that they, all of us, are the adults in the room and no one else is going to take care of our collective problems other than ourselves.
But your notion of superheroes would make sense of righteous fury. Especially if someone hasn't really encountered their own failures and weaknesses. (it's this latter part that usually keeps my ego in check -- anytime I start to think some self-righteous crap I can usually think of a time when I was basically doing the exact same thing)
I don't know if this holds up, and these days I would associate it with the Stanford prison experiment (which I didn't know about when I heard this) for good or ill, but I remember clearly an explanation of how you create torturers -- or, more broadly, that sort of personal guard or secret police, the trusted elite troops of the dictator.
The main idea is that it's not about dehumanizing the enemy. What you actually need to do is convince these young men that they are special, that they are the real defenders of the nation, uniquely qualified to do this important work. You build them up so that they feel they are above everyone except their master. That's why it is as easy for them to torture collaborators, their own countrymen, even their own friends and family, as it is to torture the foreign spy or soldier, the rebel, the ethnic other. None of those distinctions matter to them. Whatever your status or position is, theirs is higher, in their eyes. You convince them that they are in effect superhuman, and that's why they are beyond good and evil, and needn't concern themselves with questions like whether what they're doing is moral. That's what lesser beings worry about.
Now, I don't spend any time on Twitter or the like. But I hear things, and read thoughtful highbrow articles about what goes on over there. Any sense that some of these folks have taken such a view of themselves? The right still seems overwhelmingly driven by grievance and resentment. That's not my impression of the left. They do seem a bit more like avenging angels, meting out justice with an unforgiving certainty people used to be much more hesitant to claim for themselves --- unless someone went to the trouble of teaching them.
It's really interesting you brought this up, my first post in a while was provoked by this very thought...
Quoting Isaac
(having a go a the whole quoting myself lark - see, I learn)
It's this that I think is the source of your new breed of superheroes. They actually know the actual hand-on-Bible, God's-honest, Truth. Not just a theory, not just fighting it out in the grubby boxing ring of politics... the Truth.
Imagine the power trip that produces. The idea that you don't have to worry about actually supporting your position like we used to have to do, you don't need to understand the facts and do all that hard work anymore because we've moved on from arguing about what's true to 'countering disinformation'. The narrative has changed from one of discovering the truth by dialectics, to merely 'defenders' of that truth which has already been discovered - a much more heroic role. Guardians of Truth (already bought the film rights by the way, gonna be a hit - "In a world where some people still disagree with each other about stuff, one man stands between Truth and other-things-people-might-believe, the last great battle between what-some-people-on-Twitter-think and what-the-Governement-website-says...").
If these people were indeed coming from a place of superiority and a belief in 'the Truth', perhaps we wouldn't expect to see this type of anger, nor would we expect such folks to be reluctant to engage in real discussion. Both neither suggest confidence nor a well-rooted belief of 'the Truth'.
To me it suggests the opposite, though in some ways it is related.
The anger stems not from a sense of superiority, but from taught ideology. Through what is basically indoctrination the ego is bound to the ideology, and the individual develops a sense of self-esteem that is directly connected to this ideology.
The result is a lack of confidence, because the ideology is what has value, and not they the individual. Only through the ideology does the individual gain value, or so they are implicitly taught.
When the ideology starts showing cracks (as any ideology is bound to do at some point), it is their fragile sense of self that starts cracking along with it, hence the aggression - they perceive debate as a direct attack on themselves.
Rather than going through the painful process of decoupling one's sense of self from the ideology, they develop coping mechanisms to deal with a stubborn reality that doesn't conform to the ideology, by shunning honest debate and instead relying on every dirty trick in the book to protect their sacred egg.
That's a very well thought out theory. I have some sympathy with the general idea. At a gut level, I definitely get the feeling that people are defending something they know is nonsense but are somehow frightened of letting go of. I agree about these people's faith in The Truth. I don't think it's all that strong, and shows cracks pretty quickly. You see an awful lot more "I'm not going to engage with this..." than we used to. If that was just exasperation, or dignity, I'd understand, but (I'm thinking of this site now, I've no real experience elsewhere), the same people who say they'll 'refuse to engage' with someone on one topic will be producing machine gun frequencies of retorts on other topics against someone they think is obviously a lunatic. It sure doesn't sound like exasperation - it sounds more like what you describe. They think they've got a chance with the 'lunatic', they're frightened of being shown the cracks in the other thread.
That said, I have a couple of quibbles too.
Firstly, the way I view our understanding of the world is that it is all already interpreted, there's no understanding that isn't framed by a narrative (we won't go into why I believe that, here, as that really would totally derail the thread, and I suspect we're on thin ice in that regard already!). So the issue I have is how you might de-couple what you're calling 'ideology' from what you're calling 'sense of self'.
For me, an ideology is just a narrative, a story with which to make sense of data which is otherwise ambiguous (which is virtually all of it). We have this information which could be interpreted one of several ways, we have to choose which, we can't do so on the basis of the evidence itself (it under-determines), so we do so on the basis of it fitting a narrative we like - an ideology. I also don't believe we can 'suspend judgement' on most matters (but again, not the place to go into why).
If you want to make the case that one could pin one's self-esteem to an ideology, or not (ie not just choosing ideologies, but having the option to choose none), then I'm not sure what method one might use to choose between interpretations of under-determining evidence - stuff that could be taken one way or another and you can't tell which just by looking at it.
An ideology, in my sense, is just a collection of choices about the interpretation of ambiguous data that coheres (a tendency to always interpret ambiguity in one direction, or toward one end). I think we all have such a tendency, it helps us navigate an otherwise very confusing world full of uncertainty.
So to make sense of your theory within my framework (not that we need to do that, but I like your idea, so I'm going to try), We'd have to have 'ideology' as something more than just narrative, something which becomes more hooked into self-esteem than mere narrative does.
I think you allude to this possibly in your post (when you talk about 'superiority'), as does @Srap Tasmaner. In the ideology, you are the hero. In the narrative you're maybe just the protagonist (but the plot is not so clear that you're the hero). It may be something to do with the suffusion of social media into people's lives, but the big issues seem to take on an importance that invites a hero narrative. I think this is what has changed. The enemy used to be big business, government, the Russians, ...pick your poison, but whatever story one held, the enemy were very big and very far away. We were not even foot-soldiers. We were the support staff at best.
Now, with 'disinformation', the enemy is anyone who doesn't agree with The Truth. We can all be foot-soldiers at least, heroic commanders, even. Because we now have direct access to the enemy. They're right here on this forum!
So maybe the self-esteem link (which I think you're right to highlight) is about letting oneself see one's role as being 'fighting the disinformation trolls' as opposed to merely 'waiving the flag', or 'wearing the badge', or making the right donation. That raises the stakes if you seem to be losing that fight.
You ever heard the expression that the media is a mirror?
I think it works especially well for Twitter-- it's tailored for you. You can block who you want, follow who you want, report who you want, and even set your profile to private so that you're only seen by your close circle.
Looking at it objectively I think we have real cases, but ones selected for us through what is effectively a black box to us. We have reason to believe it maximizes engagement. Which means what I'm seeing is even more about me, and now without as much of an audience that needs to be catered to -- it caters to me and my individual tastes as determined by what I "like" (a button on a post) or spend time on.
So if we want to find this case we will, and we can then daisy-chain through the follows/retweets/links/likes to find more. So it feels like "Yeah! This is exactly what I've been talking about!" -- hence why it's very easy to write reflective think-pieces about cultural trends on Twitter because you'll probably find confirmation. Even more the subject of identity is complicated not just by anonymity but the ease with which sock-puppets can be created, as well as bot networks. There is no way of confirming even if your positive confirmation is a genuine confirmation of some niche network of individuals, or some trolls having fun on twitter making fun of people that don't really exist anywhere but inside their own heads. There's enough of them that are genuine, but enough of them that are not to cause doubt.
Which is all to say: I can't say, and this is why. It's almost impossible to gauge a person based upon their tweeting habits if we're just reflecting on our own experiences. It breaks how we normally communicate.
:D
I'm still looking for the loop back -- but I can see the relation due to the timing of trans issues becoming more prominent in popular discourse aligning with changes in norms of discourse. This not really talking about trans issues but rather the media form which all of these political views get disseminated through. I've enjoyed the reflections you've shared.
Thanks. I've enjoyed having a space to reflect them in (or on - whatever the right term is for the object of a reflection).
Quoting Moliere
Yes. That's was my plan (he says, rapidly post hoc justifying what was actually a meandering ramble often completely forgetting what the title of the thread even was!) I appreciate your tolerance.
I'm going to give what you wrote a think, and come back to it later.
Great. I look forward to hearing what you think.
There's some stuff here. One is that the behavior we all deplore -- because Street's gone, so there's no one to take the other side -- among certain groups of young progressives has a name: bullying. So there are some cultural paradoxes about masculinity threaded through all this.
Harry Potter, and the fate of its ("its" because I don't mean him but the world and the stories) creator, is the big case in point. On the one hand, Harry Potter was deeply meaningful to a great number of young people because part of the message was, it's okay to be a weirdo, it's okay to be different, it might even -- ugly-duckling style -- be wonderful to be different. Queer kids everywhere got the message.
But with time it's been possible to take stock of Harry Potter, and more people have done so. (My son has pointed me to some interesting video essays re-appraising HP.) Even early-ish on, Ursula K. Le Guin was asked about it and commented that it seemed to her pretty derivative and "somewhat mean-spirited." This is the point a number of people have been converging on: it is mean-spirited, and in fact the whole thing looks a bit of a revenge fantasy. The queer kids, the theater kids, the weirdos, they get bullied a lot (as Harry does by the Dursleys) but secretly they're the ones with the real power, power you can't imagine, and when it's their turn, you're gonna pay.
When Jo Rowling shot her mouth off, a generation of readers of put into practice what she'd taught them: make her pay.
If Street were here, he'd argue that this isn't violence, it's counter-violence. Fuck Jo Rowling. She's got it coming. But to the rest of us, this looks like the same old tragic tale of the revolution adopting the means of the oppressors they overthrew.
And in this case, the means are unmistakably associated with toxic masculinity: it's bullying. The desire for revenge is understandable but besides being wrong, it's a mistake. It retrenches the technology of power you were trying to undo. What's wrong with toxic masculinity is not that it's abuse of women by men, but that it's abuse at all, and that ought to be obvious because asshole men are more than happy to abuse other men. (It's why the conclusion to the British Office -- as we call it over here -- is so satisfying, when Brent stands up to his bully. That's not a blow for cis-white-men, it's a blow against bullies.)
What comes out of the superhero stuff is issues about what the favored term is. Because of the holocaust, there was a lot of talk for a while about how dangerous it is to dehumanize the other, and that's true so far as it goes. What struck me -- and why that story stuck with me all these years -- is that the how-to-make-a-torturer story takes the torturer as the favored term, not the victim. Everyone not the torturer is a potential victim.
For whatever reason, the current state of play takes victim as the favored term, and everyone not a victim is (potentially?) equivalent to the torturer. And the trouble with that turns out to be that you miss the opportunity to mark characteristic behavior of the villain as what makes him the villain. You the victim have no problem becoming the bully in turn because the problem with the world was only that you were being bullied, not that there were such things as bullies at all.
Heh. I'll note that I don't deplore violence in principle. Context matters, and the series of sins goes back and forth. While I dislike violence, I don't deplore it because it's so much a part of our world that when it comes to politics it's impossible to do without (and those who are most attracted to non-violence are often ones who aren't aware how much violence their own society requires to function). It's like deploring lying -- sure, Kant, it's bad to lie, but we're all going to do it anyways. So goes violence.
I often look to Nelson Mandela as a person who managed to express the perfect pitch on the question of violence -- he never condemned it on principle, but also didn't pursue it as his main tool.
But I also think there are some incredibly large egos out there that could use deflating, and that the stakes are too high to allow egos to be the reason why we engage in political activity. I'm not up to the point of being able to say something as specific as J.K. Rowling -- she has really shown her ass in public on trans issues as far as I'm concerned, but then I wonder why in the world we're talking to a popular author about an issue she doesn't have to live with in the first place. It's probably because she said some dumb stuff, and it got amplified, and she then doubled down, and the back-and-forth created these hard-division identities -- you're either with JK Rowling or against her!
Which is the exact choice you have to make if a political campaign is underway -- you have to stay in the picket line or go to work, there is no in-between. But this isn't the same kind of political campaign because we're dealing with the personal psychology of J.K. Rowling and whether or not that is a good psychology or if she is a bad person, and this is why she's good/bad, and if you do/not like her then you're also good/bad. There is no demand hooked to the decision which can be debated. It's her, and reflectively our own, moral character that's at stake.
There's a place for that level of demonizing, even. But you have to be like a holocaust denier or a legitimate member of a white supremacy organization or a cop before I even think about it. And it has to be for a purpose rather than because I think this person is a bad person (there are a lot of bad people in the world, and I have a life to live not chasing them all)
Certainly there are people who see this as the job, sorting people into good and bad.
Some people feel it's important -- and their job -- to sort art into good and bad. To sort artists into good and bad.
It's related to something I have found very peculiar about the reading habits of my millennial and gen-z friends and coworkers, that the first thing it occurs to them to say is, I liked this character and I disliked this other character. I didn't grow up reading novels that way, and I don't understand how this happened or why people do it.
An aside: can confirm. People do this at book clubs.
I've touched on toxic masculinity in the thread because I figured it'd come up and it needs acknowledging. It's a real phenomena. I'm not sure I'd put the various stances of political actors in that box, though. The conflict isn't coming from a sense of the masculine as much -- we aren't bullying people because that's what men do, I mean, even in a toxic masculinity. Resentment is the emotion of toxic masculinity moreso than the pleasure of bullying.
I think that bullying can become pleasurable for anyone in the same way that the use of power can be pleasurable. pointed out Trashing, the Dark Side of Sisterhood which describes a similar phenomena. Some people are unable to distinguish between the boss and the loyal opposition, and some people don't even want to bother because they're not there to build a world-wide movement. They just don't want that person there anymore for whatever reason.
-- my guess is that masculinity probably isn't related to where we landed, though it's important to talk about with respect to trans discourse because it shapes where our present thoughts are probably reflecting from, at least.
Indeed it isn't. @Isaac successfully Mao'd over the thread.
Quoting Moliere
Everyone can resent. What flavours of resentment are uniquely masculine or essential characteristics of toxic masculinity? Can you give a list of contributors to toxic masculinity? Something like correctness conditions for the predicate "is an instance of toxic masculinity"?
True! And just because one feels resentment or acts on it I wouldn't say that's even an identity.
Whatever "identifying with" means -- if you identify with your resentment and simultaneously identify that resentment with your identity as a man ("It's because I am a man that...") and want to do something about it against not just a person, but the world -- that seems to get closer. But I hasten to add I'm being creative and attempting to build something. I'm sure I missed something.
?
So I thought asking about masculinity was fairly on target for the original topic. If we are spurred on to defend this or that view because of our masculinity, it makes sense to start asking what is the value of this masculinity? What else other than our masculine identities is contributing to this confusion?
Plus I do actually like thinking about this stuff, and thought that our usual regulars might have more to say on the topic of masculinity than the meaning of "woman".
EDIT: I should note that this isn't a dig. I would not have started the thread without the impetus, and all that. I felt the need to justify my approach though.
It's sort of hard to pinpoint. I've never cared much about my gender, but at the same time I've never doubted that I'm a boy/man. It's always seemed to me that gender is made relevant far too often, and that doesn't align with my intuitions very well. But at the same time, I can't rule out that there are biological-behavioural tendencies I follow - which makes my behaviour masculine. But it's just not deeply rooted in my identity. How to explain? Maybe if you compare social life to a piece of word processing software "masculinity" would be a macro someone's once written and others have contributed to that I don't use; but I might go through the same operations one by one anyway, just not always or consistently, so I get results that are slightly different than if I were to usually rely on the macro.
I have no emotional attachment to being a boy/man. An example from my puberty: In sports class, we were supposed to do some task; I can't remember which. I couldn't do it - too weak probably. Imagine it was pole climbing: I would have made some low-motivation token effort. Someone asked me whether I'm a boy or a girl. I replied something along the line, "Don't care, you choose." He thought that was the funniest thing he heard that day, but when he told his friends he couldn't get humour across. As for me, I just wanted to get to the end of the hour-long class. Things like that happen a lot; I care about the activity at hand (presently somehting I was ill-suited for and not motivated to get better at). The gender thing was probably supposed to be a way to motivate me, but it doesn't work on me, because I just don't care about my masculinity. It's a nuisance lable in situations like that: now I not only have to do this task I don't care for, I have to put this in a wider context I also don't care for. Dead pan humour often works - I rarely offend, but I did usually get some sort of outsider status out of it.
When I'm focussed on something else, I can even get literal minded and not get the social function of the reference. Example: I had a job at a market research instute entering data from physical questionnairs into the software. I busy doing that when the boss of a different section came in asking for help from "strong men". I heard he words, heard "strong", and tagged that as having nothing to with me. My friend who sat next to me (a woman) tapped me on the shoulder and said, "C'mon, we'll help." It's only then that I realised that this was likely just the usual male-ego flattering and the job won't require all that much strength - but carrying stuff is a "man thing". So I went to help (with mostly women I might add), and the task involved moving tables, which weren't all that heavy, so even I could move them (with help). But I did hear "strong men" as ("men who are stronger than expected") rather than ("men who I call strong so they feel good about helping"), which is a mistake I probably only made because I was distracted.
The upshot is that I usually understand masculinity culture enough to function, but I don't connect to it through identity. I don't consider myself particularly masculine, but neither do I consider myself particularly feminine. Any gender typology applied to me is something I put up with rather than something I feel. As a result, "Grow up and take responsibility," is likely more effective on me than "Be a man and take responsibility," even if the speaker contrasts "man" with "boy" in this scenario, so that the intended meanings are close. But the gender aspect is a distraction which I tune out, focussing on "take responsibility," which I will then do if I think I should. With "grow up," you're telling me I'm being childish, which is something I might actually consider. It's more likely to hurt, too. Gender-based appellations usually fall on deaf ears with me.
Coming at this from a more functional perspective rather than an imagined type of psychology: a toxic masculinity is an identity which results in misogyny. In my previous psychological type I ought to have said not "the world" but more specifically "the women's world" -- resentment of women as a type of person seems to get closer to the psychological type, but functionally it wouldn't matter what the psychological type is if it results in misogyny either way.
I promise to try and stay more on topic this time.
Quoting Moliere
So, in order to have misogyny, there has to be a 'gyny to mis', yes. The object of the hatred/mistreatment has to be an identifiable one, otherwise you're talking about misanthropy.
I suppose that's why you've got 'woman-as-a-type'. But back to identifiability, we could go with the modern trend toward self-identification, but that doesn't seem to fit with mis(anything); I can't determine to hate some category that I can't even identify without asking. So woman-as-type has to be some kind of identifiable group (even if only identifiable by the misogynist - maybe the rest of us don't agree such a group exists).
So I'm wondering who does the identifying here? Is it the misogynist ("I hate all people like this"), or the women (declare themselves to be such, and immediately become the object of hatred, like gravity), or society (but we have no end of trouble with society defining what a woman is)...
Simply put, who or what is the object of the misogynist's hatred?
Maybe you're right, and maybe bullying is just one style of a manipulation among others. The ones that matter here lean heavily on devaluing the target. It looks a bit like shaming, but the twitter threads I've looked at did not seem to be shaming as a means to get someone to change, but as a means to get them to shut up, to take away their power and their agency. It's not you ought to reconsider your life; it's you need to understand that you're a piece of shit who doesn't deserve to speak. It's the sort of thing abusive husbands say. Manipulation on kickass 'roids. All of which is why it struck me as bullying, and as the kind of manipulation we associate, for very good reason, with less than admirable men.
I don't know to what extent Incels are real, but that serves as a more concrete example of what I think of as basically the worst kind of misogyny -- not even just identifying with resentment (there's a lot more to an identity than that feeling too I should note, and that too can pass), but an active despising that's re-expressed and becomes central to a person. So I think the person doing the identifying here is the misogynist. But "like this" doesn't need to be very specific. "Woman", to the misogynist, probably has a collection of traits associated with it but I wouldn't be too keen on accepting the Type as the misogynist sees it either. I'd likely say "you have the wrong notion of woman", or something along those lines.
Active patriarchs are another -- as in people that want the patriarchal family structure not just for themselves, not just for their community, but want it enforced by the state up to and including restrictions on birth control. Here there are traits which don't necessarily have to be pinned to womanhood, but the patriarch sees women in a particular way and wants that to have social force behind that view. Here the object of hatred are the women who aren't doing the right thing -- again, it's the misogynist that's doing the identifying.
But then there's me doing identifying, and I'd include trans women as women which means I'm more liable to make the type about self-identifying than about some set of traits. Not that self-identity is the whole of gender, but rather that it's a good way for determining what category someone belongs to -- rather than looking for traits I'll just ask them, given that it's their identity, and as long as they aren't lying then that's a better measure than inferring based upon their traits, be they physical or mental. What I mean isn't anything close to what the misogynist's notion of "woman" means.
So from my perspective the object of the misogynist's hatred is partly a fantasy. I think it has something to do with resentment of the perceived power of women over men: hating that women have a kind of power over them. That's when I think it gets nasty.
So if...
Quoting Moliere
...but the object of misogyny is identified by the toxicly masculine person, then toxic masculinity has to be a feature identified by them as well.
A is a trait identified by an attitude toward B and B is identified by the possessor of A. That makes A a trait entirely identified by the possessor of A.
The object of misogyny is identified by the misogynist. If we were talking structural problems, like patriarchy, then it'd make sense to talk about a social determination -- but at the level of identity I don't think it makes sense to say that's a social determination. Or, at least, it's not the same (clearly we're a social species and all that, but that seems to be talking at a different scope).
Also I'm not sure that an identity is a trait as much as it's a manner of expressing traits. "Tall" is a trait that's relative to the group, being between such and such heights on average is a range of traits associated with some group, and expected behaviors are one step away from traits. But the manner of expression is what differs.
So a toxic masculinity is an identity which results in misogyny -- misogyny being the hatred of the type "woman" over something to do with perceived power. Or I've been saying resentment too, which isn't the exact same as hatred. What can I say: I'm theorizing. I'm not totally certain where I'm going.
So it's a way of displaying one's manliness, or expressing one's manhood, or being a man that results in the hatred -- in this general sense that's not specifying the bundle of emotions because I'm trying to remain more functional (given the problems of identifying the type) -- of women-as-a-type. And likely there are also tokens of the type -- so not just an idea, but rather an idea coupled with lived and interpreted examples.
It'd have to be the tokens which give me evidence of the identity though, since I'm not a mind-reader. So there is a social input of sorts in making the identification -- but it's not the default that I think of. It's just a possibility I'm aware of given what men do to women and say about women.
That's what I thought.
Quoting Moliere
Yes. I think that's the tension that many traditional feminists feel with the newer gender identity prescriptions. If there is a group that is oppressed in some way, it can't be a group that is self-identified because the oppressor does not ask questions about identity before oppressing, the object of their oppression is that group identified by them as deserving oppression and so the subject of any fight against oppression is the group the oppressor identified, not the one any other group identify.
Quoting Moliere
That makes sense, yes.
Quoting Moliere
Yes, I agree with you there. I chose 'hatred' as it was the dictionary definition and I didn't want to get hung up on definitional differences, but I'm also happier with your idea of 'resentment'.
Quoting Moliere
So here again it's unclear how a set of traits can be identified by an outside observer as expressing a property which is given by the person 'manhood'. There are traits/expressions/ways-of-being which result in hatred of an identified group (identified by the one doing the hating), but then you link those traits/expressions/ways-of-being to a property (manhood) which is self-identified. How is it that you (the third party) are doing the linking then?
---
To give a concrete example. Let's say a boss at a bank is traditionally toxicly masculine (bullying, competitive, and misogynistic). He favours the promotion of a man over an equally qualified female colleague because he somehow feels a man would be 'better for the job'. Later he finds out that the female colleague he overlooked identifies as a man.
What has happened in that instance? Has he, unbeknownst to him, not been a misogynist because he resented a man? Or has he been a misogynist all along, but the target of his misogyny is not self-identified?
In a way this is a re-expression of the question. How am I doing this linking? How do any of us do it? That's a good question.
The first thought in defense of my idea that I have is to say that the misogynist will identify as a man, at least, if not a misogynist -- but my honest reply is that I don't apply the golden standard of asking people what their gender identity is most of the time. In some spaces that's considered polite, but in most spaces which aren't hyper-aware of gender issues it's considered rude: "Can't you tell?!"
What I'd have to supply is some justification for being able to determine someone else's way-of-being aside from just asking them about their identity, which is all I've provided so far as a method for doing so.
But I'll just admit I don't have that theory in hand here. It's something I have to think about.
Quoting Isaac
Trying to parse the scenario: The boss is at least discriminating on the basis of sex because he identified the female colleague as a woman and then denied [s]her[/s]his* promotion for the reason of [s]her[/s]his perceived identity. And because the boss is a misogynist in the scenario we can conclude that it's due to a toxic masculine relationship to the type "woman".
So I'd go with your latter -- he has been a misogynist all along, but the target of his misogyny is not self-identified. The misogynist probably identifies women by their traits, and treats people with those traits accordingly.
*Luckily these are hypothetical people! But, as you can see, I still make that mistake, too.
That's a bit oppressive of you, isn't it? If your theory is also
Quoting Moliere
The philosopher psychologist assumes the position of superiority, which is a power relation whereby even bosses are what we say they are. The man/woman at the centre of the hypothesis is a cypher, and we do not care a jot about their identity for themselves, or whether or not they even want promotion. Of course our power is also hypothetical here - our writs do not run the world. But they are to a great extent a product of the way the world is run.
I think the way out of this jungle is to see that oppression is power without love. The inequality between men and women or black and white or whatever, is one of power, and that is why it is always the boss who is oppressive in relation to his minions, even though they may all have equally uncaring and prejudicial views, and the minions may have their own pecking order.
Thus masculinity becomes toxic to the extent that it identifies itself with power, and femininity with love.
Thanks, that helps clarify things.
Lemme see if I've got this right, the underlying contrast you're disambiguating is between two concepts of misogyny which look like:
1 ) An act A by an agent X is misogynist = when A is a prejudicial act directed toward a woman on the basis of their womanhood with a means of identifying womanhood W.
That's something like a correctness condition for an act being judged misogynist, where W is a supplementary correctness condition for identifying womanhood. Be it a "subjective" identity, a performative one or whatever. The two cases you highlight are different values of W. In that regard, whether someone is a misogynist or not turns on a correctness condition for what counts as a woman.
There's another option - rather than a misogynist act being directed toward a woman, a misogynist act I think could be construed thusly:
2 ) An act A by agent X is misogynist = when A is prejudicial and directed toward someone X identifies as a woman on A's basis of identifying them as such.
That's also a correctness condition for misogyny, but it removes the need for disambiguating the concept of womanhood, or whether the recipient of an act of prejudice counts as a woman by some theory of identity. 2 ) instead incorporates counting as a woman as part of A's judgement.
The utility of that conception is that a misogynist act can incorporate a misjudgement of someone's gender identity (as construed under a sensible theory of identity), and all that matters is that they count as a woman to the agent doing the act.
Quoting Isaac
I also think the above addresses the concern you raised here. The criteria by which people socially count as women can be quite different from those which correctly count women as women in accordance with a robust theory of identity. In that respect, what matters for being a recipient of misogynist acts isn't "being a woman" (in accordance with a robust theory of identity) it's "counting as one" for practical purposes. Like Game of Thrones Arya stark pretending to be a young boy when she was kidnapped.
In terms of someone being a misogynist, I'd guess that consistently doing misogynist acts counts someone among their number.
Yes I think so. It's a violent identification from the outside, that is, from me onto them. They aren't speaking about themself, I am speaking about them without asking. And I find myself nodding along with you here:
Quoting unenlightened
Guilty as charged. I am playing at being Hegel's phenomenologist while simultaneously believing that to be an impossible position.
I agree with the conclusion -- that's getting close to the phenomena. But there is a counter-example I can't let go of when I think of your opening here -- the oppression that is a loving power. A person can be cruel and mean, and that's what we've been talking about when it comes to toxic masculinity, and I think identifying oneself as a powerful person (and especially not a loving person) would cause all kinds of internal conflicts that seems to fit the bill.
But sometimes there is the loving oppression which is paternalistic in nature. It comes from a place of love, but the power differential matters if the loving person is ignorant in some way of their amor's needs. To take this far, far back to first wave feminism, some would argue that women don't need to vote because their husbands would vote for them and had their interests at heart (plus, being men of the world, they knew better anyways)
But I don't think that's a toxic masculinity. So it's a bit of a side show to the original question of identifying the conditions under which we know there to be a toxic masculinity.
I think this is the main reason women might be expected to present themselves as childish. I'm thinking more about Japanese culture where women are simultaneously ridiculed for behaving childishly, but the women themselves say they have to behave that way for acceptance and career advancement.
burikko
Why do you call it paternalistic rather than maternalistic? Don't confuse paternal with patriarchal here.
The infant is helpless, so the power relation is real and necessary and its neglect would be the abuse. But even here, the nature of love is communicative - one does not force feed the infant, though one does force clean them because one literally does know better.
Interesting that in your example 'ignorance' is expressed as 'knowing better'. Something to look out for, along with infantilising language. But voting is for adults, and one does not marry one's father, so that particular 'knowing better' is patriarchal rather than paternal, I think. I treat my children as children, until they become adult, and then love has to grow towards respect and equality. I recall there was a radio 4 disability series called "Does he take sugar?" a gentle reminder of how easily one can fall into that kind of ignoring, belittling ignorance. Sometimes, of course, a disability is a communication difficulty, but a communication difficulty is necessarily mutual in this sense:- one expresses inadequately and the other understands inadequately; although in the other direction of communication there may be no difficulty.
Childishness is performed subservience. Reminds me of a thing I noticed about some US women - voices like the Chipmunks. Cute indeed! My ignorance of Japanese culture is profound, but a powerful woman is liable to be a witch, a harridan, a harpy, or if persistent, a nightmare, in this culture. A threat to the masculine identity. But girls just wanna have fun.
Good point. I should intead say "chauvinism" as a better description -- something that can be practiced by paternals and maternals. That's basically what I mean, and I agree that it's important to keep paternal separate from patriarchal. I think the English speaking world associates fathers with the system of paternalism, and so we have these locutions, but I agree with the need to keep paternal distinct from patriarchal.
Quoting unenlightened
True!
Makes sense.
There are milder versions of it too. My mother worked as a secretary of one sort or another for most of her life, and worked for a number of men she deeply respected, but toward the end of her career she had female bosses sometimes and never got along with, or thought well of, any of them.
And boars. And bores.
Quoting Moliere
Well yes. we're back to power here, are we not? Puissance what (any)one can do: which is a function of culture (the system) rather than a literal trial of strength (the pecking order is not literally physical in human society). Patriarchy empowers men and endorses power as a masculine virtue, thereby declaring itself virtuous. Therefore...
Right. So the problem arises when we want to take affirmative action, or protective action against the misogyny (or the effects of past misogyny - patriarchy). The victims are a group of people identified by the oppressor. If we create a space for women as victims of abuse, it's women defined by the abuser, not defined by themselves. If we want to take affirmative action to correct systemic issues caused by past misogyny, then the group who have been systemically mistreated are that group defined by the misogynists, not those who currently identify that way.
All of which leads pretty much to the same conclusion that the Equalities and Human Rights Commission recently reached. There needs to exist at least one definition of 'woman' (in the EHRC's case for the purposes of the Equalities Act), which is based on traditional criteria. Women (the oppressed grouping) are not having their protected characteristic adequately defended if they cannot be defined (in at least these areas) by visible biological sex traits - the traditional means by which the patriarchal system would have identified them as targets for unequal treatment.
Source? Sounds a good read.
Here https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/letter-to-mfwe-definition-of-sex-in-ea-210-3-april-2023_0.pdf
In particular...
It is also telling that the chair of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission felt the need to conclude...
...certainly a position I recognise.
With the scenario of law, and in taking into consideration the wider system of patriarchy, I'd say that trans individuals are targeted by patriarchy as much as women.
Yes! Power differentials -- or as the anarchists put it, hierarchy -- is a common root to oppression. Or at least a pretty good abstraction of the various kinds of oppression.
The part I'm uncertain about is onboarding love to the general theory of oppression -- that it is power without love. In the case of a toxic masculinity I think you make sense here:
Quoting unenlightened
But the main reason I'm uncertain about love is that while it is at least on the positive side of the spectrum, it is also a deeply violent emotion if what we love is threatened. Power combined with love can lead us to the most terrible, and justified, violence. That's the thought in the back of my mind at least.
Ah, I see. There is some ambiguity in the word 'love'. I'm not referring to the emotion in that sense. Would you be happier if I used 'care', or 'affection'?
We can continue using "love" with this clarification. I'm a little uncertain that the two kinds are unrelated, but I believe as we are more aware of the violence that can come from love we're also more able to choose the peaceful love rather than the violent love: There's a distinction to be made even if they are related emotions.
So, back to the theory -- oppression is power without the love that takes on pains, the love of laying down one's life for another, or brotherly love in the sense of taking on the pains of your brother despite the pain.
Toxic masculinity is an identity of the masculine which identifies itself with power, and the feminine with love, and denies itself the feminine. If you feel love, the feminine, then that is a weakness which the powerful wouldn't need to succumb to, and insofar that you feel love you should act to purge it to become a real man.
Do you mean trans women? With trans individual you're in danger of falling into the very caricature @Tzeentch was painting where 'patriarchy' is simply a rather misandrist catchall term for every bit of oppression going on, and misogyny likewise for just 'being a dick'.
The point of Baroness Falkner's argument, the point of the Equalities Act itself, is to protect a group of people who've been abused, both historically (and so in need of reparation) and currently. That group is defined by the abuser, not the abused, and it is based on biological characteristics (mostly to do with reproduction). That group need protection from that abuse, which means they need to be identified as a group.
Oddly, the mainstream left seem quite happy to accept the exact same argument about race. We ought be colourblind, but because the abuser identifies a group on the basis of skin colour, then in order to protect that group from that abuse we need to identify them - we cannot be colourblind.
It's exactly the same argument with 'women' but the politics are different, so a different result is promoted.
As to the difference between law and real conflict... If the law doesn't codify behaviour, doesn't act to resolve conflict, then what exactly is it for? The law might be unjust, but that's not what you seem to be arguing - you seem to be saying "the law's fine, but it's something separate to but conflict resolution which is another entirely". What purpose do you see the Equalities Act as having? Do you think it unnecessary?
Quoting Moliere
Misogynists can do other bad things motivated by other prejudices. Those who've undergone gender reassignment are also protected by the Equalities Act, people are also abusive to that group and as such that group , defined, again, by the abuser, need protection under the act.
Quoting Isaac
Same. Charity can often be absent. I like to hope TPF is a bit less reactive in this manner. Whether that makes it more of a cess pool than some other places is, of course, to taste.
Quoting Isaac
While I can see the utility of it for the law, there was also some utility in leaving some points as it was. The article concludes that maintaining the biological sex definition of woman as a marker for the protector group clarifies some issues but makes others ambiguous or unintuitive. Explicitly, a trans woman with a gender recognition certificate would be able to appeal to protective laws for women under a social or subjective theory of gender identity but not under the sex one. Even if they were dismissed or undermined as a woman would be in the workplace.
If I understood the article correctly, a major source of the ambiguities in the EHRC's protected categories legislation is that they are currently revising the document. The document did not distinguish between sex and gender, so it will be unclear conceptually and practically which conception to use in which place. Perhaps it is considered elsewhere, but it I did not consider something more disjunctive or case based.
Something like "you can appeal to (protected category of womanhood) in (this circumstance) if you (have woman as a biological sex or have a gender recognition certificate that you are a woman". Notably this isn't considering legislation considering trans as a distinct protected human rights category. Which, practically, might dodge these issues.
Regardless, I'm sure you see the distinction between recognising an act of misogyny in the workplace and operationalising/defining terms in the law. It is difficult to conclusively establish that any individual act is born out of personal prejudice. And I don't believe we've established a reason that legal definitions of womanhood as a protected characteristic should behave as the criteria for recognising misogyny in interpersonal acts. The ability of a trans woman to experience interpersonal misogyny as well as transphobia is evidence of this. Surely you wouldn't contest that someone who counts as a woman for social purposes experiences misogyny too?
Also, this appears quite distinct from studying "toxic" masculinity as a category of social style/personal identities, since identity of that sort is largely autonomous from the legal codes surrounding it. Hence the article being written, it's revising a 2010 draft, and notes society has changed considerably in its gender dynamics and conceptualisations since then.
Whatever space of concepts that latter "gender dynamics" and "conceptualisations" lays in is the one relevant to the concerns of this thread, I believe, not the law.
Yeah, a difficult decision, for sure, but as is pointed out, a trans woman who is discriminated against because of her womanhood will still be as to claim against the Equalities Act under the category of have had gender reassignment, so it doesn't leave her with no recourse. The alternative, however, would leave women without certain protections, so I think the advice wise still.
Quoting fdrake
I do, yes. I think I'd make a distinction between redress, suffering and abuse. At the event-level an act of abuse against women is going to affect a trans woman no less than a biological woman. As such the abuse does not distinguish and so there's no cause for us to either. But at the systemic level, clearly a biological woman (grown up as a woman) has been exposed to discrimination that a trans woman (grown up a man) has not. Likewise structurally, women's roles and expected behaviours shackle biological women (who might prefer to behave otherwise) but typically do not shackle trans women (part of whose trials are that they they wish to behave exactly that way).
So I don't think its so much a matter of law vs everyday. I this it's more about different frames within which different means of categorising become more or less appropriate.
With regards to the clash with traditional feminism, this fully exhausts the area of conflict. I don't think any of those branded Terfs argued that trans women shouldn't be treated as women in everyday circumstances (and that would include an act of misogynist discrimination). It is the insistence, from many in the trans movement, that the definition of woman include trans women in all those other frames too. For example the recent Scottish bill to have birth certificates changed, which Baroness Falkner argues would undermine attempts to monitor systemic discrimination against women (much of which takes place during childhood, education etc).
Quoting fdrake
The connection was with @Moliere's earlier ...
Quoting Moliere
... where it seemed to me that defining toxic masculinity by result muddied the water between 'masculine' the sex characteristic, and masculine the behavioural set.
I was really just exploring the idea of a gender-related behavioural set acting against a sex-related set. The gender 'man' (here the subset of behaviour considered 'toxic'), carries within it an identification of an 'other', the object of its discrimination, which is sex-related.
In other words, the object of one group's discrimination is 'otherness' but their othering is based on sex. Does that make the groups self-defined as sex-based. Can we have 'masculinity' divorced from the male sex if we define 'masculinity' as containing elements of self-definition which are sex-based.
I think we run into trouble maintaining a narrative of gender as expressive act, whilst also including in the toxic elements of that gender a self-identification as a sex.
There exists a group who are misogynist. That group causes both systemic problems for biological women, and everyday problems for both biological and trans women. That group self identifies universally by sex-characteristics, not gender ones, so I don't see any justification for looking at their behaviour through the lens of gender. And, seeing as their victims fall into two district categories, I think its a mistake to view their victims through the lens of gender too.
Misogyny is largely about sex. The 'othering' is sex-based, the effects are heavily sex-based (reproductive rights, treatment of female children,..). The lens through which it's examined needs to match that.
I think that's true, but I'm not sure it's relevant from the perspective of what counts as a woman. I'd bet that oppression experiences don't uniquely characterise womanhood, they just apply to womanhood. Whether we can imagine a womanhood resembling the current one without characteristic oppression experiences I suppose is an issue. Your mileage may vary on whether the kind of subjectivity (womanhood) produced in tandem with oppression experiences of that sort (systemic discrimination against women) has an autonomous existence from those oppression experiences (womanhood simpliciter, possibly without oppression experiences).
Regardless, the expression you gave is tensed, right. There'd need to be an argument that past oppression experiences which are typical for women to experience are necessary for being a woman. Effectively this would exclude anyone trans. If it's treated as a theory of social identity as well as a legal classification. I think this also interfaces with the radfem/terf/feminist points you raised.
Isn't this against the point you made earlier? About the definitions of an oppressed minority should not depend solely upon the oppressor? Did I misread?
Though I imagine we're having the frames discussion you highlighted at the end of your post.
Quoting Isaac
Perhaps a decent angle to come at this from, giving charity to the "cancel culture brigade" is that the frame separations are also politically charged, perhaps precisely because it's difficult to tell when the frames have switched. I doubt we'd be having this discussion if which operationalisations of gender are appropriate in which context are a settled matter. In that regard, being particularly militant about it makes a lot of sense. Especially when whether you count as the person you are is up for grabs. Like your rights.
That said there'd be nothing stopping the a code from having trans misogyny guidelines which enable some of the same legal protections. And try to clear up the entry to spaces issue. It's a pretty fine line between an organisation allowing someone into a space because legally biological sex lets them preclude it vs not allowing someone into a space under that same law because they're not seen as who they are. You see what I mean? I'd be fucking terrified of whatever precedents are set here. No wonder people get mad.
Quoting Isaac
On the level of systemic oppression, a trans person is going to have different hurdles than a cis one. This be true. A woman is going to have different hurdles than a man. A trans woman is going to have different hurdles than cis woman, a cis man or a trans man. Those things could have different categories ascribed to them yeah.
If you want to call cis women's oppression misogyny, trans women's oppression trans misogyny as a matter of nomenclature, I think that's fine. Though I doubt it makes sense treat its vectors as independent. Since we already stipulated that there are plenty of times trans women will be the recipient of acts which would be called misogynist acts if they were directed toward a cis woman. That articulation necessitates an underlying construct - gender.
Which is part of why that remains a useful category. In what frame? An explanatory one for acts of prejudice, independent of its an identity theory for it.
Quoting Isaac
Though perhaps I misinterpreted you, it seems you've talked about a group of misogynists (I guess "the set of all misogynists", what a colourful lot!), do you see this group as the origin of systemic oppression of women?
Well, only that something of what counts as being a woman has to account for this, otherwise it is nowhere considered. We have to be able to ask "are women still suffering from systemic discrimination in childhood?", and mean by that 'biological women'. In order to do that we need, for example, birth certificates to register the biological sex (otherwise we can't even begin to gather data) and that is something the trans community have actively campaigned against. I think that's unhelpful.
Quoting fdrake
Yeah. Couch this in terms of race and see how it sounds. Does one need to have had the past oppression experiences of being black to suffer the loss of privilege associated with that experience? Yes. Without a shadow of a doubt. If I had some random medical condition which darkened my skin, it would not be the same as having been raised black, I don't inherit that identity, just by meeting the criteria currently - there's a history which informs our current identities. For women (biological) that history is their childhood. For trans women it cannot be. That creates two separate identities (insofar as the idea of identities makes any sense at all, which I'm not sold on)
Quoting fdrake
I didn't really come down on one side or the other in terms of oughts; the point I was trying to make was merely that this is the state of affairs. Oppressors do dictate the oppressed because it is the group they decide to act against. If a mass hatred of people with 'funny voices' were to develop, then what constituted a 'funny' voice as opposed to a normal one would be dictated by the oppressors, the victim group would be whomever they (the oppressors) decided had a 'funny' voice. It would not be possible for a person to think "hey, I think my voice is kind of funny, so I must be oppressed too". If the oppressors don't agree then they're not going to oppress you, and you, by definition, will then not be oppressed, not in the 'funny voice' gang, no matter how much you want to be.
I'm not actually sure about whether that state of affairs has a moral valence, I'd have to give that more thought.
Quoting fdrake
We are, yes.
Quoting fdrake
Yeah, I think that's spot on. The way I see it working is that the very existence of frames can be a trial for trans people as it acts in opposition to the identity they're trying to have realised by their community. It's not an easy situation at all, but it's made harder by misunderstandings about other's motives, especially when (in both cases) those motives are genuinely not always good.
Quoting fdrake
Yeah, In the Equalities Act as we have it right now, gender reassignment is a protected characteristic. I'd like to see more gender identity types included than that. I think gender reassignment is too high a bar to qualify. Merely being trans should be enough, like being gay is.
Quoting fdrake
Yeah, absolutely, but I see some of this as the problem of the way trans identities are constructed. I know that this is perhaps a less popular notion these days, but I'm pretty much a thoroughgoing social constructionist. I don't hold to the notion of anyone's identity being self-discovered, all we've got going on inside is 'lights 'n buzzers', just a lot of axon firing and endocrine fluctuations. Making 'woman' out of that is a cooperative cultural exercise. And I think some of that exercise is being carried out in unhelpful ways right now, one of which is the idea that 'woman' is an all or nothing identity. 'Woman' always was a loose term which meant slightly different things in different circumstances, it never cropped up as an issue because there were so few non-overlapping elements, but the criteria for membership was never stable.
It's funny given the main anti-trans arguments are about 'woman' having a fixed meaning, I'd argue the opposite. It has (and always has had) a fluid meaning depending on circumstances. It's the (strong version of) the pro-trans campaign (and so also their opposition) who want to cement the term ('how I feel' vs 'what bits you've got'). I don't think either are useful.
Quoting fdrake
It comes back to systemic effects, which trans women don't feel and cis women do. The vectors would be the same perhaps (though I'm still not sure - I suppose we'd have to ask some misogynists - and this, I think is where @Moliere's approach has some merit, looking at the outcomes, not the intent), but the victim group and their experiences are different, that necessitates a distinction which is at risk of being erased.
I think you've equivocated between inheriting an identity and being subject to its systemic vectors of oppression when you count as it. If you look like a duck, people will treat you like a duck. I think I can agree with you that the socialisations are different - if you're currently a trans woman, you might've been socialised partly as a man, partly as a trans person, in a queer fashion and so on. As you say, the boundaries are blurry.
Quoting Isaac
There were so few non-overlapping elements in the public conception of things, anyway. Those instabilities were going to implode as soon as anyone shone light on them. I think it's a good thing this is happening.
Quoting Isaac
Aye. I think if this was a choice on the ballot, I would take it. More categories, more protective laws, more tailorable specificity.
I imagine you believe the same of masculinity, it's not an "all or nothing" thing? It's instead a big wibbly wobbly ball of manny-mascy stuff?
I haven't seen that. They just talk like humans for the most part. But just today a woman said that the last time she gave birth she told the doctor she wanted her tubes tied and the doctor said he'd have to consult with her husband. That's sexism.
Fair. I wasn't terribly confident in the analogy as I was writing it, but thought 'fuck it, it's going in anyway'. I don't think there is an analogy for gender because there's really no other protected characteristic that is determined by different people in different ways. In a sense, that's the problem the disambiguation the EHRC are suggesting is aimed at fixing.
Quoting fdrake
Yeah, me too. I think where me might differ is I don't see something like the trans movement as being part of that process so much as working against it. Replacing the false 'woman'='has a womb', with the equally false 'woman'='feels like a woman' doesn't get us where we need to be in terms of understanding the multi-faceted way the term is used and, to be realistic, is going to continue to be used. Human language is pretty resistant and will not be tamed. 'Woman' is going to continue to be a term used different ways in different contexts. We can profit by understanding that, or we can bang our heads against the wall trying to make it not so.
For example, I don't think "It's a girl" is something like a scientific categorisation by a midwife - it's a declaration, a use of the term 'girl' (she looked at the reproductive organs and used the word 'girl'). but when later that girl decides she expresses herself more like a man, then she'll use the word 'man' and ask others to do so too. That also is a use of the word. Both legitimate uses of a word which has different felicitous uses in different contexts. The midwife wasn't wrong, nor the trans man later in life. It's just that gender terms are not fixed to one use in one context. Nor do I see the slightest reason why they ought to be.
Quoting fdrake
Yep, absolutely. It's just a word, they're slippery beasts.
You can find TERFish references to the same analogy on SEP's Feminist Perspectives On Trans Issues. I think comparisons between identity categories are a helpful way of highlighting differences. I'm sure you've heard the lines about objectifying objectivity and appropriation before, so I shan't rehearse them.
Quoting Isaac
Yeah! "Assigned woman at birth" and all that jazz.
Yes. I can read that and know you intend the bolded "she" as a continued reference to the person with female natal sex who was declared a woman at birth and then identified as/behaved as/became a man later. I don't think I immediately need to read you as intentionally misgendering. Which could well have happened. Since my Internal Twitter picked up on it, and it is usually quite good.
I do not think that is productive. Though I can understand, in the climate of these discussions, there are so many disingenuous actors that it can make a lot of sense to assume bad faith on any interlocutor's part. And in that regard reinforce the worst excesses.
My Internal Twitter, when reading the EHRC report, wanted to scream at it for denying the reality of trans identity by equating natal sex with gender [hide=*](for the record I don't think that's quite what the EHRC report is doing, it's at best doing it in one frame and not necessarily/conceptually restricting others)[/hide]. Ultimately that would be based on a misperception, though. Unless there was further context that the EHRC report's recommendation came out for purely political reasons as a curtailment of rights (which I can imagine being the case, since I don't know what knock on effects this will have on current trans protections).
Also yes.
As an aside, I do hope that we can keep TPF able to have these kind of discussions in a respectful manner, it's something we've needed to argue about in the mod thread on numerous occasions.
This, then, is actually a really good example of the some of the issues. I thought about that use. My thought process went "I ought to say 'he' as the person I'm now talking about is a man"..."but if I say 'he' no-one will know who I'm talking about as the whole purpose of these identifiers is to save having to repeat the act of reference" ..."but there's only one person in this story, I'm sure I'll get away with swapping to 'he'"..."but if there was more than one person, I wouldn't get away with it, it'd cause confusion, I need to have one rule that covers all situations"..."do I though?"..."fuck it, it's only a pronoun for an hypothetical person, I'll work it out properly if ever I need to refer to a real person in these circumstances"...
At no point did "Ha! I'll misgender them...that'll show 'em", come into the mix. And I very much doubt my thought processes are far off most people's. This is all very new to most people and a little transition time is not an unreasonable request.
Quoting fdrake
Do you think? It's funny how from different sides (only slightly different, I hope) the world looks so different. I can't, off the top of my head, think of a single act on the part of any institution at all in Britain that's been aimed at curtailing trans rights. I can see how the trans community might think the necessary changes aren't happening fast enough, but changes in the wrong direction...? I certainly don't know of any. We only narrowly avoided the Scottish bill to have birth certificates replaced. Maybe they should have been, that's a legal argument, but the bill was pro-trans and it didn't progress. It wasn't that an anti-trans bill did progress.
I think it's clear (from where I'm sat - leather wing-back armchair in ivory tower, of course), that the political climate is pro-trans but with the brakes on. Anti-trans I just don't see.
The situation in America, I understand, is not so tolerable.
Quoting fdrake
Me too.
Respect is a loaded term, but it consists of more (much more) than just not swearing. And the mods shouldn't have to work so hard to maintain it. It's up to us as a community to develop the sense of the place - what's acceptable and what's not. We rely on moderation too much.
Saw what you did there.
Thank you. That one's going on the wall.
There are issues of moderation and extremism woven throughout this thread.
Here's a note from those centrist souls at Niskanen on Goldwater and Aristotle. (Possibly relevant to the Ukraine debate as well.)
Nobody wants only some of their rights, or to have their rights recognized and protected "to a degree." Nobody thinks a misogynist should just be a little less misogynistic. But systemically, incremental change is the reliable way. "Trudge up that hill," as Barack Obama put it.
But I'd also say that Goldwater was striking a masculine note with his remarks, entrenching the connection between the right and a particular view of masculinity. For US politics the next crucial moment is not Reagan but Gingrich, the scorched-earth compromise-is-surrender approach.
It's all packaged together: the left is trying to feminize the world; to give them even an inch, to compromise, to appease them, would also be effeminate.
Maybe! By curtailing I also meant to suggest "blocking the advancement of". We could talk about rejecting the Scottish Bill if you like, my understanding was that the official reason was largely "we haven't changed the law in England yet, so making this easier in Scotland would cause some chaos down here".
Quoting Isaac
Eh. I saw a lot of people donating to an anti trans charity just before the bill. They were getting donations on the streets of Edinburgh. People would go by and tell them all kinds of things. I know they were anti trans because of their pamphlets, and the "all trans women are rapists" rhetoric they were spewing onto the street. I can understand why people would get that impression.
My org kept poaching their punters though, they soon left. Buggers also couldn't stand light rain.
Quoting Isaac
;)
That's an interesting take. There were aspects of Wilkinson's argument I quite liked (but not all).
I think the issue with moderation (and also moderation) is that it cannot itself sit outside of politics. We can't sort of look down on politics (including ourselves) - see the whole gamut - and derive from that what is moderate and what extreme. Yet - the extent to which I agree with the argument - we must try to do so anyway because tolerance is necessary outside of the extremes, which should not be tolerated. We need to know when it's D-Day and when it's not, but that decision is viewed through the lens of our political position and our right-wing neighbours aren't going to have the same answer as us.
It always annoys me intensely in gardening books (and other guides - but gardening seems the worst offender) when it'll say something like "don't plant the bulbs when the soil is too wet". It's such meaningless advice, I mean, that's what 'too wet' means, more wet than is ideal.
There's something of that with the maxim that we "don't tolerate racists, sexists, homophobes and transphobes". Obviously we don't tolerate those people, those labels imply people not to be tolerated. It doesn't help guide our behaviour because our behaviour requires that we identify them, that we know where the line is between the 'Terf's' genuinely held belief that the everybody's welfare is best served by retaining the connection between 'woman' and birth sex, and an actual transphobe who's just let their conservatism turn to hatred. Where that line is is already coloured by where you stand on the issue politically.
Then there's the other way around, the Overton Window of what's acceptable. You touched on Ukraine as an example. I think both war and, worse, mass starvation (particularly in Africa for some reason) have been normalised, brought into the Overton Window as acceptable policy outcomes. We hear people casually dismissing both as if their necessity hardly needed a second thought, like the decision was in the category of what rate to set the upper tax bracket, or whether to relax planning legislation. To me, that's extremism, and I've been pretty blunt at times about the kind of people who espouse it. To others my bluntness looks like unprovoked asperity, worthy of moderation (and moderation, at times too). Our different political perspectives have yielded a different bright line of where extremism becomes tolerable, the exception that proves the rule.
On the other side, I've been the recipient of some pretty blunt attempts at 'intolerance' of positions that I think are non-extreme, presumably because others think them extreme enough to be more 'exceptions which make the rule'. Again, their political positions colour their judgement of where the line is.
Coming back to the topic (so sorry @Moliere - there's just so many interesting threads to pull on from this topic)...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes. there's something 'masculine' about knowing where that line is. Intolerance is masculine - certainly if Hollywood knows anything about what masculine is (and who's going to argue with Hollywood?). Knowing the line and being decisive about it is the square-jawed hero of the film, unsure of the line and dipping a toe into the wrong side is at least the wayward sidekick, if not the antagonist themselves.
But where I think conservatism used to be the main bastion of unquestioning certainty about lines of tolerance, the new left has taken up that torch and now - in very masculine fashion - are fighting their own D-Day without compromise.
Here's the official statement of reasons - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/statement-of-reasons-related-to-the-use-of-section-35-of-the-scotland-act-1998/html-version
They basically come down to three matters - the effect on reserved characteristics in the Equalities Act, the effect of having two different sex records cross border, and the inadequate protection against fraud.
There's clearly a lot of political wrangling though, with the UK parliament itching for an opportunity to give the Scottish parliament a bloody nose on anything, so...
Quoting fdrake
As I said 'ivory tower' for me at the moment. I think what's happening among real people out there is quite divorced from what's happening institutionally. From the sounds of your experience, that's probably a good thing - eugh!
Quoting fdrake
Your org can make it rain! Powerful org.
We couldn't stop it though.
Yes. Isn't that why you posted the thread in the 'Ethics' subforum?
Why is it hard to get to a 'should'? Is this all Hume's fault? The is-ought problem?
When you see something that is clearly wrong, isn't there an impulse to do something about it?
But not everybody knows or cares enough about whatever 'it' might be.
Some believe it is above their pay grade.
Sometimes, we feel helpless, frustrated, and impotent. After all, what power do we have?
However, when enough people are adversely affected, there can be spontaneous collective action. Sometimes there can be coordinated efforts by different activist groups.
Unfortunately, even after apparent success or progress, the problem is shown never to have gone away.
Today, I read of Iran's 'reinstatement' of the 'morality police': 'to deal with civilians who ignore the consequences of not wearing the proper hijab and insist on disobeying the norms.
This comes 2 months ahead of anniversary of the death in custody of Mahsa Amini for not properly wearing the Islamic headscarf.
Quoting No other option but to fight - Iranian women defiance against morality police
***
I admit my ignorance. I had wrongly assumed that those policing the women, in what some term 'gender apartheid' by the clerical regime, would be a male-only force. So, I was surprised when I looked at the Guardian's headline photograph of 'Two veiled morality police approach women on the streets of Tehran.' Then again, there is nothing new about women v women. Females are not all 'sisters'. Just as males are not all 'brothers'.
So, who are the morality police?
Quoting Who are Iran's Morality Police? - The Conversation
And here we have it. A question for @wonderer1: Is this a result of 'evolutionary psychology'?
A changing sense of morality? Young men unwilling to act against their modern (possibly secular) beliefs yet are forced to do so.
A line from the film 'Australia':
Just because something 'is', doesn't mean it should be.
Who polices the 'morality police'?
At least insofar as I understand things, no. I believe patriarchy targets trans people as it targets women -- it's the same systematic cause. I don't think this is accidental or the result of a generalization to oppression, but rather that trans people are targets because they are living counter-examples to the belief that one's identity is determined by one's trait-based biology.
It's because of erroneous and emotionally volatile views on gender that a trans person is a target for patriarchy. Women are the declared targets of this enforced gender binary, as the group which is born to be subservient to men. Trans individuals, as living counter-examples, are also objects of patriarchy. Trans men aren't really given any more credence than trans women by our hypothetical misogynist, and it's still a disgust, at least, born from this view -- not quite resentment, but disgust, another ugly emotion.
Quoting Isaac
Heh. I don't think I'm ready to bring the law into the mix. The law is a whole perspective unto itself -- the need for identification is the need of bureaucrats who want their jobs to be easy. But as soon as we write it into words then the original method I proposed for knowing a person's identity -- asking them -- can no longer be relied upon. If a law is written then there's usually a reason to lie somewhere because the law is not a reflection of our identity, or even anywhere close to what an identity is. The law is an ancient bit of social technology which simultaneously protects the rights of kings and commoners in a weird mish-mash of historical concerns that gets us whatever the beast is now. In terms of politics the law is the description of the front -- what claims you can enforce, what claims you can't, and so on. The law is written by a small party of motivated interests, and the primary viewpoint that's never questioned in the law is the viewpoint of administration -- if your view cannot be administered, then the law is a feel-good law that has little effect. But if it can be put into a manner which others can deliberate then you can ensure something is going to happen, whatever that happens to be (we hope as intended, but...)
The scenario we were debating before would never be as crystalline as it is in our imaginations. One of the things about the scenario is we can simply specify "and this boss is a misogynist" when in real life that'd be a lot harder to determine. It's perfectly acceptable to posit that in a scenario to judge how our concepts, in this conversation, are relating to one another -- but I don't think it wise to take crystalline imaginations as a model for laws.
Lastly, I suspect that identity is such that the law cannot be satisfied. Even if we were to take the perspective of a gender-based definition in law, what then would our administrator think of the gender-fluid person, whose gender identity changes by the day? That would make an administrator's life difficult.
But surely we can identify however we identify, have it be genuine, even if the legal administrator can't understand us?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Oh yes. Something that's often missed is that women can be patriarchal -- it's not an identity, but a system which is supported through cultural habit and technology. For it to persist you'd better not ignore roughly half of the population's habits!
The whole topic is very tricky for me, because I am pretty committed to a certain take on masculinity -- my sense of what it is to be a "good man" -- but there are two problems with that: one is that there's some overlap I'm afraid with what people I don't like take as their ideal of being a "real man"; the other is that there's no definably masculine "content" to the ideal -- what it's good for a man to do is generally good for a woman to do as well, so it's really more a matter of style, of a man's way of being good, of enacting the generic ideal, what it is to be good as a man.
For instance, your point about political perspectives almost completely co-opts what I think is one of my core expectations of a good man: standing up to bullies. Good men see followers of the real-man ideal, machismo, toxic masculinity, whatever, as bullies, or at least as bullies in training. Even if they don't have consciously malicious intent, but are just acting on what they understand as their prerogative, the effect is that they become bullies. --- The political point, before I forget: in the US, the right regularly paint themselves as standing up to bullies, big tech, the liberal media, corporate wokeness, blah blah blah. And there is a sense in which they are fighting forces more powerful than them, so it's not completely irrational for them to read the situation that way. It's just that in many cases their opponents, while hegemonic, are not actually bullying them and have not targeted them; and what they are fighting for is generally the freedom to bully trans kids and queers and black and brown people. (Here in Georgia, you will still hear people say the Civil War wasn't about slavery, but states rights -- which, yeah, the right of states to allow slavery. Similar logic here. The federal government is by definition a bully in red states.) So the left says they're obviously standing up to bullies -- racists and sexists and the rest -- and the right says they're standing up to the bullies on the left.
Standing up to bullies -- how does that work? If bullying is the stronger taking advantage of the weaker, the weaker could always stand up for themselves, which would be noble perhaps, or brave, but also probably foolish. They'll need help, and the usual options are many more of their weak brethren pitching in, so all of them together are stronger than the bully, or someone about as strong as the bully stands up for them. (In revenge fantasies, your ally is way bigger than your bully.) This is the guy who says, "Hey, why don't you pick on someone your own size." (I'm not quite 5'10" and a buck fifty, so I can only use that line or your smaller bullies.)
I just don't know if it's true elsewhere, but I'm convinced that this is a core element of how America sees itself. Hitler was a bully, Europe was in a general way too weak to stand up for itself, the minorities Hitler especially targeted like Jews and Gypsies and the mentally ill -- I'm telling the American version here -- they were obviously weak and needed a Captain America to stand up for them. It's why I posted that stuff about the American ideal of the reluctant warrior. It's why Shane is the quintessential analysis of American manhood. --- Shane is particularly interesting because he is a reformed gunfighter. He, like America, has a dark past in which he was the bully, so he has the capability but has forsworn using it. He only takes his guns out of the bottom of the trunk when there's no avoiding the conclusion that there's a bully in town the farmers and womenfolk just can't handle on their own.
(This is also why it's complicated talking to Americans about foreign policy. The belief that we are the good guys runs really, really deep. Some of us, a lot of us, learned when we were teenagers that the history of the US's foreign interventions doesn't reflect entirely well on us, so the critics of American foreign policy aren't telling us anything we don't know. But we understand the American self-image and treat it as aspirational. We have not always been the good guys, but it's baked into us to want to be. And it's why Captain America says, "I'm loyal to nothing, General -- except the Dream." --- I looked it up. It was Frank Miller, of all people, who wrote that line. Even Frank Miller, glorifier of masculine violence, gets it.)
What's really uncomfortable about this whole analysis though is that it does accept that the world is divided into strong and weak, and while the good man stands with the weak as a matter of choice, he is with the bully as a matter of nature, being strong. That also means that as a matter of psychology, choosing to see yourself as a protector of the weak is choosing to see yourself as not one of them, but as strong. And that means unavoidably making strength a part of your self-image rather than incidental to it. The other famous superhero line fits here: with great power comes great responsibility. If you accept the responsibility, it's a way of seeing yourself as powerful.
Usually all of this relies on a simplistic understanding of power or strength as something some people have and some people don't, but you can take it as situational. That was always my understanding of Oppenheimer, that he acted as he did because he recognized he was uniquely positioned to act (to try to stop the super, for instance) and that granted him power he had a responsibility to exercise.
(And this is all another reason for the right to cast itself as standing up to the bullies on the left -- it's a way to indirectly cast yourself as strong rather than weak. The real-men crowd despise weakness and will do whatever it takes not to see themselves as weak, and the first option is usually bullying. Can't be a bully if you're not strong. This seems to be Trump's deal, and why he thrived at the military school he was sent to.)
Coming back finally to my first paragraph -- that being a good man is a man's way of being good -- if you recognize that your society has given men privileges and authority, and that includes you, then you ought to recognize you've been given power to act for the good. That power is situational, not inherent to you, but it's real. And it's not necessarily something you wanted, but you have it. (Refusing more power than you've already been given, or more power than you need to do what's right, is another classic good man move, from Cincinnatus to Washington to -- Mike Pence. For all his flaws, and they are considerable, when he told Trump he did not have the authority to pick the winner of an election, Trump (or was it Eastman? I don't remember) asked him, "Yeah, but if you could, wouldn't you want to?" To which Pence replied, "No! Of course not. No one should have that kind of power." Apparently even Christian dominionists can understand that power corrupts.)
So it may well be that the ideal of the "good man" is largely an artifact of patriarchy. (There may also be something in the inherent differences in physical strength between men and women, on average, and using that relative strength responsibly too.) Being a good man is an adaptive behavior, a way to be as good as you can given that the society you live in has given you unequal power, something like that.
Yikes, this was a long, rambly one. Hope there's something in here worth taking up.
That makes sense, yes.
Quoting Moliere
Yeah. I can see that. I'm wary though of putting too much stock in 'that sounds plausible'. I've had too many theories that sounded plausible turn out not be the case on examination. But still, for what it's worth... that sounds plausible.
Quoting Moliere
See, here's where I part company from the modern identity culture. I don't think the law is the oddity here. I think the notion of a part of our language being inaccessible to the language community is the oddity. Can you think of any other examples of words whose meaning resides with the object? Does the meaning of 'tree' depend on the tree? The meaning of 'Zebra' depend on the zebra? It's not a casual and everyday change that's being proposed here. The notion that the word 'woman' now describes, not a loose family resemblance type collection of public traits, but rather a thing called an 'identity' which I don't even believe exists, let alone has a state.
I can think of a few words that have entered the lexicon of a similar nature. People say a person had a 'bad energy', which I think is also nonsense. Or maybe saying someone is a 'Libra'... but none of these have attempted to enforce compliance. I simply don't believe in the notion of an identity which someone is. I don't see any compelling evidence that I should. It seems very much the sort of thing that belongs in the same category as personality theory, or some of the spurious DSM classifications. But instead it's become a thing, the denial of which, is grounds for accusations of bigotry.
The thing I'm being asked to refer to is a thing I don't think exists. Can you see how that's a problem for me?
So true. I'm glad you said it first.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Not to get all Evolutionary Psychology (let's not go there), but men are different. We're a different toolset, so 'using' us to do good is going to involve a different set of behaviours from those which make use of a woman. Typically.
Returning to a favourite theme of mine (narratives), boys growing up need some narrative options that will suit them, and that requires a culture to have some archetypes, even if they don't apply to everyone. The various male-types are just that - or at least that's how they should work.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yeah, both in a sense using the trope to lend authority to their political objectives which are more about group membership tokens than archetypes of the hero. It's like using the all the props from a story without playing out the actual story.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
That's really interesting. I know nothing about football, but in England we're notoriously shite at it (we never win the world cup), despite being absolutely passionate about it, as a nation. I've thought it odd, but the resolution I think, shows a difference which may separate the 'proper' man from the bully. To be a good footballer, one has to be dedicated to practice, but being a 'football fan' in our culture is opposed that sort of dedication as being indicative of something a bit too 'Germanic', all to organised and taking oneself far too seriously. So we're shit. I think your bully is like that compared to the 'real man' which stands up to bullies. It takes dedication and training to be the sort of person who can fight. A bully is never going to commit to that because if they were prepared to make that kind of self-sacrifice, they wouldn't need to bully. Does this actually play out in bigger social circles? Don't know. There's certainly plenty of bullies built like brickhouses, but none of them are Chang Caine.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think this is inevitable at some level even without society. One sex is generally stronger then the other, so the narratives for that sex are going to need to deal with that power imbalance. They can do so badly (ownership, control), or they can do so well (standing up when needed, stepping back when not), but what they can't do is not address it at all. Accumulated power is different in the sense that divesting oneself of it is an option, but even doing so is an act of power (those without don't get the chance to play the magnanimous ruler). I think a lot of what comes under masculinity is embedding the notion that it's one's job to unthinkingly help those weaker than one. The key here is unthinkingly, and that requires it be done even in circumstances where it's not needed. The point is to not think about it. The point is to take responsibility for being stronger. And that sometimes applies to men in relation to women.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Ha!. You know how I confessed before to replying to posts one paragraph at a time without reading the whole thing first...? Still great minds....
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes. Couldn't agree more.
And because the whole point is to pick on those who are weaker. The stereotypical bully is a big guy who just takes advantage of his god-given advantage, with no effort. (Hence the way older brothers treat their younger siblings.) More important is the guy who's smart enough to spot people's weaknesses and manipulate them, bullying them through psychology. That's Trump, that's Finchy in The Office.
Quoting Isaac
We haven't talked enough about this. I think it was @Moliere who mentioned that the key opposition is not man/woman, but man/boy. There's so much to say about this, but the first thing is that it's not just archetypes but your father that is your primary exemplar of manhood, so it's inevitable that you chose to emulate his example or reject it, and for most a mix of both they don't recognize until they're older. A child's first definition of woman is going to be "someone like my mom" and of man "someone like my dad".
Yes. That would certainly make everything confusing! You'd have to more or less ask the other person to make clear what we're talking about, and here I am saying "it's not clear, but it's not that -- you have to take people at their word" :D
I asked someone earlier if they believed gender-identity to be on par with, say, horoscopes -- a meaningful set of phrases that are all of them false, more or less offering an error theory of gender-identity. It seems that you'd commit to that? -- it's identity-talk, but we generally understand that as a set of phrases horoscopes cannot hold without context because they're purposefully written to be ambiguous so that we can find the correct context, and so it doesn't work to the standard of, say, a definition of a set.
I don't think error-theory works here, though, because gender is one of those things which gets re-expressed in many different ways throughout various cultures. At the very least, looking as societies as under a kind of natural selection, those which landed on rules where reproduction excels will have more numbers which leads to more relative power, which in turn, throughout history, has overwhelmingly favored patriarchal societies. The patriarchy is older than most of the systematic social structures I point out -- outlasting even the major economic changes, to go against some interpretations of the Base-Superstructure theory of Marx. And here I am certainly talking about the patrilineal descent and control of property as the background social structure that this all gets organized around
So I see it as there being something very basic, which is hard to get at that underlies this re-expression (what I've referred to as a way-of-being, in contradistinction to both traits and behaviors). I'd say our identities exist, but maybe not in the same way, or at least the way we usually talk about existence doesn't seem to work here since it's neither traits nor behaviors. I'm not sure that identity is amenable to scientific analysis, though I think historical analysis works. I've been situating gender within culture, because I think that's what gives shape and meaning to gender identity.
But when I do that -- that's when I land on these notions which are far from the lock tight demonstrations. The concepts are fragile, half-formed, and morphing along the way. How does anyone describe a way of doing things? We can say, in general, Being-in-the-world -- but that's the ontological expression rather than an expression of identity.
What I'm brought back to is that I think we all do this with respect to identity. How we relate to others isn't so much about the traits they hold, and is only partially dependent upon behaviors (consider how you can judge the same behavior as good or bad -- the perception of a person's overall reputation will guide how a perceiver judges a behavior).
Quoting Isaac
Heh please don't put too much stock into it. I don't think it a universal theory, as much as a generalized observation of how people react to trans people. Especially on the psychological side -- it's pretty hard to predict what emotion is going to be the reason for actions in general, at least for me. I'm not sure it's always disgust, but it can be all kinds of emotions which still functionally lead to enforcing the central patriarchal norm -- the gender binary -- which is where I think the connection really comes from. It's because the binary is being violated that they are targets, since patriarchy relies upon the binary for its own justification.
Yeah, that's it. It's like two different relationships with strength (above average) that define both how it was acquired and how it is used. If our stories are to be believed (and who's going to doubt such an authoritative text as The Lord of the Rings?), the brutes lose.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yeah - which comes back to my favourite neglected topic. Parenting. The aspect of socio-political strategy which is simultaneous the most important and the most ignored. Which is the stronger role model for abuse of power - the mansplaining work colleague with his outdated use of "bird", or the figure who can command an entire room to sit, stand, speak, and move exactly when told and has the power to determine your dress, your haircut, your speech, can imprison you on a whim, and against whom you have absolutely no say and recourse...?
(I'm not a big 'school' fan - if that comes across)
We have these superlatively draconian figures in every child's life five days a week, every term for their entire childhood, and when looking for reasons why children might grow up to abuse the power they have we're casting around for things like men spreading their legs when sitting down, or misusing some outdated terminology.
I'm not here saying that that stuff is fine. It's not fine, but it's the tools by which the bullying is done, it's not the reason why.
Do I? That seems to be begging the question. If there's such a thing as an 'identity' and it's as important as you claim, then yes, I'd obviously have to take people at their word on it, it'd be mean not to. But that's only if such a thing exists. If it doesn't, then taking people at their word on it would be saying that I have to buy into their model, but they don't have to buy into mine, ever. Is conversation not a two-way cooperation?
Quoting Moliere
Gender as behaviour does. Gender as 'identity'...? I've seen no evidence for it.
I can classify societies by literally any loose set of characteristics, and because we tend to form sub-sets, it's not too hard to find some kind of statistically robust boundaries. Teenage culture, for example - emos, goths, sporty types, geeks.... Cultures have 'man' and woman' as ready-to-hand sub-types into which most people fit, with a lot of the behaviours and expression related to reproductive biology, but many not, just pure cultural affectation.
And sure - if a person with a beard and a deep voice etc. came up to me and said "I feel more like a woman", I don't for a moment imagine his beard, voice, or any other biology puts a lie to that. But it remains that all he's saying, in that instance, is that he wants to behave like that class we call 'women' (in this context). If he/she were to invoke some 'identity' as a thing with a fixed value, I can't see any evidence from his actions that there is such a thing.
Quoting Moliere
That all sounds perfectly reasonable, but I don't see things that way. What you're describing is more like a world view, it sounds vaguely Heideggerian, maybe? Fine. Not my cup of tea, but I'm not starting a crusade.
The point here is that it's not bigotry to disagree with the world-view you've just so carefully laid out. It's fine you think that way, but others don't. You can see, surely how those couple of paragraphs of nebulous uncertainty cannot drive even mandated social relations, let alone law. I can't justifiably be compelled to act in accordance with a notion you can even explain without resort to "hard to get at", "not sure that identity is amenable to scientific analysis", and "Being-in-the-world"...?
Why ought I believe someone who believes in the notion of 'identity', any more than I believe someone who believes in the notion of 'an eternal soul', or 'innate evil', or 'destiny'?
It is.
To be fair, most people don't think identity simply does not exist -- they think there is this or that thing to be said about identity. Further, that's the usual sentiment that trans individuals face -- that they are non-existent or confused -- so it's unlikely to find a person who has to deal with that on the daily be willing to entertain it in a philosophical spirit. It's like saying "I do not exist" -- the reverse cogito which disproves itself.
But this is a space for philosophical thinking, and I'm willing to entertain the notion. You've certainly entertained mine.
If there is no such thing as identity then my method is question-begging (as an aside, I tend to believe all beliefs about existence beg the question, but that would take us way too far astray).
So you'd commit to error-theory, then? Or at least the analogy that all identity talk is as existentially important as talk of horoscopes?
Quoting Isaac
By all means disagree with me. I've laid it out as philosophy, and that's the usual mode of conversation.
I don't think most people who are describing their identity are doing so in that vein, though. They're asking for recognition, which in turn means safety, whereas I'm attempting to at least reflect on the phenomena from a philosophical distance.
Disagreeing with a world-view is one thing. I think the push-back you receive is that it's not just a world-view that's at stake -- unlike here, where we really are just talking about ideas. Serious play, but at a distance so we can look at how we're thinking and reflect.
But once we exit the philosophy room the whirl begins again, and most people don't have a taste for philosophy, in my experience.
Yeah, that's right. Insofar as there's something immutable and sacred there. I mean, you made a really good showing, but you'd have to admit that your paragraph explaining what an identity is was hardly clear. I don't think it's beyond reason to think that the reason you're having trouble pinning it down is because there's nothing there to pin.
Let's say I ask you - what is your identity? How did you learn what word would do the job to explain to me what it is? Why 'Woman', or 'Man'? Why not 'cat'? How did you learn that 'Man' and 'Woman' were legitimate answers to that question, but 'cat', or 'the capital of France' didn't make any sense?
It's from you language community, right? So 'woman' has no meaning outside of what we use the word for -we, the language community. It can't mean only what you use the word for, that wouldn't make any sense, the word wouldn't do anything and you couldn't possibly know that you were using it to mean the same thing one day to the next (messy rehash of the private language argument).
But 'woman' is not like 'cat', it seems to be used to do different things in different contexts. Sometimes pretty biological taxonomy, sometime social roles, sometime behaviours... but these thing all have one thing in common, the one thing all language does... the terms are publicly available. I can learn from you what 'woman' means in your language game, and you can learn the same from me. That way we can use language in our cooperative ventures.
It's my belief that when we describe aspects of ourselves, we're reaching for these publicly constructed models to best explain what are essentially just interocepted nerve signals, memory re-firing of past neural patterns, and no small amount of random noise.
What I don't believe for a moment, is that a) some constitution of this mental goings on is correct, immutable and sacred, and b) known only to you and not picked off the shelf of publicly available models associated with the word you choose.
I don't believe (a) because we see too much the same mental goings on interpreted as different constructions by the same people at different times. We're wildly unfaithful even to our own models and we've absolutely no better idea what's going on than the person sat next to us.
I don't believe (b) because we don't just pick random words to describe these 'identities', we pick words we've learnt, and we can only have learnt those words from a community of language users, who must, therefore, know what the word means, which means, by definition, you could be wrong.
Quoting Moliere
That is excellent, because the way it enters is via the devilish wrong understanding, like wot da Bible say.
But I think there is also a simpler, and much more general explanation of the conflict which is that identification is necessarily divisive. No us without them. No male without female. Hence the famous story about the Buddhist visiting N.Ireland being asked insistently, "Yes, but are you a Catholic buddhist of a Protestant buddhist?" The very idea of being both or neither threatens everyone's own identity and the very laws of logic themselves.
As an old hippy, I well remember the horrified complaint about men with long hair "but you can't tell whether it's a boy or a girl!" And as I have said at tedious length, sex is of fundamental importance to a patrilineal society, and not so much if at all to a matrilineal one, thereby allowing more focus on which end one opens one's boiled egg at breakfast (all right thinking folk, men and women alike, are obviously little-enders), and other such vital issues.
I like this, but I think I'd like it more if you aimed at the level of narratives instead of going all the ways down to words -- though I understand it looks like it's the use of individual words that's at stake, of course it isn't, they're pieces of a larger puzzle.
Somehow this all reminds me of a moment in The Sting, when Redford (I think) is at the apartment of a criminal associate of his. I think it's grandkids sitting on the floor listening to a cops and robbers show on the radio and one of them cheers the cop hero, which elicits from the old guy a "Hey! Who are y'all rootin' for?!" and possibly a gentle smack on the head (it would fit, but I'm not sure I'm not imagining that). Can be tricky to keep your identity fixed.
Here's another one from the criminal world -- so more masculinity stuff here -- that I would have heard on the radio I guess during the crack epidemic. There was a culture clash in America's high security prisons. I remember clearly some old cons who were interviewed who did not understand the new younger cons in their midst. "We were just outlaws," they would say. And there'd be talk of still having some kind of code. "These guys, though, they don't seem to care about anything, shoot anyone, for no reason, kids too." I remember some old guy particularly put off by these younger guys laughing when someone got shot in a cop show on TV. Just couldn't wrap his head around that.
Upshot of these little stories, I guess, is that identity is always something you perform, rather than something that you are, and your ideas about yourself play a part in that performance but are also a reflective simplification of that performance. There's a feedback loop, but I think it starts with the performance and it's the performance that will keep updating the ideas. (My motto these days, is "How can I know what I think till I see what I say.") If that coupling is too loose, you get people whose ideas about themselves and their performance diverge enough to be troublesome, and then we're talking about neurosis, I guess. But it's always a little loose.
Yes, you're right. The words here are category words and that matters more than I've given due. 'Woman' is not like 'cat' in this context. It's more like 'free-thinker', or 'entrepreneur', or 'layabout'... But it is like 'cat' in another. I think 'women's' bathroom just means 'bathroom for those who need to sit down to pee'. It doesn't mean 'bathroom for those who wear dresses, ride side-saddle, and get captured by dragons in Disney films'.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes, that's the sort of thing I was aiming at. I suppose with my focus on words I was trying to get at the way in which, with these identities being largely public, off-the-shelf options, they've usually all got names... 'Woman' being one such.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes, so in modeling terms, your higher level cortices affect the priors in the models below them. You're more likely to interpret some collection of neural happenings as, say, a 'womanly' sensation, or drive, if that's already a meta-level model of how those cortices cohere (of course, they don't actually cohere at all).
I agree that it's not beyond reason. An interpretation of Hume asserts that we're nothing but bundles without an intrinsic nature (another is that reason fails to grasp who we are while the heart doesn't). And, definitely it's not clear to me. That's part of why I find it interesting! And why I think about it from the philosophical perspective. Not just that it's unclear, but that it may be a feature of the very thing we're talking about. Or, at least, this is how I see things: that another explanation for vagueness is that the phenomena is such that it's not really pin-able. I tend to believe there are at least two "kinds" of knowledge -- scientific and historic. They are similar in that they are about reality, make claims about what's happened and what's happening and what will happen, and are based upon facts that can be demonstrated in some fashion. Historical knowledge is what a knowledge of identity is amenable under(though not uniquely, as I think self-knowledge isn't exactly history), but historic knowledge doesn't have all the benefits of scientific knowledge. Namely it's not falsifiable, and it comes in narrative form as its primary mode -- it's based on facts, but it's as much about the storyteller as it is the story because it's even more theory-laden than science without the benefit of being able to demonstrate a disproof from prediction. Further the notions of how the world works change between historians moreso than between scientists with respect to their subject of expertise (scientists disagree all the time, but usually there's a large body of agreement on the knowledge they're working on)
Think -- what are the scientific data which can even be correlated with, say, the meaning of Homer's epic poem? There are no ancient Greeks whose brain we can measure, but we're able to translate meaning from then into our own. Would the correlates which a person has while reading Shakespeare change the theme of Hamlet? Aren't most of the things in our life that we care about not really reducible in this way?
Primarily I'd say identity is like this. And reading your exchange with @Srap Tasmaner (ah! I didn't finish this thought because the post was too long already -- I picked up on the notion of performance and worked it in below though)
Quoting Isaac
I don't think I'd foist the problem of identity onto language use. I believe the Private Language Argument to hold in that it demonstrates there is no such thing as a private language. But I don't think that identity-talk relies upon a notion of a private language as much as it relies upon a standpoint of some kind, which is much more defensible than a full-blown Subject.
I think a lot of people feel that their identity is immutable, sacred, and private. Upon coming back to thinking on The Subject I think while they are technically incorrect there's more. While there are philosophical reasons to reject immutable and private -- sacred, I think, is something which most people still hold to, and I'm not sure there are philosophical reasons for that outside of a flat denial of the sacred (it's more an ethical question than an ontological one where the sacred shouldn't be profaned) -- In terms of how we converse people will know more about themselves than you know about them because they've been around themselves the whole time. This not in a fancy way, but the simple fact that people will be better able to construct a story about themselves than strangers who know nothing about them. There is a kind of knowledge there about themselves, their preferences, what they've done, what they'd like to do, how they feel, and all that which I only have access to through language if they are willing to tell me. I can make guesses, and be correct, and I can know an individual person better than themself in a particular way (especially in intimate relationships where you do share feelings), but they'll always have that perspective of themselves that I do not have.
To step away from gender and look at another scenario, how would you know a Baptist from a Buddhist? They are both ways of life that don't rely upon traits -- and, in truth, people rarely live up to the behaviors of their way of life. But a person could still be a Baptist or a Buddhist, yes? It's not like it's false for them to be either of these things, to feel this certain way about the world and their place within it, to know what they care about.
Now you've gone all the way so the analogy wouldn't work for you. Identity isn't real because...
But then how do Baptists and Buddhists talk to one another about the divine? Are they incommensurable worldviews, or could they find a way to talk to one another in spite of their differences?
I bring up religion because from the anthropological angle I don't see much of a difference between performances of Buddhism or Baptism from performances of Masculinity. They are central to a person's identity in a similar way and help guide a person in their place within the world. I'd go further and note that even though all identity is a kind of performance that doesn't make it false -- or, rather, the truth and falsity isn't as relevant as the significance of one's identity. Whether there is an existent which correlates with claims of identity isn't important at all. What matters is being heard and recognized as a person. (How could I respond to a person who believes I do not exist? What possible retort is there? What is true about asking others to do?)
That a particular language community doesn't have a language-game that recognizes me, for instance, wouldn't stop me from expressing myself as best I can within the context I find myself in. In fact, existentially, I couldn't stop expressing myself, as I am always myself regardless of the words I happen to know. If in a community of Morman's (switching to something I know more) who believe in the gender binary as at least sacred and immutable (though not private) I'll still say "I'm not that". The act of negation will always be open, even if the way the public uses words right now doesn't seem to match how I want to use them. That's not a private language, that's just how language works -- it morphs along with the use such that the meaning changes over time rather than sitting on a shelf for the public to pick up (at least, in my metaphor of language)
(a bit of an afterthought on the PLA -- you can jerrymander who the public is as to give your meaning preference)
Oh! You should have said the opposite. Identity is precisely an issue of the autobiographical self.
Quoting Moliere
Same.
Quoting Moliere
There's obviously something to this; I know lots of things about my personal history that no one else does. But there's also the Burns Problem: we are biased when it comes to ourselves, and sometimes others can see us more clearly.
Quoting Moliere
But it is a story and serves a purpose. It's not just the unvarnished truth.
Quoting Moliere
Right. It is just not one of the purposes of the autobiographical self to be a truthful record of your life. So yes truth and falsehood are irrelevant to its function -- for you. Not entirely irrelevant to other people I think. We do tend to make judgements about how self-aware people are, because we need to know how seriously to take what they say about themselves.
Heh. My thinking would differentiate between mere autobiography and History :D -- Biography, sure! That's history. Autobiography? That's primary literature.
Self-knowledge is precisely the autobiographical self? That's close, but then there's the kind of knowledge I act on without articulation and have to articulate later. I knew what I was doing and who I was the whole time, but the articulation -- categories -- come after the fact.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Oh yes.
A simple fact that can be complicated.
Still, there is something to this kind of knowledge, as you admit. Even calling it a "knowledge" -- there are various known deficiencies in recollection, but I'll still know better than a total stranger about my life story, while in a court room or a psychotherapist's session I could come to believe entirely fabricated memories.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I make the judgment, but I'm not sure that I tend to make the judgment of others' self-awareness for the various things I've been thinking through and about. I think what I've found is that it's far too easy to believe you have judged another's self-awareness when there's something missed.
Oh but I didn't say we make good, reliable judgements about the self stories of others, only that we do. All of our own biases will certainly be in play when we try to figure out how other people understand themselves.
But to come back to the point @Isaac was making, there seems to be a demand that we all not do what we all do, that we not even consider the possibility that particular sorts of stories people tell about themselves are not perfectly true. You argued that we need to just ask and take people's word for it when they answer, but we don't do that for anything and it's an unreasonable demand.
But we can still recognize that you construct your identity in part by telling these stories -- "We are who we pretend to be" -- and grant this constructive role without acquiescing to the folly that anyone ever simply reports the truth they find within.
I admit that politically this sounds like crap. People want to be told they are seen as who they know themselves to be. But that's not a courtesy we extend to anyone, so if we refuse here it's not singling out these claimants. But on the other hand, no one else makes the demand in so many words, perhaps because they know it's a non-starter. (As I write, I keep thinking of exceptions to these generalities, mostly in arguments among family, close friends, romantic partners.) But for whatever reason, no one else asking means no one else being turned down, so the effect of refusing here on general principles still looks like singling out trans people as not being trustworthy. So yeah, still political dynamite, even if perfectly consonant with psychology and our everyday ways of dealing with each other. The natural thing is to consider the political situation and make an exception. Maybe in time trans people won't have to ask to be seen the way they want, and we can go back to not treating their self-knowledge as uniquely privileged.
Totally unintended -- I think we started with toxic masculinity in the old vein of trying to understand the normal from the abnormal.
I, to prove your point, disagree with your opening, which means we are now two.
I think trans identity works as you describe though -- that it violates the very laws of logic by threatening everyone's identity.
Heh. Weird that the conservative spaces I lived in can give similar experiences across time -- we called ourselves punk rock, but it's basically the same thing and I also got picked on for long hair.
I agree that sex is important only because of patrilineal descent of property. How else, prior to modern molecular biological technology, could you tell that your child was your child?
But on eggs -- as is typical, I'm that weirdo who starts in the middle
Is that the demand? I wouldn't go so far as to say people cannot tell false things about themselves. Sure they can, and we do.
But when it comes to someone's basic identity that they live with I'd say we take people's word for it almost always. Maybe we think there's this bit or that bit which we'd say different, but we don't ask if the person is talking about something unrelated without a reason. "Are you sure you're Baptist? That sounds Catholic"
In the case of gender I think that reason is there are individuals who don't follow popular beliefs about gender, but they are just as genuine as any expression of gender.
Hmmmm. If you want to say that we don't take their word for some things but we do for others, the identity things, then you're back to having to clearly demarcate those identity things even to make your point. Your religion example, for instance -- I could tell you a long story about my second marriage that would undermine claims that self-reported faith is reliable. So maybe sometimes it's an identity thing and sometimes it's not. What are we doing here?
I'm just not sure you can make good on identifying identity such that identity related claims should be treated as incorrigible. I would rather we not even require something that messy become tidy just to make political progress.
Consider this. If I want to be seen as what I feel myself to be, you taking my word for it that I am what I claim to be is just not the same thing, is it? If you truly don't see me as I desire, what does your taking my word for it amount to? Even if you manage to do both, how will you handle the cognitive dissonance?
Seems to me the "taking my word for it" is a cheap substitute for the real thing. And it might be worse than nothing, because one way of handling the cognitive dissonance is to try not to see me at all, so you can continue to endorse my claim without discomfort. That's not what I wanted!
Politically, it looks like the "take my word for it" view is all but openly a stopgap, a kind of expedient compromise. There's something similar in dealing with rape: "Believe women." Well no that's just dumb, but it's a deliberate over-correction to the overwhelming tendency to dismiss women's claims. If there ever comes a day when women's words aren't discounted, no one will think "Believe women" a suitable rallying cry.
I can very much relate to the idea of parents comparing their son to girls as a means to dissuade certain behaviors. My family did that to me all the time.
:roll:
I think my point can get off the ground insofar that we agree we take people at their word on anything at all.
I thought @Isaac might view religious identification in the same way as gender identification in that there are people who claim these things, they insist they are different, but divinity and gender do not exist. That's why I chose the example.
I agree here.
Though this thread is anything but tidy, so I think I've even gone some way to demonstrate my agreement ;)
When I think "taking your word" I guess I mean I believe it. So if you have cognitive dissonance the next step would be to ask something, if you have that level of trust, or make a choice, or hold onto it to think about it awhile.
True. I think I understand where you're going with this. Hopefully you see this isn't what I'm endorsing?
My attempts here are to express it as something more than a stopgap, though I feel it has been inadequate and is still a work in progress.
I think we usually take each other's word for it. We both believe we're expressing our opinions on this site, rather than trolling one another from afar. And language doesn't work without some level of give-and-take, though we find words to disagree upon for various reasons.
I'm not advocating a categorical imperative here as much as saying if you want to be able to theorize gender identity you have to begin with the face-to-face relation to the other. (but without so many words).
Right. Although, for me it was far more than just that! The way I stood, talked, expressed myself, played, etc... eventually I ended up with a persona to satisfy them. It wasn't really me, but it worked. Then I had to go through the struggle of shedding the skin later, when it was no longer necessary, and I actually realized that that had happened.
That's uh... very very difficult to do. Well, for me anyway... it was.
And now... very few of them even know me at all. They refused to accept me then... as a youth. I refuse to accept them now... as an adult.
Oh. That's exactly contrary to my linguistic intuitions. (We don't need to argue about this, but if I take your word for it that you'll be at the restaurant at 8, I agree to set aside my judgment about whether you will be and behave as if you will be.)
Okay so this is exactly analogous to "Believe women". It's not that you can't exhort people to hold some belief, but the basis being offered -- and reasons will be required here -- is essentially that you can't be wrong about this, that identity beliefs are special and incorrigible.
I'd really love to see a different solution.
Better how?
As @Srap Tasmaner says...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
... so not better as in more accurate. Better, as in, more honest? Doubt it, when was the last time you were honest with yourself? Better, as in more 'authentic'? Can't see why others who know us wouldn't have equally authentic accounts, behaviourally. More data? Maybe, but that depends on the quality of memory, it's perfectly plausible that some third party with a better memory than me remembers my behaviour more clearly than I do.
I'm totally on board with your idea of historical 'knowledge' (though I'd quibble over the term 'knowledge'), but the idea that there's a narrative which is not amenable to science is something I hold to as well. Something, for me, more like Quine's underdetermination, but it amounts to the same thing... We end up in a situation where all the evidence there is still doesn't choose between two interpretations, two stories of how things are.
All good. But to get to the place people want us to be with gender identity, we need that immutably sacred element. It's when our stories clash, create expectations of others, that it becomes an issue, because then you have to argue that being both subject and narrator of a story somehow gives you rights over another, because the issue here is not whether we're entitled to our own stories. The issue is whether we're entitled to, at any time, legally (or morally) demand that other people treat us, not as characters in their story, but as (the correct) protagonists of our own.
If, in my story, I'm 'the funny one', I'm the one who's always telling jokes, cheering everyone up with a bit of humour when the mood gets dark... I can well go through life with that identity, but others might just think me 'the fool', never taking anything seriously, undermining people's emotions by trivialising them... In their story, I'm the fool, in mine I'm the comic relief. Have I got any right to ask them to treat me like the comic relief, not the fool? Can I insist that it's rude not to laugh at my jokes because 'I'm the funny one'? Of course not. I'm the funny one in my story, but I'm someone else in theirs.
I don't see how being 'a woman' is any different (apart from the level of trauma that seems associated with needing to be accepted as one - I'll come back to that). You might be 'a woman' in your story, but you might be 'a man' in mine. As in the example above, what is there about your story being yours that now that compels me, ethically, to ignore you-in-my-story and replace the character with you-in-your-story? I appeared to be under absolutely no obligation to do so with the identity 'the funny one'.
So coming back to the trauma. All I can think of to answer my own question is that it appears to be really traumatic for people not to be treated as 'the woman' in other people's stories in way that not being treated as 'the funny one' doesn't bring. But I don't think there's anything philosophical here, it's psychology. It's partly the importance society places on these roles (and so the effect it has on one's life choices to be misgendered), and part affectation (you can flay me if you like, but there's a hell of a lot of faux offence going on - people love to be the victim and denying that is just naive). I don't think either of those issues are to do with identity. The first is to do with freedom (society seems hellish good at constraining people in ways they don't want to be), the second is to do with our victim culture right now, a lot of rich western guilt being foisted off by claiming victim-hood elsewhere. It's good that we tackle the former, it's not good that we indulge the latter. That's the line I'm trying to tread.
Quoting Moliere
At the time, I didn't realise it was a follow-up to this: 'should'. See underlined.
Quoting Moliere
Well, that is one way of looking at it. But I'm not sure it makes sense. Is 'love' seen as toxic?
Do the powerful and privileged masculine (including women) not feel love?
I think the term 'toxic masculinity' could be explored further together with 'toxic femininity'.
Their origins and what they mean to different people.
Right now, I don't have the time for careful consideration, so here are first found references.
There will be heaps more out there...from all kinds of perspectives...
Everyday examples of toxic masculinity in relationships, schools and workplaces:
Quoting What is toxic masculinity - verywellmind
***
Toxic femininity
Quoting What is toxic femininity - verywellmind
What I think is interesting is the word 'toxic'. If there is a part of humanity which is deemed 'toxic' as in poisonous, what is the antidote?
Quoting Toxic Masculinity - Learning for Justice
First, identify the poison.
Isn't that what a Pragmatist or pragmatist would do? @Ciceronianus @t clark @universeness @unenlightened...?
W.S. Gilbert. Iolanthe.
The peculiarity of gender and sexual identity in this culture is that what Nature contrives must first be hidden from public gaze, and then indicated by conventional signs of hairstyle, clothing, and behaviour. This invests sex and sexual identity with totemic power that makes this thread significant in a way that a discussion about, say, eye colour is not. Genitals are hidden like The Holy of Holies, and other such religious mysteries. Sex is the religion of modernity, and this thread should belong in the philosophy of religion section, except that no one here is questioning the foundations of practice and belief.
What is a blue-eye, and what makes them better than brown-eyes? And what should we do with those perverts who use coloured contact lenses behind their mandatory sunglasses and then wear the wrong coloured hat?
Fal lal la!
[Enter Fairies, with Celia, Leila, and Fleta. They trip round stage]
Quoting unenlightened
Even if religious practice and belief are viewed as the first identifiable poison, @Moliere's placement of his thread in Ethics is perhaps more appealing.
The continuing patriarchy of religion, rulers and royalty is stamped on currency and postage, God's sake!
The changing guard of Charles III...the numbered list of Popes.
So it goes. Never-ending. Or so it seems...
Stamped on and stumped.
If the topic was placed in the religion section, much would be made of the fact that it is mandated to cover up the facts of sex in favour of the performance of gender, and this would be called out as deliberate mystification. And anything said thereafter would be dismissed as dogma, brainwashing, and superstition. To be trans is "heretical", as it used to be to be homosexual, and still is in most places.
When a heresy cannot be suppressed, it results in a schism, and becomes a sect, like, to take a non-random example, Protestantism. This then in turn splits into innumerable factions and one ends up with a sect for every conceivable permutation of the fundamental fiction. How many genders are we up to now? It must be almost as many as the angels dancing on the head of a pin.
Heh, sorry. The moth is drawn to the light, and the man playing at philosopher is drawn to disagreement.
Quoting Amity
My thought is that a toxic masculinity is a malformed identity. Now if...
Quoting unenlightened
this may not work, because I'm contrasting it with what I'd consider a non-divisive identity, at least with respect to itself. A healthy identity leads to a happy life, and an unhealthy one leads to needless pain for itself and others.
I think there is such a thing as an undivided self, I suppose. But it's not in a category -- a healthy identity leads to contentment with life. In a meta-ethical way this can be questioned on the basis of The Good, but I more or less take it for granted that a content life is better and let those who want to be discontent to work out how that works over there in that part of the philosophy jungle.
Getting side-tracked...
"Toxic masculinity is an identity of the masculine which identifies itself with power, and the feminine with love, and denies itself the feminine. If you feel love, the feminine, then that is a weakness which the powerful wouldn't need to succumb to, and insofar that you feel love you should act to purge it to become a real man."
An attempted antidote: a real man feels and acts on love before the pursuit of power, or at least on virtue before the pursuit of power, and does not deny himself his feelings or attack himself for the feelings that he has. A real man is content with his discontentment, and learns to live with himself as he is.
Me too. What do you think I'm doing here? Scratch padding my way to that. I don't think "can't be wrong" or "incorrigible" are the right predicates. Those are obviously fatal in that we can be wrong, and we can improve our own self-understanding. A standpoint, yes, but not incorrigible. And I believe there is something to defending standpoints in other scenarios too -- such as the case of expertise, for instance. And it's not a case of the knowledge being special, but the more mundane part of having more knowledge or being in a better position to not make mistakes (though experts also make mistakes)
But I'm not sure how to articulate it. I'm still unsatisfied with my attempts here.
Quoting Isaac
This is a perfect question to get at what I'm trying to get at.
How could I tell if I am honest with myself or not?
One way would be to set up a standard for myself -- the beliefs which make me feel sad about the world and myself are the ones which are more honest, and the beliefs which make me feel happy about the world and myself are the noble lies.
But I'd be lying to myself in setting up that standard since honesty with yourself isn't about sorting yourself into categories but being in tune with who you are.
So another way would be to allow an outside observer have a standard.
The problem there is that the outside observer is in a relationship with me, but is being asked to pretend that they are not in a relationship with me to make objective determinations about whether I am being honest with myself or not. So they'll stop listening to me while listening to me from the analyst's perspective. It's no more honest than the self-determination I started with because the analyst would be lying to themself about what they see, denying the relationship that we're in.
Which is to answer your:
Quoting Isaac
It's better at building a relationship, which I think is how we come to feel our identities in the first place. The conversation is two-way at all times, even if we are using words slightly differently. We come to learn more about ourselves as we learn more about others, just like with history we come to know about the past just as much as we come to know the storyteller and it matters both the topic and the speaker.
In a relationship it takes two, and identity is found in relationship with others.
For me I always believe we should respect the self-expression of others. I've been in enough situations where I've had to figure out how I'm supposed to act to know how alienating that feels, so I tend to favor self-expression over whatever categories I happen to hold to at the time. But what this has taught me also is that listening to another's story is better for learning more about the world and yourself -- otherwise it's very easy to get trapped in my little web of thoughts.
Clearly at least listening would be a good start.
It's the hardest thing to learn and teach and practice, in my opinion.
Levinas' phenomenology is what comes closest to an exposition of listening, but it's also part of the Bad Guy philosophy so it's hard to float with people who prefer the Good Guy philosophy.
A lot of my own personal thoughts revolve around the concept of listening as primary, which means it plays a central role in my thinking but I have no good articulation for it -- which is why I come back to it.
One man's meat is another's poison. In this context one human identity is poisonous to another human identity, so one needs to identify self and poisonous other simultaneously.
Quoting What is toxic masculinity - verywellmind
Here, for example, the poisoned 'y' to which 'x' is poisonous is laid out very simply. There might be another school where a solitary 'x' is bullied for being "too masculine", but that is less likely because of power itself being associated with masculinity, at least hereabouts.
However. One might consider Margret Mead: https://www.simplypsychology.org/margaret-mead.html
To which rather overly even-handed summary, I should add the following debunking of her debunker: https://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/current/readings/Shankman-Trashing%20of%20Margaret%20Mead.pdf
Clearly Freeman and Mead were mutual poisons to each other, and so I arrive again back at the conservative liberal divide, that overlays the nature nurture, that overlays the masculine feminine divide...
Yes. You are drawn to whatever play delights you.
Of course, not all moths are drawn to the dangerous light.
There are even theories as to the reasons.
Of them all, I think this one: 'artificial lights resemble the frequencies of light emitted by the sex pheromones of female moths' is quite apt with regard to 'the man playing at philosopher'.
Quoting Moliere
What do you mean by 'identity'? In this thread, the discussion has mainly concerned gender identity.
What is the malformation, how does this present and who gets to diagnose it?
So, the characteristic of being 'masculine' in mind, body or spirit can be 'malformed'.
If it means not fitting what is usual, the correct shape or way of being, this could be applied to any person without it necessarily being toxic, ugly or frightening. It depends on perspective and context. A group identity related to ethnicity, culture or country.
Quoting Moliere
The undesirability of systemic 'toxic masculinity' concerns more than what a 'real man' is, or is not.
:smile:
Yes indeed. I was going to add: ''Choose your poison!"
Quoting unenlightened
Exactly.
Edit: Individuals with a multitude of 'selves' can have many poisons and antidotes.
I read about Margaret Mead in another lifetime. I might just have to refresh my memory.
Thanks for the links.
Quoting unenlightened
I don't think it's that simple, is it?
Some divisions might be black and white, some like it like that.
However, I think we're more often left with a sludgy grey. Not as sexy.
Perhaps lilac, lavender or royal purple...?
The origin of philosophy as the artificial satiation of sexual desire?
Or the act of philosophy as mating ritual without an object?
Quoting Amity
Something important to a person which orients them in the world. In particular an identity is not traits-based or behavior-based, in my articulation, but is more akin to being-in-the-world, but I'd rather not rely on that formulation because it concerns itself with equipmentality which seems different to me than identity.
What to mean by "identity" is a more general version of the question, what is a man? Whatever a gender-identity is, an identity is a generalization from even that.
Quoting Amity
I'dd say the malformation is at least related to the definition of toxic masculinity offered, the way toxic masculinity presents is violently, and we are the ones who get to diagnose it. I'm not sure the term can be used in terms of self-identification unless someone feels penitent, but for the most part I think it's a diagnosis from the outside rather than a self-identification. It is a kind of violence, as I said earlier to @unenlightened -- but given the violence of the world it's justified. In some ways the psychological-type is an attempt at understanding how someone could come to make the decision of hurting their romantic partner. What's up with the continued violence women are subjected to in our society? One possible explanation is that we have unhealthy identities which makes it feel right (enough, at least) to use violence.
Quoting Amity
Right. So the focus is on harm to self and others, not difference. Even if most people are not malformed, in this way, the one who is would be better off -- or at least more content -- if they weren't.
Quoting Amity
True.
Though I don't think we'll be able to encompass all concerns with a single antidote, right? This answer more in the spirit of answering the original question, or riffing on the notion of real man which I reject at the outset.
What would you propose as antidote?
My twopenneth; if I make predictions using my model and they turn out relatively unsurprising. If they don't, I've been dishonest (I've told a story which doesn't really fit with the behaviour).
To keep this gender-based. If I wanted everyone to treat me as a woman, then there must exist some set of roles/behaviours/approaches which constitute being a woman (for me), otherwise what could it possibly be that I'm asking others to do? If I too follow those, then I'm honest. If I don't, then I'm not.
But the thing here is that the criteria are public. They have to be otherwise the request "treat me like a woman", makes no sense. The use of term 'she/her' for example. It's a public term, we agree on it as a way of treating women. If someone said "treat me like a woman", but then started listing a whole load of things I don't associate with women (like using the word 'he'), I might quite fairly say "No, that's treating you like a man, you've misunderstood"
So, if there's obligations, behaviourally, on me when interacting with someone who wants to be treated 'like a woman', I think it's perverse to suggest that their own behaviour/attitude has no public component. If the trans woman can say to me "use 'she' that's what you say to women", why I can't I say "wear a dress, that's what women wear". Either we each have our own ideas of what a woman is and everyone else better lump it, or we agree together what one is (in different contexts, of course), and if that's not you, you're not one; end of story.
Quoting Moliere
Is it? I don't see it. It seems rather one way to me, which is not a good basis for a co-operative relationship. The problem is that these 'identities' are public entities. 'Woman' is something we all share in the creation of as a category, a role, a character in a story... We share that creation so that we can co-operate better, we all know what we're talking about, we all have a more predictable set of interactions which means we can plan together and maybe understand one another a bit better.
That all breaks down when people decide they're going to individually determine what these public entities are; then all we have is fights over the usage (as we have), everyone taking offence, no one co-operating because we've lost sight of the point of these public constructions.
Quoting Moliere
Yes, totally, but to tell that story we have to understand each other, we have to have a shared set of meanings for the words we use, including 'woman'. Otherwise, I can't hear your story because I don't know what you mean by anything you say.
I'll preempt @Joshs saying that we creatively 'extend' or re-determine those meanings through this dialogue, rather than them being external to our practice, fixed, and pre-existing, meanings we just use like hammers and screwdrivers.
On the other hand, we don't start from zero, so while dialogue might change our understanding of a word, it doesn't create that understanding ex nihilo.
And that's the sticking point, the off-the-shelf narratives we bring with us to the discussion. Is there a process for rewriting those scripts, how does it work, what is required for that process, and how robust is it?
I think our summoned @Joshs answers that. As you rightly suggest he would rightly say. We build these things as we go. But the point here is that it can't be a one-way system where Bob has a fully formed narrative in his head which he'd like other people to act in accordance with, but in interacting with Bob, Alice's own narrative must be discarded. I just don't think that's how social constructions are supposed to work. I think the idea of them (insofar as there is an 'idea', daren't even whisper evo psych's name) is to aid co-operation - reduce surprise really, but we don't need to track all the way back there.
I don't think there's anything stopping us each having our own narratives and just thrashing it out when they clash. I just don't think it's a very good idea, and that requires a little stability, some predictability (oh God, I'm turning into a conservative... I may have to be put out of my misery)
I have the same concerns, and I have additional concern about defining Alice's speech as per se harmful and dangerous. (I've even argued to my ex, who's an anti-fascist activist, that if you tried advocating Nazism in Tel Aviv, it wouldn't be dangerous to anyone but you.)
But if Alice's narrative is racist, we want her to discard it, right?
Or at least presumably Bob does, there being no Arbiter of All Narratives who settles these disputes for us.
And there absolutely are cases of hardcore racists changing their views, but none of those are from somebody just demanding they do so because they're wrong.
This is supposed to be different because what someone is denying is not your views, possibly not even your value as a human being, but your identity -- they don't even see you as what you are. In pushing back against that demand, we are in effect treating this as just another view of yours, maybe one you're very attached to in a number of ways, but still a view. That's going to bother a lot of people, and maybe they have a point that the rules of this sort of game are different.
I'm thinking of Philip Roth's telling his parents not to be drawn into defending him against charges that he's anti-semitic. "That's a losing game," he said, which I took to mean, treating the proposition as possibly true is already giving ground. (Aha! You admit he might be...)
Similar thing here. Maybe it puts the whole discussion on the wrong footing to think of these expressions of gender identity as, you know, opinions more or less. @Moliere for instance does not want discussion about whether someone's expression of their gender identity is "accurate" or something, and I think there's something to do that.
The trouble I have is that I want to get there by seeing those expressions as performance, but the people using these expressions keep talking like they're supposed to be taken as incontrovertible fact, or as witness -- however you do that you're opening yourself to the same types of skepticism and critique as any other expression.
No one would consider 'racist' an identity worthy of the same deference. Why gender specifically?
I'm still caught up in these meta issues, but I hope to write something about the use of words like "man" and "woman" in these conversations. Maybe soon.
I'll come back to this.
So this is different than I'd think -- the predictions are beforehand, and if it feels right to break your predictions then I'd say that's more honest than trying to predict ahead of time if I'm going to do this or that.
Though I'm a creature of habit and am certainly predictable in many ways -- I just think honesty with self has more to do with being in tune and less to do with predicting yourself. I'd say when we're honest with ourselves that's when we're most likely to find out what's different from our predictions about ourself.
Quoting Isaac
Because men and women and all the others can and do wear dresses -- and women also don't wear dresses. That is, the behavior doesn't define the identity, nor do traits. Whatever identity is, it's not those (though some identities identify with those). There are some roles which are slotted for the genders which people are attached to, but people also overcome these along with traits-based views while maintaining their gender identity: Think here not of trans but of cis -- how many cis people have you known who undergo physical and occupational changes which don't align with their self-picture, but still manage to identify as their gender? Does a man cease to be a man if he doesn't have a job? Does a man cease to be a man if he has erectile dysfunction? Does a man cease to be a man if he has feminine feelings?
Who is best to decide these things other than the person whose identity it is? How could you possibly answer these questions for someone else ahead of time without talking to them? Remember the scenario posited was a stranger -- there's something to a point of view being important to a person's identity. It'd be awfully odd to conclude about a person's identity without ever talking to them, but instead making predictions from afar? If not then functionally I'd say the algorithms know us better than we know ourselves -- but there's a sense in which measurement of a person changes how they are. The very presence of a standard changes how we think and act.
I'll go back to the Morman's as a community with a public notion of gender which at least was strictly binary: publicly "I'm not that" is an available locution, even there. If the public is ignorant of how I am, which they certainly were, then I can always reach for that publicly known meaning. And when given the option between two choices I can always say "neither" -- even if it leads to contradiction in the concepts in play, the option is available. In a way I'm asking the community to shift how they use words to accommodate me, sure. And when it comes to something basic like my own identity the ask is on pain of rejecting the community -- I may not have a lot of power, but I can at least leave and make my own community with other people who agree with me.
And the people who disagreed? Well, now that we have a publicly available meaning, we can say -- as they did -- that they're just wrong. If it's your safety that's at stake, then "they're just wrong" is a remarkably easy justification.
But that's exactly what I want to avoid. I don't think we're incommensurable, in principle -- though we like to put up our barriers in practice, I believe we'll be able to weather the tide of gender changes and find ways to communicate again (while, of course, capital will try and use any identity conflicts or differences to split us up)
I guess we could talk about correctness conditions for claiming an identity, and what they'd look like. We do have precedents for that in social roles. If I want to write "someone is", like "Sally is a woman", I'm going to treat that as "Sally can correctly claim to be a woman". I'll also stipulate that if there are any identities, social roles would count as them. Like a job. Or a profession.
Claiming a job has a clear correctness condition. I can correctly claim to be a builder in the employ of B.S Brick and Son's if and only if I am a builder in the employ of B.S Brick and Sons.
A profession is a bit more difficult. If I have worked as a builder for 10 years, and currently work as a builder, then I can correctly claim to be a builder. So it seems a sufficient condition exists for claiming professional roles. A necessary condition would be having helped build something at some point in your life. Addressing this with complete specificity seems impossible.
I might also be able to count as a builder if I have a certificate from a legally recognised organisation. Having such a certificate allows you to claim to be one and becomes a correctness condition for it. Perhaps correct in a different sense than we're after though.
We do have gender recognition certificates. Those might work operationally as correctness conditions in their society of issue. But they might not say anything about the normative but not-legal correctness condition for counting as that gender.
There's probably a constructive dilemma hereabouts, if we require a relatively sharp set of correctness conditions in order to claim that a social role can be correctly claimed, then we might end up committing ourselves to the claim that no one can correctly identify as a builder (while maintaining a non-legal sense of identity) or that identities cannot have non-legal correctness conditions in this sense. I'd personally want to treat that as a modus tollens, that since we have practical uses for identity categories, we can't require relatively sharp sets of correctness conditions for claiming social roles.
That would leave us in a space where social roles either have only operationally definable content - so you're a builder if you have the builder boiler plate, regardless of if you have ever built anything in your life - or that one can correctly claim to have an identity when that identity claim has largely unarticulated correctness conditions.
I stress "unarticulated" there, in contrast to the private language argument reference, since we've not established that perceived correctness conditions are unarticulable, or "private". We simply haven't established what they are yet.
I'd be willing to bet that counting as a man is similar to counting as round, semantically. Fuzzy boundaries, but with the ability to rule out some cases in some contexts.
If you mean something that could conceivably be negotiated, even if only implicitly, I don't know. Obviously there's something like that going on with words in general, but the problem here is that there seems to be no basis for negotiation: one side says the correctness condition for my claiming womanhood is that I know (feel??) myself to be a woman; the other side scrambles to find something else because whatever the criteria are that's not it. How will negotiation proceed?
If you dial the clock back a hundred years, say, and someone born a woman claims, without being metaphorical or something, to be a man, not to have a preference for presenting as a man, in the culturally standard way, though a woman, but to be a man full-stop, then the likely conclusion would be that this woman is suffering from a delusion.
I would even find that possibility tempting today except it just doesn't look delusional, or not like any delusion I'm at all familiar with. I literally do not know what it's supposed to mean, which suggests to me that people making such identity claims are up to something completely different.
What's not clear is whether my understanding is expected or required. Usually with words people say to me, it is, but I'm honestly not sure here, which is odd. I can think of two explanations for this: it is not a message, say, but a signal; or language is being used in some new way, and I don't just mean in a Humpty Dumpty way.
If it's the latter then the world has changed and maybe this is *real* postmodernism, not the piddly warmups we've been living through but the real thing, a through-the-looking-glass kind of change. All of us on the forum here are suddenly dinosaurs no matter how cool we thought we were.
Either way, negotiating assertibility conditions doesn't seem to be on the table.
I'll gladly follow along with a parents' observations over my own thoughts, though offer my thoughts if asked for.
I can definitely see the thumbing your nose stance. I often times feel that, but then I'm drawn back because so many people are attached to these things in various ways.
Gender is more important than I thought it was, at least, as a has-been abolish-gender international class-first anarcho-marxist.
Honestly there aren't a lot of those and this is probably the only example you're going to get. (Wouldn't have posted what I did except the language is so interesting.) As a dad, I don't even need to understand my kids to support them and love them, so it's a whole different thing. And I don't ask my teenager for explanations, because he's not a research subject.
Anyway, I don't think much of anything I've posted about trans kids reflects my personal experience of the subject -- just not how I'm approaching it.
My personal experience of masculinity is part of my approach, which ought to be obvious.
Sorry to jump in here (uninvited) but you are not alone. There are increasing numbers of parents who are having to come to terms with this issue. There is more information and support available than ever before. I linked earlier to the NHS site on gender dysphoria.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/
But perhaps these are more relevant:
https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/sex-relationships/gender-identity/
https://gids.nhs.uk/parents-and-carers/
Hope you find the information useful, even if you can't access UK services.
Best wishes.
Exactly.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
My take on this is relatively simple, but in it's simplicity it denies lots of wishy-washy stuff about 'feelings' so may not be overly popular...
There a socially constructed role (character in our collective story) for which we use the word 'woman'. Some people like the look of that role and want to play it, some of these people are born male (sex, not gender). So these people ask to be treated as playing the role 'woman' despite the lack of traditionally qualifying features (mostly around reproductive organs). Group A
There are also a group of people who who dislike the role, would rather step outside of it some (or all) of the time. Some of these people are born female (sex) and resent being pushed into the role just because they have the traditionally qualifying features. Group B
The simple solution to this is that we say no matter what your qualifying features, you just say what role you want and we'll all just agree to treat you that way (socially understood badges are useful here like dresses, hairstyles, and make-up). Or if you want neither role, that's cool too, but you might get some surprising responses from people because we can't mind-read (if there's no public script we can wing it, but aren't always successful).
There are then three problems which get us from that utopia to here
1. Toxic masculinity (for want of a better term). There are a lot of people who really like those roles to be filled only by those with the traditionally qualifying features. They might be willing to make exceptions for injury, or medical oddity, but are less comfortable doing so because of a free choice. So they push back. This is just boring conservatism, probably has a lot to do with our stifling neuroses about sex, and is rather uninteresting as a social phenomena.
2. We have a victim culture, a means of assuaging western wealth-guilt by taking on the victim role, the poor clearly deserve, for some reason other than poverty. To be a victim one needs an immutable condition, (choosing to live on the streets instead of your suburban semi doesn't make you a victim of homelessness). So there's an attraction to making the preference more like an affliction, it gains social capital and avoids guilt. And there's some merit to this - maybe I can't avoid my preference for tea over coffee, maybe it's innate.
3. The word we use for this role is also used for the sex 'female' in different contexts. One of those contexts applies to female victims of male dominance and needs addressing to help that specific victim group. This wouldn't be a problem were it not for (1) and (2). As language users we're quite comfortable with words having different meanings in different contexts. But here, because of (1) there's an attraction to insisting the word means one and the same thing in all cases - it forces those with the qualifying features (sex) into the role like a linguistic crowbar. and because of (2) people don't want there to be any situation in which their 'womanhood' is treated differently because that makes it all look a little too choice-like and not enough affliction-like.
So we are where we are, with 'woman' being nebulously defined as an 'identity' which is here acting as a catch-all term just loose enough to avoid having to ever resolve the tension, maintaining the affliction-like status Group A(2) want but without denying the freedom Group B want to behave however they like. As such, the word becomes almost deliberately meaningless. Being a 'woman' now doesn't actually mean anything for any practical purposes, but if needed gives you an affliction-like need to be treated in accordance with a social role, like an ace up the sleeve.
It's a fudge. But an understandable one. No one wants to give in to 1s, no one wants to be harsh enough to tell 2s to snap out of it and stop their first-world whinging (I say no one, but...). And of course, no one wants to have to draw any kind of line which demarcates genuine psychological conditions from bandwagon jumping. Same is true of depression, was true of anorexia, and strangely becoming more true with dissociative disorders (watch this space - I'm predicting the next 'trans' issue).
I think we could do better but I think to do so we have to give up on this victim politics we've been sucked into. To do that we have to re-align ourselves to the proper measures of inequality (opportunity), but that involves a little too much self-criticism for most who these days probably are reliant on quite a lot of that inequality of opportunity for their psychological crutches.
I agree, but my point is that this is currently one way. Does a woman cease to be a woman if they're referred to as 'he'? No. Do they cease to be a woman if they use a bathroom labelled 'men'? No. But these matters are not treated with the same degree of unimportance to gender.
If the performances do not define your gender, then why do the responses? Why have I 'misgendered' the trans woman by using 'he'? It's like you want to say that gender is not defined by the individual's part to play, but society has to confirm to a set of behaviours in response. I'm asking why it's only society that has the mandated role to play, why is my responsive behaviour socially restricted along gender lines, but not the performative behaviour of the actual person whose gender it is?
Now you're just making me look bad. In my defence I changed the names before publishing...
Negotiation about what, though? It's relatively easy to use the pronouns someone wants you to. It's a bit harder to see someone as the gender on a gut level if they identify with if they look or act stereotypically otherwise. I think those are behavioural commitments though.
Do you think they're separate from whether it's right to call someone a woman or a man though? I think I do.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes. Such an identification might not have a a correctness condition. Since that correctness condition would bottom out at being judged, in the aggregate, as correct. Thus "I'm a man" or "I'm a woman" might be more of a declaration. An affirmation without a specifiable basis. Like an "I love you". Such a statement maybe forms part of the system of judging whether the declarations themselves are correct. If it's performance all the way down...
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Then we might be living through a recognition that our categories were always this way. And the only thing that kept them from evaporating was believing that we treat gender distinctions more rigidly, and acting in accord.
I do think it's very unlikely that we could get, even in principle, a list that boils down who counts as a man or a woman without also constructing an incomplete stereotype of the role - in terms of behaviour, attitudes, social standings etc. And we'd already know that behaving in accord with a stereotype is neither necessary nor sufficient for being the type of being that stereotype is associated with.
Maybe we can look at it in a pragmatist manner, which in some respect is a refusal to get down into these issues. You count as X if you have a tendency to act as if you are X.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think that might be true. Though it might also be typical of gender categories. Manhood and womanhood as creative rather than literal. That move always seems available. Manhood and womanhood as always thumbing their nose at each other - since they're internally inconsistent corpuscles of behavioural commitments and expectations. Why should their ascription be expected to work in a well behaved fashion when man and woman never had, and even something as concrete as "builder" has major difficulties by these standards?
So the change might be more of a collective realisation of how things were before.
Quoting Isaac
There's room for there to be different classes of restrictions. As in: your responsive behaviour is socially restricted because it's the ethical thing to do regardless of metaphysics or social theory, the performative behaviour of the person whose gender it is is restricted on pain of counting as what they (feel they) are. So if you were to say "You're a woman! Not a man" to a trans man, because they were wearing a dress, what's restricted in that moment is the violence of your assertion... Not an academic discussion like this.
Admittedly some people really do think academic discussions like this are unethical and part of the logic of dominance. But I think talking about that would take us too far afield.
I think perhaps the problem with the term 'toxic masculinity' is that it is not clear-cut. From previous posts, we can see how meanings vary with more or less violence attached. It can suffer from vagueness and being overgeneralised.
That is why I try to supply real examples. I read current news. What's going on? To bring it back to your question of 'Ethics'. However, the post re Iranian women and the 'morality police' was ignored. Why? Other posts more attractive. Ears might have pricked up if I'd chosen another news item:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/24/vladimir-putin-signs-law-banning-gender-changes-in-russia
***
Quoting Moliere
I feel I have to say that it's not only women who are subjected to violence, and violence itself can take many forms. All genders, ages, and cultures are affected. Seen and unseen.
However, here is one article which describes problems and offers solutions, related to women and patriarchy. With some new terms to consider:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jun/01/disaster-patriarchy-how-the-pandemic-has-unleashed-a-war-on-women
***
Quoting Moliere
Of course, there is no single solution to global concerns.
What is the antidote to systemic 'toxic masculinity'?
Could it be philosophy? As in this kind of thread? Education. Listening and learning. A way of looking at problem-solving as in Pragmatism?
There are so many levels and approaches to be considered.
I think back to previous responses from those participants I recently tried to recall. But I think we are going over old ground; like them perhaps it would be wise to move on.
If it is agreed that there is a systematic problem, then any antidote would require action to change or dismantle the system. Different directions might be taken according to a philosopher or activist's analysis.
Of course, this might include a denial of the claim that there is such a thing as systemic toxic masculinity.
Is 'toxic masculinity' simply a useful slogan or is it deeper and ingrained so much that it is not even recognised? Should we concentrate more on particular beliefs and practices, starting with ourselves?
In this thread, I was introduced to Susan Haack. Thanks @Ciceronianus. Then using the TPF Search facility, I noted others who acknowledge her impact on their thinking. I'm wondering why I failed to notice all the mentions. So, paying attention and knowing how others have tracked and dealt with similar problems before - that's a start.
Regarding the complexity of interrelated problems, I seem to remember Haack's analogy of the crossword puzzle. Looking it up, I see it is related to foundherentism:
Quoting Foundherentism - Wiki
I read it, couldn't think of a response, moved onto the next post and then continued to pursue that thread.
Basically I got distracted.
Quoting Amity
It is why I put it in the ethics subforum.
It's hard to get to a "should" because most will feel that any "should" is either obviously true or obviously false. People's minds are usually solidly made up on matters of ethics, and they're not interested in changing their mind, so they're not interested in exploring the logical or conceptual relationships between their ethical beliefs.
I think it's our attachment to moral commitments that makes it hard to get to a "should" -- we can easily accept the is-ought problem and then proceed from there (I tend to favor moral anti-realism via error-theory, but clearly I care about ethics even though I'm more "pro" is/ought distinction these days -- it's something I go back and forth on though)
And so it goes with gender, sex, and identity.
Quoting Amity
This is the part that threw me off before. I'm not sure what to connect this to. So mentally I marked your post as "get back to" -- but then got distracted.
But in terms of "What is to be done?" -- my answer, as ever, is to organize.
But on this site I think all that can be done is to philosophize. And that is as it should be. There really should be more spaces where people can express their weird thoughts and pick them apart.
Yes. I see that and wouldn't advocate such a violent assertion, but we're not merely talking about assertion. If I'm asked to use the term 'she' in a way I wouldn't normally use it, then it wasn't a violent assertion (my previous use) its was just a performative commitment to my narrative (that 'she' is something I say to refer to females). What I mean by the asymmetry is that there's behavioural commitments attached to all of our narratives. Asking to be treated a certain way is a request that others modify their public behaviour in ways that might not accord with their understanding of the world. That's all well and good when it's a good spirited request as part of a cooperative attempt to reach some compromise among clashing worldviews, but it's less of a reasonable request as it becomes demand... becomes assault (not to)... and finally demands it become hate crime (not to). That's not a co-operative attempt at compromise.
I think this is why the debate get pushed toward identity. The strength of the 'misgendering' argument relies on there being a truth which is denied, not a request which is negotiated. But as @Moliere can attest to, we can't even concretely pin down what identity is, let alone use it as truth so universal that its denial is only and always abusive.
As far as my world-view is concerned, trans people simply want to be treated as if they were members of one of the available social groupings which to which membership has traditionally been denied on the basis of biological traits. That might be expressed as 'identity', but I no more believe that an accurate expression than I would if someone told me they were 'Libran', or had a powerful 'aura'.
The request itself is innocuous, but in some contexts we apply our responses (including speech acts) to other groupings (not social roles) because the context is different. Unfortunately because of the vagaries of language, these other groupings share the same terms ('women', 'men'). A little reasonable care and this ceases to be a problem, we'll muddle through, but in this highly politicised and polemic environment and we haven't a chance.
I like the analogy. I think it reflects Dewey's view that philosophy has too often thought of the relation between ourselves and the world as one of knowing; that of one between the knower and the known--the world being made up of objects of our knowledge (the "spectator" theory of knowledge), and that in fact we're part of the world and our lives made up of our experience interrelating with the rest of it, and others.
Yes, it made sense to me. However, I would like to see an example of it in use. I can't imagine how it would help with the issues raised in this thread, for example. Grateful for any references.
Quoting Ciceronianus
Indeed. I think that is part of my frustration and why I tend to want practical examples.
As I scroll down walls of text, I often think: "So what? What difference does your theory make?".
How does it help? Does it clarify or confuse?
This strikes a chord, except I'm none too sure of the final sentence:
Quoting Peirce, Charles Sanders - IEP
I think that's just how pronouns work. If you misgender a cis person then you are corrected, right?
It's the same correction.
I agree that sex is the religion of modernity. Individual romantic love with a sexual partner is constantly shown not just as the positive relationship that it is, but as a kind of cure-all for life.
Also I think I'd like to develop this relationship between gender and religion more. There's a strong analogue there -- it could be that religion satisfied needs which gender now does, which would explain why people dig in. Also I like that religion doesn't have traits or behaviors really associated with it, though partially so -- much like gender.
Sure. People push back on the pronouns, but the real flashpoints have been spaces and sports, and that's clearly a matter of negotiation.
Quoting fdrake
After many, many drafts, here's where I am at the moment.
When someone says "I'm a girl" or "I'm a boy," that expresses an intuition.
What we want to know is, what is the source of that intuition? Is there a mental module for gender, perhaps one that produces intuitions about the gender of others as well as yourself? Plausible. There's lots of research on the age at which children begin to distinguish between male and female in various ways, and it is just the sort of thing you'd expect natural selection to take an interest in.
But this is trouble. If there is a gender module, then the most natural thing to say about an anatomical boy having the intuition of being a girl is that the gender module is making a mistake. We would want to know if it's making other mistakes: does it get the genders of others wrong as well? I don't happen to know if there's any research whatsoever on that.
Or perhaps it's not making a mistake but producing the self-gender intuition differently. If -- and it's unclear so far as I can tell -- the brain is gendered, perhaps during development, then the gender module might not even be interested in your sexual anatomy but just report the usually well-aligned gender of the brain hosting it, even if that gender is not the same as your anatomical sex. --- And it's still conceivable for both to be true, that the brain is gendered and the gender module is producing the wrong intuition.
I've been using the word "gender" but we could substitute anatomical sex mostly. On the other hand, if there's always been variation in sexual expression and behavior, it might be worth the trouble for natural selection to classify that. Do gay male gorillas compete with cis male gorillas for female mates? They might, I don't know, but if they don't it seems like that would be worth knowing. Why fight with a guy who's not a threat to your reproductive success? --- Anyway, it seems not crazy that there might be a module for specifically gender intuitions rather than just anatomical sex, because gender might be helpfully predictive of some behavior that matters. In which case, despite it no doubt being mostly culture, there might be something to "gaydar."
Or they are. If a toddler were to refer to a girl as 'he' you'd correct them. If someone learning English mixed up 'he' and 'she' you'd correct them. The words have correct usage in our language by virtue of our collective agreement on how they're used.
I've spent the last 50 odd years of my life using 'she' to refer to females. I've done so on a rough estimate based primarily on looks but sometimes on name or title of address. I've never been corrected. It's worked fine for 50 years, as it has, I suspect for virtually everyone for the 50 years prior to that.
So no, if someone who is male thinks they ought to be referred to as 'she', they've misunderstood how the word is used. Doesn't mean they can't wear dresses, doesn't mean they can't wear make-up. It's just an odd facet of our language that we use a different form of address for different sexes.
Maybe (I strongly suspect, in fact) in 50 years time its use will have changed. But right now, one is not misusing a word because a particular group want it used differently.
Of course, I've no intention of traumatising anyone by deliberately doing something which is going to upset them, but honestly, if people are going to be upset by the fact that the entire world does not jump to it in support of their preferred treatment, I think they have much bigger issues to concern themselves with than my habits of address.
I think it's a pretty common distinction across languages, though my familiarity is European languages: English as primary with some studies in German and Spanish. So it's not the linguist's viewpoint.
I don't think it an oddity at all though because patriarchy -- the patrilineal descent and control of property -- is a common among the cultures which utilize these languages. We mark distinctions which are important, and being able to tell who is going to own the stuff after I die is important. I'd say that patriarchy is so deep that it's influenced our very way of speaking, and thereby, thinking.
Quoting Isaac
In real life, and not on the internet (which is different), any trans person I've known has been gracious towards me figuring out the customs they prefer.
Probably why I'm pro-trans. I've never really had a problem with any trans person I've met in real life. (the internet, though, as I said earlier -- I really think it changes the way we relate, at least on the social media pages with algorithms designed to increase engagement no matter what)
Why do you feel you shouldn't have posted it? Too open and personal?
I responded to what I felt was a real struggle in understanding and coping.
It wasn't only for your benefit but for others reading. For me, that's important.
It's one thing to share my own private life, but it's uncool to share someone else's. Pretty simple.
Quoting Amity
Which was kind of you.
On the other hand -- and we've all glancingly noted this -- you don't have to have a philosophically or scientifically rigorous understanding of someone to treat them decently, so the analytical challenge I've been dealing with here is a whole separate thing from just being as good a dad as I can.
Understood.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Not really meant to be kind but informative at a practical level.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I don't see the two things as being all that separate.
The challenge is to understand a particular problem issue, gender identity.
Both involve reflecting, analysis and dialogue but at different levels.
For an improvement in wellbeing.
The one can inform the other. The personal is a motivating factor in the deeper challenge. How does reducing subjective behavioural aspects to an objective mental, gendered brain module help, even if such existed. You think it would predict behaviour? With a view to what?
I think that just as we seem to have specialized modules for recognizing faces, for noticing mood, for guessing at intent, all these sorts of things, it would make sense for us to have a module for making gender determinations, and since we are as a rule binary, it makes sense for this module just to provide intuitions of the form 'same gender as me' or 'the other one', since our sexual behavior is what natural selection is going to be most interested in, and that means the gender module also implicitly provides the intuition about our gender.
And I think what we've all been struggling with in trying to classify statements like "I am a woman" spoken by anyone -- what is this identity it supposedly expresses? -- is best approached by recognizing to start with that the right word here is 'intuition'. In retrospect, it looks obvious to me, and I don't know why it didn't occur to me before. (Not least because I've just finished reading a book about intuitive inference.)
Thanks for reply. It's early morning here, so I'll be brief.
I don't struggle with what it means to be a woman.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woman
I meant 'our' as in humanity, not 'our' as in English-speakers. I don't know of any language that doesn't have those distinctions, but my knowledge of language is very limited.
Quoting Moliere
So the correct application is to sex (reproductive capability, here), not gender (a much wider grouping of expressions and roles)? You seemed to be saying earlier that the correct usage was to apply it according to individual preferences.
Quoting Moliere
Me neither, but I've met probably three or four. I can easily think of three or four men I know who have zero toxicity, yet here we are with a thread on it. Men are about 50% of the population, trans people about 0.3% in America, so your potential for base rate errors is very large.
Quoting Moliere
These people aren't on the internet, ruining a woman's career because they disagree with her...
Neither are these...
I can't see any more good reason to limit your assessment of the general trans movement to the people you've met that you would limit your assessment of masculinity to only those men you've met. We have means by which we can expand our knowledge of how larger groups act.
This latest piece is very apt to the current discussion.
https://unherd.com/2023/07/who-is-the-asshole/
In the beginning there was the binary, and it was judged good. The binary stated that our biological make-up accounted for our mentality which accounted for our social role.
Then, lo and behold, Kate Millet turnethed the binary on its head and said -- no! It is the role which is the foundation, the mentality which is the excuse, and the biology which is the marker.
In the beginning there was no gender, there was only sex used in a gender-wise fashion. But the beginning is at an end, and so we have this new distinction called "gender" to highlight differences in the use of "sex". Furthermore there is "gender" that shall be distinguished from "gender-identity", where the former is the social role and the latter is whatever identity is.
I was saying pronouns work by referring correctly. They were correcting your usage with regards to themselves. We make slip ups (not even related to this topic) all the time, and usually charity is what sees us through. Further, anyone whose asked me to change my use has been charitable and gracious. So that saw us through. Now I can use the word still.
This is how pronouns work.
Quoting Isaac
People often remark that philosophy is useless. One favored thought experiment to demonstrate its uselessness is the Evil Demon scenario. Of what use could absolute skepticism be?
One thing I learned from my time doing activisty things is that the newspaper is pretty much always picking a side. Further, that social media would rip groups apart -- useful as tool for communication, but not as tool for organizing (at least my style of it). The organizers task was half planning half counseling, like a priest of modernity.
Absolute skepticism is useful when we encounter a scenario where we have good reason to disbelieve almost everything, or at least be doubtful of almost everything. And I pretty much take that stance towards the news, social media, and so forth. Almost always there's another side to a story if you want to dig into it, a way to justify one side or the other, a deeper reason than the one presented -- and sometimes, as in the cases of police violence, there are outright lies.
Now, people go around reading this stuff thinking it's real. In part it is. You can't write good propaganda without truth -- this is something that's often missed. Propaganda is a mixture of truth and non-truth with an emotional message intended to reinforce or flip people's attachment to their beliefs.
When all the messages we're receiving are from the propaganda machine then absolute skepticism is warranted. Not that these things don't exist -- but there's a reason I'm being told this story. For my money I think the propaganda machine is automated now, not even caring about what beliefs people have but caring about what people will do. To make people predictable, going back to Machiavelli, you use fear. And capital "wants" people to be predictable because then you can plan profit flows, have workers show up on time, and so on. Or maximize engagement -- the propaganda machine automatically selects for any belief which will maximize engagement.
I'm sure they could. It's not how they do.
Unless I'm very much an oddity, I've been using pronouns to address people differently on the basis of sex (assumed from sight, name, etc) for my entire life. So has everyone I know. It is absolutely not how pronouns work.
It might be how pronouns ought to work. It might be how pronouns could work in future. It might be how you'd like pronouns to work. But it is not how pronouns actually do work. We look at someone (or their name) take a guess at their sex, and apply the appropriate word.
I've never in my life thought about what someone's gender role is, and I couldn't even possibly think about what their gender-identity is because I've still no idea what such a thing could possibly even be. And yet, miraculously it now seems, I can't think of a single occasion until now when my use of a pronoun has had to be corrected on that basis.
This is exactly how the absolutist framing of this discussion is self-defeating. I don't even think it's that terrible an idea to stop using different pronouns based on a guess about sex. I think it might be better if we ditched the whole practice altogether, or, as many places do now, just ask. But that's not the plan... Better isn't good enough, discussion isn't good enough, because the Holy Grail here is not a better world, it's victimhood. I must be wrong, not merely behind-the-times. I must be wrong so that they can be wronged.
Totally agree with you here. Probably disagree as to which 'side' this most affects.
Either way, no one is immune. I think it affects us all pretty equally. It's like when you learn there's this cognitive bias called such and such: just because you know about it doesn't mean you're immune to it. Even if you have a ritual, as I've outlined with absolute skepticism, the propaganda still effects feelings -- Propaganda works.
Quoting Isaac
Well, I wouldn't make this claim, at least. But I don't think anyone is playing victim either -- I think trans people are victimized through violence against them. The bit on pronouns is kind of a test: how do you view me? If you reject me then there's no reason to trust you. But it's not like misgendering someone is a mortal sin. It's just rude. Or, if you're wanting to know if you're safe, valuable to know who doesn't believe you.
Yes, I think that's right, but as you said, predictability is the key, so that limits the number of opposing groups to a manageable level. Pushing people into a marketable niche. My favourite example of this is one given by a speaker I saw decades ago, but I can't remember her name; I'm paraphrasing - " think about how hard it is for you and your partner to agree on a wall colour for the spare room, it's not easy. so what are the chances of everyone in the world deciding that almost the exact same shade of blue is the ideal colour for their casual trousers?" It's just easier to get a profit off mass produced blue jeans, the marketing worked, we all think that colour is the one that would look best now.
No marketing company wants hundreds of different nuanced groups with different ideas about gender. They want a small number of groups with the same ideas so they they can profile them, advertise to them and design products to appeal to them.
A bank needs to know that a rainbow flag on it's door is going to work to distract people from the fact that it is destroying LGBTQ+ lives for profit in exactly the same way as it's destroying anyone else's. The shocking thing is that it actually works.
Quoting Moliere
Yeah, I have to say this a lot as a psychologist. People assume that if I make some statement about how we think, I'm declaring myself 'above it all' somehow, but no. Knowing about it doesn't seem to do much to get around it.
Quoting Moliere
This seems like an oversimplification. why would no one play victim? We're on a thread where half the human population are being at least implicated in oppressing the other half. We've heard the insensitivity of white folk to their privilege. there doesn't seem to be any hesitation in assuming all sorts of malicious (conscious and subconscious) behaviour on the part of the currently vilified (whites, men, cis), so why would minority groups suddenly become so angelic?
OK, you're right -- not no one no one.
I don't think most are, though. I wouldn't reach for guilt-removal/repression-expression as much as I'd reach for learned callousness -- people learn to be selfish and pursue their own needs. There's probably a few who've felt connected to the zeitgeist who are mistaken -- and I certainly don't think anyone is angelic. I just think looking at the benefits/cost analysis of declaring yourself trans and living that out that there's not really a lot of advantages, and so people who are confused will figure it out and move on.
Yes I agree, but we're a social species, we're dead without a community. Most people's 'needs' are primarily to be part of a social group. So yes, some callousness, some selfishness, but that still manifests as tactical choice about which social group one has the best chances of being a valued member of.
I'm not trying to deny the reality of being trans, quite the opposite, I'm saying that if one finds oneself in that situation, what social groups are made available that one can feel part of? The benefits are relatively high given how the limits of their feelings already constrain them.
My thought is that as soon as you have an option then you'll leap at it, as I did. It's not that people weren't somewhere on the gender-bender spectrum, it's that it has become acceptable in some circles to be yourself in that way. In another time people would re-express in various ways, but -- in the positive spirit of capitalism that Marx likes -- we've invented new social forms because it was profitable to do so.
Also, I feel empathy for trans people because I feel like I'm both sides of the gender-spectrum -- I suspect that many people are, but I've learned to reserve my judgment over time as I talk to people. People really are different in their various ways of relating to their gender, their body, and their identity or gender-identity.
Sure, yeah. I think that people take up the new opportunities that new social groups present.
Quoting Moliere
I think this is at the core of how we see things differently. I just don't believe in this notion of a 'true self'. People tell themselves stories and usually these stories are ones they pick from those society offers, or construct from parts thereof. I don't think these are true (nor false either). They just more or less provide a way of understanding the sometimes contradictory mental goings on they have.
So, if a reasonably explanatory story offers good social capital, it's a selling point. Truth doesn't enter into it.
Which I think amounts to saying that there's a sense in which individuals don't own these stories, or the words they use to tell them; 'society' does. Which is fine so far as it goes because nobody wants to argue for Humpty-Dumpty-ism. And you're highlighting the fact that claiming an identity is a move in a language-game.
Quoting Isaac
But here's the problem, and it's the reaction everyone has to the language-game analysis: it all seems too static, as if 'society' has a list of acceptable moves and you have to pick from those else you're speaking nonsense.
But exactly what we're talking about is creating the social capital you acquire by changing the rules of the game.
For my part, I'm assuming our sense of our own sexuality and that of others is partially innate, but the machinery for making these inferences may be optimized for stereotypes of cis male and cis female,. The stories we tell and the social moves we make may have to work with conflicting intuitions. I'm not going to be on board with sexuality being purely social, that just seems crazy to me.
Sure, but there's rules for that too. Like how all neologisms evolve, I suppose someone started them, but "I declare 'bobby' is now a type of cake!" isn't going to make it so, it's not a legal move in the game
So, sure, we ought to add some dynamics to the model, but dynamics isn't anarchy.
Side note, one of my last study interests was in chaotic dynamics within social feedback. Like Asch conformity but with a message system prone to chaotic perturbation. Didn't really go anywhere, but interesting that you're pointing perhaps in that direction (or maybe I've misread).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Possibly, but I think that applies to a very small subset of the population. The anthropologist Clive Finlayson calls them 'innovators'. Mostly reviled until something they think suddenly works, then they gain a brief moment in the sun before going back to being reviled by the new normal.
I guess that's possibly true for our new stories about gender, but I suspect very few are mold-breakers. Most have seen the mold-breaking, seen the benefits that brings in terms of a social group with membership criteria they find easier to meet, and jumped at that.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yeah. As above, the choice of story isn't a free one, we still do have stuff going on which is the raw matter in need of modeling. I don't see any reason why something like sexuality might not be part of that raw matter, but at that level it's just axons firing, nothing of the sort we could categorise into natural kinds. At least, I don't think so.
A good story can really help people struggling to model their particular mentality by using the existing ones, and innovation can help there, but all I'm saying is that model utility isn't the only criteria people are using to choose them. Like theories, there are many stories which could explain the same set of mental activity. So choosing involves more than just a good fit, and there's no denying these other motivators.
Oh I agree. I would never suggest there's just a biological layer that's inherently right or even striving to be right. The lowest level I'm thinking of is still inferential and it's just trying to find something that works, for some definition of 'works'. What that layer comes up with might be puzzling sometimes, not just to others but to ourselves, and obviously that's an opportunity for culture to step in and offer to tell you what you actually think or feel, since you're evidently confused.
Quoting Isaac
Natural kinds would be both a simplification and an exaggeration of our intuitive inferences about sex and gender, or rather about our behavior and the behavior of others, codified as sex and gender. Those inferences might be in some ways more nuanced and in some ways less -- they don't care how elegant or comprehensive or consistent the taxonomy we make out of them is.
I don't really have much to go on here. I think the structuralist phase of linguistics and anthropology was so thrilled to be able to make sense of things at all that they accidentally created these static 'cultures' and 'languages', and that's a necessary first step, but we also know both of these literally evolve. The rules of these games are in play. I don't have a model for that to offer.
I love the turn of phrase.
Bit it's more than just an opportunity, I think. The construction of something as complex as a selfhood is really difficult, I don't believe it's even possible outside of a social context where key parts are available to build from. It'd be like trying to write a computer operating system from scratch.
Things like 'gay', 'woman', 'trans', 'geek', 'leader', 'hippy',... are pretty much needed as almost fully built units because the cost of building from scratch is just too high.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yes. There might even be a kind of meta level to this where we make simpler constructs as facon de parler simply to handle the more complex constructs that we actually use.
That's a nice idea, but as you say below, we might also kind of know these are only useful approximations -- even when they're descriptive not of a person but of a role we need them to play.
Quoting Isaac
Fair. I'd like to be distinguishing here and there between 'cultural' and 'social' but without doing that I've been giving short shrift to the necessary social context. -- Sexuality is obviously a social thing even when it's not cultural (among other mammals, say).
Yeah, that's right, but the point I'm making is that they are useful, not just descriptives, but predictives. they reduce surprise, they help us navigate each other's needs and likely actions, and not just others (like a badge or uniform might) but ourselves too. Having these broad stories for ourselves helps us make sense of our own actions and thoughts, put them into context, give them a purpose and a coherence (that they might otherwise lack).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I suppose I'm using the term 'culture' to mean how humans do social stuff. It may be too ambiguous a term. But sexuality might be more appropriately put into the category of raw sensation. The matter of what stimuli do what is data, the matter of why is story. 'Lesbian' is a story to explain why certain stimuli seem to have certain effects, but as a piece of culture, it offers so much more than just that single explanation, it carries behavioural answers to the question 'what do I do about this sensation?', it contains explanations for potentially unrelated matters - 'why do I feel so left out'?, 'why do most other girls never seem to like me?', 'why did my parents not bond with me as they did my other sister?'...etc. All of which may or may not have any connection to arousal, or even be true, but they're made sense of by the story and that makes them seem less frighteningly random.
There are ways in which I believe in it and ways in which I do not. There's the Cartesian full-blown subject which I reject, which already puts me on shaky footing with some of my favorite philosophers. My coming back around to the subject has more to do with realizing how attached people are to so much that the metaphysical subject "explains" or at least encapsulates into a tidy concept.
And there, looking at it as a concept only rather than a metaphysical reality -- and how the concept relates to individuals within a social environment -- I think I see a sort of reality to the true self, though girded underneath with the ethical commitment that the true self is content with itself (while acknowledging that this is simply taken for granted -- that other philosophies could posit other values. That is what philosophy does, after all).
It's not the immutable, immortal, or even necessarily epistemically privileged subject. The reasons we accept standpoints have much less to do with our conceptual machinery and much more to do with how we understand ourselves, others, and our relative abilities with respect to such and such. And further it seems to me that there is a kind of broaching of the subject through our relationship to others, such that our inter-relations a/effect our identities, or can depending upon how we relate to one another. An ideal relationship being the face-to-face, which is not a conceptual proof but a phenomenological encounter.
But for that to even be approached there needs to be trust, which in turn means ceding ground to others to hear them. And in denying someone their identity it's certainly not the case that you're unheard -- far from it. Your meaning is clear -- my identity is a lie because I ought select from the binary on the shelf like everyone else so that we can get onto the important things, at least until the parties that be can invent a science of the self to my specifications, or else you're just clearly playing the victim so you don't have to deal with the guilt of living in the global north but can instead play the victim of the people you sympathize with while simultaneously not realizing your material life depends upon their suffering.
At least that's the message I've received thus far.
Which is why I've been trying to highlight how identity isn't a scientific concept, and that we utilize it not on the basis of our shared language, but on a day-to-day basis for understanding one another and ourselves. Truth may not enter into it, but significance does. And we get by with these shoddy meanings by granting charity, sometimes interpreting towards what is true when that's apparent, and sometimes interpreting towards significance when that's apparent. Since meaning is use, after all, new meanings are invented daily as we re-encounter new contexts. Every use of the word is itself a new meaning which isn't fixed by a Public Shelf of Meaning, but is instead invented as we provide charity for creative uses in new contexts.
There's a sense in which identity is performance, and so it's not truth-apt. But that's not to say it's not real. All conversations are performances, but they're real conversations. They could be insincere or inauthentic, perhaps, but that's getting into the territory of identity rather than prediction: neither a trait nor a behavior will tell you if a statement is sincere or authentic. That'd depend upon how you see the person as a person.
That is, I don't think the difficulties of specifying identity are unique to trans individuals, but have always been there -- it's just that this topic has highlighted these difficulties for people.
I've been out of the thread for a bit, but I wanted to thank you for how well written this is.
Also @Isaac, @Srap Tasmaner, keep up the good work. This is a rare conversation.
Not at all what I mean.
Let me try again. I'm not saying that we ought select from publicly available narratives, I'm saying we do. I'm making an empirical claim about the way the human psyche works. We do not construct unique and detailed identities from scratch through some internal interrogation. We pick from the stories we see around us, the identities, like parts in a play. I'm not making an ethical claim. You are ethically free to construct your identity from scratch. I don't believe you either can or will.
Quoting Moliere
It's not an 'or else' but yes, I'll stand by that. We have a victim culture, and I believe guilt is at least a major part of the reason. We all know how much better off we are and we all know it's grossly unfair. If that didn't have an effect we'd be zombies, and if that effect was universally positive we'd be saints. I don't believe we're either.
Quoting Moliere
Your second second half belies the first. You claim "we utilize it not on the basis of our shared language, but on a day-to-day basis for understanding one another and ourselves". That's a scientific claim. It's making a statement about how humans (a clearly empirical object) think. You can't claim the concept isn't scientific and then give a detailed account of how it works.
Quoting Moliere
I don't see how language could possibly work that way. We'd never understand what each other were saying if we just allowed new meanings to constantly spring forth. I wouldn't get five minutes into my day if those I'm speaking to had no foundation to judge my meaning. Sure, language evolves, but that's not that same as saying anything goes. Some neologisms take, others don't. None just spring forth fully formed from day-to-day.
And why does 'charity' get invoked with new meanings but not with the retention of old ones? I might well 'charitably' interpret a new use of a word in a new context. It'd be more polite than simply assuming error. But that's not what's happening here. I'm not being asked to merely understand a new use of gender terms, I'm being asked to partake in it. And not just that, I'm being asked to entirely replace my previous use with this new one, and further in many cases being accused of hate speech and bigotry if I don't.
I really think it's stretching credulity to lump all that under mere request for charitable interpretation.
Quoting Moliere
Yes, were on the same page here. It's why I'm comfortable saying there's no such thing. Identity isn't a psychological state one 'discovers' by interoception, it's part of our naming and storytelling practices, like 'hippy', or 'geek'. We collect performances into useful groupings and name them. The utility is about them playing a role in our stories so they're less surprising, and that works both ways - it's not imposed, it's agreed upon.
Quoting Moliere
Yes, I agree. There's a tension between the expectations of public roles and the utility of having them at all. It's not all one way though. Knowing what to do next is fiendishly complicated and fraught with uncertainty. A device for resolving some of that uncertainty isn't always a bad thing.
Thanks, and likewise. Always nice to have a little cheer from the balcony every now and then, TPF is a tough crowd for my material (I'm saving the Maoist routine for the encore).
Quoting Moliere
Bullshit!
I do not LIKE the idea that there is no such thing as essential "identity" that one discovers, but experience and observation tells us that identity depends on culture.
A heterosexual child doesn't have to wait long for his or her culture to supply the "guide book" for what "heterosexual" means. On the other hand, a rural homosexual child may recognize that he likes other boys, and understands that this is an outlier desire, best not discussed. He may not have a "homosexual identity" until he comes into regular contact with urban homosexuals who can supply the gay "guide book".
So, a gay boy in Los Angeles may decide he likes the black leather motorcycle look and proceed accordingly. There's nothing innately gay about black-dyed cow leather or motorcycles, but culture has made it so. A gay boy in rural Uganda is extremely unlikely to follow the same route. (At least until recently) rural Uganda had few paved roads, no motorcycle clubs of any kind, and covering up in black leather just doesn't make sense on the equator.
I agree that identity doesn't come from scratch. Though I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that identity comes from the human psyche, either -- the subject is constituted socially, in my view, but that doesn't make it any less real (and it also doesn't mean that someone else is in a better position to declare the identity of another) Rather than a claim about the general structure of the human psyche this is an aspect of humanity that is largely social: a kind of reason that's beyond the brain, shared across bodies and brains through our practices.
Quoting Isaac
I don't know if we all really do know that in the sense of who is culpable. My point in bringing up the popularity of Marxism was that this claim of guilt largely depends upon a person's relationship to Marxism -- for most they'll accept the line that capitalism is what will set us free, and that it's just a matter of progress and time for the less fortunate to be lifted up by its magic insofar that we're able to curb the excesses of capital (themselves measured by a nationalist, rather than internationalist, measure)
A usual component of guilt, perception of one's self-culpability in doing wrong, just isn't there for most people. They'll look at you like you look at the gender-benders, complete with stories as to why you'd commit yourself to an unpopular worldview.
I don't think we have a victim culture in the sense of desiring to be a victim, except perhaps for those bored enough to really crave pain -- but rather I think there really are just that many victims. Capital is violent.
Quoting Isaac
I can if the detailed account is not scientific, which I've been denying. History is empirical, but not scientific -- so just that something is empirical is not enough to qualify it as a scientific subject.
Plumbing is the example Massimo Pigliucci likes to use to distinguish between know-how and science, and how empiricism is much wider than scientific practice -- it requires concepts, it requires testing out the pipes, and doing plumbing requires some knowledge of scientific concepts but the trade itself isn't exactly a science in the sense that we usually mean. But it's certainly knowledge.
In fact it's my position that most of our world, which is real, isn't really amenable to scientific practice, given how science relies upon prediction and universality for its force of persuasion. Anything that is real, not-universal and not-predictable will escape its purview, and as it happens a lot of the things we care about seem to fit in there -- plumbing, politics, how to drive a care, how to ride a bike, conversing, politicking, acting, the law... much of our performances, be they on the world-stage or a venue, fit here. Which is exactly the sort of practice I imagine the identity is -- real, but not-scientific.
So I'm guessing that we also have different notions about science's relationship to ontology and philosophy in addition to our respective stances on The Subject.
Quoting Isaac
The problem with transcendental arguments is that they can always be constructed in reverse.
We'd never deal with novelty if we were stuck using the same words, and so on.
But what if language is always-already this ambiguous judgment between what has been and what will be? And what if lowering surprise isn't the social goal for linguistic use? Most of the time, in creative use, we look for what will surprise rather than what will conform. The dance between conformity and novelty is a social dance, which just so happens to also include language (as a social practice).
Because even using the old meanings in a new context is already a new meaning, under my notion of language at least. So it's a failure of charity on both parts, in terms of mis-communication at least.
But also sometimes people revoke charity because they've had enough, and decide that you're not part of the language-group they are. That is the words are not conceptually incommensurable, but the practices are. We understand one another just fine. We just disagree. (and some, recognizing that, simply refuse to extend charity -- they're not interested in understanding in that case, and language ceases to work)
Quoting Isaac
In terms of language use I think that's exactly what sees us through, though. What charity explains is why miscommunication occurs here -- it's because charity is not being offered that language breaks, and language-games become incommensurable through the practices they are a part of.
The new gender-bender sees the old uses as bad, and has a community that understands the value of the new uses.
You don't have to convert to the new religion. But you might need to offer some persuasion as to why the old system which punished people for being themselves is preferable in order to earn any charity to be extended to the old uses. In general the radicals tend to see the old world as basically bad, so it's an uphill sell. And on the whole people who adopt new ways don't see much value in the old ways, almost like they were already dissatisfied with how the old language-game played out and from that dissatisfaction crafted a philosophy that expresses that dissatisfaction.
But me -- I think there's value across generational divides, and that we'll be able to work out our differences. And at least you have being a Marxist going for you ;). Hence my pointing out the need for charity. But if you don't want to offer it, I don't think anyone can force you to. That's the way conversations work. I don't think we can say at this time that it's a lack of understanding one another, though. I've provided a schema complete with a marker that says "this is what needs more work". We understand one another fine. What we disagree upon is which way is a better way for our life-practices -- which language-game of gender should we play? Well, I'll pick the language-game that recognizes who I am. And being the bridge-builder that I tend to be I'll play the old game for as long as needed to catch people up to the new game. I don't think it's quite as much on its way out as I put it before -- religions have a way of sticking around even after they fragment, and I'm thinking gender is much like religion in its social dimension.
Quoting Isaac
I definitely don't think identity is a thing -- hence my rejection of the Cartesian subject. More like a collection, but not a bundle. It's a specific collection that's important to whatever identity is.
I agree identity is not a psychological state one discovers by interoception. That's maybe a first step for some, but not all -- what's important is how one comports themselves with others. My thought is identity is a social creation entirely, but that it's also entirely real and we can be right or wrong about it. The person whose in the best position, most of the time, for making that judgment is the person whose identity it is.
My claims come back to whether you accept there is a standpoint for identity, rather than the metaphysical claim, or even empirical claim, about identity.
Quoting Isaac
Cool. Then while we began with trans identity, it might be better to finish with some other kind of identity -- like identity in general (as if that were easy....) -- because I think our disagreements are very much philosophical. And not finish in this thread -- just more like bookmarking "OK, interesting ideas to explore are identity in general, the relationship between science and ontology or philosophy, and the significance of science at large"
I agree it's a rare conversation. We should have doxxed one another by now while rallying the rabble to burn eachother at the stake ;)
This is an excellent point, but, as you note in the next paragraph, it's not the gay guide book, but a gay guide book. Which is interesting.
Quoting Isaac
All of which is fine, but one of the things that's troubling about your "off the shelf" metaphor is that it suggests mass production, that more or less identical narratives are available to everyone (or maybe people within a given culture or speech community, whatever), and I'm not sure that's quite right.
It seems to me that in taking up a narrative, you don't so much buy a copy as make a copy, so even though there's going to be some, maybe considerable, family resemblance among the copies of a story each member of a community are carrying around, they are still going to be idiosyncratic. And if you consider how we get access to these stories, we're making copies of copies of copies of copies ... The archetype may still show through, but quite a few of the details might have changed. In fact, over time one narrative might split into two, if there are populations that started with different versions of the original. And by now it should be really, really obvious that what we're looking at here is evolution.
Which is no surprise, but what I'm really curious about is the copying process itself. What I don't want to slot in here is that bullshit sort of "recipe" account you always get of musicians. (Grew up listening to country on the radio, got into funk in high school, and then I discovered Ella Fitzgerald --- and out of all that came "Walking on Sunshine.") But I think we have to say something about how whatever you've got before you acquire the new story (to use on yourself or others) is going to color your version of the story. At the very least, what else is already in your repertoire is going to shape your use of the new script -- some people will use it more and some less, depending on what else they've acquired and how they use them. (You can know a hundred stories and always reach for the same two or three.)
It's not that I want to push back against psychology's legitimate pursuit of generality; it's just that I'm interested in the mechanisms of acquiring and using these stories. The individual's narrative repertoire will be idiosyncratic in exactly the way their genes and their idiolect are, but we can say general things about how people are individuated in these ways.
Which might get us some ways toward @Moliere's sense of individuality.
Idiosyncrasy might also explain some of the strange bedfellows politics makes, and the failure of people to recognize their allies.
Forgot you said this, and it's kind of what I ended up writing about above.
Yeah, that's the idea. There's some endocrine response to the sight of the male body, or some such, that's the raw data that needs explaining. How it's explained is the story. 'Gay' is the name for the story - how it's explained - not the name for the endocrine response (which is just chemicals).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yeah, completely. But here we're talking about the names given to those stories 'gay', 'man', 'geek', 'fool'... These, like any other naming practices, rely on family resemblances. The [collection of idiosyncratic stories which all sufficiently resemble each other to be called 'being a man'] is called 'manhood'. It's called that by a language community who actively want such broad summarisation of idiosyncrasy. Idiosyncrasy is annoying to take into consideration all the time, it makes prediction work really hard. There's a benefit to all of us in ironing it out for the purposes of communication and social role-playing.
But also, just as a purely psychological theory, I'm unconvinced that our stories are so unique. I agree that we re-construct them ourselves, but only out of parts available already. Remember, these are post hoc, subsequent to the actions and internal workings they are trying to explain. So the driver here is to find an explanation, it's a defensive move (against uncertainty) not a creative one.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Totally. That's why I brought up the idea earlier of message faithfulness. The idea being that we might try to copy a story, but we'll make small mistakes - I liken it to playing Chinese whispers - and others will copy their story from us, mistakes and all. We end up this way, not just with new stories, but, worryingly, stories which we might actually find unhelpful, stories which were supposed to be helpful once but which have become mutated by error into something not serving its original purpose.
Obviously there's a countervailing drive for us to find the stories useful and we'll be pulled to reject those which aren't. But that tension can create difficulties.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yeah, totally. It's not as unlike picking parts as you suggest you want to avoid. Think about how someone who sees themselves as a 'geek' is going to handle suddenly finding themselves to be good at some sport or other. The narrative they reach for to explain that fantastic gift with, say, archery, isn't going to be the same one the 'jock' might reach for because that simply wouldn't fit with the rest of his story, but it's unlikely to be completely made up either, just more 'Robin Hood' than 'LeBron James' (or whoever the LeBron James of archery is).
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Yeah. I think @Moliere has even started a new thread on this, but the issue here is one of language, I think. We can accept that these stories are idiosyncratic and even unique (though I wouldn't go that far myself), but we still collect them (in loose fuzzy-edged collections) and name that collection in our language acts. Since these language acts are a public shared activity, it follows that these named collections are public shared utilities, not individually owned 'identities'.
I think by and large you're taking stories as cultural moves we can make in defense or explanation of our opinions and behavior, and I keep trying to find a role for them in production.
Fox News, for example, is like an experiment in how many different ways you can say "Shut up you fucking hippy!" They're still fighting retrograde actions against the sixties, and experience an intuitive revulsion toward the counterculture. (The eloquent version of this can be found elsewhere, Saul Bellow or Allan Bloom, etc.)
One way or another the label "hippy" gets attached to the object of revulsion. But are you a hippy because I find you revolting? Or do I find you revolting because you are a hippy? Most people will tend to go for the latter because it sounds more like a bit of reasoning, even if they think it's based on faulty premises. Your version is the former, in which "hippy" is available as a story that makes sense of the feeling of revulsion, and is more radical.
I want to go with your version, because the usual version just feels more computational and I no longer trust that model. On the other hand, I want an explanation for the initial feeling of revulsion and people keep telling me that culture can reach right down to your feelings and shape your responses; if culture can be effective in this way, it has to get into the game earlier than our post-facto stories and justifications and rationalizations.
On the third hand (the gripping hand), we needn't pretend this is all linear; you could have the revulsion, reach for an explanation, and also react to the explanation, almost as if it were being presented to you with the expectation that you will react.
The other role of stories, on this view, would be as feeling management strategies. Depending on the story the feedback might be positive or negative: this is a big deal, dial up your response; or, this isn't that important, dial it down.
This I like. I'm not clear on why this has to be conscious, but this seems to be where consciousness comes in, these very high-level sorts of management.
And it jibes with experience, I think. We've probably all had the experience of working ourselves up to a level of anger we didn't have at the beginning of a disagreement, or building up a simple infatuation into our One True Love, or literally telling ourselves that something isn't worth getting worked up over.
I've left the initial feeling of revulsion toward hippies unexplained, but I'm not sure it matters. (To young progressive this is everything!) The narrative feedback loop gets started somehow and it might have close to nothing to do with whatever got it started. (The genealogical analysis believes that uncovering the real source of that initial reaction reveals the real meaning of the narrative, and that's tempting but I suspect deeply mistaken. We can talk more about that.)
Aye. Something can be a post-facto story/rationalisation and still have whatever bodily state it secreted/was identified with be influential after the fact, I think all the change of vocabulary to "post factor" or "defence against uncertainty" does is try to put a gloss on whether social categories are primarily reactive or primarily productive. Considering that every social category, indeed every act of perception, would be primarily reactive under @Isaac's view, I don't think it operates at the required level of specificity.
Calling these norms post facto, or highlighting that they are indeed post hoc rationalisations, reads like the Less Wrong rationality trope "Uncritical Supercriticality" in this instance. In which a term from one context gets transported to another, and mutually elaborated upon cross purposes.
The specific form that would take here is that absolutely nothing of social life, no "mental furniture", ideology or even motivational state, survives the parsing. In effect it's a selectively applied table flip. Like choosing not to play the same game when one is out of moves.
Not saying that you're being disingenuous @Isaac, just that the moves you've made the last few pages undermine the starting premises of the debate. Even the law's post facto in this sense.
Quoting Moliere
Yeah, I agree. When I referred to a claim about the human psyche I only meant quite specifically the claim that we select from social constructions (and the associated claim that we're not really equipped to do otherwise). I agree that those entities, such as they are, are social ones.
Quoting Moliere
Yeah... I think that's guilt-based too, though. No one genuinely buys that shit... do they?
Quoting Moliere
That's a more charitable way of looking at it that maybe I could adopt. I'm not sure I'm ready to excuse the lack of perspective relative to the major victims (the destitute), but I'm willing to go as far as to see genuine victimhood.
Quoting Moliere
We do. So many threads to pull on here, not sure which to follow and which to save for later...
Quoting Moliere
Well, then I'd be wrong! Again, supporting an active inference model of language is probably another thread we could pull on, but it's been combed through on other threads.
Quoting Moliere
But that's already so loaded. Nothing about using visible signs of biological sex to pick from two forms of address is 'punishment'. It's just a cultural practice. We might have chosen hair colour, or height, or nose shape. We chose sex (for some clear cultural reasons, of course).
I can't see how that's a punishment beyond not getting what one wants. I understand some might prefer this new way. That doesn't make it a punishment to not get it.
Quoting Moliere
I do hope so. I want to be clear though, that it's not so much the differences that I think need resolving. I think things will eventually end up some middle ground of pronouns being like names (learnt, person by person) with a kind of neutral 'they' for unknown cases. I don't think that would be a bad thing.
The thing I'm most vexed about is the victim culture, the way that not adhering to this (or any other) scheme is treated as an act of oppression. That I think is dangerous because it undermines attempts to address actual oppression. Most of what I'm doing here is showing that it's not oppressive. It might be old-fashioned, clumsy, but not an act of abuse.
Quoting Moliere
Then it what sense is it a 'social' creation, if others play no role in it and are overruled by the individual? That doesn't, on the face of it, sound very social. It sounds entirely private.
This is too meta for me to understand. :(
Oh, sorry.
Pretty much everything a mind allegedly does, if it involves what we'd describe as a judgement or interpretation, can be construed as having only ex post facto affects because the entities involved in those judgements/interpretations are ex post facto. Did someone go to jail for breaking the law, or because their motor units were recruited in a manner to move their legs away from... Did I eat the sandwich because I was hungry, or because the relative concentration of grehlin in my body was high...
I could be in jail, awaiting a sentence for stealing a car, and be able to tell the officer: "I'm not here because I'm awaiting a sentence, I'm here because (something to the effect that I'm minimising some neurological loss function defined over my body states)" - and it would be true. For a constrained sense of cause, anyway.. The same trick can be played with any conceptual register about people higher in degree of organisational complexity than the body - like an institution, a social encounter, a law, a norm, an identity.
This discussion contains laws and identities. Identities are suspect whereas laws are not. The criterion @Isaac is using to dissolve identity would also dissolve law. And all the other abstractions we'd use to understand social scenarios.
Edit: and to make clear why I think that's important, it would stop is from using any of the terms the debate was premised using to begin with. Nothing would make sense any more.
In cognitive terms, the stories act as both high level meta-models of how lower level model cohere, but also as both filters and producers of confirmatory behaviour. So there's always a forward acting element.
Like with perception, we're telling stories about the scene to explain the retinal sensation, but also those stories are producing actions design to confirm them.
I see a similar thing happening with social-role stories, they're models which explain their inputs (in this case the outputs from lower level models), and thereby act as filters for noise, but also they're producing behaviours which are aimed at maximising the information the models have to work on (minimising surprise).
A story for 'trans' might be explaining all sorts of otherwise unconnected lower level models, like sexual preferences, dress preferences, discomforts (and comforts) among other sexes,etc...but then it's also producing a set of behaviours which maximise the information harvest to confirm that model. In this case we're talking about feedback from a social role based action. "If I'm an 'X', then when I do 'Y' people will respond 'Z'" - do Y and see if people respond Z.
So in your example. The revulsion is explained - "It was a 'hippy' wot did it, hence I'm revolted", but if it was a hippy, then being more revolted would fit well as a next act, it would be what my character would do next in the play - so let's test that theory, let's be more revolted and see if it fits... and so on.
Hey! I've only posted one thing since you were praising my contribution! Caprice!
Quoting fdrake
I agree (with the caveat I added). We could dissolve law that way. We could say that having broken a law is a post hoc story explaining the basic social breakdown which actually caused the crime to take place. I'm not sure that would be a bad thing in some cases.
But I'm not here arguing that because we could, we ought.
What I'm arguing, is that because we could, it is not a given. We are not compelled to accept 'identities' as an empirical reality, any more than we are compelled to accept laws as a descriptor of criminality.
If it is useful to do so, we might. If our frame were a legal one, rejecting law as a reality would be self-defeating, but here we're talking about who 'owns' the reified entity, not about it's reification, sensu lato. So the matter of it being soluble, whilst true, doesn't really help determine ownership.
Ownership of this social construction that we're calling an identity seems to be hinging on epistemological claims about how it is determined, who can say what it's nature is. It's those claims I'm challenging.
I think we're thinking along the same lines except you remembered to mention filtering and I forgot again.
Aye! I can appreciate what you wrote without agreeing with it. < 3
Right, right. I used to have this argument with @Isaac, the space of reasons vs the space of causes, that sort of thing. Driving a car isn't just moving your arms and legs in a certain way. Been there done that.
I do tend to stop at some level above surprise minimization, although I think it's fair to keep that in mind. Damasio gets a lot of mileage out of homeostasis. You can use that lowest level as a constraint: if your theory requires something where the cost would outweigh the biological value, it's a non-starter. (Okay, at species level. Individuals get up to all kinds of shit.)
I suppose I assume that to get anything that will look like an explanation to me -- of identity, for instance -- you have to move at least in the direction of biology, so down to the level of mental mechanisms that would produce intuitions about identity, say. But it also makes sense to move up, to take essentially a functionalist stance -- what social purpose could this behavior serve?
Best to do both, right? I worry that there's a little more room for bullshit moving up rather than down. But either way you almost immediately run into these unresolvable differences -- "You're only saying that because you're a lackey of Capital," "But you're only saying that because it makes you feel special and in-the-know." The first is probably an abuse of "because" and what it really means is that by saying that you *become* a lackey of Capital. The latter is too general and would account for any heterodox view I might hold, and so doesn't account for my Marxism.
I think there is a consistent pattern here. Cultural explanations tend to overdetermine individuals, biological to underdetermine them. It's another way to put the point you were making: the farther down you go, the greater the range of behavior accounted for, which is fine, unless you wanted an explanation of *this* behavior. If apo is right, I stop at this specific store, for milk, after work, in order to accelerate the heat death of the universe. That is not an answer to any of the everyday questions I might be asked. (Why *this* store? Why milk? Why after work?) But it is an answer to some question.
I need to work and think some more about the kind of explanations I want, but am I in the neighborhood of your concern here?
Ah well. I forget to mention embodiment. I think yours was the lesser oversight.
One thing on my mind is that both the hypothetical explanatory accusations I was considering are functionalist: one points to sociological function, one to psychological.
Functionalist explanations of speech behavior are going to be inherently unsatisfying to some people because they appear to ignore the content, or at the very least to ignore the truth-value of the content. (We had that discussion a long time ago too.)
The other thing is that functionalist explanations are most convincing when there's no competition (why on earth do they do that?) or when existing explanations have a serious flaw. (My example for the latter is Mercier and Sperber's explanation for why reason appears to have defects, the answer being that it doesn't if you recognize what it's actually for.)
And I think some of us see a prima facie case against the currently offered explanations for why someone with the anatomy of one sex would claim to be of the other sex. Some might see no need of an explanation at all, but it needn't be a political issue just, you know, the spirit of inquiry. The explanations on offer seem to depend on (a) ideas about identity or (b) ideas about language. Your objections to (a) and (b) are what provide the opening for a functionalist explanation. But not everyone accepts those objections, so to them you're just offering a competing theory, but on ground functionalism does not find congenial. Your functionalism is just unwelcome.
Yeah absolutely.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
My intuition is that doing both styles of thought about this should be possible, but that they should constrain each other as you said. If we went so "top down" we started thinking in terms of free will = volitional control = identification, we'd be distorting the space of concepts we're reasoning with to the extent that social learning and psychogenesis as concepts are undermined - free will as undetermined, social mediation as a determination. If we go the other way and climb from "bottom up", all of the social categories we were trying to "climb toward" would dissolve since they're not derivable from, or identical with, their neural-dynamical conditions of actuation. Or as you wrote, there's a tightrope between over and under determination - which in this case is also a tightrope of both spaces of concepts interfacing at all. We'd like to have reasoning about the neural/bodily impinge upon reasoning about the social, and vice versa, just to see what's really going on. The fact that social phenomena are parseable as ex post facto categories of bodily comportments tells us that the two images, of neural bodies and socially organised bodies tells us nothing about either, or their relation.
Quoting Isaac
You may be compelled to accept something like "institution" if you're studying a business, or "law" if you're studying legal codes. If what we're doing is more like studying legal codes, the fact that we can parse the law as ex post facto categorisations of bodily comportments tells us nothing about its content.
If instead the fact that social categories are ex post facto categorisations of bodily comportments lets us discriminate between identities, tells us how their content comes to be, then it'd be useful. Just to gesture to an intersection point, one might be the interface between social mediation of emotion categorisation ("Conceptual Act Theory of Emotion") and the phenomenology of trans embodiment.
Ultimately I'm throwing a "yes, and" at you, Isaac, rather than a pure criticism.
Yeah! My intervention in your discussion with @Isaac makes no sense unless you're both quibbling on some interface between functionalist theories, I think.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Aye. I remember. Hopefully we can keep the discussion away from those enormous rabbit holes.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I do think there's a uniquely fecund opportunity for functionalism here though. If what counts as a mental state of type X is determined solely by an array of behaviour, and there's social mediation of the behaviour, that's already very similar to gender is a performance. Since one comes to count as a gender by a type of functioning - performing a suitable class of behaviour with a given adequacy.
But as you say, if we end up with that "subjective" theory of meaning from before, it gets hard. Though it's certainly less hard when someone lives, works, speaks, looks as the gender they count as - regardless of their natal sex. Since then they function as their identified gender in a broad class of circumstances, and then they really do seem to count as that gender (like catcalling).
I get that. It's like Fodor's argument for the ineliminability of the 'special sciences'. (You can't just absorb meteorology into physics.)
On the other hand, my first commitment for 'what we're climbing toward' is "saving the appearances," so I want the bottom-up theory to explain why we hold the usual view, but I don't know that we need to preserve its categories and explanations. It's crucial to Fodor's argument that meteorology is an actual science. That it can't be reduced to physics is not at all the same as saying that pre-scientific ideas about weather and climate would need to be reconstructed for physics to be a threat to them. If those categories are inadequate, we can pass right by.
I'm okay saying that because my interest is almost entirely 'scientific' rather than political, so that's a limitation to my approach.
Quoting fdrake
Was it clear that the "you" there is @Isaac? (And also that I was again speaking in another voice.) Just checking.
Quoting fdrake
I do still think we end up there, and maybe I like the word "performance" here because once we're this far along even I will have given up disentangling the cultural and the biological.
On the other hand, I'm pretty strongly committed to what I came up with after this, which is that identity, and so gender identity, seems obviously about intuitions. It has all the earmarks. You just know the answer when asked, even if you have trouble explaining it, you might not think about it much otherwise, sometimes the words for expressing it strike you as inadequate, there's confusion about whether you should even have to defend it with reasons, on and on. It's textbook. Your sense of your gender, or your identity more broadly, comes to you as an intuition. Seems obvious to me.
But that doesn't tell you much about where that intuition comes from. Your intuitions about how language works might be innate, but your intuitions about your native language are learned through socialization. We can have socially formed intuitions, and those will be realized in biology, but that doesn't make them biological meaning "innate". So the source and purpose of identity intuitions -- open question for me. @Moliere tells me the self is entirely social (I think), and for the record that strikes me as nuts. As nuts as thinking our ideas about sexuality are entirely cultural. But I don't have a theory to offer about our identity intuitions, and if I did have one it wouldn't be worth much. That's a research program, far as I'm concerned.
No worries.
Quoting Isaac
Yes, and not just yes, but absolutely yes. The reason politicians can get away with saying what looks like obvious bullshit is they know what people like to hear, and that's what wins elections. The reason good union members with a strong foundation in solidarity vote for Republicans is because they can speak to the issues a union member believes are important -- like abortion, gun rights, and God. I always summed up Republican politics in the red states as revolving around God, guns, and babies -- you need God in your life to get you right, you need guns in your life to defeat the bad guys, and if you're going to have sex then you should take care of that baby no matter what.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of it is guilt based. Guilt is an emotion which builds institutions -- it makes people predictable enough that you'll have the numbers you need. Catholicism got by with that for over a millenia, so clearly guilt is an important motivator in building long-lasting institutions.
I just don't think it's going to be a guilt based in Marxism. The starving kids in China, as Mom would say to guilt trip us into eating vegetables, don't seem to have much to do with an individual's life, which is circumscribed by nationalist politics. Especially in the USA, I think people view themselves as having won the lottery by being born here. And if they just work hard enough they can be rich like Elon Musk, and they don't want to pay taxes because they know how to manage their own money on the stock market better, and all the other individualistic nonsense people really do believe.
There might be an underlying guilt for those with the conscience -- but that there's a carrot at the other end where you're in charge of your own destiny, I think, is what distracts from the reality of an industrial society. Plus there are all these reasons to reject Marxism, such as the violence of its political movement which is very real. (and capital's violence is intentionally designed to be easy to overlook, I think)
Quoting Isaac
That's pretty much where I'm at. If there's somehow, miraculously, a reasonable chance to actually change international conditions I'd sign up. In the meantime there are victims nearby who certainly aren't the destitute, but aren't doing too good either.
Quoting Isaac
Honestly I'm pretty happy with where we've ended up -- if I can complete the reduction to philosophical disagreements then there are future discussions to be had, and I think we agree there at least.
Quoting Isaac
Heh OK makes sense.
Quoting Isaac
I think that makes sense.
For what it's worth, I believe you. I don't think it wise to jump at people for every possible slight. I said earlier on I believe there are some egos that need deflating. I can go that far ,because I don't like self-righteousness when it comes to politicking. It's far too gray to really go full-on into one's own self-righteousness unless one hasn't reflected enough.
But, hey, I was young enough once to have that feeling, too.
Quoting Isaac
This is going to get into the conceptual territory I've already admitted I'm uncertain about. But I'll take a stab anyways.
One of the things I like to remind people about Marx who are starting is that his scope is something a new reading is unlikely to be familiar with -- political economy. It's a jump even from standard sociology which tries to find some scientific explanation for phenomena -- it's an attempted scientific explanation for all social phenomena including the genesis of the state. It's a scope wider than countries, because it deals with the economies of countries and their transition from feudalism to capitalism.
The socially constituted subject is at a scope of explanation that doesn't impinge upon conversations except to say something about higher level rules that might explain why we're talking about this or that, but once we get down to the level of identity the scope is different.
But how to differentiate the scopes? Well, that's exactly where I'm stuck. The old question for me is finding the difference between social and psychological entities. I haven't answered it yet.
I thought you were addressing an arbitrary functionalist, rather than specifically @Isaac.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I'm also okay with saying that. If it turns out that the social categories can be made sense of entirely in terms of the bodily/neural ones, great. If there's a productive point of interface - like I conjectured may exist - great. My only concern is throwing the baby (the social categories) out with the bath water (the neural categories). Which is easy to do when the baby is made largely of water and often behaves accordingly.
I see it as a question of distilling constraints on the social categories from the physical ones - as produced explanada from generative explanans. And that means finding points of interstice to get the constraints out. If we end up saying the social categories don't mean anything, what question are we asking again? Does it make sense to consider any of the distinctions which lead to this line of inquiry, even the law? Mental states? Etc.
I'm not trying to say those things "really" exist either. For the purposes of this comment, I don't care if there really are mental states or identity really is a psychic act of affiliation, just that as a methodological point, saying "there's nothing to be explained" selectively within what is to be explained makes no sense.
A reductive analogy.
Alice: "Do you want ice cream?"
Bob: "I want Pizza"
Alice: "Ice cream is better though"
Bob: "Ice cream can't be better because people don't taste"
Alice: "Oh"
Bob: "Yeah! Pizza time! It's delicious"
The discussion should either melt entirely into uselessness or cling to an interstice of the domains. My reference point here is the manifest and scientific image concept in Sellars. Social stuff is firmly rooted in the manifest image; how the world appears to us, rather than the fundamental entities which are "really" there and generative of this world. The interstice would be how the neural categories lead to the generation of the entities within, or constrain the explanatory styles regarding, the appearance. The mere fact that there's a mismatch of entities and explanatory styles tells us nothing about either image. Even when one of them, the scientific/neurological-bodily one is thought ontologically primary.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think as a "manifest imagey" conception this makes a lot of sense. The behavioural components of that identity could even be self reports, like asserting "I am a man", speaking as one, and so on. If the mind of the public is changed and asserting honestly that "I am a man" counts you as a man, that would be all the behaviour required. It would even be a public criterion. Since one says "I am a man" honestly.
I also doubt this falls pray to the private language argument, since we could all agree that the sole criterion for being a man, in this sense, is an honest report that one is. Which would even be a correctness condition in terms of behaviour.
Woke lefties of the internet, unite.
You might be right. (I wanted to make sure you didn't think it was you, and that it was clear I wasn't saying it but mentioning it.)
Quoting fdrake
Yeah I noticed you'd been in that recently.
Quoting fdrake
There's still behavior to be accounted for, including verbal behavior. One of the key linguistic markers for what region of the US you grew up in is whether you say "stream" or "creek" or "crick" (possibly also "kill" though I think that's preserved more in names than speech). There might be others I'm forgetting. Point being, there's no distinction at all among these, each is a Nash equilibrium, but they do indicate something about your personal history (statistically). On one level, they're equivalent; on another, a key distinction. Denying that they denote distinct types of small river doesn't change the differences in usage patterns.
I'll try to give another answer to this later.
Quoting fdrake
Dang. It was meant to be scientific.
Quoting fdrake
Ah, now that's a whole different thing. I'm not sure the sort of intuitions I'm talking about could bear that kind of weight, and I wasn't anywhere near proposing that they should.
Quoting fdrake
Hmmm. You left out philosophical. Maybe I'm just excessively interested in psychology at the moment but I don't really want to make this kind of distinction. I think talking about behavior, human or otherwise, requires moving relatively freely up and down these levels. Maybe it's just that I've also recently sworn off boundary policing. Maybe it's that I think finding the right explanation means finding the right level at which to give an explanation.
I agree in principle. I do think we've got ontological level difficulties here though, so the boundaries seem part of the problem. If explanatory styles get to be superimposed and blurred, great. The rough edges between them can cause issues too.
There could be multiple too, I guess.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Ah. I think in this context intuitions are manifest image.
Since the scope of a theory concerning intuitions would concern styles of thinking about "introspectible events".
Though if you were positing an intuition as an explanatory entity - like having intuition X induces entity Y - it might count as part of a scientific image. What type of intuitions are you talking about @Srap Tasmaner?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
That's a great example, thanks. If gender were something like a body of water, it would make sense that there could be a structural equivalence in denoting behaviour whose names were occasioned by different events. Though I think we've got a good reason to muddy the water with gender, since the named territory is also statistical-historical. The act of treating something as manly, womanly etc informs what it means to be a man or a woman. The class of denoting events, for creek crick etc, don't do anything to change what counts as a small stream. Or at least, they don't change the size of the stream.
More generally, the classification mechanism of small streams into "creek" or "crick" doesn't modify the behaviour of what is classified over time. Cultural change couldn't stop Tinky Winky from being purple, but they could turn Tinky Qinky into a queer symbol.
Let's say, the conscious output of unconscious processes of inference (often performed by mental modules that are domain specific). Meant really as a replacement for "belief" which has all the wrong connotations.
And you can test for them. You can do research. The part I'm iffiest on is whether they must be conscious, because I don't see why, but that's just the problem of consciousness, and it seems like they often are. Maybe that's just because in doing research you elicit self reports.
Quoting fdrake
Thank goodness. I wasn't sure at first why that occurred to me.
Quoting fdrake
Does it? I mean, you say this, and it fits the usual way we talk about socially constructed whatever, but it's exactly what people are fighting over. The claim is exactly that your treating me as a woman or as a man doesn't make me one, anymore than treating slaves inhumanly made them inhuman. (How's that for a pointed comparison?)
This is exactly the sort of thing that made me wary of picking a level or a style and then crafting an explanation for that framework. You will always be able to do that, but the evidence that doesn't fit might be on another level. I think.
I don't actually get the point here. Tinky Winky wearing a frilly tutu can arbitrarily be a queer symbol, or can be one by aligning with our hyper-local conditions, but there's no reason to think this symbolism has any essential connection to queerness beyond that, is there? So in time pointing to Tinky Winky as a queer symbol will seem distinctly peculiar. You'll have to explain when and where and why they were taken as such.
Are you making a comparison between this sort of opportunistic symbolism and a person's gender identity? I don't want to guess.
That's a fair assessment, but people (here) are still mistaking my intervention here for a prescriptive one where it is intended to be only an allowance.
That my functionalist explanations are unwelcome is clear (to say the least), but that's not the issue. The issue is solely that those other explanations' dependencies, which you highlight above lack the concreteness required to find acts of disagreement with them to be acts of oppression.
I know it was a long time back (in thread-years), but this whole debate stated with ideas about oppression and what oppression looked like. The point at which I intervened.
My argument is not "We are compelled to look at this from a functionalist perspective". My argument is "We are not compelled to agree to such a thing as identity, and therefore denying it is not an act of oppression, it's an act of philosophical disagreement"
Even with something like Marxism, I'm not going to say it taps into some kind of concrete reality the denial of which constitutes an act of abuse. I just think it's broadly right about economics. Where others disagree, it is a disagreement about economics, not an act of oppression.
It's at this ethical level that my objection sits.
Quoting fdrake
I don't actually think so. A perfectly good functionalist account of legal practice could still be given. We could say that when people carry out such-and-such an act, there is a tendency for another group to place some kind of curtailment on their freedom. In fact this explanation works better because it gives a closer account of why some criminals get away with their acts and why sometimes the police do not pursue a prosecution even though a criminal act has been committed. We are not compelled to discuss legal codes, we don't need them as principles and starting from that actually requires a whole load of caveats and addendums to make it fit the reality we experience, we could reduce them to mere mechanisms.
As above, to sustain an accusation of oppression where the concept of truthful identity is denied, it needs to be much more concrete than that.
Quoting fdrake
This makes the exact mistake I've outlined above. The aim is not to dissolve social entities by reducing them to their causal parts, it is to show how their concreteness can be called into question - not their assumed reality. I'm quite happy with a conversation which assume the social role 'man' is a reality. what I object to is twofold;
1. That this reality is concrete - it has a truth value the denial of which constitutes an act of oppression - we hear about "denying who the person really is". It is not concrete and disagreements are philosophical, not abuse.
2. Even if we accept these realities, that does not constitute an acceptance of any given theory about their nature. Particularly, in this instance the question of who owns those realities, who has the final word on correctness conditions. accepting that these realities are constructed doesn't deny them, but it does give us cause to question any assumed answers here.
Quoting fdrake
Again - we could. The ethical argument requires that we must. Otherwise there's no act of denial (and so no act of abuse) in mere disagreement about those correctness conditions.
True, but this is a rationalisation isn't it? Why did 'Mom' try the 'starving kids' routine? Was she not expecting the response "well, that has nothing to do with my eating policies, but is the result of far more systemic issues"? Emotionally, the expected result is guilt. All I'm saying is that emotionally that needs a salve. Maybe for some that salve is the insistence that it is a systemic problem divorced from day-to-day decisions, but for others that salve is going to be to say "hey, but I'm a victim too!". The actual felicity of any of those stories isn't the point, it's their function - to ease that uncomfortable feeling you get when you walk past one of the nation's homeless, or you see a painfully thin baby with flies around its eyes on the television. Those images produce guilt (or axon potentials in the anterior middle cingulate cortex with accompanying increase in cortisol and adrenaline and changes in heart rate accompanied by digestive discomfort, depending of your preferred frame!), we need to understand that and do something to make that nasty feeling go away. Physiologically, those feelings are 'designed' specifically to force us to come up with a plan to alleviate them.
Quoting Moliere
I'd agree with this but with one huge caveat. There's only one front page and there are things we can do to make it more likely that those with the power to change international conditions are inclined to do so. Those things need some of the oxygen of political discourse, all of which is sucked out at the moment by the minutiae of identity politics.
That, and the fact that solidarity is literally our only weapon and we ought be more precious of it that to descend into tribalism at the slightest hint of dissent in the ranks.
Quoting Moliere
Then I think we agree. As I've said in my post above, I'm not here making the argument that we must look at matters like identity from a social constructionist, or functionalist, or even behaviourist perspective, I'm only making the argument that because we can do so, our disagreements are philosophical, not ethical. No one is abusing anyone (not here anyway) and people are not oppressed by the fact the others do not agree with their preferred notion of how identity works.
Quoting Moliere
Nor me.
Ah right, sorry. The idea I had was that what counts as a queer icon changed over time because people started classifying Tinky Winky as one, he's now an instance of the class "queer icon" partially because that way of referring to him was popularised.
Analogy - if you took Tinky Winky back in time, Tinky Winky wouldn't be able to be classified as a queer icon because the norms and symbols wouldn't exist, at that point. But if you took the small stream back in time, it's still a present type of entity which could be classified. A stream wouldn't stop being countable as small based on the practices of people, Tinky Winky would stop being countable as queer icon based on that.
Another analogy - like the French flag, it wouldn't stand for France if you took it back 10,000 years. Right now it's one of the ways of denoting France in some contexts.
So in context - I'd responded to the "creek" vs "crick" for small stream as a functional difference analogy you made, and made the point that what's countable as a small stream doesn't change in time. The kind of properties that would make something count as a small stream, at a time, don't go out of existence when people stop collectively behaving in a given way.
Something like a flag, or Tinky Winky being classified as a queer icon, doesn't have this property (I claim), because the existence of the type of thing they count as depends upon the practices of people.
Those practices being classification behaviours - like for France, the flag couldn't stand for France until a rough national boundary was drawn and that area counted as France.
I think that when we've become inundated in propaganda the guilt starts to fade away. It's just another emotion floating along with the others.
Earlier I posited that a man who is mature is content with his discontentment. I have no desire to let go of my emotions, but I also know when I'm being manipulated. A mature man accepts his emotions, feels them even if they are uncomfortable, even if they are from a source of manipulation. But it's not like I'm going to defer much to a source which basically gut punches the heart, usually to follow up with an ask for a donation to the cause. I know why I feel what I feel, but that doesn't mean the source of the guilt trip is something worth listening to.
And in a society where manipulation is the norm people will develop these defenses to their emotions, which in turn will cause people to make enemies as they begin to lose the desire to offer charity. It's learned callousness so you can get on with life, which is what the grind does is teach you to be selfish and stop caring about the world. It's enough to care for your family, and after that -- for most it's too much to care about. Especially given the uncertainty of it all: it's not like caring about politics is going to lead to good or bad outcomes. Most people feel like they have no power over these things, and so it's back to the hand-to-mouth, paycheck to paycheck. Let the people rich enough to care duke it out, and if you really feel something then go vote.
Right, "stream" and "creek" are different words that denote the same things, meaning -- at least in this case, maybe not in all cases -- they also have the same function within people's regional dialects. That function relates regularities in the physical environment to regularities in speech behavior. It's not that functionalism ends up having no role here, because it's functionalism that identifies the equivalence of "stream" and "creek," so functionalism can answer the question "Why do say 'creek'?" but it can't answer the question "Why do you say 'creek' instead of 'stream'?"
Your first point was that gender might not be an observable regularity like a creek, so an object like 'man' might be in part determined by whether people say 'man' of it, and so on, practices, comportment towards, blah blah blah. This would speak to @Isaac's constructivist tendencies, 'man' as off the shelf narrative for making sense of things.
I have deep reservations about that account because there are extremely salient observable differences between people because humans reproduce sexually and always have, just like our ancestors who lacked speech and culture. I think it likely we make almost exactly the same sort of intuitive inferences about the sex of members of our species as other mammals do. The question would be whether those intuitive inferences play a major role in our speech and culture or have they long since been swamped by other factors. Unclear to me, but even infants seem to distinguish male and female early, so I'd count that as evidence the machinery I'd expect to be there is there.
But we're not nearly done with functionalism, because one key question is whether everyone saying "I'm a boy" is even doing the same kind of thing. Such a claim could be overwhelmingly down to the sex-determining mechanism evolution bequeathed you, or it could serve a psychological or a social role. Or all of the above. But even before trying to figure that out -- which looks daunting -- we have to think carefully about where the functional account takes hold and where it doesn't. That is -- and now we're coming back to creeks and streams -- there might be a nice functional account of why you say "I'm a boy" but not of why you say "I'm a boy" instead of "I'm a girl," because that might be just a matter of personal history, like saying "girl" instead of "femme" or "Fraulein", or like saying "creek" instead of "stream".
Sorry that's a lot of words that don't advance any particular claim or the discussion. Just really clarifying for myself as much as anything where I think the discussion stands.
Earlier in the conversation I said to @180 Proof that we should at least be able to, through philosophy, get to the point of saying "needs further research" or at least make clear that the issue is not clear.
So I'm happy with the conclusion that these questions are snowballing into, to be appropriately addressed, what would require a research program.
And you understand me in my thinking that the self is entirely social -- though I hope to make it explicit that this is a philosophical stance. Basically these are the concepts I'd start with in a research program, the conceptual machinery around the question, that sort of thing.
There are some reasons for starting with culture that I'd put forward: feral children and enculturation, and the multiplicity of sexual expressions across cultures suggest that our cultural environment at least influences our performances. Also the cultural lens doesn't make a strong distinction between bodies and who we are, in a way skipping over the mind-body problem (whereas if we wanted a psychological explanation of identity we'd pretty much have to at least address the mind-body problem, which seems to lead us, with our present knowledge, to reject that there even is a self)
Further by starting from culture it opens the conceptual door to theatrical theories -- which I think are very ripe for talking about identity. It's kind of the actor's craft to be able to recreate identities, wear them, perform them convincingly, and step out of them. And if identity just is performance, then what they have to say on this performance might prove fruitful. (also, interesting!)
But -- I'm also happy with the conclusion "needs further research" -- though I'll keep picking at the question, as I do.
Cool.
My previous post was meant to point out what level of apathy we're really dealing with. And I'd say it's even a rational apathy -- it's only the people who are in positions of power that care if they get enough votes or people out because that's their job. That's how they make money. For the rest? That's an extra effort. (which is a way of saying the professional organizer, contra Lenin, can never be a genuine organizer: payment changes the relationship enough to matter)
My own approach doesn't focus on the front-page, because I know that the front-page is propaganda. The people in charge, at least in the United States, are motivated by things other than the vote -- you can buy votes through propaganda. Election season is just an inconvenient time when you have to lie and say things that people want to hear so you can get back to the real business of governing.
Solidarity is our only weapon, I agree. But we're a bit defenseless at the moment. Thems who own are good [s]are[/s]at breaking us apart -- and really I think that given how trans issues have been a historical reality for much longer than in the past few years when they came to prominence, my thought is that the propaganda machine selected for the most controversial issue on the basis of engagement -- and it just happened to be the one.
Quoting Isaac
I think we're close enough for meaningful discussion :)
I think there's more to the public discussions than the philosophic or scientific basis of inference, though. But philosophically I think our prime disagreement is on whether or not standpoints are worthwhile, and if so when they are.
I agree, but where we perhaps get our different assessments from is in the extent to which the movements (and their accompanying agendas, and small 'p' philosophies) pre-existed that propaganda.
I generally, as will have become very clear by now, look at most behaviour through the lens of social dynamics, and that tends to mean that the propaganda-created tribes are already part of the social narrative that those involved then have to work with (the now infamous 'public shelf').
So I suppose where you might see a relatively integral and authentic movement with a sort of media circus mis-portraying it for cynical gain, I see a movement manipulated and altered by the social impact of that media circus such that there's never very much left of the original by the time it's finished with it.
Yeah, that sounds like a correct description of our respective views.
Hot damn did we manage to understand one another?
We so did!
There should be some kind of prize, no?
Masculinity, like anything else, stands out against a backdrop of its negation. You'll pick up on your own masculinity when faced with an opposition to it: your wife, mother, daughter, female divinity, female archetype, etc.
Is it a piece of genitalia or genetics that makes the masculine? Yes and no. Imagine that every human has a penis. We reproduce with machines that produce new creatures with penises. Will a penis mean "male?". No, it will just be part of "human "
But in a world with humans who don't have penises, having one means something. It means something. See what I mean?
Exactly. Treating a relative label, like masculinity, as an absolute descriptor, is a fundamental error.
Or you could say trying to pin down an essence will hide the fact that the term is half of a whole that can't stand independent if its opposite.
I don't disagree, though in my experience while masculinity is "opposed" by femininity, it is more useful to view them as opposite poles on a broad spectrum, rather than two sides of a dualist paradigm.
The advantage of that is that you have the middle point of the spectrum: the Hermaphrodite, which is a potent symbol.
Apologies if I've given this impression to you as well, it isn't my intention.
Quoting Isaac
My sympathies are, I believe, functionalist too. So we have that as a shared background of understanding.
Quoting Isaac
It does depend upon what you want to do with the model. If we focussed on a particular law and its attendant behaviours, that law is indicated to provide a context of interpretation for correlating behaviours relevant to it. In that respect there are two regions of entities, the first contains laws and types of acts which break them, the second contains acts of their transgression and the curtailment of freedom. Those two vocabularies of description don't need to overlap on all points, but you do need to be able to take the context of interpretation on the law level of description to fix the relevant scope of tokens in the functional description context. You may also need to propagate back from the functionalist context to the law one to refine scope.
An example there might be Kahnneman and Tversky's analysis of sentences meted out by judges for similar crimes before and after their coffee break. They were different. To analyse that, you need to posit court proceedings in a more functional register in order to model how the enactment of the ruled laws is dependent upon (what count as) contingent properties of the acts of judgement on the law level. Nevertheless, if you wanted to study the rulings on a particular law using the latter functional vocabulary, you would use precisely that construct to fix the scope of which judgement occasions were present in the function level construct you were correlating events in those which involved the chosen law in the law level construct.
I think either construal can be done without granting an unrestricted sense of concreteness to any of the entities in this discussion - laws in legal construct land, correlated classes of behaviours in function land. Neither is "fundamentally" more real than the other, since they're both means of differentiating a shared substrate of less conceptualised tokens (events, behaviours, perceptions, coffee breaks) that both registers of descriptions parse in overlapping but distinct manners.
Introducing a functionalist vocabulary of description, then, will de-concretise a subject matter previously articulated in terms of pre individuated posits for methodological reasons rather than ontological ones. As a choice of lens on a shared substrate of events, rather than as stipulations of ontological primitives in that shared substrate. This occurs whenever you hold two vocabularies of description up side by side. Like previous references to hormones and desires+sensations - grehlin and hunger.
I understand the following as the move you're making in this discussion:
All is well and good with that. I agree that it is a sensible way of think of the effect of introducing a functionalist vocabulary of description. But I want to highlight that, if I've read you right, the underlying logic of the move - introducing a functionalist vocabulary of description - lets you doubt the conditions of individuating posited entities in any non-functionalist language of description concerned with the same subject matter.
It also isn't a unique feature of functionalism - eg do you see atoms as atoms or as quantum clouds? It's a feature of holding up two perspectives of the world which individuate (more nebulously encountered/less precisely conceptualised) events differently.
In that regard, the move is the metaethical equivalent of carpet bombing. If we grant that the side by side comparison is ground to doubt any normative claim - due to the underlying mismatch in how tokens are grouped/individuated in the functionalist and non-functionalist description types -, we'd grant that it applies to all normative claims which permit of at least one functionalist and one non-functionalist means of conceptualising them. That scope is extremely broad.
However, it's ultimately a methodological move rather than an ontological one - about a means of describing a more nebulously encountered/less conceptually precise subject matter than what it somehow "contains". No descriptive category would be committed to reified entities if the ability to hold perspectives which differ in this manner, side by side, on the same subject matter was employed.
The only way that this reification takes place is that someone treats any mode of description as having ontologically privileged entities in it. Which is good to highlight when it happens. But it should also be acknowledged that our beloved carpet bombing melts categories like sex as well as law, perception, gender, norms of scientific reasoning, good practices of inferences... Everything really. I think this also chimes with @Moliere.
It's also thus an inappropriate intervention in an inference between one regime and the "downstream" norms which apply to it. As it undermines the ability to construe that regime in a manner which allows norms to be applied to it in the first place.
However, that inappropriateness only applies, I believe, when the move being applied is holding up a functionalist description next to another description. Rather than seeing the subject matter through functional and non-functional means. If the norms are downstream of the non-functional articulation of the subject matter, we could see how a functionalist description of the subject matter perturbs (allegedly) downstream norms concerning the entities it conceptualises. This is why I highlighted the intersection between describing behaviour and sensations + the phenomenology of trans embodiment + speech acts declaring gender, it's a connection which allows the mutual perturbation of all of those regimes.
Why I brought up that example is that it illustrates that none of the vocabularies of description need to be discarded, even after their entities are seen as deconcretised. Since deconcretisation is a function of making another map, rather than changing the territory.
This is a very simplified story though, as I'm sure @Moliere would be keen to point out that we can't just adopt these perspectives like we'd change scientific instruments, we theorise from within them. In that regard the norms are never downstream of any folk vocabulary of description. And since the semantic resources of folk vocabularies are used in the articulation of non-folk ones, we have good reason to believe that the principles which flesh out the entities in non-folk categories of description are also tainted by the messiness of the folk ones. Which isn't to say folk categories get the entities right, it's to say folk categorisations and norms of association act as a constraint on forming new vocabularies especially on relatively novel social phenomena. Like there being a decent case (already gestured toward) that gender came before sex "in the order of knowing", even if not before it in the order of being.
I generally view your opening with favor -- we come to understand a great deal of our concepts through contrasting them with other concepts: But my contention has been that the backdrop of masculinities' negation is childhood, rather than the feminine.
In a culture which covers up the penis, then the penis isn't as important to gender-identity as many other things that we actually do get to see on the regular.
Now in any given gender-identity -- here speaking in general of a particular identity some individual would affirm they are -- one may be attached to the body in such a way that the identity wants the penis, or identifies with the penis, or is the penis. When speaking of wanting someone in the way that a man wants we usually can pick up on the erotic desire being expressed, and understand that this is an expression of an individual's sexual desire, and if we're sexually active with that person and have pleasured their penis before then, and only then, is the penis a part of our mutual understanding of that gender-identity. In one sense there's the relational element of a self to the body, and then there's the relational element of the penis to a sexual partner who affirms the penis in their desire for it.
But what of the impotent man who, in his manly way, had it blown off by a land mine but still has sexual desires as a man does?
I'd suggest that the bodily attachment is just one way to relate to our masculinity, and that we're not just our penis. In fact we can be a man without it entirely.
I agree. My point was that the constitution of masculinity is in what it's not as much as in what it is. It's one of those obscure MerleauPonty type things, although it goes back to Plato.
A nude beach or nudist camp is more 'therapeutic' because our nakedness is prolonged and not instrumental -- naked for the purpose of washing up. Uncovering everything -- neck to ankle -- is good for anyone with "body issues" provided one is reasonably selective about where one undresses. A highly competitive gym might not be the best place for a skinny, out of shape, or fat person to compare physiques. Better are places with a normal mix of body types and details into which an individual fits.
Actually, one trip to a nudist camp or nude beach may be enough. The first time I undressed completely on a nude beach was the cure. The many repeat visits was just for fun.
Or the penis may become more important because it is always covered up.
Men whose penises have been blown off, shot off, or ruined by cancer greatly desire a replacement -- either one fashioned from his own tissue or a transplant (some penis transplants have been done). Even if the replacement is not 100% functional, the essential piece of tissue is present. Appearances have been preserved. Better, of course, if it works.
Some men (many?) seem to be anxious about exposing their penises to unflattering comparison with other men's dicks. A lot of this anxiety derives from too little exposure to what other penises actually look like. So, quite often there is furtive glancing to the side while standing at urinals.
Too much masculinity is invested in the penis--a mistake. Masculinity is found in the whole body and in the brain. The penis doesn't hang alone as the sole signal of masculinity, and the penis doesn't 'produce' masculinity. Men with big dicks are not more masculine than men with small dicks.
True! Especially in self-evaluation we certainly have some kind of attachment to our body.
But unless we actually want men to have penises, we make this judgment sans-knowledge of the physical make-up of most people's sensitive parts. That is the way we normally use the word isn't really in reference to a particular person's genitals (making room for the notion that our judgment of whether a person is a man is in relation to whether he has grown up, i.e., boyhood rather than womanhood)
Quoting BC
Yup, I agree.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I'm gonna get some symbols out. Most of this is trying to understand your position, then trying to relate it to other comments in the threat.
Let's say there's a class of entities E. Some of these are small watery bodies which can be correctly referred to as streams, creeks, cricks etc. This has the flavour of a set:
E= {the union canal, the water of Inverleith, the Thames..}
In writing it down, there's an act of the imagination which leverages previous uses of language, and knowledge of bodies of water, to put distinct named entities in the set. I think that the predicate "is stream" and "is a creek" would have the same extension in E. Since everything that is a stream is a creek.
There's no reason, which could be derived from that extension alone, to explain why someone would use "is a creek" vs "is a stream" in everyday language. Since by stipulation everything which is a creek is a stream. Therefore, as you say, an account could explain why someone uses "is a creek" rather than "is a stream" through the history of language use without reference to the ability to discriminate between tokens which satisfy "is a creek" vs tokens which satisfy "is a stream" - like the Thames vs the water of Inverleith.
I see two ways of reading this, the use of "is a man".
1 ) "is a man" has an arbitrary extension because (it's a discursive, historical practice and the only thing which fixes it is that practice)
2 ) "is a man" has a non-arbitrary extension because (it's a discursive, historical practice and the only thing which fixes it is that practice).
I'd have strong reservations about ( 1 ), too, because that would make the discrimination between instances of tokens which satisfy "is a man" arbitrary. Like "is a stream" vs "is a creek". I'd have fewer reservations about ( 2 ) because the extension which is fixed "only" by discursive, historical practices can nevertheless leverage (weasel word placeholder) properties of (synthesised classes of) the referred to objects. Like the presence of breasts in discriminating a woman from a man - not perfect, but a sufficient regularity that it goes into the "what a woman looks like" norm and also into the "what man should not have" norm.
An initial distinction between "is a man" vs "is a creek" is that the former is harder to treat extensionally. There's wiggle room about what counts as a small stream, but no wiggle room about some strongly characteristic properties - it's gotta be small, there must be water, the water must run. Those let you rule out, I believe, any entity from streamhood or creekhood or whatever, and probably suffice for showing an entity is a creek (up to wrangling about "small"). Contrast "is a man", where strongly characteristic properties can be deleted and preserve the predicate - like having vs not having a dick - or be present in women - like being highly muscular and having a deep voice.
Satisfying the predicate "is tall, has short hair, is very muscular, has a deep voice" - stereotypical attributes of a bloke - could serve as a good reason to declare someone a bloke. A justification of the speech act. And that reason would serve regardless of whether the person "ontologically"is "really" a bloke. Vs counting as a bloke in a nebulously defined circumstance.
It's a good question.
Yes. "It's a boy" at birth because dick (as the story goes) and...
"I'm a boy" as a result of self exploration and embodiment constraints (insert possible phenomenology of trans embodiment here)
Or all of the above.
Yeah! I think that is a good point. Functionalist approaches here work like an acid, annihilating salient distinctions as well as irrelevant ones, by treating every means of counting as X in the same socially constructed, designated token indifferent manner. Even when there's stronger constraints on what to count as X entails, like the stream (as a token).
It was a good post. I'd be interested in hearing what you think of my response to @Isaac here. I trust the functionalism (with reservations), but like you I don't trust the arbitrariness using that in an unrestricted manner suggests about what counts as a man in our common uses of the word.
I accused @Isaac of almost exactly this a long time ago, of more or less ignoring the truth-value of an individual's statements and treating them simply as, shall we say, "responses," such as a social psychologist might elicit when doing research. The interesting thing about responses (mostly, not entirely) is not whether they're "true" but what buckets we can classify them into, how they correlate with other observables, etc.
But the other part of @Isaac's approach is some version of pragmatism, so "truth" was already off the table. People say what they say because it works for them, for whatever definition of 'works,' probably dependent on context. And obviously functional accounts are designed to answer the question, works at what? So not only does pragmatism create an opening for functionalist explanations, it invites them. Some people are going to think they're pushing back on the functionalism, when they're really pushing back on the pragmatism; that's clear enough in this thread, where it's natural to take identity claims as having a truth-value, and some will even insist that they do.
All of which is to say that in part this discussion struggles with anti-realism of the sort Dummett described. If I believe there's no fact of the matter about someone's gender, what I say might strike you as ignoring a crucial question of truth, namely the proper extension of a predicate.
What you describe as eating through all distinctions captures that anti-realism, but it's not the functionalism it's the pragmatism, and it's only all distinctions if pragmatism amounts to a super-mega-ultra functionalism, which it kinda does. But there are stopping points along the way, and that's obvious in the sort of functionalism you find in anthropology and linguistics. There are structures that are relatively fixed because the behavior analysed is said to play a role advancing a goal, which is also treated as relatively fixed. (Communication, social cohesion, etc.) You can always take one more step on the pragmatist highway and ask what purpose those goals serve, and eventually, but maybe very eventually, you'll land at homeostasis (if you're Damasio) or surprise minimization (if you're Friston) or maybe apo's thing.
That's my understanding, and that's another post not really advancing a position. I will try to come back to this later. I do want more biology and less culture than @Isaac, I think, which won't endear me to anyone.
(Btw, have you looked much at Sellars's inferential semantics? All I remember is that he starts with an explicitly functional account, "English reds are German Rots" and so on. I never got very far in those papers. And I don't do Brandom, because I'm not that cool.)
I kinda like the way he writes, torturous as it is. (There's at least one long audio-only lecture on YouTube, and it helps to hear his prosody. He tends, as I do, to overdo it with the parenthetical constructions.)
On the other hand, there might be no harm in replacing
Quoting fdrake
with something like
YMMV
Nothing in depth, SEP's article and Brassier's talk on it. I've been trying to use what I know in the posts, but I don't have the comfort level for an in depth discussion of it. AFAIK Sellars is also functionalist and a form of pragmatist with respect to truth. "Means" is illustrative, it's not a relationship between a word and a thing because it's not a relationship at all - the best you get is that one word (or speech act) precisely illustrates another. In addition, what it means for a statement to be true is for it to count as correctly assertible in a given context - which is a question of making the right moves for producing correct statements in that context.
I think a point of tension between (what I understand of) Sellars and (what I understand of) @Isaac 's functionalism+pragmatism cocktail is that Sellars allows some room for isomorphic relationships of the entities in some speech acts to environmental objects. Like when we were discussing creek and crick like what counts as a crick counts as a creek, that "what" requires a coordinating series of instances which makes (what counts as a creek) equivalent to (what counts as a crick). And that equivalence is more of a... logistics of organising items of language... than a semantic relationship of expressions. Pragmatism in a "use theory of meaning" and "use theory of truth" rather than pragmatism having "correctness = best approximation" and "belief = tendency to act as if".
Whereas I read Isaac as highlighting that the fact that the "underlying substrate" of language use can't be reached, thus everything is arbitrary up to how it's used. I don't think Sellars would agree with the arbitrariness.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
LOL. Thou hast zinged me.
It did not cross my mind that words alone would have counted. The picture in my head was of speech acts of identification and the underlying norms which enable them, which aren't all words. Intuitions. Sensations. Wanted to be broad. Like why not treat pain as part of the semantical resources of folk vocabulary when we can say "pain", just a feeling brah.
But I did so knowing there would be a perfectly cogent explanation for why the more flexible locution was preferable.
I'll get back to you on the other stuff.
The other way to say that is "random variation".
For all these cases, there are only statistical regularities. Whether something fits a set of criteria for being a stream rather than a river, whether someone from a given region will call that a "stream" or a "creek", whether someone fits a set of criteria for being a man, whether someone who does (to whatever degree) will identify as a "man" or as a "woman".
@Isaac's interest -- as I understand it -- is not the essence of manhood, or why people identify as man or woman, or even why people might try very hard to get people to talk the way they want them to, but the relative speed, if not quite readiness, with which trans-inclusive -- arguably, "trans-centric" -- vocabulary has been taken up by institutions, celebrities, the very online, anyone in a spotlight.
You want to make the point, I think, that because "man" and friends are only statistical regularities, that -- something, I'm not clear. Freedom. @Isaac counters that the moves that come next are also just statistical regularities ("responses"), and therefore -- I don't know, power, capital, big pharma.
You think there's a salient methodological difference between your approach and his, but to me you're just applying population analysis to different phenomena (real people for you, things people say for him) and then taking the fact that you can choose such a population to analyze as support for what you wanted to say next anyway: a struggle you want to support, a power structure he wants to highlight.
I don't trust random variation as a concept here. When I think about random variation, I imagine that it occurs along a predefined concept. Like you repeat a measurement of pressure, and the measurements are different due to unpredictable atmospheric fluctuations, thus the results differ. That's random variation, but of pressure. The system you're measuring is the same regardless of the result of the measured variable within it.
The salient distinction between random variation and what I intended to convey was the multiplicity and ambiguity of what system is "being measured". Or out of the analogy, what the underlying concept and/or construct under analysis is - what are the operative rules, what are the acts of conceptualising tokens relevant to gender aggregating and filtering into tropes of those tokens. Like does woman mean no pee pee, but what about if demipenis?
Where I was going with the stream example comparison, setting up an "isomorphism" is that I see Sellars as opening up a flavour of naturalism with the functionalism, when those tropes are constrained by regularities in the phenomena in question. Like we know natal sex and gender have a strong relationship, so our conceptualisation of gender should be able to include a relationship between those. And we know that recognising someone as a gender depends on their behaviour and appearance, so that should go into the concept somehow.
Which is also a restatement of the debate we're having, opening it up again, but that is intentional. I read @Isaac as denying that these tropes' contents are attenuated by regularities - so the existence of the tropes is causally influenced by regularities, but not what goes in them. Like we could have conceived of gender as separate from genital presence/absence, and can come up with a purely functional description of people without necessarily using either category. But the fact that we could create this functional perspective alone doesn't, thus, undermine the presence of constraints induced on those tropes by regularities. Thus there is room to make the content of our concepts "non-arbitrary" without "fixing" that content as a collection of essential characteristics (and entities) within what the content regards.
Quoting fdrake
(self quote)
When it's granted that a functional description of a phenomenon in a context deconcretises the entities we take as present in that context [hide=*](sex, gender, identity)[/hide], that thus isn't sufficient to show that the deconcretisation [hide=**](dissolution of sex, gender, identity into behaviours)[/hide] destabilises regularities in that context which were previously expressed using the behaviour of the concretised entities [hide=***](sex, gender, correlations between them)[/hide]. When you referenced Sellars' inferential semantics, I think this construction is effectively quantifying over phrase "senses", what count as as what. To be clear, those sortals are concepts which aggregate and judge relatively nondescript tokens in the subject matter into intelligible chunks. And those acts of judgement, themselves, may be coordinated by some regularities in the subject matter - like the smallness of the stream. In essence, what commits us to the inference that this or that body of water is a creek would commit us to the inference that the same body of water is a crick, but not necessarily promote the same speech acts!
Having one's functionalist cake and eating a real cake too, even if it might be a soft layer biscuit or granular chocolate arranged cylinderwise.
So if I can put it into something like a syllogism:
1 ) If there is room for doubt about the terms of debate regarding gender norms in terms of the ability to conceive of gender in a functional fashion, then that doubt arises from the deconcretising effect of the functional description on the entities in the debate.
2 ) The deconcretising effect of a functional description on the subject matter tokens (bodies, behaviours etc) in the debate operates by undermining the norms by which tokens are aggregated into relatively stable entities/posits in that debate.
3 ) If ( 2 ) is true, then either the aggregation of tokens into relatively stable entities is undermined in virtue of the ability to provide an alternative grouping of tokens, or by the fact that this instability highlights that any grouping of tokens must proceed solely upon the basis of fiat.
3 ) The first disjunct in 3 - If the aggregation of tokens into relatively stable entities is undermined in virtue of the ability to provide an alternative grouping of tokens, this applies to any issue which a functionalist perspective can be applied to - which, I believe, is any issue. Hence the "meta-ethical equivalent of carpet bombing" comments.
4 ) The second disjunct in 3 - if the aggregation of tokens in a subject matter into relatively stable entities is undermined by the fact that these groupings must proceed solely upon the basis of fiat, then those groupings should not be constrained by empirical regularities in the tokens that coordinate word uses about them (like the small stream to "crick" and "creek").
5 ) I've provided an alternative functional approach where "the empirical regularities in the tokens" coordinate word uses in the subject. In this case things like social performance, the phenomenology of trans embodiment and so on. Stressing that the empirical regularities don't let you "read off" entities from the world in pre-individuated non-conceptualised chunks, but acts of conceptual judgement are nevertheless coordinated with each other through regularities in the subject matter tokens they concern.
So I believe we're in a place where either the capacity for a functionalist description of a subject matter works on everything, and thus works like "the meta ethical equivalent of carpet bombing" or alternatively we can debate whether the capacity for functionalist description necessarily precludes coordinating regularities in those descriptions' subject matter, like the spatial properties of the stream which enable it to correctly be called a creek or a crick.
We've yet to have that debate about coordinating regularities. I'm mostly writing this to orient where I am in the discussion too.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
So my interest is ultimately about the nature of inferences in this discussion, rather than about the entities in question. The bridging of the inferential aspects of this discussion and the entities in its subject matter was achieved, I think, through the references to the deconcretising effects of functionalist description. So my recent intervention in this discussion is bombing the bridge.
Why would I bomb the bridge? I imagine it's because Isaac and I have a longstanding disagreement on whether the "true nature of conception" [hide=*](I put this in scarequotes because it is incredibly pretentious and want to distance myself from having just used it)[/hide] has to turn you into some form of Kantian within a transparent veil of judgement, or whether you can keep a qualified realism. And it shows up most places we disagree on things. And also because I don't think the inference works and I am a pedant.
On the record, I'm definitely more sympathetic to the trans rights groups and the attendant lobby than Isaac is, but I also think these things should be talked about in depth for ethical reasons. And also because when some norms of society are made a/recognised as a nonsense that's practically an invitation to philosophise.
There are a couple different ways we can approach the concept of concept here: there are empirical questions about when and how members of a given population acquire a concept we're familiar with; there are questions about the content of that concept, empirical questions about how members of a population actually use it, and methodological questions about how we categorize data. There's some trouble here, because we might want to say that two people have different versions of a concept, and this comes out in the differing ways they use it, but why say that instead of saying that they just have different concepts, even if they denote those concepts by the same word? I don't think there's a simple answer to that.
I think part of the problem is imagining a concept as an unchanging mental tool. It's not just that individuals might use a concept differently, but the same individual might use it differently over time or in differing contexts -- 'context' here being quite broad, since the difference might be mental rather than environmental.
Suppose instead we start with the assumption that a concept is a behavior policy that is designed to be revised. I can think of two natural ways this happens: you might initially categorize an individual (correctly, given your current version of the concept) as falling under a concept, but revise the concept so as to exclude them; or you might initially exclude an individual (again, correctly) but then revise the concept so as to include them. Categorization mistakes -- which I'm distinguishing, perhaps without justification, from revision prompts -- might not be completely irrelevant: if your current version of a concept is particularly prone to application error, that in itself might be reason to revise it, and, on the other hand, concepts that almost never fail might be particularly resistant to revision. And there's cost: concepts are cost-effective simplifications, so a concept that's 80-90% right and cheap is going to be more useful than a much more expensive concept that's a few basis points more reliable.
This is one of the issues behind my "random variation" comment: there will always be exceptions, both for the sort of psychology I'm describing above, and when doing analysis and building a model. (The two processes differ only in resource constraints.) I think some exceptions lead to revising and some don't, and how that happens or doesn't is the interesting bit -- we're talking about learning. And analytically, we're in the same boat: some variations are just noise, but some we choose to treat as noise because they're not what we're interested in.
And "interested in" brings us back to the point of concepts and some kind of functionalism, because concepts have a role to play, they have a use. It's one of the things I find a little unnerving about your account: it's very highly intellectualized. So while I see the point (even with scare quotes) of
Quoting fdrake
I think it's a mistake to describe them "purely" this way -- it has to be empirical regularities that matter to us, or to the wombat or to the aardvark or whatever. I'm not sure the "disinterested" concept is a thing.
And here I would distinguish between the rationality of a concept, meaning "goal advancing", and its reasonableness, meaning "defensible to another". Revisions to a concept "toward" disinterestedness (if that's a thing) will be along one of these axes, I should think, but they're not necessarily the same. A concept that's cheap but slightly inaccurate, for instance, might be rational but difficult to defend or to persuade another to adopt. (And people will likely hold proposed concept revisions to a higher, or at any rate different, standard than their original process of concept formation had to meet. In some cases, those processes may be just unrelated.) When you say you're more interested in the inferences than the entities in our discussion, that suggests to me the "reason" side of things rather than the "rationality", but I'm not at all sure you're distinguishing those as I would, so "inferences" for you might be taking in what I would lean toward treating as two different sorts of things.
I am, for the moment anyway, avoiding questions about the epistemological status of the regularities our concepts relate to. I don't have an account I'm really comfortable with. If the discussion turns on that, I don't have much to say, except to describe the difficulty I find myself in.
I think there are chunks of your post left unaddressed here, which I hope is fine, we're not really debating so much as exchanging ideas at this point.
***
Sad that a good chunk of this turns out to be a long-winded way of saying "context-sensitive and purpose-relative" which I have tried, unsuccessfully it seems, to swear off.
Yep!
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think that's true. Do you think this analysis also applies to crick vs creek? Maybe we can sidestep the issue of whether your potato is my potato by saying that both are correctly assertible in "the same conditions". As for what "the same conditions" are, I have no idea.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Seems your context relativity is my ceteris paribus.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I think that's also true. There's another parsing where they're using different concepts, and what changes is their relationship with them. Though the individuating processes of concepts, and the entities within them, are still an issue in both accounts.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
The interest in inferences I said, sorry, is just the one we ended up talking about with functionalist accounts. So yes I think this is "reason" rather than "rationality". Largely reason within this thread.
But I suppose also more broadly now that you mention it. I don't much care what someone identifies as, I'll try to treat them as what they say they are, or failing that what they seem to me to be. I don't expect rationality in that, other than that it feels right to them. I'd expect (something closer to) rationality in a law about it though. I do care about what would make that identification count as correct, in the abstract, quite a lot though - which I imagine is about the "reason" side of things.
We're also quite close to a fundamental dispute about the role of political power in the generation of concepts, but I hope we can put that aside too.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I also don't believe in the "disinterested concept" if it comes down to brass tacks. More or less disinterested concepts, maybe. More or less disinterested uses of concepts, yes. I didn't mean to construe those empirical regularities as non-conceptualised observables, like raw sense data impressed upon a blank mind, rather as occasions which constrain our behaviour and what may be correctly asserted. Though there's also context sensitivity in what counts as an occasion and what counts as correctly assertible. I suppose that is unavoidable.
So regarding categorization mistakes, we could agree that calling the Thames a creek is incorrect because it's not a small stream. If a person believed things like the Thames counted as a creek, and they found they were wrong, they would be prompted to revise their understanding of the concept along with changing the use of the word; learning what counts as a creek.
We seem to be precisely in a period of transition about what counts as a man or a woman. So what's correctly assertible as a man, or a woman, is up for grabs. Which gives us the political power discussion again. If the norms regarding who counts as what are changing in all contexts, we can't say in a disinterested fashion that any person counts as anything else with regard to some norm without it being a political act in virtue of prompting others to adopt our use of language.
I'm really not sure what we can do with the discussion if it bottoms out in an "ontology and epistemology are politically relative in times of transition". Pick your poison I suppose. Interested deployment of concepts to the highest degree. We might end up having to accept different schemes of classification (gender, legal gender, protected category gender) for what were, originally, the same concept (sex=gender).
Not sure where to go from here, but I would add this: I think an individual is a community; I think much of our behavior, including our verbal and social behavior, is driven by specialized processes that are somewhat independent of each other.
Sometimes when we readily agree, it's because we might as well be talking to ourselves; there are very similar mechanisms in our brains making very similar inferences.
Narrative is a way of unifying our intuitions, our inferences, our behavior. The difficulty trans people face in coming up with a unifying narrative about themselves is similar to the problems others face in coming up with a unifying narrative about them. We might readily agree on a number of details, while taking very different approaches to crafting a narrative to unify those details.
So there's a question: these unifying narratives, why do we produce them and how? Given that our brains do so much so similarly, how does this end up giving rise to such dramatic differences?
Same. I think we went to the bottom of the barrel and found out that the answer was in another barrel. If it exists at all.
I'll have a think and get back to you.