Hear me roar

[Pazdispenser]

Fine print:
I dont believe all penile-endowed humans to be boyz, though the tendency is great.

Boyz, you didnt creat the system defaults, but we need you to question and remove them wherever possible if we are to survive as a species (hmmm..... werent you sayin sumthin about this 4B?), much less live in a fair world.

[compared2what?]

I was about to elaborate on it slightly, Pazd. Because there is a kneejerk assumption that if it's feminist, it's a bitter lament. And that's not really the case. On a personal level, I love OP ED. I enjoy amusing him. I'm not making a complaint, I'm describing an unacknowledged facet of the existential condition of women, not all of whom feel the same way about it.

My relationship to it is mostly: Well, it's the only life I have. So I'm gonna fucking enjoy it. Half in secret. There are worse fates. Much worse. Nevertheless. I am not free to be fully myself, there's nothing I can do about it, and the best option available to me is to enjoy it, which requires me to be constantly, automatically effortlessly fluent in understanding people who are chemically and culturally very different than I am, and who do not have a reciprocal obligation to me. Because men can survive and function in the world perfectly well without the protection or approval of women, without missing out on anything -- can still get laid, can still be welcome at parties, can still get jobs, etc.

It's not even something I'd think of discussing with other women. I assume they all know the same secrets I do, on some level. Maybe on a very deeply repressed level. But if they're getting by in the world, they know what I do. That's not an attack on anyone, a complaint about anything, or an attempt to take anything away from anyone. It's just my life, half of which I can't speak about and be heard or understood. Sometimes that's a big drag. Other times, it's not a problem. And still other times, it's terrifying. It's not a simple or slight or one-dimensional thing. It's huge. But you have to start somewhere. So I'm just trying to drop a few bread crumbs on the trail.

[FourthBase]

Because men can survive and function in the world perfectly well without the protection or approval of women, without missing out on anything

(I don't know if that's true.)

I'm beginning to understand you, I think.

[Pazdispenser]

It's just my life, half of which I can't speak about and be heard or understood. Sometimes that's a big drag. Other times, it's not a problem. And still other times, it's terrifying. It's not a simple or slight or one-dimensional thing. It's huge. But you have to start somewhere. So I'm just trying to drop a few bread crumbs on the trail.

But of course, darling. And you speak this truth in a way I could only hope to shadow on my very best day.

[OP ED]

"[Anything which] is a living and not a dying body... will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant - not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power... 'Exploitation'... belongs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which is after all the will to life."
from Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, s.259, Walter Kaufmann transl.

(that this applies to memetics as well as biology --which IS memetics after all-- was, I believe, the starting point for the linguistic criticisms levelled by the barracuda, previously)

"God created woman. And boredom did indeed cease from that moment, but many other things ceased as well! Woman was God's second mistake." - Sec. 48, The Antichrist.

The thing is OP ED, when I read that I reflexively read it from your point of view and from mine, because the former is the only point of view the terms of which most of the world understands, and if I want to respond and be understood, I have to consider those terms. If it were just my point of view, it wouldn't even really have terms that have evolved into a common parlance.

My thoughts might be expressed, more or less as: Right. Let me entertain you. Like I have a choice. My survival is dependent on winning your protection and your good will by, among other things, acting as amusing, pleasing, or otherwise enjoyable company to you.

And my feelings about that aren't expressible. I don't have any. I'm not allowed to. That's just life, from my point of view.

But none of that has anything to do with what you meant to convey, and typically, I'd just accept the meaning as it's understood in the open-air world, and respond to that as if that were the only way I naturally understood it. But it isn't. It's half of the way I naturally understand it. The other half is unspoken. That's true all the time. I'm not any more aware of it than I am of air. It's just there. It doesn't hurt me. As long as I don't try to speak the unspoken part of what I think. When I do that, I might or might not be putting myself at risk. There's no way for me to even know most of the time, except by trying.

ON EDIT: That's kind of what the male gaze means. But only kind of.

"Linguistic danger to spiritual freedom.-- Every word is a prejudice."
from Nietzsche's The Wanderer and his Shadow

The edited part of your post, which I've bolded is probably a better way of explaining my interpretation of this quote than anything I could have attempted.

While I'm certainly not psychic enough to understand things which aren't expressed, I do gather that you don't read the quoted quote in anything resembling the sense that I do. Which is to say, I considered it to be as ironic and straightforward a way as possible of explaining in male terms what the supposed natural male viewpoint of womans' position is. Which doesn't comment whatsoever as to the relative desirability and/or value of this state of things, merely it directs one's attention to their existence. I just read it a few days ago, and this thread made me remember it.

I tend to think that it is unlikely that the world at large would regard this statement with MY understanding, however I do believe that I gather the non-literalist meaning of your words in saying so. (not as in, as if there are only two ways to read nietzsche)

My quoting of the quote, was from my POV, to clarify if such is needed, another common example of my tendencies to gallows' humour. (also Freddy's--any FN quote that begins with the word "God" is a joke, however black) Nietzsche knew that men subconsciously tend to regard women as playthings, whether they (the men that is, women already know this) admit this to themselves or not. He would've expressed it quite differently, and without any condemnation of this fact, but it remains that it is assumed by neo-nihilist semiotics.

(that is, it is a social ramification of non-absolutists' deconstructions of tacit assumptions re: subject/object relations, the only criticism I've ever had of so-called "gaze" theory, specific articles aside, is that it attempts --usually-- to work backwards -- from my POV -- by drawing semiotic/psychological conclusions from social conditions instead of vice versa. I believe this makes its case weaker in a causal sense, its conclusions less obvious for this reason, especially to males who are less likely to experience them socially from non-traditional POVs, and that these situations therefore make its goals more distant. Semantics, really.)

"What then is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms -- in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.
We still do not know where the urge for truth comes from; for as yet we have heard only of the obligation imposed by society that it should exist: to be truthful means using the customary metaphors - in moral terms, the obligation to lie according to fixed convention, to lie herd-like in a style obligatory for all..."

All of which is to say, simply, that I agree with your (spoken) thoughts, semantics aside, and this is that which I was attempting to express. (meanwhile continuing my weeks long trading of Freddy quotes with 4B, maybe he'll get something out of it as I have)

Intention and outcome are rarely coincident.

I have to leave in a few moments, to attend a mandatory family social event. I had already begun an attempt to answer as honestly as possible your previous questions. I should finish this when I return supposing I don't go to prison or anything between now and then. I just wanted to clarify this first, as it seems my sense of irony and humor are not often obvious to everyone.

I'm sure that just made it worse. Oh well, something else to do when I return.

can i still haz friends?

Love is Law,
SHCR

p.s. one more:

"If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself."

[OP ED]

Because men can survive and function in the world perfectly well without the protection or approval of women, without missing out on anything

(I don't know if that's true.)

I'm beginning to understand you, I think.

It is true. It is for me, anyhow. See you later.

[Telexx]

Hi C2W --

In your honest but civilly expressed and considered opinion, do any of you really think you live in a world in which women are free and equal citizens, who have no reason at all to feel that it's not totally safe to be themselves? Or one in which you hear women's voices speaking freely and candidly very often, if ever?

You do? Honestly? On what do you base that belief, exactly?

The sad truth is, I don't believe we live in a world where humanity is comprised of free and equal citizens. I base that idea on the apparent inequity, in respect of opportunities available, that reflects a person's income, family background, race, gender, sexuality, etc, etc...

I understand that isn't the issue raised in the question - but this division of humanity (and we are all humanity from my pov) into groups is important to the question, as people frequently fall into more than one division at a time. When described as relative to societal acceptance, this multiple-classification of different people adds detail to the picture: a black woman is probably likely to be less 'free and equal' than a white woman, a gay white man from a poor background with little education may be less 'free and equal' than a straight white woman from a family with standing, etc, etc...

I can see a (somewhat convoluted!) 3d Euler diagram where the 3rd dimension (depth) reflects social freedom and equality. The reality is that a the distribution of inequality is more complex than simple male/female terms (I know I'm not stating anything groundbreaking there) but, you'd have to be myopic (or willfully misogynistic) to not acknowledge the systematic and systemic extra threat to equality that comes with being a woman.

In my 3d Euler model the female zones (any gender, equality, background) are are less, um upstanding (bit Freudian heh) than their male counterparts. To me, graphically, that just about sums it up...

To read it as simply: "Are women equal -- True or False?" and check the second option (or the first), and call it a day doesn't get you very far. I'd also say it's a red herring to consider the question primarily in terms of personal interactions among men and women on what passes for peer-to-peer terms with one another. The problem, if you think there is one, is systematic and systemic. It afflicts everyone. Just in different ways.

The point that was important to me was that no one ever hears me when I speak to these issues. So I don't bother speaking. Why does that happen? Why is it happening here? What horrible thing might happen if I said how I felt about, in effect, my life in my native environment, which isn't one I'm fully welcome in, or one that has a climate I'm naturally adapted to?

Are you talking about the macrocosm of the world (presumably the Western world, the inequality visited on women in the East and Africa is well documented, although you could debate the full extent of that), or the microcosm that RI represents?

I find gender threads here at RI completely depressing. RI is a great place, one of the few message boards I check in regularly - it is rare to find a (virtually) self-regulating board populated by (mostly) right-thinking types - ppl who are (generally) more interested in talking over the points rather than endless, recursive, ad-hominems... ad nauseum... (and when they do break out from time to time they are mostly v.entertaining for those not involved)...

RI has the right blend of consensus and disagreement, with a surprising amount of listening going on for a message board, cast across a space where facts, fairness, humour and tolerance are more common than not. It's pretty rare to find a forum where you're treated as adults - it's a miracle of teh internets in fact and a bigtime fucking credit to Jeff too...

So - what happens then when gender is discussed here? I haven't the will to revisit those threads but I suspect that - at least in part - the same antagonists will be present time & time again. For some reason some people find it difficult to discuss gender without their emotions running highly. As Joseph LeDoux says: "Strong emotions make us stupid". I think the strong emotions provoked by discussions here on gender lead to an emotional hijacking of people's (mostly male tbh) brains, causing a regression to Piagetian (pre)operatory thought (black/white, good/bad, I'm right/you're fucking wrong...)

Sigh. People cannae escape their biology easily.

As for whether I understand women - I don't even pretend to understand people tbh (although I help ppl overcome difficulties daily). For example take the whole Palin debacle... Partisanship, identity, values and belief, not to mention the psychodynamic nature of our unconscious hopes, dreams, and fears... people aren't easy to understand even as individuals, never mind anything else!

I was once told by a client that I understood women too well. I was trying to impress upon her that, as a long-term strategy, "reaching for a tub of ice cream and getting all snuggly in bed to watch Miss Congeniality on DVD" probably wasn't helping with her depression! (I think she was surprised that I'd guessed her secret, medicinal vices all in one go...)

K well I hope that I get an A (or at least a B+)

Kthx,

Telexx

EDIT: tidied up a bit.

[erosoplier]

"God created woman. And boredom did indeed cease from that moment, but many other things ceased as well! Woman was God's second mistake." - Sec. 48, The Antichrist.

The thing is OP ED, when I read that I reflexively read it from your point of view and from mine, because the former is the only point of view the terms of which most of the world understands, and if I want to respond and be understood, I have to consider those terms. If it were just my point of view, it wouldn't even really have terms that have evolved into a common parlance.

My thoughts might be expressed, more or less as: Right. Let me entertain you. Like I have a choice. My survival is dependent on winning your protection and your good will by, among other things, acting as amusing, pleasing, or otherwise enjoyable company to you.

And my feelings about that aren't expressible. I don't have any. I'm not allowed to. That's just life, from my point of view.

But none of that has anything to do with what you meant to convey, and typically, I'd just accept the meaning as it's understood in the open-air world, and respond to that as if that were the only way I naturally understood it. But it isn't. It's half of the way I naturally understand it. The other half is unspoken. That's true all the time. I'm not any more aware of it than I am of air. It's just there. It doesn't hurt me. As long as I don't try to speak the unspoken part of what I think. When I do that, I might or might not be putting myself at risk. There's no way for me to even know most of the time, except by trying.

ON EDIT: That's kind of what the male gaze means. But only kind of.

Hello, boys?

Boys?

BOYZ!

Would you bloody well reread C2W post until a modicrum, a scintilla, just a smidge of what she's saying seeps thru your system defaults?

compared2what?, you seem to be happy to huddle behind a caricature of the archetypal oppressed woman, when it suits you, but then the rest of the time you prefer to dwell in a world of details and complexity where the individual circumstances are more relevant than the person's gender.

That combination ain't very fair or helpful.

Because men can survive and function in the world perfectly well without the protection or approval of women, without missing out on anything

Until now. In the modern West we have made it so that what you say here is not necessarily so, and the opposite of what you say is true, too - "women can survive and function in the world perfectly well without the protection or approval of men, without missing out on anything." I hate to start sounding like an angry guy, but the fact is women are less likely to be the victims of assault in this day and age. Far less likely, I'm pretty sure. How do you think a sensitive person might feel, knowing that if he sets foot outside his door, he is of a demographic most likely to become the victim of an assault? Patriarchy oppresses men as well as women, but you seem to want to steal all that glory for yourself and the rest of your gender.


In the locked thread you say (p19):

Yet a third is the proposition, based on absolutely nothing other than some imaginary ancient matriarchy, that women are natural inhabitants of the peaceable kingdom, over which they should, therefore, assume their rightful and gentle rule, magically solving all the world's problems just by dint of the attributes you like to imagine they have.

That's superficially flattering to women, no doubt. But speaking only for myself, I don't really enjoy a compliment that locks me into an oppressive, burdensome, and exacting role in which I pretty much don't have any say at all wrt what my own identity is, let alone my own desires.

The exact nature of some ancient utopian matriarchy is entirely yet-to-be-agreed-upon, and even if it were somewhat relevant to our enquiries, I don't think it would be crucial. That is, if someone were trying to lock you into something, that something is whatever-you-wish, not whatever-someone-else-wishes.

The real trouble seems to be that the floor has been given to women, and women have refused the offer. Money, trinkets, an expansion of their powers in areas where they traditionally haven't held sway, and a bolstering of their powers in areas where they traditionally have held sway, have been enough to buy their acquiescence.


P.S. I'm trying to be provocative, not aggressive, and I'm appearing to single you out, c2w?, only because I want to speak to women about feminism, not men.

[compared2what?]

OP ED -- Forgive me for reading your mind wrong, honey. I did you a disservice, and I'm ashamed of myself for being so much more proud of my ability to see through walls than it merits, since I don't actually have that ability, just the ability to perceive some things very well, other things not at all, just like everyone else, except that everyone has that ability in a slightly different configuration than everyone else.

Telexx -- By "the world" in that instance, I meant: "All the environments I've lived or spent time in over the course of my life." Not because I think that's where the crux of the problem lies, but because I can speak to it authoritatively. It's neither intended to be a literally representational outline of the larger problem nor a metaphorical encapsulation of the larger problem. In part, I'm just speaking for myself, because here I am and I've got something to say. But what compels me to do that isn't actually self-interest. I have some serious handicaps, and my gender isn't even among the top three of them. That's personally difficult, but it's not of much import to anyone who isn't me or an intimate part of my life, and even to me, it's of much less import than I-can't-even-begin-to-count-how-many immeasurably and objectively more important aspects of life and the world, some of which aren't even problems but rather occasions for joy and celebration and even ecstasy. Though mostly they're problems. Tragically.

Anyway. Whether I personally am understood or not is not important enough to be tragic, even to me. I am and know that I am and don't really ever forget that I am probably somewhere in the 97th to 99th percentile of all humanity when measured by how much unearned good fortune any human individual is allotted at birth. Because of the privileges I automatically get to enjoy (and for which I am very fucking grateful) as a result of my race, my class, my education, my appearance, the configuration of my cognitive assets and deficits, and the social, economic and political status quo prevalent in the part of the world into which I was born at the time I was born into it, I can afford to have some serious handicaps and my life as a member of the mostly voiceless gender rarely has an adverse impact on me personally in any way that's much greater than personal difficulty.

About which, seriously, who gives a fuck? In the grand scheme of things, my personal difficulties are tedious minor ailments, qua personal difficulties -- ie, as problems. But they are problems, and furthermore, they're problems that I understand very, very well. I have lifelong expertise wrt my own problems, and owing to my unearned good fortune, I'm in a position to try to make them understandable to others. But my goal isn't to be personally understood by strangers. Because that would be of equally little value to me as it would be to them, as an end in itself. My hope is that making myself understood by others will have the same value to others it has to me. Which is synecdochic, not metaphorical, if we have to stick to the rhetorical-figures-of-speech paradigm. Or possibly metonymic.

Happily, we can ditch that fucking paradigm though. My point is that I am speaking what I know, which is of value to me because that knowledge makes it much easier for me better to recognize, understand and know more severe, and more important instances of the systemic and systematic oppression of voiceless people than I would be if I didn't have the analogy of my own experience as a starting point. Which does have some personal benefit for me, I guess, insofar as my handicaps are not then purely handicaps, they're also advantages. So maybe it it self-interested. I don't think that makes it any less valuable, though.

In more concrete terms, specific to the inequality and oppression of women or any other group, if I had to pick a single tangible goal, it would be economic equality. Because I'm a Marxist, in search of a better option than Marxism, which I haven't yet found. So if you felt like it, you could wish me good luck with that. But I doubt that there's anything a hell of lot more tangible to be done, that I or anyone can do to make economic equality a reality in my lifetime

Did that address your concerns, or answer your questions, or settle you mind, or whatever? Please let me know.

Erosoplier, that was a mouthful. I have to read it again.

C2W

[Penguin]

As I said before, I see the problem to be two-fold, split.
Males are out of touch with the female spirit in themselves
Females are prevented from acting out their male spirit.

Its a split thru the human spirit, which is one.
Nothing more. We all suffer, in different ways, for this.
Theres no other solution but to grow together.
Find our sisters and brothers.

[GM Citizen]

Though as I recall, I did share my very harsh opinion of GM Citizen's comportment

And I believe you did so honestly, freely, and candidly. Doesn't that answer your question, to some extent?

Sure. But not as definitively as having the thread locked did. Because, again, that sure shut me up. And, again, it was owing to your persistent refusal to hear any of the numerous warnings that your response to my free speech was objectionable-bordering-on-intolerable that ultimately made it impossible for me to speak. And I guess you might argue that you're the one who was being silenced, not me, since it was the impermissibility of your speech that effectively silenced both of us.

I am at a loss here as to what it is exactly you are trying to say.

I had no role in that thread being locked. Last I remember, I was asked some question(s) that I did not have the opportunit to reply to, due to the locking.

I had nothing to do with you not exercising your right/ability to free speech in here, or anywhere. I am afraid I do not know what it is exactly you are trying to convey to me with your posting.

[FourthBase]

My hope is that making myself understood by others will have the same value to others it has to me. Which is synecdochic, not metaphorical, if we have to stick to the rhetorical-figures-of-speech paradigm. Or possibly metonymic.

(I am so not merely being entertained right now. I'm being schooled.)
(And that was just one example.)
(Thank you.)

Good luck!

[GM Citizen]

I think G.M. and FB know what that line is, and they cross it purposely, sneakily, rudely, and, saddest of all, inadvertantly - and that's the worst, because you can see they really hold some deep-seated and wrongful, hurtful feelings on the subject, likely because they were hurt themselves and badly. It's a shame to feel hurt. You can't ignore the feelings, though. You can't go around hurting other people, and it does hurt when you talk the sexist and violent language of the oppressor. In fact, that language is all that is required to be "the man" rather than a man.

I am not speaking about FB. Just me, because you mentioned me.

There is another outlook in this scenario. It isn't always the-other-person-is-fucked-up cuz simply because they don't agree with you. I believe it has much to do with subjects that are near and dear to us for whatever reasons we have, and that these subjects are laced with hot buttons, that trigger biases. It may be difficult to overcome your bias when you discuss one of these issues, about which you may be passionate in your advocacy of it.

Even though you have an opinion, and it may well be that the majority of whatever group (here, or out in the real world) agrees with you and vice versa, does not make a dissenting opinion giver some emotional or psychological wreck.

On the other hand, if your style is to try to slap a derogatory label...any shitty label....on one who disagrees with you, well, then that's not really conducive to any substantial debate.

Let go of your bias (it is hard to do...we can't always manage that), if you can, and if you cannot fathom a differing opinion, then so be it. You can always agree to disagree without imagining an entire background for someone you know nothing about.

[compared2what?]

One quick annotation to the last thing I posted. I don't regard my under standing of anything as of such exceptional or extraordinary value that it should be adopted by everyone as the correct understanding. I just regard it as of some value, more because it's not frequently expressed than that it's rare in itself. Anyone who has suffered understands what I do, or has the tools to, or understands more than I do.

It's more like: There's my understanding, sitting there among the things of some value that I have to give. So I'm giving it in the same spirit you give any gift -- ie, with the hope that it's something the recipient wants.

In short: I'm not all that, and not trying to be. It's not easy, stylistically speaking, to write honestly about yourself without sounding like an egomaniac, I noticed long ago, while reading the egomanical first-person writings of others.

I might be fucking up in that regard. I probably am. But it's not intentional, it's just a reflection of my limitations as a writer.

[compared2what?]

I think G.M. and FB know what that line is, and they cross it purposely, sneakily, rudely, and, saddest of all, inadvertantly - and that's the worst, because you can see they really hold some deep-seated and wrongful, hurtful feelings on the subject, likely because they were hurt themselves and badly. It's a shame to feel hurt. You can't ignore the feelings, though. You can't go around hurting other people, and it does hurt when you talk the sexist and violent language of the oppressor. In fact, that language is all that is required to be "the man" rather than a man.

I am not speaking about FB. Just me, because you mentioned me.

There is another outlook in this scenario. It isn't always the-other-person-is-fucked-up cuz simply because they don't agree with you. I believe it has much to do with subjects that are near and dear to us for whatever reasons we have, and that these subjects are laced with hot buttons, that trigger biases. It may be difficult to overcome your bias when you discuss one of these issues, about which you may be passionate in your advocacy of it.

Even though you have an opinion, and it may well be that the majority of whatever group (here, or out in the real world) agrees with you and vice versa, does not make a dissenting opinion giver some emotional or psychological wreck.

On the other hand, if your style is to try to slap a derogatory label...any shitty label....on one who disagrees with you, well, then that's not really conducive to any substantial debate.

Let go of your bias (it is hard to do...we can't always manage that), if you can, and if you cannot fathom a differing opinion, then so be it. You can always agree to disagree without imagining an entire background for someone you know nothing about.

GMC, I hear you and I'm glad you posted this and the post that was addressed to me. I even think you're right about a few things. OMG! I swear to on a stack of Wages, Labor and Capital pamphlets that a pig just flew across the room! In lipstick!

That was just a flight of fancy, btw. I do think you're right about a few things. And I wanted to say that and that I heard you before replying more fully. Because I want to review that thread before I do, out of justice to both of us. And that'll take a little time.