In my series on complicity, I have introduced the subject of ways that moderate feminists might be complicit with radical feminists, and shown an example of where the behavior of a notorious feminist bigot, Catharine MacKinnon, has consistently gone uncriticized in public by feminists in higher education, and even tends to be praised by them instead.
In this post, I will address feminist support of another notorious feminist bigot, Mary Daly. Why am I focusing so much on these notorious feminist bigots? Because if moderate feminists often display complicity with them, it is important for people to know. And if I can make this case, then readers will find it easier to believe that moderate feminists are often complicit with less extreme radical feminist positions, and that broad criticisms of feminists on such grounds can be warranted.
As I mentioned in my previous post, if you are a feminist but not in academia, these two posts are probably not about you; similarly, if you pass them (and you know if you do or don’t), then this post is also not a criticism of you. The point of these posts is that a surprising amount of feminists in academia evidently don’t pass the “MacKinnon Test” and “Mary Daly Test” of non-complicity, a phenomenon that I hope will bother you, too.
Let’s start with some of the views of Mary Daly, which will show why she is considered a notorious bigot even in the eyes of some feminists:
If you have to choose between the two, female obviously is better. And I don’t even have to choose between the two; I mean, the other isn’t worth consideration anymore. It’s just hanging all over putridly.
In response to the idea that “The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately ten percent of the human race,” Daly replies:
I think it’s not a bad idea at all. If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males.
In a different interview, another feminist actually takes her on (the whole interview is worth reading, and the interviewer certainly passes the Mary Daly test):
CM: I suppose so, but — the convenient disappearance of the patriarchs, and of males generally, just doesn’t strike me as. . . sufficiently credible to give hope.
MD: I know, your use of the word convenient gives your cynicism away. But — but why not? I mean, what it does is examine possibilities and new avenues of thought.
CM: Well, why not is because of so many attempts at conveniently disappearing other populations in the twentieth century.
MD: Well, I’m not disappearing them. It’s just a possibility. It would be a wonderful one to me. Let it happen. Do you see any other way that patriarchy will disappear?
CM: I don’t know either. But if somebody put the tools in my hands to disappear them I wouldn’t do it.
MD: I don’t think anyone would put the tools in my hands. No, I didn’t have the women in Quintessence out killing them. But I do think there’s something wrong with that life form, to be honest. You know, in the ’70s we commonly called them mutes [short for mutants].
According to Mary Daly’s website, this “radical elemental feminist”:
has lectured at over 300 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada during the past 36 years. She has lectured at universities and public gatherings in Australia, England, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Norway, Scotland, and Switzerland.
Wow, quite impressive. To get some perspective, the wikipedia College article cites information claiming that there are 2,474 colleges in the U.S., which presumably includes universities, and Canada has 92 accredited universities according to the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada.
Now, we don’t know how the 300 lecture invitations were divided between the US and Canada. But if she lectured at every Canadian university and college, then she has lectured at about 208 American colleges, which is about (2,474 / 208) 8.4% of U.S. institutions of higher learning. Assuming that she received the same proportion of invitations came from universities in the U.S. as in Canada, then she has lectured at about 12% of institutions across North America, according to some basic algebra. Mary Daly’s sweep of higher education is occurring at a rate of 8.33 colleges per year, which obviously doesn’t count the lectures she does at places other than colleges, or outside North America.
Thus, we can estimate that 12% of North America institutions for higher education fail the “Mary Daly Test,” which is to not invite Mary Daly to speak at your college.
How much complicity?
Of course, my Mary Daly Test applies only to feminists in academia, or to feminist groups who invite her to speak in non-academic contexts. We don’t know how much moderate feminist complicity with Mary Daly might generalize to other contexts, and there is at least some evidence that plenty of feminists do publicly criticize her views, such as the second interviewer that I cited, who even identifies as a radical feminist also.
To be fair, it’s possible that Mary Daly received a disproportionate amount of invitations during the beginning of her career closer to the Second Wave of feminism, but we would also expect her to receive more invitations as she wrote more books and became more famous. Also, it’s possible that feminists at colleges who invited her in the past decades would not do so now that men are not longer referred to “mutes.” We have no evidence either way for either of these potential mitigating factors.
It’s not clear exactly how much moderate feminists are the source of support or complicity towards Daly in academia. I suspect they are at least partially to blame, but there is a question of to what degree. It’s possible that some of her invites came from radical feminist student groups, or from radical feminist professors, and that they were unsupported and uncondoned by moderate feminists at those institutions. Yet if there was moderate feminist protest about Mary Daly at, say… Boston College, where Daly used to work, it did not reach print. I did a search of “Mary Daly” in the newspaper of Boston College, and found no articles critical of Mary Daly. Nor did the articles on Mary Daly’s firing mention any student criticism of her, but rather student protests against her firing. (If this reminds you of the rallying in favor of Catharine MacKinnon’s hiring, then you are seeing the same pattern that I am seeing.)
I am not 100% sure that complicity with the notorious feminist bigots is the only explanation of the seeming lack of moderate feminist criticism of them in public, but I really can’t think of any explanations that don’t involve some implausible mental gymnastics or complete speculation (e.g. perhaps Mary Daly has exaggerated the number of colleges she has spoken at, perhaps her website mistakenly lists the number of lectures she has given rather than the number of unique colleges, perhaps the feminist groups who presumably invited her were predominantly radical and should not reflect on moderate feminists, perhaps the feminist groups who invited her saw her as a curiosity without having any support for her views, or perhaps most of her invites occurred in the 80′s and should not reflect on present day feminists.) If anyone has some plausible explanations, or thinks that one of these is more plausible than I think it is, then do tell.
Looking on the bright side, we can be pretty confident that at least 88% of colleges don’t have feminists who support someone who wouldn’t mind if men were wiped off the face of the planet.
In my next post in this series, I will look at some more examples of where I consider moderate feminists to be complicit with radical feminists.
i think a lot of the time, people call in feminists like Daly for the same reason the media airs contraversial or titilating programs during sweeps week…
they are trying to generate ratings.
Hugh,
well, I’m not sure to which extent failure to criticise publicly shuold count as “complicity”. There are cases, panel discussions at universities, blogs, etc.. But apart from that? I can even understand that there moderate women who say “let them scream” as a political tool, even though they won’t agree with them and even though they are aware of the philosophical problems and partly logical fallacies espoused in parts of feminist political theory. It’s a bit of genie in a bottle – it’s just that I suppose that to most feminists, not just the radical ones, there is still not much of a risk in letting the radical ones scream as loud as they want, since they – as I see it – don’t think feminist issues count much at all in the rest of the public discourse .
I don’t have an interest in “taking on” other Feminists, unless they harbor specific anti-feminist, anti-women views.
So if Mary Daly thinks reducing the population of males to 15% is a possible solution, Feminist discourse should entertain it.
I fail the Mary Daly test. I fail it because I find what she has to say about Separatism, men seeking discourse with feminists, and her teaching style, compelling.
Kiuku fails the Mary Daly test?
I’m SHOCKED. SHOCKED I tell you.
I think the test is wholly misguided, especially as it applies to academia. First of all:
1. Those words are not the whole of her work.
There are people who’ve taught me and with whom I’ve worked with whose views on some subjects, I detest morally. But I work with them, listen to them, learn from them because they have other things to say that are useful. Mary Daly has a huge volume of writing on feminist matters.
2. Even if they were the whole of her work, an interesting objectionable view is still worth listening to.
It’s possible to have a well-argued, well-informed, well-researched viewpoint on matters of philosophy and theology—what Mary Daly does best—that is also morally reprehensible and bigoted. It is perfectly legitimate to invite someone who has research talent and qualifications to speak, even under that situation.
3. Guilt-by-association politics are always dangerous in academic contexts.
Saying that universities fail a “Mary Daly Test” by inviting her implies that you believe that offensiveness to you is a legitimate ground for preventing an academic institution from inviting someone to speak. This is completely contrary to the mission of an academic institution.
And yes, I think Columbia U treated Ahmedinejad shamefully.
they don’t have to stop her…. they just have to speak some concern.
Not really. This demand for denunciation is actually starting to sound creepy and Stalinist to me.
[quote comment="18270"]they don’t have to stop her…. they just have to speak some concern.[/quote]
How about equal time to the synthetic-womb male seperatists?
[quote comment="18266"]Saying that universities fail a “Mary Daly Test” by inviting her implies that you believe that offensiveness to you is a legitimate ground for preventing an academic institution from inviting someone to speak. This is completely contrary to the mission of an academic institution.
[/quote]
But alas, Mandos, that is not how it always works out in the real world. So-called “Conservative Speakers” are often assaulted or barred from speaking. Does this happen everywhere and all the time? No. Obviously many of the speakers get to speak and I suspect in a fair amount of their engagements they are left alone. But there is also a well documented history of harassment of these speakers by progressive students and sometimes professors blatantly interrupting these speakers, throwing pies at them, creating demonstrations (often inside the place where the speaker is speaking).
The academic institution definitely has an extreme leftist bias, a sometimes dangerous one too that stifles free speech and discussion. Unfortunately the proposed solutions to solving this problem would only create more problems, a conservative Christian counter-balance, which is equally as tendentious and repugnant to me.
I just wish more academics would put their scholarship first instead of their politics.
wait … speak of genocide and you don’t blink but this is stalinism?
Nobody is demanding anything.
We’re saying that the academic feminists at these institutions, who invite such individuals, and offer no public criticism of their views whatsoever are tacitly supporting them. We’re not demanding that they denounce, we’re observing that they don’t denounce.
Also what leta and ApconX said.
I firmly support your right to picket a Mary Daly talk at any college of your choosing. And frankly, disruptive tactics are used by both political sides. I heard Ralph Nader speak at a college once, and conservatives stood up randomly, interrupted, and sang patriotic songs while he was trying to speak.
As for teh librul bias in academia, this is claptrap. Go to any engineering dept and you’ll find an truckload of libertarians and the like. Of course, they are usually terribly ill-informed on social reality.
I suggest that sometimes the politics merely conforms to reality. Demands for “unbias” have led us to our horrendous media situation. “Opinions on shape of earth differ.”
And I am telling you that this reading of the situation is not appropriate for an academic setting. There is no need for anyone to be denouncing anything. Stalinist guilt-by-association politics is what it is, and creepy.
What conservative students and professors do is irrelevant to this discussion. If liberals demonstrate disruptively against conservative speakers, but fail to even write a letter to the editor of a student newssheet about a feminist who would apparently approve of genocide, I don’t how we can not infer something from this.
Also irrelevant, though in this case the irrelevance was introduced by ApconX. In any case surely the problem with any alleged political bias among the staff/students is that it feeds into the academic product – research and teaching. That makes alleged bias in Social Studies/Science departments a matter of concern, while bias in an Egineering department isn’t, there being no discernable difference between liberal engineering and conservative engineering.
Guilt by association is a fallacy when it’s a false association, such as when we get lumped in with the worst of MRAdom despite expicitly rejecting the association, the label, and (in my case at least) having a long history of denouncing them. In the cases under discussion, the association is voluntary on the part of the academics who invite these feminists, and who go to hear them.
Another example of guilt by false association is when feminists blame men collectively for the actions of individual men, such as kiuku has been doing, and such as is common in feminism. You’ve been defending her position; would it be ‘Stalinist’ of me to infer from this, that you agree with it?
expressio unius est exclusio alterius
It would be incorrect, as I have not been defending her position—I have been attempting to clear away some of the rather odd misunderstandings of it and its consequences, and she has largely agreed with my interpretations.
That may be defending to you. It’s intellectual honesty to me.
It is always legitimate to invite someone and hear someone. I repeat: it is creepy to suggest otherwise.
OK. I will reread your comments in that thread, with that in mind.
Nobody has suggested otherwise.
[quote comment="18286"]
I firmly support your right to picket a Mary Daly talk at any college of your choosing. And frankly, disruptive tactics are used by both political sides. I heard Ralph Nader speak at a college once, and conservatives stood up randomly, interrupted, and sang patriotic songs while he was trying to speak.
First, there is a difference between picketing outside and interupting inside. I have no problem with someone protesting outside against a speaker to be perfectly honest. Besides, I wouldn’t waste my time picketing a half-wit scholar like Daly.
I am quite sure that it sometimes happens in reverse, but probably not to the same degree or frequency.
As for teh librul bias in academia, this is claptrap. Go to any engineering dept and you’ll find an truckload of libertarians and the like. Of course, they are usually terribly ill-informed on social reality.
It is common knowledge that academia is liberally biased. There have been numerous studies done in this regard. The fact that you can name only one department on campuses that probably splits more like 50/50 politically says a lot. Besides, true libertarians aren’t politically conservative.
When you start comparing that to all the super-leftie English departments, History departments, Women Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Philosophy Departments, American Studies departments, ad nauseum, I have to begin to wonder whether you’re either extremely ignorant of your surroundings (since I presume you’re currently in academia) or you’re being extremely disingenuous.
The fact that one of the best ways to silence/discredit/challenge a scholar in many of those disciplines I mentioned is to call them a conservative says a lot about the political make-up of those disciplines.
I suggest that sometimes the politics merely conforms to reality. Demands for “unbias” have led us to our horrendous media situation. “Opinions on shape of earth differ.”
Sometimes the politics does conform to reality. However, many times it does not because this implies there is only one interpretation to be made of statistics or reality or whatever. A lot of the bias has to do with selecting materials that confirms your own world-view, what is permissible to say in class. In other words, from my experience professors just bring their political bugaboos with them.
Reality is sufficiently complex enough that there is often many takes on what is happening in a given situation. In other words, there is always two, three, four, five sides to every story.
—————————————–
Let me repeat that I do NOT want a conservative or Liberal bias. I am NOT a conservative, but I am sympathetic to the difficulties they often face on campus. I don’t think the answer is to counteract the existent liberal bias by teaching nonsense like Creationism, or Holocaust Revisionism, etc.
In other words, I am suggesting there is a way to teach many of these topics neutrally.
I known I’ve taken many classes where the professor strived to do just that (and these are the classes I learned the most), I also have taken many classes where the professor couldn’t understand why we weren’t out in the streets protesting the unfairness of the world and beginning the Communist Revolution.
I want scholarship to come before politics that’s all, I especially want teaching to come before politics. But since that isn’t the case currently: I’ve heard enough horror stories, read enough studies on the topic, I’ve seen enough bias with my own eyes in my own classes, and there isn’t a single moderate (let alone conservative) professor in either of my departments right now (though there are a few with common sense, which is almost as good as being a moderate since most extreme progressive types generally don’t have any) and knowing the political views of my peers, I realize more still needs to be done.
This is what I’m seeing.
There are women who advocate genocide and/or eugenics and seperation, all based on the gender essentialist position that men cause all social problems call themselves feminists and consider their analysis feminist. Other, less radical, feminists don’t stand up and say ‘no, that isn’t feminism.’
This leads to a belief that non-radical feminists support radical feminists _implicitly_. Simply because they don’t challenge their use of the feminist lable for themselves and their rhetoric, suggesting that even non-radical feminists believe that there is room for radicaly anti-male rhetoric in the feminist movement.
If I were part of a group and one of our group members said ; ‘all X people should be excluded from society. this is a belief consistant with the value system of our group.’ I would feel compelled to denounce such a view because I would not want it associated with my group or related to its philosophies. Unless I *did* want it associated; or didn’t feel strongly enough either way.
Mandos said:
I have the same impression of your comments. It was clear to me that you were not defending her position at all, but rather attempting to elucidate it better.
Now I will address the ways in which you think my tests are misguided.
They are the direction in which her work is going.
I’ve also learned a lot from people who I detest morally. Still, I wouldn’t uncritically invite those people to speak at my school without expecting my association with them to raise justified suspicion that I support their views to some degree. In fact, if I did, I would be insane, especially if I was known to be part of the same political movement as those people. My posts are not an argument about whether or not we can and should learn things from people we have moral differences with.
And don’t forget that we aren’t just talking about some moral quibbles. We are talking about someone who would be happy if you and I were dead, and refers to us as mutes (i.e. mutants).
As far as I can tell (and you are welcome to clarify), your point is that the possible intellectual value of other aspects of Mary Daly’s work could be a reason why she is being invited to all these colleges, and consequently, feminists who invited her can’t be considered complicit with the hateful and bigoted aspects of her work. This argument could be a mitigating factor in the level of complicity, or the probability of complicity, that can be assigned to the feminists who invited Mary Daly at these campuses.
Still, there are several limitations of this argument. First, there are plenty of feminists with work of intellectual value (at least, in the eyes of feminists) who are not as bigoted and extreme as Daly. Even someone like Marilyn French. Why not invite them? Inviting Daly, when her bigotry is so well-known, demonstrates that there is something specific about her radical views that is attractive to feminists at least on an emotional level.
Second, regardless of what other intellectual value her work has, it still displays bigotry. To support Mary Daly by honoring her with a speaking invitation (and probably financial compensation) is to support her bigotry (unless stated otherwise), independent of what other intellectual value her work might have.
Mandos said:
Actually, it isn’t. Acknowledging something as reprehensible and bigoted implies that one does not believe that it is well-argued (as a whole, at least, even though you might consider some parts of it well argued or interesting). If you consider something well-argued, then you wouldn’t consider it bigoted.
Your point seems to be that feminists who invite Mary Daly to speak could simultaneously see her bigotry but also find her viewpoint to be well-argued. That is incoherent. Feminists who truly recognized Mary Daly’s bigotry would have to believe that there were some big flaws somewhere in her arguments. Thus, if feminists were inviting Mary Daly in full acknowledgment and disagreement with her bigotry, then they would be inviting someone who they know holds highly flawed arguments. If so, it would count against your point that feminists invite Mary Daly for the intellectual value of her work. (What I suspect feminists invite Mary Daly for is the emotional impact of her work.)
And as for describing Daly’s work as “well-argued, well-informed, well-researched viewpoint on matters of philosophy and theology,” you are kidding, right?
This is not an argument about legitimacy, it’s an argument about complicity. It’s always legitimate to invite a qualified speaker. Yet if that speaker is known to be bigoted, and you are known to be part of the same movement as them, then you are complicit with that bigotry unless you condemn it. Feminists can legitimately invite feminists bigots to speak for them all day long, and I uphold their freedom of association. That legitimacy is not an argument against the complicity of those feminists with their bigoted speakers if they are uncritical of them.
Whether Mary Daly in particular is a qualified speaker is another question. As I described, highly bigoted arguments are integral to her work, and believing that those arguments are bigoted entails a reduced belief in the intellectual value of her work (though it’s conceivable, though unlikely, that the rest of her work is of such a high level of intellectual value that it compensates). Virtually nobody except for feminists think that her work has any intellectual value. In fact, one of the main reasons she appears to you to be qualified as a speaker is because so many feminists have supported her or been complicit with her over the years, by calling her things like “brilliant” and “provocative” (the words we saw applied to MacKinnon in the other thread), rather than calling her out on her bigotry and easily falsified reasoning.
As Daran points out, guilt-by-association is only a fallacy when it is unwarranted. In this case, I’m not the one associating Mary Daly with the feminists who invited her to speak to them. The feminists already made this association prior to me pointing it out. What exactly that association entails is up for debate.
The association could be due to factors other than complicity that you or I have already observed, but which cannot be demonstrated. Consequently, we cannot prove an accusation of complicity, but neither can we reasonably exclude it (for example, it’s possible that feminists groups who invited her gave her some very tough and critical questions after hearing her speak, but we can’t know either way). We can only assess a level of probability, not certainty, to feminist complicity in this case, and that probability should be somewhere between moderately-low and moderately-high. Even in the event that we assign a moderately-low probability of weak complicity with Mary Daly on the part of feminists who invite her, I propose that such a level of complicity is something that not only we, but also moderate feminists, should have a problem with.
Mandos said:
What’s creepy to me is the way you are so quick to cast inviting Mary Daly to speak uncritically as “offensiveness to me,” as if I was engaging in some type of egocentric reasoning. I hope it’s offensive to you, too, and to moderate feminists who don’t want to be associated with someone who wouldn’t mind if men were wiped off the face of the planet, and who have problems with other feminists displaying complicity with her by dignifying her with speaking invitations.
Nevertheless, the offensiveness of inviting Mary Daly is not an argument for preventing campus feminists from doing so. Where you are getting these notions that I am advocating prevention of feminists from inviting who they want to speak to them, or that I demand that feminists denounce each other, I do not know.
I would like it if feminists would denounce feminists who they believe to make bigoted arguments, but this is not a demand I can make. Similarly, I don’t want to “prevent” feminists from inviting what speakers they want, but rather observing that an academic speaking invitation to someone is a form of support for that person, unless stated otherwise, especially when that person is a member of the same political movement.
Feminists can invite bigoted feminists to speak to them all day long, as far as I’m concerned. Their right to do so doesn’t make them not complicit, if they are uncritical of their bigoted speakers. And I will call them them out for that complicity all day long.
By “Stalinism,” I can only presume that you mean it’s problematic to advocate that feminists call out feminists who they believe to be bigots (or for a start, resist honoring those bigots with speaking engagements). Why would it be Stalinist to encourage feminists to say what they already believe (or to act in a why that is consistent with what they believe), especially when they would be doing themselves a big favor by clearing away any suspicion of complicity? (Unless you are suggesting that the feminists do not believe that views such as Mary Daly’s are bigoted, in which case you would be agreeing with me that they are complicit with her bigotry.)
Stalinist? Give me a break. The level of moralistic condemnation you direct towards my arguments exceeds the level of understanding you show of what I’m actually saying, and the level of actual counter-arguments you have provided. It’s possible that our disagreement is due to views where reasonable people can differ, such as the level of honor provided by a speaking invitation at a college.
I admire how hard you work to get the arguments of radical feminists straight. I would love to see you extend the same consideration to arguments that are critical of feminism. I greatly value the kind of open-mindedness that you are bringing to this board, which makes it all the more disappointing when you seem to display it so selectively in this thread.
Now that we have gotten moral repugnance over some aspects of each other’s outlook out of the way, perhaps we can continue on to have a reasonable dialogue.
So, I will try to reveal the card up my sleeve in the shortest way I can, so as not to belabour the point. Here is but *one* problem with this entire complicity formulation in a democratic context:
Whatever you may think of the specific ideas and proposals of certain feminists, feminism as a social movement is intended to be a liberatory movement for an oppressed class. (Let’s leave aside whether you agree that it’s an oppressed class—that’s besides the point for now.) It is almost part of the definition of “oppressed class” that such are historically denied a vocabulary and social process of ideation to express the solutions to the oppression and to imagine life as it could be without the oppression.
People like Mary Daly are *part* of the avant-garde of ideation in feminist thought, for better or for worse. One of the risks of being avant-garde in liberation is that some liberatory ideas might be bad ones in the eyes of others. In particular, they might be bad or repugnant in the eyes of the oppressor class.
But for members of the oppressor class to make this judgement (including members of that class who might be oppressed in other dimensions) and then to forward this judgement into a critique, well, it becomes a kind of a wedge strategy. Knowingly or unknowingly. A wedge strategy to separate the liberatory movement of feminism from its ideational avant-garde. That preemptively attempts to disarm the liberatory movement—because it’s only in the sea of experimentation with arguing for new (and possibly bad) ideas and vocabulary can a movement discover what *does* work.
This does *not* mean that complicity cannot apply elsewhere. If Mary Daly were to collude with an overenthusiastic student who is designing The Virus, and Gloria Steinem were to have known about it and said nothing, then Steinem would have been complicit in an attempted crime. (However, I think it’s a misreading of Daly’s interviews to think that she wants to kill men…)
Wow.
I’ve always thought of feminism as worthy of a lot of adjectives. Avant-guarde was never one of them.
Regardless. Is the avant-guarde so precious that the abhorant solutions it comes up with can’t be criticized and dismissed?
Creativity without a critical process is, basically, shitting.
Also, as long as these ‘unworkable, abhorant solutions’ are not declared abhorant and unworkable by mainstream feminists, they remain legitimized. By not dismissing them, feminists are saying ‘yes, this has validity.’
I’m impressed that you were able to respond to my long posts with such a short one.
I think there could be a radical feminist to whom your argument would apply, but I don’t think that Mary Daly is that person. There may have been a time when Mary Daly was avant-garde, but now she is old guard. If you pull in the average feminist off the street, she will say that Daly is an essentialist.
I have a better explanation of why Mary Daly has been making the rounds in academia, other than intellectual value or experimentation that she inspires: because her arguments are emotionally appealing to many feminists. Those feminists almost certainly don’t agree with her. But perhaps inviting Mary Daly is cathartic: when she speaks, she will articulate all the resentments that the feminists in the room have been feeling about men, but never actually stated because they know on an intellectual that it isn’t true. We have all had times where we resented the opposite sex, but when we knew that the thoughts those feelings inspired weren’t really true. If Daly indeed has a therapeutic function, and allows more moderate feminists to expel resentment and hatred of men by proxy, then it’s possible that her invitations aren’t evidence of complicity, or even have a positive effect. Yet this story I’m spinning, like all the other alternatives to complicity you and I have explored, is merely speculation. Based on the current knowledge availability, complicity is the most parsimonious explanation of why Mary Daly has received so many speaking invitations.
It’s possible that complicity arguments of the type I’m making can have the intent or effect of driving a wedge into feminism. But so what? That has no bearing on whether the argument is warranted or not. Moderate feminists could make many of the same arguments I am making with the goal of stopping radical feminists from tarnishing the good name of feminism.
It’s also possible that if moderate feminists drove a wedge between themselves and the radicals, they would succeed even better in winning public support and favor. The effect of following arguments like mine could be to arm feminists in the battles over public opinion, rather than disarming them. Why so many moderate feminists have so much trouble implementing such a common-sense public relations strategy is beyond me.
The argument that feminists need to seek ideas for experimentation is not an argument against their complicity with the views of feminists they honor with uncritical or laudatory speaking engagements.
Here’s another idea for feminists to toss into their “sea of experimentation:” don’t uncritically associate yourselves with people who hate men.
If feminists haven’t discovered by now that Mary Daly’s approach doesn’t work, then you make them sound like very slow learners. This is one of the reasons that your argument doesn’t really apply to Daly, though it could conceivably apply to another radical feminist who actually has ideas that could help feminists accomplish their goals and do something in the real world, rather than sitting around hating on men and dreaming of some society in which they didn’t exist.
I agree; good thing nobody has said she wants to kill men. She wants men to die, she just doesn’t advocate that women do the deed. She is waiting for some miracle, instead, of evolution or of the earth striking back.
So feminists have a choice. They can either be seen as a movement that entertains genocide and/or eugenics as possible solutions (in conjunction with a healthy dollop of chauvanistic gender essentialism) or they can be seen as a movement that does not entertain genocide and/or eugenics as possible solutions.
It’s hard to have it both ways.
I used to believe in “feminist” social mores…my mother was a feminist, still is to some degree…but even she is disgusted with the state of our society, and lays the blame squarely on women’s behaviour (a general statement she sticks by, she feels the problem is THAT pervasive). I’m a man, and an MRA, and moderate. How someone who claims to support equality can take issue with wanting to address:
Men commit suicide 4 times more often than women(at the minimum), after divorce a man is 20 TIMES more likely to kill himself.
There is widespread systemic discrimination in academia, from the educational achievement of boys (and lack of male teachers – where’s you affirmative action NOW N.O.W.?) through to the suppression of discourse on men’s issues in general.
Men have the top positions in society, right now anyway, but the VAST majority of dangerous/dirty jobs are held almost exclusively by men. And men are judged by women on thier income level as a matter of course. Rare is the woman who is happy “supporting” her man…yet nearly every woman in history wants to marry a rich guy. When was the last time you heard a man give a shit AT ALL what a woman makes. Young/hot women, yes, money, no.
The entire family court system runs roughshod over Constitutional rights in nearly every country in the West, and does so in secret (no public oversight). This is done with the explicit consent and encouragement of feminist groups continent-wide.
Here in Canada, it’s illegal to discriminate based on sex, creed, colour, etc….UNLESS you’re discriminating against white males – then it’s OK. Double standards anyone?
Women graduate more than men from university, get better jobs (and in professional jobs, women earn MORE than men on average – a trend destined to continue with the increasing disparity of University grads), yet women STILL complain about “wage gaps” even though it has been PROVED time and time again this is not true. If there is a statistically signifigant wage gap, it goes in the other direction.
Men are routinely denigrated, on TV, in movies, around the water – cooler, and especially in legal/political circles. Women are not – by and large – subjected to anything that even remotely resembles this, and NEVER HAVE BEEN.
Now, far be it from me to suggest that this is an exhaustive list of concerns, but so far, it seems like enough to get started on. Feminists usually don’t disagree that thee things are happening (ok, the wage gap thing still gets play, but feminists can’t support the claim without disingenious behaviour – like for example saying ALL women make on average less than ALL men….never mind the fact that a good portion of those women work part-time or not at all.
Which is why I laugh when I hear a feminist say men should care about X for women. See, feminism doesn’t concern itself with men all that much, definitely tries to get in the way of men taking care of the issues important to them, and claims the moral high ground the entire time.
Hypocrisy.
Feminism is a defunct ideology, devoid of reason and fairness, based on lies, half-truths, and appeals to spoiled brat mentalities (that seem to be so prevalent among women). Telling the world “It’s not fair! I want it, you can’t tell me I can’t have it!”
If this were NOT true, it would be easy to counter MRA arguments, and I suspect the majority on this board secretly agree with this statement. Why would you need to resort to shaming language, ad hominem attacks, and mischaracterization to win an argument, when all you have to do is show how you’re right?
The answer…feminism lost it’s reason to exist about 35 years ago, and has been manufacturing “crisis” ever since – both to increase thier power (despotism at it’s finest), and to continue to have a career.
In other words, feminism is irrelevant.
We no longer have a society where men are responsible for thier wife’s actions. We no longer have a society where men are forced into rigid gender roles. We no longer live in a society where men are forced to give up thier lives (literally and figuratively) to support the women and children in thier lives.
Oh wait….yes we do. Any choice a wife makes must be abided by, and paid for, by the husband. Socially speaking, and in many cases legally speaking. We have obligations for men in every facet of life, yet we are not even allowed to determine for ourselves if we are ready to have children (we do not have an “our choice” to go with “our body/life” like women do…as cut and dried as it gets to show double standards.
Feminism is 100% equal to hypocrisy…end of story. If you really believed in equality, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are right now for one, and secondly, we wouldn’t be having this discussion because I’d be preaching to the choir.
As it is, I’m not holding my breath. Sometimes I really can’t argue with those who say that women deserve everything that’s coming to them.
See “fembot bingo” for the responses to this post. See anti-feminist bingo for a simplistic, illogical take on the same subject.
As to any charge of misogyny or the like….well, you may have a point. I used to like women. Now I’m generally quite disgusted by them.
Thank God I know how to get laid easy. Then I don’t have to give a fuck.
Thanks Andrea Dworkin and the like…..now I can get a nut off without having to put up with the crap. Sure, it’s a lonely life…but I’ve already lost everything to two women who “would never do that to a guy”….I know better now, I only hope I can convince a few men of that reality before it happens to them.
Remember girls, misogyny is not natural to men….YOU are making that happen all on your own.
Factory
So if a man said that women victims of injury, rape, murder etc. have it coming, you wouldn’t argue?
It’s not clear at all that this is the case. It’s possible—and to me, more than likely—that this is actually a form of rhetorical preemptive disarming of a social movement. Liberatory movements that “drive a wedge” between themselves and their “radical fringes” do not appear to me to be very successful. The Altalena moment usually happens after victory, not before.
And far from winning the popularity contest, it yields the debate to the opposing. “Oh, so your side DOES have crazy people!” Do you think that anti-feminists would stop calling Daly a feminist? Give me a break.
I vaguely remembered writing about this very point in another context, and I googled around and found that I have, indeed, written about it:
http://www.la-mancha.net/?p=1294
This was for the now-defunct blog Tilting at Windmills in the context of the Danish cartoon riots.
As I say in the post, mockery and escalation are often better tactics than pearl-clutching ally-denunciations. The latter eventually cedes control to the Little Stalins. The civil rights movement for blacks would hardly have gotten as far as it did without its black nationalists, I do believe. And the American liberal left would not be so toothless if it did not so enthusiastically repudiate its radicals and perhaps suggested the eating of a rich person or two. (Just two? Please? We want their succulent flesh.) While the looniest neocon Strangeloves run the country.
Oh, and…I also dislike the wedge language of “moderate.” But not “radical.” Because moderate and radical are not opposites, for one thing.
I guess it’s time for those interested in advancing men’s rights to embrace the loony fringes.
To better the movement of course.
“Ladies, don’t like the idea of being killed/weeded out of the population and replaced by artifical wombs and sex robots? Then you’d better embrace default shared physical custody.”
Isn’t that just the inevitable extension of “Ladies if you like to eat, and don’t like being raped and killed by other men you better cede to male domination. Who else is going to protect you from the rapists and murderers?”
Sorry, that only works for liberatory movements.
But, more seriously, that’s what conservative/established-power-supporting movements actually do, anyway. I mean, the prime examples of that are the neocons, and their bizarre association with the religious right. It’s like, the loopiness has gone so far around the bend that that it’s touching itself.
“You know that somewhere in a top-secret underground robotics lab, male scientists are working feverishly to develop life-size Barbie dolls that can be programmed to fuck, suck, clean house, and make babies on command. Then the government can just kill us real women and be done with it. ” -Ghost of Dr. Violet
Great work, Mandos.
Mandos, liberatory movements that make ‘deals with the devil’ and fail to drive a wedge between themselves and racist/sexist/criminal elements may find their ‘ally’-assisted successes to be extremely short lived, or may find the nature of their movement corrupted by the alliance so that it is no longer progressive. At a minimum, they risk alienating reasonable undecideds and provoking extremist elements from the ‘other’ side … although, in truth, any movement or sub-movement that imparts moral standing based on biological characteristics is inherently reactionary and has more in common with its ‘right wing’ opposition than it does with its erstwhile ‘moderate progressive’ ally.
Your assertion about what helped and what hampered the 1960s movements is wildly speculative and frankly full of holes. Whole government programs were set up based on the notion that attaching extremist fringe elements to a social movement were fatal to that movement, not helpful. Perhaps you’re not familiar with the terms agent provocateur and COINTELPRO?
At any rate, your strategy for social change (“mockery and escalation”) couldn’t be more antithetical to the principles of enlightened dialogue.
[quote comment="18579"]But, more seriously, that’s what conservative/established-power-supporting movements actually do, anyway. I mean, the prime examples of that are the neocons, and their bizarre association with the religious right. It’s like, the loopiness has gone so far around the bend that that it’s touching itself.[/quote]
I dunno.
Who would neocons protect and sacrifice for if all women were robots? They’re obsessed with defining themselves by how well they serve their womenfolk(
or whatever they call those hard, mannish harridans in the right[Please, typhon, you know the rules, or if you don't, you ought to by now. -- Daran]). They just don’t like them baaaaad _other_ wimmins threatenin’ their privilaged position as servant.Nother thought… who gets to decide what’s ‘libratory’? From where I’m sitting(which is truly a privilaged vantage point), feminism was just more of the same old, same old.
Well, actually, that was intended primarily for bad-faith interrogators, of which on the Danish cartoon mess, 9/11, etc, there were many.
I sometimes look at Mary Daly as a kind of walking response to bad-faith interrogators of feminism.
You have the order backwards. My reference to the Altalena Affair was intended to illustrate this. Yes, to some extent, good PR is one part of the strategy, and in some contexts, social movements *do* shed extreme riders. But this often happens only after achieving some significant victory.
It really depends on what you mean by “moral standing based on biological characteristics.” For instance, the term “white privilege” contains the notion that a biological characteristic (light-coloured skin) imparts, through no inherent property of individual white people, a moral characteristic to people who have that characteristic.
But this is getting into territory already covered in the comments to kiuku’s post.
Separatism need only begin from the perspective that the male class has deleterious effects on the female class, not that men are inferior because they are made to oppress.
Certainly, but as one sees in the wikipedia page to which you linked, part of the program was increasing factionalism and disruption…
[quote comment="18599"]
I sometimes look at Mary Daly as a kind of walking response to bad-faith interrogators of feminism. [/quote]
Are there any good-faith interrogators of feminism?
I mean, if getting the heebie-jeebies at genocide makes one bad faith… what makes one good faith?
BTW, if men’s rights isn’t libratory, then I forsee a short and very painful future for feminism.
Something like:
Jim: Hey, Bob. I’m tired of the various indignities men face for being men. Let’s get rid of them. And, while we’re doing it, lets repeal women’s right to vote, force _them_ to work the worst and most dangerous jobs and provide for our living.
Bob: Sounds like a good idea Jim. Lets use our vast patriarchal powers to make this happen.
*pop!*
Feminism, and all women’s choices in life, dissapear over night.
The end.
Mandos said:
As opposed to liberatory movements that embrace their radical fringes and are “successful” at killing millions of people?
It seems to me that the results of driving a wedge between moderates and radicals could go either way, and may depend on particular movements. I think we would need a lot more historical evidence to generalize.
*shrug* I won’t bother to argue the men’s rights business. It’s boring and hashed out everywhere else on the t00bz.
[quote comment="18606"]*shrug* I won’t bother to argue the men’s rights business. It’s boring and hashed out everywhere else on the t00bz.[/quote]
Not my brand.
Do you have any evidence that the government or men want to kill women?
Of course you don’t. Governments and men in general preferentially protect women.
The claim that men generally are waging a war against women is a lie. I call it the feminist blood libel. Like the historic blood-libel against the Jews, it serves both to foment and justify hatred toward men.
There is only one person of any significance in this discussion who would like to see the extermination of an entire gender, and that person is Mary Daly.
Who are you quoting, and for what reason?
Re: Comment #27 by Factory.
This “washing bill of complaint” style of post is poor argumentation which all-too-often amounts to little more than duckspeak. You’d do much better to pick a single point (preferably one related the the topic of the post) and develop it in detail.
Take this, for example:
All you are doing is making bare claims while providing absolutely no supporting evidence whatsoever. Contrast with Ampersand’s wag gap series. Notice how he supports every single one of his points with an authoritative citation.
Now it’s possible that you’re right and he’s wrong, but to show that you need to make a point-by-point rebuttal. Unfounded bare assertions convince nobody.
We went through this on the other thread.
Probably. I think in the specific case of feminism, its radical “edge” has been necessary for the reason that women have not had a political vocabulary that pertains to their plight until the advent of feminism, and it is in the radical edges, willing to think the unthinkable, that generates useful concepts for the rest of the movement from time to time.
Why do you think there is such an emphasis on word-play in Mary Daly’s work? Why the Wickedary?
Even though Violet mysteriously started hating on me or something, I still think this is unfair. Violet’s quote was not meant seriously—it was meant in the context of a specific post to do with specific acts by specific men.
But it’s very hard to say that there is a systemic pattern of oppression against women—call it ‘patriarchy’—that is the raison d’être for a feminist movement, without also saying that the male class is waging a sometimes-overt war of oppression against the female class. There may not be a Smoky Den where the plot is being hatched, but…
Daran,
Protect women from who, what? Aliens in outerspace? Lions in the jungle? No..it’s other men.
Mandos,
I am concerned that anyone in our arena could mysteriously hate on you.
Daran
I am aware that men protect other things they own and want access to as well, such as their houses.
Mandos,
Most male talent is wasted, inefficient talent for this reason. I sense a “men invented everything” tangent coming up. However, while Violet’s quote was taken out of context from her Stepfordization post (Great post btw), it’s probably very accurate.
Possibly it happened because I suggested that ignoring the Anonymous Horde would make them go away, which it would have. Also, because I tend to do to feminist sites when I am doing here… You must have missed the Referendum episode.
Ah, memories, memories.
I should have named myself after a St. Exupéry character.
Let’s not do the “men invented everything” tangent. Who knows?
Let’s instead do the “wasted, inefficient talent.” What in your mind would be required to “unwaste” that talent, given that 50% of the population is male?
Mandos,
When you examine the female:male birth ratio, and given men’s propensity to end their lives as quickly as possible, you discover that men naturally should be no where near 50% of the population. However, this is mainly a social result of men trying to make themselves women through violence. They are 50% of the population by killing and controlling women through violence and force. Men’s technology is a crude one, and most of men’s time is spent trying to make themselves women. Women’s inventions, on the other hand, and realizations outpace men by 1000′s of years, only to be ignored, or worse.
What we also must understand, from a more moderate point of view, is that women are still 50% of the population, and, throughout history, have been denied enterprise. What can deterring 50% of the population from enterprise do other than deter enterprise itself?
If so, why do men have the propensity to end their lives quickly? I mean, the female:male birth ratio is given here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.....ural_ratio
More males are born than females, in the natural ratio, at least according to wikipedia.
You would have to have a…ridiculously high rate of (suicide?) carnage to get to a situation in which men are a significantly smaller part of the population. Why do you think that this is a “natural” state, and how do you think that it would be accomplished?
This makes perfect sense to me and I suspect everyone would agree with it.
Mandos,
I am not going to say kill the men. Ever. Unless Separatism were adopted as the solution and men, through force, threatened that act. Reducing the population of men artificially is not the answer, though Mary Daly entertains it. Interesting Wikipedia says that males are born more often than females. If that rate is indicitive of natural state vice selection for male children than there should naturally be more males than females and I see no reason to kill off the men to change that…rather than, say, convince men to stop killing men and women through Separation.
I was not accusing you of wanting to Kill Teh Menz. I was instead talking about the Natural State. In the Natural State, if there are *significantly* fewer males than females, how would this be brought about? Why would men die more?
I mean, the actual number doesn’t matter as such, but whatever.
not as fun. I know.
Men die more for many reasons. In fact, I am aware that men suffer certain diseases more often than women, exampled by ratios of Down Syndrome in males vice females, and Autism, as well. However, there may be diseases that strike females more often to counterbalance the male vulnerability. It’s obvious why men die more. They kill eachother (and women) and they kill themselves. They really detest life.
So, I think this is a nice place to segue back to the peripherality discussion that IMO got derailed in the other thread. See, when you say “men must accept peripherality”, the first image it brings to mind is, well, men slinking off into the forest living atavistic lives of trapping and hunting, or loafing off on the edge of down, or something like that, while women do interesting and productive and exciting things in the middle of the city.
I can cite you at least 3 SF novels based on this premise.
But if men in the post-patriarchy are, you know, getting educations, doing productive things, etc, etc, and presumably even doing these things around/with women, then I’m not sure whether the notion of peripherality might be just vacuous, even if true in some kind of Deep Philosophical Sense.
kiuku – why don’t you just post all of Solanas scum manifest now?
instead of feeding it in pieces…
My understanding is that females are more likely to suffer chronic and debilitating diseases than males (ie, arthritis and advanced osteoporosis and so on), even if they have a longer life expectancy—which is narrowing, because male life expectancy is increasing.
I mean, it’s obvious why men might *get killed* in the *patriarchy*, maybe. But why would they have that characteristic in the post-patriarchy, when presumably the violence that inheres in patriarchy would have been expunged?
I don’t envision that. I envision that, women living separately from men, would usher in the most humanistic and technological era of our species. Without controlling women, men would just have no reason to kill eachother as long as they respected the separation. There is no reason they wouldn’t have cities.
The SCUM manifesto is hilarious by the way. I love the way Solanas changes her mind and decides that *some* men can live but as a mercy to them, they can live vicariously by cameras on females…
Ah! OK. So you believe that not only is male control of women a cause of violence between men, but also the *predominant* cause.
So would this be a permanent condition? The reason why I say this is that it is not exactly efficient in some ways. This goes back to something to which we alluded in another thread—that men and women would still retain family ties, presumably. How would these cash out in a separatist utopia?
The SCUM Manifesto is great. I read it a couple years ago, but haven’t since. I seem to recall allowing pro-SCUM men into some women-spaces, especially if they castrated themselves.
It is -the cause- of violence. It is the root reason. You can stop it indirectly by trying to address all other reasons which stem from that to justify violence, which we are doing now presently, or you can to the actual root of the issue, which is men’s percieved need to control women.
Family ties differ throughout culture. However, there is good reason to suspect that some people would not adopt a separatist ideology or practice. They shouldn’t be forced. And that is where it becomes, rather an ideal than an actuality, of having women live completely separate from men. When you get into issues of having to force a mass amount of people into doing something they’d rather not, is when you approach dystopia vice utopia.
Mandos,
I don’t get why marxist categories keep being “abused” in this context. Neither men or women are a class, they have a sex and a gender. Class is a rather pointless concept in most contexts, except, maybe, discussions of historic materialism. You’re arguing in favour of standpoint epistemology, which is in fact arguing for “class based” incommensurability. If women and men cannot establish “facts” at least intersubjectively, no discussion will go anywhere. Members of both classes can arbitrarily deny members of the other class the ability to understand truth (and then there’s the whole intersectionality problem, which logically leads right back to individualism)…
But do not get me wrong here. A woman-only state would be Utopia. A threatened from the outside Utopia, perhaps, but a Utopia nontheless.
Here’s the part I’m not getting. Some of our technology depends on non-renewable resources, and the part that *doesn’t* depend on non-renewable resources still depends on resources with a finite extraction rate or allocation criterion (ie, land, for instance).
In a complex world, people will have a variety of different needs and desires.
How do you manage conditions of scarcity and competition for resource access? I mean, if nothing else, animals kill and eat each other even without scarcity.
OK: so separatism is not conceived—just to make clear for our readers—as an actual, implementable program for dividing men from women, but as a possibility that allows women to conceive of themselves entirely outside the umbrella of patriarchy, and then to take steps to reduce their patriarchal exposure.
Am I right?
But in actual practice, as it is very likely that most women would want to retain many or most of the male ties that currently already have—I mean, very many avowed Internet separatists do!—an actual situation in which men live in a separate domain from women and live completely different lives is probably unlikely.
Still right?
Then we’re back to square one: how does the peripherality analysis actually apply to the desired state of relations between men and women?
This goes back to the accusation of essentialism. What about the introduction of men to this Utopia would threaten its utopianism?
Furthermore, taking this to its limit, I presume that you believe that a separatist world would be thus a global utopia. Am I wrong? Then would it be the case that “Manland” in this world would also be a utopia?
Mandos,
This is not our technology. It is men’s technology. Men’s technology is crude. It springs from their perceptions of life, their lives. It is a technology of force, of penetrating; a sticking, jabbing, forcing technology…and it will be replaced, and is being replaced as more women gain momentum in enterprise.
Limited resources/competition is something men percieve and create, but does not actually exist.
Mandos, I addressed essentialism in my latest post back on the Separatism thread.
I am unfortunately not trained in any formal way as a social/political philosopher/theorist, so some of the terminology simply zings over my head, vaguely bringing up memories of what friends I have in that business sometimes say.
So, um, maybe if you could explain your point in more detail? The reason why people make use of Marxist categories is these situations is that they seem to work when you treat oppression as unfair and systematic extraction of resources/labour from a defined group of people. Separatists very much see things this way.
Neither am I Mandos, but just look at some examples. How do we get into space? We thrust a spaceship into gravitational trajectories of course. How do we make a building? We erect one, with force. Big machines capable of lifting big objects and if we want to split and object we actually forcefully cut it, rather than say a more svelt system of using one objects weight against the other with sophisticated principles of leverage and weight.
Even in weapon’s technology both swords and guns act on the same jabbing/penetration principle.
It’s crude. It comes from a crude understanding of the world, and it is being replaced. It should have never existed.
Mandos,
sorry I’m in a hurry right now – if you’re interested, this document
http://plato.stanford.edu/entr.....stemology/
will be more informative than anything I can write.
Why would men have come up with such an understanding of the world if men, peripheral or otherwise, are possessed of talents similar to women, which you acknowledge?
(Assuming that I accept that there is another conception of the world that allows you to go into space without using jet propulsion.)
The problem is that you’re applying a phallic metaphor to something after the fact (that men may also do, but that’s the same problem). There’s nothing inherently phallic about a rocket lifting into space, except that some people perceive an anatomical overtone to it. But you could have thought of other metaphors. After all, it’s making use of the “every action has an equal and opposite reaction” principle.
Mandos:
[quote]OK: so separatism is not conceived—just to make clear for our readers—as an actual, implementable program for dividing men from women, but as a possibility that allows women to conceive of themselves entirely outside the umbrella of patriarchy, and then to take steps to reduce their patriarchal exposure.[/quote]
With due respect, I think that there are two interpretations that could be drawn from the phrasings and statements here and in the other thread. One is what you appear to be stating: that separatism is conceived of as a thought experiment first and foremost, because it is not considered to be a viable, implementable program. The other is that there are practical impediments to separatism that would make it unlikely to succeed, or are morally unacceptable and cannot be exercised, and as a result it becomes a thought experiment.
The implications of each interpretation are substantially different. Do you think that, given what has been posted so far, the second interpretation is unreasonable?
You have to accept it Mandos. Just like there is another way for lifting very large objects outside of force of a big machine, there is another way of putting objects into space that doesn’t require thrusting. I’m not ascribing a metaphor after the fact. That’s what it is.
Men’s technology stems from their perception of the world. Likewise women’s technology would and does stem from their perception of the world and it is precisely why we need it. Men can change their perception, and do, but will they, and can we count on men to change? That is what the Separatist movement says no to.
You see it clearly in medicine to. “Oxygen is vital to life” and the way to bring someone back to life is to force the heart to beat again. And every organ has a “job” and illness is the product of an organ not doing its “job”
Occassionally from men you get something magnificent, or a magnificent realization. All I am saying is that you’d get it more often and EARLIER from women.
Daran, I’m not actually quoting anyone *specifically*. Just being facetious. There was one guy from soc.men who figured women would be replaced, eventually, by robotic sex dolls with artificial wombs. But I don’t think he entertained his theories in order to force society to accept moderate MRAs.
Kiniku, what’s always facinated me about women’s enterprise is not that they were excluded from men’s, but that they didn’t make their _own_. All of men’s enterprises have a definate start, where a man or group of like-minded men founds them using their resources.
Women have not been deprived of resources throughout Christian history. For example, rich aristocratic women could influence the sciences and arts by becoming patrons of scientists and artists and hosting salons. Despite the fact that women had resources, historically, they rarely used them to found their own enterprises.
At the very start of an enterprise, there is no descrimination, except the descrimination between those who have the idea and the passion to see it to fruition, those that have the idea but are too risk-adverse to invest in it, and those that don’t have the idea.
Women are rather over represented in the last two catagories.
Finally, I assume you believe there can never be a matriarchy if men and women are together in the same society.
[quote comment="18733"]Occassionally from men you get something magnificent, or a magnificent realization. All I am saying is that you’d get it more often and EARLIER from women.[/quote]
Wow. Evidence?
No because there was a Matriarchy, and men didn’t like it. And women did innovate, improvise, and use their resources, until men dominated them.
it just amazes me, between you and Baumeister (you’re making the same assertion) that people can actually believe that women could just “make their own”
Typhon,
Hildegard, a nun, proposed universal gravitation 500 years before Newton. Neolithic societies show evidence of using stoves, among other comfort technologies.
Likewise the periods of the greatest destitute were those in which men dominated and oppressed women the most.
[quote comment="18738"]it just amazes me, between you and Baumeister (you’re making the same assertion) that people can actually believe that women could just “make their own”[/quote]
You being amazed isn’t really an argument against it.
Women had resources, yet there are not historic women-enterprise proportionate to those resources.
There isn’t even _current_ women-enterprise proportionate to the resources women have. At least not ones based on novel technological concepts.
You’d have to prove that women weren’t really oppressed, and that would be difficult. Were we just supposed to make our own schools, with the economy that we had access to, or I suppose you think women could have just prostituted themselves for it?
Women were able to accomplish a great deal for humanity through marriage, though, and using men’s resources. Take Theono, for instance, the woman philosopher. It’s a great love story too. She falls in love with an older philosopher named Pythagoras. She was a mathemetician. She wrote an essay on her mathematical discovery “The Golden Mean”. She marries Pythagoras and together they build institutes of higher mathematical learning, and eventually you get something..I’m sure you’ve heard of it. The Laudable “Pythagorean Theorem”
[quote comment="18739"]Typhon,
Hildegard, a nun, proposed universal gravitation 500 years before Newton. Neolithic societies show evidence of using stoves, among other comfort technologies.[/quote]
I recognize atypical women exist.
Unfortunately, they don’t exist in the same proportion as atypical men. I would say it’s something like 1:1000. Which is why woman-enterprise is never the same proportion relative to their availiable resources as man-enterprise.
BTW, I think Newton’s application of calculus to physics is probably his most noteworthy contribution. For some reason, people like to ascribe things to Newton that he didn’t actually do alone or first. This includes the work of Leibniz, a man.
Hildegard is not an atypical woman. She just had the opportunity of living away from men’s domination. She was a nun. In order to propose any kind of actual concrete ratio, like you are doing, you have to prove that women were not oppressed.
[quote comment="18742"]You’d have to prove that women weren’t really oppressed, and that would be difficult. Were we just supposed to make our own schools, with the economy that we had access to, or I suppose you think women could have just prostituted themselves for it?[/quote]
I don’t have to prove women weren’t oppressed. That they had access to resources is all that is required.
At some point there _were_ no scientific schools for men either. Men created them. The first schools were simply places that like minded men met. In order to suggest women were excluded from the same activities you have to prove that women could not meet other like minded women in a place.
So why didn’t women create their own schools, proportionate to the resources they had access to?
At some point science was something done in a room of a rich man’s house by said rich man. All he needed access to was a house and some money to buy instruments (or make them). Both things rich women had access to. Yet the number of female founders of the scientific revolution is not proportionate to their access to those resources.
Men did not inherit all this intellectual infrastructure just by being men. They _created_ it from scratch.
I really want you to prove to me that women could make their own schools, and that women could have had their theories and opinions heard or published for discourse. Do you know what the rate and historical trend of illiteracy was among women and men?
They created it from scratch. hahahhahahahaha. What exactly did men create from scratch?
I’m telling you right now that your phallic technology is quickly being replaced and should have been replaced a long time ago. It should have never existed.
[quote comment="18743"]Women were able to accomplish a great deal for humanity through marriage, though, and using men’s resources. Take Theono, for instance, the woman philosopher. It’s a great love story too. She falls in love with an older philosopher named Pythagoras. She was a mathemetician. She wrote an essay on her mathematical discovery “The Golden Mean”. She marries Pythagoras and together they build institutes of higher mathematical learning, and eventually you get something..I’m sure you’ve heard of it. The Laudable “Pythagorean Theorem”[/quote]
So, hm, I guess ancient greek society was another utopia for women in which they were able to ‘get away from the domination of men.’
As for literacy…
According to ‘In The Cloister and the World: Essays in Medieval History in Honour of Barbara Harvey’ girls were given the opportunity to learn to read and write and women’s literacy was expected in 15th century London.
It was Guetenburg that brought literacy to the masses. And, I assume, in the absense of a helpful class of aristocrats teaching them, the masses taught themselves to read. Why couldn’t the same be true for women? If, indeed, men refused to teach them how to read and considered it men’s knowledge.
“I don’t have to prove women weren’t oppressed. That they had access to resources is all that is required.”
There is little difference. But if you prefer, what resources did women have access to?
“At some point there _were_ no scientific schools for men either. Men created them. The first schools were simply places that like minded men met.”
No. The first schools involved men and women. They were created by women, and men. The first written text was done by a woman.
“So why didn’t women create their own schools, proportionate to the resources they had access to?”
What resources?
[quote comment="18748"]They created it from scratch. hahahhahahahaha. What exactly did men create from scratch?[/quote]
Schools, printing presses, scientific journals.
Women could have created their own. They _did_ have access to resources. They also had access to literacy.
And that’s just looking at the historical situation. Right now women have considerably more resources to develop their own science, technology, schools and scientific journals.
All I see, however, is feminism. Which was developed initally by a _man_.
[quote comment="18758"]“I don’t have to prove women weren’t oppressed. That they had access to resources is all that is required.”
There is little difference. But if you prefer, what resources did women have access to?[/quote]
There is a huge difference. Oppression is a nebulous abstraction; property is concrete.
Women owned resources throughout the middle ages. Developing a school, or a technology, requires, in a material sense, only access to resources. And like minds, in the case of a school.
[quote]“At some point there _were_ no scientific schools for men either. Men created them. The first schools were simply places that like minded men met.”
No. The first schools involved men and women. They were created by women, and men. The first written text was done by a woman.[/quote]
Women developed _writing_? I’m going to have to ask for a source on this one.
If the first schools involved men and women, that makes my argument easier. Where are the female innovations from these co-ed schools proportionate to female enrollment?
[quote]What resources?[/quote]
Aristocratic women owned resources. Property, chattle, money. They even ruled countries in some cases. Shocking but _true_.
How is it then that the first centers of learning were Temples of Priestesses (and priests)
I don’t expect people to follow up on history, especially not women’s history, so it is easy for me to realize that what you are saying, on face value, many people believe. It’s just not true, though. I’m sorry but the first centers of learning were Temples, where people developed math and recorded the movement of heavenly bodies.
When you see a transition to men’s extreme domination of women you see a drop in technology and an increase in oppression/foul living. When women become more accepted you see progress.
I see the burden of proof falling on you. When you propose to say that women -could have- made “their own” you have to prove to me that women were not oppressed. You have to show me the resources you propose women had access to, that women could have been reasonably expected to publish and innovate and take credit for her innovations, throughout men’s history, in order to say that what men produced was somehow done so because of their manness.
As for your source, the world’s oldest known author was a woman, and a priestess, by the name of Enheduanna, who wrote in cuneiform approx. 4300 years ago.
Later on the first novel would also be written by an asian woman.
[quote comment="18761"]How is it then that the first centers of learning were Temples of Priestesses (and priests)[/quote]
I’m not saying women are incapable of being teachers or learning; I’m saying that kind of person who is both innovative, intellectually creative and not risk-adverse, tends to be male more often then female.
You can look at it from a deterministic perspective–men and women are biologically different– and/or from a cultural perspective–men do not create with their bodies, therefore they are more prone to create using their minds. They are also less _essential_ to reproduction(although I’d argue that) therefore their sense of expendability leads them to be less risk-adverse.
You want women to be central to reproduction; *and* benefit from the positive aspects of ‘peripherality’. Namely, an increased drive to create in _other_ ways and be less risk-adverse.
It could be that Hildegard’s genius was less about ‘getting away from male domination’ then getting away from reproduction.
‘Peripherality’ also can lead to violence, since those who feel themselves expendable are prone to feeling that others are as well.
But ‘centrality’ can lead to controlling behavior. I have seen mothers who destroy the lives of their children by forcing them to abide by their conception of what is best. They make the child’s life too precious for the child to live it.
You can say it tends to be male more often than female all you want. That means nothing to me in the context of women’s oppression. Who knows what more Enheduanna could have come up with if she wasn’t exiled, for instance. What does mean something to me, is that despite their oppression, women have still managed, through using men’s resources, come up with some profound things, and that the actual trend, it seems, is that women come up with profound things at an advanced pace, compared to men.
I’d also like to know how you propose men’s destructive habits (burning schools/libraries, taking over whole civilizations, erasing histories) did not outweigh their so-called inventiveness.
[quote comment="18763"]You have to show me the resources you propose women had access to, that women could have been reasonably expected to publish and innovate and take credit for her innovations, throughout men’s history, in order to say that what men produced was somehow done so because of their manness.[/quote]
There was no publishing prior to Guetenburg’s press. And there were no scientific journals prior to men founding them.
If women had access to literacy and resources, they had the opportunity to purchase their own printing press and develop their own scientific journals. Thus weither or not men would publish their work would be irrelevant.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_.....987874.stm
It’s a little light weight, but interesting article.
You keep saying women had access to resources. I want some details on this. What resources and what period of time?
The first author was a woman in 2285 BCE.
and the recording of heavenly bodies, while early, is pretty scientific.
but I’m really glad that 1000′s of years later men decide to give science a go.
[quote comment="18767"]You can say it tends to be male more often than female all you want. That means nothing to me in the context of women’s oppression. Who knows what more Enheduanna could have come up with if she wasn’t exiled, for instance. What does mean something to me, is that despite their oppression, women have still managed, through using men’s resources, come up with some profound things, and that the actual trend, it seems, is that women come up with profound things at an advanced pace, compared to men.[/quote]
I read a bit more about Enheduanna. She was the daughter of Sargon, who also wrote cuniform himself. (Interesting that he is not considered the first known author.) Apparently her imperial father appointed her to a position usually held by locals and the locals didn’t like that and ousted her.
Not quite a patriarchal relvolution, but whatever. Her story doesn’t strike me as particularly revolutionary or indicative of the kind of genius I’m talking about.
Almost all girls I know write poetry.
Anyway, right now, in this century, women access education more then men, they have equal or greater access to resources, which they control completely. Female success is exhalted, not hidden or diminished. There are no rules barring women from winning awards or being published.
Where is your flowering of the woman-enlightenment? Or are they all being held back by some invisible patriarchy that exerts no legal, social or financial control over them?
[quote comment="18771"]and the recording of heavenly bodies, while early, is pretty scientific.[/quote]
What role did women have in developing astrology? How can we know what happened in those ancient temples? Our ignorance of what occured is not evidence of a woman-enlightenment in prehistory. There still were priests in those temples, after all.
Poetry wow. Because being the first prophet is just poetry.
“The true woman who possesses exceeding wisdom,
She consults [employs] a tablet of lapis lazuli
She gives advice to all lands…
She measures off the heavens,
She places the measuring-cords on the earth.” -Enheduanna
SO you no longer want to argue that women weren’t historically oppressed and now you want to focus on present day? Women’s inventions and patents are rising. It is hard to deny women’s contributions to, and of, computer science, though no one reads about this. Without women it would be hard to say we would have ever isolated the stem cell, or discovered the double helix nature of DNA of which a woman shares co-patent and yet the man won all the awards and recognition for. Women are still oppressed and because this is something that is largely accepted, the burden of proof falls on you to prove to me, yet again, that they are not.
I guess men would just rather believe that our burgeoning technology now is due to an alien spacecraft that landed in Roswell. We reverse engineered it.
kiuku
You could say the same for Curie. She got all the attention although her husband did much of the work.
Also it WAS mainly men who discovered the double helix – it could be confirmed from X rays done by a woman, but that is hardly the same as coming up with the theory before the evidence. An X-ray camera operated by a women. It was a lab technician. If you want to give lab technicians credit for what we have given scientists credit for, many many things should change – things that have nothing to do with gender. That is a new science history altogether.
It is very obvious that you have learned you science history (or herstory, sorry) in a Women’s studies class. You only know half the stories.
No I did it on my own, actually. Please don’t accuse me of Academia. When it is academia, I’ll let you know. What is “obvious” to you has been pretty wrong so far, so I see no reason for you to claim something is obvious to you.
[quote comment="18775"]SO you no longer want to argue that women weren’t historically oppressed and now you want to focus on present day?[/quote]
I have not argued that women weren’t historically oppressed. I’ve argued they had access to resources that could have enabled them to create a parallel woman-controlled scientific infrastructure.
If they were so inclined.
You have offered up a set of reasons for women’s lack of success historically: they lacked access to resources, they couldn’t publish in men’s scientific journals, they weren’t educated.
Now, using that set of reasons, I’m looking at modern day woman.
[quote]Women’s inventions and patents are rising. It is hard to deny women’s contributions to, and of, computer science, though no one reads about this.[/quote]
I’m talking about the big ticket items. Not this niggly little crap, the underpinnings of which were developed by men.
Where’s woman-math? Where’s woman-UTE? Where’s the woman-physics that will send us to other solar systems?
[quote]Without women it would be hard to say we would have ever isolated the stem cell, or discovered the double helix nature of DNA of which a woman shares co-patent and yet the man won all the awards and recognition for.[/quote]
She collected the date; they developed the theory. They could not have done it without her data, but it was still _their_ theory. Further Nobel prizes are not awarded post-mortem.
[quote]Women are still oppressed and because this is something that is largely accepted, the burden of proof falls on you to prove to me, yet again, that they are not.[/quote]
Women have control over an equal or greater share of financial resources. They represent the majority of students in post-secondary education. Their discoveries are not dismissed: they have full access to awards and publication.
These are the same areas you _said_ explained why, historically, women failed to achieve. They no longer exist in the modern age. Women should be out creating your woman-enlightenment.
It is now incumbant upon you to explain this X factor that continues to deny women their success.
for it to have any kind of merit.
Look Typhon this is the last time I’m going to ask you to tell me what resources you propose that women had access to. Because you keep repeating yourself, and you’re beginning to frustrate me. Not only do I want to know what resources, I also want to know a period of time so that I can verify that. For instance if you claim women had an equal share of financial resources I want to know what period of time and under what rulership.
You have to prove that women were not oppressed, such as women, in a given period of time, could have been reasonable expected to enterprise.
Women were tired of being calculators, thus the birth of the computer. the first computer was developed by a man and a woman. Later the ENIAC would involve the work of four women. Most computer operators were women, and some of the first early computer languages were created by women.
So “doing your own” is equivalent to a women’s studies class?
How sad for independent thinking.
JFA,
The simple fact that you believe in independent thinking dissuades me from further discussion with you.
Typhon,
Sometimes the Patriarchy relaxs and women can rise to positions of esteem and enterprise. Hyptia of Alexandria, for instance, rose to a position of leadership of an institute, solved several mathematical problems, and devised instruments for research in Astronomy. But then she was killed by Christian men.
but it is particularly these periods of relaxation that humanity shows the most progress. Unfortunately it is usually brief because a bunch of men come around and burn all your libraries.
[quote comment="18782"]Look Typhon this is the last time I’m going to ask you to tell me what resources you propose that women had access to.[/quote]
Take a look at the article I posted.
[quote]Because you keep repeating yourself, and you’re beginning to frustrate me. Not only do I want to know what resources, I also want to know a period of time so that I can verify that. For instance if you claim women had an equal share of financial resources I want to know what period of time and under what rulership.[/quote]
Equal is not what I claimed. I claimed that women _had_ access to resources. In other words there existed women who had control over financial, capital and even human labor resources.
It does not matter the _proportion_ in comparision to men. I am asking why women did not develop scientific infrastructure in proportion to their access to resources? Considering that, initially, scientific infrastructure was developed with minimal financial cost, if women of property had interest, it should have been an easy field to explore. And if there were no journals to publish women’s work, why did they not purchase a press and start their own scientific journal if the interest was there? History is repleat with aristocratic women funding male innovators, why not female? (As you can see, all these suppositions are not reliant on a particular time period.)
Regardless, you have stated your list of reasons why women did not achieve historically. Now we get to see how they apply to the modern day.
Typhon,
I am finished with this discussion.
[quote comment="18786"]but it is particularly these periods of relaxation that humanity shows the most progress. Unfortunately it is usually brief because a bunch of men come around and burn all your libraries.[/quote]
If you’re right, then women’s intellectual creativity should be a beast straining at its traces. At the merest hint of freedom, it bursts forth to decimate the stagnant intellectual climate of man with the awesome force of its revolutionary creativity.
We have the ‘merest hint’ right now. No financial, educational or publishing/recognition constraints are left on women.
So where is it? Where is the revolution in thought that should shake feeble male intellect to it’s very core? Everything should have been swept away by women’s creativity. It should make the Elightenment look like a fourth grade science class.
BTW, women didn’t invent the computer. A woman created the first programming language, yes. Women always are part of the intellectually creative process. At least, on the periphery.
[quote comment="18788"]Typhon,
I am finished with this discussion.[/quote]
Tapout for the win.
kiuku – Fine. There is nothing more to discuss. Please venture out and create the brand new woman’s world.
Perhaps it really will be a lot better.
Perhaps.
Typhon,
It is very easy to call your technology amazing when you have nothing (left) to compare it to. You get a glimpse of where we are headed with women’s emancipation. Women are making statistical progress and they are still oppressed.
If you want to claim that women -should have- or could have been reasonable expected to enterprise such that you can make little ratio’s about how men are inventive you have to prove that they were not oppressed. Saying that men invented all this stuff when women were oppressed speaks nothing about manness. Likewise, simply saying over and over again “women had access to resources” doesn’t prove anything. It is a generally accepted notion that women were and are oppressed.
You’re wrong about where the first schools were and how they started. You’re wrong about the first author. You’re wrong about the first Astrologist, just like you’re wrong about a lot of things.
I’ll give you another chance.
JFA,
There is not question about it. Your inductive reasonsing and phallic technology can only go so far.
[quote comment="18792"]Typhon,
It is very easy to call your technology amazing when you have nothing (left) to compare it to. You get a glimpse of where we are headed with women’s emancipation. Women are making statistical progress and they are still oppressed.[/quote]
By _what_? All your stated reasons why women were oppressed historically no longer apply.
Women have control over equal or greater financial resources, they have access to education, and to publishing.
What’s left to oppress them?
[quote]If you want to claim that women -should have- or could have been reasonable expected to enterprise such that you can make little ratio’s about how men are inventive you have to prove that they were not oppressed.[/quote]
Again, I don’t have to prove that they were not oppressed, I just have to prove they had _some_ access to the same resources men used to create scientific infrastructure.
And they did. Regardless of how *much* access they had, they had _some_. Thus, assuming women have equal interest and drive in science, there should exist at least a seperate, parallel, woman’s scientific infrastructure. Smaller in scope then men’s, but _there_.
[quote]Saying that men invented all this stuff when women were oppressed speaks nothing about manness. Likewise, simply saying over and over again “women had access to resources” doesn’t prove anything. It is a generally accepted notion that women were and are oppressed.[/quote]
Wow. How did my ideas go from being ‘generally accepted’ to ‘generally not accepted.’
[quote]You’re wrong about where the first schools were and how they started. You’re wrong about the first author. You’re wrong about the first Astrologist, just like you’re wrong about a lot of things.[/quote]
Those things happened thousands of years ago. A lot of who and what related to ancient history is gone. I’m not even speculating about what happened thousands of years ago.
I’m not wrong about who created the first printing press. I’m not wrong about who created the first modern scientific journals, or award granting institutions. I’m not wrong about who founded modern schools.
There is absolutely no reason why women, with equal interest in science, shouldn’t have done these things for themselves. They had access to the _same_ resources men required to create their scientific infrastructure–time, money, property. They did not have equal amounts of those resources, but they had some. And that should have been enough to create a parallel scientific infrastructure, even if it was smaller scale.
It’s like this. Let’s imagine we apply your reasoning to Cuba. Since Cuba doesn’t have the same access to resources as, say, the US, they can’t possibly have created services for their people. Not so. They _do_ have services, just on a smaller scale.
simply asking me what is left to oppress women doesn’t prove that women are not oppressed. It is a generally accepted notion that women are oppressed. It’s not my job to argue it. Keep asking why and what all you want.
[quote comment="18796"]simply asking me what is left to oppress women doesn’t prove that women are not oppressed. It is a generally accepted notion that women are oppressed. It’s not my job to argue it. Keep asking why and what all you want.[/quote]
Putting me in a bit of a bind here.
You won’t state what remains to oppress women, yet you want me to create a compelling counter-argument against what you will not state.
You want me to make your argument, basically. Because it is a generally accepted notion that women were oppressed,a nd are oppressed, which makes your statements about men’s inventiveness meaningless, it is completely up to you to prove that women were not oppressed in a persuasive manner.
So far you’ve sort of made an argument..like because women had access to a house (presumably European, presumably through marriage), and a house is all it takes for scientific enterprise, women could reasonably be expected to enterprise. It’s not persuasive, but it is sort of an argument.
Or when women were systematically threatened, and could not publish, they could have just bought their own printing press, which to me is as naive as saying “let them eat cake”
Because it is a generally accepted notion that women were oppressed, and are oppressed,
First one possibly second one that is actually hard to prove.
men do not oppress women. Powerful people oppress people who aren’t powerful.
Both men and women belong to both groups.
[quote comment="18799"]So far you’ve sort of made an argument..like because women had access to a house (presumably European, presumably through marriage), and a house is all it takes for scientific enterprise, women could reasonably be expected to enterprise. It’s not persuasive, but it is sort of an argument.[/quote]
I’m saying that women had access to the same resources men did in creating scientific infrastructure. In the beginnig all that was needed was interest, time, a moderate amount of money and space. Women may not have had *as* much access, but they did have access to these things.
So why is there no parallel, scaled down woman-science?
As for women not being able to purchase a printing press… what, exactly, is farcical about that? What more does a person need to start up one of the original presses then money, time, space and interest?
[quote comment="18798"]You want me to make your argument, basically. Because it is a generally accepted notion that women were oppressed,a nd are oppressed, which makes your statements about men’s inventiveness meaningless, it is completely up to you to prove that women were not oppressed in a persuasive manner.[/quote]
Let me try to untangle this rats nest.
You say that women’s lack of success historically and in modern times is due to ‘oppression’.
You have indicated that the historic reason women did not achieve is: access to resources and education, and access to publishing facilities.
Regardless of my arguments regarding access to resources for women in the middle ages, these are the _reasons_ you give for why women have not achieved historically.
I have noted that these historic reasons no longer apply in the modern era. And I’ve requested you to state the reason why women have not achieved their woman-enlightenment in the modern age.
You have stated, repeatedly, that they do not achieve because they are oppressed. And I’m asking for another _mechanism_ of oppression. Lack of resources, education or publishing opportunities are all mechanisms of oppression. They are the ‘on-the-ground’ manifestations of oppression.
It is impossible for me to argue that women are not oppressed currently if you cannot tell me the mechanism of their continued oppression.
No it is entirely up to you, Typhon, to support your claim that men are more inventive, due to women’s lack of enterprise (not “success” which is arbitrary) during their oppression. You haven’t given reasons against oppression. You haven’t given reasons for oppression, which actually do not need to be given. It is entirely up to you to prove women were not oppressed and are not still oppressed in a significant way.
Is it your argument that women are not oppressed now because they can go to school and have “equal” access to financial resources and therefore should be reasonably expected to enterprise at the same rate as men? I have, admittedly been skimming your posts recently, but I haven’t seen any more arguments.
[quote comment="18806"]Is it your argument that women are not oppressed now because they can go to school and have “equal” access to financial resources and therefore should be reasonably expected to enterprise at the same rate as men? [quote]
Or ‘enterprise’ at a rate proportional to their access to resources, both educational and financial.
You know what Typhon..I just realized that for men to dominate and oppress women through force, and then to blame women for not being successful, an arbitrary and male-defined idea, is deeply offensive. If I wanted to argue Baumeister I’d go argue Baumeister, not Baumeister in Typhon disguise. You know maybe if Baumeister took a “women’s studies” course he wouldn’t be so ignorant.
[quote comment="18805"]No it is entirely up to you, Typhon, to support your claim that men are more inventive, due to women’s lack of enterprise (not “success” which is arbitrary) during their oppression. You haven’t given reasons against oppression. You haven’t given reasons for oppression, which actually do not need to be given. It is entirely up to you to prove women were not oppressed and are not still oppressed in a significant way.[/quote]
My historic argument rests only on the premise that women had *some* access to the same initial resources men used to generate their scientific infrastructure. Therefore if there was equal interest or ability, there should have been a woman-science proportionate to women’s access to those initial resources: time, money, space.
I don’t need to prove anything about ‘oppression.’
Since my historical argument is done–and so far unanswered. Except by party line posturing. I’ve moved on to the modern era. You’ve presented reasons why women couldn’t acheive historically, reasons that no longer apply, I ask you why women haven’t achieved in modern times.
You have said, ‘because they’re oppressed. And since everyone believes women are oppressed, it’s up to you to prove them wrong.’
But why do you(and everyone else) think women are oppressed? Becuase they don’t achieve? Circular no?
[quote comment="18809"]You know what Typhon..I just realized that for men to dominate and oppress women through force, and then to blame women for not being successful, an arbitrary and male-defined idea, is deeply offensive.[/quote]
I never said that woman-science had to look like man-science.
BTW, it’s rather silly to blame men for what _I’m_ saying.
you came up with a circular argument that no one put forth and then called it circular. You continue to use the word “achieve” which is arbitrary and defined by men. I’d rather you use the word enterprise, but it is not as important as the fact that you want to attribute men’s inventiveness or scientific enterprise with the fact that they are men. That’s up to you to prove. You haven’t.
and neither has Baumeister who is an ignorant tool. B-Meister can kiss my Radfem butt.
[kiuku: As you may have noticed, we prefer that participants here avoid this kind of direct personal invective. --ballgame]
I emailed Baumeister once to ask him if he was also a white supremecist but he never got back to me.
[quote comment="18812"]but it is not as important as the fact that you want to attribute men’s inventiveness or scientific enterprise with the fact that they are men. That’s up to you to prove. You haven’t.[/quote]
I haven’t?
Women haven’t achieved in the modern era comisserate to the proportion of resources they have access to, both financial and educational.
You theorize that women have a superior intellect that is quantitatively and qualitatively unique from men’s. To that I ask, where is the woman-enlightenment?
Many men participated in creating their scientific infrastructure against incredible odds. Theological persecution, poverty, class restrictions. Yet women, who now recieve the lion’s share of educational opportunities, control at least half of financial resources and have equal opportunity to recieve acclaim cannot manage to ‘enterprise’ at the same rate as men?
If you’re right, woman-enlightenment should be racing out of the gate, leaving man-science in the dust. Women shouldn’t be simply expanding on the theories men create, they should be creating entirely entirely new fields of woman-gnosis.
Since men fought against the odds to create science; they were willing to die for their ideas and often did. What’s stopping women when the odds are in their favor? (Or at least not as extreme. It’s unlikely that the creators of woman-gnosis are going to be hung.)
So, unless you can tell me what’s stopping women, I think this debate is pretty much done.
First of all there is no debate because you still haven’t put forth an argument. You’ve made a statement. But that’s it. And men fought against themselves, not “odds” to “create” science.
This is a good analogy of what just went down
God exists
I don’t believe you.
Why don’t you believe me? Why doesn’t God exists? I bet you can’t tell me. What could possibly be another reason for all this if not God?
*smacks forehead* So we *did* eventually get into the “men invented everything” discussion. It’s fruitless and circular.
BTW, yes, I am sort of in the hallowed halls of academia, and I can easily tell you that at least our formalized system of academic advancement—designed to free up minds for innovation, at least in the science—is NOT friendly to women. In fact, if a woman even slightly slips up (for instance, has a child at the wrong time) that could permanently end her career. I say this even though I work with a number of very smart women. Slight disparities in risk create large disparities in representation.
No, but your examples were intended, I presume, to suggest that science as men have conceived it came from phallic metaphors.
And no, I don’t have to “accept” anything. When someone tells me how to do it, I’ll believe it. If you’re suggesting this, then perhaps can you give us a pointer (a book, a reference, an article, an email address) that can tell us where to find the information that backs it up? Or whence you heard it?
Well, let’s back up a bit. I’m not sure that I agree that they have substantially different implications. I mean, behind door number 1 is something “not considered to be a viable, implementable program.” Behind door number 2 is something that you wouldn’t do because it is impractical or immoral to try. I’m not clear on how these are just different ways of stating the same thing: that for exterior reasons, separatism has the practical status of a thought-experiment.
Actually, there’s a middle position: separatism is neither entirely a thought-experiment nor an implementable program in toto, but instead, by taking the thought-experiment to the limit, it is intended to allow feminists to winnow out what is practical and implementable from what is not.
[quote comment="18846"]*smacks forehead* So we *did* eventually get into the “men invented everything” discussion. It’s fruitless and circular.[/quote]
When did I say that ‘men invented everything’?
[quote]BTW, yes, I am sort of in the hallowed halls of academia, and I can easily tell you that at least our formalized system of academic advancement—designed to free up minds for innovation, at least in the science—is NOT friendly to women. In fact, if a woman even slightly slips up (for instance, has a child at the wrong time) that could permanently end her career. I say this even though I work with a number of very smart women. Slight disparities in risk create large disparities in representation.[/quote]
And I can easily tell you that what you’re saying is wrong.
[quote comment="18848"]
And I can easily tell you that what you’re saying is wrong.[/quote]
Worse, it doesn’t address my fundemental argument.
Why haven’t women created their _own_ woman-gnosis(that moves beyond discussions of gender)? Now more then ever they have the resources.
Regardless of the discrimination they face due to the authorities(which men faced initially as well), they could still develop their own science and technology seperate of men. Which is what men did to begin with.
But women don’t. No woman-gnosis.
[quote comment="18847"]Well, let’s back up a bit. I’m not sure that I agree that they have substantially different implications. I mean, behind door number 1 is something “not considered to be a viable, implementable program.” Behind door number 2 is something that you wouldn’t do because it is impractical or immoral to try. I’m not clear on how these are just different ways of stating the same thing: that for exterior reasons, separatism has the practical status of a thought-experiment.[/quote]
I think that they state the same thing, in the end, but that they imply different things given the course taken to arrive at that statement. It’s one thing if separatism is a thought experiment from the start; it’s another if it’s a thought experiment because of the existence of impediments that, at a later date, may no longer exist, be overcome, or cease to be persuasive. It’s the difference between “it was never our intent to” and “if it wasn’t for the existence of.”
[quote]Actually, there’s a middle position: separatism is neither entirely a thought-experiment nor an implementable program in toto, but instead, by taking the thought-experiment to the limit, it is intended to allow feminists to winnow out what is practical and implementable from what is not.[/quote]
I’d only disagree about it being a middle position. It’s more of a way of using the current circumstances to advantage, and applicable to both — not a point between them.
kiuku:
ballgame:
Kiuku’s been here long enough that she should know the ropes by now. So let’s make that a bit firmer: We do not permit this kind of direct personal invective, whether the person targeted is a participant on this blog or not. Any similar remarks from kiuku will be subject to strikeout.
kuiku:
You’re right. That is a good analogy. What should be going down is something more like this:
What I’m seeing is a lot of toing and froing with claim and counterclaim, but with nobody actually backing up their claims with supporting evidence. The result is an “I’m right. No I’m right” pantomime.
What I said to Factory applies: Bare assertions convince nobody.
[quote comment="18854"]What I said to Factory applies: Bare assertions convince nobody.[/quote]
Bare assertions?
My argument is thus. In the last five centuries men(and a few women) have built a scientific revolution from very minimal initial resources: time, money, space and the support of like minds.
Women, in the last five centuries, have had access to similar resources. (They may have had access to _less_, but they had access to some.)
I presented an article on a researcher who has studied the issue of women’s resources:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_.....987874.stm
The article is a bit lightweight, but the researcher profiled makes the case that many women had access to resources and could choose how to manage them.
In that context, and assuming kiniku’s assertion that women have the same drive for ‘enterprise’ as men, we should see women historically using their resources to create some sort of gnosis. This woman-gnosis would be seperate from men’s science and, perhaps, smaller scale, yet it should *exist.* (The argument about how much access women had to resources is only relevant to the _scale_ of woman-gnosis, not its existance.)
The only ‘discrimination’ that can be claimed is that the institutions men created denied women access. But there was no discrimination against women creating their own gnosis. Many early scientists were simply men of means who had an interest and some resources to invest in that interest. No one was stopping women of means from taking on the role of hobby-scientist/inventor.
Moving my argument into the present day… now that women have even more access to resources, woman-gnosis should be flowering like never before. And since Kiniku believes women’s intellect is superior to men’s, it should be sweeping away all the stilted, stagnant, inferior man-gnosis.
Regardless if there is discrimination in the institutions of man-gnosis, women could still be developing their gnosis independantly. Just like men developed the scientific revolution independant of the prevailing dogma of the time.
So what we have is this. Men developed man-gnosis. They started from scratch–no institutions of higher learning, no body of literature, no awards and no publication journals. They started as hobbyists(necessarily) and gradually built up the infrastructure we see today.
No one prevented women from starting as hobbyists and gradually building up their _own_ infrastructure using the resources available to them.
How is the word “enterprise” any less “arbitrary” or “defined by men”?
And how is “achieve” defined by men anyway? Words are defined by usage. Dictionary complilers observe that usage and then write them up, (and lexicography is not a field dominated by men.)
It is, if that is indeed what she is doing, but that is not clear. Rather the thrust of her argumentat seems to be
1. The structures of society, schools, hospitals, etc., have been build mostly by men.
2. Cultural and scientific advances have come mostly from men.
3. There were no obstacles preventing women from doing these things.
You do not appear to be disputing points 1 and 2. (You have identified a large number of individual women of achievement or enterprise, whatever, but it is still only a tiny fraction of the number of men of comparable achievement and enterprise.) Nor have I seen those points convincingly disputed.
Point 3 is demonstrably false. Women were routinely excluded from education and other services. Men of enterprise and achievement were therefore building on the work of those who preceded them, a foundation denied to women. The suggestion that women could have built parallel structures from the ground up ignores the inhibiting effect of existing structures, and of a culture which encourages activism on the part of men.
Why separate? What was there to stop discoveries by women from being absorbed into “men’s” science, (which is, in fact, what happened.)
Your link is interesting the but Dr. Niebrzydowski’s findings don’t surprise me in any way. Our culture is blind to women’s activism just as it is to men’s suffering.
[quote comment="18857"]
Point 3 is demonstrably false. Women were routinely excluded from education and other services.[/quote]
But it was not a complete black out. I posted a reference to an article on the 15th century regarding women’s education. Women did have access to education.
Wealthy women would have had even more access to both education and resources.
[quote]Men of enterprise and achievement were therefore building on the work of those who preceded them, a foundation denied to women.[/quote]
What foundation? Much prior knowledge was wiped clean. The Empiracists founded a new branch of knowledge based on observing the natural world.
Imagine a propertied woman in the 15th century. Likely literate and with resources she can apply to her interests and time to pursue those interests. What’s preventing her from inventing the Scientific Method _herself_?
[quote]The suggestion that women could have built parallel structures from the ground up ignores the inhibiting effect of existing structures, and of a culture which encourages activism on the part of men.[/quote]
1. What inhibiting effect of existing structures are there? And how can structures have an effect prior to being built?
2. Encourages activism on the part of men? By killing those that develop theories in opposition to the existant dogma?
[quote comment="18864"]
Why separate? What was there to stop discoveries by women from being absorbed into “men’s” science, (which is, in fact, what happened.)[/quote]
Because of the assumption that the institutions of man-gnosis are antithetical to women-gnosis.
Initially the many rich, educated female scientific hobbyists might share their knowledge with the many rich, educated male scientific hobbyists. But then the male hobbyists start to publish their findings (of course, there is no reason why the female hobbyists didn’t get there first) and excluding the female hobbyists from being published. And the male hobbyists start creating institutions of higher learning–becoming academics and again they exclude the female hobbyists (of course, there is no reason why the female hobbyists didn’t found institutions first.)
Even if women were excluded from later stages in the institutionalization of empiracism, why weren’t they present in the early stages?
Founding a scientific society or academy only required a meeting place and a number of like minds interested in research. Even if male scientific societies excluded women, what stopped women from founding their own? I don’t believe women were excluded from meeting together and talking about mutual interests.
(In my argument I’m only refering to empiracism since it is a branch of knowledge that has, more recently, evolved into an institution.)
[...] kiuku: And men fought against themselves, not “odds” to “create” science. [...]
You can argue him, her, then Daran. I’m not interested in teaching anyone history.
Yes Mandos we did eventually get a “Men invented everything” discussion. It’s their favorite. And I never knew that men created culture too. wow.
Remember what I said about not killing men? I take that back.
Men weren’t “present”, collectively, at the early stages either. Most men had nothing to do with the institutionalisation of empiricism.
Those individuals who were “present” were mostly men (though not most men). However some women were “present”. Madame Lavoisier, for example, together with her husband, turned alchemy into an empirical science.
[quote comment="18929"]Those individuals who were “present” were mostly men (though not most men). However some women were “present”. Madame Lavoisier, for example, together with her husband, turned alchemy into an empirical science.[/quote]
If there were no ‘oppressions’ stopping women from taking an interest in these theories, why weren’t there _more_ Madame Lavoisiers? Assuming that women have the same passion and interest in this field of knowledge, we should see equal numbers of men and women in these embryonic acadamies. And even if women were excluded from the men’s acadamies, there should have been enough interest and opportunity to create woman-only ones.
This is the frustration I have in my life as well. Feminism postulates that men and women have equal interest in the same fields of endeavor. And yet I remain (mostly) alone in my interests.
Where are my female companions who share in my interests? To be honest, I don’t see this nebulous oppression preventing other women from engaging in the fields I engage in–oppression which I’m, apparently, too insentiate to feel–more it seems to me that they are _disinterested_.
And the more I feel akin to the men who share my interests rather then the women who don’t and seem to want to excuse their disinterest by pointing fingers at the ‘evil’ behavior of my fellow male enthusiasts.
To them it seems to be more about being mad at men then it is about actually taking an interest in the fields composed mostly of men.
Typhon, is that last paragraph a commnet on Comment 176?
[quote comment="19411"]Typhon, is that last paragraph a commnet on Comment 176?[/quote]
Not directly. But I suppose, now that you ask, it could be.
[...] revealing example of feminists excusing reprehensible behavior within their in-group is the case of Mary Daly, who we’ve discussed here before. Mary Daly was the radical feminist professor who referred [...]
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