Indeed, but Nietzsche neither accounts for everything nor equates value with merely existing.

By "independent" I do not mean of something other than the living being, some transcendent force or some such. I just mean one's value is a different truth than just being a state of existence.

If I have reason to act because it is valuable to me, it is not the same truth as merely existing.

Failure or success in a goal isn't the sort of thing that can make sense. Sentences make sense, actions makes sense (in respect of their objective). Labelling ('failure'/'success') is just a categorisation exercise. It might be wrong or right, but not sensical or nonsensical. — Isaac

This is the mistake. Actions do not just makes sense to given objective. Someone doesn't just have reason to do something because they exist with a related objective. It would make as much sense, in terms of existence, for them to fail. They actions to success only make sense if their is an ought.

Otherwise, it makes as much sense for them to fail in respect to their objective as succeed

I have to say that generally I can't make much sense of what you've written, so I've little faith that the following will actually address it, but I'll have a go...

My point is about what is believed if someone has a rational preference. I wasn't suggesting here it was the there was an ought. I was saying any postion which holds their is a rational course of action holds there is an ought, as it is a logical requirement of actions being rationally preferable to others.

I do not agree.

Moral claims were always justified by something other than the fact a person makes a claim, by an ought significance which is truth independent of whether people make claims for it. The moral was never a contingent normative practice-- that's why they are still true even when contingent normative practices are the opposite or the moral (e.g. instances of stealing still being wrong, even when people are practising it all the time).

A moral justification (ought)is a different truth to contingent normative practices (the existing states of our actions and what we believe about actions). That's why we cannot bootstrap an ought or absence or an ought simply on the existence of a practice or culture.

Sartre is doing something closer to description of a new state. Essences don't work because they substitute some type of eternal idea or concept (e.g. human nature, the nature of man, the nature of woman, etc. ), for the work of a specific being at a specific time. There is no problem with people taking certain actions or exiting with certain traits (their "choices"). They happen all the time (indeed, one of Sartre's point is we cannot escape making a choice). His point is just these are finite occurrences, a particular moment of our being, there in terms of itself. Any of them could change with any new moment, when a different moment of ourself makes some other choice. We are always are own creators in this respect.

Any of us might, in fact, possibility do anything. All it would take is a choice in the next moment. Since it is our being which performs who we are, it cannot be limited by some mere concept, by some idea of what us as being or our sort of beings are supposed to do. (given the other content of this thread, it should be noted that "possible" is being used to refer to what our being might be, not what powers for actions we are actually capable of-- we aren't all omnipotent gods just because our being defines us, even though that is something our being might do).

The reason you seem to think otherwise is because you are still ascribing people have a rational reasonof taking action, absent the presence of the ought. You are still acting like people still have reasons for taking on action or another when there is no ought, as if the mere presence they existed seeking an outcome was sufficient to suggest it should be achieved.

My point is this cannot be true. People don't just get to say it is true an outcome ought be achieved just because they exist wanting it. That's the same leap as someone who thinks getting an outcome must be an objective truth just because they exist wanting it. Without an ought, their failure will make just as much sense as their success.

What is the truthmaker in "if it's true getting my desire is the rational outcome"? — Isaac

The fact the existence of your desire does not equal that it ought to be achieved. You only have reason to prefer your own success if it ought to be over your failure. Otherwise, it makes just as much sense for you to be one who fails and never gets their desires fulfilled, even from your own point of view .

Also, I'm not sure how any of this relates to the argument about assignation of blame being an objective-oriented speech act. In order for such an argument to be plausible, it only need be the case that the speech act is effective at it's objective. That being so, you can almost guarantee that people will use it that way and so it becomes, de facto, what the speech means.

The objective is the problem: it supposes an ought. If there is no ought, then we have no reason for uttering this speech act to achieve this outcome over any other. The effectiveness doesn't matter because , without the ought, failure in this goal makes as much sense as success.

People will, of course, act to achieve success because they want it, but this doesn't ground the action a preferable or the rational option. It's just describing how people exist acting to get what they want. That one has "the might" and uses it does not amount to an action being preferable, either in terms of ethics or the rational.

I have not assumed it. My point is the exact opposite: we don't just have a fact that I should get what I want. If I exist with a desire, it does not entail I should (and have rational reason) to get it. I'm not arguing oughts are so here.

The point is that if I think my desire should happen, that is rational I get it over its absence, then I believe there is an ought. The ought is somemthing my thought and its supposed rationality cannot be posited without.

Now, I might be wrong in this believe. Maybe the ought is untrue, it being false that I ought to get my desire and it has a rational presence over the opposite. I could be believing a falsehood in thinking getting my desire was the rational outcome.

My point isn't that the ought must be. It's that if it's true getting my desire is the rational outcome, then an ought is so.

Because they aren't truthful without an ought. Just because I exist wanting something is not a reason I must have it. The existence of my desire does not automatically mean it is truthful my desire should be fulfilled.

Of course, we may have a world in which I rather not be ostracised and this reflects what ought to happen, and so has a rational force, but this invoves an ought. My personal objective reflects what ought to happen, and so has rational force.

That's just a popularity and how others treat you for it-- questions of existence only. Again, any outcome of the world makes as much sense as another here. Existence where you are ostracised is just as logically coherent as one where you are not.

It's only rational for you to stop if there is an ought: that you ought not get ostracised. Then we would actually have a reason to prefer an existence of not being ostracised over being so. Yes, it is rational, but only to a world in which you ought not be ostracised.

The problem is the statment is not rational unless there something wrong with the action. It's not rational for someone to do what you want, to act to achieve your goals, unless that action and goal ought to happen , even for oneself-- goals are normative in nature, they are an account its true something ought to occur.

Now, it's true one doesn't need the ought to be to exist with goals or act to achieve them. Those are states of the world which happen regardless of whether they ought to, by one's existence. In this space though, the goal has no more rational force then an alternative. It makes as much sense for existence to produce a person who doesn't achieve their goals as much as it does. Existence is just as capable of creating a person who doesn't want kill anyone, but goes around shooting up large crowds.

Nietzsche is anti-nilhism. His major point is that life itself is valuable and nihilism has a much longer history than just when people grew critical if religious or traditional accounts of meaning-- that nihilism begins not when we no longer have God to give meaning, but rather from the point in which we thought we were meaningless such that God would have to give our life meaning.

The case against God would be prosecuted the crimes of the prisoners needn't to have occurred in the first place. God could have chosen a world those crimes and people never existed, instead making a version with similar people who were never dangerous, who never choose actions to hurt others with their free will (free will doesn't actually get God off the hook here, as God knows which people and their choices are going to exist).

You are thinking in almost the right direction, what's at stake is even greater than whether prisoners get released. It's whether they even get to exist at all.

God, could, indeed make a world in which these people, their crimes and their danger to others, never existed. Doing so though would have a consequence: those criminals would never exist. Worse, they would have been adjudged not worth existence by God here, for God deliberately chose to make other people instead, to avoid the criminals on account of how they exist.

Humans are sometimes, maybe even frequently for some us, in this situation. One example is making judgements on whether to complete pregnancies of children known to have certain maladies. We have the power to decide whether to have a person with Down's syndrome live or not. If we so choose, we can make it so they never live, never encounter certain difficulties or bring us their specific inconveniences. But that comes at a price: we are decreeing this instance of life not worth existence, suing our power to choose something else over it instead.

The omni God's evilness or negligence is not quite as cut and dried as it appears. In some respects, creating or allowing a less than moral world to exist is valuing the existence of those who are less than moral.

The issue is that with omnipotence and omniscience, God has both the knowledge and ability to make anything happen, to prevent or set events up to occur in any other way. Such a God is a doctor with every miracle cure and the opportunity to use it. A lot of people, in this instance, are very concerned with or confused by God's culpable negligence in this instance-- God has the power to fix any problem encountered, but actively chose not to.

I quote this line, but refer to all of your argument up to this point. You have misunderstood. Boys have tendencies toward physical spatial play - and girls toward social play. It's very well noted in the literature. These are not one-off experimental results. And it doesn't mean those behaviours are exclusive; but that there are distinct differences in patterns of play. Given a room full of toys, boys will instinctively go for the cars and footballs - whereas girls will go for the dolls. Piaget is not some left wing undergraduate psych student - he spent his life studying developmental psychology. Why impugn his professionalism? — counterpunch

I have not misunderstood. The point is that the given evidence of patterns does not fit with the conclusions about which trait belongs of which people in the given analysis.

A mass pattern is a mass pattern: it shows a rate of occurrence amongst a group. It does not show nature if an individual is only the a majority occurrence. Paiget has observation and grounds to claim a pattern of play in the observer mass group, that it is the cases that more girls played a certain way and boys another.

He does not have grounds to suggest social play is the specific “nature” a girls. Or that spacial play is the specific “nature” of boys. The empirical state of a given girl or boy is not a mass pattern. If we asking, “What is in the nature of a person with a given gender to do?” we are not measuring what behaviour are more common of a mass, we are asking about what it is a individual of a girl or boy might do. His own observations, the lack of exclusivity of behaviour, show the exact opposite of what you suggest they do: that girls and boys have a nature of engaging in spacial or social play respectively.

The argument you are making, suggesting that girl and boys only have a “nature” because more of them behave in some way, is outright lying about what occurs empirically. Some, even many, girls and boys have a nature which are the opposite of the pattern. Just because there aren’t as many of them doesn’t make them any less existing people with their own behaviours.

The problem isn’t that patterns of behaviours haven’t be observed, it’s that people are interpreting these to mean something they don’t and engaging in anti-scientific (as it is blind to the empirical reality of girls and boys who’s nature it is to break the pattern) account of the nature of girls and boys in the process.

That's just not correct; not least because it's not nature "vs" nurture. No-one with any education would see these as exclusive. It doesn't happen, and never has. It's always been that both nature and nurture influence development, but often one is more influential. Lefties want everything to be nurture - so they can subject it to their identity politics dogma. They construe gender as a social construction - but then, I think you should read the story of David Reimer. Dr Money's conclusions were premature to say the least - and yet still form the basis of left wing gender politics dogma. — counterpunch

You misunderstand. I was not suggesting any people were claiming development was only nature or only nature, my point was that each influence was both nature and nature. So there is no opposition of nature effects and nurture effects at all.

Take something considered a nature, like the influence of a gene. Nowadays we know that the gene does not act unilaterally. It occurs in a specific environment which did not induce it to some other effect. Now take something considered nurture, like humans learning one language or another. How do we learn a language? Our bodies have to react in certain way to the environment we encounter. Our biology makes it happen. The supposed “nurture” effect is only produced if one has a specific biological nature. It’s literally impossible for nature or nurture to be more influential because every instance is produced by a specific combination of itself and its environment.


The notion of a “blank slate” has been dead for decades. It’s also just about as far as you can get from the modern left accounts of gender identification as you can get. I’m very familiar with the David Remier case. It’s a seminal case for analysis of gender identification, innate sense of body and self.

It is very important because it shows the innate pull and effects of gender identification, and the dangers of community authors trying to enforce an identity and belonging which is not one’s own. Mr. Money’s attempt to enforce and alter David Remier’s sense of identity and belonging is akin to what your gender binary does to many trans people.

When encountering a trans person with dysphoria, the gender binary tries to insist (exactly like Money did to Remier), that their sense of identity and belonging of a body is false, and instead is really this other one (that Reimer was a girl, who was meant to have a certain body, in the case of Money. In the case of your gender binary, that a trans woman is actually just a man and is meant to belong with a man’s body). The left isn't concerned with, as Money was, attempting to give someone whatever identity or gender they want, irrespective what identity a person actually had. They are concerned with recognising what it innate to a given person, even when that violates exceptions of what their identity should or must be.

That is quite possibly the maddest paragraph ever written in the English language. Barring incredibly rare genetic abnormalities, a human being with a penis is a man. Not "categorized as a man." But as a matter of biological fact, the penis owner IS a man. Incredibly rare exceptions - such as hermaphrodites, do not invalidate the fact a human with a penis IS a man. That way madness lies - and that's precisely the intent of left wing, post modernist, neo marxist, political correctness bigots and bullies, regardless of the harm their crazy making causes. — counterpunch

It's clearly not a biological fact. Even you admit that to the biological state doesn't automatically make you a man-- if that were true, then various intersex people would be just men too, as they are human. Do you not see the outright contradiction this insistence?

When I say categorised as man, what I mean is there is a distinction between a biological state and having a given identity. The former is an existing organ, which might occur also sorts of places: someone might have chopped on off an have it sitting on their mantle (is this biological state of a penis a man?), perhaps someone has worked out how to grow now in a lab (is this biological state of a penis is a jar a man?), it might be an organ on a intersex person. So how come the biological state gets some exception when on these people you deem men, such that it's presence just means a man is there?

The point here is not people with biologies don't have identities. People with biological states of penis are men all the time. It's just that the identity of man isn't given by the presence of the biological state of a penis (as seen in all those expectations who pretend don't have relevance), but rather through the identity itself. There are men with penises, rather men being there because there is a penis.

This is what I was talking about: the argument is the gender binary is objectively untrue, for it does not recognise various objective facts about gender, sex and the body (and the binary is most certianly not "scientific" because it tells falsehoods about empirical states of the world).

To bring this back somewhat on topic, gender, sex and its relation to bodies is a great exmaple where what's professed as the "scientific" is not so at all. Take the suggestion about gender you gave in your response to me:

I disagree, and so does the science. Developmental psychologists like Piaget - note distinct differences in play patters and behaviours between boys and girls that cannot be attributed solely to socialisation — counterpunch

What does such an observation entail? It's not "the nature" of a boy or a girl. Neither is the sole feature of individuals who are a girl or boy. Even at face value, what the observation has measured (higher rates of certain play behaviours amongst groups of children), is not reflected in what conclusion is claimed (that certian behaviours are only of girls or boys). Indeed, the observations actually show the opposite of the claim: that both boy and girls engage in either set of play behaviours, so either are of a girl or a boy. A greater number of girls behaving are certian way doesn't eliminate the empirical states of other who act in other ways. The same for boys.

Your claim suggests an empirical falsehood: that a certains behaviours are exclusive performed by girls or boys, as some are done more often by one group or another.


Then we have a question of "socialisation" vs "nature." The fact you are raising this shows you haven't looked at much in the last 40 years on the topic. Nature vs nature has long been recognised as an incoherent opposition because everything we do has both a biological and environmental component. When we are "nurtured", our biological body is responding to an environment to produce an outcome. The same is true of "nature", as when our biology grows one way or another, ot does so in an environment (and in virtue of the absence of an environment which doesn't cause it to do something else).

The nature vs nurture opposition is not scientific: it ignores how both biology and an environment go into producing something we do. In this respect the left isn't afraid of biology these days, indeed they affirm it.

Nowhere is this clearer than in accounts of sex and gender in relation to the body. The thing about biological states is well, they are biological states, regardless of how we categorise them under sex, gender or any other identity categories we might have. If we have someone who is classified as a woman, but has a penis, she still has a penis. The biological fact of her penis isn't dependent on being categorised as a man.

The gender binary is anti-scientific with respect to biology. It doesn't treat biology as its guiding principle. Rather than recognising biological states for what they are, and that they are what they are, no matter how they might be classified under sex and gender, it treats biology like it is subordinate to categories of our language, as if what we named biology was what made it what it was.

Even worse, this practice leads us to ignore , dismiss or deny the very existence of some biologies-- such as various intersex biologies or even just the biology of someone engaged in what us supposedly cross gender play (i.e. the failure to recognise more uncommon behaviours of a certian body are still behaviours of that body), for they do not fit with the binary narrative of what sort of person occurs with a given gender.

The gender binary is as far from science as you can get. It concerns itself not with describing the world and the biology people have, but with affirming a culture of placing bodies in select categories, regardless of how their biology exists.

This is probably at great risk of going of topic, but the left is cornered with truth with regards to gender. They identify, correctly, that the existence of a body is not equivalent to the categorisations of either sex or gender we give might give to them. One's body is a body, not a sex or gender. To think this is concerned with ignoring truth is to entirely misunderstand what is at stake.

Does this mean you are arguing Europeans are only human in appearnce because they thought some concepts in their language that other people didn't at a certain time?

One also wonders what this means for babies, since they have to learn language. Are babies the only time anyone is human, before they start thinking in the concepts of only appearing-older-people in language they never had access to before?

Well, I'm not.

Could is not does. Just because I could use English to say anything, it doesn't mean I do. In any given instance where I use English, I make a choice (to keep to the context Sartreian terms) to speak one meaning or another. I could have said "Banno ate ghosts for breakfast" with this entire paragraph of this post, in English (a new, novel use of English compared to what people usually use), but I didn't. I said something else, with an entirely different meaning, which will never be "Banno ate goats for breakfast."

Since could is what I possiblity might have said, and did is what I did, both are true at the same time. I did use language which never says, "Banno ate goats for breakfast", but that use could have (even though it never will).

I'm saying you're playing Sartre. Since any use of English could mean anything, there is nothing beyond the scope of what could be said in English. fdrake is arguing the opposite to Sartre, suggesting there was some essence to English, such that it is incapable of talking about some concepts.

You're Sartre needs work. Since we are free, our use of language included, English could be used to talk about anything at all. There is nothing conceivable that English (or any other language) could not talk about. The game of English can be anything we choose.

Definitely not sentimental, I'm talking objective material conditions of society: what is entailed in one's social existence and how it relatest others.

"Colourblindess" is akin to a empirical error. It's refusal to observe how the bodies we talk about (sometimes in terms of racial identity) occur in specific relations.

I was addressing assertions about the need to be pro Western and how it related to supremacy.

There are "colourblind" people in all countries no doubt, and it is indeed racist, as doesn't recognise the need to recognise a person of a race as part of the community,
but I was not answering that question. (and its definitely not all people on each society. Some people are not "colourblind" ).

It's racist or supremacist because everyone else does the same, in their own conditions. The values and practices you identify aren't uniquely Western. People of other cultures partake in them or are just as capable of doing so (as with any culture, values and practices ebb and flow with the tides if history and circumstances).


Nothing is wrong with being happy with achievements within Western culture, of course. The "pro west" is a narrative of othering. People do not mention because they are proud we have antibiotics. They do so because they imagine a narrative by which the West are a superior people and culture: supposedly, it is unique of us to have these technologies, unlike all those other primitive cultures (which is of course hilarious because The West lagged behind other cultures in anti bacterial practices for ages-- such technologies are not unique to the West and Western culture).

The "colourblind" approach is racist. "Race" is a proxy for the material conditions and signifcance of a body. When we ignore someone's skin colour, we do not recognise their body is one which belongs of our society. We leave the question of whether society values them up to unobserved whim. We do not recognise that it is our responsibility to value people of those bodies, such that we will give them a society which respects them (and acts to change itself when it doesn't).

Racial equality is not a question of ignoring race. It is one of asserting that people of each race belong to our community--i.e. not "I do not see race", but "I do see you, your community, that you belong of our society."

The fun part is pretty Hume much agrees with Kant here: that causality is not manfest in empirical appearance (i.e. it must be a priori relation which is not granted by empirical appearance). Hume just understands the relation to be formed by existence of states, rather than being a conceptually sourced.

The blank slate is neither here nor there here because any investigation of things is occuring after the blank slate has passed. If I'm thinking about things and causes, my mind is not a blank slate. It has been filled with ideas.

The funny thing is extremes of "social construction" are the genuine materialists. They recognise that the finite construction of things applies not only of our social relations, but also of physics relations too. Gravity, for example, doesn't just always occur. It is a manifestation of specific objects on relation to each other, a thing coupled with other things (it's environment), which happen as they do on account of how those things exist. At any moment, we might have a thing with a different relation, an object which behaves differently. The pull of gravity is soemthing which has to be made true, over not, by the existence of the things at the time.

You're right about some Marxists being upset with this kind of material account, but that is because they are in some respect idealist: they have notions or concepts of how society will necessarily work, that there is a set of outcomes which will occur, secured beyond the action of finite material states in a counterfactual relation.

The "post modernists" aren't against truth. Indeed, the favourite targets of the right are all about the truth: the various objective states the world and society takes. They just recognise the objective states are a contingent formation: a truth put there by moment of existence, rather than something put there by a transcendent force or derived from a concept or principle.

Jersey is referring to the nihilism of transcendent metaphysics, where something else is said to replace or perform man's/the material's value. I would quibble because with Jersey's suggestion of Christianity. The transcendent metaphysic and their priests have a far longer history than just Christanity.

Nihilism (our earthly lives have no meaning, no morals, etc) begins when we suppose Earth existences are worthless. The transcendent metaphysics (e.g. God, etc., whatever meaning giver your tradition supposes) then flies into rescue us from our ignominy. We don't need to worry or fear, for our worthlessness will be cured by this transcendent force.

The nihilism Jersey us talking about is not the dishonest posturing which sometimes emerges out of some forms or moral scepticism (these people are usually not moral nihilists at all, just confused about what morality is and how to oppose objectionable claims about morality they encounter), but the condition of thinking material existence has no meaning or value itself (and so then posing a transcendent realm to do it instead).

But that's the issue: here "racial issues" are just thinking someone ought to have one social position or another because someone has a skin colour or not. It's a material relation of bodies in a community.

So to merely stop thinking concepts of race doesn't actually get us to the position you describe. It might, if the the absence of a concept of race were then to cause future changes in the community, more equitable relationships between certian bodies, etc.

We know, however, this effect will be extremely limited by the way our economic system functions. Poverty runs in a cycle. Those who a poor, usually remain poor. If we just stop thinking about race, the economic disparities will largely remain because the structure of poverty will reproduce or where it already is. Stopping thinking about race will not slove the major issues in this area. The bodies in question will still be overwhelming in poverty. The racism of concern, economic disparities between these bodies, remains the case. Stopping thinking about race doesn't make it disappear.

Yes, it's partly a Buffy reference.

So if we remove racial signification, your chain breaks, yes? — Pro Hominem

In many cases, no. The social relation in question is one of particular bodies. If every human lost their awareness skin colour tomorrow, it would not alter many of the present social relations between bodies. The same bodies would still be in jails, poverty striken communities, etc., and the structures of systematic racism would still be present of the bodies. We would just cease to be aware of them.

Many people make the mistake of analysing these issues in terms of intention towards a skin colour, deliberately granting or harming people is some way because they have one skin colour or another. This is only one aspect of racism. Much of it is just a relation of how a body exists or is treated. A black body does not need someone to deliberately act upon it because it is black, the general systems of society can act to produce an unjust relation without any mention of skin colour-- e.g. a capitalism in which the black bodies are overwhelming in poverty compared to others, a justice system in which black bodies are overwhelming incarcerated, etc.

Just because these systems might act with reasons of employment/profit or in response to crimes, rather than because someone has a skin colour, it doesn't change the impact upon the bodies. Certain bodies, the black ones, are still overwhelming poor, incarcerated, etc. For us to forget concepts of race entirely doesn't alter these circumstances.

For example, if we eradicated all forms of systemic racism in the US (magically, instantly) but black Americans are still disproportionately poor (not changed), would that be a problem for you? — Judaka

The economic disparity is one of the major examples of systematic racism. If it has not been eliminated, all forms of systematic racism have not been ended.

What matters is that they are a body (with a skin colour) which is treated with respect, given a place on a society, etc., so it's not a simple matter of ignoring race.

It's not good enough to say, "Race never matters, ignore it and just think about other things". If there are people of a certain skin colour who are treated badly in a society, it is an act upon them, upon their body, with its skin colour.

The equitable society cannot just ignore bodies different skin colour, as if it didn't matter where they occurred or they were treated. They have to understand a body of any skin colour is to be respected, understood to belong, treated justly, etc.

It must actively understand each individual, with their skin colour, is valued and belongs. It is not colorblind. It gets up and pronounces each person belongs in their own skin: a society in which White, Black, Asian, etc., such that it matters how each of those bodies is treated by society.

If that is true, what is wrong with white privilege? How is it a mistake or untrue?

That's because I have read the thread up till now. I've got enough information to describe what your positions are doing.

My point was never that you were denying facts of systematic racism, only that you were rejecting its factual connection to the concept of white privilege. You say accept systematic racism, but how does this fit with a denial of the description of the material condition, that white people have systematic advantages at the expense of non-white people (i.e. "white privilege")? This material condition, referenced/named "white privilege", entails the systematic racism you free is there.

If you assent to the systematic racism, you agree there is the social phenomena which others are identifying with the words "white privilege".

Oh I know that very well (my point was you were calling "White privilege" a racism when it was not, rather than you were denying systematic racism occurred), which leads me to the next point: how can you deny white privilege when it is a literal description of what the given social relationship entails: that society is doing things which give white people systematic advantages at the expense of black people.

I'm not making assumptions about your position. My point is it doesn't make sense given what you would seem to agree with about social relations. In other words: you are unwillingly to call a spade a spade, out of concern for hurting white people by having their culture as identified as racist.

I'm saying that because it appears you are treating white privilege as though it were a judgment determined on the basis of someone having white skin.

I was not engaging in any sort of racism.

I was descirbing how there are bodies, which are identified and related to through racial or ethnic identities, which are subject to different systematic conditions in our society.

White privilege isn't something people have by having white skin. Privilege isn't a merit/value they attain by a fact of having white skin, it's a material relation of different sorts of bodies within a culture. It is something the bodies of our society do. Whites do NOT have privilege because they have white skin. They have privilege because material conditions of society act to give groups of white people systematic advantages.

Privilege is describing the fact our society acts in certain ways towards people, it is not suggesting people attain advantage simply by having a skin colour.

Why is the idea an important piece of countering racism? It's recognition of systematic advantage people of cetain bodies have over others in a racist society.

When we pretend discrimination has nothing to do with the ways in which our bodies are identified, classified and treated, we miss the ways in which those bodies of a group are treated by society. We start making ignorant dismissals of systematic racial issues as simply some other force (e.g. crime), and ignore that a racial disparities are actually formed by a material condition of a certain body (e.g. a black body) itself. That's to say, racisms are not just defined by people intentionally acting to hurt or exclude a racial group, but also just by a mere fact which places a racial group in some kind of social disparity to others.

I was assuming the context was refering to cases in question were men were learing from sexual interest. My postion is certainly not that any look equaled objectification. All staring is not even objectification.

People refered to strippers deliberately to both show how sexual display is not equivalent to objectification but how men take it to be. Strippers are people too. They have their own agency and different range of sexual activities they are comfortable with or not.

The point many men do not recognise this, including several in this thread, such that the women are treated as nothing more than an object to fulfil a sexual purpose, rather than being recognised for the people and professionals they are. The following is a perfect example of this:

As soon as a transaction takes place, in this case money, all bets are off. — “brett”

This is not true. To strip it not an agreement to any kind of sexual activity or desire. Some strippers may in fact insist people do not stare with a specific tone. Just as they might insist not to be touched, spoken about in certain ways, photographed, etc., an exchange of money does not take away the question of what activity someone else is comfortable with.

Even an act being specifically mentioned in a contract doesn’t change this. Maybe a strip club holds a policy that men can stare however they want, but this doesn’t alter what an individual dancer is comfortable with. Men (and the strip club) taking she must be subject to any stare is objectification, for it denies who she is supposed be sexually without reference to her own agency and wishes.

If we recognise the dancer as a person, with agency and wishes, we would know that not even a contract, including one we are paying for, would entail that she must be subject to any stare. We would recognise respecting her as a person and performer entails being aware of the sexual relation she is comfortable with. We would choose not to stare in ways she found uncomfortable because her well-being is important to us, and we recognise the interaction as an event of mutual agency.

Nor do I think it’s only “scantily clad” women that are stared at. Nor do I think the men who lean out car windows yelling at girls are the same as men who might idly look at a passing women, That might just be a difference of maturity or upbringing. It’s not so simple is it? Not that I’m suggesting you were saying so. — “brett”

Indeed. The point is, however, that all those men have something in common: they think of the woman as thing which must give them their sexual satisfaction, they all objectify her. They do not understand the woman to be here own person, who gets to choose whether to be involved in a sexual interaction or activity.

Your first premise is incohrent.

If she chooses to partake in displaying a sexy dance for others, it is not an act of objectification. Others are meant to see and enjoy the dance. In the respect, it is not dehumanizing but rather the opposite: she affirming her own agency and will in doing the sexy dance and being seen doing it. (in this context, rhe act of stipping would only be dehumanising if she was something againist her wishes as a sexual being. This happens plenty too--i.e. cocerion to strip, either out of economic concerns or social pressure from bosses-- but this is a different situation and is an objectfiction of the social syestem or the person coercing her to strip against her will ).

Objectification isn't about obtaining economic or social value. It's about the relationship of an individual's agency and will to how others treat them.