What are your thoughts regarding the suggestion that 'pragmatists and feminists are necessary partners'? (see my underline below) — Amity
gravitas — frank
But there's no call to point out when anyone stumbles, whether he's strong or weak. You see what I mean? It's bad for the soul. — Srap Tasmaner
For me, the word "arena" refers to the arena where the Roman ludi took place. Combat by gladiators or the killing of wild beasts for the entertainment of the public. The "man in the arena" is properly a slave engaging in blood sports to amuse others, not the romantic hero portrayed by Roosevelt. TR certainly killed his share of wild beasts for his own amusement, of course, but if he thought of himself as "the man in the arena" I wonder if he understood what it implied. — Ciceronianus
You never know what battles the people around you are fighting. — frank
I know of a pragmatist I admire who is a woman. She's Susan Haack, a valiant defender of pragmatism from the vagaries of such as Rorty, who thinks Dewey was a postmodernist before postmodernism became popular. I don't know if she qualifies as a feminist. — Ciceronianus
For one thing, I’m very independent: rather than follow philosophical fads and fashions, I pursue questions I believe are important, and tackle them in the ways that seem most likely to yield results; I am beholden to no clique or citation cartel; I put no stock in the ranking of philosophy graduate programs over which my colleagues obsess; I accept no research or travel funds from my university; I avoid publishing in journals that insist on taking all the rights to my work; etc., etc. Naturally, this independence comes at a price; but it also earns me the freedom to do the best work I can, without self-censorship, and to communicate with a much wider audience than the usual “niche literature” does — Interview with Susan Haack - Richard Carrier blogs
The aim should be to get the most thoughtful, creative, discriminating, honest, philosophically constructive people into the profession; and—essential to achieving this goal—to prevent such irrelevant factors as a person’s sex (or race) from distorting our judgment of the quality of his or her mind. If only we could achieve this, artificial attempts to create “diversity” would be unnecessary.
Susan Haack says: “the kind of feminism that appeals to me places the stress on what all of us, regardless of sex, have in common as human beings, and on the vitally important differences between one individual and another. This is why your hypothetical generic-woman-aspiring-to-be-a-philosopher strikes me a distraction at best… I am saddened to think how glacially slow our progress seems to be towards acknowledging the simple fact that, just like men, women are all different, and, as Dorothy Sayers put it many decades ago, shouldn’t be expected “to toddle along all in a flock, like sheep.”
No doubt, she’s more than right: Women are different individuals. Look at Susan Haack versus Dorothy Murdock. Reason versus fantastic beliefs. The contrast is striking.
Still, the ideal of focusing only on what “all of us…have in common as human beings”, making abstraction of all other particulars, such as, in this case, erasing the difference in sex is illusory — one of the great tenets of the fallacy of imposing PC ideology on the working of the brain.
The “human being” as such doesn’t exist. This is an abstraction conceived by the Enlightenment, in its fight agains the rules of gods. Only physical persons do exist. Those are the characteristics immediately perceived in encountering another “human being”: sex, age, ethnic markers, native environment, then friendly or hostile intentions, face, hair, dress, language, religious beliefs etc…Those are vital components of social recognition and vital to our survival.
The dream of erasing the social and biological particularities of life is the goal of political correctness, but it is a self-imposed illusion, a modern form of ideology trying to enforce an abstraction as another primary, immediate belief.
But the abstraction of the modern “human being” remains in fact the product of a long chain of rational thinking that cannot of itself erase the immediate modes of brain functions. It may with the help of sanctions and enforcement control behavior, and play a big role in political and legal theorizing, but it will not become a spontaneous belief of “fast thinking”.
So, sex, age, language, native origins do remain a factor in the formation of the self. Even John Locke would have to admit it.
And so, of course, Susan Haack does give us an excellent reminder to refresh our acquaintance with John Locke’s ” Of the Conduct of the Understanding”, and perhaps to review the whole life of John Locke as well.
If you're willing to accept that some kind of feminist analysis is helpful, especially along intersectional/postcolonial lines, and that broadly speaking anti-patriarchy politics is doing Good Things (tm), then there's room to talk about what's to be done. If you're on the "we should be concerned about nothing but international class based geo-politics" boat, that is fair enough. It is a respectable boat. There's another boat, which is the "international class based geo politics would be swell, and so would emancipatory politics in political north countries"... I assume you are also in that boat. — fdrake
there's a type of social concept which is required to understand and work on these things. Like a demographic. Trying to understand why people act the way they do. As men and women. Around relationships, cohabitation, sex and all that. There're problems. And they're not all addressed by throwing money at them.
If those problems are simultaneously interpersonal and systemic - which they seem to be - then you end up looking at norms and what enables people to act in accordance with them. That's the space this discussion operates in. — fdrake
How would you flip the table and play the old one? — fdrake
I don't see what's gained by the intersectional approach over just tackling each issue as it is. — Isaac
Maybe that's a weak version of intersectionality though, I'm claiming that some of the time it makes sense to try it for some problems, rather than it ought to be the primary viewpoint used for formulating those problems. — fdrake
[...] In my conversations with right-wing critics of intersectionality, I’ve found that what upsets them isn’t the theory itself. Indeed, they largely agree that it accurately describes the way people from different backgrounds encounter the world. The lived experiences — and experiences of discrimination — of a black woman will be different from those of a white woman, or a black man, for example. They object to its implications, uses, and, most importantly, its consequences, what some conservatives view as the upending of racial and cultural hierarchies to create a new one.
But Crenshaw isn’t seeking to build a racial hierarchy with black women at the top. Through her work, she’s attempting to demolish racial hierarchies altogether.
[...] But Crenshaw said that contrary to her critics’ objections, intersectionality isn’t “an effort to create the world in an inverted image of what it is now.” Rather, she said, the point of intersectionality is to make room “for more advocacy and remedial practices” to create a more egalitarian system.
[...] Indeed, intersectionality is intended to ask a lot of individuals and movements alike, requiring that efforts to address one form of oppression take others into account. Efforts to fight racism would require examining other forms of prejudice (like anti-Semitism, for example); efforts to eliminate gender disparities would require examining how women of color experience gender bias differently from white women (and how nonwhite men do too, compared to white men).
A good question then would be: What is left out when we dismiss both feminine and masculine traits of a human?
I think far too many human characters are defined as either masculine or feminine. Things like compassion, logical reasoning, basic feelings aren’t masculine or feminine. — ssu
Masculinity and femininity nowadays are seen as traits present in both men and women, but when discussing the so-called 'darker side' of masculinity the discussion is always about men. Not about masculinity, and (obviously(?)) not about women.
Even still, it's unhealthy to associate these essential traits with inherently negative things. The message it sends to boys and young men is that there's something wrong with them. Sadly, I think that's a message many of them have already taken to heart.
What this reminds me of is how certain religious groups like to label the woman as inherently flawed and sinful. Forgive me for being skeptical when such a group claims to be taking an open-minded, balanced approach to things. — Tzeentch
To reiterate, though the primary beneficiaries of a patriarchal society are men, they are not men in general. As@180 Proof pointed out, patriarchy (as I conceive it, simply a society dominated by masculine values) funnels wealth and power to a small cadre of a particular type who happen to be men, but theoretically could be of either sex. And the solution is not to eliminate competition or demonize men or masculine values but to recognize that the way we understand our interrelationships is infused with an arbitrary self-justifying way of looking at things that, I would argue, is deficient and in some senses destructive. ( — Baden
Here's a classic statement, from Raymond Chandler's "The Simple Art of Murder," published in The Atlantic in 1944, a defense of hard-boiled detective fiction and particularly of Hammett. — Srap Tasmaner
masculinity as a kind of archetype has been around for thousands of years in multiple cultures. — frank
Any other guys feel that way? — Srap Tasmaner
Having thought about it more, I guess I would expect courage to tend to manifest differently in men and women. — wonderer1
Campaigns need to build solidarity, not break it down. — Isaac
Having thought about it more, I guess I would expect courage to tend to manifest differently in men and women.
— wonderer1
I agree, given that expression, rather than traits, is what makes a gender. Care to say more? — Moliere
looking at interlocking systems of oppression effecting people marginalised in more than one way. — fdrake
To reiterate, though the primary beneficiaries of a patriarchal society are men, they are not men in general. As@180 Proof pointed out, patriarchy (as I conceive it, simply a society dominated by masculine values) funnels wealth and power to a small cadre of a particular type who happen to be men, but theoretically could be of either sex. And the solution is not to eliminate competition or demonize men or masculine values but to recognize that the way we understand our interrelationships is infused with an arbitrary self-justifying way of looking at things that, I would argue, is deficient and in some senses destructive. — Baden
Now more than ever, it's important to look boldly at the reality of race and gender bias -- and understand how the two can combine to create even more harm. Kimberlé Crenshaw uses the term "intersectionality" to describe this phenomenon; as she says, if you're standing in the path of multiple forms of exclusion, you're likely to get hit by both. In this moving talk, she calls on us to bear witness to this reality and speak up for victims of prejudice.
An aspect of this is that I would expect the courage of women to tend to show up most strongly in defense of their offspring (and perhaps children in general). I think the trope of the human 'mama bear' fits well with this. Men I would expect to be more inclined to band together with other men, in defense of the whole social group. — wonderer1
Overall, the #MeToo movement has raised consciousness of women’s sexual objectification on a global scale. But we still have a lot to learn. That is, we need to be more intersectional. We need to listen to all women which includes listening to women of colour, working class women, trans women, disabled women and the list can go on. We need to acknowledge the various forms of inequality and how they operate, intersect and reinforce each other. We must stand with each other, understand each other and speak out against all inequality in order to build a brighter and more equal society. As Kimberlé Crenshaw put it, “if we aren’t intersectional, some of us, the most vulnerable, are going to fall through the cracks”. — The #MeToo Movement: Intersectionality - Glasgow Women's Library
Sarah J Jackson, a professor of communication studies at Northeastern University, believes context is the key to anchoring Me Too.
"I wouldn't call hashtag 'Me Too' a movement at all," she says. "I would call it a campaign that is part of a larger movement. So I would call women's rights the movement, and feminism the movement. And I would say #MeToo is one indication of the sort of conversations that need to happen.
"The next step is, OK so now we know the problem - how do we as a global community expand this conversation?" — What has #MeToo actually changed? - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-44045291On 15 October, actress Alyssa Milano suggested on Twitter that anyone who had been "sexually harassed or assaulted" should reply to her Tweet with "Me Too", to demonstrate the scale of the problem. Half a million people responded in the first 24 hours.
A barrage of allegations has since emerged against high-profile men in entertainment, the media, politics, and tech. Many deny any wrongdoing. The repercussions are still in flux, but Hollywood's power dynamics have undoubtedly shifted.
That's less obviously true in the world beyond, and begs the question: What's different for the millions of ordinary people who shared their own #MeToo stories? Are the currents of the movement visible in their lives too? How far has the rallying cry been converted into real-world change?
Since #MeToo took the Internet by storm in 2017, it has had transnational social and legal ramifications. However, there has been little research on the repercussions of this movement for the ways in which masculinity has been politicized as questions around its meaning and place in gender relations were brought to the forefront of public discussions. Thirteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants from two Western Anglophone men’s groups, one embracing and one opposing feminist ideas. Our findings demonstrate a qualitative shift in contemporary expressions of “backlash” and “masculinity politics” in the #MeToo era compared to their initial formulations in the wake of the women’s and men’s movements of the 1960s to 1980s, shaped by novel tropes and tactics.
masculinity as a kind of archetype has been around for thousands of years in multiple cultures.
— frank
Can you or do you care to say more on this kind of archetype? — Moliere
An aspect of this is that I would expect the courage of women to tend to show up most strongly in defense of their offspring (and perhaps children in general). I think the trope of the human 'mama bear' fits well with this. Men I would expect to be more inclined to band together with other men, in defense of the whole social group.
— wonderer1
This seems to be quite a narrow expectation of where 'courage' shows up. Especially, if we are talking about increasing social awareness of gender issues and the like. — Amity
Christianity is kind of odd in that the central figure doesn't really demonstrate characteristics we'd think of a masculine. — frank
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