Everything, no matter if it is an idea, a worldview, a theory, a concept, a discipline, a tradition, etc. is understood to be just one of many possible ways of knowing and understanding.

I do not think that I just described a postmodern view. A postmodern view is more like "There are no truths. There are only truth claims". — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Anyway, after spending the past two hours browsing the Web and reading about radical feminism I am beginning to think that there is a significant number, if not a majority, of people whose minds are made up about reality, are closed to anything more than a tweak here or there in that reality, and are solely in the business of making everything conform to that reality.

It is settled: in all of history (and probably pre-history) men have been oppressors and women have been the oppressed. This is the ultimate reality. Any inquiry--development of new technology, scientific exploration of the cosmos, further researching and writing history, etc--must be done according to that reality. Any failure to go along with this understanding and service to it is complicity to evil, continued suffering, etc.

And people think that religions are controlling and dominating?! — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Maybe it has been extremely naive of me, but 99% of the time when I read or hear ideas I take them with the writer/speaker saying "I respect views opposed to my views, although I disagree with them. I am open to hearing alternative views. I know I could be wrong. If I am proven wrong, more power to me".

Apparently with some very influential and determined people in the world it is, rather, "This is the way things were in the past. This is the way things are. This is the way things are going to be. Period. Either accept that or get out of my way." — WISDOMfromPO-MO

What I described is probably, unwittingly, more like the spirit of scientific inquiry: we have the best answers that we can derive from the available evidence, not any definitive, absolute, final answers; and nothing is inevitable (no teleology). — WISDOMfromPO-MO

On the other hand, can this claim escape itself? Can the assertion that there are no truths but only truth claims, itself claim to be more than simply a truth claim? — darthbarracuda

Now I don't want to read into you too much, but the words "radical feminism" followed by a short rant and a comparison between the former and organized, dogmatic religion makes it seem like you had a rough encounter with some of the "vocal" radical feminists when you found that what you thought was innocent or a-moral turns out to make a lot of women very angry. — darthbarracuda

What that means is that I often have to tell myself to let people scream, vent, and mock, even if I don't agree with them (or even if I do). They have experiences I don't. They deserve the right to speak their mind. For many, ideology is all they have. Bread fills the stomach but ideology might fill the soul. — darthbarracuda

Another thing I've noticed is that when people try to silence the noise of a dissatisfied group, it's usually because they don't like what they have to say. One way of doing this is by claiming you have the truth in an even louder voice and killing anyone who disagrees. Another way is to get rid of truth, which effectively pulls the rug right out under the opposition. — darthbarracuda

But you have to see how this sounds to someone who has certain experiences that are more true and wrong than anything else in the world. To them, it is the truth-denier who is the enemy. The truth-denier is suppressing them. The truth-denier is privileged to be able to deny truth! How can they not see it? The truth-denier is preventing real progress, and we're getting impatient! — darthbarracuda

Hence why I'm increasingly attracted to the idea of a free and open society, where allegiance to some truth claims does not require everyone else's allegiance. One philosopher that I highly recommend on this topic is Paul Feyerabend, especially his judgment on the place of science in society.

In my opinion, we all need to have a bit more tough skin if we're going to open up and understand each other. — darthbarracuda

Depends on how it is interpreted. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I don't recall any direct interaction with a radical feminist. Only indirect interaction, such as reading a blog.

My experience has been that when discussing gender issues with those who have feminist attitudes my words get distorted by very volatile people who do not listen to what I am trying to say or make any effort to empathize with me and my concerns.

You can't get to truth/reality if people are not going to let your inquiry develop.

It is about being able to fully function intellectually. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

But then they do not respect other people's right to speak their mind. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

This thread is not about feminism--I only brought it up as what made me conscious of what we might be looking at--but if we are going to talk about it let's remember that feminists regularly disrespect men's rights activists even though "MRAs" are simply voicing their concerns, venting their frustrations, etc. They regularly, as I understand it, do whatever they can to silence men's rights activists--pressuring places into not hosting men's rights events; removing "Men's Rights Are Human Rights" signs; etc.

Calling pro-choice people "baby killers" is bad enough. Then we get feminists calling men's rights activists "misogynists", among other things. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I can empathize.

But making life difficult for those who honestly seek the truth is counterproductive. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

If people feel like they have been forced into silence and are not being heard they make their voices heard through, oh, voting Donald Trump into the most powerful position in the world and catching the polling industry, the experts, and the punditry completely off guard, the narrative goes. Sounds about right to me. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

... I am beginning to think that there is a significant number, if not a majority, of people whose minds are made up about reality, are closed to anything more than a tweak here or there in that reality, and are solely in the business of making everything conform to that reality. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

While there is nothing much I want to disagree with there, it seems one sided. Whilst there may be no final answers, there must be provisional answers that are accepted as the starting point of any conversation. If we are talking about astronomy, we probably don't want to consider the possibility that the Earth is flat. — unenlightened

Likewise, if we are talking about feminism, we need to acknowledge that it has a history roughly along these lines (this is UK history, there are other stories along similar lines). If it is agreed that there has been a progressive development of equal rights from a prior state of inequality, then we can discuss whether or not we have arrived at the destination of equality, or there is some way to go, or we have overshot the mark to female dominance. — unenlightened

On the other hand, if you wish to claim, as a certain ex-contributor recently did, that women should not have the vote, then there is not much to talk about. We must have some common ground, and that discussion has been settled a while ago; though there are still flat-earthers out there, they are not worth talking to. — unenlightened

How else can it be interpreted? — darthbarracuda

Either the proposition that there are no truths is true, in which case it refutes itself, or it's false, in which case there are some propositions that are true — darthbarracuda

A vocal minority does not represent the whole movement. — darthbarracuda

When people say they hate "feminists", they hate the small, vocal minority, the "feminazis" or whatever, and not the actual feminists, whom I think most people would actually agree with if they took the time to listen. — darthbarracuda

From a radical feminist perspective, pointing out men's issues when radfems point out women's is an attempt to downplay the severity of the woman's predicament. — darthbarracuda

The fact is that many MRAs are misogynists. They point out the issues men deal with to make it seem like women are selfish, greedy, bitchy and should shut up and go back to the kitchen. Of course, it's veiled a lot of the time. But you'll notice that a lot of the time, MRAs are explicitly reacting to radical feminist theory. It's not really "about" men's issues - it's about obscuring women's issues. — darthbarracuda

What if the truth is simply hard to accept? Is it not a possibility that "extreme" points of view may actually be true? Like I said before, having a tough skin is necessary if you are to trudge through the political arena. You have to be able to entertain notions without accepting them. — darthbarracuda

That it is futile to try to arrive at any purely objective reality.

Agnosticism on steroids, kind of.

I have also heard it this way: postmodern theory, unlike what its critics would have you believe, is not epistemological relativism. It is, rather, a sociological recognition of the totalizing, repressive nature of modernist/Enlightenment principles and their implementation. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

But when I struggle to find strong rebukes from the majority, I fear for our intellectual lives. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I can't speak for other people, but I can say that I gravitate to speakers/writers who are humble and who show that they recognize and respect views opposed to their own. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

What makes them difficult for me to even begin to swallow without immediate nausea and indigestion, never mind accept, is their "us" vs. "them" posture. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Or this has all been a dream and we will all wake up and see that the Earth was flat all along. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

When we wake up, we can have a laugh about that maybe, but in the dream, I want to talk about the dream-world, and to bring that up is just a futile undermining of any conversation, that is equivalent to the radical postmodern denial of fact that you seemed to want to reject. — unenlightened

— andrewk

-I discovered that it is believed that the evidence from biology tells us that the Y chromosome has very little time left relative to the time that all of the other biological material on Earth has existed; that female humans will move on; and that this is, apparently, good news to a lot of people such as feminists. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

When you discover the memo, we can discuss that, but until you do discover it, the mere possibility that there might be such a memo undermines the discussion without adding anything. — unenlightened

Thus we can discuss how life is but a dream — unenlightened

Oh yeah, that's scientism to a tee. It's sad that scientism is so pervasive. — Metaphysician Undercover