Latest posts by Alison Tieman (see all)
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http://rookiemag.com/2012/07/this-is-how-it-feels-to-be-free/
Nice article, Joe. What I appreciated was the mild tone. It gave that article a lot of credibility.
Welcome, by the way.
From the comments in Joe’s link:
“Although I do think you can love individuals who are men while still hating men as a group. Doesn’t necessarily mean your feminism is based on anger.”
Just wow.
One has to wonder just what their feminism *is* based on in that case.
Didn’t you know Paul? It’s perfectly possible for there to be a reality where nothing is real. It’s called ‘postmodernism’ where everything is true and no-one’s feelings are ever hurt by the triple demons of ‘thought’, ‘doubt’, or ‘growth’. Fa-la-la-la-la……
Here’s an example of a mean MRA type guy taking all the ice ceam scoops http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iyeUcFKRv4#t=44
Druk,
““Although I do think you can love individuals who are men while still hating men as a group. Doesn’t necessarily mean your feminism is based on anger.”
Ha! That’s parallels something someone said 40 years ago about how racism in the North differed from racism in the South. They said in the North they love the race and hate the individual but in the South, the Jim crow South, they loved the individual but just hated the race.
dungone, this whole business of self-existing ice cream reminds me of some anarchist discourse to the effect that “property is theft”. Perhaps for trust fund baby parasites like them property is theft because their experience of it it is that is just exists all on its own. They have no experience of accruing anything throguh their own labor, so they cannot see expropriation for the enslavement it really is.
Lol, I know this is off-topic (you really need an open thread) but I’m having a debate with a feminist on Ally’s blog about how the word patriarchy means something different in feminist theory and doesn’t mean “rule of the father”.
The irony is that I’m the one arguing the feminist side of the argument! The feminist is arguing that the term used by feminists is the same as the traditional usage.
I’ve just told her to “go educate yourself on feminism”. It’s fucking hilarious.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/hetpat/2013/10/10/malestrom-pt-4-male-anger-and-the-forces-of-conservatism/#comment-12086
@Ginkgo, the commune-loving hippies, the Marxists, the anarchist, and pretty much every other postmodernist philosophy out there is nothing more than thinly disguised in-group bias disguised as a moral virtue. The only difference between these groups and Libertarians is that these groups express their greediness at the group level versus Liberterians express their greediness at the individual level. All in all, they all suffer from a failure to appreciate what economists call “externalities,” but what a layperson might call walking a mile in someone else’s shoes.
You’re kidding me, right? This is like Christians defining what an atheist is.
“@Ginkgo, the commune-loving hippies, the Marxists, the anarchist, and pretty much every other postmodernist philosophy out there is nothing more than thinly disguised in-group bias disguised as a moral virtue.”
This is exactly how religion ruins everything, and exactly the difference between religion and faith.
The libertarians, the Libertarians, the fatherhood-denying SJW types – they all depend on the Virtual Father to survive and then deny he exists.
Religion is pure ideology. It turns faith into nothing more (and nothing less) than simplistic arguments expanded to absolute truths in order to command passivity and with it, total political power. It’s actual power lies purely with convincing all others to yield and remain passive.
@Druk:
A lesser man than I would go over, reverse the genders, and ask them if they consider that sexist. Then watch their head explode as they try to rationalize it.
@Adiabat :
Which is, in fact, even more feminist.
What I find odd is that many feminists sincerely can’t understand why people seem to have somehow gotten the impression that they’re blaming men for gender roles. It’s almost as if using a term with a different meaning from a common one is bad for communication!
Though I have seen some respond to “if you’re using the term the Patriarchy to refer to all oppressive gender roles, for men and women, why is it gendered male?” with “because men still have the most power, duh!” Others have specifically asserted that women don’t cause problems, but the Patriarchy does, as if women were entirely separate from it. The term often is so flexible that it can be used to declare anything a given feminist wants part of the Patriarchy. Which is why someone recommended forcing feminists to define the Patriarchy at the start of the discussion so they can’t move goalposts later. I have yet to try that method.
I flew off the handle a bit with the feminist unfortunately. I think I’m just sick of trying to meet them halfway and engaging with their theories as they describe them just to have them intrepret and reinterpret things things to suit themselves, even if they contrdict what they said earlier.
Feminists have no respect for basic logic and consistency in debates.
“but the Patriarchy does, as if women were entirely separate from it. ”
It’s the same mentality as the Tea Partiers have, where “government” is this looming shadowy presence out there.
The other part of it is the Women Are Wonderful trope – something is bad; women by definition are warm and nurturing and good, so they cannot be involved in that something.
Adiabat,
“I flew off the handle a bit with the feminist unfortunately.”
It is not the least bit unfortunate. They argue like spoiled four-year-olds and it’s time they got a taste of adult reality. They have been pampered and indulged all their lives so much they don’t have any idea how pampered they are, and it hurts when reality crashes in, but it’s the only way forward with them.
Specifically not catering to the feelings of women is a front in this struggle for gender equality. Catering to women’s assumed daintiness is part of the toxic gender systrem everyone says they are against, so feminists ought to welcome this liberating pain.
Saying religion ruins everything is like saying the government ruins everything. The fact that some (or even many) people misuse religion, whether by accident or design, and end up making things worse is no reason to throw out the idea entirely. The US government is embarrassing itself fairly frequently and quite badly lately, but I don’t see people saying that anarchy would be better.
The problem with (Protestant) Christianity in the US (this might apply more broadly too) is that it tends to be a collection of rules to keep, things to believe, things to judge oneself or others about. Religion should not only tell you what not to do; it should give shape to your faith and to your life, with times to be solemn and times to rejoice. It should bring people together, rather than cause them to divide themselves. American Protestantism seems to have rejected all the fun stuff as empty ritual, but kept all the rules they want everyone to follow, and now it can’t understand why people don’t want to be Christian anymore. Ironically, it is Protestantism that feels empty to me now.
Which is why the problem is ideology (a collection of abstract and naive arguments against which reality cannot intrude and people cannot argue) rather than the ideas themselves. Religion descends into ideology distressingly rapidly, in the main because it depends on revealed truth as opposed to analysing reality and facts. They can insulate against this and leave ideology behind by the involvement and argument of it’s adherents and critics, rather than having ordained unimpeachable experts (ie. priests).
Robert Crayle:
Facts are honestly not that important to what priests are supposed to be experts in. They teach and preach about morality and ethics, which tend more towards immutable truths than working hypotheses–except in postmodernism, and I think we can agree it would be silly to expect priests to embrace moral relativism. New evidence, for example, is not going to make killing people okay.
It is not the role of religion to analyze reality or facts. What you need for that is science. In the same way, science can’t tell us what is right or wrong or how to live our lives in relation to other people. Science has nothing to say about people, however detailed its descriptions may be of human anatomy, history, attributes and abilities.
I see atheists and fundamentalist Christians making the same mistakes in conflating the realms governed by religion and by science; both groups think there is total overlap, and thus must reject one of them to avoid constant cognitive dissonance. But faith and knowledge are different things, and while one may be applicable to situations brought up by the other, each must be allowed to come to its own conclusions without interference from the other.
“Saying religion ruins everything is like saying the government ruins everything.”
It’s not only adoelscent and puerile, it’s dishonest, because it’s an attempt to ignore the real problem – human tribalism and weakness and viciousness.
“The problem with (Protestant) Christianity in the US (this might apply more broadly too) is that it tends to be a collection of rules to keep, things to believe, things to judge oneself or others about.”
That form of Protestantism is moribund in the US. The problem with US Protestantism is the exact opposite – it is crazy visionary. It is apocalyptic. Sarah Palin is an Armageddonist.
And this is not some new trend in US Protestantism; it goes to the Puritan strain that has existed since it came over from England. It drove Manifest Destiny. It drives the fanatical, enabling support for Israel we see, that gives Israelis the willies (and they are right.) It is jihadi Protestantism.
Look at the dickdance we just went through in Congress. Does that look like ossified legalism to you?
And this tendency is hardly confined to Evangelical Protestantism (in the American sense of that term). It informs all the forms of feminism we excoriate. Modern Anglophone feminism is just one more incarnation of Puritanism – in it bluenosedness, in its fervor, in its smug self-righteouness, in it moral blindness. Puritan to the bone.
“Modern Anglophone feminism is just one more incarnation of Puritanism – in it bluenosedness, in its fervor, in its smug self-righteouness, in it moral blindness. Puritan to the bone.”
Well said. Feminism is very much a religion, and daring to question this “faith” is grounds for all sorts of abuse from its adherents-in exactly the same way that heresy has been greeted by any religious ideology.
Dungone and Gingko, did either of you read George Will this morning? He says Rick Santorum is running for president again in 2016, precisely to address the problems you bring up. Especially “illegitimacy” (what Gingko calls “fatherhood-denying SJW types”) –they are digging up the ghost of Daniel Patrick Moynihan (just as we started to rest easy) since the infamous Moynihan report will be 50 yrs old next year, so the neocons can dredge it up and dissect it to a fare-thee-well. Synchronicity!
As long as you overlook Santorum’s hatred of gays, he is exactly what the MRM has been waiting for: a proper restoration of ‘patriarchy’ (as Adiabat has ably defined it). Isn’t he? If not, explain? — because that’s what I took away from your comments.
George Will is getting ready to jump ship for Fox News, so I see he is getting ready to do the Republican warm-up acts, necessary for Fox News employment.