What constitutes Misogyny?

[norton ash]

^^^ Thanks for that, Kate.

Namaste. Salaam Aleichem. Good thinking.

[justdrew]

And now a brief word from our sponsors:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... igion.html
Was God's wife edited out of the Bible? Atheist claims the Almighty had partner known as Asherah

thanks, I had considered posting that. did you know festivus poles are really disguised Ashera poles?

[Project Willow]

Is it I, or has this entire thing gotten insanely ridiculous? I mean it started that way, OMFG.

PW said:
I would no more wish to engage in a lengthy debate with someone who hated women than I would volunteer to marry a man who beat me every day. I'm sorry that doesn't make sense to you.

Searcher08 said:
No, it does make sense to me, I just really really disagree with you and that seems to drive you crazy. To me , you seem to only find value in people who share your ideology.

Right there, you don't get to disagree with me about decisions I make for my safety, you can give me advice, maybe, but otherwise you don't get to criticize choices I make that involve my psychological health and physical safety.

Two different points:
1 MY UNDERSTANDING:
You are communicating to me that you think you have some authority about whether another person criticises you or not. Who says? Where did you get the authority to tell another person what they can fucking THINK ABOUT??? THIS is fascist thinking in MY world.

No, you're stripping the qualifier, and therefore unfairly misinterpreting my point. This is what I said: but otherwise you don't get to criticize choices I make that involve my psychological health and physical safety.


You always evade my question about this.

No, you have completely failed to grasp my point, absolutely and completely. Here, let me try for the 6th time to overcome the nasty motivations you've projected onto me.
Your question seems to be that I'm telling you what to think about. No, I'm not doing that. I'm saying you have no authority over the disposition and handling of my psyche and physical body, which you don't, so you are in no position to criticize my choices in those regards in this specific case, therefore in no position to disagree. This is a personal boundary I have tried to establish, respect it or risk being called an asshole. (Penny still has not dropped.)

2 You think that I have an opinion or other on safety issues for yourself. I have none. I have no interest or business in giving you or any person advise about anything unless asked. I have expressed no opinion about your choices - I dont even KNOW what choices you are referring to in your cloud-word filled communication.

The cloud is clearly over your own comprehension. Again my choice that you're disagreeing with, of not speaking with men who hate women, INHERENTLY involves decisions about my safety, ineherently, the two are not separable.

You can choose to speak or not speak to whoever the heck you want. However, NOT speaking with people has wider consequences systemically than you yourself. You appear incapable of seeing this.

Oh no, I see it, perfectly fine. Your view on how the community speaks to people is damn narrow, but that's besides the point. Did you not read where I talked about my safety being an integral part of that decision making process? You've just ignored that AGAIN! Woohoo, we're up to I don't what number of times you've ignored this point, you know, my safety.

Are you trying to tell me my need for safety is outweighed by the community's need for me to speak to people? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, fuck that.

Where on Earth am I suggesting you marry a man who beats you??????!!!!!!
I never said or implied any such thing!!! Im feeling amazed that you think that! Seriously, talk about projection - I find violence detestible - did you not read what Ive written about growing up in Belfast?

It's quite plain and clear. You disagreed with me when I said this: I would no more wish to engage in a lengthy debate with someone who hated women than I would volunteer to marry a man who beat me every day. That's a comparative statement. I'm saying the two for me are roughly equivalent in that I experience the hate speech from a man who hates women as a form of violence, it causes me psychological harm. I'm saying that in disagreeing with that statement you are denying that I have a right to avoid harm. If you don't mean what you say, then don't say it.

You didnt answer my question.
If you are making a comparison between those two things being the same, that appears to be to be more evidence for my point that you are a subjectivist - who is saying that because you feel something internally that that has the same validity as an external fact like the law of gravity. They are not the same. You are now blending it in with a (very valid) need , which is to avoid harm. Subjective experience does not follow the same structure as objective as a person who thinks they can fly under LSD soon finds out.

Yeah, I read your little philosophy about "subjectivists". You know what that is? A dictator's wet dream. It's a nice little rationalization for turning other people into objects, conveniently erasing their experience as anything that might need to be considered in a given course of action. It is the most fascistic thing I've read on this board in a long time, and it's disgusting. Feelings are the very things that signal when we're being harmed. Pain, anger, shame, etc., are adaptive reactions that tell us how to respond when we're being harmed. You simply cannot define harm if you draw some boundary between them and an action. So yeah, I react to your philosophy as an erasure of my human experience, as a personal assault.

I have never and would never deny a person their need for safety. Nor would I deny the subjective reality that person was experiencing as being powerfully present for them.

You just have done both, over and over again.

I don't have the power to create any kind of culture here.

NO SALE
Yes you do and IMHO you are.

Wow! Cool, Project Willow almighty! Bow before me. Muahahahahah!

I'm reading you being ironic as a play on you not having power. I dont experience you as powerless.

I'm not saying I'm powerless, I'm saying I don't have enough power to carry out what accuse me of attempting to do.

You land with me as someone who wants to control what people think. You have described yourself as a hard core feminist and a proud feminazi (when I posted the definition of that from urbandictionary, you didn't disagree - 'someone waging a gender war against men'.) Our conflict would appear to come down to that.

That was a joke, that you accepted it as a straight statement, and are obviously completely unaware of its origins is telling. Using that word puts you in company with Rush Limbaugh and other far right reactionaries.

Argumentation FAIL
Now THAT is funny - if I dont "get" your humour, I become Rush Limbaugh. Obviously. Completely.
I gave you a commonly accepted definition - and a source. You didnt comment.

Comprehension FAIL. False conclusion FAIL.

You are again CONFLATING TWO THINGS

I am not conflating, I am telling you straight out, the issue of whom to talk to in this specific case, for me personally and experiencing harm are inseparable. Therefore it's not up for debate.

You are using harm in two different senses - one an internal subjective experience realm one, the other an external objective experience one. If you DONT have these as separate, then I can see what you say perfectly.

No, I've been very clear all along, psychological harm. Hmm separate, you want me to question my experience of being harmed if it's purely psychological? You want me to ignore my reactions? You want me to go to some external source who then determines for me if I have been harmed or not? What a paternalistic crock of shit.

to me you blur the line between internal feelings and physicality. For me they are two distinct, unique worlds as is the third world, that of concepts and ideas. This is where IMHO boundaries are really important - to know what is a feeling, what is beach ball and what is an idea.
For me feelings are never to be neglected, but as the forum says, have rigourous intuition.

How very male. What you don't understand about the constant implied threat of physical violence against women is a lot, but I know far better than to try to explain it to you at this point. Moreover, I am not required to adopt your philosophy. However, if you don't respect my feelings, then you are crossing a boundary with me, and we can't have a discussion at all.

[wintler2]

Is it I, or has this entire thing gotten insanely ridiculous? I mean it started that way, OMFG.

You and Searcher08? way beyond ridiculous, about to clock insane. its had me re-re-reading your posts to try and work out how S08 can possibly be interpreting you the way he is, but .. it remains a mystery.

[wintler2]

My belief is that not only are the two NOT mutually exclusive, but that the REAL self-interest is in "power (from) within," and NOT "power over."

I can understand your reading, sorry i wasn't clear, in fact i see the future the way you do - we adapt or perish, learn or lose, and what we need to learn is how to get needs (not wants) met without power-over others. We're in complete agreement on that. My use of 'self-interest' was lazy, what i meant was selfishness, 'short term maximisers', the supposedly rational actor beloved of economists and "well everybody else is doing it" 'pragmatists' the world over.

It is my impression tho that human natural selection (and no i'm not really qualified to use that term exactly correctly) in say the last 10k years has favoured power-over: the victorious warlord and henchmen get more offspring, so long as there are new frontiers to feed their unsustainable expansionist control-over operating system. But we're fresh out of 'virgin' territory and stacked with competing factions that are increasingly of similar lethality, so old rules are for walking dinosaurs. Its just a pain they still think they're in charge.

You may like to argue that power-with has always made people happieras individuals and i couldn't disagree; but it is my guess that in last 10k years the controllers have had more babies. I'd love to be proven wrong tho, who wants to be descendant of long chain of abusers.

[Searcher08]

<snip> All quotes from PW

Your question seems to be that I'm telling you what to think about. No, I'm not doing that.

Yes you are. Evidence? watch this space...

I'm saying you have no authority over the disposition and handling of my psyche and physical body, which you
don't,

Praise Jeebus! AGREED!!!

so you are in no position to criticize my choices

Err, insert one hundred synonyms for WRONG here. As I said, we didnt have long to wait at all. Call me NostrafekkinDamus. You say
"I'm saying you have no authority over the disposition and handling of my psyche and physical body, which you
don't"
which I say as
ANY PERSON IS 'IN A POSITION' TO -
THINK ABOUT, CONSIDER EMOTIONALLY, LOGICALLY ANALYSE, THINK CRITICALLY ABOUT,
LOGICALLY DEFEND, DISCUSS, PONDER, DIAGNOSE, DIALOGUE, DECONSTRUCT, CLARIFY,
MULL OVER, THINK CREATIVELY ABOUT, THINK LATERALLY ABOUT,BRAINSTORM, THINK IN A DESIGN WAY, THINK IN A SYSTEMIC WAY, THINK CYBERNETICALLY,
ABOUT ANYTHING AT ALL.

ANY TIME ANY PLACE ANYWHERE (like the Martini advert )

WHERE A PERSON CHOOSES TO PUT THEIR FOCUS - AND HOW THEY DIRECT IT ,IS THEIR BUSINESS.

from there you go to:

"so you are in no position to criticize my choices"

How do you get there? Why do I have to be in a 'position' to criticise (or question or ask about) your choices?
I have no right to a response, but I have every right to ask any question.

This point eludes you like sound eludes a person with their fingers jammed in their ears and yelling "WHAT??!!"

in those regards in this specific case, therefore in no position to disagree. This is a personal boundary I
have tried to establish, respect it or risk being called an asshole. (Penny still has not dropped.)

I see, so in your world I have to ask your 'permission' each time I have a conversation with you,
just in case your 'boundaries' are being crossed?? What about you crossing all my imagined safety boundaries?
I have not heard you talk about them.
You appear to live in a world where others have the ability (from what you say I dont understand where this bizarre ability comes from) to 'erase another person's subjective experience'.
You treat this belief, not even as a 'working hypothesis' but in the same category as scientific fact. But the world according to your feelings is not the same world as the world of physicality. If you treat them as the same, I assert that that is a recipe for potential disaster.

Yeah, I read your little philosophy about "subjectivists". You know what that is? A dictator's wet dream. It's a nice little rationalization for turning other people into objects, says the person who treats feelings as objects?!
conveniently erasing their experience as anything that might need to be considered in a given course of action.

Utter nonsense. Who said I deny 'considering experience in a given course of action'? Not me!
Your response is that of someone who experiences that . if you feel it, it is right. You talk about erasing
experience. AFAIK, all sensory input a person has is stored at some level - whether it is accessible is a
different subject. You are asserting that I can 'erase your experience' I suggest that is the domain of 'Ah-nold' scifi movies.

I think the following is key:
To me, you are not seeing a distinction between
1 Using feelings as a useful input into creating a decision action, making choices
and the
2 "If I feel it, then it has the same reality as the outside world" worldview

When a person feels something is right, that is useful valuable information. I have never asserted it isnt.
However I would put it to you that an inability to separate what your internal feelings are from what is
occurring in the physical world IS the very basis of fascism. Why? Because treating human beings just by treating passing feelings (such as nationalism, racial superiority and the like) about people being as externally real as external things IS the first step on a very dark road.
It turns the external person into an object, with a label of the feelings stuck on them. The labels are then reacted with and the process escalates. This is on a road that leads to industrial extermination. Treating others as real threats JUST because you have a feeling they are is batshit insane.
It is precisely the same shit that the Israelis pull about the Iranians. Iran will be bombed because lots
of Israelis feel they are being assaulted daily by the Iranians. For that scenario, it doesnt matter to the Israelis whether there is a bomb there - its a case of "

"IF WE FEEL IT, WE'LL BE BOMBED!"

This is the starting point - if you think your feelings are 'things' the same way a table is a thing
and that you demand treat them as having the same external consensus reality, well, respectfully, the moon isnt
made of green cheese because you FEEL it is. Accusing me of 'ignoring feelings' is demonstrable
nonsense, and a shallow befogging. Feelings are very important, they are a big part of a
person's internal life, which is as much a part of being human as the external 'stubbing your toe on the table' world and that of creating things with an existence outside oneself.

You distract over having no distinction between internal and external worlds
Then ==> Implying I am ignoring the internal world of feelings and add... I am a MAN(!)
Then ==> Go down the rabbit trail of saying I dont care about feelings (utter rubbish!) and ergo, am cold and heartless and an uncaring fascist (as also shown by my not laughing at your jokes FFS).

It is the most fascistic thing I've read on this board in a long time, and it's disgusting.

I would to you that is the most jaw-dropping case of pot calling kettle black I have seen since well, you earlier in this thread....

Feelings are the very things that signal when we're being harmed. Pain, anger, shame, etc., are adaptive
reactions that tell us how to respond when we're being harmed.

This is what you believe. It would be an interesting discussion to go into this. Harm can happen in the absense of feelings, for example with leprosy, where people were taught to visually survey themselves frequently, because they might have injured themselves but felt nothing. I have read many differing interpretation about what feelings function as. I know that the whole field of cognitive psychology seems to be developing very rapidly indeed. Personally, I find that the greatest value I have had around feelings is moving from seeing them as either to be 'expressed' or 'suppressed' into having a third choice, which is... they can be let go of. This also includes good feelings, surprisingly enough.
Feelings can be physically released and a space for new things allowed. I take my inspiration from Lester Levinson and from Prof Gene Gendlin and his 'Focusing' approach. Personally I have found both really interesting , helpful, easy and light.

You simply cannot define harm if you draw some boundary between them and an action.

According to the dictionary, 'harm' is an extremely rich word with many many distinct nuances., and the synonyms give even more richness. You have not said how you define harm here, but that would probably be another thread.
Creating a distinction between a feeling and an action doesnt mean both are not required in a definition.
However when you say "Simply cannot" this reminds me of the Church telling Gallileo that he could not 'go there' cf fascist thinking above. This is like you are reading a system diagram - drawing a boundary about which part of the system you are in is essential.
Treating a feeling as the same as an external object is will lead to the same class of interactions as both. Doing any amount of NLP or therapy isnt going to change the colour of a car by itself.

So yeah, I react to your philosophy as an erasure of my human experience, as a personal assault.

I consider your subjectivist philosophy as violently fascist and have explained why above.
"I feel it, therefore it is right" is a hairbreath from "I feel might, therefore my might is right"
BTW regarding your bad-jacketing me, you must be feeling on pretty shaky ground if people who dont find your remarks funny become 'far right extremists" like Rush Limbaugh .

No, I've been very clear all along, psychological harm.

Hmm you want me to question my experience of being harmed if it's purely psychological?

I dont want you to anything. If you want to question and think about your experience, great; if not fine.Up to you.

You want me to ignore my reactions?

I dont want you to anything. If you want to question and think about your reactions, great; if not fine.Up to you.

You want me to go to some external source who then determines for me if I have been harmed or not?

I dont want you to anything. If you want to question and think about your sources, great; if not fine. Up to you.

What a paternalistic crock of shit.

Put words in my mouth and then froth like a ventimochalatte at these imagined words?
What a paternalistic crock of shit indeed.

How very male.

You treat that as an insult. Personally, I draw the line at tolerating (repeated) sexist crap like that.
But that's just me. You might get more mileage elsewhere.

What you don't understand about the constant implied threat of physical violence against women is a lot,
but I know far better than to try to explain it to you at this point.Moreover, I am not required to adopt your philosophy.

I have no wish for anyone 'to adopt adopting my philosophy', nor myself adopt yours- this is the key point which you avoid. Think of it as "What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander"

BTW I dont experience you as having an iota of empathy about where I'm coming from in this.
My subjective report? I feel unheard, unlistened to, not dialogued with at all, bullied, treated as stupid, mocked and demeaned. It's no big deal BTW, because they pass and I am confident in myself that my feelings dont stop me engaging with you, which I am doing my best to do. Stick and stones and all that. Glass houses and stones too.

However, if you don't respect my feelings, then you are crossing a boundary with me, and we can't have a
discussion at all.

I am guessing that you mean agree with here?
You may have feelings f1, f2, f3...fn at any time.
If I try and pretend that you dont feel those things, then I am ignoring your subjective experience - and thus ignoring part of reality. Ignoring is pretending something doesn't exist... when it actually does.
If by respect, you mean knowing what your feelings are and accepting them as those, then surely I respect you, as knowing what is present in ones internal world is very important.

OTOH if you want me to agree with what you theorise as reasons for those feelings and treat them with the solidity of gravitational laws, then, I cannot and wont do that, because that is requiring me to accept your philosophy - I do not. King Canute demonstrated the difference between internal reality and external reality very eloquently. You have no power over me; neither have I over you.

[Searcher08]

I'll pass on further involvement here, as it has been taking too much IRL time. I appreciate people kind of giving some 'room' for this, obviously a conversation both of us have considered important enough to continue although clearly a difficult one and appreciate Willow for her engagement.
cheers!
S08

[Project Willow]

Hey Searcher08, I got a little clue for you, ..."think" and "criticize" are NOT the same words, look 'em up in the dictionary.

My biggest mistake was attempting a dialogue with you. Most other people would have responded to your accusations of "fascist thought controller!" with a hearty: "Stuff your fucking accusations in the stinky, dark, elastic depression of your behind region!" or perhaps: "FUUUUCCCCKKKK YOOOOOOOOOUUUU!" Yeah, but I'm not always very savvy when it comes to protracted character assaults.

Wait, wait, it's not too late, you're still at it in that second post above, so, in response to your continued accusations about my motives and actions, Searcher08, FUUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKK YOOOOOOOUUUUUUU!

I just hate it when someone unfairly perceives me as a pasture pie in the field of their neuroses.

I think I just broke the rules.

[barracuda]

I thank god every day for this thread.

[82_28]

This has been the needlessly messiest thread in my stint here before I leave in a huff.

Christ almighty, all of us have opinions.

However, I do think we got somewhere with it. We've learned who's who, who wants to play ball, who wants to maintain civility, who wants to cry. Yet, at the end of the day, I know friendship is out now, we're all just potential friends in the "real world" when one day any one of us could possibly meet without out augmented iphone reality turned on with our online names in bubbles above our heads. So to close things off for me, as I will no longer post here in this thread. That girl I urinated with in that stupid as fuck story I told, which in real life is a funny tale, this is the song that will always be ours, as it is to me pertinent. And that's it for me. I know it's cheesy ass Journey, but deal with it.



We're men and we're women.

Love will survive somehow, someway.

Out.

See y'all in other threads.

edit: This one's better. Or maybe not. It seems to keep the synth more intact, which is crucial to this song being good or a piece of shit butt rock song.

[Project Willow]

82, you don't have to run off... I've got this for you.



Victorian Fainting Couch.

[Cosmic Cowbell]

I thank god every day for this thread.

[Allegro]

I thank god every day for this thread.

I want to thank god every day for this thread.

I want to thank god every day for this thread.

I want to thank god every day for this thread.

[Kate]

Thank you, Norton! And...

Pax vobiscum!

[Kate]

Wintler, hi!

My use of 'self-interest' was lazy, what i meant was selfishness, 'short term maximisers', the supposedly rational actor beloved of economists and "well everybody else is doing it" 'pragmatists' the world over.

I see what you mean. By my lights, selfishness and greed, besides being immoral, are fundamentally STUPID. In the long run.

When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it--always.
Mohandas K. Gandhi

Now, one could reply to Gandhi, yes, but a new tyrant seems to always spring up in the old one's place. And that is a great tragedy when that happens.

But here is where I pick up on your mention of "human natural selection" (I guess "social Darwinism" is just a facet of the larger idea you mean), as well as this:

But we're fresh out of 'virgin' territory and stacked with competing factions that are increasingly of similar lethality, so old rules are for walking dinosaurs.

Unless "power within" comes to the fore, we will all be "walking dinosaurs," a.k.a. the walking dead.

I'm having trouble, however, seeing the top 1% of the socio-economic heap as outbreeding the rest of humanity. When you mentioned that I had a bunch of simultaneous images arise in my mind -- for instance, the way the aristocracy of Europe AS WELL as royalty became so in-bred it became a standard joke that they all developed genetic ailments and such (hemophilia in the House of Romanov, and the mental illness of George III, now believed to have been caused by the genetic blood disease, porphyria, just to give two examples).

But then there is the arguably more important moral degeneracy often seen in the offspring of the mighty and super-wealthy. Those spoiled by their parents' ostentatious wealth and success, often are raised to become stupid, talent-less, noncreative -- Never needing to work, always expecting someone to take care of their every whim, completely out of touch with the reality of the other 99% of society. It seems to me that these offspring become LESS capable of surviving "real world" crises -- other than their capacity to flee behind their castle walls, hoarding their wealth and buying their own protection.

As a more mundane aside, at least in the Western world, it seems that the more wealth one has the fewer children the parents produce -- in contrast to the lower classes in societies where either access to good birth control and reproductive health care are limited, or in rural areas where the need for many children exists, whose labor helps the whole family to have the chance for survival. (Just as was the case in earlier centuries in the Western world.)

In any event, I think the kind of human crises on the horizon represent those very "environmental" (literal and metaphorical) contingencies which will have humanity "up against the wall," so to speak. And if we cannot cooperate, share, respect the dignity of all, which is to say, EVOLVE in a MORAL sense, then it's "good night, nurse!" Lights out.

I think I want to ponder more on what the "elite few versus the many" will mean in the coming crises. But I've been fighting migraine for the past couple days, and I'm not capable of pondering, well, anything too complicated at the moment.

Although, and staying on topic: the EVOLUTION of humanity's moral sense -- the kind of evolution necessary for survival of the species -- will REQUIRE an end to misogyny, as well as all the other childish hatreds poisoning us for lo these many centuries.

This migraine has me wondering if what all I just wrote was coherent, so please, if'n it ain't, please let me know!