What constitutes Misogyny?

[vanlose kid]

...

I've been saying this for years. I watch it happen. Why wouldn't men go through hormonal cycles? This would be an interesting class within a men's studies course, I think. There's really so much that could be covered.

it would. it would also, i think, dispel quite a few myths bandied about by men about men. there's quite a lot of it in this thread.

re Weininger: the basic assumptions that he built his absurd edifice on were those current in his time, and the irony is that quite a few people raged about how he had stolen their ideas. one of the main features was the association of negative character traits with gender markers. what i have noticed but rarely see people mention is e.g. how women are thought of as being inherently irrational or driven by emotion or as being inherently materialistic and lacking in spirituality (the terms get prettified these days but its the same old, same old).

the "funny" thing is that the same negative characteristics are also associated with race in that jews were (and are to some extent) painted with the same brush, and in S&C Weininger draws the "conclusion" that jews as a race are more feminine, hence, more irrational and materialistic by nature, which of course explains why there were no jewish geniuses in art or science or music (as there were no female geniuses in art or science or music),[1] etc., all of which of course makes jewish women the lowest of the low. this, then, resulted in Weininger being accused by the more "morally enlightened" academic posterity of being a self-hating anti-semitic misogynist nazi jew which only compounds the absurdities he exposed in my view.

[1] the nazi's of course took S&C as scientific proof of their prejudices and considered Weininger to be a "first-rate enlightened jew" who had seen through his own racial deficiencies to the truth.

the same broad brush with modifications has been used against native americans, africans, asians, aboriginals, you name it. hence my mention of scientific race theory in connection with scientific misogyny in my previous post. thing is, a lot of it still thrives in certain circles to this day, and is taken as common sense. i'm not equating the two, though. just pointing out the likenesses.

it's the framework that's interesting. if you happen to be a women, jew, african american, etc., within this framework of knowledge or science or understanding or whatever you want to call it, you haven't got a chance. because your argument is, by default, irrational. e.g. if you're a women and buy into the distinction between men and women, and that women are more emotional, i.e. more susceptible to being controlled by their emotions with a consequent loss of rational capabilities, then you have no say, and had better leave it to those who inherently are better equipped. end of. you're just being emotional. – i know that caught in the same trap i would go ballistic. which of course would only "prove" that i had lost my mind. (come to think of it, it seems like psych wards function on the same lines.)

so when you all speak of how you're denied a voice or rarely heard, this is what comes to my mind. this con of science. don't buy into it.

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rationality and pain. men are supposed to be, because they are more rational, better capable of reasoned action under duress than women are. you know "men are better at keeping their cool"? this is just such BS. i mean, women manage to give birth yet are so weak that they can't think straight at the sight of blood. it is so stupid an idea that if it reflects the best of male intellect then… (some scientist at some point probably then came up with a theory that if women had greater rational capabilities they wouldn't be able to withstand the pain, thereby proving that men are more rational.)

*

thing is, it would be hard to talk the privileged into giving up this advantage. why should they? when they can shut you up just by mentioning your sex and the weaknesses "inherent" to it?

*

there isn't much on Anna von Lieben online but here's her German wiki: "Hugo von Hofmannsthal, ein häufiger Besucher, beschreibt sie als tierisch, sinnlich, halbverrückt. Sie war hochbegabt, liebte das Schachspiel und war mathematisch interessiert." (Hugo von Hofmannsthal, a frequent visitor, describes her as being wild, carnal, half crazy. She was highly gifted, loved chess and was interested in mathematics.)

sums it up.

*

[Plutonia]

Still....As far as coming up with a model for constructive accommodation of the cycle of abuse that commonly afflicts very poor and/or outcast communities, you could sure as hell do worse and I doubt that you could do better. That's very impressive. To what cultural (or, I don't know [OTHER, AS APPROPRIATE] traditions/factors/whatevers do you attribute it?

Um. Yeah. It’s not in any way a picnic that’s for sure and to situate them within a “cycle of abuse” is, erm, wrong.

To really answer your question requires some history, but to start, the short answer is that they don’t have a choice. Well, they can go to Vancouver and shoot-up on Main Street.

So quickly:
This part of North America was the last to be colonized; in 1858 it was still the Indian Territories, and there were only a handful of non-Native settlements- Victoria, Fort Langley, plus a fur-trade outpost and an Oblate Mission in the Interior. Victoria, the largest settlement was a village with a population of 500. (It's bizarre to think how recent that was.)

1858 The year gold was discovered in the Fraser Canyon and 10,000 miners arrived from California that summer to stake claims. Over the next few years tens of thousands more followed and spread out into the Caribou and the Klondike. In

1862 Smallpox decimated the Native communities. It’s impossible to know how many people died but some estimate as high as 90% of the indigenous population. The Oblates recorded communities in their area reduced to single digits.

1863 the first Residential Schools opened.

1871 British Columbia was annexed to Canada (without treaties and therefore illegally, according to the Canadian Constitution and International Laws that are still in effect.)

1873 Royal Northwest Mounted Police was founded to police the new province.

1876 The Indian Act was enacted by the Parliament of Canada, which is a separate set of laws that apply only to Status Indians. (At one time it was illegal for a Native to talk to a lawyer and during the Great Depression it was illegal for Natives to sell anything they produced off the reserves.)

It happened so fast, less than twenty years and boom! Everything that was, was over.

From 1862 til the 1980’s Native children were forced into Residential Schools where they were abused in every way. The death rates of the children were in some cases as high as 50%. For about 100 years. If you want to know more about that check out Kevin Annett’s site, Hidden from History: http://www.hiddenfromhistory.org/

-Through-out that period alcoholism, starvation, TB, violence and suicide were features of reserve life. In some communities, the Band Council Chiefs were the bootleggers and people debilitated by three generations of fetal alcohol syndrome are not uncommon.

-I read a monograph from the 1940's one time that tracked rates of TB infection in Vancouver Island Natives and estimated that the Native population would disappear withing two decades. In Residential Schools, children who were sick with TB were made to share beds with healthy children and some times even lick them.

-A Nisga man told me that he and the other children of his village were transported to Residential School, several hours drive away, in the back of a garbage truck. And he's younger than me.


Now back to your question: “To what cultural (or, I don't know OTHER, AS APPROPRIATE, traditions/factors/whatevers do you attribute it?”

This:

Secwepemctsin – Language of the Secwepemc
Secwepemctsin contains the cultural, ecological, and historical knowledge which includes: values, beliefs, rituals, songs, stories, social and political structures, and spirituality of the people. The Secwepemc view all aspects of their knowledge, including language, as vitally linked to the land. This knowledge, passed down to the next generation orally, contained the teachings necessary for the maintenance of Secwepemc culture and identity.

As the Secwepemc were given the land; they were also given a language. Language was given to the Secwepemc by the Creator for communication to the people and to the natural world. This communication created a reciprocal and cooperative relationship between themselves and the natural world which enabled the Secwepemc to survive and flourish in harsh environments. For example, the Secwepemc receive messages from the animals and birds who tell them when it is time to harvest and gather certain foods and medicines. The cricket will tell the Secwepemc when it is time to catch the salmon.

Secwepemc Songs and Dances
The songs, dances, stories, and ceremonies of the Secwepemc were, traditionally, an integral part of daily life; not separate as in many Western cultures. They were absolutely vital in maintaining the values, beliefs, and teachings regarding care of the land and the people.

The songs, dances, and ceremonies keep the Secwepemc tied to the land and they continually remind people of their responsibilities. They perpetuate vital teachings and contain the laws – who may harvest medicinal plants and how it must be done in a proper and respectful way. Secwepemc must sing and pray before harvesting any food, medicines, and other materials from the land. They must make an offering to thank the Creator and the spirits for anything they take. The Secwepemc believe that all living things have spirits and must be shown utmost respect.

For a number of reasons. Because the whole burden of protecting them falls on the moms, who are sexual abuse survivors living in a community that accepts their abusers, which affects their judgment. Because nobody knows any other reality or customs than the ones they were born into and raised with. And also....Well. The short version would be: Because women with children are the most fixed and stable householders in an urban ghetto, typically, due to the quirks of federal and state assistance for the poor.

I’ve noticed that Native youth really identify with black culture, music and what-not. A lot of what you say is similar as far as I can see, at least superficially; think rural, but not farm rural- think wilderness.

BC is mostly wilderness and Natives still have hunting, fishing and foraging rights- the fruits of which are distributed amongst the community. And their economic pressures are reduced in other ways too, free housing, medical, dental, tuition, though it’s all at the discretion of the Band Councilors and you don’t want to get a vaccination at the clinic there because they have been known to be spiked with sterilizing agents. Otherwise, a single mother on a reservation can do alright, if she toes the line.

Also, the community I was at that time still has a Warrior Society, whose role it is to protect the community so abusers know who they will have to answer to.

Real poverty is hell, in the same way war is. In short. People are still people, in all their beautiful and not-so-beautiful variety, even in hell. But environmental influences are a lot more forceful than one tends to give them credit for being. The ones to which one is oneself subject, I mean. It's much easier to see when you're a tourist in someone else's environment, figuratively speaking.

Anyway. Any thoughts about wherein the distinction lies?

It’s not the poverty so much, not when you’ve got mountains and lakes and rivers, it’s that boot on your neck.

They've got a legal claim to a lot of land and that land is rich, rich, rich in resources. You tell me - assimilate or die?

I think our ancestors were probably put in the same position at some point in our past.

[Canadian_watcher]

I can't imagine being that girl's father. It would be really REALLY hard not to take matters into my own hands and really fuck that kid up.

speaking as a momma bear, I feel the same way. I'd move on to the school administrator next.

[wallflower]

This is such a big honking thread! The size of this thread makes me feel a bit stupid. There are whole swaths of it that I am having a hard time integrating and so come around to repeating things I've already said. I take that as sign I'm not listening very thoughtfully. For me the purpose of trying to identify what constitutes misogyny is to find ways to move away from hatred towards better ways of being human. Ha and I presume that's moving from hatred towards love. I recognize that's a big leap which adds baggage to an already unwieldy vehicle. In short it's hard to stay on topic.

Stephen Morgan posed that I was obviously a werewolf. I have admitted to shapeshifting at least so far as being able to identify as a child, as a man, as a woman. Oh and I've been known to let out a howl on occasion. Mostly however I feel pretty stuck as a middle-aged ne're do well.

Stephen Morgan wrote:

my position on women is that we should treat them like men.

His position is one I hear fair-minded people take often. Sometimes it expressed "I treat everybody equally" or "Anything a man can do a woman can do (better)."

Something makes me hesitant. As a guy who has tried to some extent not to feel there are activities and behaviors I cannot do because they are in the woman's domain; e.g. cooking, sewing, flower gardening, etc. I certainly want liberation from too narrowly defined gender roles. But I still think that gender is a fundamental construct that people use to understand our relationships with other people. And that's what makes it hard for me to accept that the problem of misogyny can be resolved by adopting a genderless view. It seems useless to pretend there's no such thing as gender when gender seems a to be a fundamental category which people use to understand our relationships with other.

I want to understand what you're saying Stephen Morgan. The way I understand your position is that we ought to treat others without regard to gender distinctions. That is, you are not making any claim about whether gender is a useful distinction in some regards, but rather that our treatment of others ought not to refer to gender distinctions. Is that close to your position?

I might add that something close to what I've said about genderless treatment of others seems a prescription many feminist advocate.

vanlose kid points to Otto Weininger as a warning about how ideas of gender can be abused, or perhaps that gender is a pitfall to avoid. Again I'll say I'm a bit stupid and am ready to listen if I'm mistaken about what you're saying valnlose kid.

If we *need* gender in some sense as I believe, then the question "What constitutes gender?" surely is another thread that I'm not going to start In the context of this thread the caution that vanlose kid presents about ideas of gender strikes me an important topic for uncovering misogyny. I also think that Stephen Morgan's point about a genderless treatment needs closer examination because that view is often presented as remedy for misogyny.

There are clearly pitfalls to gendered thinking. But I wonder if people here believe we can think without gender?

[vanlose kid]

^ ^

wallflower, maybe i haven't made myself sufficiently clear. i have no problem with gender as such, biologically. my point, or Weininger's point, was to object against tying human character traits rigidly to gender by definition. e.g. a man who is irrational is an aberration or anomaly, whereas a woman who is irrational is naturally so: its the "default state" of women. it's a whole mode of school of thought. another one that's cropped up here is that men who object to something express righteous indignation whereas women who do so are just being hysterical.

another example would be this: "bitchiness" (setting aside the origins and its connotations) it seems fair to say that in general, the views is that, only women exhibit this. i find that to be factually false. men exhibit it to a like extent. only it isn't considered "bitchiness". this view is nonsense.

or take bravery, in a woman its unthinking and instinctive, whereas in a man it's considered and coolheaded, part of what it means to be one. (maybe i can't make myself clear?)

in the context of indigenous people (thanks for your latest post Plutonia) they are being irrational and vengeful when they seek reparations, because in the end they have only "benefited" from the progress that the white man brought them. Plutonia mentions that the choice they are faced with is to either assimilate or die. that is, nothing of their history, culture, science (because it is unwritten?) is of any worth, since it isn't real history, culture, science as the west understands these things.

i mean, i can well imagine what the progressive scientific rationalists such as Dawkins or Hitchens would say to this:

Secwepemctsin – Language of the Secwepemc
Secwepemctsin contains the cultural, ecological, and historical knowledge which includes: values, beliefs, rituals, songs, stories, social and political structures, and spirituality of the people. The Secwepemc view all aspects of their knowledge, including language, as vitally linked to the land. This knowledge, passed down to the next generation orally, contained the teachings necessary for the maintenance of Secwepemc culture and identity.

As the Secwepemc were given the land; they were also given a language. Language was given to the Secwepemc by the Creator for communication to the people and to the natural world. This communication created a reciprocal and cooperative relationship between themselves and the natural world which enabled the Secwepemc to survive and flourish in harsh environments. For example, the Secwepemc receive messages from the animals and birds who tell them when it is time to harvest and gather certain foods and medicines. The cricket will tell the Secwepemc when it is time to catch the salmon.

Secwepemc Songs and Dances
The songs, dances, stories, and ceremonies of the Secwepemc were, traditionally, an integral part of daily life; not separate as in many Western cultures. They were absolutely vital in maintaining the values, beliefs, and teachings regarding care of the land and the people.

The songs, dances, and ceremonies keep the Secwepemc tied to the land and they continually remind people of their responsibilities. They perpetuate vital teachings and contain the laws – who may harvest medicinal plants and how it must be done in a proper and respectful way. Secwepemc must sing and pray before harvesting any food, medicines, and other materials from the land. They must make an offering to thank the Creator and the spirits for anything they take. The Secwepemc believe that all living things have spirits and must be shown utmost respect.

"get with the program!"
"join the 21st century!"
"there's no questioning the superiority of western culture and science. we rule."

they're expected to conform. to give up. that is the progressive, enlightened, rational, scientific thing to do. and as long as they haven't the best thing to do is to have our experts and managers come in and manage their transition and resources efficiently and profitably until they catch up. for their sake, naturally.

*

[Stephen Morgan]

This is such a big honking thread!

If we don't keep it longer than the bin Laden thread, the terrorists have won.

Stephen Morgan wrote:

my position on women is that we should treat them like men.

His position is one I hear fair-minded people take often. Sometimes it expressed "I treat everybody equally" or "Anything a man can do a woman can do (better)."

Something makes me hesitant. As a guy who has tried to some extent not to feel there are activities and behaviors I cannot do because they are in the woman's domain; e.g. cooking, sewing, flower gardening, etc. I certainly want liberation from too narrowly defined gender roles. But I still think that gender is a fundamental construct that people use to understand our relationships with other people. And that's what makes it hard for me to accept that the problem of misogyny can be resolved by adopting a genderless view. It seems useless to pretend there's no such thing as gender when gender seems a to be a fundamental category which people use to understand our relationships with other.

I want to understand what you're saying Stephen Morgan. The way I understand your position is that we ought to treat others without regard to gender distinctions. That is, you are not making any claim about whether gender is a useful distinction in some regards, but rather that our treatment of others ought not to refer to gender distinctions. Is that close to your position?

That's about the size of it. I accept that there are certain rather large differences between the average man and woman, of course. People are individuals, though, and we should neither expect men to be more able nor give women greater consideration.

I might add that something close to what I've said about genderless treatment of others seems a prescription many feminist advocate.

There's a certain common feminist belief in the social origins of sex differences, yes, the belief that any differences between men and women are entirely generated by our supposedly patriarchal culture, which often rests uneasily alongside a belief that women are somehow morally purer. Anyway, I think that's all rubbish. There are differences between the sexes, but that should have no impact on our treatment of the individual and our respect for the equal rights of all to proper consideration and dignity as human beings. Not equality as in "we're all the same", but equality as in equality before the law. Difference-blind liberalism.

vanlose kid points to Otto Weininger as a warning about how ideas of gender can be abused, or perhaps that gender is a pitfall to avoid. Again I'll say I'm a bit stupid and am ready to listen if I'm mistaken about what you're saying valnlose kid.

I found a PDF of Otto Weininger's Sex and Character on the interweb. Fascinating stuff. Mad as a Luton Town fan, of course, but some interesting philosophical points. The opposition to many traditional notions of the characteristics of the sexes, and the embracing of Platonic structures, particularly.

If we *need* gender in some sense as I believe, then the question "What constitutes gender?" surely is another thread that I'm not going to start In the context of this thread the caution that vanlose kid presents about ideas of gender strikes me an important topic for uncovering misogyny. I also think that Stephen Morgan's point about a genderless treatment needs closer examination because that view is often presented as remedy for misogyny.

There are clearly pitfalls to gendered thinking. But I wonder if people here believe we can think without gender?

It's just a question of not internalising the dominant attitudes of society. Make a conscious effort to act in an unorthodox way and you will soon reach a tipping point at which the new modes of behaviour become your natural response.

[wallflower]

Thanks to both Stephen Morgan and vanlose kid for responding so quickly.

In Menand's book "The Metaphysical Club" which is about the development of American Pragmatism Menand relates how Jane Addams was influential in changing his view of the dialectic:

I can see that I have always been interpreting dialectic wrong end up, the unity as the reconciliation of opposites, instead of the opposites as the unity in its growth, and thus translated the physical tension into a moral thing... I don't know as I give the reality of this at all,... it seems so natural & commonplace now, but I never had anything take hold of me so.

(I copied that from the Wikipedia article on Dewey.)

There's another thread active on Matriarchial Studies http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=31971 It's an important subject, but one I find hard to add to the thread because I know so little about the subject. So there's a point I want to make that probably belongs over on that thread. And that is that one way of dividing up social systems along gendered boundaries is to oppose Patriarchy to Matriarchy. From my limited exposure to the field, or at least my limited understanding from having read Riane Eisler's book "The Chalice and the Blade" many years ago, is that rather than to oppose Patriarchy to Matriarchy the pairs are the Dominator model versus the Partnership model. Patriarchal systems are premised in a Dominator model.

I'm clear that I would prefer our social relationships be defined by partnership rather than domination and oppression. Something made even more obvious by this thread is that misogyny is oppression.

In thinking about what constitutes misogyny I wonder to what extent hatred for women is hatred of the feminine? How do ideas about gender help to constitute misogyny?

I mentioned Tony Porter's TED Talk before http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td1PbsV6B80 I don't feel bad about mentioning it again because it's really worth watching if you haven't seen it. However Trigger Warning applies as he relates a disturbing story from his own past. Anyhow Porter talks about "The Man Box." In his presentation there's a slide discussing what constitutes the Man Box. I was hoping to find the slide online somewhere and haven't. The problem with taking a screeshot from the video is the slide isn't fully in any segment. The short version of the slide is a list of dialectics which men think of to be men. Men lead, Women follow; Men are superior, Women are inferior; Men are valuable, Women have less value; Men are actors, Women are objects, especially sexual objects; etc. Porter contends that the great task for men is to escape the Man box.

The premise of identifying what constitutes misogyny is a scientific way of thinking: analysis by breaking into constituent parts. Scientific thinking isa very good way to think clearly. van lose kid can imagine what Dawkins and Hitchens would think about the spiritual basis of Secwepemc culture and identity. I imagine they would think it gibberish and unscientific. One of my pet peeves is when members of the hard science fraternity seek to straighten out the fields of Sociology and Anthropology, to show them how science (and thus clear thinking) ought to be applied by bringing up "cultural evolution." Clearly culture changes, but to me the application of biological evolutionary theory to culture is a metaphor and so the notion of applying the theory literally to culture seems muddle headed.

Scientist prefer induction but clear thinking involves deduction as well. It seems to me that myths provide a sort of map to navigate through our experience using deduction. One of the advantages it seems to me about story-myths is the stories help people keep in mind that the story is a map of reality not reality. Scientists too fond of induction are too easily fooled into thinking that their maps and models are reality and not maps and models.

In re the Matriarchial thread Cynthia Eller wrote a book The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future. I haven't read the book but the her general criticism of the Goddess and Neo-Pagan movements is often brought up and follows basically that history didn't happen as they would like to believe. Reviewing some of that general debate last night, particularly Max Dashu's review of Eller's book http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/eller.html (Eller's Web site Supressed Histories is a great resource) it struck me that one of the problems with the idea of cultural evolution is how unconsious scientific types are about ideas of progress. It seems Eller's main reason to dismiss Matriarchal history really is that if Patriarchy comes after Matriarchy then Patriarchy must represent an adaptive improvement. Reading excerpts of Eller's book I know she's not so crass about it, still it seems to me she's in the thrall of cultural evolution as a rather literal projection of biological evolution to culture.

I'm with Tony Porter that the Man Box is toxic. I also think that the sort of antagonistic way of thinking about the dialectic is part of what makes it so. The shift in John Dewey's thinking prompted by Jane Addams from thinking of the dialectic as "the unity as the reconciliation of opposites, [to] instead of the opposites as the unity in its growth" makes a big difference. It's a difference especially important for imagining moving from a Dominator to Partnership model in our relationships. It make a difference too for how we imagine gender.

[Plutonia]

I just wanted to add one thing to my response to C2W?'s questions above that came to mind today:

Real poverty is hell, in the same way war is.

This statement actually contains a subtle Western bias though on the surface it's difficult to disagree with. Let me refer again to the Native's experience - this is the analysis of Harvey Whitehawk, a Northern Cree Medicine Man, told to me in 1997:

Harvey's reserve is a small one and remote. His People were traditionally nomadic, now divided into smaller Bands on widely distributed small Reserves and dependent on Federal money for support. Alcoholism has been endemic to his community since their subjugation. His experience was of a repeating cycle; whenever the community would get together (usually after a tragedy) and dry out, the questions would begin - "Why are our children taken to Residential School? Where are the children that haven't returned? What are those loggers doing over there? Why is our water contaminated with ecoli? Band Councilors, what are you up to?"

And what would follow would be an unusual dispensation of a big, fat, lump sum of money from the Feds to the Band Council, to be distributed at their discretion. Predictably, this would lead to fights and soon enough the community would descend back into drinking.

This is, according to Harvey, a deliberate policy of strategic, economic warfare.

Money isn't a solution in and of itself and neither is affluence, in my opinion, for what should be obvious reasons.

I can see that I have always been interpreting dialectic wrong end up, the unity as the reconciliation of opposites, instead of the opposites as the unity in its growth, and thus translated the physical tension into a moral thing... I don't know as I give the reality of this at all,... it seems so natural & commonplace now, but I never had anything take hold of me so.

This principal is expressed rather magically and succinctly in the yan/yang symbol. It even implies motion.

[OP ED]

Whereas if you proved to be a despicable little old lady from Pittsburgh who was actively scheming to do me harm day and night in reality -- and for all I know, you might be -- I would still never feel anything but the most passionate, tender and all-consuming love for you that I've ever felt for any OP ED on earth.

I love you like I'd raised you from a seedling as my very own, OP ED, for real. Despite not knowing you.

Funny, huh?

not so much really. OP ED gets that all the time.

...

[tis mutual, at any rate, with only minor contextual differences]

[Stephen Morgan]

The premise of identifying what constitutes misogyny is a scientific way of thinking: analysis by breaking into constituent parts. Scientific thinking is a very good way to think clearly.

Hasn't someone in this thread claimed the scientific method to be an irredeemably patriarchal mode of thought?

In re the Matriarchial thread Cynthia Eller wrote a book The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why an Invented Past Won't Give Women a Future. I haven't read the book but the her general criticism of the Goddess and Neo-Pagan movements is often brought up and follows basically that history didn't happen as they would like to believe. Reviewing some of that general debate last night, particularly Max Dashu's review of Eller's book http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/eller.html (Eller's Web site Supressed Histories is a great resource) it struck me that one of the problems with the idea of cultural evolution is how unconsious scientific types are about ideas of progress. It seems Eller's main reason to dismiss Matriarchal history really is that if Patriarchy comes after Matriarchy then Patriarchy must represent an adaptive improvement. Reading excerpts of Eller's book I know she's not so crass about it, still it seems to me she's in the thrall of cultural evolution as a rather literal projection of biological evolution to culture.

I think the main argument is that the matriarchy didn't exist simply because there's no reason to believe that it did. It's just an anti-semitic myth, in origin, Simmel and company. It's also entirely tied in with the idea of progessive cultural evolution, from pantheist to polytheist to monotheist, from polyandry to polygyny to monogamy, and so forth. Nineteenth century ideas.

I did mean to respond to the Matriarchy thread at greater length, it being a load of rubbish (even quoting Marija Gimbutas, who I was going to lay into), but I don't fancy getting involved in another one of these threads. Anyone buying into it is probably beyond reason anyway, like anyone accepting the OP in the witchcraft thread. Just want to accept anything good that can be said about women, no matter how baseless, and anything bad that can be said about men through the proxy of the supposed patriarchy/matriarchy bullshit.

I'm with Tony Porter that the Man Box is toxic. I also think that the sort of antagonistic way of thinking about the dialectic is part of what makes it so. The shift in John Dewey's thinking prompted by Jane Addams from thinking of the dialectic as "the unity as the reconciliation of opposites, [to] instead of the opposites as the unity in its growth" makes a big difference. It's a difference especially important for imagining moving from a Dominator to Partnership model in our relationships. It make a difference too for how we imagine gender.

Men lead, Women follow; Men are superior, Women are inferior; Men are valuable, Women have less value; Men are actors, Women are objects, especially sexual objects; etc.

Obviously I'm very much in favour of a breaking of the "man box", that system of cultural restraints which limit the freedom of action of men, although obviously I don't believe for a minute that widespread cultural prejudices in our society deem women inferior or less valuable, not for a moment. Also, "object" should be changed to "objective".

“I personally don’t think women should be in combat, but that’s a personal view based on my feeling that women are too valuable to be in combat.”
-- Caspar Weinberger

I'd recommend a book called "If Men have all the Power, How come Women Make All the Rules" by one Jack Kammer. Used to be available on the internet for free download as a PDF, but I'm not sure if it is now. It's all about those culturally defined rules.

[compared2what?]

There's a certain common feminist belief in the social origins of sex differences, yes, the belief that any differences between men and women are entirely generated by our supposedly patriarchal culture, which often rests uneasily alongside a belief that women are somehow morally purer. Anyway, I think that's all rubbish. There are differences between the sexes, but that should have no impact on our treatment of the individual and our respect for the equal rights of all to proper consideration and dignity as human beings. Not equality as in "we're all the same", but equality as in equality before the law. Difference-blind liberalism.

I agree, totally. I guess the point we differ on is what, exactly, constitutes equality under the law. I mean, I personally very much wish that Catherine MacKinnon had evaporated immediately after the work for which she first became known back when she pretty much single-handedly did the work that eventually became present-day sexual harassment law in the late '80s, IIRC. Because most of the rest of her work is just a horrendous series of assaults on the First Amendment, sorry to say.

Nevertheless. Sexual harassment law prior to her work on it was simply not adequate to the task of preserving the equal rights of all to proper consideration and dignity as human beings in the workplace.*** She perceived that as a form of discrimination against women. So the scholarship that became the test cases that established the common-law standards for proving hostile-work-environment and quid-pro-quo sexual harassment as they exist today was based on that premise.

But that's just because discrimination against women is her sole and exclusive focus professionally (and, for all I know, personally). In practice, the (main) upshot of her work applies to anyone who can establish a prima facie case that:

He or she suffered intentional, unwanted discrimination because of his or her sex.
The harassment was severe or pervasive.
The harassment negatively affected the terms, conditions or privileges of his or her work environment.
The harassment would detrimentally effect a reasonable person of the same sex.
Management knew about the harassment, or should have known, and did nothing to stop it.

__________

Now then. An unscrupulous person might try to abuse or exploit that, of course.

But honestly, the same could be said for a hell of a lot of law that has no implications for gender one way or the other. Further, the law itself takes that into consideration, insofar as the burden of proof for the plaintiff is pretty damn high, particularly on the second and third prongs as listed above.

In short, it's basically good and useful law that was created to guarantee the equal rights of women in the workplace but that's only mostly used to that end in practice because at present, there happens to be more hostile-work-environment sexual harassment of women than there is of men. However, since it stands ready to protect anyone who's subject to such harassment irrespective of gender, I don't really see what it takes away from men that could reasonably be described as a right or entitlement to equality, respect or human dignity. Do you?
____________

My point: Most law is very old and was written without entirely without consideration to the existence of both male and female individuals in roles that they either didn't then occupy or weren't valued for occupying. Therefore, there are a number of legal circumstances under which the law as it stands simply doesn't work to the end of ensuring that the differences between the sexes will have no impact on our treatment of the individual. When that's the case and an injustice arises from it, it ought to be addressed, irrespective of whether one gender is more adversely impacted than the other. Including cases in which one gender is exclusively adversely impacted to the general benefit of the other, ftm.

Fair is fair, after all. You can't really advocate for father's rights, then turn around and say that the law should be gender-blind as if it didn't occasionally take some effort to make it so. It does. That's life.
______________

Some gender differences are socially constructed, in part or in whole. But not all of them. It's just crazy talk to make that argument, imo. Men and women are innately different and differently constituted. Within a wide range of individual variability, granted. But still.

That's been pretty well attested to as a general matter. By the very, very sad story of David Reimer, which is told as well as a story can be here. As a specific matter....I don't know. You'd have to take it on a case by case basis, I guess. It might have implications for the equality of all, and it might not. It's impossible to say on an abstract basis.

[compared2what?]

I just wanted to add one thing to my response to C2W?'s questions above that came to mind today:

Real poverty is hell, in the same way war is.

This statement actually contains a subtle Western bias though on the surface it's difficult to disagree with. Let me refer again to the Native's experience - this is the analysis of Harvey Whitehawk, a Northern Cree Medicine Man, told to me in 1997:

Harvey's reserve is a small one and remote. His People were traditionally nomadic, now divided into smaller Bands on widely distributed small Reserves and dependent on Federal money for support. Alcoholism has been endemic to his community since their subjugation. His experience was of a repeating cycle; whenever the community would get together (usually after a tragedy) and dry out, the questions would begin - "Why are our children taken to Residential School? Where are the children that haven't returned? What are those loggers doing over there? Why is our water contaminated with ecoli? Band Councilors, what are you up to?"

And what would follow would be an unusual dispensation of a big, fat, lump sum of money from the Feds to the Band Council, to be distributed at their discretion. Predictably, this would lead to fights and soon enough the community would descend back into drinking.

This is, according to Harvey, a deliberate policy of strategic, economic warfare.

Money isn't a solution in and of itself and neither is affluence, in my opinion, for what should be obvious reasons.

I can see that I have always been interpreting dialectic wrong end up, the unity as the reconciliation of opposites, instead of the opposites as the unity in its growth, and thus translated the physical tension into a moral thing... I don't know as I give the reality of this at all,... it seems so natural & commonplace now, but I never had anything take hold of me so.

This principal is expressed rather magically and succinctly in the yan/yang symbol. It even implies motion.

You are reading a bias into it that isn't there, honey. I did not and would not have said:

Real poverty is hell, in the same way war is. It arises purely from a lack of funds and has no non-monetary implications of any kind for the poor, society or anyone else.

So the state should throw gangs of money at it.

Problem solved, end of story.

Poverty, in a literal income-level sense, isn't always hell. That's not what I meant. I live at or just under the poverty line myself, and it's not hell for me. Nor is it hell for every single poor person I know or have ever known, either when it's defined that way or when it's defined more expansively.

I thought the context made it clear what I intended to say. But if it really doesn't, let me know, and I'll try to make a clearer statement about what I did (as opposed to what I didn't) mean. I certainly didn't mean to insult, condescend to, or otherwise demean the poor or speak of poverty as something that made people who lived in it "other" or lesser.

I really, genuinely don't feel that way, or think that way, or act that way. To be honest, that's actually why and how I formed the conviction on which that statement was based in the first place. I've just had too many friends who -- for example -- still live as social outcasts in the same state of extreme poverty they did when they were hit in the head with a cast-iron skillet by their psychotic mothers in childhood, ever since which they've been subject to the epileptic seizures with which they live on the streets of New York City unto the present-day (and so on) not to think of chronic, multi-generational poverty as it usually exists as hell, in the same way that war is.

I'd be horrified if what I wrote just came across as if I were high-hatting the poor, as a matter of fact. And I totally majorly apologize for it if I did.

Ick. And also (shudder). I'm repelled by myself just thinking about the hypothetical prospect of it.
______________

ON EDIT: I can't really speak to chronic multi-generational poverty as it exists in non-European Eastern cultures in more than a very general way. I mean, I don't get the impression that large numbers of people anywhere are crazy about it, but obviously, majority Hindu/Buddhist cultures conceive of the subject very differently than Western Cultures do. And not entirely by accident, historically speaking. Ruling classes everywhere have always used religion to justify social inequity, and usually to a considerable degree. That doesn't invalidate (or validate) any of the creeds themselves, needless to say. It doesn't really reflect on them one way or the other. It just reflects on the ruling classes.

WRT Native American traditions in particular, just for clarity's sake: It's my view that no people should be forced to live in want or constantly on the brink of it, no matter how well they accommodate it. Neither should they be forced to live by the standards of Western materialistic culture. One class of people shouldn't be forced into any lifestyle or belief system by any other class of people, period. Including their preferred lifestyle or belief system. Because you can't start making exceptions about who can be forced to live what way without losing the whole game, basically.

Know what I mean?

[barracuda]

I think the main argument is that the matriarchy didn't exist simply because there's no reason to believe that it did.

It depends on what you mean by "matriarchy", I guess. If you mean a society in which women dominate men in some sort of gender-mirror of the world as we know it now, then, yes, I doubt such a society has ever existed except as an abberation on the order of the mythical Amazons. However, that isn't by far the only way to view the idea, and there exists abundant evidence of societies which are decidedly non-patriarchal, matrilineal, or even a fair epresentation of matriarchal even today. I see little reason to suspect that matriarchal societies didn't flourish in the distant past, particularly considering the lack of evidence for patriarchy in early settlements such as Çatal Hüyük, and the simple logic behind the notion that patrilineal disposition of property and familial rights can only have codified probably sometime following the discovery and subsequent enforcement of the nature of men's participation in the conception of children.

In any case, it seems reasonable to assume that something about the power balance between the genders has changed significantly in the last ten thousand or so years. I mean, everything else has.

[Plutonia]

You are reading a bias into it that isn't there, honey. I did not and would not have said:

Real poverty is hell, in the same way war is. It arises purely from a lack of funds and has no non-monetary implications of any kind for the poor, society or anyone else.

So the state should throw gangs of money at it.

Problem solved, end of story.

Poverty, in a literal income-level sense, isn't always hell. That's not what I meant. I live at or just under the poverty line myself, and it's not hell for me. Nor is it hell for every single poor person I know or have ever known, either when it's defined that way or when it's defined more expansively.

I thought the context made it clear what I intended to say. But if it really doesn't, let me know, and I'll try to make a clearer statement about what I did (as opposed to what I didn't) mean. I certainly didn't mean to insult, condescend to, or otherwise demean the poor or speak of poverty as something that made people who lived in it "other" or lesser.

I really, genuinely don't feel that way, or think that way, or act that way. To be honest, that's actually why and how I formed the conviction on which that statement was based in the first place. I've just had too many friends who -- for example -- still live as social outcasts in the same state of extreme poverty they did when they were hit in the head with a cast-iron skillet by their psychotic mothers in childhood, ever since which they've been subject to the epileptic seizures with which they live on the streets of New York City unto the present-day (and so on) not to think of chronic, multi-generational poverty as it usually exists as hell, in the same way that war is.

I'd be horrified if what I wrote just came across as if I were high-hatting the poor, as a matter of fact. And I totally majorly apologize for it if I did.

Ick. And also (shudder). I'm repelled by myself just thinking about the hypothetical prospect of it.

Uh. Sorry. I was really just extrapolating on "poverty is hell" as a concept, not saying that you meant it that way C2W?.

In an odd coincidence, that article about John/Joan that you linked to above, features a Dr. Money as the "architect" of that particularly reprehensible experiment. Weird, no?



On edit: Just finished reading the whole thing. The nurture part of the nature/nurture debate in tatters on the floor. Here's some highlights:

Dr. Money's experiment was to turn baby John into a fully identified woman through child-rearing, surgery and sex education.

The True Story of John / Joan

The significance of the case to the then-burgeoning women’s movement was obvious, since feminists had been arguing against a biological basis for sex differences for years. Indeed, Money’s own papers from the 1950’s on the total psychosexual flexibility of newborns were cited by Kate Millett in her best-selling, seminal 1970 feminist text, Sexual Politics. Money’s new twins case buttressed the feminist claim that the observable differences in the tastes, attitudes and behaviors of men and women are attributable solely to cultural expectations.
“This dramatic case,” Time duly reported in its Jan. 8, 1973, edition, “provides strong support for a major contention of women’s liberationists: that conventional patterns of masculine and feminine behavior can be altered. It also casts doubt on the theory that major sexual differences, psychological as well as anatomical, are immutably set by the genes at conception.” The New York Times Book Review hailed Man Woman Boy Girl as “the most important volume in the social sciences to appear since the Kinsey reports” and praised Money for producing “real answers to that ancient question: Is it heredity or environment?”

…

Diamond [scientist and critic of Money] wrote that John’s case is evidence that gender identity and sexual orientation are largely inborn, and that while rearing may play a role in helping to shape a person’s sexual identity, nature is by far the stronger of the two forces so much so that even the concerted 12-year efforts of parents, psychologists, psychiatrists, surgeons and hormone specialists could not override it.

…

While many of these studies still need to be replicated, few sex researchers today dispute the mounting evidence of a strong inborn bias for sex and sexuality. “Which is why,” Reiner says, “I have been advising physicians to be very prudent when prescribing sex reassignment for infants. Because it’s quite clear that the vast majority of boys born with functioning testicles have masculine brains.” Reiner endorses Diamond and Sigmundson’s recommendation (published in a recent journal article) that in cases of injury or intersexuality, the assignment of sex be made socially, in terms of hair length, clothing and name, but any irreversible surgical intervention be delayed until the children are old enough to know, and are able to say, which gender they feel closest to. “We have to learn to listen to the children themselves,” Reiner says. “They’re the ones who are going to tell us what is the right thing to do.”

…

But the strongest impression I was left with after that first meeting was of John’s intense, unequivocal masculinity. His gestures, walk, attitudes, tastes, vocabulary – none of them betrayed the least hint that he had been raised as a girl. And, indeed, when asked whether he thought that his extraordinary childhood had given him a special insight into women, he dismissed the question. Like the sex-reassigned boys in Reiner’s study, John had apparently never been a girl – not in his mind, where it counts.


http://www.healthyplace.com/gender/insi ... 7/page-16/

[Stephen Morgan]

There's a certain common feminist belief in the social origins of sex differences, yes, the belief that any differences between men and women are entirely generated by our supposedly patriarchal culture, which often rests uneasily alongside a belief that women are somehow morally purer. Anyway, I think that's all rubbish. There are differences between the sexes, but that should have no impact on our treatment of the individual and our respect for the equal rights of all to proper consideration and dignity as human beings. Not equality as in "we're all the same", but equality as in equality before the law. Difference-blind liberalism.

I agree, totally. I guess the point we differ on is what, exactly, constitutes equality under the law. I mean, I personally very much wish that Catherine MacKinnon had evaporated immediately after the work for which she first became known back when she pretty much single-handedly did the work that eventually became present-day sexual harassment law in the late '80s, IIRC. Because most of the rest of her work is just a horrendous series of assaults on the First Amendment, sorry to say.

Nevertheless. Sexual harassment law prior to her work on it was simply not adequate to the task of preserving the equal rights of all to proper consideration and dignity as human beings in the workplace.*** She perceived that as a form of discrimination against women. So the scholarship that became the test cases that established the common-law standards for proving hostile-work-environment and quid-pro-quo sexual harassment as they exist today was based on that premise.

I wouldn't mind such laws if they were ever equally applied. I mean, rape laws provide disproportionate benefit to women, or that's the idea, but I'm not against them. I would still like to see them more equitably enforced, and the removal of things like rape shield laws (or alternatively their extension so as not to unfairly show prejudice against men) and obviously with some attempt made against rape in prisons and so forth.

In short, it's basically good and useful law that was created to guarantee the equal rights of women in the workplace but that's only mostly used to that end in practice because at present, there happens to be more hostile-work-environment sexual harassment of women than there is of men.

I disagree completely, there's merely more sensitivity for the complaints of women. It's occasionally possible for a man to make use of the law, within the rigid system of female privilege. There was a man in the news a few years back, he worked at a jobcentre and on a hot day had been reprimanded for removing his tie, although women weren't enforced any sort of dress code at all. HE won his case at the workplace tribunal, but only because his employer hadn't enforced any dress code again women, an "equivalent" dress code would have been accepted by the court, even though that would have allowed women to be wearing collarless blouses, sandals, shortish skirts and so on, while a man wearing a collarless t-shirt, shorts and sandals would still be unacceptable. That's a minor but easily illustrated example, unseen due to the all-pervasive nature of female advantage.

Fair is fair, after all. You can't really advocate for father's rights, then turn around and say that the law should be gender-blind as if it didn't occasionally take some effort to make it so. It does. That's life.

The enforcement of the law ought to be gender-blind, too.

Prison is "a system designed and run by men for men", according to Time Magazine. True in a manner of speaking of course. Women are just thought too valuable to be imprisoned, even if convicted of crimes. Crimes against women get higher sentences than the same crimes against men.

The unstated policy of the justice system is that women are morally pure and ought to be looked after, while men are dangerous and ought to be "taken care of" as it were, a rather infantilising attitude which is nonetheless beneficial for women.

I think the best think we can do for justice is to make sure all the legal pitfalls which await men happen to women as often as possible. More injustice for women may be the In cases like [url]this[/url], for example. When bad things happen to women it causes outrage, when bad things happen to men no-one really cares. Make these things happen to women more often and they'll stop happening all together.