guruilla » 06 Dec 2015 16:50 wrote:Project Willow wrote:I don't believe in the gender binary, that there are true masculine or feminine "expressions" that we can disentangle from enculturation, and sex role socialization.
This is an interesting question and obviously central to this thread. I am not sure what I believe there, but I do believe that man the biological creature who also possesses (or belongs to) a psyche has a true expression that might be termed masculine, and the same with the female. On the other hand, without getting too new-agey, this only happens with and through an internal integration of, or "marriage" to, the opposite pole within oneself, i.e., when a man fully recognizes & "brings home" his anima, & when a woman makes space for her animus. So whatever the true masculine and the true feminine might look like, they would first of all be completely particular to that psyche, and secondly, have very little in common with enculturated roles. (Just summing this up so my position is clear, not for anyone's edification.)
You've simply chosen a different analytical framework here, a quasi-mystical one apparently. There are multiple lenses through which the question can be approached, but since you aren't interested enough to explore my approach, there's really not much we can discuss.
guruilla » 06 Dec 2015 16:50 wrote:Project Willow wrote:I've already explained to you that recognition of trauma is the wellspring my feminism.
You have, and I tried to explain why I don't relate to that particular position. So far recognition of my own trauma has not led to any sort of ideological identification ~ as far as I know.
You do not understand. This is not a matter of adopting or rejecting a specific ideology. It is a matter of recognizing that you are benefiting from profound cultural and structural changes due to the work of the women in the Second Wave and the movements that could not exist without them.
Before second wave feminism, there
were no words to describe the trauma that women experienced simply for being female. Indeed, in a seminal work, it was called
The Problem with No Name. “Over and over women heard in voices of tradition and of Freudian sophistication that they could desire no greater destiny than to glory in their own femininity.” Betty Friedan,
The Feminin Mysitque, 1963. There were strict taboos against even mentioning domestic violence and child abuse. These were considered private family issues, and not subject to societal sanction. Rape in marriage was still legal. The feminist proposal that,
The Personal is Political was the fundamental ideological blow against the partition between private violence (suffered by women and children) and social and legal policy. That you are unaware of this, and indeed, apparently hostile to the very idea, I find sadly amusing.
guruilla » 06 Dec 2015 16:50 wrote:Project Willow wrote:It is the work of feminism to reveal the ways in which women in general are treated as lesser beings, in other words, to reveal sources of trauma, pain, and suffering.
Like slomo, I do not really believe this is so (tho I agree about the war on female sexuality), and even if it were, I would consider it a secondary issue to the undeniable truth that
children in general are treated as lesser beings, and that this is the source of all trauma, pain and suffering, for men and women, down to the last one of us.
Again, you would not be speaking about child abuse if it weren't for feminism. There would be no conceptual basis or societal permission for it, no trauma informed therapy, no shelters, no CPS, none of it. See below.
guruilla » 06 Dec 2015 16:50 wrote:guruilla wrote:None of these women you cite would have been able to do the work they did without Freud, and we all know how unreliable and even untrustworthy Freud was (especially around sexual abuse of children). Facts do not have ideological content, though they can be used ideologically.
Are you disagreeing that Freud's work was foundational to psychology?
How do "we all know how unreliable and even untrustworthy Freud was (especially around sexual abuse of children)."?
Feminism.Absolute rejection and repudiation of Freud's theories were central to feminist criticism from the very beginning. See Millett, Greer, and countless others, but most particularly, Florence Rush:
"She electrified a New York Radical Feminist Conference on Rape in April 1971, winning a standing ovation for her speech on what was then a startling new concept: Her theory, inspired by evidence she had collected in a facility for delinquent girls, identified familiar males — fathers, stepfathers, older brothers, uncles, neighbors and family friends — as the major sexual abusers of children, and traced the toleration of such abuse to the beginnings of history and cultural/religious customs. Family abuse had been ignored by the reigning Freudian psychologists of the day, who preferred to theorize about seductive children and girlish fantasies." "Freud cautioned the world never to overestimate the importance of seduction, and the world listened to Freud and paid little heed to the sexual abuse of children. His theories, surrounded by scientific aura, allowed for the suppression and concealment of the sexual exploitation of the female child.”These critiques were fundamental to explorations of the central role of trauma in oppressive systems such as the patriarchal family, and provided the philosophical and cultural shifts out of which the child abuse survivor movement grew.
love it
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