Gender roles and religion

I started a discussion about genetic defects that took a left turn into the politics of the hijab (or covering of women's bodies, whether voluntarily or under compulsion).

The left turn happened after I stopped attending to the OP, and I couldn't find a place to step in and try to rectify that left turn. So, I decided to start this thread, despite the fact that such follow-on threads usually don't have the liveliness of the original thread.

So, here's the point of this thread:

It's not the superficial details of the social control (i.e., wearing the hijab or burka) that matter, it's the overall cultural/religious stance towards women.

My beef is not with what women wear. My beef is with fundamentalist sociopathies that declare women to be second class citizens, to be unclean, to be the property of men to control. If one cannot draw a line and say that fundamentalisms that demand female circumcision, fundamentalisms that ban abortion even if the mother dies are simply evil, then one can hardly draw non-religion-based moral lines at all. That is, to not draw a line is to cede morality in a nation to whatever bunch of crackpots have the raw power to enforce whatever lunatic "religion" they claim.

ON EDIT: At some point, fundamentalism ceases to be religion and becomes mental illness. When the distance between reality and religious assertion passes some event horizon of cruelty, you can't give the headcase spouting it the protection of "freedom of religion". This kind of psychodrama has been played out in every century of the so-called Christian era, which speaks to the universality of the phenomenon of the mental disorder.
END EDIT.

Its my opinion that if women had the freedom and the time to examine the totality of their social situation, without the overbearing censorship of fundamentalist religion, they would not choose to wear a burka or cover their face with a hijab. But that's just my opinion about a situation that is unlikely to happen anytinme soon.

On the opposite point that Western women feel the tyranny of looks, here is the one comment I made in the previous thread:

The US is nowhere near as bad as countries like S. Korea or Brazil, where everyone (men and women) feel pressured to undergo plastic surgery to meet the demand for personal good looks.

The problem goes way beyond religion. Appearance has been a pillar of culture forever. Societies dictate the bounds of appearance.

So, those are nothing but opinions. I don't claim they are the right answer. But, here is what I do claim:

Most Western** (Christian, Jewish, Islamic) fundamentalisms look the same. Women are property. Men are in charge. Sex is the snare of the devil, and therefore women are the devil. In any "he said, she said" situation, the men are assumed to be victims and the women are assumed to be perpetrators. (** I know little about Eastern fundamentalisms, and will not discuss them.)

These were the attitudes of the Catholic fanatics of the Spanish Empire of the 16th-18th centuries. This is still the attitude of fundamentalist (Hassidic) Jewry. (When they marry, women shave their heads and wear a wig. They bear as many children as the husband demands. Women sit in a separate section of the temple.) It is the attitude of fundamentalist Islam, which allows men to have multiple wives, but not vice versa. (This whole discussion was started because of the station of women in the fundamentalist Islamic society - and their are non-fundamentalist Islamic societies which have not been discussed.)

IMHO, women who think that they are "choosing" to wear the hijab should take a good long look at the role of women in their religion and in their society. Are women equal? Or are women property? Are women viewed as neutral actresses or as temptresses? Are women encouraged to reach their full potential, or mandatorily sidetracked into the role of homemaker? As one commentator in my earlier thread wrote:

Yes, there are women who choose to wear hijabs and head coverings because they think they have a freedom of choice. They don't. And the reason for the covering is to either please or not offend a male god.

In closing, the issue is not the hijab/burka. The issue is the entire misogynistic mindset of fundamentalist religions - and all the "traditional marriage" conservatives who equally want their women "barefoot, uneducated, and pregnant". The hijab is a distraction.

If the American version of (for want of a better term) Enlightenment democracy cannot defend its commitment to individual rights for women in its own country, then we might as well just call up the biggest fundamentalist Christian whackjob preacher and appoint him president for life.

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have I mentioned how much I like this site, lately?

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Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .

Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .

If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
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arendt's picture

@Tall Bald and Ugly

As I suspected, this follow-on thread has been completely ignored. Certainly not blaming you for that.

I don't understand why follow-on threads don't work, but I've experienced it enough times to know that its true.

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@arendt

It could be that the direction your original post took without you make commenters shy of responding to this one. I feel a little that way.

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@janis b

the direction the other thread took. The hijab thing was too close to Identity Politics for me - you can't criticize fundametalist Muslims for their practices. Period. Full stop. Even if said practices are driven by fundamentalist misogyny.

If people here can't agree that religious fundamentalism must be resisted, I am at a loss to come up with a safe topic for a thread.

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@arendt

that most of us feel intense resistance and disgust toward religious fundamentalism in whatever form it takes. Possibly though, it takes a more intimate understanding of others whose lives are so different to be able to comment confidently or assuredly in what we believe is 'right'.

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@arendt
for the misogynistic characteristics of various religions in the foundational texts of those religions. which is to say, sects of Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and whatever else, that we typically identify as "fundamentalist" are usually stepping beyond the fundamentals when they start treating women like tainted livestock.

the hijab and other dress restrictions are not characteristic of Islam, they are characteristic of an odious bronze age culture that i revile. little in the bible -- and certainly nothing in the new testament, with the possible exception of some of Paul's mommy-issues-laden epistles -- justifies the obnoxious relegation of women to silent and ever-forbearing housekeepers and baby-making machines, per various christian and jewish sects.

what we witness, over and over again, is that the soul-broken creeps who crawl their way to status within religious organizations use their hard-grabbed religious authority to exert physical and psychological control over the people whose spiritual wellbeing is supposed to be their purview. such creeps are not always men. the magdalen sisters of ireland were an entire cult of sadistic control-freak female monsters, so appalled by their own sexuality that their greatest satisfaction in life was to punish young women who had had the fortune -- good, or often enough ill (e.g., raped by priests) to experience sexual congress.

no, i have no regard for such institutions, nor tolerance for their loathsome principles and practices. i do not believe we are compelled to treat every religious "principle", regardless of how harmful, how sadistic, how anti-human, with diligent, careful, morally-relativistic live-and-let-live respect.

no, i say to them all:

Your old road is rapidly aging
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend a hand
For the times, they are a-changing.

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@janis b

which might explain the lack of comments here.

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@arendt

This is how I took his comment.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

arendt's picture

@snoopydawg

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@arendt spoke a little too soon on that one! And as Snoop says below, it Was meant as a compliment, but no worries. Shit Always gets garbled on the ‘net. I saw your reply to that also. Thanks!
What I meant was that I LEARN so much from All of the posters and comments here-even the ones that are full of shit! Especially my own!
I feel like my role(sometimes) is to kick back and keep rolling and passing joints around the circle while these Brillant motherfuckers rap about Some HEAVY Shit, Man! It’s a Fun environment even when people get pissy at each other, seems we are All in the Same ballpark, even if more folks are in the stands than on the field. Kinda how it goes, I guess.

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Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .

Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .

If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march

I have stated before, and will almost certainly again, here and elsewhere, that the competing desires, interests, and biologies of human males (on average) and human females (on average) cannot be perfectly reconciled within the framework of western secular humanism and liberalism.

The reality is that even within either of those classes, we cannot reconcile their conflicting interests. Sometimes, we can't even reconcile the conflicting interests within a single individual of one of those classes; And the issue of who could/should wear what, and when and where, is right at the fulcrum of this unworkable balance.

Consider this conundrum, which is colored by our particular north american cultural constructs, but is rooted in essential elements of physiology and psychology: Women, it has been suggested by some, should be free to walk down any street at any time, stark naked, without being subjected to ... well, to anything, really. On the other hand, most of the people who would assert such a thing (I think I got it from Steinem, but it doesn't really matter, it's an extreme view but I'm certain it is not unique to her) would simultaneously assert that a man who displays his penis in public is a sexual deviant who should be required to register as such with the local authorities, banned from any and all involvement with "children", yadda yadda. Why is this so?

I suggest that it is so because we recognize that male sexual behavior is fundamentally aggressive (often explicitly violent, really), but we choose to ignore that female sexual behavior is fundamentally passive aggressive. (Again, I'm talking about generalities and averages -- you needn't post a rebuttal about the woman you know who prowls the bars with a leash and an on-your-knees demeanor.) We assert that we must protect women from the discomfort and even fear that they experience when exposed to aggressive male sexual behavior, while simultaneously we assert that we must protect women's rights to express their passive aggressive sexual behavior regardless of any discomfort experienced by the males in the vicinity. Thus, young women wander around high schools and college campuses in sheer, skin-tight yoga pants that, if worn by a male, would possibly get him arrested. This is not because males have visible external genitalia and women do not -- if you suppose that to be the case, I invite you to google "camel toe". (But not at work.)

No, the reason is because, in reaction to about 10,000 years of male repression/enslavement of females, we -- at least, "we" in the mainstream and leftwards thereof -- have decided that women's discomfort with men's sexual display is the men's goddamned problem, and that men's discomfort with women's sexual display is the men's goddamned problem.

Now, I may have framed this as if I'm taking a side (that of the poor men), but actually I'm not. I cannot reconcile the competing interests. It's quite clear that a lot of women desperately want to wear as little as they possibly can, and only a particularly naive understanding of human psychology -- or mammalian psychology, really -- believes that this behavior is not motivated by a deep (possibly unrecognized, certainly often denied) urge to attract the sexual attention of males. Regardless, I'm not the least bit sympathetic to blaming rape victims because they were dressed "provocatively". But I wish they'd fucking not do so.

And to that extent, I do take a side. As a middle-aged male, I really, really, really, really, really, really, really resent the fact that I'm expected to wander through a world of nubile women putting on what are in some cases rather extreme displays of sexual attraction, and:
A. Not look at them.
B. Not think about them.
C. Not talk to them.
D. Not talk about them.
E. Not give any overt sign detectable by anyone around me that I have noticed them.
F. Etc. etc. etc.

Given this context of social constraint under which I'm expected to function, I think it is incredibly ill-fucking-mannered of them to behave as they do. Which doesn't mean they don't have the right to do it, it just means they're assholes for having not one shred of consideration for how their behavior affects other people around them. Because you know what? Nobody needs to walk around in sheer skin-tight clothing.

I literally cannot enjoy a trip to the beach, because it is too damned unsettling. That doesn't make me a sicko. It makes me a normal mammalian male.

And here's the thing: Philosophically, I'm about as far on the side of the women as can be for an extremely intelligent, deeply-thoughtful, constantly introspective, secularly humanist, testosterone-saturated human who has been fortunate enough to enjoy some pretty excellent sex with some rather extraordinary and physically beautiful women. So move the needle about two standard deviations away from me on intelligence, introspection, secularism, humanism, and sexual good fortune, and ask yourself: How is that guy ever going to be able to reconcile the conflict between what he feels, thinks, wants and needs, versus what a whole lot of women feel, think, want and need? Because guess what? He's probably representative of more than half of all the males who are struggling their way through this tale told by an idiot. They are never going to be "okay" with a culture that subjects them to something like the list of constraints I gave a few paragraphs back. They are always going to be angrily resentful and subversive of any such culture -- and some of that subversion is going to find its expression in violence, sexual and otherwise.

Because that's just the human fucking condition.

As it were.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@UntimelyRippd @UntimelyRippd
relate to this "follow-on thread", whose purpose, the author states explicitly, is to sidestep the whole question of hijabs, as a distraction from the question of, uh, "Fundamentalist Islam. What the Fuck, Really?"

so, my extended comment all about who should wear what blah blah might seem to be exactly the opposite of the essay was trying to evoke. i say, however, that it is not.

the kind of social restrictions that fundamentalists insistently place on women are a response to the problem that i have outlined above. i claim that men and women have interests and agendae that are inevitably at odds with one another; i claim moreover that the points of contention are not small, but are essential to the human experience. this means they cannot be casually waved away.

the supposedly "fundamentalist" response to this is simply to pick a Big Winner (Menfolk) and a Big Loser (Womenfolk). it doesn't take a rocket scientist -- well, actually, rocket scientists tend to have toddlerish understandings of humanist issues, but ... -- to reason back from the outcome to the decision-making process. which is to say, "the" men made the rules. not just any men, though. the rules were made by a bunch of particularly hateful, obnoxious, sadistic, selfish, greedy, authoritarian, sociopathic men.

and the thing is, the same thing happened over and over again. sometimes, some of those men might have been gay guys of the sort who find women gross and contemptible. (i refer you again to the epistles of paul.) other times, those men were cunning exploiters looking for a way to claim dominion -- and in particular, the right to snap up and lay down every pretty little thing in the neighborhood. (I'm talkin' to you, Joseph Smith.)

the brilliant insight that these men had, in every case, was that once they established themselves as interpreters of What God Wants, their every misogynistic whim could be justified, set in stone even, or engraved in golden plates, as Divinely Ordered. but make no mistake: this was rarely a matter of textual fundamentalism dictating the subjugation of women (and for that matter, the enslavement of all human minds); rather it was a matter of some savage criminals seizing control of the religion in order to carry out their evil anti-human designs.

in conclusion, there's not much i find of value in any of the abrahamic faiths (or any other religions, for that matter), but when it comes to those claiming the mantles of fundamentalism within those faiths, i would prefer to challenge, not the religion, but the misappropriation of religious authority to carry out an anti-human cultural program that, as often as not, directly contradicts the fundamental texts of the faith in question.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@UntimelyRippd

Either the sexes are the same and all laws civil and religious should reflect that, or they are different and people need to accept that and quit screaming misogyny. I have a big problem with the one-sided way abortions work. Either men are forbidding it to women and demanding birth and motherhood, or women are choosing birth and demanding fatherhood.

Religion is a problem for society. They should all be treated like cults. It is possible that religion is composed of myths that are all a perversion of history. This is long and interesting in view of the climate change issues we are having. This ties back to religion, myth, and the misinterpretation and application of all of it.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

@dkmich
it's important to recognize that not all women want the same things. some women enjoy a certain level of explicit male interest, while other women find it offensive, annoying, or even frightening. what i think a lot of women would like is to live in a magical universe where their sexual display would be received and acted on by exactly and only males in whom they are themselves interested. i think a lot of men would would like to live in a magical universe where they are only interested in women who are interested in them.

the critical intersection of what I've laid out with the problem of so-called fundamentalist religions, is that they don't have any problems at all with reconciling the conflict of male and female interests. they just award male interest the priority, at which point the new problem is dealing with the conflict within the male segment. thus, for example, we get the mormon communities that drive out their own young men, so the old bastards can have all the young women to themselves.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@UntimelyRippd

There's a flip side to the patriarchy. Yes, you have the silverback bosses and the glass ceiling, but at the same time, how many women have you seen walking behind (not driving) a garbage truck? Correct me if I'm wrong, but to this day, young men have to register for the draft, or they can't get student loans or qualify for federal jobs. How many American women have been drafted, as opposed to choosing the military for a career or a job? Men are raped by the thousands every day, in our prison-industrial complex, and until recently, it was treated as a joke: "put him in a cell with Bubba". Who knows what the true numbers are. I think most are not reported.

Before we get emotional here, my point is that the power structure oppresses ALL but a few. The oppression varies by degree and circumstance, but it's determined more by class than anything. The details of oppression are complex, but the reality is simple.

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@pindar's revenge
coal miners, and ask, "show me the privilege".

one of the basic concepts of feminism was the observation that "exploitation" of "women's bodies" was fundamental to our culture. people were less than receptive when i pointed out that exploitation of men's bodies was the central organizing principle of our economy.

which is precisely why i've for a long time been critical of what i guess is now being labeled as "bourgeois feminism" -- the self-congratulatory effort to ensure that sociopathic women have the same opportunities as sociopathic men to fuck over the rest of us. feminism without socialism solves nothing important. it's right in there with, "We need to start space colonies, because the earth is going to suck so bad," as if space colonies are a solution for the billions of people who will still be suffering down here on earth. it's a very weird abstraction.

anyway, yeah, life ain't that great for most people, male or female. maleness does come with some undeniable privileges -- i mean, jesus fuck, women's minds were just abandoned to waste and wander for most of our history -- but also some pretty unpleasant obligations. the twin starting points for accomplishing meaningful equality are that women must have control of their own fertility, and they must have full access to educational opportunity. accomplish that, and we can start worrying about addressing other inequalities, whether they favor males or females.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@UntimelyRippd @UntimelyRippd

"exploitation of men's bodies was the central organizing principle of our economy"

I'd say "people's bodies", to be picky. Men get killed and crippled doing the bulk of physically dangerous work, but also remember the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. The capitalists were willing to treat families, not individuals, as the object of exploitation, with the man going down the shaft and the woman supporting him, but in a pinch, women (and children) could die at work too. Those little kiddies could fit in tighter places. Enslaved women worked the fields, too. Of course, nowadays we've come a long way, baby. Each and every one of us has to work to make ends (barely) meet. We're incredibly lucky if we like our work.

I don't use the word "empowerment", as a term to describe the process of stamping each of us, male and female, into a cog in the machine. I say people should be "enabled" to do what makes them happy. That's not the function of this economy.

Of course, the biggest difference is that men don't get pregnant. That's a big discussion in itself.

edit: kudos for this line:
"the self-congratulatory effort to ensure that sociopathic women have the same opportunities as sociopathic men to fuck over the rest of us"

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@UntimelyRippd
High School. Duh! Adolescence is a total sea of burning hormones. I've never liked sports and was always interested in how things work. My standard joke was that "In High School the other guys thought about sex 90% of the time and sports the the other 10%. I was different. I thought about Science 10% of the time." Back in the dawn of time (early 1960's), the standard uniform for girls was a microskirt, tight tight low cut blouse and beehive hairdo. We boys wandered the halls in a daze of lust. It wasn't until many years later that I realized (from talking with former female classmates) that the girls were as horny as the guys. If it weren't for cultural constraints, the halls would have have been littered with rutting couples. This is natural. It has nothing to do with being "good girls" or "good boys". Being asexual is what's unnatural.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

@The Voice In the Wilderness
the advent of the Pill changed the landscape for young unmarried women.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Deja's picture

@UntimelyRippd
You seem so very binary in your beliefs -- or at least the ones regarding sex/gender/age/marriage. Either/Or. On/Off. Good/Bad. Right/Wrong. Young & hot/Old & not.

Submitted by UntimelyRippd on Thu, 01/03/2019 - 6:10pm
cultural constraints + scientific constraints
@The Voice In the Wilderness
the advent of the Pill changed the landscape for young unmarried women.

While you are correct that it changed the landscape for unmarried young (and not so young -- ya know, we can have babies well past 20) women, it also saved (and is still saving) some married women from birthing literally to death, like a stray cat or dog -- like the poor married women did back before it was legal for them to know how their own bodies worked and exactly how they could get pregnant in the first place. Lots of married couples use the pill to keep from having babies, just like single women.

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Anja Geitz's picture

@Deja

As it relates to the pill might be the more pertinent focus for men who apparently have what they refer to as a, er, healthy male libido.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@Anja Geitz
that had remarked on the sexual behavior of young unmarried women.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Anja Geitz's picture

@UntimelyRippd

Either way, it's purely guess work on my part. Sorry if you felt I was targeting you.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@Anja Geitz
so often invoke "young" women -- whatever someone supposes that might mean, but for someone of my encroaching decrepitude, it's certainly anyone in their 20s -- is that it's more or less a given in our culture that any attraction a man of a certain age feels for a woman of a certain substantially lower age is essentially, inextricably creepy and gross. The message the culture gives me ENDLESSLY is that if a 20-year-old inspires in me a particular sort of response -- even a mild one -- I'm a disgusting creep. Well, I'm not. I'm just a guy.

To get a little more personal than I'd like, I was genuinely surprised when I found myself infatuated with a woman 30 years younger than me -- surprised because what i was experiencing internally was not some sort of creepy greedy lasciviousness. Instead, I felt exactly the same as if I were 22. Or even 16. stomach in knots hoping our paths might cross on a given day. stomach in knots hoping they wouldn't.

I didn't come away from that experience angry at her for being unavailable to me. (Angry at the universe, maybe, but not at her. I continue to adore her, and imagine I always will.) Why should i expect her to be otherwise? i'm not all that wonderful. i don't hate myself, and i don't love myself. i know who i am, i know my faults and my virtues. my ego is not invested in whether or not any particular woman likes or loves me, which means i don't need to construct some sort of self-defensive rationalization, in the form of a phony catalog of her hypothetical defects, to explain why she doesn't.

All of which (and more unsaid) renders, I think, Deja's curious interpretations of my motivations and opinions astonishingly far off base.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Anja Geitz's picture

@UntimelyRippd

I recently had a little crush on someone who was also 30 years younger and it also surprised the hell out of me. I couldn't stop smiling any time he was around. I felt giddy whenever he surprised me with a smile of his own. I had a bounce in my step I hadn't had for a awhile. And yet I was keenly aware not only of how ridiculous it was, but that I was in my 50's and being reminded of it everyday in contrast to his 27 years.

Eventually the crush wore off as I realized that although he was flattered by my "admiration" for him, my interest in someone who shared my experiences in life was much more appealing than the tabula rasa young "Chris" represented for me.

Besides, I kinda want to enjoy being admired by someone who doesn't make me feel "old".

So I do understand where you're coming from. It happens. And it can be sweet. But it's untenable for so many different reasons. As it should be , I think. Let the young enjoy their tabula rasa together, while we enjoy the experiences of our lives with some who has experiences of their own to share.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@Anja Geitz
be any sort of relationship between us -- which she claimed to want -- it would not be of the kind where I sat with glass in hand dispensing wisdom and she sat with glass in hand receiving it. In the end, as I expected and despite her protests to the contrary, she chooses to spend her social time with people her own age, and we very rarely encounter one another, and then only briefly, and talk of nothing significant when we do. C'est la fucking vie.

Meanwhile, where Deja is most particularly mistaken is in thinking that I'm complaining because young women won't fuck me. I've no idea, actually, whether I could troll the college bars, be my most charming self, and "pull", as the Brits say. I've never tried. I don't even want to. If the average 20-year-old in yoga pants actually propositioned me (because somehow we improbably found ourselves in a social situation where it could happen), I'm not at all certain I'd say yes.

My singletude being apparently a matter of some concern for my coworkers, one of them told me that he and his wife had discussed trying to find someone to fix me up with, but in the end thought better of it. I just laughed. "Really? Can you really imagine anyone you know being a reasonable match for me?" He admitted that in retrospect it was ludicrous.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@Deja
When I say something, often in language quite carefully composed, and then somebody accuses me of having said something quite other than what I said.

Of course the Pill also changed things for married women, and for older women (though not as drastically as you might think -- the last time i saw statistics, some time ago i admit, the preferred form of BC for women 30+ was still tubal ligation). That just wasn't the subject at hand.

My thinking is not remotely binary. To the contrary, I am hypersensitive to the infinite complexities of reality, and the difficulties, as elucidated by Wittgenstein and exquisitely comprehended by practitioners of my scientific specialty, of capturing, representing, and communicating those complexities in language and the structures of formal reason.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Anja Geitz's picture

@UntimelyRippd

Because your thought process was so well written.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@Anja Geitz
of blather laced with unnecessarily big words.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Anja Geitz's picture

@UntimelyRippd

When you write this way. Obviously you're very intelligent, and it's clear your thought process is comfortable balancing several balls in the air on a number of topics. You're also very passionate about your ideas. Together, that sometimes makes your responses difficult for the rest of us to break down to s point we want to respond to.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

Anja Geitz's picture

@UntimelyRippd

Because I once commented that one of your responses had too many big words, I'm impressed you remembered and hope you aren't still angry with me. Because if you aren't angry with me, I enjoyed the banter.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@Anja Geitz
Deja just ripped into me for it (via a rhetorical device) when JtC warned that one of her responses had crossed a line of civility. I think it was the one where she told me I need therapy. She responded to him:

I guess if I blather on and on, using unnecessarily big words blaming the opposite sex for and whining about my not being able to have my way with them based on their age and what they're wearing, it will be okay.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Anja Geitz's picture

@UntimelyRippd

Well, it was still kinda funny anyway.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@Anja Geitz
that particular gripe into their responses to me.

then eventually you can start a club, with t-shirts and everything.

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0 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Anja Geitz's picture

@UntimelyRippd

But with small words on them.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@UntimelyRippd
Some years back I worked on our family tree. In my grandparents' generation they had eight or nine kids apiece. My father had an Aunt two months younger than he was. In his generation it was only two or three kids. In mine, one or two. The pill wasn't around in my mother's time. However, she did have a d8iaphragm. And me and my buddy across the alley got our condoms by raiding his father's drawer which was full of them.

My suburb, was full of Irish/Italian/Polish Catholics with many Protestants and quite a few Jews. No differences in family size. My buddy's father was a Polish Catholic and his mother an Italian Catholic. They attended mass every week. Somewhere in the early 20th Century, American Catholics stopped listening to the Pope about sex. My father (non-practicing Italian catholic) told me, "What does he know? He's not married!"

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

CS in AZ's picture

@UntimelyRippd

And to that extent, I do take a side. As a middle-aged male, I really, really, really, really, really, really, really resent the fact that I'm expected to wander through a world of nubile women putting on what are in some cases rather extreme displays of sexual attraction, and:

A. Not look at them.
B. Not think about them.
C. Not talk to them.
D. Not talk about them.
E. Not give any overt sign detectable by anyone around me that I have noticed them.
F. Etc. etc. etc.


I read this late last night and thought something seems off here, but decided to sleep on it.

Now I see what troubles me. This list of rules is quite off the mark, it seems to me.
It’s missing the only two actual “rules” that there are, as far as I’m concerned.

1. Do not touch without permission.
2. (Inherent in rule 1, but needs to be explicit) Don’t rape them or force yourself sexually on them in any way.

That’s it.

Unless you are married or in a relationship and your spouse/partner imposes these other rules about not looking, noticing, thinking, etc. then I really don’t know where you get that from. Peope who dress sexy want to be noticed. They just don’t want to be accosted. Talking to them is perhaps a gray area that depends on the context and situation, as well as what you might say. But hell man, everyone looks, notices, and thinks about what they see. And they may talk about it, again depending on context. In most marriages you’d probably be well advised not to mention to your spouse or children how hot you think some young thing looks, but you could tell a friend.

You can’t enjoy a day at the beach? That’s very sad. My friends returned from a trip to San Diego last fall where they visited the famed clothing-optional Black’s Beach, and she complained a little about how they made the trail so much easier now that there are a lot of lookie-loos who bring beach chairs and just sit and watch the nude beach goers. However, she said she loves being nude at the ocean so she just ignored them and went for it, as did most everyone. No one really cares if they look.

I remember when my husband (who is bisexual) and I in our younger days went to watch mixed-gender beach volleyball tournaments in Laguna beach quite often. (We are not interested in volleyball. Wink )

I dunno why you’re living under such constrictive rules, but I do not think this level of repression is how most people view it. Football and it’s ubiquitous scantily clad beautiful cheerleaders, beautiful people on tv, beauty pageants, well it’s endless. Everyone looks and notices and thinks ... whatever they want to think.

The rules are simply don’t touch without consent, and do not invade others’ personal space with uninvited advances or make rude or derogatory remarks to them or about them.

I’m genuinely sorry that you feel such repression in your life, and resentment is certainly understandable if you feel your response is that constrained and controlled. But I submit for your consideration that you might have adopted a set of rules that you could challenge and find are not so unfair as you are thinking.

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detroitmechworks's picture

@CS in AZ However, in the age of actionable Microaggressions, simple and straightforward rules are not what lawyers and cops make the big bucks suing and arresting people for, respectively.

MOST good natured people do in fact see it in the way you describe. Unfortunately, for those of us who have seen the opposite in its minuscule and manifold pettiness, it becomes a case of "Burned hand".

And if you think I'm kidding, check out Netfix' Sexual Harrasment policy.

Because who can be FOR harassment? Clearly if you're accused you're doing something wrong, you just don't see it and YOU'RE the problem. Except it feels that EVERY behavior becomes wrong. So it is wrong to be aggressive and bother employees! Rgr. Check. Won't bother them, or place myself into a situation where I will make the person uncomfortable. No, can't do that because you're treating them DIFFERENTLY! Now you must treat them exactly the same as male employees, because the standard is whether or not gender was a factor in the treatment.

The next adjustment of course is WRONG, so anybody trying to follow the rules is stuck in a situation where every choice they make and every possible decision is wrong. And yes, you're totally entitled to change your mind, but when that choice has the force of LAW behind it, people get REALLY gun shy.

Essentially, we've criminalized miscommunication when it comes to gender relations. If you don't think I'm kidding, ask yourself who will IMMEDIATELY go to jail if they call the cops. Here's a tip, it's NOT the woman.

My paranoia after dealing with social workers has stuck with me LONG after. Sure, maybe most people are great wonderful folks who don't think that every male/female is an evil person out to ruin them. But it only takes a couple drops of poison to taint the entire well.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

CS in AZ's picture

@detroitmechworks

Which I agree have generally gone overboard.

But the post I responded to was about “walking around in the world” — at the mall, at the beach, etc.

No one is going to arrest anyone for noticing, looking at, or admiring people in those types of places.

Serious question: do you find it impossible to go shopping or to a beach because of fear or anger that you might see an attractive woman?

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detroitmechworks's picture

@CS in AZ But rather that I might interact with her. Of course I feel that way about most people that I do not know, but there's an extra layer of nerves when interacting with attractive women. I do NOT want to offend. I tend to resort to Military discipline in such situations. Formal, tend to go to parade rest, (Which My Girlfriend has called me on Multiple times when I get nervous when we're having a fight.)

Hell, I used to be paranoid about hugging my daughter in public after some of the comments I got. For years, side hug ONLY.

I've gotten better, but even at parties, I'm very nervous about speaking to people without being introduced first. Hell, I have caught myself staring at the ceiling for over an hour to avoid looking at people I don't know. That one I'm DEAD serious about.

I also admit I have severe PTSD and Paranoia. It doesn't get BETTER by worrying about all the ways I can fuck up, and being ultra paranoid about physical contact of ANY kind with someone I wasn't intimate with. (Thank you Judo for helping me with that little problem.)

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

CS in AZ's picture

@detroitmechworks

and I don’t do well at talking to strangers either. I absolutely suck at making small talk, avoid it as much as possible, and being at a party with lot of people who I don’t know well is very stressful to me.

None of that has anything to do with sexual attraction however.

I really was trying to get specifically at this idea that ALL MEN are so constrained in their lives now that they cannot safety go to public places, because some women dress in sexy clothes, and you cannot so much as look, notice, or show awareness of them.

I do not think that’s the case.

I’m trying to discover if other men agree with that or not.

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detroitmechworks's picture

@CS in AZ to be a mind reader in this situation.

Thanks to the myriad of messages about creepiness, condescension, NOT complimenting women on their appearance because it suggests she did it for YOU, I feel that many men, including myself, feel it's best to play it safe and follow the rules:

1: She has NO interest in being seen or observed, much less interested in meeting somebody new. You are a SCARY man, and approaching or talking to women can be a threat. Just let her go about her day.
2: Interact as little as possible so you don't offend or frighten.
3. If you ignore 1 and 2, that's on you, buddy, I warned you.

Because that seems to be want is wanted. No approaching, no conversation, No staring. Yes, I admit this feels an awful lot like how I was expected to treat women in Iraq at checkpoints.

My guide since I've been back in the states and get my kids back is "STAY OUT OF TROUBLE"

So, yeah, I do think at least I feel it. I cannot speak for all men, and I wouldn't even if I could. I just worry, especially here in Progressive Portland.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

CS in AZ's picture

@detroitmechworks

Being seen and observed (noticed) and being actively approached by anyone with an intent to initiate a sexual interaction.

I’m really surprised that this is not understood...

Oh well, that’s what I like about this place. Always learning. Thanks.

(sorry again arendt for the mistake of posting my thoughts on this.)

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detroitmechworks's picture

@CS in AZ However, there are people who do not.

They are the ones who came up with micro-aggressions.

This is what drives me crazy, because I agree there are horrible, disgusting men out there who don't follow the rules, ignore women's wishes and generally are pure scumbags.

When women feel like they're constantly having to remind men not to rape... the ones you need to tell don't give a shit. In fact they Revel in their breaking of women's boundaries, delighting in negging and physically assaulting women to the breathless adulation of the media. (PUA culture is just the tip of the trash-berg)

IMHO, the people is that people aren't TALKING. So I applaud you for being willing to discuss it openly. Communication is the only way we're gonna fix this problem.

So, my position on the sex issue:

I don't talk to women because I am worried that it will come across as creepy and unwelcome. I have no way of knowing when it is welcome, because it feels that every interaction is a potential speed-dial away from jail. I also am not overly fond of "Hook-up" culture, and so my options are very limited. I don't drink anymore, because I tend to turn into exactly one of those assholes that women are complaining about.

Hence while I am Poly, I haven't been on a date in almost 2 years. Too much stress out there.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

@detroitmechworks
It's OK to be a garrulous old man as long as you smile.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

@CS in AZ @CS in AZ
however, i am careful, whether in the workplace or anywhere else, not to let my gaze linger more than a fraction of a second; not to meet their eyes, or directly acknowledge their existence in any way; not to make an offhand remark to someone i happen to be with; and so on. basically, some people expect men to act, always, as if they are peasants and all women are royalty.

these are the new rules of disengagement.

and honestly, i wouldn't care very much (at least not for myself), except that at the exact same time, women's clothing styles have become ever and ever more explicitly a matter of sexual display, and that makes life really fucking uncomfortable for those of us who are expected [EDIT: NOT] to exhibit -- or actually, even experience -- a response to that display.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@UntimelyRippd
Became an unperson and an entire show was taken down and re-runs sequestered because he touched the bare back of a female worker at work. My immediate reaction was "Who wears a barebacked dress to work?"

IMHO, the appropriate response would have been a slap in the face along with a hissed "Keep your hands to yourself!", not the nuclear option. Feminism is no longer about lifting women's status but about degrading men.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

@CS in AZ
that your apparent shock and incredulity at this repression is because nobody imposes it against you?

It is absolutely the case that women believe they should have control over not only who notices them in public, but what the response from approved observers should be (I was once yelled at while jogging for NOT looking at a sunbathing sorority girl, and yes, I do recall that the epithet “fag” was thrown out...). This is part and parcel with the old-fashioned commodification of female sexuality that modern feminism has become oddly comfortable with. Especially so long as it remains a sellers’ market...

In her 1973 essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” British critic Laura Mulvey introduced the concept of “the male gaze” to refer to effect of creative representation that presents female characters subjectively from a masculine perspective (that of the writers and directors). You ask any random woman under fifty (those who grew up under the influence of Second Wave Feminism) what “the male gaze” is and they’ll inform you in short order that it’s being observed in public by men with doubtlessly unsavory intentions and ill-will. This is why, as detroitmechworks notes below, that there is such an ambivalence towards the burkha in academic feminism.

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CS in AZ's picture

@FutureNow

and I cannot imagine what makes you say that. Also, obviously, I related experiences beyond my own, such as a crowded nude beach, so no, it’s not just about me and what I’ve personally experienced.

A LOT of men are able to enjoy a day at the beach. I do not think they are ALL seething with resentment because they find women attractive.

But maybe I’m wrong. Your response makes me sorry I offered my views at all.

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@CS in AZ

I dunno why you’re living under such constrictive rules, but I do not think this level of repression is how most people view it....
Everyone looks and notices and thinks ... whatever they want to think.

This is primarily what led me to that response. I agree that Untimelyrippd is overthinking his situation (the answer for him in all instances is “1 - 5: Don’t exist”), but who are “most people” that you find are so easy-going in their perceptions of acceptable public behavior? Certainly not the #metoo crowd, who cavalierly refer to Louis CK and Al Franken as “serial rapists” or who count among Harvey Weinstein’s crimes his “assault” on Minnie Driver by calling her “unfuckable” (incredibly conflating actually finding someone undesirable with rape!).

I appreciate your thoughts, but I should hope that I’m allowed to follow-up or challenge them?

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CS in AZ's picture

@FutureNow

I’m always happy to engage in a good faith discussion of differing points of view. I could do without the assumptions like that I’m shocked or incredulous, when nothing I wrote suggests that. I was pretty light hearted about it, honestly. I just felt bad for UR that he says he’s unable to enjoy the beach or a shopping mall, because of these rules about not looking, noticing, or even thinking. Which, as you say, do not exist in those situations. That was actually exactly my point too.

And now, with my apologies to arendt for the off topic detour, I feel it’s best to leave it at that for now.

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@CS in AZ
they put on their sunglasses and stare to their hearts' content.

though i'll say -- how much any given man cares is likely to depend on the quality of his current sex life.

but also, i think a lot of men aren't particularly introspective about it. they don't necessarily connect their constant levels of anxiety and fidgetiness with the fact that they're constantly bombarded with images or live examples of nearly naked women. it's just part of the background that they've always lived with. so if you ask them, "does going to the beach and seeing young women in dental floss bikinis make you irritable," they're not likely to say yes. many will insist that to the contrary, they love going to the beach and seeing young women in dental floss bikinis. i suspect they're wrong about that, but i can't authoritatively gainsay their self analysis.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@UntimelyRippd

Sex sells, goes the saying, so we're constantly bombarded with sexual images and sexual signalling. Can't get no satisfaction, when we're constantly in a state of stimulation, even if subliminal and not overt. It's all manipulation on the commercial end, and often manipulation on the personal end. It gets really creepy, with the commercial sexualization of young girls. Remember Brooke Shields?

Not watching tv helps, I avoid a lot of manipulation that way. I can't stand the sound of tv, these days, like nails on a blackboard. I think a lot of the obnoxious behavior like cat-calling is closely associated with the distortion of the psyche by sexual repression, and maybe political-economic oppression. Venting. I find that smiling is a good response to personal displays, and sometimes "I'm impressed" when it's an overt power-display.

Public nudity, like skinny-dipping, is very different. It's not there to tantalize and manipulate your decision-making process. That little bit of floss should have a dollar sign on it.

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Deja's picture

@UntimelyRippd

Submitted by UntimelyRippd on Thu, 01/03/2019 - 6:25pm
a lot of men don't give a fuck about the new rules.
@CS in AZ
they put on their sunglasses and stare to their hearts' content.

though i'll say -- how much any given man cares is likely to depend on the quality of his current sex life.

but also, i think a lot of men aren't particularly introspective about it. they don't necessarily connect their constant levels of anxiety and fidgetiness with the fact that they're constantly bombarded with images or live examples of nearly naked women.

It's very hard for me to address this without showing how disgusted I am that a grown ass, well read, and highly educated man "contant[ly]" haz a sadz because he gets sexually frustrated and either wants to fuck or feels entitled to fuck, but knows he can't, every woman he sees who's not wearing her Handmaid's bonnet (that's the sign she's free game and wants it from any and all men, but not you, right?), or that makes his willie a woody. Jesus fucking Christ, I really think you need to talk to a therapist, because this is a recurring theme with your comments when it comes to women -- but especially young women. Glad I'm an old one (over 20)!

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@Deja
in this thread right here.

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Deja's picture

@JtC
I guess if I blather on and on, using unnecessarily big words blaming the opposite sex for and whining about my not being able to have my way with them based on their age and what they're wearing, it will be okay. I mean, based on your non involvement until it's thrown back at him, that's what it certainly seems like. Or is it because he's male, so it's okay; and I'm female, so absolutely not okay?

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@Deja
because that's where this conversation became personal and insults were thrown. I don't take sides but I do point out personal invective. Please point out where the poster you were responding to insulted you personally. Speaking controversially is not against the rules, throwing personal insults are, but you know that, right?

This thread is based on a touchy subject and was going along civilly, you escalated it with personal insults. I've seen this too many times to let it slide because I know where it leads.

If you can't post without throwing insults then don't post at all.

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@JtC
I just responded to two of Deja's remarks -- a bit snippily, perhaps, but not rudely, I hope. In any case, I will leave the matter there.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

arendt's picture

@JtC

This string of comments happened while I was off the internet (Friday evening), so I missed it.

I appreciate both your understanding in letting the thread run on, and your vigilance in squashing the personal attacks. You run a very tight ship, sir!

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@Deja
I was wondering whether someone would throw out "incel" at some point. As it happens, I do not think I -- or anybody else -- is entitled to have sex with anybody, ever -- nevermind any and every sexually attractive person they encounter. I believe I've been excruciatingly clear on this point -- that I attempt to honor, in philosophy, in rhetoric and in practice, the sexual autonomy of every individual. As I also observed, as far as such things go, I consider myself to have enjoyed above-average good fortune in my sex life.

You have, in any event, ably made my point for me by demonstrating precisely the cultural attitude I'm describing: Women who are made uncomfortable by overt male sexual display are fundamentally righteous, and must be accommodated, always and everywhere. Men who are made uncomfortable by overt female sexual display are whiny misogynists, who want to control women's self expression and put them in burkhas, and must be denounced and ridiculed, always and everywhere.

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0 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Deja's picture

@UntimelyRippd
The common theme of your comments in this essay and others on the subject of gender (metoo in the past) seems to be that you get aroused by seeing young women in certain attire -- totally normal if it stopped there. It doesn't. Not only do you, based on your own comments, get aroused, you then get frustrated because of it, as if those young women are to blame for your sexual frustration because if they were properly covered according to your definition of proper, or didn't go where you go (so you didn't have to see them), then you wouldn't get aroused and in turn not get frustrated. Therefore, your problem is all their fault. Now throw in a little normalization by saying basically all men feel the same way, they're just too shallow to know it.

If black men gave me a physical response (racing heart, sweating) and then an emotional one of fear, based on their mere presence in my line of sight, that would NOT be their fault, but would certainly be my problem. It would be completely irrational of me to be frustrated at them for existing. If I felt that way, I'd have to go talk to a professional, because it's absolutely irrational to blame an entire group of people for my own feelings.

I'm sure you will deny it all, but the pattern of your comments regarding the subject says otherwise.

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Anja Geitz's picture

@CS in AZ

You can’t enjoy a day at the beach? That’s very sad...

I've never heard anyone complain that attractive girls on the beach were troubling except to comment on their sexual promiscuity, which I don't think this poster is saying. Odd.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@Anja Geitz

The trouble you can get in for finding them attractive is what's troubling.

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Anja Geitz's picture

@pindar's revenge

When you say that. I need an example before I could comment.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@Anja Geitz @Anja Geitz

But I think of an incident a few years ago. Two guys out on a smoke break. A statuesque woman walks by dressed in the most diaphanous, clinging piece of cloth I've ever seen, more tantalizing than nudity, but practically nude. One guy says "I'm just looking straight ahead". (I said "maybe there is a god") His statement struck me that he was totally afraid to react to this blatantly sexual display, for fear of getting into trouble, even so much as to look at her. This is not the same as going skinny-dipping and not leering at the ladies, because in that case the nudity is not a deliberate sexual display. In the diaphanous case, there's a real possibility of getting challenged for misbehavior, for reacting, no matter how mildly, to a blatant stimulus.

edit: to summarize, the trouble does not lie in what the woman might be wearing, or in a simple (not hypersexual or cat-calling) reaction to a stimulus, but in the real possibility of getting in some form of troble for it.

post-script: I like Arendt's long take on this issue, below.

post-post-script: for context, I have been physically attacked for interrupting a clear case of harassment on the street, tackled to the ground by the harasser. Fortunately, nobody got hurt. I wound up kneeling on him and telling him not to act that way. I don't like offensively aggressive behavior. Another example.

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CS in AZ's picture

@pindar's revenge

I’m genuinely very interested in this topic. Your response is fascinating. I note that you evidently did not seem to share that fear, with “there is a god” ?

Which is a much more ‘normal’ response, in my opinion. Not necessarily the god part (ironic, in this thread), but the appreciation. No woman dresses like that and wants to be *ignored* — in my opinion. Again, yes, she doesn’t want to be accosted. But appreciated? Yes. I think so.

I also still can’t figure out what actual trouble could ensue for just looking. Or for merely thinking there is a god and appreciating her body.

Is it that he fears he cannot control himself to only looking?

Did you look? Did you get into any trouble for doing so?

In my opinion, a woman dressed like that expects to be looked at. That doesn’t mean she wants anyone to approach her, but looking? She cannot expect otherwise, and would not dress so if she truly wants to go unnoticed.

I say that as a female who, for the most part, wants to go unnoticed in the physical world.. It’s not that difficult.

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@CS in AZ

Not looking at anyone. I was cautious.
Yeah, ironic and funny. And I was still learning the ins and outs of modern behavior, which is never-ending.
I've known men who had disciplinary action taken against them for similar mild remarks. It's not the harmless mild interactions or behaviors that are the problem, not the wearing or the staring, but the manipulation of these behaviors and interactions as an expression of power or intimidation that is the problem.
In any case, I don't wish discomfort on anyone but the privileged.

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CS in AZ's picture

@pindar's revenge

It's not the harmless mild interactions or behaviors that are the problem, not the wearing or the staring, but the manipulation of these behaviors and interactions as an expression of power or intimidation that is the problem.

This needs further consideration.

It’s gone far beyond what I had in mind earlier, about supposed rules for men going to the beach or the mall, and what thoughts can be allowed to pass silently through their minds.

If I get real brave (or fool-hearty) I might do an essay and see if anyone wants to explore this more. Thanks again.

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@CS in AZ

I think we need a lot more communication around sexual politics. I don't think we all understand each other as much as we think we do. And this looks like a good forum for it. With a potentially explosive topic, there's been near-zero friction here.

And thank you for taking the trouble to read and think about what I had to say.

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Anja Geitz's picture

@UntimelyRippd

I literally cannot enjoy a trip to the beach, because it is too damned unsettling. That doesn't make me a sicko. It makes me a normal mammalian male.

Perhaps I'm interpreting the word "unsettling" in a way you are not intending, but the comments you've shared in the past related to satisfying your sexual urges and the emotions you experience being in the presence of sexually attractive women sound more like symptoms from hypersexual disorder than "normal mammalian" urges.

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

@Anja Geitz
masturbated. then they lobotomized them. Bad, Wicked, Naughty Zoot! Much too perilous.

everyone who has ever looked into the matter (to my knowledge) has discovered that almost all men entertain various sexual thoughts with a ridiculous frequency. the extent to which men are able to successfully sublimate all that sexuality and get on with business is a significant factor in how we evaluate their relative level of civilization. repression of male sexual drive is not an insight i dreamed up. western cultures got really explicit about it starting in the mid-1800s. even before that, one of the most effective methods our culture (and many others, for that matter) employed was to separate men and women from each other most of the time in their daily activities. (feminism has made this impossible -- which i applaud -- but the only response anyone has produced to the increased sexual tension is for men to grow up and behave themselves, and stop acting like hypersexualized beasts.) circumcision, a largely pointless exercise in child mutilation, became common practice in the US under pressure from a few different directions, but one of them was pseudoscientific bunk that circumcision both reduced the male sex drive (it doesn't) and made masturbation more difficult (not enough to matter). (True story: I was in a Bradley natural birth class. One of the sessions was devoted to the matter of circumcision, which is officially disdained by the Bradley folks. One of the younger of the expectant moms -- who, I'm sorry to say, could not get her partner to come to the classes -- said, "But what if I don't have him circumcised, and he grows up to be a rapist?" Being unmutilated myself, I had no idea how to respond to that question. At the time, I hadn't ever heard of the concern.)

meanwhile, here in the 20teens, i believe there has never before been a culture -- certainly not a modern post-industrial culture -- in which sex so completely saturated society's communication systems, our art, our fashion, our literature, our music, our drama, our commerce. confronted with the cultural crazy quilt of mixed messaging, and niftily provided with an incomprehensible abundance of pornography, "kids these days" -- teens through twenty-somethings, maybe right up into their thirties -- are apparently in large numbers opting out of the entire mating ritual. they don't know how to ask someone they know out on a date -- and in fact, they think it's kind of creepy to do so. they're discovering that dating apps don't actually work for most people, because most people aren't attractive enough to ever get right-swiped. they might be having more sex than any Americans have ever had before -- but if they are, they're having it with themselves. probably, though, they're having less sex than their parents and grandparents did, onanist included, because they're getting their dopamine and serotonin fixes from craftily designed games that they play on their phones. so maybe that will be the solution -- as my generation ages out of society, men won't give a fuck about what women are wearing, because they'll all be blissed out from gaming.

anyway, you might think i'm hypersexed, but i know that there are plenty of men like me, who find the constant distraction of young females' sexual display a real fucking drag. they talk about it, but they don't talk about it anywhere that they think someone unsympathetic might overhear. i used to be amused by the trope in movies, literature and standup comedy, of men sitting around talking about sex. in my own experience, it rarely happened, which is one reason men are so often appalled when they discover that women talk about everything, which means your wife's best friend who's sitting across the table right now may well know every fucking thing about your sexual behavior. the few times i remember discussing the specifics of our sex lives with other men, the conversations were between just two people, and they were relatively quiet and serious, or straight-up hilarious (the time my friend immediately fell asleep post-coitus, still on her and in her) -- but they never involved talking about what "she" liked, or didn't like, or did, or didn't do, or how she sounded or looked, or anything at all like such "guy-talk" is often represented.

nowadays, though, i do find men talking about sex -- and one of the things they're talking about is the irritating phenomenon of functionally naked, wholly unavailable, women wandering around in public places while acting aggrieved if they are noticed. in order of preference, i would say that the men's first choice would be that the women put on some clothes that don't show everything they've got (albeit some of it "hidden" under a layer of spandex), rather than that the women not act aggrieved at being noticed.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@UntimelyRippd
that penile cancer rates are much higher in uncircumcised men. Although penile cancer is rare.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

@UntimelyRippd
"the irritating phenomenon of functionally naked, wholly unavailable, women wandering around in public places while acting aggrieved if they are noticed."

Man-haters trying to trap their enemy.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Anja Geitz's picture

@UntimelyRippd

But I read your response while I was at work yesterday and shared the gist of what you said with my male co-workers, who btw are all under the age of 35 years old. None of them seemed to share your resentment of women who dress provocatively. And none of them seemed to share your distress about overwhelming their libido. A co-worker who is also very attractive and physically fit even admitted to having practiced celibacy for a few years, and still stood by his comment in response to yours.

As for your original comment about bikini clad women at the beach exposing their skin at the risk of possibly arousing the unsuspecting male nearby, what would you expect them to wear at the beach?

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There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier

arendt's picture

@UntimelyRippd

clothing rathole.

I have stated before, and will almost certainly again, here and elsewhere, that the competing desires, interests, and biologies of human males (on average) and human females (on average) cannot be perfectly reconciled within the framework of western secular humanism and liberalism.

The reality is that even within either of those classes, we cannot reconcile their conflicting interests. Sometimes, we can't even reconcile the conflicting interests within a single individual of one of those classes; And the issue of who could/should wear what, and when and where, is right at the fulcrum of this unworkable balance

I was with you right up until you reintroduced clothing. I will grant you all you say about biology; but why, oh why, must the fight be about something as trivial, yet polarizing, as clothing? People have been fighting about "expression" (including clothing as an expression - see Lady Gaga's meat dress) forever. Remember George Carlin's "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" skit? Haven't enough progressive causes been derailed by wedge issues that we can see them coming?

Freedom of expression is its own complex subject with its own wedge issues, e.g. prayers in schools. I'm trying to talk about the place of women in society, and the conversation keeps being derailed by what a person wears, as if that is the only or even the most important dimension of being a human being.

Sam Harris (unforunately now gone to the dark side) claimed that all religions eventually wind up being dominated by the most fundamentalist people because those people have the simplest message, and that message can be found directly in the holy book.

It seems to me that the clothing debate here is headed in that direction. I simply don't want to get into whether or not "choosing" to wear a hijab is good or bad. I don't want to get into whether a woman has or has not got the right to walk down the street naked (and a man doesn't). Its all wedge issue distraction.

Now, I will agree with you that the politicization of these wedge issues is completely out of control and can land people in really bad legal trouble. Microagressions are bullshit. If you take every utterance as a prelude to an attack, you are fucking paranoid. We cannot shut down all dialogue because of a few predators. Trigger warnings are a sad commentary on the helicopter parenting of the last thirty years. Kids are traumatized when some trivial thing disagrees with their worldview. Parents won't let kids walk to the end of the block unattended, and this is enforced by departments of child protection - absolutely unbelievable overreach.

As my wife says, all of the sudden a 75 year old song, "Baby Its Cold Outside" must be banned for its sexism - but the most vile rap music (bitches, hoes, fuck this and that) blares out in every gym and health club. Its as stupid as claiming that "don we now our gay apparel" is really a recruitment song for homosexuals.

The society has been manipulated into complete insanity by the corporate media.

That's an issue worth discussing, not getting mad at each other about how one is allowed to "gaze" at one another. Next thing you know we will be putting out eyeballs for daring to look at someone. Oh, my mistake, that's what burkas are for.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@arendt

Blinded by the light I am.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
TheOtherMaven's picture

@arendt

and, in fact, when it was popularized in the film Neptune's Daughter (a piece of Esther Williams silliness), it was performed twice - once with the standard "man trying to persuade woman to stay", and the second time with the roles reversed (the woman trying to persuade the man to stay!)

I suppose it could also be performed with same-gender couples, though I don't think anyone has gone there yet (there's always a first time though).

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

arendt's picture

@TheOtherMaven

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TheOtherMaven's picture

@arendt

As far as I know, I'm the only person who ever gender-flipped a parody of "Eddystone Light" (bawdy song normally about a man, his son, and his estranged partner). This may take a lot of explaining....

"Eddystone Light", "Asteroid Light", "London Zoo" and "Benden Weyr" (Pern fandom) all start out with a predatory human male and a rather offbeat female: mermaid, Martian, kangaroo, fire-lizard(!). They get together and have three children, two of whom are rather weird and have strange (sometimes unpleasant) fates, and one apparently normal human (who sings the song).

Well, at the time I was up to my ears in Darkover (Marion Zimmer Bradley's rather...strange planet of red-headed telepaths) fandom. The telepaths tend to gather in Towers headed (in latter days) by female Keepers (with me so far?) who are supposed to remain celibate. There's an indigenous race on Darkover called the chieri, who are hermaphromorphs (they can change from one gender to the other pretty much at will) and also highly telepathic. There's a flower called kireseth which loosens all sexual inhibitions. So I started with:

"My mother was the Keeper of the Arilinn Tower,
She seduced a chieri with a kireseth flower..."

When the singer-offspring meets his other parent:

"Oh what has become of my children three?"
My father he/she asked of me." [Hermaphromorphs, remember?]

Last verse:
"The starstone flashed in his/her hair,
I looked again and my father wasn't there.
But he/she telepathed from his/her bower,
"To Zandru [= the devil, roughly] with the Keeper of the Arilinn Tower!"

MZB liked it and wanted to put it in one of her books - but unfortunately the first opportunity she had was in a story set way back in a time when men were the Keepers. So she reverted it to the standard pattern (except for the chieri). Sigh. (Then again, for all her outre ideas, MZB was nowhere near as liberated or avant-garde as she wanted people to think she was.

I guess I just liked the idea of the female initiating the action, for a change.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

@arendt @arendt
with my own response to my original comment. it was late at night while i was writing. i didn't really quite get it all down properly.

The ultimate point I was trying to make is that there is this essential difficulty, built into our biology and our evolution, a dilemma that is not reconcilable within the framework of modern liberal ethics. By contrast the difficulty is trivially dealt with inside the framework of fundamentalist religion: Women are blamed for almost all of it, and the rules are constructed primarily (though not exclusively) to serve male interests, mainly by limiting the agency and autonomy of women -- limiting their dress, limiting their education, limiting their liberty to go out into public, limiting their control over their fertility, limiting their ability to experience sexual pleasure (whether by brainwashing them into thinking that sex is a disgusting business enjoyed only by wicked women, or by physically mutilating them so that they literally cannot feel it), and so on.

To those of us with a modern western secular humanist worldview, such an array of infringements is intolerable -- evil, even. We might not be able to construct a nice comfortable model of what is tolerable -- what limits should exist on each of the sexes, and even the nature of enforcement of those limits (social convention versus legal constraint for example) -- but we know that whatever such a model might look like, or try to approximate, it looks nothing like the barbarous, savage, antiquated anti-woman outrage that a bunch of sick creeps tacked onto the coattails of the abrahamic faiths.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@arendt

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

@UntimelyRippd Men are men and women are women; there are true differences between the sexes (without getting into the topic of people who fall outside the norm, as in the scientific meaning of the normal curve).

To me (and I was born a feminist), women are now trying to force men to be just like them (women), and it really sickens me.

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dfarrah

SnappleBC's picture

To your point, I'd like to start out by stressing strongly that my general sensibilities align with yours pretty well. If either of us was elected emperor my guess is that we'd end up running pretty similar societies. That being said, I want to step back a bit... a big bit. Let's just take this part.

My beef is not with what women wear. My beef is with fundamentalist sociopathies that declare women to be second class citizens, to be unclean, to be the property of men to control. If one cannot draw a line and say that fundamentalisms that demand female circumcision, fundamentalisms that ban abortion even if the mother dies are simply evil, then one can hardly draw non-religion-based moral lines at all. That is, to not draw a line is to cede morality in a nation to whatever bunch of crackpots have the raw power to enforce whatever lunatic "religion" they claim.

When you step back, what you've got there is an aesthetic... that is to say, unless you can justify your position on something better than "morality" or "ethics". Again, I agree with your aesthetic. What I don't know, however, is how I'd argue if someone else had a different aesthetic. How would I say that mine is superior and should be adopted? For instance, how would I respond when the person said, "But aren't YOU circumcised?" Or what if they pointed out that our society has specific and more restrictive dress codes for women also... and they are enforced by law.

Honestly, the only rational argument I've ever thought of is efficiency. If I were emperor you can bet equality would be more than just a catch-phrase because the notion that I'd let half of all the Fermis and Einsteins and Hawkings go to waste is ludicrous. And then, of course, there's the other side. What about all those men who'd do a great job home-making if that were an option available to them? Raising a strong next generation seems to be pretty important if I want a sustaining society. When you get down to it, aside from all the aesthetic repugnance I feel for it, sexism is incredibly wasteful.

Do you have a better argument in favor of your stance?

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A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard

@SnappleBC
imagine a context in which you raised a bunch of girls in complete isolation from males. up to the age of maybe 12, you told them nothing at all about sex. (or more reasonably, as they approached menarche, you gave them the basic information about human reproduction.) other than that, you employed one of those hippie-dippie learner-driven education systems, where you let their interests drive their curriculum. the only thing you would censor from the curriculum would be art/history/literature that gave them a background in gender identity. and yes, that would mean teaching them almost no history at all, and a very limited amount of literature.

and then, when they were 14, you said to them, "hey, guess what, in most cultures women and men interact together, usually from earliest childhood, and it's all weird and wacky because there's love and sex and romance and babies and stuff. and different cultures have come up with different ways to address some of the complexities of those interactions -- like the problem of male sexual violence. and here's some of them."

and you give them lists of various constraints and proscriptions that various cultures have placed on males and females, as well as various privileges and encouragements.

and then you ask them: how do you feel about this one? how do you feel about this one? how do you feel about this one? you can even let them go out into the world and experience the different options. send them to the beach in bikinis. then send them in burkhas. whatever.

and here's my question for you, treating this whole thing as a thought experiment: How many of those young women do you honestly believe would choose for themselves,
A. Clitoridectomy
B. Burkhas
C. Subservience to a husband's will
D. Forced birth
E. Shame about their sexuality
F. etc.

Clitoridectomy isn't an aesthetic, it's a bizarre and hateful abomination that no woman would choose, or even accept, unless she had been brainwashed from an early age into hating herself for being a woman. My guess is that, having inevitably learned by then to masturbate, every single young woman in your group would find it hard to believe that such a thing had ever been done, anywhere, to anybody. They'd probably think the whole thing was some sort of freakish attempt to shock their minds for some obscure educational purpose. I will warrant that if you carried out this experiment on a billion young women, the number who would say, Yeah, I want to go the clitoridectomy route, would be exactly and identically ZERO.

Feel free to disagree -- but I won't believe you, no matter how fervently you believe yourself.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

arendt's picture

@SnappleBC

Ditto neoliberals, libertarians and every other pile of Social Darwinists, including sociobiologists. No, civilization is not efficient. If you try to make it such, sooner or later you wind up with "superfluous people" and concentration camps. You wind up in a race to the bottom, a war of all against all.

When you step back, what you've got there is an aesthetic... that is to say, unless you can justify your position on something better than "morality" or "ethics". Again, I agree with your aesthetic. What I don't know, however, is how I'd argue if someone else had a different aesthetic. How would I say that mine is superior and should be adopted? For instance, how would I respond when the person said, "But aren't YOU circumcised?" Or what if they pointed out that our society has specific and more restrictive dress codes for women also... and they are enforced by law.

Honestly, the only rational argument I've ever thought of is efficiency. If I were emperor you can bet equality would be more than just a catch-phrase because the notion that I'd let half of all the Fermis and Einsteins and Hawkings go to waste is ludicrous. And then, of course, there's the other side. What about all those men who'd do a great job home-making if that were an option available to them? Raising a strong next generation seems to be pretty important if I want a sustaining society. When you get down to it, aside from all the aesthetic repugnance I feel for it, sexism is incredibly wasteful.

Do you have a better argument in favor of your stance?

Here's my stance. Every human society that isn't run by the gangsters/fanatics, i.e., a society that is a functioning civilization rather than an open air jail, shares a common core of laws. That core includes laws against murder, assault, theft, rape, fraud (a trickier form of theft), libel (a subset of lying), etc. The details may differ [as in the famous (apochryphal?) story of some Chinese "executing" a tree for falling on a man and killing him]. But, I maintain that one can find a core of social "morality/ethics" in our biology. It is truly a morality because it is hard-wired into us. Some things repulse us, make our skin crawl, for biological reasons.

Its not an "aesthetic" to oppose physical mutilation of infants that causes lifelong pain (clitorectomy, Chinese foot binding). It is a basic part of our biology and our biologically-driven social behaviors to react negatively to people causing pain to others for no good reason. Ditto, banning all abortions. Its not an "aesthetic" to say that letting women die, when they could easily be saved, for no good reason is evil and immoral.

Unfortunately, this core of laws usually evolved in societies that were tribal or conglomerations of tribes (hence titles like "king of kings") worshipping one or another violent male deity. These tribes were always male dominated - the preceding matriarchal "great mother" civilizations having been destroyed by violent males. This behavior persisted for almost 4000 years, one conqueror following another. Some long term successes, like the Roman Empire. Some victims, like Carthage. But, the male tribal model was the only game in town.

The monotheism of the Abrahamic religions, in the end, did not change the game. Early on, the trademark of monotheism was to set oneself apart. To refuse to worship the local (tribal) gods, to refuse certain of the local social behaviors, to keep special diets. Early Christianity was pacific to the point of accepting being killed. Women had a strong say in early Christianity. But then, enter the usual macho, homosocial assholes, and presto we have yet another violent, misogynistic super-tribe on a mission from god to conquer the world.

The problem this OP is discussing must recognize the historical context - namely that the Western world only started to tear down the "traditional" tribal, misogynist, racist past after 1945, when the European Civil War (WW1 and 2) ended, finally discrediting the earlier zeitgetist. For a hundred years prior to that, the fruits of the industrial revolution were used to maintain and vastly expand the grip of the traditional male dominance via violence. So, the space for discussing alternative ethics and morality (as in this OP) only opened up within my lifetime.

Plus, the blasted Stalinists and Trotskyites ruined socialism as a caring social alternative, because it gave the sociopathic capitalists a club to beat anyone who objected to "efficiency". It also permanently tarred socialism with enforced atheism and greatly added to the caricature of liberated (i.e., Soviet) women as unattractive and overly masculine. (It always sickens me to remember that the neocons started out as Trotskyites and were given absolution for their Red ways by the paleoconservatives because of their militant anti-Stalinism.)

The cult of efficiency is nothing but a euphemism for pathologically greedy individuals who cannot let the slightest bit of money or power slip from their grasp. Efficiency is not ethics; it is a false god in service of money. For example, according to that gospel, it is not "efficient" to pay unemployment compensation. It costs the taxpayers money. It "encourages laziness". It is "socialism". The cult of efficiency gave us the Robber Barons, the Nazis, and lately the neoliberals. The result of neoliberal "efficiency" has been to impoverish middle classes (which were only created after WW2) worldwide, to make the world an uglier and nastier place.

Further, this "efficiency" has degenerated into short term behavior, next quarter's profits. It would truly be efficient to plan how to get our population/consumption explosion under control, to balance the number of humans plus their environmental footprint with the carrying capacity of the planet. But, to do that would be "inefficient", "communism".

I know Communist China did that for 30 years (one child policy). It was horrible. I do not endorse limiting population by coercion. But China is in better economic and social shape than India on account of those 20 years. I would be in favor of paying people not to have children. I would certainly favor capping deductions for too many children. Why should the batshit crazy Duggars get some huge subsidy ($2,000/child x 18) from the government for running a baby mill?

----

Well, sorry for all that. I wanted to get back to the OP, but bring me anywhere near the cult of efficiency and I go berserk. Nothing personal. You just pushed one of my buttons.

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SnappleBC's picture

@arendt

While I agree with you point-by-point... or nearly so, I still cannot see a solid justification for saying, "this is wrong and that is right". In the end, right & wrong, good & evil, are defined by those making the rules. This is exactly why I've said to more than one Christian, "If what you are saying about God is true then I am downright evil because I need to be fighting on the other side from the horror you're describing. Sure, God makes the rules so that makes me evil. I'm good with that."

In this same way, you are trying to define the rules for someone else. That other person is going to decide if you're rules are good or evil and act accordingly. No matter how right you think you are, you have to answer a few questions...

A) If the other guy doesn't agree, are you willing to kill them over it?
B) If not, then what are you planning on doing?

Let's turn this question around for a minute. Let's suppose I was a Catholic and therefor assessed homosexuality as evil. What, exactly, would you say to me to convince me that you're version of good/evil is better than mine? And what are you going to do if your argument fails to sway me?

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-- lotlizard

arendt's picture

@SnappleBC @SnappleBC

First, let me ackowledge that you are really working this issue. I don't mean to dump on you, but I have an equally strong take on this matter.

Let's suppose I was a Catholic and therefor assessed homosexuality as evil. What, exactly, would you say to me to convince me that you're version of good/evil is better than mine? And what are you going to do if your argument fails to sway me?

It seems that you are trying to find some external talisman of authorization. This has been the plight of humankind since the voices of gods disappeared in the second millenium BCE.** I've spent my time pondering what authorization I need, and concluded that the bad guys aren't struggling with their consciences. So, folks like us don't have the luxury of struggling either, unless we want to get run over.

As your hypothetical is stated, why should I care whether or not I "sway" one single Catholic? Its still a sorta free country. Its just his opinion versus mine. I can't stand most of the authoritarian power worship that is Catholicism's main "addition" to the teachings of Jesus. I wouldn't waste my breath on them and their child molesting "priests".

Now, if you put it in the context that a Catholic organization (or a repulsive Catholic/Ayn Randian politician like Paul Ryan) is lobbying for a law re-criminalizing homosexuality, that is a different situation. And that situation has little to do with who is right or wrong, because societies and laws are about power, not right or wrong.

The way I see it, your hypothetical is either a "who cares?" or its a category error.

------

** I buy Julian Jaynes arguments about this.

Leftovers of the bicameral mind today, according to Jaynes, include religion, hypnosis, possession, schizophrenia, and the general sense of need for external authority in decision-making.

- Wikipedia, Bicameralism (psychology)

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@arendt justifying something as right because a supernatural being some odd thousand years ago wrote (or didn't) on a tablet that no one has seen is pretty close to hearing voices in your head. Following the dictates of someone who essentially hears voices in their head....I dunno. Then there's Scientology (which spell check capitalizes for me). I rest my case.

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@Snode think that the 10 commandments should be followed?

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dfarrah

@dfarrah do you want followed? The one that advises you to not seethe a kid in its mothers milk?

The first four in the commonly used version are completely religious in nature, so why should anyone not following an Abrahamic religion pay any attention to them? So now we're down to the remaining 6 commandments which are pretty much just some basic ethical comments to "don't be a jerk" or "do unto others as they would want" or "don't do unto others as they don't want/you wouldn't want them to do to you". Certainly none of those are exclusive to those religious traditions.

As soon as you get into command morality it is an easy move to "go and kill the Amelekites" because the Lord has commanded it.

Mitchell and Webb have a good take on the whole thing with Abraham and his son Isaac, no wait, Ivan:

https://www.metatube.com/en/videos/27349/God-Is-Smart/

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