Thank you for the link to Germaine Greer. A little research sent me to [Greer is a liberation, rather than equality feminist. She believed achieving true freedom for women meant asserting their uniquely female difference and “insisting on it as a condition of self-definition and self-determination.”] I didn't know that that was a thing. …
Thank you for the link to Germaine Greer. A little research sent me to [Greer is a liberation, rather than equality feminist. She believed achieving true freedom for women meant asserting their uniquely female difference and “insisting on it as a condition of self-definition and self-determination.”]
I didn't know that that was a thing. I wish my reading queue was not so long or I'd read her book.
Her thoughts on "femininity" being learned vs. "womanhood" being innate is interesting. My raised in America daughters didn't understand some of the behaviors that my wife insisted upon that their friends didn't deal with. Now that I think about it, it was an Asian cultural femininity behavior training thing. By wife once told me that kathoeys were easy to spot because they overdid femininity. I thought the difference was completely innate, but Ms. Greer supports the idea that there is also a learned process starting in childhood.
That leads to the question, are effeminate men (observed behavior) exhibiting some natural "trans" attribute or are they adopting what they observe as femininity to support their self-image. I assume there is some non-monolithic ratio. Since gay men range from hyper-masculine to flaming femes it might be answerable from that perspective in contrast to the perspective of biological women. That short video and life experience sent me off on an unexpected tangent from the denial of reality theme.
[edit addition] I do understand that masculine/feminine attributes have an overlap and I do think that some of that is innate. However <comma> some is learned as I do see differences culturally which either are genetic or adaption to local cultural norms. We've thrashed that out a bit here in the Commentary.
Greer is not a person I respect. While I never read her books I did read interviews with her and discussions of her outlook and it is she I have foremost in mind when I write about the disintegration of feminism into just another resentment cult.
At its beginning the inequality of women in society was stark. For a woman to have a job was regarded as emasculation of her husband and she was paid barely over half what a man was paid for the same work. Feminism's original goals were focused on equality. Women should be able to have careers if they wanted (though many who preferred a more traditional role were looked down upon) and wages should be the same irrespective of gender. Feminism was anger. It was anger at the inequality.
What happened? Wages converged. Not all the way; instead of 50% women started getting 75% or so. Not ideal, but progress, and progress is good. It didn't mean to stop fighting for equality, but it was satisfying, and this led to the rage softening.
Catastrophe.
Maybe lecture attendance dropped off, maybe the rhetoric got a little milder, but the reaction in feminist circles was uniform: SHIFT THE FOCUS. Wages are measurable, progress could be quantified. This was intolerable. Without maximum rage there would not be maximum lecture fees nor maximum book sales.
Almost overnight feminism turned from an equality movement to a hate cult. This is when we started getting "womon" and "womyn" and "a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." This is when women were encouraged to leave their boyfriends and husbands and become lesbians. Wages are measurable; "patriarchal attitudes" are not. Strident feminists could always say that The Patriarchy was becoming ever more oppressive, and they did, and they still do.
And for some, decades later, the bitterness has never died down. These feminists don't want male allies; men "can't possibly understand" and in making an attempt we are regarded as ppressive and condescending.
And this is when Greer and MacKinnon and the rest went from equality to liberation. They have done all they can to make men and women into enemies.
"Greer is not a person I respect. While I never read her books I did read interviews with her and discussions of her outlook and it is she I have foremost in mind when I write about the disintegration of feminism into just another resentment cult."
I'll admit to only having read a small selection of her work, as well as a number of interviews, but I feel broadly the same way. But she absolutely nailed the sex vs gender issue in the clip.
But as I've said before, an element always seems to arise in social justice movements that becomes more concerned with tearing down members the oppressor group than lifting up the members of the oppressed group. And therefore, they have to insist that all members of the oppressor group are the same and complicit in the oppression. Otherwise this position makes no sense.
Sadly, I think it's pretty much inevitable that once you've been in the trenches for a certain amount of time you become less nuanced. Anger and weariness take over unless you're paying very close attention.
"I think it's pretty much inevitable that once you've been in the trenches for a certain amount of time you become less nuanced. "
I think this is what happens to cops.
And it's obvious that people who think about gender issues too much, any of them, lose contact with reality because it's hard to accept a lot of what they claim to believe.
I could name more. A lot of chess players go insane in a particular way.
And, most interesting to me given my love of number theory ... mathematicians who deal with infinity almost always go nuts.
There was one idea that I think I got from PK Dick's Valis, first book of the trilogy, that I could not think long about without feeling I was losing my marbles. It was not a pleasant feeling. And, despite a memory like a steel trap, I've forgotten it. Something to do with the duality of Parmenides, but it's gone. Probably to my benefit.
Thanks for this. Since I grew up in a household with my mother as the head of the family in the 50s/early 60s, I understand the harm caused by underpaying women. That should make me a natural feminist, and with regard fair treatment of people regardless of sex or race I am fully on board with feminism and anti-racism in that realm.
But I don't call myself that and you just provided clarity as to why. I see them as people with a chip on their shoulder who promote divisiveness and demonization. Things that I oppose. I don't discard friends over differences of opinion, but I definitely discard venomous ideologies and organizations.
For much of my life I have been relatively apolitical and quite honestly gave little thought to it. My attitude towards feminists was more of a feel than something based in serious analysis. I've always been someone who easily made friends because I am inclined to like people. Then I started reading Medium and its extremist writers. It is changing me in ways I don't like. Or perhaps America has changed in unanticipated ways.
It's hard to wrap my mind around now but I was an *ardent* feminist of the equality variant. I tried to be a part of it. But by this time the "womon" thing was in vogue and the glares of smoldering hatred sorta turned me off. I volunteered as a cashier at a food bank and a lot of the lesbians with their chin beards would not look me in the eye, just glared at the counter and I had to put their change on it so our hands would not touch.
And you are probably familiar with the online forum phenomenon, present company excepted, of women who treat even the most polite disagreement as personal attack. I think this attitude came out of misandric feminism.
I wrote before about how the law must lead. Pay women the same as men.
"Then I started reading Medium and its extremist writers. It is changing me in ways I don't like. Or perhaps America has changed in unanticipated ways."
The "trans" writers on Medium, TaraElla excepted, are violently sick people. A lot of the "queer" men are likewise. To point out that a "trans" woman is biologically male means a full ban, not a warning, not a temporary, you are off the platform and lose any money you had coming. They've swallowed the whole fishing pole.
"That leads to the question, are effeminate men (observed behavior) exhibiting some natural "trans" attribute or are they adopting what they observe as femininity to support their self-image."
I think, fundamentally, all behaviour is learned. All we're really talking about is the amount of external pressure. Start influencing somebody early enough, or apply a strong enough hand, and you can make people behave any way you want. Human behaviour is, above all else, adaptive.
The variances in innate behaviour in humans are quite small. For example, men are more aggressive than women. But it's only at the ends of the bell curves where that differences is notable. For the most part, differences in aggressive behaviour are better explained by socialisation and the fact that real world aggression is likely to lead to real world violence which women, for obvious reasons, are more motivated to avoid. Studies done on online behaviour show an even smaller difference between male and female aggression.
I used to be baffled by the exaggerated feminine behaviour seen in some gay men, but I think it's more accurately framed as codified *gay* behaviour. I think it's a learned behaviour that acts as a signal to other gay men as well as a signifier of group membership. See also: "talking black" or sagging pants for some black people, the defensive "no-homo" masculinity of some straight men or the banal, "everything happens for a reason" enlightenment of pseudo spiritual people.
There's nothing innate about these behaviours (as Chris points out below, the "flaming" gay behaviour seems to be giving way to the "gym bro" gay stereotype). At least not in any significant sense. But they're widespread within certain sub-sub cultures.
"For example, men are more aggressive than women. "
Not true. And women are not more social than men.
Actual double-blind testing shows both of these to be stereotypes.
The only sex difference that survives testing is reaction to competition. Men will outperform themselves under competitive circumstances; women will perform the same in both.
"Not true. And women are not more social than men."
I mean, there's pretty extensive research that says it is true. Just not to the degree most people think. In fact, I've never seen a paper that claims it's not true. But I guess there's a paper for everything nowadays. All that said, it would be pretty remarkable if humans were pretty much the only mammal special that didn't display heightened aggression in males due to testosterone.
I can't back this up with references because I got it from a university class that I took four times (I was a professional notetaker) and the professor was not the kind who would say things for shock value. Others were.
Obviously, women don't use their fists as much as men; any actuary can tell you that where men use guns, women use poison. So I don't know if the studies he was citing included verbal as well as physical aggression but in the decades since I have seen little in my life to doubt it. Women can be vicious. Certainly I've seen a lot of feminists who were shockingly aggressive.
I think the flaming femme fashion is going out of. I haven't been to a gay public territory since 1996 but even then I had seen a sharp drop in the femme gays who were so common in the 70s.
In American gyms a lot of weightlifting guys are gay, it's not uncommon to see blowjobs in progress in the steam room.
Thank you for the link to Germaine Greer. A little research sent me to [Greer is a liberation, rather than equality feminist. She believed achieving true freedom for women meant asserting their uniquely female difference and “insisting on it as a condition of self-definition and self-determination.”]
I didn't know that that was a thing. I wish my reading queue was not so long or I'd read her book.
Her thoughts on "femininity" being learned vs. "womanhood" being innate is interesting. My raised in America daughters didn't understand some of the behaviors that my wife insisted upon that their friends didn't deal with. Now that I think about it, it was an Asian cultural femininity behavior training thing. By wife once told me that kathoeys were easy to spot because they overdid femininity. I thought the difference was completely innate, but Ms. Greer supports the idea that there is also a learned process starting in childhood.
That leads to the question, are effeminate men (observed behavior) exhibiting some natural "trans" attribute or are they adopting what they observe as femininity to support their self-image. I assume there is some non-monolithic ratio. Since gay men range from hyper-masculine to flaming femes it might be answerable from that perspective in contrast to the perspective of biological women. That short video and life experience sent me off on an unexpected tangent from the denial of reality theme.
[edit addition] I do understand that masculine/feminine attributes have an overlap and I do think that some of that is innate. However <comma> some is learned as I do see differences culturally which either are genetic or adaption to local cultural norms. We've thrashed that out a bit here in the Commentary.
Greer is not a person I respect. While I never read her books I did read interviews with her and discussions of her outlook and it is she I have foremost in mind when I write about the disintegration of feminism into just another resentment cult.
At its beginning the inequality of women in society was stark. For a woman to have a job was regarded as emasculation of her husband and she was paid barely over half what a man was paid for the same work. Feminism's original goals were focused on equality. Women should be able to have careers if they wanted (though many who preferred a more traditional role were looked down upon) and wages should be the same irrespective of gender. Feminism was anger. It was anger at the inequality.
What happened? Wages converged. Not all the way; instead of 50% women started getting 75% or so. Not ideal, but progress, and progress is good. It didn't mean to stop fighting for equality, but it was satisfying, and this led to the rage softening.
Catastrophe.
Maybe lecture attendance dropped off, maybe the rhetoric got a little milder, but the reaction in feminist circles was uniform: SHIFT THE FOCUS. Wages are measurable, progress could be quantified. This was intolerable. Without maximum rage there would not be maximum lecture fees nor maximum book sales.
Almost overnight feminism turned from an equality movement to a hate cult. This is when we started getting "womon" and "womyn" and "a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle." This is when women were encouraged to leave their boyfriends and husbands and become lesbians. Wages are measurable; "patriarchal attitudes" are not. Strident feminists could always say that The Patriarchy was becoming ever more oppressive, and they did, and they still do.
And for some, decades later, the bitterness has never died down. These feminists don't want male allies; men "can't possibly understand" and in making an attempt we are regarded as ppressive and condescending.
And this is when Greer and MacKinnon and the rest went from equality to liberation. They have done all they can to make men and women into enemies.
To hell with them.
"Greer is not a person I respect. While I never read her books I did read interviews with her and discussions of her outlook and it is she I have foremost in mind when I write about the disintegration of feminism into just another resentment cult."
I'll admit to only having read a small selection of her work, as well as a number of interviews, but I feel broadly the same way. But she absolutely nailed the sex vs gender issue in the clip.
But as I've said before, an element always seems to arise in social justice movements that becomes more concerned with tearing down members the oppressor group than lifting up the members of the oppressed group. And therefore, they have to insist that all members of the oppressor group are the same and complicit in the oppression. Otherwise this position makes no sense.
Sadly, I think it's pretty much inevitable that once you've been in the trenches for a certain amount of time you become less nuanced. Anger and weariness take over unless you're paying very close attention.
"I think it's pretty much inevitable that once you've been in the trenches for a certain amount of time you become less nuanced. "
I think this is what happens to cops.
And it's obvious that people who think about gender issues too much, any of them, lose contact with reality because it's hard to accept a lot of what they claim to believe.
I could name more. A lot of chess players go insane in a particular way.
And, most interesting to me given my love of number theory ... mathematicians who deal with infinity almost always go nuts.
There was one idea that I think I got from PK Dick's Valis, first book of the trilogy, that I could not think long about without feeling I was losing my marbles. It was not a pleasant feeling. And, despite a memory like a steel trap, I've forgotten it. Something to do with the duality of Parmenides, but it's gone. Probably to my benefit.
Thanks for this. Since I grew up in a household with my mother as the head of the family in the 50s/early 60s, I understand the harm caused by underpaying women. That should make me a natural feminist, and with regard fair treatment of people regardless of sex or race I am fully on board with feminism and anti-racism in that realm.
But I don't call myself that and you just provided clarity as to why. I see them as people with a chip on their shoulder who promote divisiveness and demonization. Things that I oppose. I don't discard friends over differences of opinion, but I definitely discard venomous ideologies and organizations.
For much of my life I have been relatively apolitical and quite honestly gave little thought to it. My attitude towards feminists was more of a feel than something based in serious analysis. I've always been someone who easily made friends because I am inclined to like people. Then I started reading Medium and its extremist writers. It is changing me in ways I don't like. Or perhaps America has changed in unanticipated ways.
I don't know if you must be a subscriber to read this, but it is a generally thoughtful article on "woke" and how it matters. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/24/upshot/woke-meaning-democrats-republicans.html
It's hard to wrap my mind around now but I was an *ardent* feminist of the equality variant. I tried to be a part of it. But by this time the "womon" thing was in vogue and the glares of smoldering hatred sorta turned me off. I volunteered as a cashier at a food bank and a lot of the lesbians with their chin beards would not look me in the eye, just glared at the counter and I had to put their change on it so our hands would not touch.
And you are probably familiar with the online forum phenomenon, present company excepted, of women who treat even the most polite disagreement as personal attack. I think this attitude came out of misandric feminism.
I wrote before about how the law must lead. Pay women the same as men.
"Then I started reading Medium and its extremist writers. It is changing me in ways I don't like. Or perhaps America has changed in unanticipated ways."
The "trans" writers on Medium, TaraElla excepted, are violently sick people. A lot of the "queer" men are likewise. To point out that a "trans" woman is biologically male means a full ban, not a warning, not a temporary, you are off the platform and lose any money you had coming. They've swallowed the whole fishing pole.
But, sorry, America itself has changed.
"That leads to the question, are effeminate men (observed behavior) exhibiting some natural "trans" attribute or are they adopting what they observe as femininity to support their self-image."
I think, fundamentally, all behaviour is learned. All we're really talking about is the amount of external pressure. Start influencing somebody early enough, or apply a strong enough hand, and you can make people behave any way you want. Human behaviour is, above all else, adaptive.
The variances in innate behaviour in humans are quite small. For example, men are more aggressive than women. But it's only at the ends of the bell curves where that differences is notable. For the most part, differences in aggressive behaviour are better explained by socialisation and the fact that real world aggression is likely to lead to real world violence which women, for obvious reasons, are more motivated to avoid. Studies done on online behaviour show an even smaller difference between male and female aggression.
I used to be baffled by the exaggerated feminine behaviour seen in some gay men, but I think it's more accurately framed as codified *gay* behaviour. I think it's a learned behaviour that acts as a signal to other gay men as well as a signifier of group membership. See also: "talking black" or sagging pants for some black people, the defensive "no-homo" masculinity of some straight men or the banal, "everything happens for a reason" enlightenment of pseudo spiritual people.
There's nothing innate about these behaviours (as Chris points out below, the "flaming" gay behaviour seems to be giving way to the "gym bro" gay stereotype). At least not in any significant sense. But they're widespread within certain sub-sub cultures.
Common experience: walking down the sidewalk with a gay friend. He is speaking at normal volume and with no "gay accent."
Pass some people walking the other way and he gets louder and puts on the "queer" voice.
That always made me mad.
"For example, men are more aggressive than women. "
Not true. And women are not more social than men.
Actual double-blind testing shows both of these to be stereotypes.
The only sex difference that survives testing is reaction to competition. Men will outperform themselves under competitive circumstances; women will perform the same in both.
That's it.
"Not true. And women are not more social than men."
I mean, there's pretty extensive research that says it is true. Just not to the degree most people think. In fact, I've never seen a paper that claims it's not true. But I guess there's a paper for everything nowadays. All that said, it would be pretty remarkable if humans were pretty much the only mammal special that didn't display heightened aggression in males due to testosterone.
I can't back this up with references because I got it from a university class that I took four times (I was a professional notetaker) and the professor was not the kind who would say things for shock value. Others were.
Obviously, women don't use their fists as much as men; any actuary can tell you that where men use guns, women use poison. So I don't know if the studies he was citing included verbal as well as physical aggression but in the decades since I have seen little in my life to doubt it. Women can be vicious. Certainly I've seen a lot of feminists who were shockingly aggressive.
I think the flaming femme fashion is going out of. I haven't been to a gay public territory since 1996 but even then I had seen a sharp drop in the femme gays who were so common in the 70s.
In American gyms a lot of weightlifting guys are gay, it's not uncommon to see blowjobs in progress in the steam room.