Robert Stacy McCain on feminism’s mainstreaming of extremists:
Any honest person who undertakes an in-depth study of modern feminism, from its inception inside the 1960s New Left to its institutionalisation within Women’s Studies departments at universities, will understand that without the influence of radicals — militant haters of capitalism and Christianity, angry lesbians who view all males as a sort of malignant disease, deranged women who can’t distinguish between political grievances and their own mental illnesses — there probably never would have been a feminist movement at all…
Once we go beyond simplistic sloganeering about “equality” and “choice” to examine feminism as political philosophy — the theoretical understanding to which Ph.Ds devote their academic careers — we discover a worldview in which men and women are assumed to be implacable antagonists, where males are oppressors and women are their victims, and where heterosexuality is specifically condemned as the means by which this male-dominated system operates.
As noted previously, when it comes to identity politics, the boundaries between mainstream and delusional aren’t as clear as one might wish.
And Thomas Sowell on cultural inequalities:
While cultural leadership has changed hands many times, that leadership has been real at given times, and much of what was achieved in the process has contributed enormously to our well-being and opportunities today. Cultural competition is not a zero-sum game. It is what advances the human race. Cultures are living, changing ways of doing all the things that have to be done in life. Every culture discards over time the things which no longer do the job or which don’t do the job as well as things borrowed from other cultures… Spanish as spoken in Spain includes words taken from Arabic, and Spanish as spoken in Argentina has Italian words taken from the large Italian immigrant population there. People eat Kentucky Fried Chicken in Singapore and stay in Hilton hotels in Cairo.
This is not what some of the advocates of “diversity” have in mind. They seem to want to preserve cultures in their purity, almost like butterflies preserved in amber. Decisions about change, if any, seem to be regarded as collective decisions, political decisions. But that is not how any cultures have arrived where they are… No culture has grown great in isolation — but a number of cultures have made historic and even astonishing advances when their isolation was ended, usually by events beyond their control.
At which point readers may recall the Guardian’s Emer O’Toole, a “postcolonial theorist” and assistant professor of Irish Performance Studies, for whom all cultures past and present are equally vibrant and noble, except of course the culture in which she currently flourishes, on which opprobrium must be heaped ostentatiously and often.
Ms O’Toole famously bemoaned the colonial propagation of Shakespeare, whose works she denounced as “full of classism, sexism, racism and defunct social mores.” And worse, “a powerful tool of empire, transported to foreign climes along with the doctrine of European cultural superiority.” The possibility that at any given time one set of values and insights might be preferable to another, even objectively better, bothers her quite a bit.
Her article was accompanied by a photograph of New Zealand’s Ngakau Toa theatre company performing Troilus and Cressida in a distinctively Maori style. To me, it looked fun and worth the price of a ticket. But this cross-cultural fusion saddened Ms O’Toole, who dismissed notions of the Bard’s universality as “uncomfortably colonial.” She then presumed to take umbrage on behalf of all past colonial subjects, whose own views on Shakespeare and literature she chose not to relate. She did, however, get quite upset about “our sense of cultural superiority” – a sense of superiority that, she insisted, has long been “disavowed by all but the crazies.”
It may be a tad indelicate, even improper, but I can’t help wondering how Ms O’Toole might have felt had she been among the 19th century English colonists who encountered a Maori culture that was all but prehistoric, with no discernible literature or science, in which the average lifespan was about thirty years or so, and where cannibalism was not unknown. Faced with such things, I’m sure Ms O’Toole would have resisted the wicked urge to think herself a little more culturally advanced.
When not romanticising the cultural purity of others from a safe distance, Ms O’Toole prides herself on denouncing those more primitive than herself – say, women who choose to shave their armpits. In Ms O’Toole’s moral universe, cultivating armpit hair is “the necessary and important work of challenging stupid, arbitrary, gendered bullshit.” And our right-thinking Guardianista tells us, several times, that her boyfriends have thought her “brave” for daring not to shave.
As usual, feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments.
I feel I should mention that in order to deter spam the comment threads automatically close after one month. Or 10,000 comments, whichever comes first.
If we hit the 10,000 will there be a certificate?
There will be cake.
Yeah, always cake tomorrow
There are scurrilous rumours regarding the non-existence of said cake. Do not listen to those rumours. Believe in the cake.
Weeeell, I dunno, they make a good case.
But nobody is disputing there are differences, only whether women can be said to be the inferior sex (or vice versa) in any meaningful sense.
Who has said anything about inferiority?
Who has said anything about inferiority?
If you mean are not merely using ‘unequal’ as a synomym for ‘different’ you must be implying inferiority or superiority.
Hmmm. Amongst the cascade of cream pies being thrown at moving targets, would this and assorted be cake?
Ever since “Trojan Horse” broke, the apologists have been claiming it’s all a racist fabrication.
. . . .
Those voices have fallen silent now. As Peter Clarke’s horrifying report reveals, the real bigotry, bullying and lies were from several of the staff and governors of the Trojan Horse schools. The private messages of Razwan Faraz, deputy head at Nansen and one of the key plot ringleaders, attacking gay people as “satanic animals,” make clear that the media’s only failing was to understate the depth and virulence of the forces involved.
Some scarily leftish ideas being expressed by Gilligan in that article:
But no school run by someone who believes, as Mr Faraz believes, that women’s “perpetual role” is “serving men” can be a good school.
What on earth else are women for? PC gone made, I say.
If you mean are not merely using ‘unequal’ as a synomym for ‘different’ you must be implying inferiority or superiority.
Where did I use “unequal”? (Spoiler alert: nowhere)
You have just scored an own goal, BTW. No, that would constitute an increase in freedom goes straight, without justification, from different to inferior. This is a classic example of collectivist thinking: that people acting per their own preferences aren’t free, that one kind of reaction is more “free” than another; that it is in women’s interests to prefer men’s judgment free promiscuity to judging women’s promiscuity; that women themselves aren’t doing the judging; that people shouldn’t be free to judge.
Within one sentence, you have reached a half dozen conclusions, all without a single argument. You traffic in pronunciamentos that contradict themselves before they even get their shoes tied.
Another pro-tip: instead of saying what people have said, quote them. Every time I get in a debate with collectivists, whether here, or at Crooked Timber (for another example) invariably collectivists interpose what they have decided I said upon what I actually said.
This is a puzzler. In my experience, non-collectivists never do this.
Where did I use “unequal”? (Spoiler alert: nowhere)
It is implied when you deny ‘equality’. If you are now conceding that women and men are equals, we can put that one to bed. Wish you could have got round to it sooner.
that one kind of reaction is more “free” than another; that it is in women’s interests to prefer men’s judgment free promiscuity to judging women’s promiscuity
It is in women’s interest to be free to choose for themselves. Without choice, what is freedom?
Jeff, if I might help. The Clueless One (“One”…as if) is referencing this:
Sexes are not equal. And the inequality divorces “is” from progressives’ baseless notion of “ought”
I was going to comment to the effect that if bicycles are not equal to boomerangs, which is superior/inferior? then erased it. Cause i’m trying to stop this. Must…get…help…
I was going to comment to the effect that if bicycles are not equal to boomerangs, which is superior/inferior? then erased it. Cause i’m trying to stop this. Must…get…help…
See above, I have made it clear many times so UI assume Jeff and others agree that we are not using ‘unequal’ in the sense of ‘different’. Because then we just come to the banal conclusion that all humans are unequal.
the ability to lead similar sex lives to men without being shamed for it, as an example.
The ability to be libertine sluts without shame?
Dood. The fact that men are able to be libertine sluts without shame is not something to aspire to. It’s what makes them pigs.
‘Twere better that men bridle their passions instead of thinking with their crotches.
However, if you don’t know already that the reproductive strategy of the male is to inseminate as many females as possible, and that the female reproductive strategy is to mate with the alpha male — behavior rooted 100% in unchangeable biological reality — then I don’t know what to do for you.
You would need extra strong smelling salts if you worked where I do, toilets are mixed sex.
I was RIGHT!
You work in academia.
only whether women can be said to be the inferior sex
On what planet is this still being disputed? Surely not in the enlightened West.
But continuing to champion a position no one opposes anymore is Yet Another Hallmark of the left. In race relations it’s always 1963; in the battle of the sexes, it’s no later than the Stone Age.
invariably collectivists interpose what they have decided I said upon what I actually said.
This is a puzzler. In my experience, non-collectivists never do this.
If you’re not already a regular reader of proteinwisdom.com, you should give it a look. Jeff has spent more than a decade explaining the incoherent linguistic assumptions that underpin the phenomenon you describe.
Within one sentence, you have reached a half dozen conclusions, all without a single argument. You traffic in pronunciamentos that contradict themselves before they even get their shoes tied.
I used to wonder if Minnow weren’t David in drag, wherein he plays the devil’s advocate as an intellectual exercise.
But then if that were the case, Minnow’s arguments would be a lot more cogent and intelligible, not to mention wittier.
So, no. Minnow, alas, is the real thing.
I used to wonder if Minnow weren’t David in drag, wherein he plays the devil’s advocate as an intellectual exercise.
And do twice the legwork? Are you high?
And do twice the legwork? Are you high?
Twice?
Set up a good [someone else needs to state coding particulars here] script that starts with a previous post and then scrambles to generate output . . . mebbe with an occasional sprinkling of pre-seeded websites and references from them . . .
Sort of like the pomo generator only pulling from the blog instead . . . .
The coding has a bit of work involved, but the use becomes trivial.
I once used the old Dilbert site’s mission statement generator to populate some required BS blurb for my self-review. Kept clicking until a statement popped up that I could modify to fit an individual instead of a corporation. My boss was impressed with the result as it made him look good in some meeting. He was even more impressed when I told him how “efficiently” I came up with it.
But nobody is disputing there are differences, only whether women can be said to be the inferior sex (or vice versa) in any meaningful sense
You said earlier and I must quote once again, that “men and women are equal in every regard”. Which is a different statement – and clearly false.
Many people would like to think that the sexes are exactly equal in intellectual tasks. You yourself seem to be so enamoured of a (horribly vague) notion of ‘equality’ that you think science must show that men & women are equal.
What if it doesn’t for many tasks? Is the science then wrong because it didn’t come up with the currently ideologically correct picture?
Fortunately the sexes seem to complement each other in that they are good at different tasks. There’s no need to think either are inferior (that would be awkward!). But this still isn’t enough for Steinem et all, so they insist the science must be wrong. Because it doesn’t suit them personally
It would be much quicker to cite some examples of jobs that women are incapable of doing. I can’t think of any, but you claim there are many, so over to you.
Dunno about “incapable” in an absolute sense but “No way José” jobs are featured on Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs.
The coding has a bit of work involved, but the use becomes trivial.
—and even the manual version wouldn’t be that difficult. You’re going for responding material as a result, not responding accuracy . . .
Dunno about “incapable” in an absolute sense but “No way José” jobs are featured on Mike Rowe’s Dirty Jobs.
. . . . noting the distinct difference between incapable and No way José . . . where I am extremely capable of babysitting hipsters—one either fires ’em, or one arranges that they will learn to either auto correct and improve or voluntarily quit, i.e. they fire themselves— . . . but given the level of effort required to set up the perfect autocorrect forcing mechanism, by this point, for me that pretty much automatically slides into NWJ . . . .
I have never met a woman who didn’t believe there were such barriers.
Probative of exactly nothing, starting with the fact that the women you know are elitist intellectuals who must vociferously express that article of faith lest they get their eyes clawed out.
Everyone runs into barriers of one type or another. Straight white cis-males run into “barriers” for being:
Bald
Short
Fat
Inarticulate
Dorky
Muscle-bound
Weedy
Bland
Clumsy
Old
Ginger
When the bigotry is strong enough to keep a woman down it will keep us all down. Same with all other “oppressed” subgroups.
The West has got this opportunity thing down to a freaking science. On to Waziristan, if it’s that important to you.
Everyone runs into barriers of one type or another. Straight white cis-males run into “barriers” for being:
[List snipped to save space]
I looked at that list and went ‘that’s me… and that… and that…’. I think I missed muscle-bound, old, and ginger. Having one or two of those can be worked around (see Patrick Stewart for the first entry on the list), but having multiples is for all practical purposes insurmountable.
But the inverse is more important. It may be possible to find a woman with upper body strength comparable to that of an above-average man, or endurance comparable to an above-average man. It’s a lot more difficult to find a woman with strength and endurance (and pain tolerance and reflexes and…) and all the things we expect in an elite rough field job. A female Olympic weightlifter can lift enough to pass that part of a military physical, but is unlikely to have the distance running skills.
To put it in reverse, there are a handful of physical competitions where women have an advantage; it’s one of the reasons women’s gymnastics and figure skating gets more attention than men’s. There are a handful of men smaller and lighter than the average female gymnast, yet I wouldn’t expect, say, Verne Troyer or Peter Dinklage to be able to compete with a female gymnast because it’s not just size but also flexibility and strength. You need to win the genetic lottery at all three to have a chance.
It would be much quicker to cite some examples of jobs that women are incapable of doing. I can’t think of any, but you claim there are many, so over to you.
And that’s the language trick. Because there might theoretically be one woman in a million or a billion capable of doing a job that a thousand times as many men can do, we have to assume that women in general are physically equal to men when it comes to employment.
Of course, I can think of a job women are incapable of doing: Sperm donor. (And men are incapable of being Surrogate Mothers). Would Olympic Medalist in, say, the Men’s 100m dash also qualify?
The male body is built for brute strength; the female body for endurance (famines, long-distance journeys, hard winters, surviving infancy).
Which type of strength is more important? Neither; they’re complementary and to a degree mutually exclusive.
Feminist efforts to desegregate The Citadel (military school) have forced them to “dumb down” the qualifications for women, who might be able to finish the 10-mile-hike but not as fast as the men. The first female inductees washed out because they couldn’t keep up.
There’s a reason women don’t compete with men in sports: women aren’t built for the same physical tasks. Our very hip angle prevents us from running/swimming as fast as men, not to mention the sheer muscle mass that testosterone provokes.
Women tend to be better at pattern recognition and fine motor skills whereas men are better with gross motor skills and spatial orientation.
Turns out women are also better as test pilots because our lower center of gravity helps us endure the Gs better than men. And men are better at dirty jobs because they’re less easily grossed out. (I happily swapped out a radiator from my old car but kept running back into the house to wash off the gritty greasy ewwww stuff.)
However, for most occupations in this modern, cubicle world, employers should be able to hire whomever fills the bill without considering sex ratios. If women happen to prefer some types of employment and men others, who the hell cares, as long as there are no artificial barriers to doing what you’re good at.
[Minnow:] If you are now conceding that women and men are equals, we can put that one to bed.
I said quite a way up that men and women are legally equal; although to be quite accurate, women are somewhat more equal than men.
I also said quite clearly that legal equality, without coercion, will not lead to this social equality unicorn you keep trotting out.
It beggars belief that we are having to belabor the glaringly obvious so, but here goes again. Men and women are radically different, they are not blank slates, and the differences lead to ineradicable inequality.
That Women’s Issues article I pointed you to above, which I am quite certain you didn’t look at, because you avoid evidence the way vampires avoid the sun, completely contradicted itself and you by the time it reached the second page. Since you won’t look at it, I’ll summarize here.
Problem: in voice acting; something like four time as many men are employed as women because #waronwymyn.
Page two. The authors do surveys.
Trigger alert: since this paragraph contains evidence, collectivists will likely find it disturbing. The authors played recordings of passages read by men, and by women. Listeners, both male and female found, by large margins, that male voices convey more authority. That’s the way it is which is miles away from your ought. The difference is innate, beyond the reach of re-education camps. Both men and women find deep male voices far more authoritative than much higher female voices. Because patriarchy, I guess.
Yes, but not all. There is an overlap [in male and female fundamental frequencies].
Would you please do us all a favor? In the future, when you make a pronouncement like this, back it up with something other than your assurances, since they are far too often dead wrong. On just this subject alone you have many times asserted something that is simply not true.
Your “overlap” is way out at the tail end of the Hz distributions, which leaves you only with exceptions that by their very rarity prove the general rule. Yes, I’m sure some women have deeper voices than effeminate men, and everyone this side of a twee five year old girl has a voice deeper than Michael Jackson’s was, but that is no help to you at all.
Fairness be damned, deep, resonant, voiced men will always be able to convey more authority than women. Low frequencies penetrate far more efficiently than high. It matters, a lot, in ways that make a complete mockery out of “social equality”..
Ineradicable difference. Unequal effect. Extensive knock-on consequences. Therefore, according to the article, #waronwymyn! To everyone else except collectivists, #realitybites.
It is in women’s interest to be free to choose for themselves. Without choice, what is freedom?
I don’t think I’ve read anything so anodyne AND vacuous in so few words. You assert — again without a shred of evidence — that women in general want the same freedom to be promiscuous without criticism as men, and that this is somehow positive. In other words, you wish to suppress the freedom of people to judge others’ conduct. I hope this isn’t a news flash to you, but women are far more judgmental, particularly of other women, in this regard.
If we accept the complete absence of barriers. It seems to me obvious that barriers persist and I have never met a woman who didn’t believe there were such barriers.
My profession, well remunerated at the upper ranks, has rocketed from 0% female to 3% female in forty years. To be more accurate, it rocketed to 3% in about 20 years, and has scarcely changed since. That is despite the fact that companies compete to hire any woman that even meets minimum qualifications.
There are no barriers other than aptitude and motivation to women. Yet they avoid it in droves.
Small engine mechanics are almost universally male. Why?
Yes, I’m sure some women have deeper voices than effeminate men,
In my brother’s erstwhile barbershop quartet, they introduced their high tenor as “the only one of us who cannot sing lower than his wife.”
Still an outlier.
I prefer to listen to male voices, too, because high-pitched women’s voices grate on my nerves. I also dislike violin concertos (all of which are “Concerto for the E String”) and soprano arias.
Sound frequencies affect us differently. The tinny beep of a cell phone will never soothe as well as a cello sonata.
Damned, unenlightened physics. Why can’t it get with the program?
My profession, well remunerated at the upper ranks, has rocketed from 0% female to 3% female in forty years. To be more accurate, it rocketed to 3% in about 20 years, and has scarcely changed since. That is despite the fact that companies compete to hire any woman that even meets minimum qualifications.
Or it could be that your profession is still largely populated with men like you who hold primitive attitudes about female workers that make it an uncomfortable place for them to be. This takes a while to change, but as the dinosaurs drop out, the mammals will slowly rise.
Sound frequencies affect us differently. The tinny beep of a cell phone will never soothe as well as a cello sonata.Damned, unenlightened physics. Why can’t it get with the program?
As so often Dicentra, you mistake your personal preferences for laws of nature. Some of us find Callas singing Casta Diva as soothing as music can be.
The professions women choose to enter are largely determined by the courses they choose to do at university. Women are well represented in process engineering departments in the oil industry, but barely at all in the mechanical and civil departments who sit right next door. Why? Because for some reason, women prefer to study chemical engineering (the starting point to being a process engineer) than mechanical engineering. The faculties are run in the same manner, yet women prefer to do chemical engineering over mechanical engineering by a factor of around 5-10.
Or maybe the patriarchy is brutally shoving women into chemical engineering and erecting enormous barriers to keep them out off mechanical?
Dicentra:
Sound frequencies affect us differently.
Minnow:
Dicentra, you mistake your personal preferences for laws of nature. Some of us find Callas singing Casta Diva as soothing as music can be.
Me:
What is it about the left and their inability to read?
Tim, it is your failure to read. Dicentra meant that sound frequencies cause different effects in us, low ones being soothing. Or , at least, that is what she wrote.
Or maybe the patriarchy is brutally shoving women into chemical engineering and erecting enormous barriers to keep them out off mechanical?
Maybe it is, let’s see how things pan out. It was only the day before yesterday that it was evident that women were unfit to work as doctors or lawyers after all. I suspect that the lovely chaps in mechanical engineering do not make the department as welcoming for the ladies as they might. We will see.
I suspect that the lovely chaps in mechanical engineering do not make the department as welcoming for the ladies as they might.
But the same chaps – for there is a great deal of cross-over – make the chemical engineering department welcoming for ladies? I’ve read Nigerian 419 emails that are more convincing than this.
God forbid it might simply be the case that women, in general, prefer to study chemical engineering over mechanical. No, the nefarious patriarchy and misogynist mechanical engineers must always be at work.
Dicentra meant that sound frequencies cause different effects in us, low ones being soothing.
In which case she’s also right. There is a reason why warning sirens are always designed with a high-pitch.
In which case she’s also right. There is a reason why warning sirens are always designed with a high-pitch.
It is because they are easier to hear especially over distance. But you will notice modern alarms have variable pitch.
God forbid it might simply be the case that women, in general, prefer to study chemical engineering over mechanical.
It might be, but it is too early to tell. This thread shows that there is still a lot of anti-woman prejudice in some professions and it seems implausible to me that that has had no effect. After all, women have only very recently forced themselves in any numbers into the professions at all. Remember how Jews just seemed attracted to money lending, lacking, apparently the inclination for nobler pursuits? Until they didn’t. Something changed.
It might be, but it is too early to tell.
Actually, you have no idea how long this phenomenon has been observed, as today is the first time you’d ever have heard of it. You’ve just pulled the “it’s too early to tell” response out of your arse because it is the only way you can stick to your dogma of the nefarious patriarchy keeping the sistas down.
It is because they are easier to hear especially over distance.
Bullshit. Factory hooters and fog-horns are not high-pitched, precisely because they want to convey a different message.
But you will notice modern alarms have variable pitch.
Modern alarms? How quaint. Let that be your little secret.
Actually, you have no idea how long this phenomenon has been observed, as today is the first time you’d ever have heard of it. You’ve just pulled the “it’s too early to tell” response out of your arse because it is the only way you can stick to your dogma of the nefarious patriarchy keeping the sistas down.
I know, as you probably do, that women have been making a concerted attempt to break down professional barriers for the last fifty or so of the 5,000 or so years of human history. They have been amazingly successful in some areas, but progress has been slower in others. However, as someone who can still remember when the idea of a female surgeon was either a bit funny or a bit sexy, always worth a double take on the TV, I am confident things will change even in the more neanderthal corners of the professions. Too early to tell for sure though. The fight has only just started.
I know, as you probably do, that women have been making a concerted attempt…
*guff*
…Too early to tell for sure though. The fight has only just started.
Bzzzzt!!! Repetition!!
NEXT!
Modern alarms? How quaint. Let that be your little secret.
?
*guff*
You hadn’t noticed? Well, perhaps you should peek outside of you cave a little more often. You might like it out here.
You hadn’t noticed?
Erm, it was *me* who pointed out to *you* the prevalence of female process engineers in the oil industry. Up until then, you were blissfully unaware. You hadn’t noticed.
I was unaware, and I am glad that you have after all noticed the triumphs of feminism in recent years. It is another datum to demonstrate that there are no careers that women are unfit for. I am sure the outward ripples will continue even into the workshop. After all, there were no shortage of women engineers, mechanics, or mechanical engineers in the 40s, and that was from a standing start, as it were.
I was unaware, and I am glad that you have after all noticed the triumphs of feminism in recent years.
And I’m glad you’ve finally admitted the oppressive patriarchy was a figment of your imagination all along! Drinks all round!