A land beyond feminism, somewhere over the rainbow, that’s where you’ll find me . . .
Kidding, of course.
I got into this in a recent one, the March of Science, I believe, about our human “meritocracies,” yes, sarcasm quotation marks. I am trying to make the point that despite human specialization and the existence of probably thousands of different human skills, there is mostly only one measure for competence in anything, and it is best summed up in the word “toughness.” Normal quotation marks.
I have made allusions at least, to the effect that this measure of violence, aggression and battle-competence colours many areas, and that it is basically another version of what feminists call the patriarchy. Not risking ant sort of quotation marks!
If we can break this down, just what is the patriarchy doing – violence, intimidation, mostly – well, rapists auto-selecting themselves for propagation also – then we have something we can work with, behaviours, education, laws, strategies. If we decide that’s just how men are – and basically allow us to let ourselves off the hook for it – then we are getting nowhere. Of course, nothing is “just how it is.”
I’m sorry.
I understand that every man you ever met was indeed like this. I understand that the only safe stance to have is that we are all like this and not be caught out alone. Of course I would never advise some stupid “trust us” line. We have to change. But that does mean people talking as though that were actually a thing, though, change. To say, “men gotta change” to fix things, and then turn around and say “but they can’t” is some awful bait and switch game that . . . well, how’s it working out so far? We’re not really telling the rapists no-one expects them to change, I hope? That doesn’t sound like the best idea, does it?
I mean if telling and expecting mean anything. That would be some form of nurture, I guess. If it does, then yes, this should be part of our nurturing, that rape has to be actually, functionally illegal!
Now, sex shouldn’t be illegal. Clearly, it’s the force, the intimidation, the stuff we cannot bring ourselves to outlaw about ourselves, gentlemen. That has to be wrong, actually wrong. Like, not, “OK, wrong, but we are your protectors, so you want this,” no, wrong, because this is what we need protection from! It is not better for your female friends, for your wife, mother, daughters, all of them, that a protector, “one of us” raped them and not some “other,” which is all this arrangement ensures, nothing but selecting our own criminals over criminals that belong to some “them.”
That sounds extreme in my dysphemistic way of talking but make no mistake: a common solution for in-group rape has always been marriage. The ladies hate it and rightly so, but apparently the people in charge think this is a preferable situation over women choosing their own lovers and so having the possibility of them choosing an other. In some places, the ladies who cannot tolerate this solution are killed – apparently the folks’ in charge’s less preferred “solution.”
Crimes are activities, not people. You have to agree, that if you use force, if you rape someone, that you should face the law. Do you?
Is whether or not you actually agree a matter of your father’s rapist or not genes?
Nature VS nurture again, really?
No, that wasn’t the point, right! Today’s topic is the ‘toughness is the only meritocracy’ meme. The patriarchy.
It’s exactly what the MRAs and the macho IDW types and the sexist children like Shapiro are stating is foundational, right? It’s also the unapologetic central meme of fascism, if you can, that is permission, might is right, and obviously, when you think that as a society, that’s what you get. But it’s exactly what I’m arguing about, it’s exactly what isn’t really true, at least not until some hammerhead points his gun at you and you must agree, yes, this mindless bullshit is true, not mentioning any names.
I understand we’ve had to abandon attempts at psychologizing our past selves because exactly these fools have commandeered the idea and turned into nothing but a simple machine game theory with no psychology provided or required, that we’ve had to cut off that arm of science to save the rest of the body. I finally get that, I am sorry if I sounded like I was on the wrong side of things. Honestly “evolutionary biological theory” is better anyway. I think somebody ran with calling it evolutionary “psychology” at the start with a view to removing it from science curricula and discrediting it and therefore science (I know, not intuitive, don’t believe me, but simply harping on the term “theory of evolution” has legs, so), generally, leveraging the division between “soft” and “hard” sciences, bring the biologists on board, but really as part of the general anti-intellectual, anti-science stuff. Then when these penis-centric idiots ran with it, everyone else let go and distanced themselves – with me last and lost, as usual.
Like I say, “evolutionary biological theory,” sounds better anyway, even if it does sort of imply the smaller version of “theory,” because in name or not, there is going to be a certain amount of psychology involved. We are trying to understand our clearly psychological selves.
Not a tangent. What I’m getting to is, it’s not foundational, toughness being all that matters and crime be damned, it’s a real part of the psychology, sure – but absolutely not foundational. It is a policy decision adopted to deal with foundational concerns, predation, group conflict, death, and this is exactly what policy is: a decision made earlier regarding foreseeable problems including basic ones, by the boss, maybe that’s you, maybe not – and a policy is not an environmental condition, not “foundational,” at least not to the boss. His option, your “foundation.” If you’re the boss, same – your option, that maybe you call your “foundation.” Policy, the prior decision, now the default stance, all meanings retained – a stance we took, a position we chose.
Choice. Now THAT sounds like psychology, doesn’t it?
This argument almost holds up for lions and tigers and bears, I mean couldn’t we just breed and run like everything else? But no, we wanted to settle down and hold our ground, surely there was a choice somewhere along that journey? But clearly when the threat is us that is our “foundation,” sorry, no choice? I am your threat, we have no choice? We’re back to nature and toxic game theory? No. That was a choice, right there, “I am your threat.” No, you could just run, like everything else. Usually I say “aggression” is a choice, a policy decision; same conversation – aggression is the name for a policy of fight over flight, so “having aggression” means you chose to have it.
This is the difference between natural disasters and human-made disasters: individually, we are as powerless against one as the other. But collectively, we cause one and not the other (OK, at least there are natural disasters we don’t cause, if not all of them).
Honestly, what good are nouns, attributes, “properties,” in Platonic terms?
Hey, there’s this problem I have, we can’t stop the violence. You want to figure that out for us?
Sure – ah, OK, here it is. See, what you got there is “aggression.”
Problem solved! I learned a new noun. Sorry – what was the problem again? Right, violence. And why? Right, aggression. OK, cool, here’s your money, thanks!
Say it again, add a word, can’t stop the male violence – see, what you got there is men.
Terrific, thanks again. The usual price? Automatic deposits alright?
You want to solve something, you look for thoughts, actions, something happening – a chance to possibly intervene. You want to protect something, it’s a noun: sorry, it exists. End of story. It’s another brick in the wall – “Men are aggressive, so you can’t have no rape! How can you have no rape if men are aggressive?”
Like I suggested earlier though, the hammerhead with the gun whose guiding light is violence, he creates this reality. If he and enough of his developmentally arrested friends decide that nothing else but toughness matters, then that signifies the peak of that civilization because almost every other skill humans have will have to be suppressed for the constant antisocialization required for the constant state of war that results. It’s a self-fulfilling policy that way – it’s true when they prove its true.
All I’m saying is, if we didn’t prove it, it wouldn’t be.
That’s our clue that we’re in social science territory, psychology territory, “truths” that must be proven constantly, minute by minute, these are only social truths, and that line is ruling all of our lives, always certainly, but today more clearly than ever, the rational versus the social. Perhaps all of our meritocracies are real, but only rational, and as such, taken with a large grain of salt, while the social meritocracies are few, but far more serious. I mean, sure ladies are clever enough to build you an atomic bomb – but are they crazy enough to deploy it? Or do the fairer sex simply lack the social skills for war?
If only male lions were aggressive, we would still find out how fast we can run every time we saw a cub or a lioness, because they all live together in social groups and the presence of cubs and lionesses means lions also and they would still be a species to avoid generally. Aggressive males means an aggressive species. I believe I’ve seen lionesses rejecting an incoming would-be alpha, I think if there are enough ladies in the pride, they get to select their males – and as things stand, the males are big, nasty bastards. That’s an aggressive species and if the ladies never let a claw out themselves, it would still be an aggressive species – which is maybe how this narrative about us is supposed to go, right? Aggression is the province of men, a property of maleness, not of humanness?
I suppose it would be completely true if all men are rapists, if a substantial portion of people are the children of rape, and so it is true to a degree, because there absolutely are rapists and their children. That’s a problem – I just worry it’s not the only problem, I worry, that not unlike the lions, when our ladies get a chance to practice some sexual selection, we still end up with big, nasty bastards (or little ones that make up for their size with extra nastiness). You don’t think? OK, here it is, at last.
The ’not all men’ urge was very strong with me, I got in trouble a few times on Twitter, trying to defend myself, trying to fight what I felt was the determinism in memes that say it is indeed all men, all men are rapists, all men supposedly agree with this latest disgusting ramping up of misogyny that came online along with Russia, and I lost, and I gave it up, telling myself it truly doesn’t matter if a few men abstain, does it, if they don’t or can’t stop it? But maybe I have a legitimate critique, the above thing:
When the problem is a noun, there is no solution, and no-one expects one, right?
If it’s “men,” all men, then what are we to do, eliminate them? So a feminism that actually believes in a solution, in the possibility of change might not want to go with that, but the smart folks know that, it’s the other side of that coin that is pertinent today: evil trolls absolutely want that. Misogynist men absolutely want the problem to be a noun, even if that noun is them, because men are never going to implement a solution for that.
So stick to the script, behaviours, laws – rational things – and reject arguments about whole groups of people like “all men,” (and of course reject slander of more oppressed groups also) which is social and so serves the bad guys, who fear truth and rationality above all else.
Jeff
Oct. 27th., 2019
Abuse with an Excuse 
You should lecture at uni, it’s a bit wasted on us bloggers here, or is it that all of us who deal with reason are self alienating?
I was describing the outback to an English friend and saying how after a four hour flight then a 10/11 hour car trip you get out and you’re here. The drone of the car and your mind suddenly has to cope with a kind of vastness you just can’t do justice to with words.
Some people come out here and it really really upsets them you can see a kind of underlying conflict of reason over panic as people who, like me have lived with a small horizon and proportionally insular life are put to a test. I think I cop because I’ve always loved up as a direction. It’s more than that though there is a profundity in the way the vast makes you contemplate your smallness, and again if you’ve had a life as a thing you somehow don’t implode like someone who’s been the star things orbit (cough – yeah sorry for the pun).
Anyway to the point – misogyny – a lot of men actually fear things in us that we are often not even aware of and I think it’s vice versa too. Is it the function of the sado/masochistic relationship of men and woman? I don’t care what Greer says it’s innately submissive the ‘act’ and even relationships – the vanilla ones – and some – seemingly most – wierdly – seem to want it that way.
There was this trans woman on the news here recently who was going to take her school to court for distinguishing between males and females because that upset her. I got to say as an actual owner of s slightly used but serviceable vagina I was kind of insulted that this person who isn’t my gender wants to dictate that gender away from me so it feels better.
Sure, absofuckingloutly lets do that and not really worry about bigger issues like the maybe 50 years of life left on earth. I know that sounds intolerant but I think the left is sometimes too far into pop issues than fighting for humanity. A lot of that stems from the right being into learning institutions and trying to press their agenda there – there you go I made it to the point eventually – people like you should teach. Because not only do you think you consider and when someone presents you with evidence that might have an effect on your work you actually take that in and process it. If we are to evolve and live – we need that.
Hope you’re well I’m high 🙂
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yeah, you could be higher, I still can’t keep up!
I think I would be one of the ones out there in the desert panicking. I dunno.
Yes, I guess ultimately . we provide both to one another, friendship and opposition. Really, really, REALLY clear to me ATM that I served as bogeyman and enemy to my ex, I mean, almost unbeknownst to myself, but very clearly that was her model, her role, opposer of men, and protector of children, and when I foreswore my role in that scheme, she must have gone ahead with it anyway, telling the kids SHE was protecting them from ME, when in truth it was me stopped the abuse! I’m finding out now, they grew up thinking I wanted to whoop them or some shit and she saved them!
See, when she wanted some normal shit to happen, dinner, bedtimes, whatever, I would intervene when she started getting upset and coercive, I’d try to explain stuff to her, which would “stress her out” and she must have gone straight to the kids, upset and crying and saying to them, look what your dad did to me. She didn’t need an actual abuser, she would create one from nothing. No wonder I couldn’t understand what was going on, it really was all fiction!
Sorry, a few times a year, like a heartbeat.
But yeah, we define ourselves against the other, I suppose, and our role is easier if others stay in character too. I just couldn’t do it, didn’t want it.
Hope you’re well, M.
Cheers
Jeff
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whoa, comma overload.
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I think it might be that I’m not preoccupied by death any more, or that I’ve always been fascinated by the vastness – the sky – the desert – forests. Even the city to some extent the endless and unknowable.
Even within people there is a vastness that the apparent clarity of the foreground hides the things in the background don’t you think?
Wow that’s some pretty fucked up behaviour, do you think there might have been some mental illness there, I mean she sounds mental, like she was either after some masochistic relief or a pity party. I’ve seen that in women but not to the extent that they make up things like that – with women I think it’s easier to get what you want you just have to ask for it or look for it. Sometimes even the wiff of a psycho sets some off – sadly.
Sometimes too when people don’t get enough drama in their lives they go and make it.
Don’t worry about venting it’s a necessary thing and we all do it, you don’t need to apologise for it. And the commas? I’ve recently had to kick a fairly bad hyphen fetish and I find I’m sticking comas in everywhere.
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Ha. Kyle’s working class critique of the semi-colon hurts me; I love them! But it’s working on me – more and more dashes instead. I have this idea of embracing it and writing an entire big-ass novel in a single run-on sentence, I should at least start, have a go and see if I can do a whole page. Six line paragraphs I already do, I think. Ulysses felt a little like that.
Interesting, the themes that grab you – the Moby Dick one, obsession, and this vastness – well, plenty of vastness in Moby Dick, come to think of it . . .
parallels, but these areas I haven’t thought about, or in those words. I guess I’ve been stuck wishing folks would leave me the fuck alone my whole life – careful what you wish for – is that like talking about the vastness?
Yes, I think so now, and my failure to “do my work” left me unequipped to see even such craziness, would be the normal pop-psych way to see it and sure. I am forced to wonder whether the ladies that raised me weren’t also just that bad, that makes sense in that paradigm, right? It’s making it hard to stay in touch with my sister(s). I’m thinking back, trying to find someone who didn’t expect nothing else from me but male abuse, and apparently hate me preemptively and it’s a losing game. Just today, for the first time, I fantasized about a partner long enough to think about if I lost them, like the first time I thought that far ahead since my troubles, and oh boy, not feeling like I’d handle that very well right now. Starting to get horny and lonely and realizing I am not remotely thinking about letting anybody in, like ever again, so, ambivalent.
Told a very grownup joke on Twitter the other day about how a lady talked nice to me at a store and in trying to smile at her, I, tense and crazy, felt my stupid eyes drop below her face and blew it immediately – like some incel child and not a father, maybe a grandfather, for all I know now, complete with STDs. I’m so thirsty I can’t stop shaking to hold the cup!
Cheers. You’re a friend.
Jeff
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I dunno if making things that are as hard to read as Ulysses is the answer, I tried to read that once and found I couldn’t follow it. There was a time where I thought I’d go back and read it again but there’s too much to do and too many other things to read now.
I think I’ve read Moby Dick 5 times, it’s my book, at various times I’ve seen myself as Ahab but Ishmael and Elijah and even the whale. And it is the vast emptiness and the unknown deep it’s a draw – hypnotic and restrained terror. The vastness is a relief and a hell at the same time, sure like myths – you never ask the gods because the favour is also a punishment. Which is it carrot or stick, it depends on how you feel at the time. The last time I picked it up, like a few other books I used to love – 1984 and A Brave New World – I had to put it down because it felt masochistic to read it and I think that’s a problem I have, don’t get on the ship, and here I am, at 4.45 am on the ship, crew asleep.
People misrepresent crazy as the state of not being part of the uniformed greedy, millimetre thin veneer – jell pumped and Botoxed to look like everything is perfect, but the difference between scanning Instagram and the mirror is you know how one was made and what lies beneath. We all suspect we are crazy and yet the real crazy is writ large on the media and pointing that out is an act of fraud or treachery – fake news anyone?
I watched the Joker last night I think that film was made to make people despair, I highly don’t recommend it. I was awake after it wondering if it wasn’t made so that people give up on humanity quicker. If you scratch the surface of it there is right wing ideas rendered in bleak European Cinema cool. It’s like a desperate attempt to show what ‘the man’ is fighting and why you should be locked indoors. The actual street is not so callus or psychotically cruel, it just is, like the vastness it isn’t driven by demons or vengeance for whatever ails you.
This is where I left the idea I was mad, tainted and done, real madness is obvious – like the joker – or any villain, what we imagine or relate to is a concoction of years of programming. When i finally saw madness it wasn’t what I thought I was at all.
Hmm get back in your box Miss Ranty Pants.
Funny that shame and lust are still attached for most westerners – is it different in other places? Sure we can reason but we are also part of the animal kingdom, we have sexual urges, even if you try bury those they pop up. (Cough). You’re not an incel for shyness and want, they are another beast entirely. Nor are you a saint, no one is, urges are natural every organism has them even the ones that say they don’t right?
Cheers mate, big brains are hard to manage, the alternative is bleating.
Mx
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gonna start a new one, running outta space
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BAAAAA!!!!!
Yeah, if I wrote down every word I remember of Ulysses it probably wouldn’t fill a page. A decent experience, is the impression. As for story . . . a guy gets in trouble for an affair? It was a “day in Dublin,” right, 24 hours? No story as such, I guess. That stuff’s made for me, I hate stories, seven billion people, a handful of stories. It’s some game of putting words together in a self satisfying and aggrandizing way, writing with swagger, maybe – that’s what I like, and he has that (if naught else!). I told someone else yesterday, I thought I loved Dostoevsky, but the fourth or fifth one was a different translator and the love was gone! Some matter of detail I love. word choices, not story choices, weird?
Absolutely, there is some theoretical sanity and the consensus ain’t usually it, I’m always comparing things to some projection I have of what “real,” or sensible reality would be, it seems silly to think and talk about what most folks think is going on, sure to be more erroneous than my guesses about how a more sensible thing might look.
ah, nihilism in entertainment. Agree completely, and thank you, I’ll give it a miss. I have ideas about that, of course. Honestly, I hated Seinfeld, and now I think it was the start of hate watching, everyone watching those venal jerks and their venal lives. Hey, research, you may know this – is there anything positive in Rick and Morty? I hate to associate this conversation with Jewish names, I think that’s an accident. I have hardly seen anything for decades, I sure don’t have opinions about every show. But R&M seems pretty dark, do you think it’s part of this nihilism?
Not that it’s all active, entertainment tries to give us what we want or what’s relevant (as well as what the US Government thinks we should see), but much of entertainment and literature is a sign of the times, not a driver, but . . .
Oh, I know, I never was any sort of incel, I’ve only ever been alone when I’m super down, for a few years at 21 and now, basically, I don’t do that, or I never did before. I’ve more been the one you’re sure is gay because you’re NEVER supposed to catch me ogling you like a male chauvinist pig (all one word in my childhood). My inner male chauvinist pig has learned to be a photographer, the first look, when I first see you, no-one’s mad at anyone for looking the first time before they even know you’re a beauty! I’ve lived my life being pretty good at keeping it to that, and I expect a lot of ladies figured I was either gay or hostile – but I sure as Hell never thought an in your face ogle was a way to flirt, good lord. I have laughed out loud at seeing guys do that.
But yeah, after a big trouble, people do have to learn how to talk again, sometimes, the simplest social things disappear, I’ve heard that elsewhere, was it Phoebe?
Hope you’re well, I hope your preoccupation is lessened not for a bad reason but no pressure you don’t have to address that.
Jeff
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Yeah I wonder about translation, I have a few authors I like that aren’t English writers and I wonder if the books I love vs the books I’m so-so on have anything to do with it?
I utterly hate Seinfeld – I just cringe at it all why is someone being a moron funny? Yelling the same word over and over hilarious? I always thought that was a generational thing – that I missed the point of the laughs because I didn’t understand the context.
I don’t like cartoons really either – other than south park and Disenchantment, bot of which are nihilistic I guess. I understand that kind of nihilism but not the hatred and violence that film associate with it. I like optimistic nihilism myself, if I had to pick a team. With Rick and Morty I think it’s more – I want to be the Simpsons too – I know people who love that show but it bores me stupid, in the same way I look at cartoons generally they seem manufactured, stilted, obvious and like some geek who never leaves his mum’s basement wrote them.
Morality as gayness is a male thing, women though tend to appreciate it, it’s disappointing when you’re having a good conversation and you discover the guy can’t stop looking at your tits, but to be fair – they are there for a reason and if they are mostly out isn’t it disingenuous to be offended? That is unfair to expect someone’s sex drive to miraculously vanish during a social situation where it’s generally the type of place where you do flirt a bit. It’s a tricky issue, the answer is telepathy and that’s not possible so self control – next best thing – has a tendency to fail. People should relax more maybe.
Sounds wise – it probably was Phoebe.
Yeah things are good, and I’m back to zen.
Hope you’re well too
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Russell Brand’s latest podcast apparently states that there is goodness and beauty in Rick and Morty, but I’m having a hard time getting there, frankly Russell falls into the nihilism category for me too. I suppose I’ll try to listen to it at some point, he lied.
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I don’t think much of Brand, I don’t find him genuine, to me I think he’s playing the modern Jesus for all the wrong reasons, none of them much good other than if he inspires some rebellion that’s good. I think thought mostly he inspires upper middle class boys to be shits.
Try this instead – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBRqu0YOH14&t=303s
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saw him on Norm MacDonald, I think they’re both autodidacts, and they both seem sorta sociopathic, like is there some level of IQ where all things are the same and some awful crime and some obscure beetle are all just two more phenomena? I worry about my hero that way too, Trivers. Or do they just LOOK that way?
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I hope a high IQ doesn’t make you mental, though I can see why it would make people think they are better – the incel thing and – well the nerds I go to uni with. I think it’s more we are all raised – or mostly raised to think we are special – that even turns up in the joker. I’ve yet to meet someone special, mostly people range from incompetent to whizz at something, is that special?
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