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Awareness -> RE: I Love My White Male Privilege! (3/16/2016 11:49:42 PM)
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ORIGINAL: PeonForHer
'Pandering to Islamic fundamentalism' is rubbish. Of course it is, but the regressive left is focused on the promotion of all other groups and cultures as victims of white men. This is why, for example, feminists are astonishingly silent about the Cologne sexual assault cases. Which is weird, because feminists are constantly denouncing white men for being an horrific group of rapists but seem strangely reluctant to condemn Islamic refugees for the same crime.
I mean, it's really weird - it's almost like feminists are like... intellectually dishonest or something.
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Too weak a charge to be worth my arguing with. Nonsense. Feminists are guilty of pandering, you know you're guilty and you have no defense against your own prejudice.
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The phrase 'Islam is a violent, imperialist culture' is nonsense because of course, it isn't a culture, it's a religion. Education time! Of course, you're incorrect and your comment reflects your monumental ignorance. Islamic culture is rooted in the Islamic religion, however the culture itself is the essential set of underlying assumptions, beliefs and memes which have formed AROUND THE PRACTICE OF THAT RELIGION.
Islam is a culture which is distinct from the notion of the Islamic religion. This dichotomy is necessary - in fact it's impossible to discuss Islam without it - because the Islamic religion itself is perpetually engaged in civil war. The Sunnis and the Shiites have been killing each other for hundreds of years over their argument about which dead ancient was the true inheritor of Mohammed's legacy.
This becomes worse when you talk to Muslims who comment on the effect of Islamic resettlement in other countries. Comments such as "without grandmothers to tell children which parts of the Koran to ignore, the resulting fundamentalist interpretation of the book results in a more virulent strain of Jihadic Islam."
Consequently, Islamic culture extends beyond Islamic religion itself. It includes the idea of who has the authority to interpret the Koran and consequently elevates the clerics which preach a message of theocratic domination. It is those clerics who take pains to inoculate the people against the lure of the Western lifestyle - by feeding their minds with anti-western poison - that are the true influencers of Islamic culture.
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This is why the average ISIS member is nothing like, say, the bloke at my local shop who sells me daily newspaper. That comment also gives away the fact that you've failed to grasp what's meant by the 'ecological fallacy'. The only difference between the average ISIS member and the bloke at your shop is their degree of commitment. The bloke in the shop doesn't really care if Britain falls under an Islamic theocracy and he certainly wouldn't fight to defend Britain from it. Surveys of 'moderate' Muslims have shown time and time again, that they won't participate in the violent overthrow of existing governments, but they don't think a theocratic Islamic caliphate is a bad thing either and they certainly wouldn't stand against it.
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As I said, Awareness, it's monumentally difficult to 'think oneself beyond' the left/right axis in the study of politics. It's bit like trying to do maths while disdaining to be 'restricted' by the ideas of plus and minus. That's an astonishingly naive viewpoint. Part of the problem here is that you're unable to think outside the structure which you're absolutely convinced represents reality, when all it really does is provide a poor model of categorisation for the individuality of political views. Your simplistic perception of individual beliefs requires you to attempt to evaluate political views based upon the degree to which another's beliefs are in accord with your own.
The utility of a model - and indeed, the degree to which it can be thought of as being correct - lies in its predictive power.
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The terms 'right wing' and 'left wing' don't go much deeper than I think you imagine they do. They go right down to one's world view - not just to how you think society should be, but how you think it works right now.
Here's an example of your own thinking, and how it slots into the cluster of right wing views:
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ORIGINAL: Awareness
Feminism aims to elevate women at the expense of men and the only way a man supports something which harms him is because he's either self-loathing or hoping to score pussy.
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That view depends upon a standardly right wing, individualistic view of society. Society, in this, is a 'zero sum game': It's a competition between X and Y and what is gained by X is lost by Y. A lefty - as indeed I am, no prizes for guessing - will tend to see society as in terms of cooperation rather than competition. So, I'd tend to see groups of people as teams. That is some of the most ironic drivel I've ever seen in my life. I don't think you have any fucking notion of what the fuck you're talking about and once again you reveal your own ignorance about feminism itself. Christ, this is incredible.
The Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls (please tell me you know what this is) implicitly placed men and women in opposition to each other. Let's examine some of the language:
"The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpation on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her."
Now that's a funny view for a lefty to be taking considering that families were considered teams, but apparently being in a family team is indeed a zero sum game with men taking and women losing out. What the fuck kind of point were you ludicrously attempting to make again?
My view of feminism's approach is based on what feminists are actually doing. The problem, of course, is that according to you, nobody who advocates for legislative, social or political change is actually a feminist if acknowledging them as such would be inconvenient. To say feminists such as yourself are astonishingly intellectually dishonest is the understatement of the decade.
The problem, dear boy, is that all of the legislative, social and political change for which feminists advocate is fundamentally targeted at men. Men as an amorphous group of rapists. Men as an amorphous group who earn higher wages for the same work (utter drivel of course, no economist takes this claim seriously). Men as an amorphous group who dare to comment on a woman's body. (Yet women not only comment on men's bodies but regard mutilating men's bodies as fodder for humour). Men as an amorphous group of oppressors who engage in daily micro-aggressions because they hate women.
The list goes on and on. The crap which comes out of the feminist camp is some of the craziest bigotry I've ever seen in my life.
My view is based on observation, not on notions of how society operates. It's based on feminists advocating for advantages while attempting to escape responsibilities.
And as a demonstration of the incompetence of your left/right model of political views, my politician of choice at this point in time is Bernie Sanders. That would appear to be an incongruous choice for a right wing conservative, don't you think?
Your model of the possible range of political views is an inaccurate crutch. You lean on it for support when what you really need to do is cast it from you, that you might walk.
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You want the one who's best at a given job to *get* that job. This is why, for instance, feminism helped to bring about the possibility of a female POTUS and why I support that. Myself, I don't know if I'd support Clinton. But I'm damned sure I'd want the possibility of a good female POTUS. I don't have a problem with that, provided she does so without special assistance. Women need to compete on their on merits not through speculative programs aimed at addressing theoretical disadvantages they allegedly suffer because they were coercively assigned feminine gender at birth. (That last phrase is just for the cis-haters amongst you.)
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Those are two of the meta contexts that are involved, as you see them, anyway, though I guess it goes without saying that this 'fundamentally broken culture of victimhood' is just your own slant. It's a standardly right wing slant, of course. I doubt it. I think even the most progressive individuals are waking up to the realisation that victim-hood culture is just a race to the bottom of avoiding moral responsibility for your own life. And I find it interesting how you're completely unable to stop yourself from trying to put your opponent in the other tribe so you can throw rocks at him.
Let me make it clear. If you've ever used the phrase "liberals are" or "conservatives are" then you're a fucking moron. The artificial division of human beings into two tribes is a chimera designed to focus the attention of the masses on each other instead of their leaders who are defrauding them.
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Of course they are both seeking power. That's what, in most people's view, is what politics is *there* for. As for one side being more righteous than the other: I think that, at some point, in the great search for the fundamental truths in politics, you come to a dead end. This 'dead end' often involves morality and , ultimately I know my own morality can't rationally be demonstrated to be better than anyone else's. So, at the point of this dead end, you just nail your colours to the wall. That's what I've done; that's what any political scientist I've ever known has done. No you dolt, it's not mere morality - that's a tidy little piece of misdirection designed to imbue your views with a patina of worth. It's about your underlying philosophy, your understanding of the psychology of the species, the psychology of individuals and how this effects choices.
Morality isn't worth a damn if your understanding of humanity is so ignorant you fail to understand - for example - why we consistently and persistently abandon our so-called principles in the face of self-interest, the degree to which we deceive ourselves as well as others and the reasons why we cling to false beliefs in the face of clear evidence to the contrary.
If your understanding of humanity is facile, your choices around policy will be equally facile - which is why I'm inherently suspicious of your approach which posits a facile interpretation of people's political principles.
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Forget it. The most arrogant one of all is always the one who thinks he's so far above everyone else that he believes *them* to be intellectually constrained within some paradigm, but cannot see that he suffers from exactly that fault himself. And by the way, I reject your appeal to vehemence. I also don't care how much disdain you try to convey in your argument. It's irrelevant to me. Look this arrogance of yours is just futile. You don't have the truth - nobody does. You have a model of reality and that's all it is. A model. One which should be subject to revision and testing. That you believe it's the final word on the range of possible political views is a clear sign that your own views are completely calcified.
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ORIGINAL: Awareness
Ecology is about biology, not thought or memes.
Again - too limited a view. It's part of philosophy and the social sciences, now. Again. Where? Ecology is about biology. The ecological fallacy is about applying statistical aggregates about populations to individuals. Explain to me how this is relevant to the expectations that cultural memes are likely to be present in individuals from that culture?
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ORIGINAL: Awareness
You can infer from Greta's biology that she's not likely to be violent because her testosterone is (likely) to be significantly lower than a man's and her risk of being a sociopath is also lower.
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You can talk of a likelihood, given the things you mention, but not a certainty. A certainty would put us in the territory of that ecological fallacy, again. Well yes... we're talking about biology and statistical aggregates from populations. Explain to me how the ecological fallacy applies OUTSIDE of statistics?
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No, just gently pointing out that you hadn't read it closely enough. Cf the examples above, and the fact that the exception and ecological fallacies are flip sides of the same coin. No, you just got it wrong and tried badly to recover. Next!
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Yes, Awareness, I am aware of that, thank you. However, I didn't talk about 'dictionary definitions'. I was referring to definitions per political science. The further into such study you go, the more nuances you deal with. There are *vast* numbers of different slants on terms like 'communism', 'democracy', etc, etc. But you need to have a working, common definition of all of them. Definitions as per political science have little value. And Wittgenstein demonstrated that the meaning of words cannot be reasoned from first principles. The meaning of words is established by the populations which use them. Attempting to define them outside of their context, usage and grammar is pointless.
Consequently feminism is not an ideology which can be contained in a dictionary definition. Feminism is the meaning to which the actions of feminists have ascribed certain values in the mind of the population which uses that term. And that is why feminism is considered by many to establish women as victims, promote hatred of men and seek unfair accommodations for women for nebulous reasons which have no basis in fact.
Your retreat to a dictionary definition, besides being a demonstration of intellectual cowardice is actually a retreat from the reality of what feminism means to the population which uses it - to whit, the men and women who perceive its influence.
Can you not understand the head-in-the-sand nature of continually retreating to that definition whenever the missteps, mistakes and cruelty of feminism is pointed out to you? Can you not understand why you appear so dishonest?
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The first part of that is better put than Nick put it, when I asked him to define 'feminism', but it's screwed up in exactly the same way. If, as you imply, feminism is about what feminists do rather than what they are - well, how do you define the sort of people you're looking at when you set out to assess what they're doing? And who, for you are the 'principle proponents' and why is it that you assume that these people are what a given ideology is 'essentially about'? In the end, you have no choice but to have a basic definition, otherwise you can't see any of the nuances - anything at all. Tables come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Some are good; some are crap. But unless I know a basic definition of 'table', I'm not even able to recognise something as a 'table'. On that basis, feminists cannot possibly say anything about men. Who are these "men" that feminism rails against? Who are the representatives of "the patriarchy" which is apparently oppressing the lives of women? How can you assume these "men" are responsible for what's happening in the lives of women?
Christ, it's like arguing with a child. Your own arguments are so easily turned back on you, it's embarrassing.
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This is why you have to start with a definition. And that definition, in the case of feminism, is 'the advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes'. Or something very close. And I've just explained to you that your definition is a retreat from responsibility and reality.
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Hey, I've not been the one spitting out the word 'fucking' as many times as he can. Nor have I been the one to allow his egotistical contempt to control him. Or ... could it be that you don't, in fact, consider egotistical contempt to *be* an emotion? What the fuck does my enjoyment of a colorful turn of phrase have to do with the distinction between hard and soft sciences? Are you high?
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As for 'hard evidence' - well yes, that's vital ... but even more important is a clear, commonly accepted vocabulary. That's why, per your rigid adherence to a miscast use of the term feminism, you'd not pass a course on that subject. You really don't understand. The clear, commonly accepted vocabulary is the one which dominates our societies. And I've already explained to you what the word "feminism" means to the majority of people.
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And yes, it *was* cretinous to imply that feminists want sameness rather than equality. That was a schoolboy argument. Oh Good Lord. Do you even know what the fuck feminism advocates for? The degree to which feminism attempts to erase gender difference? The absolute obsession feminists have with arguing gender is socially constructed?
You'd have to be a cretin to argue otherwise. Or you're just not paying attention to what's actually happening in the world around you.
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ORIGINAL: Awareness
Feminists advocate for parity, not equality. Equality of opportunity does not equal equality of outcomes and yet feminists behave as though they do.
No, a feminist is defined by support for women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes. Some will argue for equality of outcome; others will argue only for equality of opportunity. Stop retreating from moral responsibility and reality.
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ORIGINAL: Awareness
Ah, y'see this is where you just don't understand. A feminist is not defined by what dictionary definition she adheres to. A feminist is defined by what she chooses to believe in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.
Drivel, of course. No, this is how women are judged by feminists. When women say "Look, I believe in equality of the sexes, but we ARE equal and we don't need to keep agitating for more rights than men", she's told that she's not a feminist and that she suffers from "internalised misogyny".
A woman who looks at the evidence and decides that feminism has lost its way is subject to name-calling, gas-lighting and abuse by feminists.
Oh wait. Here it comes. Next you'll be telling me "those aren't real feminists, because real feminists don't do that!"
IIIIIIT'S NO TRUE SCOTSMAN TIME!
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ORIGINAL: Awareness
So, a woman who was raised as a feminist who looks clearly and unflinchingly at the evidence and begins to query the sacred cows of feminism tends not to be a feminist. She's basically a woman who's been indoctrinated and is undergoing some cult deprogramming.
No, a feminist is defined by support for women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes. Stop retreating from moral responsibility and reality.
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*Wince*. No. You're not getting it. If you use the term 'political correctness' to a left wing academic, particularly a social scientist, he's just going to think you're an idiot. Seriously - it'd be like your calling him a 'big poo-face'. Really? You're telling me a political scientist doesn't understand that political correctness is an attempt to win the moral war by attempting to control socially accepted modes of expression? Well then I think he either doesn't know what he's fucking talking about or he's so embedded in a leftist view of the world that he's abandoned any pretense of even attempting to reason.
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ORIGINAL: Awareness
Funnily enough, the number of women prepared to call themselves feminists is dropping. Ever wonder why that is?
I'm pretty damned sure I've known for decades, now. It's a long-defamed term. It's been kicked around so much that it's gone the way of the term 'socialism' ... so many propagandising-opponents, for so long a time, have cast it as a monster and kicked it around. You and Nick are two such propagandising opponents. Still, as I understand it, both terms have been experiencing something of a comeback more recently. So let me get this straight, because I want to highlight the absolute stupidity of your premise here.
So you're telling me, that feminism has advocated - wildly successfully according to you - for the rights of women for over a hundred years and has instituted widespread political, sociological and legislative change. And yet the TERM ITSELF which describes this wildly successful campaign has been successfully demonised because of a conspiracy by representatives of the patriarchy?
That the men who rule over women have somehow acceded to the demands of feminists but are running a campaign of misinformation on the sly? Or that men with power are virtuous but the common man is a regressive cunt who badmouths feminism?
Do you understand how phenomenally stupid that proposition sounds and how it resembles the conspiracy theories of people who rave about aliens and the Illuminati?
This is what someone from the discipline of political science thinks? Seriously? Ye Gods, and you wonder why I prefer the hard sciences.
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Again, I had a wider focus than just that of 'culture'. Secondly, the 'ecological' bit of 'ecological fallacy' isn't now related to the biology-based subject of 'Ecology'. Back to Googling for you. Thirdly, you've already accepted that the flip-side of the ecological fallacy - the 'exception fallacy' - is pretty damned central to, eg, looking at racism. First off, ecological fallacy seems pretty much confined to the domain of statistics and for someone who babbles about Googling, you've yet to provide a reference for its use outside of that field. So perhaps you could enlighten my ignorance by providing an example.
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You only say that because you insist on your own, utterly skewed definition of 'feminist'. You've insisted on it so much by now that you think that I just must be working with the same definition. However, I don't work with that definition (Or - non definition - since you've skirted, just like Nick did before you, just how you define 'feminist') So, if we work with your definition, you're proposing the - frankly ridiculous idea - that enjoyment of sex and "support for women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes" are somehow linked.
That's bonkers.
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What would be hysterical would be the idea that women got to the position where they could enjoy being women and that *not* having anything to do with feminism. That's most especially true when we're talking about women enjoying sex. Those women exist. They're women who say, "No, I'm not a feminist. I like men".
And they're generally not into that whole "erase the differences between the sexes" that feminists are obsessed with.
Funny that.
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