Your body

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Dead Kennedy, it's obvious that you are both intelligent and educated. Unfortunately, you're also a raging, pompous, and completely insufferable dick, and apparently pathologically incapable of engaging with other people unless it's on a level that insults and demeans them.

In other words, a perfect Internet troll. Have you considered joining HIMEOBS?

[Precious Moments Zalgo]

That conclusion is only true if the premises are true.  if they are only "metaphorically true" then the conclusion is only "metaphorically true."

If we then act on the conclusion, we are acting on "metaphorical truth" rather than factual truth.  We have substituted the map for the territory.

Thus my opinion that it's a craptacular argument with no convincing power if you recognize what's going on

That's all true, but none of that is relevant.  She didn't post it as a formal logical proof.  It was just a rant.

Of course, if one has a penis then one is biologically male, if one has a vagina then one is biologically female, and if one has ambiguous genitalia then one is biologically hermaphroditic.  However, having a vagina doesn't mean one has to shop and primp and gossip and giggle, and having a penis doesn't mean one has to grunt and cuss and fight and spit.  The point I got from the OP is that you can choose to act however you want, regardless of what kind of body you have.

I know Cartesian duality isn't true.  However it feels true, it's easy to see to the world that way, and language that suggests Cartesian duality is easy to slip into.

I don't think anyone here is anti-intellectual, but I get the feeling that most folks here won't stand for intellectual bullying, which is what you are doing.

I bet you were the guy in the theater watching "Freaky Friday" who threw his drink and the screen and stormed out screaming about how the move was promoting Cartesian duality.

[Dead Kennedy]

So... you're suggesting that only people with philosophy degrees should write?

No, I'm suggesting that if you want to write on philosophical topics, then perhaps you should learn something about those topics.  Otherwise you are just making noise.  You are doing exactly what you decried other people doing in your SHUT THE FUCK UP rant.  It's hypocritical.

I'd also like to point out that you are now defending your essay from the charge that it's crap by citing the fact that you apparently put neither time, effort, or serious thought into it, and are not a philosopher.  

It seems to me that this defense only makes sense if you have implicitly agreed with me that it's garbage.

Funny that.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

My entire defense of the alleged crime of engaging Cartesian duality is "Huh. That's not what I was going for".

I was actually kind of trying to walk a middle line, which is what RA objected to because I wasn't dualist ENOUGH. But I was trying to keep it fairly neutral and mostly in the realm of first-person parable because the wherefores behind our existence is kind of irrelevant to my point, which was that gender, as a separate factor from biological sex, is a social construct, and kind of a limiting one.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

So... you're suggesting that only people with philosophy degrees should write?

No, I'm suggesting that if you want to write on philosophical topics, then perhaps you should learn something about those topics.  Otherwise you are just making noise.  You are doing exactly what you decried other people doing in your SHUT THE FUCK UP rant.  It's hypocritical.

I'd also like to point out that you are now defending your essay from the charge that it's crap by citing the fact that you apparently put neither time, effort, or serious thought into it, and are not a philosopher.  

It seems to me that this defense only makes sense if you have implicitly agreed with me that it's garbage.

Funny that.

Doesn't everything that isn't science have the possibility of being classified as "philosophy", though?

Also, I think that most self-described philosophers are morons, and completely full of shit.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

You are doing exactly what you decried other people doing in your SHUT THE FUCK UP rant.  It's hypocritical.

Whut

how did you manage to miss that my "shut the fuck up" rant (which you so charmingly accused me of plagiarizing from Douglas Adams) was about people making NOISE WITH THEIR STUPID NOISY NOISEHOLES? It was about pointless sounds, not ideas. It was, in fact, about me venting because someone near me would not SHUT THE FUCK UP while I was trying to do my own thing.

The written word is easy to ignore, because it's not yammering five feet from my head about nothing all fucking day long. For that matter, if someone wants to TALK about their ideas or viewpoints, that's not meaningless empty noisemaking, either.

[Dead Kennedy]

Dead Kennedy, it's obvious that you are both intelligent and educated. Unfortunately, you're also a raging, pompous, and completely insufferable dick, and apparently pathologically incapable of engaging with other people unless it's on a level that insults and demeans them.

Actually, I have to point out that you insulted me first.  I only said that I found your essay boring and deeply flawed.  I never attacked the author.  You decided to make it personal when you responded to my criticism of your essay with criticism of me.

What you have discovered is that I can be a raging, pompous, and completely insufferable dick.  What you will discover with time is that I only become a raging, pompous, and completely insufferable dick when dealing with nitwits who can't engage with criticism and keep it about the ideas.

Here's a trick:  Don't rely on demeaning me as a person to defend ideas that you hammered out quickly without giving them proper consideration.

Seriously, if your first response to me had been "I'm not sure what the level of engagement you're looking for here is... I sat down the other day and banged out a little rant about something that irritates me, and you want me to rise to the level of a philosophy graduate and defend it as if it were a dissertation." then we wouldn't be here now.  

But your first response was to accuse me of having a hang-up about religion, with the implication that I was only criticizing your essay because of some neurotic emotional problem, and not because it was a deeply flawed essay.

As I noted earlier, when someone decides to make the argument about me and not about the ideas being discussed, I consider that an invitation to rake them over the burning hot coals of my staggering intellect.

[Pariah]

Here's a trick:  Don't rely on demeaning me as a person to defend ideas that you hammered out quickly without giving them proper consideration

People like new ideas as long as they're not covered with a thick slime of a prick.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Dead Kennedy, it's obvious that you are both intelligent and educated. Unfortunately, you're also a raging, pompous, and completely insufferable dick, and apparently pathologically incapable of engaging with other people unless it's on a level that insults and demeans them.

Actually, I have to point out that you insulted me first.  I only said that I found your essay boring and deeply flawed.  I never attacked the author.  You decided to make it personal when you responded to my criticism of your essay with criticism of me.

What you have discovered is that I can be a raging, pompous, and completely insufferable dick.  What you will discover with time is that I only become a raging, pompous, and completely insufferable dick when dealing with nitwits who can't engage with criticism and keep it about the ideas.

Here's a trick:  Don't rely on demeaning me as a person to defend ideas that you hammered out quickly without giving them proper consideration.

Seriously, if your first response to me had been "I'm not sure what the level of engagement you're looking for here is... I sat down the other day and banged out a little rant about something that irritates me, and you want me to rise to the level of a philosophy graduate and defend it as if it were a dissertation." then we wouldn't be here now.  

But your first response was to accuse me of having a hang-up about religion, with the implication that I was only criticizing your essay because of some neurotic emotional problem, and not because it was a deeply flawed essay.

As I noted earlier, when someone decides to make the argument about me and not about the ideas being discussed, I consider that an invitation to rake them over the burning hot coals of my staggering intellect.

Your intellect is clearly a marble tower! I mean, really, I am shamed to be so much as kneeling before it.

No, actually, you remind me of another pompous philosophy major I know, who also doesn't grasp sarcasm too well.

You started right off by being a completely insulting cock. This is not a writer's board; this is a rager's board, and you stepped right in it. Stupid, pompous assfuck. Why do you think it's called "Or Kill Me"?

Learn to read, and comprehend, where you are before you come out of the gate with your wank-emote, dipshit.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I never attacked the author.  You decided to make it personal when you responded to my criticism of your essay with criticism of me.

So, what's your excuse for insulting everyone else on the board while you were at it?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The OP is mired in Cartesian duality and ego-identification.   I could barely keep my eyes open.

By the way, asshole, "OP" can be translated as "Original poster" as well "Original post" and is usually used interchangeably. Learn to write what you mean CLEARLY, THEN criticize me.

[Sir Squid Diddimus]

dude this guy's posts are so full of inane dribble that it makes em hard to read.
in fact, i didn't read most of them for that reason.

Nigel i liked your OP.

DK- eat dick, doo doo head.

how's that for pathetic nonsensical popsicle fuckwit drivel
ask me more, i'm full of it, douche bag.
in fact, if you think Nigel's rant is -- whatever the hell it was you were trying to say about it, you haven't met the childish grawkitude that is me.

[Dead Kennedy]

My entire defense of the alleged crime of engaging Cartesian duality is "Huh. That's not what I was going for".

Again, maybe you should have thought about it some more before ranting about it.  Then, perhaps, your rant wouldn't have come across as ignorant and vapid NOISE.

I was actually kind of trying to walk a middle line, which is what RA objected to because I wasn't dualist ENOUGH. But I was trying to keep it fairly neutral and mostly in the realm of first-person parable because the wherefores behind our existence is kind of irrelevant to my point, which was that gender, as a separate factor from biological sex, is a social construct, and kind of a limiting one.

Except the "wherefores behind our existence" are extremely relevant to your point.

That's the whole problem.  You hand wave off the "wherefores behind our existence" with some superstitious malarkey, which is the only way you can arrive at your point.

I don't think that gender can be separated from biological sex.  I think gender is a function of biology, and that only the particulars of gender are socially constructed.

That is to say that I think the the idea "Pink is for girls, blue is for boys." is socially constructed, but that the need to gender things is innate to human existence.  In many ways I think gender is like language: Every culture has its own language, but every culture has a language and a society cannot function without a language.  Likewise, I don't think that a society can function without gender roles, and I think that the idea that gender is entirely socially constructed had caused incredible damage to modern society.  I think it's caused a huge portion of society to become postively neurotic about gender roles.

I don't think rants like yours help.  I think you are an agent of the endarkening, that you are helping to pull the wool over people's eyes, using bullshit superstitious arguments to justify nonsensical positions that make people go crazy -- both by embracing the nonsense, and by resisting the nonsense.

There are basically three groups of people in modern world:

 There are men who are comfortable being men, and women comfortable being women, and they make up the largest group.  The people in this group rarely think about gender, they simply go with the flow and embrace what society expects of them, staking out some amount of individuality in the undisputed middle grounds.  These are the people who accept that masculine does not have to mean macho superman, and the feminine doesn't have to mean submissive doormat.

 There are men uncomfortable being men, and women uncomfortable being women, who become neurotic travesties,focusing all of their energy on their gender. They cut themselves off from the first group by insisting that gender is "only" a social construct, and acting as if being social constructed means that it's not necessary.  They call themselves genderqueer or other silly labels, and they waste all their energy fighting gender to no effect.

 Finally there are men and women who are terrified by the lack of clear gender roles, and so they cling desperately to ever more neurotic and tyrannical definitions of gender.  They cannot go with the flow.  The men become macho blowhards, the women submissive doormats, and they go bugnuts crazy trying to impose gender certainity on society.

Look at what has happened in the last thirty years since feminists first started advancing this theory of socially constructed gender.  Has gender gone away?  No, quite the opposite!

A good friend of mine, Jackson Katz, directed a film about masculinity called Tough Guise (trailer) in which he shows some of the changing images of feminity and masculinity over the last several decades.

There are three sets of images that stand out.  The first compares images of professional wrestlers with images of professional models.  Over the last few decades wrestlers have gotten larger and larger, with ever more stereotypical masculine features,while professional models, who have become thinner, more waifish, more delicate, more stereotypically feminine.

Another set of images compares Star Wars figures from 1977 to figures from 1997.  Han Solo is the figure.  The 1977 Kenner Han Solo action figure has a realistic masculine build, just like Harrison Ford.  The 1997 Han Solo has ridiculously exaggerated muscles -- he's buff like a wrestler.  Han Solo, one of the most iconic male images of the 70's, is not masculine enough for the kids of 1997.

The final set of images compares male leading actors in crime thrillers.  First is the poster for the Maltese Falcon: doughy, flabby and jowly Humprey Bogart, with his kind face and big puppy dog eyes holding a small snub nosed revolver at his side.  Next up is Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry, tougher,leaner, meaner, scowling, a huge pistol held menacingly in his hand. The last image shows Sly Stallone in Cobra, huge oiled muscles, shades to block his eyes from showing emotion, scowling and holding a fucking machine gun in one hand.

What's going on?  My theory is that by attacking gender, feminists have provoked a defensive reaction from society to circle the wagons around the concept of gender and defend it, strengthen it, allow no questioning of it.  By challenging gender's right to exist, we have only made the problems associated with gender worse.

I actually have read Judith Butler, so I know just how sketchy and fact-free the argument in support of the "gender is socially constructed" idea is.  I know why you had to handwave off the "wherefores behind our existence" to make your point: because being mindful of those wherefores seriously undermines and challenges the validity of your point.

[Sir Squid Diddimus]

fweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[Sir Squid Diddimus]

now i wonder.
will he take another 45 minutes to come up with some long winded retort that bores the shit out of me?