Your body

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

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.

What damage specifically has been caused by this war on gender?

Establish the causal connection of feminism to exaggerated gender roles.

If biology determines gender than how do you account for people who are intersex?
Should we just put them in the ovens?

[Bu🤠ns]

the endarkenment was mentioned in Angel Tech: A Modern Shamans Guide to a pregnant universe with a pic of fred mertz not sure its the original source of the idea.

good book..i highly recommend it.


---

i think what nigel said about having a conversation resulting in mutual understanding is key here...You're literate, DK, we get it. Is mutual understanding a worthy cause here?  I'm just making a simple request toward cohesion over alienation here.--if you're up for it?

[Dead Kennedy]

I think you missed the point

Is the point that I'm a troll?

How exactly am I troll?

Because I wrote something critical about Nigel's post?

Because I shot snark back at everyone who has taken potshots at me?

Because I'm a different sort of asshole than all the other assholes in this thread?

At some point troll is just a word for someone you disagree with.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Noooo... it's a word for someone who writes antagonistic, bizzarre or out of place posts solely for the purpose of drawing attention to themselves, gaining a large number of responses, or disrupting a forum. You have 2 out of 3.

[Thurnez Isa]

I think you missed the point

Is the point that I'm a troll?

How exactly am I troll?

Because I wrote something critical about Nigel's post?

Because I shot snark back at everyone who has taken potshots at me?

Because I'm a different sort of asshole than all the other assholes in this thread?

At some point troll is just a word for someone you disagree with.

lets put it this way
if it wasn't 2 am and I had some time on my hand I probably could do a search and find each one of those above questions said by others under similar circumstances

and I probably wouldn't have to go as far back as the civil war which more or less predated me joining the board
that's what Im talking about

I DEFINITELY would find your "I'll have to tell you what discordism is and how your all not real discordists endarkened

[Dead Kennedy]

Noooo... it's a word for someone who writes antagonistic, bizzarre or out of place posts solely for the purpose of drawing attention to themselves, gaining a large number of responses, or disrupting a forum. You have 2 out of 3.

I didn't write an antagonistic, bizarre or out of place post solely for the purpose of drawing attention to myself.

I did write a mildly dismissive critique of the hastily written, poorly thought out essay you posted -- primarily because everyone else was giving you totally undeserved mittens, and I wanted to offer a counterpoint.

You decided to attack me, and your loser friends rushed in to defend you, and that's when the thread turned into a discussion of me.  Despite my attempts to discuss your essay.  it seems whenever I criticize your ideas, you criticize me.

I think you're a hypocritical cunt.  

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

And I think you're a kind of stupid philosophy parrot. w00t.

[Sir Squid Diddimus]

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Despite my attempts to discuss your essay.  it seems whenever I criticize your ideas, you criticize me.

I think you're a hypocritical cunt.  

What better way to debate the idea and not the person by calling them a cunt in the next breath.

































































LAILTASTIC!

[Dead Kennedy]

And I think you're a kind of stupid philosophy parrot. w00t.

Yes, but you can't actually back up that entirely baseless accusation.  You have already told us that you are ignorant of philosophy, so your claim that I am "parroting" some other person -- and by implication not thinking for myself (and fuck you too, cunt)  -- must be entirely uninformed.  

How could you possibly recognize that I was parroting some philosophical source unless you were,in fact, very familiar with philosophy?

Logic bitch, it'll get you every time.  So yeah, color me: unimpressed by this bland, unoriginal, and thoroughly witless attempt at an insult.

Say something else.  Give me even more reason to think you're a thin-skinned, hypocritical idiot who can't handle what she so readily hands out.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Thin-skinned implies that I'm actually upset. Maybe you should contrast how much effort I've put into my responses with how much effort you've put into yours, and apply some logic to that.

I love your your scope is so limited that you can only TRY to understand something after you've forced it into a very narrow frame of reference.

Anyway, thanks for helping me while away a relatively boring evening, goodnight.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Dead Kennedy, we're really all friends here, so I'm going to let you in on a special secret:

Your approval is not our concern.


In fact, have another:

We are all having a great deal of fun at the expense of a great deal of your time and effort.

[Thurnez Isa]

We are all having a great deal of fun at the expense of a great deal of your time and effort.

not me


unless someone agrees to do two weeks of chemistry assignments for me tonight

[Dead Kennedy]

Thin-skinned implies that I'm actually upset. Maybe you should contrast how much effort I've put into my responses with how much effort you've put into yours, and apply some logic to that.

Thinking and writing require little effort for me.  I practice constantly.  I try to use my brain at least 75% of the time I'm awake.  I'm guessing you shoot for closer to 25%.  And I'm being generous.

I love your your scope is so limited that you can only TRY to understand something after you've forced it into a very narrow frame of reference.

I dare you to actually explain what you mean by that.  That doesn't mean anything.

It's just empty words.  I don't have to "try" to understand what you wrote.  I understood it just fine.

Your problem is that you, like most idiots, think that what you "meant" is more important that what you actually said.  So you say something stupid, and then you get called on it, and what? Now I'm close-minded because you can't express yourself clearly and don't know what you're saying actually means?

Say what you mean, mean what you say.  Words to live by.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

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.

What damage specifically has been caused by this war on gender?

Establish the causal connection of feminism to exaggerated gender roles.

If biology determines gender than how do you account for people who are intersex?
Should we just put them in the ovens?