The rest of the world doesn’t care about your aspirations
Glosswitch can hit more nails on more heads in one tweet than most of us can in entire essays.
She starts with the way girls and young women like to think they’re different from their mothers, they won’t be complicit the way Mummy is.
Of course, like millions of women before me, upon having children I discovered this thinking is bollocks. It’s not because you stop caring – motherhood doesn’t excise this yearning for individuality– but because the rest of the world doesn’t care about your aspirations.
Physically you’re screwed, socially you’re screwed, because it turns out gender isn’t a performance.
You become “that woman” because guess what? No other bugger’s stepping in to be her for you. What’s more, you start to realise that no one is “just some mum”, not even your own mum. All those years you spent kidding yourself she was lucky enough to identify with servitude!
…
Motherhood politicises many women. It makes us aware of how utterly facile the idea of transcending the sexed body is (my male partner and I have had three kids. I’ve ended up carrying and birthing all three, with all the risk, pain and long-term cost. Coincidence? I think not).
…
Mumsnet has been a place where women can rage about the injustice of being a human trapped in a mother’s social position. And no, there was no golden age during which Mumsnet mummies spoke only of dangerous prams and the cheapest make-up remover.
…
Patriarchy has always mistrusted women speaking without male supervision. The treatment of Mumsnet follows a familiar pattern. In the early days the site was trivialised (“yummy mummies wittering on” etc.), now it’s getting the full witches’ coven treatment.Anyhow, I get why some women are keen on making dramatic denunciations of all the evil women they encountered at Mumsnet. They’re never going to end up like those crappy mummies. Unlike Rich and me, they shall find a way of doing it all differently.
Read it all. It’s genius.
Brava, Glosswitch.
Time to reread my signed first edition copy of Of Woman Born.
Nobody gets the choice of whether or not to be conceived, miscarried, terminated, still-born, live-born; or what sex they are, what their genetic makeup is, who their parents or siblings are, or race (sorry ethnicity) or the period of history they are being born into. A new-born baby’s first cry can be interpreted as a protest against having been ejected from probably the most comfortable lodgings it will ever know, in which the very best of everything has been laid on, commonly at the expense of the maternal body. (For example, calcium will be strip-mined from the maternal bones to head off a foetal deficiency.) But at the same time, foetal alcohol syndrome and such are evidence that everything does not always go the baby’s way.
An American proverb (author unknown?) rolls out what is for some an uncomfortable truth: “maternity is a matter of fact; paternity is a matter of opinion.” Another: “man proposes; woman disposes”; Yet another: “the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.” It was when, in western world in the last half of the 20th Century, that the cradle-rockers decided to stop or severely limit their rocking. Why? Because they could. (Same reason that corporate executives award themselves truly obscene salaries.)
We are all of us, for good or ill, latecomers into our ongoing historical scene.
I absolutely, to my shame, related to the ‘I would be anything rather than my mother’ attitude.
Omar, did you just compare women making their own choices to corporate executives getting truly obscene salaries? I assure you, for many of us mothers the right to go off to work, work our asses off, then come home and change diapers is not on a par with an obscene corporate salary.
“the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world” was an expression designed to discourage women from voting and becoming involved in public life.
iknklast @#4: Of course not. The operative sentence there is “Because they could.” People on the lower rungs of the corporate ladder do not get to fix their own share of the pie of created wealth. ‘Conservatives’ commonly operate to preserve this situation.
A study of events like the Australian gold rushes of the 1850s shows what can happen in the labour market when the punters no longer face the restriction you talk about. (In that case, employers overnight found themselves without workers, the colonial governments responded by introducing expensive licenses to dig for gold, and as a result there were riots and massive political unrest on the gold fields: the closest the country has ever come to a revolutionary situation.)
guest @#5: whatever. But it would not work in a propaganda campaign if it was false, no matter what its level of subtlety or duplicitous intent. It is a (clearly sincerely written IMHO) paean in praise of motherhood by William Ross Wallace (1819-1881).
BTW, I have never met anyone who is not in favour of motherhood, as an institution, if not for themselves.
Citation needed.
Many false statements work in propaganda campaigns. And I agree with guest. This is designed to keep women out of the work place, and it has been extremely successful. Most the women I know are anxious for babies if they don’t already have them, because they have been led to believe they are not fully women unless they are a mother.
As for against motherhood as an institution? Consider yourself introduced to someone who is, in fact, against motherhood as an institution. I am not against the idea of reproduction. I am not against the idea of mothers.
I am totally and completely against the idea of motherhood as an institution. This is the institution thrown at the head of women who try to “forget their place”. Motherhood is a pernicious concept that has little to do with reproduction, with child rearing, or with anything other than creating some sort of idea that straps women down to a single biological function. And it has been horrifyingly successful, because so many people refuse to accept the idea that motherhood and career can go hand in hand, leading women to leave the workplace for “motherhood” or to feel guilt and blame if they continue to work after giving birth. Motherhood as a concept needs to be shot out of a cannon into the sun where it will burn up in a spectacular conflagration, and we can all get about the work of remaking society without the need for “motherhood”.
I sure hope that’s not true. I hope most people (mothers and fathers) have babies because they want children.
From what I can tell that is an oversimplification at best.
The poem from which the line comes was written in 1865.
Then some moron in 1915 said, “the hand that rocks the cradle wields a better and a stronger influence upon the Nation than the hand that writes the ballot”, as an argument against women’s suffrage.
Skeletor, I hesitate to speak to the motivations of any women not myself, but…I don’t know how many women I hear say things about “needing to be complete” and “being a complete woman”. Now, that may mean they want children very badly and feel incomplete without them, and it may not. I know what I felt, and how I felt, and why I felt, and if going back today, would I do it again? I hope not, at least not the way I did. (And since my son sometimes reads this site, and knows this is me, I am going to say that is not a reflection on how I feel about him. He is the only reason I would do it again, and I hope only for the reason that I actually want to encounter him in my life, rather than that I want to feel like I am a woman.)
The things I hear from women are frightening to me. There is an absolute desperation many of them have to have children that seems to be divorced from the desire to have children and more from the desire to feel loved, to feel wanted, to feel complete…that last one is the one that horrifies me, the need to feel complete. I learned the hard way:
If you do not feel complete, no husband, no child, no lover can complete you. You have to get there on your own, and feel complete as a person, just as you, because you are complete. You are a full person. You are a fully realized human being, even if you haven’t realized your full potential, all your desires and dreams, and achieved everything you want to achieve. You are complete. If you do not feel you are, please do not have children until you have resolved that. It is bad for the child.
Actually, Skeletor, I was talking about it as propaganda. Whatever the poem means, few remember the poem anymore.
And besides, it’s not true. That is reason enough for me to dislike it being spread. The hand that rocks the cradle ends up being ruled by the world – husband, children, society – and not the other way around. And once the cradle stops rocking, she is discarded. Yes, she has influenced the child, but that is not the same as ruling the world, since children often become their own people and are totally the opposite of what “Mom” brought them up to be.
iknklast:
Your attitude to motherhood is noted. But as one very wise young woman once said to me: “never assume that your own reality is anyone else’s.”
For the record, here is the poem by William Ross Wallace (1819-1881) in its entirety; well, entirety as far as I can tell.
[Emphasis not in original – Omar.]
Now many will probably contend that William Ross Wallace (1819-1881) was at best, a minor poet. On the stage strutted by Shakespeare, Coleridge and the rest, they could aver he was a mere ant, from down in one of the little gaps between the boards; or maybe accord him the status of say, a somewhat lyrical Scottish miner, on the tour of his lifetime, standing mute and gobsmacked in the crowd down in the pit of The Globe at Stratford-Upon-Avon.
But it brings to my mind that great American (‘Negro spiritual’) song Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child. IMHO there can be no greater tragedy in life than for a person of either sex to have to go through infancy and early childhood without a mother. After that stage, teenage daughters often model themselves on their mothers, or maybe on some female relative or friend of their mother’s (plenty of potential drama for the budding playwright in that) and likewise sons on their fathers and/or adult male relatives.
Unchanging in the first instance and changing in the second, sexual dimorphism and sexually divided responsibilities are with us, whether we like it or not. Hence the traditional order on a foundering ship for filling the lifeboats: ‘women and children first’.
http://holyjoe.org/poetry/wallace.htm
Not that traditional.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22119-sinking-the-titanic-women-and-children-first-myth/
Well there you go.
Also, that Titanic article the author says at the end
Yet there is good evidence that rich people were more likely to survive than poor (summarised in many sites, but this one will do http://www.titanicfacts.net/titanic-survivors.html). I guess this suggests that people will co-operate to ensure the survival of others in their class or group, but not so much outside that. So, perhaps it all depends whether you are a globalist with a ‘all in together’ outlook, or not.
@12 Omar:
Would you elaborate on this comment, please?
Cressida @#16:
Men are not very good at lactating, and a fair bit flows from that, IMHO. Whether we like it or not and no matter how much stuff like infant formula is available, the responsibility for care of children in their early years tends overall to be taken up and sought by women, particularly in the case of their own children. Many experiments have shown that for mothering females, the maternal drive is stronger than the drives for food, water, thermal equilibrium and sex.
In my own line of (cattle) work, ‘never get between a cow and her calf” is a fundamental rule: all too often learned the hard way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive_theory
I do not believe I ever suggested such a thing. I merely introduced you to someone to contradict your own overly broad statement, and indicated that I have seen some things suggestive of the fact that I am not alone. In fact, I know that I am not alone, as many of my female friends have similar ideas.
But not for all mothering females. Female catfish lay their eggs and leave the father to raise the young. Many, many mothers in the animal world simply leave their young to fend for themselves, and in the insect world, many of them die without ever seeing their young.
I think if you’re going to compare us to cattle, and assume that our instincts are going to be the same as cattle, I could compare us to catfish…why? Because neither assumption holds. There is enough difference between organisms that different things could prevail. It is no more appropriate to compare us to cattle than to compare us to lobsters (thanks, Jordan Peterson!). And even other primates…well, culture is going to play a certain role, and we can’t be totally sure how much that is…also, we can’t be totally sure how much bias is working into the studies, since researchers tend to expect to see that.
Even if mothering is a natural instinct (and I have personally never known a woman I would say had a nurturing instinct – though some women I don’t know that well appear like they might), that does not in any way imply that this should translate into sexually divided responsibilities, since it is likely that at least some men have the nurturing instinct, as well, and besides, men are perfectly able to care for children. No, they cannot deliver the child nor lactate, but those skills are only needed for a period of time, and lactating is not the be all and end all that it used to be. Many men are raising their children from birth without mothers for one reason or another, and doing it just fine, and no one (at least no one I have ever heard) suggests that they should somehow be seen as being less able to function in their other capacities, so I think the idea of “sexually divided responsibilities” is still often tied to plain old ordinary misogyny (at least after the child is born, since there obviously is a strong differential prior to that).
@17 Omar:
Why did you italicize those words?
iknklast @#18:
My apologies. I was using ‘mothering’ as synonymous there with ‘nurturing’, which does not suit all occasions. The higher up the phylogenetic tree you go, the more subtle the distinction becomes. Invertebrates, fish and amphibians sure: they lay eggs by the thousand, and that’s it: parental role and responsibility done with. But with birds and mammals, it is a different story. The egg-laying female birds, after the stress of developing the eggs up to laying stage, can lay them and then sit on them and nurture the chicks up to juvenile stage beforeleaving them to fend for themselves; or lay the eggs and leave them to the father to supervise from then on, as happens for example, in the case of emus. Those mammalian females which lactate (marsupials and placentals) have to nurture/mother the offspring for longer.
Reproductive strategies vary along two major lines in both animals and plants. One is to produce a large number of next-generation offspring, but each with a small chance of survival long enough to become a parent in its own right. The other is to produce few offspring but to maximise each one’s survival chances via parental/adult supervision for as long as possible. In human societies, this takes the form of long gestation, a long period of offspring helplessness and high offspring dependence on adults, but the payoff is relatively excellent chances of offspring survival. The net result in the biosphere for all species is normally one of constancy: a dynamic equilibrium between regeneration on the one hand and being eaten on the other. (Dying of old age is rare in nature. Most animals will end up being taken by predators: even the majestic lion.) But we modern humans, with our science and civilisation, have upset the biospheric applecart big time. To use a legal analogy, the jury is still out, but word round the corridors is not optimistic for the defendants. (That’s us.) Or to use one from the sport of baseball, Nature is going in to bat last, and is just stepping up to the plate: with a grim determination that has brought a hush to the stands.
The breast-feeding of an infant likely adds a dimension to the mother-child bond for which a father with a feeding bottle is a poor substitute, misogynyor no misogyny.
Biologically, it is in the interest of both parents to maximise the contribution of the other (to the children, family, tribe and beyond) consistent with ensuring survival of the whole. Arguably, it is also in the interest of each parent to minimise their own, and in this aspect, men would at first appear to have a natural advantage which of course can lead on to misogyny, domestic strife, divorce… you name it. Studies of breeding pairs of songbirds have shown that around 10% of male songbirds have been selected by their female partners for their contributions to the nest etc, but have been cuckolded: the female preferring some other male’s genes for her offspring. This adds a new dimension to the old saying: ‘maternity is a matter of fact; paternity is a matter of opinion’.
Surprisingly, this does not carry across to human populations, where only about 1% of fathers are unknowingly raising children not their own. While women may have the same disposition in this regard as songbird females, it appears that cultural pressures keep them on the straight and narrow: particularly in the extremely misogynous Islamic cultures.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/cuckoldry-is-incredibly-rare-among-humans/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3916850/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1459116/
Cressida @#19: See my following comment (should be # 20 or 21 when it gets through moderation.)
Omar, it’s undoubtedly true that the actions of men and women, as groups, are distinguishable. But when you say things like “like it or not,” or “misogyny or no misogyny,” it implies that those different actions are inherent and unchangeable. They are not. They are products of gendered socialization. It is a mistake to point to gendered differences in behavior and conclude that men and women will always inherently and inevitably exhibit gendered differences in behavior. We’re no longer primitive beings ruled by instinct. If we want to be equal, we can make that a goal and it can happen.
Cressida:
Is lactation and all that goes with it such a product?
Omar:
I don’t know. How would you characterize “all that goes with it”?
Omar:
I don’t know. How would you characterize “all that goes with it”?
As all that goes with it, given that Nature for pretty well understood reasons, invented sex (back in the days when the Earth was ruled by bacteria).
I would like a world in which everyone can be what they want to be. But certain natural and understandable factors operate against that happening. Our life circumstances (what period of history we live in, for a start) set limits, but very much essential to our process of liberating ourselves from such factors and the limits they set is awareness of their very existence. The life of a sleepwalker, zombie, or some lower life-form like a jellyfish has little to recommend it IMHO.
Stuff comes with being a person capable of lactation: being able to give birth for starters. Being able to form a mother-baby, mother-infant and mother-child bond, which if all goes well, will last a lifetime and affect subsequent generations. That is not biologically or psychologically the same as the father-child bond; for better or worse.
Feminists have historically raised the question: is biology women’s destiny? A woman can to a large extent free herself from riding Nature’s rail track through birth control; electing to become a mother or not, choosing how much of her time she spends in these and various other related pursuits, and so on.
Do I think that XY = XX and vice versa? No I do not. There are important and undeniable (well, to me anyway) differences between males and females, anatomically, hormonally and probably psychologically. Just as there are between different male individuals, female individuals, and so on. Do I think such are insurmountable? No again. Do I think they matter? Only if we let them.
Omar, you weren’t talking about just lactation. You were talking earlier about women seeking out motherhood. I will agree, they do. I do not agree on a couple of other things:
1) This is anything substantially different than men seeking out fatherhood, except there are greater costs
2) This is totally inherent and not at all culturally socialized – until we can study women separate from societal expectations, we cannot be sure of this sort of statement
3) This is in any way relevant to anything about women being able to do X, Y, or Z, unless society makes it so
4) This is a good thing for women
I don’t think you were making all those claims, but those things generally go hand in hand with people who do start out with “distinguishable differences”. I do not deny those differences; they become obvious if I try to put on one of my husband’s shirts. But for most people, that is the end of the argument. Women are different, and they have different roles. Why? Why is there any reason for women to give up a career for child raising, and not men? And don’t give me back lactation – yes, lactation is a good that can help forge a bond, and give the child some needed benefits, but millions of kids have been raised to be perfectly healthy, and without neurosis, with bottle feeding.
And the constant focus on lactation is painful and guilt-inducing for women who, for whatever reason, cannot breast feed their babies. I know from experience, because I was bombarded with guilt meteorites and shame meteorites from every side, left, right and center, when it became obvious that I could not feed my son, and had to switch to formula. Some of those meteorites left enormous craters that took years to fill in and left scars on mother, father, and child. Everyone blamed me for every little sniffle, every infection, every single pitiful cry whenever something didn’t quite work the way he wished in his little world, because things never do. This is something no man ever raising their babies have to deal with, and they are not assumed to be raising an unhealthy, neurotic child just because they do not lactate and are not able to breastfeed, and mommy is no longer available through death, divorce, or desertion.
And your final post has the unmistakable odor of all the men I encounter who insist on telling women things that women need to understand, and then protest “I am just saying…I am just pointing out…I don’t believe all that, but….”
Iknklast
The second of the 2 links I supplied with my penultimate comment (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1459116/ ) disagrees somewhat with that. But if you or any other woman has been unable to breastfeed when that was what you/they wanted to do, then you have my sincere sympathy.
But then you add:
My first reaction to that is to mutter, ‘well you can’t win, can you?’ Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. But beyond that, I would ask you to be more specific. There is an odour is about as vague an accusation as ever comes anyone’s way.
I have downloaded this whole thread, put it through Notepad and then into MS Word, and have trawled through it as meticulously as I can. I am damned if I can find anywhere in it that I have done that, or anything like that.
Can you quote me any sentence, phrase or passage in which I have been patronising or discourteous? (Note: ‘odours’ are not amenable to quotation.) Where have I been anything other than courteous to you or any other commenter? Go into the archives if you like to the point many years ago when I started my participation here. Find what you can, and quote it.
When you find out that you cannot, I suggest to you that you will owe me an apology.
I’m going to help out Iknklast here (I hope she doesn’t mind)–it’s an absolutely glorious day outside, but I’m not feeling that well (very late night last night, for unpleasant reasons, unfortunately, and although I really want to go out and enjoy the day I’m not motivated and don’t really want to deal with the weekend crowds). Anyway:
Your first comment on this post contained misogynist quotes, though it’s clear you don’t understand this, and I personally don’t understand what argument(s) you were attempting to make by posting them.
‘An American proverb (author unknown?) rolls out what is for some an uncomfortable truth: “maternity is a matter of fact; paternity is a matter of opinion.”’ This is not an American proverb, and it is not a truth, uncomfortable or not; it’s a statement, originating in an antiquated scientific and economic system, justifying male control of women’s sexuality. How is it relevant to a post about women’s experience of being mothers in our culture?
‘Another: “man proposes; woman disposes”’. Again, how is this relevant to the subject under discussion? This statement implies that women are the ‘gatekeepers’ of sex (and it is the duty of men to circumvent this gatekeeping).
‘Yet another: “the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.”’ You and Skeletor have gone to weirdly literal and mansplainy lengths to point out that this is a line from an obscure Victorian poem, but, as Iknklast says, no one now is familiar with the poem, and no one actually cares; the only reason people are aware of this line now is its use to suggest that women already have more power than men, in their own appropriate sphere, and thus have no reason to seek power through participation in society. Again, not sure how that’s relevant to Glosswitch’s thoughts on the difference between individually chosen ‘identity’ and physical and cultural reality.
You go on to suggest that ‘cradle rockers’ chose to ‘stop or severely limit’ their rocking ‘in the last half of the 20th century’ (are you referring here to the feminist movement? It’s hard to tell, because ‘last half’ is a long period) and suggest that the reason for this was ‘because they could’. If these cradle-rockers controlled the world through cradle-rocking, why on earth would they choose to stop? I would think that world control would be even more valuable to the cradle-rockers than the obscene salaries of CEOs; stopping would be a ridiculous choice. So you haven’t even made the case here that the cradle-rockers stopped for any sensible reason, if you’re arguing that they control the world. I don’t actually need to go into detail about why and how women’s roles and status began to change in the 1970s; I’m sure you can find plenty of good histories to help you understand what actually happened if you’re genuinely interested.
The first part of your next comment confused me as well—what does the Australian gold rush have to do with any of this? You then go on to write that the author of the cradle-rocking line was sincere, and I’m sure you are right about that. Men who say women control the world through their control of access to sex are also perfectly sincere. And yet…if women did control the world, through controlling access to sex or through rocking the cradle, wouldn’t you expect to see women treated differently? If I controlled the world through my cradle or pussy I’d certainly arrange it differently than what I see today.
Scanning down the comment thread, I’ll stop to address Skeletor’s comment—years ago I read a book about voluntary childlessness which pointed out that the number one reason for couples to have children was ‘oops’.
‘But it brings to my mind that great American (‘Negro spiritual’) song Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child. IMHO there can be no greater tragedy in life than for a person of either sex to have to go through infancy and early childhood without a mother. After that stage, teenage daughters often model themselves on their mothers, or maybe on some female relative or friend of their mother’s (plenty of potential drama for the budding playwright in that) and likewise sons on their fathers and/or adult male relatives.’
What argument are you making here? There’s a song about orphans, it’s sad when people don’t have mothers, young people look to older people as role models. I’m sure all these things are true, but…is this in some way a response to Iknklast’s point that women in our culture are pressured into being mothers so strongly that that pressure seems internal?
‘Unchanging in the first instance and changing in the second, sexual dimorphism and sexually divided responsibilities are with us, whether we like it or not. Hence the traditional order on a foundering ship for filling the lifeboats: ‘women and children first’.’
I’ve already pointed out to you that there is no such traditional order; that statement is untrue. And if it were, how does it relate to sexual dimorphism, and how does sexual dimorphism relate to sexually divided responsibilities? I’ve lived in many different cultures, and there are no consistent ‘sexually divided responsibilities’ (not even lactation, or child care—there are cultures in which child care is primarily a male responsibility, and cultures (such as postwar American culture, or eighteenth century European bourgeois or aristocratic culture) where breastfeeding was frowned on). Richard Wrangham does make an argument, which I am inclined to accept, that cooking is a sexually divided responsibility:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/the-plate/2015/09/02/a-brief-history-of-cooking-with-fire/
but you don’t appear to be considering this.
‘Whether we like it or not and no matter how much stuff like infant formula is available, the responsibility for care of children in their early years tends overall to be taken up and sought by women, particularly in the case of their own children. Many experiments have shown that for mothering females, the maternal drive is stronger than the drives for food, water, thermal equilibrium and sex. In my own line of (cattle) work, ‘never get between a cow and her calf” is a fundamental rule: all too often learned the hard way.’
You’re making the rookie mistake here of conflating ‘nature’/instinct with culture and social control. I don’t need to elaborate on this, since there is plenty of reading material available on this subject, particularly as regards ‘women’s nature’ (or you can expand out to read similar work on what is perceived to be ‘human nature’). You’re also explaining the cultural behaviour of human women to the instinctual behaviour of animals, which many of us find offensive. We try not to say things like ‘ducks and dolphins rape, so it’s only natural that men rape—we understand they can’t control their behaviour, it’s just their instinct to attack women’. There is certainly an important conversation to be had, and many people are having it, about the value of acknowledging that homo sapiens are animals, but this isn’t the place or the manner.
Then, in response to Iknklast pointing some of these things out to you, in perhaps a less direct way, you go full-on mansplain about k and r strategies. Do you think that the readers of and commenters on this blog are not familiar with this? I personally find it condescending that you’d think it necessary to type/copy-paste five paragraphs of lecture that we all learned in biology class in high school. It made you look like you think the rest of us are ignorant and need to be taught the fundamentals of biology, which is not only not a good look but also not relevant to Iknklast’s points.
‘Omar, it’s undoubtedly true that the actions of men and women, as groups, are distinguishable. But when you say things like “like it or not,” or “misogyny or no misogyny,” it implies that those different actions are inherent and unchangeable. They are not. They are products of gendered socialization. It is a mistake to point to gendered differences in behavior and conclude that men and women will always inherently and inevitably exhibit gendered differences in behavior. We’re no longer primitive beings ruled by instinct. If we want to be equal, we can make that a goal and it can happen.’
Here is the answer to your last comment, in which you write that you carefully reviewed this entire thread.
By this point your constant reference to lactation has become downright weird. How much time in a woman’s life do you think she spends lactating, and how disabling do you think it is?
Your next comment is another rehash of ‘complementarity’. It surprises me to run across this set of arguments here on an atheist blog, as they usually come from religious people.
Iknklast then points out that you’re known by the company you keep, and that your arguments in this thread are putting you in very bad, and definitely suspicious, company (this, I think, is what she means by ‘odor’–by uncritically believing and propagating these arguments you’re associating yourself with some deeply unpleasant men, movements and agendas). This is the point at which she suggests, again possibly less directly than you perceived, that you might want to have a rethink, after reading some actual scholarship on these subjects as well as the words of those who would agree with you.
guest:
Noted. I’ll get back to you.
No need to respond…just have a think; if you find that the shoe fits try walking around in it, and if it doesn’t leave it for the next person.
guest:
This thread by Ophelia Benson starts with a quote inter alia: “[Glosswitch] starts with the way girls and young women like to think they’re different from their mothers, they won’t be complicit the way Mummy is” and goes on from there.
You claim that the quotes about women in the following from my comment at #2 are somehow “misogynist”, as in
NB: Misogyny means hatred, as in hatred, as in HATRED of women. It is an affliction of a population of men of arguable size, and perhaps a microscopic population of women. Not to be confused with sexism, ie prejudice or discrimination based on sex or gender, especially against women and girls.
My ‘misogynist’ quotes were:
Meanings matter, and the greater precision in our use of words, the less a verbal sludge will result. IMHO.
There is no hatred of women, none at all: zilch, nada, zero… in those sayings. There is repeat, no misogyny, sorry: hatred of women, as in hatred as in HATRED, AS IN HATRED of women, in any of them. Indeed, they point IMHO to real power women often have but all too often do not realise they have. This is an old issue, perhaps best illustrated by the film-maker Akiro Kurosawa in his film Seven Samurai , in my view the finest film ever made, anywhere.
An important part of the role of an oppressor is to prevent the oppressed (commonly relatively numerous) from realising the fact of their own real strength, and the oppressor’s own real weakness. In World War 2, the British, Dutch and French colonial armies, previously viewed as invincible, suffered humiliating defeats by the Imperial Japanese forces. In so doing, the Japanese delivered the colonised peoples an enormously important liberation service. They punctured, deflated and blew to smithereens the British Dutch and French auras of invincibility. The result was post-WW2 independence movements all through SE Asia.
I put it to you that the only ‘misogyny’ is in your own perception, and perhaps that of iknklast, and perhaps also one or two Martians from some camp on the dark side of the Moon. (Also maybe, in a back room of some outpost of some bunch of some authoritarian’s thought police.)
This sort of thing ends with everyone (well at least every gullible male of the species) walking on eggshells lest they violate some esoteric norm of speech or some new standard of feminist behaviour or expectations. As I suggest you yourself illustrate in your comment at #3.
It is also illustrated in your statement at #29 re my quotation of a proverb: “man proposes; woman disposes”. You asked: “Again, how is this relevant to the subject under discussion? This statement implies that women are the ‘gatekeepers’ of sex (and it is the duty of men to circumvent this gatekeeping).”
Well, perhaps that might be your experience and view of it, but even if we just confine it to sex, it is inevitably true: outside, of course, of rape in marriage. Biology commonly sets us males up to come on heat at the drop of a sombrero, and 24/7. Sadly, I have to admit that in my younger days, I on too many occasions had my sexual advances rejected by a number of young and attractive women. Memory of some of those female acts of wanton disregard for my feelings and disinterest in the delights that lay in store for them and for me, can still bring a tear to my eye. Particularly after a glass or two. But though I have racked my own memory, I cannot recall a single instance of my having rejected anywhere or at any time, a woman’s request for sex, save one. The only occasion I knocked one back was after I got married, and I was being invited into infidelity. And as I love my wife dearly, that was an easy choice to make.
Aside from that, I see man proposing and woman disposing all the time. It is the common fact of many households that even where the husband or male partner is the main breadwinner, it is the woman of the house who manages the money, and decides what is OK for them to spend it on.
But back to my alleged ‘misogynist’ quotes. If the Christians in their early days in the Roman Empire had spent their energies in heresy hunts and show trials, they would never have got off the ground as a religion or political movement, and would have been the laughing stock of their Roman overlords. Having heresy hunts did not even occur to them (though the germ of them is there in the letters of St Paul) until a priesthood of professional Christians got going, with what evolved in due course into the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, and the Inquisition. Much the same happened to Marxism in Russia, particularly in Stalin’s time. Evgenia Ginzburg made a very important observation IMHO in her book Into the Whirlwind. She said that by about 1935 people all over the USSR had stopped communicating. From fear of Stalin’s informers and secret police, they just made small talk, lest they commit some heresy and have it overheard and reported.
The feminist revolution of recent times has been a very important development historically, IMHO, but like all philosophical movements aimed at changing human societies wherever, it carries within itself the seeds of its own transformation into a grotesque negation of what it presently is. Philosophical, political and religious movements tend to do this. Christianity went through that, Marxism likewise. (Islam is a very interesting special case.) But the term ‘feminazi’ and God knows what synonyms have appeared because some observers (some of them opponents of the whole feminist movement) have picked up a humourless and intolerant streak around a few feminist think-tanks and have worked on it.
So forgive me if I take your political correctness and over-the-top misogyny detector with a bit of a chuckle and a big pinch of salt.
Hi Omar–it looks like you’ve got some reading to do! Here are a couple to start:
https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/12/5/16705284/metoo-weinstein-misogyny-trump-sexism
https://www.livescience.com/16594-busted-gender-myths-bedroom.html
and here’s a fun one–visual record of a culture in the not too distant past where women thought about sex 24/7 and were persistent sex pests while men just wanted to be left alone to get on with stuff:
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/idols-of-perversity-9780195056525?cc=gb&lang=en&
That should at least get you started; good luck.
Why?
Why not?
I suggest that we ignore Omar going forward. He hasn’t been here long, but everything he says indicates a desire to argue with feminists (with lots and lots of imprecise words) no matter what we say. He’ll deny this, of course, and ask me to point to statements of his that prove my assessment. But I’m not dumb, and I know a troll when I see one.
He certainly has a lot to say for himself!
Officially freaked out now by this: ‘hatred of women, as in hatred as in HATRED, AS IN HATRED’
I am not this site’s host, but as a fellow participant, I welcome you and your contributions to it. But you make a number of points in the above which I must dispute, even if only in my capacity as a believer in the eternal search for truth.
1. He hasn’t been here long…
Only since 2007. And the site got going in 2002. But, I agree. That’s not long. Only a bit over 21 years. Not even a quarter of a century. (I have also been a contributor, but not under the name of Omar, which is a nom de blog , as I assume is ‘Cressida’ also.)
2. … everything he says indicates a desire to argue with feminists…
Only where one of them says something I disagree with. (NB: I am of the opinion that as a male of the species I cannot be a feminist, but can only be a feminist sympathiser. And I regard myself as such.)
3. (with lots and lots of imprecise words) Please give ONE example, IN CONTEXT.
… no matter what we say. So I will argue with you just for the sake of disagreeing with you, and on no other basis. So if you said the Earth is round, I would say it’s flat. That sort of stuff?
Please give me ONE example, in context where I have done that.
4. He’ll deny this, of course, and ask me to point to statements of his that prove my assessment.
I deny it, of course, and ask you to point to statements of mine that prove your assessment.
5. (a). But I’m not dumb, and (b) I know a troll when I see one.
For (a) to be true, (b) has to be false. I believe (a) to be true, so draw your own conclusions.
(See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll ). For the entire 21 year period of my participation at this site, that is precisely what I have NOT done. If you do not agree, please prove otherwise or withdraw.
So there has to be a statement (c) as well: (c) do you know a non-troll when you see one?
Omar hang on – your arithmetic is off. 2007 to 2018 is 11 years, not 21. But that aside, you are a longstanding and valued commenter, yes. I don’t agree with your take on this thread, but you’re no troll.
OB: Thanks for that. My mistake.
(I was away from school the day we had arithmetic. The dog ate my homework. And 2018 – 2007 = 21 is true sometimes, but only on the first Sunday in May and on a waning moon. ;-)
As I recall, I came here originally by following a link from Harry’s Place. I noticed that this site was on the blogroll there, and the title was intriguing.
And I think that the record will show me having agreed with you in the main on the issues you have covered.
Omar, as for the length of time, my mistake then. I guess you started being annoying only recently.
I decline to respond to the rest.
Cressida:
So let me get it straight:
You grant my long history here, BUT:
1. I still want to pick fights with feminists
2. Using lots and lots of imprecise words: no examples needed;
3. You are still not dumb;
4. I’m still a troll, and
5. You still know one when you see one.
No further comment. See you round.