‘Gender Segregation’
I was going to say more about Juan Cole anyway, because a further point had occurred to me – a further bit of peculiar, evasive rhetoric. So it’s all the more motivating that commenters think I’ve misread him. I don’t think I have – not in the Vincent post. Cole may well be a great source of information in general, but I think this particular post is baaaad.
A little repetition here.
Clueless Americans don’t understand the principle of gender segregation for the most part, and if they do understand it they are horrified by it. But in large swathes of the world, it just is not considered right for a male to be in the company of an unrelated female. It isn’t just a matter of sleeping around, as my wingnut correspondents assume. It is being alone in the company of an unrelated man or woman, and having that be known publicly. Male honor is invested in the protection of the virginity of female relatives…Clueless Americans don’t understand gender segregation, and they don’t understand clan honor as practiced in most Arab societies. We American men aren’t dishonored in particular if our sisters sleep around, though I suppose in high school it can’t be pleasant for a guy to have everyone taunt him that his sister is a slut. But in Arab culture, a brother can’t show his face in public if his sister is known to be a slut.
There is one hell of a lot of bad faith in that passage. Notice the phrase ‘gender segregation,’ for instance. What does that sound like? Oh…maybe a school with separate classes for boys and girls, something like that. At any rate a system that is neutral between the two genders: both are segregated, both are separated, both get on with their lives. But of course that’s not the arrangement he is describing with that anodyne phrase. No. The system in question is one in which women are imprisoned; confined to home, required to ask permission from a male relative in order to leave the house, required to wear a tent when they do go out, while men are not confined to home, not required to ask anyone’s permission to go out, allowed to dress in clothes that don’t impede their movement or suffocate them. In which men are allowed to live generally free lives, to work, to go where they like – except for private houses where women are confined – and women emphatically and comprehensively are not. ‘Gender segregation’ doesn’t really characterize such a system accurately – the phrase gives a misleading impression.
Then notice the unmarked shift he makes. He starts out pretending to be gender-neutral, then suddenly in the fifth sentence, things change. ‘Male honor is invested in the protection of the virginity of female relatives…’ Ah. So it’s not symmetrical after all. It’s not about both genders. Female honor is not invested in the protection of the virginity of male relatives. No, it’s just male honor, and female virginity. But that’s not ‘gender segregation’ then, is it – it’s female segregation. So why did Cole euphemize it? Because…he wants ‘clueless Americans’ to accept it as routine and normal and not a problem? I don’t know. But the point is, euphemize it he did. He also completely failed to mention the fact that plenty of women in those ‘large parts of the world’ that have ‘gender segregation’ hate it and want to be free of it. It’s not just ‘clueless Americans’ who find the segregation and subordination of women repulsive.
And then notice one more shift. ‘But in Arab culture, a brother can’t show his face in public if his sister is known to be a slut.’ He doesn’t use scare quotes on the word, or say ‘thought to be a slut,’ or dissociate himself from the nasty idea in any way. And more than that – all he’s been talking about in this passage is unrelated people of opposite sexes being in each other’s company. So he is apparently accepting the idea that a woman who has been in the company of an unrelated man is a slut. And then (he managed to pack a hell of a lot of nasty stuff in that one brief passage) he appears to endorse the idea that a woman who ‘sleeps around’ (meaning not defined) is a ‘slut’ – while a man is not. Men are people who are shamed if their sisters ‘sleep around’ and are ‘sluts’ while women are people who shame men if they ‘sleep around’ and are ‘sluts.’ Period. It’s all a tad asymmetrical – and just a tiny bit misogynist. Frankly.
The whole system of clans, clan honor, and the investment of male honor in the protection of the chastity of females may be horrific. But it is the norm in much of the world (it operates to some extent in parts of Africa, in South Asia and in Central Asia, as well). Not understanding and respecting it can get you killed when you are out there.
A couple of readers said he was just describing, just giving a warning. That passage looks more like a somewhat neutral warning (although the ‘may be’ is odd, given how often the women end up dead, and how stunted and deprived their lives are in the process of all this aggressive ‘protection’), but given what he said in the first quoted passage and much of the rest of the post, I don’t buy it. I don’t think that is all he was doing. If it is all he was doing, then he did a damn bad job of it.
OB, I noticed the sleight of hand in that obnoxious passage but was not able to articulate my unease as well as you have. Thank you.
Another point revealing that Cole is not just a disinterested observer of a phenomenon he personally abhors is the length to which he goes to identify himself and, indeed ALL American men, with the travails of poor put-upon Arab brothers.
“We American men aren’t dishonored in particular if our sisters sleep around, though I suppose in high school it can’t be pleasant for a guy to have everyone taunt him that his sister is a slut. But in Arab culture, a brother can’t show his face in public if his sister is known to be a slut.”
Try to understand, he seems to be saying, that arab male honour is not that alien a concept even to us enlightened westerners. Even WE american men, are discomfited(if not actually dishonoured) by our sisters’ wanton sluttishness and the resultant, inevitable social shaming, just imagine how much worse it is for an arab brother!
I’m not trying to defend Cole’s piece as a whole (the “slut” part was quite repulsive), but the first thing I associated the word “segregation” with was racial segregation, a la the old South or apartheid. And so the grossly unequal (and unjustly so) status of the segregated groups in “gender segregation” was implicit, or at least I inferred it … whether Cole intended it that way, I can’t say.
If you are interested in the prospects for Iraqi women, you might like to look at this. No prizes for guessing where I got the link.
He doesn’t use scare quotes on the word, or say ‘thought to be a slut,’ or dissociate himself from the nasty idea in any way.
Maybe he didn’t realise that he needed to? Maybe he thought a sympathetic reader would take him to be describing a social phenomenon rather than endorsing it, indeed wouldn’t think in a million years that he was endorsing it.
But when a reader is determined to be unsympathetic and uncharitable, there’s not much you can do about them.
No, very true. I’m a hopeless case. I’m determined to be unsympathetic and uncharitable, and unfriendly and unkind, and unmerciful and unsensitive, and unsweet and unwarm. I’m evil and bad and fascist and awful. There’s not much anyone can do about people like that – in fact there’s nothing at all. It’s hopeless.
Chris
I agree that it is going way too far to say that Cole endorsed the killing, and from what I’ve read of his other articles he does seem to be very well informed, but it is legitimate to ask what attitudes this short piece displays.
First he takes speculation as fact, stating that Vincent was ‘romantically involved’. Not ‘thought to be’ or ‘said to be’ but just a statement of fact.
Note that he doesn’t even mention Nour Weidi by name, she is just an ‘Iraqi interpreter’
A few lines later ‘romantically involved’ turns to ‘sleeping around’.
A few lines after that we get to ‘slut’.
As OB pointed out, no quotation marks, no qualifiers.
The Telegraph article he cites makes it clear that there are strong arguments against the ‘honour killing’ theory, not least being that the woman would be the principle target.
Cole’s piece strikes me as dismissive in a fairly unpleasant way; ‘Well, if amateurs are going to sleep around with sluts, then that’s what they can expect.’
One could as easily say; ‘If journalists go around criticising the authorities, then that’s what they can expect.’ Perhaps that is another part of Middle Eastern culture Vincent failed to appreciate in a properly serious accademic way.
…but it is legitimate to ask what attitudes this short piece displays.
Cole churns out more material than most bloggers and there is a Google box at the bottom of the page, so it isn’t hard to discover what he has to say about the situation of women in Iraq and elsewhere. One doesn’t have to rely on a short piece. Hell, OB might even find some better ammunition.
What gets me is that just when Iraqi women are bidding farewell to the limited rights they had, the topic for discussion is the attitudes of the blogger who has done more than any other to tell us this was coming. The liberal hawks remain in good standing as their glossy prospectus falls apart. They use the right words, you see. They have the right attitudes. That’s the important thing
Kevin,
I’m not a liberal hawk.
And I’ve posted several items on the dire lookout for women’s rights in Iraq here; I’ve hardly focused on Juan Cole to the exclusion of all other subjects. Cole isn’t the topic for discussion here, he’s one topic for discussion here. You could figure that out just by scrolling down, you wouldn’t even need to click on a new page.
“it is going way too far to say that Cole endorsed the killing”
Which by the way I never said.
So it turns out that there’s no case to be made against Cole, just a PC rant. Cole forgot to use scare quotes around the word “slut”. But, aside from the syntax of scare quotes being entirely informal, Cole was mentioning the term rather than using it, as part of an effort to illustrate his point briefly by making a rough cross-cultural translation of socially embedded concepts. His use was already clearly citational, so the issue of quotation marks picks the tiniest of nits. (Is Cole perhaps a prude? Who knows?) Then it boils down to the fact that he said that the “whole system” “maybe” horrific rather than is so. But the syntactic function of the “maybe” was to shift the focus from the state of affairs to the attitude of its perceivers, which is what he was addressing: a quasi-subjunctive construction. That’s a precise piece of syntactic perception on the part of the “language instinct” of a skilled academic writer. (Much academic writing is not nearly so skilled.) And though the notion of objective horror might be tempting, it’s a bit hard to construe: the grammar of the concept attaches to the “internal” perspective of agents and not to the external perspective of things, so the mistake of giving way to such temptation is called reification. So is the counterclaim being made that anthropological structure should be instantaneously abolished in the name of the unmitigated freedom of individuals? But that is just to completely fail to understand the notion of anthropoligical structure and how the organization of kinship systems in tightly chained to the reproduction imperatives of many societies,- (yes, with often repressive and sometimes brutal effects),- in ways that have long since disintegrated in most of Western societies, which is precisely the point that Cole was making. If one is going to raise dire suspicions based on the technique of “close reading”, there are still rules to be followed and one must still know and understand something of the subject matter. The only valid point in criticism of Cole that was made was that he was speculating, without any adequately secured knowledge. But then, he was just making a comment, not rendering a verdict.
Very cogently put. Now, what have you done with the real john c halasz?
“So it turns out that there’s no case to be made against Cole, just a PC rant.“
Ophelia the feminazi? That’s a bizarrely Limbaughian tack, even for you, John.
Just been re-reading this thread (and its predecessor). One of the best for a while; passionate disagreement tempered by courtesy and intellectual rigour. Top blog.
We keep coming back to tone and the choice of the word ‘slut’. And we can’t dismiss objecting to that word as mere PC ranting. Especially given the circumstances; Nour Weidi is a real person who took four real bullets doing her job. We can analyse his sentence structure endlessly (and I have real respect for John C’s ability in this area), but I’d like to raise two points pertaining to tone;
Let us suppose that you have a sister who has been raped and murdered and at the funeral one of the speakers (her college professor?) manages to repeatedly introduce the word ‘slut’. It may well be that a close textual analysis shows that he was ‘mentioning the term rather than using it, as part of an effort to illustrate his point briefly by making a rough cross-cultural translation of socially embedded concepts.’ But you might well feel that he was also sending a message.
Of course Cole was not delivering a eulogy, he was speculating about an event of political significance, as well he might. His tone needs to be more detached. But you can’t have it both ways; you can either meditate in cool academic detachment about ‘the notion of anthropoligical structure and how the organization of kinship systems in tightly chained to the reproduction imperatives of many societies’ or you can drop emotive and loaded words like ‘slut’ into the debate. You can’t do both.
Second, let us imagine a black journalist has been gunned down in the American south. How does this sound;
‘X had no real knowledge of southern culture and failed to understand that the honor and manhood of Southern males might be threatened by the sight of a nigger strutting around and mixing with white ladies.’
Oh, and John C, I’ve read a fair amount of your postings and I would bet my meagre pension that you have never used the word ‘slut’ without meticulous qualification. Why not?
“But needless to say, “honor killings” are not the dominant norm….”
Quite so. And lynchings weren’t the dominant norm in the South during the Jim Crow era–hey, only about 20,000 or 30,000 black people were murdered and mutilated over a hundred-year period, nothing for anyone to have worried about. I mean, it’s not like all blacks were lynched. So, let’s not bicker and argue about ‘oo killed ‘oo. Let’s get back to more pressing concerns, like lecturing Ophelia at great length and frequent intervals, in the most gloriously purple and pedantic prose, about just what a silly hysterical woman she is.
The point is that OB broke the frame of Cole’s comment in pursuit of her peculiar obsession.
– john c. halasz
Peculiar obsession? Peculiar obsession? She’s concerned about basic rights for women, who constitute half the population of the world. What is so peculiar about that? Is it any more peculiar than your own ‘obsession’ with her opinions?
Brian:
What’s peculiar is that she completely distorted the frame of what Juan Cole was saying, which didn’t concern “honor killings”, but the complexion of a whole social system,- in which the former phenomenon is only the most extreme and archaic expression,- as a reality that needs to be taken into account, and then made out that what Cole had tried to say was “baaaad” and that, in effect, Cole was “evil” or, at least, complicit in evil, without, by her own admission, having attended to what Cole has written and reported/analyzed over the past few years.
“What’s peculiar is that she completely distorted the frame of what Juan Cole was saying…”
So, that’s OB’s obsession? She’s obsessed with distorting Juan Cole’s frame? That’s all she ever talks about, Juan Cole and his frame and how she can distort it? My God, man, you’ve certainly nailed it!
“…and then made out that what Cole had tried to say was “baaaad” and that, in effect, Cole was “evil” or, at least, complicit in evil, without, by her own admission, having attended to what Cole has written and reported/analyzed over the past few years.”
Silly me. And here I thought she was criticizing Cole for one particular very badly written post that had a very questionable tone. “What Cole had tried to say”? Seems to me and several other people here that if Cole was attempting nothing more than a dispassionate anthropological (sic) explanation for Vincent’s murder, then he failed miserably. Back to Freshman Comp with him.
Well, let’s face it, to some people, concern with basic rights for half the people in the world (but the wrong half, you see) is a peculiar obsession, one it’s worth spending a large amount of one’s time and energy trying to lecture out of existence.
Exactly. Why is that an obsession, and what is so peculiar about it?
And why is it so hard for some people to say, ‘Yes, that particular post by Cole was badly written and might even have a slightly nasty tone, but in general the good that Cole has done far outweighs this one unfortunate post.’ Then Cole’s passionate defenders can point us to several other posts in which he has advocated women’s rights and criticized misogyny. That way, the rest of us would say, ‘Okay, we were wrong, maybe Cole isn’t so bad after all.’ As it is, I now lean toward Ophelia’s ‘uncharitable’ reading of Cole and wonder why I should bother reading him.
Silence, uppity woman, and know thy place!
“But what I object to in OB approach to these sorts of issues is her simultaneous tendency to forget that “those people” are very much like us, in terms of the tendencies to form affectional and affiliative relations and bonds and in their ambivalences, and very different from us in terms of the conditions under which they live and the practices and structures under which they form their sense of identity.”
Translation: OB is using the negligible issue of women’s rights to mask her racist imperialist agenda. She just doesn’t get it that 1) boys will be boys and 2) that you can’t expect foreign males to restrain themselves like we can.
“And why is it so hard for some people to say, ‘Yes, that particular post by Cole was badly written and might even have a slightly nasty tone…”
Because otherwise the Republicans win. If we don’t make this crazy woman shut up immediately, she’ll prolong the war and re-elect George W. Bush yet again.
The “peculiar obsession” is the tendency,- it’s a recurrent tic, a bad habit-of-mind,- to confuse a referent with the frame in which the referent occurs and the interrelation of statements (or, depending on linguistic/illocutionary form, non-statements), through which reference is established in the first place. In Marxist discourse,- well, a certain kind of such discourse that’s critical of other kinds that lay exclusive claim to the title,- that was referred to as “reflection theory”, which precisely does not mean that the latter is reflective, and OB has always struck me as being caught up in a similar such conception, which I’ve variously objected to. I actually waited from about 0 comments on this post to see if anyone here would have enough sense to counter her reading, and only chimed in when I saw that,- thank “God”-, there were others. But, of course, OB never backs down from her vehemence and admits error, because… er… Obviously, neither I, nor, ventriliquizing, the good professor Cole, lack the fingers and toes to count population ratios. But if it’s pointed out, tautologically, that women are half the global population and that women’s rights are at issue, is it criminal to ask: which women and which men? Are there no cross-secting frames of interpretation and analysis that might be applicable? Now, to be sure, there are plenty of things that could be said about or within a discourse of “rights”, their nature and function, or the uses to which such discourses are or can be put. But a couple of things are pretty clear: 1) “rights” are not intentional objects that can be moved about or implanted at will; and 2) human beings are not sheerly self-constituting and self-referentially self-determining intentionalities without boundaries and conditions. Those idols, in my book, at least, are certainly worth criticizing, and they bear a classical name: viz. idealism, (cf. Husserl). But probably the shallowest criticism of discourse about human rights is the use to which it is put in order to clothe oneself in virtue. That’s a species of self-righteousness that even Jean Calvin would not quite have abided.
The “peculiar obsession” is the tendency,- it’s a recurrent tic, a bad habit-of-mind,- to confuse a referent with the frame in which the referent occurs and the interrelation of statements (or, depending on linguistic/illocutionary form, non-statements), through which reference is established in the first place.
– john c. halasz
In other words, Ophelia always misreads these things…
But probably the shallowest criticism of discourse about human rights is the use to which it is put in order to clothe oneself in virtue. That’s a species of self-righteousness that even Jean Calvin would not quite have abided.
…because she only wants to make herself seem more important and more virtuous.
But if it’s pointed out, tautologically, that women are half the global population and that women’s rights are at issue, is it criminal to ask: which women and which men? Are there no cross-secting frames of interpretation and analysis that might be applicable? Now, to be sure, there are plenty of things that could be said about or within a discourse of “rights”, their nature and function, or the uses to which such discourses are or can be put. But a couple of things are pretty clear: 1) “rights” are not intentional objects that can be moved about or implanted at will; and 2) human beings are not sheerly self-constituting and self-referentially self-determining intentionalities without boundaries and conditions. Those idols, in my book, at least, are certainly worth criticizing, and they bear a classical name: viz. idealism, (cf. Husserl).
Besides, Western ideas of human rights are irrelevant in other places.
Does that about sum it up, Mr Halasz? Did my paraphrase leave anything out, aside from the verbiage and name-dropping?
“OB never backs down from her vehemence and admits error”
That’s a flat lie, Halasz.
Furthermore, as you know, the reason I have warned that I may ban you is precisely because you – not I, you – simply ignore me when I question your assertions. Because you might have to back down and admit error? Or because it’s beneath your dignity. Who knows. But saying I never admit error is just a brazen lie.
In case you haven’t noticed – your peculiarly obsessive vendetta (your TGS, to use the technical term) is becoming kind of obvious.
“Did my paraphrase leave anything out, aside from the verbiage and name-dropping?”
It’s missing all the poetry! You’ve taken a gorgeous glowing tapestry and turned it into a tie-dyed bandana!
OB:
I missed the “TGS” referent. But, in this particular case, if you’d draw a Venn diagram of anyone you’d remotely wished to be affiliated with, I don’t think you’d find much support for your “position” on the man, nor your reading of what he actually said. Cole was directing his comment to mildly criticizing Stephen Vincent, who willingly and knowingly accepted a high degree of risk, by his widow’s own account, for having not known what he was getting into, for having behaved provocatively without effect, and for having drawn others unwittingly into his own self-assumed risk. Everything else he adduced was evidentiary to those points, and certainly implied no endorsement of factual realities. On the other hand, my last response did specify a general tendency belonging to your “epistemology” that might be conducive to such misreadings and their excess of polemical zeal, which results in gems like “flat lie”, when, emm…, I’m not a particualrly good liar and you’ve evaded the main point by such a response.
Brian:
That was not “name-dropping”: those names were signifiers for complexes of ideas,- ya know, like might allow for frames of “interpretation and analysis”, in which real differences, deriving from real processes, structures, and histories, might be addressed. One of the basic points about “human rights” is that, to be “real” they must be coercively enforced,- which is to say, that they are always invested by power relations. You’d think that might bear some burden of analysis,- ya know,- in terms of how it lays out in the real world. But one of the things about a conception of politics and political affairs exclusively focused upon “human rights” is that it pretends that the latter sphere is exclusively powerless, and thereby constitutes a peculiarly apolitical conception of politics. That effectively excludes any consideration of properly political, economic and cultural factors, in favor of an exclusive moralism, which, yes, might, in the light of the afore-mentioned, be suspected of being self-serving.
Karl:
You’re an unemployed linguini major? Why? ‘Cause you’re so good at it! Why don’t ya just go out and produce more linguini?
“You’re an unemployed linguini major? Why? ‘Cause you’re so good at it! Why don’t ya just go out and produce more linguini?”
See what I mean, Brian? Pure poetry!
Mr Halasz’s original text: I missed the “TGS” referent. But, in this particular case, if you’d draw a Venn diagram of anyone you’d remotely wished to be affiliated with, I don’t think you’d find much support for your “position” on the man, nor your reading of what he actually said. Cole was directing his comment to mildly criticizing Stephen Vincent, who willingly and knowingly accepted a high degree of risk, by his widow’s own account, for having not known what he was getting into, for having behaved provocatively without effect, and for having drawn others unwittingly into his own self-assumed risk. Everything else he adduced was evidentiary to those points, and certainly implied no endorsement of factual realities. On the other hand, my last response did specify a general tendency belonging to your “epistemology” that might be conducive to such misreadings and their excess of polemical zeal, which results in gems like “flat lie”, when, emm…, I’m not a particualrly good liar and you’ve evaded the main point by such a response. [170 words]
My paraphrase: Huh? What does TGS stand for? None of your friends agrees with you about Cole’s post. It is perfectly obvious that Cole meant only that Vincent was an arrogant ass who brought his murder on himself (and endangered others, too). Nevertheless, Cole never implied that Vincent deserved to be murdered. I did so answer your questions, at least in my last response. I’m not a liar: You are!
[50 words]
Mr Halasz’s original text: That was not “name-dropping”: those names were signifiers for complexes of ideas,- ya know, like might allow for frames of “interpretation and analysis”, in which real differences, deriving from real processes, structures, and histories, might be addressed. One of the basic points about “human rights” is that, to be “real” they must be coercively enforced,- which is to say, that they are always invested by power relations. You’d think that might bear some burden of analysis,- ya know,- in terms of how it lays out in the real world. But one of the things about a conception of politics and political affairs exclusively focused upon “human rights” is that it pretends that the latter sphere is exclusively powerless, and thereby constitutes a peculiarly apolitical conception of politics. That effectively excludes any consideration of properly political, economic and cultural factors, in favor of an exclusive moralism, which, yes, might, in the light of the afore-mentioned, be suspected of being self-serving. [210 words]
My paraphrase: Names like Husserl are simply a shorthand for more complex ideas. Any educated person would easily recognize these names and understand what I’m referring to. Practical politics requires that we ignore violations of human rights in other countries. Furthermore, human rights are just a nice-sounding excuse for greedy Western governments to bully and exploit other countries. If we talk too much about human rights, we risk giving our governments the excuse they are looking for to invade more countries. [70 words]
Once again, Mr Halasz, have I distorted your meaning or left out anything important? (Please forgive me, Karl, if I have missed all his poetry, but I prefer clarity when discussing political matters.)
Halasz, I didn’t say you were a good liar, I simply said that the specific quote I cited is a lie. You don’t bother to rescind it or apologize. I think you’re about to take an involuntary vacation from B&W.
It’s fun, isn’t it, Brian? Kinda like doing word jumbles or crossword puzzles.
Here’s my paraphrase: Hi, I’m a pompous ass who won’t deign to write clearly and succinctly. It’s your duty to decipher my murky, pretentious, interminable ramblings ’cause I’m so fucking awesome. You filthy peasants!
Really, that could pretty much describe everything the man’s ever written. My simple 35 words to Awesome John’s 11,233,563 words.
That is a little harsh, Karl. Surely there must be more to Mr Halasz than that. I think he is genuinely concerned but confused.
One thing that isn’t clear from all Mr Halasz’s many comments is whether he thinks talking about human rights is actually dangerous, or merely ineffectual. If it is the former, then I can understand why he expends so much time and energy trying to argue against Ophelia, although I don’t understand why he cannot make his arguments clear. But if we human rights advocates are merely wasting our time, then I don’t understand why he is so obsessed with correcting us. If it is the case that we are only ineffectual, then surely one blogger and a handful of commentators are not worth all this obsessive, corrective attention.
“Surely there must be more to Mr Halasz than that.”
Nope. That’s all there is.
Oy vey! What a lot of petty malice. But it’s a dead thread, so why not?
OB:
The only real point here is whether or not you were performing the rhetorical move vis-a-vis Cole of shooting the messenger. Have you bothered to read Cole? Do you really think he’s as big a lout as you claimed? If so, by all means post further, and offer your evidence. If not, why not admit so and retract?
Brian:
The only to names dropped were Marx, whom I think everybody has heard of, if controversially, and, N.B., parenthetically, Husserl, as the locus classicus of the conversion of the idea of pure intentionality into an idealism that claims to “constitute” the world through “transcendental” subjectivity. But the fact of the matter is that both names were attached to succinctly formulated analytic points, “bullet points”, if you will, which were not intended as the end of discussion, but only as markers of its terms. (You could scroll up and see if that’s the case.) And I’m not innocently confused, but rather genuinely puzzled. I claim no more. But it is clear to me that “human rights” do not form a self-sufficient basis for any genuine politics or accompanying analysis, but rather the “balance” of the multifarious horrors of this world requires a much broader effort to form a framework of analysis and interpretation, in which formal considerations of rights form but a component. (Earlier, I was lambasted here for suggesting that, ya know, religious thinkers, insofar as they recognize those said horrors as a challenge to and of the good, might be kind’a onto something. That was treated as incomprehensible and obscurantist nonsense, but, are contemplative secular alternatives any better?) But all but certainly, (since there’s a lot of history behind it), there’s cause for suspicion that partisans for “human rights”, without any further definition or analysis, might be seduced by, or complicit in, the machinations of organizations of power that don’t really care a whit about such considerations.
Karl:
You really should enroll in boot camp with the SF Mime Troop. I’m sure they could give you more than a few pointers in techniques of mimicry. ‘Cause, you see, technique is the most important point about sycophancy.
So long, Halasz.
But all but certainly, (since there’s a lot of history behind it), there’s cause for suspicion that partisans for “human rights”, without any further definition or analysis, might be seduced by, or complicit in, the machinations of organizations of power that don’t really care a whit about such considerations.
– john c. halasz
Short answer: Yes, very often human rights are ultimately just a nice-sounding excuse for domination, control, and exploitation.
I’m not sure how we advance from that position. Should we simply keep our mouths shut when we see horrible things being done to people? Or do you have some different and more correct way to argue for human rights, one that is more effective and doesn’t lend itself to being a facade for exploitation?
“You really should enroll in boot camp with the SF Mime Troop. I’m sure they could give you more than a few pointers in techniques of mimicry. ‘Cause, you see, technique is the most important point about sycophancy.”
His parting shot! I salute a worthy opponent. You shall be sorely missed, John.
A different and more correct way to argue for human rights? Come on, Brian. It’s obvious that John believes that nobody in the Western world should criticize the practices, however cruel or repugnant or lethal, of anyone in the Third World. His motto is: Butt out, Whitey!
Plus, I really do think John’s attitude is aggravated by the fact that Ophelia is an “uppity” woman who won’t obey him.