That is an interesting take, I think I understand your point more now. Thanks

So it is understandable that women felt that their very biological nature betrayed them, but I think they, and she, was wrong about that. So all the stuff about liberation from childbirth, I simply reject. — unenlightened

The conclusion that I drew from her analysis was that, for all history, in order for the human species to survive, there has always been a need for women to get pregnant. If all women were to collectively say, no more pregnancies, there would be a dilemma. The species would end. There has always been some degree of coercion involved on the part of women because of their biology. A similar thing might be said about men (if men collectively said, no more sex, there would be a dilemma) - but men escape the burden of pregnancy, and the risks and pains of childbirth. It might be a more fair comparison if men suffered some serious risks and pains themselves in the process of reproduction, but they don't.

Pregnancy was, for a long time, a very dangerous thing for women, literally life-or-death. Technology gives women the ability to escape this biological imperative to get pregnant by transferring the process to an artificial womb. All of this assumes that the continuation of the species is something that ought to happen, but that's a separate topic, I think.

Interesting links, btw.

Is this supposed to appeal to me because she's a woman and some feminist? Don't do that.

Drowkin was batshit crazy and most sane people do not care about her except men trying to prove some point, 99% of the time. — Cobra

Dworkin was an important figure in the second-wave. Intercourse is a classic. I love her writing. That is why I mentioned her. I dunno why you think she was batshit, I think she was brilliant.

This post is just a bunch of it's a woman's fault because she has freedom of choice and that men want to rape or kill her and control her body, which is absolutely insane. — Cobra

I have not once said that any of this is women's fault. It is a male phenomenon that victimizes women.

Especially since you are making the argument these men exist in tangible reality as a commonality and interact with women often.

And this is why Dworkin is batshit crazy, because she attempts to argue that all men are sadists and instills false insecurity and false fears into otherwise, healthy women. — Cobra

If you have a reference to where Dworkin says this, I'd like to read it. Because AFAIK, while Dworkin was very hostile to male rapist ideology, she didn't just think "all men bad".

The percentage of men that graduate from sexual frustration into full-blown sexual assault and rape is of course much less than the percentage of men that merely feel resentment, but never have any intention of acting on it - though in certain circumstances (like in war), the social barriers preventing this can crumble, and what happens are atrocities that include violence against women, like the Rape of Nanking, or My Lai. Iris Chang said it well: the veneer of civilization is thin.

Yes, because they are not getting laid and feel entitled to women's bodies. Then they make up a false scenario that women are depriving them intentionally and that men are an oppressed class because sex socialism is not a thing. — Cobra

:up:

Women do not dress conservatively to feel safe from men because they are men, they dress conservatively to avoid a specific small group of people that EXCLUSIVELY TARGET women to induce harm and/or unnecessary unwanted attention. — Cobra

I just don't see this group as small; I see it as quite large and spread out. Some women might want to stick their heads in the sand and pretend that "other" men are like this, but not any of the men in their lives...but that's probably not true. Being a man might give me more opportunities to notice this, because a lot of times men won't talk about this stuff around women.

I think there is a facade that is kept up by a lot of men to try to convince women that they don't have sexual predatory thoughts and feelings; some are better at it than others. Conceptually sequestering this phenomenon to a small group of perverts is a neat way to avoid having to critically analyze the culture that promotes it. It redirects the blame to an invisible boogeyman.

When it comes to violence and sexual abuse there is no significant difference between the genders,in that other men, boys and children are also targets, sometimes exclusively, by this very same subset of deranged entitled sadistic men. The rape in male prison is sky high, precisely because this subset of the same men target others to inflict harm through entitlement. — Cobra

Actually, the dynamics of homosexual prison rape often mirror the dynamics of rape outside of prison. In situations in which women are not accessible, a portion of the male population are used as surrogates. Brownmiller has a lengthy chapter on this, which is very illuminating.

We could go into it a bit more if you are interested, but her views are not mine by any means. — unenlightened

Please do, I am curious. Firestone has some interesting ideas, but there's a lot I find unconvincing, some of which I also find disgusting.

To be clear, I am not defending this dynamic. Dworkin seems to have felt similarly, as I pointed out earlier in this thread.

A woman choosing to not sleep with you is not an act of revenge; you just feel so because you are drowned in entitlement. — Cobra

I can see how my choice of words could give the impression that this is what I was trying to say. What I really should have said is that men will perceive (projection) women as intentionally trying to elicit sexual feelings just in order to frustrate them, so they gain some kind of power, or satisfy some sadistic desire to see men writhe in sexual frustration. Whether a woman is actually trying to do this is irrelevant to the dynamic - men will feel that women are doing this on purpose, to "hurt" them, or to "get back" at them in the perpetual battle of the sexes.

Men will grow to hate women's bodies for the power they hold over him. They will resent women for just being in their world. Hence why women sometimes feel the need to dress conservatively, in order to feel safe. Just as Brownmiller said, rape is a looming threat that men use on women.

This dynamic is probably in most cases confined entirely to within a man's mind, which is dominated by numerous anxieties and fears - castration being just one of them. I do think that sometimes personal choices of appearance can be deliberately political. If men hold most of the power, then a woman can use the male gaze against the gazer, if she chooses to. It is conceivable that some women do intentionally try to turn on men so they can gain some kind of leverage or power; they know how to play the game. But I don't think this what usually happens. The dynamic is usually a completely psychotic fantasy of men that has no basis in reality.

I'm curious, what are your thoughts on the resurgence of neo-scholasticism in the philosophy of religion? I remember a few years ago everyone was raving about people like Feser, though I haven't followed up with the trend for a while.

Food for thought, from Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex:

Matriarchy is a stage on the way to patriarchy, to man's fullest realization of himself; he goes from worshiping Nature through women to conquering it. Though it's true that woman's lot worsened considerably under patriarchy, she never had it good; for despite all the nostalgia it is not hard to prove that matriarchy was never an answer to women's fundamental oppression. Basically it was no more than a different means of counting lineage and inheritance, one which, though it might have held more advantages for women than the later patriarchy, did not allow women into the society as equals. To be worshiped is not freedom. For worship still takes place in someone else's head, and that head belongs to Man.

The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, Shulamith Firestone

The objectification of women isn't solely the fault of men, nor of women, but both. — baker

Nobody says that it's solely the fault of men...just that men carry most of the blame, being the ones that benefit.

Not a small amount of radical feminists are hostile to women who beautify themselves, or act in porn, or work as prostitutes, but the rage and fury is directed primarily at the men who are the ones benefiting from the system and perpetuating it.

That women can be complicit in their own oppression should not mask the fact of who is the exploiter. When the Nazis persecuted Jews in the Polish ghettos, they forced the Jews to set up Judenrätes, which were made up of Jewish people, but did the bidding of the Nazis as intermediaries. A similar thing happened in the concentration camps and death camps, where the Kapos (prisoners themselves) were used as intermediary administrators. It was easier for the Nazis to control the Jews by using Jewish intermediaries. These Jewish intermediaries often ended up being hated more than the Nazis who used them; in this way the Nazis achieved a certain degree of distance from their crimes.

Similarly, women in patriarchy is often used as intermediaries when men want to control women. So for instance FGM in Africa is frequently done by women, even though it is clearly an operation done for the benefit of men. Commercials for beauty products aimed at women are always narrated by women.

There's always token women put into a place of intermediary power in order to dispense patriarchal law. This is precisely why equality is not good enough; women participating in a patriarchal institution doesn't stop it from being a patriarchal institution.

What is crazy in this story is that men are always talking about their sexual misery, without ever realizing the misery they create in women. What do you think, guys? That we don't want to make love, that we don't want to be carried away by desire? Well, yes, we do! — Olivier5

:100:

Another 'theory' is that of Michel Houellebecq in his Elementary Particles: sexual liberation during the 60's and 70's led to high sexual competition between males, and between females, with the most attractive people screwing all their content and less attractive folks living in eternel sexual misery. Freedom leads to inequality between the haves and the haves not, now applied to sex as well.

The tittle of Houellebecq's first book is also about that: Extension of the Competitive Domain ie an extension of competition from the sphere of production and consumption (under capitalism) into the sphere of reproduction. Like an extension of capitalism to sex. — Olivier5

:up: Elementary Particles was quite good. Sex is like money: some people have a lot of it, most people have some but nothing to brag about, and some don't have any.

But that's about where the similarities end, since nobody deserves sex like how they deserve money (or the means to afford life requirements)

Finding a convincing explanation for the historical rise of fascism is an important task, still unfinished I think. — Olivier5

:fire: that is something I have been fascinated by in recent years. I have researched it a lot and have come to the same conclusion. There are some good theories, but recent events have put some of them into question.

But women objectify themselves and other women in this same way. Pick up pretty much any "women's" magazine, book, tv show, seminar, webinar, and there it is: "see yourself as a piece of meat to be fucked".

It's a bit of a stretch to say that women do this because they are the poor victims of patriarchy. — baker

I would agree that women, being people, have the capacity to make decisions. Bikini models choose to be bikini models, etc. Alcoholics choose to be alcoholics (60% of the revenue in the alcohol industry comes from alcoholics), etc.

But I think that it would be too shallow of an analysis to entirely put the blame for objectification on the women who choose to objectify themselves. The objectification is marketed towards men - it is the male gaze that these women are attempting to satisfy. And by doing so there is the implicit message: that if you don't look like this, you aren't good enough.

There is also a case to be made that the objectification of women reached new heights when women joined the workforce. After the feminine mystique was demolished in the first wave of feminism, there had to be a way to compensate for the economic loss that came with women leaving the kitchen. They weren't buying the household stuff that they usually did. The only thing left was to ramp up the body image ideal. More makeup, more clothes, more surgeries, more diets. It's all about the $ $ $ $ $ . It also happened to put an unfair double standard on women, who not only had to be professionals but also had to be beautiful (a fluid concept that cannot be pinned down).

The feminization of women is fundamentally a male phenomenon; the femininity that is imposed upon women is a male construct. The entire purpose is to keep women from acting like men; only men are allowed to be full persons. This is also why homosexuality was and still is so loathed by patriarchy - it puts a man in a woman's place (he is getting fucked, but that's a woman's role! Men do the fucking, and women get fucked).

Finished Intercourse, Andrea Dworkin. Continuing my voyage through feminist literature with The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf.

Refer to Bill Burr on reasons to hit a woman (comedy but it does highlight a problem). Is it naive to assume it is all about sexual domination as women can, and do, objectify men just as much as men objectify women - physically, dues to social status and intellect too. — I like sushi

That's like saying it is naive to assume it is all about racist white supremacy because there are some black people who hate white people. :yawn:

That Bill Burr "comedy" was stupid and depended entirely on a strawman. Is his point - and is it your point - that battered women are complicit in being battered? "Now I'm not saying the man should have hit her buuuuuuuut she had it coming...wHy cAnT wE aSk AnY qUeStiOns????" I mean come on that's just bullshit.

It is too common a misconception that a woman chooses (or should choose) her action, clothing, etc as a direct and intentional response to the fears and desires of the men around her. So when a woman acts contrary to his desires, or fails to allay his fears, she presents as a chaotic force to be subdued by his efforts. — Possibility

Yeah it's an all-too-common phenomenon that women are physically abused by men for not conforming to the expectations projected upon them by men. If you don't see women as people with intentions of their own then when they seem to express these intentions, they must be violently put back in their place.

The fact that a woman may be sufficiently self-aware to NOT feel the need to appear rationally unaffected does not give men permission to do so — Possibility

Sorry, I didn't follow this, can you explain a bit more?

His inability or unwillingness to reason amidst his own fears or desires has nothing at all to do with women — Possibility

:up:

In Intercourse, Andrea Dworkin remarks:

For women, according to the killer/husband, virginity is the highest state, an ideal; and a fall from viriginity is a fall into trivialization, into being used as a thing; one dresses up to be the thing; one does not have a full humanity but must conform to the rituals and conventions of debasement as a sexual object. But the reduction of humanity into being an object for sex carries with it the power to dominate men because men want the object and the sex. The rage against women as a group is particularly located here: women manipulate men by manipulating man's sexual desire; these trivial, mediocre things (women) have real power over men through sex.

[...]

This dominance of men by women is experienced by the men as real - emotionally real, sexually real, psychologically real; it emerges as the reason for the wrath of the misogynist.

[...]

[the killer/husband[ sees that powerlessness generates revenge, and revenge is what women accomplish in the sensuality he experiences as their dominance, his powerlessness.

[...]

'so it is with women: [...] 'Ah, you want us to be merely objects of sensuality - all right, as objects of sensuality we will enslave you.' — Dworkin, "Intercourse"

What Dworkin says here is basically what I outlined in the initial post of this thread.

That assumes a whole lot of intentionality. I doubt such intentionality is there at all. — Tobias

I doubt it's overtly conscious, but I would say it is likely that this or similar thought processes are going on subconsciously, and we occasionally get glimmers of them when we think about the reasons behind sexual anti-social behavior.

I think the OP accurately tracks the thought process of victim-blaming and justification of rape but seems worryingly uncritical of it. — Cuthbert

In what way do I seem uncritical of it? The purpose of this post was to expose and discuss the bullshit rape culture and women hate that men participate in and perpetuate.

Excellent post, btw.

What?

What alternative views do you suggest?

Of course, this is usually a narrow view based more on the man themselves than the women. — Philosophim

:up:

I mean, do you disagree?

Yeah it is creepy for sure

Oh sure, women can objectify, though that doesn't necessarily mean that objectification is natural. These women are female but living within the confines of a male-dominated culture, and they take on social roles that are manufactured by men for men. The question is: would these women objectify if they did not grow up in patriarchy? For that matter, would men objectify if they grew up outside of patriarchy?

I take objectification to mean the fixation/fetishization of the parts of a person's body and the ignoring of the person to whom this body belongs. Objectifying women == perceiving her as meat to be fucked in whatever way.

Heaven would be nice, but I would be happy with oblivion, which would be, as Luther held (until the resurrection) merely as "sleep". — RolandTyme

Indeed, the pure simplicity and tranquility associated with oblivion makes one wonder why god felt the need to change it by creation. The only theology that makes sense is one that sees the world as something to be liberated from.

Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, Mary Daly

IMO, "misunderstanding" Heidegger isn't possible because there really isn't anything to understand that hasn't already been said more clearly elsewhere.

Democracy for the Few, Michael Parenti
North, Céline

But I cannot avoid my own death and it will come well before I am even close to "done" exploring life. That cannot be right, can it? Are these philosophies of finitude's bringing purpose/meaning just platitudes or wishful thinking? Isn't terror the natural and most justified human condition? — Yvonne

:fire:

Life always dies, eventually. While continuing one's life may be good, the anxiety associated with losing one's life, is not good. In my view, it is best to let go of one's attachment (grasping / clinging) to one's own life and let whatever happen, happen - and learn to appreciate the moments that you can.

Oh, and don't have kids, spare them all this crap.

How are these topics related? — TiredThinker

From an open-minded (and perhaps naive) perspective, the use of philosophy in religion can be seen as a method of acquainting someone with religious concepts who might otherwise not be inclined to believe them. If I remember correctly, Aquinas thought that philosophy can help a person get started on their path in the faith; reason is used to demonstrate that the beliefs of a religion are worthy of consideration. For instance, once a person understands the conclusions of a philosophical demonstration that purportedly demonstrates the necessity of a prime mover, they can take the next steps in their relationship with this prime mover.

From a cynical (and perhaps paranoid) perspective, the use of philosophy in religion can be seen as nothing more than propaganda, used to swindle people into believing nonsense under the guise of impressive, intimidating and esoteric arguments. Religions commonly manifest as hierarchical power structures, and philosophy helps justify the structure by convincing people that it is legitimate.

My own opinion is a mix of both of these perspectives, but fundamentally I believe that regardless of whatever merits a religious philosophy may have, in actual practice this intellectual apparatus functions as a propaganda device for the powers that endorse it.

Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, Peter Kropotkin
Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, Susan Brownmiller

Is anything ruled out and why? — Andrew4Handel

If the proposition "nothing is ruled out" is true, then the proposition "nothing is ruled out" is an exception to this. "Nothing ruled out except the current proposition", perhaps.

Same here! :100:

“But when Israeli apartheid is gone, it will be replaced by Palestinian apartheid. The solution to apartheid is not different apartheid. Until you offer a solution in which apartheid ends in Palestine/Israel entirely, you aren’t actually trying to end apartheid.” — Ennui Elucidator

Ending a moral evil that is happening right now is obviously more important than preventing a moral evil that might happen in the future. You're basically just saying that there's no point in fighting evil if it's just going to come back in a different way.

If the Israeli apartheid ends and is replaced by a Palestinian apartheid, then the Palestinian apartheid will then have to end. But the current crisis is the Israeli apartheid, the one that is actually happening, the real one.

Average member of an internet debate about antinatalism:

The Rape of Nanking, Iris Chang

my bias argument — L'éléphant

?

The advent of agriculture had contributed to the decline in our intelligence. — L'éléphant

Yes, there is evidence to suggest that hunter-gatherers were much more well-rounded and capable than modern domesticated humans (the same can be said about domesticated farm animals). Much of this has to do with the specialization of work that comes with sedentary agricultural life. Cities are like tool boxes, with each person being a tool that performs a specific function but is only really useful when part of an assembly of other tools. A hunter-gatherer, on the other hand, is like a Swiss army knife, capable of doing lots of different tasks on its own (viz self-sufficiency), or at least with assistance from a small group of other multi-purpose tools (of which the collaboration is voluntary).

I know for a fact that my nonexistence before conception was temporary, otherwise I would have never been conceived. — Paul Michael

Elaborate on this. How do you know that the past does not extend infinitely in the same way that the future does?

I think we are like waves in an ocean, briefly rising above the water and then just as rapidly returning to it.

Self-actualization vicariously achieved much like how the super-rich in present times finance research (Bill Gates Foundation for example). — Agent Smith

So parasitism?