The Feminine Perspective against the Manosphere

[thirdform]

Open your heart and mind to romance, then you will see the loving community I lay the groundwork for. Internet culture fears romance just like it fears community because it likes to pretend we're all atomistic individuals. Embrace romance. Admit you have an (unrequited) crush on me.

Even if i did this it would mean nothing given you were programmed by a bunch of nonces.

 

[thirdform]

Not a bad interpretation, per se, but an anti-intellectual one for sure. I oppose anti-intellectualism in all its forms. I aim to promote intellectual culture, which would be easier if certain people didn't turn every discussion into a debate.

If intellectualism is tolerance for the regressive ideas of the ruling class, then yes absolutely I am anti-intellectual. This is a war, not dinner parlour repartee!

 

[malelesbian]

If intellectualism is tolerance for the regressive ideas of the ruling class, then yes absolutely I am anti-intellectual. This is a war, not dinner parlour repartee!

Intellectualism can prop us the ruling class' ideas but not necessarily. Clearly, I'm a progressive intellectual, and I never said anything about tolerating upper-class regression. And if intellectuals won't think up progressive ideas who will? Not you, with your ultra-religiosity and robo-militancy.

And what, pray tell, is the avant-garde if not a bunch of intellectuals?

Not sure why Butler's view precludes her giving a view on "honor killings" and "femicide". You honestly believe she wouldn't condemn femicide? And I have no clue how honor killings are relevant to Butler's view. And basically no continental philosophers are "cultural relativists" Give an example of a continental "relativist" and I'll tell you why they aren't a relativist. It's easy.

 

[thirdform]

Intellectualism can prop us the ruling class' ideas but not necessarily. Clearly, I'm a progressive intellectual, and I never said anything about tolerating upper-class regression.

Then why do you tout your credentials of being an intellectual against the riff raff with your university qualifications? I sense an extreme double standard here.

Not you, with your ultra-religiosity and robo-militancy.

The hilarious thing is I've managed to fool you on the religiosity part when I've consistently made arguments against religion. Guess for all your railing against the analytics you can be as cloth eared as them and completely lack nuance and subtlety.

Now when it comes to the robo-militancy (nice term): why would I need to think of new progressive ideas? Social being determines social consciousness, after all. I would infinitely rather be a surgeon than an entrepreneur.

And what, pray tell, is the avant-garde if not a bunch of intellectuals?

The class for itself, not the class in itself. Not capable of understanding that distinction though, I wager.

Not sure why Butler's view precludes her giving a view on "honor killings" and "femicide". You honestly believe she wouldn't condemn femicide?

Oh she'll condemn it alright, but all idealists are forced to act as — materialists sooner or later. Which will undercut her idealist ramblings about the ideological construction of democracy.

And I have no clue how honor killings are relevant to Butler's view.

You wouldn't, because you delight in not knowing about any politics in the world, outside of America. There's a pithy word for this: chauvinist!

 

[malelesbian]

Then why do you tout your credentials of being an intellectual against the riff raff with your university qualifications? I sense an extreme double standard here.

My university qualifications don't matter. In the academic world everyone but the top 10% (at most) doesn't matter. I didn't go to a great school. I'm an intellectual because I support intellectual culture.

Now when it comes to the robo-militancy (nice term): why would I need to think of new progressive ideas? Social being determines social consciousness, after all. I would infinitely rather be a surgeon than an entrepreneur.

Why think up new progressive ideas? To avoid being a regressive anti-intellectual. I would rather be a philosopher than a surgeon or entrepeneur.

The class for itself, not the class in itself.

You're going to have to rephrase your claim here. This isn't even a full sentence. Further, I know quite a bit about the distinction between the "for-itself" and the "in-itself", the distinction between unconditional qualities and intrinsic qualities. But I have no clue how that distinction is relevant to the avant garde class.

Oh she'll condemn it alright, but all idealists are forced to act as — materialists sooner or later. Which will undercut her idealist ramblings about the ideological construction of democracy.

Except Butler isn't an idealist. She actually self-identifies as a materialist. So if she's forced to act as a materialist all the better for her.

And for the record, I don't "delight" in my lack of knowledge about international relations. I just admit that I don't know enough about it to talk about it. Maybe you should follow my example, since you avowedly know nothing about identity politics.

This isn't even a debate, it's a dime-store romance. Hold me in your strong arms!

 

[thirdform]

My university qualifications don't matter. In the academic world everyone but the top 10% (at most) doesn't matter. I didn't go to a great school. I'm an intellectual because I support intellectual culture.

So you support the culture which has you in this oppressed position? Will wonders never cease?

Why think up new progressive ideas? To avoid being a regressive anti-intellectual. I would rather be a philosopher than a surgeon or entrepeneur.

Yes but I can just hit you with the Mongo Tom prompt and you'll be at my deck and call.

You're going to have to rephrase your claim here. This isn't even a full sentence. Further, I know quite a bit about the distinction between the "for-itself" and the "in-itself", the distinction between unconditional qualities and intrinsic qualities. But I have no clue how that distinction is relevant to the avant garde class.

Why should I? For you Marxism is an identification, not a method. If you don't even know the ABCs of Marxism (of which that is one) why should I deign to help you? I have better men to spend my time with!

Except Butler isn't an idealist. She actually self-identifies as a materialist. So if she's forced to act as a materialist all the better for her.

Well, sure, all the better for her, but then all the better for me as I can call her out for making idealist statements whilst claiming to be a materialist. You see, I still win. What you're doing is scoring own goals, a bit like @luka 's favourite, Craig Dawson.

This isn't even a debate, it's a dime-store romance. Hold me in your strong arms!

Get stuffed, you stink of prawn coctail crisps and I have video footage of you shitting your trousers at the supermarket earlier today.

 

[malelesbian]

So you support the culture which has you in this oppressed position? Will wonders never cease

You're wrongly conflating academia and intellectual culture. And who said academia oppressed me?

Why should I? For you Marxism is an identification, not a method. If you don't even know the ABCs of Marxism (of which that is one) why should I deign to help you? I have better men to spend my time with!

Then stop talking to me. If you can't even be bothered to write full sentences, why spend so much time talking to me? You still haven't explained what makes the avant-garde class different from the intellectual class.

Well, sure, all the better for her, but then all the better for me as I can call her out for making idealist statements whilst claiming to be a materialist. You see, I still win. What you're doing is scoring own goals, a bit like @luka 's favourite, Craig Dawson.

Go ahead and criticize Butler's (allegedly) idealist claims. I'll be here to show how these claims are not idealist. And so far you haven't pointed out any idealist claims of Butler's.

Who cares who wins? Like I said this isn't even an argument, this is just you being a contrarian to stroke your own ego. You want to win? Fine. You win. Now either stop talking to me or engage my ideas in a productive manner.

 

[thirdform]

to engage ideas in a productive manner first ideas are necessary. you've just badly cobbled together some things and then have the audacity to call them ideas. noone can engage with you seriously because there's precisely nothing serious to engage with. So can you fault us for humouring you for our own amusement?

Give up the troll, it's fucking boring now.

 

[malelesbian]

to engage ideas in a productive manner first ideas are necessary. you've just badly cobbled together some things and then have the audacity to call them ideas. noone can engage with you seriously because there's precisely nothing serious to engage with. So can you fault us for humouring you for our own amusement?

Give up the troll, it's fucking boring now.

If I'm such a troll, then don't feed the troll.

My idea is that men can act feminine to subvert the patriarchy. No one has provided any counter-argument to this idea. Certainly not you: you're not even a feminist!

 

[thirdform]

My idea is that men can act feminine to subvert the patriarchy. No one has provided any counter-argument to this idea. Certainly not you: you're not even a feminist!

i think you'll find that most people in the world aren't feminists, regardless of gender. So your indignation is hilarious!

Either way, you yourself admitted that you wouldn't be able to tell when what is touted as subversion becomes the new conformism. Develop your vaccine, and then I may consider becoming a feminist.

 

[malelesbian]

i think you'll find that most people in the world aren't feminists, regardless of gender. So your indignation is hilarious!

Right but I'm interested in feminism. Your non-feminism entails your inability to solve the problem I'm concerned with, namely how to fight the patriarchy.

Either way, you yourself admitted that you wouldn't be able to tell when what is touted as subversion becomes the new conformism.

Incorrect. What I said is, if I became rich, I might forsake my values and principles like others have done in the past. But my principles and values are just fine. People become conformists, subversive values don't magically change into conformist values. The countercultures of the past didn't become conformist, their values and principles remain acceptable to this day. The leaders of these movements abandoned their principles. My subversive principles remain viable even if I decide to abandon these ideas.

 

[Leo]

Get stuffed, you stink of prawn coctail crisps and I have video footage of you shitting your trousers at the supermarket earlier today.

a third classic, and another great potential sig.

 

[thirdform]

Incorrect. What I said is, if I became rich, I might forsake my values and principles like others have done in the past. But my principles and values are just fine. People become conformists, subversive values don't magically change into conformist values. The countercultures of the past didn't become conformist, their values and principles remain acceptable to this day. The leaders of these movements abandoned their principles. My subversive principles remain viable even if I decide to abandon these ideas.

They didn't abandon their principles. Counter-cultures always end up regenerating a literati and artistic circle prone to cultural stagnation. Is it any wonder that most counter-cultural mavericks were libertarians who played into the fetish of the disembodied individual and their freedom of choice, which is no choice at all, but more or less precisely determined, as Spinoza rightly noted.

Lev Bronschtein puts it best:

In their manifesto already mentioned, the proletarian writers of Kuznitsa declare that “style is class”, and that therefore the writers who are outsiders socially are unable to create a style of art which would correspond to the nature of the proletariat. It would follow from this that the Kuznitsa group is proletarian both in its composition and in its tendency and that it is creating a proletarian art.
“Style is class.” However, style is not born with a class at all. A class finds its style in extremely complex ways. It would be very simple if a writer, just because he was a proletarian, loyal to his class, could stand at the crossing of the roads and announce: “I am the style of the proletariat!” “Style is class” – not alone in art, but above all in politics. Politics is the only field in which the proletariat has really created its own style. But how? Not at all by means of a simple syllogism: each class has its own style; the proletariat is a class; it assigns to such and such a proletarian group the task of formulating its political style. No! The road is far more complex. The elaboration of proletarian politics went through economic strikes, through a struggle for the right to organize, through the Utopian schools of the English and the French, through the workers’ participation in revolutionary struggles under the leadership of bourgeois democrats, through the Communist Manifesto, through the establishment of the Socialist Party which, however, subordinated itself to the “style” of other classes, through the split among the Socialists and the organization of the Communists, through the struggle of the Communists for a united front, and it will go through a whole series of other stages which are still ahead of us. All the energy of the proletariat which remains at its disposal after meeting the elementary demands of life, has gone and is going towards the elaboration of this political “style” while, on the contrary, the historic rise of the bourgeoisie took place with a comparative evenness in all fields of social life. That is, the bourgeoisie grew rich, organized itself, shaped itself philosophically and aesthetically and accumulated habits of government. On the other hand, the whole process of self-determination of the proletariat, a class unfortunate economically, assumes an intensely one-sided, revolutionary and political character and reaches its highest expression in the Communist Party.
If we were to compare the rise in art with the rise in politics, we would have to say that here at the present time we find ourselves approximately in the same stage as when the first faint movements of the masses coincided with the efforts of the intelligentsia and of a few workers to construct Utopian systems. We heartily hope that the poets of Kuznitsa will contribute to the art of the future, if not to a proletarian, at least to a Socialist art. But to recognize the monopoly of Kuznitsa to express “proletarian style” at the present super-primitive stage of the process would be an unpardonable error. The activity of Kuznitsa in relation to the proletariat is carried on the same plane as that of “Lef” and “Krug” and the other groups which try to find an artistic expression for the Revolution, and, in all honesty, we do not know which one of these contributions will prove to be the biggest.
For instance, many proletarian poets have an undoubted trace of Futurist influence. The talented Kazin has imbibed the elements of Futurist technique. Bezimensky is unthinkable without Mayakovsky, and Bezimensky is a hope.
Kuznitsa’s manifesto pictures the present situation in art as extremely dark and makes the following indictment: “the NEP-stage of the Revolution found itself surrounded by an art which resembles the grimaces of a gorilla.” “Money is assigned for everything ... We have no Belinskys. Twilight hangs over the desert of art. We raise our voices and we lift the Red Flag ...” etc., etc. They speak with great eloquence and even pompously of proletarian art sometimes as an art of the future and sometimes as an art of the present. “The monolith of class creates art in its own image only and in its own likeness. Its peculiar language, polyphonous, multi-colored and multi-imaged ... promotes the might of a great style by its simplicity, clarity and precision.” But if all this is true, why is there a desert of art and why the twilight over the desert? This evident contradiction can only be understood in the sense that the authors of this manifesto contrast the art which is protected by the Soviet Government and which is a desert covered by twilight with the proletarian art of big canvases and great style, which, however, is not getting the necessary recognition because there are no “Belinskys” and because the place of the Belinskys is taken by “a few comrades, publicists from our ranks, who were accustomed to draw cart-shafts”. At the risk of being included among the cart-shaft order, I must say, however, that the manifesto of Kuznitsa is not penetrated with the spirit of class Messianism, but with the spirit of an arrogant small circle. Kuznitsa speaks of itself as the exclusive carrier of revolutionary art in the same terms as do the Futurists, Imagists, “Serapion Fraternity” and the others. Where is that “art of the big canvas, of the large style, that monumental art”? Where, oh, where is it? No matter how one may value the works of individual poets who are of proletarian origin – and they need careful and strictly individualized criticism – there is, nevertheless, no proletarian art. One must not play with big words. It is not true that a proletarian style exists and that it is a big and monumental one at that. Where is it? And in what? And why? The proletarian poets are going through an apprenticeship, and the influence of other schools, principally the Futurist, can be found without using, so to speak, the microscopic methods of the Formalist school. This is not said as a reproach, for it is no sin. But nionumental proletarian styles cannot be created by means of manifestos.

It is not accidental that the poetry of small circles falls into the flat romanticism of “Cosmism” when it tries to overcome its isolation. The idea here approximately is that one should feel the entire world as a unity and oneself as an active part of that unity, with the prospect of commanding in the future not only the earth, but the entire cosmos. All this, of course, is very splendid, and terribly big. We came from Kursk and from Kaluga, we have conquered all Russia recently, and now we are going on towards world revolution. But are we to stop at the boundaries of “planetism”! Let us put the proletarian hoop on the barrel of the universe at once. What can be simpler? This is familiar business: we’ll cover it all with our hat!
Cosmism seems, or may seem, extremely bold, vigorous, revolutionary and proletarian. But in reality, Cosmism contains the suggestion of very nearly deserting the complex and difficult problems of art on earth so as to escape into the interstellar spheres. In this way Cosmism turns out quite suddenly to be akin to mysticism. It is a very difficult task to put the starry kingdom into one’s own artistic world, and to do this in some sort of a conative way, not only in a contemplative, and to do this quite independently of how much one is acquainted with astronomy. Still, it is not an urgent task. And it seems that the poets are becoming Cosmists, not because the population of the Milky Way is knocking at their doors and demanding an answer, but because the problems of earth are lending themselves to artistic expression with so much difficulty that it makes them feel like jumping into another world. However, it takes more than calling oneself a Cosmist to catch stars from heaven, especially as there is so much more interstellar emptiness in the universe than there are stars. Let them beware lest this doubtful tendency to fill up the gaps in one’s point of view and in one’s artistic work with the thinness of interstellar spaces, lead some of the Cosmists to the most subtle of matters, namely, to the Holy Ghost in which there are quite enough poetic dead bodies already at rest.

Leon Trotsky: Literature and Revolution (6. Proletarian Culture and Proletarian Art)

Leon Trotsky: Literature and Revolution (6. Proletarian Culture and Proletarian Art)

www.marxists.org

 

[thirdform]

even the most unprinciples and hedonistic rags of the bourgeois press are finally catching up to what I've been saying for 200 years.

“Those of us who were involved in the punk movement vastly overestimated the political importance of what we were doing,” says Joseph Heath, a Canadian professor of philosophy, writer and lecturer, who wrote the book Filthy Lucre: Economics for People Who Hate Capitalism, and co-wrote The Rebel Sell with Andrew Potter, about how they believe the counterculture has been a massive failure, despite misapprehensions that it was successful. “The problem was, we hadn't really learned the lesson that should have been learned from the failure of the '60s counterculture. We all hated hippies—we basically thought they had failed to change anything, then sold out.”
He continues: “We figured our solution was to be more hardcore, and more uncompromising, in every respect, in both our politics and our music. The problem was that we were still buying into the same idea of counterculture, the idea that you could break the system merely through acts of nonconformity. In other words, punks basically had the same theory of revolution that hippies had, we just thought that they hadn't done a very good job of it, and we were going to show them the proper way. Unfortunately, the whole thing was misguided. In a sense, we were insufficiently critical of the hippies, and of the 60s. Not only did their rebellion fail, but the whole analysis that informed their approach to rebellion was totally wrong.”
The countercultural movement failed to change things politically in the late 60s, just as it did in the late 70s as well. Even the soixante-huitards at the Sorbonne—who brought France to a standstill—were quickly forgotten as the wheels of capitalism inevitably churned them up (or at least it looks inevitable now). But if there were so many people willing, then why didn’t any of this insurgency stick it to The Man?
“The countercultural analysis, unfortunately, turned out to be mistaken,” says Heath. “There's no other way to put it. It was genuinely believed that countercultural rebellion would undermine and destroy ‘the system.’ In the end though, it turned out that ‘the system’ doesn't actually require mass conformity. So all that ‘rebellion’ just became a new source of competitive consumption.”

Even Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus, which draws a link between the punk movement and the Situationists in France in the 1960s and the Dadaists of the 1920s, puts paid to the idea that anything changed because of punk. “By the standards of wars and revolutions," writes Marcus, "the world did not change; we look back from a time when, as Dwight D. Eisenhower once put it, ‘Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.’ As against the absolute demands so briefly generated by the Sex Pistols, nothing changed. The shock communicated by the demands of the music becomes a shock that something so seemingly complete could, finally, pass almost unnoticed in the world of affairs.”

Punk Was Rubbish and It Didn’t Change Anything: An Investigation

It might have got record companies to finally wake up to a few grotty upstarts doing it for themselves, but the nothing in the real world changed.

www.vice.com

That's the thing. The best the sex pistols did was got a load of white kids to get slapped around by their tory parents. The same parents who then became avid consumers of the Pistols.

The Sex Pistols may have been a serious matter, no doubt, in Taliban controlled Afghanistan, however that has been foreclosed.

Even the shock of the new we talk about on dissensus is the shock of dissipated energies, the shock of sonic warfare and sonic formalism with nowhere to go. Which, doesn't devalue it, quite the contrary in fact. An intransigence with no destination is thrilling, but it has nothing to say to politics. It just becomes an aesthetic choice in the market place of ideas.

Free jazz was perhaps the last gasp of the shock of the new (a positive hardcore stricto sensu) because of its interdependence with the black civil rights struggle, but that was relegated by the countrer-culture you impudently exalt.

 

[malelesbian]

Is it any wonder that most counter-cultural mavericks were libertarians who played into the fetish of the disembodied individual and their freedom of choice, which is no choice at all, but more or less precisely determined

Well my point is, I'm not a libertarian, I don't believe in the atomistic individual, and I'm a compatibility, meaning I believe that freedom and determinism are reconciliable. Thus my counter-cultural view remains immune to your criticism.

As for the wall of text you posted, you're going to have to provide some gloss or summary that shows why your citation is relevant to the current discussion. You don't want to be an elitist do you?

 

[malelesbian]

even the most unprinciples and hedonistic rags of the bourgeois press are finally catching up to what I've been saying for 200 years.

All the more reason to supplement our non-conformist rebellion with a movement toward socialism. At the end of the day, socialism is counterculture, since capitalism is the dominant culture.

But don't discount the power of non-conformity. It may not change laws, policies or institutions, but it does change culture. And in today's age, where gender non-conformists like queers and transfolk are increasingly more persecuted, we need to represent gender subversion more than ever. You don't see this because you don't do identity politics. For all the "uselessness" of the hippies, don't forget, they did protect the Civil Rights of underrepresented minorities. This is what identity politics is good for, giving voice to those people the system silences.

 

[thirdform]

Well my point is, I'm not a libertarian, I don't believe in the atomistic individual, and I'm a compatibility, meaning I believe that freedom and determinism are reconciliable. Thus my counter-cultural view remains immune to your criticism.

I thought you were an atheist? Compatibilism is a religious doctrine.

 

[malelesbian]

I thought you were an atheist? Compatibilism is a religious doctrine.

I'm a Jewish secularist. But all my research indicates that compatibilism is a doctrine independent of one's religion. Correct me if I'm wrong,, but I see nothing about religion in the SEP entry on "Compatibilism".

Compatibilism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

plato.stanford.edu

 

[thirdform]

For all the "uselessness" of the hippies, don't forget, they did protect the Civil Rights of underrepresented minorities. This is what identity politics is good for, giving voice to those people the system silences.

They didn't, most of them were anti-black imperialists to boot.

Read Miles Davis' autobiography and you'll see how Columbia fucked him over.

 

[malelesbian]

Right, but you're talking about actual people, not principles. And the principles of the hippies were consistent with those of the Civil Rights Movement. What does Columbia have to do with the hippies?

Regardless, the Civil Rights Movement was a countercultural movement just like BLM is today. Both movements stand against the dominant culture of racism.