The Feminine Perspective against the Manosphere

ghost

ghost

Well-known member
Studying theory does have no value if you are fundamentally incapable of doing literally anything with it! That is not an admission, that is my point!
 
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?!..!?

Well-known member
Studying theory is valuable for its own sake. I reject your Anglo-American ultra-pragmatism, which reduces the value of everything to its instrumentality.

It's true that a good theory should have a practical component. That doesn't mean all theoretical discussion is valuable only relative to its ability to stimulate real world practices. America lacks an intellectual culture because of ultra-pragmatists like you.

My theory's practical component is expressed in my efforts to build communities. You claim I'm part of the problem for trying to do this. In your opinion, literally playing lawn bowling is better than building online communities around feminist principles and values. I don't see how anyone could consider your view a feminist one. You basically think that no online communities have any value because anything of value has to be done in real life. This is a non-starter, because incels live in social isolation and have no community other than online ones.
 
ghost

ghost

Well-known member
Studying theory "for its own sake" is valuable in the way knitting is valuable, not in the way a soup kitchen is valuable.

That theories of how to improve social relations are instrumental is a virtue (it means they can do it), not a fault.
 
?

?!..!?

Well-known member
ghost of beiser said:
Studying theory "for its own sake" is valuable in the way knitting is valuable, not in the way a soup kitchen is valuable.

That theories of how to improve social relations are instrumental is a virtue (it means they can do it), not a fault.
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Broadly speaking, I agree. But that doesn't mean you should discourage theoretical discourse!
 
ghost

ghost

Well-known member
ghost of beiser said:
I'm not trying to disparage anyone by saying that a person who is so socially isolated that they don't have any friends can't make social change. You've got a hermit, he lives in the woods, he never talks to a soul in his life. He wants to change society. I don't think this is very smart, or a very good way to be a hermit. One shouldn't try to repair social relations if they don't have any. It's like campaigning to stop deforestation when you live on a desert island. The theory of change here is basically "prayer".

Only if you're genuinely of the belief that "understanding theory" is akin to worship or self-purification can it even make sense to think that the man who knows nothing of feminism but is kind and understanding to his friends is worthy of denigration, or that our friendless hermit is doing literally anything of value whatsoever.
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malelesbian said:
This is basically an admission that you believe that studying theory has no value.

Also, you didn't address my main point. Can men do feminism in all-male spaces? If not, they can only do feminism in relation to women. That is essentialism.
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Reread the conversation that prompted this, and tell me that I'm "discouraging theoretical discourse."
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
ghost of beiser said:
Studying theory "for its own sake" is valuable in the way knitting is valuable, not in the way a soup kitchen is valuable.
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Hardly a fair comparison. After you're done knitting you have a utile and hopefully beautiful item, like an awesome scarf or something.
 
?

?!..!?

Well-known member
Mr. Tea said:
Hardly a fair comparison. After you're done knitting you have a utile and hopefully beautiful item, like an awesome scarf or something.
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Theory is much more beautiful than knitting. The term 'utile' is antiquated, appearing mostly in Bentham. I never was a fan of Bentham...Dewey, now there's a good pragmatist. I'm a pragmatic moralist, so I guess I'm more like Emerson I want to say?

Here's some deeper questions for you all: how many of you know what phallocentrism is? How many of you actively oppose it, let alone deconstruct it like I do? Lord knows, beiser's strategy of maintaining good relationships with women does nothing to counteract phallocentrism. It's not even clear his strategy counteracts the patriarchy. It seems to me the patriarchy wants men to be gentlemen while preserving oppressive social conditions.

In artistic content, Andrew Dice Clay is the arch-patriarch. Why should the fact that he had good relationships with women change my mind about his art?

I want to deconstruct phallogocentrism. It's a huge project, I know, but it definitely takes more than just having good relationships with women. And it has nothing to do with Andrew Dice Clay.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
malelesbian said:
Theory is much more beautiful than knitting. The term 'utile' is antiquated, appearing mostly in Bentham.
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I just meant that a scarf or a jumper is a useful thing with a practical, as well as aesthetic, value.

As for theory being beautiful, isn't Butler widely regarded as having written some of the most turgid and impenetrable academic prose of all time?
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Then again, maybe 'impenetrable' prose is just what you need to protect yourself from those awful phallogocentrists, forever thrusting rapaciously here and there with their vile wordcocks!
 
?

?!..!?

Well-known member
Phallic discourse wants to penetrate to the heart of the matter. Anti-phallic discourse is something else entirely. We find it at the margins of intelligibility.

Butler's reputation as a bad writer, in my opinion, comes from analytic philosophy's insistence that philosophy be written clearly. The phenomena Butler discusses are not clear in their real character. To some extent, Butler's obscurity derives from the obscure and confusing character of post-modern personal identity, which twists and turns and transforms and bears within the potential for perpetual change. Not everything can or should be written about clearly. Analytic philosophy's demand for clarity oversimplifies the real subject matter of philosophy.

And of course the beauty in Butler's theory shines through in the way it reveals gender fluidity to us. To grasp Butler's theory is to see oneself through the eyes of a person basically different from oneself. Butler's insights on the variable, alterable character of identity are very beautiful.

Edit:
What do you guys think of this? Crazy, right?

 
ghost

ghost

Well-known member
malelesbian said:
In artistic content, Andrew Dice Clay is the arch-patriarch. Why should the fact that he had good relationships with women change my mind about his art?
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this is like getting mad at a guy because he plays Donald Trump on saturday night live
 
ghost

ghost

Well-known member
malelesbian said:
Lord knows, beiser's strategy of maintaining good relationships with women does nothing to counteract phallocentrism. It's not even clear his strategy counteracts the patriarchy. It seems to me the patriarchy wants men to be gentlemen while preserving oppressive social conditions.
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I never proposed maintaining good relationships. I proposed being a good friend.
 
ghost

ghost

Well-known member
im not gonna wade into the phylogistocentrism morass here but malelesbian's theory of change reminds me a lot of a set of science textbooks i had in 6th grade. they had been produced during a culture war in maybe the 80s, and so every scientist in the book was a woman. every single one. the only exceptions were a man repairing a telephone pole and a garbage man. i don't think this is some great crime but I do think it's very silly.

anyway, if you ask me, the primary barriers to the flourishing of women are structural, economic and legal. to the extent they're cultural, it's about the culture inside institutions, not whether public access TV is sufficiently yonic. that malelesbian is more worried about a washed up comic than the creeping illegalization of safe abortion is the kind of position that you can only understand when you remember that he professes to have never seen—much less spoken to—a "real, live" woman in his life.
 
ghost

ghost

Well-known member
unrelated, is the "I've been a male lesbian since 2006" line about how male_lesbian was born in 2006? it's all making sense now
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
ghost of beiser said:
im not gonna wade into the phylogistocentrism morass here but malelesbian's theory of change reminds me a lot of a set of science textbooks i had in 6th grade. they had been produced during a culture war in maybe the 80s, and so every scientist in the book was a woman. every single one. the only exceptions were a man repairing a telephone pole and a garbage man. i don't think this is some great crime but I do think it's very silly.

anyway, if you ask me, the primary barriers to the flourishing of women are structural, economic and legal. to the extent they're cultural, it's about the culture inside institutions, not whether public access TV is sufficiently yonic. that malelesbian is more worried about a washed up comic than the creeping illegalization of safe abortion is the kind of position that you can only understand when you remember that he professes to have never seen—much less spoken to—a "real, live" woman in his life.
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male lesbian come here, we'll hang out in soho and i'll find you a proper cafe with a massive window and we can look at all the women walking by (in a very respectful way), you'll get to see loads of them a herd of wildebeest
 
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