Anyone else notice that a lot of "feministic" postmodern/new age woo sounds pretty sexist itself?

[Odin2005]

I see this crap a lot from the PoMo nutty types, taking cross-cultural "archetypal" sexist stereotypes about women and men (man = active, woman = passive; man = modern civilization, woman - nature; man = logic, woman = intuition; etc.) and just giving them a positive spin. Then of course there are the nonsense screeds, like one certain DUer posts constantly, equating environmental destruction and a "patriarchal tendency to domination over nature" and similar travesties of reason. I think it is pretty pathetic and actually insulting to women.

[realisticphish]

1. that's an excellent point

I hadn't really thought about it, but that's true. How often do you hear, "if women were in charge, there wouldn't be any war, since women are naturally peaceful" or something like that. Very interesting.

[Odin2005]

4. "Women are naturally peaceful" tell that to Maggie Thatcher, LOL!

[onager]

6. Women are naturally empathetic and nurturing, too!

[Orrex]

2. Postmodernism of any stripe is full of shit.

One of its favorite bullshit pastimes is the creation of paired lists of artificial opposites and then assigning the less cool list to whatever aesthetic or cultural concept is currently being assailed.

Sure, the occasional nugget of useful insight can be wrung out of this intellectual dead-end of a philosophical system, but mostly it's just a succession of rhetorical card tricks.


Incidentally, a PoMo zealot's typical response to the above criticism is either "you don't get it" or "your objection only proves that it's correct."

[Odin2005]

3. Or something like "you are trapped in the metanarrative" or similar shit.

And WTF is with PoMos being so enamored of Psychoanalysis?

[Dr. Strange]

11. That's going to be my theme for next week.

Postmodernism of any stripe is full of shit.

If I made Fortune Cookies, I'd put that in one. It kicks metaphorical ass.

[Orrex]

13. I confess that I didn't realize until afterward that I'd invoked "shit stripe"

Serendipity!

[Jmaxfie1]

16. Agreed, PoMo sucks

Other than hipsters, old New Left professors and first year college kids I don't think anyone takes Postmodernist philosophy all that seriously anymore, Thank God.

[Warpy]

5. Yeah, it's the same old sexist garbage

dressed up in robes and garlands instead of the three piece power suit or the priestly drag.

However, patriarchy has damaged us and everything around us horribly. Chances are matriarchy wouldn't be any better.

Equality would be a nice change.

[dropkickpa]

7. Yep! Hear hear!

[LeftishBrit]

8. Agreed

As I posted a few months ago, "Some of the most fundamentally sexist people are those who flatter women the most - providing flattery as a substitute for equal rights". The old-fashioned version of this - women are too gentle and beautiful to risk being corrupted by masculine activities like going to university or voting - is sometimes reflected uncomfortably in passages, like the one that I was then replying to, which stated that society emphasizes masculine values of survival and achievement over 'The Feminine' with its emphasis on 'beauty, graciousness, compassion and relatedness'.


'The role of a woman is to nourish, uphold and sustain. To Nourish, Uphold and Sustain' (Particularly old-fashioned teacher at English girls' school, attended by LB, c. 1976.)

'Ugh!' (LB, then and now.)

And these sentimental passages are saying pretty much the same thing.

[TZ]

9. I've always thought that those who try to put women

on a pedestal as the "better sex" are in some ways treated us with a certain condencesion...You know..."women's ears are too delicate for curse words" kinda thing. True feminists don't want to be treated either worse OR BETTER then men, we just want to be treated the same as men..or better yet...as individuals.
Oh yeah, and alot of that POMO matriarchy shit plays into stereotype of how women are perceived to be. A positive stereotype is STILL a stereotype.

[realisticphish]

10. right

"Asians are good at math" and "Jews are good with money" are (I guess) positive stereotypes, but making those stereotypes is equally as ignorant as the negative ones

[Heddi]

12. I took a sociology class a few years ago. We talked about the "Perfect Stereotype"

Asians are good at math--yes, it's a "positive" thing to say, but still a stereotype. What about Asians that aren't good at math? Or Jews that can't keep their checkbook straight. God, what was the name of the term they used..Oh! Model Minority. That just because a stereotype makes reference to positive attributes rather than negative ones, it's still a bad thing, and a stereotype just as much as "Asians are shitty drivers" and "Jews control the world"

I had never thought about it until I took the class but it makes sense, that you can't group people together for good or bad reasons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_minority

[Odin2005]

14. BINGO!!! I knew there had to be a term for that crap!

[lizerdbits]

15. Shit like chivalry

Usually means the women is getting treated much worse in private, at least in my experience and the experience of women I've known. It also distracts from the lack of rights. If you keep telling her she's pretty and how important it is that she 'nourish, uphold and sustain' or other shit like that, she'll forget all about not being allowed to be educated and having few options in life other than marriage and children.

I knew as a teenager I didn't want to have kids. I honestly don't have a child nurturing bone in my body. Interestingly the last guy I briefly dated once said 'you're so logical about everything and that's what so irritating about you'. LOL! If you were using stereotypes, he would have been the emotional female and I would have been the logical male.

[onager]

17. I like resurrected threads! And what about these "archetypes..."

Hey, just popping in to thread-jack as usual.

Speaking of those archetypes...I just found a French website with a thread full of fascinating pix.

All the photos show women in WWII, from all nations (including Japan, Yugoslavia, Nazi Germany, etc.). Many of the photos are color (or colorized). As a history geek, I just wasted some time there (and I'll probably post this over in GD to bore other people too!):

http://atlantikwall.superforum.fr/t7183-femmes-en-guerre

Some examples:

A Polish nurse, captured by the Germans after the fall of Warsaw in September 1939, fate unknown but almost certainly grim:



Russian bomber pilot Mariya Dolina:



And finally an American archetype of the era, "Rosie The Riveter:"

[realisticphish]

18. Russian women kicked ass in WWII

as they did in many nations, but in Russia they were very often combat soldiers. Snipers, pilots, etc. There was one regiment, the 46th Taman Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment, which was one of the best in the war.

[onager]

19. The "Night Witches!" Thanks for the mention!

Those women were really incredible. Flying an obsolete biplane designed as a crop duster, usually cutting off the engine and gliding onto the target silently. At night. In sub-zero temps. From an open cockpit. Yeesh!

One thing that sometimes saved them: they were very hard to shoot down, because the top speed of that biplane was lower than the stall speed of a German fighter plane.

[realisticphish]

20. Russian pilots in general were badass

I've read of multiple instances where the russian pilot would actually ram the german aircraft when they ran out of ammunition