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I Made A Video
01/09/2010
It’s very angry and ranty, or it turned out very angry and ranty because I had to cut it down to under 10 minutes length, and all the angry stuff ended up being where the points were. Took forever. Anyway. It’s over there in my little video thing, “Questioning Authority”. I’m already embarrassed by it. Ugh.
Question… You mentioned Calvinist influences in feminism (between 1:40 to 1:50) and I am just requesting a bit more info, as I am not a theologian. The few things I remember off the top of my head about Calvinism (aside from the general puritanical slant) is predestination and money lenders can charge interest (in today terms, pegged to the rate of inflation). Did you mean basically mean puritanical/ old testement literal interpretation?
I am also quite a bit interested in you statements about regret (4:20 to 4:41). Not necessarily in the particulars, but in the general cases. I had a friend that killed himself drunk driving. It was his action, and in some cynical way, I acknowledge that it is ‘lucky’ that he only killed himself.
Now I was not at the party at all that night when he left for his last drive. But from others I know they just let him walk out the door. His wife, who had not been drinking, had already gone to sleep and no one thought to wake her so she could drive him to the 24-hour fast food joint.
If you know someone is going to misstep, sometimes you do not know how damaging that misstep is going to be.
There should be some regret there. Especially if you failed to act out of apathy or complacency. Or becuase you did care but your personality was to weak to try and tell someone to unfuck themselves.
But it bears repeating for the sake of clarity, I disagree generally, and not with the particulars (selling sex, gender identity).
I’m working on a reply – it keeps getting too long…. I’ll post it soonishly
well here’s a bit I can answer now, regret, well there will always be regret and it all has to do with what laws are against it – it’s legal to drink, legal to drive, not legal to mix the two because you might kill an innocent person. And it sounds like your friend was on that cusp of just buzzed or something, where we all know not to let the stumbling guy get behind the wheel, it’s another thing with a freind who is just buzzed.
With sex, legal to have sex, legal to earn money, – not legal to mix the two because it might….. kill somebody??? I guess, if you spread disease, but isn’t spreading disease bad for anyone to do? and maybe you might break up a marriage if a wife finds out, but isn’t that a religious values thing? what if you don’t believe in marriage… that’s where the difficulty is – and so far the people making the laws about the sex and money have a religion based outlook on it. Look at our entire society’s reaction to Tiger Woods or what was promoted in the media,- that all “decent women” naturally want sex within caring loving whatever relationships, when some of us don’t, for whatever reason… the ones who don’t whether it’s a man or a woman gets looked at as immoral and the only thing actually immoral (imo) was the lying. Just for starters, I mean, that whole Tiger Woods thing, the sexism, gender expectations, racism, nationalism, media-manipulation – that is something that someone needs to study and teach a class on.
Hi again FW,
Before I get to far into this, I want to reiterate again that when it came to regret I was addressing the generalities, not the specifics.
Your video addressed regret towards preventing others from entering sex work or sex changes as being selfish. I was addressing the ‘selfishness’ if failing to intervene and used a different situation to highlight how I was in disagreement with the general, not the specific, of what you covered.
Gah.. I feel like I am derailing, but:
and maybe you might break up a marriage if a wife finds out, but isn’t that a religious values thing?
No, I don’t think it is a fairly religious value thing as I don’t believe that morality stems from religion. I think that it is the other way around.
This has the potential to be a huge derail…
and so far the people making the laws about the sex and money have a religion based outlook on it.
You can have non-religious views (i.e. parental) towards law and sex. You could say that men are too weak and are being preyed upon on account of their aching blue balls and must be protected. You could go over the well discussed concern for the women in sex work.
Ah, shit, I am being hella contrary today:
And it sounds like your friend was on that cusp of just buzzed or something, where we all know not to let the stumbling guy get behind the wheel, it’s another thing with a freind who is just buzzed.
I have a kinda zero tolerance for drunk driving. I am pretty sure it predated my friend death. Buzzed is too much. I can and have gotten completely fucked up every day of the week i, but not have a drop when it comes to getting behind a wheel.
Thank you for your reply
-S
I have a kinda zero tolerance for drunk driving.
I have zero tolerance for drunk driving too, for all sorts of stuff, I didn’t mean it’s “another thing” because we think it’s ok to let the buzzed person drive, but we might not even realize he’s been drinking, or we might think our friend had his last beer 4 hours ago, and we don’t realize he just had another one – that sort of thing. … but yeah.. I’m the type where I make people give me their keys and I have actually tackled friends on the way to the car — (that didn’t end well at all).
religious value thing …. morality stems from religion… it is the other way around.
when I say religious – well first, I totally agree, morality makes for religion, and here’s where the weird religious influences in feminism come into play, and particularly Mary Daly mentioned in the video – that a LOT of “feminist theology” is being passed off as “feminist theory” – and it’s like, well there are lots of people out there who think that if you don’t have religion then you don’t have morals – and believe it or not, there are A LOT of those folks in feminism. I’ve always seen moral people get less moral the further they go into religion – like anything else, moderation is key… :)
here’s the thing as far as something that is seen as “moral” but maybe not so much “religion” involved – well dang it’s hard to explain – but I think that expectations of monogamy can be harmful- and the basic reason I see those expectations (just the expectations - 2 people deciding on monogamy is awesome and happens most of the time) as harmful is because so many relationships end. Most of us go through 1 or 2 or 50 before we find “the one” — and it gets so damaging – really damaging like violent and deadly – when ya know, we all know that things just get messy and complicated and people fall out of love, but there is this whole culture of “failure” when a relationship ends – failed relationship this, and doomed love affair that – it’s really bad stuff when you start to think about it – and that stuff is in our movies and on TV just as much as, if not more than, the glorifications of sexual violence that we see – I think it’s the focus on “failure” at love that results in the glorification and increasing acceptance of sexual violence (real violence, not porno violence), – it’s a catch-22 situation, the folks pushing the anti-pornography stuff (both feminists and christian coalition types), along with the sex-ed focus on abstinence, and if not abstinence then the focus on “loving relationships” at it’s most liberal…. All of that is done with the best of intentions, but really I think it’s what’s screwing us so badly. so to speak.
“the ’selfishness’ if failing to intervene … in disagreement with the general” –
I think I know what you mean, (I hope I’m not rambling about the wrong thing!) – but for me it all comes down to what’s ‘against the law’, and what people can actually go to jail for or have a “record” for – I think that sure we should all try to give advice and yes try to stop people from doing things that will hurt them, but there’s gotta be a cutoff – where with drunk driving I’d tackle a guy trying to get in a car because it’s not just him at risk, it’s a lot harder when it’s drug use (should weed be legal? for ex. ) sex (should gays marry?)
Here’s really the best explanation – it’s where I get a lot of my crackpot outlook from: Ain’t Nobody’s Business If You Do – the intro linked there, might explain it better than I can.
As for the gender reassignment stuff, that was mostly directed at the way some people on other blogs pop up and say stuff like “gender re-assignment is bad because the hormones you take will give you cancer, we just don’t want you to get cancer” – which, ugh, please then let’s criminalize the combustion engine if cancer is the criteria – …
So much of what I rant and ramble about is for feminist types – and the thing with sex work and feminism, is that these ‘academic feminists’ for lack of a better term, teach and promote just one side of the “sex work” and also one side of the “transgender” argument to young feminists or they just don’t give the whole story … the whole Mary Daly thing was ALL about that, so when I say “hey it’s selfish to stop people” it’s also that they want to stop people from even having a fair debate about certain topics … when sex workers try to debate the issue we are told, clearly, flat out, that we are too warped or crazy or stupid or out-of-touch to be taken seriously … these feminist dicsussions on this stuff – the few we have anyway – get downright nasty and threads are closed and views are stifled, and it goes right up to the top of feminism to NOW and which women’s groups recommend which policy, which ends up in the UN and all around the world.
My personal opinion is that sex work is the cure for all of the evils of the world, kinda, – but my other personal opinion is that in general- decriminalized and destigmatized is better than criminalized and shamed and all that stuff…
For men too there are dangers for men – they get robbed, stabbed, ripped off all over the place – and not a single one of them has a bit of legal recourse for that sort of thing, I mean he has to (or probably will) make up a story about who and why he got stabbed if he calls the cops. Same goes for being taken advantage of – in my fantasy world the average guy wouldn’t be skeeved out about checking those ratings and reviews forums and there could be a prostitutes better business bureau and stuff to help the right customer find the right service provider.
You always ask questions that make me ramble too much :)
- And you contrary?! No way! You seem quite agreeable. My favorite feller, when he was a kid he wanted to grow up to literally be “the devil’s advocate” for the Vatican – I didn’t even know it was a real thing – but he debates with me all day everday and … he takes contrary to a whole new level… merciless is the word that pops into my mind… :)
Oh and as for the calvinism question – I’m planning a longer entry about the religion in feminism that I hope covers some of that stuff, it’s pretty link- heavy type stuff
I’m not a big fan of YT as a way of presenting one’s thoughts because it is so easy to come across as disorganized and ranty. A lot of people seem to use YT for blogging now, but only a handful do it well. This is why I still much prefer written blogs as a medium, as writing allows one the luxury of organizing one’s thoughts and choosing words more carefully. Basically, I think to do a good piece on YouTube, you really have to write an outline first, then do a couple of cold run-throughs before doing a final taping. Ultimately, I think it takes more time than doing a written post.
Anyway, that said, I liked many of the points you made in your YT video and I actually favorited it and have featured it on my YT page. :)
I think one point that’s off-target, and I think many of the radfems you’re critiquing would be quick to point this out, is your reference to radical feminism as a form of “liberation theology”. Actually, many radfems aren’t religious (at least, not in the traditional meaning) and many are outright atheists. The ones like Mary Daly that do claim some kind of theological foundation are a minority. Now one thing I think is true is that radical feminists, like many Marxists, are guilty of elevating a secular ideology to a quasi-religion, with a lot of assumptions about the world that are never held up to question. But that’s a bit different from calling it a kind of theology full stop.
(try 2 at posting this without a huge formatting fuck-up)…
I’m surprised I made any sense at all in that thing :) – thanks for favoriting it. I dis-allowed all replies and ratings over there ‘cuz I have such tender feewings. But, my boobs looked good, which surprised me, and my neck was particularly emotive, and I cut 5 inches off my raggedy-ass hair the next day. Ugh, what a mess.
As far as the liberation theology stuff, and the Calvinism stuff too… I keep looking for “the root” of it… and turns out that it’s just “religion” particularly “christian” and more particularly “calvinistic protestantism” – (and also, as an aside, I’m one of ‘em! I can trace my family tree all the way back to Hingham England, and my ancestors settled in Hingham, Mass. So, if the Calvinists are right, I’m guaranteed a spot in heaven. Yay. Maybe that’s why I have such heathenistic hobbies, because I don’t have to worry) – along with a good deal of Catholicism, cause that shit is just everywhere — it’s all everwhere….
I keep trying to make a post about it, but it’s almost like there is too much “evidence”… so I think a better way to put it is that it’s just the same old Protestantism and Catholicism that has always fucked around in our lives. The particular themes that I’ve run across – well, I run across them because I am researching the sex work / prostitution / trafficking thing all the time – so I find my “evidence” in places like college syllabi from past, present and future, what books are assigned, and even sometimes opinions are passed off as fact in syllabi (or syllabuses maybe?) in the way students are told to think about things. It extends very much into that whole resistance about evolutionary psychology, and the odd determinism aversion that people have – again, I don’t get it at all, cause I’m a heathen, I just don’t understand how saying shit about mating habits of humans equates with some sort of “determinism” (well I do kinda – it’s cuz it threatens the determinism they prefer).
Here are a few particular bits, I take from wiki, and y’all know to check the sources and stuff:
2 Principles of Catholic Social Teaching 2.1 Human Dignity 2.2 Solidarity 2.3 Caritas 2.4 Subsidiarity 2.5 Distributism
This “social teaching” sounds to me like a pacifist version of “liberation theology”, I was reading stuff last night saying it’s sorta the same, but not, which they kinda have to say since the “liberation theology” was all gun-happy and stuff. Which, really I’m not buying the name change, because it screws up the awesome acronym that I made up…
oh here, i just found this: On the “Catholic Social Teaching” wiki page, the section for “Preferential Option for the poor” (“and vulnerable” according to the url) links to the “main article” for the topic Option for the poor:
That’s what I mean, not a day, an hour, a click goes by without yet MORE evidence…. it’s religion…
I’d say the MAJORITY of feminists today use the “dignity” and “vulnerable” argument ONLY when they want to argue against prostitution (and immodest sexual displays of all types). It’s so much about feminism too, not just radical, and not all radical is this christian type of radical… it’s as diverse as women are… and it comes down to the basics of religion, ideas of monogamous love, worshipful sex, dignity, ‘sanctity’ … it’s combined with “social justice” and Marx, the church basically stole it from him, but then again Marx was the son of a convert from Judeaism to Lutheranism, so he was already working from within a heavy Judeo-Christian frame. Everybody was working with religious framework for thousands of years – it was most of what they taught you if you went to school – it was only recently that “public” schools started teaching secular subjects secularly – was the Scopes? that was the biggie… . I dunno, I’m irreligious pretty much through and through.
and here’s a bit of calvinism stuff, now there is “New” Calvinism, and the old calvinism, there’s this, five points of calvinism except there might be six?:
3.2 Five points of Calvinism
3.2.1 Total depravity
3.2.2 Unconditional election
3.2.3 Limited atonement
3.2.4 Irresistible grace
3.2.5 Perseverance of the saints
3.2.6 Nature of the atonement
and you can find of the old Calvinism in the New York Times archives from the years leading up to women getting the vote, searching “feminism” turns up lots of stuff anti-feminism back then, or try searching “baby crop” if you wanna be squicked out… but here’s a bit from wiki on the New:
And that whole “new” stuff, it’s really great I guess, teaching liberal thoughts, love thy neighbor – but along with it comes the same old attitudes, and there are a crapload, I mean millions of young people who consider themselves “feminists” because they don’t cotton to the idea of women being “victimized” and yep, they are working from “feminist” theories advanced by “religious” feminists. Again, most of my focus is on prostitution and sexuality, so when I see Raymond, Jeffreys, MacKinnon, and so many more on syllabus after syllabus, and recommended on blog after blog – I know those women, I’ve read ALL about them, and I know the backgrounds they come from, and it’s that same old religion. Brainwashing, don’tcha know, you never fully overcome it.
There are tons and tons and tons of “pro-choice christian feminists” out there, and they are the ones who impose the moral values about prostitution, polyamory etc. and according to much of the “feminist” textbooks, they are totally feminists because they support abortion rights, and want women to have a “chance at dignity”, and believe that most men – if left to thier own devices – will degenerate into rapists and prostitute users (that entire “end the demand” thing: it’s religion, supported by way too many “feminists” and way too many of them call themselves “radical”)
Clearly – my parents didn’t raise me right, because they never taught me religion.
But, my boobs looked good, which surprised me, and my neck was particularly emotive,
I thought that when you assertively declared that the Godmother of radical feminism has died that your breasts were not suppose to be part of the post…
I’ll read the Calvininst stuff later… to much overtime…