I’m fascinated by the complete SILENCE about the concept of luxury beliefs (and about class prejudice in general) among prosperous progressives. It’s not as if they have a ready answer or a glib dismissal; they pretend as if these ideas simply don’t exist. They never discuss or acknowledge them.
'Low-status men have historically been treated as expendable by governments and monarchs, and the broad working class could not aspire to a comfortable life.'
There are no 'men'. Universalizing 'men' creates a set of illusions about about the 'sameness' if the status of 'men' in different race-ethnic-cultures.
For example, in Britain, 'low status' was situational. The 'laird' was always vulnerable to sabotage and violence and the development of 'the rights of Englishmen' is a testament to the way in which the violence against the ruling class (of White males) resulted in every British male a participant in 'rights'.
I think it's fair to say that the (male) ruling class of every race-ethnic-culture state wages war on the those over whom they rule. But *some* of them never arrive at the capacity to 'low status' all other males.
I've just finished Hermione Lee's huge biography of Virginia Woolf, which obviously talks a lot about her feminism and the way she (and others) really believed that the broader social problems she (and others) identified were inseparable from women's second-class status. The difficulty for the feminism of this time was that *it really was true* that women were deprived of opportunities *for no other reason* than that they were female. So it made a certain kind of sense to link this *real discrimination* -- much of which was motivated by genuine misogyny, one so default among elites that honestly I think we moderns cannot even truthfully imagine what it felt like, because it has basically disappeared (I don't mean personally, I mean institutionally) -- to the broader social ills they identified.
Because VW was not wrong about the exclusion of women from almost all elite institutions, she had no way to even conceptualize the idea that finally admitting women to those institutions *would not actually make one shred of difference* to the broader problems that interested her political cadre. She couldn't know what she couldn't know, I guess is my point. I think it's easy to take our advantageous hindsight for granted, and to forget that severals things can be true at the same time, namely, in this case: 1) it's great that women aren't categorically discriminated against in institutions/professions; 2) institutional feminization has trade-offs; and, 3) the social utopia that has obsessed the elites who dropped God in favor of Progress is not just the next "liberation" movement away.
Extremely well put, and I ought to revisit Woolf. It’s that she and elite women like her capable of reasoning perhaps didn’t contend with the fact that many, if not most women, are uninterested in the abstract, which plenty of studies since have shown. It’s why there are few in the technical professions, for example. They want the prestige of high status careers requiring credentials but don’t want to actually do the truly difficult jobs that require analytical ability, because analytical ability is not equally distributed among women. And instead of accepting that, they actively suppress analytical ability in women by punishing it socially. That has never been dealt with.
I’m going to restate a question which I think I’ve raised with you before. When you say feminism is responsible for feminisation (and I don’t dispute that our culture is being crushed by feminisation), which feminism do you mean? Because I don’t agree that radical feminism is doing that. It may well be that PoMo-derived liberal feminism is doing it. Although my personal vibe is that it’s not even so much the academic libfems who are driving this, as opposed to populist “slop” hall monitors with a 3rd hand take on libfem and little to no awareness of the existence, even, of radfem.
I guess I’ll follow your link now to see what you mean by the comment.
For me, there is no separate feminism to be located. The earliest wave actually came from the Protestant Reformation, and its successor was the Enlightenment-era argument that women have rational faculties equivalent to men's. Then there was the demand for suffrage, which drew on the promises of liberal democracy that 'feminism' of later decades took credit for. Radical feminism is inseparable from the rise of academic feminism, which later gave rise to managerial feminism, as we see in our social spaces today. I reject all of it. I don't think most women are interested enough in abstract ideas to actually understand their responsibility to a democratic society. I also think that access to credit was a mechanism for the destruction of wealth for single women, and especially for families. I think that while most women probably think they're fine, democratic citizens, their habits of mind reveal otherwise.
A very credible viewpoint. So what do you make of the conflict between the radfems and the libfems - the latter being closest to the managerial feminists. Accepting that you reject all of it, whole cloth, are the intra-feminist wars false consciousness, or meaningless, or? Would you include the famous “sex wars” / “porn wars” in this? The current “trans wars”?
I think they are fighting internecine battles that are orthogonal to the problems that should be discussed. That said, I will give radfems that they at least stuck their grievances to observable reality, that is, sex differences. I definitely want sex-segregated public facilities because I've seen in India, for example, what danger women face if they don't have separate spaces. The sex and porn wars are actually related to earlier feminist claims that women are the superior guardians of social morality, during which time (early twentieth century) feminist campaigners argued that men are degenerates and women's morals should govern us. The porn wars, for example, refuse to acknowledge human nature. Men will always be consumers of beauty, so you can't ban porn.
Your work is hard to read, and I say this as a compliment, because every sentence is packed full of complex and novel ideas. It needs to be read slowly, one sentence at a time.
I feel the same, and found this particular post ever more so. I do think it could be watered just a bit, if only for flow and absorption. While the message is potent throughout… it’s as though you’re anticipating debate. There’s a harshness, it’s compact and can become inaccessible. I stick it out. And glad that I do. But can’t help but offer that a slight dialing back, you know, for these spongy female brains, would open it up ten fold.
hm, that is fair. I will think about how to do that. Truthfully, I don't see it unless people point it out, so thank you. I'm purposely trying NOT to talk down to the reader but I can see how it ends up opaque as a result.
Living honestly, as you’ve noted, and authentically… is not in accordance with meritocracy. But behaving in compliance to the hand that feeds, often is.
I don’t think you should dumb yourself down. That wasn’t what my original comment was aiming at. Just that there is so much inside of each sentence compounded by each word… that perhaps this is a concentrated serum for what’s to come.
Finally… if someone is pushing back they might not be able to at that time. Denial is a fairly solid survival tool. Medicine that can be taken for too long. Before you know it you’re in your 40’s without a map. Which is what I’m getting at. You’re mapping territory that was never included (the map is not the territory so to speak).
I’ll stay tuned, but as you know, it’s heavy lifting. Aside - I've paid an enormous price. I don't know that I am in a place yet, even 4 years in, where I would recommend it. It depends.... I need to sit with this a little longer. Maybe I'll come back. Thanks again for putting yourself and your ideas out there.
I didn't read it as a request to dumb myself down at all, and I get what you mean about each sentence being compressed. That comes from having lived inside this stuff for years, so I'm kind of not even aware it's so compressed that it overwhelms the reader. For whatever it is worth, I will take this feedback to heart and try to write a little differently. I'm not sure how yet, but I'll work on it. Thank you for being willing to sit with it, because I know I ask a lot of the reader.
It’s that there are certain sentences that are loaded, word for word. It does seem written for either a man (perhaps the writers you’re critiquing) or … I mean, you’re right, it will appeal only to specific women. And this may very well be your lane. I don’t mean to assume, but I do assume you aren’t interested in addressing the audiences containing those actually paying the price for the insights you’re drawing together. There’s a lot more handholding, tears and resistance and a lot less nods of affirmation and potential book deals. That said, I would hope some of it has a trickle down effect in the best of ways. There’s a lot in here “worth noting”. Now if you’ll excuse me while I go grieve many of my past choices…(!)
The problem is that the people paying the price need to accept that they're paying one at all, and they're motivated not to confront that because of the sunk cost fallacy. I've also found that no matter what I say to such people, the message is so confrontational that they don't want to hear it, not to mention that those women are the ones most likely to attack me personally for saying the unsayable. So I find myself in a bind, because I remember well behaving exactly like that when a man said something that forced self-confrontation. I was just more predisposed, in general, since childhood, not to reject something I was repeatedly taught by life.
I’m fascinated by the complete SILENCE about the concept of luxury beliefs (and about class prejudice in general) among prosperous progressives. It’s not as if they have a ready answer or a glib dismissal; they pretend as if these ideas simply don’t exist. They never discuss or acknowledge them.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/our-ruling-class
'Low-status men have historically been treated as expendable by governments and monarchs, and the broad working class could not aspire to a comfortable life.'
There are no 'men'. Universalizing 'men' creates a set of illusions about about the 'sameness' if the status of 'men' in different race-ethnic-cultures.
For example, in Britain, 'low status' was situational. The 'laird' was always vulnerable to sabotage and violence and the development of 'the rights of Englishmen' is a testament to the way in which the violence against the ruling class (of White males) resulted in every British male a participant in 'rights'.
I think it's fair to say that the (male) ruling class of every race-ethnic-culture state wages war on the those over whom they rule. But *some* of them never arrive at the capacity to 'low status' all other males.
Attributing things to, ahem, certain demographics cause, ahem, certain people to automatically tune out.
Intelligent people can do the math themselves and solve for X.
not following your implication
It's safer to just refer to "certain demographics" than call out women as such. Most people know whom you are referring to.
It is, but that’s never been how I function which I’m sure you’ve noticed
I've just finished Hermione Lee's huge biography of Virginia Woolf, which obviously talks a lot about her feminism and the way she (and others) really believed that the broader social problems she (and others) identified were inseparable from women's second-class status. The difficulty for the feminism of this time was that *it really was true* that women were deprived of opportunities *for no other reason* than that they were female. So it made a certain kind of sense to link this *real discrimination* -- much of which was motivated by genuine misogyny, one so default among elites that honestly I think we moderns cannot even truthfully imagine what it felt like, because it has basically disappeared (I don't mean personally, I mean institutionally) -- to the broader social ills they identified.
Because VW was not wrong about the exclusion of women from almost all elite institutions, she had no way to even conceptualize the idea that finally admitting women to those institutions *would not actually make one shred of difference* to the broader problems that interested her political cadre. She couldn't know what she couldn't know, I guess is my point. I think it's easy to take our advantageous hindsight for granted, and to forget that severals things can be true at the same time, namely, in this case: 1) it's great that women aren't categorically discriminated against in institutions/professions; 2) institutional feminization has trade-offs; and, 3) the social utopia that has obsessed the elites who dropped God in favor of Progress is not just the next "liberation" movement away.
Extremely well put, and I ought to revisit Woolf. It’s that she and elite women like her capable of reasoning perhaps didn’t contend with the fact that many, if not most women, are uninterested in the abstract, which plenty of studies since have shown. It’s why there are few in the technical professions, for example. They want the prestige of high status careers requiring credentials but don’t want to actually do the truly difficult jobs that require analytical ability, because analytical ability is not equally distributed among women. And instead of accepting that, they actively suppress analytical ability in women by punishing it socially. That has never been dealt with.
I’m going to restate a question which I think I’ve raised with you before. When you say feminism is responsible for feminisation (and I don’t dispute that our culture is being crushed by feminisation), which feminism do you mean? Because I don’t agree that radical feminism is doing that. It may well be that PoMo-derived liberal feminism is doing it. Although my personal vibe is that it’s not even so much the academic libfems who are driving this, as opposed to populist “slop” hall monitors with a 3rd hand take on libfem and little to no awareness of the existence, even, of radfem.
I guess I’ll follow your link now to see what you mean by the comment.
> feminist theory is the intellectual fountainhead of what we call woke beliefs, [and] that elite leftist culture has feminized institutions,
Ah ok I thought you were causally chaining these two statements together. Maybe you’re not, and they are independent claims?
For me, there is no separate feminism to be located. The earliest wave actually came from the Protestant Reformation, and its successor was the Enlightenment-era argument that women have rational faculties equivalent to men's. Then there was the demand for suffrage, which drew on the promises of liberal democracy that 'feminism' of later decades took credit for. Radical feminism is inseparable from the rise of academic feminism, which later gave rise to managerial feminism, as we see in our social spaces today. I reject all of it. I don't think most women are interested enough in abstract ideas to actually understand their responsibility to a democratic society. I also think that access to credit was a mechanism for the destruction of wealth for single women, and especially for families. I think that while most women probably think they're fine, democratic citizens, their habits of mind reveal otherwise.
A very credible viewpoint. So what do you make of the conflict between the radfems and the libfems - the latter being closest to the managerial feminists. Accepting that you reject all of it, whole cloth, are the intra-feminist wars false consciousness, or meaningless, or? Would you include the famous “sex wars” / “porn wars” in this? The current “trans wars”?
I think they are fighting internecine battles that are orthogonal to the problems that should be discussed. That said, I will give radfems that they at least stuck their grievances to observable reality, that is, sex differences. I definitely want sex-segregated public facilities because I've seen in India, for example, what danger women face if they don't have separate spaces. The sex and porn wars are actually related to earlier feminist claims that women are the superior guardians of social morality, during which time (early twentieth century) feminist campaigners argued that men are degenerates and women's morals should govern us. The porn wars, for example, refuse to acknowledge human nature. Men will always be consumers of beauty, so you can't ban porn.
Thank you, very cogent reply.
Your work is hard to read, and I say this as a compliment, because every sentence is packed full of complex and novel ideas. It needs to be read slowly, one sentence at a time.
I feel the same, and found this particular post ever more so. I do think it could be watered just a bit, if only for flow and absorption. While the message is potent throughout… it’s as though you’re anticipating debate. There’s a harshness, it’s compact and can become inaccessible. I stick it out. And glad that I do. But can’t help but offer that a slight dialing back, you know, for these spongy female brains, would open it up ten fold.
hm, that is fair. I will think about how to do that. Truthfully, I don't see it unless people point it out, so thank you. I'm purposely trying NOT to talk down to the reader but I can see how it ends up opaque as a result.
Living honestly, as you’ve noted, and authentically… is not in accordance with meritocracy. But behaving in compliance to the hand that feeds, often is.
I don’t think you should dumb yourself down. That wasn’t what my original comment was aiming at. Just that there is so much inside of each sentence compounded by each word… that perhaps this is a concentrated serum for what’s to come.
Finally… if someone is pushing back they might not be able to at that time. Denial is a fairly solid survival tool. Medicine that can be taken for too long. Before you know it you’re in your 40’s without a map. Which is what I’m getting at. You’re mapping territory that was never included (the map is not the territory so to speak).
I’ll stay tuned, but as you know, it’s heavy lifting. Aside - I've paid an enormous price. I don't know that I am in a place yet, even 4 years in, where I would recommend it. It depends.... I need to sit with this a little longer. Maybe I'll come back. Thanks again for putting yourself and your ideas out there.
I didn't read it as a request to dumb myself down at all, and I get what you mean about each sentence being compressed. That comes from having lived inside this stuff for years, so I'm kind of not even aware it's so compressed that it overwhelms the reader. For whatever it is worth, I will take this feedback to heart and try to write a little differently. I'm not sure how yet, but I'll work on it. Thank you for being willing to sit with it, because I know I ask a lot of the reader.
It’s that there are certain sentences that are loaded, word for word. It does seem written for either a man (perhaps the writers you’re critiquing) or … I mean, you’re right, it will appeal only to specific women. And this may very well be your lane. I don’t mean to assume, but I do assume you aren’t interested in addressing the audiences containing those actually paying the price for the insights you’re drawing together. There’s a lot more handholding, tears and resistance and a lot less nods of affirmation and potential book deals. That said, I would hope some of it has a trickle down effect in the best of ways. There’s a lot in here “worth noting”. Now if you’ll excuse me while I go grieve many of my past choices…(!)
The problem is that the people paying the price need to accept that they're paying one at all, and they're motivated not to confront that because of the sunk cost fallacy. I've also found that no matter what I say to such people, the message is so confrontational that they don't want to hear it, not to mention that those women are the ones most likely to attack me personally for saying the unsayable. So I find myself in a bind, because I remember well behaving exactly like that when a man said something that forced self-confrontation. I was just more predisposed, in general, since childhood, not to reject something I was repeatedly taught by life.
And after doing the work of unpacking it I agree with 95% of what you say, by the way.