- Joined
- Oct 27, 2021
Could you lead me through your connection from cringe crappy books to feminists? I think I know where you're going, but before I reply I'd rather understand exactly.
I am disappoint. I thought we clarified that that is not the case at all. Recognition of humanity and related political and legal rights is not predicated on "there are no biological differences between the sexes." Key concepts: 1) biological differences do not make a case for a hierarchy, including and especially basic human and citizen rights, 2) "biological differences" matters for some things and not for others. Men don't need a gynecologist or a nursing bra, for example (despite current-day insanity that we all chuckle at and/or get outraged by on KF), and 3) notallwomen #notallmen: some women will be better shotputters than some men, and some men will be better crocheters than some women.
That humans have failed to hit the right policy notes (or to operationalize policy in rational, successful goal-based ways) every time does not mean it is impossible or that the underlying effort is unworthy.
Separatism meaning exactly what? Literal separatism, opting as women to move away from society and have no interaction with men whatsoever, to the furthest extent possible? Or is the concept something less stark?
Personally, the stark version doesn't resonate with me. That said, I'm not too familiar with the theory or intended practical aspects of it, so am curious to learn.
Without knowing the theory/"plan" in some detail, my reaction is that I can't conceive of it as a broad movement, either from a positive effect standpoint or from a practical one. I can certainly see individuals making that decision if they want to or it is how they want to live, for both their own personal and political reasons.
Intellectually, she has a shallow and literalist understanding of Rousseau. She also seems a bit traumatized by becoming a mother. She makes a fundamental intellectual error of conflating the ability to be a fully capable agent in your life with the rejection of a distinctly female existence, and it all seems like an opportunistic effort.
That said, because I try too hard to find merit everywhere, I was initially interested in a couple of incidental points she has made, though on review I decided that they were made primarily in service of poor conclusions.
And she is ass-backward on things like birth control.
God, she needs a Tl; dr.
OK. As I said, she contributed a lot to thought. But her views of all hetero sex as coercive and degrading, and that penetration dooms women to inferiority (note: for (my) convenience I^ loosely paraphrased Cathy Young (ugh, I get it) in her rather mean-spirited bitch about the glowing post-death notices about Dworkin, but if you read Intercourse, the characterization isn't wrong - "Intercourse is the pure, sterile, formal expression of men's contempt for women," is only reasonable for broad adoption as a highly abstract, extrapolated notion). If you really liked what she has to say, in the sense of effecting it in real life, you wouldn't be living the hetero marriage/childbearing the life you live. ...and that is not a critique of you/your life! My point was and is that Dworkin is important for her intellectual philosophical challenge of the status quo/deeply embedded assumptions and dynamics, but it's a matter of pushing the edge to move the needle, not literal adoption on a broad scale (individuals absolutely could and do believe and live it...though not even she did).
