Needed: A coalition of feminists and conservative Christians

Paidiske

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Is it that incels are misogynistic because of their resentment, or that incels are resentful because of their underlying misogyny...? Would they really be so resentful if they completely accepted a woman's rejection of their advances, or lack of interest?

Either way I don't have answers, but I keep looking at that attitude of entitlement with deep suspicion.
 
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St. Helens

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It's a vicious circle. It's hard to tell where it begins or ends. It feeds on itself. The bottom line is that the focus is on sex and the sense of entitlement. If the person brought his focus outside himself, there wouldn't be the issue.
 
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Silmarien

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I think, too - thinking both about Silmarien's excellent post and the reading I've been doing on the sex industry - there are some other, underlying issues and assumptions which play into both. For example, somehow along the way as we tried to build a healthier culture around sex (as an activity, not an identity), we seem to have created the cultural assumption that everyone is entitled to sex, on their terms.

But while I think we all have a right to be free from sexual exploitation or violence, I don't think we have a right to expect as much sex as we want, the way we want, within the relationship that we want. All of that is negotiated, and the reality is that for many people those negotiations won't be "successful." This was true even when the cultural expectation was that sex was for marriage; there were always some who didn't find the right person or for whom that didn't work out.

And I don't know how we re-wind that assumption without coming across as either anti-sex or heavily controlling; and yet I think that assumption of entitlement is doing an awful lot of damage.

Yeah, I think the sex industry in general is a very big problem, especially considering the way that it trickles down into the normal entertainment industry, leading to television producers always pushing the envelope and including gratuitous nudity. The Emilia Clarke story, where she felt pressured into shooting sex scenes in Game of Thrones and took years to finally feel established and assertive enough to refuse, is really troubling. (Especially considering that I've actually seen feminists refer to some of the nudity involving her character as "empowering"--that was before the full story came out, but even so, no matter how empowering you want to consider a specific instance of female nudity, the whole internet is just going to sexualize it.)

The sex industry really troubles me, since it's a very disturbing blind spot for left-wing folk who are otherwise very aware of economic pressures, power imbalances in the workplace, and commodification. In any other context, we would challenge the idea that those in an economically subordinate position are truly free from coercion, but in this context, where being free from coercion is absolutely crucial, it seems that anything goes. Though the left's attitude towards sex is rather contradictory in the first place--I think in the post #MeToo era, there is a lot of concern over consent and recognition that you aren't entitled to sex, but the whole culture is still pushing it as something you should be doing as often as possible if you want to be "liberated," and those two ideas don't go together all that well.
 
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archer75

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In my admittedly very limited contact with incels my first thoughts were " Gee, I can't blame women for rejecting you."
It sounds to me like the offending "incels" have identified completely with the anguish of rejection (known to many) and then around that whole-body anguish construct an elaborate mask-identity that claims that the initial anguish should never have existed. It's a kind of self-erasure, a sustainable suicide fantasy. All I am is Rejection, but Rejection should not be. It's very painful to see.

It is another kind of identity politics, I suppose. This one feature of me is WHO I AM.
 
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Silmarien

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Paidiske

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Thanks, that's really interesting. Partly because I'd listened to some of the commentary from Benioff and Weiss in which they discussed their attempts to make sure such scenes were done in a way which was "respectful" to the actresses concerned. Clearly there was a big disconnect there somewhere...

I became interested in Game of Thrones as a story after it was already really big, after I'd listened to G.R.R. Martin talking about how he personally is a deeply committed pacifist, and wanted to write in a way that was honest about the horrors of that kind of society (rather than so much fantasy writing which kind of airbrushes the violence and abuse). But there's something deeply ironic about him trying to write in a way which shared his revulsion, and yet it becoming wildly popular mass entertainment.
 
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archer75

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Martin is an interesting case. The guy has written very popular stories, he speaks well and engagingly without being ingratiating. He seems sane, pretty humble, expresses various ideas, a good number of which I generally agree with (so he must be sane, right)?

That said...I can't shake the feeling that Martin also suffers from some kind of severe emotional disorder that he covers well in his personal presentation but that is quite visible in his fiction. There is just too much gratuitous horror. The way the Unsullied are "manufactured" is insane. I won't go into detail, but it's completely nuts. There's what happens to Theon. There's the Red Wedding. I'm sure I've forgotten a lot. Rape (of women) is certainly recognized as something that happens in the world, but the most gratuitous horrific violence is aimed at men. And I get the impression the author feels somehow compelled to get that stuff in.

I hear this is seen a lot in depressed people, when their anger towards others, unexpressed, is turned inward. Not a psychologist here, for the record. But it almost sounds to me like Martin could have some of the same resentments and anxieties that we see in the public faces of the incels...but he turns that anger against men in his fiction and has a "feminist" personality.

This isn't to say that Martin is bad or his fiction is not okay or that armchair psychology has all the answers, but...I don't know. To me, this is a reminder of the following:

Just about everyone has problems (problems=emotional problems). Personal trauma, family trauma, trauma inflicted on you because of your sex or place in the world or whatever other feature you have. There are different things you can do with that pain. Some men who have poor experiences with women identify completely with that pain and become "incels." Some hide it with a super-feminist outlook and direct their anger towards their own sex, deliberately barking up the wrong tree. Some handle it more consciously, recognizing that not everyone is responsible for their poor experiences. And I'm sure there are many other ways, and a large set of possible responses to every textbook example of trauma (even if some responses occur more often than others).

How is this on-topic? In public discourse in the anglophone world (probably elsewhere) there is a tremendous amount of fakery: extended arguments for or against this or that thing, arguments you don't really believe yourself, but that you need in order to hide your real anxieties.

The classic example was the moral or religious arguments "against" homosexuality when those arguments were advanced by someone who was attracted to the same sex and couldn't admit it (this does not mean that anyone who advances such arguments is in fact attracted to their own sex, only that with some people, it's obvious that this is the case). But even now, in the middle of culture war 2.0, there is plenty of this going on. Many who subscribe to the most totalitarian version of "privilege theory," who fall all over themselves trying to confess their privilege (from being a certain race or sex), are clearly anxious about something else: social class and money. They can't bring themselves to say that poor people are in a very bad position, that there is no meritocracy, and that they themselves in their privileged jobs are little more than paper-pushers. The whole twisting of oneself into a pretzel is, for many participants, nothing but an extended exercise in self-distraction: I don't deserve what I have, so I will pretend to be focused on why someone else doesn't deserve not to have what I have.

So if there's to be an alliance, a lasting alliance, I don't think it can work unless the groups in question can be honest at least about those purposes for which they're going to be allied. Each little social clique is pretty carefully tailored these days for a specific set of anxieties and a specific set of distractions from them. People can make common cause for a time (as here), but unless their common enemy really lasts a lifetime, I don't see it lasting.

I can't believe this thread was started last August.
 
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Paidiske

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Thanks, archer, thoughtful and insightful as always. :)

Kind of touches on some other discussions I've been having over the past few days; one thing I'm noticing (here in Australia, at least; I'm not sure how this is playing out in America) is the desire to find someone to scapegoat for the pandemic. It seems to me that a lot of this is really about people's anxieties that this is something that can't entirely be controlled (and that might, therefore, end up severely affecting them); but because we can't admit that, instead we'll lash out at someone whom we'll load up with all the blame... Currently where I am it's being directed at a few poor souls who happen to have had the bad luck to unwittingly spread the infection (admittedly probably involving some unwise choices), but I'm a bit concerned because once that kind of blame game is going on it never ends well.

But more to your point, yes, in the end, feminism and conservatism have incompatible concerns driving them. Feminists are looking for change, and by definition, conservatives aren't (unless that change is a return to an idealised past). So I agree that lasting alliance is probably deeply unlikely.
 
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archer75

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Kind of touches on some other discussions I've been having over the past few days; one thing I'm noticing (here in Australia, at least; I'm not sure how this is playing out in America) is the desire to find someone to scapegoat for the pandemic. It seems to me that a lot of this is really about people's anxieties that this is something that can't entirely be controlled (and that might, therefore, end up severely affecting them); but because we can't admit that, instead we'll lash out at someone whom we'll load up with all the blame... Currently where I am it's being directed at a few poor souls who happen to have had the bad luck to unwittingly spread the infection (admittedly probably involving some unwise choices), but I'm a bit concerned because once that kind of blame game is going on it never ends well.

But more to your point, yes, in the end, feminism and conservatism have incompatible concerns driving them. Feminists are looking for change, and by definition, conservatives aren't (unless that change is a return to an idealised past). So I agree that lasting alliance is probably deeply unlikely.
Over here, it seems everything is scapegoating, and everyone's goal is to end up NOT being the scapegoat. Which I guess is always how scapegoating works...

Re: alliances, I do more or less think what I said, but there's also the notion of a great realignment taking place right now and that the former cliques are being shaken into new ones. In which case, who knows, we might see a lasting alliance between former feminists and conservatives. Frankly, I don't hope for it, because what they would be making common cause against really frightens me...

It was an old post of yours, I think, that pushed me to read about Florence Li Tim-Oi, the first woman ordained to the presbyterate in the Anglican Communion. I think you said something about how she was hardly liberal in her attitudes (other than accepting the idea of women being ordained to the priesthood). It was helpful for me to have that said explicitly...it's so easy to imagine that the political / social / theological pies can only be cut in this one familiar way, but it's just not true.

So, maybe there can be an alliance?..but not in the cultural matrix in which these groups have been accustomed to existing...
 
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Paidiske

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Frankly, I don't hope for it, because what they would be making common cause against really frightens me...

Good point!

it's so easy to imagine that the political / social / theological pies can only be just in this one familiar way, but it's just not true.

Yes. And I must say, as an Australian on an American-dominated forum, the way Americans think about those pies is often a bit weird to me. It helps to remember that the world is always bigger than our own little bubbles!
 
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bekkilyn

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Came across this article today:

Why did trans women lead the Women’s March?

Part of the introductory paragraph:

"If the ‘transracial’ Rachel Dolezal were to give a keynote speech at a Black Lives Matter event there would rightly be an outcry. And yet this year the ‘Women’s March’ in London was fronted by someone who has identified as a woman for less time than I’ve had the shoes I’m wearing. Munroe Bergdorf is a transgender model who was chosen to speak by the London chapter of the global Women’s March. In a baffling address Bergdorf offered insights into Brexit, austerity and womanhood. The crowd cheered as Bergdorf explained that laws preventing brothel-keeping were bad for women and that the British media is transphobic."

An interesting quote from the article:

"But anyone with the smallest understanding of feminism knows that trans women are male, and their interests are different from those of women. As a rape survivor, and as someone who has worked in the women’s sector for years, I want someone on that stage who will support the right of women like me to have space away from men, regardless of how they identify. In their efforts to be inclusive organisers, they are excluding women who do not toe the current politically correct line. The “Women’s March” is a misnomer, it isn’t for women like me.’"

Sounds like this women's march has been co-opted to push harder on the idea that brothels are "empowering" for women, among other things.
 
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Silmarien

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@bekkilyn: I've been following some of the more conservative transwoman voices: Blaire White, of course, and another one who I think is very interesting is Kristina Harrison, a British National Health Service employee who was apparently banned from Twitter for tweeting that "sex and gender are not the same thing." I'm noticing that whoever is behind this firestorm is all-in on silencing transpeople too if they step out of line. Only voices that are sufficiently "inclusive," which appears to mean committed to a very specific ideology, are permitted. Which I have to admit is basically the modus operandi of the left in general, unfortunately.

I think it's important to note that the fact that there are transwomen championing inappropriate content and prostitution does not necessarily mean that the interests of transwomen are in opposition to the interests of biological women--it seems to be in line with the conflict within feminism itself between the pro-inappropriate content feminists and the anti-inappropriate content feminists. I really suspect that there's a link between the claim that biological sex is irrelevant and the claim that inappropriate contentography and prostitution are empowering, since both buy into the idea that the female body itself is unrelated to the oppression of women. Still, I'm not convinced that this in and of itself means that transwomen's interests are more similar to men's interests than to women's interests. Just that a lot of them, like a lot of feminists in general, are buying into ideas that are ultimately really harmful to women. (I would say "patriarchal" ideas, but I'm not sure that the push to devalue the body has much to do with patriarchy, except insofar as the otherworldly rejection of bodily reality has always been more of a masculine thing.)

It is disturbing to see that letting transwomen represent women at the head of major feminist events is what it means to be "inclusive," but I think the underlying problem is probably something a lot deeper than the "transgender question" itself. I think it's more about the larger war that's been waging within feminism itself, and the transwomen who have voices are championing stuff like prostitution because that's the side of feminism that has won in general, and it's canceled everyone else, transgender and "cis"-gender alike. I'd be careful getting too reactionary against transgender people themselves, though, since a number of them really are our allies. They are just the ones getting banned everywhere.

Long live progressivism, I suppose. (This sort of totalitarian craziness is why I haven't identified as a progressive for a while, though I think I'm going to drop "leftist" now as well since the SJW horde seems to be more a symptom than the disease. I think I'm going to go with "liberal distributist" now, or possibly even try to self-declare into moderate conservatism to really confuse people. I can feel like a conservative and still vote Democrat, right? ^_^)
 
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bekkilyn

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@bekkilyn: I've been following some of the more conservative transwoman voices: Blaire White, of course, and another one who I think is very interesting is Kristina Harrison, a British National Health Service employee who was apparently banned from Twitter for tweeting that "sex and gender are not the same thing." I'm noticing that whoever is behind this firestorm is all-in on silencing transpeople too if they step out of line. Only voices that are sufficiently "inclusive," which appears to mean committed to a very specific ideology, are permitted. Which I have to admit is basically the modus operandi of the left in general, unfortunately.

I think it's important to note that the fact that there are transwomen championing inappropriate content and prostitution does not necessarily mean that the interests of transwomen are in opposition to the interests of biological women--it seems to be in line with the conflict within feminism itself between the pro-inappropriate content feminists and the anti-inappropriate content feminists. I really suspect that there's a link between the claim that biological sex is irrelevant and the claim that inappropriate contentography and prostitution are empowering, since both buy into the idea that the female body itself is unrelated to the oppression of women. Still, I'm not convinced that this in and of itself means that transwomen's interests are more similar to men's interests than to women's interests. Just that a lot of them, like a lot of feminists in general, are buying into ideas that are ultimately really harmful to women. (I would say "patriarchal" ideas, but I'm not sure that the push to devalue the body has much to do with patriarchy, except insofar as the otherworldly rejection of bodily reality has always been more of a masculine thing.)

It is disturbing to see that letting transwomen represent women at the head of major feminist events is what it means to be "inclusive," but I think the underlying problem is probably something a lot deeper than the "transgender question" itself. I think it's more about the larger war that's been waging within feminism itself, and the transwomen who have voices are championing stuff like prostitution because that's the side of feminism that has won in general, and it's canceled everyone else, transgender and "cis"-gender alike. I'd be careful getting too reactionary against transgender people themselves, though, since a number of them really are our allies. They are just the ones getting banned everywhere.

Long live progressivism, I suppose. (This sort of totalitarian craziness is why I haven't identified as a progressive for a while, though I think I'm going to drop "leftist" now as well since the SJW horde seems to be more a symptom than the disease. I think I'm going to go with "liberal distributist" now, or possibly even try to self-declare into moderate conservatism to really confuse people. I can feel like a conservative and still vote Democrat, right? ^_^)

I'm right there with you on what you've said. I've noticed, especially in the last couple of days, how a lot of transwomen have been cancelled right along with females for not toeing the line. My conflict is definitely with TRA ideology and not with transpeople in general. TRA ideology is at the point now where I believe that it is also harmful to transpeople and to their human rights and needs. Kind of like when I go on rants about aspects of conservatism, it's not about the people who are conservatives (with the possible exception of when we're discussing political or other popular figures) but with the ideaology.

I think trans people probably have their own interests rather than having men's interests or women's interests (and trans men different from trans women). They have their own unique needs, just like men have their own unique needs and women have our own unique needs. I think we need to both honor and celebrate these differences (though not in an oppressive stereotypical way) and not continue the push for people to conform to harmful stereotypes and to pretend that there are 97,000 different genders.

If we go the "gender" route, then I would have to argue that there are as many genders as there are living people, since each person is very unique creation in the image of God, and no two people are alike, but that still doesn't negate the biological reality of sex or for the need for female safe spaces that are not inclusive of "male-bodied" people.

The problem with allowing transwomen to represent women is that they simply cannot legitimately do it. They don't have the biology or the lived experience of women, and their issues are different than the issues women have. And technically they are still male, so what does it say for diversity when, for example, a company hires 50% men and 50% who self ID as transwomen and then claim to be "gender diverse" and has the law on their side because it's changed from sex to gender?

Of course, the issue for conservatives on the conservative side nowadays is that if you don't toe the Trump line, then you're not really conservative.

I think there are more and more people every day who are basically politically homeless whether they originated more from the right or from the left. :)
 
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bekkilyn

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So there was a letter that came out yesterday (I think) that was signed by a bunch of people with varying viewpoints concerning free speech and the current and growing "cancel culture" of the political left. And apparently it was met with a whole lot of vitriol. Not so much for the content of the letter, but because they were angry that some people they liked signed their name to the same letter that people they didn't like also signed.

Here is a link to an article I just read about it (that includes a link to the original letter). This is how bad it's gotten on the left. (Many of us already experience how bad it's gotten on the right.)

The Reaction to the Harper's Letter on Cancel Culture Proves Why It Was Necessary

I think we're going to eventually need a coalition not only between feminists and conservative Christians, but also anyone else who is sane in order to protect both freedom of speech and basic human rights. I realize a lot of this stuff is happening on the internet, but the fact that people are losing their jobs and getting harassed in "real life" simply for expressing an opinion is just dangerous.

There are some opinions I've seen here on CF that I find to be truly horrific, but I would never go seek out any of the people behind them and try to ruin their lives and make them miserable no matter how strongly I disagree with their views. That's just terrible! I really don't even comprehend it.
 
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