are you all speechless at my smartitude?
OK, i'm out and I'm proud! Scratch a dunderhead and you get .. some more of the same!
Sparkly bits that distracted me Part ONe.
Etin: "Robert Wright makes the point that EP supports Dworkin and Mckinnon's argument that the experience [of sexual harrassment] is different for the two sexes and its EP that explains why."
But didn?t Dworkin mean that the customary victim and customary victimiser have necessarily very different perspectives because of customary power imbalance? So EP doesn?t precisely support her.
Etin (i think) "RE. consent - for many women around the world, they consent to sex simply by marrying. Therefore there is consent often because there is not choice. So is this rape?
Is it just at one end of the spectrum of lack of human female mate/mating choice?"
Wha?? Yes its? rape. May be institutionalized but still rape. Round my spectrum, anyways.
Etin again "And is the exchange of sex for other resources inherently wrong?"
It?s a valid question, but my answer must be yes. Do you remember Madamez? porn position? My answer was then, as it is now, that this is rarely an exchange in any meaningful sense.
MonkeyTrousers:"What conclusions are approaching with regard to patriarchy? From what I have read, I suspect that it does not exist to oppress women, as traditional feminism thinks, but to oppress other men (i.e rivals) in the clamour to attract the prize; women and hence offspring."
Or both, conveniently wrapped up in the same patriarchal ackage, and impossible to disentangle except in hypothesis?
From Nature (can't remember names of reviewers now sorry): "Thornhill and Palmer cloak themselves in the authority of science, implying that the controversy over their ideas is purely political, and that the underlying biology is unimpeachable. This is a serious misrepresentation."
I remember this very vividly, it drove me insane. They sneered, it was repulsive.
Again from Nature:"If every human behaviour can be seen as a by-product of evolution, then the by-product idea is useless, for a theory that explains everything is merely a truism."
Precisely.
Jerry Coyne (thru Etin)
"Given that in most reported cases rapists are sexually aroused, often reach orgasm, and sometimes admit to erotic motives, it is hard to disagree with T&P's claim that rape is at least partly a sexual act.[...]But T&P note that 'academic feminists and sociologists' have consistently denied any sexual motivation for rape, insisting instead that 'rape is not about sex, but about violence and power'.
I think very few feminists would deny that rapists are sexually aroused, do orgasm and sometimes (always?) ?admit? to erotic motives (of course they do, that's their get-out-of-jail card!)
But that doesn?t mean that the underlying impulse is not one of control.
Coyne again "It is true that in recent decades the discussion of rape has been dominated by such notions, though one must remember that they originated not as scienctific propositions but as political slogans deemed necessary to reverse popular misconceptions about rape."
?slogans? v dodgy and reactionary imo. We?re all so damn .. angry ..all the time, aren?t we?
Coyne again: "Feminists are undoubtedly right to claim that culture reinforces sexual stereotypes, but hthere can be no adequate explanation of patriarchy that completely ignores evolution."
Do you think Social constructionist explanations of patriarchy have left huge holes? I haven?t noticed that, I don?t think.
Eliz on sex/violence false dichotomy: "Yup, a violent act using sex organs as its weapons."
And can I add, the violent act of a system which has ensured that female chastity is intrinsic to female social currency (bcs inheritance etc). That, surely, is why patriarchy controls women through sexual violence, and not simply through violence.
Etin: Why do men want to dominate women? It's not as if it gets them anything, is it? So why?
I think there must be more to this and I?ve missed it ? you?re not seriously sugg. that men don?t gain from female subservience?
MT: "To my mind the ?violence? argument is dangerous, because often women are threatened, not actually beaten, and this is seen, with the violence argument, as being a mitigating factor against the victim. If she is not seen to have fought to within an inch of her life, a suspicion remains that it was not rape."
Oh MT ? this means that the justice system is wrong, nothing more nothing less.
Etin: "I believe there are differences between the sexes that have come about due to evolution.
As I mentioned somewhere above in my theory of the origins of patriarchy, our species-specific evolutionary history gave the human male a upperhand over the female"
Also gave us opposable thumbs but we don?t use that as an argument for much now, do we? Males got the upper hand over females. That?s all we can say, isn?t it? Could be evolution, could be an embryonic politics, could be environmental.
MT: "The research has been done though, and woemn with out mind set, our concerns about rape - some of them victims of rape themselves - female oppression and patriachy have taken the path of skeptical inquiry with regards to not feminism itself, but recieved feminist dogma, to see, and hope that it can progress, as it is a progressive moevment at heart.
'some of our best freinds have been raped/?received feminist dogma?/'progressive movement' (at heart) = vocab of a reactionary politics?