Well, this is apocalyptic

[LangCleg]

Long read, but worth it. Ends: The risk is that we only belatedly realise that transhumanism is oppression disguised as liberation. This cannot be good for all but the richest, most privileged women. Again, I am thinking about the prostitutes in Altered Carbon, who agree to be strangled to death for the payment of a shiny new body.

quillette.com/2018/07/11/the-transhumanism-revolution-oppression-disguised-as-liberation/

I only have one experience of a UK rural community but it's not like that here. No religion either - the poor local vicar has to run three parishes because the congregations are so tiny.

That's great and reassuring!!

I don't believe in dualism, but I do believe in disassociation

Yes this.

It's all of a piece isn't it. Dissociation from bodies, emotion, empathy, the natural world and any willingness to believe in material reality as the basis of experience

It's all of a piece isn't it. Dissociation from bodies, emotion, empathy, the natural world and any willingness to believe in material reality as the basis of experience.

Yes, it is. Which is why attempting to think about how everything fits together and whether the resulting picture is ominous or promising, is not evidence of "trans panic". Reductio ad absurdam.

I'm hope I haven't womansplained!

Of course you haven't! I like it that we have quite different starting perspectives but very often come to similar conclusions. All helps to illuminate the bigger picture.

That's great and reassuring!!

My parish has a population of about 1,500. Church congregation numbers in the 20s. I like the vicar though. There's so little religion hereabouts - and what there is is the fairly benign Anglican type - that he's more of a social worker than a preacher.

It's very different here than it was in the city. Much less ideology. And there's this curious mix of tolerance and parochialism. If you belong here, you can be who you want to be and nobody will mind. Dave from the Post Office could suddenly become Davina, for instance, and the reaction would be "takes all sorts, bless them". But if Shon or Monroe or Owen came for a visit and started lecturing people as they do, the reaction would be "fuck off back to weirdo London, mate, and stop telling us what to do".

My view is that dualist perspectives have everything arse over tit. It's assumed that the body is some kind of primitive workhorse which has the function of serving the mind. I think the mind / consciousness is in reality a flimsy little evolutionarily recent add-on which developed to better serve the body.

It's possible to enforce a viewpoint by enacting violence on the bodies of others. But anyone going up against their own embodied nature has bitten off a lot more than they are going to be able to chew.

My view is that dualist perspectives have everything arse over tit. It's assumed that the body is some kind of primitive workhorse which has the function of serving the mind. I think the mind / consciousness is in reality a flimsy little evolutionarily recent add-on which developed to better serve the body.

Yes! What a great way of putting it.

Yes, yes, is totally dissociation.

The mental process occurs similarly in girls and boys who are abused I think, but I do wonder if the toxic male culture encourages boys/men to go on to express this outwardly in different ways - as a very general rule women tend to act in (hurt themselves) or if acting out they may grow up to be self-sabotaging or to exhibit 'petty' or personal acts of power on a personal scale of vindictiveness eg narcissitic mothers, where as a larger proportion of abused men tend to act out their anger sooner and on a larger scale or replicate some of the abusive attitudes, ie violence or obvious violence/ or obvious hatred/ vengefulness towards women.

That is not to say that some abused boys/men do not hurt themsleves and hate themsleves and/ or their body because that happens too. But where toxic masculine culture prevails, it does encourage boys/ men to express their rage outwardly, albeit with mis-attribution and mis-targetting, ie mis-placed rage and 'kicking the cat'.

Getting to the root of rage and harming behaviours is essential.

seafret

YY all that you wrote - I do agree the boys and girls/men & women are mostly conditoned to express anger and rage differently. There are very few female role models for healthily expressing anger and many who take it out on their body and themselves - it is expressed more interpersonally and vindictively I think.

Whereas guys on the whole take it out on other people - mostly women it seems!! Though there is a lot of male on male violence as well, I still can't get stats on how much of that male on male violence causes actual harm to the men. And more importantly is it the same lot who take it out on women or a different group?

womanformallyknownaswoman

I have no stats either.

Anecdotally and from MH research etc, I would suggest that there is overlap but that men who are violent to women are not always violent to other men.

Men who are particularly, or additionally, violent or hateful towards women may have been neglected/ betrayed, or perceive that they were, by women in their own familiy eg their mother (as well as a male perpertrator). This may be being neglectful, complicit in abuse, turning a blind eye, failing to protect, being 'weak', domineering etc.

Sometimes this is misplaced eg the woman was physically abused and so could not protect herself or the child but the child still blames the woman; the person internalises and reproduces the male abusers words like nagging, she desevered it etc; sometimes that the mother is blamed because it would be dangerous to vent anger on the real abuser, or that the mother actually was neglectful/abusive, BPD, narcissitic etc.

All reinforced by the prevailing misogyny.

From what I have gathered, male on male violence can be not-personal. Just an outlet, any man would have got the same treatment in the same time or place. For some people who have been abused sexually/psychologically (I mean, it is all psychologically abusive but sometimes it can be particulary so) there may be an added visceral anger and psychological element and the expression is more vengeful and targeted than random getting into fights.

Perhaps getting into fights is a form of self-harm.

I perhaps haven't expressed that very well!

www.amazon.co.uk/Masculinities-Violence-Routledge-Studies-Society/dp/1138040274?tag=mumsnetforum-21

This is a good study on male violence. Also, worth reading as very challenging from a radfem perspective - never be afraid of a challenge, sisters! - and interesting on social class.

right from the off it was going to be nonsense

Claiming that sex isn't based on reproductive role is nonsense, claiming to have an opposite sex brain is nonsense, claiming that woman is a feeling in a man's head is nonsense. So that's not really a reason for you to dismiss it.

I haven't got the headspace to read it but, yeah, all these woke dudes are just neo-liberal individualists

Sing it, sister.

Has anyone read any Donna Harraway?

OMG, I forgot all about her! Cyborg Manifesto, right?

That's where the mental health professional often get it very wrong imo - they treat the symptom and victim blame rather than name the root cause - male violence. Then the person who has been criminally victimised is made to feel like they are the problem and are continually blamed and re-abused by administrative abuse (welfare etc)

This is so true, woman Thank you for explaining it, I hadn’t had that perspective before.

Just came across this - some very interesting thoughts on the relationship between transhumanism and white male supremacy

babeinbotland.com/2018/07/13/we-can-build-you/

You're welcome Hipsterfun

The MH profession, despite what most think, provides inconsistent and often ill informed approaches and are poorly regulated.

There's a power imbalance when they label the victims as the problem, rather than their injuries, plus continue to treat them as such.

A better approach is to normalise their experience by contexting it and naming the perpetrators plus associate the present conditions with the historical male violence that invariably caused them.

however many refuse to do that because they won't label anyone who they haven't consulted them. Of course amazingly the perpetrators rarely seek therapy as they think everyone else is the problem. Like you see in politicians who always have a scapegoat but somehow the real perps get protected by inadequate laws, biased processes etc

Anyone would think that psychopaths had designed the very codes of conduct that protect the menz in whatever guise /s

the perpetrators rarely seek therapy as they think everyone else is the problem

This is such an important point.

This is one of the reasons personality disorders are so hard to treat - talk therapy doesn't get very far with someone who believes that the shitty way they're treating other people is perfectly logical and reasonable.