Okay! So to my eye, a lack of social hierarchy seems like a pretty ideal view of the world. How do you reconcile that outlook with the existence of things like governments or a legal system? Those would be what I consider an ordering of humans, and in that light it sounds like you’re saying “punching back” (as it were) against those social structures would be reinforcing those same (potentially oppressive) structures (an example possibly being ‘the patriarchy’) - have I got that right?
It’s tempting to see authority as an ordering of humans, but it isn’t. Anthony Fauci is not more of a human than you are. And it’s not okay to punch Anthony Fauci for the same reason it’s not okay to punch you. But we still need authorities and so it can’t be the case that every person in the country is the authority on diseases.
No, punching back is not the problem. The problem is the idea that there exists something called “punching up” that is more excusable generally than “punching down.” THAT idea reinforces social hierarchy and oppressive structures. Particularly if you believe that “punching up” will always be punching up, invariant of what happens in the world, because that asserts that the hierarchy is fixed which even further reinforces it.
So if I understand you correctly, your position is that there are two distinct facets to ‘arranging’ society — Order (that one person is inherently above or below another, a concept I agree is wrong) and Authority (that being the broad agreement to respect one person’s limited and highly contextual “superiority” within a specific area of knowledge).
Extrapolating an example to ensure I understand: this would mean that the legal system is granted the authority to enforce those rules society has agreed on, onto those people we’ve agreed are subject to it’s authority (which is a good way to think about it). And things like conflicting authorities can be handled in the same conceptual ‘framework’, like how people that respect Anthony Fauci exist at the same time as people who think Anthony Fauci is trying to inject us with ground up infants. Or how there are both authorities that respect LGBTQ+ people’s right to exist, and those that want us all rounded up and gassed.
But where I’m stumbling is that you’re considering “punching up” or “punching down” as something that can only be done against the Order of society (thus trying to elevate or denegrate someone as inherently above or below another person) and not something that is done against the Authorities in a society. And I can’t figure out why that would be the case.
To my eye this fairly explicitly reads as you saying that when (ex:) LGBTQ+ people attempt to “punch up” against the authority figures who want them all gassed, that action is inherently implying that they are attempting to establish themselves as inherently superior to that other person in the Order of all humanity. And I do not think that’s what you’re trying to say here, since it seems to be completely at odds with every comment you’ve made on this site in the last two months (and full disclosure I did just go and read all of them)
Is that misrepresenting your position?
(edit: I just wanna throw out that I’m not the one downvoting you)
Yes, likening one person saying to another that they are mansplaining, to defending oneself from literal death by chemical weapon, is misrepresenting my argument. If you are being threatened with death, defending yourself is not punching up or punching down, it’s not even a voluntary action at all, it’s just human instinct and you can’t even call that a choice.
Also, are you trying to paint a random commenter on the Internet who probably didn’t even fully read the post they’re replying to, as an “authority?”
I didn’t liken the two though, because that’s not the representation of your perspective I was interested in. I’m curious in the meta-analytical nature of why you hold this position - as an example, where is the line drawn between “being threatened with death” and “punching up”. I assume we agree on the idea that objecting to calls to gas all the queers isn’t problematic - but is calling someone a bigot for expressing the (deeply homophobic) view that femboys are constantly horny “punching up”? Or, if not there, calling out the ‘did you just assume my gender’ joke?
I’m really very curious where you draw the line. We sincerely appear to agree on damn near every issue except the one of feminism. Why is that? Where do our opinions diverge? Do we disagree on other things that, given our respective positions on so many other topics, one could be forgiven for assuming we’d share?
Aside
(Yes, I am claiming that the internet dipshit is an authority. I don’t consider them one, I think they’re a dipshit - but my opinion isn’t the only opinion that exists, and the undeniable existence of the anti-vax movement has clearly elevated those self-same uninformed internet commenters to positions of trust and authority in society. They even put one in charge of HHS, god help us all.)
Second, and pretty unrelated, I think feminism is a dishonest platform and has far exceeded its mandate. Women are oppressed in the Middle East. To say they’re oppressed here currently, relative to males, is somewhere between dishonest and delusional.
First wave feminism had a very strong reason to exist. Second wave as well. But intersectionality is a complete mess that only creates problems instead of solving them, and ideas like antiracism are positively counterproductive
Anyway, feminism doesn’t have a monopoly on egalitarianism. You can be pro-equality without being feminist, despite what feminism would say.
And gays are literally crucified in the middle east, and yet the fight to be allowed to change one tiny letter on your driver’s license is important. Why does the first one negate the second one?
Sorry, that was snarky. But seriously, where are you getting this? No not in a dismissive way, I think there’s commentary to be found here - but I’m incredibly curious what actual interaction with the subject you’ve had. The opinons you’re presenting here are almost identical to the fundamentally misinformed ones presented by commentators like ThunderF00T, Sargon of Akkad, Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan and Charlie Kirk (I can find examples of all of them repeating this stuff…) and I’m pretty sure you’re smarter than this. I don’t see that you’ve been confronted about these ideas in the last two months on lemmy (and that’s clearly all I can draw on), but have you ever confronted these ideas?
You’ve presented an idea of the world that’s quite optimistic, except on this one point that you hold an inherently contradictory position on. You’re reacting with habitual hostility, not reasoned consideration. Please, please, think about this. Have you ever actually gone and listened to, say, any video essays from feminist figures? Have you ever engaged with feminism at all outside of internet commenting? Or are you being told that this is what feminism is.
Feminism is necessary. It’s not delusional, it’s not dishonest, and women’s and men’s rights are being eroded every day in the western wold because of the current far-right administrations. When does it start being acceptable for women to fight back again, when every victory the second-wave feminists won have been reverted (instead of just half of them)? No, really, that’s a good question. When do women get to have their grievances heard?
(And… what? What’s wrong with intersectionality? It’s literally just the study of biases in culture, it’s a core branch of sociology, and the first tenet of anti-racism is education about the historical realities of racism. There’s nothing more to it than that.)
Well, I’m on my phone so apologies if my replies are shorter generally. I will attempt to answer some of these. Yes, I have engaged in a ton of discussion with hardcore feminists. I have listened to podcasts by them including Stuff Mom Never Told You and unfortunately read Brotopia. This is not my first rodeo. And you don’t need to listen to Tate or Kirk any of those extremely distasteful people to know that feminism claims to speak for men’s interests while completely ignoring them. Feminism 100% claims to be acting in the interest of both men and women, and at least for men, it completely falls short of that. You will try to correct me. That is the problem.
Any ideology that posits “<ideology> is necessary” is self-serving and borderline cult. The ideas of the ideology are what matter, and the ideology itself is just a name. If the ideas were any good, you should just as easily be able to create a new ideology from those ideas with a different name and have it be just as valid.
Which is really funny because masculism and feminism both claim to be about equality. But only feminism is the one that is right, apparently.
A good chunk of the population has been listening to feminism for… decades. What do you mean, when will the grievances be heard? We’ve heard them. Women are oppressed, the second sex. Abortion is a right. Equal access to healthcare. 84 cents to a dollar. Alimony. Some of these are addressable, some of them have been addressed, and some of them are not addressable. It’s complicated.
Perhaps I should be asking you when will men’s grievances be heard?
Saying someone is mansplaining is a normative statement. You’re stating a moral position by using the word. One aspect of that moral position is the use of this obnoxious spelling, “splaining,” which is clearly meant to denigrate the desire to explain things. This is anti-intellectual, yet it’s couched in the oh-so-innocent veneer of being pro-feminism.
To contrast, calling someone a bigot is stating a moral position, but the only moral position it states is that bigotry is bad, which isn’t anti-intellectual.
There are several parts of the word’s meaning, some of them optional:
man explaining thing to woman
poorly / incorrectly
dismissively
that she already knows
to someone who knows more about it
But the only real requirement is #1. Despite what anyone says, even if the thing is not explained dismissively and is explained well to someone who doesn’t know about it, you could still call it mansplaining because it’s punching up. Which again only serves to say that attempting to explain is the shameful part.
Punching up again. You keep using that word, and I don’t think it means what I think it means. You’re using it as a stand-in for asserting inherent superiority over another person, but correcting someone on the internet does not actually imply that. You’re trying to present it as an inherently hateful and cruel act, and it’s still not. You even present that it’s not, in this very comment.
But the only real requirement is #1
Why? No, seriously, who says? You’re the one making that claim here, and you appear to be the only one doing that. Why is that the only real requirement, and why does it conflict with all the broadly accepted definitions (including the one you just provided)?
Okay! So to my eye, a lack of social hierarchy seems like a pretty ideal view of the world. How do you reconcile that outlook with the existence of things like governments or a legal system? Those would be what I consider an ordering of humans, and in that light it sounds like you’re saying “punching back” (as it were) against those social structures would be reinforcing those same (potentially oppressive) structures (an example possibly being ‘the patriarchy’) - have I got that right?
It’s tempting to see authority as an ordering of humans, but it isn’t. Anthony Fauci is not more of a human than you are. And it’s not okay to punch Anthony Fauci for the same reason it’s not okay to punch you. But we still need authorities and so it can’t be the case that every person in the country is the authority on diseases.
No, punching back is not the problem. The problem is the idea that there exists something called “punching up” that is more excusable generally than “punching down.” THAT idea reinforces social hierarchy and oppressive structures. Particularly if you believe that “punching up” will always be punching up, invariant of what happens in the world, because that asserts that the hierarchy is fixed which even further reinforces it.
So if I understand you correctly, your position is that there are two distinct facets to ‘arranging’ society — Order (that one person is inherently above or below another, a concept I agree is wrong) and Authority (that being the broad agreement to respect one person’s limited and highly contextual “superiority” within a specific area of knowledge).
Extrapolating an example to ensure I understand: this would mean that the legal system is granted the authority to enforce those rules society has agreed on, onto those people we’ve agreed are subject to it’s authority (which is a good way to think about it). And things like conflicting authorities can be handled in the same conceptual ‘framework’, like how people that respect Anthony Fauci exist at the same time as people who think Anthony Fauci is trying to inject us with ground up infants. Or how there are both authorities that respect LGBTQ+ people’s right to exist, and those that want us all rounded up and gassed.
But where I’m stumbling is that you’re considering “punching up” or “punching down” as something that can only be done against the Order of society (thus trying to elevate or denegrate someone as inherently above or below another person) and not something that is done against the Authorities in a society. And I can’t figure out why that would be the case.
To my eye this fairly explicitly reads as you saying that when (ex:) LGBTQ+ people attempt to “punch up” against the authority figures who want them all gassed, that action is inherently implying that they are attempting to establish themselves as inherently superior to that other person in the Order of all humanity. And I do not think that’s what you’re trying to say here, since it seems to be completely at odds with every comment you’ve made on this site in the last two months (and full disclosure I did just go and read all of them)
Is that misrepresenting your position?
(edit: I just wanna throw out that I’m not the one downvoting you)
Yes, likening one person saying to another that they are mansplaining, to defending oneself from literal death by chemical weapon, is misrepresenting my argument. If you are being threatened with death, defending yourself is not punching up or punching down, it’s not even a voluntary action at all, it’s just human instinct and you can’t even call that a choice.
Also, are you trying to paint a random commenter on the Internet who probably didn’t even fully read the post they’re replying to, as an “authority?”
(re edit: thanks, I appreciate that)
I didn’t liken the two though, because that’s not the representation of your perspective I was interested in. I’m curious in the meta-analytical nature of why you hold this position - as an example, where is the line drawn between “being threatened with death” and “punching up”. I assume we agree on the idea that objecting to calls to gas all the queers isn’t problematic - but is calling someone a bigot for expressing the (deeply homophobic) view that femboys are constantly horny “punching up”? Or, if not there, calling out the ‘did you just assume my gender’ joke?
I’m really very curious where you draw the line. We sincerely appear to agree on damn near every issue except the one of feminism. Why is that? Where do our opinions diverge? Do we disagree on other things that, given our respective positions on so many other topics, one could be forgiven for assuming we’d share?
Aside
(Yes, I am claiming that the internet dipshit is an authority. I don’t consider them one, I think they’re a dipshit - but my opinion isn’t the only opinion that exists, and the undeniable existence of the anti-vax movement has clearly elevated those self-same uninformed internet commenters to positions of trust and authority in society. They even put one in charge of HHS, god help us all.)
Second, and pretty unrelated, I think feminism is a dishonest platform and has far exceeded its mandate. Women are oppressed in the Middle East. To say they’re oppressed here currently, relative to males, is somewhere between dishonest and delusional.
First wave feminism had a very strong reason to exist. Second wave as well. But intersectionality is a complete mess that only creates problems instead of solving them, and ideas like antiracism are positively counterproductive
Anyway, feminism doesn’t have a monopoly on egalitarianism. You can be pro-equality without being feminist, despite what feminism would say.
And gays are literally crucified in the middle east, and yet the fight to be allowed to change one tiny letter on your driver’s license is important. Why does the first one negate the second one?
Sorry, that was snarky. But seriously, where are you getting this? No not in a dismissive way, I think there’s commentary to be found here - but I’m incredibly curious what actual interaction with the subject you’ve had. The opinons you’re presenting here are almost identical to the fundamentally misinformed ones presented by commentators like ThunderF00T, Sargon of Akkad, Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan and Charlie Kirk (I can find examples of all of them repeating this stuff…) and I’m pretty sure you’re smarter than this. I don’t see that you’ve been confronted about these ideas in the last two months on lemmy (and that’s clearly all I can draw on), but have you ever confronted these ideas?
You’ve presented an idea of the world that’s quite optimistic, except on this one point that you hold an inherently contradictory position on. You’re reacting with habitual hostility, not reasoned consideration. Please, please, think about this. Have you ever actually gone and listened to, say, any video essays from feminist figures? Have you ever engaged with feminism at all outside of internet commenting? Or are you being told that this is what feminism is.
Feminism is necessary. It’s not delusional, it’s not dishonest, and women’s and men’s rights are being eroded every day in the western wold because of the current far-right administrations. When does it start being acceptable for women to fight back again, when every victory the second-wave feminists won have been reverted (instead of just half of them)? No, really, that’s a good question. When do women get to have their grievances heard?
(And… what? What’s wrong with intersectionality? It’s literally just the study of biases in culture, it’s a core branch of sociology, and the first tenet of anti-racism is education about the historical realities of racism. There’s nothing more to it than that.)
Well, I’m on my phone so apologies if my replies are shorter generally. I will attempt to answer some of these. Yes, I have engaged in a ton of discussion with hardcore feminists. I have listened to podcasts by them including Stuff Mom Never Told You and unfortunately read Brotopia. This is not my first rodeo. And you don’t need to listen to Tate or Kirk any of those extremely distasteful people to know that feminism claims to speak for men’s interests while completely ignoring them. Feminism 100% claims to be acting in the interest of both men and women, and at least for men, it completely falls short of that. You will try to correct me. That is the problem.
Any ideology that posits “<ideology> is necessary” is self-serving and borderline cult. The ideas of the ideology are what matter, and the ideology itself is just a name. If the ideas were any good, you should just as easily be able to create a new ideology from those ideas with a different name and have it be just as valid.
Which is really funny because masculism and feminism both claim to be about equality. But only feminism is the one that is right, apparently.
A good chunk of the population has been listening to feminism for… decades. What do you mean, when will the grievances be heard? We’ve heard them. Women are oppressed, the second sex. Abortion is a right. Equal access to healthcare. 84 cents to a dollar. Alimony. Some of these are addressable, some of them have been addressed, and some of them are not addressable. It’s complicated.
Perhaps I should be asking you when will men’s grievances be heard?
I’m sure I’ll get into the rest in a moment, but for the sake of vamping for time while I’m cooking dinner: to your mind, what are men’s grievances?
edit: And for a bonus, since you’ve already rejected that the core idea of feminism is “egalitarianism”, what is the core idea?
Saying someone is mansplaining is a normative statement. You’re stating a moral position by using the word. One aspect of that moral position is the use of this obnoxious spelling, “splaining,” which is clearly meant to denigrate the desire to explain things. This is anti-intellectual, yet it’s couched in the oh-so-innocent veneer of being pro-feminism.
To contrast, calling someone a bigot is stating a moral position, but the only moral position it states is that bigotry is bad, which isn’t anti-intellectual.
I’m sorry, it’s gotten late here, is your basis for claiming it as an anti-intellectual term really just that the word is a malformed portmanteau?
There are several parts of the word’s meaning, some of them optional:
But the only real requirement is #1. Despite what anyone says, even if the thing is not explained dismissively and is explained well to someone who doesn’t know about it, you could still call it mansplaining because it’s punching up. Which again only serves to say that attempting to explain is the shameful part.
Punching up again. You keep using that word, and I don’t think it means what I think it means. You’re using it as a stand-in for asserting inherent superiority over another person, but correcting someone on the internet does not actually imply that. You’re trying to present it as an inherently hateful and cruel act, and it’s still not. You even present that it’s not, in this very comment.
Why? No, seriously, who says? You’re the one making that claim here, and you appear to be the only one doing that. Why is that the only real requirement, and why does it conflict with all the broadly accepted definitions (including the one you just provided)?