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Rage: I suggested that you followed the curve and continued to contribute meaningfully. If you are more interested in complaining that you are being unfairly treated, I suggest you do so by private message, or by starting a thread in the Policy. This is an interesting thread and if you continue to use it for internecine squabbling I propose the moderators start to remove inflammatory irrelevancies from it. The difference being that so far Ierne has devoted one sentence to you, whereas you have made you and your problems with Ierne the central theme of your interaction with the thread. If you want to be abusive or defensive, fine, but do it in the context of some relevant response to the issue at hand. Which involves reading other posts and formulating a response to them, or introducing new concepts.
Bill: I think systems of capital exchange are an important and useful consideration, but why do you propose that a capitalist system will inevitably reward "male" behavioural traits? Is this a necessary product of all possible capitalism(s), or specifically the one we are stuck with?
And what are the implications there? If you are located in a capitalist society that rewards "male" trait, then the logical response would be to adopt those "male" traits - that is, the most successful women would be the ones who refused to wear lipstick, had sex with women and refused to be penetrated (if we take these to be "male" traits - I assume what you mean are "dominant" straight male traits). This is presumably not the case. So, the next assumption might be that within a system that assigns privilege (through capital) to people who place their neck on the yoke of societal assumptions about what constitutes acceptable "female" behaviour - thus, the "giggly, wearing pink lipstick" paradigm, which our misogynist feminist could then despise because it meant that the "girly girl" was following a set of behavioural structures externally imposed in order to follow the rules of a capitalist system - sacrificing selfhood as a woman for advantage as a capitalist.
Except that one of the incumbent capitalist conditions could be construed as "constantly financially disadvantaged in comparison to men". So at that point the girly girl would be actively disadvantaged by participating, and the misogynist feminist's position might be "Oh for fuck's sake, you're putting yourself in a position of weakness and doing it with joy, aren't you? You absolute arsehole..."
Bit like Chris Rock's dichotomy of black people and "niggers", where the black people (in this case, the educated, independent women who in some way are not prepared to buy into imposed behavioural structures, be that an Andrea Dworkin or a pre-makeopver Hilary Clinton, instead succeeding in their own terms, and the "girly girls" who undo all their good work by perpetuating images of women as lightweight, "giggly", shopaholic and so on.
To which the "girly girls" might reply "so, you want us to demonstrate our individuality and emancipation....by being more like you? What if, like the hypothetical glamour model who finds glamour modelling arousing and empowering, I happen to express my selfhood in a considered, 'authentic' and empowering way involving toenail-painting and strappy tops, so fuck you."
At which point the feminist can reply that the hypothetical glamour model can enjoy and be empowered as much as she wants but her naked body is still commoditised and sold to men at a rate of exchange that makes a lot of other men a lot of money, and the "emancipated girly girl" is still a) failing to take a serious part in the struggle for freedom and b) actively contributing to the oppression of women by feeding capitalist industries that are thus deincentivised to improve their equal rights record because, hey, women are still buying this stuff, as well as c) appearing to swell the ranks of "unemancipated girly girls" to the casual observer, both male and female.
At which point the emancipated girly girl points out that the misogynist feminist has just tried to make another woman ashamed of the way she dresses and behaves, and with feminists like that around, who needs men anyway? At which point there's a big fight.
So, is it possible or necessary (see my brief touching on the DIY ethic above) to separate the accoutrements and appertenances of "femininity" from the structures that maintain and are benefitted by "the feminine mystique"? |
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