GENIUS FORUMS

Pye,

Children in daycare - unless they have been raised on another planet, have already seen the television, have already lived with sex-role differences embedded in their parents' behavior, they have already heard what little girls and little boys are supposed to do, etc.

This is a 25-year old nonsense. It tells me that you have shut your eyes, and that you have not watched small children. In fact, my own eyes were shut, our society more or less teaching us this ideal, of the sameness of the genders. It was not until I took my own first child to nursery school that I was simply astonished at what I saw. And it is ridiculous to think that these little semi-animal beasts, two and three year olds, have so imbibed this culture that they actually refrain from playing according to their inner desires and instead comply with society. The nursery school I took him to was a very liberal group, and I think my own child was not the only one to be unexposed to television.

I think that you should read the essay posted by Matt Gregory in the thread Is There Anything Good About Men? thread, which is now at the top of page two. Here is the link:

http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm

Such things as this author point out cannot be ignored, nor the different world that boys and girls experience because of their different brains.

I'm telling you Pye, you are in a losing battle, a no-win, a foolishness and a waste of your time and your life, if you doggedly pursue this fantasy. I never say that individual people cannot go outside the curve, but men and women are quite different, they are different because their brains are different. Let's deal with reality and not run from it.

The misogynists, the patriarchs and the feminists - all united in their disrespect and hatred of women.

The difference is, the misogynists say a woman can never be a man, and the feminist says she sure as hell can.

Looking at the world honestly and with open eyes, I see that mankind as related to womankind are like a race of demigods. If women are to be faulted, it is not for failing to match the accomplishments of men, but for failing to control their destructive side, for going along with the dark side of male nature.

Is there a woman in a million like my sister, who dared to say to her son whom she loves very much, "If you go to Iraq I will never speak to you again"?

I wouldn't trade a hundred thousand bitch lawyers for her.

Which reminds me to say, it's simply unfortunate that you see at bottom of my ideas here resentment. All of us have been well-trained to recognize this when it comes from a woman about social inequities.

But I have agreed that there are inequities. It muddies the water. Nonetheless, women are not by and large interested in the outside world, how it works, how to take it apart and build it again, how to rearrange and understand it, etc, etc, etc.

And speaking of resentment, it is an odd inconsistency that in a forum exalting masculinity they so often speak resentfully, even wistfully, of the very life of women they supposedly abhor. And by the desire to kill woman, they negate their own masculinity utterly. For in nature, the masculine exists ONLY as "that which is not female." That is its purpose. The masculine exists to serve the female, and because there is a female.

But the female exists to serve life. It's a big task, and that is why she has a help meet for it.

Alex has suggested, and maybe a taste of this from you, too, that what women need to do is burrow deeper into their "femininity" - cultivate its differences, reach for its core-values, really examine what it means to be a women, etc. etc. thus continuing the unthreatening and fruitless activity of women busily searching for this thing in vaguer and vaguer experiences.

What I am suggesting is that they not run from it, nor be brainwashed into thinking that they must reject it and disparage it as fruitless. At any rate, I devoted 10 years of my life to birthing, breastfeeding and full time child care. I considered it my highest priority and the best years of my life. I have three of the most amazing adult children on the planet, and yet I am pretty sure that I am more spiritually realized, and have achieved greater transcendence and abstract and logical thought, than most men.

I do hope that this masculine age of Kali Yuga is on the wane, now being replaced by Dwapara Yuga, a feminine age, and that as it dawns we regain perhaps some ancient knowings of what it means to be female and how to reach high attainment within it, if one is so destined and desirous. It may be that at this time in history, the understanding of the feminine has been obscured from our consciousness, like the sun behind a cloud or an eclipse, and that this lost knowledge will be regained in its own due time.

Brahma is the charioteer.

Anna,

Congratulations on a wonderful post. Refreshing, insightful and honest.

Iolaus wrote:I'm telling you Pye, you are in a losing battle, a no-win, a foolishness and a waste of your time and your life, if you doggedly pursue this fantasy. I never say that individual people cannot go outside the curve, but men and women are quite different, they are different because their brains are different. Let's deal with reality and not run from it.

This is clearly the case. In my computer systems engineering degree (which I never finished) there were perhaps a handful of women who started, out of over a hundred students altogether. It's not, I believe, that women couldn't handle the material, nor that they had no opportunity to study it - everybody was equally free to tick whichever boxes they wanted to coming out of high school - but that they simply weren't interested in it. Their brains simply resisted anytime someone said to them "How about studying engineering?" Now Pye might argue "Well that's because they have been programmed by society to abjure technical studies." Phooey! If, according to Pye, men are strong enough to follow their dreams in the presence of strong pressure otherwise - which clearly they are else there would have been no Newtons and Einsteins - then, given that men and women (according to Pye) have no innate differences, so should women, and the (very minimal, currently) societal pressures placed on women to reject technical studies should have minimal impact on those women who are seriously devoted to it. As it turns out, very, very few women actually are seriously devoted to it.

But let's wait a few years for it to all balance out before we form a final judgment - perhaps Pye's societal pressures are relevant after all. Somehow, though, I doubt it.

Iolaus wrote:The misogynists, the patriarchs and the feminists - all united in their disrespect and hatred of women.

The difference is, the misogynists say a woman can never be a man, and the feminist says she sure as hell can.

And no one asking: "What is it that makes a woman a woman?"

Iolaus wrote:Looking at the world honestly and with open eyes, I see that mankind as related to womankind are like a race of demigods. If women are to be faulted, it is not for failing to match the accomplishments of men, but for failing to control their destructive side, for going along with the dark side of male nature.

Is there a woman in a million like my sister, who dared to say to her son whom she loves very much, "If you go to Iraq I will never speak to you again"?

I'd trade a hundred thousand bitch lawyers for her.

Let me put it like this: individual women are capable of achieving as highly in a man's world as individual men are, but as a group, women generally have no desire to even seek to achieve in that way. Hence, from now on, what I say about women will be related to the general group, and not to the individuals who choose to deviate from the group. The real power of a woman lies in the fact that ultimately a man's decision will reflect back to her, and that she will voice her opinion on it. Real men (as opposed to abusers) value the opinions of their women, and adjust their decisions based on what their women communicate to them.

I'm just imagining, though, the cries from Pye: "You sexist pig, relegating women solely to the role of opinion-providers." Let me say in my defence, Pye, that I have acknowledged that individual women can deviate from this role (and let me further add that I find such women as desirable as, if not more desirable than, the average women whom I'm describing), but that it is the role that most women tend to take upon themselves naturally, and to which most men respond naturally: seeking advice and assurance from "the other half".

Pye: Which reminds me to say, it's simply unfortunate that you see at bottom of my ideas here resentment. All of us have been well-trained to recognize this when it comes from a woman about social inequities.

Iolaus: But I have agreed that there are inequities. It muddies the water. Nonetheless, women are not by and large interested in the outside world, how it works, how to take it apart and build it again, how to rearrange and understand it, etc, etc, etc.

Exactly, which is the point that I made about how few women chose (voluntarily, and freely) to take up a computer systems engineering degree. Let me reiterate again (somehow I feel Pye on my back) that I'm not in any way intending to restrict individual women from so doing, merely that in my experience, they tend not to want to. Let me further add that I encourage the promotion of such courses of study to women, it's just that I don't expect great results.

Iolaus wrote:And speaking of resentment, it is an odd inconsistency that in a forum exalting masculinity they so often speak resentfully, even wistfully, of the very life of women they supposedly abhor. And by the desire to kill woman, they negate their own masculinity utterly. For in nature, the masculine exists ONLY as "that which is not female." That is its purpose. The masculine exists to serve the female, and because there is a female.

But the female exists to serve life. It's a big task, and that is why she has a help meet for it.

This is a very important point. Masculinity and femininity exist in large part in a relationship to one other. The one would be nothing without the other. Hard as it is for QRS to accept this, but a large part of that relationship can be reduced fundamentally to the sexual, although here I'm not talking about bump and grind, I'm talking about the way that men and women identify themselves in the presence of the opposite gender. The QRS notions of "pure masculinity" (spiritual consciousness); and of pure femininity (lack of spiritual consciousness) are flawed insofar as they are isolated from an opposite sexuality. These are abstractions of the naive mind. In reality, masculinity is a force that seeks to harbour and protect the feminine from harm and adversity; femininity is a force that seeks to nurture and affirm the masculine in the face of attack and aggression.

But again, I hear Pye on my back: "How contra-versive of you to describe masculinity and femininity in such stark and definitive terms." I'm sorry, Pye, but I'm just going off my own experiences. If it doesn't work for you, then please feel free to break the boundaries.

[snip the rest, which I will leave between Pye and Iolaus]

guest_of_logic wrote:

Iolaus wrote:And speaking of resentment, it is an odd inconsistency that in a forum exalting masculinity they so often speak resentfully, even wistfully, of the very life of women they supposedly abhor. And by the desire to kill woman, they negate their own masculinity utterly. For in nature, the masculine exists ONLY as "that which is not female." That is its purpose. The masculine exists to serve the female, and because there is a female.
But the female exists to serve life. It's a big task, and that is why she has a help meet for it.

This is a very important point. Masculinity and femininity exist in large part in a relationship to one other.

In large part? So there are forms or aspects of masculinity (or femininity) which don't exist in such a relationship?

It's curious that you don't object to Anna's elevation of the feminine to the serving of life and her downgrading of the masculine to being the feminine's help mate.

The one would be nothing without the other. Hard as it is for QRS to accept this, but a large part of that relationship can be reduced fundamentally to the sexual, although here I'm not talking about bump and grind, I'm talking about the way that men and women identify themselves in the presence of the opposite gender.

That is certainly true for those whose masculinity doesn't extend beyond the realm of sexuality and relationships. But there is no law that says we have to define ourselves by other people's lack of purpose and vision.

These are abstractions of the naive mind. In reality, masculinity is a force that seeks to harbour and protect the feminine from harm and adversity; femininity is a force that seeks to nurture and affirm the masculine in the face of attack and aggression.

That what is masculinity can do, but needn't do if it doesn't want to. I'm wondering what is motivating you to force these arbitrary limits upon the masculine.

-

David Quinn wrote:

guest_of_logic wrote:

Iolaus wrote:And speaking of resentment, it is an odd inconsistency that in a forum exalting masculinity they so often speak resentfully, even wistfully, of the very life of women they supposedly abhor. And by the desire to kill woman, they negate their own masculinity utterly. For in nature, the masculine exists ONLY as "that which is not female." That is its purpose. The masculine exists to serve the female, and because there is a female.
But the female exists to serve life. It's a big task, and that is why she has a help meet for it.

This is a very important point. Masculinity and femininity exist in large part in a relationship to one other.

In large part? So there are forms or aspects of masculinity (or femininity) which don't exist in such a relationship?

I wrote that to allow for possibilities that I have not yet seen. For now (i.e. for the possibilities that I have seen), I define masculinity and femininity as interrelated forces.

David Quinn wrote:It's curious that you don't object to Anna's elevation of the feminine to the serving of life and her downgrading of the masculine to being the feminine's help mate.

Yes, it's curious to me in hindsight, too. Basically it's because I didn't want to pick nits with her otherwise excellent post. If I were to address that point in the light of the emphasis that you've given it, I would say that both masculine and feminine are devoted to the equal serving of life, and to the extent that the masculine "serves the female", the feminine likewise "serves the male", so that it's no big deal in the end - Anna has simply emphasised one end of the bargain, which is natural given that the other end is usually emphasised even more on this forum.

If I might be allowed to imagine it from Anna's perspective (and let her please tell me if I am wrong), I would guess that what she is saying is that the feminine - through childrearing, etc - is more explicitly involved with life itself than the masculine, which is more involved with moulding external forms - and, given that life is all of our concern - that the masculine is essentially a support unit for the feminine.

Let me put it in simple terms: the woman births the child and nurtures it; the man "serves" her by building the structures that support that child and its welfare and education whilst the woman performs this vital role.

Again, to those of you who might accuse me of sexism, let me say that I'm perfectly happy for the individual man to perform the nurturing role, and for the individual woman to perform the reality-moulding role, it's just that this isn't the way that it typically occurs in reality, and we're all looking for truth, right?

David Quinn wrote:

guest_of_logic wrote:The one would be nothing without the other. Hard as it is for QRS to accept this, but a large part of that relationship can be reduced fundamentally to the sexual, although here I'm not talking about bump and grind, I'm talking about the way that men and women identify themselves in the presence of the opposite gender.

That is certainly true for those whose masculinity doesn't extend beyond the realm of sexuality and relationships. But there is no law that says we have to define ourselves by other people's lack of purpose and vision.

Which, from one perspective, is a refutation of the QRS view of women, isn't it? None of us should have to define ourselves by the "lack of purpose and vision" that holds to such a childish and unrealistic version of masculinity and femininity as the dichotomy between spiritual consciousness and unconsciousness (talking about lack of purpose and vision, anyway).

David Quinn wrote:

guest_of_logic wrote:These are abstractions of the naive mind. In reality, masculinity is a force that seeks to harbour and protect the feminine from harm and adversity; femininity is a force that seeks to nurture and affirm the masculine in the face of attack and aggression.

That what is masculinity can do, but needn't do if it doesn't want to. I'm wondering what is motivating you to force these arbitrary limits upon the masculine.

They're not arbitrary, they're what I observe occurring in my family and in the families of those around me whom I consider to be balanced and healthy groups.

Iolaus, we simply cannot go any further with this discussion whilst we are each working from different knowledge bases. Look into the studies of feral children. The relative poverty of sane discussions about it stands in evidence to our protective attitude toward what we feel to be our human nature (much less our man/woman one), but it's there, for you to see and contemplate. There, you will also find a few feral children who have made it to adulthood or were discovered as adult, and there you will also be surprised to find a marked lack of the over-sexualized behavior we have cultured for ourselves. We are the only mammals who have no 'mating season,' although we have cycles of fertility to evidence such a thing.

By the way, I am not a feminist. I am no more interested in a female-value-centered world than I am in a male-value-centered world. From much of what you've written above, you would qualify as a feminist far more than myself, and in fact, I know many just such women who say just such the same things as you, and declare themselves as the purest variety of that kind of female-centered thinking.

Addtionally, I am gratified to hear that you seek to make meaning and value out of your female immanance. It stands in testament to the need for transcendence overall.

guest_of_logic, thanks for your thoughts, but we cannot speak sanely together until you cease imagining me at your back, calling you names, Pye this, Pye that, etc. and otherwise fulfilling your enculturated notions of what you think I think - or rather, what "women like [me]" surely think. I understand, though. You, like so many, have been conditioned to believe that simply taking on the subject at all means it can only be taken on in the stereotypical way, with the stereotypical goals in mind. You seem to be conducting a discussion with me, without me. So carry on . . . .

Yes, there are differences. Some people are more/less intelligent than others, some are more/less nurturing, some are kinder, more/less courageous, more/less spiritual, more/less aggressive, passive, idealistic, realistic, and on and on. Qualities, one and all, and people fulfilling them to more or less degrees. Only a focus on the qualities themselves might bring about a world of human affairs whose quality overall can begin to lift, to rise. And only an understanding of our stunning malleability might make this human world more a matter of conscious creation, and less one still suffering the hangovers of early human conditioning. Men-are/women-are is an impoverished and limiting view of this world. It is a suffocating step below where we could be. Only the human world has a chance to understand the categories that fall beneath its umbrella. And if we're fortunate and hardworking, we might be able to see the rest of all phenomena more brightly, too; properly adjust our overblown and cherished delusions about ourselves into the larger scheme.

Please do pay attention to all the caveats contained in this Wikipedia entry regarding the veracity of some of its claims. It is written in the same spirit of Ripley's Believe It Or Not that most discussions of this take place.

Claiming that feral children are already mentally defective is another gap in reasoning, putting the cart before the horse. It's been said all along by sociologists who have a great deal of investment in their own theories of innate human-being. They are made "mentally defective" in terms of the collective behavior of human-beings to which they have never been exposed.

If we are so sure of our humanity, it would be no problem to abandon a baby on the slopes of Mt. Citharon, as the Greeks used to do, to prove what we are by nature. But we're not going to do that, are we? It would be inhumane. And perhaps we already know what little of the human we would find of this being upon its recovery.

BTW, the Amala/Kamala case in India has NOT been "proven a hoax." Singh - the owner of said-orphanage - did his best to keep people away from the two children he had found; kept it a secret for many years. One of them was long dead and the other had just a year or two left to live before he let outsiders in to see her. Further, he received zero monetary gain from the entire thing. He himself withdrew from trying to rehabilitate Kamala, and often thought he had done wrong to remove them both from their wolf-hutch at all. He saw nothing but suffering for them coming from it.

"Humanity" itself is a transcendent idea . . . .

Alex, surely you have better things to do here than showing people how to use Wikipedia. Surely, we can all think further than Wikipedia, too.

Pye wrote:No. I do not think there is some unifying inherent human nature.

What about sleeping, eating, shitting, not being able to fly unaided. Could these be said to be some forms of inherent human nature? Aren't these limits that humans find themselves trapped within from birth to death? I realize you've been addressing psychological nature up to this point, I'm just probing to see where, or if, you see any inherent characteristics and limitations in humans at all.

Pye wrote:Ever and ever increasing consciousness. A scheme that says, men are/do this; and women are/do that has shut the lid. Any definitive, unmoved and unmoving scheme that shuts the lid - well, I don't have to explain how this is incommensurate to an open-ended thing.

Ever and ever increasing consciousness. How do you define consciousness in this sense? For example, is a dog more or less conscious than a human?

If a person were to overcome the "limitations" that socialization had ingrained in them, and start shitting on the ground, and murdering people on a whim, would they thus be increasing their consciousness? Do you have any particular guidelines or principles that govern what an increase in consciousness is or isn't?

Pye wrote:You are perfectly aware yourself, Jason, when you talk to people that you are facing varying degrees of consciousness, and I would bet [insert something valuable] that you prefer being around those with more acute and active consciousnesses than those with lesser.

Well, I do often like and prefer the company of animals over some humans, even though under some measurement schemes these animals may be viewed as being less conscious.

Pye wrote:You don't need to ask me how it's measured - you already know.

No, I'm not sure I understand what you mean exactly by "consciousness" and what measures you use to decide its quantity. Could you spell it out for me.

Pye wrote:Limitations do not accurately reflect the open-ended quality of consciousness. Consciousness is not a noun - it's a verb. Not thing, but movement. By its own operation, I cannot but come closer to the fluid nature of all being.

Do you think there may be some inherent limitations to human consciousness due in part to its apparent reliance upon the underlying physical brain and body structures?

I have a lot of interest in your ideas because, amongst other reasons, I identify with at least part of the thrust of them. I have always, since my earliest memories, been trying to overcome what I saw as unnecessary and irrational limitations that were placed on me(and humans in general) by socialization and expectation. Limitations which were often at odds with my natural inclinations.

I hated a lot of masculine role expectations and felt very alienated and repressed by them. For example, I tried to share my heartfelt feelings with other males, I tried not to hide my fears and weakness, I tried not to hide tears, I didn't mindlessly worship sport and cars, I tried not to put on all the macho bullshit, I tried to not ape certain words and language which were used as a means to fulfill male role expectations and prove masculinity membership.

Then there were just the Western human in late 20th century expectations. For example, I drank from a bottle(the type with the rubbery teat) until I was about seven years old, simply because I liked drinking from a bottle more than drinking from a cup or glass. No one could give me a good reason why I should stop drinking from a bottle, it was just what was done, and people who didn't stop drinking from a bottle beyond a certain age were freaks and would be outcast. I eventually succumbed to the pressure on that one.

I found there were all these little(and big) things, all these rules and mores and expectations that appeared quite arbitrary, that no one could give a good reason for their continued existence or even their reason for being in the first place. Unlike your desire for increased consciousness, my guiding principle was always to try my best to fulfill my inner nature. If a more or expectation got in the way of my nature, and I found the expectation to be arbitrary and irrational, and have no good sensible reason for existing, I tried to follow my inner nature, my fulfillment, over the idiotic inherited unquestioned bullshit. Trying to follow that course was very rough, and I failed in many ways, but I also had much success. I'm still trying.

Pye wrote:guest_of_logic, thanks for your thoughts, but we cannot speak sanely together until you cease imagining me at your back, calling you names, Pye this, Pye that, etc.

OK. It was meant to be an indication that I'm trying to consider where you're coming from, but I'll drop it if it's unhelpful.

Pye wrote:Men-are/women-are is an impoverished and limiting view of this world.

How about "men have general tendencies in this direction, and women have general tendencies in that direction", then?

David Quinn wrote:That's how I generally see young women these days - as cows with lipstick on. Except for when the imagination is suddenly turned on.

David's view of the world*

*(Warning: contains nudity)

guest-of-logic, I appreciate your re-address. This is much better.

And Jason, I really appreciate the candor you show regarding your human experience as it is measured against the social-paradigms of male-ness.

To both and all, I just came in to shut down the machine; I have to hit the road this afternoon. Since you've been thoughtful in response, let me be thoughtful and not-hasty in return.

back soon-ish . . . .

Jason wrote:

David Quinn wrote:That's how I generally see young women these days - as cows with lipstick on. Except for when the imagination is suddenly turned on.

David's view of the world*

*(Warning: contains nudity)

Jason,

Thanks for the *(warning :)



A=A





.

Jason wrote:I tried to not ape certain words and language which were used as a means to fulfill male role expectations and prove masculinity membership.

This behaviour can be hard to detect, and the following example is a little over the top, but I always liked this exchange from The Simpsons:


(We hear a low growling noise.)

MILHOUSE: "It's the monster!"

(Milhouse takes a few tokes from his asthma inhaler.)

BART: "No it's not, it's my tummy."

(Nelson stares aggressively at Bart)

BART: "I mean stomach! Gut! Crap factory!"

(Nelson nods in acknowledgment.)

Pye,

I am not necessarily overtly antagonistic to your claims, to the idea-products you are selling, so the reason I placed a link to Wikipedia is only to orient some here to the issue of feral children. Four years ago now I intended to look into the issue, and since you reminded me again of that book, I ordered it. (Abe Books) All the arguments that have been presented have elements of truth, of course. One usually has to investigate and to know about the more hidden motives of those who form specific opinions, on contentious subjects, and doing that one enters a more subterranean, psychological territory. David gets exasperated when this fact arises, and so does Diebert. I just don't see any way around it though. But, it may happen, and it usually does happen, that major shifts in culture and cultural adaptations come about be cause of unseen influences, or radically opposed influences. Some part of this conversation, some part of conversing, especially in this medium, always has a bit of an absurd element to it. Do we suppose we are going to decide anything?

So, the psychological. As we all know [grandstanding], the QRS need to be brought under a psychological scope, and they need to be turned over, like an armadillo when examining the tender underside will reveal more than a look at the shell offered to the world's view, and they need to have their entrails examined so that they will reveal 'the truth'. 'The truth' will often reveal itself despite every attempt to cover it over, to layer 'story' over it, and this is something we all need to take into consideration with every idea and opinion that we ever put forth onto the mental landscape: we could in fact be wrong. Anyway, I only need to allude to the psychological paradoxes within our beloved and dear Mahatmas, and everyone by now can certainly come up with a kind of provisional diagnostic. Except, of course, the TBs (true believers) who carry those flags! who sally forth to smite the enemy at the gates! who defend The Truth against the defilers! (Excuse the flourishes; I am into the second tome of The Conquest of Peru and everything is colored by knight-errantcy, bold standards that snap in the wind, blood-soaked ground, severed heads rolling down pristine hillsides in equatorial climes, the glitter of silver and gold).

You most likely have read Katie Roiphe and might entertain the idea that a large part of popular feminism has a more hidden, darker undercurrent that can be explored, uncovered. If one accepts even a percentage of the critical analysis of standard feminism, it presents one with a problem: that it is very, very difficult to move through and to get through contentious discourse. Even within feminism there are irreconcilable camps that, given the opportunity, might well slit each others throats (despite the opinion of Deborah Siegel who asserts that it is toleration of different views which distinguishes modern feminism) in order to get rid of oppositional views, to settle on a standard Truth. So, that is why I personally feel that these issues will not be decided by theorists (you are a theorist, aren't you?), but far closer to the ground. Like Anna, I have my own little examples which come from the ground, and when I think of these issues I mentally refer to them. I am acutely aware too that my views are in their very essence Judeo-Christian, and instead of hiding this and not speaking up about it, it is more fun (more chivalrous) to reveal these cards. Those psychologists who analyse me will have an easier time of it knowing that there is indeed an under structure which informs me. (There are though numerous different currents or grains in this under structure).

Some part of this conversation, too, likely contains the age-old tension between the fiery, explorative tendency of youthfulness and the ever-encroaching conservative tendencies of middle-age. I suspect you are around 27-28 (?) and I am now 47. This is just a by-the-way, but it is true that one tends to come back into more conservative frames as one gets older.

But what I want to ask of you is what is there on your psychological insides? What sea-creatures move in your waters? What are you breaking away from? and what do you want to break-into or upon? One would have to know also, I think, what is your sexual orientation, as in many cases theorists of feminism (I use the term but I do well understand that you genuinely consider yourself outside of this category, and I believe you, to a degree) have been outright lesbians with a tremendous amount of anger, but that kind of anger that turns back upon itself, that undergoes a transformation, and is expressed as ressentiment. I declare that it is impossible both for men or for women to have this sort of conversation without a grasp of the implications of ressentiment, and as you say in men as well as in women. Men are, as you know, in a peculiarly vulnerable position vis-a-vis women (mothers and female society), and have many reasons and opportunities to hone and polish their ressentiment.

The GF Boychiks have gotten back on their ideological spaceships and have zoomed-off for heaven-only-knows-where, so that leaves only the 3-4 of us to carry one here 'sanely'.

I see your Wild Child and raise you the Hexagram Number 48 The Well with a reference to an immutable human nature:

"The Well. The town may be changed,
But the well cannot be changed.
It neither decreases nor increases.
They come and go and draw from the well.
If one gets down almost to the water
And the rope does not go all the way,
Or the jug breaks, it brings misfortune."

Finally, to my way of seeing things, and based in my at least fairly reasonable background in anthropology, I think there better examples to draw on to discuss the male-female issue are primitive tribes, like for example in the Amazon. Women and men are not so unalike, they are each of them quite a bit like children, and yet within that essential similarity or sameness there is a very real dichotomy.

What you are going for, and what you yourself want, has not been revealed. This of course is the major defect of this whole forum: the absence of the 'real person' and his (and her) unwillingness to 'show-up'.

Well, Pye has gone off for an undetermined time, but I will go through and answer anyway, in order.

Guest,

But let's wait a few years for it to all balance out before we form a final judgment - perhaps Pye's societal pressures are relevant after all. Somehow, though, I doubt it.

I quite agree with this. One of the good outcomes of this whole modern feminist movement is that people are now allowed to step outside the boxes.
So what if only one woman to 10 or a hundred men wants to do a particular thing? Let her do it. It used to be so stifling, and certain things that women are actually good at, such as being doctors, was closed to them.

My daughter's boyfriend is an engineering student, and he says that there are a fair number of women (although he indicated he did not want to date them) are in the engineering program. This does surprise me. I don't know if it is a new trend, or whether it is because this is a cream university.

But again, I do really think that women can take an interest in the structures that men have created, and participate as much as a man, often making striking contributions. There seems to be good evidence that it was a woman who provided the clue which led to Crick and the other guy to discover the DNA structure, and Lynn Margulis is a prominent evolutionist who makes feminine intuitive leaps that have placed her in the highest categories of achievement scientifically, (albeit the whole evolutionary paradigm is nonsense), but nonetheless her contributions are valid.

But I also think that if we waited for women to invent the things that men have invented, that we would be lucky if we had a canoe.

a large part of that relationship can be reduced fundamentally to the sexual, although here I'm not talking about bump and grind, I'm talking about the way that men and women identify themselves in the presence of the opposite gender.

In my view, the duality, the yin-yang, reaches to almost the highest tier of reality. Our entire universe/world is built upon the positive negative, or masculine feminine forces.

The QRS notions of "pure masculinity" (spiritual consciousness); and of pure femininity (lack of spiritual consciousness) are flawed insofar as they are isolated from an opposite sexuality.

But if I am correct about the functioning of the duality in reality creation, then it might indeed be necessary to denote pure consciousness to one gender, and pure materiality/malleability to the other.

We can then call mind male, and the body female. This means that existence itself is ultimately female, and that which makes life worth living, is the gift of the masculine force.

In reality, masculinity is a force that seeks to harbour and protect the feminine from harm and adversity; femininity is a force that seeks to nurture and affirm the masculine in the face of attack and aggression.

Yes.
David,

It's curious that you don't object to Anna's elevation of the feminine to the serving of life and her downgrading of the masculine to being the feminine's help mate.

It's not really a downgrading. It's just how biological nature works. If we look at animal life, we see that the male's existence is to provide sperm at the right moment. They may indeed enjoy their existence, and it is a freer one, but their life is completely dedicated to being available to the female at her time, and he sacrifices everything, including his life itself, to that end. There is no other value that trumps it, and therefore we can say that the purpose of the male's life is to serve the female.

In the higher order of mammal life, this service increases, not decreases, although the intelligence and personal enjoyment of the male also increases.

Life is what is happening here, and we all must serve it. In the case of the human, the male is freer and highly intelligent, and thus not only has tremendous ability to transcend his male role, but his gifts to the human race cause us to transcend the animal life.

My point is simply that in the service of life itself the female has the direct role, and the male the indirect role. Take mating, for example. For the male the act of copulation is an end in itself. If the male caribou manages to mate, he has accomplished the end to which he was born. Thus the male attitude toward sex as an unquestionable good.

But for the female, the act of copulation is an essential but certainly only part of a chain of events. This is a big difference.

Pye says,

Iolaus, we simply cannot go any further with this discussion whilst we are each working from different knowledge bases. Look into the studies of feral children. The relative poverty of sane discussions about it stands in evidence to our protective attitude toward what we feel to be our human nature (much less our man/woman one),

Likewise, I wonder if you will find the time to read the link I sent. I am certainly willing to learn more about feral children, and I do not quite know what you are implying, but I have to question whether we can find some sort of 'true' human nature by studying children who have suffered severe neglect, albeit they may have been nurtured by animals. The brain is set for development and childhood is the time for it. If a fetus had some lack in the uterine environment for its brain development, we would not use that baby's subsequent life as an example of true human nature. Humans are obviously wired for language development, yet feral children have missed the window of opportunity.

Addtionally, I am gratified to hear that you seek to make meaning and value out of your female immanance. It stands in testament to the need for transcendence overall.

Yes, but you see, if the male achieves transcendence while being male, why cannot the female achieve transcendence while being female? Also, I do not limit my search to finding value in what you call female immanence, as if this that were the end of the matter. As though one makes a choice between the two.

My daughter's boyfriend is an engineering student, and he says that there are a fair number of women (although he indicated he did not want to date them) are in the engineering program. This does surprise me. I don't know if it is a new trend, or whether it is because this is a cream university.

It can't be all that new. My class at Cornell ('78) was the first year there that the number of female engineering students equaled the number of males. That's 30 years ago! Christ! Get me my friggin' cane, already!

I also studied engineering in the late 70s and early 80s, and the male / female ratio was about 50%. That was 30 years ago, as broken says. In the 90s, there were already more women going to college in my country than males. Sorry that I don't have the current numbers for engineering students specifically, but I wouldn't be surprised that females outnumber the males.

I do know that in the 60s and early 70s, women engineers were rare. But that is history.

-

My experience with this is that the quality of the education, its general level of training has so much improved and made a lot of stuff easier to digest that certainly equal opportunity is now often the case although not in the studies I followed in the 80's (ratio of 1/25). In fact I know enough male engineers who mostly slept through their prestigious 'modernized' classes. Older engineers I speak laugh about the current level of what graduated students produced. They get more general training in commercial and organizational aspects but at maths or general insight they generally suck more than ever.

I wonder if the rising dominance of women in traditionally male intellectual environments have something to do with what is outlined in this study....

Alex Jacob wrote:One usually has to investigate and to know about the more hidden motives of those who form specific opinions, on contentious subjects, and doing that one enters a more subterranean, psychological territory. David gets exasperated when this fact arises, and so does Diebert.

And you're quite bloody right about that!

It's the methodology that is erroneously but still sufficiently targeted on this forum as the post-modern mindset, the pre-positioned deconstructive analysis of all those elements which must lurk there in the background clarifying even the most puzzling act. And behold: there they always are! It always has its trace to deeper running wheels inside wheels. What a wonderful feeling it must be every time. Everything has context, the background it arises from or against.

It's this very act, while it can bring about a lot of truth, that also contains the seeds of its own death - it's the pathological post-mortem examination, a sort of 'autopsian' view of the world where anything can turn into forensic evidence, the proof of being merely human and a sign of relief is possible. Again no leprechaun, no ghost in the machine, no absolute realities at work!

Pathological indeed, having lost any sense of life one is only left with finding truth in taking the corps apart. How did it die, how did it live?

Poets peer excited through the many potholes while the wise walk mostly silent slippery mountain roads.

I studied with a few females in geology labs that were very talented in certain aspects of scientific thought, but there was something always lacking in how they inquired scientifically. Their talent seemed to be for the memorization of knowledge that had already been discovered, but they weren’t all that creative in their own personal projects. They often struggled with research ideas, and asked me if I could brainstorm with them. And I found myself steering them in a few directions that I didn’t have time to go into myself, but I was never satisfied with their findings. Although, women were often able to far surpass me in the ability to remember a body of knowledge, but when it came to ideas for research projects, they never had any good questions that addressed holes in their understanding. They worked well in a cooperative team with men. However, in a leadership role, they brought the creativity of the class down quite a bit. It is almost as if women are much more content with what they learn, whereas men have a deeper discontent and focus that pushes them forward.

Sorry, Diebert. There is no way around psychological analysis, it is both fun and useful (cf Lord Nietzsche). If the psychology is conducted with some balance, and the knowledge that you can never definitively know anything absolutely solid about any other in that way, and also if the use of psychology is not utterly romantic or an extension of Machiavellian politics, or of religious projection, then it can be useful and helpful.

The fact that you struggtle so hard...against it...is...very telling, isn't it? ;-)

You suppose that these sages of yours are sort of beyond the threads and fibres that bind them to terrestrial life, but that is a huge mistake. If they make anything of themselves (intellectually) it is only because they go to such an odd extreme and thereby provoke, I think, others to discover a more balanced position.

I still want to know how Pye is oriented in relation to these questions, and the question is valid, even if she would never answer.

So Alex, are you a psychologist? Do you have an office open to the public? What is your "specialty"?

guest_of_logic wrote:

David Quinn wrote:

guest_of_logic wrote: Masculinity and femininity exist in large part in a relationship to one other.

In large part? So there are forms or aspects of masculinity (or femininity) which don't exist in such a relationship?

I wrote that to allow for possibilities that I have not yet seen. For now (i.e. for the possibilities that I have seen), I define masculinity and femininity as interrelated forces.

In other words, you don't really know how far masculinity extends beyond the sexual realm.

guest_of_logic wrote:

David Quinn wrote:It's curious that you don't object to Anna's elevation of the feminine to the serving of life and her downgrading of the masculine to being the feminine's help mate.

Yes, it's curious to me in hindsight, too. Basically it's because I didn't want to pick nits with her otherwise excellent post. If I were to address that point in the light of the emphasis that you've given it, I would say that both masculine and feminine are devoted to the equal serving of life, and to the extent that the masculine "serves the female", the feminine likewise "serves the male", so that it's no big deal in the end - Anna has simply emphasised one end of the bargain, which is natural given that the other end is usually emphasised even more on this forum.

If I might be allowed to imagine it from Anna's perspective (and let her please tell me if I am wrong), I would guess that what she is saying is that the feminine - through childrearing, etc - is more explicitly involved with life itself than the masculine, which is more involved with moulding external forms - and, given that life is all of our concern - that the masculine is essentially a support unit for the feminine.

Let me put it in simple terms: the woman births the child and nurtures it; the man "serves" her by building the structures that support that child and its welfare and education whilst the woman performs this vital role.

Yes, that is most likely what Anna was talking about.

It is pure fantasy, of course. A woman contributes very little to the creation and birth of a child. For example, she doesn't consciously reach inside her and put together the child out of the amino acids that are swirling around down there. Nature does it all for her. She barely has to do a thing. Her only noteworthy contribution is laying down and spreading her legs at each end of the process. And even that is very passive.

Consciously, she is no closer to the creation of the child than her husband is.

guest_of_logic wrote:

David Quinn wrote:

guest_of_logic wrote:The one would be nothing without the other. Hard as it is for QRS to accept this, but a large part of that relationship can be reduced fundamentally to the sexual, although here I'm not talking about bump and grind, I'm talking about the way that men and women identify themselves in the presence of the opposite gender.

That is certainly true for those whose masculinity doesn't extend beyond the realm of sexuality and relationships. But there is no law that says we have to define ourselves by other people's lack of purpose and vision.

Which, from one perspective, is a refutation of the QRS view of women, isn't it? None of us should have to define ourselves by the "lack of purpose and vision" that holds to such a childish and unrealistic version of masculinity and femininity as the dichotomy between spiritual consciousness and unconsciousness (talking about lack of purpose and vision, anyway).

But you don't really know whether it is a childish and unrealistic version since, by your own admission, you only know about the kind of masculinity that is esconsed in the sexual realm.

guest_of_logic wrote:

I'm wondering what is motivating you to force these arbitrary limits upon the masculine.

They're not arbitrary, they're what I observe occurring in my family and in the families of those around me whom I consider to be balanced and healthy groups.

What you happened to have arbitrarily experienced in your local area? Are we to conclude, then, that it is a case of your own small horizons creating these limits?

-

...