Malcolm, you say:
> malgosia, what would be your great personal loss? the loss of the
> privilege of being in the one-up position in every romantic relationship?
Heh heh, you didn't do very well on this one, and it's hardly a $60,000
question. I would lose the delight and richness of having, with men,
relationships that include sex.
> heterosexual masculinity in this culture, as
> something represented, as a mode of representation, as a practice, as a
> lived experience, is deeply and perhaps irretrievably sexist. to the
> extent that one partakes of it, one participates in systemic sexism. it
> is however a culturally specific mode of subjectivity and social
> practice, one that is not insurmountable. but in order to surmount it, it
> will take a lot more than men being nice.
It's not just "heterosexual masculinity" that's systemically sexist; it's,
just as much, "heterosexual femininity". It's the whole ball of heterosexual
wax. But I don't see how inter-gender abstinence would in any way be a step
towards surmounting this. I feel that your position partakes as much in
systemic sexism as the practices whose avoidance you're advocating. There
seems to be, underlying your position, a deep self-disgust -- the idea seems
to be "at least we won't be doing it to women". You're positing "women"
as a group "to whom it is done", and you're not even consulting them in the
matter of a solution; it doesn't even occur to you that your solution
involves a severe -- I would say _violent_ -- stricture for women, who are
supposedly the "injured party" in the equation you're trying to solve.
You mention "men being nice" as something that is
qualitatively in the right "solution space" -- even though you declare it
quantitatively insufficient. It seems to me that you're ultimately positing a
dichotomy between "violence" in sex, which you condemn, attribute to men,
and to which you respond by wanting to throw men into an isolation facility
where they cannot "harm" the other, supposedly non-violent, citizens --
and some kind of "unviolent", "gentle", "nice" sex, sex as it should be.
What is this ideal? Where do you get it from? Why does the unfulfillment
of this ideal by actual sex, now, in our lifetime, between men and women,
warrant in your mind the complete rejection of this actual lived sex?
-m
> malgosia, what would be your great personal loss? the loss of the
> privilege of being in the one-up position in every romantic relationship?
Heh heh, you didn't do very well on this one, and it's hardly a $60,000
question. I would lose the delight and richness of having, with men,
relationships that include sex.
> heterosexual masculinity in this culture, as
> something represented, as a mode of representation, as a practice, as a
> lived experience, is deeply and perhaps irretrievably sexist. to the
> extent that one partakes of it, one participates in systemic sexism. it
> is however a culturally specific mode of subjectivity and social
> practice, one that is not insurmountable. but in order to surmount it, it
> will take a lot more than men being nice.
It's not just "heterosexual masculinity" that's systemically sexist; it's,
just as much, "heterosexual femininity". It's the whole ball of heterosexual
wax. But I don't see how inter-gender abstinence would in any way be a step
towards surmounting this. I feel that your position partakes as much in
systemic sexism as the practices whose avoidance you're advocating. There
seems to be, underlying your position, a deep self-disgust -- the idea seems
to be "at least we won't be doing it to women". You're positing "women"
as a group "to whom it is done", and you're not even consulting them in the
matter of a solution; it doesn't even occur to you that your solution
involves a severe -- I would say _violent_ -- stricture for women, who are
supposedly the "injured party" in the equation you're trying to solve.
You mention "men being nice" as something that is
qualitatively in the right "solution space" -- even though you declare it
quantitatively insufficient. It seems to me that you're ultimately positing a
dichotomy between "violence" in sex, which you condemn, attribute to men,
and to which you respond by wanting to throw men into an isolation facility
where they cannot "harm" the other, supposedly non-violent, citizens --
and some kind of "unviolent", "gentle", "nice" sex, sex as it should be.
What is this ideal? Where do you get it from? Why does the unfulfillment
of this ideal by actual sex, now, in our lifetime, between men and women,
warrant in your mind the complete rejection of this actual lived sex?
-m