[UA] What? Me sexist?
Timothy Ferguson
ferguson at beyond.net.au
Fri Sep 1 03:49:21 PDT 2000
----- Original Message -----
From: "Patrick O'Duffy" <redfern at thehub.com.au>
> It's an experiential thing. No, it's not impossible, but it's very hard
to fully
> understand the other gender.
To state that the other gender are of monolithic, singular opinion is
sexism, surely?
Sorry, but I can't help it. In this debate on how not to be sexist, you are
dividing the race into two groups and attributing dimorphic mindsets to each
half. That's clearly sexism, because it indicates that people think how
they think not because they choose to do so, but because they have genitals
of a certain shape.
Thus paradox.
> Furthermore, I think there _are_ real psychological
> differences between genders, as a whole; some are genetic and
physiologically based,
> most are the products of social conditioning that is incredibly hard to
overcome.
Unprovable, indeed all but absolutely undemonstrable considering the same
sentence has been used for race and there was that debacle with phrenology,
which demonstrates that since you can't have an unbiased person to measure,
you will never get accurate measurements or tabulations.
> > It doesn't matter how Greg or John wrote that material in UA, because to
> > some people the very fact *that* they wrote the material is grounds for
a
> > label of sexism in some form.
>
> In her defense, I don't think Jo is saying that. She's included
qualifiers in her
> statements; she's not saying that UA is 100%, 'objectively' 'sexist', but
instead has
> said that _she_ thinks it _may_ be considered sexist for several reasons.
It's the
> difference betweeen a shitfight and a reasonable discussion.
It makes the claim difficult to disprove, and since it contains a
prejorative, it's basically a worthless and nasty sentence.
If I were to, stating this solely for the sake of discussion and not as a
real excercise, go about an online community of which you were a member and
say "Patrick may be a rapist." would you consider that a reasonable
statement? How many qualifers does it need to have before it becomes
reasonable? "Patrick may subconciously desire to be a rapist"? No number
of words between the subject and object make it a reasonable (meaning
objectively provable or disprovable) statement. Semantically, of course,
it's true for that set of people who do not know you, Patrick (for whom you,
like the cat, may or may not be), and in that sense it is reasonable, but is
it, anyway, at the level of highest scientific method, a reasonable thesis?
The structure of the parallel is: "X may be a member of hate-group Y. They
do not know they are a member of the group, do not consciously wish to be a
member of that group. However, from their actions, a member of
reverence-group Z can see that this is so."
It requires both an occluded sin, where the schizoid sinner is unaware, and,
more interestingly, an elect who can see into the sinner's soul. It's far
closer to mystery religion than reason.
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