@w2af3ts

previously @sftn

[sftn-deactivated20170702]

There is no "good" or "valid" group of radfems, they're still TWEFs and SWEFs.

while I completely understand where you’re coming from, “radical feminist” as a kind of label for a set of politics isn’t always synonymous with the exclusion of trans women and sex workers, although it often means/signifies that on Tumblr

what is denoted by the label “radical feminism” is the aim of liberation for women through the absolute destruction of patriarchy and the systems that make it possible – this in itself isn’t the problem; the problem comes in the way this particular group of radical feminists, the ones U refer to as “TWEFs” and “SWEFs”, understands the content of “women”, “patriarchy”, and “systems” – i.e., incorrectly, and without reference to material reality

[radoruno]

Do you know what material reality means? It’s based on things that actually exist on a material plane, that means, things you can see and touch, and measure, that exists objectively even if there is no meaning given to them. So understanding patriarchy as sex-based (this group of people are opressed for having vaginas) is very much based in material reality, since it refers to physical characteristics. You can agree with it or not, but understanding “women” as people who have vaginas/vulvas is a material understanding, in opposition to understanding the word woman as meaning anyone who feels like a woman - a concept very far from material reality, because it’s absolutely subjective. And that’s the whole point? Anyone can identify as whatever they want because gender is individual (subjective) and being a woman is not based on biology (not material). 

[sftn-deactivated20170702]

this might be the longest post I’ve ever written – let’s hope it’s the longest post I’ll ever write; for the sake of readability, I’ve included subheadings and bold markers for major points, definitions, and examples – let me know if this is useful

I’ve gotten several asks from radical feminists asking me to explain how exactly it is that radical feminists do not or incorrectly refer to material reality, since radical feminists understand “sex” as something material in the same way U understand materiality here (as opposed to “gender”, which they hold is immaterial)

major point: yre right; I misspoke – it’s not that these radical feminists don’t [try to] reference material reality, it’s that they simultaneously (1) conflate what is purely objective, i.e., certain biological realities, with what is necessarily socially-constructed no matter how it references objective reality, i.e., sex, and (2) selectively reference material reality, i.e., only when it is convenient to do so

I’ll begin by correcting your definition of material reality: material reality does not merely consist in physical objects, i.e., “things U can see and touch”; material reality also consists in what happens, which is not necessarily something that can be seen or touched, but is something that has an objective existence, something that comes about as a result of objectively real/material objects, or as a result of interactions between objectively real/material objects – if something is happening, it is happening; if something has happened, it has happened – that “something” is real, and this vastly expands what can be considered material reality (for example, U wld want to be able to say that misogyny is materially real, i.e., something that happens) – this is essentially the Marxist understanding of materialism, too

by the way, being purely objectively real is not the only way for something to be real, and it certainly isn’t the only way for something to be true – for example, the president of the United States is a socially-constructed category itself, and would not exist without the particular kind of social arrangement and social understanding that makes it possible – but it’s true that Barack Obama is the president

major point: all of this having been said, patriarchy is completely unconcerned with objective reality – rather, it is concerned with trying to pass off the patriarchal and capitalist conceptualisation of the body and the person as something that is purely and objectively real; when radical feminists take on this definition of the body, of the person, of “sex” in an effort to subvert and destroy patriarchy, they accidentally become invested in maintaining these conceptualisations and thus accidentally become invested in maintaining patriarchy itself – this is what powers almost everything else that is wrong with this popular radical feminist movement

(1) SEX ISN’T REAL: here is a fantastic, thorough post about why “sex” is not objective fact; I’m going to paste the most relevant portion of it here for everyone’s convenience:

[A]t the end of the day, a zebra is materially different from a dog in the same way that, to get back to the original topic, a penis is materially different from a vagina (actually a bad analogy since homologous reproductive organs are much more similar to each other than taxa that have been separated for millions of years, but anyway). The biological differences and similarities themselves exist, but any attempt to categorise and quantify them will necessarily rely on socially constructed and frequently arbitrary models, definitions and assumptions. That’s basically what science is - a continuous (and frequently wildly inaccurate) attempt to try to make sense of reality. […] Essentially, we’re trying to find quantitative ways to represent things that are by nature qualitative, and that’s always going to be arbitrary to some extent. Obviously biological characteristics (whether genetic, sexual/reproductive, etc.) objectively exist and would continue to exist if humans and human culture were to suddenly disappear, and in that sense, things like sex, gender and taxonomic classification can be said to be based in biological reality. But human attempts to define or categorise these characteristics - for example species concepts, the binary model of sex, etc. - are not in themselves biological realities, and are subject to change based on new information. For example, evolutionarily speaking, “reptiles” (as we traditionally understand them) don’t exist. Obviously this doesn’t mean that lizards, tortoises, snakes, crocodiles, non-avian dinosaurs etc. don’t exist or never existed. It simply means that the socially constructed classification of animals into two distinct, mutually exclusive groups called “reptiles” and “birds” is completely arbitrary and not actually the result of any inherent biological reality (in fact the opposite).

in essence, and in addition: “sex” itself is not objective fact, but rather an attempt at interpreting our perception of what is objective fact; that’s two layers of abstraction (i.e., perceiving, and then interpreting); we also add a third layer of abstraction, i.e., referencing the interpretation of our perception – by abstraction, I mean moving further away from the objective nature of [biological] reality, and toward the subjective nature of ideas – there are lots of other layers/methods of abstraction (e.g., judgment, valuation)

this is to say that there isn’t actually something out there that is actually “female” or “male” – those are concepts that are used to describe things we perceive/interpret about bodies in particular ways, in order to make reference to them and make judgments about those perceptions, interpretations, descriptions, and references; but this process of perceiving, describing, referencing, judging, and so on is coloured by the way we are taught to think about things, and fundamentally inaccurate because of the nature of subjectivity [and subsequently, of abstraction] (some anti-realism for U)

major point: why is this important? because our current definition of sex, even at the level of what is “male” and what is “female”, is inextricably rooted in patriarchy – biological/evolutionary science itself is informed by the structures, systems and processes that surround and contextualise it; have a look at the history of the Western conceptualisation of sex for evidence of that – it is patriarchy that has caused the conceptualisation of the human body, and by extension people themselves, to be primarily defined by reproductive capability

this isn’t how bodies “really” are [because we can’t know how bodies really are], or what they “really are for” [since this is a kind of value judgment, and thus a kind of abstraction as I explained earlier] – rather, it’s the way of understanding bodies that is most useful to patriarchy – no one’s body really fits into this definition, and there are all kinds of bodies that really complicate this system of categorisation, e.g., bodies with different chromosomal configurations, bodies deemed or understood as intersex, and more

this is all to provide background for what U are claiming here: that patriarchy targets people whose bodies are biologically-arranged in particular ways, i.e., bodies capable of reproduction, particularly bodies that produce ova, have uteri, and so on – and U know what? U’re not wrong; under patriarchy and capitalism, gender functions as a signification system based on the patriarchal conception of sex, forcing people into one of two categories and coercing them into behaving and presenting themselves in particular ways in order to (1) easily identify them as having particular reproductive capabilities – “[under patriarchy,] gender presentation is genital representation”, says Talia Mae Bettcher; and (2) to best exploit those reproductive capabilities and binaried categorisation of those capabilities for the purposes of maintaining and (re)producing patriarchy and capitalism

the particular radical feminist understanding of patriarchy, systemic maintenance of patriarchy, and womanhood (i.e., gender) in question stops here – stops short of here, actually, considering that U take the patriarchal understanding of sex to be objective fact

major point: here’s the problem, both with the patriarchal understanding of gender and sex, and with the subsequent “radfem” understanding of the same categories: people are not their reproductive capabilities, even though patriarchy insists that they are – people are self-determining, complex and multi-dimensional subjective beings who think about themselves, each other, and their relationship with the world around them in complicated ways – patriarchy tries to limit all of this in favour of the maintenance of capitalism and thus attempts to constrict and oversimplify our understanding of ourselves to a primarily patriarchal understanding, a primarily binarily-gendered and binarily-sexed understanding… an understanding into which nobody really fits, but is coerced into accepting

major point: this patriarchal understanding necessarily cannot fit all of that complexity, all of that subjectivity, all of those ways of thinking – it is designed to limit and destroy them; however, these categories are really the only ways we have been taught to and allowed to conceptualise ourselves, and so it is not only logical but necessary that people reimagine, repurpose, expand them – what U take issue with, i.e., the expansion of the category “woman” past its patriarchal understanding to include people who understand themselves as women, is not the fault of these women themselves – it is the fault of patriarchy and capitalism for limiting the ways we are allowed to understand ourselves and our relations to each other and the world; that U choose to punish and denigrate trans women for their identities indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of the way patriarchy functions and of the category of “womanhood” on your part and on the part of these radical feminists

major point: trans women are women, and it is true because they say so

(2) SELECTIVE UNDERSTANDING OF MATERIALITY: these radical feminists often do not believe transmisogyny is real, completely ignoring the material reality in which trans women face specific kinds of marginalization, dehumanisation and violence on the primary basis of their being trans women – they refuse to name transmisogyny as a specific kind of oppressive process/system, and try to account for it by defining it in terms of other oppressive processes, namely homophobia – not only is this a wholly insufficient account (which isn’t to say that homophobia doesn’t play a part), it is a reality-denying one – transmisogyny is something that has happened and is happening, and is objectively real

[sftn-deactivated20170702]

If I understand you correctly, men can't love really. They just learn how to trade the gestures of love correctly. Sure, they could unlearn the harmful effects of masculinity, but what is the honest chance of that happening? Of them realizing that and accomplishing unlearning what has been taught and reinforced since birth? Practically none

men-as-human-beings are absolutely capable of love, just as all human beings are; however, [patriarchal] masculinity (as it is rooted in domination, ownership, control, and dehumanisation) is inherently loveless, and must be relinquished

(femininity is loveless, too – don’t get me wrong; but that lovelessness manifests itself and functions differently with respect to masculine lovelessness)

I suppose I’m wondering why U think there’s “practically [no]” chance of men “[unlearning] the harmful effects of masculinity” – I think there are things in place that make it incredibly difficult as well as undesirable to do so, absolutely! but not impossible

actually, I think that the widespread belief that it is impossible for men to change and relinquish masculinity is a part of what makes it difficult for such a change/transformation to happen, and I think that the belief is in part a product of patriarchy itself – that is, if we are made to believe that patriarchy is at most objective fact or at least incapable of changing/being eliminated, we are forced to accept it as reality

my own belief in men’s capacity for transformation is rooted in three things: firstly, that men are first and foremost people, i.e., complex, self-determining, self-conscious, and above all vulnerable; secondly, that masculinity is necessarily coerced (as opposed to purely chosen or inherited) – thirdly, that men want to and need to be healed from masculinity, but often don’t recognise masculinity as the* source of their pain in the first place

these are the things that not only make men’s healing and transformation possible, but necessary… and cement their own investment in said healing and transformation

[sftn-deactivated20170702]

hey, what do u think about this? "Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male; the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object—and most particularly an object of vision."

this is from John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, I think – and I agree with it to an extent, but I think it’s an oversimplification

I think it’s generally believed that only women self-survey, when this is actually an essential part of the phenomenology (that is, the subjective experience) of capitalism/hegemony for all people – all people self-survey, self-commodify, self-regulate, self-objectify, self-police, self-flatten under capitalism; in different ways, for different functions, in different contexts, and so on – but processes of self-surveillance are an integral part of existence under capitalism/hegemony

I say that because I think this implies that men are exempt from self-surveillance, when self-surveillance is not only a core aspect of masculinity (e.g., think about what people are talking about when they say masculinity is ‘fragile’), but also a core aspect of the kind of “look[ing] at women” that Berger is talking about here – men “look at” women in relation to the way men “look at” themselves (e.g., the ways women come to symbolize men’s worth)

I also dislike that this also assumes that women are a homogenous category who collectively experience a universal, uniform relationship to a homogenous category of men – one in which all women are “looked at” (that is, objectified) by men, and in the same ways; e.g., do white men “look at” white women the same way black men “look at” black women? do white men “look at” black women the same way they look at white women? what about black men in the same case?

this also implies that all women collectively experience self-objectification the same way, and only in terms of gender, which is part of the reason I take issue with the idea that “[t]he surveyor of woman in herself is male”; the “surveyor” is not necessarily male, and is additionally raced/racialized, classed, dis/abled, and more… and none of these things can ever be removed from the gender of the surveyor [or from each other]! power dynamics are incredibly complex and constantly shifting in terms of context, and so the “surveyor” is complex and shifting, too

[sftn-deactivated20170702]

this might sound strange but it’s incredibly important to understand that we are primed, through existing in capitalist and hegemonic contexts, for compliance with capitalist and hegemonic ends

e.g., a “respect for authority” isn’t merely How It Should Be – rather, instilling a basic deference to authority figures (through the familial unit [to adults, particularly patriarchs], through education [to knowledge authorities, moral authorities, etc.] and through other social institutions) makes one more likely to comply and less likely to question or defy, especially when a respect for authority is framed as something natural, necessary, and universal – i.e., what’s the point in questioning something that Just Is?

this is why I’ve always taken issue with the way the Stanford prison experiment and the Milgram experiments were taken up publicly (and even in academic psychology) – “well, I guess people really respect and/or fear authority! case closed”, without questioning exactly where a deference to authority originates and why instilling a deference to authority is useful (which both experiments actually illustrate perfectly)

[sftn-deactivated20170702]

something I want to say, almost cryptically, in the hopes that the ppl I am addressing will understand what I am saying:

ideological purity is not only a sham but completely ineffective, especially when U are trying to communicate something radical, disruptive, transformative to ppl who have not been exposed to the ideas U are trying to get across

this is the exact problem I had with bell hooks’ criticism of Lemonade, and it’s the problem I have now with whatever group of people (namely white people in academia) calls themselves leftists and imagines themselves to be doing “important” work when using highly abstract, highly context-specific language and means of communication in order to get something across to people who have no familiarity with that language, with that kind of communication, with those contexts… and then blames those people for not listening! not researching! not keeping a dictionary on hand!

there is a reason why people would rather listen to and watch Lemonade than listen to U! and I think it’s worth thinking about why that is!

U must prioritise legibility, accessibility, and even attractiveness – not just for the sake of “inclusiveness”, but the sake of literal effectiveness – I can’t believe this suggestion is something people actually balk at, but it is! and it shouldn’t be!

[sftn-deactivated20170702]

the more I think about it the more I realise that this move toward cryptic, abstract, highly context-specific and ultimately academic language is a reaction to the way every [excruciatingly slow] development in public consciousness when it comes to feminism [for example] is readily absorbed into capitalism – think about the way the word “intersectionality” has been misunderstood, bastardised, sloganised and taken on as some kind of identity

but that doesn’t mean U do the total opposite! that doesn’t mean U turn social justice and activism and critical theory into a No Fun Zone (or into a Highly Abstract, Highly Specific, Esoteric, and Meta-Ironic Fun Zone) simply because it’s difficult to extricate beauty, romance, aesthetic, softness, positivity and so on from capitalism and capitalist values

people have to be reached first – people have to want to listen first – and making that intervention requires relying upon the available, familiar language and symbolism – requires beauty, requires romance, requires glamour, requires softness, requires idealism – whether U like it or not!

I think what I’m trying to say to this group of people, ultimately, is Be Nice And Lighten The Fuck Up

[sftn-deactivated20170702]

no person is static and unchanging – every single person alive, as long as they are in an environment that nourishes and validates them wholly, will tend toward growth – every single person alive has the capacity to change – even U – especially U

[sftn-deactivated20170702]

I've seen you mention human nature several times, what are your views on that? Esp w/r/t violence, greed, mutuality, etc

when I mention human nature, humanness, and the like, I’m always talking about vulnerability – i.e., a proneness: to harm, to injury, to loss, to suffering, to lacking, and so on – as well as what is motivated by vulnerability (e.g., thoughts, actions)

I think I’ve mentioned in the past that vulnerability isn’t purely human (i.e., that all things that can be damaged/changed are vulnerable), but that when I’m talking about vulnerability in the context of humanness I’m talking about our ability to think about, signify, and structure our own vulnerability and our subsequent motivations in important, unique, and complex ways; this makes something that seems relatively simple incredibly complicated

most importantly, I think, is that there is never a time that we aren’t vulnerable, even when we do our best to protect ourselves from damage/change

so, when I refer to human nature, and when I say things like “we need to account for human nature”, I’m often saying that we need to situate people’s thoughts, actions, motivations and the like in terms of their vulnerability, the context of their vulnerability, and the ways people account for and protect their vulnerability in that context

with that, I think U might be able to derive how that ties into violence, greed, and mutuality (I’ve explicitly talked about violence as it relates to vulnerability in my /tagged/violence as well as my /tagged/masculinity)

[sftn-deactivated20170702]

cruelty, fear of vulnerability, and/or emotional constipation disguised as objectivity, rationality, righteousness and moral authority are neither apolitical nor morally neutral; they are far from harmless or justifiable, and they are inextricable from one’s politics

using politics, activism and social criticism/commentary as means for covertly projecting personal insecurities and identity crises upon others and acting out one’s desire to be cruel, superior and impervious to others should be completely unacceptable – and yet, it is not, because it is commonly accepted that as long as one is aligned with the “right” causes and directs their unchecked cruelty toward the people who “deserve” it, anything is permissible no matter what motivates it

this is not the same thing as saying “don’t fight hate with hate” “violence is not the answer” or “if you’re mean/angry, you’re just as bad as they are”, mind U – being told things like that is solely meant to deny us the means to communicate the violence we see/experience, to protect ourselves from violence, and to interrupt hegemony

refusing to do this examination of one’s politics and the politics of those in our communities is how it becomes possible to harbour abusers, manipulators, exploiters, and opportunists – they take advantage of a veneer of moral correctness to do harm, and their behaviour is either viewed as normal and/or justifiable, or goes unchallenged because they occupy marginalised identities, are aligned with the “right” causes, or are viewed as moral authorities

and it is not just possible to harbour them – it is equally possible to become them by deceiving ourselves about thoughts and behaviour that would otherwise be understood as unacceptable or inexcusable

we must each address our insecurities, our misgivings, our negative tendencies, our flaws, our fears, our defense mechanisms, and our maliciousness because the nature and enactment of our politics are inextricably linked to and rooted in these things – they cannot be separated from each other or compartmentalised – the very violence and trauma we face in this work can and does cause us to inflict and (re)produce violence and trauma; working through this is equally as important as any other work

we must constantly think about why we are here

[sftn-deactivated20170702]

I’ve said this in the past, but people often think my project here is denying that men are regularly, predictably violent, and that their violence proceeds from their gender – it’s not, they are, and it does

my problem is that I feel that, apart from the black feminist tradition (which has done such a thorough job of this), feminism has done a poor job of contextualizing men, and we are left with fatalism about men instead and the assumption that men’s violence is inevitable and inherent (in biology for radical feminism, in gender identification for ‘mainstream’ feminism) instead of something that absolutely can and should be transformed

what I have tried to do in my masculinity tag is contextualize masculinity and its subjects; I’ve tried to situate it not only within material and sociopolitical contexts, but within psychological and historical ones, particularly personal histories – I’m of the opinion that ignoring the individual in favour of analyzing systems leaves us missing half the truth, and we are all worse for it

[sftn-deactivated20170702]

The human male pattern of violence, towards each other and towards women, is identical to the violence exhibited by males in all other apes. All apes have common themes of males raping females and killing each other. Even the bonobos, it's just that there males are kept in check by older females (ex. if a male harasses a younger female, the older matriarchs gang up on him and physically intimidate him into leaving). Violence is in men's DNA. Has nothing to do with capitalism or "love".

U know, honestly – given the sheer abundance of counterarguments and evidence to the contrary to this precise line of reasoning that exists on Tumblr, and given the amount of time I have spent on this blog outlining the complexity of gender formations and organizing them into tags where they can be easily accessed, I don’t think I feel like engaging this directly

what I will say, slightly tangentially, is this: I know that U think what U are saying here is correct, that U are telling a truth that no one wants to acknowledge – what U fail to understand is that this line of argumentation is a reification of patriarchal knowledge; this is exactly what patriarchy (and capitalism, as much as U think it is irrelevant) would have us all believe, because it is in the interest of their stability and persistence to believe it – it’s false and it’s fatalism, which is also always false as far as I’m concerned

(by the way, that bonobo dynamic U’re talking about isn’t stable, and there are bonobo societies that don’t take on this set of dynamics – but Google will tell U more about that)

[sftn-deactivated20170702]

every once in a while, this post I wrote last year about masculinity and transactional relationships regains popularity and is circulated – I think it would be irresponsible of me not to provide U all with some clarifications and developments:

(1) I refer to love in this post in quotes not because I don’t believe love is real (I do, and I have a /tagged/love where I talk about it endlessly), but because the kind of heterosocial relationships (i.e., not only romantic/sexual relationships between men and women, but all kinds) that are called loving under capitalism and hegemony are meant to serve the goals of these systems, and we are made to adopt these goals as our own – as a result, we end up seeing people as having ‘roles’ in our lives and in society, instead of as being people; we see them as an amalgamation of tasks/goals they can fulfill for us and norms they should adhere to in order to meet those tasks/goals – this has become such a banal way of going about relationships with others that we don’t even realize we’re doing it

I have a hard time calling these kinds of relationships “loving”, and I talk about this here explicitly, and provide an alternative vision for love in my /tagged/love

(2) heterosocial/sexual relationships are not the only kinds of relationships under capitalism and hegemony that are transactional, that result in the reduction of one or both partners to a set of tasks/goals they can fulfil for the other, or that are violent – in fact, many relationships to others take this form under these systems unless we actively strive to structure them differently

as a counterexample, according to the 2010 CDC National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS), (the full report can be found here) lesbians report being victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) at equal and at times greater rates relative to heterosexual women

two things, then: one, men aren’t the only group of people capable of inflicting IPV (and it might be the case that the prevalence of IPV inflicted by men might have something to do with the prevalence of heterosexual relationships in general); and two, everyone has work to do

(3) men are not especially evil, soulless or apathetic – men are not incapable of love – most importantly, men are not undeserving of being loved, cared for, empathized with, doted on, and the like – but there are three problems: firstly, it is an uncontestable fact that men are punished for gender non-conformity; secondly, masculinity, in centering around superiority and stoicalness, prevents boys and men from developing the skills needed to navigate emotionality in themselves and with others, since emotionality, vulnerability and sensitivity in men is perceived as gender non-conforming; thirdly, both because of hegemonic gender relations and because of (heterosexual) men’s atrophied emotional skills, it becomes the responsibility of women, particularly romantic partners, to do this kind of work for men and to bear the brunt of men’s inability to do it for others

in a study by Wheeler et al. (1983) titled ‘Loneliness, social interaction, and sex roles’, it was found that single ‘macho’ men (i.e., men who strongly identify with hegemonic masculinity) who were low in emotional expressivity, and were thus dependent on women as romantic partners to keep from being lonely, tended to be the most lonely – however, men who were high in emotionally expressive traits such as warmth and sensitivity did not follow this pattern

(4) as bell hooks points out in All About Love, oftentimes, the kinds of behaviours women perceive as being loving and caring are not at all, and often serve to regulate boys’ and men’s masculinity and heterosexuality (e.g., mothers who punish their sons for or warn their sons against gender non-conformity as a means of ‘protecting’ them; romantic partners who dismiss/ridicule their partner’s sensitivity, or expect stoicalness from them in being the ‘man’ in the relationship) – women can be (especially as mothers) complicit in the kinds of lovelessness that men experience and enact

I think there is more to say, but this post is long enough

[sftn-deactivated20170702]

Re: that nothing about us is innate - do you believe then that even an uprooted identity can never belong wholly to one's self? Trying to reconcile all of this myself too... your posts are very enlightening i appreciate you so much

thank U so much!

I think that this depends on what U mean by one’s self/identity “belong[ing] wholly to oneself” – do U mean purely produced by oneself? purely following only from oneself, one’s intentions, one’s will? free of influence and outside intervention?

to that, I would say: ppl are porous and dynamic by nature – the “self” is not so much a thing-in-itself as it is a set of ever-changing, ever-evolving relationships to the world, to space, to time, to objects, to people – of relationships-to in general, most of which are unintentionally formed – the self does not come into existence alone or in isolation and cannot exist in isolation, but rather with/against/for/by relationships-to, particularly to people – the self necessarily denotes some relationship between us and something/someone else, which is also always saying that we are something other than the thing we are relating to – the self is a distinction

in that sense, it is impossible for one’s identity to belong wholly to oneself, since identity can be said in this sense to be a mere means of distinguishing one self-determining bundle of relationships-to from another and from the world and from things in general

however… if by “belong wholly to oneself” U mean “know oneself wholly”, that’s different – if that is the case, then yes, I believe it is possible to belong wholly to oneself – and that is exactly what I was trying to get at in the post

when we take who we are for granted, when we assume that who we are is essential and naturally a product of our consciousness and intentionality, we lose the ability to see who we are; we lose the ability to decide for ourselves who we would like to be – the constant and eternal calling of the origins of one’s self into question that I described in that post is a way of laying claim to oneself, is a way of belonging to oneself

it isn’t merely about knowing “oneself” as a self/identity, however – because, like I said, the self is a nebulous mass of relationships-to; rather, it is about understanding one’s situation within those relations; understanding one’s place in the world, in time, in space, and with others

in this sense, the self is a meeting place, rather than a distinction

[sftn-deactivated20170702]

talking about love and being about love are two vastly different levels of understanding and embodiment, for the simple fact that love can never be adequately contained in or expressed by language – love is contained in action, in loving-action, and to attempt to capture love in language only is to immobilize it, to freeze it, to stunt it; to talk and talk and talk about love without practicing it is to not know anything about love at all – to not love at all

a week or two ago, one of my favourite professors briefly told us about a Zen Buddhist kōan* about “a finger pointing at the moon” – i.e., when I point toward the moon, U aren’t meant to look at my finger! U are meant to look toward the moon! n matter how long U stare at the finger, U will never see the moon, n U will never understand anything about it

and this is what talk about love should be – it should direct us toward love; it is not love in and of itself, and we should never mistake it as such, we should never stop at it, and we should never be satisfied by our ability to talk about it – we must turn toward the moon; toward love itself

*(thank U, Anonymous)

[compassioncole]

mental illness is a spectrum of experiences which are constructed and categorized by social institutions as diagnoses

diagnoses aren’t sacred, essential, platonic entities floating in space somewhere, they’re descriptions of patterns of experiences

if your self-described experiences correspond with a a particular pattern, then congratulations, that’s how the process of diagnosis works

you may note that this is kind of fuzzy and ambiguous: that’s because that’s how mental illness works and why your medical metaphors are incoherent. there is no chemical/physical test for mental illness because it is entirely descriptive of self-reported symptoms, so stop acting like there’s some hoop people have to jump through to be Really Mentally Ill other than “having corresponding experiences” (which is really loose anyway because mental illness isn’t clearly delineated, because, again, it is not an a priori category that inherently exists)

[sftn-deactivated20170702]

also imp’t to remember that these categories aren’t really constructed arbitrarily; psychiatry cannot exist without the existence of ppl who are “mentally ill”, n thus there must be the perpetual construction/production of mental illness/mentally ill ppl (either in the pathologization/medicalization of ppl’s behaviour/circumstances, or in the actual traumatization of ppl) in order for it to persist

these categories have also been constructed w sociopolitical n economic aims in mind (historically, see: drapetomania, homosexuality, hysteria) – the medicalization/pathologization of deviance, disobedience, n traumatization-via-hegemony is thus useful bc it locates the problem in the individual instead of structurally/systemically

(this isn’t to say there aren’t ppl who are traumatized, who are struggling, who live with symptoms that make it near impossible to live their lives – what I’m saying is that psychiatry often hides that ppl are traumatized/struggling/suffering as a result of hegemony – of capitalism, of marginalization, of being targeted, of being forgotten, of surviving a system that relies upon their traumatization/pain/invisibility)

mental illness (as the grouping of certain behaviours into patterned categories) is by definition socially-constructed; thus, it has no objective bases (n biology is not objective!) – n that that construction serves a sociopolitical n economic purpose… one that, among many other things, positions psychiatry as not only the sole bearer of the only truths abt our psychology, but subsequently the sole bearer of validation n help; we aren’t allowed to have faith in our own judgments abt our psychology bc only psychiatry knows the truth n has the authority to mete it out, whether we accept/tolerate psychiatry or not – it has to be this way, so that psychiatry can pathologize/medicalize ppl n their behaviour/circumstances from an ostensibly objective standpoint with no possible contest, n effectively carry out its function as a tool of hegemonic violence

[sftn-deactivated20170702]

super briefly: sex being socially-constructed isn’t in itself a problem – necessarily, anything that is talked about is socially-constructed, since language is socially-constructed [and so is subjectivity, but that’s for another time]

like, I don’t think anyone at all is saying that literal biological realities do not exist – that there aren’t biological differences between people, that there aren’t biological features that function in certain ways, and so on – I don’t think anyone is saying that nothing is real; I’m certainly not saying that

but the problem is that what is embedded in language becomes embedded in sex, too! when we say “female” we want to say/mean “bodies that are biologically arranged in these ways” but that is ultimately not all that we say or mean – and this is something distinct and different from the way we think about gender, so we can’t chalk it up to that either

and until we come up with a solution for that, I’m going to take issue with and complicate the way we conceive of and talk about sex

[sftn-deactivated20170702]

a major reason I haven’t been active is because I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the pervasiveness of “identitarian” politics here and elsewhere – i.e., the belief that identities are pre-discursive (I have always hated this word but I don’t have another way of explaining it right now), the kind of politics that attach a moral status to identities, the subsequent construction of identities in terms of/against/contrary to identities considered inherently morally-reprehensible … which ultimately results in the necessity and maintenance of those morally-reprehensible identities + the power relations between those identities, and so on – like, identitarian politics are completely futile and harmful

it’s so overwhelming and I don’t know where or how to begin dissolving it since it’s such an important part of how people understand politics in general

[garliccloves-deactivated2018032]

Could you elaborate? I’m confused!

[sftn-deactivated20170702]

I don’t blame U, this post is super dense! let me try to unravel/elaborate it a bit (scroll to the bottom for the conclusion):

first of all, when I say “pre-discursive”, I mean taken for granted – like, it is taken for granted that certain identities exist, and certain things about those identities are taken for granted, too – like, certain things are always associated with a particular identity, and no one really wants to give any thought to why that is or why those identities exist in the first place (and for good reason; I’ll explain below)

two important things to understand about identities in general is that (1) they are necessarily exclusionary, in that if there are some people who are included in a group, there must be some people excluded from that group, which means there must be a set of rules governing the parameters for inclusion/exclusion, and subsequently (2) all identities must be constructed to some degree in terms of/contrary to/against those people that they exclude – like, who is excluded from an identity is just as important to defining that identity as who is included in it, if not more important

that is: there is always a binary formed where any identity is formed, e.g., us/them

especially in the realm of political identities, this is incredibly important, since these relationships between who is included and who is excluded are always defined by some imbalanced power relation between the two – i.e., one is understood as dehumanising the other, so one identity is the dehumanising party and the other is the dehumanised party, and their respective statuses in that power relation become integral to those identities and to the way people understand those identities

as a result a moral status is attached to belonging to either identity – the dehumanising identity is understood as morally-reprehensible, and the dehumanised identity is understood as morally-good

let’s take feminism and the hegemonic man/woman binary as an example, where it is commonly understood women are the subject of feminism, and that men are the dehumanisers and women are the dehumanised, and subsequently that those who fall under “man” are inherently morally-reprehensible and those under “women” are inherently morally-good

thus, in order for the category “woman” and its members to remain understood as morally-good, it/they must continue to be dehumanised by the category “man” and its members; in order for the category “man” and its members to be morally-reprehensible, it/they must continue to dehumanise the category “woman” and its members

see the problem? the category “woman” is necessarily constructed in relation to the category “man” and thus the imbalanced power relation between them must be maintained in order for the category “woman” and its members to continue to understand itself/themselves as morally-good

simultaneous problem: pre-discursiveness, which I explained at the beginning – what is a “woman”, anyway? what is a “man”? do these identities exist outside of their relation to each other, or outside of the social context they have relevance within? is anyone really a “woman” or a “man”? does everyone really fall neatly into one of these two categories? do the members of those categories even really belong to them completely?

that is: is “woman” always dehumanised and never a dehumaniser in any way? is “man” always a dehumaniser and never dehumanised in any way? is “woman” never capable of dehumanising “man”? is “man” never dehumanised by “woman”?

conclusion: when we become invested in a particular identity, we also become invested in the power relation it is situated within and in the maintenance of its moral goodness as the dehumanised party in that power relation – we become invested in a binary that could not possibly accurately represent the people who exist within it; identitarian politics are circular! they are not about transcending power relations! they make it necessary for those power relations to continue to exist so that people can continue to understand themselves as morally-good in terms of them

[sftn-deactivated20170702]

IF NOT US, THEN WHO?