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RantFirst they came...
First they came for the cheating males, and I did not speak out-
Because I was not a cheating male.
Then they came for the rapists, and I did not speak out-
Because I was not a rapist.
Then they came for the child mutilators, and I did not speak out-
Because I was not a child mutilator.
Then they came to me, and told me I could live my life again. And all my sisters spoke out-
Because now we could.
I love when the smugly righteous are too dim to realize theyâve been politely decapitated.
Dr Stock is amazing, lol. Iâve had similar experience with handmaidens. A lot of them are so very dim. I find theyâre the type that get sucked into those mlm schemes easily.
When we studied postmodernism and the Critical Theories at university, I really never imagined it would play out like this in the real world. It's honestly so surreal to see this. LGBTQ+ groups, feminist groups, leftwing groups, all trying to dismantle category distinctions and using "queering" as praxis, even if they do not realise that's the project they're engaged on. The "queering" of all "binary oppositions", man/woman, straight/gay, cis/trans.
This is seen as a progressive movement in getting rid of social oppression because Queer Theory views oppression as springing not from one class of people subordinating another and exploiting them for labour and resources for their material benefit - in Queer Theory, oppression comes from the very act of labelling these groups in a binary fashion, which is seen as restrictive and oppressive, and people cannot express their authentic selves in this binary opposition.
So when oppression is not seen as arising from material relations of power, but instead from the LABELLING of these relations in a binary fashion - of putting people into these groups, these categories - then it really drops power out of the equation.
When females unite together in feminism - according to Butler, this only strengthens the gender binary, which is the source of all oppression. So materialism, material relation of power gets jettisoned. Women are actually oppressed by the category of âwomanâ itself, and feminism needs to proceed without the category of âwomanâ and females could not be the subjects of feminism, as that was an âexclusionaryâ move, and that all of feminismâs actions had to be inclusive of all individuals.
Feminism became symbolic with Queer Theory - not materialistic. Erasing certain categories from language through the process of queering.
--Susan Cox
I'd be curious to know how many of the women and lesbians and gay men who are adopting this theory when they make these arguments about who is and isn't a woman and who is and isn't a lesbian, are even aware of what they are actually doing? Are the consciously aware that they're trying to destroy these categories on the principle that the LABELS are the thing creating all social ills?
Surely if we just ignore the material reality of us (women, men) being embodied creatures, the power imbalance of these binary systems will just magically disappear! I'm sure the same exact power dynamics won't just reassert themselves no matter what you labels you use! Language and categories are more powerful than material reality right?? If women just stop using that label they'll stop getting raped and assaulted and killed by the group who were arbitrarily labelled "men"...right?
This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I don't know how anyone can believe this. It's like saying the real problem for a starving person is saying they're starving, not the actual lack of food. What kind of magical thinking bullshit is this, and how did it get such a hold in academia? It's bewildering.
I don't know how anyone can believe this.
The upper class academics in the Women's Studies Gender Studies departments live in their minds, in a world of concepts and theory. They seem to have lived lives quite "disembodied", unlike working class women, or women not sheltered within academia. So yes...they've completely disappeared up their arses. The entire branch of "Trans humanism" deals with the same idea. Let's escape our bodies and move beyond being humans! All our problems will be solved if we just deny we are mammals.
In my experience you are 100% right. My AGP TIM ex taught Critical Theory as well as Science Fiction.
A learned fool is more of a fool than an ignorant fool. âMolière
400 years of academic discoveries and technological advancements later and people really haven't changed at all.
"they've completely disappeared up their arses."
This line needs to be used frequently.
Itâs hardly a new phenomenon for men to believe their words have the power to change reality. To give just one example, for two thousand years theyâve been claiming that the prayers of a select class of men (but never women, for some reason) can literally transform bread into the flesh of a dead Jewish carpenter, never mind what the mass spectrometer or the electron microscope says. Men have gone to war and died and killed for the sake of that particular delusion of grandeur, and many similar power fantasies besides. Why should today be any different?
I don't know how anyone can believe this.
Really? A lot of people believe in incredibly stupid things. A magical man in the sky granting wishes is a very common belief among humans. Parents even teach it to their children, because they find this belief foundational to their lives.
how did it get such a hold in academia?
I'm pretty sure you won't find a lot of people believing things like this in the hard sciences. Because it's a belief, not research findings from control group and double blind studies.
I find the conflating of the soft and hard sciences kind of dangerous. Because in the soft sciences you can in practice write a book saying anything you want, and there is often no scientific way to prove or disprove it. It's there at the word of a human. A respected human, sure, but still, this is not how research should work. Humans are biased. In the hard sciences, things are only accepted as true when we find they have to be through studies. Control group, double blind. We try to remove as many biases as we can through study design. In the soft sciences, that is often not possible, so in practice it becomes more speculation than things that are proven.
(I'm sure there are exceptions to be found, but in general this is what it's like. Just look at the field of psychology and all the awful things it's done to people - particularly women - and accepted as valid treatment).
I'm pretty sure you won't find a lot of people believing things like this in the hard sciences
At the same time, they are cowardly in the hard sciences even, and you'll get few speaking out about pieces like Sex Redefined published in 'Nature', as Colin Wright demonstrated. They are just as captured ideologically in a way, because everyone is terrified of having their reputations and social lives destroyed, even serious people in the hard sciences.
I have absolutely no mercy for these stupid fuckers. I really don't. I put my biology degree to good use. The problem is that they are promoting GenderWoowoo which is psychology and sociology. Those are soft sciences. You don't have quantified data except in large population studies.
Biology is a hard science, and it says that sex is binary. I shut down all the BS about DSDs and whataboutism. They don't know the differences between genotype, phenotype and karyotype. I found a karyotype chart and post it often just to piss them off.
This crap about words not having meaning and such, comes from PoMo, which Moe Syzlak of The Simpsons said was "Weird for da sake of weird". French weirdos like Sartre, Baudrillard & Foucault. Bunch of child molesters making airy fairy excuses for their sorry behaviors.
I put up my essay about it on substack. Please read if you are so inclined.
perragrande.substack.com
Why is it so hard for TRAs to understand the concept of words having meanings?
You can't identify as a child, or an Olympic gold medalist, police officer, doctor, etc. if it's not true. Those words mean specific things about a person, and so does lesbian (a female human attracted to other female humans).
Where did these people get the idea that you automatically are anything you want to be just by saying it?
I had a Twitter argument with a guy who claimed it doesn't matter how people want to identify themselves, that if you want to identity as a lawyer, you can just say you're a lawyer. Sure, call yourself a lawyer. But take money from a client and show up in court and you've committed civil and criminal fraud. That part didn't seem to sink in.
It's pretty common in narcissists. They will often lie and state some specific thing repeatedly until they believe it themselves (and other people start believing it too, because they are so adamant that it's reality). Because surely they wouldn't be so insistent if it weren't true...
It's almost fascinating to see how much these people are able to twist reality (when you are at a distance of it).
I am gaining traction among my social set by marketing Professor Stock via favorably comparing her with Brienne of Tarth (Game of Thrones), but a British aesthetic philosophy professor with a background in French literature and womenâs sport who has come for Judith Butler and in defense of the honor of all lesbians everywhere down through time and into the future.
Professor Stock has Martina Navratilova actively backing her up.
Theyâre like, âReally? Wow.â
Then they will tell you their take on gender.
Thatâs your opening to say, âThe name of her book is MATERIAL GIRLS. Also: Check out the YouTube videos of Kathleen Stockâs recent bouts at the Cambridge and Oxford Unions.â
This is funny, tho I'm curious who Stock WOULD blame, if not this person themselves. Society? Education institutions? Media?
Half of the population has below average intelligence. I think Stock is aware that he has. below average intelligence and is gently saying itâs not his fault. Itâs a nature thing.
nature you can't change stupid no matter how much education you throw at it, if someones thick they will always be thick.
I disagree. While I don't deny nature is a factor, I think the blame belongs far more to stultifying systems like public education and corporate brainwashing.
The brain in a muscle and most people's lives are regimented from the time they're toddlers nearly until death. They're not really exercising them. I think this is a better explanation myself, and I'm wary of the arguments from nature, because they're used all the time to justify social horrors. "They would have bootstrapped themselves out of the injustice, but they're just not capable," instead of looking at institutional power and the effects it has on the disenfranchised.
Anyways, this is all my speculation addressing yours, unless you meant Stock had posted this as her reasoning somewhere?? I'm being genuine here btw, I don't know anything about her or her work, and hadn't heard of her til the Oxford headlines the other day.
Honestly I used to think there wasn't any really stupid people and they could learn, I learned I was wrong and some people never improve no matter what.
Ok, I'm going to chime in with my biology here. :)
Everyone has a range within each trait, including intelligence, written in their DNA (genotype). What is actually expressed is affected by surroundings etc. (phenotype). So while people can be nurtured into the higher end of their range if they have perfect surroundings, there is an upper limit. It's very easily illustrated with height. Good, consistent nutrition and low stress, makes people go to the upper end of their range. But many will never be really tall even in perfect conditions, because their range doesn't go that high. However, when a very undernourished population gets better nutrition, a proportion of the children will grow much taller than their parents (who grew up under poorer conditions).
People have different ranges, and also different variance in that range (bigger difference between high and low end).
Sometimes I wonder if this is actually true. I mean, if a child doesn't learn language within a certain time frame, they will never acquire it (see feral children). Maybe early development means the same thing for critical thinking. Once you pass a certain threshold, the potential is lost. I don't know the answer. All I know is that it seems a huge proportion of people either can't or don't want to leave their consumer comfort box in order to become better people.
A lot of people simply don't have the drive to strive to be better people. They certainly will not sacrifice anything for it. And a lot of people also don't value the common good over whatever feels good to them in the moment.
These are some of the main things holding humanity back, reasons for why it feels like we are always swimming against the current when trying to improve things. Why the internet is so dystopic and filled with so many awful things.
Have you seen what passes as private education in the US? Google the IBPL or Bill Gothard and education.
You can't really "blame" someone for having low intelligence. It is, as she says, not their fault.
You could pose this same question to men who suddenly decided males can belong in the lesbian category. If anyone's an authority on lesbianism, it would be women. Men have been self-declared authorities on everything since the beginning of recorded history.
Would be a burn if this wasnât coming from Stock.
Yeah I agree, I didn't want to post this after the absolute shite she wrote in her book and other shit she's said about feminists and lesbians "liabilities, setting back female rights by decades, casually denigrating, inflammatory and unevidenced, verbal attackers, contemptuous, severely polarising" not to mention the slander of transwidows and Julia Long.
Anyway.. she's one of the 2+2=4.9 people. Which, to me, is just as bad as saying 2 and 2 make 5. however, I posted it because i did think it was a good burn.
Thanks for providing context by way of the link.
If a fox wants to get in among the chickens, my first thought is NOT that he's doing so because the other foxes were mean to him.
why, whats wrong with her?
She also has difficulties understanding what a lesbian is.
Savage
This is why it's almost impossible to reason with TRAs as well. Most of them are seriously unable to understand what's actually being said or grasp the logic in an argument.
You can't argue with a fool.
Chess with a pigeon.
đ
I think they understand perfectly well, they're just stubborn, narcissistic morons
TRAs have been conditioned for so long to believe that whatever someone wants to identify as has to be respected as truth, as real, as valid - that I bet this person honestly was completely confused by Stock's reply.
I don't think so. I think they're faking it.
Maybe in this case, but a lot of the people I've had discussions have big problems with logic
Same, but I think that, if you really prod under the surface, you'll discover that they actually do understand there's such a thing as reality.
After recently being called a TERF following some heated discussions, I asked what exactly it is that this person thinks I believe. There was no coherent answer at all, so I posited that my basic belief is one in material reality.
If a tree falls in a forest and no human saw or heard it, it still happened because the tree and the forest exist independently of human observation. They would continue to exist if all humans were magically airlifted off the planet by aliens and dumped somewhere else, never to see Earth again. If we suddenly lived in a world where the majority of people expressed a belief in gravity not existing, it would still exist and it would still be foolish to jump off a cliff, because gravity exists independently of one's belief in it and can be easily verified all over the place.
THAT got me to "I believe that too! I just don't think it is a PROBLEM to say that TWAW". In other words, at least some are more grounded in reality than their usual words might betray.