How to out oneself
Over in ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
matociquala's journal she made a post about rock-climbing, which had a passing comment on how Criminal Minds had managed to deconstruct a bit of the male gaze in its most recent episode.
It was the passing comment which led to the amusements. Setsuled asked a reasonable question. Bear responded, and as is her wont (and right, and privilege) she teasedsetsuled about how easy it might have been to look it up.
In the course of the subsequent responses (to which I added a few words) it became plain the user was unclear on a few basic concepts (not all of which are things one would be expected to know; though some are ones which the engaged participant would be expected to delve into).
It also became plain the user has a very subtle form of male-privilege, one which might work fairly well in the general run of the world, but was doomed to end up in disaster in a place like Bear's journal.
The things about which he was unaware were all asked with a reasonableness that hid the nature of his exploitation of privilege. If the conversation hadn't kept going, his misogyny might have remained hidden.
It was an interesting unfolding (and you are abjured from wading in to make comments. The subject, insofar as he is concerned is closed. Make your own call on substantive addressing of the issue, but he, and his comments, are a done deal there. I don't want to re-open it. Not only am I not trying to make a dogpile, but the poor thing isn't able to respond. That would make it rude to Bear, and unfair to him; so do me the favor, ok? Thanks).
The initial comments weren't too bad. There was something bothersome about them, but they weren't offensive. Just a trifle privileged, and even that was subtle. One got the feelng he was well meaning, but not well-informed.
As time went on, he got more defensive, and more dismissive, and (qu'elle surprise) evinced more use of privilege. Then he tied the rope around his neck, with an inappropriate comment.
He could have pulled back from the edge. In fact he seemed to, but not quite. And then he jumped. He got pissy about people pointing out he was being, not just rough and tumble in debate, but rude.
As I said, it's an interesting case study in someone outing themselves; from nice guy, to "Nice Guy" to jerk, to asshole, to banned, all in one day.
matociquala's journal she made a post about rock-climbing, which had a passing comment on how Criminal Minds had managed to deconstruct a bit of the male gaze in its most recent episode.It was the passing comment which led to the amusements. Setsuled asked a reasonable question. Bear responded, and as is her wont (and right, and privilege) she teased
setsuled about how easy it might have been to look it up.In the course of the subsequent responses (to which I added a few words) it became plain the user was unclear on a few basic concepts (not all of which are things one would be expected to know; though some are ones which the engaged participant would be expected to delve into).
It also became plain the user has a very subtle form of male-privilege, one which might work fairly well in the general run of the world, but was doomed to end up in disaster in a place like Bear's journal.
The things about which he was unaware were all asked with a reasonableness that hid the nature of his exploitation of privilege. If the conversation hadn't kept going, his misogyny might have remained hidden.
It was an interesting unfolding (and you are abjured from wading in to make comments. The subject, insofar as he is concerned is closed. Make your own call on substantive addressing of the issue, but he, and his comments, are a done deal there. I don't want to re-open it. Not only am I not trying to make a dogpile, but the poor thing isn't able to respond. That would make it rude to Bear, and unfair to him; so do me the favor, ok? Thanks).
The initial comments weren't too bad. There was something bothersome about them, but they weren't offensive. Just a trifle privileged, and even that was subtle. One got the feelng he was well meaning, but not well-informed.
As time went on, he got more defensive, and more dismissive, and (qu'elle surprise) evinced more use of privilege. Then he tied the rope around his neck, with an inappropriate comment.
He could have pulled back from the edge. In fact he seemed to, but not quite. And then he jumped. He got pissy about people pointing out he was being, not just rough and tumble in debate, but rude.
As I said, it's an interesting case study in someone outing themselves; from nice guy, to "Nice Guy" to jerk, to asshole, to banned, all in one day.
no subject
Ahh, but not mad at him for any reason. Coming in with a "your so gay" comment would have that effect, but not in a satisfying way. No, I think the enjoyment comes from playing intellectual martyr. "Their definitions were unsound," he thinks, "so I questioned them. All I cared about was the truth. Like Socrates, man. Like Galileo." The trouble is that what's really happening is not that he's applying cold, merciless logic to what people say to him: he's actually just responding with a dismissive smirk, and then brainstorming a follow-up question by picking semantic nits so that it sounds like he's being all Socratic.
I knew so damn many people in high school who loved playing that game. Most of them grew out of it.
no subject
... wait. WHERE THE FUCK IS MY BLOWJOB, BITCHES?"
Also, I was observing to
*loves*
no subject
And honestly, I didn't think I was being that charitable. There's definitely a whiff of cookie-demanding entitlement there, as well, but the main motive I read was the childish desire to buzz at people like a gnat until they lost patience with him, and then declare You People Won't Listen To My Difficult Truths.
no subject
no subject
no subject
"I'm sorry if your frog's death causes you pain."
(An article about apologies I am very fond of.)
no subject
no subject
Great, now I'm sorry, too.
no subject
no subject
I do, however, from looking at his journal, think he expected to be able to explain things about how the world works, and; as the way he closed his comment to me, with an attempted barb, which failed for misquotation, though it would have been worse had he quoted me correctly), shows, he's not as clever as he thinks he is (his intelligence we can't plumb).
And it was his attempts at clever which set his doom. A lack of actual examinatiin of what was happening sealed it, but he overreached his talents trying a 5.10, when 5.5 is about his max.
At which point he does get to play the martyr, so he probably sees it as a win/win situation.
The Lord's Cross Might Redeem us, but our own just wastes our time...
I have a hammer. I know where we can lay hands on a cross. Shall we ask Bear for the loan of some arrows?
Re: The Lord's Cross Might Redeem us, but our own just wastes our time...
Re: The Lord's Cross Might Redeem us, but our own just wastes our time...
I knew it was impossible, but...
This ain't no easy weekend...
no subject
no subject
So is male gaze something like thulium or bilateral symmetry in mammals? Is it a fact about the objects in the world? Really? Because the only way I can see anything needing to be "explained away" is if it is a *fact*. Which, hey, it isn't actually.
no subject
Bear posited it (with all the baggage it entails) and he jumped on it.
At the start it might have been possible to discuss it. Because ruffling feathers wasn't the problem; failure to actually address the things offered up, and then the offensive comment, and the non-apolgies were the things which caused it to go so pear-shaped.
no subject
Really. Wow, so you read minds now, do you? Because that thought isn't borne out by anything he said that I've read so far, certainly not what he said directly pertaining to it.
Oh, and by the way, how exactly is he exemplifying male privilege?
no subject
I may have based my statement on what Rex Stout had Nero Wolf call, "knowledge based on experience," from other people who did similar things in discussion/debate. But if I you won't allow me to do that, unless I can read minds, then I have to do things like believe Bush and Cheney when they tell me they were trying to keep me safe from terrorists.
Because I've seen this pattern of behavior before. Someone asks for something to be defined (say torture) and then proceeds to try to tell me how my understanding of it is wrong. That torture, as a definition, doesn't really cover the things I mean. Or that things I don't define as torture somehow fall under the rubric, and so my definition is completely false.
As to the last, no, maybe he's not using male privilege, and he's just an asshole. Maybe the whole, "ride you like a horse," and then be offended because the person he said that too took offense was,"too sensitive" is just a function of some other aspect of him, and his upbringing, and he's just a run of the mill asshole; who happens to be male. Maybe his assholishness is because his common sense makes him more clued-in on the world, and how to deal with others than the rest of us.
But, since I do think there is such a thing as privilege, I can choose to think it's a large part of his problem. Be that a more generous read on his behavior, or not, it's the one I took.
I can also go now, and look at his version of events (and no, I don't pretend this is relevant to what I thought yesterday. It's just more evidence for it now). He thinks we were engaging in "hive-mind" responses to "our leader" being attacked.
None of what happened had anything to do with him. It was all about how we didn't read what he meant to say properly, how we needed someone with more patience than he hadto make it plain what was wrong with the idea of male gaze, and why it really would be better to call it, "objectification."
Which isn't so far off the mark of the idea he meant to explode the theory. He doesn't seem to have had that in mind when he asked, but he says it was what he ended up trying to do.
(no subject)
no subject
That's fine, you have doubts, and they should not be dismissed, but I disagree with your doubts and this is (the brief internets version) why:
It's a social construct; now you can definitely argue that, in order to be properly empirical about any social construct or phenomenon, you would have to somehow get purely factual answers from every generator of that phenomenon (in this case, every creator of every piece of artistic expression depicting a woman) about their motives and who they thought of as their audience.
In return, I can argue that's like testing for bilateral symmetry in mammals by getting every mammal on the planet that ever existed and physically confirming it. Every mammal. That is to say even the "hard" sciences are not subject to that kind of rigor.
But no, there is no Male Gaze you can put in a box, and you cannot stand on the corner of Male Gaze and smoke a cigarette. It's not a mammal, so you can't check to see if it's bilaterally symmetrical. But you can look at it as observed phenomena, observed and tested, and while it may not be as rigorously tested as the properties of thallium, you might be willing to grant that anything a person observes is a phenomenon, and anything that many people observe with certain characteristics, well documented. This is why we allow theologians to speak in public and do not lock them in asylums. This is only an aside, but I have seen more phenomena I can solely attribute to Male Gaze in a half hour than phenomena I solely can attribute to a simultaneously omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent entity with personal interest in my affairs.
Let us also say that many creators are aware of this phenomenon when they create (as I am a creator and aware of it - you can argue I'm the only filthy one of us and the rest of the creators of visual and textual art are totally innocent or above thinking of it... I don't suggest you take that argument, but you could), aware enough to use and, yes, deconstruct it as part of their artistic technique. So even if the historical fact that most of the well-known artists were men working for male patrons does not hold water for you as an argument, the fact that there is at least one creator who has consciously used Male Gaze, the phenomena, the social construct as a technique in their work might.
I may come across as combative, and if I do, I apologize.
no subject
And no, actually, you can't look at Male Gaze as an observed phenomenon. The only repeatable, observer independent phenomena you have to actually observe are the behaviors of people who use the term. Not the claimed gaze itself. And no, I do not grant that anything a person "observes" is a phenomenon, except as a phenomenon of their experience. Which I have no access to. I don't therefore grant the phenomenon they claim to observe as objectively real -- that requires some sort of standard of proof. Repeatable, independently demonstrable proof. In casual conversation, I tend to take people's reports of their experience as truthful (or at least not disprovable), but when someone starts making claims about the way the world is, I tend to expect a bit better proof.
And what proof, what rigor, the hard sciences, and even the not so hard sciences like anthropology and sociology, are subject to that lit crit is not, is induction and the possibility of disproof. Lit crit, not unlike the Freudian theory that so many lit critters hold dear, fails the Popper test. Therefore it isn't science. And yet consistently those who adopt a lot of its concepts tend to run around applying them to things that aren't literature, and fall outside the scope that those concepts were ever intended to apply to, acting as if those concepts have the same theoretical validity as gravity, and that everyone should somehow know what they're talking about and accept the same base assumptions they have. Hell, a lot of times the crit crowd don't even seem to notice that they have assumptions. (I blame a serious lack of rigor in the teaching of Theory.) This is what I was objecting to, supra. The stunning lack of rigor and self-awareness that goes flying around the room before the lit critters and the self-styled Feminist Theory types and their various heirs do their little victory dance.
Oh boy, we beat down another Evil Over-Privileged Antifeminist. Yeah. Or not. Chalk up another failed communication.
[Edited to close a stray italic code]
no subject
Oh boy, we beat down another Evil Over-Privileged Antifeminist. Yeah. Or not. Chalk up another failed communication.
Or serious loutishness on the part of
no subject
What do you think you're getting from these?
Really. Wow, so you read minds now, do you?
Right. Critical theory --> critical lobotomy.
Oh, and I just love it when one of the lit crit kiddies comes in and starts opining about what is, or isn't, a valid argument, as if the lit critters could recognize validity with both hands and a truth table. Feh.
You've "noticed" this because you were looking for it. This is called "observer bias".
In the lot the closest you come to argument is the one about observer bias
You did finally explain why you think the use of literary criticism at a large is weak; but in terms of persuasion you didn't do that very well, esp. since it wasn't
Unless all you meant to do was ruffle feathers I think we can chalk up another failed communication.
no subject
Also, I think he was trying to win at internet, which is something you can only do in one move. If you make your one move and have not won, you can only lose bigger. And lose big he did.
no subject
I kinda wish it weren't frozen, so someone could point out that, in these contexts, "privilege: translates to "I have opportunities and freedoms that are bought by oppressing the lives, freedoms and identities of other people--in this case, women"... and to proudly say "I love being privileged," while getting all upset at being called a misogynist, is an elegant example of hypocrisy.
OTOH, while I think that new ways to describe "privilege" can be useful, I don't think he'd be the one getting any use out of it.
I wish I were still active on LJ so I could ban_set him. (I could, but it's not like I post in my journal.)