StJohnOfPatmos
5mo ago
Stop saying "women" when you mean "feminists".
I'll stop when self-proclaimed conservative women in positions of political power don't consistently fall back on feminist rhetoric the moment they feel cornered for their own actions.
As long as our conservative female defence minister here in Austria proudly asserts that mandatory military service should remain an exclusive male burden and that women can't be expected to share this obligation because "they still suffer from systemic injustice in other domains such as a housework or the gender pay gap" (her actual reasoning), I will continue to assume that feminism is mainly a in-group cudgel for women to wield against men and society for virtually any reason that they see fit in helping them get ahead.
StJohnOfPatmos
5mo ago
Also, isn't visually expressing sexual desire for the simple sake of showcasing how powerful, seductive and all-encompassing desire can be an artistic purpose in it's own right? We all feel it, we're all extremely affected by it, so shouldn't it naturally take up a prominent space in our artistic expressions even if it doesn't serve to advance a larger narrative or make a political statement?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Xpef-FKYAf4
The opening scene of Godard's Contempt is literally Birgitte Bardot being reduced to her physical attributes, as Belmondo praises and declares his love for each of her individual body parts separately. But this "objectification" is so obviously an act of devotion - after all, how could you truly love a romantic partner without also loving their waist, their hands, their ankles, their genitals?
You could fully cut this scene from the movie, and the narrative would be unchanged. It exists entirely to showcase physical desire of an exceptionally beautiful woman. And it's absolutely wonderful.
StJohnOfPatmos
5mo ago
Perhaps my male brain is too compromised to process this, but I've never really understood why sexualising someone is an act of "objectification".
The Cambridge dictionary defines objectification as: "treating people like tools or toys, as if they had no feelings, opinions, or rights of their own"
To sexualise someone means to explicitly render someone as the target of sexual desire - putting an actress in a short skirt allows us to see more skin, which allows us to muse about what she would like naked, which we imagine we would be privy to in a fantasy scenario where we have sex with said actress. It has very little to do with denying someone's opinions or rights, but rather honing in on one specific part of their human existence, i.e. their potential as a sexual mate. Am I objectifying a waiter when I only consider him as someone who brings my drinks and my check when Im a customer at a café? Would I be morally wrong to be weirded out if said waiter suddenly started talking about his personal issues and opinions and I told him I really only want him to serve me my order and nothing else? According to the Cambridge dictionary, I would be "objectifying" him in that instance, which sounds blatantly absurd.
But most importantly - being the receiver of sexual desire is a foundationally humanising experience! People want to have sex with other people, not with objects - that's why most sex toys are shaped to resemble human genitalia or body parts. That's why high-end sex dolls are painstakingly manufactured to appear as human as possible. To want to have sex with someone is one of the bedrock human drives that will forever separate us from machines - and thus likewise, being the receiver of sexual desire equally represents a bedrock of the human condition, limited nigh-exclusively to humans (a fringe amount of people are sexual deviants who want to fuck toasters or animals, but they're irrelevant to the larger topic).
The issue seems to emerge from the fact that alot of people, notably feminist academics, endow words with moral weight they simply do not possess - since they consider most forms of sexual attention as bad, it MUST be described by a strictly pejorative term that also conveniently opens up the act to monumentally larger implications - suddendly, lusting after someone also must imply you want to treat them "like they have no rights of their own", i.e. perceive them as essentially unworthy of human dignity. This is such a massive jump from wanting to fuck someone that it feels essentially alien to how anyone actually experiences sexual desire. When I looked at Jennifer Lawrence's leaked nudes as a teen, that last thing I was thinking of was restricting her rights and opinions - I was thinking about how amazing it would feel to have sex with her and literally nothing else.
Of course, there's an obvious subtle truth hiding behind all this: the profile of the person doing the sexualisation is exponentially more significant than the sexualisation itself in evaluating if its "objectifying" or not. As a man, being told by an attractive woman that she only wants me for sex and nothing else is a mostly extremely rewarding experience that has given me lasting boosts in self-esteem. Similarly, a fat ugly girl hitting on me and drunkenly attempting to create a hookup situation with me left me feeling disgusted.
Objectification as a term only really makes sense if it leads you to dismiss the person's agency in a context where said agency is relevant - i.e., interrupting a woman speaking to tell her to take her top off, which would imply you aren't interested in her humanity beyond her sexual potential.
A glance at the roots and political development behind the term should immediately make it obvious that we are dealing with an ideological concept, not a neutral descriptor:
Rae Langton proposed three more properties to be added to Nussbaum's list:[2]
Reduction to body – the treatment of a person as identified with their body, or body parts
How the FUCK does treating someone depending on their human body render the person an "object"? Humans ARE bodies, first and foremost. HOW you treat the body is what matters.
According to Martha Nussbaum, a person is objectified if one or more of the following properties are applied to them:[1]
Instrumentality – treating the person as a tool for another's purposes
So virtually any transactional relationship is an act of objectification - seems somewhat insane to simultaneously insist that the term describes an objectively negative quality when it also applies to me working a job or asking my roommate to get groceries for me. Either objectification is wholesale bad, in which case it's definition needs to be reworked from the ground up, or objectification describes an inevitable social process with no inherent moral weight, in which case feminists have to stop using it as a buzzword for negative behaviour.
StJohnOfPatmos
5mo ago
To that end, Ocasio-Cortez has levied a steady attack against Crowley, pointing out that he lives in a house just outside of Washington D.C. where he’s been raising his family and kids for the last several years.
Crowley did not directly answer a question about why his family does not live in the district, but said his presence in Queens remains a constant — a point the Ocasio-Cortez campaign disputes.
“If a person loves their community they would choose to raise their family here, they would choose to send their kids to our schools, they would chose to drink our water and breathe our air,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I think that it takes away a fundamental interest and understanding of our communities when we raise our families somewhere else.”
We're comparing a Congressman who essentially had zero physical presence in his own district and didn't even possess a home there to the possibility of not returning to your constituency virtually every single weekend over the course of an entire term in Congress. I don't think it's quite the same.
Also, regarding Crowley, I would somewhat question the oft-repeated statement that the guy was some kind of grand figure in Democrat politics - he was a reliable party insider in one of the safest blue seats of the country, not an actual decision-maker or vital asset for the party. The fact that he vanished from politics the microsecond he lost a primary somewhat attests to the fact that he wasn't really a big deal or any kind of political talent, as the DNC would have tried to keep him on their roster or have him run elsewhere. AOC's win was well-earned and she ran a strong campaign, but it was very much a "right place, right time" scenario, as a progressive wave was descending upon the Democrats during Trump I and Crowley barely bothered to campaign since he wrongly assumed it was a done deal.
Fast forward 8 years and AOC is now a global celebrity - which I strongly assume is a much better guarantor of keeping her seat than anything Crowley had to offer.
Returning to the weekend-trip issue, it just feels forced and at best like a minor issue to me: France's Parliament also draws its members from geographic circonscriptions, and French legislative elections are famous for "parachutages" - essentially having candidates stand in regions they have literally zero associations with, but were selected to run in because they have a high national profile and/or the specific race is deemed critical. Everyone knows this and rolls their eyes about it, but in the end it doesn't make a difference - because the vast majority of voters rank it extremely low on their hierarchy of issues. A left-leaning voter is not going to support a conservative or right-wing candidate they hate because the Socialist party candidate has never lived in their region - it simply does not matter enough, and why would it? The vast majority of parliamentary decisions made and voted on do not concern specific regions, but national matters, so whether your candidate has lived in your area his whole life or not is meaningless.
Don't get me wrong, I think there is definitely an electoral impact when members of Congress make a point of being highly present in their district - like how AOC hosts a local town hall every single month without fail since her election. I just really don't think enough people are keeping constant track of the weekend returns of their Congressperson, nor do I think it matters enough overall to make or break a political career without other factors at play.
StJohnOfPatmos
5mo ago
Fong cited this paper which "find that gaining an airport that provides a round-trip direct flight to Washington, DC, is associated with an approximately 1.6 percentage point increase in the probability that a member runs for reelection." Or in other words if you need to have a layover, you'll less likely to run for re-election.
Doesn't this actually mean the exact opposite - i.e., that there is next to zero correlation between airport accessibility and running for reelection? A 1.6% difference is minuscule and essentially a rounding error.
I also must be honest and admit that I don't really understand this entire segment about Congresspeople returning to their constituency every weekend - as you say, it's "expected" of them, which means in practical terms that it's not mandatory nor enforced in any way. I heavily doubt that an otherwise popular Representative would suffer any kind of status loss or dip in support if he isn't physically present in his constituency every single weekend of the year. This only seems like it would be an "expectation" for retired cranks who spend their days harassing local council members and writing emails to Congress. Do you think AOC or Ilhan Omar would loose their seats if it came out that the spent every other weekend in DC instead of always returning to NYC or Minnesota? I doubt anyone cares.
At the end of the day, a lot of the complaining from Congresspeople about their job should be taken with a grain of salt - this is a pool of people largely self-selected for having huge egos, are in constant need for excuses when they inevitably fail to deliver their campaign promises, and are enmeshed in a mediatic/cultural zeitgeist in which being a snivelling victim is considered a valid defence for failure. They have EVERY incentive to bitch and whine about their job and portray themselves as more martyred by it than they actually are.
StJohnOfPatmos
5mo ago
Late answer but in Paris, where I lived during most of the pandemic, there was a curfew at 6 pm, after which you were not allowed to leave your house without a valid reason (medical emergency, work, etc.) Your daytime movement was also heavily restricted to 1 hour at a time, and within 1km radius of your apartment. You had to fill out and sign a specific form clarifying your reason for being outdoors every single time you left your home.
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-france-requires-form-leave-house-walk-shopping-2020-3
I assume it maybe wasn't quite as extreme in Australia, but in Paris we most certainly could not leave home to go for walks at any time.
StJohnOfPatmos
6mo ago
During those lockdowns I remained able to go for walks, buy groceries, and so on
Jesus Christ, this is the bar? You know there are people serving actual prison sentences that have that same amount of freedoms, i.e. brief leaves on weekends and access to commissary?
StJohnOfPatmos
6mo ago
did not get the credit they deserve for persisting with their non-woman-like behavior in public.
That's literally the main thing Sufragettes are credited for.
Also, aside from some rare exceptions like iconoclasm and bombings, I doubt the Sufragette's behaviour appeared "non woman-like" to most people at the turn of the Century: the resentful, nagging shrew who finds strength in numbers and acts as a buzzkill in a public setting is one of the most ancient and consistent tropes of womanhood. Add to that the fact that most Sufragette leaders were...shall we say...homely in physical appearance, and the stereotype of the "bitter spinster who wants to disrupt other people's happy marriages" essentially writes itself.
StJohnOfPatmos
7mo ago
I have absolutely no idea why you think the size of the local population has any bearing on the importance of Lampedusa when the island itself is considered a symbol of the Refugee/Migrant Crisis - which is of course a highly relevant issue for the West and the Third World. Furthermore, if big numbers are what determines relevancy to you in a symbolic gesture, consider that since 2023 alone, over 120.000 migrants have passed through Lampedusa on their way to Europe - it's literally the biggest migrant reception camp in Italy, a nation at the forefront of illegal migrant arrivals. As an individual migrant center, its quite literally the most relevant in Europe after Moria in Greece.
Yes, exactly what I said. African economic migrants, mostly Muslim, mostly military aged males. Great priority for a Pope, to promote the destruction of Europe even as Catholicism dies in Europe.
So is it an irrelevant island, or a springboard for the total destruction of Europe? It can't be both.
I agree with you that this immigration is bad and stopping it is an existential priority, but this kind of incoherence is pointless - either we are talking about the Papacy's stance on immigration, in which case we're probably on the same side, or we're talking about the implications of the Pope not attending America's 250th anniversary, but you can't just jump back and forth between two separate conversations.
You aren’t familiar with the history and practice of Catholic wordplay.
You literally said "we get the pun, Leo" - the only way to interpret this is that you mean the "pun" is Lampedusa including the letters "usa" in its spelling. I think sincerely believing that the Pope chose this location based on this "pun" is ridiculous and unserious, since once again, Lampedusa is infamous and has been a byword for mass migration since over 20 years.
Do you know the last time was 13 years ago?
Considering that the last time a Pope visited my hometown Vienna - a historic centre of Catholic Power and the symbolic seat of Christendom's victories against the islamic Turkish invasions - was 19 years ago, I don't consider 13 years long or rare by any means.
I still don't understand why you expect the Pope to appear at a state event commemorating a national independence day. Your entire argument hinges on Pope Leo slighting Trump by not attending - when Popes just simply do not do that in the modern age. John Paul the IInd was a proactive right-wing Pope, but even his role in world politics was organised under very clear theological lines: Communist states oppressed the Church and Christians as a matter of state policy, so obviously he was completely within reason to speak out against them as the Spiritual Leader of said Christians. Pope Leo being critical of Trumps immigration policy is easily defendable by Christian doctrine, even if I could maybe come up with better counter-arguments.
StJohnOfPatmos
7mo ago
I severely doubt any Popes in any historical Era would have approved of "extinguishing an entire civilisation", since it would condemn dozens of millions of souls to Hell or purgatory without having had a chance of conversion.
StJohnOfPatmos
7mo ago
This argument was already dumb propaganda back when it first emerged - historically, no one is more on bad terms with a Pope and tassels with him more predictably than a Catholic Monarch. The Pope is not Jesus Christ and papal infallibility is an extremely narrow domain with few actual applications. The entire institution of Gallicanism in France should be enough to prove that a Catholic head of State has enormous leeway in dealing with Papal authority.
StJohnOfPatmos
7mo ago
then there is absolutely no reason that "Eternal Rome" can't be located in Dillwyn Virginia.
Aside from basic decency and taste, perhaps.
StJohnOfPatmos
7mo ago
This is a serious insult to an entire country over a political dispute involving a transient administration
The Pope has no allegiance to any specific country, since he's...the Pope. Why the fuck should he be present or make a formal appearance for America's birthday party? Do you understand what the Papacy is? I'm unsure, since you're literally expecting the Pope to express a national preference. Do you think Pope Benedict was hanging out in the German Reichstag to celebrate the anniversary of Reunification?
I'm assuming this is news to you, but Lampedusa is an infamous island since it's been a major receptacle for illegal migrant boat crossings long before the 2015 Refugee Crisis began. It was constantly in the news here in Europe for not having the logistical ability to properly house and feed the throngs of migrants arriving there. The word "Lampedusa" used to act as a byword for illegal immigration into Europe and still is an emblem of the migrant crisis, especially in Italy - leftists and the Papacy see it as an example of unjust human suffering and indignity, while right-wingers see it as a cautionary tale of mass migration. For you to call it a "completely irrelevant island" immediately classifies you as lacking the basic insight to have much of a meaningful opinion on this matter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lampedusa_immigrant_reception_center
You heard that the Pope would be in Lampedusa and actually, sincerely thought he was doing so because the last three letters of the island's name spell out "usa"? This is something you actually think is true? Are you ok?
I actually agree - as a Catholic - that the Pope's knee-jerk defence of any and all immigration is wrong, misguided, and ultimately a very narrow reading of Christian doctrine on the matter. But this kind of completely braindead reasoning does us no favours.
StJohnOfPatmos
7mo ago
They would likely be the first ones to confirm the story and so far, their stance is ‘thé meeting happened but nothing of note took place- no threats of Avignon’.
Without this, there essentially is no story - so the article OP posted appears to be a fabrication, which is unsurprising.
StJohnOfPatmos
7mo ago
This doesn't confirm it as real, but that it wasn't immediately denied and dismissed like the typical M.O. is quite interesting.
It actually makes it exponentially more likely that it's fake in my view: if it actually happened and the administration knew, they would obviously just deny it. The fact that it seems to have caught the White House off guard, i.e. Vance not having heard of it previous to the story breaking, makes it more likely to be a fabrication since they didn't have a planned response for it.
The very interaction recounted in the article is somewhat hard to believe - why was this meeting necessary? The Pentagon wants to apply pressure on the Vatican to do what, exactly? Publicly proclaim they're abandoning the basic anti-war messaging they've held on to consistently for a century and will now be picking sides in armed conflicts? Really?
The Pentagon was issuing explicit threats of military violence against the Vatican, which is a tiny complex of buildings and gardens located inside Italy's capital, and was referencing the Avignon Papacy in doing so? Really?
This current administration is excellent at lastingly damaging relations with allies for little gain, but the idea that they would suggest using military force against a peaceful, greying religious order that both enjoys excellent standing amongst world leaders all while really not having any meaningful practical influence on world affairs seems laughable. I seriously doubt anyone in the Pentagon gives a fuck about what the Vatican says against their military operations, since they never gave a fuck in the past, nor ever felt a negative consequence coming from the Vatican for having done so.
This could help explain why Pope Leo has felt so emboldened to speak up against Trump's war efforts in Iran
Pope Leo has said the exact same things every Pope in recent history has said about non-defensive wars waged without a meaningful cassus belli - that they condemn them wholesale, call for ceasefires and diplomacy, and remind everyone that being a Christian means acting from love and forgiveness. Virtually nothing Pope Leo has said or done represents a shift or sharpening of that basic Church doctrine.
John Paul the IInd, essentially a proactive right-wing culture warrior Pope, immediately condemned the Iraq War and called it a crime. This is not special or particular, it's a basic requirement of being the Head of Christendom.
StJohnOfPatmos
7mo ago
Yes, this is exactly what I expected. The very idea that a man could sue for legal discrimination is such an existential threat for feminism that it needs to be dismissed and restated through a lens in which it’s about women gaining rights instead of men alleviating discrimination against them.
The mere suggestion that men as a gender could gain something by equalizing the law is registered as innately dangerous by feminists - which is only coherent since feminism today is about harming men first and foremost.
StJohnOfPatmos
7mo ago
Why even bother replying if you won't address the 2 direct questions asked for you to clarify your positions? We can all read, so your ignoring of the main substance of the message you're replying to isn't lost on anyone.
Again: what are some examples of men and women not enjoying legal equality in current-day America? These must exist, since according to you there are feminists who's sole goal is legal equality - hence these feminists can only exist if legal inequalities still persist, so what are they?
StJohnOfPatmos
7mo ago
there are also kinds of feminism that just support legal equality between men and women
Where?
Here in Austria, we still have mandatory military/civil service for men only - literally defined as gender-based "forced labour" (Zwangsarbeit) in our constitution. Since our demographics are shrinking, this vital pool of manpower (these 18-year old boys drive most ambulances, do most dirty work in retirement homes, hospitals, integration homes, not to speak of yearly dangerous cleanup missions when our rural regions periodically get flooded) is shrinking too - begging the question if maybe women could also get conscripted to these tasks.
Our female defence minister - a self-proclaimed feminist from the CONSERVATIVE Party - immediately rejected the idea that women should also receive this legal obligation, called it sexist, and instead proposed extending the amount of time young men are conscripted into forced labour. This forced labour is also paid far below average wages (I believe its almost half of what the minimum wage for a full time job would be) and is routinely described as a "Hungerlohn" - a "starvation wage" that is by design not sufficient to survive off of.
This is a feminist from the f*cking Conservative party of Austria, openly saying she would rather exploit young men more and harder rather than simply enact gender equality and have this massive burden be shared equally by both genders.
In Germany, they abolished their mandatory conscription of males, but are now gradually phasing it back in again - do you want to guess which political groups where most vehemently opposed to the proposal of also having women added to conscription? Yes, it was feminist groups and political parties who self-define as feminist, obviously. OBVIOUSLY.
Sorry, I don't see any feminists who support legal equality between men and women - probably because said legal equality has already been achieved for women half a century ago and all remaining discrepancies (sentencing disparities, men not legally being able to be victims of rape by a woman, divorce court, conscription, etc.) benefit women and harm men indisputably. All said remaining discrepancies are actively supported by feminists across the spectrum, without exception. If any sincere feminist was only seeking legal equality, their unique remaining cause today would be erasing these remaining legal distinctions that harm men - but these feminists do not exist, because that's not what feminism is.
StJohnOfPatmos
7mo ago
You keep saying feminism is not a monolith, but any actual deviated positions that would exemplify this flourishing diversity of thought feminism harbours is notably absent from your comments. Can you maybe provide some specific examples of serious differences of thought that are accepted and openly fostered within feminist discourse?
Do you believe in "the Patriarchy" as an active force that permeates all levels of Western society and acts as a kind of Original Sin determining and undergirding all male-female relations, be they familial, professional, or personal?
If yes, then what exactly is your grand distinction from those who blindly cheer for feminism as a monolith? If no, then in what sense are you a feminist and not just a basic egalitarian who wants everyone to get a fair chance at a good life?
I know this questioning is suggestive and biased, but since you're repeatedly guaranteeing diversity of thought within feminism without providing any examples, I feel the need to accelerate the conversation to a point where we get actual information instead of evasions.
Virtually every ideological/social movement with enough support and adherence becomes "a lot of very different things"- this is nothing more than a cowardly evasion, sorry.
Humanity is not a hivemind and the crushing majority of supporters of any given movement have not read or studied literally every piece of associated literature or thinkpiece that their movement builds itself upon. Everyone has their bubble and everyone familiarises themselves with an ideology through specific filters and lenses through which an ideology is presented and mediated. Do you think a wealthy adventurist from the 19th Century like Louis-Auguste Blanqui, who's fervent communism took the shape of romantic banditry, had the same definition and personal beliefs around Communism as a 19th Century working-class single mother who's main anxiety was worrying about what might become of her orphaned children should she die in a workplace injury? Communism meant "a lot of very different things" for different supporters, i.e. bourgeois communists engaging with it as a kind of moral destiny leading towards an apocalyptic showdown between the historic forces of good and evil, while the working class itself mainly understood it as a pragmatic method to lastingly improve their standard of living (which is why they permanently abandoned it the microsecond it stopped improving their living standards, while the bourgeois romantics still cling to it today) - does that mean that one can't simply talk about Communism as an ideology because of these internal differences?
Furthermore, feminism is actually, despite its vast support across many societies and varying institutions, an incredibly rigid belief system with a massive amount of in-built and internally sacrosanct a priori beliefs, to the extent that you will get essentially identical responses about any given feminist topic from a 15 year old girl scrolling Tiktok as from a tenured Sociology department chair at a respected university. It's extreme conformism truly is one of it's defining characteristics - well exemplified, for example, by its incessant use of rehearsed slogans that are nothing more than in-group signifiers originating from group chants at protests, but are treated as if they are political/philosophical positions in their own right during political discussions.
Here in Austria, it's virtually impossible to have a discussion with a self-proclaimed politicised feminist without her inevitably using English terms in an otherwise German-language conversation - because her thoughts are simply not her own, they are just regurgitated formulas imported from elsewhere. Feminists here never say "Gemeinschaft", they always jarringly insist on the English word "Community" - same with "Race" instead of "Ethnie", "Gender" instead of "Geschlecht", "BIPOC" (a term that of course means virtually nothing in Europe, since WE whites are the "indigenous" people here) instead of "Minderheiten", all the way down to easily translate terms like "unpaid labour" or "weaponised incompetence"! They actively refuse to translate these terms into the language they are speaking in, despite there being zero linguistic difficulty in doing so, because even that minuscule act of deviation from the source would require a minimum of cognitive agency and intellectual independence - the only feminists I can think of that do sometimes translate US-imported terminology are the French, and that's really just because of their deeply ingrained cultural-linguistic chauvinism as francophones.
Feminism means a lot of very different things to the extent that any large enough ideology/Weltbild does - be it Christianity, Islam, Liberalism, UFOlogy, Fascism, Red Pill, whatever. Where Feminism does however stand out is that it manages to maintain a chilling level of conformism despite this variety of support - there is no feminist space that would ever dare profess a general inherent love for men as valuable beings both on the personal scale (friends, family, neighbours) and society at large (men who work dangerous and vital jobs, men as victims of war, etc.) - the baseline rapport is cruel apathy at best and foaming, fanatic hatred at worst.
Actually, I take that back - there is one notable feminist group that does have a positive view of men: Némésis, the French feminist group that focuses on resisting mass immigration from the Third World as a means of protecting women's rights and safety. They are very clear about wanting to curb mass immigration, but have an overall very sympathetic and conciliatory view of European men as mainly good people who want their female counterparts to be free and happy.
It it any surprise, then, that the virtual totality - without a single exception - of French left-wing and feminist groups call them Neonazis and demand they be legally banned and their leaders persecuted? Not really.
The most powerful figure of the current French Left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, very recently went so far as to say that if the government didn't ban Némésis and the group showed up at one of their protests, they would "take care of it" - an explicit threat of violence, greeted by cheers and applause from his audience.
Is it any surprise that Erin Pizzey, the founder of the first and largest domestic abuse shelter system in the world and a true hero of the vulnerable and the oppressed, had to leave her native UK after receiving systematic death threats and aggressions from feminists for having dared to say that many men also face domestic abuse and that women have the capacity to be violent partners, too?
In 1981, Pizzey moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, while targeted by harassment, death threats, bomb threats[36] and defamation campaigns,[15] and dealing with overwork, near collapse, cardiac disease and mental strain.[23]: 275 In particular, according to Pizzey, the charity Scottish Women's Aid "made it their business to hand out leaflets claiming that [she] believed that women 'invited violence' and 'provoked male violence'".[15] She stated that the turning point was the intervention of the bomb squad, who required all of her mail to be processed by them before she could receive it, as a "controversial public figure".[23]: 282 [37]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Pizzey
Her complete blacklisting from all feminist organizations (all down to her own refuge shelter she founded, which kicked her out and banned her from even visiting), constant violent harassment campaigns forcing her to repeatedly move to new homes, coerced efforts to deprive her of sources of income to the point she was rendered homeless for a while, entirely and exclusively stemmed from her believing that helping abused men is good and in the interest of women for a better, more harmonious society.
So no, feminism does not mean "a lot of very different things" beyond any large movement's basic internal distinctions - it actually mainly only means one thing: resentment of the male gender and the desire to harm men. Any feminist who deviated from this ideological bedrock (be it Camille Paglia, Erin Pizzey, or Némésis) got threatened, harassed, brutalised and forced into flight by the crushing iron heel of feminist conformism.
StJohnOfPatmos
9mo ago
This is just a mirror image of annoying leftists being unable to entertain any rightwing belief or action without immediately comparing it to the Nazis. You've created a discursive padded cell in which kicking into a car's headlight and stepping between an ICE officer and a woman getting peppersprayed is morally indistinguishable or innately upstream of slaughtering people for wearing glasses.
I agree that there are plenty of leftists who can become ice cold killers in the proper context, but I would be ashamed of myself for judging a man by hypothetical actions he might do at some point in a certain situation rather than the things he actually did and that actually happened.
StJohnOfPatmos
9mo ago
I don't know about "communist", but the evidence certainly shows that Pretti was engaged in direct action against federal law enforcement on multiple occasions.
I'm sure we could both hypothesise many situations in which direct action against federal law enforcement wouldn't suffice to call someone a bad person or might even be the morally good decision depending on the circumstance. That alone isn't sufficient: the actual decisions he made, damaging an ICE vehicle lightly and needlessly stepping between an ICE officer and a woman said officer was pepperspraying for blocking their vehicle, are not particularly "evil" taken by themselves. They're more petulant and foolish - which is not to say I think they should be legal or that there shouldn't be consequences for that behaviour.
I do agree with you that I'm probably being a bit more charitable than I should - consider it as an avocatus diaboli response to your take, which maybe was a bit too lacking in charity.
StJohnOfPatmos
9mo ago
Pretti was a bad man because he was an insurrectionist communist and because he made it his life's work to obstruct lawfully empowered federal law enforcement officials.
As much as I'm rather on "your side" in the big picture of the culture war, this is a terribly shortsighted and intellectually stifling judgement passed upon a person solely due to 2 videos of their very recent behaviour - and behaviour Pretti himself certainly saw as morally directed, no matter how wrong or deluded he was. We can ridicule and deconstruct the Left's misguided beliefs all the way down to the Rousseauian bedrock it builds itself on, it won't change the fact that people contain more complexity and ingrained incentive systems than their stated ideological affinity.
Looking at pictures of Pretti, he strikes me as one of those rather common male millennial leftists who feel a lot of inner resentment and bitterness towards their lives, yet are still to meek or calculating to express this inner rage on their own terms and must sublimate it through socially-approved political grievances. When I was a member of the Austrian Socialist Youth many moons ago, this type of male left-wing activist was already very commonplace: men that could not fit into any socially desirable mould of masculinity or youth and thus found a social space that not only allowed them to go on aggressive rants and lash out against property or people, but even lauded them for it and bestowed them with in-group status for their aggressive tendencies. Despite the explicit denial of meaningful same-sex difference within the Socialist Youth, this type of "male attack hound" was an unspoken model of traditional masculinity accessible for otherwise rather unmasculine men. (I might be totally off the mark here with my armchair analysis of Pretti, but everything I've seen so about him checks the list for this type of person. I'm also not saying "Pretti was ugly, therefore he was a self-loathing communist" - it's a more nuanced mix of physical, intellectual, and social factors.)
I very much doubt Pretti was a "bad man" to his colleagues, neighbours, or other people he interacted with regularly. Maybe he was easily irritable or smart-assed (would match the type), but I don't see someone like him, say, wantonly tossing trash onto his neighbour's lawn or stealing change from a colleague's purse. The actions you point at to designate him as such are both situations in which he probably felt that he could morally justify letting out his rage at a target that was anyway deserving of such. You say that "he made it his life's work to obstruct lawfully empowered federal law enforcement officials", but within his media/social ecosystem, he was operating off of the impression that current ICE tactics were an illegal overreach (and why wouldn't he, if his news bubble consists of NPR, the NYT, an Antifa Telegram group or any other media outlet partaking in the effort to smear and denigrate ICE at any cost), or at the very least would be legally overturned and near-universally condemned in the near future, à la Jim Crow laws. We can and should point out that he was wrong to do what he did, that his belief system was based on fables, conformist meekness, and a need to sublimate his resentment at the world, without immediately resorting to a complete moral condemnation.
Maybe I'm being overly sentimental, but I can't bring myself to feel any condescension or Schadenfreude at his death. I find it a tragic waste of life and a pathetic, misguided attempt of a man desperate for self-respect. Of course he was looking for a fight. Of course bringing a gun was provocation of the highest degree. Of course I don't blame ICE officers for how this went down (although I would appreciate if the White House wouldn't so blatantly pursue a strategy of "deny and defend at all costs before there's even clear documentation available"). But Alex Pretti was an intensive care nurse at a Veteran's hospital with a clean record - are we really going to reduce's a man's entire existence and character to the probably most irrational and emotionally charged moments of his life? There's alot of left-wing activists I have no trouble morally condemning rather fully (Hasan Piker comes to mind), but it feels unjust and shortsighted to do so here.
Isnt this the bog-standard, completely expected feminist analysis of rape? Why is this being presented as something spooky or menacing when he's just repeating Dworkin takes?
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