The voice of the majority
Since
I teach computer science, the closest that I have come to academic
feminists was when I was once heading for my classroom and walked past
a group of approaching-middle-age women, one of whom said something of
which I could only make out the words "white males", said with a tone
of voice that one would normally use to describe a piece of dog shit
stuck to the bottom of your shoe. Unfortunately, I was in a hurry and
could not slow down to learn more.
I think it was Udolpho who once noted that feminists are trivial to avoid in academia: simply major in any reality-based field that has objective standards. Feminists tend to avoid such fields for obvious reasons and rather congregate in fields that are more subjective and emotion-based. (I doubt that many women's studies programs spend much time with basic thinking tools such as the Occam's razor, for example.) When I think of the talented female students that I have met in my classes, I find it difficult to even imagine them thinking in ways or seriously believe the ideas that one can routinely see the internet feminists expressing in all apparent seriousness.
I often enjoy looking at the surreal upside-down bizarro world that the feminists seem to inhabit. Things are pretty different when the basis of everything is social constructionism instead of the objective reality. I wasn't quite aware about how surreal this world actually is until I started commenting there and, for example, learned that the idea that men consider young slender women to be more attractive than middle-aged obese women is actually controversial.
Through this looking-glass, I was at one point led to the blog of Vox Day, a self-described "Christian libertarian" who seems to be the number one man on the feminist hatelist these days. Now, based on my own experiences I wouldn't convict even a dog based on feminist testimony. For example, once when debating the idea that young women are more attractive than old women, I made the mistake of noting that by walking through any university, you get a pretty realistic idea what the average twentysomething woman looks like in the real world. Later, I read some feminist excitedly reveal that I am a creep who likes to check out my students, another called me a wife beater etc. Another time, I wrote that I used to weigh a lot more than now when I lived in Finland, and later read a feminist mock me that I am a loser because I have a fat wife. (Apparently, that particular feminist didn't receive the memo about fat acceptance, which is these days an inherent part of feminism.)
Reading through Vox Day's postings, one can't deny that he is politically quite extreme. The whole fundamentalist Christian thing kind of puts me off, myself being an atheist, but I can't help but note that he has a few good points. (Especially the idea of feminists as inherent socialists and totalitarians is hard to deny, seeing how many feminists proudly proclaim their socialist worldview almost as if they were completely unaware about the events of the last thirty years. Feminism and socialism are one and that one is socialism, as someone once said.)
Of course, the policies advocated by the Left and the policies advocated by Vox Day are mutually 100% incompatible and thus necessarily in conflict. But I believe that from this there emerges an important way that Vox Day can be extremely educational to the Left. In America, Vox belongs to a small minority residing the extreme end of the political spectrum, but worldwide and especially in the third world, he is actually in the mainstream and the solid majority. As far as I can tell, none of his ideas and opinions about, say, the proper roles of sexes or the relationship between religion and education would be out of place or any way controversial in most Middle Eastern, African, Asian or Latin American cultures. Yes, you need to change the names of some deities and holy books, but the basic principles are similar, especially from the point of a western leftist. And many of these cultures make Vox Day look like a raving loony-left liberal! For example, I can't remember seeing him ever calling for gays to be put to death, a position widely held and practiced in large parts of the world even today.
Many leftists like to proclaim that Vox Day "disgusts them" and "makes them ashamed to even belong to the same species". Now, why don't these people express similar dislike towards the people and cultures whose opinions are essentially the same or even (much) worse than his, from the point of view of the Left? (Rhetorical.)
When looking at other cultures, it is easy to imagine them as social democrats who just have different cuisine and clothes. This is the best service that Vox Day unintentionally provides to everyone: he expresses the views shared by the vast majority of the people in the world, but since he is an American, the Left is allowed to criticize him for holding these views. This practice session will come handy in the near future, when they have to confront the real thing.
(To end this posting, I have to add that there is another lesson taught by Vox Day and countless others that I would like to be better known outside America: the fact that it is possible to be a solid American conservative and oppose current Bush administration, at the same time, without any logical contradiction.)
I think it was Udolpho who once noted that feminists are trivial to avoid in academia: simply major in any reality-based field that has objective standards. Feminists tend to avoid such fields for obvious reasons and rather congregate in fields that are more subjective and emotion-based. (I doubt that many women's studies programs spend much time with basic thinking tools such as the Occam's razor, for example.) When I think of the talented female students that I have met in my classes, I find it difficult to even imagine them thinking in ways or seriously believe the ideas that one can routinely see the internet feminists expressing in all apparent seriousness.
I often enjoy looking at the surreal upside-down bizarro world that the feminists seem to inhabit. Things are pretty different when the basis of everything is social constructionism instead of the objective reality. I wasn't quite aware about how surreal this world actually is until I started commenting there and, for example, learned that the idea that men consider young slender women to be more attractive than middle-aged obese women is actually controversial.
Through this looking-glass, I was at one point led to the blog of Vox Day, a self-described "Christian libertarian" who seems to be the number one man on the feminist hatelist these days. Now, based on my own experiences I wouldn't convict even a dog based on feminist testimony. For example, once when debating the idea that young women are more attractive than old women, I made the mistake of noting that by walking through any university, you get a pretty realistic idea what the average twentysomething woman looks like in the real world. Later, I read some feminist excitedly reveal that I am a creep who likes to check out my students, another called me a wife beater etc. Another time, I wrote that I used to weigh a lot more than now when I lived in Finland, and later read a feminist mock me that I am a loser because I have a fat wife. (Apparently, that particular feminist didn't receive the memo about fat acceptance, which is these days an inherent part of feminism.)
Reading through Vox Day's postings, one can't deny that he is politically quite extreme. The whole fundamentalist Christian thing kind of puts me off, myself being an atheist, but I can't help but note that he has a few good points. (Especially the idea of feminists as inherent socialists and totalitarians is hard to deny, seeing how many feminists proudly proclaim their socialist worldview almost as if they were completely unaware about the events of the last thirty years. Feminism and socialism are one and that one is socialism, as someone once said.)
Of course, the policies advocated by the Left and the policies advocated by Vox Day are mutually 100% incompatible and thus necessarily in conflict. But I believe that from this there emerges an important way that Vox Day can be extremely educational to the Left. In America, Vox belongs to a small minority residing the extreme end of the political spectrum, but worldwide and especially in the third world, he is actually in the mainstream and the solid majority. As far as I can tell, none of his ideas and opinions about, say, the proper roles of sexes or the relationship between religion and education would be out of place or any way controversial in most Middle Eastern, African, Asian or Latin American cultures. Yes, you need to change the names of some deities and holy books, but the basic principles are similar, especially from the point of a western leftist. And many of these cultures make Vox Day look like a raving loony-left liberal! For example, I can't remember seeing him ever calling for gays to be put to death, a position widely held and practiced in large parts of the world even today.
Many leftists like to proclaim that Vox Day "disgusts them" and "makes them ashamed to even belong to the same species". Now, why don't these people express similar dislike towards the people and cultures whose opinions are essentially the same or even (much) worse than his, from the point of view of the Left? (Rhetorical.)
When looking at other cultures, it is easy to imagine them as social democrats who just have different cuisine and clothes. This is the best service that Vox Day unintentionally provides to everyone: he expresses the views shared by the vast majority of the people in the world, but since he is an American, the Left is allowed to criticize him for holding these views. This practice session will come handy in the near future, when they have to confront the real thing.
(To end this posting, I have to add that there is another lesson taught by Vox Day and countless others that I would like to be better known outside America: the fact that it is possible to be a solid American conservative and oppose current Bush administration, at the same time, without any logical contradiction.)
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