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bildramer t1_iz983iy wrote

Must we, though?

For all that she speaks in a reasonable and measured way, she endorses bad faith tactics. She straight up admits this - Malcolm X was good because he made MLK seem reasonable in comparison. Seeing nothing wrong with this kind of mercenary realpolitik is not conductive to getting anyone to ally with you.

>I think most of us have experienced at some point or another, where we find ourselves drawn to (whether sexually, romantically or just as a friend) someone that politics tells us we shouldn’t be drawn to, someone who has the wrong body shape, or the wrong race, or the wrong background, or the wrong class. I think most of us have had those experiences.

I have no earthly clue what the "wrong" traits of person to be attracted to alluded to are. She seems to take it as a given that people follow this notion of hierarchy by default. I don't have "dreams where we have sex with the wrong kinds of people" because I've never had a mental category of "wrong person" to begin with, and I don't think that's uncommon! The article mentions she's the daughter of an investment banker, and it shows.

>It’s the women who have to figure out how to feed their children and feed their husbands and so on.

Lol. Lmao, even.

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Cetun t1_iz9lt8q wrote

>For all that she speaks in a reasonable and measured way, she endorses bad faith tactics. She straight up admits this - Malcolm X was good because he made MLK seem reasonable in comparison. Seeing nothing wrong with this kind of mercenary realpolitik is not conductive to getting anyone to ally with you.

That was the biggest problem I had with her analysis. In his last book before he died Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? MLK specifically said he agrees with the principles of the Black Power movement, he had no problem with their message and privately endorsed it. He understood why it was needed and agreed with it's message.

He was an extremely astute political strategist though and understood political capital and how to gain and utilize it. His problem with the Black Power movement was that it induced white backlash, something he was worried about before the Black Power movement. White middle class support for his causes was absolutely critical to their success, the Black Power movement didn't scare white middle class people to flock to MLK as she posits, it induced them to flee the progressive position altogether. The choices weren't MLK or Malcolm X back then, there was a plethora of conservative and moderate positions that the white middle class could be scared off to. The idea that Black Power bolstered MLKs popularity is just false.

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Azad1984 t1_iz9tuwq wrote

Sure the Black Power Movement did not persuade people to support the movement, but that is exactly her point! She thinks that they have contributed in other ways, namely moving the overtin window to the right directions. If I have to make a comparison, the MAGA movement did not persuade people to be conservative. In fact, if you are moderate before MAGA, you might now turn liberal just to oppose them, but it might still be the case that MAGA has made other conservatives seem like more viable options for compromises. Like if you were Sanders or bust before, now you would be happy with Biden!

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Azad1984 t1_iz9roz1 wrote

She did not say that Malcolm X is good because he made MLK seem reasonable. She said that even if Malcolm X did not persuade people because he is too radical, he nonetheless creates room for the slightly less radical MLK to be accepted. In fact, she mentions nothing about whether she thinks Malcolm X is right; she is only talking about the effect of Malcolm X on public discourse to illustrate the point that persuasion is not the only function of discourse.

As for the “wrong” body thing, it could be simply that you do not share that aspect of the experience she describes. But, even if that is the case, it is undeniable that who we find desirable is partly shaped by the culture (just compare the beauty standards today vs 50 yrs ago and compare beauty standards across societies!). And, for many people, there would be fleeting moments when we find ourselves attracted to someone that not our “type” (and, come on, we all have a type). One way to see the plausibility of her claims is then to identify that “type” as partly a product of the culture (hierarchical culture in fact), and see those fleeting moments as being attracted to the “wrong” body. The suggestion, then, is to affirm those fleeting moments and to try to change the culture in doing so.

Finally, she never said that the husbands are not also responsible for putting food on the table. More likely, what she means is that if you start with a traditional family with a working husband and a house wife, now with the husband unemployed, the house wife takes on responsibility that she did not have before. And it is easy to see how this may lead to an “awakening” of sort for the house wife.

Hope this clears some things up.

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clairelecric t1_iz9cf1j wrote

She didn't say you think these people are wrong, but politics does. According to her. I have no clue what she's on about though. I've never felt like politics were telling me who to be attracted to and if they were I wouldn't care.

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Heartbroken_Boomer t1_iz9c736 wrote

I honestly do not see any use for this kind of hermeneutical critique. One short text is not sufficient grounds for an attempt at such an examination.

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laucha126 t1_iz9esxs wrote

if such short text is no sufficient grouds for an attempt at such examination then what is it good for? can it really justify its own existence? is it long enough to develop or communicate her ideas enough? also first half of the text is pure flaunting rather than contextualizing so is not like they made the most out of such a short format anyway

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chesterbennediction t1_izava8v wrote

Has anyone noticed she sidesteps or reframes most of the questions? It feels very lawyer like as they basically make up their own question and answer that instead of what the other person was actually asking.

I also don't agree with her notion of sexual selectiveness and that we are forced to put a value to people because society bullies us into wanting certain traits. Basically no matter the stigma I don't think that obese men or women or asymmetry will be a desirable body type no matter how much we try to condition that out of people because those are evolutionary markers of health and fitness.

I also would like to see what her definition of hierarchy is and what part she wants to get rid of. Hierarchy gets a bad rap but it's also essential(as far as we know) to organize people to be a productive work force, how can anything get done if everyone's say is equal? Decisions would take far longer and people without the relevant experience could lead to a tragedy of the commons as they aren't aware of the consequences of their actions.

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xRafafa00 t1_izb1ol1 wrote

I agree with your second paragraph, but I'd like to provide different reasoning - yes, certain aspects of body type are indicators of fitness and survivability, but that's only considered attractive in modern society. A few hundred years ago, skinny people were viewed as undesirable because they were poor and couldn't afford food. Now the people who can't afford healthy food are overweight. But being overweight isn't unattractive to everybody. Some people have unconventional "types". Some people have perfectly conventional types. Some have no type.

Her main assumption (and yours) about sexual hierarchies is that everyone has a type, and that statistics can effectively predict what everyone's type is. That's not true, as nobody has a purely identical sexuality as someone else, so no amount of statistics can predict what or whom someone is sexually attracted to. Widespread, uniform sexual selectiveness is neither the result of social pressure nor evolutional markers of fitness; it just doesn't exist. There simply is no widespread uniformity to sexuality.

Thing is, that's already widely accepted in western public discourse, especially within social circles that would be inclined to read this article in the first place. Basically, this article isn't philosophy, it's reaffirming the beliefs of its likely readers, while decrying a problem that is already in the process of resolving itself.

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[deleted] t1_iz96cbp wrote

[removed]

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BernardJOrtcutt t1_izae1o8 wrote

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[deleted] t1_iz9822a wrote

[removed]

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BernardJOrtcutt t1_izae1hp wrote

Your comment was removed for violating the following rule:

>Read the Post Before You Reply

>Read/watch/listen the posted content, understand and identify the philosophical arguments given, and respond to these substantively. If you have unrelated thoughts or don't wish to read the content, please post your own thread or simply refrain from commenting. Comments which are clearly not in direct response to the posted content may be removed.

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VersaceEauFraiche t1_izahpn5 wrote

Conversations surrounding topics of beauty and desire are always circular. It is easy to accuse the other party of having their standards of beauty be the result of social engineering, but the accusation can always go both ways (no matter if it is true or not).

Hierarchies always form, and especially so around sex, because sex and procreation are some of the few topics in which it is increasingly difficult to obfuscate the difference between one's stated and revealed preference due to the skin-in-the-game that is required for both of these topics. There are such high opportunity costs associated with these decisions, and your pick of mate speak louder than the words you say regarding what you look for in a mate.

An emergent order is always created in these fields. Look at tinder data, okcupid data. It maps on to the Pareto principle almost seamlessly: the top 20% of men are having 80% of the sexual encounters that are attributable to all men. Just look at the whole West Elm Caleb thing. The majority of women are sharing a minority of men, the top selection. Or you can see it as these men having their pick of the litter and these women are willing to wait. This is an emergent order. No one is telling these men and women that they have to do act in this way.

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Talltist t1_izc67v3 wrote

The pareto principle is amazing. It applies in so many different ways in life.

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the_grungydan t1_izcla3r wrote

This reads like Jordan Petersen meets basement dwelling incel with a fine veneer of having read a dictionary.

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iiioiia t1_izg7ouq wrote

How something "reads" is a function of the content of the document itself as well as the quality of the mind ingesting it.

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timbgray t1_iz9jafj wrote

Hierarchies arise naturally, and inevitably in the real world regardless of what or how we feel, or what pronouns we use.

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Azad1984 t1_iz9vhzn wrote

And the article has nothing to do with that

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timbgray t1_iza4u89 wrote

Marxists, for all their talk of inevitable history, have a fundamentally flawed understanding of hierarchies in general.

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Heartbroken_Boomer t1_iz9n53r wrote

The prevalent social hierarchy is not the result of competence, necessity or nature, but is itself a construct of the distributed wealth allocation.

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timbgray t1_iz9nulg wrote

The prevalent social hierarchy is the result of competence in obtaining wealth.

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Base_Six t1_izar7lv wrote

While that's a nice ideal, I think in reality wealth has more to do with how wealthy your parents were than it does with personal competence. The best way to make money is to have money, and being gifted a down payment on a house and a debt-free college education sets you on a radically different trajectory in terms of earning prospects.

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timbgray t1_izbc4bo wrote

Well, the wealth was created somewhere by someone, and the generic creation of wealth is ultimately manifest in our social hierarchies. Note the context of my comment was a response to a previous post. Of course, other factors impact our social hierarchies as well, our DNA being the most obvious example. I’ll also note in passing that ontologically competence is a hierarchy.

My basic point is that the majority of time, the vast majority, targeting “hierarchies” for almost any critical sociological purpose is aiming at the wrong target, because the fundamental cause of the general angst on display (which seems to be mostly self indulgence) is simply our nature as biological beings.

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Base_Six t1_izbiaeu wrote

I think a certain degree of wealth-based hierarchy is unavoidable, but there's an inverse relationship between income inequality and happiness that's been documented in numerous studies. Part of our nature as biological beings seems to be a strong negative reaction to what we perceive as unfairness.

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timbgray t1_izbmk0q wrote

I suspect that if we unwound that inequality, the unhappiness index would increase.

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Mindless-State-616 t1_izlozh9 wrote

then please at least provide reliable data or to a paper that proves such causality of your country's, then.

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Heartbroken_Boomer t1_iz9pwdd wrote

Or is it the art of obtaining wealth, or is it the beauty of it, the spirit of it? Let us move the goalpost together. Let's make up new words and phrases until you are an unicorn and I am your daddy.

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xRafafa00 t1_izavjw3 wrote

I would say the article reads more like a celebrity interview on a wide range of topics than a philosophical exploration of the topic of sex.

>> Feminism isn’t an idea or a theory or a belief

Feminism is certainly a noun. A noun is a person, place, thing, or idea. So by process of elimination, she must be asserting that feminism is a person, place, or thing. I can't talk to feminism, I can't get directions to feminism, and I can't reach out and touch feminism. So her fundamental assertion requires circumventing logic to understand.

And I personally cannot take seriously a well-to-do Bahrainian Hindu born in 1984 who attempts to use the American Civil Rights Movement as support for any philosophical claim.

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humewasrightallalong t1_izbclps wrote

Amia stands in front of a wheel covered in words. She spins it.

'We must a create a. . . '

*Spin*

'. . . sexual culture. . .'

*Spin*

'. . . that destablizes. . .'

*Spin*

'. . . the notion of. . .'

*Spin*

'. . . hierarchy.'

I've got a BA and an MA in Philosophy and shit like this makes even me hate philosopers now. Tedious.

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magic_leopluradon t1_ize7tud wrote

Right. I honestly didn’t see anything philosophical at all in the interview at all. It’s a political piece, not an academic exploration.

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Heartbroken_Boomer t1_iz9choa wrote

I would like to further contextualise her perspectives for they appear valid and are very attractive. I especially appreciate her last paragraph where she hints at a possible method of reconciliation in the divided left. I will surely read more, thank you for presenting the article OP.

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theglandcanyon t1_izax4gu wrote

I honestly do not see any use for this kind of positive evaluative judgement. One short text is not sufficient grounds for an attempt at such an assessment.

Gotcha!

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augustamunhoz t1_izazskt wrote

There’s hierarchy, holarchy, and dominance. From what I read she’s trying to mix a bit of everything but missing out connecting thoughts on each.

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[deleted] t1_iz9bc97 wrote

[removed]

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BernardJOrtcutt t1_izadxqu wrote

Your comment was removed for violating the following rule:

>Read the Post Before You Reply

>Read/watch/listen the posted content, understand and identify the philosophical arguments given, and respond to these substantively. If you have unrelated thoughts or don't wish to read the content, please post your own thread or simply refrain from commenting. Comments which are clearly not in direct response to the posted content may be removed.

Repeated or serious violations of the subreddit rules will result in a ban.

This is a shared account that is only used for notifications. Please do not reply, as your message will go unread.

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No-Jellyfish-876 t1_iz9g8g4 wrote

Yeah well, we are already seeing quickly how bad this idea is

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Heartbroken_Boomer t1_iz9ncq3 wrote

The incompatibility of a prevalent hierarchy with anarchist thought does in no way, shape or form, other than delusion, indicate the *badness* of an interpreted idea.

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postart777 t1_iz9nwt3 wrote

This sounds good, but why separate non-hierarchies into sexual and otherwise. If we are going for destabilized hierarchy, we should go all in.

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InTheEndEntropyWins t1_izaplw4 wrote

Please can someone do a TLDR in plain english. It's like I become dyslexic when I try and read these kinds of articles.

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Prestigious-Error545 t1_izby2uy wrote

That's absolutely impossible. You will never EVER get rid of a hierarchical system, you can make it about sex. And eliminate that, but it will only sprout up in another form somewhere else.

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Buroda t1_izdiuzi wrote

I agree, we must eliminate the notion of tops and bottoms. Everyone should switch it up in 2023

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magic_leopluradon t1_ize6ixn wrote

An idea is presented but there is no actual argument present in this interview. There are many “shoulds” “coulds” and “woulds” and it’s mainly a lengthy statement of controversial social justice-esque talking points without presence of any real supporting arguments.

Has anyone read her book? Does it contain any content that supports her claims at all? The only useful or interesting part of the dialogue was the raising of epistemological questions asking how do we know what it means to be a man/woman etc. which she didn’t answer or explore more, disappointingly so.

For someone so decorated and from prestigious institutions, I expected a lot more. It just reads as political feminist ideological fluff.

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Azad1984 t1_iz9pzrm wrote

Amazing article.

Edit: just saw the comment section. wow. I often wished redditors would read charitably, but now I just wish that they would read

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the_grungydan t1_izclpla wrote

I'm glad I'm not the only one that feels that way. I straight up just posted under the (current as of writing) top post that it sounded like a Jordan Petersen level bad take by an incel with a dictionary. These comments reek of offended "men" desperate to be right.

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strangeapple t1_iz9j9a9 wrote

Hierarchical social structure is the biggest source of human inequality. We need intelligent structural anarchy all over the place. However, most of the world is nowhere close to ready, because most people knowingly or unknowinly support the idea of being "above" and "below" someone - fighting their way up the social ladder is the central theme in the lives, views and dreams of many people. Religions and existing power structures are largely built around these hierarchical systems; Advocating end to hierarchy is like declaring a war against most institutions on Earth. Those who take comfort from inequality see "equality" as bad and anarchy as extrimism promoting the end of everything.

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Azad1984 t1_iz9s8gu wrote

You did not attribute this claim to her, but I still want to point out that she is not suggesting an end to hierarchy. Instead, she has advocated for ways to be free of that hierarchy in one aspect of our lives so our desires are no longer “regulated” by it.

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signor_bardo t1_iz9l0gk wrote

So hierarchy is socially constructed and inherently evil, and most people are either consciously oppressive or passively duped into internalizing oppressive ideas. Whereas enlightened intellectuals, such as yourself, know better than everyone and will slowly usher in an age of peaceful anarchy where the world will run smoothly without hierarchical structures in a technocapitalist world state.

Did I get you right?

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strangeapple t1_iz9o6iu wrote

>So hierarchy is socially constructed and inherently evil, and most people are either consciously oppressive or passively duped into internalizing oppressive ideas.

Pretty much. I think hierarchy might work for animals in small packs, but for us humans I believe it creates unmeasurable amount of anxiety and suffering. If we, as a society, truly saw other people as our equals, would we still look down upon homeless as lesser people? The trap is psychological - the more invested we become in an idea of becoming better than the so-called 'lowest' the more we see someone challenging this idea as a threat, or a contender, to our self-worth. If it makes you feel any better am a total retard.

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signor_bardo t1_iz9q7lm wrote

I get you, I even agree to some extent, I just don’t think anarchy works. Society needs hierarchy to function, but we should work to establish fair hierarchies that don’t rest on physically and psychologically destructive exploitation.

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strangeapple t1_iz9vls7 wrote

Anarchy is not something that was ever meant to work in and of itself. It is an ideological direction against structural concentrations of power. We're somewhat talking about same things here with different semantics. Now, we could go deep into debate on how to define hierarchy, but I think it's easier to agree that we can't fully eliminate concentrations of power from society. My idea of anarchy is moving and promoting towards dimishing these concentrations of power. As to how would be yet another whole, more complex and multi-dimensional, topic.

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JCPRuckus t1_iz9wlwc wrote

We are animals and hierarchy only becomes more important in large groups if merely for logistical purposes.

If we need 20 people to go pick the fruit today before it spoils, someone has to be responsible for, and capable of, getting 20 people to go do that. We can't just hope that 20 people feel like picking fruit today... And now you've got a management hierarchy... This issue only compounds the more specialized jobs you have and the more tightly they need to be coordinated.

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AdGlittering6805 t1_izcy1uq wrote

Fuck this shit, and shitters.

Anima, animus. Body poses both. when you woke up you did you Think, i thougt i wad a man, or woman. I am a product Of my counsioucness, and my body are my temple.

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[deleted] t1_iz9gtwc wrote

[removed]

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