Fashion-as-shallowness is a sexist construction

Shallow Gals By Phoebe Maltz

A pet peeve of mine is the belief, common among those who consider themselves intellectuals, that an interest in fashion (broadly defined, as in, could be designers, could be well-arranged thrift-store duds) takes something away from a person’s intelligence, such that each trip to H&M knocks another shelf’s worth of Hegel and Heidegger out of one’s brain. But even beyond tweedy circles, admitting to thinking about what you wear, beyond situation-appropriateness, is considered suspect. Thus the platitudes about books, covers, and under what circumstances one is and is not allowed to judge.

So, a hypothesis, one I’m sure I’m not the first to make, but one that needs making: caring about clothes is seen as dumb because it’s seen as - and often enough is - something typical of women, something men find dull. (The cliché about taking a yawning guy shoe-shopping? Based on heaps and heaps of fact.) When a serious male political blogger has a post every so often about sports, he shows his real-person side. When a female blogger takes a break from Important Questions to post a link to a shiny pair of ballet flats, she has effectively declared herself the ditsiest sorority girl on the beach at Cancun. (It was with this hypothesis in mind that I recently defended the indefensible.)

It could be, as Rita proposed, that "Blogging about fashion usually means blogging about your fashion–it indirectly reveals things about your body, your income, your friends–in sum, your private life. And when the snipers come out, it makes some sense that they’ll take aim not at the shoes, but at you, since you have armed them with all the relevant information and personal insults hurt more." (Yes, sounds familiar.) The same could well be true of interest in fashion expressed off-line.

But I still think there’s something to the idea that fashion-as-shallowness is a sexist construction, albeit one traditional feminism has embraced. Rather than encouraging men to cook meals as well, we as a society embraced crappy food. Rather than asking men to care about their own appearances, we as women protested and put on some snowboots that shall not be named.

There’s no reason fashion should be considered shameful or idiotic. How we dress is a form of self-expression, one among many, not merely a surface underneath which our ‘true’ selves lie. Aside from young children and the very poor - groups, incidentally, often excluded from other forms of self-expression as well - everyone has some choice in what they wear. Posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 11:11 pm and is filed under Ideas. 24 Responses to “Shallow Gals” Pages: [1] 2 3 » Show All

WE ARE WOMEN, HEAR US WHINE? from Dr. Sanity by Dr. Sanity
Heather MacDonald asks today's feminist movement a rather pertinent question:

Which is it? Are women “strong”? Or can they be crushed by fears of a permanent bad hair day and inspired by something as superficial as Hollywood fashion? Given the amount of time and money that most women spend on applying makeup, blow-drying their hair, shopping for clothes, and gullibly attending to preposterous wrinkle-cream ads in women’s magazines, Angier’s claim that girls could be thwarted by a TV comedy is not wholly unreasonable. It just happens to contradict the usual feminist claim that women are just as tough as men.

8 - 7

Eight babies born at the same time are doing well IBTimes Hong Kong, CA - The mother of that octuplets gave birth to six boys and two girls weighing between 1 pound, 8 ounces and 3 pound, 4 ounces. The first baby born at 10:43 am, ...
Video: Doctor Says Newborn Octuplets Appear Healthy AssociatedPress
8 is plenty: Mother gives birth to octuplets The Associated Press Octuplets Delivered: 8 Babies Born at the Same Time. In This Economy? Women on the Web - Paying for one baby’s tough enough these days, but one California woman won’t let that worry her. The mother in question just gave birth to eight babies — only the second time in history live octuplets have been born, according to doctors.

Man kills wife, five kids, himself after being fired CNN International - LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- A man apparently despondent about losing his job killed his wife and five children before turning the gun on himself, officials said Tuesday.
Video: Police: La. Man Kills Family Over Job Situation AssociatedPress
Los Angeles man kills his 5 children, wife, self Los Angeles Times

Beyond the black/white horizon

4 Responses to “Other-Reification and Racism” Feed for this Entry Trackback Address

1 Tusar N. Mohapatra Jan 25th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
This significant exploration can be extended to a broader horizon if instead of confining it within the black/white binary, the Indian conception of the fourfold “Varnas” (literally, colours: white, red, yellow, and black) is also considered. [TNM]

2 Cynthia R. Nielsen Jan 26th, 2009 at 9:06 am
Thank you, Tusar, for your comment. I agree that the discussion should be broadened beyond the black/white horizon.

***

Healing the division between two cultures [A Cultural Misunderstanding by Angiras: An understanding of the cultural factors underlying these varying responses might contribute to healing the division that has recently arisen in the international Sri Aurobindo community.]
It would be still better to apportion the religious component within the cultural. [TNM] 1:52 PM

Differences between the sexes are both deeply engrained and imaginatively galvanising

Intimate Relations: The Natural History of Desire by Liam Hudson (Author), Bernadine Jacot (Author)

Hudson and Jacot (The Way Men Think, 1992) make a perplexing and incoherent effort to analogize intimacy and art. The authors declare "that psychological differences between the sexes are both deeply engrained and imaginatively galvanising" and "that there exists a parallel between art and intimate relations." Unfortunately, very little that follows has anything to do with these potentially engaging assertions.

For example, they devote two chapters to a "thought experiment" in which they describe several historically important women, including Margaret Mead and Kate Millett. The experiment requires imagining these figures as men, with the assumption that, as such, their stories would not make sense. The experiment fails thoroughly, however, for well-read readers of gender and sexuality literature, possibly because the authors dismiss these fields as postmodern and liberal to the point of irrelevance. Basically, they see men and women as fundamentally different because of early relationships with parents. Based in Freudian thought, they believe that men and women grow up with different complexes, and "wounds," which color future interactions.

The authors are exclusively concerned with "the mutual fascination of individuals who are categorically dissimilar" in terms of biological sex, so although they bill this as a history of desire and intimacy, only heterosexual love is addressed. And many of their characterizations of patterns of loving are rooted in stereotypes and structural inequities, criticisms of which they discard as extremist rhetoric of feminists and other radical groups. In their final analysis, intimacy and art are comparable because they both spring from the imagination, what Hudson and Jacot see as the "mind's central function." But there never emerges a natural history of intimacy at all. What could have been a compelling discussion about the imagination is cluttered with conservative biases and false interpretations of social scientific data. (Kirkus Reviews)

Product Description In their previous book, "The Way Men Think", Liam Hudson and Bernadine Jacot explored the dislocation experienced by all male children as they separate from their mothers and identify with their fathers. This book focuses on the experience of women and the way they relate to men. As they grow up, small girls are not "wounded" like their brothers, but nonetheless acquire a burden (or "incubus") that distorts their perception of intimacy. For reasons intrinsic to their development, the book argues, women will find all heterosexual relationships troubling.

Examining the differences between the minds of men and women, the authors describe the incompatibilities upon which intimacies between the sexes seem so often to founder. They argue that the dissimilarities between men and women are not an obstacle to real intimacy, but its prior condition: intimacy is energising precisely because it joins like to unlike. It is its ambiguity which makes erotic closeness enduringly compelling. Intimate relationships should - like works of art - be understood as exercises of the imagination.

This work offers detailed accounts of the lives of remarkable women - Vera Britain, Kate Millett, Margaret Thatcher and Margaret Mead - showing how the thoughts and feelings of the two sexes are subtly but systematically off-set from one another. It analyzes the resonances between the public and the private in particular works of art, and uses literary texts - from Truman Capote and Doris Lessing to John Milton - to establish a theoretical framework within which the phenomena of intimacy can be considered and men and women begin to understand the lives they share. [4:46 PM]

Women have a lower sex drive than men, and are more likely to lose interest

What Do Women Want? By DANIEL BERGNER
Published: January 22, 2009 (Page 7 of 8)

“Female desire,” Meana said, speaking broadly and not only about her dyspareunic patients, “is not governed by the relational factors that, we like to think, rule women’s sexuality as opposed to men’s.” She finished a small qualitative study last year consisting of long interviews with 20 women in marriages that were sexually troubled. Although bad relationships often kill desire, she argued, good ones don’t guarantee it. She quoted from one participant’s representative response: “We kiss. We hug. I tell him, ‘I don’t know what it is.’ We have a great relationship. It’s just that one area” — the area of her bed, the place desolated by her loss of lust.

The generally accepted therapeutic notion that, for women, incubating intimacy leads to better sex is, Meana told me, often misguided. “Really,” she said, “women’s desire is not relational, it’s narcissistic” — it is dominated by the yearnings of “self-love,” by the wish to be the object of erotic admiration and sexual need. Still on the subject of narcissism, she talked about research indicating that, in comparison with men, women’s erotic fantasies center less on giving pleasure and more on getting it. “When it comes to desire,” she added, “women may be far less relational than men.”

Like Chivers, Meana thinks of female sexuality as divided into two systems. But Meana conceives of those systems in a different way than her colleague. On the one hand, as Meana constructs things, there is the drive of sheer lust, and on the other the impetus of value. For evolutionary and cultural reasons, she said, women might set a high value on the closeness and longevity of relationships: “But it’s wrong to think that because relationships are what women choose they’re the primary source of women’s desire.”

Meana spoke about two elements that contribute to her thinking: first, a great deal of data showing that, as measured by the frequency of fantasy, masturbation and sexual activity, women have a lower sex drive than men, and second, research suggesting that within long-term relationships, women are more likely than men to lose interest in sex. Meana posits that it takes a greater jolt, a more significant stimulus, to switch on a woman’s libido than a man’s. “If I don’t love cake as much as you,” she told me, “my cake better be kick-butt to get me excited to eat it.” And within a committed relationship, the crucial stimulus of being desired decreases considerably, not only because the woman’s partner loses a degree of interest but also, more important, because the woman feels that her partner is trapped, that a choice — the choosing of her — is no longer being carried out.

A symbolic scene ran through Meana’s talk of female lust: a woman pinned against an alley wall, being ravished. Here, in Meana’s vision, was an emblem of female heat. The ravisher is so overcome by a craving focused on this particular woman that he cannot contain himself; he transgresses societal codes in order to seize her, and she, feeling herself to be the unique object of his desire, is electrified by her own reactive charge and surrenders. Meana apologized for the regressive, anti-feminist sound of the scene.

Yet while Meana minimized the role of relationships in stoking desire, she didn’t dispense with the sexual relevance, for women, of being cared for and protected. “What women want is a real dilemma,” she said. Earlier, she showed me, as a joke, a photograph of two control panels, one representing the workings of male desire, the second, female, the first with only a simple on-off switch, the second with countless knobs. “Women want to be thrown up against a wall but not truly endangered. Women want a caveman and caring. If I had to pick an actor who embodies all the qualities, all the contradictions, it would be Denzel Washington. He communicates that kind of power and that he is a good man.”

After our discussion of the alley encounter, we talked about erotic — as opposed to aversive ­— fantasies of rape. According to an analysis of relevant studies published last year in The Journal of Sex Research, an analysis that defines rape as involving “the use of physical force, threat of force, or incapacitation through, for example, sleep or intoxication, to coerce a woman into sexual activity against her will,” between one-third and more than one-half of women have entertained such fantasies, often during intercourse, with at least 1 in 10 women fantasizing about sexual assault at least once per month in a pleasurable way.

The appeal is, above all, paradoxical, Meana pointed out: rape means having no control, while fantasy is a domain manipulated by the self. She stressed the vast difference between the pleasures of the imagined and the terrors of the real. “I hate the term ‘rape fantasies,’ ” she went on. “They’re really fantasies of submission.” She spoke about the thrill of being wanted so much that the aggressor is willing to overpower, to take. “But ‘aggression,’ ‘dominance,’ I have to find better words. ‘Submission’ isn’t even a good word” — it didn’t reflect the woman’s imagining of an ultimately willing surrender. [...]

“So many cultures have quite strict codes governing female sexuality,” Chivers said. “If that sexuality is relatively passive, then why so many rules to control it? Why is it so frightening?” There was the implication, in her words, that she might never illuminate her subject because she could not even see it, that the data she and her colleagues collect might be deceptive, might represent only the creations of culture, and that her interpretations might be leading away from underlying truth.

There was the intimation that, at its core, women’s sexuality might not be passive at all. There was the chance that the long history of fear might have buried the nature of women’s lust too deeply to unearth, to view. « Previous Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next Page » Daniel Bergner is a contributing writer for the magazine. His new book, “The Other Side of Desire: Four Journeys Into the Far Realms of Lust and Longing,” will be published this month. More Articles in Magazine » A version of this article appeared in print on January 25, 2009, on page MM26 of the New York edition.

सेंसर बोर्ड मैं कोई भी इस समाज की चिंता करने वाला नहीं है

"स्लमडॉग मिलियनेयर" नाम से दुःख
भारतीये सेंसर बोर्ड आखिर कब जागेगा "slumdog Millionaire" नाम से दुःख Labels: ओस्कर अवार्ड, जाटव, डैनी बायल posted by Shant Prakash @ 7:48 AM 0 Comments

आज के दोर मैं गरीब समाज अलग-अलग नाम से जाना जाता है. किसलिए सिर्फ गरीब का रोज नया नामकरण होता है. कभी गिरिजन, हरिजन, दलित, उपेक्षित समाज, वंचित समाज, अछूत. कब तक इज्जत उतरवा कर आमिर का मनोरंजन करता रहेगा यह समाज आज राज्नित्कों की पहली पसंद है यह समाज, फिल्मकारों के लिए है यह एक आकर्षक मुद्दा. कियोंकि ऐसे नाम रखने से कोई इनके खिलाफ कोर्ट जायेगा और इनको आराम से पोपुलारिटी मिल जायेगी ऐसी गन्दी सोच को बढावा हमारा सेंसर बोर्ड भी दे रहा है.

इस फिल्म को अप्प्रोवल देने का मतलब है की इस बोर्ड की आत्मा मर चुकी है और इस बोर्ड मैं कोई भी इस समाज की चिंता करने वाला नहीं है. और इस सब के पीछे कारण है सर्कार की लापरवाही और अनदेखी. ऐसी दशा मैं एक बार फिर भगवन ही भला करे जो कभी नहीं करता पर उम्मीद है।

जय भीम जय भारत भारत माता की जय।

शांत प्रकाश (जाटव)
२७९, ज्ञान खंड-१
इंदिरा पुरम, ग़जिअबाद-२०१०१२, उत्तर प्रदेश
इंडिया Mobile-09871952799
मोबाइल-०९८७१९५२७९९ Email-shant@mail.com , shantbjp@mail.com

India is becoming a hub for prostitution, pornography and cyber crime and a destination for sex tourism

The Human Body : The Great Commodity Exchange from Around and About by shantanu dutta

Most of us Indians would not like to know that India is a key source, destination, and transit country for humans trafficked for the purposes of forced labour and commercial sexual exploitation. While no comprehensive study of forced and bonded labour can ever be completed, there are estimates that the trafficking “industry” touches 20 to 65 million Indians. Women and girls are trafficked within the country for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced marriage. Children are subjected to forced labour as factory workers, domestic servants, beggars, and agriculture workers, and have been used as armed combatants by some terrorist and insurgent groups. India is also a destination for women and girls from Nepal and Bangladesh trafficked for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation.

Due to the clandestine nature of the problem, little is known about those who carry out human trafficking. Studies show that they may be family members or friends, brothel owners and brokers, community leaders, women in sex-work or people in powerful positions such as police and other government employees. Data collected from victims of trafficking for the UNIFEM study, suggests that 50% of traffickers are women (reported in Sen, A. 2005: A Report on Trafficking of Women and Children, UNIFEM)...

So, even as Trafficking is understood and interpreted as modern-day slavery, and a matter of global concern, with India as one of the worst affected countries, clearly a lot needs to be done before the great commodity exchange trading in human bodies is controlled , let alone wiped out.

Priests 'purify' Orissa temple after Dalit minister's visit

Priests 'purify' temple after foreigner enters premises Times of India, India - 13 hours ago PURI: There was disquiet at the Jagannath temple here on Friday when a 23-year-old Chilean entered the premises where non-Aryavarta Hindus are banned. ... Lord Jagannath Temple's Rituals hit due to entry of foreign tourist Orissadiary.com Foreigner detained Calcutta Telegraph Chilean enters Puri temple, creates flutter Express Buzz Newspost Online - KalingaTimes all 13 news articles »

Orissa: Priests vanish after purification ceremony Times of India, India - 15 Jan 2009 BHUBANESWAR: The controversy over a purification ceremony at the Akhandalamani Shiva temple at Aradi in Bhadrak district following Orissa minister Pramilla ...
Orissa temple purified after low caste minister visit Reuters India, India - 21 hours ago The minister said the purification ritual, at the Akhandalamani temple in Orissa's Bhadrak district, could have been conducted at the behest of her ...
‘No row over Minister’s visit’ Express Buzz, India - 19 hours ago... the visit of Women and Child Development Minister Pramila Mallick, a Dalit, to the Akhandalamani temple at Aradi, 35 km from here, yesterday. ...
Orissa temple 'purified' after Dalit minister's visit Smash Hits, India - 15 Jan 2009 Women and Child Welfare Minister Pramila Mallick entered the sanctum sanctorum of the Akhandalamani temple, a highly revered shrine of Hindu lord Shiva at ...
Priests 'purify' Orissa temple after Dalit minister's visit Times of India, India - 14 Jan 2009 Pramilla Mallick, the women and child development minister, on Wednesday went to the famous Akhandalamani Shiva temple at Aradi in Bhadrak, ...
Mallik visit to temple causes turmoil The Statesman, India - 14 Jan 200914: The entry of the state women and child development minister Mrs Pramila Mallik into the Sanctum Sanctorum (Garva Griha) of the Akhandalamani temple in ...

Caste abuse in temple Calcutta Telegraph, India - 14 Jan 2009 Some sevayats (priests) objected to her entry after she had left the Akhandalamani temple at Aradi, about 150km from here. Rituals at the 150ft temple ...
Dalit woman minister`s temple entry sparks tension Zee News, India - 14 Jan 2009 Bhubaneswar, Jan 14: Chaos broke out over the entry of a Dalit woman minister in the sanctum sanctorum of the famous Akhandalamani temple in Orissa's ...
Woman minister's temple entry sparks tension in Orissa Indopia, India - 14 Jan 2009 Bhubaneswar , Jan 14 Chaos broke out today over the entry of a dalit woman minister in the sanctum sanctoram of the famous Akhandalamani temple in ...
Rel om tempelbezoek 'onaanraakbare' minister De Telegraaf, Netherlands - 18 hours ago De autoriteiten onderzoeken of hindoepriesters na het bezoek een reinigingsritueel hebben uitgevoerd in het Akhandalamani-heiligdom.

Refusing to accept as final the present limitations

AB Purani’s Summary of Book One of Savitri
Posted by RY Deshpande on Mon 29 Dec 2008 05:52 AM IST Permanent Link Cosmos

Man is not in reality what he appears to be,—a mere material phenomenon,—mentalised animal having a physical body. He has from the dawn of history a feeling of something imperishable within him. And there are hidden powers in man which can be awakened to make the realisation of that Self possible by following a certain path of inner discipline called sādhanā in India...

Man is subject to doubts and difficulties of his own nature which are the products of a process of slow evolution from original Nescience to some spiritual perfection. His movement towards that perfection can begin by his refusing to accept as final the present limitations of his nature. The first effort at realising the spirit releases man from the ego and enlarges him so that he is able to identify himself with the World-Being...

Doom is the present apparent determinism of Nature trying to perpetuate the rule of Ignorance in mankind. It denies and contradicts man's deepest aspirations and opposes any attempt at self-exceeding... Behind the external appearance of ignorance there is the Divine Presence that works in silence. Savitri: the Light of the Supreme Home Mirror of Tomorrow

These guys hate each other, really and truly hate each other, even as they smile at each other

Dec 7, 2008 (title unknown) from For The Turnstiles by DGA
Canada is facing a twofold political crisis. The first part involves unaligned incentives in different regions of the nation (a conflict expressed in cultural and linguistic terms, basically in terms of mutual resentment); the second, a total vacuum of competent leadership in any one national party, and therefore, anywhere in Parliament...

Where is that leader who can legitimately integrate the Left in English and in French Canada? If he or she exists, that leader is apparently not ready, or not readily apparent.

In passing, I have a cultural observation as well: Canadians often seem to be the most resentful, passive-aggressive, put-upon polity I have ever encountered. William Buckley would fight all day while on the clock, but at the end of the day, he would still drink a beer with you. But these guys hate each other, really and truly hate each other, even as they smile at each other. This is pathological. Rather than identifying common interests and working together to meet them, you have wealthy children (that's you, Alberta) whining about having to share with cousins they do not understand or respect, and culturally rich but economically declining adolescents (bonjour, Quebec) resentfully recalling a litany of legitimate slights. Canadians typically seem really proficient at being offended, feeling slighted and marginalized. One begins to suspect that many of them are only happy when they have an excuse to feel uptight and defensive.

Cut the cord, friends. You want a working government, a plan for a future without petroleum? Quit complaining and work together in good faith, for the sake of your children and the example you set to the world.

I know the American system and American leadership is pathological in its own delightful ways, but come on, Canada, you are supposed to be smarter and better prepared on the "good government" front than we are. Meanwhile, we have Obama and you have Halfwit McGoo in a happy blue sweater duking it out with two chumps and a former janitor.

For the psychological health of America, may a real leader arise on Canada's Left and glue the thing together. For the sake of your economy and your society, I hope that leader arises sooner rather than later.

People don't want to acknowledge how much nepotism plays a role in their own lives

In Praise of Nepotism
an interview with author Adam Bellow
Adam Bellow is the author of a remarkable new book, In Praise of Nepotism : A Natural History, which in our opinion is a must-read for anyone in a family business. Or maybe we should just say it is a must-read, family business or not. He's also editor-at-large for Doubleday and former director of the Free Press.

BELLOW: The old nepotism was discredited by the Crash of '29 and the Depression. People began to feel that the American business elite was too nepotistic, they had gotten rich and given out partnerships to sons and sons in law, they allowed family interests to outweigh business rationale. It was the subtext of the Depression, and it had a powerful and lasting effect on our view of nepotism and family management in general.

After WWII, American business went global. There was a boom in the economy, and a new era of corporate management and governance was introduced. Along with that came efficiency, meritocracy, etc. It was the era in which nepotism rules were instituted in big corporations and government. And that was a good thing. It's not my purpose to say that nepotism should be left alone, because what you get then is what you see in Nigeria, India and Brazil.

We still need nepotism. It still has a role. The story in my book is the war we've fought since the American Revolution, not to get rid of the family itself but to limit and curtail the influence of family interests in both the public and private sectors. We did that in the interest of greater efficiency and fairness. However, I argue that in our attempt to get rid of nepotism, we haven't stamped it out but transformed it. What makes it new is that it respects fairness and merit. It's a new nepotism regulated by a deep-seated commitment to those values...

There's nothing wrong with sibling rivalry. It may give people some comfort to see family dynamics as disruptive, and many think that they force the business to be counterproductive. But the opposite is true. History shows that these are powerful forces and they often supply the motivation and drive that gets people to strive for excellence and give that last ounce.

Amazon.com: In Praise of Nepotism: A Natural History: Adam Bellow 7:08 PM

Foucault's genealogical investigations of medicine, madness, prisons, sexuality, etc.

Biopolitics from The Pinocchio Theory by Steven Shaviro

I’m not sure if the term “biopolitics” was invented by Foucault, but of course he did the most to make the concept thinkable. Foucault traces, in his genealogical investigations of medicine, madness, prisons, sexuality, etc., the ways that a regime of sovereignty, still prevalent in Europe in the Renaissance, was gradually displaced, or supplemented, by a regime of discipline, which was less concerned with the prohibition of certain behaviors than with the surveillance, manipulation, and management of all aspects of human life. Among other things, this involves a shift from being concerned with particular acts, and with clearly-defined hierarchies and chains of command, to being concerned with the bodies and souls of the entire populace. Foucault’s well-known account traces the links between attempts to contain disease by imposing quarantines, for instance, and attempts to regiment people in schools, factories, military barracks, and prisons.

Power moves from prohibiting certain actions to actively shaping and manipulating peoples’ actions overall, and from drawing lines of exclusion, lines that it is forbidden to transgress, to finding ways to include everybody and everything within a grid of carefully managed alternatives and possibilities. Foucault also describes this as a shift from the power of death (the power of the sovereign to impose death as a punishment) to a right over life (the power of the state to manage, for the sake of health, growth, productivity, etc., all aspects of peoples’ bodily habits and tendencies). It is through this shift that “life” becomes a coherent concept, and a matter or focus of concern. “Life” gets defined conceptually, by doctors and judges as well as by philosophers, insofar as it emerges pragmatically as a target and focus of power.

As always, Foucault is saying, not that “discourse” is the sole reality, but rather that both discourses and concrete, physical practices, varying historically, constitute so many ways in which we manage and control a “real” that always exceeds them. Contrary to some foolish interpretations, Foucault always remains a materialist, and a realist (in the ontological sense). “Life” refers to a particular way that we have conceived the multiplicity of lives, living beings, and life processes that surround and include us — but these always exist beyond our conceptualizations and manipulations of them.

So far so good. Esposito is an excellent close reader. He helpfully focuses on the ambiguity, in Foucault’s work: between claiming, on the one hand, that the regime of discipline and the management of life has replaced the earlier regime of sovereignty; and on the other hand, that such a disciplinary form of power is overlaid upon a sovereign power that continues to exist. Foucault proposes, precisely, that different modern regimes have been characterized by different mixtures between sovereign command over, and disciplinary positive investment of, the lives of individuals and populations. Esposito then moves backwards from Foucault to Nietzsche, in whom, he argues, “life” really emerges in its modern sense as an object and focus of both power and inquiry for the first time. 11:29 AM 12:04 PM

Ethos, pathos, and logos correspond to the capitalist triptych of the advertiser, the consumer, and the accountant

Dec 14, 2008 At Least It’s An Ethos: Why Merging Rhetoric With Composition Is A Mistake
from The Kugelmass Episodes by Joseph Kugelmass (x-posted to The Valve)
Teaching Them What They Already Know: Composition and Literature

Anyone who is not mentally ill has, within certain familiar realms, a very sophisticated, intuitive understanding of rhetorical strategy. Teenagers understand very well how to shift from one vocabulary to another, depending on audience, and sound completely different in their essays than they do in casual conversation or on IM programs. They have different ways of speaking to parents and friends, and they work hard on crafting online and offline persona that others will find appealing. This is not because they’re teenagers; actually, everybody does these things. One of the gratifying things about teaching rhetoric is that, up to a point, students “get it” right away, and manage to rapidly produce useful observations. This is especially true when they are dealing with something comfortable, like a scene from a movie.

On a deeper level, though, students “get” rhetoric (and we find it easy to teach) because it follows a similar intersubjective logic as capital. Rhetoric goes hand-in-hand with advertising, the dominant language of contemporary desire. Students find themselves growing up in a world where demographics — audiences — are created out of thin air by advertising in its various forms, and where mass production aligns itself to the desires of a consumer audience. Furthermore, rhetorical analysis is dissociative: anyone who has tried to teach ethos, pathos, and logos as operations to be performed on a text knows how students arbitrarily divide the text up into “emotional” sections and “argumentative” sections, even though such divisions are rarely defensible.

This is not the students’ fault, as we send them gunning for whatever holism a text possesses. The lysis of the text feels oddly familiar, though, because contemporary culture is similarly dissociative. Logic is the calculated process of competition and oppression, emotion is the catharsis of sentimentality, and personality is likeability; to put the matter crudely, ethos, pathos, and logos correspond to the capitalist triptych of the advertiser (the “front man”), the consumer, and the accountant.

The weak, in their slave morality, resent the power of their masters, as well as their inability to retaliate

Part III: Alyosha and Zarathustra on Com-passion and a Genuine Embodied Life
from Per Caritatem by Cynthia R. Nielsen

Zarathustra holds compassion in low-esteem and views exhibitions of pity with great suspicion. According to Zarathustra, pitying another person causes resentment in the recipient and is simply a way for the person showing pity to think himself better than others. In the sections entitled, “On the Rabble” and “On Tarantulas,”[1] Zarathustra re-visits this idea of resentment (or ressentiment) with both recalling categories and themes discussed in Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals. For example, in the Genealogy, we are introduced to master and slave morality.

The weak, in their slave morality, resent the power of their masters, as well as their inability to retaliate against their masters. Because the weak see no justice in this life, they invent an other-worldly realm where God metes out ultimate justice. Slave morality is credited with having invented the concepts of evil and good-concepts which are defined in reference to the masters (those in power). The great flaw of slave morality is the way in which the weak define themselves in terms their masters rather than carving out their own definition of themselves.

According to Nietzsche, values are constantly in flux; consequently, notions of good and evil are always changing and cannot be fixed. Whatever the current conceptions of good and evil happen to be, these will remain the dominant way of thinking until a different group comes into power and re-creates new conceptions. Interestingly, in this genealogical account of morals, Nietzsche concedes that the slave morality ultimately involves a cleverness about it, because it was able to trans-value the then-dominant values of its day.

For instance, the slaves turned the qualities associated with the masters-powerful, wealthy, strong, cruel-into a description of evil characteristics. Likewise, they transformed their own characteristics-weak, poor, lacking in power, compassionate-into a description of good qualities. Even though he grants this cleverness to slave morality, ultimately both Zarathustra and Nietzsche despise the ressentiment that drives it, as ressentiment in seemingly deterministic fashion produces nay-sayers who have their eyes fixed on some other-worldly world, and consequently, degrade and devalue the body and this world.

Lastly, in his discussion of the “ugliest man,” who, according to Zarathustra, murdered God because he couldn’t bear God’s constant, ever-present, penetrating gaze, we are told that the one sentiment that the ugliest man could not endure is to be shown pity.[2]

What is the role of the category “woman” in this interplay between politics and history?

CFP: 16th Annual DePaul University Philosophy Graduate Student Conference
from Continental Philosophy by Farhang Erfani
FEMINISM AND THE POLITICS OF HISTORY April 3-4, 2009 Keynote Speaker: Falguni Sheth, Hampshire College

One of the central problematics of feminist philosophy is the narration of history. This conference will focus specifically on feminist interventions within this narration, emphasizing the role of the political therein. Whether focusing on the historical exclusion of “women” within philosophy or the influence of gender on philosophical concepts, feminist philosophy has questioned what counts as history and how specific histories are deployed in philosophical inquiries. Both within and separately from this work, questions have also been raised about how class, race, ability, sexuality, and other axes of difference shape the histories and counter-histories deployed within philosophy. This conference seeks to build upon and extend this work by posing various questions.

• What are the politics produced by alternative historical archives?
• Where do these politics play out in philosophical thought and how might they factor into analyses of past and present political situations?
• What are the histories still unexplored by philosophy and how might turning to these histories offer different points of departure or complication?
• Who has been recognized by or allowed into these interventions, who continues to be excluded, and why?
• What is the role of the category “woman” in this interplay between politics and history?
• How is this category deployed to cause disruptions?
• What conversations might be staged between feminist philosophy and other critical perspectives on the politics of history?
• How have feminist critiques of the history of philosophy both revealed and participated in the exclusionary and hegemonic gestures they ostensibly sought to resist?

The aim of this conference is to facilitate a dynamic, interdisciplinary conversation examining feminist approaches to these and related questions. To accomplish this, we invite contributions from a number of theoretical frameworks, including but not limited to aesthetics, critical race theory, critical theory, cultural studies, disability studies, epistemologies of ignorance, post-colonial studies, psychoanalysis, and queer theory. Submission Deadline: January 15, 2009

Today we are moving from masculine based structures of the social to feminine based structures

Sexuation 1– The Logic of the Signifier
from Larval Subjects. To be-the-phallus (the feminine position) was to be the object of the Other’s desire, while to have-the-phallus is to possess signifiers of mastery with respect to identity (money, power, knowledge, strength, intelligence, wisdom, prestige, etc)... Thus, in the example of Monica Lewinsky, Clinton had the phallus in the sense of political power, but in her intimate dealings with him she discovered that he was a castrated subject, requesting, as my friend Tim jokingly put it, the ultimate rejoinder to Freud’s claim that “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”. Despite having complete power, Clinton still had a desire for something else and was still haunted by a structural incompleteness. What Lewinsky discovered is that Clinton, while having the phallus, also did not possess it...

Two Political Observations
On the basis of the foregoing, it can be argued that masculine and feminine sexuation also correspond to two different types of social and political organization. On the masculine side we get centralized and hierarchical forms of social organization often associated with nationalism, totalitarianisms, authoritarian leaders, etc. In my next post I will outline the jouissance that corresponds to these structures. Corresponding to the feminine side of the graphs of sexuation, we get networked, non-linear, decentralized forms of socialization. It can indeed be said that today we are moving from masculine based structures of the social to feminine based structures. However, it should not be presumed that these structures do not possess their own deadlocks and antagonisms. Indeed, it could be said that network based social relations are far more resistant to critique and engagement than are masculine based structures.

There can be no global theory of intellectual change without paying attention to the dynamic between men and women

Book Review: Randall Collins' The Sociology of Philosophies,
By Hava Tirosh-Samuelson Metanexus Chronos. 2004.04.15.

What about women?
Obviously when one covers 2500 years of intellectual activity, seven major religious traditions, scores of intellectual networks, and hundreds of individuals, one must leave a lot out and cannot possibly do justice to the material under consideration. There is one particular omission, however, which concerns me most, not as a Jew but as a Jewish woman. Only five female philosophers are mentioned in the book - Ann Conway, Catherine Cockburn, George Elliot, Madame de Stael, and Julia Kristeva.

Collins, I must admit, anticipates this challenge from his readers and in the introduction he raises the questions "where were the women?" In the Introduction he mentions four women, whose names appear again later in the book. Yet, in truth, this book is but another illustration that the story of philosophy is "His-story" rather than "Her-story." This is not a cheap shot on my part simply to waive the feminist "party card" and rebuke Collins for not consulting the massive material that has been collected about the work of female philosophers from ancient Greece to the present. Rather, my point is that Collins's exclusion of the women from the sociological analysis distorts his reconstruction of intellectual networks.

How can one discuss Sartre while omitting Simon de Bauvoir, or Nietzsche without a reference to Lou Andreas-Salome, or Jacques Lacan without a reference to Luce Irigaray? These women are not only crucial to the analysis of the ideas of their male counterparts, they are essential to the critique of their ideas as well as the reception of those ideas. There can be no global theory of intellectual change without paying attention to the dynamic between men and women, and without recognizing that at least half of social reality in which all philosophic activity is embedded includes women.

Same-sex marriage is okay

Gay Marriage (by Don Boudreaux) from Cafe Hayek by Don Boudreaux
Here's a letter of mine that appears in today's Washington Times:

Thomas Sowell's case against affirmative action is sound; his case against same-sex marriage is not ("Affirmative action and gay marriage are frauds," Commentary, Sunday).

It's true that marriage laws emerged largely to deal with fact that heterosexual couples have children. But this fact does not imply - contrary to Mr. Sowell's careless claim - that "the government has a vested interest in unions that, among other things, have the potential to produce children, which is to say, the future population of the nation." Certainly in a free country, the state has no business governing in any way or for any purpose people's decisions on having children.

Additionally, the "married couple" has become a legal entity with unique status under tax, property, insurance and estate laws. Being married also carries with it important, largely positive, social implications. The fact that gay couples cannot (by conventional means) have children is no reason to deny these couples such status.

DONALD J. BOUDREAUX Chairman Department of Economics George Mason University Fairfax

‘Those’ days

SACRED FEMININE: The Divine Flow TOI, 6 Oct 2008, Narayani Ganesh

Three days in a month my mother would hang around looking cool in her bedroom. She would read magazines and novels in a supine position, her head resting on a block of wood fashioned like a pillow. She would sometimes practise drawing kolams — patterns that are made with rice flour at the entrance — in an unruled notebook, and would ask me which ones I liked.

Amma looked so relaxed, unhurried and undisturbed. She wouldn’t take part in household activities nor go out shopping or attending functions. On ‘those’ days, Amma wouldn’t wear the usual crimson, tear-shaped kumkum on her forehead. Instead, she sported a black, round bindi, what we called chaandu pottu, made of dried, burnt rice that was left to coagulate and dry in the cradle of the empty half of a coconut shell.

You made your thumb moist with a little water and gently rubbed it on the stuff and the paste would be transferred to the index finger with which one drew the round mark a little above but between the two eyebrows. When pestered with questions, Amma would say: “I’m on my monthly three-day vacation!”

The family — like many others in the community — has long since discontinued with the seclusion tradition as archaic and regressive. Yet, ancient tradition revered the Sacred Feminine, and regarded the menstrual flow as affirmation of life. At Assam’s Kamakhya Temple — one of the nine Shakti Peeths — the annual Ambubachi Mela celebrates the Sacred Feminine in the Devi’s annual menstrual flow. The spring water from the Yoni — symbolising the power of procreation — and pieces of red cloth are distributed as prasad .

What would my grandmother — if she were alive today — have to say about recent medical research that finds menstrual blood to be rich in stem cells! A US company promoting this concept says that women can collect their menstrual blood, after following instructions carefully to avoid contamination, and send it to the laboratory where it will be put through a purifying process and stored for future use in the treatment of diseases like cancer.

As cord blood banking is a recent phenomenon, culling stem cells from menstrual blood could be easier than mining bone marrow. It would also be free of controversies over the ethics of using embryonic stem cells. Above all, it could help remove superstitions and taboos associated with ‘those’ days.

We should sympathize with them for the nature’s onslaught on them

Towards the Rebirth of India
ShareThis Sep 24 2008 Sulekha.com Aju Mukhopadhyay Aju-Mukhopadhyay.sulekha.com Beta

If caste is an old issue we wish to annul, how could we play with it for our political mileage? Free India is more than 60 years old- most of all who were deprived for the prevalence of cast system have passed their life time. Reservations or suppression of merits cannot continue for ever. Let the opportunities for education and training be opened to all with special care for the deprived and less developed ones but merit must be given due honour for the country’s well being.

Trafficking is a heinous crime. Victims are terrorized by various means. In a civilized society it must be stopped. Why on earth some women should live separately, why their main activity shall be to sell their bodies? Are there not many other functions of human beings and do such persons not have many such qualities to work on besides selling their bodies? Why should they be called sex workers? Large numbers of people have vested interests in them but it must be noted that no such person is noble or great in any sense, none of them is really a friend of the victims.

Sweden has passed a unique law: They treat buying sex and broking for it as criminal activities whereas all the prostitutes are treated as victims. If a civilized society aspires to progress it should give up the system of harlotry, abolish the brothels. Similarly all transsexuals should be honourably rehabilitated in the society as they too can do everything except sexually, in the normal way, which is in no sense a real bar in life. We should sympathize with them for the nature’s onslaught on them.

Nature and Wildlife must not be allowed to be further dwindled if we have to continue to live like human beings. Proper environment must be maintained. Villages must not be made hybrid products while facilities of the modern world should reach there. Agriculture and agriculturists in a country like India must be given their proper share in life and society. Industrialization and proliferation of software should be done in harmony with other sectors of economy.

While it is individual right to belong to any religious group or not, to accept God or not, no one should play with religions for political or such gains with the net of secularism. Proselytizing should be prohibited. Spiritualism is above ritualistic ordinary religions. Once mankind embraces it there would not remain petty quarrels over religions. Sri Aurobindo brought down the highest spiritual consciousness, the Supramental light and force for the upliftment of mankind, supported and helped by the Mother. It is open to man to aspire for it towards higher life leading to Life Divine. Sri Aurobindo wrote on 14.1.1931

‘The Supramental is not inconsistent with a full vital and physical manifestation: on the contrary, it carries in it the only possibility of the full fullness of the vital force and the physical life on earth. . . . All other yogas regard this life as an illusion or a passing phase; the supramental yoga alone regards it as a thing created by the Divine for a progressive manifestation and takes the fulfillment of the life and the body for its object.’ 17

The spiritual regeneration of India will lead to its becoming the leader of the world, gaining a global unity, leading mankind towards a higher life, away from war and strife. The may be fulfilled if the majority realize the need for it and act towards realizing the truth, today or tomorrow.

Sri Aurobindo and the use of religious symbols in the Indian Freedom Movement

The Political Goddess: Aurobindo's Use of Bengali kta Tantrism to Justify Political Violence in the Indian Anti-Colonial Movement
269 – 292 Author: Rachael Fabish

Abstract
The notion of a goddess being used to inspire young men to throw bombs may at first seem far-fetched. But what if that goddess is Kalī? Fierce Kalī—who stalks proudly through the Bengali imagination, dripping blood, scantily clad in tiger-skin and severed human body parts, slaying and devouring countless demons? Early in the twentieth century, Bengali philosopher and activist Aurobindo Ghosh (1872-1950), a key figure in the development of Indian nationalism, glimpsed the potential of Kalī-worship as a potential tool of political mobilisation to promote revolutionary terrorism, and forged a movement around the fearsome Tantric goddess that culminated in a rash of revolutionary terrorist acts against the ruling British colonial regime.

* This essay is a modified version of a paper submitted to the 15th NZASIA International Conference, Auckland University, November 2003: 'Asia: Images, Ideas, Identities'. It is drawn from my unpublished Master's Thesis entitled 'The Political Goddess: Aurobindo and the Use of Religious Symbols in the Indian Freedom Movement'. Please see this thesis for further evidence from Aurobindo's writings and development of the argument I present in this essay.

Let's not lose sight of the larger goal of self-transformation

My two cents as an Aurobindoan: I've written about this topic on my blog, but, I fear, in a way that generally tends to offend all sides involved in this debate.
I understand that as queer people we are very wounded and there is a need for "queer-centric" spirituality sometimes just to bring attention to the sort of collective wounds we have endured (and growing up in an Islamic country, I've suffered many traumas, so I know firsthand how these wounds feel).
However, I take the Foucauldian position that the very creation of sexual and gender categories is used as a tool of oppression. And this is very consistent with the Vedantic philosophy which sees the life-force (of which sexuality is a mundane aspect) as essentially one -- the life-force merely crystallizes into various forms at the divided physical level. In truth, eros is universal, equal to all, and has no preferences.
It is easy to turn our LGBT identities into another ego-mask and sink into a sense of victimhood -- whereby we refuse to recognize our participation in the queerphobia, homophobia and transphobia in society. Yes -- unconsciously we *do* participate in these things and we ourselves internalize these phobias. I often feel that we use the masks of these identities to avoid facing our own shadows. And then there is always the danger of a kind of collective ego developing, which takes you further away from your true soul, your true identity.
However, of course every single group has its relative gifts to offer in this evolutionary journey. Within the integral yoga community, I've been told that the greater visibility being given to LGBT people shows that humanity is growing out of its immature attachment to a binary gender system, and is starting to see love as not being wedded to physical nature or procreation. So LGBT identities *are* playing their role in propelling humanity to a higher evolutionary state.

But in the end, I just feel that these relative identities are very limited. I am not denying that there *are* relative spiritual gifts that are offered by LGBT people, but what I'm saying is that in truth, each person is a *unique* soul -- and the soul transcends and is above all our external identities. The soul is the *highest* individuality. Each soul is potentially a *creator* -- the creator of something completely new and original, something never seen before. As long as we cling to external identities and external group identities -- which I don't deny is often necessary given the extent of the emotional wounds we sometimes sustain -- our soul and its *unique gifts* will remain forever hidden from us.
Even as we stand up for our right to express our LGBT identities, let's not lose sight of the larger goal of self-transformation. Posted by: ned August 04, 2008 at 11:41 AM

PJ, I guess I should qualify everything I write as saying that it's where *I* am personally and it's what I am trying to live right now -- but it may not be right for others.
In the spiritual/yogic view, your true individuality *is* realized in the One. What we typically refer to as our individual ego, from the yogic viewpoint, is hardly "individual" or "unique" at all -- it's weighed down by attachments to the past, neuroses and atavisms inherited from our parents and cultures, and so on.
What I aspire for yogically is to be free of all these attachments to the past and be liberated to create the future -- and to create something truly new and unique. The point I was making was that ego-based identities are always sort of coping mechanisms that we use to avoid letting this true self or soul emerge. That doesn't mean they aren't necessary or helpful -- we certainly do have to put up a facade for the world in order to not disturb it too much. But the real "me" lies somewhere much deeper than my superficial outer ego-personality. And the real "me" is always going to be something of a Mystery, something I can't quite label or put my finger on. Posted by: ned August 05, 2008 at 11:21 AM

Puri peregrination

HC orders bitter couple to take Puri trip Times of India - 24 Jul 2008, KOLKATA: Playing the saviour of marriages yet again, Calcutta High Court on Wednesday directed an estranged couple to take a five-day trip to Puri with their child....

The court then suggested that the couple should spend some time together by themselves — away from their families. After consultation with lawyers from both sides, the judge decided on Puri. Justice Banerjee directed the couple to leave for Puri on Friday with their five-year-old daughter. They are to return to Kolkata on July 30 and appear before the court a day later. The judge felt that the child may act as a bonding factor for the couple. Spending some time with each other may also help them to get rid of certain misconceptions.

Judge orders Puri vacation for estranged couple The Statesman HC asks estranged couple to go for a vacation with son Kolkata Newsline Expressindia.comall 4 news articles »

Gender issues were further sidelined by questions of life and death and the clash of civilizations in an era of terrorism

The Sex Difference Evangelists (and a History of Feminism by Camille Paglia)
from Integral Options Cafe by WH

For another take on the issue of women and feminism, here is the newest from Camille Paglia, writing over at Arion. She is essentiually looking at the history of feminism as a reform movement.
Feminism Past and Present: Ideology, Action, and Reform
CAMILLE PAGLIA Click Here to View .pdf Version (Recommended)

Two technological innovations—cable TV and the World Wide Web—broke the hold that American feminist leaders had had on media discourse about gender for twenty years. Suddenly, there was a riot of alternative points of view. Most unexpectedly, a new crop of outspoken conservative women arrived on the scene in the ’90s—Laura Ingraham, Barbara Olsen, Monica Crowley, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin—who blurred conventional expectations about female self-assertion. These women, who had attended elite colleges and in some cases had worked in the Republican administrations of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, were aggressive, articulate, funny, and startlingly sexier and more glamorous than their dour feminist adversaries. The old Pat Nixon stereotype of conservative women as dowdy, repressed, soft-spoken, and deferential was annihilated. Old Guard feminists, who came across as humorless and dogmatic, were losing the TV wars to a spunky new breed of issues-oriented women. Barbara Olson, who died in the attack on the Pentagon on 9/11, was a co-founder of the Independent Wo­men’s Forum, an association of conservative and libertarian women that was first formed as a response to liberal media bias in reporting during the Anita Hill case, in which Northeastern women journalists were directly and perhaps inappropriately involved.

After 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, gender issues were even further sidelined by questions of life and death and the clash of civilizations in an era of terrorism. There was a resurgence of popular interest in military regalia and history and in traditional masculinity, showing up even in children’s toys. Feminist commentary on this development—which was predictably labeled “reactionary”—has seemed out of touch with the times. Perhaps whenever survival is at stake, we need to unite as human beings rather than as quarreling genders. The legacy of 9/11 has certainly presented a problem for Hillary Clinton in her political aspirations. The necessity at this time for a woman candidate to look strong and to show command of military issues certainly led Hillary to vote for the fateful war resolution authorizing President Bush to use military force in Iraq—a decision that has come back to haunt her and that has made her a constant target of that audacious and ingenious female guerrilla group, Code Pink.

• What precisely is feminism?
• Is it a theory, an ideology, or a praxis (that is, a program for action)?
• Is feminism perhaps so Western in its premises that it cannot be exported to other cultures without distorting them?
• When we find feminism in medieval or Renaissance writers, are we exporting modern ideas backwards?
• Who is or is not a feminist, and who defines it?
• Who confers legitimacy or authenticity?
• Must a feminist be a member of a group or conform to a dominant ideology or its subsets?
• Who declares, and on what authority, what is or is not permissible to think or say about gender issues?
• And is feminism intrinsically a movement of the left, or can there be a feminism based on conservative or religious principles?

While there are scattered texts, in both prose and poetry, which protest women’s lack of rights and social status, from Christine de Pisan to Anne Bradstreet and Mary Wollstonecraft, feminism as an organized movement began in the mid-nineteenth century, inspired by the movement to abolish slavery—just as the resurgence of feminism in the 1960s was stimulated by the civil rights movement, which targeted segregation and the disenfranchisement of African-Americans in the Jim Crow South. Feminism was therefore keyed to the expansion of liberty to an oppressed group. And feminism was always linked to democracy: it is no coincidence that feminism was born in America and that that became the early model for British feminism.

In general, feminist theory has failed to acknowledge how much it owes to the Western tradition of civil liberties grounded in ancient Greece, not simply in the flawed democracy of classical Athens, with its slave economy and its severe circumscription of women’s lives, but much earlier in the first appearance of the individual voice in Archaic poetry, one of whose finest practitioners was the world’s first major woman writer, Sappho of Lesbos.

Second, feminist theory has failed to acknowledge how much the emergence of modern feminism owes to capitalism and the industrial revolution, which transformed the economy, expanded the professions, and gave women for the first time in history the opportunity to earn their own livings and to escape dependency on father or husband. Capitalism’s emancipation of women is nowhere clearer than in those magical laborsaving appliances such as automatic washers and dryers that most middle-class Westerners now take for granted.

Third, feminist history has insufficiently acknowledged the degree to which the founders of the woman suffrage movement—that is, the drive to win votes for women—were formed or influenced by religion. It is no coincidence that so many early American feminists were Quakers: Susan B. Anthony, for example, was the daughter of a Quaker farmer, and Lucretia Mott was a Quaker minister. It was in Quaker meetings, where men and women were treated as equals, that women first learned the art of public speaking. The quest for suffrage, motivated by religious idealism and paradigms, cannot therefore automatically be defined as a movement of the left. Indeed, the social conservatism of most of the suffrage leaders was shown in their attraction to the Temperance movement, whose goal of banning alcohol in the US finally led to the fourteen socially disruptive years of Prohibition after World War One. In the nineteenth century, alcohol was seen as a woman’s problem: that is, working-class men were alleged to waste the meager family income on alcohol, which led in turn to the neglect or physical abuse of wives and children. Temperance, flaring into public view in the 1870s, was called the “Women’s Crusade” or “Women’s Holy War.” Temperance women gathered in groups outside saloons, where they prayed, sang hymns, obstructed entry, and generally made nuisances of themselves. Many saloons had to move or close. It was one of the first examples in history of women mobilizing for social action.

However, the impulse to regulate private behavior that can be seen here was a persistent element in feminism that would resurface in the virulent anti-pornography crusade of the 1970s and ’80s. The nineteenth-century suffrage leaders reacted punitively to Victoria Woodhull, who espoused free love—an issue that Susan B. Anthony and others felt would tar the entire movement and doom it politically. They were motivated by a contrary goal to rescue women from “vice,” that is, the clutches of prostitution. Sexuality outside of traditional marriage was seen as a danger that had to be curtailed by moral norms. The preeminence of ideology over the personal can also be seen in Anthony’s nun-like devotion to the cause and in her prickly resentment of the way her colleagues were pulled in another direction by the needs of family and children. By the end of her life, Anthony was revered and universally honored, but her obsessive focus on a single issue was perhaps not a model for the balanced life.

Read the whole article. Tags: Sex Differences, History of Feminism, Camille Paglia, Amanda Schaffer, Emily Bazelon, Susan Pinker, Louann Brizendine, The Female Brain, The Sexual Paradox, Psychology, gender studies, brain, culture, Slate, Arion