Similarities
I decided to make my own contribution to this project its own post. And I'm going to come at it a little slant here. Hopefully it'll be useful to people.
There's something familiar about "examine." I don't think it's entirely a radical feminist idea.
I keep thinking back to my younger days as a very strident and loud atheist. There was a woman whose website I really liked, full of irreverent essays about the uselessness of prayer, the nature of superstition, etc. (Much of it I no longer agree with now, so please don't take me to be asserting that these things are cool to me now. They were to me then.) I really liked her site, and enjoyed perusing it all.
Then I came across an article she'd posted about violent video games. I don't recall if she'd made some argument that violent games ultimately somehow traced back to The Demon Religion, or if she was just angry about something random. But she wrote this long thing about youth today and how they were being trained to think violence is OK. If I remember right, there was even a lovely, juicy line about how she didn't trust someone who played too much Quake because he might kill people. Or something.
The big thing I remember, though, was an unsourced and (as I remember) hardly argued-for assertion that violent video games were "hypnotic," like driving on long stretches of highway mesmerized by the yellow line in the middle of the road. That one got me. While I could understand why she might ask "does doing this too often teach you that guns are good?" I found the whole idea that one is numbed and making repetitive motions, rather than hyped up on testosterone, music, and excitement really... odd. It suggested to me that she wasn't being particularly careful about making her arguments at all.
As someone who grew up with Wolfenstein (actually, my dad first bought it when I was a kid, and had to convince me the blood was OK!), I was really disappointed to see the thoughtless acceptance of a very simplistic connection between playing and being violent. Especially from (oh how arrogant I was) a fellow "freethinker" and devotee of "rationality." I wrote to her, telling her I disagreed and, as I recall, challenging the "numbing" comment.
We emailed back and forth a bit; she clearly wasn't budging. At one point, clearly exasperated with my inability to recognize I was just too enamored of my pixelated blood and nailgun to see sense, she said:
"How old are you? I sense you are very young."
It enraged me, but that's not the point, so much as what's encoded in talking that way. You've said I'm wrong, and you fall on the side of defending a pleasure I've concluded is suspicious. Therefore, you simply must be incapable of reasoning like a real adult.
It is true that I was young; eighteen (possibly seventeen) or so to her forty-something. And yes, I do think age affects opinions and can affect certain types of reasoning ability. But it's telling that instead of listening to someone from the age group such entertainments are marketed toward and answering with compassionate disagreement, she wrote me off as lacking in maturity.
I see the same thing in the "Examine your desires" meme, at least as perpetuated by many. There's this sense that one couldn't possibly be disagreeing for valid reasons, that one must simply be
There's something familiar about "examine." I don't think it's entirely a radical feminist idea.
I keep thinking back to my younger days as a very strident and loud atheist. There was a woman whose website I really liked, full of irreverent essays about the uselessness of prayer, the nature of superstition, etc. (Much of it I no longer agree with now, so please don't take me to be asserting that these things are cool to me now. They were to me then.) I really liked her site, and enjoyed perusing it all.
Then I came across an article she'd posted about violent video games. I don't recall if she'd made some argument that violent games ultimately somehow traced back to The Demon Religion, or if she was just angry about something random. But she wrote this long thing about youth today and how they were being trained to think violence is OK. If I remember right, there was even a lovely, juicy line about how she didn't trust someone who played too much Quake because he might kill people. Or something.
The big thing I remember, though, was an unsourced and (as I remember) hardly argued-for assertion that violent video games were "hypnotic," like driving on long stretches of highway mesmerized by the yellow line in the middle of the road. That one got me. While I could understand why she might ask "does doing this too often teach you that guns are good?" I found the whole idea that one is numbed and making repetitive motions, rather than hyped up on testosterone, music, and excitement really... odd. It suggested to me that she wasn't being particularly careful about making her arguments at all.
As someone who grew up with Wolfenstein (actually, my dad first bought it when I was a kid, and had to convince me the blood was OK!), I was really disappointed to see the thoughtless acceptance of a very simplistic connection between playing and being violent. Especially from (oh how arrogant I was) a fellow "freethinker" and devotee of "rationality." I wrote to her, telling her I disagreed and, as I recall, challenging the "numbing" comment.
We emailed back and forth a bit; she clearly wasn't budging. At one point, clearly exasperated with my inability to recognize I was just too enamored of my pixelated blood and nailgun to see sense, she said:
"How old are you? I sense you are very young."
It enraged me, but that's not the point, so much as what's encoded in talking that way. You've said I'm wrong, and you fall on the side of defending a pleasure I've concluded is suspicious. Therefore, you simply must be incapable of reasoning like a real adult.
It is true that I was young; eighteen (possibly seventeen) or so to her forty-something. And yes, I do think age affects opinions and can affect certain types of reasoning ability. But it's telling that instead of listening to someone from the age group such entertainments are marketed toward and answering with compassionate disagreement, she wrote me off as lacking in maturity.
I see the same thing in the "Examine your desires" meme, at least as perpetuated by many. There's this sense that one couldn't possibly be disagreeing for valid reasons, that one must simply be
- Blinded by pleasure/desire/indulgence
- Immature
- Identifying overmuch with a gratification-based culture
- etc.