(no subject)
Watched Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. The more I watch this movie, the less I like it. It just seems so disjointed thematically and narrative-wise... But then again, I have a feeling that I'm probably better served not rewatching the old Indiana Jones movies, as I might not like what I see there either.
I am so excited to be reading de Beauvoir's Le Deuxième Sexe with S.! I really feel like I've neglected de Beauvoir and given much more value to Sartre, a person whom I feel more and more is just outshined stylistically and intellectually by de Beauvoir the more I read about both of them. I mean, I have a lot I want to write down and discuss, and I've only read the book's 30-page introduction. That's intense. I do not look forward to having to review my Existentialist notes to get the context of what she's trying to say in terms of facticity vs transcendence and all that jazz.
So, I think what de Beauvoir is saying in the beginning is that feminity is defined by a couple of things:
She talks about how the Enlightenment shirks the issue by saying, "Hey, we're all human anyways! Who needs to dwell on gender?" and that this is sort of dishonest because it ignores the facts on the ground. I feel that that's a bit unfair of her, because she seems to be saying that the big issue in Feminism isn't raw rights (though that's a chunk of it) but the framing device used to understand women; if that's the case, then appealing to an underlying humanity is a great way of going about that. She speaks of this a bit when she talks about the hypocrisy of these men who espouse equal rights, only to be complete dicks once these "rights" stop being abstract things and start affecting their own lives. But this seems unfair of her to me. It's saying, "Hey, these guys are dicks because they say they see us as equal human beings but don't treat us that way... but even if they did, they still wouldn't get it!!"
I think she does an amazing job of dissecting privilege. Privilege isn't about bonus points for males (or, not mostly.) It's about allowing males and men to define all context: if men do it, it is normal AND normative! That's fucked up! It's the right of redefining society and retroactively changing the reasoning for decisions and values without really being called out on it. This might explain in part why I don't know if S really feels the way I do about adulthood: I see it as a clear opportunity to help define what is normal. If I want to work, then watch cartoons, read Kant in the evening and discuss mortgages with friends sitting in park swings, that's my right. Or, to retake a classic example from Randall Munroe, if I want to install a big ball pit in my house, I can do that too. We get to define what being an adult means. But maybe that's a male-skewed perception of these things. It is said with the ease of one who has never had his Right to define his own worldview challenged. It speaks not necessarily of arrogance, but of self-confidence that almost borders on the metaphysical....
I am so excited to be reading de Beauvoir's Le Deuxième Sexe with S.! I really feel like I've neglected de Beauvoir and given much more value to Sartre, a person whom I feel more and more is just outshined stylistically and intellectually by de Beauvoir the more I read about both of them. I mean, I have a lot I want to write down and discuss, and I've only read the book's 30-page introduction. That's intense. I do not look forward to having to review my Existentialist notes to get the context of what she's trying to say in terms of facticity vs transcendence and all that jazz.
So, I think what de Beauvoir is saying in the beginning is that feminity is defined by a couple of things:
- It is an element of the struggle between genders
- One of the genders (masculinity) has already "won"
- This "victory" was not event-contingent: it has just always been
She talks about how the Enlightenment shirks the issue by saying, "Hey, we're all human anyways! Who needs to dwell on gender?" and that this is sort of dishonest because it ignores the facts on the ground. I feel that that's a bit unfair of her, because she seems to be saying that the big issue in Feminism isn't raw rights (though that's a chunk of it) but the framing device used to understand women; if that's the case, then appealing to an underlying humanity is a great way of going about that. She speaks of this a bit when she talks about the hypocrisy of these men who espouse equal rights, only to be complete dicks once these "rights" stop being abstract things and start affecting their own lives. But this seems unfair of her to me. It's saying, "Hey, these guys are dicks because they say they see us as equal human beings but don't treat us that way... but even if they did, they still wouldn't get it!!"
I think she does an amazing job of dissecting privilege. Privilege isn't about bonus points for males (or, not mostly.) It's about allowing males and men to define all context: if men do it, it is normal AND normative! That's fucked up! It's the right of redefining society and retroactively changing the reasoning for decisions and values without really being called out on it. This might explain in part why I don't know if S really feels the way I do about adulthood: I see it as a clear opportunity to help define what is normal. If I want to work, then watch cartoons, read Kant in the evening and discuss mortgages with friends sitting in park swings, that's my right. Or, to retake a classic example from Randall Munroe, if I want to install a big ball pit in my house, I can do that too. We get to define what being an adult means. But maybe that's a male-skewed perception of these things. It is said with the ease of one who has never had his Right to define his own worldview challenged. It speaks not necessarily of arrogance, but of self-confidence that almost borders on the metaphysical....