Comments | paulhope: ¡Ululación! ¡Todos es flexión del género!

paulhope

¡Ululación! ¡Todos es flexión del género!

Jan 06, 2005 12:53

The narrator of Unbearable Lightness recommends that we notice and cherish the coincidences of life. For Tereza, that means seeing significance in the coincidence of Beethoven, a book, and Tomas. Being in tune with these coincidences lets us live our lives with a sort of novelistic beauty.

I am in two minds about this. I don't want to go into them ( Read more... )

power dynamics, meaning, the unbearable lightness of being, romanticism, the blank slate, poetry, nativism, feminism, coincidence, social constructivism, gender

Comments 4

theshowmustgo0n January 12 2005, 02:01:42 UTC

Interesting. I must say I do respect the nativist attitudes towards gender identity, but I have to say, as always, that I air more on the side of culture. I believe we are more pliable and less predetermined by biology than can be argued ( ... )

AHHHH!! SOUND THE ALARMS!!! RAISE THE WARNING LIGHTS!!! paulhope January 13 2005, 18:22:52 UTC

Oh man, do I have beef with your response.

First, on what grounds do you believe that "we are more pliable and less predetermined by biology than can be argued"? Like, I would drop nativism in a heartbeat if I thought the scientific evidence turned against it, but for now I'm trusting Pinker that the weight of good research supports it. If you wanted I could look through the chapter and point you towards the studies he cites.

It sounds like your or maybe just Friedan's argument against gender nativism is that it makes her political agenda more complicated. But I just can't buy that a political opinion should be so important that it requires everybody to remain ignorant about something. Doesn't that scare you in the slightest?

The solution has to be more knowledge, not less. I mean, if it were true that a woman president would be at war for a week out of every month, we sure as hell wouldn't want a woman president. But since the premise of that is patently false, given examples of female prime ministers and presidents around ( ... )

Re: AHHHH!! SOUND THE ALARMS!!! RAISE THE WARNING LIGHTS!!! theshowmustgo0n January 14 2005, 01:02:06 UTC

You're right that perhaps I should probably read what Pinker has to say before refuting any of it. I'm sorry you have beef, Seb. All I'm saying though is(and here I will sinply cut and paste)"that I air more on the side of culture." The Nature/Nurture argument can be very hairy when it comes to gender and sex identification. And I'm NOT BY ANY MEANS saying we should not explore the matter of innate gender differences more. Ignorance does scare me, and it's not worth ignoring scientific findings to push a political agenda, but neither is it worth overstating the role of biology, because it can be dangerous. There have been many instances where certain traits were thought to be biologically determined (by sex, race, etc), innate, or universal, but were later found to have been a result of cultural influence (and vise versa!), so it's highly possible that what we take to be innate differences are caused by the social environment. And don't forget that scientific findings tend to reflect cultural attitudes as well (how curious!) - ( ... )

Re: AHHHH!! SOUND THE ALARMS!!! RAISE THE WARNING LIGHTS!!! paulhope January 14 2005, 01:38:19 UTC

Fair enough, nice person, you're right about being cautious on this stuff. I ungnash my teeth.