Aug 16, 2022Liked by Titus Techera, Carl Eric Scott
Carl's discerning eye appraises another precious jewel. Perhaps it could be read in tandem with the Declaration of Independence and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, in a lineage of new births of freedom.
May 26, 2023Liked by Titus Techera, Carl Eric Scott
Catching up on my PoMo Con account... Well, one cheer for Bar Weiss. I’ll have to look at the rest of the speech. But, sorry, wasn’t this the same Bari Weiss who busied herself with canceling Trump supporters during her tenure at the NY Times? Seems she, and this type of “classical liberal,” only became alarmed by cancel culture upon noticing how the wokerati turned on her own narrow ethnic interests (Judaism/Zionism), and on her feminist cause. Her notion of liberty is suspect and would end up recapitulating the very nightmare we’re now in, as she fails to see how the problem of identity is intrinsic to feminism ab initio. There is no cordon sanitaire between feminism (of whatever “waves”) and wokeism/transgenderism. This comes out well in Weiss’s severely blinkered essay “How Feminism Got Hijacked” (actually written by Zoe Strimpel, but published at Weiss’s Substack and, suffice to say, ratifies Weiss’s own thinking to a T given other things of hers I’ve read).
Gosh, here we learn that impugning motherhood as an ideal for girls, implementing no fault divorce, promoting promiscuity to young women, and competing economically with men had nothing to do with teaching girls to behave...like men!
Now, the article does make some sound criticisms. This, because it wants biology or nature at its most elemental. But once things “close to the body” (greater economic/material parity between the sexes) are satisfied, it seems to me you have not a “highjacking” by gender theorists, but rather a transition or segue to eventual transhumanism and tranny politics. If I’m not mistaken, I’ll have to consult Strauss again on this, but I seem to recall Strauss makes this same intimation in his seminar on Plato’s Symposium and in his seminar on Marx...
My friend Scot Zentner once crystallized the point re identity/feminism culminating in a “flying blind” self-constructionism very well years ago in a paper arguing against same-sexual marriage, a paper, low and behold, that focuses on the differences in soul between men and women:
“This implicit desire for liberation [from the constraints of nature] is not new; it is a part of human nature itself. Many religions throughout history, for example, have included hopes for the transformation of the world, the creation of wholly new kinds of human beings. Social constructivist theorists, feminists included, often express similar hopes. But unlike religion, the origin of their visions is all-too-human; it rests upon modern man's hubristic attempt to master and transform human nature. “The feminists were so assertive, Harvey Mansfield explains, "as to conceive, announce, and establish a new definition of woman and, somewhat incidentally, of man. The new definitions were in a sense non-definitions - - no more than possible identities - - so as to help create the new gender-neutral society." But such non-definitions leave us without guidance, without freedom in any meaningful sense, for they deny what is essential to woman and man.”
Carl's discerning eye appraises another precious jewel. Perhaps it could be read in tandem with the Declaration of Independence and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, in a lineage of new births of freedom.
Catching up on my PoMo Con account... Well, one cheer for Bar Weiss. I’ll have to look at the rest of the speech. But, sorry, wasn’t this the same Bari Weiss who busied herself with canceling Trump supporters during her tenure at the NY Times? Seems she, and this type of “classical liberal,” only became alarmed by cancel culture upon noticing how the wokerati turned on her own narrow ethnic interests (Judaism/Zionism), and on her feminist cause. Her notion of liberty is suspect and would end up recapitulating the very nightmare we’re now in, as she fails to see how the problem of identity is intrinsic to feminism ab initio. There is no cordon sanitaire between feminism (of whatever “waves”) and wokeism/transgenderism. This comes out well in Weiss’s severely blinkered essay “How Feminism Got Hijacked” (actually written by Zoe Strimpel, but published at Weiss’s Substack and, suffice to say, ratifies Weiss’s own thinking to a T given other things of hers I’ve read).
Gosh, here we learn that impugning motherhood as an ideal for girls, implementing no fault divorce, promoting promiscuity to young women, and competing economically with men had nothing to do with teaching girls to behave...like men!
Now, the article does make some sound criticisms. This, because it wants biology or nature at its most elemental. But once things “close to the body” (greater economic/material parity between the sexes) are satisfied, it seems to me you have not a “highjacking” by gender theorists, but rather a transition or segue to eventual transhumanism and tranny politics. If I’m not mistaken, I’ll have to consult Strauss again on this, but I seem to recall Strauss makes this same intimation in his seminar on Plato’s Symposium and in his seminar on Marx...
My friend Scot Zentner once crystallized the point re identity/feminism culminating in a “flying blind” self-constructionism very well years ago in a paper arguing against same-sexual marriage, a paper, low and behold, that focuses on the differences in soul between men and women:
“This implicit desire for liberation [from the constraints of nature] is not new; it is a part of human nature itself. Many religions throughout history, for example, have included hopes for the transformation of the world, the creation of wholly new kinds of human beings. Social constructivist theorists, feminists included, often express similar hopes. But unlike religion, the origin of their visions is all-too-human; it rests upon modern man's hubristic attempt to master and transform human nature. “The feminists were so assertive, Harvey Mansfield explains, "as to conceive, announce, and establish a new definition of woman and, somewhat incidentally, of man. The new definitions were in a sense non-definitions - - no more than possible identities - - so as to help create the new gender-neutral society." But such non-definitions leave us without guidance, without freedom in any meaningful sense, for they deny what is essential to woman and man.”