Friday, August 1, 2008

BLOGGING: Informed Idealogue

First of many blogs from the old blog in preparation for the one year anniversary of queercincinnati.com ... This one was from the day that I decided to start this account, except it precedes this blog by five months (March 21, 2007)...

-------

I've decided...

...to become an informed idealogue, but I'm trying to decide what to talk about.

So I'll do this a little more publically (be warned... I may be opening a blogspot account).

This is my first topic and I'm just going to process through a few things, and I want to welcome your opinion. Now, this is predominately coming from one source -- "SavetheMales," www.savethemales.ca -- so it's uniform and one sided, but let's work with what we got, yes?

----------------------------

Let's start with the articles that interest me.

The Effect of Sexual Deprivation of Women

Dr. Henry Makow's entire thesis in this paper can be summed up by a few sentences near the end:

All successful organizations are hierarchical. The heterosexual family is male dominated. If you wanted to destroy it, you promote equality. Our culture is doing this.

Hrm. I have some fundamental concerns with his point. First of all, this is the structure of his logic:

1) successful organization (MUST EQUAL) hierarchy

2) "the nuclear family" (IS) an organization

3) (THEREFORE, FOR) "the nuclear family" (TO BE) successful (IT MUST BE) hierarchical

4) hierarchy (MUST EQUAL) male domination (this is implied, hold on, I'll get to it)

5) lack of male domination/equality of the sexes (MUST EQUAL) destruction

Ultimately, Dr. Makow's concern is aobut the fall of women's self esteem, whom he says have become disillusioned with their "way" in life -- ie, expectations of career, not family. He points out that despite the fact that only 14% of women in high paid positions do NOT want children, 47% of them don't. This is making an interesting logical jump again:

6) happiness for women (MUST INCLUDE) children and family

Which I would question, at its base -- and I am ignoring the fact that the movie The Business of Strangersand the Chaucer's Wife of Bath are used to prove this point, as I don't think fiction is necessarily good for documentation. Because it, along other statements, implies the opposite:

7) happiness for men (MUST INCLUDE) a good job to support a family

IE, women get their self-esteem from social and familial bonds whereas men get their self-esteem from achievement. (He does make a good point, this idea of hypergamy, where "[women] seek men of higher power and status. Nurses marry doctors." It's interestingly classist, but let's move on.) But both of these points -- one logical and one sociological -- are assuming that men can't display these qualities that he's so keen on women having. In other words, men can develop self-esteem and a positive life concept from family and social bonds; women can develop self-esteem from achievement. We just tend to label one as "masculine" and one as "feminine."

Now, back to point 4 (hierarchy (MUST EQUAL) male domination). I think this is the gap in his thinking. I think, esp. with the experiences of the modern corporate world, that hierarchy can be successful without male domination. Hierarchy has been proven to be successful with female domination (Hewlett Packard, anyone? -- despite that she's disgraced now due to backroom scandals... that is the side effect of a lot of power, but that's a power argument, though that may not be separate).

Even more pressing, however, is the very machismo he puts out by saying that a successful organization would require hierarchy, at all. However, I lack the appropriate evidence to contradict that statement (that was me idealoguing for a moment... you know talking about what I feel like without any evidence to back it up).

Regardless of all this, he contends that the nuclear family as we know itis being destroyed by equality in marriage (I would argue that there's always been equality, btw, in terms of work... in fact, it was the lightening of household work by modern conveniences that freed women to ask for more things to do... those women, always wanting to do something... oops, idealoguing again). I think that was the stated point of feminism, to destroy the nuclear family as we knew it.

See, true feminism was to give women the right to choose... that they should not automatically be assumed to have to be a wife and mother. That, if they cared to, they could be a professional, that they could have a career. The promise of feminism was not that they could hold down a job and have a family. The purpose of "equal rights" was the "equal right to choose." (The liberals are just as bad... a woman who chooses to be a wife and mother has that right to choose and you should not judge her accordingly).

Now I'm really going to idealogue, going back to my unitarian jihad:

Moderation. The fun thing about this country is that we are expected to be diverse. It is not right, because of the right to choose a path in life, that a person should be this way or that way. The purpose and goal of America is to allow people the opportunity to choose their path and pursue it. Too many people -- idealogues and politicians, for example -- are prescriptive in "this is how the world should be" and "this is what you should do." No, no, no... I think we should people on the news that are not prescriptive, but descriptive in nature. Instead of "we should stop with this whole diversity thing by decrying it as bad and immoral and destroying the way we live," we should, probably, just celebrate the differences that make up our country.

See, the American experiment is interesting. The purpose of the different "states" and the "rights of the state over the federal government" was so that there would be some difference in governance. A modern example: people in Mississippi don't like pot smoking? That's ok! California allows it! And, somehow, it works out. Now, these little quirks between the states are made to seem like inconveniences (living on the border of three states has made this perfectly clear), rather clear differences in policy priorities. Ohio, for example, would rather people not smoke, so we have high cig taxes. In Kentucky, most of their economy is based off of tobacco. They would be foolish to stop people from smoking.

And that's ok.

Do you hear me? That's ok.

It is ok for people to have different opinions. It's when you try to force your opinions on other people that it's no longer ok and you try to be prescriptive. Laws are there for protection of our life, liberty, property, and pursuit of happiness. Otherwise, it's limiting people's choice. Choice to be whatever the hell they want to be.

And now that I've got you all strung along, I'll use a modern example:

Gay marriage is a non-issue because it is legislating something outside of the protection of life liberty property and pursuit of happiness. The anti-gay marriage advocates have failed to prove how it hurts any of that. Regardless of what makes someone "gay," it is a choice to get married... legislating otherwise abandons that choice. IE, it doesn't hurt anyone.

And now I'll string you along further:

Abortion is a non-issue because it is legislating something out of the protection of life liberty property and pursuit of happiness. Although people frame it as a "the child is alive" debate, it still doesn't affect you. That's a decision the mother and father have to make together and they have to live with that decision without your nasty pictures. IE, it hurts no one but the people who make the choice.

And I'm done. Please respond to more than the last two examples.

No comments: