tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8839412.post1282794021957558734..comments2024-03-19T07:48:54.021-06:00Comments on Gus Van Horn: Worse Than You Can ImagineGus Van Hornhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05126749051688217781noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8839412.post-19690257422998249492014-10-13T13:16:10.320-06:002014-10-13T13:16:10.320-06:00Agreed: I, too, am glad that somebody who is reaso...Agreed: I, too, am glad that <i>somebody</i> who is reasonable is out there is doing this.Gus Van Hornhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05126749051688217781noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8839412.post-55281863885194553822014-10-13T07:06:00.943-06:002014-10-13T07:06:00.943-06:00Yo, Gus, yep, interesting read. While I often dis...Yo, Gus, yep, interesting read. While I often disagree with McCain's positive positions, I admire the fact that he is in the middle of systematically reading a number of the feminist authors they teach in women's studies courses, and more than that he reads them with some attention. A couple of decades ago I read many of the main works myself, including Dworkin, pretty intensively, until I got sick of trying to figure out how the radical feminist world view hangs together and how it got that way. Mind you, I didn't make notes or go about it as thoroughly as McCain does, but I'm glad someone's doing so and putting up his thoughts about them without fearing the retaliation of the radical feminists. Goodness knows I'd be sorely loath to go back and do what he's doing, simply because Dworkin, Marilyn Frye, and their ilk are so distasteful.<br /><br />I also give props to him for being a bit more subtle about things than one might expect. As he points out, more mainstream feminists will say that rad fems and lesbian separatists don't represent feminism per se and should not be taken as representative of feminism. However, those writings are taught with a very heavy hand in women's studies courses without anyone criticizing them nearly as thoroughly as you'd expect if feminism were really devoted to equality between the sexes.<br /><br />At most, as some of my feminist acquaintances with a much more rational view of things expressed it, it's a point of view they call "rape feminism" that should be taught, you see, to convey a full view of feminism...so it <i>is</i> part of feminism, yet it's not <i>really</i> part of feminism. Any detailed philosophical analysis of that point, which could be done on a number of levels with great value by someone with a good head on her shoulders, never seems to follow, since what they want is a political big-tent movement, fundamental principles be damned.<br /><br />Similarly, when I asked another of my former acquaintances, a philosophy grad student with a close interest in "feminist ethics" (which in her personal life, alas, seems to be the opposite of pure and simple ethics, hence she's a <i>former</i> acquaintance) her opinion of Dworkin, she responded that she was a twisted woman she felt only pity for. My response was that yes, she was a pitiable woman, but she was also vile: Either she truly hated men, including me, simply because we exist; or else she disparaged men unjustly and offensively in order to make radial changes in society, in which case she was fundamentally dishonest as well as a purveyor of hatred, and I had a hard time deciding which was worse--but in any case I had no interest in trying to truckle to someone who preached that I was evil simply by existing. I refuse to appease people who want me to cease to exist or to strip me of my rights, so to hell with her.Snedcatnoreply@blogger.com