Maximize utility, minimize suffering? Like, for example, in your value system, you value stoicism. But the way stoicism has typically played out in the recent past is that men were simply not allowed to show feelings and it was demanded of them that they repress their emotions. This is really unhealthy, and I can name no noteworthy benefit from doing so. I suffered from that as well as a child, I was always kind of an emotional kid, and looking back it seems so meaningless. What possible benefit is served from forcing people to repress their feelings and act like stoic brutes when they’re hurting on the inside?
The first step is to see why, and whether the benefits outweigh the consequences. For example, I’m sure a lot of people see the increasing acceptance of non-heterosexual sexual expression as “immoral”. However, their reasons for doing so are terrible - alleged divine fiat that wouldn’t constitute a good reason even if their god existed, and personal discomfort. Meanwhile, the reasons for rejecting their view on morality? Very simply that it is a clear and straightforward improvement of life for a marginalized (and suffering) minority for virtually no cost. This is the kind of evaluation we should go through when examining whether our “standards” are sensible.
And in many cases, they just aren’t. For example: the standard that men should never be “girly” is stupid. There’s no reason for it, it hurts men who identify with any sort of feminine side, has some unfortunate unstated implications for women, and just generally sucks for everyone who isn’t a beefy, macho dude. Can this standard, toss it in the memory hole, and society is a better place as a result.
Much of what you’ve identified as “standards” in this thread boils down to biases and straight-up bigotry. It’s good of you to confront that, so kudos for making this thread.
I was reacting to what i took to being your attempt to equate gender identity with various “icky” fetishes, which trivializes what trans folks face and plays right into the hands of those who believe them to just another set of “perverts.”
If that was not your intent, I am sorry. If the discussion has moved from trans folks to non-mainsteam sexual attraction and behaviour i do want it to be on record that I do not give a damn what any two grownups do for play.
I’m always surprised that people don’t seem to realize that by saying “it is really important for a man to be manly, and being manly means never ever ever associating yourself with anything feminine because that is gross and bad and second class and ew” is saying something very specific about what they think about women.
I’ve always perceived it as a strong v. weak, powerful v. subservient type of dynamic, wherein you gotta drill into your son’s head that he has to be tough and macho so that it’s clear that if he’s in a subordinate position it’s only because some other dude was even stronger, not because he’s a natural bottom. Thing is, that it should be unnecessary to make that point. It’s not always a fair competition.
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More to the OP point, a standard of strict discipline, high threshold of performance and respect for hierarchy IMO can be applied effectively even across evolving social standards. For instance, hanging on, standing your ground and keeping a poker face in presence of the opponent even when exhausted and hurting badly is as useful for males as for females whether straight, gay, trans, etc in battle or in labor relations or any number of other adversarial situations.
And yes, it can be frustrating to see that after you struggled hard to overcome those aspects where you did not meet the older norms, now they get changed – well that does NOT make your pain meaningless or your effort in vain nor that you sacrificed for a “bad” reason. It just means you dealt with the world as it was when you came up; they’ll deal with the world as it is when they come up. You respect their empowerment and they in turn had better also respect what you had to put up with.
I do not look down on people who feel uncomfortable with change, nor expect that when informed of the " new truth" they’ll just come around like changing a shirt; that’s yet another challenge to face.
It’s very clear. If you think a man “acting like a woman” is shameful, that’s because you think it’s shameful to be a woman.
Thing is, there’s no such thing as “acting like a woman”, outside of a few select biological functions, and even then there are plenty of women who are not, have not, cannot, or never will engage in those biological functions. Yes, gestating a fetus in your uterus is acting like a woman. That doesn’t mean any person who isn’t currently gestating a fetus isn’t a woman. I know lots of women who have never gestated a child, or never will gestate a child, or are physically incapable of gestating a child. If you have your uterus removed, or never had one, are you not a woman?
If having a fertile uterus is what makes you a woman there are lots and lots of people on this planet who are neither men nor women. Do we make up a new category for them? But I thought we were insisting that everyone is either a man who should act like a Man, or a woman who should act like a Woman. Which is it?
Well, the mall, being private property, is subject to private rules. The management could ask them to leave. (I know some folks who were ejected from a mall for wearing “Steampunk” costumes.)
Otherwise, in public places, on public property…they have the right. It isn’t disturbing the peace. Weirder things happen in Central Park.
I hope that the fact that I created this thread in the first place and that I am making a good-faith effort to examine my own thought process will convince you otherwise. If I were not, I would have ragequit this whole forum a long time ago.
But to answer the question you and others have asked: One of the posts in the transgender thread directed me to a wiki article about Right Wing Authoritarianism. I found it fascinating because it described my feelings very accurately. I have no doubt that I would score quite high on any RWA metric, along with it’s sister phenomenon of social dominance theory. I do not perfectly exemplify the stereotype, however, in that I have little use for religion and I think the Republican party has gone insane. (Who knew you could be a high RWA and still vote democrat?)
As a high scoring RWA, I perceive a highly competitive and very dangerous world. A major component of this conflict is that various groups have competing value systems. Clearly, much of this discussion has centered on whether my particular grievances (such as transgenders) are legitimate. And that’s okay. I very clearly articulated my grievance WRT that specific issue, so it is only logical that it should be the center of debate.
Nonetheless, I believe that the best way to reduce conflict and uncertainty in the world is to promote an unambiguous and universal value system.
FWIW, this ideology should hold at least some appeal for minority rights activists. For example: I absolutely despise Kim Davis. My belief in the value of authoritarianism and the virtues of unambiguous values extends to the point that I despise her for placing her own religion above her duty to the government and the people. It may be purely accidental, but this is at least one thing LGBT activists and I agree on.
Further, I believe that identity politics are a very real danger to the body politic. I have been plenty of places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kosovo where individual religious sects or ethnic groups refused to accept centralized authority or uniform national identity. They get fractured into these broken and unsustainable micro-nations or plunged into decades of civil war because they refuse to compromise for the sake of unity.
Am I saying Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner is going to lead to the Balkanization of America? Of course not. But I do believe that if we had one value system and more conformity it would be more efficient for all concerned.
How do you mean “promote”? Do you want to just talk about it? Fine. Do you want to legislate it?
One of the, maybe three, books in my life that has affected me most is a set of essays by Isaiah Berlin called The Crooked Timber of Humanity. The title is from a Goethe (?) quote: “From the crooked timber of humanity, nothing straight was ever made.”
The thesis of the book is that different people start with fundamentally different and incompatible values; there is no single universal value system. And that’s okay. Or at least, given that it’s inevitable, it’s tremendously dangerous to try to change it. Utopianists tend to think that if you’re making the perfect omelette, you can break any number of eggs; if you’re going to promote a universal value system that will end conflict, it’s okay if you commit atrocities along the way.
Berlin argues, very persuasively IMO, that we can’t reach the utopia you describe, that we’re always going to have different value sets out there, and that our best approach is a messy liberal democracy in which we try, through shifting norms and alliances, to more-or-less let people follow their own value systems. It’s a muddling approach, not straight and pure, but one he suggests is the best system we can build out of such crooked timber.
If you’re up for some really interesting and chewy historical essays, I highly recommend that book.
I may have to read this. The concept of “equally valid but mutually incompatible,” is paradoxical and anathema to me. I am much more a devotee of writers like Theodore Dalrymple, in that pluralistic socieities cannot/should not be welded together out of incompatible parts.
If I remember correctly, he actually took the idea from Nietzsche and ran with it. Nietzsche observed that the Christian values of martyrdom and humility ran directly counter to the pagan Roman values of valor and personal glory, and that there was no way to reconcile them. But it’s been a couple of decades since I read them, so I may misremember the specific details of the argument he started with.
The important point is that humans make it impossible to have a single set of values. While we can certainly exclude certain sets as fundamentally incompatible (Isil, Nazism, Westboro, etc.), that should be an extreme act–and excluding a few extremes is different from demanding a single set everyone adheres to.
As I said before, it’s fine to argue for a particular values set. No problem with that. But the argument should be with words, not fists. Physically abusing those who do not swear allegiance to the value set is bullshit.
Going back to the OP, it seems to me that you never actually argued in favor of the values you cited there, values about manliness etc. Is that deliberate? Do you think those values cannot be defended persuasively?
Sounds like the genealogy of morals that I alluded to earlier. The premise is that the Judeo-Christian system of charity and humility only emerged to subvert and invert the pagan ideals of strength and power. The Judeo-Christian underclass could not exercise strength and power, so they decreed that these things were immoral and the new virtues were charity and humility… Things they could achieve and benefited them… And thereby claimed moral supremacy over the wealthy elite.
And I have been dodging the question of whether my value is, itself, virtuous or superior. In some ways I do believe that an ideology of achievement, aggression, and rigid self discipline is the best response to a competitive, dog-eat-dog world. I have very much internalized the idea that these values are “correct” whether I personally like them or not. I perceive someone who asks to be exempted from the rules as a failure or a shirker, because the world is zero sum.
As others have pointed out there is a great deal of hypocrisy in saying an Olympic champion has failed to meet the standards of manliness. I have often wondered whether the avoidance of anything considered womanly was due to the perception of weakness, the fear of being perceived as homosexual, or confusion over why someone would willfully abdicate men’s historically privileged position in the world. But as I said above, I think it mostly has to do with these being qualities that are beneficial in a hostile environment.