Guest post: The long-standing paradigm that women just feel things
Originally a comment by iknklast on The medical paradigm establishment narrative.
I am so sick of the anti-scientific, anti-expert obsession, especially in women’s health issues. Challenging the patriarchy does not mean rejecting every single thing any man has ever done or said. It does not mean branding science as a “male” field, or branding medicine as something “men” do to oppress “women”. It means getting rid of the things men do to oppress women, while maintaining the things that are in our best interests. It does not mean abandoning all rationality and reason, though I have seen that argued (in my playwriting program, I protested parts of one book my mentor had me read because they implied women don’t do rationality and scientific thinking, we need a mother paradigm and emotional woo-based things).
Women do science. Women do medicine. And women are expanding these fields in new directions, taking women’s needs and women’s “lived experience” into account, to incorporate the unique bodies and experiences of women into the scientific paradigm of the medical establishment. So we don’t kill women with stupidity, or with treating them like deviant versions of men, but as fully functional human beings in their own right.
It is people like Paltrow and Block that contribute to the patriarchy, because they willingly accept the long-standing paradigm that women just feel things, and can’t think them through rationally. They buy into the language of the male-dominated establishment that told women we couldn’t be what we wanted to be because our brains were fuzzy lady brains, and not fit to do math or science. Women like Jen Gunter are proving them wrong, and too many women are trying to push her back into the box.
Shame on you, Jennifer Block, for aiding and abetting the patriarchy by showing them yet more examples of women who react in an emotional, fuzzy way, rejecting science in favor of woo.
Yes. A hundred times yes.
People like Block take as given the gendered notions about men and women, and thus their “feminism” is antifeminist from the start. They don’t at all think to question what they are told of the sexes, so they cannot escape their mental bonds.
This sort of crap doesn’t help, either. Women are so, so sensitive and caring of their own and other people’s feelings, that if you promote factual information the wrong way, they’ll reject it and look around for facts being promoted by people who are more considerate.
I’ve run into that attitude from women who are self-proclaimed “progressives.” The idea seems to be that those who are right would also be good. It’s female wisdom; men just look at issues. But healing must involve the heart and spirit.
Blech.
Sastra, this is the case with so much these days. Oh, you come right out and say there is no god? You’ll hurt people’s feelings and they won’t listen. You come right out and say global warming could become catastrophic very soon? You’ll sound like a scold and alienate people. You call a basket of deplorables a basket of deplorables? Oh, that was bad, very, very bad.
Telling the truth is apparently only able to be done if you wrap it in fuzzy woo-based jargon. It also makes it easier for people to ignore the truth, because it is hidden enough that you have to work for it, so naturally those that benefit from woo don’t want us to tell the truth plainly and simply where people might actually hear and understand it. They want us to hide it behind cotton balls and packing peanuts.
Well said!
Einstein’s contributions to science aren’t “male” any more than Marie Curie’s contributions to science are “female”. After all, men and women live in the same universe, and physics and chemistry works pretty much the same way for both. But the solipsism of the alternative cult has gone so far that many now really do feel entitled to their own facts and not just their own opinions. We rarely hear about “alternative car mechanics” who employ alternative theories of how the engine works (“The Crystals indicate that we need to apply acupressure to the tires to harmonize the car’s energy-frequencies”), but when it comes to our own bodies, many seem to think that “Because it’s My body, only I get decide how it’s going to work in My reality”. Unfortunately no one seems to have told the bacteria, viruses or cancer cells that we are in charge…
As much of this is coming from the alt-left crowd, there is also something strangely consumerist about the whole endeavor (Come to think of it, alt-leftism seems to be all about consumerism). In our hyper-consumerist, capitalist culture even the relationship between doctor and patient has been reduced to a relationship between salesperson and costumer, and as we’ve all been told from day one “the customer is always right”. Hence the job of the doctor/salesperson is simply to give the patient/costumer what (s)he wants, even when what (s)he wants are other laws of physics and chemistry. I suspect there is also some bastardized version of the idea of democracy involved. After all the “people” – like the costumer – is always right as well and knows best, even when what they demand are their own facts.
Yes, not the double standard in play that benefits The Deplorable in Chief. A man like Trump (please, tell me there aren’t others…) can holler the most blatant, insults and lies and they are (at least by some people) accepted as truth. His empty-headed, unfiltered id-utterances are characterized as “plain speaking” or “honesty” when they are neither. No sugar coating here; that would be too “sophisticated” or “elite.”
Bjarte – this is happening in education, too. It’s all about what the student wants or thinks they need for their future, not for the experts that are teaching them to decide. Experts many of whom have worked or currently work in the field the student is trying to enter. Customer must be happy…