Author: Ophelia Benson

Time to say it in polite company.

Harris’s explosive book, as more than one reviewer has noted, articulates fiercely and fearlessly what more and more people are thinking but few are willing to say in polite company: religious faith is not only blind, but deaf, mute, absurd, irrational, and threatens our very existence…He calls his book “an argument for intellectual honesty. It’s only on matters of religion that we allow people to pretend to be certain of things they are not certain about.”

That’s just it – it’s this special dispensation thing. On everything else people over the age of about four are expected to justify their assertions, especially if they’re a tad far-fetched – but ‘devout’ people can talk about what God wants, and very few people will be heartless enough to ask how they know. It’s a double standard, but one that never really gets explained or justified – it’s just there.

Religious moderation, Harris argues, betrays both faith and reason equally. Moderates are, in large part, responsible for religious strife “because their beliefs provide the context in which scriptural literalism and religious violence can never be adequately opposed” — all thanks to the sacredness in which we hold tolerance.

Exactly – ‘the context in which scriptural literalism and religious violence can never be adequately opposed.’ And if you try, even atheists flock to chastise you. I do find that strange, and disheartening.

Good, The Subjection of Women is online after all, just not at Project Gutenberg. So I’ll quote a passage from section one.

All causes, social and natural, combine to make it unlikely that women should be collectively rebellious to the power of men. They are so far in a position different from all other subject classes, that their masters require something more from them than actual service. Men do not want solely the obedience of women, they want their sentiments. All men, except the most brutish, desire to have, in the woman most nearly connected with them, not a forced slave but a willing one, not a slave merely, but a favourite. They have therefore put everything in practice to enslave their minds. The masters of all other slaves rely, for maintaining obedience, on fear; either fear of themselves, or religious fears. The masters of women wanted more than simple obedience, and they turned the whole force of education to effect their purpose. All women are brought up from the very earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the very opposite to that of men; not self will, and government by self-control, but submission, and yielding to the control of other. All the moralities tell them that it is the duty of women, and all the current sentimentalities that it is their nature, to live for others; to make complete abnegation of themselves, and to have no life but in their affections. And by their affections are meant the only ones they are allowed to have — those to the men with whom they are connected, or to the children who constitute an additional and indefeasible tie between them and a man. When we put together three things — first, the natural attraction between opposite sexes; secondly, the wife’s entire dependence on the husband, every privilege or pleasure she has being either his gift, or depending entirely on his will; and lastly, that the principal object of human pursuit, consideration, and all objects of social ambition, can in general be sought or obtained by her only through him, it would be a miracle if the object of being attractive to men had not become the polar star of feminine education and formation of character. And, this great means of influence over the minds of women having been acquired, an instinct of selfishness made men avail themselves of it to the utmost as a means of holding women in subjection, by representing to them meekness, submissiveness, and resignation of all individual will into the hands of a man, as an essential part of sexual attractiveness. Can it be doubted that any of the other yokes which mankind have succeeded in breaking, would have subsisted till now if the same means had existed, and had been so sedulously used, to bow down their minds to it? If it had been made the object of the life of every young plebeian to find personal favour in the eyes of some patrician, of every young serf with some seigneur; if domestication with him, and a share of his personal affections, had been held out as the prize which they all should look out for, the most gifted and aspiring being able to reckon on the most desirable prizes; and if, when this prize had been obtained, they had been shut out by a wall of brass from all interests not centring in him, all feelings and desires but those which he shared or inculcated; would not serfs and seigneurs, plebeians and patricians, have been as broadly distinguished at this day as men and women are? and would not all but a thinker here and there, have believed the distinction to be a fundamental and unalterable fact in human nature?

So much has changed since Mill wrote that, and yet women are still subject to unremitting social pressure to be sexually attractive before they are anything else.

Julian’s been on the radio again – in fact he seems to have been on aproximately every other time I listen, lately. That one’s Night Waves and it’s only good until tomorrow, because it’s last Monday’s show and I didn’t know about it until yesterday when I happened to browse the Night Waves page to see what I’d been missing – otherwise I would have told you sooner.

I transcribed one bit because it sort of fits with various things we talk about here from time to time. The interviewer asked how useful philosophy can be, does it change people’s thinking, and so on.

I think it’s possible to read a hell of a lot of philosophy, it’s possible to be a professional philosopher, and not have a philosophical attitude. I think the philophical attitude is this kind of constant questioning, and I think that sometimes people find philosophy, they love it, and they latch onto a few of their favourite philosophers, and they become as entrenched in a particular form of philosophy as any unphilosophical person becomes entrenched in their assumptions; philosophers are actually subject to the delusion in fact because their subject is officially the ‘queen of the sciences,’ the discipline which questions assumptions more than any other, they kind of feel that they themselves are immune to the kind of dodgy reasoning and stupid assumption-making that the unwashed masses do, and I think that’s a terrible risk of doing philosophy.

Good point. Let us all take a solemn vow (on a bust of Socrates if you happen to have one, or Hume, or Sponge Bob) never to feel that we are immune to dodgy reasoning and stupid assumption-making.

Here’s something I find quite funny. It’s from The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism from the entry for ‘Speech Acts’.

This issue of parasitic language became one of the turning points of the Searle-Derrida debate. In the late 1970s Searle wrote a “reply” to Derrida’s deconstruction of Austin, assuming that Derrida was attacking Austin and rushing to the master’s defense. Derrida then wrote a hundred-page deconstruction of Searle’s reply, more or less savaging Searle and demonstrating both that philosophically Searle is way out of his league and that methodologically Searle and Derrida are not so very far apart. Both Searle and Derrida are analytical philosophers who believe in rational, logical thought; Derrida is merely better at it than Searle, more sensitive to the mind-numbing complexity of analytical issues.

Hmmmm.

I’d never heard of Sheila Jeffreys before reading this article. Okay so I’m a dreary boring sexless humourless old-timey feminist, but I think she’s right. It depresses me to see the things women do to themselves and how it’s gotten not better but worse since second-wave feminism started.

I’ll tell you something else I hadn’t heard of, and that’s ‘trimmed labia.’ Trimmed what? Trimmed? Trimmed? You trim fingernails and hair, apples and carrots, not pieces of your body! Okay so I’m clueless, but I don’t spend a lot of time keeping up with the ‘sex industry,’ therefore I was unaware there was such a thing as ‘labiaplasty.’ What was that we were saying last year about female genital mutilation?

“Men’s desire for bigger and bigger breasts, and clothes commonly associated with prostitution, has resulted from the mass consumption of pornography.”

Ah – is that what causes it. Good to know. I’ve been wondering for years what the ‘get me, don’t I look exactly like a hooker’ fashion was all about.

She points to studies that have found significantly higher rates of suicide among women who have had breast implants. The latest, conducted in 2003 by the International Epidemiology Institute of Rockville and funded by Dow Corning Corp, a former maker of silicone gel breast implants, included a study of 2,166 women, some of whom received implants as long as 30 years ago. Dow Corning also funded an earlier Swedish study, which examined 3,521 women with implants, and found the suicide rate to be three times higher than normal.

The first thought that occurs to me is that it’s probably not that the implants make women suicidal, but that suicidal women get implants. It seems quite likely that women who think their appearance is the most important thing about them will tend to be depressive. That women who think it’s worth cutting their breasts open and having a foreign substance shoved inside just to make the breasts bigger do not have a particularly healthy or reasonable view of what they could be doing with their lives.

I can get very cross and depressed about this kind of thing. I’m glad Sheila Jeffreys has written this book, but I have absolutely no hope that it will make the smallest bit of difference.

The trouble is, there is no answer. It’s no good trying to argue the question with the thought that there is an answer if only everyone can be convinced of it – there isn’t. It’s hopeless. There are only two competing goods, or goals, or desires or needs; there’s no way to grant both at once; there’s no way to do the right thing in both directions. At least not that I can ever see.

Three French intellectuals and the publisher of the nation’s premier newspaper, Le Monde, were ordered by a French court in May to pay 1 euro each to Attorneys Without Borders, which Mr. Goldnadel leads, for defaming Jews in an op-ed article three years ago…The case is one of many such complaints to land in European courts in recent years as a surge of emotional discourse – regarding Muslims after the Sept. 11 attacks and Israel after the second Palestinian intifada – bumps against post-Nazi laws intended to guard against the fascist hate-mongering of the 1930’s…Some here say that Europe is struggling to adjust the boundaries of reasonable debate at the worst possible time.

That’s just it. It’s a struggle to adjust the boundaries of reasonable debate – contestable every step of the way, as indicated by the contest-laden vocabulary – struggle, adjust, boundaries, reasonable, debate. Not a black/white, yes/no idea in the lot.

Many free-speech cases have been set off since Sept. 11 by criticism of Islam amid concerns about Europe’s growing conservative Muslim population…The case of the article published in Le Monde arose amid a wave of scorn for Israeli policies that swept Europe after the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada in September 2000. The mood soon fueled a surge in anti-Semitism in France, which has the largest Muslim population in Europe. “Death to Jews!” was shouted in Paris streets.

Not a situation that can be just brushed aside, or ignored. Not a shout one wants to hear shouted in any streets anywhere on the planet.

The article, published in June 2002, was nothing remarkable to American readers accustomed to raucous, sometimes racist public debate…One of the passages cited by the court read, “One finds it hard to imagine that a nation of fugitives descended from the people which has been persecuted the longest in the history of humanity, having been subjected to the worst humiliations and the deepest contempt, would be capable of transforming itself in two generations into a ‘dominating and self-assured people’ and, with the exception of an admirable minority, a contemptuous people taking satisfaction in humiliating others.”

One doesn’t want to hear ‘Death to [Anyones]’ shouted in any streets – but at the same time, that sentence does not look like something that ought to be taken to court. In fact it looks like the kind of thing that ought not to be taken to court, because it is a political opinion. And yet – and yet – political opinions, even those comparatively distant from shouts of ‘Death to [Hated People]’ in the streets, can, in just the right (i.e. wrong) circumstances, lead to such shouts and then to the machetes or the massacres in empty warehouses. But then, if one looks at it that way, so can almost any political speech. Safety is good, protection of minorities is good, but so is political discussion. Ideas about the need to protect minorities are themselves the product of political discussion, after all.

An open letter in support of the defendants, signed by 100 French intellectuals and published in Le Monde last year, argued that criticizing the Israeli government “and even the majority of Israelis who support it,” is far from a condemnation of all Jews. It warned that the case “shows the serious threat, which often takes the form of intimidation, that is looming over freedom of expression in France.” But Mr. Goldnadel sees the case as part of a larger shift in what is acceptable in public discourse that began with the start of the second intifada. “Since the intifada, the media has suddenly discovered freedom of expression,” he said. “When speaking of Israel or Zionism they say anything they want to now.”

Well, I think he’s wrong, but I don’t know of any knock-down argument that he is. I just think he is.