Rant Thread II

[Solumina]

The apartment complex that we really want to move into will have a one bedroom unit coming available June 11th so Jake was going to stop by our leasing office and see about staying for an extra month as our lease is up near the end of May. Yeah he didn’t do that. He got a little distracted by video games and forgot that the office closes at 5:30. I’m not happy about this. It isn’t too big of a problem as we can stop by on our way up to visit my mom tomorrow, but I’m still very much annoyed.

[Saya]

Originally Posted by Underwater Ophelia

I don't get how people get hung up about gender identity. If you feel like being a boy, be one. If the next day you're a lady, be one. If you're a man's man who wears lipstick or a superfemme with a fake cock in her pants, be that.

Seriously, how is it a problem?

Because its not that I can't pick which I want to be. I'm reading through Foucault and Judith Butler pertaining to the formation of identity, and grappling with the fact that there is not only no gender binary, but gender isn't even a tangible, real thing.

[Underwater Ophelia]

Originally Posted by Saya

Because its not that I can't pick which I want to be. I'm reading through Foucault and Judith Butler pertaining to the formation of identity, and grappling with the fact that there is not only no gender binary, but gender isn't even a tangible, real thing.

Eh. Unless I'm misunderstanding you, I think I disagree with that. For some people, it's not a real thing, and for some it is. I mean, you can say it's just a collection of likely mannerisms, preferences, talents, etc, and that's certainly a real thing. Either way, to me, it isn't too heavy.

[Saya]

Originally Posted by Underwater Ophelia

Eh. Unless I'm misunderstanding you, I think I disagree with that. For some people, it's not a real thing, and for some it is. I mean, you can say it's just a collection of likely mannerisms, preferences, talents, etc, and that's certainly a real thing. Either way, to me, it isn't too heavy.

Butler is pretty much saying that gender isn't something you are, its something you do, and what Foucault says is that its constructed through discourse. This I agree with, because society defines what is "female" and what is "male", or rather, masculine and feminine, on pretty arbitrary guidelines. A man certainly can wear high heels and dresses and feel like a man's man, and a woman can certainly stuff her pants and feel like a woman. Its only real in that we accept it as real. Which jives with how I feel about myself, I only identify as a woman in how others see me, and as Butler points out, by creating gender trouble we can change discourse to be far more accepting of sexualities that fall outside of heteronormative discourse.

But I do agree that to many people, it feels really real and important to them, and what I'm having trouble with is how do I accept queer theory (Butler's stance) without being dismissive of their experiences, specifically when its comes to transsexuality? How do I bring this discourse to my activist work, and how do I create gender trouble without burning bridges with the second wave feminists I work with?

This is why I need someone to organize my thoughts for me.

[Solumina]

I think it helps to see gender as a social construct but also as something that people can still find meaningful. It also helps when creating gender trouble to not really make it about getting rid of the ideas of masculine and feminine but simply to get people to allow things outside of those two categories. I have personally found it very helpful to mention that there are societies that have different genders, it usually is a pretty good mind-fuck but once you give people a few examples light bulbs tend to go on (although some people will just go "that's fucking weird").

[Murder.Of.Crows]

9 out of 10 times, I get "that's fucking weird" comments.

[Fruitbat]

Originally Posted by Murder.Of.Crows

9 out of 10 times, I get "that's fucking weird" comments.

My first husband used to say i was fucking weird all the time - that was his term of endearment... but then everyone used to say I was fucking weird, and yet I was the most normal person I knew at the time.

[Saya]

Originally Posted by Solumina

I think it helps to see gender as a social construct but also as something that people can still find meaningful. It also helps when creating gender trouble to not really make it about getting rid of the ideas of masculine and feminine but simply to get people to allow things outside of those two categories. I have personally found it very helpful to mention that there are societies that have different genders, it usually is a pretty good mind-fuck but once you give people a few examples light bulbs tend to go on (although some people will just go "that's fucking weird").

I don't usually find that a great argument, as even in societies with a third gender, gender roles can still be extremely strict. And the problem with feminine/masculine is that it has characteristics that obviously favour the masculine, i.e masculine is strong, feminine is passive. It slays me when people say "its like Yin Yang! They're different but equal!" when in Yin Yang theory, Yin represents the feminine and death while Yang represents masculinity and birth. Incongruity detected!

Speaking of identity, this week my school's paper has an LGBTQ theme. Now, the paper is usually a piece of crap, but because of that and someone mentioned that there was another reply to the burka article that pissed me off last week, so I picked it up. And it was...decent.

Except when I got to the editorial. Apparently LGBTQ create homophobia by being divisive, by declaring your sexuality you draw a line in the sand. If we keep this up, in the future jobs will require you to be a certain sexuality, and at birth it will be set on your birth certificate because of chromosomal testing. Its LGBTQ's fault! Why can't they just love dick or pussy and shut up about it?

At least thats what I could glean, it was so poorly written I'm pretty sure he wrote it just to meet a word count. And this is by the paper's senior reporter, by the way.

[Saya]

I'm sorry sir, who are you? Your opinion matters how?

[Versus]

So I just got home from a very bad day at work, and guess fucking what?

I let a co-worker use my shower this morning and I just came home to a clogged toilet from the huge dump he took in it after I left for work.

Thanks, Satan.

[Sir Canvas Corpsey]

Double K... I wonder who that would be.

Also, you expressed Atheism as a universal truth and factual. Dislike. Kontan you're an ass-munching ****** train.

[Sir Canvas Corpsey]

Originally Posted by Versus

So I just got home from a very bad day at work, and guess fucking what?

I let a co-worker use my shower this morning and I just came home to a clogged toilet from the huge dump he took in it after I left for work.

Thanks, Satan.

Ew.

Shoot him?

[Saya]

End him. spoooooky.

[Still Jack]

#winningWhitepeoplestink

[Saya]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

Oh you can't see the delicious irony in what you're saying to Solumnia and what I said to you about religion? It's the exact same reasoning and all of a sudden, because it pertains to how you feel about injecting things into sexual orifices, it all of a sudden matters in a very concrete way. Gender doesn't exist, but spirituality CERTAINLY does.

Sir, calm down sir and I'll try to figure out what you're upset about. Now, is the modem plugged in?

[Sir Canvas Corpsey]

And why is Atheism the most logical and reasonable conclusion? Come on, you self-righteously assert your superiority over me because you think I'm dumb for not seeing what you think is so obvious yet you seem to only provide your supposed intelligence as the basis for the factuality of Atheism. Yet without providing any reason you can hardly argue that you're any better than buck-toothed bible basher who sees a tap produce water and (not) wanks because they think it's a miracle.

[Versus]

Originally Posted by Still Jack

#winningWhitepeoplestink

Is it me, or is it fun to see what people say to get the 10 character minimum?

[Sir Canvas Corpsey]

I simply sit happily in the middle of it all, because I do not know science to the extreme that is required to comprehend all of those theories that supposedly prove or disprove, I also am not so confident in what I feel and know to say that I believe in any distinct religion but I can't reconcile some elements of my life with a scientific reality without holding a potential divinity or 'other' along side with it.

Unlike you (it seems) I can happily hold Spirituality and Science in both unison and tension, and I'm happy to have my beliefs challenged but you are not challenging them, you are out right denying them because you do not understand how someone could ever come to that conclusion. Whether you agree with someone's beliefs or not, be they theistic or atheistic, if they're willing to discuss and debate them with you in a peaceful and respectful manner, you really should do the same otherwise you'll never get the converts you so desperately seem to desire.

Let me turn your God of Gaps argument back at you then, because there is something we cannot explain in nature but other things have or can be explained in full or part by science why is it presumed that science which has to be constantly reinvented and audited to correct previous false conclusions has to provide the answer? So we can maybe discover something new and useless or a develop a new theory that will supposedly make humanity better and better as it shits itself to death?

My issue of spiritual identity is not and of itself the tensions between the mysteries of the archetypal ends of the spectrum (Science and Spirituality), it's when someone deliberately disrupts and disturbs those tensions that seek to solve themselves, by interjecting with their supposedly undeniable truth and denying all that I am trying to figure out for myself.

Let's say in the end I do end up clinging to a sense of spirituality because I emotionally need it to get through the day? What's wrong with that provided it doesn't hurt others? What concern is it of yours what helps carry me through life in what is at times a pretty shitty world?

[Saya]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

You can patronize me all you want, but I want you to acknowledge the irony.

I don't see the irony. When did I say religion wasn't man made? Or are you saying religion doesn't exist?

[Saya]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

No. I said the supernatural didn't exist, yet you defended a religion's propriety on supernatural claims because it made people feel better. Of course religion exists. But their claims aren't true.

How is that related to gender? Even if gender doesn't exist, but most people believe it does and its important to them. Here I argued that even if I don't believe in it, I don't want to alienate those who find it immensely valuable. Because something isn't tangible doesn't make it easy to dismiss, hell the only reason a twenty dollar bill has any value is because everyone believes it does.

[Sir Canvas Corpsey]

I was a big fat Atheist between 2004-08, just saying, I went from a happy-clappy Christian child of God is rainbows and unicorns to seriously questioning everything I had been told and then outright denying it because it all seemed so stupid and contrived, I honestly believed Science could hold all the answers and now I see I can't be happy with one or the other, and it's not even a matter of wanting a life after death, despite the fact death terrifies me, I don't want a divine force to coddle me or assure me there is some meaning in everything, I just can't believe this, in all its complexity, would gel together so well after being created in an instant of chance.

That last part of my previous post was meant to hopefully placate you in your disrespectful tirade against where I am. My issue is not that you challenge this, it's that you're throwing a tantrum at me, because you're not happy I see things your way. At College I'm called the poster-boy for Perspective and the Relativity of Belief, something which earns me much gratitude and ire, I do not assert that my spirituality is empirically true, I simply assert that if I ever reach an answer to Spiritual or Science it will be on my own terms and not because of the heavy-handed tactics of fundamentalists like yourself who throw their empirical belief in science or God at me and then try and accuse me of being unreasonable.

I don't know why you removed me on facebook and quite frankly at this point I'm not sure I want to know, what I do know is that it looks like a tantrum or an attempt by you to give some sort of reward (re-adding you) for following your way of thinking.

[Sir Canvas Corpsey]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

I want to expand on this.

Sentence 1: Because science IS objective. Science doesn't have to be correct all the time. It's just evidence supporting theories and laws. It can be amended, but just because science isn't always right doesn't mean it permits us to be superstitious.

Sentence 2: You're appealing for a supernatural authority. In one sentence you admitted that you can only believe in a divine force that can make humanity better while also stating that you do not believe it is possible for humanity to save itself from itself. It seems like you seek to keep humanity under a dynamic of a child because the problems we cause are actually beyond our control to fix. That's just not good enough, SCC. It just isn't. If anything will kill humanity, it is our indifference to ourselves. I can assure you, no god is going to save you from that.

You've misinterpreted part of this, I wasn't saying that I need a God that makes humanity better and better, I was saying that humanity as a whole, religious or not, thinks it can keep one-upping itself, and that many atheists think that we can pull through this shit by pure strength of will and science. I honestly don't know if humanity can do it on its own or even with the help of some deity should it exist.

Science should be theoretically objective, but the fact of the matter is that the practice of science is conducted from a subjective foci which attempts to do or explain something for a certain purpose that isn't always as purely academic as many would like to believe. I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say in this paragraph to be honest but I felt I had to say it anyway.

[Saya]

Originally Posted by DoubleK

And here's the crux, Saya. I'm willing to agree with you that our notions of gender should melt away. I think it is a more JUST view on the world and I agree with you completely on it. It's why you're a feminist because you seek to break down those barriers. Gender roles are detrimental to our society and you see the unjust in it, DESPITE people feeling that it's important. You STILL war over it. It's no different than my take on atheism. These ideas MUST be challenged, they MUST be shown for what they are, a mistaken injustice on humanity. No one is to blame for honest mistakes, but we are to blame if we perpetuate them after knowing full knowledge of those mistakes.

The reason I'm against gender roles is because I feel its unfair that people believe they must do something because of what is between their legs, or are forced to do something because of what is between their legs.

But gender itself isn't so easy. I don't want to end gender. One in twelve transgendered people in America are murdered. It costs a lot of money, time and pain to get a sex change surgery. What am I to do, tell them that its all in their heads, they don't need surgery? To me, being a woman means nothing except of what society expects of me, but I am speaking from a position of privilege. I have no idea what it feels like to be in a body that doesn't match your identity.

[Sir Canvas Corpsey]

I never said I revered the spiritual force, I only that I acknowledge there must be some. I very much believe that this force, sentient or not, embodies the need for decay and renewal, death just as much a pre-requisite for life as it is the end of.

Here's how you respect that which you don't agree with, you 1) accept that it's a human opinion that has no detrimental affect to others (seeing as I'm not out to convert others to my way of thinking, only attempting to defend the validity of my journey) 2) say you respectfully disagree, and then 3) get the fuck on with whatever you were doing before you initiated the piss-fest.

If that's all too hard for you then just skip to 2) and lie and then move to 3) or if that's too much damage to your pride then just go 3)'s throat.

[Saya]

It doesn't make sense. People are free to chose their ethics and beliefs. I agree that I feel its wrong to tell someone they MUST do something, but whats wrong with SCC just having an inkling that there's something more?

And are you saying atheists are never transphobic, sir?