"Don't Laugh: I Have A Serious Reason For Raising My Cats Gender-Neutral"; Or: A Silly And Ineffective Way To Neuter Your Cats
As it turns out, she does not have a serious reason.
Not, at least, if 'serious' here means worthy of being taken seriously.
There's so much to ridicule here that I'm not even going to get started.
Well...ok...here's one thing: lefties insist on the sex/gender distinction when it suits them, and throw it out the window when it suits them. Oh and, their most effective tactic: simply use 'gender' to mean whatever the hell they want it to mean in order to persuade people of their favored conclusions.
All these really dumb mistakes are easy to avoid with just a little bit of thought...but most people (enthusiastic PC shriekers included) don't put even a little bit of thought into it. Add to that unshakable devotion to certain conclusions...and what you get is a complete and total mess. A tangle of downright dumb conclusions.
And stuff like this is really stupid even if you think that it's kinda dumb to project stuff about masculinity and femininity on your f*cking pets... Not that there aren't behavioral differences between male and female animals--including humans. Because there are. And all the women's studies courses in the world won't change that.* But it's still kinda silly--though hardly a cardinal sin--to exaggerate such things.
Also: I'm going to resist the urge to ridicule the cat thing for "virtue signaling." I think it's a handy concept, but I also think we ought to psychologize less about our interlocutors.
Sheesh. I think a lot of stuff...
* Though, of course, feminism (in the guise of "women's studies" and elsewhere) also tends to switch back and forth between the there are no sex differences position and there are lots of sex differences position, again, depending on which they prefer at the moment.**
** For the record--though I don't think we should typically offer such assurances--I'm an advocate of a kind of hard-headed egalitarian feminism. It's too bad that position isn't very prominent in public discussions anymore...
Not, at least, if 'serious' here means worthy of being taken seriously.
There's so much to ridicule here that I'm not even going to get started.
Well...ok...here's one thing: lefties insist on the sex/gender distinction when it suits them, and throw it out the window when it suits them. Oh and, their most effective tactic: simply use 'gender' to mean whatever the hell they want it to mean in order to persuade people of their favored conclusions.
All these really dumb mistakes are easy to avoid with just a little bit of thought...but most people (enthusiastic PC shriekers included) don't put even a little bit of thought into it. Add to that unshakable devotion to certain conclusions...and what you get is a complete and total mess. A tangle of downright dumb conclusions.
And stuff like this is really stupid even if you think that it's kinda dumb to project stuff about masculinity and femininity on your f*cking pets... Not that there aren't behavioral differences between male and female animals--including humans. Because there are. And all the women's studies courses in the world won't change that.* But it's still kinda silly--though hardly a cardinal sin--to exaggerate such things.
Also: I'm going to resist the urge to ridicule the cat thing for "virtue signaling." I think it's a handy concept, but I also think we ought to psychologize less about our interlocutors.
Sheesh. I think a lot of stuff...
* Though, of course, feminism (in the guise of "women's studies" and elsewhere) also tends to switch back and forth between the there are no sex differences position and there are lots of sex differences position, again, depending on which they prefer at the moment.**
** For the record--though I don't think we should typically offer such assurances--I'm an advocate of a kind of hard-headed egalitarian feminism. It's too bad that position isn't very prominent in public discussions anymore...
posted by Winston Smith at
10:18 AM
2 Comments:
"Though, of course, feminism (in the guise of "women's studies" and elsewhere) also tends to switch back and forth between the there are no sex differences position and there are lots of sex differences position, again, depending on which they prefer at the moment."
But among feminist scholars, is it really the same individuals and movements repeatedly switching back and forth between seemingly mutually exclusive frameworks? Or, do politicians, media commentators, popular activists, and others with little use for intellectual consistency merely cherry-pick the most convenient principles for advancing their personal and collective goals? I would guess that it is more the latter than the former, although these groups sometimes overlap.
Good point.
I do think that there's something like: *the overall most prominent position of the vocal vanguard of feminism*. And I do think that that shifts around a lot *ad hoc.*
The shift of emphasis is undoubtedly in play--but I don't think that it can explain it all. Remember, feminism is more a political movement than an intellectual one--and all other political movements are inconsistent in this way...so it'd be something like a miracle if feminism wasn't...
Think about the shifting rough consensus about the sex/gender distinction in response to the new emphasis on transgenderism. Things we used to be told were *verboten* to believe we are now told are obligatory. And this isn't just a matter of Smith saying x and Jones saying y, but of a consensus mutating...I'd say *ad hoc*.
Or, of course, I could be wrong.
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