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I've been reading the Trickycracker / Caligula debate and it's really quite ridiculous. If both of them basically accept the article "Feminism, the Noble Lie", what the hell are they arguing about? And why so viciously?
Caligula is rude, obnoxious and offensive and his arguments are often overly simplistic (but I'm not telling you anything you don't already know). Trickycracker, the clear favorite around here, is a tougher nut to crack. She's without a doubt arrogant, but beyond that, she's either a devious, double-talking, word-twisting, master rhetorician, or she's receiving Caligula's transmissions in an alternate universe that gets everything from our universe backwards. A few cases in point:
- C makes a point about the various means by which men can suffer pain equal to or greater than that of pregnancy--technology being one of them--and T goes into an irrelevant rant about the difference between "advancing technology" and "using technology".
- C talks about pregnancy in biological terms, in which case it's never an accident but very obviously a necessity, and T responds incoherently, talking about it in situational terms, in which case it can indeed very often be an accident and not a necessity. In doing this, she inadvertently suggests that women who get knocked up by mistake should be anesthetized while women who choose to get pregnant should not (if "unintended accident" gets "available medicine" then intended pregnancy must get no medicine). Oops.
- C argues that "a desire to attract women underlies just about everything men do", noting that it can result in both positives (civilization, perpetuating the species, etc.) and negatives (destruction, violence, etc.), and T misquotes him as saying that "pointlessly destructive behavior" such as "firing at gasoline-filled televisions" results in civilization and perpetuating the species.
Frankly, at that point, I would have stopped debating her myself. But then I would have stopped debating C long before.
T's support of her thesis that a woman was behind the beginning of WWI is quite impressive but, once again, irrelevant. So a woman was marginally involved in the war. That doesn't mean the war was fought over her the way the Trojan War was reputedly fought over Helen. I can only imagine the time and effort T put into that post, and for what? It has little bearing on anything and, by the look of things, C isn't even going to see it. It's a bit sad the way you all hang around here waiting for him to return.
Let me try to provide some sanity before this thread takes its final resting place. The two basic points on which C and T seem to disagree that aren't completely absurd and irrelevant are [1] the question of whether it's more advantageous for wives to have careers or stay home, and [2] the question of whether or not there's a link between the high rate of divorce and feminism.
Here's a passage from Alan Bloom's "Closing of the American Mind" (the chapter on Relationships) that addresses both points intelligently, providing some food for thought:
"[1] The feminist response that justice requires equal sharing of all domestic responsibility by men and women is not a solution, but only a compromise, an attenuation of men's dedication to their careers and of women's to family, with arguably an enrichment of diversity of both parties but just as arguably a fragmentation of their lives.... Moreover, the compromise does not decide anything about the care of the children. Are both parents going to care more about their careers than about the children? Previously children at least had the unqualified dedication of one person, the woman, for whom their care was the most important thing in life. Is half the attention of two the same as the attention of one? Is this not a formula for neglecting children? [2] Under such arrangements the family is not a unity, and marriage is an unattractive struggle that is easy to get out of, especially for men."
I hope I haven't offended anyone.
Regards,
VOR
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