Jordan Peterson: Gender Pronouns and Free Speech War
- Thread starter Laura
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What's one of those?
And we also don't really care, nor should we. And by 'we', I mean pretty much everyone on the planet with any sense.
Sex was never "culturally specific". It has always been defined by chromosomes, as it is today. As for gender, yeah, today that's been detached from sex, from which it was always undifferentiated, and is now all about the feels, which makes it super not hyperlogical.
"queer theory take on archeology". LOL. Sorry, but I can't help laughing at that phrase. Assuming you could know it, in what way would you, or queers, 'do honour' to ancient people's sex or gender? A rainbow flag sticker on a bone fragment perhaps?
Understanding that people in the past viewed themselves and their place in society, the world and the universe, in perhaps different ways than we do today, is not a 'queer lens', it's a long term core part of historical research. Viewing history through a 'queer lens' is, instead, the abuse of logic and reason through spurious subjective theorizing about past societies in an effort to accrue power to oneself in the present one.
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Yeah, I watched that the other day, JP Sears at its best!
Funny and insightful!
That remark is interesting, because it highlights how 'theories' of a postmodern flavour will attack traditions or values as mere 'social constructs', but then proceed to 'honour' other such social constructs as it suits them best. For example, Western Christian values are mere patriarchal social constructs to be challenged. But values or customs from other cultures, minorites, or even better, LGBTQ, are to be honoured and embraced. And if you don't, you're a bigot. As A Jay pointed out above, these are not really theories ("theory: a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained"), but political tools.
The word "gender" is a silly artifact of the English language, which usually is just a specialized term for grammar nerds (latin: "genus"), which the English somehow started using interchangingly with "sex", probably because they are a polite and prudish lot. The French - not so much. It's just "sexe". And "genre" for the grammatical form, which would be laughable would it be used for actual humans (some weirdos try it, but it's entirely an import from the English "gender studies" crowd.) The Germans, well, they are a bit coarse, they call both sex and grammatical gender "Geschlecht", literally "genital". The word refers both to a penis and to the grammatical form of a male word.
"Gender" doesn't exist, except for some random historical development of English speakers being posh, or something.
There, it's all culture-specific
Relativists don't really believe in facts. So, what is a relativistic fact?
Your statement is the same as saying that a cracked lens is still useful because it adds lines to your pictures. A richer "effect", or "analytical space" as you put it. Woke people would have a kick out of that, and spend hours discerning "the deeper meaning" of what in reality is just a crack in the lens. It actually worse than that, when you dig into the ideology behind it and its origins.
"Sigfting materials", yes. But with a lot of critical thinking. You might want to watch that documentary "What is a woman", and pay special attention to the university professor...
The word "gender" is a silly artifact of the English language, which usually is just a specialized term for grammar nerds (latin: "genus"), which the English somehow started using interchangingly with "sex", probably because they are a polite and prudish lot. The French - not so much. It's just "sexe". And "genre" for the grammatical form, which would be laughable would it be used for actual humans (some weirdos try it, but it's entirely an import from the English "gender studies" crowd.) The Germans, well, they are a bit coarse, they call both sex and grammatical gender "Geschlecht", literally "genital". The word refers both to a penis and to the grammatical form of a male word.
"Gender" doesn't exist, except for some random historical development of English speakers being posh, or something.
There, it's all culture-specific
This idea fleshed out and with some context:
siftingmaterials
Jedi
your analogies always make me smile, Chu, even if our antlers clash!Relativists don't really believe in facts. So, what is a relativistic fact?
Your statement is the same as saying that a cracked lens is still useful because it adds lines to your pictures. A richer "effect", or "analytical space" as you put it. Woke people would have a kick out of that, and spend hours discerning "the deeper meaning" of what in reality is just a crack in the lens. It actually worse than that, when you dig into the ideology behind it and its origins.
"Sigfting materials", yes. But with a lot of critical thinking. You might want to watch that documentary "What is a woman", and pay special attention to the university professor...
I think it's mostly clarifying a categorical confusion about what constitutes a fact that's needed in my reply, but we'll see.
Okay here's a fact: Ancient high status celts were sometimes buried with horses / sometimes even chariots. It requires no force of argument. The archeological record reflects it. Though i might point out that our conception of an "ancient celt" may have nothing to do with how they saw themselves. More on that in a minute.
Here are two examples of supposition based on a mix of currently held cultural beliefs and values combined, perhaps, with an incomplete picture of the past:
1. the high status celt believed that his being a man had primarily to do with what sort of body he had
2. the high status celt believed that his being a man had primarily to do with what sort of stories he was told
These are guesses, not facts. We can make these guesses in the case of ancient burial sites, but we have to acknowledge that our reasoning is our own. we have a unique cultural interpretation of ancient celts. it changes over time. Maybe guess 1 or guess 3 gets closer to the truth, but we can't know the mind of the ancient celt.
And then, of course, we have to admit that the high status celt may not identify as a man in any way we currently think is definitional.
The risk of queering archaeology in the extreme is that we might ascribe a trans narrative onto a pre-colonial, 2-spirit indigenous spiritual figure. It's a pretty common meme to say that trans folk have existed forever. Well, not as such. Trans-ness is a specific sociocultural concept that has its own history and contemporary significance. It's distinct from what it means to be 2-spirit, or, in India, Hijra, so on and so on. These are distinct categories. Call one the other and you'd be wrong.
Same as our concept of an ancient celt might feel completely alien and unrelated to such a person if we could resurrect one and interview them. They might say, "Well, sort of. But it's more like this:". Or they might say, "You have it completely wrong. I'm not a celt at all. What's a Celt?"
I dunno, folks, I feel like in some important ways, I agree with the majority take on this issue. It's dangerous to assume our current understanding gives us factual insight into how ancient peoples saw themselves.
I'd just invite you all to consider that this extends beyond a criticism of queering archaeology. The whole concept of queering archaeology came about decades ago to contend with the idea that we just don't know how people saw themselves. That's what queering archaeology is and that's how it's appropriately understood. It was a response to the fact that archaeologists aggressively pursued arguments that assumed things about corpses we will never know.
siftingmaterials
Jedi
you've built in a pretty strong qualifier with this "people with sense" group, but none the less, many people care. Archaeologists and historians, to begin with.
A culture can't define sex by chromosomes if they have no concept for chromosomes. So you can imagine a culture that defines sex in some other way. You can imagine a thousand possible cultures who have no knowledge of cellular biology. Each one might have a different definition of sex. Or no definition, for that matter.
The thing I'm saying is hyperlogical is that a highly diversified and pluralized conception of sex/gender is equally misapplied as fact to the corpse of an ancient celt as a strict, materialist, binary view of sexl/gender. We don't know the mind of that celt. In either case, the methodology has a single, fundimental flaw. Maybe you would say that bones or whatnot indicates irrefutable proof of a man or a woman or whatnot - i understand that, but I think the activist/academic is addressing a different dimension of interpretation. We can agree to disagree on the point of whether anyone cares about the lived experiences of ancient humans, or how they saw themselves.
the idea that we can honour the past or people who existed millenia ago is, pretty unverifiable, yeah - if that's what you're saying then I think I stand corrected on that point. Thanks for pointing that out, actually. there's a deep pragmatism in your POV that i vibe with, Joe
Research into the past hasn't been without its flaws. Queer theory applied to archaeology and history didn't start because of an agenda to change facts. It came about to challenge assumptions made from heteronormative perspectives that may have overlooked or unecessarily filled in details/blank spaces in the record
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This is blather. Every culture made distinctions between sexes and it was pretty easy. They looked at genitals and other sex differences.
I think your fare is just entirely incompatible with the philosophy of the members here.
I suggest going to some queer forum if you want to use words like heteronormativity and queer theory, and still want to be taken seriously.
siftingmaterials
Jedi
I appreciate the focus on this - it feels very intuitive to say we can't pick and choose what does or doesn't honour the past. I wasn't so hyper-focused on this point, but I think it's a really important piece of the puzzle and highlights the necessity for a gray zone in historical analysis where we, maybe, honour OURSELVES by not presuming an authority or special virtuous access to the distant past.
siftingmaterials
Jedi
Respectfully, I don't strictly use these terms in the prejorative sense and you can assume what you want about that. I leave you to it. I'd get the same response that you just gave me if I was posting in a queer-dominated forum. I'm not a conformist thinker, though it might seem that way to you.
siftingmaterials
Jedi
alright folks, sorry for all this, didn't mean it to be a big derailment lasting any longer than it has - others can have the final word or just move on, i'll return to bleachers :)
