Is this not relevant?

In response to a comment by mcbirdie on her post Is this not offensive?, I offered a comment, OOP replied, and I responded.  This is a further response, via OOP's reply to said responsive comment.

THE ORIGINAL TOPIC

Why is it such a struggle to consider the topic of whether or not this advertisement is in fact sexist to a degree which is offensive and then whether or not it is acceptable that we still advertise in this fashion? It just seems like so many people need to take it to the direction of the oppression of men, the proper definition of feminism, and a dozen other unrelated issues. Is is that the question is too difficult or so simplistic that the answer seems obvious?

Okay, first let me address your concern about the original topic. I have yet to comment on that, as I have not decided for myself where exactly I stand on the issue. Do I find the advert sophomoric and objectifying, yes. Am I offended by the same advert? I'm not sure that that is the emotional quality of my experience, and I haven't yet come to a place of understanding as to why.

My interjection was merely to offer an alternative to dismissing the argument of one standing against feminism as an unrelated distraction, by showing that they, in fact, are using the very historical, political, and methodological arguments they seek to debunk to make their case against feminism and/or women's concerns about objectification. That parental leave or the seriousness of rape are contemporary gender-discrimination issues (the gender of the individuals effected notwithstanding) is the very reason that those of us identifying as feminist continue to make such noise about these issues, and justifiably so.

Insofar as people seek to justify their acceptance of something that is undesirable on the grounds that they or their gender category have to accept things undesirable happening to them, this is a related issue. Connecting with the universality of oppression (whether gender oppression or any other form) gets everyone on the same page. From there, we can choose to be apologists (people get a raw deal, deal with it) or meliorativists (people get a raw deal, do something about it).

The problem is, when anti-feminists take the apologist stance, they don't do it from a place of connection, but from a place of competition. They're reading feminism as a zero-sum us-vs-them game. It isn't. We can turn their arguments around and show how they're operating ultimately from the same needs for a fair and just society as we are, or we can dismiss their arguments as a distraction, and thus play the very same zero-sum us-vs-them game.

THINKING ABOUT EQUALITY

I feel like this is the sort of thing that people start saying when they've spent so much time thinking about the theory of equality that they forget that equality does not mean the same. I mean, by your token, why don't we just schedule all new fathers in for a bit of surgery when their partners are in labour? I'm sure with a bit of creativity the medical profession can come up with a way to make the pain equivalent.

So here we get to the question of "the proper definition of feminism". I suggest that there is no such thing. The feminists I speak with readily speak of feminisms, not simply feminism as a singularly defined term. There is no proper definition, but there are definitions.

Failing to acknowledge this plays into the hands of those who will not willingly recognize objectification when it is staring them in the face, because to do so would be to concede to feminism as they insist it be defined, as if there were no other definitions out there.

When we do acknowledge which feminism we are speaking from, our logic is clearer, and we have the opportunity to show that not all feminisms are the feminism that some would rail against. If not debunking a straw man, we can at least avoid fishing for red herring.

My own feminism is not a feminism of equality. Yet I can and do use the tools of a feminism of equality because those tools are useful and effective. I also use the tools of other feminisms.

INTERESTS OF SOCIETY

For instance, you seek to undermine my argument by suggesting satirically that men should have a medical procedure following the birth of their child so as to have equal bodily suffering. Here I would draw on the feminism of embodiment.

Equality does not mean the same. I agree. Here's the thing, child birth and child bonding are not the same. Child birth does not equal child bonding. Rechal, meanwhile, introduced a point about nursing. Nursing does not equal bonding, either. They are all related, but they are not the same.

Here we have three interests of society. First, the interest in childbirth. Second, the interest in nursing. Third, the interest in parent-child bonding.

The first interest is perhaps the most significant: no children born eventually means no society. The second interest concerns the lifetime health of those children: so long as we believe (as I do) that human milk is superior to other alternatives in maximizing the health and disease resistance of newborns. The third interest regards the behavioral health (what used to be psychological health) and lifetime societal contribution of children: we all benefit from children forming secure attachments and long-term healthy relationships with their parents.

To this, I would add a fourth societal interest (the relevance of which will become apparent below), the interest in employers benefiting from the knowledge, skills, and abilities of their employees.

Now, historically the first three interests have been bundled under the concept of "maternity leave", while the last two, I would suggest, are caught up in the fraught concept of "paternity leave". This bundling confounds distinct interests of society, and conflates bodily sex with cultural gender. This bundling is less and less defensible in an era of same-sex marriage, surrogacy, breast pumps, and yes, even paternity leave. Heck, it was problematic even when the only recognized non-traditional family arrangement was that of adoption.

Let's take gender out of this. Imagine we have a pair of parents. (We'll limit our consideration to two-parent families.) These could be a man and a woman, two women, two men, a transexual in transition and an androgene: it doesn't matter for my argument here. Actually, what matters is that the gendered "one man, one woman" model is not definitive of "a pair of parents".

THE INTEREST IN CHILDBIRTH

Our first interest concerns the delivery of a child into the world, and by extension, the nine months of pregnancy leading to this. Female-bodied persons willing to undergo the physical effects of pregnancy and child-birth are arguably necessary to society, at least until a societally-acceptable technology enables us to gestate and bring to term human life by other means. This interest is reflected in the historical understanding of maternity leave as a time for the mother to recover from both pregnancy and giving birth.

(Before that, termination of employement due to pregnancy and/or childbirth arguably even more tightly bundled the interests of childbirth, nursing, and bonding than they are now. We have inherited this bundling of motherhood as all of a piece from the patriarchal injustice that preceded it.)

However, what if the birth-mother is not either of our pair of parents? What if our couple, for whatever reason, chooses to have a third party carry and deliver their child? In this case, the benefits society grants for recovery from childbirth are by right those of the birth-mother, not either of our pair of parents. As it is the birth-mother who underwent the physical labor of pregnancy and delivery in which society has an interest.

This in no way detracts from society's other interests. Society still has an interest in nursing and in bonding, and while the birth mother might contribute initially to the former, it is our pair of parents who engage exclusively in the latter.

This is why I argue that maternal medical leave should be held distinct from parental leave, and should be based on the health consequences of individual pregnancies. Now, I would note here that any attempt to negotiate concerns of both health and employment is fraught with problems. Anyone who has any experience with a workers compensation board knows that one's right to fair treatment is often hard won, if won at all.

Nonetheless, even baring any improvement in such systems, a regime that grants medical leave apart from parental leave would be preferable to a regime that requires that female-bodied persons who are both bonding with their new child and recovering from the birth of that child to balance both these interests within the same time frame as a co-parent who had no such physical trauma. Birth and bonding are not equal, and should not be treated as if they were.

THE INTEREST IN NURSING

Let's consider again the case of a pair of parents who choose to have a surrogate carry and deliver their child. Now, imagine that one of our pair of parents is female-bodied (without considering the body of the other parent), and chooses to voluntarily undergo a procedure to induce lactation, so that they can nurse the child upon delivery by the birth-mother.

This nurse-mother would not benefit from maternal medical leave, as it was not their body that carried and delivered the child. However, this does nothing to negate the physical sacrifice they are making to nurse the child after the birth.

Again, this has historically been bundled together with childbirth and bonding under the concept of "maternity leave". Again however, as birth is not bonding, so too nursing is not birth. That one typically follows the other does not mean society's interest in both need necessarily be treated as equal. Children can and are raised without a nurse-mother. Society has an interest in this happening less often than more often, but that interest is separate from the interest in childbirth.

Thus, in our scenario above, the nurse-mother who does not actually give birth would still be undergoing physical strain for which some measure of benefit should be available. Unlike maternal medical leave, however, here I would not argue for a health test to determine term of benefits. Nursing is too intimate and personal, in my humble opinion, to be treated like recovery from a C-section, and unlike such an obvious trauma, the effects of nursing on the mother's body are far more nuanced than would merit, again in my opinion, micromanagement of leave accounting.

Here, instead, I would argue for a graduated term-based benefit scheme. Say society values its interest in nursing during the first three months of life as worth 26 days of nursing leave, which works out to about 2 days per week during the first three months. The same society might value the next three months of nursing at only 20 days, or about 1.5 days per week. Again, as we're not bundling the interests here, such nursing leave would be independent of either maternal medical leave or parental leave.

ALLOPARENTS AND WORKING MOMS

Another scenario can help to explore this. Imagine one of our pair of parents is the birth mother, but there is a medical reason that she cannot nurse her child. Perhaps she is diagnosed with cancer in her third trimester, and while the baby is safely delivered, her doctor advises that she start chemotherapy immediately to maximize her own chances of survival. Chemo would make her milk unsafe for the child, and so nursing is not an option for her.

However, a relative is willing to voluntarily undergo the same procedure as our first nurse-mother, above, inducing lactation so that they can nurse the child on the birth-mother's behalf. Let's bracket for the moment the slippery slope that this portends toward commodification of bodies, and assume that we're looking at a society that deems surrogate nursing to be no more objectionable than surrogate pregnancy. Here, the nurse-mother, who was not the birth-mother, nonetheless is making a physical investment that, in society's own interest, should be recognized in terms of nursing leave, irrespective of who benefits from maternal medical and/or parental leave.

Now, let's imagine a society that does not want people other than the parent of a child inducing lactation. The birth-mother is still in chemo, but now no one is nursing the child, instead the parents are giving the newborn formula or some other substitute from the outset. Well, now there is no physical strain put on any individual body to nurse the child (the physical strain of chemo is a separate issue), and so no nursing benefit would be available, but this doesn't take anything away from maternal medical and parental leave (and any other medical leave due with respect to the cancer treatment), as these things are not equal.

One last example to fully explore this model. Let's imagine, again, one of our pair of parents is birth mother, and following maternal medical leave, she chooses to return to work, her partner taking the first round of parental leave. The birth mother, however, takes a breast pump to the workplace, so that the child will continue to receive at least some of the benefits of nursing. The fact that the nurse-mother is working does not mean that there isn't still a physical consequence of continued lactation for her body. If society values nursing over substitutes, then the benefit of nursing leave would accrue whether or not the nurse-mother returns to work.

Perhaps she takes one day off a week to rest and recuperate, perhaps she banks all the time for her period of parental leave. However it is worked out, the nurse-mother would recieve benefit irrespective of benefits received for recovery from childbirth or caring for their newborn.

Indeed, even if the nurse-mother only returns to work after exhausing all maternal medical and parental leave, if society values their continuing to provide their own milk to their child, then a nursing benefit would still continue to accrue for however long said society was willing to incentivise continued lactation.

THE INTEREST IN BONDING

The more recently historical movement toward paternity leave speaks to the importance of parental bonding, irrespective of whose body or bodies are involved in birth and nursing. A male-bodied parent neither gives birth nor lactates, but they still form an attachment with their child that impacts upon that child's subsequent development and maturation. Birth and bonding are not equal. Nursing and bonding are likewise not the same. That we historically have bundled all three does not mean that we must continue to do so. Thus, while a male-bodied parent deserves neither the benefits of maternal medical leave or nursing leave, society still has an interest in their having the benefit of parental leave.

Here society's interest in parental leave for both parents is equal, irrespective of the body of either parent. Both members of a pair of same-sex parents should derive the same benefit, regardless of their body sex, as both members of a different-sex parental pair. Society's interest here is in bonding (and coincidently, infant care), not in the bodily sex of the parents doing the bonding.

Regimes that bundle the first three interests come in two forms, so far as I'm aware. In one form, maternity leave and paternity leave are treated as fixed blocks of time irrespective of medical necessity. A mother (perhaps even if not the birth-mother) of a new infant gets a fixed period of maternity leave, irrespective of whether she had an easy pregnancy or nearly died due to complications. A father gets a fixed period, often much shorter, irrespective of the needs his family may have for additional care due to the physical trauma of a difficult pregnancy.

In the other form, citied to by the OOP in the case of Finland, the parents together share a single block of time, so far as I understand sequentially (although were it to be concurrent, it would still be problematic), and without regard to complications in pregnancy and/or delivery or the extra physical stress of nursing if one partner can and does do so. Here, it as if rather than unbundle bonding from childbirth and nursing, the attempt instead has been to bundle both parents into a single body, one of which is always at their desk, further confounding distinct societal interests.

Here we don't even need to look to such historically new issues as surrogacy or same-sex parenthood. Consider the case of adoption. Perhaps more than any other scenario, society has an interest in the formation of a healthy bond between an adopted child and their adopted parents.

Let's assume the adopted child is already old enough to have been weaned. Neither parent undergoes the stresses of childbirth to bring this child into the world. Neither parent will naturally or artificially lactate to nurse this child. Yet they both need time to bond with this child. This is true whether they are a traditional partnership representing two genders or a same-sex partnership. Society doesn't benefit only from the mother bonding with her child, but from both parents doing so, even if neither is a "mother".

The parental leave that would be due under these circumstances has nothing to do with recovery from childbirth or with the physical stresses of nursing. Bundling these interests only means that a nursing birth-mother with a C-section scar plus internal scars due to near fatal hemorrhaging and an adoptive mother who only feeds their adopted child Gerber products would derive the same maternity leave benefit (or, in the alternative only the former would, the latter deriving no benefit), even though they are not the same. Their partners, meanwhile, would most likely derive a different, shorter benefit, if any at all. Even though society's interest in their having a strong bond with their child is the same.

THE INTEREST IN KSAs

Knowledge, skills, and abilities: the stuff you seek to represent on your resume. Society has an interest in these. When an employer hires you, the expect to derive benefit from your KSAs, and insofar as they do derive such a benefit, society benefits from the economic productivity that results.

In the case of maternity leave, historically, the contention has been one of how to value the interest in KSAs against the value in the bundle of childbirth, nursing, and bonding. Paternity leave, more historically recent, has only weighed the value of KSAs against the value of bonding (and coincident care). The result is that even in societies where there is a system of maternity leave, there is little or no system of paternity leave.

Say we have a policy of three months of maternity leave and three weeks of paternity leave. If we were to weigh the bundled interests irrespective of gender, this would indicate that childbirth and nursing, together, were valued as worth 10 weeks of leave, without regard to trauma undergone during childbirth or stresses endured during nursing, and without regard to whether the bonding-mother was birth-mother or is nurse-mother. The mother is deemed woman, and thus gets a block of time without regard for her individual circumstances.

Meanwhile, we have bonding leave valued at three weeks. Perhaps that's what bonding of each parent with the child is worth in this society (although it seems insufficient to me). Which would be fine, if is were not confounded with medical conditions and nursing stressors. When it is, we have unequal situations where a life-threatening pregnancy and an atypically easy pregnancy are both valued as the same, even though the reality is that the latter birth-mother is in much better physical condition to bond with and care for their newborn than the former birth-mother, and so gets far more bonding benefit from bundled maternity leave than either the difficult pregancy birth-mother or the partners of either birth-mother.

By unbundling these interests, we can still have a block of time, extended within reason to allow for recovery from physical (or even mental/post-partum) trauma. This does not require a medical intervention to have fathers undergo equivalent physical trauma, as OOP opined, as the interest in childbirth is distinct from the interest in parental bonding. Intentionally traumatizing the partner's body in no way serves society's interest in childbirth.

UNBUNDLED BENEFITS OVER TIME

However, the other unbundled benefit schemes would not require a block of time. The nursing leave benefit, as already noted, might be taken piecemeal over the course of many weeks, during which time the nurse-mother's employer benefits to a large extent from the nurse-mother's KSAs, where they would not if the nurse-mother were staying home during an undifferentiated bundled block of time, while the nurse-mother still has an opportunity to recuperate from the stresses of nursing, even if indirect nursing via some technology. Here, societies interests in nursing and in KSAs (including maintenance and continued development of the human capital represented by those KSAs) are both served.

(I don't know that there are not already parental leave schemes that allow for such flex-time or partial-return-to-work arrangements. My understanding of the cases I know of is that it is typically a one-size-fits-all model where the birth-mother stays home for a fixed block of time, and then that time expired, returns to work full time.)

Likewise, if both parents received parental leave benefits, distinct from maternal medical leave and nursing leave, these benefits would not need to be treated as an undifferentiated block. Rather than one parent taking off for three weeks of parental leave and then the other parent doing the same, one could imagine a non-birth parent taking their parental leave concurrently with a birth-mother's maternal medical leave, giving both the birth-mother and the child the care they need when they most need it. This needn't even be done all at one time. Fifteen days of paternal leave might be spread over one or more months, again allowing the non-birth-parent to relieve some of the strain on their partner during their recovery while still delivering benefits to their employer.

Again, this has nothing to do with the gender of either parent. A pair of female-bodied parents would derive the same unbundled parental leave benefits irrespective if either was birth-mother, nurse-mother, both or neither.

Of course, there would be an opportunity for coercion on the part of the employer to have the employee-parent conform to a leave schedule that suited the employer more than the employee-parent. No system is perfect, but unbundling the various societal interests in the very least ameliorates the all-or-nothing return to work as if somehow after x months there is no further societal interest in parental bonding (and care) except if one parent can afford to give up a continued relationship with their employer.

Another variation on this would be a staggered work arrangement, where both parents reach agreements with their employers to work a two or three days a week during the term of their respective parental leaves, such that both parents have time to bond with and care for their child even as both parents' employers benefit from the KSAs of their employees.

As with the nurse-mother benefit discussed above, the employees likewise derive benefit from being able to stagger work and bonding, as they are able to keep their KSAs relatively current and carry projects important to their careers through to completion even as they are both being allowed time to bond with their new child.

SUMMING UP

As I've stated at the outset, I have not come to a definite conclusion as to how I feel about the advert mcbirdie offers for comment. Nonetheless, I believe that when the argument turns to how men get a raw deal, on account of being men, this is entirely related to the advert. This argument seeks to dismiss gender-discrimination by citing to other cases of gender-discrimination, and those of us who identify as feminists dismiss such an argument at our peril.

Likewise, it is important to be clear about which definition of feminism we're working from, especially when our interlocutors would dismiss our arguments about gender-discrimination by attacking feminism as they would unilaterally define it. When someone claims that you have no basis to be offended by something that is gender-discriminatory, and they wrap this claim in an attack on an idea of what feminism is or one gender's concerns are, it is useful to discern how their definition and our own may differ, so as to avoid talking past one another. This is Lakoff's argument about fairness.

Finally, my argument about unbundled leave comes from an understanding that equal does not mean the same, which is why I prefer to make arguments from within a framework of embodiment. Different bodies, individual bodies, have different capacities and suffer different hardships. A two-sizes fit two-genders model that assumes all mothers have the same bodily experiences does a disservice to mothers and to women, at the same time as it creates at least the appearance of gender-inequality.

Unbundling the interests of society and structuring benefits to reflect the bodily realities of individuals with respect to each interest, while entailing a more complex regime, would both better serve society's interests and obviate arguments about men getting inequal treatment with regard to parental leave.

The advert that spawned this discussion does not exist in a vacuum, but rather in a complex society with many such adverts and many other gender-discriminatory practices besides. An attempt to discuss the advert in a vacuum does not serve anyone's interests, except those who would seek to debunk our concerns about one little ol' advert as insignificant. A discussion that recognizes how the advert is embedded in broader and deeper biopolitical regimes of regulating bodies may seem to be a distraction, but it is anything but.

Not your mom's common sense, or yours

Okay, finally, I get to Groucho. Mind you, he still has a tantalizing good question on another thread, but I'll get to that in due course. For now, let's address what he had to say more recently on my original feminism thread.

Here's the relevant portion of my comment, as quoted by Groucho:

Inhabiting a body with features that enable one to perform certain biological functions says nothing about that body's ability to assist another body in the performance of such biological functions held in common. Having a body that is adept at circulating blood throughout the organs and tissues of that body says nothing about the knowledge, skills, or abilities that body might bring to the task of vascular surgery upon a second body, or even CPR. Common, sense isn't.

To which Groucho's response began:

W/ respect, that's a terrible analogy. A body doesn't "assist" another body - a person does.

WHOSE BODY IS IT?

Yes, very true. A person, however, inhabits a body. I use this language to get away from the nonsense about "mind" that dominates the humanities. Cartesian dualism is a trap best left for others. (Some may think I'm just replacing mind with person but talking about the same object. We can discuss that if anyone is interested.)

I raise the issue of body here, further, because you introduce the capabilities of the bodyinhabited by a person (without using the words "body" or "person", those are my terms to achieve clarity in our analysis) as somehow qualifying them for a particular career related to the capabilities of someone else's body.

FIREFIGHTERS, DOULAS, AND AGGREGATES, OH MY!

I want to be clear about just which body we're talking about. If we're going to make biological arguments (and the citing to the capability of giving birth is a biological argument), then let's be clear about the relationship between individual persons and individual bodies. (Of course, even if you didn't choose to make a biological argument, I'd still find a way to bring it round to biology. This really confuses my peers in the humanities.)

A firefighter has to have a certain amount of strength because their job involves lifting and carrying heavy, often unwieldy, objects. This is about how the capabilities of the body of the person having a career of firefighter relates to the tasks of the career of firefighter.

A doula, on the other hand, does not have to have to have a body that has the ability to give birth. This capability or noncapability of their body does not bear on the tasks of the career of doula. It is not they who perform the task of giving birth as part of their job.

So, to recap. Firefighters need to inhabit bodies capable of lifting heavy objects, because that is a career in which firefighters inhabiting such bodies do indeed lift heavy objects. Doulas do not need to inhabit bodies capable of giving birth, because that is not a career in which doulas inhabiting such bodies do indeed give birth.

Thus, your belief (and you do identify it as what you believe) that women (in aggregate, or otherwise) make better doulas because they are capable of giving birth does not stand logical inspection. You may believe it, but that's all it is, a belief.

PERSONS VS. AGGREGATES

Picking up where we left off:

The question of firefighter vs doula pay is a separate question, and clearly a cultural matter. But the idea that in the aggregate women are better suited to doing that work seems commonsensical to me,

Yes, you've said both those things before. To which I responded, first, women in the aggregate aren't better suited to do anything, because women the category (whether the category carries with it through an attempt at syllogism the additional term of in the aggregate or not) is not a person. Only individual persons are better or worse suited to do any particular thing.

(Further, any given particular person who happens to be woman is not better suited to doing the work of a doula, for the reasons I've just outlined, not simply on account of being of the category woman. Any given individual, irrespective of gender, might be better qualified to be a doula, but that is because of the knowledge, skills, and abilities they bring to the actual tasks of the job, not the capabilities their own body may or may not have that they will not be called on to exercise in their performance of the job.)

And, second, common, sense isn't. That it seems commonsensical to you tells us what you see as commonsensical, not what is actually discernible from any logical argument. It's common sense isn't a logical argument, it's an appeal to the wisdom of custom.

Interestingly, my date last night has several times raised the importance of "the idea", citing to Mao of all people. That's coming from someone in the humanities. Guess what, I think ideas are interesting phenomena, but not as powerful as people often make them out to be, which brings us to the question of "common sense".

HOW TERRIBLY COMMON

Look, I love Thomas Paine. Really, I do. But he really could have chosen a better metaphor from which to hang his arguments.

I can cite all sorts of examples of what was common sense once and isn't common sense now, or what is common sense in a foreign country today but isn't common sense here in our land. I won't because that would just be a distraction. Common sense is merely what we believe reasonable people to believe.

Worse, common sense has a way, if we follow it's reasoning to a logical conclusion, to some truly horrific places. Anyone familiar with Jonathan Swift has an understanding of this.

Moreover, insofar as common sense might happen to be common, then it runs the risk of being common in the same sense as we might speak of something being second-rate. I don't mean that you intend it that way, but that is a meaning of common.

We, of course, could rescue this and say that common sense is the sense of the commons, the sense of the public at large, sense as known by a community, as shared in common with other individuals, as familiar, and best known and most frequently seen.

However, this again exposes the logical fallacy of argumentum ad antiquitatem. That this is the way a public or a community commonly see the question, that this is sense that is familiar or most frequently seen, tells us nothing more than that this is the way a public or a community commonly see a question, that this is a sense that is familiar or most frequently seen. To draw from that an assertion that this sense is therefore reflective of truth is to engage in false induction.

A QUASI-RELIGION IN COMMON

Continuing with your comments:

and the kind of common sense that gets washed away by quasi-religious proclamations

The whole project of the Enlightenment was one of washing away quasi-religious proclamations, in particular, the then quasi-religious proclamations of what was then contemporary common sense (the term used at the time was "superstition"). It's actually a game of cleaning house that was engaged in by the established church for many centuries before that. Washing away the quasi-religious proclamations of those we disagree with is a tried and true practice.

Now, I take issue with much of the Enlightenment project, yet it nonetheless seems to me that to profess that "I believe" and "it's commonsensical" sounds like taking a quali-religious position. Of course, I have no problem with taking a quasi-religious position, and do not take that as an accusation I need to defend myself against, I am quite confident that I have done so, but I don't see it as only happening where I'm standing. Nor would I expect it to be.

You acknowledge them as beliefs, and yet still hold them as true. Plenty of religious folk who would make the same move. "I believe in a God that..." "Well, sorry honey, but there is no God." "I don't care what you say, I believe in God, so there!"

It's true because I believe it to be true and it is commonly held to be true by the community that I identify with (not your community of quasi-religious practictioners, my community of people who know common sense when they, ehm, sense it): well, that's just an appeal to beliefs held in common, which is really just what any community, religious, quasi-religious, or non-religious, tends to do. Thus, I expect nothing else.

SPEAKING OF COMMON SENSE

It is certainly what is done in the humanities. I had a conversation on my date last night where I cited to biological studies, and her very quick reply, cutting me off mid-sentence, was that all those studies have been discredited because... No, I responded, cutting her off, they haven't been discredited; they've been dismissed.

See, this is the common sense held, in common, by people in the humanities. To talk about biology is regressive thinking, it harkens back to social Darwinism and measuring people's skulls to identify racial characteristics. It's the sort of things Nazi's do, not people who think for themselves. (Yay for Godwin's law!)

Whenever you see a study that claims to have found a biological difference between people, you don't even need to read it, you already know it was so-called "research" done by someone who refuses to accept the common sense notion that biology is strictly a cultural construction. It's sad really, because we keep telling them they're wrong, but they won't listen.

No matter, they've been discredited, so don't waste your time reading what they have to say. (That it has been discredited also being common sense.) It's sociobiology, or evolutionary psychology, or something equally commonsensically regressive, and we should give it no further consideration. (See "Yet Another Aside On Relating to Categories", in another long-winded post of mine for more on this.)

This is common sense in the humanities. Few question it, because it is how the liberal public (the only public that matters--the rest of you aren't the *real* public, no way) and academic community commonly sees the question, it is the sense that is familiar and most frequently seen by those who hold it to be common sense.

It is also argumentum ad antiquitatem, that is, false induction.

THINKING DOESN'T MAKE IT SO

that nature has no shape and is only shaped by cultural tropes. Again, thinking doesn't make it so; far more likely that nature exerts some shaping force, and then culture is a (heavy) overlay.

Again, I'm leaving the territory of nature alone, because I don't find that to be a useful argument from either side, although I'm open to discussing it, if there's any evidence that we've made progress in better understanding one another on some of the points already on the table. I have the argument often enough with people in the humanities who try to dismiss what I'm saying as regressive notions about the reality of nature.

You've very much correct. Thinking doesn't make it so. I agree wholeheartedly. Thinking that women in the aggregate are better suited to be doulas doesn't make it so either. I don't care if everyone on the planet but me thinks that, it still doesn't make it so. It just makes it common sense, which is not anything more or less than a sense that is all too common.

Likewise, I agree with you that there are shaping forces that determine the structures of culture. Harpy has raised the issue of institutional structures, which I intend to address in more depth on that thread, but in short (as I said on my date last night, in fact), I don't give truck to the top-down arguments that culture makes people. People make people. Persons inhabiting bodies. And people make culture. Again, persons inhabiting bodies.

I'm very much interested in structures. My interest is in the embodied structures that open onto the possibilities of institutional structures. This is why I look so very carefully at how arguments are put together, at how logic is or is not employed. Because I'm trying to get a deeper understanding of how distinctly opposed ideological stances can take hold, in bodies that otherwise have an awful lot in common. Common senses (in the plural) are fascinating to me, because they are only possible in bodies that with features that grant the capacity to hold a sense in common with other bodies.

CITING AGAIN TO REN'S FAV COMMENT

Crow made a terrific point i/t/r: "Even before they were exposed to too great an amount of societal pressure it was obvious that the girls *liked* pink and playing with dolls whereas my boy's favourite activities are running around and shouting." No one responded to that point - b/c there is no response.

Actually, I did respond to the comment by Ineke that I believe may have prompted Crow's comment. Ineke commented:

Boys still get engineering toys, girls get humanity toys. Boys are still taught to be competitive, girls are taught to be kind.

To which I replied:

Ineke, this is where Groucho gets up in arms about the whole "strictly cultural" claim that many in the humanities put forward, marshaling just these sorts of examples.

Yes, boys and girls are given differently culturally sanctioned toys, and are encouraged to behave in certain culturally expected ways, but like everything else, it's more complex than that. For children exhibit choice in how to play with the toys that they have, and that choice isn't necessarily informed by the attitudes of modern doctorates in area studies, but rather derives from much more ancient capacities.

"Young Female Chimps Cradle Stick-Toys like Doll", reports Scientific American. What are we to make of this?

* * *

You are welcome to read the rest of my response. As I note, I am proud to have receivedRenaissgrl's seal of approval on that one. I think you will see that I do take into account the sentiment that Crow's comment touches upon, even if I did address him or his words directly.

Yes, there is a tendency among little boys to behave in certainly culturally expected ways (i.e., the culture aligns with the way individual persons who happen to inhabit male bodies are most likely to behave) and a tendency among little girls to behave in certain culturally expected ways (i.e., the culture aligns with the way individual persons who happen to inhabit female bodies are most likely to behave). We see that in chimpanzees, we see it in humans.

This, however, tells us nothing about how an individual person we have yet to observe is inclined to behave. This is why we are doing a dangerous thing when we try to make an argument about men in the aggregate or women in the aggregate. Induction from statistical probability is a method of reasoning, but not a method of proof. It is only a means of obtaining an educated guess. But that's all it is, a guess. Translating that guess into a belief is to engage in the common sense game.

FUNDAMENTALIST COMMON SENSE

Even a po-mo fundamentalist, to coin a phrase, has to be mute in the face of actual experience - an experience which other (academic) parents have expressed to me.

Trust me, they aren't mute. They're quite vociferous: saying anything they can to avoid actually addressing the empirical evidence, because to do that would be to deny the quasi-religious authority of common sense.

Bottom line: I'm dreadfully sorry if the world doesn't conform to your presuppositions. What's the joke? "An intellectual is someone who worries that what works in practice won't work in theory."

That knife cuts both ways. One can be just as unconcerned that what works in theory doesn't work in practice. That's what the "in the aggregate" argument shows, a lack of concern for how the theory that "gender x in the aggregate is better suited for" does not always work in practice, even if it does much of the time.

Close enough isn't good enough. Reducing individual persons to a commonsensical theory about what is true in the statistical aggregate: this is fundamentally bad practice.

ON THE ISSUE OF LEGISLATION

Moving on. I subsequently said the following.

Uh, Groucho, proud libertarian here, but not quite the objectivist that I believe businesses can operate in a legislation-free regime.

To which you replied:

Where did I ever say there shouldn't be legislation?

You didn't. You did seem to be making the argument that legislation was incompatible with business, at least certain types of legislation, which I interpreted (wrongly, it would seem) as an argument that anyone in favor of legislation was anti-business.

Contract law is part of what makes markets work - a huge part. Indeed, China needs more of the right kind of laws, the kind that are based on fairness and transparency rather than state power and government fiat.

Agreed. I would, however, note imbtween's argument (which I have disagreements with) that laws are "inherently punitive" (an assertion he has made at least twice). i.e., by that argument, which has some merit, but also some flaws, laws based on fairness and transparency are no less punitive. Where they effect business, they still interfere with the operations of business. Even a law enforcing fairness is government fiat in the end.

LAW OF CONTRACT

Now, you specifically speak of "contract law" above. Here's the thing. Employment law is contract law. To hire someone and be hired by someone is to have a contractual agreement, even if nothing is put on paper.

A large part of contract law, meanwhile, is about spelling out contractual terms that are assumed unless the contracting parties choose to stipulate otherwise. This is done both to reduce paperwork (why spell out the same terms in a million contracts if they can be spelled out once in an act of legislation) and to protect contracting parties from unfair practices, where a dispute turns into a game of "but that wasn't in the contract, so I'm not bound by it".

Legislation specifying that employers may not discriminate in setting wages then, as an example, is essentially specifying default terms to employment contracts. Undersigned employer agrees that they will not pay undersigned employee less than other employees performing the same tasks and having the same level of seniority, without respect to their gender, or some such.

Now, the difference here is that neither employers nor employees have the option to put terms in their contract that authorize the employer to discriminate, on the basis of gender, in the payment of wages. I said above that contract law specified assumed terms of contract unless the parties choose to contract according to other terms. Here, however, we have a law that is prohibitory. It doesn't allow the default terms to be modified.

Well, we can have a discussion about that. I'm sure if I thought about it I could come up with examples of prohibitory laws that nonetheless are commonsensically designed to enforce fairness and transparency. I'm not going to just now, however, but if you want we can explore that issue further.

ONCE AGAIN, ON THE MATTER OF FAIRNESS

On the point of fairness, please see the Lakoff quote at the end of my last post. The entire argument you were having with Slowbie, so far as I understood it, was an argument about what is fair.

If we look at the ten types of fairness Lakoff outlines, I'd predict that you would identify some of those types of fairness as more directly related to your argument against certain types of legislation, and Slowbie would identify others on the same list as more directly relevant to her argument in favor of the same legislation. Were you both to identify the same types of fairness in common, I suspect that the analysis Lakoff engages in, showing how the metrics we use to employ any particular type of fairness can differ wildly, would hold true for the two of you, also.

In other words, Slowbie as I understood it, was arguing that the United States needed more of the right kind of laws, the kind that are based on fairness and transparency. Meanwhile, you were arguing, about the same laws, that they are the wrong kind of laws, because they are unfair (whatever you might say about whether they are transparent or not) to businesses. That's what I understood of the argument, anyway.

EVERYONE ELSE IS DOING IT

I just get fucking pissed off when people ignore the positive re BOTH the private and public sectors. "Hey, I don't have to point out the virtues of [the sector I want to disparage] b/c everyone else is doing it."

Yes, some people do have a bug up their butt about groups they don't look favorably upon. I'm waiting for you to point out the virtues of those in the humanities who you seem to disparage so. :/

This isn't to justify the unwillingness of those who have a grudge against some group of people or other to ignore things that are of meaning and value to others. It is only to note that we all do it. I hear that you get fucking pissed when you hear it done to sectors you value. I'm guessing that Slowbie gets fucking pissed when she hears it done to sectors, or groups, or ideological camps, that she values.

Everyone is doing it. We're all hearing what we don't like about what the other side is saying, and that makes it very hard for us to actually have a meaningful conversation with them. It's so much easier to dismiss the other person's commonsensical (to them) beliefs in favor of our own commonsensical (to us) beliefs.

The sooner we stop relying on common sense, and start actually trying to make sense of what the other person might be pissed off about (rather than telling them what we believe they're pissed off about), the sooner we can have more meaningful discussions. That's my belief, anyway. I don't always do what I proscribe here well, but that's what I aim to do as much as possible.

A WORD ABOUT RELATIVISM

I hear the charge of relativism being readied as I type. I'll save you (if not Groucho, then someone) the trouble. Relativism is a position, as I understand it, that says no one's truth is really true, because everyone else have different truths, which are all equally true, and thus also not really true. That's not what I'm saying here.

The problem I have with relativism, is that it's the last defense of hypocrites. It's all relative, which is why my truth is the only truth that matters. Or, it's all relative, which is why we have no authority to take action when we see something as unfair or immoral. Yeah, okay, go meditate over there for a while. See if you can do it until you die of dehydration. I'll just be over here, trying to understand other people's truths and seeking to intervene where I relativistically believe it's necessary.

What I am saying is that the stories we tell about what is common sense divert our attention from truth, rather than point to it. There is truth, not in the materialist sense of something one can find or reveal or unearth, but in the libidinal, even essentialist, sense of there being something that organizes the world we live in into coherent, meaningful experiences.

I just don't believe that truth is related to through stories, or judgments, or diagnoses, or sense, common or otherwise. That's like trying to relate to gravity through the planets. We have a relationship to gravity, so do the planets, but we don't experience our relationship to gravity through the planets, we experience our relationship to gravity through gravity. We certainly have a relationship to the planets, a relationship mediated by our relationship with gravity (as our relationships to all objects of any mass are mediated by gravity), but it's a different relationship from our relationship with gravity as gravity.

So, I profess, it is with our relationship to truth. It isn't to be found in common sense. It isn't even going to be found in logic. It is found in the embodied structures that mediate our relationships to both common sense and to logic.

TOO FUCKING MUCH

Is it too fucking much to ask that people should modulate their POV to reflect, uh, the way things actually are, and in this case specifically our dependence on both spheres? I don't think so.

Is it too fucking much to ask people to modulate their point-of-view to reflect, uh, the way we believe things actually are? No, it is not too fucking much to ask that.

Is it too fucking much to expect people to modulate their point-of-view to reflect, uh, the way we believe things actually are? Yes, I think it is. That won't stop me from asking, though. I try very hard to modulate my own expectations on that front.

Is it too fucking much to tell people they should modulate their point-of-view? Yes, I believe it is. You have a choice to ask someone to do something, you can make a request, and they can make a choice to honor that request or not. You likewise have a choice as to whether you modulate your expectations as to their honoring your request or not.

You even have a choice of declaring that someone "should" do something you are wanting them to do. You can certainly make that demand, if you so choose. I, however, believe that is too fucking much. Just sayin.

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