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Male archetypes in fairy tales

sharonblackie.substack.com

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Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales

#21

Post by DarkNova6 »

blueflow wrote: post #15
DarkNova6 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could it be a construct of our modern times if their themes are consistent throughout history of humankind? Delving into mythology and legends which explore the nature of our kind, the description of male and female is fairly consistent. You might as well say "everything is subjective, there is no truth".

That something is widely popular for millenia does not prove its truthfulness. Mythology and legends are still fiction. > You might as well say "everything is subjective, there is no truth". Strawman. I'm criticising this specific kind of thing as fiction, not everything in general.

Fictional on a surface level. A depiction of fundamental human archetypes if you see beyond it.

And it can't be a strawman as I misrepresented nobody.

Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales

#22

Post by DarkNova6 »

rsynnott wrote: post #17
DarkNova6 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could it be a construct of our modern times if their themes are consistent throughout history of humankind? Delving into mythology and legends which explore the nature of our kind, the description of male and female is fairly consistent. You might as well say "everything is subjective, there is no truth".

Depends what you mean by consistent. You don't have to go back too far before things get, well, different enough that they can be confusing to the modern observer. Obvious example: early 19th century dandies. These tend to get read today as kind of effeminate, unmasculine, because that's kind of the _modern_ view of a man who's obsessed with fashion, grooming, etc (or, at least, it was the late 20th century view; thi…

To be fair I should have been more precise. I was implicitly referring to myths, legends and epics which are way older than just 2 or 3 hundred years.

Particularly the Epic of Gilgamesh is a fascinating view into a society that could not be further away from modern times and yet is perfectly recognizable. Perhaps it is when humanity is the most stripped down and naked that fundamental motives become most clear.

Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales

#23

Post by roenxi »

david-gpu wrote: post #14
bitwize wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What a weird take on things: let's apply neat little discrete labels to every person and pretend that the experiences of each particular combination of labels is so radically different from everybody else's that we can't possibly learn anything from anybody else. This is called "intersectionality", a term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in the late 1980s but some of the key concepts date back to the work of bell hooks…

There is some nuance here. As I understand it, intersectionality simply highlights that the experiences of a collective built from the intersection of several traits can be quite different to the experience of an adjacent collective. E.g. the queer descendants of Asian immigrants may often share experiences that are quite distinct from those of queer black folks. I have no problem with that. My point of contention is…

> Why is it that...

If you go with ye old class analysis, you'll notice the big threat to the status of VHNW is a free and fair free market. They benefit a lot from regulation and handouts to preserve the status quo.

If you look at what plays out in practice, the rational move for the ultra-wealthy is to quietly align with the poor against the middle class. It isn't too blatant, but quietly just make it harder for people to jump up orders of magnitude in wealth.

The intersectionality as pushed in the public debate is probably emanating from people looking to create a divided political climate to make it harder for poor and middle to unite and look for political change. I don't think most people want to institutionalise anti-white racism. Indeed, I suspect a "white's only" association wouldn't disgust many people, on the basis that we can have black or girl-only associations and they are fine. It would still be racist, obviously. But people have

Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales

#24

Post by david-gpu »

junke wrote: post #19
david-gpu wrote: post #5

> I hate it more than I can say when I read books or listen to talks and performances by men who tell and ‘interpret’ women’s stories, and who are kind enough then to suggest to us ways in which our lives as women might be improved. I’ve never wanted to do the same to them What a weird take on things: let's apply neat little discrete labels to every person and pretend that the experiences of each particular combinati…

That's a very malicious way to interpret what the article is talking about in hundreds of words.

I sincerely tried to steel-man her case, but her sexism was so explicit that I could not let it pass. Having your opinion dismissed because of your gender is grating; I think we can all agree on that, at least.

Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales

#25

Post by blueflow »

DarkNova6 wrote: post #21
blueflow wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That something is widely popular for millenia does not prove its truthfulness. Mythology and legends are still fiction. > You might as well say "everything is subjective, there is no truth". Strawman. I'm criticising this specific kind of thing as fiction, not everything in general.

Fictional on a surface level. A depiction of fundamental human archetypes if you see beyond it. And it can't be a strawman as I misrepresented nobody.

If you want to find out what the human archetypes are, you have to measure real people for specific properties and look if there are patterns. Myers & Briggs did that in 1944, their ideas got popular but are not uncontroversial.

"Seeing behind fiction" is a bad excuse, the only thing you will get is your own imagination.

Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales

#26

Post by ctrw »

DarkNova6 wrote: post #22
rsynnott wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends what you mean by consistent. You don't have to go back too far before things get, well, different enough that they can be confusing to the modern observer. Obvious example: early 19th century dandies. These tend to get read today as kind of effeminate, unmasculine, because that's kind of the _modern_ view of a man who's obsessed with fashion, grooming, etc (or, at least, it was the late 20th century view; thi…

To be fair I should have been more precise. I was implicitly referring to myths, legends and epics which are way older than just 2 or 3 hundred years. Particularly the Epic of Gilgamesh is a fascinating view into a society that could not be further away from modern times and yet is perfectly recognizable. Perhaps it is when humanity is the most stripped down and naked that fundamental motives become most clear.

To quote a Canticle for Liebolitz:

To survive the Church's slow sifting of the arts, you have to have a surface that can please a righteous simpleton; and yet you need a depth beneath that surface to please a discerning sage. The sifting is slow, but it gets a turn of the sifter-handle now and then– when some new prelate inspects his episcopal chambers and mutters, "Some of this garbage has got to go." The sifter was usually full of dulcet pap. When the old pap was ground out, fresh pap was added. But what was not ground out was gold, and it lasted. If a church endured five centuries of priestly bad taste, occasional good taste had, by then, usually stripped away most of the transient tripe, had made it a place of majesty that overawed the would-be prettifiers.

Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales

#27

Post by david-gpu »

roenxi wrote: post #23
david-gpu wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is some nuance here. As I understand it, intersectionality simply highlights that the experiences of a collective built from the intersection of several traits can be quite different to the experience of an adjacent collective. E.g. the queer descendants of Asian immigrants may often share experiences that are quite distinct from those of queer black folks. I have no problem with that. My point of contention is…

> Why is it that... If you go with ye old class analysis, you'll notice the big threat to the status of VHNW is a free and fair free market. They benefit a lot from regulation and handouts to preserve the status quo. If you look at what plays out in practice, the rational move for the ultra-wealthy is to quietly align with the poor against the middle class. It isn't too blatant, but quietly just make it harder for pe…

> I suspect a "white's only" association wouldn't disgust many people, on the basis that we can have black or girl-only associations and they are fine. It would still be racist, obviously

Well, it would disgust me. I have so-called mixed-heritage children and I dread the day when I have to explain to them that they can't join this or that activity with their friends because they have the wrong skin color or the wrong gender.

I may be in the minority, but I find associations that exclude people based on any of the protected classes (gender, sexual orientation, etc.) very distasteful. By all means, feel free to organize an event centered around X community, but allow everybody to attend.

Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales

#28

Post by hk__2 »

scotty79 wrote: post #20

Why are people so fixated on gender? We all mostly want the same things, feel the same things and do the same things, both good and bad. Individual variety overwhelms slight difference in averages between the groups. When it comes to anything except children, "I'm a man" is no more meaningful than "I'm a Libra". Objectively meaningless, subjectively can screw you up but only if you believe in zodiac.

> We all mostly want the same things, feel the same things and do the same things, both good and bad

The irony is that it’s clear from this affirmation that you are a man, because any woman knows how false this is. This is the same for pretty much any situation where some group dominates another: the dominants think everything is fine because they don’t experience any discrimination and don’t understand why the dominated complain and are "so fixated on gender" (or race, etc).

Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales

#29

Post by HelloNurse »

blueflow wrote: post #11

Keep in mind that masculinity and femininity are constructed - they only exist because some properties associated with each other. Because of its construction, its an opinion, not a fact. What one considers masculine or feminine is basically arbitrary and random and everyone is free to disagree. An evil spirit could claim that none of the mentioned archetypes is gender-specific at all and they would not be provable w…

Gender is an opinion, but it is a sufficiently coherent opinion across different people and different times that it can be studied and discussed from an almost objective historical and anthropological perspective; the "evil spirit" cannot claim that, for example, typical blacksmiths in stories are not male.

Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales

#30

Post by ajuc »

david-gpu wrote: post #24
junke wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very malicious way to interpret what the article is talking about in hundreds of words.

I sincerely tried to steel-man her case, but her sexism was so explicit that I could not let it pass. Having your opinion dismissed because of your gender is grating; I think we can all agree on that, at least.

I agree with the sentiment, and it's prevalent in modern feminism - to the point of inventing words to deprive half the population the right to speak, but in this article the author is trying to do the exact opposite?
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