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Male archetypes in fairy tales

sharonblackie.substack.com

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Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales

#51

Post by roenxi »

d-z-m wrote: post #43
roenxi wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as you are consistent and are disgusted by all race based organisations equally then cool. But, realistically, there are race based associations. Quite a lot of them. You're going to have to tolerate them - although I agree they are counterproductive. And I don't see why a white-only association would be unusual in the current climate. In the US in particular, whites are well on the way to being just one more…

> And I don't see why a white-only association would be unusual in the current climate. I think it would be very unusual. I'm curious to know why you think otherwise. I also think it would be career and social suicide to be associated with said organization.

Picking on Harvard because I know a few people who went there and it is a decent signpost of what direction the US political elite are going in...

If I go look up Black students at Harvard, I can find a Black student association association: https://www.theharvardbsa.com/. The photos might not be completely representative of their membership but they are quite suggestive of a certain racial trend among the associates.

Ditto the Harvard Latino alliance - https://harvardlatino.sigs.harvard.edu/ - just eyeballing the photos but I it looks like this association is race biased too.

I don't see why Whites are supposed to be all that different. I would suggest that in the future there will be a Harvard White Student association. Not immediately, but I'd say in a 30-50 year time horizon it'd be much more likely that not.

Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales

#52

Post by junke »

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.

again, I won't argue with a straw man version of what she wrote

Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales

#53

Post by mcphage »

BlackFly wrote: post #6
joshhansen wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"actually it is better if women lead this study at this current time" This is such an indictment of our society. I still believe that the proper response to women's mistreatment in the past and present is to stop mistreating women, not to start mistreating men. Constraining men from discussing things of interest and value to them, basically because they're not women and don't have the societal "indulgence" of being f…

Well, I don't think it is an indictment so much as the typical indication of how we humans swing to extremes. I find it somewhat lamentable (although perhaps more enviable) how gay men are able to more openly discuss with one another what it means to be a man (because the biggest thing they need to grapple with is this gender norm that to "be a man" means having sex with women), but even they risk charges of misogyny…

> But the potential charge of misogyny is felt to carry too heavy a risk for most men nowadays.

Is it, actually, a risk? Or do we instead see misogynist men in many high positions?

Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales

#54

Post by scotty79 »

d-z-m wrote: post #41
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.

> "I'm a man" is no more meaningful than "I'm a Libra". I think you're overstating things here, by a lot. I understand not wanting to get mired in gender politics, as I find it tedious as well. But "man" and "woman" goes deeper than star signs.

I think you underestimate how strongly people who are into zodiac signs feel about it. Roughly just as strong as people who are into gender are feeling about theirs. The mechanism is the same, you blow up differences, neglect similarities. All in service of constructing your identity in opposition to others.

Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales

#55

Post by ajuc »

zozbot234 wrote: post #45
ajuc wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

She's nonetheless 'interpreting' men's stories for them, even as she suggests that it might be problematic when men interpret women's stories.

She said she doesn't want to do this - people complain that it's sexist.

She did this - people complain it's hipocrisy.

With that amount of bad will communication is impossible.

Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales

#56

Post by [deleted] »

littlelady wrote: post #50
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…

> We demand diversity and inclusivity, but somehow the more "able-bodied neurotypical white heterosexual male" checkboxes you tick, the less your opinion and well-being matters. (And I only tick two of those) Let's look at this more from a structural view: "Able-bodied neurotypical white heterosexual male" is the assumed default in "Western" society. What do I mean by that? White neurotypical heterosexual men built s…

[deleted]

Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales

#57

Post by hk__2 »

d-z-m wrote: post #36
hk__2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 domin…

> because any woman knows how false this is. In what way is the statement you quoted false?

> In what way is the statement you quoted false?

"We all mostly want the same things, feel the same things and do the same things" is contradicted by any studies on consumer behavior that takes gender into account. Of course deep inside we’re all mostly the same, but as a society we constructed a gender polarization that has very real effects on what we want, how we feel and what we do. If I tell you that my friend likes to wear high heels and a red skirt you can hardly pretend the probability they are a woman is only 50%.

Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales

#58

Post by AnimalMuppet »

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…

> the queer descendants of Asian immigrants may often share experiences that are quite distinct from those of queer black folks.

OK, but keep going. The queer descendants of Asian immigrants may often have experiences that are quite different from those of other queer descendants of Asian immigrants, too.

So you can make some generalizations and find some patterns, but those generalizations and patterns can turn into stereotypes if we aren't very careful.

As bitwise said in the GP, people are individuals. They share some subset of the experiences of the various groups of which they are members. Those experiences shape them in ways that have some similarities with the characteristics of the groups as a whole, and also have some differences. For anything that you think is a characteristic or a shared experience of an intersectional group, you can find members who do not share that.

Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales

#59

Post by scotty79 »

hk__2 wrote: post #28
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 domin…

Dividing oppressed and oppressors neatly along some superficial trait is great for making politics. Especially when historical correlations were strong. But you often have to bend backwards to explain the complexities of reality where sometimes women oppress women and men who oppress women at the same time oppress men even more.

Re: Male archetypes in fairy tales

#60

Post by BlackFly »

mcphage wrote: post #53
BlackFly wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I don't think it is an indictment so much as the typical indication of how we humans swing to extremes. I find it somewhat lamentable (although perhaps more enviable) how gay men are able to more openly discuss with one another what it means to be a man (because the biggest thing they need to grapple with is this gender norm that to "be a man" means having sex with women), but even they risk charges of misogyny…

> But the potential charge of misogyny is felt to carry too heavy a risk for most men nowadays. Is it, actually, a risk? Or do we instead see misogynist men in many high positions?

This is a pretty good example actually of what makes entering these conversations so difficult.

It can logically be both and I would personally say it is both but your reply demands polarization. It is either one or the other because people like Harvey Weinstein exist. Don't get me wrong, it took way too long for Harvey to see justice and arguably he never did.

But here now I don't want to talk about Harvey Weinstein, I want to talk about male archetypes in fairy tales, yet here we are. Of course that isn't entirely true, since actually I was mentioning the meta-difficulty faced by people like Robert Bly and the controversy of the father's rights movement. So yeah, your comment is fair but a good example of the drive towards polarization faced by anyone trying to discuss being male and using that as a lens. Life has nuance and most of us want to express nuanced views but don't want to post manifestos.

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