When I say “reality” I mean “situations you will encounter in life” not “some objective notion of the world around us on a fundamental level” which is often the sort of thing people mean when they say reality.
I’ll allow any definition of ‘reality’ in most cases. But when you say “carving reality at it’s joints” you are engaging with a specific concept, one that you cannot merely redefine away. This difference is exactly the sort of thing that studying linguistics can help one understand. It’s the difference between “just my point of view” and “wrong”.
I meant to engage with that specific concept. You seem to agree with my usage with respect to linguistics, so I assume you have some hostility towards feminist studies. I did reference that concept purposefully, please allow me to explain why.
The professor in my feminism course was a particle physicist, so she used quantum mechanics to draw metaphors for social circumstances.
For example, when establishing some idea such as “gender,” we often consider only two options; male and female. These are unusually dense points in “genderspace,” though by no means the only points, and they are bounded by our maps, not by the territory.
Similarly, when dealing with Newtonian mechanics, we often refer to “position” and “momentum” as inherent properties of objects. This is not how things work, but it is helpful for our maps. Unfortunately, as we attempt to build smaller and smaller things, this ends up driving us crazy, because our maps have the wrong symbols written on them and don’t make sense anymore.
As our society becomes more diverse and more accepting, and as we attempt to raise the quality of life of its inhabitants, it becomes the case that the male/female dichotomy starts being harmful. Around 1% of the general population (I don’t have a citation on me but I could find one) does not meet (every part of) the standard definition for male or female. Among other things, it may be difficult for these people to decide which bathroom to enter in a restaurant. By expanding our notions of gender, we can carve reality in more detail, but by studying gender we may find higher-definition joints.
If you can think of any other class in which that sort of analysis happens (and it almost certainly doesn’t happen in every feminism class, although probably in more than you might expect), I would be very interested to hear about it.
Around 1% of the general population (I don’t have a citation on me but I could find one) does not meet (every part of) the standard definition for male or female.
You probably ran into Anne Fausto-Sterling’s claim that 1.7% of human births are intersex. But it looks like Fausto-Sterling got the science wrong. Yet her work is widely cited by feminist academics.
The professor in my feminism course was a particle physicist, so she used quantum mechanics to draw metaphors for social circumstances.
This raises a big red flag. All the analogies I ever heard drawn between fuzzy people issues and quantum mechanics have been wrong and idiotic. The analogy you gave higher up in the thread (women are neither more nor less intelligent than men just like light isn’t a particle or a wave) is also wrong and idiotic. Are you sure your professor was an actual physicist, rather than some kind of “quantum feminist” or “quantum postmodernist”? Cthulhu knows I’ve seen a lot of those on the Net. Sorry about the scornful tone, but there seems to be no other way to get the message across.
I had to mostly disengage from this reply when you used “you must be hostile to X” as an excuse to not understand my comment. In fact, my point is completely irrelevant to feminism.
The definition you have declared for ‘reality’ is a completely incompatible with the ‘carve reality at its joints’ concept that you are appealing to.
Some of the other points that you make are ones that I would address in a different context (perhaps in reply to my other reply in this tree) and with a different introduction.
The definition you have declared for ‘reality’ is a completely incompatible with the ‘carve reality at its joints’ concept that you are appealing to.
Sorry, but I haven’t seen that either. magfrump’s concept (“situations you will encounter in life”) seems quite compatible with “carve reality at its joints”.
(I agree that saying “I assume you have some hostility towards feminist studies” is not very useful at this point)
I am sorry about the hostility comment, I had a a lot of replies to sort through so I assumed you referred to the original comment rather than the later comment where I introduced the definition.
As Emile notes, however, I don’t see any incompatibility between my definition and the concept outlined in the post he links.
This comment is great, an unexpected but interesting perspective.
This claim sounds obviously wrong to me. But I suspect we’re working with different ideas of what “reality” is.
When I say “reality” I mean “situations you will encounter in life” not “some objective notion of the world around us on a fundamental level” which is often the sort of thing people mean when they say reality.
I’ll allow any definition of ‘reality’ in most cases. But when you say “carving reality at it’s joints” you are engaging with a specific concept, one that you cannot merely redefine away. This difference is exactly the sort of thing that studying linguistics can help one understand. It’s the difference between “just my point of view” and “wrong”.
I meant to engage with that specific concept. You seem to agree with my usage with respect to linguistics, so I assume you have some hostility towards feminist studies. I did reference that concept purposefully, please allow me to explain why.
The professor in my feminism course was a particle physicist, so she used quantum mechanics to draw metaphors for social circumstances.
For example, when establishing some idea such as “gender,” we often consider only two options; male and female. These are unusually dense points in “genderspace,” though by no means the only points, and they are bounded by our maps, not by the territory. Similarly, when dealing with Newtonian mechanics, we often refer to “position” and “momentum” as inherent properties of objects. This is not how things work, but it is helpful for our maps. Unfortunately, as we attempt to build smaller and smaller things, this ends up driving us crazy, because our maps have the wrong symbols written on them and don’t make sense anymore. As our society becomes more diverse and more accepting, and as we attempt to raise the quality of life of its inhabitants, it becomes the case that the male/female dichotomy starts being harmful. Around 1% of the general population (I don’t have a citation on me but I could find one) does not meet (every part of) the standard definition for male or female. Among other things, it may be difficult for these people to decide which bathroom to enter in a restaurant. By expanding our notions of gender, we can carve reality in more detail, but by studying gender we may find higher-definition joints.
If you can think of any other class in which that sort of analysis happens (and it almost certainly doesn’t happen in every feminism class, although probably in more than you might expect), I would be very interested to hear about it.
You probably ran into Anne Fausto-Sterling’s claim that 1.7% of human births are intersex. But it looks like Fausto-Sterling got the science wrong. Yet her work is widely cited by feminist academics.
This raises a big red flag. All the analogies I ever heard drawn between fuzzy people issues and quantum mechanics have been wrong and idiotic. The analogy you gave higher up in the thread (women are neither more nor less intelligent than men just like light isn’t a particle or a wave) is also wrong and idiotic. Are you sure your professor was an actual physicist, rather than some kind of “quantum feminist” or “quantum postmodernist”? Cthulhu knows I’ve seen a lot of those on the Net. Sorry about the scornful tone, but there seems to be no other way to get the message across.
I had to mostly disengage from this reply when you used “you must be hostile to X” as an excuse to not understand my comment. In fact, my point is completely irrelevant to feminism.
The definition you have declared for ‘reality’ is a completely incompatible with the ‘carve reality at its joints’ concept that you are appealing to.
Some of the other points that you make are ones that I would address in a different context (perhaps in reply to my other reply in this tree) and with a different introduction.
Sorry, but I haven’t seen that either. magfrump’s concept (“situations you will encounter in life”) seems quite compatible with “carve reality at its joints”.
(I agree that saying “I assume you have some hostility towards feminist studies” is not very useful at this point)
I am sorry about the hostility comment, I had a a lot of replies to sort through so I assumed you referred to the original comment rather than the later comment where I introduced the definition.
As Emile notes, however, I don’t see any incompatibility between my definition and the concept outlined in the post he links.