Yes....all of it. I recently (finally) discovered the word androcentric. I'd been stumbling around for years attempting to locate the feeling I was having every time I watched most movies, read most books on anything related to history and even every time I sat in front of a teacher sharing insight about a particular Buddhist text/sutra/meditation technique. (you get the point). It's dawned on me, 65 years in, that I've been shown the world and its history through the lens of a man's western world view. I think I've been carrying around a good deal of anger for a very long time now. It's taken a long while for me to feel rooted in my own intrinsic value. I wasn't taught it, I wasn't shown it. All those philosophers telling us "how things are" IMHO, derive from the *fact that the origin theory clearly shows man as the creator and therefore, *he has rights to what is the truth. I'll never get Simone de Bouvouir's quote from the Introduction to "The Second Sex" , "Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being." I only got as far as the introduction, but that one sentence informs so much.
Anyhow, you're writing has woke me up this morning! It's early and 21 degrees and I need to finish my coffee and get the dogs out for their walk. My new take on all this (for me), is that it's my job to unearth and discover the unheard women's voices and accomplishments throughout time. I'm no longer waiting for some white male scholar to "help me understand" a history that they've forgotten to include half the population. They are many women's voices already surfacing (including yours), we just need to listen.
YES! I love this response, Mary! I'm glad to have played a role in helping perk you up a little. How many falsehoods have women taken to be rote? How long must we sit waiting to be allowed to learn, to feel, to trust our own knowledge of the world? The second-wave feminists laid an elaborate groundwork that we are attempting to continue. At some point I need to write something about Irigaray's Marine Lover. I read it this year, slowly, cycling back again and again for maximal absorption and... wow. It has shifted something massive in my understanding of just how women's 'othering' has altered our sense of self.
The minute Plato starts going on about Ideal Forms, all have to admit that he's making it up. Whatever his repository of metaphysical meaning is, it's all in his head. That prof wasn't good at philosophy questions either, ya? "It's all for our use." Like, but that is the question, IS IT FOR US, or is it just ... being there, us interacting with it in one of several possible ways....
Yes....all of it. I recently (finally) discovered the word androcentric. I'd been stumbling around for years attempting to locate the feeling I was having every time I watched most movies, read most books on anything related to history and even every time I sat in front of a teacher sharing insight about a particular Buddhist text/sutra/meditation technique. (you get the point). It's dawned on me, 65 years in, that I've been shown the world and its history through the lens of a man's western world view. I think I've been carrying around a good deal of anger for a very long time now. It's taken a long while for me to feel rooted in my own intrinsic value. I wasn't taught it, I wasn't shown it. All those philosophers telling us "how things are" IMHO, derive from the *fact that the origin theory clearly shows man as the creator and therefore, *he has rights to what is the truth. I'll never get Simone de Bouvouir's quote from the Introduction to "The Second Sex" , "Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being." I only got as far as the introduction, but that one sentence informs so much.
Anyhow, you're writing has woke me up this morning! It's early and 21 degrees and I need to finish my coffee and get the dogs out for their walk. My new take on all this (for me), is that it's my job to unearth and discover the unheard women's voices and accomplishments throughout time. I'm no longer waiting for some white male scholar to "help me understand" a history that they've forgotten to include half the population. They are many women's voices already surfacing (including yours), we just need to listen.
Be well my friend.
YES! I love this response, Mary! I'm glad to have played a role in helping perk you up a little. How many falsehoods have women taken to be rote? How long must we sit waiting to be allowed to learn, to feel, to trust our own knowledge of the world? The second-wave feminists laid an elaborate groundwork that we are attempting to continue. At some point I need to write something about Irigaray's Marine Lover. I read it this year, slowly, cycling back again and again for maximal absorption and... wow. It has shifted something massive in my understanding of just how women's 'othering' has altered our sense of self.
Solidarity, sister xx
The minute Plato starts going on about Ideal Forms, all have to admit that he's making it up. Whatever his repository of metaphysical meaning is, it's all in his head. That prof wasn't good at philosophy questions either, ya? "It's all for our use." Like, but that is the question, IS IT FOR US, or is it just ... being there, us interacting with it in one of several possible ways....
I was just so blindsided I gawped like a carp for a minute and said something to the effect of resources are exhaustible.