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Comment by gone35 | Hacker News Reader

Ahh, the soft bigotry of different expectations. From your [1]:

The masculine cognitive style is abstract, theoretical, disembodied, emotionally detached, analytical, deductive, quantitative, atomistic, and oriented toward values of control or domination.

The feminine cognitive style is concrete, practical, embodied, emotionally engaged, synthetic, intuitive, qualitative, relational, and oriented toward values of care.

Do you really think this line of thought is somehow "progressive" and "empowering" for us women??

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No, I don't see that particular line of thought as progressive and empowering for women in today's world.

However, the quotes you choose are from a section that notes that "Various feminist standpoint theories ground the claim to epistemic privilege in different features of women's social situation" -- and in a paragraph starting with "Some early versions of standpoint theory (including Flax 1983, Hartsock 1987, Rose 1987, and Smith 1974) accept feminist object relations theory ..."

So I'd caution against rejecting the whole discipline based on early views from a handful of a few people.

No, I don't see that particular line of thought as progressive and empowering for women in today's world.

So you reject Standpoint Theory. I guess we agree about that.

Yet you also (seem to) accept the notion of "situated knowledge". But, without any recourse to Standpoint Theory to be able to privilege any claim over another, that necessarily commits you to relativism --and a rather extreme form, at that.

So you either reject the very notion of "situated knowledge" (and thus a great deal of feminist epistemology), become an extreme relativist, or accept Standpoint Theory.

I, for one, reject relativism --so that commits me to reject "situated knowledge"-based feminist epistemology (i.e. pretty much the whole discipline).

I'm not sure how you got from me saying "there are a lot of different sources of standpoint theory" and "I disagree with a line of thought stated by some early standpoint early theoreticians" and "don't reject the whole discipline based on some early work" to thinking I reject standpoint theory. How many times in this thread have I linked to and quoted Sandra Harding?

It's the end of the semester, I'm awfully sleep deprived, and I should be doing work instead --that's why. I apologize for misrepresenting your views.

No worries! But, to reassure you on one point: I'm not a relativist :)

Recognition that the styles exist, that they have (whether they ought to or not, and whether also on some more fundamental level than culture or not) a cultural association with gender, and that the style associated with the feminine gender has in patriarchal societies been devalued -- even to the extent of being treated as invalid and unworthy of consideration -- is both progressive and, if not empowering in and of itself, a fairly important foundation for empowerment.

So, yes.

[T]he style associated with the feminine gender[...]

That very idea is the most profound, insidious form of patriarchy there is. Think about it.

> That very idea is the most profound, insidious form of patriarchy there is. Think about it.

No, its not, and, you know, its pretty ridiculous to make that claim in a venue where the original text is accessible, so that it is obvious the way that you had to deliberately ignore the whole preceding and following parts of the sentence to even make the attack on the phrase you excerpt taken out of context remotely plausible.

Recognizing that patriarchy exists, and that certain associations exist in the context of patriarchy is not, itself, patriarchal.

Relax. I'm just trying to encourage you to think about your deeply held assumption, since you seem to care about women.

And no, I am not "deliberately ignor[ing]" nor taking out of context anything. Don't assume malice where simple disagreement may suffice.

I'm just claiming that the very idea that "[gender-associated] styles exist" is the most profound, insidious form of patriarchy there is. The rest of your qualifiers (viz. independence of whether or not they are cultural, or normative, and so forth) are immaterial: I'm claiming the very premise you start with is incredibly damaging, in profound and insidious ways.

Again, I invite you to think about it. Read Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer, but substitute the ζωή-βίος rift with a ζωή-ζωή (or βίος-βίος) rift. And see where that leads you.

> I'm just trying to encourage you to think about your deeply held assumption

What assumption are you talking about?

> I'm just claiming that the very idea that "[gender-associated] styles exist" is the most profound, insidious form of patriarchy there is.

The fact that they exist is certainly an aspect of patriarchy. The idea -- which is a necessary prerequisite to the ability to recognize, discuss, and alter the fact -- is not a form of patriarchy, on the contrary, the absence of the idea in presence of the fact would be make patriarchy unassailable.

> Again, I invite you to think about it.

I invite you to stop assuming that I haven't thought about this issue, quite deeply, for several decades.

Sigh. Nevermind then. Sorry for pointlessly rising your blood pressure.

(And to all, for bikeshedding this thread.)

I'm still not sure I understand your objection. Is it specifically to the phrasing that "gender-associated styles exist"?

How about the alternate phrasing of "Patriarchal society has historically associated styles with gender, devalued those styles typically associated with women, and used this as a tool to reinforce patriarchy" ... is that equally objectionable?

Sorry I wasn't clear.

My objection is to the very idea that 'styles' exist in the first place. I claim that's the primal rift that starts it all.

Like saying, e.g., "there are different kinds of human(ity)". Starts innocent, but it opens a dangerous door.

Thanks for the clarification. I agree that the categories we put on "styles" are constructed, but not sure that for me it follows that they don't "exist". For example after I shared this discussion with a friend, we talked about how the "wall of text" of Hacker News' UX was jarring to them and they much preferred a Pinterest-style UX, while I like the information density of HN (and Slashdot, and lobste.rs, and Reddit, and ...). To me it seems like this difference in our preferences certainly exists; and it feels like "style" is an okay word for it. Although of course "style" is usually thought of as generalized, which can be problematic.

So, I'll think more about it ... My initial reaction is that like gender (which I also see as constructed) it's still a useful concept, although you have to be careful with it, but like I say, worth pondering.

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