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Re: Re: Production
Following up on these garbled musings after a night's at least two nights' sleep.
An important thing to remember in this discussion, which our toxic culture would have us always forget, is that male minus manly virtue is not female, merely an unmanly1 male; conversely, male plus womanly virtue is not female either, though one may occasionally give the appearance of being female in the absence of other gender markers. (Similarly, female minus womanliness is not male, but no one ever unironically asserts that anyway.)
Another important thing, limited to the scope of this post (though possibly applicable in other posts on this matter): Unless I explicitly state otherwise, you may assume that any value judgment is coming from my own subjective moral intuition. I am going to take a great leap of faith and assume that it has not been wholly corrupted just yet.
Failing a proper definition I should at least posit a working model for approximately the sort of thing we ought to be talking about. This is consistent with my hypothetical failure scenarios in the preceding post.
Working target model for feminine virtue: Wandering Around in an Albuquerque Airport Terminal. Bringing together people in understanding and providing comfort to those who (would otherwise) have been isolated.
Working target model for masculine virtue: Leiningen Versus the Ants. Solving problems, honour in the face of danger and suffering, leading men with loyalty and respect.
Again it is stressed that the masculine does not work to the exclusion of the feminine and vice versa. One should be able to see Christ in the former and the Theotokos in the other. (Not mentioned, as well, are obedience, humility, thankfulness, love, I/Thou co-suffering and other virtues that are so basic to Orthodox soteriology that they must be assumed to apply equally across gender lines.)
It seems that in our society a typical female profile for masculine versus feminine virtue (on a scale where 0 = negligible, **** = exemplary and ***** = surpassingly excellent) is:
F* to F***
M* to M**
And male:
F0 to F*
M0 to M***
They tend to go up by a point or two if we only deal with people who have had experience having to actively2 labour and suffer for the welfare of others.
I have known MtF trans women whose balance of male and female virtue does indeed have the proportionstruly ordinarily fitting a woman. I do not know enough FtM trans men to say anything about them. I have known women and men (in this paragraph these words include whoever identifies as such) whose balance would appear to fit the masculine profile, but no men whose balance would appear to fit a stereotypical feminine profile - they are either full of feminine virtue and even more masculine virtue to "make up" for it, or are grossly deficient in both and the masculine deficiency just happens to be more noticeable.
So going back to my question about those hypotheticals:
And the third day in which I've had this in my draft txt file:
I'll need to consider this further. It's one of those things where every side seems loaded with so much baggage I can't help but churn out my own homebrewed clunky duct-tape rig just to see the hard but only trustworthy way what doesn't work.
1 sense of Unman-ly included, if unintentionally
2 I am highly skeptical of simplistic "male active female passive" labelling. They are like a black censor bar: suggestive in what they reveal and vital in what they obscure.
2015-07-12 EDIT:
An important thing to remember in this discussion, which our toxic culture would have us always forget, is that male minus manly virtue is not female, merely an unmanly1 male; conversely, male plus womanly virtue is not female either, though one may occasionally give the appearance of being female in the absence of other gender markers. (Similarly, female minus womanliness is not male, but no one ever unironically asserts that anyway.)
Another important thing, limited to the scope of this post (though possibly applicable in other posts on this matter): Unless I explicitly state otherwise, you may assume that any value judgment is coming from my own subjective moral intuition. I am going to take a great leap of faith and assume that it has not been wholly corrupted just yet.
Failing a proper definition I should at least posit a working model for approximately the sort of thing we ought to be talking about. This is consistent with my hypothetical failure scenarios in the preceding post.
Working target model for feminine virtue: Wandering Around in an Albuquerque Airport Terminal. Bringing together people in understanding and providing comfort to those who (would otherwise) have been isolated.
Working target model for masculine virtue: Leiningen Versus the Ants. Solving problems, honour in the face of danger and suffering, leading men with loyalty and respect.
Again it is stressed that the masculine does not work to the exclusion of the feminine and vice versa. One should be able to see Christ in the former and the Theotokos in the other. (Not mentioned, as well, are obedience, humility, thankfulness, love, I/Thou co-suffering and other virtues that are so basic to Orthodox soteriology that they must be assumed to apply equally across gender lines.)
It seems that in our society a typical female profile for masculine versus feminine virtue (on a scale where 0 = negligible, **** = exemplary and ***** = surpassingly excellent) is:
F* to F***
M* to M**
And male:
F0 to F*
M0 to M***
They tend to go up by a point or two if we only deal with people who have had experience having to actively2 labour and suffer for the welfare of others.
I have known MtF trans women whose balance of male and female virtue does indeed have the proportions
So going back to my question about those hypotheticals:
Or perhaps another test question is: which is worse off: a woman devoid of the feminine and a man of the masculine, or a woman devoid of the masculine and a man of the feminine?
- The abandonment by the women seems to be treacherous in a way that is more marked than the same act by the men, which seems easier to excuse as "giving him space".
- The butthurt railing by the men seems to be disgusting in a way that it is merely eyeroll-worthy in the same act by the women, which seems almost business-as-usual. (Perhaps to clarify: the very purpose in what I am imagining is to lay blame and curse and puff without anyone trying to do anything to help resolve or ameliorate the problem, not merely venting and grumbling before the problem-solving begins.)
And the third day in which I've had this in my draft txt file:
- I find myself, personally, embodying a shining example of unmanly butthurt viz. a low-level government bureaucrat on the phone who was no more capable of solving the problem than I.
- I discover this while looking for something else. (scroll down to "
manlytears"; I have not rewatched the video and have no recollection why I expressed dislike for this Ensler person.)
I'll need to consider this further. It's one of those things where every side seems loaded with so much baggage I can't help but churn out my own homebrewed clunky duct-tape rig just to see the hard but only trustworthy way what doesn't work.
1 sense of Unman-ly included, if unintentionally
2 I am highly skeptical of simplistic "male active female passive" labelling. They are like a black censor bar: suggestive in what they reveal and vital in what they obscure.
2015-07-12 EDIT:
The distinctive role of the person of the Theotokos in God’s plan for the salvation of humanity is the source for the empirical, typological symbolism according to which the liturgical function of women in the plan of divine οἰκονομία is parallel to the work of the Holy Spirit, while the liturgical function of the male is parallel to that of Christ.