Apparently This Needs to be Said

[qos]

I strongly object to any and all terms which characterize women's bodies and beings as being "less", with being a failure -- especially when explicitly contrasted with warrior culture. I particularly object to women's genitalia being used in this way. Make any case you like criticizing the current state of our culture (or anything else), but do not use women, women's sexuality, or femininity to characterize what you think is wrong.


Criticizing individual women is as valid as criticizing individual men, of course. My objection is using the "idea" of women, of feminininty, as inherently derrogatory.

Comments

[athenian-abroad.livejournal.com]

May I add that I object to characterizations which value men's bodies chiefly as instruments of violence and intimidation? (And "protection," by the way, is just a euphemism for "violence and intimidation directed at somebody other than me.")

Not disagreeing with your point at all, of course. But I do want to challenge the notion that we can cleanly separate out "good" warrior culture from "bad" warrior culture and somehow just keep the good bits. I don't know of this ever having been accomplished outside of romantic* fiction. Perhaps the whole enterprise of celebrating violence and intimidation (sometimes euphemized as "strength") is rotten to the core.


* Note: using "romance" in the technical sense -- say, Chanson De Roland or Morte d'Arthur.

[qos.livejournal.com]

You are right, of course -- and it's a position that deserves more awareness. There is an unfortunate tendency by both women and men to characterize men's bodies (including, and sometimes especially, genitals) in terms of violence and coercion, whether implicitly or explicitly.

This post was in response to a particular term used in a comment on a previous post, which is also where the contrast with "warrior culture" was used.

Separating out the noble aspects of warrior culture from the rotten ones is extremely difficult, and it's part of the central work of the Soldier's Heart process. It seems most successful on the individual level -- but I think that could be true of most "shadow" work, since culture is made up of individuals, and it seems that a certain critical mass of individual change has to occur before there is a cultural shift. I don't feel that I'm in a place where I can meaningfully discuss or debate how likely it is that warrior culture can be changed in a meaningful, large scale way in the perceivable future, but I'm not optimistic.