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    <title>Salon Libertas's topics - tribe.net</title>
    <link>http://tribes.tribe.net/libertas/threads/rss</link>
    <description>Tribe.net. Local Connections</description>
    <item>
      <title>Seeking New Place to Live</title>
      <link>http://tribes.tribe.net/libertas/thread/1b447c09-a2f1-4004-9c67-917460aba6fa</link>
      <description>&lt;div&gt;I rarely post to any of the tribes I belong to...but I decided to 'hit them up' in my time of need. 
&lt;br/&gt;  I am a single woman, 33, no pets,non-smoker,fully employed @ UCSF as a social worker .Currently I am in a roomate situation that I've lived in for 3yrs.The Owners are now selling this building. I am clean, resourceful, friendly, easy going, and relatively quiet.The goal is to rent in an area close to public transportation. My credit isn't immaculate(school loans and an eviction in 93, unfortunatley) but I can provide personal and work references as well as proof of income. 
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;If you know of anyone looking for a roomate,a sublet filler or own property with studios/one bedrooms, please send me an message.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Have a Fab day and enjoy your weekend!
&lt;br/&gt;G.&lt;/div&gt;
				&lt;div&gt;
			posted in
			&lt;a href="http://tribes.tribe.net/libertas"&gt;Salon Libertas&lt;/a&gt;
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      <pubDate>Fri, 21 Jul 2006 18:55:29 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">http://tribes.tribe.net/libertas/thread/1b447c09-a2f1-4004-9c67-917460aba6fa</guid>
      <dc:creator>juicybooty13</dc:creator>
      <dc:date>2006-07-21T18:55:29Z</dc:date>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>how do u feel the U.S. handles gay youth</title>
      <link>http://tribes.tribe.net/libertas/thread/1f0bf473-b6ac-4b45-aaa6-e9c1e8c30fa3</link>
      <description>&lt;div&gt;how do u feel the U.S. handles gay youth?
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt; i as a now 18 yo gay male think that wile it is a better invorment then it has been in the last 10 - 20 years it needs to be better then it is if we hope for a turely free socity 
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;-cheshire-
&lt;br/&gt;(sorry for the spelling erors) 
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/div&gt;
				&lt;div&gt;
			posted in
			&lt;a href="http://tribes.tribe.net/libertas"&gt;Salon Libertas&lt;/a&gt;
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		&lt;/div&gt;</description>
      <pubDate>Tue, 06 Dec 2005 18:20:41 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">http://tribes.tribe.net/libertas/thread/1f0bf473-b6ac-4b45-aaa6-e9c1e8c30fa3</guid>
      <dc:creator>cheshire</dc:creator>
      <dc:date>2005-12-06T18:20:41Z</dc:date>
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    <item>
      <title>Joan Kennedy Taylor: Why Aren’t More Women Part of the Libertarian Movement?</title>
      <link>http://tribes.tribe.net/libertas/thread/3d9b3c81-45fb-4142-846d-7066a356d5f5</link>
      <description>&lt;div&gt;This article ( http://www.alf.org/alfnews/alf70.shtml )by the late Joan Kennedy Taylor (you can read a touching tribute to her here: ( http://joankennedytaylorblog.blogspot.com/ ) speaks forcefully and clearly to many of the words Starchild has here spoken.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;"Women are not totally different from men, but they are not just imitation men, either. We are all human beings, but different groups within humanity have different problems. We don’t ignore the political dilemmas brought to our attention by artists, by businessmen, by farmers, or by journalists, just because they may not apply to everyone in the spectrum. Why should those brought by women be ignored?"
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;"Instead of building on this moment of outreach, too often today’s libertarian messengers either completely ignore or are vocal in their scorn of "women’s issues," and often appear to be hostile even to the raising of certain concerns that involve women, not just governmental solutions to them."
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;I think Taylor's most crucial point for today is this and here: Women have, for obvious and enormously complex historical reasons, a significantly different set of concerns, foci, and life-worlds than men.  And if libertarians with to find any connection with women- *you* must come to them; *they* will not come to you, nor should they endure the insulting presumption, alienation, and indignities involved in the assumption that they should do so.  So long as the implicit, voiced, or shouted expectation is that women should not relate peculiarly to women's concerns, libertarians have no excuse or complaining that their movement is seen as a bastion of arrogant, privileged men.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;And Starchild, as an activist, you just might take the point seriously that libertarian failure to appeal to women is a political disaster.  Bite the bullet: as long as libertarianism speaks in the tones of antifeminism, its chance of significant appeal to half of American culture and voters is: slight to zero.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;"The answer I would give to Al Swain’s question is that, to recruit more women, libertarians have to focus on what is good in the goals of feminism, rather than those elements with which they disagree. Perhaps they think that by bashing feminism, they will attract "their kind of woman." On the contrary, by doing this they often alienate even women who are not intimately involved in the feminist movement, because they come across as bashing the legitimate aspirations of women. Women who might be libertarian still won’t respond positively to what looks like prejudice."
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Amen to that, sister.&lt;/div&gt;
				&lt;div&gt;
			posted in
			&lt;a href="http://tribes.tribe.net/libertas"&gt;Salon Libertas&lt;/a&gt;
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      <pubDate>Tue, 15 Nov 2005 19:39:39 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">http://tribes.tribe.net/libertas/thread/3d9b3c81-45fb-4142-846d-7066a356d5f5</guid>
      <dc:creator>Aster_of_Wellington</dc:creator>
      <dc:date>2005-11-15T19:39:39Z</dc:date>
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    <item>
      <title>imagining an alternative antiracism</title>
      <link>http://tribes.tribe.net/libertas/thread/a7caff84-256d-4866-b6b8-a9058eec991f</link>
      <description>&lt;div&gt;A thought... and an unusual one.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;As many here probably know, I'm the last libertarian to speak enthusiastically about the virtues of removing discrimination law.  I don't in fact support these laws, but I find myself doing so in the uncomfortable spirit of inescapable logical principle verging on a dreary technicality.  Still, I typically have a mammothly difficult time believing that discrimination laws are a great enemy of human liberation.  No passion within me finds the inability to racists and bigots to exclude those they hate as much a primary to human liberation as the ability of the different and unpopular to live each day's normal business without a constant fear of rejection and exclusion from common civil society.  And- I will be blunt- my own experience as a transgender woman makes the common skepticism of libertarians towards the seriousness of the problem seem naive at best, a privilege of ignorance in many, and a dark callousness in the worst.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Nevertheless, an interesting thought just occured to me on the concept that at least gives me an unusual pause.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Under laws against discrimination, official discrimination is, obviously, illegal.  Every business is assumed to be nondiscriminatory, tho' this is not always in fact the case.  But every business claims to be so whether this is the case or not.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;In particular fact, established and politically connected businesses make a loud point about how nondiscriminatory they are, putting up big signs like ""EO employer" which, logically, are insultingly superfluous in this climate, and which actually mean an interested and often hypocritical toadying to some government office which glories in being a force against the evil of discrimination, but is in fact primary a bureaucracy of simpering bureaucrats interested in power.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;This is the picture that shows itself where anti-discrimination has the practical official sanction, implemented for good faith or politics, of the state.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;But contrast similar signs that occur in another context where discrimation is, quite often, legal, and even when illegal only nominally so, since the typical state apparatus is too riddled with bigotry or apathetic to care.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;I refer to the 'gay-lesbian-bisexual safe zone' signs I can remember seeing here and there on the West Coast and in colleges back East.  In contrast to the EO/AA office signs of corporate buildings, which reek of political pandering (with apologies for using this term such to actual panderers... who often provide a useful service as knowledge entrepeneurs), these signs at least suggest and often really stand for a genuine, positive moral purpose and stance.  And so generally in culture.  With something like racism, where everyone pretends to abhor racism and yet many people are unrepentant or suave code-word bigots behind their backs, when it comes to heterosexism the bigots are out in the open, flaming proud of it and even a bit more dignified about it... while- and this is much more important- those that actually stand for tolerance, diversity, and self-expression really mean something when they speak out against heterocentrism.  As an aesthete with no moral compass, I can't help but notice that this produces both a more vibrant, vivid, and *real* picture than does the unreal swamp of fake tolerance one finds the a legally covered-up, underground economy of racism.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;One perverse effect of antidiscrimination laws is that by blanking out the evidence of all discrimination by making it a prohibitive social expense, it effectively *socializes* the costs of being racist.  This is true because genuine anti-racists cannot really identify themselves.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;One thing which truly speaks to me here is this: my father was a racist, altho' he carefully avoided using that term in all but the most qualified senses, but in any case as a child I recieved constant, obsessive tales of the deparavity of the 'black underclass', the ubiquity of 'politically correct' dogmatism, and a constant injuction that the anti-racist proclamations which I heard daily, for instance, in public schools, were the product of a bunch of liberals in denial of reality who were just pushing propoganda for political ends.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;I never bought the concept of racism (which I thought plainly irrational under premises I later found articulated in Ayn Rand), *but* I also didn't really challenge the general picture of the world my father taught me- for instance, that real achievements had always been done by Western white males and that all the people mentioning anyone else were really just twisting history for the sake of politics.  Or the typical 'blame the poor' versions of social theory and history.  Or: well, I'm frankly ashamed to remember the ugliness.  Etc, etc, etc.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;The problem was, the kind of creatures I remember from yearly mandatory Martin Luther King Day lectures and later college administrators really *were* a bunch of intellectual crooks who would gladly twist history for the sake of politics.  In fact, it took me years to find a book (specifically: one called "Lies My Teacher Told Me" which really did present a rational case for the kind of liberal picture of the world which was being crammed down my throat in schools.   It was only then that it dawned on me that much of the stuff I'd heard preached insincerely in schooling was both *important* and *true*, that many people *did* mean it sincerely, and that what my father (and others like Charles Murray) had been claiming on every level of fact and principle were in fact vicious lies.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;It felt like an immense personal liberation, along with a true disgust at some of the things I'd been taught to accept, and for the first time I was able to really appreciate the kind of authors I'd been pushed to read in college.  As a transgender woman, I found Langston Hughes and the early W.E.B. DuBois to speak personally to me, both personally and to the human situation.  And I started realizaing that, for instance- no, books such as Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God" and Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" were not worthless third-raters pushed into classrooms for politically charged academic balance.  Or rather- bar that- such books *really* were pushed into classrooms for politically charged academic balance.  They just were *serious, valuable human literature* abused in such a way, much the way conservatives abuse the Bible, Homer and Shakespeare by making them creatures of political nationalism and therefore useless as literature, or the way classical music is made into socially harmless 'culture'* no one would actually dream of really enjoying, learning from, or learning to craft something with.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;* Which is very stupid.  Case in point: if you've never actually read the lyrics to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony... go read them.  Then go play it is church.  Hint: find a proper church, like a cathedral.  Cathedral, in actual Latin, means 'seat', so make sure a religious officiary is properly on the seat.  Please bring donations.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;I note the result is the same on both counts: liberals convince a lot of people to hate non-Euro, non-malestream literature.  Conservatives convince a lot of people to find classical European literature to be immeaurably dull.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;In my case, the loud government campaigns against racism actually helped a monster like my father appear reasonable- simply because I never got the sense the teachers and textbooks really believed what they said or cared whether their facts were straight- my father, in his own perverse way as a hateful dogmatic bigot, did.  The result is that my personal "bullshit filter" ended up catching the exact wrong materiel, filtering poison from pure air... precisely because the message I should have felt as liberating truth, and which belongs as a *basic* teaching of a liberated mind in the Republic of Letters (a citizenship which to this woman of the cloth is more real than America's)- was presented as inauthentic propaganda smarmy hypocrisy.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Perhaps 'tis a good idea not to try to push the state to be anti-sexist or anti-racist precisely because it's dangerous to have the truth spoken out of the mouth of lies.  There is a kind of Gresham's Law in operation here: state nondiscrimination *drives out* heartfelt nondiscrimination; state celebration of diversity *drives out* real celebration of diversity.  When I was in college, "diversity" was an administrative buzzword to which I rolled my eyes, used as a moral bludgeon to silence critics in order to implement whatever politically convenient policy was deemed expedient (the Black president of the university I went to was simultaneously a fairly loud PC advocate and a shocking Uncle Tom, who tried to dissaude a friend of mine from investigating an actual case of instituional racism which involved a corruption of the student elections because it would be bad for business and look bad to the (overwhelmingly white) alumni).  Here in San Francisco, however, where diversity isn't just a political slogan but the way people *live*, clear at the glance of a street sign or the architecture, and built into the basic courtesy of human relations, believing in "diversity" has real spiritual meaning.  The person next to you has a real presumption of moral seriousness when using the word.  After all, she decided to *live* here.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Perhaps a similar thing is possible with regard to antidiscrimination law.  Imagine: during the 1960s, offical discrimination laws had been struck down and government instutions had been permitted to discriminate, but private discrimination was still legal.  Now, it's the 1990s, and liberal college professors and employers put up prominent signs announcing their opposition to racism and even a commitment to 'affirmative action' to push everslow history along and overcome past injustices.  Except this timeline, there's once difference: *they mean it*.  Standing up for an anti-racist cause doesn't make liberals look dubious or silly and fishing for applause (even if they in fact passionately mean it) but is a genuine political act of nobility.  Hopefully, it's a common act, and one that becomes common enough that eventually the people who find themselves decling such speech-acts sooner or later notice that they are in a pretty ugly minority and wisely start to shut up.  Except in this alternate universe, they don't shut up begrudgingly because they are legally forced to, convinced secretly (as racists I've known generally are) that pretty much everyone (of their race, of course) secretly shares the same opinions about 'those people' being less intelligent, violent, shiftless, lazy, or generally inferior (or whatever).  No, they shut up because they realize that everyone else *doesn't* feel the same way, because there was a war of words about this and- thank God and Goddess!- they *lost* (please play the mocking taunt of Nelson from "The Simpsons"), and they go slink away in defeat, knowing underneath all their rationalizations that their opponents, standing forth honestly, look beautiful, while they look like a bunch of big, ignorant, and terrified bruisers in comparison to those with a claim to represent humanity (perhaps true cosmopolitanism relates to antidiscrimation law like the waters of Youth relate to a cheap (but not inexpensive) makeup job)
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Now, *that's* a form of libertarian thought experiment that I can participate in, and perhaps a personal sign of how there can be a *hopeful* way to channel both an aesthete's politics and her anger- of how judging freedom by its look and feel, instead of airly and colourless formalisms, can result in both a good logic of liberty, and- a rare and difficult thing for me- hope.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;And a self-expression for which- well- I actually feel better after writing this.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Lady Aster.&lt;/div&gt;
				&lt;div&gt;
			posted in
			&lt;a href="http://tribes.tribe.net/libertas"&gt;Salon Libertas&lt;/a&gt;
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		&lt;/div&gt;</description>
      <pubDate>Tue, 15 Nov 2005 07:38:36 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">http://tribes.tribe.net/libertas/thread/a7caff84-256d-4866-b6b8-a9058eec991f</guid>
      <dc:creator>Aster_of_Wellington</dc:creator>
      <dc:date>2005-11-15T07:38:36Z</dc:date>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Fat Albert vs. Rosa Parks [Arthur Silber] [Arthur Silber]</title>
      <link>http://tribes.tribe.net/libertas/thread/2ed93def-71b1-4d63-9d9f-0ace3dc9a6f4</link>
      <description>&lt;div&gt;[Another excellent anti-racist piece from the progressive libertarian Arthur Silber's new blog, Once Upon a Time (http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/).  It is wonderous to hear someone within the libertarian world demolish the kinds of bigotry that I- for one- remember hearing every day in childhood.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Salonmistress.]
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;[If you'd like to comment on this, please post your reply here:
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;No Credit for Good Intentions: "Well Meaning"? Hardly. 
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Fat Albert vs. Rosa Parks 
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;In a valuable column, business writer Michelle Singletary debunks some of the myths that Bill Cosby is fond of peddling about the "black underclass." Singletary first sets forth a bit of background:
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;During a ceremony last year to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, Cosby contrasted the achievements of civil rights activists such as Parks with the current generation of "lower-economic and lower-middle-economic people" who he said have not been holding up their end of the deal.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Cosby said they are squandering what Parks and others fought for.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;They are "fighting hard to be ignorant," he said.
&lt;br/&gt;Cosby accused poor blacks of being "bad parents" because, for example, they spend what little money they have on "brand name sneakers" costing $500. The result is that "[a]ll this child knows is gimme, gimme, gimme." As Singletary notes, "white conservatives and some blacks" heralded Cosby for his "bravery" in speaking truths that others dare not name.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;But it's not brave to peddle myths -- myths that are entirely inaccurate, that are based on long-held stereotypes with especially vicious historical roots, and that are most notable in their dishonesty and cruelty. We saw all these myths resurface with particular virulence and in a context where their cruelty was unmasked so that the horror became unmistakable in the wake of Katrina. It should be emphasized that the obviousness of the dishonesty and cruelty involved did nothing to slow down those who traffic in these lies. 
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Singletary is recommending Michael Eric Dyson's "Is Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?" for her monthly Color of Money book discussion. She uses Dyson's book to cut away the lies and get at the truth:
&lt;br/&gt;Dyson begins most chapters with Cosby's own words and then methodically dissects the comments, showing just why the comedian was rattling off nonsense much like his Fat Albert character Mushmouth. "Cosby's remarks are not the isolated ranting of a solo rhetorical gunslinger, but simply the most recent, and the most visible, shot taken at poor blacks in a more-than-century-old class war in black America," Dyson writes in the book's preface.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Dyson, a professor of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania, deftly demolishes the stereotypes Cosby let loose.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Let's take Cosby's assertion that lower-economic and lower-middle-economic people are pathological consumers throwing their money away on overpriced consumer goods.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Dyson counters with research by anthropologist Elizabeth Chin. In her book "Purchasing Power: Black Kids and American Consumer Culture," Chin concluded that black youths are not brand-crazed consumer addicts any more so than other youths. In fact, the children Chin studied more often than not made good purchasing decisions.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;"The point of Chin's book is to dispel the sort of myths perpetuated by Cosby and many others, black and white," Dyson writes. "The perception that the meager resources of the poor are somehow atrociously misspent on expensive consumer items is far out of proportion to the facts of the case." 
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;...
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;But what about the oft-repeated assertion that poor blacks can't afford to be spendthrifts?
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;"There is a cruelty to such an observation," according to Dyson. "Not only is the poor parent, or child, at a great disadvantage economically, but they are expected to be more judicious and responsible than their well-to-do counterparts, with far fewer resources."
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Dyson's book is a stinging indictment of upper-middle-income blacks who have benefited from the civil rights movement but now feel justified to criticize poor black folks who haven't ascended to the same financial success.
&lt;br/&gt;I find it very intriguing that Dyson refers to the "more-than-century-old class war in black America." One element that makes conversations about significant cultural and economic problems so difficult is the complexity of the factors involved: here, racism and economic class are both involved, and they reinforce each other in ways that are often hard to untangle. 
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Most people, and almost all commentators and pundits, will purposely avoid complexity whenever they can, and propagandize on behalf of a starkly simple storyline. We saw this after Katrina, and we see it now in connection with the riots in France. The hawkish Terror War ideologues are eager to cast the French riots as the latest symbol of the "clash of civilizations" between the Enlightenment West and Islamic fundamentalism. But as I've noted (here and here), Islamic fundamentalism has very little to do with events in France. Once again, it is largely problems rooted in both blatantly racist policies and historically-grounded economic inequalities that underlie the riots.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Many people see the problem of racism but, at least in a fair number of the articles I've seen, they tend to overlook the problem of economic class. But as I said, both these elements are involved: they are interdependent, and it is crucial to try to see how they reinforce each other, both now and in the past. There is another, related problem that merits a brief mention in this context: the conservative-libertarian myth of capitalist America, where everyone can be Bill Cosby or Oprah if they only apply themselves diligently enough.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;This is an oversimplification that omits so much that it is tantamount to a lie. And it has been a lie for well over a century. The largest engine that has driven the American economy is corporate statism: the unholy alliance between large, entrenched business interests and government. Almost all conservatives and libertarians apparently are ignorant of or would prefer to forget the fact that it is businesses themselves that have lobbied for government regulation and control historically -- precisely so that newcomers would be prevented from entering their industries and competing for their customers. 
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Today, corporate statism has swallowed almost all of our economy. This system -- which has almost nothing to do with the myth of "capitalism" that conservatarians constantly peddle -- works to the benefit of those who have already profited from it, and continues to exclude those who have not. The former tend to be upper middle class and wealthy whites (with the occasional Cosby or Winfrey thrown in); the latter are the poor, including many black Americans.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;These issues deserve lengthier consideration, which I hope to get to at some point. In the meantime, Singletary's column is a good brief introduction to the subject.&lt;/div&gt;
				&lt;div&gt;
			posted in
			&lt;a href="http://tribes.tribe.net/libertas"&gt;Salon Libertas&lt;/a&gt;
			- 2 replies
		&lt;/div&gt;</description>
      <pubDate>Mon, 14 Nov 2005 01:50:29 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">http://tribes.tribe.net/libertas/thread/2ed93def-71b1-4d63-9d9f-0ace3dc9a6f4</guid>
      <dc:creator>Aster_of_Wellington</dc:creator>
      <dc:date>2005-11-14T01:50:29Z</dc:date>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>cutting off the king's head</title>
      <link>http://tribes.tribe.net/libertas/thread/f9a98f32-4b87-4414-b657-216a15e6a6be</link>
      <description>&lt;div&gt;(continuing a discussion transplanted from this salon's previous incarnation on yahoo groups)
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Jeff-
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;To answer your question: no, I don't think of feminism as
&lt;br/&gt;a "withering away" stage towards a good society. I simply don't essentially define political movements in terms of their acheivements of a certain kind of society at all. I'm not interested in counterweights because the issue for me is not primarily establishing what society as a whole or balance is going to look like. The problem is all this talk of 'reigning ideologies'm 'ideal societies', etc, etc. Don't you see something implicitly authoritarian and well... statist... in squishing politics into the attainment of a civic ideal?
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;I think the problem is that libertarians have a very peculiar
&lt;br/&gt;understanding of politics- whereby one's political identification
&lt;br/&gt;must set up some kind of primary rule or focus one desires to see in social life. Therefore, to be a feminist to libertarians means wanting to see the triumph of some particular female "ism" in political life.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;To myself, feminism is a *movement*- a set of focuses, concerns, actions, and worldviews which defines what a certain kind of people care about seeing and advancing in society. Specifically, it means a movement to overcome the oppression of women. I think libertarians have a hard time grapsing that people can and usually do unite around
&lt;br/&gt;movements that embody concerns important to them rather than a vision of ultimate political good. I think this causes libertarians to misunderstand not just feminists but environmentalists, conservatives, and others whose politics are just not politically incarnated the ways that the various forms of liberalism and socialism are. Feminism is a movment opposing *particular* percieved structural evils. It is not a political goal calling for a new structure.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Foucault once said that modern political theory has yet "to cut off the king's head." What he meant was that we are still captured into thinking of "politics" as an activity concerned with the decrees and actions of an imagined central sovreign. Even a movement like libertarianism which thinks it opposed central power still thinks in terms of the issue of central power, spends almost all of its political effort over what that central power is to (not) do, and counts all political movements in terms of who is to hold central power
&lt;br/&gt;and what they are to (not) do with it. Thus libertarianism flubs
&lt;br/&gt;repeatedly in even understanfng political movements like feminism which are irreversably *local*. Libertarians want to know what "feminisms" program is towards acheiving a "feminist society" with a "feminist state". But while it's true that feminists have both rightly and wrongly (to my view) involved themselves in the state as one arena of power, this is just not what the essence of the movement is about. Being 'pro-woman' isn't being 'anti-male' unless you start with a totalist theory of politics. That requires starting with the notion that politics involves a zero-sum establishing of
&lt;br/&gt;primacy in the first place. It's an illustration of the totally
&lt;br/&gt;different way of thinking involves that one feminist I heard recently was saying that men "need a movement" for their own liberation the way men do. This makes total sense to me (I'm ambivalent on whether I would agree-- I'd need more details). The point is that oddly while libertarians claim to be antistatist they have such a state- centered theory of politics.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;I am not a feminist because I think that women's concerns are more important than mens'. but because womens' concerns are more important to me. This isn't because of any exact correspondance between politics and group membership- but because of the values that happen
&lt;br/&gt;to touch *my* life (I stay away from transgender politics because I don't like transgender culture, for instance).
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Fighting specifically the oppression of women happens to matter to me enough to stand up and be counted. Fighting the oppression of men does not (and I do think patriarchy oppresses men). It's really no more complicated an issue that in the realm of formal rather than cultural poltiics, I find certain issues (such as sex worker rights, drug decriminalization, and right to bear arms) meaningful, while
&lt;br/&gt;other issues (such aa most economic issues) are impossible to connect to.  And when I say *happens* to, I don't mean the choice is arbitary but that it is the result of concrete and contingent circumstances. Calling feminism bigoted makes sense only in the context where politics requires a prior repudiation of contingent circumstances and thus contingent political action is misunderstood by "raising" it to
&lt;br/&gt;the level of a universal program.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;I think libertarianism has an implicit notion that it is the duty of
&lt;br/&gt;people to connect with the political Good precisely as universal
&lt;br/&gt;human beings in which I am at the extreme opposition end of the spectrum. I feel politics is real and honest when people connect with concerns to which they really form attachments in their lives, and to which such universal principles (which are universal, we should remember, *only* in the sense that they are commonly abstracted from *particular* individual experience) may aid as guides to comprehension and understanding, but they are not the primary and
&lt;br/&gt;immediate units of political action. Libertarianism klunks as a
&lt;br/&gt;political practice precisely because it claims to embody no one's experience and as a result embodies the experience of the kind of people who generally become libertarians.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Feminism begins not in abstract theory but in shared experience which takes on the tone of a certain imperative under the colour of a certain political-intellectual climate. I gathr that libertarianism once really did (in the 70s) galvanize as a movement with an implicit tone and vision of life such that it provides a common vision and feeling which people could really be attached to (the recent L. Niel Smith comic posted to this forum illustrated it beautifully)... but
&lt;br/&gt;this is less true now, or if it is truw I don't like the tone of much of the libertarian world. Maybe that phrase would help explain the misunderstandings: to me 'libertarian world' does not mean "a world where all the rules are libertarian" but "the kind of common world libertarians share in terms of their passions, commitments, visions, and attractions".
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;To sum up: you're trying to look at feminism as: When Feminists Make the Rules. I suggest that libertarians are themselves captives of authority, misunderstanding others because they concieve of the whole show as about "who (doesn't) make the rules". To me, realizing that collective action begins in shared experience and common meanings and only partially and secondarily involves a set of rules to fight for is the beginning of a truly *cultural* politics.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Pleas to libertarians: learn from a feminist slogan and stop aping your enemies the state: "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." (Audre Lorde) - you flatter your enemy to cast all of political life as a battle over its purposes. Most real political activity has always occurred beneath the state's feet and behind the state's back, with the confused and clueless authorities reacting blindly, angrily, or terrifyingly to the forces which really turn the system. Libertarianism has already succeeded eithout realizing it
&lt;br/&gt;where it least expects it: by creating an *internal* culture
&lt;br/&gt;motivated by a different theory and practice of society, which
&lt;br/&gt;attracts and motivates a certain kind of people to form a different political world. In the long run, this is what moves history and nations, and builds up or drags down the state's world. Feminism understands this. Conservatism understands this. Libertarians usually don't.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Metaphysical background issues:
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;You have to understand: to me an ideal is only concievable as
&lt;br/&gt;something irreducibly particular. I think the notion of 'the ideal
&lt;br/&gt;society' runs into all the same problems as trying to picture
&lt;br/&gt;a 'universal work of art'- and understanding what all art has in
&lt;br/&gt;common or what makes art possible doesn't change the fact that the vivid reality of art which has metaphysical primacy is irreducibly plural. I'm a humanist, but perhaps we have forgotten that to the original humanists, humanity was not just a universality but a particularity, a glory in specificably and definably particular human things (and even then, my sense is that 'humanist' is actually if you look closely enough a symbiosis of realted ideals rather than a true ideal).
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;I don't suppose it would help if I said that conception to me is a particular mode of perception- in other words, that I strongly
&lt;br/&gt;believe that ideas are if we pay attention *sensed* by a somewhat different but equally intentional method as what we ordinarily call 'sensation'. I got this from Kant and Husserl (and Sartre and Hegel), but the upshot is that I think we deal with "ideas" in a manner which is justa special case of dealing with perceptual objects, which is why I handle these concepts (see above) differently than somebody else. Thus, I look at 'the ideal society' and my first question is 'what does it look like?' And I don't think this is an unserious question as, for all their universal pretensions, I think everyone knows that Marxism, libertarianism, Christianity, etc. have a particular manner in which they look and smell like (or rather,
&lt;br/&gt;each of these names captures a family resemblance of closely related mental images with broadly similar attrivutes).
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;This isn't to deny abstract thought- on the contrary- I consider the setting of abstract relations a clearly wonderful and valuable method to deal with conceptual objects and at a certain point it occurred to me there's no reason one can't deal with other perceptual objects the same way as well. In my view the realization- a la Husserl- that inner sensory objects are in the same relation of intentionality to
&lt;br/&gt;consciousness as outer sensory objects leads not only to the
&lt;br/&gt;philosophical awareness of the possibility to apprehending ideas in a concrete way as to the praxical awareness that one can apprehend existents in an ideational way.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;OK, enough... does anyone else think I am making sense here? I confess I'm suffering from a lack of sleep after not entirely feeling myself last night.
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;But it really is the same issue to me as "why I am a feminist".
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;Lady Aster
&lt;br/&gt;
&lt;br/&gt;)(*)(&lt;/div&gt;
				&lt;div&gt;
			posted in
			&lt;a href="http://tribes.tribe.net/libertas"&gt;Salon Libertas&lt;/a&gt;
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		&lt;/div&gt;</description>
      <pubDate>Sun, 13 Nov 2005 22:24:59 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">http://tribes.tribe.net/libertas/thread/f9a98f32-4b87-4414-b657-216a15e6a6be</guid>
      <dc:creator>Aster_of_Wellington</dc:creator>
      <dc:date>2005-11-13T22:24:59Z</dc:date>
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