A personal request: I appreciate that those who have responded here have
substantive points to share. May I request that you continue the discussion
in another space? As a women, I feel reading about "misogyny" here sets a
negative tone for discussions of design.
On Sun, Feb 4, 2018 at 3:51 AM Johann van der Merwe <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> This is a long post.
>
> Keith and all
>
> I read an interview and a review of Manne’s book, and this gem stands out:
>
> “The ‘naive conception’ also renders misogyny ‘politically marginal’. If
> the litmus test asks whether a given man hates all women, we will find very
> little misogyny in the world. Most men have mothers, sisters, daughters,
> wives. For once, Manne argues, we should put individual men to the side.
> Misogyny is ‘a social and political phenomenon with psychological,
> structural, and institutional manifestations’. And we should evaluate those
> manifestations from the perspectives of its victims.”
>
>
> This correlates with what Keith wrote: “Manne resists sticking it to
> individuals, as such. Why? Because it is more advantageous, politically and
> intellectually, to find the evil everywhere rather than just in bad
> apples.”
>
>
> I am very much in favour of women’s rights, or should I say, I don’t
> believe in women’s rights at all, for the simple reason that I have never
> been able to fathom why there should be a difference between the rights of
> women and men. All people have the same rights (whatever they might be).
> However, in today’s world #MeToo becomes not only necessary but “about
> bl---dy time, mate!”
>
>
> Women are people too. Let me declare my position: I have never liked men
> much, because I haven’t been able to understand them fully; I like women
> much better, and had a very good role model in my mother, who had a strong
> character and who wasn’t afraid of anything or anybody, including
> overbearing bosses. So, of course sexism and misogyny exists, and of course
> it seems to be rampant in some circles, as the news media are highlighting
> at the moment. And – undoubtedly it also exists in academia, where it
> should not have taken root in the first place.
>
>
> Like Keith I would like to resist the awful approach of tarring with the
> same brush: it is not just in this case (Manne’s book and some of the
> reviews) that “it is more advantageous, politically and intellectually, to
> find the evil everywhere” because it is happening at the moment with my
> language. Afrikaans medium schools are under attack (both figuratively, by
> the MEC for Education in Gauteng, and literally, by thugs who threaten the
> kids & their parents outside the school gates) for denying non-Afrikaans
> speaking pupils (55 of them) places in the school (despite the fact that
> two nearby English medium schools have places). Afrikaans as a language is
> under attack because “it is more advantageous, politically and
> intellectually, to find the evil everywhere”.
>
>
> Second example: during one particular year at my institution the powers
> that be decided to jack up the teaching aspects of the whole university
> (too chicken to tackle the bad apples directly), and for that they sent
> round this awful woman who preached at us, with her hands in her pockets,
> slouching in her chair, glaring at us (I am not exaggerating), and telling
> us what bad lecturers we were. She had never been to our Faculty, did not
> know the first thing about our staff, but had the temerity to tar us with
> someone else’s brush. At some point I had had enough, stood up and said,
> “You are alienating the hell out of me with your approach” – she was
> furious and wanted the Dean to throw me out of the meeting.
>
>
> Which brings me to a point on which I must strongly agree with Manne’s
> position, and it has to do with design education, from first year up to
> doctoral level. Manne posted this comment: “On election night, I wasn’t
> shocked, but it hurts to know that the most incompetent, morally bankrupt,
> and ignorant white man can be elected over a woman about whom reasonable
> people can disagree, but who was obviously more qualified than Trump.” The
> key word / term is ‘reasonable’, and in her thesis she speaks of “the
> emphasis on reasons with a capital-R in moral philosophy was more a product
> of it being a masculine-coded concept”. Keith’s students with their reasons
> why they should not fail fall into this category … so why would this be an
> exclusive ‘masculine-coded concept’? Because it mostly serves men, and
> therefore we forget that women also use this excuse for their position.
>
>
> What I agree with in Manne’s work is that she argues against (aspects of)
> the internalism of reasons (the ‘masculine-coded concept’), and in light of
> this from plato.stanford.edu: “It is important to clarify that reasons
> internalism is a thesis about *normative* (or *justifying*) reasons, not
> about *motivating* (or *explanatory*) reasons. A normative reason is a
> consideration that counts in favor of or against doing something, whereas a
> motivating reason is an answer to the question, ‘why did she do it?’”.
>
> I hate to admit it, and seem to be arguing against myself, but given that
> this internalism is at the heart of Manne’s position (and thus her book),
> does she not have a point in moving the focus from individuals to a (social
> / cultural / normative) system?
>
>
> It is undoubtedly true that “it is more advantageous, politically and
> intellectually, to find the evil everywhere”, and in SA we have become used
> to this tarring, but, the old nationalist government did the same thing! I
> would have to read the whole of Manne’s book before being able to state
> categorically that this is her position.
>
> The reason for this line of argumentation is that I believe strongly
> (personally and in design education) in the “power of reason” (Steven
> Toulmin) and in “reasonableness”, and what Jacques Maritain called “logic”:
>
>
> (from my thesis) If we wish to take the idea of a cybernetically designed
> conversation seriously, and offer a *reasonable *approach to the process of
> setting up such a conversation, the very foundation on which this process
> rests must be derived from the logic of, not *ideal *theories of social
> conduct, but a living logic to be found “not in the pseudo-logic of clear
> ideas, not in the logic of knowledge and demonstration, but in the working
> logic of every day [social reality], eternally mysterious and disturbing
> [in its complexity], the logic of the structure of the living thing”
> (Maritain 1939:52).
>
>
> (from my thesis): We are responsible for our work and we are not, in the
> sense that the worth of the work we produce must be judged over and against
> the reasonableness the work finds in the lives, and therefore the
> similar-to-our-own co-ontogenic developments, of others.
>
> We need the self to produce the self, and therefore we need to give new
> form to the old self by becoming our own information-structure projected
> into and onto the future, and the best way for design students to learn how
> to learn in this complex way, is via a design cybernetic conversation using
> gramma/topology as lens. The engine driving this self-focusing deformation
> can be compared to an electro-magnetic induction coil, a low-power source
> that can produce a high-power output when ‘the penny drops’ and we see
> something that wasn‘t there before: this is an argument for abductive
> reasoning, in that the self is led away from itself towards itself, Dasein
> is abducted by its own autopoietic reasoning towards Being. We use the
> switching between analysis and creativity, the switching between self and
> other, and above all, the switching between rationality and reasonableness
> to arrive at a position where the distinctions have been made and the
> answers available in this new space are acceptable to both the I and the
> Thou, a most reasonable position, since “I require a You to become [me],
> becoming I, I say You. All actual life is encounter” (Buber, in Bloch and
> Nordstrom, 2007:17).
>
>
>
> I think, therefore I need You in order to become me. That is why I cannot
> see any difference between men and women; we are both people, and,
> hopefully, reasonable people.
>
>
>
> I have also had confrontations in my office with students and / or their
> siblings/parents. Mostly they came on their own, and three examples that
> stand out were male students: the one’s sister tried to bribe me, the
> second tried to involve the HOD from his former institution to discredit me
> (it failed), and the third tried strong-arm tactics to intimidate me. Nada,
> sorry for you. The one female example I remember is a student who cried in
> my office, but I managed to reason with her (she had plagiarised a research
> report due to pressure of work), and despite her setback (it’s only one
> assignment) she flourished after that …
>
>
>
> Last remarks: my answer to Keith’s academic student problems … all our
> assessments (my field of design theory aka the old Art & Design History)
> from 1st year to 3rd year were always based on “research reports” that
> resembled the research projects of 4th years (honours) and 5th years
> (masters). You got marks for *Proposal Structure, *Essay Structure =
> Development of Argument (identity / persuasiveness / ‘visual’), Flow of
> Text (storyline, use of grammar), Use of Sources (textual integration), and
> Referencing (in-text & Bibliography).
>
>
>
> As Keith stated, explain this at length and there are no or very few
> comebacks.
>
>
>
> To return to Manne’s book: “Misogyny is ‘a social and political phenomenon
> with psychological, structural, and institutional manifestations’. And we
> should evaluate those manifestations from the perspectives of its
> victims.” This
> reminds me of Maturana’s changing of observational stance / position: he
> (with Varela) was researching how pigeons saw colours & shapes, and their
> observational position was right next to the pigeons, looking at the world
> of form & colour. That changed to an observational position from the world
> of form & colour, and asking a different question: what does a pigeon need
> in order to observe form & colour?
>
>
>
> What happens (in the world) that imposes feelings of misogyny on women?
> What do women need in order not to feel they are victims of misogyny? That
> would require a different take on the subject, and a move from focusing on
> individuals to focusing on “the world” of misogynistic men (and, let us not
> forget, women who actively support this 'normative' attitude) . That is
> what is at stake, and this observational position, while necessary, can
> also be abused, which is what I think Keith fears might happen too easily,
> and I share that concern, while having to agree to the reasonableness of
> the overall argument against all forms of misogyny.
>
> Johann
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Dr. Johann van der Merwe
> Independent Design Researcher
>
>
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--
Colleen M. Seifert
Arthur F. Thurnau Professor
Dept. of Psychology
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