This plays into the point I was making last week about business suits. The only function they serve is to signal that you are of a man of a certain class and status. Though men who don't wear them professionally may own one to wear to funerals, they are chiefly worn as a kind of costume that signals a professional purpose. It is possible to 'keep up with the styles' in suits, but it is also possible to purchase simple, classic cuts that don't go in or out of fashion especially. There were very limited rules governing the wearing of such suits even when etiquette was much more binding and universal than it is today. You don't wear a brown suit in the city, or once upon a time you didn't; but you can wear a charcoal suit pretty much anywhere but a truly formal occasion and expect to be well-received.
So we don't really look at the suit. It's not an outfit, it's not a fashion, it's a signal. Once we've received the signal, we don't really even see the suit itself. It doesn't matter what it looks like. Of course no one noticed. No one even looked at it.
He asks a really interesting question about halfway through the video about whether the differential treatment of men and women with regard to professional clothing is sexism, which he suggests -- and the female anchor agrees -- it may not be.
I would say that's right: it's differential treatment, but it's something particular about the business suit for men. If a man wears something besides a suit on a professional occasion, he certainly may be noticed! Lucy Steigerwald can take comfort in being right about this:
Dear feminists, I may be more contrarian than average. But I strongly suspect I am not the only person completely repulsed by your petty myopia. I am not of the right, but you’re certainly not making liberalism or feminism anything I wish to be affiliated with.I have heard the same opinion expressed by four very different people I know, one of them an extremely left-leaning academic of tremendous age. He did not ascribe the dustup to "feminism" but to "political correctness," for which he has no use regardless of who is involved. In his opinion, the shirt was tasteless, but the reaction was entirely out of proportion, especially given the occasion.
He also made a point I've heard several times from Glenn Reynolds, which is that the enforcers of political correctness have no real talents or accomplishments to balance against this man's, who helped land a spaceship on a comet hundreds of millions of miles away, the first time it's ever been done. It's a good point, which Eric Blair usually expresses: "Deeds, not words."
I don't really understand the amount of emotion this story has generated on either side.
ReplyDeleteSeems like rather a tempest in a teapot to me, but I'm probably being insensitive on several levels :p
I don't see this as political correctness or feminism, but rather simple situational awareness. People are always free to trample on the sensitivities of others. What they're generally not free to do is escape the consequences of doing so.
It seems pretty plain to me that this would have caused an uproar when I was younger, and also when my parents were young, and my grandparents as well. IOW, nothing has changed except our incessant desire to inject sex into pretty much every human and social situation and then react like scalded cats when anyone dares to object :p
"This would have caused an uproar" meaning the scientist wearing a Hawaiian style shirt covered with Betty Page-type Rockabilly girls? I frankly think that in an earlier generation it wouldn't have caused an uproar, because he'd have been taken aside well before he got in front of a camera and asked to change into something more "appropriate" -- meaning symbolic, either a suit or a lab coat.
ReplyDeleteThere was a lot more formality in those days, and people knew what the rules were because there were rules everyone followed. I think a lot of the turmoil we see comes from the fact that, in the name of freedom(!) and self-expression(!), we've done away with all the etiquette that allowed people to know how to deal with each other without causing offense.
Restoring the etiquette is no answer, though, because the system of etiquette itself is one of the things the so-called "Social Justice Warriors" have long labeled offensive and sexist.
Probably the old system would have helped him out here, and would have protected the SJWs from offense. But they're among the ones who've been right there chopping at the roots of the old system with axes and mauls, hammer and tongs (or was that sickles?). So they have little to complain about if he didn't dress like Wernher von Braun.
Restoring the etiquette is no answer, though, because the system of etiquette itself is one of the things the so-called "Social Justice Warriors" have long labeled offensive and sexist.
ReplyDeleteAnd that a great many righty pundits have labeled 'misandrist'.
Probably the old system would have helped him out here, and would have protected the SJWs from offense.
I'm not worried about "SJW"(that neat label that mysteriously makes any retaliation morally right) because it's not just "SJW" who suffer the consequences.
No one forces anyone else to act in a particular manner, Grim. Individual responsibility is not so easily dispensed with as that, or should not be. Especially by its defenders.
I can't imagine Tweeting about something like this, and frankly would not have written about it had I not seen your post this morning. By the same token, I think people who foam at the mouth about *tweets* and liken them to Mao's mass murder and Stalin's purges and the like really need to take a tranq.
It's all a bit overwrought.
"I've been asked what the shirt I'm wearing says to women. Many of those people have then put words in my mouth, telling me and you what my shirt says to them. I think it's time I spoke for myself, addressing particularly young women considering their education and career choices.
ReplyDeleteTell me - how much time do you spend trying to decide what to wear when you go to school, or a party, or to work? Why? Do you worry a lot about what other people will think? Do you worry about what they will say, or how they will judge you? Do you spend a lot of time and a lot of money choosing and buying the 'right' clothes, only to do it all over again in a few months?
Well then - get a STEM education and become a scientist or an engineer. Because I'm the living proof that in these fields what matters, what you are judged on, are your ideas and your work. Obviously nobody gives a damn what you wear."
Obviously.
ReplyDeleteNo one forces anyone else to act in a particular manner, Grim. Individual responsibility is not so easily dispensed with as that, or should not be.
ReplyDeleteI think you and I have different ideas about what he is responsible for having done. Sin of any kind is about the will: as Master Eckhart said when accused of heresy, he might be wrong about the nature of God but he couldn't be a heretic because he didn't will to be one. He was trying to do the right thing, according to his best power of understanding. If he was in error, he would accept correction -- but not blame.
I've just written up what I think was going on with the guy at your place, but here's the relevant part again:
"The woman who made the shirt is herself an "alternative model" who goes to great lengths to look like one of those women on the shirt. She also makes and sells shirts like this.
"So for her, this whole set of symbols is about empowerment. It's about being who she wants to be, and living her life on her own terms. She is not letting anyone tell her how to dress, or that she's 'too sexy,' but is doing her own thing as she pleases. A woman being free to do just that is supposed to be (or to have been) at the core of what feminism fights for in society.
"So to this man, as her friend, adopting those colors is a way of embracing and celebrating his friend and her lifestyle choices. He's celebrating her and saying that he, too, thinks this is a fine way for a woman to be and to look if she wants.
"Of course, the internet morons (as you put it) didn't know any of that context. They just saw some geeky old dude in a hideous shirt. But when you see this poor guy break down and cry in his apology -- the sort of thing I'd think discreditable in a man if he hadn't just landed a probe on a comet 300 million miles away -- I have to feel really bad for the guy. He thought he was helping a woman he liked embrace her life choices, and came under vicious attack for being an enemy of women getting to feel welcome in his world. That's just what he was trying not to be."
Now if I'm right about that, this was no sin -- just a mistake. He may be due correction for his sense of what is appropriate to wear on camera. But he isn't due blame, nor shame. He has been treated unjustly because he has been treated as someone who did something blameworthy and shameful. That's not fair to the man, who meanwhile has accomplished something noteworthy -- even extraordinary.
No one (least of all me) has suggested he hasn't done anything noteworthy, Grim.
ReplyDeleteActions aren't all fungible, and as I've already said, the shirt just isn't that big a deal. It's a weird choice, and certainly if he wants to champion the right of women to dress like that in the workplace (and his bosses don't mind) he can do that.
And other people can - and will - take away what they take away from it. Unless he plans to spend all day explaining himself, they're probably not going to think, "Ah - he must be championing the right of some woman I've never met to dress however he pleases!"
Let's change up the situation a little bit. Now our scientist is has a gay friend, and the shirt (made for him by that friend) depicts scantily clad men in leather. There is absolutely NO difference between that guy's shirt and this image, for instance.
Anyone who is made in the least bit uncomfortable is a prude and [insert insult du jour here].
Somehow, I'm not seeing the same defense for him, nor the same outrage :p
Do you understand why that analogy won't work for me? You've heard the metaphysical argument from me before, but just to make it explicit: humans have natures, which is to say that we grow and come to be in a certain way. You and I and our dogs can all eat the same food, but we won't become more like each other. Our natures will order that same food into you, me, and our dogs.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things that human nature provides us with are eyes. Now we can see from the way the eye is structured what its function is supposed to be: it is to see. But sometimes people are born with eyes that don't work for some reason. These people are not due blame, nor pity, but respect (as respect is for the soul, which is human). So we wouldn't say that they are bad people because they are blind; we make room for them.
However, we ought to be able to make a distinction between saying that they are "bad people" and saying that they have bad eyes. That's a perfectly rational thing to say because we can objectively observe that the human eye is supposed to see, and their eyes do not. The eyes are objectively criticizable even though the person is not (and indeed should not be criticized).
Homosexuality is in an exactly similar position. We can criticize the sexuality as disordered just as we can criticize eyes that don't work as disordered. And it would be wrong -- in Eckhart's terms it would be sinful, as it is an act of will -- to celebrate a culture that is disordered. It would be like putting your son's eyes out because you want to celebrate blind culture; or even putting out your own.
For the cases to be analogous, then, rockabilly culture would have to be itself disordered. But it isn't; it's chiefly not about sex but music. And great music -- Johnny Cash, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and so forth. So the celebration of the one culture isn't analogous to the celebration of the other.
Now, I'll give you an example that I think is a closer analog. It's not quite perfect, as you'll see.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things InstaPundit sometimes says that is foolish is that someday we'll all have sexbots and we won't need women any more. That's a disordered culture almost on the same terms as homosexual culture (it's actually somewhat worse, since it is a genuine perversion rather than something with a disordered natural function at its base).
So if you were celebrating a culture of abandoning relationships with real women in favor of relationships with sexbots, that would deserve criticism in terms of your analogy -- even more criticism.
I haven't said much about that because, of course, there are no sexbots. It's kind of a silly fantasy of some men. But it's the kind of thing you could count on me to criticize in even stronger terms, were it actually possible.
You've heard the metaphysical argument from me before, but just to make it explicit: humans have natures, which is to say that we grow and come to be in a certain way. You and I and our dogs can all eat the same food, but we won't become more like each other. Our natures will order that same food into you, me, and our dogs.
ReplyDeleteYou make this argument repeatedly, Grim. Generally followed by telling me what that nature is, and how the fact that men are "this way" and women are "that way" somehow justifies whatever proposition you're trying to get me to accept.
The thing is, human beings don't even agree on "the exact nature of human nature". You have your opinions about it, and you're entitled to them. But I don't share them. Philosophers are still arguing about all of these questions.
So putting forth a circular argument in which your take on questions that have never been settled in any way proves your point just doesn't convince me. The science isn't settled, and neither is the philosophy.
I understand the argument you're making. I just don't find it to be valid for the reasons just stated.
Yes, you can claim that homosexuality is a malfunction; an aberration. But that's your opinion on a question that none of us really knows the answer to.
I cannot imagine anyone wearing this shirt to Church on sunday. I don't need to explain to you why this is so - you already understand the reason. And it wouldn't serve as an excuse that you only wore a shirt with semi-naked women on it because you wanted to celebrate women's empowerment and rockabilly culture :p
That's argument's pretty much a crock.
The reason people wouldn't wear such a shirt to church is that it's overtly sexual, just as the same kind of shirt would be if it were covered in gay men. Or hetero men dressed in the exact same clothing.
Nor am I likely to buy the argument that this image is mostly about music, not sex.
I don't think there's any question that every philosopher agrees upon. But this position has a pretty honorable track record of agreement from some very serious minds. There are people who disagree about it, but they tend to adopt some pretty extreme positions -- that there are no moral values at all, or only culturally created ones, or that there is not even really an external world (or at least that we can't be sure there is one). In terms of philosophers who have managed to build functioning societies, you'll find this argument well established: in the Christian West (much of it is from Aquinas), in the Jewish philosophers (especially Maimonides and Gersonides), and among the Islamic philosophers in the days when that field was flourishing (especially Averroes).
ReplyDeleteIf a society cannot see the difference between blindness and sight, between deafness and hearing, between natural function and malfunction -- well, of course such a society will make bad decisions and build warped institutions. And of course it will need to destroy healthy institutions and regulations.
I haven't defended the shirt the guy wore; I've only said that the culture it represents is not disordered. I have agreed with you that someone should have told him not to wear it. But I question whether anyone can, because of the damage done to the healthy institutions such as etiquette -- damage done by the very people now most upset by his attire.
You are not among those people, but your objection to his outfit is explicitly phrased in terms of the older tradition: "It seems pretty plain to me that this would have caused an uproar when I was younger, and also when my parents were young, and my grandparents as well. IOW, nothing has changed except our incessant desire to inject sex into pretty much every human and social situation..."
Well, one thing that has changed besides the desire -- which, actually, is probably not new because it also follows from "human nature" -- is the destruction of all those protective and regulatory institutions whose influence you miss. The result is that nobody knows what the right and left limits are on how to behave, and everybody's screaming at each other all the time.
I am sorry he apologized- would have seen him mock the affronted, laugh at them., humiliate them them publicly- "so sorry, sweetheart, I was busy landing a rocket on a comet, didn't have too much time to agonize over whether or not my shirt was gonna freak out some useless harpy. Some of us have a lot to do with our hands, , and some of us have way too much time on our hands- guess which one you are, sweetheart?"
ReplyDeleteThese people have gotten so used to the idea they can harass with impunity they need to get some back, front and center.
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Raven's answer sounds like it should be read in the voice of Han Solo.
ReplyDeleteWhat church do you go to, Cass? I'm willing to bet I could find something similar in some churches in Florida or Hawaii, especially Unitarian ones.
ReplyDeleteAnd I seem to remember you mentioning your skirt being measured by nuns at one time--how important was that? Pretty important to those nuns.
Now, I'd have loved it if the guy had responded as Raven indicated, but, he didn't, and being a 'sensitive new age guy' as the song goes, he got blindsided by the current war between the 'sex positive' (for lack of better phrase) female crowd, and the female 'new puritans' (which is probably a slur on the original puritans, but you get my drift).
Cass is an Episcopalian. In the Catholic church I most often attend, though -- it being located on a university campus, for the service of the young -- I'm impressed by how much variation there is on what people think these days about what it's proper to wear to church.
ReplyDeleteThe nuns don't measure skirts anymore. Even that institution hasn't held the line, not always. In fact, the nuns are often some of the most liberal feminists of all. Certainly the sister at this church is among those. But she's a sweet, wonderful lady with a great heart. I think she wanted to see a world in which people were just free and accepted, as Christ accepts and forgives everything.
Chesterton used to talk about an orphanage on a high cliff, surrounded by the sea. It had high walls, and was a joyous playground. Later, someone took down the walls. And then it was not joyous anymore, because it was too dangerous to play.
Chesterton had quite the knack for making wisdom plain.
ReplyDeleteThe Episcopal churches here in my neck of the woods range from informal (right down the street, new minister who strikes me as overtly political and extremely liberal) to what I'm more comfortable with (Anglican-style, gothic architecture, most people still dress up for church - Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes).
ReplyDeleteBut my sister in law married a Catholic and they have raised the kids as Catholics. Their church is modern and very informal (yet I still cannot imagine anyone wearing that shirt to church, and I've been in their church countless times). But with Unitarians, all bets are off :)
Funny story. Years ago we attended a small mission church in the high desert. The traveling priest was a former Unitarian. One day he walked up the aisle strumming a guitar. Our elderly deacon (an 80 year old Brit with strong high church leanings) almost went into cardiac arrest. I kept thinking of The Name of the Rose - I could easily see him in a monk's robe with cowl, finger shaking in outrage, and the word "ABOMINATION" on his lips :p
For an answer to this, I'm going to make a suggestion. Scour the internet. Go to the blogs and forums of these social "justice" warriors. Wade into that cesspool. Se for yourself the world they envision.
ReplyDeleteAnd if you can stand it you'll probably say "Well, that's just incoherent." It's not. I'm here to tell you that with all the competing visions out there there is one common thread:
Anything besides that which we - Me, Cass, Grim, you all, etc - hold dear.
It's not a philosophy of building something, it's a philosophy of destroying something.
I'm not going to look up the source, it's not relevant - I'll cite it as "Someone smarter than me." Someone smarter than me once said (paraphrased) that he's not about to even consider someone tearing down a wall until the person proposing to do so can articulate why the damn wall was there to begin with.
These SJW's know why the wall is there.
They also know that after they articulate why, after due consideration, we're not going to agree. If they stated their full intent, in fact, it would be on. Nary a one on us all would not be prepared to spit on our hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
They'd lose that battle. And they know it. So instead of an open war, it's the death of a thousand cuts.
"Wall? We're not tearing down a wall. Come on - you're over-reacting. It's just one brick. We don't need this brick. Be reasonable. Compromise. Okay - now this brick needs to go too. Wall? Again with the wall? NOOOOOOOBODY is talking about tearing down any wall! What's wrong with you people? You're a bunch of conspiracy theorists! IT'S JUST ONE BRICK!"
And another. And another. And another.
If they came in and said "We aim to tear down this wall." we'd be ready to nail them to it and cut the blood eagle in their back. But as long as they are only chipping away at the mortar here and there, defacing it, taking out one brick at a time nobody seems to care. Meh. Leave them alone. Just one brick. Let them have a petty victory, it's beneath us.
In the meantime - how's that wall looking?
Now you know why I want to kick their teeth down their throat. Because it's not about the brick they're chipping at.
The Wall Paradox is also G. K. Chesterton's, Anon.
ReplyDeleteTheir accomplishment was making someone bow down and Obey.
ReplyDeleteBeing able to do things is of limited use. Slave Empires like Islam have always preferred to control the producers, making Indian numerals into Arabic numerals is just as good. Controlling the producers is more practical and more flexible.
He did not ascribe the dustup to "feminism" but to "political correctness," for which he has no use regardless of who is involved.
Those that commit memory and thought crime, will be punished. That professor should know this, first and foremost. It's why his job exists, after all.
Their church is modern and very informal (yet I still cannot imagine anyone wearing that shirt to church, and I've been in their church countless times).
ReplyDeleteHad anyone wore that to the church, they would not have been torn a new one. Because that would be an invalid way of recruiting members. The Left, utilizing brainwashing and terror tactics, have less interest in such, since if they permit certain kinds of behavior such as free thinking blacks, they would lose members.
The punishment, is thus the hint. And people are still clueless enough that they refuse to get it. They don't want a clue, so they will get the Left. Befitting a soulless population.