Reason, intuition, emotion, and two of my favorite philosophers

I've been talking with friends about the relationship between (among?) reason, intuition, and emotion. Some friends seem to think that reason should be used to guide and restrain the unruly impulses of emotion, which can otherwise get is into such big trouble. Other friends argue that clear intuition, properly understood, is the best guide to action. I think it all goes together, reason, emotion, and intuition, and they all affect and correct each other. My friends are tolerant and open-minded people, but they seem to think that this is a rather unusual idea. As much as I would like to believe that I am the creative genius that has discovered this innovative way of looking at the world, it just ain't so. It is something that many radical feminists and lesbian feminists have been saying for years. This discussion inspired me to look up what two of my favorite philosophers have to say about the subject.

First, here is a passage from Mary Daly's autobiography, Outercourse: The Be-Dazzling Voyage. Starting on page 74, she describes her struggle with the concepts of reason and intuition when writing her dissertation for her doctoral dissertation in philosophy:

The point is that although I cherished this intuition, and could see no use in philosophizing without it, perhaps even in living without it, I wanted a clear defense of intellectual rigor/vigor. This insistence on having it all--intuition and arduous reasoning that is rooted in intuition--was of deep importance to me. I loved both modes of knowing, which I recognized as essential to each other. Sickened by the downgrading and caricaturing of intuition and the relegation of this pathetically reduced "talent" to women--which of course also implied the safeguarding of "reason" as the prerogative of males--I was struggling to Name this game which had been played by academics for centuries. It was indeed one of the masters' major mind fucks of the millennia.

That is one of my favorite things about feminist thinking, this wild insistence on having it all, on not having ourselves cut up into little pieces that get labeled "masculine" or "feminine." Another example of this wild insistence comes from radical lesbian Sarah Hoagland, whose 1988 book Lesbian Ethics has been one of the major influences on my own thinking. Hoagland has a long and interesting chapter on "Integrating Reason and Emotions," which I haven't the time to re-read at the moment. I'll content myself with quoting most of her first paragraph, found on page 157:

I want to discuss the split between reasoning and emotions, and the subsequent belief that one must control the other, which informs traditional anglo-european philosophy from ancient greece to the present and which we as lesbians perpetuate in our interactions. I want to suggest that accepting the split keeps alive the idea of power as control and keeps our selves fragmented and isolated. My overall argument is that our moral agency is encouraged by integrating and so politicizing reasoning and emotions within the community, for this is how we get back in touch with the energy that moves us, energy which is deadened when we separate reasoning and emotions.

Here is to unfucking all of our our minds and putting our reason, emotion, and intuition back together.

Maybe they are a Republican front group?

P.U.M.A., supposedly a group of Hillary Clinton supporters, has thrown its support to John McCain now that he's selected the inexperienced and ultraconservative Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.

All the women I've talked to are insulted and slightly incredulous at this choice--as was Jill over at Feministe. I'm not sure that I'm either insulted or incredulous--after all, this is the party that sent Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court to replace Thurgood Marshall. The G.O.P. often has been unable to tell the difference between diversity and tokenism. I expect even less from the Republicans than I do from the Democrats.

What does astonish me is a supposedly feminist group of women that tries to deny the threat that the McCain/Palin ticket would pose to women's reproductive rights, as P.U.M.A. does in this post: P.U.M.A / McCain/Palin on Roe Vs. Wade…

Commenters to this post have suggested that P.U.M.A. is a Republican front group--a charge that GrandPuma hotly denies. I have no way to evaluate the claims of either side. But it is incredible to me that a group allegedly formed to support the staunchly pro-choice Hillary Clinton would back a slate that opposes everything that Clinton stands for.

Del Martin dies/Swapping information across generations

These two topics are related. I'll tie them together at the end.

You can find the information about Del Martin here:
Feministe � Today We Mourn the Passing of Del Martin

And here is a link to a fascinating post on Feministe by LaToya on Sharing Information Across Generations. I love this post for its upfront and open-minded effort to deal with controversy and division in the feminist movement. Here's a longish sample:

More than just being feminist starstruck though, talking with Alida [Brill] really illuminates a lot of the personal struggles that come out of a movement like feminism. Like what it means to give so much to a movement that your personal life suffers. Or what happens when you realize you made key mistakes. Or what happens when older things you have said, or done, or written, come back to haunt you.

“We got so much wrong,” Alida told me openly. “We got the race thing wrong, and we got the lesbian thing wrong, and we are still getting things wrong. I just hope we have the time to fix it.”

Hearing her say that reminded me that while we tend to think of movements as immovable, inflexible things - not a reflection of all the people who create a movement or participate in one. Sometimes, as she tells me a story, her pain over something long past is palpable.

But most of the time, her tone is hopeful.

For you see, talking with Alida is not like listening to someone who could care less about what you think. Talking with Alida as a young buck is actually an illuminating experience because she doesn’t address me (or us, rather - there are 10 women in the program) as some insolent child sullying up the grand second wave legacy.

She is my elder, but she is also my peer. She is just as interested in hip-hop feminism as I am, asks a lot of questions about the internet (even if she is a little afraid of it) and is always open to the understanding that her interpretation may need an adjustment for the times. It has been a pleasure talking and learning from a feminist who lived through the struggle, and I look forward to more conversation.

But when LaToya said, "The average librarian is about 55-65 where I live, and they are the people that give me the most hope about living a full active life all the way to the end," I have to admit she threw me a little bit. At 52, I am close to the lower end of that age group. I am crossing my fingers and hoping that I have the chance to go beyond 65. And finding myself wanting to know the histories of women who already have--especially lesbians who already have.

Del Martin was 87. She started the relationship with the love of her life, Phyllis Lyon, several years before I was born, and began her activist career the year before my birth when she and Lyon co-founded the Daughters of Bilitis. The organization Old Lesbians Organizing for Change--of which Martin was a member--has an oral herstory project focused on recording the stories of lesbians 70 and older. These are some of the places where I am taking my inspiration.

(This post was originally entered at 7:09 AM on August 28, and expanded and rewritten later that evening.)

Rick and Kay Warren at Saddleback

A friend of mine recently mentioned Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in California, as an interesting change from old style right-wing Christian leaders such as Sally Kern. I hadn't heard of him before, but this is the guy who sponsored the forum where Barack Obama and John McCain both spoke recently.

This morning I accidentally heard the last few seconds of this public radio program:

Rick and Kay Warren at Saddleback [Speaking of Faith-- from American Public Media]

What I heard was Rick Warren saying something like, if you're asking why God isn't stepping in to fix serious problems in the world, God is asking the same thing about you. And Warren said that in order to work on these problems, his church was willing to work with believers, agnostics, atheists, gays...

Yup, that sounds different than Sally Kern all right.

I don't know if I'll have time to go back and listen to the entire show. But I did poke around on the Speaking of Faith website page about this particular broadcast.

I'm sorry to say that in many ways, Saddleback Church sounds like a typical, authoritarian evangelical church, in ways that creep me out a little bit. They say "you were made for God's pleasure." I don't know what I think about God. But I do think that any God(dess?) worth believing in would create beings for their own pleasure, and take pleasure in those beings being themselves.

I don't know what position they take on the role of women, but I'm wary. Kay Warren does seem to play a prominent role in the enterprise. (The pastor's wife seems to play a well-publicized role in many evangelical churches.) She has recently published a book, Dangerous Surrender. This may be about her view of Christian discipleship in general, but the title reminds me of all those books trying to convince us that wives should submit to their husbands and men should be the ones who take leadership roles in church and society.

Nevertheless, the Warrens and their church do seem to represent an interesting shift away from the right-wing evangelical politics of the past.

Critical Support for the Obama Candidacy

In the wake of the widely publicized presidential candidate "faith forum" over the weekend, here are two interesting perspectives on supporting Barack Obama in the upcoming presidential election while frankly criticizing his coziness with corporate power:

janinsanfran focuses on Obama's support for Bill Clinton's 1996 "welfare reform" act as a way of distancing himself from the needs of poor black people. Despite this, she sees him as clearly preferable to Republican John McCain.

Norman Solomon, believes that

we're in great need of willingness to acknowledge contradictory truths, to sort through them as a means of finding the best progressive strategies for the here and now. While some attacks on Obama from the left are overheated, overly ideological and mechanistic, there's scant basis for denying the reality that his campaign and his positions are way too cozy with corporate power. Meanwhile, his embrace of escalating the war in Afghanistan reflects acceptance rather than rejection of what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the madness of militarism."

Nevertheless, Solomon, who is an Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention, also supports Obama over McCain.

Given that Cynthia McKinney is not on the ballot in Oklahoma, I will cheerfully vote for Obama.

What do Sally Kern and Arianna Huffington have in common?

I went out to the Red Cup on Friday night, brain dead and feeling like I'd been hit by a truck, so I could hear the band 13 Seeds. It was excellent and amazing, though I was certainly too tired after a grueling day at work to give you description of exactly why I'm saying that. They have a new CD. You should check it out.

Somewhere toward the end of the performance, a man named Rob Marlett stood up. One of the band members introduced him, and he gave a little speech. He's a Democrat, challenging Republican Sally Kern in the November election for the District 84 seat in the Oklahoma State House of Representatives. And I stood up and applauded for him, not because I know much about him, but because I wanted to give the guy some credit for taking her on.

You remember Sally Kern, of course. Back in March, she was addressing a small gathering of like-minded right-wing Republicans when she made some statements that ignited a nation-wide controversy.

Here is the crucial part of her speech, as quoted by the Associated Press at the time. "The homosexual agenda is destroying this nation. Studies show that no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted, you know, more than a few decades. I honestly think it's the biggest threat that our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam, which I think is a big threat." (I know the AP said this, because I quoted it in an email to a friend at the time. You can find more background material on this episode, and more of Ms. Kern's bizarre exploits at Wikipedia.)

I am certainly grateful to Mr. Marlett for taking on this campaign. And I think it would be an excellent idea to get Ms. Kern out of the Oklahoma Legislature. Yet, I often find myself feeling hesitant when progressive activists target Ms. Kern for her anti-gay attitudes. As obnoxious as she is, I feel that several important issues end up being ignored.

For one thing, in addition to attacking lesbians and gay men, she attacked the entire religion of Islam and all of its adherents. It wasn't that she criticized it or offered disagreements with some of its tenets. She described the existence Islam as a threat to the well-being and safety of US citizens. This seems like a direct attack on the freedom of religion that supposedly helps to make this a free country.

For another thing, Kern's reference to the threat of "terrorism," needs to be questioned. The criminal attacks in New York and Washington in September 2001 were abhorent. But the so-called War on Terror that followed those attacks has been used to justify the invasion Afghanistan and Iraq. It has been used to excuse torture of "enemy combatants" and to attack the civil liberties of US citizens, and to divert scare resources away from dealing with other serious social and economic programs.

But more than that, the ideology underlying Kern's views has not been examined.

The central theme of this self-appointed "cultural warrior" seems to be that gay people are a threat to "the family." Before we toss this view away as ridiculous, we need to understand what sort of family Sally Kern is defending.

It's not just a family that consists of a husband and wife and their biological children (no other types of families need apply). It's a patriarchal family, one which is ruled by the man, in which the wife and children defer to his judgment.This particular type of family is understood by fundamentalist Christians to be the bedrock on which all of society rests.

This was the same argument used to oppose the Equal Rights Amendment, and before that, the right of women to vote. (Given this, Sally Kern's position as a state legislator is ironic, to say the least.)

What Rep. Kern and her allies seem to fear is that given other options, many people will not choose the patriarchal model for families. If society is based on that family model, then society as a whole is threatened.

But at its best, the United States is actually a pluralistic society that provides a place for people with very little common ground to coexist in peace. We are not going to achieve a nation in which everyone shares the same values any time soon. We are going to continue to have deep and difficult differences that can't be patched over easily.

How do we deal with that? Left, right, and center, many activists fall prey to the temptation to blur the disagreements that exist. Thus, it's tempting to single out Sally Kern as a practitioner of hate speech. It's much harder to have an honest discussion about the world view that underlies what she says.

The Religious Right may be past its prime. Its number of adherents may be shrinking. But it is still an important force in US politics and social life. Unfortunately, Sally Kern is not an aberration. She represents a real constituency.

There is always some fool woman who is ready and eager to defend the patriarchal way of doing things. (Remember ita Anita Bryant?) There are always lots of progressive people out there who want to make fun of that poor figurehead, while ignoring the underlying patriarchal reality.

I want to stop talking about the figureheads. I want to talk about the patriarchy.

Which brings me to the second part of this story. The patriarchy is a complicated beast with more than one face.

There is the moralistic, authoritarian patriarchy that thrives on squelching diversity. Then there is the fun-loving patriarchy that thrives on photos of Olympic women's beach volleyball.

This morning I made the mistake of poking around through some old links in my web browser, and on accident I discovered that the Huffington Post was featuring a slideshow of the U.S. women's beach volleyball team.

Women in all sorts of sports at the Olympics are wearing scanty little outfits that appear designed to show off as much of their bodies as possible. Men competing in the same sport are wearing outfits that expose much less skin. Even I have seen enough of the Olympics to notice that.

Apparently, the US women's beach volleyball team wore especially skimpy outfits. Apparently, the beach volleyball competition was much less about any pretense of athletic excellence, and much more about the display of conventionally attractive female bodies in conventionally titillating poses. At least, that was the impression I got from listening to Scott Simon and Daniel Schorr discuss this sport on National Public Radio on Saturday morning. It wasn't what they said, it was how they said it. I could hear the leer in their voices.

And then, this morning, I noticed the existence of that slideshow on Huffington Post. And saw some of the comments from the supposedly liberal men who had taken the time to page through the whole thing. (I could see the leer in their words.) I could have posted my own comment if I'd been willing to register with the site. But I wasn't willing to do that. I wasn't willing to add to their credibility as a supposedly serious alternative to the mainstream media.

Well, darn it, women are certainly beautiful, aren't we? But there is really a big freaking difference between appreciating a woman's beauty and treating her body as a commodity. Appreciating a woman's sexual attractiveness is completely different from treating her as an object to be bought, sold, consumed.

Real appreciation has something to do with perceiving that inner fire that illuminates and animates the body. It also has something to do with seeing the beauty in all the shapes, sizes, colors, and ages that the female body might have.

The phony leering thing that makes sex and women's bodies nasty is the product of the unholy marriage of patriarchy and capitalism.

Most of the nice liberal men who are doing the leering in this case would probably condemn Sally Kern for her bigotry. That disappoints me, but doesn't really surprise me.

The thing I'm still scratching my head over is how this crap ended up on a web site started by a woman who is theoretically challenging the world view of the mainstream media.

Controversy over SEIU organizaing strategy

This analysis over at t r u t h o u t is a fascinating discussion about the conflict activists face between "practical politics" and achieving the goals that you really want to achieve. Given the importance of the Service Employees International Union in organizing health care workers:

The stakes are very high for everyone. An organized healthcare industry in alliance with consumers could create the strength to win a single-payer health system benefiting every person in this country.

Aren't elections about having choices?

When I go to the poll on Election Day here in Oklahoma, I will have two choices for US president--Barack Obama or John McCain. There will be no other presidential candidates. There's not even a place for me to write in the name of my little cat.

Given those choices, I'm going to vote for Barack Obama. I might wish he were more radical. I'm definitely disappointed that he felt he needed to disown his former pastor Jeremiah Wright. But Obama is clearly a better candidate than John McCain.

But no matter what I do, Oklahoma seems certain to give its seven electoral votes to McCain. Given that McCain is unacceptable to me, there is no reason to worry about giving my vote to his most electable opponent. I would like to have some other choices.

If I had the choice to do so, I would vote for Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney. I've said this before, and I'll probably say it again--if the Democrats don't get any criticism or competition from the left, they will drift further and further to the right.

Here's another situation in which political opponents are working together for a common goal. OBAR Ballot Access Reform for Oklahoma is working to gain access to the Oklahoma Ballot for so-called minor parties. Sounds like a darned good idea to me.

Of course, there are also activists within the Democratic party who are working to make that party less conservative and more accountable to its activist base. See the post directly below.

Demo Activists Win Healthcare Platform Fight

Common Dreams has this piece from The Nation on good news coming out of the Democratic Party's platform negotiations:

Platform Fight: Activists Win Commitment to Guaranteed Care - CommonDreams.org

The organization that worked for more progressive language on health care is Progressive Democrats of America. Over at the pdamerica site, Donna Smith describes how this victory was achieved, and seems to think it's a pretty big deal. Not a final victory in the battle for universal health care, but a big step forward. It also represented an interesting coalition between Smith, an advocate of a single-payer system, and Bob Remer, a Hillary Clinton supporter on the platform committee:

This was the first time I met Bob. He was (and is) a staunch supporter of Hillary Clinton's. From the icy cold in Iowa to this moment, Bob believed with his heart and his head that Sen. Clinton was the best candidate to lead his nation. A big, hulking fellow with a rich history of community and political involvement and a career spent working in the healthcare field, Bob felt the strengthening of the platform language on healthcare was a way to honor Sen. Clinton. So, I thought, that's fine, so long as we agree that every American has a basic human right to healthcare. We sat in the hotel coffee shop in Pittsburgh, two ordinary folks from Chicago, hoping we could push our party off the mark on this issue and toward true reform. We both agreed that the platform is not where legislative details or programs are either negotiated or adopted--and because we disagreed on what the final outcome of health reform legislation might be, Bob and I quickly moved beyond that discussion. He supports a Clinton-type reform while I am firmly in the single-payer camp.

I find something incredibly encouraging about this. It offers hope that people with similar goals but dramatically different proposals for reaching them can work together respectfully and honestly.

Polls About Race Can Elicit Dishonest Responses : NPR

As I was driving over to the Red Cup today, I was listening to this segment on Talk of the Nation. I wasn't so much listening on purpose. It was just a thing where I hit the "FM" button on my radio out of curiosity about what was on.

If I'd known the topic was going to be politically polling, I would have kept my finger off the button. The existence of polling makes me angry. If I were Queen, I would outlaw it. Polling creates the illusion of popular involvement in political life, but undermines the reality of real participation. Instead of genuine discussions of issues of public policy, political campaigns become superficial popularity contests.

This discussion made me uneasy for two reasons. They were talking about the idea that white people might be lying when they tell pollsters that they're willing to vote for a black candidate. I think this is a discussion that shapes opinions as well as revealing them. At the risk of sounding irrational or paranoid, it feels like something that justifies and encourages racism in the white electorate.

But what really blew my mind was a caller to the show who said she was liberal on most issues, but against what she called "illegal immigration." Not only does she hide her true opinion from her friends, but she goes to political demonstrations and holds up signs she disagrees with. I hardly even know what to say to this. It scares me. Disagreement is important. Honest disagreement is one important ways that community is built.

This is a complicated topic, but the Red Cup is closing in five minutes, so I'll leave it as it is.

Talking to Myself, Part I

July 27, 2008

The name of this weblog is Talking to Myself, because that is
what I need to do to learn how to put a blog together.

A blog is not a diary. A diary is private. I have a diary. Hell,
I have 30 years worth of diaries. They are bound books that I
write in with a pen, or sometimes a pencil. In my diary, I can
say anything I want. I can tell stories that I'm not willing to
share with anyone else, or stories that would violate someone
else's privacy if I told them. A blog is a form of electronic
publication. Even if I restrict entry to this blog, it is
potentially a way of discussing ideas with others. What I say
here, I accept that there is a possibility that others will read.

That, indeed, is why I want to write a blog. I want to have a
conversation with others. It's a way to help create the world I
want to see, a world where power-over is no longer a governing
concept. A world where there may be many cultural differences,
and differences of opinion, and differences of ways of life--but
a world in which no one has power over others based on gender or
race. A world without economic exploitation and a world in which
everyone's basic needs are met. Haven't I said this all before?
Aren't these all platitudes? Maybe, but I'm talking to myself,
and if I listen to my own voice I will learn the specifics of
what I need to say.

Okay. That's enough to start with.