Dmitry Pruss sent me Wool and the Indo-Anatolian Hypothesis: A Linguistic and Archaeological Approach, saying “the summary looks good”; here are some salient passages:
In the context of Indo-European languages, wool holds linguistic significance as well. In Hittite, the word for wool appears in various forms, such as the widespread use of the Sumerogram SÍG. […]
Interestingly, linguistic analysis shows two distinct stems in the Hittite language for wool: ḫulii̯a- and ḫulan(a)-. Both forms, while indicating wool, exhibit different grammatical usages and highlight how linguistic evolution can track technological innovations, like wool production, in ancient cultures. The suffixes -ii̯a- and -āli- are common Indo-European nominal endings, while -ana- presents an anomaly, showcasing potential inner-Anatolian developments. […]
The research presented by Alwin Kloekhorst challenges long-held assumptions regarding the presence of a common Proto-Indo-European (PIE) term for wool across the Indo-Anatolian languages. The conclusion that the lexeme h₂ulh₁n(e)h₂- for ‘wool’ likely never existed within PIE forces a reevaluation of how the Indo-Anatolian languages developed in relation to wool-related vocabulary. In particular, the Anatolian word ḫulan-, which refers to wool, appears to be independent of the late PIE term, suggesting that the Anatolian branch diverged early from the rest of the PIE family, long before the spread of wool technology across Eurasia.
Furthermore, the PIE term ulh₁n(e)h₂- seems to have been created later, in the post-Tocharian PIE era, around 2700 BCE. This period aligns with the introduction of wool production to the Pontic steppes, indicating that language adapted alongside technological advancements. The evidence supports the idea that the spread of wool and its associated terminology was not a universal phenomenon across all Indo-European languages but rather emerged as wool became a vital resource in specific regions.
Lastly, the root hul-, found in Anatolian languages, could be a borrowing from external sources, such as Hurrian. This borrowing emphasizes the complexity of linguistic evolution and the significant cultural exchanges between ancient peoples. By integrating linguistic evidence with archaeological data, Kloekhorst’s conclusions offer a more nuanced understanding of the development of wool production and its terminology, illustrating that the linguistic divergences in Anatolia better align with the archaeological timeline of wool’s spread than previous theories suggested.
More details and graphics at the link. Thanks, Dmitry!
The paper is in a desperately irritating format: a pdf version of one of those powerpoint presentations in which every time you click, just one single line is added to the same slide contents that you’re already looking at (it’s an annoying enough gimmick in a powerpoint, and tends to reflect a bad use of powerpoint, viz reading out the text on your slides rather than using them as a visual aid to your spoken presentation.)
Roger Blench has a tendency to do this too, alas; though happily, he is much less given to the incremental-reveal style in his powerpoints.
The tl;dr seems to be that the marked similarity between the Anatolian and Rest-of-IE forms for “wool” is pure coincidence. I am in no way competent to assess this claim (and look forward to hearing from Hatters who are), but similar phenomena in Oti-Volta set many traps for the unwary.
For example, you can’t automatically conclude that a form is not inherited from the fact that the meanings in descendant languages suggest a referent which is too recent archaeologically: the original meaning may have changed in parallel in different branches. The various Oti-Volta words for “book” provide some cases in point.
And once you get into loanword/calquing territory, things get a lot more complicated, and you need much more evidence to substantiate your claims than you need for a straightforward historical reconstruction. Otherwise it’s all just-so stories.
The paper is in a desperately irritating format
Heartily seconded.
Kloekhorst mentions the possibility of a Hurrian loan, but I wish he’d at least referenced the comparison with Northeast Caucasian languages. In “Areal Typology of Proto-Indo-European: The Case for Caucasian Connections”, Matasovic references the NCED’s *ƛ:wāħnɨ “wool”, only attested by Northeast Caucasian, as a possible source, though he also notes that Nichol’s (2003 reconstruction, (D=)Vɬa(-j) as the Proto-Nakh-Daghestanian wool word makes this scenario less plausible.
Without making any claims for or against the “Alarodian hypothesis”, and a phyletic link between Hurro-Urartian and Nakh-Daghestanian, it’s interesting to imagine the resemblance between the Anatolian and Nuclear Indo-European roots as being the result of parallel borrowing from the Caucasian sphere
“Areal Typology of Proto-Indo-European: The Case for Caucasian Connections”
Oh, wonderful. Similarity between phonologies of the Caucasus and PIE as presently reconstructed is striking – or I believe it is – and I have been wondered if anyone dedicated a book or a paper to possible areal/typological context for PIE. So someone did!
“This document is currently being converted. Please check back in a few minutes.” Must be because I’m on a bus in rural Czechia. So I’ll talk about the format instead of the contents…
It’s only annoying on academia.edu. If you’ve downloaded the PDF, you can get it to display one page per screen, and then you can click through and get the intended experience of extra lines appearing on the slide without anything else moving.
I make my own presentations with written bullet points that appear sequentially because, when I’m in the audience, I get distracted when there’s text on a slide that the presenter hasn’t gotten to yet. I desperately try to read all of it before the next slide, and that means I can’t listen. That’s bad. Indeed, when the presentation is just 15 minutes including time for questions, as it normally is at the conferences I go to, it’s horrible. Much better to have the one point I’m talking about at the moment appear on the screen just-in-time. Feed as much information as possible to the audience as fast as possible – but not any faster.
Presentations should not be speeches, and they shouldn’t be speeches adorned with two or three pretty pictures either. I’m visual enough that I think everything important should be spelled out and/or illustrated. Once you’ve cut your presentation down to 12 minutes, there really isn’t much left that isn’t important…
The same time constraint, BTW, is a strong argument against any animations fancier than “appear” and “disappear”. They simply take too long.
Not sure if the connection is the problem; one click away is this paper on the gradual introduction of wool in Crete, with a short literature review on the gradual breeding of wooly sheep in general.
That paper, BTW, exhibits another common annoying feature of papers on academia.edu: it contains the entire front matter of the volume it’s in, so the text only starts halfway down the page.
“I desperately try to read all of it before the next slide, and that means I can’t listen. ”
That happens.
I haven’t decided yet for myself what is better.
___
But honestly, just give me 30 minutes, handout (with printed version of everything) a day before and a chalkboard. Optionally. (unlike wine, obligatory)
Somewhat related but more broad, with respect to early IE borrowing and substrates. I see that Kroonen’s volumr is in open access
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111337920/html
Sub-Indo-European Europe
Problems, Methods, Results
The dispersal of the Indo-European language family from the third millennium BCE is thought to have dramatically altered Europe’s linguistic landscape. Many of the preexisting languages are assumed to have been lost, as Indo-European languages, including Greek, Latin, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic and Armenian, dominate in much of Western Eurasia from historical times. To elucidate the linguistic encounters resulting from the Indo-Europeanization process, this volume evaluates the lexical evidence for prehistoric language contact in multiple Indo-European subgroups, at the same time taking a critical stance to approaches that have been applied to this problem in the past.
Chapters include
Three pre-Balto-Slavic bird names, or: A more austere take on Oštir
Anthony Jakob
Proto-Slavic forest tree names: Substratum or Proto-Indo-European origin?
Ranko Matasović
And more related to the current topic
Indo-European substrates: The problem of the Anatolian evidence
Zsolt Simon
A more austere take on Oštir
I presume this Oštir.
this Oštir
“Drei vorslawisch-etruskische Vogelnamen (1930)”? Hmm.
I don’t think any connection between PS and Etruscan was proposed there:) Wanderwords maybe.
(also from Slovenia Etruscan is not TOO far)
Oštir’s Wikipedia page was the second time I encountered Alarodian. The first was Hippophlebotomist’s comment above.
So far, so good, but there’s a long history of fun and far-reaching hypothesizing before it got there. Still going on, apparently:
You know what they say, scratch an Etruscan and you’ll find a Nakh.
That Kroonen volume is full of good stuff. There’s also a chapter on “camel”, a word usually taken to be a Semitic borrowing into Greek, but here argued to have come to both from another common source. Nakh and Georgian are discussed in depth.
I’m reading it now. It’s boding well so far.
@Trond, I come across it all the time.
I suppose one reason for this is that this term surfaced (for me) in connection with the local Meinhof argument (link), so I began to pay attention. Nevertheless it is in use in Russian literature because Diakonoff.
“fun and far-reaching hypothesizing”
Languages similar to Etruscan and Nakh could be once spoken across much larger area. Or not. And both definitely once were spoken elsewhere (as everything but maybe some random langauge in Africa. E.g. Afrikaans:)). So testing all possible far-reaching hypotheses of course makes sense. Searching under the streetlight is unlikely to be resultative, but it is more informative than not searching at all.
“This document is currently being converted. Please check back in a few minutes.”
Must be because I’m using a dated browser or because due to joint efforts of the Russian government and Ukrainian allies many things on the Internet don’t work from Russia or for any other reason:(
>“This document is currently being converted. Please check back in a few minutes.”
PDF or E-Pub?
The PDF took my not amazing web connection about 35 seconds to download, and then opened immediately. Would e-pub be something readible in a nook or kindle app?
PDF, but I susseccfully downloaded it. Even read … some of it.
25MB.
It just did not want to let me read it without downloading. I think it’s same for DM… but can’t be sure.
“Both forms, while indicating wool, exhibit different grammatical usages and highlight how linguistic evolution can track technological innovations, like wool production, in ancient cultures. ”
Haven’t found anything about different grammatical usages (reflecting tech or not) in the paper.
Is his problem 2 (no -(e)h₂, pp 72-63 of the pd
блядьf) a serious one?Is that abnormal?
I thought there are but a few supposed cognates of Core-IE feminine nouns….
So did I. The grammaticalization of the feminine gender and (probably) the wide application of the *-eh₂ suffix are supposed to have happened after Anatolian split off.
It’s all very woolly.
I got excited when I saw the Hausa word for ‘wool’ was ulu but then I learned it was borrowed from English. My Indo-Chadic hypothesis died aborning!
@DE, first it was really hairy, only then – woolly. (are we discussing “Selective Breeding of Problems: a Step towards Solution?”)
Me: the grammaticalization of the feminine gender and (probably) the wide application of the *-eh₂ suffix
I obviously meant “the femininization of grammatical gender and (probably) the *-bʰ-eh₂ suffix in common ewes”.
Flannel is Gaulish! Wow.
Trond, why *-bʰ?
Baa.
drasvi: why *-bʰ?
Because this is the conventional notation for the reconstructed Proto-Indo-Eweropean phoneme.
“Selective Breeding of Problems: a Step towards Solution?”
i’m not certain whether we should be pursuing a eugenic or a dysgenic strategy, if we are to begin an active cultivation of problems, myself. the consensus in the field seems to be that new problems are better problems, but i suspect that is based on the idea that the emergence of new problems means the disappearance of older ones, which i think is not supported by the evidence. the implicit chain-of-succession model should, it seems to me, be replaced at a minimum by a tree model, and perhaps even by some form of problem cladistics.
Ah. Indeed, it is be-e-e-e in Russian (not sure what hyphen stands for here, in words like не-а, nʲeʔə “nope” it is often a glottal stop as in nuh-uh).
I got excited when I saw the Hausa word for ‘wool’ was ulu but then I learned it was borrowed from English
Boringly, it’s just pɛ’ɛkɔnbʋg “sheep-fur” in Kusaal.
Gulmancema pèkobidi “wool” is an exact cognate (apart from the noun-class suffix), thereby proving that wool “technology” was known to the speakers of proto-Oti-Volta. Or not, as you may think …
(There’s not actually much call for wool in those parts. No long winter evenings ….)
it is be-e-e-e in Russian (not sure what hyphen stands for here
It is clear that the Russian “be-e-e-e” derives from the Kusaal pɛ’ɛs “sheep.” The hyphen is an attempt to represent the long glottalised vowel.
Sigh. I’m now not confident at all it is not MY hyphen. For my own glottal something*.
I haven’t read properly edited Russian fiction since the second millenium:-( (or since Hijri 10s)
*Be-e-e-e!
The glottal interruptions sound more goaty than sheepy, maybe.
It’s actually something of a mystery why the Western Oti-Volta words for “sheep” (like Kusaal sg pɛ’og) have a glottal vowel. The Nawdm cognate is fɛɛgu, rather than the *fɛɦgu you would have expected if the glottalisation were original.
However, this shows that the Russian form must be borrowed from Western Oti-Volta specifically, with obvious implications for the timescale. The loan must date from the period of Mossi-Dagomba rule over Muscovy and the first introduction of African sheep to Russia.
the period of Mossi-Dagomba rule over Muscovy
The rule must have extended much farther, as there are Mossi ruins all over Eurasia.
Usually solved by claiming that Mossi-Dagomba are Jews and everyone else who rules are Jews.
(when I told a young lady from Bangladesh who wanted to nuke Israel that the blockade of Gaza is organised by two countries, not one, she solved the problem this way)
The Red Hunter, grandfather of the founder of these kingdoms, is said to have come from east of Lake Chad. To this very day, Israel remains east of Lake Chad. Coincidence? I think not.
Well, we do underestimate Judaism.
I mean, in the Bible it is a religion of one people and country (neither is Chinese or China) and now it is a religion of one small people who again are not Han.
But in the Middle Ages there are influential polities in Arabia, in today’s Russia and in North Africa – that is,another “large” religion like Christianity.
I complained that there are no Christians and Muslims in West Mediterranean on “Muslim” and “Christian” shores and that may be the result of certain practices shared by both.
But the middle ages definitely were just as brutal to Jewish polities, everywhere.
Still “currently being converted”. So I went to Kloekhorst’s main page… and the presentation doesn’t have a preview picture. Normally that means it isn’t uploaded at all. So I went back and tried to log in (which I haven’t done in years because academia.edu is generally horrible) to download the pdf, not that that should be possible when there’s no preview.
It’s now stuck on “Please hold while we log you in”. Maybe the password is wrong (I never created an account there, academia.edu did that for me the first time I tried to download something, so who knows if I have a password…!), but that’s no way to tell me!
So I logged in through Google. I think I have two academia.edu accounts now.
Anyway, the download worked splendidly. Before I actually read the presentation, I’ll say that the argument that the Greek words aren’t compatible with an initial *h₂- is solid, but if there was a separate phoneme *h₂ʷ-, that might work after all.
I’ve read it now! It works splendidly in Acrobat Reader; the animation works exactly as intended every time I turn the wheel on the mouse by one cog – nothing else moves. Kura-Araxes Culture I-II flows into Kura-Araxes Culture III, pouring out from the Caspian to the Mediterranean Sea…
I’m very skeptical about the Kortlandt effect as formulated originally and in the presentation, i.e. *d > *h₁ within PIE under certain conditions; but if it’s instead formulated as simple disappearance of *d from certain difficult clusters, with compensatory lengthening of immediately preceding vowels, it probably works.
That might also hold for the Armenian “wool, fleece” word.
Yes, but the suffix did exist; a few nouns in -a describing men like Latin agricola do show up in Lydian and/or Lycian and such. I don’t know if it’s widespread in abstract nouns like it is in Indo-Actually-European.
Agricola is not a good example, is it? The -a is a derivational suffix. Did you mean that that nominalizing suffix has Anatolian cognates?
Well, the derivational suffix is the same thing as the feminizing suffix; the latter is the former generalized to a new function.
Well, the derivational suffix is the same thing as the feminizing suffix; the latter is the former generalized to a new function.
In other words, the feminizing suffix is just a repurposed rib of the derivational suffix. This idea did not excite criticism in Genesis times, but those times have changed.
@Stu, they do try to explain why feminine was formed based on this specific suffix (which also supposedly gave neuter nom-acc) with various ideas that presuppose that communication is somewhat androcenric.
(I’m not sure what the source of the feminine marker should be to encourage them to give gynocentric explanations. E.g. if masculine were obviously the marked gender and feminine stems we one suffix shorter – would they search for an androcentric explanation anyway?)
I’ve read it now! It works splendidly in Acrobat Reader; the animation works exactly as intended every time I turn the wheel on the mouse by one cog – nothing else moves. Kura-Araxes Culture I-II flows into Kura-Araxes Culture III, pouring out from the Caspian to the Mediterranean Sea…
I think you mean the Kura-Araxes thing as description of the paper but I momentarily considered that it might be a metaphor, obscure to me but vivid for those few who get it, for things rolling forward exactly as they’re expected to.
@DM, then I think it is not a “problem” for the root. Only for the whole derived form. That is:
– do we expect this suffix? I think no. Then not a “problem” for the root.
– do this suffix reinforce somehow the idea which K. is objecting to? I don’t know, but if yes, K.’ questions this.reinforcement.
Otherwise they are just two different topics, the root and the suffix.
___
I think there is a good reason to be careful with dating such words.
It describes a new technology, that is highly borrowable.
A technology of manufacturing something that can be traded: luxury goods (if there were any), e.g. fine fabrics and carpets long distance, otherwise middle distance (from people who have sheep to people who don’t have (wooly) sheep – and very large territories can be so: “there are many sheep” or “there are not many of them”). Which means Highly borrowable.
So we can have borrowings between dialects of IE, adapted to the target dialect. In Semitic that’s a nightmare, in IE it is possible as well (good when it is Romance and Sanscrit: they were far from each other)
And we can have replacements with words from merhcants/source of wool.
P.S. same for almost everything taht can be called “archaeolinguistics” (using the word from the article linked in the OP)
Y: That Kroonen volume is full of good stuff
Me: I’m reading it now. It’s boding well so far.
I just picked it up again after having been caught up in other matters. Not taking very close notes, but Ranko Matasović made me choke on this:
I don’t understand why he’s positing an original Germanic sense “spruce, Abies picea” and not even mentioning what I thought was consensus, “(Scots/Baltic/Red) pine, Pinus sylvestris“. The omission is doubly odd, since he goes on to discuss the etymological connection to Lat. quercus, which is much less semantically awkward for “pine” than for “spruce”.
I would have thought it simpler to assume a shift -> “spruce” in Slavic, not at least since the Slavic form also assumes an irregular change (by contamination) *p- > *sm-. To me, that works better for “pine”, because the attractive fatwood trunks can be hunted by nose. Or one could suggest that the word for “spruce” was formed by rhyming “pine” with “smeller” in a doublet, **perka [and] smerka, before *perka was replaced by *sosna, a substrate word for “fatwood” (in his next entry).
Any other examples of p- > sm- in Slavic, or it supposd to be unique (and based on rhyme as you say)?
Wiktionary compares it to Smerian and Old Chinese words:/ But not to Kusaal:\
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Slavic/smerkъ
It’s supposed to be unique, a contamination. I suggested a couple of ways that contamination could have happened without “spruce” being the original meaning.
But really, the contamination etymology is Matasović arguing against his identification of a substrate word. That the argument is weak means that it doesn’t much affect the case for substrate status.
Thanks.
Yes, but contamination becomes more likely when the alternation is common (not everything that alternates does so for purely phonological reasons).
About the suffix, found this snippet: link. References this artcile (not online:() by Brosman.
Our great-great-grand… 200 years later would laugh at me, a user of Google Snippets. If someone cared to record for history what Google Snippets was.
I hope “the world-leading journal for research on the Indo-Europeans” (world what!?) is not on jstor or elsewhere not because “Scholars of the far-right have criticised the journal’s ongoing association with Pearson”?
You would have thought that Elon Musk or Peter Thiel might have stepped in to subsidise an on-line presence. (Paywalled, even so, naturally. Poor people have no right to knowledge. Freeloaders, all of them.)
Pearson is a Nazi.
DE, yes, I just read the WP article about him. I don’t know “Nazi” or not (Russian government wholeheartedly agrees that it is convenient to have a label like “Nazi”) but quotes from him are quite cannibalistic.
I am happy to concede that Pearson has never been an actual member of the NSDAP.
I am sure that he is a very fine person on both sides.
(Cannibals get a bad press, admittedly, and I would probably not be happy for one to marry my daughter*, but it seems unfair to compare them to someone like Pearson.)
* Though it would depend on the cannibal. One should not generalise.
DE, about labels its is not theorising.
I don’t think it even changed my opinion (only emotions maybe. Because yes, there is a theorising behing my opinion too:)) but you MUST have noticed how our government have been using this particular label, eventually as a motivation for a war – all the while flirting with racists and drifting in that direction. I heard this word like million times over these years, I heard it from people thirsty for blood, and I’m sick of it.
It IS conveinent for such types. Which is not to say your specific usage is anyhow wrong, but I think you can understand why one can be careful with labels.
Sure. I understand you. (And why this is a particularly sensitive point for you.)
In this particular case, the antisemitism, “scientific” racism and hostility to democracy do seem to make it a not totally unwarranted label, but in hindsight I should have stuck with “fascist.” (As I have previously said, I have given up avoiding this word on essentially technical grounds when it comes to describing e.g. Trumpites. I think we’ve gone beyond checklists now.)
Well, the combination described in WP is indeed appropriate for Nazis. When I said “I don’t know”, I meant “I don’t know”, I did not mean he is not. He may identify as one or not or maybe there are important points of disagreement between him and NSDAP or not.
What matters to me are those quotes that I described as cannibalistic.
I use “fascism” vaguely in the sense “what we don’t like about what we learn in school about Mussolini’s Italy and Francist Spain”. This fascism does not entail anti-Semitism, even racism (though I do associate it with xenophoby, including these two), and this is pretty much what the aforementioned people are.
Fascism always needs an Enemy, but I agree that the Enemy has not always been characterised in racial terms. (The current vogue among US and UK fascists is to label him in “religious” terms, though this is a transparent surrogate for old-style racism. In Trumpite rhetoric, Venezuelans and Haitians get to be honorary Muslims too. Anything will do to make you the hate target, but a hate target is essential.)
The original echt Fascists were not spectacularly antisemitic (teste Primo Levi, who had the right to speak. Most Italian Jews survived the war, though that is to the credit of Italians, not Fascists.)
“Nazi” at some level (and especially in Russia because they’re the arch-enemy of WWII) are:
“A group of Others.
People who you can fiercely hate and Jesus will applaud you.
People whose blood you can spill and God will thank you”.
It is detrimental for one’s spirit to have such a monstrous concept in one’s head.
Yet the word does have an actual original meaning. I don’t think those of us who have the good fortune not to be currently physically endangered by Putin need allow ourselves to have our language choices dictated by a foreign thug’s propaganda about his (necessary) Enemy.
However, I shall be mindful of your (understandable) sensibilities. Next, I shall denounce the hell-bound Trumpodule heretics in terms that will make Ezekiel sound like Patience Strong … no Nazism will be invoked …
@DE, but this was in the word before the propaganda used it (again, more so for us than for West Europe. Even more so for Jews I suppose). It is conveinient if the emotion you need to trigger is self-righteous anger. And the propaganda used it because there were actual Nazis and otherwise far right groups among pro-Western Ukrainians (and even associated with post-2014 government).
And then you start a war, all the while claiming, “yes, it is a re-enactment of WWII, and we are (again!) the Soviets and they are (again!) the Nazis)”.
Yes, I’m not against technical use of the word, I just try to keep in mind this capacity of labels to help people turn into what they once hated (what changes them is hatred itself). Thus preference of terms like “cannibalistic” etc. when what I want is just to express my disgust. As a reference to why I don’t like Nazis and their likes.
Yes, I understand where you’re coming from. (Truly: I hadn’t altogether appreciated quite why you react the the word “Nazi” as you do. It explains some things that I was perplexed by.)
DE, again: I’m not objecting to your use of the term. I’m just explaining my own word choice:)
Yes, you’re right, there were actual Nazis and perhaps I’d call Pearson so if I knew more about him (and then it would be worse than calling someone a supporter of NSDAP, because many supported it)
“It explains some things…”
Yep. It is indeed often useful to keep in mind that our contexts are different.
it would be worse than calling someone a supporter of NSDAP, because many supported it
I agree with your implication: he is a worse man morally than those who merely lacked the courage (or clarity) not to go with the flow in Nazi Germany.
Nobody threatened him or coerced him into his vile opinions. He brewed them up himself.
Cowardice and moral laziness are scarcely virtues, but they are at least extenuating circumstances (particularly cowardice: it’s easy to preach courage from a position of security.)
Well, “moral laziness” is a prevalent quality. I’m too mostly so, morally lazy. I just know how to avoid some traps.
Complete absence of moral laziness is seen only in saints and psychopaths (there is some overlap of these categories.)
Human kind cannot bear very much reality.
DE – I leave your posturings uncommented because this is not the appropriate place for a debate on them.
I appreciate your restraint.
(Possibly you did not recognise the quotation.)
Garlic and sapphires in the mud.
I wish I could still posture. Several months of unconscious shoulder-hunching compensation for pain in my feet have left me with back pain of the finest.
For decades I have read while sitting cross-legged on the ground (im Schneidersitz). This morning the back pain was suddenly so bad that I tried various arm positions. Then I thought “wait, this is like a yoga position where people rest the back of their open hands on their knees in that phoney pious way”. So I tried it out – all pain vanished (for a while) !!
I conclude that the Buddha had ill-fitting shoes.
@PG
Does Pearson have some compensating virtue that he does not highlight? Does he love animals and small (white) children?
I think part of what appears to be outrage on DE’s part is that Pearson portrays his opinions as being rooted in or confirmed by science and scholarly work that is being suppressed for political reasons (perhaps he does not state who is behnd the suppression, but I think I can guess).
I don’t know who Pearson is, but trying to track it back through the thread, this
>I am sure that he is a very fine person on both sides.
should really become a popular understated euphemism. It’s hilarious.
The only Pearson I know is the publishing company, and for all its possible wrongs I don’t see how it could be a singular Nazi.
I googled `pearson nazi’ and it was the first hit.
I think these AIs are going to define `common knowledge’ eventually, it’ll be like sea level…
I don’t know if the N-word is really appropriate there, but from all the details in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Pearson_(anthropologist)
it seems very logical to apply some other labels such as eugenicist, racial segregationist, and anti-Semite? And his whole interest in the things Indo-European seems to be inextricably linked to his beliefs of white supremacy?
Nowadays eugenics and/or racialized thinking are the labels that even fairly mainstream genetics, with its luggage of studying actual populations and actual evolutionary trends, gets from the more humanities types more or less regularly. Being a geneticist, I’m naturally a little too cautious to accept the veracity of all such labels without checking the gory details. But with Pearson, who isn’t a geneticist in the first place and who espoused the racist views and associated with the proponents of racism more or less all along, I don’t see a reason for such extreme caution in applying the labels. They seem to fit quite well.
The key bit in the wiki piece drasvi originally linked to is perhaps a quotation in a footnote: “It is instructive that none of Pearson’s writing appeared in the one publication at the [Institute for the Study of Man] of acknowledged academic value, the Journal of Indo-European Studies, which he left to the control of respected scholars Edgar Polomé and Marija Gimbutas, both now deceased.” This by someone who could not be characterized as an apologist for the late Dr. Pearson or many of his dubious associations both individual and institutional, although perhaps no one yet has anything negative to say about Pearson’s tenure as President of the Pakistan Tea Association. (Alas, it was in the quondam East Pakistan that he is said to have first become fascinated with “Aryanism.”)
The JIES has inter alia published the proceedings of one or more of the numerous UCLA conferences on Indo-European matters, presided over at least in part by my old historical linguistics teacher (and hat’s grad school contemporary) Stephanie Jamison.
The WP article is unclear about the nature of the “ongoing” association of Pearson with the Journal of Indo-European Studies, though as he is 97 years old, one imagines that it is not very active, whatever it once may have entailed.*
Pearson founded this, BTW:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_League_(British_neo-Nazi_organisation)
I don’t think “Nazi” is hyperbole or inappropriate in his case.
But in any case, I would by no means imply that a journal need be irrevocably tainted by its origins, however unpleasant. (Thanks to Lameen, I am joint author of a paper in Africana Linguistica, published by the Belgian Africa Museum, set up under the auspices of the vile Leopold II, who caused more suffering by his greed and inhumanity than a mere Pearson will ever do.)
* Though my father, who is much the same age, is still entirely lucid, and delights in deliberately winding up me and (especially) my even-left-wingerer daughter with rightist provocational barbs. Happily, though (alas) Palaeoconservative, he is no Nazi.
left to the control of respected scholars
I have a feeling that the broad academic esteem came to them late … considerably later! The combined taint of the founder of the journal and of the suspicion that all the people-not-pots hypotheses were at most whitewashed racism may have been too much. I also suspect that it ultimately took ancient DNA research to restore the reputations… and it’s still not stellar.
I had googled Pearson linguistics, misunderstanding his background. Yeah, he looks more than just an ugly racist with an idle curiosity in the more violent aspects of his faith. He called for a totalitarian state with control over the right to procreate, in the hopes it would “outcompete” other nations, and wrote of a “fog of J***** lies” about western civilization. (The word used there isn’t a slur, but the whole sentence is, and I don’t even want to type the full sentiment to be googled ever after.)
I’d label him a Nazi.
The English-language wiki article on Dr. Pearson may have gone un-updated for a while, but the French one says he “mort le 4 janvier 2023” at age 95. Neither that one nor the English one seems to have much of any information on the last 25+ years of his life.
Speaking of the French, I happen to be at present in Paris (for the first time in almost two decades) and had a light supper at an establishment called the Comptoir Brezh. Which made me reflect on how Breton nationalism (or separatism, or even particularism) can of course be disparaged or deprecated by those with whatever motivations to do so by pointing to unsavory historical affiliations (perhaps arguably modest in scope, but non-zero) with Nazis or Nazi-adjacent types. Just like Ukrainian nationalism, or population genetics, or historical linguistics.
Most U.S. paleo-conservatives, even the ones so eccentric as to actually self-identify that way, are not quite so reactionary as to seek a rollback of Noah Webster’s spelling reforms and thus become palaeo-.
So Pearson has gone to his reward …
Plaid Cymru, these days somewhat to the left of Labour on most issues*, was a much more typical ethnononationalist party originally. Saunders Lewis himself was an antisemite of the Catholic Chesterbelloc kind.
Obviously US Paleoconservatives lack the courage of their convictions. Weak!
* During the last election, while campaigning for Labour, I was accosted by some Bangladeshi-descended Swanseapersons who had just come out of the local mosque, and encouraged by them to vote for Plaid. (They didn’t notice my lapel badge.) I could see their point, and said so.
(The then Plaid candidate is an old friend of mine, too.)
Per the discussion in the en Wikipedia page, the source for the French article was an obituary in a neo-N… I mean, white supremacist website, which the contributors to the English one considered prima facie unrelliable, and they couldn’t find another source.
I don’t know who publishes the JIES nowadays.
Yes, here is the obituary
https://counter-currents.com/2023/03/obituary-for-prof-roger-pearson-m-sc-econ-ph-d-london-1927-2023/
very sympathetic to his views and causes indeed (and, therefore, in some ways more revealing than any Wikipedia summary). According to the obit, he was still involved with the JIES until mid-2010’s. Up until ~2010, he also led Mankind Quarterly. One of the pictures has Pearson in his Washington DC Editor’s office in 2013. Overall, pretty disgusting, but I had to read through to figure out what Pearson was up to late in life..
Among other intriguing or revolting tidbits, it mentions that even before India he was obsessed with reuniting “Northern nations” of Europe and preventing any future internecine wars between them, and had Tolkien among his sympathizers.
Clicking through to his obituary in that reliable source American Renaissance, I see that one of the great man’s insights, as recorded by his fanboy there, is that previous generations “had much better posture.” Evidently my own posturing is defective on account of the extensive miscegenation perpetrated by my forebears, some of whom were even Rootless Cosmopolitans.
I glanced at it too. I was comforted knowing that people who hate me admire that man, who, I imagine, would never, ever let his tea oversteep.
I saw the obit as well. What I took is that he volunteered for World War II after the liberation of Paris but before the Battle of the Bulge. Admittedly, he had only turned 18 a few months earlier, but it still felt like an effort to get the credit without fighting the fight. Framed in the obit as “he could have gotten an exemption.”
He seems to have been rude to waiters. I don’t think we need to know any more. (The fanboy relates this as a charming anecdote. His notion of “perfect English gentleman” appears to be an idiosyncratic one.)
Tolkien, incidentally, is on record as objecting quite unequivocally to Nazi racial doctrine:
https://flashbak.com/jrr-tolkien-letter-nazi-the-hobbit-1938-429966/
It is likely that the fanboy obituarist’s imagination has run away with him. Odd in one so truthful.
High flying caustic British English is so hard to interpret. Tolkien was clearly annoyed, and didn’t want to demonstrate any degree of acceptance of the Nazi’s outlandish racial theories, but it almost sounds like the annoying parts were where his ancestral roots were equated with the Indian colonial subjects of Britain or with the Gypsies, like what nonsense, or with the idea that the newfangled German rules could apply to the ancient grandeur of British gentlemen, what a gall.
He didn’t go as far as to say that all races and ethnicities are equal, or that the German laws were immoral, no.
I think he is saying this solely to point out that “Aryans” are speakers of Indo-Iranian.
I’m not a particular fan of Tolkien, and have no personal axe to grind, but I think his gloss on “Aryan” is not anti-Indian but a good philologist’s objection to the characteristic Nazi perversion of the meaning of the word, with pointed examples of the true sense.
Tolkien was surely a man of his time, and many people have picked up on his East-Bad/West-Good created cosmology and the vaguely Turkish look of the Black Speech. But I think his letter is clear enough on the issue in question.
He was part of a milieu (studying and teaching Old English, Old Norse etc) which in those days tended all too easily to slide into racism (even Gordon’s excellent Introduction to Old Norse has some passages which it is uncomfortable to read nowadays); but he seems to have been pretty free of all that, for his time. A fan of the speech of us untermenschlich Celts, for example, and even of the Finns …
He didn’t say those laws were immoral, but he did say, in so many words, that they were stupid. I wonder how aware he was of what the Jews in Germany were suffering at that moment as a result of those laws. Of course, it would be more satisfying if he’d explicitly told the publishers to shove it, without even answering their question.
The “gifted people” comment was certainly not what those racists wanted to hear, and it was meant to taunt them, but it leaves me wondering if Tolkien considered some other peoples to be categorically less than gifted.
“neo-N… I mean, white supremacist ”
…
@Y, am I supposed to start ironising about your claim that there are “people who hate” you?*
You remind me certain witty and sarcastic haters of political correctness. I’m not a friend to political correctness either, but I don’t think you’d like the comparison (neither do I like those people who your words remind me of).
There is a difference: what triggers their sarcasm usually has nothign to do with large ongoing wars and thier motivation.
* Or maybe about your claim that Jews were not exactly happy in Germany. To be more specific as to what kind of always ironical people I’m thinking now.
well, as fate would have it, pearson’s number has just come up at The Empire Never Ended podcast (a favorite of mine), whose official self-description is “the Antifascist Amerikanski-Balkan podcast about (neo) fascist terror, the (deep) state and the alienation, nihilism and desperation produced by the capitalist system. And how to get rid of all that.”
one of the many things i appreciate the TENEpod hosts for is their willingness to immerse themselves in some of the vilest primary sources around to research some of the most awful people ever – it’s hard on them, but makes things easier for the rest of us. and they’ve just released the first of two or three episodes diving deep into pearson’s career as a eugenics advocate and neonazi. they weren’t able to confirm whether or not he’s dead either, so we needn’t feel bad about our own collective uncertainty. i hope he is, as long as he’s buried in a known location.
Social security death index spans only years up to 2014 at present, but in a few years we’ll learn more details on the more recent US deaths
drasvi: I didn’t intend to be making fun of you, but I can see how it might have come off that way. I apologize.
The “gifted people” comment was certainly not what those racists wanted to hear, and it was meant to taunt them, but it leaves me wondering if Tolkien considered some other peoples to be categorically less than gifted.
I suspect he meant that, according to his beliefs, God had given the Jews the gift of making us his Chosen People, including the supreme gift of incarnating himself among us. I can’t rule out the possibility that he meant other kinds of gifts too.
“fog of J***** lies” – between острый галльский смысл and сумрачный германский гений.
“untermenschlich Celts” – One of contributors to the Journal of Indo-European Studies is Untermann…
“unsavory historical affiliations” – I don’t know how much popular racist/anti-Jewish crap is popular among people from the range which includes lovers/supporters of Breton language and culture, separatists, nationalists and other.
But “historical affiliations” I think refer to something else: support for German military occupation (as a chance for, again, a range of things from cultrual autonomy to independence). This may in principle lead to supporting the whole ideological package, but the original motivation is “foe of my foe”, as in the alliance between modern Russia and Hezbollah.
Of course this in turn led to extreme hostility of France to both Breton nationalism and langauge.
Tolkien, incidentally, is on record as objecting quite unequivocally to Nazi racial doctrine:
https://flashbak.com/jrr-tolkien-letter-nazi-the-hobbit-1938-429966/
It is likely that the fanboy obituarist’s imagination has run away with him. Odd in one so truthful.
I’m not an expert on Tolkien, but I wouldn’t find it surprising if he sent a letter of congratulation to someone starting a publication aimed at restoring friendship among the Germanic-speaking nations, assuming that what he initially heard about it wasn’t explictly racist.
@Y, I think I should apologise as well:( So I do.
Of course, I’m angered at people who keep doing some things we hate Nazis for (while playing on anti-Nazi sentiments) and not at you. But I’m angered very seriously.
We know how willing are people to do ugly things in the name of God. Same with Nazis etc.
Generally, when you tell someone that “the Boubou are evil because they did a, b, c” all she hears is “we’re good, the Boubou are evil”.
It is often the case that we only know of the deaths (and even more so the specific times/places of the death) of unsavory people from unsavory sources. For the deaths of Lenin and Stalin and the vast bulk of their successors, for example, wikipedia relies directly or indirectly on Communist sources and if they think some English-language standard reference work has vetted those sources in a more elaborate way than wikipedia editors could manage they are probably being naive. It is unclear to me what plausible motivation the Counter-Currents crowd would have for falsely claiming that a 95-year-old had finally died, plus wouldn’t you assume that they had some rival unsavory faction would have come forward to denounce the fraud? I clearly don’t have the proper frame of mind to engage in this sort of wikipedian nerd-battle.
The obit in American Renaissance, linked from the French page, starts “Roger Pearson, anthropologist and publisher, passed away on January 4, 2023. (You may see other dates associated with his death, but they are incorrect.)” So some unsavory sources are less reliable than others.
Anyway, I think English WP should say something, lest we assume he will live forever absent contrary evidence.
I wonder what the source for Tolkien’s favourable reception of Pearson’s book is. I can find no mention of Pearson in the places I’d usually check for this sort of thing: Hammond & Scull’s massive Tolkien Companion & Guide, and the collected volume of Tolkien’s letters. Doesn’t mean it’s not true, but it would be nice to have some kind of documentation or source.
@Y: Here’s how (English-language) wikipedia handles Michael Rockefeller:
“Disappeared November 19, 1961 (aged 23)
Asmat region of southwestern Dutch New Guinea
Status Missing for 62 years, 10 months and 23 days; Declared legally dead in 1964 (aged 25–26)”
For Pearson you would think there would be some standard-ish wikipedia hedge language like “reported to have died” or “widely believed to have died” to which you can add something slightly vague like “in early January 2023.”
OTOH, you do sometimes see wiki articles that just never got updated except by the mindless software which automatically tells you that the subject is (based on date of birth plus math) now 113 years old or whatever. Although plenty of Americans who were also 23 in November 1961 (both of my parents, for example) are still alive.
I wonder what the source for Tolkien’s favourable reception of Pearson’s book is
On the other hand, there is an actual picture of a fan letter to Pearson from Ronald Reagan. Surprise!
I wonder what the source for Tolkien’s favourable reception of Pearson’s book is.
The obituary in Counter-Currents says of the journal Pearson founded in 1954:
“Northern World was favorably received in like-minded circles, including the famed author J. R. R. Tolkien (who also subscribed to A. K. Chesterton’s Candour journal) and the agrarian environmentalist Rolf Gardiner, both of whom sent personal letters of congratulation.”
You don’t have to believe that, but if Tolkien such a letter why don’t the usual sources on him mention it? Maybe they didn’t know about it. Tolkien didn’t keep copies of his letters, and scholars may have seen no reason to contact Pearson or the obscure organization he founded. Maybe they thought it didn’t shed much light on Tolkien and would have given the impression that Tolkien was associated with someone later known as a white supremacist.
Why didn’t Pearson or his successors publish it where we can see it now? Maybe it’s lost. Maybe it appeared in an early issue of Northern World that’s now lost or hard to find. Maybe it contained things Pearson didn’t like, such as a disparaging reference to Nazi “race science”.
Back to the subject of Tolkien not keeping copies: He wrote two drafts of the letter to the German publishers who wanted to translate The Hobbit and let his publishers (Allen and Unwin) decide which to send. The letter we know is, according to Humphrey Carpenter, the one that was not sent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien_and_race#Opposition_to_peacetime_Nazi_racial_theory
I don’t know how much popular racist/anti-Jewish crap is popular among people from the range which includes lovers/supporters of Breton language and culture, separatists, nationalists and other.
See: Christian-Joseph Guyonvarc’h.
Ah. A GRECEan. How sad.
Probably a bad sign that he wrote a book on druids.
(I have read one good :book on historical British paganism: Ronald Hutton’s. What’s good about it is that he is at some pains to point out that we actually know hardly anything about it. The more impressive, as he is by no means hostile to Neopaganism: it’s just that he is entirely happy to debunk the romantic myths of continuity with the pre-Christian past.)
It appears that GRECE is keen on a return to “Indo-European values.”
It is certainly true that royal horse-fucking is sadly in abeyance in these degenerate times. No wonder we see instability and confusion on all sides!
GRECE
That was a rabbit hole. Or a hole, anyway.
And we’re back to the founders of JIES.
Why “spruce”? Is that the lowest common denominator of Föhre “pine” and fir?
And what is this about spruces having any odor at all?
*steal*
The location shown deserves it already for having a hyphen instead of a dash!
Reborn as the Identitarian Movement. I did not see that coming…
Prominent personalities […] GRECE […] JIES
this has me wondering (less idly than i had been when the same question occurred to me earlier this year): can anyone here speak to gimbutas’ current reputation in her area of specialization as an archaeologist (as opposed to metahistorical speculations like her matristic-culture hypothesis; i take the kurgan hypothesis about PIE to be more or less transitional between the two zones)?
(she’s fascinating! not least because there aren’t many cultural-feminist icons in academia who have as tantalizing a nazi-collaborationist history)
@JWB, Tucker exaggerates when saying that the journal never published texts by Pearson: the index. And the next name is siad by Tucker to be one of his several pseudonyms as well.
But perhaps in 2002 it was not very easy for him to verify the claim.
@David Eddyshaw: I agree wholeheartedly about Hutton. And I too, when young and uncautious, read Les Druides, which appeared in several editions, growing from a slender pocket book to a hefty tome. Guyonvarc’h’s wife and collaborator, Françoise Le Roux, also published on her own; I have the strong impression that she was the real scholar and he was just the ideologue.
I recall as a teenager reading a short history of Wales in Welsh (unfortunately I lost it long ago, and can no longer remember who it was written by.) It was very scathing on histories which purported to find relics of derwyddiaeth everywhere.
That fraud Iolo Morganwg has much to answer for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iolo_Morganwg
Rodger C, what about Guyonvarc’h and racism and anti-Semitism?
I tried to find, but found nothing:(
(It is possible that he’s one of my Breton teacher’s (Anya Muradova‘s) professors – but she never mentioned him, I think)
I can only speak to the metahistorical speculations. I once met an archeologist who said Gimbutas had come to her university in Poland and performed a fertility dance she, Gimbutas, had “reconstructed”.
Naked.
In Poland, in the early 00s.
People didn’t put a reputation into words. They were just stunned.
gosh, I had to read it three times and every time, like, so where’s the big deal, and only then I realized: Poland rather than Portland 🙂
One has to admire the commitment.
One hopes no horses were present. They would rightly have been frightened.
Is this about the revised hypothesis stating that Indo-Europeans used horses to pull the wool away from people’s eyes?
Yes. Yes, that was it.
Someone needs to write “Black Leather Athena: the Making of the Film by L. Riefenstahl Depicting the Life and Work of Prof. Dr. M. Gimbutas”
Damn. Now I need to go and have another cold shower.
Russian students do it.
Usually in
sacred grovesforests. Usually not very sober and there is a fire of course.I DO support the idea of promoting it in universities – in order to promote.. hm. Maybe not exactly science but something:)
The primary role of the university in Russia (and I’m not kidding, I do think so) is that it is a place where girls meet boys and girls meet boys and where they marry. If they dance naked they will marry earlier.
Likely they will study less then but I also (seriously) think that we do need an education system that can be combined with raising children.
It may just be a matter of dates, but it seems unlikely Marija Gimbutas danced naked in Poland in the 00’s since per wiki she died in ‘94.
Pah! You with your Western rationality and scientistic approach to everything! Mere bodily death is nothing to the truly spiritual.
It could also be that I misunderstood what was reconstructed — the dance or Prof Gimbutas.
It was obviously a reconstruction of the ancient Indo-European rite of *gʷm̥bʰewtós.
This was believed by the Kurgan peoples to ensure a propitious reception by the gods of the celebrants’ mystical offspring (PIE *th₁éses.)
However, more recent scholarship suggests that only the horse had to be naked. It sounds as if the participants may have got a bit carried away.
an education system that can be combined with raising children.
They are proposing something more practical, shaving a year or two off both grade school and college curricula. Anyway the children are hardly ever born from bonfire nights and skinnydipping…
Well, that’s why you need the fertility dance. To propitiate the stork.
Russian students do it.
Usually in sacred groves forests. Usually not very sober and there is a fire of course.
This sounds more like Russian students reconstructing the Kupala Night scene in Andrei Rublev
Could David‘s archeologist have gotten the dates wrong? I don’t find a woman dancing naked in a Polish university in the ´00s particularly noteworthy. Cultural mores had already shifted towards standard Northern European.
Now had she done it in the 1980s – that might have been something.
I do wonder what Poles who spent time in the GDR in the 70s and 80s thought about the whole East German FKK scene.
Well, naked professors are generally unusual for European universities.
@Vanya, well, yes: Kupala Night is the only even known to me where something like that is done systematically and not just because everyone is in the mood.
I mentioned here that a couple fo times I was helping my friend to run a slave market at some historical re-enactment (by the way, this sort of things is called “reconstuction” in Russian) festival, when city administrations began sponsoring such events. We went home in evenings but some Barbarains and Romans likewise stayed in the park and of course got drunk, and of course there were dancing naked ladies.
You can’t be properly Barbarian (e.g. Celtic – our Celts were especially Barbarian) without dancing naked (and being a lady). Hear, DE.
Like PP I thought about Leni R. and her Nuba.
Modern urbanites missing wild barbarism is of course a part of the story.
@DP, it’s continuation of something I was thinking about one evening several years ago.
Maghrebi girls marry in around 30, in average. The change was very fast (e.g. in Libya it was 18 early 70s, 29 by early 90s).
Various Western organisations are quite happy: for them it means “more opportunities for women’s education” (though as I said before one must be seriously stuck in 19th century to think that women in general and Arab women in particular are “behind” men in education: they’re the leaders, women in general and Arab women among them).
Also (not sure they think about such things) 30 is the Western European cultural norm. Not “modernity” this division between West Europe and others is old. (WP:Western European marriage pattern). In Russia it is 22f 24m – bascially by the time of graduation.
What those who are happy about this are missing is that locals are very serious about virginity. 30 is a catastrophe.
It has been proposed as a possible explanation of the Arab spring. And it explains something I can confirm personally: that local young men and women are markedly less happy in their love affairs than Russian boys and girls. And generally: markedly less happy.
So what I was thinking is that while it is necessarily either
(a) you’re against pre-marital relationships and marry early (teens) or
(b) you’re not against pre-marital relationshiops or
(c) everything is as is, and everyone is unhappy.
“marriage” and “education” (and participation of women in other things) are different variables.
To make them depend on each other you need to either understand “marriage” narrowly, namely:
(1) when you get married you must immediately get pregnant (2) raising children is girls’ job
or understand “education” (and other things accordingly) narrowly, namely
(3) incompatible with having children
(Or else you can think that among Orientals the man is the master in marriage and women are reduced to basically nothing. As I learned from communication on forums, many Russians do think so at least about Gulf countries:/ Perhaps some here think so as well.)
I, of course, can’t have anything against the idea of losing virginity in marriage rather than before, but I’m, of course believe the Arab concept of honour as dependent on sexual behaviour of women is a huge black spot on Arab culture. But apart of this all, of course, if they married like they did before, that is early, but beget babies only after graduation, education and everyone’s happiness would not be a problem.
Having this said, children should not ideally be a problem too.
After all women I know are happy with their gender, so my variety of feminism is not one where women must
behave like normal people that is menwear pants but more like one where men should put skirts on.That is, the “big modern” society should be organised in such a way that a girly girl is compfortable there.
I’m frequently at odds with Western feminism but I’m afraid I’m more extremist:)
Ah, I inferred the date from evidently misremembering the account as an eyewitness account. (It sounded no less distraught than an eyewitness account would have been.) Quite likely the terrible tale was propagated for decades in undiminished glory.
That’s also a thing in the US – many fundie girls have been sent to college for the purpose of finding a husband.
I’m frequently at odds with Western feminism but I’m afraid I’m more extremist
I’m not sure how much you know about Western feminism other than as a label, but I assure you there are many different kinds of Western feminists, and the idea that women must wear pants is not a common one. It might help if you would just present your own ideas rather than feeling compelled to oppose them to straw-man imagined opponents.
DM, in Russia basically everyone studies there.
A university is people and people only when you’re not studying something that requires expensive labs.
If you’re into studies you meet professors and people to discuss scinece with.
If you need a job… In a Russian univeristy you find it too.
And you also find friends, girl/boyfrinds and spouces.
I don’t mean that this is why universities are created (though it must contribute into their popularity: you may not only want to study what you want to study but also hang with people like you. And sleep wiht them.), but when everyone studies, it is the place where you meet your girlfriend anyway.
And I think this matters more than the degree.
@LH, you misunderstood me.
When I’m saying “frequently at odds”, I mean not that I have my own idea of what is “Western feminism” and dislike it. No.
I mostly mean that people like you who say that they support it frequently can’t find common language with me.
I also can be sceptical about certain western feminist ideas, BUT:
(1) here by “feminism” I mean the “vulgar” idea of it, those ideas that became popular and are considered feminst
(2) often it is the problem of applicability of specific solutions to other cultures.
(3) I simply wasn’t thinking about it. I was thinking about you:))))))))
here by “feminism” I mean the “vulgar” idea of it, those ideas that became popular and are considered feminst
But what’s the point of that? You alienate people who have a non-vulgar idea of it, and how are you helping your case?
I simply wasn’t thinking about it. I was thinking about you:))))))))
I’m not at all sure you have any idea what my feminism involves — you are aware that I think of myself as a feminist and simply attach whatever occurs to you to that label. Again, I’m not sure how that helps you. Why not just talk about what you think is good for women rather than adding all sorts of rhetoric about imagined “feminists”?
It’s as if I said to myself “drasvi is a Russian, so I’ll include a bunch of references to vulgar ideas of what Russians are like!” I don’t think it would work or be helpful.
Frankly, I suspect we are largely in agreement about the issue (I presume you think women’s education is a good idea and don’t like men’s domination of women), but you seem determined to talk about it in ways that invite misunderstanding and unnecessary pushback.
Applicability:
When two German ladies insist that complimentign strange women (specifically their apperance) is an insult and I keep seriously hurting feelings of Iranian ladies because I behave like a Russian and do not compliment them when ALL Iranian men would and when I’m expected to.
I”m still a Russian (who never smile etc.).
I don’t normally compliment strange women (though I do normally consider myself an asshole for this). I could of course compliment a cachier in a Russian shop in such a way that she would understand that it is not an expression of sexual interest – whatever the German ladies in question think (they think compliments never improve anyone mood even when said with this intent). I just don’t do that and know I’m an asshole.
But I do have some emphaty. I know when I’m making someone feel BAD. And with Iranian ladies it happens all the time.
And of course I’m perplexed by what German ladies say, and don’t know how to react at that. It is just inapplicable to Iranians. Basically, they are saying I’m an asshole because I consider myself an asshole for not making compliments:)
So is this universal idea of how compliments are evil a part “Western feminism”? Perhaps of what I called the “vulgar” idea of it.
Having this said, perhpas in Germany things are different and compliments don’t improve moods.
So is this universal idea of how compliments are evil a part “Western feminism”? Perhaps of what I called the “vulgar” idea of it.
I’d call it a phase feminism went through (I’m not sure calling it “Western feminism” makes sense — it’s like talking about “Western democracy,” implying if you like democracy you’re not a true Asian or African or whatever). Women were rightfully fed up with being unable to walk down the street without having a whole bunch of men whistle at them or say “Hey, beautiful!” or whatever; the problem was that the men didn’t think they were doing anything wrong, they were just saying nice things. (It might have helped if they’d thought about themselves walking down the street and having lots of gay guys say “Nice ass!” or “Hey, want to have drinks tonight, handsome?” every single day.) So the more outspoken feminists started shaming men for it, and of course (because humans are human) they often went too far and made men feel they weren’t “allowed” to say anything nice to women, and everybody’s feelings were hurt. I think things have settled down with that particular issue to some extent, but the meme is still around and available to make feminism look bad if that’s what one wants to do. (I’m not saying that’s what you want to do, just that that’s why the meme is around.)
In Russia it is 22f 24m – bascially by the time of graduation
It is most likely a mere coincidence, stemming from the strong ethnic heterogeneity of the contemporary Russian population, especially among young adults. A very large, and growing, fraction of people aged 20..30 belong to the ethnic minorities, mostly from the South, where marriage happens earlier. In contrast, in regions like Moscow (also multiethnic but with the higher fractions of ethnic Russians), average age at marriage was already pushing 30 five years ago. I suspect that among today’s ethnic Russians, marriage “right after college” which was typical for the earlier decades has by now become a rare exception. But, needless to say, marriage is no longer linked to child birth anyway.
In my years of being an unofficial Covid oracle, I got acquainted with Russia’s maverick demographers such as Raksha, who do a really commendable job dissecting ethnic and regional demographic disparities in Russia and combat pervasive secrecy and outright fraud in population statistics there (although I’m a bit baffled by their alarmist take on the coming population collapse there … for, indeed, is it a big deal if the numbers of the Russians shrink in the XXI century world where immigration can make up for most of the population losses?). I’m absolutely sure that Raksha published detailed analyses of disparities in marriage and on the near-extinction of the post-college marriage. Check it!
Other great nations or cultural groups which we erroneously think of as monolithic and defying the global trends include India, where almost all regions are already below the replacement rate – but the youngest state or two, with their vast masses of reproductive-age residents and still-high fertility, drive the nationwide stats, and the Mormon communities of America’s Intermountain West*, where population is still growing due to its relatively young age, but fertility is dropping below replacement. As always with the averages, the numbers are influenced too much by the outliers, and kind of obscure what’s typical…
* about Brigham Young University, it has been the saying of many generations that the women go there “to get their RM” (rather than BA/BS), meaning that they were expected to drop out after finding husbands from among the Returned Missionary classmates. I doubt that it’s still true…
Just to be clear: feminism basically means treating women like human beings; all the other stuff is responses to the situations in particular places and times. (Compare Rabbi Hillel’s response to the challenge “Teach me the whole law while I’m standing on one foot”: “‘What is hateful to you, don’t do to your neighbor.’ That’s the whole of the law; everything else is commentary.”)
In the U.S, we have risen past the Bad Old Days because now ambitious and highly-credentialed secular young women can and do marry guys they met in law school or med school or business school, not just in their undergraduate institution. Although undergraduate institutions (at least a subset of them) are still a pretty important mating market. What has changed (outside a few subcultures) is the ticking-clock sense that if marriage itself doesn’t occur within a month of graduation maybe it occurs within a year or so and engagement has preceded or accompanied graduation.
My wife met her spouse while she was an undergraduate, but I dd not do so myself.
feminism basically means treating women like human beings
https://xkcd.com/1027/
“In Russia it is 22f 24m – bascially by the time of graduation”
A correction: I think I’m speaking of MEAN, not average.
I can’t find the source I was using (but it is the UN).
I’m usually quite annoyed when the average is given where the mean is more informative, so I thought I remembered that correctly but… I think I treated it as the mean, so it must be the mean.
“It is most likely a mere coincidence”
DP, yes, quite possible.
But for many marriage means children, and getting pregnant when you graduate rahter than before does make sense.
LOL the xkcd lines look likes a summary of today’s Russia’s cultural politics: “we must be offended by so many things the West says or does … please understand that they hate us over there … but we still covet and secretly admire their life … bingo! how about we start yelling all sorts of hateful and offensive things about them? Surely it would help induce reciprocal secret admiration, and soon they will fall into our arms!”.
(the chauvinist pigs’ rejection of everything even remotely feminist is just one page of it; and it isn’t just views and life philosophies which are crudely and stupidly ridiculed, but just about any kind of the West’s accidents and mishaps becomes a source of happiness … like most recently, there was a viral meme about a stupid German mother who ordered 2 burgers to be delivered for her kids’ lunch, not accounting for a third kid, her kids’ friend, dropping to their home … but instead of cutting the burgers into thirds and equitably dividing it, the said bad mom left her guest without a hamburger … what a horrible, inhumane culture they must live in in the wretched West! It’s infinitesimally better in Russia, rejoyce!)
https://xkcd.com/1027/
Excellent!
Rodger C, what about Guyonvarc’h and racism and anti-Semitism?
I don’t know if he ever expressed himself on the topics in so many words, but as others have pointed out, he was associated with GRECE. Also I read long ago that he was in the Waffen-SS, though I suppose that might be only a Celtic patriot’s way of striking a blow at the hyper-centralizing French state–the Nazis were adept at stoking such resentments. He was certainly adjacent to some very ugly things.
In the XKCD, what is “I’m going to the bathroom to roll a bowling ball down the line of stalls”? Just random? Wildly violent? Am I supposed to envision a bunch of guys sitting in them having their legs broken sequentially? Except in that kind of public setting, guys rarely sit or even go into the stalls, so I don’t know what that is at all.
On skirts – in some kind of weather the only sane thing to wear is a short, wide dress. As the saying goes: patriarchy hurts men, too.
Well, first of all, to talk to a random stranger you need a very good reason, and liking what they look like is not good enough.
Maybe it’s also finally sinking in that beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. The knowledge that a random stranger finds you beautiful doesn’t help you in the vast majority of cases because it doesn’t predict whether anyone else will find you beautiful. It’s simply useless.
what is “I’m going to the bathroom to roll a bowling ball down the line of stalls”?
The character Black Hat is a recurring one. He is basically evil. The girl (Danish) won his heart (so far as he can be said to have one) by outmanoevring him at his own game.
https://www.xkcd.com/374/
https://www.xkcd.com/377/
The character with that hat is a recurrent violent troll. He also holds laptops by the screen just to annoy everyone.
Edit: oh, 337 had escaped my attention. Somehow I never became a regular reader. 🙁
According to French wikipedia, Guyonvarc’h (who would have been a teenager at the time) was a member of this unsavory-sounding armed group. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bezen_Perrot The claim about him in particular is sourced by a footnote citing a 2015 book in French which I know nothing about, so I don’t know whether the book supports the claim or whether the book is credible. That said, the Breton-wiki article about the same group describes him, without actually linking to a souce, thusly: “Emezelet da 18 vloaz. Kondaonet da 10 vloaz labour-ret. Dieubet e 1946.” Which seems to mean more or less enlisted/joined at the age of 18, sentenced after the war to ten years hard labor, but then released in 1946. The Breton-wiki biography of him is congruent with that: “Genidik eus an Alre, yaouank e emezelas dindan an anv Cadoudal er Bezen Perrot er bloavezh 1944. Goude an Eil Brezel-bed e vezo kondaonet da 10 bloaz labour-ret. Dieubet e vezo e 1946.”
According to the English-language wiki article about him, his formal association with a GRECE-sponsored-or-affiliated publication lasted only two years – this for a man who lived to be 85. So one might want to know why the association ended as well as why it began.
To say something more positive about something Breton-adjacent, wikipedia reads (I know now) as follows: “In crêperies (crêpe restaurants) in Brittany, cider is generally served in traditional ceramic bowls (or wide cups) rather than glasses.” I was quite surprised, not unpleasantly, this past Sunday afternoon in Chartres (not in Brittany, of course) when the half-liter of draft cider (brut not doux) I had ordered with my lunch arrived in a ceramic pitcher with a ceramic vessel I would have described as a large coffee cup for me to decant it into.
The knowledge that a random stranger finds you beautiful doesn’t help you in the vast majority of cases because it doesn’t predict whether anyone else will find you beautiful. It’s simply useless.
You seem to be implying that a lot of women took the things men said to them on the street as actual compliments based on a serious consideration of their facial attributes, form, style, etc., and used them as a consideration in judging their self-worth. This is not in the least true of any women I have known, and I seriously doubt it is true of a cohort of women large enough to justify generalization. What the men say has (in the vast majority of cases) nothing whatever to do with the actual nature of the woman before them, it is simply a way of forcing contact with a random female, both because (as some of them say outright) “You never know, every now and then one of them might respond” and (as none of them will admit to themselves or you) to maintain generalized male domination over women, in much the same way white people in the Bad Old Days forced black people to sit at the back, use separate facilities, etc. (except they were perfectly willing to say it was to maintain domination, because that was seen as a good and valuable thing). I’m sorry if this sounds like extremist ranting; a lifetime of observation, reading, and listening to women has convinced me it is the simple truth.
Virtually all random strangers find me beautiful, but they are generally too overwhelmed to say so. This is natural.
Quite so.
Oh, sorry, I mean compliments that are either meant sincerely or provided as part of smalltalk. Wolf-whistling, or shouting “ciao, bella” across the street, are bullying plain and simple.
Ah! Thanks for the clarification.
@LH, first I take “alienate” as a rather friendly word, so thank you for that.
Second, are not you overreacting?
I said I’m “frequently at odds” – and this is enough to “alienate” someone.
“…so I’ll include a bunch of references to vulgar ideas of what Russians are like”
When you said that Russian women are treated like shit by Russian men you did NOT alienate me!
I called it an “insult” (because I think it is) but I don’t feel offended: my only problem with it is that you say such things but don’t explain why. As result I simply don’t know what to do about this.
And now mere “frequently at odds” is taken as criticism and met with hostility.
When you said that Russian women are treated like shit by Russian men
As far as I can see, Hat has said no such thing at all. In fact, not only did he not make this specific allegation, but he didn’t actually criticise Russians as such in any way. Saying that vulgar ideas exist about Russians (and they do exist, a fair number of them promulgated by actual Russians) is scarcely endorsing them.
I’m here to tell you that vulgar ideas exist about the Welsh, too. Some of them very vulgar … (Only the ones about us stealing anything that isn’t nailed down are actually true.)
@DE, google this exact line.
Please. And fuck, I really do NOT have a problem with this!
I just think “frequently at odds” gives no reason to strong reaction. It is just a fact.
The band slunk away, and Paul and the Doctor turned back towards the Castle.
‘The Welsh character is an interesting study,’ said Dr Fagan. ‘I have often considered writing a little monograph on the subject, but I was afraid it might make me unpopular in the village. The ignorant speak of them as Celts, which is of course wholly erroneous. They are of pure Iberian stock—the aboriginal inhabitants of Europe who survive only in Portugal and the Basque district. Celts readily intermarry with their neighbours and absorb them. From the earliest times the Welsh have been looked upon as an unclean people. It is thus that they have preserved their racial integrity. Their sons and daughters mate freely with the sheep but not with human kind except their own blood relations. In Wales there was no need for legislation to prevent the conquering people intermarrying with the conquered. In Ireland that was necessary, for there inter-marriage was a political matter. In Wales it was moral. I hope, by the way, you have no Welsh blood?’
‘None whatever,’ said Paul.
‘I was sure you had not, but one cannot be too careful. I once spoke of this subject to the sixth form and learned later that one of them had a Welsh grandmother. I am afraid it hurt his feelings terribly, poor little chap. She came from Pembrokeshire, too, which is of course quite a different matter. I often think,’ he continued, ‘that we can trace almost all the disasters of English history to the influence of Wales. Think of Edward of Carnarvon, the first Prince of Wales, a perverse life, Pennyfeather, and an unseemly death, then the Tudors and the dissolution of the Church, then Lloyd George, the temperance movement, Nonconformity and lust stalking hand in hand through the country, wasting and ravaging. But perhaps you think I exaggerate? I have a certain rhetorical tendency, I admit.’
‘No, no,’ said Paul.
‘The Welsh,’ said the Doctor, ‘are the only nation in the world that has produced no graphic or plastic art, no architecture, no drama. They just sing,’ he said with disgust, ‘sing and blow down wind instruments of plated silver. They are deceitful because they cannot discern truth from falsehood, depraved because they cannot discern the consequences of their indulgence. Let us consider,’ he continued, ‘the etymological derivations of the Welsh language….’
(I have spent many years attempting to live up to Dr Fagan’s ideal. Alas, the flesh is weak …)
@LH, I just don’t know how I can be myself without alienating people.
I can’t really identify with an ideology. Any. An ideology is not analysis. It is not drawing attention to problems. It is when you have a (simplified) plan for what exactly should be done to solve them and start promoting it, and when your ideology is successful, many people join just because it is a successful ideology (who could and would join the opposite ideology if it were fashionable). Join and become very Loud.
Yes, there is also a theory, but a theory is not science: each theory, if it works at all, usually works only sometimes, here and there. And idologies usually have One theory.
No matter how progressive or feminist I am, no matter how strong is my faith in God, I’ll be frequently at odds with all ideologies and ideologised people who support left or feminism or go to church.
There is one more thing.
I mostly communicate with Russian and Arabic speakers. They’re usually quite sceptical about feminism.
Some of those “Arabic speakers” are feminists. I mean, people who fight against [let’s skip the list of what] and for whom itis one of their main interests.
Yet they say much worse things about “feminism” than just “I’m frequently at odds”.
The “first world” plays an enormously important role. Its ideologies would be highly influential even if they were not interesting in prozelitising, but they frequently ARE interested in promoting solutions meant for Western context and to Western problems outside the first world.
That is, where even problems are different and solutions must be different as well.
So if this feminism can’t bear my “frequently at odds”, can it really talk to those Arab feminists?
Or will it wait until Arab countries become more Westernised and those “alienating” types will be replaced by other people who’ve embraced Western feminism and too are promoting Western solutions to Western problems in Arab countries so it could say: “these are the True feminists! So much better than those ladies who were fighting an uphill battle in 2020s and did not like US”?
Then such feminism is horrible. Narcissistic.
No, I’not claiming that the whole of Western feminism is like this. I don’t know.
But I think I’m soft enough. Why should I be softer when the ladies i’m speaking about are simply hostile to it?
As for “vulgar” I simply mean poular ideas of what it is and what it stands for.
Among its supporters.
In the West.
OF COURSE such feminism is enormously important.
(And so are popular ideas of what it is in Russia and Arab countries)
Yes, I know, there are Western feminist thinkers who may have very different ideas.
But I think I can call the “vulgar” version “feminism” as well. After all it is this version which most of the world is dealing with.
Sure. It’s all very messy, like all things human; we’re a messy species.
Oh, and just to be clear, you haven’t offended me at all, if that’s what you meant. I was just trying to clarify.
I almost got offended by the post with juxtaposition of mean vs average, but worst things happen with math these days
mean vs average
Meh. A modish difference only. Mere convention.
I am very aware of hat’s strong sensibilities and compassionate sympathies re woman’s issues, but I feel uncomfortable with an across the board condemnation of predominantly (women are doing it also, when they are in a group or feel the inclination to do it in a safe space) male addressing of strange women with “sexist” greetings or compliments (“piropo’s”). This is because such condemnation (1) denies the possibility of female agency (deliberately provoking and enjoying a male reaction or jealous reaction of other women) and (2) carries for me a taint of classism or racism. To be more precise on classism, Mohammed Fayed, Harvey Weinstein, etc., had the resources to live out their seduction fantasies without having to stand on street corners, and younger middle class would-be seducers have clubs, societies, universities, holiday resorts and other more propitious venues. To be more precise on racism, for some cultures, slanging is an accepted ritual and just part of courtship. I would of course agree that unwanted stalking or other invasion of personal space is generally wrong, although again there may be cultures in which this is ritualised.
for some cultures, slanging is an accepted ritual and just part of courtship
No doubt there are, but none come to mind. Do you have a particular example?
@de
I should have written “may be an accepted…” My impression is from depictions in films or television, supplemented by occasional glimpses of authentic street life in Ireland.
for some cultures, slanging is an accepted ritual and just part of courtship
I can’t personally vouch for it, but Kate Fox’s Watching the English vividly describes this ritual for English working-class teenagers.
Well, as the delightful Kemi Badenoch has recently reminded us, not all cultures are equally valid* (a sentiment with which Boko Haram are in complete agreement.)
[Reminds me of a headline in the Economist that I once saw: “Can immigrants afford the English?”, referring to the fact that immigrants are, on average, significantly more economically productive than the indigenes.]
* One of the many things wrong with this deliberately misleading dog-whistle is its reification of “culture” as a sort of immovable object: the reality is that cultures are dynamic and ever-moving creations of the relevant communities, who may decide at any time that some aspect of it is rebarbative and should be jettisoned, or that some aspect of another culture is wholesome and positive and should be adopted. Possibly the Tory culture-bearers will eventually decide that the deliberate stoking of hatred of foreigners and of the poor is not, as it may appear to horrified outsiders, a cornerstone of their own culture after all.
I feel uncomfortable with an across the board condemnation of predominantly (women are doing it also, when they are in a group or feel the inclination to do it in a safe space) male addressing of strange women with “sexist” greetings or compliments (“piropo’s”).
Lots of people feel uncomfortable with it, for understandable reasons. Condemnation of abuse of women has frequently been used as a cudgel by bigots of various sorts to attack cultures they don’t like. I don’t care any more: abuse of women is abuse of women, and any culture that valorizes it had better change. “They’re only attacking me because I’m X” (where X can be a gender, race, religion, or any other grouping) is an easy and frequent refuge of scoundrels of all sorts, who should consider that they may be being attacked because they’re actually doing something wrong.
Good to see the Decline and Fall quote from David Eddyshaw:
I read that first at a prep school in North Wales which was founded by a previous headmaster of Arnold House where Waugh had worked, which probably makes me something of a cultural descendant of Llanabba School. Perhaps not the best choice of text for a school with roughly equal numbers of English and Welsh pupils…. (I was firmly in the first camp at that point, Welsh studies came later…
I’m old enough to remember the times when anti-war and anti-racism movements routinely relegated women to roles of doing gruntwork (and sleeping with the male comrades), and if they complained they were told to sit down and shut up. Didn’t they care about war/racism? Women’s issues always come last. (And, sadly, because of cultural conditioning and inability to do anything about it, many women have accepted situations like that and even approved of them. Chinese women forcefully defended the practice of foot-binding back when reformers were trying to end it. I doubt many people today would defend that practice on the grounds of respecting other cultures… although of course they would, considering how many defend FGM. But wrong is wrong. I’m not a relativist in this matter.)
FGM has undoubtedly been a part of many African cultures, but is now very actively opposed (when it is not actually outright illegal, as is now normally the case) by many women and men from those very same cultures who have no desire at all to abandon their cultures in toto. I have known many such people myself.
Other ways have been created of representing the symbolic and cultural significance once marked by these practices. Real cultures are adaptable (or dead.)
[What I am myself opposed to is characterisation of FGM as “simply criminal.” That is pure cultural arrogance. It should not be hard for people to understand that people can do bad things from good motives, and I strongly suspect that in many cases the motivation for such statements is racism rather than simple ignorance.]
Traditional Western culture has been highly repressive of women, but is now (patchily) improving. Any implication that other cultures cannot do the same (or better) without being effectively replaced by our own is simply colonialist bigotry.
Quite right on all counts.
I just ran across this quote from Arnold Toynbee:
“This misfortune is a rare one,” he says, because he’s thinking of royals (whom he goes on to discuss); it would doubtless never have occurred to him to apply his statement to women, but that’s what leapt immediately to my mind.
What the men say has (in the vast majority of cases) nothing whatever to do with the actual nature of the woman before them, it is simply a way of forcing contact with a random female, both because (as some of them say outright) “You never know, every now and then one of them might respond” and (as none of them will admit to themselves or you) to maintain generalized male domination over women
A few will admit it. I can think of two men who have said—not in the context of starting conversations with strangers—that men need to retain generalized male dominance. One, from a man who I think is now in his seventies, was that it was a sad day for men when Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs. He wasn’t talking about his team losing a tennis game; he was talking about the consequences for men’s relationship with women.
I suspect that if I were more “one of the guys”, I’d have heard that more often.
Given the choice of talking about Bobby Riggs or talking about Breton nationalism, there’s I guess no accounting for taste …
It does sound as if the sketchy Nazi-collaborationist Breton armed faction referenced upthread excluded females from participation, as is sadly unsurprising for an unenlightened age like the 1940’s.
If we’re talking about Royals, Sigvard Bernadotte may be a counterexample to Toynbee. He simply married a commoner and enrolled as a student of decorative arts, eventually heading a successful industrial design studio. (He was the next younger brother of the current king’s father — which cumbersome designation is necessary because the latter died while still the heir apparent).
His motto seems to have been Errare humanum est, however, which you are welcome to interpret as you will. (And he did try to get his princely titles recognized again late in life, having unilaterally assumed them earlier).
(According to WP.sv, it was not a case of not being acceptable in royal circles, since he was in fact approached about accepting the hand of the Dutch crown princess in marriage [but refused]. But of such matters we should not speak until the happy return of des innit).
It is curious that rightist genetic deteminists seem to have been relatively uninterested in the fairly convincing evidence that possession of a Y chromosome strongly conduces to violent crime. I daresay they attribute this to environmental factors. Well, I’m sure they know their own business.
By Morphic Resonance, the Grauniad has an article today referencing Mankind Quarterly:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/16/revealed-international-race-science-network-secretly-funded-by-us-tech-boss
Also a link to something about the odious plagiarist Francis Crick, apropos the bad treatment of women in our culture.
@LH, why do you assume the desire to dominate in men who ‘say “Hey, beautiful!” or whatever‘ on the street?
Don’t men have a strong (and isntinctive) reason to approach women quite different from “domination”?
I just don’t understand your logic here.
Such a desire can be postulated in three cases I think:
– when you find such a desire (behind this specific action) in yourself.
– when men who do it say they do it to dominate.
– when men do something they would NOT do otherwise.
But in this case it is “No!” three times.
I think such a man does not really care about “men” and “women” in general (your “ to maintain generalized male domination over women,”, emphasis mine) and who of them is dominant.
I think he cares about himself:/ And even for himself he has reasons to behave so that have nothing to do with domination. He would behave so whether he wants dominate or not.
Don’t men have a strong (and instinctive) reason to approach women quite different from “domination”?
I recommend James Tiptree Jr’s “The Screwfly Solution” on this point. (I should say that it is one of the most slow-burn horrific stories I have ever read. Brilliant, however.)
DE (N-1), how do you even control for acculturation in a study like that? Y-chromosome possessors are trained to be thugs from kindergarten innit. It may still be true, but I’d like to see the methodology set out.
I also found that Guardian article, which led me to an old one that mentions the odious Pearson. “Managing director of a group of tea gardens in East Pakistan”, must be the same guy, but I’m sure it has more scope for being odious to employees than being the President of some Society as was mentioned (in another thread?)
@DE, not sure what you mean by this, but I am NOT telling that such behaviour is nice.
I’m not telling that men never won’t to dominate either.
I’m only telling that this behaviour is expected anyway, including men who (as most young people) don’t a shit about “generalized male domination over women” and men who are not interested in dominating.
@DP, aaaaa!
I meant MEDIAN!!!!
It is an artefact of swtiching between langauges. I normally understand English ‘mean’ to mean what it normally means, but yesterday I typed it as the “translation” of медиана:(
I have no idea how it could happen.
ANyway, I’m afraiad it still was mean, not median.
@Lars:
It is true that Kindergarten (with its militaristic Prussian associations) has much to answer for in this area.
@David E.: If only anthropologists had studied “primitive” kindergarten-free societies it might be easier to disentangle nature and nurture here. Of course “it’s not nature, it’s nurture but pretty much the entire range of known human societies both extant and historical just happen to nurture in the same way” might be a technically non-falsifiable alternative claim.
I recommend James Tiptree Jr’s “The Screwfly Solution” on this point.
Yes!
@LH, why do you assume the desire to dominate in men who ‘say “Hey, beautiful!” or whatever‘ on the street?
Don’t men have a strong (and isntinctive) reason to approach women quite different from “domination”?
Of course men have a reason to approach women — all sorts of reasons, in fact. The point is not that men should never approach women, it’s that they have no business accosting women they don’t know on the street, when the woman is just trying to get to work or meet somebody or whatever. There are many ways to meet women in circumstances where the woman can be expected to be interested/receptive. Out on the street is not one of them. (And let me point out that construction workers, to pick a cliched example, who call out to women passing by are not trying to meet them or get to know them.)
I respect and appreciate your desire to treat people as individuals and not make ideological assumptions, but surely you don’t deny that people act for other reasons than simple personal ones. The white men who told black people to get to the back of the bus in the old days were not each doing so for personal reasons that happened to coincide, and the same is true of how large numbers of men approach women.
Edit: @LH, DE, so you won’t consider answering the question or explaining anything?
I hope I just answered at least one of your questions, and I’m happy to try to explain anything you want explained. You certainly haven’t “alienated” me (or I think anyone else), and I’m sorry you feel that way.
И вообще, не волнуйся, мы просто болтаем!
Her [Sheldon’s] `A momentary taste of being’ is another toe-curler
I’m with you on what telling people to go to the back of the bus was about. And I find whistling or whatever at women offensive. But except when it’s performative, I tend to agree with drasvi.
To be honest, I’ve rarely if ever seen or heard that kind of thing. It’s more a movie thing than real life in my experience.
With the greatest possible respect, you might want to ask some women about that. It’s extremely common for men to say “I’ve rarely if ever seen or heard that kind of thing.” It’s not that hard to figure out why that might be.
“But except when it’s performative”
@Ryan, what do you mean here?
I think when it is a company of men (one man does it for other men), things can get much worse. They do not necessarily get worse, but they can.
Companies and other social units very easily become hostile to other social units and thier members – and companies of young men can easily develop a subculture contemptuous to women.
Is that what you mean by “performative”?
I join in drasvi’s question.
Ryan agrees with drasvi except when agreeing with drasvi is performative.
@LH, thank you for the answer and my apologies for the comment.
I managed to delete it in a second after the page refreshed (with your responce), but you intercepted it:)
(I intended to append this to a longer comment, but I’m not sure when I’ll type this longer comment, so sending it now).
PS in this case the (wrong as it turned out) idea that you and DE might exchange nods about some short story that I did not read but won’t bother to explain anything to an outsider (in the sense: someone who may disagree) bothered/disappointed me not because this outsider was me, but for the reason I explained above.
It’s hard to keep up with life in the 21st century!
The short story really is worth reading, drasvi. I’m not particularising only Because Spoilers. I couldn’t really do it justice in a summary. Its very last sentence is spot on.
WP has an article on it, though. But you should really read the story instead. I found it in the collection Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, which is altogether highly to be recommended. (It contains the story Jack Morava referred to, as well.)
James Tiptree Jr was very good at the skull-beneath-the-skin thing. The horrific effect in this particular story is so powerful because what she describes is very uncomfortably recognisable. Like rather a lot of what she wrote …
Yes, and? That doesn’t make it better.
Not over here, where people know tennis exists and that’s it. I had never heard of this incident or the people involved.
I’m quite sure it’s much rarer than it used to be, but also that I don’t get to see the great majority of occurrences.
(I’ve mentioned shouting “ciao, bella” across the street. That’s a stereotype about Italy; I haven’t seen it there [or elsewhere], but I have seen random honking while driving past a young woman – without even slowing down. Progress, yes, but.)
Am I the only one who absolutely never wants to read “The Screwfly Solution” again? It may be very good, but it was definitely not for me.
Honestly, I simply can’t say much about the extent to which such behaviour is bad or what.
The only time women discussed their own reaction – and it is their reaction that matters! – with me was when I asked them.
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What others say is useless, I’m afraid. As with those German ladies. I mean, they are ladies, yes.
But they believe compliments to strangers are Bad.
They start telling how they are always wrong, no matter what do we mean by “stranger” and no matter what country and culture.
@Brett: I’d say i liked “The Screwfly Solution” and I’m glad I read it twice, but I have no need to read it again.
I’d also say it should be read in conjunction with “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” where the women **** ** ***. After that you’ll need a break.
“needless to say, marriage is no longer linked to child birth anyway.”
@DP, this stand in almost comical (or it would be “almost” if not “needless to say”) contrast to how I and my friends we discuss it and joke about it.
From my experience in my circle marriage IS children. And nothing else.
Once it also meant the woman can engage in sex without being considered “one of those women who practice pre-marital sex” (a whore that is).
Some Russians are not ethnic Russians but most of us are and most also receive higher education and childbirth in university is not terribly convenient. Also you don’t think about yourself as an adult until you’ve graduated. I mean, yes, there is a word “adult” and it understood differently but practically you are a schoolboy and then you’re a student (this transition matters) and then you graduate (this too matters), otherwise adulthood is fully abstract.
Also not 22f 24m – only slight difference between boys and girls (not in like with one’s idea of “Oriental” marriage: an adult man and young girl).
I do expect a peak there among ethnic Russians.
In my circle… it happens. But my freinds (close friends that is) married later if ever.
@dm
I am happy to let hat have the last word, viz., that (as I understand) he thinks the social benefit of a blanket ban on this kind of behaviour outweighs the social cost of stigmatising people who think they were not doing anything wrong and of enforcing such a ban. My mentioning of the women was intended not to exonerate the men, but to suggest that the urge to engage in such behaviour may be universal and there might be contexts in which the ban might not be appropriate, especially where the risk of the thing escalating to a more serious offence is negligible.
“the chauvinist pigs’ rejection of everything even remotely feminist is just one page of it;”
Er.
We both know that when USSR fell apart Russians (and women in particular) were sceptical of feminism. And the worst things I hear about feminism, I hear them from Arab women. Like “I hate feminists!”.
So I’d call this line somewhat misleading.
You don’t claim that it is ONLY chauvinist pigs, but the association has been created.
(as I understand) he thinks the social benefit of a blanket ban on this kind of behaviour outweighs the social cost of stigmatising people who think they were not doing anything wrong and of enforcing such a ban.
I most certainly do. In my strong opinion, the ability of women to live their lives without being frequently harassed and occasionally brutalized is far more important than the occasional hurt feelings of men who “think they were not doing anything wrong.” It is a sign of how out of whack the social consensus is that this is even a controversial opinion.
I mean, plenty of thieves, conmen, and other violators of the social contract think they’re not doing anything wrong. If that’s the standard we’re going to use, let’s just open up the jails and have a free-for-all.
Other ways can be created of representing the symbolic and cultural significance marked by these practices.
@de
I am not sure that this always works. Suppose a blanket ban was put on alcohol consumption because some men get drunk and beat their wives. The Calvinist substitutes of sugary drinks and cakes might not work for everyone and wife-beating might even increase under such a ban.
Some experimentation with dfferent alternatives would be in order.
(Also, Real Calvinists drink whisky.)
And so do I! Perhaps there’s hope for my salvation…
Well, I’m sorry, people who seriously want to ban unsolicited heys on the street are jsut “one more sort of people who love to ban”. I mean, who have a banhammer and treat every problem as a nail. Like those who ban propaganda of homesexualism (e.g. in the form of same-sex romantic affection in public – and also of course all sorts of modern western fiction where some characters happen to be gay or lesbian) here.
They too have powerful reasons. “But think about children!!!”.
The target is different, the methods are same.
They likely are even right in assuming that children are more likely to experiment with same-sex relationships in a society where homosexuality is not considered bad/abnormal.
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How ‘bad” it is wholly depends on how it affects women.
(a) thier feelings
(b) resulting perception of the space (which may discourage walking alone etc. etc.).
But no women ever complained to me at this – unless I asked her. They complained at all sorts of things, but never at this. I understand that there are highly unpleasant things people don’t complain about. But first 0 is 0, second I asked (about compliments from strangers, not specifically shouting “hey beautiful” which is less common for Russia), I remember what they responded, responces varied (“mostly unpleasant”, “sometimes unpleasant sometimes pleasant but if they ban them I’ll lose more than I’ll gain”) but they did not sound like it is a problem of the same scale as some other episodes they complained at on their own!
I perfectly realise that some forms of such street compliments simply can’t be pleasant, and even always going to be highly annoying. Perhaps I simply never asked those ladies who experience these – indeed theoir prevalence depends on society.
But it maybe would be better if these forms will be dealt with rahter than all street heys and compliments, and by someone who is not obsessed with bans.