Albert wrote:I have been contemplating about this for a while. More so to become certain of what I have arrived at first. The more I see things unfold and learn about the past, the more I become certain that the core of the progressive movement, its essential drive, its prime motive, is located in the misconception of the relationship between men and women. And the role that which a woman plays in society.
This misconception began way long ago, since the advent of liberal revolutions. My estimate that the whole liberation of women began more then 150 years ago, and now we are here. With gender issues, gay, divorce issues whatever you can think of. On this original misconception, every other destructive elements of progressivism were build.
Obviously these "elements" had always existed in the past, homosexuality and such. However in modernity they are no longer contained like in the past, where they were not allowed to reach destructive levels. But the destruction of gender relations and that of traditional family has opened the gates to these destructive elements that grew to a point where they have consumed almost all of our societies.
The current movement that has arose to challenge this persistent "progress", the current artificially established way. Will succeed only if it manages to successfully reconcile gender relations. On which I believe progressivism rests.
I believe, now it is about time to begin to challenge the foundation at earnest. The core of this ever unsatisfied beast that breathes destruction. As this necessary for the heart, as once proper relation between men and women are restored. This will clear up so many other things, intellectually and in ones' heart.
There also have to be the acceptance, that in the future women will not have power. At some point it will be begun to be taken away from them.
Well might note that with liberal revolutions, they created a revolutionary ideology whilst in practice fulfilled the interests of the developing capitalist class, so that the ideas that later would be ideologically compelling within capitalist conditions through liberalism weren't established in it's origins which quite explicitly wasn't of universal emancipation.
Which is why there was actually a regression in rights for women int he case of the French revolution because aristocratic women had some power which was then removed and none was really formally given to women, hence why there were struggles later on when women were more organized in their circumstances.
Workers were as they are today subdued to the primacy of capital and property.
But in espousing such radical ideology which legitimized itself, it became easy to critique standard within that framework. Which is why liberalism is progressive to the extent it gives ideological justification to oppose formal discrimination in law as the patriarchal justifications to oppose women acquiring an education for example were weakening along with the conditions that maintained them. The common appeal to nature was too readily fallicious and a naturalization of status quo than explantory.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/francois-barre/At the same time, it was an acknowledged fact that most women (and most men) in the seventeenth century were unable to read or write, and were inadequately trained for the exercise of public offices. It was a fallacy, however, to conclude that they were not capable of acquiring the relevant skills. Since ‘nature’ was a pseudo-explanation of women's lack of achievement, Poulain required some other explanation. He offered instead an historical hypothesis to explain how, over many generations, women were reduced to the inferior roles to which they had become accustomed. This history of subjection was compounded by women's exclusion from education, so that opponents of equality could then argue that women lacked the training or education required to exercise the same roles in society as men. And since women were generally unfit for those offices, the argument was made that they did not need access to an education if they were excluded from the offices for which education was a necessary condition.
The circularity of this was made explicit in the summary statement by ‘Sophia’, who had borrowed many of Poulain's arguments: ‘Why is learning useless to us? Because we have no share in public offices. And why have we no share in public offices? Because we have no learning’ [1739: 27]. In contrast, Poulain drew the conclusion that women should be allowed access to exactly the same educational opportunities as men and should then be allowed compete equally for all civil and ecclesiastical offices. The equality or otherwise of men and women could be tested only by implementing such a long-term social experiment.
Opponents of equality assumed, not only the alleged fact of women's inferiority and its related ‘natural’ explanation; they also assumed that the status of women in society was not unjust. It was taken for granted that, if some situation had been long established by custom, it must be justified. Poulain claimed, in reply, that this was based on a false concept of custom: ‘if some practice is well established, then we think that it must be right’ (2011: 62). The invalidity of the inference, from the fact that some custom is established to the conclusion that it is justified, inspired the anonymous ‘Sophia’ to formulate a version of the ‘Is-Ought’ distinction one year before Hume published A Treatise of Human Nature (Book III).
It is enough for the Men to find a thing establish'd to make them believe it well grounded. In all countries we are seen in subjection and absolute dependence on the Men, without being admitted to the advantages of sciences, or the opportunity of exerting our capacity in a public station. Hence the Men, according to their usual talent of arguing from seemings, conclude that we ought to be so. But supposing it to be true, that Women had ever been excluded from public offices, is it therefore necessarily true that they ought to be so? God has always been more or less resisted by ungrateful man, a fine conclusion it wou'd be then to infer, that therefore he ought to be so. (Woman Not Inferior to Man, 35)
This point is still replicated today
https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1960&context=sulrIt goes beyond stereotyping, however, because in believing men are stronger, we both train them to be stronger, and we create a military designed around their abilities—in other words, we make the belief real. Epistemologist Sally Haslanger has termed this cognitive mechanism “assumed objectivity.”207 Members of a powerful group ascribe characteristics to a weak group in a way that makes the differences real, and in a vicious cycle, the ascribed characteristics help make the weak group weak.208 For example, slave owners might ascribe a lack of intelligence to slaves, claim that this characteristic is innate, use this professed belief to justify a lack of education, and in this way make real a difference that keeps the slave owners in power.209
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Subjection_of_WomenMill attacks the argument that women are naturally worse at some things than men, and should, therefore, be discouraged or forbidden from doing them. He says that we simply don't know what women are capable of, because we have never let them try – one cannot make an authoritative statement without evidence. We can't stop women from trying things because they might not be able to do them. An argument based on speculative physiology is just that, speculation.
"The anxiety of mankind to intervene on behalf of nature...is an altogether unnecessary solicitude. What women by nature cannot do, it is quite superfluous to forbid them from doing."[8]
In this, men are basically contradicting themselves because they say women cannot do an activity and want to stop them from doing it. Here Mill suggests that men are basically admitting that women are capable of doing the activity, but that men do not want them to do so.
And you're a bit vague in regards to these elements always existing, homosexuality and heterosexuality as concepts are historically contingent, concepts are existent as givens from the beginning of mankind but developed. To which one might project concepts back into the past, but one would also be ignoring the historical specificity in which one is applying modern views perhaps in a time that didn't have the same conception of the world. The essentialized identity of being gay and such emerged from psychiatristry that made it a disorder which was transcribed from a religious context that emphasized reproduction between a man and a woman (British Evangelicalism). It tried to give rational and scientific basis to an essentially religious concept and framework. In response to that it really did create the identity in practice of being gay as socially significant, and in the last century inspired by the tactics of the civil rights movement, feminists copied them and gays copied them and such was
identity politics to emerge, emphasizing their particular identity and struggle which has now developed in intersectionality where there isn't a unity but an infinite series of identities with varying basis in people's practice and thus varying felt validity.
But in copying each other, they might have helped activism and tactics but they didn't create the conditions of conflict themselves. Conflict within the family between the interests of women and men didn't create that of psychiatrists abusing gays although in some way they do emerge from similar backgrounds of ideas relating to one another about sexuality, reproduction, the labour of the family unit which all necessarily changed with economic conditions out of necessity.
And liberal progressivism can't reconcile gender conflict because at it's most radical it only seeks to change laws, not society itself. So it can only partially objectify it's ideal practically, where as to radically change the relation between men and women would require fulfillment of a socialist project. An essential change in the economic relations of a society such that ideals of both people having a rich individuality becomes more plausible out of adequate resources such that they're not coerced by economic circumstance as readily.
It's not clear what you feel an attempt to recreate a modern variant of patriarchal relations of the past would solve in that it's not that compelling that you reasonably interpret the past conditions, which makes it seem as if all this is simply a romanticized want of as an idyllic past. To which might emphasize that in man's role was that of a conservative masculinity which women required paternalistic care to have them controlled. This paternalism was then based on a hostility towards women in society generally which required protection through a man, access to economic stability and such was through marriage rather than one's own merit.
You'd have to destroy women's access to the economic sphere and thus it's corresponding status effect on women on average which seems impossible as they're a significant resource of labor to any developed economy. So much so, people are going into third world countries in their sense of progressivesm to get women working and paid for their work, speeding up the process. But this also suggests that in the mean time, might try and go live in places that aren't industrialized and given modern capitalist relations to fulfill the dream patriarchal living. Otherwise one is as impotent as fascists who wish for a traditionalism that is contradicted by the modern capitalist economy that they exist within, always wanting to retain things whilst defending the very current that undercuts their supposed desire. Which reflects the disconnect between a sense of what is and what they want, an inadequate view of means and end, which fortunately suggests a real world impotence to objectify such ideals more broadly.
Albert wrote:1) Broadly speaking without getting into details at the moment, it is traditionalism. Granted this traditional relationship will look different after industrialization and in our technologically modern societies. But in essence it is still the same.
Might need to think and explain this further considering the traditionalism of patriarchal relations you perhaps call for are exactly undermined by industrialization (capitalist development), because it brings women more explicitly into economic power and presses against the relations of power that
they're excluded from.
Women, Politics, and Power: A Global Perspective By Pamela Paxton, Melanie M. HughesECONOMIC POWER
In most societies, women's work has long been overlooked or underestimated. Although many ofen think that throughout history men have been the workers while women have been the mothers and wives, anthrpological research indicates that among early civilizations women were the primary labor force in teh vast majority of gathering and cultivating societies (Murdock 1967; cited from Blumberg 1984). Even today, statistics on labor tend to ignore the work of poor rural women (Donahoe 1999). Therefore, it is clear that women's labor alone is not sufficient to give them economic power. Specifically, economic power is based in control over the means of production and control over the allocation of surplus. It is control over surplus (in money, goods, land, or the labor of others) that leads individuals to have resources to pursue and acquire political power. So though women's level of labor force participation or income may be important, gender stratification theorists argue that it is control over labor or income that matters (Blumberg 1984; Chafetz 1984). For example, Staudt (1986) explained that although women in Africa have control over money within their households, they cannot own land, putting them at a serious economic disadvantage compared with men in that society.
Although economic power does not guarantee that women will gain formal political power, gender stratification researchers argue strongly that women's economic power must precede political power. For example, according to Rae Lesser Blumberg (1984), a power hierarchy exists - political power rests at the top, and other types of power, such as economic power, appear below. Achievement of power at the lower levels of power, such as in the labour force, must occur before power can be reached at the next highest level (cited from Paxton 1997)> IN an ethnographic analysis of 61 preindustrial societies, Blumberg (1984) found only one instance in which women had significant political input without autonomous economic power. (The exceptional example was the Mende of Liberia. Although the women did not do much of the productive labor, they were organized in a secret society and used their clout to influence the political sphere.)
This is true to comments in the
communist manifesto of the revolutionary force of capitalism
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.
http://libcom.org/files/marx,%20marginalism%20and%20modern%20sociology%20-%20clarke.pdfAs relations based on personal status were progressively eroded with the growth of commercial relations, so the conception of society as a network of relations between persons gave way to a conception of society as a network of relations between different forms of property. Similarly the state came to be seen increasingly as a juridical body, sustaining the established order by regulating the relationships between the various forms of property. This ‘dehumanisation’ of society undermined the self-evident sanctity of the established order, and called for new ways of understanding the possibility of a stable and harmonious social order, on the one hand, and of justifying the political reforms required to achieve that order, on the other. Thus the medieval conception of society was modified firstly by providing a rational foundation for the authority of the sovereign over his subjects and of the patriarch over his dependent household, and secondly by recognising the jural and moral rights and obligations entailed in the establishment of contracts as the typical form of social relation between property-owners. Society thus came to be conceptualised as a political order whose foundation was some form of real or implied contract. The juridical relations of right and obligation that bound the members of society together, under the superintendence of the sovereign, were no longer defined and differentiated according to personal status and sanctioned by God, but came to be conceived in terms of the ‘natural laws’ that accorded with reason, that governed the rights and obligations of individuals as property-owners, and that guided sound government.
...
The most interesting of Weber’s early works, at least for the light it throws on his own orientation, is the research that he conducted under the aegis of the Verein on ‘The conditions of rural labour in Germany beyond the Elbe’, published in 1892. This research was ostensibly a study of the impact of capitalist development on the rural social structure of Eastern Prussia and showed how the expansion of capitalist agriculture had eroded patriarchal relations in agriculture, reducing the labour force to a rural proletariat. Under the impact of such a development the Prussian rural workers were emigrating to the towns and were being replaced by Polish peasants, who were prepared to work for lower wages and under conditions of abject subordination to their employers. Such a development was hardly unique to Prussia, nor was Weber by any means the first to observe it. The importance of Weber’s contribution lies not in its substantive content so much as in the lessons Weber drew from his study, which indeed motivated it in the first place.
For Weber the development of capitalism in rural Prussia was undoubtedly progressive if evaluated in purely economic terms. However, economic criteria alone were not sufficient to evaluate social developments or policies to modify such developments. Thus the development of capitalism was increasing the productivity of agriculture, fostering the accumulation of capital and enriching the ruling Junkers, but it was doing so at the expense of the ethical and political foundations of the nation. The sturdy independent Prussian peasant, whose moral qualities had contributed in no small way to the virtues of the Prussian State, was being eliminated, replaced by a dependent workforce of much inferior cultural quality which was prepared to work under the most exploitative and degrading conditions. Moreover this new workforce was not only culturally inferior, it was also culturally alien and so a potential fifth column in the event of political or military threats from the East. Finally, the development of capitalism, in undermining patriarchal relations in agriculture, was establishing the conditions for the growth of class conflict in the countryside. The development of capitalism in rural Prussia was therefore strengthening the Junkers economically, while turning the Junkers into a section of the capitalist class, but it was eroding the ethical and political foundations of national security in the most sensitive eastern border regions.
Which brings us to your second point
2) It is proper because it foster harmony and proper function of society without friction and distress. In the end it is healthy for one's own emotional and mental well being.
In that this seems to gloss over conflict in project an illusion of harmony as what was the basis of political project on the woman question if not explicitly that of struggle and conflict. Soon as women got enough power, they tore off much of those illiberal patriarchal laws and mentalities in significant degree.
It would require ignoring the history that lead us to the changes in the first place to posit such a state of affairs and doesn't even contend with those who do desire such traditional relationships but were necessarily undermined. In Australia for example, there were judicial attempts to retain men as breadwinner patriarch but many men were not providing or could not for their wives and children, so working class women inevitably were made to work for pay because they couldn't survive otherwise because the middle to upper class ideal in practice relied on a great deal more wealth than many had.
So here the concern is you perhaps have a fetish for an equilibrium, thus think in denial of the conflicts in reality because it's upsetting to your ideal, you'll necessarily be dissatisfied when you begin from an ideal sponatenous conception rather than examination of what is to then develop a tension with a possibility (ideal end).
https://www.marxists.org/archive/ilyenkov/works/positive/positii.htmThe reader has probably already managed to notice how often and persistently the magical word equilibrium is repeated in the quotations from those texts. Yes, here we are dealing not simply with a word, but a genuine symbol – a symbol of faith, a fundamental and key category of the logic of their thinking. No matter where their arguments originate, or where they lead to, they inevitably begin with equilibrium and end with equilibrium.
From their works the reader discovers that equilibrium is not simply or solely an equal balance on the scales with which everyone is familiar from personal experience, but it is something much more important and universal, something metaphysical.
It turns out that this magical concept contains within it both the secret of life and the secrets of the functioning of social organisms, and even the mysteries of all cosmic systems and events. It turns out that all these mysteries, secrets and enigmas are simple and easy. One only has to apply to them the magical 'lock pick' – and they become transparent and simple.
It turns out that the entire infinite Universe strives to achieve equilibrium. Thus the history of mankind, the history of social organisms (people, lands, states and civilisations), is directed towards and yearns for equilibrium.
Immediately, everything becomes clear: both the condition of economic and political relations and the organisational principle of the living body of the frog, and the direction of the evolution of the solar system.
It is remarkable that in not one of the works of the Machists will we find an intelligible explanation of the meaning of this word. They all prefer to explain it by means of examples. But throughout the entire system of such examples, the actual meaning of this 'empirio-symbol' clearly shines through: it is first of all a state of inviolable rest and immobility. It is the absence of any noticeable changes or deviations, the absence of motion.
Equilibrium means the absence of any state of conflict, of any contradictions whatsoever, i.e. of forces which pull in different, contradictory directions. And where is this seen? You will never see such a state, even in the shop, even in the example of the scales. Even here equilibrium is only a passing result, an ephemeral effect, which is achieved at precisely that moment because two opposing forces are directed at each end of the lever: one presses upward, and the other presses downward.
In the Russian language, equilibrium means: 'A state of immobility, of rest, in which a body is under the influence of equal and opposing forces.' But according to the logic of Machism, the presence of opposing forces exerting pressure at one point (or on one body) is already a bad state of affairs. It resembles the state which is designated in Hegelian language as contradiction, as 'a body's state of discomfort', in which two opposing forces exert pressure, either squeezing the body from two opposite sides or tearing it in half.
Such an understanding of equilibrium is therefore unacceptable for the Machists. How could it possibly be that equilibrium turns out to be only the passing and quickly disappearing result of contradiction, the result of the action of opposites applied at one point, i.e. the very state which every living organism tries to escape as soon as possible, and by no means the state which it supposedly is striving to achieve.
Here then arises the concept of equilibrium which the Machists want to counterpose to contradiction, which is the presence of two opposing forces. It is a state in which two opposing forces have ceased to exist and therefore no longer squeeze or tear apart the ideal body (or the equally ideal point of their application). The forces have ceased to exist and have disappeared, but the state which they have established at a given point still remains. Equilibrium is a state of this kind. A state characterised by the absence of any opposing forces whatsoever, be they internal or external, physical or psychic.
In this form, equilibrium is the ideal. It is the ideal model of the cosmos and the psychics, the fundamental philosophical category of Machism, and the starting point of Machist arguments about the cosmos, about history, and about thinking. The aspiration to escape once and for all from all contradictions whatsoever from whatever kind of opposing forces, is the striving for equilibrium.
In addition to all the rest, equilibrium finds under these conditions all the characteristics which ancient philosophy describes with the words 'inner goal', 'objective goal', and 'immanent goal'. According to Machist logic, equilibrium is by no means a real state, given in experience, even if in passing, but only the ideal and the goal of nature, man, and being in general.
Such an equilibrium is static, complete, disturbed by nothing, an equilibrium of rest, an equilibrium of immobility, a state of 'suspension in the cosmic void'. It is the ideal model of the Machist Bogdanovian concept of equilibrium.
Even the desire for the middle class ideal of a stay at home housewife is clearly economically unsustainable today in that many of the relations in the last hundred or more years in industrialized nations reflect some significant similarities and tensions for families and their stability.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/For%20Ethical%20Politics.pdf#page90
-For Ethical Politics
Most men, and women, would disagree with your archaic view. Why do you hold such a regressive view? 
- By Verv
- By paeng
- By Pants-of-dog