You and I are having a discussion right now that is outside the constraints of a formalized binary debate, where we would be called upon to sympathize with one camp or the other. The category that you might call “feminists” includes very different and diverse views on pornography. Maybe I’m not a debater, because I believe in the diversity of opinions that can exist outside of the restraints of binary identities. But yes, I can’t argue that debate is not a recognized and institutionalized format of discourse. I just wouldn’t agree that it is always the *best* one. I assure you that my opinions and perspective are potentially very different than other writers here on this blog. And I’m sure you have opinions and perspectives to contribute on the topic as well, which you are certainly more than welcome to share with us.

I claimed that the interest in, roughly speaking, “having a career and being accomplished” was/is traditionally masculine cross-culturally, and I indicated why that might be the case. So I’m happy to allow that you’re more masculine with respect to your personality than most women are, just like I would say that a female bodybuilder is more masculine with respect to her body than most women are. But just as I don’t see why having a lot of muscles would necessarily be better than having a softer body, I don’t see why behaving in a masculine way is necessarily better than behaving in a feminine way. Perhaps you could explain that to me. (Seriously, I would appreciate it.)

It really doesn’t matter if you reject my evolutionary explanation, although I see no reason why you should. Even if you just say that “masculine” and “feminine” are aspects of “traditional gender roles” (presumably “culturally imposed”, right?), you know the traits that the terms refer to. So my question is why say that the traits “assigned” in the past to men are better than the ones “assigned” in the past to women? Because that strikes me as more than a little misogynistic.

2) No one’s claiming that Anscombe is the only contrasting opinion, or at least I didn’t: “Or, you could debate students who disagree with you and are not in Anscombe–of whom there are plenty, I assure you.” For example, I disagree with you and am not in Anscombe.

3) “parade”: I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

4) You will concede that formal debate is *a* legitimate form of discourse. The reason people engage in it is that it’s a structured way of articulating one’s views and explaining why a rational person should believe them. Two sides of the argument are represented, both get equal time to speak their minds, no one can talk over the other, and there are some basic standards e.g. no name-calling. Formal debates have been going on for a long, long time and it’s pretty much standard practice for people who want to intelligently argue about some disputed issue. With all these things to recommend it, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to debate someone, maybe Anscombe, maybe not, as at least *one* method of “engaging in discourse”. If people don’t hassle Anscombe about not debating their opponents, it’s probably because they’re fully ready to have such a debate anywhere, anytime. Why aren’t you?

But while we’re talking about gender assignment, Tristan seems to think that having a career and being accomplished is a masculine interest. I must be hypermasculine, then!

Tristan also purports to know my “brand” of feminism just from my previous 56-word statement. Let’s just say the argument that ensued was about Tristan’s angst about the breakdown of traditional gender roles, not about my factual contribution to Nick’s post.

Tristan,

You seem to think that this blog presents a model of morality that is not to be found anywhere else, and I really haven’t heard the Republican/Democrat binary that you’re talking about (if you’ve noticed, we don’t really like binaries here), so I’m confused about your statements.

I don’t think that the only “contrasting” and “diverse” opinion is that of the Anscombe society. In fact, from feminist to feminist, among Democrats and among Republicans, you will find a range of opinions and positions on pornography. And that, I believe, is a dialogue that LeT’S is trying to engage.

I’m sure not everyone agrees with the Anscombe Society’s position, but I doubt that anyone parades their website declaring that they are not engaging in a useful dialogue, because they haven’t staged a “debate”. “Debate” was never mentioned in the post above…so I’m confused about why you want it in such a specific format, and why you think it’s the only legitimate form of discourse.

Diverse and contrasting opinions do not only constitute either/or. I know we learned about “opposites” in elementary school, but the range of opinions that can be represented by the academic world extend far beyond representations of white and black.

And Brenda, while I agree that this was a better-than-average article, trotting out that 1 in 4 nonsense is pointless at best.

People often wonder how it is even possible that 1/4 college women are victims of attempted assault by the time they graduate. They think the statistic is “too high” to be true.

The problem is exactly what you so clearly articulated: assuming that a rapist has made a one-time mistake. It’s not simply that 1/4 of the male population attempts to assault 1/4 of the female population; data suggests that most offenders repeat their crimes over time. That means that offenders on campus–yes, students among us–perpetrate not just once every few months, but potentially as often as every weekend, or with every opportunity that arises, be it in a romantic relationship, or with or without the aid of alcohol (and always with the aid of our society’s victim-blaming, body-shaming, “mistake”-forgiving rhetoric). That’s a lot of victims over four years at an undergraduate institution.

Another thing to bring up is that Bonnie assumes there are an equal number of females (or black people) that WANT to direct movies. I’m not saying there aren’t, but you certainly aren’t bringing ANY (none, zip, absolutely nothing) evidence (read: data) to show that there are an equal number of men and women (and black people) who desire to be directors. (I only put black people in parentheses because it was also a secondary example in her paragraph, I promise I’m not racist XD)

As anyone versed in any kind of statistics can tell you, the low number of female directors can be a sign of two things. The first thing is that there is some sort of bias against women. The other completely legitimate conclusion is that the number of women who win Oscars is representative of the number of women, compared to men, who direct. I’m not saying either is right or wrong, but many feminists refuse to acknowledge the second possibility, as if it would be preposterous to think that maybe MOST women do not want to have a career, etc.

Again, I don’t think most women blah blah blah, because I don’t have a good statistical study to look at.

Brenda also refuses to acknowledge that even if males and females can act exactly the same, as some human standard, that perhaps that is not the best way to approach things. She begs the question when she says, “if both men and women could be both feminine and masculine, this society, as well as individual males and females, would be far better off.”

I’m not exactly here to argue against this claim, but just to point out that in the end, Brenda is just saying “if both men and women could be both feminine and masculine, this society, as well as individual males and females, would be far better off because it would be better if both men and women could be both feminine and masculine”

You can’t deny that differences between women and men “exist in nature”, even if you only consider physiology. And I see no reason to think that these are the only differences: there are good evolutionary reasons that males and females (of all species) have different interests and behave differently. In a Darwinian (i.e. non-moral) sense, some behaviors that are good for males are bad for females; for example, behaving promiscuously as opposed to nurturing one’s offspring.

This is an explanation for the behavior that we see today and that we have always seen–it gives an explanation where “culturally imposed” gives none. It also shows that there is some behavior that is distinctly feminine and some that is distinctly masculine, although of course most behavior is neither. Given that men and women have different interests and will behave differently, why equate masculine behavior with human behavior? Why try to expunge feminine behavior (as you still want to do in your post)?