The Dream Women

I think I am slow on the uptake. Until today I did not realize the extent to which my own take on evolutionary theory coincided with my Cabell obsession as well as my opposition to modish intersectional "gender theory" feminism.

So I hastily wrote a note pertaining to this, without being too confrontational. See “The Dream Women” on my blog: http://wirkman.wordpress.com/2017/05/13/the-dream-women/

I first essayed a theory about sexual selection before I read Darwin or Cabell — and to explain an outlier practice, homosexuality (which I had just learned about) — when I was 15. I have sort of been preparing to oppose gender theory ever since then, at least 40 years ago.

I am curious if any of you have considered the contrast between Cabell's view of life and modern Third Wave feminism.

http://www.skeptic.com/downloads/conceptual-penis/23311886.2017.1330439.pdf

Well, as the author of (probably) the only recent paper on Cabell and feminism, and admittedly a passionate proponent of both, I must confess I feel a bit uncomfortable using Cabell's outlook on life for an anti-feminist argument. Cabell was certainly no feminist in our modern sense. But I think it's impossible to separate the endless worship and demonization of women in his fiction from his conservative upbringing and especially his unsuccessful courtship of Gabriella. I'm also quite confident that he (thanks to e.g. his friendship with Ellen Glasgow) realized that the male view on women was only one side of the story, and that the very ideals of chivalry he upheld for so long were to blame for lots of misconceptions and misery in male-female relationships: "I think of Gabriella [!] Carr," he writes in Let Me Lie regarding the protagonist of Glasgow's Life and Gabriella, "who ... ran away, in a panic, from the most faithful and the most chivalrous of Virginian gentlemen because she could not endure being married to his delusions". He also responded positively to Claire Myers Spotswood Owens' "The unpredictable adventure", a feminist pastiche of his romances, calling it "indubitably a masterpiece". And he knew from first-hand experience how it felt to be involved in a homosexual scandal, too.

So: I think you're certainly right that physical attractiveness and the sexual drive fulfill a crucial role in ensuring the survival of a species in an evolutionary sense. I would also agree to what you said about the importance of formalizing the Divine and the way Cabell contrasts the realm of the magical and ideal with the reality of marital life. But I don't quite agree to the heteronormative message you seem to derive from this (when you speak of 'anomalies' and 'outliers' and warn of 'cataclysms'). I don't get this message from Cabell at all. He's much too cynical about this whole bleaching business :)

>2 Crypto-Willobie:

I wish I had coined the term conceptual penis. I love the opening line, too: "Anatomical penises may exist ...". The authors do give a great performance and urge the reader to keep going, when perhaps the argument itself might suggest stopping.

It's a hoax paper, right?

If so, it fooled me -- but I'm easily fooled. I thought it real, and assumed it was an easy target for those looking to criticize scholarship.

Well, "nonsense" -- I think there's more "there" there than the authors are claiming. Language has its own heft, even when an attempt is made to abuse it or drain it of meaning. Anyway, that's a big part of Orwell's lesson, I thought.

I'm not claiming the paper or the argument is good. But it's not empty or nonsense.

Exactly my reaction. It fooled me, too, and I thought "Whoa, you reaaaally shouldn't have phrased it that way", but for the 20 seconds I bothered to think about it, I found it intriguing ;)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/29/science/evolution-of-beauty-richard-prum-darw...

There is feminism in its official capacity, as an ideology opposing sexism and supporting legal equality between the sexes, and there is today's Third Wave variety, which is a form of misandry and propounds various conspiracy theories ("The Patriarchy") and an exacting equality on some grounds (wealth, high-status jobs) but not others (child guardianship, risk, dangerous jobs). I do not witlessly use evolutionary theory to support systems of inequality. The liberalism of the past is a great liberator, and itself was bolstered with evolutionary themes. But today's feminism seems to me crazed, and anti-science (quite literally), and in some key ways anti-reality. Quite the revolution they are cooking up.

Cabell gestures towards the tools that help us understand these distinction.

But I would hesitate to consult him with an ideal.

The postmodernism pilloried in the "conceptual penis" parody is my target. Though I admire Derrida as a sort of Imp of the Perverse in philosophy, I regard him and his kind as great enemies.

Sorry to blurt out something so divisive here. But I'm a modernist, not a pomo acolyte.

(I wonder what Jack Woodford, or his daughter, would have said about all this.)