"I don't think that being a strong person is about ignoring your emotions and fighting your feelings. Putting on a brave face doesn't mean you're a brave person. That's why everybody in my life knows everything that I'm going through. I can't hide anything from them. People need to realise that being open isn't the same as being weak."

- Taylor Swift

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Why are we, in this day and age, learning from and idoliziong misogynistic bastards?

Mood: zonked
Listening to: 'Iris' by the Goo Goo Dolls
Hungry for: milk

I am, as of this semester, a year ten Philosophy student. We're studying theories proposed by the famous Greek philosophers - Socrates and Aristotle, mostly, but we briefly covered Plato.

The thing that annoys me the most is that two out of the three are MISOGYNISTIC BASTARDS.

Part of this annoyance comes from the fact that I am a staunch feminist, and I refuse to recognise, let alone learn from and idolize, any bastard who is so f**ked up that they cannot even see the true value of the female sex and the equality that should be between the two sexes. I don't care if that's the main mindset of the Ancient Greeks. Philosopher's are meant to go against the norm - Socrates was put to death 'for corrupting the youth', so it wasn't like he wasn't used to being the red fish, as I like to call it. There is no excuse for misogyny, and all misogynists should go F**KING DIE IN A HOLE.

But the other thing is, I believe that the only credible philosophers are those who are completely unbiased - you cannot really count the opinion of anyone who is rascist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, etc. I mean, a biased opinion is not a good opinion, so why bother learning about it? The only times I swear and say the 'f' word is when it comes to sexism and rascism. I can't believe in this day and age we're still idolizing sexist f**kheads.

Which is why I no longer count myself as a Buddhist - because, however enlightened Buddha was, he was still misogynistic. When will women have their place in the world? When someone as esteemed and enlightened as Buddha places men above women, then you know this world is f**ked up.

1 comment:

Adelaide Dupont said...

Karl Popper was pretty close to having no biases.

That's one of the reasons I was attracted to him last August.

Read The Open Society and its Enemies. He really gets into Plato, Hegel and Marx.

Essentially, Plato opposed women because he opposed change and openness. (He was one of the biggest essentialists, and opposed democracy).

And Mary Midgley and Iris Murdoch are good philosophical role models, especially Murdoch. She writes well about good and evil (see the earlier post).

Suzanne Langer is one of my favourite linguistic philosophers.

Remember that Socrates was called a midwife.

At present I am re-reading Aristotle and also Rousseau.

French feminism has always had a strong philosophical branch.

Here are four female philosophers from the time of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle (some were taught by their fathers, who learnt from those three):

Arete of Cyrene

Aspasia: she was particularly strong in political philosophy.

Hipparchia: she was a Cynic

Leontion who followed Epicurus