Neither the time nor the place, but...

[starlady]

My admittedly short and cursory review of Clockwork Phoenix has merited a response fromjohncwright. The Internet, being a series of tubes, evidently can be a very small place.

So what is the source of the indignation? Ah. To answer that, you will have to look at the indignation, and not at the story.

Is the point lost on me? No, I fear it is crystal clear. I never understand why those who uphold bumpersticker dogmas as conformist, sheeplike, and simplistic as "Four legs Good! Two legs ba-aa-ad!" opine their thoughts are somehow too high flown or deeply spiritual for the rest of us working Joes. (In my case, a working Joe with a classical education and a doctorate in law.) I wrote a story where the hero had two legs. But two legs bad! Aristotle male. Male bad!

Got it. Point taken.

An interviewer once asked me if my Christianity or my political philosophy would offend readers, by which he meant readers to the Left of Center. I answered that since such readers get offended at plain, ordinary and decent things like heroism, romance and marriage, I have no need to expend effort to offend them with more abstract or topical questions.

I hope I made it clear that I intended no ad hominem attacks against Mr. Wright himself in my comments on his story--certainly he's a technically impeccable writer, and I personally don't know him. I also hope I made it clear that I suspected my reaction to his story was wholly idiosyncratic in the most Greek sense of the word, and in that sense I wholly agree that "the source of the indignation" is my own opinions, and not his story itself. However, I certainly never stated, and do not think, that my "thoughts are somehow too high flown or deeply spiritual for the rest of us working Joes", and I personally have nothing against Christianity per se (I attended a Christian college, for starters), or against conservativism (if Mr. Wright does indeed define himself as conservative vis-a-vis those whom he calls "left of center"), or against diversity of opinion or "intellectual diversity."

I do, however, have a quarrel with patriarchy, with misogyny, and with heteronormativity, and this journal is an unabashed testament to those disagreements.

Comments

[kaigou]

So, wait, let me get this right: you reviewed a story and the author replied to your review -- not only that, he did so to complain? Too bad there's no way to tell ahead of time when an author's going to be so not down with the classy.

[starlady]

Nice icon.

Yeah, I mean, I'm completely boggled that he felt it worth dignifying my review with a response--I wouldn't, in his position. The story in question is something like 1.5 or 2 years old to boot.

[kindkit.livejournal.com]

I'd say there's no need for ad hominem attacks on Mr. Wright in any case. He can make himself look like an arrogant fool without help.

Wow

[(Anonymous)]

Followed the link and saw this little gem "Balance is Bigotry, since it is judgment not on the merits"

And I guess thank you for giving him the opportunity to show he isn't just a bad writer, but a sexist, racist egomaniac who responds to lit crit with personal attacks.

What a creepy, creepy man. I guess I can see why he identifies Republican

[olewyvern.livejournal.com]

This isn’t a direct response to your post, just something it made me think about in conjunction with my own recent academic activities. Feel free to ignore my musings if you have better things to do.

I think there has to be a bit of slippage between the terms “misogyny” and “patriarchy.” The two often manifest themselves together, certainly, but I don’t think they’re inherently connected. Misogyny is most literally hatred of women, whereas patriarchy is more the elevation of men; while elevation of men might presuppose devaluation of women, that’s not the same as outright misogyny. For example, if Athenians generally hated women, then the Lysistrata would be infuriating, not hilarious. Instead, it’s predicated on the assumption that women are irrelevant (rather than detrimental) to politics; like most of Aristophanes’ plays, the plot of the Lysistrata is taken to be simply absurd and impossible in the real world. So a man in the audience would not think “those hateful creatures are taking over the city!” so much as he would think “those insignificant creatures are taking over the city!” with a radically different tone. I wonder, too, whether the reasons for the devaluation of women relate to the intellect. It’s a fact that as a rule men are physically stronger than women. A certain brand of logic might conclude that men must be mentally stronger, too. In that case, patriarchy is not a reaction to some Freudian fear of female dominance; it’s just the way things are.

Of course, I’m not endorsing this attitude, and I would not deny that there are elements of misogyny in ancient literature. But I think that the case could be made that in general women were not hated or even deliberately put down, but just ignored. The adult Athenian male was elevated over women, as well as slaves, barbarians, metics, and children, whom he surely did not hate. They just weren’t relevant to his thinking. And maybe that’s the trend you object to.

I am also put in mind of an analysis I read the other day of the Trachiniai that posits that Deianeira kills herself in a masculine way (i.e. with a sword). I think there’s some merit in this, since Heracles makes a big deal out of how she’s made him weep like a woman and so on and so forth. At the same time, I’m not sure if it’s legitimate to call a sword masculine, as it’s ultimately a tool of violence, not masculinity; it just happens that most swords are used by men. Oedipus puts out his eyes with Jocasta’s pins, presumably because they’re ready to hand and suited to the task, but that doesn’t make him feminine. Also, Deianeira kills herself in the bedroom, supposedly the center of the woman’s universe, by driving the sword through her left side; apparently the left side is the feminine side (and I don’t know why that is; I’d have to dig up another article). So she kills herself in a feminine environment, by applying a masculine instrument to a feminine part of her body. that all this is so, do we see her suicide as masculine or feminine? And if it’s both, then what does that mean? For that matter, if it’s one or the other, then what does that mean?

A better reading of the Trachiniai might be that Deianeira, who has to be about the most peaceful and sympathetic character in extant Sophocles, kills herself by violent means, whereas Heracles, after defeating various monsters, braving the underworld, and generally doing tough, violent things, dies by a woman’s hand (by a robe, of all things) while making a sacrifice – in other words, not the way a warrior expects to die. It’s just all painfully ironic, and I think the reversal goes beyond a gendered reading, which might even distort or confuse the symbolism.

[(Anonymous)]

On the other hand, all she did was write a blog post that indicated a story by and for white dudes about a culture by and for white dudes was not interesting to her.

The nastiness of his response makes it a clearer case of mysoginy rather than ignorant neglect.

[olewyvern.livejournal.com]

Well, that's why it wasn't meant as a direct response to her post. I don't know anything about John Wright or his work and wasn't trying to defend them, and I didn't have his response in mind as a model when I started going off on attitudes toward women in Greek drama. I just have some general thoughts on the nature of misogyny and patriarchy in literature, particularly the ancient variety, since that's all I do know.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

They just weren’t relevant to his thinking. And maybe that’s the trend you object to.

Definitely the trend I object to. My objections get a lot more specific when it comes to Aristotle, or more precisely to his philosophy.

There definitely is a slippage between patriarchy/misogyny; my using correct parallelism in the above was an attempt to prevent further slippage, since I do consider them separately (though, if anything, I think Wright has conflated them, at least in his response, if not in the story in question).

I’m not sure if it’s legitimate to call a sword masculine, as it’s ultimately a tool of violence, not masculinity; it just happens that most swords are used by men.

Objectively, I agree completely, but the reality is that the sword is a phallic symbol, and in a patriarchal society the phallus is the ultimate symbol (and legitimizer) of power. So when Deianeira kills herself with a sword, she's appropriating the symbol of masculine power to herself and thus acting masculine--of course, a woman can't have a phallus, so she only uses it to kill herself (thus restoring the phallus, which is of course a metaphor for the penis, to its proper place inside a woman's body).

I like your reading, though. And I think your interpretation of Lysistrata makes sense, too--a lot of these texts' dominant interpretations are pretty overdetermined after 2500 or so years of us telling each other stories about them.

Re: Wow

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

Well, I think creepiness and arrogance are bipartisan and equal-opportunity.

But yeah, I was surprised that he even felt the need to note my comments, let alone write that response--it's easily three or four times the length of my own remarks. In his place I wouldn't have dignified my comments with a reply.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not prepared to speculate on Wright's motivations for his remarks, and the story in question is actually the only work of his I've read, so I can't speak to any more of his work than that, and his blog--I mostly know what other people whose opinions I respect and generally agree with have said about him. There's more reasons for people to fly off handles than misogyny, sadly.

Re: Wow

[(Anonymous)]

Of course you're right. Point taken.

His rant just managed to hit just about every square in Republican Talking Point Bingo, regardless of whether it had anything to do with the story/post. The Oppressed Christian motif was probably the most obvious example.

[olewyvern.livejournal.com]

Your interpretation makes better sense of whatever latent sexuality there may be in that play; I wasn’t getting that much out of the book I was reading. I think my problem with a lot of feminist scholarship these days (aside from anger at the subjects, which I think results in part from the conflation of patriarchy and misogyny) is the tendency to oversimplify on the specifics. It kind of reminds me of all the things I hated about reading English poetry in high school – just as not everything has to be metaphorical of death, so not everything has to be either masculine or feminine. It could be completely gender-neutral, or indirectly gendered (as I would argue the sword is – ultimately symbolic of violence, then becoming masculine because it’s used by men). I would still be a little leary of taking the sword as generic phallic symbol; lots of characters die by the sword, and most of them are not reasserting masculine dominance (Ajax, for instance, sees in his sword the permanence of enmity). I suppose it’s more legitimate here, because of the environment. Though I’m still not sure what to make of the idea that Deianeira’s suicide is simultaneously masculine and feminine, active and passive, etc.

I personally have a tough time getting too worked up over even the worst ancient misogyny (I think some of it is pretty funny, actually). Juvenal just gets tedious, but six hundred lines of ranting about anything could be tedious. My other problem is that I don’t naturally think in these terms at all. I have no difficulty sympathizing with a male character or enjoying a story from which women are completely absent (the Philoctetes, for example); it takes a conscious effort on my part even to notice the difference. The upshot is that I’m always sceptical about such readings and may fail to appreciate the valid ones if the argument is poorly constructed (as is all too often the case).

And just as a fun linguistic point: φαλλος was the clinical term, πεος the vulgar.

Re: Wow

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

Oh, for sure.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

I have no difficulty sympathizing with a male character or enjoying a story from which women are completely absent (the Philoctetes, for example); it takes a conscious effort on my part even to notice the difference.

Yes. It certainly takes me a conscious effort even now to ask, "hey, why are there no/few women in this?" about any given work, and I tend to really only get chuffed about it for more recent works. As you say, ancient Greece is gone (which isn't to claim that I'm incapable of getting chuffed about such things, though, particularly historical phenomena). And I do think the fact that it's so easy to see those sorts of works as "normal" isn't coincidental vis-a-vis our society.

Your interpretation makes better sense of whatever latent sexuality there may be in that play;

I just finished a book about transvestism that drew heavily on those sort of very Freudian theories about (psycho)sexuality. In some ways they are a handy critical tool and in others they are more trouble than they're worth (dare I say, too blunt an instrument?).

Yeah, just as with any other kind of scholarship, there are some brilliant and some terrible feminist books, and a lot in between.

[olewyvern.livejournal.com]

And I do think the fact that it's so easy to see those sorts of works as "normal" isn't coincidental vis-a-vis our society.

I'm not sure I agree completely. It's not so much that the Philoctetes is "normal" as that it's not abnormal. Some stories are about men, some are about women, both types can be equally good (whatever we mean by "good"), and I don't think either type restricts the other (and of course, to turn back to the Greek model, it's interesting to note just how many female figures there are in Attic tragedy, givent that that is a patriarchal society). Generally speaking, I probably wouldn't notice if a story is dominated by female characters, either. It seems to me that, as long as it goes both ways, the failure to notice such differences is desirable, an indication of normal functioning and relative lack of tension between the sexes. When I define myself, "female" barely makes it onto the register; it's a physical descriptor, but it just doesn't have much say in who or what I am.


(dare I say, too blunt an instrument?).

Heh.


Yeah, just as with any other kind of scholarship, there are some brilliant and some terrible feminist books, and a lot in between.

True, that; which just shows I need to read around some more.

[arctangent.livejournal.com]

Wandering drive-by commenter to say two things:

1) In my experienced "chuffed" is a way to say "pleased", not a synonym for "pissed".

2) In my long career of lurking at John C. Wright's LJ and silently expressing growing horror at the personality and opinions of the author whose Golden Age trilogy I had so much enjoyed, I still had never seen anything so strange or petty as a published author randomly stumbling upon a random stranger's LJ-review of his book (because he obsessively Googles all mentions of his own work? or what?) and then posting a 10-page-long rebuttal on his own LJ for his own echo chamber (he screens comments) to back him up with.

I clicked here just to make sure this wasn't an LJ hosting an actual published magazine with actual published reviews or something. It's not that Wright isn't allowed to pick on random fans on the Internet in order to boost his ego or hammer in the same points he never gets tired of hammering to his echo chamber, it just shoves my general opinion of the man down several more notches.

This isn't the first time he's done it, though, so don't feel like you're alone here. I've never seen a published author apparently have so much free time as to devote entire massive posts to his ongoing attempts to prove to one of his sycophantic commenter base that no, we cannot agree to disagree about gay marriage if we want to save society from going to the dogs.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

Hello, drive-by commenter!

I'd gotten the impression that "chuffed" was a synonym for "worked up," and that it could be taken either way, but I admit I've only rarely encountered it.

Though I haven't asked, and won't, I'm working on the assumption that the editor of the book in question, time_shark, mentioned my comments to Wright, since I'd gotten a review copy of Clockwork Phoenix 2 from said editor, and linked him to my reviews of both books. So I don't think that Wright obsessively googles himself, at least not currently. ;-) ETA: I just saw that time_shark linked to my reviews of both books on a recent LJ post; that's almost certainly how Wright found my comments.

How people spend their time is of course their own decision, but Wright's apparent leisure both to write and to blog really leads me to doubt that "us working Joes" reference in the excerpt above, though I decided not to mention that in the actual post. I admit that my desire to read Wright's blog or books further is essentially nil, so thanks for letting me know that he didn't set some sort of precedent in my case. I never would have known it happened but for another walk-in commenter, even.