Foxglove
07-21-2012, 08:40 AM
Hi, Ladies and Gents!
Veronica has just started a thread
http://www.crossdressers.com/forums/showthread.php?177949-Conformity
which you might want to look at it. She’s asking some very good questions that are worthy of consideration, I think. This thread came at an appropriate time for me because her ideas are related to certain things that I’ve been thinking about lately.
I’ve been thinking about “society” and the various benefits it affords and the problems it might occasion. One problem that I see with society is one that some people might find surprising: in a sense, it doesn’t exist. There’s no such thing as “society”.
I look at this way. There are certain words we commonly use that are in a sense meaningless. One of them would be “evil”. What exactly do we mean by the word? It depends, because it can mean different things to different people. Christianity, e.g., has personified the concept, turning into it into a devil that leads us astray from the one and only path to salvation.
I would say this: there’s no such thing as “Evil”. What I mean is that there is no hard and fast object in this world that you can lay your hand on and say, “This is Evil”. I might define “Evil” as the sum of evil people and evil deeds. “Evil” is then an abstract concept, a linguistic shortcut that’s handy because it’s easier to say “Evil” than “the sum of evil people and evil deeds.”
But there is a danger in adopting these linguistic shortcuts. E.g., when the leader of a country declares, “This is a struggle between Good and Evil” by way of justifying a war, it can lead people to do all sorts of bad things they wouldn’t do otherwise precisely because they believe they’re combating Evil. After all, war is a dirty thing, and sometimes you have to do dirty things to achieve a higher goal. The end justifies the means. Except that by committing a string of evil deeds, they might not see that they themselves have set off on the road to becoming evil themselves.
Who knows? The guys who ran the Inquisition no doubt thought of themselves as the good guys. As a means of combating “Evil”, they apparently felt perfectly justified in committing all sorts of atrocities that presumably were pleasing in the eyes of a Loving Heavenly Father.
I think this word “society” is similar. There’s no hard and fast object in this world that you can lay your hand on and say, “This is society.” “Society” is an abstract concept, a linguistic shortcut. Maybe we can define it as “the sum of people who live in a given place and their values, beliefs and way of life.”
Just as Christianity has personified “Evil”, I think a lot of people have personified “society”, as if it were some dour, amorphous entity constantly looming over us, watching us, pressuring us, controlling us. “Society” is a word I rarely use myself. I tend to say “people”, and it does make a difference which word you use.
We’re constantly saying, e.g., “Society pressures people into conforming,” without realizing that we might be expressing a tautology. When we consider what we really mean by “society”, we’ll realize that what we’re saying is, “People pressure people into conforming,” or perhaps, “The citizen body pressures the citizen body into conforming.” And now the proposition becomes a bit problematical.
It’s quite possible of course for all the people to pressure each other or for some people to pressure other people, but by using the word “people” instead of “society”, we require ourselves to think more carefully about what we’re saying.
A situation can be like this: a number of years ago (the situation might be somewhat better now) you’d hear Dubliners complaining that they’d like to do without a car because rush-hour traffic in Dublin was as bad as it is in any major city. Yet they were unable to do so because public transport in the city was so poor.
Now virtually everyone in the Western world these days owns a car (I’m one of the rare individuals who don’t). But do people buy cars because they’re pressured into buying them or because they like to have them? By and large, it’s because people love cars. Nobody has to pressure them into buying them.
Except for a small minority of Dubliners. Since the vast majority have made a purely voluntary decision to buy a car, it creates circumstances (a neglected public transport system) whereby the minority is forced to conform.
And this may be the situation for us transpeople. Some transpeople believe that there would be more CDers if society didn’t pressure people into conforming as regards the matter of dress. But “society” is just people, not some entity standing over us and watching us. So the question is, Do the vast majority dress the way they do because they feel pressure from others, or do they dress the way they do because that’s how they want to dress? Are they simply doing what feels natural to them? I think we transpeople may be in one of those situations where because of a voluntary decision on the part of a majority, we the minority feel pressure to conform.
I think in other ways, it’s not helpful to think in terms of “society”. I’m still carrying on the eternal debate within myself: can I possibly get out in this little town I live in? It’s not helpful to me to ask, “What will society think?” Rather, I need to think, “What about Ms. So-and-So in the library? How will she react? And what about So-and-so in the hardware shop? How will he react? And what about the people who own the bargain shop? How will they react?”
That is, I’m going to be dealing with flesh-and-blood individuals, not some faceless “society”. By talking about “society” we do in a sense dehumanize the people we’re dealing with. I believe in certain instances it is handy to think in terms of “society”, but I think it’s necessary to always bear in mind what we’re really talking about--and that's people.
Best wishes, Annabelle
Veronica has just started a thread
http://www.crossdressers.com/forums/showthread.php?177949-Conformity
which you might want to look at it. She’s asking some very good questions that are worthy of consideration, I think. This thread came at an appropriate time for me because her ideas are related to certain things that I’ve been thinking about lately.
I’ve been thinking about “society” and the various benefits it affords and the problems it might occasion. One problem that I see with society is one that some people might find surprising: in a sense, it doesn’t exist. There’s no such thing as “society”.
I look at this way. There are certain words we commonly use that are in a sense meaningless. One of them would be “evil”. What exactly do we mean by the word? It depends, because it can mean different things to different people. Christianity, e.g., has personified the concept, turning into it into a devil that leads us astray from the one and only path to salvation.
I would say this: there’s no such thing as “Evil”. What I mean is that there is no hard and fast object in this world that you can lay your hand on and say, “This is Evil”. I might define “Evil” as the sum of evil people and evil deeds. “Evil” is then an abstract concept, a linguistic shortcut that’s handy because it’s easier to say “Evil” than “the sum of evil people and evil deeds.”
But there is a danger in adopting these linguistic shortcuts. E.g., when the leader of a country declares, “This is a struggle between Good and Evil” by way of justifying a war, it can lead people to do all sorts of bad things they wouldn’t do otherwise precisely because they believe they’re combating Evil. After all, war is a dirty thing, and sometimes you have to do dirty things to achieve a higher goal. The end justifies the means. Except that by committing a string of evil deeds, they might not see that they themselves have set off on the road to becoming evil themselves.
Who knows? The guys who ran the Inquisition no doubt thought of themselves as the good guys. As a means of combating “Evil”, they apparently felt perfectly justified in committing all sorts of atrocities that presumably were pleasing in the eyes of a Loving Heavenly Father.
I think this word “society” is similar. There’s no hard and fast object in this world that you can lay your hand on and say, “This is society.” “Society” is an abstract concept, a linguistic shortcut. Maybe we can define it as “the sum of people who live in a given place and their values, beliefs and way of life.”
Just as Christianity has personified “Evil”, I think a lot of people have personified “society”, as if it were some dour, amorphous entity constantly looming over us, watching us, pressuring us, controlling us. “Society” is a word I rarely use myself. I tend to say “people”, and it does make a difference which word you use.
We’re constantly saying, e.g., “Society pressures people into conforming,” without realizing that we might be expressing a tautology. When we consider what we really mean by “society”, we’ll realize that what we’re saying is, “People pressure people into conforming,” or perhaps, “The citizen body pressures the citizen body into conforming.” And now the proposition becomes a bit problematical.
It’s quite possible of course for all the people to pressure each other or for some people to pressure other people, but by using the word “people” instead of “society”, we require ourselves to think more carefully about what we’re saying.
A situation can be like this: a number of years ago (the situation might be somewhat better now) you’d hear Dubliners complaining that they’d like to do without a car because rush-hour traffic in Dublin was as bad as it is in any major city. Yet they were unable to do so because public transport in the city was so poor.
Now virtually everyone in the Western world these days owns a car (I’m one of the rare individuals who don’t). But do people buy cars because they’re pressured into buying them or because they like to have them? By and large, it’s because people love cars. Nobody has to pressure them into buying them.
Except for a small minority of Dubliners. Since the vast majority have made a purely voluntary decision to buy a car, it creates circumstances (a neglected public transport system) whereby the minority is forced to conform.
And this may be the situation for us transpeople. Some transpeople believe that there would be more CDers if society didn’t pressure people into conforming as regards the matter of dress. But “society” is just people, not some entity standing over us and watching us. So the question is, Do the vast majority dress the way they do because they feel pressure from others, or do they dress the way they do because that’s how they want to dress? Are they simply doing what feels natural to them? I think we transpeople may be in one of those situations where because of a voluntary decision on the part of a majority, we the minority feel pressure to conform.
I think in other ways, it’s not helpful to think in terms of “society”. I’m still carrying on the eternal debate within myself: can I possibly get out in this little town I live in? It’s not helpful to me to ask, “What will society think?” Rather, I need to think, “What about Ms. So-and-So in the library? How will she react? And what about So-and-so in the hardware shop? How will he react? And what about the people who own the bargain shop? How will they react?”
That is, I’m going to be dealing with flesh-and-blood individuals, not some faceless “society”. By talking about “society” we do in a sense dehumanize the people we’re dealing with. I believe in certain instances it is handy to think in terms of “society”, but I think it’s necessary to always bear in mind what we’re really talking about--and that's people.
Best wishes, Annabelle