The Morals of the Wretched (Interlude: The Walk of Life)

I didnt actually expect to create this entry, but neither did I expect to create the last interlude to my entry on (see causality of this article) et al. But just like in that instance, 'something came up', and it just happened to fit with the theme (with a little stretching involved).

In January, a Toronto police representative made an ill-advised comment that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized”. And so the SlutWalk was born to 'take back the word slut' and bring the public's attention to the manner in which people (predominantly women) are marginalized, bullied, and generally treated with contempt when their freedom of expression goes against the often dominant voice that advocates sexual conservatism, and the dangerous precedent that this stereotyped objectification sets. Marches have been held in many cities throughout North America, and over the next few months, these demonstrations are being planned in Amsterdam, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

The phenomenon was originally brought to my attention by a feminist activist friend of mine, and at the time I didn't really think much of it other than 'huh... interesting concept', but on Sunday there was a BBC article that gave it a good deal of publicity, and the following day, a second BBC article announced details of the SlutWalk planned in London for June 4, rightly saying: "Organisers say the aim is to highlight a culture in which the victim, rather than rapist or abuser, is blamed. So what started as an 'interesting concept' was suddenly becoming a global phenomenon.

So the request, as put to me was "I would like to see an entry on people's delusion that they can provide any help for a cause by participating in a 'walk'". Now, I'm not a psychologist, nor do I have the ability to read minds, so I cannot know for sure how close my assessment will come to the reality of the situation, and clearly different people have different reasons for participating in public demonstrations, but I'll give it a go, but before I do, let me motivate the topic a bit by mentioning a few anecdotes about the situation in South Africa.

First and foremost is the HIV/AIDS problem. Sub-Saharan Africa, especially Southern Africa, has probably the highest proportion of HIV positive cases in the world, and the prevalence of rape, which, up until very recently when it was updated, was justified by a "Sexual Offences Act [that] dates back to 1957: the days of apartheid when the country's rulers were not only all white, but also all male." It doesn't help that the country's president is a polygamist with five wives, two fiancees, and twenty children, and had gone through an infamous rape trial when he had sex with an HIV positive woman (and later revealed he had 'showered to avoid HIV'). Indeed, under the previous government, president Thabo Mbeki pretended there was no HIV problem, and dismissed anti-retroviral treatment as 'toxic and dangerous'. Things are getting better, with groups especially from the townships like Khayelitsha coming together and boldly wearing shirts describing themselves as HIV positive, and billboards with celebrities like Ryan Giggs saying things like 'Be a man. Know your status." with regard to HIV.

Another, more personal story, occurred when I was sitting in the pub in a discussion with some friends of mine. For some reason we got into the topic of rape, and the gal at the table, who I didn't know, volunteered that there was an instance when she had been at a party and would have been raped but for a friend of hers happening to walk in 'just in the nick of time'. The gentleman to my left then volunteered that he 'had heard' that most rape instances 'are actually when women have second thoughts after the fact'. I told him flat out that this simply wasn't true, that if it is truly consensual, then there shouldnt be any 'second thoughts' and if there is any doubt there shouldnt be any sex. I told him about the historical accounts of women being intimidated and marginalized to the point where they rarely report rape cases, where too often the burden of proof is on them to prove that it wasn't consensual and that it often simply comes down to her word against his and she usually ends up losing out. A story was brought to my attention by friends of mine in Ghana about a purported 'thief' in a student housing block who was eventually mass-raped by a group of students. I have followed people's reactions (i.e. friends of friends in Ghana) on the story, and most of them (who are males) tend to offer little sympathy, justifying it by saying 'she got what she deserved'.

So what does this tell us? It tells us that there is a problem. As I alluded to in my gender bender story, the history of patriarchy means that gender equality is still not taken very seriously by many, even in 'developed' countries (and this includes the current Prime Minister of Canada). And this apparent 'ignorance' seems to grow in proportion to conservatism, especially religious conservatism. So what can be done about it? Well it appears that one may run into difficulties and general inaction if one petitions one's government representative to take it up as an issue, so there must be another way (though this is usually how it is).

I will start by saying that such a 'walk' is a form of 'direct democracy', a "form of governance in which people collectively make decisions for themselves, rather than having their political affairs decided by representatives." The truth is that if democracy was all about voting every couple of years, any majority government could do whatever they pleased (we will see if that is the case in Canada), when, in fact, mass protests are the means for people to tell their representatives in no uncertain terms that they are not doing a very good job if they refuse to deal with issues that are important to those that they purport to represent. Moreover, it sends a message to the general public that this is, indeed, an important issue that cannot be absorbed or swept under the carpet. Instead of dropping hints here and there, there is an active and very real component that brings people together in protest, and also brings people who may never have thought about such an issue to get the gears in their mind turning, and (hopefully) they may begin to ask themselves what they really think about the issue and why. Even if they do not agree, critical engagement and dissenting voices are always important democratically to figure out the best way forward.

And protests are important to keep governments in check. Oftentimes it turns out that violent protests, though riskier, are often much more effective (my Ghanaian friend's treatise on student activism gave me an intimate look into this world), but one must remember that non-violent protests are a show of obstinate defiance and (assuming the Declaration of Human Rights is upheld) insulates protesters from being victims of violence themselves. This is also what eventually allowed Gandhi to free India from British colonial rule.

So I ask who is responsible enough to stand up and fight for the rights and morals of the wretched, in this case, victims who have to carry the burden of the shame of objectification, marginalization, manipulation, and egregious invasions of their personal privacy?

Lest we forget also that protests are a means by which like-minded people come together for a cause, so it also presents the opportunity for a very interesting and often very rewarding social experience for everybody.

Hmmm... I had better get that 'SlutWalk Cape Town' ball rolling...

Gender Bender (or Behind Closed Doors)

The beginning of the month often sees rooms, houses, properties, etc. change hands. And in the house that I am staying in, this followed accordingly. The most obvious (if you had read about my recent scenario involving death) new arrival would be the one filling up Danny's room, since given that it has a personal bathroom and kitchenette, it would provide the greatest amount of extra income to the landlady. Another individual arrived to fill another room and a third room was also on offer that would have prompted a re-shuffle (in terms of various people switching rooms), but for the 'unbelievability of the unknown'.

I don't know the whole story, but the individual who stayed in this room had done so for quite a long time (I've been told for possibly up to four years). He had his share of problems, being a drug addict, and having some very strange behavioural issues in terms of possible 'kleptomania', and there was some animosity towards him from one of the other individuals who had also been there long term. But the landlady told me that she didnt have a problem with him staying because on the one hand his personal issues weren't her business and on the other hand his mother always promptly transferred the full amount of the rent into the proper bank account at the beginning of every month. He was scheduled to arrive last Thursday or Friday to clear out his stuff, but it ended up being that he didnt actually arrive until late on Saturday. I was there at the time sharing a toke with Raymond (Rasta), and I had tried to convince him that we should check out what's happening at the pub, but he kept motioning to me that he was worried about leaving this guy at the house by himself should he decide to take something with him on the way out. But at the end of it all he relented and we left.

The next morning, I woke up to the sound of 'Holy shit! This is really not good!' and thought that perhaps we had made a mistake by leaving him alone and he had made off with something. But when I eventually dragged myself out of bed, one of my other roommates came up to me and said 'Check out the room! It's like Al-Qaeda has been staying there and let a bomb go off!' I thought it couldn't be that bad, since I'm usually fairly untidy when it comes to leaving clothes and stuff strewn about my floor and a mess of papers and books near and in my bed because of the myriad of projects that always seem to pull me this way and that, so I went to check on it and... wow.

There was an almost indescribable mess, with a giant mess of things strewn everywhere in and around the room. A giant pile of wood and plastic and various broken things in one corner, the bed in a disgusting state and covered with garbage, etc. There were also to ropes tied across the middle of the room, I imagine to hang his washing on. And it was a very small room. But that wasn't the most interesting thing.

It always interesting to know what goes on behind the closed doors of people who are very secretive, especially those who have various substance problems. For the first month I had stayed at the house, he seemed a fairly regular guy, though the only sight I ever had of his room was him squeezing the door open as little as possible, squeezing through it, and then when leaving, he would always have a hockey bag containing who knows what (two heads in a duffel bag, for all I knew), but he spent most of the second month apparently staying out with his mom near Bellville to be closer to work, so I hadnt seen him much lately. While I had been there, the landlady had always talked about a lot of things that had gone missing: dishes, a receipt booklet, various odds and ends here and there, but she was always adamant that even though she contained an extra key, she couldnt by law go in to check his room (another thing she told me was that because of recent legislation she couldnt by law kick non-paying tenants out without a long legal procedure, so, as with the things missing, she took the people who had failed to pay over the month of April in stride). So now we were all going to get a peek into this individual's weird little world.

Unsurprisingly, during the cleanup that followed over the coming days, most of the missing dishes were found (and put through a very rigorous washing process), the receipt book had been found, and many other missing things had shown up in the room of an apparent kleptomaniac. But now, surveying the room, the first thing that occurred to me was the overfull ashtray next to the bed. This in itself might not be particularly interesting but for the fact that many of those cigarettes were stained with lipstick. Then my eyes went to the mess on the floor where there sat numerous bottles of makeup products, colognes, perfumes, and who knows what else. You saw condom packages, tampon packages, women's underwear. The landlady had always had a rule 'no sleepovers, male or female' (though this rule was only very loosely adhered to by most of the tenants). So what had been going on there? How often had women been going in and out? How long of the four years had all this stuff been fossilized there?

Well, the speculative answer to a lot of these questions has to do with the the fact that it had already been revealed to me by the landlady that there was an instance when she had surprised him one day by catching him in a dress or some such (perhaps when he had to take a quick bathroom break) and he had immediately taken to his heels to seek the privacy of his room. So it seemed that, to at least some extent, the 'women' who had been visiting him were his effeminate alter egos. Though this could not (and still doesn't) explain what a male who likes to get regularly in touch with his feminine side, and in a rather pro-active way, requires condoms and female hygiene products for. Either there had been women there at various times (though it would be odd for him to keep 'hygiene products' around for her unless she had been there constantly, and no such individual had ever been seen to have entered or exited his room), or he had REALLY allowed his imagination to run wild.


The notion of gender has very interesting ontological connotations. Just like we might say that humans are such because of certain physiological or genotypical traits, so one might make the same assessment of gender. You are male if you have certain hormones, a Y-chromosome, certain anatomical essentials, etc. Similarly, you are female if you have certain hormones, two X chromosomes (and therefore polar bodies), certain anatomical essentials, etc. Then there are those that are often lumped into 'gender neutral' groups, such as those with Klinefelter's syndrome, those that have under-developed sex organs of both genders, various hormonal 'imbalances', etc. But just as we might say that to define a human being as 'a bag of bones' or 'a bag of DNA' is not particularly useful, so it might be said of gender. How are males and/or females 'normally' 'supposed to' or 'not supposed to' conduct themselves?

In my MA philosophy thesis, I wrote about how political notions of 'human freedom' are often defined by looking at the ontological definitions of 'humanness' as depicted by the theorist in question. What, aside from physiologically or genealogically speaking defines people as being human? Is it based on 'thinking'? 'Consciousness'? 'Productive capilities'? 'Hierarchical structure'? 'Socio-political structure'? Different answers imply different notions of political notions of freedom (so I have argued anyway).

But I believe a similar approach could be used to see what is behind gender stereotypes. If we talk about humanity in terms of its procreative needs, it leads to notions of 'heterosexuality', 'homosexuality', and 'bisexuality'. If we talk about humans in terms of 'thinking' or 'consciousness', which is the mark of the 'classic' and 'early modern philosophy', it turns into the perpetuation of stereotypes of women as intellectual socialites due to the egregious declarations that the patriarchy made about the general 'inability' of women to critical engage with and critically assess epistemic and intellectual pursuits. Note how women were basically treated during those times, and note that the hierarchical implications of these assessments are then sneaked in the back door to imply that women are fundamentally 'lower' because of their inability to engage with 'higher' forms of learning, as well as their biological 'closeness' to the children that they carry with them through the nine-month gestation period implying that their role is to 'create and maintain the family'.

But then a reassessment started to take place during the Romantic period when women started to show their intellectual worth through their ability to write many very important and very deeply insightful and philosophically relevant novels. The notion of the intellectual inferiority of women then took on a different tact that it was restricted to 'female' perceptions of the world, and was explained by the romanticization of women as storytellers and artists, etc. Eliot summarized it in 'The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock' by repeatedly referring to 'the women who come and go talking of Michelangelo'. But still they were largely excluded from 'real' male pursuits like philosophy and the sciences. And still the bias became about a woman's productive capabilities: stereotyped as being more 'delicate' (and lacking the required levels of testosterone, apparently), they were restricted to 'light labour' if they were to be loosed from their traditional banishment to household labour in terms of 'the woman's place in the kitchen', etc.

When Marx arrived on the scene, and reinvented human ontology as being based on production in the physical realm rather than thinking in the intellectual realm. He spoke of the importance of female labour and, largely, the end of gender stereotypes with respect to production: we are now a species-being and we should further our species-capabilities through whatever means possible and quit squabbling about individual roles. And it has been this ontological modernization, in my opinion, that has been at the heart of gender modernization; I do not think that it is any secret that women who wish to be 'very' progressive in terms of gender must also be ontologically progressive, and, transitively, politically progressive, in terms of 'leaning more to the left', in some way or another (for example, my thesis speaks of Hannah Arendt's philosophy as being 'progressive' in this way, even though she always largely pooh-poohed socialism).

And so I believe we can take this lesson from history and ontology to define human beings first as human beings before we say that, being this or that gender, they must act in this or that manner. If this individual is curious about what it might be to live as a woman, then I believe he should be encouraged to do so, just as I believe John Howard Griffin made a bold and important move to live as a black.

And it just underlines what is the central tenet of my social-political theory, which has been derived from my numerous travels and engagements in countries around the world and could be at the heart of so much socio-political progress in terms of race, gender, and economic class, if only it could be universally adapted:

We must look at, see, and accept each other as human beings before we allow notions of ethnicity, gender, and other visual cues to creep in and corrupt our judgments.

Exegesis in the Bedroom

As outlandish and immoral as it may seem, Sade's 'approach' is not only shocking in terms of its details, it is also very important in terms of questioning some very fundamental moral values.

Having read du Plessix's Gray's At Home With the Marquis de Sade, it is known that the descriptions in his works are no mere fantasy, but, in some sense, accurately depict Sade's own 'approach' to life. Thus, works like Philosophy in the Bedroom may be seen as a sort of attempted justification and a challenge to the rest of the world, asking "why should the way I (choose to) live my life (i.e. with libertinism and debauchery aplenty) be deemed immoral and/or criminal?"

This is indeed a very good question, and one, in my opinion that shakes us to the very core. It is not difficult to come up with some fairly valid reasons why it should be deemed immoral for one to go out on rampages and commit mass murder, simply because your happiness is clearly at the expense of others, and it is a great expense; often another's life is the price one pays for the pleasures of such a 'homicidal maniac'.

But with morality 'in the bedroom', where (ideally) each is happy because of the pleasure that they are experiencing, why should such things be deemed 'sordid' and 'immoral'? After all, "it is only by sacrificing everything to the senses' pleasure that this individual, who never asked to be cast into this universe of woe, that this poor creature who goes under the name of Man, may be able to sow a smattering of roses atop the thorny path of life."

It is easy to come up with fairly substantial arguments that justify this stance towards debauchery when one considers it under the watchful eye of religion. In Christianity and many other religions that preach asceticism, such as many Eastern religions (Buddhism, Hinduishm, etc), the 'pleasures of the flesh' are quite clearly deemed 'sinful' since they fly in the face of the manner of self-denial and self-mortification that such religions dictate. But can one say that this treatment of debauchery as 'sordid' and 'immoral' can be ENTIRELY traced back to religion or, at the very least, some other authoritarian (e.g. monarchical or autocratic) creed?

Issues of health aside, there are issues of power and control that arise. A certain idea of 'freedom' can become very much under threat if the event is not completely 'egalitarian'. This is especially a concern when considered with regard to the largely patriarchal history of humanity, and indeed the simple biological fact that men are able to 'spread their seed' at will, while women are left to 'carry the can' for nine months at a time seems to tip the balance in favour of some sort of inequality. Of course, this does not apply to sexual practices where pregnancy cannot result for whatever reason, and these are most often treated as the most heinous of all. And although 'pleasure' might seem to be a substitute for happiness, issues of dignity and self-worth also come into play with regard to such an issue, so psychology also plays a major role: by being objectified, it becomes easier for one to objectify oneself, and this is, in some sense, a form of dehumanization. At the same time, though, this becomes a sort of chicken-egg problem: did self-worth and dignity arise because of asceticism and morality, or is it the other way around? In other words, is such sexual objectification of oneself or others deemed a form of dehumanization simply because it is, in most cases, not a socially acceptable human practice? E.g., education, which is seen as primary for the human race would never be seen as a form of dehumanization, even though it often seems to be becoming more and more the case that students are treated like cattle on an assembly line to cater to capitalistic needs/desires. This 'educational dehumanization' is especially a valid consideration with regard to some of the (supposedly) despotic educational set-ups they sometimes (supposedly) maintain in Eastern Europe and the Far East, though one can argue that 'rehumanization' occurs when the individual re-enters the greater world being able to reap education's benefits, whilst with debaucherous practices, the resulting advantage is not immediately clear.

Whatever the 'reasons', it is an important issue to consider. If we leave aside divine judgment, then who is to judge such an act but ourselves? And if this is so, why does it make us uncomfortable, especially if (if the heavy traffic on pornography sites is to be taken for an accurate survey of the interests of the general population), we are able to so easily fantasize about it? Is it due to social conditioning? Psychology? Conscience? Biology?

Or is it simply down to consequentialism, that one worries about opening a proverbial can of worms, since the penalties for debauchery are numerous (even outside social stigmata like criminal punishment and/or religious judgment), including injury, disease, being egregiously harmed by a jealous lover, etc: i.e., if one wishes to lead such a life, must they not only be a moral nihilist, but also an existential nihilist? And is this question based on the fact that such practices would now surely exist in the minority with respect to the general population (and therefore be treated with the utmost scrutiny, rather than accepted as justified), and not for any other reason?

Philosophy in the Bedroom

To Libertines:
Voluptuaries of all ages, of every sex, it is to you only that I offer this work; nourish yourselves upon its principles: they favour your passions, and these passions, whereof coldly insipid moralists put you in fear, are naught but the means Nature employs to bring man to the ends she prescribes to him; harken only to these delicious promptings, for no voice save that of the passions can conduct you to happiness.
Lewd women, let the voluptuous Saint-Ange be your model; after her example, be heedless of all that contradicts pleasure's divine laws, by which all her life she was enchanted.
You young maidens, too long constrained by a fanciful Virtue's absurd and dangerous bonds and by those of a disgusting religion, imitate the fiery Eugénie; be as quick as she to destroy, to spurn all those ridiculous precepts inculcated in you by imbecile parents.
And you, amiable debauchees, you who since youth have known no limits but those of your desires and who have been governed by your caprices alone, study the cynical Dolmancé, proceed like him and go as far as he if you too would travel the length of those flowered ways your lechery prepares for you; in Dolmancé's academy be at last convinced it is only by exploring and enlarging the sphere of tastes and whims, it is only by sacrificing everything to the senses' pleasure that this individual, who never asked to be cast into this universe of woe, that this poor creature who goes under the name of Man, may be able to sow a smattering of roses atop the thorny path of life.

--The Marquis de Sade

"The supreme value of [Sade's] testimony lies in its ability to disturb us. It forces us to reexamine thoroughly the basic problem which haunts our age in different forms: the true relation between man and man."

--Simone de Beauvoir

Philosophy IS sexy (or it simply attracts the insane)

There have been numerous examples in history of dangerous liaisons occurring within the greater philosophy community. A primary example would be what went on between Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger when she was a student of his. Heidegger had controversially backed National Socialism (the Nazi movement), once describing it after its disintegration as 'a grand social experiment gone horribly wrong'. Arendt, on the other hand, was a German Jew, so the liaison was dangerous indeed, culminating in the need for Heidegger to send Arendt to do her PhD under Karl Jaspers. I dont know all the details, but from what I know, Arendt's relationship to Heidegger blew very hot and cold and her philosophy during her time with Heidegger (after which she was heavily influenced by Jaspers and Aristotle to conceive of the notion of 'political action' and take a strong stand against the so-called 'totalitarian' regimes of the day) at times reflects Heidegger's own phenomenological musings, and at times challenges them directly. Moreover, her acceptance of not only Heidegger's themes and ideas but their relationship in general more than likely became more strained and possibly estranged by Jaspers' estrangement from Heidegger over Heidegger's support of National Socialism.

The most famous example would probably be one of the real 'Don Juans' of modern philosophy: Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre was not an overly attractive individual physically (the fact that he suffered from strabismus would have put a damper on this) but his numerous liaisons—not only the 'main' polyamorous one with de Beauvoir, but with numerous students of his, some many decades younger—is legendary. The book 'Hearts and minds: The common journey of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre' by Axel Madsen is a beautifully written and very complex book about what can only be described as 'existential love'. I recall a story that was put to me by the boyfriend (now husband) of a friend of mine who studied philosophy under Robert Birch. Birch was a student of Gadamer and, as I was told, once went to Paris and rented a flat along a road that was apparently frequented by Sartre at the time (Sartre died in 1980). So the story goes (if I remember correctly) there was no sign of Sartre until the last day when Birch happened to look out the window and see Sartre slowly walking by on the arm of a very young woman. At that moment, a taxi pulled up along side him and Simone de Beauvoir got out and began accosting and (apparently) attacking him with her purse. Perhaps an urban myth, but sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

The final story is one of the strangest in the history of philosophy. It involves a fairly little-known philosopher by the name of Moritz Schlick. Schlick was in charge of putting together and chairing the 'Vienna Circle', which was a group of logical positivist philosophers who based their approach to philosophy on 'Wittgenstein I' and the Tractatus (see the entry 'Luki'). It included such individuals as Carnap, Neurath, Gödel, and others. But if Schlick was not so well-known, what sets him apart?

The wikipedia article on Schlick states:
"With the rise of the Nazis in Germany and Austria, many of the Vienna Circle's members left for America and the United Kingdom. Schlick, however, stayed on at the University of Vienna. When visited by Herbert Feigl in 1935, he expressed dismay at events in Germany. On June 22, 1936, Schlick was ascending the steps of the University for a class when he was confronted by a former student, Johann Nelböck, who drew a pistol and shot him in the chest. Nelbock claimed that Schlick's philosophy had "interfered with his moral restraint" - by which he probably meant that under the encouragement of Schlick's philosophy he had indulged himself homosexually, and in a paranoid displacement blamed Schlick for his "defilement". Schlick died very soon afterward. The student was tried and sentenced, but he became a cause célèbre for the growing anti-Jewish sentiments in the city. (That Schlick was not Jewish tended to be overlooked.) Nelböck was paroled after serving 2 years of a 10 year sentence & shortly afterward became a member of the Austrian Nazi Party after the Anschluss."

However, in the book 'Wittgenstein's Poker', other theories have been put forward for Nelbock's actions. One such theory is based on the fact that apparently Nelbock regularly attended Schlick's lectures, often sitting alone at the back of the room. It is said that he became incredibly infatuated with one of Schlick's female students, who often sat in the front row of Schlick's lectures. The theory goes that Nelbock believed that there was something going on between Schlick and this woman and the assassination was the result of jealous rage in a deranged individual.

That explanation is so much more interesting.