Author Archives: Majken Hirche

Do fourth wave sex acceptance feminists have a point?

During the last 10 to 12 years, scholars, theorists, and feminist activists have started talking about a fourth wave feminism. However, there is not much agreement on what the content of this forth wave is or whether it has any new ideas to offer that have not already been encompassed by previous versions of feminism.

It is important to note that this critical assessment of fourth wave of feminism is not something we have cooked up, nor some anti-feminist caricature, but in fact an assessment shared by even feminists themselves. They also disagree on whether the fourth wave should be considered a thing. And as stated, they also hold contradictory views of what the fourth wave is even about, insofar as it exists.

In this video we’re going to focus on a recent statements made by self-identified fourth wave sex acceptance feminists. Their argument is that there’s a gender imbalance in the way our culture views the sexual exploits of men and women. According to them, if a man sleeps around with tons of women, he is a stud and worthy of admiration, whereas if a woman sleeps around with tons of men, she is disparaged as slutty. One is positive and the other negative. According to the feminists, this exposes a cultural sexist double standard.

Do the feminists have a point? Let’s look at the arguments of their opponents. They have generally objected that according to evolutionary psychology, men have traditionally not been able to know whether they were the fathers of children their wives gave birth to, whereas women could always be sure that they were the mothers. According to this line of thinking, it wouldn’t be a big deal if a man slept around, since the child, carrying his genes, would be raised at someone else’s expense. But if a woman slept around, her husband would end up expending resources raising a child that wasn’t his. It would therefore make sense for traditional societies to evolve a social order which placed a greater premium on female chastity than on male chastity.

In other words, the opponents do not deny that there exists a separate set of sexual norms for each gender, but they believe this evolutionary reasoning can justify the differing moralities.

Let’s assume that the evolutionary argument is correct. Would it then justify the position of the opponents? There are reasons to be sceptical.

  • One is that technology has long since caught up with the reasons for maintaining this morality. Now that we have birth-control and DNA tests, the original reasons for upholding this morality have gone. That is not to say that the dispositions that have been handed down to us through evolution are gone. There are scientific studies showing that men are on average more prone to sexual jealousy and rage at their spouse’s promiscuity than women are. And since we know from modern behavioural genetics that every human trait is heritable to some extent, it is safe to assume that this sex difference is not just brought about by culture, but also by genetics. So yes, even if we could completely change our culture overnight, men are probably going to be more uncomfortable with their lady friends sleeping around than the other way around. However being made uncomfortable by something does not give you a right to avoid it. There are also studies showing that religious people get extremely aggravated at seeing their prophet mocked or religion insulted. But that does not give religious people a free pass from having their religion satirized.
  • Another reason is that saying “evolution made it that way,” without further elaboration, is an instance of the naturalistic fallacy, that is, the tendency equate the state of nature with moral goodness or the way things are meant to be. But as scientific studies have detailed, evolution most likely also shaped us to be uncannily likely to neglect or harm our stepchildren as opposed to our own children. Rape is considered to be a natural phenomenon by the majority of evolutionary psychologists too. In other words, to simply say that “that’s how evolution arranged for things to be,” can also be used to justify every kind of atrocity that evolution primed us with during humanity’s long and violent past.

Now interestingly, the sex acceptance fourth wave feminists don’t actually engage with the evolutionary argument – at least not as far as we have seen. They just argue as if the whole of the problem were cultural, which – as we have seen – is unlikely. But nonetheless, they do have a point that the sexual morals concerning men and women amount to a kind of double standard. Their opponents will have to do better here.

The Best Star Wars Story You Will Never See

Adam Driver, who plays Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens, has said that he has:

“… very strong opinions about Hollywood movies and how they can be a waste of resources and seem totally gratuitous and dumbed down for an audience and sacrifice story for spectacle.”

That’s not without its irony, since one popular criticism of The Force Awakens is that it was a soft reboot – a “retro movie” that didn’t attempt to further the Star Wars story, but simply rehashed familiar tropes as fan service.

The odd thing is that – in spite of what Star Wars dignitaries such as the guys from Red Letter Media say – the Star Wars universe is actually capable of supporting nuanced characters and deep philosophical stories.

Don’t believe me? You should definitely have a look at KOTOR 2 then. And just a quick warning – the following contains spoilers for that game.

KOTOR 2 is short for Knights of the Old Republic 2, an old video game from 2004. The game was consciously written in an effort to go beyond the two-dimensional, black-or-white characters so often seen in the Star Wars universe. Let me give you a few examples of the complexities of the game:

  • You play as an ex-Jedi who was exiled from the order. What evil deed did you undertake in order to be cast out, you ask? You rushed to defend innocent civilians who were being slaughtered by enemies of the republic. The Jedi council did not want to interfere in the slaughter, since they feared a greater threat was at play. But you could not stand idly by, so you defied the council. [CUT TO NEW AUDIO FILE]
  • There is also a Jedi librarian who, out of pride and love of the Jedi order, gathers Sith teachings and masters them. She rationalizes to herself that she can use the teachings of the Sith to destroy the Sith and build a new and more powerful Jedi order. [CUT TO NEW AUDIO FILE]
  • Your mentor in the game is an old and powerful force user cares neither for Jedi nor Sith, but preaches a message of radical individuality and freedom from pre-fabricated labels. She instructs others to find their own path, rather than narrowly following the code that has been handed down to them from others. She believes the truth is something one must find for oneself. [CUT TO NEW AUDIO FILE]

So who is evil and who is good? It’s hard to tell. Rather than the one-sided good vs. evil trope, the major characters have nuanced motivations that make sense from their own point of view. And that’s just the characters – the story is interesting too. But we won’t spoil too much. [CUT TO NEW AUDIO FILE]

Concerning the allegations that people only say Rey is a Mary Sue out of sexism, did you notice that all three of the aforementioned characters are female? No one ever said that they are Mary Sues, poorly-developed, or uninteresting. In fact, many Star Wars fans have said that Kreia – the old force user who mentors the main character – is their favorite Star Wars character of all time. She certainly is mine. Contrasting the one-dimensional Rey with these three-dimensional, nuanced, and multifaceted female characters, and seeing how popular the latter three are with the community, shows beyond a doubt how desperate the move of calling people who don’t like Rey sexist is. [CUT TO NEW AUDIO FILE]

So there you have it. It is possible to tell intelligent stories exploring complex psychological motivations of deep characters in the Star Wars universe. However, as the guys at Red Letter Media have said, big movies like Star Wars are essentially a business and that’s why you will never see a story with the complexity of KOTOR 2 on the big screen. Adam Driver is right that blockbuster movies like The Force Awakens are dumbed down and sacrifice story for spectacle.

We’re not faulting Driver for taking the role as Kylo Ren, though, because if a casting director turned up on our doorstep offering millions for us to participate in some dumbed-down spectacle, you’d better believe we’d sell ourselves on the spot. And many of these Hollywood celebrities also give tons of money to charity, so hey, that’s cool. However, no matter how much you twist and turn it, The Force Awakens is a stupid story. [CUT TO NEW AUDIO FILE]

Now, since some of the audience on this channel comes here for information on psychology and Jungian typology, I want to say a few words on how awesome two of the female characters in KOTOR 2 are from a psychological standpoint.

The first is Kreia, the wise old force user who despises both Jedi and Sith. She is an INTJ personality type modelled on the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. I suppose Palpatine from the first two trilogies is supposed to be INTJ too. But if you compare the two, it is evident that one shows an INTJ at their most-developed philosophical apex while the other is a cartoony, one-dimensional character, complete with cheesy laugh. [CUT TO NEW AUDIO FILE]

It’s so refreshing to see a well-rounded and philosophically nuanced INTJ. Besides Nietzsche, there aren’t actually many of them in Western culture. Many seem to relish committing one-sidedly to their own philosophical message, but Kreia and Nietzsche want you to think for yourself – they refuse to let their message be reduced to simple talking points or slogans. [CUT TO NEW AUDIO FILE]

At the end of KOTOR 2 it is revealed that Kreia despises not just the Jedi and the Sith, but the force itself because it seems to have a will that controls the destinies of people. As a radical individualist, she hates the fact that people are not in control of their own fates; not free to choose their own values and make a personal testament out of their lives.

When Nietzsche says that to redeem the past is to transform every ‘it was’ into an ‘I willed it so’ and that that alone is worthy of being called individuality, these words could easily have been spoken by Kreia. Likewise, when Nietzsche says that most people’s values are borrowed from codes that have been handed down to them, which they have not been powerful enough to supersede, that too could have been said by Kreia.

And the way Kreia hates the force while simultaneously relying on it echoes the conflict between the INTJ’s topmost functions, namely the metaphysical expansivity of Ni and the immanence-oriented reductiveness of Te, which I have described and gone into more detail about in my essays Plato’s Discoursive Defense and Determining Function Axes, Part 6, which are available to members on our website.

Another interesting character is Atris, the Jedi librarian who believes that she alone is competent enough to be the warden of Sith artefacts and to do what must be done to save the Jedi order. Probably she is supposed to be an ISTJ with a compulsive personality style. She is preoccupied with matters of order and control. But unlike the individualistic Kreia, Atris conforms to the compulsive stereotype, that is to say, she is the busybody who believes that everybody should live as she does. She is intolerant of the values of others if they do not live up to the conduct she believes is right, and she does not believe anyone else can be trusted to “keep order” and “do what is right” to save the Jedi order. [CUT TO NEW AUDIO FILE]

Another point is that compulsives often turned out as they did because they had one or more strict parents who instilled in them the impression that in order to be worthy of love, one must meet one’s responsibilities with exceptional diligence and strive to fulfil one’s obligations to the highest degree. This upbringing has typically given the compulsive deep-seated feelings of aggression, which, however, they dare not acknowledge to themselves, lest they lose their parent’s love completely. As a result, their aggression remains unacknowledged, even to themselves, as they go through life devotedly tending to duties and work. In Atris’ case, her unacknowledged aggression and anger is one reason that she falls to the dark side. Since she dares not acknowledge them, it is all the easier for them to overtake her. Another reason is that, as a compulsive who fears the collapse of the regimen she had built for herself, Atris is unable to heed one very vital element of the Jedi teaching. [CUT TO NEW AUDIO FILE]

Atris didn’t just fall to the dark side, however – she fell without being able to see it herself. In truth, this could probably happen to a compulsive of any type, but it’s also a good illustration of the perils of introverted sensation types who get too cut off from their inferior Ne. Without the perspective of intuition to step outside of the regimen and routines one has built for oneself, the introverted sensation type imbues her personal experience with greater and greater subjective meaning until anything can mean practically anything within one’s personal frame of reference, or until one believes that becoming a Sith is the best way to be a Jedi. [CUT TO NEW AUDIO FILE]

All in all, KOTOR 2 is a great game with a great story and some fantastic characters. It’s not a perfect game, however, as the developers had to rush it due to demands from the publisher. Luckily for you, though, fans have developed a Restored Content Mod, which implements many of the elements the developers were originally forced to cut from the game. So be sure to get that if you want to play it.

Finally, there is one more thing I must mention about KOTOR 2 and that is the aesthetics of the game. Many video games try to do dark settings and atmospheres, but somehow they end up overdoing it. In their quest for grit, the grit becomes its own art choice – its own brand of beauty, as it were. In KOTOR 2, the designers also opted for a bleak setting, but it all feels much more realistic and immersive. It’s gritty, but at the same time there’s a sense that the inhabitants of this universe have tried to make a home for themselves amid the bleakness by spicing up their surroundings with whatever solace and comfort they have been able to acquire. The result is a dark and sinister setting that’s much more believable than the consciously dark settings so often peddled in these kinds of games. Finally, the music is also really well done, and truly succeeds in underscoring and giving you, the player, a feel of the bleakness, grandeur and vastness of the Star Wars universe.

How to think about groups

In Sweden, urban-dwelling, liberal-minded ethnic Swedes opposed organizing a gay pride parade through Muslim areas. They wanted to keep the march in the ethnically white areas of town, claiming that purposefully making the pride march through Muslim areas would be insensitive to Muslims. (Oddly, the very same people also claim that there’s no basis for discriminating between Muslim migrants to Sweden and ethnic Swedes, but I digress.)

Anyway, the point here is that public discourse in Sweden held that making the gay pride march through Muslim areas was racist and insensitive to Muslims. But Muslims are not one group. And in fact, what happened in Sweden was that gay and/or liberal-minded Muslims who were being oppressed by their own community spoke out against these misguided attempts at tolerance. In their eagerness to get along with Muslim migrants, ethnic Swedes fell into the trap of thinking that all Muslims have the same interests, likes and dislikes, simply because they are Muslims. In fact, the Muslim community in Sweden has its own internal fights over acceptance of homosexuality and Western values vs. Sharia values. If you as a liberal-minded Westerner want Muslims to integrate successfully into Western society, you might think you’re doing Muslims a favour by respecting what you perceive as their beliefs, but in fact, you are not respecting the beliefs of the group, only of the dominant, Sharia-conservative forces within the group. In this way, you’re actually making things worse for the Muslims in your country who share your values and who could otherwise have been part of a coalition between liberal-minded ethnic Swedes and liberal-minded Muslims living in Sweden.

The same point could be made about Denmark and the Danish Muhammed cartoons. When the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published them, many liberal-minded ethnic Danes accused the paper of bullying Muslims. Few read the thoughtful op-ed that accompanied the cartoons. At any rate, the logic was the same – a minority of Danish Muslims welcomed the cartoons as a challenge to Sharia power within their community. And the conservative clerical powers within the Danish Muslim milieu saw the cartoons as a challenge to their status within the group. They undertook lawsuits against the free press and cried offence on behalf of all Muslims. They didn’t want to see their power base challenged like this.

So again, the liberal-minded ethnic Danes who sympathized with what they perceived to be the whole of the Muslim community were actually helping an extremely conservative and intolerant minority within that community retain its power base. It would have been better for secular Muslims if the liberal-minded Danes had supported the cartoons.

A third variation on this point can be found if we look to Switzerland. Last year the Swiss voted on legislation that would have automatically deported foreigners who committed major crimes, drug trafficking, or social security fraud. The legislation was rejected, and one argument on the no side was that it would be harsh on Muslims, since Muslims in Europe commit more crime. But would it really? If you are of the mind-set that you want to see immigration to your country succeed, letting criminal migrants stay is likely to cause your countrymen to associate migrant groups with crime. But if you deport offenders, you will – all else being equal – have more law-abiding migrants in your country to represent the group. In other words, you might think you are helping the migrants as a whole by not deporting the criminal elements within their group, but you are actually helping the criminal migrants at the expense of the migrant group as a whole.

Immigrant Cost in Norway

In the fall of 2015, the Norwegian parliament decided almost unanimously that the politicians and the population ought to have some figures concerning the cost of immigration from non-Western countries. The results have just been published.

From the age of 25 and to the date of his death, a male immigrant from what the Norwegian government calls “Group 3” – that is, Asia and Africa – will cost Norway 6.2 million Norwegian crowns, which is the equivalent of 740,000 US dollars.

From the age of 25 and to the date of her death, a female immigrant from Asia or Africa will cost Norway 11.6 million Norwegian crowns, which is the equivalent of 1.4 million US dollars.

The Norwegian report details several prospects for what non-Western immigration will cost Norway in the coming years.

In the medium-level scenario non-Western immigration to Norway will cost the Norwegian society 104 billion Norwegian crowns, which is the equivalent of 12.4 billion US dollars. That might not sound like a lot by a US yardstick, but Norway is a small country of only 5 million people.

Another way to say it is that, from the year 2035 and till 2100, all growth in wages and productivity for Norwegian citizens will be lost, as it will have to be taxed away to pay for non-Western immigration to Norway.

That is, if non-Western immigration to Norway is allowed to continue, the country is looking at 65 years of no improvement in the lot of ordinary citizens. And that’s only the economic side of the matter. That’s not factoring in the increased crime rate brought about by non-Western immigrants.

One final point is that the statistical methods used in the report are rather conservative and take an extremely cautious approach. For example, they assume that the second-generation descendants will be fully integrated into Norwegian society, even though the data actually shows that second-generation descendants are more troublesome than their first-generation parents. That is to say, it is far more likely that that the report is underestimating the true cost of immigration than overestimating it.

Anthony Gottliebs ’The Dream of Enlightenment’

Tror du også (som pave Johannes Paul II og prins Charles), at Descartes var subjektivist? At Rousseau mente, at mennesker i naturtilstanden ville behandle hinanden pænt? At Hobbes var ateist? At filosofihistorien umiddelbart før Kant kan deles op i hvv. empiriske og rationalistiske tænkere? Ja? Så tager du fejl.

Nietzsche skriver et sted, at filosoffer er elendige og inkompetente til at varetage deres fag, fordi de søger at afhistoricere alting og se filosofiske tanker som fritsvævende uden for tid og rum. Han havde helt ret.

Filosoffer er notorisk bange for at historicere filosofien. Engang diskuterede jeg med en fyr, der var vild med Sartres ’Væren og intet.’ Han mente, at hvis man fandt værket uforståeligt på lange stræk, så var det, fordi man ikke havde reflekteret dybt nok. Da jeg så indvendte, at Sartre skrev store dele af værket i en periode, hvor han tog op til 20 amfetaminpiller om dagen, og at flere passager ifølge Sartre selv var fuldstændig meningsløse, svarede han, at den slags historiske detaljer var uvedkommende for filosofien.

Den slags er typisk. Filosoffer tror, at de kan sætte sig selv uden for historiens betingelser, men i virkeligheden betyder det blot, at feltet ender med at gengive den samme dårlige historiografi, fyldt med fejl og fordrejninger der i mange tilfælde blev til som åbenlyse partsindlæg. Historikere ville grine af filosofifagets såkaldte historiske metode.

”Men findes der så ikke en bog, der genhistoricerer filosofien og kigger på det med friske øjne,” tænker du så. Og jo, det gør der. Den bog er Anthony Gottliebs ’The Dream of Enlightenment’, der udkom sidste år.

Descartes var ikke synderligt interesseret i omverdensproblemet. Han ville blot have nogle indledende metodiske overvejelser af vejen, før han gik videre med sit egentlige projekt, som omhandlede videnskabelige studier af anatomi tilført nogle kreative filosofiske overvejelser om, at kroppen var en maskine. Descartes anses for den moderne filosofis fader, men hans projekt lå langt tættere grækerne end på nogen af de filosoffer, der efterfulgte ham. Spinoza var ikke en ædelmodig ener, der hævede sig over ydre betingelser ved at fæstne sig ved en smuk filosofi udklækket i isolation. I den marrano-jødiske menighed, han blev ekskommunikeret fra, var mindst to andre kommet i problemer for at have fremsat tanker om Gud som et rationelt naturprincip før ham. Han var i øvrigt heller ikke fattig, men levede ganske pænt af penge, hans fans og venner forærede ham. Hume synes ikke selv, at induktionsproblemet var noget, man skulle gøre for meget ud af. Efter hans mening var det et grundvilkår ved al kognition; en kommentar til hvor skrøbelig den menneskelige erkendelse er og altid vil være. Han ville have grinet af de herkulæiske anstrengelser, det 20. århundredes topfilosoffer (forgæves) kastede sig ud i for at løse det.

En ting, der er trættende ved bogen, er, at forfatteren bruger betydelige ressourcer på at løbe åbne døre ind med syrlige bemærkninger om, hvor uflatterende kirken agerede, og hvor travlt korsets folk havde med at begrænse den frie tanke i Europa. Den gradvise frigørelse fra kirkens intellektuelle benlås er unægteligt en del af oplysningens historie, men det forhold er tydeligt nok efter den første håndfuld observationer af den art. Et dobbeltcifret antal er overkill. Et andet minus er, at bogen er flagrende og vilkårlig i, hvilke temaer der udforskes over flere sider, og hvilke der blot opridses med en sætning eller to.

Ikke desto mindre er bogen original og læsværdig, og ingen kan tage fra Gottlieb, at han formår at skrive om filosofihistorien på en komisk, kæk og krystalklar måde, der flere steder overgår Bertrand Russell – i hvert fald rent stilistisk.

Bogens hovedpointe – at filosofien ikke kan vriste sig fri af de historiske betingelser, den udtænkes i – er stærk, og efter sidste side er det tydeligt, at mange af de ting, man sædvanligvis siger om Europas største begavelser, er forvrængede, forkerte eller begge dele. Filosofihistorien er lige så meget mytologi, som den er historie. Den har antaget et selvstændigt liv, som flere af fortællingens hovedpersoner ikke ville genkende sig selv i. Det er også instruktivt at se, hvordan førsteklassesbegavelser enten spillede med på den intellektuelle mode, der herskede i deres samtid, eller blev kørt ud på et sidespor som ’mindre filosoffer.’ Uanset hvor kvik du er, er det svært at undslippe tidsånden. Endnu sværere er at blive set og hørt, hvis du ikke passer ind.

Slutteligt kunne man spørge: Hvis filosofien angiveligt kan hæve sig over tid og rum, hvordan kan det så være, at 90% af de væsentligste landvindinger er udgået fra blot to steder på kloden, koncentreret over blot to perioder der samlet beløber sig til under et halvt årtusinde (Grækenland i klassisk tid og Nordeuropa i tidlig moderne)? At dette utrolige sammentræf ikke skulle have noget med historiens vilkår at gøre, er vist noget, man skal tage 20 amfetaminpiller om dagen for at forstå.

If Luke was Rey (a.k.a. The Star Wars: A New Hope “Mary Sue” Rewrite)

I present to you the ANH “Mary Sue/Marty Stu” rewrite. For the writer who thinks Luke is too human and relatable and should’ve been as perfect, plastic and flawless as Rey. Because boys need role models who are superior to themselves in every way.

*Luke is an expert survivalist living on his own in Tatooine. He isn’t subservient to Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. He loyally waits for a lost companion to return.

*Luke steals R2-D2 from a Tusken Raider on a Bantha who has captured R2-D2. The Tusken just watches and rides away.

*Luke can understand everything R2-D2 says. C-3PO is written out since he’s not needed to translate.

*R2-D2 follows Luke around obediently instead of running away and generally just thinks Luke’s awesome.

*Luke meets Obi-Wan and tells him he’s just a nobody and didn’t even know the Force was real. Obi-Wan hands Luke his father’s saber and then disappears from the movie. No training required.

*Luke experiences a “vision” upon touching the saber for unexplained reasons. Magic lightsaber?

*Luke enters the Cantina and knocks down Ponda Baba and Dr. Evazan with a stick when they threaten him.

*Luke finds the Falcon with only Chewie inside as TIE Fighters start bombing the area. He jumps in and flies it with some wild maneuvers through Beggar’s Canyon while Chewie works the gun port. They destroy the TIEs and return to get Han.

*Chewie is injured while running from Stormtroopers to get to the Falcon and Luke takes over as co-pilot.

*Luke fixes the Falcon’s malfunctions by himself before Han can figure out what to do.

*Han is so impressed with Luke that by the time they get to the remains of Alderaan, he offers Luke a permanent job.

*They sneak into the back door of the Death Star unnoticed and somehow instantly find Leia’s cell.

*Luke uses the Jedi Mind Trick on the guards at Leia’s cell to get inside. (First time the Jedi Mind Trick appears in the movie.)

*Leia says Luke is amazing, thanks him and won’t stop talking about wanting to run away with him and devote herself to helping him. Luke is not interested and says he just wants to be friends.

*Han somehow instantly finds the head Stormtrooper Commander and says he’ll kill him if he doesn’t shut down the tractor beam. The Stormtrooper Commander complies and they throw him in the trash compactor.

*Darth Vader finds the heroes. Luke watches as Han Solo confronts Darth Vader and is killed.

*Luke attacks Darth Vader and holds his own. He drops his saber but he is able to Force grab it before Vader can. (First time Force grab is seen in the movie.) Vader offers to train Luke. Luke lands several blows on Vader and cuts off his hand while remaining unscathed and Vader collapses in a heap. But there is an explosion that ruptures the platform between them and Luke must join Leia, Chewie and R2 back on the Falcon.

*Meanwhile, Wedge leads a small squad to do a bombing run on the Death Star. He easily hits the target without facing much resistance or even thinking about it much and the Death Star blows up.

*Luke officially joins the Rebellion at the end of the movie and is instantly selected to pilot a ship on a vital mission they’ve been waiting years to do. Their best pilot who just blew up the Death Star, Wedge, is passed over.

And there you have it. Star Wars: A New Hope as bland, generic, shallow, Saturday morning cartoon space opera, without depth, meaning, humanity, heart or soul, a.k.a. Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

I’m thinking we’ll cast Arnold Schwarzenegger as Luke and Chris Tucker as Han Solo.

*PERMANENT LINKS:

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Is Daisy Ridley Right that Calling Rey a Mary Sue is Sexist?

You might remember that when ‘The Force Awakens’ came out, the screenwriter Max Landis faulted the character of Rey for being a Mary Sue. A Mary Sue is a trope that is commonly seen in bad screenwriting and fanfiction. It refers to a character who, with little to no explanation, is so awesome that he or she has unrealistic and overpowered abilities that are not supposed to the movie’s own backstory; that he or she is better than all of the established characters at the things that make them unique for no apparent reason, and so on.

When Landis said Rey was a Mary Sue, many women accused him of sexism. Recently, these women have been joined by Daily Ridley herself who said that “The Mary Sue thing in itself is sexist because it’s the name of a woman. … Everyone was saying that Luke had the exact same [capabilities.] … So for me, it was just confused.”

Is Ridley right about this?

The Mary Sue trope does indeed carry the name of a woman. But there is nothing in the definition of a Mary Sue that necessitates that such a character would have to be female. If you switched Rey’s gender in ‘The Force Awakens,’ but kept everything else the same, the male Rey would also be a Mary Sue. The name itself is nothing to get hung up on. In fact, male Mary Sues are often referred to as Larry Stus and Gary Stus by screenwriters – and of course, that wouldn’t happen if Mary Sues were always women.

Ridley has a point that there is no reason that a gender-neutral screenwriting trope should be named after a woman. But if you think about it, many terms and tropes in common parlance have somewhat misleading names. Feminism, for example, is quite the misleading name for a movement that seeks to do away with gender differences. But it carries this name for historical reasons. Similarly, the Mary Sue trope carries this name because the original piece of writing that criticized the trope happened to revolve around a female character. It’s called a Mary Sue for historical reasons, not because only women can be Mary Sues – and it was actually a woman who came up with the original criticism of the Mary Sue trope.

Just like you could switch Rey’s gender to male and she’d still be a Mary Sue, so you could switch the name of the Mary Sue trope, and Rey would still be a Mary Sue. None of this has anything to do with gender. She seems to be confusing the surface phenomenon of the name with the motif that the name refers to.

Then there is Ridley’s claim that Luke Skywalker had the same capabilities as Rey, the implication being that supposedly, in a world devoid of sexism, if Rey were a Mary Sue Luke would then also be one. Ridley is right that Luke had many of the same capabilities as Rey. But she neglects to mention that Luke only had these capabilities by the third movie and after having been trained by both Obi-Wan and Yoda. Rey demonstrates abilities on par with, or better than Luke’s by the first movie and without any training. So Ridley is leaving out some preeeeeetty important details when she says Rey is no more overpowered than Luke.

Furthermore, recall that one of the features of a Mary Sue is that the character is better than all of the established characters at the things that make them unique for no apparent reason. For example, we never actually see Luke being better than Han at fixing or flying the Millennium Falcon, but that (and many other things) is just what we see with Rey, with no explanation given for her prowess.

Some people have said that maybe Anakin was a Mary Sue then, because Anakin also had many overpowered abilities that he hardly had to train to acquire. It would certainly be tempting to grant this point so that we could have a clear example of a male Mary Sue in the franchise and lay the accusations of sexism to rest. But recall another point about Mary Sues – they have overpowered abilities that are not supposed to the movie’s own backstory. Anakin had overpowered abilities, yes, but the prequels actually take care to explain that he is a virgin birth and a child of the force with a midi-chlorian count higher than Yoda’s. Now, this is also really bad screenwriting. But it isn’t the Mary Sue kind of bad – the movie does explain why Anakin has such extraordinary abilities. Nor is Anakin better than all of the established characters at everything. He is a whiny brat who needs Obi-Wan to discipline him. He needs Padme to help him understand grand scale politics. And he needs Yoda to bail him out after he gets chopped by Count Dooku.

So no – neither Luke nor Anakin are Mary Sues. But Rey invariably is. And Daisy Ridley’s arguments don’t hold up.

Frihandel og det nye højre

Mange på det nye højre begynder at spejle venstrefløjens position om, at frihandel er skadeligt for suverænitet, selvbestemmelse og demokrati. Har de ret?

 Af Ryan Smith

Overalt i den vestlige verden har nye højreorienterede strømninger medvind. Et utal af politiske spørgsmål, der før blev betragtet som afgjort, genåbnes, og nye svar forfærder de gamle eliter.

Meget af det liberale idegods, der bare for 20-30 år siden blev anset som fremtidens ufravigelige verdensorden, fremstår i dag blåøjet, bizart og altmodisch. En oprykkelse er i gang, hvor både højre- og venstreorienterede gradvist indser, at Vesten må revidere sit verdensbillede. At løsninger, der unægteligt er i strid med fordums konventionskonsensus og liberaldemokratiske principper, gradvist må accepteres, hvis Vesten skal få bugt med migrationspresset.

Men hvor langt bliver vi nødt til at gå? Hvilke af fortidens vedtagne sandheder må kasseres, og hvilke får lov at bestå?

International frihandel er den tanke, at hvis to lande handler med hinanden, vil den samlede velstand blive forøget, selv hvis det ene land er markant rigere end det andet. Frihandel er et af de spørgsmål, som gennem mere end et århundrede er blevet betragtet som afgjort blandt eliten både på højrefløjen og blandt Vesteuropas socialdemokratier, med kun det yderste venstre som undtagelse. Men i løbet af 2015 og 2016 er mange på det nye højre begyndt at spejle det yderste venstres position om, at frihandel er skadeligt for suverænitet, selvbestemmelse og demokrati. Mest kendt er nok Trump, men vi har også hørt lignende røster herhjemme.

Oveni de approprierede venstrefløjsargumenter om ”selvbestemmelse” lægger det nye højre så argumenter om folkeslag, der er politisk forpligtiget på sig selv, og som der må forene sig mod det migrationspres, den vestlige verden oplever fra henholdsvis Latinamerika (USA) og Mellemøsten (Europa) i disse år.

Så hvor langt bliver man nødt til at gå? Bliver man nødt til at indføre protektionisme for at beskytte nationens egne ufaglærte, sådan som Morten Uhrskov Jensen, landsformand for Dansk Samling, har plæderet for? Eller kan man, som Pernille Vermund, forkvinde for Nye Borgerlige, stå på mål for en position, hvor grænserne lukkes for migration, mens frihandelen bevares?

Frihandelsmodstanderne blandt det nye højre begrunder især deres skepsis med to argumenter: (1) At den ufaglærte arbejder i Danmark vil få værre kår af frihandel og (2) at frihandel vil medføre øget indvandring til Danmark. Men er det nu også rigtigt?

Hvad angår det første argument, så ved vi reelt ikke, hvordan det vil gå. Erfaringen taler for, at danske lavtlønsarbejdere vil opnå en samlet velstandsforøgelse ved frihandel, fordi det, de taber på at blive udkonkurreret på arbejdsmarkedet, bliver genvundet gennem stadig lavere priser på stadig bedre varer. Dvs. man kan have en højere levestandard på overførselsindkomst med råd til iPads og de rigtige californiske rødvine end at være fabriksansat og kun have mulighed for at købe Harboe-pilsner og varer fra Fakta. Men frihandelsmodstandere som Uhrskov baserer netop ikke deres argumentation på betragtninger om et samlet velstandsniveau, men  derimod om væsentligtheden af at være i job. Her har Uhrskov m.fl. unægteligt ret i, at den værdi, man oplever ved at varetage et job (mening og retning i tilværelsen såvel som anerkendelse og værdighed), ikke kan opgøres i kroner og øre, og derfor kan spørgsmålet om frihandel ikke reduceres til et spørgsmål om, hvor mange (velfærds)kroner Danmarks ufaglærte i fremtiden vil have mellem hænderne.

Til gengæld lader frihandelsmodstanderne til at misse en af den østrigske nobelpristager i økonomi, F.A. Hayeks, væsentligste økonomiske indsigter: Når nutidens jobs forsvinder, ved vi ikke, hvor fremtidens jobs skal komme fra. Og det har vi aldrig gjort. Det gjorde vi heller ikke i 1617, 1717, 1817 eller 1917. Men økonomien har altid tilpasset sig, så fortidens fyrede ufaglærte igen er kommet i job. Det betyder ikke, at vi kan være sikre på, at det samme vil indtræffe i 2017, men som Hayeks økonomiske arbejde har vist, så vil økonomisk intervention (i form af eksempelvis toldmure og omfordeling) destruere grundlaget for, at økonomien kan tilpasse sig de nye vilkår. Med andre ord ved vi ikke, om økonomien kan tilpasse sig, og vi finder heller ikke ud af det, hvis vi ikke giver den en chance.

Endelig er der spørgsmålet om, hvorvidt frihandel vil medføre øget indvandring til Danmark. Spørgsmålet opstår som følge af en manglende skelnen mellem frihandel forstået som varer og kapitalens frie bevægelighed og frihandel forstået som folkeslag og arbejdskraftens frie bevægelighed. Det er unægteligt sandt, at de to ideer hænger intellektuelt sammen og kan retfærddiggøres med henvisning til de samme argumenter, sådan som den østrigske økonom Ludwig Mises påpegede. Nogle økonomer taler endda om varers fri bevægelighed og folks fri bevægelighed som to faser af samme udvikling. Men blot fordi de to praksisser er intellektuelt forbundne, betyder det ikke, at de ikke kan adskilles i praksis. Der er intet politisk til hinder for, at man kan acceptere varer og kapital, mens man vedbliver at afvise indvandring (sådan som Pernille Vermund stod på mål for i Danmarks Radios Debatten).

På nogle punkter kan man endda argumentere for, at frihandel vil styrke det nye højres egen dagsorden: Jo større velstandsforskel, der er på de forskellige lande, des større incitament har den enkelte indbygger i de fattige lande til at risikere liv og lemmer for at komme ulovligt til Europa. Uden adgang til det europæiske marked ved vi også, at der er betragteligt færre økonomiske muligheder i disse folks hjemlande. Vesten kan ikke løse alle de mellemøstlige og afrikanske landes problemer, men det, vi kan gøre, er at lade dem sælge deres varer på vore markeder, hvilket tillige vil tage en del af indvandringspresset.