Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending 19th January 2025 - awful.systems
https://awful.systems/post/3278715
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Paul Graham is on his bullshit again.
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As many writers (perhaps most eloquently George Orwell) have observed, women seem more attracted than men to the idea of being moral enforcers.
Ah, thanks Paul far validating my disdain for Orwell at least.
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George was writing his stories in the 40s, so at least has “product of his time” as an excuse.
Paul’s just a flat out piece of shit to be writing this nearly 100 years later.
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Fair, though in Orwell’s case the misogyny is not accidental either, but an essential aspect of the mostly conservative ideology he adopted for 1984 (contempt for the working class, linguistic purism, just really being a little too enamoured with his perfect crystal of unending oppression etc).
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I’ve never heard of anyone describing 1984 that way, could you elaborate on your points or link to some analysis?
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I read it in high school. Iirc, the main character in 1984 deeply hates a woman he works with and his violent fantasies about her are tied up in his desire to rebel against the regime. He later overcomes his desire to commit violence against her by having sex with her. His contempt for her fairly leapt off the page when I read it. I’m sure it’s arguable what Orwell meant or intended.
In another scene, the middle-class protagonists watch a working-class woman hanging out washing and tell themselves that if there was any hope for freedom, it lay in “the proles” (members of the mass underclass, like that woman). But the way they look at her and talk about her is dehumanizing.
It’s probably easier to just read 1984 yourself and make up your own mind. it’s not a very long book.
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Isn’t Julia a member of some sort of anti-sex league, meaning there’s a lot of bad faith involved in their relationship from the get go?
Also with respect to the attitudes on women and proles, although I don’t think it’s entirely written in the character’s point of view it feels like there’s a lot of unreliable narration going on, or at least you get a lot of stuff from the perspective of a person who grew up in one of the most absurdly totalitarian regimes in literature. Which is to say, it didn’t feel prescriptive most of the time to me.
See also: “proles”, as in the contempt is baked in to the language, which we know the regime is actively trying to hold a tight leash on.
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I have not read it in ages, but did hear somebody has written something (not sure if book or play or etc) of the book from Julias perspective.
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To be clear, I mean to say that in society where it’s life or death to be highly guarded and suspicious of everyone any romantic relationship is necessarily poisoned.
Plus I think there’s a whole thing in the book about things being so restricted that fucking for fun is in itself an act of rebellion and thus another thing your partner has over you if they happen to need to give something up to the authorities.
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Julia, by Sandra Newman
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Thanks!
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