Philosophy Radical Sapphic Democracy: A Theory of Politics

LowlandsOfHolland

Active member
Following a discussion elsewhere, I was asked to summarize my thoughts on politics and metaphysics. The following is an abbreviated form of what a political manifesto I might produce according to my particular politics would look like, though without much reference to my particular views on metaphysics. <deleted content> suggested, after reading it, that I should join this forum to post it, and told me that this forum would be the appropriate place to post it, or the most appropriate place. I will of course be willing to provide clarification as necessary on any technical points.

Radical Sapphic Democracy: A Theory of Politics

What does it mean to be American?

Does not truly being American require lesbianism, lesbianization, sapphical consciousness? Are we not formed by the orgiastic frolics of the goddesses Liberty-Marianne, Justice, and Columbia? Are we not the horniest bitches the world has ever seen? Do we not, in the face of reactionary insistence that immigration is a kind of wanton sluttery, rejoice in the promiscuity of our liaisons with our many international lovers? Do we not notoriously refer to our international politics as "special relationships"? Do we not boast of our incredible endurance? Have we not been understood as an inherently feminine nation, even as we have been denounced as aggressive and demanding? Are we not an unholy fuck machine of tempestuous lust, a global sugar mommy with an ill temper?

Of course, this requires insight. There is a dichotomy between the true Americanism as dimly grasped by the early politicians of the First Revolution (and seen again and again since then by visionaries but often dismissed as an impossibility, manifesting itself only through bizarre idealizations) and the false Americanism of hot dogs, McDonald’s, Hollywood, all the more usual cultural factors.

Hot dogs, after all, are German. Motion pictures are French. McDonald’s is syncretic in its origins but fundamentally English in its grasp of cuisine. What is there that is truly culturally American in origin? Even our racism is borrowed from the English. As such, when people say, dismissively, “Americans have no culture,” they are more right than they know! The false Americanism is a mosaic of random pieces to conceal the shattering reality of true Americanism, apple pie as the only thing that preserves the sanity of everyday life.

For you see, the vision of America as founded on a set of ideals meant that Americanism was in one sense utterly shallow. One could become an American simply by verbal pronouncement after maybe 30 minutes of thought. But in another sense, this is quite simply the recognition that true Americanism is truly egalitarian. Anyone can become an American. Americanism is a thing of pure Gesellschaft. No Gemeinschaft, Völkisch or otherwise, for us! That is something for the other portions of our selves, the cultures of the constituents of America. This, then, is the true depth of Americanism-- being American can encompass the whole universe without ever having to compromise or annihilate anything else. Coexistence, coevality.

And these ideals, what are they? That all people are created equal, that however they are created they are endowed with certain rights in the process, including but not limited to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that they establish governments to secure these rights, and that they may destroy and remake anew any government which fails in this endeavor? That is certainly a good starting point to consider. Let us break it down, then.

What these ideals are is collectivist in nature. It is not the right of any particular ego to destroy and remake anew. It is not any particular person’s decision which establishes governments. It is the people who do so. Why? Because all people are equal in the unalienable rights they possess. No one has any greater claim to power than anyone else.

And it is a collectivist outlook which secures the individual as an entity. Under a world of pure individualism, everyone would be fundamentally identical entities, unable to specialize or develop their particular characters or interests or talents, monistic beings that could not approach within the zone of absolute terror close enough to make the contact necessary to differentiate us into individuals.

Therefore, America is necessarily and at its core set firmly against individualism, in order to save the individual.

It is thus no surprise that Abraham Lincoln, the rail-splitter, won the admiration of Marx, and that Marx himself was so fascinated by the United States. In the end, America is fundamentally socialistic. The encrusting of “personal responsibility” on the American love of voluntary organizations, the attempt to redefine these as “charity” in order to assert power over those who are in need, cannot escape the buried roots beneath, which say this: compulsion is immoral! Thus, to work to live is an abomination, to work is properly to express one’s dignity, to contribute to the world! This is what socialists of a particular stripe might term the distinction between “work” and “labor."

What, you might ask, has all this to do with lesbianism?

It is no surprise to anyone except the most blushing infant that heterosexuality is idealized as unequal. It is said that men and women are “separate but equal,” “complementary,” all terms which we must understand in light of Brown v. Board of Education to indicate inherent inequality. Even if we ignore that shining light of reason, the obvious note is that masculinity is understood to convey power and femininity to convey weakness in the ideal heterosexual relationship.

In turn, relationships between men are nervously stuffed into the erastes-eromenos frame, insisting that one partner must necessarily be weaker than the other, inferior, unequal. This proceeds in alternate turns by feminizing or infantilizing this partner. But lesbianism has escaped this constraint-- rather, lesbianism remains to a certain extent in a realm of coy mystery. Why is this so?

In the end, it comes down to a metaphor-- the metaphor of penetrative sex. It is understood that heterosexual sex consists of a penetrator filling an empty vessel in the form of the penetrated. The postures of idealized heterosexuality feature the penetrator above the penetrated, reinforcing notions of hierarchical scale. And thus, male homosexuality is perceived in this mode, wherein sex is penetrative, the erastes filling the empty eromenos. Never mind the reality.

But lesbian eroticism is mysterious. For centuries those outside of its world have been perplexed by the question of how two women can have sex. Frequently the answer has been to assume that there was some sort of secretive penis involved, something which could allow lesbianism to be reframed into heterosexual visions of what sex is and could be. One could say that fingering or the use of a dildo might restore penetration to the mix, and thus redeem lesbian sex into the realm of the comprehensible act of filling an empty vessel.

But therein lies the difficulty- fingering may be mutual. The dildo may swap users. There is always the blood-curdling possibility of egalitarianism. And if we go to the French term, tribade, tribadism, we are confronted by something even more horrifying- sex without penetration. Tribadism proper and scissoring are in reality fairly difficult to perform and not especially satisfying. But let us instead consider cunnilingus. Traditionally, fellatio is considered to be a submissive action on the part of the oral performer, because they are being penetrated. But the oral performer in cunnilingus is penetrating, unless they are being penetrated by the clitoris, or merely bring tongue to labia. Even when heterosexuals perform cunnilingus, it is with an aura of fear and mystery, for they tread on the grounds of sexual egalitarianism.

And to go beyond, into the deeper realms of lesbian sex opened up by this insight, is even more terrifying to the unenlightened. But I wish to stop here, and simply note that, lesbian sex is egalitarian, it is mutual, it is democratic. It is American, and America is lesbian. To be American is to have sapphic consciousness perpetually weighing on you. For all too many cisgendered heterosexual people, the terrible allure of this leads them to vicious rejection and thus the epidemic of violence in America, which is directly aimed at reasserting hierarchies, is explained. It is fear of a lesbianized planet.

Thus it is ultimately necessary to awaken this consciousness in everyone, to lesbianize the planet by willpower rather than await spontaneous insight which may never come. Even within Zen teachings to achieve moments of kensho, let alone full satori, requires extensive study and knowledge of the Noble Eightfold Path, membership within the Sangha.

It is worth being clear here that I do not mean a total conversion to lesbianism. I mean quite simply that heterosexuality and gayness be made more lesbian in their attitudes in order to awaken their egalitarian sense and suppress the insipidity of aristocracy that currently chains them. I mean quite simply that we must pursue the maximal sapphic consciousness within ourselves, act to purge un-American thoughts about racial inequality, the superiority of the abled body and mind over the disabled one, the utterly asinine notion that gender is a hard rigid thing, nationalism, sectionalism, regionalism, belief in cultural superiority. We must cultivate the highest possible degree of lesbianism so that it might be awakened to the fullest extent in everyone else.

I shall call this “Americo-lesbianism” to distinguish it from the false Americanism, for the simple sake of clarity. And thus my particular beliefs might well be termed “absolutist lesbocracy,” or alternately, “radical sapphic democracy."

What, then is the radical sapphic democratic program? There both is and is not one. We are not in a position to directly contemplate offensive action to implement anything like a program as such, and so any program we might present is necessarily tentative, subordinate to events, a living, breathing document.

And, to put it bluntly, we must necessarily endorse the principle of Auftragstaktik, of “mission command,” when considering political action. We cannot be democrats of any stripe, let alone radical sapphic ones, and envision a politics that is directly controlled from the top down according to a strict plan. It is necessary to have a politics that consists of broad goals and strategies which are translated via operational planning into different tactical approaches.

The first of these goals is democracy. We must democratize society. It is important to understand that by democracy we mean democracy in spirit as well as in outer form. We mean the democracy of the Toyota Production System, not the democracy of Brexit. It is a democracy of chaos, of flux, of cycles and motion. It is a democracy that breathes deeply and lustily. It is a democracy that does not proceed in straight lines, but sways and curves.

Democracy not just in a vague “political sphere,” but democracy taken to its ultimate form within every sphere. We shall democratize the family. We shall democratize the workplace. We shall democratize the shopping mall. There are those who would sneeringly disdain these notions as causing an inevitable snarl, the machine stopping. They understand “democracy,” more often “the republican form of governance,” as the elevation of a figure who dictates and determines, rather than the selection of a figure who holds the responsibility of evaluation and bearing blame.

(For those who often profess Christianity, or to value Christianity and Christian values, it is thus curious that they understand government as Caesarist rather than Christian. But that is an aside.)

For we shall democratize romance. And we shall lesbianize this all too. We shall understand that roles are roles, they’re something to play and not to be. We shall thus develop yet further the glorious vision of the American system of manufactures, one where any given person may be trained and put in a position and achieve.

The second of these goals is sapphism. We shall adopt the insistent passion of the lesbian from the familiar joke (to us) who shows up to the second date with a U-Haul. We shall, in that immortal voice of wisdom, recognize that "world hard and cold, tiddy soft and warm." Thus we shall develop a society around this concept of tiddy. Warmth, softness, nourishment, pleasure, diversity: all these shall become the centerpieces of a truly sapphic life.

As such, we will necessarily offer compassion of the tits to all! We shall nourish all, we shall foster pleasure for all, and we shall understand the width of experience and reject a one-size-fits-all intellectual brassiere.

And let us be clear-- this shall be sapphic in that this compassion of the tits shall be mutual but not necessarily reciprocal. That is, we shall understand that a woman may indeed be blessed with large breasts or small, with a titlust great or little, and that it is not required, indeed far from it, to insist that only like should be paired to like. Thus, the shared compassion of the tits is like a busty woman who is not especially fond of breasts in a love affair with a slender woman who thirsts for tits deeply. Each contributes what they are able to, each draws out what they need.

To this extent, we do not need to go into details about the specific particulars of this or that. It is only important for the purposes of this manifesto to emphasize the broad principles here. We must distinguish between government and the state, administration and compulsion. Government should be understood as something like an enormous hookup app, enabling and uplifting the potential for sapphic encounters, developing itself further from cruder personals ads. Even if we were to foolishly limit sapphic life to encounters between two, one cannot be forever satisfied with dates that consist of walking in a featureless plain. For there to be movie theaters, cute cafés, charming restaurants, karaoke bars, adorable shops to walk through and coo over arm in arm, even for there to be maintained paths for hikes and walks and time on the beach, there is entanglement with and reliance on other people than simply one's partner(s).

Thus, government. What of the state?

Some might say that power is illegitimate (some of these might well claim this while also claiming to believe in the justice and mercy and love of a potent, that is to say, a powerful god). Let us set that aside for a moment. What we desire is simply an intermediate shift before contemplating the long haul- not the nanny state which extends its largesse from a position of authority, but the sugar mommy state which provides from a position of voluptuosity.

This, then, is an overview of the sapphism of radical sapphic democracy-- the mutual non-reciprocal compassion of the tits, the hookup app theory of governance, the sugar mommy state as a rejection of inherent authority in favor of a theory of voluptuosity.

Then there is the radicalism. For after all, what in the preceding vision of sapphism and democracy is truly radical in implication? All of it is as entirely conventional as arranging a monthly twelve-woman orgy. But by radicalism I mean playfulness. I mean a willingness to explore and create and see what plays out from our whims and passing fancies.

By radicalism, thus, I mean a willingness to understand that the world is malleable and delightful, something to live in and with and not to withdraw from, first of all, and then second of all, the will to act on this willingness. This is the essence of the true radical: they are playful.

In their playfulness rests a willingness to be tested and challenged, to put things to the question. They are unwilling to let conventional wisdom and common sense lie like old logs-- they turn them over and find an explosion of life and activity.

Thus, for radicalism I do not make any claim but for flexibility, playfulness, and the exploration and expansion of what is possible.

From these principles, radicalism, sapphism, democratism, we might well resolve any political question through proper application.

Gun control? The opponents of gun control emphasize a hierarchy with them standing above the "irresponsible" gun owner, and so they are not truly democratic. Radicalism would lead us to question the dogma of the usefulness of a personal gun for self-defense. Sapphism would require us to consider whether it is truly compassionate, truly thinking in the way of the tits, to make it so easy for suicides and accidents to kill so many.

I could go on in this manner, but I believe that this serves as a sober political analysis for now.
 

ShieldWife

Marchioness
Well, this is probably satire, at least some work went into it. These days it can be hard to tell if an unusual idea is serious or not.
 

ShieldWife

Marchioness
Okay then.

I’m not convinced that lesbianism really represents any of the qualities discussed, like egalitarianism. Then again, I oppose the idea of equality so it probably doesn’t matter.
 
D

Deleted member

Guest
@ShieldWife , I believe you honourably hold a similar sense of humour and mild-mannered sangfroid to my own, and your first post had the right of it. I think <deleted content> just meant that he had not, in any sense, endorsed the contents, merely told the ... author, where it would be appropriate to post here. And we certainly do support freedom of speech.
 

LowlandsOfHolland

Active member
Okay then.

I’m not convinced that lesbianism really represents any of the qualities discussed, like egalitarianism. Then again, I oppose the idea of equality so it probably doesn’t matter.

Which would you say is your primary objection? To the notion of equality or to the notion that lesbianism is equal/democratic in orientation?
 

ShieldWife

Marchioness
Which would you say is your primary objection? To the notion of equality or to the notion that lesbianism is equal/democratic in orientation?
Well, probably to equality itself. Most people believe in equality and so the opposition to it is a central part of my world view. The idea that lesbianism is necessarily more egalitarian isn’t really an idea that I have entertained that much, though ultimately I believe that equality is mythical and so is an inappropriate ideal. This probably extends to lesbianism as well.
 

LowlandsOfHolland

Active member
Well, probably to equality itself. Most people believe in equality and so the opposition to it is a central part of my world view. The idea that lesbianism is necessarily more egalitarian isn’t really an idea that I have entertained that much, though ultimately I believe that equality is mythical and so is an inappropriate ideal. This probably extends to lesbianism as well.

When you say that "this probably extends to lesbianism as well", do you mean that you believe lesbianism is mythical, or that it's an inappropriate ideal?
 

ShieldWife

Marchioness
When you say that "this probably extends to lesbianism as well", do you mean that you believe lesbianism is mythical, or that it's an inappropriate ideal?
Lesbian isn’t mythical, but equality is, and so lesbian relationships can’t be equal because nothing is really equal.
 

LowlandsOfHolland

Active member
Lesbian isn’t mythical, but equality is, and so lesbian relationships can’t be equal because nothing is really equal.

Why is equality mythical? Is this an axiomatic statement?

Furthermore, even if there is some sort of Great Chain of Being which dictates who is lesser and who is greater, do we have the ability to access it such that we can be assured that equality is mythical in practice rather than merely mythical in theory?
 

LTR

Don't Look Back In Anger
Administrator
Staff Member
Founder
tl;dr

One of my friends got a meaningless tattoo which is only meaningless to me because she found it quite profound.

Eleuthera Damashi

That is what it says.

She says it's Greek for 'Freedom' and Japanese for 'Spirit.' Greece of course, introduced much of the basis of Western civilization, including democracy. But she chose the term 'Eleuthera' not for the sake of the Greeks, but for their neighbors, the Scythians of which... according to the Greeks, were related to the 'Amazons' and that supposedly the later Sarmatians were a union of Scythian and so-called 'Amazons.'

There is a romanticism of the steppe tribes however, the implied meritocracy and egalitarianism born out of necessity. Of how while Men were often in charge, women had to be capable and while their status was generally subordinate to men, it was still generally perceived as more inclusive and empowering to women and the Greeks clearly saw that in the Scythian and related tribes. And there are accounts of similar status of women in later steppe tribes as well... most notably the Mongols of course.

And it's a lifestyle easy to romanticize, even now... especially now. My friend often said even the most liberated of us (or lazy) were still experiencing the concept of self-indenture if not to our jobs (wage slavery as the Commies call it) then to our hobbies whether it be the loom or the lyre... or something like that. Our labors to pursue increased leisure was also a pursuit into fallacy, for who but the warrior and hunter has more free time... and whose livelihood isn't labor but sport in itself. How the pursuit of property promotes selfish rivalry and estrangement with ones fellows.

... and so on.

If the Amazons did reside in the same realms as Scythia however, they would've had no real historical legacy beyond that of what their civilized, landed rivals, who had systems of writing and record-keeping and historical tradition possessed. Which, on the face of it... is pretty obvious. But for the Greeks... Amazons were something worth remembering.

Or mythologizing.

My friend is also a lesbian... probably... *shrug*

This is actually super interesting. Can you share a little more on this?

You should try harder.
 

ShieldWife

Marchioness
Equality is an artificial construct that can only truly apply to artificially constructed things. Two sides of an equation can be equal because the equation is an abstraction, people are not.

Any qualities which humans have can be compared and some positive or negative qualities can be compared and are never found in equal measure, not even in identical twins.

Sure, person A may be smarter than person B, person B may be stronger than person A, but how can we say that strength and intellect are equal? How can we say that a person who is both stronger and smarter is the equal to another with less of both qualities?

The only way that any two humans can be called equal is with philosophical abstractions or mystical claims, in reality only things which are exactly the same can be meaningfully said to be equal and no humans are the same.

This lack of equality doesn’t mean that some people are superior to others, though they may be. For the most part, complete superiority is subjective and the worth of various humans is incommensurable - they cannot be compared.

The equality that any two humans supposedly share can’t be reasonably defined, it is in fact an incoherent idea that drives irrationality. People think that they are “equal” and since that word has no true meaning outside of idealized abstractions, they create there own meaning for an idea that all of society has told them exists.

This leads to envy and resentment and ultimately people see a world where different people have advantages that they do not, or who lack their disadvantages, and believing that they are “equal” become resentful of the perceived unfairness and this resentment creates a great deal of misery as well as driving ill conceived policies designed to eliminate the inequalities or unfairness.
 

LowlandsOfHolland

Active member
Equality is an artificial construct that can only truly apply to artificially constructed things. Two sides of an equation can be equal because the equation is an abstraction, people are not.

Any qualities which humans have can be compared and some positive or negative qualities can be compared and are never found in equal measure, not even in identical twins.

Sure, person A may be smarter than person B, person B may be stronger than person A, but how can we say that strength and intellect are equal? How can we say that a person who is both stronger and smarter is the equal to another with less of both qualities?

The only way that any two humans can be called equal is with philosophical abstractions or mystical claims, in reality only things which are exactly the same can be meaningfully said to be equal and no humans are the same.

This lack of equality doesn’t mean that some people are superior to others, though they may be. For the most part, complete superiority is subjective and the worth of various humans is incommensurable - they cannot be compared.

The equality that any two humans supposedly share can’t be reasonably defined, it is in fact an incoherent idea that drives irrationality. People think that they are “equal” and since that word has no true meaning outside of idealized abstractions, they create there own meaning for an idea that all of society has told them exists.

This leads to envy and resentment and ultimately people see a world where different people have advantages that they do not, or who lack their disadvantages, and believing that they are “equal” become resentful of the perceived unfairness and this resentment creates a great deal of misery as well as driving ill conceived policies designed to eliminate the inequalities or unfairness.

If the worth of people is incommensurable, not comparable, then they cannot be unequal because an inequality cannot actually be defined. Thus, they would not be equal or unequal but existing in a state of uncertain equality. That is, if we define that equality is a mathematical term, so too is inequality. And to define two things as existing in either of the two states requires the ability to measure them for comparison.

Given that, you argue that inequality is a social good, because if people rejected the belief that they were equal to other people, they would naturally be content with their lot in life. Leaving aside the question of whether the ability to be discontented is potentially a good thing or not for the moment, this conflicts with your statements about the uncertainty of measuring inequality. What stops people, even ones who believe in inequality, from saying "I am better than person X with things Y and Z, I deserve things Y and Z more than they do"? That is, what reason is there to believe that people can both be utterly bamboozled by notions of equality and yet simultaneously would recognize their natural superiors on sight?

Finally, going back to the ability to be discontented, surely that is itself a social good if the inequalities are unjust? That is, as you have laid things out, it seems that you might agree with "people in the USSR ought to have been contented with the fact that Party membership sped you up in the waiting line to get a TV, or that members of the PolitBuro had access to the best dachas, because assuredly they deserved them more because they had them". Is that accurate? I must confess I don't really see why it would be inaccurate.
 
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ShadowsOfParadox

Well-known member
...I disagree with the "separate but equal" bit.

I'd call it "Different" instead.

As far as equality... meh. I don't find it terribly important and I find worrying hard about it to pretty much always result in less of it.
 

Scottty

Well-known member
Founder
Oh boy, reading that bit of postmodernist waffle takes me back...
Long ago, in a previous century, in the world that was before Y2K, I spent some amount of time on Usenet, as it was called. And in one of the theology-related groups there was a guy who went on and on about something he called the Sodomite Prophecy. All of his posts were dense with academic jargon, and the reasoning was... well, a bit like TimeCube Guy. But this was earlier.
Trying to figure out what on Earth he was actually on about taxed some minds back then.

I think he was trying to make some sort of argument about homosexuality no longer being wrong, but his inability to communicate with normal people means I cannot be certain.
 

LowlandsOfHolland

Active member
...I disagree with the "separate but equal" bit.

I'd call it "Different" instead.

As far as equality... meh. I don't find it terribly important and I find worrying hard about it to pretty much always result in less of it.

What's the point of such a distinction?
Oh boy, reading that bit of postmodernist waffle takes me back...
Long ago, in a previous century, in the world that was before Y2K, I spent some amount of time on Usenet, as it was called. And in one of the theology-related groups there was a guy who went on and on about something he called the Sodomite Prophecy. All of his posts were dense with academic jargon, and the reasoning was... well, a bit like TimeCube Guy. But this was earlier.
Trying to figure out what on Earth he was actually on about taxed some minds back then.

I think he was trying to make some sort of argument about homosexuality no longer being wrong, but his inability to communicate with normal people means I cannot be certain.

I don't see what's postmodernist about using concepts that are so associated with the Modernists, such as Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft. Psychohistory as a discipline is more recent, to be sure, but psychological analysis of history certainly dates back to the emergence of psychology as a distinct field of study. Again, well before postmodernism emerged in literary analysis.
 

Scottty

Well-known member
Founder
I don't see what's postmodernist about using concepts that are so associated with the Modernists, such as Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft.

"Made to hear sermons by mystical Germans who preach from 7 to 4"...
What do those words mean?

Psychohistory as a discipline is more recent, to be sure, but psychological analysis of history certainly dates back to the emergence of psychology as a distinct field of study. Again, well before postmodernism emerged in literary analysis.

I'm not sure what century Hari Seldon lived in.
:confused:
And "Sapphic" makes me think of Aluminum Oxide.
 

LowlandsOfHolland

Active member
"Made to hear sermons by mystical Germans who preach from 7 to 4"...
What do those words mean?

Ten to four. I would suggest that they do not mean that an academic field which emerged around 80 years after W. S. Gilbert wrote those words was on his mind as he wrote them.

I'm not sure what century Hari Seldon lived in.
:confused:
And "Sapphic" makes me think of Aluminum Oxide.

As Asimov himself noted in either his final SF collection or one of his later essay collections, "psychohistory" had by a funny coincidence also become used by historians to denote historical analysis in psychological terms.

I'm afraid I don't see what that association for a word of quite reputable antiquity under this definition has to do with anything.
 

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