Is Ligotti's feminism intersectional enough for 2017 relevance?

[Justin Isis]

An issue that's been preoccupying me for some time. We know that Ligotti is at least conversant with the discourses surrounding complex systems of oppression but there are not many statements by him where he talks about being agitated by other people's feminism not being intersectional enough. It would be nice to know he is at least occasionally irked or nettled by the lack of a genre-wide intersectional awareness.

Can't have patriarchial systems of oppression if there's nobody alive to oppress anything.

[Justin Isis]

Some relevant stories:

"Purity"
"The Bungalow House"
"Miss Plarr"

Now that you mention "Purity", Justin, I suppose Candy's addiction to mayonaise-drenched weiners is symbolic of the male dominance over a woman's body.

Not too sure about "The Bungalow House", but it's been some time since I've read that one.

[Ascrobius]

Joking...

[gveranon]

From My Work Is Not Yet Done:

Quote

I declared earlier in this document that, "with one exception," there was no cuteness among The Seven. Sherry was the exception, although a serious qualification must be appended to this statement. Physically she was attractive, not to the point of being a harrowing beauty, but enough to put her over the line between women of average or even "good" looks into the company of those who possessed across-the-room attraction. (If anyone believes that I'm perpetuating some arbitrary or twisted image of the world, that's fine with me--I wish them well in their transactions with social reality.)

To those who would, more in anger than in sorrow, instantly declare this problematic, I wish to point out that Ligotti's reference to "social reality" would seem to raise this passage from problematicity to critique. However, the wording here--"I wish them well in their transactions with social reality"--would seem to ironize this critical awareness at the expense of the critiquer. And since irony is, if not inherently reactionary, at least suspect (in that righteous indignation requires unself-aware univocity of cognizance), this passage is problematic after all.

Continuing the passage:

Quote

The qualification to which I made reference above is this: if you happened to cross that room on the other side of which stood Sherry, what you confronted was... [ellipsis in original] I can't even name it--some kind of thing inhabiting the body of an attractive woman, an alien from some diseased planet or a creature of low evolutionary stature that by some curious means had insinuated itself into a human being at some stage in her development, the result being this Sherry-thing.

Now that is intersectional as all get-out! Perhaps Haraway would find it old hat, but leaving aside Harawayan modalities (if I may be pardoned for further marginalizing the marginal), Ligotti here is, I contend, beyond 2017 in his awareness of intersectionality. The Sherry-thing... some kind of thing inhabiting the body of an attractive woman... an alien... a creature. If only that didn't sound so misogynistic! But relax: it turns out that the swinish darkness inhabits all beings. Question for intersectional theorists: Given that the swinish darkness inhabits all beings, how is this swinish darkness inflected in socially-constructed identities of the oppressed? And isn't whiteness uniquely implicated in darkness? (The chromaticity of this image becomes problematic.)

[Arthur Staaz]

I see the potential for a great article in a leading humanities journal. Othering, of course, would need to be addressed.

[cannibal cop]

All I want is to see the churning, all-pervading darkness PUNCHING UP a little more often. Is that really too much to ask?

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

Quote Originally Posted by gveranon

intersectional as all get-out!

New book title

How did I miss this thread?

Intersectionality is great and why third-wave feminism is really pretty cool. I have no idea what Ligotti's views on intersectionality are. I know he's a socialist, but not all are intersectional. I think that despite the general lack of what could be considered 'diverse representation', his work's picture of antinatalism as a form of compassion is compatible with intersectionality. There are a lot of antinatalist feminists as it's actually a good way of removing reactionary society's view of women as baby factories.