to Joseph Campbell "Are you saying women never become aggressive?"

The hero's journey: Joseph Campbell on his life and work page 99

Campbell: What happened in Western society was that a good deal of the organized thinking with respect to sex was based on putting the woman forward. You take your hat off (or you used to, at least) in the elevator. Or when a woman comes in to the room you give your seat to her. Now the woman begins to dress like a man and the man's dress hasn't changed; it's just deteriorated and receded into the background. And where the hell are we? We have unisex barbershops. It's ridiculous because the whole energy of life depends on polarity and when you give that up all you've got left is a blob [laughter].

Then you have a shock when you travel to India. You learn that the active aspect of the idea of energy is Sakti, female. And the male is inert. He is the one to be activated.

I thought, Where did the system come from? Why this complete contrast? They're both perfectly true. One is related to the physical relationships and other is psychological. The male, psychologically -- he just wants to be left alone! I've seen it very, very strongly! I don't know how the females are, but God, the best times are when you're just there, kid, and you are where it counts.

And then this little twinkle bug goes by, and as Joyce says in Finnegans Wake, in Anna Livia Plurabelle, "the little rippling river stream."

And she says, "Oh, wouldn't it be nice to start the world again?"

And you think, Oh, goddamn, it really would. And the male then is activated.

Now I think this is perfectly correct. The female is the activating principal, and then she's amazed that you're activated and come at her like that! You know [laughter]!

Highwater: Are you saying women never become aggressive?

Campbell: They're aggressive; is already there in the twinkle star. It's another kind of aggression. The power of women is psychological and magical, do you see, and their aggression is a magical one. They are perfectly innocent, and oh boy, something's going on, and they say, Oh, I'm not responsible, no, I just came in here en décolleté, and look what's happened!

[–]cryptogirl 4 points5 points6 points 16 years ago (24 children) | Copy Link

[–]RoundSparrow[S] 1 point2 points3 points 16 years ago* (13 children) | Copy Link

Are you suggesting that Bucks and Steers have no horns? And Cows and Doe do?

Physical aggression in males and fear in females is a pretty well established gender relationship. it isn't 100%, and Campbell expounds on nothing being absolute or 100% in any matter of life.

men are not allowed to hit or be physical toward women. I think pretty well established now world-wide. I do not advocate hitting among any gender, even male on male violence. yet, physical and loud verbal aggression is a reality of the male hormones!

Women have not seemed to disarmed their games equally. It seems to many men that (generic) women can openly play mind-games, (generic) "woman's prerogative" to change mind, given care over the children in custody battles, etc. You going to label all these general observations and history as Misogyny?

It is a FACT that is easily observed that (generic, generally) men are more physically strong and aggressive. Why do we split sports records?

Homosexuality is just one obvious variance of gender roles. But look at it from a million foot level (society level), one can say that testosterone is an aggression hormone of the physical kind! And mental aggression too!

Cite: http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Difference-Truth-about-Female/dp/0738208442 Baron-Cohen's certainty about gender differences, the Cambridge Univ. professor of psychology and psychiatry lays out his controversial thesis on page one: "The female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy. The male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems." Defending this bold view is a tough but engaging battle, one that's alleviated by Baron-Cohen's disclaimer that his conclusions refer to statistical majorities rather than "all men" and "all women," but exacerbated by his habit of simultaneously skirting and employing gender stereotypes.

You know Campbell worked at Sarah Lawrence college, which was female-only - for nearly 40 years?

This political correctness of avoiding realities of the genders is getting really old. Some suggest that some women have moved well past equality into the punishing and 'revenge for the past' stages against men!

Personally, I am questioning what is going on in society. I view it as winter as to summer, there are social cycles. I question if we aren't just reacting to reacting, knee-jerk... without understanding the cycles. I am questioning, as I think we all should. Not blindly following or parroting.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points4 points 16 years ago (10 children) | Copy Link

[–]ignatiusloyola 2 points3 points4 points 16 years ago (7 children) | Copy Link

[–]RoundSparrow[S] 1 point2 points3 points 16 years ago (6 children) | Copy Link

I'm not saying that Joseph Campbell hates men or women, I just think his brand of big-picture Jungian philosophy sometimes glosses over the diversity and complexity of human gender and sexuality.

You just don't get that he says NOTHING, not genders, not truth, not ANYTHING in this world is {absolute, 100%, perfectly divided}.

Of course there are trans-genders at all ends of the spectrum. do we really have to spell out all ends of the spectrum? men GENERALLY have a Penis, women GENERALLY have a vagina. Yet even surgery can alter this!

I think the big issue is that neither side wants to be forced into the gender differences. There are average differences, but each person is unique and has a unique set of traits.

This is exactly what Joseph Campbell (an atheist!) says is the purpose of religious teachings. To open your mind to the infinite, beyond what you can see in this world. To the eternal, to the infinite beyond your tiny human mind and languages! It is nothing to do with God, it is Jung Psychology.

Joseph Campbell: "It's the female as the giver of forms. She is the one who gave life to the forms and she knows where they came from. It is from that which is beyond male and female. It is from that which is beyond being and nonbeing. It both is and is not. It neither is nor is not. It is beyond all categories of thought and the mind."

[–]ignatiusloyola 2 points3 points4 points 16 years ago (4 children) | Copy Link

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point2 points 16 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

[–]ignatiusloyola 1 point2 points3 points 16 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point2 points 16 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]ignatiusloyola 0 points1 point2 points 16 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

And whom have I scorned, beyond the Joseph Campbell guy?

I will argue about the literary and cultural merits of religion as well. As far as use for understanding anything about nature or reality, however, I give them zero merit. They do not tell me anything about the nature of genders, of society, or morals, of ethics, or laws that cannot be more correctly and logically deduced from philosophy.

Myth understood as metaphor still doesn't resolve the problem, and is simply a view put forth by Campbell. It isn't justified in anything I have read so far, and is thus axiomatic without any self-evidence. Religion has problems without creationism, as it is anti-reason, anti-logic, and anti-progress. By its very nature, it purports the acceptance of thoughts without question. This is counter productive and counter intuitive.

[–][deleted] -2 points-1 points0 points 16 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]RoundSparrow[S] 0 points1 point2 points 16 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

Agreed. But as unpopular as it may be to say this on reddit - the story of Adam/Eve in CHAPTER 1 of a 2500+ year old book is getting right at this same damn issue.

Joseph Campell at age 82 in 1987: "One has eaten of the tree of knowledge, not only of good and evil, but of male and female, of right and wrong, of this and that, and of light and dark. Everything in the field of time is dual: past and future, dead and alive, being and nonbeing. But the ultimate pair in the imagination are male and female, the male being aggressive, and the female being receptive, the male being the warrior, the female the dreamer. We have the realm of love and the realm of war, Freud's Eros and Thanatos."

And in relation to Eastern: "At the Buddhist shrines you'll see one has his mouth open, the other has his mouth closed -- fear and desire, a pair of opposites. If you're approaching a garden like that, and those two figures there are real to you and threaten you, if you have fear for your life, you are still outside the garden. But if you are no longer attached to your ego existence, but see the ego existence as a function of a larger, eternal totality, and you favor the larger against the smaller, then you won't be afraid of those two figures, and you will go through."

[–]ignatiusloyola 1 point2 points3 points 16 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]RoundSparrow[S] 0 points1 point2 points 16 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]RoundSparrow[S] 0 points1 point2 points 16 years ago (8 children) | Copy Link

In his ability to synthesize diverse mythologies, Joseph Campbell was quite brilliant -- but on gender he was definitely a bit sexist.

Then explain how he says women get the short end of the stick by Western society?

Joseph Campbell at age 82:

Now, today there is no out-group anymore on the planet. And the problem of a modern religion is to have such compassion work for the whole of humanity. But then what happens to the aggression? This is a problem that the world is going to have to face -- because aggression is a natural instinct just as much as, and more immediate than, compassion, and it is always going to be there. It's a biological fact. Of course, in biblical times, when the Hebrews came in, they really wiped out the Goddess. The term for the Canaanite goddess that's used in the Old Testament is "the Abomination." Apparently, throughout the period represented in the Book of Kings, for example, there was a back and forth between the two cults. Many of the Hebrew kings were condemned in the Old Testament for having worshiped on the mountaintops. Those mountains were symbols of the Goddess. And there was a very strong accent against the Goddess in the Hebrew, which you do not find in the Indo-European mythologies. Here you have Zeus marrying the Goddess, and then the two play together. So it's an extreme case that we have in the Bible, and our own Western subjugation of the female is a function of biblical thinking.

[–]cryptogirl 4 points5 points6 points 16 years ago* (7 children) | Copy Link

Look, I love Joseph Campbell. In fact, when I was in high school and dropping acid every weekend, he was like my own personal bodhisattva. I'm not calling him "Misogynist," I'm saying he's "a bit sexist," in that he falls too easily into archetypal/stereotypical thinking about masculinity and femininity. For example, he says:

The power of women is psychological and magical, do you see, and their aggression is a magical one. They are perfectly innocent, and oh boy, something's going on, and they say, Oh, I'm not responsible, no, I just came in here en décolleté (e.g. "rocking some cleavage"), and look what's happened!

This bit of wisdom ignores the fact that women are often physically violent and abusive, a fact of which you should be well aware if you've spent much time on r/mensrights. Let me be clear: I'm not saying that Joseph Campbell hates men or women, I just think his brand of big-picture Jungian philosophy sometimes glosses over the diversity and complexity of human gender and sexuality. But you know what? I can forgive him for that.

[–]catlebrity 3 points4 points5 points 16 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]RoundSparrow[S] 0 points1 point2 points 16 years ago (4 children) | Copy Link

[–]cryptogirl 4 points5 points6 points 16 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

[–]RoundSparrow[S] -2 points-1 points0 points 16 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

In this politically correct bullshit society right now, you have to put five pages of disclaimers to say anything. Campbell discusses that:

Joseph CAMPBELL: Yes, but another reason for the high level of violence here is that America has no ethos.

Bill MOYERS: Explain.

Joseph CAMPBELL: In American football, for example, the rules are very strict and complex. If you were to go to England, however, you would find that the rugby rules are not that strict. When I was a student back in the twenties, there were a couple of young men who constituted a marvelous forward-passing pair. They went to Oxford on scholarship and joined the rugby team and one day they introduced the forward pass. And the English players said, "Well, we have no rules for this, so please don't. We don't play that way."

Now, in a culture that has been homogeneous for some time, there are a number of understood, unwritten rules by which people live. There is an ethos there, there is a mode, an understanding that, "we don't do it that way."

[–]cryptogirl 2 points3 points4 points 16 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point2 points 16 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–]ignatiusloyola 0 points1 point2 points 16 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

Title	to Joseph Campbell "Are you saying women never become aggressive?"
Author	RoundSparrow
Upvotes	6
Comments	25
Date	May 3, 2010 4:48 PM UTC (16 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/bzhgh/to_joseph_campbell_are_you_saying_women_never/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/to-joseph-campbell-are-you-saying-women-never.1049636 https://theredarchive.com/post/1049636

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