| | I received the following SOLO-mail from Jeanine. I asked her permission to post it. She granted it.
As usual, it's long. I'll have a few comments at the end of it.
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Msr. Perigo, your majesty.
You asked be some time ago whether I thought there was hope for a love of colour and life, of "sense of life", among Objectivists. I am sorry I did not reply then; I could not think of the right words to say, but what I wanted to write was something like this: "as a Pagan, I will never make an Objectivist, but I wish the best for your philosophy, and think you are rescusing the best of its essence from a sad past."
And that is what I believed then, and I thank you for your wonderful work to try to create a living spirit within the Objectiivist world.
But I must say, and I speak tragically as well as with bitterness, that I have concluded forever that this is not possible. Msr. Perigo, thank you very much for running this site, and I know you have tried wonderfully. But I am leaving your court, and I shall never return, and I have sworn a personal oath never to seek friendship or alliance again with Objectivists for as long as I may live.
In every Objectivist site, I have been scorned and hated, not for my flaws, but for my virtues. I have fought beyond measure and given up everything in my previous life to defy society and live a life of my dreams, and I am despised for it, and despised by people who dare call themselves individualists. And every time, this philosophy of the individual, the minority of one, has ended up refusing to treat me as the gender of my choice, and I speak, as almsot any transgender would, as someone who, if I could not live as a woman, would want to die.
There are other worlds, better worlds, which manage to speak to me with respect and kindness, that can see the colour in life I see, that understand the sirit that inspired me. Objectivism cannot. Monsieur Perigo, that is a fact. Objectivism had to be dragged to tolerating gays and lesbians; now it cannot tolerate transgenders, or counterculturalists, or prosititutes. The simple, inescapable fact is that Objectivism, no matter how many of its ideas I admire, will always be a miserable place for me. I give up this fight. Others can treay me as a human being, yet eventually- this is now the fifth Objectivist forum where I have been treated like a dog- this subculture cannot. I have finally learned. I am swearing off Objectivism for the rest of my life, and I am done with philosophy and surrogate academia. I have found a world that can accept me, respect me, understand my loves, and it is unfortunately one my intellect once barred from me.
This was the last place for me. As I have told Mme. Branden, I have wanted badly, more than anything all my life, to speak with the minds in greatness that I admired, the names that I once reverenced as a Randian child. Well, I have, I have now. And I thank you for giving me the chance to experience this just once.
But what it has shown me is another thing; that anywhere I go in the bourgeois conventional world, and anywhere includes the subworld of Objectivism, I as a transgender woman and a prostitute cannot exist. I have long thought of doing what every one of my sister prostitutes has advised me and drop out of an impossible mainstream life. I still can't quite bring myself to do so; I will still keep my own group online. But this message shall be my retirement from my hangings on to the last of a philosophical life. I swear to you, on my honor, that the only happiness in this world has been in existence as a whore, as a sexual creature where I can be my own aesthetic creation. Objectivism has done nothing but scorn that and every other happiness I have had. And Objectivism truely is the best that philosophy has to offer in this world.
I am done with philosophy. To quote the irrationalist- my ears no longer ring at that word- Spanish existentialist Miguel de Unamuno- "I take myself now to my lord Don Quixote de la Mancha".
So, goodbye. May I please ask that the SOLO admiinstration delete my account. I know no one here will ever care, but I have taken a risk to post here openly, and since I don't have any value left here, I would prefer those risks be minimized.
I do hope you can make something worthwhile with SOLO- I wish I thought something like this could succeed. But my fellow guests have been stating and explicit general concurrence that the essence of humanity of repression (I quote), that children should give up love for their parents, as well as damned my profession in gross ignorance and insulted me as a transgender woman in ways so painful I will never be able to look at or focus on that screen. Msr. Perigo, I am afriad this is the reality of Objectivism; this is what Objectivist culture has always been, from the NBI to the present, and it remains so here. I beleive neither you, nor Sciabarra, nor Mme. Branden, can change what Objectivism is. And what Objectivism is has tortured and despised everything I love.
I truly thank you; I am glad for all you have done, and for kindnesses you have shown me (though I do disagree with you about the war). I don't think you want to hear that I think you are better than your philosophy, but that is the truth.
Tomorrow, I shall go on the Winter Solstice to meet in his home a man whom I love. He is another prostitute, another despised by your fellows in philosophy, and he is a beautiful, tender soul of a kind I do not know here. We're going to try Ecstasy together, and I will celebrate the stars of the evening as a Pagan, as I can only now, as I never could with my former life or my former mind. It will be a night to give myself entirely to my new Life I have chosen; a night to recognize where my happiness, my light, my hopes and dreams and future lie.
I do not blame you, I truly do not, for how you must look at me and see unreason. From all that you know, you are right; all I would wish you to know is that I speak with sincerity. As for unreason, it does not look such from my eyes. But having seen what the highest philsophy of reason has done, I confess my discernment dims and that for that ruling I no longer care.
goodbye,
and blessed be,
Jeanine Shiris Ring )(*)(
Aster Manque
For a Philosophy I loved:
Thinking back, on how things worked,
and how we loved so well
I wanted to be the mother of your child
and now its just farewell
Put your hands in your hands
and come with me
To find another bed
Put my hands, put my hands
on anyone's shoulder
'cause I can't be with you
{Cranberries; I fear they may be headbanging caterwaulers- however much
we disagreed on this; let me say I love that phrase}
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Now I know Ms Ring did not *have* to spit the dummy in this way. She *could* have chosen to ignore the posters who attacked her & continued to deal with those who didn't. (That would have been my preference - I do tire so of cry-babies.) However, it's obvious that her previous encounters with Objectivists predisposed her to think that her attackers - & SOLO - were just "par-for-the-course-so-why-should-I-bother?"
And part of me agrees with her. It requires a fair dollop of insensitivity to another person's context, when that person was a woman inside a man's body who has reworked nature to her heart's desire, to call that person "Mister." It requires a fair dollop of crude bigotry to condemn that person for engaging in commercial sex with other adults by mutual consent as an "ass-seller." It requires a fair dollop of presumptuousness to tell that person to "shut the fuck up" when one does not own the board on which that person speaks & is therefore out of line in telling *anyone* to "shut the fuck up." Confronted with such crassness, in Ms. Ring's place I too would be tempted to sling my hook (no sexual double-entendre intended).
As Joe has explained, non- & anti-Objectivists *are* allowed here, provided they show some respect for the fact that this *is* an Objectivist web site whose owners revere their philosophy. More, dissenters are positively *welcome* if they put up good arguments in good faith. That's a selfish thing on our part - there's nothing that keeps one on one's intellectual toes better than thoughtful arguments sincerely proffered. I never once had the sense that Ms. Ring's objections to Objectivism were proffered in bad faith, much less malevolence. I actually think that, over time, SOLOists could have won her over, if the ham-fisted hadn't charged in. I could be wrong, but now, we'll never know.
It's funny how different are the things that enrage us. For some, obviously, it's the spectacle of a transgender prostitute who not only is not ashamed of her work but idealises it. I'm not enraged by that at all, & in fact would not want to live in a world that *was* enraged by it (if I wanted to live in such a world I'd migrate to Iran, or some part of America inhabited by closet-gay Randroids). What enrages me, to the point where I physically shake when I behold it, is the spectacle of clever-dick smart-ass word-play wankers posturing as philosophers who *never* state their own actual position on anything but simply try to tear apart the stated positions of others. In one such case on this board, the wanker doesn't even have the guts to state his name. *This* type of person - not a trans-gender prostitute - is the dregs of humanity in my view. Yet, note, here we put up with even *that*.
To both Ms. Ring *and* her attackers alike I say: ponder *that* before you throw hissy fits.
If we seriously believe that we are engaged in a contest of ideas, we must not shrink from that self-same contest. For us Objectivists, that means constantly repairing to the facts of reality, rather than the hobgoblins of ignorant prejudice, & taking on all-comers.
Linz
(Edited by Lindsay Perigo on 12/20, 11:16pm)
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