so I read The Tyranny of Structurelessness yesterday and enjoyed the text, thought it made some great points, and appreciated the insight it gave into the feminist movement of the time and experiences I’ve had within activist orgs.

My friend, very recently (just before the conversation mentioned below, in fact) has stated that I need to recognize their philosophy prowess because they studied neuroscience in college (they never took a philosophy course or read any philosophy, and they can barely structure / dissect an argument). I mention the essay because we were on the topic of feminism and it seemed germaine. I’m describing what I learned about formal vs informal structure in groups.

This friend is a social worker and uses their experiences to say “oh yeah I know informal structure the government is all informal structure” & I’m just like . To me, government might be best example formal structure! (obv informal structure exists within it, just like any other group)

this extends into this very long and annoying conversation and they’re saying that if they subjectively feel like it’s informal then it is. they give an example of whether something isremoved depends on the feelings of the victim.

eventually they’re literally saying that I should just dissociate rather than evaluate or critique the words they’re saying in order to not have an emotional response, and there’s no such thing as meaning or truth, and that to counteract patriarchy our relationship should be imbalanced in the other direction (they’re feminine gender presenting) so I should just let them “win” and never say “you’re wrong” (I didn’t literally say that, but I did disagree with the structural categorization of government)

godamm. this wouldn’t bother me so much if they didn’t claim to be a philosopher. I mean c’mon, I was primed by them to engage with their words in that capacity!