Seems like the source of our disagreement is that you implicitly view ideas as reified essences, as independent entities; whereas I view them as sites of contestation, definitionally tied to a certain perspective that puts down a stake contra other perspectives.

I indeed don't particularly care for the term "pretentious" - the perspectives it's tied to are usually not ones I'm impressed with.

As opposed to Zappa. What a talent.

I'm a Beefheart guy, not a Zappa guy, but there's so much to admire about Frank. My "unpopular opinion" about him would be that his very finest hour was his very last release, the orchestral Yellow Shark.

I prefer The Perfect Stranger but I agree on his orchestral works being his best.

Yeah that's definitely one of his masterpieces.

Mindfulness might be the one exception. He seems like a wonderfully eccentric dude but I wouldn't call him a nerd.

He collects and sells cards. :/

The point that seems perpetually lost on Terrapin and probably Mucha is it's not Crew Slut. It's every song that features women in any capacity. It's in the bovine perspiration of Dynah Moe-Humm and in the tiny mustaches of the Catholic Girls. Frank seems to want them sexually (only), but at the same time can't help shaming them in some derogatory way. It's not a deal-breaker for me, but the big picture is certainly a misogynist one.

Who would think a rock star from the 60s with song titles like Easy Meat and Crew Slut would be misogynist? Controversial, I know.

If you're locked into your position or simply don't agree, that's fine. We don't have to agree.

"Critical" doesn't mean "negative." It implies analysis.

I don't usually agree to disagree though. I want you to not be wrong, to not have unsupportable misconceptions, etc.

It's dumb as a criticism because of how the term is conventionally defined: "attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed."

??

A conceptual "site" where stuff be contested?

I thought that it's one of my many calques from French and while it is that too, a Google search in English turns up "about 136,000 results" and in quite a few of those, "sites" refers not to physical but conceptual spaces.

"The sessions will feature a multi-faceted reflection on the ways in which the liberal arts become sites of contestation and sources of consolation in times of historical crisis." - you get the idea.

The larger framework is of course Nietzsche as read by Deleuze and Foucault.

I'm not at all a fan of continentalism, and I'm a physicalist, so . . . lol

Concepts are physical things in particular brains in my view.

You can probably imagine that as a Zappa fan, I've had this discussion before. Both with other people and in my own brain for a long time. I've been on your side of the discussion for years and years.

Learning more about misogyny and becoming more aware of it is an important part of what's brought me to my current position on the issue. I believe I see something that you're probably blind to and discussing here isn't likely to change that.

Maybe you should ask your wife about it.

Where did I say that criticism and negativity are the same? I simply said you were being uncritical.

This has nothing to do with Zappa, but in general, my view is that misogyny, racism, etc. are attributed all over the place where it makes no sense to do so. My views about this have much more to do with my general philosophical views, especially my views about how meaning works, how interpretation works, etc.

So to reason this out for you, since I was saying something a la analysis, it made no sense to say that I wasn't being critical unless you had in mind that that would require a negative assessment.

So even if I don't explicitly say that criticism is negative, it's still something that can quickly be inferred from the context of what was said?

I wonder if there's anything else that operates like that. Something discussed in this thread, even.

Yes. Otherwise it would make no sense as a response to what I said.

Way to miss my point.

Your analysis is dishonest because it's based on the assumption that sexism can only exist within an explicit denouncement along the lines of "women are inferior" as opposed to trends with clear implications. Your only "analysis" is simply the parroting one dictionary's definition.

Frankly (hehe) you'd have to be blinded by fanboyism or your own sexism not to see it in Zappa's music.

Haha yeah I'm used to coming up against this wall - or others coming up against my wall - in philosophy circles. Let's say I've been the beneficiary of the "well, if we absolutely must have some random adjunct teach to our students the incomprehensible verbal diarrhea of those weird, nihilistic, godawful French homosexuals who have no interest in The Truth and Universal Logick, let us then get one of them clowns from lit studies, who had chunks on Foucault in his PhD on the likes of Blanchot and Klossowski and who reads all that garbage in the original. He regards all philosophy as no more than literature anyway, his view of language is derived from Benveniste and Barthes, not Frege and Quine, which will show our students how intellectually unserious he is, and they'll regret ever demanding courses on Foucault and come around to the sound ways" attitude...

What's wrong with being sexy?

https://aveleyman.com/Gallery/2017/D/4897-19426.jpg

And who the hell doesn't love a good misog?

https://www.karmamassagespa.com/stat...e-services.jpg

Can you give the definition of "sexism" you'd be using?

Right . . . although not that I'm a Frege fan, either.

You can keep your unnuanced blanket definitions. In Zappa's case, the sexism/misogyny comes in the form of lyrically affirming traditional demeaning roles of either being childlike, sex objects, or quite often both to the point of being a prejudice.

Doesn't "lyrically affirming traditionally demeaning roles" hinge on meaning and interpretation?

Now read the rest of the sentence that clarifies which traditionally demeaning roles I'm referring to.

Agree to disagree then?

I believe there's room for dialogue between the traditions (Foucault, for one, definitely thought so and sought to escape being pigeonholed as "another one of those French philosophers" toward the end of his life, when he spent all that time in Berkley) but have neither the philosophical training nor the inclination to explore this. Sometimes you gotta stay in your lane and enjoy the ride, or something like that...

The selling part redeems him, some might say, though I don't know the details. If the whole thing is not entirely for profit then yes, he too.

Again, it's not Frank. It's like calling Leonardo DiCaprio a schizophreniac because he played in Shutter Island, or calling Mick Jagger a satanist because he sang Sympathy for the Devil. Taking on a role, a pose does not make someone racist or sexist.

If Zappa was acting this way in real life – his everyday life – that would make him misogynistic. If he is consciously writing lyrics that are supposed to be scandalous, shocking or anything of this sorts, then he is not misogynistic.

In my original comment I was only trying to say that I don't get it why this discussion about Zappa hass to be so ad personam towards him. The poor bastard never dd nothing wrong as far as I recall.
And a lot of people find his lyrics rather funny (sure, some more, some less, some not at all) than spiteful (our meant to offend anyone – maybe apart religious people).

Oy vey. The old "If it wasn't in the quotation, it wasn't read."

Again, doesn't "lyrically affirming traditionally demeaning roles" hinge on meaning and interpretation?

Yeah, that's part of it. It's the stupid tendency to read lyrics as if someone is writing a confessional or a diary or something. It's as dumb as taking Stephen King to have murderous, psychopathic and/or sadistic tendencies because of what he writes in his novels. But it's also ignorance re interpretation of semantic content, too.

He doesn't always hide behind characters. And perhaps you didn't read the whole discussion, but I already commented on the real world FZ. Banging groupies was his vice, to his wife's dismay. He says so on camera, adding that Gail grumbles, but what's she gonna do? She's his wife.

When Marc Maron asks Moon Zappa on his podcast about weird things growing up in the Zappa household, she tells him they had groupies living with them. He also managed the GTOs which was a group made up of groupies.

The very likely reason his vices don't come up much is because if you are a documentary maker, you need access to material - the Zappa vault. You're not gonna get it unless you cooperate with Gail Zappa/the estate and agree to terms that will basically protect the legacy of FZ.

Gail is fiercely protective of FZ's legacy and everything else, even suing the Zappanale festival for using the iconic Zappa stache in their marketing.

He was by and large a good dude and a genius, but by no means a saint. You believe he was above misogyny?

There's nothing misogynistic about having sex with groupies.

Irony alert.

Do you think I care about your leading questions?

No (though Gail didn't approve), but the lyrics coupled with the stories make it seem like he didn't really respect women.

From his secretary:

Butcher moved to the US and became his full-time secretary, despite the lack of convention with which the role was first suggested to her: "Do you think if we ****ed, you could still work for me as my secretary?" Zappa asked.

...

But gradually she began to experience moments of clarity. When Butcher heard one of the "Mothers" – the members of Zappa's backing band, the Mothers of Invention – say he felt sorry for one groupie because she had been with three different musicians on consecutive nights, she became irritated, since the men who behaved that way were congratulated for "scoring". Or as she says, with understatement: "I began to notice the double-standard."

Butcher was upset when Zappa did not see her point of view. Something clicked in her mind when she saw feminist campaigners in the news. "I saw a banner that said: 'Love me less, respect me more.' And I just thought: 'Yes. That's it.'" Butcher read Kate Millett's Sexual Politics, which came as a revelation to her, as it did to many women at that time. Excitedly, she told Zappa what she had realised. "I thought he'd be sympathetic, but he wasn't, completely the opposite."

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/music/20...nk-zappa-women

I'm sure I've read he for a while used to give trophies to groupies for ****ing him, which also seems a little narcissistic and condescending.

He also started a thread dedicated to pens. So definitely, he too.

Hey ain't nuthin nerdy bout this prime cut of ... Oh.

I don't think you care about asking questions that require you to think critically, no. Doesn't hurt to ask though, in the off-chance that you'd actually answer.

So, on your view, you respect women by not wanting to have sex with them, presumably because in your view, women don't really want to have sex as much as guys do.

You got that right.

Answer your own question with the stance you're clearly attempting to introduce instead of trying to lead me into some dumb gotcha. I know the game dude.

No. Are you even making an effort to understand my point of view? Treat the discussion with some respect, please.

So what's not "respectful" about saying something like ""Do you think if we ****ed, you could still work for me as my secretary?"

I'm inquiring about your semantics (philosophy of meaning). I can't answer for myself what your semantics is.

...I clarified it for you already. Read the sentence you're contesting again. It's on you if that's outside of your comprehension tbh.

He is her boss, right? Is it okay for a boss in this situation to pressure an employee into sex? Because I think any sane person would start to wonder what it would mean for her future employment and relationship with her boss if she were to turn him down.

As an employer, this is obviously gross to me and is a big part of what stirred the #metoo movement to begin with. Where have you been?

You believe that something you wrote already presents a philosophy of meaning/an account of just how meaning works ontologically?

I believe that you're either too dishonest or dumb to understand the clarifications of sexism I've laid out here.

First, isn't this a different question than whether someone is being "respected"?

Secondly, is anything a boss asks an employee about socially something that is or that should be read as social pressuring, and as something that would be tied to the job? Or are just some things that? Which things and why?