Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Unkempt Wenches of the Wilderness

From a speculative essay on the origin of human history, by our dear friend and philosophy canon member Immanuel Kant:

"In the course of time, however, the growing luxury of the town-dwellers, and in particular the seductive arts in which the women of the towns surpassed the unkempt wenches of the wilderness, must have been a powerful temptation to the herdsmen to enter into relations with them and to let themselves be drawn into the glittering misery of the towns."

I want a T-shirt.

Can it be any more obvious that men who write books with stuff like this in them aren't actually talking to real women at all?

Frickin' hilarious.

via kelby

10 comments so far. What are your thoughts?

Anonymous said...

that is frickin' hilarious, with a capital FRICK - it's a perfect addition for the multi-volume anthology i've been planning: The Boners of Great Men

and i thought Plato was funny...

and the same is the case with the so-called womb or matrix of women; the animal within them is desirous of procreating children, and when remaining unfruitful long beyond its proper time, gets discontented and angry, and wandering in every direction through the body, closes up the passages of the breath, and, by obstructing respiration, drives them to extremity, causing all varieties of disease 
 

Posted by jam

Anonymous said...

Let's see if I can actually post this successfully. Again I think what Kant may be alluding to is a unique social medieval social arrangement that allowed more liberated women of the towns slightly more freedoms than the normal 'house drudges' of the provinces. So he may well have been documenting a certain emerging class of women property holders, in what would later become the emerging trading/middling classes of small shop owners and the like. Those seductive arts are of course part of historic harlotry. Like I said, small business owners got their start in towns and where people would congregate for trading on a regular basis. So while it may sound really strange, what he may be doing is describing historic and real events in Germany.  

Posted by VJ

Anonymous said...

historic harlotry?

a.k.a.....

tales of the tramps?
saga of the sluts?
narrative of the nymphs?
wayback wenchery?
bygone bimbos?
folktales of the floozies?


ok, i'll stop... :P



 

Posted by jam

Anonymous said...

well, this is  Kant we're discussing, here. i don't think he ever did much talking to real people , of either gender. what little i've read of his didn't appear to have been written in any human language, anyway.

and Plato came from the same sort of society and tradition as Aristotle, more or less. these were people who saw nothing unusual about pontificating on the number of teeth the opposite sex might possess without ever bothering to actually, y'know, count them. such is philosophy for you - although i'm told it's been improving somewhat lately. must be the influence of those upstart natural scientists and their empiricism, i guess... 

Posted by Nomen Nescio

Anonymous said...

Sorry for the typos in my post above, I've been having problems posting here for days for some reason. But Kant did not have to talk to too many people to observe what was going on around him. He could not be too isolated, he did not take orders and live in an Abbey for example, so he had to find some way to be provisioned with food, shelter etc. But I really do think that my explanation, of unique medieval social arrangements may be the best interpretation, besides the usual overlay of traditional misogyny.  

Posted by VJ

Anonymous said...

Sorry for the typos in my post above, I've been having problems posting here for days for some reason. Hence the prior duplicates. But Kant did not have to talk to too many people to observe what was going on around him. He could not be too isolated, I think he did not take orders and live in an Abbey for example, so he had to find some way to be provisioned with food, shelter etc. But I really do think that my explanation, of unique medieval social arrangements may be the best interpretation, besides the usual overlay of traditional misogyny. That space for independent women was a short, brief, and narrow one. But it's memory lingered on for sometime.  

Posted by VJ

Anonymous said...

Jam - I prefer "Bygone Bimbos," myself... ;) 

Posted by Kameron Hurley

Anonymous said...

beer and baths are a powerful combo 

Posted by Anonymous

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