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Practice makes perfect.
Nobody’s perfect.

and

Birds of a feather flock together.
Opposites attract.

The second pair isn’t contradictory (and also not really advice), but I think the first pair is right in line with the examples you give in your post. Some people aren’t performing well and just need to be told to practice more; others need to be reminded not to expect so much of themselves all the time.

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Neither of these are valid implications, since utopia is not an option. It is logically possible for “the government can’t solve all problems” and “no (existing) regulations are counterproductive” to both be true; some problems may not be solvable, at least not perfectly solvable. It is also logically possible for “the free market can’t solve all problems” and “no regulations are necessary” to both be true, for the same reason. “Solve all problems” is a red herring whether you approach this from a statist or libertarian viewpoint.

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Oh, and The Dialectic of Sex, which I’ve already praised here; doubt I’ll ever see a better feminist text, it’s just SO damn good. And I’ve skimmed bell hooks’ Feminism is for Everybody after hearing it referred to as a good introduction… meh. Liberal. Common-sensical. Unstartling. Cliched, unengaging language. I suppose I fell victim to Tumblr osmosis on that one.

P.S.: No, really, slogging through Gender Trouble made me glad I’m not a philosophy student. Having previously enjoyed some commentary on Lacan – and I don’t just mean Zizek – in no way prepared me for this horror.

P.P.S.:

A blogger, who also found it distressingly unreadable, mentions:

I had a conversation with one of my professors at the end of last semester about this very topic (though this was before I had read hooks’ book). She suggested that feminist theory (specifically in reference to Butler’s Gender Trouble) was “not ours to share”. Perhaps there was a breakdown in communication, perhaps I implied that I want to preach feminism to the “uneducated masses”, or worse that I would deign to explain oppression to the oppressed, but something about that conversation rubbed me the wrong way. Feminism is a liberatory ideology, a theory and practice that originally emerged out of the discussions amongst ordinary people about their everyday lives; only later, after much work by these same individuals, was it subsumed into the academy and made into the discipline of women’s studies. S0 there is obviously a space and a need for an academic feminism. However, if that feminism is not tied to a living, evolving, political mass movement; if it is not responsive to the critiques provided by the lived experience of real people; if it is so vague, abstract, and/or technical that it cannot be put to any practical use, then what purpose does it serve?

…Fascists should come and kill the lot of us and burn the bodies. Because such people as this professor are themselves literally Her-tler, and their sins weigh heavy on us.

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