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shadowkatYou ever think that you think too much? Or over think things? Been wondering that lately. Turn off the mind.
Told a friend the other night that the only time I turn it off is when I'm focused on creating something artistic - whether it be a watercolor, a painting, a drawing, a bowl in pottery class, a story, what have you.
That's when the mind quiets. I sit at the wheel molding clay, feeling it slip and slide between my fingers. I press it into shape, my body curled over the wheel, elbows on knees, palms caressing the mud, fingers lightly pressing, capturing, molding, shaping. When I'm in the zone, I hear nothing, see nothing, but the clay, the shape, the slide of clay. Nothing exists outside of it, nothing but an aura of negative space. Than jarred, I snap out of the zone, hear the conversations buzzing, see the other wheels, the other potters and my piece looks odd to my eyes alien and I wonder vaguely where I've been and how did it turn out much better than expected. How did I do that??? Also whatever will I do with it. It's not the end product that exhilirates so much as the process of creating it. They say there are those who love the process and there are those who love the product. For years I thought, I was more interested in the product, recently I've realized I could care less about the end result - it's the creation or the journey involved that gives me the high - that puts my demons to rest.
Speaking of demons...
As you may have gathered by now, I'm hyper-critical of myself and highly analytical - hence the critical. This next bit will seem a tad jagged and disconnected. My thoughts are running on multiple tracks tonight, out of sequence, bumping into one another like drunken blind men.
Most of this week been a bit hyper-aware of biases, my own and others. Seeing all of them, no matter how benign or seemingly harmless. As if they are pimples and freckles and postules sticking out on people's noses. Aware that we all are, whether or not we admit it, members of "in-groups" and "out-groups" and often base our opinions on others on which group they appear to be a member of when we encounter them. In the class that I'm auditing this week, the professor stated that she did not believe there was such a thing as truth or rather that we could not find it, since we see everthing through a veil of our own biases, some so ingrained in our make-up that we are not conscious of them, cannot see them. Only catching them when they accidentally slip out in casual conversation, if then.
The film Crash while heavily flawed, is an excellent examination of bias, how everyone has them and how people reacte to one another - creating rather destructive situations - based on them - literally crashing into each other's assumptions. [I saw the film this week - which is a story about a bunch of seemingly unconnected people in LA after 9/11 who bump into each other and change one another's lives - emphasizing their racial prejudices and how those prejudices and assumptions affect their behavior in situations and how depending on the situation they can do horrible or wonderful things, partly due to those prejudices or in spite of them.)
You biasis on fan boards all the time. Fans are very biased, more so than a casual viewer actually. You can see it in how people's views of a tv show are so contradictory, you wonder if they are watching the same one. They are - it's just that each person is watching it through their own shield of prejudice, their own past hurts, their own up-bringing, things you can't dismiss or ignore or forget. I was reading some posts on Veronica Mars for instance that confused me because the episode people were reviewing - it wasn't this week's, I watch it on Sunday's so a week behind, was not what I saw on the screen. Reading the posts carefully - I saw the biases, the wants, the desires of the individual poster. It reminded me of what I saw on fan boards and fan fic during Buffy and Angel's run. And how important it was for everyone that they were right. And how defensive people got when someone said they weren't, myself included. If you made the mistake of pointing out that perhaps they were biased - they'd retort, so are you. I'm not sure you can see a story clearly when you are obsessed with it - because the thing about the story that obsesses you will overshadow everything else, also obsessions often are short lived, or momentary, so it is more than likely, years later you'll revisit it and wonder what the fuck? I know I did when I revisited a few obsessions from my youth - Kimba, Robin Hood (the animated Disney Version), Batman (the cheesy tv series), The Monkees, Battle of the Planets, BattleStar Galatica (original version), and Star Wars. What was it in each of these obsessions that gripped me? I think I know - it was a character - a vulnerability, a sense of adventure, maybe? Then again maybe I don't know. I look at the first three seasons of BTVS and wonder vaguely - why did I get so obsessed with Angel for a while? I did by the way, was watching it in S2 almost purely for Angel - was completely obsessed near the end of that season and started hunting spoilers online, visited websites at work, felt silly , taped the episodes, and did not tell anyone.
Closet obsession. Looking back? I think, what the fuck??? Course at the time was equally obsessed with the Jean Grey/Scott Summers romance in the Xmen. Another thing I've told no one until now. And had a weird yen for Vicky Bliss mysteries by Elizabeth Peters. Re-read one recently, and I get the Peters yen, don't get the other two at all.
Biases, obsessions...are they interelated? Hmm. I've learned the term "cognitive miser" recently. What it means is mental short-cut, or someone who thinks conservatively or relies on mental short-cuts or stereotypes, categories. An example - "Rosaria is tempermental and very confrontational.."
Response:" Isn't she Italian? Italians are tempermental and confrontational..." Or : "Alberto got a full scholarship to NYU." "Alberto is Spainish and an Immigrant and that's why he did, they always give those people scholarships because of Affirmative Action." Or..."People who want control...Men are like that.." or "I get Anti-Semitism now, it's the tall poppy syndrom, whenever someone says I'm chosen or better, others want to kick them." Or "Harry Potter is exactly like Star Wars, has the same story framework, that's why people like it..." (actually all stories are based on four or five basic tropes, what makes them interesting is the characters, universe and things people add to them, the basic plot is not the creative part - that's why a basic, sketch of a plot can't be copyrighted. Example - "the heroes journey" - see Buffy. Or the tragic hero? See Angel. Man vs. Organization - Firefly, X-files...so on and so forth. We tell the same stories over and over and over again.)We do it all the time. Every day. Every hour. In every single conversation. Every post. Make judgements based on our bias, based on the short-cut. It's how people think. And it's not necessarily predictable or consistent because biases can change as can prejudices, they aren't constant. Someone said in class that one of the best tv shows that depicted the inherent biases in people was "All in The Family", would agree.
Almost picked up a book today entitled The Race Myth - it's about how race or the color of someone's skin, the width of their nose, their hair color, their weight has absolutely nothing to do with personality or intellect or behavior. But we believe it does. And why we do and why our thinking is completely unfounded on science or anything remotely rationale. But this thinking is ingrained. In class the teacher spoke of internalized homophobia - the person who is homosexual but hates themselves - an issue hit briefly on in one of the episodes of Season 2 The L Word and one I experienced personally with a friend of mine in college - who hated herself because she was gay. I've known people who felt shame and frustration because of their race, felt that if it weren't for that one little thing they would be a member of the "group".
Mentioned in class this week the quote by the Secretary of Education about how the crime rate would be reduced if we aborted black babies and how morally reprehenisible that is and we'd never do it, but it still would reduce the crime rate. People in class asked the same questions that people online and my friend Wales did - at the time the quote happened. First they were shocked that someone in government, with an education would think such a thing, then they tried to rationalize how that biasis came about. What caused that thinking. And other examples started to get thrown about - such as the distinguished Harvard Professor of Mathmatics view that women were not as good at math as men, that genetically they just weren't designed for it in the same way, the brain was different. Yet there are women who succeeded in mathematics that disprove this, how can he believe it? Well, according to Eliot Aronson - what people do is "subtype" - they convince themselves that while this is probably true is a rare exception to the stereotype. Or they respond to the counterstereotyping by mentally creating a new category to place the person or persons in. Lableing the exception as the "exception that proves the rule." Oh and he goes on to define "stereotype" which is to assign identical characteristics to any person in a group, regardless of the actual variation among members of that group. And we learn how to assign identical characteristics at very young ages - ie. "who is popular, who is atheletic, who is smart, etc..." Stereotyping by itself isn't an intentional act of abuse - according to Aronson and I'd agree, rather it is the we have of simplifying our view of the world and making decisions. We all do it. Read the reviews of A History of Violence and see how people stereotype Americans and the American sensibility. Or how about what is happening in France right now? Or how about the reaction people had when they discovered Tim Minear, a favorite writer was a Republican. No, wait, I'm confusing definitions here - that's not just stereotyping, stereotyping is not all that different than categorizing in of itself, no when an negative reaction is assigned - that becomes "prejudice" and when we act on our prejudices, that becomes discrimination.
"prejudice" is defined a hostile or negative attitude toward a distinguishable group based on generalizations derived from faulty or incomplete information. Based on that definition, I can safely say that everyone I've ever met is prejudiced. And believes they are justified in that prejudice to some extent. (ex. Wales recently told me she was prejudiced against fundamentalist Christians.)
There was a study done a while back on sports uniforms. They discovered that teams with "black" uniforms recieved more fouls and were reprimanded more by referres than teams with light colored or white uniforms. The referees did two things here - they stereotyped, subconsiciously the uniforms, then discriminated based on their prejudice regarding the stereotype.
Tonight while watching The L Word I noticed a few interesting things - how women deal with men. How we assume as women that men do not know what it is like to be intruded upon or violated or fucked with. That they have it easier. They don't by the way. Just different. One of the perks of having a younger brother who is just three years younger - is you do get to see the other side of the equation. Women aren't the only ones who go through hell. But we think we do, because hey, we aren't men. We can't imagine what it is like to be a man and the men are in control - they have the physical and monetary power in our society. They are "in-group" and we are the "out-group" and the out-group always gets defensive about the in-group or the group in power. And the in-group always feels threatened by the out-group taking that power away from them. Was discussing power with a friend last night, and realized all relationships are about power. Heck posting on lj is about jockeying for power - how many friends do I have, how many people read me, am I more interesting or less interesting? We engage or disengage - and each choice we make has a weight behind it. Who makes the biggest compromise? Just going out to a restaurant or picking a movie - can be a power-play between two people. Or a conversation.
That said, one character's comment got me thinking - she said: " Every woman has been at some point intruded upon or violated by a man no matter how benign it might seem." I started thinking back and realized yep.
That was true. And yep, power games. It's about power. In school, I was taller than the boys and ruthlessly teased by them. I think one of the reasons I despise skirts and find them uncomfortable is at an early age I learned I could not play in them without risking some boy pulling it up or looking beneath and teasing/embarrassing me. Can almost hear the reader's response - boys will be boys or everyone does that, people get past that. But do they? And having a younger brother - I know he was teased in other ways, got in fights here and there, etc. We both left high school with huge chips on our shoulders. We both felt at times violated and intruded upon by the opposite sex. And by our own. Women can be as nasty as men. Just different.
I think what it comes down to is who has the power in any given situation. Or rather the most power and it's not always the person you think. In the L Word one of the most powerful characters appears to be the weakest: Tina and Jenny. Why? They make the choices that affect other characters. Shane and Bette who appear to have power, actually have none. They are weak, they've given it away. Same with BTVS. Spike and Angel are actually powerless when it comes to Buffy, Buffy has the power in her relationships - which is why Spike attempted to rape her as a soulless vampire and Angelus tried to rape/kill/maim/destroy her world and friends. Why? Buffy had the power and they had none. They were at her whim. Or rather felt that way. Power...ugh. I hate it sometimes.
Damn 1 am. And got up at 7am. Tired. Must sleep.
End of brain download. Make of it what you will...
Told a friend the other night that the only time I turn it off is when I'm focused on creating something artistic - whether it be a watercolor, a painting, a drawing, a bowl in pottery class, a story, what have you.
That's when the mind quiets. I sit at the wheel molding clay, feeling it slip and slide between my fingers. I press it into shape, my body curled over the wheel, elbows on knees, palms caressing the mud, fingers lightly pressing, capturing, molding, shaping. When I'm in the zone, I hear nothing, see nothing, but the clay, the shape, the slide of clay. Nothing exists outside of it, nothing but an aura of negative space. Than jarred, I snap out of the zone, hear the conversations buzzing, see the other wheels, the other potters and my piece looks odd to my eyes alien and I wonder vaguely where I've been and how did it turn out much better than expected. How did I do that??? Also whatever will I do with it. It's not the end product that exhilirates so much as the process of creating it. They say there are those who love the process and there are those who love the product. For years I thought, I was more interested in the product, recently I've realized I could care less about the end result - it's the creation or the journey involved that gives me the high - that puts my demons to rest.
Speaking of demons...
As you may have gathered by now, I'm hyper-critical of myself and highly analytical - hence the critical. This next bit will seem a tad jagged and disconnected. My thoughts are running on multiple tracks tonight, out of sequence, bumping into one another like drunken blind men.
Most of this week been a bit hyper-aware of biases, my own and others. Seeing all of them, no matter how benign or seemingly harmless. As if they are pimples and freckles and postules sticking out on people's noses. Aware that we all are, whether or not we admit it, members of "in-groups" and "out-groups" and often base our opinions on others on which group they appear to be a member of when we encounter them. In the class that I'm auditing this week, the professor stated that she did not believe there was such a thing as truth or rather that we could not find it, since we see everthing through a veil of our own biases, some so ingrained in our make-up that we are not conscious of them, cannot see them. Only catching them when they accidentally slip out in casual conversation, if then.
The film Crash while heavily flawed, is an excellent examination of bias, how everyone has them and how people reacte to one another - creating rather destructive situations - based on them - literally crashing into each other's assumptions. [I saw the film this week - which is a story about a bunch of seemingly unconnected people in LA after 9/11 who bump into each other and change one another's lives - emphasizing their racial prejudices and how those prejudices and assumptions affect their behavior in situations and how depending on the situation they can do horrible or wonderful things, partly due to those prejudices or in spite of them.)
You biasis on fan boards all the time. Fans are very biased, more so than a casual viewer actually. You can see it in how people's views of a tv show are so contradictory, you wonder if they are watching the same one. They are - it's just that each person is watching it through their own shield of prejudice, their own past hurts, their own up-bringing, things you can't dismiss or ignore or forget. I was reading some posts on Veronica Mars for instance that confused me because the episode people were reviewing - it wasn't this week's, I watch it on Sunday's so a week behind, was not what I saw on the screen. Reading the posts carefully - I saw the biases, the wants, the desires of the individual poster. It reminded me of what I saw on fan boards and fan fic during Buffy and Angel's run. And how important it was for everyone that they were right. And how defensive people got when someone said they weren't, myself included. If you made the mistake of pointing out that perhaps they were biased - they'd retort, so are you. I'm not sure you can see a story clearly when you are obsessed with it - because the thing about the story that obsesses you will overshadow everything else, also obsessions often are short lived, or momentary, so it is more than likely, years later you'll revisit it and wonder what the fuck? I know I did when I revisited a few obsessions from my youth - Kimba, Robin Hood (the animated Disney Version), Batman (the cheesy tv series), The Monkees, Battle of the Planets, BattleStar Galatica (original version), and Star Wars. What was it in each of these obsessions that gripped me? I think I know - it was a character - a vulnerability, a sense of adventure, maybe? Then again maybe I don't know. I look at the first three seasons of BTVS and wonder vaguely - why did I get so obsessed with Angel for a while? I did by the way, was watching it in S2 almost purely for Angel - was completely obsessed near the end of that season and started hunting spoilers online, visited websites at work, felt silly , taped the episodes, and did not tell anyone.
Closet obsession. Looking back? I think, what the fuck??? Course at the time was equally obsessed with the Jean Grey/Scott Summers romance in the Xmen. Another thing I've told no one until now. And had a weird yen for Vicky Bliss mysteries by Elizabeth Peters. Re-read one recently, and I get the Peters yen, don't get the other two at all.
Biases, obsessions...are they interelated? Hmm. I've learned the term "cognitive miser" recently. What it means is mental short-cut, or someone who thinks conservatively or relies on mental short-cuts or stereotypes, categories. An example - "Rosaria is tempermental and very confrontational.."
Response:" Isn't she Italian? Italians are tempermental and confrontational..." Or : "Alberto got a full scholarship to NYU." "Alberto is Spainish and an Immigrant and that's why he did, they always give those people scholarships because of Affirmative Action." Or..."People who want control...Men are like that.." or "I get Anti-Semitism now, it's the tall poppy syndrom, whenever someone says I'm chosen or better, others want to kick them." Or "Harry Potter is exactly like Star Wars, has the same story framework, that's why people like it..." (actually all stories are based on four or five basic tropes, what makes them interesting is the characters, universe and things people add to them, the basic plot is not the creative part - that's why a basic, sketch of a plot can't be copyrighted. Example - "the heroes journey" - see Buffy. Or the tragic hero? See Angel. Man vs. Organization - Firefly, X-files...so on and so forth. We tell the same stories over and over and over again.)We do it all the time. Every day. Every hour. In every single conversation. Every post. Make judgements based on our bias, based on the short-cut. It's how people think. And it's not necessarily predictable or consistent because biases can change as can prejudices, they aren't constant. Someone said in class that one of the best tv shows that depicted the inherent biases in people was "All in The Family", would agree.
Almost picked up a book today entitled The Race Myth - it's about how race or the color of someone's skin, the width of their nose, their hair color, their weight has absolutely nothing to do with personality or intellect or behavior. But we believe it does. And why we do and why our thinking is completely unfounded on science or anything remotely rationale. But this thinking is ingrained. In class the teacher spoke of internalized homophobia - the person who is homosexual but hates themselves - an issue hit briefly on in one of the episodes of Season 2 The L Word and one I experienced personally with a friend of mine in college - who hated herself because she was gay. I've known people who felt shame and frustration because of their race, felt that if it weren't for that one little thing they would be a member of the "group".
Mentioned in class this week the quote by the Secretary of Education about how the crime rate would be reduced if we aborted black babies and how morally reprehenisible that is and we'd never do it, but it still would reduce the crime rate. People in class asked the same questions that people online and my friend Wales did - at the time the quote happened. First they were shocked that someone in government, with an education would think such a thing, then they tried to rationalize how that biasis came about. What caused that thinking. And other examples started to get thrown about - such as the distinguished Harvard Professor of Mathmatics view that women were not as good at math as men, that genetically they just weren't designed for it in the same way, the brain was different. Yet there are women who succeeded in mathematics that disprove this, how can he believe it? Well, according to Eliot Aronson - what people do is "subtype" - they convince themselves that while this is probably true is a rare exception to the stereotype. Or they respond to the counterstereotyping by mentally creating a new category to place the person or persons in. Lableing the exception as the "exception that proves the rule." Oh and he goes on to define "stereotype" which is to assign identical characteristics to any person in a group, regardless of the actual variation among members of that group. And we learn how to assign identical characteristics at very young ages - ie. "who is popular, who is atheletic, who is smart, etc..." Stereotyping by itself isn't an intentional act of abuse - according to Aronson and I'd agree, rather it is the we have of simplifying our view of the world and making decisions. We all do it. Read the reviews of A History of Violence and see how people stereotype Americans and the American sensibility. Or how about what is happening in France right now? Or how about the reaction people had when they discovered Tim Minear, a favorite writer was a Republican. No, wait, I'm confusing definitions here - that's not just stereotyping, stereotyping is not all that different than categorizing in of itself, no when an negative reaction is assigned - that becomes "prejudice" and when we act on our prejudices, that becomes discrimination.
"prejudice" is defined a hostile or negative attitude toward a distinguishable group based on generalizations derived from faulty or incomplete information. Based on that definition, I can safely say that everyone I've ever met is prejudiced. And believes they are justified in that prejudice to some extent. (ex. Wales recently told me she was prejudiced against fundamentalist Christians.)
There was a study done a while back on sports uniforms. They discovered that teams with "black" uniforms recieved more fouls and were reprimanded more by referres than teams with light colored or white uniforms. The referees did two things here - they stereotyped, subconsiciously the uniforms, then discriminated based on their prejudice regarding the stereotype.
Tonight while watching The L Word I noticed a few interesting things - how women deal with men. How we assume as women that men do not know what it is like to be intruded upon or violated or fucked with. That they have it easier. They don't by the way. Just different. One of the perks of having a younger brother who is just three years younger - is you do get to see the other side of the equation. Women aren't the only ones who go through hell. But we think we do, because hey, we aren't men. We can't imagine what it is like to be a man and the men are in control - they have the physical and monetary power in our society. They are "in-group" and we are the "out-group" and the out-group always gets defensive about the in-group or the group in power. And the in-group always feels threatened by the out-group taking that power away from them. Was discussing power with a friend last night, and realized all relationships are about power. Heck posting on lj is about jockeying for power - how many friends do I have, how many people read me, am I more interesting or less interesting? We engage or disengage - and each choice we make has a weight behind it. Who makes the biggest compromise? Just going out to a restaurant or picking a movie - can be a power-play between two people. Or a conversation.
That said, one character's comment got me thinking - she said: " Every woman has been at some point intruded upon or violated by a man no matter how benign it might seem." I started thinking back and realized yep.
That was true. And yep, power games. It's about power. In school, I was taller than the boys and ruthlessly teased by them. I think one of the reasons I despise skirts and find them uncomfortable is at an early age I learned I could not play in them without risking some boy pulling it up or looking beneath and teasing/embarrassing me. Can almost hear the reader's response - boys will be boys or everyone does that, people get past that. But do they? And having a younger brother - I know he was teased in other ways, got in fights here and there, etc. We both left high school with huge chips on our shoulders. We both felt at times violated and intruded upon by the opposite sex. And by our own. Women can be as nasty as men. Just different.
I think what it comes down to is who has the power in any given situation. Or rather the most power and it's not always the person you think. In the L Word one of the most powerful characters appears to be the weakest: Tina and Jenny. Why? They make the choices that affect other characters. Shane and Bette who appear to have power, actually have none. They are weak, they've given it away. Same with BTVS. Spike and Angel are actually powerless when it comes to Buffy, Buffy has the power in her relationships - which is why Spike attempted to rape her as a soulless vampire and Angelus tried to rape/kill/maim/destroy her world and friends. Why? Buffy had the power and they had none. They were at her whim. Or rather felt that way. Power...ugh. I hate it sometimes.
Damn 1 am. And got up at 7am. Tired. Must sleep.
End of brain download. Make of it what you will...
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no subject
Date: 2005-11-13 06:43 pm (UTC)Made me realize I can't judge people by their biases or their politics or their religion. Every time I try, they do something contradictory to my expectations. For that - I'm incredibly lucky.
Don't recall Plato's sense of it - although could look up, but no time. I think what she was saying wasn't that there isn't "truth" per se, but that humans being cognitive misers are incapable of seeing it.
That I agree with. To see truth, we'd have to first let go of every biasis including those we aren't aware of.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-13 07:41 pm (UTC)Plato's conception of Truth was really his conception of God, that which transcends life and is the perfect 'Good'. Of course he wouldn't have used the word 'truth' for the changing trivialities of the world, but instead only for the unchanging and infinite.
so when your professor says: "that she did not believe there was such a thing as truth or rather that we could not find it, since we see everthing through a veil of our own biases". I was thinking that she meant this deeper, more universal truth. Plato would have said that it can be found in logic, and in a mystical practice of mathematics which was like a form of meditation and mental discipline...which I guess isn't that different from your professor's statement, that one would need something to take oneself out of the personal biases and to a broader view of life.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-14 01:11 am (UTC)Can we say Plato knew truth or that his own desires, experiences, wants and needs defined it?
Not sure..
We are trained to think beyond the information given, to use logic to deduce an answer that is not provided and assume that our deduction is the correct one. The "truth". But what if the logic that takes us there is flawed? What if it is influenced by bias? Then the truth is in a way distorted? Don't know may be overthinking it.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-14 03:35 am (UTC)It seems to me that bias, by definition is a limitation of thinking and the material world, and that Plato's conception of 'Truth' exists only on the level of consciousness (abstract, not material). If that makes any sense.
But of course my bias is to believe Plato to be above bias (LOL).
no subject
Date: 2005-11-14 01:23 pm (UTC)Course my own biases figure into that. I find it interesting though that American public schools and basic philosophy courses teach mainly Plato, Socrates, Aristotle and a smattering of Lock, but not many of the others. I noticed that in my own education. In which case we are taught to buy Plato's view of truth - that is ingrained in us. How would we think if the view we were taught were say another philosopher's such as Focault or Confucious or one of the Eastern philosophers? Our mind set to a degree is formed by our education.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-14 03:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-14 05:41 pm (UTC)Hee. You just proved something that I learned in social psych class and have been reading about. The tendency to inaccurately conclude something from one mention of it. Example: I said Plato had problems with women and that may have affected his philosophy. Then stated Plato had a huge effect on Western Culture and we haven't studied the other philosophers as much. Then wondered what we'd think if we studied Confucisious or someone else.
No where in that did I imply or state that I thought they'd feel differently about women. Just that we may have a different outlook.
But because I mentioned in the first portion of the paragraph that Plato had problems with women - you jumped to the conclusion that this is what I thought - possibly because your own bias highlights that one phrase and saw it as the theme of the paragraph?
It's fascinating how we think. In class the teacher gave each student a different test question to read and answer - leading us to believe we were given the same one, and it was the same, except for the first three sentences. Without exception - every student in the class's interpretation of the statement was based on what they read in that first sentence - it colored their view of the rest. They read everything after that with that bias in mind.
You did exactly the same thing here. And so does everyone on the net.
We watch TV the same way - we don't see the entire story, just the bits that leap out at us and conclude things based on those bits - which will leap out due to our bias. Plus it is how we were taught to reason in school - if the first sentence says this - then everything afterwards is arguement supporting the first sentence. But that is not always true - particularly in how some of us write on the net - stream of consciousness hodgepodge. I know I'll often throw out many things.
So you cannot draw the conclusion that I think Confucious etc don't have bad views towards women, just because I think their views are different from Platos, and I think Plato felt negatively towards women.
I see how you came to that conclusion, but the way you did it contained a flaw in deduction - what you did was read beyond the information given. You made an assumption instead of reading what was on the page at face value, which of course we are taught to do, it's natural, it helps us but it can also lead to dangerous prejudices - it's that type of reasoning that lead the Sec of Education to make the statement he did about blacks - he read beyond the data given and jumped to a conclusion.