Women of the world, take over

[IanEye]

wow, it looks like I missed a crazy back and forth volley here on this RI thread. Ironically, I was away visiting my old hometown to celebrate my mom's 60th birthday.

We all had a great time.

[snark]I'll have to check out the whole thread later though, because now i have to watch Katie Couric give Valerie Plame the grilling of her life!![/snark]

[velvetrut]

http://www.vday.org/contents/vday/vmoments/070926

Break it down.




velvet_rut

[blanc]

women of the world take over this thread:the world
sorry Jeff, the guys made a mess of it, this time its up to them to clean up

[FourthBase]

women of the world take over this thread:the world
sorry Jeff, the guys made a mess of it, this time its up to them to clean up

This thread's been salvaged, I think. I hope.

[populistindependent]

theeKultleeder - People knew what time it was because the church bells signaled "time to take a break from cultivating my Lord's land to kneel down and submit."

me - Catholicism persisted before, during and after feudalism without any changes.


theeKultleeder - Precisely

Not getting the connection between church bells and indentured servitude, then.

[populistindependent]

Oh, sure. Cooperative agrarian cultures - but "feminism" arose out of post WWII culture, so that is where we are now.

And we should be careful of relying on the glories of the past. If you were/are a woman, I very much doubt you would want your marriage arranged or to be treated and traded as chattel.

Suburbanization did not free women from being treated and traded as chattel, nor from arranged marriages.

If feminism rose out of post WWII American suburban culture - very different and unique in history in many ways, especially for women - and if "that is where we are now" then we should see feminism as a reaction to (or more likely a component of) the modern suburbanization phenomenon and not romanticize it as a struggle for the ages against centuries-old forces.

It would be dangerous and misleading to base broad and sweeping generalizations and theories about the human condition and human societies from an unexamined and unacknowledged point of view—that of modern American upper class white suburbia and academia. Since this demographic is intimately interwoven with power and privilege in this country, and we are at a unique and dangerous juncture in human history, we run a grave risk of basing all of our ideas about gender on seriously flawed and corrupted premises.

I would say that it is as important to look at the larger social and economic context within which feminism rose as it is to look at feminism itself. It is especially odd to place modern feminism into a historical context of thousands of years, yet refuse to put it into the context of American society over the last 50 years.

No one is suggesting "relying on the glories of the past." I cautioned against relying on the presumed glories of modern times. It does not have to be all one or all the other.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Are there hidden agendas behind modern liberalism, and is that a source for much of the confusion?

I have been debating with people about gun control and organic, among other issues, in recent days on various boards. I have argued that in each case we need to look at whether or not the advocacy of the positions can actually achieve the purported goals. Can the organic movement actually achieve the goals of safer food and improved sustainability? Has it?

Who knows, it definitely tastes better tho.

Can the gun control movement actually achieve the goal of less gun violence? Has it?

Unlikely.

Worse yet, beyond the undeniable fact that the methods are not working to advance the alleged causes, in case after case the wealthy and powerful – the perpetrators – skate and are untouched by the movement, or are even able to successfully co-opt it, while the working class stiff is left to bear the brunt of liberal wrath.

Yeah definitlely.

What I am running into is a deep resistance on the part of liberals to critical consideration of liberal causes as methods and examinination of their relative effectiveness at reaching the purported goals. The methods – the tactics and strategies – are defended as though they were the goals, or as though criticizing them were tantamount to attacking the underlying principles and ideals. For example, all who are opposed to the slaughter of innocent children by madmen must then therefore be in favor of gun control and support the gun control movement and anything it proposes, and those who are not in favor of gun control are then presumed to be in favor of the slaughter of innocent children by madmen. All those opposed to people being poisoned and the environment being destroyed must therefore support the organic movement, and all those not supporting the organic movement are therefore presumed to be in favor of people being poisoned and the environment being destroyed. The ends and the means are to be seen as one and the same. One means, and only one means is to be considered. All those objecting in any way to the means being employed is subject to being smeared as the enemy of all that is right and good in the world.

Modern people have a curious inability to see themselves as causative agents in a world where objective reality can be recognized and analyzed and they increasingly rely on a sort of second hand activism of “think positive” mysticism – “visualizing results” and “changing their mantras” and “being the change they wish to see.” In other words, if a person has the “right” spiritual stance in the world, that will mysteriously produce desired results.

Afain I agree. But I wouldn't blame the spirituality itself. Its the lazy application of the spirituality as an excuse for inaction rather than anything in and of itself. Those sorts of spirituality are supposed to teach rejection of desire, not action. They are supposed to teach action without lust of result for the purpose of generating more effective action. Not sitting on your arse gazing at your navel.

"The only way to change the world is to change yourself" we are told.

Perhaps that should actually be something those people take to heart. Change themselves and they might get something done.

Much of liberal advocacy is couched in the language of mysticism, by the way, and mysticism is inherently anti-democratic: only the few achieve enlightenment and the many must rely on the guru or wise one to interpret truth for them and so settle for second-hand wisdom. It also requires arcane and specialized training or gifts that are not available to all.

Rubbish. Enlightenment is available to everyone and ultimately means sweet FA anyway. Only unenlightened people hold it up as something special.

Why might there be so much resistance to critical analysis of the methods and approaches – the tactics and strategies – used ti promote the liberal causes? Why are the methods defended as though they were the causes themselves rather than merely means to an end?

Cos its a lifestyle choice, not an imperative driven by an actual need. If something was on the line for those people then what you say is absent wouldn't be. IE If it mattered then teffective tactics and strategies would be sought after and current ones subject to a full on critical evaluation to see what worked and what didn't.

There is one very simple and obvious explanation. If there were a hidden agenda – if the purported goals were not the goals at all – then critical investigation and discussion about the methods would reveal the hidden agenda. What are the hidden agendas? Attacks on working class men, under the guise of feminism, attacks on farming and other traditional community activities in which men have meaningful roles under the guise of organic and environmentalism, attacks on the working class under the guise of gun control, and at all times promotion of the interests of the ruling class.

Its a bit uncomfortable to admit you might be right there, tho you are definitely right with those last 12 words. Personally I think those things you claim are attacks are also valid. However they way they are often used does disempoer men. Well the ones that aren't up to the challenge anyway.

New Age pseudo-Asian mysticism is the perfect context for these attacks, since it makes people turn inward and ignore objective external reality while it separates and divides us and taps us all in isolated Hells of personal experience and encourages blaming people for their circumstances, makes the goal posts easy to move should the working class start catching on to the scam, and creates power positions for supposed mystical gurus – enlightened ones to keep the flock in line through ridicule and bullying.

The main problem, as said before, is the focus inward without any outward ... thats like wayyyy to much Yin and not enough Yang. (BTW Yin means absorbtion, softness, acceptance, breathing in, not anything to do wiith feminity. Yang is the opposite and more like breathing out, not anything to do with masculinity. It says more about people cultures and systems thats it interpreted that way.)

The post:

Let's take a sober look at the issue of gender equality in modern American society. We have every working stiff male half driven to distraction about what he says, what he does, what he thinks, lest he fail to be ever vigilant at rooting out every last vestige of the dreaded “sexism” virus.

Is that really the case tho. It isn't with most of the blokes I know. Certainly isn't with me. Might be different in the US tho. or in cities.

We have the erosion of the traditional male identity as sole bread winner.

In really traditional societies, indigenous ones, both genders are "bread winners" even in many farming communities. The sole bread winner bullshit is an attempt to invoke the "man the hunter image" in some heroic way. I am pretty comfortable in my traditional oe not, male identity, but don't ask me to define it.

None of that is meant to deny the abuse and discrimination faced by women, anymore than saying that working class whites are exploited is a denial of the existence of racism. Rather, it is to say that class warfare – an assault on the working class – lurks behind feminism and drives it and informs it and controls it. This shouldn't shock us or come as any surprise at all. The complete aversion over the last 30 years that liberals have for any hint of class analysis necessarily and inevitably leads to ruling class agendas permeating and dominating liberalism. Class warfare doesn't disappear because you ignore it, and all of the liberal causes are carefully tailored to function as ersatz substitutes for class analysis. “It isn't the wealthy and powerful who are exploiting you, it is your working class boyfriend and yahoos like him.” There is presumed to be something about maleness that is evil and not to be trusted.

Funny that working class males often support the right wing too. Unlike 70 years ago (in Oz at least) where they were proudly working class, unionist and in it all together.

Oh you noticed.

They see what the smart people, blinded by their own arrogance and intoxicated with the intricacies of their own convoluted arguments, and bought off with status and prestige and trinkets, stubbornly refuse to see.

BTW My old girl (mum) is not exactly a feminist, tho she would be the sort of person feminists look up to. She did her own thing (first women to get a PHD in science at her Uni, back in the 60s in Tasmania, which was still in the 20s in the 60s, and the first white woman to marry a black man, at least openly and in full view of society. It happened in Tassie, but never got acknowledged.)

Tho lots of men treat women like shit, it doesn't seem to be limited to the working class.

And what is it that working class women now have the freedom to do? Cast off their working class partners, and make themselves available to potential ruling class partners in the giant harem known as corporate suburbia.

For the most part ruling class families, marriages and relationships are stable and working class families, marriages and relationships are floundering and in disarray, with much attendant suffering.

While I agree with everything you said above, and before that, it doesn't actually fit with my experience. Most families marriages and relationships i know of are based on something that keeps them together, as much working class (dunno that many ruling class) or underclass as anything.

Organic? A spectacular windfall profit making opportunity for the ruling class, while working class farmers are placed under suspicion and attacked.

How so? Every organic farmer I know is not ruling class, but something about the fact that they have lower overheads, less money spent on ferts and pesticides, contributes to them making money. What happens after they sell their produce doesn't take away from the fact that they spend less in monetary terms than "traditional" (as in traditional oil age) farmers, and as a result get more cash back. (Mind you they also work harder, well not actually harder, but use smaller plots and are more labour intensive on them. Every farmer I know works bloody hard.)

The means have become more important than the ends, and the means will never achieve the ends.

Corporate agri business sucks, and destroys lives. No question at all. Agri business run by people (organic or not) are nowhere near as bad.

Why would that be? The ruling class wants the women, can use the women, and does not want the men. That isn't progress for women.

First you get the money, then you get the power...

Men throughout history and in every culture, also thrive on danger and adventure, while women are more pragmatic and security oriented. Men were dominant in what could be called the “foreign affairs” of the family and the village, while women were dominant in the domestic affairs.

I think the priginal premise of this tread is that perhaps we need to have women running things primarily because the world has become a domesticated place, a global village, and all that other stuff. I am communicating in almost real time with the other side of the world, this is not the situation that male aggro was evolved for. It was evolved for for travelling there (the other side of the world), beating the crap out of you and taking your stuff, or maybe resisting someone else trying to do that to me.

I dunno if that was your point tho..

In modern society, the women are freed from the curse of bearing children, while the men are not free from the expectation to be a protector and a bread winner. In fact, the relative worth and value of modern men is judged more than ever on how materially successful he is. It has become almost a case of men being judged solely on their material success. Men are also still expected to do the dangerous and unpleasant tasks as they arise. Yet the ability of men to perform these roles in undermined and sabotaged at every turn, subject to ridicule and suspicion, and the opportunities to succeed more and more restricted and suppressed.

Not if you play footy and fight bushfires.

I see it on the farm. The young men want to stay, they want to farm. But the young women want to go off to college and move into corporate jobs and live in suburbia. Yet it is one in a hundred of these women who can express any career goal, any mission, any burning desire to a career. They are seeking “better” husbands, and the men are forced to follow and abandon the farm, go to work in some cubicle for some corporation, and try to become Alan Alda – neutered, tamed, gentrified, feminized. This is a function of the de-valuing and destruction of traditional male occupations, ...

While there might be some truth in this, specifically the leaving bit, I find it hard to credit that every woman that 'leaves" does so to find a better husband. There is more to this than your analysis. Women, like many men are sold the idea that there is "something more" to life, and it ain't on farms...

However that serves the ruling class agenda as well as anything else.

BTW spot on about black communities too.

Why does modern liberalism call upon us to turn inward in search of “bad” things that are supposedly deeply rooted somewhere in our make-up, so we can “improve ourselves?”

er, cos its actually there.

Why are we to look into the heart and psyche of the poor working class people to find the “roots” of our social problems, which we are then to attack by conjuring up various New Age spirits to help us against the evil that lurks within, in pursuit of mystical personal enlightenment, which is then postulated as not only the best, but the only way to approach social problems?

Its called bait and switch, if we looked at the real problems then the "ruling class" would be in shit.

Ever heard of Stanford Research Institute and "Changing Images of Man"?

Thanks for a thought provoking post.

Quote:
My main point is that we need to be alert to the very strong tendency to look at everything through a modern and decidedly upscale social filter.


Then your main point is outstanding

You should have left that in too.

Also much of modern culture is imposed by the ruling class, especially mainstream modern culture...

[Stephen Morgan]

In theme, some powerful remarks on the global shame of the state of women's rights by Stephen Lewis, at his final address as the UN's Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, Toronto 2006.

Woman Is the Nigger of the World

Which points to the obvious rebuttal, the real niggers of the world: niggers, if you'll pardon the term.

From the now defunct Per's MANifesto:

---It was a nightmarish scene, one that all too many women are familiar
with. A woman was alone in an elevator. A young man got on. He lunged at
her. She screamed.
What actually happened in that elevator on a pleasant day in May is in
dispute. The man said he tripped and bumped the woman, and then grabbed her
when she started to fall.


Not everyone believes his version. And, as feminists say, "Why would she
lie?" And there were people who won't tolerate violence against women. Not
everyone is going to sit on the sidelines while the war on women rages. Not
everyone is going to tolerate the epidemic of violence against innocent
women who are afraid to walk the streets or even ride the elevators.


Women's advocates might be glad to know that this incident was not buried in
the back sections of the papers. In fact, it made the front page. There was
a stirring call to arms, a resounding cry of "no more."


The activists gathered to take back the night -- with guns and torches. The
woman was white, the young man was black. It was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in
1921, and the race riot that followed wiped out the prosperous black
business district known as Greenwood. Scores of people, perhaps even
hundreds, were killed. Greenwood looked like a war zone. More than 1,000
black-owned businesses and homes were burned to the ground. The National
Guard had to be called in. ("The Fire That Seared Into Tulsa's Memory: In
the Ruins of a Riot, A City Learned Tolerance," The Washington Post, May 30,
1996, page A1.)


And in the aftermath of this horrible tragedy, the woman declined to press
charges against the man. Today, most people in Tulsa they believe the young
man was telling the truth. But it's difficult to sort out the truth when
emotions run out of control and the front pages are screaming with scary
headlines about violence against women.


That's how it was in Tulsa. That's how it is in our nation today.


Emotions are at a fever pitch again, as partisan groups pump up the rhetoric
and whip up their followers with misleading statistics and broad
stereotypes. The violent reactions today are not as blatant and concentrated
as the riot in Tulsa. It's a quiet riot, spread out across the country,
involving a person's life ruined here, a person's life ended there -- a teen
named Eddie Polec beaten to death in Philadelphia, a young man named John
Baumgardner gunned down in Fairfax, Virginia, and the countless others who
have been fired, bankrupted, disgraced, ostracized, beaten or maimed because
of inaccurate accusations.


In the aftermath of the horrible riot, Tulsa learned tolerance. Whites
learned that they shouldn't judge other people too quickly.


There are some feminists who, hopefully, will learn the same lesson about men. ---

I don't really see any discrimination against women in non-Muslim countries in the world today, if I'm honest. With HIV/AIDs most of those with the disease are men. Headlines: "More Women becoming infected with HIV". I suppose I'm too attached to facts rather than blind bias.When more men than women were in university it was discrimination, now it's the other way around it's merit. I don't know which was right, but I dare say they're not both right.

Chaucer and his fellow archaics had a better idea about the morality of women than FourthBase there. It's only a victorian philosophical model that women are paradigms of virtue, one sadly detached from reality.

I agree that a peaceful revolution is impossible, but women are the key to only one door, the foorway to the devil, as Tertullian said. Women are more suggestible, due to their more left-brain nature. This makes them the ultimate tool of the conspiracy. This is why feminism has been so enthusiastically fostered by the elites. Women are more inclined to spend on material goods, especially vanity-products like make-up. Billions at stake. Women spend 90% of household wealth. Keep the people paralysed, distracted. Women are the key, certainly, but for them, not us.

And yes, Thatcher, Meir, Ghandi, Clinton...

As I say, Tories would have lost every 1945-79 election without female votes.

So much for "the whole". I suppose the minority in a democratic vote is "the whole".

Weininger, Dingwall and Bax all agree. Nazi, parapsychologist and socialist in harmony.

Of course rule by the masses would be better. Especially male masses, if I'm honest. Those not so far targeted by the advertisers, the co-opters. Those not university educated. So, mostly male.

Remember the thread about Hitler's love letters? I don't think Thatcher got any.

I need more time.

[AlicetheKurious]

Populistindependent, your post is a masterpiece of obfuscation and derailment: the simile about the bus is ironic, because it's an accurate representation of how every issue, no matter how simple and clear-cut, can be fogged up by pseudo-thoughtful sophistry.

Me, I'm an Occam's Rasor kind of gal. Whether it's class oppression or sexual or religious or tribal or even family, it all comes down to one simple thing: violence.

Violence is the ugly truth that is then sugar-coated with fancy rationalizations. These rationalizations then take on the gloss of given truths. Like the French "mission civilisatrice" or the British "White Man's Burden" that predicated the "advanced" civilisations' duty to elevate the "savages" for their own good, never mind that this entailed raping and killing and torture and stealing. The savages weren't "convinced" by reasoned argument, but at the end of a bayonet.

The workers' unions, the civil rights leaders, the peace advocates are and have been met with tanks, billy clubs, dogs and bullets. When millions of women are battered, raped, forced into prostitution and financially dependent on men, it makes no sense to discuss whether "feminism" represents the major threat to the family, or to "working-class men".

(Yeah, feminism is a sneaky weapon by the ruling-class to deprive working-class men of their women, so that the ruling-class gets to take them instead.

Uh-huh.)

The fact is, we don't know what our world would look like without violence, actual or implied. More than any other single factor, violence has coloured and shaped every aspect of our existence, whether as individuals, males and females, workers and bosses, even our physical environment. To talk about oppression, whether sexual, class or racial, or to talk about the changes in our environment, without realizing that violence is the basis, is to spin one's wheels.

Behold the world that violence has made.

It's an increasingly ugly, dangerous world, and we are rational enough to notice that our own extinction is looming ever closer. As violence begets violence, the wheel is spinning faster and faster as we become more technologically advanced.

The question is therefore: in order to save ourselves from hurtling towards our own annihilation, is it possible to eliminate violence as the main factor in human evolution? If so, how?

I think we have some good models of what is possible. The trick is to apply these on a global scale.

Laws, enacted and enforced by agencies that are transparent and fully accountable to those who are subject to those laws, rather than to those with the bucks or the guns, is the only mechanism I can think of to change our course before it's too late.

Just think of the War on Terror.

During the Clinton years, public pressure was increasingly focused on the military-industrial complex, with people questioning why the US needed to budget around US$ 200 billion every year for military spending, when no other country even came close to that, whether in dollar value or as a percentage of GDP. The general opinion seemed to be that this public money could be far more usefully spent on health care, education, environmental protection and infrastructure projects.

A small number of people, on the contrary, viewed the then-current military budget as inadequate for the realization of their grandiose vision of utter control of global resources, most of which happen to be in the Middle East. They formed a group, named Project for a New American Century, which proposed that their plans could only be effected once a "new Pearl Harbor" shocked Americans into a re-evaluation of their needs away from such life-affirming projects as social, health, education, etc., to an even bigger and badder military.

Then, in a lucky break, shortly after the PNAC members got to the White House, the September 11 attacks were launched by 19 Arabs led by a cave-dwelling religious nut. In an incredible coincidence, the cave-dwelling religious nut happened to be in a country where a planned oil pipeline was going to be built, crucial to the PNAC's plans, if only the regime could be changed.

To cut a long story short, the US military budget was more than doubled, instead of being cut. US military bases sprang up all around Russia, China, Iran, and in the "stan" countries surrounding the Caspian oil fields.

As part of the War on Terror, all kinds of "Patriotic" laws were passed, as well as a new department, the Department of Homeland Security, and other mechanisms put in place to ensure that American public opinion stayed with the program. "Peace" became a dirty word, and "you're either with us or you're with the terrorists" became the mantra of the day. "Islamofascist" bogeymen took replaced enemies such as poverty, injustice, ignorance, environmental destruction, and the gradual elimination of democratic safeguards against tyranny. War, war and more war, with no end in sight. Etc., etc.

In other words, left to their own devices, the American people would most likely have demanded that the military budget be decreased in favour of life-affirming projects.

It took a traumatic blood-bath, lies splashed across headlines and blared from the teevee, suppression of rational questions and the incitement of a crazed jingoistic hysteria, to turn people away from their own needs and reason, and towards a cretinous president with a bulge in his uniform for "Leadership".

War is when men rule: women get pushed aside or crushed underfoot. The more violent or warlike a society is, the more power is likely to be monopolized by men. The only exception is pseudo-men women like Margaret "Iron Balls" Thatcher, or the character GI Jane who, in the film's defining moment, proclaiming her equality to her lieutenant (or whatever, I can't remember the details), first beats him up and then growls: "suck my dick." Or "Condi" Rice, with her empty womb, obscenely crowing that the senseless murder of dozens of defenseless women and children were "the birth-pangs of a new Middle East".

War is only the ultimate expression of violence, which is the natural enemy of woman. Except for the occasional abominations created by a male-dominated, violence-based system, women are neither physically nor mentally designed to physically intimidate or commit violence.

So, if violence is our problem, violence against humans, violence against nature, then women are indeed the answer.

[velvetrut]

http://www.amazon.com/Gate-Womens-Count ... 0553280643

I don't want to ruin the plot or ending, but Tepper proposes a sly and genius way of addressing War over several generations.

Tepper was head of Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood for a long time, in addition to being a prolific and fascinating novelist.

[FourthBase]

Chaucer and his fellow archaics had a better idea about the morality of women than FourthBase there. It's only a victorian philosophical model that women are paradigms of virtue, one sadly detached from reality.

Oh come on, do you think I'm talking about sexual morality? No.
I'm talking about basic fucking empathy and fairness.

I agree that a peaceful revolution is impossible

Then really, there's no place for you in this thread. Bugger off?

, but women are the key to only one door, the foorway to the devil, as Tertullian said. Women are more suggestible, due to their more left-brain nature. This makes them the ultimate tool of the conspiracy. This is why feminism has been so enthusiastically fostered by the elites.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
We should not have to deal with this tripe in this thread.

Women are more inclined to spend on material goods, especially vanity-products like make-up. Billions at stake. Women spend 90% of household wealth. Keep the people paralysed, distracted.

Finally something resembling a good point. Still wild hyperbole.

[blanc]

oh dear. I did pull back from this thread on first reading, uncomfortably close to the assertions that bad guys are the way they are because of Mom etc I thought. Now phoney stats like women spending 90 per cent of household wealth are being feted as halfway decent point.
anyone seriously doubt that our society is patriarchal, has been since (probably) neolithic period? most worrying trend in this patriarchal society is the viscious denigration of women through pornography, slavery and particularly the attack on childhood. it'll take all people of goodwill IMO to set us on a different course. not just the downtrodden sex.

[AlicetheKurious]

...women are the key to only one door, the foorway to the devil, as Tertullian said. Women are more suggestible, due to their more left-brain nature. This makes them the ultimate tool of the conspiracy. This is why feminism has been so enthusiastically fostered by the elites. ...

Women are more inclined to spend on material goods, especially vanity-products like make-up. Billions at stake. Women spend 90% of household wealth. Keep the people paralysed, distracted.

[Iroquois]

[FourthBase]

Now phoney stats like women spending 90 per cent of household wealth are being feted as halfway decent point.

I said...

Finally something resembling a good point. Still wild hyperbole.

Sorry, but relative to the other nonsense he wrote, it was the closest thing to a good point, and note that I called it wild hyperbole. But there is a valid point somewhere buried in the hyperbole, perhaps that like all forms of empowerment today, feminism has been co-opted by our corporate culture and re-cast as "consumer power"?

But yeah, Mr. Morgan is another example of why it'd be great to have an alternative to the anything-goes, trends-toward-extreme-disagreement general discussion board.