ending male violence

marxists are patriarchal anthropogenic assholes

2011-08-12T21:03:00.000-07:00

"Marx failed to appreciate that Man's freedom through labor and technology are made possible by the expropriation of a surplus from women and nonhuman nature" - Maria Mies

Moses Seenarine
marxists are patriarchal anthropogenic assholes
August 7

Heather
No we are not. Do not throw out the baby with the bathwater!

Alex
Ouch. That seems to me like an unhelpful emotion driven oversimplification. If there are Marxist tools to be utilized in dismantling the patriarchy why shouldn't feminists employ them?

Heather
Marxist theory is a foundation for a lot of real thinking and resistance. Billions on earth use it.

Jed
Marxism argues (from anthropological evidence) that patriarchy is the first class. Engels sees human life as both production and reproduction. In fact, I don't know what the hell Mies is talking about. If she wants to pretend that Marxism as a movement and philosophy hasn't made transcending the property-family (patriarchy) core to its mission — she is welcome to. But that's wrong in fact and in principle.

Allecto
I love Maria Mies. Is that Ecofeminism you are quoting from Moses?

Have you read Catharine MacKinnon's analysis of Marxism in Towards a Feminist Theory of the State? I found that quite useful in understanding why socialism and Marxism doesn't/didn't fit well with my feminist politics.

I know of no socialist or Marxist organisation in Australia that mobilise around sexual violence against women/prostitution/rape/incest/male terrorism in the home/pornography/degraded images of women in the media/the sexualisation of women and girls etc etc. The only socialist organisation in the world that I know of taking an active stand on *one* of these issues is the Scottish Socialist Party which has launched a campaign against prostitution. Women's liberation is not a priority under a socialist or Marxist activist framework. We are lucky if we even rate a mention. The only people who truly care about the state of women and girls under male supremacy are women-centred women (this category includes women who may identify as Marxist feminists) organising without men to end our oppression. Men would lose too much if we actually gained freedom. Marxist feminism is just a smokescreen.

Jed
‎"The only people who truly care about the state of women and girls... are women-centered women".

Lucky you, to be among the few who "truly care."

Alex
I participated in a fund raising event on Friday last for a local chapter of feminist prison abolitionists in advance of prison justice day and the main organizer and voice advocated working in a union shop on principle. Prison labor organizing was discussed at length in Q&A very positively and I can assure everyone there was not a petty bourgeois in sight. The focus of the event was women in prison, but it was clear from each presenter that solidarity with male prisoners' struggles was in order.

Heather
If the working class isn't together now this is bad. Women's Fightback Netrrok in the NY, FIRE,( Filipina group) and the May 1 Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Right (and others) s are participating in a protest against DSK. All of these are anti-imperialist and headed by Marxists who a the rapist/IMF monster DSK. The leaders are feminists and Marxists and vs. Let us figure out how to press forward our demands to end our exploitation and oppression without dividing the class any more than it is!

Aisha
this is really good. moses. thank you

Michael
a cursory glance at who all the major revolutionary figures in marxism are - starting with its namesake - tells the whole story (men, men, more men, and yet more men, excepting the very important but tokenised Rosa Luxemburg). some marxists seem to have improved now somewhat, which is great. but doubtlessly this is because of the ideological thrashing they've got from their radical feminist cousins in the past thirty years or so. radical feminism is a materialist philosophy after all, like marxism. i like most of radical feminism and marxism, but i'm personally not too convinced anymore by grand dialectics and class warfare. :p

anyway it seems a bit forced for marxists and radical feminists to be enemies, being philosophically so damn similar with the materialism and the dialectics and all. both feminism and marxism started the 20th century fiercely condemning religion and the family and both ended up coopted into defending them by the end of the century, both ended up with their moderate acceptable versions palatable to the powers that be (social democracy, liberal feminism). they've even been coopted in much the same way by the powers. even MacKinnon herself said at one point she's also sort of a marxist which incidentally, outside of the politics-as-identity crazed anglophone world... wouldn't surprise anyone. many radical feminists are also marxists and many marxists are also radical feminists, by their own admission *gasp*! i know. earth shattering. there actually isn't any rule of physics that says you can't be both. that norwegian nutter ranted and raved about "cultural marxists/radical feminists" in the same breath... we are all the same general sort of thing to him. :p

and speaking of him... prison abolitionism?? i've never been able to wrap my head around that. can i ask what is the plan for rapists and murderers currently in prison when prisons are abolished? what are you proposing as a replacement? and what would prison abolitionists have us do with breivik who's already going to be doing a stint of 20 odd years in a hotel (if we're lucky) before being unleashed again? it's an honest question.

Alex
It's a loaded question. Answer it yourself.

Michael
how is it a loaded question? if you actually want to convince people to abolish prisons it's a question you'd better be willing and able to answer because it's the question that's going to be asked.

Kellum
in a general sense. youre right moses. i know plenty of socialists and marxists (self proclaimed) who are anti-women. every once in a while they will say something pro-woman or get behind a teeny tiny movement, but it seems half hearted and only when its in their best interest to APPEAR feminist. many times they actually think they are feminist, but their actions say otherwise. i once dated a socialist who, after i merely inquired as to his source for a long forgotten claim, told me i needed to listen to him b/c he was the man. i know he isnt an example for everyone, but ive noticed is is far from being alone. but at the same time, i dont agree with many things in the feminist movement either. and im staunchly feminist.

Max
There are many streams of women's movements, how could it be otherwise for such a huge international liberation movement. Personally i do not use the label marxist because however right he was about the oppression of workers (leaving out, of course, how it all impacted women) and the economics that drives politics, he made a live-in servant into his concubine right in his wife's face, the wife that struggled to manage a household with all the children he engendered without enough income. "In fact, I don't know what the hell Mies is talking about." No, you don't. First, her critique of Marx's failure to integrate women into his analysis (something he and more so Engels was moving toward at the end of his life) was written decades ago, when many marxists were strenuously resisting these ideas. Jed you would do well to actually look at Mies' work, it's very important. See for ex pp 32-34 in Patriarchy and accumulation on a world scale: women in the international division of labor (1986, but preceded by over a decade of other writings)

Patriarchy and accumulation on a world scale:
women in the international division of labour
http://books.google.com/books?id=bFIHuJFGDgcC&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33&dq=maria+mies+critique+of+marx&source=bl&ots=nWkU8VaMrD&sig=-CHIudSNd95vhDNJP1k5JPVzOxA&hl=en&ei=fAg_Tu-gAunTiAKNmI3DBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

I remember the US Guardian, the Communist party, all kinds of groups, would regularly attack feminism as "bourgeois" ignoring all of us working class feminists with left politics. Infuriating. We were internationalists, socialists, anti-imperialists, and they were trying to drive us into this little corner, to be dismissed by blatant misrepresentations. Still goes on. At this point, i take em as they come. Marxist feminist, fine, if she addresses the massive levels of violence against women, expropriation, male privilege, then we are allies. I don't want to argue about terms. But the left in general has backslid to the point that all-male conference keynoters are happening again, as Jennifer Posner has written about re left media conferences, and as i have seen happen too. My feeling is that class is extremely important and will become more and more central as the economies collapse. Whether marxists can lose the hidebound doctrine, especially its failings toward women and indigenous peoples, remains to be seen. A long way to go. I'd prefer to let that formulation go (what's to be gained from it?) in favor of a liberatory coalition that integrates female liberation, indigenous sovereignty, rise of all oppressed classes and peoples, while dismantling the expropriative and war economy and providing for the common good, including protection of the Earth.

Jed
Radical Feminists use the word "feminist" to mean a particularist, reactionary ideology which is very much tied to bourgeois white women's conception that their war is with bourgeois white men. And they were flabbergasted to learn that black women had other issues. That poor women had other issues. And that "women" weren't a class oppressed by men.

If feminism means the "radical idea that women are human beings" then of course all marxists are feminists. Communism is the ONLY movement in history that has made this claim, and fought t back it up on a global scale.

Marxism isn't about "workers oppression" but understanding the nature of social change. The idea that Marx is "for the workers" is the same as that Feminism is "for women". These are liberal, constituency claims that are at odds with the revolutionary humanism at the ethical core of Marxism.

Jed
Mies is a marxist, no?

Alex
Dear Michael, the following quote is from fuck you, do your own research:

"The term prison abolition literally means to work to abolish prisons, and this movement is supported by national organizations like Critical Resistance, centred in Oakland, California, and by networks of anti-prison activists and community organizations. Prison abolition doesn’t mean that there will be no problems or violence, but rather that locking people in cages is not a just or efficient solution to the problems that lead people to commit crimes."

Max
Jed, that is exactly the kind of crapola i am talking about. Communism and "revolutionary humanism" ignored the horrific levels of violence against women, institutionalized the double and triple shift for women, and suppressed women activists in their ranks. All men at the top, and women kicked around by alcoholics at the bottom, at all levels for that matter. And there you go with the "bourgeois." Marxist men of class privilege are somehow never "bourgeois," only women of any class who challenge the bunkum. You have no standing to pronounce on relations between women, zero, especially since you have oversimplified an entire movement beyond recognition, with no ken of the dialogues and coalitions that have taken place. Sorry i wasted my time.

Allecto
Michael: "anyway it seems a bit forced for marxists and radical feminists to be enemies,"

When the primary activism this year of the socialist/Marxist left in australia is around the right of men like Julian Assange to rape women with impunity then yes, absolutely, marxists are my enemy. When men advocate their right to rape women with impunity they are my enemy whether they call themselves Marxists or whatever.

Max: "Marxist feminist, fine, if she addresses the massive levels of violence against women, expropriation, male privilege, then we are allies."

Exactly what I was trying to say. I have no problem with working with any woman of any persuasion, providing she centres women in her analysis and her activism.

Jed
Forgive me, Allecto: can you provide a single example of some leftist in Australia who says "Julian Assange has the right to rape women with impunity?"

DIdn't think so.

Max
You've already proved my point, Jed, careful you are close to proving Moses' original comment too.

Mary
Peculiar that Mies is used as a weapon against Marxism since she identifies herself as one.

Moses
thanks for the great comments on feminism, dear sisters, but what about the point about anthropocentrism?

allecto, yes, i am making an ecofeminist point; marxism is no different from capitalism in their conceptualization of nature - "free" for human use; pathethic!

so technically, this is not actually a mies's quote; i'm actually quoting janis birkeland who is paraphrasing mies's two zed book (1986 and 1988)

Mary
So you put quotation marks around a comment and attribute it to a Marxist though it is not her quote and in fact a paraphrase twice removed, all in an attempt to discredit Marxism!?

Jed
The argument is that any form of mutualism, universal ideas of justice, etc. all intrinsically are predicated on denying women personhood and naturalizing their oppression.

So where Marxists learn, or engage in self-criticism, that is merely an example of how they are "incapable" of not being hypocrites. Hence the example that (supposedly) the Marxists of Australia are running around demanding "rape with impunity". They MUST be rapists! And the women who are Marxists? To that method, they are simply enablers of the patriarchy unless they decide that men are an oppressor class by facts of birth or socialization.

There is something really gross and reactionary about the attack on those who are attempting to actually challenge power directly, in a comradely spirit.

There's an old saying that "anti-semitism is the anti-capitalism of fools." In other words, naturalizing capitalism as "the Jew" is a method as old as dust. Blaming men for "the patriarchy" even where they oppose it, or Americans for imperialism, or whites (by virtue of birth) for the crimes of colonialism... these are all ways of AVOIDING fighting the system and reducing the anger of oppression to resentment.

The world is full of pain. That pain is not itself liberating. Resentment isn't rebellion. Hatred isn't love.

For discussions of Marxism and ecology, two arguments within Marxism may be of interest: the first is the debate around the "theory of productive forces." Interesting, Mies is crucial to this discussion, though it took sharpest political form during China's break from the Soviet Union and internal development debates. In short, the argument was whether heavy industrial development was key to national liberation ad socialist development. Was the building of the economy a base change that (in and of itself) "lifted" the population? Or was the key in the revolution in social relations? Mies book Patriarchy and Accumulation on a Global Scale was an attempt to remove the various blind spots of "Orthodox" Marxism, not just around ecology, but the naturalization of women's oppression and how imperialism works.

To take arguments within Marxism and pretend that the position you prefer is "anti-marxist" is peculiar. As is saying directly to Marxists that they believe something they don't, or to consistently seek to deny and minimize the changes that socialism has brought for sexual liberation.

Moses
mary, marxism has discredited the earth, in favor of all things huMAN; that's the point, regardless of whether mies directly said this quote or not, as jed points out, she believed what it states to the core; now how about other marxists? why have they brought the feminist argument but jettisoned the anthropogenic one?

Jed
John Bellamy Foster is currently writing on this, and from his editorial chair at Monthly Review has put the set of issues tied to this at the core of current Marxist thinking. His book Marx's Ecology, which is both criticism and development, may be of interest to you.

Jed
But will Marxists decide that humanity is the problem? Unlikely. Communists are motivated by a love of people, and a wish to grow and take responsibility. So, on a basic level — Marxists will NOT adopt twisted (Christian) notions of original sin.

Moses
so only when a man takes this up does it become important? ecofeminists have been whistling this tune in the wind for decades; bellamy, like habermas, horkheimer, adorno and others before him, still ignore the connection between the mutual and interrelated oppressions of gender and nature, and how it's linked to masculine identity; so, i have to conclude that all male ecological marxists theorists are sexist; we'll still going nowhere with them

Mary
You're twisting ideas, Moses, to suit your grudge against Marxism. When you begin from the evo psycho premise that being male is a genetic and intellectual deficiency, then it's easy to dismiss any men who agree with you as sexist theorists. Quite frankly, I find many ecofeminist theorists incomprehensible and often more rooted in psychology than politics. Their being female does not render them comprehensible, let alone superior in their insights and analysis. If female gender is a sign of superiority, you have to explain Thatcher, Clinton, C. Rice, and M. Albright (who said the war in Iraq was worth 500,000 Iraqi children's lives). And you have to explain why Marxists have been involved in and/or leading every social struggle against racism, war, female oppression for well over 100 years.

Moses
what's so hard about integrating class, gender and ecological analysis? can't marxists walk and chew gum at the same time? i can, so this must be a psychological problem marxists face;

once committed to the ideology of class, marxist adherents become very defensive and resistant to any other form of analysis - race, gender, ecological, or otherwise; class becomes a religion, albeit a poor one considering its ignorance of the pervasiveness of greed

admitting gender and ecology into their dogma may also require behavioral and dietary changes that marxists are reluctant to undertake

but why are marxists women so dismissive of feminism in general and ecofeminists in particular? is it because feminism is viewed as divisive? then why isn't class or race or any other movement for empowerment seen as equally divisive? a glaring contradiction, no? or could it be that feminism is seen as lacking the intellectual rigor of the enlightenment theories made up by the western elite? or are marxist feminists resigned to carrying water for their lower class boys forever?

whatever it is, it does us all a huge dis-service for marxist women to let their male "comrades" off the hook as they continue to decimate women and nature, all in the name of "class" which is really a misnomer for continued male violence and domination, as every single marxist movement has shown

Mary
You're confusing Stalinism (which considers feminism as bourgeois degeneration) and Marxism, which has always been in the theoretical and political leadership of feminism. I have been a feminist long before I became a socialist and have always integrated them with out conflict into every other sphere of political activity, including ecology. It's not Marxists who are dismissive of gender or environment, but you who are dismissive of class.

Moses
i am the product of thousands of years of caste/class oppression, and four generations of immigrant bonded labor; i get class, trust me

Max
Jed, your analogy is defective. Anti-Semitism is Christian oppression of Jews, a very poor analogy for women who challenge "world-historic" male domination, at any level of the class system. The better analogy would be Communists pointing to "bourgeois feminists" and saying Look, the class enemy, over here, go get ‘em. Mary, The Thatchers just prove that the only women who get through all the structural barriers are those who play by rules set by the patriarchal elite, by the empire, etc. You have to go deeper than that and talk about those structural barriers, which are pre-capitalist, even pre-feudal. Women fare better under socialism in Scandinavia, a degree of socialism at least. I'm a leftie, remember. But Marxism has not "always been in the theoretical and political leadership of feminism." If that was true, there would not be such a long record of Marxists fighting feminism (and protesting rape, battery, and other forms of male violence is not "bourgeois") as bitterly as so many have. Dont forget, in the industrialized world the autonomous women's movement rose out of the left, precisely becuase of the intense hostility to female leadership and critique of patriarchal social patterns and political analysis.

Paula
Is it okay then to be a marxist *and* a feminist? I really don't see why saying Marx (or early marxism) failed to recognize the surplus from women and nonhuman labor etc. would be the same as saying Marx or early marxism was (in other ways) wrong. It's okay we argue this stuff, as long as we work together on the big fights. Which are now coming down hard.

Mary
Well one would have to ignore the theoretical contributions of Engels to the understanding of the relation between class and female oppression and to that of man and "animal"; btw, the latter a contribution which Stephen J. Gould valued for its insights. The original sins of Marxism are either slanders or disagreements. Engels himself wrote volumes on nature and environment. But I agree with you, Paula, we can find ways to work on common political goals without agreeing on what Engels and Marx understood or said. It all depends on our commitment to women's liberation.

Paula
I find Engels obscure and possibly obscurantist, frankly. But that's an aside. There seems no reason, though, not to ignore--or rather, work around rather than accept--the mistaken or limited portions of Engles' or even Marx's ideas, or their limitations so as to find a theory, to whatever we may need one, leading to socialist-feminist-etc. goals.

Michael
the namesakes of all these currents of communist thought do speak volumes. marxism, stalinism, leninism, trotskyism, maoism, castroism. all male figureheads and, where applicable, the egotistical heads of all-male governments each with their own dedicated personality cult. how can this be? surely if they had been all-female governments people would harp endlessly on that little detail. that radical feminist theorists are women seems in itself to be enough in eyes of most people to make their insights not relevant to "human" experience or consign them into an ideological ghetto of "women's issues". yet these all-male "revolutionary" socialist governments pass with nary a comment or a blink. we're meant to quietly accept them as "normal" and at the same time accept that marxism has always been at the forefront of anti-sexism! curious. that's at least as meaningful as albright's or thatcher's warmongering, i'd say, in terms of its implications. like the laughable accusation of the vatican that we are purveyors of what they term "gender ideology" - the VATICAN. the avowedly patriarchal vatican. some people protest too much.

and how is it that this keeps happening over and over again? clearly something has been defective in the socialist movement which tends away from the scientific, humanistic and empirical analysis of social and economic conditions it claims to be about and inexorably toward quasi-religious hero worship of swaggering alpha males. surely serious marxists have seen this elephant in the room by now? i like socialism - honest socialism, not ego trips. but socialism will not go anywhere meaningful until it incorporates the bulk of radical feminist insight. it's a logical progression. and really radical feminism is essentially a leftist thinking. it's just the thinking of the thinkers that leftist men's club kicked out way back when because they would not accept that "the place of women is prone". it is not alien thought, it is properly left wing thought. it is only considered "alien" because the men's club is considered "normative" to begin with and assigned this ridiculous preeminence. second wave / autonomous women's movement came out of thinkers who were an organic part of the left. separation was only forced by divisive alpha males who hounded and harassed them out and continue to this day to insist we should consider them and all issues they raised and raise "alien" and "not really important". the very idea is sexist at its core. philosophically radical feminism is so clearly related to marxism, being materialist and relying on dialectics of class - which MacKinnon openly admits. much closer to marxism than to post-modern queer theory, really. but radical feminism is developed by women and apparently this and this alone is enough to dismiss it out of hand, without even having to understand it! O_O

jed you're doing the hypocrisy thing even while patting yourself on the back. in chiding radical feminism as a homogenous, undifferentiated boogie woman all the while insisting that marxism is actually nuanced and self-critical. marxist men are needlessly divisive and distracting from the real issues. perhaps the marxists should kick them out of the movement?

max i had no idea marx had a live in servant who he made into a concubine! the things you learn! it's funny though, the behaviour of marx himself, or the spectacle of stalin's "purges" (mass murder) apparently doesn't sully marxism to the extent we should outright reject it and yet jed would seem to insist that any female supremacist statements (even being just statements) sully radical feminism so irreparably we should just throw the *entire* thing out without any further consideration. strange.

surely if we see value in marxist theories, we can also see value in radical feminist theories, while still being able to honestly disagree with whatever it is we may disagree with and not falling into the dreadful hero worship trap or unreflective dogmatism. :p

female essentialism and war

2011-06-29T22:23:00.005-07:00

Moses Seenarine
‎"The first woman to serve in the US Congress, Jeannette Rankin, was a pacifist who voted against US participation in both World Wars. The War Resisters League was founded in 1923 by three women."
Women for Peace, Not Just A Pretty Face | Peace is Our True Nature
http://wpas.worldpeacefull.com/2011/05/women-for-peace-not-just-a-pretty-face/
Its interesting when women become political and start to speak of a woman’s perspective they are called feminist. Now let me have a look at what that means, as I’ve never identified as a feminist and I am aware when it is levelled at women it is not complimentary. So I will look into it, this is w

Carla
I'm glad we entered the first and second world war. If we hadn't a lot more people would have been tortured and killed. I can't like this woman for doing something as horrendous as that.

Komal
The second World War was just about the most morally justified war in history. Let us not essentialize men and women, as that is sexist.

Moses Seenarine
not according to zinn, who called it an unnecessary war; we wouldn't have to fight the germans if we didn't arm and fund them in the first place...

exactly how do women benefit from war? why is a woman arguing for peace essentializing? women are more peaceful than men - look at history and see who are the ones fighting wars; that men are more violent is a fact; masculinity is built on violence and aggression, and patriarchy is maintained by same; how is women equally as violent as men? why is this argument essentializing?

Komal
Generalizing about men and by saying things like 'women are peaceful, men are aggressive' is essentializing. It is the very definition of essentializing!

How do women benefit from war? Hmm let me think. When the people being thrown into concentration camps -- many of whom are women -- are being freed from the regime doing this to them, they benefited. The Nazis were also an imperial power, other than being sick hateful fascists who instituted mechanized slaughter for their own citizens. Jewish women benefited from this war, gypsy women benefited, lesbians benefited, and all Germans benefited from the lifting of the dark shadow that the Nazis had cast over them.

If you look at history you will also see that most scientific accomplishments have also made by men. Most philosophy has been developed by men. And mathematics, technology etc. Does this mean men are naturally smarter than women? Of course not! That inference is a false one. Men have been largely responsible for most of the affairs of humanity. Those have included wars, inevitably, just as as it has involved mathematics, science, philosophy and technology. The only people who have really been allowed to exist as humans throughout history have been free adult men. Women have been peaceful because they have been passive, they have been harmless because they have been rendered impotent. To glorify the incapacitation and 'emasculation' of women and essentialize them as peaceful and adorable and incapable of wrong, is very sexist and essentialist. I know you have good intentions but please be aware of this.

Moses Seenarine
complete nonsense! we're talking the history of violence here, not the history of science;

90% of violent crimes are committed by men, and this is not because women are locked inside their homes since the crimes include domestic violence; how does one explain this, if not as a result of masculine identity? imperial wars are a mere extension of domestic wars, with men being the chief protagonists; women have power and control over children, so why aren't children killed equally as often by women as they are by men? this essentializing argument defies history, logic and common sense; men rape, women don't

Komal
Then you should just say you believe in essentialism. Your position is an essentialist one: now whether essentialism is bad is another issue. I happen to disagree with what you're saying, since I reject essentialism.

The science point was a counterexample. You should also note that many feminists regard essentialism about men and women that casts women in a positive light and men in a negative light to be sexist. I am among those feminists.

There are other explanations behind why men rape and women do not. Rape is a tool of the patriarchy, a method of control and something that comes from men's sense of entitlement to women's bodies. This is itself the consequence of the system, one where women are rendered passive and subordinate to men, and are regarded as property (sometimes even legally). It is not some essential male nature that produces rape: it is men's power under patriarchy, including the effects of this on their minds.

Michael
until the end of world war ii western powers didn't know very much about the concentration camps, or simply didn't care. they turned refugees back. hitler was invading that is why they declared war. if he had limited himself to killing a few million gypsies, jews and queers in his own country no western power would ever disputed it - and quite a few powerful men in allied nations were openly sympathetic to nazi ideology. but history is written by the victors so after all was said and done it was easy enough to pretend there was some overarching moral reason guiding them, even though this was invented afterward. if there was a moral reason why the usa waited until pearl harbour to enter the war? and why vaporise two civilian cities with nuclear bombs if your moral reason is to defend civilian lives? gimme a break. like NATO is "defending civilians" now in Libya.

as for saving all germans from the nazis - must have been saving them from themselves, since they voted those nazis into power to begin with. and what could possibly be defended about the first world war???? even the elites admit these days that it was just a pointless macho slugfest without even a cheap pretence of morality tacked on.

i have to remind you these wars were fought by conscripts? that means boys were kidnapped by the government and ferried over to war zone. this is exactly the kind of shit that explains why men are violent and invasive - generally speaking. (generalising is not essentialising). so you are against pornography and in favour of wars and militaries? do you believe both girls and boys should be masculinised until they are killing and torturing in equal numbers?

Moses Seenarine
generalizing is not essentializing :)

masculine identity is socially constructed, so one is not talking of biological differences only here

all over this world, women are brutalized daily by men, and whenever you try to point this out and you encounter a theoretical wall; if you look at the violence enacted against women, children and nature, there is one common cause;

why are men more violent? this is where the discussion needs to go; but as long as we're stuck on essentialism, we'll never even attempt to move in that direction

Komal
I am against pornography and generally against war, though I do believe war can be justified at times. There was not an overarching moral reason for World War II, but morality did play a part in it (Winston Churchill, for example). Even if morality was not the intention, the act itself was moral. It was a morally good act whether it was intended to be or not.

Also, what are you implying when you say the Germans voted in the Nazis? Are you saying they 'deserved' it or something? That's quite terrible. Nobody deserves to be thrown into concentration camps or executed in killing fields, whatever their fellow-citizens may have voted for.

I do believe women should become more masculine than they currently are, but not militarized. Androgyny in women != militarization of women ('!=' means 'not equal', in case you were wondering :P).

I'm glad you noticed the title. Is it stupid and offensive because it's gender essentialist, by any chance? ;)

Komal
Generalizing is not essentializing, sure, but it is essentializing to talk of male and female natures, since it implies this is who they are innately, rather than that this is the product of the patriarchy. Saying 'women are peaceful' is essentialist, and one does not have to say it merely to point out facts about male violence against women and children.

Also, I am a bit worried about the effects such a thing could have on young boys. I have a younger brother, and I would hate for him to hear such things. It might effect his self-esteem, it might lead to the labeling effect, and it might imply he's responsible for something he is not. I know that is not your intention, Moses, but I just think one should be careful before framing these issues too much in terms of male and female, rather than power and patriarchy.

Moses Seenarine
in the early 19th century, there was a powerful women's peace movement; the feminists at that time saw the connection between male violence in the home and wars, treatment of animals, etc.; women launched movements to stop all wars, including ww 1 and 2, the slaughter of birds for their feathers in hats, etc. , and for the better treatment of pets, animal welfare, etc.; following in their footsteps, women have since that time continued to be the main element of peace, environment, health and other movements; early 19th century feminists were ahead of their time in understanding war as male violence, and critical of masculinity in all of its forms; they did not suffer from the essentializing malise

i cannot recall there ever being a man's peace movement, animal welfare movement, or whatever, but i could be wrong

Moses Seenarine
pointing out the nature of patriarchal violence has no chance of affecting the self-esteem of those privileged by such violence, but it may be the only way of avoiding the pitfalls that comes from undeserved power

Komal
There have been peace movements with huge male participation and leadership. Either way, our disagreement isn't entirely empirical. It's also about the interpretation of the facts, and about strategy. Even if men are by and large more violent than women, I would rather see this in terms of patriarchy than male nature, and I especially would not essentialize about women, thus further trapping them in expectations of propriety and femininity.

As for my brother: there is more to life than politics. You may say he has undeserved power, but all I know is he is my 14 year old brother, I love him, and he is a good person. I do not want any child to have his/her self-esteem badly effected. I don't care what class they are a member of.

Michael
morality was not the intention, the issue was "leibensraum", the trigger was the invasion of poland, which the allies had said was a no-no. NOT genocide. refugees at risk of being exterminated by the nazis were turned back. it would have been worse if the allies hadn't overpowered the nazis? i agree. but don't pretend that makes it a "moral war". that's blind luck, they were not trying to be "moral", they were trying to win. if masculinisation did not exist to begin with on either side there would have been no war to win and no genocide to stop to begin with.

i'm not saying the germans "deserved it", but saying they were saved from the nazis does ignore the participation of german citizens in putting the nazis into power and playing along with them. the allies themselves said so actually, hence "denazification" - which was aimed at german civilians.

war can never be justified because the concept itself is inherently corrupt and implies to me a kind of mutual agreement to "slug it out" in just such a way. a bit like "let's take this outside and see who the real man is" or whatever. another thing is whether violence can be justified - i think it can be justified in self defence, or defence of others, but i wouldn't call this war. the aim is not domination.

i'm glad you are against militarisation. as far as the title - i belive it's stupid and offensive first because "not just a pretty face" is itself judging someone in terms of their appearance and i do recognise and i'm sorry for how that hurts your humanity. second because in essentialising the anti-war and anti-militarism of this person it's distracting attention from her real arguments and making something which is serious seem to be about some obscure fetish of heterosexual men (for femininity) - which is what should really be treated as not serious. war resisters had very good reasons to resist.

"Addams’s efforts to galvanize US opposition to World War I backfired as she “alienated American public opinion by daring to question the ‘heroism’ of war.” She was “instantly accused of besmirching the heroism of men dying for ‘home, country, and peace itself.’” She argued, based on visits to military hospitals in Europe, that soldiers were not natural killers and were victims of the sheer horror of mechanized war. Her critics took this to mean she thought men incapable of heroic self-sacrifice."

So who is essentialising now?

"After 1917, Addams “was increasingly isolated” in opposing the war. She admitted moving “from the mire of self-pity to the barren hills of self-righteousness and … hat[ing] herself equally in both places.”""

goddess... can i ever empathise with that. O_O poor Addams, cursed with real insight.

Komal
I don't know about Addams, but I was remarking that Moses and the author of the article were essentializing.

Moses Seenarine
patriarchy is fine, just as long as we're talking about men, generally; as for low self-esteem, there is racial, religion and class inferiority, etc., but within their own community, boys become part of the superior group and develop hyper-masculinity to make up for the other disadvantages

Komal
Yes, sometimes they do. But people are also individuals. I think we shouldn't get so caught up in class analyses as to lose our empathy with individual human beings. He's my brother also, a member of my family. And he's not macho at all. Anyway, let's stop talking about him. It makes me upset sometimes to bring members of my family into discussions.

Moses Seenarine
we could talk about my 5-year old son if you like; he's already "hans solo" with a light saber, one of the good guys that's supposed to be fighting the bad guys...

Komal
That's awesome. I was like that when I was that age! :D

Moses Seenarine
no, that's fucked up patriarchal programming that will keep on destroying this world!

Komal
Oh, give me a break. We're going to have to agree to disagree on this point. Spiritedness is a very important virtue.

I was a tomboy when I was a child: patriarchal ideology told me I should be wearing dresses and playing with dolls. What useless activities! No proper exercise of the faculties, no chance to truly explore and be strong. Tell your son that I say he should go on being a hero :).

Moses Seenarine
komal, you grew up! men never do...
and they don't have to; when they look around, they are the rulers and masters of this universe

Komal
Well, I'm an androgynous woman now, so I didn't really grow up out of that. Of course I behave less childishly, but that's another issue. That's more about intellectual maturity than valuing heroism or embodying heroic virtues. I'm sure your son will not be playing with light sabers when he's an adult! :D

Michael
male violence against women, children and men - leaving this out is part of the whole essentialising game. to understand why men are violent and where it comes from - from a non-essentialist perspective - you need to understand male violence against men, you can't separate it out from "violence against women and children" as if men were an essentially different category. there are structural reasons for violence against males which and those are to make males react to the fear of vulnerability by becoming violent themselves, accepting their birthright (masculinity) and carving out their own "empire". that is why the reaction to people like Addams is so visceral.

"Also, I am a bit worried about the effects such a thing could have on young boys."

that's kind but where does the buck stop? at some point someone, somewhere has to say "enough" for anything to actually change. as someone with a kind of wonky self-esteem though i understand. anyway young boys, like anyone else, should simply know the real truth. hiding the truth from people does much more harm than good.

Moses Seenarine
yes, men-on-men violence is a huge part of this; lesser masculinities are feminized and animalized

Komal
Yes, true, but the truth should be spoken in a way that doesn't seem to attack them or blame them for things they are not responsible for (especially if you're talking about young, non-macho boys). I think framing the issue too much in terms of 'male' and 'female', instead of structural inequality, patriarchy and the property paradigm, does amount to that sort of attack. I also just disagree with it analytically.

Moses Seenarine
patriarchy is the overarching ideology that underline all others, including class, race, religion, etc.; masculine identity has to be fully deconstructed in all of its forms; men need to take ownership for this, and calling them out is the only way to get them to even acknowledge they're part of the problem; to talk in non-gender terms merely leaves men off the hook, as they've been from the beginning of time

Michael
abstracting things into structure, ideology and paradigms too much gets very far away from material reality and real meaning. who is responsible for anything? none of us asked to be here. but if we don't hold ourselves responsible for some things then how is it possible for anything to change? if bullies are not responsible for their behaviour because they themselves were bullied, then who do we hold responsible for changing things? they will become the enforcers of structural inequality and the cycle will continue endlessly.

Moses Seenarine
one is not saying that cultural and other patriarchal differences aren't real and distructive, but we must be careful not to reify or eviscerate the cause of such differences in our deconstruction, for that is entirely counterproductive; patriarchy and masculinity must remain front and center in our analysis and actions, including the attempt to transcend socially-constructed difference in regards to men, women or nature

Komal
Michael: that's fine, but in the process of blaming one should not essentialize, is the point.

Michael
sure but afaik i don't essentialise. actually i make it a point to talk about machistas not "males" and some other people make it a point to put 'machistas' in scare quotes when answering - which is fine also.

case in point - as i understand you see piv sex as inherently harmful to women and inherently invasive and that otherwise most sexual contact with males as harmful also (going on what i've read). what good does hiding that do? that's not structure, that's specific.plus, by hiding it the opposite point of view seems more ubiquitous, which makes it even harder for people who may question such things to feel that their own questions are a legitimate point of view or experience with social representation. that also makes it very hard to get to a place of truth where egalitarian relationships become possible, because people's answers are conditioned. i don't know what to believe about piv myself anymore.

Komal
Yes, I know you do not essentialize, but I felt the article and some of Moses' comments involved essentialism.

I am critical of PIV, but I do not see most sexual contact with men as harmful. My critique of heterosexuality is based on gender roles (the link between gender roles and heterosexuality), not based on any essentialist view of the male body. Also, in heterosexual relationship there is a pairing up of two individuals between whom there is structural inequality: if I had a boyfriend, for example, he would benefit from male privilege whether he wanted to or not.

Moses Seenarine
yes i am essentiallizing; a strategic essentialism among "women" is the only way to confront the culturally constructed essentialism of men; men have no problem with essentializing "women"; how does one critique patriarchy without addressing masculine identity and the construction of manliness?

the male/female essentialism dualism is imagined, socially constructed, and real at the same time; we need to build solidarity among those affected by this dualism, which entails a strategic essentialism for women to counter the real essentialism of men;

if we limit our critique to biological and social contradictions of this dualism, we are not addressing those caught in its cage now and in the foreseeable future; the main issue is the vast majority of women are reduced in the dualism, and arguments about whether the dualism is real or not, is of limited use to them; pointing out how the dualism affects women is important, as is building female opposition to this - a strategic essentialism

Michael
well there are many mixed sex relationships (que no "heterosexual") where this isn't so cut and dry, mostly around here in much maligned pansexual land where pairings between butch women and males or between females and femme boys are not exactly unheard of, and they don't quite get the "Leave it to Beaver" treatment out in public, it plays out differently. to say nothing of trans men and cis males which as much as you might "critique" transsexuality, are still real people in real relationships with real, material consequences which are simply not the same as what you are calling heterosexual relationships. insofar as both are read as men, they are a gay male relationship. likewise insofar as you have a butch woman and femme guy together, they get the butch woman and femme guy treatment out in public. that is not materially the same as the ordinary heterosexual treatment.

the link between gender roles and sexuality isn't as straightfoward. but that is not to say male privilege doesn't exist there - obviously it does. it's just different than what is usually imagined when you say "heterosexual relationship" and people imagine Leave it to Beaver. i thought you did say somewhere that most sexual contact with men was harmful... maybe i'm misunderstanding though and you distinguish heterosexual contact (with gender roles) from gender-neutral mixed sex contact (which i do, incidentally).

*anatomically*, though - in sexual contexts - the same sorts of issues (ie. PIV) come up, and even some of what you speak to in regards to feeling "emasculated". broadly speaking - taking mixed sex relationships between female and male bodied people in any kind of rebellion against their assigned gender roles, you tend to end up with a lot of males generally more at peace with our "emasculated" status and a lot of females where that kind of peace would actually mean a return to servitude. respecting one another is partially about recognising this. for me emasculation is a sort of boogey man that's been used to beat me all me life, so there is a lot of empowerment rejecting the whole notion and in proud femininity - but NOT in enforced masochism, of course, ever. -_- that is not where empowerment is for you, which makes sense. we don't have to be in the same place to see each other with respect.

so that's a structural inequality - BUT, you can follow it down to real material questions and dynamics in individual relationships. so it's not just abstract, it's material and personal and interpersonal. PIV is an example. whether in a mixed sex relationship the people involved have PIV or not ever is a structurally-informed personal question in a society where the default for both is to "want PIV". i don't want to be "protected" from that - i'm interested in authentic egalitarian relationships, which means relationships founded on truth where everyone has the same potential to access truth for themselves and be respected and valued.

if we tell the truth about ourselves, who we are, what we want and what we don't want, at some point someone's feelings are going to get hurt - maybe even our own. but it is worth it to know the truth. we can't have meaningful egalitarianism without access to the truth.

Komal
Hmmm... I suppose I was thinking of heterosexual couples who are non-transgendered and gender-conforming. As for the other stuff (gender-neutral mixed sex contact): that's a different story, I guess, and I can't see anything wrong with it now that I think about it. So yeah, it seems we're agreed on that.

Carla
So, just because the US funded the Germans, the Jews should have been left to their own devices? The difference between all other wars and the first and second world wars is that specific groups of people weren't being oppressed. In fact, you could make the case that the oppressed were the ones causing strife and trauma. The only cases that would be similar, where the oppressed haven't denied outside intervention, is Israel and Gaza,

Winnie
Thanks for this discussion, komal, moses, and michael :) I might add my thoughts tomorrow

Swaneagle
Have to go to work, but this is an interesting discussion worth rereading which i will later. Interestingly i am going to clean house for a woman this morning whose father was Jeannette Ranking's driver. They both were from Montana and he drove Jeannette where she needed to go in DC. My client gave me the book about Jeannette's life which i have been reading. I lean towards Moses' position on this. Met an old man who cried telling me he could never shoot anyone during WW II and said i was the first person he was able to tell that to. War is evil, bombing upped the ante to shifting casualties towards overwhelmingly women and children - 90%!! Later... Oh Moses i am working on your son's portrait. Inspiring.

why do these pricks need ac?

2011-06-29T22:03:00.000-07:00

Moses Seenarine
and then, there is this... why do these pricks need ac?
Cost of air conditioning for U.S. troops in MidEast more than NASA budget | The Raw Story
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/06/26/cost-of-air-conditioning-for-u-s-troops-in-mideast-more-than-nasa-budget/
The United States spends $20.2 billion annually on air conditioning for troops stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan — more than NASA's entire budget, NPR reported.

Shirley
Because they are fighting on our behalf in temps that are near 110 plus!...

Suzette
Up to 120 degrees, in heavy uniforms. I do not know how they stand it.

Moses Seenarine
they are killing mulisms for the christians/zionists to feel good about their insanity, and raping women for corporate profit; and for this they deserve ac?

Suzette
The military members are not the pricks. The pricks are our lying politicians and the international corporations who control them. The military are victims of their lies and greed.

To make it more insulting, the corporations and politicians hire many thousands of private contractors at huge pay, to do work our military used to do... They work side by side with the contractors who are getting rich, while risking their lives ...

Sick system.

Moses Seenarine
what about firefighters in arizona? don't they deserve ac? it's hot in the middle east and the people there have no ac; what the hell did they sign up to go there?

Suzette
How do you know the AZ fire fighters have no access to ac?

Moses Seenarine
there are not inside their trucks keeping cool, that's for sure; the point is war is hell; trying to make grunts more comfortable to kill the locals is just prolonging their romance with war profiteers

Sadakne
Suzette- Soldiers break into houses, rip clothes off kids and teenagers, spread their legs, hold them down and take turns shoving their dicks into their assholes, mouths and vaginas. Then after they're done cumming, they cock guns, point at their heads, pull the triggers and burn the houses down. The President doesn't do that, the Senate doesn't do that. The corporate structure doesn't do that. Soldiers do that. Then they come back to be recruited to be police officers and prison guards. And don't waste your time with the few bad apples argument. It's called Rape and Pillage for a reason: first they Rape and then they Pillage.

Viet Nam was televised. Americans found out what had been kept secret from them. Now they know. They cannot say they did not know. They know. There is no reasonable claim of innocence of the job description this time.

Stephanie
Shirley, can you please explain to me how delivering "shock & awe" to civilian populations equates "fighting on our behalf"? And fighting against *what*, exactly??

Michael
That's why after Vietnam the US prohibited their tightly controlled media from reporting or publishing images from any American war zone without Pentagon permission. Since then all reporters must have Pentagon minders assigned and reports from war zones must be approved by Pentagon censors. I think they call this "freedom of the press" or something like that.

Lucky
Thank you Sadakne for telling it like it is. 80% of the casualties in any war are women and children. Which tells us who soldiers really target. Is there any other reason men freely sign up to be soldiers other than for the free rape, torture and murder of girls/women? Not only is it condoned and even ordered by their superiors, these boys are declared brave and heroic and worshiped. It's beyond nauseating how Americans worship these rapists, murderers, and cowardly bullies.

essentialsim and ecofeminism

2011-06-29T21:53:00.013-07:00

Moses Seenarine
the revolution is just getting started in egypt, greece, spain and elsewhere, but will the boys play it differently this time? will they use women to obtain concessions from the state, only to monopolized all gains, and maintain women in their place? what can women do differently this time around?

Moses Seenarine
see 'Nature, Woman, Labor, Capital' - Ariel Salleh (pdf)
http://arielsalleh.info/theory/eco-socialism/OConnor/OConnor-article.pdf

Alex
These revolutions are largely organized by women and they have more than just participated in mass direct action. This gives the elite's counter-revolution currently underway an overtly misogynist character.

Jane
Repudiate femininity! ;)

Moses Seenarine
and pretend to be men? which woman in her right mind would debase herself so?

Jane
Repudiating femininity is not about pretending to be men. Femininity itself is a product of the patriarchy.

Moses Seenarine
let's not throw away the baby with the bathwater; patriarchal thought has not achieved hegemony and women are still resistant; is there a femininity beyond patriarchal definitions and conditioning? how can these "female" values/modes of being be nourished?

Jane
I don't think they should be. Also, female is not the same as feminine.

I think we should repudiate gender essentialism and stop seeing men and women as essentially different. We should move toward a genderless society (which requires the end of patriarchy).

Moses Seenarine
there is no such thing; let's deal with what exists - gender essentialism, defined by men; women need to reclaim this principle

Jane
Women do not need to reclaim anything, except the spirit that is robbed of them in order to turn them from persons into 'women' (i.e. highly feminine people). Also, do you think it's ok for a man to tell women how to be, as far as gender is concerned?

Moses Seenarine
reclaiming the female "spirit" is exactly what i am talking about; we're debating semantics here

men have been essentializing women for eons, so why is working towards a strategic female essentialism as part of resistance to patriarchal control telling women what to do? debates over strategy is useful, while essentializing the messanger in an attempt to silence the message is not :)

Jane
There is no such thing as the female spirit. It is the same spiritedness that exists in both men and women. A lot of what is called 'masculinity' includes that, or includes what is the consequence of it.

Moses, I know you have good intentions, but I think you should let women figure out how to strategize. I am against gender essentialism, as most feminists are.

Gender essentialism is also not a strategy. It's a philosophical position, and an incorrect one. If you're still thinking of female and male as essences, you're still otherizing women and exoticizing them, which is ultimately a patriarchal construction (the idea of women as 'other', or men and women as other to each other, and of course the ideas of masculinity and femininity). Women are humans who eat and poop, not magical goddesses who are defined by their difference from men.

Moses Seenarine
yes, this is simone de beauvoir's contention, that women are defined in relation to men, but other feminists have begun to question this; they see the maternal role as the most important in boys lives, and masculinity as defined in opposition to the female;

this represents an important re-thinking of the freud/sartre model of femininity, since masculinity is basically a repudiation of feminityl female essentialism is not the problem; masculinity is! so, how are women to resist patriarchy, as individuals only? why is group resistance, or female essentialism in this context a bad thing

Millennium
I like to think of the feminine as that which honours or reflects all genders, all personalities ... which of course has no correlation with our patriarchal state programming ... and the whom we are Singing Empowerment of today, is all nonviolent personalities, equally ... the ending of the institution of non-persona, serf/slave non-entities, and their cannibal mobster overlordship ...

Jane
I just don't agree with your approach to this at all. I believe feminintiy and masculinity are artificial. Femininity != women, and masculinity != men. These are just the psychological patterns that have developed in men and women as a consequence of patriarchy. There is no essential difference between men and women. We need to stop thinking biologically and start thinking spiritually.

You keep asking why essentialism is a bad thing. Does it not bother you, as a pro-feminist man, that you keep telling women what they should do even after they object? Essentialism is a bad thing because it is FALSE. That's good enough for me.

There is no such thing as 'the feminine'. Honestly, Millenium, if you're a man, your comment is rendered so much the worse.
Honestly, I think your comment is the most ridiculous thing I have ever read in my life. Severe dislike.

Moses Seenarine
alright then, how do we get the female spirit to re-emerge and to resist patriarchy? by telling women there is no such thing as being female?

that makes little sense given real biological differences, and the real consequences for violating gender norms for women;

this theoretical construct flies in the face of reality and it may help a few females become more empowered, but it does nothing for men who will keep on defining themselves in opposition to what they perceive to be femininity

telling men they're really not masculine, so they ought to give up all pretense at male control, will get nowhere since there is no incentive for them to change and give up power and control over women;

so, this is the dilemma - how do we organize women if we start out with the premise that they don't exist?

Jane
Female is not feminine!! Why do you keep conflating the two? That's precisely what gender essentialism means.

There is no premise that women don't exist. Since female is not the same thing as feminine, I have no need to show there is no female (which would be ridiculous) in order to show that femininity is artificial and oppressive.

The repudiation of gender essentialism is more established in feminism than the embrace of it. So there's no question here, of strategy. The answer to 'how we do it' is 'the way we've been doing it all this time'.

Jane
Sometimes it seems that men are so deeply gender essentialist and male-centered, that they either hate women or exoticize them. Both of them are forms of othering. Here's something radical: consider women humans. Stop trying to elevate us and define us according to what you want. Stop defining us! There is no goddess, mother earth or any of that nonsense. There are females, who are NOT magical, and males, who are also not magical.

The sooner everyone realizes this, the better. And honestly, if I hear 'the feminine' one more time I'm going to shoot someone. Oh but I forgot that's impossible since I was born to be mother earth and a universal womb instead of an individual.

Moses Seenarine
working on female solidarity/essentialism is not arguing in favor of maintaining oppressive femininity; who's conflating the two?

seeing masculinity as separate from men is letting men off the hook; women are not the primarily enforcers of gender roles, and they are not the ones defining themselves in opposition to men; the anti-essentialism camp is rightfully concerned with biological determinism, but that concern withers when we consider females as the superior beings

Jane
Everyone who exoticizes women and perpetuates this feminine spirituality bullshit is a misogynist who is inflicting psychological and spiritual violence upon women. Stop it now.

Moses Seenarine
when women start to fight wars and commit 90% of violent crimes, rape and torture, i will :)

Moses Seenarine
i am not trying to romanticize females as non-violent goddesses, but facts are facts; masculine identity is a major problem, period; arguing that biological differences don't exist as a way of avoiding the imposed femininity makes little sense as long as femininity is assigned to gay, trans and lesser men, however defined; obviously there is no biological necessity, but saying that biology doesn't exist leads us nowhere in our deconstruction of masculinity;

men are the ones doing gender construction, and arguing that gender really doesn't really exist has done little to affect men or the construction in any way; on the contrary, all gains have come by asserting female differences and experiences, and fighting for laws and programs to serve women's special needs; there is a huge disconnect between theory and practice here

Jane
Never mind. You don't even realize that this is just another form of sexism. But go on then. Tell me what I should do, since you obviously know what women need better than women themselves.

Moses Seenarine
it's not a question of who knows better for who, but exploring dominant theories and alternatives that may serve us better; we should all be open to learning and growing, and that includes questioning inherited "wisdom" given current circumstances

women need to organize across race, religion, class, location, etc., in order to resist men, who are similarity organized, formally and informally; men have no problem essentializing "females" and theory may sometime serve as a hindrance to preventing effective resistance

Jane
You're a man. You're doing the very thing you accuse other men of doing. Since when is telling women what to do pro-feminist?

Also, what I have is not 'inherited wisdom'. I have first-personal experience of being a woman, and I have (hopefully) rational views on this. So far you haven't challenged anything I said, but just keep repeating the same old thing in an attempt to tell me what I need for my liberation. I am not continuing this conversation, but I suggest you think twice about gender essentialism, and about your strategy of trying to impose your ideas of what is women's best interest upon women themselves.

Moses Seenarine
i though i did, but then again one could always be more critical

the misogyny charge would make sense if these were a man's ideas... i borrowed them from essentialist feminists, who all happen to be "female"; yes, there is such a specie; much maligned, but they are there

Moses Seenarine
why don't we start with ariel; she's been my go-to feminist recently :)
Essentialism and Eco-feminism"
http://arielsalleh.info/theory/eco-feminism/arena-essent/arena-essent-article.pdf

we can use this article to explore female essentialism further; what critiques of ariel's positions arises?

Jill
Why is it so hard for people to just say "women" rather than "the feminine"? If you want to talk about certain generalizations about women based on history, embodiment, phenomenology, etc., why not just say "women's experience" rather than "feminine difference"? It would achieve what you want to achieve without falling into the essentialist trap.

Jill
Also, what do women who don't fit into this kind of essentializing do with ecofeminist theories? For instance, I have never felt even the slightest bit of some sort of "magical" connection with nature (sorry, as a kid I much liked staying indoors and tinkering on my computers), and I resent such a connection being imposed on me just because I'm a woman.

Jane
Jill, don't even get me started.

Moses Seenarine
jill, i am talking about women, not femininity; and i don't see essentialism as a trap for myself, but desperate attempts to avoid the label is a trap for the vast majority of feminists, which leads them to the conclusion maintain that female solidarity is unattainable and undesirable...

camille paglia suggests (i know, she's not everyone favorite "feminist") that regardless of whether women feel connected to nature or not, they are reminded of that connection every month; urban women may not like anything remotely natural, but yet female identity is not constructed in opposition to nature; females don't try to dominate and control nature as part of establishing their identity

men have have no monthly reminders, and masculine identity is constructed in opposition to women and nature; boys learn to dominate nature as practice for dominating women;

there is a lot more to this; has anyone read ariel's short piece on essentialism? what critiques do you have of her?

Jill
Huh? What in the world are you talking about? When I get my period, I'm mildly irritated at having to be on guard against excessive bleeding on the first two days, but it's never, ever reminded me of nature (I'm truly baffled, Moses -- really) or any supposed connection I have to it. Nor do I feel any more embodied. I just do what I have to do to remain clean, and get on with my daily routine of reading, tinkering around on a computer, and exercising/working out.

And I'd be lying if I didn't say I've also been pretty happy to "dominate nature" -- whether it's by driving my Pajero long distances or using various technologies to make my life easier (leaving aside the fact for now that it's probably recommended that we all reduce our ecological footprints in general). Not buying this ecofeminist stuff AT ALL, dude. I don't have time to read Ariel's piece right now -- maybe if I have time and feel motivated, but I don't find ecofeminism inspiring in the least.

Female solidarity doesn't need to be based on the idea that women are identical or united by some common character. It needs to be based on the simple historical fact of SHARED OPPRESSION at the hands of men. What's so hard to understand about that?

Moses Seenarine
how often do you go hunting, fishing or play war games?

here's where essentialism and cultural separatism serves as a trap for feminists - you can't have shared oppression if women are not the same; feminists of all kinds are busy proving just how different women are from each other, and how it's no use talking about women as a group; the terms of the debate is no longer shared oppression but how each woman's oppression is different and unique; patriarchy could not have invented a more perfect theoretical cage, but the anti-essentialism trap was created by women

Jane
Women are not 'the same': we have a shared fate under patriarchy. We are all oppressed under patriarchy, which means: we may all be raped, our impregnability may be used against us, most of us will be patronized and belittled because we're women, when people are objectified, it is mainly us, and we can all see that. And, perhaps most importantly, most of us will be 'emasculated' and feminized by the patriarchy, and so turned from something sober and authentic (an un-self-conscious person) to some mutilated half-creature who has internalized the idea that she is to be seen rather than heard.

From this it does not follow that gender essentialism is true. The best trap patriarchy has ever invented IS gender essentialism, especially the idea of femininity.

Glorifying and exoticizing women is a form of sexism. Realize this, please.

Moses Seenarine
for ecofeminists, women and nature share the same oppression of patriarchy and masculine identity, and that serves as the basis for a strategic essentialism; femininity is not our main concern, masculinity is; anti-essentialist feminists need to get this, please :)

Jane
‎"how often do you go hunting, fishing or play war games?"

I played war games when I was a child, and I continue to play war video games as an adult. The reason I do not go hunting or fishing is because I believe it is wrong to kill animals unnecessarily, and I am a vegetarian. But I would happily go paintballing, clay pigeon shooting, or engage in any other hunting or war simulation that does not involve actual harm to other sentient beings and that is engaging and interesting to me.

In my life I have come across girls who have bullied others, I have come across violent women who have thrown their weight around in extremely authoritarian ways, and I have come across men who are pacifists. Instead of essentializing, let us be honest about human nature and see what is wrong with the system. Dividing the world into 'innocent women' and 'bad men' is the wrong approach. We're all capable of good and evil, but some of us are more privileged than others, and this has corrupting effects.

Moses Seenarine
we are a product of patriarchal thought; we do what patriarchy expects from us, and sometimes we do the opposite of what is expected; this is mere oppositional response

men are still lord and master of this universe and male violence is still largely responsible for the harms done to women and nature; but let's keep blaming humans since that makes women equally responsible, and earth knows that with all the power they have under patriarchy, they ought to know different by now, right? so women are equally responsible for all of society's violence, even though men commit 90% of it...

you are right, men are not bad, and they are just spoiled by patriarchal privileged; but how is male privileged perpetuated and maintained? through violence

women lack patriarchal power and privileged; their violence is not institutionalized and reinforced by the patriarchal state; arguing that women are equally violent as men is similar to the reverse-racism argument - it makes little sense

Jane
No, what I am arguing is that gender essentialism is false. My words seem to be going over your head. Let's just agree to disagree, because having to repeat myself is getting annoying.

Moses Seenarine
gender essentialism is real, just like masculinity is real and entirely destructive; women are different from men and they suffer shared oppression from men; they need to organize as women, using a strategic essentialism, to resist male power and control

Jill
Moses, I can't be bothered arguing this, and Komal has done a good job of countering your claims. It's one thing to speak of certain biological/evolutionarily inherited/culturally inherited differences between men and women and how they get stabilized/reinforced by culture and transmitted across generations (I'm a psychology grad student and this is an area of interest for me). But I fail to see why it's politically useful to speak of women has belonging to some metaphysical realm called "the feminine" and to speak of men as belonging to a metaphysical realm called "the masculine" -- and especially to talking of women like they're innocent lambs in harmony with nature (this part really makes no sense to me, even if I take essentialism seriously -- do you even have any empirical support for it?), when actually they're as involved in the destruction of the environment as men (myself included, needless to say).

You also contradict yourself. On the one hand you say that we can no longer speak of shared oppression and have to speak of how each individual woman's oppression is unique, and on the other hand, you want to create this weird homogenizing realm of the "feminine" and pigeonhole all women into that -- effectively erasing all individual differences. My and Komal's position *is* in fact that every individual is different, but that there is an unjust hierarchy created on the basis of categories of biological sex, privileging men and making women second-class human beings, and that this hierarchy needs to be dismantled. There is no need to erase or homogenize individual women's experiences to accept this -- as a Pakistani woman, my experience is undoubtedly different from a European's or an American's. Pretty simple, really, and I see no reason why women can't organize around this. It's in fact gender essentialism that tries to erase individual differences, whereas anti-essentialism allows for individual variation.

It sounds to me like you're basically just anti-masculinity, and just want to wholesale emasculate everyone -- men and women both. Well, that's a brand of feminism that I'm least interested in, sorry. I like certain virtues in myself and in others -- some of those virtues have been classified traditionally as masculine and some as feminine, and I cherish them regardless of their traditional gender designations.

Btw, I am avidly interested in military history and love military re-enactments and wargaming. So far, it hasn't made my 'feminine' brain explode. ;-)

Moses Seenarine
‎- in this discussion on essentialism, there are several aspects getting conflated

1) building a strategic alliance among women based on shared oppression among girls and women; i refer to this as a strategic essentialism based on the common female experience of shared oppression under patriarchy

2) the oppression of women and nature is related, and both groups are oppressed by masculine identity; this is where the essentialism of ecofeminism comes in; ecofeminists deconstruction of patriarchy goes beyond gender to look as how masculine identity view women and nature similarly as inferior objects to be dominated

3) exploring the difference between masculinity identity and the experiences of women; this is where the predominance of male violence comes in; why are women less violent? if masculine identity is the only cause for gender difference in violence, then what would a non-violent masculinity look like?

4) do women have any experience to offer men in their re-thinking masculinity? how does childbirth and childcare affect women's thinking; does this lead to the development a more relational individualism as opposed to male rugged autonomy?

- responding to your points in the last post:

1) female complicity in patriarchal development, culture and religion is just that, complicity and nothing more; how would women act under a different development or cultural paradigm? what would matriarchy look like and how would women act under this political system?

2) i am not the one saying we can no longer speak of shared oppression; on the contrary, any attempt to do so is dismissed as essentialism; my whole focus in deconstructing patriarchy is building solidarity among those who share this oppression, women

rather, it's third wave/third world feminists who are insisting that female solidarity is impossible and undesirable;

in their view, female empowerment is part of cultural/community empowerment, and as a result, third world/minority women cannot and should not attain solidarity with women from other communities, especially dominant ones; they are the ones accusing me of essentialism and western feminist imperialism

3) masculine identity considers all women as inferior and as part of nature; masculine identity is constructed in opposition to the passive cycles of nature, of which women are viewed as a part; men have invented culture and sky magic to replace and stand above the creative forces of nature; this disjuncture deeply affects all men, and women may not be as driven to rise above all things natural as men are

are men or women separate from nature? obviously not; we are not alien creatures or created by some imaginary sky magic; men and women are part of nature; men are more alienated from what we actually are, nature, because that's how masculine identity is constructed; femininity is not constructed in this oppositional manner, and so women may not be as alienated from what we all are actually a part of - nature

4) i am anti-patriarchal and anti male violence; patriarchy is part and parcel of masculine identity; you can't eliminate patriarchy without first removing it's cause, masculinity and masculine identity; arguing that masculinity is unrelated to patriarchy defies logic and common sense

5) everyone is an individual; that's a given; so what does that mean? that each one of us must construct our own path to empowerment? so what we need is self-improvement, more so than not social change...

when do we get to work building alliances based on shared oppression?

if you follow the logic of individualism and identity politics, there is no shared oppression; solidarity becomes reduced to a huge gripe fest and competition over victimization

6) is masculinity, patriarchy and male violence related to militarism? does the glorification of militarism perpetuate patriarchy?

7) girls/women admiring and developing hyper-masculinity is understandable to this emasculated minority male; thankfully, i've turned a corner and am no longer defensive or trying to over-compensate

Mexican teenage girls train as drug cartel killers

2011-06-20T00:14:00.000-07:00

how male greed and violence implodes us all
Mexican teenage girls train as drug cartel killers
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43445168/ns/world_news-americas/t/mexican-teenage-girls-train-drug-cartel-killers/
Dwarfed by surrounding reporters and with her head bowed to avoid the television cameras, the slender 16-year-old hesitated slightly before she answered the question. "I'm a hitwoman," she said.

Patrick
she is absolved because she is female..? she has no motive force of her own..? is she a robot, or a human being who makes her own choices... much of your rhetoric is false and misleading, i fear, and is essentially misogynistic in that it denies that women have the capacity or strength to make their own choices, and to take responsibility for their own actions... the very definition of a "minor"...

you indict half of humanity with your diatribes against men... hitler targeted only a small minority, and is reviled for all of history... collective punishment is a crime against humanity, and rightly so...

Moses Seenarine
patrick, like most men, you're blind as a bat; the question is, is it willful or not?

who runs the cartels, women? who pays a lot of money to kids for them to kill? who trains them to kill? who rapes and compels them live this life of violence?... how can starving kids have free choice when you dangle a lot of money in front of their face? please, don't insult our intelligence

there is motivation and planning at a higher level done only by men, which you blindly ignore; why do you refuse to see men's culpability in 90% of human violence? are you that blind or just plain biased by patriarchal privileged?

like most men, there is no use taking to you since as far as you all are concerned men are all as normal as apple pie, and it only racist ideology that spoils humanity; well, i got news for you - patriarchy is also an ideology and its the most damaging one man has ever invented

Patrick
the girl had no free will..? by your logic, pope been-a-nazi is justified is joining the hitler youth corp, rather than doing as jesus suggests, suffering persecution for justices sake...

the girl had enablers no doubt, but her lack of a y-chromosome is no proof of innocence...

moses, i am indeed unlike most men... i am, like you, a unique human being with unique experiences and free will, and conscience, and the ability to make decisions and accept the consequences of them... you call me blind as you proclaim your black-and-white world of absolutes and opposites... i see a technocolor world, of many hues and shades... i think it is you who needs to open his eyes...

Moses Seenarine
i am male, the product and re-producer of male privileged; whenever i open my eyes as a man, i see the harm that undeserved privileged causes ; that's what opening one's eyes as a man means, not imagining some other male fantasy of inclusiveness, harmony and equality that don't exist and never will with this pollyanna attitude

Patrick
i think you mean well, and i hope you find truth in whatever path you choose...

How can we explain the rape epidemic in Congo?

2011-06-19T23:55:00.000-07:00

How can we explain the rape epidemic in Congo?

"What if rape has actually become systemic -- not a brutal act of conquest so much as a systemic, even rational occurrence in a system that has been built upon violence?"
How can we explain the rape epidemic in Congo?
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/05/11/what_can_explain_the_rape_epidemic_in_congo
For the last decade and a half, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has spawned unfathomable statistics. First, we learned that more people had died in conflict there than in all of World War II -- a devastating number in a country that most people couldn't locate on a map. Today's news that betwee
Thursday

Carla
There certainly is ample evidence for it....

Mary
What does "systemic" mean here? I don't get what this explains.

Moses Seenarine
she is saying that this is not rape as a act of war, but rape is a part of congolese culture, from colonial times to the present, so there isn't actually an increase in rape, but only an increase in reporting rape; so, we have to change the culture of misogyny not just look at rape as a conflict issue

Lucky
Rape is already systematic. We've just been conditioned to think of it as sex.

Mary
Moses, I would bet that's the most vile and racist explanation for rape I've ever heard. Anyone the least familiar with colonialism in the DR Congo who blames Congolese culture rather than colonialism has their head stuck up their ass. What is going on now in the DR Congo has been called the equivalent of WWIII and the predations against them continue by diamond mining companies. And this vile apologist wants to blame Congolese culture!?

Moses Seenarine
it could be both cultural patriarchy and part of the conflict over metals; women are abused by all sides and have few places to turn...

Mary
Racism isn't just the ideological disguise of imperialism and colonialism; it is fundamental to the functioning of that system. And it is just as true of violence against women, which is why colonialism fosters racial divisions and sexual crime. You can see the same problem of rape in Haiti now. It hasn't a damn thing to do with cultural practices; that it has to do with patriarchy goes without saying. But the fundamental roots are in colonialism and there is no ending it without revolutions against imperialism and colonialism.

Moses Seenarine
that would make sense if women's status actually improved after the nationalist struggles of the 50s-60s, but what has happened instead - the same old boys network now run these independent states with now neo-colonialism running hand-in-hand with local cultural patriarchy;

men will exploit whatever advantage they can, and when civil society, law and order disintegrates, men resort to savages and it's women who suffer; we have to end patriarchy, mary, it's the only way forward

Mary
That's an extraordinary position, Moses, and entirely dismissive of the violence and wrecking operation called imperialism, which I remind you in the DR Congo has been called the equivalent of WWIII and has caused an estimated 4 million to 6 million deaths in the last 10 years. And you want to blame it all on patriarchy!?

Moses Seenarine
i was referring to all the anti-colonial struggles; as for the congo, i have not followed it closely enough; kabila sr. seemed ok, but now his son is there and it's become a dynasty again; all the neighboring countries are contributing to this crisis, trying to hack off a piece of the congo for themselves and funding private militias to control mining areas close to their borders; plus there is local elites involved with the multinationals to extract the minerals and metals; throughout all of this, how many women are involved? if we were to eliminate western imperialists, the neighboring countries would just increase their already powerful interests; this is not an easy situation to solve, but i know that local elites are part of the problem and they aren't going to go away even if all outside influence were removed

Carla
You want to blame it all on racism!? Imperialism and colonialism also run hand-in-hand with misogyny. Misogyny and racism are both inherent in a patriarchal culture.

Moses Seenarine
neo-colonialism works hand-in-hand with local patriarchal culture, and is one of the main reasons why nothing much has changed in any of the former colonies after a half-century of independence (for men)

Mary
I'm just amazed that the death of nearly 6 million people in an ongoing war seems to carry no weight with you. Not to mention the ongoing predations involved in UN occupation, violent extraction of the countries wealth by others, and the machinations of colonial forces. This would of course bring out the worst in people, don't you think!? But to lay emphasis on culture and patriarchy rather than imperialist violence is, I have to say, entirely cavalier and vile.

Moses Seenarine
war is always terrible and there is never anything good from it; the congo has been at war for as long as i can remember, mary, over 30 years... why do you blame this war only on western imperialists? the neighboring countries share the blame, as do local elites (men); how do we stop this war? support women, since it's always going to be in some man's interest to continue this war

Mary
Where we differ, Moses, is that you see war as rooted in patriarchy and I see it rooted in capitalism and imperialism. I don't think you can eliminate patriarchy under capitalism; it can be mitigated but not overturned because racism and misogyny are fundamental to the system.

Moses Seenarine
capitalism and imperialism is responsible in part for these wars, but why are men so willing to fight these wars? they are benefiting in money, violence and rape; how can you not look at the role of masculinity and militarism among local men who are the ones actually doing the raping? imperialists are nice and safe in their air conditioned offices in the west, not raping women and killing other men in the congo? we need an understanding of victimization and accountability, mary; your framework lets men off the hook and so what is their incentive to change their vile brutality?

Mary
You have a peculiar understanding of how imperialism operates, Moses.

Moses Seenarine
i grew up in a former colony, mary, one that became independent 50 years ago, and absolutely nothing has changed for the poor and women; i have watched the ideology of anti-imperialism and socialism used to justify dictatorship and one-party rule during all this time, and a state in which all life revolves around the corrupt ruling party; where is the change from imperialism? neo-colonialism allows the same imperialists to extract raw materials and surplus to the center from the periphery using local elites; how do we get beyond this new imperialism?

Guy
Moses' explanations make sense to me.

Chris
I think that the only solution is to educate the young about working cooperatives, and put an end to hoarding at all levels. Much easier said than done until the monied elite are abolished as a power class.

Mary
Misogynistic cultural practices in imperialist countries are quite barbaric too; not just rape and prostitution but porn, strip clubs, massage parlors, etc. Now put them in conditions of constant war, occupation, destruction of culture, economic pillage, and the death of 6 million people. Would this apologist for colonialism refer to our misogynistic cultural practices?

Ursula
Misogyny transcends both imperialism and capitalism.

Lucky
Sexism and misogyny existed before capitalism and imperialism and colonization existed. Your arguments hold no water, Mary. But capitalism, imperialism, war, and colonization certainly have spread the disease of it and have added fuel to the already raging fire.

Lucky
If you really want to get to the root of things, it probably started with the domestication of animals. Women probably did the initial domestication of animals and farming, but evidence suggests women co-existed with animals and nature itself. They were only interested in feeding their families, not power, control and profit. It is when men took over that things began to go sideways. Because men are selfish and greedy and only interested in power, control and profit. And then in turn, got the bright idea he could reduce women into animals and breed and domesticate them as well. Women serve as the model that all other oppression of groups of people are now fashioned after. Show me most any means of oppression and you can bet your bottom dollar it was done to a woman first.

Heather
Sexism began with class systems, about 10,000 years ago. It was part of control for every class society. It is old. It's got to go, women don't have patience for it anymore. It is in the way of men as well, becasue they gain their humanity only through opposing it, like whites can only be human if they reject racism. But it is up to women and the oppressed to make the struggle, because the trappings of power that the class system has given men need to be opposed every day in every way by every woman. Hard to do, but it is happening! Read Engels.

Mary
How about opposing imperialist war in Afghanistan and the DR Congo too?

Heather
Of course. But the issue of women brings up the way men are socialized to rule women and disregard them as humans. This old system uses men as soldiers, "gives" them mysogeny and sadistic sexist practices, denies women every right, Every NATO or US base is surrounded with brothels , debasing the women of each country; most women in the US military have been molested or raped.It is all part of imperialism. Congo gets ignored becasue of racism. . I don't disagree with you Mary. And Lucky- agriculture was women's contribution to the begonning of class society. The thing is, things only change for the pooor and women when they fight. The IMF in the last 50 years has targeted the poor and women and they have suffered under what is called "civil society," and microloans and neoliberal "restructuring" which have impoverished them. Rape has many forms.

Mary
So then I'll see you at the next antiwar protest, Heather?

Ursula
Let's be clear. In no other form of social hierarchy are the individual members of the oppressed class required to COHABITATE with their oppressor and express unconditional life-long LOYALTY to them (compulsory heterosexuality). In no other form of class hierarchy are the oppressed members BIOLOGICALLY vulnerable to their oppressor. RAPE of females by males, as in the article above, has everything to do with women's reproductive capacity and men's ability to cause a UNIQUE HARM (pregnancy) that they cannot perpetrate on ANY other class of oppressed persons. Women are simultaneously prevented from protecting themselves and each other by the heterosexual social organization that isolates women in private domesticity and emotional subservience to men. It is critical to understand that the SEXUAL nature of misogyny is unparalleled by any other form of social oppression. Rape is the proof.

Lucky
Gosh, who are all these imperialists and capitalists? And how can it be explained that 80% of the casualties in ANY war are women and children (mostly female)? Are we afraid to name these imperialists and capitalists as men? And admit these men are intentionally and systematically targeting females globally? Why else would men freely sign up for war if not for the free pass to rape, torture and murder females? Obviously, the main purpose of imperialism, capitalism and war is for sexist reasons, otherwise these statistics would not be so. It would be the opposite way around. Men would make up 80% of the casualties.

Spot on, UP. Furthermore, racism could not exist without men's control of women's bodies and thus, reproduction. How else are the boys going to make sure their beloved blood lines remain pure and uncontaminated? Isn't that one of the purposes of rape? To contaminate those pure blood lines? Of course it is. In fact, it's an age-old military strategy. Soldiers have been ordered to rape women since time on end. The result of that can be seen, for example, in modern day Mexico. Gosh, where are all the aboriginals? Answer: they've been raped right out of existence. Mexicans are now a mixed race.

Racism and sexism do not run parallel. Racism is the result of sexism. I dare say if women had been free to reproduce with the mates of their choosing, racism would've already been eradicated. Ask yourself this. What is the one thing that cannot be eradicated through rape and random reproduction? Answer: Sex. It's pretty much dead even. Women have a 51% random chance of producing a male, and a 49% chance of bearing a female via het sexual relationships. But even that is misleading. Who says het sex is the only way women can reproduce? It isn't. It is only one way women are able to reproduce. But it is the only way a male can be reproduced. This is important to note. Because only males carry the mutant gene and can pass it on. The mutant gene being the Y chromosome. Are you starting to get the big picture yet? The purpose of heteronormativity? The purpose of rape? It is the only way males can be reproduced. But it is not the only way females can reproduce.

Heather
I am a UNAC organizer. I've been orgtanizng and protesting US wars since 1959. I am an anti-imperialist, Mary. Where were you on April 9th? UNAC met in NYC today and planned several big actions, or we hope they are big. All these issues must be understood and combined.Protesting the Libyan US/NATO war Mon, June 27 in NYC, October marches planned and hopefully opposition to the hoopla around 9/11 in NY.

Mary
Heather, I would think my remarks would make it clear that I am active in antiwar protest and have been for several decades.

Heather
I took your comment, " So then I'll see you at the next antiwar protest, Heather?" as a dig. Sorry, it was an invitation!

Missa
rape culture exists because men are assholes to those they claim to love, but for some mysterious reason y'all need a more specific explanation? Why?

Missa
Seems like y'all are trying to avoid the bloody obvious. Rape culture exists to some degree or other in every culture simply because MEN ARE ASSHOLES TO THOSE THEY CLAIM TO LOVE. They literally don't know what genuine love looks like. And instead of just acknowleging that, y'all prefer to believe there's some COMPLICATED explanation.

Seraphim
Men are assholes to everybody. Love is beside the point.

Heather
Since this was not always the case, wouldn't it be wiser to examine class structure and how male chauvenism becomes an underpinning for promoting the system? Be it slavocracy, feudalism or capitalism, and finally imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, men have been recruited to be the body guards of class society. They are granted brutal superiority, but are suffering under this same system ( I am not talking rich men, but poor ones, in prison, in armies, day laborers, unemployed, poorly paid...the system is giving them nothing. The owners of the means of production, the bourgeoisie are the beneficiaries, and poor men are not benefitting. They are not the enemy. They are our class.

Mary
They are our brothers, sons, fathers, mates.

Seraphim
Mary: So? And that makes it impossible for them to be assholes?

Heather: the entire class system was built by male violence and sadism.

Mary
Misanthropy is usually a very bad guide to social analysis.

Lucky
Last I looked, poor men enslave, rape, batter, torture and murder women too. What do you mean poor men aren't benefiting from this? Even the lowest man on the totem pole is granted rule over more than half the population - women! Throw in children and we're creeping up to the vast majority of the population! How do you figure poor men aren't benefiting from this? I beg to differ.

And spare me the "not all men do this" crap. I'm not interested in the 3 men in Outer Mongolia who don't do this. I mean, do you say this about Nazis? Not all Nazis were like that! How 'bout slave owners? Not all slave owners were like that! Exception to the rule is a given. But why are women the only oppressed group on the planet where it is demanded that 100% of her oppressors be like this - without exception? This isn't done to any other oppressed group on the planet!

Moses Seenarine
mary, it's easy to accuse women, but i'm a man with a son; am i a misanthrope too?

not a word on american masculinity and its racist/imperialist origins and ties to militarism, as usual

2011-06-19T23:32:00.000-07:00

not a word on american masculinity and its racist/imperialist origins and ties to militarism, as usual

The Militarization of America: How the Military Mindset Is Permeating Our Political Culture and Soci
http://www.alternet.org/story/151291/the_militarization_of_america:_how_the_military_mindset_is_permeating_our_political_culture_and_society?akid=7112.266065.XxdjIp&rd=1&t=2
Our president and elected representatives must serve as a check on the military establishment, rather than issuing blank checks to them.
June 15

Moses Seenarine
‎"Militarists see war as productive, as offering solutions rather than posing problems. They see it as heroic. When wars are romanticized as action-packed tests of a nation’s warriors, cuts to war spending are naturally seen as perfidiously unpatriotic -- as kneecapping those same heroes."

Swaneagle
Warape unculture.

Michael
it's ridiculous to talk about militarism without talking about masculinity.

Moses
yet, only 1 in a million are written this way, and this is from the progressive "left"???

Michael
my guess is it's the "masculine-default" thing. everything ever conceived by macho men is the "human" default, all the rest of us are exceptional others, so when talking about macho culture there is no need to specify we are talking about macho culture, cause isn't that everyone's culture and isn't the existence of macho culture unquestionable?

Moses Seenarine
but these leftist fools ought to know better; they view their brand of "liberal masculinity" as feminist and not at all patriarchal; they see their anti-militarism analysis as part of a class analysis, and if you bring up gender, it's divisive and counter-productive; damn asses

Michael
but no analysis of militarism can even make sense without analysing masculinity. the whole cultural pressure and conditiong to be militaristic revolves around masculine values - and as swaneagle points out, war culture is inseparable from rape culture. leftist... bua... no, reactionaries who are appropriating our movement. as far as i know la revolución será feminista, o no será. it's just wildly absurd to put another troop of rape conditioned alpha males in charge of ending "militarism" which is what these "checks" amount to. are we going to appoint moderate nazis to put checks on racism too? gimme a break. these guys and their culture of invasion and power over have just got to go. adiós, y hasta nunca.

Carol
Thanks Moses...

Monique
Moses is spot-on: "and if you bring up gender, it's divisive and counter-productive". after years of raising my kids and just recently starting to get involved with local 'progressive groups', i'm starting to see the screamining silence in addressing root patriarchy as problematic with violence and conservatives. it just doesn't get mentioned. i'm disgusted.

Swaneagle
Can't tell you how much i appreciate this thread, the comments and all those addressing this issue. So draining to be isolated in resisting patriarchy full tilt.

killing makes you feel manly, if and until you realize manliness is wrong!

2011-06-19T23:21:00.000-07:00

killing makes you feel manly, if and until you realize manliness is wrong!
BBC News - How soldiers deal with the job of killing
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13687796
When a soldier kills someone at close quarters, how does it affect them? This most challenging and traumatic part of a soldier's job is often wholly overlooked.
June 11

William
If you want to learn more about this, go to. http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Psychological-Cost-Learning-Society/dp/0316330116

Moses Seenarine
grossman bases his study on Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's pioneering work on death and dying;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_K%C3%BCbler-Ross

Michael
you've got to be kidding me. "non-firers". "warrior mask". "can't take it off". you are collectively taking your boys, putting them in a macho culture hazing them, telling them their purpose in life is to kill and be killed, sending them out to kill and die and then saying they are "failures" if they don't want to while all the most murderous, violent, angry ones are your ideal men who you put in the highest positions of power. then you seriously pretend to have no idea why the hell the society you live in is so violent, where all the rapists come from and why is the earth being destroyed and by whom. oh wait women can join in the killing now and become sociopaths too - cause it's a CHOICE (still culturally obligatory for males though). so that's what "progress" is!

what the HELL is wrong with people!? fer goddess' sake. step back and take a good long look at this whole damn thing and just bloody stop it already!!!! this is madness. your whole culture is about inflicting pain, invading and killing!

Patrick
there is nothing wrong with masculinity; it is one half of humanity, and to impugn all men is to condemn humanity... and you are naive if you believe no men suffer the effects of violence... the many iraq vets returning with ptsd and the many suicides provide the evidence your claim is false... the combatants in today's conflicts do include women as well...

Patrick
‎1870 MOTHER'S DAY PROCLAMATION

Arise then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or tears!

Say firmly: We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies.

Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience.

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

http://www.hometownfocus.us/news/2011-05-06/Features/Original_Mothers_Day_Proclamation_was_an_ANTIWAR_M.html

Moses Seenarine
exactly! ptsd is a direct result of masculinity; there are people being killed on the other side... there's plenty wrong with masculinity

what is one good thing about masculinity?

Patrick
true feminism must be about restoring respect and reward for what women bring to the table, not bashing men for what makes us distinct... we are yin and yang, inseparable, part of one another... rather than resetting the conflict of man vs man to that of man vs woman, feminists must seek inspiration in a different social dynamic, not repeating the same tired, divisive rhetoric, and provide an example of what a truly balanced, humane society could look like... the one fueled by anger and contempt, disdain and vindictiveness is not bringing anything new to the table... in fact, i suggest, it is poisoned and corrupted...

Moses Seenarine
i have no idea what you are talking about since conflict is all i know and see; let's look at what actually exist now; what is one good thing about masculinity?

Patrick
moses, you're a guy, right..? what are you going to do about it..?

i recommend you try thinking of people as individuals rather than as stereotypes... this is the basis of discrimination, racism, hated...

Moses Seenarine
i'm trying to deconstruct masculinity, to be aware of male priviledge, and to help my son do the same

i see my own child at five reproducing patriarchy right in front of my eyes... i don't need to look any further

Patrick
that there is privilege is inarguable.. whether it is deserved or not must be decided on a case by case basis...

Moses Seenarine
how can patriarchal priviledge ever be deserving?

Patrick
if men are so terrible then maybe war is a good thing.. just send them all off to destroy each other... the women can all become lesbians and reproduce via cloning vats...

this thread is spiraling downward in a tighter and tighter vortex...

privilege may be earned and well deserved... any privilege granted categorically is injust...

Michael
mask-ulinity is a ridiculous and pretentious pantomime of invulnerability set up around pointless and gratuitous violence, emotional repression, sadism and bizarre beliefs about gender which would be quaint doublethink if they were not enforced on everyone by the most sadistic forms of totalitarian violence imaginable.

masculinity is a self-fulfilling nightmare...

2011-06-19T23:07:00.000-07:00

masculinity is a self-fulfilling nightmare...

"A new study shows how a macho conception of white masculinity leads to risky behavior among white males in Southern states."
Why Men in Southern States Are More Likely to Die in Accidents
http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/151330/why_men_in_southern_states_are_more_likely_to_die_in_accidents
A new study shows how a macho conception of white masculinity leads to risky behavior among white males in Southern states.

Moses Seenarine
‎"In more macho societies, challenges to one’s manhood — such as being the recipient of ridicule for avoiding risky behavior — must not go unanswered. And the results can literally be deadly."

"there is a higher rate of accidental deaths among whites (but not nonwhites) in the American South and West — regions where a “culture of honor” makes backing down from a challenge problematic for many males."

"men living in these regions “might be more prone to engage in risky behaviors that sometimes lead to death,” because this willingness “signifies that one possesses the ‘manly’ attributes of strength and courage.”

- these guys are ticking time-bombs, american jihadis

“It seems plausible that the accidental deaths of women results from their mimicking, wittingly or unwittingly, the risky behaviors of men,” they write. In addition, “it is also possible that they die as a consequence of men’s dangerous actions, as would be the case if a husband crashed his car as a result of driving recklessly.”

Susan
Wondering if they are any more likely to sign up for the military than those in other states.

Jeannie
with roots in the south on mother'side and raising, I can be heard to blather about this culture of honor...we definitely have honor killings also;
blather as in critically

Patrick
pfft... "macho" is not "masculinity"... "macho" is stupid ignorant chauvinist asshole, typically encompassing not only misogyny but also hated and intolerance for anyone different then them... getting rid of machismo would enrich humanity... getting rid of masculinity would extinct it...

Patrick
i think too that no one disputes that men as a class tend to exhibit more risky behaviors...

it makes sense to me, given our evolution from hunter-gatherers, and the fact that it takes 0.75 years to gestate a child then another 5-6 at least for it to become somewhat autonomous... women kept the settlements, raised kids, invented agriculture... men had to hunt for food, fight wild animals and other men for defense...

the concept of a "culture of honor" though is one worth examining... i posit the argument that a society or culture that forces men into these narrowly defined and accepted behaviors is one that victimizes men...

as women as victimized and their reproductive traits exploited, so are men victimized, their backs and muscles fettered for some other man's enrichment, their athletic acumen exploited, their bodies maimed and broken for some other men's cause...

Patrick
‎@susan, i think yes, there is a stronger military tradition in the south... virginia has long been a source of american military strength and leadership... but i have found similar trends in more northern states, in fact rural ny has its own breed of macho rednecks, so the "southern" stereotype is just that... the biggest factor in military enlistment is economic, however, which is why so many enlistees come from poorer communities... white poverty is something not often mentioned, but it exists none the less... i have a friend in the navy, who is gay, as i think are many white females in service... so, are lesbians more "violent" or honor-bound or whatever, or are they people who have broken down the gender barrier and feel comfortable taking up a traditionally "masculine" role..?

Jed
entitlement + willful ignorance = trouble.

Patrick
ignorance is a curable condition... stupidity, however, is permanent...

Susan
Yes, Patrick I believe that to be the truth. Thanks from a Canadian. It helps explain too another question: why ever would a mother not do anything in her power to dissuade her child from putting on the boots and going out to be killed & to kill? Indoctrinated tradition &/or a job in which almost all are hired . . . (But I think also that we have to be careful about saying that gay people have broken down the gender barriers when it comes to non-traditional for gender work roles. Just because a man enjoys doing the cooking, or a woman loves woodworking for e.g., does not mean that by any stretch that they are inclined to be gay).

Moses Seenarine
patrick, "macho" is not "masculinity"? what then is masculinity if not physicality, dominance and power?

men as a group do exhibit more risky behavior because that's how patriarchal power is maintained, period;

hunting is part of machismo, and it's why women are prevented from the hunt;

yes patriarchal society is to blame for conditioning the young, but then you just would have us all simply ignore male power, and also the fact that it's men who are largely maintaining patriarchy; all men are concerned with male honor - that's their job as part of maintaining patriarchy - to deflect all attacks on their honor from women and other men; so, how do we end patriarchal thought and conditioning without addressing patriarchy in the first place? it's not possible

if you end masculinity, pro-feminist men will not go extinct, but in fact help to improve the specie

Patrick
you're a fucking moron... i am tired of your stupid sexist drivel... goodbye, "moses"...

I'm not a feminist (and there is no but)

2011-06-19T22:56:00.000-07:00

I'm not a feminist (and there is no but)

‎"for some women, eschewing the label of feminist is not about avoiding being called "ugly" or an "angry extremist".

For some women, avoiding the label of feminist comes from a place of self-love and balance."
I'm not a feminist (and there is no but)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/10/white-feminism-black-woman-womanism
Renee Martin: As a black woman, I felt the white feminism movement was not created for people like me. So I embraced womanism

Moses Seenarine
‎"I'm not a feminist (and there is no but), because my life experiences lead me to believe that feminism was not created for women like me... Not owning the feminist label is not always about equivocation; for some women, it represents truly loving oneself in the face of bigotry."

Missa
no offense, but I always gets suspicious when women conflate "civil rights" with "the need to love myself". Civil rights is all about how OTHER people deny you education, jobs, etc etc, not how you feel about yourself...

Missa
According to her logic, "Black women pretty much ignore the special needs of Latino women, so therefore, Latino women should not advocate civil rights for ANY woman. Instead, Latino women should find that special snowflake balance within themselves which honors themselves in the face of bigotry." Change the ethnicities and the massive logic fail might become a tad more obvious...

Missa
hmmm, if she had just said "hey white feminists are ignoring how racism affects Black women, so FUCK YOU" then it would have made more sense to me. Instead, she's actually asserting a logical argument (which makes no sense) It goes: "If white women are not going to help me, then I'm not going to help ANY women attain their civil rights; instead, I'll just contemplate my feelings".

Moses Seenarine
missa, your response to this just floors me!!!

reification of imposed patriarchal constructions leaves one trapped within it...

instead of being bitter about being invisible, and giving up on female solidarity by remaining trapped within themselves and partiarchal communities, women of color could instead build their own radical feminist groups and then try to build bridges from a position of having something to offer; even if white women never accepts them, they would be taken much more seriously by men and other women in their own communities

Komal
I'm familiar with Renee's work. Familiar and unimpressed.

Missa
I'm just seriously nit-picky Moses. Really. sometimes too picky.

Missa
Perhaps my craptastic attitude would make more sense if I talked about mean girls. There's a few who tromp all over the internet and try to divide folks. Calling out the insensitive self-centeredness of some white feminists is a good thing, and yet, this is not what the mean girls *limit* themselves to. They are merely funfems, and come in every ethnicity... They do not seek a system of genuine equality, but merely desire a more cosy position for themselves within an unfair system.

Moses Seenarine
nit-picking is what makes social science a science :)

liberal feminists, cultural feminists, conservative feminists, third wave feminists, and scores of other feminists, have all limited their goals towards achieving the gradual improvement of patriarchy, personal and/or local, however defined; it doesn't matter how long it takes, just as long as some progress is being made; the fact that women have been trying to reform men for 25,000 years, largely unsuccessfully, seems to make little difference to women's timeless patience and optimism for men; male control and privilege are viewed as inevitable, meaningful, and even essential for women's well-being...

full recognition of male violence, control and power at the personal, local and global level is required to go beyond the reformist model, and only radical feminists, separatists, ecofeminists, anarco-feminists and others on the frenge seem to get the need to end male domination entirely, in all of its forms

Komal
I would love to play the identity politics people's own game and say: as a woman of colour and a lesbian, I am against identity politics. Actually I can't wait until I finally get to try that :P.

Missa
hey disagreement is okay, and the opinions and thoughts and reasons of other people help me to evolve my own. It's all good and keep those call outs coming!!

lorde is a cultural separatists?

2011-06-13T20:52:00.000-07:00

Moses Seenarine
what have black men contributed to the black feminist movement in the past 30 years? how long do black feminists intend to keep their "lesser empowered" black sisters in "bondage" while waiting to bring black men along; and what exactly are black men supposed to do in order to show that we are all ready to move ahead in solidarity with white sisters?

Rhya
good questions...

Yusuf
forget gender-bias

Moses Seenarine
no address gender bias in order to get at racial ones

Yusuf
just treat people as individuals :)

Moses Seenarine
yes,, individual change is important, but we need to build an effective movement to challenge institutional bias

Yusuf
uphill struggle - life's far too complex - espousing equal opportunities for all is far simpler

Moses Seenarine
the state and institutions have most of the power, and the biggest gains have come from challenging biased-laws, so we have to keep the gains and press from more, at the macro level, in addition to espousing equality in our daily lives at the micro level

Yusuf
textbook political theory, bro ... but what's actually happening meanwhile, hmm?

Moses Seenarine
meanwhile, we're caught in a cultural trap, and a masculine one as well, as these questions point to; women of color need to see this for what it is, a trap

Yusuf
You think the labels themselves can become restrictive, at times?

Moses Seenarine
if the label leads to self-definition and identity, it becomes hard to move from there

Moses Seenarine
all labels are socially constructed by others; but once inside, how does one accept and challenge the construction at the same time? you can more effectively challenge the construction once you outside and beyond it;

how can women of color challenge white patriarchy while remaining trapped inside black patriarchy, however defined? they must move beyond all patriarchy and attain solidarity with all women to mount an effective challenge

Yusuf
How about moving one step further still ... to equal human rights for all? :)

Moses Seenarine
that is the goal, but how do we get there? simply wishing it will not do; we must start from what exist now, and it's not equal rights for all; it's a hierarchy of whites, men and women of color are at the bottom waiting for men of color to join them... that ain't happening anytime soon

Moses Seenarine
what can men of color do to help achieve equality for women of color? they can start by addressing male privileged with communities of color, and work to achieve full equality for women within our own communities

Moses Seenarine
but there is a psychological factor at play here; men of color are oppressed by the white hierarchy as well, and they salvage their identity by maintaining patriarchy within their own communities; so women of color are really facing an uphill battle in trying to convince men of color to give up one of the most important aspects of their identity- male privileged

Max
There is this, however: the survival and wellbeing of the entire people depend on women not being ground down, and the children with them.

Catherine
Black patriarchy is deeply entwined with religious faith and practices in our communities, making it all the more difficult to address. Both men and women embrace and defend these practices.

Moses Seenarine
if black feminists have no answers to these important questions, then they must at the very least admit that by strictly following the words of audre lorde, they have been leading us blindly on a wild goose chase for 30 years!

and they should see that we're all so busy trying to play catch up with them marching far ahead in a race to nowhere, that we're all forgotten why we're running in the first place;

while women of color may be glad for the exercise, i for one refuse to move another inch blindly until someone can give me some answers as to where we are going, what i can to expect to find, and how long it may take us to get there; and if no one knows the answers or they refuse to tell us the plan, what are people of color supposed to about this? must we wait forever until black feminists themselves realize that they are blind, loss and confused?

Moses Seenarine
i think if lorde was alive today, she would certainly modify what she wrote, given it's lack of effectiveness and progress over three decades; how can we finish this job for her?

Moses Seenarine
lorde has influenced not only black feminists, but oppressed women of color throughout the world, how we move forward with this crucial issue in helping women of color frame their struggle has revolutionary potential to change the world!

Sallie
I knew Audre Lorde in the Seventies. A woman who passionately loved her race, her children and her sisters, she would have changed with the times. Like most of us, when we get a clearer picture.

Max
What is it about Lorde that you find problematic? i can't see that where things have ended up can be laid at her door. The massive colonizing influence of mass-media has much more to do with it if you ask me.

Moses Seenarine
max, lorde herself is not a problem, but a select reading of lorde that is used to justify cultural separatism, as well as to prove that female solidarity is impossible, is the problem; further, this framing of lorde is used to cast any attempt at global solidarity as patriarchal imposition on female cultural differences

cultural feminists, not the media, are the ones building careers and academic glory by corrupting lorde into a cultural separatist, and indoctrinating communities of color into the notion that any woman trying to establish solidarity with women from dominant communities is being a feminist and cultural traitor

that's where things stand now, max, and it not lorde's fault

Sallie
She wouldn't attend conferences where boy children weren't allowed, because as she would painstakingly write the organizers, she had a Son AND a Daughter, and she choose to live in a vision where ALL children would be included. Men generally had a habit of grabbing the mic and drowning out women's voices, so she used what energy she still had, in woman-centered but not strictly separatist, community.

Max
OK, i see where you're coming from. Ironic, that charge of, "being a feminist and cultural traitor" because she was deeply feminist, and not only fought racism among feminists, she also fought sexism and homophobia in her home community.

Sallie
Yes, A woman without a country-- except for all who were marginalized discounted discredited and victimized by patriachy. Being a revolutionary can be one lonely busines.

Mary
I know black lesbian separatists, Moses. Please do not speak as if you know all about black feminists.

Moses Seenarine
right on! i need them on my list!

Isaiah
The question is not what Black men have done to contribute to the feminist movement anymore than what the feminist movement done to contribute to the Black Movement. I'm sure both sides would be found wanting.

And I'm non-plussed by the suggestion that White Feminists have moved so far forward and ahead of Black feminists, for it was through the struggle of Africans in America that White women found their voice in challenging sexism in America. Ironically, it was not even to challenge their own men about their sexism, but BLACK MEN... The issue of sexism came to the fore in SNCC, not SDS, or other so-called White progressive movements.

The issue for Blacks is far more complicated than it is for Whites, which is why Black Feminists language about sexism is so different. Black women are not merely fighting on one front, they are fighting on many, so saying that White women feminists are ahead of the game certainly says nothing that rings with great authenticity.

Lastly, but not least in importance, is this question of SOLIDARITY with White Feminists. Going back to the 1880's, The Colored Women's Clubs sought solidarity with the White women's Suffragists Movement, but it turned out to be nothing more than a relationship of convenience for the Suffragist. When southern White females protested the suffragists inclusion of Black women, the White suffragists caved in without so much as a whimper. I would that these White feminists seek out Black women for some solidarity, and demonstrate some backbone in their support of Black women. They can start by becoming far more outraged over what is going on in the Congo...

Moses Seenarine
isaiah, you are correct about the history, but we must focus on the present and the current impasse; no one is "ahead" since as all women are oppressed under patriarchy; so how does black women and all women get out from being stuck under men's thumb?

as per women of color cultural separatist, we'll have to wait for black/minority men to step up before even getting dressed; so, what does stepping up mean for black men? are we ever going to get dressed and go out and play with others?

Monique
the longer these threads span, the more i am beginning to wonder if there is such a thing as a black male feminist, a supportive male for the black feminist community, not necessarily feminists in general. i'm not a well read woman so maybe they/he exists, but up until this point I've only thought of it in the context Catherine mentions. ...hmmm.... this looks like its a question that needs asking. *press forward*

Moses Seenarine
honestly, monique, there isn't any heterosexual black male or white male or any other male feminist, and it's not possible to be one; black gay and trans men can be allies, but there is a sense of competition even here; for straight men, women are just holes, plain and simple; it's very hard to deprogram from this when all of society reinforces this basic image of women

Monique
i don't know if Quentin Walcott, Director of Connect New York, would call himself a feminist, but his work against domestic violence surely falls within that realm. i would be most grateful to be educated about male feminists in the black community. ♥

Monique
may not be possible to be one, but to the extent that his empathy is comprehensive enough to function as a feminist activist....and surely that is worthy. a male feminist activist in a supportive role. yeah. i don't see how we can end patriarchy without their support--unless we just move to another planet.

Moses Seenarine
the problem is male violence in all of its forms, not just domestic violence; what occurs in the home is a reflection of male, patriarchal values in society, in the brutality against other men, animals, etc.; that's why radical feminism is the only theory that works, since it encapsulates all aspects of male violence

Sallie
Yes--I fell in love with a man decades ago when he said, "Sallie, Radical Feminism is the only hope America has"--because I was so shocked that he could Get It. ( He drove the getaway car when we were helping battered women escape before there was funding)

Moses Seenarine
there seems to be at least one man every generation or so; i suspect it is a radical feminist gene that rarely occurs in men :)

Sallie
If there was an ongoing "12 Step Detoxing From Patriarchy & Rebuilding" Group, this would curttail the inevitable cultural backsliding. ~

Sallie
If there was an ongoing "12 Step Detoxing From Patriarchy & Rebuilding" Group, this would curttail the inevitable cultural backsliding. ~

Olutosin
I really appreciate this 'GENERATIVE THEME'

Hey, wont you all come attend my class on Feminism next year...i can imagine how lively the discussion would be...I am enjoying this please Non Stop

Moses Seenarine
yes, Mark Anthony Neal understands the importance of opposing the 'Strong Black Man' concept
http://newblackman.blogspot.com/

there is also Michael Eric Dyson, Ishmael Reed, Phillip Brian Harper, and others

but the best work is still Bell Hooks' two books, "We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity" and "The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love"

hooks finds that black men are taught violence and aggression as the keys to survival, an ideology that is reified in the lucrative gangs-and-guns side of hip-hop music and culture. Mainstream culture inculcates fear of black men, rewarding them most when they act out the "Native Son" role of brutal psychopath to confirm that fear,

Hooks asserts that black men have been so dehumanized that they are in crisis emotionally and at risk within society. Yet she posits that the greatest threat to black life in America is patriarchal thinking and practices. She points to the current instability of black male employment in contrast to improved employment opportunities for black women, something many black men have trouble accepting because of the cultural dictates that men should dominate women. Too many black men face a host of troubling social dynamics--including alienation from their fathers and their children. Hooks advises them to emulate the many black women who turn to self-examination and self-love and to break with the macho demands and values of a patriarchal culture.

"Sex, then, becomes for most men a way of self-solacing. It is not about connecting to someone else but rather releasing their own pain."

Isaiah
Actually, Black men have not "learned" violent behavior from HipHop. To suggest that we have is sooooooo incredibly laughable it borders on insanity.

We've had 5,000 recorded lynchings in Amerca, most of those the result of some white woman crying rape, or complaining about a brother whistling at them, and now we got sisters talking about violence was learned exclusively through other Black men through a musical genre that was born because young Black men were using it as an alternative to gang violence... Can you make up such an incredible story?LOL!

You know what I earnestly believe, Moses? I believe Black women and Black men have some internal issues that we need to work out among ourselves. We do not need to superimpose upon those internal conversations anything other than our own personal and communal healing. Black women owe White feminists NOTHING, brother. If anything it's the other way around.

Moses Seenarine
isaiah, you are correct about racial violence occurring right now as we speak, and you and i can both be subjected to it at a moment's notice, but that does not negate anything bell says; we are both victims and co-conspirators in male violence; culture has a large part to play in transferring male violence into the next generation, and we learn it from both minority and mainstream masculinity and patriarchal communities

Isaiah
I believe this argument that Black men must get behind feminism to show some soldiarity with White women is not only misguided and dangerous, I believe it to be bogus. If you want solidarity with someone you go after it. You don't put obstacles in the ways to that solidarity as is being done here.

I think the notion that it is the Black Males' patriarchy that is the problem in our relations as a community is disingenuous on the part of any Black feminist who makes that argument. Black women are as much accustomed to that matrix as are Black men, and are loathe to have a man around who is not working, and bringing in the bread and butter, so Black men who are clear about this, would naturally shy away from committing to a relationship where scarce employment is required.

To suggest that black men, alone, are caught up this thinking tells me that those who keep making this argument without wholistic treatment are doing it feel good about their own analysis, and nothing more. Black women are not immune to this patriarchal matrix. In fact, many of them teach it to their own male children. Many of them teach their own male children to be violent, and hyper-masculine, in a world where father figures are scarce, as that is their concept of what manhood and masculinity are. So, it is really much more complex than Bell Hooks would have us believe. That's what happens when the story is not told in a balanced manner - or when a man is removed from the picture...

Moses Seenarine
i am not putting obstacles to solidarity, on the contrary, i am pointing out that it's cultural separatists who are; and here, i'm not suggesting that minority men become allies with white women (although that would be a good idea), but only that women of color form larger alliances to take on patriarchy

yes, women of color are also complicit with cultural patriarchy, and bell talks about this as well

Julius
Violence was around. I hate to say it but there are a WHOLE lot of black women, feminists & otherwise who have purchased, listen to & STILL idolize some of the most vicious women beaters in history. And that predates Rap by decades. The primary difference being that while rappers openly display their disdain, others did it with a smile, a smooth voice & a velvet touch. None of which made the butt-whippings that they administered any less painful to the recipient.

Whether an artist SPEAKS disrespectfully of our women, or speaks nicely while beating our women behind closed doors,the result is the same. One is simply more bastardized for their behavior because it's in-your-face, while the other is done behind closed doors.

I don't condone rappers & what they do, but to lay all of this at their feet while exonerating others is not right. And if we REALLY want to get into some truth, there's the truth that while we blame these kids for being directionless, exactly hiow did they get to be that way?

Could it be because they were abandoned by the men of my generation & the one before? Could it be that the men of my generation & the previous one, through drink, drugs & simply being irresponsible set one hell of a horrible example for these young men & women?

How about the mother who got more into chasing drugs than raising her kids? And exactly when did it become acceptable for 14 year-olds to become pregnant & when did it become commonplace to become a grandmother at age 36?

I'd argue that these kids are who & what they are because of horrible neglect on the part of TOO MANY of MY generation, as well as the one which preceded mine.

Who allowed our neighborhoods to become what they became? Who talked crap about the infiltration of drugs & drug dealers until they either got hooked on drugs, or got a cut from the drug dealers for holding their drugs?

Who sat back in virtual silence while crap was being drilled into the heads of our children through music, videos, tv, movies & even toys?

WE DID, so truthfully, what did we really expect?

You can't make a perfect cake out of a pan that's full of potholes.

Julius
And as far as the black man vs feminist, it seems that we have our hands filled with our internal issues. It seems that those issues have to be addressed before one can tackle the feminist issue. You can't solve one before solving the other. Then again, you'd have to convince women & men that that issue needs to be addressed.

That seems to be why we can't get anything meaningful accomplished because we have so many differing ideas as to what exactly needs addressing, in what order it needs addressing & simply seem to find divisiveness at every turn.

I wish that I had the answers, but people being people, I don't. But it appears to me as though we simply have so many areas which truly need to be addressed & respect for our women is just one of them. currently, we seem to still be dealing with that same old "lighter-skinned vs. darker-skinned", which has been around before the days of the 60s, when I was a little boy seeing Artra Skin Lightener ads in Ebony or Jet.

I'd also add that US respecting US as a collective seems to loom even larger, as the ramifications for not doing so is tantamount to genocide.

Moses Seenarine
if we focus on those least among us, and half of the population, that would get us started in the right direction; when you deal with women's issues, you also cover children, and men; radical feminism has never been tried; what are we waiting for?

Julius
Moses, I understand what you're saying, but I believe that you're overlooking one very important piece of the puzzle & that piece further exacerbates the situation.

The root of the problem is the attempted castration of the BLACK MAN! If the man is supposed to be the head of the family, then how can we overlook what ails him, address feminism, then expect anything good to come of it?

Remember what led to the chasm which we see today, a chasm which has far too often led to women saying such idiotic things as "I don't need no man". B------t! We BOTH NEED EACH OTHER!

Remember the days of the early 70s forward, when employers killed 2 birds with one stone by hiring not merely the minority known as "woman', but also a BLACK woman, as opposed to hiring a BLACK MAN! And what better way to further emasculate or show the BLACK MAN how powerless he was, than to place a BLACK WOMAN over him as his boss?

When discussing the problems between us, these things can NEVER be forgotten, nor the reasons for this practice being implemented to begin with.

With this history as fact, it would seem as though we have to give the black man back is testicles, so to speak & from there addressing all else. Show me a society where the man doesn't command TRUE respect or lacks a degree of power & you get anarchy in our neighborhoods, anarchy in our homes, a lack of respect between our men & woman, genocidal behavior in our communities, a.k.a. life in the inner cities circa 2011.

Moses
i grew up in the inner city in jamaica, queens, ny, and am still part of it here in los angeles; i witnessed first hand how the anarchy in our communities is caused by men for the most part, so let's deal with this fact not by blaming it's victims - women

black masculinity is no more in crisis that white masculinity or any other form of male privileged; can privilege be in a crisis in the first place? isn't this a good thing?

how can black men be castrated if they all act as proudly macho as they always have; how is black masculinity and black patriarchy any different from what it was say 50 or 100 years ago? before you bring up the loss of the nuclear family, please note that only 20% of american families are now nuclear, with single mothers being the most form of common household; so, who's carrying the burden and needs more support for sustaining the black family?

even in nuclear families, black men are out to lunch - too busy with their friends, partying, etc., rather than taking time to care of children; know what kind of a relationship i have with my father? zero! the man is a complete stranger even though i was raised in the same house; we have nothing in common because we never did anything together; what a waste!

economically, black men remain almost as disadvantaged as they were 50 years ago, so why would their masculinity be impacted all of a sudden? and why are black men any different from white men in the current mancession? how many black women bosses are there of black men compared to white men, 10%?

if black men are missing testicles why has child abuse, domestic violence, sexual abuse, and black-on-black crime not decreased in our communities? why has black participation in wars and white capitalist society not decreased significantly over 50 years?

racism is an issue for black men and women alike, and although imprisonment is a larger problem for black men than black women, black masculinity remains part of this problem as well, and it will only be solved by black men rejecting it in favor of feminism

Moses Seenarine
if a black woman being a black man's boss leads to their castration, then may all black men have black women as bosses!

julius, talking to you is not going to get anywhere; you've arrived at your destination many decades ago, and no amount of reasoning from a boat load of feminists will help you to see anything different from what you already know and luv - 100% pure and unadulterated male privilege

i'm done here since you would only have black women stay in their place - prone!

lorde as "sister insider"

2011-06-13T20:39:00.000-07:00

Moses Seenarine
this damn jerk should stab himself for being a man! the world is filled with such male jerk-offs, whose only purpose in life is to spread the patriarchal cancer to each new generation;
Tracy Morgan, the Word "Faggot" and a Plea to call People "Jerk"
www.addictinginfo.org
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/06/11/tracy-morgan-the-word-faggot-and-a-plea-to-call-people-jerk/

Homophobic language in sports, media and society puts Gays and Lesbians at risk.

Moses Seenarine
this piece of shit is what black feminists refuse to leave behind, and what prevents them for achieving solidarity with white women? please! these assholes will never come around to having any sense besides looking out for themselves, and while waiting around for them, black women will become even more irrelevant than they are now

Sista Dez
Wow Moses, I hear you, but wow!

Moses Seenarine
instead of calling out this misogynistic ass, who would sacrifice his own son to the alter of heterosexuality, for promoting fear and hatred of gays, what is the black male media and intellectuals busy doing? defending his dumb would-be killer's right to keep his job... just like they do for their drone-happy president; these clarence thomas jerks do the work of the patriarchal massa, and reduce "black power" to being first in line to getting paid from white massa

Sista Dez ‎
You are making a lot of ugly blanket statements , first off he is an ignorant azz for this. Black women are not irrelevant, and Clarence, and the drone -happy Barry has not anything to do with Black Power.. I feel your outrage and concur, no way he can put this up as "just comedy" he is no better than that dude from Sinefeld..(can't remember his name), and I pray he doesn't really have a son...But wow Moses...

Moses Seenarine
i just responding to this as it unfolds; first to what he said, and to the pathetic community response to cast this as comedy! being hazed, bullied to suicide or murdered is not funny; to try to justify his outrageous remarks in any way is equally outrageous, given all we have heard about gay suicides this past year alone;

why does they black or any other minority community refuse to call out financially successful blacks for homophobia, sexism and other ills of society? because their limited success means that all of us are successful as well? insanity! that's the connection with thomas and potus; i'm not the one making the blanket ugly statements, and i don't have a media platform, and i'm only doing this to mirror and respond to what he said

Sista Dez
I'm not faulting you, I agree, I cannot answer why, I ask that all the time...It was the irrelevant black woman, and the black power reference in the same sentence with those two...that got me..peace.

Terry
Yes, well, you respond in ways that expose your inherent racist thinking - attached to the notion that the Brother ought not grow or learn, but should get the DEATH PENALTY for expressing bigotry.

You should in your own words "stab yourself" for being such a morbid, resentful, over-reacting . . . I could go on and on.

Once he is instructed to stab himself, what he said doesn't even matter anymore.

Terry
Please note that that comment is merely the best he has to offer. He doesn't know jack about Black women beyond what he peeps along the surface.

First, he reveals his own bigotry, and then when you call him out, he rushes in to defend himself and then posts a bunch of Black stuff for a while. That is, until he believes he has found relative redemption at which point he begins again from square one.

It's a *vicious* cycle.

Terry
Rather than spitting the critique out, he should swallow it. Think about it.

Kenneth
Moses you have to have some notion of redemption for folks, who even as we agree they are homophobic and misogynist, who are willing to apologize and both learn and provide for us a learning moment. That's IF you believe as you have often stated that this is what we get from patriarchy, demonization of women and non-straight, non-christian folks. I don't know where your thread came from condemning black feminism, but I don't know any black feminists excusing Morgan's language. Help me out with that one?

Kenneth
‎@Terry, interesting that on some level, Moses vitriol is not much elevated from Tracey Morgan's acidic ramblings? Irony?

Terry
Exactly Bro. Kenneth. And that's not to say that one can't express anger and even rage, but the proposal that any person should "stab themselves" reveals much more about the proposer than the proposee.

Sista Dez ‎
Not for me it isn't Kenneth, all I heard, was black, black, black...that seem to be the focus of the comment...rather than Tracy's idiot tail...

Terry
Hey, thanks Dez for sending me back there for another look. Check it: "and while waiting around for them, black women will become even more irrelevant than they are now."

His vitriol is just as Sis. says, all about Africans. And another irony is - how relevant are the people of Guyana which is where he is from?

Does he suggest that he and this child are relevant in this link below? He is lashing out at his Mother of course - which means there's a lot of stuff goin' on here that we don't know about.

Maybe he needs to write her a DEAR HARRIET letter.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1044914257584&set=a.1492898416908.68635.1667470222&type=1&theater

White supremacy is alive and well - often flailing around in "brown face."

Kenneth
right Sista Dez. Thank goodness I didn't have to stab myself for my own youthful homophobia and misogyny. Instead I was elevated by folk like Baldwin, Essex Hemphill, June Jordan, Toni Cade Bambara, and the great Audre Lorde. So Black Feminism lifted many of us, and wouldn't let us excuse ourselves or anybody else spewing the poison Tracey was spewing.

Terry
Thank goodness indeed. And of course, we all came from a place of ignorance, and if we're lucky understand that we are privileged to know a few things here and there.

Terry
why does they black or any other minority community refuse to call out financially successful blacks for homophobia, sexism and other ills of society?

1. He still thinks Black people are a minority. We are not.

2. He has some kind of sweltering resentment against *successful* Black people (whoever they are.)

3. He thinks that successful Black people are more "homophobic" because he doesn't read. If he studied, he would know that they are the LEAST bigoted (not that they are important or relevant since they obviously aren't all comedians).

4. "why does they" is not the start of a sentence.

Monique
a convenient detour from this article, not another word of critique on Morgan except the implication that he is misguided and should be forgiven. :-(
here's another perspective from a comedian who calls out his bullshit: http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/wanda-sykes-takes-on-chris-rock-roland-martin-over-tracy-morgan/discrimination/2011/06/11/21872

Sista Dez ‎
I don't think it was a convenient detour at all. We all, I believe have said dude is flat wrong for his disgusting, homophobic, and straight repulsive rant..But to say he should kill himself for it, is no different than what Tracy said.

Sista Dez
But he(Moses) has added a layer to this thread, that I could not leave unaddressed. It is very disappointing to say the least. I applaud Wanda, and with this link you have answered part of his question Monique, someone with a platform called him out for his pathetic comedy. And no Tracy should not be forgiven, I can't see how it can be considered comedy and his apology was a poor example of one...personally, those kinds of apologies are empty in my eyes.

Terry Howcott
If he can't be forgiven, none us can be forgiven. The man is just sick, that's all. And I dare say, we have all been sick and/or sickening at various points in our lives.

In fact, to be clear - most Same Gender Loving people and supportive Brothers and Sisters are *recovering bigots* who have said horrendous things in their past.

Sista Dez ‎
And honestly the person who posted the article, chose the direction of the thread with his very first comment...so NOT a convenient detour. That's the path he picked..

Terry Howcott
Sho nuff he did indeed.

The truth will set him free.

Sista Dez ‎
Well yes, in time, but not right after he says it with such ferver, jsut because it got bad press..

Sista Dez ‎
Well yes, in time, but not right after he says it with such ferver, just because it got bad press..

Moses Seenarine
in this little gem, i got in a critique of all men, and included minority communities and feminist of color;
if you're a lover of conciseness, you may appreciate it for that much :)

as with the other posts i use with shock value, it's meant to generate a response; so let's what have i gotten back so far?
the same tired accusations of racism from terry; i haven't noticed black feminist calling out this fool and i'm glad to have brought a few out; but this is not the only reason why i included feminist of color in this rant;

you see, everytime i talk about female solidarity, women of color feminists are quick to oppose a separatist agenda by pulling out lorde's work from 30 years ago, arguing that women of color feminist will not move towards their white sisters without taking along black men as well; so, i'm trying to understand just what exactly black men have contributed to the black feminist movement in the past 30 years? how long do black feminists intend to keep their "lesser empowered" black sisters in "bondage" while waiting to bring black men along; and what exactly are black men supposed to do in order to show that we are all ready to move ahead with solidarity with white sisters?

Terry
No. If you are a lover of conciseness, then you understand that Black people are NOT minorities, and that "feminists of color" are not relevant here. In fact, the real culprits in all of this are WHITE and LIGHT feminists who cater to people such as yourself.

I believe you are dishonest to the core. I believe you meant exactly what you said, and that as you always do - you slipped and showed your true *color.*

Three. Black men shouldn't be explaining jack to you, because you are not the arbiter of truth and justice for African people. In fact, it is useful and wonderful that you don't understand so that you can stay out of our business.

Four. How long are Guyanan males who think and speak like klansmen going to continue feeling entitled to stretch their culture-less rhetoric across our African landscape.

Five. Black women are not obligated, interested or well served by operating in solidarity with the white women of YOUR choice.

Moses Seenarine
i can see, it's gonna take a while; thanks for making that very clear, terry

Moses Seenarine
i hope you guys don't mind me forging ahead and trying something different from what hasn't worked in the past

Terry
We are moving not toward, but away from people like you. You are free to trapse in the opposite direction from attempting to affect "leadership" over Black people.

Stay in your place.

You are not African.

Be like a non-African.

Sista Dez ‎
That is probably a good idea...try something different to free the lesser empowered black sisters from bondage.
~Smdh....smh.

Terry
Takin' that "Moses" thing way too seriously.

Moses Seenarine
my place is with the oppressed, always; i may not be "black", but that subtle difference is irrelevant to the white hierarchy; i reserve the right to criticize about any group, just like everyone else; my page here is for personal discussion and my own understanding of issues; it's not anywhere near being a platform to anywhere

Terry
We reserve the right to slam your butt every time you show your white supremacist side - driving while claiming to be 'progressive.'

Moses Seenarine
hopefully some young feminist of color will read this and understand the masculine trap we're still caught in and be able to move beyond it, as i have

Terry
Hopefully, you'll "stab yourself" for trying to play man to African women.

Moses Seenarine
i got you to do that for me, terry :)

Terry
And let your epitaph be that you were *not qualified.*

Moses Seenarine
‎"finally an ending to thought" is what i would prefer

Terry Howcott
‎*Whatever works.*

Moses Seenarine
i want change that - "finally an ending to facebook"!

Karen
I am stunned at your racist generalizations about Black women, black feminists & the black community, Moses! Of course what Morgan said is ignorant & homophobic! But why did you attack the Black community? Were not a monolithic group of people! Besides, your attack is unwarranted! You should just stick w/ attacking patriarchy instead of attacking black feminists, which I am, and my community! SMH with disgust!!!

Moses Seenarine
why is the black community or black feminists beyond critique? are you saying that these groups are beyond reproach, or that i'm not qualified to criticize them? i would rather others to respond to the context and issues of what i am addressing, not merely question representation which leads nowhere

Lucky
You're right, Moses. The dude is a patriarchal disease and needs to go the way of the dinosaur. But his color is irrelevant. All men would be tyrants if they could. Regardless of race, creed, color, nationality, sexuality, or class, men all bond together in solidarity and brotherhood in their hatred of women. What is homophobia except more woman-hating? Punishing gay men for not using and violating women and punishing lesbians for not freely allowing men to violate them?

But what's up with taking black women to task? Women of all colors are guilty of protecting their Nigels and refusing to toss them by the wayside, even at the risk of their own enslavement, torture and demise - of both themselves and their children. Personally, I don't look for liberation to come from my white or black sisters. They are too colonized and are too invested in it and as a result, now have too much to lose. Liberation will come instead from those who have nothing to lose. Keep your eye on our Middle Eastern and Latino sisters. That is where I predict the liberation will come from.

Moses Seenarine
i'm not taking black women to task, but am questioning rigid adherence to lorde which has influenced women of color feminist intellectuals; i'm trying to push them to think harder about what solidarity means for men of color and dominant women

Lucky
That's a bit patronizing, wouldn't you say? 70% of black women identify as feminists. Only 40% of white women do. I don't think it's black women who need to be pushed or who need to think harder.

Missa
Moses, you're awesome! :)

Moses Seenarine
lucky, we all need to work harder; i am no more enlightened about this than anyone, but i am concerned about moving beyond the impasse we seemed to have reached; this critique is from an insider, and it is aimed solely at women of color intellectuals, not the average woman of color who may never have read lorde

i'm also having arguments with white feminist over their support for deep ecology men, conformity to male religion, etc.; i have a lot more to do here as well

Lucky
I guess I missed the part where Lorde put color before sex. Here's my favorite poem by Lorde:

Revolution is one form of Social Change
Audre Lorde (1968)
Chosen Poems ~ Old and New

When the man is busy
making niggers
it doesn't matter
much
what shade
you are.

If he runs out of one
particular color
he can always switch
to size
and when he's finished
off the big ones
he'll just change
to sex
which is
after all
where it all began.

Moses Seenarine
thank for sharing this, lucky! i need to remember this poem whenever anyone brings up lorde's fights with mary daly and white feminists :)

Moses Seenarine
this is one of several pieces on difference that serve as the bible for women of color intellectuals:
audre lorde on Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference: http://www.politicsforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=95&t=102167

Lucky
Ah, yes. The row between Audre Lorde and Mary Daly. Mary Daly told me herself that she had written to Lorde. Lorde insisted she hadn't. But after her death, the letters were indeed found, which was later disclosed in Audre Lorde's biography: Warrior Poet. But those with an agenda only saw what they wanted to see and disregarded the rest. IOWs, they skipped that part. Who knows why Lorde denied receiving the letters? Perhaps she never saw them? Whatever the case, I think folks have blown it all out of proportion to suit their agenda.

Lucky
Thanx for the link. Audre Lorde at her brilliant best! I don't think Lorde foresaw tho how these differences would be used against us to divide and conquer us.

Moses Seenarine
lorde was sleeping with a white woman when she wrote all this; another inconvenient truth that's totally ignored

Karen
Moses, the women I follow & teach their scholarship are Patricia Hill Collins, bell hooks, Kimberle Crenshaw, and other critical race fem. They provide a more stronger theoritical analysis, esp as how they examine the intersections of oppression. So, who you hanging? I mean, you continue to make blanket generalizations. Gotta run. Will be back in a few hours. I want to seriously address your assumptions.

Lucky
Again, I don't see how it's relevant who Lorde was sleeping with or what color she was. It doesn't negate what Lorde said in the piece or make her or other folks hypocrites.

Moses Seenarine
‎@ karen: how is difference articulated any differently by more modern feminists of color from what lorde said?

@lucky: it shouldn't matter, but it does;

for 30+ years, this schism between daly and lorde, and lorde's position on difference, has been used as the reason why women of color can't have solidarity with white women; that's why it's important to show that if lorde can express such solidarity in the bedroom it proves that she was not the cultural separatist her proponents would have us all believe

Lucky
I don't recall Lorde advocating any such thing, which tells us there are other forces at play here. I can understand where Lorde was coming from tho. My white sisters can drive me crazy sometimes too when they act like they are the standard and everyone lives the same way as they do - such as in nuclear families, with 2.3 children, which is more the white experience and not the norm world-wide. I seriously doubt tho that Lorde was trying to pit woman against woman and advocating that women segregate from each other. That is not in tune with the times. What was in tune with the times was conscious-raising. Lorde raised that consciousness level up a few more notches. By pointing out, that there was more than one way the patriarchs liked to skin the cat. The patriarchs break women down into sub-categories, often in conjunction with their hierarchies, and targets groups of women in very specific ways. And what that means for these groups of women and how it affects them. As a black, lesbian woman, in a interracial relationship, with a son, she related her experiences as such and how it affected her - which differed from the relationships of white lesbians, often without sons, or white or black het women. I mean, you can't just pick out the parts you like and ignore the rest, which perhaps, my black sisters may be guilty of. You must look at the woman as a whole - as the sum of her experiences. It ALL affected and alienated her and thus mattered to her. Thus she labeled herself, Sister Outsider. A term in conjunction of the acute alienation that she must've felt from her sisters, both black and white, lesbian and het alike.

That'll be $10 for the analysis. :p Ok, ok, I'm joking. Actually, I'm not Audre Lorde (surprise!) and I can't speak for her. But being a bit alienated from my sisters and an outsider myself, I identify with Lorde and this is my interpretation of the message I think Lorde tried to convey. Having something in common with most everyone and yet be a part of none. A round peg trying to fit into a square hole. It doesn't quite fit into any category. Humans are complex like that. You can't toss us all into a nice, neat, little box, gift wrap us, and tie a pretty little ribbon on top. Lorde emphasized that and gave us all a little more inclusiveness.

Moses Seenarine
lucky, thank you for the priceless analysis :)

i have always felt it a travesty reducing lorde to "sister insider"; i can understand the motivations, but lorde's lifework deserves more than our desire for cultural aggrandizement and uncritically accepting the patriarchal divisions she struggled against

Terry
Right, you can't pick out the parts you like which means that her relationship with a chocolate colored African women - the love of her life - becomes the primary storyline. See the movie

You can't hide the realities, and therefore, you can't reduce this genius African woman to mere discussion relevant to patriarchy.

She also said, "Black women sharing close ties with each other, politically or emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men."

She further said, "When we create out of our experiences, as women of color, we have to develop those structures that will present and circulate our culture."

You are correct in saying that we can't, "ignore the rest," and that we must "look at the sum of her experiences. Therefore you wouldn't want to neglect to look to how Lorde "attacked the underlying racism of feminism, describing it as unrecognized dependence on patriarchy."

Sis. Joseph, who was to become Audre's BLACK WOMAN a few years later, lamented in 1981 that "white women are both tools and benefactors of racism, and that feminists must recognize and address white women's social position as both oppressors and oppressed.

In fact, Joseph contends that "given the extensive privileges of whiteness, white women's immediate self interest is to maintain racism."

Also, Audre was not the only Black woman who lived on the planet. There are other brilliant African women who do not and would not accept this line of discussion from a Guyanan man who hasn't produced a shred of critique of Guyanan women.

It is at least suspicious, convenient and SELECTIVE that a Guyanan man with a female profile pic directs continuous critique of African men while neglecting to ever discuss the horrendous situation in his OWN CULTURE.

https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=202190603145318

I'm just sayin'.

Lucky
LOL, I guess we can see what Terry is doing for black women. Pits them against other women and does his best to divide them. Which is a favorite sport among men. Who does that serve? Himself, of course. How else can he hope to keep our sisters under his thumb? The thought of women uniting in sisterhood must be terrifying for him. As is it is for most men. But like it or not, Terry, women of any color have more in common with each other than they will ever have with you or any other man. Deal with it.

Lucky
Your job as pro-feminist men is to talk to other men. Not to tell women what to do.

No doubt there is horizontal hostility between women. Mostly caused by men sticking their dicks into things in an effort to keep women divided and under their thumb. But things like racism and classism are power struggles among CLASS MEN as they battle each other for power and position in an endless game of king of the hill. They take turns knocking each other off the top of the hill and claiming to be king. All men are guilty of it. Stop pointing the finger at other men.

Women's only purpose is to reproduce more of men's kind - to supply troops and numbers for their team so men can stay in the game and continue these stupid reindeer games. Women, who in the year 2011 are still viewed as men's property, get caught in the cross-fire of men's reindeer games, and worse, targeted. By targeting and raping the women of one's enemy, men can literally wipe their enemies out. It is an age-old military strategy. Men have been committing genocide via this means since time on end. So when it comes to women, it also becomes a game of capture the flag. The goal being to capture the women of one's enemy while trying to keep the enemy from stealing theirs.

Of course women identify with their masters! Their lives depend on it! But to reverse it all and blame women for it and act like women can remedy it, is despicable and sadistic. As I said, racism, classism, etc. is a power struggle among class men. Women have no power or control over men. Only men can stop their reindeer games. Until then, women will continue to be caught in the cross-fire of men's power struggle, and will take on the identities of the masters for their own survival, less she become the target of his enemy. This in turn, causes horizontal hostility between women.

No woman has the power to do anything about it, which men damn well know and take sadistic pleasure in, but it keeps women busy fighting each other in then name of their masters, which prevents them from getting any bright ideas such as, "Hey, why don't we just stop producing the masters?" Too bad for you, some women have already figured that out. I, for one, refuse to bring a male into this world and short of force, refuse to have relationships with men.

What you boys don't seem to get is women put you boys on this earth for our amusement, not vice versa. But you know what? I don't find you boys too amusing any more. You are destroying this female planet and all life on it and have overstayed your welcome. I am tired of your love and worship of death and destruction and your endless funeral processions You have had thousands of years to get your shit together, but you refuse to do so. If anything, you are only getting worse. Males are beyond redemption at this point. It's time for you boys to go. Mother Nature apparently agrees. She has scheduled you boys for extinction. Not females, mind you, just males.

Moses Seenarine
lucky, i agree with everything, but have you tried talking to men? we are happily out to lunch and don't mind sleeping in our own piss! why do you think i'm over here trying to talk to women? they might at least object to the smell...

men are not only beyond redemption, but are completely unwilling to change and to even concede the smallest bit of patriarchal privilege, even as we head over the cliff

Lucky
Have I tried talking to men? Hey, maybe if women just tried talking to men, they'd stop raping us! Is that what you're trying to say? Oh, shucks, we never thought of that!

Come on, Moses, you know better than that. Women have been trying to talk to men for 15,000 years. Men refuse to listen and change their ways. In fact, they'd rather destroy the entire planet than ever allow women equality, much less, liberation.

Women can't change men. Only men can change men. That's why I said it is not your job to talk to women or tell women what to do. If you want change, then talk to men.

I am going to recommend a book for you, Moses, so that you have understanding. It will pretty much explain everything to you. It's called, "The Caliban and the Witch," by Silvia Federici. If you are sincere about all of this, it will be one of the most important books you will ever read. Especially since history is repeating itself and the Burning Times are upon us again. The powers-that-be are going back to basics. It reads like a script. Read it. Have understanding. Truth and knowledge is power. And maybe, just maybe, you will be key in preventing it from happening again.

Moses Seenarine
yes, i do try to reach men and am constantly engaging them here on fb, arghhh!

thanks for reminding me about silvia's work; i'd heard of it and meant to look at it sometime; i like the connection of class and gender, and how women were oppressed to produce the laboring class; i have read maria mies and and a bit of engles; in my own paper "recasting indian women in colonial guyana" i argued that the difference between indian "prosperity" relative to that of blacks in the caribbean had to do with dis-inheritance of indian females and primogeniture among indians, which lead to rapid capital accumulation versus more egalitarian inheritance among africans; this idea was not well received by caribbean indian men or women :)

silvia's work is important and is similar to ambedkar's seminal work showing how gender was crucial to reproducing caste relations in south asia; if i may suggest one book for you, it would be by my favorite author, katherine burdekin's swastika night, written in 1934, in which she addresses the reduction of women to the status of animals in a post-hitlerian society 700 years hence into the future

thanks for pushing me, lucky, and your insights!

Lucky
Now you're catching on, Moses! Keep following your instincts. You're on the right track. I'll take a look at Burdekin's work. I think my friend was reading it or something similar to it, just last month. She mentioned it to me. Sounds like the same book. The dates match up.

call the un before you question a vegan, ok?

2011-06-13T19:53:00.000-07:00

- call the un before you question a vegan, ok?

"Lesser consumption of animal products is necessary to save the world from the worst impacts of climate change, UN report says."
UN urges global move to meat and dairy-free diet
www.guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jun/02/un-report-meat-free-diet

Lesser consumption of animal products is necessary to save the world from the worst impacts of climate change, UN report says
Friday at 10:53am

Unkas
it is thank God they recognize it

Patrick
perhaps they have it backwards..? should we be saving the world from the impact of animal consumption by lessening the impact of climate change..?

Moses Seenarine
thank earth :)

Patrick
stopping climate change means stopping the sun from burning, the planet from spinning, plants from respiring... there have been ages in which the earth was mostly covered in ice, others in which the planet was a steamy swamp...

Patrick
when i was a kid, people were afraid of another ice age coming... people talked about "pollution", which included acid rain, smog, chemical effluents into the air and water... how did the "ecological crisis" evolve from one of profit-motivated industry to that of heavy breathing eaters... civilization would never have occurred without combustion... now "they" want to tell us burning fuel for warmth, food, light, transport, are somehow immoral..? no mention of course of the externalization of production costs in the drive to maximize profits... the world is going to shit all because of the useless surplus eaters...

Moses Seenarine
and now the age of modern patriarchal development, the most powerful of climate change force of them all - achieving in a few centuries what took thousands of years before - and surpassing them all in mass extinction rates;

regardless of how it is caused, patriarchal competition and greed have wiped out countless ecosystems before, and now threatens the entire globe; this male achievement-based climate change model has the same result as global warming, so i don't see a difference here

meat and dairy consumption is linked to western masculinity and imperialism, as carol adams argues in the sexual politics of meat

Patrick
cattle is linked to patriarchy, to be sure... as human societies became more sedentary, and began to accumulate a surplus of possessions, it became necessary to define what belonged to whom especially as one generation passed to the next... the orientation of society from matriarchal, season-based societies to patriarchal pan-season societies was pronounced by the evolution of religion from worship of a life giving goddess to that of a law giving god...

to blame all modern society's ills on male dominance in society ignores human nature, the fact that given the opportunity women are equally if not more vicious and vindictive than men...

in terms of the ecological equation, in our traditional roles, men are the earners, women the shoppers... so whose sensibilities are driving our modern consumer society... a look at tv ads makes it obvious to whom marketers perceive as their target audience... it's freely admissible to openly mock and ridicule men and masculinity, because the message is to the women, the ones who do the shopping...

Patrick
and, in fact, the most extreme instances of climate change have occurred well outside the time frame of modern patriarchal societies... the idea - to me - that humans drive climate or any other solar-geologic process, is ludicrous... there have been many epochs in which the climate was warmer, and in which co2 composed a greater portion of the atmosphere..

Moses Seenarine
the programming starts with children; they have convinced women, against all reasoning and logic considering the limited availability of meat and dairy in the diet before factory farming, and in other parts of the world even now, that they need to feed their children meat and dairy, that it's necessary for essential minerals, proteins, etc.; but humans have lived on limited meat and dairy cultures for centuries; yet, this is how modern capitalism reproduced itself, and it's what the un report is pointing out, that it's not sustainable...

Moses Seenarine
from the report:

"Animal products cause more damage than [producing] construction minerals such as sand or cement, plastics or metals. Biomass and crops for animals are as damaging as [burning] fossil fuels."

- this is the elephant in the room that no one is addressing, besides the few brave souls at the un

Moses Seenarine ‎
"Rising affluence is triggering a shift in diets towards meat and dairy products - livestock now consumes much of the world's crops and by inference a great deal of freshwater, fertilisers and pesticides.

Agriculture, particularly meat and dairy products, accounts for 70% of global freshwater consumption, 38% of the total land use and 19% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions."

Patrick
i am a proud member of peta - people eating tasty animals... :D
but, i do believe in moderation... and i do recognize that a meat-based diet is less sanitary, both to one's body and the to the environment... my eggplants don't shit all over the place before i eat them... and i've heard said, my cats get more protein than many children in the third world... that is fucked up, should i abandon my cats to the street..? the problem, in my mind, is how thing must be quantified into some sort of value, the point of food not being nutrician, of medicine not being healing, of school not being teaching, but of all these things being forst and foremost businesses and driven not by a desire to produce goods or services but to acquire profits... it this manner every requirement for human happiness becomes perverted into a mean of fettering us, indebted to a usurious corporate bank... should we then starve ourselves, live homeless and uneducated, because some parasitic humans prey upon us as we try to better our lives..?

Patrick
would "animal products" include using horses as a means of transport, oxen for field work..? if we're to forfeit petroleum-driven technologies to reduce emissions, what do we replace then with... how, if you were solely responsible, would you ensure that all the people in the world were fed and sheltered in sanitary, healthful conditions..? how would you achieve the required redistribution of wealth without violence..?

Moses Seenarine
i don't glorify dumpster diving as the solution, and i think it's sad that many are forced to go there, but this report is not suggesting that kind of extremism; i'm vegan for over 25 years, worked as a public servant mostly, and have tried to educate myself all this time; what's so hard about that?

Patrick
i am not criticizing you or your diet ,btw... more power to you... maybe this will be the trend in third world agricultural development... an emphasis in producing plants foods that provide the full range of essential amino acids, nutrient and minerals, without the resource requirements of livestock... there are many cultures in the world, and each one will react differently to external pressures, whether from nature or from neighboring societies...

Bev
Being vegan has destroyed the health of almoste everyone I know. The beginning of agriculture was the beginning of "civilization:" patriarchy, war, slavery, overpopulation. That is what turned forests into deserts. Hunter-gatherers are not vegan, do not destroy the environment, do not alter the earth to suit them. Factory farming of plants or animals is not the answer. Humans need to absolutely stop reproducing.

Patrick
‎@bev, good points, well stated... i found it not uncommon among "environmentalists" embracing a vegan/vegetarian lifestyle, while simultaneously idealizing the native american cultures as living "in harmony with nature"... the lakota i knew were big on meat, in fact the guys ate nearly nothing but meat... toast, eggs, bacon..? they'd eat all the bacon... something about being a nation of hunters... old traditions die hard, i guess... i'm sure they ate more than buffalo, before the us govt killed them off, but theirs was definitely a meat-based diet...

Patrick
but stopping reproduction..? good luck with that... there are far more people living on earth today than ever before, surely, because fucking is so much more fun than dying... and even if we stabilized at seven billion, how do we feed and house them all, and who will take care of them when they're too old to work..? who will decide who gets to reproduce to carry on the species... and according to what criteria..?

Moses Seenarine
why don't we just pretend that all the facts in this report don't exist, and we keep on doing exactly what we are doing, and hope for the best? it'll all turn out great, just like the fairy tales we grew up on...

Bev
Fucking isn't "fun" for women except for those who've had their brains removed by the media and patriarchy. I'm serious. Just stop fucking and almost all the problems will end. No one is even willing to try. If each individual did it... but instead everytime someone reproduces they are so rewarded and praised. Bring back the wild animals, let the forests return and stop mono-culture. Stop patriarchy.

Joel
As usual, the UN proves its irrelevance and lack of awareness of what is going on in the exponential world of innovation just as they have done with their utter cluelessness about the exponential pace of the solar revolution.
Hydroponics animal fodder is already explosively growing. There are numerous companies offering systems that enable radical reductions of usage of water, arable land, fertilizer and the almost total elimination of herbicides and pesticides. These hydrponic fodder systems enable a tripling of the nutritional content per pound from alfalfa and barley seed by sprouting them for 1 week, then feeding the sprouted mat to the livestock, whose stomachs have the microbes that can digest the root mass.
Here is a link to one of the many companies that exist in this field of hydroponics animal fodder:
http://www.sunroadsfarmory.com/page/page/6561254.htm

My back of the envelope calculations tell me that for an upfront investment of $12 B in these systems and the solar panels to power them, the entire population of 80+Million Ethiopians could be eating 6 ounces of steak and a milkshake everyday for the rest of their lives while utilizing far Less (1/3) arable land and 1/10 fresh water than presently.
Extrapolate that to global population circa 2050 of 9B -> ~$1.3 Trillion, or 2% of a single year's Global GDP as of today (presumably GGDP will be much larger over 40 years), and you can see that there is neither a population crisis nor an "earth carrying capacity crisis," but solely one due to the absence of a world democracy and the attendant global system of taxation and reinvestment in global infrastructure that would accelerate the democratic availability of this even faster than the current exponential pace of cost reduction.
Humans Are the Earth's Carrying Capacity.

Moses Seenarine
joel, we should encourage people to make better personal choices while we wait for the investment or revolution; the un is merely doing it's job;

there is a time-value here, and since we may run out of time before a turn around, consuming less now saves us more time

Patrick
‎@joel, rotflmao... srsly...

Patrick
i think, it's not all about sheer numbers, but about distribution... in the end, what we are talking about is not the end of the world, but the end of the world as we know it... rome fell, life went on... one historical difference being that in today's world, far more humans are far more interdependent than we have ever been in history, the socio-economic life support system we have constructed is fragile and essential to sustain human well being on this planet... in wwii half the casualties were non-combatants... in yugoslavia and iraq, the proportion was closer to 90%... collapse of life support systems, e.g., food storage, distribution, and transport, sterilization and transport of fresh water, generation, storage, and distribution of fuel and electricity for storage of food and medicine, for heating in the winter, cooling in the summer... loss of these essentials resulted in a dramatic increase in infant mortality rates in iraq during clinton's bombings, justified as enforcement of the no fly zone... in the grand scheme of things, whether i chose to eat rib eye or tofu tonight seems of little import...

Patrick
and bev, i am sorry if you never found "fucking" fun... not all women i've known have found sex to be revolting or degrading... in comparison, i think, i'm the prude... my use of phrase was tongue in cheek, however, and i offer you my apology if you found it crude or inappropriate... still, numbers speak the truth; for whatever reason, we breed faster than we die... surely some patriarchal conspiracy to ensure male dominance and corporate profits... praise the lord and god bless a murka...

Joel
Solar power wattage manufactured has, on average, doubled every two years for 70 years. As a result the price has fallen on average by 78% per decade since 1954 in nominal dollars (far more in inflation adjusted dollars). At the longstanding exponential pace of solar rollout, it will replace ALL existing energy systems on the planet by 2030. Over the last five years solar has grown by 65% per year. Although this year will probably see a reduction in the growth rate of the solar market due to the uncertainties about German and Italian subsidies. That was before the FukD Meltdown. The German and Japanese responses to the nuclear crisis will now radically accelerate the pace of solar rollout even faster into a war preparation frenzy. This is without taking into account China and India each decreeing that they will grow their solar installations by 100X between now and 2020.
The climate change and peak oil hyperboles of Malthusian sociopathic abstractions are being superceded by the actual work of real people doing real things not procrasturbating with fearmongering.

Patrick
and, if we really buy into this fall of society rhetoric, what is our chief responsibility, to care for ourselves and our families, or to prostheletyze the masses, or chastise them for their gastronomical choices... pack up your bags, pick up your tent, money's gone, already been spent... join the nwo survivalists and dig a bunker, stock it with food and ammo... some of us at least will survive the new dark ages...

Patrick
procrasturbating... nice coin... “hippies, hippies... they want to save the world but all they do is smoke pot and play frisbee!” ~cartman... "A thousand people in the street, Singing songs and carrying signs, Mostly say, hooray for our side..." ~ Buffalo Springfield

Moses Seenarine
energy is only part of the equation; the problems of agriculture and factory-farming will only increase with more production; the depletion and pollution numbers in these reports are all on the upswing...

each individual decision made at millions of kitchen tables serve to reinforce or deconstruct patriarchal violence and development;

the link with masculinity and meat is probably one of the most dominant, destructive ideology of patriarchy; as carol adams points out meat eating is used by western imperialism to show how inferior asian and non-meat based cultures are, and these cultures are now adopting our western meat-based diets as part of developing their own masculinity

helping others to make hard choices regarding diet is not procrastubating :)

Joel
E=mc^2
Stated differently, if there no constraints on energy that we can harvest, which is the upshot of what the Sun and ever cheapening solar panels means to the planet, than we can transform smaller amounts of more common types of matter into forms more useful to us.
This is the essence of Moore's Law in IT and it is what all of life does.
The Constructal theory of evolution and metabolism being the broader application.
Ubiquitous cheap solar power means cheap water purification from waste or seawater and cheap indoor lighting, water pumps, air fans, and thereby hydroponically produced food - plant and animal - using 1/10 the water and less of everything else.
Moses, I totally agree that many people in the rich world need to change their diets. But by far, The Most Important Changes that most people need to make is to increase the amount of water and green veggies they eat and most important of all, reduce their consumption of high glycemic carbohydrates which lead to diabetes, obesity, heart attack, and stroke. And I myself did so and lost 150 pounds.

Bev
In response to above, this is why I'm a Separatist and basically don't spend time around men. The heterosexism and hetero-male-supremacist attitudes are infuriating. I know it disturbs most men terribly to find out that not all women have been fucked. We don't have to have eaten dog shit to see that it's not something we want to do. In spite of the intense propaganda to make women want it, including sexually assaulting most in girlhood as training, it is not anything that females would naturally want.

And no, the numbers of women who participate in their humiliation and degradation don't prove anything more than they've been easily bought and manipulated. How many women alter their bodies is excruciating and degrading ways? (Besides the plastic surgery, high heels have made a huge comeback in media propaganda.) None of it is natural. Men who want women to look like that, should do it themselves. Men who want to fuck women should experience being fucked by men themselves and see how they like it.

Moses Seenarine
yes, bev, there is the no question that population growth is integrally related to masculinity; the desire to produce male heirs has probably resulted in more births than all other reasons combined; women are mere pawns used to reproduce patriarchy

Joel
Moses, population growth has been primarily due to the need for agricultural labor and the lack of social safety nets to care for people in old age. As people move off the farm and to the cities they have fewer kids. The rate of population growth everywhere on the planet is slowing down dramatically. My discussions with women of various generations and modes of production and rural vs urban locales throughout SubSaharan Africa bear out this observation of preferences. The maximum range predicted by 2100 amounts to a 42% growth over ~100 years compared to 250% over the previous ~100 years.

Patrick
there are a lot of over generalizations in that last comment... japanese are far from western but are indeed patriarchal... theirs too is a meat-based diet, the meat being derived from surf rather than turf... i don't eat meat because it makes me feel manly, but because it tastes good and satisfies my body's cravings... masculinity is one half of humanity, femininity the other; unless in balance, there is some distortion of human spirit and of justice according to the concept that we are all made in "god's image"... cattle, in the schemes of the "patriarchy", was more symbol of wealth, a means of carrying capital "on the hoof", and also a vehicle for land ownership... in the brazilian amazon, land is "improved" by clearing the forest for cattle pasture, turning the land into private property...

Patrick
these are not the kind of cows that are good for eating, btw...

Bev
No, Moses is right. My grandparents didn't overpopulate with having 8 kids because they needed help on the farm. It's men wanting to reproduce as much as possible. Some men in the cities try to impregnate as many women as possible, and look at the mormon fundamentalists! If women resist, they're raped.

Patrick
i have found, sadly, that many "environmentalists" do not understand basic ecological concepts... that life has evolved in its various manifestations according to its adaptations to a constantly changing physical environment... that, unless it can synthesize sugar from co2 (gasp!) and photons, every organism must pirate the sugars produced by some other organism, whether a cow chewing cud or me chewing steak...

Moses Seenarine
there is patriarchal hierarchy of food; beef is at the top, and fish at the bottom, with chicken and lamb somewhere in the middle; this hierarchy serves to reinforce the independent masculinity of western cowboys, the image of rugged individualism is reinforces at the bbq, etc; in poor countries, men are served the meat, and women eat vegetable and scraps

Joel
Moses, the gender-based differences in protein consumption correlates well with the sexual division of labor where males tend to perform the most demanding and dangerous physical labor, especially in poor countries.

Moses Seenarine
bullshit; women are deprived this protein when they most need it, during pregnancy! and they still have to do formal production, childcare, and community roles

Joel
Moses, what is bullshit? That men in poor countries perform the most physically demanding and dangerous work? Surely you jest or are completely out of touch with reality.

Moses Seenarine
women work three times as hard!; men get to come home, get drunk and beat everyone up; women have to work just as hard, come home and cook and deal with male violence all through the night; that's reality, mate

Patrick
‎@bev, you use the word "fuck" as a verb connotating violence... i am sorry if that has been your experience... the fact reamins, none of us would be here having this conversation if our parents did not "fuck"... there something beautiful in sexuality that may be celebrated and shared; it does not have to be about power and domination...

Joel
Moses, I am so deeply tired of your anti-male sociopathic bs unsupported by anything aside from histrionics and imperialist chivalrous stereotypes quite convenient for justifying their wars. I should have you come with me the next time I'm in Uganda, Nigeria, Angola or Ethiopia and you will discover what a moron or asshole you appear to be to those who know far more about the real world. Your perpetual denial of male suffering is disgusting.

Patrick
i have never heard of this "patriarchal hierarchy of food"... i live in the west, am a male, have been exposed to many cultures in the world, and subcultures in the usa, but have never heard anyone say anything like that... i've heard the term "meat and potatoes man" and always equated that with someone reactionary, or a stereotype...

Patrick
islam is reviled by some for the way muslim women are treated differently from men... yet their diet includes lamb or chicken more commonly than beef.. i think this "hierarchy of foods" concept is faulty...
Moses Seenarine no one is saying that men lack any ability to suffer whatsoever; but whatever class, race, or other suffering men are experiencing is no justification for oppressing women in turn; that is all i am saying; if men stopped oppressing women, maybe their own oppression will be improve as well; that is the basis of my argument with men

Moses
no one is saying that men lack any ability to suffer whatsoever; but whatever class, race, or other suffering men are experiencing is no justification for oppressing women in turn; that is all i am saying; if men stopped oppressing women, maybe their own oppression will be improve as well; that is the basis of my argument with men

Patrick
bickering whether working men or pregnant women more 'deserve' a nutritious diet seems to me banal... both arguments are valid; but why should the choice be imposed..? or, as moses points out, why is meat reserved for men..? not, i think, because it is a symbol of masculinity, but rather, being a better source of protein, being reserved for the one deemed most "deserving"...

Patrick
point being, if there were enough meat, the women would eat it too...

Moses Seenarine
yes, but is meat a better choice? what does meat represent? what does meat have to do with sacrifice and male religion? does meat itself represent the patriarchy?

Patrick
read, the mists of avalon.. there is a scene when authur runs with the stags... in the context of a ritual joining of the sun god and earth goddess... meat is part of the cycle of life... reverence for life is what modern society is lacking... acknowledgement and reverence of both male and female aspects of humanity with allow us to attain a truly just and humane society... wht is most important to life is perpetuation of life... we must be a creative element in the world, not one of destruction... still, we must consume other beings to live...

Bev
No, women are still deprived of meat in the most patriarchal cultures. Meat is the most concentrated nutrition. Hunter-gatherer women eat meat. It is grains and all altered food that humans changed through agriculture -- the original GMO -- which is what represents patriarchy. Agriculture made patriarchy and all the horrific violence that followed -- genocide, war, slavery, gynocide, extinction of species, destruction of the environment. Read Lierre Keith's "The Vegetarian Myth."

Bev
For our other disagreements, I agree, Moses, about how hard women work in comparison to men. I've seen enough documentaries where the men lounge around while the women do back-breaking work.

Patrick
the rise of patriarchal society occurred after the neolithinc revolution... but there is a historical correlation between the advent of agriculture, leading to sedentary populations and accumulation of surplus produce, which in turn led to the practice of leaving wealth to one's male heirs, and depriving women of ownership of property...

Moses Seenarine
meat is integrally related to masculinity and the hunt; women are "proved" inferior because they work in agriculture, and are denied to hunt, while men prove their dominance by subjugating all non-human animals, and nature in turn

Patrick
when, where does this happen..? you speak in generalizations...

Patrick
the world, and history, is full of injustices for which humanity will never be redeemed... who is keeping score..? who will judge..? how exactly can justice be served, for crimes so heinous, committed by and against people long dead..? is each of us responsible for the deeds of all others like us, categorically, men/women, white/brown, etc..?

Moses Seenarine
in all of the videos i saw, this tradition of men/killing and women/processing is reproduced in modern factory farms

Patrick
how many women do you know who would choose the job of killing the cow over cutting up the meat..?

Moses Seenarine
exactly; so this patriarchal disjunction has to occur in order to gain female conformity

Patrick
what..?

Moses Seenarine
women are more sensitive to killing, obviously

Moses Seenarine
if women were forced to go out and kill all the meat they eat, most would likely end up vegetarian, or eat smaller animals

Derek
I have a totally wild and crazy theory as to why meat products are still consumed in allot of countries today. Its economic incentive all over again... ye know ecology institutes like willits, california and others are often saying that we are farming enough land to produce food for everyone in the world. Well we prioritize and then refine that food! to produce something we can provide to the powerful of this world. What i propound today is that we produce wasteful products to ensure the propagation of our current economic paradigm.

Moses Seenarine
exactly what china is doing right now, to prop up growth, building huge empty cities, everywhere; using up precious resources count as increased production, regardless of whether anyone lives or shops there... the madness of male competition

Derek
Ok... im not going to say this is true its just rumors that i have heard. But some say china is currently trying its level best to burn up its massive dollar reserves in preparation of the big switch to an other trading currency.

Derek
Oh, i totally missed your point. Not so isolated, yet very sad.

Patrick
primitive accumulation... transformation of "nature" into "commodities"... each layer of processing involves labor, from which value may be extracted... potato chips are quite more expensive than raw potatoes... likewise, land may be "improved" by razing it of life and replacing a forest with a building in the middle of a parking lot... or plopping down some cows and saying see this land is mine, i "improved" it, my cattle graze on it, it is mine...

Patrick
‎@derek ... you understand correctly, these are not rumors... except that china is not 'burning' anything; rather, they are converting what they perceive as a volatile commodity into more secure and utilitarian forms of wealth... china is using its cast dollar reserves to fund economic development deals in the indian ocean basin and in africa, seeking to secure access to resources, to secure the sea lanes to the middle eastern energy resources... china is buying strategic minerals, industrial metals, and stockpiling them so that they are available to china as its economy grows, and available also as a valuable source of foreign exchange as the traditional industrial countries seek out continue supplies of essential resources... hence, i think, the escalation of us military involvement in africa...

Derek
i guess the rumor side of this is that they are not even trying to replenish their US reserves and intentionally spending up putting the US in a dangerous position of having to devalue its own currency. People could imagine vast and catastrophic economic failure occurring while countries start trying to release their devalued currency. I don't know the truth in all this... its just a scary thing i have read.

Robert
Wow, now they are getting hardcore. Austere world.

women can't have false consciousness

2011-06-11T16:18:00.000-07:00

women can't have false consciousness; everything they say and do is part of personal choice and agency, and so each woman is always right, especially when they are hyper-misogynistic!

Men should be allowed sex slaves and female prisoners could do the job - and all this from a WOMAN p
www.dailymail.co.uk
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2000292/Men-allowed-sex-slaves-female-prisoners-job--WOMAN-politician-Kuwait.html
Salwa al Mutairi argued having a sex slave would protect decent Kuwaiti men from adultery and would be a better life for female prisoners of war

Moses Seenarine
it doesn't matter what women do either - from serving as madams for child sex-workers to soldiers killing other women and their children - nope, just as long they are getting paid, which is the only proof needed to show how smart and powerful women are, and the more money they make, the smarter they are; so, oprah is the smartest woman on the planet, and the most feminist as a result... smh

Katherine
In a patriarchal culture, the women pushed to the media forefront are going to be the ones that support that dominant culture- look at Palin and Bachmann, if you need an American cultural equivalent. They're perfect specimens of what the religious right thinks women should be- pretty, fertile, ignorant and submissive in Palin's case, older, less physically ideal, ignorant and batshit-crazy in Bachmann's. This is religion in action- God loves a stupid, submissive woman, especially one that can be bought or persuaded to enslave fellow women. It's why Melissa Farley is an "expert" on prostitution (paid for by the religious right) but Margo St. James or Carol Leigh are ignored. It's why Bristol Palin is an "expert" on sex education (paid for) but Cecile Richards is demonized. It's why Sarah Palin is pushed as a feminist triumph (paid for) while Hillary Clinton is the "cankles and pantsuits" lady and if you mention Terry O'Neill, people say "Who?".

You supported the false choice of the burqa/niqab, which is the same culture of oppression that gave rise to this slavery nonsense. You can't have it both ways. You have to attack the problem, not those crushed under it. Are you willing to attack Abrahamic religious teachings? Because the thing I find the saddest about this is the probability that she really believes what she's saying; that that's what she's been taught about God, men and sexuality.

Also: it disturbs me that you view all women's personal choices with so much hatred, especially since the article being discussed is about DENYING women's personal choices. What would be your alternative, and whose orders will we be obeying in that alternative?

Moses Seenarine
this is not an attack on women's limited choices, but a critique of those presenting such limited choices as entirely personal ones, and therefore off-limits to all discussion of larger political and social issues;

further, this presentation of limited choice is used to disparage any discussion of it limitations as part of the patriarchy;

the only criteria used to determine efficacy of all women's choices is reduced to personal, material gains; this is essence of individualist libertarianism, but no woman is an island

whether one is de-humanized as a sex-worker or glorified as a patriarchal mouthpiece, women's choices are in both cases are circumscribed by the patriarchy, regardless of how much money these women make

pointing out that sex-workers' choices are circumscribed by the patriarchy is not used to criminalize and dehumanize women, but to show its limitations; such limited choices may alleviate individual families' dire economic plight, but that is all; we do not glorify such choices as part of women's empowerment in general

freedom of choice means having the freedom to not make limited choices based on economic need, cultural tradition, religion, whatever; that is where we see the struggle, not in advocating for limited choices; to limit women's empowerment to fighting for the right to do sex-work limits the feminist struggle; we refuse to do that

Katherine
My reason for supporting sex workers is very simple; criminalization generates dead and battered bodies on an enormous scale. I do not support slaughtering or abusing people for someone else's noble ideal, especially when the person with the noble ideal is risking absolutely nothing. When safety precautions are able to be taken and the client knows the worker is free to call the police or security if there's a problem, the rate of worker violence nosedives. Prevention is always preferable to cure.

Moses Seenarine
especially if the police are women! we need to demand female policing in sex-work and other oppressive industries

Katherine
My personal opinion: you might get mixed results. It's certainly safer for the worker in one respect because a female officer is much less likely to demand a sexual payout for protection; the tradeoff would be that the type of customer likely to get violent with a worker, knowing that there's security or police nearby and there will be an immediate arrest, is also more likely to respond violently to a female authority figure. Like all things, the ideal would probably be an even male-female mix, able to police each other as well as everyone else.

Moses Seenarine
there is one significant difference here - female police would be accompanied by many others, and more backup if necessary, so this is not an issue, as female policing has shown in all parts of the world

Katherine
True. It could probably work.

ARE YOU A MANARCHIST QUESTIONNAIRE ......

2011-06-11T15:01:00.000-07:00

Are you a Manarchist???
Wednesday, November 21 2001

ARE YOU A MANARCHIST QUESTIONNAIRE General Questions:

I. Do you ascribe to either:

A) Passive-Aggressive Patriarchy:

" (often come across as a victim/helpless/inneed/dependent and get women in your life to be your physical and emotionalcaretakers? to buy you things? to take care of your responsibilities? pick up your slack? use guilt or manipulation to get out of your responsibilitiesand equal share of the work? do you treat your female partner like a"mom" or your secretary?)

B) "Aggressive Patriarchy:" (Do you often take charge? Assume that awoman can’t do something right so you do it for her? Believe that onlyyou can take care of things? Think that you always have the right answer? Treat your female partner like she’s helpless, fragile, a baby or weak? Do you put down your partner or minimize her feelings? Do you belittleher opinions?)

2. How do you react when women in your life name something or someoneas patriarchal or sexist? Do you think of her or call her a "PC Thug,""Feminazi," "Thin-skinned," "Overly-Sensitive," a "COINTELPRO-esque"or "Un-fun?"

3. Do you see talking about patriarchy as non-heroic, a waste of time,trouble making, or divisive?

4. If a woman asks your opinion, do you assume she must not know anythingabout the subject?

5. Do you believe that women have "natural characteristics" which areInherent in our sex such as "passive," "sweet," "caring," "nurturing,""considerate," "generous," "weak," or "emotional?"

6. Do you make fun of "typical" men or "frat boys" but not ever checkyourself to see if you behave in the same ways?

7. Do you take on sexism and patriarchy as a personal struggle workingto fight against it in yourself, in your relationships, in society, work,culture, subcultures, and institutions?

8. Do you say anything when other men make sexist or patriarchal comments?Do you help your patriarchal and sexist friends to make change and helpeducate them? Or do you continue friendships with patriarchal and sexistmen and act like there is no problem. Activism Questions

9. As a. man, is being a. feminist a priority to you? Do you see beinga feminist as revolutionary or radical?

10. Do you think that you define what is radical? Do you suffer fromor contribute to macho bravado" or ‘subpoena envy? (I.e. defining a trueor "cool" and respectable activist as someone who has: been arrested,done lockdowns, scaled walls, hung banners, done time for their actionsargued or fought with police, done property alterations, beat up naziboneheads, etc.)?

11. Do you take something a woman said, reword it and claim it as yourown idea/opinion?

12. Are you taking on the "shit" or "grunt" work in your organizing?(I.e.: Cooking. cleaning. set up, clean up phone calls, email lists,taking notes, doing support work, sending mailings, providing childcare?)Are you aware of the fact. that women often are taking on this work withno regard or for their efforts?

13. Do you take active step to make your activist groups safe and comfortableplaces for women?

14. If you are trying to get more women involved in your activist projects,do you try to engage them by telling them what’ to do or why they shouldjoin your group?

15. Do you ever find yourself monitoring and limiting your behavior andspeech in meetings and activist settings because you don't want’ to takeup too much space or dominate the group? Are you aware of the fact thatwomen do this all the time?

16. Do you pay attention to group process and consensus building in groupsor do you tend to dominate and take charge (maybe without even realizingit)? Sexual/Romantic Relationships and Issues

17. Do you make jokes or negative comments about the sex lives of womenor sex work?

18. Can you only show affection and be loving to your partner in frontof friends and family or only in private?

19. Do you discuss the responsibility for preventing contraception andgetting STD screening prior to sexual contact?

20. Do you repeatedly ask or plead with women for what you want in sexualsituations? Are you aware that unless this is a mutually consented uponscenario/game that this is considered a form of coercion?

21. During sex, do you pay attention to your partner’s face and bodylanguage to see if she is turned on? Engaged, or just lying there? Doyou ask a woman who she wants during sex? What turns her on?

22. Do you ask for consent? 23. Do you know if your partner has a sexual abuse, rape, or physicalabuse history?

24. Do you stay with your partner in a relationship for comfort and security?Sex? Financial or emotional caretaking? If you’re not completely happyor "in love" with your partner anymore? Even though you don’t think itwill ultimately work out? Because you’re afraid or unable to be alone?Do you suddenly end relationships when a "new" or "better" woman comesalong?

25. Do you jump from relationship to relationship? Overlap them? Or doyou take space and time for yourself in between each relationship toreflect on the relationship and your role in it? Do you know how to bealone? How to be single?

26. Do you cheat on your partners?

27. If your girlfriend gets on your case for patriarchal behavior orwants to try to work on the issues of patriarchy in your relationship,do you creak up with her or cheat on her and find another woman who willput up with your shit?

28. Do you agree to romantic commitment and responsibility and then backout of these situations?

29. Do you understand menstruation?

30. Do you make fun of women or write them off as "PMS-ING?" Friendship Questions

31. Do you tend to set the standard and plans for fun or do you workwith the others in the group, including women to see what they want todo?

32. Do you talk to your female friends about things you don't talk toyour male friends about especially emotional issues?

33. Do you constantly fall in love with your female friends Are you friendswith women until you find out that they are not in love with you tooand then end the friendships? Are you only friends with women who arein monogamous or committed relationships with other people?

34. Do you come on to your female friends even jokingly?

35. Do you only talk to your female friends (and not your male friends)about your romantic relationships or problems in those relationships?

36. Do you find yourself only attracted to "Anarcho-Crusty Punk Barbie",Alterna-Grrrl Barbie," or Hardcore-Grrrl Barbie?" (The idea here beingthat the only women you arc attracted to fit mainstream beauty standardsbut just dress and do their hair alternatively and maybe have piercingsand tattoos) Do you question and challenge your internalized ideals ofmainstream beauty ideals for women?

37. Have you ever heard of or discussed "sizeism" and do you think itis low on the oppression scale?

38. Are you aware of the fact that ALL WOMEN, even women in radical communities,live under the CONSTANT PRESSURE and OPPRESSION of mainstream patriarchalbeauty standards?

39. Are you aware of the fact that many women in radical communitieshave had and are currently dealing with eating disorders?

40. Do you make fun of "model-types" or "mainstream" women for theirappearance? Domestic/Household Questions

41. When was the last time you walked into your house, noticed that somethingwas misplaced/dirty/etc. AND did something about it (didn’t just walkby it, over it, away from it or leave a nasty note about it) even ifit wasn’t your chore or responsibility?

42. Are you constantly amazed by the magical "food fairy" who mysteriouslyacquires food, brings it home, puts it away, prepares it in meal formand then cleans up afterwards?

. Do you contribute equally to domestic life and work?

44. How many of the following activities do you contribute to in yourhome (this is a partal list of what it takes to run a household):

A: Sweep and mop floors and clean carpets B: Wash and put away dishes C: Clean stove, countertops, sinks and appliances if they are messy andeach time after you have prepared food D: Collect money, do food shopping, put away food and make meals forpeople you live with E: Do house laundry (kitchen towels, bathroom hand towels, washable rugs,etc.) F: Clean up common room spaces, even if it’s not your chore G: Pick up other’s slack H: Deal with garbage, recycling, and compost I: Take care of bills, rent, utilities J: Deal with the landscaping and gardening K: Clean bathrooms and make sure bathroom is clean after you use it L: Feed, clean up after, and take care of housepets Children & Childcare

45. Do you spend time with kids? If you do, do you spend time with children(yours or anyone's) in a way that is gendered? (do certain things withboys and other things with girls?

46. If you are a father, do you CO-parent your children? (Spend equaltime AND energy AND effort AND money to raise them)? 47. Do you make childcare a priority? (at both activist events and indaily life)

48. Do you help make the lives of single mothers in your life and communityeasier by finding out if and how you can assist?

49. Have you politicized your ideas about child rearing and parenthoodradical communities? Do you believe that individuals who are in the movementhave children or that the movement has children?

Multi-Category Questions:

50. When was the last time you showed a woman how to do a task ratherthan doing it for her and assuming she couldn’t do it?

51. When was the last time you asked a woman to show you how to do atask?

52. Do you get emotional needs met by other women, whether or not youare in a romantic relationship with them? Or do you cultivate caring,nurturing relationships with other men in which you can discuss yourfeelings and get your needs met by them?

53. If a woman discusses with you or calls you out on your patriarchy,do you make an effort to be emotionally present? Listen? Not emotionallyshut down? Not get defensive? Think about what she said? Admit you fuckedup? Take responsibility/make reparations for the mistakes you made? Discussyour feelings and ideas with her? Apologize? Work harder on your ownshit to make sure that you don’t make the same mistakes again with heror other women?

54. Do you look inside yourself to find out why you fucked up in theserelationships and work to both change your behavior and be a better anti-patriarchyally in the future?

55. Do you organize regular house meetings or activist meetings to resolveconflict in the house/group?

56. Do you use intimidation, yelling, getting in someone’s physical space,threats or violence to get your point across? Do you create and atmosphereor violence around women or others to threaten them (i.e.: throw things,break things, yell and scream, threaten, attack, tease or terrorize theanimals or pets of women in your life)?

57. Do you physically, psychologically, or emotionally abuse women?

58. Do the women in your life (mothers, sisters, partners, housemates,friends, etc.) have to "remind" you or "nag" you or "yell" at you inorder for you to get off your ass and take care of your responsibilities?

59. Do you talk to other men about patriarchy and your part in it?

60. When was the last time you thought about or talked about any of theseissues other than after reading this questionnaire? Scoring:

ALL MEN need to work on issues of patriarchy, sexism and misogyny.However, this questionnaire may point out to you areas of particularfocus or concentration for your own anti-patriarchal/sexist/misogynistprocess and development.

--------------------------------------

Hashim
this is too long. :P

Heer
So is the history of oppression of women…:P:P:P

Hashim
if they have the audacity to put a questionairre like that to me, it better be. :P

Byron
Some interesting questions here actually. I belong to this group on here called "Castrating The Patriarchy", where I have been debating with this older gentleman who takes a hardline matriarchal stand against moderate feminism. The ironic thing about many of his points and arguments is that they are unintensionally sexist , by making claims that females have natural and inherent attributes like being more sensitive, nurtering , cooperative and peaceful than males. This argument is infact the core of his beliefs. And it's sexist! But the guy considers himself a hardliner for matrifocalism and female liberation in general. The natural differences between males and females are subtle and abstract. Males and females are mostly the same,which is one of the core concepts of feminism. The other interesting point here is the bit about males who play role reversal games with their female partners. Here I refer to straight or bisexual males who are connected to or directly involved in the feminist scene who have female romatic partners. Men who act like hurt little boys all the time, and are overly emotional , overly sensitive, clinging, smothering, jealous, pathetic ect. These males reinact the gender roles of sexist society, but flip them over in reverse. These types of males play the passive female role and expect their female partners to play the stonger male role by taking care of them like spoiled bratty little boys. This is a pretty common problem in the feminist world. But , in general most feminist males don't pull this bullshit.

Byron
I do NOT tolerate sexist comments or attitudes from other men. I will try to some extent to enlighten other males about feminist issues, but I don't waste my time on hopeless bonehead brutes who hate women. Only if the male seems somewhat receptive will I work much to convert him to feminist ideas. Many males will pysically attack male feminists. Male feminists are treated as if they are homosexuals , and are verbally abused and sometimes pysically attacked by other males. I prefer enlightenment , but some men just refuse to listen. Some men just need a good old fashioned punch in the face when they make sexist comments. It's all the brutes understand.

Moses Seenarine
guilty on all counts!

now, what do i do about it, since there's no benefit for me to change? it's pays to play men's ball and men sure hate to loose one of their kind, and byron suggests above; is there any part women can play in turning this around, especially when it comes to reproduction?

byron, you should respect your pro-feminist elders, william is a solid supporter, and pointing out the obvious doesn't means you're a determininist

Byron
William is NOT a feminist. He supports a delusional version of hardline matriarchy. I think he's a good man, and he really feels that his theories are in the best interests of women. But his ideas are sexist by accident of their basic flaws. He believes that women should have absolute socio-politcal rule over men. This is hardline matirfocalism. The ironic thing is that hardline matriachy is sexist tword both males and females, by advocating the belief that men and women are inherently and and distictly different form one and other. The core of the hardline matriachy argument is that women are naturally more peaceful, cooperative, nurtering than men. That because of this women should literally rule the world. Hardline matriachy advocates female only governments, and that all interactive male-female relationships must be female dominated. One important obsticle for men to overcome is the smug attitude of expectation of direct personal rewards for good behaviour tword women. Patriarchy is bad for men aswell as women. Being forced into the patriarchal male role of tyranical overlord is deeply damaging to the male psyche and spirit. It's spiritually unbalanced and unhealthy to be a sexist male. There is no direct reward for being a male feminist. Infact it is a very hard life full of conflict. But it is right and good. I would happily sacrifice my life for feminism if I had to do so. The most important part women play in feminism is refusing to be used and abused anylonger. Another important aspect women play is simply in being willing to give males a second chance to prove we can change for the better. Let us feminist males prove to you our beloved sisters that we can change. Some of us....a few of us at least can become human.

Moses Seenarine
‎"females have natural and inherent attributes like being more sensitive, nurtering , cooperative and peaceful than males."

- also happens to be the core of my beliefs!

- here's why:
90% of violent crime are committed by men! due to biology, social conditioning, or a combination of both; no one knows for sure, but there it is nevertheless;

- why matriarchy is the only solution!
patriarchy is pure evil, plain and simple; you don't end patriarchy and end up with a neutral system because before too long men will dominate again

when we think of revolution, what is there to be revolted against the most? classism, racism or patriarchy? and if we define patriarchy as the enemy, then which group are most critical and resistant to this system of domination? it ain't men

Byron
If there is any biological element at all it is VERY subtle. Women are not more sensitive, peaceful , nurtering or cooperative than men. That is an outdated steriotype. It is ALL social conditioning. My little 8 year old boy's favorite toy is his baby doll, who he cuddles and whispers to while pretending to feed her a bottle. I did not have to train him to be gentle and nutering..., it's just simply his true male nature. My 11 year old daughter's favorite toys are her action figures of female warriors. The thing is, we already have concrete proof that gender equal systems and societies work quite well. We used to have them, and they were stolen from us by monotheistic patriarchy. We did not go directly from neolithic matriarchy to modern patriarchy. We evolved out of early matriarchal Mother Goddess societies into gender equal pagan societies, where we remained quite happily until monotheistic and patriarchal warrior cults took over and ruined everything. We once enjoyed gender equality and we shall have it again through feminist revolution.

Moses Seenarine
doesn't matter what causes it, it's still there; and adopting patriarchal violence is not feminist progress! we need to end this patriarchal obsession with domination and power, seriously; women operate on a more cooperative individualism, which is what we need to develop and expand more of

Byron
Women operate on a more cooperative level only because men are brainwashed into brute compitition. Males are deeply insecure and feel the need to constantly prove themsleves. But this is almost entirely social conditioning. Otherwise men would be just as cooperative as women. If by adopting patriarchal violence you refer to my comment about "a good old fashioned punch in the face." well, all I have to say about that is violence is just a part of life. Violent action is not necessarily patriarchal. Sure as I said, I prefer non violent enlightenment. But sometimes violence is all we are left with. Somtimes violence does have a positive result. Take the example of the school bully for instance. The one and only thing that ever changed a shool bully is getting their ass kicked. In this case violence is a tool of change and healing for both the bully and those he formally bullied. This is sometimes the case with sexist males too. Some times some people need to be pysically hurt to teach them a lesson. This is very un-P.C. I know. But it's true. When you have been brutally beaten, slashed, stabbed and shot at as many times as I have been, you start to come to the conclusion that being passive is not a logical option. We need to stand against patriarchy by any and all means necessary to reach our ultimate goals. This includes violence. Though I do certainly hope the things can change as peacefully as possible.

Moses Seenarine
the blind leading the blind will get us nowhere, as usual; male violence is the problem and cannot be part of any solution to replace itself

Byron
Sorry, I must respectfully disagree. All violent action is not the same. This has nothing to do with "blind leading the blind". If I act in violence it is only "male violence" because I happen to be male. But it is not the same thing at all as patriarchal violence which is offensive not defensive, and motivated by fear and hate. The positive violent action I refer to would obviously involve women aswell as men acting in aggressive self defense against patriarchal tyrany. Male violence is the probelm yes, and no, similair tit for tat male violence cannot transform society. But a united force of both females and males ready and willing to act in violence if necessary would not reprosent "male Violence", but rather a militant revolutionary feminist movement which acts according to situational logic. Being totally passive just doesn't work. Fascists love passivists. They know they will only resist to a certain peaceful limit. Then they can just march in a start breaking heads, and noone will fight back because they are delusionally commited to absolute non violence. Its sad I know. It's ugly and unpleasent to think about. But it's just part of life. Violence is not by nature patriarchal. To assume it is is to reinforce the outdated gender steriotypes we have already been discussing. Women are just as violent as men by nature. Likewise, men are just as gentle as women by nature. Humans are complex animals that way. We are a strange mosaic of beauty and brutality. Don't get me wrong! I am willing to use violence, but I greatly prefer PEACE. I hope our revolution can be as peaceful as possible. Let us all hope this together.

Moses Seenarine
here's the problem with this typical patriarchal logic - the people can rarely mass a successful attack against the overwhelming force of patriarchal state violence, and violence just gives the state any excuse to commit genocide, as has happened so many times before; read gene sharp, howard zinn and ecofeminists who eschew violence because they see it as integreally related to masculinity

Byron
There is nothing in any way typcal or patriachal in any aspect of my thinking. My views are mostly held by women, and should be seen as militant but obviously in no way related to anything patriarchal. Violence is not related to masculinity. That is an outdated gender steriotype. Indeed, armed revoltuion aimed directly against the state is seldom successful, and yes the state use it as an excuse to clamp down. But passivism is not the solution. Direct armed resistance to the state has temporarily worked in the past, and it can work again. But it would be trully horrible, even if we were victorious. At the end of it all how many would be dead? Thousands, millions? Yeah, it would be ugly for sure. But we might have no choice. But really, I wasn't refering direcly to the state it's self. But rather a more vague and abstract enemy in the likes of independant rightwing groups and the sexist male society in general. I wasn't actually refering to overthrowing the government! But, since you brought that up........I agree it hasn't worked out too well thus far to directly fight the state, but military resistance from the people HAS had some postive results, though those results were temporary, and the state eventually returned to power. The simple primitive act of punching a mysogynist in the face my seem machismo and tit for tat on the surface, but when this is repeated over and over again to ther extent where men int the maisnstreem are afraid to make sexist remarks or harass women because a woman or another man might knock the crap out of them, than this seemingly pointless act becomes truelly revolutionary and WILL change men and society. It sends a clear message that being a sexist is NOT acceptable. Can punches in the face repalce education and true feminist enlightenment? No! obviously not. Women and other men must teach boys and men to respect girls and women. We must see that gender differences are mostly artificial social conditioning. I like Howard Zinn and ecofeminism. But I am also an individualist and a stone cold realist. Passivism does not work anymore than total violence works. The answer we seek is somewhere in the middle. We have to be open to all possibilities, and be willing to use all methods.

Moses Seenarine
zinn and sharp argue that peaceful protest has/is working;

your opinion on violence is so deeply patriarchal, it's not funny; read!

Byron
There is nothing patriarchal in anything I think or believe. You are an ignorent person and deeply delusional. Obviously you are an intellecual elitist. And very RUDE. Telling a militant feminst activist his views are patriarchal is not a good way to make comrades or friends. I have made my points, though you refuse to listen. Life is not as simple as you think it is. You could have argued your points without insulting me. I have nothing more to say. :end byronic transmission:

Moses Seenarine
typical man... no hope here!

Byron
You have been deeply brainwashed . You do not understand feminism or revoltuion. I have no time for stuck up elitists. The real activists are out on the streets livng it eveyday. I am one of those people. I live and breath the revoltuion. So, go ahead and be smug if you like. My many feminist comrades stand by my side. Goodbye and good luck on learning about feminism.

Moses Seenarine
‎- why do men always insist that violence be part of the answer?

yet, these same fools are rarely risking their lives rescuing trapped sex-workers?

why, because violence is our language and carrying card, and we loathe to relinquish any part of it? it allows us to still control and defend the less violent women, and so patriarchy never ends, does it? how very clever...

the real enemy is inside our heads; can you entertain a world without violence? that world starts now

Heer
wow, woke up to see this wonderful debate on my wall...great!!! but please lets not stoop to insults and personal attacks...this is an important issue..i floated this questionaire to my comrades and friends here because being an activist i see alot of sexism / patriarchal behaviours in my comrades...and its time to debate on these issues and educate the young comrades...Now, about the masucility and violence...moses, i am afraid i will have to side with Byron here. what you are talking about is acute male conditionning, because i refuse to believe that male violence has any genetic roots unless there is some scientific data to prove i am not aware of...as for organized armed / militant struggle, thats a differnt debate- and should not be confused with individual social behaviours or gender alone-because some such struggles that have emerged in the last few years, like we see in india, where women started to attack their perpetrators is rooted, primarily, in economic disparity...those women belonged to the lower strata of societies..none of them hailed from urban, educated middle class...so the class angle cannot be ruled out from those feminist revolts..its very complxed moses...

Moses Seenarine
it is largely patriarchal thought; we are in agreement here; where we disagree is seeing patriarchal violence is a part of patriarchal thought; self-defense is not violence, and poor desperate women defending themselves are not to be glorified as feminist heroines; they're much rather be peaceful, i'm sure; byron, on the otherhand, can't wait to get his hands bloodied - creation envy, anyone?

Moses Seenarine
heer, being extremely personal and insulting to men is the only way to shame these legends in their own minds into humility or deconstructing patriarchal privilege; nothing else will work, and ever this has a snowball chance in hell

Heer
Moses, thats a very extreme and violent position my friend and, while it may work in individual cases (also debateable as the backlash can be more severe on women) for collective change it will have to come through a systematic deconstruct of patriarchy and the violence that comes with such power disparity through awarness and rigirous deprogramming / conditionning of male behaviours -maybe as early as they are born, in schools, through social media and a collective proactive approch; through economica empowerment of women and the assimilation of the two...the reason i cannot accept your position is because it is not scientific, while i understand the anger (and i have alot of it in me as i see women suffer day and night), to say that male violence is genetic will require data / research and scientic evidence..in my opinion male violence or other forms of discrimination against women are directly related to patriarchal thought..

Meera
Gonna read through it this evening...but love the opening question :)

Moses Seenarine
what's very extreme and violent - shaming and ridiculing men to get out of their comfort zone regarding physical violence? the two doesn't even equate, heer;

education, reservations, legal reform and implementation of laws have helped men to change, but its seems every time they take one step forward, they take two backwards; and even the "enlightened" ones are still trapped in violence as the solution;men are hopeless, and that's why i only focus on women, but they too seem not to be able to move forward without men; arrrrghh!

Heer
No moses, you have gotten me completely wrong. If you read my previous msgs carefully, i wrote that i understand you anger, but attacking the perpetrators or shaming men may work out in indivual cases but it will also have severe backlash on women...and i can quote u numerous examples of personal experiences because i live in an extremely violent and radicalized islamic country where women are constantly in physical threat...all i am saying is that for collective and more sustainable change, women's economic empowerment is the only way, along with changing the patriarchal mindest through education and movements...and please dont be so judgemnetal because u do not know about my strugles as a woman, so u have no right to make comments like " women dont seem to able to move forward without men"...its very insulting...dont think you are the champion of feminism..every woman in pakistan is fighting a gender battle on a daily basis, do not demean their struggle...but we have to be sensible and practical in our struggle....

Moses Seenarine
yes, all you say is true, heer; women around the globe have been fighting a gender battle for 25,000 years! and the backlash is not limited to islamic societies;

how many western men are resisting the current attempt to limit women's right to choose their own clothing, to decide what to do with their own bodies, etc.? are men lacking education on this issue, or they really don't care? and why should they care - it doesn't affect them!

now, since men refuse to change, how does one address this problem of global misogyny? how do we get men to change? logical, reasonable arguments have not worked; is it because there is a deep psychological problem among men that fuels their insecurity and supremacy? and if they do have deep psychological issues, how do we get at them? this is not a simple educational problem, please! we need to move men out of their comfort zones, and addressing male violence is one major aspect of this

i am not addressing women in this post, but the violent tradition of men, even "enlightened" men, and the women who choose to defend the sorry asses;

i make no apologies for attempting to address male violence, and it's disingenuous to suggest that my trying a different approach is somehow equal to all the crimes of men; i don't expect everyone to approve of this, and feel free to not tag me if this is too upsetting for you, but don't expect me to be civil to privileged morons who are out to lunch regarding male violence

Moses Seenarine
‎#10: "Do you think that you define what is radical? Do you suffer from or contribute to macho bravado" or ‘subpoena envy? (I.e. defining a true or "cool" and respectable activist as someone who has: been arrested,done lockdowns, scaled walls, hung banners, done time for their actions argued or fought with police, done property alterations, beat up nazi boneheads, etc.)?

- this macho bullshit occurs in every "progressive" movement you look at; machismo is glorified among "feminist" men, marxist men, cultural resistance men, animal rights men, etc.; and, when i call men out for this blatant contradiction, i'm being disrespectful, please!

Justin
As far as this topic goes I have this to say: If we truly believe, as I do, that men and women should be equal partners in the movement and in society in general than we will have more women in leadership positions and equally distribute all the task regardless of gender. As far as whether women are some how innately less violent than men: Well, considering that my x-wife was the type to starting swinging when she got pissed that layed to rest any notions I might have had about women being more peaceful. One could argue that because men have more upper body strength than when that they are ore efficient at violence than women but looking at certain historical example that this is not always the case. Consider the Celtic Warrior Queen Boudicca who lead her tribesmen on many succesful campaigns against the Roman's until their uprising was finally quashed. Or conversely consider how Sun Tzu trained and lead an army of the Emperor's Concubines on a victorious campaign against his enemies.(Something he did on a dare by his court rivals who thought he would fail). In modern day Israel both men and women fight in the army. But even if there are innate differences between men and women- as our biologically evolved sexual dimorphism would attest to- is difference synonymous with inequality? As a radical egalitarian I think not. Differences should be celebrated and seen as complementary not hierarchical. We are not interchangeable cogs nor are we bound essentially to any one role by nature. We are humans- male or female- and should treat each other as such especially since we on the Left adhere to a radically humanist philosophy. Well, that is my two cents so I am getting off my soap box now. Ciao one and all, great thread!

Moses Seenarine
this issue of violence is not a trivial one, and no amount of anecdotal historical examples of women fighting defensively, conscripted, or for economic survival can explain away the 90% monopoly men have on violent crime - from domestic violence and murder, to wars and genocide; refusing to acknowledge and address this glaring inequality, and then advocate for respecting differences, equality, harmony, and all that jazz is pure nonsense, and more mansplaining; let's deal with the elephant in the room, and it's men, damnit!

there's so much men need to do to correct each other, and talking about divesting male power, privilege and violence comes way, way before any talk of equality can be entertained? jez, speaking of the damn obvious, are there any adults in here or we all gonna go on playing pretend?

Justin
But I just said that women need to be in more leadership roles and tasks must be distributed equally. I fail to see how that is not acknowledging the need to address the galring inequalities. In fact that IS addressing the need for glaring inequalities. I only brought up those historical annecdotes to make it clear that women have the capacity and indeed the right to be in ANY position of power that men have historically been in. Patriarchal power structures have thwarted this kind of parity and thus we must destroy patriarchy and male supremacist ideology. I never implied otherwise.

Moses Seenarine
christ on a stick! how does giving women more leadership roles address the 90% disparity in male violence? would they then pass laws locking up most men? why are men so violent and how does equality address this? should we encourage women to become equally as violent to compensate? madness!!! but this is a male hallmark

there is 90% dominance of males in violent crime because masculinity itself is the problem! to solve this problem, you must deconstruct masculinity and male violence, not promote female violence!

i'm starting to repeat myself to you as i did to bryon...

you and i are the problem, mate; we need to address that, first and foremost; anything less maintains the patriarchal status quo of violence as normal and acceptable; such a violent, male-based ideological system only promotes token female leaders, and will never pursue a radical peaceful, feminist agenda

Justin
The fact is that our opponents are violent and will use violence against us. I am not a pacifist cause there is absolutely no evidence that pacifism in the face of brutal repression works. True enough that we have to disarm patriarchal violence and machismo in society and times of peace but we must all also learn- both men and women- how to defend ourselves against oppressive forces like imperialism and capitalist exploitation. Peace and violence are but two aspects to life. We need to learn when and where to use them. Amongst the ones we love- our friends, family and comrades- it is never acceptable. But against those who would try to take our life, and liberty it is not only acceptable but a duty to be unrelenting in fighting back by any means- even the most violent to stop it. To do less would be cowardice and morally repugnant, no matter how much you might pretty it up with the saccharine rhetoric of pacifist ideology.

Moses Seenarine
dear earth, how do we get off of this male ego trip? we'll move forward when men grow up, until then, we'll just have to watch the insecure fools run us all around in their violent circles;

not much else to say here...

Justin
Siiiigh yet another one who lives in a fantasy world. Well, have fun in your deluded world of moral purity when others have to face daily horrors. But that is alright I am sure if the victims of oppression just tap into your feminine new age energy that boot on their neck will feel like a warm hug from the goddess! HAHAHA!!!

Moses Seenarine
the biblical moses was an asshole, and he's generated three religions filled with the same, and they now infect all men; an eye for an eye - assholes!!!

childish, imbecilic, moronic assholes that would have us all stay in the evolutional gutter with them! thankfully, women have better sense, at least those who refuse to listen to these depraved fools that would have us all blind!

Justin
Well, Moses that sounds like pretty inflammatory, dare I say, masculine, even violent, rhetoric. Becareful you might start losing your enlightened pacifist feminine goodness and start dragging your knuckles with the rest of us down here in the gutter. ;-)

Ali
I think its an excellent questionnaire as it helped me look into few of my practices that otherwise I would have never thought are of manarchist nature.

a man owns up to piv, sorta; he fails to mention it's basically violence!

2011-06-11T14:24:00.000-07:00

Moses Seenarine
a man owns up to piv, sorta; he fails to mention it's basically violence!

Why I’m Anti-PIV « lateralpazwalk
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June 6

Katherine
This "womon" disagrees with the blanket statement that it doesn't feel good. Disagrees in a loud clear voice. Disagrees strongly. Where on earth does this stuff come from?

Moses Seenarine
eating really hot pepper, followed by hot tea, in scorching weather, feels good as well, but it's not everyone's cup of tea

Katherine
Yeah, but no one's saying "Everyone should give up cayenne pepper and tea! No one likes it!" because that blanket statement would sound just as silly as this guy's post.

Moses Seenarine
he's questioning male definition as piv-only, and that's absolutely essential to ending male sexual violence

Katherine
But that's a property issue, not a sexual one. The body is hardwired to want sex- in both genders- that's how the species reproduces. The issue of vagina-as-property, which is learned social behavior not biological afaik, is the problem. It's why so much effort goes into training young girls to NOT like sex- same principle as FGM, a woman that doesn't like sex is less likely to seek it with someone else. He did manage to nail that principle at one point- ownership is the problem- but he seems to see that problem as arising from sex itself, and if so he is looking for a solution in the wrong direction.

Moses Seenarine
yes, property is part of this, but it's not the only one since female mouth and hands should be considered property as well, and they are, but piv is still seen as the only "real" male orgasm, and even using condoms is seen as making the conquest less real; and as conquest, piv is seen as part of male domination and supremacy, and that's why there is vastly different male feelings and perceptions of a purely biological act

Katherine
Actually, a man who views a woman as property is going to include hands, mouth and anal in the package, as well as emotions and thoughts- don't look at another man, don't think of another man, I am all you need etc. Again, that's learned behavior, and addressing it as a vaginal sex issue isn't going to solve it. That's the symptom, not the disease.

Moses Seenarine
i don't how the two issues can be separated; not all women consider piv as essential - maybe we need to start there? the logic of this can get twisted if we go with the sex is natural and required argument; it's a woman's right to say no at anytime, since she is the one being penetrated, and piv is never required, maybe only if we're down to the last pair; men need to get this, and telling them that piv sex is natural and right does nothing to help them in this regard; they need to get that sex is much more than piv, and gasp! may not include piv at all

Winnie
http://cherryblossomlife.com/2011/04/19/the-pill/ is illuminating too :)

Michael
‎... ok some of my feelings on this.

PIV always bothered me since I was little. When I started being sexually active I decided I didn't want to have PIV, mostly because it seemed dangerous and also because the idea of being "invasive" really bothered me. I wrote an essay on it even, it was in 2000, which I really wish I could figure out how find again. This was over ten years ago, way before "anti-PIV" came into fashion in the radfem blog community. so back then my first partner, who was radfem, said by "denying" her PIV i was controlling her sexuality and reproductive rights, pressured me a lot (and she wanted to do it only without condoms - cause condoms are 'patriarchal') and eventually she left me over it. most of my female partners after her though were accepting of it though all were disappointed and kind of hoping i'd change my mind. my last female partner was very insistent on trying it "at least once" when i met her and pressured me a lot and i was scared at the time that if i didn't she'd leave me over it, so i agreed to do it with her (with 'patriarchal' condoms of course). since then i'm not totally closed to it anymore, but not specifically wanting it either. i know it's not necessarily a sadomaso thing or an "invasive" think and i've not experienced it that way. it can be very sweet and beautiful. and has been. but it is still dangerous.

i do feel it's completely creepy and plays into a sort of disturbing rapist mentality to actually "demand" PIV. and i've felt really pressured to it myself also. there is a "piv-compulsory" and "pia compulsory" culture that queer radicals have also been very critical of for a long time. also i feel it makes sense not to ask to "penetrate" someone. when i've been with boys who enjoyed PIA they would ask to envelop but to ask to "penetrate", i dunno, something about that disturbs me personally. anyways the boys i've been with always were very respectful of boys who didn't like to envelop in PIA - luckily. but with mainstream gay boys there is an added gender issue - if you don't want to envelop in PIA you're assumed to be "top", i fyou don't want to penetrate you're assumed to be "bottom" and if you don't want PIA at all you're refusing "sex". ¬¬

for one thing if something is assumed by default that you "have" to do it, and even equated with "sex", then that means people don't have a chance to do what they enjoy and to define their sexuality on their own terms. you can't meaningfully want to do something when you feel you can't say no to it, when it's an "offer you can't refuse". that's not a real choice.

some people do enjoy PIV and PIA and some people don't and for some people it's even painful. people who enjoy it already have the whole culture on their side, but people who don't are pressured and pried and denigrated and forced, and told they're "prudes" or whatever else. so we got a major imbalance here. that's important. saying "no one" enjoys it or doesn't feel good is confusing the issue a bit - actually even some of the bloggers who started criticising it have said they do enjoy it or it feels good to them. to some people it does and my last partner gets orgasms this way more than i do. it's not about that. the enjoyment issue is men will demand PIV without regard to whether or not it IS enjoyable to the other person, because they don't give a shit, they just see it as a requirement, because it's "SEX" and it's theirs for the taking. and many people will agree to it without regard to whether or not it IS enjoyable to them - because they feel they *have* to, and can't imagine how they could *not*. and *that* is scary. it's ok for it to be not enjoyable to people and for people not to want it. we need to be saying this. this should never be *pressured* out of people. >.<

i think the lovely boy who wrote the article is absolutely right - if you like someone and want to share sexuality with them, the point is for everyone involved and sharing to feel good and enjoy themselves and be equally valued. the point is to be with them - so you figure out what each of you enjoy and respect and care for each other. why on earth would you insist or demand something which they found painful or scary? we're not all the same. but the "point" of ordinary heterosexual relationships is not about this at all. it's more like an ego trip. ¬¬ and it's routine in these relationships to demand "women-as-objects" do things "to men" that "men like" because "men like it". but like someone pointed out above - that isn't just PIV. they demand all kinds of things from their "property", all kinds of fetishes be satisfied regardless what they think. because they just see objects principally. so i agree it's not just this either.

but PIV and PIA *are* particularly dangerous, mostly to people eveloping, because of the risk of pregnancy and stds. and people who are female are defined as class so the purpose is basically to be "fucked" and face this kind of risk over and over, as part of their "duties". there is a whole culture around this.

so even when people enjoy PIV or PIA that does not take away the danger and risk involved in it, and doesn't take the cultural context away. and it *is* dangerous to people who are enveloping, even if it feels good, even if it feels good to them and not to the person being enveloped (which happens sometimes *gasp*) and even if both are aware of the culture they are in and respect each other as equals and people (which happens also). that's not a moral judgement. it's just dangerous and risky and even when doing it you really need to carefully and consciously know what exactly you are going to do about the danger, and you need to be aware you are doing something that has a risk for one person - the person being enveloped - that both need to be aware of.

Michael
a few months ago i asked my (female) partner to read all these blog posts about PIV and reflect and tell me what she thought, which she did though this involved spending days wading through some very difficult english and some laborious translation of concepts - just because she cared enough about my anxieties to do it, which i really appreciate. she replied that she understands the point, but that every workday we also get in the car as if it ain't no big thing and we drive to our jobs on roads where dozens of people die in car accidents every week, which is extremely dangerous to both of us and we still do it anyway and pretend it isn't as dangerous as it is. so if we really want to be safe, why do we use the car? at some point you say 'the risk is there but it's low enough, and i also want to live a little.' when you say this is a really individual thing. but i don't see that with PIV this question is even really asked. it's just "expected"

as for "if it were women doing it to men they would NEVER do something that would put their precious nigels at risk"... i think that is some seriously naive shit right there. probably the bloggers writing this would not do this to their "nigels" and conclude well if we wouldn't, no one would! forgetting that the world is not made of first world bloggers convinced they are the most "radical" people on planet earth and have seen The Truth. my mum signed me into the military in 2001 against my consent, to get government loans, knowing it meant i could be drafted and sent to die and after i *begged* her not to do this because the risk of it scared me. this is also compatible with machismo, which defines the role of males as "kill or be killed" and is responsible for the military existing. BUT. it still shouldn't be this way. for ANYBODY. nobody should be "expected" to risk their life because of the "caste" they were "born into". we should be FREE, respected, equally valued and have REAL choices. *all of us*. that means PIV should NEVER, NEVER be compulsory and people who do decide to do it, even in the most genuinely egalitarian and mutually desiring of contexts, still need to be aware of the risks and take them seriously and *care* about them. so that's how i feel.

and this boy from this blog seems just compassionate and trying to do the best he can not to hurt people. probably just read a blog on this issue and felt genuinely concerned for fellow human beings. yeah some of us actually do that. ¬¬ yeah i know *gasp*. he's just worried that's all. it's natural to be worried and apprehensive about these things, because we live in a bloody rape culture. i find it really pathetic he's actually being attacked for feeling worried and reflecting on his feelings on how to be ethical by "internet radicals" too lost in their own theories to notice real human compassion when they see it in front of them.

one more thing... i am *not* hardwired for sex. i would have noticed that by now. i just feel sexually excited sometimes, sometimes enough to want to climax, which i can do myself. that's all. i *love* intimacy with people. including sexual intimacy. but i only share it with people who want to share it with me, because we want to share it with each other. i don't "need" it. i don't shrivel up and die without it. i just like it. and sex does not mean coitus... please reread this with that in mind if you read it thinking it does. i'm not hardwired for coitus either. i don't believe anyone is.

Moses Seenarine
Thanks for your honesty and insights, michael :)

Joel
Thank goodness some of your friends are not mentally ill like yourself on sexuality and actually dwell in the biological world and don't hate themselves or each other for it. And what is more, they are far Ahead of you at understanding that private property and the family are the core issues.

Komal
I'm with Andrea Dworkin on the PIV issue. Though I would add that the greater mobility and control of the person penetrating is part of the problem. I don't think penetration is redeemable if one person does it to another (as opposed to in masturbation where you do it to yourself, which is fine), and do not engage in it myself.

Komal
And no this is not about private property and the family. It's about women's bodies, our sanctity, and the relationship between this particular boundary violation (which is what it is, whether it's consensual or not) and the constant boundary violation that constitutes a big part of women's experience under patriarchy. Women need to hold themselves with dignity and independence, and this is incompatible with PIV, femininity and even most cases of heterosexual relationships.

Komal
‎[Gets shouted at and accused of being too radical in 3... 2... 1...]

Katherine
Keyboard, meet face. Face, keyboard.
Nowhere did I say that it was required. Natural is not the same as mandatory. Unless you totally lack hormone production, you are hardwired for sex. That's what those hormones DO. I can not have possibly been the only person paying attention in high school biology class, you all know this stuff, it's Reproduction 101 for goodness sake. It's very easy to separate the two issues, although hard to implement- remove the property issue from women's bodies. Stop teaching little boys that God made women inferior for the use of men. Stop teaching little girls that they're mentally ill/evil/sinful if they desire anyone but their husband. Give young men the idea that there is more to life than who "owns" the most toys. Give young women enjoyment of their body, instead of resentment, and give them the self-confidence to say no. Eliminating the symptom does not eliminate the problem- has removing sex from the picture done wonders for the Catholic priesthood, for example? No, because the underlying attitude of superiority didn't change.

It would be wise to remember that not every cause presenting itself under the feminist label is practical, workable, sensible, beneficial, or even with the best interests of women at heart.

Komal
Oh, and we are not hardwired for sex. That is a biologically deterministic and reductionistic view. People are spiritual, not just material.

The Catholic Church forces people to be celibate, and that is a problem, but many spiritual people choose to be celibate themselves and things turn out fine with them. Take the great leaders like the Buddha, Jesus etc., as well as the saints (e.g. St. Joan of Arc).

Katherine
People choose to enter the priesthood, Komal. It's voluntary celibacy. And we're still hardwired, that's biology. We can choose not to act on it- that's mental overriding physical, not absence of physical. Joan of Arc heard voices- not normal or healthy under any circumstances. Jesus had a wife. You're still looking in the wrong direction. Sex is not the issue, property rights are the issue. Demonizing human sexuality does nothing at all to fix the problem.

Komal
Yes, but they are required to be celibate in a way that might be out of touch with their level of spiritual attainment. It is forced in the sense that people use repression rather than letting it happen through a natural progression, the way it does in highly developed people like the saints, spiritual teachers like the Buddha, Jesus etc.

Jesus had a wife? Don't think so. You'd have to substantiate that claim. And even if he did have a wife, unlikely as that may be, he did not necessarily have sex with her. Certainly after he started his ministry he was not sexually active, based on all the evidence we have of him. The Buddha, and the saints are other examples. We are going to have to agree to disagree on the Joan of Arc point: I believe she was a saint, and was not 'crazy'.

People are not merely biological, was my point. Yes, we have hormones, but we are not determined by our hormones.

Katherine
There are entire libraries of research on the subject of Jesus' marital status. I'm really beginning to wonder if I'm the only person in the world still reading anything besides blogs. There's also a body of research around the idea of "spirituality" and the brain centers, chemistry and reactions that cause "spiritual" effects. All of this is thread drift. Back on topic:
You're welcome to point out where I said we were entirely biological. In fact my whole point was that the problem under discussion was NOT biological but mental- the warping of the sexual desire into ownership and control for men, shame and sinfulness for women. The solution to the problem is not further mental warping of the natural sex drive, but UNdoing the existing mental damage and eliminating the vagina-as-property mindset -and this part is very important- from BOTH GENDERS, so that men don't view women as property and women don't either. I'm not sure what part of that is proving so difficult to understand. It's not that hard a concept.

Katherine
There are entire libraries of research on the subject of Jesus' marital status. I'm really beginning to wonder if I'm the only person in the world still reading anything besides blogs. There's also a body of research around the idea of "spirituality" and the brain centers, chemistry and reactions that cause "spiritual" effects. All of this is thread drift. Back on topic:
You're welcome to point out where I said we were entirely biological. In fact my whole point was that the problem under discussion was NOT biological but mental- the warping of the sexual desire into ownership and control for men, shame and sinfulness for women. The solution to the problem is not further mental warping of the natural sex drive, but UNdoing the existing mental damage and eliminating the vagina-as-property mindset -and this part is very important- from BOTH GENDERS, so that men don't view women as property and women don't either. I'm not sure what part of that is proving so difficult to understand. It's not that hard a concept.

Michael
we are not hardwired for "sex". we are hardwired to feel sexually stimulated and sometimes enough for it to be distracting until we indulge it. we are hardwired to sneeze also. sex is a *completely* social act. saying we're hardwired for sex is like saying we're hardwired to read. we are hardwired to see. we read because we learn to and choose to. chimpanzees raised among humans do not know what social sex is because they are never taught, this has been documented. when reintroduced to chimpanzees after adolescence they are have no instinctual knowledge of what to "do" to "have sex" - if they aren't taught by watching other chimpanzees, they don't know. biologists saying we are hardwired for sex are simply wrong and being pseudoscientific - unless by sex we mean feeling sexually aroused. that is the only thing physically that happens to me that just happens. i don't feel any instinctual "urge" to "have sex with someone". i just don't. what would that even feel like? just some random person walks down the street and i'm like, "OMGZ. i want to have sex with you!! i just needz it right now!!" ? well that does not happen, i don't feel anything like that ever.

i do love being sexually intimate with people i trust and who appreciate me as their equal and who I appreciate. i love intimacy and sharing for emotional reasons. that is just my experience of myself. it's not accurate or scientific to talk about an instinct to "have sex". "having sex" is a completely socially constructed ritual - constructed around feeling sexual arousal, pleasure and tension, which *are* biologically hardwired, as opposed to getting together with one or more other sexually aroused people to climax together, which is social ritual. a lovely social ritual - as long as it is egalitarian, between people who respect and value each other as equals. :) like any other social ritual or interaction.

Katherine
Michael, my initial statement was "the body is hardwired to want sex", which is biological fact and pretty much exactly what you just said. For some reason people chose to twist that into "people are hardwired to have sex whenever the mood strikes them" which was not what I said at all. I have gained the impression that sex with men under any circumstances is viewed as "bad" by certain elements of feminism, which is an attitude that rather disgusts me.

Michael
i'm not trying to twist you words, katherine. i think it's just that the word "sex" itself is ambiguous, because it's used ambiguously - so we've just used it to mean different things. some people say "sex" meaning coitus. some say "sex" meaning sharing sexual arousal among people. some say "sex" including masturbation, some mean only social sex. some say "sex" meaning arousal. it's used in different ways in different context. i just honestly thought you meant people are hardwired to want to have sex with other people. if you mean people are hardwired to feel sexual arousal and want sexual release then of course i agree. you don't need to do this with other people - we can do this ourselves too.

i think these certain elements simply see sex with men as inherently invasive and degrading to people as subjects. it's nothing too weird or radical though. it's exactly what misogynist men say about sex and about themselves, isn't it? and they seem to be in the majority. at least the feminists who believe the same thing are not actually celebrating and revelling in it - like machosadists. to me that is even more disgusting. if people believe that about males they should at least have the decency to despise it.

i do *not* believe this about sex with men. i'm bisexual, i have sex with males too. i don't see it as "bad" or feel degraded by it. :p most people in the world though would say that it is bad and i am degraded by it and these are not limited to certain elements of feminism. these are ordinary mainstream, good old misogynists. i would never look down on anyone for being sexual with males. i agree it's a reactionary attitude. i do look down on misogynist, sadistic men who see and play out their sexuality as an act of humilliation and dominance and invasion. and these men *themselves* look down on the people they "fuck" and see them as devalued and degraded and would *never* consent to being in the same position. and these men are running the world. so what about them? i hope they disgust you also because they sure disgust me.

Katherine
They do indeed disgust me, although you don't see me arguing with them as much on FB. That's because they aren't welcome on my friends list. I had to kick a guy from my list awhile back for trying to make the 11 year old in Texas complicit in her own rape (after I told him what I thought of that). My real life is pretty much the same- people who think they own me, or have any rights to me at all, don't get to stick around.

I'm bi too. I don't feel degraded by either one. I revel in all of it- ever read Heinlein? "A growing-closer"- sharing with and learning from someone, even if it's a one-night stand. And it's just plain fun and feels good. I get disgusted at the idea that only half my sexuality is acceptable, because to me it's all beautiful.

Tracey
All this talk of "invasion" and "degradation" at the hands of a male penis is a SICKNESS. It' fundamentalist cult. Sex is a biological urge you weirdos. And that means penetrative sex too.

I swear we are trapped in a death cult. Death and violence - good (entertainment), ignored (wars). Sex, pleasure, nurturing, lifeforce -bad.

Moses Seenarine
i spent most of my day nurturing and enjoying the lifeforces around me; i enjoy pleasure, and solo sex, so am no death-worshiper! why can't i still be critical of rape or any kind of forced/conformed penetration?

Katherine
You're more than welcome to be critical of rape, but that wasn't the issue. All sex is not rape. The fact that a man and woman, or man and man, or woman and woman, are penetrating one another is not de facto rape. If you cannot understand that two people can enjoy each other sexually even if one of them is male, then I pity you deeply.

Moses Seenarine
noted: the second part to my last comment, conveniently ignored;

what about "conformed penetration"?

- is there something to this, especially for women suffering from dyspareunia, sexual trauma, etc.

Katherine
What about "therapy"?

Wouldn't fixing the problem be better than spending a lifetime tiptoeing around it and remaining traumatized? If there's a physical problem that's not fixable, then great, don't have sex. Or if you just don't want to have sex, don't have sex. I'm good with that, although I think such people are missing out. Why are you demonizing it across the board, though? There are a LOT of women who actually like having sex with men. Why do you find it necessary to tell the rest of us we shouldn't have sex because someone, somewhere might be traumatized? Why insist it's ALL bad and ALL wrong and ALL unpleasant? That's the root of my problem: people telling other people how they should conduct their sex life, because someone, somewhere doesn't like it.

Do you really, truly not understand that two people of opposite genders can enjoy sex with each other? Because that's sad, and it's a depressing commentary on humanity.

Moses Seenarine
i'm not trying to tell anyone anything about what they do to get their jollies; all i do, all i ever do, is to point out how getting one's jollies off, may (not always!) cause trauma for others, that's all; but this doesn't serve the interests of those who may benefit form the sex-industry

Katherine
I'm not sure how the sex industry comes into it exactly?

Winnie
Katherine, you really seem to be defining sex as PIV/penetration (and vice versa). Why does sex = PIV (or penetration of some type) = sex. I suppose I'm one of the "anti-sex" ppl being brought up by you and others, going by that definition (sex-critical is more accurate tho). But I myself am pansexual (or bi, you can call me either), and have had more experience with men than women (a lot more) to boot and am a female. I am also what most would call a "virgin" in spite of my experience, as experience like Frottage, tribadism, cunnilingus, fellatio, masturbating together, threesomes, etc simply don't register as "real sex". Much radical and/or lesbian critique of heterosex is a critique of PIV as a social and political practice with serious consequences for women. So to most, that is anti-sex, as sex and PIV are interchangeable (as opposed to PIV existing for reproduction when it is desirable, as nature actually intended, for example), and whenever actual complexity is expressed in sex for women and politicizing it, we are automatically called sex-negative. Even part of the reason older women are seen as non-sexual and ugly is that PIV holds less danger to them once in menopause, so men find PIV and sex with them less hot, racy, etc.

Michael
Yeah I'm confused yet again as to what "sex" means here and I thought we clarified that. So are we talking about sex here or are we talking about coitus? I haven't seen anyone here insist sex is all bad or all wrong or unpleasant. o.O Katherine some people just don't enjoy coitus, for *whatever* reason. Full stop. Why you sending them to therapy? Why don't you send heterosexual men to therapy becaue they don't enjoy any sexual activity with males at all? If people actually feel they CANNOT legitimately or validly want sex with males without wanting coitus, then how can it possibly by meaningful when people do want it? How can desire of something be meaningful if it's expected by default and you can't say "no"? You know that many males prefer to be sexual with each other also with no anal penetration involved at all? *gasp* I know a shocker. Do you recommend therapy for us too? Dan Savage to set us 'straight', perhaps? Or is this just for women? Why can't people just do with us and with anyone else for that matter, things that they enjoy and feel good about? Why do other people presume to tell *them* what they should do or should enjoy and if they don't "therapy"?

Tracey you are not being honest here or addressing anything we are actually saying. We are in the death cult you describe but we are not supporting it here. We are just talking about the dangers of coital sex and saying it is considered compulsory and it shouldn't be.

Katherine
No, that's definitely not how I'm defining it, if for no other reason than that my same-sex encounters are definitely sex. What I AM objecting to is the rather sad idea that sex is only acceptable without penetration; that penetration = violence or assault by definition; that penetrative sex is never pleasurable to a woman; and the rather bizarre idea that by eliminating it, male violence will magically vanish. My original point was that the concept of ownership over women is the problem, and demonizing vaginal sex is not the solution.

My personal belief is that sex is a beautiful thing, should be enjoyed to its fullest and as often as possible; I have no objection to people who don't choose to do that (as noted, I think they're missing out on something great, but that's jmo). The problem is that people who opt out of it tend to not return the favor: there seems to be an idea that since they're not enjoying it, no one else ought to be either. So I have the opposite problem from you, I am automatically called a "sex-pozzi", even though I don't require anyone to do anything at all. I just have a huge problem with people who tell others how to live.

Katherine
Michael: because he brought up sexual trauma. A traumatized person needs therapy whether they will ever have sex again or not. The idea that simply avoiding sex will undo the mental damage or make the person better is ridiculous.

The person in the blog post certainly stated that ALL PIV is wrong, bad and unpleasant to women- Moses repeated that idea in his lead-in, Komal followed through on it. I objected. At no time have I insisted that anyone else engage in it, and never would. Where did you get that from? I WILL say definitively that a lot of people DO enjoy it, and trying to insist there's something mentally wrong with all of us who do, or that we're raping/being raped when we do it, is as far from OK as it gets.

Michael
Why for *no* other reason than your same-sex encounters Katherine? Were all of the sexual encounters I've had with women without having coitus not "sex"? I think I've specifically agreed it doesn't equal violence it's not never pleasurable and that eliminating it wouldn't end misogynist violence... I am not meaning to demonise it. I'm meaning to ask why you seem to write as if your encounters with women are genuine "sex" and mine aren't unless we do coitus, just because I'm male? What is behind that?

I don't call anyone "sex-pozzi" and I don't support that either. ¬¬

Katherine
Ah. I think I see the problem.
I typed "sex" because I am tired of typing "penetrative" in front of "sex" every time, and calling penetrative sex by a set of initials- PIV- is insulting. You know what we do that with? Diseases. Disorders. It's neither. "Coitus" is good and I will use it from here on out.

Lucky
Just because men have been raping women for thousands of years, doesn't mean PIV is natural. It isn't natural for humans. It's natural for ANIMALS. Humans ARE NOT animals. Humans are in a category all by themselves. Unlike animals, humans don't live by instinct. Humans live by belief systems. IOWs, PIV is something that is learned. If not taught, it wouldn't even occur to humans to have PIV - as is evidenced by the many cases of folks who have been kept completely in the dark about sex. They don't have a clue. Sure, folks would still become sexually aroused. Males, even as infants, have erections. But we don't see 2 yr olds running around jumping other children. The thought never occurs to them to stick their penises in things, never mind other humans - until they are taught to. Up until then, they masturbate. Reproduction? Sperm impregnates - NOT penises. There isn't any reason under the sun for PIV. So what is the purpose of PIV? To reduce women into animals. It's called animal husbandry. Or do you think it's just a coincidence that married men are called husbands? It's about what it's always been about. Men wanting to wrestle reproduction out of women's hands. Among other things, they can do so by rape. Which, like it or not, is what PIV is. PIV gives men power and control over women's biology. And that's what men eroticize. Power over. Not sex. In the animal kingdom, when same-sex animals mount each other, it's not because they're homosexual and it's certainly not for reproductive reasons. It is an act of dominance. They are establishing dominance and a pecking order. Get the big picture yet? Good. Cuz this is where men learned it from. By watching animals. Now if some of you don't mind being reduced into animals, hey, good for you! But stop saying it is natural. PIV is about the most unnatural thing on the planet. Men were never meant to have power and control over reproduction. I mean, think about it. What was your first thought when you were first taught about PIV? And thought of your parents? Well most folks say they were repulsed and said, ewwww. The vast majority of women experience pain when losing their virginity. Pain? Now there's a clue. What every species on the planet is hard-wired to do is to AVOID pain. Women are the ONLY species who is taught to ignore pain and even conditioned to think pain is pleasure. Men as a class are a sick, sadistic bunch. They enjoy the masochism women have been forced to find pleasure in. Moses, Michael, Komal mentally ill? Nah. They're doing the work, unlearning what they have been taught and are going sane in an upside down, insane world - brought to you courtesy of the patriarchy. The rest of you are as conditioned as Pavlov's dog. Right on cue, you salivate at the ring of the bell - just as you have been taught to do.

Michael
katherine: ok i can understand that. thank you for considering that. :) when "sex" is used that way as a synonym for coitus it feels alienating to a lot of us and contributes to a mentality that is delegitimising all of the different ways we are and can be sexual with people, by to making one thing - coitus - "real sex" and anything else "foreplay" as per machista parlance. i've just seen "PIV" as meaning to be explicit about what is going on (penis in vagina) but i can understand how it could seem insulting too. so i will use coitus also. and like i've said earlier it's something i'm not closed to doing anymore and do it with people sometimes. obviously i wouldn't do it if i believed it were "always" violence or invasive or degrading to other people. it's still not the "point" of sexuality or some destination where we're "going" or compulsory or "must" happen to be sex. it's just one thing. i know it can feel good. and fingers also work for that too and sometimes we can prefer that also. sometimes i can not be in the mood to have my penis enveloped, but maybe still for sex and all for giving vulvic and vaginal massage with my fingers. i know perfectly well how good that can feel for some people sometimes, i don't need any convincing trust me. :p we are not limited in mixed sex relationships to any one configuration. for some people for *whatever* reason enveloping is not comfortable, painful or they just don't like. that is completely valid also.

i really feel it is seriously screwed up to tell people if they want to be sexual in the presence of males they *must* like or want or accept coitus or anal sex. it *must* be "penetrative". says *who*? and *why*? please we not all brainless, we're versatile too. some of us are really creeped out by this also. that includes even if we do enjoy it sometimes also - *with* other people, not against them. let's consider - isn't it macho guys who are the ones defining coitus as a form of violence? aren't they speaking of it in these terms *constantly*, everywhere in the whole culture? who says "we're fucked" to say they got seriously abused and taken advantage of? doesn't most everyone speak this way? so why focus specifically on radical feminists, this usage was not invented radical feminists. i'm totally critical of conceiving it as "violence" - but let's be clear who sees it and talks about it and *does it* as an act of violence and humilliation are mostly misogynist men. we got a whole culture to criticise and we are completely immersed in it.

and why is it het guys are never told they *must* enjoy being anally penetrated if they want to have proper "sex"? (cause so far every female partner of mine ever has anally penetrated me at some point. ;)) why it's not a requirement for them and for other people it is? there is a serious double standard here. alls i'm saying is let people define their own boundaries and likes and dislikes and be *respected* in them. it's supposed to be enjoyable for everyone, not a "duty", not a chore, not an act of submission.

some of us are overlapping with *some* things we are saying, but we are not all saying the same thing. we are not the borg or at least i am not. :p so pls judge me on what i am saying not what other people are saying... yeah? peace.

Katherine
Michael: Thanks for understanding. When it's late and I'm getting sleepy, I'm not always clear and concise. :)

I don't understand the point of telling people how they *must* enjoy sex, either. Not only is it demeaning, it's another form of control. I focus on it when feminists do it because it drags us down to the level of the people we're fighting, and I have no more approval for matriarchal rule than I do for patriarchal. We ought to know better than that.

Winnie
While I largely agree with Lucky, I don't think humans are as removed from "animal" as she claims. In mammals at least, PIV is learned behaviour too, as those raised apart from others of their species have no idea what PIV is and how to do it. They do figure out masturbation, though, and when introduced to others of their species quickly figure out things like mutual masturbation. Also, even mammals who do grow up with their group, while knowing of PIV, most mammals (both as species and individuals) only do it during estrus. But they do manual, oral, rubbing, etc kinds of sex whenever. Additionally while some mammalian species are really patriarchal, some are equal or matriarchal (notably bonobos), and even some patriarchal species have the violent, dominant males who bond together to do violence, but also have gentle males who bond with the females and either play fair or are even submissive to the females. Even within the same species, these two groups also have sex with females differently the dominant males often rape, use violence, etc, the ones who are with the females all the time tend to be gentle and have various nonpenetrative sex. Some don't even have PIV, some do when specifically invited to.

Winnie
I also say PIV is flat out accurate as to what is going on in a nonjudgemental way and doesn't even get into "man as active" as it is simply penis IN vagina. Coitus technically means "coming together," which describes any type of sex I should hope, and "intercourse" means an exchange of thought and feeling, which also describes any kind of sex. So PIV is the only term (unless someone has another one) that gets at what is actually, specifically happening.

Katherine
I think I'll stick with using "coitus". Calling it by an initial set makes it sound like a socially unacceptable disease or mental illness. JMO, and just my preference; as long as we understand what the other means, it's all good.

Missa
Katherine, when I hear radical feminists analyze penis in vagina and say things about piv which offend het women, what I hear is them saying no one should offend them by saying anything bad about men. Maybe that's not what they mean, but it comes across that way to me. It's very male supremacist.

But men as a class aren't pure nobility. some, many of them are raging fucking assholes who take PLEASURE in causing women pain.

Katherine
I know, perceptions differ from person to person. That's why we have these discussions, so's we can clarify. :)

Gerda Lerner - The Creation of Patriarchy

2011-06-11T13:11:00.000-07:00

Moses Seenarine
‎"TO STEP OUTSIDE OF PATRIARCHAL THOUGHT MEANS: Being skeptical toward every known system of thought; being critical of all assumptions, ordering values and definitions. Testing one's statement by trusting our own, the female experience."

Gerda Lerner - The Creation of Patriarchy
faculty.mdc.edu
http://faculty.mdc.edu/jmcnair/Joe10pages/the_creation_of_the%20Patriarchy.htm
PATRIARCHY IS A HISTORIC CREATION formed by men and women in a process which took nearly 2500 years to its completion. In its earliest form patriarchy appeared as the archaic state. The basic unit of its organization was the patriarchal family, which both expressed and constantly generated its rules
June 1

Moses Seenarine
‎"Women themselves became a resource, acquired by men much as the land was acquired by men. Women were exchanged or bought in marriages for the benefit of their families; later, they were conquered or bought in slavery, where their sexual services were part of their labor and where their children were the property of their masters. In every known society it was women of conquered tribes who were first enslaved, whereas men were killed. It was only after men had learned how to enslave the women of groups who could be defined as strangers, that they learned how to enslave men of those groups and, later, subordinates from within their own societies."

‎"Thus, the enslavement of women, combining both racism and sexism, preceded the formation of classes and class oppression. Class differences were, at their very beginnings, expressed and constituted in terms of patriarchal relations. Class is not a separate construct from gender; rather, class is expressed in genderic terms. By the second millennium B.C. in Mesopotamian societies, the daughters of the poor were sold into marriage or prostitution in order to advance the economic interests of their families."

‎"Men had learned how to assert and exercise power over people slightly different from themselves in the primary exchange of women. In so doing, men acquired the knowledge necessary to elevate "difference" of whatever kind into a criterion for dominance."

"From its inception in slavery, class dominance took different forms for enslaved men and women: men were primarily exploited as workers; women were always exploited as workers, as providers of sexual services, and as reproducers."

‎"The class position of women became consolidated and actualized through their sexual relationships. It always was expressed within degrees of unfreedom on a spectrum ranging from the slave woman, whose sexual and reproductive capacity was commodified as she herself was; to the slave-concubine, whose sexual performance might elevate her own status or that of her children; then to the "free" wife, whose sexual and reproductive services to one man of the upper classes entitled her to property and legal rights. While each of these groups had vastly different obligations and privileges in regard to property, law, and economic resources, they shared the unfreedom of being sexually and reproductively controlled by men. "

Margaret
‎2500 years ....okay... boring .... enough is enough ....switch the patriarch channel... we're done..... the end.....(not you Moses- the patriarchy is boring)

Moses Seenarine
‎"Economic oppression and exploitation are based as much on the commodification of female sexuality and the appropriation by men of women's labor power and her reproductive power as on the direct economic acquisition of resources and persons. The archaic state in the Ancient Near East emerged in the second millennium B. C. from the twin roots of men's sexual dominance over women and the exploitation by some men of others. From its inception, the archaic state was organized in such a way that the dependence of male family heads on the king or the state bureaucracy was compensated for by their dominance over their families. Male family heads allocated the resources of society to their families the way the state allocated the resources of society to them. The control of male family heads over their female kin and minor sons was as important to the existence of the state as was the control of the king over his soldiers."

‎"In modern industrial states, such as in the United States, property relations within the family develop along more egalitarian lines than those in which the father holds absolute power, yet the economic and sexual power relations within the family do not necessarily change. In some cases, sexual relations are more egalitarian, while economic relations remain patriarchal; in other cases the pattern is reversed. In all cases, however, such changes within the family do not alter the basic male dominance in the public realm, in institutions and in government. The family not merely mirrors the order in the state and educates its children to follow it, it also creates and constantly reinforces that order."

‎"Reforms and legal changes, while ameliorating the condition of women and an essential part of the process of emancipating them, will not basically change patriarchy. Such reforms need to be integrated within a vast cultural revolution in order to transform patriarchy and thus abolish it. The system of patriarchy can function only with the cooperation of men. This cooperation is secured by a variety of means: gender indoctrination; educational deprivation; the denial to women of knowledge of their history; the dividing of women, one from the other, by defining "respectability" and "deviance" according to women's sexual activities; by restraints and outright coercion; by discrimination in access to economic resources and political power; and by awarding class privileges to conforming women."

‎"Class and racial privileges serve to undercut the ability of women to see themselves as part of a coherent group, which, in fact, they are not, since women uniquely of all oppressed groups occur in all strata of the society. The formation of a group consciousness of women must proceed along different lines. That is the reason why theoretical formulations, which have been appropriate to other oppressed groups, are so inadequate in explaining and conceptualizing the subordination of women. Women have for millennia participated in the process of their own subordination because they have been psychologically shaped so as to internalize the idea of their own inferiority. The unawareness of their own history of struggle and achievement has been one of the major means of keeping women subordinate. The connectedness of women to familial structures made any development of female solidarity and group cohesiveness extremely problematic."

"Thus ' women were often forced to flee from one "protector" to the other, their "freedom" frequently defined only by their ability to manipulate between these protectors. Most significant of all the impediments toward developing group consciousness for women was the absence of a tradition which would reaffirm the independence and autonomy of women at any period in the past. There had never been any woman or group of women who had lived without male protection, as far as most women knew. There had never been any group of persons like them who had done anything significant for themselves. Women had no history-so they were told; so they believed. Thus, ultimately, it was men's hegemony over the symbol system which most decisively disadvantaged women."

‎"As long as men believe their experiences, their viewpoint, and their ideas represent all of human experience and all of human thought, they are not only unable to define correctly in the abstract, but they are unable to describe reality accurately. The androcentric fallacy, which is built into all the mental constructs of Western civilization, cannot be rectified simply by "adding women." What it demands for rectification is a radical restructuring of thought and analysis which once and for all accepts the fact that humanity consists in equal parts of men and women and that the experiences, thoughts, and insights of both sexes must be represented in every generalization that is made about human beings."

James
excellent discussion of our sexist society and the need for diversity in feminist terms

Isaiah
The very same thing could be said about White Supremacists who impose their worldview on people of color all over the world, male and female...

James
The black woman and women of color are double oppressed Isaiah. First by their men and next by social and class exploitation. Women are super oppressed. There is her"man" and there is the "cracker" , WASP, the men of any designation in all societies.

Moses Seenarine
whites rein = 2,000 years; misogyny = 25,000 years; where is the comparison? and who constructed whiteness? if you end that construction, another male supremicist idea will merely take it's place

Tony
Moses, I do always enjoy your posts, they remind me of the fabulous feminist Julia Kristeva and her use of a "poetics of liberation." I would also add that queer-feminist theorists like Judith Butler, in her book Gender Trouble, have questioned the very notion of an "empirically stable" body - including a that of a female body. Obviously the binary of male/female has pervaded Western culture for some time, but I wonder if reiterating familiar tropes about the "female experience" do more to contour, produce and generate the very binary that creates these oppressive experiences? I am just thinking "out loud" here, any ideas?

Moses Seenarine
Yes, tony, this is one limitation in trying to create a strategic feminism, but there is a space for collaboration in an anti patriarchy struggle with multiple genders and with subordinate and marginal patriarchies

Tony
I agree. I think we might need to employ both essentialist and deconstructive feminist-queer critiques to overturn the "heterosexual contract" (Wittig) and to redeploy these performative acts in different ways. :)

he should pay to raise the 12 children of Octomom

2011-06-11T12:58:00.000-07:00

Moses Seenarine
he should pay to raise the 12 children of Octomom

‘Octomom’ doctor's license to be revoked, state medical board rules
latimesblogs.latimes.com
The medical license of the Beverly Hills fertility doctor who assisted Nadya Suleman in conceiving octuplets will be revoked next month, the Medical Board of California announced Wednesday. The panel ruled that Dr. Michael Kamrava “did not exercise sound judgment"...
June 1 at 6:49pm

Jarmila
definitely but the woman is not without her share of stupidity

Moses Seenarine ‎
"To assign even a scintilla of responsibility to a patient who becomes pregnant and then elects not to follow through with a procedure that may jeopardize her (and possibly her family's) prized objective is troubling and telling," the board said.

Jarmila
that's OK, Moses, no question about it but she said when asked that she wanted more children (already having how many??????????)

Moses Seenarine
my grandma had 13, and i met one woman who told me her mom had 21! it's natural thing to say, although it may not very well planned

Jarmila
Mose, how old is your grandma? In the time of my grandparents (and I am 65) it was - especially in poor families) normal to have 5-8 children. Times have changed with my parents (at least in my country, where I was born), people having 3-4 maximum; my generation - nobody has more than 3 children, NOBODY. It's called responsibility. It's one thing to want them and yet another to be bale to take care of them

Kymi
Common is not common for everybody don't waste money for college if u can't pass the common sense test

Moses Seenarine
jamila, yes, but she may simply be responding to her life giving nature, her natural urge to love and want more children, and not be serious about it; anyways, this doctor was the one who made her have 12 kids, and it wasn't her choice to do so at one time

Jarmila
from what I have seen on tv when she was interviewed, she knew exactly what was going to happen and I repeat: she alredy had few children! Why would she want more in her situation?

Moses Seenarine
who knows? i understand the poverty and environmental argument, but i still think it's her right to choose whatever she wants

Jarmila
but in that case, Moses, to also take the consequences; unfortunately, it is ALWAYS the children, who suffer, not the idiotic parent; and YES, the doctor should be punished

Moses Seenarine
kids always suffer for the poor choices made by parents; it's sad, but that's why the world is so terrible, because we value children as possessions, not as the gods they are :)

Jarmila
many women are having children for all the wrong reasons, Moses; it's relatively easy to have a child, it's very, very demanding to take care of one esp if the parents do not have jobs; I have met so many women in the last several years who have no education and have 3-5 children each from a different father and none is participating in their lives; so what the hell were they thinking when they decided to have them? and no, I am not a republican, far from it (light years from it)

Moses Seenarine
this is an interesting perspective - for the poor, children represents one of the few resources parents may have access to; in india, family planning has never worked, because when you are dirt poor, the only thing you have is your body, and we breed in order to survive; it doesn't make sense, until you understand how the kids could be used as child laborers, bonded laborers, etc.; what else are poor women to do?

Jarmila
this is not a simple subject, I know; personally, if I were poor, that reason by itself would be enough for me never to have a child (not without being married or having a partner, i.e. two people trying to support a child, not one); I LOVE CHILDREN very, very much and THAT is a reason why I would never bring one to this world knowing that I might not be able to take care of it, period

Monique O'Reilly
Nichole and I just had this conversation a few days ago. Poor women having several kids. What *are* they thinking, says Nichole. I tell her I'm guessing its done for several reasons, speaking for myself with 2 kids from different dads. Low self-esteem, so taking responsibility for another life can make a girl feel like "an adult", can give a false sense of empowerment/power. And then there is the other option, but if you live in a heavily saturated religious culture, everyone around you is going to tell you abortion is wrong, etc.
It's a tough subject, speaking for American culture anyway. One thing is for sure, having kids "willy-nilly" can not be blamed solely on the mothers' willful negligence, and can not be blamed solely on a culture that doesn't give the female her rightful place in society: equality.
Yep, this one is a head-scratcher.
Agree though, doctor-dude should be held accountable as well.

Amira
Moses, there was a piece in Gerda Lerner's "Black Women in White America" in which a woman, talking back to the welfare state, said the only time she felt alive was when she had a baby growing inside of her. she said a new life made her feel hopeful. i read a dissertation of research done by a brother in Milwaukee in which his respondents, though poor, stated that their mothering under the constraints of capitalism were acts of resistance. Suzan-Lori Parks, "In the Blood" was about Hester, a homeless woman & her five children living under the viaduct. Parks was performing the work of liberals who understand structural inequities still attempt to critique and police the behaviors of poor women.

should women have to sublimate their maternal desires to the dictates of market economies? no, but....

i have & raised six children on the South Side of Chicago. it was a struggle not for the faint of heart. social scientists theorize that education and greater access to the labor force will lead women to have fewer children. in Puerto Rico they took drastic measures to test that hypothesis by sterilizing over 50% of the women. that might be true of some women, but others whose nature it is to nurture are going to make a way outta no way.

Jarmila
it is not even a question of having two kids from two different dads, Monique, for woman can get divorced once or twice; it is about being able to take care of the children! And I never ever understood the "low self-esteem" thing being dealt with by having a child; how about getting an education or taking up some interesting hobby? We are talking lives here, they are depending on US; I am not judging you, I do not know you or your circumstances, I was addressing that young woman in the article and SHE is definitely IRRESPONSIBLE

Jarmila
Amira: does it mean that if I "only" have two children, I am not nurturing???????????????????

Monique
Jarmila, not all women or girls are at the emotional maturity level that you are. Speaking for myself again, I was too immature to have a second child. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to pull myself out of poverty, and to grow emotionally. Not everyone gets that lucky in either department.

Monique
honestly i think the key is to having an abundance of strong female role models....not just at the personal family level either...but in media. gah, but that's a pipe dream.

Jarmila
as for the role models, Monique, I never had one except for my mother, that was enough for me; I am 65 and till this day I do not admire movie stars or anybody else except if they are brilliant people doing something for the human race per se; enough for me tonight, I do not want to preach, hate that, I only wish that the young girls would think about the children's FUTURE before their own feelings; children are not the toys, new dress or car to make me feel good! They are here for the duration of our lives

Amira
where did you get that from, Jarmila? i have six children & am a single mother. i also have a EdM & a PhD AND a 'hobby' as a poet/musician. i don't have low self-esteem. i had a desire to have children regardless of who said what (like those sitting on the sidelines peering into & judging the lives of others) or how the state/media attempted to construct women and define their aspirations. as a grand, & greatly grand mother, i agree that young mothers should have a strong, caring network of women & men. there are few indigenous cultures where women are expected to mother solo.

Jarmila
this is from what you wrote, Amira:"but others whose nature it is to nurture are going to make a way outta no way." Perhaps I misunderstood you

Monique
‎@Amira, "i have six children & am a single mother. i also have a EdM & a PhD AND a 'hobby' as a poet/musician. i don't have low self-esteem." I'd call you a superwoman then. Not all women or girls are made of that stuff, and they shouldn't be expected to.
@Jarmila, "I never had one except for my mother, that was enough for me;" ~ it shouldn't be this way, but for a goodly number of young women (people), culture has a tremendous impact / influence. Again, to look soley to the family (and many times church) for a girl's inspiration is denying "the world out there". It exists.
Methinks we're all speaking from personal experience here, and its very clear we all have compassion for kids. (Well, there are times when I can just strangle my oldest...but hey...whatever).
G'night ladies. ♥

Jarmila
I agree with you on almost all points, Monique and I am glad I had an oportunity to "talk" to you tonight. And you made me laugh at the end, I know the feeling!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Good night!

Amira
Monique, in a world of superlatives, there will always be greater & less than. no, not everyone should be expected to be like me, but i definitely raised/am raising my 5 daughters & granddaughters to strive for total self-expression/development. & yes, we personalized the conversation a bit, but only to caution against universalizing narrow opinions. in peace.

how to become a radical feminist: for women concerned about health, nature and the environment

2011-06-11T11:05:00.000-07:00

how to become a radical feminist: for women concerned about health, nature and the environment
by Moses Seenarine on Tuesday, May 31, 2011

how to become a radical feminist: for women concerned about health, nature and the environment

focusing on health and environmental awareness

- strengths:
(1) creates awareness of health/environmental issues, and highlights common problems/solutions facing different socially constructed communities (class, race, caste, religion, location, etc.)
(2) targets intervention into whole communities for health/environmental change, and to victims of health/environmental damage
(3) supports lobby efforts and representation for health/environmental issues

- missing:
(1) analysis of how health care and development is fundementally patriarchal in nature, and how women have more to lose than men
(2) analysis of how masculinity and patriarchy is related to conceptions of nature and to health, and to environmental distruction in general
(3) analysis of how patriarchy and misogyny operates in health care and economic development
(4) analysis of how women serve as both victims and reproducers of destructive health/environmental practices

- weakness:
(1) focusing on health/environment issues alone limits solidarity with other groups who may not see this as a pressing issue, but who may also be victims of dominant patriarchal development paradigms
(2) it leaves existing patriarchal conceptions of health and nature intact
(3) it leaves existing destructive patriarchal development policies intact

- takeaway:
(1) you become a radical feminist when you understand that the destruction of nature, health and the environment is deeply patriarchal ; that women may be more affected and concerned about saving their own health, and that of their environment, than men

Moses Seenarine
i'm kinda scared to tag this one, but here goes; i have a few more planned :)

Teresa
I love this grrl. thanx. =)

Sallie
I agree w you . in the words of uncle walter cronkite, "that's the way it is"---for real~

Monique
asthma is prolific in poor neighborhoods (Nichole and I both have it, Rachael doesn',t must be that tough cuban blood). thanks for the tag. this is a big topic. one thing that comes to mind for me is that veganism is really popular among middle class white women....i wish we would reach out to more diverse people in regards to this, people of color, and especially poor folk. i don't have much time for activism, but when i retire in 7 years, imma hit the street running.

Quincy
Looks great Moses . Thanks for tagging me . I would like to say something more coherent but it's past my bedtime I am wiped out .

how to become a radical feminist: for women of color feminists

2011-06-11T10:48:00.000-07:00

how to become a radical feminist: for women of color feminists
by Moses Seenarine on Tuesday, May 31, 2011

women of color focus

- strengths:
(1) highlights institutionalized discrimination based on socially constructed categories of race, caste, religion, location, etc;
(2) targets interventions to victims of institutionalized discrimination against socially constructed groups
(3) reservations and quotas assure inclusion and representation of socially marginalized groups

- missing:
(1) analysis of dominant male stakeholders’ role in constructing and maintaining socially constructed categories of race, caste, religion, location, etc.
(2) analysis of non-dominant male stakeholders’ role within socially marginalized groups in maintaining socially constructed categories of race, caste, religion, location, etc., through internal restrictions on relationships, marriage, offspring, inheritance, primogeniture , etc.
(3) analysis of how patriarchy and misogyny operates within communities of color, and how that serves to reproduce dominant patriarchies
(4) analysis of how women of color serve as both victims and reproducers of socially marginalized groups

- weakness:
(1) focusing on dominant group women’s role in maintaining institutionalized discrimination limits solidarity with this group who may also be victims of dominant patriarchy
(2) it leaves existing patriarchal relations intact outside and inside socially marginalized groups
(3) it leaves existing socially constructed categories intact - of race, caste, religion, location, etc;

- takeaway:
(1) you become a radical feminist when you understand that socially constructed categories are created by dominant men, and are then maintained by non-dominant men to serve their own interests

Moses Seenarine
for fara, even though you wouldn't see this

Anu
thanks for the tag, moses, perhaps i should write a note on 'how to learn the histories of feminist struggles of colored women'? :) if one can step down from the elevated platform of teaching women whose histories one evidently cannot be well informed about (colored women is a big world, no?), one might rearrange the idea of the term radical. think i have said this before to you, i am not a feminist in training. i am a dalit woman. this is the only radical thing you will hear from this colored woman. :) you will have to relearn what the term feminist means in non-white contexts and then perhaps we can partner in mutual learning. believe me, i am an eager student at all times, always learning, from all sources, but, i choose my teachers with care. :)

Moses Seenarine
thanks for your response, anu; always insightful; there is already a small cottage industry dedicated to how to learn histories of feminist struggles of colored women, but i'm sure you would still have some important things to say, and i do hope to see that note sometime :)

there is at least 4 billion women of color, and no note can ever capture all of their nuances, however i have never seen anything on this topic, and was thus prompted to write it in the interest of encouraging debate on this specific issue;

and although i can never understand what it means to be a woman, this is a cultural exploration that i could have easily have written to men of color, but sadly they refuse to acknowledge that they are part of the problem, and are happy as long as women are color are prepared to sit in the same sewer with them

mary daly is hard to beat as a teacher; who else would you recommend?

Anu
teachers that i have learnt a lot from and would gladly recommend to you, don't have college degrees, moses, they don't speak english either :) and some of them are men who would find your statement of "and are happy as long as women are color are prepared to sit in the same sewer with them" very odd.

Moses Seenarine
yes there is a lot of knowledge outside the academy, and sometimes wisdom with age;

let me explain my odd statement:
in this exploration, i am suggesting that oppressed women of color have common interests in addressing patriarchy with women from dominant communities;

in order to challenge the near hegemony of patriarchy, we have to build alliances, clearly; oppressed women of color could build a strategic alliance with women from dominant communities to press for equal reservations and representations for women at all levels of society; and, hopefully this will help to disrupt patriarchy at all levels

if i try to sell this argument to men of color, they may not be open to the idea of working with any women, even their own or those from dominant communities to serve the interests of all women, and will not be willing to give up their own patriarchal privilege in their own communities; their resistance may be insurmountable

Moses Seenarine
oppressed men or color may be willing to accept that men from dominant communities have socially constructed their oppressed social conditions, however they are unwilling to accept, for selfish reasons, obviously, that ending patriarchy is the solution; they see ending the social construction and social conditions as the only goal, and they steadfastly deny that they may have something to do with maintaining the same social construction by upholding patriarchy in general, and thus dominant patriarchy as well

Anu
institutionalized knowledge often has little bearing on colored women's realities and struggles, it arrives like a colonizer all set to civilize the natives. your note is one such example. build alliances with women from dominant communities? colored women have to accept a dominant standard and become foot soldiers to fight the common enemy? moses, this is a funny conversation about equality between sexes. accept a subordinate position among my own gender and hope to become equal with the opposite gender? like i said, your brand of feminism (white feminism) is a strange beast and it is as awful as patriarchy itself.

Moses Seenarine
yes, anu, that is exactly what i am suggesting; women of color are already subordinate; how do we help them out of their double oppression? they have to chose sides, and they already have for millenniums, and have gotten nowhere; isn't it time they consider switching sides?

i don't see this a white feminist position, but simply as a radical feminist one

Moses Seenarine
there is an opportunity here as well; doubly oppressed women are at the crossroads of social constructions of gender and race/caste, and they could serve as a bridge for both struggles; dominant women could come to respect oppressed women's large numbers and commitment to women's rights, and oppressed men could come to understand the power of oppressed women in breaking down the social constructions with race/caste alliances with dominant women

Anu
moses, kindly spare me your gracious 'helping' out 'subordinate' women. getting to say that there are women who are in need of your help is a sad little patriarchal attitude, moses. there is nothing radical about it.

Moses Seenarine
being pro-feminist is not patriarchal, anu; and, i'll spare you tags in the future

Mara
houria bouteldja on how western feminists (pays du nord) can express solidarity with their sisters (pays du sud) - starts at 4.00 in this interview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v_hKEqiAVs&feature=share

Moses Seenarine
thanks, for the great interview, mara;

houria is talking about developed vs. third world feminism, and i like the points she makes; although related, this is not exactly what i'm trying to get at

i'm talking about feminism in the same geographical context; i'm addressing divisions among women in the same location, and how we can try to think about bridging these differences; what houria says about western women addressing issues in their own community may also be applied here, but in a sense, these women are all facing the same struggle, and its a local one

Mara
moses, i think that equally dramatic differences in priorities exist w/i communities as well. this is not just true of the u.s. but also of other countries like pakistan or brazil. class and race can pretty closely parallel systems of imperialism within the same country. here is audre lorde on Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference: http://www.politicsforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=95&t=102167
solidarity is not impossible but it has to work w/i certain parameters which acknowledge difference and respect the priorities, m.o. and goals of the "other".

Moses Seenarine
yes, acknowledging differences in priorities, goals, etc., is essential, but i think that oppressed women are quite capable of doing so in working with dominant women;

the "gatekeepers" of both groups may be part of this problem since territoriality does translate to power, however limited

Nilesh
i liked the last line "Takeaway" can i use it as my status message, can i?

Karen
Thanks, Moses!

Sonia
If whites walked alongside blacks during the civil rights struggles and offered their support to black causes I don't see why white women from the dominant class couldn't offer their solidarity to aide colored women in the fight for gender equality. I believe feminism is all inclusive to all women. Thanks for the tag, Moses.

Huma
dear moses, i'm afraid your algorithm to "become a radical feminist" suffers not just from a weird and condescending attitude towards women of color as pointed out by Anu Ramdas here (and Terry Howcott and Sista Dez elsewhere on your wall) but also from a very deficient and racist framing and core that also essentializes women. what you point out as "missing" is anything but!

if you want an...
"(1) analysis of dominant male stakeholders’ role in constructing and maintaining socially constructed categories of race, caste, religion, location, etc.
(2) analysis of non-dominant male stakeholders’ role within socially marginalized groups in maintaining socially constructed categories of race, caste, religion, location, etc., through internal restrictions on relationships, marriage, offspring, inheritance, primogeniture , etc.
(3) analysis of how patriarchy and misogyny operates within communities of color, and how that serves to reproduce dominant patriarchies
(3) analysis of how women of color serve as both victims and reproducers of socially marginalized groups"

you might want to read gayatri spivak, marnia lazreg, leila ahmed, saba mahmood, houria bouteldja (she does NOT just talk about different geographies of privilege in different locations, but also in the same location), sunera thobani, sherene razack, angela davis, bell hooks, nadia naber, rabab abdul hadi, lisa hajjar, jasbir puar, laura perez, norma alarcon, and yes, people here: anu, terry, sista dez, mara, etc. (and there are millions more, from those who theorize on paper or film to those who theorize via living and fighting.)

i for one, will be saying farewell, as although i've found some articles posted by you interesting in the past, i find many of your comments implicitly or explicitly troubling.

Moses Seenarine
that's a lot of names! i have read a few, but not all; spivak refused to serve on my diss committee on dalit women, so that's a laugh!

feminist academics getting paid to promote difference is not the limit of my worldview, thankfully; peace

Moses Seenarine
can you name me one woman of color academic/activist who has a university job or book contract promoting solidarity among all women, including women from dominant communities?

are women of color intellectuals all in agreement that female solidarity cannot be attained?

or maybe, if you are a woman of color advocatiing female solidarity with all women, including those from dominant communities, you and your crazy ideas are rendered mute and invisible

you know what i find odd? that any woman would consider global sisterhood a troubling idea

is sex-work just like regular work?

2011-06-11T10:13:00.000-07:00

Moses Seenarine
'Raiding a Brothel in India' glosses over Kolkata and its people
www.write2kill.in

This open letter is in reaction to Nicholas D Kristof's article 'Raiding a Brothel in India' which appeared in the 'New York Times' on May 25, 2011. Mr Kristof, You've taken on an important subject, and these poor girls need help. But honestly, there are some serious problems with your article and
May 28 at 5:53pm

Moses Seenarine nick's original article
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/26/opinion/26kristof.html

Tracey
Speaking of sophisticated propaganda. The point of imperial wars is to kill and subjugate people, not save them. So this crap belongs up there with "humanitarian intervention". In the bullshit pile. Lots of speculation and unconfirmed anecdotes, all building a case to take away YOUR rights. Put it into context - it's a war . Asking for the State to introduce new laws that erode the civil liberties of people when perfectly functional slavery laws exist internationally, should cause the serious reader to ask some questions. Why are people so WILLING to hand over their rights to a government that they KNOW has been occupied by warmongering profiteers. They jump to believe the most lurid tales, even though they KNOW the War on Terror was based on lies, and even though they are being TOLD that this war follows the same script (the manufacture of lies). And asking for ramped up police presences, when we know fully WELL how corrupt our system is, is also a joke.

The empire won't save you or me or anyone. We're on our own. And I'm a better fiction writer than any of these anti-trafficking scum.

Tracey
Yay for the cops! And their undercover sting operation!! And all the "truth" they uncovered.

Yasmin
This is a version of the same old "our children are being trafficked" story that pops up every few years. Debbie Nathan has written about these false - and salacious - stories extensively. Here's one of her pieces: http://www.counterpunch.org/nathan02172006.html

Also, Laura Agustin has an excellent website and book that explodes the myths around sex trafficking (see in above comment, fb is acting up as always).

Laura
the 'girl next door' trope has been done to death, how can a supposedly sophisticated rag like vanity fair not be embarrassed to use it? rhetorical question.

Yasmin
Sonagachi is actually home to one of the best-organised sex worker networks, and sex workers there have helped establish one of the most successful campaigns at HIV reduction. Kristof, whose white imperialism and desire to rescue brown women from themselves, is being his usual self. In this case, he's also building on a public perception of Sonagachi based on the utterly problematic film, Born into Brothels (in that case, white woman saves brown children from their parents, all the while scolding, threatening, and finally exploiting their art).

As for IJM, I interviewed them for a piece many years ago, and they are a highly dubious organisation that does more harm than good. Raiding brothels and separating children from their mothers, which is what they used to do in Thailand - in what context do we consider that a sane act?

Aniruddhan
People should watch Shohini Ghosh's film on the sex worker collectivizing at Sonagachi, on the Durbar Mahila Samanvay Committee (DMSC), "Tales of the Night Fairies"
All nuances get lost in the loudness and hegemony of the all-sex-work-is-trafficking arguments

Winnie
This is another good article http://5forfairness.org/forum/topics/read-of-the-day-nicholas . Rescuing them from the brothel is just the beginning of what can be either imprisonment or, given appropriate care, years of healing. Some rescued will not remember a time they weren't in prostitution. What does that do to how the brain and body forms (trauma impacts on brain development, eg memory, responses to trauma, etc). The day to day care work to help women and girls heal is rarely newsworthy though, in part because women do it.

Kathleen
I'm all for calling Nicolas Kristoff on his paternalism through which he thinks that he alone discovered the problem of sexual exploitation of women and children in brothels. But defending "sex work" as if prostitution is men's legitimate right to buy sex is utterly sexist too. Maybe you should look at feminists' work on this issue. See www.kathleenbarry.net for a beginning.

Winnie
Yeah the language of "sex work" is ridiculous. Rape is not called "forced sex work" or "coerced sexual labour" for a reason. Prostitution is different from virtually all work. (ie forcing someone to do say agricultural or electronic work, for profit or not, is forced labour. Forcing someone to have sex, for profit or not, is rape).

I must say calling children who aren't even in double digits "child sex workers" takes the fucked up cake.

Yasmin
‎@Kathleen and others - maybe you should also consider the fact that several feminists, including myself, do consider sex an issue of labor. For more, see http://www.lauraagustin.com/
I, for one, don't know anyone who refers to "child sex workers."
I'm not going to get into a pissing contest about who gets to be more feminist, but it is worth remembering that feminists come in many stripes.
There are certainly class and race issues that crop up in the discussions around sex work - and some prefer the term "sex trade" for precisely that reason. But that cannot erase the fact that lots of feminists - including many sex workers, such as the women in Sonagachi - are fine with the term "sex work," however it might be translated.

Winnie
‎"I, for one, don't know anyone who refers to "child sex workers.""

A lot of people do, including the "girls" at feministing. Just Google it, you'll get a ton of hits.

While I do believe there is merit it discussing prostitution in terms of women and children's emotional, psychological, sexual, etc labour (esp sexual labour), I don't think the language of "work" speaks to this, especially from a pro-work analysis.

"Lots of feminists - including many sex workers...are fine with the term 'sex work'" is a circular argument, as you have labelled women/feminists in prostitution/the sex industry as sex workers yourself, and then said they are fine with it. Also, women who do identify as sex workers are fine with the term. Duh. Women who in prostitution who say they are in the life, in prostitution, are or were prostituted, are hooking, were pimped out, etc tend to not call it sex work.

Yasmin
‎"Women who in prostitution who say they are in the life, in prostitution, are or were prostituted, are hooking, were pimped out, etc tend to not call it sex work." Yes, that's why I was very clear that people use different terms. No one is claiming that there is never force/coercion in the world of sex for money , but t gives us no right to erase those who prefer the term "sex work."

Why isn't a blowjob for money considered labour? What "sex work" and the related emphasis on sex as labour enables is the ability to also demand protection and safety and for women - or, I should add, men, of whom there are many, to demand fair representation and freedom from harassment (by cops more than by johns, I should add - most people in sex work/sex trade/ prostitution will also tell you that the greatest violence they face comes from law enforcement) - without having to engage in the piteous rhetoric of victimhood or forced collaboration with the state. Which is what the Violence against Women Act currently does, especially with regard to migrant and undocumented women who *cannot* receive redress from the state unless they "admit" that they were trafficked and coerced.

As for "child sex workers," it's certainly not a term that I and my cohort would use - again, that tells you that those of us who engage in discussions of sex for money (the broadest term I can think) come from different places.

Winnie
I think part of the problem is most of our theory and language around labour was based upon men's labour, and doesn't fit most of women's labour. Also, only in prostitution (including porn) is the "worker" expected to orgasm. Most customers and bosses don't even expect actual enjoyment, but johns not only expect the performance of arousal and orgasm, but believe it to be genuine.

I also don't think the emphasis on sex stops prostitution from being made safer. For example, it was through emphasis on the sexual and what it means that allowed for marital rape to be criminalized and age of consent laws to come into place.

And I also see folks in your general "camp" dichotomizing johns and cops, when cops are as likely, if not more likely, to be johns as civilian men. Saying cops aren't johns too is like saying men who beat women aren't also husbands.

Why is the "rhetoric of victimhood" so piteous? What is this shame and disavowal around recognizing one is victimized? (general question of third wave/sex positive feminism)

Fwiw, I think everyone should have status, regardless of how they got here, and what circumstances they are now in. Especially in a settler state (presumably US for you, Canada for me), no one is illegal.

In regards to these sex work vs prostituted women debates, I prefer "women (and/or others) in prostitution" or "women in (insert type of sex industry)" unless told otherwise. I think it places agency, "choice" in context too, and neither erases nor overemphasises it. (It is usually a difficult decision that has continual obstacles, ambivalence, decent things, and shit things, not the kidnap by crimelords over country borders nor the empowerfulized choice that it is dichotomized into)

Winnie
And if prostitution were just work like any other, why would johns only hire those who met their sexual preferences (eg female, young, thin, large breasted, make up, shaved, etc)? If it were just work like any other, why wouldn't straight johns hire men to do work for them? Why would they go to the brothel and have the women line up and select the one they want based on visual conformity to their fantasy? Wouldn't they hire the older ones, the ones with more experience, over the young ones? For example, usually men prefer to hire other men for non sex work. Why does this change in prostitution?

Yasmin
No, the problem is that we don't think labour in a less outmoded fashion. Yes, of course, cops are just as likely to be johns - often, I should add, as johns who FORCE themselves on sex workers/prostitutes whatever term you prefer by threatening to use their state-sanctioned power and control in terms of outing/incarcerating those who perform sex for money - all the more reason why sex work/trade needs to be seen as a protected form of labour. I don't see how bringing up that point, which is in fact perfectly germane to my point about violence, negates what I've already said. You're making up points by me to prove yours - the fact that I did not MENTION that cops are also johns is not the same as denying that fact.

Again, the fact that I point to the existence of violence and coercion in sex work/sex trade is evidence also that I do believe that, yes, there can be and are victims - but acknowledging the presence of victims is very different - and demanding protection for them, as all sex workers continually do - from advocating that all our purported solutions as per the violence that we all know to exist should depend solely on the rhetoric and performance of victimhood. Think about what happens on the ground for sex workers/whatever term you prefer: why should a man or woman who has had the crap beaten out of her/him have to rely on painting herself/himself as a victim (I was innocent, I was not engaging in sex for money, therefore I deserve your sympathy - which is EXACTLY what is required in the current state of things where sex for money is illlegal)? Why not give him or her the ability to say: I was performing my job, and my client beat me up? As things stand, most sex workers don't even dare to report crimes against them.

My point about migrant and undocumented sex workers is not about the issue of whether or not everyone should have status or not - it is entirely about critiquing the way we allow the state to effectively coerce these women into falsely claiming that they were exploited/coerced/sex trafficked. It should shock you and others that women are compelled to iterate false narratives of victimhood as the absolute condition of resolving their status.

I'm a sex worker/prostitute/sex trader/whatever term you like ally. I prefer the term sex work because of the issues of labour I've gone into above, but ultimately I'm not going to erase the existence of women who don't like the term sex work. I'm not going to pretend that their self-definition of themselves -as, say, prostitutes - is somehow invalid because of my own perspective. For that reason, I don't know why so many women insist on telling sex workers that, no, your term is inaccurate and you, effectively have no right to stake your claim to that term. At the end of the day, I would hope that we all consider that there needs to be a major overhaul in the ways in which we treat people who engage in sex work/prostitution and that the state has more of an interest in perpetuating the violence against them than it does in granting them rights. THAT is the violence facing us.

As for your point about men and men in sex work - I advise you to take a closer look at the gay rags in your locality and I can tell you, for a fact, that straight men do in fact hire men to do work for them. As for the rest - I don't know where you're coming from - that's exactly why it's SEX work, not lawn work - physical attractiveness/desire is key. I could turn around and ask you why you don't marry/date/cohabit/whatever certain kinds of people based on what I might gather about your personal tastes and preferences in sexual partners - but I won't - desire is desire. We exercise our sexual preferences in our daily lives - why should we not do so if we pay for sex?

I think I've really said all I can on this subject - I find your use of points that are not even germane to this conversation and the grasping of straws to be rather disturbing. So I'm going to leave you to your own arguments.

In the meantime, to others interested in this topic: there's a possibility that there's a Slutwalk event in your city (google it), and there's an equally great possibility that these very same issues will be discussed (along with a lively discussion about the use of the term "slut," yes). I'm speaking at the one in Chicago on June 4, and there are plans for an open forum in the fortnight or so afterwards. I hope to see some of you there. 'Night.

Winnie
Well, I don't think I was grasping at straws or bringing up random shit. What do other people think?

Why is physical attractiveness key for one? In a sexual context we don't generally call prostitution or nonsexual labour context, wouldn't most call that shallow? Or is a man entitled to hire a hawt secretary cuz she's hawt, or to get a "trophy" wife? Or to dump his partner because he's "let himself go"?

Re: "straight" men hiring male prostitutes. Um, yes, but they are closeting part of their sexuality if they call themselves 100% straight and pretend to others that they are (as in, there is some level of bisexuality). Which plays in favour of my point, they do it because of things like shame surrounding their bisexuality or entitlement to any object of desire.
May 28 at 9:32pm via Facebook Mobile

Winnie
Yasmin, you need to put a space or skip a line after a link for it to show.

Ps, I'll take Take Back the Night over Slutwalk :)

Yasmin
Huh, thanks, I'll try that - it keeps disappearing on me.
Here goes again:
https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=214536121907348
and
http://www.slutwalkchicago.org/
Lots of people who attend TBN will be at Slutwalk; the two are not incommensurable events (though I have my own issues with TBN, I favour the general message).

Winnie
Waterloo, near where I live was supposed to have a Slutwalk, but was cancelled b/c of weather. There was a fallout by some Slutwalk-critical women for a black and purple bloc. I was willing to go for the bloc.

Winnie
Callout not fallout. Silly spellcheck.

Another point, re desire. Why don't more women hire sex workers then? Does looks, attraction and sex (defined broadly) not matter to women? (if sex work is based mostly on desire and attraction, and that's why men hire young women).

Ps I read a book review of a book by a john defending prostitution. The john thought a 28 year old sex worker was over the hill, and called another a "monster in a miniskirt". What a prince.

Winnie
The john was in his 40s BTW.

Moses Seenarine
i have no problems with decriminalization feminists advocating for adult sex-workers; however, they do seem to jettison how paid access to female sexuality reinforces patriarchy and misogyny; if i am a pro-feminist concerned with ending patriarchy, how do i address the reduction of women, in men's minds, that female prostitution sets up? the only way to stop the reduction of prostituted women, and all women in general, is abolition; otherwise, rape will be excused as denial for paid sex with any woman

Chris
Any way that you slice it, buying and selling a human body is treating that body like a commodity. We most certainly know that johns are not buying a woman's personality, they are buying her vagina, mouth, breasts. They are turning a human being into an object to be used and discarded. Women I've spoken to and read who have been "in the trade" will tell you of the pain, disease, psychological destruction, and death that goes with it. Care to look up the mortality rate of prostitutes? There is nothing "sex-pozi" about prostitution. It is a deplorable practice born of the ridiculous and delusion notion that men require and have a right to sex, and that women exist to serve their needs. And it's really not even about sex. It's about power and dominance. There is absolutely no justification for it. Period.

Moses Seenarine
abolitionists get that most of women's work is far from perfect, especially at slave wages; the solution is not to promote sex work for a few more dollars a week, but fair wages for all women's work! and while rescues have problems in creating alternative employment, trading a maquiladora for a brothel is not progress; feminists need to unite to end patriarchy, not work against each other in helping to reinforce its various institutions

Moses Seenarine
while some of the points partha makes in this article are valid, and i'm not surprised to find him on the decriminalization side, i do wish this article was written by an indian feminist, not merely a hindu apologist

Yasmin
I'm not going to address the definition of sex work/prostitution - I think I've said enough about that. And I'm going to ignore the fact that folks here seem clueless about the fact that sex work is hardly restricted to women - and that to draw simplistic conclusions about that is to ignore that sex can be exchanged/ coerced/bought/traded across a spectrum of gender and sexuality. Is it a vastly gendered field? Yes. But to pretend that gender and sexuality can be dismissed so simplistically is to make matters much less complex than they really are (and to ignore that patriarchy does not affect women/straight women alone).

But as for the notion of abolition: Abolitionists don't get that sex work/prostitution is not going to go away with campaigns like "End Demand." Furthermore, the very structure of abolition - when it comes to moral/cultural matters - is designed to buttress a patriarchal state system that in inherently violent and unscrupulous in targeting the most vulnerable.

What I find so faulty about the abolitionist framework with regard to sex work is that it fails to acknowledge the violence of the state. In asking for abolition, abolitionists have no recourse but to allow the state to dictate the terms of "ending demand," case in point, VAWA (see comment above). And in doing so, they are enhancing the ability of the state to target the most vulnerable.

I agree with you that the goal is to end patriarchy, but to deny that sex is and has been women's work - ask the women of Sonagaachi - is to deny them access to protective measures that go simply beyond asking for help from a state structure that is designed to target/exploit them. I would also remind you that there is no more patriarchal and pervasively so institution than the state, especially in our neoliberal times where we are able to pretend that matters of identity and affect don't enable the state to abdicate from its responsibility to protect, not simply persecute.

I would also remind you that sex work, in the right conditions, and taking matters of access of privilege into account, can be far more profitable than "a few more dollars a week," - that's exactly the point we're trying to make, even as we fully take matters of class and access into consideration. But so far, abolitionists are stuck on the same ideas: selling sex is dehumanising, no woman could possibly want to do it voluntarily, and the only way to stop the dehumanisation is to ask, of all people, the state to step in and abolish. That, as we all know, only has the effect of driving sex work underground into far more dangerous places. And it ignores what so many abolitionists pretend not to understand: that selling sex is both pleasurable and profitable for many and that our goal should be to ensure that that it remains such for those wish to voluntarily engage in it, while we combat the exploitative and violent ways in which women and men *can* be coerced into selling sex.

SWOP (Sex Workers Organising Project) does plenty of work with people who have been coerced/trafficked into the sex trade even as it fights for the rights of sex workers. That's not a contradiction - it's an explicit acknowledgment of the very complexities that abolitionists refuse to acknowledge. Ironically, it's sex worker advocates who are fine with working with women who emphatically will not identify as sex workers - our goal is simply to reduce violence. Abolitionists, instead, persist, in the face of all and any evidence, in trying to make people believe that anyone who sells sex is forced to do so and consequently turn their backs on so many of the very women they claim solidarity with.

In the end, I don't think we're going to come to any resolutions on facebook. But I'll start where I began - pro-sex work is as feminist a position as any (and I know you don't deny that, Moses, judging from your choice of words) and sex work is as much a form of labour as any. To deny that and to grind one's wheels endlessly into the mud of '90s-inspired Dworkian denial is to erase the realities and complexities of sex work, at our collective cost.

Yasmin
Also, cough, cough, looking for an Indian feminist, Moses??? ;-) But I see your point. Didn't know about his politics re: Hinduism. Got to google that now.

Moses Seenarine
when i visited brothels as a john, far less than 10% of the sex-workers there were other genders than female; in discussing this issue, i focus on 90% of those affected, women, since if we can improve conditions for them, the other genders in sex-work will benefit as well;

sex-work is not going away, but neither is patriarchy and male violence; should we just throw our hands in the air, and support men in their rule?

state violence targets all minorities, not just women, but it’s the same state that has helped to target and reduce domestic violence, enforce order of protections, etc.; i have this argument with cultural feminists all the time, who are very wary of racist cops killing abusive husbands and fathers, but this is a problem brought on by men, and so it is them who are to blame; besides, if the police are never called, the abuse will continue, guaranteed, and i have see how fast men changes when greater force is applied

my solution to this problem and the problem of patriarchy in general, is not to seek help from the coercive state, but women reducing male population gradually, over time;

while sex may be women’s work, there is nothing empowering about it; and while it can be more lucrative, how many fast food employees get beaten and killed by their customers? the dead prostitutes i know would probably choose working in fast food for less money, if they could change their minds

Moses Seenarine
and what's with this connection of sex-work to murder? there is no other work situation like this; what is it about paying a woman for sex that makes a man feel entitled to beat and kill her? does paying for sex aid in the reduction of women in men's minds, does it make them less human in their eyes, to the point where killing them is justified? as long as this crucial fact is ignored by decriminalization advocates, they cannot be taken seriously

Moses Seenarine
yasmin, as an indian feminist, i am assuming that you read the literature on british imperialists' legalized prostitution system in colonial bengal in the 16th to 18th centuries? indian feminist literature is clear in their analysis that colonial legalized prostitution was a curse for bengali women that only benefited imperial soldiers; many sex-workers also got trafficked as indentured laborers in colonies far away; how could going back to this be a solution?

Yasmin
Yes, and many factory workers were treated horribly and exploited (still are, actually, but let's take a broad sweeping view here) and many, many, have died performing simple tasks - I don't see anyone arguing for the end of factory work as a result. Rather, there has been a gradual and steady movement to better work conditions. The fact that factory exploitation and death - since you seem bent on the idea that sex work = death ,has, in fact, exploded in areas where the global north has exploited Dickensian conditions in its factory locations in the global south - you've actually referred to one such example, above - does not deter people from pushing for better factory work. The same goes for any form of labour.

Your problematically transhistorical example of the past does not wash and directly refuses to confront the reality of, again, Sonagachi. How do you reconcile this account with what is going on there? Those conditions of imperialism, by the way, are still true in Japan, where US military camps still act like colonising powers upon women in particular - we hear much less about the reality of rape in those towns than we should. But, again, saying that the existence of deplorable conditions for one group automatically negates the possibility that the same work might be productive for another is like saying that we ought to abolish all factory work, period.

The impasse here is simple: we think sex can be labour (note: not *is* because that's not the case for everyone, and we acknowledge that). Abolitionists don't. That's the issue we're not going to resolve here.

As for your solution to patriarchy - I'll leave that alone. But I will say that it is unrealistic and problematic to assume that a world ruled by women is a better world. I really don't want to engage in essentialist arguments where women are problematically posited as the better sex - for starters, and just for starters, this buys into all kinds of reductionist ideas about gender and sexuality.

As I said, I think we have an impasse here, and very different views about how power and coercion work and the role of gender in all that. It's best we return to our real-life communities and continue our work. I'll see you in/from the trenches.

Moses Seenarine
factory workers do have accidental deaths but they are not consciously murdered by corporations; the planned murder of sex-workers is not the same as unplanned factory deaths, and in fact, apple makes you sign a anti-suicide pledge; girls and women are killed by their own pimps to set an example for other sex-workers, and those murdered are simply replaced, no questions asked; similarly, i’m not arguing against marriage due to wife-murders, since marriage is not work; if we locked johns and pimps up, they are less likely to be out murdering...

sonagachi is a direct result of colonial legalized prostitution in bengal; if we ignore this history, we limit our understanding of how the sonagachi system was developed, and also ignore the mistakes of prior decriminalization policies; historical analysis is very important; besides, how can one oppose british sexploitation of poor indian women during the colonial era, and now fully support organized crime’s exploitation of same? and while the exploitation by military bases of girls and women has never stopped since 16th century, what has stopped is legalized access that soldiers had in the past; wouldn’t studying how women’s status improved or deteriorated as a result of abolition be useful? why argue for a-historical perspective? ending legalized prostitution was part of the colonial struggle, and only by ignoring this history, can one claim that decriminalization is the future;

sex can be labor, just like bonded child labor; and seeking an end to both, will impoverish individual children and women, but ultimately benefits all children and women, no? no one argues for maintaining bonded child labors in the fields, so why do so many feminists argue for decriminalizing a system that generates bonded child sex-workers in brothels?

as far as being reductionist, 90% of violent crime and murders (including those of sex workers) is done by men; why is acknowledging this fact essentialist? and regarding mary daly’s biggest sin, which i intend to keep alive, reducing male population is the only possible solution to ending patriarchy, and i am at a lost as to why feminists would be opposed to matriarchy, since it implies ending male rule; as for being in the trenches, i am all too aware of how men who use prostitutes, think of sex-workers - they are dehumanized objects not worthy of a few dollars; decriminalization of sex-work reinforces patriarchal reduction of women and will never lead to ending patriarchy;

Yasmin
Again, I've addressed these issues of sex worker earlier, and will let you carry on the conversation. But let me just add this about murder (direct and indirect) by corporations:

http://killercoke.org/

And, no, factory deaths are frequently deliberate, brought about either by direct injunction or through deliberate negligence. I'm surprised by your benign view of corporations and factories.

Have a great day.

Moses Seenarine
corporations are run by men, so that explains negligence and more; it doesn't make sense for stockholders to train workers just to have them killed, to pay out compensation, create bad press, trigger protests and boycotts, etc.; brothels don't have stockholders, there is little training for sex-workers, pimps never have to pay compensation for wrongful deaths, and johns don't care what happens as long as there is someone else to fuck

i must admit that it's a sad day when i find feminists supporting johns and pimps' argument - "well if the corporations murder, why can't we"?

Chris
I'm not clueless about anything, Yasmin. This is a topic I research a lot, read what dozens of people have to say about it-- from every angle and every side. But the fact remains that sex should not ever be something for sale. We need to fix the economics of those areas where sex has been made into commerce so that human beings do not need to participate in slavery to survive. To clarify my P.O.V. and where my opinion is grounded, I have several exited prostitutes as friends, and they are the ones that I derive the core of my opinions from, not pundits or psychologists.

Yasmin
And...the experiences of sex workers don't count? What do they experience? False consciousness? Establishing this dichotomy between absolute experience and punditry/psychology is unrealistic and silencing.
As I said above, it's fascinating that my "group" is willing to work with and for those who don't identify as sex workers, because our primary concern is with better conditions, but that abolitionists are far more dogmatic.
At any rate, happy Mem day (weekend) to those in the U.S., at least.

Moses Seenarine
the experiences of sex-workers do count, but it seems to me that the decriminalization camp only validates the experiences of girls and women who are mentally trapped and supportive of prostitution, and who therefore may be subjected to false consciousness (it does exist, you know);

but far worse than only validating the experiences of "willing" sex-workers, decriminalization "experts" end up validating the experiences of johns and pimps, and they are totally fine with that!
for decriminalization specialists, any girl or woman who is opposed to sex-work is dogmatic; ditto for reformed men who want to stop paying for sex; this is where the dogmatism lies - in minimizing and reinforcing the crime, violence and deaths associated with sex-work.

Chris
Holy crap. Did I not just write that my main source *was* the experience of sex workers who had exited prostitution? I'm really not the one being deaf in this conversation.

Have you read the statistics and information from countries where prostitution has been legalized, and how the abuse of women escalates when it goes off the street and indoors? What about the countries whose laws have been changing to criminalize johns in an effort to end the sex trade?

You want the words of former sex workers? Then here you go:
Her words, not mine-- "It is not work – it is exploitation, it is sexual slavery, it is violations of basic human right, it should be classed as torture."
http://rmott62.wordpress.com/
http://www.survivingprostitutionandaddiction.blogspot.com/

And here are some more articles
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/05/sex-trafficking-201105
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/may/28/child-trafficking-local-authority-care

Yasmin
Um, Chris, I'm referring to the use of terminology here. As in: those who identify as sex workers engaging in sex work and those who insist that there's no such thing, which is where this conversation started. And to the fact that many, many sex workers do have vastly different experiences than what you and Moses describe. But I see that Moses has already dismissed those.

Moses, your model insists that women can have no real consciousness with regard to their rights and desires, so that's an interesting, shall we say, model for feminism...

The world wide interwebs can give us all the duelling sources we need - with a preponderance of salacious, state-funded narratives about female victims and male beasties, which keep the dollars coming and the borders closed. Enjoy those to your heart's content (and I will note that, while I'm the last person to be anti-porn - surpise! - these narratives have, shall we say, a peculiarly pornographic sexual thrust which is, shall we say, worth theorising). For my part, I've provided all the references and sources I could; Nathan and Agustin are amonst the strongest and best researchers out there; I also recommend Elizabeth Bernstein and her cohort:

http://womensstudies.barnard.edu/profiles/elizabeth-bernstein

Greg Scott and Rachel Lovell at DePaul do fantastic empirical research which puts campaigns like "End Demand," in Illinois, into perspective:

http://condor.depaul.edu/ssrc/staff.html

I also recommend that interested folks keep an eye out for work on the prison industrial complex. My friend and colleague at DePaul, Traci Schlesinger, has been doing interesting work on that:

http://depaul.academia.edu/TraciSchlesinger

In particular, Traci's work looks at the results of incarceration and, more importantly, the route to incarceration - which is what is most encouraged, by the way, by abolitionist campaigns like "End Demand."

Sources like Counterpunch provide well-researched and well-rounded counterpoints to the conventional narratives about trafficking, and I encourage folks to look those up.

I'm sure the two of you and your friends will find ways to rip into all this amazing research but I did want to put out those sources for others following this thread. Also, I wrote about this subject as well, some moons ago, and will be following up on my own work in the following months (Chicago is a particularly interesting mileu for all these issues and contradications that we have, uh, discussed). Enter "trafficking" as a search term on my website and you'll come across my work. And, as I said, I'll be speaking about all and this and more on June 4; drop me a line if you're interested in having a conversation outside this thread (that's directed to others who want to know more).

Ta, for real.

Moses Seenarine
so, how many women and girls actually enjoy sex work - 50%, 75%, 90%? how many were surveyed and how many answered truthfully? no one knows, but decriminalizing advocates all assume the numbers are on their side;

from my own experience as a john, this was certainly not the case; the women were initially pleased with the opportunity to make money, but their disposition changed as soon as they commenced work, and the longer the sex lasted, the more belligerent they became, demanding more money for continuing to work; none of the women i met fit the model of a happy hooker, and seeing their displeasure was all the more reason for me to stop this inhumane practice

do i have a model for sex-workers? i talk about what i read and know; i am not part of the industry and no one pays me to propagandize; i have never met a prostitute who asserted sex-work as a right and as part of her desire; they all seemed trapped, economically and otherwise; what am i supposed to assume, that everything i think and know is wrong and that these women were actually were fooling me all along and enjoying the sex? i am not that delusional, thankfully

do you have any links of people who aren’t being paid to produce propaganda? when young, clueless university types seeking tenure decide to go native and become sex-work research subjects themselves, i may take what you say a bit more seriously; until then, i'm going with what i experienced first hand

Tracey
Yasmin, love and support to you!

Yasmin
Okay, even as I wave goodbye to the deck of this Titanic, I have to address this: "do you have any links of people who aren’t being paid to produce propaganda?" Seriously, Moses? You mean, like the highly-paid writers who produce pieces for Vanity Fair - you know a publication that has absolutely NO interest in raising its readership by producing salacious stories that they then illustrate with reenactments like this one (which completely proves my point, above, about the pornographic impulse behind these narratives):

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/05/sex-trafficking-201105

By the way, as I mentioned above, the VF story is eerily similar to the one produced by Peter Landesman for the New York Times, with a very similar title, "The Girls Next Door," some years ago, and which was brilliantly exposed as a sham by the redoubtable Debbie Nathan, one of the best damn investigative journalists out there. The Times, which, as we all know, is blithely unconcerned with ratings and readership or, oh, supporting the war machine etc. see Judith Miller et al.

And no, YOUR experience as a john, no matter how many hundreds, nay, millions, of times you paid for sex does not invalidate the methodical and thoughtful research and analysis done by people, academic or not, who have no interest in generating money through their work. And, frankly, I'm weary of you bringing this up in a way that is more than slightly macho here, even as it tries hard to pretend to be the opposite. I don't have a problem with the fact that you paid for sex, but I question your attempt to use your personal experience as an invalidation of research and even, yes, others' experience; according to you: only your experience matters. Frankly, I'm appalled by your profoundly anti-intellectual stance.

And your tone is becoming increasingly petty and, frankly, bitter. Your comment about people being paid to produce propaganda is extraordinarily mean-spirited, desperate and, frankly, unethical. Dissect the research and prove that they've been paid to produce propaganda, but don't just throw out weird pot shots.

I'll leave you to stew in your own juice, but I just wanted to make sure folks understood the difference between the work of Nathan, Agustin, Schlesinger et al and that of the kinds of mags and sources that produce what amounts, ultimately, to a form of oppression porn for the masses.

Tracey
I wish abolitionists and anti-traffickers would simply admit they hate sex and that they disagree with women controlling their own sexuality and that everybody should be in a monogamous relationship. I wish they would be up front and say that they don't trust women to make the right decisions about their own bodies.

Moses Seenarine
social researchers all have biases! the most important one is obtaining tenure and additional funding; like you and the other academics you cite, i was part of the university bubble, so i know what i’m talking about; but thankfully, i have given up that dream, so i can speak the truth now, yay!

isn’t it interesting that well-paid decriminalization advocates are emerging from well-funded elite universities, not poor, grass-roots human-rights organizations? and of course arm chair activists would know much more than those on the ground, especially with a book contract waiting in the wings; this is not to say that journalists and sensationalist media cannot be equally biased, but neither are “academics” completely objective and inclusive of all sides; hello?

there is no pure academic objectivity, and any researcher with a bit of integrity left starts by acknowledging their bias; mine is with exploited and abused sex-workers, clearly; yours and those you cite are tied up with your career, publishing and ambition, not only with empowered, feminist sex-workers; let’s not fool ourselves here by ignoring the obvious; the idea that academics have no interest in generating money through their work is nonsense, and even if they’re working off a trust-fund, there is the notoriety, fame and glory that comes with publication, conferences, etc.; privileged white-collar workers using the tragic lives of poor sex-workers to promote and advance themselves is pathetic, but that’s how the universities are run, so it’s not your fault, right?

speaking about bias, it is of no surprise that a decriminalizing feminist would dismiss the opinion of a reformed john who doesn’t quite fit the bill; and if i had an anti-intellectual stance, why would i read about legalized sex-work under colonialism and write a dissertation of dalit women, including the 3,000 year old devadasi sex-work tradition?

i refuse to play polite academic games, and when i do tear back the cover of academic biases, it's not petty, its an attempt to reveal the biased reality or all research; frankly, the faster we chose to leave the hallowed halls of academia, the faster we may get to the truth, without paid-for biases, in addition to the personal ones

Tracey
Bias shmias. Difference between you and us, is this OUR lives and our livelihoods, we are talking about. OUR lived experiences. Stop telling us we are not "representative" because we went and got educated. Because our sex work paid for our degrees, and it is largely sex work continues to fund our activism. We are biased because it affects us and our families. It doesn't affect you Moses. And the anti-trafficking rhetoric you are so enamoured with, is going to be exposed as a fraud. It isn't about bias. It's about evidence vs ideology.

Moses Seenarine
tracey, i am happy that you were able to do so! i have my own lived experiences to go on, and i am concerned with how this affects men as well as girls and women

Tracey
It's just insulting that you think women on the ground, advocating for labour rights, are well paid operatives for some sinister structure. That's straight out of Melissa Farley's book of how to silence women who are conveying their experiences. You claim to be concerned, but refuse to listen to the women at the grassroots. And why don't you respond to the various accounts of state violence at the hands of police and army? It's the people you are worried about, the victims, that bear this burden too? Even if you COULD rescue poor infantilisied women -- how would you do it?? Did it ever occur to you that sex workers have been quietly rescuing young women for decades?? That maybe they just don't sing about it because they can't?

Moses Seenarine
tracey, i didn't say local activists are well-paid; on the contrary, i'm saying that white-collar academics are, for producing research that supports the hugely successful criminalized sex-work industry; and i'm not in favor of locking up women victims, only their johns and pimps; rescuing women starts with the premise that they need to be rescued, but decriminalization folks are working overtime to prove that they don't, so countering this propaganda is all important

Tracey
You can't separate a workers' client from the sex worker. You can't mess with someone's livelihood and not expect there to be some remedial measure taken to restore that livelihood. So, going after clients means women, trafficked or not, suffer violence (often extreme) at the hands of law enforcement, simply by virtue of contact with them. Besides, it's crazy to me that you want to outlaw a consensual arrangement based on some analysis that says it's wrong. You know the cops and army are rounding up women based on the Swedish Model. You know that abolition does not curb prostitution, only make it more dangerous and vulnerable people more traffickable. You know that the US declared war on trafficking in 2000, that an industry - the rescue industry has grown out of it, you know the data is falsified - there is very little hard data about trafficking, its based upon estimates. In fact, USAID is suppressing results of a study they commissioned recently in Cambodia, because those results do not match up with their policy. There were zero people found trafficked in this rigorous study conducted over two years. And it will never see the light of day. You know there are successful programmes being implemented in the community, at least in SE Asia and South Asia as well as across the first world. Yet you still support the imperial model.

You still want to lock up the "johns". Like we have a system with enough integrity to carry out such a task. You know, there is absolutely no excuse to support these policies. The semantic trickery of "we only go after the men", adds insult to injury, and is part of the reason I personally feel sold out by mainstream liberal feminists. They invite unmitigated violence against women by setting the cops on women, then throw up their hands and say "it wasn't us!". Enabling rape. Enabling violence. Enabling theft. Enabling legal repercussions, mostly to do with migration.

Try giving THE WOMEN some credit for a change. What would academics know about SEX work OR trafficking anyway??

Moses Seenarine
the supposed war on trafficking is nonexistent and mostly rhetoric; there is no denying that the sex-industry is growing by leaps and bounds everyday; if you are in the sex-work industry, it's boom times all over, and i see zero effort at abolition; am i missing something here?

locking up pimps and johns will affect women's livelihood, but is necessary if we want this inhumane practice to end; abolition must work alongside education and alternative employment, so women will not miss their meager but essential income; poor exploited girls and women deserve better, and feminists of all stripes must unite to demand that they get a chance to live meaningful lives; i do not want to see women suffer as a result of abolition, but neither am i willing to support this horrible form of exploitation that mainly benefit men

Tracey
‎"the supposed war on trafficking is nonexistent and mostly rhetoric; there is no denying that the sex-industry is growing by leaps and bounds everyday; if you are in the sex-work industry, it's boom times all over, and i see zero effort at abolition; am i missing something here?

Where do you get the idea that the sex industry is growing? What is that based on, and what is it measured against? Where is the sex industry booming now, that it wasn't say a decade ago? And how do you know that signs of "boom" aren't actually signs of women looking for a space safe enough, so that they come out. Disclose their experiences.

Tracey
Moses, I forgive you for being a fascist, on the basis that it's "well intended". But this offer is limited. I really think you project some of your own issues into this debate. Your absolute keen-ness to view women as victims when they have sex, but not when the cops are gang raping them, just flies in the face of reason.

Tracey
Before you zap me, let me add, the war is real. It visits a lot of suffering on the people its claims to help and is a profitable pyramid scheme in the tradition of the War on Terror.

http://apnswdollhouse.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/somaly-uh-uh/

Moses Seenarine
the sex-work industry is tied into the booming porn industry; i am equally opposed to cops raping sex-workers, as i am to johns and pimps; i do have a lot of issues with this, starting with my own family; and, thanks for helping to save a few girls and women, quietly, tracey; let me know how i can help you save others

Tracey
Cops are not on an equal footing with individual men. One is an armed gang with the power to take away your liberty, the other is a solitary male expressing a desire in a consensual arrangement. One is a sustained attack that can last from hours to days, cause internal damage and a death without inquiry, and the other is a solitary male agreeing to conditions set down by the woman. You know that militarism is inherently violent, but you place them on the same level as a single male? One who is not doing anything wrong by any objective standards. Only in the minds of those who demand a clean vagina.

Moses, how can you claim to be on the side of women, when you ignore (the war does not exist) the violence. You only want the sex to stop. The violence, both actual and structural, both implied and institutional seems to be OK with you. It's just the sex, that must stop. Well it won't stop. You can't stop it and neither can anybody else. You have two choices - a public examination of our historical hypocrisy in the context recognising human rights, or a private industry manned by thugs (much like the one you IMAGINE the industry to be) driven further underground, instilling more hypocrisy, violence and doubespeak into our global culture.

Moses Seenarine
cops can be corrupt and very violent, especially those working for various crime syndicates, and sex-workers are not the only ones being abused; one is suspect simply for walking/driving while black, arab, etc.; i was assaulted while handcuffed inside the station, so i under no illusion about the cops, and also want this violence to end; having female police to do the work of arresting johns and pimps would a start in the right direction;

since much of sex-work is already underground, how is getting serious about abolition going to change anything?

Winnie
Tracy, and others who paint us with the "anti-sex" brush, I'm polyamorous, pansexual, anti-marriage, anarchist, and yes, sex-critical. It makes sense to me, esp to be PIV-critical, considering 2/3 of women are sexually assaulted and this often has impacts on "consensual" sex, more pregnancies are unwanted than wanted, even wanted pregnancy can kill women, almost everyone believes sex equals a man sticking his dick inside someone else's body, boys and men first see pornography at age 10 or 11 (depending on the study), etc.

I will not fault women for working with the state, as the state and corporations are two main governing bodies in the world. And both are run by men. Since when have corporations helped women? We also don't fault women working with the state on say health care, domestic violence, enforcing laws on corporations, etc. Or do you object to that too? Is a woman who calls the cops on hearing what sounds like a physical or sexual assault between the couple next door a collaborator denying women their own choices when she knows her neighbour doesn't want her man arrested because she looooves him? Nurses who take government money and work with cops (they all do), are they secret fascists?

And the fact is, if abolitionists did work outside the law, you folks would be shitting on them for that too, eg denying pimps and johns due process of law, not going through "proper channels", etc etc by doing their own investigative work and holding men accountable to our own justice, rescuing women and girls, etc. And a lot of us also do other work outside the law, but we can't run around blabbing about it because it's illegal.

Winnie
Also in regards to lone johns vs army and cops, a lot of sex work is done with more than one man at once, eg stripping, bachelor parties, when soldiers have "r and r", when men go as a group to a brothel, most gonzo porn, etc. False dichotomy.

It can also serve as an argument for marriage and monogamy, as in those, one only need deal with one lone man at a time.

And how is doing things like getting PIV, fellatio, etc from a woman who may have been in it since she was a child, is probably only doing because you are paying her, is potentially giving her an sexually transmitted infection (in no legalized or decriminalized system are johns tested, only the supply), potentially impregnating her, etc harmless and not doing anything wrong? Bwuh?

Some johns, in their tellings of johning, even describe women experiencing traumatic flashbacks, physical pain, etc and don't seem to give a shit. I remember reading one who even began visiting adult women, and being offered younger and younger workers, and didn't even think anything of having sex with children, until the girl that came to the brothel room was about 8. He had sex with her anyway, rationalizing it as it was what johns did in that country. Others believe the women (and girls, boys, men) love every minute of it. I've even read johns interpreting women in prostitution crying and screaming as their orgasms being so great they couldn't contain themselves.

Karen
i noticed the men Johns were NOT even mentioned once in this so called unbiased article mmmmmTHEY are the ones buying female human beings for meer kicks, as sexual property ...might want to mention the johns in such an article before accusing Kristof of bias... and pointing a finger at everyone else...ps MANY people from India are fighting THE JOHNS , that ultimate 'class' system of gender supremisism and the class system that sex slaves the loweest class in India....Where are these voices in the article ABOUT A JOHN INHUMANITY ...INHUMANITY BY JOHNS FOR MEER KICKS ...like I said not one mention of what the article should have been about : BECAUSe the issue sure as hell ...is about the men, the johns. And Kristof does NOT call inhumanity on girls 7 the women they grow to be if they survive in this, the 'sin' of the girls : as the article implies with that VERY VERY old manipulation tactic about people who want to stop the inhumanity of THE MEN as meer attackers of the females as sex-sinners...give me a break...unbiased my sweet behind...THIS article doesn't even so much as gloss over lighty the UNSPEAKABLE INHUMANITY COMMITTED SENCELESSLY BY THE JOHNS... wHAT A biased JOKE.

Winnie
Yes indeed, advocates of sex work don't only not want to hear exited folks who were in prostitution often, they definitely don't want to know what johns say when guaranteed anonymity or when talking amongst other johns about it. It would at least shake their view that most johns are just nice, lonely guys.

Karen
The johns are buying a female human being as sexual property...we know WHAT THEY DO...it's time we stopped sugar coating it bowing to sexual misogyny and it's complete overwhelming part of the power stucture of corruption and supremisism . the johns are buying females as subhuman inhumanity...we are talking human beings here...as for what they say...yes, it reveals them , but anyone who needs to ear it is brainwashed by the constant, nonstop depictions by the mass media & the billions & billions of dollars of this industry attached to the mass media over this, the number one thing that sells : anyone who needs to HEAR the johns for what they are, & what they are doing, is being a 'sex' PODsitive zombie to that massive, collassal totolitarian machine that pumps and pimps the OVERhumanizing of the john abusers and the subhumanizing of the female human beings in this misogyny power structure.

Karen
I know the difference between sex and sexual misogyny, between sex and abuse, between sex and sexual inhumanity...THAT is the difference this money makking power structure DOES NOT want anyone of us 'pods' to realize : a Brave Heart cannot be in favor as POSITIVE...INHUMANITY -AS-SEX ....M HATE-AS SEX...nothing is more anti-sex, anti-female, anti-conscience...and anti-brains , than that.

Karen
Who is so culturally lead, such a cultural follower that they call inhumanity in it's most blatant form, abuse, misogyny [hate]...meer sex ?? allowing industry to highjack sex for it's massive misogynistic profit off of injustice & inhumanity...supremisism and abuse??? Amazingly sad. and pathetic.

Karen
What pisses justice off the most...is that this cultural form of genocide took over by way of physical genocide the USA from native americans who held this act of men, being johns, to be the ultimate wrong : And now we have to hear 24/7 that this is natural etc as AMERICA largly has spread this attitude around the world and all the other money grabbing/ self worshipping pimps and johns and pimp and john, supply demand souless batstards lapped it up : so entire cities trned into massive human trafficking helll holes...& there is no conscience that this was NOT the Red road....my praises to Cherry Smiley for addressing this [she is Canadian Native].

Karen
the article DID not mention Johns AT ALL...but attacked the men trying to stop their inhumanity....but this was not biased???? The men were no issue at all...in prostituion, in human sex trafficking....!!!!!!! Totally protected Johns....WOW ...AMAZING , SHAMLESS BIAS ...How does bias get worse than that???

Karen
The article protects & coves up JOHNS , THE DEMAND, then accuses anyone against THE INHUMANITY OF THE JOHNS that he CENSORED to be the stereotype of jerks who hate sex & try to save girls from their 'girly sex sinning': He'd know men like Kristof are trying to stop other men from being inhuman to females in inhumanity for kicks, IF HE HAD BOTHERED TO MENTION THE JOHNS AT ALL !! TOTAL bias like the old, old decades before, same tired outdated tactic from when the Demand's inhumanity had 100% totolitarian control of the media & of what was censored out of this issue :THE INHUMANITY OF THE JOHNS FOR HUMAN SEX TRAFFICKING of countless millions of female human beings for misogynistic kicks.

Karen
AND TRACY...The sex as you demand it be called, & as the corrupt industry has DICTATED it be called...IS not sex but violence : it is Inhumanity to buy female human beings in this horrific industry but you CALL THAT ...SEX ?!! MEER SEX ?!!! i guess rape is meer sex to you, so long as the girl/woman isn't beaten to a pulp?? THIS IS THE INDUSTRY OF RAPE/ABUSE/INHUMANITY...that IS NOT SEX: WOW!! You can't see the difference: that says it all !!!!!!

Karen
MISOGYNY IS NOT SEX...buying females as sexual property is not being pro-sex , it is being pro-hate & pro-inhumanity....Only the most industry-as-sex mindset and misogynistic libido fails to see the difference. And HATE should never be a turn on: Inhumanity should never be called SEX: THAT is as anti-sex as it can get !!!!! lordy Mamma !!

Karen
But you call my friend and this brave man....anti-female...what a hypoctitical and projectionism joke !!!!

Karen
YASMIN ...you call factory machinery no different than female human beings & their humanity ?!! WOW !! You accuse others of not being pro-female as you say working in any factory for low wages etc should not be an end to factories so why end human sex trafficking...EXCUSE ME!! The buying of human beings as sexual property is MISOGYNY : Females as Commerce sex slaves to buy is no different to you than what goes on in factories that make candy, bread & babty toys WTF !!

Karen
Factories that make candy might have treated workers unfair....but candy isn't A CRIME AGAINST FEMALE HUMANITY : WE ARE TALKING ABOUT WHAT IS THE PRODUCT ...In trafficking females are not just abused workers THEY ARE ALSO THE DAMN PRODUCT as sexual property to buy like subhuman machinery....Get a conscience: Stop attacking others for your own guilt.

Karen
Moses...you rock !!!! *HuGs*

Karen
When people tried to stop black slavery all we heard was Blacks are treated well when owned, they approve, studied showed most said they supportd it & that only 'trouble makers' wanted to obolish it: & after it was illigel to buy blacks the same pro-slavery crowd pounted to most blacks stating that now they lost their ability to survive & income etc WE HAVE HEARD THIS TACTIC 100O TIMES BEFORE: But our conscience dictated that it & not industry , nor slavers, nor those who view humans as commerce to be bought by others, CONSCIENCE will be followed !! Human beings cannot claim to be human and support human trafficking , the buying of humans as proprty NO WAY & certainatly not for supremisistic , sadistic kicks !!!

Karen
This stuff that tries to support and tolerate inhumanity that is human trafficking on this wall...is as old as inhumanity itself...and smells like it too !! Decay. Rott.

Karen
The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center has taken the anti demand position and the position therefor of ALL human sex trafficking as the slavery it is. As one grop of human believing it right to own another as bought property ...even for the most inhuman reason of all : supremicistic kicks...one's own sadistic pleasure . and for industry to make a killing off of this inhumanity.

Karen
MOSES you don't have to take this crap from women trying to make you feel guilt...it is OUTRAGEOUS what these 2 women on this thread have called you...you don't need to prove anything to them...they WANT they reaction from you...you should gently but rightly NOT TOLERATE IT ...they can be gently taken off your list: NO ONE should feel they have to take this abuse WHICH HURTS ALL FEMALES: THEY ARE HARMING ALL FEMALES WITH THESE ACTIONS, they need to know that is not okay, YOU are the one HELPING all females with your courage....They will be taken on by me and others whenever they chose to harm females and attack brutally great men like you who are helping to stop the inhumanity. I'm here for you friend: You've got the backs of all females : I've got your back Friend :)))))))

Karen
ps i'm glad they said what they did: It can all be shot down in flames with anti-inhumanity fact: Their points are old cruel attacks easily blasted into space....THEY HAVE STURRED MORE SUPPORT AGAINST HUMAN TRAFFICKING MORE PASSION TO END THE INHUMANITY THAN EVER WOULD HAVE OCCURED HAD THEY NOT ENGAGED IN THIS...THEY..YES, THEY ARE WHY WE FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT on to take on the demand, the inhumanity ~~~~~

Karen
Thank you Moses for having the anti-spin anti-corrupt industry brains & heart to know the difference between sex in humanity vs sexual inhumanity....You are not ashamed of sex...but of inhumanity/misogyny/abuse being spun as just 'sex': You know the diffence between sex and misogyny....dispite a world of power & pods trying to FORCE us all to obey otherwise ...like zombies as BILIONS of endless dollars are poured into PR spin for the industry of inhumanity WHich You have the light [and brains] to see through. Good for you !!

Sometimes real life reads like Science Fiction thrillers...if so ...you are one of the rare heros that has the guts and conscience to resist this power structure , billions of dollars of Pr control, totalitarianism, sexual fasicim & cultural pressure including personal attacks and lies about you....That takes RARE courage.

Rebbeca Mott has that courage too, as does Cherry Smiley & Ted Bunch , & Men against prostitution and trafficking and Tom laughlin and others like Nicholas Kristoff and GEMS to name just a few. :))