As you are doubtless aware I see myself as a 'feminist', so I would imagine you would be interested in my opinion on your piece.
I do, as it happens, understand what you are trying to say here - obviously it's a serious subject, but a part of me - well, the old-fashioned, affectionate feminist part of me - thinks it's really quite sweet of you to expend such effort trying to skirt, as it were, around the issue, and not to step on eggshells. I got that feeling all throughout the essay. There's a certain irony there of course - I mean you mentioned the word 'taboo' - which, it seems to me, the entire 'woke' thing is intended to manufacture.
But what I really wanted to say was that I think you may have a particular definition of 'feminist' which is, well, whether it's accurate or not is a question, but it's certainly a different definition to the one I have (or the type of feminist I am).
I'll explain - I generally take a view of the 'history of feminism' as one in which, basically, after some women fought for a long time and with much hardship against the patriarchal Establishment (Judaeo-Christianity, post-1066 feudalism etc.), they were able to win to themselves a greater respect within society (I'm talking western society here I guess). Think about people like Mary Wollstonecraft here, for example. I think you'll agree that someone like her bears zero resemblance to these 'modern feminists' you are describing? I'm more like Mary, by the way, if that helps.
A real feminist knows, for example, that you cannot be a feminist and a Judaeo-Christian at the same time. Likewise, if you are a genuine feminist then you have to be something of an anarchist. For me, there is little difference at all between 'hierarchy' and 'patriarchy' (and thus 'statism'). And any system which has a 'commandment based morality' rather than a 'virtue-based morality' is by definition unnatural and hierarchical/statist. A system, that is, which dictates 'norms' and vilifies anything which doesn't conform to those norms. Likewise the word 'liberal' has been captured and misused - it doesn't mean 'freedom' anymore. It actually means 'patriarchal conservatism' !!
Virtue-based, simply premised on, or made possible by, emotional and psychological maturity.
We then have this early feminism progressing hand-in-hand with the struggle for socialist emancipation of the masses (against the (feudal, patriarchal) Establishment) - historically we see these two groups mutually aiding each other - although, one must say, with not as much support from the male socialists as we would've liked, but we are a forgiving species, of course. Anyway, now fast-forward to the post-ww2 era, and bring us to the 1960s counter-culture (read: anti-Establishment) movement. This is the point where the 'movement' (which includes the old socialist emancipators) or 'the resistance' suffers a concerted and systematic programme of attack by the Establishment. Just as you have Cointelpro (I think you mentioned that), you also have 'infiltration' of 'feminism'. Also use the term 'agents provocateurs'. These infiltrators will, put simply, pretend to be feminists, they will call themselves feminists, but they will express themselves in such unattractive, us vs. them ways so as to discredit feminism itself. Discrediting 'the resistance' by infiltration and control is a timeworn tactic of the Establishment, as I think you would agree?
So my take on all this, then, including a lot of the 'woke' shit, is that this kind of stuff is not being promoted by genuine feminists like myself, it is being promoted by the infiltrators - in other words, by the Establishment itself. And likewise in typical Establishment style, it is also infiltrating and controlling the 'other side' - the 'anti-woke'. And what happens as always it's the innocent who get caught up in the middle. For example if you look at the anti-trans 'feminists' you only need to see where they come from (the Vatican) and who they ally with - the far-right 'Christian' fundamentalist types - i.e. the archetypal patriarchy (!!!) to hopefully understand precisely 'which side they're really on'.
So when we talk about 'feminism' and 'feminists' we really need to take a step back and define what 'kind of feminist' (or pretend-feminist) we really mean. I am, believe it or not, vehemently against all these so-called new feminists who are a natural progression of the Establishment's infiltration and agent provocateur strategy. They do not represent me or the interests of women - or men for that matter (remember the patriarchy oppresses men too, by dictating roles for them) - and more than that, they are misrepresenting feminism, and demonstrably doing a massive amount of damage to the interests of women - and society/humanity itself in the process - and I say, this is deliberate and entirely intentional. And they do position themselves on 'both sides'.
Of course I don't know the precise details of your own personal run-ins with so-called feminists (or people who said they were feminists) and for it's worth I am sorry if you were unfairly treated, and I just wanted you to know that 'I am not that kind of feminist' - and 'we're not all like that'.
I think that's important to remember.
Oh, as a P.S. with regards to your statement 'murder is worse than rape' - actually that's not true from a psychological point of view (depending on the nature of the incident, granted, and the psychological state of the victim). Being raped is (or can be) a life-sentence. And it IS different for a woman than a man, on the psychological level. This is another issue though, so I'll not go on about it here. There are a lot of myths around rape, though, this much is true. Most rapes are committed by someone the victim knows (hence the horrifically low conviction rate - without some 'written consent' it comes down to one word against another - there are some places that are trying a different approach though, and perhaps that will change the culture. Rather than saying 'no means no' it requires an actual 'yes' from the woman. I think there is some merit in that, but as I say, it's for a different discussion).
Thank you for your comment...Because you cover so much ground, I don't know where to begin in responding to it.
"A real feminist knows, for example, that you cannot be a feminist and a Judaeo-Christian at the same time."
I've never actually heard anyone say that, and I'm not sure what you mean by Judeo-Christian - Judaism and Christianity are completely different religions with completely different values. Judaism is obviously incompatible with feminism, but Christianity? Really? Have you read the New Testament? Considering the historical context, I think its teachings are very enlightened, including in regards to women. The only thing that Jesus said that could be construed as anti-feminist was his position on divorce... And to understand that, you need to consider something about Jewish customs at that time.
I will point out that if feminism is anti-Christian, then it can't claim to represent women, because probably something like a quarter of the world's population are Christian.
This is one of the annoying things about feminism. It claims to speak on behalf of all women, but it can make no such legitimate claim. It is dominated by urban university-educated childless women who look disparagingly upon women who do not share their views.
"Likewise, if you are a genuine feminist then you have to be something of an anarchist."
The word feminism is now too contested to make that claim. I would have to ignore the past twenty years of feminism in order to believe that. If it's original spirit, sure. But when people like Hilary Clinton and Justin Trudeau use feminism to get elected, the "real feminists" need to clarify their position in relation to that "fake feminism". At this point, it will probably be necessary to choose a new label to describe your ideology.
Might I suggest anarchist or voluntarist? We're for everything you're supposed to be for, you know. And if all social relations were voluntary, would there really be a need for feminism to exist?
Of course, privileged childless women will always find something to complain about. When a certain type of person is unhappy, they need to blame someone for something. Men do this too, but they can't do it in public because they would lose status in the eyes of other men. Women are judged by different criteria, and are much less likely to be told they're full of shit.
"If all social relations were voluntary, would there really be a need for feminism to exist?"
That's a great statement, and I wholeheartedly agree.
I think maybe that's what I'm really getting at when I talk about the necessary link between voluntaryism and emotional/psychological maturity. And likewise I think that in order to reclaim 'feminism' as a positive thing this is the kind of approach one would need to take - 'feminism' has been seriously muddied with all these bad actors messing with it. So yes, what you said 'original spirit' - I do absolutely take a very spiritual or 'essential' (as in 'essence') view of all this.
Getting definitions right is a bummer, lol.
Looking back I didn't realise how bloody long my comment was! Sorry about that. I do go off one sometimes don't I!
I'm with you about the word feminism being too contested - I agree with that too - I do, in fact, sometimes find myself not actually wanting to call myself a feminist for that reason. Yeah - because of bad actors like Hillary jumping in and trying to claim the word as their own (like Marx did with 'socialism'). Put differently, I don't want to be associated with those sorts, thank you very much.
With regards to Christianity - I have studied it of course. It was a mandatory part of the curriculum at both my schools for example, although I did continue looking into it after school, especially when I went off and studied philosophy. I was unfortunate to be sent to a methodist school at primary age (I guess that's 'elementary' on your side of the pond) and then a more Catholic place for secondary (high) school. The methodist place was seriously abusive, which made the Catholic place almost refreshing. So I went from total austerity and anti-spirit (it sucked the entire joy out of everything) to fulsome bells and smells marvellous colour and music and richness and everything. So I do appreciate that aspect of religion. Ceremony and stuff. A coming together of the social group.
On the other paw, after some study I go further back to, say, the Egyptians, and can clearly see how the Jesus story is modelled on Isis (Mary), Osiris (Joseph/'the father') and Horus (the 'son' - Jesus). Egyptians also have Horus the younger (son) and the elder, which is the resurrected Osiris. My feminism in this aspect comes from Isis, and recognising that paganism has an inherent gender-balance to it - whereas Christianity - as it has been 'manifested' (or imposed into the world/society) has thrown out that balance in favour of a patriarchy. Please note I'm talking here about its historical manifestation more than its inherent original meaning. I would also go along with Celtic (Irish/British) Catholicism along the lines of Pelagianism (rejecting the doctrine of original sin - which is only used for social control) and Marcianism (rejecting the old testament). In fact I even see that version as the genuine original Christianity, or at least what it should be.
Anyway - I am mindful of not wanting to write another essay (I should actually be working right now so I'm being a little naughty here), so I'll leave it there for now...
Hmm... I really wasn't expecting a response like this. A feminist telling me that my critique of feminism is sweet?
Here's something that's more bitter:
To all the feminists outraged that I´m saying this, because a man could never understand the pain of being raped, let me ask you this: Have you ever had the shit kicked out of you by six or eight screws with billy clubs? Have you ever been beaten, stripped, put in a baby doll and a hockey helmet with your wrists and ankles cuffed, and kept on 24-hour suicide watch by sadistic guards? Guess what? It´s not as much fun as it sounds.
Forgive me. I guess I´m a tad bitter. After all those years of trying so hard to be a good feminist, and being treated like shit by these heartless bitches, I find out that all of these people who were judging me are no better than I am.
Have you ever been drugged into a near-comatose stupour for months on end because you refuse to adopt the beliefs of your captors, who dignify their abuse in the name of psychiatry, telling you that you surrendering your will to their ideology is for your own good? Have you been held down by a gang of sadistic male nurses on a psych ward and injecting you with chemicals that cause you to lose consciousness? What makes your penetrative assault worse than the many penetrative assaults I have suffered? Why do you think that your trauma trumps mine?
I´m sick and tired of the feminist attitude that ¨my pain is more important than yours¨. If you cut me, I bleed red, just like you do. Pain is pain, whether it is physical or emotional, whether it's a man or a woman experiencing it. It became fashionable for women to exaggerate their pain and blame men for it. That's what #MeToo was. It was a fad. A terrible, awful, no good fad.
You don´t know what a person has been through by looking at them.
One of the most infuriating things about feminists is the same in which they play the Rape card to shut down debate, as if only females are ever victims of sexual violence.
For another thing, as radical feminist Germaine Greer has pointed out, rape is not the worst thing that can happen to a woman, saying:
¨If a woman allows a man to have sex with her to avoid a beating, then arguably she fears the beating more. A woman who has been raped has no reason to feel shame… and a female-centred view of rape will not fashion it as something that can "ruin" a woman. ¨
"Historically, the crime of rape was committed not against the woman but against the man with an interest in her, her father or her husband", she wrote in 1995. "What had to be established beyond doubt was that she had not collaborated with the man who usurped another's right. If she had, the penalty, which might have been stoning or pressing to death, was paid by her."
"She may be outraged and humiliated,but she cannot be damaged in any essential way by the simple fact of the presence of an unwelcome penis in her vagina."
She argued, in two Guardian columns, that it was not the rapist's penis that had hurt her, but his fists and "vicious mind", and the loss of control, invasion of self, and "being made to speak the rapist's script".
"To insist", she wrote, "that outrage by penis is worse than outrage by any other means is to glorify and magnify that tag of flesh beyond reason."
I do understand where you are coming from, believe me, and like I said I'm not 'that kind of feminist'. People should be treated individually on their own merits (or lack of). Likewise it shouldn't be a case of 'my pain was worse than yours' - for a start we should show solidarity with each other, with all those who are oppressed in whatever way, and second it's the individual's personal perception of whatever happened to them that matters. It's not for anyone else to judge and say 'your pain is such and such' or 'your pain only merits level 5, or 6, or 7' or whatever.
That absolutely applies to Germaine Greer. It's not her call to make such generalising statements. That's an entirely insensitive thing to do. She can talk about herself and her own perception, sure, but she is absolutely not allowed to project that onto others.
Like I say, we should judge these things on an individual basis - it's not a competition. Unfortunately, a lot of (false, in my opinion) 'people who call themselves feminists' (but who aren't really) have discredited genuine, compassionate feminism by turning it into a competition. I can damn well understand how decent-minded and decent-hearted men would react negatively to that. I react negatively to it as well because it does a lot of damage to the cause - that's why I strongly suspect these people are like agents provocateurs - misrepresenting feminism and - clearly - sowing discord.
My own personal feminism is indeed about anarchism and liberty and resisting oppression. In that sense, it's not so much about 'men' or 'women', it's a matter of principle.
The feminism aspect I think comes in when I notice the historical association of oppression with the patriarchy - this is an undeniable historical fact, but it's not something to do with 'men' per se - it's to do with bad men (who are a minority) - the 'might means right' brigade. I would hope we are agreed on that one, at least in principle. That's also why I can distinguish between 'good men' and 'bad men'. Good men, for example, simply wouldn't even consider 'non-consensual' sex (let's call it rape for the purposes of the discussion) because he is empathic, sensitive, and compassionate towards the female and would want her to experience the consensual act with as much intimacy and pleasure as he would, because that, ultimately, is what love really is - it's a mutual meeting of heart, mind, and soul (and body too, obviously).
Again, what I'm perhaps talking about here is emotional and psychological maturity. Mature people do not harm others in any way. It doesn't even occur to them and revolt at the mere thought of it. And they do not tolerate harm being committed to others - of any kind.
Anyway - I don't pay any attention to the likes of Germaine Greer. I have in fact put her away in the box designated 'fake feminists'. They do more harm than good.
I am a spiritual feminist. I am nothing like her. As for rape, here's my personal thing (and yes, this is personal to me, not a generalisation) - it's the 'getting inside my safe space' - the 'internal violation' which is key here - it's as much a spiritual violation as a physical and a psychological violation. For me, this is far more difficult, if not impossible, to 'get over' than something which does not 'get inside' and remains a superficial assault. A superficial assault is easier to 'psychologically process' I mean. Not that it's not awful - of course it is - it's the psychological difference.
But like I said, that's my own personal feeling and shouldn't be taken as a judgement on others. It's how we perceive the thing that matters. Maybe Greer would be ok with being raped, I don't know - I've never met her and I don't want to either. But I strongly object to her trying to pontificate on how I, personally, am supposed to feel. That's the antithesis of feminism.
When I said it was 'sweet' I meant it as a compliment - it shows sensitivity. That's something I admire in another person. Take that as a second compliment.
I agree with much of what you've said here - no one wins at the Misery Olympics. But since the 2015 until 2024 there was prevailing attitude of:
"YOU HAVE TO LISTEN TO ME AND DO WHAT I SAY."
"NO, YOU DON'T GET A TURN TO SPEAK."
"SIT DOWN, SHUT UP, AND ACCEPT THAT YOU ARE GUILTY!"
In retrospect, it was utterly disgusting. Bill Burr is right. White women hijacked the woke movement - a movement that was about justice for people of colour. In Canada, they saw residential school survivors of sexual abuse getting a lot of attention and they said "Me Too". They managed to make it about them somehow. It became socially desirable to be a victim. And who doesn't have a story about some kind of negative sexual experience?
I asked "Is rape worse than a bad beating?" for a deliberate reason. Because it makes you think, doesn't it?
If you take the time to think about the question, one answer is unescapable: it depends on the rape, and it depends on the beating, doesn't it?
Would you rather spread your legs when you didn't want to or have your legs broken?
Would you rather be penetrated while you're unconscious or have your face disfigured?
The Rape card is used by feminists in the same way as Zionists use the Holocaust card. And like the Holocaust card, you've used it up. Many victims of rape will suffer for years to come because feminists cheapened the meaning of the word rape.
Some kind of major salvage operation is now necessary, which is why I made what I think is a helpful suggestion - differentiating between different types of sexual assault. Obviously, my suggestion is inadequate, but I hope that it points in the right direction.
Treating all rapes as if they were same not only is intellectually dishonest - it's also harmful to survivors.
Furthermore, MEN GET RAPED TOO. This is one of the most perverse things of all - that women (likely unknowingly) exploited the male taboo against admitting to being a survivor of sexual violence to monopolize discourse about rape. Women never show an interest in ending male-on-male prison rape, which tells me that they're not serious about creating a world without rape.
Furthermore, many of the victims of sexual abuse at residential school were male. I don't know why, but pedophiles seem to target boys just as much as girls. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong.)
I have a theory about why pedophile priests would target boys... I'm guessing that the priesthood provided a way for homosexual men from conservative families to avoid family pressure to get married. Such men may have entered the priesthood BECAUSE they were closeted gays. This explains why pedophile priests seem to prefer boys. Perhaps access to altar boys is a factor. I don't claim to know. What I do know if that I know quite a few men who sexually abused by priests as children, and no women (so far as I know).
Anyway, I really wish that women would quit pretending that females are the only victims of sexual abuse. It's not true.
Furthermore, there are female pedophiles, such as Ghislaine Maxwell. You never hear too much about female pedophiles, but they definitely exist. Epstein and Nygard had TONS of female accomplices. I don't know how many of them were pedophiles themselves, but is being an accomplice in a sex-trafficking ring worse than being a pedophile?
Also, for fuck's sake, feminists supported biological males being housed in women's prisons and shelters for battered women. That's insane. There's a reason no one respects feminists anymore. There's nothing to respect.
Also, where was the #MeToo crowd when the news about Epstein and Nygard came out? Why aren't feminists up in arms about Prince Andrew? Why do they go after people like me?
Because it wasn't about justice. It was about power, revenge, hatred of men, and schadenfreude. A lot of women showed their true colours, and the ugly side of the female psyche came out in full force.
One of the things that the #MeToo era showed is that women just aren't morally superior to men. As soon as you the power to strike at men, you abused it in ways that were shameful and frankly unintelligent.
It took 9 years for feminists to figure out that the moral imperative to "Believe all survivors" was stupid.
Why? Because women don't lie? Because women aren't shrewd enough to use guile to get what they want? Because they never blackmail or extort anyone? Because they're never vengeful? Because they're made of sugar and spice and everything nice?
Does this mean we are in agreement here? It kind of looks that way, even if we have totally different ways of expressing it...
But what I think you have hit the nail on here is how words like 'feminism' or 'feminist' and decent resistance movements get hijacked and then corrupted - and this is precisely what I mean by agents provocateurs...
By the way, let's face it: everyone lost the plot around the same time... roughly 2015 to 2024. Leftists, anarchists, conservatives (God help you if you think Trump is a conservative), feminists, social democrats, the LGBT, Jews, Christians... pretty much everyone. Presumably, it was a result of the advent of social media echo chambers, weaponized through some of kind of "Flood the Zone with Shit" strategy serving God-knows-who.
I know I'm going hard on feminists, but don't feel too bad - it's definitely not just feminists, or just women. It's damn near everyone. Our brains got scrambled.
There are now officially signs that feminists are coming to their senses and engaging in a genuine process of political reorientation. That's good.
I've started referring to the women of the truth movement as post-feminists, but fifth wave feminist would arguably be an accurate term. The real feminists feel a spiritual calling to stick up for their sisters. I get it. You could change the name, and that might be strategic, but feminism, like anarchism, is never going away, because it stems from the inborn desire of human beings for freedom.
If you're wondering what happened to the fourth wave, I would argue that that's woke feminism, the corrupted movement which began around the end of Occupy, in which intelligence agents launched a major campaign of ideological subversion designed to bomb the fault lines of race and gender in order to preemptively quell the resistance movement.
Arguably, the beginning of the fifth wave began with Mary Harrington, who seems to have been the first to recognize that feminism no longer represents mothers, and that no movement that doesn't represent mothers can claim to be a real women's movement.
Fifth wave feminists will presumably restore mothers to their rightful place in feminist discourse. Either that or feminism will go dormant and women will follow the lead of men, at least until WWIII or over.
I read the free bit of the pronouns article. Having studied literary translation this included the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - which is that words & meanings are intrinsic to cultural identity, essentially (thus making true translation impossible, at least for complex concept-words). This became all the more apparent when I translated a bit of German philosophy (Hegel - I strongly advise against that, by the way - it did my head in).
Anyway, that might seem off-topic but something just clicked in my head and I finally fully realised what it was that has been seriously riling me up about these 'new feminists' vis a vis the anti-trans thing. It's this word I came across recently called 'bioessentialism'. It essentially says that biology determines everything about gender. I instinctively reacted really quite strongly against that, because it essentially offended my soul itself, and robs everyone of 'agency'. The reason is because if everything is reduced to biology then the soul has no place anymore - that's to say, the true self has no place. And that, to me, is intimately linked with the social control inherent in what I have called the patriarchy, but which is actually simply the 'totalitarians' or Judaeo-Christianity - JC being simply one of their many mechanisms of totalitarian social control - the antithesis of anarchy and human egalitarianism and freedom. So to me, bioessentialism is simply one more mechanism or method or 'deceitful idea' created by the cabal to herd everyone into easily controllable ways of thinking - it's an ideology. It is anti-spirit and anti-nature and anti-everything that makes sense to me as a deep, profound essence. So it's not even the 'trans' thing that concerns me at all, it's what it represents. And this is why I think these 'new feminists' are simply the latest in a long line of deceivers. Because essentially (that word again) one could say that 'trans' people reject 'bioessentialism', and define themselves not by their biology, but by their very essence as a person. That's what they see as their 'identity' - and that's an understanding I can share. I've never defined myself by this 'body' that's going to dust at some point - that's demeaning - what's inside is my identity. The 'anti-trans' brigade are effectively attacking the 'internal identity' which is, as it happens, the essence of every human being.
So, again, it was the principle of the thing that got me. I should've known because I'm always like that.
Anyway - I just wanted to get that out of my system, so to speak. I knew there was something bugging me. Now I see it clearly.
So with regards to where 'feminism' should be going - it should be embracing what I just said about the true essence of a human being's identity - something internal and something spiritual - and that, ultimately, is not really a 'women only' thing, is it? It's perfectly and beautifully equal for men and women. So there.
I can sort of see what you mean here, if you associate 'fourth wave' with 'woke'. Personally, however, everything beyond 'second' is an Establishment controlled psyop and that clearly includes what you have termed 'fifth wave', with people like Harrington. These are people who cannot see beyond biology, and are taking what is essentially a Victorian, patriarchal definition of 'woman' based entirely on their place in the reproductive cycle. In other words, they reduce women (and men, for that matter) to nothing but fucking baby machines. In doing this, they are utterly destroying not only all the progress we have made but also destroying the essence and the spirit. I'm sure now and then they deceive people with stuff that 'sounds sensible' but that's just a hook. These people, in my experience, are nasty, reactionary, bigoted right-wing types disguising themselves as 'feminists' and claiming to represent women and mothers and children and so on, when they do nothing of the sort. I've seen some of the vile shit Harrington writes in Unherd and I don't want any part of it. These people are dangerous, in my opinion, and they don't speak for me.
Damn, I was trying to tell myself not to engage in this kind of thing. I tell you what, I'll go and read that guest article (Rozali) and then see.
Listen, there are most certainly feminists & post-feminists that I respect, notably Meghan Murphy, Mary Harrington, Alicen Grey, Margaret Anna Alice, and Rozali Telbis. Notably, ALL of these writers clearly now have mixed feelings about feminism.
I am definitely not against the feminism that I grew up with - the prevailing feminism of the anti-globalization movement, which was heavily influenced by anarchism, Quakerism, and very interesting thinkers like Starhawk, Gimbutas, Riane Eisler, Merlin Stone, etc... You'd be surprised how familiar I am with more mystical side of feminism. I was very into it.
I'm willing to forgive and move on, but there does need to me a post-mortem on the #MeToo movement. Let's recall that it was started by the CBC soon after Trudeau was elected. It all started when they went after Jian Ghomeshi, a popular CBC radio host, for basically being a bad date. The political context at that time was the growing indigenous sovereignty movement, which has broad popular support from environmentalists, feminists, liberals, and most everyone who wasn't an industry worker.
Note that the CBC never went after Peter Nygard, whose crimes they helped cover up for decades. Nor did they go after Prince Andrew, serial chomo extraordinaire. They went after someone after a radio host who was totally unknown outside of Canada.
Also, did you know that Justin Trudeau might be a chomo too? There are sexual assault allegations against him going back decades... I haven't really looked into them, but there seems to be quite a bit of circumstantial evidence. Why didn't feminists cancel JT? Because he's so cute? Because the CBC never turned against him? Or because social media algorithms were directing their moral towards certain targets?
Anyway belief is that that the #MeToo movement was part of a counter-insurgency strategy which served to divide a movement that was fast becoming a threat to Canada's extractive industries. If so, it may have been too successful, as it seems to have basically destroyed Canadian society. Turns out that a society in which men are afraid to contradict women isn't a recipe for success. Whodathunkit?
By the way, do you realize that #MeToo has been Canada's most successful cultural export of the past decade? How depressing is that?
Ok - I read Rozali's guest article and it has clarified a few things for me I think. I was in fact pleasantly surprised not to find myself assaulted by a whole load of right-wing talking points.
One thing I should say here is that I have little to no experience of the kind of, how can I put it, intellectual milieu, which she is describing. I'm sure, however, that if I had been hanging out with self-styled 'feminists' for the last ten years, most of whom had attached themselves to the latest manufactured 'cause' then I too would've gotten just a tad pissed off.
What I would not have done, however, is flee straight into the arms of the waiting demon. I thought it was intriguing, after all, that one of them she mentioned, this 'Terri Strange' person said she'd gone over to 'Christianity'! Right, so you call yourself a feminist and now you are prostrating yourself beneath a male 'god' (actually demon pretending to be a god). That's surrender and submission, not feminism!
Likewise, this 'fifth' wave of feminism has been embracing a whole load of these reactionary talking points which, as I say, had been manufactured by the Vatican fifty years' ago and had only ever been there waiting for them, presumably with its great gaping maw wide open. Ironically, fifty years ago is exactly around the time neoliberalism got going. I don't think that's a coincidence. So what I think these sorts are is, in fact, the new wave of agents provocateurs - the waiting demons.
This is why I really loved the final two paragraphs of Rozali's essay - she nailed it with her observation that this isn't a rejection of 'feminism' it's actually a rejection of neoliberalism (she called it capitalism but I think she meant the same thing). The only other piece of the puzzle missing is that it is precisely the architects of neoliberalism who are also the architects of all the other rotten shit that is flying around these days - on both sides of these manufactured 'talking points' and hashtags and 'causes'. All of them are designed specifically to misdirect, keep people occupied, prevent them from seeing the true cause and guilty, demonic source of all of it. In other words, it shouldn't be just a rejection of neoliberalism, it should be like a conspiracy theory thought - go right down into the heart of it and reject that ultimate source - the 'grand conspiracy', the 'new world order' and that small cabal of monsters responsible for all of this. And those monsters, those demons have many minor demons and minions out there, all doing their own bidding.
So maybe this explains why I embrace the pagan and the magical so much. It's the true antidote.
So maybe I should count myself lucky that I have been able to avoid getting caught up in all that. Moving here to a lovely rural setting away from it all (around 15 years ago) with our own piece of nature with which to commune and work - this is the real feminine. I had never, before I came here, felt so close to the feminine essence, the planet herself, the Goddess. Here she is truly alive. None of this manufactured world order has any place here - it's like maybe she has cast a wonderful protective spell around this place to keep away all those demons.
That's an interesting little potted history of which, I must admit, I was not aware. This is partly because (you'll have to totally forgive me on this one) I know next to nothing about Canada. I mean the internal political stuff (other than obvious things like the truckers and a little about indigenous rights and so on), obviously I know where it is on a map. For example I'd never heard of Peter Nygard. As for JT, he's got tool written all over him. He reminds me a lot of Monsieur le President here in France (Macron), who's as slithy a tove as you'll ever find.
I was also under the impression that the #MeToo thing started in Hollywood with some actresses talking about how people like Weinstein (and presumably a whole load of other producers) forced them to perform sexual favours in exchange for parts and so on. (Oh now there's a great song - The Exploited - 'Sexual Favours' - that's one of my favourite basslines of all time that is). So yeah, regardless of where it came from it was, in timeworn fashion, hijacked and turned into something which benefited the Establishment. Of course what they really want us to do is, by rejecting it, immediately go to the other extreme, which is likewise controlled by them, and very often already there waiting for us having been set up in advance.
I'm not going to get into any of those 'feminist' names you mentioned, as I would very much like to avoid touchy subjects. So I'll say nothing. I will however check out that guest article you mentioned (Rozali). If it upsets me though then I may well just remain silent.
From an unpublished article about serial killer Robert Pickton:
"If you spend any amount of time examining the evidence, you will conclude that Pickton definitely had collaborators. According to evidence presented at trial, two women enticed multiple sex workers back to the farm so that Pickton could torture and kill them. Their names were Gina Houston and Dinah Taylor. Yet both got off scot-free."
Pickton's sister, Linda Wright, was also never charged, despite being the co-owner of the infamous pig farm.
In the cases of Nygard and Epstein, I could probably come up with dozens of names of accomplices, but why bother? No one cares. Everyone knows that men are the problem. After all, you can't rape someone if you don't have a dick.
The saying that comes to mind for me regarding #MeToo and all of its consequences is "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions."
As you are doubtless aware I see myself as a 'feminist', so I would imagine you would be interested in my opinion on your piece.
I do, as it happens, understand what you are trying to say here - obviously it's a serious subject, but a part of me - well, the old-fashioned, affectionate feminist part of me - thinks it's really quite sweet of you to expend such effort trying to skirt, as it were, around the issue, and not to step on eggshells. I got that feeling all throughout the essay. There's a certain irony there of course - I mean you mentioned the word 'taboo' - which, it seems to me, the entire 'woke' thing is intended to manufacture.
But what I really wanted to say was that I think you may have a particular definition of 'feminist' which is, well, whether it's accurate or not is a question, but it's certainly a different definition to the one I have (or the type of feminist I am).
I'll explain - I generally take a view of the 'history of feminism' as one in which, basically, after some women fought for a long time and with much hardship against the patriarchal Establishment (Judaeo-Christianity, post-1066 feudalism etc.), they were able to win to themselves a greater respect within society (I'm talking western society here I guess). Think about people like Mary Wollstonecraft here, for example. I think you'll agree that someone like her bears zero resemblance to these 'modern feminists' you are describing? I'm more like Mary, by the way, if that helps.
A real feminist knows, for example, that you cannot be a feminist and a Judaeo-Christian at the same time. Likewise, if you are a genuine feminist then you have to be something of an anarchist. For me, there is little difference at all between 'hierarchy' and 'patriarchy' (and thus 'statism'). And any system which has a 'commandment based morality' rather than a 'virtue-based morality' is by definition unnatural and hierarchical/statist. A system, that is, which dictates 'norms' and vilifies anything which doesn't conform to those norms. Likewise the word 'liberal' has been captured and misused - it doesn't mean 'freedom' anymore. It actually means 'patriarchal conservatism' !!
Virtue-based, simply premised on, or made possible by, emotional and psychological maturity.
We then have this early feminism progressing hand-in-hand with the struggle for socialist emancipation of the masses (against the (feudal, patriarchal) Establishment) - historically we see these two groups mutually aiding each other - although, one must say, with not as much support from the male socialists as we would've liked, but we are a forgiving species, of course. Anyway, now fast-forward to the post-ww2 era, and bring us to the 1960s counter-culture (read: anti-Establishment) movement. This is the point where the 'movement' (which includes the old socialist emancipators) or 'the resistance' suffers a concerted and systematic programme of attack by the Establishment. Just as you have Cointelpro (I think you mentioned that), you also have 'infiltration' of 'feminism'. Also use the term 'agents provocateurs'. These infiltrators will, put simply, pretend to be feminists, they will call themselves feminists, but they will express themselves in such unattractive, us vs. them ways so as to discredit feminism itself. Discrediting 'the resistance' by infiltration and control is a timeworn tactic of the Establishment, as I think you would agree?
So my take on all this, then, including a lot of the 'woke' shit, is that this kind of stuff is not being promoted by genuine feminists like myself, it is being promoted by the infiltrators - in other words, by the Establishment itself. And likewise in typical Establishment style, it is also infiltrating and controlling the 'other side' - the 'anti-woke'. And what happens as always it's the innocent who get caught up in the middle. For example if you look at the anti-trans 'feminists' you only need to see where they come from (the Vatican) and who they ally with - the far-right 'Christian' fundamentalist types - i.e. the archetypal patriarchy (!!!) to hopefully understand precisely 'which side they're really on'.
So when we talk about 'feminism' and 'feminists' we really need to take a step back and define what 'kind of feminist' (or pretend-feminist) we really mean. I am, believe it or not, vehemently against all these so-called new feminists who are a natural progression of the Establishment's infiltration and agent provocateur strategy. They do not represent me or the interests of women - or men for that matter (remember the patriarchy oppresses men too, by dictating roles for them) - and more than that, they are misrepresenting feminism, and demonstrably doing a massive amount of damage to the interests of women - and society/humanity itself in the process - and I say, this is deliberate and entirely intentional. And they do position themselves on 'both sides'.
Of course I don't know the precise details of your own personal run-ins with so-called feminists (or people who said they were feminists) and for it's worth I am sorry if you were unfairly treated, and I just wanted you to know that 'I am not that kind of feminist' - and 'we're not all like that'.
I think that's important to remember.
Oh, as a P.S. with regards to your statement 'murder is worse than rape' - actually that's not true from a psychological point of view (depending on the nature of the incident, granted, and the psychological state of the victim). Being raped is (or can be) a life-sentence. And it IS different for a woman than a man, on the psychological level. This is another issue though, so I'll not go on about it here. There are a lot of myths around rape, though, this much is true. Most rapes are committed by someone the victim knows (hence the horrifically low conviction rate - without some 'written consent' it comes down to one word against another - there are some places that are trying a different approach though, and perhaps that will change the culture. Rather than saying 'no means no' it requires an actual 'yes' from the woman. I think there is some merit in that, but as I say, it's for a different discussion).
Thank you for your comment...Because you cover so much ground, I don't know where to begin in responding to it.
"A real feminist knows, for example, that you cannot be a feminist and a Judaeo-Christian at the same time."
I've never actually heard anyone say that, and I'm not sure what you mean by Judeo-Christian - Judaism and Christianity are completely different religions with completely different values. Judaism is obviously incompatible with feminism, but Christianity? Really? Have you read the New Testament? Considering the historical context, I think its teachings are very enlightened, including in regards to women. The only thing that Jesus said that could be construed as anti-feminist was his position on divorce... And to understand that, you need to consider something about Jewish customs at that time.
I will point out that if feminism is anti-Christian, then it can't claim to represent women, because probably something like a quarter of the world's population are Christian.
This is one of the annoying things about feminism. It claims to speak on behalf of all women, but it can make no such legitimate claim. It is dominated by urban university-educated childless women who look disparagingly upon women who do not share their views.
"Likewise, if you are a genuine feminist then you have to be something of an anarchist."
The word feminism is now too contested to make that claim. I would have to ignore the past twenty years of feminism in order to believe that. If it's original spirit, sure. But when people like Hilary Clinton and Justin Trudeau use feminism to get elected, the "real feminists" need to clarify their position in relation to that "fake feminism". At this point, it will probably be necessary to choose a new label to describe your ideology.
Might I suggest anarchist or voluntarist? We're for everything you're supposed to be for, you know. And if all social relations were voluntary, would there really be a need for feminism to exist?
Of course, privileged childless women will always find something to complain about. When a certain type of person is unhappy, they need to blame someone for something. Men do this too, but they can't do it in public because they would lose status in the eyes of other men. Women are judged by different criteria, and are much less likely to be told they're full of shit.
That's where I come in. Someone's got to do it.
"If all social relations were voluntary, would there really be a need for feminism to exist?"
That's a great statement, and I wholeheartedly agree.
I think maybe that's what I'm really getting at when I talk about the necessary link between voluntaryism and emotional/psychological maturity. And likewise I think that in order to reclaim 'feminism' as a positive thing this is the kind of approach one would need to take - 'feminism' has been seriously muddied with all these bad actors messing with it. So yes, what you said 'original spirit' - I do absolutely take a very spiritual or 'essential' (as in 'essence') view of all this.
Getting definitions right is a bummer, lol.
Looking back I didn't realise how bloody long my comment was! Sorry about that. I do go off one sometimes don't I!
I'm with you about the word feminism being too contested - I agree with that too - I do, in fact, sometimes find myself not actually wanting to call myself a feminist for that reason. Yeah - because of bad actors like Hillary jumping in and trying to claim the word as their own (like Marx did with 'socialism'). Put differently, I don't want to be associated with those sorts, thank you very much.
With regards to Christianity - I have studied it of course. It was a mandatory part of the curriculum at both my schools for example, although I did continue looking into it after school, especially when I went off and studied philosophy. I was unfortunate to be sent to a methodist school at primary age (I guess that's 'elementary' on your side of the pond) and then a more Catholic place for secondary (high) school. The methodist place was seriously abusive, which made the Catholic place almost refreshing. So I went from total austerity and anti-spirit (it sucked the entire joy out of everything) to fulsome bells and smells marvellous colour and music and richness and everything. So I do appreciate that aspect of religion. Ceremony and stuff. A coming together of the social group.
On the other paw, after some study I go further back to, say, the Egyptians, and can clearly see how the Jesus story is modelled on Isis (Mary), Osiris (Joseph/'the father') and Horus (the 'son' - Jesus). Egyptians also have Horus the younger (son) and the elder, which is the resurrected Osiris. My feminism in this aspect comes from Isis, and recognising that paganism has an inherent gender-balance to it - whereas Christianity - as it has been 'manifested' (or imposed into the world/society) has thrown out that balance in favour of a patriarchy. Please note I'm talking here about its historical manifestation more than its inherent original meaning. I would also go along with Celtic (Irish/British) Catholicism along the lines of Pelagianism (rejecting the doctrine of original sin - which is only used for social control) and Marcianism (rejecting the old testament). In fact I even see that version as the genuine original Christianity, or at least what it should be.
Anyway - I am mindful of not wanting to write another essay (I should actually be working right now so I'm being a little naughty here), so I'll leave it there for now...
Hmm... I really wasn't expecting a response like this. A feminist telling me that my critique of feminism is sweet?
Here's something that's more bitter:
To all the feminists outraged that I´m saying this, because a man could never understand the pain of being raped, let me ask you this: Have you ever had the shit kicked out of you by six or eight screws with billy clubs? Have you ever been beaten, stripped, put in a baby doll and a hockey helmet with your wrists and ankles cuffed, and kept on 24-hour suicide watch by sadistic guards? Guess what? It´s not as much fun as it sounds.
Forgive me. I guess I´m a tad bitter. After all those years of trying so hard to be a good feminist, and being treated like shit by these heartless bitches, I find out that all of these people who were judging me are no better than I am.
Have you ever been drugged into a near-comatose stupour for months on end because you refuse to adopt the beliefs of your captors, who dignify their abuse in the name of psychiatry, telling you that you surrendering your will to their ideology is for your own good? Have you been held down by a gang of sadistic male nurses on a psych ward and injecting you with chemicals that cause you to lose consciousness? What makes your penetrative assault worse than the many penetrative assaults I have suffered? Why do you think that your trauma trumps mine?
I´m sick and tired of the feminist attitude that ¨my pain is more important than yours¨. If you cut me, I bleed red, just like you do. Pain is pain, whether it is physical or emotional, whether it's a man or a woman experiencing it. It became fashionable for women to exaggerate their pain and blame men for it. That's what #MeToo was. It was a fad. A terrible, awful, no good fad.
You don´t know what a person has been through by looking at them.
One of the most infuriating things about feminists is the same in which they play the Rape card to shut down debate, as if only females are ever victims of sexual violence.
For another thing, as radical feminist Germaine Greer has pointed out, rape is not the worst thing that can happen to a woman, saying:
¨If a woman allows a man to have sex with her to avoid a beating, then arguably she fears the beating more. A woman who has been raped has no reason to feel shame… and a female-centred view of rape will not fashion it as something that can "ruin" a woman. ¨
"Historically, the crime of rape was committed not against the woman but against the man with an interest in her, her father or her husband", she wrote in 1995. "What had to be established beyond doubt was that she had not collaborated with the man who usurped another's right. If she had, the penalty, which might have been stoning or pressing to death, was paid by her."
"She may be outraged and humiliated,but she cannot be damaged in any essential way by the simple fact of the presence of an unwelcome penis in her vagina."
She argued, in two Guardian columns, that it was not the rapist's penis that had hurt her, but his fists and "vicious mind", and the loss of control, invasion of self, and "being made to speak the rapist's script".
"To insist", she wrote, "that outrage by penis is worse than outrage by any other means is to glorify and magnify that tag of flesh beyond reason."
I do understand where you are coming from, believe me, and like I said I'm not 'that kind of feminist'. People should be treated individually on their own merits (or lack of). Likewise it shouldn't be a case of 'my pain was worse than yours' - for a start we should show solidarity with each other, with all those who are oppressed in whatever way, and second it's the individual's personal perception of whatever happened to them that matters. It's not for anyone else to judge and say 'your pain is such and such' or 'your pain only merits level 5, or 6, or 7' or whatever.
That absolutely applies to Germaine Greer. It's not her call to make such generalising statements. That's an entirely insensitive thing to do. She can talk about herself and her own perception, sure, but she is absolutely not allowed to project that onto others.
Like I say, we should judge these things on an individual basis - it's not a competition. Unfortunately, a lot of (false, in my opinion) 'people who call themselves feminists' (but who aren't really) have discredited genuine, compassionate feminism by turning it into a competition. I can damn well understand how decent-minded and decent-hearted men would react negatively to that. I react negatively to it as well because it does a lot of damage to the cause - that's why I strongly suspect these people are like agents provocateurs - misrepresenting feminism and - clearly - sowing discord.
My own personal feminism is indeed about anarchism and liberty and resisting oppression. In that sense, it's not so much about 'men' or 'women', it's a matter of principle.
The feminism aspect I think comes in when I notice the historical association of oppression with the patriarchy - this is an undeniable historical fact, but it's not something to do with 'men' per se - it's to do with bad men (who are a minority) - the 'might means right' brigade. I would hope we are agreed on that one, at least in principle. That's also why I can distinguish between 'good men' and 'bad men'. Good men, for example, simply wouldn't even consider 'non-consensual' sex (let's call it rape for the purposes of the discussion) because he is empathic, sensitive, and compassionate towards the female and would want her to experience the consensual act with as much intimacy and pleasure as he would, because that, ultimately, is what love really is - it's a mutual meeting of heart, mind, and soul (and body too, obviously).
Again, what I'm perhaps talking about here is emotional and psychological maturity. Mature people do not harm others in any way. It doesn't even occur to them and revolt at the mere thought of it. And they do not tolerate harm being committed to others - of any kind.
Anyway - I don't pay any attention to the likes of Germaine Greer. I have in fact put her away in the box designated 'fake feminists'. They do more harm than good.
I am a spiritual feminist. I am nothing like her. As for rape, here's my personal thing (and yes, this is personal to me, not a generalisation) - it's the 'getting inside my safe space' - the 'internal violation' which is key here - it's as much a spiritual violation as a physical and a psychological violation. For me, this is far more difficult, if not impossible, to 'get over' than something which does not 'get inside' and remains a superficial assault. A superficial assault is easier to 'psychologically process' I mean. Not that it's not awful - of course it is - it's the psychological difference.
But like I said, that's my own personal feeling and shouldn't be taken as a judgement on others. It's how we perceive the thing that matters. Maybe Greer would be ok with being raped, I don't know - I've never met her and I don't want to either. But I strongly object to her trying to pontificate on how I, personally, am supposed to feel. That's the antithesis of feminism.
When I said it was 'sweet' I meant it as a compliment - it shows sensitivity. That's something I admire in another person. Take that as a second compliment.
I agree with much of what you've said here - no one wins at the Misery Olympics. But since the 2015 until 2024 there was prevailing attitude of:
"YOU HAVE TO LISTEN TO ME AND DO WHAT I SAY."
"NO, YOU DON'T GET A TURN TO SPEAK."
"SIT DOWN, SHUT UP, AND ACCEPT THAT YOU ARE GUILTY!"
In retrospect, it was utterly disgusting. Bill Burr is right. White women hijacked the woke movement - a movement that was about justice for people of colour. In Canada, they saw residential school survivors of sexual abuse getting a lot of attention and they said "Me Too". They managed to make it about them somehow. It became socially desirable to be a victim. And who doesn't have a story about some kind of negative sexual experience?
I asked "Is rape worse than a bad beating?" for a deliberate reason. Because it makes you think, doesn't it?
If you take the time to think about the question, one answer is unescapable: it depends on the rape, and it depends on the beating, doesn't it?
Would you rather spread your legs when you didn't want to or have your legs broken?
Would you rather be penetrated while you're unconscious or have your face disfigured?
The Rape card is used by feminists in the same way as Zionists use the Holocaust card. And like the Holocaust card, you've used it up. Many victims of rape will suffer for years to come because feminists cheapened the meaning of the word rape.
Some kind of major salvage operation is now necessary, which is why I made what I think is a helpful suggestion - differentiating between different types of sexual assault. Obviously, my suggestion is inadequate, but I hope that it points in the right direction.
Treating all rapes as if they were same not only is intellectually dishonest - it's also harmful to survivors.
Furthermore, MEN GET RAPED TOO. This is one of the most perverse things of all - that women (likely unknowingly) exploited the male taboo against admitting to being a survivor of sexual violence to monopolize discourse about rape. Women never show an interest in ending male-on-male prison rape, which tells me that they're not serious about creating a world without rape.
Furthermore, many of the victims of sexual abuse at residential school were male. I don't know why, but pedophiles seem to target boys just as much as girls. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong.)
I have a theory about why pedophile priests would target boys... I'm guessing that the priesthood provided a way for homosexual men from conservative families to avoid family pressure to get married. Such men may have entered the priesthood BECAUSE they were closeted gays. This explains why pedophile priests seem to prefer boys. Perhaps access to altar boys is a factor. I don't claim to know. What I do know if that I know quite a few men who sexually abused by priests as children, and no women (so far as I know).
Anyway, I really wish that women would quit pretending that females are the only victims of sexual abuse. It's not true.
Furthermore, there are female pedophiles, such as Ghislaine Maxwell. You never hear too much about female pedophiles, but they definitely exist. Epstein and Nygard had TONS of female accomplices. I don't know how many of them were pedophiles themselves, but is being an accomplice in a sex-trafficking ring worse than being a pedophile?
Also, for fuck's sake, feminists supported biological males being housed in women's prisons and shelters for battered women. That's insane. There's a reason no one respects feminists anymore. There's nothing to respect.
Also, where was the #MeToo crowd when the news about Epstein and Nygard came out? Why aren't feminists up in arms about Prince Andrew? Why do they go after people like me?
Because it wasn't about justice. It was about power, revenge, hatred of men, and schadenfreude. A lot of women showed their true colours, and the ugly side of the female psyche came out in full force.
One of the things that the #MeToo era showed is that women just aren't morally superior to men. As soon as you the power to strike at men, you abused it in ways that were shameful and frankly unintelligent.
It took 9 years for feminists to figure out that the moral imperative to "Believe all survivors" was stupid.
Why? Because women don't lie? Because women aren't shrewd enough to use guile to get what they want? Because they never blackmail or extort anyone? Because they're never vengeful? Because they're made of sugar and spice and everything nice?
Yeah fucking right. So much for that theory.
Does this mean we are in agreement here? It kind of looks that way, even if we have totally different ways of expressing it...
But what I think you have hit the nail on here is how words like 'feminism' or 'feminist' and decent resistance movements get hijacked and then corrupted - and this is precisely what I mean by agents provocateurs...
Not in my name.
By the way, let's face it: everyone lost the plot around the same time... roughly 2015 to 2024. Leftists, anarchists, conservatives (God help you if you think Trump is a conservative), feminists, social democrats, the LGBT, Jews, Christians... pretty much everyone. Presumably, it was a result of the advent of social media echo chambers, weaponized through some of kind of "Flood the Zone with Shit" strategy serving God-knows-who.
I know I'm going hard on feminists, but don't feel too bad - it's definitely not just feminists, or just women. It's damn near everyone. Our brains got scrambled.
There are now officially signs that feminists are coming to their senses and engaging in a genuine process of political reorientation. That's good.
I've started referring to the women of the truth movement as post-feminists, but fifth wave feminist would arguably be an accurate term. The real feminists feel a spiritual calling to stick up for their sisters. I get it. You could change the name, and that might be strategic, but feminism, like anarchism, is never going away, because it stems from the inborn desire of human beings for freedom.
If you're wondering what happened to the fourth wave, I would argue that that's woke feminism, the corrupted movement which began around the end of Occupy, in which intelligence agents launched a major campaign of ideological subversion designed to bomb the fault lines of race and gender in order to preemptively quell the resistance movement.
Arguably, the beginning of the fifth wave began with Mary Harrington, who seems to have been the first to recognize that feminism no longer represents mothers, and that no movement that doesn't represent mothers can claim to be a real women's movement.
Fifth wave feminists will presumably restore mothers to their rightful place in feminist discourse. Either that or feminism will go dormant and women will follow the lead of men, at least until WWIII or over.
Time will tell.
I read the free bit of the pronouns article. Having studied literary translation this included the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - which is that words & meanings are intrinsic to cultural identity, essentially (thus making true translation impossible, at least for complex concept-words). This became all the more apparent when I translated a bit of German philosophy (Hegel - I strongly advise against that, by the way - it did my head in).
Anyway, that might seem off-topic but something just clicked in my head and I finally fully realised what it was that has been seriously riling me up about these 'new feminists' vis a vis the anti-trans thing. It's this word I came across recently called 'bioessentialism'. It essentially says that biology determines everything about gender. I instinctively reacted really quite strongly against that, because it essentially offended my soul itself, and robs everyone of 'agency'. The reason is because if everything is reduced to biology then the soul has no place anymore - that's to say, the true self has no place. And that, to me, is intimately linked with the social control inherent in what I have called the patriarchy, but which is actually simply the 'totalitarians' or Judaeo-Christianity - JC being simply one of their many mechanisms of totalitarian social control - the antithesis of anarchy and human egalitarianism and freedom. So to me, bioessentialism is simply one more mechanism or method or 'deceitful idea' created by the cabal to herd everyone into easily controllable ways of thinking - it's an ideology. It is anti-spirit and anti-nature and anti-everything that makes sense to me as a deep, profound essence. So it's not even the 'trans' thing that concerns me at all, it's what it represents. And this is why I think these 'new feminists' are simply the latest in a long line of deceivers. Because essentially (that word again) one could say that 'trans' people reject 'bioessentialism', and define themselves not by their biology, but by their very essence as a person. That's what they see as their 'identity' - and that's an understanding I can share. I've never defined myself by this 'body' that's going to dust at some point - that's demeaning - what's inside is my identity. The 'anti-trans' brigade are effectively attacking the 'internal identity' which is, as it happens, the essence of every human being.
So, again, it was the principle of the thing that got me. I should've known because I'm always like that.
Anyway - I just wanted to get that out of my system, so to speak. I knew there was something bugging me. Now I see it clearly.
So with regards to where 'feminism' should be going - it should be embracing what I just said about the true essence of a human being's identity - something internal and something spiritual - and that, ultimately, is not really a 'women only' thing, is it? It's perfectly and beautifully equal for men and women. So there.
I can sort of see what you mean here, if you associate 'fourth wave' with 'woke'. Personally, however, everything beyond 'second' is an Establishment controlled psyop and that clearly includes what you have termed 'fifth wave', with people like Harrington. These are people who cannot see beyond biology, and are taking what is essentially a Victorian, patriarchal definition of 'woman' based entirely on their place in the reproductive cycle. In other words, they reduce women (and men, for that matter) to nothing but fucking baby machines. In doing this, they are utterly destroying not only all the progress we have made but also destroying the essence and the spirit. I'm sure now and then they deceive people with stuff that 'sounds sensible' but that's just a hook. These people, in my experience, are nasty, reactionary, bigoted right-wing types disguising themselves as 'feminists' and claiming to represent women and mothers and children and so on, when they do nothing of the sort. I've seen some of the vile shit Harrington writes in Unherd and I don't want any part of it. These people are dangerous, in my opinion, and they don't speak for me.
Damn, I was trying to tell myself not to engage in this kind of thing. I tell you what, I'll go and read that guest article (Rozali) and then see.
Please ignore this little rant.
Listen, there are most certainly feminists & post-feminists that I respect, notably Meghan Murphy, Mary Harrington, Alicen Grey, Margaret Anna Alice, and Rozali Telbis. Notably, ALL of these writers clearly now have mixed feelings about feminism.
Rozali explains: https://nevermoremedia.substack.com/p/why-are-women-ditching-feminism
Mary Harrington in particular does a brilliant job of explaining how feminism lost the plot here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddzPoQ-vNtM&t=3s
I am definitely not against the feminism that I grew up with - the prevailing feminism of the anti-globalization movement, which was heavily influenced by anarchism, Quakerism, and very interesting thinkers like Starhawk, Gimbutas, Riane Eisler, Merlin Stone, etc... You'd be surprised how familiar I am with more mystical side of feminism. I was very into it.
I'm willing to forgive and move on, but there does need to me a post-mortem on the #MeToo movement. Let's recall that it was started by the CBC soon after Trudeau was elected. It all started when they went after Jian Ghomeshi, a popular CBC radio host, for basically being a bad date. The political context at that time was the growing indigenous sovereignty movement, which has broad popular support from environmentalists, feminists, liberals, and most everyone who wasn't an industry worker.
Note that the CBC never went after Peter Nygard, whose crimes they helped cover up for decades. Nor did they go after Prince Andrew, serial chomo extraordinaire. They went after someone after a radio host who was totally unknown outside of Canada.
Also, did you know that Justin Trudeau might be a chomo too? There are sexual assault allegations against him going back decades... I haven't really looked into them, but there seems to be quite a bit of circumstantial evidence. Why didn't feminists cancel JT? Because he's so cute? Because the CBC never turned against him? Or because social media algorithms were directing their moral towards certain targets?
Anyway belief is that that the #MeToo movement was part of a counter-insurgency strategy which served to divide a movement that was fast becoming a threat to Canada's extractive industries. If so, it may have been too successful, as it seems to have basically destroyed Canadian society. Turns out that a society in which men are afraid to contradict women isn't a recipe for success. Whodathunkit?
By the way, do you realize that #MeToo has been Canada's most successful cultural export of the past decade? How depressing is that?
Ok - I read Rozali's guest article and it has clarified a few things for me I think. I was in fact pleasantly surprised not to find myself assaulted by a whole load of right-wing talking points.
One thing I should say here is that I have little to no experience of the kind of, how can I put it, intellectual milieu, which she is describing. I'm sure, however, that if I had been hanging out with self-styled 'feminists' for the last ten years, most of whom had attached themselves to the latest manufactured 'cause' then I too would've gotten just a tad pissed off.
What I would not have done, however, is flee straight into the arms of the waiting demon. I thought it was intriguing, after all, that one of them she mentioned, this 'Terri Strange' person said she'd gone over to 'Christianity'! Right, so you call yourself a feminist and now you are prostrating yourself beneath a male 'god' (actually demon pretending to be a god). That's surrender and submission, not feminism!
Likewise, this 'fifth' wave of feminism has been embracing a whole load of these reactionary talking points which, as I say, had been manufactured by the Vatican fifty years' ago and had only ever been there waiting for them, presumably with its great gaping maw wide open. Ironically, fifty years ago is exactly around the time neoliberalism got going. I don't think that's a coincidence. So what I think these sorts are is, in fact, the new wave of agents provocateurs - the waiting demons.
This is why I really loved the final two paragraphs of Rozali's essay - she nailed it with her observation that this isn't a rejection of 'feminism' it's actually a rejection of neoliberalism (she called it capitalism but I think she meant the same thing). The only other piece of the puzzle missing is that it is precisely the architects of neoliberalism who are also the architects of all the other rotten shit that is flying around these days - on both sides of these manufactured 'talking points' and hashtags and 'causes'. All of them are designed specifically to misdirect, keep people occupied, prevent them from seeing the true cause and guilty, demonic source of all of it. In other words, it shouldn't be just a rejection of neoliberalism, it should be like a conspiracy theory thought - go right down into the heart of it and reject that ultimate source - the 'grand conspiracy', the 'new world order' and that small cabal of monsters responsible for all of this. And those monsters, those demons have many minor demons and minions out there, all doing their own bidding.
So maybe this explains why I embrace the pagan and the magical so much. It's the true antidote.
So maybe I should count myself lucky that I have been able to avoid getting caught up in all that. Moving here to a lovely rural setting away from it all (around 15 years ago) with our own piece of nature with which to commune and work - this is the real feminine. I had never, before I came here, felt so close to the feminine essence, the planet herself, the Goddess. Here she is truly alive. None of this manufactured world order has any place here - it's like maybe she has cast a wonderful protective spell around this place to keep away all those demons.
So, now, I think I feel even more blessed...
That's an interesting little potted history of which, I must admit, I was not aware. This is partly because (you'll have to totally forgive me on this one) I know next to nothing about Canada. I mean the internal political stuff (other than obvious things like the truckers and a little about indigenous rights and so on), obviously I know where it is on a map. For example I'd never heard of Peter Nygard. As for JT, he's got tool written all over him. He reminds me a lot of Monsieur le President here in France (Macron), who's as slithy a tove as you'll ever find.
I was also under the impression that the #MeToo thing started in Hollywood with some actresses talking about how people like Weinstein (and presumably a whole load of other producers) forced them to perform sexual favours in exchange for parts and so on. (Oh now there's a great song - The Exploited - 'Sexual Favours' - that's one of my favourite basslines of all time that is). So yeah, regardless of where it came from it was, in timeworn fashion, hijacked and turned into something which benefited the Establishment. Of course what they really want us to do is, by rejecting it, immediately go to the other extreme, which is likewise controlled by them, and very often already there waiting for us having been set up in advance.
I'm not going to get into any of those 'feminist' names you mentioned, as I would very much like to avoid touchy subjects. So I'll say nothing. I will however check out that guest article you mentioned (Rozali). If it upsets me though then I may well just remain silent.
From an unpublished article about serial killer Robert Pickton:
"If you spend any amount of time examining the evidence, you will conclude that Pickton definitely had collaborators. According to evidence presented at trial, two women enticed multiple sex workers back to the farm so that Pickton could torture and kill them. Their names were Gina Houston and Dinah Taylor. Yet both got off scot-free."
Pickton's sister, Linda Wright, was also never charged, despite being the co-owner of the infamous pig farm.
In the cases of Nygard and Epstein, I could probably come up with dozens of names of accomplices, but why bother? No one cares. Everyone knows that men are the problem. After all, you can't rape someone if you don't have a dick.
idk about that but I've noticed that feminist outrage is weirdly selective!