Since I received the shocking phone call telling me of Matthew’s unexpected death, I have been living a roller coaster of emotions. Matthew was not an easy person in my or any of our lives. He was seriously troubled by mental illness—specifically schizoaffective disorder. Because of the choices he made as a result, he alienated himself from us, his family—he became our lost sheep. Many of you did not know him at all. So, I want to talk about him — to honour him — as I remember him. Afterwards I will invite you who knew him to share what you remember. It does not have to be sugar coated. My memories are far from that.
Outline
1. I’ll begin with what I’ve learned about his death,
2. then talk about him as a man involved in political activism for I believe that was when he was at his most content, what he was proudest of and what he would want us to remember;
3. I’ll move on to him as a kid, for that is what most of us will remember best and for me it was the best;
4. I’ll go on to what was maybe the worst time for me, when he was a teen, troubled youth and young man, though even then there were many happy times for he had many friends;
5. I can’t end there. I want to talk about what I loved about him, what I admired, what I want to remember more and more as time heals the wounds now that he is gone and cannot suffer more.
I will begin with his lonely death. None of us knows if he had friends or what he was doing in, or with, his life when he died. I find that tremendously sad.
This is what we do know. On March 16th, the police, whom he derided, called me and told me—as gently and humanely as they could by phone—that Matthew had been found dead in the green space beside the Sir John A MacDonald Parkway, past the new War Museum, in a beautiful, peaceful location looking out over a widening in the Ottawa River. They had done some great detective work to track me down, call me and inform me. Since then, my brother, Jon, has been my rock, taking care of everything in Canada. As a result, my worst nightmares since I received that call have been put to rest.
Matt had organized a camp under the tallest pine tree in the area. It was 80 to 100 feet tall. He had plenty of space under it, and lots of shelter from the wind and weather because of the protective snowbanks around its outer perimeter. He had set up a tent, had a sleeping bag, computer and notebooks among other things. His location was invisible from the paths and road and it was a lovely spot with a view of the river. All his possessions, including his wallet, and phone were untouched when he was found a few feet from that tree. He had not died by violence, although he had severe injuries. It took a while to figure out what must have happened, given the nature of his injuries and our knowledge of Matt. As strange as it may seem to us, it is not unusual to live this way for people with severe mental illnesses who do not live with family. We would call them homeless. For Matt it was his choice of home, and he did have a choice, as I will get to later.
We believe he had climbed high in that pine tree under which he had been living and had fallen from it. Why he was up the tree we will never know, but there is much we will never know about his life. During the fall or when he landed, he suffered extreme injuries, including a blow to his head. I like to believe that he felt little or no pain because either he was already dead, or the blow killed him or knocked him unconscious when he hit the ground. I comfort myself knowing he did not commit suicide, nor did he freeze or starve to death from want, but was living where he chose and as he preferred when the fatal accident occurred.
2. Matt’s political activism
When I learned he was dead, I combed the internet looking for some trace of his recent activities. These few pictures show him doing what he loved. I have labelled him an anarchist. He called himself that. I found the following YouTube video from 2013. I am going to show you the video. It is only about 3:00 minutes but more than anything I can say, Matt shows who he was.
I admire Matt for a number of things he demonstrated here. He spoke well in public. He had a gift for oratory as the structure and flow of his sentences show and he knew to keep his listeners involved, hence the use of the call and response.
In the lovely message David Dunn wrote me, he said in part:
It matters little that none of us sings his specific song or feels the rhythm of his drumbeat. As liberals we share many of his dreams and I know that we are proud when one of us stands out from the crowd to do something about the state of the world.
So, thanks, Matt, for being who you were and for showing us that sometimes you need to throw stones 'at the man' as well as sing songs.
Matthew walked the walk. He protested with the Algonquin at Barrière Lake and the police broke his arm very badly. I know this, as his mother, having taken him to hospital after a number of his activist activities, to make his meals and do his laundry and much else during the time he healed. Matthew was not the only one who served in his causes.
The other thing that wrenched my heart, as I listened to that speech was how he ended it. He said:
We need to find alternatives to mental health hospitals that are for locking crazy people up in. That's... that's one of the tasks that we have, that's something that we need to do, and that's something we urgently need to figure out.
Those words made me cry. Matt knew about mental health hospitals. He had spent enough time in them to know that he wanted change. For him, being restricted any where, especially involuntarily, inside a hospital was a form of prison. Twice, I was the person who had to commit him against his will, and he hated me for it.
So, I was grateful to learn that he had checked himself into the hospital on February 28th and stayed there until March 11th. He was offered a placed to live when he was released and refused it. He picked up his meds on the way to setting up his camp. He seems to have died in relatively good mental health. The coroner said he was in good physical shape as well. He had a will to live. These pieces of information help abate my nightmares.
3. Matt at a kid
Matthew was a Christmas baby. He was born on the 23rd of December. One of my cherished memories is that first Christmas when he was 2 days old. The doctors on duty came around dressed up as Santa bringing us our babies. Matt arrived in a big, bright red Christmas stocking. We used it for years.
David and I both wanted Matthew and we loved him very much. He was a cutie, as the pictures I have here, reveal. He had big blue eyes, curly blond hair, a big sunny smile and fair skin— a perfect little storybook boy. He wasn’t particularly precocious. He didn’t walk until he was one, and I don’t remember when he started to talk but it wasn’t remarkably early nor did he begin speaking in sentences. From early on he was challenging. He was a fussy eater and he had a hard time sleeping, he had no interest in potty training and he had a will of his own. But he was quick to learn and lively, and had many friends on the street where we lived and at school. He loved his cousins, Rick and Carla’s kids, Bruce and Amber’s kids, and loved going up to the Lakehouse and the Big House in Arundel, and his trips to PEI and in Germany when we went to visit. These were wonderful family times. I am hoping to you have memories to share about these times, probably the happiest of his and our lives with him.
Once he started school he ran into trouble. He was probably somewhat dyslexic, but it was never diagnosed, and he since loved to read and talk and learned quickly, it didn’t interfere enough to hold him back, though David and I struggled through getting him to do homework, through his parent-teacher interviews and his sullen refusal to engage. He had lots of friends and he was happy to go to school even when he didn’t seem to like the actually learning.
4. Matt as a teen and youth
I do not want to dwell on the negative, but I must acknowledge that in his teenage years, as a youth and a young man his undiagnosed mental health issues created more and more problems in his life, in our lives, and within the family. He got in trouble with the police, he stole, he attempted suicide. He ran away to Mexico and then went to England and later to Europe and Spain. He did various bad and dangerous things along the way that I did not know about until later and probably many I still don’t know about. As a young man, when he came to Arundel and when lived with me he was slovenly and argumentative. He harmed people I love with vicious and dangerous lies. I grew to hate living with him because he would not agree to any what seemed to me even minimal standards for communal living. I felt bullied yet I did not want to throw him out onto the street. These realities cannot be swept under the table since we who knew him experienced them. I do not want any of you, or of us, to pretend otherwise. Yet I do not want to end here.
5. The admirable in Matt
There was much that was admirable in Matt. He was gifted. He wrote poetry and stories— sadly I have none of his writing and hope that the computer and notebooks in the police possession will contain some. He could be very funny, and I still laugh at some incidents and look forward to remembering more. He was an avid reader. From the time he was a baby until he was twelve or so, I read aloud to him almost every night. We both loved that time together. I may be the only person I know who has read The Lord of the Rings aloud, cover to cover, twice. He enjoyed cooking and we did a lot of cooking together when he was young. When he got older and he decided he was vegetarian, and then vegan, he cooked well and could stay healthy with his cooking, which was a good thing.
The two serious girlfriends of his whom I knew, were wonderful women. When they were a couple they invited me to visit, and I stayed with them. It was clear they were happy together and welcomed me. I understood why the girls broke up with him, but I also understood why they chose him, and why they stayed with him for as long as they could.
He was a quick learner. He spoke French, Catalan and Spanish as well as English. He loved playing games and cards, talking and arguing politics and all that sort of stuff.
So that was Matt as I knew him, a beautiful and challenging child, a difficult youth and a man who worked to change the world for the better. Yet he was man whose demons drove him away from all of us. As far as we know, although his path seemed hard and thorny, it was one that worked for him. He was living as he chose when he died suddenly by accident. It is better than I feared I would have to say about him at his death, although I hoped, until March 16th, that one day we could find our way back to each other.
So, rest in peace Matthew. I always loved you. I always will.
I remember Matt at some ActCity Ottawa events and discussions as well as at some other social justice gatherings. He came across as someone who saw society much as it is, the enemy. His mental struggles were apparent but understandable as help with behavioural issues in this society is a rarity. Mental problems and treatment is used by those in power as a means of control. I have gone into mental health departments at two Ottawa hospitals to help get people released. ...Kman (Ken) ..editor, Digileak
Yeah, well something really messed-up definitely happened to him along the way. I think he was victimized by police and/or prison guards in Spain, because I know that he had some severe trauma related to state violence. Take it from me - people don´t end up that way for no reason. I assume we´ll never know the full story, but I did talk at quite some length with his mom after he died. I ended up being the person helping her process her grief, which itself is sad, because I was never super-close with him, and when he died, I hadn´t seen him since before COVID.
She blamed everything on a therapist who helped him ¨uncover¨ repressed memories of ritual abuse at the hands of a Satanic cult. I looked into the therapist and she seems to have been some kind of insane woke feminist zealot, so I am inclined to believe his mom. But maybe Im just naive. When someone claims to be a ritual abuse survivor and then dies mysteriously after writing publicly about it, it does make you wonder. But thats still a bridge too far for me.
My mom´s explanation makes more sense to me. I´ve studied therapy, and I hope suggestible people can be, especially when they´re in a vulnerable position. If you look at the Satanic Panic, in which countless people ¨uncovered¨ memories of ritual abuse because it allowed them to blame their parents for their unhappiness as adults. It was a terrible, terrible time, and unfortunately I highly doubt that the world has learned its lesson about the power of suggestion...
The mind really does work that way. This is one time where I back the official explanation. It makes more sense to me than anything involving Satanic cults... Although... maybe I just don´t want to admit that people like Mark Passio might be on to something...
Theres stiff competition out there but the Canadian ones are a special breed.
Im normally a pretty loving person, but Im finding it impossible not to hate them right now. Maybe its part of the healing process, I dont know. Im really not a hateful person, because Im quite comfortable expressing anger, but I think that what I am experiencing now is
something qualitatively different. Its not actually white women or
feminists that I hate... its a kind of free-floating negative emotion
that looks for something to attach itself to. Its not good. Its not
cool. Certainly nothing to be celebrated or wallowed in. But emotions
need to be expressed, dont they? Because hate is an emotion, not a
political stance.
I was thinking of writing something about how hate is a normal emotion
and that repressing it is bad for your mental health... but maybe I
should just play drums instead... but I dont have a drumset.
For instance, there is a woke organization called ¨ANTI-HATE¨ and I dont ever seeing any problem with that name... but it now occurs to me that hate is a normal human emotion, not a political position.
Why not ¨ANTI-SADNESS¨, ¨ANTI-JEALOUSY¨, or ¨ANTI-FEAR¨?
“No one can tell me what exactly he did wrong, leading me to believe it was the typical female complaint that men were taking up too much space or making women uncomfortable.”
The problem really is with male assertiveness. In my experience, its always just a matter of time because I have a problem with feminists, because I am an assertive male who people tend to look to for social cues. It really is my personality that they have a problem with, more than my behaviour. It doesnt matter what I do... eventually theyll want to cut me down size, because they see the battle between the sexes as a zero-sum game, and I remind them of male power because Im an assertive male. For that reason, Ive reached the conclusion that it is impossible for me to work with most feminists.
Part of the problem is that feminists see gender relations in terms of power more than men do, because it wasnt that long ago that men ruled over women (and of course they still do in most of the world). But its actually gotten to the point where men are going to be forced to stand up for themselves if they intend on maintaining a shred of self-respect, and that means having the balls to contradict feminists.
Its hard at first, but it gets easier. Honestly, feminists are a lot better at barking than at biting. A lot of the power they wield over men vanishes the minute you stop caring what they think.
Ive become more sympathetic to the gender politics of Ivan Illich and Darren Allen, because I think that women and men are different and have their own aptitudes, wishes, inclinations, etc.
Make no mistake - it is capitalism that has produced this ahistorical phenomenon in which women compete against me. I dont want to over-simplify, but modern gender relations are the result of capitalism. Thats undeniable.
Women are never going to actually outcompete men in the areas typically considered the domain of men, such as warfare, finance, or engineering. These are left-brained activities. Men have an advantage. This really shouldnt come as news to anyone.
Women actually have considerable advantages in areas requiring heightened perceptiveness of subtle dynamics, such as politics, art, religion, spirituality, psychology, and many other areas.
As far as I can tell from my experiences as an amateur anthropologist, a separation of male and female domains is the natural way for human beings to organize themselves.
From Matt´s mom:
My dear Family and Friends
Introduction
Since I received the shocking phone call telling me of Matthew’s unexpected death, I have been living a roller coaster of emotions. Matthew was not an easy person in my or any of our lives. He was seriously troubled by mental illness—specifically schizoaffective disorder. Because of the choices he made as a result, he alienated himself from us, his family—he became our lost sheep. Many of you did not know him at all. So, I want to talk about him — to honour him — as I remember him. Afterwards I will invite you who knew him to share what you remember. It does not have to be sugar coated. My memories are far from that.
Outline
1. I’ll begin with what I’ve learned about his death,
2. then talk about him as a man involved in political activism for I believe that was when he was at his most content, what he was proudest of and what he would want us to remember;
3. I’ll move on to him as a kid, for that is what most of us will remember best and for me it was the best;
4. I’ll go on to what was maybe the worst time for me, when he was a teen, troubled youth and young man, though even then there were many happy times for he had many friends;
5. I can’t end there. I want to talk about what I loved about him, what I admired, what I want to remember more and more as time heals the wounds now that he is gone and cannot suffer more.
1. His lonely death
I will begin with his lonely death. None of us knows if he had friends or what he was doing in, or with, his life when he died. I find that tremendously sad.
This is what we do know. On March 16th, the police, whom he derided, called me and told me—as gently and humanely as they could by phone—that Matthew had been found dead in the green space beside the Sir John A MacDonald Parkway, past the new War Museum, in a beautiful, peaceful location looking out over a widening in the Ottawa River. They had done some great detective work to track me down, call me and inform me. Since then, my brother, Jon, has been my rock, taking care of everything in Canada. As a result, my worst nightmares since I received that call have been put to rest.
Matt had organized a camp under the tallest pine tree in the area. It was 80 to 100 feet tall. He had plenty of space under it, and lots of shelter from the wind and weather because of the protective snowbanks around its outer perimeter. He had set up a tent, had a sleeping bag, computer and notebooks among other things. His location was invisible from the paths and road and it was a lovely spot with a view of the river. All his possessions, including his wallet, and phone were untouched when he was found a few feet from that tree. He had not died by violence, although he had severe injuries. It took a while to figure out what must have happened, given the nature of his injuries and our knowledge of Matt. As strange as it may seem to us, it is not unusual to live this way for people with severe mental illnesses who do not live with family. We would call them homeless. For Matt it was his choice of home, and he did have a choice, as I will get to later.
We believe he had climbed high in that pine tree under which he had been living and had fallen from it. Why he was up the tree we will never know, but there is much we will never know about his life. During the fall or when he landed, he suffered extreme injuries, including a blow to his head. I like to believe that he felt little or no pain because either he was already dead, or the blow killed him or knocked him unconscious when he hit the ground. I comfort myself knowing he did not commit suicide, nor did he freeze or starve to death from want, but was living where he chose and as he preferred when the fatal accident occurred.
2. Matt’s political activism
When I learned he was dead, I combed the internet looking for some trace of his recent activities. These few pictures show him doing what he loved. I have labelled him an anarchist. He called himself that. I found the following YouTube video from 2013. I am going to show you the video. It is only about 3:00 minutes but more than anything I can say, Matt shows who he was.
I admire Matt for a number of things he demonstrated here. He spoke well in public. He had a gift for oratory as the structure and flow of his sentences show and he knew to keep his listeners involved, hence the use of the call and response.
In the lovely message David Dunn wrote me, he said in part:
It matters little that none of us sings his specific song or feels the rhythm of his drumbeat. As liberals we share many of his dreams and I know that we are proud when one of us stands out from the crowd to do something about the state of the world.
So, thanks, Matt, for being who you were and for showing us that sometimes you need to throw stones 'at the man' as well as sing songs.
Matthew walked the walk. He protested with the Algonquin at Barrière Lake and the police broke his arm very badly. I know this, as his mother, having taken him to hospital after a number of his activist activities, to make his meals and do his laundry and much else during the time he healed. Matthew was not the only one who served in his causes.
The other thing that wrenched my heart, as I listened to that speech was how he ended it. He said:
We need to find alternatives to mental health hospitals that are for locking crazy people up in. That's... that's one of the tasks that we have, that's something that we need to do, and that's something we urgently need to figure out.
Those words made me cry. Matt knew about mental health hospitals. He had spent enough time in them to know that he wanted change. For him, being restricted any where, especially involuntarily, inside a hospital was a form of prison. Twice, I was the person who had to commit him against his will, and he hated me for it.
So, I was grateful to learn that he had checked himself into the hospital on February 28th and stayed there until March 11th. He was offered a placed to live when he was released and refused it. He picked up his meds on the way to setting up his camp. He seems to have died in relatively good mental health. The coroner said he was in good physical shape as well. He had a will to live. These pieces of information help abate my nightmares.
3. Matt at a kid
Matthew was a Christmas baby. He was born on the 23rd of December. One of my cherished memories is that first Christmas when he was 2 days old. The doctors on duty came around dressed up as Santa bringing us our babies. Matt arrived in a big, bright red Christmas stocking. We used it for years.
David and I both wanted Matthew and we loved him very much. He was a cutie, as the pictures I have here, reveal. He had big blue eyes, curly blond hair, a big sunny smile and fair skin— a perfect little storybook boy. He wasn’t particularly precocious. He didn’t walk until he was one, and I don’t remember when he started to talk but it wasn’t remarkably early nor did he begin speaking in sentences. From early on he was challenging. He was a fussy eater and he had a hard time sleeping, he had no interest in potty training and he had a will of his own. But he was quick to learn and lively, and had many friends on the street where we lived and at school. He loved his cousins, Rick and Carla’s kids, Bruce and Amber’s kids, and loved going up to the Lakehouse and the Big House in Arundel, and his trips to PEI and in Germany when we went to visit. These were wonderful family times. I am hoping to you have memories to share about these times, probably the happiest of his and our lives with him.
Once he started school he ran into trouble. He was probably somewhat dyslexic, but it was never diagnosed, and he since loved to read and talk and learned quickly, it didn’t interfere enough to hold him back, though David and I struggled through getting him to do homework, through his parent-teacher interviews and his sullen refusal to engage. He had lots of friends and he was happy to go to school even when he didn’t seem to like the actually learning.
4. Matt as a teen and youth
I do not want to dwell on the negative, but I must acknowledge that in his teenage years, as a youth and a young man his undiagnosed mental health issues created more and more problems in his life, in our lives, and within the family. He got in trouble with the police, he stole, he attempted suicide. He ran away to Mexico and then went to England and later to Europe and Spain. He did various bad and dangerous things along the way that I did not know about until later and probably many I still don’t know about. As a young man, when he came to Arundel and when lived with me he was slovenly and argumentative. He harmed people I love with vicious and dangerous lies. I grew to hate living with him because he would not agree to any what seemed to me even minimal standards for communal living. I felt bullied yet I did not want to throw him out onto the street. These realities cannot be swept under the table since we who knew him experienced them. I do not want any of you, or of us, to pretend otherwise. Yet I do not want to end here.
5. The admirable in Matt
There was much that was admirable in Matt. He was gifted. He wrote poetry and stories— sadly I have none of his writing and hope that the computer and notebooks in the police possession will contain some. He could be very funny, and I still laugh at some incidents and look forward to remembering more. He was an avid reader. From the time he was a baby until he was twelve or so, I read aloud to him almost every night. We both loved that time together. I may be the only person I know who has read The Lord of the Rings aloud, cover to cover, twice. He enjoyed cooking and we did a lot of cooking together when he was young. When he got older and he decided he was vegetarian, and then vegan, he cooked well and could stay healthy with his cooking, which was a good thing.
The two serious girlfriends of his whom I knew, were wonderful women. When they were a couple they invited me to visit, and I stayed with them. It was clear they were happy together and welcomed me. I understood why the girls broke up with him, but I also understood why they chose him, and why they stayed with him for as long as they could.
He was a quick learner. He spoke French, Catalan and Spanish as well as English. He loved playing games and cards, talking and arguing politics and all that sort of stuff.
So that was Matt as I knew him, a beautiful and challenging child, a difficult youth and a man who worked to change the world for the better. Yet he was man whose demons drove him away from all of us. As far as we know, although his path seemed hard and thorny, it was one that worked for him. He was living as he chose when he died suddenly by accident. It is better than I feared I would have to say about him at his death, although I hoped, until March 16th, that one day we could find our way back to each other.
So, rest in peace Matthew. I always loved you. I always will.
I remember Matt at some ActCity Ottawa events and discussions as well as at some other social justice gatherings. He came across as someone who saw society much as it is, the enemy. His mental struggles were apparent but understandable as help with behavioural issues in this society is a rarity. Mental problems and treatment is used by those in power as a means of control. I have gone into mental health departments at two Ottawa hospitals to help get people released. ...Kman (Ken) ..editor, Digileak
Yeah, well something really messed-up definitely happened to him along the way. I think he was victimized by police and/or prison guards in Spain, because I know that he had some severe trauma related to state violence. Take it from me - people don´t end up that way for no reason. I assume we´ll never know the full story, but I did talk at quite some length with his mom after he died. I ended up being the person helping her process her grief, which itself is sad, because I was never super-close with him, and when he died, I hadn´t seen him since before COVID.
She blamed everything on a therapist who helped him ¨uncover¨ repressed memories of ritual abuse at the hands of a Satanic cult. I looked into the therapist and she seems to have been some kind of insane woke feminist zealot, so I am inclined to believe his mom. But maybe Im just naive. When someone claims to be a ritual abuse survivor and then dies mysteriously after writing publicly about it, it does make you wonder. But thats still a bridge too far for me.
My mom´s explanation makes more sense to me. I´ve studied therapy, and I hope suggestible people can be, especially when they´re in a vulnerable position. If you look at the Satanic Panic, in which countless people ¨uncovered¨ memories of ritual abuse because it allowed them to blame their parents for their unhappiness as adults. It was a terrible, terrible time, and unfortunately I highly doubt that the world has learned its lesson about the power of suggestion...
The mind really does work that way. This is one time where I back the official explanation. It makes more sense to me than anything involving Satanic cults... Although... maybe I just don´t want to admit that people like Mark Passio might be on to something...
The Canadian woke zealots are the worst. Honestly. Have also had a terrible experience with them.
Theres stiff competition out there but the Canadian ones are a special breed.
Im normally a pretty loving person, but Im finding it impossible not to hate them right now. Maybe its part of the healing process, I dont know. Im really not a hateful person, because Im quite comfortable expressing anger, but I think that what I am experiencing now is
something qualitatively different. Its not actually white women or
feminists that I hate... its a kind of free-floating negative emotion
that looks for something to attach itself to. Its not good. Its not
cool. Certainly nothing to be celebrated or wallowed in. But emotions
need to be expressed, dont they? Because hate is an emotion, not a
political stance.
I was thinking of writing something about how hate is a normal emotion
and that repressing it is bad for your mental health... but maybe I
should just play drums instead... but I dont have a drumset.
For instance, there is a woke organization called ¨ANTI-HATE¨ and I dont ever seeing any problem with that name... but it now occurs to me that hate is a normal human emotion, not a political position.
Why not ¨ANTI-SADNESS¨, ¨ANTI-JEALOUSY¨, or ¨ANTI-FEAR¨?
“No one can tell me what exactly he did wrong, leading me to believe it was the typical female complaint that men were taking up too much space or making women uncomfortable.”
The problem really is with male assertiveness. In my experience, its always just a matter of time because I have a problem with feminists, because I am an assertive male who people tend to look to for social cues. It really is my personality that they have a problem with, more than my behaviour. It doesnt matter what I do... eventually theyll want to cut me down size, because they see the battle between the sexes as a zero-sum game, and I remind them of male power because Im an assertive male. For that reason, Ive reached the conclusion that it is impossible for me to work with most feminists.
Part of the problem is that feminists see gender relations in terms of power more than men do, because it wasnt that long ago that men ruled over women (and of course they still do in most of the world). But its actually gotten to the point where men are going to be forced to stand up for themselves if they intend on maintaining a shred of self-respect, and that means having the balls to contradict feminists.
Its hard at first, but it gets easier. Honestly, feminists are a lot better at barking than at biting. A lot of the power they wield over men vanishes the minute you stop caring what they think.
Ive become more sympathetic to the gender politics of Ivan Illich and Darren Allen, because I think that women and men are different and have their own aptitudes, wishes, inclinations, etc.
Make no mistake - it is capitalism that has produced this ahistorical phenomenon in which women compete against me. I dont want to over-simplify, but modern gender relations are the result of capitalism. Thats undeniable.
Women are never going to actually outcompete men in the areas typically considered the domain of men, such as warfare, finance, or engineering. These are left-brained activities. Men have an advantage. This really shouldnt come as news to anyone.
Women actually have considerable advantages in areas requiring heightened perceptiveness of subtle dynamics, such as politics, art, religion, spirituality, psychology, and many other areas.
As far as I can tell from my experiences as an amateur anthropologist, a separation of male and female domains is the natural way for human beings to organize themselves.