Trying to fathom the various hatreds of the Republicans these days is always a tricky exercise.
After all, these are people who despise saintly figures like Jimmy Carter. How, exactly, does one go about hating someone like Carter? It's like hating Mother Teresa.
The wingnuts also despise decorated war heroes like John Kerry, John Murtha and Max Cleland. I've never understood how soldiers who fought and bled for their country could be the target of such venom from anyone, either on the Right or the Left.
But it's always been a complete mystery to me why the Republicans would hate someone like Hillary Clinton.
Surely it's clear to anyone outside of the Rush-listening, knuckle-dragging base of the GOP that Hillary is hardly an extreme liberal. In fact, she's quite moderate.
Despite what the likes of Fox News would have us believe, Hillary is a business-friendly politician who is hardly the champion of worker's rights. In short, she's not much of a progressive.
In fact, Hillary's 2002 vote in favor of using military force against Iraq and her pandering on the flag-burning issue have been enough to distance her from a number of progressives.
Liberal columnist Molly Ivins, for example, famously declared last January that she would not support Hillary for president.
The mainstream media hasn't helped things over the years when reporting on exactly what it is that Hillary stands for.
Indeed, the MSM continues to insist on calling Hillary a "divisive" figure.
Presumably, in giving her this label, the MSM is referring to the rabid GOP nutcases who are consumed with hatred for Hillary. What's interesting about all this is that the MSM hasn't stuck a similar label on George W. Bush---even though no president has ever done more to divide the country (and alienate the world from America).
Frankly, the mainstream media has done a lousy job of reporting on Hillary Clinton over the years. And nowhere is this more evident that the lies and misinformation that it spread about the 1993 Clinton health care plan.
The MSM went out of its way to try to scare the American public about Clinton's health care proposal. As a result of the media's misinformation, most Americans were under the impression that the plan called for some kind of scary, Communist-style government takeover of the entire U.S. health case system. This is a misconception that exists to this day.
In fact, the Task Force on National Health Care Reform (which Hillary headed) called for no such thing. It didn't even call for a Canadian-style single-payer plan. In fact, it left the nation's health care system firmly in the hands of the private sector.
The MSM's inability to convey even this basic, fundamental fact about Clinton's health care plan, of course, played right into the GOP's hands as they fought fiercely against the plan. I suspect we'll see a great deal more of this MSM misinformation about Hillary should she pursue the presidency.
Which brings me back to my original question: why, exactly does Hillary inspire such foaming-at-the-mouth hatred from the GOP these days? It sure as hell isn't because Hillary is some sort of FDR-style progressive.
The creator of the progressive site, BeggarsCanBeChoosers.com, Marc McDonald is an award-winning journalist who worked for 15 years for several Texas newspapers, including the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, before he quit his day job and set up shop in cyberspace in 1995. McDonald's articles have appeared in a number of popular progressive Web sites, including OpEdNews.com, BuzzFlash.com, Crooks and Liars, Salon.com, Progressive Daily Beacon, The Neil Rogers Show and The Raw Story. McDonald's Web articles have also been featured and reviewed by various national and international media, including CNN Headline News, the BBC, the Washington Post, USA Today and many more.
edav 38,
Talk about Mr. McDonald needing sunglasses! What a rabid right wing silly accusation to make against Hillary Clinton! Where is your proof that Hilary Clinton belonged to the Communist Party? Did she belong to the registered American Communist Party or did she belong to the subversive international Communist Party? Do you know the difference? You just hung an accusation out there for the world to read with not one thing to back it up. Sorry, you cannot get away with such evil.
Where is your proof? Put your money where you mouth is with proof. No jargon, just proof, no diatribes, just proof. I bet you believe in and promote such wonderful works of art as the "Clinton Chronicles" and the "Protocols of Zion." Wow! Those two works of art are two great bastions of right wing truth are they not? I bet you believe Max Cleland, John Kerry and Al Gore are un-American and un-Patriotic. That ole' dog sucks eggs and won't hunt no more.
Proof, please, Proof, Proof. Not words, proof.
by
pratliff94 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 940 comments)
on Saturday, December 30, 2006 at 10:55:43 PM
If we are going to judge Hillary only on her stand on Iraq, we are going to have to apply the same standard to such folks as Barack Obama and every one else who took the same stand. The Republicans hate Hillary because she is one of the most Progressive Liberals in American politics. Whether the rabid left wing likes it or not, she is the only one in Congress who has presented a viable national health insurance policy for every American. I am afraid that Molly Ivins conveniently forgets that effort at health care, her voting record in the Senate, and why Bill Clinton was defeated for a second term in Congress.
My only fear if Hillary Clinton wins the Dem. Primary is that the US will not elect a liberal woman to the highest office. They would elect an arch right wing conservative woman much more likely than a liberal progressive woman. Why? The Republicans are more vicious than Democrats and they are not as terribly divided on social and moral issues. Throw in a Green Party candidate for President which would take away eight to ten percent of the Democrat vote and Jeb Bush will win in a walk, no matter whom the Democrats run.
by
pratliff94 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 940 comments)
on Saturday, December 30, 2006 at 11:17:29 PM
"It's not that the GOP necessarily despise women in general---it's just that the right-wingers want women to stay in their place in society."
No, they hate women all right. But they aren't the only ones. Germaine Greer is right: "Women have very little idea of how much men hate them ... men do not themselves know the depth of their hatred."
by
Mar (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 155 comments)
on Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 9:24:52 AM
Males don't hate females any more than slaveholders hated African-Americans. Depending upon people, using them, exploiting them, and keeping them in what you believe to be their proper place isn't hate. Sure there are some males who hate females, but even they'll probably tell you that some of their best friends are female.
When people have been taught that another group is inferior to them, it turns their stomachs to think that inferior group might be equal or even superior to them. In hierarchical societies (patriarchy is a hierarchy based on sex, but hierarchies can be based on other things, like skin color, religion, ethnicity, etc.) everyone is supposed to grovel to those above them, and stomp on those below them.
Some males hate females. Some just are incapable of understanding that females are human beings like themselves. They see only the differences, not the similarites. And then there are some males, like Andrew Vachss for example, who hate those who abuse power or exploit others.
On Robben Island, the South African prison island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years, there were no females. But there were rival gangs, and when they had gang fights and one gang won, they would kill all the members of the losing gang except for those who were willing to become "wifeys." Wifeys had to take traditionally female names, wear traditionally female clothes, and serve as household and sex slaves.
In this case, since there were no females around, males simply did to other males what patriarchy had taught them to do to females. It didn't mean that they hated males, just that they were entrapped in the violent cycle of patriarchy and could not free themselves from it. What another opednews writer described as a "cooperative, partnership model of society" is unimaginable to them. They think only in terms of a competitive model.
Well, no, I guess that's wrong. They don't actually think. They scheme. They plot. They strategize. They act. But they were never encouraged to think and it would probably be extremely painful to them if they tried.
by
Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 28 quicklinks, 72 diaries, 903 comments)
on Sunday, January 7, 2007 at 3:40:33 AM
I'm not about to lighten up. Let me get this straight. The boys have treated women in vile, hateful ways for thousands of years but that's not hate? Blamed women for every human ill and natural disaster throughout history to this day, but that's not hatred? Excuse me?
You let me know which country, which religion, which race treats women like human beings and I'll be there. There wouldn't be country, religion or race if men didn't corral women like brood mares to maintain their divisions, their almighty "purity" of race, creed or country. Hatred is fear-based. The plantation owners were terrified of their black slaves. You're going to try to tell me The South doesn't hate blacks to this day? Please.
What the hell do you think the last forty years of backlash has been all about? Do you think the powers that be are really concerned that blacks or gays acted up in the sixties? Do the math. Women are over fifty percent of the human population. Not Blacks. Not gays. Not any one religion. Not any one country. They know all their patriarchal institutions are built upon the subjugation of women. As I overhead one honest asshole say about the liberation of women, "Well, there goes ALL the niggers then." Can't have that can we?
Greer is right. Men themselves, even of the brightest sort like yourself, have no idea how much women are hated. Face it. Better yet, school yourself. I suggest you read Jack Holland's "Misogyny, The World's Oldest Prejudice." It will open your eyes to the true history of "civilization." The treatment of women amounts to abuse of human rights on an unthinkable scale. Maybe you'll pay attention to the hatred of the very concept of woman if you hear it from a male.
Make this world safe for women and you won't have to worry about xenophobia, racism, the ecology, war, religious hatreds any more.
Oh look! There's an 800 pound gorilla in the living room. Who knew? Where'd that come from? How long's that been there? Weepin' jaysus on the cross.
by
Mar (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 155 comments)
on Monday, January 8, 2007 at 7:53:11 AM
Mar, please read what I wrote again, slowly, Mar.....
.....and think about it.
The problem isn't hating females, as the true example I gave about Robben Island shows clearly. The problem is hating. If there are no females to hate, those who hate will hate each other because they have been taught to hate.
The reason for my deliberately provocative subject line was in hopes that those who believe in patriarchy/hierarchy/hate would mistake it for the usual paternalistic crap and actually read it.
I never thought that you would.
Do you really think that the Robben Island gangs subjugated other males because they hate females? They hate, Mar. Hate is all they know. If they don't have females around to hate, they'll hate each other. They have been taught from birth to hate in the name of God and feel self-righteous about it.
Patriarchy is a hierarchy. It is based on elitism and the subjugation of others. It is a pecking order. Everybody wants to be on top and they don't care who they step on. If you read the posts by "ofbyandfor" you'll see some extremely lucid explanations of the partnership/cooperative model of society, which is where we have to go in order to abolish neoliberalism/capitalism/fascism/patriarchy/hate.
This is not actually a progressive board. Somebody just posted another inappropriate, sexist article, and the editors approved it as usual. Opednews doesn't care if it offends females because it is a patriarchal, regressive board. It has one male owner and it is incapable of grasping the concept of shared power or egalitarianism. The larger it grows and the more money it makes, the less open it will be to progressives and feminists.
Read my post again, please, Mar. It isn't what you assumed it was. I am not denying 5,000 years of subjugation and hate, I am saying that it is not hate against females, or people of color, or gays, or any other group, no matter how small or large, that must be eliminated, but hatred itself.
There are very few people who can understand this. The Bolivarians in Venezuela, where the Vice-President and many of the top government officials are female, and the Zapatistas in Mexico, many of whose commandantes are female, understand, but they are mostly indigenous peoples who come from ancient cultures where females were always respected. That's why they oppose and are fighting the common enemy of neoliberalism, capitalism, fascism, corporatism, patriarchy, and hierarchy. They have always known that another way is possible, whereas most of us have not.
--Mark
by
Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 28 quicklinks, 72 diaries, 903 comments)
on Tuesday, January 9, 2007 at 5:58:07 AM
Read this. Take your time. The problem is misogyny. There is no word for the delusional hatred of men. The Robyn Island example only illustrates "Abuse among fellow female prisoners is rare - rape in women's prisons is almost always by male guards, which is taken much more seriously. It's become so ingrained in society's psyche in the United States that people routinely joke about it, and hardly anyone seems to give any indication that what's being done to these prisoners is somehow wrong. With the increasing movement to "get tough on crime," attempts to improve the conditions for prisoners seems ill-fated.
"I was too embarrassed to tell the [corrections officers] what had happened [that I had been raped] . . . . The government acts as if a 'man' is supposed to come right out and boldly say "I've been raped." You know that if it is degrading for a woman, how much more for a man." (http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1195495)
Wah, wah. Since women are just supposed to expect it I guess. It's not "those" and "they" who hate. It is men.
Of course I would read your article. How odd you think I wouldn't. And, how typical of some man trying to school me on what patriarchy is and getting it wrong. Hierarchy is merely its standard operating procedure, Marc. I think I'll stick with Merriam's definition:
1 : social organization marked by the supremacy of the father in the clan or family, the legal dependence of wives and children, and the reckoning of descent and inheritance in the male line; broadly : control by men of a disproportionately large share of power
2 : a society or institution organized according to the principles or practices of patriarchy
Men hate because they are taught to hate women by this social organization. Fortunately, it is merely an organization, which had a beginning, therefore, can end, but it won't die easy. We are living through the end of this system now, which is what makes these such dangerous times. Like any hateful abuser, patriarchy would rather destroy Mother Earth before losing its "...disproportionately large share of power." To end hatred itself, how's about we start with the biggie, the oldie, the daddy of them all, the hatred of women; the hatred preceding all others.
This isn't a progressive board? Who knew? Flash: That's why I post here. Aggravating so-called progressive and liberal boys is a little hobby of mine. On January 19, 1969, the revolution boys rallied in Washington to protest Nixon's inauguration. Two women spoke at that rally, against the advice of radical feminists who wanted to silently tear up voter registration cards on the platform to symbolize that suffrage had failed women. The first woman, Marilyn Webb, said "We as women are oppressed. We, as supposedly the most privileged in this society, are mutilated as human beings so that we will learn to function within a capitalist system." All hell broke lose. She went on, denouncing a system that views women as objects and property, which the boys cheered, shouting "Take her off the stage and fuck her!" "Take her down a dark alley!" "Take if off!"
Shulamith Firestone took the microphone and attached back, pointing out it was not just capitalism that was the problem, but men, and not just capitalist men, but even the "revolutionary" men in that audience. "Let's start talking about where you live, baby and wonder whether...capitalism and all those other isms don't just begin at home...Because we women often have to wonder if you mean what you say about revolution or whether you just want more power for yourselves."
Things haven't changed much. Well, actually they have. It's gotten worse. Women are dropping like flies out there, brother. 80% of the casualties of modern warfare are women and children. Rape is epidemic. The global slave trade is the third most lucrative right after arms and drugs. Porn is just like apple pie. Etcetera.
As in all other Latin American countries, except Cuba, abortion is illegal in Venezuela, and Chavez isn't about to stir up a hornet's nest by doing anything about it. The decriminalization of abortion for any reason is literally not on the agenda of even Chile's President Bachelet.
As for the Zapatistas, it's most likely the women fighting in that revolution would end up the same as they always have should their boys win: guillotined like Olympe de Gouges of The French Revolution for the audacity to argue that women, too, should benefit. Her revolutionary brothers were clear that her punishment was for forgetting her proper place (bottom) and proper role (slave) as a woman.
by
Mar (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 155 comments)
on Friday, January 12, 2007 at 9:32:58 AM
Many females raised in patriarchal societies are just as patriarchal as males.
Remember that it was females who bound their daughters' feet in China, and females who genitally mutilate their daughters in Africa.
Phyllis Schlafly is female, but do you think that having Schlafly as President would stop the war or help the environment?
A matriarchy would be no more nurturing and compassionate than a patriarchy. No hierarchy can be nurturing or compassionate because all hierarchies are status-based and modeled on competition rather than cooperation.
Yes, patriarchy is responsible for the subjugation of females, and for things like rape and prostitution, but when female parents choose to educate their sons and not their daughters, or to sell their daughters when they need more money to educate their sons, it is not because females are more nurturing and compassionate.
The hate is mutual, Mar, even if the more powerful get to act out their hate on the oppressed. When we are born we are divided into two teams, the pink team and the blue team, and we base our primary identity on patriarchal gender roles instead of on our common humanity.
Substituting a matriarchal hierarchy for a patriarchal hierarchy won't solve the problem, Mar. It will still keep people divided into two competitive teams and unable to see each other's common humanity. In order for our species to cease being ecologically nonviable and to become an ecologically viable species, we first have to BE a species, not two species the way patriarchy teaches us to be. Matriarchy would make the same mistake.
You are half male, Mar. You got half of your genetic inheritance from your male parent. Every male on earth is half female because they got half their genetic inheritance from their female parents. We are not two species, we are one. Divisiveness is the enemy, and you don't solve the problem by changing who's on top.
Everything you say is correct except for one thing. The problem is not misogyny. The problem is hierarchy. Do you really think that our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are killing everyone they can see because they hate females? Do you think they are torturing the innocents in Guantanamo because they hate females? So why don't they let the males go?
Yes, patriarchy is responsible for the endless cycle of overpopulation and die-offs that we are locked into, and it accomplished this by subjugating females. But there are males who sincerely want peace and females who sincerely want war. Not all males hate and not all males rape. And not all females are nurturing or compassionate.
Do you truly believe that if you were male you would rape and hate females? If so, then I can only hope that you do not believe in reincarnation, because you might have to come back as a male for many lifetimes before you learned that sex does not determine character.
by
Mark E. Smith (21 articles, 28 quicklinks, 72 diaries, 903 comments)
on Sunday, January 14, 2007 at 1:43:41 AM
The real reason Republicans hate Hilary Clinton is because she is an effective Senator with a legislative record of bipartisan achievement and could be the first person since McKinley to be able to parlay such a record into electoral and political success.
Clinton won the Senate in 00 with the fourth highest plurarity of any Senator in her class. This victory was based on faith. New Yorkers- a group not known for generosity or gullibility- trusted her, liked Bill and generally stay loyal to the Democratic Party.
Six years later, running on a record that has included major legislation co-sponsored by men like Lott, McCain and McConnell Senator Clinton was re-elected by a higher margin.
Clinton carried 59 of New York State's 62 counties and got 25% of the GOP vote.
No buyers' remorse here.
She was a leader among the Democrats in calling for and receiving Rumsfeld's resignation.
Unlike many Democratic Senators, she did not make her calls exclusively from the safe confines of the Capitol.
She took the fight on the road and presented her case to the American people.
Her support was key in many instances of putting competitive Democrats into races against entrenched GOP incumbents.
Her support was key in many of the electoral victories that resulted in the great Democratic upset of 06.
The GOP hate Senator Clinton because she is an effective and powerful advocate for the lower middle class and middle class voters the GOP has abandoned in the post-Reagan era.
Robert Chapman
Lansing, NY
by
Robert Chapman (28 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 557 comments)
on Monday, January 1, 2007 at 4:29:19 PM
Even women who recognize what patriarchy is and what it does must survive in this man's world and they each make their deal with that. Of course, the Schaflys and foot binders and genital mutilators are going to be rewarded by patriarchy. Mothers necessarily betray their daughters or they will remain unchosen, unwived, shunned, a burden to their families. If they give their all to help their sons succeed, they may have some small hope of survival after her usefulness to men is over. Even today in this country, a mother's son has a far better chance of economic success than her daughter will because her daughter will not be paid the same wage for the same work and will walk a razor's edge in the workplace or have her career derailed by the glass ceiling or the mommy track, etc.
Women are taught early and often that their identity as woman has absolutely no ideological imperative; it is subsumed to other categories (race-creed-country rears it's ugly head as always) that are more important to their sense of themselves. They are mexican first, women second, jewish first, women second, british first, women second. We are taught from the cradle to hate and mistrust ourselves and other women precisely because we are female.
Everything I'm saying is true, especially that patriarchy is the worship of the father through misogynist subjugation of the mother on both an individual and societal level. Again, hierarchy is merely the organizational structure of patriarchy, not patriarchy itself. Hierarchy is the means and ways patriarchy uses to maintain the dominance/submission, psycho-sexual, pecking order with women at the bottom of every tier, the slave of slaves. Even the lowliest Neanderthal of a man is deemed superior to the most accomplished woman in this hierarchy.
And, who said anything about it being a swell idea to replace patriarchy with matriarchy? Not me. Matriarchy is not the opposite of patriarchy. Democracy is the opposite of patriarchy. Your condescending explanation of matriarchy reveals your own fears, common with even the most intelligent of men, that women would abuse men just as badly as they have abused women for sooooo long if they somehow had the power to do so. An impossibility if you had the fortitude to admit that it's not even physically possible because the vast majority of women have neither the ability nor the inclination to commit the violence, murder and rape necessary to maintain patriarchal dominance. Rather than acknowledge that men achieve and maintain dominance through violence and manipulation, not merit, they bleat, "Women do it tooooo."
You don't think men dominate because of some actual, innate superiority do you? Even the kindest of men benefit from the sexual terrorizing of women, whether or not they acknowledge it. If I were a man I wouldn't have to rape and hate women to benefit from the fact that so many other men do just that while the "good guys" get to play hero in the male protection racket.
We know of women throughout history who have come to positions of patriarchal power precisely because they upheld that system. We know little to nothing of women who resisted because they have been vilified or erased from the history of man. Mary Magdelene is the classic example.
No, not all females are nurturing or compassionate, but the vast majority of humans who are, are female. Is this due to nature or nature? I'm not sure yet. Women may or may not be more innately human but they are at least allowed emotional expression, while men are turned into (nurture versus nature) emotional cripples through having the humanity beat out of them in a thousand ways from the time they are assigned the blue blanket and they begin their lessons in why they should hate everything female. There is no competition between the pink team and the blue team as there is no level playing field. Under misogynistic patriarchy the blue team wins every time while the pink team has their very humanity questioned and is taught to hate itself every step of the way.
Because women are not required to deny their emotions they are able to perceive the humanity in men. Men, on the other hand, have great difficulty perceiving the humanity of woman. It is because of this emotionally healthy ability of women to accept the humanity of all people, even the enemies of their men, that they have to be controlled to keep them from fraternizing, sullying the purity of men's races, religions and nationalities.
How do you think races, colors, creeds have been preserved and maintained down through the centuries in the first place? Think it might have just an itsy bit to do with banishing or killing women who stray from their own "kind?" Of course, men are not punished for straying because their seed is all; the woman is just the incubator with no other contribution. This misogynistic fantasy goes back to Aristotle. Think I'm making this stuff up or that it's merely Medieval? Think again and look up for yourself what some muslim and catholic clerics teach even today about this very thing. This is precisely what led to the rape camps and ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia. Those catholic and muslim men were taught exactly that by their religious leaders. This is why women who are raped and/or impregnated by the enemy are abandoned or killed by their husbands and/or families if they are so thoughtless and dishonorable as to have lived through their ordeal.
Do I think our troops are killing Iraqis and Afghanis because of misogyny? You bet I do:
"Misogyny is rarely noticed as a historical catalyst, yet it has played a sometimes profound role in helping to determine the course human affairs would take. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the long and bloody sequence of events that led to the September 11 attacks on the United States began forty years earlier in a college in Afghanistan when an angry male student hurled acid in the face of a young woman student because she was not wearing the veil. His name was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and he would go on to help foment a rebellion against Afghanistan's reforming government that would first draw the Soviets and eventually the Americans into a brutal war against Moslem fundamentalists in which the US is engaged to this day."*
The primary aim of the Taliban is the suppression of women. This war is absolutely ALL about the disagreement among the sons of Abraham over the status of woman. They can all agree that women are to be maintained as the sex class. It's just that Western men want women to be public property while Middle Eastern men want women to be private property. And, I'm supposed to break out the pompoms for...who?
Do you think it is just coincidence that the more autonomy women have gained since the beginning of the twentieth century, the more brutal and lethal warfare has become? That 80% of the casualties of modern warfare are women and their children is merely unfortunate collateral damage? Get real. Misogyny is the point of war. Always has been. You know why our apple-cheeked boys hate that their turn playing warrior is in the Middle East? It's not because it's so hot and sandy. It's because they can't indulge in warrior entitlement there, getting loaded and sexually exploiting the enemy's women in brothels as the warriors of Viet Nam or Korea or Japan or the Phillipines or...on and on...could. And did, with eager enthusiasm.
Humanity is ecologically unviable because men have been taught from the time of the Golden Age of Greece that they are not of this base world of nature, which includes women, who are to blame for separating them from their father gods and heavenly gardens by tempting men with animalistic sex; born in filth, condemned to earthly suffering and toil, doomed to death and decay. They have been taught they can only be redeemed by denial of Earthly desires (read "woman"). Their hatred of this planet is one and the same with their hatred of women and it is feared, plundered and raped in the same obscene manner. The desire to not be of this planet is reflected in their denial of its sacredness and validated by church, state and even science. NASA's space program can be seen as science's version of this fear and hatred of Earth in the costly attempt to get off this planet.
As for being half male, Mark, duh! I have done my best to achieve balance between my male and female aspects despite the fact that I have been roundly punished for rejecting both femininity and masculinity for the mere patriarchal constructs they are, having nothing to do with being male or female. Note that the concept of men getting in touch with their female side has become little more than a goofy joke.
In order to defeat an enemy you must know the enemy. Liberal and progressive men can't face that they are their own worst enemy since they are unable to face their own unconscious misogyny (see Pogo). Maintaining willful ignorance of misogyny works out swell for patriarchy and assures its continuation, of course. Perfect, except for one little snag: Nothing is likely to continue since the logical conclusion of patriarchal dominance may happen in our lifetimes through mutually assured destruction. Men have stumbled upon the divine at the molecular level and, in typical willful ignorance, have used this knowledge to destroy rather than create. They have nothing left to conquer but themselves and they are insanely hot on it since they would rather die and take everybody else with them rather than face the evil ignorance (redundant) in their own souls.
Never having been the target of misogyny, you pontificate to someone who is about what is and is not hateful prejudice in its most basic manifestation. That is stunning in its arrogance. I'll wager you have never lectured a black man on racism. How about a jew on anti-semitism? And, why not? Because you stand to get your lights punched out by them. But, you're pretty safe no matter how offensive you may be if you're insulting attitude is directed at women, aren't ya?
In short, Mark, acknowledge that the only thing...that's the ONLY thing...that will save the species is the end of patriarchal misogyny (redundant), or you are merely one more tool of the patriarchy.
And, by the way, yes, I do believe in reincarnation. It just might be that because I have already lived many lives as a misogynist male (and, how could I not have, human history being what it is) my karma requires me to confront this ancient and ignored prejudice that thrives today with impunity and the virulence of a cancer, with every fiber of my being because, in patriarchy, sex absolutely does, tragically, determine character.
*Jack Holland, "Misogyny, The World's Oldest Prejudice"
by
Mar (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 155 comments)
on Monday, January 22, 2007 at 2:21:15 PM
