Food for thought, definitely. I, like Janice, tend to be a little more rageful when it comes to the way most of us just stand back and let the sorry human beings that make up the feminist consortium get whatever they want.
I wonder if what you call the matrisensus isn't a somewhat misdirected attempt at explaining a phenomenon better understood as the *true* patriarchy, which is that men do the things we do, as patriarchs, for the benefit of women and children and at our own expense. It's men that make feminism even possible. Feminists' success in activism will only change when men stop empowering it. Indeed, when we stop falling all over ourselves to empower it like goofy school boys trying to score points with girls.
Agreed that men empower feminism, and that the male competence hierarchy (I reserve the word Patriarchy for the shadow of that system, when the motive is corrupted from service to personal power) is deeply committed to the benefit of women and children,
To be fair it isn't "men" so much as the men in positions of power and influence. Those "goofy schoolboys" went to a surprisingly small number of schools (many residential) and like the parallel small number of schools for precisely the similar girls, almost all single sex. And from these mainly to one of two Universities with a sprinkling of others. Certainly here it is these gilded beings who preside over our family courts, criminal courts, civil service, Universities, public and private corporations and provide the majority of our national politicians. Perhaps those years shut away in school fueled the idea females are mystical and saintly. But it is a very few men, and women, who actually have eagerly and unctuously enacted the feminist wishes. In a sense men for whom there is no real hardship in looking after women and children first because they have plenty. Unlike of course the majority of men who, without nannies, residential schools, second homes and a flat in "town" , actually make sacrifices of their interests, effort even comfort for their families. And who are far more than slightly inconvenienced by divorce etc. In this country it is blatantly obvious that "white van man", I suppose "blue collar" man, who aspires to a good job, a modest home a wife and children an annual holiday is derided in much the same way as was the case in the Victorian era, the era when women's saintly pedestal was really raised up. Not all men, but some men.
When you get right down to it, most of what we're brought up to believe is etiquette and chivalry is little more than pandering to women's desires for coddling and protection. It's built into our genes (and jeans) to suck up to women and also to compete with other men to be even more coddling and protective, which explains how women can use men against each other so easily. Little boys grow up dreaming of fighting other men for the honor and safety of women, and getting a leg over in the bargain.
Food for thought, definitely. I, like Janice, tend to be a little more rageful when it comes to the way most of us just stand back and let the sorry human beings that make up the feminist consortium get whatever they want.
I wonder if what you call the matrisensus isn't a somewhat misdirected attempt at explaining a phenomenon better understood as the *true* patriarchy, which is that men do the things we do, as patriarchs, for the benefit of women and children and at our own expense. It's men that make feminism even possible. Feminists' success in activism will only change when men stop empowering it. Indeed, when we stop falling all over ourselves to empower it like goofy school boys trying to score points with girls.
Agreed that men empower feminism, and that the male competence hierarchy (I reserve the word Patriarchy for the shadow of that system, when the motive is corrupted from service to personal power) is deeply committed to the benefit of women and children,
To be fair it isn't "men" so much as the men in positions of power and influence. Those "goofy schoolboys" went to a surprisingly small number of schools (many residential) and like the parallel small number of schools for precisely the similar girls, almost all single sex. And from these mainly to one of two Universities with a sprinkling of others. Certainly here it is these gilded beings who preside over our family courts, criminal courts, civil service, Universities, public and private corporations and provide the majority of our national politicians. Perhaps those years shut away in school fueled the idea females are mystical and saintly. But it is a very few men, and women, who actually have eagerly and unctuously enacted the feminist wishes. In a sense men for whom there is no real hardship in looking after women and children first because they have plenty. Unlike of course the majority of men who, without nannies, residential schools, second homes and a flat in "town" , actually make sacrifices of their interests, effort even comfort for their families. And who are far more than slightly inconvenienced by divorce etc. In this country it is blatantly obvious that "white van man", I suppose "blue collar" man, who aspires to a good job, a modest home a wife and children an annual holiday is derided in much the same way as was the case in the Victorian era, the era when women's saintly pedestal was really raised up. Not all men, but some men.
No, it's damned near all men.
When you get right down to it, most of what we're brought up to believe is etiquette and chivalry is little more than pandering to women's desires for coddling and protection. It's built into our genes (and jeans) to suck up to women and also to compete with other men to be even more coddling and protective, which explains how women can use men against each other so easily. Little boys grow up dreaming of fighting other men for the honor and safety of women, and getting a leg over in the bargain.