This is one area where 'systemic oppression of women' might actually be a valid complaint.
All society's are gynocentric because that is how we ensure the survival of the species (women and children get priority access to resources and protection - and at men's expense). But after the industrial/ technological revolutions women's basic pr…
This is one area where 'systemic oppression of women' might actually be a valid complaint.
All society's are gynocentric because that is how we ensure the survival of the species (women and children get priority access to resources and protection - and at men's expense). But after the industrial/ technological revolutions women's basic protection and access to resources has been taken care of (supermarkets, shopping malls, paved streets, electricity, indoor plumbing, central heating etc). But the gynocentric hard wiring is still present in both men and women, and so we've just continued to add more things to the list of things to give to women...... beyond food and shelter we now supply lifestyles, career pathways, (unnecessary) education, identities and accommodations that define women as children (and perhaps even disabled children at that).
The more we cater to women's feelings, aspirations and fantasies ... the more we strip women of any sense of identity, value and purpose as women. We even tell women it is OK to hand over your baby to strangers every day so you can pursue a more fulfilling lifestyle. The idea that women have any social responsibility at all (any unique and vital role in society) has been dropped in order to free women of that burden - the burden of being a necessary part of society.
The equivalent for men would be telling men they can walk away from power stations and road maintenance and construction, and let the infrastructure and global supply chain fall apart, in order to pursue more satisfying careers and lifestyles. Not only would this be catastrophic for society (as catastrophic as daycare and state schooling has been) but it would also leave men with an identity crisis.
Women are oppressed in the west .... BY feminism. An ideology which tells women they have no role, no value, no unique contribution as women - and that self actualisation can only come from parodying masculinity, competing with men - while simultaneously playing the victim, acting like a spoilt child and making endless demands of men because men are the only people in society who are allowed to identify as being grown ups.
I don't think it's enough to refute feminism (although we can do that too), we have to point out that feminism IS the oppression of women. Nothing oppresses women more.
We’ve indeed made it undesirable to be a woman in the world differently from men and I think many of us have bought the lie that no difference exists between our roles abilities and modes of being. Gender ideology is responsible for a lot of this and comes out of this bad idea. It’s led women to be miserable working jobs they’d rather not in the name of elusive independence (from what? I don’t see work as freedom anymore). A woman once legit got mad at me for suggesting that women should be allowed to opt out of children but that we do still need to reproduce to keep the species going. She made the baffling argument that women aren’t required nor should they even be seen as the source of continuing the species even though we’re the only ones who can be pregnant. There’s a tension between individual choices and the effect on the collective. If enough women opt out, the economic consequences will be disastrous on all levels but no one seems to care. Part of this is that society has zero safety net for mothers and we have allowed the cost of childcare to balloon beyond reason, and feminism should be fighting for things like that instead of elusive individual liberation. Wanting to be like a man in a relationship was only a source of misery. And you are right that we both require men to coddle us while wanting to be like them; it can’t be both. The emotional terrorism I see everywhere is honestly baffling. We do expect to be treated like children and exercise empowerment from a place of disempowerment.
I forgot to add something, Corona, about your insightful comment on identity. Men are indeed in the midst of a profound identity crisis. And it does indeed emerge from inability--both personally and collectively--to make at least one contribution to society that is (a) distinctive, (b) necessary and (c) publicly valued. If women can do everything that men can do (either alone or with help from the state), and if men cannot do one important thing that women can do (giving birth), then there can be no reciprocity between the sexes and no adequate foundation for a social contract.
Without a healthy identity, as I have just outlined that, more and more men will resort to an unhealthy one (which might be better than no identity at all) by abandoning not only their families but also a society with no room for them as men. This is already happening. Boys and young men are dropping out of school, dropping out of society (through video games, drugs, crime or whatever) and dropping out of life itself. This is where we are now. Consequently, the future of society looks very bleak.
There is one possibility: fatherhood as a source of masculine identity. Women cannot be fathers--not unless the two are interchangeable, which is what many women and even some men now believe. Assistant motherhood is inadequate as the source of a healthy masculine identity.
At the risk of sounding contrary, I think women's identity crisis is more profound than men's. Men only have to look to the UN to understand their role (he for she). We constantly remind men of their obligation to serve society, provide resources and protection to women... and lay down their lives when necessary in dangerous jobs or on the battlefield. Men are acutely aware of their role every time they are taxed and the money is spent on endless programs to help and support women.
Men's role has always been adaptable - from hunting wild boar to building canals to programming software....... it's all the same basic role, to create and maintain the infrastructure and ensure women and children are provided for and protected from the harshness of nature.
Women's role used to be managing the household, and having and raising the children. The home/ garden/ allotment/ farm was itself a business enterprise and she was the boss. Her role was to manage the day to day running of this enterprise, with children by her side.
Feminism's clever trick was to reframe women's BOREDOM at home resulting from new labour saving technology (mod cons) as OPPRESSION. Had 20th century women stayed true to their identity and used their imagination they could have reinvented themselves as homemakers to the whole community, organising parks, home schooling, social projects (housing the homeless, feeding the poor etc). This would have reduced the role of government until it effectively disappeared, and this would have kept the relationship (partnership) between men and women healthy and productive as a BINARY relationship without state interference (they say three's a crowd).
I would argue that it's because of women's diminished role (essentially caricaturing men in the office 9-5) that so many women cannot assert their unique value as women, and so have to assert themselves through eternal victimhood instead.
The lie of feminism was that women's traditional (ie natural) role as mother and homemaker was (a) demeaning (b) oppression (c) unnecessary. The equivalent of women abandoning children to 'daycare' and pursuing 9-5 jobs would be men abandoning the power stations and construction sites.
Sure things would tick along for a while, but eventually the bridges would all rust and collapse, the roads would be full of potholes and the gas and oil stocks would run out. This is what we are now seeing with children's mental health in state schools and day care.
While not every woman needs to have children (just as not every man needs to maintain the infrastructure) those that do need to take care of them properly. That means stay at home motherhood and home schooling at the very least. But to point out women's unique and important (vital) role in raising children and passing on cultural/ moral values from one generation to the next is now regarded as backward, far right, misogyny.
So women cannot have an identity or a unique sense of value, because that is a violation of progressive ideology. Women's only permissible identity is to keep pushing for perpetual revolution, liberation and empowerment.. which will come in the form of artificial wombs (only 10-20 years away) which will be the new fridges and vacuum cleaners. This will further diminish women's role and induce even more depression and lack of self worth..... prompting more feminism... and on and on it goes.
I think men are not suffering an identity crisis, so much as a 'what's the point?' crisis. We demand just as much from men as we always have but without any gratitude or respect or support. Even making men a lousy sandwich for their efforts is regarded as too much gratitude. Men are expected to provide for women and children (as always) but without necessarily benefitting from having a loving wife and children as a reward and a motivation.
I think that a debate over comparative suffering would be a mistake, Corona. That's what both academic victimology and its fallout in ideologies that rely on identity politics boil down to: competing for the grand prize of who suffers most. Whether you intended to play that game or not, I refuse to do so. It's unnecessary and counterproductive from my perspective as someone who wants to replace inter-sexual debate (in which one side loses and other wins) with inter-sexual dialogue (in which both sides win by acknowledging a complementarity that is rooted in nature). In short, I'd say that BOTH sexes are succumbing to identity crises for similar but not identical reasons.
It's true that men can still do the heavy lifting, but that has for many centuries been characteristic of the lower classes, first as serfs and then as proletarians. Upper class men--aristocrats, say, and gentlemen--were precisely those who did NOT have to rely for identity on their brute strength or to earn money in any other way. On the contrary, men with the highest status were those who relied on their physical strength. Even in ancient times, though, middle-class men brought something else to the table: skills that could be learned. It was culture, not nature, that assigned and taught these skills to men instead of women and consequently conferred masculine identity. These skills allowed men to earn money as merchants, traders, artisans, scribes, priests, professionals and so on.
In our time, none of these jobs confers a desirable masculine identity. Society does ascribe masculinity to men who work by the sweat of their brow--men who work in the fields, let's say, or on factory loading docks--but not in a good way. Sports figures do gain masculine identity, sure, along with fame and fortune in some cases. But what they do is vestigial and ornamental, not necessary. And women have their own sports figures (or would if it weren't for transgender women).
That leaves us with two possibilities. One confers masculine identity on soldiers. It's true that society now allows women to enter combat, but forcing them by law to do so, as it forces men, is another matter entirely at least in the United States. So, yes, soldiers still gain masculine identity and even public respect. But combat is a lethal activity and not all men, by any means, believe that the risk of being maimed or killed is worthwhile--certainly not without the promise of privileges over women (and other non-combatants) that earlier generations of men could assume.
The other possible source is fatherhood. To make the case--and it's no longer self-evident--I argue that fatherhood is (a) distinctively both male and masculine, not merely assistant motherhood; (b) necessary for both their children and society as a whole; and (c) should be, but often isn't, publicly valued.
I won't add much to what you say about women. For the time being, at least, women can still choose to be mothers and the identity that motherhood entails. It might be very hard to do so in this lamentable cultural climate, but they can make that choice and most do no matter what feminists tell them. Moreover, no man, by definition, can be a mother. There is a rough parallel, therefore, between mothers and fathers in our time. Both have distinctive functions. Both are necessary. But neither is assured of being publicly valued--and therefore of being a reliable source of identity.
Not being a fortune teller, I can't predict the future. Maybe artificial wombs will make women obsolete as mothers. Maybe drones will make men obsolete as soldiers. Maybe Western civilization will collapse due to a combination of ideological stupidity and self-loathing neuroticism. But I'm not ready to give up.
The reason why feminism has been so successful at defining every aspect of gender and running all our institutions is that men generally do not want to play the victim game (it doesn't suit the male temperament) PLUS men love to be chivalrous and gynocentric. This means men tend to spoil women rotten and indulge their naturally higher neuroticism. Which not only destroys society but also makes women miserable.
I would argue that it is men's MORAL DUTY to point out millions of ways they suffer and carry society on their backs... not to play the victim, but to deflate feminism's victim (and threat) narrative by pointing out how women actually have it pretty good and men are women's greatest allies (not oppressors) and always have been.
Most women cannot afford to be mothers, so no they don't get to choose (by mother I mean raising children and not just giving birth). To be a mother requires a man to provide the support - the unique role of a father, like you say.
All of this needs repairing ..... and it begins with dismantling patriarchy theory.
Oh, I agree enthusiastically about the need to end the patriarchy theory (and all of the other conspiracy theories of history that have become fashionable due to wokism).
And I agree enthusiastically about the MORAL duty of men to speak truth to power (to borrow an expression that has become so popular among feminists and their woke allies). Too many men either forget or ignore the fact that misandry is ultimately a moral problem, not only a psychological, sociological or economic one.
Whether women can "afford" to be mothers or not is another matter. Most women have always had to worry about poverty, and most women have always had to work in the fields (with men). Nonetheless, most women continued to want and have children. During the Depression and World War II, many women postponed motherhood, it's true, but later on, in better times, were very eager to start families (which led to the "baby boom").
I agree that mothering is not only about giving birth to children but also rearing them, just as fathering is not only about providing material resources for children but also about guiding them from the safety of home into the challenging world beyond home.
I'm not sure that "all societies are gynocentric." To put that another way, I suspect that all societies show signs of both gynocentrism and androcentrism. It's true that every society depends on women to gestate and lactate. And I do think that the dramatic ability of women to give birth generally leads men to envy their mysterious power (often enacted ritually by men as "couvade"). But no society could do without the equally necessary contributions of men. And every society (except ours for the last half century) has rewarded men accordingly. I suggest that this leads women to envy men.
But I doubt that envy, either way, was of paramount importance until very recently in evolutionary terms. For most of human history, by far, both sexes faced death on a routine basis: women commonly died in childbirth, after all, and men were commonly killed by predators. Historically, in short, no society could ever be unambiguously either gynocentric or androcentric. Rather, every society has been at least somewhat ambivalent, its social contract showing signs of both and thus ensuring that both sexes invest heavily but also willingly in the community's future and . Until now.
This is one area where 'systemic oppression of women' might actually be a valid complaint.
All society's are gynocentric because that is how we ensure the survival of the species (women and children get priority access to resources and protection - and at men's expense). But after the industrial/ technological revolutions women's basic protection and access to resources has been taken care of (supermarkets, shopping malls, paved streets, electricity, indoor plumbing, central heating etc). But the gynocentric hard wiring is still present in both men and women, and so we've just continued to add more things to the list of things to give to women...... beyond food and shelter we now supply lifestyles, career pathways, (unnecessary) education, identities and accommodations that define women as children (and perhaps even disabled children at that).
The more we cater to women's feelings, aspirations and fantasies ... the more we strip women of any sense of identity, value and purpose as women. We even tell women it is OK to hand over your baby to strangers every day so you can pursue a more fulfilling lifestyle. The idea that women have any social responsibility at all (any unique and vital role in society) has been dropped in order to free women of that burden - the burden of being a necessary part of society.
The equivalent for men would be telling men they can walk away from power stations and road maintenance and construction, and let the infrastructure and global supply chain fall apart, in order to pursue more satisfying careers and lifestyles. Not only would this be catastrophic for society (as catastrophic as daycare and state schooling has been) but it would also leave men with an identity crisis.
Women are oppressed in the west .... BY feminism. An ideology which tells women they have no role, no value, no unique contribution as women - and that self actualisation can only come from parodying masculinity, competing with men - while simultaneously playing the victim, acting like a spoilt child and making endless demands of men because men are the only people in society who are allowed to identify as being grown ups.
I don't think it's enough to refute feminism (although we can do that too), we have to point out that feminism IS the oppression of women. Nothing oppresses women more.
We’ve indeed made it undesirable to be a woman in the world differently from men and I think many of us have bought the lie that no difference exists between our roles abilities and modes of being. Gender ideology is responsible for a lot of this and comes out of this bad idea. It’s led women to be miserable working jobs they’d rather not in the name of elusive independence (from what? I don’t see work as freedom anymore). A woman once legit got mad at me for suggesting that women should be allowed to opt out of children but that we do still need to reproduce to keep the species going. She made the baffling argument that women aren’t required nor should they even be seen as the source of continuing the species even though we’re the only ones who can be pregnant. There’s a tension between individual choices and the effect on the collective. If enough women opt out, the economic consequences will be disastrous on all levels but no one seems to care. Part of this is that society has zero safety net for mothers and we have allowed the cost of childcare to balloon beyond reason, and feminism should be fighting for things like that instead of elusive individual liberation. Wanting to be like a man in a relationship was only a source of misery. And you are right that we both require men to coddle us while wanting to be like them; it can’t be both. The emotional terrorism I see everywhere is honestly baffling. We do expect to be treated like children and exercise empowerment from a place of disempowerment.
I forgot to add something, Corona, about your insightful comment on identity. Men are indeed in the midst of a profound identity crisis. And it does indeed emerge from inability--both personally and collectively--to make at least one contribution to society that is (a) distinctive, (b) necessary and (c) publicly valued. If women can do everything that men can do (either alone or with help from the state), and if men cannot do one important thing that women can do (giving birth), then there can be no reciprocity between the sexes and no adequate foundation for a social contract.
Without a healthy identity, as I have just outlined that, more and more men will resort to an unhealthy one (which might be better than no identity at all) by abandoning not only their families but also a society with no room for them as men. This is already happening. Boys and young men are dropping out of school, dropping out of society (through video games, drugs, crime or whatever) and dropping out of life itself. This is where we are now. Consequently, the future of society looks very bleak.
There is one possibility: fatherhood as a source of masculine identity. Women cannot be fathers--not unless the two are interchangeable, which is what many women and even some men now believe. Assistant motherhood is inadequate as the source of a healthy masculine identity.
At the risk of sounding contrary, I think women's identity crisis is more profound than men's. Men only have to look to the UN to understand their role (he for she). We constantly remind men of their obligation to serve society, provide resources and protection to women... and lay down their lives when necessary in dangerous jobs or on the battlefield. Men are acutely aware of their role every time they are taxed and the money is spent on endless programs to help and support women.
Men's role has always been adaptable - from hunting wild boar to building canals to programming software....... it's all the same basic role, to create and maintain the infrastructure and ensure women and children are provided for and protected from the harshness of nature.
Women's role used to be managing the household, and having and raising the children. The home/ garden/ allotment/ farm was itself a business enterprise and she was the boss. Her role was to manage the day to day running of this enterprise, with children by her side.
Feminism's clever trick was to reframe women's BOREDOM at home resulting from new labour saving technology (mod cons) as OPPRESSION. Had 20th century women stayed true to their identity and used their imagination they could have reinvented themselves as homemakers to the whole community, organising parks, home schooling, social projects (housing the homeless, feeding the poor etc). This would have reduced the role of government until it effectively disappeared, and this would have kept the relationship (partnership) between men and women healthy and productive as a BINARY relationship without state interference (they say three's a crowd).
I would argue that it's because of women's diminished role (essentially caricaturing men in the office 9-5) that so many women cannot assert their unique value as women, and so have to assert themselves through eternal victimhood instead.
The lie of feminism was that women's traditional (ie natural) role as mother and homemaker was (a) demeaning (b) oppression (c) unnecessary. The equivalent of women abandoning children to 'daycare' and pursuing 9-5 jobs would be men abandoning the power stations and construction sites.
Sure things would tick along for a while, but eventually the bridges would all rust and collapse, the roads would be full of potholes and the gas and oil stocks would run out. This is what we are now seeing with children's mental health in state schools and day care.
While not every woman needs to have children (just as not every man needs to maintain the infrastructure) those that do need to take care of them properly. That means stay at home motherhood and home schooling at the very least. But to point out women's unique and important (vital) role in raising children and passing on cultural/ moral values from one generation to the next is now regarded as backward, far right, misogyny.
So women cannot have an identity or a unique sense of value, because that is a violation of progressive ideology. Women's only permissible identity is to keep pushing for perpetual revolution, liberation and empowerment.. which will come in the form of artificial wombs (only 10-20 years away) which will be the new fridges and vacuum cleaners. This will further diminish women's role and induce even more depression and lack of self worth..... prompting more feminism... and on and on it goes.
I think men are not suffering an identity crisis, so much as a 'what's the point?' crisis. We demand just as much from men as we always have but without any gratitude or respect or support. Even making men a lousy sandwich for their efforts is regarded as too much gratitude. Men are expected to provide for women and children (as always) but without necessarily benefitting from having a loving wife and children as a reward and a motivation.
I think that a debate over comparative suffering would be a mistake, Corona. That's what both academic victimology and its fallout in ideologies that rely on identity politics boil down to: competing for the grand prize of who suffers most. Whether you intended to play that game or not, I refuse to do so. It's unnecessary and counterproductive from my perspective as someone who wants to replace inter-sexual debate (in which one side loses and other wins) with inter-sexual dialogue (in which both sides win by acknowledging a complementarity that is rooted in nature). In short, I'd say that BOTH sexes are succumbing to identity crises for similar but not identical reasons.
It's true that men can still do the heavy lifting, but that has for many centuries been characteristic of the lower classes, first as serfs and then as proletarians. Upper class men--aristocrats, say, and gentlemen--were precisely those who did NOT have to rely for identity on their brute strength or to earn money in any other way. On the contrary, men with the highest status were those who relied on their physical strength. Even in ancient times, though, middle-class men brought something else to the table: skills that could be learned. It was culture, not nature, that assigned and taught these skills to men instead of women and consequently conferred masculine identity. These skills allowed men to earn money as merchants, traders, artisans, scribes, priests, professionals and so on.
In our time, none of these jobs confers a desirable masculine identity. Society does ascribe masculinity to men who work by the sweat of their brow--men who work in the fields, let's say, or on factory loading docks--but not in a good way. Sports figures do gain masculine identity, sure, along with fame and fortune in some cases. But what they do is vestigial and ornamental, not necessary. And women have their own sports figures (or would if it weren't for transgender women).
That leaves us with two possibilities. One confers masculine identity on soldiers. It's true that society now allows women to enter combat, but forcing them by law to do so, as it forces men, is another matter entirely at least in the United States. So, yes, soldiers still gain masculine identity and even public respect. But combat is a lethal activity and not all men, by any means, believe that the risk of being maimed or killed is worthwhile--certainly not without the promise of privileges over women (and other non-combatants) that earlier generations of men could assume.
The other possible source is fatherhood. To make the case--and it's no longer self-evident--I argue that fatherhood is (a) distinctively both male and masculine, not merely assistant motherhood; (b) necessary for both their children and society as a whole; and (c) should be, but often isn't, publicly valued.
I won't add much to what you say about women. For the time being, at least, women can still choose to be mothers and the identity that motherhood entails. It might be very hard to do so in this lamentable cultural climate, but they can make that choice and most do no matter what feminists tell them. Moreover, no man, by definition, can be a mother. There is a rough parallel, therefore, between mothers and fathers in our time. Both have distinctive functions. Both are necessary. But neither is assured of being publicly valued--and therefore of being a reliable source of identity.
Not being a fortune teller, I can't predict the future. Maybe artificial wombs will make women obsolete as mothers. Maybe drones will make men obsolete as soldiers. Maybe Western civilization will collapse due to a combination of ideological stupidity and self-loathing neuroticism. But I'm not ready to give up.
The reason why feminism has been so successful at defining every aspect of gender and running all our institutions is that men generally do not want to play the victim game (it doesn't suit the male temperament) PLUS men love to be chivalrous and gynocentric. This means men tend to spoil women rotten and indulge their naturally higher neuroticism. Which not only destroys society but also makes women miserable.
I would argue that it is men's MORAL DUTY to point out millions of ways they suffer and carry society on their backs... not to play the victim, but to deflate feminism's victim (and threat) narrative by pointing out how women actually have it pretty good and men are women's greatest allies (not oppressors) and always have been.
Most women cannot afford to be mothers, so no they don't get to choose (by mother I mean raising children and not just giving birth). To be a mother requires a man to provide the support - the unique role of a father, like you say.
All of this needs repairing ..... and it begins with dismantling patriarchy theory.
Oh, I agree enthusiastically about the need to end the patriarchy theory (and all of the other conspiracy theories of history that have become fashionable due to wokism).
And I agree enthusiastically about the MORAL duty of men to speak truth to power (to borrow an expression that has become so popular among feminists and their woke allies). Too many men either forget or ignore the fact that misandry is ultimately a moral problem, not only a psychological, sociological or economic one.
Whether women can "afford" to be mothers or not is another matter. Most women have always had to worry about poverty, and most women have always had to work in the fields (with men). Nonetheless, most women continued to want and have children. During the Depression and World War II, many women postponed motherhood, it's true, but later on, in better times, were very eager to start families (which led to the "baby boom").
I agree that mothering is not only about giving birth to children but also rearing them, just as fathering is not only about providing material resources for children but also about guiding them from the safety of home into the challenging world beyond home.
I'm not sure that "all societies are gynocentric." To put that another way, I suspect that all societies show signs of both gynocentrism and androcentrism. It's true that every society depends on women to gestate and lactate. And I do think that the dramatic ability of women to give birth generally leads men to envy their mysterious power (often enacted ritually by men as "couvade"). But no society could do without the equally necessary contributions of men. And every society (except ours for the last half century) has rewarded men accordingly. I suggest that this leads women to envy men.
But I doubt that envy, either way, was of paramount importance until very recently in evolutionary terms. For most of human history, by far, both sexes faced death on a routine basis: women commonly died in childbirth, after all, and men were commonly killed by predators. Historically, in short, no society could ever be unambiguously either gynocentric or androcentric. Rather, every society has been at least somewhat ambivalent, its social contract showing signs of both and thus ensuring that both sexes invest heavily but also willingly in the community's future and . Until now.