More on Genderism, in response to a comment

[the above image is from here]

A visitor identified as xjm stopped by with a question regarding an older post (Genderism: a definition) that relates, in some ways, to a recent post on what makes someone a white man. What follows is, I hope, a satisfactory answer to xjm.

xjm wrote:

I stumbled on this post looking for a word to mean "discrimination on the basis of gender identity, sex, sexuality, and/or sexual orientation" that was somewhat broader and more meaningful than "sexism" or "male chauvinism" or "homophobia" (all three of which, to my mind, are linked). "Genderism" was the best I could come up with...

It's an interesting post. I like a lot of your ideas; however, as a linguistics student, I have to pick at one thing. You say: "In some societies, for example, there are as many as eleven genders." What's your source for this? Are you sure you're not confusing linguistic gender with social gender?

In Ojibwe, for example, there are two linguistic genders: animate (people, animals, some plants) and inanimate (most plants, lifeless objects, etc.) I also remember briefly studying another language (I think from the southwest or perhaps California) that had some number of genders based on the shape of an object: whether it was round, long, flat, etc.

Clearly, these linguistic categories have little to do with human gender categories; the reason the word "gender" is used is that the categories function analogously to the 2-3 gender-based language genders that European languages typically have (he, she, it).

Now, this is a separate issue from social gender categories; I have read, as you probably have, that many non-Western cultures have traditional roles for people whose gender identities we today would put somewhere under the "LBGTQ" header.

I'll post my reply here, rather than at the old blogpost's page:

Hi xjm,

Thanks for your comment and questions. First, unless you are Ojibwe, I'd caution you about drawing conclusions based on what whites, disproportionately but not entirely men, have reported about the Ojibwe languages, identified by some Westerners as having multiple dialects and various regionalised writing systems. And I ought to similarly caution myself, given my statement to which you are replying!

There are many ways to approach questions like those you ask. One is to say that all understandings of gender, whether or not such a terms is not meant as a synonym only for "category", are linguistic, in societies that rely on what Westerners call "linguistics". But I hear you asking something more particular and let me know if I'm off the mark completely. I hear you asking: "Are all categorisations of things by gender referring to "gender" as in "woman and man", or in ways that use "gender" to be more or less synonymous with "genus" or "type" (and not, strictly speaking, "sex")?

As you note, there are many ways to classify and categorise animate "beings" and inanimate "things", including people in terms of their supposed gender. (That white male supremacist societies tend towards perceiving "beings" as the opposite of "non-beings", the animate as completely distinct from the inanimate is a problem best dealt with another time!)

From Wikipedia:
Some languages have gender-like noun classifications unrelated to gender identity.

Particularly common are languages with animate and inanimate categories. The term "grammatical genders" is also used by extension in this case, although many authors prefer "noun classes" when none of the inflections in a language relate to sexuality. Note however that the word "gender" derives from Latin genus (also the root of genre) originally meant "kind", so it does not necessarily have a sexual meaning. For further information, see Animacy. [I put that one portion in bold]

Wiki continues:
Some Slavic languages, including Russian and Czech, make grammatical distinctions between animate and inanimate nouns (in Czech only in the masculine gender; in Russian only in masculine singular, but in the plural in all genders). Another example is Polish, which can be said to distinguish five genders: personal masculine (referring to male humans), animate non-personal masculine, inanimate masculine, feminine, and neuter.

* * *

So, xjm, when you say "linguistic gender" I assume you mean one of the "noun classes" or "genus categories"--which can refer to human sexual categories, or not, such as by distinguishing what are perceived to be "Animate" things from "Inanimate" things. But we have to keep in mind that linguistics and social human reality are not terribly distinct or separate, are they?

To work toward answering your question, I'm saying that there have been or are societies that are not well-known among dominant male supremacist Western "educated people", in part because we Westerners, particularly our men, have destroyed them, or are currently trying to do so. Those societies that use verbal language may have spoken categories for human gender that are not "visible" to us Westerners. We might compare this to the way that an English-speaking child who is only taught there is yellow, red, and blue will not readily discern yellow-orange, rose, magenta, or indigo as "separate" or "distinct" colors from yellow, red, and blue. This is where and how linguistics creates perception; and perception is a foundation for what is understood to be "real", depending on one's understanding of "the real" of course. (Western-educated non-Lacanian traditionalists, as well as Lacanians will have a field day with that statement.)

Another preliminary question is: Are we going to accept that each non-Western culture's perspectives and worldviews and their accompanying realities are equally "valid" as those in the West? (And what a problematic term valid is!)

I am saying that if a society, an ethnic group, a people, such as the commonly (mis)used example of the Inuit, allegedly* have several terms for snow and the dominant U.S. has one or two, does that mean that there are only one or two forms of snow? If, among my society, ethnic group, and people, a white woman carpenter has many terms for "nails", that probably means that when the non-carpenter that I am walks into a hardware store, all I see are a "bunch of different kinds of nails", whereas she sees those same objects as having particular names, uses, and designs--and calling them all "nails" isn't especially useful or accurate to her.

We are struck, immediately, with the assumptions that white folks and men place on their "subjects" who are more often than not more objectified and "studied as other" than subjectified and empathically. White men, especially tend not to see "otherness" in ourselves, however "other" we are. At best, it seems, we might come to the conclusion that "others" are "fundamentally like me", keeping "me" the standard of what constitutes otherness. Whiteness and manhood, for example, are in the business--literally and otherwise--of making everything not white and not a man into a less valued, less esteemed being or thing (in the eyes, minds, and oppressive behavior of white men).

So, what constitutes a term and a category in the white male supremacist West, may not constitute a separate "term" in another place. If, then, an Indigenous (or non-white, non-Indigenous) society has eleven terms for gender, I doubt a white Westerner who did not grow up among that society will even be able to figure out how to think properly, meaning here, in accordance with the ways of seeing and being in another society.

*From this site:

[B]ecause the example is so widely known and because it has been written about by both linguists and anthropologists, it seems worthwhile to add a perspective informed by Eskimo [sic] linguistics.

Martin's article does a fine job of tracking the snow example through its many incarnations, showing how it has been misrepresented and misused. She points out that Eskimo is not a single language, as it seems to be presented by those who have discussed the snow example. She further stresses that the polysynthetic morphology of Eskimo languages renders a discussion of "words" as such almost pointless, since the number of words in these languages is practically infinite due to highly productive patterns of suffixation. It is therefore necessary to establish what would be considered a word in the languages in question, and apparently it must also be decided what is to be considered a "snow term," since Martin and some others see this as part of the issue.

It's this sort of sloppy anthropological, linguistic, and sociological work that has resulted in really inane Western (usually Euro-centric or Anglo-centric) masculinist conclusions, such as "if my people hunt, and those that hunt are the men, and our men dominate our women, then if I examine another society, and find that there are hunters and non-hunters, that means the non-hunters are subservient to the hunters." Uh, not so fast.

One person told someone I know that "in my culture we have eleven genders". The person receiving the information didn't then go on to interrogate the statement or its speaker. So I'm not sure what it means to say "eleven genders" exactly, but I do know white society has more than two, but forces, coerces, threatens, and harasses everyone to identify or look like one or "the other".

I'll perhaps very foolishly assume that the person sharing this information about eleven genders means that they see eleven genders in his society, can discern each as distinct from the others, or perhaps sees the eleven as variations and permutations, made distinct by features or qualities we in the West do not recognise as "categories". If this assumption is close to being accurate, does that mean the dominant U.S. and U.K. way of seeing gender is wrong?

I'd argue the answer to that question is not "yes, it is wrong" so much as it is not "the whole truth" and that "truths" are relative to so much. So here we are in the so-called post-modern perspective of cultural relativism; not that non-Westerners didn't have such ways of seeing and comprehending reality way before Europeans came on the scene.

That there are differing and equally valid perspectives is not something many anti-relativistic dominants are comfortable acknowledging. Dominant "modernist" Western peoples tend to want to demand that their perceptions are "THE truth" or are, if being condescendingly generous, "more accurate" than other ways of perceiving. White people do think we're white, after all, even though this is a made up racial concept that has only existed for a limited period of time in some places. Men do think we're men often enough to cause atrocious problems for those we identify as women/not-men. (As Dworkin noted thirty-five years ago in her book Woman Hating, there are things that are real but not true.

That the idea that "so-called male and female anatomical differences" means that there are only two human genders is both spurious and political to the core.

But, as you note, a Latin language such as Italian gives a term like "window" a so-called feminine spelling--lunestra--whereas "door" is portello, a so-called "masculine" term. Clearly the window is not more female than the door, and vice versa. Or is it?

But the point, a political one as well as a cultural and linguistic one is that these determinations are simultaneously arbitrary and deeply intentional with political consequences. And linguistics is embedded or encoded with a politic, whether that's conscious to the speaker of it or not. Derrida's work attempted to reveal that.

Gendering the world, whether one of its human-spoken languages, or its people, particularly into only two groups, as is done in the West, means that we don't see a lot about humanity; once gender is so hierarchically and dualistically politicised and organised--oppressively, and structured into society this way, we get all kinds of stigmas and statuses attached to these only-two particular genders.

My response, for now, is that a culture with eleven genders is just that, but the eleven genders may not be understood the way white folks think of "gender". I'd have to learn a whole lot more about how that society's language is structured, how their perceptions and belief systems differ from my society's. That white male supremacist societies tend to have two genders serves our systems of male supremacy well; understanding humanity in terms of "two genders" is a fundamental part of what constructs and maintains male supremacy, linguistically, socially, culturally, and politically, as well as economically, religiously, philosophically, AND biologically. Because we only name two genders, we can only identify human beings as one or another sex.

Western gender dualism/male supremacy/sexism/misogyny is built on a rather shaky premise. Curiously, or outrageously, the earlier version of the premise in Western civilisation was that there was one sex in two forms: each was male. There were non-inverted males who were deemed superior to inverted males. (Guess which group decided that?!) As you may know, the term "invert" is also a term meaning "homosexual" in the English-speaking West. (It's even used in a Beatles song, one of George's actually, titled "While My Guitar Gently Weeps": I don't know why you were inverted. No one alerted you.) We are again reminded of how interlocked misogyny is with homophobia, sexism with heterosexism.

Are we going to maintain an illusion, a terribly sloppily if politically expedient Western/Cartesian imposed idea, that all people are either "males" or "females"? For the hard-core Western scientists reading this, we might say that this is obviously not empirically true--there are intersex people, after all! Why are we insistent on this misperception being stone-carved truth? For whose benefit? Certainly not for the benefit of intersex people who are more often than not, in the U.S., genitally butchered and sexually disabled at birth or a bit later in life in order to make them "appear" male or female.

I once knew someone who was neither male or female, neither woman nor man nor transgendered, who had (and has) no visible or "tucked away" ("inverted") genitalia. In a society such as ours, white supremacist patriarchal science has to scurry to figure out "what's wrong" with this person, or "what went wrong" in utero.

So we English-speaking Westerners forcibly cram reality into a tiny frame, a dualistic and hierarchical one. With that task done, certain oppressive forms of power, entitlements, and privileges can be distributed among elites; those determined by "the superiors" get to behave as if they are superior by treating those who are not determined to be so esteemed as servants in various degrading and soul-crushing ways.

Language, culture, and political reality are not separable, is one point I'm trying to make. Each is part of the other, and informs and reinforces the other, which is why, according to Western terminology and perception, this non-sexed person I just mentioned, when on a popular TV talk show, was met with questions from host and audience such as "don't you want to know what sex you were meant to be?" (By having their chromosomes checked, for example).

The person's answer was, more or less: "No. I know who I am already."

For more, see this cached website's description of Toby's appearance on TV:

Now imagine after some tests that
there are no internal or external sex organs whatsoever. No
ovaries, no testes, no uterus, no vagina, no penis, no
glands that produce estrogen or testosterone, no semen, no
eggs, no anything. Is this possible? Surprisingly yes. It
is very possible and in fact probably more so that one
thinks. Though rarely publicized, there are people in this
world that are physically indistinguishable as males or
females. Sally Jesse Raphael recently had one of these
androgynous human beings on her popular morning talk show.
This person, known as Toby, is neither male nor female and
prefers to live life in the androgynous state. Toby is the
only known human being in the world like this. Medically
feasible, yes; but is the androgynous person socially
acceptable in our everyday lifestyle? Since Toby was born,
Toby hasn't been able to live a normal life. Throughout
childhood, Toby was constantly pressured to make a decision
to either become a full fledged male or female. Doctors,
teachers, friends and family all thought that Toby would be
much happier if Toby could be classified as either a man or
a woman. But Toby didn't think so. Toby made a decision to stay androgynous and it has caused some very interesting
results. Everywhere Toby goes identity comes into question. Is Toby male or female? Toby is neither. But that's not possible. Yet it is. Think about what you do everyday and how much of it relies on gender and then think about Toby. What public restroom do you go in? What kind of clothes do you wear? What store do you buy them in? What colors do you buy? What letter is after the word sex on your drivers license? How does Toby answer these questions? That's not the point. The point is why does Toby have to answer these questions? Because this is what we have determined to be socially correct. There are two sexes, male and female and you must be one or the other.

[The portion in bold was made so by me.]

I welcome a response.

What is "A White Man" anyway?

[image is from here]

A relatively young white man who appreciates many of the postings on this blog asked me to define what I mean by "a white man".

I'll attempt to do so here.

First, the term "a white man" or "white men" is not ever used here as a biological term. It is not a description of something that occurs in nature as we popularly speak of the nature vs. environment distinction. White men are not the population of grown up people who don't a clitoris when born, for example; nor are they those people who have relatively little melanin in their pale skin. A white man is not a natural occurrence, in other words. A white man is a social-political phenomenon, in person. He is one among a group of people positioned at the top of two social/political/economic hierarchies: the one frequently called the gender hierarchy and the one called the racial hierarchy.

In the gender hierarchy of the white male supremacist West, there are two acknowledged genders: woman and man, with woman historically and transculturally, if not universally, being seen and treated as lesser than man; as inferior to, as in service to, as subordinate to man, naturally or by [a white man's vision of] God's design.

In the racial hierarchy of the white male supremacist West, there are several races, but two are identified most often as being "in opposition" historically and transculturally, if not universally: a race called "white people" and a race called "Black people". Now, we can note immediately that "Blackness" globally doesn't always mean "of African descent". For example, the Indigenous people of Australia are termed "Black". Also, in the U.S. alone, people of sub-Saharan African descent, particularly and especially the descendants of Africans captured and forcibly transported in the Maafa, intentionally to be used/abused as slaves for whites in the U.S., have been termed various things over the decades, some obviously and overtly pejorative, but some that were not pejorative at the time they were most commonly used among and by African Americans. Some of these terms have come and gone with the passage of time and social-political conditions and consciousness. One example is "Colored people" still noted in the civil rights group's named: NAACP. We see this term in Ntozake Shange's play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When The Rainbow Is Enuf. Colored was also used by whites in the U.S. to describe American Indians and people from the First Nations in Canada. We can also note that in the U.K. and in South Africa, the racialised term "Coloured" doesn't mean African American. It refers instead to people of "mixed race". Here we must again remind ourselves there are more than two races, so "mixed race" need not refer only to people whose lineage goes back to sub-Saharan Africa (and, for example, Europe); the online edition of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica defines "Coloured" this way:

Coloured [people]:
a person of mixed European (“white”) and African (“black”) or Asian ancestry, as officially defined by the South African government from 1950 to 1991.

So we can note that not only nationally and regionally, but also temporally and culturally, these terms do not have fixed meanings; their meanings can and do change over time.

"Whiteness" itself has a history, a social-political one, not a natural one. It is the designation given to those who are positioned above and against people of color. Who is white has varied over time. In this country, for example, I am white. But in Nazi Germany, as an Ashkenazic Jew, I would not have been seen as white; I would have been seen, treated, and likely killed for being "not white" and "impure due to not being Aryan-white".

For much more on the history and unnaturalness of whiteness, please read Tim Wise's writings.

What "woman" means (in various languages) has historically been politically decided by men in various patriarchal cultures. How women define "woman" has significantly more variation, moving beyond the confines and shackles of men's violently enforced parameters for what women can do, and, "are". And women who move beyond men's shallow confines are punished socially, including by being stigmatised, stereotyped, and stoned to death, by stones or fists.

"Man" too is a relative term, historically (his-story being written by men) nonsensically meaning "humankind" or "all of humanity". This is false. If limited to the terms "woman" and "man" in English, if we're going to equate one of those two genders with humankind we ought to use the term "woman" as the synonym, not man. After all, there are more women than men on the Earth. Also, the gender-oppressed are more humane than the gender-oppressors, contrary to what members of the oppressor classes project onto the oppressed with nauseating and insulting regularity.

"Men" and "Whites" mean, specifically, those two groups of humans who oppress "women" and "people of color" respectively. White men, of course, are positioned socially to oppress women of all colors, as well as men of color and all children and animals and the Earth. We white men are not only positioned to do so, but we actively do so, in many ways that we, collectively, take little to no responsibility for. This is important to note: our position is a critical component in how we behave towards other people. Systems of accountability for "decent treatment" for example, are, in white and man-dominated societies, set up to allow white men to get away with murder, rape, battery, incest, child molestation, pollution, global warming, the extinction of thousands of species of non-human animals, sexual slavery, genocide, gynocide, and more.

The young white men mentioned above does not actively oppress women in his life interpersonally (any more), for the most part. But he is still positioned to be able to do so interpersonally; and should he use misogynistic language to or around a woman or women, he would be committing an act of gendered oppression. Regardless of how non-oppressive he is interpersonally, around women he knows or sees, he, and I, and all men, are oppressive to women systemically, structurally, and institutionally. We are cogs in white male supremacy's machinery, whether we like it or not. (And most do like it, tragically for the rest of humanity.)

In liberal societies, it is mistakenly believed that "oppression works both ways" or that women can be just as sexist against men too. Or that people of color can be racist against whites. This is structurally impossible and utter nonsense. It is interpersonally possible that any person can be harmful to any other person, regardless of race or gender, or other factors. But given that the societies white men rule are founded on several institutions that require various structures of support and maintenance, there is never an opportunity, a social reality, inside which women can oppress men--of the same economic class, race, and sexuality. Likewise, no person or people of color can oppress whites. Society isn't set up to make that an option. As noted, individuals may carry very stereotypical ideas about what it means to be white, Black, Arab, Jewish, Muslim, lesbian, transgendered, gay, rich, or poor, but these "ideas" are not manifesting oppressively, institutionally against whites--of the same gender, economic class, and sexuality.

A far too common response I hear from white men when I speak of this subject is: "What about Oprah? She has way more social power than I do. She owns media. She's a multi-millionaire." Unless I'm speaking to Rupert Murdoch, or any number of other men far more wealthy and powerful than Oprah Winfrey, I respond by saying "please compare people within the same stratas of society. For example, while Oprah may have more power, in many regards, than a poor, homeless white man, that poor, homeless white man can still call Oprah Winfrey derogatory terms for both women and Blacks. That homeless white man still has the means to sexually harass her too, and worse. But more to the point, let's compare the homeless white man to a homeless woman of color and see who comes out ahead, in terms of status, social visibility, stigma, and likelihood of dying of major diseases. (Answer: not the white man.) And if we compare Oprah Winfrey to Rupert Murdoch, he has far more influence over what we know and do than does Oprah. And ol' Rupert and even more visibly famous white men, aren't likely to be refused service and treated rudely by in a chic French shop due to his race and gender, even if he allegedly arrives fifteen minutes after they close.

But when we speak of "position" we are referring specifically to how a society is structured, who most benefits from that structure, who gains status and privileges and entitlements, and who loses them, or is never given them to begin with. We are speaking of what forms of agency and power individuals and groups have within systems that either promote their welfare and well-being or discriminate against them.

This is when many white men who are liberals will chime in that "if I was one-eighth Native American I could go to college for free! You don't call that "reverse discrimination"?!

No. And here's why. The very few laws and policies that exist to try and remedy social inequalities and injustices that have happened only due to the over-valuing and privileging and empowerment of whites and men over time, by white men in charge of social institutions, have not, as yet, produced a society that shows any signs of lessening its white male supremacist power any time soon. While tokenistic efforts appear from time to time to give the appearance that white men want equality among the genders and races, what is never achieved is that actual equality. What is never accomplished, even with that free college tuition for American Indians in white men's institutions of "higher" learning, is the transformation of those academic institutions such that white men's views and values are seen as no better or worse than those of any other political/cultural group. You can get a free pass in, but once in you'd better learn how to "think and behave like a white man" in order to succeed. A wise white lesbian woman I once knew studied theology at Yale for her Ph.D. almost didn't make it through to get the degree because of all the white (and heterosexual and Christian) male supremacist bullshit (beliefs, rules, standards of conduct, notions of "knowledge", etc.). And of course the white men who professed there never understood what was severely ignorant and oppressive about their values and ideas.

What about Obama being president, liberal white men ask? Doesn't that mean that we no longer live in a white male dominated country? First, the U.S. remains white male dominated. Second, he is still operating in an overwhelmingly and predominantly white male supremacist culture (the U.S. government of Washington, D.C.), and is limited in what he can do for women and people of color because of that. Add to that the fact that many of his values and policies are also shaped by that culture, represent that culture, and are culturally imperialistic and murderous globally in ways that most benefit white men and least benefit women of color. And then there's the question of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Here we have a perfect example of how a woman of color's statement is turned against her, particularly when she's identifying something structurally and socially true.

In recent months, Justice Sotomayor was verbally and in print raked through the coals for making what to me seemed like a rather unremarkable statement:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge in the U.S. court system] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life[.]"

When I first heard this comment I thought: "Duh." White men are not positioned to know or care much about most of humanity, are notoriously self-serving in their/our policies and practices, and, given that we are positioned over and against others in the race and gender hierarchies, tend to know very little about what it means to be oppressed by white men, unless we are marginalised or oppressed by white men for other reasons: such as poor white men being oppressed by rich ones, gay white men by straight ones, disabled white men by non-disabled ones, and so on. Even then, though, such awareness of one's oppression as poor, gay, or disabled does not tend to make those oppressed (and oppressive) white men empathically connected to the experiences of people of color--women and men, and white women, generally.

This lack of empathy that comes from not having walked in the shoes of the gender-oppressed and race-oppressed, or ridden in their wheelchairs, means that we white men have to go out of our way, off our privileged path, beyond our myopic world views and values to gain insight and understanding, let alone empathy, for those we structurally oppress.

In my experience, white men do not go out of our way often enough or far enough; most don't go out of our way at all. We tend to want to preserve our social-political-economic position (and the power and privileges that come with it) nationally in the U.S. and U.K., for example. We want the experience of ourselves as "the norm". We hate feeling like "the other"--even while we are, especially in the U.S., which ethically belongs to no white man. We, the trespassers, the invaders, the conquerors, also want and do preserve our social, economic, and political structures globally, through policies and practices we white men created in order to hoard and abuse the world's so-called resources, including by identifying and treating all those people who are not men and not white as "resources" for white men.

As is now well-known by white men who grossly sexually exploit people worldwide, white men globe-trot specifically and intentionally to appropriate other cultures' people and artifacts, to rape boys, girls, transgendered people, and women, to purchase and enslave human beings who are not white or men, to set up shop--literally, where people of color, disproportionately children and women, do the atrociously repetitive, laborious, and dangerous work that white men, even poor white U.S. men, do not generally have to do because the globalised economy is structured by the white men-led and controlled World Bank, multinational corporations, and the International Monetary Fund, not to mention the white men-controlled religious institutions. the various Christian church leaders who preach what they have no intention of practicing, unless they are preaching about evil-doing. Question: how many white men in the Christian Churches have to be discovered and reported to be rapers of nuns and other female church-members and abusers of female and male children before we stop listening to their racist, misogynist, misopedic "God-inspired" preachings? I am waiting for the answer.

Because white men tend to live lives in great ignorance of the experiences and knowledge of the majority of human beings on the Earth, we tend to have a very myopic understanding of what humanity is, how humanity thinks, responds, and acts in many parts of the world. To use a metaphor, we are positioned on a mountaintop above the clouds; we cannot see what is happening below us. We think all is well--more or less, as we sit perched atop our white man's mountains (made by slaves who are not white, fed and nurtured--kept alive--by white women). We don't consider that our piss flows downward below the cloud line which is our sole vista (if we choose). We don't particularly care who has to endure its stench and volume. When asked to peek below the cloud line, should we do so and notice beings below, we tend to remark cynically, without any regard for the humanity of those we harm, "They can climb up here and be with us. And if they don't that's their own damn fault!" Never mind that these mountains have peaks, not plateaus, and only have room for the few, never the many. Never mind that the white man not only doesn't care to offer a hand up, but shits all over the people below. Never mind that life below would be just fine thank you, if only white men would stop pissing and shitting all over it.

And so our seemingly gracious efforts to equalise inequalities that are structured into society, by offering the free tuition to an American Indian student, for example, doesn't factor in what she has lived through to even get that far: the amount of stench of white men's shit she's inhaled, the miles of wading neck deep in white men's piss. Nor do white men's rather self-serving efforts to "help the less fortunate" measure what kind of social climate she's forced to assimilate into in order to succeed in white men's colleges, teaching white men's ideas and ways of doing things. She may be admitted, but she won't see herself reflected in the canon of great reading materials and examples of great people in history.

This is how it comes to be that the father of this young white man, who is also white and far more self-unaware of his white, heterosexual, and male supremacist privileges and entitlements than is his son, could say to me not long ago that Feodor Dostoevsky expressed the human condition (experience) in his writings in a way that is superior to any other writer. This Christian white man not only said it, but he believed it. Are there actually places that try and demonstrate that Christian white men are the best writers? Yes.

When I immediately asked him, "How does he represent women in his novels", this Christian heterosexual white man who is around fifty-years-old said, honestly, "He doesn't do so well with women characters; they tend to be far more two-dimensional than his male characters." (We can note that Mr. Dostoevsky never did turn out a brilliant book called The Sisters Karamazov.) I then noted that given that most of the world's human population is female, he might want to reconsider how much of humanity Dostoevsky allegedly spoke for.

I would argue that any and every white man speaks to and through his own experiences primarily, and to those of the people he knows best empathically and socially. Given the hierarchies mentioned above, those people in his social circles tend not to be people of color, unless they are his house cleaners, the carers of his children, or his gardeners. This, combined with a significantly limited capacity for empathy for anyone other than white people and/or men, means that his life experiences generate and sustain little to no empathy or understanding for those he hires for help and for every other human being who is not his race or his gender. To him, they are not of equal status and worth, no matter his proclamations to the contrary. And so the majority of the world's population remains "other" to him; he sees them primarily through the tiny, distorted lens his position allows; and to the degree he sees them at all, he mistakenly regards them as lesser in quality, intelligence, and character. No white man writer I know, not Dostoevsky, not Tolstoy, not Hemingway, not Shakespeare, describes "the" human experience or condition. He may describe "a" human experience.

White men's philosophies and politics are so limited in their understanding of the self, the world, and Spirit, that they can scarcely get out of their own way to see what is before them. And how many women of color do you think made the list of "Great Philosophers"? Check here for the answer. What political demographic do you suppose has defined "philosophy" and "greatness"? Answer: "educated" white men. So rather than ask Aboriginal elders how they and their ancestors have managed to live sustainably on the Earth for thousands of years, we look to two white Australian men for the answers to this very important question. It's not that Bill Morrison and Scott Pitman have nothing useful to say; it's that we look to them as holders of great truth and ideas, and as saviors of us all, because they are white men. When whites do go to people of color, especially Indigenous people, for counsel, advice, guidance, and wisdom, it is almost always to exploit them, and enhance white men's quality of life while--knowledgeably or not--continuing our genocide against them, culturally and physically. And when white men go unwelcomed into non-industrialised cultures, we historically assume and believe the holders of knowledge are the men, not the women, and certainly not those who are neither.

The universalising and normalising of white men's perspectives, feelings, ideas, experiences, and behavior is one of the key ways that white men maintain oppressive control over everyone else. Extra status is given to those white men who behave in especially white and manly ways.

So, all of the U.S.'s presidents prior to Barack Obama, being white Christian publicly heterosexual men who were oppressive to women and people of color, including being rapists of slaves and genocidalists, are generally regarded in U.S. society as "heroes" and "great men". Needless to say, I don't agree. If speaking only about U.S. Americans, I think Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Lozen, and Andrea Dworkin were far greater people than any U.S. president, including Barack Obama.

That we reward and honor white men, and many men who are not white, with medals and accolades for going outside the U.S. and murdering people of color, and raping both white women and women of color, as well as murdering them, tells us a great deal about the dominant white man's value system.

When I say "the dominant white man" I am often accused of grossly stereotyping white men. I would argue that white men far more powerful and influential that I'd ever want to be do this all by themselves. White men keep each other in line, in check. White men physically beat the shit out of each other for acting in ways that are not white or manly enough. White men use the term "man" all the time; never bothering to say "some white men, but certainly not all". Scour the history books and newspapers over the last hundred or so years: who uses the term "man" the most to improperly categorise and identify all people as one kind of people? Answer: "educated" white men.

White men's legacy on this Earth speaks for itself. There's nothing at all I, or any profeminist or feminist, can say or do to make that history be different than it is. The books have been written, the atrocities have occurred and still occur: the so-called great victories of white men over everything else have been recorded. I just happen to think what we white guys have done isn't all that great, particularly when we consider the cost to most of humanity, and the rest of the Earth's beings, to achieve it.

I'm not going to diss the Beatles' music. I think some white guys are really funny. I love Fred Astaire and James Dean. Believe it or not, some of the people I consider to be my closest friends and chosen family are white men. But, on the whole, what we white guys have done to this place is not a pretty story and it's about time we owned up to the fact that we did it and we have the power to undo it. We own so much of the world; why is it so hard for us to take responsibility for and radically change the destructive things we do?

I welcome responsible, respectful comments or questions if anyone reading this is still confused about what it means to be a white man.

Nigeria and White [Male] Supremacy: an analysis by Chinweizu

[image above is of author Chinweizu, and was found here]

[For the website with the original post, please click here.]

Nigeria and White Supremacy
A Letter in Response to "Nigeria A Failed State in the Making?"
By Chinweizu

My impression in reading Chinweizu is that Nigeria, despite its oil wealth, is not a model African state because of "white supremacy." I derive this impression or conclusion from this Chinweizu statement:

"White power controls Black Africa today through country presidents, generals, company directors and Board chairmen who are all black. White supremacy, as a matter of historical record, does not disappear with the emergence of even a complete phalanx of black office holders. For example, Nigeria is under the thumb of white supremacy, though it has been ruled for some 50 years by black Heads of State, all-black legislatures, all-black armies, etc." (Chinweizu, Commentary in "The Death of White Supremacy?")

From Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh we get an entirely different perspective on Nigeria. He concludes in his Nigeria A Failed State in the Making? that the Nigerian governments and its officials, especially, and its "populaces" are the causes of the lack of support for general free education and other deteriorating aspects in Nigeria, rather than "white supremacy."

Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh allows that there probably should have never been a Nigeria. He says, “The country Nigeria was an imposition. . . . our constitution was an imposition.” Ogbunwezeh points out, “Just like in Animal Farm, we exchanged our slavery to British official whims to the capricious and monumental indiscretions of Nigerian politicians. This exchange created a crop of home-grown colonial Lords, who exploit the people like their former Lords did.”

That is to say, Ogbunwezeh does not allow Nigerians to escape their responsibilities for the present state of their conditions: “The home-grown masters have now new masters: namely their inordinate greed. They shipped their loot to Switzerland; housing it in numbered accounts. The rape of the country assumed the same trajectory in both epochs. Our local pirates in some space of four decades succeeded in out-performing the colonial masters in greed, thievery and plunder of our commonweal.”—Rudy

Rudy,

Like Neely Fuller, Jr. said, "If you don't understand white supremacy—what it is, and how it works—everything else that you understand will only confuse you."

The picture painted by Franklyn, though illuminating as far as it goes, does not go far enough. It is like a picture of a train that leaves out the engine. To complete the picture we need to add the role of the white supremacy institutions of the new imperialism in initiating and maintaining the disaster that is Nigeria.

If we understood the devious ways of white supremacy, in this stage of what Nkrumah called "Neo-colonialism", we would see that my account and Franklyn's are not contradictory or alternative accounts, but are complementary. Franklyn describes the body of the snake, I pointed at its head )albeit in passing, in the context of our discussion of white supremacy). The combined and fuller picture allows us to see how the mess in Nigeria serves a white supremacy which manipulates Nigeria through institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, the UN agencies, The (British) Commonwealth, which link Nigeria to the global system of white supremacy.

Nigeria, like other black African countries, has been misruled by local Black Comprador Colonialists whose paramount interest is to preserve the subordination of their countries to the imperialist interests of their "former" colonial masters. It is that subordination that permits them to loot their own people for their imperialist masters, and allows them, as the junior partners and agents of imperialism, to keep a share of the loot, which is their own consuming interest.

Of course, to that end they have frustrated, in their own local interests, any attempt to develop an autonomous polity that is answerable to its own people, that responds to the will/desires of its own people. A Nigerian polity that responds to its own people would have less to hand over to the imperialist masters, and would come under imperialist pressure and attacks. A current example is Mugabe's Zimbabwe. For so long as Mugabe did not try to take back the land stolen by the whites, he was okay. But when he began to respond to his people's land hunger, he became a pariah and came under sanctions and destabilization from the white supremacist powers like the UK, the USA and the EU.

In contrast, Nigeria, under Obasanjo, handed to the foreign creditors a whopping $12bn to allegedly get Nigeria debt-free (which it did not) while leaving Nigeria with badly decayed roads, power supply, education, etc. that still need massive capital injection to refurbish them. Needless to say, the debt-free mirage was just a scam. Nigeria is still not debt free and still goes aborrowing.

But since Obasanjo was a loyal servant to the white imperialist powers, he had a free hand to rig elections, sack villages that contested his misrule (e.g., Odi in the Niger Delta was sacked by Obasanjo's soldiers), and to loot to his greed's content. By the way, the bulk of the loot from what is misnamed "corruption" gets stashed away in the banks of Europe and America, thus adding to the total plunder that the imperialists extract. In that way, even the much decried corruption of the Nigerian elite ends up serving the white powers. It also bribes the Black compradors with part of the imperialist loot so they don’t buck the system.

We need to keep this fuller picture in view if we are to understand the so-called "failed state" of Nigeria. Nigeria, from the viewpoint of its population, is a failed state, has always been a failed state, i.e., a state that has failed to serve them or address their interests. And it has been that way right from its founding by the British a century ago. But it is not yet a failed state from the standpoint of its British and other imperialist masters. It has always served the white power interest, and consistently, at the expense of the interests of its population, during both the period of White Expatriate colonialism which ended in 1960, and the period of Black Comprador colonialism that began in 1960. We need to be ever mindful of these two senses of the phrase “failed state”.

Incidentally, though Nigeria is financially in a position to give free education to all its citizens—let’s leave aside the matter of the damaging white supremacist content of that education—part of why it does not do so is that much of its resources is pumped abroad to the coffers of the white supremacists through "debt" repayments and the routine looting by the foreign companies and their Nigerian comprador agents. If Obasanjo had chosen to apply to Nigeria's needs the $12bn he eagerly handed over to the white shylocks, there would be more than enough funds for the free education Franklyn is talking about, and for much else.

Nigeria could become like Kuwait, Dubai etc., or even like Cuba, if it organized to use its oil earnings in the interest of its population. But for 50 years, the Black comprador colonialists have not seen fit to organize that. With their Eurocentric education and blancophile brainwashing and their mental allegiance to White supremacy, they have fallen for every conman advice that the white supremacists gave them on "development", especially through the IMF and the World Bank and the foreign aid outfits like Britain's ODA and America's USAID.

The ways of white supremacy are comprehensively devious. In fact one of its uses for the "independence" imperialism granted its colonies was to enable it to deny responsibility for what its Black comprador agents do to their own people, even though it is all part of what they are prompted and encouraged to do for the continuing imperialist plunder of these "ex-colonies". These black misgovernments are serving as monkey's paws and fall guys for the plundering of Black Africa by and for the white powers.

Like the Black Slavers in the era of the Chattelization Wars, a.k.a. the Slave Trade, and like the plantation overseers and house niggers of ante-bellum USA, the Black colonialists of today operate within the framework and mandate given them by white supremacy, but they add their own peculiar twists to the master's mandate. The executive anarchism of the Nigerian comprador elite just happens to be, perhaps, the most abominable of these local twists to the basic mandate given by white supremacy to its local black agents.

We all need to continually deepen and update our understanding of white supremacy and its manifold and morphing ways if we are to see its dominant and directing roles in our condition. We also need to understand the roles of its black colonialist agents among us, and their own special contributions to the mess. If you want more insights into the Nigerian case, I can send you "Black Colonialists"—an interview I did two years ago on the roots of the trouble with Nigeria. You could also read The West and the Rest of Us, for insights on the ways and means of white supremacy especially during the post WWII transition to Black colonialism in Africa.

* * * * *

Responses

Nigeria: White Supremacy, Criminal or Traitorous Behavior

Chinweizu, the criminal and corrupting behavior of African heads of state, I suspect, existed long before there was the British, the French, or the Americans. This point was made by the Malian writer Yambo Ouologuem in his novel Bound to Violence and in his 1971 interview in Commonweal. Yambo said, "It was the black aristocrat who made black people become Negroes. If you look at the entire history, you find there were three stages of oppression: blacks oppressing blacks, Arabs oppressing blacks, and whites oppressing blacks" (Yambo Ouologuem). So we have come full circle. Now we have again "blacks oppressing blacks."

There has always been a "global" struggle for resources and power. Indeed that struggle has "morphed" in magnitude and character. And there probably has always been enticements from foreign powers. But because there are external enticements (say from the West), there is no reason to conclude that the enticing power (say USA or France or UK or white global corporations like oil companies) or the powers that lend some sort of assistance in a nation's reign (say China's recent sale of tanks to the Khartoum government) that we can conclude that that nation (say Nigeria or Sudan or South Africa) is a mere puppet of foreign influence (the agents of "white supremacy").

Nigerian (or South African or Sudanese) leaders made political decisions—without an American gun at their heads, or a French tank on the lawn of government house, or UK threats of invasions—about Nigeria (or South Africa or Sudan), its people, its economies, its internal development. We (Nigeria or South Africa or blacks leaders in the diaspora) will never have a situation in which there will be no foreign power that will not provide enticements as well as threats. The onus of the national oppression problem settles on black leaders and heads of state, not on the heads of foreign states or the heads of global corporations.

If you want to call the present black national oppression, "neo-colonialism," okay. But do not make a fool of us and common sense and say that this neo-colonialism was instituted and is sustained by "white supremacy" and there is nothing these leaders can do about it. If you insist on doing so, you must offer much more evidence of this "Black Comprador" relationship in which black leaders are being compelled to oppress and murder their own people and that they are receiving direct payments from Western corporations and Western states to do so.

As you have pointed out with regard to the Khartoum government, it is not so much that they are subject to the foreign powers who sustain "Arab Supremacy," that is, that they are not puppets of Saudi Arabia or Egypt or Syria, but rather that their heads are filled with Islamic political ideology that they are willing to slaughter and displace their own citizens because of native greed. If you are suggesting that the heads of states for Nigeria and South Africa are operating in such a was as they are in oppressing their native populations because their heads are filled with foreign ideologies and greed, I might agree. But that indeed is a far cry from saying that Nigeria and South Africa are the puppets of "white supremacy."

Chinweizu, your view of "white supremacy" as the primary culprit in Nigeria or South Africa's present difficulties is essentially different from that of Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh, who says, “The home-grown masters have now new masters: namely their inordinate greed. They shipped their loot to Switzerland; housing it in numbered accounts. The rape of the country assumed the same trajectory in both epochs. Our local pirates in some space of four decades succeeded in out-performing the colonial masters in greed, thievery and plunder of our commonweal” (my italics).

That is, you place your emphasis on external influence and puppetry (rather than traitorous behavior), whereas Ogbunwezeh places his emphasis on a problem of internal governance and national or individual character (that is, criminality). If you eliminate such individuals whose emphasis is greed for money and power, he implies, Nigeria and South Africa and others such black states have a greater possibility of building up individuals who dwell on the true and good and thus the likelihood of developing model states. The political problem is not across the ocean but much closer to home.—Rudy

* * * * *

Pre-Obama White Supremacy

I have Pre-Obama thoughts about "white supremacy". I have been thinking about this phrase "white supremacy" for a long time, especially ever time you, Rudy, have brought it up again and again to prove your several points about it. Almost three years ago, your arguments suggested that you believed it existed in large measure. Lately, you seem to be arguing from the point of greater responsibility among Blacks, as if White Supremacy is not monolithic. Then I noticed that I tended to agree with both the new you and with Chinweizu, which really made no sense to me. How could both of you be correct, I thought?

But then, lately, as I have tried to imagine a pre- and a post-Obama America, I have come to this conclusion: Even where and when only one of us in America or the world is confused about White Supremacy's existence, that confusion suggests that White Supremacy's hegemony over us is, indeed, in our cognitive struggles. The thing about this white supremacy is that even if it were never again practiced—if white America did nothing to racialize us ever again—it would not cease to exist. Its greatest control over us is in making us think that it does not exist in any degree any longer.

Here is my best example of why I believe it does exist in a palpable way and does hold sway over our cognitive activity. Remember—my example does not assume that there is a Barack Hussein Obama on the horizon. If Obama becomes our next President and proves to be what we hope he will be for all America, then my example may no longer make sense (for me at least).

So here's my pre-Obama thinking about white supremacy: It does not matter one iota which party is in the White House. And it does not matter which Ray Nagin or Tavis Smiley or Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton or Mark Morial or black police chief or black school board superintendent is in position. No, it especially does not matter which party is in the White House! When the Democrats or the Republicans lose the White House, the outgoing party—all the aides and staff people, and some Congress administrators and members—spreads out into the Greater Washington, D.C., or into home states, and assumes lucrative appointments.

They simply await their turn to return. Nothing transformative emerges. And then the next party gets in, and the outgoing folks take up their appointments in the land and await their turn to return. Nothing transformative emerges. The two parties simply swap positions, dust off the chairs, and assume business as usual in this land of free-market politics.

And Black on Black crime in America and Africa continues to increase. You can not convince me that down in our counties and cities and states, and among the tribal and sectarian divisions of Africa, that we cannot halt crime on this planet. I am convinced that Supremacy does not want to stop it, because it's the best way to rid the planet of unwanted peoples—just let them kill one another. Let them die on dope and sadness and religious slogans.

It is because the face of White Supremacy is sometimes also black that we think that White Supremacy is diminishing and that we are our own responsibility. But it's the same lesson being perpetrated over and over again! We argue about its existence while it exists. We commit crimes against one another while it exists. We are still as a nation and as an African continent on lesson one. Supremacy was our first teacher in the New World and all we are doing is mimicking our First Teacher.—Mackie

* * * * *

Two Aspects of White Supremacy: Practice and Cognitive

My changed view on "white supremacy" surfaced in 2008 after Iowa voted for Barack Obama. So it is a recent thinking. It's an inward questioning that is going on. In some sense in these correspondences and editorials, I’m thinking out loud. I expected that in Iowa Obama would come in at best in third. He came in first. It shocked me and many others Americans—black and white. I concluded that white people I had in my head did not correspond to actual white people in America. This vote suggested that no position in America existed that a black person could not occupy. In short, that Jim Crow politics and any extension of it were dead in America.

Your view of “white supremacy” is most serious and thoughtful, especially since it is not wholly and entirely political as was the case with my previous discussions in the pieces Nigeria and White Supremacy and The Death of White Supremacy? Yours is a far more nuanced perspective. That’s the path, I think, we should take by necessity if we are to be fair and balanced in talking to ourselves and talking to white people about "white supremacy."

For one of the truisms of Obama's rhetoric, I believe, is that we Americans (black and white) are more alike than different and that white Americans are more accepting of black Americans than we think. The former hostilities and hatreds and prejudices are declining rapidly, especially among the younger generations, who have had no experience of Jim Crow or no sense what it was really like, as we of our generation have no real sense of the antebellum slave world of the Southern states, except through literature.

You have broken "white supremacy" up into two aspects 1) as practiced and 2) as cognition. In some sense I can testify to both aspects. The first relates to the palpable easily perceivable racial exclusion whose basis is the inferiority of the Negro; in short, that the Negro is another species of being who should not be granted the same rights and privileges of citizenship as whites. I was raised in this segregated world and observed and experienced it in separate educational facilities and in transportation on buses between southern Virginia and Baltimore. I had little or no contact with whites except in public places, at stores or in the fields of work.

Jim Crow politics laid the ground and conditioned my adulthood. It only began to change as I was making my way to college with the federal passage of the 1964 and 1965 racial integration laws. Probably by the 1980s they were more or less fully in force. But my Jim Crow conditioning was not fully wiped away. As Dick Gregory pointed out recently, he hears a police siren behind him and he holds the steering wheel tighter and when the police car passes him by he thanks God. I do not think that black kids today have the racial fears that their grandfathers have or had. So in some sense I see this as the cognitive aspects to which you referred.

That is, that "white supremacy" exists in our minds and hearts because of its former palpable existence in our lives and that our recognition of it was a means of survival. Possibly older whites retain some of this white skin privileging and wish for its return. But for many blacks every act or symbolical aspect of racism reminds us of its former sway and the possibility of its resurfacing with its former sway. One might compare this mental state to those Jews who survived the reign of Hitler or their descendants and that any or the slightest hint of anti-semitism unsettles, whether that person is a practicing Jew or whether he or she has only a Jewish grandmother.

Now for the second part. I suppose indeed that "white supremacy" can have a black face if that means that a black person can assert racist opinions with respect to blacks and commit racist acts against blacks. But these are insignificant vestiges or shadows of that which was a state of white supremacy. There were such persons as Anglo-Africans, but often these persons were also black nationalists and Pan Africanists, such as Alexander Crummell, the mentor of W.E.B. Du Bois, who thought that English should be the language that all Africans should adopt and who thought as well very little of African languages. Of course, he did not view blacks as inferior, which I think one must assert as the key aspect of white supremacy.

Have we eliminated every vestige of racism in our society? No. Will racists with white supremacy views continue to exist? Yes. Are there sick white people who receive pleasure from black deaths and suffering? Possibly.

The world we grew up in has changed, Mackie. We are far beyond the world of our childhood. Many more opportunities exist now for blacks and their children. The world is changing quickly for better and worse, but not necessarily in the old categories of the past. Admittedly, race and ethnic distinctions will for sometime yet be used in economic exploitation and for political positioning. They have some impact in our justice and educational systems which remain in great need of reform.

But many of these problems are the result of economic policies that have been signed onto ignorantly or thoughtlessly by both blacks and whites, for more selfish economic reasons than for racial reasons, though these policies may have an anti-black impact. For instance, there are too many Americans working more than 60 hours a week for less than $10 an hour. Deregulation of the economy and anti-union practices have had an impact on the expansion of the criminal justice system as well as deleterious impact on the education system, and have had a greater impact on blacks than whites, for blacks started farther down the ladder of success because of past racial crimes.

In turn, blacks have to adapt at a quicker rate to cultural, economic and political changes. As presently organized, American society, less tolerant, provides fewer chances for catching up. This new state of things requires more restraint, more focus, more discipline, more discretion. These internal changes cannot be organized on the basis of racial pride. There might indeed be too much racial pride, especially of the warped kind. Immigrants are coming into the country and on the basis of character they are out achieving our young men and women.

These positive acts of awareness and social consciousness by politicians, religious, social and business leaders, I think, combined with a friendlier economy of corporate regulation for the working man will cut into those markings and statistics that ideologues brandish as emblematic of the existence of white supremacy.—Rudy

* * * * *
Dear Rudy,

What you are ignoring is the fact that 90% of Black people in any Western culture are also "White Supremacist".You can't be Culturally British or Culturally French or Culturally American without being "White Supremacist".In Africa, as well, a very large portion of the most Colonized areas are made up of people who have a "Quasi White Supremacist" mentality. The fact that they still have their own languages, traditions, names, etc. is what keeps them from being totally WS, but they are still carriers.

The description you gave of Blacks and our "self-undoing" is true, but then so is Chinweizu's argument.

Otherwise, why would 90% of black women wear processed hair? Why would 90% of black men desire Mulatto women and consider them black? Why do we accept the idea that Mulatto OBAMA is to be the "first Black President" when in fact he's the first "Biracial" President? We accept all of this, because we, too, harbor White Supremacist belief systems. You can't have a SEXIST society, Rudy, unless the Mothers of the boy children are also predominately sexist.

You can't have a EUROCENTRIC society unless most of the people in it adhere to Eurocentrism.

How many Black men in America dress in African garb every day, Rudy? How many Black men in America have endeavored to speak an African language in their daily lives? No, to be culturally American, is White Supremacy itself.

Who is featured in the Black man's music videos, Rudy? The white man's mother (or an imitation of her).—Kola

* * * * *

Kola, I love you too much to argue with you.

But let me say this. All the instances of incongruence you point out are in some ways humorous and point out contradictions in the racialized life of the modern as well as the post-modern world, and attempts to reconcile them. They are one might say hangovers passed down from an experience of white supremacy. Or they are the result of nonwhites living in a society in which the majority of the population is of European extraction. Most of the acts you have chosen to highlight are choices rather than impositions. Some of them I do not care for but I find most tolerable or desirable.

I am culturally an American. And I in no way consider the popular culture "white," neither in its music, its dance, its speech, in contemporary art, in body language, its food, its literature, even in its dress. The cultures of the world have come to this land and found a place. American culture is, what they say in New Orleans, a gumbo, very unique and very global.—Rudy

* * * * *

Rudy, I love you, too, King.

Feel free to argue with me anytime, because I respect your opinion so much. You and Chinweizu are my Lion Kings. Also feel free to curse me out. If people could actually see my movements, facial expressions and tone of voice when I say things they find "volcanic"---they would see that I am a comical, loving wise-talking black mother. Not the serious bitch they envision. I am always prepared to change my mind, but no one ever tries to change it. They fear me. Which is ridiculous. My thing is this—I love my people. You are one of my favorite ones.

On another note: Rudy, I still have not gotten the book deal that my agent expected,therefore, I am not able to send you the money I had planned just yet. Hold tight, however, because it will happen.—Kola

* * * * *

Blame-mongering vs. Factor-analysis‏

First of all, let me make it clear that I am not interested in "blame". I am a scientist, my interest is in investigating the factors relevant to a phenomenon, not in assigning blame. I HOPE YOU UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCE!!! Blame mongering is for moralizers; factor analysis is for problem solvers."—Chinweizu

* * * * *

Chinweizu, Is "white supremacy" some unembodied phenomena unattached to persons that one studies like one studies say AIDS? The social sciences are among the weakest and most inexact of sciences and some might say that it is not science at all, except when statistics are used. In any case, all science must in some way deal with morality and ethics, especially when one is dealing with human behavior.

I did not note any factor analysis in your expositions. What stood out was racial ideology."—Rudy

* * * * *

Rudy, I suspect Chinweizu thinks that your goal or end in everything you write is to establish blame. I think he believes that that is your conclusion and not one of your several premises leading up to a more significant facor. So you need to clear that up. Of course, one way to clear all of this up is for all of us to keep reading Chinweizu and you. So, for me, you do not need to withdraw your own personal take on Chinweizu's scholarship.

I am sure—well, certainly, I hope—that when Chinweizu calms down and thinks about it, he'll reason that while scholars can have no hold, outside of the classroom, over how readers process, experience, interpret, read their scholarship. Chinwezu calls his work factor analysis. Rudy suggests -- for him as a reader—that Chinwezu's work is blame analysis, and Rudy does not mean this negatively.

Failure analysis might be a better term, because the way factor analysis is used in the "The West and the Rest" scholarship—whether the term is mentioned in the scholarship to hand or not, these texts concentrate on the failure of the West against Islam.

There is a whole slew of The West and the Rest texts in print. Here are just two Google lists.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=The+West+and+the+Rest&btnG=Google+Search
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=The+West+and+the+Rest+of+Us&btnG=Google+Search

Chinweizu's work is, indeed, a comprehensive example of factor analysis. Whether implemented in the physical or mathematical or psychological or sociological sciences, factor analysis reduces the plethora of variables under observation and discussion by grouping and then analyzing these variables down to the most overarching category or factor. What Chinweizu has published on this web site certainly amounts to being very excellent examples of factor analysis in the social sciences, particularly on the clash of civilizations between the West and the Rest.

This West and the Rest scholarship—not necessarily Chinweizu's, I hasten to add—is usually framed as The West and the Rest Against Us. The rest here are the Arab or Islamic lands. Roger Scruton's work falls into this frame:

ROGER SCRUTON
http://www.morec.com/scruton/ [VIDEO LECTURE]
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-scruton092302.asp

Chinweizu's scholarship, I believe, analyzes the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial criminality of Africans against their own people and sets this criminality up side by side with that of the West in equal weight and measure. He points out the failure in both our houses. He does not blame. He shows where and how we have all failed. That said, if readers wishes to use this scholarship to place blame where blame may need to be placed, these readers need to reveal what end they have in mind. We already know that the goal or end of most of the The West and Rest scholars is to privilege Christianity over Islam, the West over the Rest.

I would also suggest that Chinweizu could be more forthcoming and reveal his underlying end in his scholarship. What motivates him to do this scholarship and not some other kind? What end does he want to accomplish? Surely, his aim is not only "objective scientific scholarship." We have known far too long now that such a motivation driving our scholarship is a myth. Everything has subconscious as well as conscious slant.

A BUDDHIST ANALYSIS OF FAILURE (BLAME/FACTOR) ANALYSIS http://www.bpf.org/tsangha/loy-westrest.html

—Mackie

One More Thing, for now, on George Sodini and woman-killers who then commit suicide

It's a shame these men don't have what I'll term "Male Misogynist Murderer's Dyslexia" (MMMD) whereby they shoot and kill themselves first, and then... do nothing else to harm anyone.

To all men who plan to kill women, please kill yourselves first.

Thanks.
END OF POST.

Woman-Killing, Media, and How We Report Misogyny

[this disturbing image is the even more disturbing avatar for a 21 year old straight man, who calls himself "Misogynist". For more on him, see here]

This post exists, in part, to honor the tragic loss of humanity of three women who were recently assassinated by a misogynist murderer:

Betsy Gannon, age 49;

Heidi Overmier, age 46; and

Jody Billingsley, age 37.

There are nine other women to whom I offer prayers and best wishes for their healing:

Ashley Ferragonio, 23, seriously injured;

Gretchen Lewis, 26, critically injured;

Heather Sherba, 22, seriously injured;

Jackquilyne Gallagher, 25, seriously injured;

Lisa Fleeher, 27, critically injury;

Mary Primis, 26, critically injured;

Melinda Williams, 22, seriously injured;

Srimeenakish Sankar, 31, seriously injured; and

Stephanie Latusick, 33, treated and released Tuesday night.

For more about these women, please click here. And note the overt sexism and heterosexism that informs how some the women are described. If one or more is lesbian, would we know? The reports seem obsessed in telling us all about these women's connections to men. One of the women, Jody Billingsley, is shown in a photo in which she appears to be sitting close by another woman, who is partially cropped out. We are given the following information about her: 37, Mt. Lebanon, deceased. Single. Master's in physical therapy. Worked as sales representative for Medtronic. Enjoyed gardening, sports. "She was a beautiful girl, very sweet, very nice, very friendly," neighbor John Williams said.

And if she weren't beautiful, sweet, and nice, and if she weren't friendly, would her death be any less tragic?

It is no accident that the dominant news media want us to know the extent to which the three murdered women, and the nine other women injured by the white heterosexual male woman-killer George Sodini, 48, were partnered with men or were, or would soon be, mothers. So we learn right away that one of women was "a newlywed" (I presume wed to a man) and one of the surviving women, the instructor of the Latin Dance class, was "pregnant": Mary Primis, pregnant fitness trainer, shot once in each shoulder. Being treated for injuries at hospital. Unborn child survived.

I get the sense that if Ms. Primus had survived but not the fetus, this would be more tragic than if the fetus survived and Ms. Primus did not. Is it not "crucial" here to know how the woman is doing? Can the news of her pregnancy remain none of our business? Will the news of a woman having recently married a man ever be irrelevant in a report about a group of women being shot in the dark, by a man--some to death? Why aren't women's lives valued as human lives, on their own, independently of whether or not they were married to men, or had children, or were pregnant? Or "a beautiful girl". Or sweet. Or nice.

In mass misogynist media, a woman gains human status and worth by being in relationship with men, and by mothering "men's" children. Hence the hatred directed at single mothers, especially if of color, at women who do not bear children through sex with a man, such as Nadia Suleman, and at lesbians who are partnered and parenting their children with women.

On to other matters related to this horror.

CNN reports: "He felt lonely, said he hadn't had a girlfriend since 1984. He said his father didn't love him. And he detailed plans to kill young women."

As if these follow in some logical sequence. Given this information, why didn't he show up at a gathering of fathers, turn off the lights, and let bullets fly? Because women are supposed to be the targets of men's wrath or loneliness?

What follows is part of a news report about the contents of his diary:

The December 22 entry says: "Time is moving along. Planned to have this done already. I will just keep a running log here as time passes. Many of the young girls here look so beautiful as to not be human, very edible. After joining this gym, started lifting weights and like it."

Two days later came an entry about loneliness.

"Moving into Christmas again. No girlfriend since 1984, last Christmas with Pam was in 1983. Who knows why. I am not ugly or too weird. No sex since July 1990 either (I was 29)."

By December 26, the writer seems to have picked a date. "I will shoot for Tuesday, January 6, 2009, at maybe 8:15. I have list of to-do items to make."

In an entry dated January 5, he laments, "Every evening I am alone, and then go to bed alone. ... Why should I continue another 20+ years alone? I will just work, come home, eat, maybe do something, then go to bed (alone) for the next day of the same thing. This is the Auschwitz Syndrome, to be in serious pain for so long one thinks it is normal. I cannot wait for tomorrow!"

Then he loses his nerve.

"It is 8:45PM," reads an entry dated January 6. "I chickened out! [Expletive] I brought the loaded guns, everything. Hell!"

What is in bold was made so by me. To my knowledge Auschwitz Syndrome was not typified by a male concentration camp survivor going out and killing women due to his emotional and physical pain. And apparently his pain wasn't normalised sufficiently. He was well aware of it, focused on it quite intensely, and used it as a terrible excuse to execute a killing spree against "girls so beautiful as to not be human, very edible." Given that horrendous understanding of their humanity he wasn't, in his view, killing anyone; he was merely fixing his dinner. Too bad for them he wasn't vegetarian. The question remains, why didn't anyone stop him? How much information do men need to know about a man who is going to kill women before we prevent it from happening?

Apparently, there is no reasonable answer to this question. He can proclaim his plans and still only be seen as harmlessly expressing himself. As we know, men who threaten to kill women and have restraining orders placed against them do find and kill the women they wish to kill. As we know, men's ways of expressing their feelings for women often result in women being injured and killed. Clearly, men's right to express their feelings about and to women is not abridged or "repressed" in our patriarchal society, it is revered and protected.

If you think "protected" is too strong a term, note this, by a police officer:

George Sodini "had a lot of hatred, he was hell-bent on committing this act, and nothing was going to stop him," Allegheny County police Superintendent Charles Moffatt said at a news conference Wednesday. (Source: here.)

[image of Officer Moffatt is from here]

So even when a man tells the world he's planning on killing women "nothing was going to stop him"?!? What about you, officer? Isn't that your job? (Or is just harassing people of color?)

Take note of this particular murderer's stated intentions. (More detailed portions of his online diary can be read but be warned: this is utterly disturbing.) There and elsewhere we are reminded that this regular misogynist was "a lonely man", in "despair"; he was a man who hadn't had much heterosex in his life--according to Nightline's report, a man who was not asked out on dates by women. This probably describes many men, and what we are being told is that one way for such men to act is to become a mass killer of women. (If, by preventing radical feminist women from speaking on the air, we are given no other explanations for how it is that he came to be a woman-killer, other than this inadequate psychological sketch, what other conclusion are we supposed to arrive at?) He was especially well-armed with four guns. Does the number of guns a man carries reflect his level of despair? I wish the media would spare us all this patriarchy-denying psychologising.

For millennia, men, without any systematic interference from other men, have chosen to misogynistically and in many racist ways express their feelings of hurt and upset--or boredom, or loneliness, or need for pornographised sexual gratification, or out of a inhumanely self-serving wish to control, dominate, humiliate, subordinate women. Male supremacist media claim that there's some inevitable connection between women not paying enough attention to men and those men retaliating with violence against women; this histerical hypothesis, mired in the protection of patriarchal imperatives, is not new. But it remains dangerous. It is wrong information about why men harm women. Every man I know has been hurt in the context of intimate relationships with women (and, um, men).

Even the media is into showing us how heart-broken men can be. In the latest run of "The Bachelorette" the nice guy who is told he's not the one reflects on his heart-break and sorrow:

"It's the day of the final rose ceremony and we're a bundle of nerves, just like Jillian. Our heart sinks a little when we see that Kiptyn's limo is the first to arrive. It's never easy to let a great guy go but Jillian manages it with class. Kiptyn is not happy to hear that she's fallen in love with someone else, but as he exits, he's glad he put himself out there and told her how he felt."

In the follow-up show, we ought to note that Kiptyn didn't come back armed with weaponry with which to kill her and the man she did chose to be with. He did return, at the producers request (or mandate), and tell her that he's glad she is happy, even though the experience was deeply painful for him. See men, our violence against women is not biological or inevitable; it is willful, not adequately discouraged, not opposed en masse by men, and is, to the contrary, overwhelmingly and systematically supported.

Consider the following all-too-typical story by one woman about her experience with a man she doesn't know, on the street. It is a comment by a woman who goes by the name sojourner truth, and is located here, on the blog, Celie's Revenge:

I honestly believe that women in urban areas, particularly Black women in urban areas, should daily document the same race sex harassment that we have to endure daily in case people think that we are being 'hysterical' or exaggerating. I am seriously considering carrying a hidden camera and microphone and using the footage in an art installation project.

I was walking down the street again today in my urban, gentrification-resistant 'hood. Again, walking with a clear purpose, blinders on, earplugs in, going about my business, covered up much more than I wanted to be on a muggy, humid, late spring day.

At crosswalks, I am constantly scanning ahead to navigate which side of the street has more people, to make sure that no just released parolee or sex offender ex con who may happen to be watching my movement does not take my choice to simply WALK down the fucking sidewalk as an opportunity to stalk, harass, other otherwise menace me without witnesses. As I am doing this, waiting for the light to change, who do I spy? This same "bruuuutha" who, just a few days ago, questioned my sanity and sobriety for having the unmitigated GALL to have ignored his attempts to 'holla' at me as I attempted to walk down the street. He saw me and yelled, "Ay, ay". I ignored his obnoxious lack of home training and continued to wait for the light. My attempts to ignore him spur him on to further engage me. I have no idea why he insists on continuing this masochistic game of being obviously and painfully ignored by me in spite of his constant bellowing, perhaps in his pea sized brain, I am being a 'challenge' and playing hard to get, so of course, he ratchets up his efforts to get my attention, this time whistling and crooking his ashy finger at me as if I am his errant dog run astray. Yet again, I continue to ignore him. He crosses the street and walks alongside me, looking at me, then says, "It seems like we are having a communication problem". I do not respond, pretending to be mute and deaf as he walks alongside me, wanting to shout, "No, mutherfucker, WE do not have a 'communication problem', YOU have a self-entitlement and boundaries problem!"

Of course, I continue on my way and he FINALLY left me alone, probably because more people were gathering on the sidewalk, and he didn't want any witnesses to his harassment and sidewalk stalker bullshit.

I got to thinking, who are these males, and who taught them to think that this shit is ok?

I believe the answer to who teaches men to think that this shit is ok is other men, not women. And society-at-large, including its media, teaches men how to operate oppressively inside white heteromale supremacist systems of domination and entitlement.

A heterosexual woman I once knew for years in a professional context left her boyfriend; she broke up with him. After that, armed with a loaded gun, he came back to her rural home where she lived alone and killed her. He did this why? Because she did not wish to be with him any more? Because he was "in pain"? Because he "felt rejected"? If that's your answer, you're not paying attention to how society works against women. Clearly nursing his grief alone or with male friends wasn't sufficient; and in his social world it may not even have been a viable option. But he terrorised and murdered her not because he was ill-equipped to handle his pain. He had to remove her from his world, a man's world, which is the world. He did it because he learned from other woman-killers that murdering your ex-girlfriend is doable. He did it because there were no men to stop him from doing it. He did it because he knew how and where to have access to her. He did it because he had the means to do it.

Over two decades ago, a self-defined antifeminist walked into a college in Montreal and massacred many women, for being women. At that time, news coverage focused on how he must be "mad" (meaning insane, not angry), and that such a thing was inconceivable. In a society in which men kill and injure women by the minute, how can such an act be perceived as inconceivable? He wasn't the first to conceptualise it, after all. Men's mass murder of women has a long, long history.

Weekly, daily, hourly, minute by minute, women are violated and killed "by the men who love them" or the men who don't love them any more, or the men who don't know them at all. Men are taught to believe we should be endlessly appreciated and attended to by women, even women we don't know. Women are punished in ordinary and heinous ways by men in society, for being women who are human, with wills, with senses of self and personal agendas that are not wrapped neatly around men; women are punished if and when they do not behave the way one man or many men demand that they behave. (And even then.) Harassment is seen by men as appropriate if a woman he doesn't know doesn't respond to his hello (or whatever other derogatory four- or five-letter words he uses to open up lines of communication).

Rape is the a gendered collective punishment men routinely enforce directly on women for disobeying a cardinal patriarchal law: "You (woman, women) must want to be socially and sexually subservient to me (man, men) always, at any time of day or night. But regardless of your (any woman's) wishes, you will be accessible to me(n)." The gross predatory video voyeurism targeting ESPN broadcaster, Erin Andrews is not surprising, while it is horrifying. Gross (meaning here, both on a large scale, and egregious) predatory video and digital camera voyeurism/violation/victimisation is now normal. It relatively innocuous terms like "up-skirting". Websites, which get millions of hits, are dedicated to providing men with images from other men who have taken photos of women's bodies by positioning their cell phones or video cameras in ways that women don't know they are being physically and psychically violated.

The continued murder of women by men is likely--but not inevitable outside of a patriarchal context--in a society that, in so many ways, subordinates women to men's wills and wishes. When the subordination, the exploitation, the degradation of women by men is routinely called "just the way things are" we can be sure there's not likely to be a mass revolt against the status quo. What's the point of organising resistance to a turbulent sea? You accept fate or get out of the way. But for women, there is no where to go where they are "out of the way". And when battered, raped, and pimped women leave patriarchally possessive men to try and find that place, far too often they are hunted down and killed for it.

This particular murder of three women and maiming of nine is only the most currently media-reported story of such misogynist violence.

For more information on this story and specifically on Sodini's expressed hatred of women, see this video report, this webpage, and also this one. And please keep in mind, this is but the latest story of a normal man whose normal hate was expressed in a variety of ways. One way was him "spraying" (the media's terminology) bullets in a room at exercising women. However much exercise women do, women cannot, quite apparently, exercise their unofficial right to not be harmed by men.

There is much more to note in this latest crime and how it has been reported. For now, I'll mention one portion of a television news report. (It is linked to above, but to make things less complicated, I'll re-link to it. The relevant part is "-3:40" into the video report. In it, a sweet white woman in a lime green t-shirt who appears to be a neighbor, says with regret, "I never knew that he was that bad off or I would have invited him over more, you know, maybe to have coffee or to have a picnic, or something." My first reaction to hearing her say this was to be very frightened for her. When one hears this, one might temporarily forget how powerful the misogynistic cultural mandate is for women to never treat men harshly or unkindly; to never ignore or refuse a man's offer of contact; that men's pain is women's responsibility; that it is women's job to ease the hurt and appease the anger of men. So when one hears a woman says out loud what men want and expect women to do silently, we might remark, "Is she nuts?!" But let's not forget: In the patriarchal media and beyond it the woman-killing man (a term I prefer to the more romantised one used ubiquitously in the dominant media: "gunman") is always humanised well beyond the level of humanity he demonstrates in becoming a notorious public figure. We are all asked to withhold judgment--news reports must tell us what he allegedly did. We are allowed to offer pity or sorrow for this "lonely man", for this misogynistic mass murderer who didn't get asked out on enough dates by women. We are inundated with messages that the real victim here was the a poor dear heterosexual white man who was in such profound emotional pain that, well, he just had to plan for a long time how he was going to obtain guns and kill lots of women. Does the media care about the pain women are in because of all-too-typical woman-hating assholes like this guy? Apparently not so much.

To answer Catharine A. MacKinnon's politically significant while rhetorical question: "No; according to patriarchal men, women are not human."

A note to the fortunately dead George Sodini, who also expressed his sentiments this way: "Women just don't like me. There are 30 million desirable women in the US (my estimate) and I cannot find one".

Wrong, George. YOU didn't like women. And whether you found them desirable has nothing to do with whether they would or should find you desirable. Women not giving you the time of day is not the same thing as you not being liked, fuckhead. I don't like you, for example. And I wish you had killed yourself, and no one else, years ago. Before your final atrocious actions most women couldn't care less about you. And that's exactly as it should have been and should remain, you despicable self-absorbed prick. May you burn in hell.

Healthy Communication and Mutual Respect: A Rare Practice of Equality in Sadistic Patriarchies

[image is from here]

What immediately follows is from the book Love and Pornography (2009). (See the previous post for more.)

A few months after arriving in California, and not long after I'd had my realization about the pervasiveness of porn, I invited a local NVC [non-violent communication] teacher to my home to tell me what training was available locally. As I've experienced with most people I meet in the NVC world, I felt safe and comfortable talking with him about what was going on in my life. When I brought up my angst about Garry's porn, he listened empathically, which helped settle my anxieties some.

Then I asked, "Why do so many people, including Garry, look at porn?"

"Well," he replied, "looking at porn is just a strategy for meeting needs, so if you can identify the needs he is meeting with it, you will have your answer. For example, most people strive to get money, but it's not the actual pieces of paper they're after, it's what money gives them. So money is the strategy to meet the need. For some, the need is purely survival: it's a way to put a roof over their heads and food in their mouths. For others, it's a way to get the respect or acceptance they want. The same goes for pornography -- people are after something when they look at it."

[Julian's note: His explanation for why men look at pornography, or procure women, is woefully inadequate in my view and patriarchally by-passes the whole issue of how it is that men set up society so that we have so much access to women's bodies. But he never said he was a profeminist and he does have valuable insights to offer her.]

I was starting to get it, and I was really curious now. "Got any ideas on what it might be that Garry is after?"

"I don't know about his motives specifically, and I think it's probably different for different people. But some people might want relief from the complications of a relationship, and they still get to feel the aliveness that comes from sexual energy."

[Julian's note: This completely fails to explain why it is men, disproportionately, who seek out images of raped, molested, incested, and economically exploited women to obtain "uncomplicated" sexual pleasure and relief; how is it that a man, any man, feels relief and pleasure when viewing images of human beings turned into sexxx-things, through many forms of covert and overt coercion and violence?]

We were quiet for a while and then he added, "But that doesn't mean porn is meeting all of Garry's needs. Often, a person will do something to try and feel better in one part of their life that has consequences for other parts of it. And then there is your side of things."

"What do you mean, my side of things?" I asked.

"Well," he said, "your pain is telling you that there are some needs that are not being met for you when he looks at porn. If you can see those needs clearly, it will give you a greater understanding of what is so important to you."

I was hanging onto his every word. This was what I had spent weeks trawling the internet for but couldn't find: a way to understand what might be going on for the both of us. With these simple statements, I found what I was looking for and the door barring peace and understanding sprung open [...]

It would take a while for Garry and me to understand what this teacher meant [...], and longer yet before we could find ways to [consistently live in this approach to communication]. This book is the story of how our insight evolved--and how we ultimately created the love we had always wanted.

* * *

From the bits of the book I've read so far, there is a clear commitment on the part of Victoria and Garry to struggle together to work towards greater intimacy and healthier communication built on the values of honesty, compassion, and empathy.

It is rare, in my experience, that couples and friends know how to communicate with one another with mutual compassion, especially when both people are feeling psychologically defensive or emotionally threatened in some way. At those times in particular, caring communication tends to break down, no longer flowing in a constructive way that allows each person to feel genuinely heard and understood.

Victoria Prater's book, Love and Pornography gives me a deep experience of what that sort of communication sounds like and feels like in action. It is, to say the least, refreshing.

In this regard alone, I find this book to be both solidly feminist and activist on the interpersonal level, and now, with the book's publication, on the social level.

I come to relationships with various levels of openness, wariness, distrust, curiosity, and longing. But I am not especially good at identifying what I am needing, in part because I grew up in a family where me identifying my needs, let alone expressing them, did not seem to be welcomed. Or, at least, that was my experience of my family; others' needs seemed to take priority. Additionally, due to various forms of trauma, I had learned to dissociate from my body and to partition feelings, putting some away to be felt at a later date. Often it takes days for me to know all of how I feel about something that has happened that caused some level of dissociation. (And I know this is not uncommon.)

Additionally, though, white and male supremacist socialisation allows white men to be oblivious to a lot of what is happening in the world, including the world of women and girls around them. Not only are boys are shamed by other boys and men for expressing vulnerable feelings, we are simultaneously encouraged to pride ourselves on being tough, on not feeling the hurt that comes from living life. For example, we are told by grade school sports coaches (and also in college, if we get that far) to shake off pain, to push through it. I can't tell you how many times I've heard men in boys' lives tell them to "be a man" when the child gets hurt and starts crying. It's disgusting. I despised male team sports because of this, seeing it as utterly inhumane. This enforced lack of self-care, and learned callous disregard for the human who is hurting, is directly related to being able to inflict pain on others, including, horrifically, for fun or a sexual thrill. Various combinations of sadism and self-unawareness are hallmarks of men's treatment of others, historically and currently. Society, in so many ways, teaches boys to be hurtful to others as badge of honor, as a route to status-among-men. Those who enlist in the military and go abroad to slaughter people are frequently called heroes, particularly when they die. To say that patriarchy is a death-worshiping form of civilisation is an understatement.

I remember one time a male child I babysat was with his mother and the man she had chosen as a romantic partner. Thank god it didn't last between them; he was such a jerk in so many ways, in my view and also, not soon enough, in hers. The boy, around eleven, had slipped on a rug and landed against an active wood stove, burning his forearm badly. He cried in obvious pain. Soon this adult male jerk was around him, verbally encouraging him to be tough and not cry. I was furious. I think I intervened, saying "He doesn't have to be tough; he just got badly burned!" but it may be something I only said in my head. I lost all respect for him then, as did the boy and his mother.

As I read Love and Pornography my heart is warmed by the heterosexual couple's commitment to caring communication that is not just aimed in one direction--from her to him.

The warmth cools on occasion. I do have issues with Garry; so far, he doesn't name or take responsibility for his male supremacist privileges. Seeing how that lack of naming and irresponsibility impacts her negatively makes me angry. I get that obliviousness comes with privilege. But, often, if not always, there's a level of willful (self-serving) ignorance that is usually present in the privileged as well. I'm curious to see what he is willing to "get" and hope he does his homework, so the humanisation of a man doesn't fall on the shoulders, once again, of a woman.
END OF POST.