Polo, by Ralph Lifshitz? No. Ralph Lauren, with Oprah Winfrey, have well-understood the racist, anti-Semitic society they each grew up in

photo of Oprah Winfrey and Ralph Lauren is from here

Revised quite a bit in places, on 20 May 2011.

Judging from a recent Oprah Winfrey Show, Mr. Lauren and Ms. Winfrey both appear to desire to live at the top of this allegedly only-great society. And to the casual observer, they do. But neither will, let me tell you. Neither can, because neither person is white, male, and Christian. And only white het male Christians or Gentiles can be at the tippety-top in this misogynist, racist, anti-Semitic, heterosexist, and increasingly classist country of mine.

I'm so sick of white people--women and men--telling me how powerful Oprah is, as if she's nearly as powerful as the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, GW Bush, Bill Clinton, or, even, Arnold Schwarzenegger. She isn't. She has a place in dominant cultural media. That's it. That's power too. But consider the power to control, violate, and oppress other people's lives. Oprah can get books sold and can get people to watch a TV show. She doesn't control state or other government policies which really do harm vulnerable people. She doesn't have a military or police force she can unleash onto oppressed citizens. Those kinds of destructive, inhumane power are very valued in the US.

Oprah Winfrey doesn't have or exercise that kind of power. She has participated in creating dominant society's culture and has benefited from it, building a career all around it, figuring out how to have a very financially successful life on the white skeleton of CRAP's bloody body; but her life is not stained red with the Richest White Man's blood. She, unlike so many white het men, is not a war criminal, a serial rapist of women and girls living on US, Indigenous, or another country's land. She doesn't mass produce or compulsively consume images of raped and incested girls (or boys)--grown or not. And if she spoke out too much against racism, capitalism, and misogyny (I'm not concerned she'll start doing this, by the way), she'd be not so graciously removed from public life. Her corporate and financial supporters would stop having her back.

One of the most anti-status quo things I think she's done is to be so overtly pro-lesbian and pro-gay. She has also worked to keep adult male predators away from children, for a little while. There is also the example of her life, for so many people. There's the bootstraps myth, that her life participates in: she pulled herself out of poverty and a racistly and misogynistically abusive childhood to become an ultra-successful businessperson and celebrity in what is usually a White Het Man's World. She demonstrates how to have a lot of economic power but not abuse it horrendously. That's a very rare thing and there are, weekly, rich white het men who remind us how abusively some forms of power can be expressed, with no meaningful or class-level human rights accountability keeping them or the institutions in check; it's the actions with the institutional supports that make their normalised corruption possible. The white het men who commit these egregious crimes are not charged with exploiting the powers they, alone, possess. The power they possess is socially, generally, seen as "good". But it's anything but good.

White het Christian and Gentile men have the most dominant, institutionalised destructive power in my country, exercised exploitively without any class-level relief against all women, including against white women, but additionally destructively against the lives of women of color. White het Christian or WH Gentile men also oppress and destroy men of color, and potentially any person determined by het men to be of lesser value for being not masculine or manly enough--if male. Women cannot be masculine or feminine enough to avoid the atrocities and abuses men, as a class, misogynistically commit. Either way, along any cultural continuum, the femme woman and the stud or butch, the non-gender conforming or the gender variant woman will be punished somehow, usually in more than one way, by men. Lesbians, in particular, however the appear to het men, will be oppressed by het men, institutionally and socially (structurally) if not also personally.

Ralph's ability to abusively exploit and take lives depends on his willingness to use slave labor in the production of his carefully designed clothes--clothes designed to sell back to the United Rapes of Amerikkka, and to the capitalist world, an idea of itself that is white non-Jewish male supremacist to the core of its bloody being. It depends on whether and to what degrees he reinforces dominant cultural ideals of beauty, used against just about everyone but the ideals actively enforce and support rape against girls and women by portraying women as sexxx-things for men. This is dovetailed in a way that won't create peace or social justice for people of color.

photo of model whose "looks" could locate him in a neo-Nazi Aryan Youth movement is from here

As a white Jew, I've had occasions--many recently--to observe, among whites (Jewish and not), how there are hierarchies that don't get spoken about out loud any more. Suffice it to say blond people are valued more, Christian or just plain Gentile light-whites are valued more--even while some of them get to be tan. Anyone who has a Western European patriarchal "sir" name that isn't Jewish is valued even more. Ralph knew this very well. He chose "Lauren" as his name and "Polo" as his icon because it represented an economically and ethnically-specific class of humanity to US Americans that he was not born into. He cannot ever occupy it either. He can pretend to. He, like Oprah, can acquire many of the trappings of it. But if you believe there aren't many, many places across this country, many new versions of old-fashioned country clubs, polo clubs, golf clubs, fraternities, Lion's clubs, Mason's organisations, and other whiteboys' clubs--like that of white male priests, that won't let Ralph and Oprah in their doors and won't welcome them to be members, let alone leaders, you're living in a grand or deep level of denial. There are many places in the Christian/Gentile white world that will look with strange curiosity or suspicion upon anyone who is Jewish (or Muslim).

Oprah Winfrey visited Ralph Lauren on his Colorado estate. She was impressed--"wow"ed--clearly.  This level of being impressed reminded me that even among the multi-millionaires or billionaires in the world, there are social and cultural stratifications and degrees of material status.

From the interview I learned (from Oprah, not from Ralph) that he is the son of immigrant Russian Jews. ("Russian" being a term that was, in his childhood, used as a synonym for the whole of the USSR. His family is from Belarus, not what is now the country of Russia, however.) We also learned from this show, which introduced us to his spouse and children, that his wife of many years is blond (they do seem to have a lovely and very loving relationship). We also learned about the sexual orientation of at least of his grown children: a daughter and a son, are about to be heterosexually wed to their respective fiancée/fiancé. So we have the presentation of this almost ideal nuclear family, which exists on the throats of so many who will never get what they have.

I had a friend once who was also Jewish, white, very heterosexual while not especially homophobic. He was pro-feminist. He only chose to date non-Jewish white women. His last name had also been anglo-sized away from being identified too readily as "Jewish" European. His family holidayed in Telluride, Colorado, which is near where the Lauren land is located.

If you go to Colorado, or Utah, or Arizona, or any other state in the union, please pay attention to where and when there are places that won't allow anyone who is Black, Brown, Indigenous, Jewish, Muslim, Arab, or Indigenous. And pay attention to how many of those places value women and gay males as much as het men.

White, economically class-privileged, het men who complain about not having enough rights, as males, are so deeply in denial about all the structural, institutional power they have--including, of course, the power to rape, the power to assault, the power to control, the power to exclude, the power to sue, the power to imprison, the power to economically and sexually exploit other human beings, that it's no wonder they view feminists as a powerful enemy. They don't know the meaning of the word "enemy". White het Christian and Gentile men, in the U.S., have no enemies. They might have people who don't respect them, although not a lot. They might have people who feel appropriately disgusted by the entitlements, privileges, and forms of power they posses quite possessively. But that's not the same thing as having the power to oppress whole classes of people. At all.

The sooner white het men admitted that, the sooner we might be able to address the many forms of social injustice and inhumanity that rule this White Het Man's world. It's most powerful citizens won't even consider me to be a man, because I'm male and so stubbornly pro-feminist, so against sucking the intellectual dicks of white men, so opposed to the unjust and evil forms of structural power they so furiously and defiantly, and secretively and privately protect.

Ralph understood what any person wants in the US: status, power, respectability. In the US, wealth is a quick ride to all of those things. It won't get you to the tippety-top, unless you've got a few other culturally and ethnically specific things going for you which are not so easily gotten rid of once you have them--the stigma of racial, sexual, regional, religious, or economic inferiority.

To those who know cultural history--and believe me, Ralph is sure hoping you don't find this out--the religious and regional roots of the game of polo take us directly to Muslim Asia. The game itself comes from Central Asia, specifically the region now known as Iran, but has been played across many regions including South Asia and Northern Africa. It is a sport that was colonised by the White British. And it is this period of its history, and its location in the US as a white Christian-statused rich man's sport of leisure, that Ralph is referencing and exploiting.

Appropriation and colonisation is what white Christian westerners do so well. If you want to see a rather obnoxious, racist display of this, just note how, in Ralph Lauren's Colorado estate, he has many well-appointed living structures (also known as teepees), and has many items throughout that have been ripped off or stolen from the societies of people the White Man killed and are still killing here. It is a sign of racial and ethnic superiority to be able to display the artifacts of the societies you destroy. No where is this more evident than in upper class and wealth class white homes, built, every one of them, on criminally stolen and corruptly named White Man's land. But on with our history lesson. From Wikipedia *here*:

From Persia, in medieval times polo spread to the Byzantines (who called it tzykanion), and after the Muslim conquests to the Ayyubid and Mameluke dynasties of Egypt and the Levant, whose elites favored it above all other sports. Notable sultans such as Saladin and Baybars were known to play it and encourage it in their court. Polo sticks were features on the Mameluke precursor to modern day playing cards.

Later on Polo was passed from Persia to other parts of Asia including the Indian subcontinent and China, where it was very popular during the Tang Dynasty and frequently depicted in paintings and statues. Valuable for training cavalry, the game was played from Constantinople to Japan by the Middle Ages. Known in the East as the Game of Kings. The name polo is said to have been derived from the Tibetan word "pulu", meaning ball.

The modern game of polo, though formalized and popularized by the British, is derived from Manipur (now a state in India) who played the game known as 'Sagol Kangjei', 'Kanjai-bazee', or 'Pulu'. It was the anglicised form of the latter, referring to the wooden ball which was used, that was adopted by the sport in its slow spread to the west. The first polo club was established in the town of Silchar in Assam, India, in 1834.

The modern sport has had difficulty grappling with the traditional social and economic exclusivity associated with a game that is inevitably expensive when played at a serious level. Many polo players genuinely desire to broaden public participation in the sport, both as an end in itself and to increase the standard of play, while others value and seek to preserve the social and economic exclusivity of the sport.

If one searched the world over, you'd find few other sports less associated with being a European Jew than polo. The internalised and externalised anti-Semitism that is revealed by Ralph making that decision to whiten (franco-anglocize) his last name is evident enough, as is his need to escape his family's cultural "trappings". And I'm sure he's not hurting all that much, as he gazes across his land to the picturesque and glorious Colorado mountaintops in the distance. Not even Oprah possesses that view, although she has envied it over the years from just beyond his fenced in land, which she apparently has driven by many times. She envies what he has exactly the way any US American is supposed to; but most of us won't visit the outside, or inside, of his visually bordered backyard. How many other Black women, or any women of color, born into poverty do you suppose Ralph and his spouse and children have had as special guests there (and not as hired staff)?

In Ralph Lauren's logo there's no indication of the Muslim or Asian roots, or South American present, of the game of polo. Below, the iconic human figure atop the horse is off-white, just like the status of many white Jews in Amerikkka, who will never, ever control this not-so-great country of mine, despite what so many non-Jewish people around the world and within Amerikkka believe is going on. A Black Christian man and, hopefully, a Christian white woman, will be president before a Jewish woman or man of any color. Ralph's home isn't filled with Belarussian Jewish cultural artifacts for a reason. They wouldn't signify him as a "great" conquering, settler white man.

image is from here

A Slightly Belated Happy Chinese New Year (Feb. 3, 2011) to all who celebrate the holiday!!

image is from here

Wishing everyone a peaceful, joyous, prosperous new year! -- Julian

A Joyous Eid ul-Fitr, at the end of Ramadan, to all my blessed Muslim siblings

image is from here

A very Happy Eid Mubarak.

Niyamgiri, a test case for the defense of our forests and tribals: "we are simultaneously witnessing an ecocide, aquacide, culturecide eventually leading to silent genocide due to displacement." -- Usha Ramanathan

photo of Dr. Usha Ramanathan is from here

What follows is cross posted from *here*, at Navdanya, Dr. Vandana Shiva's blog.

Press Release On Policy Dialogue: Niyamgiri, a test case for the defense of our forests and tribals

Yesterday, 12th of August 2010 Research Foundation for Science Technology and Ecology and the Save Niyamgiri Movement joined hands to hold a policy dialogue “Niyamgiri: a test case for the defense of our forests and tribals”, at the Constitution Club in New Delhi to support the struggle of Niyamgiri, its forests and its people against Vedanta’s plans to mine its sacred mountain.

While on their way to the conference to narrate the atrocities witnessed in Niyamgiri by the hands of Vedanta, two of the Dongria Kondh leaders Lado Sikaka and Sana Sikaka were beaten and abducted by police officers in plain clothes, and only released after the intervention of Kalahandi MP

The two leaders were traveling to Delhi along with members of their community who were also to attend the policy dialogue. The following Dongria Kondh representatives were also supposed to attend, but as phones and car keys had been confiscated by the abductors, they were forced back to send the alarm to the kin.

Men:	Women:
Kalia Sikaka	Rinja Sikaka
Drinju Sikaka	Sinde Sikaka
Sima Sikaka	Pandra Kadraka
	Sundri Krusiki
	Minjadi Sikaka

This incident reinforces the message that Vedanta’s rule of terror in Niyamgiri must be put to an end now, a message that all eminent speakers at the conference laid out clearly and unequivocally. “Niyamgiri stands as a test case” says Dr Shiva, for “If we fail in Niyamgiri, we won’t be able to protect the rights of people and nature anywhere else”.

The policy dialogue’s two objectives were in fact putting forward a comprehensive strategy to support the Niyamgiri struggle, while also more broadly deepening the democratic processes of the country to ensure its laws are upheld. Kalahandi MP Bakt Charan Das reiterates that laws on paper are not translating into rights in practice, as despite the FRA and PESA the individual and community rights of tribals in Niyamgiri are not b eing recognized or respected. B.D. Sharma, one of the architects of PESA, validates this point by saying that the provisions existing in the legal constitutional framework are not followed. For example the Gram Sabha, he goes on, is competent to manage its affairs and resources according to traditions and customs but the issue arises as the “top leadership doesn’t allow for people to be supreme”.

From a legal standpoint, Pinky Anand - Senior Advocate (SC) - and Sanjay Uphadyay –one of the framers of the Act - stress in fact that the issue is not one of absence of laws, but of lack of implementation, a point that was reiterated by most speakers. In reality, as T.K. Oommen, B.D. Sharma and Vandana Shiva remind us, the rights the tribal and forest dwelling communities are fighting for are rights to the Earth and its produce; they derive from Mother Earth and hence they are natural rights; they shouldn’t depend on an Act in the first place. Still, Sanjay Uphadyay reminds us how the rights are “already vested” and it is a duty of the State to respect them.

Much of the problem, the speakers conveyed, is that neither the Government, nor the urban public deeply understand the relationship that bonds the tribal and forest communities to their land and the environment. These communities have informally implemented the law of nature for centuries; as opposed to the law of loot, of greed, and corporate terror that is in place today.

Usha Ramanathan makes an important point by stressing that in cases like Niyamgiri, the Government itself is acting in violation of the Constitution and the law; we members of civil society should not question how the Government is using its powers; we should, practicing democracy, assert that it doesn’t have such powers in the first place! “The State” she says “has Constitutional obligations and does not have absolute powers”.

She goes on to say that much of the problem lies in our understanding of development and in the imposition of our urban paradigm to communities with a unique lifestyle. Eminent sociologist T.K. Oommen follows on this stating that while some displacement is perhaps inevitable, it is paramount to minimize it, and adequately compensate the displaced, after receiving their informed consent. Neither holds true in the case of Niyamgiri, where, he says, we are simultaneously witnessing an ecocide, aquacide, culturecide eventually leading to silent genocide due to displacement.

Unfortunately though, the approach followed by the Centre in forest and tribal areas has been one of “control” or “develop”, says Uphadyay. Questions of good governance or empowerment were never raised.

Rajya Sabha MP Mani Shankar Aiyas said: ‘The tribes need to feel empowered and free which is only possible when the centre involves them in the process of development.’ All the speakers agreed that the approach to be followed should be one of community empowerment: this stresses on the paramount essence of both the notion of common management of resources, and on the fact that these communities know what they want.

The Dongria Kondh through the voice of Lingraj reiterate that they are well aware of what they want: they do want development, but a sustainable one, that respects their traditions and customs. People have the right to refuse our urban industrial paradigm of development; if the process is leading to immiserization of locals, it can’t be called development, says Ramanathan.

Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh said tribals and other forest communities should be made stakeholders of their own development, and also part of the market economy the country has embraced. "The way forward in Niyamgiri” he said “is to make the forest dwellers owners of their own produce. The benefit of any capital investment is their inherent right."

Finally, all speakers agreed that in the immediate future, the efforts should concentrate on creating a comprehensive legal framework that addresses all issues thoroughly, in the place on the individual Acts currently in place; there is also need for a review of existing legislation to do away with all loopholes and inconsistencies that allow Vedanta and companies alike to carry on with their national loot.

In the words of Bakt Charan Das “We have to choose what is more important, the corporate leaders or millions of people in the countryside.

We must use mass agitation. We can assemble. We can go on hunger strike in Gandhiji’s way. This is how community rights must be brought to the country. We can decide. With this I conclude.”

What Most Christians Don't Want You to Know about Jesus: a Top Ten List

[image of poster is from here]

In this post I am bringing Jesus Home, from Those who Stole Him, 

Misunderstood and Misused Him to Promote Their Homophobic, Patriarchal, 

White Supremacist, and Corporate Capitalist Agendas of Atrocity.

It's time. Or past time. Perhaps it is centuries past time. Or perhaps someone ought to have had a good talking to with Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul, giving those Jewish men a heads up about how people who would come to call themselves "Christians" would almost completely misunderstand and misuse Jesus-the-person to promote their own patriarchal agendas and project their own needs for a Father-God who is also a Son.

A month or sometimes a week cannot go by without someone approaching me--a Jew who is neither atheist nor theist--with the idea that "You need Jesus". What they mean is "You need to believe in this cultish religion I've decided is The Truth because I've taken in the delusions and distortions human beings have spoken and written about Jesus and I MUST believe they are true--my faith in my cult depends on it." That's what they usually mean. Some are more good-hearted. Some approach me with a kind of condescending compassion that makes me want to vomit. Some with an arrogance that makes me want to spit in their faces.

Regardless of their reasons and anti-Jesus-while-"Christian" ambitions, they won't get away with it here at A.R.P. Jesus will be spoken about respectfully here as the Jewish person he was, not the Christian God he wasn't.

Let's begin with a few basic truthful facts, as opposed to the kind many Christians preach, promote, and proselytise.

Jews in the time and region of Jesus (while he walked the Earth) didn't tell history the way contemporary Western Christians often do--as a set of facts that are understood to have actually occurred in ways that are not open to interpretation and contradiction, discussion and disagreement.  

Christian Fundamentalism is a deeply and dangerously anti-Jesus phenomenon.


What most Christians don't want you to know about Jesus: a top ten list.

1. Jesus was not ever a Christian, nor did he ever advocate that anyone be a Christian.

2. Jesus was not THE son of G-d. He was, as all of us are and each of us is, a child of G-d if we're going with the metaphor of G-d as parent.

3. Jesus used metaphors to make his beliefs and experiences more comprehensible to his audience. Making G-d a "Father" was not something Jesus believed a "truth". He used the language as a device to convey deeper meaning to his listeners. Jesus was a Jew, and while Jews frequently defaulted to various patriarchal metaphors, any rabbi who has studied and experienced G-d, knows that G-d does not have a gender, a sex, or a patriarchal personality.

4. Jesus was not pro-capitalist, and anyone who honors and respects capitalism as a social good that should be made sacred or should be worshiped is behaving in a way that is anti-Jesus.

5. Jesus was not a white supremacist or a racist. Jesus was also not ever white. (Whiteness didn't exist when he lived, for one thing. And Jesus was Semitic, or what would now be called a person of color.) Anyone who believes Jesus was white and behaves as though whiteness is better than any other politically constructed and enforced racial identity is not behaving in accordance with the teachings of Jesus.

6. Jesus was not homophobic and was not an anti-gay or anti-lesbian bigot. He didn't speak on the subject but he did stand with the oppressed, the marginalised, and the socially ostracised and disempowered, the castigated and degraded, and not with the corrupt power-brokers of society. If you are homophobic, heterosexist, and anti-lesbian or anti-gay, you are behaving in a way that is anti-Jesus.

7. Jesus was not anti-woman . He was pro-woman; he held Mary Magdalene as his closest disciple, an equal to him, not beneath him. He never said she was a prostitute. A comma in the New Testament has been ignored, as Jesus, according to that biblical story listed people he encountered including Mary Magdalene and a prostitute. He stood with women enslaved in systems of prostitution, not in patriarchal, misogynistic judgment of them. If you are anti-woman, including against women who are trapped in systems of prostitution, you are behaving against the teachings of Jesus.

8. Jesus was not born from the womb of a woman who was "a virgin" if by "virgin" we mean a woman who had never had sexual intercourse. She may not have had sexual intercourse willingly: she may well have been raped. Joseph, quite possibly, was not his biological father but was a man who took care of Jesus' mother, Mary, after she was raped. Regardless, Jesus had a biological father, not a heavenly one. A sperm and an egg combined and Jesus was born, like every other human being on Earth. The notion of Mary the Mother being a "virgin" is a misread and mistranslation of a term that more accurately means "maiden" or very young woman.

9. Jesus was opposed to the worship of Man, of Mankind, of Men and of Patriarchal societies, particularly and outspokenly against the one he lived in that was governed and ruled by the Roman Empire, which, as all ought to know by now, was lethally anti-Jesus. The Roman Empire was coercive and corrupting of some of his people, the Jews. If your values and practices are pro-man-worshiping, believe in the man as the only appropriate head of household, or head of state, or if you are in any other ways pro-patriarchal, you are anti-Jesus.

10. Jesus was not resurrected in any way that is different than any other human being. In other words, he was not uniquely resurrected. The Resurrection spoken about in the New Testament is metaphorical, and a device to communicate something about our spiritual nature, not only Jesus'. He was not a kind of human being metaphysically different than others but he has been made into one who is metaphorically different. He was a human being, like me and like you, who noted that we are not just animals as "animals" were understood in that anti-Indigenist framework and culture: all beings are and all being is divine. All of Life is Divine. He welcomed people to know and experience this. If you believe Jesus was qualitatively different in his humanness; if you believe he was a fundamentally more metaphysical being than anyone else; if you believe he was "more spirit" than any Indigenous, Wiccan, Taoist, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindi, Jewish, agnostic, atheistic, or pagan person, you don't know Jesus.

Now spread THAT word.

Peace to us all, collectively, when we realise we are not entirely separate beings who need warfare, social hierarchies, rape, racism, and civilisation. When we join with revolutionary feminist women and revolutionary Indigenous warriors in the effort to radically transform all patriarchal and genocidal societies, we may begin to collectively know peace on Earth--if Earth survives what industrial and corporate patriarchal civilisation has done to it.

We may know peace, love, and joy in the mean time as well, in a way that is sometimes termed "individually" by those who may limit our being to the distortions of a kind of living-experience not promoted by Jesus. We may know peace, love, and joy by reminding our apparently individual selves who we really are: waves on the sea of non-separate Being that are simultaneously and paradoxically Many and One.

We may know peace, love, and joy when we accept and experience, against much Christian mis-teaching, that G-d, which is not male and is not a man; which doesn't live only in (as) the sky--which lives equally as Earth; which doesn't look down upon us as a patronising father might; which is not in us, or outside us, or above us, or beyond us.

G-d is not a being who is fixed in some sort of sacred portion of outer space. G-d is Being and Becoming. In this sense, G-d is not theistic and theists are wrong about G-d. G-d is non-theistic, not atheistic as that term is commonly used by that arrogant bunch who call themselves atheists.

G-d is us--all of us, and is all that is not us' G-d always has been and always will be becoming this in ways that our limited human minds register as paradoxical and perplexing.

G-d is not Giant Ego that cares one bit whether G-d is referred to as Jesus or "Christ" or Buddha or Krishna or Abraham, or "Allah" or "God" or "Great Spirit", or Goddess, or G-d or any other name that humans can speak or write. For G-d is authentically unspeakable and ultimately unknowable by humans who believe they are not part of all Being as a wave is part of the sea.

To promote one name for G-d, including the term G-d, or Christ, is to not understand AT ALL what Jesus was preaching about and experiencing. It is, rather, to be egotistical and arrogant, lost in one's own private being and ego while often pretending one is doing what Jesus spoke about as seeing and knowing G-d. Delusions about G-d, or about Jesus, or about other human beings, or other Life, will not serve us in our collective quest to find peace, love, and joy on and with Earth and its Biosphere, which is, metaphorically and not-so-metaphorically speaking, our parent.

There is no heavenly Father. There is "us" living in a nightmare of our own making, in part by not understanding what Jesus and Buddha and Indigenous Spiritual Guides were, are, and said.

Wake up from the nightmare. Now.

Know yourself as Being. Sit humbly in the knowledge that G-d is not absolutely or objectively knowable to you, and that you have no moral business going door to door or nation to nation to proclaim that you, and your people uniquely know what G-d is and wants better than any other people who know G-d or Buddha-nature, Goddess or Great Spirit.

Boobquake's Het Male Supremacist Seismic Aftershocks: be careful where you cyber-step

[image is from here. You can click on it to see the smaller text.]

It is so typical of white societies to discuss things like this ad nauseam, while millions of children and women die and suffer from marital or date rape, men beating up women, lack of clean water, or lack of health care, being bombed or raped by white country's leaders' coloniser-by-proxy soldiers, or due to the lack of so much that white men have, globally. It's so damned typical. Economic-social-political privilege does many things; making some human beings utterly unaware and callous to the suffering of others is high on the list, in my view.

Witness the sputtering and mutterings of Jacobus van Beverningk, following the utterly misogynist terminology of an "evolved" man named Jerry A. Coyne, who penned a book and, now a website, titled Why Evolution is True. How egotistically emphatic we whiteboys are about our truths!! Have you noticed?

What follows is from *here*. Warning, you are entering a zone where white men and all our privileges are fully engorged. Tread carefully. Or, rather, just stomp on anything that looks too egotistically engorged. First, the initial post by Jerry A. Coyne, who does, I'll admit, try and do something good here. And he does quote from a feminist blogger who does speak to the issues rather effectively. Too bad Jerry doesn't get the following:

-- That making fun of an Islamic Iranian cleric is oh-so-easy when you ignore the misogyny of your own culture's dominant faith traditions. (We can't have cultural self-reflection and accountability. No, no, no. That's not how white het male supremacy works AT ALL.) (Yes, there's plenty that's grossly misogynistic and loaded up with sexist double-standards that cleric Sedighi reportedly said. And I feel no need to protect him from criticism. My issue is this: white Christian-cultured men always find it very profitable to their egos and stature to put down men of color around the world, as if white Western men are god's gift to aetheistically and scientifically understood human life.

-- Or that using a term like "blag hag" isn't helpful to the cause of ending misogyny.

-- Or that putting down radical feminists as "priests" isn't funny either. As if radical feminists organised, ruled, and maintain a centuries old religious institution for the primary purpose or raping children and nuns. Oh, wait. He said "acolytes", not "altar boys". That means he's Anglican or Episcopalian. My bad.

As for Dworkin, other radical feminists, and myself lacking senses of humor. Hardly. He clearly hasn't read a damn thing Dworkin has written, or he'd get how funny she is, about the stupidity of white men's logic. (Funny. White men don't laugh about that.)

Here's a good one, boys:

Q: What's the quickest way to a man's heart?
A: Through his chest.

Misogynist white het doods, why aren't you laughing? Oh, right. Antifeminist men have no sense of humor. Moving on to Jerry's words of attempted wisdom:

Boobquake

Okay, we all know that Blag Hag (Jen McCreight) had the bright idea of “Boobquake,” a way to make fun of a Muslim cleric’s accusation that immodestly dressed females cause earthquakes.  Jen jokingly suggested a “scientific” experiment in which women would test this hypothesis by showing their breasts today on the internet and looking for an increase in seismic activity. (Actually, this isn’t really a test of the cleric’s idea, since he blamed earthquakes on the adultery attendant on display of boobage):

“Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes,” Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media.

Regardless, the idea has been taken up with approbation by some of my favorite bloggers, including P.Z., erv, and Russell Blackford.  How do I feel?

I can’t get behind it.

Call me humorless, call me a militant pro-feminist, call me a prude—call me what you want, but somehow the idea of women mocking religion by showing their breasts comes perilously close to making points through sexuality instead of through good arguments and brains. (Just imagine how tepid the response would be if, in the same cause, all of us male bloggers decided to show ourselves in jockstraps).  The predictably leering response of men, who of course have tendered enthusiastic thanks for the mammaries, just confirms this suspicion.

What’s worse is that some women who don’t want to participate in this affair have been derided as anti-sex.  Even Russell Blackford took this tack:

Unfortunately, there was a lot of 1980s pseudo-feminism that took a similar attitude to that of Christianity and Islam, problematising displays of female beauty and even expressing disgust with heterosexuality itself. The worst offender was the egregious Andrea Dworkin – who died relatively young back in 2005. In her case, good riddance. These pseudo-feminists merely use feminist-sounding language to rationalise the religion-based anti-sex morality into which they were socialised. But they lack the self-insight to understand that it’s what they’re doing.

Look, Russell, if you really think that male and female bodies are both beautiful, why do you suppose that this event is getting much more publicity than would a similar display of male skin? Do you think CNN would be all over the event if it was men who were showing their junk? Of course not—and you know why.
And do you really want to tar women who object to selling ideas with sex as acolytes of Andrea Dworkin?  That’s simply unfair.  Some women don’t want to bare their mammae, and NOT because they have a “religion based anti-sex morality”; they simply have good reason to think that in the long run such stunts will hinder women being taken seriously as thinkers and colleagues.

I have to agree with the take of Miranda Hale at Exquisite With Love,  who is an atheist and a feminist, but won’t be doffing her duds today:

The idea is fantastic and well-intentioned. It points out both the ridiculousness of the cleric’s claim and the despicable and harmful practice of blaming all sorts of horrible things (including sexual assault) on women.

However, the great majority of the responses to this effort have been anything but fantastic. Instead, it has inspired, primarily at its Facebook event page, many comments of the “show us your tits!” or “Dude, awesome, I’ll get to see some boob photos on Monday” variety. And, for some reason, women are complying. They’re posting photos of their cleavage and men are responding with “awesome boobs!”, etc. The Facebook event page has almost 200,000 “attendees” and the effort has received a great deal of media coverage. And that’s all well and good, but how many of these individuals are actually concerned with raising awareness of this issue? Very, very few, I’d say.

Sure, one can assert that the event has been unfairly “hijacked” by the men who are reacting in this way, but this response wasn’t hard to predict. And although the men making these types of comments are solely responsible for the attitudes expressed in them, why provide them with fodder? I understand that this is intended to be a lighthearted attempt to point out the ridiculousness and stupidity of the assertions made by the cleric, but that intention has been completely buried under a constant stream of “show us your tits” comments. . .

. . . Let’s dress however we want to, let’s be as modest or as immodest as we choose, and let’s use our sexuality however we see fit. It’s all about choice. If Boobquake is your kind of thing, then, by all means, enjoy it. But don’t stop there. Write about these issues. Raise consciousness about them. Speak out against the “show us your tits” reactions. And please don’t pretend that merely showing as much cleavage as possible is somehow making any kind of difference. It’s not.

If it doesn’t make a difference in promoting atheism and mocking faith, what good is it? It’s just Playboy on the internet.

UPDATE:  Ceiling Cat weighs in.

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Pretend it is April 1: New Law Proposed Across Europe: ALL SIGHTED MEN MUST KEEP THEIR EYES COVERED WHEN IN PUBLIC...

The above image juxtaposes men's condemnations of women East and West. Globally, women can't be determined BY MEN to be moral, fully human, or free no matter how much they wear or don't wear in public. [the image is from here]

 THIS JUST IN: An addendum to the new law: Sighted het men must ALSO keep their eyes covered in private, if any woman or girl in the household or community requests it.


If white het men care so much about women's human rights, that's something they could do to assist in preventing ALL women from being visually and otherwise harassed and raped. So, what do you say, fellas? Still concerned about Muslim women's human rights to be free from the restrictions of the burqa? Or do you just want visual access to the bodies of Muslim women in Europe? Why won't you support ALL women being free from YOUR gaze AND disgusting comments AND threats AND predatory violence? Let's see you get on that bandwagon, for women's human rights!

This post was fully inspired by a commenter at a recent post, on white euro men's calls to legally ban some Muslim women's traditional clothing from being worn in public allegedly FOR women's freedom FROM Muslim men. And since when have white men anywhere in the world ever, collectively, done anything other than rape, oppress, forcibly sterilise, and murder women of color? (And steal the community's children to raise them to be Christian.) For that post and inspirational comment, see *here*.

When White Euro Men Aren't Right: Don't Ban Burqas, Niqabs, or Hijabs!

[image of protesters to European bans on what Muslim women can wear is from here]

European push to ban burqas appalls Afghan women

By Sayed Salahuddin
Reuters
Friday, April 16, 2010; 7:21 AM

KABUL (Reuters) - A firm believer in women's rights, the only thing Afghan lawmaker Shinkai Karokhail finds as appalling as being forced to wear a burqa is a law banning it.

Karokhail is one of many Afghan women who see a double standard in efforts by some European nations to outlaw face veils and burqas -- a move they say restricts a Muslim woman's choice in countries that otherwise make a fuss about personal rights.

"Democratic countries should not become dictatorships and Muslim women should not be deprived from all kinds of opportunities. It should be their choice," said Karokhail.

"Otherwise, what is the difference between forcing women to wear a burqa and forcing them not to? It is discrimination."

France, which has the largest Muslim population in Europe, as well as Italy and Belgium are considering proposals to ban all-enveloping burqas and face veils called niqabs. Many in the West see them as a symbol of the subjugation of women.

In France, government and opposition lawmakers call burqas an affront to the country's secular traditions, though an advisory board has said a banning them may be unlawful.

In deeply conservative Afghanistan, the Taliban made wearing a burqa mandatory for all women during their five-year rule that ended with the U.S-led invasion in 2001. It is still widely worn in the Muslim country, especially in rural areas and the south.

Shukriya Ahmadi, a 35-year-old Afghan government employee, has ditched the burqa since the days of being forced to wear it during Taliban rule. Still, she has only scorn for Western governments seeking to outlaw them:

"This shows they use democracy, freedom of religion and human rights issues only when it suits their purposes," Ahmadi said.

PUNISH THE MEN
She suspects burqa legislation will only help a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan gain support from outraged Muslims and win recruits for their insurgency campaign against the Afghan government and U.S.-led NATO forces.

University student Farida, 20, is another Afghan woman who says the move smacks of a double standard.

"I have never worn a burqa and do not like it," she said. "But why would the West, which calls itself a supporter of democracy take such a decision? I am perplexed and sad."

Even one of Afghanistan's most outspoken and controversial women, former lawmaker Malalai Joya, is a staunch opponent of efforts to ban burqas or tight headscarves called hijabs.

She dislikes burqas, but wears it anyways as a cloak of protection from warlords she has been critical of in the past.

"As much as I am against imposing the hijab on women, I am also against its total ban. It should be regarded a personal matter of every human being and it should be up to women if they prefer to wear it or not," she told Reuters by email.

"It is against the very basic element of democracy to restrict a human being from wearing the clothes of his/her choice. These governments better punish those men who force women to wear hijab, but if any woman wears it out of her own wish, there should be no ban on it."

(Editing by Deepa Babington and Bill Tarrant)