Saturday, January 5, 2019

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE - This Is Everything That Is Wrong With Mainstream Feminism

This is excellent; Cailtlin Johnstone is spot on here about feminism, I thought. Jordon Peterson had a point about the  women's role in society being undervalued, but he comes from a patriarchal point of view, where Caitlin Johnstone's view is slightly different, and much better. Yes, alpha women aggressively competing with alpha men in the market place isn't my idea of equality for women.

This article is so good I didn't know what bits to leave out, so I've put everything in.


Outlets like MSNBC and Politico have been excitedly running headlines titled "The military-industrial complex is now run by women" and "How women took over the military-industrial complex". Apparently four of America's five top defense contractors are now women, whose names I will not bother to learn or report on because I do not care.
These headlines are being derided by skeptics of the establishment mindset for the cartoonish self-parody of the corporate liberal mindset that they so clearly are, and rightly so. Pretty much everything in American mainstream liberalism ultimately boils down to advancing mass murder, exploitation and ecocide for profit while waving a "yay diversity" banner so that the NPR crowd can feel good about themselves while signing off on it. But the fact that these stories exist and have an audience can also be blamed more specifically on the failures of mainstream feminism.
A lot of men (and the occasional cultishly servile woman) like to bitch about the problem with modern feminism as though it is something that hurts men, threatens men, demonizes men, or robs men of their place in society or anything else they feel entitled to. This is all dopey nonsense which amounts to nothing other than a childish temper tantrum over men losing control over women that they never should have had in the first place; it's people whining about losing their slaves. That imaginary piffle is not what is wrong with mainstream feminism. What is wrong with mainstream feminism is exemplified perfectly in a mass media parade celebrating the rise of women to the top of the most depraved industry on earth.
The problem that true feminism seeks to address is not that there aren't enough women at the top of the corporate ladder, or that Americans refused to elect a woman to do the bombing, exploiting and oppressing in 2016. The problem has always been that we're trying to value women with a value system created by a few very powerful men. By leaving in place the value system created by patriarchy (i.e. capitalism), we are now valuing women but only for their ability to play men's games. Nobody has ever become a billionaire by being a mother, even the very best mother in the world, and nobody ever will because capitalism was designed by men, for men, to value men's qualities. This has created a species-threatening imbalance because inequality is baked in to the system. When men reluctantly allowed women out of their house-shaped cages in the sixties, they did so on the condition that they would not change a thing about themselves. Women could play, but it was the women who had to change. As usual.
It's interesting to go back to seminal texts like Germaine Greer's "The Female Eunuch" and see how much time feminists spent back then thinking about how women could be paid for domestic and child-rearing work. Fifty years ago, feminists of the time could easily see how financial abuse runs rampant through marriages because women don't get paid for the majority of their work. They could see how if women were to ever be truly free, that had to be fixed. If you're not getting paid, then you're not able to leave, and if you can't leave, you're a slave. Despite all of feminism's gains, today if you dare suggest that women be paid for bearing children, you will be jeered at. It was decided somewhere along the line that, fine, you can be a fake man if you want to, but don't expect us to value YOU. Men refused to value women's work, which is why most of it is still essentially slavery. And that was a crucial, planet-threatening mistake.
By refusing to value women and what skills they naturally bring, humanity continued to not value the meta work of the feminine. We continued to not value the health of our environment, the health of our social cohesion, the mental health of each other. By refusing to place a hard and fast value on cleaning, healing, networking, redistributing goods, disappearing problems, restoring, reusing, collaboration, happiness and health, we are strengthening all their opposites.
Many men will knee-jerk argue that they too are slaves to the corporatocracy, and that's true. That's what you get when you don't change a valuing system that was created by slave-owners to distract their slaves from killing them and to keep them working anyway. That's what you get when you insist everyone change to suit a system that was created by power to keep power in place. We laugh about how indigenous people were fooled into handing over vast swathes of their land for handfuls of shiny shells, while we hand over our labor, our land, our rights and our freedoms for paper rectangles, today.
True feminism doesn't hold that the world would be better off if women ran things; shifting control from one gender to the other would change very little as long as the current valuing system remains in place. True feminism holds that all of humanity needs to change its valuing system to one which rewards feminine work as much as masculine, instead of only rewarding women when they succeed at climbing the ladder of the patriarchal paradigm.
Women controlling the military-industrial complex is not feminism, it's toxic masculinity. It's the fruit of the sick valuing system that is blackening our air, poisoning our water, filling the oceans with plastic, bulldozing the rainforests, and marching us toward the brink of nuclear armageddon. True feminism means turning away from the toxic valuing system which elevates the most ambitious sociopaths and toward one which values empathy, collaboration, nurturing and peace instead.
Caitlin Johnstone

16 comments:

Kaivey said...

This is very feminine, Konrad. A lovely song.

Saint Etienne - You're In A Bad Way (Video)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OEDAGNYYa1o

Konrad said...

Very lovely indeed. I’ve never heard it before. I shall play it several more times. The band is from London, which shows that lovely things can emerge from not-so-lovely places. (The last time I was in London was 2005.)

Please don’t hesitate to ever recommend a song, because your tastes and mine are almost identical. (They may even be 100% identical.)

Incidentally I wish to clarify that I was only attacking feminism, not women. I love women. They are our other halves. Our beautiful halves. We are yin; they are yang. Neither can survive without the other. Two sides of the same coin.

For heterosexual males, there is nothing in the universe that is equal to women in beauty. Sunsets, full moons, and flowers are nice, but nothing compares to women. It’s a shame that so many women seek to destroy men.

Konrad said...

Excellent song.

Also pretty is “One Man In My Heart” (1995) by the Human League (from Sheffield UK)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWiVRpm7dm4&app=desktop

Kaivey said...

Yes, that's a good song, Konrad. I call it pop music, but I don't know if people would call it that, to them pop music is chart music. I like the simplistic prettiness. Sweet Talking Guy is fab.

This is one of Saint Etienne's best tracks from their first album, Fox Base Alpha. It could b 25 years old now. They were a very modern band when they first came out, slightly underground, alternative. It has lovely arrangements.

Saint Etienne - Nothing Can Stop Us (original video)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=87&v=bSuxnF8dOPU

Kaivey said...

Saint Etienne - People Get Real. Another one of my faves.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U4hfEY3I1cg

Konrad said...

Wow. That’s quite a group. I’ve never heard of them before. I very much like all three songs you recommended.

There’s something about their music (some of their songs anyway) that is vaguely “sixties”-ish. The band says this is intentional.

Their music would be great for use in films.

I admire how they’re not afraid to do songs that are simply pretty. Many groups fear they won’t be taken seriously unless their music is ugly and offensive.

Here’s kind of a slow dreamy song [if you haven’t heard it]. The singer in the video I once met in California, but I didn’t know she had done this song until well after I met her. “Fade Into You” (1994) by Mazzy Star

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImKY6TZEyrI&app=desktop

Kaivey said...

That's a lovely song. Do you know, Konrad, I love electronic music and bands that use a lot of electronics, but one of my favorite instruments is the acoustic guitar.

I don't really have much more like Saint Etienne, the Magnetic Fields, and the Future Bible Heroes, which is a shame, as they are so unique, but now I've heard Fade Into You, there might be more we can share.

Robyn Hitchcock is one of my favourite artists, in fact, with the above, these are my favourite bands.

Some people don't get on with Robyn's voice; he's middle class but when he sings he's half cockney - working class, london. Surprisingly, the Americans loved him, but he wasn't big in Britain. Everyone here was into stylish indie bands, like The Cure, and Robyn's music didn't fit in.

ROBYN HITCHCOCK AND THE EGYPTIANS - veins of the queen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQfFrPZXefI&app=desktop

Kaivey said...

One of my favorite Robyn tracks.

Robyn Hitchcock - Airscape (HQ)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FUgViZU2Pg&app=desktop

Kaivey said...

Another good one from Saint Etienne.

Saint Etienne - Mario's Cafe (music video)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=178&v=JZm31xMRp4A

Konrad said...

“Some people don't get on with Robyn's voice; he's middle class but when he sings he's half cockney - working class London. Surprisingly, the Americans loved him, but he wasn't big in Britain.” ~ Kaivey

Many English-speaking performers are more popular in foreign (English speaking) lands than in their own English-speaking nations. It’s the same with Spanish language singers. It’s probably the same with other languages too.

One time I was on a bus in Mexico, sitting beside a man who was a tourist from Spain. The man was quietly humming to a song that another passenger on the bus was playing on a radio. I spoke to him in Spanish.

ME: You like that song?

TOURIST FROM SPAIN: Yes, I like a lot of music from Mexico.

ME: That song and the singer are from Spain.

TOURIST FROM SPAIN: Really? Are you sure?

ME: Note the singer’s accent.

TOURIST FROM SPAIN: I guess you’re right. I never heard of him before I came here to Mexico.

Some of this has to do with the politics of the music industry. Corporate big-wigs in various nations decide which performers in those nations get exposure and promotion.

Speaking of Spain, Constance Demby is an American living in Spain. You might like this example of her music…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6nEt4XbYU8&app=desktop

Chris Spheeris is a Greek living in the USA. The song below is nice when he gets to the chorus part at 1:30.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfch8MqbZws&app=desktop

Konrad said...

.
@ Kaivey

I’m particularly fond of that song “Mario’s Café,” which is about the famous café in Kentish Town (Camden Borough, north central London).

A lot of songs have been written about that tiny café (it’s just a hole in the wall, maybe 8 feet wide) but I had never heard this song before. Very nice.

I listened to it several times. The video features clips from the 1967 movie “Smashing Time.” I don’t want to seem racist, but in that movie, positively everyone on the streets of London is white. Also I had forgotten how sexy those mini-skirts were.

I’m listening to “Mario’s Café” as I type this. Pretty song.

TRIVIA: The music video shows some gas holders, or “gasometers” in London: those giant tanks that used to hold gas for cooking and whatnot for the city. We had them in the USA too. Although the ones in Los Angeles were gigantic, and had stood for 70 years, no one in the city remembers when they were removed. (It was in the mid-1970s.)

My theory is this . . .

In our everyday lives we only pay enough attention to our physical surroundings as necessary to navigate through and around our surroundings. We ignore or filter out small details. Therefore we hardly notice when things are removed, and our memory of them is vague, even when the now-vanished items were huge like those gas holders. The exception is when we personally had an emotional experience while looking at the items. For example, we would remember those gas holders clearly if we had seen a murder committed at the base of one of them.

Not far from me had stood a giant water tower for decades. Again, no one in my neighborhood remembers when it was torn down.

Konrad said...

Regarding that video for “Mario’s Café,” I was reading that the movie “Smashing Time” was part of “Swinging London” (or the “Swinging Sixties”) in which many rural Britons moved to London in search of fun, fame, and fortune.

“Swinging London” included female models like Jean Shrimpton and Lesley Lawson (aka “Twiggy”). The music video shows those iconic BMC Minis driving around London. Famous movies included The Pleasure Girls (1965), The Knack ...and How to Get It (1965), Alfie (1966), Georgy Girl (1966), The Magic Christian (1969) and so on. The UK flag (“Union Jack”) became a popular design motif in both the UK and USA. Young people were excited and optimistic. London was “the most swinging city in the world.” The “Mod” subculture became a rage. Carnaby Street in Soho, and King's Road in Kensington, were the places to see and be seen. In those days, every American boy had the hots for Dianna Rigg (“Emma Peel” of the TV show The Avengers.)

If we could travel back to 1968, and we told the people of St. John’s Wood in London that ten years in the future a huge Islamic mosque would be built a quarter mile from Abbey Road studios, we would have been called crazy. Today there are 15 mosques in London alone.

Kaivey said...

Yes, you're right, Konrad, I love the old London and don't want to lose it, but I'm not a racist.

Three more really good songs from Saint Etienne. Archway People is so feminine and beautiful.

Archway People

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JXBE9Xpe2VU&list=PLWDq-kxJRHDSevK6Uma-dI-Kf8gEogmM1&index=14&t=0s

Kiss and Make Up

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw32-oDZ0kQ

Spring

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ydaY5VHdqvE

Kaivey said...

Those songs are beautiful, Konrad.

Konrad said...

My preferences in this order:

[1] Kiss and makeup

[2] Archway People

[3] Spring

Regarding the group Saint Etienne, I like Sarah Cracknell's relaxed way of singing. Too many singers try to show off their voices, and end up sounding screechy.

The pretty girl from College Youth (a Canadian group) sings in that relaxed fashion. The song below honors airline pilot Chesley Sullenberger's miraculous landing in New York's Hudson River with 155 passengers and none injured (15 Jan 2009).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cedWvuxwbc

Kaivey said...

That's very nice, Konrad. Yes, the modern way of singing is to bellow it out like an athletic performance. Very often this was was done to disguise the fact that there wasn't much of song there.

The best songs were written in the 60's and early 70's, but musicologists say it became difficult to write good songs after that as there are only so many ways you can put cords together. But Saint Etienne and Stephen Merrit, of the Magnetic Fields, seemed to a real talent for song writing. So does Robyn Hitchcock.

BTW, the two keyboard players in Saint Etienne, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs, are the song wwriteres, but they could hardly play the keyboard when they made their first Saint Etienne album. They relied on programming and simplistic keys instead, so it's even more remarkable that they were such good songwriters.