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A Realistic Pessimist Speaks

In order to be enslaved or oppressed, you need a master group. This master group has control over the subservient group’s rights and freedoms and even the quality of their daily lives and what they believe, think and do. To achieve liberation from the master group, the enslaved have to plead, convince or fight the former. They need significant support from fellow members of their group. It is easiest to achieve freedom when some or all of the master group no longer see releasing the enslaved as threatening to the privilege to which they have become accustomed. It also helps to have the support of other enslaved groups, especially if it they can be convinced they are more ‘privileged’ than the group actively seeking release.

We’ve seen many enslaved groups throughout time released by master groups through pleading, convincing and/or fighting. In all cases, they have had strength in numbers among their own group, have been able to demonstrate that their release doesn’t pose a threat to the complacent powerful masters, and have had strong support from other desperate outcasts.

Some well-documented examples include African slaves in the US. The majority of blacks were united in their desire for freedom; several members of the master class (i.e., Northern American males; British liberal males; Canadians via the Underground Railroad) were not economically dependent on slavery and thus didn’t see the utility of its continued existence as well as believed in human male rights; and many white women, who were themselves slaves to white men, were vocal about releasing black men and women from the atrocities of slavery. All ingredients were present, slavery was abolished, black men were given the vote and freedom from their direct oppressors. Women of all colours stayed slaves to men…

In more recent years, we’ve seen massive inroads in gay rights – although more so for gay men than for lesbians, of course. Homosexuals have, for much longer than and by all racial groups, been erased, abused, and denied basic human rights and freedoms. Killing and torture have always been more likely for a gay individual than for any non-white. To this day, ALL countries in the world and ALL races perpetuate anti-gay violence, rape of lesbians, erasure of lesbian history and public presence, and denial of political, legal and social freedoms. Patriarchy-fuelled, anti-woman, forced heterosexuality has been the greatest enemy of homosexuals fueled in large part by religion and/or traditional cultures. Gays have successfully appealed to their heterosexual masters by maintaining that they don’t want to change the system, but rather to participate in standard heterosexual, anti-woman traditions, such as marriage and breeding. Some lesbians have also appealed to hetero masters by performing anti-woman femininity rituals; subscribing to and aggressively defending anti-woman gender role parodies (butch/femme); engaging in porn and BDSM participation and consumption; and by claiming ‘bisexuality’. More recently, acceptance has been achieved by supporting violent, anti-woman, male trannie policy changes that undermine all progress lesbians have made. Gay individuals, lesbians especially, find themselves in poverty, silenced, and in danger when they don’t support anti-woman, pro-religious, pro-patriarchy policy and rhetoric, and have been ostracized from most to all previously gay-focused groups. There is no such thing as a lesbian-only space anymore, alas. It is hard to predict the future for lesbians, but gay men are sitting very pretty.

The only group that has never risen en masse as a united group with a clear goal has been women.  Female slavery is the longest, most complex, most accepted slavery in the history of the world. It is the only slavery that relies upon intense, multi-layered programming and propaganda. It is the only slavery that has been accepted in every corner of the earth. It is the only slavery that has for millenia been unquestioned by the masses either on the basis of false ‘evidence’ from religious doctrine or from Nature/evolution. The master class, men, has been united in the enslavement of women, however.

Now women’s only real potential source of support from a fellow oppressed group is that of gay men. Gay men are the group from the master class with the least to  lose by the emancipation of women. So why haven’t gay men rallied and given all women the support they need to achieve freedom from male slavery? Really, all other groups have managed to find support from the fellow oppressed. I suspect that the primary reason is that all other groups have depended on female support to get their movements off the ground. Gay men are not women, and are thus self-centred and selfish. Men tend to only support things if they know what they themselves are going to get out of it. Further, gay men, while not directly invested in the keeping pussy available and acquiescent (unless they are renting a uterus for baby implantation or they are using a vagina to find out if they are gay or bi or plain old straight), still gain a lot from female enslavement. Gay men don’t suffer poverty like lesbians do. And every group of men on the planet tends to need to feel like someone is under them. Men don’t like being on the bottom of the hierarchy. All oppressed groups that have been supported by women have ditched the bitches once they have achieved their freedom. Gay men have been no different. They have accepted and taken for granted all kinds of support from women, but have given nothing back in return but scorn, hate speech, and support for the woman-hating beauty/fashion industry.

No heterosexual man will ever support the emancipation of women because he perceives he has too much to lose. This is not just what I think. Rather, this is what men tell us every day when they complain about even weak forms of feminism. Men complain about not being able to sexually harass and assault women freely anymore – although they use the words ‘flirting’ and ‘having fun’. Feminists have ruined it for men with their ‘political correctness’ and their ‘over-sensitivity’. You see, men believe they have a god- or -Nature-given right to access women’s bodies, emotional services and domestic services for free any time. Feminists or perceived feminists are emasculating men everywhere. (Wait, isn’t that oversensitivity…?) Indeed the entire structure of capitalism is built upon having access to women’s labour and support for free or cheap, as well as to be able to define products and services in ways that should never exist (i.e., sex is a service, or a woman’s body is a commodity – thus, anything goes). To emancipate women is to remove privilege from men, not remove human rights from men. Men see their privilege as ‘rights’. Wrong. So, to repeat, women will never, ever find support from men for true feminism (not to be confused with ‘liberal feminism’, which is not feminism).

Another problem is that women are the only class of enslaved people in history who are thoroughly entwined with their masters. No other group lives with and sleeps with their overlord of their own free will. And no other group breeds members of the master class. Having boyfriends, husbands and sons, all of whom have privilege over them and who force emotional and even biological ties with them, ensures that women remain entirely confused about what constitutes freedom as a woman from men as a class.

Further, women are not united as a class in their purpose. Most women are the true definition of the ‘happy slave’, indoctrinated from birth to believe in and live their slavery like it is the most natural thing in the world. They even police one another’s thoughts and behaviours to great effectiveness. To eschew the programming is to bring great punishment upon themselves socially and economically. A woman who doesn’t follow the rules set out by men finds herself economically very vulnerable, physically and sexually unprotected, and very much alone socially. There are many mechanisms in place to keep women believing they are meant to be exactly where they are: on the bottom.

There has been a little of this in all enslaved groups. For a very short period of time, some African slaves may have believed they were exactly where they should be, but it didn’t last long due to geographical limitations and massive support against their predicament from a variety of sources. At certain points in time, and in certain places, gays, especially religious ones, questioned every ounce of their being and believed they should be punished for unnatural ways, but that has mostly been eradicated in modern countries due to widespread support and acceptance, even from a few religious groups. Women, however, are so programmed that many fight for their right to BE slaves, to service the master class and will even incorrectly call themselves ‘feminists’ for believing that female slavery is freedom, à la 1984. That has never been seen before within an enslaved group on such a scale. Who has fought so hard to stay enslaved besides women??? I’m hard-pressed to come up with an answer.

Can women be united and plead, convince, or fight their way to freedom from men? Probably not. As long as women accept heterosexuality as natural (which it isn’t, for women) (men are omnisexual) and are programmed into believing that they must breed or else there is something wrong with them, they will remain enslaved and completely disconnected from other women whom they’ve been trained to see as enemies and subsequently treat with mistrust.

A French, heterosexual, economically well-off, liberal feminist with a husband and two heterosexual sons told me recently that I must be a pessimist because I fight for women and don’t see a clear end to what I perceive the problem to be. She, by the way, does NOTHING for women, but like all liberal ‘feminists’ is an anti-racism activist. Anti-racism is easy and safe, and it gets you lots of head pats without putting you in danger from men or threatening your cosy hetero lifestyle. It also doesn’t make the world a better place for women as a class. I’m a realist. Fighting for women is one of the most dangerous things you can do these days, and that is how you know that women are still slaves, and feminism is needed. More than anything else in the world, in fact.

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The Semester Starts with Racism and Misogyny – Mmmm Good

I have a very strange internet friend whom I’ve ‘known’ for a long time from years ago – back when I was a serious researcher doing serious research and not frittering my life and spirit away in China. We collaborated on a short project online, but we have never met in person. At this point, this acquaintance’s role has morphed into one of sending me occasional stories of ‘how fucked up China is’. News of the weird. Of human rightsy weirdness. Bizarre deaths resulting from Chinese neglect. That kind of thing.

The thing is, I KNOW ALREADY. I live here. I experience bad and weird things here all the time. I don’t bother to comb through alt-media sites or even mainstream Western media for Chinese fuckery because the day-to-day stuff that I see in situ is bad enough.

When you come from a country where there are *sometimes* consequences for abusing power – or at least the pretense of consequences – or at least mechanisms and bodies set up to deal with power abuses – it is hard to imagine it working otherwise in other places. So Westerners can’t understand that if they go to China, if anything untoward ever happens to them, there will be nothing whatsoever that can be done. Unless you have managed to get very well connected with powerful people, that is. And the majority of Western people – or any foreign worker, for that matter – are extremely vulnerable to abuse because they aren’t connected. Newbie Western workers will often try to fight what has happened to them with logic or human-rightsy arguments that usually start with: “This would never happen in MY country.” And they might be right. Maybe. It might happen, and you might be lucky to have a way to fight it. There is definitely more of a chance of fighting it in the West. But in China, you learn very quickly that anyone can do anything to you at any time. And you are not allowed to say anything about it. Even contract agreements between you and the Chinese only apply to you. If you don’t live up to the contract they can do what they want to you. But as a Chinese, they can break the contract every single day. You can complain if you want. And they will ignore you. And they might fire you because you don’t take abuse well. Their firing techniques are almost always passive-aggressive, subtle manipulation. It is actually the exact mentality behind Western men complaining about Western women. The whole “I love Asian women” phenomenon. Western women believe they have rights as humans. Most men don’t like that, and some will go East to find the perfect docile slave.

Many of the younger Westerners who come here are ‘liberal’, so they don’t usually complain, and may often make excuses for the Chinese (aka ‘apologism’), because they hold the Western mentality that the Chinese are oppressed – which isn’t actually true anymore in the West, nevermind the East. It’s the older white (and usually incompetent) male who comes here for a pussy and booze free-for-all who gets very angry and loud when he isn’t treated like a member of the dominant race. And both groups are delusional, by the way.

The Chinese are the dominant and the majority race. And China is very patriarchal. And it is still a system that is run as a dictatorship. And with that combination, you get very serious racism, very serious misogyny, and no concept of human rights whatsoever. There is no such thing as a race-motivated crime. There is no such thing as a crime against women. And there is no such thing as workers’ rights or human rights abuse of any sort.

It is hard for many Western people to wrap their minds around that non-Western reality.

I once read a disturbing, but amusing (because I could understand it on a personal level) little essay written by a long-time foreign resident in China about the stages foreigners go through when first living in China. It was written by a man, and thus didn’t take into account that China is much easier for men to deal with for a number of reasons. But I still recognized some of the elements in it. The whole essay reminded me of the grieving process one goes through when dealing with a death – starting with anger, moving through depression, and eventually resolving with acceptance of reality. It was troubling to realize that living in China was so similar to dealing with a serious loss such as a major death, but it is actually very much like that if you stay long enough. Living in China really does mean giving up your personhood or identity. It is a death of sorts. Whether you can be reborn or whether you remain living as the undead, is another thing entirely and is dependent upon either having your mind and spirit broken completely and thus becoming open to brainwashing or being able to escape most of the mundane Chinese abuse through obtaining an elitist kind of job with super-high pay.

I’ve thought about this a lot. Many sociologists and cross-cultural researchers paint this simplistic black-and-white picture of individualistic cultures and group-based cultures. And of course, the former are painted as evil and latter are somehow superior. But I think this conclusion, and the whole type-of-society dichotomy are not quite right. I actually find the Chinese to be much more individualistic and self-centred and heartless in some ways that I have not been able to explain (until recently) using the group-think or collectivist society model. Likewise, that model hasn’t explained the countless examples of supposedly average, individualistic, selfish Americans and other Westerners relentlessly donating their time and money to humanitarian efforts or to helping random people on the street. You may not see this if your knowledge of China has come solely from movies and the news, but given how much time I’ve spent in non-Western countries, I’ll tell you how jarred I am by how much positive and pro-social interaction there is between strangers in the West. Every time I return, I get freaked out. Strangers helping strangers. Hell, strangers talking to strangers. You never, ever, never, ever see this in China. Ever. Ever. People don’t even say ‘thank you’ here. But that is a post for another time [update: here it is, 7 years later 😉  I is for Individualism. I have developed my own theory as to this individualism vs group-based society phenomenon.

My point is that to survive in China, you can’t see yourself as a person in the Western sense. And most people are not able to see themselves as a person in the Chinese sense. It’s not a great way to live. Undead.

I haven’t written in a while simply because my first two weeks back at work have been a racist, misogynist fuck-fest. There has been plenty of Chinese bullshit and some Western male bullshit, too.

The first day of class involved university officials and photographers stopping by my class to photograph me while teaching. I’m never allowed to say ‘no’ to anything they do to me, and in this case, they will use my image for their greedy capitalistic and political purposes. (See! We have foreign staff! Come to our university!!! Pay our tuition!!!) Like a porn contract, you sign on the dotted line, and that means they can do whatever they want to you after that (don’t worry, I’m not equating teaching with porn… I’m telling you that the Chinese mentality is the porn producer’s mentality).

I spent the week correcting the grammar of misogynist sentences produced by my male students, which was fucking awesome and not a mindfuck at all!

And the second week saw a quiet, moneyless payday – and an announcement from the university that they had no intention of paying us this month for last month. They announced to us that the pay schedule will change (again). Now, they are going to start paying us TWO WHOLE MONTHS after the start of each pay period. We get paid monthly, the pay date has been pushed further and further away from the pay period each year that I have been with this university. And now, work that I do on March 1st won’t be paid until April 30th. What??? I am not allowed to protest this. They have implemented worse abuses in past years – like breaking my contract and quadrupling my work load for no extra pay. The foreign staff has protested individually, but as Chinese, they give excuses and end up doing what they want to us. This new payment policy actually feels very much like one of the passive-aggressive Chinese punishments. They may be looking to clear out foreign staff by implementing abusive policy, so they can bring in new, naive people whom they can pay less.

Chained Up - sm

Every night at 11:00 pm, staff were chained into their building. Apparently, it was ‘too dangerous’. For whom…?

This happens all the time. I’m used to it. There is nothing ‘fair’ about the Chinese. It may surprise you to know that this is the best place I’ve ever worked in all the years I’ve been in China. At least these employers don’t chain the staff into our residential building every night like my last employer did. Nobody could get in or out except the key master. The Chinese didn’t understand why the Western staff had a problem with that. A simple, humane solution to the ‘grave danger’ looming over our building would be to install a key card or coded key pad entry system. But that would cost the Chinese money. The Chinese don’t like to spend money.

But the worst of these first two weeks back was actually dealing with a horrible, British, male acquaintance/co-worker and his disgusting misogyny last Saturday. I’m still reeling from it. Unfortunately, I need to stay ‘friendly’ with this asshole, as one really needs allies when you’re working for the Chinese. The Chinese deliberately try to keep Western people in the dark and misinformed and isolated on several levels so that we remain powerless and disorganized. Because foreign workers are ALWAYS abused, it is really key to have as many allies as possible – even if they are assholes. Information needs to be shared since it is so hard to come by, and sometimes protests must be done as a group or at least in numbers. But the cost of being friendly with jerks can be really hard, and the deeper I get into feminism, the harder it is to deal with men who don’t see me as a full human.

I’m going to write about this asshole. It’s one of those things that ended up being successful in my mind even though it didn’t and doesn’t necessarily feel like it. I’m glad I did what I did, but my body and mind are paying for it. More soon…

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