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I is for Individualism
This post is part of the ongoing Alphabet Series. Listen along to my recording on YouTube and/or read the article below ♥♀
So, one winter, five to ten years ago, I found myself at a communal breakfast table of the youth hostel where I was staying in Washington, D.C.. Generally, I’m not a fan of big groups of people I don’t know, so I tend to keep quiet, and just listen and observe the dynamics in these situations, kind of like the meat world equivalent of lurking in an online community. On this particular morning, I noticed a conversation between two women at the other end of my table – an American and a woman from South America. The latter had been reminded of and was recalling her experience at a group breakfast at an international conference she had attended a few years before. I think the breakfast she described had been a serve-yourself type of set-up and this woman had immediately taken on the unrequested and unnecessary role of dishing out food or coffee to all the attendees. Apparently, a Scottish woman had come up to her and told her that she didn’t need to do that and that it wasn’t women’s responsibility to take on serving roles at this conference. The South American woman had become quietly offended, and I think she had bridled at what she had correctly seen as a feminist attempt to invite her to join the group and eat some breakfast instead of missing out and serving. The South American explained to the American that in her culture, it is normal to volunteer to serve the group selflessly, and it had nothing to do with male domination. No way! Couldn’t possibly! But did she bolster her argument by adding that the males at the conference had also immediately jumped in to serve and clean up? No! Of course not! Because they hadn’t and they never do, and yes, this IS due to male domination. Culture is the very definition of all the ways in which women are subordinated to and by males in a particular time and place. The American listening to this story immediately did what all good little white Western women are supposed to do. She bowed her head in self-deprecation and shame, and lamented that her culture was soooo individualistic and selfish. None of this was about patriarchy, but about how Americans only think of themselves and their aggressive pursuit of fulfilling wants and needs at the expense of others. Fuck other people! I’m actually surprised that the American didn’t shit on the Scottish woman for imposing her feminist opinion on the situation. I can’t remember whether I had decided that breakfast was over at that point and I ended up missing the attack on feminism. Regardless, the whole thing was pathetic to listen to and frankly, incredibly reductionist, as all discussions of culture tend to be. But years later, I still remember this little scene so well, as I’ve always had a bone to pick with the whole over-simplified, high school debate topic – Which is morally superior: individualist or collectivist societies?
So, today, commune- and island-dwelling sisters, I is for Individualism.
I was still living in China when I witnessed this conversation, so I had been doing a lot of thinking on this topic, China being the so-called collectivist culture that it is. And I’ll say one thing right off the bat. I think if you’ve never spent significant time living in both individualist and collectivist cultures, you really aren’t qualified to make comparisons or draw conclusions about which one is better. It makes me think of another set of morally infused opposites: capitalism and communism or socialism, and how so many Americans seem to have really strong and judgey opinions about the latter without really knowing anything tangible about what it is.
The second thing I’ll say is that I don’t really prefer either type of society, and that some of the things we are told are present in one, are actually equally or more present in the other. I want to discuss a few points about both models of culture and then I’ll conclude with a note on patriarchy and what that means for women.
The Family as Individual
One thing I noticed after nearly a decade in a collectivist culture is that individualism is actually the undercurrent, but the unit is different. The individual is not the person, but the family. It really clicked for me when a student of mine was telling me about some Western soap operas she was watching. She said they were very different than Chinese shows. The characters in Western shows each had their own story line in addition to whatever was going on within a family. In China, all the story lines involve the family as a group. The members are not individuals living their own lives within the context of a family. I also, in the role of unofficial therapist for so many of my students, listened to countless horror stories of young people being horribly abused by parents while accepting the fact that they would never, ever leave and would even financially support their abusers for their entire lives. They believed and accepted that there was no escape. Individual suffering is meaningless in light of the well-being of the family. So, in collectivist cultures, you are not separate from your family. Everything you do affects its status and reputation – you function as a unit, an individual, essentially. So I consider collectivism to be almost a subtype of individualism, but incorrectly painted as morally superior. In reality, it can be colder, more dishonest and more open to abuse than any true individualistic society ever could be.
The Selfishness, Ruthlessness and Hypocrisy of Collectivist Cultures
It’s funny, so much of what is criticized about individualistic cultures is actually more true of the collectivists. It is said that individual success is not worshipped like you see in individualistic cultures. This isn’t true. Individual heroes are often created as examples to be followed, and you are more likely to see the development of personality cults among leaders within collectivism. I think without a rallying point such as a successful person, people tend to stray off the accepted path in order to create their own purposes. As well, volunteerism, as in choosing to do volunteer work, instead of being forced into it is virtually non-existent in collectivist cultures, despite it being essentially a selfless, group-benefitting act. I remember a conversation with one of my closest friends, who is Chinese, about volunteer work. She is a really smart and considerate person, but she told me she couldn’t truly understand why one would ever do volunteer work and was quite awestruck with the many stories of volunteerism that the various Western travellers she has met had. She also couldn’t believe that many so-called individuals even plan their travel around volunteering. But it is a fundamental and even moral imperative in individualistic cultures, although moreso among women than men, as males tend to believe that they deserve compensation for any work that they do. The same moral approach exists towards charities and charitable donations. In the US, data show that poor people frequently donate money to charities – it really has nothing to do with wealth, unlike what people assume. It is a moral choice, not a financial choice. Charitable giving doesn’t really exist in places like China, even among the rich. There is no drive to help strangers that I have ever seen, despite the claim that it is the faceless masses that you don’t know that are more important than you as an individual. I remember back when the Philippines suffered devasting losses due to a typhoon about 10 years ago. China as a country donated less money to relief efforts than the company IKEA. And the Philippines is both their neighbour and poorer than China. It seemed to me that collectivism has some very well-understood, but unspoken limitations on who belonged to the collective. It is very ‘in group/out group’. And indeed, collectivist cultures tend to be very, very exclusive. You don’t help anyone outside your tribe, and for many, even outside your family – the individual. You also don’t share, you don’t allow migration into the group, and you erase those who try to leave. Collectivist cultures tend to be very racist, very sexist, very censorious and rule-bound, and very unforgiving and violent, despite the ‘for the good of all’ mantra that you tend to hear. These are not the shiny happy people that communists and collectivists claim they are.
When Individualism Creates Weakness Rather than Strength
If collectivists are about grinning and bearing it in the name of sacrifice to the group, then individualists are supposed to be about survival of the fittest, and I’m referring to Herbert Spencer’s essentialism here. Individualism has done some good things for society. It has inspired creativity, some progress in human rights, critical analysis of religion and more. But it has also moved a lot of people away from contributing to the well-being of society and legitimizing some really shameful and anti-social pursuits. And while introducing the idea of human rights, it has also created a lot of confusion over the differences between wants, needs, rights and privileges, often elevating a frivolous or delusional wish to the level of a matter of life and death. Instead of creating the type of strength that would come from being forced to adapt to frequent change or normal human societal challenges, in the way that Darwin saw evolution and progress, highly individualistic societies seem to have created a population dependent on validation and being rewarded for mediocrity and even failure. We now see division and strife that can put individualistic societies in precarious and unstable situations over relatively insignificant issues. And this serves to distract from more serious problems facing our world.
Conclusion
Well, I’ve managed to shit all over everything, eh? Actually, I like some aspects of both types of society. My problem is that no reasonable system can function the way it is supposed to if men run it or even exist in it. In a collectivist society, the male drive to control and conquer will override the sharing and altruistic goals that are supposed to flourish. Female altruism and empathy end up abused and devalued, and everyone ends up suspicious and cold. In an individualistic society, male greed will create horrors and suffering for those without power and resources, and who end up forced into desperate arrangements in the name of survival. I’d love to see and actual collectivist society that acknowledges some value of the individual. It would have to be a small-scale society with clear goals, and the key element – or rather, missing element – would be the interfering destructive sex that has tended to ruin everything it touches. You know who I’m talking about 😉 But for now, if you are going to criticize a culture, remember that is it not individualism or collectivism or capitalism or communism that are the root problems, it is patriarchy. And that should be the basis of your arguments.
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Reissuing of ‘Called It’
Sorry, folks, I messed up on this latest post, and I thank Minka on YouTube (you know who you are) for letting me know. Cheers on that. I really shouldn’t write these things late at night and especially when most of the media is referring to this person as she and by a female name, which isn’t allowed in our current sociopolitical climate. So, I automatically and wrongly assumed that that this was a male in a dress and wig. I was WRONG! So let’s give this another go.
Round 2
Yep, I really did. The first trannie school shooting. And I am going to indulge in a little smug-face for a second…. Okay, that felt good. But seriously, back on March 1st, 2016, I wrote a little post on male violence, which ended up with a consideration of how trannies distort the sex ratio of violent crime stats. I predicted that it wouldn’t be long before they’d break into school shootings (Waiting for It: The First Trannie School Shooting). I’m actually surprised we had to wait so long. But there is a twist that I didn’t predict…
“And I really think it is only a matter of time before one of these social-outcast, mentally deranged, confused, damaged, gun-home-residing boys comes to school in a dress and a mask and toting a metal penis gun, and shoots the fucking place up.“
From my 2016 post. I got a few things wrong – the trans is a 28-year-old former student of the school, not a kid. And this shooter is a WOMAN. She is a FtT or trans-identified female. The police are calling her a ‘she’ and this will likely be listed as a female crime – the first or at most one of the very, very few solely female school shootings.
“And he’ll shoot girls, primarily.“
Almost. Girls and women. And we’ll say ‘she’ instead of ‘he’ because that is what she is. Four of the six murdered were female, including two 9-year-old girls, a substitute teacher and the head of the school. Perhaps it is because all this happened in Tennessee, in a hard-core Christian community and because the perp is female and thus not feared or respected in the way actual men are, but people are using her ‘dead name’ and referring to her as a female. It may be the first time in history that Christians are actually dealing with reality and speaking truth!
I present Little Orphan Annie Audrey Elizabeth Hale. The proud owner and user of a semi-automatic rifle and two handguns, as well as a death wish.
And like all female trannies, she got what she wanted; an attempt at male privilege. Now, as I’ve said before, most female trans are just self-haters who don’t want to have to deal with the shit that women have to endure, but are generally okay to deal with. But Audrey took things a little further. Her quest for male privilege resulted in female destruction and possible martyrdom. TRAs will likely be milking this event for years as an example of how the system failed this woman.
Luckily, this piece of shit was shot dead at the scene. Basically, a suicide (death by cop). It is rare to see a woman take down a bunch of other people while on a death wish. Perhaps this was a quest for the ultimate male privilege. Murder-suicide is a male game. I tend to feel a bit bad for women who are so messed up that they try to become males, but the internalized misogyny stops me in my tracks every time. And if part of your woman-hate involves killing little girls, any sympathy I might have evaporates.
I will say this. Male trans are respected. Female trans are not. In the media, on TV, and by the public at large. If you want any more (like do we need MORE?) evidence of the absolute misogyny that runs through Western society, it is this. This woman is being roasted as a woman, not a man. Society needs to prove that women are bad too, so a female trans will be called female, and a male trans will be called female. If this shooting had been committed by a male in a dress, he would have been called ‘she’, would not have been ‘dead named’ and if taken alive, would have been housed in a female prison.
Oh, and as a side note, apparently there is a ‘manifesto’, and I can’t wait to get a look at that.
I’m including this post in the series, USA: The Downward Spiral.
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An Evening Muse on Western Misogyny, Poverty, and Such
I have to admit I’m a little down lately. Despite being a person who expects little from people, situations, and life in general, I’ve managed to become disappointed and once again worn down by life in North America. If you’ve never read further on this site, the context for this comment is this: I frequently live and work abroad; I left a nearly decade-long stint in China at the end of July 2019; I spent a year in the US studying and trying to navigate a possible career change; and then the Virus hit, all my plans went to hell, and I was forced to return to my homeland – Canada – a country I thought I might never return to again other than to visit.
China is a really racist, sexist, and chaotic, but uber-controlled country. It was hard. But I adapted. I was employed, I cultivated a small, but excellent group of local friends, and equally important, I had an apartment that was all mine despite being black moldy and not very cosy. I’ve spent most of my adult life living alone, and I’ve come to see it as a luxury, even when my space is not optimal. I just don’t like living with people. And I especially don’t like living in places where I have no control over who else is living there.
The year in the US was pretty brutal in a lot of ways. First the culture shock – not sure if that is the right word – was kind of surprising. I think in the year and a half since leaving Asia, I’ve realized that if I am going to be an outcast, I need to be a full-on outcast that has no hope or expectation (by self or others) of ever fitting in. Even more than in early adulthood, I just don’t think I can fit into regular society here – and that seems like a simple and precious thing to say, but it is really complicated in a way that you will never understand unless you’ve lived outside your country for years and years at a time.
The US also showed me that women don’t have it better in the West. We are constantly battered with the idea that “women are equal now” and “Western (especially white) women are better off than all other women, so stfu.” But I have to tell you, no, the misogyny is just as bad here as anywhere else. It just looks different. And the less money you have, the worse it is. Because of the lifelong brainwashing, selective women’s history (if any) taught in public schools, and a general unwillingness to self-examine because it’s “too negative” or victimy, the majority of women just don’t see it. And I’d bet that in countries that Western women typically tsk tsk over, those women also don’t really see what they experience as anything other than “that’s life, the way it’s supposed to be”.
I had some good experiences during my year in the US. I was studying plants, for one. And then the Virus hit, which was actually a good thing in some ways – I was able to get some tuition money back after my male teachers decided they didn’t want to work anymore, and continued my plant education by myself outside the classroom by going on 5-10 mile hikes every day. But I spent way too much of my small, scrupulously accumulated savings on keeping wealthy people wealthy through overpriced accommodation. I also contracted a staph infection that has recurred 5 times, manifesting in massive, painful and disgusting abcesses. Antibiotics are NOT something one should be taking regularly, and I’ve had 4 hardcore rounds in less than a year. I swear, if you want to contract a brutal disease, go to the US, not a Third World country. But possibly tied for worst – I haven’t lived alone since I left China – the bad part being that I have lived with some of the most horrible and abusive men and women I have ever met, and paid my hard-earned money for the privilege. Ouch. Once the Virus was in play, housing became even more insecure. I was terrified of being kicked out with literally nowhere to go if I contracted even a small cough. The crazy landlady I lived with during the first few months of the outbreak forced one of the other tenants out when she got a cold. It was stressful.
But you know, despite some pretty seriously shitty stuff going on while in the US, my spirits were good. It was not until I returned to Canada that I started to get depressed. This country is about poverty for me. I spent most of my Canada-side adult years living in poverty, and being back is no different. I have no contacts or references here. I’m an overeducated, middle-aged female and white – all of those working against me in a city with 11% unemployment and a government focused on making sure immigrants have jobs.
And I’m still living with people. And it has been all about male violence. I just moved from a shared house where an older male verbally attacked me and threatened to physically attack me because I wasn’t looking at or speaking to him correctly (we all know what that means – he wasn’t getting the deference and respect he thought he deserved). I just moved out of that house in the burbs to a downtown hostel that accepts month-to-month renters. I had stayed here when I first moved to this city for a job 20 years ago. But things seem to have gone downhill with increased poverty/income gaps and with the stress of the Virus. In a week’s time, there have been two major violent male episodes – luckily not with me. But they were terrifying. One – a verbal screaming match between staff and a male who (as usual) didn’t think he needed to follow the Virus rules mandated by the hostel. The second – a male did something the staff didn’t like and they refused to let him back into the building to go to his room. It was a long ordeal, poorly handled by the staff, that escalated until the male smashed the entire plexiglass wall going from lobby counter to ceiling, and smashed computers and various things on the check-in desk. No cops ever seem to be called here. I took the least expensive room. It is in a hallway beside the lobby. It is a tiny, tiny room with no window. There is an immense amount of noise 24/7 due to people traipsing by or accessing a bank of METAL lockers right beside my door at 2 or 4 in the morning. They are raising the rent significantly next month despite being down season for travellers. It does have a bit of a half-way house feel to it. Or even a homeless shelter (given the male violence and the creepy, listless air of some of the male guests), except that I am paying for the privilege.
As much as I wanted to move on from teaching English to unmotivated, cell-phone addicted students, I’m almost wishing the Virus were over so I could escape Canada, take another teaching job, and have a job and a small private living space away from men again.
Bottom line: the West is just as dangerous and stressful for women as it is in other parts of the world. The income gap and access to affordable and secure housing issues are as serious here as they are in many places. The less money you have as a woman, the more exposed you are to dangerous situations caused by males. And yet Western countries are more and more obsessed with racial diversity and less and less focused on the fact that women are the most at-risk group STILL and face more challenges economically than men of any race.
Let’s hope 2021 brings a better year for us and that we all make it there unhurt by the men around us.
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The Three Douchebags of the Coronapocalypse
Three apocalyptic heroes: Trump, Xi and Putin. Who needs a brain when you have a penis?
Just an intro
Sorry so silent. There is so much to write. And this is the perfect time for writing. There is nothing to do, and I’m trapped in a true shithole: America. Luckily, not New York – I feel bad for those fuckers. Truly. That shit storm could have been prevented. And it is getting worse. And it is entirely possible, given the true lack of leadership, brain power, and coordination between states, that the US is going to see even harder times during what was fast becoming a serious problem due to income disparity, housing shortages, climate change problems, and a low point for women. Perhaps my new series on the American Downfall, which had been brewing in my mind for a while was aptly timed.
But let’s get into some particulars. I want to take a look at three very special narcissistic psychopaths who have more power than anyone deserves and who run completely unopposed in a way that matters.
China – President Xi Jinping
Luckily/unluckily, I have a shit ton of experience with the Chinese, how they think about things, how they operate, and how they destroy people from the inside out. I lived there in a surreal hell cumulatively for nearly a decade – a hell where you constantly feel like you are fucked no matter what you do or what you say. They are masters of psychological punishment and retribution, and experts on ‘spin’. As I have mentioned before, I had a Chinese leader at a college I worked and lived at look me in the eye and say with a straight face that they locked us in our building at night for our own safety.
Throughout history, the Chinese government has perpetrated numerous crimes against humanity – often unhidden crimes spun as ‘for your own good’ measures – and haven’t ever once taken responsibility for a single one, even when the hard cold truth is laid out before them. A thousand years of foot-binding is never talked about – it is suppressed women’s history, after all. Who cares? They also don’t teach their children that China bought and owned African slaves for hundreds of years. My students often like to talk about Americans like they are evil for their history of slavery, but the fact is that black flesh was bought and sold by Arabs and Asians long before even white Europeans and later, American men, got in on the action. And speaking of criticizing Americans, please note that while the US is good at incarcerating people, the Chinese are best at incarcerating and killing people. China kills more prisoners per year than all the other countries of the world combined. They don’t talk about it, though. Suppressed information. It is impressive, this ongoing cover-up of history and facts, but you definitely want to admire it from outside their sphere of influence.
It is not possible, however, to live outside their latest influence because the sphere is the entire globe – the COVID-19 pandemic. They may not have deliberately created this situation, but they certainly facilitated it. And they are squarely in denial mode, and are still spreading lies throughout their population that the virus didn’t start in China. I have several former students checking in with me on Chinese social media to smugly inform me that a) the virus actually started in Italy or the US (or whatever the rumour of the day spread by the state-owned media is over there), and b) China is superior at containing the virus. What they don’t say to me is that China has been superior at exporting the virus. And they have also been superior (as they have been for years) at hiding information, failing to report data, and intimidating and punishing people who have tried to expose the truth or criticize the government (which are seen as the same thing over there). Like everywhere, there are good, honest people in China, but they don’t survive well under an oppressive regime.
Looking at China’s recent history, what is happening now is nothing new. The previous president, Hu Jintao, was a typical Chinese leader now famous for suppressing information about SARS for over a month, holding the doctor who leaked the information to the world in prison for 45 days. Luckily, SARS only spread to 26 countries. I lived in Taiwan, a hotspot, at that time – 2003. And I was continuously told that the US had concocted the virus and deliberately infected China with it. Same Chinese tactics – blame someone else, refuse all responsibility.
Xi Jinping has followed suit, but he is a hell of a lot worse than President Hu. Admired by the populace as a president “working to stamp out corruption”, he has ended up implementing measures to reduce government accountability and transparency (not that the Chinese government was ever either of the two), and ensure more corruption. Xi named himself lifelong dear leader recently, and showers his cronies with rewards. He is possibly just as powerful as former notorious Chinese dictator, Mao Zedong. Xi has managed to wage a war on Canada due to the Huawei debacle, even killing an incarcerated and already sentenced Canadian, as revenge for Canada arresting the multi-millionaire Huawei CFO and keeping her under house arrest in Vancouver (she has a few million-dollar homes in my country). As a professional bully, Xi has also forced several international airlines to stop saying that Taiwan is a country. American Airlines, Delta and United, Lufthansa and numerous other airlines have kneeled to suck Chinese dick. Pathetic. In the last little while, he has imprisoned over a million Chinese muslims in concentration camps – sorry ‘reeducation facilities’ – Islam is seen as a mental health problem (I think all religion is a mental health problem, but incarceration or conversion can’t fix that problem…). Xi has cracked down even further on free speech, especially on the internet. He employs millions of people to police the internet and thousands are arrested every year for saying the wrong thing. The online presence of a gay and lesbian group at a university where I was living was recently shut down, students were interrogated. And now he has become the man responsible of the spread of the Coronavirus to, let me check… 180 countries (as of today, April 1st – and that’s no joke). Note to President Xi: you can cover up rape and murder in your country, but you can’t hide an epidemic, no matter how many scientists you arrest.
Classic Chinese thinking (Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Geng Shuang)
“China didn’t start it. China is not responsible for it either.”
Oh, and by the way, speaking of Chinese power and free speech suppression, we have: the Spanish flu, German measles, Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), and more, but we can’t call COVID-19 the Chinese flu or Wuhan flu, despite the fact that China, and specifically Wuhan, is the origin of this disease. Stop coddling the psychopaths. It reminds me of Saturday Night Live – long-running American comedy show notorious for making fun of almost anyone and everything. I grew up watching it. I have noticed that President Xi is the only major political leader who is off-limits, and China is never joked about. As I’ve been predicting for years now, China has begun its empire, and the US is on the way out.
USA – President Donald Trump
And Trump is helping the US on its bizarre downward spiral. Only in the US, a country that claims to uphold freedom like no other country in history or in the modern world, can someone like Trump be freely elected. Only in the US, a country with the power to impeach leaders, can someone like Trump remain in office. This is a stupid man. An ignorant man. A man who doesn’t understand much, let alone science. A man who cares more about Twitter and his television presence than actual politics and the people he has been elected to protect and serve. A man who was recorded making rape comments about women and who has been accused of raping, attempting to rape and sexually assaulting numerous times since 1989. His rape comments have been recorded and made public and still he remains. Women have been surprisingly complacent about what this man stands for. Knitting fucking hats for fuck sake. Instead of demanding the recall of this human excrement. You poor brainwashed women. You’ve allowed men to shut you up, derail you, and make you believe you are free when in fact you are no better off than women in other woman-hating countries/cultures.
Rapey Trump quotes:
“I moved on her like a bitch.”
“Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
To me, that is his worst quality, and I think he should be put to death because of rape – like any and all men in the world. But if his deep-seated misogyny doesn’t move you, there is plenty of other shit to make you question his ability to lead effectively.
The man is stupid. I was flying within the US a few years ago, and an elderly American couple that was sitting beside me asked me what I though of Trump. Now, being a Canadian, I am pretty polite and mild-mannered, and I gave some non-answer meant to keep me unassaulted. I am so used to dealing with crazies and I am so used to being verbally (and sexually and physically) attacked for being a lone white woman (WWWW – walking while a white woman), that I just try not to rock the boat (or plane) unless I know I can escape. Long story short, the couple ended up being anti-Trump, and I finished our Trump discussion with an analysis that I though the man saw what he was doing as some sort of game. He is used to being on television where nothing is real and everything is drama. And I really think he extends this little fantasy life into the real world. The presidency is just one more game to him. But he is also stupid. I can’t say this enough times. Seriously.
I am not sure why he is allowed to speak in public. His own party is starting to distance themselves (see this article, from The Atlantic, written by a Republican). And following every statement that he makes, it seems like member of his entourage needs to go back and do damage control, placating the enraged, correcting erroneous ‘facts’, and dialing back fantastical promises and predictions. I mean, history is riddled with insane and/or stupid MEN with too much power doing and saying stuff and people having to clean up after them. And often these types of leaders, if left unchecked, can spell the downfall of a society.
If you want a clear sign that the US is falling, this is it. I would argue that two terms of Bush Junior was the writing on the wall – I mean seriously, he was dumb and aggressive and offensive and did huge damage to the reputation of the US, but Americans wanted him not once, but fucking TWICE. [Does everyone remember that hilarious, but significant, televised press conference where that Iraqi journalist threw a shoe at Bush’s head??? If that doesn’t say dunzo for America, I don’t know what would…] The acceptance of Trump doesn’t surprise me one bit, and the complacency exhibited by ignorant Americans is just a death rattle in my ears. Americans, I’m embarrassed for you, but you made your bed.
Now, getting to the virus. Trump has made the mistake of turning this virus into a blame game with Xi. They are both narcissistic psychopaths with testoterone poisoning. Xi began the coronavirus pandemic when he suppressed vital information about what was going on and thus releasing the virus out into the world at large. He is 100% responsible for that, but Trump has devastated America by behaving ignorantly, ignoring medical professionals, putting on his “We’re number one!” dumb American act (this virus can’t touch us, we’re so fucking powerful routine), and failing to take necessary precautions. So now, at this writing, the US is the most infected country in the world with nearly 204,000 cases. And it will get much worse. And Trump is fully to blame for this. My own country, despite sharing the longest border in the world, is weathering things well. We paid attention to past epidemics, we are responding intelligently and promptly. I just hope that American ignorance doesn’t destroy us too and that Trudeau doesn’t decide to suck Trump’s dick. Myself, I am stuck here in the US. I can’t go home, and if I could, I don’t know if I would at this point. Travelling ups your chances for infection, and I’d hate to import and infect my fellow countrywomen. I’ll write a different post on the shitty treatment a legal foreigner faces in the US at this time…
Honestly, now that I’m back in the US, I don’t see a lot of differences between the Chinese and Americans. They share so many qualities. The leaders do too. Both places are terrible for women. Both places perpetuate ignorance, but as I’ll write about in another post, I really feel that Americans celebrate ignorance on a whole different level in comparison to the Chinese or anyone else on the planet, for that matter. Ignorance is entertainment and it is accepted. Chinese just pass the buck, or the RMB, I should say. It’s an excuse machine.
Classic Trump:
“It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear”
Russia – President Vladimir Putin
Where the fuck is Putin? And what is actually going on in Russia? Now, I’m going to admit that I don’t have much experience at all with Russians, and I have never lived in, let alone been to Russia. So I can’t speak to the Russian mind or way of doing things. They do have that same bizarre, bastardized, communist mentality that you see in other places like China. But Putin has put out a different image than Xi. But I included him here because he is a major player, and he is a narcissistic psychopath like Xi and Trump, regardless of his politics.
So, what is going on in Russia? Does anyone know? If you go by the little that Putin has said, he is behaving like a typical communist leader. Everything is rah-rah-rah. The government is fucking amazing. Everyone and everything is fine. Black out bad news that paints the government in a bad light or that might force the leader to take responsibility for their actions. If I look at my trusty Coronavirus map, there are only 2,777 cases in Russia. This seems odd in a country that borders 14 other countries, including China and with populated areas close to virus-overrun Europe. They also have 144 million people. How can they have so few cases? One explanation is that this is how communist regimes work. Cover up the truth, etc. But Russia also has a crappy health care system, and word is starting to get out that things are much worse than reported. One of the major problems with Russia’s data suppression moves is that Russian travel has not been restricted. They aren’t seen as a risk zone, they haven’t been quarantined or put on flight ban lists. And the result is that the general feeling among the population is that Putin is a hero and the virus will sidestep Russia because of it.
The common Russian view:
“I don’t believe in coronavirus.”
Now, it just came out yesterday that a doctor who just tested positive for the virus met with Putin unprotected. They shook hands. Moscow has been put on lockdown for a week (actually a week-long paid vacation), and the government has implemented a ID system similar to that described to me by my former students in China. They will have to register and show ID if they want to go out to procure food. But unfortunately, much of Russia is either doing business as usual or only has partial lockdown. Let’s see what happens.
Andrei Kolesnikov, political analyst, Moscow:
“It’s a clear message that we are better equipped due to our political system. [Putin] is sure that he is more efficient and this is a case to demonstrate his superiority in that sense.”
Conclusion
Can we fuck off with the politics and just work together to solve the problem?
No, a resounding no. This is how men work. May the best psychopath win!
Stay safe and smart, ladies. And stay away from men if you can. They are always filthy germ-carriers, no matter the disease. We know this from personal observation and from published research. As an example, among educated people in the workplace, “only 31% of men and 65% of women washed their hands” after going to the toilet. If you are going to catch the C-virus, it will likely be a man infecting you. What’s new?
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New Series on the USA’s Downward Spiral
It’s a page not a post, so find it here or in the side bar. All articles falling under this discussion of the demise of the American empire can be found on this page.
Happy reading!
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You’d Never Know It’s Women’s History Month
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am no longer in China. All of the options I’d been researching seemed better than China, each with their own challenges. I chose to apply for a student visa to go the US, commit to a year studying something I felt passionate about, and most important, get my mental and physical health back. China broke me down.
Well, it hasn’t really worked out like I had hoped. My savings has been cut nearly in half in less than a year. I have contracted a scary super bacterium, the likes of which I had only gaped at via online images in the whatthefuckisthat!? category. I think I would have been safer in China with the Coronavirus, tbh. I’m not joking. And sadly, I’ve encountered some of the nastiest and most aggressive women I’ve ever met in my life. I may not stay here after this semester ends. It has been a true nightmare. And I don’t recognize this country anymore – a country where I went to grad school 20-some-odd years ago. I’m left saying what the fuck is going on here? I feel like I’m living in a ‘shithole country’ that many Americans like to refer to when they talk about Third World countries or countries where women are treated like cattle (pot-kettle-black?) And can only conclude that it is part of the natural decline of a prolific and violent patriarchal empire.
So back to the topic I had in mind. I feel like this country has taken some steps backwards, especially with regard to women. It was poignantly expressed yesterday morning as I arrived at my campus. Black history month was last month – there were posters of MLK and messages posted everywhere to raise awareness. March – now – is women’s history month, and…..? Cue the crickets. Nothing. No posters. No acknowledgement. No empowerment. No history. I had expected it, but even when you’re ready for disappointment, it still bites.
But what does this mean, the failure to acknowledge women in America directly following a month-long fanfare for blacks? Neither liberals nor conservatives will support women, but for different reasons. Liberals want to congratulate themselves for being human-rightsy, but don’t want to take real power away from men. Supporting women would threaten the male power base. Conservatives are often pro-whatever-their-race-is, but will still support men of other races over women. It is this way in every corner of the world, but we’re talking about the US. So what might be some of the reasons for the no-comment on women’s history?
Liberals would likely say that women have achieved freedom and equality, unlike the poor black folks (men). I mean, women can vote and besides they are able to be prostitutes and sluts and pole dancers and shit. They have freedom now, dammit. Trying to call attention to themselves, especially right after black month, would be offensive and arrogant and would steal thunder. Make a big to-do out of nothing as bitches are wont to do. Why can’t they just accept that women have all the power?????
Liberals might also say that use of the word ‘woman’ is trans-exclusionary. Somehow, stating a fact (XX = human female) negates the existence of men in lipstick and stilettos who feel like totally puss-perfect and ready to do Woman correctly, nay, better! Putting up those celebratory posters might make 68.1% of trans try to kill themselves. And it would be all women’s fault! It is better to erase women and women’s history in order to keep the trans from throwing a typical male hissy fit at not having the spotlight. My campus is so pro-trans that I am partially surprised that they didn’t put up women’s history posters focusing on trans history… I suppose doing nothing is better than a trans take-over? Both are forms of erasure. Can’t win here…
Conservatives? Do they celebrate women? Not really – unless said women are really good at supporting their man. Powerful women are those who can scrub a skid-mark out of a pair of boxers or quell the family’s whining with a well-baked pie. So putting up posters at an institute of higher learning kinda goes against what they believe in. Education at least opens the door for female freedom. While many women do pursue the education, sadly enough, few walk through that door.
A few historical points about the US track record with women that most like to gloss over, make excuses about, just plain old don’t know, in favour of whatever the political climate is:
- The first slaves brought to the US were white women from Europe: wife-slaves, unmarried female children to be sold as wives, and female ‘criminals’ who were to be sold into marriage or prostitution. Europeans also rounded up girls (‘street urchins’) living on the streets to send over as rape fodder. This model has applied to all colonies in the history of the world. Women and girls are always the first and last slaves.
- Women were not included as people in the Constitution or Bill of Rights. Women have been trying for a federal Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution for decades. It is 2020 now, and nearly 100 years after women first drafted the amendment, there *might* finally be the 3/4 of the 50 states needed to officially add said amendment. It is being debated. People will fight it. It may be years until women are protected humans on paper. I’ve noted that white women as a class are the only US citizens not protected in any way under the Constitution. There are official racial protections, gay protections, religious protections, and of course, white men wrote the whole g.d. thing for themselves, so they are protected. But white women have been left out. White privilege applies to men, and a woman of colour can always fight her oppression on the basis of racism. Hopefully, the trans will not sabotage things for women and the federal ERA will go through.
- Black men got the right to vote in 1870. No woman was allowed to vote until 1920. There have been barriers to voting for both groups, but black men were accepted as adult humans well before ALL women.
- There has been a black male president, who despite being less experienced and qualified, was accepted more than once over an experienced and qualified white woman (or any woman, for that matter). Neither candidate was perfect, but enough already. I don’t really believe that the presidential office attracts the right kind of person, given how corrupt the system has become. I just don’t see a woman as President in the near future. When there finally is one, she will suffer and be sabotaged, and be held up as ‘the reason we don’t want women as presidents’.
In conclusion, I believe that all groups except women are fully supported for a few reasons. First, men are part of all oppressed groups, except the group known as female humans. I’ve written about this before to explain why hate speech against women isn’t called hate speech. Secondly, and equally important, a history of oppression is only acknowledged when the group in question is no longer enslaved. Women are the only group in the world, including and especially in the US, that embraces established female slavery institutions and welcomes new forms of female slavery. To talk about women’s history is to acknowledge that women were and still are oppressed – unless you seriously alter the facts; unfortunately, much of women’s true history has been erased as it is.
Anyhow, happy women’s history month, and welcome to my series on the American downward spiral.
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Another White Dude Analysis of the World’s Problems
I’m not sure why I bother. Watching documentaries, that is. Roughly 99.9% of English language documentaries are made by white dudes. Sometimes, they’re religious white dudes. Sometimes, they’re environmentalist, lefty white dudes. Sometimes, they’re libertarian white dudes. Sometimes, they’re partially lobotomized, incoherent nutjob white dudes. Most of them are middle class or come from those there parts – not rich enough to be truly devoid of cause. And not poor enough to be barred from funding even a low-budget documentary. Most of them have a basic college education – even the partially lobotomized ones, since we hand out college degrees like candy to white dudes with damaged brains.
But despite the deceptive variety in approach or ideology, the commonality is that they all belong to the class at the top of the human heap. And as such, they are blind to many things; they believe they have more of a right to speak than most; they believe they have a unique perspective than no one else has; they see themselves as leaders and ones best equipped to speak for all of us; and they tend to populate their documentaries with interview clips of their fellow white dudes as if there are no other people available to offer insight.
Most liberal white dudes are tuned in enough to make a documentary that pays lip service to problems of racism and classism – because these, of course, are classes that contain bepenised people – men can be of different colours and can be poor. And all men deserve attention, of course. But their oh-so-unique views of the world almost always miss one of the most important (if not THE most important) cause of why our world is the shithole that it is.
They either ignore or severely downplay the role of male domination – aka Patriarchy – in the destruction of the earth and the degradation of the human condition. They don’t acknowledge the fact that the only reason men have made poor economic models work in the short run is because they’ve built everything on the unpaid or lesser paid backs and uteri of women. You can’t have domination without slaves. And slaves have, for the most part, throughout history and continuing through to tomorrow, been women. But even when you have an unlimited slave supply (women), you can’t make a model of unlimited growth work (à la capitalism), or expect nonrenewable resources to magically become unlimited, or demand unlimited environmental imperviousness to deadly human assault.
It makes for a flawed and incomplete documentary. It has always made for bad science and theories in every field. When you don’t factor in Patriarchy as the primary cause and/or the primary environment, you aren’t telling the story correctly. It would be like trying to measure atmospheric gases, but failing to take into account that the planet being studied is Jupiter.
Men leave this key part – that Patriarchy is the root of most problems on Earth – of the puzzle out for a few reasons:
- Men like women to shoulder some to all of the burden when blame is to be laid and responsibility is to be taken for shitty circumstances.
- Conversely, men like to take credit for things (even when they didn’t contribute) only when it is a positive accomplishment (i.e., male expert dominance to be patted on the back in the awareness-raising documentary).
- Men don’t want to acknowledge that we’re in the shitter because of them, their violence, their greed, and their lust for power.
- They won’t find themselves an audience if they suggest that men fucked up and should take responsibility for the things they’ve done and should immediately relinquish their control and power structures. Men don’t like to be told that their millennia-long culture of dominance and rape is at the heart of most of the world’s current woes. Even a lot of Stockholm Syndrome-affected women won’t get on board with a documentary that says, “Look at what the men have done.”
I’m going to force myself to watch as much of this as I can. I’m into minute 23, and after way too much melodrama and wordiness, this generic, middle class, white dude, has finally laid out what he sees as the four main things that will lead to American downfall. I noticed that all four problems he listed result directly from Patriarchy, yet he doesn’t identify Patriarchy as the ultimate source. He referenced Derrick Jensen early on in the doc, and implied that he interviewed him, so I’d be a little disgusted, but not surprised, if he managed not to talk about Patriarchy in his ‘analysis’. Jensen has paid lip service to radical feminist theory, although I find him a little arrogant for my personal liking.
—
Two hours later:
I managed to get through two hours of, yes, mostly white dudes pontificating on the decline of the American Empire. And no, Patriarchy wasn’t mentioned even once. Dominance yes, but dominance was used to refer to class and race, as I predicted. There wasn’t a single mention of the oppression of women and how all empires have been built on that requirement. It was unsurprising, but still disappointing. Oh, and Jensen was indeed interviewed, and he arrogantly told us his favourite thing that HE ever said. Icky. Self-quoting… Well, white dudes. What do you expect?
I’ve noticed a few things about white dude documentaries. I’m not sure if there is a manual that they all read, but recurring elements creep me out.
White Dude documentaries must display the following:
- Lots of historic film footage of dudes doing something dudely or women doing something degrading or feminine. Preferably from the 1950’s or from some wartime period (if soldiers or concentration camp victims are needed)
- All or an overwhelming majority of those interviewed are white male experts (despite there being tons of non-white and/or non-male experts in any given field)
- Video clips that give a literal enactment of some metaphor used by an interviewee. For example, an expert begins talking about destroying the environment, and suddenly you have a clip of a wreaking ball.
- Quotes from noted misogynists, pedophiles and the like. (This particular film quoted Woody Allen who is both a misogynist and a pedophile.)
It’s hard to take a documentary seriously if it ignores really key elements. I’m not talking about entertaining and giving equal weight to fringe theories. I’m talking about allowing personal bias resulting from privilege to severely limit the explanation of the phenomenon you’re trying to cover. Feminism is not a fringe theory, and it is globally relevant. It needs to be included to provide an accurate picture of what is going on. It is also hard to take seriously any documentary that pulls testimony from a single group of privileged people (who all look like you) when the phenomenon is a) relevant to more groups than that small one, and b) there are plenty of representatives of many other groups to pull from as experts.
Nice try, white dude. He would have been better off giving his funding to a woman or minority and offering his services as ‘research support’. He would actually have been walking his talk then. But that’s just the thing. When a white dude talks about wanting to change the world, it’s just words. He doesn’t actually follow through on what he’s saying. It would have been really, really easy for him to make a positive change by enabling a traditionally less powerful, and often silenced, voice to deliver the message. When have men every stayed silent though?
*** Note: I’m not going to link to this film. It’s really not worth watching, nor do I offer a time-back guarantee when you demand those two hours of your life back. Anyhow, I wanted to comment on a phenomenon, not this particular documentary.
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