lillian,

I think we're on the same general wavelength, however, I disagree with your take on "consumer society".

"....Politicians are in cahoots with corporations but not for the benefit of consumers. Australia is about to lose it's sovereignty with the signing of the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement."

"Everything" from cradle to grave in Western society is predicated on "consuming". Yes, right-wing governments are skewing the odds in favour of more power to corporations, however, that is more about corporations being given powers to sue if anything gets in their way. It's merely act of a progression, and something that has been practiced upon the developing world by Western organisations for a very long time.

" What we have is not a 'consumer' driven society (consumers had to be invented in the 20th century by advertising and built in obsolescence. Thrift was the previous virtue"

We "do" have a consumer-driven society, one in which if you're are not attending an actual "workplace" then you are likely ensconced in one or another institution, be you a toddler, an older child or a retiree. The reasoning behind this is that the person in the workplace is then freed to earn so as to consume...simples. And yes, 'advertising" is so important to urging consumption beyond sustainable limits...but how do you deduce from that that we "do not" have a consumer-driven society in 2014?

I'm under no delusion that "all" Western women are "sitting on a huge wave of wonderfulness", however, both genders are complicit in engaging the structure under which we Westerners live. Both genders benefit materially, and blithely and myopically accept their spoils without (for the most part) a sidelong glance at the exploitation from which it emanates in the third world.

It's all a very Apollonian ideal - and Western women appear happy to sit astride the bandwagon for the ride, criticising the patriarchal ideals which impel the vehicle.

Poirot:

It is good to hear what a woman free from a personal agenda to push has to say about the world. There are insights such as yours that only a woman might observe and they complement the insights that come from observations that only a man would be likely to observe. It is this complementarity that should be the back bone of the way forward in solving society’s problems.

Killarney:

You sound like a lot of Jewish people who want to keep the Holocaust up front and centre all the time in order to convince themselves that they are still victims of oppression.

Why not deal with the reality of the present instead of always talking about how things were? It seems that your identity is so tied up with your feminism that you cannot accept that the need for that kind of feminism is no longer necessary

Poirot
You write as if everything just 'happened' and everyone has happily gone along with it all. There is, and has been, immense opposition to this.

Maintaining everything really is about the consumer is daft. READ THE INFO ON THE TPP. Society has been deliberately engineered by the powerful by a variety of mechanisms. Have a look at Edward Bernays 1928 pamphlet "Propaganda". Once the great unwashed got the vote the popular will had to be bent to the bidding of the powerful.

The 'consumer' society makes money out of what was once free. The establishment of capitalism involved the enclosure of the commons, the enclosure of women by men and lashings of violence. Now the enclosures of the commons are the patenting of seed and human genes and Nestle being given water so it can bottle and sell it at vast profit and the exploitation of 3rd world via 'globalisation'.

Are people happy? Some are, increasing numbers aren't. Do most people realise what is going on? No. Why? Deliberate ignorance is fostered and the neo-lib right wing have done a splendid job of creating myths and making people believe the opposite of what is true. See the creation of the Abbott government as one example. Read "The Establishment" by Owen Jones for how it has been done, including the use of 'think tanks'. We have the Institute of Public Affairs as our very own loony tunes that is at the centre of Abbott's aims.

"It's all a very Apollonian ideal - and Western women appear happy to sit astride the bandwagon for the ride, criticising the patriarchal ideals which impel the vehicle." You can believe this if you only look narrowly. Have a look at what masses of small, underfunded organisations are doing for women and against the corporate, capitalist mess we live in.

Phanto, women still have to face violence, sexism, religious and other discrimination and poverty. When women's lives improve so do those of men and children.

Thrift may have been the previous virtue but according to Weber this was part of Protestant work ethic, and while austerity was the ideal this didn't stop these Godly entrepreneurs amassing enormous wealth. There had to be a switch to consumerism in order to service the economy. Late capitalism is not for humanity, humanity is for capitalism, which must grow. This can only be accomplished by creating more and greedier consumers. The great mass of consumers exist to consume and culture, another mode of consumption, is little more than patronage designed to foster the illusion of meaning. Mental health statistics and all the violence show that this isn't working, while exotic/predatory sexual bevaviour and the porn industry are testament to the dullness of satiety. Mass culture is detestable to the likes of Abbott, but it's a necessary evil; our bovine culture drives the economy and facilitates elitist culture which is alive and well.

lillian,

"Maintaining everything really is about the consumer is daft...."

Tell me what drives our economy? Convince me that conspicuous consumption isn't the chief tenet of Western life. You note the advertising propaganda which permeates almost every waking moment of Western lives - why is that? It's because our entire lifestyle is now predicated on buying stuff, and then buying more stuff.

"The 'consumer' society makes money out of what was once free."

Yep, but as Squeers points out, we're a bovine mob....are women going to withhold their spending power to make the point that capitalism exploits the ordinary man and rewards the obscenely rich? No, because ordinary people of both genders enjoy their fortunate material position - that's the pay-off.

Here's what Paglia wrote:

"The capitalist distribution network, a complex chain of factory, transport, warehouse, and retail outlet, is one of the greatest male accomplishments in the history of culture. It is a lightning quick Apollonian circut of male bonding. One of feminism's irritating reflexes is its fashionable disdain for "patriarchal society" to which nothing good is ever attributed. But it is patriarchal society that has freed me as a woman. It is capitalism that has given me the leisure to write this book [Sexual Personae]...."

And what is it that Westerners project onto third world countries when they envision "lifting them out of poverty" and development? - they would replicate our generic consumer society and foist it upon them...because with capitalism and consumerism comes material fortune, education and loosened gender role bonds.

Of course, humans turn out to be intelligent, but not wise - and our voraciousness, under a highly advanced capitalist system is not conducive to the health of fellow species or their habitats...perhaps we're an evolutionary error.

Poirot

You’re conflating feminism with humanism, which are two fundamentally separate social justice movements, driven by fundamentally separate issues. Like all social justice movements, their goals and activities overlap, but one should not be judged for not doing the work of another.

Feminism is about gender equality, not fighting global capitalism or making life better for people in the Third World (the latter of which usually creates more problems than it solves anyway).

Also, you seriously underestimate Western feminism’s awareness of the true ‘capitalist’ reasons behind the ‘green light’ given to Western women to enter the workforce en masse from the early 60s. They know full well that it was motivated by the recognition that women represented a whole new consumer market with its own spending power.

However, when technology and economic factors bring seismic shifts in the way societies are run, they also bring simmering social justice issues to the surface. The old principle of ‘preparation meets opportunity’ kicks in and social justice issues become movements that start pressuring the powers that be to make concessions.

While women have made what is patronisingly referred to as ‘great strides’, especially in terms of consumer spending, the matrix of power remains firmly in the hands of men. This particularly applies to all the propagandist institutions that drive public opinion – Hollywood, the media, advertising and publishing, whose main job is to spruik the male-centric values of war, sport and business, and keep women’s role in the culture as passive and peripheral.