Poirot, When you dad was violent to your mum did she think that that was OK as men had invented philosophy? Or was she stuck with a violent man because she was trapped her financially and/or socially? Surely a mother is hard pressed to fight both a system that protects (or at least doesn't intervene with) violent men and look after her kids. Paglia seems to want women to accept the system.We only have the rights we have because we fought for them. They haven't been bestowed by kindly patriarchs.

Aristocrat, you haven't made a post that wasn't a mass of generalisations and a rejection of other ways of thought without putting anything forward.

Squeers, Glad to see that you speak up against oppression. Interesting you are ostracised for it and so see it as the norm. I worked in the building industry and saw nasty men manipulate and play "in and out crowd" with other men. Have a look at the Peckham Experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peckham_Experiment "Central to Scott Williamson's philosophy was the belief that left to themselves people would spontaneously begin to organize in a creative way, and this happened," I don't think we should give up all hope.

Phanto, You frequently refer to psychologists and said that people are violent when acting irrationally in response to anger and fear. How do you suggest dealing with this? What do you think of the Roots of Empathy programme http://www.rootsofempathy.org/ and Hawn Foundation http://thehawnfoundation.org/

Killarney I agree that men don't want to face up to violent masculinity because it brings privileges. This article shows the misogyny of Afghanistan. http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/27141-the-missing-women-of-afghanistan-after-13-years-of-war-the-rule-of-men-not-law The US are complicit in the creation of the Taliban. There's also a tradition of reforming Afghan men. "Nearly a century ago, King Amanullah founded the first high school for girls and the first family court to adjudicate women’s complaints about their husbands; he proclaimed the equality of men and women, and banned polygamy; he cast away the burqa, and banished ultra-conservative Islamist mullahs as “bad and evil persons”.

When life is good for women, it's good for men and kids too.

lillian,

Good point...no my mum was trapped in the 60's and she eventually walked out in desperation....on all of us.

My question, however, was why feminists would buy into a masculine system based on a projection away from, and aggression towards, feminine nature?

I'm trying to understand why feminists accept the aggression innate in the system - are complicit along with the rest of the population in enjoying Western privilege at the expense of those exploited in third world countries by our system - and yet criticise the very quality of aggression in men?

Feminists clamour for equality in a system which does not celebrate the feminine. It seeks to conquer it - to build an illusory reality that humanity is somehow separate and not dependent on feminine earth.

It's all very comfortable materially, but why do feminists seek to embrace with such gusto a system built on the aggressive subjection, not only of the environment, but also of vulnerable humans who don't share our system?

You say:
"We only have the rights we have because we fought for them. They haven't been bestowed by kindly patriarchs."

As I'm sure you realise, my choice of the word "bestow" was a recognition that it's the system (not kindly patriarchs) that gives feminism a voice - one which it wouldn't have had otherwise.

Lillian :

I had a look at those sites and they show a positive approach especially in regard to the importance of parenting.

My opinion is that things like empathy and emotional intelligence are things that do not need to be taught. They already exist in human nature and if a child is allowed to freely develop they will come to the surface naturally. They should be as natural as breathing and no one needs to be taught how to breathe.

The problem, as I see it, is that parents can hinder that natural development because they are more concerned with protecting their own pain than allowing their children freedom to develop. For example when they see a child develop a natural curiosity about sex then this may threaten them if they were brought up in an environment that repressed sexuality. They might punish the child or show such disapproval that the child grows up thinking there is something fundamentally unnatural about sex. So now you have a second generation with stilted attitudes to sex. It goes on through the generations until a parent decides to examine where they got such unnatural attitudes. This is where psychology should be able to help. I think you have to break the cycle as an adult before you can be effective as a parent in allowing a child to develop according to its nature.

I think this is how violence continues on through the generations. A person who feels threatened by the freedom exhibited by children may well become violent towards the child in order to protect themselves from the painful fact that they have had to repress a lot of their natural freedoms . When they see a free spirited child they want to silence that child because it triggers too much pain for them. They need to look at what freedoms they have repressed and recover them so they are free to parent in the best interests of the child.

"Aristocrat, you haven't made a post that wasn't a mass of generalisations and a rejection of other ways of thought without putting anything forward."

My "mass generalisations" can be verified by reading the references you provided. Some of them specifically state they are using a Foucauldian paradigm to analyse history. Additionally, in Humanities and Social Sciences departments, Foucauldian and neo-Marxist analyses are often used as a methodological approach to researching history (and a host of other cultural issues).

As I stated previously, the first step is to stop lambasting men as the cause of all the ills in the world. There is no solution in this approach. This only creates guilt and resentment and feeds the revenge fantasies of feminists and other "progressives".

phanto

'My ‘psychobabble’ has obviously hit a nerve with you.'

Oh, get over yourself. You're nowhere near as insightful as you like to think you are. You're just making yourself boring. No doubt you'll use this post as evidence of my existential bitterness or a cry for help or that I'm in denial ... or how about paranoid projection of my inner rage?

Knock yourself out, Sigmumd. But don't kid a kidder.

Poirot

Feminism crosses all political boundaries and belief systems. From your posts, you seem to think that a feminist must only embrace a particular kind of socio-political system.

Why must it be 'either/or', not 'both/and'? I can walk and chew gum at the same time.

I've come across this attitude towards feminism a lot among the left, particularly the radical socialist left (not that I'm saying that you are a radical socialist ... I'm just drawing the comparison). The attitude is that a feminist is not a feminist if she endorses the capitalist system in any way, shape or form. The belief is that the class struggle takes priority over everything - I strongly suspect this is because class is the only real barrier most men have to struggle against.

A woman can be a feminist and yet believe in capitalism, consumerism, imperialism, religious values and military solutions to problems. A feminist can also be philosophically opposed to abortion (although A LOT of feminists don't agree with me on that one).

I don't mean to be argumentative with your views. I'm just putting forward my own view of what feminism means to me - a view that feminism embraces, and can operate within, all political systems

Killarney,
it's not "that a feminist is not a feminist if she endorses the capitalist system", but that she's a hypocrite.
Feminism appeals to ethics for consideration of her inequitable treatment, but my concern (andf Poirot's I think) is it's self-serving rather than ethical per se. Global capitalism is the zenith of patriarchy, relentlessly bent on reducing all humanity to market values and based on the unsustainable rape and pillage of the entire biosphere. Our feminists are apparently happy for this global "violence" to go on, so long as they get their share.

Lillian,

I'm disappointed you've addressed the least of the points I've made above. However, the whole idea that we can change the world with peer pressure and appeals to conscience is patent nonsense. You only have to spend time on OLO, especially AGW debates, to see that prejudices are obsidian. Humans are master rationalisers and can reconcile their irrational beliefs with all and any evidence to the contrary.
But as I said above, progressive action(merely agitation) only endorses the status quo, and it stands condemned. This imposes a far more disturbing form of ostracism and I would love to receive some cogent argument to the contrary. We are social animals and I have no wish to be a self-exile. But I put ethics before self-interest.

On the article, I just want to add the point that while violence can never be justified, women are often equal partners in stirring it up, at least domestically. Conflict often is stereotypical, with men trying to use reason and their partners responding emotionally. Each gets exasperated with the others obtuseness and it escalates.