Col Rouge

"If it looks like a duck and it sounds like a duck, i assume it is open season and shoot at it."

Yes, I can see that. The slightest word or phrase and it’s all guns blazing!

Just because I talk up issues like fairness and sustainability it doesn’t mean I'm arguing for an overthrow of capitalism. Despite its flaws, I agree that it is the best system we have to date. There doesn’t seem to be any viable alternative and even if there were today’s power brokers would see to it that it never gained momentum no matter how much popular support it might have. So, no, I’m not anti-capitalism. I just don’t like the laissez faire, greed-is-good, dog-eat-dog, out-of-control, drowning-in-consumption type capitalism that we’ve ended up with now, thanks to deregulation and all the other “Thatcherite” reforms we’ve been subjected to in the last decade or so.

I know I’ve just waved another red rag! I’m sure we’ll get to revisit this debate on other threads, perhaps where it mightn’t be as off topic as it probably is for most readers here.

Romany

I've been away for about 10 days and have just checked back in here. The thread's virtually finished but I can't help but make one comment in the hope that you will see it.

Regarding your last post to Whitty, - Stop apologising!! Stop explaining yourself!!

Whitty’s attempt to frame the Order of the White Feather as some kind of specifically feminist tactic – on the basis of ONE Google article clearly written by a femophobe pseudo-historian drawing a very long bow – was irrelevant, provocative and misguided. HE was the one needing to apologise.

One of the side-effects for women living under a patriarchy is that they develop this permanent need to apologise for everything they do, say, think, feel and breathe. To apologise and explain yourself over your sane, well-informed responses to Whitty’s silliness … even once, is once too many. Doing it six times in one post is definitely a feminist issue!

If you find this unasked-for advice from a total stranger insulting – I’m sor- … Tough!

Whitty

For the record … At the same time as Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst were handing out white feathers to men who weren’t too keen on becoming one of the many millions to die in a worthless trade war declared by rich, powerful men locked in a power struggle over who was going to control the world for the next 50 years, Adela Pankhurst was addressing Womens Peace Army anti-war rallies in Melbourne that drew six-figure crowds and most certainly contributed to the defeat of warmonger Billy Hughes’s two conscription referenda in 1916 and 1917 – and the saving of tens of thousands of young Australian men’s lives

SJF,

'frame the Order of the White Feather as some kind of specifically feminist tactic '
Get out of here. I merely used it as an example where, heaven forbid, women have supported war. Read the context of the argument. I have admitted my language was loose, but there is no denying women, suffragattes, participated in this activity.

'women living under a patriarchy is that they develop this permanent need to apologise for everything they do, say, think, feel and breathe'

Are you a 19 year old gender studies student? Come on SJF, be honest.

I think if anything that describes men's reality post feminism!

What, no sex toy minibar at the hotel you were staying at, SJF? Romany is a big girl and can think for herself. Here’s hoping you chill out over the weekend ;-)

Sorry Romany, and not only for butting in on this particular occasion.

As this post is virtually exhausted, and I, like Romany have been away from this thread for some time, I thought I would drop in and see how things are going. Not much change ...

An interesting book by Jane Robinson, "Women Out of Bounds" looks at women who succeeded in fields thought exclusively for men. She found female engineers, plumbers, surgeons, a naval commander and a Royal Marine.

This book was published in 2003, but it seems woefully out of date for now.

Communist Russia had women commanders on battle ships in the 1950's - I suspect possibly earlier than that. As this was not uncommon, undoubtedly they served in other areas of the services.

I consider it appalling that women handed out white feathers. However, they were a product of the thinking - also by men - of this period. In the initial days of the war, many of the men who enlisted thought they were embarking on a great adventure ... They possibly thought that it was a larger version of "cricket," where rules applied, and they could go home after tea.

One soldier wrote that he had regarded enlisting much like going to a picnic, and the war would be over in weeks.

Wasn't the initial predicted outcome for the war, at the highest levels of command, that it would be concluded with a victory in six weeks?

Danielle whilst the assumption you wrote about WW1 is true. I really wonder if any of you women have actually read the articles on the White Feather Brigade?

SJF is very disparaging labeling the author as a " femophobe pseudo-historian".

http://itech.fgcu.edu/&/issues/vol1/issue1/feather.htm
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWfeather.htm

<Although he was a serving soldier, the writer, Compton Mackenzie, complained about the activities of the Order of the White Feather. He argued that these "idiotic young women were using white feathers to get rid of boyfriends of whom they were tired".>

<(4) James Lovegrove was only sixteen when he joined the army on the outbreak of the First World War.

On my way to work one morning a group of women surrounded me. They started shouting and yelling at me, calling me all sorts of names for not being a soldier! Do you know what they did? They struck a white feather in my coat, meaning I was a coward. Oh, I did feel dreadful, so ashamed.>

This tactic of shaming men into joining the armed services had been used in the past, it was also used in Australia (not to the same degree)

Yes Danielle, many men did naively think it was like a game of cricket, until they encountered the realities of war where friends would die in front of you, half bodies, torso's with limbs or heads missing.

They may left as boys, but they came back as broken human beings having lost their innocence. Very few of those who came back will ever speak about what they saw or experienced.

"One of the side-effects for women living under a patriarchy is that they develop this permanent need to apologise for everything they do,"

Do you mean to say that it is only recently that women have suddenly developed the verbal skills necessary to challange the dreaded "patriarchy'? SJF

Christine Stolba in her book "Lying in a room of ones own" is very critical of feminists texts, errors of fact, errors of interpretation and sins of omission are the three categories whe developed.