A Springboard December 7, 2014
Posted by FCM in international, liberal dickwads, logic, news you can use, radical concepts.Tags: guy mcpherson, near term extinction, NTE, NTHE
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i realize that some of my previous comments may have seemed out of left field so i wanted to clarify what i meant when i said that the environment may not support MALE life for much longer, and almost certainly not indefinitely. i started researching NTE/NTHE (near term extinction/near term human extinction) based on a comment on another blog and i have been thinking about it for awhile. there have been cryptic comments being dropped on our blogs for years by trusted commenters about some imminent disaster/extinction event but nothing that was googleable, and i was apparently not inclined to investigate it on my own; at last, someone dropped an acronym — NTE. something googleable! so i googled it. (witchwind has also discussed this on her blog).
i will not get into it extremely deeply here, google will tell you all you need to know (the evidence has been synthesized and kid-gloved so its readable, the really sciency among us may be able to find the original data somewhere as well). however, i can tell you that there are some people who believe that human-caused global climate change will cause human extinction within our lifetimes — even as soon as the next 15-20 years. due to “positive feedback loops” of environmental destruction which produce exponentially more of the same, even if “we” stopped our policy and practice of global environmental destruction tomorrow, it wouldnt help (and we are nowhere near stopping any of it tomorrow, next year, or ever). we have passed the point of no return.
now, i think it is always a safe bet to assume that men are lying about whatever they are talking about, or that they have gotten it wrong (or both). i think this should be our default posture when encountering any male ideology, but that we should also not dismiss all of mens work out of hand. mary daly talked about using mens work as “springboards” for our own. in this way, we can turn mens necrophilic theory, policy and practice into something we can use, to help ourselves. a sound policy, considering that males have monopolized all the resources including data and methods of collecting data, and we have to get by on whatever they decide to share with us, assuming there is anything left after stripping it down of its repulsive maleness. and i have come to believe that there is something we can use in the data/evidence and synthesis men have shared in relation to NTE.
NTE activist (mostly) males say that global climate change will make the earth uninhabitable for humans and that we will become extinct — that the planet in its oppressively polluted state will shortly get exponentially worse and will not support human life for much longer. and this may well be. what i have never seen discussed is the possibility that an oppressively polluted earth will not sustain MALE life (but that female or majority female life may well live on) even though there is some evidence to support this. i am not saying PROOF — i am talking about evidence. and this is important.
all theorists except mathematicians (i think?) rely on evidence, not proof, in forming and coalescing their thoughts — upon which is built policy and practice. proof is reserved for mathematics in that actual logical proofs can be drawn which are not debatable — if done correctly, proofs are demonstrably true, in a mathematical sense. others of us have to rely on “evidence” which is a lower standard, and far from ideal, but it is what it is. of course, an even lower standard has been applied where some feminists have “theorized” about men and maleness “against all evidence” and these feminists have long professed that there is hope for men, that men are likely to change, that males will respond to females without violence. they admit that the policy and practice flowing from these absurd beliefs has been against all evidence. the result has been a disaster, and 100+ years of reformist politicking has been like shooting pebbles at the moon.
anyway, all this is to say that there is indeed EVIDENCE that MALE life will become extinct or endangered in fairly short order, due to global climate change. while NTE activists (or whatever they call themselves — doomsday cultists) present compelling EVIDENCE for their claims that human life will shortly falter or fail, they have rather notably not addressed known sex-based differences in human survival rates including fetal development under conditions of pollution and maternal stress — these conditions demonstrably favor female life over male. in other words, where male fetuses and neonates are relatively fragile, and female is the default setting for every fetus, it is largely females that survive environmental pollution and maternal stress — massive levels of both pollution and stress being on the horizon, according to NTE activists. and males, disproportionately, do not survive in these conditions.
i have used NTE male circle-jerking (essentially, resource hoarding and hedonism in preparation for “our” impending doom) as a springboard for my own thoughts, which is that nature will favor a global female majority, and that there is EVIDENCE that this will indeed happen, and that it may happen soon. relatedly, there is also EVIDENCE that, when the male population decreases substantially for whatever reason, life gets better for everyone. google it! what all of this means in practical terms, as far as i can tell, is that natural law will take care of the maleness problem, which is partly a numbers problem, ie, too many males. and human females need not do anything — its going to happen anyway, no matter what we do or dont.
kindly recall that i am citing EVIDENCE, not PROOF. and frankly, as there is NO evidence that males as a class will ever change for the better, and NO evidence that males as a class can or will respond to females without violence, what i am proposing here is in fact more logically sound than anything any reformist feminist has ever proposed. there is more evidence that the human race will become extinct in 15 years than there is evidence that males will ever stop oppressing, raping and murdering females based on our sex. think about that.
males have created a global system that is unsustainable, where they have reaped all the benefits while enduring no or disproportionately low costs (PIV is but one example of many, but it is the only one that all males share equal responsibility for; being that global overpopulation is largely what has caused this mess, this is no small point, but one that largely “sexually active” PIV-positive NTE activists have notably not addressed. responsibility for other discrepant cost/benefit scenarios may differ amongst men based on their race and class, with white western males arguably being the worst. but still, all subsidies are created by and for men). the punchline, if you can call it that, is that nature will not stand for this forever. women demanding some return to homeostasis, or activating towards it, follows natural law, but there is EVIDENCE that it is too late for any of this. and as it always has and always will, nature bats last.
NTE activists believe that no humans will survive, but another outcome is supported by the evidence — the world will be so polluted and stressful that males will simply cease to exist, or will only exist in disproportionately tiny numbers while females survive to make the best of whatever is left, even if its been reduced to a toxic, smoking cinder. just like we always have. this is freeing in a dark way — and forgive me too if i find it a bit funny. after all the FEMALE blood, sweat and tears expended advancing radical feminism (and environmentalism!) in the face of impending global male extinction…its gallows humor.
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femonade 
here is DGR’s derrek jensen interviewing NTE guru guy mcpherson
http://prn.fm/resistance-radio-guy-mcpherson-041314/
note that “radical feminist ally” jensen does not mention male culpability (or patriarchy) one time. and that the words “human” and “civilization” are used repeatedly, but that MEN and PATRIARCHY (or necrophilia) are not used once. thanks for nothing DGR.
Women will not only have a greater chance of surviving for the reasons you specified, i think we are also less worried about it, which is important in and of itself and also in how it relates to our prospects for survival. We are the life-givers and as such are built to contribute to the whole instead of egotistically competing against one another. Cooperation will help us maximize our potential to integrate into the environment in which we find ourselves. But if we don’t fit into the bigger picture, the needs of the larger ecosystem, so what? We die and our bodies compost and then become new life, perhaps a form that is more needed. Consciousness endures.
Men are more scared of death because of their egos, their lack of identification with anything larger than, but inclusive of, themselves. So I wouldn’t trust anything men say about how shit will go down after the fall. Guys like DJ are clearly scared shitless of the masses behaving in egotistical ways following grid crash strikingly similar to the ways he already behaves, a resource hoarder who capitalizes on, well, capitalism. DGR functions as a vehicle for wealthy white males to get in with indigenous folks who have access to both land and ancestral (women’s) knowledge of relationship with land. Notice they don’t care about POC who have no land. Land = survival.
As a system, the org operates with the same fractal pattern of energy-sucking male violence as exists in the larger patriarchal vortex. Such large orgs will become impossible without the energy grid and male rule will thus be easier to resist. As women, we will connect to the mirror-image fractal pattern of life-giving female gynergy, using the sun as our source, and spin and spiral autonomously and harmoniously like the peaks of a purple cauliflower, until the remaining chunks of mutancy are blended into compost.
yes! there are surely hundreds of reasons women will survive where males dont. we have survived millenia of brutal oppression, violence, torture, othering, and femicide including female-specific infanticide. would males survive these conditions if they were the objects instead of the subjects of this type and degree of oppression? it is telling that they have never had to. also, very interesting about DGR’s policy and practice wrt indigenous peoples, i did not know that. their entire operation is morally and politically bankrupt, if they claim to be radical feminists (which they do). its a screaming farce. and i agree that in the big picture, it doesnt really matter if any humans survive. i also cant help wondering if we did survive, and the earth cleansed and rebalanced itself to the point that males were being born again, would females conceive and nurture them so inappropriately like we did the first time around, so that all this would happen again? its something to think about.
in the meantime, i am getting more and more comfortable removing myself from radical feminism, and i think this is a great conversation to have in that light. i think it is pointless and tragic, and that there is plenty of EVIDENCE supporting that conclusion. females are thinking beings and we have the natural right to make reasoned conclusions based on the evidence. i think this is a waste of energy, and the FACT that so many women reject it is further EVIDENCE that its faulty. women arent stupid, and yet they consistently reject feminism and feminist activism. male terrorism is probably part of this, as it is part of what silences women. but as we previously discussed, there may be other reasons that women do not embrace mens language. i also think there are other reasons, besides men threatening us, that women think feminism is not worth it. perhaps women sense what is to come, and would rather spend time with their kids, or reading, or basically doing anything besides shooting pebbles at the moon (a euphemism for pointless, misguided and wasteful feminist activism, as demonstrated by the last 100 years, where things have only gotten worse despite our sincerest and best efforts).
Just quickly something I was going to say on the last thread and never got around to: even males define autonomy as “uncoerced” decision making.
Sleeping on the post and am digging CTR’s comment. Thanks 🙂
The whole idea of evidence vs proof is interesting. In one way proof is seen as airtight, but is it better in other ways? Not necessarily. They are different things, though science has regarded them similarly. You can have all kinds of evidence. Inner knowing, for instance, can be evidence. So can community tradition. Things observed may be seen as evidence. For instance, a woman who is a healer might have an intuition about a plant never before used. She may taste it on the tip of her tongue. Both are kinds of knowing. Or a community of healers may know about certain plants, something passed along. Or someone is given a herb and recovers. All of these things will be seen as evidence and all may combine to form a comprehensive picture to be passed along in a community. But a good healer is also like a craftswoman, something that takes a long time to learn and is learned from others.
Science has tried to make math do a job it should not do. For instance, a pharmaceutical drug is tested. It may even start with some of these kinds of evidence (which is usually seen as lesser). But then the drug is given to “subjects” who are generally objects and not people. Often the profession’s ethical standards are violated and plenty of harm is done, particularly to women used as guinea pigs. (I just finished reading “Woman on the Edge of Time” which makes this point.
The evidence from the testing is then measured mathematically, using statistics. The trouble here is that statistics are not proofs in the same way as other math. But people often treat them that way. It often includes a bell shaped curve, with people at both ends. If you are an “outlier” you may have a horrible reaction to the drug and end up in far worse shape than previously. Or end up dead.
Also, math is reductionist. You are reducing real life things to numbers. In the above example, you are only testing for one or a very limited number of things. So significant side effects may be ignored in the reporting of the results. If you have ever had a “side effect” from a drug or a medical device and your doctor has said, “there’s no evidence for that” and pooh-poohs it, what does that mean? It only means that it has not been studied directly.
I do not throw out this kind of “research” evidence or math, not at all. But see it for what it is: a very narrow picture of the evidence available. The kinds of evidence a traditional woman healer uses is more comprehensive. But there may still be errors based on community beliefs, cherry picking for what you want to see, etc. So, long story short, I’d subsume the mathematical kind of research evidence, including statistical evidence, under the larger umbrella of all evidence.
One more thing is computer or mathematical modeling. Again, it could be useful but is also often mistaken. The men doing it have to reduce the factors. It is impossible to understand the complexity of a thing in the real world fully. So it is simplified. Reductionism is a male, particularly a first world male, approach to prediction and control. Except it doesn’t work.
So, while I don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, and think we should use whatever we can as evidence, I also think that things like intuition and other kinds of connected knowing are demeaned but are the things that women understand and use all the time anyway. They are subtle and complex, like the world around us. Is the ability to use this kind of evidence part of what was suppressed through the witch burnings?
Gotta run, check back tonight.
P.S. I meant to say, but somehow left it out that “anecdotal” evidence is usually demeaned in the type of research we see. So if a bunch of people have used a herb for centuries and it has worked well and you use it and it works better than the drugs you are taking, it may be invisible to your doctor, since it is “only” anecdotal evidence and thus not admissible as “real” evidence. The doctor may report a spontaneous cure instead since writing in your patient records that you took x herb and recovered is a no-no.
I liked “Woman on the Edge of Time” for the good points it makes about ethics and women and medicine. (I just ignore the piv and like stuff). Plus, I’m into reading novels these days.
the whole thing is totally manipulated by men! when the EVIDENCE shows what they want it to show, they says its PROOF when its really not (its just evidence, and as you say in the case of “scientific” experiments, evidence of one thing taken in a vacuum, and ONE INTERPRETATION of the evidence at that). but when women use EVIDENCE we have gained over generations and millenia for example that males are rapists and oppressors, this is regarded as BAGGAGE, or ISSUES. when it comes to women even making statements about their own reality, or when we want to create a pro-female policy and practice out of necessity, in the face of overwhelming EVIDENCE that it is in fact necessary, males demand PROOF when this standard is impossible, even as males themselves have no PROOF for anything they espouse either, just that they have the power to name, and they NAME their evidence PROOF (and their bullshit gaslighting and lies as EVIDENCE) when it suits them.
and feminists fall for it. they really do. i would say that anyone who looks at the history of feminism and our herstory of 100+ years of feminist activating and thinks that its working and we should do more of it, is not using EVIDENCE in their evaluation of the situation, and that includes “inner feelings” and “intuition” too! i simply do not accept that any woman could look at males as a class for example, and really, truly FEEL/SENSE/INTUIT that males are “really” good on the inside for example, or that they are not dangerous. there is no way this is possible, considering the reality of the situation, and in fact the #yesallwomen hashtag was useful this way because what women demonstrated there was that they are fearful all the time, they carry their keys like spikes between their fingers, why again? because “something” tells them that that one crazy guy that does all the raping and murdering of women is in town that day? does “something” tell them that EVERY day?
feminist activists must also accept that the things males have called PROOF have really been proven, otherwise they would not act as they do ie as if any of this is working or is likely to ever work (for example, mens alleged PROOF that in some cultures, men do not rape — this dubious conclusion based on EVIDENCE that in some cultures, men rape *less* than they do here). d’oh.
it is possible that women continue to activate because they SENSE or INTUIT that it is working or that someday it will work. this is possible, but i dont buy it. when pressed, what these women state is that they HAVE TO believe it will work, not that they actually believe it. they HAVE TO believe it because they have sons, or they fear the alternative would be too depressing. ok, but that does not even rise to the level of evidence. if you are doing this properly, you have to WEIGH competing evidence as well, and evaluate/synthesize analyze the data. i do not see that happening either. all this AGAINST ALL EVIDENCE stuff, and the demanding PROOF when no such thing exists outside mathematics is gaslighting, is what it is, and it is unconscionable.
have nothing new to add, just wanted to say this is as always, an excellent and thoughtful post. and wordwoman: ” If you have ever had a “side effect” from a drug or a medical device and your doctor has said, “there’s no evidence for that” and pooh-poohs it, what does that mean? It only means that it has not been studied directly. ” YES a thousand times. i can’t believe how many medical “professionals” refuse to listen to me when i say this, like they shouldn’t be thankful i just did their job for them. bless all y’all. can’t wait for the mass male extinction!
Thanks for bringing this up! I found an article with a discussion of climate change and its impact on male fetuses. In September 2014 Japanese scientists published a study which showed an association between extremes of temperature and a falling rate of live births of males: http://www.livescience.com/48070-male-fetus-climate-change.html
At the very end of the article is the way this gets balanced out and indeed, there’s an increase in the ratio of male babies being born worldwide due to sex selection in abortion. So what nature seems to be doing, changing the climate, is being counterbalanced by patriarchal mores in humans ending up with women being the group that is reduced!
A strange analogy comes to me: the US Equal Rights Amendment. Women fought long and hard for it. They believed, and many libfems still think, that passage (with some smart amendments like specifically retaining certain protective laws for women) would provide a strong basis for legal challenges to patriarchy by women. However, many of us have watched a number of instances in which civil rights “equality” laws for women were promptly co-opted by men to protect their position even more. An example of this is the Bakke Supreme Court decision gutting affirmative action for women in college admissions, on grounds that men must be given “equal” consideration under Title VII of the US Civil Rights Act.
The Equal Rights Act (a proposed amendment to the US Constitution, which still does not guarantee equality for women) was never passed in spite of many women giving the bulk of their feminist energies for years to its passage, and this was widely seen as a failure for feminism. But subsequent discussion has shown that passage of this “equality” Act would have been a disaster. Reactionary mens’ groups now actively agitate to resurrect the bill and pass the Act. They see that this could be easily coopted to insist that nothing positive to redress inequality of women could be done legally without doing the “same” for men, which would of course result in retaining the same balance of inequities.
My point is that every time something comes along, big or small, that changes the male-female balance of power, a balancing change occurs somewhere else, causing the unequal system to be retained. Sexual politics acts like a runaway ecosystem that’s skewed but is always adjusting to keep the skew instead of looking for an equitable homeostasis.
And this is something we aren’t supposed to notice. We need to be aware and watch for it as the balancing act may occur in a very different area of patriarchal systems.. So – male fetuses in danger from male-caused climate change, more abortions of female babies.
Yes, right – why are women carrying their keys like spikey brass knuckles and why are they starting to carry guns in ever increasing numbers? To protect themselves from that ‘tiny’ fraction of men who are doing all the bad things?
When I say “rapists are men” I get every kind of resistance from the ubiquitous ‘women rape tooooo!1!’ and ‘not all men’ to ‘how dare you!’ Recently one woman claimed that not ONE of all the men or boys in her extended family or any of her male friends/coworkers were rapists and I asked her how she could be sure of that – did she think that they would divulge that sort of alarming information to her? She, a “feminist” no less, was enraged.
Yes women have to believe, against all evidence, don’t they? What’s particularly sad to me is that women have bought the line that it’s their fault if some man they even KNOW would rape – but the reality obviously is that they are too frightened to believe that they are living with and enabling rapists.
i really do agree with you about the futility of feminist activism, reforming patriarchy, or even talking to anyone about it anymore, whats the point…i like your “shooting pebbles at the moon”
The evidence that you cited that the Female race can and will survive ties in nicely with the “evidence” that the y chromosome is a mutation and like all mutations , they finally become extinct and cease to exist. and many believe that time is Now, in Sisterwitch Sonia Johnson talks about this……..
and this is the best part “human females need not do anything – its going to happen anyway, no matter what we do or don’t do” …!
thanksxx for pointing that out!
could maleness ever occur again?? since maleness=evil (THEY created the concept) and this is a bit Out there to wonder,
but does evil just Float around out in the Uni-verse, Multi-verse
waiting for a male 3-D mutational form to occupy….?
i have to think not……just a thought, dont mean to derail ………
yes, wrt males using their technologies to put the odds back in their favor, i would say that the grid shutting down will take care of that, and they will not be able to do that anymore. sex selective abortions will be impossible since there will be no technology available to determine the sex of the fetus, and medical interventions as a whole will have to decrease in the absence of electricity, running water, sterilization, light (wont they?) the fact of a pregnancy at all would be EVIDENCE that the fetus is in fact female, since most of them will be, but since a few males will also probably be born, aborting any fetus would be risky — it might be a male! and males would then be very “precious” to other males. if you are saying that, if more females are indeed born, and less males, that males would then wait until the females are born and then kill them? they already do that. the only reason it works to decrease the ratio of females to males is that males continue to be born and are let live. under conditions of extreme pollution and maternal stress, this would not be the case. they can rape women all they want, and it will only produce more females. they can kill us, but we will only be replaced (and males wont be). if you are saying that males, being born at a tiny fraction of the rate they are now, would kill so many female infants so that males would STILL be the global majority…they well might. they really, really might. i wonder how women would react to “patriarchy” then, with no male technology, no grid, and very low total population and probably very small communities, and considering that male fertility would probably be very low as well as this is happening already (very few pregnancies would happen at all). would women stand for males surveilling their birthing rooms and killing their girls? if so, why? if not, why not? perhaps more to the point, would nature stand for this? it hasnt the first time around.
also, vyechera, i am not sure that saying “nature” is changing the climate is accurate, or what you mean by that. “humans” are changing it, or more specifically, males are. it seems as if there is a very small amount of wiggle room where the climate can “change” and it is still compatible with human life, but there are sex specific differences among humans. it really depends on how far they take this. if they take it too far, no one will survive. the NTE death-cultists believe none will survive. however this is just an assumption on their part, and based in “equality” rhetoric at that, that women = men and men = women. they have failed to address any nuance here, even in the face of known evidence of sex difference under the very conditions they anticipate.
yes S4, it is as if women believe that rapist males have no mothers. violent male abusers, including rapists, all come from nowhere, i suppose. whispy tendrils of evil floating in the air with no families, and no female friends, relatives, nothing. its the same place all male criminals come from, and all ugly men in fact. because all womens sons are harmless (and beautiful). its ridiculous.
My question is this: why, when we would be having a fairly difficult time surviving at all would any woman put herself in the extreme position of pregnancy in the first place?
i just assumed men would continue to rape us, and that includes the NTE activists, some of whom advocate for women sterilizing ourselves NOW for the impending mass global rapes after the grid fails by men like them, as well as all the recreational PIV and whoremongering (to celebrate!) in the meantime. because why stop sticking your dicks into women, even in the face of global overpopulation having done us all in? but you are right! if it were totally and completely up to us, would any of us decide to do this? how many of us?
FCM said, “also, vyechera, i am not sure that saying “nature” is changing the climate is accurate, or what you mean by that.”
I misspoke. Nature is being changed by the patriarcho-industrial complex.
Thinking about this, though, I begin to ask myself if Nature may be actively changing herself in response to the insults against her, as a patient fighting an infection develops a fever which kills the infection. She is perhaps fighting rather than passively reacting only. Maybe she’ll draw back after she’s destroyed industrial civilization and let us have another chance.
I was at a conference where Derrick Jensen was on several panels a couple of weeks ago. I won’t say much except that he did two things that I and others felt were very problematic. First, he acted condescending to a woman on one of his panels, minimizing her statements. Second, someone in the audience objected to an earlier statement by someone else that said that the rape of women is the same as the “rape” of the environment. Everyone agreed that this comparison is not advisable as it blurs, broadens, and diffuses the specific criminal act against women. Everyone but Jensen, who said loudly and firmly that he saw no problem with the comparison.
I believe DGR may be fragmenting with the all-woman radical feminist wing separating more and more. However, I think they still have a strategic alliance because Jensen is well-known and has contacts and resources that are helpful. I don’t know him personally.
There’s also the factor of men killing each other off. I expect this will continue, too.
yes men raping women is exactly the same as men raping the environment, because men raping the environment hurts both women and men, and men raping women hurts both women and men. oh wait…
dear mr. jensen. go fuck yourself! thanks!
WordWoman, regarding reading novels…….synCrone-istically, i just finished reading Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time too…..and since i think we are all participating in a “gatherstretch”,
(that is, thinking about the same things at the same time, from Gearharts Wanderground, another great book), i find that fascinating.
For those who havent read Woman on the Edge of Time, the main character is committed to an insane asylum/mental institution by her brother, where the inmates are drugged with thorazine & seconal daily and the doctors exxperiment on their brains by drilling holes and implanting electrodes, stimulating parts of the brain. this is to improve their bad behavior and make them well again. Because Connie is psychically “Open” she is a powerful ” receiver” and “sender” and she keeps getting pulled into the future, 2137.
The world there is somewhat better compared to now, but the author cannot conceive of an future exxistence without men.
may i recommend for your reading entertainment
and pleasure some other authors /series that describe women living together in a future/past withOUT men: female utopian fantasy
Diana Rivers and the Hadra & the Witches series, 6 books set
in the 16th-17th century after most of the witches had been exterminated, i enjoyed them so much and also loved
Jean Stewarts Isis series, set in 2094 after the aids virus mutates with genital herpes and wipes out most of the het population
a gripping exxciting story , 5 books
another wonderful author i enjoyed, Katherine V. Forrest’s trilogy
about 4000 women who leave earth on a spaceship , finding a planet they call Maternas, set way in the future
the imaginations of these authors is Wild!
this post reinforced for me that a future WITHOUT men isnt just female uptopian fantasy, its not IF, its WHEN!
mil gracias
i mean, could it be any more obvious that derrek jensen thinks of women as natural resources (for men), and not as human beings? jesus.
what all this makes me think is that there is a limit to how far any of us is supposed to take this or any EVIDENCE. we are supposed to be good citizens and good women, and not be too disruptive, and adopt “issues” like pets (pet issues) but we definitely are not allowed to really think about any of this stuff, or to come to any conclusions about any of it. for me, once i realized that men are never, ever going to stop raping and oppressing women, well, it was not that hard to accept that men have destroyed the planet, but it took something as drastic as NTE to make me see it. “environmentalism” was too surfacy an understanding of the situation and did not help. i think i always trusted that they would stop before it was too late, but once you accept that they will NEVER stop with one thing (raping women), you also have to accept that it may have been too late years and decades ago wrt another thing (the environment) and they didnt stop then either. its as if there is a vibration, or something, to both conclusions, and the vibe is the same, it is a very low, deep note. my “range” did not allow me to hear this note before, but once i heard once, i heard it again. it is the same. and neither thing is ANYTHING like the surfacy understandings of feminism or environmentalism as we know them, and the connection between them is nothing like what i thought. this is all maleness and men, and men not stopping no matter what, ever. and this is what DGR will not say about either men or the environment, and it is nothing i have ever heard anyone say, except for bronte who dropped a single comment about it once and started all this. 🙂
but look who i am talking to, right? LOL almost without exception, a bunch of activists, who literally define their existence upon the belief that its not too late, and something can be done. sorry, but that is not unlike the fun fems, who base their feminism on PIV-positivism — a premise that is never examined, and which is forbidden to be examined because reasons. all the evidence that it is, in fact, too late, and/or the evidence that even if it isnt too late NOW, men will never, ever stop and it will be too late sometime (which also means its too late now BTW, because they wont stop, this is written in stone and cannot be changed) MUST be ignored, because reasons. welp. i give up on men, and therefore, i give up on feminism, and environmentalism. but notably, i have not given up on female survival. get it? hope for men = feminism = hope for men. hope for men = environmentalism = hope for men. hope for men DOES NOT EQUAL, AND MAY BE UNRELATED TO female survival.
i will close comments here if no one has anything else to say.
i have linked to this before
This discussion, especially about the rape of women and the rape of the Earth, made me think again of apoptosis, cellular suicide. I first heard of this about 6 years ago in a political discussion, of all places. I have long felt that I am but once cell within the body of Earth, along with many other kinds of cells that make up Earth – and that Earth is one cell within the body of the Solar System with the Sun as our Mother. Earth to me is and always has been female – I do believe that She will continue to evolve along with many of her other species or cells. With the exception of human males. I really like what you said: hope for men does not equal and may be unrelated to female survival. I have no hope for human males at this point.
This short explanation of apoptosis made sense to me when thinking about human males as cells within the great body of Earth – and they are but one small part of that greater whole.
I have so enjoyed this conversation and the others it has made me think more deeply and freely. Thank you.
I don’t think that the choice apoptosis will be left to human males – the Earth has the final decision on that front.
Women are pragmatic, and whether we are that way because it’s intrinsic or because we’ve been forced to be is neither here nor there as far as I’m concerned.
And though it may seem/feel defeatist (which it isn’t because we HAVE been struggling for quite some time to little avail) to acknowledge that they will never stop and the planet will lay mostly in ruins I know for sure that women will survive – we’ll simply cross that bridge when we get to it like we do with every other seemingly impossible situation we’re faced with.
Delphyne, that’s an interesting metaphor from biology about cellular mechanisms. I got a little spark from one of your statements, about T cells. There was the “T” thing, haha! But what works for me is that immune cells are the “protectors” who can’t stop when the battle is over but just keep blindly fighting until they threaten their own (and our) health and survival. At that point Nature steps in and initiates the cell-death process.
One could examine why men see life as a war. Maybe back in prehistory survival was so iffy for the human species it was necessary to have “cells” that would fight blindly to the death. For most of the human species the need for blind endless fighting is now gone. Yet the T cells go on and on making war on everything, threatening the “body’s” survival at this point.
The little spark I got was to connect that with FCM’s assertion that men as a class will never stop being violent. There’s an inexorable, Terminator-like quality. They are not able to stop, like your T-cells. I was thinking about how in a co-ed discussion men will often never give up or concede anything. They just keep rolling on until the women feel worn down and just leave the discussion (are silenced). Another word for this quality is insatiability. It’s a drive that cannot be satiated. Men as a class seem to need to accrue, and what they accrue is never enough. They can’t stop accruing, killing, taking from others, stealing territory, gaining riches, beating others at whatever the game is. It is in this sense, I think, that the capitalism game is such a profoundly male system.
Looking at it from the women’s point of view, women can stop. They can cut their losses because they see destruction coming in the sense that the discussion is devolving into naked useless power plays and the merits aren’t being discussed any more. There’s nothing more to be gained, so they withdraw before harm occurs. When they see that industrialization is ignoring harm to the environment, they can stop harming the environment. When they see that the endless wars are unnecessary, they can stop. They do not fight to the death unnecessarily because they are life-givers and know the value of life. They do not have that blind drive.
And then I have to think, what insanity. Because global society is male-oriented, it is the male insatiability and willingness to fight to the death with all its dangerous consequences that is valued. And capitalism is seen at least in the West as a successful system, while the voices saying, hey, it’s killing the earth, are laughed at.
I’ll just throw in one more little spark: that corporations are microcosms of capitalism and masculinism. They are established to generate endless profits for their investors. There is no mechanism built in to stop profit accumulation when the larger system (other businesses, the earth, employees) suffer harm. There are no “ought nots”, only the single “ought”: make as much profit as possible, infinitely, disregarding any costs or damage to anything else in society. Corporations have no brakes. There are no normative considerations, no Good, no ethics. Competition (warring) is their method, and it’s insatiable. They only “stop” when they are put out of business by another corporation (or a government influenced to do so by other corporations). They are blind, insatiable. They build and then they keep building until everything falls down.
In an absolutely extraordinary act of destructiveness, the Supreme Court of the United States extended human rights to corporations in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission (2010).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission Most commentators on that decision are still not seeing the forest for the trees. They are talking about how it affected financing of political campaigns. They are trying to keep us from noticing that the First Amendment of the US’s Bill of Rights to the US Constitution has just been extended to non-human entities. That’s right, corporations are now human; they have inalienable civil rights to free speech and expression. And since they are the most powerful organizations on the planet, and the insatiable accrual and the fighting to the death involved with the profit motive has been boosted to a constitutional protection, I’m going to agree with most of the commenters here: the earth itself is in danger of destruction.
thanks vyechera and delphyne49! as you know, i love natural models for “sexual politics” aka. the problem of maleness, because natural models suggest natural strategies. as we have seen, political strategies do not work, so what else is there except to evolve beyond maleness and everything males have touched/influenced to find our solutions? it is not as if they are going to tell us how to defeat them. in the case of cellular suicide, i suppose all we can do is let them kill themselves, and that the whole will survive and thrive without them? and in fact, to stop these cells from killing themselves would be very dangerous for the whole and goes against natural law. makes sense to me. this is probably the only way they would ever commit suicide together, all at the same time (global annihilation). fine by me (as if my opinion matters. it doesnt).
as for male corporate entities being human beings under the law….well i dont suppose there is a more perfect example of what the law thinks is “human”. clearly they favor the human male. i dont see them granting human status to trees or rocks (which is perhaps the female model?) trees and rocks are as human as corporations are, afterall. as long as they are making shit up, why not grant human status to something that is decidedly UN-male? because they cant. because human = male and male = human. and females (and nature) can eat a bag of dicks!
i will leave comments open as long as people are actively discussing, so post em if ya got em.
The question that comes to mind now is, “how can women best survive?” Instead of trying to recruit and reform (feminism or environmentalism or male-style survivalism), how can women survive? Autonomy, as we’ve been considering, is part of it.
Sharing things about this on an open forum is not what I’m talking about, likely counterproductive. But it is not even possible. Because it is a local thing, what may ensure survival in one area may not in another. The set of skills a particular woman or group of women may have will be unique. There’s no one way, no one set of actions. No one true path, no one organization, etc. These things are patriarchal creations.
That’s why autonomy and learning, watching, trusting our judgment, connecting with the earth and with one another are important. As the ratio of males born decreases, at some point this will be easier. But in a sense it’s easier already since autonomy is easier than activating. Plus, it’s based in joy rather than fear.
@FCM, Haha! Your comment makes me think of what else non-human that is NOT destructive expresses itself and might ask for protection. The first thing I thought of was primates like the great apes. They are far more human than corporations in that they have emotions like affection and consciousness. They love their young; they experience joy and many other human things that corporations don’t. They police each other to stop rogues from hurting the more vulnerable among them. In short, they have their own sense of ethics and avoiding unnecessary suffering to others. All they need is some cash to hire some lawyers and I’m sure they’d ask for the rights to not be deprived of their life and liberty without due process of law, for instance. I’ve read a little about animal rights and would sure support those over corporate rights.
Not meaning to be mysterious about it, and I do think it’s unique to each situation, in general, I’m talking about learning/honing skills that will help us survive, herbal medicine and helping mend the damage to the earth come to mind but there are many others, things which we may be inclined to do out of joy rather than drudgery.
‘its as if there is a vibration, or something, to both conclusions, and the vibe is the same, it is a very low, deep note. my “range” did not allow me to hear this note before, but once i heard once, i heard it again. it is the same. and neither thing is ANYTHING like the surfacy understandings of feminism or environmentalism as we know them, and the connection between them is nothing like what i thought.’
Well, I think I know this vibration, this sensation-sound. Because it’s exactly as you’ve described it: “a very low, deep note.”
I’ve never assigned words to it, as you have, probably because I took it for personal thing–a personal flaw, I guess. Just a quirky hum in the brain that interferes, like a background noise or distraction, with attention and concentration.
But it has to do with hope. That’s when it shows up. While attending to hope, concentrating on it, and on all the analyses and arguments for reform that go along with that hope (for men, for their oppressive systems, for the planet). That vibration is there.
It’s there whenever I join in, lately, on conversations about “consent,” about the meanings of “yes” and “no” when women are speaking. Hope swells (women are trying, trying, we want to fix and fix and fix some more) but then hope bursts and the vibration is there. Or, rather, the vibe precedes the hope bursting because the vibe was always there. Only now, you feel-hear it. Perhaps it is the sound of–yes!–male insatiability. How can we stop something that, by definition, has no end?
It’s there, lately, when I see a picture of Jian Ghomeshi. That terrible vibration. Or of the Alberta tar sands. Here are before and after pictures, which are only a small a fraction of what men have done (the whole mess can be taken in only from space):
I would add that it (this vibration) is like a march, straight and forward, but without a discernible beat, just a flat, pointed, insinuating line. Which means it can be described visually as well. Maybe it is personal–that is, peculiar to the woman who sees/hears/feels it. But also objective, outside of ourselves. Similar to, but not at all the same as, (female) anxiety or depression or despair.
Funny how they tell us that despair is a sin (in religious terms, and then psychiatric terms, and now feminist and environmentalist terms). Same with knowledge (in the Christian tradition, at least, Eve invited punishment by wanting to know). So, it might be that despair IS knowledge. And that hope (hope-against-knowledge) is the sin.
oh wow! someone else can hear it. 🙂
or feel/hear it
@morag99 re the pictures, I’ve seen mountaintop removal. Come upon it in a remote wooded area. It is clearly the work of evil.
wrt hope, hope is so soul crushing and destructive. a better word for it is wishful thinking, i really fail to even see a difference between these two words/concepts even though we are supposed to see nuance there…whats the damn difference? it keeps us from being here, now. and what is at the intersection of HERE and NOW? IOW at the intersection of TIME + SPACE? its life, and existence. and incidentally, also the only time/place where we have AGENCY and can act. we cant act in any other location besides where we are, this is physically impossible, and in the past/future we cant act either. it sounds woo woo or something but really its simple physics. when you lose hope, you see things as they really are. and you can DO something about it (or STOP doing what you were doing before, and/or DO something else, instead). to have HOPE literally keeps you from accessing your agency, and that includes your agency to STOP DOING. sonia johnson talks about this here/now stuff. you kind of have to feel it for yourself. god hope has to be the most poisonous thing on earth, after males. it is truly toxic and evil, just like they are. the cocktail we all have to drink to share this planet with them.
FCM–Yes. Feel it, hear it, or visualize it.
I’m so glad you gave it shape in words. Because that helps to make it a thing, per se, rather than a kind of blobby or vaporous sound of defeat. Like when you’re late, and running for the bus–that awful sound it makes just before it leaves you behind? And, of course, it’s all your own fault: for being tired, for sleeping in, for waking up to a sick kid, for wanting a second cup of coffee or needing to change a tampon. It’s all your own fault for not being “on top” for not “getting with the program.” But, the program is actually designed to leave you behind, while appearing tantalizingly near, within reach. It’s gas-lighting. That’s the sound: men’s insatiability, and the low buzz of their gas-lighting us so we don’t notice they’re insatiable. No, it’s not woo-woo to notice.
Chasing buses, planes or trains or a culture of consent or a reduction in greenhouse gases or world peace. Same same. Remember Cat Steven’s “Peace Train”? Climb on that thing (i.e., get with the program, just show up, keep hope alive), and a woman would likely be whisked off to the nearest orgy, or–as it turned out with Stevens– to the nearest totalitarian ideology. Some scenery is more tolerable than other scenery, true, but the destination is always the same: they don’t stop. Which probably means they won’t stop, no matter if women are on top of things, dedicated, optimistic and with it, or if we can’t be bothered to show up because our own survival calls. Again, I agree: it’s not woo-woo to heed that call.
WordWoman–re: mountaintop removal. I’m so glad you used the word “evil.” I sometimes feel shy about using “evil” because of its association with patriarchal religiosity. But that’s what it is. Removing the top of a mountain is not a mistake, not merely an excess, or something that can be fixed up later (by men and women together, of course!). Now, I’m no expert on what’s involved in removing the top of a mountain. But, I’m pretty sure a man would have a LOT of time to think about what he was doing while he was doing it! He does it anyway, forges right ahead. That’s what evil is: wholly conscious.
“when you lose hope, you see things as they really are.”
And that’s where I was coming from re pragmatism and autonomy and agency. As morag put it, ‘despair’ is knowledge.
Looking reality straight in the face is (or can be) joyful in the sense that at least we aren’t allowing ourselves to be lied to by ourselves or others.
i also wanted to suggest reading “demonic males” for anyone who thinks that violent maleness is peculiar to humans. its apparently not, and other primates suffer from this too, including rape and murder. i havent read it myself.
Thanks for the reminder, FCM. Every time I hear about this book (people are still talking about Demonic Males) I mean to look for it, and then never do.
Carolyn Gage wrote a book review, back in 1997, when it was published. She said that “reading Demonic Males was like uncovering all the family secrets forever.” But, she also said that the last chapter “is a familiar retrenchment and probably a capitulation to the (justly) anticipated barrage of demonic male criticism that would greet the publication of the book.”
Her review is quite rich with information (and funny, too!), if anyone is interested in reading it:
Oops–sorry. I thought the url to the book review would come out as a link, but it’s done something else instead.
re: hope: I agree with your assessment of foreground (false) hope aka wishful thinking, which is the clinging on to the hope that men will change and “things will change with time” because “natural progress” or whatever.
However, I just read up on Hopping Hope in the Wickedary:
“Hope that hops, leaps, jumps intuitively with the rhythms of the Elemental world.”
I do think this is different form foreground hope. It is a feeling of joy that is not dependant on one specific outcome (unlike foreground hope that is dependant on change in the foreground to occur):
When reading what you wrote about natural law taking care of the excess males, for example, that lets a feeling of Hopping Hope arise in me, because it is not dependant on me feeding all of my energy into “causes” like getting the ERA, or getting prostitution abolished etc etc, but it frees me to listen to what my intuition tells me is the right path to follow right Here/Now.
I do wonder what it’s like for women who are completely capitve to males though, do they experience Hopping Hope? or are they trapped in hope that “everything will be fine if I have that baby boy/he will stop beating me/ things will get better when he gets that job” etc etc).
In other words, is Hopping Hope a luxury of women who are relatively free from males in our lives?
Also, I think I disagree with your assessment that change can only occur here and now. If course it is true, but I think that doing things can change the vibration of onesSelf so that change is possible later. Kind of like the “Butterfly effect”. Mary Daly talks about the Future Foresisters Magnetizing us from the Archaic FUture. ANd that we are here and now making possible the occurence of said Archaic (Post-patriarchal) Future. Quantum physics, in other words.
hi alexis, thanks for re-membering mary daly here! i like the distinction/definition between hopping hope and foreground hope, you are right that foreground hope is dependent on a specific foreground outcome. if we are dependent on males for anything, they will always disappoint us no matter what, they do it on purpose in fact as it is an effective method of torture, and that includes withholding the foreground changes we so desperately want and need. wishing for it to happen is soul crushing and toxic, and this is by design. i think mary daly believed that all women experience or have the potential to experience these things because we are all elemental beings and so therefore would not be dependent on males at all. i hope thats true. and the here/now stuff i mentioned is only about agency and acting, (not change) including both doing and stopping doing things. i agree that other things can move in different ways and that intuition can help us decide what path to take here/now. of course.
thanks everyone. closing comments now.