now that i have become interested in the topic of NTE i have sought it out; like radical feminism, the body of work on NTE is so tiny it would be well within any of our abilities to read literally every word ever written on it. it was/is theoretically possible so i tried with both (radical feminism and NTE) but became bored both times, although it took longer with radical feminism because it is at least written from a female/radical perspective and tries not to be misogynist. at least that. with NTE, beyond the science, which i am not personally competent to understand without having it interpreted/explained to me, these people should just stop talking. seriously. the good ones do stop talking — after a point, what can be said about NTE? about that which is so obvious (men have raped and pillaged the world) and about that which is written in stone/cannot be influenced or changed (self reinforcing feedback loops get worse, meaning they get more/bigger/faster of what they already are, but they dont stop or get better).
welp. the NTE activists (or whatever they are, they are not really activating toward anything) who do keep talking say some weird and boring shit indeed. of course they speak about the end of the world due to male-caused global climate change in sex-neutral terms, that “humanity” and “industrial civilization” caused this mess. in the case of “population overshoot” as if women participated equally globally and across time in raping ourselves and forcing pregnancies on ourselves and forcing ourselves to raise unwanted and ambivalent children. in the case of resource extraction as if women had anything approaching equal decisionmaking power this whole time regarding anything, including that (and the connection between the two — resource extraction to what ends? to clothe, house, etc. the worlds cumulative/aggregate 100-billion rape babies globally and across time. obviously).
the wordier NTEs also go on and on about grief, as well as how “difficult” it is to accept the idea of NTE even in the face of overwhelming evidence that its a done deal. to be clear, i am talking about the believers here — they have no qualms about the science, for them this is not the issue. they accept the physical/scientific reality of NTE, and yet find themselves overwhelmed that it has happened and grieving over what they believe has been lost. this makes little to no sense to me.
the environmentally-minded among us have been talking for a long time about “sustainability” by which they mean “this cannot go on forever.” okay. so, the thing (patriarchy) that cannot go on forever > meaning it has to stop > will stop. so what? its only logical. the woman giving the above presentation said it took her years to get her intellectual mind around the inevitability of NTE caused by runaway feedback loops of “population overshoot” and related “resource extraction” but why? once i first heard of it, it didnt take me long at all to “get my head around” the idea that men, because they will never stop > didnt stop raping and pillaging the world. it didnt take a lot of mental or emotional energy at all to come to terms with the inevitability of and connection between this cannot last > this will not last, and then, i suppose > this stops. duh.
the conversation in which non-feminist NTEs attempt to get their minds around what men have done is thought-terminating and painful, its gruesome in fact, as they gymnastically avoid the real issues and then ultimately truncate their thoughts out of exasperation and as it were, necessity — the issues being, obviously, patriarchy and male parasitism and male necrophilia. these concepts/realities are literally unspeakable in nonradical space, so NTEs are in the uncomfortable position of being unable to talk or even think about whats really going on (all the while patting themselves on the back for hosting the “most radical conversation” on the internet or anywhere). its painful, and embarrassing. whereas radical feminists understand this reality intimately, and speak about it easily. the nutty ones of us do anyway.
so in the end, after likely many missed opportunities over the years to save my own time and (therefore) my own life, by coming to radical/rational conclusions faster, without having to reinvent the damn wheel, this might be the first time i have gotten to use this shortcut thing and i have to say: if getting ones head around NTE is supposed to take years, the shortcut provided by a radical feminist understanding of the world has probably saved me some serious time (and apparently, horrible grief). regarding NTE, i get it. its logical, and unassailable. of course men have destroyed the world, was there ever any other possible or likely outcome than that?
of course, i again find myself in the position of having little if anything to read on a topic i am interested in (because none of it goes far enough, meaning, it doesnt take its own evidences/thought processes/conclusions all the way to the beginning, or to the end). but if whats on offer on the subject of NTE, after the science, is a bunch of bullshit gaslighting and jibberish about how “humanity” caused the end of the world; and how civilizationpatriarchy mens global reign of rape and torture has literally burned itself out because it was not sustainable to rape and torture this much for this long (there i fixed it for them); and how this finally ending is supposedly a bad thing…well its hardly worth my time. is it.
i am, however, still interested in what radical feminists have to say on the subject, if anything. i am going to leave comments open on this one, and see if theres anything forthcoming, as posting into the void really isnt my bag and it never was. so, post em if you got em. i am seriously running out of things to say.
i have noticed something weird about television commercials lately, and the above seem to exemplify the trend. specifically, i am noticing an extreme inward-looking theme in advertising which is even more pronounced than the standard inward-looking consumerist/lifestylist fare (isnt it?) the “honest company” commercial illustrates a nuclear-family-centric circle-the-wagons message, and there is something noteworthy about the way the words “prah-ducks” and “mie famlee” are emphasized — dont ask me to competently dissect and analyze as i am not a professional marketer or media critic, but something bugs me about this every single time. like…an exaggerated, extreme individualization of consumerism and family, down to the very way the words are pronounced? or something? i dont know, but “ryan mcgee” provides an oddly memorable delivery of a timeless message.
meanwhile, the pantene commercial doubles down on the already-extreme social controls on women via the beauty/fuckability mandate where every single hair on our heads has to “pass the needle test” or else negative outcomes. this needle-test business has been around for years and has been criticized as being racist/exclusionary of women with naturally coarse hair, which of course it is. but what else is it? and why is it resurfacing in such an obvious way now? seeing as how i and others have come to believe that the end of the world is neigh via abrupt climate change and loss of human habitat related to male-caused global overpopulation and over male population, it just strikes me as weird timing to police women this way ask women to examine and control ourselves down to the very hairs on our heads (each and every individual 150,000 strands or whatever each of us has). and the extreme-inward looking message of ryan mcgee and her prah-ducks for her famlee tastes a bit tinny where perhaps especially now, we should be paying attention to the world around us. the world in which things are starting to catch on fire, blow up, slide, wash away and crash into the sea due either to “unknown causes” or due to known causes of male terrorism and/or extreme weather events.
its hardly necessary to comment on quakers take on the “”””energy crisis”””” (thats 4 full sets of sarcastic, its-not-really-a-thing quotation marks!) except to say that its very deliberately dismissive of the big picture in which there is indeed a very real man-made energy crisis happening, consisting of no fewer than 30-something self-reinforcing feedback loops and legitimate dilemmas which cannot be cured with oatmeal or with anything as a matter of fact.
in the face of these oddly-individualistic campaigns, i suppose i would remind women to “do the opposite” which is always sound advice if you can manage it. in this case, definitely do NOT circle the wagons around your famlee to the point that you fail to notice (or care) what is happening around you, specifically wrt male terrorism and extreme weather events. notice it! and definitely do NOT examine and control yourself, your female Self down to the very last hair — instead, do the opposite. whatever that means. kindly recall that if females were actually free we wouldnt be in this mess to begin with, and that males controlling females — specifically, our “natural” meaning global and timeless aversion to intercourse and multiple/endless unwanted pregnancies — is literally what caused it.
of course, a policy and practice of “doing the opposite” would also apply to male NTE activists (google it) who think they need to “carpe diem” and “create moments of joy” as the world burns because of them — considering what men find joyful, which without exception seems to be necrophilia/destruction and intercourse/impregnation, including rape, my advice to males who give even the tiniest crap (and there are those who think they do, or claim they do) would be to evaluate what you find pleasurable and positive, and then DO THE OPPOSITE. this is how fucked up men are of course. for men, who are driven to ACT constantly, “the opposite” would be to STOP ACTING and STOP DOING shit. completely. just stop. take opposite-day as far as you can, applying the concept to feeding yourselves and performing self care (to the extent you do that). pumping fuel into, and performing even perfunctory maintenance on, necrophilic killing machines isnt helping. savvy?
or, if you MUST continue to act, and i know you must, (right?) try this on for size: whatever the activity, if you like it, DONT DO IT. if you hate it, KEEP DOING IT. i think this is a fair compromise really (for those who are into compromising with men…its merely a rhetorical device for those who understand that men will never stop ever). for example, if you love your job, it probably means you are being overcompensated for it, and/because its victimizing other people, especially women, so stop doing it. if you hate your job, its likely that you arent being coddled/catered to, overvalued due to your membership in the oppressor class (male), and presented with sexual access to as many women as you want, like you sincerely believe you deserve, where catering to/supporting those male beliefs and actions created this ultimately/imminently doomed necrophilic shithole in the first place — so if you must DO anything, keep doing that. the things you find emasculating, humiliating, boring, and against your natures — its all good. you know, if you really care about any of this, and yet are still driven to act. get it?
that males as a class, even the self-identified “good ones who get it” ARE driven to act, of course, is irrefutable evidence of mens natures; and only supports my conclusion that men will never, ever stop. and that (therefore) this NTE stuff, or loss of human habitat and abrupt climate change related to male-caused global overpopulation and over male population, whenever it occurs, is a done deal.
i have about reached my limit with the modding aspect of blogging, where i put something out there for public consumption then am physically and psychically tied to the internets for as long as comments remain open. it is documented that repeatedly “checking” things like email and comments is an addictive cycle whereupon the checker receives repeated dopamine hits, one every time you “check” something that may or may not have changed since last time you looked, even if that was literally half a second ago. as many times as you check, and whether or not there is something new in your inbox/queue, has nothing whatever to do with whether there will be something new there in a minute or a second, so you can check as many times as is physically possible and its always a “novel” event so produces a dopamine hit every time. that cant be good. its not good for my readers either, because you end up doing the same thing — checking to see if the conversation has progressed since the last time you looked. we are all junkies now, and this cannot possibly be helping us (can it?) so, i am no longer accepting comments.
anyway, as you already know, since i have been very vocal about it, i believe that men have effectively done us all in via the self-reinforcing feedback loop of global overpopulation and global over male population, resulting in catastrophic global climate change. there is evidence that our fate was sealed decades ago by rapacious, resource extracting, resource hoarding males who just wouldnt stop raping women (creating babies) and polluting and pillaging the earth. there is evidence that this is a done deal and its too late now to stop it; this makes me wonder about the time before it was too late, 50 years ago, 100 years ago and earlier. did women see what was happening and (try to) intervene? i figure they probably did — globally and across time, women have despised intercourse and repeated pregnancies, knowing in their bones that various man-ifestations of maleness were not compatible with life, and (thus) not sustainable.
of course, any evidence of womens knowing about this, and responding to it, will have been buried so deep it will be nearly impossible to locate and extract it. so we have to use the scraps of information we do have, along with our intuition and creative leaps of thought to try to put our herstory (and our female Selves) back together again. the question of “what would womens resistance have looked like?” is probably a dead end since womens (real, effective) resistance is killed, cremated, and buried quickly lest other women use that information and get ideas. and, you know, build on the knowledge and work of women who came before. that, we cannot have. its probably rule #1 under patriarchy, now that i think about it (isnt it?)
probably a better question would be, if women had resisted, and effectively resisted, what would mens response to it have looked like? and this line of inquiry bears some fruit. i think, if women were resisting effectively, anywhere in the world, that mens response to it would be testerical, brutal, and absolutely devastating, not just to the resistors themselves but to all women everywhere. the resistors would be taken down and out, and an example made of them, the message communicated to all womankind that this behavior will not be tolerated ever, and to resist further will be the absolute worst thing you could ever do, so best not to even think of it. ever. again. the intent would be to give the entire resisting class such debilitating trauma that they would be cognitively impaired (PTSD) and both physically and mentally ineffective for the rest of their lives, and furthermore, that they would pass these traumatized (submissive) beliefs and behaviors down to their own girl children forever, creating a true aversion to real, effective female resistance as surely as if it were genetic (this happens and is known as a a meme, a belief and related behaviors that travel through bloodlines almost as if they are physical and not social traits).
men would have gone absolutely nuclear on effective female resistance, and their response would have been so outrageously oppressive and brutally violent as to prevent it ever happening again. i think this is a reasonable assumption. which brings my thoughts to the burning times.
andrea dworkin wrote in “woman hating” about what she understood to be a mass delusion in the times of the witch hunts (approximately 1560-1760 or even later, depending on the source) which was the “dicks in a box” delusion. apparently, women at the time were accused of telekinetically castrating males and keeping their members in boxes, where the severed dicks would root around eating corn. (!) i have heard this rather bizarre historical fact explained 2 ways: either folks were delusional about this and were reporting truthfully about what they believed they saw, or they were lying in order to crazy-make and implicate women in practicing witchcraft. both are plausible, and there is no way to know for sure (although i think men lying about it to justify torturing and murdering women is more likely than the mass-delusion explanation. interestingly, dworkin herself believed they were delusional and telling the truth).
understanding that we will probably never know for sure, because it is impossible to reliably put our female past back together again because of mens erasure and mens lies, i would propose a third possible explanation. one that takes into account the rather unprecedented male testeria and the brutality and oppressiveness of the burning times, which could very well have been mens response to effective female resistance at the time (if women had resisted, the quality and quantity of male violence and oppressiveness demonstrated during the burning times would be the likely response).
here, i would tentatively suggest that around the year 1500 or so, women somewhat-collectively came to realize what men were and the likely outcome of mens ruthless and unsustainable regime of necrophilia and rape, which would be the literal end of all (or much of) life on earth. because there could be no other end to it but that. knowing that in their bones, and they were right of course, women started killing men. the dicks in a box thing could have been women keeping souvenirs (a rather male thing to do) or perhaps more likely, was a way to keep track of just how many men they had done away with. because their intent would not have been to kill all or too many of any life form — women are not men afterall. if they were doing this, they probably had a specific goal in mind and they planned to stop once they reached their goal (modern researchers seem to believe that a reduction of 90% (i think?) is just the right amount to achieve a level of sustainability and peace — google it). also, it is possible that some women chickened out and lied to each other about having done in their fair share of men, so a reliable method of keeping tally would have been necessary. could there be a better method of tallying than collecting and keeping the deadmens dicks in a box? i cant think of one (although admittedly, i havent really tried. when you hear pure perfection, and something which could not possibly be improved upon, you just know it).
in short, what if the dick in a box thing was real? im just asking. surely everyone is much more comfortable believing that men simply tortured and murdered between 100,000 and several million women because delusion, or because misogyny — nothing too repulsive or wrong with either of those, right? surely nothing that would keep anyone up at night. whereas the idea that women might have actually harmed men in self defense, and done something to deserve what they got from men is disturbing and wrong (“deserved” in a patriarchal sense of course — both natural law and hindsight dictate that reducing the number of men at that time in history would have been both prescient and timely. in other words, the exact right thing to do, at the exact right time, as if women knew what was coming and really, seriously desired and endeavored to stop it). its too late to do anything now of course.
tl;dr dick in a box may in fact represent humanitys last best chance of survival: reducing the number of males before the start of mens industrial (necrophilic) revolution mightve actually worked. there is evidence (although obviously not proof) to support this. as thinking persons, we like evidence, and hypotheses/theories based on evidence. dont we.
continuing on the subject of NTE and global climate change related to male-caused global overpopulation and over male population, i would like to address the issue of anti-civ activism by “people” (mostly men) who believe that NTE is a reality and just around the corner. indeed it does seem as if DGR (deep green resistance) and NTEs are in bed together, and guy mcpherson cites derrek jensen specifically in his own anti-civ advocacy. i am not going to link to it here, you can find it yourselves.
let me ask you this. if you thought near-term human extinction was not only possible but likely, or even more likely than not, what (if anything) would you DO in the face of that knowledge? assume as NTEs do that it wouldnt matter at all in the big picture, because nothing you can do can stop NTE — our fate was sealed decades ago by rapist, necrophilic men who insisted on selfish hedonism, resource-extraction and resource-hoarding to benefit themselves, regardless of the consequences to women or the planet (or even to themselves as class:male long term). what would you DO, understanding that the means would never justify the ends because we would not live to see any end (except NTE), and that therefore the means WERE the ends. in other words, whatever you are going to DO, you are doing it for extremely short-term gains only, or to put an even finer point on it, doing X for its own sake.
welp. the anti-civ strand of NTE activists/believers have decidered that they are going to do above and below-board “actions” designed to bring down industrial civilization. while the anti-civs have been doing this for a long time (although they obviously arent very good at it) the rather unholy hybrid NTE/anti-civ activists understand that it will not change anything to “destroy” civilization, it will not reverse the course of catastrophic global climate change related to male-caused global overpopulation and global over male population, and yet NTE/anti-civ males have decidered to engage in anti-civilization destructiveness anyway. seemingly for the sake of sheer destructiveness alone. what else would be the point, when it is too late to change the outcome?
but what else could we expect from “people” (men) who invented drug dealing afterall, and all that entails? get “people” including women hooked (dependent) on civilization for our most basic needs, including food, water and shelter ffs, and then take it all away. gee, that sounds familiar! in the case of NTE, where our fates are sealed, we wont be able to come crawling back to males like civilization junkies looking for a fix, so here we get to see it play out rather bare — this is about torture isnt it. males, torturing and brutalizing women for the sake of doing it. punishing “dependents” for the crime of being domesticated and enslaved, by men, over millenia, except “punishment” implies we could have done something to avoid domestication and enslavement by men (as if we havent tried). no, this is just more male necrophilia and torture, and in the case of hybrid NTE/anti-civ males, it is completely without pretense now. since anti-civ destructiveness on their part wont change the outcome anyway, and anyone with eyes can see how these ideologies interplay (conflict?) it seems as if this group in particular isnt even trying to hide it.
and what else would we expect from the class (men) who brought us rape? strike a deal among men (the global accords governing the fair use of women) to somewhat-mitigate the damage of men raping women through social (legal) controls on men and social (medical) benefits to women, make women literally beg and plead for these protections for decades and centuries even, and give them a crumb or two — and then decider to destroy it. knowing the whole time, of course, that as soon as things get sticky, all “controls” against men raping women will literally be the very first thing to go. as both NTEs and anti-civs must know, the destruction of “civilization” and social controls on men is going to be a rape-fest.
now, i of course agree that civilization — as a euphemism for patriarchy — is pure evil and that none of this has been done for womens benefit; for example, legal protections for women against men raping us is largely gaslighting and laughable. HOWEVER. in any discussion of the dual issues of NTE and anti-civ, this bastard hybrid discourse specifically, i think that it should reasonably be WOMEN deciding what parts of civilization (patriarchy) should go and which should (temporarily) stay, and that men should have no say in this at all, being that they are the cause of all of this and the ones women need protection from.
and to the extent that non-human lifeforms have been affected by this the whole time, obviously their “voice” should be heard also — would it be presumptuous to assume that the voice of “nature” would be the same as womens voice here? asking, nay demanding at this point (in the booming tone of god no less as we face the literal end of the world!) for men to STOP ACTING, and STOP DO-ing shit, jesus. notably, the collapse of civilization at this point will only cause the global temperature to further rise — the particulates in todays industrial pollution are apparently causing a “global dimming” effect whereby the full heating potential of sunlight doesnt quite reach the earth. the day industrial civilization collapses, no more particulates. get it? at any rate, i highly doubt that its the voice of phytoplankton asking NTE/anti-civ activists to bring industrial civilization to its knees. so whose voice is it, and to what ends, exactly?
in light of recent discussions, in particular NTE stuff and the likelihood absolute certainty of the catastrophic loss of human habitat due to male-caused global overpopulation and over male population, whenever it occurs, i am reminded that certain of us have described visions of our female future. in particular, i am re-membering mary daly and sonia johnson, although i am unable to access my books just now to look this up properly (if i am remembering it wrong, i am sure someone will tell me). as i recall, both women “saw” a female future (and a past) where women were free of the plague of global maleness, where we were/are finally, finally free to simply BE, without much if any do-ing, and without the constant threat of being raped and pillaged by men. ahhhh, that does sound nice.
specifically, what i am remembering is that these visions were of another dimension, where women were able (somehow?) to live without eating, drinking or performing any maintenance-type stuff at all — sonia johnson envisioned that women were free of any DO-ing whatsoever and that we literally lived on clean air and sunshine, and could fly. (!) at the time i first read her vision, i embraced this as a thought exercise where women were encouraged to imagine/experience effortlessness, and the freedom to just BE and in so imagining to realize and feel how much of our female lives and female selves are in fact spent DO-ing under conditions of patriarchy female oppression, torture and slavery, especially doing for and doing because of others, namely, men. i found the exercise mind-expanding and helpful.
and as i recall, mary daly imagined women coming together in a place far away from men and maleness; maleness was no longer an issue for whatever happy happenstance (happy/stance) and women found each other and lounged about, enjoying each others company and sharing lore about the bizarre past where patriarchy reigned. daly wrote in the 1990s about this coming-together occurring in what would now — as we are currently in 2015 — be the rather near future. in this future, as i recall, women subsisted (largely? completely?) on lemonade and dog-licks. i dont remember exactly, but that was the gist — another plane of existence, in the not-so-distant future, that is as different from the one we currently inhabit as can be imagined, and then some. and we have everything we need, and nothing we dont, (because) the problem of men and maleness has been solved.
sonia johnson also imagined that women could change perspective at will to experience BE-ing a bird, or a wolf, or a tree.
so currently, in light of the issue of catastrophic climate change due to male-caused global overpopulation and over male population, i am considering dalys and johnsons visions of womens “female future” and i have to wonder just what it was these women were envisioning when they essentially saw women existing without bodies. get it? while it is a nice exercise to imagine not having to eat or drink or DO anything, the fact is that natural law applies, it applies now and it will continue to apply in the absence of patriarchy. and natural law dictates that women — as human animals — cannot, in fact, live on lemonade and dog-licks alone, and we also cannot fly. temporarily “trading” consciousness with birds and trees does not violate natural law as far as i am aware, so i will leave that one alone.
now, obviously i understand and agree that in general, we are free to en-vision whatever we want, or to describe whatever vision comes to us whatever the source (the source may not be “us” exactly, i say this as a creative person) and that it doesnt have to make sense, or be possible. in the case of johnson and dalys visions of our female future (and past) i previously understood these metaphysical (metaphysical = literally “beyond physics”) visions as fictional writing, or thought exercises, and i assumed that daly and johnson were imagining/describing a scenario/universe in which we (somehow) experienced these obviously metaphysical things simultaneously with being (BE-ing) very much alive. i understand and accept that this is the accepted interpretation of this writing, and also that daly and johnson likely intended to be read that way as well.
but i have to tell you. as of recently, i am really wondering: when they “saw” women in this vastly different state, where women are/were finally free of not only men and patriarchy but of everything, including all DO-ing and the limitations/requirements of physics (and bodies) what were they seeing really? not to be alarmist or anything, because whats the point…but as has become my inclination in every area*, i am taking note. specifically, i am taking note and notice of current and past events that could be reasonably associated with global climate change (and resulting near-term human extinction), and i think our best feminist thinkers and visionaries visions of our female future are absolutely relevant to that. that is all.
* i see that they have found one of the black boxes from the most recently “disappeared” malaysian jet and i am waiting to hear if this catastrophic failure was weather-related. considering what we already know, that the last communication with the plane involved changing the flight path to avoid the weather, i suspect we already know the answer to that…but far be it from me to try to predict the future uh, past?
femonade 