Listen, little man.

Patriarchy is a political system, and as such it martials its forces to fight those who stand against it.

The methods of attack run an extraordinary gamut, from ongoing harassment, to impugning the character, or the general competency, of the person that the troll considers it worthwhile to attack.

In all of this, psychological warfare is the primary approach at hand. Disguising the harassment of a feminist as either meaningful and legitimate criticism, or as concern for her well being (concern trolling), or as genuine moral outrage, or indeed, as an authentic critique of her competency, is the name of the game.

Now, there are ring leaders in all of this -- the anti-feminist opinion makers -- who know what they are doing. Then there are the muddle-headed patriarchy advocates who follow in tow. These are the foot soldiers in the war against women -- the ones who genuinely buy into the arguments presented; who take them at their face value. These swallow whole all moral condemnations against feminists, without wishing to see that attacks on feminists are political. These may even accept a biological basis for discrediting women, whist choosing not to see this as payback for feminists' criticism of the patriarchal system.

In all, discrediting the characters of feminists has been the game the patriarchal warriors love to play. Silencing an enemy reduces its influence over others, and makes it more likely that your side will triumph.

The spoils of a patiarchal war against women are, of course, domination of the defeated enemy. Women have been dominated for centuries, to the point that when feminists speak out about it, their words sound threatening and strange to ears attuned to listening to their enemy.

The art of The Listen

I was originally intending to point out that Westerners presume I was brought up with all sorts of advantages, and to look down on others, whereas my actual situation differed very much from what they presume to have been the case.

As for WHY my situation differed, or indeed, who was to blame for that, these are themselves very Western preoccupations, and that is not a way in which I was brought up to think. I mean, if we find out why something happened, that does not immediately solve the problem, or make it better in any way.

What would be of benefit to me is if Westerners themselves were capable of listening to the stories of those whites who happen to have come from Africa, instead of hatin' on them.

Morality in Western culture

The problem with the Western mode of moralizing is that it is inherently capitalistic. I have found this to be true in general, that unless somebody has some really substantial intellectual training (and sometimes even then), they will tend to take the moral position that will enable them to capitalize. That means they want to shine at very little cost to themselves -- or at a cost to you, rather than to them. Ask them to do something difficult, so as to be really superior and they will not even have a clue what you are getting at. "Take a difficult position in order to be genuinely righteous, rather than seem to seem to be moral at a little cost? That doesn't make sense!"

When it comes to Westerners and what they take to be "morality" one has to lower one's expectations to the lowest level possible. They are brought up to compete -- to look for any moment that advantages them over you and to capitalize. It is very hard for them to mitigate this competitive tendency with anything solid. So, one must lower one's expectations absolutely to the breaking point.

And then lower them again.

A way of eating ice-cream

Richard Chinheya writes as follows:

There was a long held view by white citizens in Zimbabwe to conclude that it was pointless to pay a black man much money as 'he would spend it on beer'.

Whereas whites had a solid foundation where they would plan for their children so that by the time they were of age they had a car, and/or house and a job they thought the blacks did not have these owing to their laziness and stupidity. These circumstances justified a superiority complex and perpetuated an impression that blacks were stupid, dull or unintelligent.

Perhaps the domestic employees were the basis for these perceptions but these were important to make whites feel intelligent and the blacks dull. sadly even now both blacks and whites are victims of these syndromes.

Certainly, what your write is true, especially of past Rhodesia, although it is less true of present day Zimbabwe, but still the racial divide persists along these lines, to some degree.

I want to suggest the presence of an alternative reality, however, even in the midst of all of this unfairness. The logical assumption that all whites cared for their children by setting them up with the material benefits of life could prove to be occasionally mistaken. Injustice is only perpetuated when it is assumed that one been given all the positive things in life, which will set one up in good stead for a middle class existence. Some parents -- even in Rhodesia -- might find that scenario to be all too easy. Their own children might not necessarily be favoured in this way.

So it was with my father, who didn't necessarily want to transfer benefits to me automatically. The common sensical assumption that he would, or did, has always followed me like a bad smell.

His failure to do so, however, was a fact, albeit one not likely to be believed.

In KG1, for instance (I was five), me, my schoolfriend Nicky, and my father took an afterschool walk in Ballantyne Park. "I'll buy an ice-cream cup for anyone who can walk along those bricks without falling off!" This was my father's challenge to me and Nicky.

So we stepped onto the line of bricks that formed the exit to the park, and walked along them, one foot in front of the other, wobbling. After a few seconds, I fell off, but Nicky kept on going for a few more seconds.

"Nicky wins!" proclaimed my father. "I will buy her an ice-cream."

"What about me?" I wanted to know.

"No, I only have enough money for one ice-cream, so I will buy one for Nicky."

That's what happened -- and Nicky ate her ice-cream in front of me.

I don't hold a grudge against my father for whatever he thought he was demonstrating on that day. He taught me quite directly that I couldn't depend on him too much, and that his judgements were unlikely to count in my favour.

The problem is I have been punished for having been given all sorts of unfair advantages in life -- those that pertained to being born white in Rhodesia.

The fact is that most of those advantages I am assumed to have had did not really exist.

It has taken me a long time to realise that in the eyes of Westerners, my father's was pretty abnormal behaviour.

But then again, it is also the reason why Westerners themselves have always seemed to irrational to me. I mean, in the sense that they have treated me like I've had unfair advantages by being brought up in a colonial society, when to my mind it is the Westerners who have lived in the lap of material luxury. They would be insisting on a very crazy interpretation of life if they think that somehow I have been set up very well for success in life, and need to face "reality" by being brought down a level or two.

Darwinism and adaptation

What is strong and what is weak is not necessarily as easily observable or even "objective" as we take it to be. Rather, the context of the environment and culture determines what is or isn't strong and weak. Put most U.S. citizens into an African culture or environment, and watch them flail. One doesn't even wish them to admit their "moral failings" as there is no meaning or point in it. Their success or failure has nothing to do with morality, but simply with their competency in meeting the circumstances as they actually are. If such an American admits that he is not all-seeing and all-conquering by virtue of his innate nature, then this might better facilitate an adaptation of sorts, but it still doesn't mean that there is any intrinsic virtue in his proclamation of his weaknesses. It just means that he is reducing his arrogance level in such a way that maximizes his chances for adaptation. Whether or not he succeeds in adaptation, even after this adjustment, still has nothing to do with morality, but with social and environmental features.

patriarchal thought processes

To understand the psychology of the patriarchal mind one must delve deeply into patriarchal logic.

The first matter that comes to our attention is that the patriarch wishes to avoid being "influenced" by factors in life that he defines as "feminine". If you are female, that means YOU.

By that biological fact alone you represent a threat to him, such that he will do anything -- and I mean anything at all -- to avoid an appearance of being influenced by you.

This explains the second feature of our patriarch: He isn't really listening.

To understand the reason for this, go back to Matter One. To listen to you implies that he is making himself vulnerable to be influenced by you. That is the whole outcome that has to be avoided at all costs.

Thirdly, and because of his embrace of these two preceding predilections, the patriarchal mind has no idea of what you are talking about.

What you say literally doesn't make any sense to him at all.

This is because he has taken care to shield himself from your ideas on the basis that they might be seen to "influence" him. Not understanding you at all puts him into an extremely vulnerable position with regard to you. He is quite jittery when you are around. He avoids direct contact, and tries to stage all public interactions to take place in formal contexts, where the "script" for the interaction is already decided.

The fourth direction in terms of the logic of the patriarch's psychological development is toward trying to resolve this crisis of confidence he has created.

He concludes that what seems true (that he actually does not know you at all) cannot be so.

After all, it is he who is patriarch -- the one defined by intellectual purity, by power and by truth.

Therefore, you must have been hiding your real self from him all along.

Why so? Well, obviously, because you have something nefarious about you that needs to be hidden.

In fact, it now seems that you are not just hiding something, but you are also withholding important information with the express purpose of making the patriarch feel jittery about his position.

(You are, indeed, the living embodiment of all the "influences" that the patriarch has refused to accept. You have become the manifestation of all the negative and disowned parts of his own mind. )

Solving the problem leads to the consolidation of the final term of patriarchal logic: "Either I am good and you are evil; or you are good and I am evil."

On the basis of his previous choices, who do you think the patriarch will pick in order to represent the "good" over the "evil" forces?

Himself? Or you?

Midnight #2

Jennifer F Armstrong

HAZCHEM!

The real poison of patriarchy that is fed intravenously into all children growing up today is the mystical feeling that patriarchal perspectives are always and inevitably transcendent perspectives. In relation to women, that is, they are "The Perspectives" that offer a birds-eye view on everything.

What that means, in practice, is that whenever there is a patriarchal perspective to be offered, women's perspectives are automatically wrong. One has to remember that women's perspectives are by definition NOT patriarchal perspectives, no matter how much the right wing has worked to make it seem like unusual intelligence in a woman will make her see the world in a patriarchal way. The metaphor of transcendence is employed here quite implicitly, but it remains only a concept, without any relation to social and cultural dynamics as they actually are.

Let me explain how the idea that patriarchal perspectives are the transcendent ones actually works. This concept CREATES the social dynamics that relegate women into a position of inferiority -- the set of gender relations that it would appear merely to "interpret". But this is not at all possible without a lot of faith. Therefore, a man must believe in himself and never come to doubt his own perceptions. It is out of this attitude of faith that his "transcendence" pours. (This faith is henceforth known as "self confidence" and/or "virility").

But let us refer to the attitude that claims transcendence as its own (as"faith"), for that it the function that enables all patriarchal perspectives.

The man of faith confronts a world in which there are many opposing perspectives. He notices women's perspectives are often in opposition to his own, and this puts him into a state of self-doubt. "Maybe my transcendence is not all that it seems to be?" echoes a constantly nagging doubt. At that moment, he calls on faith to help him to resolve the issue of epistemological discrepancy.

"After all, I have the Transcendent View," he says. "All patriarchal texts affirm so."

What of women and their points of views -- the ones that are genuine and therefore necessarily anti-patriarchal?

"Women are inherently manipulative, and exhaust all their energies in trying to make higher individuals lose their ways," he affirms to himself. "All patriarchal texts assume so."

HAZCHEM!

Intellectual anchors

As per my previous post on the enormous difficulties one necessarily has, in writing within a context of cultural anomie, I'd like to address a related issue.

This second issue concerns intellectual paradigms, and the difficulty one necessarily has in figuring out their presuppositions. For, it is the rarest thing in the world for the writer of a paradigm to announce (that is, self-reflexively) the very presuppositions of their own paradigm. The reason for this is that the premises on which any paradigm is based cannot be taken to be artificial or arbitrarily imposed. Much rather, they need to pass as "common sense". Otherwise the whole value of the paradigm is in doubt, in terms of its ability to point us to a deeper level of truth.

So it is that one must do a lot of intellectual sleuthing in order to try to find out the hidden premises, (those unstated presuppositions about the world) without which the paradigm would not be effective as a means for interpreting reality.

One way to find these out is to approach the paradigm with one's own particular version of "common sense", and then wait to see what produces a sense of dissonance. This dissonance does not imply anything about premises being right or wrong, but rather suggests the presence in the paradigm of presuppositions that one experiences as alien.

Let me demonstrate how this works. Let me consider, for example, the intellectual presuppositions of Freud.

The aspect of Freud's work that produces dissonance most within my mind is that which seems to be a wholly uncritical positive regard for the status quo. To depart from acquiescence to the status quo, indeed, to become critical of the status quo, marks one in Freudian terms as a "discontent". This is Freud's "polite" way of saying that one is starkraving balmy. Yet to accept anything -- including and up to the status quo -- in an uncritical way is not the mark of an intellectual. So what is going on here?

Mike has clarified the issue for m, yesterday, with his suggestion that the intellectual anchor for Freudianism is actually a particular appropriation of Darwinism. This particular appropriation lends itself to the idea that those who define the status quo are the healthy members of society (and thus, on the basis of this implicitly Darwinist argument) guaranteed to be sane. Conversely, those who do not adopt the standards defined by status quo are those who are less fit to survive. If this is so, then we can say that Freud has high estimations of the value of the status quo on the basis of a certain appropriation of Darwinist theory. (In other words, he is not uncritical of the status quo at all, but rather positively applauds it.)

Once one has discovered what seems to the intellectual anchor -- the hidden presupposition -- of any particular paradigm, one understands what it is capable of doing, or not doing, as a whole.

Freudianism does not lend itself well to making a radical critique, simply because it is a core part of this paradigm to affirm the value of the status quo.

Some paradigms have inherently different capabilities, and should be able to do some tasks better than other ones can.

cultural infantilism

The unconscious mind  will always strive to certain ends, depending on your goals and needs. When somebody treats you in such a way that they undermine your self-esteem and make you doubt your own judgement  they are working to create dependency in you to draw from that, even if they do not recognize this themselves.

In terms of finding friends who will listen, I really like Zimbabweans. There is still enough humanism in Zimbabwean culture for Zimbabweans to be able to listen to others, most of the time. In contemporary Western culture, we are going through a post-humanist phrase, where the person doesn't really matter. It is like Kleinian "object relations" where a person is only important in terms of the function they serve for me. If they nurture me, I will accept that nurturing function, but I will not get to know the person since to do so is a strain and a burden and doesn't serve my immediate needs.

The post-humanism of Western society is infantile since few people can afford to represent themselves as whole human beings, because they just get cut down.

Patriarchal sexuality and logic

I’m going more along the lines that subjectivity = no legitimisation, whilst objectivity =legitimisation of knowledge. So the point of being a patriarch is to have one’s knowledge legitimised by claiming an objective status for it.

Now I think this is what patriarchy, in modern times, has been trying to do with male sexuality. It has endeavoured to associate it with the objective quest for knowledge, and thus to legitimise it, by making is seem objective.

My view is that patriarchal thinking does not succeed here — that the way the patriarch experiences his sex drive remains subjective, not least because he changes the environment he moves into (he HAS to see women a certain way, in order to legitimise his sex drive). Also, because he does not engage in a genuine dialectic with women, but only seems to do so. Rather, he engages in a very subjective dialectic with his own internalised version of “woman as she has to be, in order for me not to lose my legitimisation”. He is not participating in reality objectively, because the reality that he would have to participate in has been labelled as polluting. So he invents a fantasy and participates in that, instead. A fantasy, however, seems to suffice him in terms of being a compromise between maintaining patriarchal mores and experiencing (albeit in a very safe and mediated way) a certain level of dialectical relationship.

On academic liberalism

Academic conferences can expose you to a world of left-liberal ideology. I am an alien with respect to that world. It isn't that I don't understand the project of liberalism, which is to ameliorate reality. What I do not "understand" so much is how a left-liberal ideal of inclusiveness can be taken for the reality of life. It is as if left-liberals work very hard to promote a notion that there is intellectual and social space for us all to live in harmony together. Having produced this notion (for instance by means of a orchestrating a seminar or a conference), they are done. It now really seems as if nothing has been excluded from the scope of left-liberal hegemony. A notion like that of patriarchal psychology being equivalent to "black holes" in the universe must be dismissed as something irrelevant to the project at hand -- the gathering of all into one tent of harmony.

But this tent remains what it is -- merely conceptual. And despite the hard work and the good intentions of academics, their pronouncements remain pronouncements. Their sense of achieving inclusiveness is limited to change at a conceptual level. I do not, by writing an academic text, remake the world.

The real danger is the development of a left-liberal hegemony within academia. This concerns intellectual blind spots, which form wherever good feelings about living in collective harmony with eachother find their natural limits in the lives of those who are belligerent, desperate or struggling, and in any case excluded from a realm where social harmony is even thinkable.

On the state of play in politics

The mind is separated from the body, especially in Western culture  This "mind" is very moral, even politically correct. It is Eloi. Meanwhile the hard toilers can't identity with intellectual leftist, not least because they live hard lives. The body is Morlock -- and so are the manual workers.

Identity politics is also a part of the problem, which prevents us from seeing how society is divided along horizontal lines of hierarchy. Instead we are encouraged to see only vertical lines, and the colours of skin competing against another. So, putatively left wing identity politics merely reinforces the main capitalist sense of reality -- that we are all competing against each other. Moreover we all have weapons in the form of moral censure by means of which we can attempt to "compete"(by stabbing others).

Black holes

It has now become obvious to me that puzzle of the patriarchal male --why he is how he is --can be related to a similar phenomenon, to "black holes" in the Universe. As I have said earlier, "patriarchy is institutionalised male narcissism which psychologically obliterates the Other":

My sense of things is that patriarchy wants a mirror for the male psyche (like Narcissus) in order for masculinity to read, in the Other, the meaning of the male sex drive. This was arguably also Freud's project all along -- to discern the meaning of the male sex drive, to focus on it, and understand its message for patriarchal culture. Logically, in order for the male sex drive to be able to read "objectively", it needs to be read as a phenomenon in isolation. Therefore, the female sex drive has to be silenced; it has to be rendered passive. And so it was rendered that way by patriarchy, throughout the ages. The outcome of this peculiarly patriarchal logic is why it became technically impossible, from a patriarchal point of view, to find out anything about the female sex drive. That is why Freud's understanding of female sexuality could only go so far as asking the rhetorical question, "What do women want?" It is logically consistent with the patriarchal psychological construction of reality that Freud should not have been able to produce a substantial answer to this question, despite dedicating his whole life to questions of human sexuality.

However, if one is to understand the very construction of reality in patriarchal terms as designed to feed male narcissism by silencing the Other (that is, women) then a lot more starts to make sense.

Why does one experience, in a relationship with certain males, the sense that the closer they get to you the less you have the ability to make sense? It is as if one were pulled beyond an event horizon, after which point one's very atoms start to tear apart. Whatever meaning one may have intended to convey is lost for good.

Others cannot even hear one screaming.

That it is in the fundamental nature of patriarchal culture to do this to women is hardly understood. Do we look up into the night sky and notice black holes? Not at all.

Rather, we tend to notice only stars -- the givers, rather than the takers of light.

The phenomenon of patriarchal men as "black holes" has been similarly overlooked historically. I consider it necessary to take into account their aggregate effect if one would weigh up the universe in terms of human interpsychological relationships.

Aggressive narcissism

The patriarchy insists that women should be thoroughly passive, and that it must somehow play witchdoctor, inspecting the entrails of female behaviour, in order to discover their mysterious meanings.

This insistence on women's passivity by the patriarchy is necessary in order for women to play the role they are required to, under the patriarchy. That is, they are to be mirrors of men's souls, nothing more and nothing less. So a male looking into a woman is supposed to be able to read his own sex drive, in terms of good or evil, and to make sense of it that way, in relation to other men.

If what he sees in the mirror makes him angry about himself, he may beat or kill the woman, but if what he sees of himself pleases him, he will try to couple with her in a more peaceful manner.

In any case, he is a narcissist who uses women as a means to an end.

My view here is based on thinking about people like Freud, and how they reflect upon masculinity and femininity. The puzzle is why so great an intellect as that of Freud's was unable to figure out "what women want". My conclusion is that patriarchy has fixed it so that women's voices are silenced. But why? What did patriarchy want, when it fixed things this way, for surely it must have had some reason, some incentive? My sense of things is that patriarchy wanted a mirror for the male "soul" as it were (like Narcissus) -- but more specifically in order for masculinity and the male as such to discern the meaning of his sex drive. And, looking at it closely, this was really Freud's intention all along -- to discern the meaning of the male sex drive, to focus on it, and understand its message for patriarchal culture.

But, as I have said, in order for the male sex drive to be able to read "objectively", it needs to be in isolation from all other sex drives. The female drive has to be rendered a still lake. And so it was rendered so by patriarchy throughout the ages. And this is precisely why it became technically impossible -- by virtue of patriarchy's own logic and the way it had structured reality -- to find out anything about the female sex drive.

In other words, patriarchy is institutionalised male narcissism which obliterates the Other.

UPDATE: Interestingly, THEO DORPAT seems to concur that Freud was culpable in attempting to override some of his clients' self-expression, in order to impose his own rigid views. See:
http://www.amazon.com/Gaslighting-Interrogation-Methods-Psychotherapy-Analysis/dp/1568218281

Mike's kata

Destitution: Hillsong Christian singing in Zimbabwe

The patriarchal witchdoctor

In regard to a sexy woman, "asking for it" reinforces the idea that:


For women, sex is trouble.

Men have so little control over their actions that a woman's appearance can provoke them into harassment or worse.

Women have men in mind when they choose what to wear or how to behave.

If a woman dresses or acts in a sexy way in hopes of having sex, then she's fair game for all men.

Women should not or will not clearly initiate or consent to sex. Men have to look for clues, such as the way a woman dresses, to see if she wants it.

Sex is akin to a bar fight in which women provoke men, and the men react in a way that proves their manhood while putting women in their place.

http://www.echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/



This is very intriguing stuff by Suzie, and it is spot on in terms of how patriarchy reasons. The patriarchy insists that women should be thoroughly passive, and that it must somehow play witchdoctor, inspecting the entrails of female behaviour, in order to discover their mysterious meanings.

This insistence on women's passivity by the patriarchy is necessary in order for women to play the role they are required to, under the patriarchy. That is, they are to be mirrors of men's souls, nothing more and nothing less. So a male looking into a woman is supposed to be able to read his own sex drive, in terms of good or evil, and to make sense of it that way, in relation to other men.

If what he sees in the mirror makes him angry about himself, he may beat or kill the woman, but if what he sees of himself pleases him, he will try to couple with her in a more peaceful manner.

In any case, the patriarchal man is a narcissist who uses women as a means to an end.

a turnstile to a balanced mode of living

I'm surprised that this factor doesn't come under scrutiny more -- contemporary society is not one designed to facilitate enjoyment, but to facilitate work. Functionality rather than elegance, the bare minimum rather than opulence -- all of these serve to tell us: Don't get too comfortable here; it really isn't worth your time; keep movin' along.

Adapation to the condition of being a work-slave is really facilitated by the lack of deep enjoyment offered by other facets of life.

Most contemporary facilities are designed to be enjoyed only superficially.

On whipping

People are often not consciously aware that they are being oppressive. That does not mean they are not guilty of oppression, only that they are not consciously aware of what they are doing. This leaves the person who is aware of it, indeed the person who is being oppressed, with a problem.

Suppose I am whipping you, only I am not aware that I am doing it.

The first point of action you might try is to ask me to stop.

Maybe you will get the response from me: "Well I'm comfortable acting like this. It is the quintessential me."

What will you then do?

You can try to grab the whip out of my hand, but I'm not going to let it go that easily. I say, "You are trespassing into my area and trying to take my private property!"

You can then try reasoning with me.

"Please give me that whip. We will both feel better if you are able to stop whipping me, and I will certainly respect you more."

I consider your request for a moment, and think, well, I don't really feel like I should stop whipping you to get your respect, when whipping you to get your respect is much more fun."

So you try to grab the whip from me using physical force.

Immediately, I let out a cry of alarm to all who are like me, who then appear on the scene with their whips, and start whipping you (writers of feminist blogs will understand this analogy.)

I says "See! Justice is on the side of the powerful. I hope you appreciate the efforts I've exerted in order to adjust your attitude -- for your own good. I don't want to have to make an example out of you again."

Having had this experience, you then come to a feminist blog like this one, and you say: "Perpetrators are as much victims and the actual victims are!"

Everybody then gives you three cheers.

why back to nature is not a good thing

Something about the spirit of the present age is wrong, wrong, wrong. My suspicion is that there is too much indulgence of people's naturalness these days. Secularism has not been the redeeming factor one might have hoped it would be. A return to nature was never a good idea, because it has led to men treating women as if they were all a gargantuan nurturing body -- his "mummy". And women, I was told tonight, are just as often inclined to treat males like a daddy. Where this happens, "civilisation" is a misnomer, because really nobody is truly civilised. Rather, everybody just falls back into a familiar psychological and social pattern in their relationships with other people. "Civilisation", as such, does not (is not permitted to) intervene.

When this happens, we are all in a very low state, as I feel we are today.

One simply has to have something to compare it to, to know this, however.

When I went back to Zimbabwe, I felt I did not have to justify every little thing I said by trying to show that I had shaken it dry of all emotionalism (i.e. any personally discrediting content). At least in the white culture, there is not this form of social censure. People are just people, and their status does not have anything to do, in principle, with the degree to which they can demonstrate a separation between their mind and body. In black culture, where "civilisation", was externally imposed, women are ascribed as more emotional than men.  This is from both the colonial point of view and that of the culture they already have.  Therefore we can say that the black cultures are often more genuinely "natural" in that they identify men and women in terms of their familial positioning.

It's not good in my view -- this global "return to nature".   We need something else to intervene --some reason, some values imposed from as if from on high, but ideally something people have been led to feel would automatically be creditable.

gender and civilisation

I have trouble trying to see males, per se, as more rational than I. That doesn't work for me, and I can't seem to make this contemporary paradigm make any sense.

Confirmed somewhat from my recent trip to Zimbabwe, I get a sense that the culture there still views women as representing "civilisation" and men as representing the wild man, as part of "nature". If I am right that this really is how most colonial whites see it, it also confirms that this is probably how I was brought up to see it, too.

If so, this would particularly account for my suspicion about gender roles in Western culture. After all, it would have been an effective switch, for me, to have start to see myself in terms of "nature" (at least at the subconscious level) whilst seeing males as representing the opposite symbolic pole of "civilisation" as such.

I needed to make that switch in my thinking to adapt successfully, to a very different culture, -- and I did not.

The more recent (or, in other terms, "urban") male strategy of dominance -- choosing to identify with civilisation and not with nature -- seems linked to the world moving away from frontier cultures (wherein men were supposed to guard the peripheries) towards urban cultures. In this latter case, hierarchies, represented by the metaphor of the skyscraper, seem more apt. This is a case of men on top, women on the bottom.

***

..which would explain the nature of my project: a desperate effort to try to reinscribe myself into "nature" and into the realm of emotion, to adapt -- an effort that ultimately failed, since I have now chosen non-adaptation, not fitting in, as my only realistic recourse. And why I now see a large part of the memoir as representing a project that failed.

Choosing one's level of participation

I was on ZimNet radio discussing women's self defence, and so many people rang in to tell me that I couldn't possibly understand Zimbabwean culture because I was white. They even said I wasn't Zimbabwean, although I was born there. One woman even rang to say that if a man was going to rape his wife, he should be free to do it, as nobody had the right to intervene.

I suspect that all these callers were trying to make me feel angry or exasperated, but I didn't feel that way at all. After all, I am not particularly maternal or caring, I just think it is rational that women should do what they can to raise their status if they want to do so.

Nietzsche and the good conscience

Nietzsche's readers almost always fail to observe a central aspect of his thinking. Most probably this is because they have sought out (and thus created in their minds) a kind text that would identify them as "winners". So, they must have overlooked the precept that one should seek to explore the realm of thinking freely, but without necessarily having the benefit of a good conscience. To live according to a good conscience is in accordance with the spirit of the pharisee and persecutor of free individuals, and is not a way of thinking that pertains to a Nietzschean adventurer.

As it seems to me, a good conscience is precisely what one risks and perhaps sacrifices if one wants to partake of a Nietzschean form of intellectual adventuring. And, not being prepared to risk this holds you back, pins you down, makes you one of the "good and the just".

O my brethren! With whom lieth the greatest danger to the whole human future? Is it not with the good and just?--

--As those who say and feel in their hearts: "We already know what is good and just, we possess it also; woe to those who still seek thereafter!

And whatever harm the wicked may do, the harm of the good is the harmfulest harm!

And whatever harm the world-maligners may do, the harm of the good is the harmfulest harm!

O my brethren, into the hearts of the good and just looked some one once on a time, who said: "They are the Pharisees." But people did not understand him.

The good and just themselves were not free to understand him; their spirit was imprisoned in their good conscience. The stupidity of the good is unfathomably wise.

It is the truth, however, that the good MUST be Pharisees--they have no choice!

The good MUST crucify him who deviseth his own virtue! That IS the truth!

A good conscience, an established identity, conservatism, a right wing imperative to maintain the hierarchy as it is (because it suits one very well that way, thank you) -- these all cause one to crucify the Nietzschean adventurous spirit (if not immediately in others, then at least and always within oneself).

Also, if one is supportive of the tradition of patriarchy and finds it very natural to be down on women -- I'm sorry to say, you are very much among the persecutors vying against a mode of Nietzschean experimentalism and intellectual adventure.

just the usual: apes throwing shit

The claim that some patriarchs make is that patriarchy holds me to a higher standard than "matriarchy" (or some alternative system) would. This is self deception in the eye of the beholder. The truth is that patriarchy is the enshrinement of shit-throwing as a way to establish social hierarchy. It is this, and nothing else besides.

Considered according to my lights, the "higher" standard that patriarchy holds me to is this and nothing else: the ability to allow shit to be thrown at me without flinching. This, my friends, is the beginning and end of patriarchy's testing of "strength of character". One is considered to have such strength if one can allow the shit to be thrown without acknowledging it. One is considered to lack "strength" if one notices that what is being thrown is actually just shit. (I am saying that it is shit that is being thrown -- nothing more; nothing less.)

Grace in execution is something patriarchal society yearns for -- not least because it is the factor that is entirely eliminated by the necessity of living under the principles of a patriarchy. One simply does not, cannot, throw shit gracefully. One must throw it, rather, as best as one can, with a certain degree of ape-like preponderance -- but, certainly, without grace.

Grace, unfortunately (for this isn't what we have), belongs to a matriarchy. One must be queen of something -- certainly a domain of some sort -- to be able to afford to act with grace.

Conversely, however, it is only a resigned stoicism that belongs to patriarchy -- this being the highest attainment of patriarchy in the current era. One must stand still and accept one's fate. The shit smells like roses. It has that beautiful aroma of transcendence -- a sign that one is making definite progress along one's way.

Tolerance of everyday aggression and violence is a sign that patriarchal values hold sway. This is aggression and violence made profane, deprived of any particular significance, apart from signifying the nature of every day life. The associated lie is that this violence, this aggression, is somehow implicated in one's transcendence, that it presupposes it. Remove the illusion, the rose-coloured spectacles, and what remains are images of grotesque apes, throwing their shit.

This is the spectacle that this century enshrines as the penultimate expression of human nature; human freedom.

Insurrection: on destruction as friend and foe

Somebody cautions:

This [not being competitive] is a survival strategy, because women get destroyed for being competitive.

The view echoes a truth:  the power system does try to destroy women who are competitive, because that is not the role it has allocated them. During the recent Australian electoral campaign there was an advert for the opposition party that was particularly troubling. I later decoded it as attributing the persona of Lady Macbeth to our now Prime Minister, as punishment for being competitive. Obviously, the opposition was trying to say that she had gone against her feminine nature. Had the opposition's campaign succeeded better than it had, she would have been publicly "destroyed".

But there is another sense of "destroyed", which I find more conciliatory to our cause. That is in the sense in which one can allow the idiotic idea of having a perfectly feminine little life to be fundamentally destroyed from within.

Each time a 'patriarch' attacks me, for whatever reason, he or she compels me to revisit the fact that it is impossible to live within a patriarchal society. Such patriarchs do me a service in causing that part of me that wants to live quietly and harmoniously within an inimical social order to be destroyed. Each time they tear me down, I also destroy myselff.

I have heard the theory that one develops muscle in the body as a result of  tears in the existing fiber  Muscle is caused by muscle destruction and consequent rebuilding.

DADA

How gender discrimination works

There are structures in life that militate against us. These are distortions based on stereotyping, as well as limiting gender constructs that are based rather on a cookie-cutter model of humanity. These all concern feminine gender performance, which they oversee and serve to evaluate. These structures, it is important to point out, are not necessarily overtly sexist, but they are nonetheless sexist to the degree that they compel onlookers to judge women on how we appear and on our demeanour, (such trifling matters), rather than on what we say. And even when we are very clear about what we mean, what we say will still be distorted, in order to fit other people's stereotypes about what it is possible for us to mean within the existing ideological limits of gender stereotyping.

It is as there was an already existing silhouette of a woman sketched out on a piece of paper. Others then take on the role of monitoring you, to see how much of your energy takes you outside the lines of this pre-existing silhouette, and how much remains within those lines. To the degree that you do, say or think anything that takes you outside of these established boundaries, your career will be penalised, and your behaviour will be socially censured. Stay inside the lines, though, and you might just be okay, although you will not have much of a spark, and will be unlikely to say, do, or think anything that could be objectively considered very creative. You will certainly be living your life in close conformity with the existing structures of reality -- but you will be very boring!


000

A way to look British

Patriarchy and projective identification

I have a theory about how gender oppression works, and it is related to projective identification. I think that when males come out and accuse me of emotionality and then say they cannot "feel" the barbs of my sarcastic counter-attack, there is a reason for this. They have projected their own emotionality into my words and therefore genuinely cannot feel anything anymore. Rather, I seem to embody all emotional states for them. They no longer have them. It is, as Melanie Klein has suggested, a way of getting rid of one's shit, quite literally speaking. Of course, it is extremely infantile. But that is my point. Patriarchy is based on infantile structures of adaptation, and that is why it is so instinctively natural for most people. It really is quite primal, rather than being rational.

Patriarchy, like racism, turns others into "part objects" (functions, rather than people) in order to make political gains. Then, the only people who are treated as complete individuals in their own rights are the ones at the top of the gender/race hierarchy.

my aesthetic

In all, I like a quintessentially masculine aesthetic in life, although this is not a sexist preference on my part -- I could just as easily work with women who embrace it, and indeed would prefer to do so.

I embrace the idea of training, for instance, toward a goal. One can marshall all of one's forces toward it, and then become that which one has been training to be, over the previous months or years. This makes more sense to me that sitting down and listening quietly to others. Rather than this, I wish to engage the full person -- and moreover that person inside, who becomes easily agitated at the lack of movement, who wants to press forward, discover something, in a mode of "make or break", eschewing safety.

I don't like a passive aesthetic, because there is less of ME in it -- less input and more accident. For the same reason, I don't embrace family and the sensation of having family connections. Family connections pertain to accident, not intent. When it comes to what it means to have a family, I am in general underwhelmed. The proliferation of babies, for instance, does not strike me as a positive outcome for world population growth.

In me, rather, is a core of aggression that wishes to express itself. I have learned to see it as my true self, since when I do not express this aggression, as a necessity, I rapidly feel ill.

I need the open plains (of Africa) and the sanctuary of the gym (in Australia). My aggression isn't social -- and doesn't require others to be present in order for me to engage with it.

Dreams

I've had dreams, of late, of looking into a precipice. I've had three such dreams in a row.

In the first one, I was back in Zimbabwe, investigating factories for horse-riding. There was a chasm between two rocky edifices, and I hid under some overhanging rocks in order to allow horses above me to jump from one side to the other, unhindered by the distraction of my being there.

In the second dream, I was back in Africa and investigating the lifestyles of the rich, as compared to the lifestyles of the poor. I made my way out of one rich person's garden, which I didn't know that I was in. It had trapped me like a labyrinth -- as well as Letwin, and others too, whom I was with. We went down an enormous flight of stairs. At the bottom of it was the sky -- empty air and clouds. It filled me with fear. But then the sky turned into the ocean, warm and green, and there were so many fish there I kept inadvertently picking them up.

In the third, I ride on horseback to the edge of the rocky precipice, and manage to pull my horse away from veering over the edge. The man said my horse had shivered at the sight of it, although in reality he hadn't at all.

Next, a dragon is gliding within this chasm, and asks me to throw a water bottle down to him -- down over the precipice -- as he is thirsty. I think that it will miss, but the dragon catches my water bottle and is refreshed.

The dogma of "woman versus reason"

Our quintessential problem  is the way that the idea of "woman" as as such has been encoded, culturally and psychologically. A lot of our rhetorical fire is absolutely wasted, just because of the reflex that patriarchy reproduces in people, that "woman = irrationality".

Feminists can take a lot of time pointing out that woman are being treated badly, that our treatment is extremely irrational, but ultimately what registers in people's minds is that the object, woman as such, is an irrational object, and hence that it is not logically possible to treat an irrational object in a rational way.

The reason patriarchies encode "woman = irrationality" is because of the relationship that males have with their sex drives. They must often experience the need to repress their sexuality in order to embrace "reason". From this there comes the feeling that sexuality is opposed to reason. Equating "woman" as such with one's sexual feelings is a small leap for most men, leading them to the patriarchal conclusion that "woman" and "reason" are diametrically opposed.

Our criticisms fall on deaf ears. Those men who are imbued with patriarchal values and perspectives already implicitly understand that women are not treated in a rational or reasonable fashion. But they also take if for granted that it is simply not possible to do so, given the formula:  woman = irrationality/my sex drive.

Of course, the principle works in the opposite direction, too:  men who treat their sex drive as an irrational part of themselves will have difficulty finding partners.

The power of moral skepticism

The false dualisms seem to arise a lot these days, as a feature of the way advanced Western culture tries to process morality (and quite clearly in the absence of historical theory, or something that could lend substantiality, like sociological analysis). One ends up processing all of reality as different (but somehow all too similar) abstractions. One abstraction becomes easily interchangeable with another -- for they are both ungrounded abstractions.

Having demonstrated their interchangeability with each other, the contemporary moralist can then congratulate himself: "See!" he cries. "Action, as such, is dubious."

I am all too aware of the kind of "argument" that follows Echidne's critique here:

First, many of us have been neither geese nor ganders but perhaps ducks or gulls, some species of birds which was not inappropriately generalizing in the first place, in either direction. Saletan confuses the issue by ignoring that, preferring a plunge into false dualism.

This false dualism -- which ultimately turns out not to be so much of a dualism, after all, but a monism, as it makes everyone out to be the same -- is linked to a form of moral skepticism.

Moral skepticism (with its attendant clause, "deep down we are all the same") seems to have it origination in the idea of original sin -- that whatever we do, we will be wrong, so why try to do anything right?

Those who would maintain power over others (but with a bad conscience) have every reason for embracing moral skepticism. Think about those groups that are intent upon justifying patriarchy, for instance.

Such groups tend to cling onto the argument which has the structure: "We are all sinners anyway! So, you'd better do exactly as I say!"

banning patriarchy

To be quite clear, it has been patriarchy itself, and never its self-proclaimed enemies, that have convinced me that patriarchy is a failed system. Patriarchy never gives what it has promised.

Supposing the patriarchal man wants love -- and yet would bind me in chains in order to get it. Such is the precise condition for the very negation of love.

Supposing the one who has faith in patriarchy expects others to respect him, yet patriarchal values have taught him to belittle all those that it deems inferior. He is therefore unable to get those whom he belittles to respect him, for they perceive him as acting in a cowardly fashion.

Supposing he upholds the value of the system as it currently is. He likes the status quo, and believes that it is beyond criticism. He comes across as passive, unresponsive, unable to see another person's point of view.

In all ways, the adherent to patriarchal values mitigates against his own interests. His actions promote the very conditions that will undermine him in due course.

An Internet troll is very similar in all sorts of ways, as his actions demand he should be banned.

Black rain!

I suffer from moments of PTSD. It is as Marechera said: Black rain, drumming upon the head. The blackness metaphor is apt, because it implies numbness, the inability to think or see clearly. The metaphor of the rain that beats down in also extremely appropriate, because it describes an agitation that separates you from the rest of the world -- attacking the skull, the exterior of the brain. PTSD is exquisitely like Chinese water torture. When it begins, it seems as if it will go on forever, but then suddenly the stress is released, and one is once again back in the real world.

The unpredictability of this foe is what makes it hard to manage. Will it come to me in my sleep, making everything seem hopeless, like a heavy blanket of dread? If so, I will be less well positioned to use various deliberate tactics I've developed over time, to fend it off.

This PTSD is a product of contemporary identity politics. It was produced, above all, by patriarchy's anti-feminism, but also by those who made an industry out of hating whites who came from Africa.

It is a product of Australian xenophobia.

Society and its conventions

Much of my life has been spent trying to defend myself from psychological projections. It has to do with the way that masculinity is encoded in our societies. When I think about how I learned to understand my father's true feelings, it was always indirectly and on the basis of having the maturity to distance myself from what he was saying in order to conjecture what he actually meant. I learned, in this manner, to conjecture the content of his feelings, or at least what they seemed to be.

I learned from him that one is reasonably afraid of everything, or that one ought to be afraid of everything, when he asserted, one day, out of the blue, that I was afraid of everything. Before that, I had not been afraid of everything, but only of a dangerous few people. But he informed me that I was "afraid of everything", and so I learned that he was afraid of everything. I also felt that he was warning me to be eternally alert -- to fear imminent disaster if I was not eternally vigilant and fearful of everything.

His conservatism, which conforms without questioning, could speak of fear of everything. My liberalism and adventurism speak otherwise, but those who hear word of my father's past conceptions of me will take his word for it, for our family is still very imbued with 19th Century sensibilities. The father makes pronouncements concerning his daughter, and thus they become true. "Reality", as it is commonly understood, is all too narrowly circumscribed by patriarchal conventions.

Larger society, also, is not free from patriarchal feelings, and will give weight to fatherly pronouncements. Should your own father ever pronounce something negative about you, out of the blue, consider keeping it under wraps. He may be suffering from some kind of madness, or dementia, but that's not for you to say. Society will determine whether it is right or not, and they will do so on the basis of the positive resonance of the word, "father". It has a good tone -- it denotes paternal concern, protectiveness, and the quality of giving. Any negativity must be seen in these lights, as intended positively, and with good will.

A father wishes us well. But a father also has negative emotions he wants to get rid off -- like being afraid of everything. These two aspects are contradictory, and cognitive dissonance urges us to resolve the difference by favouring the former statement over the latter. A father wishes us well. Negativity is his way of wishing us well. Society concurs: "He is trying to straighten you up, dear, to assist you to fly right."

But a father is deathly afraid of everything. This fact also needs to be faced, if one is to understand the meaning of the relationship. One must not shirk from understanding what is palpably in front of one. A father is shell-shocked, profoundly traumatised by his loss of country and home, and a father is too afraid even to honestly express his negative emotions. (He thinks they should be a daughter's emotions -- he wants to bequeath them to her.) A father, therefore, is indirectly asking for help in order to deal with his negative emotions. But he is too afraid to ask for help directly. His own words are "afraid of everything."

How does a daughter help a father who is afraid of everything? She is now becoming afraid, herself. Not yet afraid of everything, but afraid of society's tendency to ascribe to her emotions that rightfully belong to her father. What should she do about it?

She could ask for help. But society in general is not tolerant of much complexity, and is likely to ascribe to her identity her father's words, without proper understanding that they belong to him. And also, she is trying to help him -- isn't that the father's role, to help his daughter?

Society is apt to punish her, for this reversal of roles. She shouldn't be trying to help her father. He should be helping her. She can't be thinking properly, and must be brought back into line.

In line with what, exactly?

In line with patriarchal conventions which determine what is really real, and what isn't real -- in line with what people are already comfortable believing:

"Daughters, not fathers, are likely to be afraid of everything."

Jennifer Armstrong

I had a drink of white wine that night -- my first alcoholic beverage since arriving in the country. It immediately intoxicated me. I had a warm bucket shower behind three-quarter grass walls, temporarily lost my glasses somewhere on the thatched wall and was unable and unwilling to find them. It had begun raining heavily, even as I was taking my shower. I retreated to the tent and report on my loss when the safari guy announce that it was dinner time. He found the glasses for me, whereupon I managed to discard my airline pillow in the mud (due to the fact that I was barely conscious I was wearing it -- a feature of the white wine entering an empty stomach). My South African companion became thoroughly concerned, upon finding this pillow on the way back from her meal, that witches on hyenas might have led to this. This kind of chaos was something I was personally accustomed to.

So, we went deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. We marched and marched and marched and marched up and down a thousand mile high ravines. These got steeper and steeper and more tiring to navigate. We were on our way to our destination: to sleep under an overhanging rock, overnight. We stopped around mid afternoon at a river with boulders around it. There, I lay on a rock in the middle of the stream with my riding hat over my face. I felt that there were river spirits speaking to me. A baboon threw a stick at one of us, but this I couldn't see as I was half asleep.

The safari guide said we had a few more hours riding ahead of us. That was a lie. We went up a hill and then down the other side and the horses locked their legs in brake position. It was the same as when they'd seen zebras. Only this time, it was the pack pony, neighing out a greeting and waiting patiently for us.

So, we stayed under the rock that night and we noted all the speckles in the sky -- so many stars that not one space of sky was not covered with a star. We slept on numnahs and hard rock and all the sand we slept upon got into everything. (When a tour assistant shook out my companion's sleeping bag, they let out a laugh that she had been sleeping with some sizable stones.)

The day of the return back in the direction from whence we'd come was the hardest for me, since I had not slept so well. I drank coffee to keep me alert, but this enervated me. I knew that if I made an error of judgement in this steep and rocky terrain, many miles away from medical assistance, I would not be happy with the consequences. I did actually fall off my horse, all the same. It happened as I was gaining confidence in Bonus's abilities to perform almost supernatural tricks involving the descent and ascent of many river banks. I had aimed her at a rise a little too steep, even though the guide called out to take her around the other way. I'd already committed to taking the steep rise. She pounced onto the rise on the opposite side, but the ground was muddy and she could not get her footing. She immediately tried again, two or three times -- and I, resolving not to make things worse, delicately slipped off her side onto the muddy red earth to the right.

That was the worst situation that happened, but it was minor. We continued on our journey at a knee-breaking speed, which was a sprightly walking pace. It would not be too long before we'd made our way home.

Jennifer F Armstrong

On Patriarchy

There is no reasoning with patriarchy, because the range and quality of experiences of a patriarch are necessarily totally different from one’s own. A patriarch is, as Nietzsche would say, imprisoned in his own good conscience, and can’t even understand the games he is inclined to play. For instance, there was a recent thread of facebook which began with my status update telling people I would not stand to be called “dear” as it was a diminutive term.

From this there followed three patriarchs — two of them telling me, either directly or indirectly, that there was a lot of emotion in my text, which invalidated my simple request.

After I told the first one that the emotions he was detecting were assuredly his own, since all he had to go on were some written words, he retreated somewhat, but this was not enough to prevent a more robust patriarch from emerging on the scene to insist, three times, that the words on the page were heavily laden with emotion.

Finally a third patriarch appeared to state that people were simply requesting an explanation from me — this was after I had already very clearly given my explanation concerning the diminutive connotations of the term, AND after I had been through the whole rigmarole of explaining how all of the objections to my request were merely based upon the emotional projections of the reader, which had distorted my meaning and intentions.

Patriarchy.