Feminism and Societal Suicide

[B_Hickboy]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKECiyIsq3I

Thanks for saying what needs to be said.

 

[maxcok]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKECiyIsq3I

Thanks for saying what needs to be said.

There, there Hicky. Here . . . . here's a Kleenex. *waves slightly soiled tissue*

 

[Drifterwood]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFBOQzSk14c

 

[Smaccoms]

Let's see . . . thus far, lots of calls of 'bullshit' and outright dismissal of the topic, but no real answers to any of the questions I asked. If what I'm saying is demonstrably bullshit, it should be easy to prove it as such.

Thats because the position you're presenting in an extreme with perceived small chances of being possible (I agree with everyone else on this). In such a case if you want to get peoples' attention seriously you have to give a lot of legitimate evidence backing up your point that's increasingly difficult to dispute.
For example this single mother thing could have a myriad of explanations. The increased number of divorces, the increased population sizes, perhaps the bad economy, even specific coincedental events can have a huge impact. To cite an example, it's been said part of the reason crime rates cut in half through the 90's was partly due to the legalizing of abortions back in the 70's (since the first round of abortions supposedly affected the criminal population) This is something that's very difficult to disprove, and clearly is plausible. SO much can happen in a century, so to use this as evidence you have to prove the connection of the supposed occurrence to your argument specifically. Otherwise it's pure talk.

 

[D_Tim McGnaw]

I’m not arguing that one is morally superior to the other. History demonstrates that patriarchy builds civilizations, and matriarchy does not.

Well considering that Anthropologists have not been able to reliably indentify any Matriarchal societies either extant or extinct or archaeological it would seem impossible that you could make that wild generalisation.

There have been matrifocal, matristic, matrilineal and other forms of gynocentric civilisations in spades, indeed some of them are some of the most important and spectacular civilisations in human history. However in the absence of any comparison it is impossible to see how you come to the deduction that Patriarchy alone produces civilisation.

Hence, bullshit.

Why didn’t matriarchal societies build nation states?

Again since no such societies can be said to have ever existed with any reliability that question is somewhat redundant. If you're comparing Patriarchal societies with Matrifocal. Matrilocal societies or Matristic societies et al then you're not comparing like for like, but even by this comparison the basis of your question is manifestly false. Because woman focused societies have indeed produced numerous civilisations.

Hence, bullshit.

 

[luka82]

What exactly is 'civil' about a society that is in a constant state of war or preparing for war? What kind of 'civil living' is provided in a country like the United States where we spend an obscene amount of our treasure serving as the policemen of the world, while people die for lack of basic healthcare or homeless in our streets? What was 'civil' about life in the Soviet Union or the Roman empire at their demise, collapsing as they did from the sheer weight of defending themselves against military threats? What was/is civil about life in those supremely patriarchal and militaristic societies of Iraq, Iran, North Korea . . . . ?

Smooch!

 

[Tattooed Goddess]

Fine. In response to MR's challenge:

p.s. MR, if you are so hot to debate this topic, feel free to step right up.
......And what, pray tell, does sexual orientation have to do with this??......

Because I've been on this board for 3 years to notice what kind of topics go well or don't go well over on the Etc. forum. It's mostly male gay men with a little bit exception. Because of that, certain topics that would be hot with responses every few minutes and turn a dozen pages a day may not get much of a response at all over here.

Does it mean that gay men like yourself can't answer? No, does it mean that a lot of gay men won't bother answering, yes.

So i recommended him to take it to another forum where debate is more likely to happen rather than just being written off as BULLSHIT or "I'm not wasting my time"

 

[big_tits4big_dicks]

Feminism leads to matriarchy (well, at least until the society collapses or is conquered). It is an inevitable consequence of the more immediate goals sought by feminism.

nope.

 

[D_Tim McGnaw]

Because I've been on this board for 3 years to notice what kind of topics go well or don't go well over on the Etc. forum. It's mostly male gay men with a little bit exception. Because of that, certain topics that would be hot with responses every few minutes and turn a dozen pages a day may not get much of a response at all over here.

Does it mean that gay men like yourself can't answer? No, does it mean that a lot of gay men won't bother answering, yes.

So i recommended him to take it to another forum where debate is more likely to happen rather than just being written off as BULLSHIT or "I'm not wasting my time"

So what your saying is that the female members and others who frequent Women's Issues are just more likely to entertain patent bullshit then?

 

[Tattooed Goddess]

No, im saying that have more interest in responding to his questions than most gay men from the Etc. forum do.

I don't think the questions he is asking are just bullshit. Petite is asking detailed questions back to him about what equals what, this doesn't equate this, etc. etc. I don't call that entertaining bullshit.

There are tons of feminist/feminism related questions over there being talked about regularly. He should have asked it where most people ask those questions. There are more straight men who frequent the Women's Issues than the Etc. who would answer his theories.

 

[D_Tim McGnaw]

No, im saying that have more interest in responding to his questions than most gay men from the Etc. forum do.

I don't think the questions he is asking are just bullshit. Petite is asking detailed questions back to him about what equals what, this doesn't equate this, etc. etc. I don't call that entertaining bullshit.

There are tons of feminist/feminism related questions over there being talked about regularly. He should have asked it where most people ask those questions. There are more straight men who frequent the Women's Issues than the Etc. who would answer his theories.

Yeah my point is that he doesn't have any theories and his assertions are based on nonsense and absurd received wisdom and a variety of other spurious nitwittery.

This isn't really even a discussion about Feminism, it's the ramblings of a very ill informed person who seems to think all the world's woes can be blamed on evil feminists trying to take over the world blah blah blah, and that Matriarchy is wrong and Patriarchy is right, as if the comparison is possible or even worth bothering to make.

The presumptions inherent in almost everything Tromag is saying are so ridiculously faulty and lacking that it's virtually impossible to engage with them intelligently, unless one descends into an extended disquisition on history, archaeology and anthropology, and sociology in order to put his "ideas" in their proper context. Knowing that even if one bothered to do this, Tromag would undoubtedly cling to his crackpot notions makes that prospect distinctly unattractive.

But if you guys over in Women's Issues feel like that sounds fun, have at it.

 

[ManlyBanisters]

I thought this thread started in Women's Issues and was moved here. Perhaps I was mistaken.

MR - I think this is better suited to Etc even though the OP is, as hilaire points out, "based on nonsense and absurd received wisdom and a variety of other spurious nitwittery".

Etc is not, in my expereince, mainly gay men -I would say it is the forum that has the largest crossover of readers and posters from the male / female, gay / bi / straight spheres, well, along with Funny Stuff perhaps.

But that is somewhat beside the point. Who are you to decide what gay men are interested in and may or may not want to read and / or respond to? Feminism is not 'straight' issue - it is a people issue. Being gay does not make men run screaming from women. Sure, there may be a handful like that, but no more, proportionally speaking, than straight men who seem to run screaming from women as anything other than a convenient vagina and occasional Petri dish for heir cultivation.

 

[helgaleena]

I did notice Tromag posting in some threads on Women's issues which caused him to voice some of these 'facts' of his. I don't know if he put this thread up over there first or not. But a discussion about entire civilizations most certainly merits discussion not by women only.

I know of lots of matrilineal and matrilocal cultures, but the matriarchy? Not so much. Females do not feel the same need for dominance hierarchies in order to organize, from what I have studied...

And feminism does not espouse matriarchy. It espouses equality within existing structures. I doubt that this would make existing structures cease to exist. Beaurocracies are much too self-perpetuating IME, regardless of who's running them.

 

[sbat]

Ok, so are we going to talk more about that sexual hypothetical scenario or what?

 

[ManlyBanisters]

What. :tongue:

 

[Bbucko]

Well considering that Anthropologists have not been able to reliably indentify any Matriarchal societies either extant or extinct or archaeological it would seem impossible that you could make that wild generalisation.

There are bits and pieces of clues, some quite tantalizing, regarding the extent to which pre-literate Old Europe was Matriarchal. The decades of work by Marija Gimbutas cannot simply be dismissed as the ramblings of a crank, and most of her hypotheses remain unexplored by (patriarchally-focused) archeologists and anthropologists, let alone disproven.

I seriously doubt that the OP has even heard of her or her work.

Another excellent book on the subject of pre-literate Europe and the Middle East, The Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age, by Richard Rudgley, should be required reading by anyone interested in the 50,000-250,000 years that anatomically modern humans existed prior to writing; they were hardly savages. In fact, the introduction of agriculture and animal husbandry actually shortened, rather than lengthened, life expectancy 8000-10,000 years ago.

Another example of a potential Matriarchal society that could well have existed at the dawn of Historical times is in Malta, where the oldest examples of stone architecture still stand. The only statuary ever found within the Maltese "temples" (no one really knows what purpose they served for those who built them) are of a characteristic female figure, whose enormous hips and breasts suggest a religion centered on fertility.

Of course, much the same can be said about the Temple of Artemis , and there was never anything even remotely matriarchal about Hellenism. But as the archeological evidence at Malta has been plundered for centuries, we'll probably never know the extent to which their religious practices overlapped with their societal structures.

Other ancient societies in which the sexes were considered equal were the Minoans and Etruscans. And, of course, we'll never know the extent to which civilizations and societies off the Eurocentric page by which we still study history may or may not have existed.

There have been matrifocal, matristic, matrilineal and other forms of gynocentric civilisations in spades, indeed some of them are some of the most important and spectacular civilisations in human history. However in the absence of any comparison it is impossible to see how you come to the deduction that Patriarchy alone produces civilisation.

Judaism, while patriarchal in many of its structures, is entirely matrilineal, if only to pick the most obvious example.

Again since no such societies can be said to have ever existed with any reliability that question is somewhat redundant. If you're comparing Patriarchal societies with Matrifocal. Matrilocal societies or Matristic societies et al then you're not comparing like for like, but even by this comparison the basis of your question is manifestly false. Because woman focused societies have indeed produced numerous civilisations.

Hence, bullshit.

In hunter-gatherer civilizations, where men were absent for weeks at a time on hunts, it is patently obvious that women ruled the day-to-day lives of their societal groups.

OK, let’s step back a bit. Imagine a world of total sexual freedom, with men and women free to have sex with whomever they want (assuming it is consensual of course), free from religious or moral codes against promiscuity and free from societal shaming of ‘slut’ behavior. One could argue that in the USA, and particularly, its large coastal cities, we are in the early stages of that sort of scenario.

Who are the sexual winners in this scenario? Are there any sexual losers? If so, who?

I don't really understand your statement here at all. The Sexual Revolution began with the introduction of the Pill: it's at least 50 years old.

Free love was an essential part of 60s counter-culture and was pretty thoroughly mainstreamed by the 70s and early 80s. For from being at any "early stage", it's an historic fact.

AIDS cut it all short, for obvious reasons; though in general the straight community was slower to react to the pandemic through a misguided sense of insulation from risk, though by the mid-late 80s everyone got the message.

How old are you, anyway, to not understand such basics of contemporary American cultural history?

 

[sbat]

In fact, the introduction of agriculture and animal husbandry actually shortened, rather than lengthened, life expectancy 8000-10,000 years ago.

Just venturing a guess, but I would say that is almost entirely due to the sharp increase in population density combined with living in close proximity with animals that allowed pathogens to jump from animals to people and spread very rapidly.

I believe those two elements had to be together, as the mound building cultures in the Great Plains region of North America (Mound builder (people) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) are suggested by some anthropologists to have attained levels of population on par with their european contemporaries in the 13th and 14th centuries - yet the peoples lacked the disease immunity found in Europe because of a lack of animal husbandry and livestock domestication (the economy was corn centric - high carbohydrate, easy to grow, widely abundant - it can support a massive population).

Just to keep this post relevant, the society of the Mound builders are conjectured to be matriarchal (or matrilineal at the very least)

 

[Bbucko]

Just venturing a guess, but I would say that is almost entirely due to the sharp increase in population density combined with living in close proximity with animals that allowed pathogens to jump from animals to people and spread very rapidly.

That, combined with a somewhat more restricted diet, is precisely why. I should have included that in my post above: thank you for expanding it to include that point.

I believe those two elements had to be together, as the mound building cultures in the Great Plains region of North America (Mound builder (people) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) are suggested by some anthropologists to have attained levels of population on par with their european contemporaries in the 13th and 14th centuries - yet the peoples lacked the disease immunity found in Europe because of a lack of animal husbandry and livestock domestication (the economy was corn centric - high carbohydrate, easy to grow, widely abundant - it can support a massive population).

Just to keep this post relevant, the society of the Mound builders are conjectured to be matriarchal (or matrilineal at the very least)

The Mound Builders have long fascinated me but my research into their society is a neglected item in my mental To-Do list. Thanks again for expanding my post to include them.

 

[Lex]

I do so wonder what it must be like to go through life constantly fearful of the "other."

Great points made in this thread (about how the OP is full of it).

 

[sbat]

That, combined with a somewhat more restricted diet, is precisely why. I should have included that in my post above: thank you for expanding it to include that point.



The Mound Builders have long fascinated me but my research into their society is a neglected item in my mental To-Do list. Thanks again for expanding my post to include them.

If you ever get a chance to visit the midwest, you should see the Cahokia Mounds outside of St. Louis. It is suggested (again, not a lot is known directly on account of a lack of written history) that the vast network of mounds stretched across much of the Ohio River and Mississippi River plains areas, and given the lack of high productivity technology, suggests that a highly structured society with a very large population built it.

Researchers don't really have much of a clue why the society disintegrated, but my own suspicion is that - like the Mayans and many of the other great pre-European civilizations like Great Zimbabwe - the system of esoteric knowledge that allowed such social cohesion failed to prevent or even caused a major natural disaster. I remember hearing (can't remember the source) that it may have had to do with trying to divert the flow of the Mississippi River to better irrigate crops, and of course flooding human living space instead. Jared Diamond, though, treats the subject of civilization collapse much better in his book "Collapse."

A good starting point for reading is George Bryce's book "The Mound Builders"
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Mound Builders, by George Bryce