If you want a reminder of how lucky we are to be rid of the bastards, just read Yvette Cooper in the Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jul/04/women-budget-cuts-yvette-cooper#start-of-comments
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Wow, astonishing. I wonder what those people are doing right now. I particularly liked this bit:
“The paper will argue that there is evidence that at the same level of IQ, women are able to achieve more than men “possibly because they are more conscientious and better adapted to sustained periods of hard work”. ”
Like donkeys. Or deltas.
Otherwise, the comments are pretty good like this one:
“All this discussion is fairly irrelevant. Men and women have different and also some similar skills but we are all genetically programmed for survival, together. Basically we need teamwork and to be able to work to each other’s strengths and minimise our collective weaknesses in order to make any progress in future. Divisive talk about who is better than who is pointless and smacks of political correctness.”
Richard, Worksop
The point is, technicolour, that when you intimated that there are more men in high positions as being unfair, the gender differences at the high end of IQ, will account for this situation.
To force more women into high end jobs, based on feminist ‘equality of outcomes’, will only diminish the intellect of management.
But then that would be a boon to a Marxist-Feminist government, who would find parvenue run businesses, easier to manipulate than elite male run businesses.
I didn’t intimate it was unfair. I pointed out it hardly argued for women having a ‘special advantage’ in job applications. In fact, as you probably know, women as primary carers/parents are often unfairly discriminated against in the job market, but then the job market unfairly discriminates against most people who want to work and have a life, it seems. Why are we not all going part-time?
That aside, I’ve explained how I view the IQ test. Whatever, I find it quite extraordinary that you think the current generation of male leaders are either an ‘elite’ or fit to rule anyone.
Think we could certainly do with more maternal qualities (which men also possess, confusingly, until you realise the word denotes ‘warmth and care’) in decision making circles. Don’t you?
You didn’t say if you’d seen the Two Ronnies, btw.
No, I think men need more male qualities; it’s women who need more maternal qualities.
Feminism has screwed up two generations worth of children; we have as many boys with girlie attributes and hair styles, as girls with butch attitudes and tattoos.
The reason governments want more women in the decision making, even allowing disposable feminism to aid and abet them, is the same reason that advertisers target women: it’s because women can be easily manipulated compared to ‘cussed’ men.
What does the word maternal mean to people? It means love, warmth, care, tenderness, I think. Those are not specifically female qualities, and it seems unfair of society to have allocated such a powerful word only to one gender.
You’re saying that women are easily manipulated. How do you square this with your assertion that they’re also in charge?
I’m not sure what you mean by a butch attitude, do you mean ‘mouthy and aggressive’? I agree, that negative reading does have male connotations, as well as class connotations, unfair again, I feel. I suppose you could mean ‘spirited and self-confident’?
Naomi Klein, in the Beauty Myth, warned that the massive marketing onslaught on women would be repeated on men. I think you’re seeing the results.
On the other hand, it’s also partly a male form of preemptive self-defence to refuse to adopt an aggressive style of dress. And perhaps it’s also a bit nice for men to come out of the post war austerity era and indulge in some pleasant self-grooming. Just a shame they’re generally being sold cheap chemicals packaged to look like luxury. Can recommend coconut oil.
@ technicolour :
“You’re saying that women are easily manipulated. How do you square this with your assertion that they’re also in charge?”
I did not say they were in charge, I’m suggesting they are given top jobs in the managerial decision making positions.
The idea from the point of government, is that women who are drilled by feminism, basically have a unified outlook; unlike men, who would be more cussed, and have a higher sense of independence regarding decision making.
Now look at socialist Britain, it has far fewer businesses, and therefore more monopolies, or basically fewer managements to manage, from the government perspective.
With men at the top of most businesses, government would have to negotiate a multitude of ‘little principalities’. But with more women at the top, there would be a higher probability of a national Gleichschaltung of synchronised feminist opinion; equivalent to a cloned confederacy of businesses. A governments dream of total unified control.
Finally, off to bed. But before I go, I think I know the Marxist-Feminist you fear, Mr Giro. When I saw her, she was standing on the steps of the local community centre, surrounded by black clad bodyguards, and preventing anyone but her supporters from entering the building. She was also wearing black leather gloves on a hot sunny day. Seriously.
However, even if that person self describes as a feminist, or even if you describe her as a feminist, simply because she is in power, she is not a feminist. She is an oppressor, and feminism is, by its self-description, diametrically opposed to oppression.
As for ‘Marxist’; not aware that having read Marx, or even broadly agreeing with Marx, makes anyone oppressive, necessarily.
I happen to know a real Marxist-Feminist (I think); a good person who has everyone’s best interests at heart and works pretty tirelessly for the public’s welfare. She has her faults too, of course – doesn’t dress up to please men, for example, and can be somewhat taciturn. But she is about as oppressive as a tree.
Sorry, your last post isn’t making sense. It’s either a confusion of principles and meanings, or a deliberate attempt to try and legitimise some kind of nonsensical anti-female agenda.
You’re now insinuating that women in power are all brainwashed Nazis: of course they are when possible handpicked as candidates for their support of the leadership but so are the male MPs. I mean, huh?
You still didn’t say if you’d watched the Two Ronnies.
Or it could be a Doctor Who plot. Or a very funny joke which I’ve managed to miss?
“synchronised feminist opinion”?
In a situation in which the main engines of oppression are fundamentalist corporate monopoly capitalism and the grey psychosis of managerialism through which it is implemented, it is both amusing and ironic that some still feel it necessary to rail against ‘Marxism’ and ‘feminism’. Socialism and feminism, the two taboo words, post-Thatcher. In the USA, the supporters of McCain and Palin branded Obama “a socialist”. It would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.
All forms of oppression ten to use similar tools and to appropriate terminologies from their opponents – so there will be much in common b/w the way Stalinist managers worked and monopoly capitalist managers work, in terms of methods of control. Nowadays, they may well use terms lifted from feminism, socialism, the Green movement or indeed any tendency that once represented a threat to their interests. Capitalism has proved almost uniquely flexible in this regard and this was something which I don’t think Marx predicted (how could he?).
As technicolour has quite rightly argued, it is the relationship of power with the system and the kinds of people who tend to make it to positions of power in the system that results in the kinds of injustices about which many people are exercised. Machiavelli and Lucretia Borgia would be better parallels than Mrs Pankhurst and Engels.
But constantly to yell: “Socialism!” and “Feminism!” is akin to screaming: “Heretic!” and “Witch!” and simply lets the Inquisition and Monarchy (i.e. the enforcers of military economic power) off the hook. In the end, as with the Palin-McCain-Obama nexus, though probably unintentionally so in the case of Mr Giro, it’s a diversion from an analysis of manner in which power is exerted in this, our increasingly monopoly-capitalist, country and world.
@ technicolour:
“”synchronised feminist opinion”?”
http://jimmygiro.blogspot.com/2008/05/democratic-fascism.html
Yes, I see you quote Popper. Quite interesting. Nothing to do with women or feminism. If you read a number of self declared feminist writers you would find a vast range of opinions; but then you wouldn’t be attacking them so aggressively, I guess.
By the way, interesting that you use Nazi tactics (‘proof’ of lower intelligence) to denigrate women. While declaring the primacy of the individual you treat others as homogenous, judgeable groups. Does that not trouble you?
@Jimmy et al:
I always worry when I see angry denouncements of “socialism” applied to our societal structures, which as far as I can make out is capitalist red, in tooth and claw. It reminds me of a relative of mine, who will first agree that New Labour were mainly a right-wing government (especially in their light-touch and tax-avoiding treatment of the wealthy classes, not to mention their damned foreign policy). He will then go on to exclaim: “Do you see where socialism gets us?”, as if the professed credentials of the party had some bearing on their vacuous, sound-bite, market-worshipping policies.
My other general observation is that your belief system is that it rotates around organised conspiracy. I don’t incidentally use that word in a perjorative sense, as some do. But there are some reasonable objections to some posited conspiracy theories on the basis of the number of people who have to co-operate with it whilst staying silent about it. You said:
“What pap these feminists use to dupe women and manginas [feminised men], to believe their intentions are virtuous, even to the point that some of them seem almost innocent, belies the fact that it is their evil actions that have exposed their true evil intents.”
Evil intentions? I just don’t think that has been illustrated, let alone proven. You claim that the feminisation of men, and the degrading of business excellence, makes society easier to control; however I would find it hard to believe that anyone would set out such a policy deliberately, nor would an army of (female?) implementors carry it out without comment.
The problem with the perspective you present, I think, is that because you have some good points – on Ritalin, and the gender bias towards mothers in the family courts – you are too easily convinced on other points in order to paint all problems as stemming from an amorphous and deliberately evil ‘feminism’.
You claim to hate feminists and love women, presumably to nip accusations of misogyny in the bud. But you also hold women to account for being crooked receivers of stolen rights, in effect:
“[There was] No slip there; the receiver of stolen goods is not the thief, but is still a crook. Feminists commit the offence of politics, but most women gain the unfair advantages.”
The point you are not seeing about “[women getting] special advantages in job applications” and the idea that “there are twice as many men than women with IQs above 125” is that alternative explanations exist. In the former case, anti-discrimination laws exist to correct an ancient discrimination, and in the latter case, the difference in readings could be down to male-written tests, or evidence of male supremacy in the psychological realm (women do less well because they have been persuaded, by the male-dominated culture, that they are less able).
That brings me on to the point of: how much has society feminised, exactly? Men still control politics, the courts, the boardroom, upper management and business generally, and that includes news/media groups who have a disproportionate impact on our cultural direction. I believe that this arrangement is the effect of the transmission of a ‘masculine superiority meme’ that was invented by male-dominated organised religion, and it trickles down to our culture now, from one generation to the next, propagated by men and women alike, and not always consciously. So, rather than seeing male dominance in a particular area to be a sign of natural justice, I think it would be a good thing for this to be corrected.
Finally, Suhayl offers some very good reasonings about the effects of rampant international capital, but you don’t seem to engage with those points. Surely on this, and on the various other points that have been put to you, you might claim to consider them, as part of the natural spirit of enquiry?
@technicolour – Naomi Wolf, not Naomi Klein. But it’s a good mistake to make: Klein has some excellent work out.
jon, of course. another case of ‘synchronised feminist opinion’ maybe (“Yes! We’ll call them all Naomi!”)
Jon: “I always worry when I see angry denouncements of “socialism”…”
I’m sure you do.
Jon: “My other general observation is that your belief system is that it rotates around organised conspiracy…”
Feminism is organised to promote feminism, therefore it is a conspiracy.
Jon: “Evil intentions? I just don’t think that has been illustrated, let alone proven…”
The Ritalin essay, with the graphed data, was illustration and proof enough.
Jon: “The problem with the perspective you present, I think, is that because you have some good points…in order to paint all problems as stemming from an amorphous and deliberately evil ‘feminism’.”
I say all problems caused by feminism are the fault of feminists.
Jon: “The point you are not seeing about “[women getting] special advantages in job applications” and the idea that “there are twice as many men than women with IQs above 125″ is that alternative explanations exist.”
Why bother with inferior ‘explanations’?
Jon: “That brings me on to the point of: how much has society feminised, exactly? Men still control politics, the courts, the boardroom, upper management and business generally, and that includes news/media groups who have a disproportionate impact on our cultural direction. I believe that this arrangement is the effect of the transmission of a ‘masculine superiority meme’ that was invented by male-dominated organised religion, and it trickles down to our culture now, from one generation to the next, propagated by men and women alike, and not always consciously. So, rather than seeing male dominance in a particular area to be a sign of natural justice, I think it would be a good thing for this to be corrected.”
So that’s what you get up to in ‘women’s studies’.
Jon: “Finally, Suhayl offers some very good reasonings about the effects of rampant international capital…”
No he doesn’t.
There’s another one who I mix-up with the two Naomis and who writes in a similar area. But she’s not called Naomi. What’s her name…? Can’t remember. Oh well, let’s just call her Naomi as well.
Apart from all the valid criticisms of IQ tests already mentioned; they can be useful as part of a psychological battery in relation to identifying particular aspects of actual learning disability and possibly also in genius (the definitions of this latter vary hugely), but if you’re basically ‘average’ or above, they’re pretty dodgy and partial measures altogether. The controversy over people of African origin being an example. Remember that university professor who claimed that Africans were not as clever as white people? He had his genes analysed and discovered that he was around 11% African. The whole thing is a nonsense.
Incidentally, I remembered that while males have a higher percentage in the ‘above-average’ IQ cohort, they also have a higher percentage in the ‘below average’ IQ cohort, at a level of 1.5 to 1.0 (male: female ratio).
So, while men are cleverer, they are also thicker.
I feel sure that my wife would heartily agree with the second half of that sentence!
In whose eyes are alternative explanations ‘inferior’? Only in yours, Mr Giro; just as statements like ‘I say all problems caused by feminism are the fault of feminists’ are quite plainly dumbed down versions of the reality.
You’ve addressed very few of my points – including the wide range of opinions found in feminist writers; the pay discrimination against women; the career imbalances; the use of women as low-paid careworkers; your use of Nazi/eugenic tactics to denigrate women. You’ve addressed very few of Jon’s points: the cultural dynamics; the origins; the history. You’ve addressed none of Suhayl’s, as far as I can see.
Is there any further point in taking you seriously? Or are you wedded to your limited and rather hysterical point of view? Have you no respect for the women who progress society – Mary Robinson, Allyson Pollock, Gareth Pierce, Mo Mowlam, the miner’s wives, the Sufragettes and on and on, including all the Naomi’s? Are you that gripped by your testicles? They’re smaller than the world, you know.
In fact, the conflation of ‘feminists’ and ‘women’, and the violent agression directed at both, is reminiscent of the BNP’s use of ‘Zionists’ when they mean ‘Jews’. You wouldn’t have anything in common with the BNP leadership, would you, Mr Giro?
Yes, that’s it, technicolour. It’s the Pre-Raphaelite vision of a dreamy woman on a boat, it’s the National Socialist vision of women being baby-factories and repositories of everything ‘home and hearth’, it that very early-mid-C20th obsession with (mis-)using science as a tool for racial and sexual superiority. Funny, in places, it reminds one of Alfred’s hypothesising. It’s ahistorical and ultimately vicious.
It is, aye. The cardboard cut out version of the psyche. Fit my simple stereotype or else.
I quite like Christy Moore sometimes:
Now the earth is a witch, and we still burn her.
Stripping her down with mining, and the poison of our wars.
Still to us, the earth is a healer, a teacher, and a mother.
A weaver of a web of light, that keeps us all alive.
She gives us the vision to see through the chaos.
She gives us the courage, it is our will to survive.
🙂
it’s probably better heard, there’s a fine acoustic version.
otherwise, it’s just so sad. I wonder what the percentage is of BNP men whose wives secretly dislike them. Or the percentage who can’t ‘get’ a woman, or the percentage whose women have screwed them over?
Are they so set on maintaining their artifical male cut-out (‘butch’ ‘cussed’ ‘individual’ ‘strong’) that they can’t see their view of the female is not an attractive one, do you think?
As I said, sad.
Anyway, don’t let him wind you up, technicolour. Billions of women (and men) from an assortment of backgrounds, etc. around the world know how it works in relation to gender.
If one meets some of the amazing women who work with Women’s Aid, it is tribute to their humanity that they don’t hate all men (and they don’t). If you’ve seen women across the country with injuries inflicted by fists, boots and minds, it makes you ashamed and sick to the stomach.
Statistically, most – not all – sexual abuse of children is committed by men and as we know it screws people up forever.
Let’s not even begin to discuss genital mutilation.
I think it is important that such facts are stated. This is not to demonise men – which would be easy to do, if one possessed the sort of mindset which thinks that flinging out a statistic about IQ amounts to coherent argumentation – but simply to state that around the world, overwhelmingly, women are oppressed by men (and often – eg. in the case of genital mutilation – by other women in collusion with patriarchy).
In some states, when there’s a marriage break-up, men get the kids and the entire legislative framework is directed at serving patriarchal power. I know women personally in this country who have lost their kids that way and cannot get access, in spite of the law because they are too afraid that their own families – relatives – will be assaulted or ruined by their husbands’ families.
So yes, there are inequities against men and these are wrong. But if one sets these on a worldwide scale, there is no doubt that the axis is tilted very much against girls and women. God sake, people abort female foetuses in India! Chinese girl-babies were killed during the One-Child Policy days (one understands why China had that policy, but this was the terrible ‘side-effect’ of it). This goes on, day after day after day. It’s in our face. I am NOT “a feminised man”! Ha! That’s a real joke; it’s pure bullshit. I AM in favour of the liberation of humanity from its shackles.
Those are great lyrics, technicolour! Christy Moore. It’s the Irish “aye” again. See – it surfaces when you least expect it! Aye.
@suhayl: I’m unwound; the poor bloke probably has money worries on top of everything else. Thanks for your brave list; it’s strangely easy to forget.
@jimmygiro: rereading, am very curious to know how you blame the prescribing of Ritalin (which we all agree is wrong) on women, or what you refer to as feminists, in any way? And to which ‘graph and essay’ do you refer? I think you produced none.
technicolour :”It is, aye. The cardboard cut out version of the psyche. Fit my simple stereotype or else.”
…Or else you’re a misogynist or member of the BNP?
Doesn’t follow, please address the points above?