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vendredi, 16 septembre 2016

Féminines, pas féministes!

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17:38 Publié dans Evénement | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : gabrielle cluzel, féminisme, féminité, lyon, événement | |  del.icio.us | | Digg! Digg |  Facebook

jeudi, 14 juillet 2016

The Feminist Mystique

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The Feminist Mystique

Editor’s Note:

This is the transcript by V. S. of Richard Spencer’s Vanguard Podcast interview of Jonathan Bowden about feminism. You can listen to the podcast here [2]

Richard Spencer: Hello, everyone! Today it’s great to welcome back to the program our friend and contributor Jonathan Bowden. Jonathan, thanks for being back with us! How are things over on your side of the Atlantic?

Jonathan Bowden: Yes, a bit frigid, a bit cold these days, but probably nothing to what it’s like on your side. But otherwise well.

RS: Excellent. Today we are going to talk about another big and important issue for our movement, and that is feminism. It’s obviously an issue of major importance for the world as well.

Jonathan, what makes feminism so complicated and interesting is that it’s had all of these various waves, as they call them, and they’ve often put forward contradictory philosophies and objectives. But maybe that’s what’s made feminism so long lasting and powerful in a way.

To get the conversation started, just talk about that initial impulse towards feminism, where it was coming from, where do you think it cropped up first. What’s sort of the first first-wave, so to speak, of feminism? Do you think this was with women’s suffrage or was it with one of the many liberal revolutions that occurred in Europe over the course of the 19th century? Where do you think that original urge came from?

JB: That’s a complicated and quite a difficult one. Textually, it goes back to Mary Wollstonecraft’s The Rights of Women as against Tom Paine’s Rights of Man produced in a similar timeframe at the beginning of the 19th century and sort of coming out of the later end of the 18th century. She was part of a radical ferment of opinion around William Godwin and his extended family into which she was intermarried.

But the political drift of feminism in its first wave that’s discernible has to be in and around the Great War, 1914–1918 in Europe, and just after where you have a militant movement for women’s suffrage concentrating on the vote but often extending out into other areas and you have that split between two wings. Those who would pursue purely non-violent means, who’ve been largely forgotten by history, the suffragists, and those who were prepared to use direct action, and indeed even violence, to get their way, the suffragettes, who are the ones who history remembers. They are the ones who were force-fed in prison. They are the ones who chained themselves to railings. They are the ones who assaulted police officers. They are the ones who threw themselves in front of derby winners, and some were trampled to death on news reels of the time to great and extended excitement and social convulsion.

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So, that was the first wave, which then fed into the swinging 1920s as Europe and the West relaxed into a hedonistic decade after the slaughter of the Great War and prior to the coming depression of the ’30s.

Second-wave feminism, as it is called, is co-relative to the ’60s and has a whole new generation, skipping out several generations, in actual fact, between the first and the second waves. The second wave is notorious for its theorists and its polemics and its going outside the box of what is understood to be political and looking at all areas of life often in a rather caustic and adversarial way.

Culturally, the second wave, you could argue, had far more impact than the first wave, but it wouldn’t have amounted to anything without the first wave, and the first wave did genuinely convulse the society because nothing divided opinion like the issue of if women should get the vote, because it was axiomatic of all sort of other matters in the society. By giving them the vote, it indicated that women could do almost all jobs that men could do up to a point, and it opened the professions to them; it opened the universities to them; it opened higher educational institutions to them; it opened the world of politics and political representation to them, not just voting.

And so, in a way, it changed the world, and that’s why the dynamite of the vote was used.

RS: What do you think was the reigning philosophy of the early suffragists and suffragettes? Was it a liberal one? Do you think it could be connected with some of the early social democratic and Marxian movements? What do you think about that?

JB: Well, I think the honest answer is yes and no. The truth is that female politics resembles male politics pretty closely and that there’s a range of opinion Right, Left, and center. What surprised many sociologists when women got the vote, particularly bourgeois women, is they voted pretty much along the lines that men did and were perceived to have the same social and economic interests that men did.

There have been times when the gender gap has been one way and then the other. For example, today in the Western world, which is quite clearly Anglo-Saxon — the Anglophone world — there seems to be a marked preference for center-Left parties amongst women as against center-Right parties amongst men, and that drift and gap is quite discernible.

But there have been times when women have been much more conservative than men and on certain issues women remain a lot more conservative than men. On law and order issues in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, women often had much more conservative attitudes than men.

So, it’s debatable in a way. Certainly, a large number of bourgeois supporters of female suffrage just wanted the vote as a coping stone, as a sort of seal of approval for their admission into social life and once that happened they reverted to essentially a conservative tradition. Some of the first women to be elected, of course, into parliaments were on the conservative side, because it was inevitable that women from a very bourgeois background would be the best educated women and would be the women who, in some ways, wanted to protect the status quo, and all that the suffrage did for them was allow them to do so. In the past, they would have done that through men, really, then they had a chance to do it on their own behalf.

It is true that the vanguard movements were associated, for the most part, with liberal and with social democratic causes and with the culture of the Left, generally speaking. That’s because it was seen to be an out-of-left-field movement. It was seen to be a movement for radical change and it inevitably adhered to the Left rather than the Right.

RS: Just to add onto what you were talking about earlier. A good friend of mine often will tell a powerful anecdote about female voting, and if you’ll forgive me, I’m forgetting some of the details, but as with details it’s the essence of it that matters.

There was a revolutionary parliament in France, and they were actually bringing up the question of whether women should vote, and actually the people who most vigorously opposed it were the far Left of the parliament, and those who supported it with greatest passion were what we would call the Right and even the clerical Right. The reason for this — and I think in some ways that both were rationally correct to hold those viewpoints — was that if given the chance to vote, women would most likely vote the way that their priest told them to vote and that women in this sense were a kind of force of conservatism. They would maintain the existing religious and aristocratic order. The far Left didn’t really want women to vote in this way.

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We discussed a little bit last time about the idea of the majority strategy where you have the large White majority and it’s being dispossessed and attacked by a large rainbow coalition. The women are the kind of traitors or kind of wedge in this. Women, for whatever reason, maybe purely out of sentimentality, want to vote for center-Left parties, the parties that push the buttons about taking care of the children or whatever and they are kind of on the wrong side of the dispossession of America’s White historic majority.

So, again, it’s a very complicated issue and the social manifestations of women’s suffrage can occur in quite different ways.

Let me also ask another question about this. In some ways, I want to move on to second-wave feminism, because you find tracks that are at least more obnoxious, extreme, and things like this, but I want to stick just a little bit longer to pre-WWII feminism.

I’m thinking of someone like Margaret Sanger. She is in many ways a fascinating individual. Nowadays, she’s looked upon by many liberals as a wonderful, heroic, right-thinking woman who was fighting for the rights of women to use contraception and women’s rights in general.

But if we take a little closer look and you peel away a few layers of the onion, you find that she was a eugenicist of sorts, that she was afraid of the feebleminded and weak and so on and so forth overwhelming the healthier stock of America and that in a democracy something like that would be a truly terrible consequence. She would actually flirt with people like Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant, people who now would be considered totally beyond the pale, fascist, racialist types.

So, maybe in some of these first waves of feminism that we might think we know what it’s all about if we see it through the lens of modern Left-Right politics, so to speak, but actually it’s something quite different.

Do you have any thoughts on that? Some of the different strands of first wave feminism and how they’re kind of surprising when you look at them from our standpoint?

JB: Yes, I think that’s very true. I think first-wave feminism can’t be divorced from the class backgrounds of most of the women who advocated these positions. Although there’s been a careful pick and mix of the women concerned so that they seem part of a progressive continuum, there are many contradictions and (12:49 ???) that occur. It’s inevitable that these ultra-bourgeois women, for the most part, will often have radically conservative values and a few of them will have cross-fertilized Left-Right values and elitist values at that, despite the fact that they’re in favor of giving the vote to themselves.

This means that they’re not in favor of the vote for others. It also shouldn’t surprise us that when a lot of female literature is published in the late 19th/20th century — in a sense sort of elite literature — it turns out not to be Left-wing particularly. A lot of feminist publishing houses are bemused by the fact that a lot of the literature they publish from the early days isn’t really at all progressive, in their own terms and in the Left’s terms. That’s because the women who wrote it came from upper-class backgrounds. They were the women who were educated at the elite university level in all-female colleges during that era and their values and what they produced reflect that.

You also have a marked partiality for forms of ultra-conservatism among certain early female champions and it’s not for nothing that some of the political leaders who emerge first from the dispensation that gives women the vote turn out to be on the Right rather than on the Left.

Over time, eugenics and feminism have almost completely separated out, but because feminism is concerned with biological and reproductive health and wanted to give women control of it . . . Abortion, of course, cuts two ways. Although anathema to the Christian Right, abortion does feed into eugenics and gender. Indeed, without some concept of abortion you couldn’t have eugenics in a meaningful sense, because how are you to act to prevent these people that eugenicists believe shouldn’t be born or encouraged from being born in the first place? So, there’s an inevitable correlation between certain sociobiological and Darwinian ideas and certain evolutionary ideas and feminism of a particular sort, particularly un-ideological feminism.

So, it’s inevitable that the sort of Marie Stopes wing of the movement will come out of eugenics and family planning, and abortion and pro-choice movements are all deeply mired in feminism, on the one hand, and eugenics, on the other.

RS: Yes, actually the religious Right in the United States, and I assume in Europe as well, have picked up on this, and they’ll usually make inflated claims of abortionists. “They really want to rid the world of Africans,” or something like that or connect Margaret Sanger with Hitler and various things like that. Obviously, this kind of rhetoric is overdone, but it might actually have a kernel of truth to it. But it also points out the egalitarian nature of the so-called religious Right in the country.

Let’s move on to second-wave feminism and the 1960s. I would say that if you talked to the average Joe in the US or Europe who’s maybe a conservative-thinking guy with pretty normal good instincts when you say the word feminism he probably thinks of some woman who’s maybe tattooed and earringed and has totally outrageous views and hates men and probably got dumped at prom or the dance or something and became a lesbian and is driven purely by her resentment. He probably has that kind of man-hating feminist stereotype in his mind. In some ways, a lot of that is associated with that second-wave feminism that came with the New Left, which came with the ’68 revolutions and so on and so forth in the US and Europe.

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So, Jonathan, maybe you can give us an introduction to this movement and it obviously has a quite different vibe, so to speak, to it. It probably has a different philosophical grounding as well. It might not even be related to earlier feminism. But what are your views on the impulse behind feminism that arose in the 1960s and beyond?

JB: Yes, I think this is the feminism that most people associate the term by whatever their view. Feminism in the ’60s and thereafter and some of its precursors in the late ‘50s tends to be a movement that is concerned almost completely with revolutionary politics, particularly sexual and psychological revolutionism. It only just about fits into Marxism because it relates to biological or pseudo-biological and sort of quasi-biological theories. It’s associated with a range of alternative society and slightly madcap women like Germaine Greer, who wrote a book called The Female Eunuch which at one level was quite well done but is a hysterical rant about the role of women in society, most of which is utopian in a way. It wants the female role to be changed out of all recognition. To such a degree that you could argue that one of the subtexts is that women become men over time and men become women over time, which was one of the unstated psychological goals of second-wave feminism. To see a feminization of men, in relative terms, and a masculinization of women, in relative terms. And that’s not an entirely stupid notion when you look at the theories some of them were proposing.

RS: Well, they seem to have succeeded in this to a large degree.

JB: Yes, well, feminism is unusual in that it’s one of those revolutions that’s succeeded. In absolute terms, of course, it’s completely failed because it addressed itself to utopias that are not possible of realization. Things like radical feminism, the total separation of female and male lives. Women living separate beehive-like existences in communes. That’s all failed.

RS: I’ll jump in here and then you can get back to your thought, but Alex Kurtagić was suggesting that I read Valerie Solanas’ tract, The SCUM Manifesto, and SCUM in this instance means the Society for Cutting Up Men.

JB: That’s right. She was an American, of course, and a schizophrenic. But she was the most extreme feminist that there’s ever been. Other feminists partly regard her tirade as sort of exhibitionistic, Sadean, and tongue-in-cheek. But yes, it advocates physical attacks on men and, of course, she did attack Andy Warhol. She shot him in the stomach with a gun from which he later recovered, and she was imprisoned for three years because of that. She got off quite lightly because it was regarded as an act of insanity.

Yeah, she represent in some ways the lunatic fringe, even the lunatic fringe of the lunatic fringe, within that particular movement. Although there will be feminists who will defend her, because she represents a sort of nethermost position or a position that it’s not possible to get beyond, a virulently man-hating position. Misandrist, I think it is, a word that’s never used, really, but means female detestation of men. Misogyny being a male detestation of women, which is a quite well-known word.

If you take a book like The Women’s Room by Kate Millett [Note: Marilyn French wrote the book by that title. Bowden could be referring to French or to another book by Millett, perhaps The Basement] there’s as strong a detestation of men in that than anything in Solanas, but it’s not expressed in as grotesque a way. So, Solanas’ is a deliberately absurdist text.

But that wing of feminism, Radical Feminism as it’s called with a large R, which is counter-propositional biologically and yet is rooted in biology, because it wants a total separation of the sexes and in the end advocates lesbianism even for heterosexual women. Hence books like Lesbian Nation and that sort of thing which come out of this particular milieu.

Feminist groups had internal debates in the ’70s and ’80s about lesbianism when the vast majority of women had to confess that they were biologically heterosexual and therefore this wasn’t an option for them. And they had endless debates about whether they should have political lesbianism instead, but it never really got anywhere.

womlib_1800.jpgSo, that wing of feminism, the more lunatic fringe, radical elements of what is anyway a radical doctrine, has fallen by the wayside, although there are important theorists associated with the anti-pornography movement such as Andrea Dworkin and so on who come out of the radical wing who are still current.

Yet another odd reverberation is the association that anti-pornography feminism has with conservatism, particularly religiously motivated conservatism. Unlike libertarianism, for example, which would take a laissez-faire attitude towards commercial pornography.

RS: Yeah, let’s put some pressure on this. I actually had porn down as an important subject I wanted to discuss. It obviously didn’t, at least to my knowledge, come up with first-wave feminism, but you have an interesting anti-porn movement that did work hand-in-glove with the religious Right, so-called. You also had, I believe, porn’s first leading lady, Lovelace — I’m forgetting her first name — who was in Deepthroat, one of the early large pornography movies. I think it was the first feature film that was porn, and Lovelace eventually became part of the anti-porn movement and worked with Dworkin and people of this nature.

Again, it gets back to how I opened the conversation. What makes feminism this lasting movement is this ability to mutate and its ability to take on contradictory positions. Because you have now throughout the ’90s and 2000s, I’m sure it’s still going on,  whole courses at major universities in the United States, and Europe I’m sure as well, on porn as this way of female power or pure liberation or they probably have other terminologies to describe it that I don’t even understand.

In some ways, there’s almost a yin and a yang to this. There’s the evils of something like pornography, is it’s just expressing how men want to treat women as objects and want to abuse them and so on and so forth, but then porn might be seen on the flipside as this pure expression of a kind of Marcusean, id-driven society of pure liberation and social relations as an orgy and so on and so forth.

Maybe this is part of the power of feminism. It can kind of flip back and forth and radically re-evaluate its social positions.

JB: Yes, I think that’s true, but in a way it’s bound to be like that, because it is slightly ridiculous that half of mankind has a viewpoint. If there was a movement called manism, if there was a movement of men. They’d immediately divide into all the subsections, because men don’t agree on anything.

So, there’s a degree to which to expect women to agree on anything beyond a few superficials is fraught with difficulty. So, you have to frame the thing that women feel they’re in a subsidiary place and therefore that gives them an alliance with each other that then allows them to align around certain core issues. But even then they’ll still be divided on most other issues.

RS: And there’s the Marxian legacy where it’s almost like the female as the proletariat. They are oppressed by the current state of being and therefore they become a sort of world historical actor. They become the universal subject or something. It’s like a Marxianism gendered, so to speak.

JB: Yes, there’s a bit of that going on. Although amongst conservative women, and Dworkin once wrote a book called Right-Wing Women, which is about Right-wing women on the Right of the Republican Party because those are the most discernible Right-wing women that she could find, and they’ve always been a source of fascination to feminists. What makes women otherwise conventional and adopt what they consider to be a male-concentric view once they’ve achieved just civic equality in terms of careers and jobs and money and things of that sort?

Of course, there’s a large area of social conservatism which is part of the female view as well. The view that basically women have a different role in life to men and have different tasks in life to men, but they’re not particularly concerned if they’re allowed to do male tasks. So, if a woman wants to be a judge and goes all out to be one the general conservative female attitude now is, “Why shouldn’t she be one?” And she might be quite a tough-minded Right-wing judge at that when it comes down to it. But they don’t think the world should be up-ended so that women can be judges. It’s just an add-on to the female role that remains otherwise unchanged.

Feminism, like a lot of these movements, is a movement that’s only superficially touched the lives of the overwhelming majority of women. Still, after all the propaganda the other way, 67% of women, about 2/3rds of all women in most societies, want the traditional option. They want some sort of stable marital or other union and they want a family with children and that’s pretty much what they want. And feminism doesn’t really have much to say to those sorts of women, although it always postulates the notion that it never stops trying to address them.

So, the bulk of women remain uninfluenced by it, although they have taken advantage of the successes that feminism has scored because although it’s one of these movements that can be seen to have failed completely in its own utopian terms its effect on society has been so great and its effect on men has been so great that in a way it has succeeded far more than other radical currents far more than other ideological currents. It has succeeded because it has forced the law to maximalize those areas of female-male equality and to disprivilege areas of inequality that did exist in the social and civic space between men and women to the degree that now men who talk openly about opening those spaces up again are frowned upon by other men and are in a very small minority.

RS: Yes. You know, it’s interesting. Just to tell two quick little anecdotes. I did notice . . . I’m now involved in an oppressive bourgeois marriage, but when I was dating I did notice that it was still tacitly accepted that I would be paying for every meal, and if I happened to take a girl on a date and say, “Oh, do you want to split it down the middle?” or something like that I would probably get a very nasty look. At the same time, if during that date I ever suggested something like, “Don’t you think since men are the head of the household that maybe they should be paid more across the board, that that’s a good thing and it’s not really unfair? It’s actually fair because men have more financial obligations than women.” Again, I would probably get a horrified and disgusted look.

So, I think feminism succeeds in particular areas, maybe fails in a couple, but does succeed in general.

Let me talk a little bit about someone totally different than someone like Valerie Solanas, who I am sure most people in the population, even someone who would call themselves a feminist, would probably declare she was mentally ill, and maybe she was acting purely out of hatred. And that is the kind of modern girl feminism that represents a kind of compromise solution for women that is actually quite attractive and is about them playing with the big boys at work or having the ability to get a job. Even if they eventually might want to have a family a little bit later that they still have the opportunity to go become a stockbroker or something like this if they want to.

If you meet these women, they are otherwise normal and healthy. They don’t hold any views of men as evil or should be destroyed or anything like that. So, it’s a kind of acceptable compromise feminism.

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I don’t want to make this too much of a leading question, but I think it is worth pointing out that since the 1970s real wages have either stagnated or, probably more likely, declined. What I mean by real wages is the wage paid to the head of a household minus inflation. Essentially, the wage is not keeping up with price increases. What we had in the ’80s and ’90s was in essence “mom went to work.” Dad, if he had a normal job, he could no longer sustain a family of four. It was impossible, particularly with education costs, medical costs going up and so on and so forth. So, in a way, mom had to go to work and that dovetailed with this more palatable feminism that came out of all these waves of feminism.

So, in a way, one could say that the Gloria Steinems of the world are the central bankers’ useful idiots. What I mean by that is that due to things like inflation and economic malfeasance it was impossible for the single breadwinner to have a family and these women were out there thinking that they were suggesting something radical by suggesting that women go to work, but really they were just justifying and maybe even sugarcoating the economic decline of the Western world.

I guess that’s kind of my own take on it there, but you can pick up on that if you’d like to talk about that economic element to it. But maybe, Jonathan, you could just talk about that more palatable kind of compromise feminism which seems to be embraced by, I would say, a vast majority of women.

JB: Yes, it’s a sort of very practical solution and women have always bene a very practical sex at one level of consciousness. This middling solution, where you take a little bit of the small R radical feminism and kick the rest into touch and basically can see it as a conceit and as a way to move forward on the career front, is an eminently sensible way of looking at it. It’s not necessarily what men always wanted, but it’s a solution that in a sense neuters the more virulent aspects of feminism whilst retaining a considerable dose of it.

There was a theorist in the 1920s called Wyndham Lewis who wrote a book in 1926, I think, called The Art of Being Ruled in which he suggested that capitalism was the real motivating force behind feminism, because the whole point was that the family was an archaic and reactionary institution that was pre-modern and floated uneasily in the marketplace and dammed up any alternative lifestyle. All these producers and consumers that could be let loose, but they could only be let loose if women were prized out of the home and were treated as auxiliary men and were used in the workplace in that manner.

It’s a remarkably prescient analysis given that it was regarded as quite mad when he came up with it in the 1920s. It accords almost painstakingly with what’s actually happened.

RS: Yes, without question. Also, the welfare state benefits from it. You have women working, they’re paying more taxes. Divorce benefits certain economic groups. If you’re owning apartments, you’re going to benefit by the family no longer being intact. So, in a kind of horrible way, feminists are again the useful idiots of the banking system and American capitalism.

JB: Yes, and you see that in the cultural area as well. The sort of Sex and the City feminism totally divorced in many ways from the lifestyle and instincts of the Left, which can be quite puritanical, goes with a hedonistic market capitalism. You see this sort of combination of feminism and libertarianism and feminism and libertarian capitalism and the two going along together. You see this in the sort of females’ issues magazines like Cosmopolitan, which are the female equivalent of pornography in many ways motivated again by the market and what it is felt the market will bear and is quite distinct from the traditional romantic fiction, so-called female emotional pornography, which are endless stories fictionalized about romances between men and women which tend to adopt deeply socially conservative and sort of old-fashioned timbre.

Cosmopolitan and Sex and the City are the exact inverse of all of that and advocate an almost predatory and slightly sluttish sort of sexuality for women that traditional moralists were appalled by and women as a whole have tended to regard as a harmful lifestyle for women but is now a sort of market-tested to destruction attitude that’s favored on every newsstand.

RS: Oh, without question. I don’t want to sound too haughty by saying this, but I’m afraid that too many of the women who move to, say, London or Manhattan, they get a job and they’re little miss career gal and they live the Sex and the City lifestyle and at some point in their mid-40s they wake up alone and lonely living with cats. Again, I’m not trying to demean anyone. It just seems to be the case and there seems to be a hangover of the Sex and the City lifestyle, which is something I don’t think anyone wants.

So, Jonathan, expound a little bit, if you would, on how feminism has changed men. I think it’s something a lot more complicated than wussification or men have become like women. I think it’s something deeper and more varied than that.

JB: Yes, I think it is. I think what’s happened is that a whole storehouse or memory chain of male archetypes and types has gone down, has been sort of zapped and factored down. Certain types of raw heterosexuality in a relatively traditional and very Masculine, capital M, have gone away and gone down the memory hole, but so have elements of the dandy and the sort of over-stepping, flamboyant heterosexual. Those roles, which were quite marked and quite varied, and bohemian male roles as well of a traditional type. They’ve gone as well or they’ve been rather neutered and confined as well.

fem0154680235110702_1233227079_n.jpgThere’s a whole intermediate zone of masculine identities who had their card marked and have gone into the past. The question is why has this occurred? And I think the motivation is almost completely male and completely internalized. I think it’s many men do not feel that they can be successful in private life, do not feel they can attract the women they wish to attract or be seen as attractive to such women and certainly not get alongside of them if they are otherwise than the present sort of postmodern man. They feel like they’ve got really no chance in the private lifestakes if they remain loyal to traditional and rather heedless masculinities that are in conflict with the egalitarianism of the present order.

This is something where theory is all very well, but if you want to have a happy or beneficent life you have to do various things to make that turn around in the private area and men have basically just bitten on the bullet really and adopted a whole new set of masculine constructs in order to be successful with women and they think they’ve actually been quite clever because they’ve adopted an element of male feminist language, posture, and behavior in order to get on with women once equality was formalized in civics and in law and in social behavior.

Men haven’t changed deep down that much maybe, but behaviorally they’ve changed a great deal, and this goes to show that men don’t revert to something else when they’re on their own these days except very occasionally and under the influence of all-male banter or drink or whatever. But that’s pretty rare and it’s not the reversal that scandalized feminists would expect on the whole either.

So, I think that a lot of men feel that in order to have successful families, in order to have successful private lives, they need to downplay certain prior forms and play up certain attitudes and variants which are acceptable today. And I think that’s happened right across the board.

RS: Yes, as we discussed off-air, our side sometimes underestimates the importance of that 20% of things that is nurture as opposed to nature and, in the case of men, it’s almost as if the post-feminist man is a new, different biological species. I mean, he’s not exactly, but that nurture end of the equation is quite powerful.

JB: Yes, well, no one would engage in politics, no one would engage in any social ideology if the 20–25% of the things that is nurture as against nature was unimportant. So, it’s in some ways the crucial vortex through which everything becomes what it’s bound to be. If you just left it to nature, you would end up with a semblance of what nature wanted, but you would probably give the game away to all sorts of people who wish to denature nature as much as possible. So, nature on its own isn’t enough and men have not fundamentally biologically changed, but their behavior has altered out of all recognition.

If your average man in the 1920s looked at what happened today, he’d be baffled. And yet a part of him wouldn’t be, because he’d just perceive it as a tactic that is adopted in order to be successful.

RS: Do you think that’s all it is, a tactic?

JB: It’s a tactic that goes quite deep. It’s rather like learning a stage part in a play, but you learn it so well it sort of becomes your unguent. It becomes what you wish to be when you’re off set. I think it’s a part that’s been learned to such a degree that it’s become second nature now.

Maybe that proves that part of the prior masculinities were also slightly rhetorical that they’ve proved themselves to be so adaptable and so changeable. But I think it’s the pressing need to be successful in this area that is the prime motivator.

Also, I just think it goes with the egalitarian discourse. Because what is the alternative? Is the alternative a cult of male superiority? Many men would feel uncomfortable with that because the idea of superiority and hence inferiority in any area strikes people as axiomatically discomforting in present circumstances.

RS: To bring this conversation to a close, let’s talk a little bit about the woman question from a deeper and anthropological standpoint and that is the role of the woman in the West. Certainly, it’s no coincidence that many of these feminist movements were arising out of Europe writ large. Even if you want to blame it on Marxism, it’s arising out of the European milieu at some level. A lot of that has to do with the fact that, despite some of the horror stories told by Leftist academics, women are treated better in the Western world than they are in the rest of the world, quite frankly.

One likes to imagine the oppressive bourgeois marriage or something, but in comparison with most other gender relations around the world the oppressive bourgeois marriage is quite equitable. So, it’s probably no surprise that feminism would grow out of the Western world.

There seems to be a tension in the West between let’s just call it liberalism granting people more equality, thinking that people can transcend their biological or material rootings and kind of decide for themselves and then also another deep Western tradition, which is the family.

I should point this out. If one wants to be a crude Darwinist, in some ways the monogamous family is also a great victory for feminism. I mean, obviously, if we were going to live in a truly Darwinian atmosphere we’d have some sort of polygamy where the big man, strongest guy gets all the women, and all the weaklings are either killed or serve as slaves or something.

But in many ways this tradition of the family and monogamous relations, a very deep tradition, one that predates Christianity, that is also something uniquely Western. You don’t see a lot of monogamy in, say, the Old Testament or Semitic traditions. You see polygamy and tribal relations. But that monogamous family is something uniquely Western.

So, just taking up on some of these thoughts that I’ve put forward, Jonathan, what do you think from an anthropological standpoint is the role of the woman in our European culture?

feministes.jpgJB: Yes, I think it’s really the traditional role. It’s the role that predates ’60s feminism. I think it can be compatible with doing various jobs, but I think it is the mother’s role and traditional female roles extended out into the educational area, into nursing, into areas like that. But essentially the mother role, the Madonna role . . . Of course, there is a sexual role as well. And the scarlet female role is part of that continuum. It has to be because all areas have to be covered by it. So, that’s all part of the package.

All of those survive in the West quite markedly, actually, despite feminism’s impact. So, feminism’s changed everything, yet everything’s remained the same. All of the female lifestyles that pre-existed feminism co-exist with those that have been changed by it.

I think what’s really happened is that feminism hasn’t changed women at all. It’s changed certain patterns of female opportunity, but it hasn’t changed women one iota. What it has changed is it’s changed men a great deal.

I think men have been the real recipients of feminist ideology, and it’s men who have been transformed by it or have been reluctantly so transformed because they feel as though there’s no option but to accept a certain dose of it in order to have some successful private life.

So, I personally believe it’s feminism’s action on the male agenda that’s the crucial issue. Women have changed to a degree, because they’ve adopted some of its vocabulary, but men have had to adapt in a much, much greater degree because it was an alien vocabulary as far as they were concerned. They have adopted it, and they have had to get rid of or junk an enormous prior traditional male set of vocabularies, only a proportion of which are heard anymore even amongst men even when they’re on their own.

Feminism has bitten very deep and has changed men and probably not for the best. If you look at the way men are depicted in 1950s films, which is before the cultural watershed, and how men and women are depicted and allow themselves to be depicted, and depict themselves more is the point, from the 1970s onwards you notice a really radical transformation in the way masculinity is configured, the way heroic masculinity is configured, the way all forms of masculinity are configured. Certain traditional forms of masculinity where the Humphrey Bogart character slaps the woman because she’s misbehaving would now be regarded as so unacceptable as to cause a frisson if they were to occur in contemporary cinema, for example.

RS: Well, it’s interesting that there’s a deep ambivalence with all of this. I’ve noticed this with the success of the television show Mad Men, which in some ways represented men behaving badly so women could kind of gawk at the oppressiveness and outmodedness. So, you’d have men openly hitting on their secretary and lots of ass-slapping and having little affairs during lunch breaks and so on and so forth.

At the same time, if it were just that I don’t think it would be a successful show. It might be a successful show for men, you know, on the Spike network, the stupid jock all-men programming cable network. But the reason why Mad Men was successful was at some level that Don Draper figure, that tall, dark, masculine, strong, self-confident, willing to put someone in their place type of man is something deeply attractive to women, and it’s something they continually long for maybe even despite themselves, certainly despite feminism.

But, Jonathan, I think we have just scratched the surface on this issue. Thank you for being with us and I look forward to talking with you again next week.

JB: All the best! Bye for now!

Article printed from Counter-Currents Publishing: http://www.counter-currents.com

URL to article: http://www.counter-currents.com/2016/07/the-feminist-mystique/

URLs in this post:

[1] Image: http://www.counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Medea-Sandys.jpg

[2] here: http://www.radixjournal.com/bowden/2014/7/24/the-feminist-mystique

samedi, 14 mai 2016

Cumann na mBan, un mouvement de femmes celtes

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Pâques 1916. Cumann na mBan

Un mouvement de femmes celtes

Par Fabien Régnier

03/05/2016 – 07h00 Dublin (Breizh-info.com) – Fabien Régnier, rédacteur en chef de la revue Keltia Magazine, nous adresse en exclusivité pour Breizh-info.com un article tiré du dernier numéro consacré notamment à l’Irlande.

Au début du XXe siècle, il était admis dans tous les pays que les femmes ne pouvaient en aucun cas participer à des combats. Même au plus dur de la Première Guerre mondiale, les belligérants n’envisagèrent le rôle des femmes qu’à l’arrière, comme infirmières ou comme ouvrières d’usines quand le manque d’hommes devint criant. Elles n’avaient d’ailleurs pratiquement aucun droit, et surtout pas celui de voter ou de participer à la vie active des divers pays car on ne les en jugeait pas dignes.

C’est pourtant une toute autre vision du rôle de la femme qu’allait développer le mouvement insurrectionnel irlandais, seul en Europe à renouer avec l’une des plus honorables caractéristiques de la culture celtique, concernant la place des femmes dans la société. Après le départ des Anglais, les insurgés du Sinn Fein établirent des structures dans lesquelles hommes et femmes avaient les mêmes droits et les mêmes fonctions. Mais il y eut un début héroïque à tout cela. Il est très peu connu et nous voulons vous en parler.

La fondation

Le premier meeting, considéré comme acte fondateur, eut lieu à l’hôtel Wynne à Dublin, le 2 avril 1914, c’est-à-dire quelques mois seulement avant le déclenchement de la Guerre mondiale1. La situation tragique de l’Irlande sous occupation anglaise, l’impitoyable traitement qui lui était infligé et n’était que le prolongement de nombreux siècles d’oppression, avait conduit l’organisation de la résistance nationaliste autour du Sinn fein2. Celle-ci incorporait principalement des hommes, mais les femmes irlandaises souffraient tout autant que ceux-ci. La femme qui prit l’initiative de cette réunion se nommait Kathleen Lane-O’Kelly. On peut donc légitimement lui attribuer la fondation du mouvement. Celui-ci prit le nom celtique de Cumann na mBan qui, en gaëlique signifie tout simplement « Association des Femmes ».

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Le « Haut Arbre »

Des « branches » furent mises en place, la première portant le nom de Ard Chraobh (le Haut Arbre, en référence au chêne sacré des druides). À partir de ce moment, ces militantes de la renaissance irlandaise commencèrent à s’entraîner au maniement du fusil et du revolver. Une photo représente la comtesse Constance Markiewicz3 un revolver à la main en plein entraînement. Toutes ces femmes avaient conscience de l’imminence du combat pour la liberté. Et toutes étaient prêtes à se sacrifier pour ce qu’on nommait « la Cause ». 10 000 femmes irlandaises s’enrôlèrent dans le Cumann na mBan au cours des deux années qui suivirent sa fondation, ce qui est énorme, surtout pour un si petit peuple.

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L’insurrection

Lorsque les volontaires entrèrent dans Dublin, le 23 avril 1916, pour se sacrifier afin d’accomplir la première révolution celtique de l’Histoire, en sachant par avance qu’ils seraient écrasés, ils pénétrèrent dans la ville tenue par d’énormes forces anglaises par divers côtés.

pg-20-32.jpgCe même jour, les Dublinois eurent la surprise de voir 70 femmes armées de fusils pénétrer dans la cité dans un ordre impeccable. Elles savaient toutes ce qui les attendait. Pourtant, elles avançaient sans hésitation. C’était le Cumann na mBan.

Certaines, commandées par Winifred Carney, prirent position dans le GPO (General Post Office) qui, inlassablement pilonné par l’artillerie anglaise, allait devenir le symbole de la résistance pour tous les Celtes conscients. D’autres mirent en place des barricades derrière lesquelles elles se retranchèrent à Bolland’s Mill sur le grand canal des docks de Dublin, pour y bloquer l’arrivée des renforts anglais.

En dehors de ces combattantes, d’autres femmes du Cumann na mBan soignèrent les blessés sous la mitraille et les obus. Elles furent également des héroïnes de l’insurrection, même si elles ne se battirent pas.

Ella Young, la comtesse Markievicz et bien d’autres, combattirent avec acharnement. Cette dernière abattit un soudard au service des Anglais qui tirait sur les positions insurgées.

Helena Molony fut grièvement blessée en attaquant le Château de Dublin, place forte des occupants où se trouvaient notamment les geôles dans lesquelles ils torturaient à mort les patriotes.

Il y eut des mortes et des blessées et, parmi les survivantes, bon nombre furent capturées et emprisonnées par les Britanniques. Mais ceci est une autre histoire.

Agnes O’Farrelly assuma la direction du mouvement de sa fondation jusqu’à 1916. La comtesse Markievicz prit sa suite. Cent ans plus tard, les femmes d’Irlande rendent toujours hommage au Cumann na mBan. Nous avons voulu quant à nous réparer l’injustice qui consiste, de ce côté-ci du Channel, à en ignorer jusqu’à l’existence.

Fabien Régnier.

1. En août 1914.
2. « Nous-mêmes ».
3. Elle ne devait en réalité son titre de comtesse qu’en raison du fait que son époux était un comte polonais, révolutionnaire patriote, ayant fui la Pologne occupée, après l’écrasement de l’insurrection patriotique par les armées russes.

Crédit photos : anphoblacht
[cc] Breizh-info.com, 2016 dépêches libres de copie et diffusion sous réserve de mention de la source d’origine

mercredi, 27 avril 2016

Déconstruire le féminisme

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17:16 Publié dans Evénement | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : féminisme, événement, action française, lyon | |  del.icio.us | | Digg! Digg |  Facebook

samedi, 12 mars 2016

Le féminisme, une idéologie dépassée

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Le féminisme, une idéologie dépassée

Ex: http://zentropa.info

Les combats des femmes d’aujourd’hui ne peuvent être ceux des féministes d’hier : les Antigones entendent sortir de l’impasse idéologique du féminisme conventionnel, système mensonger qui détourne les femmes des enjeux réels de notre société. Notre féminité retrouvée et assumée sera notre arme pour construire le monde de demain !

Dans le combat culturel de notre siècle, sortir de l’impasse féministe est une nécessité et une urgence. Le féminisme conventionnel, dont les mots d’ordre n’ont pas changé depuis les années 1950, est une idéologie dépassée incapable de faire face aux enjeux réels de notre temps. Le féminisme d’autrefois était une force de révolte et de contestation contre des normes aberrantes : nous saluons toutes celles qui ont lutté pour rendre leur dignité sociale aux femmes, en les sortant de l’impasse du XIXe siècle bourgeois. Nous sommes les héritières de leurs luttes. Mais notre époque est celle d’une rébellion bien conventionnelle : les institutions féministes sont devenues des tentacules étatiques prônant la liberté du producteur-consommateur. Le féminisme a vécu : il est temps de le dépasser. Pour commencer, abandonnons les combats illusoires.

Refuser les combats illusoires
Les féministes conventionnelles combattent encore et toujours un patriarcat imaginaire, bataillant contre quelques arbres qui cachent la forêt, orientant la société vers des débats contre-productifs, sinon dangereux.


Le débat est-il vraiment celui de la parité dans les conseils d’administration ? Ne serait-ce pas plutôt celui d’une redéfinition de notre système économique basé sur l’exploitation illimitée de nos ressources naturelles et humaines ?


Le débat est-il vraiment celui de la taxe tampon ? Ne serait-ce pas plutôt le moment de nous affranchir de la culture du jetable ? Les tampons sont toxiques et à usage unique, une coupe menstruelle se garde dix ans.


Parlons pilule : le débat est-il vraiment celui de la libre disposition de son corps ? Ne serait-ce pas plutôt celui de se libérer de cette castration chimique supportée par les femmes, de ces hormones de synthèses que l’on achète tous les mois, qui bloquent l’ovulation sous couvert de confort ? Ne serait-ce pas plutôt de se reconnecter à son corps, d’apprendre à reconnaître son cycle et à maîtriser soi-même sa fécondité ?
Le débat est-il vraiment celui du partage du temps dans le congé parental ? Ne serait-ce pas plutôt celui de la redéfinition de la place de la famille dans la société, du rôle primordial de la mère les premiers mois du nourrisson ?


Le combat est-il vraiment celui du Madame ou du Mademoiselle quand des femmes sont agressées dans les rues de Cologne ? Le combat est-il vraiment celui de l’ « égalité réelle » quand 80% des travailleurs du dimanche dans les zones touristiques sont des femmes à temps partiel ? Le combat est-il vraiment de sortir madame Sauvage de prison quand les coupables de violences sont relâchés après deux mois d’incarcération?

Nous pourrions écrire un livre sur ces faux sujets sur lesquels s’escriment les féministes actuelles, jouant ainsi parfaitement le jeu du capitalisme libéral-libertaire ! Ce féminisme déconnecté du réel n’a aucune réponse à apporter aux Françaises.

Retrouver notre féminité
Les mouvements idéologiques des dernières décennies n’ont eu de cesse de déconstruire les rapports hommes/femmes pour mieux atomiser la société, en faisant de la femme un homme comme les autres ou en défendant l’idée de la guerre des sexes. Nous dressons de leurs actions un bilan dévastateur. Ces raisonnements stériles ont gravement impacté les rapports entre les sexes, que les féministes considèrent soit comme une interminable lutte entre oppresseur et opprimé, soit comme une rivalité jalouse. Nous sommes les deux moitiés du même ensemble, aussi indispensables l’un à l’autre que le jour et la nuit ! L’homme et la femme ne s’additionnent pas, ils forment un tout cohérent qui tend vers l’harmonie, ils sont interdépendants et essentiels à la fécondité de l’humanité, dans tous les sens de ce terme. Le nier relève de postures politiques et idéologiques qui minent nos vies quotidiennes et hypothèquent l’avenir.

Nous pensons que la culture s’ancre dans la nature, que les différences sexuelles existent biologiquement et, en s’exprimant, structurent symboliquement la société. Il n’y a pas rupture, mais continuité et interpénétration entre la nature et ses mises en scène culturelles. Vivre pleinement son sexe biologique constitue le meilleur moyen d’en renouveler la construction sociale et d’obtenir des changements en accord avec ce que nous sommes. Tandis qu’affirmer, sans nuance, que le genre n’est qu’une construction culturelle source d’injustices, qu’il convient de supprimer les normes et les repères constitue une erreur fondamentale et destructrice !

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Cette complémentarité des sexes ne doit pas être vécue de manière fixe, avec une liste de tâches « féminines » ou « masculines ». Pour autant, calquer nos comportements sur ceux des hommes est vain. La différence n’est pas synonyme de domination ou de hiérarchie ; un peu d’altérité ne ferait pas de mal dans ce monde de Narcisse !

Construire la société de demain
Nous ne sommes pas les victimes des hommes ou du patriarcat international. Notre combat est ailleurs : nous voulons nous libérer d’une société déshumanisée, qui n’est plus qu’une machine économique sans âme, sans passé ni avenir. Avec la complicité des féministes, les femmes sont les premières consommées et les premières consommatrices de notre « société kleenex ». Nous avons une place essentielle dans cette lutte.
Les Antigones prônent l’autonomie des femmes et leur enracinement dans leurs familles, dans la vie locale, dans la société. Construire l’avenir est notre combat essentiel : nous ne reposons pas seulement sur nous-mêmes, et avons des comptes à rendre à nos héritiers. Alors que le féminisme beauvoirien ose affirmer que la maternité est un fardeau, une discrimination, nous considérons que donner la vie, permettre à demain d’exister, est un bel et bien un privilège. Et nous entendons en user comme tel. Afin de créer le lien entre le passé et l’avenir, de transmettre la mémoire et le sens des choses, la chair et le sang d’une civilisation. Or la maternité est aujourd’hui mise en danger par sa technicisation : GPA, congélation d’ovocyte, demain utérus artificiel, etc. Si la maternité est un moment par nature féminin, il n’est pas la propriété des individus, mais la condition d’existence de l’humanité. Permettre aux femmes de vivre une maternité libre et sereine devrait donc être une préoccupation féministe de premier ordre, au lieu de l’envisager comme une servitude ou un frein à la carrière !

Cela dit, les femmes ne vivent évidemment pas leur fécondité uniquement à travers la maternité, d’autres voies, toutes aussi importantes, demandent encore et toujours à être explorées. Transmettre peut se faire de mille façons et notre féminité, notre nature féconde et créatrice, est une arme dans ce combat. Cela commence par les actes : changeons nos habitudes de vie qui servent le capitalisme de séduction. Obstinément, jour après jour, grain de sable après grain de sable.

Le combat des femmes, c’est ici et maintenant. Dans la rue, les journaux et les livres pour faire entendre nos voix. Au foyer, centre d’où l’on rayonne. Dans les bois, les champs et nos jardins pour nous réapproprier la nature. Loin des systèmes idéologiques, ancrées dans la réalité de nos vies.

00:05 Publié dans Actualité | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : actualité, féminisme, antigones | |  del.icio.us | | Digg! Digg |  Facebook

mercredi, 27 janvier 2016

Dictature du féminisme

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19:22 Publié dans Evénement | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : événement, féminisme, nantes | |  del.icio.us | | Digg! Digg |  Facebook

dimanche, 17 janvier 2016

Feminism a Neo-Con Tool

Ex: http://www.craigmurray.org.uk

UPDATE

Minutes after I posted this article, the ludicrous Jess Phillips published an article in the Guardian which could not have been better designed to prove my thesis. A number of people have posted comments on the Guardian article pointing this out, and they have all been immediately deleted by the Guardian. I just tried it myself and was also deleted. I should be grateful if readers could now also try posting comments there, in order to make a point about censorship on the Guardian.

Catching up on a fortnight’s news, I have spent five hours searching in vain for criticism of Simon Danczuk from prominent or even just declared feminists. The Guardian was the obvious place to start, but while they had two articles by feminist writers condemning Chris Gayle’s clumsy attempt to chat up a presenter, their legion of feminist columnists were entirely silent on Danczuk. The only opinion piece was strongly defending him.

This is very peculiar. The allegation against Danczuk which is under police investigation – of initiating sex with a sleeping woman – is identical to the worst interpretation of the worst accusation against Julian Assange. The Assange allegation brought literally hundreds, probably thousands of condemnatory articles from feminist writers across the entire range of the mainstream media. I have dug up 57 in the Guardian alone with a simple and far from exhaustive search. In the case of Danczuk I can find nothing, zilch, nada. Not a single feminist peep.

The Assange case is not isolated. Tommy Sheridan has been pursuing a lone legal battle against the Murdoch empire for a decade, some of it in prison when the judicial system decided his “perjury” was imprisonable but Andy Coulson’s admitted perjury on the Murdoch side in the same case was not. I personally witnessed in court in Edinburgh last month Tommy Sheridan, with no lawyer (he has no money) arguing against a seven man Murdoch legal team including three QCs, that a letter from the husband of Jackie Bird of BBC Scotland should be admitted in evidence. Bird was working for Murdoch and suggested in his letter that a witness should be “got out of the country” to avoid giving evidence. The bias exhibited by the leading judge I found astonishing beyond belief. I was the only media in the court.

Yet even though the Murdoch allegations against Sheridan were of consensual sexual conduct, Sheridan’s fight against Murdoch has been undermined from the start by the massive and concerted attack he has faced from the forces of feminism. Just as the vital messages WikiLeaks and Assange have put out about war crimes, corruption and the relentless state attack on civil liberties have been undermined by the concerted feminist campaign promoting the self-evidently ludicrous claims of sexual offence against Assange.

As soon as the radical left pose the slightest threat to the neo-con establishment, an army of feminists can be relied upon to run a concerted campaign to undermine any progress the left wing might make. The attack on Jeremy Corbyn over the makeup of his shadow cabinet was a classic example. It is the first ever gender equal shadow cabinet, but the entire media for a 96 hour period last September ran headline news that the lack of women in the “top” posts was anti-feminist. Every feminist commentator in the UK piled in.

Among the obvious dishonesties of this campaign was the fact that Defence, Chancellor, Foreign Affairs and Home Secretary have always been considered the “great offices of State” and the argument only could be made by simply ignoring Defence. The other great irony was the “feminist” attack was led by Blairites like Harman and Cooper, and failed to address the fact that Blair had NO women in any of these posts for a full ten years as Prime Minister.

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But facts did not matter in deploying the organised feminist lobby against Corbyn.

Which is why it is an important test to see what the feminists, both inside and outside the Labour Party, would do when the leading anti-Corbyn rent-a-gob, Simon Danczuk, was alleged to have some attitudes to women that seem very dubious indeed, including forcing an ex-wife into non-consensual s&m and that rape allegation.

And the answer is …nothing. Feminists who criticised Assange, Sheridan and Corbyn in droves were utterly silent on the subject of Danczuk. Because the purpose of established and paid feminism is to undermine the left in the service of the neo-cons, not to attack neo-cons like Danczuk.

Identity politics has been used to shatter any attempt to campaign for broader social justice for everybody. Instead it becomes about the rights of particular groups, and that is soon morphed into the neo-con language of opportunity. What is needed, modern feminism argues, is not a reduction of the vast gap between rich and poor, but a chance for some women to become Michelle Mone or Ann Gloag. It is not about good conditions for all, but the removal of glass ceilings for high paid feminist journalists or political hacks.

Feminism has become the main attack tool in the neo-con ideological arsenal. I am sceptical the concept can be redeemed from this.

00:05 Publié dans Sociologie | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : féminisme, néo-conservatisme, néocons | |  del.icio.us | | Digg! Digg |  Facebook

dimanche, 07 juin 2015

Politiek-correct feminisme holt het Westen uit

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Politiek-correct feminisme holt het Westen uit

(deel 1)

door Sid Lukkassen

Ex: http://www.doorbraak.be

Sid Lukkassen schreef een drieluik over het moderne feminisme dat de waarden van de westerse beschaving dreigt onderuit te halen.

‘Politieke correctheid is veel breder dan de gekte van een handvol radicale activisten, het lijkt de kern van onze cultuur te zijn geworden.’ Dit stelt Henri Beunders, hoogleraar aan de Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam. In mijn recente boek Avondland en Identiteit (Aspekt 2015) stelde ik al vast dat traditionele bronnen van autoriteit en moraal in het Westen zijn uitgehold, waardoor moraliteit steeds minder verinnerlijkt is. Dit leidt tot het opleggen van moraliteit als uitwendige controle: politiek-correcte gevoeligheid en censuur.

Deze uitholling begon in ‘68, constateert Beunders, toen activisten protesteerden in naam van de ‘maatschappelijke slachtoffers’: ‘Klasse, ras/etniciteit en geslacht oftewel gender. Daar kan nu geloof, en dan met name de islam, aan worden toegevoegd. Dit Amerikaanse mengsel noemde men het ‘race/class/gender-ism’ – de ismen die ook nu nog het debat domineren.’[1] Vandaag overweegt men in de Verenigde Staten een wetsvoorstel dat het strafbaar maakt een hand vast te pakken tijdens een date, tenzij van te voren hardop toestemming is uitgesproken.[2] De westerse cultuur verwacht nog steeds van mannen het meeste initiatief om de spanning tijdens een date van vriendschappelijk naar erotisch om te zetten. Aldus lopen mannen onder deze wet het meeste risico. Ook Zweden is diep aangevreten door deze politieke correctheid: ‘minister van Justitie Morgan Johansson heeft een wettelijk voorstel gedaan om Zweedse bedrijven te verplichten 40% vrouwen in het management op te nemen, anders bestaat de kans dat de deuren dichtgaan, zo meldt de Zweedse krant Foretag.’[3] Zweedse socialistische feministen wilden mannen al eerder verbieden om staand te plassen.[4]

Halina Reijn schreef onlangs een column waarin ze zichzelf als slachtoffer neerzet omdat ze tegen haar wens kinderloos bleef. De samenleving zou haar het gevoel geven dat ze ‘minder meetelt in de maatschappij’.[5] Toch was ze vanaf haar vijftiende tot haar negenendertigste vruchtbaar – in die tijd waren er ongetwijfeld honderden mannen die het met deze knappe en succesvolle vrouw wilden proberen. ‘Ik ben bijvoorbeeld geen partner tegengekomen met wie ik die stap wilde zetten’, stelde ze. Ze had een fling met Edgar Davids en nadat zo een ‘alfa-type’ in haar bereik kwam was downdaten met een gewone man blijkbaar een brug te ver.

Verleidingskunstenaars observeren dat vrouwen in grootstedelijke gebieden seks hebben met charismatische, aantrekkelijke en avontuurlijke mannen, totdat ze hun dertigste naderen en zich dan toch (tijdelijk) settelen met een doorsnee man. Maar tijdens die relatie worden vrouwen geprikkeld door hun herinneringen aan de opwindende alfa-types. Dit maakt het moeilijk om de liefhebbende maar gemiddelde partner te respecteren en voert tot escapistische fantasieën, vreemdgaan en het uiteindelijke verbreken van de relatie.

Chris Rutenfrans merkte ooit op dat vrouwen vroeger doorsneemannen eerbiedigden omdat man en vrouw van elkaar afhankelijk waren. Anders dan destijds kunnen vrouwen vandaag terugvallen op uitkeringen om buitenechtelijke kinderen te onderhouden; dit neemt barrières weg om zich met bad boy alfamannen op te houden.[6] Toch is het Avondland voor een belangrijk deel door doorsneemannen opgebouwd: beschaving veronderstelt het kanaliseren van de (mannelijke) seksdrive naar productieve doelen. Plato, Montesquieu en Houellebecq stelden daarom dat levenskrachtige beschavingen hun werkende klassen beschermen door de vrouwelijke fixatie op onbereikbare alfafiguren te begrenzen. Rechttegenovergesteld is de feministische campagne om ouderschapstesten af te schaffen bij rechtszaken die scheidingen en alimentatie betreffen.[7] Dit dwingt mannen om de kinderen te onderhouden die hun overspelige vrouw met bad boys maakt. Wie dit om de nek hangt, heeft weinig zin om nog te werken. In westerse landen komt naar schatting tien tot vijftien procent van de kinderen van een andere vader, hoewel recentelijk wetenschappelijk onderzoek in Vlaanderen dit cijfer terugbracht naar één tot twee procent.[8]

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Verleidingskunstenaars concluderen dat het huwelijk voor doorsneemannen geen goede zet is. Men krijgt een vrouw die over de piek van haar jeugdige aantrekkelijkheid heen is met een groot risico tot scheiding en verplichting tot financiële compensatie. Westerse no-fault divorce laws leggen mannen een christelijk-traditionele code op – de plicht je gezin te onderhouden – maar maken tegelijkertijd de vrouw van haar traditionele plichten los. Dit alles werd mogelijk toen feministen het slachtofferschap opeisten en tot moreel wapen maakten. De belevingswereld van deze verleidingskunstenaar

Houellebecq schetst in Soumission een Europa dat door dit politiek-correcte feminisme zo is uitgehold, dat alleen bekering tot de islam nog houvast biedt. Zo bezien verrichten post-‘68 rebellen, ookwel social justice warriors genoemd, waardevol voorwerk voor jihadisten en de Moslimbroederschap, door de geestelijke weerbaarheid van het Avondland te ondergraven.

(Dit is het eerste deel van een drieluik, lees hier deel 2) 

Foto: (c) Reporters


[6] Filosofisch Kwintet, 1 juli 2012 (12:05).

[8] Cerda-Flores, Barton, Marty-Gonzales, Rivas, & Chakraborty, 1999; Macintyre & Sooman, 1991: https://books.google.nl/books?id=esDW3xTKoLIC&pg=PA266&lpg=PA266&dq=esti... Voor de studie in Vlaanderen zie: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1772/20132400.abstract (18 mei 2015).

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Politiek-correct feminisme holt het Westen uit

(deel 2)

Deel 2 van een drieluik over de macht van het politiek correcte feminisme dat mannen niet langer mannen laat zijn.

(Lees hier deel 1)

Gisteren belichtte ik hoe politiek-correct feminisme zaken als gezinsvorming en liefdesrelaties steeds zwaarder en complexer maakt. In m’n recente boek Avondland en Identiteit (Aspekt 2015) betoogde ik al dat deze kwesties voor het voortbestaan van een beschaving levensbelangrijk zijn.

Recentelijk sneuvelden de voorgevels van vele winkels tijdens een demonstratie van woedende feministen in Barcelona. Zij protesteerden tegen de schoonheidsidealen opgedrongen tegen het kapitalisme – in naam van ‘homoseksuelen, transgenders en iedereen die te maken heeft met seksediscriminatie’[1]In navolging van 1968 voeren zij hun ‘vrolijke revolutie’ onder de banier van maatschappelijke slachtoffers. Volgens de achtenzestigers zouden vrouwen eeuwenlang zijn onderdrukt – stemrecht hadden zij bijvoorbeeld pas sinds een halve eeuw. Daarbij verzwegen ze dat het niet zozeer de vrouwenstrijd was die tot het algemeen kiesrecht leidde dan wel de Eerste Wereldoorlog. Toen nieuwe wapens als de kruisboog en het pistool de ridderstand overbodig maakten, markeerde dit de entree van de burgerij als politieke klasse. Net zo werd in de Eerste Wereldoorlog de arbeidersklasse onder de wapens geroepen – wie bereid was voor het vaderland te sterven verdiende ook een politieke stem. Feitelijk zijn het de mannen die met honderdduizenden stierven voor het algemeen kiesrecht.

Sterker nog – tegen de achtergrond van deze oorlog veranderden de feministen van narratief. In plaats van voor de absolute gelijkheid van geslachten te ijveren benadrukten zij nu het belang van separate spheres: mannen ver weg aan het front, vrouwen veilig achter de linies (Susan Kent, Journal of British Studies 27, 1988, 234). Theodore Dalrymple concludeerde dat de feministe Virginia Woolf, uit een vooraanstaand en welvarend milieu, zich achtergesteld voelde bij de vrouwen uit de arbeidersklasse.[2] Burgervrouwen als Beauvoir, Badinter, Wollstonecraft, Jacobs en Drucker lieten zich uit over het vrouwenkiesrecht maar hadden feitelijk weinig kijk op de ontberingen van de lagere klasse als geheel. Zodoende zag de arbeidersklasse het feminisme initieel als een bourgeois decadentieverschijnsel: arbeidersvrouwen werkten altijd al. De ontberingen van vrouwen binnen die arbeidersklasse waren niet wezenlijk dieper dan die van mannen. Het lukte de achtenzestigers om dit frame jaren later om te draaien. Aanvankelijk waren socialisten zelfs tégen het vrouwenkiesrecht omdat ze vreesden dat gelovige vrouwen op aansporing van priesters en pastoors conservatief zouden stemmen.

De bourgeois feministen verkondigden dat vrouwen intellectueel werden achtergesteld omdat ze zichzelf vergeleken met filosofische beroemdheden als Descartes en Voltaire. Maar deze geniale individuen waren ook ‘uniek’ en ‘gepriviligieerd’ ten opzichte van miljoenen gewone mannen. Uit correspondentie met dames als Marie du Deffand en Émilie Châtelet blijkt dat Voltaire hun argumenten serieus nam.

Discussies over feminisme draaien altijd om de kern heen. De socioloog Roy Baumeister concludeerde dat de seksuele interesse van mannen in vrouwen groter is dan andersom. Hierdoor moeten mannen meer risico’s nemen om de vrouwelijke aandacht te trekken. Het komt op mannen aan om grenzen te verleggen (wetenschappelijke doorbraken) en regels te overschrijden (politieke machtsgrepen) om zo uitzonderlijk te zijn en op te vallen. Dit wil niet zeggen dat vrouwen dit niet kunnen maar wel dat de noodzaak tot excelleren voor mannen groter is. Zo is aangetoond dat vrouwen op mannen vallen die hoger opgeleid zijn dan zijzelf.

Men love war and women love warriors’, aldus militair historicus Martin van Creveld.Het Romeinse woord voor fallus is fascinus – een man moet fascineren. Eén man kan meerdere vrouwen bevruchten; als een man niet aan de kant gedrukt wil worden moet hij harder presteren dan zijn seksgenoten. Dit begint al bij de geslachtsdaad waar duizenden spermacellen om het hardst zwemmen om het eitje te bevruchten.

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In Plato’s Gorgias herleidt Kallikles macht en moraliteit af uit natuur. Dit werpt een interessant licht op man-vrouwverhoudingen en de maatschappelijke invloed die uitgaat van seksualiteit. In de natuur is het bij veel soorten het mannetje dat bepaalt of er seks zal plaatsvinden: het vrouwtje zal zich soms verzetten maar als de drive van het mannetje sterk genoeg is geeft het vrouwtje zich uiteindelijk over. ‘Bij het mooie en rechtvaardige volgens de natuur gaat het hierom: om op de juiste manier te leven moet je je verlangens zo heftig mogelijk laten worden en die niet korthouden’ (491 E).

Mensen zijn volgens Kallikles van de natuur afgedwaald en hebben via juridische structuren een ‘culture of consent’ gecreëerd. Dit legt de seksuele selectiemacht bij het vrouwelijke element (want de mannelijke aandrang is doorgaans groter). Nu zagen we dat het op mannen aankomt om reputatie te maken door controverses op te starten en de status quo uit te dagen. Dit merk je bij leeuwen, primaten en andere zoogdieren waarbij jongere mannetjes hun oudere voorgangers van de heuveltop verstoten. Bij de mens, een politiek dier, gaat dit samen met omwentelingen, ideologieën en doelen. De essentie zien we in de film Doctor Zhivago: vóór de Russische Revolutie slaapt de beeldschone Lara Antipova met een koddige liberale parlementariër. Ná de revolutie ligt ze ineens naast een strak-geüniformeerde communistische legerofficier.

‘Mannen met ballen, mannen met uitstraling, mannen met een mening. Dit soort mannen wordt door de verregaande versofting en verwijving van de maatschappij meer en meer uit het beeld verdrongen door de metromannen.’[3] Uit de opkomst van de ‘metroman’ verklaart columnist Frank Berkemeier de groeiende kloof tussen samenleving en politiek: ‘Hun zachte, vrouwelijke en conflictmijdende uitstraling gebruiken zij vooral om vrouwen en andere metromannen aan zich te binden.’ In deze wat ruwe bewoordingen lees ik dat mannen, misschien doordat vrouwen vandaag de seksuele selectiemacht controleren, niet meer leidend maar juist volgend en afwachtend geworden zijn. Ze stellen niet zelf de standaard maar passen zich aan de standaarden van een gefeminiseerde maatschappij aan.

Zo ontstond een cultuur waaruit onverschrokkenheid en vooruitstrevendheid verdwijnen doordat mannen door hoepeltjes moeten springen. We werden een maatschappij waarin uitzonderlijkheid gewantrouwd wordt. Filosofie, intellectualisme en wetenschap zijn ‘saai’, iedereen moet fifteen minutes of fame kunnen hebben, reality-tv toont ons ‘gewone mensen’ en lijsten van politieke partijen staan vol lieden die ‘zo lekker gewoon gebleven zijn’. De cultuur raakt in zichzelf opgezogen en ziet bedreigingen van buitenaf niet aankomen. Zoals ik in deel 1 van deze artikelenreeks al concludeerde speelt de gezapigheid en richtingloosheid die zo ontstaat de tegenstanders van het Westen in de kaart.

Foto: (c) Reporters



[3] http://opiniez.com/2015/05/18/metromannen-in-de-nederlandse-politiek/ (21 mei 2015).

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Politiek-correct feminisme holt het Westen uit

(deel 3)

In het derde deel van zijn antifeministisch drieluik schuift Sid Lukkassen enkele oplossingen naar voren om het Avondland te redden.

In twee voorgaande artikels (deel 1 en deel 2) zette ik de dynamiek tussen mannelijkheid en vrouwelijkheid uiteen, en de impact van dit krachtenveld op de West-Europese beschaving – het ‘Avondland’.[1] Vrouwelijke machtsuitoefening verschilt namelijk van mannelijke.

Zo blijkt dat mannen biologisch meer vervangbaar zijn ten opzichte van elkaar; daardoor moeten ze opvallen. Terwijl mannelijkheid de sociale normen moet aanvechten en doorbreken, gebruikt vrouwelijkheid de sociale normen in haar voordeel via ‘naming and shaming’: het aantasten van een rivaal in reputatie door het gedrag van dat individu te labelen als ‘asociaal’, ‘intolerant’, ‘xenofoob’, ... Door zo te stellen dat een individu de samenhang van de groep schaadt, raakt dat individu van het sociale weefsel verwijderd. Hij of zij moet het zonder krediet en hulpdiensten doen en raakt langzaam uit de groep verstoten. Zo toonde de documentaire Sletvrees dat vrouwen vooral elkaar van sletterig gedrag betichten.

In 1930 besloot de Komintern – de communistische internationale onder Stalin – dat alle tegenstanders van communisme met het woord ‘fascist’ zouden worden bestempeld. Vandaag vervult het woord ‘macho’ deze rol. Traditionele mannelijke uitingsvormen krijgen zo een kwade bijsmaak; mannen raken in de war en weten niet wie ze zijn. Vrouwen reageren reflexmatig ‘oh, ik wil persoonlijk niet met een macho samenwonen’ terwijl ze vaak geen idee hebben wat een macho werkelijk is of wat ze zelf willen. Zoals gezegd wordt de cultuur doelloos en raakt in zichzelf geabsorbeerd.

Éric Zemmour wees er in Frankrijk op dat het kapitalisme vroeger productiekrachten nodig had: arbeid verschafte mannen identiteit. Vandaag vindt de productie in Azië plaats en is vooral consumptie belangrijk. De ideale consument is volgens Zemmour een vrouw en dus worden ook mannen toenemend gefeminiseerd zodat ze bijvoorbeeld schoonheidsproducten kopen.[2] Wie zich hiertegen verzet en voor een duidelijke onderscheiding van de seksen pleit wordt aangemerkt als vrouwenhater, fascist of macho. Mannen die zich niet aan de feminisering onderwerpen hebben geen sociale praxis meer, geen rituelen om de vorming van hun mannelijkheid te geleiden. In binnensteden wordt dit gemis aan masculiniteit gevuld met lomp, zelfs barbaars gedrag. Een viriliteit die wordt vernederd is een viriliteit die barbaars wordt. Een viriliteit die wordt gekanaliseerd komt de beschaving daarentegen ten goede.

feminismus-je-prezitek.jpgOok vermindert het feit dat vrouwen en mannen meer op elkaar gaan lijken de begeerte – zo constateerde psychologe Lori Gottlieb al eerder dat stellen met een traditionele rolverdeling vaker en ook bevredigender seks hebben (Avondland en Identiteit, Aspekt 2015, 221).[3] Deze uitdoving van de lust zet vrouwen weer aan tot het najagen van bad boys – mannen die wél opwinding maar geen stabiele relaties te bieden hebben.

In Le sexe et l’effroi (1994) betoogde Pascal Quignard dat het christendom de maatschappij feminiseerde door seksueel verlangen aan liefde te verbinden – een eeuwenoud vrouwelijk streven, aldus Quignard. Gecombineerd met de hedendaagse vluchtigheid leidt dit in het Westen tot een identiteitscrisis. We blijven het premoderne, romantische beeld koesteren van erotische opoffering en emotionele versmelting terwijl we zeer rationeel zijn; we willen controle houden en voor ons zelf de optimale keuzes maken. We houden meer afstand en proberen met een cynisch-ironische levenshouding onze autonomie te bewaken.

In een traditionele samenleving is het gezin van belang en vanuit de mannelijke visie misschien het zelfstandige individu. Het stelletje geldt als tijdelijke fase, als rite de passage. In de gefeminiseerde samenleving is juist alles op het koppeltje afgestemd. In de romantische cultuur moeten mannen eerst liefde voelen voordat ze een vrouw seksueel mogen begeren. De traditionele sociale beperkingen zijn verbroken waardoor jongedames als seriële monogamen vriendjes in hun leven kunnen opnemen en weer wegwerpen. Daarbij zijn ze een beetje zoals grootmoeders, want steeds zeggen ze: ‘Dit is hem, dit is de ware, ik voel een groots liefdesgevoel aankomen.’ De ‘bevrijde generatie’ van ‘68 probeerde de band tussen lust en liefde juist op te heffen, omdat ze die band als een onnatuurlijke vervreemding zagen die was opgelegd door koning, kerk en kapitaal.

Het christelijke liefdescredo zette zich door terwijl de traditionele banden die de seksuele selectiemacht in banen leidden versplinterden. Precies omdat het koppel tot mythologische proporties wordt verheerlijkt zijn we in de dagelijkse realiteit al gauw teleurgesteld, wat leidt tot scheidingen. Samen met het genoemde kapitalisme ontstond hieruit een geatomiseerde grootstedelijke levenswijze waarin vrouwen niet door familieleden worden afgeschermd van ‘alfamannetjes’. Relaties zijn zo vrijblijvend, lauw en voorbijgaand dat de activiteit van verleidingskunstenaars – het oppikken en in bed krijgen van een vrouw op een eerste afspraakje – geen verwondering wekt. In Voorwaardelijke liefde (2014) beschreef Thierry Baudet hoe verleidingskunstenaars zich trainen in het nabootsen van alfmannetjesgedrag.

Alles in deze drie artikelen bij elkaar genomen leidde tot een situatie waarin de doorsnee man in het Westen het nakijken heeft. Charismatische, knappe en avontuurlijke mannen houden er meerdere minnaressen op na: een groep mannen van grofweg tien procent, de meest aantrekkelijken, heeft seksueel toegang tot het leeuwendeel van de vrouwen. Dit is het ‘boer zoekt vrouw-fenomeen’: vrouwen raken opgewonden en meegesleurd door de concurrentie met andere vrouwen – dat een man in het centrum van de belangstelling staat maakt hem voor haar nóg begeerlijker. Precies door die spiraal van meeslepende passie komt het bij veel vrouwen niet op om hun datingstandaarden op het realistische af te stemmen. De traditionele huwelijksmonogamie hielp vrouwen om realistischer te zijn over potentiële huwelijkskandidaten, maar zoals gezegd zijn die traditionele banden nu versnipperd.

Vrouwen worden aangetrokken door de vluchtige grootstedelijke levenswijze: per 100 mannen heeft Utrecht 132 vrouwen en Amsterdam 122.[4] Wie als man achterblijft in een landelijke streek heeft een probleem. Vrouwen proberen de tien procent buitengewone mannen aan zich te binden, bijvoorbeeld met seks, maar de kans van slagen is, gelet op alle concurrentie, bijzonder klein. Dit leidt vervolgens tot teleurstelling en verbittering. Zo verklaarde Olivia Strzelczyk zichzelf tot slachtoffer omdat ‘alle goede mannen bezet zijn’.[5]

Impliciet in dit slachtofferschap is een gevoel van entitlement omdat zo’n vrouw de avances afslaat van mannen die qua aantrekkelijkheid op haar gelijke niveau staan: de doorsnee-mannen. Zo’n man krijgt te horen dat er ‘geen chemie was’ omdat ze ‘te weinig gemeen hebben’. Twee dagen later wandelt zo’n pedagogiestudente dan hand in hand met een boomlange basketbalspeler of een oudere rijke zakenman. ‘Zou ze daarmee nu zoveel gemeen hebben?’ vraag de afgewimpelde man zich af. In werkelijkheid gaat het om omhoog ruilen – ‘voor jezelf de beste keuzes’ maken, wat achteraf door de vervrouwelijkte liefdescultuur gerationaliseerd wordt tot ‘chemie!’. Zo houdt men de verliezers op de liefdesmarkt dom.

De oplossing ligt in een nieuw verbond om het ‘68 gedachtegoed te ontmantelen en het Avondland te redden. Dat verbond zal bestaan uit de creatieve en intellectuele ‘alfamannetjes’ die hun geestelijke kwaliteiten niet meer erkend zien in de vervlakte mainstreamcultuur, ondersteund door groepen genegeerde doorsnee mannen en ten slotte aangevuld met vrouwen die verlangen naar traditionele vastigheid en geborgenheid. Zonder zo’n verbond zal de postmoderne Brave New World maatschappij uiteindelijk uitdraaien op een Soumission.

Foto: (c) Reporters
 

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mardi, 26 mai 2015

Eloge de l’homme

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Eloge de l’homme

Il faut haïr l’homme présent. 

Je hais l’homme moderne, celui qu’on nous montre partout, celui qui accuse réception de ses sentiments, qui s’écoute, qui est sensible avant d’être sensé. L’homme d’aujourd’hui est laid, bête et méchant. 

Il la ramène constamment. Pour dire des inepties. Si ce n’est pas pour parler de sa queue, c’est pour parler de sa vie, et quoi de pire que de l’entendre disserter sur sa morne subsistance, sans lumière, sans saveur, sans beauté. 

L’homme moderne est à l’image de cette société, creux, crépusculaire, agonisant dans des mares de vinaigre, sécrétées par sa propre morgue.

Quant à parler de son esprit, son âme est sépulcrale, sourde au saisissement. Il jacte, il ne jouit pas, il ingère et recrache. C’est une poubelle. Il en possède la fonction: servir de réceptacle momentané aux immondices.

Nous voulons des hommes beaux, qui se taisent, qui nous regardent plutôt que de se louanger.

Nous voulons des hommes sans doute. Ou bien s’il vient à douter, par pitié qu’il le fasse en silence. La lancinante complainte de son infortune, ses combines miteuses, ses disettes céphaliques, nous fatigue au plus haut point. Sa ruine atteint des abîmes étourdisants lorsqu’immanquablement, il est content de lui-même, content de la vilaine bectance qu’il se prépare, qu’il te prépare.

L’homme moderne a totalement ingéré sa part de féminité (et la tienne, et même celle de ta mère au passage) en renonçant à sa part masculine.

L’homme moderne est un hermaphrodite récessif. 

Homme, nous te désirons hautain, le port altier, élégant et sans réserve. Fier mais rogue. Licencieux, sans être lascif. Sors un peu de ta condition de victime de ton temps. Imagine toi bien que derrière toi se tiennent roides les postérités de tes ancêtres, il ne s’agirait pas de faillir maintenant, bonhomme.

Et par pitié, ne te défile point, ou alors, arrange-toi pour que l’on ne te recroise plus, nous n’avons pas besoin d’hommes qui s’expriment, qui geignent, qui manifestent ce qu’ils ont à l’intérieur, derrière le gras-double, juste après la tripaille, leur anorexie. on veut des taiseux, silencieux et taciturnes. 

Par trop souvent, de nos jours, l’homme moderne est un anti-homme.

Louise Demory.

vendredi, 15 mai 2015

Avondland en Identiteit van Sid Lukkassen

Avondland en Identiteit van Sid Lukkassen

 

sid_lukassen.jpgHet boek Avondland en Identiteit van Sid Lukkassen is een kritische analyse van een Europa dat worstelt met zichzelf. Het is een portret van een continent dat eeuwenlang de wereld domineerde, maar zijn identiteit kwijtraakte en nu zijn hegemonie van verschillende kanten bedreigd ziet. Geen vrolijke kost, wel een aantal ongemakkelijke waarheden.

Lukkassen (27) studeerde geschiedenis en filosofie. Hij is raadslid voor de VVD in Duiven en heeft werkervaring in de Tweede Kamer en het Europees Parlement. In de afgelopen jaren waren zijn columns op onder andere ThePostOnline en De Dagelijkse Standaard te lezen. Op dit moment werkt hij aan zijn proefschrift.

Atomisering

Met Avondland en Identiteit schaart Lukkassen zich achter de lichting kritische denkers die hun pijlen richten op het culturele vacuüm dat de vrijgevochten ’68-generatie achterliet. Denk hierbij aan Michel Houellebecq en Eric Zemmour in Frankrijk en in ons land Thierry Baudet. Ook Lukkassen ziet een westerse samenleving die zijn oude identiteit heeft afgeworpen, maar verweesd is achtergebleven.

Lukkassen is niet mild voor het huidige Europa. Er is niets overkoepelends meer dat ons bindt, geen gemeenschappelijke waarden die het individu overstijgen. De samenleving is geatomiseerd: zij bestaat uit losse individuen die in ‘vrijheid’ ieder hun ‘eigen waarheid’ hebben. Doelloos leven zij langs elkaar heen, niet meer gericht op een gemeenschappelijk ideaal, maar vooral op onmiddellijke bevrediging van de eigen begeertes.

Generatie ’68

Debet aan de huidige situatie is volgens Lukkassen het ‘cultuurmarxistische denken’, dat wil zeggen het Marxistische idee van gelijkheid, maar dan toegepast op de cultuur in plaats van de economie. De ‘generatie ’68’ bracht het cultuurmarxisme in de praktijk. De ‘bevrijding van het individu’ en het gelijkheidsdenken werden de norm, wat zich uitte in bijvoorbeeld de opkomst van feminisme en postmodern denken. Feiten werden ondergeschikt aan intenties. Niet langer telde het resultaat, maar de ‘goede bedoeling’. Waarheden maakten plaats voor relativering. Iedereen had voortaan zijn ‘eigen waarheid’. De versnippering was een feit.

Feminisering

Als erfenis van de christelijke traditie bleef de identificatie met onderbedeelden. Deze worden sinds ’68 vertegenwoordigd door de vrouw en de immigrant: (zelfverklaard) slachtoffers van discriminatie. Schuldgevoel knaagt aan de moderne Europeaan. Hij leeft niet meer in een bakermat van cultuur en wetenschap, maar in een continent van misdaden: vroeger de slavernij en de Holocaust, tegenwoordig (institutioneel) racisme en seksisme. Trots heeft plaatsgemaakt voor ‘weg met ons’.

Lukkassen merkt een verandering op in waarden. Masculiniteit werd symbool voor het verleden van ‘onderdrukking’ en ‘paternalisme’. Typisch ‘mannelijke’ waarden als daadkracht en trots raakten ondergeschikt aan ‘vrouwelijke’ waarden als empathie, medelijden en zelfreflectie. Europa feminiseerde. De daadkrachtige mannelijke identiteit van Europa verdween. Ervoor in de plaats kwam een cultuur van polderen, pappen en nathouden om vooral niemand tekort te doen. Een cultuur die niet opgewassen is tegen daadkrachtige Russische legers en gepassioneerde eensgezinde jihadisten.

Seksuele marktwaarde

Lukkassen constateert dat individuele vrijheid niet tot de gehoopte gelijkheid heeft geleid. De moderne westerling mist richtlijnen en voelt geen verbinding meer met de samenleving. De vrijheid maakt hem, zonder waarden als zelfbeheersing en wilskracht, tot speelbal van zijn instincten en begeertes. De wereld verwordt tot een Darwinistische competitie. Zo leidt seksuele vrijheid volgens Lukkassen vooral tot elitarisme.

Seks wordt een voorrecht voor mooie, succesvolle mensen die ‘goed in de markt liggen’, iets wat Michel Houellebecq al in 1994 in zijn klassieker De wereld als markt en strijd aanstipte. Lukkassen voorziet een doorslaggevende rol voor ‘seksuele marktwaarde’ in het Westen. Fysieke aantrekkelijkheid wordt het criterium voor succes. In een culturele anarchie heerst de mooie alfaman: een bijna dierlijke situatie, die ironisch genoeg onder de noemers ‘bevrijding’ en ‘vooruitgang’ tot stand is gebracht.

Bedreigingen

Lukkassen wijst ons op traditionelere culturen, die wel eensgezindheid en gedeelde waarden kennen: China, Rusland en de islam. Lang verkeerden zij in hun eigen hoekje van de wereld, nu dreigen zij ons op economisch, militair en ideologisch gebied te overklassen. Terwijl het Westen zich verliest in eindeloos gefemininiseerd overleggen waarin ieders mening even zwaar telt, profileren onze nieuwe tegenstanders zich vooral in meedogenloze ‘masculiene’ daadkracht.

Ongemakkelijke waarheden

Lukkassen schrijft gepassioneerd, op een bloemige, soms bijna poëtische wijze. Daardoor neemt hij de lezer mee. Hij onderbouwt zijn beweringen met wetenschappelijke onderzoeksresultaten en verwijst vaak naar filosofen, waarbij hij zich duidelijk laat inspireren door de Oudheid.

Soms slaat Lukkassen wat door in zijn uiteenzettingen en gaat Weltschmerz overheersen. Zijn omschrijving in het slothoofdstuk van een samenleving die in een ‘doodsdrift’ verkeert, komt wat overdreven over. Desalniettemin zal het beeld dat het boek neerzet van Europa akelig veel herkenning oproepen.

Het boek leest vlot weg, ook voor leken die weinig van politiek en filosofie weten. Valkuil van Lukkassen is het vervallen in herhalingen. Een ‘nu weten we het wel’-gevoel bekruipt de lezer tegen het einde; met 50-100 pagina’s minder was de boodschap ook duidelijk geweest.

Weerzin en enthousiasme

Avondland en Identiteit is een boek dat weerzin en enthousiasme zal oproepen. Socialisten en feministen zullen not amused zijn door de felle kritiek van Lukkassen op hun wereldbeeld. Verwijten van seksisme en elitarisme zijn te verwachten. Anderzijds is het boek een verademing voor wie twijfelt aan het geforceerde gelijkheidsdenken, dat keer op keer botst met de alledaagse werkelijkheid.

Of de lezer Lukkassens standpunten nu deelt of niet: het boek zal hem niet onberoerd laten. Avondland en Identiteit toont ongemakkelijke waarheden en doet een appèl op ons: Europa is in verval en heeft een nieuwe identiteit nodig; een waarin trots, daadkracht en intellect weer leidend zijn. Alleen zo kunnen we ons weren tegen de bedreigingen waartegenover we nu staan.

Sid Lukkassen – Avondland en Identiteit, Uitgeverij Aspekt, 2015; 302 pagina’s; €19,95, ISBN: 9789461536709 302

jeudi, 26 juin 2014

L'aveuglement féministe

"Pourfendre la vulgate féministe, c’est, pour l’auteur, noter un premier fait paradoxal : les féministes soutiennent que, dans notre société, le pouvoir est aux mains des hommes, mais c’est pourtant dans tous les lieux de pouvoir, et d’abord dans les média, qu’on ne cesse de célébrer la « libération » des femmes, et d’applaudir à leurs combats futurs. A-t-on jamais vu le maître exhorter ses esclaves à  se révolter contre lui ! Toute femme devrait donc s’interroger : si l’on me caresse dans le sens du poil avec autant d’insistance depuis si longtemps, ne devrais-je pas me méfier ?

Sans préjugés et sans passion, tout en désacralisant quelques idoles, l’auteur montre que le féminisme, loin d’énoncer la vérité sur la condition des femmes, fait preuve en réalité d’un aveuglement à manifestations multiples. Mêlant argumentation précise et ironie acerbe, il analyse ces effets : méconnaissance de la différence des sexes, interprétation imaginaire de l’histoire, image caricaturale du passé, injustice scandaleuse envers les hommes, illusion sur le sens de sa propre action.

À ses yeux, le féminisme pourrait bien constituer une mystification ayant conduit les femmes dans l’impasse. Il est fort possible qu’un jour elles se montrent beaucoup moins convaincues des progrès dont leur condition est censée avoir bénéficié depuis l’essor du mouvement féministe."

00:05 Publié dans Livre, Livre | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : livre, féminisme, sociologie, moeurs contemporaines | |  del.icio.us | | Digg! Digg |  Facebook

dimanche, 27 avril 2014

L'engagement au féminin

Méridien Zéro vous propose une émission consacrée à "l'engagement au féminin", autour du dossier de la revue Rébellion. Avec Alaïs Vidal, Louise d'Espagnac, Marie Chancel et Louis Alexandre.

A la barre et la technique : Jean-Louis Roumégace

Pour écouter:

http://www.meridien-zero.com/archive/2014/03/14/emission-n-180-l-engagement-au-feminin-5321968.html

flyer-emission-14-03-14.jpg

mardi, 25 février 2014

L’“école Hillary” (Clinton): du féminisme au Système

hillary_clinton_aphoto.jpg

L’“école Hillary” (Clinton): du féminisme au Système

Ex: http://www.dedefensa.org

 

Dans un article sur PressTV.ir (le 9 novembre 2014), Finian Cunningham, scientifique britannique devenu journaliste et commentateur de combat, et antisystème certes, aborde un thème intéressant : celui des femmes en position de pouvoir (exécutif) dans l’ensemble de sécurité nationale du système de l’américanisme, singulièrement rassemblées ces dernières années au sein du département d’État. Ces femmes se révèlent d’un extrémisme extraordinairement agressif et impudent, un extrémisme exprimé furieusement et sans frein, un extrémisme illégal par les actions qu’il engendre mais présenté avec ce qui peut paraître une sorte de “bonne conscience” et de certitude de la légitimité de leur action qui laissent loin derrière celle de leurs pairs masculins.

Cette présence de femmes dans des postes de responsabilité à la tête de la diplomatie US est évidemment une nouveauté, due aussi bien jusqu'il y a peu à l’aspect “machiste” et unisexe de cette grande démocratie moderne, particulièrement dans les affaires diplomatique et de sécurité nationale, qu’aux exigences “sociétale” désormais impératives du féminisme avec sa philosophie des quotas et du politically correct. Cunningham prend comme argument de départ l’intervention extraordinaire de Victoria Nuland (ou Nuland-Fuck : voir le 7 février 2014) dans une conversation avec l’ambassadeur Pyatt à Kiev, interceptée par des moyens techniques qui n’ont pas fini d’étonner et de préoccuper les spécialistes du genre du bloc BAO ; il ajoute celui de Wendy Sherman, n°3 du département d’État, dans la même veine de l’extrémisme, cette fois contre l’Iran.

ff_hillary_clinton1.jpg«What is it about America's women diplomats? They seem so hard and cloned – bereft of any humanity or intelligence. Presumably, these women are supposed to represent social advance for the female gender. But, far from displaying female independence, they are just a pathetic copy of the worst traits in American male politicians – aggressive, arrogant and completely arrant in their views.

»Take Victoria Nuland … […]

»Next up is Wendy Sherman, the Under Secretary for Political Affairs, who is also Washington's top negotiator in the P5+1 nuclear talks with Iran. Sherman is another flinty-eyed female specimen of the American political class, who, like Nuland, seems to have a block of ice for a heart and a frozen Popsicle for a brain. Again, like Nuland, Sherman aims to excel in her political career by sounding even more macho, morose and moronic than her male American peers.

»Last week, Sherman was giving testimony before the US Senate foreign affairs committee on the upcoming negotiations with Iran over the interim nuclear agreement. The panel was chaired by the warmongering Democrat Senator Robert Menendez, who wants to immediately ramp up more sanctions on Iran, as well as back the Israeli regime in any preemptive military strike on the Islamic Republic.

»Sherman's performance was a craven display of someone who has been brainwashed to mouth a mantra of falsehoods with no apparent ability to think for herself. It's scary that such people comprise the government of the most nuclear-armed-and-dangerous state in the world…»

Le cas de Nuland est suffisamment documenté. Celui de Wendy Sherman peut être largement renforcé par un rappel d’un article récent sur les USA et l’Iran, où nous introduisions comme exemple de l’argument développé, une intervention de Sherman particulièrement extraordinaire par son aspect suprématiste (plutôt que raciste), exposée devant une commission sénatoriale impavide, ès qualité dans son importante fonction de n°3 du département d’État. Nous écrivions le 25 novembre 2014 :

«On peut rappeler à cet égard le cas éclairant, y compris pour la façon dont sera traité cet accord avec l’Iran, de Wendy Sherman, sous-Secrétaire d’État et représentante permanente des USA aux négociations P5+1, qui se trouvait au côté de Kerry lors des négociations qui ont conduit à l’accord. Les époux Leverett, ces excellents commentateurs des questions iraniennes, avaient relevé, le 3 novembre 2013 sur leur site, l’intervention de Wendy Sherman, en octobre, au Congrès, parlant des Iraniens, “Nous savons que la tromperie fait partie de leur ADN” (“We know that deception is part of the DNA.”). Enchaînant sur cette très-édifiante illustration à la fois de notre haut niveau civilisationnel et de l’état d’esprit présidant aux relations avec l’Iran, les Leverett observaient ceci : “This statement goes beyond orientalist stereotyping; it is, in the most literal sense, racist. And it evidently was not a mere ‘slip of the tongue’: a former Obama administration senior official told us that Sherman has used such language before about Iranians.»

»If a senior U.S. government official made public statements about “deception” or some other negative character trait being “part of the DNA” of Jews, people of African origin, or most other ethnic groups, that official would—rightly—be fired or forced to resign, and would probably not be allowed back into “polite society” until after multiple groveling apologies and a long period of penance. But a senior U.S. official can make such a statement about Iranians—or almost certainly about any other ethnic group a majority of whose members are Muslim—and that’s just fine...»

Il s’agit bien, ici, de mettre en évidence l’extrémisme affiché, déclaré et développé officiellement par ces hauts fonctionnaire du genre féminin dans l’appareil de la diplomatie/de la sécurité nationale US. Les exemples sont nombreux depuis la fin de la guerre froide : Madeleine Albright, secrétaire d’État lors du deuxième mandat de l’administration Clinton, avait ouvert la voie, et de cette présence féminine, et de cet extrémisme cruel dont on parle en répondant quelque chose comme “le jeu en vaut la chandelle” à un journaliste qui l’interrogeait sur les évaluations de 500.000 enfants et nourrissons morts en Irak des suites de l’embargo de l’ONU initié par les USA. Condoleeza Rice, directrice du NSC puis secrétaire d’État montra plus de retenue entre 2001 et 2009, – on reviendra sur la signification de la chose, – mais c’est vraiment avec Hillary Clinton devenue secrétaire d’État en 2009 que s’établit la situation qu’on décrit ici. (Cela, au point qu’on peut parler d’une véritable “école Hillary” à cet égard.) Les femmes maximalistes, extrémistes, occupant des postes important au département d’État (ou au NSC, qui est dans ce cas une organisation similaire), sont en nombre respectable aujourd’hui : Susan Rice (ambassadrice à l’ONU puis directrice du NSC), Samantha Powers (ambassadrice à l’ONU), Nuland passant de la position de porte-parole à celle d’adjointe au secrétaire d’Etat pour les affaires européennes et caucasiennes, Wendy Sherman… Il s’agit de postes à haute visibilité, disposant de pouvoirs considérables, traitant d’affaires extrêmement importantes et agitées par des crises de première importance.

Un point remarquable est le mélange des genre : le féminisme, qui est d’inspiration de gauche et surtout développée chez les démocrates comme affichage de leur prétendue option progressiste et humanitaire, et l’extrémisme de tendance à la fois belliciste et humanitariste. (L’“humanitaire” désigne une forme conceptuelle vertueuse dans ce cas, l’humanitarisme devient une doctrine d’interventionnisme armée au nom de l’humanitaire que des esprits soupçonneux verraient comme un faux-nez pour l’interventionnisme pathologique et illégal, et complètement déstructurant, du bloc BAO.) Le cas Condoleeza Rice, qui était loin d’être la plus extrémiste dans l’administration Bush et qui avait été choisie essentiellement pour sa proximité avec le président, échappe au schéma général. De même ne peut-on guère la placer dans le courant “belliciste-humanitaire” (ou liberal hawks), qui est absolument la marque d’Hillary Clinton et de l’“école Hillary”. Même une Nuland, cataloguée comme neocon, et donc en théorie proche (tactiquement) du courant de l’administration Bush, ne l’est pas vraiment et doit plutôt entrer dans ce moule “belliciste-humanitaire” qui prétend absolument afficher sa philosophie “sociétale” renvoyant au féminisme et à une opinion “libérale” (“progressiste”). (Cela rejoint parfaitement le jugement de William S. Lind sur les USA (voir le 12 février 2014  : «The world has turned upside down. America, condemning and even attacking other countries to push “democracy” and Jacobinical definitions of human rights, is becoming the leader of the international Left.»)

Cette “école Hillary” est donc cantonnée à la “diplomatie” et à la nébuleuse du département d’État, mais contribuant à faire de ce département d’État un foyer extrémiste et belliciste absolument remarquable. Au contraire, il n’y a pas eu et il n’y a pas de femmes aux vrais postes de responsabilité au Pentagone, – secrétaire à la défense, adjoint au secrétaire et sous-secrétaire, les n°1, 2 et 3  – les plus hautes fonctions atteintes par des femmes étant les sous-ministères des trois armes, USAF, Army et Navy, sans réel pouvoir et aucun pouvoir politique, ou celui de sous-secrétaire pour la politique qu'occupa Michèle Flournoy, de 2009 à 2012. (Il y eut aussi le cas de Darleen A. Druyun, occupant dans les années 1990 un poste très important de direction de l’attribution des contrats, mais celui-ci restant très technique quoique d'un pouvoir important, et l’aventure de la pauvre Druyun se terminant dans la corruption et une condamnation à la prison, – comme un vulgaire “mec” [voir le 25 novembre 2004].) On a parlé un temps de Hillary Clinton comme secrétaire à la défense, mais cela n’alla pas loin ; le Pentagone est beaucoup trop soft pour ces dames, beaucoup trop prudent et réticent vis-à-vis des interventions extérieures...

En Europe, il y a quelques équivalents aux positions US dans le domaine de la sécurité nationale, mais les cas montrent un comportement d’une certaine modération, – comme Bonnano en Italie, aux affaires étrangères, – traduisant un reste de comportement traditionnel des genres, quand ceux-ci étaient encore victimes des différenciations de “sexes”. Le cas le plus remarquable à cet égard est la française Alliot-Marie (MAM pour Michelle) à la défense, qui fut une “première française” en la matière d’une femme à la tête d’un ministère régalien ayant dans son inventaire des forces nucléaires. Elle se montra excellente administratrice des forces, imposant son autorité, mais surtout elle montra une maestria diplomatique dans un sens opposé à ses consœurs US : c’est elle qui mata Rumsfeld le belliciste lors d’un échange fameux à la Wehrkunde de Munich en février 2003 (voir le 9 septembre 2003) et c’est pourtant elle qui réussit à raccommoder en bonne partie les relations France-US en allant voir au Pentagone, en 2005, le même Rumsfeld, qu’elle avait manifestement subjugué sinon charmé, ce qui est un exploit qu’il est juste de saluer. MAM n’est guère aimée des féministes et n’est nullement brandie comme un fanion de l’émancipation du genre.

Ces développements montrent une différence entre les cas US et ceux qu’on rencontre en Europe. (Mais nous dirions aussi bien que la tendance en Europe, si elle a le temps de s’affirmer, devrait se “durcir” selon les canons du féminisme pour cause d’américanisation-Système et de radicalisation sociétale, – deux expressions qui désignent d’ailleurs une même évolution.) La tradition occidentale, exclusivement européenne, qui existe et qui est solide malgré l’absence désespérante du féminisme dans ces temps reculés et affreusement rétrogrades, était liée au système de succession ou de régence allant avec le régime monarchique, montra le plus souvent des dirigeantes du genre féminin habiles, maniant le compromis et la fermeté d’une façon équilibrée, bâtissant une autorité et une légitimité remarquables en usant des caractères féminins, sans jamais dédaigner ni le cynisme ni l’arbitraire quand cela s’imposait ; en mettant à part le cas de Jeanne, qui est si singulier et hors des normes, on cite les deux Médicis et Anne d’Autriche en France, la Grande Elisabeth d’Angleterre, la Grande Catherine de Russie, Christine du Suède, etc., qui déployaient des qualités d’affirmation d’autorité sans qu’il soit nécessaire du soutien du féminisme dans sa dimension idéologique liée à la phase terminale du postmodernisme démocratique. Aujourd’hui, c’est manifestement cette force d’origine “sociétale” mais en réalité complètement idéologisée qui est le moteur de cette affirmation du genre féminin. S’il a pris la tournure qu’on voit aux USA, belliciste sans le moindre frein, furieuse sinon hystérique, etc., – alors que le féminisme en politique était d’abord annoncé comme l’apport d’une sagesse réaliste et d’une retenue pacificatrice qu’on attribuait aux femmes dans les temps anciens, – c’est parce qu’il se marie complètement avec l’américanisme, d’une part avec ses tendances matriarcales revues par la modernité, d’autre part par sa psychologie si particulière que nous rappelions dans le texte du 7 février 2014 sur Victoria Nuland-Fuck, mais sans utiliser pour ce cas l’argument pour le féminisme et dont on découvre qu’il lui va si parfaitement :

«Cette attitude relève moins d’une sorte d’hypocrisie ou d’une tactique délibérée, ou d'une arrogance suprématiste, ou de l’hybris enfin, – même si tout cela est présent à doses diverses, – que d’une conviction absolue, comme le suggère Malic. Nous avons depuis longtemps identifié ce qui, selon nous, constitue le moteur de l’attitude des USA dans ce sens, c’est-à-dire une psychologie spécifique qui oriente absolument la pensée, le jugement, l ‘orientation de l’action, etc., en recouvrant tout cela d’un onguent d’une moralité absolument impeccable et indestructible –dito l’inculpabilité et l’indéfectibilité (voir aussi le 7 mai 2011), comme fondements de cette psychologie. Il s’agit de l’incapacité absolue pour la psychologie américaniste de concevoir qu’elle puisse faire quelque chose de mauvais (de moralement mauvais), et l’impossibilité pour la même de concevoir que l’américanisme ne puisse pas être victorieux. (D'autre part, on peut aussi considérer que ces traits divers s'opérationnalisant dans la “conviction absolue” mentionnée plus haut n'est rien d'autre que l’hybris devenue partie intégrante de la psychologie. Cela n'étonnerait en rien, en offrant une interprétation complètement satisfaisante de l'essence même de l'américanisme et de tout ce qui en découle.)»

Cette description correspond encore plus pour les dames dont nous parlons, ce qui montre leur parfaite adéquation aux exigences du Système, avec le mariage du fait sociétal du féminisme et de la psychologie américaniste, comme si l’un était complètement accompli avec l’autre. Par ailleurs, on sait que, pour nous, cette psychologie américaniste est en fait la psychologie-Système par définition (voir le 28 janvier 2013). Certains craignent avec le féminisme une “féminisation” de la politique (c’est la thèse d’Eric Zemmour), mais nous aurions une autre analyse. Quelles qu’aient été au départ les bonnes intentions du féminisme et une certaine justification objective, ce n’est pas à une “féminisation” de la politique qu’on assiste avec son application mais à un degré de plus de l'intégration de ses adeptes dans le Système. Cette fréquentation intégrée ôte à celles qui en usent toute réflexion de doute, toute mesure du monde et des possibilités d’actions harmonieuses et équilibrées (ce qui était le cas pour les grandes souveraines du passé), au profit d’une assurance aveugle et d’une arrogance impérative qui ne peuvent s’expliquer que par le caractère de surpuissance, également aveugle et impératif, du Système. On ajoutera, pour le genre en question, une capacité remarquable d’adaptation à l’affectivité et à l’infraresponsabilité.

Ainsi la démonstration est-elle faite que l’évolution sociétale, qui pourrait revendiquer le titre de “révolution sociétale” est devenue, presto subito, une arme du Système (voir le 30 avril 2013), – si elle ne le fut dès le départ, pour mieux soumettre les sapiens en employés-Système, et dans ce cas en employées-Système. Piètre situation de l’émancipation des femmes, – vraiment, l’épaisse Victoria Nuland (elle a pris du poids, à l’image de son époux Robert Kagan) n’est même pas en-dessous de la cheville de la massive et considérable Catherine de Médicis dans l’exercice et la finesse de l’art de la politique. Notre chance est que le Système rend stupide, à l’image de sa propre stupidité. (Référence obligée à René Guénon, déjà cité : «On dit même que le diable, quand il veut, est fort bon théologien ; il est vrai, pourtant, qu’il ne peut s’empêcher de laisser échapper toujours quelque sottise, qui est comme sa signature…»)

jeudi, 13 février 2014

Elementos 61, 62, 63

ELEMENTOS Nº 63. DERECHA-IZQUIERDA: ¿UNA DISTINCIÓN POLÍTICA
 
 




Sumario.-

Más allá de la derecha y de la izquierda: se esfuma la división derecha-izquierda, por Alain de Benoist

 
 
Ni de derechas ni de izquierdas…, sino todo lo contrario,
por Javier Ruiz Portella

Izquierda, derecha y más allá. La cuestión del nuevo paradigma, por Diego L. Sanromán

Definir la frontera derecha/izquierda,
por José Javier Esparza

Sobre las identidades políticas modernas: la izquierda según las tesis de Carl Schmitt,
por Héctor Ghiretti

Izquierda y derecha en política,
por Angel Rodríguez Kauth

Más allá de la derecha y de la izquierda,
por Arnaud Imatz

Derecha e Izquierda: la díada existente,
por Joaquín Estefanía

Más allá de la derecha y la izquierda. Una nueva política para el nuevo milenio,
por Anthony Giddens

Derecha e Izquierda: criterios de una distinción política,
por Norberto Bobbio

Derecha e izquierda: claves del debate,
por Francisco Fernández Buey

Ni Izquierda ni Derecha,
por Alberto Buela
 

ELEMENTOS Nº 62. REVISAR A SPENGLER: EL FUTURO YA ESTÁ AQUÍ

 
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Sumario.-


Oswald Spengler,
por Alain de Benoist

 
 
Oswald Spengler, el hombre que veía más lejos,
por Rodrigo Agulló

Oswald Spengler y la decadencia de la Civilización Faústica,
por Carlos Javier Blanco Martín

Revisar a Spengler. ¿De la filosofía de la vida a la filosofía de la crisis?,
por Javier Esparza

Irracionalismo y culto a la tradición en el pensamiento de Spengler,
por Javier R. Abella Romero

Oswald Spengler: la muerte del “Hombre” a comienzos del siglo XX, por Javier B. Seoane C.


El Socialismo de Oswald Spengler,
por Carlos Javier Blanco Martín

La Decadencia de Occidente y la novela utópica contemporánea, por Paulino Arguijo


Prusianismo y Socialismo en Spengler,
por Javier R. Abella Romero

Decadencia y muerte del Espíritu Europeo. Volviendo la mirada hacia Oswald Spengler,
por Carlos Javier Blanco Martín

Guerra permanente, anti-pacifismo y elitismo en el pensamiento de Spengler,
por Javier R. Abella Romero

Nihilismo, crisis y decadencia: Ortega frente a Spengler,
por Juan Herrero Senés

Años Decisivos: el distanciamiento definitivo del nacionalsocialismo,
por Javier R. Abella Romero

La influencia de Spengler,
por Antonio Martín Puerta
 

ELEMENTOS Nº 61. LA CONDICIÓN FEMENINA. ¿FEMINISMO O FEMINIDAD?

 
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Sumario

Visión ontológico-teológica de lo masculino y lo femenino,
por Leonardo Boff

 
 
El ser oculto de la cultura femenina en la obra de Georg Simmel, por Josetxo Beriain

El feminismo de la diferencia,
por Marta Colorado López, Liliana Arango Palacio, Sofía Fernández Fuente
 
La mujer objeto de la dominación masculina,
por Pierre Bourdieu

Feminidad versus Feminismo,
por Cesáreo Marítimo

Afirmando las diferencias. El feminismo de Nietzsche,
por Elvira Burgos Díaz

La mujer como madre y la mujer como amante,
por Julius Evola

El “recelo feminista” a proposito del ensayo La dominacion masculina de Pierre Bourdieu,
por Yuliuva Hernández García

Friedrich Nietzsche y Sigmund Freud: una subversión feminista,
por Eva Parrondo Coppel

Hombres y mujeres. Un análisis desde la teoría de la polaridad,
por Raúl Martínez Ibars

Identidad femenina y humanización del mundo,
por Rodrigo Guerra

Simmel y la cultura femenina,
por Raquel Osborne

La nueva feminidad,
Entrevista a Annalinde Nightwind

El hombre no es un enemigo a batir,
Entrevista con Elisabeth Badinter
 

mercredi, 29 janvier 2014

Le féminisme politique, sexisme discriminatoire autorisé

Le féminisme politique, ce sexisme discriminatoire autorisé
 
Le petit Gibus, contre Najat Vallaud- Belkacem and co

Jean Ansar
Ex: http://metamag.fr

 

Najat-Vallaud-Belkacem-pour-son-engagement-en-tant-que-ministre-des-Droits-des-femmes_reference.jpgC’est le regroupement familial qui a changé une immigration de travail en immigration de peuplement et  qui a donné à la France cette "rifaine". Merci Chirac, merci Giscard. Elle vient d’une région marocaine berbère fière et farouche. Je la connais un peu et les femmes y sont dans les villages et petites villes encore plus invisibles que dans le Maroc arabe.

Toute petite, elle quitte Beni Chiker pour se retrouver  en France auprès de son père, ouvrier du bâtiment, avec sa mère et ses sœur ainées (7 filles ). Elle épouse un monsieur Vallaud. Ils auront des jumeaux aux prénoms de la mixité Luis et Nour. Militante socialiste et féministe, elle impose un style car elle ne manque pas de talent ni de charme. Ce talent est-il au service de la cause des femmes ou de la haine des hommes ? C’est la question qu’on doit se poser. Souriante, castratrice, si François Hollande est devenu social démocrate elle reste social-sexiste. Tout son discours et ses actions veulent imposer la diminution du rôle de l'homme dans la société et à sa culpabilisation.

Dans les derniers soubresauts autour de l’avortement, elle veut faire condamner les sites anti avortement car mensongers. Mensongers bien sûr par rapport à la présentation  officielle…. On voit son respect de la contestation. Elle veut retirer une notion  de la loi Veil pour que la liberté des vagins selon les slogans de délicieuses manifestantes s’ impose toujours aux "états dame".

Pour la prostitution aussi, c’est feu sur les hommes. Pour le congé parental, elle veut obliger les hommes à prendre le congé à égalité avec les manas dans une approche papa-couche et biberon qui reflète bien sa volonté d’imposer la théorie des genres. S'il y a bien un sexe féminin, le sexe masculin ne doit pas avoir de spécificités. Cette haine souriante mais destructrice de la société traditionnelle est un marqueur fort de ce pouvoir socialiste. 

Cependant cette société traditionnelle porteuse de tous les autoritarismes masculins et discriminations sexistes n’a pas empêché que les favorites étaient mieux traités que certaines compagnes et cela a donné Versailles et Chambord, le Taj Mahal et Angkor…. La société de madame Najat  ne sera pas une civilisation,  mais un système et son horizon pour le moment nous promet  la suppression des pissotières grâce à  la brimade sexiste qui consiste à obliger de plus en plus les petits garçons à pisser assis comme des petites filles, ça salit moins la cuvette et soulage le personnel des petites classes et puis ça donne une image égalitaire.

Le féminisme est il un  racisme ? Voila sans doute une question bien iconoclaste. Ce féminisme politique est un racisme non-dit anti-homme de toute évidence et c’est un signe de la dégénérescence de nos sociétés, imposée par des idéologies qui se croient de progrès et qui ne sont que des imbécilités absurdes.

Najat ne doit pas aimer beaucoup le petit gibus ni les concours du jet le plus long. Tiens pourquoi pas pour les parents de petits garçons une association de défense du pipi debout – les amis du petit gibus !

 

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mardi, 07 janvier 2014

Elementos 61 y 62: Spengler y Condicion femenina

ELEMENTOS Nº 62
REVISAR A SPENGLER: EL FUTURO YA ESTÁ AQUÍ
 
 
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Sumario.-


Oswald Spengler,
por Alain de Benoist

Oswald Spengler, el hombre que veía más lejos,
por Rodrigo Agulló

Oswald Spengler y la decadencia de la Civilización Faústica,
por Carlos Javier Blanco Martín

Revisar a Spengler. ¿De la filosofía de la vida a la filosofía de la crisis?,
por Javier Esparza

Irracionalismo y culto a la tradición en el pensamiento de Spengler,
por Javier R. Abella Romero

Oswald Spengler: la muerte del “Hombre” a comienzos del siglo XX,
por Javier B. Seoane C.

El Socialismo de Oswald Spengler,
por Carlos Javier Blanco Martín

La Decadencia de Occidente y la novela utópica contemporánea,
por Paulino Arguijo

Prusianismo y Socialismo en Spengler,
or Javier R. Abella Romero

Decadencia y muerte del Espíritu Europeo. Volviendo la mirada hacia Oswald Spengler,
por Carlos Javier Blanco Martín

Guerra permanente, anti-pacifismo y elitismo en el pensamiento de Spengler,
por Javier R. Abella Romero

Nihilismo, crisis y decadencia: Ortega frente a Spengler,
por Juan Herrero Senés

Años Decisivos: el distanciamiento definitivo del nacionalsocialismo,
por Javier R. Abella Romero

La influencia de Spengler,
por Antonio Martín Puerta
 

ELEMENTOS Nº 61.

LA CONDICIÓN FEMENINA. ¿FEMINISMO O FEMINIDAD?


 
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Sumario

Visión ontológico-teológica de lo masculino y lo femenino,
por Leonardo Boff

El ser oculto de la cultura femenina en la obra de Georg Simmel,
por Josetxo Beriain

El feminismo de la diferencia,
por Marta Colorado López, Liliana Arango Palacio, Sofía Fernández Fuente

La condición femenina,
por Alain de Benoist

La mujer objeto de la dominación masculina,
por Pierre Bourdieu

Feminidad versus Feminismo,
por Cesáreo Marítimo

Afirmando las diferencias. El feminismo de Nietzsche,
por Elvira Burgos Díaz

La mujer como madre y la mujer como amante,
por Julius Evola

El “recelo feminista” a proposito del ensayo La dominacion masculina de Pierre Bourdieu, por Yuliuva Hernández García

Friedrich Nietzsche y Sigmund Freud: una subversión feminista,
por Eva Parrondo Coppel

Hombres y mujeres. Un análisis desde la teoría de la polaridad,
por Raúl Martínez Ibars

Identidad femenina y humanización del mundo,
por Rodrigo Guerra

Simmel y la cultura femenina,
por Raquel Osborne

La nueva feminidad,
Entrevista a Annalinde Nightwind

El hombre no es un enemigo a batir,
Entrevista con Elisabeth Badinter
 

samedi, 30 novembre 2013

Rebellion n°61

R61pdf (glissé(e)s).jpg
 
Au sommaire : 
Editorial : bonnets rouges et rouges bonnets. 
Entretien avec David Bisson - René Guénon. Entre Tradition et Révolution.
International : Le Hezbollah. De la résistance à la révolution. 
Vive le Québec Libre ! Histoire et analyse de la lutte de libération nationale du Québec
par Yves Bataille. 
Le militantisme au féminin : Une enquête. 
Femme et militantisme, l'alliance impossible ?
par Anaïs Vidal. 
Les nuits de Mai par Louise d'Espagnac
Entretien avec Iseul Turan des Antigones :
Ni consommatrices, ni consommées !
 Rencontre avec le groupe Creve Tambour
La théorie du Drone, Rise of the machines. 

Le numéro est disponible pour 4 euros auprès de 
Rébellion C/O RSE BP 62124 31020 TOULOUSE cedex 02
http://rebellion.hautetfort.com/
 
bretagne,bonnets rouges,rené
 guenon,antigones,hezbollah,vive le
 québec libre

mercredi, 27 novembre 2013

Feminism versus Marriage

Honeymoon_in_Bali_film_poster.jpg

Feminism versus Marriage in Virginia Van Upp’s Honeymoon in Bali (1939)

By Andrew Hamilton 

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com

Feminism is a major destructive force. Anti-male, anti-family, and anti-white, it is today a key ideological pillar of the ruling class. It is therefore necessary to look to the past in an attempt to identify healthy folkways associated with male-female relationships, sex, marriage, and family.

A 1939 romantic comedy called Honeymoon in Bali (1939) starring Scottish (or part-Scottish) American actor Fred MacMurray and English-born half-Irish (father), half-French (mother) actress Madeleine Carroll (born Marie-Madeleine Bernadette O’Carroll), sheds light on the conflict between feminism and marriage in 1930s America from the perspective of a successful, high-level female executive, Hollywood screenwriter Virginia Van Upp, who lived the feminist dream.

MacMurray is best known as the dishonest insurance salesman in Double Indemnity (1944), the star of several 1960-era Disney comedies, and the affable, pipe smoking dad in the TV series My Three Sons (1960–1972). Madeleine Carroll’s romantic appeal can be seen to best advantage in two movie classics, Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (1935) and The Prisoner of Zenda (1937).

Honeymoon in Bali bore the alternative titles Husbands or Lovers (in the UK) and My Love for Yours (on video). Prior to release the working title—revealingly—was Are Husbands Necessary? Paramount, the studio that produced the film, later used that title for an unrelated 1942 movie starring Ray Milland and Betty Field.

Bali was based on short stories by Grace Sartwell Mason [2] in the Saturday Evening Post and the novel Free Woman (1936) by New York City WASP writer Katharine Brush, whose work was often compared to that of F. Scott Fitzgerald. At her death at age 49 in 1952, the New York Times characterized Brush’s fiction as “entertaining, brittle, superficial and in revolt against sentimentality and other qualities of the Victorian period.”

The real force behind Honeymoon in Bali, however, was Paramount Pictures screenwriter Virginia Van Upp. Though little-known today, she was an influential behind-the-scenes figure in the Jewish movie colony. (The Chicago-born Van Upp was apparently of Dutch descent.)

Van Upp’s mother had been an editor and title writer for silent movie producer Thomas H. Ince, the son of English immigrants. Ince was a seminal figure in the history of motion pictures. A visionary who died at age 42, he pioneered the studio system and shaped the art, craft, and business of motion picture producing as much as D. W. Griffith did that of directing.

Virginia, who was born in 1902 and began as a child actress in silent films, worked her way up from script girl, cutter, reader, and casting director to screenwriter at Paramount in the mid-1930s. As executive producer of Columbia Pictures in the 1940s, she was second-in-command to Jewish studio boss Harry Cohn, which made her one of the most powerful women in Hollywood. The scriptwriter of Cover Girl (1944) and producer of Gilda (1946), she was responsible for making Rita Hayworth a star. According to Cohn’s biographer Bob Thomas, “Miss Van Upp did not want to assume the heavy duties of executive producer because she had a husband and daughter. But she succumbed to Cohn’s overwhelming persuasion.”

Besides her energy, talent, and work ethic, a major reason for Van Upp’s success was her instinctive grasp of the need for teamwork and compromise, meeting schedules and deadlines, turning a profit, and making a product people would pay to see—in other words, the nitty-gritty of getting things done in the real world, consistently turning out film after film that would entertain millions of viewers and eventually provide endless fodder for critics and academics to analyze. Many Hollywood writers and directors never entirely mastered this essential skill, as Van Upp’s uncredited cleaning up of director Orson Welles’ sloppy and over-budget The Lady from Shanghai (1948) demonstrated.

It is only because Bali undoubtedly reflected Van Upp’s sensibility about male-female relationships to a high degree that it is worth examining. Unfortunately, the film itself is unexceptional, even as entertainment. It is a routine Hollywood programmer, nothing more. Using the 1- to 4-star scale employed by Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide, I rate it **1/2 (average). (The Movie Guide rates it ***—above average. Under its system, even that half-star is significant.)

That said, a black blogger, a former TV host on cable’s VH1, caught the movie by accident recently (I watched it because I knew Van Upp had written it) and had a response to it as strongly positive as mine was to Van Upp’s romantic comedy The Crystal Ball (1943). So colorblind and lacking in racial rancor was his review [4] that I thought the writer was white until I saw his picture beside the article after finishing it.

Van Upp first came to my attention after watching The Crystal Ball (I closely study movie credits), a much better Paramount romantic comedy she authored starring half-Jewish actress Paulette Goddard, Welshman Ray Milland (who had a colorful background as an expert marksman and rider in an elite unit of the British Army, the Household Cavalry, before becoming an actor), and English beauty Virginia Field, whose mother was a cousin of General Robert E. Lee.

To my mind, The Crystal Ball was exceptionally well-written and acted—very funny, highly enjoyable entertainment. I consider it better than many more famous romantic comedies of the period, including The Lady Eve and The Male Animal.

Honeymoon in Bali contains the usual quota of character conflicts. To cite one example, Carroll has a rival for MacMurray’s attention, a young woman played by Osa Massen, a light-hearted, “horribly rich” European Balinese girl who attempted suicide after MacMurray rejected her lovelorn advances when she was 17. I mistakenly assumed from Massen’s accent and appearance that she was German. In fact she was Danish. She was profiled in the book Strangers in Hollywood: The History of Scandinavian Actors in American Films from 1910 to World War II (1994).

However, the primary theme of the movie is the internal conflict Carroll experiences between her desire to continue her unfettered lifestyle and professional career as the successful manager of a Fifth Avenue department store in New York City, and her desire to marry a romantic stranger, a businessman from Bali (MacMurray).

Madeleine Carroll’s internal conflict between her desire for independence and the feeling that she should subordinate herself to a man (with the latter impulse ultimately winning out), parallels similar themes in the Broadway play and movie The Women (1939) by Clare Boothe Luce, about which I have previously [5] written. Luce, too, came down strongly on the side of marriage and family. (Interestingly, “family” there consisted merely of a husband, wife, and one biological child—a notably truncated conception of family. That story, like Van Upp’s, was really focused on the dyadic husband-wife relationship rather than family in the true sense.) Yet, like Van Upp, Luce maintained an independent professional life immeasurably superior to the vast majority of American men, making her something of a heroine among mainstream feminists.

I noted that the Norma Shearer character in The Women embodied Luce’s family-oriented values. I also said that only one other female in the cast came off sympathetically—Miriam Aarons, played in the movie by Paulette Goddard. Aarons was a somewhat hardboiled but independent-minded and sympathetic character with a Jewish name, but no discernible Jewish characteristics. (Luce was a shameless philo-Semite, which was enormously beneficial to her professionally, as I’m sure she knew perfectly well.)

What initially escaped me was that Aarons also represented Luce. Rather than establishing an internal conflict within a single character as Van Upp did in Bali, Luce split herself in two as it were, presenting her nurturing values in the form of Shearer’s character, and her harder-edged, feminist-oriented sensibility in the person of Aarons.

In Bali, Carroll’s conviction that career success and non-marriage represent the superior option are expressed throughout the film. She insists that she is perfectly happy and doesn’t want to get married. A disdainful running counterpoint to Carroll’s philosophy is provided by her second cousin and best friend, Smitty (actress Helen Broderick), a successful “old maid” novelist (as Carroll/Van Upp calls her).

After MacMurray responds to Carroll’s statement that she doesn’t believe in marriage by asserting that women “need the protection of a man,” she snorts, “The protection of a man! I know of more women taking care of no-good husbands and loafing brothers.”

In a key piece of dialogue she continues, “I earn a salary that makes most men’s look sick. I’m the boss. I have a charming apartment run by a competent maid, and I’m the boss there too. I have plenty of escorts—whenever I want them . . .” MacMurray: “I suppose you’re the boss there, too.” Carroll, ignoring him: “. . . and I haven’t a single encumbrance to worry me, and the most precious thing of all—absolute personal freedom. [Emphasis added.] Now for what reason under the sun do I need a husband?”

Are husbands necessary? Contemporary Italian-American TV producer Alison Martino relaxing at home. A baby boomer, her show business family/career background is similar to, if far less illustrious than, Van Upp’s. [6]

Are husbands necessary? Contemporary Italian-American TV producer Alison Martino relaxing at home. A baby boomer, her show business family/career background is similar to, if far less illustrious than, Van Upp’s.

The only “positive” she raises—in order to reject it—is “love,” averring, “I don’t intend to fall in love, either. Love muddles you up . . . it throws you.”

She’s referring to fleeting, evanescent romantic love, which is as rooted in egoism as are the other values she enumerates. Over time, it vanishes under the pressure of everyday life. There must be a stronger foundation than “love”—whatever it may be—to sustain a successful, long-term marriage and family.

Carroll informs her friend Smitty that MacMurray is “lazy, not very good-looking, makes $50 a week, and ruins my disposition. I’m as cross as a bear when I’m around him.” Of course, she’s already in love at that point. But outside of a romance novel or movie such as this, a marriage between two such different people who hardly know one another represents a crapshoot. Such a union requires romantic “love” to carry far more weight than it can possibly bear. MacMurray’s paltry “$50 a week” and “laziness” alone would eventually kill the deal.

Only a tiny portion of the story at the end actually takes place in Bali, an island province of Indonesia. The main setting is New York City. “Bali” functions as a delusive, exotic, Rousseauian-, Shangri-La-, Margaret Mead-style utopian backdrop signifying fantasy happiness someplace else.

Of course, factors other than Van Upp’s personal views impinged upon the story. For example, producers must have had an influence. The director, too, though in this case Van Upp was undoubtedly the primary auteur, not Edward H. Griffith, a competent but undistinguished director. An eagle eye on box office appeal would also have played a role. Finally, important elements of the tale must have been derived from the underlying stories by Mason and Brush. Nevertheless, everything was filtered through Van Upp’s sensibility. To the extent that the original stories were a factor, they nevertheless represented white women’s views also. At least partially representative of the population, they, like the movie, fed back into the populace, altering and shaping, consciously and unconsciously, the values and beliefs of readers and moviegoers.

In real life MacMurray was 31 and Madeleine Carroll 33 when the movie was made, so they were not spring chickens in terms of marriage or reproductive fitness. If Carroll’s character is assumed to be the same age as the actress—which is implied by her status and career accomplishments—the couple would have had to work fast in order to have two or three children before her fertility window closed [7]. A large family would have been out of the question. (In demographic terms, two children per couple represents replacement of themselves; it does not signify replacement of the population as a whole, much less population expansion, due to people who die young or otherwise fail to marry, reproduce, or have more than one child.)

While the film is laser-focused on landing a husband (thus, a male companion in the context of marriage), the idea of a traditional large family with many children, or any children at all, for that matter, is downplayed. The only child in the picture is a small orphan girl the couple eventually adopt—and she’s primarily consigned to the care of the help, both in New York and Bali.

Thus, the idea of “family” remains implicit at best. Indeed, it is probably subordinate to the idea of companionate marriage [8]. Even as they age, the two principals remain “young” and attractive and do not embrace, or advance into, the maturity, responsibility, and unglamorousness of motherhood and fatherhood. It is interesting that ’30s moviegoers readily accepted this extension of youth into relatively mature adulthood.

When Carroll first meets MacMurray and learns he is from Bali, she is deeply intrigued by the unusual sexual relationships this suggests. Much of their exchange on this subject is conveyed indirectly by subtle and sophisticated innuendo, including facial expressions.

Are Balinese girls really that pretty? she asks. Yes. There aren’t many white women out there, are there? No. Do you marry the Balinese girls? A flat “No,” accompanied by a decisive shake of the head. I suppose some of the (white) men . . . (have sex with the Balinese girls). Yes (indirectly). “Do you have a girl out there?”

MacMurray replies that he has five: one to do the cooking, one the housecleaning, one to care for his clothing . . . and one to dance for him. “But that’s only four,” she protests. He responds with a significant look. (The fifth is for sex.) This does not put Carroll off, but makes him more intriguing in her eyes. Later, after she abandons New York to follow MacMurray to Bali, narrowly averting his impending marriage to Osa Massen, she learns that he’s a decent chap after all—he only has one woman, an elderly Balinese servant who keeps house for him. But, of course, she didn’t know that when she abandoned career and country to pursue him.

This raises the interesting presence of a conspicuous alpha male/beta male distinction in Van Upp’s film.

MacMurray, of course, is the alpha male, a fact conveyed by a variety of different methods. From the outset he pursues Carroll aggressively, unabashed by her status, position, or superior wealth, yet somehow remaining aloof and seemingly indifferent to her at the same time. In a key scene, after pursuing her to the Bahamas when she flees his marriage proposal, he forces himself upon her, kissing her against her will as she struggles, saying, “You’re lying that you don’t love me. You’re afraid you’ll have to give up Morrissey’s and go back to being Miss Nobody. I’m only doing this because you don’t want me to. It’s the only way I know to hurt you, and it’s killing you, and I’m laughing,” before thrusting her contemptuously to the sand and departing. Keep in mind that this was written by a woman—indeed, a highly successful career woman. (A white conservative lady who saw the movie opined on her blog [9] that MacMurray’s character was “too aggressive.”)

lune-de-miel-a-bali-affiche_395642_26310.jpgThe beta rival for Carroll’s affection is Eric Sinclair, played by Welsh American singer-actor Allan Jones, a professional opera singer who has known Carroll for many years. His attitudes toward marriage are much different from MacMurray’s. He believes a woman can have marriage and a career both, as Carroll tells MacMurray while the three are returning to her apartment in Eric’s chauffeur-driven car. “He even believes,” she adds, “that if a [married] woman wanted to have her own apartment, and he [the husband] his own apartment . . .” her voice trailing off lamely because the words sound so foolish when spoken aloud. Eric thinks MacMurray’s view of marriage “sounds a bit barbaric.” (At another point in the film, though, he wonders, “What’s this guy got? What’s his technique?”) When MacMurray escorts Carroll to her door, she scolds him, saying, “That was rude of you, trying to hold my hand in another man’s car.”

When Carroll eventually proposes marriage to Eric under the mistaken impression that MacMurray has married rival Osa Massen, and Eric accepts (note the irony of the woman proposing to the man), she receives contrary advice from a plebeian window washer at Morrissey’s (Armenian actor Akim Tamiroff) whose counsel she sometimes heeds. Tamiroff is decisive in his preference for MacMurray over the highly cultured Eric:

“The first gentleman may be a fine gentleman, but he’s no gentleman for you. Your kind of a woman needs a guy, not a fine gentleman. The second one, he’s a guy. The first gentleman will let you be the boss, and a woman ain’t supposed to be the boss. Your kind of a woman needs a boss man.”

To top it off, Eric ultimately steps gallantly aside after he has won the lady’s hand (“He’s the nicest man I know,” Carroll praises him at one point) in order to facilitate MacMurray’s and Carroll’s hooking up.

Two religious passages play a key role in the plot.

First, MacMurray calls off his marriage to Massen at the last minute because of a chance remark by a priest the day before the wedding:

The Balinese never marry except for love, and once they are married only death parts them. Marriage is such a wonder to me. The thing that happens between a man and a woman to make them want no one on this earth but each other. It is a frightening thing, really, because it is their responsibility to keep that fragile bond intact and living. In every union there is a mystery, a certain invisible bond which must not be disturbed.

Marrying Massen, whom MacMurray does not love, would be a mistake because of the absence of this invisible bond. Apart from being right about the “fragile bond,” this is an overly romantic view of marriage.

Madeleine Carroll’s epiphany comes after she falls ill and is hospitalized in New York. The doctors couldn’t discover what was wrong with her. But finally “a wise man” informed her that long ago it was said that “It is not good for man to live alone”—and that this meant women, too. (Though not mentioned, this is a paraphrase of Genesis 2:18—I always pay attention to whether someone is quoting the Old or the New Testament, and how much from either.)

She confesses to MacMurray, “He said that however carefully a woman may have organized her life, that a husband and children were necessary to make her complete. It’s like going about with one arm . . . you’re missing something. But you don’t always know how important those things are until you’ve let them go by. Then you have to pay, any woman does, with an awful loneliness.” The unidentified wise man further explained that this loneliness had been lying in wait for Carroll for a long time, and closed in on her after MacMurray left, making her sick.

End of a Career

Van Upp’s departure from Columbia and moviemaking in 1947 was the result of an unspecified falling out with studio boss Harry Cohn, a legendary jerk. (Of Cohn’s impressively-attended funeral in 1958, comedian Red Skelton joked, “It proves what Harry always said: give the public what they want and they’ll come out for it.”)

Under Cohn Columbia was run like “a private police state,” which, Nineteen Eighty-Four-style, included listening devices concealed on every sound stage through which Cohn could, and did, secretly monitor conversations on any set at will. This kind of mentality and behavior obviously lifts one race far above others. It doesn’t require exceptional imagination to comprehend the immeasurable advantage and tremendous power conferred, particularly when combined with unscrupulousness and criminality. Yet whites will not grasp this and many other simple realities, no matter how much evidence they have about Communism, Zionism, or Jewish behavior generally. The victims in such cases are bound to lose unless they take adequate compensatory measures to protect themselves and then strike back.

According to Bob Thomas’ King Cohn: The Life and Times of Harry Cohn (1967), the producer was an admirer of Mussolini prior to the latter’s link-up with Hitler. Cohn met the dictator in Italy, where he received an award after releasing the successful and flattering documentary Mussolini Speaks (1933). (This has never been released on DVD. You can watch a 10-minute clip from the film here [10]. The narrator is radio newsman Lowell Thomas.) Bob Thomas includes a short chapter in his book entitled “A Visit to Il Duce, and How It Affected the Cohn Style.”

Cohn also maintained connections with organized crime, including Chicago’s John Roselli and Jewish gangster Abner “Longie” Zwillman. Like many Jews he used violence or the threat of violence to obtain and keep money and power. (It was mob money from Zwillman that enabled Cohn to buy out a partner during his early years, giving him full control of the studio.)

Married twice to white women, Cohn regularly demanded and received sexual favors from white actresses in exchange for employment. Like so many Hollywood executives of the time, he was a forerunner of today’s ubiquitous “adult film industry” pimp-pornographers.

With respect to Van Upp, Bob Thomas observed that Cohn “needed to find one area of vulnerability [in order to dominate and control her]. It wasn’t drinking. It wasn’t any secret in her personal life [note the Jew’s systematic probing for vulnerabilities and deliberate, callous exploitation of human frailties—another unflattering reason why the race is dominant]; she was happily married to a radio director, Ralph Nelson. [Nelson was her second husband; they had a daughter together, but divorced in 1949.] It wasn’t even money, the temptation with which Cohn had snared many a victim.”

Instead, he used his authority as studio head to attempt to extort sex from her. Van Upp spurned his unwelcome advances, convinced, according to Thomas, that Cohn was “a verbal rapist” who had no intention of going through with the affair. Even so, she demanded that her contract as executive producer include a clause prohibiting her boss from engaging in “verbal rape.” Appalled at how this would look, after a two-hour argument Cohn finally agreed to a handshake deal instead. (He had not lied to her in the past.) The issue never came up again.

By 1947 Van Upp had wearied of overseeing Columbia’s entire motion picture output and “felt the need to resume her marriage.” She therefore took an extended leave of absence, but by the time she returned, “Cohn’s need for her was over” (Thomas, King Cohn).

It is easy to see how the feminist/anti-feminist themes that dominate Honeymoon in Bali overlap with actual tensions in Van Upp’s life between her role as a highly successful businesswoman and her desire to be a wife and mother. Of course, such a desire was more widespread in Van Upp’s day than ours. Today such values have largely been eliminated from the white population, as many bizarre pronouncements by women, men, and authority figures make agonizingly clear. The economic prerequisites necessary for successful family formation so often emphasized by Benjamin Franklin also militate against the family, as do hostile laws and police behavior courtesy of the state.

 


Article printed from Counter-Currents Publishing: http://www.counter-currents.com

URL to article: http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/11/feminism-versus-marriage-in-virginia-van-upps-honeymoon-in-bali-1939/

URLs in this post:

[1] Image: http://www.counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Honeymoon_in_Bali_film_poster.jpg

[2] Grace Sartwell Mason: http://www.bradfordera.com/news/article_7e49db5a-d7f0-5949-8389-306e7beb5935.html

[3] Image: http://www.counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Virginia-Van-Upp-R.-with-Rita-Hayworth-Glenn-Ford.jpg

[4] his review: http://bobbyriverstv.blogspot.com/2013/08/fred-macmurray-gets-bali-high.html

[5] about which I have previously: http://www.counter-currents.com/2013/02/clare-boothe-luces-the-women-2/

[6] Image: http://www.counter-currents.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/TV-Producer-Alison-Martino-West-Hollywood-home1.jpg

[7] before her fertility window closed: http://www.counter-currents.com/2012/07/population-age-structure-fertility/

[8] companionate marriage: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/companionate+marriage

[9] opined on her blog: http://laurasmiscmusings.blogspot.com/2009/12/tonights-movie-honeymoon-in-bali-1939.html

[10] here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1ZJVgB8POg

00:05 Publié dans Cinéma | Lien permanent | Commentaires (1) | Tags : féminisme, cinéma, 7ème art, film | |  del.icio.us | | Digg! Digg |  Facebook

vendredi, 06 septembre 2013

Esprits insoumis

"Il faut être indulgent à ceux qui, au lieu de profiter paisiblement des grandes routes toutes tracées et foulées par les générations précédentes et par les aînés, s’en écartent pour chercher une autre voie. Ils ont au moins de l’audace et du courage, vertus essentielles aux conquérants, si modestes soient-ils. Ils ne sont pas tous des triomphateurs mais il ne faut pas sourire devant le sentier, si petit soit-il, que quelques-uns parmi eux frayent dans n’importe quel domaine, parce qu’il y aura toujours des esprits insoumis qui préféreront aux belles routes battues les sentiers pittoresques et incertains, et aussi parce que des sentiers tracés peuvent devenir, grâce à ceux qui suivront et qu’ils auront tentés, de larges avenues."


Valentine de Saint-Point

Ex: http://zentropaville.tumblr.com

mardi, 03 septembre 2013

L’idéologie du genre, une dérive du féminisme

gab.png

L’idéologie du genre, une dérive du féminisme

Quelle est donc cette idéologie que la Manif pour Tous entend contrer dès la rentrée ? L’idéologie du genre. Comment est-elle parvenue en France ? Quel est son but ? Ses conséquences sur l’éducation des enfants ?

gabard.gifDans son livre, Le féminisme et ses dérives, rendre un père à l’enfant-roi, le professeur d’histoire-géographie et ancien féministe Jean Gabard nous explique comment et pourquoi notre société en est arrivée là. Il ne nous donne pas de recette miracle mais il nous explique que deux idéolog
ies s’affrontent et s’entretiennent mutuellement. L’une, visant à nier toute différence entre l’homme et la femme. L’autre voulant au contraire ramener l’homme à son autorité pour faire tenir à carreaux les enfants qui sont mal élevés. Dans une première partie, nous verrons les rapports entre l’homme et la femme tout au long de l’histoire. Dans une seconde partie, nous verrons les conséquences de l’idéologie du genre dans notre société.

Au cours de l’histoire, les rapports entre l’homme et la femme se sont modifiés. Durant la préhistoire, la femme était sacralisée parce que l’homme s’était rendu compte qu’elle pouvait donner la vie. Dans l’Antiquité, la femme avait un rôle ambigu. Elle avait moins de droits que les hommes mais pouvait prendre des initiatives dans la maisonnée. En outre, certains cultes étaient rendus à des déesses. Certaines fêtes étaient même réservées aux femmes et l’homme qui osait s’y introduire était puni, la sentence allant jusqu’à la mort.

La femme avait un statut entre valorisation et dévalorisation. Il faut bien comprendre que la femme s’occupait du domaine privé et que l’homme s’occupait du domaine public. La seule personne qui est venue mettre le bazar dans ce monde est le Christ. Il est le seul à parler d’égalité entre l’homme et la femme. Petit à petit, au Moyen Âge, les rapports entre l’homme et la femme se sont modifiés. Certes, la femme restait à la maison pendant que l’homme allait travailler à la ferme. Mais dans les seigneuries, elle les accompagnait et pouvait même prendre des initiatives dans le château. Exemple, à partir de 987, les privilèges étaient devenus héréditaires par la volonté d’Hugues Capet.

Aussi, lorsque le seigneur décidait de donner, de louer ou de vendre son bien, la famille était donc conviée à donner son avis sur le sujet. La femme était présente. Toutefois, malgré ce rôle et ce statut,  une contestation intellectuelle se mis en place lors du siècle des Lumières. Pourtant, on peut remarquer que ce n’est pas dans un cadre trop flatteur. La contestation est surtout venue de mai 1968. Cette contestation s’inspire des études sur le genre qui sont publiées pour la première fois aux États-Unis. La polémique arrive en France en 2011, lorsque le ministre de l’éducation national, Luc Châtel demande à faire la distinction entre l’identité sexuelle et l’orientation sexuelle dans les programmes de SVT.

Les conséquences de cette idéologie sont doubles. Soyons clairs : les études sur le genre sont nécessaires pour comprendre les rapports entre l’homme et la femme et démonter certains préjugés. Le problème est la théorisation de ces études par certains chercheurs. Ils sont ensuite passés dans les institutions internationales pour les imposer (ONU, UE). La conséquence est d’abord juridique. Dans la loi, il n’y a plus de distinction entre l’homme et la femme. La seule exception est le sous-marin : la femme n’a pas le droit d’y aller.

Ensuite sur l’éducation des enfants : l’enfant ne connait plus de limite, il a beaucoup de mal avec les règles de disciplines, de grammaire, de calculs, de conjugaison d’orthographes. Pourquoi ? Parce qu’il n’y a plus de père et de mère. Le rôle de la mère est affectif auprès de l’enfant puisque c’est elle qui l’a porté jusqu’à sa naissance. Le rôle du père est de casser cette affection pour mettre des limites aux désirs de l’enfant.

L’exemple de l’interrupteur : vous avez souvent vu un enfant s’amuser avec un interrupteur pour allumer et éteindre la lumière. Normalement, le père doit intervenir pour demander à l’enfant d’arrêter de jouer avec la lumière. Mais si c’est la mère, alors l’enfant le prendra comme un chantage affectif : « j’obéis parce que sinon maman ne m’aimera plus ». Le temps que les parents se mettent d’accord sur le moment de l’intervention, l’enfant ne va pas s’arrêter.

En conclusion, pendant longtemps, on a utilisé les différences pour dire que l’homme domine la femme mais aujourd’hui on affirme que ces différences sont sexistes et discriminatoires. Par ailleurs tous les programmes de lutte contre la discrimination mis en place par les gouvernements ont échoué puisque les différences ressortent plus violemment au moment de la puberté. La question est de savoir si nous serons capables de construire une société à même d’accepter les différences et de se tenir à notre place.

Antoine Billot

 

mercredi, 27 mars 2013

Feminisme: kan links zich verantwoorden?

Femen_galleryphoto_paysage_std.jpg

Feminisme: kan links zich verantwoorden?

door  Theo Van Boom

Ex: http://www.solidarisme.be/  

Economische crisis en oorlog overal, we weten het ondertussen wel - denken ze daar allicht bij De Wereld Morgen. Dus is het nu de week van het feminisme, heel mooi. De steun die zij hiervoor krijgen uit PVDA+-hoek zal niemand verbazen en de argumenten (gelijk loon, tegen geweld etc.) zijn ook redelijk onschuldig.

Toch kan bij de acuutheid van het thema enkele vragen gesteld worden. Allereerst, waarom net nu de genderspanningen nog eens op doen wellen? Ja, men stelt wel dat "mannen ook meer moeten vervrouwelijken", maar daar moet in deze tijd van hipsters en Justin Bieber maar eens deftig debat over worden gevoerd. Idem dito de chimera aan pseudofreudiaanse en gendertheoretische onwaarheden die allang ontkracht zijn... maar ach. Niemand zal ontkennen dat wij allemaal samen in de miserie van de economische crisis delen en dat dit sowieso de sociale verhoudingen turbulent zal houden over de klassen, rassen en leeftijden heen.

Klassen, rassen, leeftijden... en geloofsovertuigingen ook? Want dat is nog iets, allicht kan de PVDA+ haar goedkeuren van de hoofddoek toelichten? Karima Amaliki, verkozen voor de PVDA+ in de Antwerpse districtsraad, draagt immers een hoofddoek. Geen probleem wat mij betreft, het valt zelfs feministisch te verantwoorden voor wie de redenering een beetje kent.

Maar die redenering is wel niet meer zo genderneutraal als men zou willen, de abrahamitische religies kan je maar zo ver relativeren. Wil de PVDA+ zich dan ondertussen dus even verantwoorden voor haar steun aan Pussy Riot en FEMEN? En neen, die steun vind je niet zo zeer terug op de site van de PVDA+, daar moet je al flink zoeken, maar elke satelliet- en randorganisatie van de PVDA+ heeft het afgelopen jaar al meermaals haar liefde verklaard voor de dolle mina's (AFF, Occupy, DWM, Apache...)

We trekken de kwestie wat verder open. De PVDA+ haar contacten met Iraanse moedjahedeen doen wel vragen stellen wanneer je bedenkt dat de bannelingen van de Iraanse Communistische Partij in Zweden een eigen FEMEN-actie op poten stellen. Wil mevrouw Maliki (overigens een vaak sji'itische achternaam) haar commentaar eens geven bij de uitspraken van haar ideologische zusters, uitspraken zoals:

"Neen tegen de hidjab" (Anke Vandermeersch, jou werd niets gevraagd!)

"Mijn naaktheid is mijn protest" (Was dat de hidjab daarnet nog niet?)

"In de historische strijd van 'vrouw VS islam' zal de vrouw winnen" (PVDA+ & Dewinter: één front!)

Het bleef in deze optiek immers al langer opvallend stil bij de PVDA+ omtrent Syrië (ondanks de verklaringen van de Internationale waar zij deel van uitmaakt). Dat Syrië staat of valt bij de steun van Iran, is zeker. Dat de PVDA+ het niet zo op Iran heeft en daarom al decennia met de marxistische moedjahedeen optrekt, dat ook. Dat commercieel en valselijk feminisme een instrument is om het regime van Iran onderuit te halen sinds de mislukte Groene Revolutie... Tja, waar ben je dan nog mee bezig?

Nog eentje, Nadia El Fani, Tunesische communistische cineaste met de film "Laïcité Inchallah" ("Secularisme in naam van Allah") op haar naam. Vandaag mogen wij ons aan een documentaire van haar over FEMEN verwachten, dit keer in samenwerking met Caroline Fourest en onder de wel heel feministische titel "nos seins, nos armes" ("onze borsten, onze wapens"). In Tunesië zelf moet zij haar gezicht al langer niet meer laten zien (allicht nog wel in boerka, oh snap), maar ook hier de vraag: helpt dit de rechten van de vrouwen vooruit, of mag dit in het licht van de recentelijk heropgeflakkerde politieke trubbels gezien worden? De onlangs vermoordde Tunesisiche oppositieleider Chokri was immers communist.

Dus de centrale vraag wordt in dit geval: hoe ernstig kan je de PVDA+ nemen wat betreft haar progressieve strijd in het licht van de onvermijdelijke geopolitieke implicaties? De vraagstukken en internationale verhoudingen zijn niet meer die van de Koude Oorlog, het lijkt mij dat communisten en aanverwanten of de boot missen of de kar van Westers imperialisme trekken met hun culturele revolutie.

Onvermijdelijk.

Dus als u toevallig iemand deze week in de naam van het feminisme tegenkomt, dan weet u wat het (hem/haar is vast seksistisch) te vragen.

mardi, 12 février 2013

Feminism: The Goddess That Fails

Feminism: The Goddess That Fails

By Becky Kevorkian

Ex: http://www.attackthesystem.com/

 

sad-goddess

 

Despite what they would like you to believe, feminists are not for “equality”, they are for the special interests of women specifically, while ignoring very real instances of inequalities against men. If feminists were truly a group oriented toward supporting equality for all, they would focus their message on the empowerment of personal accomplishment rather than trying to convince the world of the demonic, oppressive nature of men while engaging in selective brainwashing propaganda targeting not only men to degrade their accomplishments, but towards the women who are not feeling the imaginary sting of male dominance. Theirs is not a message of empowerment and equality, but rather of guilt, shame, and demands of respect without merit.

The argument addressing the statistics of lower pay for women is a beloved argument of feminists to illustrate the ongoing oppressions of first world women. There are so many reasons why that statistic may be correct, but if you go deeper and more detailed into fields of study, gender specific interests, etc, it really depends on the occupation.

…there is some evidence that men are discriminated against in female-dominated jobs. A 2010 study found that men were less likely to be called for an interview in fields with 65% or more female workers, an attitude which may be reflected in wages. Employment researcher Laurence Shatkin, author of 2011 Career Plan, says that discrimination or feelings of not fitting in could cause higher turnover rates among men in these jobs, which wouldn’t allow them to gain seniority and would negatively affect wages.

-http://www.forbes.com/sites/jennagoudreau/2011/03/14/jobs-where-women-earn-more-than-men/

No doubt, this is not a quote many will see in feminist articles. In any case, what is the ultimate end result of demanding salary “equality”? That hopefully one day a salary will no longer be a private contract between employer and employee, but public knowledge so each employee can see what the other makes, and everyone will make the same regardless of effort brought to the table?

In the instance of “millennial” women, who don’t feel oppressed to start with, feminists make the concentrated effort to tell women what they should be feeling, or that they’re too blind to see that they should be feeling oppressed.

But progress has given some young women grounds to dismiss feminism’s necessity, Bacchetta said: “We have a long way to go, and the idea that things are OK, that people aren’t thinking about it because they feel like their lives are OK, is also a part of the problem.” -http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/09/living/millennials-feminism/index.html

Millennial women just can’t see the injustices, right? The major milestones of equality have been achieved and now that we’re on a level playing field in a world that is actually quite dog-eat-dog and competitive, we have to bitch about how competitive it is (because of men) and band together for support because we’re too weak to compete alone? Feeling “OK” with one’s place in their occupation, feeling satisfied with one’s accomplishments, and that one is being justly rewarded for those accomplishments is “part of the problem”. Essentially women who feel the need to not declare the “masculine dominated society” in which they are able to excel as the obstacle causing their shortcomings are too stupid to contribute to the successes of other women who do blame men for their shortcomings. This is an assertion that is nothing more than a guilt tripping tactic used to shame well adjusted women into participating in the feminist charade against men.

Feeling accomplished and reasonably competitive on our own merit isn’t enough, we have to feel oppressed, or look into every nook and cranny for some gender norm accusation for whatever scratches we’ve suffered on the way to our successes. Our failures are because of men. Our struggles are because of men. We’re women because of our fathers, too, studies show. We were inadvertently doomed to a life of servitude and the lesser of the sexes at our conception – because of men. IF WE ARE successful, it is not because of our own hard work, but because of feminism.

What I wish more of the so-called “equality” minded feminists preached, is the truth about what is actually liberating: Taking responsibility for your own freedom and equality, as an individual. When you stop trying to blame someone else for any shortcomings- be it salary, economic position, family dynamic, etc – and take hold of your own direction, that is when you will feel free and accomplished.

This assertion is NOT acceptance of the status quo, nor acceptance of real instances of oppression. It’s taking personal responsibility. Yipping at someone’s heels demanding respect is not accomplished any better if you get more people to help you yip. Respect is not genuine if it’s done UNDER DURESS. That is what the majority of feminists do: they demand “equality” under threat of duress- legal complications, protesting, inducing guilt, etc. The resulting “respect” is not because of any actual accomplishment of productivity, by outshining a competitor as an individual, but rather one of reluctance and guilt. It’s not real.

Becky Kervokian

00:05 Publié dans Sociologie | Lien permanent | Commentaires (0) | Tags : féminisme | |  del.icio.us | | Digg! Digg |  Facebook

mardi, 24 janvier 2012

How the British Constructed a New Woman’s Movement

How the British Constructed a New Woman’s Movement

A Book Review of Feminine Fascism

 

Julie V. Gottlieb
Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain’s Fascist Movement, 1923-1945
New York: I.B. Tauris, 2003.

“Feminine fascism” is a phrase that Julie V. Gottlieb uses to describe the forward-thinking, yet traditionally influenced, ideology embraced by Britain’s fascists. Their objective was not a return to the past, to a time when women were solely mothers and homemakers. Instead, the fascists in England combined traditional roles with the advances made in women’s suffrage and the workplace, and added a fascist bent of discipline and integrity.

Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain’s Fascist Movement is a chronological account of fascism in Britain, starting in 1923 with the country’s first fascist group, the British Fascisti, founded by Rotha Lintorn-Orman, a woman. The BF remained the predominant fascist organization until Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BU) was established in 1932. Feminine Fascism discusses the role of women in these two groups, details the unique form of feminism embraced by members, and ends with an account of the internment and trials of women fascists during World War II. The last quarter of the book provides brief biographies of the many women in fascist Britain.

Gottlieb, a senior lecturer in history at the University of Sheffield, has trouble wrapping her head around what attracted so many women to fascism, especially those who had campaigned for women’s suffrage. How could women embrace such seemingly different ideologies: women’s rights, on the one hand, and anti-democracy on the other? The answer is that fascism offered women the best of both worlds.

Britain’s fascists encouraged women to be traditional in many areas. Motherhood was valued and respected, as was homemaking. In fact, the Corporate State would include a Home Corporation, in which homemakers would have representation just like any other trade. An article in The Blackshirt explained, “only when women represent women will womankind attain its rightful influence.”

A primary goal of the fascist platform was allowing women to once again be homemakers, but they used forward-thinking methods to advance their ideology. Many British women were essentially forced into the workplace due to wage variances between the sexes. Employers preferred less costly female employees, which pushed many men out of jobs. All too many families experienced the trials of having a working mother, with the father at home tending the house and children, unable to secure a decent wage. The fascists knew that in the modern world, a platform that appeared to regress women’s rights would hold no sway. Thus, they supported equal wages for women, since equal pay would mean that more men could return to the workforce. As explained by Fascist Week:

Under Fascism women will not be compelled to resign, but encouraged to do so by the fact that, under Corporate State and the scientific methods of raising real wages, men will be able to afford to marry women—and women will not be compelled to earn their own living as they are at present. (125)

However, the fascists never insisted that career-minded women remain at home, recognizing that there were not only occupations suited to women, but also situations in which women would desire a career and need equal pay. Rosalind Raby, for example, claimed that fascism would allow the unmarried mother “to earn an honest living for herself and her child.”

March_2

But the biggest innovation in British fascism was its emphasis on character. Men were encouraged to have values of courage, strength, honour, and integrity. The aristocracy of money and class would be replaced in the Corporate State with a meritocracy. Likewise, British fascism presented an alternate form of femininity: one that included strength, courage, and fearlessness. During marches, women were not permitted to wear lipstick or wave at friends as if in a beauty pageant. These feminine fascists were described as healthy, attractive, charming, intelligent, and of strong character. They were motherly, but as wary of sentimentality as Julius Evola. A male writer described the women Blackshirts:

Nothing silly or soft about these women. They are nothing if not practical . . . and the happy carefree way in which they made themselves at home, was so refreshing after one has had their fill of the simpering little brats that democracy and Jewish films have produced. (95)

The combination of traditional and modern was seen in the BU women’s uniform of: a black blouse, grey skirt, and black beret. It was against regulations for women to wear trousers while on active duty.

Integrating Fascism into Everyday Life

 

British fascists grew in numbers, in part because they didn’t relegate their philosophy to just the political sphere, but participated in almost every aspect of members’ lives. Weddings included fascist regalia, and at some funerals a fascist flag was draped over the coffin. The Fascist Week printed the names of wedding guests just like the society pages of The Times.

wedding

Members of the BF organized Fascist Children’s Clubs, in which children were taught history, songs, patriotism, and given awards for homework. Other women had brooches designed with the BU lightning symbol, and made dolls dressed in the blackshirt for children. There also was a BU Women’s Choir. According to Gottlieb:

By celebrating each phase of life within a fascist framework, the BF in fact appropriated the functions once carried out by the Church and this substantiated their claim . . . that fascism was akin to a religion. (28)

In addition to the accolades given to real women, there were fascist heroines as well. The most notable was Queen Elizabeth, for her command of the nation and exemplary oratory skills. Another heroine was Lady Hester Stanhope, who worked as a housekeeper before traveling through the Middle East. E. D. Hart wrote:

Those women who, whether from choice or, as in the case of Lady Hester, from necessity, explore other walks of life, will find both assistance and encouragement. When, like her, they display the Fascist virtues of courage, self-reliance, and tenacity of purpose, we ascribe to them the honour which is their due. (97)

Blackshirts also banded together to disparage several less attractive types of women. One was the feminist with mannish, short hair, called the “bleating Bloomsbury.” Another was the “Mayfair Parasite,” who usurped the nation’s wealth and vitality by sleeping late and devoting her life to superficial pleasures. Being fit and healthy was considered a moral duty, for as one writer put it: “Far too many women consider it their privilege to be ill . . . just ill enough to pamper themselves and evade their share of the family work.” Communists often were referred to as “submen” and “subwomen.” Titled women did not escape criticism either. Those who earned money by advertising products were publicly chastised by BU members for degrading both themselves and their class.

Women’s Duties in Fascist Organizations

Women were involved in almost every area of Britain’s fascist groups, and made up about 25 percent of the membership. The Women’s Section of the BU was established in March 1933, under the leadership of Lady Maud Mosley. She said, “When my son married Lady Cynthia [Mosley’s first wife], she took her place by his side. Now she is dead and there must be someone to help him in this work and I am going to do my best to fill the gap” (52).

Mosley’s second wife, Diana, and her sister Unity Valkyrie Mitford became two of the best-known female fascists, but Feminine Fascism only lightly touches on their stories. Their aristocratic parents were extremely Right-wing and anti-Semitic, but when the 2nd Baron Redesdale supported England during the war, he and his Nazi-sympathizing wife permanently separated.

Diana_MitfordDiana was married to Bryan Guinness when she met Mosley, and soon became his mistress. Mosley’s wife died suddenly of peritonitis in 1933 (though he was plagued the rest of his life that infidelities and political stress might have been the cause). Mosley and Diana were married at the home of Joseph Goebbels in 1936, with Hitler as guest of honor.

Unity debuted the same year her older sister became Mosley’s mistress. The next year, Diana and Unity went to the 1933 Nuremberg Rally as part of the BU delegation, and saw Hitler for the first time. Unity returned to Germany the following year, eating at the same restaurant as the Führer for 10 months, until he finally asked her over. Unity wrote to her father of their meeting: “I am so happy that I wouldn’t mind a bit, dying. I'd suppose I am the luckiest girl in the world. For me he is the greatest man of all time.” Hitler, in turn, described Unity as “a perfect specimen of Aryan womanhood.” Their affections might have escalated, if not for a suicide attempt by Hitler’s mistress, Eva Braun. Though in love with Hitler, Unity devoted herself to making speeches, writing letters, distributing propaganda, and being one of Hitler’s intimate confidantes. On September 3, 1939, the day Britain declared war on Germany, Unity took a pearl-handled pistol (a gift from Hitler for protection) and shot herself in the head, unable to bear the thought of the two countries she loved at war. She survived and was eventually able to walk again, but never recovered her full mental capabilities.

While Unity was helping the cause on the continent, women Blackshirts in England spoke at meetings, organized children’s groups, sold newspapers, and participated in marches and canvassing. Study groups about fascism were established for women speakers, and women participated in public debates. But women did not forsake their traditional duties either: One woman reported that it was the fair sex who kept the BU headquarters clean and brewed tea for the men. Members who did not give five nights a week to the movement were denied the privilege of wearing the coveted blackshirt.

A relatively large number of women participated in local elections. In 1936, the BU ran 10 women candidates (10 percent of their parliamentary candidates), from a variety of backgrounds. (Six were unmarried, five were professionals, three were in their 20s, and two were from gentry families.) The various women received between 15 and 23 percent of the votes in their respective districts.

speaking

Women’s most valuable talents were said to be in public speaking, and numerous BU women were praised for their excellent oration and ability to move crowds. Other women were lauded for their ability to use personal stories in their speeches, which proved more powerful than simple recitations of facts. During a 1936–37 campaign, women decided to censor their speeches for tactical advantage. No speaker was allowed to use the word “Jew.” Instead, plain-clothed members were scattered throughout the audience to use the word instead, as the message was thought to be more rousing if coming from the public.

Women had roles to play in security and self-defense as well. Female members of several organizations were trained in ju-jitsu, for as Fascist Week reported, “no male member of the BU is permitted to use force upon any woman, and women Reds often form a highly noisy and razor-carrying section at fascist meetings. Thus we counter women with women” (66).

The Fallout During the War

As early as 1938, a division of MI5 was formed to place agents in subversive organizations. Three women agents provocateurs successfully infiltrated the popular fascist group, Captain Ramsay’s Right Club. After Britain entered WWII, the country started to resemble a totalitarian dystopia for fascist sympathizers. In October 1939, Anne Brock Griggs was charged with “insulting words and disturbing the peace” for saying in a speech: “If Germans don’t like Hitler they can get rid of him themselves. We do not need to send our sons to fight them. If ever a country wants a revolution now it is Great Britain” (236). She quit her BU post, but was still interned during the war.

Defense Regulation 18B(1A) went into effect in September 1939, and it allowed the Home Secretary to detain anyone suspected of being a threat to national security. That category included anyone who was a leader or member in a group that might be under foreign influence. Under 18B, 1,826 people were interned, including 747 BU members (96 of them women).

Sir Oswald Mosley was arrested in May 1940, the day after the Defense Regulations were passed. The BU was outlawed in June, and his second wife, Diana, was interned shortly after. She was denounced by both her sister Nancy (later a famous novelist and biographer) and her former father-in-law, and had to leave without her 11-week-old, still-nursing baby boy. Although the English public called for Unity Mitford to be interned as a traitor, she was allowed to return to the family home with her mother, since she was weak from her suicide attempt.

Interned women were given no special treatment in prison. When Miss L. M. Reeve was arrested, a group of armed guards came to take her from her home. One officer asked if he could have her dog, since she was “probably about to be shot.” One woman’s infant died while staying with her in prison, and another woman’s infant was pulled from her arms and placed in an institution. Part of the evidence against another woman was a photograph of her on vacation in Germany in 1939, seated at a table with bottles of German wine.

Fascists on the outside, though their organizations were banned, were still able to help their comrades via a registered charity founded specifically to help those interned under 18B. The charity helped pay for legal and medical services, provided assistance to detainees’ families, provided post-release counseling, and helped people find employment. Trials could only be held for those who could be charged with a tangible offense, so many men and women fascists were imprisoned for years.

The Impact of Feminine Fascism

 

The much-anticipated Corporate State never became a reality, and its philosophies and ideas were forced to the margins of history. Yet the lessons that can be learned from the events detailed in Feminine Fascism remain relevant to the leaders of future generations.

Eighty years ago, the fascists recognized that it would be impossible to shed the gains made in women’s rights. Rather than fighting against women’s “emancipation,” with which they ideologically disagreed, the fascists used it to their advantage. The result was a philosophy for women that honored the traditional, yet considered the needs of modern women. Fascists didn’t need to force women into the home or sell them on an ideology that contradicted the propaganda of the modern world; they realized that the moment women didn’t have to work the majority of mothers would return gladly to full-time homemaking. And given the precarious nature of homemaking as a profession, they planned ways for women to have representation and security in the Corporate State. The result was a platform that united women of various political persuasions, ages, and classes. Because it details the fascists’ unique outlook and strategy, Feminine Fascism makes a relevant handbook for those looking to learn from the successes and failures of history.

mercredi, 28 septembre 2011

Absolute Woman: A Clarification of Evola’s Thoughts on Women

Absolute Woman:
A Clarification of Evola’s Thoughts on Women

By Amanda BRADLEY

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com/

evola08.jpgOne of the central concepts of Julius Evola’s philosophy of gender is the distinction between absolute man and absolute woman. But he seldom gives explicit definitions of these terms. Absolute man and woman can be likened to Platonic Forms, thus defining them can be as difficult as defining Justice, Truth, or Love.

The term “absolute woman” inspires more controversy than “absolute man.” Since the male principle is associated with light, goodness, and activity, whereas the female principle is associated with darkness, evil, and passivity, feminists can easily claim that Evola’s views are inherently misogynist. Another point of controversy is Otto Weininger’s influence on Evola. Evola himself admits that Weininger must be read critically due to “his unconscious misogynous complex” (Julius Evola, Eros and the Mysteries of Love: The Metaphysics of Sex [Rochester, Vermont.: Inner Traditions, 1991], 157–58).

It is important to address Evola’s writings on women so that his views are correctly understood. Since he was opposed to the emerging feminism of his day, it would be easy for those unfamiliar with his ideas to infer that Evola also was anti-woman. By explaining his views and not glossing over any points that do in fact sound misogynistic (as is the case with some Evola devotees) the New Right can set the terms of discourse and accurately elucidate his position.

Evola on the Composition of Human Beings

The simplest definition of “absolute woman” is the female principle, the feminine force of the universe. Individual men and woman have varying degrees of the absolute man and woman, although the feminine principle usually is the underlying force in women.

In the modern world (the Kali Yuga) these forces appear in more degenerate forms and also do not always manifest properly. In fact, Evola said that “cases of full sexual development are seldom found. Almost every man bears some traces of femininity and every woman residues of masculinity . . . the traits that we deemed typical for the female psyche can be found in man as well as women, particularly in regressive phases of a civilization” (Eros, 169). In addition, these “manifest differently depending on the race and type of civilization” (Eros, 168).

To understand the influence of the “absolute woman,” it is first necessary to understand Evola’s conception of the human being. He held that humans are comprised of three parts:

  1. the outer individual (the personality, or ego).
  2. the level of profound being, the site of the principium individuationis. This is the true “face” of a person as opposed to the mask of the ego.
  3. the level of elementary forces that are “superior and prior to the individuation but acting as the ultimate seat of the individual.” (Eros, 36)

It is at the third level, that of elementary forces, where sexual attraction is aroused (Eros, 36). Thus it is here that the elementary forces that comprise the absolute man or woman are located. This matches Evola’s description of some modern women, who are able to develop “masculine” skills such as logic or intellectualism. He says they have done so “by way of a layer placed on top of [their] deepest nature” (Eros, 151–52). However, they have not succeeded in altering their fundamental nature, only their superficial personalities.

A Metaphysical Starting-Point for Male and Female

According to Traditional doctrines, the sexes were metaphysical forces before they manifested in the world. Absolute man and woman exist from the beginning of time, when the Universal One splits into a Dyad, which then causes the rest of creation. In most forms of Hinduism, Shiva, the male principle, is identified with pure Being. Shakti, the female principle, is identified with Becoming and Change. In a similar vein, Aristotle associated the male principle with form and the female with matter. According to Evola, form means “the power that determines and arouses the principle of motion, development, becoming” while matter means “the substance or power that, being devoid of form in itself, can take up any form, and which in itself is nothing but can become everything when it has been awakened and fecundated” (Eros, 118). In the Far Eastern tradition, yang (the male principle) is associates with heaven, while yin (the female principle) is associated with the earth (Julius Evola, Revolt Against the Modern World, trans. Guido Stucco [Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions: 1995], 157.).Thus, form and matter combined to create the manifested universe. And from the coitus of Shiva and Shakti “springs the world” (Eros, 122). (This is in contrast to Oswald Spengler, who believed that becoming was the essential element, rather than steadfast being.)

The male principle is associated with truth, light, the Sun, virility, activeness, and stability. Sometimes it is associated with the Universal One that existed before the Dyad. The female quality is associated with deception, changeability, the moon, the earth, darkness, wetness, passivity, and dependence on another. In Evola’s words:

What the Greeks called “heterity,” that is, being connected to another or being centered on someone other than oneself, is a characteristic proper to the cosmic female, whereas to have one’s own principle in oneself is proper to the pure male. . . . female life is almost always devoid of an individual value but is linked to someone else in her need, born of vanity, to be acknowledged, noticed, flattered, admired, and desired (this extroverted tendency is connected to that “looking outside” which on a metaphysical level has been attributed to Shakti). (Eros, 157)

These forces then manifest in actual men and women. But Evola is clear to maintain that absolute man and woman are not simply aspects of character. Instead, they are “objective elements working in individuals almost as impersonally as the chemical properties inherent in a particular substance” (Eros, 152). As Evola says:

before and besides existing in the body, sex exists in the soul and, to a certain extent, in the spirit itself. We are man or woman inwardly before being so externally; the primordial male or female quality penetrates and saturates the whole of our being visibly and invisibly . . . just as a color permeates a liquid. (Eros, 32)

As such, the absolute woman is not simply an idealized concept of woman. She is defined from the divine down to the human, and is not a human conception of something divine.

Evola’s Description of Absolute Woman

The absolute woman is the rod by which all women are to be measured. Evola writes, “the only thing we can do is establish the superiority or inferiority of a given woman on the basis of her being more of less close to the female type, to the pure and absolute woman, and the same thing applies to man as well” (Eros, 34). In addition, superiority is defined by how closely one realizes the absolute woman or man. “A woman who is perfectly woman is superior to a man who is imperfectly man, just as a farmer who is faithful to his land and performs his work perfectly is superior to a king who cannot do his own work,” says Evola (Eros, 34).

Many more characteristics are associated with the female principle than those described below; however, these are the primary ones highlighted by Evola in his writings on the subject.

The Waters and Changeability

The fundamental feminine characteristic is changeability. Thus, the female is associated with water, which is fluid, and adapts to whatever form it is put into, just as matter/Shakti is shaped by form/Shiva. Evola writes that woman “reflects the cosmic female according to its aspect as material receiving a form that is external to her and that she does not produce from within” (Eros, 153). This fits in with Carl Jung’s description of woman’s animus, which is not self-created, but instead is a subconscious collection of the thoughts of men.

This changeability is related to woman’s tendency to live for someone outside of herself, due to the fluidity and changeability of her nature. For Evola, this means following the path of a mother or lover, fixing herself to a virile force in order to obtain transcendence. In contrast, “modern woman in wanting to be for herself has destroyed herself” (Revolt, 165.). By believing that she is merely her personality, she loses her transcendent aspect.

This changeability is seen in the association of the female with water. According to Evola, water represents “undifferentiated life prior to and not yet fixed in form,” that “which runs or flows and is therefore unstable and changeable,” and “the principle of all fertility and growth according to the analogy of water’s fertilizing action on earth and soil” (Eros, 119).

Evola also describes the correct relationship between the principle of water and that of fire, associated with the male: “when the feminine principle, whose force is centrifugal, does no turn to fleeting objects but rather to a ‘virile’ stability in which she finds a limit to her ‘restlessness’” (Revolt, 158).

Evola assents that certain modern women may appear very unchangeable, but stresses that this is at an outer level of her being:

a possible rigidity may follow the reception of ideas due precisely to the passive way she has adopted them, which may appear under the guise of conformity and conservatism. In this way, we can explain the apparent contrast inherent in the fact that female nature is changeable, yet women mainly show conservative tendencies sociologically and a dislike for the new. This can be linked to their role in mythology as female figures of a Demeter or chthonic type who guard and avenge customs and the law—the law of blood and of the earth, but not the uranic law. (Eros, 153)

Thus, a woman may be quite unchanging in her beliefs about society, etiquette, and morality, but will lack an attachment to a transcendent truth. Many of women’s ideas regarding social truths such as honor and virtue are “not true ethics but mere habits,” Evola says (Eros, 155).

This changeability of women explains the notion that women are at the same time more compassionate and more cruel than men; as woman is associated with the earth, she expresses both the tenderness of the mother and the cruelty of nature. The best example of this duality is the Greek goddess Artemis, who was both the protector of wild animals and the huntress.

Woman’s Lack of Being or Soul

Perhaps the most controversial characteristic of Evola’s absolute woman, which he gets from Weininger, is a common conception throughout history: that woman has no soul, or being. Weininger states that woman has no ego, referring to the Transcendental Ego of Immanuel Kant, which Evola describes as “above the whole world of phenomena (in metaphysical terms one would say ‘above all manifestation,’ like the Hindu atman)” (Eros, 151). In some schools of Hinduism, the atman (or “higher self”) is identical with the Brahman, the infinite soul of the Universe. In other Hindu conceptions, the atman is the life-principle. As manifested existence would be impossible without the atman, this description of woman as lacking a Transcendental Ego should not be taken to mean that women are incapable of developing and solidifying this aspect, though they may be at a disadvantage to men. Also, in the Kali Yuga, all people are the furthest removed from the divine, so modern men and women are likely in the same starting position in terms of development of Being.

Evola expands on the notion, stating that if soul means “psyche” or “principle of life,” then “it should signify in fact that woman not only has a soul but is eminently ‘soul,’” whereas man is not a soul but a “spirit.” He continues: “the point we believe settled is that woman is a part of ‘nature’ (in a metaphysical sense she is a manifestation of the same principle as nature) and that she affirms nature, whereas man by virtue of birth in the masculine human form goes tendentially beyond nature” (Eros, 151).

Deception and a Connection to Truth

Another attribute of absolute woman is deceitfulness. In fact, Evola states that it is so essential that telling lies has been acknowledged as an essential characteristic in female nature “at all times and in all places by popular wisdom” (Eros, 155). According to Weininger, this tendency is due to her lack of being. With no fixed essence, most women (and modern men) are attached to no transcendent truth, and therefore there is nothing to lie against—Truth only exists when one has substance and values. In Evola’s words:

Weininger observed that nothing is more baffling for a man than a woman’s response when caught in a lie. When asked why she is lying, she is unable to understand the question, acts astonished, bursts out crying, or seeks to pacify him by smiling. She cannot understand the ethical and transcendent side of lying or the fact that a lie represents damage to being and, as was acknowledged in ancient Iran, constitutes a crime even worse than killing. . . . The truth, pure and simple, is that woman is prone to lie and to disguise her true self even when she has no need to do so; this is not a social trait acquired in the struggle for existence, but something linked to her deepest and most genuine nature. (Eros, 155)

This quality of deceitfulness, while springing from the fundamental makeup of women, should not imply that it must be accepted as a given trait of all women, as some of Weininger’s writings imply. For, just like man, the ultimate goal of a woman’s existence is to connect with and live by the transcendent, which requires a fixation that cannot accept deception.

Woman’s Intuition, Man’s Ethics and Logic

Another idea Evola gets from Weininger is the notion that absolute woman, since she lacks being, also lacks memory, logic, and ethics (Eros, 154). In order to explain this, Evola distinguishes between two kinds of logic: everyday logic, which women can use quite successfully (though sometimes like a “sophist”) and “logic as a love of pure truth and inward coherence” (Eros, 154). This distinction can most commonly be seen when women use logic in arguments as a means to personal ends, rather than to arrive at a truth beyond their desires. Evola writes that

woman, insofar as she is woman, will never know ethics in the categorical sense of pure inner law detached from every empirical, eudemonistic, sensitive, sentimental, and personal connection. Nothing in woman that may have an ethical character can be separated from instinct, sentiment, sexuality, of “life”; it can have no relationship with pure “being.”

Women’s primary tool of cognition is not logic but intuition and sensitivity (Eros, 154).

In explaining memory, Evola turns to Henri Bergson, who described two types of memory. One is more common in women: the memory connected to the subconscious, which may remember dreams, have premonitions, and unexpectedly recall forgotten experiences. The second type of memory, which women lack due to their fluid nature, is “determined, organized, and dominated by the intellect” (Eros, 154).

The Female Principle as Powerful, Sovereign, and Active

Generally the female principle is described as passive, and the male as active. According to Evola, this only is true on the outermost plane. On the subtle plane, he says, “it is the woman who is active and the man who is passive (the woman is ‘actively passive’ and the man ‘passively active’)” (Eros, 167–68). In Hindu terms the impassible spirit (purusa) is masculine, while the active matrix of every conditioned form (prakriti) is feminine (Revolt, 157). Thus, to use the creation of a child as an example, man gives his seed, but it is woman who actively creates and gives birth to the child.

Mythology supports the sovereign aspect of woman. Evola gives the examples of the Earth goddess Cybele drawn in a chariot led by two tame tigers, and the Hindu goddess Durga seated on a lion with reins in her hands (Eros, 167). Evola states that man knows of this sovereign quality in women, and “often owing to a neurotic unconscious overcompensation for his inferiority complex, he flaunts before woman an ostentatious manliness, indifference, or even brutality and disdain. But this secures him the advantage, on the contrary. The fact that woman often becomes a victim on an external, material, sentimental, or social level, giving rise to her instinctive ‘fear of loving,’ does not alter the fundamental structure of the situation” (Eros, 167).

 

Association with the Demonic and Aspiration

Another “negative” quality of the absolute woman is that of aspiration, in the sense of a sucking quality, which also is associated with the demonic. On a profane level, in a degenerate form, this could be the woman who is constantly demanding more from her husband and others—more time spent together, a better car, a bigger house, or more attention. Since she has no “soul” (as defined above), she must fill the void within herself by sucking the vital force from others in emotional, monetary, or temporal vampirism.

On a metaphysical level, this quality merely refers to the divine female, Shakti, pulling Shiva into the world of manifestation. Thus, it is not good or bad, except for Gnostics or other sects who believe the created world to be evil. As Evola states, woman “is oriented toward keeping that order which Gnosticism, in a dualistic background, called the ‘world of the Demiurge,’ the world of nature as opposed to that of the spirit” (Eros, 141). This demonic element is expressed in actual life when women draw men to the realm of earth, nature, and children. It is expressed in sex when man’s seed being draw into the woman, creating a child bound by nature. “Although ‘woman’ can give life,” Evola writes, “yet she shuts off or tends to shut off access to that which is beyond life” (Eros, 142).

In some Eastern thought, the man’s seed is thought to be the spiritual manhood—hence the formation of sects that teach men to retain this force to attain liberation rather than wasting it through ejaculation. Women properly trained are said to be able to capture this essence during sex, thus seducing the man into giving up his manhood.

The positive aspect of this trait lies in woman’s ability to overcome it, most often by following the path of the mother or lover. In the actions required by these paths (if following them in an attitude of self-sacrifice and not self-aggrandizement), she no longer drains others, but instead learns to build up a vital force within herself through renunciation of desires. By relinquishing the control of the ego/personality by instead being devoted to others, woman is able to fix herself to the transcendent.

Like the other qualities of absolute woman, that of aspiration also can be found in man, especially in the Kali Yuga. Evola refers to sexual practices found in Chinese Taoism, India, and Tibet, where the man sucks the vital female energy from a woman during sex, a technique he describes as bordering on “male ‘psychic’ vampirism” (Eros, 249).

 

The Value of Absolute Woman in the Modern World

In the Golden Age, we can imagine that the metaphysical elements comprising a person manifested in the proper way. In such a time, the highest classes gave birth to the highest people; race was indicative of a corresponding inner quality; beauty on the outside attested to an inner beauty; and physical gender aligned with the qualities of absolute man or woman.

But in the Kali Yuga, there are pariahs in the highest classes, men who act like women, and men of Aryan stock who do not embody any of the virtues attributed to their race. As Evola says, it is possible for a person to be a different sex in the body than they are in the soul. These cases are similar to those where individuals of one race “have the psychic and spiritual characteristics of another race”(Eros, 34).

Therefore, men today may not innately possess any virile seed, just as modern women do not necessarily express the absolute female principle. In reading Evola’s work, then, we must not mistakenly interpret what he says about absolute man or woman as corresponding with individual men and women of today. Modern men and women are almost completely removed from the deepest aspects of themselves, functioning only as personalities. Thus, a person’s sex or caste has little importance in determining vocations or social relations. What relevance, then, do Evola’s descriptions of absolute man and woman have in the modern world?

An answer is found in the existential Angst that defined the twentieth century. Martin Heidegger wrote of the inauthentic life, and Jean-Paul Sartre of bad faith; most people today still fit the description of mere personalities, lacking divine connections or the means to find them. In a world that has lost its values and connection to Tradition, discovering these principles in our innermost natures becomes even more important. By examining Evola’s work, and that of other Traditionalists, we can find our way back to our true selves, the true relation between the sexes, and a connection to the transcendent.


Article printed from Counter-Currents Publishing: http://www.counter-currents.com

vendredi, 25 mars 2011

Futurismo: Valentine de Saint-Point molto futurista, poco femminista

Futurismo: Valentine de Saint-Point molto futurista, poco femminista

Donna vera e genio puro, avanguardista e provocatrice fu autrice del “Manifesto delle Donne” e della “Lussuria”

Claudio Cabona

Ex: http://rinascita.eu/

valentine.jpgSe non ora quando? La donna e la sua dignità, il suo ruolo sociale. La posizione da assumere all’interno e nei confronti del sistema Italia. Dibattiti su dibattiti, manifestazioni, mobilitazioni in nome di una rinascita in gonnella, appelli infuocati al popolo rosa. Costruzione di una nuova identità femminile o starnazzo di gallinelle? La donna paragonata all’uomo, divisione fra sessi al centro di battaglie e rivendicazioni che sanciscono nuove superiorità o inferiorità?
“L’Umanità è mediocre. La maggioranza delle donne non è né superiore né inferiore alla maggioranza degli uomini. Sono uguali. Meritano entrambe lo stesso disprezzo. Nel suo insieme, l’umanità non è mai stata altro che il terreno di coltura donde sono scaturiti i geni e gli eroi dei due sessi. Ma vi sono nell’umanità, come nella natura, momenti più propizi a questa fioritura... E’ assurdo dividere l’umanità in donne e uomini. Essa è composta solo di femminilità e di mascolinità”.
La femminilità e la mascolinità sono due elementi che separano e caratterizzano i due sessi, ma che in quest’epoca moderna sembrano essersi in parte persi, lasciando spazio ad un indebolimento dell’individuo che è sempre più costruzione e non realtà.
“Un individuo esclusivamente virile non è che un bruto; un individuo esclusivamente femminile non è che una femmina.
Per le collettività, e per i diversi momenti della storia umana, vale ciò che vale per gli individui. Noi viviamo alla fine di uno di questi periodi. Ciò che più manca alle donne, come agli uomini, è la virilità. Ogni donna deve possedere non solo virtù femminili, ma qualità virili, senza le quali non è che una femmina. L’uomo che possiede solo la forza maschia, senza l’intuizione, è un bruto. Ma nella fase di femminilità in cui viviamo, soltanto l’eccesso contrario è salutare: è il bruto che va proposto a modello”.
Il rinnovamento? Una nuova donna non moralizzatrice, ma guerriera, scultrice del proprio futuro. Un cambiamento che passa attraverso una riscoperta del potenziale rivoluzionario della femminilità che non deve essere un artificio creato e voluto dall’uomo, ma una nuova alba. Non bisogna conservare, ma distruggere antiche concezioni.
”Basta le donne di cui i soldati devono temere le braccia come fiori intrecciati sulle ginocchia la mattina della partenza; basta con le donne-infermiere che prolungano all’infinito la debolezza e la vecchiezza, che addomesticano gli uomini per i loro piaceri personali o i loro bisogni materiali!... Basta con la donna piovra del focolare, i cui tentacoli dissanguano gli uomini e anemizzano i bambini; basta con le donne bestialmente innamorate, che svuotano il Desiderio fin della forza di rinnovarsi!. Le donne sono le Erinni, le Amazzoni; le Semiramidi, le Giovanne d’Arco, le Jeanne Hachette; le Giuditte e le Calotte Corday; le Cleopatre e le Messaline; le guerriere che combattono con più ferocia dei maschi, le amanti che incitano, le distruttrici che, spezzando i più deboli, agevolano la selezione attraverso l’orgoglio e la disperazione, la disperazione che dà al cuore tutto il suo rendimento”.
Non può e non deve esservi differenza fra la sensualità di una femmina, il suo essere provocante e la sua inclinazione a diventare madre, pura e cristallina. La demarcazione fra “donna angelo” e “donna lussuriosa” è puramente maschilista e priva di significato. Il passato e il futuro si incrociano nei due grandi ruoli che la donna ricopre all’interno della società: amante e procreatrice di vita. Figure diverse, ma al contempo tasselli di uno stesso mosaico.
“La lussuria è una forza, perché distrugge i deboli ed eccita i forti a spendere le energie, e quindi a rinnovarle. Ogni popolo eroico è sensuale. La donna è per lui la più esaltante dei trofei.
La donna deve essere o madre, o amante. Le vere madri saranno sempre amanti mediocri, e le amanti, madri inadeguate per eccesso. Uguali di fronte alla vita, questi due tipi di donna si completano. La madre che accoglie un bimbo, con il passato fabbrica il futuro; l’amante dispensa il desiderio, che trascina verso il futuro”.
Il sentimento e l’accondiscendenza non possono ergersi a valori centrali della vita. L’energia femminile non solo si manifesta come ostacolo, ma anche luce che illumina strade di conquista dell’umana voglia di esistere.
“La Donna che con le sue lacrime e con lo sfoggio dei sentimenti trattiene l’uomo ai suoi piedi è inferiore alla ragazza che, per vantarsene, spinge il suo uomo a mantenere, pistola in pugno, il suo arrogante dominio sui bassifondi della città; quest’ultima, per lo meno, coltiva un’energia che potrà anche servire a cause migliori”.
Queste parole, non moraliste né tanto meno prettamente femministe, non furono di una persona qualsiasi. Appartennero ad una donna sì, ma unica, che rigettò tutte le definizioni, stracciando etichette e pregiudizi. Il suo verbo, ancora oggi, nonostante la sua visione del mondo sia stata coniata nel 1912, è ancora attuale e può insegnare molto a chi si pone domande sul “mondo rosa” e non solo. Avanguardista, provocatrice e futurista. Lei fu Valentine de Saint-Point (1875-1953), autrice del “Manifesto delle Donne” e della “Lussuria”. Contribuì, come poche intellettuali nella storia, all’emancipazione della donna sia dal punto di vista dei diritti che del pensiero, partecipando anche a vari movimenti di rivendicazione. Odiava le masse, le certezze, i dettami borghesi, amava la libertà di pensiero, l’essere femmina, l’essere futuro. Concludo con l’ultima parte del manifesto, momento più alto della poetica di una delle grandi donne del ‘900. La speranza è che femmine come Valentine esistano ancora oggi, perchè l’Italia ha bisogno di loro, di voi.
”Donne, troppo a lungo sviate dai moralismi e dai pregiudizi, ritornate al vostro sublime istinto, alla violenza, alla crudeltà.
Per la fatale decima del sangue, mentre gli uomini si battono nelle guerre e nelle lotte, fate figli, e di essi, in eroico sacrificio, date al Destino la parte che gli spetta. Non allevateli per voi, cioè per sminuirli, ma nella più vasta libertà, perché il loro rigoglio sia completo.
Invece di ridurre l’uomo alla schiavitù degli squallidi bisogni sentimentali, spingete i vostri figli e i vostri uomini a superare sé stessi. Voi li avete fatti. Voi potete tutto su di loro.
All’umanità dovete degli eroi. Dateglieli”.
 


08 Marzo 2011 12:00:00 - http://rinascita.eu/index.php?action=news&id=6928