Feminist Cred – Personal Circumstances, Part #6

I see a high-profile group of folks in my Twitter feed, ex-Evangelical Christians, people raised in religious communities and who have escaped or are trying to, and I wonder, is there such a fellowship for me, for people like me?

Feminists who are losing their faith?

I shouldn’t need to defend; I’ve got credits. Look upon my efforts and tell me who walks it.

I heard it from the women in my life, what swine men are, and I believed. I tried a few misogynist things in my youth, sure. I tried calling my girlfriend “Baby” once when I was sixteen and it fell flat on me, I have never done that infantilizing stuff to a woman again. I wrote a gross attempt at an erotic poem sometime before that, with a ‘meat’ sort of analogy about girls and sex in it, which I never felt, I was trying to sound macho or something, I hope it hasn’t survived, hope I’m not still packing that around in a box somewhere.

I was married and raised two girls and did that without the use of any sort of punishment or ‘consequences,’ which meant almost never pulling rank. Everyone in my house and my family had an equal share, no private bank accounts, and I, as the man of the house, was not the final word on anything, I tried to live in a democracy. I shouted a few times, trying to make an impression, but I didn’t win the fight for it, and didn’t escalate to win, I just lost, and the house remained a mess. I was a total pussy, but not by accident. That was the plan, that was how there wasn’t going to be violence or abuse.

OK, so maybe there’s more to living the feminist dream than being a giant pussy, right? First, if that was your first impulse, I’m not the only conflicted person in this conversation. Second, when the girls grew up, when it was maybe separation time, when they needed to cut their teeth, whatever it is, when also I melted down and they decided we weren’t going to live together anymore, democracy ruled.

It may have been a tie, old adults VS young ones, but the vote went straight down gender lines. I didn’t pull any male “rank.” Three to one, I walked.

By the time it came to that I was depressed, but I had been manic, they were scared, and my begging them to talk to me was only scaring them more. As a feminist, the only option I saw was doing as they wished, going away, and staying away, I want no part of terrorizing women. I walked, and walked away from the house, they’re just starting, still in school and such, they need a house. It’s equity, not money, but there was enough extra for child support up to age twenty-five twice over in it. I hope they can borrow money if they need some.

I had set the bar too low. I got mad about a movie choice and it was over; now I’m an abuser somehow in the minds of my daughters, and I am out, alone, pensioned, and stained as a misogynist and an abuser after my life of trying so hard – not only that, any husband and father can say he tried – but after succeeding. Even my girls will admit all of this, I think, but they think I was about to go postal on them at the end there, I guess.

So. Punted by a couple of young adult fembots of my own making in the middle of a nasty breakdown, out here alone, having lost all my family and my reputation, I am losing my faith. I tried, did it all, what I thought women wanted, and it wasn’t enough, my girls are still scared, they still think I’m the enemy, what is the point of it, of any of it?

I’ll tell you one thing though.

You can criticize my life, my perceptions, my choices, call me a pussy, fine. You think you can call me a misogynist because I have a dick, I’ve already lost real people I love to that bullshit, I will block you immediately.

I started doing that a few weeks ago. Hey, just in case I start throwing the link to this at you before I block you, please, ladies, don’t figure it out yourself, you’re not alone, talk to old, experienced feminists. Some of you are fighting the wrong things for the right reasons, and you seem to be under the dangerous impression that you’re winning or something. Hating dudes is natural, status quo, right? There’s more to feminism than that.

 

Jeff

Feb. 15^th., 2018

Innocent Voices during Wartime

I don’t suppose anyone noticed or remembers few months back when I went off on several rants against Bill Maher and his friend-by-default Sam Harris? Here they are, if you like:

https://neighsayersotherstuff.wordpress.com/2014/10/05/open-letter-to-bill-maher-and-sam-harris/

https://neighsayersotherstuff.wordpress.com/2014/10/07/maher-harris-and-american-liberalism/

https://neighsayersotherstuff.wordpress.com/2014/10/14/ive-never-met-sam-harris-but/

and

https://neighsayersotherstuff.wordpress.com/2014/10/17/a-question-for-bill-maher/

(the third one makes a different point, but it was one of a sort of a series, and I hate to miss a chance to display Harris’ dangerously flawed philosophizing.)

Well, there are more high-profile examples lately, of course. When there is a war on – and there is a war on, even if it’s a largely phony one, a la 1984, between the Christian West and the Islamic East (OK, the oil-consuming West and the oil producing East, that too) – polite criticisms become rallying cries and expressions of neutrality are painted as varying degrees of treason.

Of course I’m not the first to say it about these two things, not by a country mile, the Je Suis Charlie twitterstorm and rally and now the new Clint Eastwood movie. I’m not going to spell it out, if you’re online reading this, you’ve seen it all. Suffice to say, as regards the Je Suis Charlie rally, a million people marching and some forty world leaders jumping in for the photo op, a giant-sized show of strength and determination directed at either three guys who were already dead or at an ideology (take your pick), I must ask you. Is this designed to pacify the ideological enemy? Is this peacemaking? I know you know what I think. This would be hostile propaganda if the bombs and unmanned weapons weren’t already flying.

(Note: Obama may have actually earned his Peace Prize by not attending.)

You know, I think I had better see the Eastwood film before I comment on my own behalf, but I have already read much that suggests that while it isn’t propaganda as such, it absolutely avoids any comment specific to the particular war that’s depicted. Cooper has said the ideas are universal: wars and what they do to the men who fight them, maybe that’s fair enough. Having said that . . .

Nothing is fair enough during war.

The idea that the Islam side of the current war could possibly be helped as much as the Christian side by a lot of movie-going Westerners seeing this film and its universal themes is silly. I’ve read something of the true story that the film is based on, and without spoiling it for anyone, I will suggest to you that the hero of the film is not an Islamist.

Enough said, as we used to say in the olden days, when the world was all in black and white. I don’t want to belabour the point. Just know that the war machine is waiting to use anything we say for its own ends, and it can co-opt pretty much anything.

I’ve Never Met Sam Harris, but . . .

I think I’m already over him. Plus, as collateral damage, I think my bromance with Bill Maher may be at an end too. I mean, regarding Bill, I haven’t yet committed to never watching his show again – but I deleted the scheduled recording of it from my PVR yesterday. He’s moved from my “I want to watch” list to my “I’ll only watch it if it’s on while I’m in front of the TV and it’s somehow the least stupid option, like if there’s no mixed martial arts on or something.” I’ve got a feeling that he’s lost more fans than just me over this latest Islamming (trademark!) that he’s doing. A parting bit of advice, Bill? You may want to distance yourself from Harris a little.

Now to Harris.

Mr. Harris has been taking a lot of guff since Bill’s show some eleven days ago, and from some pretty popular voices, not just internet nobodies like myself. Here’s a response he made to some of it on his blog:

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/on-the-mechanics-of-defamation#.VDsSLTPpryM.twitter

Now, before I delve into details, and before we get caught up in those particulars, I want to point out that this blog post of his is an answer to people calling him a “genocidal fascist maniac” (which even I would suggest is a little hyperbolic), but this the thing. Nothing in this post would change my mind. I’ve been having some back and forth on Twitter with a person or two, someone is telling me that the point of the passage in question, and the chapter in his book it comes from, is a philosophical one about how belief drives action, and I think they’re trying to say the statement about the war is only an example.

Which, if the passage from the book had been the end of it, while I still don’t believe that theory (that the justification of the USA killing Islamist terrorists was put forth only as a theoretical example), I might have been able to let it pass, I might have said, ‘OK, close enough, but he said it again, in this blog post that was ostensibly intended to portray him in a less maniacal light. It wasn’t a hypothetical reference; it was updated for today’s war and was very specific. I’m speaking of the last three paragraphs in the post. Here’s the new statement, same as the one that got him in trouble with actual liberals in the first place:

“It would be ethical to kill these men (he means ISIS)—once again, only if we couldn’t capture them—because of all the death and suffering they intend to cause in the future. Why do they intend this? Because of what they believe about infidels, apostates, women, paradise, prophecy, America, and so forth.”

And here’s the rest of his defense:

“ . . . nowhere in my work do I suggest that we kill harmless people for thought crimes.”

Now, the ways in which this philosophy contrasts with my own views:

The clear implication here is that Harris does think we should kill harmfulpeople for thought crimes.

Personally, I think that anyone trying to lessen both the expected duration of the Islamists’ hatred for and wish to kill Americans and also the level of violence and war in the world generally would not even advocate for killing these harmful people for actual crimes, let alone thought crimes.

I marvel at this philosopher’s self-unawareness. In advocating that we should kill harmful people for thought crimes, Mr. Harris is a faithful mirror to the very attitude he ascribes in these passages to Islamists alone, that it is justifiable and somehow helpful to kill those whose beliefs are antithetical to ours, or to our lives. By this reasoning, it must also be “ethical” for Islamists to kill Americans.

The only place this reasoning is ethical is in a very small world, a tribal situation. This is only morality to someone for whom the only moral concerns are the domination interests of his own tribe, someone for whom the death of his enemies is not a moral issue. It’s not exactly peacemaking, which, I think, by definition means the search for a larger morality, one in which a solution is sought for all parties. Of course, in geopolitics, in the new, smaller world we live in, for the more than fifty years during which nuclear war has been a real concern, the difference between war and peace affects us all. It is really in all of our interest that the morality of peacemaking be the morality we attain to.

 

And if America is, God forbid, listening to Sam Harris for moral guidance, then it seems sort of obvious what the problem is, at least from our side.