Feminism as Fascism (booklet)
This booklet is an update to my articles The New Feminism and the Philosophy of Womens Magazines and Radical Feminism and The Anti-vaccine Movement.
As I have stated several times: radical feminism is a central part of The Matrix Conspiracy, which I claim is a fascistic ideology (see the Matrix Dictionary entry The Matrix Conspiracy Fascism and my article The Difference Between Philosophical Education and Ideological Education). The Matrix Conspiracy fascism is all about a synthesizing of authority, hierarchy, race (or spiritual gender essentialism, as postulated by New Age radical feminists), eugenics, purity, unity, spirit, with reductionisms such as biologism, psychologism, sociologism and historism. “Spiritual eugenics” could be seen as the main propaganda therapy. My concept of spiritual eugenics has to do with some kind of DNA activation (there are numerous different versions); the idea that you either can change your DNA via your thoughts, or that you via your thoughts can activate what´s “hidden” in the DNA. The problem then, is of course when these thoughts are a problematic ideology. My main term for this ideology is The Matrix Conspiracy. My postulate is also that postmodernism, and all its branches (for example post-structuralism, cultural relativism and "theory"), is the intellectualism (or rather anti-intellectualism and anti-science) behind the Matrix Conspiracy as such. And here I´m not talking about what is said on the Universities. I´m talking about how it´s expressed in popular culture. Later I will explain how also social constructivism can support the idea of gender essentialism (social constructivists are normal in opposition to all kinds of essentialism) – also read my articles Anti-intellectualism and Anti-science and Constructivism: the postmodern intellectualism behind New Age and the Self-Help Industry. The spiritual gender essentialism in New Age radical feminism is about the strong, sensual, feminist message, invoking the power of the feminine, the divinity of the goddess, and the virtue of spiritual liberation. Though claiming to be non-dualistic since the feminine divine energy is the non-dualistic source behind it all, anyone can see that it is dualistic since it puts iself in opposition to the masculine. The fascistic element comes in with the difficult hidden insinuation that the femine is better and more true than the masculine, and that the masculine must be educated to realize his feminine source, even to the point of spiritual eugenics and psychotherapy. Note that many men also support this worldview. Authority? Hierarchy? Yes, the paradox is that when the New Age industry tells people, that they through self-improvement can become themselves, it opens the doors for its own built-in paradox. It promises people liberation and praises the responsible and self-leading human being – but creates at the same time people, who are dependent of continued therapeutic intervention. The more people are told, that they can treat themselves, the more they are in the risk of being made into uncritical objects for therapeutic treatment. The widespread psychologized, emotionalized and therapized belief in the hidden aspects of humans (the unconscious) has not only given humans a new way of self-creation, but also a new outer definition of new authorities (self-help consultants, practitioners, clairvoyants, channelers, spiritual teachers, identity-experts, therapists, coaches, spin doctors), who are characterized by, that they neither want to be authorities or to be looked at as authorities. People in the age of authenticity will no longer suppress others or be suppressed from the outside, they want to express others and themselves be expressed from within. But the expression doesn´t come by itself; it has to be established in a self-help process, which builds on the idea that people have a chronically authenticity-problem and therefore are in need of treatment. The New Age industry, and its belonging therapeutic techniques, thereby exposes the paradox, that the more resource-filled a human being is conceived to be, the more it has to be supported therapeutic. The more self-actualizing a human being becomes, the more it is in need of help to actualize itself. And the more responsibility a human being is said to have for its own life, the more this same human being, as a basic starting point, is considered as a victim, as non-authentic, and therefore as powerless. What is wrong with this “philosophy”? Besides the obvious distortion of science and philosophy in popular culture, then we know from history that the mix of biology and romantic religious mysticism based on idealism and feelings, is an explosive cocktail. In Hitler´s Germany in the 1930s there were developed a so-called Aryan physics, represented by, among others, Philip Lenard and Johannes Stark, which was set up as an opposition to Jewish physics, which main representative was Einstein. Einstein´s theories were consequently condemned and taken out of the physics curriculum on the universities. The deeper reason was, that the genes of the Aryans (the true Germans) and of the Jews were different, and that the thinking and perception in the two ”races” therefore also had to be different, but that the Aryan race was the true. The radical feminists of today claim something, which fundamentally seen is the same. Since women have two x-chromosomes, where men have one x- and one y-chromosome, then the female perception, thinking and picture of the world et cetera, are different from, and truer, than the masculine. The main manifest of the feminist aspect of the Matrix Conspiracy fascism is the so-called SCUM Manifesto. It is written by Valerie Solanas. Valerie Jean Solanas (April 9, 1936 – April 25, 1988) was an American radical feminist and author best known for writing the SCUM Manifesto and attempting to murder artist Andy Warhol in the late 1960s. As a teenager, she had a volatile relationship with her mother and stepfather after her parents' divorce. As a consequence, she was sent to live with her grandparents. Her alcoholic grandfather physically abused her and Solanas ran away and became homeless. She came out as a lesbian in the 1950s. She graduated with a degree in psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park. Solanas relocated to Berkeley, California. There, she began writing her most notable work, the SCUM Manifesto, which urged women to "overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex". Solanas moved to New York City in the mid-1960s, working as a writer. She met pop artist Andy Warhol and asked him to produce her play, Up Your Ass. She gave him her script, which she later accused him of losing and/or stealing, followed by Warhol expressing additional indifference to her play. After Solanas demanded financial compensation for the lost script, Warhol hired her to perform in his film, I, a Man, paying her $25. In 1967, Solanas began self-publishing the SCUM Manifesto. Olympia Press owner Maurice Girodias offered to publish Solanas's future writings, and she understood the contract to mean that Girodias would own her writing. Convinced that Girodias and Warhol were conspiring to steal her work, Solanas purchased a gun in the spring of 1968. On June 3, 1968, she went to The Factory, where she found Warhol. She shot at Warhol three times, with the first two shots missing and the final one wounding Warhol. She also shot art critic Mario Amaya, and attempted to shoot Warhol's manager, Fred Hughes, point blank, but the gun jammed. Solanas then turned herself in to the police. She was charged with attempted murder, assault, and illegal possession of a gun. She was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and pleaded guilty to "reckless assault with intent to harm", serving a three-year prison sentence, including treatment in a psychiatric hospital. After her release, she continued to promote the SCUM Manifesto. Download The SCUM Manifesto. The manifest begins with the statement: Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex. It is now technically feasible to reproduce without the aid of males (or, for that matter, females) and to produce only females. We must begin immediately to do so. Retaining the male has not even the dubious purpose of reproduction. The male is a biological accident: the Y (male) gene is an incomplete X (female) gene, that is, it has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples. So, the manifest argues that men have ruined the world, and that it is up to women to fix it (this is a statement you see everywhere in New Age, many times hidden in spiritual platitudes such as that there are too much yang in the world). To achieve this goal, it suggests the formation of SCUM, an organization dedicated to overthrowing society and eliminating the male sex (in New Age this is expressed in spiritual platitudes such as men´s spiritual transformation, or the necessity of discovering his female sides). The Manifesto is in radical feminist circles widely regarded as satirical, but based on legitimate philosophical and social concerns. I will return to this way of explaining away. The term "SCUM" appeared on the cover of the first edition from Olympia Press as "S.C.U.M." and was said to stand for "Society for Cutting Up Men". Solanas objected, insisting that it was not an acronym, although the expanded term appeared in a Village Voice ad she had written in 1967. Solanas held a series of recruitment meetings for SCUM at the Chelsea Hotel where she lived, but a decade later insisted that the organization was "just a literary device" and never really existed. The Manifesto was little-known until Solanas attempted to kill Andy Warhol in 1968. This event brought significant public attention to the Manifesto and Solanas herself. This is of course due to the aspect of Andy Warhol´s art, that whatever he do, or is done to him, is considered art. I have examined this in my pop culture file on David Bowie. While some feminists, such as Florynce Kennedy and Ti-Grace Atkinson, defended Solanas and considered the Manifesto a valid criticism of the patriarchal order, others, such as Betty Friedan, considered Solanas's views to be too radical and polarizing. It is my claim, though, that the rhetoric of the manifest is permeating the gender debate in the popular culture. The manifest is especially appealing to the rise of heterophobia. The term heterophobia is sometimes used to describe reverse discrimination or negative attitudes towards heterosexual people and opposite-sex relationships. The scientific use of heterophobia in sexology is restricted to few researchers, notably those who question Alfred Kinsey's sex research. To date, the existence or extent of heterophobia is mostly unrecognized by sexologists. Beyond sexology there is no consensus as to the meaning of the term because it is also used to mean "fear of the opposite" such as in Pierre-André Taguieff's The Force of Prejudice: On Racism and Its Doubles (2001). Referring to the debate on both meaning and use, SUNY lecturer Raymond J. Noonan, in his 1999 presentation to The Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS) and the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT) Conference, states: The term heterophobia is confusing for some people for several reasons. On the one hand, some look at it as just another of the many me-too social constructions that have arisen in the pseudoscience of victimology in recent decades. (Many of us recall John Money’s 1995 criticism of the ascendancy of victimology and its negative impact on sexual science.) Others look at the parallelism between heterophobia and homophobia, and suggest that the former trivializes the latter... For others, it is merely a curiosity or parallel-construction word game. But for others still, it is part of both the recognition and politicization of heterosexuals' cultural interests in contrast to those of gays—particularly where those interests are perceived to clash. I will argue that both the installation of the victimization culture and the #MeToo campaign are intimately related to heterophobia. In the following I explain this. If we try to go through the manifest step by step. The Manifesto opens with the following declaration: "Life" in this "society" being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of "society" being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex. Solanas begins by presenting a theory of the male as an "incomplete female" who is genetically deficient due to the Y chromosome. According to Solanas, this genetic deficiency causes the male to be emotionally limited, egocentric, and incapable of mental passion or genuine interaction. She describes the male as lacking empathy and unable to relate to anything apart from his own physical sensations. The Manifesto continues by arguing that the male spends his life attempting to become female, and thereby overcome his inferiority. He does this by "constantly seeking out, fraternizing with and trying to live through and fuse with the female." Solanas rejects Freud's theory of penis envy, and argues that men have "pussy envy". Solanas then accuses men of turning the world into a "shitpile" and presents a long list of grievances. The bulk of the Manifesto consists of a litany of grievances against the male sex. The grievances are divided into the following sections: War Niceness, Politeness and "Dignity" Money, Marriage and Prostitution, Work and Prevention of an Automated Society Fatherhood and Mental Illness (fear, cowardice, timidity, humility, insecurity, passivity) Suppression of Individuality, Animalism (domesticity and motherhood) and Functionalism Prevention of Privacy Isolation, Suburbs and Prevention of Community Conformity Authority and Government Philosophy, Religion and Morality Based on Sex Prejudice (racial, ethnic, religious, etc.) Competition, Prestige, Status, Formal Education, Ignorance and Social and Economic Classes Prevention of Conversation Prevention of Friendship and Love "Great Art" and "Culture" Sexuality Boredom Secrecy, Censorship, Suppression of Knowledge and Ideas, and Exposés Distrust Ugliness Hate and Violence Disease and Death Due to the grievances, the Manifesto concludes that the elimination of the male sex is a moral imperative. It also argues that women must replace the "money-work system" with a system of complete automation, as this will lead to the collapse of the government and the loss of men's power over women. In order to accomplish these goals, the Manifesto proposes that a revolutionary vanguard of women be formed. This vanguard is referred to as SCUM. The Manifesto argues that SCUM should employ sabotage and direct action tactics rather than civil disobedience, as civil disobedience is only useful for making small changes to society. In order to destroy the system, violent action is necessary: "If SCUM ever marches, it will be over the President's stupid, sickening face; if SCUM ever strikes, it will be in the dark with a six-inch blade." The Manifesto ends by describing a female-dominated utopian future with, eventually, no men. There would be no money, and disease and death would have been eliminated. It argues that men are irrational to defend the current system and should accept the necessity of their destruction. If you, as a reader, have read the manifest, and the description of Valerie Solanas, you might think that I´m using the worst example to describe radical feminism, and that no one seriously could think of it as a model to follow. But then you´re wrong. You don´t know the rhetoric used in radical feminist circles (again: note that men also can be radical feminists). Many social constructivists have also asked me how I can term feminist social constructivists as fascists, since social constructivism per definition is against biological essentialism, and therefore gender essentialism. But when you come to the strong version of social constructivism, such discriminations don´t make sense any more. Then we have to do with only one thing: hard bitten political ideology. Fascism is often mischaracterized as “extreme right”, although writers have found placing Fascism on a conventional left-right political spectrum difficult. There is a scholarly consensus that Fascism was influenced by both left and right. Some fascists have themselves promoted their ideology as a “third way” between Capitalism and Communism. The first way social constructivists can support gender essentialism, is simply because of the support of relativism, which they share. The other way is through the spiritual version of gender essentialism. Here you can refer to some kind of spiritual sociobiology rooted in a holistic feminine energy ocean. A third way a social constructivists can use the manifest as a good feminist model can be seen in the tendency to look at their own fascistic statements as “narratives as political weapon” or as “parody or satire.” In the following I will give some examples. Note that I don´t claim that the people I mention is social constructivists or fascists. It´s just examples on how it can be done. Laura Winkiel, an associate professor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder, argues that the "SCUM manifesto parodies the performance of patriarchal social order it refuses". Winkiel further suggests that the manifesto is "an illicit performance, a mockery of the 'serious' speech acts of patriarchy". The SCUM women mock the way in which certain men run the world and legitimize their power, Winkiel contends. Similarly, sociologist Ginette Castro states: If we examine the text more closely, we see that its analysis of patriarchal reality is a parody [...] The content itself is unquestionably a parody of the Freudian theory of femininity, where the word woman is replaced by man [...] All the cliches of Freudian psychoanalytical theory are here: the biological accident, the incomplete sex, "penis envy" which has become "pussy envy," and so forth [...] Here we have a case of absurdity being used as a literary device to expose an absurdity, that is, the absurd theory which has been used to give "scientific" legitimacy to patriarchy [...] What about her proposal that men should quite simply be eliminated, as a way of clearing the dead weight of misogyny and masculinity? This is the inevitable conclusion of the feminist pamphlet, in the same way that Jonathan Swift's proposal that Irish children (as useless mouths) should be fed to the swine was the logical conclusion of his bitter satirical pamphlet protesting famine in Ireland. Neither of the two proposals is meant to be taken seriously, and each belongs to the realm of political fiction, or even science fiction, written in a desperate effort to arouse public consciousness. Well, the strong versions of social constructivists go as far as to assert that Solanas´s attempt to kill Andy Warhol was a brilliant act of performance art. James Penner reads the manifesto as a satirical text. He states, "Like other feminist satires, the 'SCUM Manifesto' attempts to politicize women by attacking particular masculine myths that are embedded in American popular culture." He adds, "As a work of satire, the 'SCUM Manifesto' is rhetorically effective in that it deconstructs the reader's received notions of masculinity and femininity." English professor Carl Singleton notes the "outrageous nature" of the manifesto and Solanas' increasing mental instability, which, he argues, led many people to trivialize the text. Singleton adds, "Others saw the document as a form of political satire in the style of Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal." Similarly, Jansen compared it to Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal, describing it as having "satiric brilliance" and calling Solanas "cool and mordantly funny". The bulletin of the Project of Transnational Studies echoes the comparison to Jonathan Swift, stating, "A more common strategy is to read SCUM as an instance of political fiction or parody in the vein of Jonathan Swift." Writing for Spin in September 1996, Charles Aaron calls the SCUM Manifesto a "riotous, pre-feminist satire". Film director Mary Harron called the manifesto a "brilliant satire" and described its tone as "very funny". According to Rich of The Village Voice, the work possibly was "satire" and could be read as "literal or symbolic". Winkiel said, "The humor and anger of satire invites women to produce this feminist script by taking on the roles of the politically performative SCUM females." Paul Krassner, who was a personal acquaintance of Solanas, called the manifesto a "dittoed document of pathological proselytization with occasional overtones of unintentional satire". Solanas's first publisher, Maurice Girodias, thought of it as "a joke" and described the manifesto, according to J. Hoberman, as "a Swiftian satire on the depraved behavior, genetic inferiority, and ultimate disposability of the male gender". Solanas, however, disagreed with Girodias on several points. Faso and Lee said that the "Scum ["program"] .... [is] [a]pparently not a put-on" and that unnamed people "who profess to know Valerie say she isn't joking ... [but] that deep down she likes men." In 1968, speaking to Marmorstein, she characterized herself on the "'SCUM thing'" as "'dead serious.'" Alexandra DeMonte, however, argues that Solanas "later claimed that her manifesto was simply a satire". I have only one thing to say: all this is explaining away. To claim that something as horrible as the SCUM manifesto, just is parody and satire is typical postmodernistic gaslightning. The Sokal Hoax is an example of that these people absolutely can´t see any parody and satire when this is directed towards themselves. The Sokal Hoax was a parody and a satire over postmodernistic propaganda. The Sokal Hoax, also known as the Sokal Affair, was a publishing hoax perpetrated by Alan Sokal, a physics professor at New York University. The hoax was a so-called hoax of exposure. Hoaxes of exposure are semi-comical or private sting operations. They usually encourage people to act foolishly or credulously by falling for patent nonsense that the hoaxer deliberately presents as reality. The Sokal Hoax was a pseudoscientific experiment to test the standards of scholarship and intellectual responsibility within the postmodern intellectualism (see my article The sokal Hoax). I claim that there is a need for a dialogue from where there can be talked with authority. Such a dialogue has today been removed. The platform, from where the public debate is being lead, is controlled by the Matrix Conspiracy. In a true dialogue you focus on, what cooperation and conversation require of you in order to that you at all can exist: that you speak true (don´t lie), that you are prepared to reach mutual understanding and agreement (don´t manipulate), don´t make an exception of yourself (but treat others as equals). From this rises the eternal moral values (as for example that it is wrong to lie), and generally our ideas of right and justice: the so-called human rights, the idea about the individual person´s autonomy and dignity: you shall treat the other not only as a mean, but also as a goal. In such a dialogue you use objective argumentation. Objective argumentation is an ethical way to convince others about your views, because it in reel sense shows what is appropriate or inappropriate about a case. Objective argumentation contains some of the following elements: summary or abstract, informations, description, reason, concrete choice of words, nuanced objective statement. You use critical thinking in order to explore, re-structure and change thought distortions. But this dialogue has been replaced by a culture of debate (débat, from débattre, struggle, quarrel). The culture of debate is the common used form of communication in the whole of society today. Just try to follow the American Fox News, the new feminist Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement. In debate people all the time work against each other and are seeking to show each other's flaws. They often only listen to each other in order to find flaws and defend their arguments. They more and more harden their own perspectives, because they are so busy judging the positions of others. They defend their own positions as the best solutions and eliminate others´ solutions. They fundamentally seen have a closed attitude, which is due to a fixed decision to be right. They wholehearted invest in their own conceptions, and they therefore calculate others´ positions, without being aware of feelings or relations, yes, they even often happen to play down and offend the other person. This debating attitude is unethical, and leads to violence and war. Why? Because it is based on subjectice argumentation. Subjective argumentation is an unethical way to convince others about your views, because it doesn't show, what in reel sense is appropriate or inappropriate about a case, but manipulates with it. Subjective argumentation contains some of the following elements: innuendoes, distortions, generalizations, over-/understatements, sarcasm, satire, irony, postulates, emotional affections, coloured choice of words, choices and exclusions, subjective style. People who use subjective argumentation don´t hesitate using thought distortions in order to manipulate, for example using adhominem moves, hermeneutic of suspicion, Giraffe language, setting up a strawman, etc., etc. (see my book A Dictionary of Thought Distortions). Personally I have stopped having face to face discussions with this kind of people, and I am withdrawing as soon as I sense this kind of communication. In my article The Sokal Hoax, you can read about the kinds of abuses I personally have faced. I also really feel sorry for the husbands/boyfriends of the numerous number of women, who have adopted the whole of this philosophy of the Matrix Conspiracy (read more in my article Self-help and the Mythology of Authenticity). The Manifesto, according to Lyon, is "notorious and influential" and was "one of the earliest ... [and] one of the most radical" tracts produced by "various strands of the American women's liberation movement". Lyon said that "by 1969 it had become a kind of bible" for Cell 16, in Boston. According to a 2012 article by Arthur Goldwag on the Southern Poverty Law Center Hatewatch blog, "Solanas continues to be much-read and quoted in some feminist circles." Whether the Manifesto should be considered a feminist classic is challenged by Heller because the Manifesto rejected a hierarchy of greatness, but she said it "remains an influential feminist text. Laura Winkiel argues that Solanas' shooting of Andy Warhol and Mario Amaya was directly tied to the Manifesto. After shooting Warhol, Solanas told a reporter, "Read my manifesto and it will tell you what I am." Heller, however, states that Solanas "intended no connection between the manifesto and the shooting". Harding suggests that "there is no clear indication in Solanas' ambiguous statement to reporters that the contents of the manifesto would explain the specifics of her actions, at least not in the sense of providing a script for them." Harding views the SCUM Manifesto as an "extension, not the source, of performative acts, even a violent one act like the shooting of Warhol." Winkiel argues that revolutionary Roxanne Dunbar moved to the U.S. "convinced that a women's revolution had begun", forming Cell 16 with a program based on the Manifesto. According to Winkiel, although Solanas was "outraged" at the women's movement's "appropriat[ion]" of the Manifesto, "the shooting [of Warhol] represented the feminist movement's righteous rage against patriarchy" and Dunbar and Ti-Grace Atkinson considered the Manifesto as having initiated a "revolutionary movement", Atkinson (according to Rich) calling Solanas the "'first outstanding champion of women's rights'" and probably (according to Greer) having been "radicalized" by the language of the Manifesto to leave the National Organization for Women (NOW), and (according to Winkiel) women organized in support of Solanas. Solanas was viewed as too mentally ill and too bound up with Warhol, according to Greer, "for her message to come across unperverted." According to Prof. Davis, the Manifesto was a "forerunner" as a "call to arms among pragmatic American feminists" and was "enjoy[ing] ... wide contemporary appeal". According to Winkiel, the Manifesto "was ... influential in the spread of 'womans culture' and lesbian separatism" and is also "credited with beginning the antipornography movement." Friedan opposed the Manifesto as bad for the feminist movement and NOW. I agree, and as mentioned: I claim the manifesto is very well alive in radical feminism. And, as all extreme and radical views, it is permeating popular culture. If anything can be used to justify one´s feelings, it will, for sure, be used. But what is precisely radical feminism? Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that calls for a radical reordering of society in which male supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic contexts. Radical feminists seek to abolish patriarchy by challenging existing social norms and institutions, rather than through a purely political process. This includes challenging the notion of traditional gender roles, opposing the sexual objectification of women, and raising public awareness about such issues as rape and violence against women. Early radical feminism, arising within second-wave feminism in the 1960s, typically viewed patriarchy as a "transhistorical phenomenon" prior to or deeper than other sources of oppression, "not only the oldest and most universal form of domination but the primary form" and the model for all others. Later politics derived from radical feminism ranged from cultural feminism to more syncretic politics that placed issues of class, economics, etc. on a par with patriarchy as sources of oppression. Radical feminists locate the root cause of women's oppression in patriarchal gender relations, as opposed to legal systems (as in liberal feminism) or class conflict (as in anarchist feminism, socialist feminism, and Marxist feminism). Since its inception as an ideology and then a political movement, radical feminism has faced criticism from both within the feminist movement and without. Popular criticisms of radical feminism point to its failure to recognize and address issues of race and class, and how they intersect with women's oppression within patriarchal systems of power; its insistence on excluding men from the movement and unwillingness to work with men to effect change through political channels; and its frequent reinforcement of gender essentialism (the idea that men and women are inherently different). Gender essentialism is as mentioned where The Matrix Conspiracy Fascism comes in (see Wikipedia´s entry on Gender Essentialism). In my Matrix Dictionary entry on Doublethink I have explained the brainwashing methods used in the Matrix Conspiracy Fascism. In the Matrix Conspiracy fascism, promotion of brainwashing methods has replaced the usual fascist promotion of violence. In my article The Devastating New Age Turn within Psychotherapy I have described different kinds of psychotherapy-inspired brainwashing methods. Also see my article The Vampirised Spirit of John Rosen, an my book on spiritual vampires Lucifer Morningstar – a Philosophical Love Story. The term Doublethink comes from George Orwell´s dystopian novel 1984. In Bob Black´s book The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, he refers to Orwell´s classic in the essay Feminism as Fascism: As the title of a childhood classic points out, Pigs is Pigs — and this regardless of the shape of their genitals. Ilse Koch was a Nazi, not a “sister.” Love is not hate, war is not peace, freedom is not slavery, and book-burning is not liberatory. Anti-authoritarians who would be revolutionaries confront many difficult questions. First, though, they should answer the easy ones correctly. […] All hyperbole and metaphor aside, what passes for “radical feminism” is fascism. It promotes chauvinism, censorship, maternalism, pseudo-anthropology, scapegoating, mystical identification with nature, tricked-up pseudo-pagan religiosity, enforced uniformity of thought and even appearance (in some quarters, Hera help the ectomorphic or “feminine” feminist!). Here is all of the theory and too much of the practice we should all be able to recognize by now. An ominous tactical continuity with classical fascism, also, is the complementarity between private-vigilantist and statist methods of repression. […] Fascist ideology always incongruously asserts to its audience, its chosen people, that they are at one and the same time oppressed and superior. […] For their own purposes (some of which are as mundane as sexual rivalry with straight men for the women they both desire), self-styled radical feminists actually reduce women to nothing but helpless, cringing near-vegetables, passive victims of male contempt and coercion. This profoundly insults women in a way which the worst patriarchal ideologies — the Jewish notion of woman as a source of pollution, for instance, or the Christian nightmare of woman as temptress and uncontrollable sexual nature-force — fell short of. They defamed woman as evil but could hardly regard her as powerless. The new woman-as-victim stereotype is not only directly traceable to nineteenth century Victorian patriarchal attitudes reducing (bourgeois) women to inert ornaments, but by denying to women the creative power inherent in everyone, it places women’s demands on a par with those advanced for, say, baby seals. […] Radical feminism (no point disputing title to the phrase with its present owners), then, is a ludicrous, hate-filled, authoritarian, sexist, dogmatic construct which revolutionaries accord an unmerited legitimacy by taking it seriously at all. It is time to stop matronizing these terrorists of the trivial and hold them responsible for preaching genocidal jive and practicing every evil (even, if the truth be told, rape!) they insist has been inflicted on them (or rather, as it usually turns out, on some other suppositious “sister”: the typical radical feminist has it pretty good). How to thwart femino-fascism? That’s easy: just take feminists at face value and treat them as equals... then hear them howl! The Empress has no clothes... and that’s what I call obscene. In an article from Skeptical Inquirer, March/April 1995, the American female philosopher Noretta Koertge, writes about her worries for the development of feminism. She writes that a Rip Van Winkle of feminism, who might have fallen asleep in the 1970s, would have been astounded over the opposite attitude, which is dominant among academical feminists today. The thick-skinned and strongly armed Rosie Riveters (reform feminism) have become replaced by moralizing Sensitive Susans (radical feminism), who individually are trying to find new ideological splits in the so-called “patriarchal, racist, colonistic, eurocentric, cultural dominion discourse”. They are in progress with a systematic undermining of the intellectual values of the free education. Young women are being made alien towards science in many ways. One of the strategies consists in redefining, what counts as science. Instead of for example telling about great female researchers such as Emmy Noether, Marie and Irene Curie and Kathleen Lonsdale and their struggles – and triumphs, the radical feminists, in their account of the history of science, now accentuate the contributions to it from midwifes and from the claimed arts of healing, which herbal cultivators and witches mastered – in short: New Age. Instead of motivating young women to prepare themselves to a line of technical subjects by studying science, logic and mathematics, they now teach the students in womens studies, that logic is a tool, which men use to dominate with. These women refuse rationality and critical thinking, and claim that this is inconsistent with ”womens way of knowing”. These feminists characterize themselves as ”subjective knowers”, who are characterized by ”a passionate rejection of science and male scientists”. These ”subjectivistic” women regard the methods, which you use in logic, as ”alien territory, that belongs to men” and consider ”value-intuition as a more safe and productive path to truth.” I claim, that all this is a part of a much more superior totalitarian ideology, which is about to become introduced in all educations on EU plane: The Matrix Conspiracy. In my article – The Sokal Hoax - I describe the tragic consequences of the feminist postmodern intellectualism on the universities. About the postmodern intellectualism as such: read my article Constructivism: the Postmodern Intellectualism Behind New Age and the Self-help Industry. And it is a tragedy to see the devastating effects, which you see in all the young women (and a great deal of men also), who follow radical feminists´ attack on rationality and science. Just to give an example: traditional feminists (reform feminists) often talked about the misogynistic elements in Freud´s theorizing, and pointed out weaknesses in his methods – the case Dora was a typical example on, how Freud was bullying his clients in his attempts on discovering the repressed memories, which he ”knew” where there. There is a painful irony in the fact, that our days feminists so uncritical have affiliated the methods, which hypnotherapists and psychological counselors pretend can uncover repressed memories from childhood about sexual abuse and more bizarre things such as satanic rituals, cannibalistic orgies, alien abduction, past lives etc. (see my articles Hypnosis, hypnotherapy and the Art of Self-deception, The Devastating New Age turn Within Psychotherapy, Regression Psychotherapies and Cathartic Psychotherapies). We see it in the installation of victimization culture, which basically is ”blaming the victim” put in system. Freud from beginning to end. I know no better demonstration of, how dangerous the naive faith in subjective attitudes and rejection of scientific methods and content can prove to be for all, who are involved in these things. You can mention a vast number of other crazy New Age therapies, which are taken at their face value (see my article Six Common Traits of New Age That Distort Spirituality). Or just try to follow an Oprah Winfrey show. These people are often breathtaking in their combination of self-confidence and absurdity, where they with no hesitation are bullying highly educated experts and scientists if they are critical. Subjectivism and relativism namely opens them for the danger of magical thinking and Ego-inflation (see my article The Ego-inflation in he New Age and Self-help Environment). The worst is, that the symptom is seen within the whole of the so-called personal development movement (the self-help industry), including the whole of the mix of New Thought, American Humanistic Psychology, Management theory, Nonviolent Communication, New Age, Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP), The Law of Attraction; all that, which I under one concept call The Matrix Conspiracy. A long line of these theories and methods are approved on EUs list of education, lifelong learning, and pedagogic altogether. Personally I know, that there on the Danish social and health-educations (which traditional is an area of women) directly is teached and examined in Nonviolent Communication and NLP, and it is on the whole impossible today to be trained, and have a permanent work, without being more or less forced to work with all this. It is a philosophy, which especially many women more or less are advocating, because it also is the main philosophy of women´s magazines. Subjectivism and relativism create an attitude, which says: “What people think, and the reasons they produce, may not be the real reasons at work!” Then it is easy to become suspicious on the motives of everyone as being individuals with psychological problems to solve. The removal of genuine rationality from the stage leaves open the possibility of accusations of rationalizations for ulterior motives. This form of analysis (leading to think of groups or individuals as “what is in it for them?”), is not only corrosive of trust in society. It is bound eventually to undermine itself. Why are such views themselves being propagated? What are those spreading them going to gain? – read more in my article The Hermeneutics of Suspicion (the Thought Police of the Self-help industry) and Why I am an Apostle of Loafing. Daphne Patai is a feminist scholar and author. She is a leading critic of the politicization of education, in particular of the decline of free speech on college campuses as programs conform to pressures from feminists and other identity groups. After spending ten years with a joint appointment in women´s studies and in Portuguese, Patai became highly critical of what she saw as the imposition of a political agenda on educational program [The Matrix Conspiracy]. Together with the above-mentioned philosophy of science professor Noretta Koertge she wrote the book Professing Feminism (1994). The book analyzes practices within women´s studies that the authors felt were incompatible with serious education and scholarship – above all, the explicit subservience of education to political aims. Patai´s thesis is that a failure to defend the integrity of education, and a habit of dismissing knowledge and research on political grounds, not only seriously hurts our students but also leaves feminists helpless in trying to defend education against other ideological incursions. Prominent among Patai´s concerns are what she sees as draconian sexual harassment regulations as implemented in the academical world. She argues that contemporary feminism is poisoned by a strong element of “heterophobia”: a pronounced hostility to sexual interaction between men and women and an effort to suppress it through micromanagement of everyday relations. This thesis is developed at lenght in her 1998 book Heterophobia: Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism. The book asks: What does it mean to be a feminist today? Should women require special legislation to protect them from sexual harassment? Daphne Patai's controversial look at the nation's, at that time (1998), epidemic of sexual harassment charges answers these questions and illuminates complex ideological struggles within contemporary feminism. By investigating the ongoing attempts to regulate sexual conduct, Heterophobia argues that women's pursuit of a "comfortable" environment has created a feminist-induced hostility toward men and heterosexuality. Patai identifies the origins and evolution of "the sexual harassment industry" and presents cases of those men and women whose lives were ruined by false or frivolous charges of harassment. A scathing criticism of political and sexual "correctness," this thought-provoking and powerfully argued book is sure to incite debate among all Americans concerned with the legacy and future of women's rights. If anyone can recognize this from the #MeToo campaign, it it by no means coincidentally. It tells about how fashionable radical feminism is in popular culture. Daphe Patai is the inspiration to my thesis about the development of a new Puritanism, where traditional religious confession-techniques have been transformed into psychotherapy. This new Puritanism has from Christianity inherited and taken over a very characteristic religious worldimage. Sex is sin. Sex is in the highest a necessary evil. Therefore the destructive, the subversive, again is becoming overlooked. But because it is such evident a fact, the radical feminists have to do something about it. Like in Christianity they have therefore suitable handed the destructive over to the Devil. And in this worldimage they have got the Devil, the evil, the destructive, and the sexual weaved together (read more about this in my book Lucifer Morningstar – a Philosophical Love Story). Combined with the installation of the victimization culture, you now have a good picture of the rhetoric of the #MeToo campaign. "Me Too" spread virally as a two-word hashtag used on social media in October 2017 to denounce sexual assault and harassment, in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations against Harvey Weinstein. The phrase, long used in this sense by social activist Tarana Burke, was popularized by actress Alyssa Milano, who encouraged women to tweet it to publicize experiences to demonstrate the widespread nature of misogynistic behavior. Since then, millions of people have used the hashtag to come forward with their experiences, including many celebrities. Tarana Burke wasn´t really taken seriously, but when an American Hollywood actress is saying it, it is taken at face value. Everyone, all over the world, also the intellectuals, politicians, leaders, are bending in obedience to Alyssa Milano´s orders. Hollywood, you see, is the home of the Gods. It demands totally obedience! But I claim, that what they bend for, is feminism as fascism. No more, no less. Only a few dares to critizice. The hashtag has been criticized for putting the responsibility of publicizing sexual harassment and abuse on those who experienced it, which could be re-traumatizing. Some found the hashtag to inspire fatigue and outrage, rather than emotionally dense communication. Burke had initially criticized the movement for ignoring the work of black women in creating dialogue addressing sexual assault. However, she did salute those who partook in the movement and credited Milano for acknowledging Burke's own similar movement. The alleged evil behavior of Weinstein, in other words, goes far beyond the Hollywood casting couch. For women, monsters are everywhere. At least that’s how it feels in the social media fog in the fall of 2017. In the hostile world that women face, we are now told, Weinsteins lurk around every corner. Writing in The New Yorker, staff writer Alexandra Schwartz noted a comment a friend of hers posted on Facebook: “Genuinely curious if there are women who have never been sexually harassed.” Schwartz doubted that could possibly be the case: “I’d be overjoyed, and shocked, if the answer to my friend’s question turned out to be anything but an unequivocal no.” But a lot of strong reform feminists have said that of course they have had experiences with men going too far, but not anything which in any way could be described as sexual harassment. They cannot honestly say #MeToo. They handled the situations with ease. Their response is the #NotMe campaign, which in short is about claiming: “I´m not a victim! I´m the master of my own life!” But that´s not very popular! Because, to think for yourself is a danger to any ideology. When it comes to #MeToo, the numbers are alarming, and I wish nothing but love and support for the people speaking out. I´m also in total support of reform feminism. But there is one particularly ridiculous and growing #MeToo narrative, mushrooming all over the internet and expressed succinctly in the Huffington Post: “The social media campaign is, of course, intended as a wake-up call for men. If every woman you know has been harassed or assaulted, then every man you know has likely made a woman feel unsafe.” Got that? “Every man you know has likely made a woman feel unsafe.” This is bonkers. It is nonsense. It’s quite simply untrue, and it’s also unjust. Unfortunately, it also seems to be the growing messaging strategy of some of the more vocal segments of the #MeToo movement. “This is not an individual problem,” writes Carina Chocano in Rolling Stone. “This is a systemic problem. There are no two sides. ‘Personal responsibility’ doesn’t factor in.” What does factor in? (Hint: It is not the inherent sinfulness and fallen nature of human beings.) She continues: “It’s patriarchy. It’s a system of oppression in action.” There you got it: a radical feministic message. When it comes to helpful tips — like “Three things that decent men can do in response to #MeToo” — the United Kingdom’s Independent, a British online newspaper, takes things up a notch, managing to insult boys and girls at the same time. A girl hanging out with a boy, the article declares, “may well not know how to say no, or that she is allowed to say no.” Therefore, it continues — and I’m summarizing here — we should not focus on encouraging girls to speak up and say no, but rather teach boys that girls don’t really know how to say no. No, I am not making this up. The rhetoric coming from radical feminism cast stones at all men — and cast all women as victims. That sure is a lot easier, isn’t it? Unfortunately, it does the opposite of good. When I used the hashtag #MeToo on Twitter, in order to tweet about this article, I discovered that Twitter had created it in such a way that it became followed by a small appreciating logo. Twitter didn´t even consider that the hashtag was used in connection with a #MeToo critical article. And this leads me to the next point: Couldn´t it be thought, that this campaign, just with a tiny, tiny chance, could be misused by women to spread false allegations towards men, or women? But in the best NewSpeak-way the rhetoric doesn´t allow this possibility, since women per definition is without flaws. On the contrary, critics are supplied with the thought distortion Guilt by Association. A critic is immediately considered, if not directly a possible sexual offender, then at least a thought criminal. And it´s difficult not to think that about oneself if one is critical. It says something about the power we have to do with. But I will make a prophesy, and claim that this is just the beginning of a massive modern witch hunt. And it will be devastating for the relationship between men and women. Already now voices are claiming that the campaign also should be directed towards accomplices, who were silent about “what was going on.” The rhetoric sounds like something taken out of Alice in Wonderland and the The Queen of Hearts, who offers a bizarre approach towards justice: sentence before verdict. One of her most famous lines she states often is "Off with their heads!" (see my pop culture file on Alice in Wonderland). What is weird is that all this is due to the demands coming from a very small radical feminist group, such as separatist feminism and lesbian separatism. As mentioned there is a painful irony in the fact, that our days feminists so uncritical have affiliated the methods, which hypnotherapists and psychological counselors pretend can uncover repressed memories from childhood about sexual abuse and more bizarre things such as satanic rituals, cannibalistic orgies, alien abduction, past lives etc. In this way they paradoxically come to remind about earlier times´ Christian inquisitions. There is another aspect of this, which might seem like an opposition to the New Puritanism of radical feminism, but which is a part of the same Matrix Conspiracy: because those of the New Age worshippers who today call themselves witches or sorcerers are often anti-Christian, pagan, and woman-centered, or satanic. New Age often exalt whatever the Church condemned (such as egoism and healthy sexuality in adults whether homosexual or not) and condemn whatever the Church exalted (such as self-denial and the subservient role of women). An effect of this is that we perhaps now see a direct suppression of boys in the school system. So believes the editor-in-chief for the Danish newspaper Weekendavisen, Anne Knudsen. She directly speaks about the outragerous condition of boys in a school system, which appreciates, promotes, praises, expects and rewards a behaviour, which corresponds fine with the special identity markers of girls, and in return with hard hand fights behaviour, which marks the typical boy. This systematical discrimination has grown in the later years without any actual opposition. In 1993 it was only every third boy, who continued in the school after the public school. And already in 1996, 70 percent of the new students in the gymnasiums (senior high schools) were girls. Now 14 years later the girls have educations and jobs, while the boys are fighting with unemployment. And the tendency becomes worse and worse, without any changes. As Anne Knudsen says, then it is obvious that the boys escape from a system where they shall pretend they don´t compete, while competition in reality just happens after rules, which not are formulated; where they shall lay bare their feelings on the slightest occasion, and where they in the name of equality shall tolerate collective bullying under the head line ”typical boys!” The school system is arranged, so that it is a handicap to be a boy, and this handicap is even understood as a self-inflicted, moral defect; therefore the system don´t need to take this social problem into consideration. What they have introduced in the pedagogy is namely the so-called Nonviolent Communication, which follows The Matrix pedagogy about, that cognition and moral not only have to become psychologized and subjectified, but also emotionalized, since it is the individual´s feelings, which determines the moral quality of something. Moreover that the moral has to be therapized, so that it can be considered to be a personal defect, and not a social problem, if you don´t do precisely as the pedagogy says (see my article Nonviolent Communication is an Instrument of Psychic Terror). This pedagogy claims about itself to be a “loving, tolerant, nonjudgmental, therapeutic permission to be different.” Peculiarly, since boys precisely not are allowed to be different. The problem is that ”the theory” (which in reality is hard bitten ideology – in lack of better I call it The Matrix Conspiracy) in extreme black and white way directly has made lists about what is good and bad behaviour, and in the schools they arrange so-called giraffe-language groups, where the children get hats on, either as giraffes or wolves. And guess who is sitting with the wolves-hats? In this way stupidity goes its triumphal progress in the schools of today, and no one dares to protest in fear of collective bullying. Especially men who might have made a woman feel “unsafe” are in danger of being collectively displayed on social media. The radical feminists are especially fighting against Western science and human rights, which they consider as an expression of a patriarchal, racist, colonialistic, Eurocentric, cultural dominion-discourse. Why? Because subjectivism and relativism claim, that there doesn’t exist any objective truth. Truth is something we create ourself, either as individuals or as cultures, and since there doesn’t exist any objective truth, there doesn´t exist any objective scale of truth. All truths are therefore equally true and equally valid, and if one person´s truth, or one culture´s truth, try to intervene in the truths of other individuals or cultures, then this is considered as an aggression. This ideology is penetrating everything. Today, after the celebration of the 100 year of womens´ day it is interesting to see how this ideology also has penetrated Western feminism, which must be considered as playing a leading role in the Matrix Conspiracy. Political freedom (the right to vote, to run as candidate for election, and to express yourself freely), economical freedom (the right to education and paid work) and sexual freedom (womens´ right to conduct the privacy they want) are the conquests, which traditional feminism achieved for the women of the Western worlds. This kind of feminism could, as mentioned, be called reform feminism. The conquests were achieved rather quickly in the previous century. But the progress, which the large majority of women in the West enjoy, is standing in glaring contrast to the different reality, which women outside the West live in. In the Arabic-Muslim world most women are refused access to an education. The figures for womens´ reading ability are depressing low. Their sexuality is controlled by a patriarchal system, and they have only limited possibilities for achieving economical independence. Many places in Asia the prejudices against girl children still flourish, and the result is that embryos of girls are miscaried, or that small new-born girls are put out. Moreover Asian girls and women in disproportionate degree are suffering under the discusting sex traffic with women – the modern kind of slavery. Poverty and civil wars affect girls and women in Africa in ways, which men are spared from, because mass rapes lead to unwanted pregnancies and infections with hiv and aids. Moreover a shocking large number of girls die under births, because their bodies not yet are mature enough to give birth, or because disfiguration of their genitals causes, that they die of a birth fistula, one of the most painful ways to die in, that you can imagine. Here there seems to be a giant task for Western feminists who have the liberating energy to do something. Unfortunately there is complete silence, because the Matrix Conspiracy (both through education and the propaganda of women´s magazines) has programmed them what to think. They have now, as mentioned, become what you could call radical feminists. Reform feminists have become replaced by moralizing Sensitive Susans, who individually are fighting against Western science and human rights, which they, as mentioned, consider as an expression of a patriarchal, racist, colonialistic, eurocentric, cultural dominion-discourse. The radical feminists (for instance Sandra Harding – but also New Age worshippers of all kinds) see themselves as liberal givers of charity to their non-western sisters/non-initiates. They see their charity towards their sisters/non-initiates as a loving, tolerant, nonjudgmental, therapeutic “permission to be different”. They try to “decolonize” the minds of their sisters by trying to make them repudiate Western science and human rights. But their invitation to be different is in reality an expression of intellectual apartheid, and a justification of intellectual apartheid. They dehumanize their sisters by denying them their ability to critical thinking, and this has, as expected, already contributed to a rather uncritical adoration of the nation and its traditions in many parts of the Third World. Scenario 1, India: Frederique Apffel Marglin has recently declared that the eradiction of smallpox from India using the modern cowpox-based vaccine is an affront to the local custom of variolation, which includes inoculation with human smallpox accompanied by prayers to the goddess of smallpox, Sitala Devi. Ashis Nandy has branded those who protested a recent incidence of widow immolation (sati), as modernized Westernized elites who denigrate authentic folk practices. Not surprisingly this has found a sympathetic audience among right-wing Hindu fundamentalist parties. Scenario 2, Pakistan: Though the Matrix Conspiracy systematical is trying to eliminate critical thinking and science, then it, in its manipulation, is extremely scientifical, technological and instrumental fixated. As it says, then modern science must be replaced with so-called “alternative” sciences. This has caused a boom in all kinds of pseudoscientifical theories; what I call the “Illuminati” aspect of the Matrix Conspiracy. One of these “sciences” is for instance the “investigations” of the biology of Western Men. And these so-called “investigations” have concluded, that womens´ pain under birth is a social construction created by Western Men, and that it therefore is necessary to eliminate this construction. In Pakistan and other Islamic countries, notably Egypt and Saudi Arabia, we now see the state-sponsored movement of “Islamic Science” (for instance around Ziauddin Sardar, a Pakistani émigré living in Britain, and Munavar Ahmad Anees, a US-based biologist and Islamist). This movement tries to “Islamicize” science, and create a new universal science in which the facts of nature would be different, derived solely from the conceptual and ethical categories of Islam. They find attempts from modern science to bring modern science to bear on specific values and problems of Muslims as misguided, if not actually a crime against Islam. Explicitly they are citing the work of Western radical feminists. In turn, Sandra Harding cites Sardar and associates among the “progressive” postcolonial critics of science. Recently, demands for specifically Islamic (and also Hindu, Confucian, and African) conceptions of human rights have also been put forth. Scenario 3: China: The protesters at Tiananmen Square demanded democracy, human rights and science together. Tragical for the dissidents, the Chinese government saw it differently and sent in the tanks. The Deng regime, though anxious to cultivate modern science and technology for economical development, treated any attempt to relate scientific ethos to antiauthoritarian politics as a sign of the “spiritual pollution” of China´s socialist values – using the same phrases as the Matrix Conspiracy. Especially China is gradually adopting this rhetoric (which could be taken out of George Orwell´s novel 1984), and are demanding special Chinese interpretations of science and human rights, where scientists and advocates of human rights must be civil obedient; that is: state sponsored. For instance we already see some special state sponsored versions of NGOs. And when China discover how the “spiritual” education-instruments of the Matrix Conspiracy are supporting their ideas, we will probably also see a state-sponsored kind of “New Age-spirituality”, which will cause a boom in followers. But all kinds of civil disobedience will still be eliminated. Add to this, that China now has adopted Consumer Capitalism into its own ideology (Communism), whereby it has created a curious hybrid, you could call The Matrix Hybrid. In the Matrix Hybrid the two ideologies have economical interests in common, and therefore we might gradually see how the West more and more is allowing China to violate human rights. Personally I don´t fear the threat of Islamic terror. What I prophesize is the future scenario where Consumer Capitalism and Communism are melting together. The West might gradually be more and more fascinated by China´s growing consumer culture (right now especially seen in Shanghai), and might adopt it more and more. And then we have the Illuminati scenario: a “New World Order” where all countries are led by a global government, which will try to create a world with no class barriers and religions. With this Matrix Hybrid we have something, which could develop into Aldous Huxley´s Brave New World. Latest news! 1) Strasbourg, April 7, 2011. The 47 Member States of the Council of Europe are close to finalizing a new convention that defines “gender” as Social Construct. So, a quite certain trend within a quite certain single branch of science (Sociology), shall from now on define what a human being is. This trend is called social constructivism (or social contructionism), and is the latest craze in reductionism; that is: a pseudoscientifical point of view with a political agenda. It belongs on the left-wing environment side of the heredity and environment ideology (as mentioned: read more about this reductionism in my articles Constructivism: the Postmodern Intellectualism behind New Age and the Self-help Industry and The Sokal Hoax). 2) When Progressives Embrace Hate is an article in New York Times By Bari Weiss August 1, 2017. The article describes that the leaders of the Women’s March, arguably the most prominent feminists in the country, have some chilling ideas and associations, such as support to terrorists and anti-semitism. 3) On October 13, 2017, in National Post, Robert Fulford has written an article: Feminists are Failing to Confront Islamic Society's Treatment of Women. In this article he describes how feminists do a disservice to their sisters in Islam when they ignore practices they would never tolerate in their own lives. 4) Here’s the full recording of Wilfrid Laurier reprimanding Lindsay Shepherd for showing a Jordan Peterson video - Teaching assistant Shepherd was accused of creating a ‘toxic climate’ at the university by screening a televised debate discussing gender-neutral pronouns During a seminar with first-year communications students, Wilfrid Laurier University teaching assistant Lindsay Shepherd screened a TVOntario debate to illustrate the sometimes-controversial politics of grammar. The video, an episode of The Agenda with Steve Paikin, included University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson presenting his case against the use of non-gendered pronouns. It also included panellists taking the opposite viewpoint. Nevertheless, after an anonymous student complained, Shepherd found herself reprimanded for violating the school’s Gendered and Sexual Violence policy. In a subsequent meeting with university officials, she was accused of creating a “toxic” and “problematic” environment that constituted violence against transgendered students. She was also falsely told that she had broken the law. Personally I actually don´t know who Jordan Peterson is, and after having read, and listened, to this article I suspected he must be some kind of extremist. But he is a Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. His main areas of study are in abnormal, social, and personality psychology, with a particular interest in the psychology of religious and ideological belief. His “crime” is his critique of postmodernism and identity politics. The crisis of free speech and academic freedom on campuses has been growing for years. The Laurier incident is one small part of it. It´s not just in the USA. I think all people who have gone through an education on the humanities today have experienced aspects of this if they´re critical towards postmodernism. It´s George Orwell´s 1984 in a new disguise. On humanities all over the world you´re 100 % forced to work with social constructivism as a basic "scientific" discipline. But social constructivism is a central part of postmodernism, and therefore an ideology, not anything which just is near any neutral scientific approach. When I finished my BA in philosophy, I considered taking a minor in religion. In science of religion philosophy is one of the disciplines, and since I on my major study already had heard about the crazy aspects of social constructivism, I decided to write a paper on that. My mentor was mildly said angry. He came into the office of the professor of religion and threw the paper on the table and said he refused to approve it. I was also present in the office, and went through something similar to the Wilfrid Laurier case, though in my case it was not about gender issues, it was just the very fact that I was critical towards postmodernism. My own teacher in philosophy was also present and protested, and said that what I wrote was fully acceptable since it was a paper on philosophy (the art of thinking for yourself). But eventually the paper was denied approval. For no other reason that it was critical towards postmodernism. That caused that I gave up the minor on religion and took a full MA in philosophy. Hereafter I decided that I would never work on a university, and have hereafter made my own critique of the whole this flying circus of postmodernism. Note that I think, as this article shows, that the most extreme versions of postmodernism (as for example post-structuralism) in my opinion can´t be political termed as left or right. We have to with some kind of new fascism, something in between the most extreme versions of left and right. 5) Lauren Heuser: Even post-Weinstein, we cannot outsource justice to a mob - The women who report to the media are implicitly asking the public to punish the alleged wrongdoers on their behalf. In this article Lauren Heuser is commenting on the #MeToo campaign. She says that it´s interesting — but no longer surprising — that victims would choose to go directly to the media with their accounts of sexual harassment: it’s darn effective for getting quick results. Yet, for this same reason, the public reporting process is also disconcerting, she says. Take the most recent examples. Within days of Senator Al Franken’s accusers broadcasting their accusations (the first published her account on a talk radio station website, the second reached out to CNN, the most recent two spoke anonymously to The Huffington Post), Franken’s reputation was in tatters, and his future as a politician in doubt. Charlie Rose’s downfall was even more sudden. When the Washington Post revealed that eight women had told the newspaper the television host had made unwanted sexual advances towards them, PBS and CBS News had within hours halted production of Rose’s shows. The following day, they fired him. Lauren Heuser says that the very public nature of sexual harassment reporting is both the best and worst thing about this seemingly bottomless debacle. To change anything, this endemic problem needed to be blown wide open. At the same time, public reporting is not an adequate response to the problem. The women who report to the media are implicitly asking the public to punish the alleged wrongdoers on their behalf — without any full airing of the facts. “The idea of justice by public mobbing has traditionally been anathema to a society like ours”, Heuser says. “Democratic countries are committed to delivering justice (or at least some semblance of it) through formal channels, which include checks and balances, protections for both sides, and all the rest.” The whole premise of the “believe victims” movement [= #MeToo campaign] is that the public should simply take self-identified victims at their word. One of the more striking features of the Weinstein saga is how clearly the public and implicated organizations seem prepared to do so. Rose, for example, was fired in less than 24 hours of The Washington Post first airing its allegations. PBS and CBS cannot possibly have performed thorough investigations within such a short period. 6) The #MeToo Movement Is Destroying Trust Between Men And Women, is an article in The Federalist by D.C. McAllister, December 13, 2017. Here McAllister is precisely referring to the feminist rhetoric, which I claim is coming from the SCUM manifesto. She says: The breakdown of trust between the sexes is the tragic legacy of the modern feminist movement, but it has taken on a new fervor with the #MeToo campaign and the growing accusation that masculinity is vile, toxic, and inherently predatorial. Fear of men is legitimized, as accusation is treated as fact. Men are seen as “the enemy,” an embodied deviance that must be remolded into the image of a woman. Their sexuality is assumed to be naturally brutal, a threat to be controlled and reduced for the individual man to be considered “safe.” McAllister also refers to totalitarian regimes and George Orwell´s 1984. So, she has seen the same tendencies as me, though she is not mentioning the SCUM manifesto. Maybe she is not familiar with it. But the SCUM manifesto is the explanation of where the whole rhetoric in the #MeToo campaign comes from. 7) Canada Passes Radical Law Forcing Gender Theory Acceptance, is an article in Life Site News, Thursday June 15, 2017, by Lianne Laurence. It tells that Canada passed a law making it illegal to use the wrong gender pronouns. Critics say that Canadians who do not subscribe to progressive gender theory could be accused of hate crimes, jailed, fined, and made to take anti-bias training. It begins: Canada’s Senate passed the Justin Trudeau Liberals’ transgender rights bill unamended this afternoon by a vote of 67 to 11, with three abstentions. The bill adds “gender expression” and “gender identity” to Canada’s Human Rights Code and to the Criminal Code’s hate crime section. With the Senate clearing the bill with no amendments, it requires only royal assent in the House of Commons to become law. Critics warn that under Bill C-16, Canadians who deny gender theory could be charged with hate crimes, fined, jailed, and compelled to undergo anti-bias training. Foremost among these critics is University of Toronto psychology professor Dr. Jordan Peterson, who along with lawyer D. Jared Brown, told the Senate committee that Bill C-16 is an unprecedented threat to freedom of expression and codifies a spurious ideology of gender identity in law. […] Peterson told the Senate committee last month that he believes “ideologues” are “using unsuspecting and sometimes complicit members of the so-called transgender community to push their ideological vanguard forward.” “The fact that it’s potentially illegal for me not to participate in that is something that I think is absolutely dreadful. It puts a shudder in my heart as a Canadian that we could even possibly be in a situation like that,” he said. Peterson became Canada’s preeminent critic of the Liberal bill after he produced three videos opposing the enforcement of gender ideology, one of which blasted Bill C-16, which he said “requires compelled speech.” He has also vowed that, come what may, he will not use “genderless pronouns” such as “zir” and “ze” for those who self-identify as gender non-conforming when requested [“zir” and “ze” and other ideological invented “gender neutral” pronouns, are of course meant to replace words as for example she, her, him, he, etc. – click here for an explanation. Like everything in postmodernism it is extremely obscure. I completely follow Jordan Petersen when he says that he will never use such "trendy and artificially constructed" third-person pronouns in referring to people who use self-identified genders, particularly when there could be up to 70 gender-options. Personally I don´t care if I´m facing a jail-sentence in Canada for using the wrong pronouns. And I don´t even bother to think about what kind of punishment that lurks behind my back for having written this article. I have tried to have curses put on me by self-made New Age witches – they only faced a boomerang effect]. Lawyer Brown told the Senate Committee the federal Liberals have made it clear they will follow Ontario’s lead when implementing Bill C-16. And Ontario Human Rights Code guidelines “mandate” the use of genderless pronouns on request, he said. “Mandating use of pronouns requires one to use words that are not their own that imply a belief in or agreement with a certain theory on gender,” he added. “If you try to disavow that theory, you can be brought before the Human Rights Commission for misgendering or potentially find yourself guilty of a hate crime. To sum up, on the subject of gender, we’re going to have government-mandated speech.” Those who refuse to go along could be “brought before the federal tribunal,” Brown said. Campaign Life Toronto's senior political strategist Jack Fonseca told Life Site News that the bill was an attack on religious people who reject the Left's LGBTQ agenda. "Mark my words, this law will not be used as some sort of ‘shield’ to defend vulnerable transsexuals, but rather as a weapon with which to bludgeon people of faith and free-thinking Canadians who refuse to deny truth,” he said. In The Daily Wire the whole flying circus of this law is described like this: ORWELLIAN: Canadians Can Now Be Fined Or JAILED For Using Wrong Gender Pronouns - Taking a page out of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Canada passed a new law that opens Canadians up to fines and even jail time if they use gender pronouns that do not correspond to a person's subjectively determined "gender identity." Well, any doubt by now about my theory of The Matrix Conspiracy? 8) The Warlock Hunt is an article by Claire Berlinski (The American Interest, December 6, 2017). Berlinski says: “The #MeToo moment has now morphed into a moral panic that poses as much danger to women as it does to men.” Quote: “If you are reading this, it means I have found an outlet that has not just fired an editor for sexual harassment. This article circulated from publication to publication, like old-fashioned samizdat, and was rejected repeatedly with a sotto voce, “Don’t tell anyone. I agree with you. But no.” Friends have urged me not to publish it under my own name, vividly describing the mob that will tear me from limb to limb and leave the dingoes to pick over my flesh. It says something, doesn’t it, that I’ve been more hesitant to speak about this than I’ve been of getting on the wrong side of the mafia, al-Qaeda, or the Kremlin? But speak I must. It now takes only one accusation to destroy a man’s life. Just one for him to be tried and sentenced in the court of public opinion, overnight costing him his livelihood and social respectability. We are on a frenzied extrajudicial warlock hunt that does not pause to parse the difference between rape and stupidity. The punishment for sexual harassment is so grave that clearly this crime—like any other serious crime—requires an unambiguous definition. We have nothing of the sort. In recent weeks, one after another prominent voice, many of them political voices, have been silenced by sexual harassment charges. Not one of these cases has yet been adjudicated in a court of law. Leon Wieseltier, David Corn, Mark Halperin, Michael Oreskes, Al Franken, Ken Baker, Rick Najera, Andy Signore, Jeff Hoover, Matt Lauer, even Garrison Keillor—all have received the professional death sentence. Some of the charges sound deadly serious. But others—as reported anyway—make no sense. I can’t say whether the charges against these men are true; I wasn’t under the bed. But even if true, some have been accused of offenses that aren’t offensive, or offenses that are only mildly so—and do not warrant total professional and personal destruction. The things men and women naturally do—flirt, play, lewdly joke, desire, seduce, tease—now become harassment only by virtue of the words that follow the description of the act, one of the generic form: “I froze. I was terrified.” It doesn’t matter how the man felt about it. The onus to understand the interaction and its emotional subtleties falls entirely on him. But why? Perhaps she should have understood his behavior to be harmless—clumsy, sweet but misdirected, maladroit, or tacky—but lacking in malice sufficient to cost him such arduous punishment?” […] Apparently, some women feel precisely this way. Natalie Portman, for example, has re-examined her life in light of the recent news: “When I heard everything coming out, I was like, wow, I’m so lucky that I haven’t had this. And then, on reflection, I was like, okay, definitely never been assaulted, definitely not, but I’ve had discrimination or harassment on almost everything I’ve ever worked on in some way,” she said during Sunday’s candid talk at Vulture Festival L.A. The more she reexamined her experiences, other incidents come into sharp relief. “I went from thinking I don’t have a story to thinking, Oh wait, I have 100 stories. And I think a lot of people are having these reckonings with themselves, of things that we just took for granted as like, this is part of the process.” If I were suddenly to feel as Ms. Portman now feels, I could destroy them all—just by naming names and truthfully describing a flirtation or moment of impropriety. All of the interchanges I’m replaying in my mind would meet the highly elastic contemporary definition of “harassment,” a category vague enough to compass all the typical flirtation that brings joy and amusement to so many of our lives, all the vulgar humor that says, “We’re among friends, we may speak frankly.” It becomes harassment only by virtue of three words: “I felt demeaned.” […] Harvey Weinstein must burn, we all agree. But there is a universe of difference between the charges against Weinstein and those that cost Michael Oreskes his career at NPR. It is hard to tell from the press accounts, but initial reports suggested he was fired because his accusers—both anonymous—say he kissed them. Twenty years ago. In another place of business. Since then, other reports have surfaced of what NPR calls “subtler transgressions.” […] Several cases recently in the headlines are simply baffling. They do not involve the workplace—or vast discrepancies in power—at all. Perhaps there is more to the story, but from what I’ve read, the improprieties committed by the UK’s (now former) Defense Secretary Michael Fallon amount to this: He kissed a journalist—not his employee, and not someone over whom he had power, but another adult in another profession—fifteen years ago. What transmogrified Fallon’s kiss to a crime that cost him his career were these words, and only these words: “I felt humiliated, ashamed.” Had the object of his affection said, “I felt flattered,” there would be no offense. Fallon apparently also touched another woman on the knee. Fifteen years ago. The latter incident has been reported thus: “I calmly and politely explained to him that, if he did it again, I would punch him in the face. He withdrew his hand and that was the end of the matter.” Julia said she did not feel like she was a victim of a sexual assault, and found the incident nothing more than “mildly amusing.” The facts as described are nothing like sexual assault. Any woman alive could tell similar stories. Many of us find such incidents, precisely as Julia said, “mildly amusing.” [men have the same experiences with women transgression the “normal” boundaries, I would insert]. […] Mother Jones’ editor David Corn, it seems, offered unwanted backrubs. So what? From the prose in Politico you’d think he ravished Tess of the d’Urbervilles. The accused, we are to understand, “came up behind [his accuser] and put his hands and arms around [her] body in a way that felt sexual and domineering.” He gave her a hug, in other words; but it felt to her sexual and domineering. There is no reliable way to know if a hug will feel sexual and domineering to a woman or whether she will find this disagreeable, let alone how she will feel about it twenty years from now. So the lesson to men is clear: Never hug women at work, period. But this is insane. The project of eradicating physical affection from the workplace is cruel to men and women alike, and if it is successful, we will all go nuts. […] Given the events of recent weeks, we can be certain of this: From now on, men with any instinct for self-preservation will cease to speak of anything personal, anything sexual, in our presence. They will make no bawdy jokes when we are listening. They will adopt in our presence great deference to our exquisite sensitivity and frailty. Many women seem positively joyful at this prospect. The Revolution has at last been achieved! But how could this be the world we want? Isn’t this the world we escaped? Who could blame a man who does not enjoy the company of women under these circumstances, who would just rather not have women in the workplace at all? […] Women, I’m begging you: Think this through. We are fostering a climate in which men legitimately fear us, where their entire professional and personal lives can be casually destroyed by “secret lists” compiled by accusers they cannot confront, by rumors on the internet, by thrilled, breathless reporting denouncing one after another of them as a pig, often based only on the allegation that they did something all-too-human and none-too-criminal like making a lewd joke. Why would we even want men to be subject to such strenuous, arduous taboos against the display of their sexuality? These taboos, note carefully, resemble in non-trivial ways those that have long oppressed women. In a world with such arduous taboos about male purity and chastity, surely, it is rational for men to have as little to do with women as possible. What’s in this for us? From the Salem Witch trials to the present, moral panics have followed the same pattern. Radical feminists are talking a lot about what young women are being indoctrinated to think. But what about the young men, who also are hearing all this? It is devastating for the very heterosexuality. The radical feminists will succeed in this. I´m not in doubt about this. The Matrix Conspiracy will succeed, no matter how much I criticize it. The attack on heterosexuality is clearly demonstrated in the following article, filled with scientific biases such as confirmation bias and selective thinking, as well as it is picturing women as non-thinking victims, who don´t enjoy sex [with men] - apparently scientifically proved according to the article: The Female Price of Male Pleasure, by Lili Loofbourow (The Week, January 25, 2018). I have never in my life met any of the non-thinking victimized women pictured in this article. On the contrary, I have met a lot of strong, highly independent, and deep-thinking women (note that I´m asexual, and therefore not subjective influenced by male sexuality). But I have also met a lot of radical feminists who like to picture heterosexuality in a way, that only can be described as feminist fascism. Related in The Matrix Dictionary: The Matrix Conspiracy Updates The Matrix Conspiracy Fascism Richard Dawkins Rupert Sheldrake Gregg Braden Doublethink Anti-intellectualism and Anti-science Bridge between Science and Spirituality Related articles: The Matrix Conspiracy The Fascism of Theosophy A Critique of Ken Wilber and His Integral Method A Critique of Richard Dawkins and the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) Time Travel and the Fascism of the WingMakers Project A Critique of the Human Design System The New Feminism and the Philosophy of Women´s Magazines Related: The Matrix Dictionary |
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