Category: SocioPolitical

Thoughts about Sociopolitical issues

You're not an underdog fighting "political correctness". You're just a bigot.

Db030 Comments

Movebob succintly explains why the idea of being “Politically correct” is a tool used by those who want to be bigots.

MovieBob makes a great case against all those who spew oppressive shit and then hide behind free speech by labeling all those calling them out on their bigotry as “politically correct”.

If you’ve ever spent any time arguing identity politics, then you must by now hate the term “politically correct” as much as I do, so this video was a breath of fresh air.

People seem to think that the concept of free speech is a shield that allows them to spew bigotry and hate without repercussions. Any criticism of said hate speech is treated as an assault on free speech itself which is patently absurd since one is using free speech in their criticism. No, calling out bigotry and asking people to be more considerate (i.e. stop being jerks to marginalized classes) is not “censorship” or “fascism”. I simply exercise my own rights to free speech to point out bigots, and call out for others to enforce peer pressure on them to change their bigoted ways.

Free speech does not mean “No consequences for your speech” anymore than Free Religion means that all religions need to be “respected”. If what you say (or believe) is hateful and hurtful, then you will rightly be called out on it and should expect people to take direct action against you. What that action is, depends on how much harm your free speech causes but those people have as much right to take action to hurt you, as you took action to hurt them.

For fuck's sake, No! Being falsely accused of rape is not not NOT as bad as being actually raped!

Db084 Comments

And no, false rape accusations are not an epidemic either.

[Trigger warning for rape on all links]

What the fuck is wrong with these people? I keep seeing the same argument again and again and again and again , the idea that being accused of rape is not simply as bad as being raped but often worse. I honestly can’t believe how people can be so fucking dense so as to think this is true.

Note that I am not saying that being falsely accused of rape is not bad and can utterly damage your life, but it just does not even compare to the experience of being raped. Yes, both are subjective damages but the overwhelming anecdotes we have of rape survivors show psychological damage of such extent that it can never be repaired or avoided. Being falsely accused of rape on the other hand is only as bad as being falsely accused of many other very socially unacceptable crimes such as drug dealing and murder. The effect reach only as to the extent of people who know about your crimes and consider them bad enough.

A person falsely accused of rape (and convicted of course) may, at the worst case scenario lose friend and family and have their career ruined, but given time they can find new friends who will believe them and repair their social circle, even while hindered by the state. Many times they even clear their names eventually (otherwise we wouldn’t have such a nice influx of False Rape Accusation news stories for the Men’s Right crowd to cheer around). But apparently for some, even the short term damage of a false rape accusation that a male was eventually cleared from, compares to being actually raped.

Here’s the difference though, a rape victim most likely will never escape the damage of the event. Once the deed has been done, the scar will stay forever, no matter if the perpetrator is punished. You cannot undo the rape. You cannot restore the lost trust. You cannot wipe the memory triggers. Any story from rape victims that I’ve heard is magnitudes worse than most false rape accusation stories. And while a the occasional rape victim might take it better than others and survive with less emotional scars, on average the damage is far more severe.

It truly shames me as a male that I have to even point this out to others of my gender.

Many use the excuse that because the aftereffects are subjective, no comparison can be done. Well I disagree vehemently. Due to empathy we can easily grasp the relevant magnitude of each event, much like we can easily see the difference in suffering between having your face slapped, having your tooth pulled out and having acid thrown in your face. These are not all equally bad just because the suffering they cause is subjective. But somehow this comparison fails when it comes to rape doesn’t it?

Much of it I believe comes from lack of empathy. For males, especially those active in the “Men’s Rights” movement which repeats stories of false rape accusations and child custody gone wrong stories, find it far easier to empathize with the male who has been falsely accused. As a male, this is an actual fear they face, even if they wildly blow it out of proportion. In fact I’d go as far as to say that the fear of being falsely accused in the closest thing some males will come to understanding what kind of fear our rape culture creates for females. It’s easy to intuitively empathize with the kind of emotional pain that losing your friends and family can have.  It is not as easy to empathize with rape because most men do not fear it at all. There is no common experience, no horror stories told among friends and family, no victim blaming seen on mainstream media, to even give them an idea that comes even close to how damaging rape can be and on top of that, they have a wealth of rape jokes told by other males which will further trivialize any such empathy they may develop. Naturally then they feel that False Rape Accusations are far worse than actual rape. They just empathize more strongly with the former.

Doesn’t make it correct though.

The even more frustrating things is that the fear of false rape accusations is being used to perpetuate the rape culture. The idea is promoted that a false rape accusation is bad enough even if it falls through in a court of law, due to the psychological “lynching” by friends and family. The implicit idea then is that people should treat rape accusers with distrust because otherwise you unjustly harm the accused who might be innocent after all. This of course reinforces the culture of victim blaming where the search for justice for rape victims is itself so emotionally taxing and with such a high chance of failure, that most of them do not even bother to even try.

Then the Blackstone formulation will be conveniently trotted out to show that it’s better for 15 rapists to go free than for 1 innocent  to be convicted which is so frustrating because it looks at the issue in isolation. A more accurate formulation would be to ask: Is it better for 1 in 200 males to be falsely convicted of rape ((About 8% of rape accusations are dismissed. This does not mean that 1 in 15 males is falsely accused, but from all the males that are accused, 8% are cleared. Iirc, the number in the full male population comes down to around 0.5%)) or for 1 in 6 females to be raped? Of course this is also flawed since those two statistics don’t have to be in competition ((It’s a sad fact of the flawed justice system we use that they are but challenging the adversarial justice system itself is even more unthinkable for most)). Unfortunately those who bring up the false rape accusations and paint them as an epidemic of some sort, will simply push for more stricter investigations completely ignoring what effects this has on women trying to report rape and find justice.

Fact of the matter is that compared to the frequency of actual rape, the number of false rape accusations is a drop in a bucket. To put weight into tackling those few false rape accusations without first tackling the actual epidemic of rape is a travesty, which becomes even worse when one considers that the way some males want to tackle the false rape accusations would actually reinforce the rape culture.

That does not mean I am opposed to reducing the false rape accusations while we’re at it but for crying out loud, get your priorities straight first and only then, look for ways to address it that don’t make the raped women even more marginalized. Unfortunately I think that the current court system and laws are inherently flawed and it’s a sad fact that the heavy handed statist response to the rape epidemic can’t address it without causing some harm elsewhere. One would hope this would make people rethink their premises, but unfortunately this doesn’t happen.

Finally, let me suggest an idea to make males who dismiss the idea of the rape culture while simulataneously railing against false rape accusations. It might give them an idea of how it feels to be a woman in a rape culture. Ask them, if 0.5% of males being falsely accused is a horribly large amount, how they would feel if the percentage was 18%. Would this scare them of having relationships? Ask them how they would feel if they could be easily falsely convicted without any court proceedings. Would this terrify them? Ask them how they would feel if they could be instantly falsely convicted of rape without court proceedings by their wife, their friends, or their aunts, while walking their dog, while sleeping over at a friend’s party, while drinking at a bar. Would this isolate them in horror? Ask them how they would feel if they could be easily falsely convicted of rape by many females who acted in coordination and backed up each other’s story. Ask them how they would feel if the state, their family, their friends all told them that the only way to avoid being falsely convicted of rape without a trial was to constantly use a voice recorder or a camera to record everything that happens around them. Would they think this is a sensible solution? Ask them to imagine that all of these were true at the same time and imagine how it would feel to live their whole life in such an environment.

And then remind them that this is how all women feel currently, only with worse psychological damage to boot.

PS: Bonus link (big big big rape trigger warning). Show them this gut-wrenching story and then remind them that this counts as part of the false rape accusations statistic.

How should anarchists deal with unwelcome elements in an online community?

Db07 Comments

To ban or not to ban.

A recent controversy has exploded in /r/anarchism where the issue of how to deal with white-nationalists, misogynists and other assorted scum has been raised, and particularly, if banning is an appropriate reaction. This is a question that has been asked a few times before but the can of worms was ultimately opened when one of the mods went ahead and banned one of the latest and most egregious samples of bottom-feeding scum.

The reaction was immediate, both from those congratulating the act, and those condemning it. At the start I expressed my cautious criticism as I have always been against bannination from fora and even from my own site and thus I didn’t like this turn of events which happened all of a sudden, but I was willing to let this direct action stand until I knew how the community at large felt. Of course I continued to post on my perspective on why this banning is unnecessary and/or harmful.

The subsequent figurative shitstorm allowed a lot of opportunity to discuss the issue. So I’m going to put forth some of the arguments for and against it as plainly as possible, provide my own perspective and hopefully we can discover some interesting insights and solutions.

  1. For now, lets consider /r/anarchism as a community (although there are many perspectives under which this is not the case). Lets also further consider that it’s a community for anarchists and similar minded people (again, perspectives diverge on this. More on this later)
  2. Now as a community for anarchists, it is to be expected that it should be an area where anarchists feel welcome and not assaulted for their beliefs.
    1. Point 2 can be reached organically, by making sure that discussion stays on the topic of anarchism, which is naturally libertarian socialist for everyone but a small and vocal minority on the internets. This means that the area is going to attract anarchists who are going to speak about and defend anarchism, as well as its cousin tactics of feminism, anti-racism and anti-fascism.
      1. The organic way runs always the danger of being abused by having a lot of non-anarchist “anarchists” (i.e. national “anarchists” or “anarcho”-capitalists) join the area and try to takeover with their version of it, by driving all the anarchists away.
    2. Point 2 can also be reached via a top-down method where anarchists have control of the moderator duties of the community and make sure that such unwelcome elements stay away through banning them, deleting their comments and posts etc.
      1. This assumes that it is indeed anarchists at the helm and it opens the possibility that their ranks will be infiltrated by non-anarchists using the correct rhetoric and then using their power to  to push forth a different perspective
        1. This can be countered by the ones in the moderator list making sure that the ones with power are “true anarchists”, which starts to have serious overhead issues as infighting starts to occur as accusations of leniency, weakness, betrayal and so on start to be flung around. For how extreme such a “solution” can get, I can only point out to the Russian Revolution and how many purges within their leadership they had, in increasing brutality.
        2. The above can also be countered by having the selection of the mod happen via democratic means, such as that even if quite a bit of, say, national “anarchists” managed to sneak into power, they would be able to move the theme of the community to white nationalism as the community would reject it
          1. Of course, this again encounters the flaws of 2.1.1 above, where the community might be already having a large percentage of non-anarchists who will support such a change of paradigm.
      2. This also creates the issue of an unaccountable oligarchy at the top. It is simply the case of the ones on the top being responsible for selecting which ones join them. It doesn’t matter how good intentions they have, or how pure they consider themselves, we already know that power corrupts so what will happen is that the oligarchy at the top, will slowly evolve more and more authoritarian, trusting on it (flawed) judgement to “protect the community” while being certain it’s always on the right. This can be further inflamed as more liberal members of the oligarchy are slowly driven away, either in disgust (as has started happening already in /r/anarchism) or by accusations of being soft on oppressors or providing a “platform for fascists”.
        1. The above can be countered by adding democratic accountability to the selection of the mods. This in turns opens up the issue 2.1.1
        2. The above can be countered by mods making sure each other walks the straight and narrow path of anarchism. That their fellow mods do not violate their principles.
        3. The above can also be countered by having some kind of policies or “constitution” which defines what actions the mods can take.
          1. One problem with this, is that this policy in turn needs to be decided by someone. If this someone is only the mod oligarchy, then it will not necessarily avoid the issue if the mods already have an authoritarian trend.
          2. If the ones deciding on the policy are the whole community instead, then this again falls into the problem in 2.1.1
          3. Another issue to consider is on whether this policy will be open to changes in the future, or it it will be set in stone. If it’s open to changes, then at any point in the future it can be affected by 2.1.1 or 2.2.2.2
  3. As a community, we have some bottom-up moderation tools made available by the platform we use: Reddit. Namely downvoting comments and posts. This has two significant effects. When a comment is downvoted enough (a total -5 cumulative vote), then it gets “burried”, which means it’s not shown by default unless it is expanded explicitly. A person who’s comments are consistently downvoted, starts having timing restrictions in posting. They cannot post more than once per 10 minutes. From personal experience I can explain that this can be very frustrating when you’re having an argument.
    1. The possible problem is that the voting system can be played. In a healthy anarchistic community, a sexist comment would be downvoted to oblivion and a consistent sexist would find it hard to keep posting or gain any visibility. However, given the way reddit functions, anyone registered in reddit can come to /r/anarchism and upvote any comment. This means that a sexist could theoretically call in a so called “upvote brigade” (say from /r/mensrights) which will proceed to upvote his comments to visibility
      1. The issue with this tactic is that it’s not efficient. One can only call for such upvote brigades when there’s some significance to their comments or some outrage to be caused. Fortunately, even the people in /r/mensrights do not want to be someone personal army and one can only ask for this favour so many times before they are ignored. This means that it’s unlikely that more than a few comments can gain visibility through this method and eventually the anti-sexist sentiments from the community will return them to minus
      2. It is possible to consider that someone will find a persistent “personal army”, or perhaps an invasion” will be attempted (as has been called for in the past by both national “anarchists” and by “anarcho”-capitalists). However they are unlikely to succeed as anarchists are already entrenched and all we need to do is weather a short-term influx of non-anarchists. Once no visible success is achieved, such “invasions” simply lose wind, especially given how little one can gain from taking over a community such as /r/anarchism.
        1. Perhaps one can consider that if /r/anarchism grows to sufficient size (and I consider our >10k subscribers and number of comments/posts we have have quite succesful) it will attract the attention of such organized elements, which will then attempt to take it over for propaganda purposes, much like it has happened with the Tea Party movement. However the fact that we have grown large by being a community of anarchists until then and managed to avoid such takeovers, means that it’s unlikely that we’ll be more vulnerable when we’re an even bigger society of anarchists.
    2. Another issue is that it’s possible that community moderation might not be enough to hide the most egregiously abusive comments and posts. Comments which might alienate oppressed people we would like to attract to anarchism, such as women, PoC etc. After all, they wouldn’t want to be in a community where white power apologists, holocaust deniers, misogynists and so on are seen to be accepted member and/or posters. This is because non-anarchists lurkers and even non-subscribers can vote comments up or down.
      1. One counter-argument is that people should understand the nature of this website and how voting works. An upvoted post in a deep thread does not necessarily mean that such an opinion is supported by the community. One needs to get a thicker skin and be able to ignore outright trollish comments, meant explicitly to alienate them
        1. On the other hand oppressed people shouldn’t be forced to tolerate abuse and they have every right to claim that a community where they are expected to swallow their anger is not worth it.
          1. The above argument is caused by a misunderstanding. When a “thicker skin” is mentioned, it is not a call for silence. This is not akin to saying “can’t you take a joke woman?”. Someone abused in such way has every right to be outraged and answer back in anger and/or act accordingly and they will find support in the other members of the reddit who will do the same. Rather, the thick skin refers to the idea that one should not give up on the community because the occasional troll make a nasty comment. Figuratively skewer it and move on.

I hope you’re still with me after all those numbers and indents.The reason I chose this format is just so that I can refer to specific arguments and counter arguments by their number. The above are, from my understanding, the core arguments having to do with the reasons for banning.

Proponents of banning as a legitimate tactic commonly seem to reject democratic or crowdsourced solutions. We are very often informed that democracy does not work, that lurkers shouldn’t count, that there’s only a few anarchists in /r/anarchism and so on. I find such arguments disheartening and wrong. The reason is that open online communities such as a subreddit can easily serve as a “petri dish” for the ideas of anarchism. If we can’t stick to our principles here, how can we ever convince others that we can stick to our principles in a real life scenario?

Consider a possible revolutionary situation. Your real life community is not going to be comprised 100% of anarchists. not even close. In fact, it’s very likely that there’s going to be very few conscious anarchists while the vast majority of people follow anarchistic principles (direct action and mutual aid)to some extent. Even if you collectively start progressing to an anarchist society, there’s always going to be elements advocating a return to the old ways or to something worse, like fascism. What are you going to do with someone suggesting that a strong leader takes control? What about free markets? Are you going to silence them or exile them and how? Will you declare that since this is an anarchist revolution, only anarchist deserve to be in the democratic decision making? Or will you request the leadership in order to guide society on the right path.

People online love to sarcastically point out how little an online forum has to do with reality but fail to understand the impression they give to anyone outside looking in. The first thing they see anarchists doing, is fall back to the same old methods. Use central power to control. Sure you may think that they don’t count, but how the hell else are we even going to convince others that we have a superior solution to what they already do? If your solution for an Internet forum is to use central mod power to ban racism, sexism and fascism, then why shouldn’t a statist believe that the central power of the state can do likewise?

Yes, the Internet does put limits on the actions we can follow, which is why it’s even more important that we stick to decentralized, bottom-up solutions when possible. If we can do it on the internet, imagine how well it will work in the real world, where accountability and peer pressure exists.

A recent controversy has exploded in /r/anarchism where the issue of how to deal with white-nationalists, misogynists and other assorted scum has been raised, and particularly, if banning is an appropriate reaction. This is a question that has been asked a few times before but the can of worms was ultimately opened when one of the mods went ahead and banned one of the latest and most egregious samples of bottom-feeding scum.

The reaction was immediate, both from those congragulating the act, and those condemning it. At the start I expressed my cautious criticism as I have always been against bannination from fora and even from my own site and thus I didn’t like this turn of events which happened all of a sudden, but I was willing to let this direct action stand until I knew how the community at large felt. Of course I continued to post on my perspective on why this banning is unnecessary and/or harmful.

The subsequent figurative shitstorm allowed a lot of opportunity to discuss the issue. So I’m going to put forth some of the arguments for and against it as plainly as possible, provide my own perspective and hopefully we can discover some interesting insights and solutions.

  1. For now, lets consider /r/anarchism as a community (although there are many perspectives under which this is not the case). Lets also further consider that it’s a community for anarchists and similar minded people (again, perspectives diverge on this. More on this later)
  2. Now as a community for anarchists, it is to be expected that it should be an area where anarchists feel welcome and not assaulted for their beliefs.
    1. Point 2 can be reached organically, by making sure that discussion stays on the topic of anarchism, which is naturally libertarian socialist for everyone but a small and vocal minority on the internets. This means that the area is going to attract anarchists who are going to speak about and defend anarchism, as well as its cousin tactics of feminism, anti-racism and anti-fascism.
      1. The organic way runs always the danger of being abused by having a lot of non-anarchist “anarchists” (i.e. national “anarchists” or “anarcho”-capitalists) join the area and try to takeover with their version of it, by driving all the anarchists away.
    2. Point 2 can also be reached via a top-down method where anarchists have control of the moderator duties of the community and make sure that such unwelcome elements stay away through banning them, deleting their comments and posts etc.
      1. This assumes that it is indeed anarchists at the helm and it opens the possibility that their ranks will be infiltrated by non-anarchists using the correct rhetoric and then using their power to  to push forth a different perspective
        1. This can be countered by the ones in the moderator list making sure that the ones with power are “true anarchists”, which starts to have serious overhead issues as infighting starts to occur as accusations of leniency, weakness, betrayal and so on start to be flinged around. For how extreme such a “solution” can get, I can only point out to the Russian Revolution and how many purges within their leadership they had, in increasing brutality.
        2. The above can also be countered by having the selection of the mod happen via democratic means, such as that even if quite a bit of, say, national “anarchists” managed to sneak into power, they would be able to move the theme of the community to white nationalism as the community would reject it
          1. Of course, this again encounters the flaws of 2.1.1 above, where the community might be already having a large percentage of non-anarchists who will support such a change of paradigm.
      2. This also creates the issue of an unaccountable oligarchy at the top. It is simply the case of the ones on the top being responsible for selecting which ones join them. It doesn’t matter how good intentions they have, or how pure they consider themselves, we already know that power corrupts so what will happen is that the oligarchy at the top, will slowly evolve more and more authoritarian, trusting on it (flawed) judgement to “protect the community” while being certain it’s always on the right. This can be further inflamed as more liberal members of the oligarchy are slowly driven away, either in disgust (as has started happening already in /r/anarchism) or by accusations of being soft on oppressors or providing a “platform for fascists”.
        1. The above can be countered by adding democratic accountability to the selection of the mods. This in turns opens up the issue 2.1.1
        2. The above can be countered by mods making sure each other walks the straight and narrow path of anarchism. That their fellow mods do not violate their principles.
        3. The above can also be countered by having some kind of policies or “constitution” which defines what actions the mods can take.
          1. One problem with this, is that this policy in turn needs to be decided by someone. If this someone is only the mod oligarchy, then it will not necessarily avoid the issue if the mods already have an authoritarian trend.
          2. If the ones deciding on the policy are the whole community instead, then this again falls into the problem in 2.1.1
          3. Another issue to consider is on whether this policy will be open to changes in the future, or it it will be set in stone. If it’s open to changes, then at any point in the future it can be affected by 2.1.1 or 2.2.2.2
  3. As a community, we have some bottom-up moderation tools made available by the platform we use: Reddit. Namely downvoting comments and posts. This has two significant effects. When a comment is downvoted enough (a total -5 cumulative vote), then it gets “burried”, which means it’s not shown by default unless it is expanded explicitly. A person who’s comments are consistently downvoted, starts having timing restrictions in posting. They cannot post more than once per 10 minutes. From personal experience I can explain that this can be very frustrating when you’re having an argument.
    1. The possible problem is that the voting system can be played. In a healthy anarchistic community, a sexist comment would be downvoted to oblivion and a consistent sexist would find it hard to keep posting or gain any visibility. However, given the way reddit functions, anyone registered in reddit can come to /r/anarchism and upvote any comment. This means that a sexist could theoretically call in a so called “upvote brigade” (say from /r/mensrights) which will proceed to upvote his comments to visibility
      1. The issue with this tactic is that it’s not efficient. One can only call for such upvote brigades when there’s some significance to their comments or some outrage to be caused. Fortunately, even the people in /r/mensrights do not want to be someone personal army and one can only ask for this favour so many times before they are ignored. This means that it’s unlikely that more than a few comments can gain visibility through this method and eventually the anti-sexist sentiments from the community will return them to minus
      2. It is possible to consider that someone will find a persistent “personal army”, or perhaps an invasion” will be attempted (as has been called for in the past by both national “anarchists” and by “anarcho”-capitalists). However they are unlikely to succeed as anarchists are already entrenched and all we need to do is weather a short-term influx of non-anarchists. Once no visible success is achieved, such “invasions” simply lose wind, especially given how little one can gain from taking over a community such as /r/anarchism.
        1. Perhaps one can consider that if /r/anarchism grows to sufficient size (and I consider our 10k subscribers and

Insurgency – what and how? A reply.

Db0

Someone responds to my call against questionable tactics but I fail to see the main point.

It seems someone wrote a reply to my post about anarchists using questionable tactics in stuggle, but reading through it, I fail to see the actual argument or even refutation of the points I made. Instead I see some general declaration of what states do in order to control, and how fascism has not gone away.

What I do not see is any counter to my point that using tactics compatible with fascism, will not bring about anarchism, that fighting fire with fire, in short, does not work. Then is the suggestion for this “insurgency”.

The second effective tactic is insurgency. This is perhaps the only option available to us. While from an idealist perspective, I applaud devZero’s essay as well-reasoned, from the realist perspective I must choose insurgency as more practical. As capitalism continues to crumble, something most assuredly will take its place. For the first time in history, and the globalists are correct on this point, virtually all of mankind is following the same playbook — capitalistic, economic progress. AKA “growing economies” at any cost, human or environmental. A paradigm shift is coming, whether we like it or not.

Yeah, ok, a paradigm shift is coming, but what is this insurgency you’re talking about supposed to work? You can’t just throw the word out and assume that everyone knows what you’re talking about. How does this counter at all my suggestion not to use the tactics of fascists?

Perhaps there is a misunderstanding here. Perhaps jamon assumed that I was suggesting some kind of Ghandian pacifist resistance and my call against questionable tactics was a call against all forms violence. This is not true. I am not a pacifist and nor do I believe that it was Ghandi’s or MLK’s movement by itself the cause for change. What I do say is that there’s some ways violence is warranted (eg self-defence) and some ways it isn’t (eg murdering politicians).

This of course means that insurrection is a valid tactic, as long of course as we even know what “insurgency” is. Just saying the word is meaningless. And it’s the tactics that will bring about this insurgency that need to be judged according to the ethical guideline I proposed.

Follow up on Japanese Sexism

Db04 Comments

A commenter expands on the subject of Japanese Sexism.

japanese white rabbit…
Image by colodio via Flickr

On my post about Sexism in Japanese culture, one commenter left a reply that I thought was far to interesting to let it delve in obscurity. So I’m posting it here to give you perhaps a deeper understanding on what goes on there.

Having lived in Japan for a while and having married a Japanese woman, I’d say that’s you’re fairly correct in your assumptions. In general, the progressive image of Japan comes under a lot of heat in many areas when viewed from the inside-out.

Japan has never truly had a woman’s revolution. I visit corporate clients on a daily basis and find that the majority of women are still used in a 1960s-ish ‘coffee secretary’ role. I’ve been told directly by more than a few clients that they tend to hire women solely for having them around the office to meet male workers, marry them, get pregnant, and leave the workplace so they can get new, younger women in the office.

The idea behind this is that it helps Japanese male employees meet women (which they’re fairly near utterly incapable of doing on their own sometimes) and don’t have the free time to usually pursue because of long work hours. In this way, it keeps Japan from extinction.

On the other hand, sexual harassment is the norm, and there doesn’t exist much currently to combat such things. I’ve seen female employees treated like complete garbage by men who have never had to confront the word ‘equality.’

So has the oppressing hand of man kept women down and successfully prevented a woman’s revolution?

Not Exactly….

In Japan, the workplace is traditionally the domain of men and the home is the domain of women. While men puff out their chests in public and can show dominance over their spouses there, they are normally completely at a loss to control ANY home issues.

The woman handles all money and the man readily gives her his monthly paychecks. She normally doles out a pittance to the man to buy a bit of lunch, and dictates all monetary issues.

I know many a man that I can deflate upon asking why they can’t come out for a drink.

“My wife only allows me 500 yen (5 dollars) a day for lunch.”

In this way, there’s a bit more under the carpet than can be easily seen.

I’d argue that a woman’s revolution has never occurred because the majority of Japanese woman are quite happy with the status quo and don’t feel the need for work when they can dream of being a house wife that holds out her hand to collect her husband’s money.

I liken it to some people on welfare in America/Australia that don’t bother getting jobs because life’s already basically paid for, but many Japanese woman seem quite comfortable with the arrangement. Perhaps they don’t know better, or perhaps it just IS better (I often wonder what life would be like if I could just collect a spouses money and maintain the house all day)

Of course, there are a minority of woman who want to achieve a life where they can manage companies and advance in their line of work/careers, and these women truly get the shaft and have to endure a barrage of men trying to put them back in their place.

I often get angry at it, but Japan is a place where you accept roles and stick to those roles. It’s not going to change overnight.

It IS changing slowly, extremely slowly. Men today seem to have lost a bit of their old ways and are slowly emerging in home life. Some would argue that women’s control has actually increased due to a weaker man.

I loved your post, totally agree, would love to see change, but am cognizant of the fact that I’m viewing the whole situation from a different cultural standpoint and perhaps could be wrong.

-Craig

EDIT: Just to make it clear since the comment above can be taken to apologize for the rampart patriarchy of Japan (Although I do not think that was Craig’s intention) when it says stuff like:

So has the oppressing hand of man kept women down and successfully prevented a woman’s revolution?

Not Exactly….

I believe it has been absolutely the oppressive hand of man that kept women down. I do not see the role of the woman in such a society as having any power but rather as having internalized their oppression and trying to use the position decided for them by the patriarchy to its full extent. As Sitakali wrote in the comments (and I agree wholeheartedly):

I find excuses like the one presented here to be good examples of why cultural relativism can be dangerous. Just as Sharia Law is not acceptable, regardless of the cultural history of Islamic nations, so is this separation of “duties” along gender lines unacceptable and unfair.

PS: This is the reason why I like blogging my thoughts on things like this, even if they’re not so well educated. So often will you find people that are able to provide a thoughtful and new perspective on something you’re thinking of, correct your preconceptions and generally ecpand your understanding.

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Management Consultants or Court Magicians?

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If Managers are the new nobility, Management Consultants are their Court Magicians.

Japanese-born American poet and critic Sadakic...
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I just read this very interesting opinion piece from The Independent where it is shown how Management Consultancy is the largest legal scal of the 20th century. In the piece, the author is quite surprised how time after time various big firms will fall for the same scam with disastrous results and how come the bad reputation of such Consultancy firms has not yet caught up to them.

This immediately made sense to me, for the truth is that the Management are absolutely incapable of telling what is a good or bad result, since they themselves are more likely than not, as incompetent in management as the consultants they are hiring. In the past, I’ve likened the Management and the paths they use to achieve such positions, to the Nobility of old and this latest article nicely allows me to extend this analogy.

If Management is the new nobility, then the Management Consultants are the Court Magicians.

Much like a court magician, they do not have any knowledge or skill in making decisions for other people, not to mention whole organizations. In the past, those court magicians used cantrips, displays of mysticism, cold and hot reading and simply psychology, to make the Nobles believe that they had powers of foresight and Intuition. Management Consultants instead use complex excel sheets, alchemical algorithms, free market drivel and orthodoxy and raw bluff.

Court Magicians were used as advisors to Kings and Lords in important decisions. Their advise, when not simply reinforcing the opinion of the ruler as a form of sycophancy, were nothing but random. Much like current management, Court Magicians relied on the fact that a King or Lord had no more an idea on how to rule other humans and were gunning for that 50% of random chance success, while and padding it up with the cognitive biases of the nobility. Management Consultancy can’t even get a 50% success rate but they rely on the fact that current Management is so desperate in times of crisis that they would be even willing to believe in astrology or alchemy if it promised a way out.  Of course, those two disciplines have been severely discredited by actual sciences while in the field of business, marketing is king. And Management Consultancy firms can afford a lot of Marketing.

In fact, I think that if Management firms hired actual court magicians, they might actually have better success, since at least they wouldn’t be mired in the orthodoxy of  “Cut 30% of Staff no matter the circumstances”.

The more one looks at this insane system we’re living in, it truly starts to resemble some kind of neo-feudalism more and more. The incompetent are born into their positions of power, and are then advised by the more cunning incompetent on how to rule everyone else.

Now I just need to figure who the court jester is…

Your democracy is built on totalitarianism

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Is your society free when it’s building components are unfree?

I wonder how people can still think they are living in a Free Democratic Nation™ when their whole live revolves around profoundly undemocratic institutions save for a few hours ever few years where they get to pick among those choices predefined for them. How can you call your life anything democratic when your jobs resemble state socialism, your schools resemble prisons and your army resembles totalitarianism. How can people seriously consider themselves free when they only have the choice between unfree options?

Seriously, I read this article about boot camp (h/t Broadsnark) and how much people are conditioned within to accept the most totalitarian institution. How all semblance of individuality is wiped out and replaced with unthinking collectivism and sheer killer instict. How can a free society claim that it requires an unfree institution to survive? Does not compute.

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Quote of the Day: There's no good cops

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Where oh where art the good cops?

Breathalyzer
Image by JOE MARINARO via Flickr

Hamakua skewers the classic police apologetics that “therey’re not all bad” in a very amusing way

Honestly? Fuck that. I am judging them all by the apathy of the many. I agree with the earlier post, and I believe every single fucking cop should stand up and strike every time one of these rare (yeah fucking right) bad apples “steps” out of line.

I have cop friends too, with cop families, and cop dinner tables, … with you know what? Fucking cop stories… I have heard them and I can observe the attitudes, of not just the cops, but the family, the friends, the other co workers…. It’s like a bunch of racists… except remove “race” and replace it with “us” and “them”. Meaning cops and non-cops.

Don’t give me any crap about how you have cop friends. You aren’t fooling anyone singing their defense or their praise. They should be held to a higher standard, and in fact are held to a much lower one… and you make excuses for the good ones? There are no good ones, there are apathetic ones and bad ones.

Forgive the rant, but I hate apologists.

And fucking don’t forget, they weren’t drafted, or forced to become cops, they CHOSE to become cops… it’s not like a color of skin, or ethnic background, it’s a fucking power grab.

That’s exactly it people. If there are good cops out there, they fail to publicly display it. They fail to condemn the action of their colleagues. They fail to stand up to abuse being dished out in front of them. How many times have you seen a video of one police officer getting putting his body between a police officer and his hapless victim, even forcing them away if needed? How many times have you seen a suspect being released from a questionable arrest due to the actions of another officer? How many strikes and marches by police officers have you seen against police corruption?

Perhaps such incidents exist, but they are not simply the minority, but such an overwhelmed minority that they might as well not exist. If police officers really showed that they were willing to fight on the side of the people, perhaps those people (who are not servile apologists of power) would fear them less and respect them more. And then, those few good cops, who have proven their goodness, might even be allowed in an anarchist cafe if they are sufficiently known.

But until then, it’s safe to assume that the cop you see in front of you, is as rotten as the rest of his peers. It’s not that good cops may not exist, it’s that the good ones don’t become cops, leave the force or stop being “good” eventually.

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To Serve and Protect…

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The largest and most brutal street gangs are those paid by your taxes.

Here’s something to challenge your paradigm in case you still believe the police are there to serve and protect you

Watch the second and third part as well (not to mention the whole thing). Especially the last story (starting at the end of part two and the whole of part 3)  is gut wrenching in the callous and inhumane behaviour of the police, not to mention how the state naturally protected its hired thugs from legal backlash.

And then you wonder why Anarchists feel threatened by police presence and want them nowhere near them.

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