Am I a Misogynistic Dinosaur?

This blog has arisen out of a number of recent events. It all began with International Women's Day on 8th March 2010. That prompted me to tweet @jiminthemorning (Jim Hawkins) on Radio Shropshire. Jim invites extensive involvement from his listeners. After an off-air exchange with Jim, I was interviewed on his programme. This led to some lively debate on issues to do with women - and men for that matter and to the title of the blog being given to me by one listener! The term "misogynistic dinosaur is a quotation from the film Casino Royale, where M is describing James Bond). Later that evening, I watched "Women" on BBC 4 and commented on Twitter. All of that leaves much unfinished business and the result is this piece. My intentions are to review the feminist movement, argue my views and ask you to consider where you stand.

Historically, women were the property of men. They had nothing to call their own. Their views were given no consideration and their roles in society were restricted to domestic duties, including the upbringing of children. That has only changed, in essence, in the last half century. The world in which I grew up, in the 1960s was very different from today. In truth, most of us had nothing and in that context women's issues did not seem so out of place. The revolution which has taken place has encompassed much more than the women's lib issues which normally get highlighted in a discussion of this kind. Just about everything has changed. Nevertheless, some men, at least, had more than nothing and probably all had more hope for their future. If we all felt ourselves to be on the scrapheap then women were at the bottom of it. Let us remember, also, however, that women did have a historical contribution long before the Women's Movement began.

That aside, let me list the campaign issues of the Women's Movement: reproductive rights, domestic violence, maternity leave, equal pay, voting rights, sexual harassment, sexual violence, sexual oppression. I guess we all agree with them, every one of them. In fairness to the present day International Women's Day it is specific rights around the world which are the focus of their attention, very much in keeping with this list. So why do I have a problem?

Let me now introduce a few quotations from prominent feminists:

"All men are rapists and that's all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, and their codes" Marilyn French, author of "The Women's Room", 1977, the best selling feminist book ever.

"Rape is nothing more or less than a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear" Susan Brownmiller "Against Our Will. Men, Women and Rape" 1975

"If it were admitted that the family is maintained at the expense of women capitalism would have to devise some other way of getting the work done." Ann Oakley "Women" BBC 4

"All women are lesbians except those who don't know it naturally. They are but don't know it yet. I am a woman and therefore a lesbian." Unattributed "Women" BBC 4

 "Till all women are lesbians there will be no true political revolution." Unattributed "Women" BBC 4

"We're at the end of a period of masculine rule, quite harsh at times... egalitarian rule..." Unattributed "Women" BBC 4

"Relationship between the sexes is a political relationship, therefore, we are in politics." Kate Millett "Sexual Politics", 1970

"There is no question that men are predatory on women - women are prey." Marilyn French "Women" BBC 4

It has been put to me that these are just extremist views of a left wing element in the Women's Movement. Well, I'm afraid that is simply not the case. I was there, growing up when all of this happened. I experienced appalling hostility from women in the movement first hand. I knew their views intimately.

They were a single sex organisation opposed to male supremacy - that's it in a nutshell and that much cannot be argued as untrue. I pleaded many times that there were men sympathetic to their objectives as per my first list and that we would help them fight the ruling class tyranny. No one ever took me up on it. The movement tried to forget men and create a lesbian society with no leaders in it. They were pretty well anarchists. They were certainly as sexist as any male organisation. So that's my first objection. Feminists should have realised that there were males on their side and worked together. They did not and could not.

My second problem concerns their view of the family. A sociologist, Ann Oakley, best described the feminist view. She was the first to put forward the idea that gender is not determined by biology and although it seems a little quaint today, because we have moved on even further, at the time it was revolutionary stuff. Today, we use profiling more or less exclusively to describe people, regardless of their biology and we are much freer in our interests and roles. The focus then, however, was on freeing women from domestic drudgery. Ann states that the role of the housewife must be abolished, the family must be abolished and gender roles must be abolished. She admitted on the television programme that they did not, at the time, think through how else they would bring up children. So here's my second objection. I believe that the family is the best way of bringing up children, one man, one woman and the children. I am not, in this context, going to say why I hold that belief but I might in another blog, another time. I also believe that most people aspire to a single, life long relationship with a partner and an unbroken family life. I accept that there are very important exceptions to that but I want to emphasise here that the feminists excluded the family at the expense of all those other considerations. I think we should start with the benchmark.

My third issue concerns power. As a Strategic Family Therapist power is my base currency in human relationships. It is fundamental in all human systems, be they a couple, a family, a workplace, a corporation or an entire society. When I look at human relationships I see the "rape" of which the feminists speak but I don't see what they see. I see it everywhere and in many ways. I never see it exclusively in a whole sector of society. That would be prejudice, sexism, racism or whatever. The feminists rightly saw the abuse of power but wrongly understood it. They attacked an entire species - man - and that may make them the most sexist organisation in history.

It's a bit like the French Revolution. You start off agreeing with the objectives because you see the injustices that have taken place - but then the heads start to roll. Within the movement women remained egalitarian. There were never any leaders. In society, it's a different story. We do now have women in roles at all levels, not enough, perhaps, but it's certainly not a novelty. We still have families and the roles of the adults are shared much more and so is the distribution of power. I suppose the unfilled woman, trapped in a lonely house all day long with nothing to do but housework was, in reality, the nightmare of the 1950s.

So, to return to my original objectives. Am I a misogynistic dinosaur? Are you a feminist? Or, like me, do you applaud the civil rights achieved by the Women's Movement but disagree with their wider vision of society and their take on male and female relationships?

Tags: misogynist dinosaur International Womens Day Jim Hawkins Radio Shropshire women twitter feminist men society 1960s scrapheap campaign rights reproduction domestic violence maternity leave equal pay voting sexual harassment sexual violence sexual oppression rape Marilyn French Susan Brownmiller BBC4 family capitalism work lesbian revolution egalitarian predatory single sex Ann Oakley gender roles profiling power human systems sexism racism civil rights

Global Warming And The End Of Life As We Know It

Some say it brings out the best in people, others the worst. Personally, I have always been extremely suspicious both of the science and the people who support it.

The problem with the science is that we have so very little to go on and in truth we just don't know what is going on. All scientists think that they are very clever people who know a lot about how things work. The history of science suggests otherwise. What we know in the scheme of things is a tiny fraction of a fraction of a per cent of what is knowable in terms of how things work.

When it comes to knowing a thing or two probably the worst of all possible examples is the weather. We got it wrong when it was fairly stable. What hope when it is not? What is beginning to emerge is that weather is globally linked and that is quite a new idea. Indeed the whole notion of thinking of scientific phenomena as systems is itself in its infancy.

A further problem is that we have only begun to collect data in the last few hundred years so good statistical analysis is simply impossible. Isolated archaeological finds or comments by contemporary writers help a little but mostly no one thought to comment on the weather when they were recording history. Nevertheless, I do remember at school learning that one of the reasons the chartist revolution failed in the 1840s was because on the day the great petition was presented to the government it rained and a lot of supporters stayed at home. British history is never quite like any other!

What we do know about the history of global warmth and weather is that it has fluctuated quite a bit over the centuries with extremes of both ice age proportions and equatorial weather in hitherto temperate regions. I must admit that I find it hard to believe that mankind has had such an impact on the planet that he has diverted the weather system. More likely is that this is just more human arrogance. I don't doubt that the world is getting warmer but I remain sceptical about the reason.

Can so many scientists be wrong? Well, yes, is the short answer but how many scientists actually believe in this unified theory, namely, that wicked mankind has burned too many fossil fuels and must return nature to nature to remedy things. I think the answer is that there are fewer of them than you might think. Sooner or later politics rears its ugly head. The truth is that if you want to get funding for any kind of research these days you have to dress it up to look like it has political significance. Consequently, researchers simply put a global warming spin on their research and obviously keep quiet for fear of never working again. Sad, but true.

My other concern is the group of people who have embraced the global warming bandwagon. It seems to me that every generation has its agitators and the only thing that changes is the cause. There is just a little too much glee for my liking with the way we are supposed to return to nature. Some of this group are definitely bicycle riders and hate cars and I fear that would be true even if it could be demonstrated that the car does not harm the environment. Indeed the gases that come out of the rear end of a cow are supposed to be as harmful as exhaust emissions from cars. So if we moved over to a more rural economy we may very well make matters a whole lot worse.

The real problem is that there are just too many of us. Let us look at the facts - and I do mean facts this time. In 1900 the global population was 1.7 billion. A century later, in 2000, it was 6.1 billion. Half a century later, in 2050 it is projected to rise to 9 billion. As the saying goes - you do the math!

The simple fact is that our global population growth has long since passed the steady rise position and is now relentlessly and exponentially doubling in fewer and fewer years. This fact alone renders all this carbon footprint business useless and futile. Like a plague of locusts we are set to take over the entire planet - unless...

Nature has her way of levelling things out. When one species eats all its prey and prospers to the point of eating all its food supply it dies of starvation, the food supply recovers and the cycle goes around again. The issue for mankind will be one of numbers. If we are unable to solve the problem, and I firmly believe that we do not stand a chance, then nature will solve it for us.

Now, what politician will dare to agree with me?

Pierre

Tags: global warming life as we know it science weather systems statistical analysis archaeological finds history school chartists government revolution rained ice+age temperate fossil fuels nature funding bandwagon bicycle environment cows population