In Praise of “Brocialism”
David Lindsay
Corbyn looking cool
Recent events have redefined the political debate, and ongoing events are continuing to redefine it, in terms of economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends. In the struggle for economic equality, the leading role belongs to the working class, and the leading role within the working class belongs to the trade union and co-operative movements. In the struggle for international peace, the leading role belongs to the working class and to the youth. It is possible to see that latter dimension in the movements around Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, and Ron Paul. When seen in that context, then it is only to be expected and applauded that those youth movements are largely male.
The eventual failure of the Ron Paul campaign was in no small measure due to its failure to locate the struggle for international peace within the struggle for economic equality, and vice versa. The Bernie Sanders phenomenon remains constrained by its failure to learn the lesson of Donald Trump’s victory, and of Leave’s victory in Britain: that the workers, and not the liberal bourgeoisie, are now the key swing voters, so that environmental and identity issues are subordinate within that, if they can be, or they are precluded by it, if they cannot be so subordinate.
Enter the Brocialists, if that is what you want to call them, and as they might usefully call themselves. Born in the 1990s or in the twenty-first century, they are hectored by the likes of Harriet Harman, Stella Creasy, Yvette Cooper, Jess Phillips and Laura Pidcock, causing them to wonder, “Well, what the hell did I ever do?” They are stunned at the very existence of all-women shortlists, which are the kind of thing that they have grown up assuming to be illegal, and which have not brought more women into politics, but have simply made it far easier for women to get on by drastically restricting the field. Women now need to be far less accomplished, capable or even promising than men do, and they are routinely wafted into positions for which their male contemporaries would be told that they were far too young.
Those contemporaries fail to see the economically egalitarian gains of the decades since the 1970s. Alongside a collapse in male employment that had in any case largely happened by the time that they came along, the defining experience of their own politics has been to have grown up under Governments, of all three parties, that have harvested young men in wars with a sheer pointlessness that had not been since 1918. Hence their attraction and attachment to a politician who has opposed every single one of those wars.
The very same Governments, of all three parties, have refused as a matter of principle to reindustrialise Britain, have taken pride in presiding over the collapse of parliamentary scrutiny in the House of Commons by ensuring that any and everything has to be nodded through for the sake of school holidays and babies’ bathtimes, have turned fathers into cash machines whom vengeful exes can deny on pain of imprisonment any contact with the children for whom they are rightly still obliged to pay, have empowered women to take men to the cleaners financially after even the briefest of relationships, have dramatically altered the content of arts and humanities courses against male interests (a key element in the prevention or suppression of the radical political action to which mass classical education has always been fundamental), have pumped boys full of Ritalin, have classified young male political engagement and many other normal patterns of male behaviour as autistic spectrum disorders, are now trying to force bare breasts and vaginas into men’s and boys’ communal showers and changing rooms by means of gender self-identification, and have redefined rape as any heterosexual encounter that the female partner chooses to declare to have been so, under cover of anonymity and even decades after the event.
Write it on the doorposts: all of these things have been done by the Governments, of all three parties, whose economic and foreign policies have directly caused the Corbyn phenomenon. Brocialism? Of course it is Brocialism. Not before time
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Zizek also condemns Peterson and Pinker’s pseudo-science. According to him, Peterson’s “pseudo-scientific references; he cannot talk about women and marriage without mentioning lobsters, apes or whatever”. 🙂
https://www.rt.com/uk/444717-zizek-jordan-peterson-pinker/
WD
In answer to your criticism, here and below, you seem to be able to discern the ‘creeping totalitarianisms’ that somehow relate me to Peterson, but maybe miss the latent censorship in your own comment. Or maybe you did not notice that you took on an omniscience of your own, answering for anyone and everyone (the readers) who might ever comment here? The indeterminancy of translation distorts, doesn’t it?
But let’s not go down that slippery slope fallacy that is becoming ubiquitous when people do not want to engage with a POV. Not every difference of opinion ends in the Gulag or genocide: we can agree to disagree without marching into authoritarianism?
Where would would seem to disagree, is that I think language is the key to power. It is also the key to universal equality and liberation. The ‘uncomplicated’ events that we can all comment on interminably do matter, but they are only expressions of the deep psychological structures of power. And those deep structures are words. Ordinary language discourse is the status quo and maintenance of the balance of power …a status quo ante that periodically turns totalitarian. Totalitarianism is the word made flesh.
It seems to me, mediated by ordinary language discourse, events more often lead to oppression and war …seldom to true peace. The peace we have historically known, is an absence of war: where war remains an unspoken latency that words could inflame at any moment. Perhaps there is a linguistic causality to our oppression? We’ll never know if we do not question?
If breaking the flow of normal comprehension is breaking the flow of the balance of power, could that not be a positive first step in the dialogue of peace? We’ll never know if we do not ask.
This was in reply to wardropper further down. Roll on the Beta roll out!
Sorry, anyone who thinks Ron Paul stands for economic equality and working class solidarity has a fundamental problem with reality comprehension and can’t be taken seriously. The rest of this embarrassingly bad rant confirms that the author, in addition to being shockingly ignorant of basic political concepts, has a massive chip on his shoulder. Using the bad politics of a few Labour MPs, who happen to be female, to launch into a rant about putting women “back in their place” is pretty cringeworthy stuff.
What on earth possessed OG to run this piece in the first place?
“anyone who thinks Ron Paul stands for economic equality and working class solidarity has a fundamental problem with reality comprehension and can’t be taken seriously.” – exactly the same could be said of anyone who believes Harriet Harman, Stella Creasy, Yvette Cooper, or Jess Phillips (to which could be added Liz Kendall and certainly Margaret Hodge) have anything to do with socialism.
As I see it they are all part of the same post-Blair legacy which includes more than its fair share of male counterparts (Chuka the centerist, Owen ‘BigPharma’ Smith, Kinnock jnr. Tristram Hunt, etc).
Corbyn may have failings but his emergence has laid bare the capture of the Labour party by neoliberals many who add insult to injury by promoting a ghastly form of identity politics that in the main demonises men.
Take the allegations made against Assange, for example.
Would the case have gained such traction or been seized on so gleefully by the liberal media without an underlying assumption that when it comes to sex crimes all men are guilty until proven otherwise (Kavanaugh is another case in point) – these men may be guilty, but the point is in the current climate the presumption of innocence has all but evaporated.
As I read it the OP was not so much about ‘putting women in their place’ as you put it, although imposters like Hodge certainly deserve it, but rather acknowledging social gains that arose from organised labour while pointing out that casually portraying maleness in such toxic terms should become a thing of the past.
I wish I could give you multiple upvotes Harry, spot on.
neoliberals, many who add insult to injury by promoting a ghastly form of identity politics that in the main demonises men
Too much rubbish in both the article and in this comment to be able to take either of them seriously.
Ron Paul was, like Bernie Sanders, stopped by the sheer weight of wealth-powered media mendacity, as well as by the Clinton machine.
They all had as easy a time in demolishing him as “too old”, “too extreme” etc. etc. as the equivalent machinery in the UK had in painting Corbyn as an anti-semite.
Although certainly getting on in years, as a doctor, Paul represented intelligent, humane debate on the crucial issues of our time, and that is what set him against the owners of all western media from the start. Even if you don’t always completely agree with him, he was always passionate, logical and very articulate in his arguments against the reckless misuse of public funds to propagate endless war in countries which are none of the US’s business. Yes, he actually had human feelings about such matters, and his audiences understood what he was talking about.
Given the appalling choices presented to voters these days, Ron Paul was intellectually streets ahead of the competition, but the establishment naturally can’t stand that. Heavens, he might have actually stopped some of their warmongering…!
I must add that there was a lot in the second part of Eric Blair’s comment that I DID agree with.
My main gripe is with the implication that Ron Paul should have been more of a socialist, when my view is that his intelligence actually cut through party political lines pretty effectively. You don’t have to be a socialist, or any other kind of “ist” in order to have something important to say, after all.
Just think of the state we are now in, politically speaking: Would the people vote for Noam Chomsky, Jordan Peterson, or any other highly educated, articulate and intelligent person for President?
No.
And why not?
They know too much, so they wouldn’t fit in with today’s political landscape or narrative…
The brainwashing of the west has been successful.
Labour was already a party so male in its membership, and especially in its activist base, that it had largely had to be forced to select women as candidates (whereas the mostly female activist base of the Conservative Party overwhelmingly selects men of its own accord), and that it had never placed a woman above a man in a Leadership Election. But now, beyond even that, it is being taken over at the activist level by very young men who have been highly politicised by the effects of deindustrialisation, and by pointless wars that people born since 1990 regard as having been going on forever.
Whereas the grandes dames of anti-Corbynism represent a tradition that was largely defined by deindustrialisation, and which has provided much of the ideological cover for the wars, especially in Afghanistan, but also in, for example, Iraq, which received UN awards for women’s education before 2003. A reckoning is coming, and probably very soon. Meanwhile, so is another hung Parliament, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it.
Why can’t people in the UK form a party called: “Off-Tories” ? The could win easily reading this blog.
Kill them?! I say, that’s a bit extreme!
I disagree that environmental issues should be subordinate in this era of Global Heating Climate Emergency and Species Extinction.
Petty environmental issues should clearly be subordinate or be eliminated completely from the calculus: like recycling (a big feel-good lie) and light bulbs (why bother saving the power only to have new increased demand like,uh, STREAMING?)
Same with identity politics which is vastly different from both Constitutional Rights and Human Rights.
Identity politics — the political correctness police and the women-erasing and womens issues-erasing transgender blitzkrieg — should be removed from the calculus. Identity issues that are not clear constititutional issues ought to be scrapped from the agenda.
In the US, the transcending issue should be the issue Beto nearly rode to victory in hard-red right wing Texas:
>>>>> New Improved Medicare for All
plus the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez group’s “Green New Deal” — interestingly borrowed from Jill Stein’s Green Party presidential campaign platform of 2016.
Plus a total rollback of the entire atmosphere polluting and human immiseration-creating Davos neoliberal world order juggernaut.
A reset to the policies of FDR / Kennedy / Carter, 1980 and Attlee / Wilson / Callaghan, 1979 would be a good first step.
Better would be nations based on the policies of a president named Henry A. Wallace and a Prime Minister named Tony Benn.
Too late.
‘Global Heating Climate Emergency’? Yeah right! That would be the one bought to you by the totally discredited IPCC? Look into the long term climate modelling of those scientist excluded from the global warming hoax. The next ice age is overdue. As for FDR – read Diana West, American Betrayal (And M Stanton Evan Blacklisted By History while you are at it). And if you’ve already succumbed to the tsunami of ad hominen hate against her analysis from the usual orthodox suspects, read her rebuttal of these also available in book form.
The IPCC is discredited-for downplaying the catastrophe through pressure for ‘consensus’ with rogue states like Sordid Barbaria and Austfailia. The rest is bog standard genocidal denialist garbage, ALWAYS welcome at OffGuardian.
BigB is there any chance that you could teach yourself to write in intelligible English?
This, for example:
Living systems are emergent from the balanced complementarity and unity of opposition of their binary (sexual) progenitors (Yin and Yang). There is no implied contradistinction; no imposed dualism; no separation from environment within self-generating, self-maintaining (autopoietic) living systems…
If you were writing about quantum physics there might be an excuse for your language being impenetrable to ordinary, reasonably intelligent individuals, but you are in fact writing about people and society FFS.
When I was at university in the 1970s there was a regrettable tendency in the social sciences to believe that the cleverer you were, the less anybody could understand what you were talking about, and if you were really really clever, then nobody would have the faintest idea what you were talking about. I don’t imagine anything in that field has changed much over the years.
The truth of the matter is that genuinely clever people are capable of taking a complex idea and rendering it into language that ordinary people are perfectly capable of understanding. Here’s a suggestion: make that your goal.
Lol. Comprehension of a text should not be that difficult to attain in this web world. You can easily highlight a word and look it up.
In fact you will learn more then the very exact concept expressed in that statement, which may get blurred by none exact ‘simple english’ and no doubt much longer sentence; you learn new words!
English may have most words for the same concept, but many are most apt for the specific context, that is the great thing about a pliable language.
Thanks for the down votes! I tried to explain simply in plain english in a short post.
Well you are asking for it so here is the BigB to serve it to you, enjoy, dottards!
“old decaying trees”? What are you corking about?
Most people here are bright enough to be able to look up a word or two.
But what we are talking about here is writing language which is so unnecessarily dense that it interrupts the flow of normal comprehension.
There are of course many beautiful words in the English language, and many technically apposite ones too, but a comments section is neither the time nor place for a doctoral thesis on words and their meanings. For the reader here, the issues at stake are simply not that complicated.
If Shakespeare could manage beautiful language at the same time as getting crucial existential points across to an audience of bright people, then we can at least try to come close to that.
Stonky
Thanks for the feedback: suggestion noted. What you might find hard to believe, is that it is my goal.
The problem is not me: blame the language. Language dichotomises, personalises, and polarises. It’s something I am acutely aware of. I would quite like to start the dialogue about the communication of communication. The first step of the dialogue – is the dialogue about the dialogue. Words have many more than two meanings. Terms, frames of reference, metaphoric concepts and definitions are all contestable. Language and logic are binary and separational. Binaries are hierarchical. Discourse is conflict based. If you want to understand gender issues and identity politics, you have to understand the linguistic issues. Am I allowed to mention semiotics? 😉
The issues of language are well known, post-Quine’s the “Indeterminancy of Translation”. Multiple readers create multiple interpretations of a text. If you parse the language of all fuzzy definitions, you can barely say a thing in the metalanguage. You have to express simplistic truth-values with calculus and set theory. All higher reason, including mathematical and scientific reason is a priori parsed. So is any reference to emotion or intuition. All humanity is parsed from the language.
Language is mostly metaphorical, and those metaphors and shared terminology mean different things to different groups. When you realise that mind is mediated almost purely by language (even pre-lingual ‘pictures’ require description) …it’s a real problem that is in fact the creative nexus of the mess we are in. We are legion: separated by one language (the problems are universal and supra-lingual: not confined to any particular language). Getting out of our pan-historic misconceptions, mediated and reified by language is going to take some mansplainin’! Especially the inarticulable bit about the Dao ..the Dao that can be told is not the eternal Dao …
Anyway, I’m on it. If you don’t understand my verbiage …just ask. There’s plenty more where that came from!
You may begin by deleting the word “quite” from your dictionary and spellchecker. It has become completely useless since the Brits mean either 100% (entirely), about 30% (rather, somewhat), or a bit less than that (a little bit). And the poor, confused USAmericans mean either 100% or about 75% (very). Quit “quite”; you KNOW it makes sense.
Like it BB – mansplainin’ (that’ll get ’em jumping)
When we see age-old feminists like Greer, who rightly fought for equal rights for women and won, de-platformed we can be sure this is no longer about feminism at all.
Identify politics is extremely divisive and vile. We are all equal but IP takes that away from us. It’s dangerous, neo-Bolshevik, totalitarian, manoeuvres and they must be as forcefully rejected as their propaganda and policies are pushed upon us.
Identity Politics is a classic Divide and Rule tactic. The parasite rulers must be chuckling into their Bollinger. To impose a vicious, genocidal, infinitely corrupt thug like Clinton onto the Democrat Party as Presidential nominee, by cheating and fraud and election theft, in the name of female empowerment, worked a treat. It gave the Bosses Trump, one of their own, as Thug-in-Chief.
I can’t really read this other than a misogynistic retrosexual rant. With a dangerous misanthropic twist: “men will be men again – when Jeremy gets in!”. Please: has the Cult of Corbyn gone mad and absorbed retrograde alt-right emasculated male memes?
Apart from conflating real resurgence in international and grassroots politics with an overt misogyny: this rant takes gender politics back to pre-Suffrage days …when women were women: perceived as too stupid to vote, let alone actually be involved in political debate. Now, the surviving bastion of political masculinity has to be dumbed down to accommodate them. I’m a man, but I’m offended by that 19th century attitude. Make that un-reconstructed Paleolithic attitude.
Because, when men were men, pre-Robert Bly’s maudlin ‘Iron John’ resentiment to lost masculinity, they set us on a course TO DESTROY THE PLANET. One that we have never deviated from. Steered by a misanthropic, hyper-masculine, ultra-aggressive-competitiveness and androgynous hierarchical domination of humanity. Both sexes, all genders, all biodiversity, and the very social and environmental fabric of the planet have been ripped asunder by men. Individuated to the over-testosteroned steroidal Male Archetype. One that does not need a faux-nostalgic empowerment …it is already over-empowered to the detriment and quasi divine (full spectrum) domination of all life.
Heteronormative misanthropic behaviour patterns are wilfully destructive, but also they entail (as auto-generative) the kind of radicalised feminist response to centuries of de-legitimisation of the Female Archetype. Women need to be noticed and heard. When they are continually marginalised, they are naturally going to become more assertive. Don’t blame the femininsts: blame the misanthropic chauvinists. Extending the misanthropy creates a reactionary red pill cult of Jordan Peterson ‘suicide-male’ response (latent in this rant) that re-empowers the Male. This entails an increasingly aggressive feminist propaganda; which entails an increasingly reactive pseudo-emasculated…
…STOP! I want to get off this negative dialectic tailspin into open gender warfare and environmental destruction. We are the same: not exactly the same, but a complementary holistic unity. Centuries of Male dominance can’t be balanced by centuries of Female dominance …humanity is born of Male and Female. You know, one of those emergent higher order states of Being …one in balance with BOTH our natures; balanced within EVERY person (regardless of gender); where the broader extension of our balanced complementary nature(s) is nature.
It’s not that Male and Female are incompatible …the materialisation of incompatibility is in trying to force the two, split by a counterfeit-Cartesianism, into a single paternalistic socio-political box …where the gender hegemony is a retrograde masculinity.
Trying to accommodate a broader mutual aid, empathetic cooperation and immanent, felt, and enacted connection to the Earth into the dualistic vicious-paternalism ‘box’ of capitalism creates multiple disenfranchised genders. Both sexes and all genders are being fissured and dehumanised TOGETHER in this vile, vicious, brutalising capitalistic systematised violence. Creating such crude, vulgar and naively negative gender stereotypes as the current article engenders [sic] (have no other genders ever been “pumped full of Ritalin” – just boys?) The nadir of which for me is: ” trying to force bare breasts and vaginas into men’s and boys’ communal showers”. Trying to force penises into women’s changing rooms is equally demonstrative of intra-gender fracture, humiliation and degradation, entailed in the breakdown of late epoque capitalism, is it not?
Instead of conforming to internalised capitalistic retrograde and degenerative male values: would it not be better to expose the systematised violence of domination and subjugation of all genders inherent in capitalism? It’s the system, not the genders that needs exposing. It’s the system, not the genders that needs fighting. Do we not just perpetuate the systemic violence when we engender values that create the antagonisms and antimonies the system thrives on?
Boys will be boys. It’s time for a holistic humanist balanced complementarity of genders to evolve. For that we need a new system of equality and liberation from the structures of violence that oppress all genders.
(/rant)
Heteronormative misanthropic behaviour patterns are wilfully destructive, but also they entail (as auto-generative) the kind of radicalised feminist response to centuries of de-legitimisation of the Female Archetype. Women need to be noticed and heard.
— radicalised feminist women like Margaret Thatcher and Hillary Clinton, for example.
@Milosevic; “Women need to be noticed and heard.”
So true. I remember this dialogue from my teenage years:
“Lifeguard!”
“Yes, Miss?”
“That young man has been annoying me all morning”
“But he hasn’t even looked at you”.
“Yes, and its soooo annoying”
A misandrist would say that wouldn’t they?
The culturally inherited, some might say inculcated, sexual and gender stereotypes are neither male, female, or any gender in between. They are monstrous anthropomorhisations of sex and gender: that are mutating and materialising of cultural entropy. Read Judith Butler on the iteration of norms and power affecting gender.
Is Hillary or Thatcher a feminist, or a vicious distortion of femininity? Are those that follow in their career footsteps advancing feminist principles: or conforming to the structural masculinisation and distortion of feminist principles? What is a misandrist: a self-hating male? A lover of an androgynous principle who transcends their binary prison? We are talking about archetypes and principles that transcend mere gender performance. A man is both a man and a woman: archetypally (beyond an ontological ‘core’ gender provided merely by an embodied sex) …read Jung. How can you hate a singular principle without collapsing the holism of sexuality and socially constructed gender? Anima and Animus must balance in self-actualisation.
Quite what “breasts and vaginas” in the ‘wrong’ showers has to do with anything other than a base degeneration of any real gender debate; I do not know.
And seriously, what is a ‘misandrist’?
Misandry is the hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against men or boys. Have you looked in your mirror?
Oh well, let’s not talk of principles or archetypes, or raise any issues that this one sided distortion of an article avoids. There are real issues of the dismorphism, of not just gender, but of humanity, that capitalistic cultural hegemony raises. Feel threatened as a male as capitalism tries to commoditise feminism to re-invent itself? We’ll ignore that, and keep it at a base level …one you can understand.
Pass me a red pill.
Anyway, I’m not that clever. What’s ‘dismorphism’? I dunno! 😀
Pass me a red pill.
Congratulations on the occasion of your coming out, as a neoliberal Identity Politics disinfo shill.
Someone who hates men.
For BigB:
Que?
BigB, your comment is longer than the article. And I don’t have a dictionary to hand to look up every language brain twister that you have peppered your comment with. What in God’s name is “intra-gender fracture”? (Seriously, I really don’t want to know).
And furthermore, your comment is not nearly as amusing as the article.
As for myself, I liked it. If you have no sense of humour, well that’s your problem.
(BTW, I rarely revisit my comments so no reply required.)
The reiteration of Norm Chompsky and powder affecting generic medicine. Take the green pill, for all I dare. Dysmorphism or dimorphism: that is the question; and it aint someone who hates men.
The female politicians identified are as much ‘boys’ in the bots club they service.
They are just as lethal and work for the same bankers and military industrialists. Most are friends of Israel!
How can we trust our politicians who proudly proclaim their unqualified support of a foreign nation? Some even have dual citizenships!
Hillary the neocon con artist most high profile of all. Hespel the hands-on waterboarding torturer is not the only woman in the highest seats of power and oppression – lets not forget our SIS sisters – Stella RIMMINGton, lizzie MANningham-BULLer, cressida DICK – onviously they had the right names!
The various valkyries of the MSM who are groomed to appeal to the male sexual urge while they feed us our own babies are of course part of the same PATHOCRACY that rules our lives and has done for almost ever.
That Pathocracy has systems in place to identify, nurture and fast track PSYCHOPATHS from an early age to manage and deliver for the ubberlord imperialist bankers throughout history.
These monsters male and female who are the publuc faces are chosen for their psychopathic tendencies so they will never give a toss for anyone else, they have no empathy or sympathy and only lust for the power and money.
Evil sods! Fuckem all. They know we see them and they see us gathering, ready to march on their towers of terror and lies, and they are fighting like cornered rats to destroy us and our unity.
I know its not a binary choice but socialism has delivered far more than 4th wave feminists.
One of the reasons for Britains low paid, low skill economy is a direct consequence of the endless class war against trade unions so that membership has fallen (as manufacturing collapsed) from 70% of the workforce during the ’70’s to around 20% today.
Harriet Harman, Stella Creasy, Yvette Cooper, and Jess Phillips are all strongly pro-censorship and mostly concerned about pay parity for women in elite professions (I’m prepared to give Laura Pidcock the benefit of the doubt).
In particular when Jess Phillips is not ranting about closing down the internet or doubling the pay of female autocue readers at the BBC she is actively campaigning to bring down Jeremy Corbyn.
The present neoliberal dystopia is not working out for most men or women – its a pity some of the 4th wave feminist can’t see the root economic causes.
Jordan Peterson addresses some of the gender myths here
Harry
Peterson addresses gender myths by saying identity politics is rooted in Marxism? Or is it in the myth of cultural Marxism that Peterson, Pinker, Hicks counterfeit to parse Marxism from the political and academic debate? In favour of laissez-faire capitalism (and peace-bombing democracy)? After all, equality and free speech are authoritarian traits that end in the Gulag. If you acquire his pretzel-logic.
Peterson’s cod-psychologism and lobster-hierarchism (we need to live under hierarchical rule because we were related to lobsters 23mn years ago, or so) will lead us into an uber-competitive-assertion of capitalism over humanity. His psychological model is based on socio-Darwinian traits of cultural violence and reified, concretised, Cartesian domination over All. It’s just the way it is, “pick up your cross” and get on with your White Man’s burden.
Apart from the Bible, I’ve studied much of the source material Peterson denatures. He takes Daoism, for instance, and turns it into a primordial battle of Chaos and Order, Good versus Evil, a struggle for domination by antagonisms and entropy …which it is not. Living systems are emergent from the balanced complementarity and unity of opposition of their binary (sexual) progenitors (Yin and Yang). There is no implied contradistinction; no imposed dualism; no separation from environment within self-generating, self-maintaining (autopoietic) living systems. Each contains the other: to the detriment of neither. That is the Dao. I do not recognise Peterson’s version.
Imagine if Peterson studied living systems (open dissipative, autopoietic, live), not dead-cat-bouncing capitalist psychologisms (dead, dead, dead) …and tried to replicate those living systems psychologically and politically? Immediate gender equality replaces the perennial subjugation of moribund, evolutionary redundant, non-dissipative (psychologically polluting) structures of decay and domination, would it not?
He might also find his hand-waiving dismissals of Marxism and PoMo had more to them, when approached with an open mind? It’s capitalism that is a creeping totalitarianism. It’s the Enlightenment Project of exceptionalist, indespensible imperialism that leads to the Gulag. Shall we “pick up our cross” and follow his pseudo-scientific maunderings …or smash the systemic cultural icons and be free?
Your fundamental mistake, or is it sleight of hand, is to claim that identity politics is anything to do with equality; it’s not. My other post above elaborates a bit further on my viewpoint.
What, this comment?
“Identify politics is extremely divisive and vile. We are all equal but IP takes that away from us. It’s dangerous, neo-Bolshevik, totalitarian, manoeuvres and they must be as forcefully rejected as their propaganda and policies are pushed upon us.”
My response is on point. Peterson’s POV is a gross distortion and manipulation of free speech rights and IP into and anti-Marxist defence of the status quo ante. Lobsters = hierarchy because they have serotonin in their CNS. So does every other creature, it is a near universal neuro-transmitter. When a ‘psychologist’ does not know this, and talks of mythical ‘alpha males’ (a term biologists long replaced with ‘dominant breeders’): you know he is creating and overt psychologism. You have to ask: why?
Is that because he feels threatened? The Bolsheviks were state capitalists by the way (after the NEP). Who should we be afraid of: the current paternalistic psychologisms, progenitors of IP …or the community of mutual aid where all belong and all are equal?
Only, we have to enact the latter by exposing the inverse-totalitarianism (immanent Fascism) those capitalistic psychologisms entail.
“Peterson’s POV is a gross distortion and manipulation of free speech rights”
Now I understand you even better, you and your neo-Bolsheviks believe that you are the bestowers of our rights, and that you are the arbiters of our conformance to them. Well done for outing yourself. Now scuttle off back to the Ministry Of Truth.
LOL! No one bestows rights, it’s a cruel bastardisation of our humanity to think that rights and privileges are bestowable, or even alienable. Inflicted conformance (including self-censoring inflicted conformance) to illegitimate norms and rules is the first step to a dictatorship. One that is well formed as we speak.
Why do you think that humanity has remained infantalised for so long? Hierarchical domination by a perverse autocratic psychologism such as Peterson’s, perhaps? Weaning us off the authoritarian personalities and debased voluntary servitude we have become culturally habituated to may take a while …now I have outed myself as a wannabe dictator!
If every one who has a different POV is a default Lenin or Trot …c’mon, you can be more creative than that?
Hi BB – I was not offering Peterson as an exemplar of an idealised world view just as a means of setting out a few interesting arguments which challenge the anti-male narratives inherent in 4th wave feminism.
As usual I actually agree with a great deal of what you say but if I had to quibble I would argue that it will be a cold day in hell before the sort of idealism you describe translates into a political system that comes remotely close to sharing the same ideals.
I think the broad point in the OP stands: i.e. social and economic gains have been brought about by organisation and communitarianism much of which was built on the back of working men (and women) who were able to demand better conditions through collective bargaining – the loss of this impetus (IMO) has contributed to a 3 decades long downward turn in the economic fortunes of most workers.
Personally I feel feminism has lost credibility because of undue influence exterted by a privilged minority especially in spheres like higher education, and certain parts of the media – as much as I object to amoral chancers like Trump and Kavanagh I think this analysis by Janice Fiamengo tells its own story
Well Harry, I live for that cold day in hell. Just because I happen to be reading Arne Naess: first rule of ecosophical fight club – anything can happen. We form our views from the current cultural milieu, but we should not be limited to current cultural restraints. That way something unique may happen if we reach a bifurcation point.
I totally agree about communitarian activism: only, as you ask, where has it gone? Thatcher did for a lot of it, bringing in a cult of individualism on a wave of North Sea Oil. But what has happened now that neoliberalism has shown its true face? Austerity fatigue has led to a slight return: but do you think we, the people, will really be allowed to change the rules of the game to suit us? I think not a chance, but…
As part of the diversionary tactics from a true activism: 4th Wave Feminism is not feminism, but a capitalist recuperation and re-invention of feminism. What is least likely to harm capitalist self-maximisational interests; and is a homoeopathically diluted form of the potency of true feminism (3rd Wave; eco-feminism; Marxist-feminism; Black feminism; intersectionality; etc) …identity micro-politics? Blasey-Ford did nothing for rape victims but trivialise their grief and anger. As the video states, in doing this she extended her own feathereed nest of entitlement – what about her sisters?
The current anti-male, trial-by-media or congress*, #MeToo tribalism has nothing to do with feminism. It is the commodification and instrumentalisation of an entitled simulated feminism to empower not women, but capitalism. I’ll eat my shorts if there is not a female POTUS in 2020 (Michelle, Alexandria, Tulsey, or Oprah coming up on the outside having finally decided to run?)
{*Don’t get me wrong, Kavanagh is a plutocracy enabling lickspittle.}
If I’m right, having a dick is going to get more and more uncomfortable: but the 4th and 5th Waves are cultural victims of a quasi-eternal return of patriarchy. They are doing nothing to further the female principle. Capitalism is, and will remain a man thing. Anti-male feminism, as it seems when externalised: is actually a furtherance of the male principle …if not embodied male sexuality.
Like you, I tried to elevate and diversify the discussion. For me, that was an elevation above breasts, vaginas, and penises to the level of archetypes and dialectical principles. That is where the balance lies, in the mass psychological mind: beyond the mere performative aspects of sex and gender. Reading back on the comments though, it seems I made a fundamental error of assuming people recognise the difference between the received (culturally give) conceptual gender stereotypes – those we choose to conform to – and actual embodiment of gender. I’m not sure that there is the recognition that the many conceptual models we have, that we psychologically pick and mix, are not our own. They are all recent inventions of capitalism. Pointing that out in the medium of comments is probably futile, but quite good fun on a slow Sunday afternoon.
On the outside: women become men; men become women; and the only thing that benefits from the gender dysphoria and transition is capitalism …which remains as always, a viciously distorted God of War. Psychologically and conceptually: patrilineal and male of course. Only, some men here seem threatened by the ‘the beast in the mirror’. What I never got to express is that stereotypes, when recognised, are mutable and subject to balance and change. Fundamentally, we live with an inherited false dichotomy of MALE/FEMALE. MALE and FEMALE contain each other in unity, and are mutually expressed: to the detriment of neither.
Of course, it seems to me that would be a much better fundamental conception than say Peterson’s. Roll on that cold day in hell
Outstanding BB – love this post – thanks for putting it so beautifully.
Not even Stonky can moan about the language in this one!
I think an honest overview of Peterson’s politics would show that you have more in common with him than you think, BigB. I am certain that he understands very well how “capitalism is a creeping totalitarianism”, as you aptly put it. But that doesn’t mean that creeping totalitarianism is not also to be found elsewhere.
‘DESTROYS’-the vicious thug lingo is such a giveaway.
Jordan Peterson is a children’s entertainer.
At least on Off-G Peterson ad hominems fall short of the kind of hominems one usually reads BTL at the Graun (including tedious references to the alt-right) – but its still a poor show if you can’t actually engage with any of the substantive arguments being made.
I assume not everyone can be arsed to watch the clip – fair enough the first 4 issues discussed are;
Is it Ok to criminalise jokes if they are made in bad taste. (no according to the childrens entertainer)
Should Tommy Robinson be in jail (for disrupting the sex crimes trial) – no according to the vicious thug.
Does the ‘patriarchy’ trope stand up given the growing number of successful women – no according to the right winger.
And are some western feminist are actually pretty rich by international or historical standards – yes according to the neonazi.
As I say I linked to the clip more because of the critique of modern feminism but obviously the mere mention of the name is a red flag for some commentators.
Serious question, Harry: did you ‘copy URL at current time’? Because what I watched was teed up about two thirds through. Hence I responded accordingly.
Modern feminism isn’t feminism: it’s capitalism …or a capitalist recuperation of feminism. A real psychologist should ascertain that, unless he wanted to denigrate radical cultural Marxism …and exonerate capitalism. Peterson has just such an agenda. I’ll watch the full thing tomorrow: but yes, the patriarchy trope really does stand up …as an archetypal principle. Actual women and actual men make no difference to the vicious archetypal masculinity of capitalism. Peterson trivialises the externalised motifs in order to hide the conceptual principle. Probably from himself as much as anyone, I guess he hasn’t heard of projection?
We are slightly at cross-purposes here BB – I am not promoting Peterson’s world view rather linking to a short clip to illustrate the mess we have got ourselves into when gender conflict is analysed by the intelligentsia (because Peterson, despite certain failing is not afraid to speak out).
In my opinion feminism was pretty much on par with socialism as a framework for social good but increasingly the feminist movement has alienated women and men alike because of the narrow focus on working conditions for women across the elite professions, and a counter productive obession with identity politics.
The MPs cited in the OP (with the exception of Pidock in my opinion) are all part of this phenomena.
Put another way if was a low paid female worker I wouldn’t be holding my breath waiting for better things to come from the likes of Cooper or Creasy – on the other hand if I was a female investment banker or a media executive I would probably have a poster of them on my wall.
I linked to the clip more because of the critique of modern feminism but obviously the mere mention of the name is a red flag for some commentators.
You might have done better to link to the original interview, rather than some right-wing troll’s edited version of it.
Well that’s some child he’s trying to entertain…
Plato was one too, David.
The man in the video repeatedly interrupts the woman.
The pendulum had swung way too far for a long, long time.
It’s gonna take a while to find equilibrium.
The ‘equilibrium’ of the grave. Who in their right mind foresees any human future after the next few decades, perhaps mere years? Evil is on the rampage everywhere, as the ecological Holocaust rapidly intensifies.
Interesting post. Took me a while to figure out what “brocialism” was, though, at first. Then, I got it. “Bro”, meaning brothers, or men! It is strange how gender identity has become so strongly politicized, but I suspect that perhaps it is a way of population control (not that it is necessarily needed). But, men do need to be more sensitive, that is a given, and less aggressive in their assertiveness in expressing sexuality. However, I still don’t understand how a woman can rape a man, something I have heard come up. A man needs to be aroused to be able to have sex, which is not the case with a woman. We can’t dismiss altogether this biological reality, which does factor into procreation.
You seem to be saying that it’s impossible for a man to have a hard-on and at the same time not want to have sex with a particular woman. I disagree.
There’s another way for a woman to rape a man. Male homosexual rape seems to be an increasing problem in the USA. Is it possible that some women are taking a leaf out of the homos’ book?
It may not be impossible but it is not that common, I suspect. I used to have some friends in Australia (long ago) who were ex-army guys and extremely homophobic. I reminded them that when you masturbate (they were male), you are actually having sex with a man, as a man (yourself). They replied, but it depends on what you are thinking about, if they are thinking about a woman when masturbating, then that is not homosexual. But, I said, a man is still having sex with a man, right? Anyway, of course, this conversation went nowhere. However, you state that homosexual rape is becoming a problem. It seems to me, though, that the person doing the rape would presumably be aroused to be able to do that, but the unwilling recipient of the rape (which is what it would have to be to be labelled rape) would probably not be aroused, or the act couldn’t be categorized as such. I mean, I imagine that in a male/male sexual encounter which would be called rape would indicate the victim is not into it and not aroused by it.
I just think this whole issue of male sexuality being equated with female sexuality is not appropriate as in all species it is very different between male and female members. Just look at your dogs to see an example of nature at work. Without the mechanism of empowerment for a male, it is possible that he won’t be as motivated to procreate at all, and thus an increase in male/male, and female/female attachments which don’t result in childbearing. Perhaps same sex sexuality is easier because you understand the other person’s reactions, as they are more likely similar to your own. However, I suspect that this development may have undesirable side-effects (if we think that having children is a positive outcome in life, which in my life has certainly been the case). But, perhaps there are too many people. I don’t know for sure, of course.
Source for male homosexual rape an increasing problem (only) in the USA? Source, si vous plait?
I still don’t understand how a woman can rape a man, something I have heard come up.
Perhaps it’s similar to the feminist-certified process whereby a man can rape a woman who believes herself to be consenting at the time, and only later comes to understand that she hadn’t really consented after all, and retrospectively refuses.
You are naive, male rape exists; seduction exists; getting pissed up and waking up in a ‘wouldn’t have touched with a barge pole’ exists.
Oh and as for hard ons – you can buy any number of pills – including from vending machines!
My fave definition of ‘brocialism’ is to be found at the Urban Dictionary:
“The eventual failure of the Ron Paul campaign was in no small measure due to its failure to locate the struggle for international peace within the struggle for economic equality, and vice versa. The Bernie Sanders phenomenon remains constrained by its failure to learn the lesson of Donald Trump’s victory, and of Leave’s victory in Britain: that the workers, and not the liberal bourgeoisie, are now the key swing voters…..”
Good one.Up the workers!
That’s why I posted about Dr.Assad talking to Trade Unions. Although Syrian Baath is the only explicitly Socialist Party among the Allies, the victory of Syria, Hezb and Iran (and Putin’s Russia as well?) has been in no small measure due to the Social Responsibility of its Leaders. And the same applies to Communist China, which has both the industrial clout and the social responsibility to give quiet but decisive support to Socialist Syria and Socialist Iran in their battle to free the Middle East from the vampire bloodsuckers of Anglo Zio Capitalism..
There are two points which should be viewed here from separate vantage points.
One, structure of our society, what we want from it, purpose, goals, responsibility, efficiency…
Two, nature and natural behaviour of a male and female of our species, adaptation of us to live in the group, identification of differences and reasons for it, as well as equalities… in respectful manner…
Once when we have clear picture of both of them, he will be ready for discussion, ready for progress.
Before that, it is just noise, mess, chaos, often deliberately created to draw us into bickering, mud throwing.
“it is only to be […] applauded that those youth movements are largely male”
I wonder why he said that.
Probably because he, like many of us, feels that males have been emasculated for far too long by an increasingly aggressive feminist propaganda.
emasculated ! That is SO antisemitic!