There’s a certain resistance among the intelligent – note that intelligent and intelligentsia are antonyms – to reading the sort of turgid nonsense which passes for modern feminism. Equal opportunity, most certainly and why not? But to fail to note that this capitalist free market mixture is the most feminist, most pro-women, economic system ever devised really does call into question the intelligence of that intelligentsia, doesn’t it?
Leading to a pondering of the value of the likes of this:
Regardless of cultural differences and guises, or the facilitating economic system – capitalist, communist or feudal – wherever the noxious root of patriarchy has been planted and fertilised by discursive power, unsustainable gardens of grandeur have grown on the blood and bone of subjugated women, children, slaves, invaded and colonised peoples, and nonhuman animals. In other words, conceiving of trauma as a structural force uncovers the way it informs racism, sexism, homophobia, colonialism etc.
My new book…
Well, that’s one we’ll all rush out to read then, isn’t it?
We really do need to be pointing out that the Good Old Days are now. Both technological advance and productivity growth have been driven by that combination of capitalism and markets. Capitalism, in its lust for profits, leading to the invention. Markets and the ability to copy what works being what creates the general uplift in standards by the spreading and wide use of those inventions.
The net effect of this has been, well, it’s been to make women’s lives vastly better. Starting with the point that many women actually have lives as a result. Childbirth has moved from being the leading cause of female death* to a mild risk which kills very few – each one a tragedy which is why we’re so happy that we have reduced that risk. We’ve automated all the heavy lifting in society meaning that women can indeed, with their generally lighter musculature, compete in near all areas of work. We’ve done more automation of household drudgery than we have of anything else too, freeing the distaff side from that chain upon their ambitions.
We’ve even freed all from the child bearing consequences of bonking – much to the great pleasure of man and woman alike.
Women today are the most privileged, richest, group of women who have ever stumbled across the surface of this planet. And in comparison to the men in their society they’re the most equal too. All of which leads to an interesting question. Just why are they whining so much?
In short, what damn patriarchy is it doing the oppressing?
*Possibly an exaggeration but not much of one. Certainly not about the mid 19th century before Semmelweiss.
My grandmothers protested, I need something to protest about!
Yes, keep pointing it out. “Pecunia non olet,” money doesn’t smell, there ain’t no black nor white just green, women’s money is just as good as men’s money to any seller, and women own or control most of the money. Meera Atkinson (and indeed the Guardian) are self-selecting their own audiences in her op-ed, that rape is an intrinsic token of systemic male malevolence, but the audience must decline over time as its members indulge in the wonder continuing to unfold around them, and some take the chips off their shoulders and cancel their subscriptions.
She needs to get her rabies inoculation up to date.