I’m lazy. I’m also willfully uninformed. When I occasion to inform myself, I have to use the Internet, since I ditched TV in 2007, and quite happily, I might add. I frequently inform myself by going to Antiwar.com, as I have come to trust the information they provide based on how things have been panning out over the last few years. That trust has now been reduced a fraction as I stumbled on what I thought would be an inspirational article about using peaceful means to combat war. How wrong I was, and how disappointed I have become.
The article is entitled “Why Peace Is the Business of Men,” by Tom Englehardt and Ann Jones. (I think I clicked on it because the title is entirely true. Gee, maybe it was a trap to sucker us misogynists.) I have read a lot of Englehardt’s articles in the past, and he frequently recruits intelligent writers that he then features. I think Jones has some admirable qualities, but they are dwarfed by her rampant misandry and “progressive” idiocy. Since Antiwar.com is chiefly a libertarian website, I have come to tolerate the views of the less-than-libertarian writers they sometimes feature, but this one is too much for me. Jones is under the impression that the world will have more peace when more women are brought to the negotiating table.
If you choose to read the article, you will see not a single reference to a single fact, a single survey, or a single statistic that accounts for this belief. Instead, when you get to Jones’s article after Englehardt’s opening remarks, you find that the original title of Jones’s article is actually: “Why Peace Is the Business of Men (But Shouldn’t Be): A Modest Proposal for the Immodest Brotherhood of Big Men.” Get it now? Jones’s agenda isn’t really peace. If it were, it wouldn’t matter what special, lovely thing the ambassador has between thighs that are safely out of reach under the negotiating table. All that would matter would be peace.
There can be no peace, however, where feminism can be found, because where there is feminism or “progressivism,” there is deep-rooted unhappiness. “Look at those people! Look at their destitute situation! Look at that rich man laughing maniacally at them! We need Daddy — I mean government — to do something about it! Look! Look over here at this woman who wants to be an astronaut! Look at how these men with their awful, terrifying penises, have rigged the game so that she can’t be one! We need quotas! Make that man in the Oval Office do something about it! I don’t care! Suck his dick if you have to!” Once a woman’s soul is thus agitated, war cannot be far behind.
There are more women working and making decisions in world governments now than at any previous time in history. Quite a few of them voted in favor of attacking a nation that didn’t attack us. What have historical female political leaders done about peace? Let’s take a look:
“How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to.” Golda Maier, March 8, 1969.
“And we have got to be vigilant. We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to.” Sarah Palin, September 11, 2008.
“I think this is a very hard choice, but the price [the deaths of innocent children from non-Republican economic sanctions] – we think the price is worth it.” Madeline Albright, May 1996.
“I have the heart of a man, not a woman, and I am not afraid of anything…” and: “Though the sex to which I belong is considered weak you will nevertheless find me a rock [sic] that bends to no wind.” Both Elizabeth I. (Where are these bending rocks anyway? Seriously, did she mean or actually say “tree” instead? Or am I missing something about Old English? Whatever.)
There are more quotes than this. Not much, because I can’t find that many female world leaders, but one of the posters here (goes by bugdoctor) lists a few gems:
“QUEEN MARY I
“She ordered the so-called Marian Persecutions, the execution of countless religious dissenters especially Protestant leaders; thus the epithet ‘Bloody Mary.’
“QUEEN ELIZABETH I [the Manhearted]
“She had thousands of Catholics in Ireland and England murdered… [*sniff* She’s just like her father…]
“JIANG QUING
“Wife of Mao Tse-tung,… [i]t is believed that she was the driving force that propelled the Cultural Revolution of China, of which she was the Deputy Director…
“Boudica: Celtic War Queen Who Challenged Rome
“She slaughtered a Roman army…”
There’s even more boys, but again I must remind you, I’m lazy. (I’m definitely a bending rock.) And I tried awfully hard to find something about another politician with whom I have a few grievances, but sadly, this non-progressive, somewhat sensible woman merely had this to say:
“I owe nothing to Women’s Lib.” Margaret Thatcher.
The main reason you don’t find many women in positions of power is probably because women have a natural predisposition towards children, nurturance, and home. None of this equals a disposition for peace. Furthermore, why bother when you can order a man to do it? Like the mother in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” told her engaged daughter concerning the structure of the family unit: “The man is the head, but the woman is the neck. And she can turn the head any way she wants.” I remember laughing hysterically when she said that (not because I agree, but because it’s just the sort of thing her character would say), but think about it: Does controlling the thoughts and behavior of another individual sound peaceful to you? How many ruthless male politicians had women in their early lives acting like necks for the heads of unwilling boys?
The structure of government, a most egregious system of coercion, is designed for those who wish to initiate coercion. Since “progressives” like nothing better but to initiate coercion against “oppressors,” it’s easy to see why Jones has a jones for the power-play of political peace. Therefore, the only women who are going to be invited to the table are women who can be just as ruthless, uncaring, spiteful, greedy, and violent as the men who are sitting there. In short, the really nasty sort of feminists. To be more specific, not the sort of women who are truly anti-war.
But back to Jones and her delusions: “In 2001, the U.S. and by extension the entire international community cast their lot with Hamid Karzai… We could have seen this coming if we had kept an eye on how President Karzai treats women.” As if Karzai’s sins against women would have been exposed and prosecuted, and himself removed from consideration for Prime Asshole, if the bloodthirsty men and women of the U.S. government had observed his treatment of women.
Worse still is her “progressive” way of ignoring definitions, and reality itself: “Judging by what we have already done, it seems to be perfectly all right for the West – aka the U.S. – to rain bombs upon this agrarian country… and impose an ultraconservative Islamist government and free market capitalism…” When you can’t even get your definitions straight (somebody show me the “free market” that exists in Afghanistan), can the rest of what you assert be any more credible? Will female Afghani leaders give greedy American businessmen, in bed with the U.S. government, the oil pipeline they so desperately want? Is Afghanistan suffering because only men are currently in power, or is it suffering because the “egalitarian” Soviet Union invaded in the 80s, and now the “egalitarian” United States has done the same? Is this writer expecting me to take seriously the idea that all that needs to happen for Afghanistan’s situation to improve is for the U.S. government’s puppet leader to appoint more women? Are you fucking kidding me? That will stop the drone strikes?
“Well, no. Actually, the worst thing for women is to have a bunch of men – and not even Afghan men at that – decide one more time what’s best for women.” I would agree that men should not be making decisions for women, but it goes much further than that: Men should not be making decisions for anyone but themselves. The same goes for women.
This is the main reason I am convinced that Ann Jones’s “solution” is utterly absurd. I clicked on this article thinking it would be an inspirational bit about peace, from a trustworthy website. No, it’s one more diatribe against men, about how we’ve fucked things up. Let me give Ms. Jones a tiny little lesson in how to fuck things up:
Whether you’re a mother or a father, teach your children superiority vs. inferiority. Once you have made your children feel inferior, it is highly likely that they will always feel inferior to you. Then you can extract from them pretty much anything you want. How many men grow much bigger, heavier, tougher, and stronger than their mothers, yet would never say a word against them? Why do they do this? Why do women do this with their mothers as well?
Because mothers are the primary love source. Children die without love. At the very least, some subconscious part of the brain believes this, and children think and act accordingly: “If I am slapped or yelled at, it is because I am inferior and need the guidance of the superior, not because she doesn’t love me. The second possible reason is totally unacceptable and I won’t even think it.” It’s that simple. I suspect that Ms. Jones is another victim of this phenomenon.
So let’s not think about it. Let’s lay the blame elsewhere: free slaves who haven’t learned to be civil, savage Indians who need to be spanked (on an erogenous zone) when they’re young, Jews, the Religious Right, commies, Democrats, Republicans, potheads, men, the evil free market… Then, once blame has been appropriately affixed, vetted, voted on, and heralded sufficiently in the press, we can go to war. We will go to war with the inferior race/nationality/political ideology/religion/sex, and we will win. Pay no attention to the collapse of this building.
If men are brought up by an abusive primary love source, then sent to the negotiating table, leaving at home a wife who was also brought up by an abusive primary love source, what are the chances that peace will immediately fly out the window, until the ruling elite, whether male or female, are just plain sick of fighting (for now)?
Perhaps Ms. Jones’s “modest” proposal (a reference to a far superior literary work that actually managed to be sardonic about what it proposed) would actually work if she checked her premise. Unfortunately, her premise seems to be that, based on her own observations, men have historically been in charge and we’ve had lots of war; one province of Afghanistan that has more female leadership is slightly less of a hell hole; therefore, it’s time for women in this one Afghani province, who act more peaceful, and with whom Jones occasionally has lunch, to be brought to the peace negotiations, so that they can sit there and act peaceful. Then all of Afghanistan will be slightly less of a hell hole. Also, the U.S. will finally find those responsible for 9/11 (remember that?), withdraw their troops, and Afghanis everywhere will spontaneously begin acting like model Americans, whom they love. It’s got nothing to do with that pipeline. It also doesn’t matter that none of the Most Wanted Terrorists on the FBI’s watch list is wanted in connection with 9/11. (When you get to the table of peace, love and full gender equality, don’t bring that up.)
In Ms. Jones’s world, women are superior to men in matters of peace. If this is the case, why don’t we have more peace? Women have brains, ability, and an astounding amount of intra-sex verbal communication. Why haven’t they stumbled on the solution yet? Why wasn’t it the rallying cry of feminists of the mid-twentieth century to elect women to office so that we could finally abandon war? Why isn’t that their rallying cry now? What have they been talking about all this time?
Apparently these women have been digressing quite a bit, before they get around to talking about the subject on which they are experts: “Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia [abandoned] all discretion recently and [declared] that the promise of equal protection in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not extend to protecting women against sex discrimination.” What Scalia has to do with internal Afghani politics escapes me, but here is what he actually said:
“You do not need the Constitution to reflect the wishes of the current society. Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn’t. Nobody ever thought that that’s what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws. You don’t need a constitution to keep things up-to-date. All you need is a legislature and a ballot box.”
Regardless, Jones states: “That opinion puts Justice Scalia cozily in bed with former Chief Justice Shinwari,… who interpreted Article 22 of the Afghan Constitution, which calls for men and women to have equal rights and responsibilities before the law, to mean that men have rights and women have responsibilities to their husbands.” No, it doesn’t put Scalia “in bed” with this guy. The two views (if that’s Mr. Shinwari’s actual view) are entirely dissimilar. But when you hate men, it gets easier to make the illogical and unfounded comparison. Understand this about “progressives”: They want a blanket, centralized, heavily-enforced law across this entire land mass, for all 300-plus million people living here, to be interpreted and enforced the exact same way each and every time it allegedly happens, probably numerous times each day. Good luck. Idiots. I can’t wait for my new job at Hooters. I’m sure my straight, male customers will also be pleased.
CUSTOMER: “Where’s Amy?”
ME: “She’s not working tonight; they hired me to satisfy the government’s quota.”
CUSTOMER: “What the fuck?!”
ME: “Hey! Stop sexually harassing me!”
More of Jones’s jones: “Even I don’t expect men in power to take seriously the serious proposition that women must be equally and fully involved in peacemaking or you don’t get durable peace. Too many men, both Afghan and American, are doing very nicely thank you with the present traditional arrangements of our cultures.” No, they aren’t. They’re doing poorly, and how they’re doing is getting poorer by the day. Why don’t the peace-loving women in their lives set them right with a few kind words, since they possess this vast knowledge of how to live harmoniously?
I can speak for American women: They’re too busy aborting their children, watching vapid, senseless entertainment, consuming, sending their un-aborted children to abusive daycare centers and government schools, smacking them, ordering them around, threatening them, ignoring the expression of their deepest emotions and then emotionally manipulating them, giving them toys as property and then confiscating them on a whim, teaching them mythology as fact and the nonexistent idea of superiority (Mom) vs. inferiority (child), and supporting the troops. This is peace.
Ann Jones is admirable for pursuing what interests her: the plight of women in a war-torn country. If that’s all you care about – not the suffering men, only the women – that’s fine. I will not tell people what they “ought” to spend their time researching. But what she does is roughly equivalent to someone like me going over to Afghanistan and researching how this war affects gay men and only gay men. Not gay women, not straight anybody, not kids, not wildlife. Just gay men. That would be okay, too, wouldn’t it? But it’s hardly sensible or intelligent for me, after talking to a handful of gay Afghani men, none of whom is involved in the political or martial matters of the country, to then state that all Afghanistan needs is to ensure that gay men are involved in peace negotiations. “Then everything will be absolutely fabulous!”
The article has a link to a study by the Human Rights Research and Advocacy Consortium called “Women and Political Leadership.” It’s only 54 pages, but I have this inability to finish that which I find repulsive, and it’s awfully hard for a lazy, easily upset faggot to continue reading past one of the opening paragraphs that lists several other studies this organization is involved in:
“…The Need to Extend [Labor] Protection and Security to Afghanistan’s Informal Workers,” “Afghanistan’s Female Home-Based Workers: Isolated and Undervalued,” “Report Card: Progress on Compulsory Education” (there’s that wonderful word “compulsory”), “Take the Guns Away…” “Fight Poverty…” Fight poverty with peace or violence? Will the peace that Afghani women bring to their countrymenwomen in order to fight poverty involve taxation? If an Afghani woman refuses to participate, what will happen to her when peaceful women sit in the Afghani parliament? Who will wield the peaceful guns of the sexually equal Afghani government: men or women? Will it be a 50/50 mix, or will it end up being what it always is: a horde of disposable men?
A wonderful writer over at “Strike The Root” who goes by tzo said it all with the title of this article: “Progressivism Is Not Progressive.” This report from HRRAC is nothing more than the same tired, feminist tropes, and the only reason Ms. Jones’s article got published at Antiwar.com is because Tom Englehardt co-wrote it. I don’t know much about Englehardt’s views, but he never struck me as “progressive” or feminist before. Perhaps he only suffered Jones’s article because it is thinly anti-war. But it is also anti-male and anti-sense: To be anti-male is to be pro-war.
I am increasingly convinced that true peace, while certainly having nothing to do with sex quotas, will be achieved only when truth, freedom, and love are built up at the same time and at the same rate as peace. Nothing governmental can be a part of this process. Nothing shoved on the populace by feminism can be a part of this process. The only freedom movement that will work will have three characteristics:
1. It must be peaceful. Not the quota-ed, equality-of-the-sexes peace envisioned by this feminist activist, but actual, genuine peace.
2. It must be individual, with no mass movement to join. Mass movements, like government edicts with which one agrees, are too easy to follow, and too easily dissolved.
3. It must lack a charismatic leader. It most certainly must lack a “progressive” or feminist charismatic leader.
None of the above three principles specifies what sex the freedom fighter needs to be, nor do I care. The idea that manhood is to blame for Afghanistan’s problems, when each and every problem suffered by the millions unfortunately still living there can be traced back to specific men and women, would be a laughable idea if it weren’t so odious. It has been made that much more nauseating by virtue of being published at a website that purports to stand for freedom, and against war. I guess that’s how much misandry currently bleeds.
B.R. Merrick writes for “Strike The Root“ and “A Voice for Men,” lives in the Northeast, is proud to be a classical music reviewer at Amazon.com and iTunes, and in spite of the poisonous nature of television, God Himself will have to pry his DVDs of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” out of his cold, dead hands, under threat of eternal damnation.
