Misogyny

After reading The Preludes to Assaults by Jane Eaton Hamilton I was compelled to post this poem on here.

Forget history, culture and knowledge. Break free

of your hoarding of facts, dates. Forget right and wrong.

Nothing means what it intends. The opposite is true

until we recognize it and then it becomes a lie.

The ideologue is the great virus, scourge of this planet.

He climbed down from his tree and turned it

into toilet paper. He tore open his mother’s flesh

to mine for gold.

Hated his kind, moulded it into a sword

made of his mother’s blood and slew his brother.

Sold his children into slavery and called himself

Ruler. Warrior. God.

Gaia is a whore and man is her pimp.

Our laws, our art, our songs, can’t rid her

of this storm, this swarm, this pandemic

this era of man who descended

from the awe and beauty bestowed upon him

by a power he could never deconstruct

this creation larger than his knowing

the stars he couldn’t reach, so instead

he sought revenge and created the order

raping every vessel of hope, each womb

of enlightenment, churned our mother’s milk

into grease, a war to be won.

So when we talk of misogyny as though

it’s simply the fear and hatred of woman

remember – it is the seed of homelessness

entrenched so deeply we blame nature

say it is natural law, say boys will be boys

corner them by two converging walls

of a doctrine so bricked no light can enter

no doubt allowed to breathe

trapped in the construct even she defends

his privilege by love’s failure to disarm

the earth he has littered with weapons

against the distant bird singing at dawn.

published in Eyewear Blink September 2015

Requiem for the Goddess

She is a vessel that’s all

a seed from the seed that came before

a wave flowing out from the bang

a reverberating circle reaching out.

Once she was cherished

placed in the centre of the hearth

observed and protected from elements 

she loved no matter how rough.

Now she is tied between two poles 

her limbs cannot move 

or lay down to rest. 

How can she nurture the world 

when hoisted 

as a thing that bleeds onto the soil beneath

her legs forced open so that lost souls can rape 

with their hatred.

How can she see the unfolding drama

now her eyes have been gouged

and how can she offer advice

when her lips have been sewn together

or hear the lamentation of birds

when her ears plugged with the screech 

of a dead warrior is set on replay?

Who will witness the despair of her sons

and the exhaustion of her daughters

when there is no more art or music

only a silent screen capture of today’s

stock market?

How will the starving masses endure 

the endless pain when their hormones 

begin to eat their own organs?

How can she birth the next generation

when her torn uterus hangs

outside her body?

How will the mind remember that life

existed at all when all its seeds have perished?

The Limitations of Thuggery

Many ordinary folks say what the world needs now are smart leaders with conscience and intelligence. However the recent elections point to an irrational hatred of women who are good leaders.

Is this a natural phenomenon or are there well funded campaigns helping to promote hate, eager to disparage women and encourage idiotic slander that has no bearing in the reality of world economic pressures.

An article in The Walrus written by Ira Wells, listed right wing leaders opinions which are nothing more than ad hominem hate without references. Here is a sample of attacks on Kathryn Wynne. "Our devouring mother" and "the most dangerous woman in Canada". Wynne "despises our Western Judeo-Christian culture ... she's an obedient little girl" when it comes to Islam. And "she ought to be in a jail cell for alleged party corruption."

These are not anonymous trolls. They are quotes attributed to known representatives of media and political groups.

Serious discourse in things that matter to the people of a nation should argue the facts, not slander the people.

How would a premiere of Ontario "devour" a nation and what did she do that would make her dangerous? What did she say that proves she despises Western Judeo-Christian culture? How did she corrupt the party? And more importantly what are the intentions of those who are called on to make political comments but choose slander instead.

BBC.com reported on the election of the UCP in Alberta that thousands of jobs were lost following the global oil price crash in 2014-15. Yet in spite of the crash in oil prices, the mantra for politicians has been build oil pipelines. Mr Kenney, (the UCP leader) campaigned as a champion of the oil sector, promising to fund a "war room" to defend Canada's energy resources at home and abroad.

Along with the hatred expressed towards women regardless of what they achieve, it appears that many will rally around the loudest mouth that promises to bully the nation into shape. The details are not important, intelligence and civil society are dismissed for the sake of a brief expression of mythological power.

How can voters fall for such vacuous displays?

How can we teach our daughters to save their mental health when our society continually chooses thuggery over reason and responsible leadership? How can we prepare them for the onslaught of abuse that has nothing to do their personal abilities or achievement and everything to do with hate?

Whenever societies begin to progress for the greater good, violence and hatred are weapons designed to appear as grassroots trends that destroy the progress and civil society.

I can hear the designers laughing at us.

Us and Them

There are some billionaire hedge fund owners and multinational CEOs who donate to divide civil society by investing in sites like Breitbart and hate media outlets like Fox News.  CommonDreams.org 

"Investigative journalist Jane Mayer wrote a book about their efforts titled Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.

“In April of 2016, the SPLC documented Breitbart’s embrace of extremist ideas and racist tropes such as black-on-white crime and anti-Muslim conspiracy theories. Further analyses showed how under executive chair Stephen Bannon, Breitbart’s comment section became a safe space for anti-Semitic language.”

Anti-Union groups like Heartland Institute, Heritage Foundation, CATO Institute, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research have been funded in the millions.

What makes social justice and equality such a threat towards these elites that they  fund parties who are willing to take babies away from their mothers, incarcerate African Americans, support anti-semitism, Islamaphobia, denigrate indigenous people and support pornographic misogynist rape culture?

Since Canada follows US trends we can expect that right wing political parties are also supported by Corporate capitalist elites. Even CBC news has been tainted by right wing apathetic tones.

The spike in "public" support or acceptance of right wing attitudes came suddenly after Donald Trump got elected.  Our Prime Minister changed his tone from holding up indigenous rights to cheering for pipelines.

In a nutshell, the white supremacists have revealed to my imagination this Orwellian animal farm scenario:

People who are brown, Islamic, Jewish, female, intellectually curious, LGBTQ and poor - are the enemy.  Who else is left?  The ruling elite along with those who can be manipulated by propaganda.

So what is next if this hierarchy remains and rules?  A planetary playground for billionaires and their servants. One way or another - all life that cannot be exploited will be removed. Which takes us back to the Nazis who imprisoned and killed anyone who didn't subscribe to their goal of world domination.

In some states Christianity has been hijacked and changed to an evangelical cult to not only accept the brutality of Trump's campaign but to make him a God. Forget the centuries of Christian teachings of Jesus. The second coming is Money. It can change everything that invests in its supremacy as long as humanity has been emptied of conscience and compassion.  It is built on contempt for all natural life.  It is power without flesh. The worship of the monster revealed as greed, which will bring suffering to everything that is beautiful and worth living for.

Addiction, drugs and pollution will be the weapons of those who cannot tolerate any other kind of power beyond their own. If the land is flooded and the forests on fire, they will purchase land where it is not.

It won't be capitalism or communism or fascism - it will simply be the dark hole of power, the mindless, heartless machine. There will be no conscience to reveal the suffering of ourselves or others. Language will dissolve into clicks.  Knowledge will be erased. Whatever beauty can be found in nature will be a desert.

So if we do not voice our shared or diverse views, if we are irritated by people who have different experiences, people who have different faiths and wear different clothes, and you look forward to a time where everyone is just like you, and everything is what you like - you are helping the silencing of humanity.

The Truth As the Body Knows It by Lynda Archer

I know the news moves on quickly, but I am still back, as I expect some of you are also, with what occurred in the US Supreme Court a few days ago. I am sharing with you all an essay that I couldn't not write after Dr. Blasey Ford's testimony. Trigger warning for some of what I write. Feel free to share with whomever you wish. And thanks to those who have read earlier versions. You know who you are. 

Continuing from Dr. Blasey Ford’s Testimony, the Truths I Know 

I watched closely the Supreme Court events in the US and found myself becoming increasingly sad, angry and churned up with the process and the ultimate outcome. Spoiler alert. Yes, I clearly side with Dr. Ford and I will over the course of this essay endeavour to show you why. 

I am not myself a survivor of sexual assault or abuse. But at this historic moment I am reminded of all the brave women who I was honoured to treat in my capacity as a clinical psychologist and Assistant Clinical Professor within the Dept. of Psychiatry at McMaster University. As a clinician I bore witness to the words of women who were 30, 40, 70 years of age when they spoke to me, often for the first time, of their childhood sexual abuse or their sexual assaults as adults. Assaults by uncles, fathers, brothers, friends. 

This is what I want to say. This is the truth as I know it. This is what I’d like to shout to certain individuals. Twenty, thirty, fifty years later. Those women in my office remembered. Those women who were mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, wives, lawyers, doctors, artists, plumbers, Asian, African American, indigenous... women.

Those women remembered. They remembered very well.

In great detail. Every one of those women remembered ALL that was done to their bodies. They remembered the words he said to them. They remembered how he whispered and taunted, told her that she liked what he was doing. Told her how he’d kill her cat if she spoke out. She remembered that he told her no one would believe her. Those women remembered. They remembered his body odour, his cologne. They remembered where he put his fingers. They remembered the weight of his body on their own bodies. 

But what I also know to be true. All those women longed to forget. They craved that their memories of those moments would evaporate.

Those women, every one of them, all those women, wished and hoped that the memory would depart from their brains and their bodies. 

Those kind, intelligent, caring, compassionate and courageous women.

Each in their own way had worked so hard to forget. Drinking too much. Working long hours. Chastising themselves. Pretending it didn’t happen. Telling themselves it wasn’t that bad.

Denial. Repression. Dissociation. All the psychological defences were employed.
Employed for months. Years. Decades. Wonderful defenses they are. Except they only work in the short term. They don’t eradicate memory.

Those defences don’t work in the long term because those kind of memories have a life of their own. They are not to be obliterated.

They will not be erased. That’s not how traumatic memory works. The body remembers what the mind forgets. The body does not lie or deny. The body may create disguises and diversions. Depression. Anxiety. Panic disorder. Headaches. Stomach aches. Nausea. Suicide attempts. Nightmares. Sleep disturbances. PTSD. But still the memories of the abuse remain. 

The memories of the abuse remain alongside SHAME. Shame rushes in with haste the moment the abuser leaves the room. Shame fills every cell of one’s body. Shame freezes the voice. Shame tells you that you are bad, unworthy, no one will believe you.

Shame is always there after abuse. Shame is the great silencer. “Shame holds secrets like a banker’s vault. Only death does a better job.” (Tears in the Grass, Lynda Archer)

I honour all the women who have courageously spoken out. I honour all the women who might never speak out. And in the words of Maya Angelou: 

“You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.”

Lynda A. Archer, Ph.D., MFA
Clinical Psychologist (Retired),
Assistant Clinical Professor, Dept. of Psychiatry, McMaster University (Retired)
Author: Tears in the Grass, Dundurn Press
October 16, 2018

Henri Giroux on Fascism and Toxic Masculinity

How politics disposes of some people so that others follow feeling numbed if not privileged, Giroux responds to the trial against victims of rape in the Brett Kavanaugh case. 

"I mean, I think that when any group or any element of the population is seen as so disposable, is treated with such almost visceral violence, we begin to get a whiff of something that is at work here that really isn’t being talked about, and that is a kind of fascist politics that absolutely hates democracy, hates the truth, hates public participation and is doing everything it can to hide, would seem to me, any visible element of what it might mean to take this woman’s narrative seriously and to talk, basically, about the crimes that are built into the system in ways that have to be addressed." The Real News Network. Interview with Henri Giroux by DHARNA NOOR

The Cheap and Easy Way to Power

This was originally posted November 12, 2016.


"So what you have is a voting base consisting of evangelical Christians, ultranationalists, racists, disaffected, angry, white working-class sectors that have been hit very hard....[and] an increase in mortality among these sectors, that just doesn’t happen in developed societies." Noam Chomsky, Today's GOP Candidate for "most dangerous organization in human history"

The easiest way to power is to pump the masses with false hope and fantasized superiority. Tell them they deserve to be angry because they are worth more than the "others" who are lower down on the scale of privilege.

Begin with very powerful interests like big corporations. Tell them over and over again they alone are saving the world from poverty by creating money; that money is pure power which rises above the complexities of human nature. Tell them your party will be on their side as long as you get the funding you need to carry the campaign to the end.

Then simply use the same method, with different instructions to the masses.  Even though they are not included in decision making policy, and not in the room where policies are created, they need to call on an "inherent superiority" such as class or skin colour. Then change the teachings of your prophets to match your agenda.

Don't bring facts or intellect into the campaign. It emphasizes reason, knowledge and leads to social justice. Once ideas are debated there are no winners. Intelligence is a private muscle which will stay true to the party line as long as there is a salary, otherwise it will wander off. Raise children to be suspicious of their own experience and interpretation of the world, replace their self worth with doubt and self contempt. The earlier the mind is intercepted with doctrine the easier it is to influence and control. "Give me a child until he is seven and he will be mine for life", said a priest.

Set one group against another. This builds a multi-generational division where parents will do most of the indoctrination. Catholic versus protestant. Christians versus Moslems, Jews, Hindu's and all other faiths. Liberal versus Conservative, Wealthy versus Poor, Men versus Women, Man versus Nature. This ensures the ongoing war in the minds and hearts of every living creature.  This also ensures that good ideas will never replace fear.

Once these systems are established, they will prevail and be generated by the poorest and weakest of the world. The oppressed become oppressors (Freire). For thousands of years this is how humanity has been governed. As long as they are in denial about their own needs and worth, they will fall in line and do your bidding.

There have been different labels and descriptors for ruling systems but they operate on the same principle - it is the worship of power over life. The holding up of violence over compassion. The celebration of ignorance over self-knowledge.

When life is not held as sacred it's easy to make abortion illegal while planning to starve the offspring.

However, the essential and everlasting way to power is that of a society built on the free and enduring inquiry of who we are and what we can do to solve the problems that face us.

How Toxic Masculinity Shackles Men to Misogyny

"Boys and young men are so routinely expected to betray their better natures, to smother their consciences, to renounce the best of themselves and submit to something low and mean. As if there’s only one way of being a bloke, one valid interpretation of the part, the role, if you like. There’s a constant pressure to enlist, to pull on the uniform of misogyny and join the Shithead Army that enforces and polices sexism. And it grieves me to say it’s not just men pressing those kids into service." About the Boys, Tim Winton.

"What are we left with?" asks Winton. If you are not part of a culture that celebrates coming of age into adulthood then the rite of passage is about drinking beer and getting laid. 

Political climates now reveal that nothing else is expected of a man but to be one of the boys. Which I think means non-judgement, right or wrong, of the tribe. What's said or done in the clubhouse, stays in the clubhouse. 

You can understand how the instinctive feeling of reflection or self-questioning would be seen as high-treason girlishness. 

School bullies, alpha males, can rely on absolute loyalty beyond the point of torture, to death. The witch hunts, the gang rape, the ridicule of women's bodies, all demand loyalty to the group.

No matter how violent or hurtful the words or the acts, the policies or the demands - no-one must be allowed to comment or judge.

But this sounds fine for Chimpanzees, Ghengis Khan's army or the Mafia, however,  whether we like it or not, our brains have evolved. This is why PTSD is so prevalent. Winton points out how boys are punished for having a conscience, how they must not under any circumstances say what they feel or even acknowledge what they feel. 

Women also learn to do this too if they want to stay employed in the group. It looks like this is an example of how power works in our society. 

In this age of nuclear weapons, pollution, endless wars and inequality, it is a disaster, another disaster waiting to happen.  

On the grave of our humanity we could write "forgive them Mother - they knew not what they were doing".

Confronting Evil

by Russell McNeil

"Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me." ~ Martin Niemöller


While I appreciate that a few of my friends are supportive of the US President, I have reached the end of my own psychological rope on this. My own personal daily reaction to the outrages of this imbalanced man is visceral. I have tried to understand your points-of-view. But I can no longer tolerate your positions. For me this man is my daily nightmare. I wake every morning and go to the news feeds to see what new desecrations Donald Trump has committed. I am never disappointed.

I do not believe that people are inherently evil. I do believe that the actions that Donald Trump have taken are having evil consequences. I was raised in a religious environment. I was taught the differences between right and wrong. I was taught that bullying defenseless people is wrong. I was taught that words have consequences. I was taught that preying on the weak, the young, the voiceless and the powerless is wrong. These are things Donald Trump and his sycophants do daily. This is the definition of raw cowardice.

I am speechless that a few of you still support this man. I can only conclude that you - my friends - are living in a state of permanent delusion. This is the 21st century - not the 2nd when the Roman Emperor Commodus (a man with a frighteningly similar temperament to Trump) succeeded Marcus Aurelius and began a reign of terror that ended with the disintegration of Rome.

Donald Trump is a cancer on the human family (a cancer that is now metastasizing as seen clearly in Trump's immoral speech to 40,000 cheering boy scouts this week). If you are unable or unwilling to see this I can only feel sorry for you. But I will no longer tolerate your myopia. My friends also include many who are the daily targets of Donald Trump. I can no longer remain silent while my other friends - women, minorities, LGBTQ, scientists and academics (I am one of those), and journalists (I am proud to have been one too) - are assaulted daily by this Presidential demon. Enough! #TheResistence

Units of Power and Other Social Currencies

"Power does not necessarily imply the wish to destroy... (t)he question is why some people use power to destroy." Richard Koenigsberg

The question for me - is why I see everything in the political/economic world as a contest for more and more power?  Who can argue that our obsession with money is not about power?  If you have money you can hire people to do your work for you. You have banks eager to gain more business from you. You can pressure politicians with your lobbies. You can change the mandates of higher learning. You can bring other wealthy people together for global conferences. You can influence the UN and the EU, and since November 2016, you can even destroy America.

So I wish to defend my obsession with how power is destroying our civil societies. I come from a place where family ruled my world. They interpreted reality for me. They measured my worth with their judgemental comments. They told me what my intentions were, what I was thinking, and what I hoped to gain.  At the time I did not see this as power, but concern and care.

From here I learned about morality, civilization and history from the classroom where I was a vacuous sponge.  I learned how to stay in a job. How to negotiate my needs with the needs of the company. I learned from older men and women about how to succeed in the job and in my life. I wedded the ideas of my partner to my own. But I also made mistakes by false beliefs.

I started out as a child needing to win, to prove I was worthy of the pain my mother suffered. I needed to win because I was afraid of my father who gave me instructions and who spent his life working to feed and house me. I needed to be aware of fashion - not be consumed by it, but to appear normal  to my peers and superiors.

What was the prize? What did I want to win ultimately? I wanted to belong, to have dignity and respect.  So here was I in this capitalist structure that told me I was a consumer who had to appear successful.

Success - this carrot on a stick - is rarely one you can control. Who will like you, employ you, who will hate you, who will care for you when you have a breakdown because you haven't learned that you are not in control no matter what you do or how much you learn. But that was the myth I internalized. Like Willy Loman I believed I had to play all the right roles to be 'well liked'.

There were many times I failed, in ways I told myself I would never fail. I was staunch in my  rejection of failure, and yet I failed and failed again in my own self-esteem. I remember times when I felt like throwing all our china on the floor, slamming the door until it broke. I got really scared when I felt an urgent need to go out to beat up somebody or something. Earlier in my life I was the target but never the fighter, and could never imagine raising my hand to hit anyone.

There a glimpse of insight came when I told a friend that I felt like an old Volkswagen Beetle hauling a caravan up the hill. She asked what was causing this stress?

It took many years before I could see what was happening.  My own internal drive to prove that I was worthy in a world run on money, glamour and celebrity. I was shaking the tree of life for all the nuts in the world to make up for the lack of self-love that one needs in order to dwell within community.

In the quiet hours of brokenness - which is the best word for that state where you realize  you will not get what you want - ever, it occurred to me  that "success" was not a thing that provided happiness or peace.  The consumer kool-aid I had drunk so thirstily was just an addiction. Part of the fantasy industrial complex.

There are those who climb to the top of their field through study, inquiry, good habits and humility. This uses a different kind of power. Immersion into the relationships and power of community through compassion, cooperation and self reflection. Rather than a top down control it is the commitment to serve. To observe beauty in nature and to feel gratitude for what one has.

So had I won my quest for personal glory, had I not broken down and wept, I would have carried on the ego fantasy and probably hurt many more people than I had. I might have burned the bridges to that two way learning, caused trauma to my beloved family without awareness.  This is called narcissism. And had I persisted to win at any cost my drive would have destroyed the life systems around me. This is called psychopathy.

This is what destroyed the first nations after European contact. Narcissistic, megalomaniac, psychopaths sailing into the sunset on their ships of discovery, out to conquer the world. And the way to do it is to refuse acknowledgement of the harm you are causing for the sake of your own self-agrandizement. To replace the voice of conscience with propaganda and new ideologies. To hasten the demise of aboriginal communities with germs, guns and alcohol.

This is  happening with neoliberal economics - the belief that free markets are really free while civil society and it's social institutions are being dismantled back to feudalist warring. When those who have so much power  can choose to listen to whomever they wish, they can purchase think tanks designed to back up their world view and sense of entitlement.

Power leads to destruction when the ego that has achieved some success keeps building on their status and position rather than the greater good for all. Even those in positions of power need to be surrounded by people they can trust to tell the truth, and to know that for as long as they live they belong in the family of humans.

I and Thou

Somewhere in Martin Buber's book "I and Thou" I remember the phrase - not necessarily in these words, but meaning "those who choose hate as a way out because they don't know what to do with their lives."

Now I confess I cannot find this quote although there are many by Buber or from people who write about his ideas.

I keep thinking of this phrase now that Donald Trump clearly directed his campaign through support from white supremacist, misogynist and an anti-immigrant demographic.

But what should "they" do with their lives when there are not enough jobs that will pay a living wage and will treat them with dignity?

The only thing that will come out of hate is a world of mute strangers competing with and afraid of the other.

Buber's main proposition is that we live in a dialogue with the world.  Either as I-and-It or I-and-Thou and that we find meaning through our relationships. I-and-Thou means I stand in relation to you as the meaning of  our lives unfold, giving me direction through inspiration in what to do with my life. The I-and-It is currently how our economic system is organized. People are workers, immigrants, criminals, customers and constituents. They are "Its" to be managed for the most profit.

I feel a burning rage inside that life has been reduced to this. I understand the rage coming from those made redundant by the ideology of neoliberalism. And I fear that hate will engulf the schools, the libraries, the clinics and malls just as it has in Syria.

It's not naivety to begin to live in relation to life - it is the reason for it.

The Unconscious Bias

Walking around the Farmer's Market on a summer morning I passed two craftswomen engaged in conversation.  What word describes the opposite of misogyny? In passing I chimed misanthropy. The second woman said that is the general term for the hatred of humanity. And the question was, what is the term used to express the hatred of men, males. I moved on because I didn't want to get ensnared in this conversation I had heard from others in different times and places.

I anticipated after the two women concluded there was no opposite to misogyny in our language, they felt that a hatred of men coming from women, was not recognized.  The second woman said it's not fair.

There is no opposite of misogyny because a hatred of males has not been a systemic tool. Women became the possession of men, chattels, and the institutions governed by men created a fear and hatred towards the feminine to justify the power men were given over women.

Less than a century ago, women who spoke out in public, who were engaged in challenging the status quo were often beaten, imprisoned and raped. It was mostly women targeted during the witch hunts. It was women who were trained to be submissive and obedient to men. It is women whose character is whacked in courts where rape is the charge. In domestic abuse cases, up to now, women were blamed for violence inflicted upon them. Our society claimed they must have asked for it. A man who beats his partner claims "she pressed my buttons".  Sexuality for a man is conquest, for a woman it is slut shaming. Doesn't every woman know this? How many more examples of men's contempt for women do we need to know? Southern states that try women who have miscarried for murder? The misogynist attacks on Hilary Clinton?

It was my assumption that the women at the market were feeling sympathy for men who were being attacked by the feminist movement. This made my blood boil. But perhaps they were saying its not fair how women are viewed. Perhaps it was the opposite of what I thought.

Yes there are women who hate men but it's not supported and justified by our social system.  Hate hurts us all on a personal community level, but when hate is used to support the violence towards a whole group of people it becomes a weapon, and weapons we can't see are devastating.

Had I inquired I might have pounced in judgement based on my assumptions.  Emotions operate first. Also I was not invited to participate in the conversation. Had they been shouting then their opinions would be open for comment, the volume entering and changing the environment.

But it's times like this when I feel there is a need for conversations about civil society and social justice, and a movement for adult education. Questions such as when do expressions of hate become a crime? When should the public intervene? In what ways are we implicated when misogyny, racism and homophobia are expressed?

Rape Culture

Sleeping Lion

With the current focus on the Ghomeshi trial and the way victims are being branded through the courts, it would be logical to believe that choking and penetrating someone is far more violent, far more guilty than smiling and being nice.  But in rape culture the purpose of everything is to normalize rape as a way of being. To make every living entity a victim or a conqueror. In rape culture it's far more shameful to be a victim.

We are sent to the forum as gladiators whether we want to be or not. We learn that in order to win, somebody must lose. Everything on the earth is here for the purpose of being conquered by the glorious conqueror.

It's not that we are inherently evil or good.  It is that we have been, through the experiences of our ancestors, traumatized.  We have learned how to hide who we are in order to survive.  We have learned how to entertain ourselves with games that we might win so we don't address the depth and breadth of this oppression.

So it comes down to this - am I the rapist or the raped? Am I the winner or the loser? Am I the user or the used? Will I challenge what I know is wrong or recede behind the door of my home - the only sanctuary where I am allowed to be me. Will I lock those doors so no-one can get in?  Will I allow my children to enter school and the work place to be psychologically raped every time they are compared with sluts, idiots or monsters? Will I learn how to be well adjusted in this world, or if not entirely adjusted, will I survive?

The proof of this rape culture, this acceptance of violence as normal human behaviour, is the way the legal system works and media's acquiescence to power. It is not the rapist that is on trial, examined and interrogated, who must prove he is innocent, but the victim who must prove they never uttered a word, stood, sat, smiled or fluttered in any way that could be perceived as "a come on".

The purpose of rape culture is to blame the victim, to heave contempt on the tender shoots of life, and to turn innocence into powerlessness, to brutalize every diverse expression of life into silence or submission.

Cultures of rape see women as walking wombs, walking threats to man made power. Cultures of rape see men as instruments to serve the system - soldiers, CEO's, policeman, drivers, strategists - they must serve without question - and those who do question will be crucified and forgotten. Human nature is the menace and it must be reduced, ridiculed and discouraged. Misogyny will end when science has created the means to make eggs and sperm in a lab without using what nature has created.

This is the world of psychopaths who have made themselves slaves to the system so that ultimately they might make the world a playground for their egos.

This lion of justice is sleeping. Rape is not about the minds and hearts of men and women at all.  It's about the absolute triumph of the system with all its purchased institutions, over the whole of nature.

Misogyny

But, said Tahir, militarism and its impact on women is “not specific to Pakistan.” Even the U.S. Pentagon’s own report found that violent sex crimes committed by active U.S. Army soldiers have increased by 50 percent, reflecting a rate that is far higher than in the general population. “When Pakistani men commit such crimes,” said Tahir, “it’s called ‘honor killings,’ and we condemn entire cultures for it.” But “when it’s Western men who commit such crimes we tend to look for psychological explanations.” So, the Isla Vista killer, Elliot Rodger, was described as a “troubled kid with high-functioning Asperger’s syndrome,” and U.S. soldiers committing sex crimes are seen through the lens of post-traumatic stress disorder from the battlefield.  

Sonali Kolhatkar, Truthdig

If Hate Should Win Over Love in America

The narrative coming out of media has inflamed rage, alienation and despair among the American people, and so the land is ripe for draconian measures. This will ensure absolute power for the tribe who have funded xenophobic movements, government lobbies and media, in countries all over the world.  If the haters win it means a large enough portion of American society is ready for bloodletting and the scapegoats have already been identified.  If the haters win based on their promises it means America has given up on social justice - which is not socialism but shared responsibility through civil society.

1. Planned parenthood and women's rights will be shut down along with women's voices, as promised by candidates. 
2. Same sex marriage will be banned and the LGBT community will be forced underground or targeted with violence. 
3. Abortion will be made illegal even in cases where a woman's life is at risk.
4. Medicare and social assistance will be stopped.
5. Environmental pollution will rise exponentially wiping out many species through toxic poisoning. 
6. Education funding will run out, public schools shut down and communities will be required to build and pay for their own education.
7. Libraries will be closed.
8. Psychiatry and counselling will be outlawed and mental illness viewed as a lack of morality and self-discipline. 
9. Family breakdown will be blamed on the work of feminists and liberals.
10. Worker's unions will be outlawed.
11. Civic leaders, journalists and liberal religious leaders will be arrested and placed in prisons without trial.
12. All government departments will be merged and the only services funded by taxpayers will be the police force and the military, which will eventually be contracted out to private security companies. 
13. Extreme poverty will erupt in more gang activity, and municipalities will be sponsored by corporations and run by drug cartels.
14. A war will be started with Iran, Russia and China, to employ the frustrated young men who have lost hope of making a living. 
15. Civil war will divide the country.
16. Citizens who build local economies in their workshops and gardens will have their property confiscated. 
17. The one percent will become the .5 percent and they will be much richer than they are now.
18. Current party leaders will not see this coming.

Most Americans would deny this is possible mainly because there are so many community activities built and run by good, hard working, people.  But the tribe who have employed the CEO's, the military personnel  the politicians and the experts, have already managed to erode civil society by alienating humanity from their natural power and re-creating reality through the media they sponsor.  This tribe are so powerful we will know them not by name but by their fruits - totalitarian regimes in South America and Europe since the beginning of the Twentieth Century.

The only way we can take back the power we have is to nurture what sustains us. There is no solution, no ideology, and no guaranteed strategy to fight back against the absolute rape of our psyche through the worship of power. Our hope, if there is any to be had, lies in our practice of compassion and mindfulness.