If I’d read this before I wrote Jess, I certainly would have mentioned Scalzi’s metaphor and given huge applause and thanks to him for it! (Actually, I might not have written Jess, because Scalzi’s metaphor achieves the same purpose with such … economy.)
The piece is WELL WORTH the read, as are many of the comments.
One of the most common objections is, understandably, something along the lines of this: ‘I’m a SWM and I’ve worked hard for everything I’ve got–I deserve what I have!’
That may well be. But here’s the thing (and another definition): privilege is getting what you deserve.
The Privilege of Men by Judith Mazzucco starts as an unremarkable novel about the meat industry, but then WHAM! the metaphor in chapter 16— At least I think, I hope, it’s a metaphor and not something that’s actually happening somewhere right now. Though—and I’m not sure whether this is Mazzucco’s point or whether she’s ‘just’ making a point about the meat industry—it would be completely logical for it to BE happening, given what is ALREADY happening, with respect to trafficking women for sexual services (i.e., surrogacy and prostitution). Worth the read if only for that chapter. And that point.
The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson should be required reading for everyone. In particular, for those with economic and political power (send a copy to the people of your choice!).
“Easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism …” p25 And that’s the problem.
“Looking into plans to redirect fossil fuel companies to do decarbonization projects. Capabilities strangely appropriate. Extraction and injection both use same tech, just reversed.” p54 IS THAT TRUE? Then what the hell are we waiting for? “People, capital, facilities, capacities, all these can be used to ‘collect and inject’ either by way of cooperation or legal coercion. Keeps oil companies in business but doing good things.” p54
“But lawmakers are often lawyers themselves, notoriously bereft of ideas. Can we assume they get their ideas about law from others? … Think tanks. Academics. / Meaning MBA professors. … Economics departments.” p59 Yes. Right there. B students with no humanities knowledge, understanding, with no science knowledge, understanding run/create the world.
“The three richest people in the world possess more financial assets than all the people in the forty-eight poorest countries added together. The wealthiest one percent of the human population owns more than the bottom seventy percent.” p74
“Also, the two billion poorest people on the planet still lack access to basics like toilets, housing, food, health care, education, and so on.” p74
“…we can’t think in anything but economic terms, our ethics must be quantified …” p75
“GDP … consists of a combination of consumption, plus private investments, plus government spending, plus exports-minus-imports. Criticisms of GDP are many, as it includes destructive activities as positive economic numbers, and excludes many kinds of negative externalities … ” p75
And a wonderful conversation on p98-100 culminating in “There are about a hundred people walking this earth, who if you judge from the angle of the future … are mass murderers. If they started to die … Exile, then. Prisons … What if they woke up one day with no assets?”
“Arctic permafrost [contains] as much stored methane as all the Earth’s cattle would create and emit over six centuries, and this giant burp [the melting of the permafrost, already underway] would almost certainly push Earth over an irreversible tipping point into jungle planet mode …” p147
“The whole field and discipline of economics, by which we plan and justify what we do as a society, is simply riddled with absences, contradictions, logical flaws, and most important of all, false axioms and false goals. … Not profit, but biosphere health, should be the function solved for.” p166
” … many of the worst climate impacts will be irreversible. Extinctions and ocean warming can’t be fixed no matter how much money future people have, so economics as practised miss a fundamental aspect of reality.” p173
” … the heat wave, which was now said to have killed twenty million. As many people, in other words, as soldiers had died in World War One, a death toll which had taken four years of intensely purposeful killing; and the heat wave had taken only two weeks.” p227 “And yet still they burned carbon. They drove cars, ate meat, flew in jets, did all the things that had caused the heat wave and would cause the next one.” p228 How is it that so many people are so mentally deficient?
“Meanwhile the fossil fuel companies keep pouring vast sums into buying elections, politicians, media, and public opinion.” p250
“Then all those planes going down in one day [through sabotage]. … It killed the airline industry, more or less. That was ten percent of the carbon burn, gone in a single day.” p254 Desperate times call for desperate measures.
“… those few so rich that they could imagine surviving the crash of civilization, they and their descendants living on into some poorly imagined gated-community post-apocalypse in which servants and food and fuel and games would still be available to them.” p288-9 Poorly imagined, indeed.
“Help get us to the next world system. … Invent post-capitalism!” p317
“… a clear sign that macroeconomics as a field was ideological to the point of astrology … economics were still very skilled at ignoring outside criticisms of their field …” p343
“So until the climate was actually killing them, people had a tendency to deny it could happen.” p349 And yet, see above re the heat wave. So until it killed them themselves? How special do people think they are such that seeing it kill someone else is … irrelevant?
“In the corporate world I’ve read the average wage ratio is like one to five hundred. Actually that was the median; one to 1500 happens pretty often. The top executives in these companies earn in ten minutes what it takes their starting employees all year to earn … To hide the fact that they don’t actually do a thousand times more than their employees. Hiding like that, they won’t be normal. They’ll be bullshitters.” p383
” … would include American stupidity and hubris, and the assumption of being the world’s sole superpower, as one of their outstanding problems …” p483
“Woman as Other—when would that stop, them being as they were the majority of the species by many millions?” p483-4
“Stan back, get away, keep out; maybe try fishing for plastic rather than fish …” p484
(I posted this way back in April of 2020 at hellyeahimafeminist.com, but thought it worth transferring to this blog) (as I’m doing for so many other posts) (hence the recent proliferation of overtly feminist posts)
Why more men than women will die of the COVID virus:
1. Cleanliness is a girl thing. Real men don’t wash their hands. (Certainly not several times a day.)
2. The home is the women’s cave. So unless it comes with an attached garage, real men aren’t going to stay there all day. (Certainly not all week, let alone all month …)
3. Many of the public health officials we’re hearing from are women. Real men don’t listen to women. They certainly don’t accept their advice.
4. Most men think they’re tough, so they figure they’re not going to get it. (As if toughness, rather than, oh I don’t know, a diet high in fruits and vegetables, and low in beer and cigarettes, has anything to do with immunity to viral infections.)
5. Most men are pack animals; they naturally herd together. So they’re finding this whole do-not-congregate thing really hard.
Why more women than men will die of the COVID virus:
1. The men they’re living with will get angry and frustrated (at whatever) and as a result kill them. (Because, you know, it’s their fault.)
Just read The End of Men, Christina Sweeney-Baird – well worth the read, one of several notable bits:
[She pretends to be infected] “I have never felt so powerful. This must be what men used to feel like. My mere physical presence is enough to terrify someone into running. No wonder they used to get drunk on it.” (p130)
So I’m reading Humanity: a hopeful history by Rutger Bregman, and he says the guy hired by Milgram to pressure the participants to shock the ‘learner’ actually “came to blows with one forty-six-year-old woman who turned the shock machine off” (p.165).
YAY US!
(Funny how this is never mentioned in Psych 101 textbooks that report the Milgram experiment.)
A simple but stunning observation: “… paying for sex is coercive – we all know that when people want to have sex with one another, they do it for free. No one needs to be paid unless one party is not enthusiastic about the sex.”
Read the whole thing here: https://www.feministcurrent.com/2022/09/12/the-unbearable-coolness-of-porn/
"We License Plumbers and Pilots - Why Not Parents?"At Issue: Is Parenthood a Right or a Privilege? ed. Stefan Kiesbye (Greenhaven, 2009); Current Controversies: Child Abuse, ed. Lucinda Almond (Thomson/Gale, 2006); Seattle Post-Intelligencer (October 2004)
"A Humanist View of Animal Rights"New Humanist September 99; The New Zealand Rationalist and Humanist Winter 98; Humanist in Canada Winter 97
have been previously published in Canadian Woman Studies, Herizons, Humanist in Canada, The Humanist, and The Philosopher's Magazine - contact Peg for acknowledgement details.
ImpactAn extended confrontation between a sexual assault victim and her assailants, as part of an imagined slightly revised court process, in order to understand why they did what they did and, on that basis, to make a recommendation to the court regarding sentence does not go … as expected.
What Happened to TomTom, like many men, assumes that since pregnancy is a natural part of being a woman, it’s no big deal: a woman finds herself pregnant, she does or does not go through with it, end of story. But then …
Aiding the EnemyWhen Private Ann Jones faces execution for “aiding the enemy,” she points to American weapons manufacturers who sell to whatever country is in the market.
Bang BangWhen a young boy playing “Cops and Robbers” jumps out at a man passing by, the man shoots him, thinking the boy’s toy gun is real. Who’s to blame?
ForeseeableAn awful choice in a time of war. Whose choice was it really?
Exile (full-length drama) Finalist, WriteMovies; Quarterfinalist, Fade-In.
LJ lives in a U . S. of A., with a new Three Strikes Law: first crime, rehab; second crime, prison; third crime, you’re simply kicked out – permanently exiled to a designated remote area, to fend for yourself without the benefits of society. At least he used to live in that new U. S. of A. He’s just committed his third crime.
What Happened to Tom (full-length drama) Semifinalist, Moondance.
This guy wakes up to find his body’s been hijacked and turned into a human kidney dialysis machine – for nine months.
Aiding the Enemy (short drama 15min)
When Private Ann Jones faces execution for “aiding the enemy,” she points to American weapons manufacturers who sell to whatever country is in the market.
Bang Bang (short drama 30min) Finalist, Gimme Credit; Quarter-finalist, American Gem.
When a young boy playing “Cops and Robbers” jumps out at a man passing by, the man shoots him, thinking the boy’s toy gun is real. Who’s to blame?
Foreseeable (short drama 30min)
An awful choice in a time of war. Whose choice was it really?
What is Wrong with this Picture?
Nothing. There’s no reason women can’t be the superordinates and men the subordinates. But life’s not like that (yet).
Minding Our Own Business A collection of skits (including “The Price is Not Quite Right,” “Singin’ in the (Acid) Rain,” “Adverse Reactions,” “The Band-Aid Solution,” and “See Jane. See Dick.”) with a not-so-subtle environmental message
Rot in Hell A soapbox zealot and an atheist face off…