Iceland has followed the Swedish path, as a majority of the Iceland Parliament, the Alþingi, in April accepted an alteration of the criminal code, which now forbids the buying of sex in Iceland. Thus, the nine-year long intensive parliamentary campaign for the criminalisation of the purchase of sex came to an end. For more information:http://tinyurl.com/3fqrtto
Dear Mr. Legislative Analyst, Dan Riffle of the Marijuana Policy Project:
In response to your response to my email exposing the Marijuana Policy Project for holding a sexist fundraiser at the Playboy Mansion, you wrote,
"Thanks very much for sharing your concerns. Every year that we hold our fundraiser at the Playboy mansion we receive several emails similar to yours, and we take them very seriously. This year, as in past years, we discussed the matter as a staff and the prevailing view was that we should move forward with the event. Our decision to hold the fundraiser should not be viewed as an endorsement of any particular position, but simply an acknowledgement that the Playboy Mansion offers many of our donors an exciting venue to attend, and an opportunity to get our message - that marijuana prohibition is a failure that destroys lives and denies needed medicine to patients - out to a broader audience. It is also an acknowledgement that the Playboy Foundation has been a stalwart supporter of marijuana policy reform for many decades, even providing the seed money to found NORML."
Well, Mr. Legislative Analyst, thanks for making me aware that laws and ethics are clearly differentiated from one another within your Marijuana Policy Project (MPP). Sexism? Who cares about the other half of the human race, when we don't want to ruin the lives of patients.
Do as the Ancient Roman rulers would do at a mansion---lay back while some “hos” rub your rod. Slap Me Five, Fraternity Style!
Maybe we can hold an 'exciting venue' at the former clansman, David Duke's mansion where us whities can get off on watching black people ‘model’ their teeth and muscles on an auction-block. How about an 'exciting venue' for us colonialists at a Hacienda, funded by Chiquita Banana where we can get some Latinos to rub our feet? How about some Native Americans, Palestinians, or the aborigines of the Amazon---up for grabs. Whatever it takes! The ends justifies the means for the MPP.
Just because the majority of MPP staff voted to hold a sexist fundraiser, the unanimous vote is not a valid justification for doing so. Just like the majority of KKK members, vote to continue racist activities does not mean that their unanimous votes are a valid justification for doing so. Anyway, most of your MPP staff are probably agreeing because they either don’t want to lose their jobs (food and shelter), or don’t want to lose their positions for opportunistic reasons.
Your approach is mechanistic, (i.e., short-sighted because it negates or disconnects from other important elements, highly susceptible to chauvinism, and clearly unscientific) VS a dialectic-materialist approach, (i.e., foresight because it values the interconnectedness of all things, intrinsically equalitarian, and scientifically sound).
The MPP’s selling out the legalization-of-marijuana movement to the likes of the values of the patriarchal, Capitalistic, hierarchal super structure, is hindering your / our movement, big time. The MPP’s opportunistic attitudes and practices are chauvinistic, pathetic, divisive, counter-productive, socially irresponsible, and socially retarded.
As a human rights activist, I am committed only to revolutionary principles (which includes some reforms for tactical purposes on an ethical basis only) to guide me in creating authentic change. I bet that if you followed a revolutionary or dialectical materialist approach, cannabis would already be legalized or at least have more respect from the larger community.
You can flex your muscle at the mansion, but if you don’t have the balls to institute egalitarian principles and practices, then you’re useless.
Seriously,
Andrea Lavigne
Dear Marijuana Policy Project:
According to the High Times Magazine article, Scandal at the Marijuana Policy Project, by Veinenstock and Cusick, a big sexual harassment scandal occurred implicating executive director, Rob Kampia and causing several MMP staffers to resign; therefore, the MPP didn’t hold their annual sexist Playboy Mansion fundraiser for a year or two. I heard recently that the MPP is going to resume holding their annual sexist fundraiser this July 2011, same place. The MPP’s continued sexist fundraisers promote the objectification, degradation, and violence toward women and girls; male supremacy; a patriarchal, right-wing, Capitalist, imperialist agenda; is highly antagonistic with the green-ethics of the pro-marijuana movement---undercutting the very movement your trying to promote.
One opportunistic and dubious argument mindlessly parroted by the MPP for holding the sexist fundraiser is, “While we understand that the event isn't for everyone, many respected figures have worked with Playboy, from Martin Luther King, Jr., and Jimmy Carter (both of whom sat for interviews with the magazine) to highly regarded authors who have published their work in its pages, such as Ray Bradbury and John Updike.” Excuse me, but none of those so-called enlightened people you mention were revolutionaries who concerned themselves much with women’s rights; they were charismatic liberation theologians or supporters of Christianity---for certain rights for certain people, with a de-emphasis on the rights of women. Christianity and other organized religions are all oppressive systems of male privilege. By virtue of upholding Christianity, each of those so-called enlightened people the MPP mentions, upheld male privilege.
Just as Jason Martan is the Grand Wizard of the racist fraternal organization known as the Ku Klux Klan, Hugh Hefner is the Grand Wizard of the sexist fraternal organization known as the Xploitation, Xploitation, Xploitation.
Basic 101 ethics intuits that sexism is just as objectifying, degrading, and debilitating as racism. Sexism, racism, classism, religion, and the state machine are there to serve ruling class hegemony---to divide and conquer the working class here and abroad. Sexism is actually more insidious than racism, because the repercussions negatively impact all cultures and races, all human relations in intimately complex ways.
The “Consent Fallacy”
The MPP may try to opportunistically rationalize holding a sexist fundraiser by arguing, “Those women consent, so they are not victims of oppression or sexism.” The reality, however, is if we lived in a world were women were actually free, then consent would literally mean consent, but we don’t live in that kind of world. When women consent to sexism and blacks consent to racism, sexism and racism become even more insidious; worse. In today’s economic context, consent so often means capitulation for those oppressed groups (women) whom have become metabolized into the oppressive dynamics of the power structure.
By getting enough blacks and women to capitulate to racism and sexism, and working class people to capitulate to classism, their self-maintaining auto-oppression serves as an free ride for the mansion owners, the plantation owners, for a couple reasons: firstly, by virtue that they (owners) get to spend less time and resources on suppressing race and gender rebellions and other class uprisings, since they are less bond to uprise due to auto-oppression; secondly, giving the owners more time and resources to push their imperialist agenda of infinite gain for them and poverty and martial law for us. Sexist, racist, and classist propaganda and practices are there to divide us; to justify war, poverty, prisons, the war on drugs, and to create a surplus of unemployed wage slaves---keeping profits in the hands of a few mansion / plantation owners.
Even the UN Declaration on Human Rights, speaks volumes about how sexual exploitation is a violation of human rights whether tolerated by the state or not, whether in pubic or private. Sexist, racist, and classist institutions are not inherent nor natural for they need to be destroyed for humanity to be free, free to consent based on being free.
Internalization of Oppression
Where you find sexism, racism, and classism, you will find internalization of oppression. Internalization of oppression, auto-oppression, is when we digest, believe, accept or take into ourselves concepts, ideas and images [sexist, racist, classist propaganda] that an oppressive society uses to represent us, serves to maintain a subservient and crippled state of functioning which, therefore, undermines ones ability to be a full-fledged human, coined by Frantz Fanon, a French revolutionary and psychiatrist in his book, Wretched of the Earth,1963. One can compare women’s crippling and silent capitulation to sexism to that of the House Negro in Malcolm X’s 1964 February speech, House Negro vs Field Negro: if the master’s house was burning down, the House Negro would do everything to save the house, whereas the Field Negro would do everything to enhance the flames to burn his house down, down to the ground.
Yoko Ono and John Lennon wrote a song called, Woman is the Nigger of the World. Women are the “niggers” of the world”, especially when they happily capitulate to sexism, especially when they go so far as to rationalize sexism. Too many women are minions of sexual oppression.
Kampia-Hefner like Puritans
From a non-patriarchal, Iroquois Indian perspective, Kampia, Hefner, and their ilk, are just as right wing and anti-women as the Puritans---the Kampia-Hefner camp want women as whores and the Puritan camp want women as chattel. Kampia-Hefner are not liberals and are not hypersexual, but perverted like Puritans. On the other hand, non-patriarchal cultures would never disrespect women for some opportunistic gains.
Prostitution is the Oldest Profession Fallacy
Some sexists would like to shout back another dubious claim that prostitution is the oldest profession in the world. Not true. Prostitution is not the oldest profession, but it is the oldest oppression since the advent of patriarchal societies. Prostitution was non-existent in non-patriarchal societies. Pre-patriarchal and current non-patriarchal societies, instead, have sexual rituals and group marriage, because they are not propertied societies, but communalistic.
Natural Contradiction between Patriarchy and Cannabis
There is an inherent contradiction between the patriarchy and cannabis. Cannabis is a natural plant, which does best when grown freely in a world where people are truly free. Patriarchal institutions are Big Pharma (an industry that profits off of death and disease), the Paper Industry (an industry that has no qualms about raping and pillaging the environment) or the Alcohol industry (which has no shame in selling their toxic crap), Prisons (a state sponsored human trafficking industry which profits off of housing many non-violent people), and Prostitution (which commodifies women and justifies violence toward all of them). These patriarchal industries hate anybody and anything that is free. Cannabis is so natural and free that it can’t be fully reconciled under such systems of oppression. So stop oppressing.
Solution
The immediate solution is for the MMP to stop it’s oppressive upcoming sexist fundraisers. The money the MPP gets from these sexist fundraisers is DIRTY money, just as DIRTY as money you would get from holding a racist fundraiser. Stand steadfast to the fact that men and children won’t have freedom if women are oppressed, whites won’t have freedom if blacks are oppressed, and cannabis won’t have complete freedom if there remains a system of hierarchal oppression. If you want to truly get anywhere, faster and more efficiently, you need to elevate the importance of cannabis to the larger cause of human struggle to be free from bondage, to have self-determination. I will continue to encourage others to boycott the MPP, until the MPP makes shows respect for women. In the meantime will begin by publishing this letter en mass as a call to boycott the MPP.
Seriously,
Andrea Lavigne
This video below, Women is the Nigger of the World, by John Lennon and Yoko Ono, truly has merit for today in 2010. It is ironic how the oppression of American women has become even more mainstreamed, sophisticated, and insidious since the 1970s. What is also just as un-flipping believable since the 1970's is how American women have become even more Stockhomish in their response to the sexist, patriarchal Capitalist system. Many American women are voiceless offering very little or no opposition to the 24/7 sexism that surrounds. Many American women will display a sheepish unquestioning submission, auto-oppression, internalization of oppression. During every day conversation where someone says something sexist, it is so un-flipping believable how time-and-time again many American women in the circle offer no rebuttals, just smile and act friendly--either sit there like "Step-ford Wives" or "Yes Women". What is also un-flipping believable, when confronted with sexism, most American women will, with laughter, voice jovial comments about the sexual exploitation of women--as if funny. It is even more abominable when we hear so many American women whine with heated passion in defense of sexism – with great vengeance they will argue that pole dancing is liberating, that Las Vegas, the misogyny capital of the world, is a fun place to go. What planet are we living on? Many American women believe that sexism is a non-issue, that we live in a post-sexist society, that sexism doesn't apply to them, or that they benefit from sexism. It is un-flipping believable how so many of the younger generation of so-called feminists, who refer to themselves as post-modernist feminists sound just like a bunch of sexist pigs—you would think their mentor was Huge Hefner, one of the greatest sexist pig war-against-women, war criminal known in so-called modern society, the father of the industrialization of women as sexual commodities -- who can just take is stupid-ass rabit ears and shove them up his asshole. On top of all that un-flipping believable bullshit is how when I show all the misogynistic passages of the bible to women, the bible which is a disgusting patriarchal doctrine, it doesn't seem to phase these women - they still go around attached to that woman-hating institution of religion—making up all kinds of excuses as to why they want to continue to roll around in the feces of their anti-woman war-lord, called God. It is a long time coming when American women will display any kind of conscious resistance or revolutionary spirit. I argue to women that to be complacent is to be complicit, part of the problem rather than the solution. Woman is the Nigger of the World more now than ever, the slave of all slaves. They paint their faces and dance. Paint their faces and dance. Paint their faces and dance.
The Vagina Monologues Reinforce the Existence of Patriarchy
by Andrea Lavigne
http://www.radicalfeminism.blogspot.com
The Vagina Monologues (TVM), is a book containing monologues of women’s “vagina experiences” recorded by Eve Ensler, author and activist. Ensler states in her book that her motivation for TVM grew out of her concern for an older woman who displayed contemptuous feelings about her vagina at a time when Ensler was longing to find a way back to her own vagina. TVM is also performed on stage as part of the V-Day Campaign, a global movement to stop violence against women and girls.
While performances of TVM raise funds for victims of sexual and domestic violence, at the same time, it expresses postmodern Third Wave and Biological Reductionist “feminism.” Postmodern Third Wavers, a.k.a., “sex positivity feminists” spin reality into one’s perspective and simple narratives, co-opts and internalizes patriarchal notions and traditions, and cultivates pseudo-liberating solutions for sexuality. In bed with the postmodern Third Wavers are the Biological reductionist “feminists” who reduce women to their vaginas. In opposition to the postmodern Third Wave and Biological Reductionist agenda, Second Wave feminists identify with historical materialist reality, attempt to overthrow the patriarchal Capitalist social and economic material conditions in which women’s oppression is rooted, and struggle for full emancipation.
With all due respect, Ensler’s book provides us with a few serious monologues and some important “Vagina Facts.” These monologues discuss mass rape of Bosnian women; hysterectomies; cold gynecological exams; rape of a ten-year-old by her father’s friend; and, childbirth. The “Vagina Facts” cover: 1. A woman, during a witch trial, was considered a witch by a lawyer because of her half-inch sized clitoris; 2. A clitoris contains 8000 nerve fibers; and, 3– 5. Mention of the practice of genital mutilation. While many additional “Vagina Facts” are included in the performances, presentation of such serious subject matters takes second place to the gratuitous, vagina-centric monologues like reclaiming the words “CUNT” and “VAGINA” and faking orgasms.
For the sake of criticism, I have selected monologues from the book and performances which promote sexual objectification, prostitution myths, and predatory behavior. My criticisms are meant to promote dialogue, awareness, and direction toward women’s true liberation.
Monologues that Promote Sexual Objectification
Reclaiming Cunt
This monologue is by a subject who plays around with the phonetics, “C C CA CA, Cunt” primarily as an attempt to bring back the ancient pro-woman meaning of the word “Cunt” and secondarily for shock value. However, in today’s patriarchal Capitalist climate inundated with pornography, rampant pimping of women and children into prostitution, and mass rape, the word “cunt” will lack ancient meaning as long as we remain in this patriarchal economic and social order. More constructive is for us to reclaim the action word, “L L, Li, lib, Liber, Liberat, Liberation.”
The Vagina Workshop
The “WOMAN = VAGINA” biological reductionist message is very clear in this monologue. A vagina workshop participant discovers that her clitoris “was me, the essence of me.” The vagina workshop leader convinces this participant that her vagina is “the essence of me, both the doorbell to my house and the house itself.” Furthermore, the participant poeticizes her vagina “My vagina is a shell, a tulip, and a destiny. I am arriving as I am beginning to leave. My vagina, my vagina, me.” This biological reductionism is a pathetic recurring theme as Ensler desperately attempts to establish feelings of sisterhood based on a common biology. This sexual objectification is exactly what the suffragettes were fighting against. Pioneers Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, and others fought long and hard so women would be empowered--not by their sexual anatomy--but by their minds. Empowerment does not consist of staring at your vagina in the mirror and weeping or exulting. I think the suffragettes would be pissed if they saw this empowerment scam.
Because He Liked To Look At It
In this creepy segment of Ensler’s, we learn that this guy Bob is “ordinary, boring, and unappealing,” that is, until his date discovers his one redeeming quality -- an obsession with vaginas. Bob voyeuristically stares, analyzes, and fetishizes her crotch for over an hour. She discovers how “beautiful and erotic” her vagina is because a man obsessively appreciates it. She actually could have just removed her crotch from between her legs, set it on a pedestal in her foyer, and left the house while Creepy Bob remained. She gives Creepy Bob kudos for validating her sexuality and making her feel worthy through his creepy fetish.
A Monologue that Promotes the Prostitution Myth
The Woman Who Loved To Make Vaginas Happy
This is a monologue about a woman who leaves her career as an attorney to become a lesbian dominatrix prostitute specializing in the use of sexual props, i.e., whips, handcuffs, and ropes. Why did Ensler choose this fantastical “sex worker in charge” prostitution myth in her program? What agenda is Ensler promoting? Although she doesn’t use the term “sex worker” to describe this lesbian dominatrix prostitute, the content implicitly cultivates and promotes this “free will sex worker” false notion. This “free will sex worker” spin is highly promoted on stage by the actresses who fun-lovingly perform this monologue as a highlight of women’s empowerment. This “free will sex worker” myth is also propagated when the performer intensely revels in her one-woman grand finale of faking a series of her female johns’ multiple orgasms.
These postmodernist Third Wavers would also like us to believe that because a woman is role-playing as an “independent self-assured dominatrix”, that she is truly an independent self-assured dominatrix in full charge of the night. In reality, most women used in prostitution have pimps and johns who force them into this “independent self-assured dominatrix” role---which is dangerous for the woman because the “props” can easily be used against her in a real-life, fatal scenario. The postmodernist Third Wavers, pimps, johns, and other misogynists like to conceal the issues of economic and social coercion and force, and deny the harms of prostitution.
Monologues that Promote Predatory Behavior
I Asked A Six-Year Old Girl
Ensler asked a six-year old girl the following questions: “If your vagina got dressed, what would it wear?”; “If it could speak, what would it say?”; “What does your vagina smell like?”; “What’s special about your vagina?” To the latter, Ensler quotes the six-year old girl as answering, “Somewhere deep inside it I know it has a really smart brain.” Not only do I find it hard to believe that parents would allow an adult to interrogate their first grader about her vagina, but also that a six-year old girl would know about somewhere deep inside her vagina. If a little girl knows about somewhere deep inside of her vagina, there is a good chance she was raped. This six-year old girl may need counseling from the trauma of rape and the re-traumatizing by Ensler. Imagine a male counterpart to this story: A middle-aged man asks a six-year old boy what is special about his penis. This would surely land him on a sex offender registry or in jail.
The Little Coochi Snorcher That Could
This is a monologue where an adult woman reflects back to the age of thirteen when she claims she was “sexually liberated by a twenty-four year old woman.” At age thirteen, the girl is coerced by a twenty-four year old woman into her car. The woman tongues the girl’s mouth, takes the girl into her house, plies her with vodka, and has sex with her. The now adult woman explained to Ensler, “She was my surprising, unexpected, politically incorrect salvation…transformed my sorry-ass coochi snorcher and raised it up into a kind of heaven.”
What puzzles me is that this rape is propagated as sexual liberation by Ensler, the rape survivor, and the many activist actresses who perform this monologue. We would all love to believe that sexual liberation was what truly happened for this thirteen-year old girl, for the sake of “adolescent vagina empowerment”, but it was undeniably rape according to healthy life stages of development and law. Furthermore, it is unethical and illegal to give a minor alcohol.
The notion of sexual liberation does not hold up anymore than it would if this was a story of a homoerotic curious thirteen-year old boy who was picked up by a twenty-four year old man, plied with alcohol, and anally penetrated.
What might be a scene from a public service kidnapping prevention video shown to schoolchildren becomes, in Ensler’s play, a love story.
Conclusion
TVM promotes a postmodern Third Wave and Biological Reductionist agenda of sexual objectification, prostitution myths, and predatory behavior. I find TVM's to be patronizing in today’s era. What is even more incessantly patronizing is the “Vagina’s R Us” merchandise, such as the “Vagina Warrior” t-shirts, vagina-shaped chocolate suckers, “cunt power” stickers, and other vagina-centric paraphernalia. Imagine the absurdity if this were a men’s movement where men walked around in T' Shirts that said "Penis Warriors" and sucking on penis-shaped chocolate suckers. Why would I want to wear a “Vagina Warrior” t-shirt or suck a vagina-shaped chocolate sucker, unless I was trying to fulfill some heterosexist male fantasy, which won’t be happening anytime soon.
TVM expresses the view that in order to end violence against women, all we need do is tap into our “vagina power” and become “Vagina Warriors”. I believe we urgently need to elevate our struggle for the liberation of humanity. For starters, Ensler can change her objectifying view of women and choose more liberating monologues. More substantial, we need to abolish private ownership of land, animals and people (i.e., wage slavery, slavery, prostitution, domestic servitude) and the corresponding social relations of this production. We need to abolish the patriarchal institutions that buttress the patriarchal Capitalistic economic order. We need a mass movement to affirm our struggle for emancipation. We need to collectively come together to figure out how to "break the chains and unleash the fury of women as a mighty force for revolution."
Myth of the Tragedy of the Commons
Mr. John Stossel, co-anchor of ABC News’ 20/20, wrote an opinion editorial on December 11, 2007 about the Tragedy of the Commons in the Opinion Editorial of the Atlasphere: Connecting Admirers of The Fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged http://www.theatlasphere.com/columns/stossel-tragedy-commons.php This article was sent to me by an Atheist who said that Mr. Stossel’s argument in support of the Tragedy of the Commons makes sense.
Throughout my life experiences as a militant Atheist, I notice, all too often, that other Atheists do not want to completely let go of the imperialist patriarchal ideology and practices so fundamental to religion. It would behoove Atheists to reconsider their cozy partnership with the imperialist patriarchal ideology by Mr. Stossel, God, and friends. Furthermore, I am responding to the TOC myth to expose bourgeois trickery.
Mr. John Stossel argues that in order to promote prosperity and responsibility, societies need private property. Mr. Stossel claims, “the pilgrims nearly starved practicing communal farming, but thrived once they switched to private cultivation”. I beg to differ. But, before I dispel the myth of the TOC, I want to dispel the use of the word pilgrim as if it is some innocuous term. I want to expose the use of the word pilgrim as a word used by bourgeois historians, liberal, libertarian, and conservative capitalists believers to obfuscate the reality of the imperialist nature behind the colonization of the America’s and which promotes the chosen people myth, via national sentimentality and/or religious fever.
The “Pilgrim” word as Trickery
The word pilgrim is one that is embraced by most non-indigenous Americans [who uphold the belief in private ownership, despite their religious background, (even though so many people pray on this day, treating it as a religious holiday)] used to describe the first Europeans who came to the “Americas”. It is understandable that the two definitions below would suit just about most Atheist Capitalists and Religious Capitalists, because belief in private ownership is just one patriarchal element that both these groups have in common. The most used definitions to describe pilgrim:
a newcomer to a region or place, esp. to the western U.S.. This definition sounds too neutral as if the Europeans were some good-intentioned people, peacefully just trying to find a new place to live.
a person who journeys, esp. a long distance, to some “sacred” place as an act of religious devotion: pilgrims to the “Holy” Land. This sounds too innocently spiritual for the real purpose as to the journey these Europeans took to the “Americas”.
It is more accurate to describe the “pilgrims” as imperialists. Imperialism is, firstly, the policy of extending the rule or authority of an empire or nation over foreign countries, or of acquiring and holding colonies and dependencies and, secondly, a way to live out the patriarchal “chosen people” myth, that both Atheist Capitalist Patriots and Religious Capitalist believers support. I will, therefore, us the words imperialists, or colonialists, conquerors, and the like instead of the word pilgrim.
The Myth of the Tragedy of the Commons
One reason the European conquerors nearly starved trying to practice communal farming, is because they were completely barren of former communal knowledge and skills. Any former communalist knowledge and skills that they once possessed were sadistically choked out of them by proponents of private ownership, i.e., patriarchal economic system, institutions, and customs: church and imperialist rulers (slaveocracts and feudal landlords), and male inheritance. The Church burned, not only their pagan libraries, but hundreds and thousands of wise-women. By the time the Europeans arrived to the “America’s”, they were well indoctrinated by the patriarchal paradigm of rape, pillage, conquer, and divide and of private ownership of land, animals, and people (ownership of people as slaves, indentured servants, and concubines). If the Europeans colonialist had the full knowledge and skills of communalistic living and were not indoctrinated with the patriarchal principles of ownership, they never would have ended up on an expansionist hegemonic venture into the “Americas” in the first place. With the inevitable interdependent relationship between the Church and imperialist rulers having power over the ecology, economy, and social arrangement, people become alienated from a sense of communal living. The patriarchal property owners rely on the church to tell the poor to pray to God, and everything will be okay. Just so the slaves don’t have a rebellion to overthrow the propertied class. And that in their next life, they will live in peace. The church relies on the capitalist class to uphold their patriarchal traditions of hierarchy, myths, etc…
Furthermore, to say that the ‘pilgrims’ nearly starved trying to live communalistically, therefore, communal living is a bad practice, is an overgeneralization. If you study the Native Americans, you will see that they knew how to live communalistically, not only with each other, but the land and animals. The Native American’s did not even have a word in their vocabulary to describe private ownership when the European privateers come to the “America’s”. Chief Seattle wrote in 1854 to President Franklin Pierce;
. …How can you buy or sell the sky— the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. Yet we do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of the water. . . . Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. . . . When the buffaloes are all slaughtered, the wild horses all tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the views of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires, where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the eagle? Gone
Not only did the Native American’s know how to live communalistically, so too did all the world’s people prior to the patriarchal rule over some 5000 years ago, prior to the idea of one private ownership, one male God, prior to the Church. The idea of a male God, is so intrinsically inseparable from the whole foundation of private property. Not only did the Native American’s and the people prior to patriarchy know how to live communalistically, but also more recent cultures such as the Mosuo people’s of China.
I am not saying that I believe in the matriarchal spirituality promoting superstitions. But, I am proving my point that many people outside the patriarchy, knew how to live communalistic with each other and their ecology.
Another argument I have with regards to Mr. Stossel’s argument that “the pilgrims nearly starved practicing communal farming” is that the “pilgrims” also were not historically wise to their the ecology in which they conquered. Again, the Native American’s knew how to live harmoniously with each other and their ecology.
Mr. Stossel also argued that the “pilgrims” …. “thrived once they switched to private cultivation.” How come Mr. Stossel and bourgeois history books, leave out the real reason why the pilgrims thrived on private cultivation? The truth of the matter is that these pilgrims thrived on the ownership and exploitation of black slaves. These European ownership-freaks loved to own everyone and everything they could get their greedy hands on, destroying the lives of the “other”, and using the Church to justify their ownership fetishes. Today, ownership-freaks and many average joes who believe in capitalism are often the same as those Super-patriots, and flag wavers whose national fervor mimics that of the Religious right in terms of a colonialistic history, chosen people myths, -isms, bigotry, and stupid rituals.
Mr. Stossel also argues that it is a bad thing when the “government takes our money by force and gives it to others, that’s not sharing.” According to Michael Parenti, a political analyst and professor of Yale University, in his book Contrary Notions,
“John Stossel, an ardent supporter of big agribusiness, claimed that organic food ‘could kill you’ and that catastrophic global warming is a ‘myth’. He called for privatization of Social Security, the curbing of environmental education, and the celebration of greed as a good thing for the economy.”
Mr. Stossel’s bourgeois perspective on the “pilgrims” should come of no surprise to us. Mr. Stossel, supports big agribusiness who takes from the government billions in welfare, e.g., outright welfare for the rich or as with tax subsidies, etc…. Since Mr. Stossel and friends hate government so much, they shouldn’t take money from the government at all to fund their corporations or their war machines. Mr. Stossel and friends only like government when it is sharing its money exclusively with only them. To Mr. Stossel and friends, the word, “force” does not apply when the bourgeois government’s standing armies, courts, and police are there to protect and fund their profits financed via hard labor and meager earnings from poor working class people. But they feel that when their bourgeois government may be “forced” via generals strikes, peoples uprising, etc… to share some of the wealth with the poor working class people (this wealth created by the working class anyway), such as welfare for the poor, social security, free schooling, universal health care, then they deem this as “force”.
As for property rights being associated with benefits, the bourgeois once again, only concern themselves with financial benefits; they do not operate in terms of social or environmental benefits. The few elite think only in terms of the “benefits” they alone exclusively get from their market to exploit who and what they want. They leave out the fact that these exclusive “benefits” often have a detrimental effect on people and the environment.
Mr. Stossel and friends complain that socialized health care doesn’t work. Well, for one thing, socialized medicine doesn’t work when greedy profiteers can’t, therefore, make profit off of death and disease. Furthermore, socialized medicine superimposed on top of a Capitalist patriarchal economic base has major limits. Socialized medicine in countries such as Great Britain, France, Canada, don’t work perfectly because it so happens that when you have socialized institutions resting upon a Capitalist patriarchal economic base, they won’t be perfect. And, as much as Cuba’s socialized health industry rests upon a defunct form of so called Communism, it at least has some of the best doctors in the world, doctors without borders, and allows anyone in the world, including the United States, to attend their medical schools for free. All these various forms of socialized health care industries would work better if they did not rest upon the Capitalist economic base or some makeshift version of so-called Communism --- an antagonistic relationship from the get go. A democratic socialized economic base, would be a more compatible bed fellow for socialized medicine to rest with, which would synergistically buttress the socialized health care to it’s utmost potential, never seen in all of history.
Mr. Stossel and friends like to dumb down the classism which they create with their private ownership fetishes which create masses of dispossessed people.
Capitalist doctrine mimics Church doctrine of the ownership, hierarchy, authoritarianism. Capitalist atheists should resist anything that resembles the church doctrine, therefore, they should resist Capitalist patriarchal ideology and practices.
Andrea Lavigne
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