The Canadian Association for Equality Announces Its Annual Conference

CAFE has made this announcement on its Facebook page:

 

 

 

CAFE is proud to host its 2018 National Conference in beautiful Calgary, Alberta!

You're invited to a landmark event bringing together Canadian leaders in suicide prevention, domestic abuse, and parenting - all to improve services and advocacy for boys, men and families. Plus, you'll be with us for this lynchpin event in CAFE's expansion plans. Calgary is where we plan to open our third Canadian Centre for Men and Families!

REGISTER NOW FOR OUR FULL-DAY CONFERENCE AT THE REDUCED RATE OF $80.00. VISIT https://cafe2018.eventbrite.com/ for full event and speaker info, and registration options.

This year's theme: Dads, Moms and Kids: Maximizing a Family's Mental Health and Well-Being

Join us for an all-star packed event!

Master of Ceremonies is Karen Straughan, Canada's leading men's issues youtuber and blogger
Visit Karen Straughan's YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/user/girlwriteswhat

Keynote Speaker: Mara Grunau, Executive Director of the Centre for Suicide Prevention

Featuring Presentations from a Distinguished Line Up of Guests:

Christine Berry, Director of Family Violence Prevention Initiatives, Calgary Counselling Centre
Christine Giancarlo, Mount Royal University Professor, Parental Alienation researcher and Member, Leading Women for Shared Parenting
David Shackleton, author, Daughters of Feminism and formerly publisher of Everyman: A Men's Journal

Workshop Presentations by:

David Shackleton, Branch Director of the Canadian Centre for Men & Families - Ottawa.

Topic: Opening a Centre for Men and Families - the Ottawa Experience.

Dr. Terry Singh, Registered Psychologist, expert in family counselling, divorce and separation, and family law/forensic psychology.

Topic: How to Predict Divorce: Families do not break up as a result of parents' arguments--they break up because of how parents argue.

Christine Hart, expert in relationship communications and gender intelligence.

Topic: Men and Women: How to bring out the best in each other to maximize the well-being of your family.

Dr. Ganz Ferrance, Registered Psychologist, TV and radio personality, expert in family psychology and men's counselling.

Topic: 7 Ways to Keep Your Family “Sane” in Crazy Situations

Our Special Panel Theme: The Unique Challenges of Providing Services for Men & Boys

David Shackleton, Branch Director of the Canadian Centre for Men & Families - Ottawa

Dr. Christine Giancarlo, Mount Royal University Professor and Parental Alienation Expert

Lyndsay Chaban, Edmonton Counsellor specializing in men, boys & families

Christine Berry, Director of Family Violence Prevention Initiatives at Calgary Counselling Centre

About Our Speakers

Christine Berry is director of the Family Violence Prevention Initiatives Program at Calgary Counselling Centre. Christine has a Masters in Science in Counselling Psychology from the University of Calgary and is a Registered Psychologist who has spent over a decade specializing in the area of Family Violence. When she’s not cruising in her convertible through the mountains she is addressing the impact of domestic abuse in the lives of adults and children within our ever-changing community. She plays an active role working with other community agencies to collaboratively stop domestic abuse at its root causes and has won awards for her efforts including the 2008 Selinger Award through Homefront and the Canadian Group Psychotherapy Association 2008 Group Therapy Appreciation Award for Creative Programming.

Lyndsay Chaban is a Registered Provisional Psychologist working with clients within Edmonton and the surrounding area and specializing in supporting men and their families. She believe strongly that all individuals have the power to create change in their lives. For several years, she has spent her time working with children, teens, adults and families in a number of community settings. For many of those years, she has= spent my time studying and practicing animal assisted therapy. While not an appropriate approach for everyone, counselling with animals can provide an alternative to traditional talk therapy.

Dr. Ganz Ferrance holds a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology and an M.A. in Developmental and Educational Psychology from Andrews University in Michigan. He is the former Public Education Coordinator as well as the former Vice-President of the Psychologist's Association of Alberta. Dr. Ganz enjoys sharing how people can get more "mileage" from their lives. He is a frequent guest on CTV News, 630AM CHED radio and other networks.

Christine Giancarlo is one of the Leading Women for Shared Parenting (LW4SP), and an active member of The Great Ape Project, Orangutan Foundation International, Nature Conservancy and the David Suzuki Foundation. She also holds memberships with the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) and the American Anthropological Association (AAA). As an applied anthropologist, Chris applies these lessons from nonhuman society to human culture in such areas as human sustainability, global population growth, the environment and marginalized populations. Her research projects and special expertise lie in social and environmental impact assessment, child welfare and parental alienation, gender, multiculturalism, and cross-cultural and cross-species relations.

Mara Grunau, BEd, MPA, is Executive Director of the Centre for Suicide Prevention.

Christine Hart has successfully built three of her own businesses. Her first was in Film + Television. Her second was in the event space and after 3 and 6 years respectively, she sold both companies in order to build her third. Her third business was a coaching service for singles and couples, focusing on effective communication. She was the expert for a full season on CosmoTV and developed an online program to train and certify coaches through Hart Coaching Academy. Christine combines her entrepreneurial background with her passion for effective communication and marketing to help businesses reach their growth targets. As a professional speaker, Christine specializes in Gender Intelligence in the Workplace + The Art of Feminine Leadership. Christine has a Bachelor of Arts in Communication Studies and is a graduate of the Mastery + Leadership program through PAX Programs (Alison Armstrong).

David Shackleton is a thinker and writer on gender and personal growth, and president of the Ottawa chapter of CAFE. He is the author of Daughters of Feminism: Women Supporting Men's Equality, The Hand That Rocks the World; An Inquiry Into Truth, Power and Gender, and before that was editor and publisher for 12 years of Canada's magazine off men's issues, "Everyman; A Men's Journal."

Terry Singh is a Registered Psychologist. He holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology with post-graduate specialization in Child and Family Forensics, and joined Taylor Clark after more than a decade of clinical experience in Canada and the USA. He is a member of the College of Alberta Psychologists, the Psychologists’ Association of Alberta, the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, Alberta Family Mediation Society, and the Canadian Association of Threat Assessment Professionals. Dr. Singh’s primary work involves assisting individuals, couples, and families of divorce and separation during and after the transition. Evaluative intervention services offered include: High-conflict Child Custody Evaluations; Risk Assessments; Independent Psychological Evaluations; Voice of the Child and Triage Interventions, and Litigation Support. Therapeutic intervention services offered include: Parenting Coordination-Arbitration, Mediation, Reunification Therapy, Parenting Counselling, Consultation and Litigation Support. Dr. Singh is also the lead developer and facilitator of the Anger Management program offered at Taylor Clark Psychological Services.

Karen Straughan is a renowned Canadian human rights activist, blogger and broadcaster focusing on gender and sexual politics. Her YouTube channel, girlwriteswhat, has over 180,000 subscribers, and more than 16 million video views, and her work has been presented in high school and university classrooms in the US, Canada and Ireland. A mother of three, Karen speaks out fearlessly on gender and equality with passion and clarity, refusing to back down when intimidated.

Identitarians Vs. Jeremy Corbyn

https://orientxxi.info/magazine/anti-semitism-orchestrated-offensive-against-jeremy-corbyn-in-the-uk,2446

In this excellent analysis of the establishment campaign to smear UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as an anti-Semite, it's remarkable how it's using tactics more often associated with the identitarian cultural left -- for instance, Ruth Smeeth's crybullying tactics that are reminiscent of Anita Sarkeesian or Cathy Newman. Or these points:

At the heart of the dispute between the JLM and JVL were efforts by the former to broaden the definition of anti-semitism to include “the holding of beliefs” that might be “perceived” as offensive. Corbyn supporters and others warned that the move would create “thought crimes”.

and:

Jonathan Freedland, a senior columnist at the Guardian, waded in to support the JLM, arguing that the traditional definition of anti-semitism—that it was a hatred of Jews for being Jews—was too limited. Instead, he claimed, it was a mood that could be perceived only by its victims, even if there was no tangible evidence that outsiders could detect.

-- a claim reminiscent of "microaggressions" pseudoscience.

And then there's the selective speaking in the name of a minority group only when its members support a preferred narrative:

Though it is rarely mentioned, a significant proportion of those who were summarily suspended,or expelled, for anti-semitism by a Labour party bureaucracy still dominated by anti-Corbyn Blairites were Jewish or had Jewish ancestry, such as Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein, Cyril Chilson and Glyn Secker.

In one case, a respected Israeli Jewish academic based in the UK, Moshe Machover, found himself expelled until an outcry forced party leaders to grudgingly reinstate him.

The thread connecting these high-profile cases was that all of them were vocal critics of Israel....

In reaction to the unchallenged dominance of the JLM as the voice of Jews in the Labour Party, a new breakaway group, one that was pro-Corbyn, launched at the Labour party conference last October called Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL). The new group quickly found itself tarred with claims of promoting hate speech at the conference.

All of which simply goes to show that the Right is just as susceptible to this sort of irrationalism as the Left is.

Thanks to Alexandra Stein for posting the link to this article on her Twitter timeline.

Reforming Muslim Maajid Nawaz is suing the Southern Poverty Law Center for libeling him as an anti-Muslim extremist. Learn more about his case and maybe make a donation at http://maajidnawaz.com/. You can order his book at http://www.powells.com/partner/35751/biblio/9781493000616

Pauley Perrette Is Acting Out Her Munchausen's Syndrome Again

This from Yahoo! News: https://www.yahoo.com/news/pauley-perrette-reveals-apos-multiple-103934839.html

Perrette has a long history of seeking attention with dubious claims of victimization. Here's one example: https://www.avoiceformen.com/featured/star-crazy-star-pauley-perrette-accuses-yet-another-homeless-man-of-attacking-her/ She's also been called a "poster child for restraining order abuse," repeatedly getting restraining orders against people on dubious pretexts, then deliberately going out of her way to places where they'll be so she can have them nabbed for a "violation." She did this kind of thing not only with her former husband Coyote Shivers, but also with the wife of a previous husband.

Remarkably, she actually wrote an outline of an idea for a TV show about a woman who... wait for it... develops cozy relationships with cops, then uses these to entrap people with phony restraining order violations! Talk about writing about yourself! You can verify this by searching the Web for "Star Crazy."

I'm not a psychologist, but I bet she'd be diagnosed with Munchausen's syndrome among other things.

"No, Gamergate is Not Right Wing"

Wow! I'd known for a few years that the portrayal of #Gamergate as right-wing was an oversimplification, but not until reading this did I realize just how wrong it is.

http://www.gameobjective.com/2016/11/21/no-gamergate-is-not-right-wing/

This is a timely discovery as just the other day I made a sign for an anti-occupation demonstration on which I put the GG logo, linking the issues with the slogans "Zionism, this Jew is #NotYourShield" and "NO to authoritarian identity politics!"

One small point: the author writes that "Gamergate, which adores gaming culture and the consumption of gaming products, is in direct conflict" with an anti-capitalist philosophy. I think that only applies to a certain puritanical variety of anti-capitalism. I'm a socialist and I don't see any contradiction between that and gaming (although it isn't my main fandom -- I'm mostly into literary sf).

Thanks for a Great Campaign!

Greetings!

I again want to thank everyone who's contributed to my GoFundMe campaign.


https://www.gofundme.com/SGAworkshop

Unfortunately, I started later on it than I really should have -- just last Thursday, in fact. This is partly a consequence of my past cult experience itself -- people affected by involvement in high-demand groups tend to have difficulty asking for help, because they've been conditioned to see themselves as having only obligations and not rights.

Because of how late I started the campaign, even though we've raised enough money to pay for both registration and transportation, it likely wouldn't start arriving in my bank account until after the workshop is over. And because of their own constraints, the workshop organizers can't be that flexible about when they receive payment.

Fortunately, however, the same group that is organizing the workshop -- the International Cultic Studies Association -- is holding its annual conference in my home town of Philadelphia this July. Though not as intensive as the workshop in Connecticut this weekend, this will provide me with some of the same sort of psycho-educational help.

ICSA's executive director says they can provide with scholarship for the conference to the extent the funds raised in this campaign aren't sufficient to pay for my attendance. If the funds come to more that the cost of registration, I'll simply turn them into an extra donation to ICSA to further its work.

I want to again express my deepest thanks for all those who've helped either by contributing or spreading the word about this campaign, which will now close.

Comments on Michael Kimmel's "Rebuttal" to Men's Rights Activists

The latest episode of "Red Pill: Raw Files" features portions of Cassie Jaye's interviews with feminist sociologist Michael Kimmel that didn't make it into the film. My comments follow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ebhe7wEyygk&index=40&list=PL7HeX2SUI9v84DMIawkSBzLRANIc9RQ7t

He asks why MRAs “think women are to blame” for men’s restrictive sex roles. That’s a straw-man argument, because MRAs in general don’t claim “women” are to blame. Obviously at least in a formal sense, as Kimmel says, women for the most part aren’t “in charge.”

MRAs don’t blame women as a group, we blame gynocentrism in general and feminist ideology in particular, as implemented and enforced (mostly) by men in positions of authority who’ve internalized these ideologies. And they do so with the unqualified support of the vast majority of feminist women.

Then at 3:48 he points at corporate boardrooms etc. as “proof” that women are still discriminated against, without explaining why he thinks that’s the only possible explanation for their small numbers there. And he’s factually wrong about the IMF -- that’s been run by a woman (Christine Lagarde) since 2011.

At 4:17 he mentions that women earn less money on average than men. He fails to explain why this discrepancy matters, but men’s getting less time off from work doesn’t. The point of receiving income is be able to live your life, after all. Having less time to live it -- because you’re instead living your company’s life -- is fully as much a disadvantage as earning less income.

At 4:26 he mentions (some) women’s experiencing sexual harassment in the workplace. It doesn’t even occur to him that men also experience sexual and other forms of gendered harassment.

He says women have to police themselves to reduce their chances of sexual assault. Somehow it doesn’t matter to him that men are at much greater risk of violence overall than women, while being just as likely as women to experience sexual assault in a given year, as likely as not by a woman.

4:41: “It’s incontestable that women are still victims of discrimination” -- after rattling off a whole series of facts about women and no comparative facts about men. This is an example of what Alison Tieman calls “the Church of Wimminwursting” -- the faith-based assumption that women have it worse in every area, such that one considers it “proven” that F > M simply by piling on evidence of how big F is with no need to address the size of M.

7:09: “If you let them in, they’ll come” -- again, he’s supplied no evidence that women aren’t being let in in most areas. And they do come -- just not in the same numbers as men. He invokes “antediluvian attitudes” and “structural obstacles” without showing that these are the reasons for correlations between sex and occupation.

“Iron my shirt” -- the best Kimmel can do to show the continuing acceptability of sexism, apparently, is to cherry-pick a single anecdote.

9:40: “In the guise of protecting women in their porcelain fragility, we’re actually perpetuating discrimination against women.” It’s remarkable that, unwittingly, he’s giving a perfect description of much of what “fainting couch feminism” does these days in relation to sexuality. Also that he doesn’t acknowledge this same protectiveness is expressed in discrimination against men in connection with Selective Service.

“Like making movies.” Actually, that’s something women have been seen as capable of doing at least since the time of Ida Lupino.

10:28: He acknowledges women are 30% of surgeons even in “one of the most male-dominated professions.” And still without offering any actual evidence of discrimination. Not a very strong case!

When it comes to the “wage gap” -- more accurately an earnings gap -- he acknowledges that this is mostly about parenthood rather than gender. It’s unfortunate he doesn’t go into any detail on how we should be supporting parenthood more. I would advocate making it a socially acknowledged and financially compensated job, while promoting more efficiency and community by encouraging those who care for children to form cooperatives.

Nearing the Finish Line!

Huge thanks to my cousin Susanne, who with her generous donation has brought me a lot closer to the goal of my GoFundMe campaign to get me to the Second Generation Adult workshop!

https://www.gofundme.com/SGAworkshop

Almost Halfway There!

As of this morning $135 has been contributed to the GoFundMe campaign to get me to next weekend's workshop for Second Generation Adult survivors of high-demand groups ("cults").

Also this morning, I got a call from Ann Stamler, who's organizing the workshop. For practical reasons they have to know by Wednesday morning whether I'm going to be attending. So, if you've been thinking of giving but haven't yet, please do so now and be sure to tell your friends about it. Thanks!

https://www.gofundme.com/SGAworkshop

Donations Are Coming In!

I'm excited to report that donations have started coming in to make it possible for me to attend the workshop next weekend for Second Generation Adult survivors of high-demand groups. The first was from someone I met yesterday while selling One Step Away -- she actually made the donation from her phone while we were talking -- and more have been made since as a result of her passing the word to her friends. It's very gratifying to see that people are willing to help me address the ongoing issues affecting me as a result past cultic involvement.

I should mention that not too long ago I couldn't even have imagined doing something like this -- reaching out and asking others to help me get help for myself. For instance, in 2002, when I decided to go to Palestine to take part in the International Solidarity Movement, I read in a booklet for volunteers that one could raise funds for one's trip by holding a house party for friends. I thought it was lucky I had enough in the bank at the time, since I wouldn't even have thought of asking others to give me money personally, even though it was for a worthwhile purpose. But with the help both of talk therapy I've been receiving recently, and psycho-education in recent years under the auspices of the International Cultic Studies Association (of which the upcoming workshop would be a new installment, more specifically tailored to my background than the earlier ones), I've finally arrived at the point where I can see and present myself to others as having needs worthy of other people's support. In fact, yesterday I even started mentioning my being a cult survivor while selling the newspaper. Although I know there are still some people who lack understanding or sympathy on this issue, I felt ready to make myself vulnerable by talking about it, and thereby prove to myself that I can now handle the unpredictability of people's reactions.

I'm reminded of Albert Ellis's famous exercise in which he helped himself overcome social anxiety by approaching strangers and telling them he'd just been released from a mental institution and needed directions. I'd known about this for years but generally lacked the nerve to do anything similar. Now I can.

Help get me to the SGA Workshop

Dear friends,

I plan to attend a workshop April 27-29 in Chester, CT for Second Generation Adult survivors of high-demand groups, but I need some help raising the necessary funds. I've been given a discount based on my financial need, but I'm still required to pay $100 for it, plus I'll need at least about $125 for transportation costs. So I've created a GoFundMe where people can help me raise the necessary $$ to do this.

Pictured below are the facilitators of last year's workshop (from the website of the International Cultic Studies Association).

I've previously written (for instance here: http://stripey7.blogspot.com/2008/09/too-much-like-old-times.html) about how involvement in a high-demand group (or "cult") in my adolescence has affected me. I suspect that aspects of my childhood were also influenced by my parents' involvement in the group and its effect on their parenting style.

I attended a workshop two years ago for ex-members of high-demand groups, but it wasn't especially for Second Generation Adults. Nonetheless I found it powerfully helpful, and anticipate that the upcoming workshop may help even more.

Visit the GoFundMe page here: https://www.gofundme.com/SGAworkshop Please give and share!

Free Speech Groups Fight Internet Censorship; Breitbart Pretends to While Actually Doing the Opposite

Free speech groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation are building support for the Congressional Review Act, a piece of legislation aimed at preserving net neutrality:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/tell-congress-protect-open-internet

Meanwhile, with astonishing gumption, Breitbart is hoodwinking its followers into actually supporting Internet censorship by falsely claiming the CRA is "legislation that would exempt Facebook and Google from any obligation to protect consumers online" (as you can read at https://freeourinternet.org/). They're actually using the issue of Silicon Valley censorship (misrepresented as exclusively affecting conservatives) to get people to campaign against their own freedom of speech.

Man Banned from Twitter for Commenting on Rape Case Acquitted in 90 Minutes

A Twitter friend sent me this message relating to the story below:

I thought I should let you know that twitter has just suspended my account for tweeting once last July about Souad Faress' false rape accusation. I am permitted only to send messages, and only to my followers. I am apparently unable to send image files in messages to my followers because I've tried and it won't let me (otherwise I would attach a screencap of the offending tweet so you could see it for yourself). All twitter has said is that it violates some unspecified twitter rule. This woman made up a story which was proven false by CC camera video and rejected by a court of law, and apparently twitter still thinks she needs to be protected from even a light-hearted sarcastic comment like mine. (I tweeted that I hoped Ms Faress apologized soon for her false accusation because I didn't know how much longer I could hold my breath. This was followed by a green emoji of someone holding their breath, followed by the a link to the above newspaper story about the case):

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3435317/Tried-sex-crime-brushed-past-film-star-rush-hour.html

UPDATE: He's been unbanned.

https://twitter.com/melliflora/status/986470546807271425 

"A Manifesto Against the Enemies of Modernity": Preliminary Thoughts

https://areomagazine.com/2017/08/22/a-manifesto-against-the-enemies-of-modernity/

This is a very interesting document which I think has a lot of merit. I'll try to write a more detailed commentary later, but for right now a couple points.

The authors don't spend much time examining the reasons for the rise of what they describe as anti-modernism of both "Left" and "Right" varieties. I would propose this Marxist gloss: The increased hostility toward modernity, and tail-ending thereof even by those who passively agree with it, reflects the fact that capitalism increasingly fails to to provide a satisfactory existence for large numbers of people, above all in moral terms. Since capitalism itself is largely taken for granted, however -- following  a period in which any discourse challenging it was marginalized -- most of the reaction to this demoralization takes the form not of rejecting capitalism itself as a system that has outlived its usefulness, but instead rejecting modernity, the permanently valuable historical by-product of capitalism's emergence. The fact that the capitalist interests dominating both major parties find this reaction a very convenient way of mobilizing an electoral base without threatening their class interests has facilitated the increasing dominance of the anti-modernists among activists of both parties.

Concerning the swipe at the Green Party: there's no denying that anti-modernists of the postmodern variety hold considerable sway there, but I'm not sure that's any more true for Greens than it is for Democrats, especially where Republicans aren't competitive. In the latter areas especially,  strongly left-leaning people might modify the authors' proposals concerning political action by working to support pro-modernity elements within the GP rather than the Democrats. (Of course, to a degree they could do both at once.)

Support Grows for Petition to Amnesty International USA

As of today, ten people on four continents have signed my petition calling on Amnesty International USA to either make its "Troll Patrol" program concerning online abuse nonsexist and transparent, or else end it. I've added a pertinent video to attract further interest and signers.

You can view the video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=322&v=Rm8nBt9rQBo

Amnesty International Joins the Fainting-Couch Feminists

Amnesty International USA has launched a new campaign called Troll Patrol, which is described as a crowd-sourced program for tracking online abuse of women. This is evidently their top campaign now since it's the first thing you see when you go to their Web site. Yet nowhere do they explain why they think only women deserve protection from online abuse. Nor do they even claim that women experience more such abuse than men, either in the email announcing the campaign or in the page to which it links.

I wrote them:

Why are you only compiling data on abuse against women? Don't men have human rights too? The page you link to doesn't even claim that women experience more abuse than men -- it just ignores the question as if abuse of men doesn't matter.

 

Further, you don't explain on what basis you intend to differentiate real abuse, such as credible physical threats, from statements that can at most hurt someone's feelings. It seems very odd that an organization that has always been supposed to stand for human rights now seems intent on limiting freedom of expression, and in a way that infantilizes women at the same time.

 

Can we say "sexism"?

 

Their response:

Thank you for taking the time to write to us. We fight for the rights for all people in all places, including when women can't express themselves freely and suffer harassment, abuse, and violence -- psychological violence is one of those. Threatening to rape someone is not covered in free speech and we have seen that this is especially dangerous in places where there are fewer protections for human rights defenders.

To read the full report on this issue, please visit: https://www.amnestyusa.org/reports/online-abuse-of-women-thrives-as-twitter-fails-to-respect-womens-rights/.

Best,

Samantha Putri

Member Services Assistant

Amnesty International USA

Note that nowhere does Ms. Putri answer the question of why only abuse of women should be addressed, nor does she even claim that it happens to women more often. Also notable is that while she highlights rape threats, AI's communications about this program to members and supporters are much broader and vaguer about what would be tracked, while apparently keeping tight control of these decisions in the hands of the organization rather than leaving them to the judgment of "Troll Patrol" participants. Supporters are evidently expected to do drudge work for the organization and simply trust that it will employ their efforts in a reasonable way, even though the program's gender-biased framing suggests otherwise.

In response, I'm starting a petition on Change.Org calling on Amnesty International USA and its Executive Director, Margaret Huang, to either end this program or extend it to include people of all genders, while making the process for judging abuse transparent.

Cultic Studies Are, Alas, Not Immune to "Wimminwursting"

Political cult survivor Alexandra Stein has an interesting piece that recently appeared on the NBC News "Thought Experiment" blog, about some of the ways women are victimized by high-control groups. Unfortunately the title, "Cults are terrifying. But they're even worse for women," is an example of the reflexive feminist impulse always to frame an issue in terms of women's having it worse, regardless of the facts. I respond as follows:

These are interesting and important facts, but the gloss you (or whoever chose the title) put on them is gender-biased. Some of the issues you describe affect both women and men (e.g., "Mothers in these types of closed cultic groups then end up in a position in which they are unable to protect their children"), while others have qualitatively different, non-commensuarable counterparts experienced by men (e.g., "Meanwhile, the 'extra' boys left over as a result of these plural marriages were booted out of the cult and left on the edge of the highway in the Arizona desert to fend for themselves"). This unexamined reflex whereby, when it comes to sex-differentiated experience, "F > M" is asserted based solely on the value of F has been dubbed "the Church of Wimminwursting" by artist and social critic Alison Tieman.

Why Marxism and Intersectionalism Aren't Kissing Cousins

I'm getting tired of how often I have to explain this these days, so I'm going to write about here so in future I can just post a link instead of writing another disquisition.

Mister Q @realMisterQ wrote:

I'm sorry but I don't see the difference between Marxist and Intersectionalist - both use identity politics. Both are class based. Intersectionality is the same method just applied to more "classes".

My response:

 

Marxism focuses on actual, concrete institutions whereby some people dominate others -- economic private property and the courts and police who enforce it, for instance -- and the one category, class, that exists only in function of these institutions' existence. Its critique is entirely in line with that of the earlier Enlightenment revolutionaries who agitated against the feudal aristocracy, but without the illusion that ending only those particular forms of domination would bring about "liberty, equality, and fraternity."

By contrast, intersectionalism dilutes this class analysis by falsely equating it with various categories that have an existence independent of, and in most cases predating, class; which are not specifically oppressed by any kind of formal institutions; and which merely correlate in a statistical sense with class for incidental historical reasons. While the former zeroes in on the concrete structures that need to be rooted out by a rising class having constituted its own structures in opposition (which is what makes it "radical"), the latter diverts attention to categories of inequality that are merely symptomatic, in the process steering self-conceived radicals into agitation for fundamentally co-optative programs (like affirmative action) whose function is to rejuvenate capitalism.

Faith-Based Group Cynically Promotes Relativism at Penn

There's a group with a table set up on Locust Walk today called the Christian Union. Their sign says they're about "training Christian leaders" while a blackboard asks, "What is truth?" From my conversation with one after writing my answer (what the Universe tells me about itself through my senses), it's evident what they're training them in is use of postmodern-style rhetoric to confuse people into abandoning the concept of objective reality, merely so they can then push their own evidence-free claims about said non-existent reality on them.

This group, which I'd never heard of before, mustn't be confused with Penn's long-established Christian Association, which has always had a very tolerant and non-abusive approach toward those with different world-views. I had a work-study job with them one year, most of which was spent doing office work for an anti-militarist nonprofit that had its offices in their building.

Alone, and Not Free

Yesterday's Daily Pennsylvanian features a guest column by Celeste Marcus, a junior who's studying intellectual history, titled "Netwerk it -- a world without inwardness." The central idea is that Penn students' preoccupation with networking is preventing them from developing any kind of individuality or inner life. This prompted some thoughts which I submitted in this letter to the editor:

It was depressing to read Celeste Marcus's column about the pressures toward conformity operating on Penn students today. It barely resembles anything I remember from when I attended in the early '80s.

Does the problem stem from a higher level of insecurity about job prospects, as so many employers have come to prioritize "flexibility" over long-term relationships with employees? Or does it have something to do with the much greater ease with which a person can be scrutinized in the age of social media?

One thing Marcus doesn't address is the ideological aspect of this "bubble." An inevitable consequence of commodification of people, as of anything else, is that everything ends up being judged by a uniform standard of value -- which means that alternative values are ruled out. This can result in an inability to think outside of a single ideological framework.

And the last sentence in the essay is only half true: "We will not be lonely, but we will not know ourselves." As Brene Brown has noted (https://www.fastcompany.com/40465644/brene-brown-americas-crisis-of-disconnection-runs-deeper-than-politics), as people increasingly cluster into cultural and ideological bubbles, they are also becoming increasingly lonely -- because in a bubble, you're not accepted unconditionally, but only to the extent you're seen as conforming -- and you may even feel compelled to conceal your true self.

It's not for nothing that in his first diary entry, Nineteen Eighty Four protagonist Winston Smith says he's writing for a future time "when men are free, and they are not alone." Seemingly Winston is never alone -- he's surrounded by coworkers in the Records Department. But in reality each is alone, because he isn't free to be himself around the others -- only to put on the face the system wants to see on him. Therefore none can actually be known by anyone else. This is also the situation for people involved in totalistic cults in real life.

While the corporate world's culture may not have a single identifiable face like Big Brother, it's evident that its conformist pressures, which are apparently much worse than they were thirty years ago, can create a similar superficial connectedness in which people are really, to paraphrase Orwell, "alone, and not free."