Are the sexes unequal?

Posted on November 4, 2015 by Rod Fleming| Leave a comment
Mother and Child. Pic: Rod Fleming

Mother and Child. Pic: Rod Fleming

There is a difference between sex and gender; I am going to begin with sex (you’ll see why.) Sex refers to our physical, biological bodies. Usually, it’s how we are identified as babies, by the sex of our genitalia.

So are the sexes unequal? Yes, absolutely. Women are many many times more important than men. This is because the success, indeed the survival, of any population is dependent on the number, not of men, but of fertile mothers.

In China right now, a disaster is unfolding because of decades of legal restriction of family size to one, and a cultural misogyny which has seen female foetuses routinely aborted. This means that China simply doesn’t have enough women and it is facing financial — and possibly existential — collapse as its population ages. Doubtless the Chinese will soon be seeking net immigration on a huge scale; whether they’ll be able to persuade anyone is less sure.

One man can father hundreds or thousands of babies, but a woman can only carry perhaps 20 or so children in her lifetime and very few do that. Most women have far fewer children, which makes each individual mother more important. We explain how human society developed around core groups of women and children in Why Men Made God. Without children, humans cannot survive and the key to this is not men but women. This is why we developed a ‘two-group’ social structure, based around the mothers and children, with the men in a peripheral role. Read more »

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Posted in Goddess, Politics, Sex and Gender, Why Men Made God

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Jenner: not the face of trans women

Posted on October 26, 2015 by Rod Fleming| Leave a comment
bruce-caitlyn-jenner-not-trans

Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner. Not the face of trans women

If you’ve been anywhere near a media outlet over the last few months you won’t ave been able to avoid noticing that transgender women are getting a lot of attention. If you have seen images of Caitlyn, formerly Bruce, Jenner, and then Paris Lees, Janet Mock, Laverne Cox or Jai Dara Latto, who was  crowned Miss Transgender UK 2015, you might be forgiven for being a bit confused. You might be struggling to figure out what the connection is between an ageing sports jock who looks like a man in a dress, and a glamorous woman who looks like — a glamorous woman. If you’re at all liberal or PC, you might have just accepted that these are the same, but, you know, because time and stuff.

But you’d be dead wrong. There are two completely distinct types of transgender woman and there is no connection between them at all. The conflation that is going on is wrong and potentially lethal.

Keisha-jenkins

Keisha Jenkins, 22, an HSTS recently murdered. All of the trans women killed in the US (that we know of) in the recent spate were HSTS like her.

This is important because one type — which comprises the overwhelming majority of trans women in the world today — is the  subject of deadly and repeated violence, while the other colludes in it. Now I will show my cards here: my girlfriend is transgender. But she’s not like Jenner. And because she is — being of the other type — a potential victim of violence, I have to stand to the wire. Political Correctness is all very well until people start dying because of it; and that is what is happening. So let me explain. Read more »

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Posted in Journal, Politics, Sex and Gender

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Keisha Jenkins: Say Her Name

Posted on October 8, 2015 by Rod Fleming| Leave a comment
Keisha-jenkins

Keisha Jenkins, 22. RIP

Say Her Name. Go on. Say it. Keisha Jenkins.

According to Philadelphia Police, Keisha Jenkins, 22, was ambushed by about five men who began to pummel her moments after she exited a car around 2:30 a.m. She was then shot twice in the back and later died in a hospital. Keisha is the most recent in a wave of killings of trans women in the United States.

Keisha’s brutal death brings the total of trans women murdered in the USA — that we know of — to 21 this year. While the USA is not the most dangerous place in the world for trans women — that’s Brazil — the US  has undercurrents of racism and sexism that are not apparent elsewhere and which are conspiring to make matters worse.

The underlying cause of these killings is the patriarchy’s misogynistic premise that women are worth less than men. This powers the killing of both trans women and trans men as well as rape and ‘honour’ killings of women. These phenomena are all closely related and a symptom of the patriarchy, which is not an organisation but a parasitic disease that feeds on people. Read more »

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Posted in Culture, Journal, Sex and Gender

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Pansexual: the human norm

Posted on October 6, 2015 by Rod Fleming| Leave a comment
bonobos-chilling

Bonobos chilling to the beat — as well as being pansexual and gender-fluid, bonobos like music. How cool is that?

When we did the research for Why Men Made God we spent a lot of time looking at how societies might have been structured in the era before the development of agriculture and the establishment of the patriarchy (I will be calling these ‘traditional’ societies.) Clearly, we can’t directly study the human groups that existed outside Africa between 50,000 and 5,000 years ago, because they no longer exist.

They left very little evidence. Although they did use stone and bone, a great deal of their artefacts were made of wood or leather and were perishable. The few that we do have are somewhat mysterious.

To try to shed light on this, we reviewed a wide range of anthropological literature. We especially concentrated on extant traditional societies, of which there are a surprising number, despite the attempts by the patriarchy, especially the Christian and Muslim ones, to eradicate them. (As a matter of fact, Islam has been less damaging to many traditional societies than Christianity, as we see from the number of traditional groups still living, and respected, in Indonesia.)

We reviewed the mythology that was recorded soon after the invention of writing in the culture that leads to the Western Patriarchy, which appeared in Sumer in the 5th Millennium BCE. We then compared this to modern mythologies which form part of traditional cultures.

We also looked at close relatives of humans, particularly our closest, the Dwarf Chimpanzee or bonobo, Pan paniscus. Read more »

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Posted in Culture, Evolution, Journal, Why Men Made God

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Gay is square and trans is hip

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Rod Fleming| 2 Comments

 

Jai-Latto-transgender-2015

Scottish trans woman Jai Dara Latto crowned Miss Transgender UK 2015. Congratulations and may the Zeitgeist go with you!

When I was at art school in Edinburgh in the early 1980s, there was only one place to be: the Hoochie-Koochie Club. Why? Because it was the only gay nightclub. Straight women liked it because there was an unspoken rule: straights are welcome, but no hitting on the women. Straight men liked it because we were much less likely to get battered in the face there than in any of the regular meat-markets in the city. There was no pressure; you could just chill, dance, have a drink.

But more than that, it was culturally cool. The gays always had the best music. They were the best-dressed cats in town and if somebody said ‘you’re looking a bit gay today’ you knew you had your fashion statement bang on. It was the era of the New Romantics and everybody was wearing eye-liner and bleaching their hair. Gender signals were profoundly mixed. Straight women wore sports jackets and top hats over jeans and men wore earrings and chiffon. The gay zeitgeist was as hip as it could be. Read more »

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Posted in Journal, Politics, Sex and Gender, Transattraction

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Only Corbyn can save Labour’s ass

Posted on August 19, 2015 by Rod Fleming| Leave a comment

che-jeremy-corbynYou can’t steal the Tories’ political clothes.

Future historians will see the 2010 UK General Election as the moment the ‘British’ Labour Party died, poisoned to its core by the ‘New Labour’ experiment. Gordon Brown’s catastrophic loss may not have translated immediately into a Tory majority, but that was only a matter of time.

The poison had been slow but nobody in Labour seemed to recognise what was happening as the gangrene turned black and pussy. Tony Blair didn’t win the 1997 General Election; the Tories connived and corrupted their way out of power, and an electorate, utterly sick of almost two decades of self-serving lies and destruction of the fabric of the ‘nation’ threw them out. Quite honestly they’d as likely have voted in the Three Amigos, complete with embroidered chaps and ten-gallon hats, as a triad of Tory-Liters led by Blair, all with uniform suits that cost even more than the real Tories’ ones.

Gordon Brown’s catastrophe was just the moment when everyone realised the awful truth: there was no further point to Labour at all. Ed Milliband spent years trying to persuade everyone that he could win a General Election, but he was doomed to ignominious failure. Not because he was an awful leader, or at least, not only because of that; but because Labour is now unelectable.

It’s easy to see why. The relentless sliming of Tony Blair and his incessant push towards the right disembowelled any notion of principle or purpose the party ever had. Labour always struggled to be elected, but its strongest suit was its social conscience. In the past, when people suffered, the British electorate (as it was then) voted Labour to put an end to Tories helping themselves. That’s how we got the National Health Service.

Read more »

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Posted in Journal, Politics

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Evolution observed in trout

Posted on August 7, 2015 by Rod Fleming| Leave a comment

evolution-trout-salmo-truttaYou have to be brain-dead to deny the fact of Evolution these days. Well, these last 150 years actually… Apparently though, at least 40% of USians (other Americans are smarter), are indeed just so cerebrally demised. Hopped the neurological twig as it were. Zombified the gray matter. Deceased the thinking apparatus.

Now why would we worry? These are sister-shagging Bible belt rednecks who still think the South actually won the Civil War, aren’t they? ‘Oh no man we just kinda took a time out for a mint juleps n some grits n shit them gaddamn Yankees done called time on us!’ So who cares what they think?

Well the trouble is, they get to elect the Preseedunt of the Yewnited States (of America, not Mexico), and unfortunately, given the performance of some of the incumbents, that is the most powerful office in the world. I mean they elected Dubbya. (Well they didn’t really, but he still got the job.) And there is a risk they might elect another scion of the Terminally Religionard House of Bush next year.

‘Howdee do Jebby boy! Done shot any coons lately? I do mean raccoons now, y’all. Maybe one o them Afreecan Geeraffes? Or a Liahn?’ Read more »

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Posted in Atheism, Evolution, God, Politics, Why Men Made God

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3 Ps One: Pot; marijuana

Posted on August 1, 2015 by Rod Fleming| Leave a comment

Marijuana-Growing-FieldThe first of our 3 Ps is Pot.

Pot — marijuana, cannabis, grass, weed, call it what you like, has been used by humans since the beginning of recorded history. It is likely that we have been using it for tens of thousands of years.

While there are risks associated with the use of pot, these are vastly overstated and much less than those of using alcohol or tobacco, both of which cause huge numbers of deaths and human suffering and by the way, cost society a vast amount of money. Marijuana prohibition is one of the greatest misuses of state resources and taxpayers’ money in the world today.

Until the 1930s pot use was legal and largely unremarked. William Randolph Hearst, the American media tycoon, changed that. Hearst was the inventor of ‘yellow journalism’ the sensationalising of factually incorrect and often invented stories for political purposes. He was a fanatical right-winger and a friend of Adolph Hitler. Up until the engagement of the United Sates in World War 2, Hearst remained in close contact with Nazi authorities in Germany regularly had his newspapers run anti-Russian, anti-Communist and pro-German articles, which were provided by the Gestapo’s propaganda services.

pearl-harbor

Attack on Pearl Harbor, 1941

Hearst was anti-British and a fervent ‘isolationist’ who used his media to discourage American entry into the European war. He repeatedly attacked Roosevelt’s attempts to help European states, especially the UK, against the Nazis through schemes like lend-lease and severely restricted the President’s ability to assist in the disaster. Amongst his other crimes, therefore, Hearst may be indicted for being accessory to the murders of millions of Europeans, especially Jews and other minorities like homosexuals. It was only at the point of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that he was forced to backtrack.

At home, Hearst had invested hugely in forestry and other resources to produce wood-based paper. However, making wood-based paper is very damaging to the environment and relatively expensive. Paper made from hemp (the male pot plant) is cheaper, a better product and less damaging. Hearst risked being undercut. Read more »

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Posted in 3 Ps - Pot, Journal, Politics, Pot

Pot, Porn and Prostitution – 3 Ps

Posted on July 30, 2015 by Rod Fleming| Leave a comment

scales-of-justice-pot-porn-protitutionThere are three parameters that I think define the level of freedom we actually enjoy. I call them the ‘3 Ps’.

They are Pot, Porn and Prostitution. Why have I chosen these three? Well, it’s not a recent thing, and I have thought about it for years.

I could use transgender rights, since, as readers will be aware, this is an area that concerns me deeply; but while we will certainly discuss these, the issue is too specific. I could use women’s rights but that’s the opposite: too vague — and in any case the 3Ps allow us to consider this question. I could use taxation but goodness me, everyone has a different view.

Separation of Church and State? Yeah, but again, too vague. Children’s rights? The same. Treatment of ethnic minorities — which ones? And how?

I wanted a small number, not more than three, of very specific measures that had certain things in common.

The first was that they had to be, or have been until recently, illegal. You can’t measure whether a culture is open by measuring what it permits; you measure it by the things it does not. Read more »

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Posted in Journal, Politics, Porn and Prostitution, Pot, Sex and Gender

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Europe’s immigration crisis erupts

Posted on July 29, 2015 by Rod Fleming| Leave a comment

calais-tunnel-immigrationA man was killed yesterday during a mass attack as at least 1500 people attempted to board trucks entering the Eurotunnel in Calais. This brings the death toll in the ongoing crisis, which began in June, to nine.

Eurotunnel, the operator, has invested heavily in security fences and personnel at the French end of the Tunnel but it is clearly not enough and they are swamped, daily, as would-be immigrants try to get into the UK.

The crisis has caused reduction in the frequency of freight trains through the Tunnel. Around Dover, the UK terminal, motorways have been closed for weeks as trucks waiting to depart for Europe are parked on them in what is called ‘Operation Stack’.

With the motorways closed, small towns and villages, whose roads are not designed for this weight of traffic, are jammed with cars seeking a way round the blockage. Businesses are reporting a catastrophic drop in revenue.

On the French side, large numbers of extra police and security have been drafted in to the Pas de Calais area to try to secure it, but they are manifestly failing.

While closure of the Tunnel is a drastic option, it may be the only one left. The situation, already catastrophic, can only get worse. Read more »

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Posted in France, French Onion Soup!, Journal, Politics

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