Category Archives: Men and Women

The Land of No Men: Inside Kenya’s Women-Only Village Reply

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Men and Women

Pan-Anarchism is for everyone, even abused African women.

Broadly

Where the foothills of Mount Kenya merge into the desert, the people of Samburu have maintained a strict patriarchy for over 500 years in northern Kenya. That is, until 25 years ago, when Rebecca Lolosoli founded Umoja village as a safe haven for the region’s women. Umoja, which means “unity” in Swahili, is quite literally a no man’s land, and the matriarchal refuge is now home to the Samburu women who no longer want to suffer abuses, like genital mutilation and forced marriages, at the hands of men. Throughout the years, it has also empowered other women in the districts surrounding Samburu to start their own men-excluding villages. Broadly visited Umoja and the villages it inspired to meet with the women who were fed up with living in a violent patriarchy.

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Iran and the Left: Why They Supported Islamic Reaction 2

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Men and Women, Religion and Philosophy, Uncategorized

An old Trotskyist article from the 1970s on the relationship between Left and Islamic fundamentalism during the Iranian Revolution.

Workers Vanguard

Spartacist League

When mullah rule was established in Iran in early 1979, the vast bulk of the Western left actively supported Ayatollah Khomeini’s seizure of power. Virtually  the only group that refused to bow to the Islamic reactionaries was the  Spartacist League, to which the League for the Fourth International traces its origin and from which founding cadres of the LFI came. At that time, when the SL stood on the program of revolutionary Trotskyism, its newspaper, Workers Vanguard, published the following important article.

In one sense it is now very easy to polemicize against those leftists, especially ostensible Trotskyists, who supported the Islamic opposition to the shah. We said Khomeini in power would seek to reimpose the veil, restore barbaric punishments (flogging, amputation), suppress the national minorities and crush the left and workers movement as ruthlessly as did the shah. Imperialist propaganda, they shouted, Khomeini is leading a great progressive struggle! Thus one self-proclaimed Trotskyist group in Britain charged:

    •  “The Spartacists make a series of charges against the Mullah-led opposition as a result of which they characterize the movement as one of ‘clerical reaction.’ A number of these charges amount to uncritical retailing of the chauvinist rubbish which filled the American press throughout the Autumn. The Mullahs they claim wish to restore Iran to the 7th century AD…. They wish to introduce savage Islamic law punishments; stoning, public hanging and whipping etc. They wish to enforce the wearing of the veil and the removal of the rights given to women by the Shah.”

–Workers Power

    , February 1979

Well?

Now every piece of news out of Iran proves the international Spartacist tendency (iSt) was obviously, indisputably 100 percent right. The streets of Teheran are filled with the anguished cries of those, from middle-class liberal women to Guevarist guerrillas, who claim they were taken in by Khomeini’s revolution. Tragically, the voice of the revolutionists who warned of the reactionary clericalist aims of the mullahs was drowned in the clamor of opportunists singing the praises of the “anti-imperialist” ayatollah. It is the Iranian masses who will pay the price.

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6 Feminist Myths That Will Not Die Reply

by • Left and Right, Men and Women, Uncategorized

By Christina Hoff Sommers

Time

Much of what we hear about the plight of American women is false. Some faux facts have been repeated so often they are almost beyond the reach of critical analysis. Though they are baseless, these canards have become the foundation of Congressional debates, the inspiration for new legislation and the focus of college programs. Here are five of the most popular myths that should be rejected by all who are genuinely committed to improving the circumstances of women:

MYTH 1: Women are half the world’s population, working two-thirds of the world’s working hours, receiving 10% of the world’s income, owning less than 1% of the world’s property.

FACTS: This injustice confection is routinely quoted by advocacy groups, the World Bank, Oxfam and the United Nations. It is sheer fabrication. More than 15 years ago, Sussex University experts on gender and development Sally Baden and Anne Marie Goetz, repudiated the claim: “The figure was made up by someone working at the UN because it seemed to her to represent the scale of gender-based inequality at the time.” But there is no evidence that it was ever accurate, and it certainly is not today.

Precise figures do not exist, but no serious economist believes women earn only 10% of the world’s income or own only 1% of property. As one critic noted in an excellent debunking in The Atlantic, “U.S. women alone earn 5.4 percent of world income today.” Moreover, in African countries, where women have made far less progress than their Western and Asian counterparts, Yale economist Cheryl Doss found female land ownership ranged from 11% in Senegal to 54% in Rwanda and Burundi. Doss warns that “using unsubstantiated statistics for advocacy is counterproductive.” Bad data not only undermine credibility, they obstruct progress by making it impossible to measure change.

MYTH 2: Between 100,000 and 300,000 girls are pressed into sexual slavery each year in the United States.

FACTS: This sensational claim is a favorite of politicians, celebrities and journalists. Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore turned it into a cause célèbre. Both conservatives and liberal reformers deploy it. Former President Jimmy Carter recently said that the sexual enslavement of girls in the U.S. today is worse than American slavery in the 19th century.

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Women Still Face Oppression Today in the U.S. Reply

by • Left and Right, Men and Women, Uncategorized

By Mina Ghaninejad

The Rattler

In August of 1920, women were granted the right to vote by the implementation of the 19th amendment. Since then, women have slowly progressed into having the same rights as men. And although most people would assume that women have reached the same status as men, given the modern era, that is simply not the case.

Women today are still oppressed in multiple ways, and yet we as a society turn a blind eye to the oppression that physically and emotionally harm women as a gender and as individuals. Not only are women financially oppressed, women are also socially and sexually oppressed in more than one circumstance in which men would not be.

In 2012, statistics from catalyst.org, documented the median annual income for both sexes. While women earned $37,791, men earned $49,398. In the educational field, statistics proved that the higher the degree, the higher the difference between pay. While the average median women with doctoral degrees get paid $1,371 weekly, men get paid $1,734.  Women with only a bachelor’s degree earn $930 while men earn $1,199.

In 2013, the average everyday female worker gets paid only 78% of what men earn. Though women in all states face unequal pay, some states only give women 66% of what men earn in states such as Louisiana, while in Washington, D.C, women receive 91% of what men earn.

In 2014, the Senate Republicans refused to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. This law has been persistent on being passed since 2012, however once again for the third time, it was shot down by Congress. The Paycheck Fairness Act allows employers to talk about their wages more freely and easily. The Act also forces employers to explain why the different sexes earn different wages, and to close the pay gap between males and females. And while every Democrat voted for the bill to be passed, every Republican in the Senate voted against the bill, though claiming they support equal pay for equal work. The Senates reason for the refusal of the bill was that it would ‘increase civil lawsuits, and would be pointless since discrimination based on sexes is already illegal in the United States’.

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The War on Sex Trafficking Is the New War on Drugs Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Men and Women, Police State/Civil Liberties, Sexuality and the State, Uncategorized

By Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Reason

Girl in handcuffs

“Sex Trafficking of Americans: The Girls Next Door.”

“Sex-trafficking sweep nets arrests near Phoenix truck stops.”

“Man becomes 1st jailed under new human trafficking law.”

Conduct a Google news search for the word trafficking in 2015 and you’ll find pages of stories about the commercial sex trade, in which hundreds of thousands of U.S. women and children are supposedly trapped by coercion or force.

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Once Again, Fuck the U.N.! 1

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Arts & Entertainment, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Men and Women, Military, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Religion and Philosophy, Sexuality and the State

un-uninvolved-in-peace

Over at the Inferno: my latest love letter to the kind of “peacekeepers” nobody needs.

Excerpts:

Ostensibly formed as a global peacekeeping organisation in the wake of World War II, the United Nations, or U.N., has, over time, made it clear that the peace it means to impose on the world resembles the pax Romana (or pax Islama), mandated and managed by way of a top-down global hegemon.

For all the criticisms levelled at desert pirates Daesh, their M.O. seems to resemble the U.N.’s in several key ways, with its fatwa-friendliness, universalist aspredations*, and a heralded, hypocritical hard-on for pious prohibition and penile predation. If one didn’t know any better, it’d be easy to suspect the Muslim Männerbund of taking more than a few notes.

~MRDA~

A Trafficking Survivor Shares Why She’s Anti-Criminalization Reply

by • Men and Women, Sexuality and the State, Uncategorized • Tags:

By Kitty Stryker

Harlot Media

While the plight of the survivors of trafficking are brought up in modern discourse around whether or not sex work should be legal or good for women, little actual space is given for survivors to come forward and share their stories.

Mercedes is a survivor of trafficking who approached us to present her experiences of being a survivor of trafficking so that she and other survivors can be heard in a debate that so often pointedly excludes them.

How did you end up in the sex industry?

More…

Army and Marine Corps chiefs: It’s time for women to register for the draft 1

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Left and Right, Men and Women, Military, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Uncategorized

Because gender equality means that everyone must be obligated to serve the empire. The latest in totalitarian humanism.

By Dan Lamonthe

Washington Post

The top officers in the Army and Marine Corps testified on Tuesday that they believe it is time for women to register for future military drafts, following the Pentagon’s recent decision to open all jobs in combat units to female service members.

Gen. Mark A. Milley, chief of staff of the Army, and Gen. Robert B. Neller, the Marine Corps commandant, both said they were in favor of the change during an occasionally contentious Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the full integration of women in the military. The generals, both infantry officers, offered their opinions in response to a question from Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who said that she also is in favor of the change.

“Senator, I think that all eligible and qualified men and women should register for the draft,” said Milley, echoing the remarks of Neller.

[Why the Pentagon opening all combat roles to women could subject them to a military draft]

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Augustus Sol Invictus – Libertarian Realism: Folk, Culture & Borders Reply

by • Activism, American Decline, Anarchism/Anti-State, Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Education, Electoralism/Democratism, Health and Medicine, Immigration, Law/Justice, Left and Right, Men and Women, Police State/Civil Liberties, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Race and Ethnicity, Religion and Philosophy, Strategy, Uncategorized

Great interview with Augustus by Lana Lokteff. Listen here.

Augustus Invictus is an attorney and community leader in Orlando, Florida who is a candidate in the 2016 US Senate election. Best known as a radical philosopher and infamous social critic, he is Managing Partner of Imperium, P.A., the law firm he founded in 2013. As an attorney, Augustus has worked to defend those who have become collateral damage of America’s two longest-running wars: the War on Drugs and the War on Terror.

Augustus begins with an explanation of the name he has chosen to identify with, along with the mystical path that led him to study law and eventually pursue politics. He talks about his affiliation with the Libertarian Party (LP) and the problems he sees with its watered down, mainstream message. Augustus describes the main issues he aspires to tackle as Senator: the drug war, foreign policy, and the financial crisis. We get into the customary LP stances on open borders, immigration and equality, and we look at how these key concerns have been muddled with leftist contention. Augustus shares his view on the problems that will ensue for Libertarian ideals if non-Westerners continue to flood into America, and he also speaks to the Marxist degeneracy that has infected pop culture and the educational system. Then, we discuss the absence of natural law and hierarchy in the current US government system, along with the tyrannical forces pushing oppressive mandatory regulations, censorship and hate speech laws. At the end, Augustus sums up the actions he is taking to tackle the looney left’s war on White men and inspire a resurrection of the American front.

More Than a Whiff of Cologne 1

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Immigration, Law/Justice, Left and Right, Men and Women, News Updates, Police State/Civil Liberties, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Race and Ethnicity, Religion and Philosophy, Sexuality and the State

1032873731

More than you might wanna inhale!

~MRDA~

Opinions/Editorials:

How to deal with the sexual assaults in Cologne and Hamburg by Musa Okwonga

German Feminists: Forget Rapist Migrants, They’re Already Marginalised by Liam Deacon

Why We Can’t Stay Silent on Germany’s Mass Sex Assaults by Maajid Nawaz

The solution to Germany’s migrant problem is simple. But not easy. by Janet Bloomfield a.k.a JudgyBitch

Chaos and Violence: How New Year’s Eve in Cologne Has Changed Germany by Spiegel Staff

We need to talk about Cologne by Greek Forum of Refugees (et al)

The Charlie Hebdo cartoon about Aylan Kurdi and sex attackers is one of its most powerful and important by Jessica Brown

The false dilemma of the rapacious Muslim narrative by Hannah Wallen

Cologne and the ‘sexism of the other’: Why tougher migration policies won’t solve sexual abuse by Anne Jenichen

A reply to Anne Jenichen on the link between immigration and sexual violence by Daniel Falkiner

Is Europe Choosing to Self-Destruct? by Judith Bergman

Summary of the Coordinated Sexual Assaults by Immigrants Against Europeans on N.Y.E. by Govan Kilgour

After Cologne, Feminism is Dead by Phillip Mark McGough

Europa: When Feminism is Silent by NM Phoenix

Lie Back and Think of Brussels by Ann Sterzinger and Jamie Mason

Reports:

The Guardian: German minister suggests New Year’s Eve assaults were coordinated

Breitbart: Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Dusseldorf… New Year’s Migrant Sex Assault In Every Major German City

The Huffington Post: German Train Station Attacks In Cologne: Ralf Jaeger Compares Right Wing Commenters To New Year’s Sex Attackers

BBC News: Cologne Mayor’s ‘code of conduct’ to prevent sexual assault angers many

Breitbart: Eyewitness Cologne: Germany Deploys 143 Officers To Stop Migrant Rape, 1,500 Officers To Stop Anti-Rape Protest

Daily Mail: UK celebrities furious as far-right group uses bloody pictures of them as examples of Cologne sex attacks

The Local: Backlash after women told not to go out alone

International Business Times: Cologne sex attacks: Syrian refugees take to streets to condemn mass assaults by migrants on New Year’s Eve

The Independent: Cologne attacks: American woman tells how Syrian refugees rescued her from New Year’s Eve sexual assault

Discussion:

Why Women’s Oppression Is The Moral Dilemma Of Our Time 1

by • Men and Women, Uncategorized

By Kathy Caprino

Forbes

Sheryl WuDunn

Last month, I had the honor of speaking with Sheryl WuDunn, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author, and investment banker.  Co-author of the national bestselling book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide with her husband, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof,  Sheryl and her husband helped catalyze the Half the Sky Movement, which includes television, film, social media and mobile gaming components promoting global equality and support for women’s rights.  Half the Sky raises awareness of the critical issues that affect women without a voice, including violence, maternal mortality, human trafficking, and domestic abuse. Sheryl spoke this summer at the 2013 Global Women’s Executive Summit sponsored by Hogan Lovells, an international legal practice firm.

Sheryl shared with me her views that the oppression of women across the globe is the most critical moral challenge of our time, just as slavery was in the 19th century.   “While women here in the U.S. are far better off than those in other countries, and by and large don’t experience what women face in the developing world, we simply can’t turn our backs on the struggles women face elsewhere. It’s a critical challenge that the entire world must work together to address.”

Even in the U.S., prejudice against women remains a significant problem.  In our workplaces, there is unequal pay for equal work.  Women are battered, raped, and trafficked.  And there’s simply no defensible reason why women should continue to be grossly underrepresented in government (women represent less than 20% in the Senate and the House.)

Sheryl shared her thoughts on the challenges women continue to face in ascending to leadership in both corporate America and the government.

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American Men Are Being Institutionally Oppressed Reply

by • Men and Women, Uncategorized

By Roosh V.

Successful political and social agitation by the progressive movement has cemented such gains that men can now be considered institutionally oppressed in America, even according to feminist definitions of oppression. Here are three definitions:

From a Slutwalk Wiki:

Institutional oppression is the systematic mistreatment of people within a social identity group, supported and enforced by the society and its institutions, solely based on the person’s membership in the social identity group.

From Wikipedia:

Institutional Oppression occurs when established laws, customs, and practices systematically reflect and produce inequities based on one’s membership in targeted social identity groups. If oppressive consequences accrue to institutional laws, customs, or practices, the institution is oppressive whether or not the individuals maintaining those practices have oppressive intentions.

From about.com (cited in feminist papers):

Oppression is the inequitable use of authority, law, or physical force to prevent others from being free and equal.

Before I make the argument that men are oppressed, I want to first ask if you can document or describe any oppression that women are facing today. Is there a place or environment in America where capable and qualified women are actively discriminated against while men are not? I can’t think of a single example. We have completely solved female oppression, because as I’ve documented in the past, women are coddled at every stage of their lives and given more opportunities and leeway to fail than men while having the full backing and support from every single institution in America (besides the manosphere).

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Opinion You’re Going To Hate: Women Aren’t Oppressed, They’re Actually The Most Protected Class In Our Society Reply

by • Men and Women, Uncategorized

Thought Catalog

t truly is amazing how things have “progressed” in this day and age.

For all of the advancements in science, technology, medicine, and various other things, it seems when it comes to the social foray, things have degenerated quite significantly. There is more hypersensitivity about…well…pretty much everything. For instance, bullying when I was younger was just a part of life, and we were always taught to stand up to bullies. Nowadays “don’t bully people” is plastered everywhere. I don’t know how much headway it is making, but I know that I think it is more effective to try to build someone up as opposed to trying to convince one particular mean-spirited person to discontinue their behavior, especially because there will potentially be another to take that person’s place…and another…and another.

The new methodology is to hide people from reality as oppose to letting them face it.

This brings me to my topic at hand. It has become painfully obvious that the men of society have made it so that women are hidden from many of the realities of the world. Men will often censor/belittle themselves, or avoid topics altogether so as to walk on eggshells around the women they come across. If a woman feels slighted in the most insignificant way, society has people (mostly men) falling over themselves to defend her honor. It’s so distracting that it can often become the new focal point during a discussion, and all other points become invalidated because one particular thing was offensive.

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