Paid Family Leave Revisited

(This is an updated version of an article originally posted in 2018.)

In 2017, an op-ed at CNN by Vanessa Brown Calder of the pro-corporate glibertarian Cato Institute claimed that paid family leave policies actually backfire on Women by making companies less likely to hire them as well as entrenching traditional gender roles.  She seems to see it as a zero-sum game for some reason.  And even now, the article is still likely being linked to on other articles discussing this important topic.  Even if they don't always cite it directly, people on social media still repeat the ideas found within it, for example.

First of all, except for a very few states, the USA is the only modern or even semi-modern country that does not offer any paid leave for Mothers, let alone fathers or anyone else for that matter.  And even then, the few states that do are rather stingy compared to most other industrialized nations.  The USA makes Scrooge look like Santa Claus by comparison in that regard. (So much for "Mothers and apple pie".)

Secondly, is there really any truth to the op-ed author's specious claim?  According to the weight of research evidence over the past decade or two, not really.  Except perhaps for poorly-designed programs that 1) force employers to pay for it, rather than via taxes (or money creation), 2) are limited only to mothers or are otherwise not gender neutral, and/or 3) have an unusually long duration--though that last one remains debatable, given the stunning success in the Nordic countries (whose durations of paid leave often exceed a year).  In fact, the only conclusively proven and robust downside--if one can even call it that--to long leave durations (i.e. longer than a year) is that they tend to discourage Mothers from returning to paid work compared with durations between nine months and a year.  (A very subjective "downside" at that.). 

Otherwise, the well-documented benefits to Women, children, society, and even men as well outweigh any supposed costs.  Ultimately, everyone is better off as a result. It is a win-win-win situation for everyone but the oligarchs, in other words.  Thus, a no-brainer.  See Taryn Morrissey's 2017 book Cradle to Kindergarten for a good review of the general topic of why the USA should join the rest of the developed world and invest much more in early childhood care and education, which will pay major dividends for society in the long run.

And in a country where Women have already reached a critical mass in the workforce, especially at mid- to high-level positions, have very generous paid family leave of a year or even longer could literally be done right now given enough political will.  Otherwise, starting fairly small and then gradually making it more generous and longer duration is a good foot-in-the-door strategy in the long run.

Of course, once Women finally reclaim their rightful place as the new leaders of the free world, this will no longer even be a debate anymore.  In the future when all or nearly all high-level managers and executives are Women, and many if not most of whom are Mothers, things will be very different indeed, and likely fundamentally so.  

True, paid family leave is not an end goal, but merely a good starting point for a more equitable society overall.  That is the FLOOR, not the ceiling!  Other things need to happen as well, such as Universal Basic Income (UBI), single-payer Medicare For All, shorter and more flexible workweeks for all workers, more paid time off for all workers, equal pay, affordable high-quality childcare and early childhood education, as well as longer-term cultural changes as well.  And of course, the biggest elephant in the room--MEN--really need to start pulling their weight for once.  But in the meantime, if we make the perfect the enemy of the good, we ultimately end up with neither.  

So what are we waiting for?

Only Women Can Break The Cycle of History (Updated Re-Post)

  

History, or more accurately, HIStory, has always seemed to occur in cycles.  Ascendancy and decline.  Collapse and rebirth.  Spring and fall.  Over and over again.  And with smaller cycles occurring as part of larger ones as well.  The modern meme about it goes like this:

Hard times create strong men.

Strong men create good times.

Good times create weak men.

Weak men create hard times.

And so on.  And if current events are any indication, in 2025 we seem to be in the "weak men create hard times" stage, alas.  But the authors of this meme did not pull this out of the ether, rather, this idea of the cyclical nature of history is thousands of years old.  The ancient Greeks called it "Anacyclosis".

Per Wikipedia:

Anacyclosis states that three basic forms of "benign" government (monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy) are inherently weak and unstable, tending to degenerate rapidly into the three basic forms of "malignant" government (tyranny, oligarchy, and ochlocracy). [Ochlocracy = mob rule]

Polybius' sequence of anacyclosis proceeds in the following order: 1. monarchy, 2. kingship, 3. tyranny, 4. aristocracy, 5. oligarchy, 6. democracy, and 7. ochlocracy.  [And finally chaos, and then the cycle repeats with a new king emerging from the chaos...]

And then there is the "Tytler Cycle" (or "Fatal Sequence") as well.  The following quote, actually of somewhat unknown authorship, has nonetheless been attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler sometime in either the late 18th or early 19th century, though occasionally it has been attributed to Alexis de Toqueville as well:

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.

These two paragraphs actually did not occur together until the 1970s, but the latter one is the one that stuck the most.  It can thus be summarized graphically as follows:

The first paragraph of course can be debunked by the theories of Monetary Sovereignty and Modern Monetary Theory, in that a government that issues and controls it's own sovereign currency cannot really go bankrupt unless they deliberately choose to, and thus loose fiscal policy per se need not result in a dictatorship.  In Venezuela, for example, dictatorship (and corruption) actually came first, well before their extremely loose fiscal policy.  Furthermore, Switzerland is the very closest thing to a truly direct democracy in the modern world, and interestingly the voters in 2016 actually rejected a Universal Basic Income (UBI) referendum.  And even Canada, arguably somewhat more democratic in practice than the USA (prior to 2020), had actually shrank the size of its government dramatically from 1990 to 2019 via fiscal austerity (which came at a heavy price), and barely any stimulus even during the Great Recession.  But the second paragraph is the one that is the real essence of the quote, regardless of what sort of governing system is in place.  And it seems to be true throughout history time and again.

To be fair, many civilizations have lasted for much more than 200 years, and sometimes some of the stages listed here are truncated, inverted, and/or leapfrogged over entirely.  But as a general rule or heuristic, it largely holds true. 

And more recently, William Strauss and Neil Howe's generational theory also appears to dovetail with all of this.  And the ever-insightful Julius Ruechel observes how that cycle seems to occur every four generations, or roughly 80 years or so (making us due for a major crisis by 2020, being about 80 years since the Great Depression and its infamous segway into WWII).  This is, of course, a smaller cycle within larger ones like the ones mentioned above, but again it follows basically the same pattern.  A pattern that seems to be, for all intents and purposes, sooner or later, inevitable and written in stone.  So what is the underlying reason?

Thus once again, we return to the first meme, with the proper emphasis added this time:

Hard times create strong men.

Strong men create good times.

Good times create weak men.

Weak men create hard times.

And so on.  Now do you see why?  Because MEN are in charge, that's why.  Strong men and weak men are ultimately two sides of the same coin.  And thus only Women can finally break the vicious cycle for good, by reclaiming their rightful place as the new leaders of the free world, Goddess willing.  And as they say, the rest will be HERstory.

Let the planetary healing begin!

ICYMI, Be Sure To Check Out Guru Rasa's New Magnum Opus: "The Man Whisperer"

ICYMI, be sure to check out the legendary Guru Rasa Von Werder's latest book now published and available on Lulu, The Man Whisperer:  How an Old Lady Snags Young Men for Sex.  With its self-explanatory title, she chronicles and discusses in depth her experiences as a Cougar in the college town of Binghamton, New York, and shares important wisdom and lessons she had learned along the way.

Enjoy! 😊

P.S.  Not to toot my own horn, but the book also features a little bit of William Bond and myself as well. 😊

"Smash The (Adulto-) Patriarchy", Or, "The Great Cosmic Custody Battle", Revisited

(Updated and expanded from its original 2017 version)

NOTE:  I generally don't put youth rights content on this blog, as I typically reserve it for my True Spirit of America Party and Twenty-One Debunked blogs.  But given how this article is about intersectionality, I believe it fits quite well here.  The opinions presented here are my own, and not necessarily those of anyone else in the Matriarchy movement.

One of the most vexing questions of all about the ultimate origin of patriarchy is, how did men take over in the first place, if Women are the superior gender and were already in power to begin with in the last Matriarchal age? And this question is NOT merely academic, as the answer will at least partially inform us on how to prevent men from taking over again in the future.  History may not always repeat itself exactly, of course, but it sure as hell does rhyme nonetheless.

Some theorists would say that was because Women were too lenient with men and allowed them too much freedom ("give them an inch, and they take a mile") while others say the opposite, that Women were too harsh and strict and did not allow men enough freedom, so they rebelled ("forbidden fruit" or "reactance theory").  (Note also the parallels with today's discourse about teenagers and young adults, as this foreshadows the rest of this article.)  Still others, such as Riane Eisler and many others in the Goddess Movement, inspired by Marija Gimbutas, put forth the "Kurgan theory", namely that a few patriarchal cultures formed in central Asia and the Arabian peninsula, and violently conquered their peaceful Matriarchal neighbors and eventually the world.  These cultures, called Kurgans, were semi-literate or illiterate nomadic sheepherders who really had no culture of their own to speak of, but they did have superior weapons technology, and aggression was indeed rewarded in their culture.  But that still does not fully explain how those cultures came to be patriarchal in the first place, except for the fact that aggression is wittingly or unwittingly rewarded in nomadic pastoral societies, and men are generally more aggressive and competitive than Women.

(Rasa Von Werder and William Bond each have their own theories as well.  Rasa believes that Women had sexually selected for more "macho" men by preferentially mating with them, which thus resulted in men becoming too "macho" in a toxic and dangerous way after many generations of such cumulative selection, while Women became less and less "macha" at the same time.  And William believes that Women had essentially allowed men to take over by trusting them too much with power.  I am summarizing and glossing over the details of both here, but that is basically the gist of it.  Both theories I think have at least some merit to them, and both can explain at least part of what happened, to one degree or another.)

I generally favor the Kurgan theory myself, but then when Googling the title of Robert Jensen's fairly recent book "The End of Patriarchy" back in 2017, I inadvertently discovered a similarly-titled book by Claudio Naranjo, titled, "The End of Patriarchy: And the Dawning of a Tri-une Society", which led me to a new theory on the matter.  And while I don't agree with everything that Naranjo says, he does make some good points nonetheless.  He posits that young people were the ones in charge in the Paleolithic age, then Women were in charge in the Neolithic age, and then men took over in the Bronze Age and remained in power since.  And as the title implies, he looks forward to the end of patriarchy and the beginning of a new, "tri-une" society that combines the best of all three past ages, with Women, men, and children all being equally valued members of human society.  While I agree with him for the most part, I do think that he sells the idea of Matriarchy way too short, and often mischaracterizes what it really is.  And I also still think that the best way that his "tri-une society" or something like it can be created is with Women in charge, that is, Matriarchy.  Only Women can be truly trusted to be the "Guardians of Liberty" IMHO.

In a nutshell, Naranjo (inspired by fellow Chilean, Totila Albert) delineates three main epochs of human history:  

1) Filiarchy:  This was during the Paleolithic Age more than 12,000 years ago, when people were largely nomadic, and foraging, gathering, and hunting were the norm.  In this early system, neither gender really dominated (though I think it was most likely gynocentric), but children and young people had essentially all of the power, and allegedly tyrannized their elders to one degree or another.  Obviously, this system had its downsides, to put it mildly, so it later evolved into...

2) Matriarchy:  This was during the Neolithic Age (and perhaps even a bit before that too) from 10,000-12,000 years ago with the advent of horticulture and then agriculture, to about 5000-7000 or so years ago, and even into some of the Bronze Age.  Women were in charge then.  Here he makes it seem that individuals were completely subordinate to the collective, which is presented as one of its downsides, along with some possible human sacrifice too.  This part is where I think Naranjo kinda sells Matriarchy too short, and the accuracy of such claims is questionable at best.  But otherwise he describes it fairly well overall, and certainly far, far more peaceful, relatively equal, and eco-friendly than what came next, which was, you guessed it.....

3) Patriarchy:  During the Bronze Age and Iron Age, men had taken over and ruled ever since, spreading their cancerous system around the world.  It's origins began in a few areas during perhaps even the Neolithic, but didn't really take off until well into the Bronze Age.  Here we see lots of war, violence, genocide, ecocide, rape, torture, imperialism, racism, inequality, greed, and stuff like that.  And as they say, the rest is history.  And now in what I like to call the "Leaden Age", that system's days are increasingly numbered as we speak.  Slowly but surely, Women are rising and men are falling, and the proverbial Rubicon has already been crossed by now, Goddess willing.

But one thing is certain:  Adultism (i.e. the systemic oppression and subjugation of children and young people) can theoretically exist without patriarchy, but patriarchy cannot exist without adultism.  To wit, men would never have been able to disempower Women as much as they did if young people had not been thoroughly disempowered first by adults of both primary genders (even if done more so by men).  Kind of like how the rich would never have been able to torpedo the middle class as they did from President Reagan onward if the middle class hadn't first helped the rich by throwing the poor under the bus.  That was my latest insight after coming across the work of Naranjo.  After all, it took thousands of years to remove Women from power and subjugate them, and it looks like adultism was one of men's "secret weapons" to accomplish this nefarious and perfidious act.

And of course, adultism continues to perpetuate patriarchy and vice versa to this day.  Both are mutually reinforcing, hence the term "adulto-patriarchy" used by the youth rights movement to emphasize the essential intersection between the two systems of oppression.  Adultism is of course a form of ageism, with the other side of the very same coin being the prejudice and discrimination against senior citizens, often simultaneously by the very same forces.  And at base, adultism is likely rooted subconsciously in an overblown fear of a return to filiarchy, much like patriarchy and misogyny are ultimately rooted in an irrational fear of a return to Matriarchy.  The "cork theory" per William Bond comes to mind:  when you hold a cork underwater, it will stay there, but loosen one's grip enough, and it rises to the top.

As a lifelong (albeit moderate) youth-rights activist myself, I am NOT arguing that children and early adolescents should be blanketly treated as equals to adults in every way, as that would be quite a strawman argument indeed.  So don't go putting words in my mouth now!  But the idea that they should have no civil or human rights at all, and/or should be treated as slaves, serfs, pets, or vermin, is just as odious as if that logic was applied to any other demographic group.  The fact that it has become normalized for people below an arbitrary age limit of (pick your poison, as any age limit is arbitrary) to have fewer rights than prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions, and more restrictions than convicted felons, could not have happened without consequences that backfired on adults as well!

With Women in charge, I personally believe that the best way for them to govern both men and children/youth overall is similar to the way that Dutch parents are towards their children.  They have a saying over there, "when you permit, you control."  And another good saying, though not specifically Dutch, is "be a mentor, not a tormentor".  This is largely in line with Riane Eisler's "partnership model" of social interaction.  Others in the Matriarchy movement may or may not agree with me, and that's fine, but that is what I believe nonetheless.

(For what it's worth, I recently discovered that Everything Voluntary Jack, a "voluntaryist" Substacker, had written a great article about what he calls "Parentarchy", which basically ends up being the same thing as what the youth-rights movement calls "adulto-patriarchy", that is, the intersection between adultism and patriarchy.)

Thus, patriarchy should really be called "adulto-patriarchy", and any self-proclaimed feminist or other civil or human rights movement that is not largely on board with at least the moderate wing of the youth-rights movement as well is indeed a major intersectionality fail.  Much like how "brocialists" and "manarchists" are towards Women, and how "White Feminists" (TM) are towards people of color.  Or how far too many "normies" in practically every movement are towards people with disabilities or chronic illnesses (ableism), and so on.  The entire evil edifice of kyriarchy must come down at once, as piecemeal approaches are ultimately doomed to fail.  Even if patriarchy is in fact the biggest crux of the entire pyramid scheme and protection racket.

In other words, the gender war will simply continue until men surrender to Women.  And the "Great Cosmic Custody Battle" between patriarchy and Matriarchy will simply continue in some form or another until children and young people are also liberated as well.

So let's smash the adulto-patriarchy, yesterday!  And the rest of the kyriarchy too.  And may we all one day enjoy liberty and justice for all.

(Mic drop)

1484: The Witches' Hammer

Here is a good preliminary idea for a historical fiction novel, short story, or movie perhaps, tentatively titled "1484: The Witches' Hammer", a title which is clearly laden with puns:

Inspired by Sylvia Federici's 2004 book Caliban and the Witch, and a few recent Substack articles from Katie Jgln as well as the author with the pen name "15th Century Feminist", I have been thinking of an idea lately.  As Federici notes, the Inquisition which devolved into the Burning Times / Women's Holocaust (aka witch trials of Europe) was in effect a counterrevolution against the slow-burn Women's revolution of the 14th and 15th centuries and a bit beyond as well.  That is, in addition to midwives, herbalists, healers, and of course Women who owned property (so it could be seized by men), the primarily-targeted Women as "witches" were in fact revolutionaries against feudalism, patriarchy, and what eventually came to be known as capitalism.  And combined with the enclosures of the commons, such a counterrevolution, lasting into the latter half of the 17th century, and even into the 18th, ultimately paved the way for patriarchy's favorite brainchild, capitalism, which was actually a regress from feudalism for the first few centuries.  The entire working class ultimately suffered as a result, and poverty worsened dramatically until the 19th century. 

(Men were victims of the Burning Times too, of course, but except in the very strange case of Iceland where it was mostly men killed, men were largely collateral damage, and persecuted primarily as "heretics" rather than "witches".  In fact, if you go back far enough, there was even a double standard where "sorcery" was still socially acceptable for men, but not for Women.  Read that again.  Natch.)

Anyway, while this bloody gynocidal counterrevolution had already begun before it, it did not really take off in earnest until after the Malleus Maleficarum ("The Witches' Hammer") by Heinrich Kramer, was published in 1486, following that fateful "load of papal bull" from Pope Innocent VIII (or as I like to call him, "Pope Guilty As Sin", given how much blood he had on his hands) in 1484 which inspired it.  It was the 15th century equivalent of clickbait, fake news, misinformation, and disinformation, and it was the gasoline dumped on the smoldering fires of what would soon become the Burning Times.  And as Katie Jgln notes, it was in fact enabled by the advent of the printing press, without which such disinformation could not have traveled nearly as fast.

So my idea for historical fiction would be for a group of people, mostly or entirely Women, from the present era to find a way to go back in time to 1484, and publish (using those same printing presses) a counter-manifesto rebutting and discrediting the execrable Pope Guilty's vile and slanderous words and the entire moral panic he inspired, and warning everyone about what the patriarchal establishment planned to do.  Then, after that but sometime before 1486, they would take an actual, literal hammer to as many printing presses as they could find, preventing or at least delaying the publication of the Malleus Maleficarum itself, long enough for it to be discredited before put into practice.  That would buy the Women revolutionaries some time to at least "tread water" (if not advance further) until around 1600 when they would finally get access to the "magic elixir of revolution" (as foretold in the counter-manifesto) when it arrives in Europe for the first time:  COFFEE.  And then from there, and also with tea from 1650 or so, the revolution would have accelerated, and Women would have eventually won the gender war and gradually taken over completely by now.  

First Europe, then the world.  In an organic, protopian, slow-burn revolution, i.e. the way Women prefer to do revolution. 

(In actual history, when it was first introduced to Europe from the Middle East, coffee literally came be associated with revolution for a while, and the first coffeehouses generally excluded Women, of course.  Gee, I wonder why that was?)

Indeed, as the old adage goes, if you change one thing, you end up changing everything.  By doing so, a time paradox occurs where many of the people who would have otherwise existed would end up not existing, or more likely having been reincarnated as other species.  That is because after Women took over, they refuse to be breeding slaves for men, so the world population ended up much smaller it currently is.  And since Women are much better stewards of the Earth than men, nonhuman species would have flourished more, and not been decimated nearly as much, as they have been under male rule.  And of course, capitalism would have been leapfrogged over completely (or at least largely) towards some flavor of post-capitalism and/or communalism.  

(And let's not forget all of the fuzzy kitties that would have been superstitiously targeted by the evil purveyors of the Burning Times as well, but were spared when such atrocities were largely prevented by smashing those printing presses!)

In other words, perhaps the key to having any future that is worth having, is to go back in time and correct such a truly terrible mistake.  Let the planetary healing begin!

P.S. To anyone reading this, especially Women, please feel free to steal this idea, as I hereby release this general idea of mine into the public domain, giving due credit of course to those who inspired me.  God knows that men have been stealing Women's ideas for thousands of years, so many things, from beer to baseball to the automobile to computers to the structure of DNA and so much more.  Even horticulture, most likely invented by Women thousands of years ago, has been rediscovered and rebranded as "permaculture" by men.

(To be continued....)

Guru Rasa's Latest Magnum Opus: The Man Whisperer

ICYMI, be sure to check out the legendary Guru Rasa Von Werder's latest book now published and available on Lulu, The Man Whisperer:  How an Old Lady Snags Young Men for Sex.  With its self-explanatory title, she chronicles and discusses in depth her experiences as a Cougar in the college town of Binghamton, New York, and shares important wisdom and lessons she had learned along the way.

Enjoy! 😊

P.S.  Not to toot my own horn, but the book also features a little bit of William Bond and myself as well. 😊

The Four Words To Psychologically Disarm Practically Any Patriarchal Man

This is probably the shortest post yet.

The four words that best psychologically disarm practically any man, particularly patriarchal men, are as follows:

"I CALL YOUR BLUFF!"

Because at least 9 times out of 10, if not 99 times out of 100, they are BLUFFING.  Not always, of course, but usually.  In fact, the late Ashley Montagu noted that the notion of male superiority is itself the biggest bluff the world has ever seen.

The End