What "Liberated" Gets Right--And Wrong At The Same Time

The new documentary, Liberated: The New Sexual Revolution, is a textbook example of how one can be both very right and still very wrong at the same time, to the point where the latter utterly vitiates the former.  The film, produced by the Christian anti-trafficking group Exodus Cry teaming up with Netflix, is a profoundly disturbing look at the intersection between "hookup culture", rape culture, and pop culture among young Millennials, particularly college students.

First, let's discuss the things they get right.  There should be no doubt amymore that rape culture exists, and not only among college students or young people either.  So much of it is exposed on display in this film, in ways that are both shocking and banal at the same time.  And it is very pervasive indeed, infecting the general culture as well, while fueling and being fueled by pop culture in the process.  That much is certainly true, no argument from me there.

That said, the film (and its commentaries) really starts to coast--scratch that, takes a nosedive--when the filmmakers' apparently conservative Christian and neo-Victorian biases rear their ugly heads in the following ways:

• This cherry-picked sample of a few groups of Spring Breakers in a rather notorious location is hardly a representative sample of an entire generation or culture.
• It is questionable whether "hookup culture" even exists, since Millennials are actually having LESS sex with fewer partners than the most recent previous generations (Baby Boomers and Gen X).  That is true for both students and non-students as well.
• The idea that casual sex of any kind somehow must be inherently objectifying, exploitative, and otherwise linked to rape culture is fallacious, says a lot about the people saying it, and only goes to show that when one looks upon sexuality with evil eyes, that can artificially turn it into something evil.  (This creates a self-fulfilling prophecy by then blatantly misunderstanding and misusing sexual energy as a result of such beliefs.)
• The concept of consent is unfortunately effectively relegated to secondary at best in this film, which is both agency-denying and victim-blaming at the same time in its zeal to conflate rape culture with "hookup culture".  Thus, it ends up being demeaning and infantilizing to Women as a result.
• If you torture the data enough, they will confess to anything.  Especially when all you have is anecdotal evidence.  The plural of "anecdote" is NOT "data".
• And finally, the idea that "hookup culture" somehow acts as a "gateway" to human trafficking is really, really reaching here, and reeks of a desperate attempt by Exodus Cry to link two unrelated agendas.  Nevermind that during the actual Victorian era proper, human trafficking was rife despite (or perhaps because of) the priggish sexual mores then.

Of course, the biggest flaw of all is the most glaring omission:  PATRIARCHY.  That evil system is the real root of rape culture, human trafficking, and so many other social ills for thousands of years, yet the makers of this film seem to ignore its overarching role.  Perhaps that is because they are steeped in, I dunno, a patriarchal religion?

What really exists within patriarchy--which still exists by the way--is not really a "hookup culture", but rather a persistent culture of negativity around sex and relationships generally, as Amanda Hess notes.  And neither abstinence nor the protection racket of patriarchy is the solution.  The only real solution here is respect.  And the only solution to rape culture is the eradication of patriarchy, period.

For a better documentary about rape culture itself, I would recommend The Hunting Ground instead.  Don't waste your time with this film though.

The Robot Apocalypse Is Already Here

In case you missed it, the much-feared Robot Apocalypse is not something far off in the future--it is actually already here, hiding in plain sight.  And as much damage it has wrought already in terms of technological unemployment and inequality, it is really only getting started.   Future net job losses are already baked into the cake.

And men, who are becoming increasingly redundant, will be the biggest losers of all.  The next recession will surely finish us us fellas off in terms of the power we once had.  While that is good for Women in that it will make it that much easier to take over sooner--something that will make us all better off in the long run, in fact--it can also have some very bad short and medium-term consequences for everyone if the transition is not properly managed.  We rise together and ultimately fall together as well.  Look no further than the Rust Belt and Coal Country to see a taste of the not-too-distant future for the rest of the country that case.

In the shorter term, we could implement WPA-style jobs programs to take the edge off a bit.  But eventually the Robot Apocalypse will upend those jobs as well, so a Job Guarantee (JG) program would really not be much of a guarantee in the long term, and even now would already have logistical problems and much of it would amount to make-work boondoggles as opposed to truly useful work.

Fortunately, there is a simple policy measure that can alleviate the worst aspects of both automation as well as the transition to Matriarchy.  It's called Universal Basic Income (UBI).  Every man, woman, and child would get free money from the federal government, with no strings attached.  No means test, no discrimination, and no perverse incentives.  One way to fund this would be to "tax the robots", of course, among other kinds of taxes, but given that our federal government is Monetarily Sovereign, they could literally just print the money and disburse it, just like the FERAL Reserve does to the big banks, without costing the taxpayers one penny.  (State and local governments, however, are not Monetarily Sovereign, and thus would have to raise taxes quite high to implement their own versions, so it it is best left to the federal government to do.)

Combine this with the rest of Rodger Malcolm Mitchell's Ten Steps to Prosperity, most notably including single-payer Medicare For All and free college, and abolishing unnecessary federal taxes on the bottom 99% of Americans, and that would be even better still.

Furthermore, men can become very, very dangerous creatures when they are desperate for money--almost as dangerous as when men have too much power relative to Women, and in some cases even worse.  Just look at the 1996 film Fargo to see it in action.  Or look at some pilot projects in some poorer countries where only Women are given microloans or other payments while the men get nothing.  Giving money to Women is of course a much better bang for the buck than giving it to men, but denying it to men at the same time breeds jealousy, resentment, and sometimes even violence against Women.  So even if you absolutely loathe men with a passion, pragmatism dictates than men and women should get equal amounts of UBI to defuse this ticking time bomb, especially since money is literally no object for the federal government.

Without a hard social floor of some sort, what we have is an abyss, a bottomless pit from which no one is safe.  It is long past time to put such a floor over this abyss, which will only widen and deepen in the future.

It's what the late, great Buckminster Fuller most likely have wanted.   Ditto for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and so many other great minds of the past and present.  It's a win-win-win situation for everyone but the oligarchs.  So what are we waiting for?

2018 Is the Year of the Woman

Well, it's official.  Women, mostly progressives, won a record number of political offices nationwide at all levels of government in this year's midterm elections.  Thus 2018 is the Year of the Woman, more than ever before.

Thus, this is the beginning of the end of not only the nefarious Trump regime, but also the patriarchy in general.  It is only a matter of time.  It seems that my initial prediction that Women will finally take over in 2030 in the USA and UK, and 2050 worldwide, may not be so farfetched after all.  Perhaps America's dark night of the soul (in which one can now finally see the very first glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel) really did have a purpose all along--to effectively accelerate the transition to Matriarchy, Goddess willing.

VIVE LA FEMME!  VIVE LA DIFFERENCE!