The Great Trade (Re-posted and Updated)

Part 1:

WOMAN:  Men only want one thing.  I mean, they are completely governed by their "Finger Eleven", if you catch my drift.

MAN:  "If I traded it all, if I gave it all away, for one thing...." (to quote lyrics by the band, literally named Finger Eleven).

WOMAN:  Keys to the kingdom, so we can finally reclaim our rightful place as the new leaders of the free world?

MAN:  Your terms are acceptable.

Part 2:

MODERN-DAY PHARISEE:  Not so fast, little lady.  For what shall it profit a woman, to gain the world and lose her soul?

WOMAN:  Excuse you, random man, but us Women can multitask just fine, thank you very much.  You must be projecting.

MODERN-DAY PHARISEE:  A man cannot serve two masters.

WOMAN:  True, a MAN cannot serve two masters.  But a master can have many servants.  Now go make me a sandwich!

MODERN-DAY PHARISEE:  (Speechless)

Part 3:

OVERT MISOGYNISTIC TROLL:  Something about locks and keys comes to mind, if you catch my drift.

MALE CONCERN TROLL:  Something about cows and milk comes to mind, if you catch my drift.

WOMAN:  Something about pencils and sharpeners comes to mind, if you catch my drift.  And something about fish and bicycles comes to mind as well, you redundant male trolls.  Like the song says, "get me out of your starry eyes, and be on your way".

BOTH TROLLS:  (Speechless)

WOMAN:  (Mic drop)

OK Ladies, Do You REALLY Want To Know How To Control Men? Here Are The Cheat Codes

One of the most vexing questions facing Women in both the Feminist and Matriarchy movements is, how to keep men from taking over once again when they are no longer in power?  The prevailing view that men are inherently dangerous and always will be, and thus will need to be controlled somehow or else they will inevitably run amuck, is not one that can simply be handwaved or wished away.  The problem has a name, and its name is MUTINY.  So how do you do it?  Psychology has an answer.

Here are the three, albeit very counterintuitive, "cheat codes":

1.  Men need to THINK that they are free, regardless of whether they actually are.

2.  No taxation without representation. 

3.  Bread and circuses galore.

All three should become very obvious to any serious student of history, and all three need to be maintained in perpetuity in order for it to work.

The first one can be seen throughout recorded history.  It's self-evident and self-explanatory.  Google "they thought they were free" to see the darker side of it, of course.  But that darker side has really only been seen with men in charge, that is, with men using it to control other men along with the Women.  Either way, it works, for good or ill, for better or worse.

In other words, men would need to have JUST enough freedom to think they are free.  And both Women and men would need to be treated as sovereign individuals over their own bodies and minds.  Anything less would be uncivilized. 

The second one has also been seen repeatedly to one degree or another, and not just because it's catchy and it rhymes.  Rather, the LACK of it is what often leads to mutiny, especially when combined with desperation.  From the American Revolution to the French Revolution and so on, it has happened before and will happen again if and when the circumstances are right.  But as long as men think they are being represented, and that they are getting something in return for their tax dollars, they will be willing to pay fairly high taxes, as we see in the Nordic countries (where taxes are very high, are collected simply and relatively painlessly, and they get very robust social welfare states in return, with very little to no poverty).  And even in some indigenous Matriarchal societies past and present, they have men as (puppet figurehead) "chiefs" to give at least the illusory perception of male representation, and they are all hired and fired by the Women elders.  (Hey, as long as men are not in any positions of real power, why not?)

(That said, too many male puppet figurehead "chiefs" or representatives can potentially be a problem simply by sheer strength in numbers, so unless one lives in an indigenous culture that has been doing it for literally centuries or more, having all or most representatives being male has the risk of backfiring.  For everyone else, aim for a majority of representatives being Women.)

Again, for men, perception is everything.  While I once thought it would be a good idea to openly tax men at higher rates than Women, I realize now that would be a much too vulgar display of power that would shatter such a perception.  Best to tax both genders equally, at least for the non-rich, but to distribute the benefits more heavily towards Women, especially Mothers.  Either way, the NET result is effectively the same over the lifecycle.

The third one is so obvious that one may overlook it, but it is true nonetheless.  From most famously in the Roman Empire in reality to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World in science fiction, one of the most effective and time-tested ways to prevent revolts or mutinies is cheap and readily available entertainment plus some form of dole.  And that only becomes more urgent in an increasingly high-tech and automated society where men become increasingly redundant.  In the 21st century and beyond, that can take the form of Universal Basic Income (UBI) and related ideas, as well as the emerging trend for the many dead and dying shopping malls to be converted primarily to entertainment centers for everyone.  In fact, in the wake of the ongoing "retail apocalypse", any currently successful mall has become at least partially if not largely entertainment-based these days (see The Mall of America in Minnesota, West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada, and even smaller ones like the Palisades Center in West Nyack, New York).

(About that last bit, I recall that the legendary Guru Rasa Von Werder had mentioned something like that in The Future of Male-Female Relationships, Part I.)

On a related note, in a world where in the not too distant future, Women become the richer gender, and inheritances eventually become largely (if not entirely) Matrilineal, it will eventually get to the point where the only rich men left will be lottery winners.  So keeping some form of lottery in existence (hopefully with somewhat better odds than currently!) would be a form of noblesse oblige for Women to allow for the increasingly redundant gender, that will keep the fellas somewhat motivated, I guess.

(Who needs a "man tax" when you have the "idiot tax"?  Also known as the lottery.)

Proactively create a society where rebellion is unthinkable, unprofitable, uncool, and impolitic in the first place, and there will be little or no need to reactively put down any kind of revolts or mutinies, in other words.  It will not work on 100% of men, of course, but it will work on at least 80-90% of them, on both a small and a large scale, and those few "mavericks" and rogues who remain impervious to such control would be greatly outnumbered and outgunned, and thus rendered nugatory, God willing. 

This is NOT to say that it should be all carrot and no stick, of course.  Granted, a combination of both to some degree is probably necessary.  But comfort truly is the ultimate cage when you really think about it, hence why the ancient Stoic philosophers had such a strong dislike for staying in their comfort zones. 

In contrast, other half-baked ideas such as Femdom (at least of the popular androcentric variety), bonoboism (or rather, faux-noboism), various forms of lifestylism, etc. simply don't SCALE very well.  In fact, anything that falls into the trap of androcentrism (that is, centering males) as opposed to gynocentrism, is essentially guaranteed to fail in practice. 

Let the planetary healing begin!

UPDATE:  While males clearly do NOT belong at the center of society, one should note that all successful Matriarchal societies past and present (both human and otherwise) are also just as careful not to marginalize males TOO much either, lest they ultimately form their own insular and dangerous subculture (think the equivalent of the "alt-right", neonazis, MAGA, MRA/PUA/MGTOW, tradcons, GamerGate, 4chan, 8chan, and worse), to the utter net detriment of all concerned.  It is a very fine line and a very delicate balancing act.

Poem: She Was Asking For It (Never Again)

Poem:  She Was Asking For It (Never Again)

By Ajax the Great (Pete Jackson)

(FIVE-ALARM TRIGGER WARNING:  rape and other violence against women, current and historical atrocities, misogyny, racism, antisemitism, genocide, gynocide)

A young woman was raped the other day

Like so many others every day

She was apparently "no angel"

She was a "wild party girl" who "broke all the rules"

What is your first thought, my friends

When you hear this horrible news?

I would hazard a guess you would give a stock answer:

"You know she was asking for it, right?"

I bet you would say the same 

About the Rape of the Sabine Women

Upon which Rome's (vain)glory was founded

They were asking for it too, right?

Would you say the same about the millions of women

Who were murdered, tortured, and raped 

During the Inquisition and the Burning Times?

They were asking for it too, right?

How about the First Nations women

Who were murdered, tortured, and raped

In the name of Manifest Destiny 

They were asking for it too, right?

How about the transatlantic slave trade?

You know the women didn't knock themselves up 

Forced to breed more "black ivory" for Master

They were asking for it too, right?

How about the women victims of the Spanish Civil War

Two terrors, Red and White 

Two sides of the same evil coin

They were asking for it too, right?

How about the very literal Rape of Nanjing

Mass murder, mass rape, and mass torture 

In the name of the Empire of the Rising Sun

They were asking for it too, right?

How about the Jews and countless others

During the Holocaust and otherwise 

Half of six million is three million women

They were asking for it too, right?

How about the devil with whom the Allies made a deal

A devil named Joseph Stalin

Whose army raped countless civilian women 

They were asking for it too, right?

Revenge for genocide tastes sweet at first

Then leaves a very bitter aftertaste 

Pay it forward, its name is Nakba, 1948

They were asking for it too, right?

Rape is the gift that keeps on giving

Cycle of violence, see October 7, 2023

A new day that will live in infamy

#MeToo unless you're a Jew, right?

A taste of the enemy's own medicine 

Becomes an overdose in the ruins of Gaza

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind

If everyone is asking for it, then who isn't?

Male desecration of the Sacred Feminine 

Sure as hell knows no bounds

The banality of evil writ very, very large

All masked by, "they were asking for it"

The Keystone Lie is thus laid waste

And with it, the whole stack of lies

Has now collapsed faster than you can say,

You guessed it:  "They were asking for it"

So let me ask you one more time again

About the young woman who was raped

Who was supposedly "no angel"

What is your answer now?

Because if your answer to her now

Is anything other than "NEVER AGAIN!"

With NO asterisks or qualifications

Then you, too, must be "asking for it".

(Mic drop)

ALTERNATE ABRIDGED VERSION:

Replace stanzas 11, 12, and 13 with the following two generic stanzas if one feels it is still too soon to include any references to current/recent events in the Middle East:

Revenge for genocide tastes sweet at first

Then leaves a very bitter aftertaste 

Rape is the gift that keeps on giving

They were asking for it too, right?

A taste of the enemy's own medicine 

Becomes an overdose in the ruins of war

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind

If everyone is asking for it, then who isn't?

Friendly Reminder: War Is STILL A Racket

 

(Updated for 2024, in light of current events.  See also this article as well.)

WAR.  It seems to be as old as time itself.  And so many people seem to think it is inevitable.  However, it turns out that is not really true. War is neither timeless nor inevitable.  It has a beginning, and it has an end.  The beginning was about 7000 years ago (with the advent of patriarchy), while the end will be coming very soon (with the inevitable fall of patriarchy and rise of Matriarchy in the not-too-distant future).  And the end can't come soon enough!

(Especially now with the world being at 90 seconds to midnight (!) on the Doomsday Clock. That is, the risk of nuclear war is the highest it has been in quite a while now.  If, God forbid, a "hot" war between the USA and Russia and/or China were to occur, the odds of it going nuclear are practically certain.)

Patriarchy inherently rewards aggression and violence, no doubt about that.  And it messes with our heads so as to condition us to accept such violence as normal.  And of course there is men's tendency to think that war and scarcity are inevitable, which become self-fulfilling prophecies.  Women, on the other hand, would tend to reject such backwards thinking if they were in charge.  The late, great Buckminster Fuller himself said as much.

But there is also another reason why war is likely to occur under patriarchy, and that reason is discussed in depth by Major General Smedley Butler in his 1935 book, War Is A Racket.  Put simply, war is indeed a racket that is designed to further enrich the already ultra-rich oligarchs.  In other words, its genesis is none other than evil and powerful men who are willing to lie, cheat, steal, and kill for filthy lucre, and those sycophantic lackeys and ignorant masses who are brainwashed and duped to go along with it.   And of course, we know that patriarchy itself inevitably leads to oligarchy in the first place due to its "might makes right" and "winner take all" paradigm (that is nowadays most often cleverly disguised by the persistent and utterly hollow myth of "meritocracy").

Indeed, patriarchy itself can be thought of as a gender war writ large, and the only way to end it once and for all--and all other wars that come from it--is for men to surrender to Women.  It's a war men have lost before the war even began, despite winning nearly every battle--men just don't realize it yet.

That said, General Butler's book is more about how the perennial racket of war actually works in practice, and how to smash it for good (as opposed to the why the oligarchy exists in the first place).  But it goes a very long way towards explaining it, and he would be spinning in his grave if he were to see today's massive, imperialistic war machine.

From the Wikipedia article:

In War Is a Racket, Butler points to a variety of examples, mostly from World War I, where industrialists, whose operations were subsidized by public funding, were able to generate substantial profits, making money from mass human suffering.

The work is divided into five chapters:

1. War is a racket
2. Who makes the profits?
3. Who pays the bills?
4. How to smash this racket!
5. To hell with war!

It contains this summary:

"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

Then he goes on to discuss who exactly profits from it and how.  It turns out it is not just weapons manufacturers, but also the big banks and other businesses that directly or indirectly deal with it as well.  In fact, the banksters are probably the biggest beneficiaries of war, since they lend money to finance it and then claw back so much in interest.  And manufacturers of non-weapons goods also have a market to sell their wares to in the military.  And of course, let's not forget all the resources plundered from the other countries as "spoils of war".

(And now we can add "defense contractors", aka mercenary corporations, such as DynCorp, Blackwater, Halliburton, KBR, Raytheon, et al. to the list of war profiteers as well.)

War is, of course, a negative-sum game overall.  It does not really create wealth on balance, it actually destroys far more than it creates.  But it certainly brings in a ludicrous amount of ill-gotten wealth in the form of profit, plunder, and usury for the oligarchy.  As for the idea that it "stimulates the economy" in the short run, that is technically true, but as neo-Keynesian economist Dr. Paul Krugman has famously noted years ago, a faked alien invasion would be every bit as stimulating, but without all of the serious side effects such as countless deaths, injuries, PTSD, family breakdown, resource depletion, pollution, ecological damage, and property damage.

In other words, it steals, kills, and destroys.  Kinda like....SATAN. 

And guess who foots the bill for it all?  You guessed it--the taxpayers.  The oligarchs pull the wool over our eyes, while laughing all the way to the bank.  But truly the biggest part of the bill is paid for in blood by the soldiers themselves.  And even for those who survive the horrors of war, it still takes its toll on them regardless, both physically and psychologically.  And these soldiers generally hail not from the ranks of the wealthy, but rather from the poor and broader working class.  Not much has changed in that regard today, it seems.

(Note that since the gold standard was abolished in 1971, our Monetarily Sovereign federal government does not actually need taxes to fund anything, since they can just "print" (create) the money now if they wanted.  But since wars inherently chew through ludicrous amounts of non-monetary resources, all wars are thus inflationary regardless, so We the People still pay for it in the form of higher prices.)

And that's to say nothing of the human toll of civilians in the other countries as well, who bear the brunt of it.

Then, General Butler discusses how to smash this evil racket once and for all.  To summarize, the three steps are as follows:  1) Take the profit out of war, 2) Put it up to a vote (limited to those who would be eligible for the draft) as to whether or not a war should be declared, and 3) Limit our military forces to home defense purposes.  Otherwise, nothing will stop the racket.

Again, as noted on Wikipedia:

In the booklet's penultimate chapter, Butler recommended three steps to disrupt the war racket:

1. Making war unprofitable. Butler suggests that the means for war should be "conscripted" before those who would fight the war:

It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war. The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labour before the nation's manhood can be conscripted. […] Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our steel companies and our munitions makers and our ship-builders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted — to get $30 a month [NOTE: that's $667/month in 2024 dollars], the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.

2. Acts of war to be decided by those who fight it. He also suggests a limited referendum to determine if the war is to be fought. Eligible to vote would be those who risk death on the front lines.
3. Limitation of militaries to self-defense. For the United States, Butler recommends that the Navy be limited, by law, to operating within 200 miles of the coastline, and the Army restricted to the territorial limits of the country, ensuring that war, if fought, can never be one of aggression. 

Indeed, the time to end all of this insanity and evil is yesterday.  So what do we do in the meantime while patriarchy still exists?  Thus, inspired by Butler, I propose that a new law be passed that we call the War Pigs Act, named after both the ineffectual and toothless War Powers Resolution of 1973 and the 1970 Black Sabbath song "War Pigs".  The first part of the new law would put some teeth in the War Powers Act by closing the loopholes and holding the President liable for any consequences of a war that is not authorized by Congress and is not during a state of emergency caused by an attack on the USA.  And absent a formal declaration of war by Congress, absolutely NO war may last beyond 90 days (60 days followed by a 30 day withdrawal), save for a temporary authorization of force that expires 90 days after the authorization passes or 180 days after the war began (if it began before the new law went into effect), whichever occurs first.  After that, there must be a formal declaration of war, or the war must end.  Period.

The second part of the law would implement some of General Butler's recommendations from his book, taking into account that we currently have an all-volunteer military.  Take the profit out of war, first of all.  Use the tax code to do so.  And for any war lasting beyond six months (which by definition would now require a formal declaration of war), require an annual limited plebiscite of all citizens that would be eligible for military service.  Make it a non-secret ballot such that those who vote "yes" would be drafted if we run out of volunteers, followed by those who abstain from the vote if necessary.  Those who vote "no" would be exempt from any such draft.  A kind of "consensual conscription", if you will.  We would all have skin in the game.  Women would be included as well, but before they draft the very first Woman, we should draft men in their 40s and 50s first.  That's the demographic group who starts the wars but rarely fights them.  It's only fair, right fellas?  Watch as war becomes a thing of the past, at least for the stupid ones and decade(s) long quagmires like Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.

(It would also be a good idea to do like the Iroquois once did:  give Women elders the power to VETO any decision to go to war.  That alone would prevent essentially all wars that are not waged in strict and absolute defense of the homeland.)

For the record, I am personally 100% against the draft on principle.  Unless absolutely necessary, I view it as a form of slavery and involuntary servitude, and if there were ever such a thing as a truly just war (as per St. Augustine's Just War Theory criteria), which is about as rare as a unicorn, conscription would be unnecessary, since volunteers would be plentiful.  And today's technology further makes it largely obsolete to raise such large numbers of boots on the ground.  But since nuance, gray areas, and exceptions that prove every rule do in fact exist in the real world (see WWII and the American Civil War, for example), I will note that if we ever must have a draft, only those who voted yes (or chose not to vote) for such a war should be drafted.

General Butler was a true American hero and patriot.  After his distinguished career in the United States Marine Corps including during WWI (during and after which he eventually found out just how much of a racket it really was), he later quashed an attempted Wall Street fascist coup against FDR's government in 1933-1934.  Yes, there really was a plot by the Rockefellers, Mellon Bank, Standard Oil, General Motors, Goodyear, US Steel, and many others (including pro-Nazi forces!) to overthrow the federal government and install their own fascist dictatorship do their bidding, complete with concentration camps for, in their own words, "Jews and other undesirables".  And the money for the plot bankrolled by the big banks/corporations was funneled through Prescott Bush's companies (yes, THAT Bush, who also did business with the Nazis as well).  They all thought they could use Butler for the plot and he pretended to play along at first, only to foil their plot by telling Congress about it just before it went ahead.  He literally saved America from falling to full-blown fascism, in other words.  He was indeed history's original whistleblower, and then in 1935, he wrote his magnum opus, which unfortunately fell on deaf ears the world over.  

War was a racket then, and still is today.  And it always will be as long as it exists.

As General Butler famously said, 

"TO HELL WITH WAR!"

"Either war is obsolete, or man is."

-- Buckminster Fuller

"War, what is it good for?  Absolutely NOTHING!"

-- Edwin Starr

"Come the war, come the avarice, come the war, come hell...Come attrition, come the reek of bones, come attrition, come hell...This is why, why we fight, why we lie awake...And this is why, this is why we fight..."

-- The Decemberists

"Now the labor leader's screaming when they close the missile plant, United Fruit screams at the Cuban shore. Call it peace or call it treason, call it love or call it reason, but I ain't marching anymore."

-- Phil Ochs

"I declare the war is over, it's over, it's over..."

-- Phil Ochs

"But the hardest thing I'll ask you, if you would only try, is take your children by their hands and look into their eyes.  And there you'll see the answer you should have seen before.  If we win the wars at home, there'll be no fighting anymore"

-- Phil Ochs 

"We share the same biology, regardless of ideology. But what might save us, me and you, Is if the Russians love their children too"

-- Sting and Sergei Prokofiev 

New Name For Blog: "Vive La Difference!"

Recently, I thought that the original blog name "The Chalice and the Flame" was getting a bit too stale and obscure to keep it any longer.  Then I thought of the famous French phrase, "Vive la difference!", as a better alternative.  Literally meaning "long live the difference" (that is, between Women and men), I feel it is a bit more to the point for this blog.  

To avoid causing any technical difficulties, the legacy URL, http://thechaliceandtheflame.blogspot.com, will continue to be used for the time being.

Vive la femme!  Vive la difference!

NOTE:  This blog is NOT affiliated with either Riane Eisler (author of "The Chalice and the Blade") or the Unitarian Universalist Church (whose symbol is a flaming chalice).

Patriarchy Has A Kill Switch, And We Already Know What It Is (Updated Re-Post)

(Original version of this article from 2020 can be found here)

Author Yuri Zavorotny wrote a great article four years ago for Medium, in which he articulates something that we all intuitively know (but often don't want to say out loud) about the patriarchy and how to end it.  After first establishing that patriarchy is inherently evil (and thus cannot be redeemed), he then goes on about what holds it all together.  This thing that holds the entire construct all together is its sine qua non and thus is it's own Achilles' heel, and that thing is control of female sexuality, and the primary tool used to control that is slut-shaming.  That is, the shaming of Women for expressing their sexuality in the way they choose.  And thus the "kill switch" is to put an end to this utterly toxic and outmoded practice of slut-shaming.

Wait, what?  There is still slut-shaming in 2024?  Absolutely.  It has diminished somewhat since the (largely male-defined) "sexual revolution" half a century ago, to be sure, but it is still there.  The double standard still exists, and it has in fact become more of a double bind in which Women are expected to be "sexy" (as defined by males) but not sexual by their own definition.  And ending it is thus the unfinished business of both feminism and the real sexual revolution for Women.

(Most ironically, even today to some extent, some Women often still enforce it on each other as well--talk about being one's own worst enemy!  At best, that's NOT a sisterhood, that's a cartel, driven by an internalized misogynistic slave mentality.)

That's not the only double bind here, there is also the historical one in which Women are expected to both obey men as well as be the "gatekeepers" of sex, with no way to opt out of either contradictory requirement.

As Yuri Zavorotny himself says:

So here is our kill switch: we stop telling women when, where and with whom she is allowed to get involved romantically. Her body, her choice. And she is perfectly capable of making it a responsible choice, thank you very much.

And lest anyone misunderstand his words, read too much into it, or try to put words in his mouth:

NOTE: This is not to suggest that anyone should change their own behavior. We do whatever we are comfortable with. That, of course, includes staying monogamous, still a perfectly valid choice. But it can not be justified as a moral choice anymore -- rather, it is a personal preference.

Female sexuality (or more accurately, female-defined sexuality) is an extremely powerful force to be reckoned with, which is why the patriarchy has gone out of its way to suppress it (and/or supplant it with male-defined sexuality).  As I have repeatedly noted before, the suppression of Women's sexuality was not entirely about maintaining control over the male bloodline (though that was originally a major part of it), but more generally about power and control over Women directly, as well as over other men indirectly via artificial scarcity.  Ditto for patriarchy's equally peculiar prohibitions against self-pleasuring and homosexuality as well.  Let that sink in for a moment. 

In a similar vein, patriarchy's favorite brainchild, capitalism, needs scarcity (whether real or artificial) to function.  That is how the oligarchs control the serfs.  And the kill switch of capitalism is thus to give it the one thing it cannot surivive--abundance.  The analogy should be apparent now.

Ending slut-shaming will not end patriarchy overnight, of course, but is nonetheless necessary for it to end sooner rather than later.  And if we wait until we return to full-blown Matriarchy before liberating Women's sexuality, we will never be ready, as Women's sexual liberation is a key step on the path to Matriarchy.  That is, if we make the perfect the enemy of the good, we ultimately end up with neither.

Furthermore, as I have noted in another article, any attempt at a reactionary "sexual counterrevolution" is of course doomed to backfire and ultimately fail to benefit Women on balance.  Ditto for any conservative, reactionary, neoliberal, anti-modernist, primitivist, or pseudo-feminist attempts to dismantle the social welfare state as well, by the way.

One thing needs to be crystal clear.  As hard as we fight for the right to say "yes" to sex, we must also fight at least twice as hard for the right to say "NO" as well.  The LAST thing we want is for sex of any kind to be perceived as mandatory in any way, so enthusiastic and mutual consent must be a precondition for all sexual acts, period.  And that is true for both Women and men, by the way.  Also, we must be careful not to fall in the trap of the "reverse double standard" that has become in vogue in some circles these days (Oprah and Dr. Phil, I'm looking at YOU!), in which men are the ones vilified for their sexuality while Women are ignored (if not celebrated) for doing the same exact things.  Doing so is a sure path to a sort of "reverse patriarchy", not the Matriarchy proper that we should be aiming for.  The same goes for a "reverse double bind" as well, which is also infantilizing to Women.

(Note that there is in fact NO proven precedent in all of recorded history where Women had sexual freedom but men did not, or at least not for long enough to ever be recorded, probably because doing so is mathematically impossible without creating a massive "black market" for sex per the iron laws of supply and demand.)

Put simply:  Women should have the absolute right to be as sexual--or not--as they themselves want to be, without the need for justification or apology to anyone, period.  To quote the legendary Guru Rasa Von Werder:

My associate Ajax the Great & I agree, sexual freedom is the KILL SWITCH FOR PATRIARCHY.  When Women do whatever they want sexually, & no longer fear men, men will have nothing to fight for.  Consider a ram with his harem. The harem runs off & mates with the other guys in the woods.  No more head banging, lol.  We will end war by being sexually free."

Liberty (sexual or otherwise) is NOT a zero-sum game.  In fact, liberty is like love:  the more you give, the more you get. 

So what are we waiting for?  Kill Switch Engage!  Let the planetary healing begin!

The Faustain Bargain That Wasn't, Or, Shutting Down The Agora Did NOT Benefit The Hestia (Combined And Updated Re-Post)

One perennial theme that seems to run through some circles of the Goddess Movement and Matriarchy Movement is the idea that Women made a sort of Faustian bargain during the Second Wave of Feminism in the 1960s and 1970s.  That deal, as the narrative goes, consisted of essentially "assimilating" into patriarchy by becoming more like men (i.e. less feminine and more masculine) or at least aspiring to the privileges once reserved for men.  And that is supposedly a very, very Bad Thing, as it supposedly represents the ultimate triumph of men over Women, and thus the ultimate triumph of the patriarchy.   The term "Female Erasure" is sometimes used to describe it as well, though the connotation varies.

Gender essentialism aside, this narrative indeed has all of the makings of a good story, except that it isn't really true.  What is sometimes called the "Eclipse" of the 1960s (or 1970s or 1980s, depending on one's perspective) does superficially seem to fit this narrative.  Instead of the patriarchy chewing Women up and spitting them out as in the pre-1960s world, this time Women appear to have been swallowed whole.  But what better way to finally destroy the patriarchy than from within?  In the belly of the beast, Women have been gaining almost unprecedented power, and soon they will be able to burst through and finally lay waste to that evil system once and for all, and replace it with their own, Goddess willing.

After all, sometimes darkness can show you the Light.  And besides, the apparently increasing aggression of Women actually began with suffragette and First Wave Feminist icon Emmeline Pankhurst, half a century before the 1960s even began.  Even Nikola Tesla remarked upon it in a 1924 interview, also predicting (quite accurately, it now seems) that Women would eventually take over the world.

So it appears that this so-called Faustian bargain was really not one at all.  And those purists and "retreatists", as I like to call them, who claim it is and want to somehow reverse it can easily find themselves to be inadvertent strange bedfellows with the reactionary Phyllis Schlaflys and other anti-feminist counterrevolutionaries of the world.  Unless, of course, that was really their intention all along.

Furthermore, the theory can be empirically tested in real time simply by taking a good and honest look at the consequences of the initial acute (and later chronic and rolling) Covid lockdowns and shutdowns of 2020-2021 in most of the world.  I mean, what better way to test if there was a net benefit shutting down or retreating from the supposedly hopelessly corrupt and irredeemable Agora (i.e. marketplace, or public sphere), in favor of the Hestia (i.e. home and hearth, or private sphere).  Had the theory been true, we would all be having a massive renaissance by now.  And, well, we all know the answer now:  it was in practice an unmitigated disaster in so many ways for everyone but the oligarchs, and especially so for Women as a class, setting them back decades in a matter of months, and still not fully recovered four years later.  I mean, after the "plague" should come the Renaissance once again, if history is any guide, but alas, that did not happen.  Neoliberalism is now worse than ever.

In other words, as I like to say, retreatism is defeatism.

And rest assured, try as treacherous men may, the true Divine Feminine can never, ever be truly erased or extinguished, as to do so would literally impossible.  And once Women reclaim their rightful place as the new leaders of the free world, then we will really know that for certain, Goddess willing.

Oh, and by the way, anyone who thinks that AI or robots will somehow successfully replace Women will be in for a very rude awakening.  After all, it is the SPIRIT that quickens (gives life), NOT the flesh, and AI literally has NEITHER spirit nor flesh.