Good luck Harry The Owl

By and large religions are/were organised to control people in general and women in particular.

Plus ca change.

Perhaps.

Just to be clear, the first part you've quoted was a cross post - it was a response to xxyzz's post upthread.

Yes, but that wasn't my point. My point was how on earth are we still falling into that authoritarian trap, having managed to briefly shake it off?

men are not falling into any trap - this part of their quid pro quo contract with other men, so that all men can rule over women.

Some women press for it too

Stockholm Syndrome??

Mae, yes, people. This isn't sustained simply because all men press for it. Some women press for it too, and there are certainly men who see the loss to society of checking our collective brains out. I guess it's still worth it to them, but still. I'm on a downer today, tbh.

Yes, but that wasn't my point. My point was how on earth are we still falling into that authoritarian trap, having managed to briefly shake it off?

Why are people so incredibly stupid and self-sabotaging?

people ??

For men, patriarchy is not stupid or self-sabotaging -

“Men agreed to be ruled by other men in return for all men ruling over women.”

BarbaraStrozzi - interesting discussion.

I agree with you that religion has historically been used to underpin authoritarian rule.

But equally eg under Communism, religion was blocked precisely because it was understood that it would pose a risk to the Dear Leader if there was an alternate ultimate source of power and judgement.

And as Floral unintentionally points out, it is now that the last vestiges of organised religion have declined that we can have a state where there is in effect a power vacuum in terms of moral authority - which is being rapidly filled by deliberate disinformation.

I'm not arguing that there was nothing problematic about living under religious authority - clearly there was, more or less, depending on the religion and era - but rather that the alternative to religious authority is not enlightened rational society but a differently labelled form of authoritarianism. And not necessarily a better one.

I'm not disagreeing, not in the least, but this is bugging me. I know it's true, but I'm trying to get my head around the mentality that seems content to jettison the solid, society-wide gains of a material reality understood, scientific knowledge, genuine liberty and progress for a flimsy mirage, simply to maintain the status quo of the patriarchy.

On a personal level, once you escape the pull of cultic superstition, you relish the firm ground beneath your feet so much that the idea of going back to those mindsets just doesn't seem possible. I have loved being free enough to examine ideas I had always just been told were evil and to be shunned - it's been a revelation to me to learn about class analysis, politically, after imbibing so much extreme right wing 'anything to the left of the American Christian Right is of the devil'. I couldn't go back to ignorance.

So yes, I get it on one level, that power seems to hold on, but I am continually boggled by the willingness of people to go along with this.

TL;DR Why are people so incredibly stupid and self-sabotaging?

I mean, what happened? Did the brief period of materialist sense collectively scare the penis havers because they realized reason will lead to freedom, so society must be dragged back into the ephemeral, where understood words are cannibalized and no one knows which way is up anymore? Why is everyone going along with this morass of gibberish?

Forces behind Trans Gender Identity Ideology

Homophobic Religions – Islam and Most Other Religious Denominations.

Pharmaceutical and Medical Industry.

Organisations with rigid views of sex roles - 4 year old boy with long hair

Men with autogynephilia and other fetishes, paedophiles, men who want to seed naked women and girls, men who also want to physically abuse, rape and kill women and girls.

Even if this is not all men, given that there are nearly 4 Billion men in the world, that is still a lot of “brain and man power” looking 24/7 for opportunities and loopholes against the safeguarding of women.

Just the power of white men was enough to enable Apartheid to survive into the 1990s, now add to that - men of all colours and flavors.

As seen by the response pattern of FloraJO QC, men know they are safe as long they answer to other men - with or without a penis.

Men are united in maintaining patriarchy but sadly women are not united against it.

It's not complicated at base that men will put their needs, and for some reason their orgasms as a very high priority. Fuck knows why. I mean, I like sex as much as anyone, but I can't imagine ripping apart lives to have an orgasm.

But men being very determined is a driver - it still doesn't explain why, as a society, we've gone from centuries of metaphysical beliefs enabling the control of society and keeping women as chattels, to a brief period of enlightenment, where physical realities and the scientific method held away, and eventually women were able to break through to begin to make society fairer, and now we are willingly free-wheeling back into superstitious woo holding prominence.

I mean, what happened? Did the brief period of materialist sense collectively scare the penis havers because they realized reason will lead to freedom, so society must be dragged back into the ephemeral, where understood words are cannibalized and no one knows which way is up anymore? Why is everyone going along with this morass of gibberish?

Perfect example of the white knight recognition from men being more important then women is FloraJo QC.

It is more important for him, the white knight recognition he gets from other men - tw and woke men in his peer group then the women in his peer group - eg. Joanna Cherry.

TheProdigal / Floral

Is it that complicated?

Men have fetishes.

Men want to see women and girls naked.

Men wan to abuse others (ideally without risk –women/children 1st choice).

Men are always looking for opportunities and loopholes to achieve their aims - 24/7.

Women have to fight and plead to have safeguarding rules and close up loopholes whenever discovered to stop these men achieving their aims.

Men will stop each other from achieving their aims if it directly benefits them in protecting “their" women AND getting white knight recognition from other men in particular - note - IT HAS TO BE BOTH.

Currently men are supporting each other in exploiting and abusing women under the umbrella and loop holes of trans gender identity ideology because the benefit to himself is greater then the white knight recognition he will get from other men in stopping themselves and other men.

Men do not support trans racial identity ideology because that impacts on other men and so stopping this gets white knight recognition from other men.

Yeah, I think that's a very benign view of religion, tbh, and I say that as a Catholic convert.

Besides, what I was really focusing on was going from unprovable metaphysics and presuppositionalism to the solid grounding of understanding the material world and the scientific method, all the way back to Clownfish and inner essences over-riding physical reality and words losing all meaning.

Agreed. There are authoritarians at all points on the left/right spectrum. Those of us for whom authoritarianism makes us frustrated will often be most frustrated when it's coming from our own side because we, arguably rather naively, expect to be able to reason with them.

With this issue making for odd bedfellows I (lifelong atheist), given that I see genderism in its present form as a sort of religion, would love to see its adherents attempt to debate with a Jesuit. This is because I am sometimes not a very nice person.

(Does anyone doubt that the Jesuit would win? They don't tend to be very impressed with verbal opponents who throw their toys out of the pram and storm off in a huff.)

Which! That's got to be one of the weirdest readings of history I've seen. Religious societies (England post reformation eg, with priest holes and heresy trials, Spain under Ferdinand and Isabella, Iran under the Ayatollahs, Pakistan with its trials for blasphemy) - these guys wrote the rule book on authoritarianism.

Though I suspect properly understood, a tendency to embrace authoritarian rule (as a source of comfort and stability and security) is a fairly common part of the human condition, with perhaps 50% of the population leaning this way. The form of political system it gets bolted onto - theocracy, monarchy, feudal, left wing, right wing, is a matter of contingent historical fact but the tendency to embrace it is sadly always there.

Robert Altemeyer's book The Authoritarians is very good on this.

Floral - I fond it odd that you find it odd that the decline of religion has led to post-modernism and the end of absolute truth

Religion was what underpinned society's moral and factual certainties, as an agreed frame of reference. It wasn't afraid to state that eg killing people was wrong or Male and female were different. Clearly since religious certainties were problematic eg relations eg relating to homosexuality. However in throwing out religious certainties as a society we have thrown out the baby with the bathwater and also removed the moral and ontological ( is that the right word?) underpinning for accepted beliefs AND knowledge.

When you look at authoritarian societies in general, they've usually achieved this by removal of religion, or failing that capture of religion, because religion ie God is set above the whims of whichever dictator it is.

There's also luxury communism: the revolution will be merchandised

Ha, yes. I know who you're talking about there.

Looking forward to the premium range of t-shirts with "this is what a communist looks like."

yes, I expect people who used to throw around the acronym derived from 'westernised oriental gentleman' thought that was factual and inoffensive too

You learn something new every day! Yep, I had no idea. Put like that, it sounds almost complimentary!

Solidarity from a fellow backwater dweller! Queer theory has not arrived here yet but it's only a matter of time.

Another backwater dweller here. But I get the feeling that rural Ireland will remain resistant to queer theory.

Who knew that we'd escape the crushing weight of state backed religion and superstition into an enlightenment and the grounding of a material understanding of reality and freedom of thought, only to throw ourselves into a new ignorance where we believe we are whatever we are in our fancies and we take language and detach it from any real meaning.

There's also luxury communism: the revolution will be merchandised!

Wankers.

Even seeing "anarcho capitalism" typed out makes me grind my teeth.

I also think a lot of what was taken as being left-wing in the past, is different from modern leftist discourse.

Yes. Last time I took one of those online political orientation tests it pegged me as an anarchist - very very left, very very anti authoritarian. Problem is, what now calls itself anarchism is authoritarian as hell, and I want absolutely nothing to do with it. Running around dressed up like a stormtrooper trying to scare people into being woke is going to achieve nothing other than a backlash and a political shift towards more authoritarianism.

The term "anarcho capitalism" is a sign of how thoroughly degraded the modern left's understanding of its own founding principles is.

I don't really feel much tribalism in terms of media any more. When I do it's more disappointment with how poor a job "my" papers are doing of covering important things rather than discomfort that other papers are doing a better one. The Guardian's Cologne article pretty much killed any residual loyalty I felt towards them, and now I'm willing to read news from pretty much any outlet, you just have to keep what their bias is in mind and filter through that.

FWIW I've always felt like The Times is the least biased of our major papers. It's still there sometimes, but it's not as front and center as it is with either The Guardian or The Telegraph. It doesn't surprise me that they started digging into what was going on with the gender stuff before the rest did, though I still give massive credit to Janice Turner for her persistence in the face of constant efforts to shut her down.

Thanks all for your posts and tweets. The wit and intellect here helps me think so much more around these subjects than I would otherwise. I thought I was reasonably clever until I visited FWR!
Ps can we use Fatman and Bobbin anyway?

I can hear the gnashing of teeth from Fatman and Bobbin.
[...]
Sorry, wrong thread

Aww, what! I completely assumed you were talking about Lolsuit and the deranged Doc!

Disappointed.