So women waste 50Bn litres of water annually shaving legs...

[madwomanintheattic]

interesting that the eco advice is to turn the water off whilst you wield the razor, rather than not shave them at all...

The water companies' profits will continue to increase and the peasants will continue to pay more tax, and the peasants will willingly accept it because they have been progressively, step by step, been educated to be green.

Valetude

It isn't that it's anti-woman, more that it picks on one gender type and with an issue that said gender type has been conditioned to engage in over centuries.

claig: :D

Maybe that was the wrong message. I agree with everything Claig has written.

Dworking, SGB said 'An awful lot of eco crap is anti-women' that's what I was referring to.
I mean, obviously this daft headline is (see my post near the beginning of the thread).

I think the 'eco crap' is anti all of the ordinary people and serves the interests of only the elites, who wish to restrict ordinary people's use of resources, be that water, electricity, fuel, heat, dishwashers etc. etc. It is about 'sustainability' for the elites, about control over ordinary people and rationing of their resources.

It is anti everybody, but it involves turning back the clock to a 'sustainable' heyday of bygone times and therefore may end up having an anti-woman, anti-family effect.

or maybe the eco messages are more often about maintaining traditional gender roles - so bf longer, use washable (ha) nappies to prevent landfill etc. recycle (get all you little women down the thrift shop to buy second hand or make your own clothes) sometimes the direction of the advice does seem to rather ignore male dominated public industry and concentrate on wifework or cottage indursty (as well as shaving yer pins, natch.).

oo, x post, but my tinternet froze up. yy, what she said ^^

but it's good for the children and the future, hence has got to be wimmin's business, don't forget. our responsibility. and all that.

not that i don't have a strong eco stance personally, just i sometimes wince at the pr angle...

Or maybe people should just turn off the damn tap when they're shaving. Seriously, how much of an arsehole do you have to be not to do this? Idem with teeth brushing.

The message that the real 'eco' enthusiasts have not yet told the public about is population control and restriction of the size of families. The elites don't want too many peasants using too many resources.

Today's message is 'sustainability' and now it seems 'water conscience', one day it will 'family size conscience', all done one progressive step at a time.

www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jul/17/population-control-beckham-family

Wonders: if we did actually "save" water, what would we do with it? Send it to Africa?

OK I think this is all a bit thin.
Unless you go back to handwashing in the stream, you are still using a washing machine and frankly most likely a dishwasher (eco-consciousness being most-likely a middle to upper middle class hobby these days). Afaik both a man and a woman can use those machines and we did when we used washables. They also involve industry, as does the eco-detergent scene.

Breastfeeding: I have never, not once, seen the 'breastfeeding as oppression/formula as freedom' argument put forth or discussed here on MN and frankly it's a braver person than I who might start that thread. It's a well-accepted discussion in the US I think.

For me, the eco thing involves a lot of non-consumption, recycling, reuse, fixing, growing and sharing: I don't see it as gender specific

The 'good for children' thing I have honestly heard as much from eco-conscious men as from women, if not more so. These aren't men with Big Jobs who leave their womenfolk to run the house according to eco principles. They are men with clapped out trucks who DO Stuff and lots of it involves kids and families.
I honestly don;t see rampant sexism here (though it is kind of everywhere so I 'm not writing the notion off )

claig "The message that the real 'eco' enthusiasts have not yet told the public about is population control and restriction of the size of families. The elites don't want too many peasants using too many resources."

Is there actually any intelligent person in the developed world that doesn't know we have a population problem?

'It is a view that is being pushed by the UK-based Optimum Population Trust, whose chief executive, Simon Ross, is calling for the government to tackle the UK's high rates of accidental pregnancy and to give child benefits and tax credits only for the first two children. "That would send a clear signal that the government will support sustainable families, but after that you are on your own," he said.'

It fits in nicely with the benefit cuts agenda and the labelling of people as irresponsible scroungers etc.

It's all part of that lovely green word 'sustainability'. Who could possibly be against that?

I don't see it as gender specific either but studies do show that women do more housework than men, despite working the same hours (yes, I'm including childcare in that scenario; stick your unfettered penis into a vagina and you end up with a baby matey).

Somehow the image of men sorting out dirty nappies doesn't compute; they are happy to sit in front of the tele doing the valuable task of 'feeding baby'.

OK, I know someone who is involved in the Optimum Population Trust.
Your assessment could not be more wrong.
I'm quite sad that he might get labelled like that. He truly believes that the Earth (not England) has too many people and we all need to think about how we live.
It might be pie in the sky but it's not the social hatred and control that you are suggesting.

'Is there actually any intelligent person in the developed world that doesn't know we have a population problem?'

It's a lie, it's the same Malthusian lie the elites used in the 19th century and early twentieth century, when certain Fabian socialists talked about wiping out large parts of humanity who they considered inferior.

Today's message is about irresponsible shaving and irresponsible use of water, tomorrow's will be about irresponsible people and irresponsible families. Then we will back with the Fabian socialists like HG Wells and their solutions for the irresponsible masses.

Right - what a lot of old pantaloons, Dworkin.
This is looking like 'oh let's find an issue and turn it into 'men are shits'.

Valetude, read HG Wells to see what the real leading thinkers thought. Lots of individuals fall for it all, but they aren't the people who really create the agenda. They are the followers who have been progressively educated.

Dworkin "I don't see it as gender specific either but studies do show that women do more housework than men, despite working the same hours" Surely the change in this scenario should be that men and women do the same number of hours of housework, rather than ecologists should stop talking about household waste for fear of seeming anti-women?

I'm not even going to argue, claig. I don't recognise what you're talking about.

How is it a lie, claig? Even taking into consideration the widely differing consumption of resources between a family in the developed world, and a family in the developing world, it is still clear that we are producing more people than we can currently support.
And if even the merest suggestion of resource conservation by people in the developed world, such as limiting water consumption, is going to attract accusations of anti-women, anti-humananitarian bollocks, well then we're all fucked, aren't we? What exactly do you propose we do now so?