Is someone pulling all our strings?

[Outoftheshadow]

It seems like there’s battles raging all over the place:
Attacks of free speech, no platforming, Twitter bans, Amazon refusing to sell books on body dysmorphia, attacks on democracy, Brexit, Scexit, denial of sex, butchering children, men believing they are woman, young girls believing they are boys, trans women are woman, COVID, misinformation, dwindling independent news outlets. rise in porn culture and I’m sure the list goes on.

The only sad constants are continued male dominance over woman, racism and religious conflicts.

It feels like we’re part of a war but we’re all so focused on the battle, we dont know who the real enemy is.

As Sun Tzu said over 2000 years ago ‘all warfare is based on deception’ (paraphrased) and he should know, he wrote the book on it.

Women's rights aren't anti trans.

I keep waiting for my cheque from these shadowy US groups but I haven't received one.

That’s the problem- trans people believe we are enemy and they are so consumed In this belief that they can’t hear the message being spoken by those offering the olive branch.
Knowing who the real enemy is a good place to start. IT certainly seems to know much about us, perhaps IT too has read Sun Tzu.

‘Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. When you are ignorant of the enemy, but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril’

Men will never hear the enemy approaching. Their ‘child’ is built in their image and the balance of power is stacked in their favour. Women rarely fight for power. They fight for survival, to protect their children and other women from tyranny. Perhaps the Trojan horse is already amongst us and maybe it’s time to raise the alarm to those ‘men’ who are slapping hemselves on the back admiring the horse.

I worry there are so many loud trans activist voices that are not speaking for the majority, that the real issues for them are lost and those loud voices stir up hatred and misrepresent. But where are the other voices? Are they silenced too? Really, we should be an ally that can offer the most help as we know what it is like to be on the receiving end of hatred.

The enemy, however, is the human race and the society that had been created. This is more than female issues, I think somewhere, we took the wrong turn. The battle for sex is just a battle in a war, against something larger.

Yes, we are all complicit in this war, a failing due to our nature no doubt. With regards listening to the voices on the other side, agree, but then it’s hard to hear the cries of a drowning man when you too feel you’re drowning beside them

Love your name too Icenii

I keep waiting for my cheque from these shadowy US groups but I haven't received one.

If you get yours, could you PM me? There must be a hold up with the transatlantic mail.

@Hibari

Probably. There's definitely an element on this site that make me think you've been infiltrated. I say this having seen several people defending everything from COVID denial to far right pundits to the Heritage Foundation in my brief time here.

...and seeing that, I can't help but think back to the stuff from a while back about American far-right christian groups funding some anti-trans people with hope of driving a wedge between or otherwise destabilizing both the LGBT community and feminist groups...so it wouldn't shock me if they've continued with that and expanded upon it.

Omg not the Heritage Foundation 😱

Please. They are just a conservative, pro-business group. Think establishment Republicans. You don’t have to like them, but they aren’t a far-right hate group ffs 🤦‍♀️

I watched some Russell Brand You Tube videos yesterday. Some have 2 million views.
Plus other monied things to watch - keep an eye on IMF[financial] and World Economic Forum[business, financial and political].

There probably always has been things going on behind the scenes so to speak.

As regards feminism, Arcus I have been told on MN is the one to watch.

Here's an Economist article from back in 2017 that I think is still relevant.

www.economist.com/leaders/2017/11/04/do-social-media-threaten-democracy

Scandal, outrage and politics
Do social media threaten democracy?
Facebook, Google and Twitter were supposed to save politics as good information drove out prejudice and falsehood. Something has gone very wrong

Everyone’s denying everything, we have few anchors left that aren’t being attacked . I’ll just wait until they start saying that the sun is the moon, then we will all be cast adrift.
A confused enemy is an enemy who can easily be conquered!

A guy in the Social Dilemma film on Netflix said something like "just remember when you are laughing at the flat earthers that at some point you will be the one believing falsehoods" (paraphrasing). Government absolutely must do its job and stop fawning over big tech in the name of progresss just because the CEOs are young and wear hoodies. When the UN is saying that Facebook played a determining role in a genocide it is really time to act.

There's not a single political party that represents females and what we want and all the good things that would come from equal sex, it would have a knock on effect to so many other issues. Yet, no new party would ever gain power. People need to infiltrate those already in place. All of them. Right to left.

@tellmetologoffIamaMNaddict

A guy in the Social Dilemma film on Netflix said something like "just remember when you are laughing at the flat earthers that at some point you will be the one believing falsehoods" (paraphrasing). Government absolutely must do its job and stop fawning over big tech in the name of progresss just because the CEOs are young and wear hoodies. When the UN is saying that Facebook played a determining role in a genocide it is really time to act.

But that's the thing. I used to think Governments were the top powers in the world. Now I realise, that as with a private household who has a mortgage or loans, you are beholden to those companies and businesses who have leant money to you. And you may not wish to say too much against them, at least not publically.

Governments[well all but some of them] owe money to all sorts of other countries, other businesses[and they take political donations from businesses and wealthy individuals], the general population etc. Are they really going to make huge waves against them?

There's no one person, or single shady group, controlling things.

There may be certian groups deliberately shit stirring, and egging others on in order to cause general disruption, but they're not actually controlling things as such, just exploiting the divisions that are already there in order to spread chaos.

It would be comforting in a way to believe that the world was being manipulated by some evil geniuses. At least then some one would be in charge of the shitshow! Instead, it's a complex, tangled mess of competing interests and values, good intentions, selfish intentions, mistakes, screw ups, misunderstandings and misjudgements.

(I've read some Sun Tzu btw. He demonstrated the importance of discipline in an army by beheading giggling women. No one ever quotes that bit.)

@Outoftheshadow

Actually i think that it’s more sinister., we live is a digital world with either every click, like, tweet, search, , purchase, piece of data stored in vast underground data centres - people like the Israel historian Yuvall Noah Harari warn about the danger we will face due to tech. Whilst I don’t think there’s there a bunch of people with a secret agreement to carve out power, I’m not too sure if those same people, who own all that data and have built programme so it learns , have built into the machine their own biases. Theres too much data for any human brain to process, they’re most likely not even pushing the buttons merely analysing and interpreting the data. Given how it often comes as a shock to our politicians what the actual feelings of their electorate when they meet them in the real world, it begs the question ‘Are we already being controlled by computer’?

One of the Russell Brand You Tube videos explains this very well. The example he used was farmers in India[there are riots there now about this apparently] who were given free technology[they obviously thought great] and that technology was used to gather information on their crops, their lives etc and was and is being used against them.

I’m glad it’s not just me who feels like this. I would never of thought like this before COVID when I had the luxury of time to read - lots. Not conspiracy therorist, but books by acclaimed historians, philosophers, re-reading of the dystopian classics but now through the lens of today, well written researched historical novels, academic papers about other mammalian species. It’s opened my eyes, but then I’m wary of fact that it might have biased my opinions too, but when they start attacking ‘sex’ , that’s when it doesn’t seem right. Maybe there is a flaw in their battle plan after all. They are no longer fighting an ideology, which is hard to win, and as most wars are fought to uphold power and ideology most of what is written about concerns this. But who has ever written about the fight of ‘sex’- it’s only about the fight between the sexes not the actual denial of its existence.

@lightand Yes you are totally right. Governments will never do enough for those reasons but maybe we can hope they will do something. The genie being out of the bottle is so destabilising for society that maybe it represents enough of a threat to interests for something to be done. Not holding my breath. I don't even know what the something would be. Some kind of data tax maybe. In the meantime I boycott Facebook and tell anyone who will listen what scumbags they are and hope others will do the same. But in the countries where they have donated Facebook for free and where it is synonymous with the internet what hope is there? It's terrifying really and pretty hopeless. And the gender debate has shown us just how pathetic and spineless our politicians are.

I worry that attempts to make tech firms control content (in the worthy aim of stopping terrorism and sex abuse) could easily be abused to encourage the likes of Twitter for deleting accounts of women who say biological sex is real.

Furthermore echo chambers are like comfy beds. They make you want to stay put. It's quite an effort to get up and go for a run in the driving rain instead. The social media giants are giving us what we want.

Sometimes I feel like many people are turning into the digital equivalents of those 400lb Americans you see on the interwebs. Can't walk, can't get off the bed/sofa, getting sicker and sicker, yet they still eat thousands of calories a day. I always find myself shouting at the screen "Stop talking about the fat bloke! The real story is about the person who is bringing the mountains of food to the bed!" Who is bringing all the milkshakes and burgers? Why?

@Hibari

Probably. There's definitely an element on this site that make me think you've been infiltrated. I say this having seen several people defending everything from COVID denial to far right pundits to the Heritage Foundation in my brief time here.

...and seeing that, I can't help but think back to the stuff from a while back about American far-right christian groups funding some anti-trans people with hope of driving a wedge between or otherwise destabilizing both the LGBT community and feminist groups...so it wouldn't shock me if they've continued with that and expanded upon it.

How could MN (the site, not the company) be “infiltrated”?

Anyone is welcome to join and post (excluding banned posters) as long as they follow the TOU and any board-specific rules. You can even change the display name you post under whenever you want.

MN gets all sorts. If you’re new here (I noticed you say “you’ve been infiltrated” rather than “we’ve been infiltrated” or “MN’s been infiltrated”) you may not realise that there’s a huge site beyond the Feminism Chat board and people come to MN from all kinds of backgrounds out of all kinds of interests and for all kinds of reasons. Whoever posts here are MN’ers, and that includes you. That doesn’t mean you have to, or should be assumed to, agree with any and every MN’er, in general or in particular. There is no hive mind - I wouldn’t be here if there were.

Maybe, sometimes, someone isn’t who they say they are or is posting an opinion they don’t really hold. If you spot something that looks suspicious, MN has generally asked that we not make accusations in the thread, but report it and they will look into it. Sometimes threads do get pulled because it’s a banned poster coming back with a new account, or someone with a suspicious pattern of activity or MNHQ decides the thread was started in bad faith. It’s been that way for ages.

MNHQ doesn’t discourage Americans or Christians or right wingers (which doesn’t mean similar things in different national or even sub-national contexts) from posting. Why would they? They want traffic; the more the merrier. I have a friend (white American bloke, no children, little interest in feminism and none in anti-woman activism) who checks MN and LipstickAlley frequently because he says they’re the best place to get diverse book recommendations. I’ve no idea if he posts anything; I’ll have to have a word to make sure he isn’t shocking any non-MN’er MN’ers by recommending The Federalist Papers or something.

There are loads of conspiracy theories on the internet. There have been from its inception, and before that they took different forms. They shift depending on the hot issues, and it’s not the province of any country, any issue, any place on the political spectrum. Segments of every group do this. Once you develop critical thinking skills, it’s not hard to learn to spot them and then you can devote your time to more interesting discourse and more productive activism.

What’s trolling and ‘shutting’ down womens voices- not beheading in the literal sense but achieves the same objective. To get all us to do as we are told!

F**k I’m starting to sound as crazy as Tom Cruise - I detest Tom Cruise. Don’t make me think like Tom Cruise

@WarriorN

It definitely happens at a lower level. I've been wondering if this week / Last night for Sarah has been stoked by anti police and anti lockdown sentiment.

Although I've remembered her and went for a walk and watched footage I found it striking that this much feeling has been unleashed when so many women get murdered each year, also walking home.

Lockdown, IWD and a police man may have been the trigger; at the same time this is unusual.

I agree with this. It’s making me a bit sad and angry that this tragic event has been turned into a circus when violence against women happens every single day and is resolutely ignored by most people.

@Outoftheshadow

Actually i think that it’s more sinister., we live is a digital world with either every click, like, tweet, search, , purchase, piece of data stored in vast underground data centres - people like the Israel historian Yuvall Noah Harari warn about the danger we will face due to tech. Whilst I don’t think there’s there a bunch of people with a secret agreement to carve out power, I’m not too sure if those same people, who own all that data and have built programme so it learns , have built into the machine their own biases. Theres too much data for any human brain to process, they’re most likely not even pushing the buttons merely analysing and interpreting the data. Given how it often comes as a shock to our politicians what the actual feelings of their electorate when they meet them in the real world, it begs the question ‘Are we already being controlled by computer’?

On the contrary. Great points well written.

@Hibari

Probably. There's definitely an element on this site that make me think you've been infiltrated. I say this having seen several people defending everything from COVID denial to far right pundits to the Heritage Foundation in my brief time here.

...and seeing that, I can't help but think back to the stuff from a while back about American far-right christian groups funding some anti-trans people with hope of driving a wedge between or otherwise destabilizing both the LGBT community and feminist groups...so it wouldn't shock me if they've continued with that and expanded upon it.

Where as you, remain above and immune to such manipulations on account of your superior intellectual and moral powers?