Comment by Paul Parmenter
The following was composed by Paul Parmenter in the comment log of a recent post. I found the comment to be of thought-stimulating interest, so I am turning it into an official CF post in order to "put it on Front Street."
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paul parmenter said...
I also maintain that anyone who mistrusts the "experts" in this field can do a very simple piece of research themselves. It won't be accepted by academics but it will open your eyes and give you an insight into what is really going on.
Just take a pen and notepad and go to any place where large numbers of people of both sexes gather in roughly equal numbers. Bars, clubs, whatever. It will certainly help the research if there is plenty of alcohol available.
Then just sit quietly in a corner or where you have a good view, and look for acts of physical violence against people. Score the "hits" on your notepad. You can use a very simple system, like just recording numbers; or make it as sophisticated as you like, such as distinguishing types of violence (kicks, slaps, pushes, hitting with objects etc), where aimed (face, head, ribs, groin) and the scale (low level, medium, hard, full-on - based on any criteria you choose). But be sure to record which sex perpetrates the violence, and which sex is on the receiving end, in each case.
Be honest, don't cheat, and record everything. Don't let anybody off just because their physicality is low-level, or there is no sign of damage; and certainly not because they are female. Leave your prejudices at home. Even if it is just a mild push, still record it. Any contact with any degree of force behind it and with obvious intent should go down on your pad. Ignore playful stuff, but use your judgement over whether something is serious or not. You should be able to tell from the faces of the two parties, and the verbal exchanges that are certain to precede and follow it.
At the end of the night, you will have your own sample that you can trust because you have chosen the circumstances and the venue, seen the action with your own eyes, and recorded it in your own fair hand.
It is unscientific, crude and partially subjective; as I say, it would never be accepted by serious scholars in this field. The purpose is not to prove anything to anyone else, but only to yourself.
But I can guarantee that if you make a number of these records, in different locations at different times, you will see a distinct pattern emerging. And that pattern will show women as the main initiators of violence. They will be the ones throwing the first punch or aiming the first kick, in a very decided majority of cases.
How do I know? Because I have made many such casual observations myself, and the results are always the same.
Why is it consistently so? Because women have no constraints on their behaviour at all. There is no taboo, no social disapproval, no punishment, and very little risk of adverse consequences, let alone retribution. But men have all of those constraints. And if men do "kick off", then 99% of the time it will be against other men. I can assure you that the column in your notepad headed "male on female" will be the emptiest.
Don't take my word for it; try it yourself. You might learn something you had never believed could be true.
posted by Fidelbogen at 10:21 PM
16 Comments:
Full marks to Paul for stating clearly what we all know but haven't thought about.
In my entire life, I have never seen a man hit a woman. I have seen women hit men, and more rarely, men hit men.
The reasons for men being less violent are plain - they get severely punished for it. Again Paul is exactly right.
People aren't violent because they suffer from a nasty character flaw. They are violent because violence works (at least it does for the perpetrator). That's why we allow the police to use it, and the army. If there is no punishment for being violent, violence will begin to proliferate amongst the unpunished.
We're already seeing this trend world-wide, both amongst women and children.
I was once violently slammed against the wall by a frail little waif of a girl (for a trivial reason bordering on NO reason!) whom I could have easily killed with my bare hands if I had taken the notion to do so. . .
I merely "shrugged off" the incident - which of course she knew perfectly well that I would do. . .
What a train of thought this thread has set in motion.
I wonder what the purpose of violence really is, beyond any pathological reasons. We see it daily on the news, we feel its threat whenever a police car approaches, we see it amongst dogs and other pack animals whenever there's a play for power.
I suspect I'm stating the obvious if I say that violence is primarily used to demonstrate the order of power. Whoever gets to make shows of violence is higher up the power hierarchy. From a purely brute psychology point of view, men are therefore at the very bottom - any show of defiance by them is ruthlessly dealt to.
I suppose one could cynically then conclude that the whole DV industry, which has squarely targeted men and ignored the violence of women, is in reality a mechanism for disempowering men - wholly consistent with the feminist ambition of destroying patriarchy.
It's quite clever, but runs the serious risk of discovery. What happens when men start waking up to this, and begin to believe that expression of violence does equate to status in society?
My thinking, in short capsule form, is that feminism is little more than the instrument of the elite male ruling class to subjugate the majority of men. [Discussed HERE.] This makes perfect sense when you consider that the powerful have historically ALWAYS tried to augment their power (read: enslave others.) But in the present case, they appear to have hit upon a singularly ingenious method to bring it about - a divide and rule game unlike anything the world has ever seen (to our knowledge).
As I discuss HERE, women have become the conduit which focuses the State monopoly on violence specifically against men, in a tyrannical manner.
Yes: Violence expressing the order of power - although maybe not quite so "obvious" in this case. But not so hard to figure out - to my mind at any rate, no other theory quite makes sense. . .
The feminist ambition of destroying 'patriarchy' would appear to be a subset of a master ambition, which is that of the male Elite to destroy the "patriarchy" of the male underclass but not, of course, their own. (Patriarchy = Male Power)
The widespread realization that violence does equate to status, is a thing which generally accompanies a breakdown of the social order, when life is relapsing into a primordial state of anarchical barbarism.
Which, let's face it....COULD be in the offing. :(
(When men finally rebel en masse against "duluthification", the turmoil won't likely be pretty, and getting things "back to normal" again might be like putting Humpty-Dumpty together again.....)
Hi fidelbogen, regarding your theory that [quote] "feminism is little more than the instrument of the elite male ruling class to subjugate the majority of men": Never thought about that, but it makes sense... I mean it's clear that the elite of the world is currently creating a new, dependent underclass, but so far I didn't connect the dots how feminism fits into the picture. So, thanks for another piece of the puzzle.
By the way, have you seen the documentary "The Century of the Self" by Adam Curtis? It's on Google video in four parts, starting here: Part 1
It's not directly about feminism, but it contains many interesting facts of how insights into human psychology get routinely used against humans for controlling them and changing their behaviour. For example there's the remarkable story of how a marketing genius named Edward Bernays during the 1920s tricked women into thinking that smoking cigarettes would be a visible statement of emancipation and liberation for their gender. Fascinating material, like all the other BBC documentaries by Adam Curtis (they're all somewhere on Google or YouTube).
I've heard so much about "The Century of the Self", and I've wanted to have a look at it, but....
I am connected to the internet via grape vines and tin cans, so...it takes 2 or 3 geological ages for those videos to download.
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Stay tuned for part II of the story of the male Elite which uses feminism as a tool. This will focus upon the "feminist column", and the role of the underclass (and the men's movement.).
Your thesis is very nearly the same as that of George Orwell's novel 1984, where he divides society into the Inner Party, the Outer Party and the Proletariat.
I think he was extrapolating from the Soviet Union, where this 3 part division was already apparent. There were other features of his novel that were probably drawn from the Soviet model:
the brutal repression of independence of any kind, the destruction of ideas through reverse meaning (eg Ministry of Truth for the Propaganda Department mirrors the Russian newspaper Pravda - 'Truth' - which was the Communist Party mouthpiece), the slogans, the use of war as a diversion from domestic issues and the continuing degeneration of living standards.
The use of children as informants he borrowed directly from the Nazis.
Other features of his novel though can't be so simply accounted for. The destruction of love between men and women and the use of technology to monitor all action and thought.
I found these two themes the most depressing of the whole novel - and I was at least relieved that I didn't live in such a world, and couldn't imagine people standing for it. That was nearly 30 years ago.
So I'm left now with a couple of plausible alternatives. Had Orwell correctly perceived human nature and plotted out its eventual evolution, or had he just reached an age when experience and education allowed him to step beyond his youthful conditioning and see the nature of human society coldly, as it was not only in his own time, but as it has always been?
I tend toward the latter. I suspect all of us who have stepped out of the femplex are exactly those who have seen beyond their conditioning, and that this has been made possible by better education and raised awareness. The internet has been a major agent in this process.
One of the interesting things in my own journey away from the hive is just how jarring and contrived television news is on the few occasions I see it. One has to be exposed to it daily to not notice what an offence to intelligence and judgement it is.
As television is the chief tool of the state - how else would we know what George Bush looked like, or recognize Hilary Clinton's voice, or believe that Domestic Violence is the most serious issue of our day? - killing the TV set is the first step to freedom of thought. We might even begin to develop priorities of our own again.
You mention Orwell, which is interesting. Actually, when I was writing that post in question, Orwell hardly entered my thoughts at all. I was just looking at the world and painting a picture according to what I saw. . .
"Had Orwell correctly perceived human nature and plotted out its eventual evolution, or had he just reached an age when experience and education allowed him to step beyond his youthful conditioning and see the nature of human society coldly, as it was not only in his own time, but as it has always been?.....I tend toward the latter."
I tend toward both, because I think the distinction between them is artificial. At any rate, the world will always contain X number of people similar to George Orwell, and I think that such people are gifted by their power to see directly into what I call the archetypal patterns of occurrence.
You know, "history repeats itself"; or "the more things change, the more they stay the same"; or "you've seen one, you've seen 'em all."
OR. . . every snowflake is unique and yet, they all look like snowflakes because they are governed by repeatable laws which control the production of snowflakes and even establish their identity as snowflakes. And it is only because random factors enter the structural chain of creation, that every flake is unique.
The random factors may fluctuate wildly, but the structural chain is rock steady. Hence...the archetypal patterns of occurrence.
The "equal beam, which poizes all above."
The way I see it, the secret of life (which is the secret of the sage or superior man) is to search out those archetypal patterns in all things, and by meditating upon them, rise above the mutability of time and change and strife. . .
Whoa! That was a tangent! But yes...'twas only a matter of time before some evil genius hit upon the idea that driving a wedge between men and women could be the keystone for a monumental power grab! And it was a matter of some additional time before the state of scientific knowledge (and hence technology itself) would rise to accomodate such an evil vision and make it feasible of execution. Preparation meets opportunity and all that..!
That "better education and raised awareness" inspired by the internet, seems to be a counter-trend to the major trend of watering-down and dumbing down. Like a Fiat full of people heading UP the mountain and passing a busload going the opposite way. In other words, the raised awareness is the doing of people (call them visionaries) who saw the need and went about raising THEMSELVES - by their bootstraps as you might say. And yes, they have attended Professor Google's classes at the University of Self-Education with their GPAs flying high! (And let's not forget the many who did it the old-fashioned way by lurking in libraries and used book stores!;)
Yes, killing the TV set is the first step toward freedom of thought...
Interestingly, I am a card-carrying member of the "kill your television" movement, and have been since long before I got interested in the men's movement.
Last I heard, Jerry Mander's "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television" was no longer in print. Hopefully, I heard wrong. :-(
"archetypal patterns of occurrence."
It's good terminology - instantly recognisable and reminiscent of "Design Patterns" - the recurring nature of the same features to solve particular problems in engineering.
The pattern of 3 divisions in social hierarchies is definitely one of them:
Leaders/Soldiers/Civilians
Aristocracy/Bourgeois/Proletariat
Upper Class/Middle Class/Lower Class
Owners/Managers/Labour
Elite/Fem-tier/Men
Like your term "femplex", by the way. Runs off the tongue more easily than the clumsy "fematrix".
"Like your term "femplex", by the way. Runs off the tongue more easily than the clumsy "fematrix".
My sentiments exactly - it rolls off the tongue easier. Besides, "Matrix" references are a bit cliche...wot?
The seminal 'femplex' article is HERE, and in visual terms, HERE.
Hi counter feminist,
I am not sure whether I am allowed to do this and I am sure you wouldn't mind, but .... it would be great to have some support for fathers on this poll.
The Anglican church is asking what we need to do to stop the bad record of child abuse. One of the offered solutions is to stop forcing fathers out of children's lives. Great to see they are getting the message. A vote from you would be another voice. And the more voices, the better people hear.
http://justice.anglican.org.nz/
I am not exactly sure what it is that you think you are not allowed to do....but if somebody said no, they never sent me the memo.... ;-)
I will have a look at that web address.
P.S. Last I looked, you were no longer in the blogosphere...
Hi Fidelbogan,
I stopped the blog I had because I want to do more on the street.
I am happy to leave the intelligent stuff to you, lol
"I am happy to leave the intelligent stuff to you, lol"
Tut tut! The feminists will have a conniption if they hear you say such things!
Besides, do I look like the kind of man who feels threatened by intelligent females, eh? ;-)
Julie, as per your most recent comment (in reply to my own comment directly above) ....It, uh...contained enough hot potatoes that I'm gonna keep it on ice. Oi! You didn't pull any punches, that's for sure! ;-)
But I surely enjoyed reading it! I appreciated that bit where you said *You're not threatened by intelligent females because they would all be on your side* - or to that effect. Heh heh, that was a good 'un! ;-)
More response later. . .
Fidelbogan,
Gosh, I don't remember off hand what I wrote. I hope it wasn't bad.?!?!
Ahhh, it is coming back now. No problem.
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