Women's Strike: A boon for western men?
Women's work is only noticed when it's not done.
The demands of the Strike:
- Payment for all caring work - in wages, pensions, land & other resources. What is more valuable than raising children & caring for others? Invest in life & welfare, not military budgets or prisons.
- Pay equity for all, women & men, in the global market.
- Paid maternity leave, breastfeeding breaks & other benefits - stop penalizing us for being women.
- Abolition of 'Third World debt' which falls heaviest on women & girls. We are owed much more than we 'owe'.
- Accessible clean water, healthcare, housing, transport, literacy.
- Non-polluting energy & technology which shortens the hours we work. We all need cookers, fridges, washing machines, computers, & time off!
- Protection & asylum from all violence & persecution, including by family members & people in positions of authority.
- Freedom of movement. Capital travels freely, why not people?
- Global Women's Strike, 2001
On March 8th, women around the world went on strike to demand, among other things, wages for hitherto uncompensated housework. Question is, who would pay. Men? If so, then shouldn't women also pay men for the hitherto uncompensated work men do?
The joke is, if the media hadn't informed us, most of us would never have noticed. Moreover, even if every woman in the world had participated, a lot of American men still wouldn't notice. Why? Because more and more American men are single and celibate and are doing just fine without any help from women, thank you.
Yes, but employers will feel the pain, and that's what's important. Right?
Maybe. But several million men would leap for joy if women left the work place. After all, such a tremendous cut in the labor pool would force employers to pay the remaining (male) workers almost twice as much. Yes, productivity would lag in some sectors, but most men would be willing to deal with those problems. Not that this will happen, but it demonstrates a point: the only people who would benefit from a general female worker strike would be male workers.
So pop feminists can stage all the "women's strikes" they want. Most of the rest of us will probably never notice.
Canadian Columnist advocates child abuse
(M)edical studies over 20 years have shown the health benefits of circumcision to be undramatic - except for a significant reduction in transmitting HIV/AIDS. ... Now, a group seeking a court challenge to have the procedure outlawed - based on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms protection that bans female genital mutilation but ignores male circumcision...
They equate male circumcision for infants with female genital mutilation performed on teenage girls, a conceit that belittles the severe health problems those women suffer - initial hemorrhage and shock, enduring pain and difficulty with urination and in childbirth, even walking, and, particularly, during sexual intercourse, its main purpose being to deny women pleasure in the act.
The most telling claim of this movement is that circumcision reduces some of the sensitivity and, thus, the pleasure in sex. This is a mystery to millions of circumcised men who've never complained.
The people concerned with "males' rights to bodily integrity" have every right to stop circumcising their own sons. Beyond that, their crusade would be a frivolous misuse of the Charter and a waste of taxpayers money.
- Ellie Tesher, "Circumcision is private matter, not Charter issue," Toronto Star, February 22, 2001
Tesher admits the medical benefits of circumcision are virtually nil. In fact, horrifying as the prospect is to any sane person, with regard to health risks there is greater medical justification for performing preventative mastectomies on baby girls than there is for male circumcision. Most of us would agree, performing mastectomies on baby girls to prevent the possibility of breast cancer would be child abuse, and so is male "circumcision."
More than this, it produces one of the very results in men that she condemns in the case of female genital mutilation: denying "pleasure in the act." A fact she blithely dismisses as "a mystery to millions of circumcised men" who don't know what they're missing: circumcision removes more than half the nerve-endings of the penis.
She also dismisses concerns about male circumcision on the basis that, while health complications arising from female genital mutilation are common, because the incidence of "mostly minor" complications for circumcised baby boys is only "0.2 to 2 per cent," it balances out with the benefits. But if we're going to talk statistics, then that 0.2 to 2% probably accounts for more real cases than does the higher rate from female genital mutilation as there are more male victims of genital mutilation just in North America than there are victims of female genital mutilation in the entire world.
What it boils down to is this: Absent some mitigating medical condition, genital mutilation, whether performed on boys or girls, is child abuse. Period.
Invisible (Black) men
"This is a white man's holiday," said Calvin Hildreth, a black neighborhood resident who feels like an invisible man in Pioneer Square -- on Mardi Gras and the other 51 weeks of the year. "I notice this about white folks here -- they walk right through you, as if you don't even exist."
- Seattle P-I, March 8, 2001
They're running out of issues of real substance, so these whiners are taking a characteristic of urban life and turning it into a racial issue. Like busy people all over the world, the "white folks" they complain about are just going about their business and don't have time to acknowledge the thousands of strangers they pass by.
It's not about race, but about getting things done. It's about getting to work on time, or rushing to eat and running errands during lunch.
Hold on a minute! Maybe it is about race. It could be. After more than 30 years of Afro-Americans/African Americans/Blacks wailing how evil "whitey" is, maybe Whites have simply come to expect nothing but hatred, hostility and repudiation from Blacks, so they simply avert their eyes and walk on by.
Maybe. Or maybe not. Blacks who live in the suburbs but work downtown rush about their business, too, striding past loitering Blacks and Whites same as suburban Whites.
So maybe it's not about race at all, but about under-employed Blacks trying to make it into a racial issue.
Why own stock?
(Microsoft) has $23bn of cash and short-term investments and is generating cash at a prodigious rate - $2.9bn in the last quarter. Clearly the company has no intention of returning that money to shareholders.
- Lex Column, January 21, 2001, Financial Times
If the company never intends to pay dividends to stockholders, why own stock in the first place? Answer: gambling that at some point in the future somebody else will be willing to pay more than you did for an otherwise worthless piece of paper.
Women Rule
Women buy or influence the purchase of 80 per cent of all consumer goods...
(Faith) Popcorn calls Oprah Winfrey the "Queen of Connection", claiming she brings women together in a network of shared values. ... "Women love sharing ideas, feelings, dreams, fears and, most of all, information," she said. "Men are just not all that interested in connecting in that sort of way."
Popcorn predicts that a staggering 75pc of all groceries will be purchased online within 10 years.
- eve-olution: The Future of Popcorn, January 21, 2001, Sydney Morning Herald
From the top - pop feminists have long denied that the fact women control most consumer spending is evidence of female economic power. Except when, as in this case, it persuades corporations to ignore male consumers.
Men aren't interested in connecting to share "ideas, feelings, dreams, fears and, most of all, information," which would explain why men invented and, until recently, were the predominant users of the very Internet Popcorn is talking about.
Ironically, Popcorn's assertion about women connecting is contradicted by her prediction that most grocery purchases will be made via the net within 10 years. As other pundits, such as Clifford Stoll, author of Silicon Snake Oil, have suggested, and as long-time users of the net are discovering for themselves, after working on a computer for 12-15 hours, you need to get away from the machine, stop thinking for a while and just be around people, and shopping at the grocery store where everybody knows your name is a pleasant way to do that.
But given how pop feminists work, 10 years from now Popcorn will probably claim credit for predicting this, too.
Columnist's sexist, racist attitudes overshadow valid concerns
Massachusetts Senator John F. Kerry ... greeted (Lieutenant Governor Jane M. Swift, who is pregnant with twins) with these words: "Let me take this opportunity to welcome our lieutenant governor - all three of you."
There are many things to be incredulous about in Washington; the predominance of pale-faced, power-hungry men in dark suits and red ties is one of them. ... No matter how happy a woman is about impending motherhood, it is disconcerting to know much of the world sees a breeding machine, not a thinking machine. ... Maybe when it comes to pregnant women, bipartisan sexism is alive and well in the US Senate.
- Joan Vennochi, Boston Globe, March 16, 2001
Senator Kerry's "all three of you" remark is a perfectly innocent example of guy humor. Like the "Did you get a haircut? Yes, quite a few of them." joke. A goofy way of acknowledging the obvious and then moving on. But from Ms. Vennochi's racist, classist and sexist perspective, it's evidence of the "patronizing" attitude of "pale-faced" male senators.
Most fair-minded readers might turn with disgust to the next article, but those who pressed on would find Vennochi raising other, valid political considerations. Such as the Senate's dismissive attitude toward taxpayers' concerns about the Senate's plan to impose a sales tax on Internet purchases.
Such a tax has the potential to force almost all "mom 'n pop" sites out of business, turning the web into another corporate wasteland. And it will almost certainly create another government bureaucracy, a concern raised by Lt. Governor Swift. A point almost lost in Vennochi's sexist, racist ranting.
What do you think? - Equalitarian Discussion forums.
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