Gynarchy

[John Bailey]

Yesterday I came upon this very intriguing long read from a local
writer (Melbourne, Australia) on a whole bunch of factors behind
"autogenic massacres":

http://overland.org.au/blogs/new-words/2012/08/when-the-burning-moment-breaks-gun-control-and-rage-massacres/

Brings in not just individual and social psychology but economics,
race, politics, nationalism, even poetry.

The most interesting stuff looks at the *pleasures* of gun violence,
which is something most anti-gun commentary avoids:

"One marine, a veteran of Fallujah, I interviewed for my book Killing
explained it to me like this:
'[N]othing I do from this point on in my life is ever going to
compare. Ever. I do a lot of panel discussions and things, and I tell
people, I could win the lottery today, have two hundred million
dollars, have fast cars, mansions, you name it, and still, it’s not
going to compare to that feeling of leading marines, other human
beings, into combat and doing what we did there. It’s almost like I’m
going through the motions now for the rest of my life.'

That last line is of course the kicker, an extraordinary indictment of
the world’s richest country, where nothing that peacetime offers can
provide an experience of comparable richness to house-to-house
fighting in one of the bloodiest punitive missions in recent history.

That’s why collective struggles for social change matter so much, and
why they are what we should talk about, rather than calls for new
state powers, for they contain within them the pleasures found in
combat, albeit in a non-alienated fashion. Mass movements offer an
alternative experience of solidarity, of collectivity, purpose, value
and so on, an experience that can erode the appeal of violence."

Note that all of this comes from a non-US perspective, so it might be
off the mark. But it's a much more nuanced argument than the usual
Australian response, which is "we banned guns in the 90s and hey
presto, no more shootings!" Then again, over here guns pretty much
have the status of fiction, so arguing about gun control seems purely
imaginary, like discussing unicorn training techniques. If I were to
see a civilian walking down the street with a real gun I would
probably be petrified.



On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 8:36 AM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> My mother was an unsung feminist theorist, writer and activist (though she
> was sung about for a bit here:
> http://capitolwords.org/date/2004/10/11/E1962_in-honor-of-mim-kelber/).  She
> was a great believer in the moral superiority of women.  Some of that
> attitude was born from the experience of her father abandoning his wife and
> kids, leaving them in destitution, but, whatever the source, it informed
> most of her activism, such as becoming a founding member of Women Strike for
> Peace - the title alone summing up her views.
>
> She was a journalist and speechwriter, but late in life, she decided she
> wanted to write a book, which she hoped would be the definitive work on
> women and war.  She was awarded a Wonder Woman grant, and may have even
> gotten an advance from a publisher.  She never wrote the book.  Partly it
> was due to insecurity.  She only had a BA in journalism from Hunter College
> -CUNY, and feared she'd be savaged by academic feminists with advanced
> degrees.  But mostly, I think (and maybe she'd deny it if she were still
> around), the more research she did, the more dismayed she became about her
> central thesis: that women are natural opponents of war.
>
> The problem is that women are raised, along with men, in a male society, and
> adopt the morality that's provided to them.  Sure, there's the occasional
> anthropological anecdote, or idealistic treatise, but the fact remains that
> every dominant power structure in the world today is, by its very nature,
> of, by and for males.  It's irrelevant if we think that women would do a
> better job.  The women who make it into the upper echelons of power get
> there by promising to mimic those who are already there.  Maybe the best way
> out is the "only Nixon could go to China" approach.  Only men can abdicate
> their power, or agree to share.  Maybe if the drinking water supply gets
> polluted with industrial-level amounts of estrogen?  I'm a lot more cynical
> than my mother ever was.
>
> Re: supplying kids with war toys.  On the rare occasions me and my sister
> asked for some innocuously "violent" toy like a water pistol, or some sort
> of plastic cowgirl gun ensemble, our mother would tell us that she
> disapproved of people who made money through promoting violence.  Buying
> those toys would put money in their pockets.  If we wanted a gun, we'd have
> to make one ourselves.
>
> Laura
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ian Livingston
> Sent: Dec 17, 2012 1:03 PM
> To: Phillip Greenlief
> Cc: Mark Kohut , Rich , pynchon -l
> Subject: Re: Gynarchy
>
> Well, we might get assault weapons banned this time around. Did this kid use
> an assault weapon? I haven't seen a list of his arms. Handguns are another
> issue. It's possible screening could become more selective for the sale of
> handguns, but that won't dispose of the ones that are already out there. We
> won't likely see any significant change in regulations regarding shotguns
> and hunting rifles in our lifetimes. Maybe there could be a safety course
> requirement, such as some states require for hunting license issue, but kids
> incline to sleepwalk through those things. (It's odd, isn't it, to sell a
> weapon without a safety course requirement, but to require such a course to
> get permission to use it in the manner under the guise of which the weapon
> is sold in the first place?)
>
> I'm much more interested in the subject of Rich's lead here. It has long
> been my position that women are morally superior to men. Musta picked it up
> from Plato's Socrates. There are, of course, websites devoted to Gynarchy
> and Matriarchy. Oddly, the matriarchal website "Women Thou Art God" seems
> more open to the public for inquiry, whereas the Gynarchy International
> seems more militant, subversive, selective in terms of audience and
> participation.
>
> http://www.womanthouartgod.com/femdivine.php
> http://www.gynarchy.org/
>
> One of the reasons I've long inclined to regard women as morally superior
> has to do with their inclination to talk about things before they act.
> Wilber, citing someone else in something I read several years ago, says that
> talking is a vital function of the feminine thought process. Masculine
> thought processes, on the other hand, incline to get hung up on an idea and
> let it fester until it springs like Athena from our foreheads, with no need
> for further editing, if we can help it, thank you very much for your
> thoughts I'll take the time to consider thinking about them before I ignore
> them and move forward with my obsession. Feminine thought processes
> therefore by nature incline to gyro better in their course, by allowing
> greater outside influence. It's clearly not universal, but the inclination
> seems likely enough to me. It seems most clearly defined in youth, before
> our beloved patriarchal social hierarchy indoctrinates the young into the
> wisdom of winning friends and influencing people.
>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 9:07 AM, Phillip Greenlief <pgsaxo at pacbell.net>
> wrote:
>>
>> there are countless petitions circulating. it's also a good time to call
>> your representative.
>>
>> Phillip Greenlief
>> 1075 Aileen Street Apt B
>> Oakland, CA 94608
>> 510-501-7110
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>> From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>> To: Rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com>
>> Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Sent: Mon, December 17, 2012 8:59:23 AM
>> Subject: Re: Gynarchy
>>
>> yes, yes...I'm going to do SOMETHING....ongoing.
>>
>> From: Rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com>
>> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Sent: Monday, December 17, 2012 9:47 AM
>> Subject: Gynarchy
>>
>> I have been thinking lately what a woman led world would look like. I
>> pretty much in agreement with sentiment here regarding this recent shooting
>> & mass murder. There are more women in congress but I do wonder the effect
>> psychologically for women when they begin to have more direct combat roles.
>> Will that change the dynamic in anyway? Who can say. An experiment in a more
>> active leadership in governance by women is surely one we should support in
>> some form.
>>
>> With that said gender issues aside we can easily reconstitute the assault
>> weapons ban and ensure the mentally ill do not have access to such things.
>> Far too many of these cases are not heightened testosterone but simply
>> people out of their head. Yes they are male but I see them as mentally ill
>> first.
>>
>> I'm hoping there will be some change after this event. Shame on us all if
>> nothing changes. Those poor kids deserve their memories to mean something.
>>
>