Gynarchy

[Ian Livingston]

Your mom sounds like quite a woman. A life well-lived, indeed.

As to your submission that women in power--to paraphrase rather brutally
according to my own take--are frequently masculine power-trippers in drag,
I submit Nancy Pelosi as a case in point. A seasoned hawk and power broker,
Pelosi backs many good causes and also supports indefinite detention and
cyber-snooping on citizens without a warrant, among other disasters. She is
the consummate patriarch in drag.

But a matriarchy would, by definition, not be a masculine power structure.
Do the alpha males have to die off for women to come into their own? Or do
they have merely to be outnumbered and out-debated? And, of course, the
appropriate follow-up to that line of questioning is to ask whether whether
women's coming into their own consists of overtaking masculine power, or if
equalling, thereby offsetting patriarchy, is enough. Do we really have to
go all-or-nothing in the question of women's influence? Are men all, by
nature, evil? Misanthropy does not seem like an adequate answer to
misogyny, yet it seems that the radical right, especially, regards every
gain in women's rights and authority as an emasculatory demise of men's
god-given superiority. Feminazis, they call a women who demand the right
choose what happen their own bodies, or who demand equal pay for equal
work. That there are such men, does not preclude the possibility of
cooperation between the sexes. Just maybe men and women have equally
valuable skills and talents to bring to leadership. A woman leader does not
have to wear a jock strap.

On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 1:36 PM, <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.
>>
>>
> **********
>
>
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