The Patriarchy Principle

This is posted on a sweet lefty blog called "Lenin's Tomb" (http://leninology.blogspot.com/). You could easily replace England with anywhere in North America I'm sure. I think the important thing is that it stems from a material basis. When we exist in a social society based on commodities (ie the commodity based exchange of labour) it's not surprising we mimmick it in gender relations.

"Just because it isn't said in polite company doesn't mean people aren't thinking it. A Home Office study has found that:

16% of people in England and Wales think it is acceptable for a man to beat his wife or girlfriend if she nags; 13% think it is acceptable for a man to beat his wife or girlfriend if she flirts with other men; 20% think it is acceptable for a man to beat his wife or girlfriend if she dresses in sexy or revealing clothing in public; 11% think it okay to beat if the wife or girlfriend doesn't treat the man with respect; 8% think it okay to beat if she is caught cheating.

Further, 36% think a woman should be held co-responsible for being raped if she is drunk; 26% if she is wearing revealing or sexy clothing; 43% if she flirts heavily beforehand; 49% if she does not clearly say 'no'; 42% if she is using drugs; 47% if she is a prostitute; 14% if she is out walking alone at night. (My summary)



Gender constructions apparently mean so much to so many that literally millions of people (including millions of women) are willing to see physical and sexual violence toward women as being some sort of punishment. As being justified or at least partially excusable if the woman in question does not behave completely as someone else's possession, or as a passive ornamentation for a well-kept house or an outing. I suspect that similar attitudes might be expressed, maybe by fewer people, about men who deviate from a certain paradigm of masculinity, who love other men, who are not violently assertive, who refuse to beat their partners, and who do not in general worship their own phalluses like Norman Douglas' man from Nantucket. Walk around acting like one of 'them', you can imagine it being said, and you're asking for it.

If I may satirise a certain commonplace way of arguing, the scope within which to argue that British values are essentially benign and not a threat to our way of life is diminishing by the day. All very well, but the underlying moral sanction of this horrifying authoritarianism is the empowerment of fathers and husbands in the name of 'family values'. Such values resonate with charm and homeliness, and it is constantly averred that they produce stable communities and disciplined children (as opposed, say, to obedient wage serfs and cannon fodder). There is barely a social problem that has not been blamed on their absence. The underlying political economy, on the other hand, is that patriarchy reproduces the very stratification-by-gender in the sphere of production that reduces the aggregate cost of labour for capital, enhances the surveillance of and control over female labour, and reconciles a number of men to aspects of the system which they might otherwise find onerous. I just mention the vulgar material basis for such ideas because it isn't going to be mentioned anywhere else, and the Home Office for its part will no doubt respond to its findings with a poster campaign or some other hearts-n-minds initiative, if they respond at all."

Memo to Minister Kenney: Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitism

By Judy Rebick and Alan Sears

As Israeli Apartheid Week gets underway, there is a major campaign currently underway to deny freedom of expression on campus to those in solidarity with Palestine on the basis of alleged anti-Semitism.
The Equity Office at Carleton University banned the Israeli Apartheid Week poster and the Provost issued a statement that threatened students with expulsion. B’nai Brith took out newspaper ads calling on University Presidents to “prevent Israeli apartheid week” in order to “take a stand against anti-Semitism on campus.” This builds on a pattern established last year, when McMaster University banned the use of the term “Israeli apartheid” (eventually rescinding the ban) and the University of Toronto cancelled room bookings for a Palestine solidarity student conference.
The argument that criticism of Israel is inherently anti-Semitic rests on the notion that Israel is singled out for undue criticism because it is a Jewish state. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney used this logic when he said recently, “We do see the growth of a new anti-Semitism predicated on the notion that the Jews alone have no right to a homeland.”
This statement is only legitimate if we completely ignore the situation of the Palestinians, the residents of the land Israel claimed as a “Jewish homeland.” The recent assault on Gaza, in which more than 1,300 Palestinians were killed, including at least 346 children, is just the latest in an ongoing saga of displacement, occupation and dehumanization dating back to 1948. Critics of Israel are not singling it out for undue criticism, but merely holding it to the same standards as all other nations in such areas as respect for human rights and international law.
Defenders of Israeli policy routinely attempt to direct our attention to abuses happening in other places and insist that a hidden agenda must underlie any focus on Israeli brutality in this unjust world. This argument would lead to paralysis in human rights activism by claiming that one must address all cases at once, or only the “worst” cases. Should we have told Rosa Parks, who refused to go the back of a segregated bus in Alabama in 1955, to quit whining as conditions were even worse in South Africa, or colonized Kenya, or for that matter for Palestinians in refugee camps?
The deployment of anti-Semitism as an accusation to silence criticism of Israel is also a serious setback in genuine struggles against anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination. It is based on a claim that the State of Israel is the single outcome of the history of the Jewish people, the final end of generations of diasporic existence. It attempts to make the Zionist project of a Jewish nation the only legitimate project for all Jews.
This nationalist project has largely marginalized Jewish universalism, which argued that the future of a minority, diasporic community depended on winning widespread freedoms that applied to all members of society. That meant that in Canada, for example, the Jewish population was historically very active in struggles for a wide range of social rights and against the idea of Canada as a Christian nation.
The misuse of equity claims to silence Palestinian voices is a setback in the advancement of a human rights agenda. Further, it is a dangerous strategy that makes critics of the State of Israel into enemies of the Jewish people despite themselves. It even casts those of us who are Jewish allies of Palestinian rights as enemies in the battle against anti-Semitism. Further, it disarms us in the face of anti-Semitic incidents, weakening the credibility of organizations that have used the term too broadly and blurred the line between opposition to the State of Israel and anti-Jewish prejudice.
Anti-Semitism has no place in the Palestine solidarity movement and as Jews in that movement we can attest to the fact that the leadership of the Palestinian rights movement and many Arab and Muslim communities are actively addressing anti-Semitism wherever it raises its ugly head. On the other hand, false claims of anti-Semitism from pro-Israeli groups undermines their cause and creates more polarization, fear and anger around these issues than there needs to be.
Judy Rebick and Alan Sears are both university professors and Jews in solidarity with Palestine.
Reproduced from rabble.ca

This is your life

You're not really mad at Iran or Afghanistan,
You're mad at the fact that your wife can't stand you anymore.
You don't know where she is.
You're going crazy in your basement hole,
clicking your remote control spitting insults at the screen
cause tomorrow you're back at work
where you can't stand being the little man.

Exploit your problems when you can't get ahead.
No one really laughs at your stories anymore.
They're cynical like me so they ******
Your kids are at the mall,
they just sit and stare at the walls.

You think you tell it like it is?
You say you can't stand bleeding hearts
but every single day you just sit there bleeding for yourself,
you whine and cry in a manly voice.

This is your life.

You do it to yourself, it takes a load off your mind.
Go over to the world and **********

This is your life.