Bears, Women and Men : internalisation of cultural values, development of affective state self-regulation.

A Bear in the Woods.....

Image by Erik Mandre via Shutterstock

Historically, for the major part of the existence of Homo sapiens, the people who lived in forests and woodlands were largely formed of egalitarian cultures.

The peoples that lived in forests knew and understood bears because they had lived together for many tens of thousands of years. The bears knew them. They knew each other well.

In egalitarian cultures rapes are rarer than bear attacks. And bear attacks are exceedingly rare. When they do happen, it is usually due to an accident rather than a deliberate intentional common action, a standard behavioural pattern.

So the issue raised by the bear question is a cultural issue.

No baby is born with a bigotry already in place.

There are no misogyny genes, there are no warrior genes, there are no racism genes, there are no xenophobia genes.

Our behaviour, is this regard, is learned within a cultural context. Hierarchically violent cultures curate bigotries.

We learn to walk, we learn to talk. We are taught to speak. Language is learned. Take an infant born to a mother in one language, and place that infant within another language group, and the child will learn the language of the secondary language group. There is no gene for any specific language.

Our learning of behaviour as we grow up occurs in and is influenced by the culture within which we live.

We internalise the values of the culture in such manner as to feel them as part of our core sense of self, our very identity. 

The invisible brain?

I have posted a link to an interesting (quite dense) lecture by Allan Schore on the neurobiology and neuroendocrinology of the development of emotional or affective state self regulation, with regards to the potential impacts of living conditions, environment, cultural practice upon these processes.

What goes one in our brains has been invisible, and is now being revealed as technology improves in examining brain development with empirical science tool kits.

There is the matter too of sex brain development, much of which occurs early in gestation, which is highly vulnerable to environmental influences, coming from and through the mother. we now know that brain sex dimorphism is much more complex with a greater range of variables and outcomes which indicate that the trans experience - of sensing oneself as being of the other biological sex - is indeed a natural part of human variability. For now, though, we are addressing the meaning and implications of The Bear Question.

The Bear Question.

The issue then, with regards the Bear Question, for women, is that within the dominant cultural setting on Earth is it stands today 'our lived experience is that many, many men are dangerous to us, and we cannot reliably predict when meeting men which ones are dangerous and which ones are not, in that the majority of men do seem to operate with a sense of entitlement to our bodies as sexual objects to be used, owned, possessed, exploited and discarded as a medium of the Mens Power in this culture and that there is no way to tell in advance as to which adult males are safe and which are not, and the tension of living with that is intolerable, not to mention the actual harms caused....."

And the only people who can change that are the men who call themselves allies of women.

Specifically the genuinely safe men MUST take a stance of confronting the unsafe attitudes that unsafe men hold, within this culture, and that means confronting them directly, robustly and without equivocation. All the time. Until the problem is no longer a problem. It also means confronting every structure of social power that extolls the values of the hierarchy of power, wealth and phenotype.

It is a problem with and of Men who internalise the patriarchal hierarchy cultural values in ways that are a life threatening and life altering problem for Women. Women are correct to point it out.

As a man, I understand the problem is a cultural problem, and I am part of that culture, to the extent that I have and carry any internalisation of the dominant cultural values and then express them in my thinking and my behaviour.

I have a responsibility to confront that culture. To myself, to all women, to all children. Just by being alive and aware of the problem.

It is not about 'me' and I cannot take it personally, even if my confrontation with other men on this is personal, as in one to one. 

It is about us, all of us. 

Men, women and children.

I was sexually assaulted, brutalised, psychologically abused and mistreated as a child, on a daily basis, and that abuse was mostly perpetrated by adult men. That is my lived experience.

Nuance required.

All our sons: The neurobiology and neuroendocrinology of boys at risk.

Allan Schore gives a detailed lecture on what was known in 2017 about the neurobiology and neuroendocrinology of boys at risk. 
His work on the development of emotional self regulation, on the development of the systems within the brain that handle emotional state self directed management helps us understand that there are dynamics that start in utero, and that continue throughout life, that mediate the ways in which we process and handle our emotional states healthfully or otherwise. The developing brain is extremely sensitive to the environmental condition of the mother.
The nuance here is that each child grows up within a cultural setting, a socio-economic condition, a familial environment where many variables come in to play in the formation of formerly invisible neurobiological processes that underpin our behaviour. When we are looking at behaviour, it is important to take this new information into consideration. This helps avoid stereotyping, categorisation and other dehumanising attitudes so often embedded in discussions of adverse behaviour patterns. We are all human, we were all innocent babies. 
In this lecture Allan Schore explores what happens for boys at risk, that is to say boys who for reasons outside their control or responsibility are exposed to trauma, neglect, maternal distress, familial distress in regards the maturation of biological systems undermining emotional development and learned behaviour.
This does not form a basis for absolving adults of accountability for harm causation, and it does offer a way to respond that is more concerned with prevention, health and safety than punishment. 
For my purposes I have included this here as an indicator of preventative measures that can be taken, informed by current and developing knowledge of neurobiology and neuroendocrinology, to reduce the incidence of male distress, male psychopathology and male violence as part of the overall work to meet the challenges of the bear question.
A friend responds.
I asked a friend of mine to read over this, and she made these comments, which I publish here with her permission.

“some excellent points and thoughts there.

Reading it reminded me of my other experience yesterday in a charity shop…..found a beautiful Italian leather evening style handbag in a stunning shade of turquoise…

was checking out its suitability for my needs in terms of pockets etc. it looked like it had never been used….I felt something in a pocket and thought it might be a lighter but couldn’t find which pocket it was in and the shape was a bit different so I excitedly thought it might be a small roll of cash

NOPE it was a penknife

I then took it up to the ladies at the till who were shocked and apologetic, I made a comment along the lines of whoever previously owned the bag was like me because that’s the sort of thing I’d feel the need to carry on a night out - the shop assistants and other shoppers then had a open conversation about women having such items in their bags for protection…..age range was about 20-75 years old - we all admitted to having done this, we all also agreed knife crime and carrying knives was bad.”

This anecdote, as I wrote previously was provided by a good friend of mine, a woman I respect and admire every much as a friend and fellow humane being, who describes herself as a “handbag granny :  as I am a fine example of how strong and determined women become after a life time of having to be tough….yeah it would be lovely to have become old and still be floating around without a care in the world having experienced no trauma or hardship but reality isn’t like that and life makes women tough”.

She also wrote this : “I’d say between the ages of 18 and about 45 I’d regularly carry something in my bag that could easily double up as a weapon if needed when I was going somewhere that I didn’t know was 100% safe, so 99% of the time I had a weapon in my bag and at times that would be in my hand if I was walking somewhere dark etc even if that was just a rolled up umbrella or a large set of keys. For women I think this is just instincts now, it’s not even something we think about - we just do it. Even a heavy overloaded handbag swung in the right way can knock a man off his feet, I think a granny recently took out a jewellery store thief in this way… 

She posted this link... https://youtu.be/ySBxMMidbEg?si=6czEfjh5Xd9A4FM_

Culture

Have you ever looked back on a moment and wondered if you made the right choice? Professor Robert Sapolsky has, but he believes that there was no actual choice at that moment. 

Professor Sapolsky has staked out an extreme stance in the field: we are nothing more than the sum of our biology, over which we had no control, and its interactions with the environment, over which we also had no control. Explore what it looks like to reject the notion of free will and how doing so can be liberating rather than paralyzing and despairing.

However , he points out that the kind of culture into which we are born, and the kind of culture our mothers were born into, which sets the conditions of their lived experience, has profound impacts upon us in utero, impacts that remain largely invisible yet present as behavioural patterns and dynamics. Because culture is the setting that is created by human interaction, there is room for the possibility of change. And that is exactly what this blog is all about.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

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Safe Spaces - for women, for trans-women, for men and children, and The Doctrine of Discovery.

On the question of 'Is a trans-woman a woman?', Safe Spaces and The Doctrine of Discovery. 

This piece is me taking a look at two hot topics - Transgender Rights and Indigenous Cultures Rights - in the context of the challenge of historical honesty and forward looking empathy based Governance. 
There is a widespread assumption that Democratic Governance ought protect the ordinary folk from avoidable harms caused by the powerful and others with malign intent. 
Seatbelts. Gun Bans. Health and Safety. Declarations of Interest. Laws criminalising rape, domestic abuse, wars of aggression, invasion, occupation etc.

For thousands of years, certain cultures have oppressed females as a class, a generic group.

For 5OO years, Eurocentric Conquest Culture has oppressed indigenous, native cultures on other continents. In both instances, legal and cultural structures and belief systems were created to permit and maintain the systems of oppression.

The impacts of this long history live on today because the most honest reality of that historical oppression remains obscured, deliberately, in order to preserve the gains accrued by the so-called 'victors'.

People who topple statues celebrating personages associated with that great harm - Slavers and Warlords - are accused of 're-writing history' as if they are doing so with malign and harmful intent. The reality is they do it with good intent, often after much effort to have the issue settled in a just manner, by an honest, public recording of History, in frustration with the obstacles and avoidable delays set against such an outcome.

To tell the truth is the first step in achieving justice and without justice there is neither peace nor equity..

The Truth about Biological Sex and Gender
Biology, at genetic, hormonal, cell chemistry and neurology levels reveals that biological sex is a spectrum, rather than a binary. This information is decades old, garnered from the work of many thousands of scientists, over time, peer reviewed, tested and checked to the extent of providing enough data and evidence to generate new scientific theory - not hypotheses or suppositions. Working models that work.

I urge readers to view this video. It contains critically important information. It helps us understand why so many older, egalitarian and hierarchy cultures alike, presented a wide variety of Gender assignations.

Forrest Valkai, an evolutionary paleo-biologist, walks us through the biology of sex, gender.

Who needs a safe space? Please keep this in mind as you read on. 
1. Sex at the genetic and biological level is 'male', 'female' and intersex, with intersex reflecting a natural biological variation, across the linear of 'male-female' rather than aberrations. No question. That is the Science. This is not opinion.
2. Intersex is less a third sex than it is a biologically created range of variations of sex that could suggest any number of genders. Intersex is not a choice. It's a reality. None of us choose what we biologically sexed as, in utero or upon birth. A biological reality. It cannot be wished away. Keep this in mind. Bio-logical Variety has purpose and functional utility. This is not opinion.
3. Gendering is a social cultural activity. It is the behaviour of assigning or attributing a set of traits, qualities, roles and behaviours to persons based only on what is seen in body form and it reflects what is culturally expected behaviour. Gendering has never been rooted in biological science, genetics or brain development. Because for a long time Science did not have the data to understand the true range of sex attribution until recently. Gendering has always been rooted in cultural expectations and practice. This is not an opinion. 

To accept this is so, is to accept the facts. And that means to accept that the culture ought to change to meet our new evidence based understandings in how to avoid avoidable harm. Because culture changes all the time, we know this can be done, by choice, by effort. Trade Unions struggled for workers rights. They changed the culture. This is not an opinion.

Trans rights is about Human Rights.

Struggle for cultural and public and legal recognition, understanding and healthy change. The only reason it is a struggle is because there is resistance, and that resistance is often violent and well organised. The new emerging understandings are marginalised and their proponents are othered to protect the old traditions.

Women's Rights, Feminism, Indigenous Peoples Rights, Environmental Rights, Animal Rights and of course Human Rights. They all seek changes in the culture. Healthy changes designed to make the  lives of those afflicted by adverse cultural violence and practices safer. Who opposes this?
4. Body form - what one can see - can disguise or veil the biological, genetic sex-at-birth status and variations thereof, and the person carrying the intersex genetic may well feel alienated from the prevailing culturally imposed gendering, because they in their body do not feel or sense those gendered traits as their own, and the task of presenting those sets of associated traits and characteristics attributed to that gendering leads to sense of distress that is not responded to healthfully. This is not an opinion. This happens all too frequently.

On external stimuli and their effects.

This commentator from tiktok asks the question - can being transgender be influenced by outside stimuli? He raises some important points about hostility  a form of influence - towards trans-gender people and what it means.

@kilt.dad Replying to @_x01z_ #sociology #psychology #trans #transgender #protecttranskids #transman #transwoman #nonbinary #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #gender #genderidentity #impostersyndrome #genderexpectations #transphobia #transtiktok ♬ Love You So - The King Khan & BBQ Show

5. In a progressive society, a mature society, a humane society, knowing all this we really ought to be prepared to set the absolutist binary gendering to one side, precisely because it causes harm to a lot of people. We ought to expand our definitions to meet the facts of the case. Cultural change, making life safer for persons. This is my opinion, based on the facts.
6. The binary limitation of Western gendering is a social construct. We can change it and not face an apocalypse. This is a fact.
Exclusive Male/Female binary is entirely a cultural construct. 
We know this because many different cultures hold varied gendering dynamics. Facts.
7. It is an echo or form of colonialism to suggest that the Western Euro-Christian gendering is the Natural Law governing all human life as a species. Not least because when Western Culture met many other cultures with a Gender Spectrum of their own, beyond the gender binary of The Christian West, it criminalised those cultures and the existing gender variation presenting demographics of the conquered, the colonised.

Because that binary view was largely informed by Religion rather than Science, it is maintained by indoctrinated belief and is utilised within systemic oppression of Western Colonisation as a weapon of conquest, extirpation and assimilation.
8. The Christian Right is leading the charge on anti-trans activism. By a large margin, it is really well funded and very well organised. Belief as a root of Governance is ideology.

There is a thread of very public hatred directed at trans-gender, homosexual and other people who do not fit the binary denominations. Trans-gender folk, homosexual folk and others are at greater risk, per capita, of violence perpetrated against them by men. Women are at greater risk of sexualised mistreatment and assault by men, than men are, by a long, long margin.

So who needs safe spaces? 
The drivers of anti-trans activism are not the funded by the underdogs in our society. They don't represent the marginalised, even if they are often recruited from a nother marginalised group.
9. 'Trans-Women are women' means relating to the trans-woman as a woman - as who she is presenting as, as a person, worthy of respect, dignity and legal protection from discrimination and abuse.

It does not mean and is never meant to mean a trans-woman is a biological sex-at-birth woman. You and I, if we had the funds, could undergo a DNA analysis, a brain scan and other tests and ascertain where on the spectrum of biological reality our bodies and brains are.

We cannot alter our genetics at that level. Everyone knows this.

Thus if a person has mix of genetics of female and male across their biological markers, tipped one direction slightly more than another, it is totally understandable that a person in an at first glance overtly male body may have a female brain, and other markers on that spectrum, and genuinely feel confused and distressed by the limitations of binary genderism, given the strict roles and behavioural  characteristics more commonly assigned to binary gender roles in the prevailing culture, political and social.

Thus the question is set as a trap, because it relies on the lack of knowledge of the person to whom the question is posed, in the political context. It is a bully question, a tactical deflection.

The actual question is this - Why does this culture make it so that women, children and others - people of colour, the disabled, the traumatised - need a safe space at all?
10. The technology of medical therapy is available to those who want to, after much consideration and thought, undergo transition medical procedures. Everyone undergoing this knows it will not change the sex-at-birth status of that body. The desire to alter the body according to one's taste, and the choice to do so, as medical and health practice enables safely as possible, is not a problem per se. 
11. Nobody is forcing any child or any adult to undergo such treatment, anywhere. It's so obviously a crime to do so. The claims otherwise are all arguments based on inaccuracies and falsehoods.
12. Women's safe spaces are only necessary because of a pre-existing culture of patriarchy, misogyny and the male dominated violence towards women inherent in such a culture, still operating within the current social and institutional setting.

Are the London Met more a threat to women than London's trans-women, as two groups of people?
13. CisGendered men are statistically more dangerous to women than trans-women are dangerous to women, as a demographic.

Obviously this does not mean not all men are a danger or a threat to all women, or all trans-gendered folk, it is that the statistics show that a lot more men cause sexual harm and violence to a hell of a lot of women than would happen in a genuinely healthy society. Men who fall for the trap that 'not all men' sets are reacting to a perceived threat, rather than responding to the existing situation.

This is so because there has been and remains a culture of misogyny at the institutional level, and at the personal level. We internalise the values of the culture we are born into, unless we resist. Those internalisations become part of our sub-conscious psyche.

This has biological utility. For example, among egalitarian land rooted cultures, their people carry an internal mind map of their environment, to the extent that some estimate the range of ethnobotanical information a typical individual of such a culture is thirty times that of a Western trained ethnobotanist for the same environment. Obviously the way the information is gained, processed and utilised will be quite different.
The institutional level of internalised beliefs and values across the prevailing culture of Power and Wealth provides safe space to be misogynistic, be it directly, or through negligence or through patterns of protecting the institutions rather than those who have been victimised. London Met. The Catholic Church
14. CisGendered men are even more dangerous to trans-women than they are to cisGendered women, which is quite horrific when one thinks about it carefully. Trans-women suffer more violence and abuse, per capita, at the hands of men. Their rate of being harmed by men is greater than that of women. The both require and deserve safe places. One might have thought that women would be their most natural allies in this.
15. Their need - that of women and trans-women - for safe space is a shared need, and to set out an argument that puts them as competing with each other for that safe space is an abomination and it is a very carefully laid trap.
16. Don't let your mind or your emotions fall into that trap. It will drag you down and down and down and eventually you will readily dehumanise someone and feel so self righteous about yourself.

The Vatican Repudiates Doctrine of Discovery

For the past 5OO years, older native cultures have sought a safe space. A space free of colonial oppression, conquest and extermination of people, culture, language, polity and land tenure. Who needs a safe space?

Native children, removed from their homes, families and communities, placed in residential schools approved by the State, operated by The Churches, to erase their links to their traditions, to assimilate them into White Christian Society, an outcome of The Doctrine of Discovery. 

Last week, The Vatican officially announced its repudiation of The Doctrine of Discovery, which provided the 'spiritual' and 'legal' status of colonisation of lands by Euro-Christian powers for 5OO years and more. Until this announcement was made.

The Vatican's official statement is published online for all to read. Here it is. It is a brief statement.

Joint Statement of the Dicasteries for Culture and Education and for Promoting Integral Human Development on the “Doctrine of Discovery”, 30.03.2023

1. In fidelity to the mandate received from Christ, the Catholic Church strives to promote universal fraternity and respect for the dignity of every human being.

2. For this reason, in the course of history the Popes have condemned acts of violence, oppression, social injustice and slavery, including those committed against indigenous peoples. There have also been numerous examples of bishops, priests, women and men religious and lay faithful who gave their lives in defense of the dignity of those peoples.

3. At the same time, respect for the facts of history demands an acknowledgement of the human weakness and failings of Christ’s disciples in every generation. Many Christians have committed evil acts against indigenous peoples for which recent Popes have asked forgiveness on numerous occasions.

4. In our own day, a renewed dialogue with indigenous peoples, especially with those who profess the Catholic Faith, has helped the Church to understand better their values and cultures. With their help, the Church has acquired a greater awareness of their sufferings, past and present, due to the expropriation of their lands, which they consider a sacred gift from God and their ancestors, as well as the policies of forced assimilation, promoted by the governmental authorities of the time, intended to eliminate their indigenous cultures. As Pope Francis has emphasized, their sufferings constitute a powerful summons to abandon the colonizing mentality and to walk with them side by side, in mutual respect and dialogue, recognizing the rights and cultural values of all individuals and peoples. In this regard, the Church is committed to accompany indigenous peoples and to foster efforts aimed at promoting reconciliation and healing.

5. It is in this context of listening to indigenous peoples that the Church has heard the importance of addressing the concept referred to as the “doctrine of discovery.” The legal concept of “discovery” was debated by colonial powers from the sixteenth century onward and found particular expression in the nineteenth century jurisprudence of courts in several countries, according to which the discovery of lands by settlers granted an exclusive right to extinguish, either by purchase or conquest, the title to or possession of those lands by indigenous peoples. Certain scholars have argued that the basis of the aforementioned “doctrine” is to be found in several papal documents, such as the Bulls Dum Diversas (1452), Romanus Pontifex (1455) and Inter Caetera (1493).

6. The “doctrine of discovery” is not part of the teaching of the Catholic Church. Historical research clearly demonstrates that the papal documents in question, written in a specific historical period and linked to political questions, have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith. At the same time, the Church acknowledges that these papal bulls did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of indigenous peoples. The Church is also aware that the contents of these documents were manipulated for political purposes by competing colonial powers in order to justify immoral acts against indigenous peoples that were carried out, at times, without opposition from ecclesiastical authorities. It is only just to recognize these errors, acknowledge the terrible effects of the assimilation policies and the pain experienced by indigenous peoples, and ask for pardon. Furthermore, Pope Francis has urged: “Never again can the Christian community allow itself to be infected by the idea that one culture is superior to others, or that it is legitimate to employ ways of coercing others.”

7. In no uncertain terms, the Church’s magisterium upholds the respect due to every human being. The Catholic Church therefore repudiates those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political “doctrine of discovery”.

8. Numerous and repeated statements by the Church and the Popes uphold the rights of indigenous peoples. For example, in the 1537 Bull Sublimis Deus, Pope Paul III wrote, “We define and declare [ ... ] that [, .. ] the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the Christian faith; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect”.

9. More recently, the Church’s solidarity with indigenous peoples has given rise to the Holy See’s strong support for the principles contained in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The implementation of those principles would improve the living conditions and help protect the rights of indigenous peoples as well as facilitate their development in a way that respects their identity, language and culture.

The National Congress of American Indians issued the following initial brief response. 

"The National Congress of American Indians commends Pope Francis and the Catholic Church for finally repudiating the dehumanizing Doctrine of Discovery and acknowledging what Indigenous peoples have known all along—that the Doctrine ‘did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of Indigenous peoples'. 
It is no secret that many governments -- including the United States -- have relied on this doctrine to justify the mistreatment of Indigenous peoples and the taking of our lands.
 It is our sincere hope that today’s announcement is more than mere words, but rather is the beginning of a full acknowledgement of the history of oppression and a full accounting of the legacies of colonialism—not just by the Roman Catholic Church, but by all the world governments that have used racism, prejudice and religious authority to not only justify past inequalities, but to allow, fuel, and perpetuate the institutionalization of those inequalities that continue to this very day.

We thank the Creator that Indigenous peoples are strong, resilient, full of wisdom, faith, hope, and love, and we stand ready to have difficult conversations about the future and to work together to build off of today’s  step forward to bring about meaningful positive change to our people and nations, and for the healing, reconciliation and restoration of all peoples across the globe.”

Here is a video, 46 minutes, from a Native American, Mark Charles, commenting on the Vatican's Statement, making some useful and accurate observations on the purpose behind it, on the careful language it uses and why The Vatican is trying to insulate itself from varying levels of culpability and the responsibility to make reparations, to correct the situation in full.

Who needs safe spaces and why? And who obstructs the creation and maintenance of those safe spaces?

These are important questions we must deal with, honestly.

Repudiation of The Doctrine of Discovery  - what ought flow from this, what 'reparations' really means.
1. Acknowledge the Native Land Tenure as equal standing, as a State, as a Nation, internationally, legally.
2. Acknowledge the Native Polity as a valid polity, with the UN Declaration of Human Rights as their protection.
3. Acknowledge the harm caused, and the harm still being caused and stop it.
4. Acknowledge the loss. Fully. An honest history must be recorded.
5. Make reparations, as determined by the Native people's and the UN, with co-operation from all existing Governments involved. 

And regarding Gender and Trans-Gender folk, the movement that opposes their full recognition, status and respect as human beings, with so much hatred and lies, is a cruel movement and it is evasive - it evades the truth. We live within an old, though not really ancient, bully culture, a hierarchy of wealth and power that determines the boxes and categories and class we are forced to internalise.

Who needs safe spaces and why? And who obstructs the creation and maintenance of those safe spaces?

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

https://patreon.com/corneilius - donations gratefully received

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US Supreme Court Bans Abortion whilst the US Wages Proxy Wars - oppression at home and abroad, profits increase.

I see patterns, in part because I see patterns, and in part because for 58 years I have read widely. I am curious about this world we live in. I think Earth is a beautiful place. I think some cultures are ruining it.

What links this ruling by the USCC, Wealth Extraction, Poverty, Food Banks, Low Wages, Brexit, Trump, anti-LGBTQ+ activism, Deforestation, Raw Sewage in Fresh Water Rivers, Rwanda, Patel, Johnson, Dead Sea-Beds, The Queen as a Monarchy within a  Democracy, Weapons flows into Ukraine, Syria, and Israel from the West, Boris Johnsons criminality, China and Nuclear War?

What links them is that every one of these few, on this euro-centric and incomplete shortlist, an indicator, and a myriad more, complex and complicated problems the culture has created, and must resolve. 
The industrial militarised competing powers for profit and more power culture. It's basic mode is bullying. That is not healthy, biologically speaking.  And if it's not healthy, then it is not 'normal' for our species - what this culture calls normal is really an acceptance, a submission and sense of normalised to behaviour that's unacceptable, largely because it causes harm. Do you get that feeling, sometimes?

what is she thinking?

The garden path

Roots

Today the US Supreme Court Removed the right of all women within the jurisdiction of the United States of America to chose an Abortion if they fall pregnant and do not want the child, for whatever reason, whilst the US Wages Proxy Wars - oppression at home and abroad. Good lives ruined. 

It's quite understandable that a devout Christian woman who believes that abortion is a 'sin' would refuse an abortion for herself. That is her choice.

A statement from Jacinda Ardern

It is, however, amoral for her to impose that belief on other women, not least other women who are not devout Christians following Christian rules, and to agitate in any way whatsoever remove that choice from them.

Free Speech is one thing, it's fine for Christians to say "I reject abortion for myself, due to my belief." It is their right to say that, publicly.
It is also a woman's fundamental right, as a person, as a human being, if she choses so, to undertake an abortion for a pregnancy she does not want. She also deserves the best possible health care and support undertake the operation, be she rich or poor.

How can any woman demand that another women bear a child that is unwanted?
The same applies to men.

How dare they?
The injunction in Christianity against abortion is a belief, based upon an imperfect and manufactured doctrine.  It is not a matter of knowledge, science or evidence. It is not a matter of health care and psychological health. 
There are many decent Christians, devout, who adhere to the rules of their Faith. They are not bad people, they are not evil. I see no problem in such people adhering to their rules, as long as they have chosen, consciously, to adopt their Faith. The Right to Choose, Right?
Where they err is to impose that rule upon all other women. That is wrong. amoral and unfair.

It is also a matter of insecurity - the insecure try to secure themselves often by imposing their will upon others. This is a dynamic that can be exploited and is being exploited by political actors who routinely troll and trigger target groups and individuals insecurity and belief patterns. Deploying the framing effect to influence decision making. 

We have seen plenty examples of this in recent years and throughout recorded history.

It is a standard practice in all violent hierarchy cultures.
One of the long standing problems I perceive within Christianity as a dogma is that Dominion is embedded into their belief system - they believe the worlds peoples should all be Christian, and that a Christian Earth would be the best of all worlds. God has given them this Earth. The promised land. Manifest Destiny.
This sense of the right to achieve Dominion is also built into Capitalism, which is rooted in Puritan Christianity. The Industrial Revolution and European Colonialism were also rooted in Christianity, and both were presented as Christianising projects. Wealth is a sign of God's approval, poverty evidence of His disapproval and thus, a flaw in the person who is impoverished.
The cover story for colonialism was the three 'C's. 
Christianity, Commerce and Civilisation. The British Empire was a global commercial domination project at it's core, with it's foundations rooted in Christian Dominion as a God given right and as the correct path for all Humanity.
The decision by the US Supreme Court to remove the right to abortion is part of this dynamic of imposing Christianity and it's rules upon a diverse population, it will impact all indigenous peoples in much the same manner as the conquest of the America's has and it is linked into the domination of Earths peoples by Capitalism. Every movement that rejects that imposition was treated as a threat, and type cast as a competing power grab. 
"Islam wants to take over!". "Communism wants to take over!"  "Secularism wants to destroy our Faith." "There is a war against Christianity!" 

Nonsense!
Secularism brought us The UN Charter of Human Rights, and included within it the right to religious freedom to allow people to follow their Religion, without being persecuted or discriminated against, and was a response to the horrors of the European pogrom perpetrated by the Nazi German Regime, which itself was part of a historical trend of pogroms against Jews 2000 years old.

War, religion and children

Thus it's declaration of freedom of religion was quite understandable, in the wake of the intolerable monstrosity of the slaughter of Jews and many others perpetrated by a modern European Christian State.
Unfortunately, what it did not do was instil an injunction against indoctrination.
Indoctrination is a core element of the propagation and expansion of Religion, and is mainly perpetrated upon defenceless children, often using methods, that if used on Adults, would be understood as deeply offensive. The use of psychology and sanction and corporal punishment to instil a belief system is oppressive. No matter the outcome. Even of it leads to a child growing up to be a kind, decent humane adult. The end does not justify the means.
Russian civilians and their children, Ukrainian civilians and their children are learning that lesson in the hardest and most horrific way imaginable, as two states, both avowedly Christian, though of different sects, and their allies pour weapons and men into wage war, and the civilians who are there by accident of birth, and who generally have nothing to do with the various aims of the Political War Lords on either side, until they are caught in the cross fire and must flee or endure or fight, as circumstance dictates, circumstance beyond their capability to influence - who is seeking Peace on either side?
The same can be said of any and all wars. Ordinary folk do not start wars, they do not vote for wars, because they know what wars will do to their lives, their communities, their culture.
Warlords vote for wars. Oligarchs profit from wars.
Warlords also exploit Religion and National Identity. A majority of adherents of Religion, as much as the majority of people for whom a given nationality is asserted,  are born into the Religion or The State in which their parents live and are indoctrinated into the beliefs associated with either institution as a matter of course, a practice which is accepted as the 'natural' order. 

Distal Power and Power Disparity
Children have little power relative to adults, and it's natural to some degree that children will adopt the beliefs of their parents, but the art of indoctrination - which is only possible due to the power differential between adults and children, a power disparity that is exploited to meet the adult worlds needs, and is often deployed with sanctions or threats of sanctions to ensure compliance - intensifies that adoption or internalisation of  the belief, and this frequently leads to conflict, when for example a child comes to terms with his or her sexuality as a teen or adult, and steps away from the doctrinal assumptions on sexuality or when a child rejects National Identity - as Theresa May opined "a Citizen of the World is a Citizen of nowhere!" in her Brexit Nationalistic taunt - conflict ensues.  The adults object. The rulers object. 
In my view the person externalising their own emergent sense of their sexuality is right, and a person asserting his or her sense of being part of the Human Family rather than merely a subject or citizen bound by nationalism is in the right. Those who oppose that are in the wrong.
I understand people adopting a national sense of self, an identity bound by history and culture, we all internalise our environment, but for it to be the result of indoctrination in childhood, that is oppressive, that is deliberate grooming and it is especially egregious when it is late on exploited. Nationalism fills the ranks of militarism, and in that sense it is oppressive and bloody well dangerous.

Every militarist state tells the mothers of the dead that their sacrifice was not in vain, that it was a noble sacrifice. Nah, I don't buy that. Let me say it as it really is. That is an ugly, disgusting lie, every time. It masks the truth of what war really is - for what is war other than Oligarchs organising the resources required to train workers to murder other workers, as the Oligarchy wave their Flags, in order to maintain the power of Oligarchs to dominate the society and to extract the wealth required to wage war.

Who can poll the dead for their opinions?
Would Rupert Murdoch or Elon Musk or Obama or Blair or May or Putin or Zelensky or Johnson present themselves at the frontline? Never! They lead from far behind the battle lines. Do the weapons makers turn up for shifts in the trenches. Do they fuck! 
They exhort the relatively powerless citizens to 'make the sacrifice for the Father/Motherland!' They persecute deserters and active anti-war activists and pacifists. 
Where is Julian Assange headed, and why?
Sanctions must be applied to keep the rebellious in line, and to forewarn others who might be considering similar action. Conversion therapy is driven by religious ideology, not by health care, science or kindness. It is known to be a cruel process. Demanding that every woman who falls pregnant bears the child to full term is similarly an act of intolerable cruelty.
Flags and images of Jesus are posted above class rooms, and children are enrolled, indoctrinated into the nationality myth and the religious myth. Is this just? Is this equitable? Pacifists are derided when War Lords wave flags to enroll young men and women into their wars. I think the pacifists are among the most courageous people of all. Atheists are decried as enemies of religion. Other Religions are deemed evil. This is all nonsense. Abortion Health Care is the work of Satan. Yeah, right. Jesus never said any of this.
The decision by the US Supreme Court, and body of less than 12 people, (Juries are 12, the USSC is merely 9 carefully selected (not elected) old farts, deciding upon the rules governing the lives of some 340 million people, to remove the right of all women in the US of A to choose an abortion, (and to have safe health care provision for such an operation, which they must pay for) from the Constitution, is a cruel decision. A divisive decision. What drives this divisive, irrationality?

Grooming

The Oligarchy, as I have written previously, are engaged in a political war against democratic regulation of toxic industrial practice. The strategic goal is a divided electorate, divided along irrational emotional lines of belief - that way they can harness the various value-emotion led demographics - Christians, Jews, Sunni vs Shia Muslims, New Agers, Commie Haters, people who fear LGBTQ+, Xenophobes, small land lords, people who do not correctly understand Government Level Finance Operations etc.,. etc. 
This is deliberate, well funded and utterly political right wing and very aggressive and funded by oligarchy.
https://www.ruth-ng.co.uk/the-weaponisation-of-freedom-of-speech-in-2021
A tactic they are deploying is to weaponise Free Speech.
They are also part of an anti LBGTQ+ political movement.
So they attack Trans-Sexuality as unChristian, then demand the right to do so publicly and claim their right to free speech is being trashed if anyone objects. Then the use emotional trigger to conflate and link that to other issues.
The Oligarchy seek out emotionally charged  issues that can be carefully groomed to align with political goals related to undermine democratic solidarity across the board.
This is a strategic gaming of people's emotions and positions for political gain, a strategy honest people would never engage in.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6927388/ - a study of anti-abortion activism in UK.
There’s a very well funded Christian Right Wing movement in England, affiliated with US, part of a global network.
They are targeting universities, clinics and do a lot of online advertising/grooming.
They conflate the issue of Free Speech with their campaigns.

Let me make it clear that these tactics are evil. They are abusive.
Grooming vulnerable people being deployed to restrict the rights of women, or anyone else, or to achieve any political goal cannot stand.

It is inhumane, it is institutionalised abuse, it is an act of mass oppression.

As to the Supreme Court decision it is an act of profound misogyny. And members of that court are already calling for other rights to be removed, to follow on from this egregious betrayal. The drive to divide the population along highly charged emotional lines is a drive to start a war of sorts, a war that inhibits grass roots worker solidarity.

This is not so much a slippery slope as another step along the well trodden road to inhumane ruination. This is not simply a gender rights issue, it is a full scale war against a humane democracy, a war waged by the Wealth Extraction Class who know that Climate Disruption, Poverty, Racism and Environmental Degradation, Species loss is on their door step. And they know that healthy democratic regulation would end their dominance, politically and financially. Addicted to that power they will do anything, anything to retain that power, even if it means billions of deaths.

If we don't work with all the energy, compassion, intelligence and creativity we've got, to build bridges of rationality across these emotional ravines, they will push this, and all of us to the wall.

It can be done, we have examples in our history where grass roots solidarity built healthy political movements to rein in some of the power of the Oligarchy. This work is not easy, yet it is worth the effort. The Norwegian Pension Wealth Fund is one example of taking a more socially caring trajectory.  Finland's decision to ban homework from schooling is another example of a more compassionate policy that works in the best interests of school children.

I describe a trend here that has little in it to offer hope that we will find the kind of solidarity across Humanity to meet the challenges of Climate Disruption.

And at the same time, looking at this awful decision by the USSC I wonder what might happen when hundreds of millions, if not billions, of very intelligent, compassionate and creative women and their male allies refute this atrocious ruling, if we collectively recognise this a more than about abortion,  that this is part of a deliberate trend towards an  autocracy that protects the Wealth Extraction Ruling Class, a trend that is not the will of the majority of human beings alive today.

I remain hopeful for our futures, precisely because I know most people are decent, kind human beings albeit living within a social and material power system that is toxic, and yes, there is lots of work to be done to assure our children will not suffer from previous generations of oligarchs avarice, irrationality and evolutionary stupidity.
Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

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Boris Johnson : Is Misogyny a Hate Crime?

On #BBCBreakfast the Prime Minister is asked whether misogyny should be treated as a hate crime, following the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer https://t.co/KXLP4AJltT pic.twitter.com/yxG19O30ne

— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) October 5, 2021

Johnson is largely correct in that Misogyny, harbouring thoughts of hatred of Women, in and of itself, is not a Hate Crime - Misogyny is a psychologically dysfunctional mental health issue. Hatred generally is.

Do we need a definition, in Law, of Misogynistic Crimes? We do.

Misogyny only becomes a crime when a crime is committed against a women because she is woman, or a crime is inspired or justified by misogyny.
Harbouring misogynistic thoughts is a disease state, and as long as it's just thoughts, it's a private matter. 
A misogynist can sit in his or her underwear, stew in the privacy of his or her domicile, and rage about his or her hatred of women, to his or her hearts content. It affects no one else. The affliction is contained. Obviously that person needs and deserves mental health support, irrespective of his or her awareness levels.
However, as soon as those thoughts inform behaviour and action in the social material domain, the physical real world, the shared commons and they start to have an impact on women, men or children, then the misogyny becomes a problem.
Misogynistic Bullying is Hate Crime.
Misogynistic threats made in anger are a Hate Crime.

Mistreating a woman just because she is a woman and the antagonist is a misogynist is a Hate crime.
Spreading misogynistic hate content, verbally or in any other form or medium, in order to incite more misogynistic hatred is a Hate Crime.
Insulting Priti Patel because she is a woman is a Hate Crime.
Noting that she is a bully is a statement of fact, and has nothing to do with her gender.
Sexual Harassment is a Hate Crime.
Boris Johnson's lies that prop up adverse policy that causes harm to vulnerable people are criminal, clearly. 
Yet he retains the power to utter those lies, Parliament refuses to hold him to account due to arcane and irrational rules. Johnson can cause immense social, economic and political harms, and get away with it.

Interestingly I am not aware of any single word that describes hatred of vulnerability, no technical term for that.
Vulneraphobic? MisVulnerable? A Bully?
Johnson can troll about with utter impunity, to the extent that he can troll the Earths political leaders at the UN General Assembly with inane references to Kermit the Frog and accuse them all of being adolescents, rather than mature adults, and infer that he, Boris De Peffel Alexander Johnson, will be the one to help them all mature at COP26, in Glasgow, in November 2021. 'Time to grow up!' indeed.
I am working on a song "It's not easy being Green, when you're a Bully, Liar, Troll, Thug, Groomer etc etc...!"

Meanwhile, COVID is spreading across all Primary, Secondary Schools and Universities in England, and the news mefia, parliament and the ruling class are silent: there is a taboo about talking about mass child abuse.

That deliberate silence is criminal.  I hate that silence. Is that a crime?

#SchoolStrike2021#Misogyny
#JohnsonVariant
#JohnsonOut
#enoughusenough

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Thank you for reading this blog.

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

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#corneilius#folkmusic#singersongwriter

International Men's Day - a proposal for the root or base of healthy masculinity.

Nurture is our bio-logical default, is key to any sustained and healthy human culture.

So what does it mean to be a man?

Or rather, what aspect of being male as in being a person in a male spectrum body, without referring to external value systems, is real and optimally healthy. In part this is a question for each of us, because the answers must come from our interior, the internal who we are part, the baby/person before conditioning started. The other part is ensuring the cultural space for 'male' is reflecting optimal human healthy behaviour, that integrates the diversity of our interiors, that holds space for all our variety.

For me revisioning what it is to be a healthy male on #InternationalMensDay suggests a need to confront the oppressive characteristics the culture tends towards as essentialist when laying out what a man is, and how a man 'should' or 'should not' behave to fit that image. 

I sense a need for this task everywhere - I think we need to do it accurately, it must be evidence based and I think we need to approach it with good heart, determined to create cultural and social and material space for nurture mutual aid, rather than dominance competition as the core gender root.

#Feminism

#Masculinism

My definition : we see and understand the violent hierarchy cult and we see it's inequity and we will, holding hands with one another, as men and women, work together to confront that inequity and correct it, thus bringing human culture into a healthy balance as we move forwards, and thus dismantling those obsolescent oppressive cultural conditionings. We, as responsible adult men call up for this movement emerging from within the humane population, the ordinary, decent, kind community minded folk, to act together and to behave in ways that generate genuine equity and lasting justice because we know that peace is more than the absence of war. Peace is the presence of social material and cultural safety and equity for all, everywhere.

#love

Here's a good place to start from - our beginnings

What Babies Want

#honesty #learning #natural

We are evolved to learn through playful co-operation void of judgement, reward or punishment. my song about learning.

The Culture of Violent Hierarchy trickles down and afflicts us all, from conception onwards. Men and Women alike. It is not healthy and it certainly does not have to be the way it is, even if the task of confronting this looks immense the status quo is not inevitable. I have had enough (of the bully cult).

Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."