Being biologically male or female is an accident of conception - time we got over it, don't you think?

In the most simple terms, I am a person before all else.

All the cultural labels are imposed upon the person and they form a cultural persona - a mask, a veil worn for approval and through dull habituation internalised - thus 'fitting in' to a hierarchically violent cult. Babies are people, persons from the get go. We all are. Rather than externalise our emergent selves, we are forced to endured internalisation of the cult's approved proxies.

My maleness is an accident. Of conception. Of something that happened in the womb. Nothing I did. It just happened that way.  Nonetheless I am a man. Male body.

When I was a late teen I recognised in myself, within, that I was 'androgynous' in that I was neither male nor female as played out by those around me, in the character of my mind and psyche. Or at least when I discovered the word 'androgynous' and put it into that context I felt it made sense of my inner reality. I did not feel the roles laid out by culture fit within me. I could not talk about 'women' the way other men did. I wanted to meet minds. I was interested in bodies too, and shy with that, yet it it was the mind that I was really interested in. The person. Who are you, what do you think?

And because I did not understand that the discomfort I felt (around culturally imposed male and female roles) and behaviours was accurate I thought that there had to be something wrong with me, and no matter how hard I tried, I could not internalise those values. I have always felt deeply uncomfortable around the typical male - female behavioural dynamic. When members of either biological sex talk of the others as if they were another species I always felt something was deeply wrong.

I think I need to get over it. I am not the only one. Women are not a separate species, a mystery. Women are person, minds embodied. So here goes. I now understand that those cultural imposed conditioned roles are intrusions into the psyche of the person, they are what we call part of poisonous pedagogy.

Poisonous pedagogy, in Katharina Rutschky's definition, aims to inculcate a social superego in the child, to construct a basic defence against drives in the child's psyche, to toughen the child for later life, and to instrumentalise the body parts and senses in favour of socially defined functions.

https://psychology.wikia.org/wiki/Poisonous_pedagogy

There's a long history of culturally male behaviour that punishes women for not complying with male demands for sex as if access to women's bodies was some kind of inherent right. Incels are one expression of that. Women as chattels is another. Pornography has elements of that too. Eroticism less so. The idea that masturbation is not really sex. The bluster that penetration is an expression of that 'right to sex' by virtue of phenotype that is entirely a cultural construct.

There is no inherent right to sex with anyone other than oneself. There is a need, indeed, but it is primarily for intimacy and for procreation - and even so it must be governed by informed egalitarian consent unsullied by any form of power differential, formal or informal. We see a long of anger in the male culture, a lot of pain around this. We see a lot of punishment of women around this. It is there. It cannot be denied or played down. The impacts are too vast, too disruptive of conviviality, mutualism and collective coherence. I do not feel in any way diminished when a majority of women protest - "too many men, too many times, too much impunity". I know they are not talking about me. I get how they must feel. Not least because of what my close female friends have disclosed and what I have seen myself, and how I have intervened at different times in my life to stop harassment and abuse. I do not feel the need to say 'not all men'. At all.

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Being biologically male or female is :

a) an accident of conception, yet not in the same what that the class one is of is an accident of birth. Class is created by a hierarchy cult. It is not natural at all. Class is artificially imposed. Obviously the Hierarchs hold that class is natural. They have to believe that or their self assured stated withers before their eyes. Being biologically male or female is :

b) really easy, I don't have to do anything at all. Being proud of it is silly. Humility is a more accurate approach.

c) Avoiding the dominant culturally imposed definitions of what maleness/femaleness means is difficult. That is something to be proud of, glad of. It is difficult. It is scary. And yet it must be done to become the full person I am. My body and mind is in evolutionary terms so much older than this dominator culture, by a million years or more. Personhood is older than this culture. Personhood is deeper than anything this culture has ever philosophised. I laugh at the history of Philosophy mostly for it's lack of sensitivity. Way too serious, not playful. Not like my being at all. Where is the philosophy of nurture?

d) I experience my natural personhood as asexual, non gendered and I feel this sense of self is way more sensitive than the dominator cultural value sets delineate. Super alive. Super alive to the world and to feeling. Super sensitive. Playful. Creative. Joyous. Kind. Vulnerable. My music is not male. My writings are not male. They are both of the person I am. And when I feel maleness and this male sexuality, I delight in it, on my own and with my partners. It's got nothing to do with anyone until I consent. It's nobody's business. Until I choose to invite contact and that is always in the context of the other person. It's personal, it's person to person.

e) The struggle or discord between that natural ancient evolutionary base - the person - and the cultural overlay - the persona - is immense and intense and it is a taboo subject. The cultural overlay is a wound.

I internalised an identity given to me by a bully cult. It never fits. I have never been comfortable with that inside me. I have learned that it is not of me, does not belong with me. I decide what maleness means in as much as I am a person, who just happens to be male, and the maleness is a small part of me, it is not the whole of me, not by any stretch. Maleness is an aspect of my body and how that relates through my personhood is for me to define, to decide. Emergent.

f) I think there are many culturally conditioned males who are taking it personally when women are speaking as persons in such large numbers demanding that this misogyny, this unwanted attention, harassment and sexualised violence that is happening as a daily occurrence in so many lives MUST STOP. Now! I also know there are bullies and professional predators who are gaming all of this, for power. They are grooming the cultured males and females for political, economic and psychological advantage. I know there are cultured males and females who do see the wound of this behaviour and want it to stop and are confused as to why it is happening at all. I get that some feel a strong male or female identity and that it's a big part of who they are. I hope it is emergent for them, rather than a cultural internalisation. All of us are caught between a rock and a hard place within the culture that is a hierarchy of power and violence.

f) I think that there is a fear to see the wound that the women are drawing attention to. And I think it is in part that for culturally indoctrinated men to see it, to be really honest here, to submit to the truth as it really is to lose that culturally imposed identity, that internalised value set of the good male, or the bad male, whatever - it was not what I was born with, but by golly it is who I am now - is something can be perceived as, or imagined as a loss of self, a dissolution, a death of sorts.

When it's a liberation. It IS a liberation. To be truly male is to nurture.

g) What if we are not really men, not really women, we are really persons, and we need to meet and live as persons in order to deal with this dreadful wound?

h) How much of the dominant culture collapses in that realisation?

Boys! Our maleness is an accident. Of conception. Of something that happened in the womb. Nothing you did. It just happened that way.

I think we need to get over it. Free our minds. Our hearts. Come home to who we really are. You do know there is no such thing as a male brain, a male liver, a male kidneys, or even male lungs?

Kindest regards 

Corneilius 

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

Mrs. Dorries, MP, Sex Abuse and Teen Pregnancies - Gaslighting the Victimised

Gaslighting the victimised is the Conservative fall back position.

Ms Dorries, is a Conservative MP, who has close ties with Christian Concern For Our Nation, a highly conservative group that campaigns (among other things) for 'Christian family values'. Her efforts are also supported by the Christian Legal Centre and the Christian Medical Fellowship. She misrepresents facts to claim that current sex education is not working. 

She has a Bill in the House she is trying to push forwards.

https://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2011/12/nadine-dorries-abstinence-for-girls-bill-what-you-can-do

Ms. Dorries has often made seriously inaccurate comments about  sex abuse. She claims that teaching abstinence to girls will reduce child sexual abuse – which has outraged abuse survivors' groups.

This week, however, Dorries has gone one step further. Appearing as a guest on Channel 5's The Vanessa Show on Monday, host Vanessa Feltz suggested that teaching children they can 'say no' already happens and that it already happens in an appropriate and sensitive way. The MP replied:

"Well do you know that’s really interesting because...if a stronger just say no message was given to children in school that there might be an impact on sex abuse."

Not content with putting the onus completely on girls to take responsibility for sexual activity of others who might be more powerful that the child is in the situation, she now appears to be saying they should also be taking responsibility to prevent being abused.

http://ontoberlin.blogspot.com/2011/05/nadine-dorries-abstinence-and-abuse.html

A courageous Survivor wrote about some repugnant comments made by a Tory MP, Nadine Dorries, about child sex abuse, whilst promoting her particular 'Abstinence' campaign, on TV, a campaign designed to reduce teen pregnancies (part of her stated concern is the impact teen pregnancies have on girls in terms of education, job and life prospects) and old Conservative trope.

She comprehensively rebutts Mrs, Dorries comments about children saying "No!" to adult sex abusers.

"To say I am insulted that someone would insinuate that I caused my own abuse is an understatement. But this isn’t just about me, this is about everyone who isn’t able to live with the memory of what happened to them. It’s about children who even now are being abused and being blamed for their abuse: by their parents, by their abusers, by Nadine Dorries."".

The show, The Vanessa Show on Channel 5, can be viewed here, Mrs. Dorries speaks at about 19 minutes into the show. Hopefully it will be youtubed for posterity by some enterprising youtube-er.

The blogger, Vanessa, invited her respondents to write to Mrs. Dorries. So I did.

The Letter : copied to her party leader..

Mrs. Dorries,

I watched the Vanessa Show in which you spoke eloquently about your ideas concerning sex education, and teenage pregnancy. Your concern comes across.

However, I think you have not done the depth of research in this matter, that your position as a Public Servant, paid for by the taxpayers, demands.

Eloquence is not enough when it comes to the welfare and safety of children.

You have a duty of care, Mrs. Dorries, that is both legally mandated and morally implicit.

That duty of care is to the welfare of all those affected by the work you do.

Thus it includes all living Survivors of childhood sexual abuse, it includes all those children who are today being abused, and all those who will be abused in the future, because the policies you promote will affect many, many people, and because you made some comments about sexual abuse that I must address.

That duty of care demands that you transcend your 'opinions' and deal explicitly with the facts, the material evidence.

Those who have Survived sexual assaults in their childhoods form a very large part of that dataset. Have you spoken to Survivors on this matter? Are those conversations a matter of record?

Regarding your comments which I have transcribed from the program which were as follows :

"from some of the evidence I have heard, that if a stronger 'just say no' message was given to children in school, that there might be an impact on sex abuse, because a lot of girls, when sex abuse takes place, don't realise, until later that that was a wrong thing to do ... because" .. and you continue to speak of sex being so common in Society, in marketing etc etc and do not return to this matter of 'saying no will impact sex abuse', you do nor return to the moment the child in jeopardy is in, and you talk instead of the over-sexualisation of our children, as a societal phenomenon and of how that is linked to teenage pregnancy, a point that is unproven.

I note that you made a number of comments throughout the piece that it is the girls whose futures are most impacted by falling pregnant. That suggests that teenage pregnancy is key to your position. Your primary concern. No the abuse itself.

You have used 'sex abuse' as a means to an end. To bolster your particular campaign.

That is disingenuous and it is also manipulative. How dare you behave in such fashion?

What evidence to you have to support your contention?

How do you link your campaign, which is ostensibly about telling young girls that they should say NO, as part of their conscious abstinence practice, (which I partly support : sexual activity must to be consensual, well informed, safe and fun for all concerned, and that includes saying no...) to these comments?

As a child, age 8, I was sexually assaulted. By a priest. I didn't understand what was happening, so I could not say 'no'. It was simply put just weird behaviour I did not understand, yet the abuser was in a such position of Authority in relation to me, the child that I acquiesced. He had all the power. ALL abusers do. They are adept at manipulating the situation. Check the facts. Ask Survivors.

Many Survivors have in fact said 'no!', and that has then been ignored by their abuser. This is common. Abusers do not give up easily. Some children say no and are intimidated, manipulated and even beaten by their abusers. There's this question of Authority again.

How does a child, or a young teen say 'no!' and back it up, to an advancing abuser when  all the real Power in the situation lies with the ADULT abuser?  When all their young lives they are taught to respond to Authority with obedience?

The other panellist mentioned the fact that many parents are embarrassed to speak of sexuality to their children, and that her organisation has programs to help parents get over that embarrassment, so that flows of communication between children and parents are more open?

What are you doing to address this really important communication gap, one which abusers are known to exploit?

And what then of children in 'care', in fostering, who might not have the kind of trusting relationship that nurturant parenting ought foster, where the child has no-one to turn to, where we know that sexual abuse is relatively common?

Mrs Dorries, I have to say that 'might have an impact' is far too vague a term to use, for someone in your position, with the responsibility you have, of a duty of care to those whom you serve.

Perhaps you don't see it that way. Perhaps it is others you serve, (ideology) or your own opinions you serve. Only you can answer that. But I tell you this, your comments do not serve Survivors or children who are in jeopardy today, tomorrow and in in the future.

You see, Mrs. Dorries, the roots of abusive behaviour are known, they are well described, and documented.. The dynamics of abuse have been studied for some time, the witness of many Survivors is a part of that dataset.

At the root is a lack of empathy. At the root are a range of situations and societal expressions of power, where societal messages that lack empathy are transmitted by thought and by deed, where the power disparity that exists between a child and an adult is abused by the adult, to meet the adults perceived needs, where the child's natural nurturant needs are not met. Part of that lack of empathy you have ably demonstrated in the comments you have made, quoted above.

Of course I do not hold you responsible for the abuse that others do. Nor do I seek to link you to it in any way.

If you are serious about preventing abuse, (which is another matter altogether than the one you are so exercised about, that of teenage pregnancy) then you must study this material.

You must dig deep, Mrs. Dorries, and you must, above all, speak to Survivors...

Here's some research that would be a good place to start. I offer this to you with respect and with the hope that you reflect on my comments.

http://www.alice-miller.com/ - Eminent Psychologist whose work or intergenerational abuse cycles across whole Societies, has helped many, many people recover from their trauma, has helped people break the cycles of abuse and prevented further abuse from occurring.

http://www.birthpsychology.com/ - the latest findings in Science, on the natural development of children from in utero, through birth, infancy and childhood, which describes in great detail, the natural expectations that all children embody, that are intrinsic, inherent and that if not met, lead to pathology.

http://www.violence.de/prescott/bulletin/article.html - Body Pleasure and The Origins of Violence

If you don't, then I, as a Survivor, must assume that you are more concerned with imposing your personal opinion and world view, through the power invested in you as an MP, than you are with the material evidence, the facts of the matter, and that is, in my view, utterly immoral, profoundly repugnant and I am sure that it absolutely disqualifies you from office.

I look forwards to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

I will copy this email to your party leader, and publish it on my own outlets.

Yours Sincerely... etc

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe