Showing posts with label women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label women. Show all posts

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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https://www.soundcloud.com/coreluminous - .wav Songs

https://www.corneilius.net - Archive

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#blogger
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Women Only Carriages, Sexual Harassment, You and I and Us/Them.

1. The MP, Chris Williamson, who brought up the subject of women only carriages,  as a potential response to an alarming increase in sexual assaults and harassment of women on public transport, made it perfectly clear that it was merely a discussion point.

He did not indicate any suggestions of enforcement, he did not say talk about regulations, he did not produce a white paper in preparation of legislation.

All he wanted was a public discussion on the issue.

Because it had been brought up two years ago, and the idea was dropped, and yet the behaviour has increased, the situation has worsened and that cannot happen. It is happening, and it cannot be allowed to continue.

The issue is not separate carriages for women.

The issue is safety from harassment for women. And not just on Public Transport.

Every where.

I see his effort as an institutional cry for help.

An attempt, a tactic, to bring the subject to light.

Let us talk about this, honestly.

Deal with it.

Fair enough.

The subject is sexual assault and harassment. Not Carriages.

2. The first I heard of it Mr Williamson's cry for help was when Majiid Nawaz on LBC during his sit-in for the lovely and logical, evidence based yet (sometimes infuriatingly in denial) James O' Brien, a seat 
he does not fill well, on the mid morning show.

Nawaz used this topic to attack the Labour Party and lefties in general.

Two women challenged him on this and he dismissed those challenges by asking them what would it be like if a woman did not use the carriage and was harassed, she'd be asked why she did not use the carriage set aside - with the implication that is was in some way as if it were her own fault, and a defence could be made on that grounds, and he said that would be crazy if separate carriages led to that. 

He implied that separate carriages would lead down that path. Gaslighting. On public air waves. How 
arrogant, how repugnant.

He also likened the idea to Saudi Arabian segregation of women.

He did not address the harassment of women in any detail, or with much sensitivity to the subject, or for the women who disagreed with his tactic of using this subject to attack the Labour Party. 

Those who agreed with him were praised.

He used this issue to score political points, and the media have been doing that all day.

You have no idea how angry I am at this. I have no idea how angry I am with all this.

What he was doing was gaslighting. Bullying.

He was deliberately missing the point and he was using women's distress (and many men's distress at this) to score political points.

3. In the past 8 months I have intervened on public transport to stop men harassing women, groping them, sneering at them, in obviously sexualised harassment. Thrice. Twice on the Bus, once on a late night tube. Going north..

On the last occasion, I got into a busy late night train, full of people emptying out fo the pubs, and I witnessed three drunken men, one sitting beside a woman, the other across from her, and the third in the aisle. The man in the aisle was groping the women, pawing at her, jeering at her in an obvioulsy lewd manner; the others were laughing, egging him on. She was clearly distressed.

It looked like it hand been going on for a few minutes.

I stepped up and stood up to him and told him to back off, that what he was doing was sexual harassment. Which is an offence.

He backed off, and then started to insult me.

I checked in with the lady, nd looked around behind me and saw everyone was watching, witnessing.

Fine. I did not rise to his bait, and I continued saying that what he was doing was an offence.

"The way you were behaving was the issue."

His friends got just a little bit angrier. I stood my ground. I kept repeating that, hold their gazes... looking at each one in turn

I stared and he stared and then I turned to look back down the carriage, and everyone was still watching.
One or Two stops later she got off the train, muttering thank you to me; she had to walk past all three, including the harasser whom she had to pass really close by. She was intimidated. Scared. She moved rapidly. I watched the drunk trio.

They then started to have a go at me, and the harasser called me a faggot, and then, out of nowhere one of them said.

"Well maybe your daughter was raped..."  he smirked, his friends laughed. Their little joke.

These three guys were Asian. But more importantly, they were men.

It was a trolling  dig, a trigger statement, a deliberate  knock me off guard,  and it probably had some connection to the coverage around the Rotherham case, and he was implying my opposition to his action was racist.

It was not.

I made it clear that his skin tone, his ethnicity were not the issue, and not an issue here.

** Note : In my view, the ethnicity of people who harass and assault women or children, their background, their justifications or rationalisations, their explanations is all irrelevant. All the is relevant is the behaviour. That's the issue. If the behaviour was not there, there'd be no issue. In cases like this, ethnicity is a distraction, a side issue. It always is.

"The way you were behaving was the issue. The behaviour, That's it."

Then he stepped towards me, in an intimidating drunken way... muttered another insult. I do not recall what he said.


I was about to respond to that, when some men behind me motioned to me, and asked me to  'move back here, m8!" Nobody said anything, they just slowly filled the  space between me and the three harassers,

For me,  skin tone, ethnicity, language, belief system, religion, club memberships, favourite egg dish, bath or shower? It is all wholly irrelevant.

It was the behaviour that I was addressing. I made no negative comments about them at any stage of this interaction. I did not use insult at any time. I remained polite. We can do it.

- moral of the story - if we healthy men see such harassment in public, then we all need to say it - ZERO TOLERANCE - TOGETHER and then act to impede the abuser. And if needs be, if a serious offence occurs, then it's a police matter, and then a court and sentencing matter.

We need to film the harassment as we move in. We need to stand together.

Because it is a problem of some men, that becomes a problem for many, many women. Too many women endure this behaviour.

As men we cannot stand by simply because we would never behave in that manner. And we cannot rest on the laurels of  "It's not all men!"

It is, as it happens, a problem all men need to confront.

Sexual abuse and bullying does happen either way, that is true. The bulk of sexual abuse is perpetrated by men, against women and children and other men. There is also a wider cultural context of bullying. 

Sexual harassment is not banter, it is is bullying. 

It  is unacceptable anywhere, on this Earth. really.  

Nonetheless that cannot be used as a way to deflect from the issue of men harassing women in a lewd and intimidating manner.

4. Often many of us men are scared of getting involved, for lots of different reasons, personal and social, we can become timid, feel deeply un-nerved when threatened by intimidation, aware of an inability to fight, and that is a genuine fear, a real risk and I get that.

But it is not good enough. We got to get together, stop the harassment and talk the harassers down. It can be done if we work together. It did this time, and other times.

We have to acknowledge we do not have this issue where it needs to be, now!

5. Zero Tolerance. Every time. It is an offence, and offensive, and not in the way of ‘taking offence’ which is another matter altogether.

This quote is pure wisdom, based on common sense and available scientific evidence. It has something to say on this issue.

"Because of the physiological unity of mind/body, because of the physiological unity of the brain's emotional centers, the immune system, the hormonal and nervous systems, when you suppress something in one area you are risking suppressing it in another area, so when you suppress your anger and boundaries emotionally, you are also suppressing your immune responses. And therefore your body is not as able to fight back against malignancy or, just as anger can turn against the self, so can the immune system

Anger is a necessary boundary protection. If something or somebody transgresses your boundaries, you express anger, not necessarily to hurt them, but simply to keep them out of your space. That's a healthy response. More generally, the role of emotion is to keep out that which is dangerous or threatening, and to permit that which is nurturing and helpful. So we have anger, we have love, we have attraction, we have revulsion, the whole thing. But that's exactly the role of the immune system. It's to keep out that which is noxious and unhealthy, and to attack it if necessary, and to allow in that which is nurturing and supportive.”

-Dr Gabor Maté

That means, to me, that sentencing is focussed on the community's health and safety, rather than punishment.

Health and Safety of the community, and ultimately the Society, rather than punishment, where everyone loses out.

Health and Safety says a person who cannot be trusted, cannot be trusted. 

Keep them safe. Not in Society. And. Importantly, education and honesty, as in listening to the people who have been hurt, harmed, on all sides of this issue. This is abut childhood and men and women.

This is about looking at how people learn to be bullies.... looking at the neuroscience, psychology, biology and environment to see that is happening at the physiology. How all these elements orchestrate in to influencing behaviour, Good or bad. The research understanding at present has much to offer by way of insight, Survivors have even more wisdom to offer, if anyone was to really listen to hear it No more assumptions about people in distress.

Why some bullies choose racism, another will choose misogyny, others attempt objectification of some 'othered' group, yet others strut as neo-nazi's, or parade and throw bricks as antifa... who cares? I think that is part of what happens when lots of people who want to be offensive, and I mean genuinely offensive, harmful find each other and bond. Football Hooligans.  A culture of violence.

Their justification's or rationale are invalid. Reason is a nothing. An empty space, with a narrative wrapped around it that is meaningless. The behaviour and the outcomes, that is the issue.

6. We healthy men have to be the immune system that ejects the virus of sexual harassment. Of both men and women, by whomever.

Leaving it to Government, or guards, is neglect of our shared response ability.

7. When media personalities use this story to undermine Labour's standing, they are avoiding the first point, and using the trauma of women as a political device, to make a secondary point. Labour bad!

8. There is a need for an education led approach to prevention - not talking at children, not a curriculum to be tested on, but talking with children, parents and anyone else, and most of all, children in schools listening to the survivors. They were there. First hand accounts of what it feels like.
you know that joke :

"How many Vietnam Vets does it take to change a light bulb?"

- I don't know, man

"You don't know, maaan! 'Cuz you weren't there, maaan, you were not THERE!"

9. Another point regarding placing more officials on the trains and stations - the profit lost, or the extra labour cost, which ever way you look at it, is not worth more than the feeling for women of the harassment that women are subjected to, the risk they feel, the lack of ease...

That said, someone passed me this comment from facebook:

"One gentleman said if we were all train guards and made sure people didn't feel vulnerable and step up when needed we would not need these carriages/ seats.”

Absolutely spot on, and so few words, not one wasted, makes me sound like a verbose ranter. But I know that of myself, anyways. I am a writer of polemics.

There's a lot more to be said on this... it ties in bullying and abusive behaviour in general.

10. So here’s another way of putting it.

An issue is raised. For discussion.

Sexual Harassment of Women on Public transport.

Are separate women only carriages a solution?

The media set the narrative.

Pundits  scream "going back to segregation!"

Gaslighting and deflection.

Then they use it to attack the Labour Party and J. Corbyn. They use it to attack 'woke'. They use it to attack Feminists. They use it to attack.

“Labour are utterly bonkers!”

Utterly repugnant, manipulative and puerile/immature. Bullying.

11. Healthy people must declare as a collective that there is no tolerance, for this kind of behaviour, none, and we must make it so.

Both the sexual harassment, and the punditry gaslighting. And quite a lot other obviously dysfunctional behaviour, such as the DWP Work Capability Assessment regime, which kills vulnerable people via unyielding bureaucracy.

That’s another posting.

And remember, sexual harassment of women : it is a problem of some men, that becomes a problem for way too many women. To the extent that it is a cultural problem.

Let us end it, together.

Kindest regards
Corneilius
Thank you for reading this blog. 

Violence, Women, Mothers and a decent wage....

Two items crossed my desk today, as they do...

The first was that yesterday was UN International Elimination of Violence against Women Day. Which includes mothers.

The Guardian ran an article on the World Health Organisations data on this.

"A new report from the World Health Organisation has drawn together data from dozens of studies and found that worldwide, 35% of women have experienced violence - and that the consequences for their health can be devastating"

The health consequences of violence are always devastating. One follows the other, like night and day.

We do live in a hierarchically violent culture - the strong beat on the weak, in politics, in economics,religion and in many other ways, some so subtle that they are accepted as 'normal', and even justified by so called 'innocent' bystanders, who lose their innocence with that acceptance.

Ignorance is bliss. Ihe innocence of the conditioned mind.

There is no such thing. That often unwitting unknowingness is far from innocent, it is the bedrock upon which violent hierarchies thrive. And getting angry with that sector, the innocent 'ignorant' does not help them escape.... only empathy can do that.

Just as only empathy can drive through the changes required to fulfil the United Nations aim, which all decent people share, of course. How could we not?

Yes some men will scream out about 'violence against men' ... missing the point altogether, though there is violence against men - war, for want of  a better word, yet they keep going to those war movies, and they keep on enlisting and they keep on learning how to kill. And wanting to do the job they were trained for? Ouch! C'mon!

OK. I AM being facetious here, and the issue of violence against women is clouded for some men who feel that 'feminism' (a term so general that it can only be defined as it is used,it must be qualified to have any real sense,meaning or context) is anti-men.

It's not. Some feminists are anti-men, and probably so 'cos they are angry, they are hurting somewhere deeply, and they feel things so intensely because some things are if we face them honestly extremely painful, and actually that's ok, it's nothing to be frightened by, it's healthy to feel that pain to some degree, it's an expression of a valid feeling - just don't give them guns! The boys or the girls..

Jokes aside, the thrust of a given concept is not defined by an individuals actions, other than in relation to that specific individual.

Women are exposed to a lot of hostility just because they are women, and that's plain nuts. It really is. And it's dangerous... and so something needs to change, and it's different things in different places, because the hostility towards women takes many forms, some of them cultural.

The next thing that came across my desk is part of the resolution of violence against women, and will lead to a a massive reduction in hostility towards women, and in the long term hostility in general, benefiting society massively.

It's the petition by the Global Women's Strike to the UK Government for a living wage for mothers and carers. The background document to this petition is well prepared, detailed and easy to digest. And it's accurate.

The petition was published on the 1st of May 2013. it has only clocked up 557 names since then! What? Only 557 names? In 6 months?

"Houston, we have a problem here..!"

You see what I mean about the hostility towards women? towards Mothers! Think the Unions have a hard time bargaining for better wages? Nothing on what the Mothers are faced with!

I recommend reading the background paper and then consider signing the petition, or not, as the case may be. The read is a good read. If if one does not at first support the proposition. You WILL learn something.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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

Helen Caldicott : Another sensible woman..

Helen Caldicott, who I have great regard for, was interviewed for the English Independent Newspaper, as part of the credo series. What she has to say is instructive.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/credo--helen-caldicott-424003.html

That she spearheaded the international movement against nuclear power and nuclear weapons, is because of her ability to speak deeply, intelligently, without jargon, to the facts and the figures, to the human cost. And that her thinking is very, very clear on the matter.

As I wrote - instructive.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe



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Shock, Horror and Grim Reality.

In a Jersey children's' home police ‘search’ for evidence of serious abuse against children, perpetrated by adults ‘entrusted’ with the care of those children. An all too regular occurrence. On two levels.

Level One : media reporting, shock horror stories, investigations, some arrests, some fewer charges, court case, incarceration and then back to the continued general media silence on the underlying issues of ‘child abuse‘, a subject which is well studied, well understood (by those in the field such as Alice Miller, Carl Rogers, John Taylor Gatto et al)…and yet Government and those officially entrusted with the overall administration of welfare for our children studiously ignore the information offered, and the often sensible and deeply compassio0nate suggestions made by those I have mentioned.

Level Two : One in four English speaking children experience some form of abuse that causes actual harm, be it physical or psychological. One in four women will experience serious sexual assault in their lives. One in thirteen men will experience serious sexual assault in their lives (though there is reason to believe that this lower figure is due to under-reporting, male reticence and all that). In all cases, their behaviour will have changed as a result. As will the behaviour of those that witnessed the abuse. After all that is the basic reason given for justifying rules, laws and prison. Deterrence.

Unpalatable Truth Numero Uno : Governance over people, senseless Competition, pointless War, and abject Consumerism and even Justice, that blind woman with a scales and a sword to guide her, all depend upon this systemic abuse for their very life-blood. Without that systemically abusive childhood, without the woundings and reshaping of the human personality that results, Western Civilisation would not be what it is today.

And only a fool, a willing ignoramus or a ‘believer’ would imagine that those who pull the strings of Western Civilisation are unaware of this. In fact the historical record is clear. What do you think the imposed conditions of the IMF, WTO upon ‘third world’ countries and the Invasion of Iraq for the ‘good of the Iraqi People’ who love freedom really amount to?

Unpalatable Truth Numero Duo : They do know what they are doing. . From Jesuits through to Marketing men, from Corporate CEOs through to Newspaper Magnates, they do know what they are doing. They freely admit to it, though not often in public. They are proud of their achievements, their ability, as they see it, to fool all of the people, all of the time. Dick Cheney is a good example. They are responsible for what they do.

Oh dear!

Over the weekend I was chatting to a young friend, a girl of good ’background’ about the difficulties experienced in ‘relationships’, and in particular she was concerned with the ‘self-loathing’ that is generally the lot of men, something she was beginning to ’intuit’ in her own and in her friends experience. I too experienced that self-loathing. It is not uncommon. It is a widespread fact of life. Fact of life is that I hated myself. Men do hate themselves.

For my friend, as this information was dawning upon her, as she was coming to terms with it, she was experiencing a deep shock. Part compassion, part depression, part incredulity at the scale of and profound implications of this issue.

I hope I was able to assure her that, in spite of the scale of the problem, once the core issue has been identified, it can be approached in a way that may lead to a healing.

That knowing was better than not knowing, and far, far better than the typical descent into myth and counter myth that typifies accepted or conventional wisdom on the issue of relationships.

As spouted by various writings, from self-help soul-mate seekers manuals to so called ‘agony aunts’ such as Deirdre in the Sun, from the dictats of Cardinals and Evangelical Pastors to the strident manifestoids of ‘feminists’ and ‘Gay-Rights Activists’, from the admonishments of Dr. Spock through to the ’advice’ of all of whom ignore the underlying issue : our culture revolves around child abuse, and depends upon it. Only it is never admitted to nor called by it’s name.

No wonder men hate themselves. No wonder I hated myself for so many years. And it did change my behaviour. I was and I remain a behaviourally modified organism. It is a daily work I undertake, to undo the negative effects of that behavioural modification through abuse that I lived through. I know of others who were there and are in denial. Many others. The majority, even still, will not admit to the truth.

And yes, women also hate themselves….self hatred is not exclusive.

Self-Hatred is the core driver of our civilisation. The Nuclear Bomb, the near constant Destruction of the Environment, The Constancy of War, Viagra, are all the result of hatred. The spread of AIDS through Africa as Western Policy, the advance of the American Empire are all the result of hatred. Glossy Magazines that sell the illusion of perfection, that play upon known modified behavioural and psychological weaknesses in order to sell the product are all the result of hatred. Elitism, the sense that one is better than, above or superior to another is the result of hatred. Gossip columns and ‘reality’ TV are the result of hatred. Loathing is fertile ground indeed!

Wakey, wakey people. Love is the answer. Compassion is the key. Healing is the solution. And it starts at the individual level. As one discovers the truth, and learns and heals ones own life, one becomes a lighthouse alluding to the possibility for the same process in others lives.

And that is the core of the ‘revolution’ that must occur. It is personal. Do not expect those who have ‘normalised’ the abuse to change. They will not, unless they too make it personal. Person by person. Understand that the systems designed by those who abuse, who exercise power ‘over’ others will not change and are designed to resist change from within.

Thus the only way to bring those systems down is to refuse to comply. We must withdraw our support from them. We must not buy their products, their lies, their mythologies, their tainted foods. Without what we give to them, they will collapse. As the t-shirt has it, “Bite the hands that feed you poison”. Better still, feed yourself with what you know to be healthy. And do likewise for your children. For such is love.

The anger of love is a healer, the anger of self-hatred a destroyer.


Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe

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