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
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.
Who needs a safe space? Please keep this in mind as you read on.
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?
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
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.
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.
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?
Are the London Met more a threat to women than London's trans-women, as two groups of people?
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 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?
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.
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'.
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.
These are important questions we must deal with, honestly.
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
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