Interesting thread on the brat page.
Posted: 12/20/2003
From: Redhead
Subject: O Brave New World
I've been reading (yet again) The Handmaid's Tale. At some point the
narrator mentions that now women are safe from molestation, rape, and
other unpleasantries, all committed by men. Too bad it took a
complete loss of freedom for the women, but hey, it was so much worse
before.
Compare this to The Gate To Women's Country by Sheri S. Tepper, in
which women are perfectly safe within their own society, and the men
are banished to live in the wilds outside of the cities, which are
inhabited only by women, their children, and by "servitors" - men who
chose to turn their backs on all things masculine, warlike, and
violent, and join the women in the city.
Then, of course, there is the book whose title I stole for this
thread, in which nobody has any freedom of choice, but thanks to
genetic and social engineering, nobody cares. However, gender-related
violence is also unheard of here.
It seems to me that the message is that women will never be safe from
attacks by men without some radical, drastic changes. I can agree
with that.
Now, let us assume that, just as in Handmaid's Tale, you find
yourself at the head of a new government. The military is under your
control and the populace will obey your every command. You have the
resources of the media at your disposal; your word is unquestioned
law. What would you do to correct the gender violence in society? Can
anyone come up with a way to do it that doesn't involve banishing
men, forcibly secluding women, or destroying free thought?
I'm particularly interested to see what the local fire-breathing Hell
On Wheels, elizabeth, comes up with here.
This is not meant to be a women-only discussion, by the way.
----------------
Posted: 12/23/2003
From: ZPG Zealot
Thread: O Brave New World
Subject: Have you read By the Shore of Women
It's basically set up like The Gate to Woman's Country only the
separation has been taken even further. Women live in walled cities
with no contact with men who wander about in hunter-gather bands. The
men visit temples were virtual reality images (aspects of the Goddess
in the religion the men are taught) are used to harvest sperm from
them. It's an interesting book though a bit breederific toward the
end when one of the characters falls into a deep depression after
having to send her son out of the city and into the wilds (this is
the fate of all male children).
Posted: 12/22/2003
From: elizabeth
Thread: O Brave New World
Subject: what I would do
One future utopia book I would like to live in myself is Woman on the
Edge of Time by Marge Piercy. Her future was small towns with
different cultural traditions, which seemed a bit contrived, but what
I liked was the children were all born from an artificial womb, each
child had three 'mothers' both male and female, with the children all
living in a central 'children's house' and the parents all living in
small, single person dwellings. This broke down gender roles so men
could be as femme, and women as butch, as they wanted to be. They
were trying to reduce population, to below what we have now (there
had been a war, mostly over, thet had killed off a lot of the
population).
Everyone shared the labor in food production, and other local needs
(politics were by lottery--you'd be picked to represent your town as
needed), and you could seek your own profession, since you learned by
apprenticing more than by our current higher education system.
At about age 13, children would have a wilderness trek, alone, to
come up with their adult name, then seek out their calling in
profession. Technology was limited; to save energy, they did a lot of
labor-intensive methods of agriculture and architecture (it wasn't
allowed to intrude into the natural landscape, which was
being 'healed' from the abuses of the past). This kept the people
healthy, in contrast to our flabby, obese citizens. After the trek,
the child was a full adult member of the town, with all the rights
and responsibilities, and would then try to figure out what sort of
work, from being an artist to a geneticist, s/he wanted to do, and
then go find a teacher.
Another method used in the book to break down gender roles was the
elimination of all gender pronouns, which makes their speech somewhat
odd to read at first.
OK, so that is a bit far fetched .. . so what would I do if I was put
in charge now? Well, number one thing I would do is eliminate ALL
subsidies for childbearing. No more tax breaks. I would mandate that
those women bearing children they can't support would have the babies
taken away at birth, and moved into a foster home, with liberal
visitation rights. The mother could not get legal custody until such
time as she could provide a home for the child WITHOUT taxpayer
support. She could either earn enough to pay for day care, etc, or
marry someone willing to privately subsidize her children, or seek
private aid elsewhere. Since it's very easy to find foster homes for
babies, the kids would have a chance, with a good start in life. If
the mother got her act together, she and the child would have already
created a bond, and if she didn't, well, the kid has a good home. We
need to let 'adoptive' parents, and the breeders, for that matter,
learn that the child is NOT anyone's possession, but a person in
his/her own right. Since we can't take care of all the children here
now, there is no rational reason to support the breeders of
congenitally socially malajusted and unusable people.
I would understand that as we currently have things, not everyone is
needed in the paid labor force, and find things for those who are
unwanted, for whatever reason, in the labor force. Construction of
single adults only studio apartments, in small buildings scattered in
various locations, would be 'public housing' and each adult would
contribute 1/4 of his/her income and/or whatever labor is needed
(environmental cleanup and patching parks and other public resources
comes to mind) just like the WPA projects. Housing would emphasize
single adult dwellings, because this eliminates most of the violent
crime (about 80% being done by cohabitants, who lash out and have no
where to get away from each other).
I would immediately mandate that those who persist in propagating
pronatalist propaganda cease and desist immediately. I would enforce
a rigid code of intellectual honesty, and those saying idiocy
like "the children are the future" would be publicly pilloried. I
would force whinging moothers to shut the fuck up, informing them
since they CHOSE to breed, they have to suck it up and do what it
takes.
When the Sacred Moo is pulled from her pedestal like statues of
Stalin, girls will be educated that they are human beings, and not
just wombs with legs, that mootherhood 'fulfills' a woman like a
car 'fulfills' a factory. I would make sure that girls learned that
being a sex toy or a moo is a loser's game, but simply being honest,
and bringiing out the stuff that tends to get covered over, like
domestic violence and child abuse. Tell them any sow can have a
piglet, but it takes a human being to create a meme.
It has to be understood that until women get equal representation in
all power jobs and positions, men will continue to bully and
overpower. From what I have seen, the 'tipping point' is about 30%
female--the men stop acting like dicks and begin treating women as
equals. Under that, they gang up on women, and 'divide and conquer'
by rewarding those women who 'act nice' and attacking those who
don't. So I'd pass a law that every job has to be gender integrated--
no, it doesn't have to be 50-50, but when there is too great of
gender disparity, there us a problem.
Since only those able to raise children will do so, we needn't keep
women in the cuntwork childcare job ghetto. The reduction in the
number of children born will free up more women to do jobs that need
being done, rather than being diverted into jobs that were created by
the need created by women breeding children they can't/won't care
for. Any parent who in any way abandoned their child care duties
would be immediately sterilized.
When women are true equals in society, the idea that women are just
cunts with legs would diminish. Combine this with weapons training
and hand-to-hand combat training for girls, and extremely harsh
penalties for first offenders in any sexual offense, or in children,
abuse of animals, we'd 'harden the target' and take most of the
offenders out of the action.
In the book, violent offenders were forced into some kind of exile,
after a great deal of therapy. They were also tattooed, so that if
they committed another violent crime, they were killed (remember this
meant that a teenager would not be able to avoid punishment, since 13
year olds were considered adults), because they didn't want to live
with violent people, nor did they wish to be guards over such people
(remember the Stanford Prison Experiment?). I like this system! We
know that some offenders will NEVER reform, they like being the way
they are. In the book, people simply didn't have much private
property, sharing luxury goods like library books, so if someone
stole, members of society would try to make that person feel less
poor by giving him/her what was wanted.
I'd put into effect Carl Djerrassi's latest idea, to wit: Vasectomize
teen males, and if they later wish to be a father, they have to
convince a doctor to reverse it, after age 30, if I had my way. Women
would get vouchers for 2 children each. If the woman wanted to, she
could sell her vouchers, for whatever she could get. Women who never
used a voucher would be given a pension from the government when they
retired. Women who used theirs would NOT get one, even if they sold
theirs. They would be told, well, let your children take care of you.
We'd reduce births as low as we could for at least 20 years. We would
take all the adults now able to work at real jobs, rather than child
tending, to clean up the environment and come up with some clean
fuels and then restore the 'burbs to farmland, to reduce dependency
on food imports. As long as you don't do the corporate farming with
all the chemicals, farming is not that onerous a job, and farmwork
could be made a lot more pleasant. That's where we send those workers
who are able bodied, but maybe, not smart enough or whatever for high
tech jobs.
After a generation of women not being tied by the apron strings to a
second class existance, most of the work would be done already. It's
my theory that child bearing and prostitution, and the variations
thereof, are why women are kept in second class lives. This is
killing off everyone, because we no longer need to keep half the
population down to keep the population up! When childbearing has no
status, women can be judged as individuals.
Well, that is a start of what I'd do
Posted: 12/21/2003
From: OriginalCyn
Thread: O Brave New World
Subject: The author Alice Walker has always contended
...that in ancient societies, women and men lived separately, coming
together only to mate. When the boys reached a certain age, they'd go
off to be raised by the "male tribe". Women would help one another
raise their children (and farm, herd, make artifacts and cloth and
suchlike), and the men would go off and do "guy things" (compete with
one another, figure out elaborate ritual hazing customs for "making
boys into men", and hunt, perhaps?).
It sounds like a radical feminist fantasy to me, but I suppose that
it possible that some societies, somewhere, might have such a living
arrangement.
Posted: 12/21/2003
From: dck133
Thread: O Brave New World
Subject: spartans
Sounds like she was thinking of the spartan society. They did live
segragated lives.
Posted: 12/21/2003
From: Kris
Thread: O Brave New World
Subject: You're absolutely right
The one quibble here is that the Spartans were not just in their
dealings with others. To stave off invasion, they routed and
dominated the surrounding population, forcing them to become second-
rate citizens (periokoi) or serfs (the Helots). Every year, a gang of
youths called the Krypteia would wander the countryside at night,
picking off those Helots they believed to be a threat to Spartan
security.
That said, men and women didn't mingle much except for festivals or
marriage--and even the marriage rites were a hoot. Considering boys
were segregated among men from 7 till 18 (the age for marriage among
boys and girls), and a boy's sexual experience usually came at the
hands of his peers and older men, it's not surprising that the bride
was dressed like a boy and had her hair cropped short. Her husband
came to her in total darkness on the wedding night. If he visited her
at all after the wedding, it was in secret and done so no one--
presumably his own lover as well as his mess-mates--would know what
he had done. It's said that Lycurgus, the man responsible for the
Spartans' extreme laws, remarked that this would not only help keep
affection fresh between husband and wife, it would teach them both
discretion.
However, a woman not only was permitted to inherit property--a shock
to city-states like Athens and Thebes, where women had nothing--she
was expected to run it profitably. After the Peloponnesian War,
Spartan women became independently wealthy, even as the military
might of Sparta declined. Many Athenians--still smarting over losing
that 20-year conflict--declared that the lax and "mercenary" behavior
of the women were behind Sparta's downfall. I say the Spartans were
geared towards local control, unable to differentiate between ruling
periokoi and helots and ruling free citizens, and this inability
fostered the unity of the Greek city-states to defeating the Spartan
government.
Now for the really interesting part. Women trained like the men; they
did not sit at home and grow soft, but exercised up until they were
unable to from age. They bore children, but knew that any weak,
disabled, or deformed child would be destroyed--and were taught to
make no complaints about it. They were treated as full partners in
upholding the Spartan life and discipline--although it was more of
a "separate but equal" partnership, as they could not run for office
or fight in war. Still, they were given more of a say in public life
and business than other Greek women, particularly Athenian women, who
were expected not to be spoken of for either praise or blame.
--Kris
Posted: 12/22/2003
From: Lyria
Thread: O Brave New World
Subject: I would not change anything
I cannot think of any way to eliminate violence against women by men
without changing society fundamentally. We are human and have a
violent nature. Unfortunatly, there will always be some among us that
would chose to target those weaker - be they animal, young, elderly,
or female. (Before anyone gets mad - I'm talking physical strength).
Therefore I would not change anything because the price would not be
worth it. "Those who would exchange liberty for safety deserve
neither."
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