Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - Ecofeminism's Plan for Women

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Feb. 27, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

14:24

Ecofeminism's Plan for Women

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	Tong's organization makes it very clear where certain ecofeminists stand and what their strategies might be for eliminating the common problem.
	You fucking what?
	Eco-feminists!
	The common problem!
	What?
	What?
	As theorized by Ariel K. Saleh, that the hatred of women and that of nature is one of the principal mechanisms governing the actions of men.
	And that would be incorrect.
	You're not a man, she's not a man, and you don't know what makes men do what they do.
	The ideas that this video is based on sound like insane paranoid delusional thinking.
	But not only that, presuming the evil intent of every man on earth.
	Thus the whole Western patriarchal culture.
	Worst patriarchy ever.
	Though you'll probably notice that the difference between male and female life expectancy in Britain is declining.
	Apparently women have historically lived much longer than men, but that is changing as men give up heavy manual labour and more women take on the stress of work.
	And the think tank said that women are suffering from what were once male diseases, such as heart disease and high blood pressure, as a result of moving into roles that were once taken by men.
	I'm suddenly coming overall feminist.
	Smash the patriarchy.
	Make women do all the hard work.
	Anastra King poses three possible directions for feminism.
	One, to sever the woman and nature connection.
	Is there any chance that you can define the woman-nature connection for us?
	At any points, please.
	Two, reaffirm the connection.
	I thought not.
	Three, the truly eco-feminist way.
	Do not sever the connection.
	Use it as a vantage point from which to include spirituality, intuition, etc.
	This is starting to sound a lot like feminism's answer to Scientology.
	You're not going to start telling me about vagina thetan levels, are you?
	These eco-feminists feel it necessary to sever the connection.
	Simone de Beauvoir urges women to transcend their links to nature and to overcome their status as the other sex.
	Oh yeah, I think they should become pan-spiritual demi-beings who live in an ethereal plane above the rest of humanity.
	Women must resist the male perception that women as a person who simply is, ensois.
	In refusing to be the other, women as well as men will be liberated.
	Refusing to be the other?
	Are you saying that women should become men?
	Because that's not good for your life expectancy.
	Sherry B. Ortner believes that women's social actuality must change in order to change culture's view of women, which is as intermediaries between themselves and nature.
	Call me a cynic if you like, but that sounds like some romanticized bullshit.
	I mean, is this woman an intermediary between herself and nature?
	What about these women?
	Peeing in an alleyway?
	What about this woman vomiting into a bucket while drunk on the toilet?
	What about these women at a male strip club?
	I mean, are they being intermediaries with nature?
	I mean, what does that even involve?
	How does society see them as this?
	Don't get me wrong, I agree with you when you say Women's social actuality must change in order to change culture's view of women But I don't think that society views women as you are suggesting that society views women.
	The situation must be attacked from both sides, the social actuality side and the conceptual or ideological side.
	The attack must involve both men and women in projects of creativity and transcendence.
	Okay, well I'm going to gloss over the bit where obviously strong empowered emancipated women need men's help and get to the spiritual mumbo jumbo.
	What are projects of creativity and transcendence?
	What do they actually involve?
	Women and men would be seen as cultural, bridging the gap for both genders from nature or culture.
	Look, if women and men are seen as cultural and not natural, and we live in a patriarchy, why wouldn't you just choose to be a man?
	You know, except for the lower life expectancy.
	These eco-feminists feel it necessary to emphasize the connection.
	Mary Daly believes we should put women back in touch with their original wild and lusty natural world and free them from men's domesticating and dispiriting cultural world.
	Well it sounds like Mary Daly's full of shit then, doesn't it?
	Or she is actually advocating for women to be released back into the wild from whence they came.
	Females are to reject the phallocentric system.
	The phallocentric system in which men and their penises do not live as long as women and their vaginas.
	And refuse to become fembots.
	Women should free themselves from men for their own sakes.
	Until women do this, nature is doomed.
	I rather think you're kind of overemphasizing your own importance there.
	I think nature is going to be just fine.
	But okay, I'm a modern, enlightened Renaissance man.
	I'm happy for women to be released back into the wild if that is what they so desire.
	Have fun living like savages.
	Susan Griffin states it is women who must help human beings escape the false and destructive dualistic world into which men have led us.
	She urges women to journey out of culture back to nature.
	How is it dualistic?
	But okay, fine.
	So they are actually advocating that women go back and live in the wild then.
	My one question is, how many women do you think are going to go with you?
	Because you're not going to have access to tampons or showers.
	Women can overcome the thinking that belittles nature, the body, women, etc., by learning to speak for themselves.
	Oh yeah, if only women could speak for themselves.
	But to tell you what, when you get women together, they'll sit around in silence, looking at each other in mute desperation.
	Oh no, wait, that's what the men do when you get a gaggle of women together.
	The women talk relentlessly.
	Women are to refuse to let themselves and nature be exploited, saying no to what is in order to seek what might be.
	This, this is what might be.
	Just so you are aware, this is how you're going to end up living.
	But I'm fine with that.
	You guys have a great time.
	Within this category fall spiritual feminists.
	Of course they do.
	I knew religious nutjobs would come into this somewhere.
	Who believe that no matter which theology, religion, or spirituality women adopt, it must be an embodied way of relating to the ultimate source.
	Women should abandon their patriarchal oppressive religions and practice earth-based spiritualities.
	I agree, just crack on.
	I mean, I know that Christians and Muslims are like, well, we think this is the divine word of God in writing.
	But women are going to be like, well, I mean, at the end of the day, it is kind of patriarchal, isn't it?
	We kind of need to abandon that to return to the woods.
	So what are you going to do?
	A prominent spiritual feminist, Starhawk.
	Sounds credible, said a man calling himself Sargon.
	States that, the more we understand nature, the more we will understand our oneness with all that exists.
	My, my, my, where have I heard this before?
	She also encourages room for feminist men in the Save the Earth movement.
	Presumably because without them, very little is going to get done.
	These eco-feminists feel it necessary to de-emphasize the connection.
	Dorothy Dinnerstein believes Western dichotomist thought must be explored to end the oppression of everyone and everything devalued.
	I very much doubt its oppression and I very much doubt it's really devalued.
	But go on.
	Fundamental, the deconstruction of the male-female dichotomy.
	Women are to bring nature into culture and men are to bring culture into nature.
	What does that even mean?
	Am I supposed to like build a treehouse or something?
	Karen J. Warren provides a list of ethics we must follow.
	One, anti-naturalist, rejecting nature domination.
	Anti-naturist kind of makes it sound like you hate nature and want to burn it to the ground.
	Two, contextualist, having relationships to nature rather than rights over.
	Good grief, am I supposed to get consent from the wheat before I harvest it?
	3. Structurally pluralistic, recognizing differences in humans and non-humans.
	Isn't that rather at odds with the deconstruction of the male-female dichotomy?
	4. Theoretically in process, using the active voice.
	Yeah, okay, the passive voice is generally less interesting to read, but how's that relevant to this?
	5. Inclusivist.
	Which apparently doesn't need an explanation.
	6. Subjectively biased.
	Identifying patriarchal frameworks.
	I really don't know why they all think that this is such a great thing.
	7. Attentive to traditionally feminine values.
	Well, I guess that would be a consequence of all this subjective bias, wouldn't it?
	8. Recognizing humans as dependent on the earth.
	Sorry, how is that in any way dependent on feminism?
	Within this category fall social eco-feminists.
	Of course they do.
	As a social eco-feminist, Warren stresses that women and men should be viewed as equally natural and cultural.
	Okay, so she's in complete and direct opposition to Dorothy Dinnerstein, who wanted to remove the male-female dichotomy.
	She calls for transformative feminism, which one recognizes the connections between all systems of oppression.
	I just checked and this video is actually from 2010, which is interesting because these days they call it intersectional feminism.
	2. Stresses the diversity of women's experiences.
	Which kind of contradicts the idea of subjective bias raised earlier, doesn't it?
	Because certain women are going to have experiences that contradict each other.
	And so what you're going to need to strive for is some kind of objectivity.
	3. Rejects domination.
	I don't know if anything of the sort is even possible.
	4. Reconsiders the attitude of superiority towards non-humans.
	I did exactly that, actually.
	I reconsidered it, then I googled it.
	Then I realized that no animals were using Google.
	Then I realised that no animals could even conceive of what Google was.
	And that seemed to be a sign of human superiority.
	And so I decided to leave it and come back to doing this video because it didn't seem worth proving any further that I as a human being was smarter than every other non-human on earth.
	5. Stresses traditionally female values.
	You know, I'm just going to chalk it up that it's a coincidence that it's always women who are feminists and promoting stressing traditional female values as part of their individual subjective brand of feminism.
	And 6. Uses science and technology only for earth preservation.
	Whoa, no.
	Are you fucking kidding?
	If I had a massive tumour growing out of my head and I went to the hospital and I said, hello, could you use your technology to remove this tumour from my head?
	They would say no.
	Because it would be better for you to die and be returned to the earth so worms could feast on your carcass than it would be for us to remove that tumour and allow you to go on destroying the precious earth and its resources.
	And this basically renders all human technological advancements null and void.
	Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva feel that we must learn to conserve nature by living as simply as possible and consuming it as little as possible.
	Well that's very interesting and I'm absolutely convinced that they should be allowed to do that on their own away from me.
	Don't get me wrong, I think that we could be a lot more ecologically savvy, we could use a lot more solar power and all that sort of thing, but I am not abandoning technology to the earth.
	People should take a subsistence perspective.
	Wow, I'm going to take economics lessons from crazy cave women.
	Go on then.
	This being 1. Produce only what we need.
	So we are abandoning trade and commerce then.
	2. Use only as much of nature as needed.
	That really was rather encapsulated in the first point.
	3. Take on a participatory democracy as opposed to a representative democracy.
	I was actually unfamiliar with this phrase, and after looking up the Wikipedia article, as I could only be bothered to go that far, it seems to just be a direct democracy rather than a party democracy.
	Basically, it sounds like she's advocating some sort of 7th century tribal council.
	4. Develop multi-dimensional problem-solving approaches.
	Well that sounds like it's easier said than done.
	5. Combine contemporary science and ancient wisdom.
	Yeah that does sound great, but not much ancient wisdom really is in favour of abandoning civilization and returning to the wilderness.
	I guess it's really that technologically they're so close to the time where we were living in caves and had nothing of our own really, that they can kind of remember it, I suppose.
	And they can feel what it would be like to lose all of the civilizational benefits of being who they were.
	Which is I'm guessing what eco-feminists can't do.
	6. Break the boundary of work and play.
	Again, easier said than done.
	7. View natural resources as community goods.
	I get the feeling that the person who suggested this didn't go through the time and effort of collecting them.
	8. Women and men need to adopt the subsistence perspective.
	Well then this isn't going to work because I am not living like a Paleolithic farmer.
	Men must redefine their identity, give up destructive commodity production and share women's work for the preservation of life.
	Ah, thank you, but no thank you.
	I think I'll stick to patriarchy even though it shortens my lifespan.
	I know it sounds selfish, but it'll increase the lifespan of my wife and children and make sure that less of my children die in childbirth.
	That fucking selfish patriarchy.
	9. Men and women should cultivate traditionally feminine values.
	And it's still just a wild coincidence that this was written by a woman.
	You know, the sort of person who might enjoy cultivating traditionally feminine values.
	10. All must understand, for each person to have enough, no person can have it all.
	The funny thing about the 1% is that most people are not part of the 1%.
	Which means 99% of people completely understand that.
	In this closing statement, Rosemary Tong reminds us that action can be taken on a more personal level.
	Not everyone who cares about the earth and works to safeguard it needs to move to the women's peace comp at Greenham in England.
	There is work to be done in one's own backyard as well as in faraway places.
	Well that's convenient because otherwise it might have been quite a lot of effort.
	I think we should all thank our young co-host here for helping us understand exactly the insane minds of eco-feminists.
	I wouldn't have been able to put together such an accurate presentation on the crazy that they have been feeding the young generation of women coming out of universities now.
	Thank you very much my dear.

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