August 26, 2002
Kaori wrote me an email the other day. Now, she's in Australia, working her new job at a Japanese-language radio station. She hopes to do some radio announcing after a few months of training. I'm very glad that she's found a job so quickly; maybe the help I gave with her résumé made a difference for her? Well I like to think that I'm helpful for somebody at least occasionally.
If you haven't gone over to Angry Harry's site, I suggest you do so. The writings are so elegantly-constructed, they are almost sublime.
There was one article there that brought-up an idea which really caused me to reel-backwards in amazement. Simply because the connection was SO simple, yet it never crossed my mind. I was blown-away when it clicked. The article was entitled "Are Men Emotionally Retarded? Yes."
The article finished-up with a line of thought which caused the ground to shake beneath my feet.
"...I would really like you to ponder on this 'fact' that media morons and 'experts' keep telling us is true.
This 'fact' is that men are too repressed emotionally. They are not demonstrative, open, willing to talk about how they feel, etc."
This is of course, something that women love to revel about. What emotional oafs that men are. That women are so superior at articulating their feelings. Gee, men are mental invalids, they chuckle. If only men weren't so gosh-darned flawed...
He goes-on to ask the reader: "Which groups of people felt/feel able to express themselves emotionally, freely and without concern? Which groups have been, or are, emotionally repressed? Nazis or Jews? Masters or slaves? The soldier with the gun or the person toward whom it is pointing?"
Well, obviously, a slave certainly wouldn't feel able to express himself emotionally, would he? He exists within a system which destroys his own humanity.
This really made me think. AH suggests that since men often keep-quiet about their own emotions, that fact might actually be a plausible indicator that society dumps the majority of its shit on men. Not on women. If men are indeed emotionally repressed, then why does no one ever seem to think that it might have something to do with some form of oppression which might be present in a male's life? Nay, if a man is ever emotionally repressed, it's his own fault and he deserves to be made fun-of for it.
Oh, but men aren't actually 'oppressed', that's just colorful hyperbole, innit? Yes, most women would laugh at the idea, and then quickly change the topic to insisting on her own underdog status. Phooey to men being oppressed!
Well as if in confirmation, the very next day I picked-up the August 10, 2002 issue of The Economist. (I love The Economist; its articles are researched to an extent that no dumbed-down American mass-circulation news magazine ever attains.) After you read the cover-article, the idea of men being oppressed won't seem so dramatic after all.
The cover-article was about the American penal system. I read through it interestedly. Dostoevsky once said that the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. By the time I was finished, I was sick to my stomach. Yes, I knew that the prison population in the U.S. was distressingly huge, but I was once again reminded of some statistics that I'd pushed into the back of my mind a long time ago... How America has the largest per capita prison population of any other industrialized country on the planet. Moreso than present-day Russia. Moreso than South Africa during the apartheid years, if I'm not mistaken. 'Land of the free?' Don't bet on it. Of all western countries, America is by far the most enthusiastic jailer. Number one among western countries in executing its prisoners. Number one globally in the execution of minors and until recently, number one globally in the execution of the mentally-retarded (I believe a recent court decision has put that last practice on hold). Simply barbaric.
And who are the vast, VAST majority of people who are locked within these disease-infested gaols? Who are nearly all the souls who actually live within this brutal, endless purgatory of crime and punishment? That's right: it's men. Not women. Gee, women don't seem quite as oppressed all of a sudden, do they?
I don't need to write about conditions within prisons. Prison labor isn't even paid minimum wage. And after serving their sentences, the system is often ambivalent about how ex-prisoners get reintegrated into society. On top of this, many states limit the voting rights of felons and ex-felons. Even after they get-out of prison, many of them cannot vote. The result? 4.7 million adult Americans (2.3 percent of the eligible voting population) cannot vote, almost all of this disenfranchised group is male. 7% of the voting population of Alabama cannot vote, almost all of these excluded people are male. One out of every six black males in Virginia and Kentucky cannot vote.
When you look at testimony such as that, the idea of men being oppressed isn't such a tough sell. Yes, every society develops its own forms of coercion (subtle or crude) to make sure that wealth and power stays where it is. Every country has methods of terracing (covert and overt) to better-stabilize the pyramid of privilege. Regardless of the society, those at the top of the social ladder are always willing to imprison, persecute, deprive, abuse, dispossess, indocrinate, plunder, swindle, disenfranchise, humiliate, exile, deport, conscript, disempower, enslave, maim, neuter, cripple, starve and execute those clinging to the lower rungs. It reduces competition for scarce resources. It's a side-effect of when competing power-groups try to optimize conditions for themselves.
In this case, the coercion is sanctioned through the wonderful equality of American law; somehow the prisons always end-up being full of poor people. Through the equality of the law, both rich and poor are equally forbidden to beg for change on street corners. Both billionaires and vagabonds have the right to buy as many mansions and factories as they can handle. This is a system which floods the population with cheap handguns while perpetuating an unwinnable war on drugs. Into this, add the zeal of our elected officials to prove how 'tough' they are on criminals in order to garner middle-class votes. It's just so gosh-darned handy that criminals in America are created through poverty, broken families and broken-down schools at a faster rate than they can be put-away.
So this is just a simple matter of men oppressing men? Oh yes, a woman will say it's all men's fault. Prisons are made by men, for men. Men rob and kill to get wealth and power, so they get imprisoned by wealther, more powerful men. End of story. Well, that ignores the existance of powerful women and blocs of female voting constituents who contribute to the process (women just love to ignore the existance of powerful women; they like to feel unaccountable as a group). And even assuming that this all is an oversimplified matter of men oppressing other men- well, what is one of the big incentives of wealth and power for the men who do all the oppressing, hmm? Well-- improved access to women!
Females like to say that behind every great man, there is a woman who deserves to share the credit. Well, if that is true: then behind every war-criminal, bribe-taking official, theiving CEO, small-time drug-dealer and two-bit scumbag there is also a woman who smiles and rewards him for scoring ever-more loot by whatever means possible. Maybe- just maybe if women didn't sanction and reward illegal behavior, maybe there wouldn't be quite as much of it?
As I finished reading that article in The Economist, I think it served to illustrate yet another fact that should tick you off. Despite a population of factually disadvantaged and alientated male prisoners that is simply too huge to hide, American women have the fucking GALL to walk-around (totally free, mind you) with a victimhood mentality?!? If women are so disadvantaged, then why aren't they imprisoned in greater numbers? Why aren't their voting rights stripped-away? Why aren't they executed as often?
As I have exclaimed a thousand times before, women are not oppressed any more than the other gender is oppressed. Certainly women were NEVER any more disadvantaged than men currently are, at least.
It is because of their numbness to these circumstances (and contribution to creating these circumstances) that I will always despise American women in every possible way until the end of my days.
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