Debunking "Debunking Democracy"

http://sfbay-anarchists.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Bob-Black-Debunking-Democracy.pdf

The nearly unanimous condemnation of democracy in past history which Black (accurately) mentions was in all cases in contrast to elite rule, whether monarchy, oligarchy, or republic.

He then points out that democracy has been largely corrupted, that most societies that use it today are representative / republican, that not everyone who claims it actually practices it, and points out that there has rarely if ever been universal enfranchisement.
Again, all accurate points, but none of them is an actual criticism of direct democracy, its simply saying that not all of what people call “democracy” is the same thing.

He gives the lack of successful urban direct democracy as a reason it could not possibly happen.  That’s just silly.  Nothing exists prior to the first time it exists, that is certainly not proof that it couldn't possibly ever exist.  It may well be an “abstract ideal”, but no less so than anarchy, or any other ideological potential organization of society.  He acknowledges that direct democracy has in fact existed, but implies it ‘doesn't count’ because “Every known instance has involved a considerable admixture of representative democracy which has sooner or later usually subordinated [direct] democracy where it didn't eliminate it altogether”
But of course there is exactly zero cases of anarchy which did not “sooner or later” succumb to another form of social organization.

Black says that the objections to representative democracy apply to direct “pure majoritarian democracy”.  But nothing inherent in the ideal of democracy demands it must be majoritarian in nature.

On to the specific points:


1. the majority isn't always right.

This is the long standing argument for authoritarianism, monarchy, and oligarchy.  The masses are too dumb to know what’s good for them, so the educated elite should decide for them.
If the masses aren't always right, why would the masses acting as individuals be any more right?

2. Democracy does not, as is promised, give everyone the right to influence the decisions afflicting her, because a person who voted on the losing side had no influence on that decision

This is true only in a winner-take-all voting situation.  The concept of democracy does not inherently imply a winner-take-all system.  In fact, outside of America, winner-take-all is NOT the norm, even in representative democracies.

3. Democracy, especially in small constituencies, lends itself to the disempowerment of permanent minorities, who occupy the same position in the democracy as they would in a despotism.

True enough.  This is why in most systems (even in the most imperfect American one) there are substantial rights built in for the sake of minorities.  Hence the State protects minorities from the majority, even when, for example, the individuals representing the State may hold the same prejudices as the majority.  For example, the National Guardsmen who protected the first Black students to attend formerly all white public schools may have been racist themselves.  How would anarchy do any a better a job at, say, protecting LGBT people from Christian mobs?

4. Majority rule ignores the urgency of preferences.

Again, democracy does not inherently mean “majority rule”.  It most definitely does not mean “winner-take-all” or “first past the goal post”.  This is a criticism of a particular form of democracy, not of democracy itself.  There is no reason strength of preference couldn’t be factored into decision making – in fact it is!  Not only are there many different ways to prevent the described scenario, but many are actually implemented – notably close to home, Oaklandhas implemented rank-choice voting, for the exact reasons he is talking about.  If there were reason to think it would affect outcomes, the same could be applied to any other democratic decision.

5. There are no self-evident democratic voting rules.

Is this a criticism?  Are there self evident constitutional law rules?  Are there self-evident oligarchic structures?  Is there a self-evident application of anarchism? 

6. Collective, all-or-nothing balloting is irrational.

The argument seems to be that since each individual only has one vote, and there are many total votes, that each individual is insignificant.  This is faulty logic – its like saying “everyone else drives a car, so I might as well too”.  But it is only because everyone else is also saying the same thing that we end up with global warming, oil wars, and auto accidents as the number one cause of death before age 40.  There are 7 billion humans.  Of course each one has a tiny impact – no matter what political system you use.  All society is the accumulation of each tiny individual, just like the ocean is made of trillions of individual drops of water.  Each one is fungible, yet each has an impact. 
Voters are fungible as well, which means it makes absolutely no sense to talk about “the one vote that counts”.  A 50.01% to 49.99% split may come down to a single vote, but it doesn’t come down to any specific vote, as Black suggests.  Because votes are fungible, even in the 50.01 to 49.99 split, every single vote still counts.

7. Majority rule is not even what it purports to be: it rarely means literally the majority of the people.

First, as I said, “democracy” doesn't inherently mean “majority rule”.  As Black himself pointed out earlier in the same essay, it could just as easily mean “plurality” or “supermajority”.  It could also mean “consensus”. 

Second, this is not remotely a critics of the concept of democracy, it is a critics of its practice. The solution would be universal enfranchisement.
How would eliminating democracy in favor of either oligarchy or anarchy give children or lunatics any more power than they have under democracy?
Also the claim that those people listed (including foreigners, transients, and felons) are “everywhere denied the right to vote” is simply false.  For example, many countries of the EU allow a resident who is a citizen of other EU countries to vote in their elections.  Several UScourt cases have established that the homeless have the right to vote.  There are only 2 US states the impose lifelong bans on voting to ex-convicts.  In 37 states it is automatically restored either after release, after parole, or after probation.

The fact that not every eligible voter chooses to vote is not really relevant.  It’s a choice.  (Although, incidentally, some societies make it an infraction to NOT vote.  Voter turn out in those places is up to 90%, which invalidates the rest of the argument.  For “leaders to wield decisive power” necessitates a representative system, which has already been established as not the only possible way to organize democracy.

8. Whether voting is by electoral districts or in popular assemblies, decisions are arbitrary because the boundaries of the districts determine the composition of their electorates, which determines the decisions.

Relevance?  The point is people are involved in decisions which affect them.  As long as you keep the process as small scale and local as possible, “districts” is irrelevant.  As long as you stick with direct democracy even on large scales boundaries aren’t relevant.  Gerrymandering is only an issue when using local districts to determine representatives for large scale decision making (i.e. congress)

9. Then there is the Voters Paradox

Easily overcome by replacing the primary system with ranked choice voting.

10. Another well-known method for thwarting majority rule with voting is logrolling.

 Wait, I thought he didn’t want majority rule!  Now he is criticizing that it can be undermined?  He posits that it can accommodate the urgency of preferences, something which he suggested needing accommodation earlier.
 In practice, outside of a extremely small group in which all individuals know each other personally, this would be close to impossible to pull off.  If voting is done in secret, game theory would tell us it would be completely impossible, in any size group.  But even if it were to happen – so what?  Individual can choose to compromise if they want to.  Why shouldn't they be allowed to?

11. In the unlikely event a legislative body eschews logrolling, it may succumb to gridlock.

Yup.  That would be the reason almost no one advocates for consensus based democracy.  Also the reason some argue for republics, aristocracies, and monarchies.

His example (everyone wants a road, but no one wants it in their back yard) gets worse and worse the further from monarchy you get.  That problem would be so much worse as to be completely unsolvable under anarchy.

12. Democracy, especially direct democracy, promotes disharmonious, antisocial feelings.

Its hard to even get started on this one…
Capitalism and democracy did not develop at the same time, they aren’t equivalent, and in fact – despite everything Americapropaganda has said for the past century, they aren’t even compatible.  Further, psychology says that Mr Smith ISN’T the same person in his consumer role as his voter role, just like he isn’t the same person in his father role as his employee role. 
A lack of concession in order to benefit society as a whole is the best possible example of selfish individualism.  Agreeing to concede when most of the group wants something different is the opposite of selfish individualism.  Claiming the two are equivalent makes no sense!  On the spectrum of political autonomy, moving toward authoritarianism decreases selfish individualism, and moving toward anarchy increases it. 
Granted, “In a winner-take-all system there is no incentive to compensate or conciliate defeated minorities”, which is why few if any advocates for democracy advocate a winner-take-all system. The USseems stuck with it because our size makes us slow to adapt and change, but most of the world – which adopted democracy a bit later – does not use a winner-take-all system.

“Deliberation "can bring differences to the surface, widening rather than narrowing them.”
True enough.  If everyone kept their mouths shut and never talked about politics or race or religion, no one would know that other people disagreed with them.  So then this is an argument for each individual to live as a hermit, never collaborating with any one else.
 “but nowhere would they be more destructive of community than in face-to-face assemblies and neighborhoods.” This theory does not hold up to observed practice.  See SummerHill.

13. Another source of majority irresponsibility and minority indignity is the felt frivolity of voting, its element of chance and arbitrariness.

What?  What element of chance?  Just because there is a large number of variables and can’t be accurately predicted doesn’t make it “arbitrary”.  The comments on delegates are irrelevant to direct democracy.

14. Under representative democracy with electoral districts, malapportionment - the creation of districts with unequal populations - is possible and, even if they are equal, gerrymandering is almost inevitable.
Obviously a criticism of representative democracy.

15. Direct democracy, trying to avert this evil embraces federalism, which increases inequality.

Federalism is the opposite of direct democracy.  The “evil” of gerrymandering doesn’t even come up in direct democracy (as Black himself states in 14), so why would it need to avert it?

16. Direct democracy, to an even greater degree than representative democracy, encourages emotional, irrational decision making.
Its true; humans have a lot of cognitive biases and logical fallacies built in.  Some more than others, and all in some situations more than others.
Again, this is an argument towards authoritarianism.
When you, for example, move from socialism to capitalism, there is no trend of consumers to become less emotional and more rational because of their new found freedom.  If anything, quite the opposite occurs.  Why would we assume that greater autonomy and greater individualization, less socialization and group dynamics would result in less emotional impulse and more correct reasoning?

17. A specific, experimentally validated emotional influence vitiating democracy is group pressure to conform.

Dude!  I know!  Scary, ain’t it?  And kind of screwed up.  Well, what can we do – humans are naturally social animals.  At least its only 58% of the population that are conformists.  Sometimes it feels like 98%.
But, wait, what are we talking about?  Oh right, democracy.  What does this have to do with it exactly?  How is it an argument for any other form of government?  Its basically pointing out that humans naturally develop homogenous culture, and tend to trust large enough groups over even their own senses.  This phenomenon is known to increase in minimally permissive cultures, and decrease under liberal democracy.  For example, the effect is far more pronounced in Chinathan in the US.
As far as it’s relation to voting, a secret ballot makes the experiment referenced irrelevant.

18. Another inherent flaw in direct democracy, partly (not entirely) a consequence of the previous one, is the inconstancy of policy
That will always be equally true under any possible system of social organization other than strict and detailed constitionalism.  What, if you remove democracy, all people’s opinions and desires would become fixed?

Points from Conclusion:
 “Majority rule is as arbitrary as random decision”
As in point 6, this belief stems from not understanding large complex systems, the collected impact of small influences, and the fungbility of votes.   All processes of all kinds are made up of microscopic components.

“A celebrant of Swiss direct democracy at its height admits: "Corruption, factionalization, arbitrariness, violence, disregard for law, and an obdurate conservatism that opposed all social and economic progress were pathologies to some extent endemic to the pure democratic life form."”
Yet again, an argument for authoritarianism.  Are we to believe that “disregard for law” would be less a problem if there were no laws?  Social conservatism is a personality trait, with multiple sources, which is based fundamentally on an individuals approach to morality, not politics.

 “The believers claim that democracy promotes dialogue, but where is the dialogue about democracy itself”

Well, here’s some right here.
There is also “The Irony of Democracy” by Dye Ziegler, “The No-Nonsense Guide to Democracy” by Richard Swift, and Freedom-vs-DemocracyAnarchy-vs-Capitalism Anarchy = Capitalismand Free Market VS Democracy: (1-0) by Bakari Kafele, along with about 30,000 others. That Black isn’t aware of the dialogue that is and has long been going on about democracy perhaps explains why he makes so many mistakes in his analyses of it, being based (apparently) mainly on observation of the American implementation of it.

“That's why you didn't learn it in school”
The Irony of Democracy (Ziegler) was one of my textbooks in school.

I propose that in order to condemn democracy on any of the points above, it is not enough merely to suggest a problem, but one must also explain how any possible alternative would solve that same problem.
The majority of the issues described would be as bad or worse under anarchy, (and many solved by a benevolent dictator) and yet Black comes to the conclusion that government itself must be the problem.

Walk the talk

One person asked me, upon reading my anti-capitalism pro-free market essay series, for ideas on how individuals might help contribute in daily life.

Walking the walk on two of the big points is easy: shop at independant stores instead of chains, don't buy IPOs, and if you create something (art, music, software, inventions), make it creative commons / open source / patent it but then licence it for free.

As to walking the walk on real estate: I don't really think it's applicable. There is some political momentum behind changing the corporate system after Citizen's United, and there is piracy/file sharing undermining copyright, but there is exactly zero movement behind one person one parcel.
Thats not even a phrase that exists. I just made it up, just now, as I was typing!
But there really is no inbetween. Nothing any one person does (short of the solution proposed in Manna) is going to have more than zero effect on the rest of the world.
The closest I imagine one could possibly come would be buying rental properties, and renting them at below market rent, even at cost (though with hidden irregular costs, like vacancies and major maintenance, factored in). One could opt out, but that would do as little to change the system or benefit anyone as opting out of voting does (i.e. exactly none, and possibly counter-productive, since then you are diluting your own potential influence)

For one person one parcel, I think the best anyone could do right now, even a billionaire, would be to publicize and promote the idea, because the first step would be getting the idea into the minds of millions of people. Its not quite communism, not quite libertarianism, not quite anarchy, not quite free market. As far as I know, its something no one has ever thought of before.

There is one other thing - probably the single biggest change to our system, (short of one person one parcel) would be for working hours to be adjusted downward to match increases in efficiency.
That is something we could easily do, if we were so inclined, just like we reduced working hours from 60-80 per week at the turn of the last century down to 40-50 hours today, as the industrial revolution vastly increased output per worker.

Today, computers and the internet and robots, plus outsourcing and corporate consolidation, not to mention quickly advancing 3D printing, has increased productivity far more than steam power and assembly lines ever did, yet we have never adjusted the 40 hour work week to match.  Our insanely massive income inequality, inflation adjusted income stagnation, and steadily high unemployment are all direct results of that.
I have started a petition to that end: http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/a-35-hour-work-week-will
Of course, given the actual increase in output per worker since the 1940s when the 40 hour week was officially established, we should be at 4 hour work weeks by now,

 but 35 seems a bit more politically realistic as a starting point.

Unfortunately, I'm just a manual laborer with some ideas and a free blog account, not an activist or promoter, but if you happen to have a network of people who'd support the idea, by all means help me get some signatures
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/a-35-hour-work-week-will

Privilege - its not the problem

Response to:
http://andrea366.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/the-problem-with-privilege-by-andrea-smith/



I absolutely love its general premise, and could not agree more - though perhaps for slightly different reasons.

I have long questioned the entire idea of "privilege", and especially the focus on it.  If you are lucky enough to be middle class, its fairly easy to see inequality in terms of having some privileges or not.  One of those privileges is being able to (pretend that you) live in an insular world where an individual being culturally insensitive to another individual is one of the worst aspects of racism.

As a African American, who has lived most (but not all) of his life in poor, high crime, high minority urban areas, the entire sub-culture of race activists has always looked very shallow and meaningless to me.  It has always seemed much more about being able to say "I, in contrast to all those other (white) people, am enlightened."

What, exactly, does white people or men or straight people or whoever, acknowledging their privilege actually accomplish?

Lets say every single European American was fully aware, fully acknowledged, and fully internalized that they have privilege relative to other people.

Would that somehow instantly, magically, cause wealth and income inequality to disappear, so that whites were proportionately represented among the extremely poor (and I'm not talking "can't make car payments" or "home foreclosure" poor - I'm talking "can't afford a halfway decent bicycle" or "choose between rent and food" poor) - or better yet, make it so that everyone who has the ability and desire to work could live (what we currently consider) a middle class lifestyle?

Would it end the dramatically different levels of violent crime victimization?  For all the talk about police brutality, young black men are murdered by young black men somewhere on the order of 100 to 1000 times more often than they are shot by cops.  If enough white people acknowledged their privilege, would that stop?

Even from within this essay - its a great suggestion to make a point of having a non-college educated person speak for every college educated person.  Of course, given the context of the essay, doesn't that take it as a given that college graduates will be disproportionately white?  Of course that is true - why not work on changing it?  How would inviting non-college educated people to speak help to equalize the education gap?  That's a much bigger problem, one that effects many more people, much more profoundly, than who gets a chance to give a talk to a room full of people.

The entire concept of privilege, of race awareness, of cultural sensitivity, it is all the masturbation of activism: it feels good for the people doing it, but it doesn't accomplish anything.

So, overall, I'm glad this was written, glad it is saying what it is saying.  I fully agree with and support the basic premise.

That said, there are some particular things that stand out to me that I disagree with.

It is repeating / reinforcing the nearly universal assumption (among activists) that inequality today is caused by "structural forms of oppression" and "systems that enable these privileges".

My response to that is much the same as my response to the idea of privilege - how would dismantling any current system actually make anyone's life better?  More over, exactly what "systems" and "structures" would those be?  This is not 1900.  This is 2014.  Racist and colonial systems have ALREADY been dismantled.  And yet race disparity still exists.
That racism is explicitly illegal does not end the problem.  But it does change the problem - yet so many people are stuck thinking in terms that are no longer relevant.
Thinking that disabling oppressive structures will solve problems is like ending slavery (with not even the meager restitution which was initially promised) and expecting former slaves and their children will simply catch up via hard work.  It would take specific pro-active steps.  If every single boss and teacher became color blind, if every prison were closed, if every nation-state were dissolved, there would still be a culture of drugs and violence in the poor black community.  There would still be massive wealth and education inequality, and it would continue to go from one generation to the next. 

There was a time when activists realized this, which is why the Panthers created preschools, economics classes for adults, free medical clinics, and drug rehab programs; its also why, more recently, the program to try to at least begin to address education inequality was called "affirmative action".  Unfortunately, now that name has been taken, but its what we need - not reactionary and destructive dismantling of existing structure, but affirmative action

Much of the specifics are concerning not racism, but colonialism.  I find the portrayal of young American's returning from foreign lands with their "insights" as absolutely spot on.  But I find the suggestion that there is no clear way to deal with it rather odd - it's simple: leave other cultures alone.  Give them access to the knowledge of technology IF they want it, and otherwise leave them the hell alone.  You don't need to go and have your personal profound experience, any more than they need you to come in and save them from their lifestyle and choices.

The portion on nation-states strikes me as having an anarchist ideology at root which makes assumptions about what a nation-state is, which are not necessarily true.

Assuming that without them there would be less violence, less fighting over land, less oppression of one group by another, shows a profound lack of knowledge of history.  The nation-state has only existed for a few hundred years, but those problems have been far worse for most of history than they are today.  This is not to say that the specific methods of action discussed are not absolutely wonderful, positive developments.  Its more that, if the community movements talked about were to expand, and eventually make the state irrelevant - that means they have become the state.  And that's ok.  In fact, it is amazingly positive, because it would have meant a peaceful revolution, which brought (real!) democracy in from the ground up.  That is what needs to happen, all over the world (including America) - actual democracy.  Not what the US calls "democracy", which really means "open markets", but the kind where the people make the decisions of how the state will run and how economic structures will be organized.  That can happen just as easily within the model of a nation as it can without discrete borders.

As far as "safe spaces", my suggestion is this: get over yourself.  These issues are way way bigger than whether your feelings get hurt.  This is stuff that actually impacts millions of peoples lives in very tangible ways, and in order to address problems, sometimes people need to be real and direct and to the point.  Sometimes that means not being "politically correct" and sometimes it means not being "culturally sensitive".  Its not about you.  Deal with it. 

The essay is right to point out that being in an oppressed group does not automatically make you incapable of doing wrong, and a structure designed by an oppressed group is not automatically "oppression free".  People are people, and if you want to form something free from inequality or harm, you have to start out admitting you are not perfect, and then make a conscious effort to recognize and correct for your own biases and assumptions.  No one is immune to them, regardless of race or sex or personal experience.

Again; "as the rituals of confessing privilege have evolved, they have shifted our focus from building social movements for global transformation to individual self-improvement."

Yes.  This is true. And it is a problem, because it distracts people who are aware from doing anything useful.

Overall, my criticisms are relatively minor compared to how much I support the overall point.

Privilege - its not the problem

Response to:
http://andrea366.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/the-problem-with-privilege-by-andrea-smith/



I absolutely love its general premise, and could not agree more - though perhaps for slightly different reasons.

I have long questioned the entire idea of "privilege", and especially the focus on it.  If you are lucky enough to be middle class, its fairly easy to see inequality in terms of having some privileges or not.  One of those privileges is being able to (pretend that you) live in an insular world where an individual being culturally insensitive to another individual is one of the worst aspects of racism.

As a African American, who has lived most (but not all) of his life in poor, high crime, high minority urban areas, the entire sub-culture of race activists has always looked very shallow and meaningless to me.  It has always seemed much more about being able to say "I, in contrast to all those other (white) people, am enlightened."

What, exactly, does white people or men or straight people or whoever, acknowledging their privilege actually accomplish?

Lets say every single European American was fully aware, fully acknowledged, and fully internalized that they have privilege relative to other people.

Would that somehow instantly, magically, cause wealth and income inequality to disapear, so that whites were proportionately represented among the extremely poor (and I'm not talking "can't make car payments" or "home foreclosure" poor - I'm talking "can't afford a halfway decent bicycle" or "choose between rent and food" poor) - or better yet, make it so that everyone who has the ability and desire to work could live (what we currently consider) a middle class lifestyle?

Would it end the dramatically different levels of violent crime victimization?  For all the talk about police brutality, young black men are murdered by young black men somewhere on the order of 100 to 1000 times more often than they are shot by cops.  If enough white people acknowledged their privileged, would that stop?

Even from within this essay - its a great suggestion to make a point of having a non-college educated person speak for every college educated person.  Of course, given the context of the essay, doesn't that take it as a given that college graduates will be disproportionately white?  Of course that is true - why not work on changing it?  How would inviting non-college educated people to speak help to equalize the education gap?  That's a much bigger problem, one that effects many more people, much more profoundly, than who gets a chance to give a talk to a room full of people.

The entire concept of privilege, of race awareness, of cultural sensitivity, it is all the masturbation of activism: it feels good for the people doing it, but it doesn't accomplish anything.

So, overall, I'm glad this was written, glad it is saying what it is saying.  I fully agree with and support the basic premise.

That said, there are some particular things that stand out to me that I disagree with.

It is repeating / reinforcing the nearly universal assumption (among activists) that inequality today is caused by "structural forms of oppression" and "systems that enable these privileges".

My response to that is much the same as my response to the idea of privilege - how would dismantling any current system actually make anyone's life better?  More over, exactly what "systems" and "structures" would those be?  This is not 1900.  This is 2014.  Racist and colonial systems have ALREADY been dismantled.  And yet race disparity still exists.
That racism is explicitly illegal does not end the problem.  But it does change the problem - yet so many people are stuck thinking in terms that are no longer relevant.
Thinking that disabling oppressive structures will solve problems is like ending slavery (with not even the meager restitution which was initially promised) and expecting former slaves and their children will simply catch up via hard work.  It would take specific pro-active steps.  If every single boss and teacher became color blind, if every prison were closed, if every nation-state were dissolved, there would still be a culture of drugs and violence in the poor black community.  There would still be massive wealth and education inequality, and it would continue to go from one generation to the next. 

There was a time when activists realized this, which is why the Panthers created preschools, economics classes for adults, free medical clinics, and drug rehab programs; its also why, more recently, the program to try to at least begin to address education inequality was called "affirmative action".  Unfortunately, now that name has been taken, but its what we need - not reactionary and destructive dismantling of existing structure, but affirmative action

Much of the specifics are concerning not racism, but colonialism.  I find the portrayal of young American's returning from foreign lands with their "insights" as absolutely spot on.  But I find the suggestion that there is no clear way to deal with it rather odd - its simple: leave other cultures alone.  Give them access to the knowledge of technology IF they want it, and otherwise leave them the hell alone.  You don't need to go and have your personal profound experience, any more than they need you to come in and save them from their lifestyle and choices.

The portion on nation-states strikes me as having an anarchist ideology at root which makes assumptions about what a nation-state is, which are not necessarily true.

Assuming that without them there would be less violence, less fighting over land, less oppression of one group by another, shows a profound lack of knowledge of history.  The nation-state has only existed for a few hundred years, but those problems have been far worse for most of history than they are today.  This is not to say that the specific methods of action discussed are not absolutely wonderful, positive developments.  Its more that, if the community movements talked about were to expand, and eventually make the state irrelevant - that means they have become the state.  And that's ok.  In fact, it is amazingly positive, because it would have meant a peaceful revolution, which brought (real!) democracy in from the ground up.  That is what needs to happen, all over the world (including America) - actual democracy.  Not what the US calls "democracy", which really means "open markets", but the kind where the people make the decisions of how the state will run and how economic structures will be organized.  That can happen just as easily within the model of a nation as it can without discrete borders.

As far as "safe spaces", my suggestion is this: get over yourself.  These issues are way way bigger than whether your feelings get hurt.  This is stuff that actually impacts millions of peoples lives in very tangible ways, and in order to address problems, sometimes people need to be real and direct and to the point.  Sometimes that means not being "politically correct" and sometimes it means not being "culturally sensitive".  Its not about you.  Deal with it. 

The essay is right to point out that being in an oppressed group does not automatically make you incapable of doing wrong, and a structure designed by an oppressed group is not automatically "oppression free".  People are people, and if you want to form something free from inequality or harm, you have to start out admitting you are not perfect, and then make a conscious effort to recognize and correct for your own biases and assumptions.  No one is immune to them, regardless of race or sex or personal experience.

Again; "as the rituals of confessing privilege have evolved, they have shifted our focus from building social movements for global transformation to individual self-improvement."

Yes.  This is true. And it is a problem, because it distracts people who are aware from doing anything useful.

Overall, my criticisms are relatively minor compared to how much I support the overall point.

Why OWS and the 99% is THE fundamental issue, which lies behind all others:

[This is another of those things I wrote years ago, and has been lost in draft form.  I think I originally planned to add more list items, and elaborate further on all of them, but of course I don't remember what exactly I had in mind]


-War: Some of the largest corporations, (Boeing, Lockheed Martin), profit enormously from war

-Civil Rights: Corporations are not citizens, and therefor should have no civil rights - they are granted right anyway.  They violate the rights of individuals without consequence.  Income and wealth inequality are the single largest factor for the different life experiences of American whites and blacks, and wealth inequality is a direct result of our economic policies.

-Gay rights, abortion, etc etc: Directly mutual relationship between corporate political power and the religious right, as they are both "conservative".  The only reason the religious right is taken seriously is because they support the politicians who are funded by corporate money.

-Environment: EPA doesn't work on shutting down your backyard BBQ.  It is corporations which cause massive pollution.  Corporations decide which power sources to tap into and what type of cars are manufactured.  It was corporations which deliberately destroyed public transit across America.

WTO / NAFTA / etc: this should go without saying

Freedom VS democracy

[I wrote this some years ago, I don't remember exactly when. It was lost in the drafts folder.]

Some people condemn all government as authoritarian.  They take the government we have today as an example of "democracy" and condemn democracy as just another form of government control over people's lives.  But the word "government" doesn't mean "authoritarian control".  Democracy is a form of government.  And democracy isn't about legislatures interfering into private peoples lives.  Democracy is about private people acting as legislatures. 

The United States of America has corrupted the word democracy.
The USA is not, and never has been, a democracy.  It was never intended to be.



What we have is a republic.
Under a republic people or localities designate representatives, and those representatives make rules and jointly form the government.  People vote for congress members by county or city (more or less), states elect senators, and party electors vote for presidents. A citizens participation consists of about 20 minutes every four years or so.  Congress makes all the laws.  The president designates people to run government agencies.

Democracy is government of and by the citizens themselves.  In a true democracy, instead of passing legislative and executive responsibilities to someone else, the responsible citizen participates in the process.
 In the state of California we have a partial democracy.  Any citizen can propose a new law.  They can go out and try to collect signatures, and the people they stop take a moment to read the proposal, and then sign it (or not).  If the citizen gets enough support it appears on the ballot, and everyone has one vote.  If it passes it is as legally binding as a law written by the legislature.  That's an example of democracy. 
In a large scale democracy the function of government officials is just to file paperwork, run elections, implement what the people decide.  In a true democracy the people who work in government have no power.  They are bureaucrats, not decision makers.  The decision makers are the citizens themselves.  In a democracy people have both a right and a responsibility to participate in the process of deciding how society and the economy will be.


Many people are very concerned about government abuses or authoritarianism.  People hate being told what to do - even when it really is what's best for them.  People want the freedom to not wear a seatbelt and become disfigured or die in a car crash.  Personally, I find this more than a little immature.  It reminds me of the rebellious teenager who goes against what their parents say just because they said it - ignoring that the parents probably learned the hard way the lesson by doing the same thing themselves.  Maybe that is something most people have to go through; but one would hope we all grow out of it...  But I digress.
Some say democracy is a "tyranny of the majority" and that no one should ever be coerced to do anything.  They suggest that all group projects (i.e. everything which is "society") be done on a unanimous consensus basis.
But remembering that democracy does not have to have an authoritarian ruler or hierarchy, there is no reason to assume people are being "forced" to do anything.

Consider this example:
Four students are assigned to be in a group together, and complete a joint project which will be a significant portion of their grade.  The teacher allows them to decide on the topic themselves, but they must all contribute to one narrowly focused paper.  Chances are not all 4 will agree on what to do it on.
Maybe two people agree, but two others have different ideas.  Each person argues their case, and in the end, if no one has changed their minds, it goes to a vote and the idea with 2 supporters gets done.  The other 2 go along with it - not because they were forced to (nor any threat of force) but simply because they need to work with other people to accomplish their own goals. Sometimes working with other people means not getting your way. 
That is democracy.

In this example their is no hierarchy.  No one has any more power than anyone else.  There is no tyranny, no authority, no coercion. If one person was absolutely not ok with the chosen project, no one is stopping them from dropping the class.
Having 100% consensus 100% of the time, even in a group of 4 like-minded people is perhaps a noble goal, but is totally unrealistic.  Having 100% consensus on a national (or even neighborhood) level is simply a joke.  But the fact that a rule is made that not everyone agrees with does not imply some outside authority or threat of force.
In any free country, citizens are allowed to leave anytime they like.  Although it isn't an explicit "right", anyone can immigrate to another country if they prefer the rules somewhere else.. 
In a commune, where a number of adults all live in one shared space, if one person refuses to do any chores, doesn't contribute to rent or food costs, makes noise while everyone is sleeping, and generally ignores the rules everyone else collectively agreed to, I doubt anyone would argue the group is overstepping its bounds in asking that individual to leave the shared space.
Following the rules that the people collectively decide on is a reasonable condition of living in a country and enjoying its benefits just as surely as it would be in any commune. 
Because of this, simply staying is giving implicit consent.


Freedom is an extremely popular idea.
Conservatives argue for economic freedom.  Liberals argue for social freedom.  Libertarians argue for freedom of both, so long as one person's  doesn't infringe upon another, and private property and national boundaries are respected.  The constitution guarantees freedom of speech, religion, the press, and to assemble.  Anarchists argue for complete freedom for everyone, all the time.

Freedom is contrasted with a monarchy handing down proclamations, fascism (and the implicit connection with nazi's),  brutal and oppressive dictatorships, government abusing power and taking advantage of people.

Whenever an idea becomes so obvious to a people that it is taken for granted by all sides, when a philosophy or theory becomes an axiom, its a good idea to take a step back and question it.  The idea of freedom, of self-determination, of autonomy, has not always been seen as the most valuable or basic of human rights.  We have gotten to a point where the only thing debated is how best to achieve it, instead of asking why it is even the goal.

Why is freedom inherently valuable? - even beyond extent of improving human condition or increasing individual happiness.  If it "just is" then it is no more than dogma, an axiom based on faith.

In context of a repressive dictatorship, relative freedom has value - because it can improve the state of human happiness and equality. 
But beyond that, it becomes a religious conviction, which is repeated until it is accepted.

The insistence on freedom, whether it comes from an anarchist, a libertarian, or a conservative, is for the most part a straw man, a red herring - it is a retort to an argument which nobody was making in the first place.
Even within the most repressive dictatorship, (outside of war, prison and slavery), people are - and have always been - free to live their lives as they choose.
Citizens are allowed to choose where they live, who they associate with, what they do for a living, when to eat dinner, what to eat for dinner, who to marry (family may have a say, but that's a whole separate issue).  For the most part - outside of religion's influence on government - governments make no attempt to control those actions which affect no one but the actor himself, or other consenting adults who choose to associate with them.
What governments do regulate is all the actions which affect other people involuntarily.
If someone wants to go out into the wilderness and be totally self-sufficient, no one is stopping them.
The reality is humans are a fragile and social specie, and almost no one would be capable of doing that if they wanted to, and almost no one wants to.
The reality is that, since we live in society, the vast majority of our choices DO affect others around us.

Consider the statement: "I think its great that there are many choices of high mileage cars for sale.  Personally I drive the most efficient car I could get, and it saves me a lot of money.  But what's even greater is that everyone has the choice to drive whatever they want, even if its a big SUV".
Obviously there is the environmental impact.  There is also the fact that the SUV will do much more damage to a victim should the driver accidentally crash.  And since gasoline is a supply and demand commodity, the fact that one person wastes gas by driving a bigger car than they need means that the price is driven up just a little more.  Whether its breathing clean air, being able to afford gas, or being able to travel safely in the streets, one person's decision does not just affect themselves, it affects everyone.

In a global economy, each and every economic decision which any person makes ultimately affects everyone else.  And while that affect is very small when it is just one person out of 6 billion, an entire nation of people acting selfish together can really add up. 
Enter the tragedy of the commons.


To a large extent "freedom" is an illusion anyway.  Those who can afford access to distributing mass media have spent the past century refining ways to manipulate people.  Psychology is employed in advertising and in politics, and we are indoctrinated from the time we can talk in regards to what we should value and desire. 
The very ideal of freedom and self-determination itself is the best example of this: we are bombarded with it from all angles, the rugged self-made individualist American Dream on one side, and the rebellious non-conformist activist on the other - supposedly at odds with each other, but both playing into the ideal of 'individual freedom' which, ironically, was invented by and supports the one thing they both can agree to hate:  the government.


Democracy, of course, requires a certain degree of cohesiveness among citizens, and a willingness to make (small) individual sacrifices for the overall good, knowing that oneself is a part of everyone, and everyone does better when everyone does better.  It is a bit like a union - if you cross the picket line you may get your individual check, which is good for you - but if you sacrifice that extra pay for yourself now, everyone ends up with the health plan and vacation time (and "everyone" includes you).  The citizen cuts back on luxuries when their nation is attacked, and pays taxes willingly.  The individualist buys the SUV and crosses the picket line.
Problem is, once that one person crosses the line, the workers collective loses power.  That power is taken back by the company.
Citizens vote.  Consumers don't waste their time.  As citizens become more and more focused on themselves, they lose unity with other citizens, and in doing so give up their power.  Which leaves a vacuum which politicians and the wealthy move into without resistance.

Nothing undermines democracy more than a populace who feels morally entitled to self-determination and believes deeply in individualism, and nothing supports government abuse of power more than the undermining of democracy. 
The irony is that the ideas of freedom, self-determination, and lack of authority came largely from government itself, as a method of limiting democracy - thereby giving itself more power.  The irony is that the groups most antagonistic to government - anarchists and libertarians - are those most enamored with the very concepts which prevent government from being effectively run by the people, leaving a void which the elite class fills.

Regardless of what one believes in theory, this is the reality of what has happened in this country over the past century.
It was a deliberate push by both corporations and government to change the psychology of Americans from being citizens (which are a part of something larger than themselves) to consumers (who are beholden only to "I, me, mine") and it had the intended effect.
Today people have a rearrangement of priorities: lots and lots of material goods, comforts, and conveniences, and they are loath to give any up. 
They do not feel they should have to make any individual sacrifices to the greater good.  In fact, that concept (rightfully accused of being "socialism") is equated with communism (where the government owns literally everything, and makes all macroeconomic decisions), fascism (which promotes total devotion to a monoculture and essentially worship of one's own country) and even evil.


Another axiom is that production of wealth is inherently good. 
Consider an extreme example -a sort of monarchy in which the king gets benefit of 100% of wealth creation.  Every time any citizen goes to work, they get compensated enough to afford basic necessities, but the rest all goes to one man.  If GDP goes up, whether by the invention of new technology or by people working harder or longer hours or by a decrease in waste and increase in efficiency, all the additional wealth that is generated goes to the king, and the king alone. 
In this example while it might look good on paper to do something which "supports the economy", in reality this doesn't help anyone.  Hundreds of millions of citizens get literally no benefit at all.  But really neither does the king, since he already has more than enough wealth as it is.  In this extreme scenario there is nothing particularly good about increasing economic activity or wealth generation.

 Now consider a slightly less extreme example: a small aristocracy.  Instead of going to one man, all increases in wealth go to a small subset of the population, which stays almost entirely along family lines from one generation to the next.
This less extreme example is... exactly what has happened in reality over the last 3 decades or so in America.  There has been no real income increase for the working or middle classes after adjusting for inflation - while the highest fraction of a percent of the population's wealth has skyrocketed to absolutely unprecedented levels.
Increasing GDP is useless in terms of impact on average person.  What we all too easily seem to forget in that the purpose of the economy is to support people, not the other way around.

Consider the sort of sacrifices the average person is supposed to accept on the grounds that its good for business: outsourcing, mergers, union busting, tax cuts on investment income, tax payer funded corporate subsidies - things which directly support the upper class while hurting everyone else.  Notice that no business suggests cutting off stock holders or paying all executives a no more than what the average employee makes as a method of "remaining competitive in the global marketplace".
Giving all the money to the king does not create more jobs.  If that newly generated wealth were spread around evenly, people could work less hours for the same pay.  If people with jobs worked less hours, then to maintain productivity, companies would need to hire more people.  Instant job creation, nobody has to spend anything, everybody wins.  The super wealthy fail to get super-duper wealthy, but that's really ok, because once you have 10 million dollars, another billion or two does not appreciably increase quality of life anyway. 


The idea of the free market taking the place of government in terms of making the economic and production decisions of a society is that it naturally matches the desires of the people, and that a more accurate and fair valuation of the value of goods and services will be settled upon by the "invisible hand" of many peoples individual, independent, and self-interested negotiations.
In theory, this is better than democracy, with its potential to become a "tyranny of the masses"
This is summed up with the phrase "vote with your dollar".
Another way to say that would be "money is power".
And unlike the democratic principal of one person / one vote, the more money you have, the more influence you have over the direction the invisible hand takes.
And this takes us again back to the aristocracy - rule by a wealthy and powerful elite - the opposite of democracy, and the opposite of what any of us outside that elite actually wants.



Yet another common idea is that rational self-interest will tend to increase productivity, as people search for ways to be more efficient or ways to get investment returns, which ultimately make society work like a machine and benefits everyone.

Tax rates should be low (or non-existent) because people will work harder if they can keep what they earn, and it shouldn't be progressive because then the wealthy will stop working altogether.  People can be as selfish as they like - in fact, can be encouraged to be selfish - because in the long run the effect they have on the economy will improve it in general.  Wealth will be created, re-invested, and that will help to create jobs.

In the real world:

-people already work far harder than there is any real need to.  Productivity per worker has increased by the hundreds over the past century with the advent of assembly lines, gas and electric powered machines, robots and computers.  Yet we still work 40 or more hours per week.  Instead of using that efficiency to allow for more leisure time (which would actually increase human happiness) it has gone to generating ever more wealth (which, as has been established, has gone primarily not to the workers themselves, but to the upper class who don't actually work)

-The only people who high top tax brackets might encourage to work less are the very people who do the least work.  One of the primary definitions of rich is "anyone who makes enough income from investments that they do not need to work".  Collecting stock dividends, capital gains, interest, or rent, is not working, and it is not contributing to society.  It is leaching from it.

-Investors can not take credit for economic production.
It's as if one person hoards all the hammers in town, and rents them out to people, then wants credit for the houses other people built with them. If they weren't hoarding the hammers, the hammers would still exist. If they were distributed equitably, no one would need to rent them; therefor building would be cheaper, and more would get built.
In this way the fact that someone is hoarding and charging interest actually depresses economic activity, because those hoarding the cash skim a little off the top of every financial transaction thereby increasing its cost.

Just like we tend to assume freedom and democracy go hand in hand when in fact they are in some ways at odds, capitalism and the free market are generally assumed to be interchangeable as well.
It ain't necessarily so.

A free market - ideally - works much like, well, a market...

[I stopped writing here. I'm posting it as is, as where it was headed happens to be the focus of my next series of posts.]

Wearing the Skirt

Been thinking a bit recently about gender.

Thanks, primarily, of all things, to being more active on Facebook than I've ever been.

Which exposed me to:

http://denisdutton.com/baumeister.htm

(A ruler can only lead with the consent of at least most of the people. Women make up slightly more than half of the population. Sure, today institutions are set up that hold the status quo, but how did it get this way in the first place? This is a pretty plausible theory of how and it puts a lot of other stuff into a different perspective too.)

and this

http://www.buzzfeed.com/tabathaleggett/lego-just-got-told-off-by-a-7-year-old-girl

(I'm afraid the larger issue is that we all assume the standard lego person is male. The standard lego person looks like this:

which has no features which indicate gender.
Kind of like when cartoons give a female animal character long hair or eye lashes, lipstick, or (human type) breasts - even if she isn't a mammal - because if a cartoon animal just looks like an animal "obviously" it must be male(??)
It goes way deeper than corporations and marketing. We have all internalized it. Even the girl who wrote the letter.)

and then this



www.buzzfeed.com/marietelling/this-powerful-video-shows-men-what-it-feels-like-to-be-subje

(Overall, this was great. I love that it was made, and I hope some of the guys who treat women so disrespectfully see it, and it gets through... There is one problem I have with this video though - the last scene perpetuates a belief, shared by almost everyone, which is based more on misogyny than fact.
The guy really was "asking for it" when he yelled back at the gang members. Not because of how he was dressed or any signals he gave off, but because he YELLED BACK AT GANG MEMBERS!...
every male above about the age of 13 who lives in an area with street crime knows that doing that will get the shit beat out of you.  Because the reality is that men are the victims of violent crime by strangers over 1/3 more often (down from twice as often a couple decades ago). What any male with even an ounce of street smarts does when a group of 4 dangerous looking teens starts harassing him verbally is ignore it, let it go, and continue with his life. Sometimes women yell or insult them back - and the reason they think this is ok is because most of the time they can get away with it - almost all men, even the low life scum who look for excuses to attack strangers, have internalized the (sexist) rule of "never hit a woman".
But then, in the few instances where it does escalate to violence - and despite the fact that it escalates to violence more often with men - we take those examples and pretend it proves that women are disproportionately victims. It isn't because the statistics actually support it. Its because our misogynist society starts out with the premise that women are victims as a given, and then looks for the evidence to support it.)

followed by this

http://imgur.com/a/RmAjE

(It may be true, as far as it goes - but I can think of more than a couple examples where the FriendZoner does choose to go out with the guy who WOULD take advantage of her when she's drunk, or who WON'T listen to her when she is upset. As though she is only attracted to people she wouldn't actually be friends with. Not saying it is universal, but it seems to be pretty common. She might even be even be attracted to The Nice Guy - if only he acted like more of a jerk. That doesn't make her an evil bitch. But it does maybe make her judgement a little suspect.)

and then, finally this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/magazine/does-a-more-equal-marriage-mean-less-sex.html

(I can say, for me personally, I feel no pressure to fit a masculine role, but I have experienced what it talks about first hand - it could easily have been about my marriage. And it was mostly her; she wanted equality and friendship in principal, but was attracted to the jerk who didn't respect women. It looks a lot to me like what I was talking about earlier about the Nice Guy not being sexually attractive by virtue of being a nice guy - that makes him seem like a brother, which is anti-sexy... If it is because of societal expectations and gender roles, then why do lesbian couples experience the exact same patterns?)

all of which, of course, I had comments on, usually lengthy (compared to a typical online comment) and most of which drew responses from others, which in turn got me thinking even more.

I feel like there is a bit of a common theme running beneath the surface, one which is touched on, or at least alluded to, by things I've written before

 (like  Sexual Dimorphism, and Caveman Love,  
FemDom vs. Feminism: Power doesn't come from penetration,
The Oldest Profession,   and 
What does our gut reaction to the word "rape" say about our subconscious beliefs about women's agency?  )

but is never really spelled out explicitly, mainly because even I take the world as it is for granted, and even though I actually have thought about this in the same terms before, I didn't actually remember in the moments I was writing any of those.

Its nothing particularly revolutionary - in fact, it seems it should be obvious, and I'm sure many others have thought of, and have written about the same thing, but it still seems to escape our daily consciousness, even people whose primary focus in life it these sort of issues.

I had been trying to pin down what exactly it is that I don't like about the word feminism, why I prefer "egalitarianism", for several months now.  It isn't just that all people should be treated fairly and with respect - I think it's totally valid that any group which has disproportionate challenges in society get more focus in order to change that.  And its not just that using the root "fem" to apply to females implies that all women are (or should be) "feminine", which is a social construct to which not all females conform (so does feminism not aim to help them?).

The last of the essays I read finally helped solidify what it actually is...

Back in the 1800s and early 1900s, the focus was on allowing women to participate in democracy.  Around the time of world war II (due to necessity) women entered the work force in large numbers and after, due partly to that, partly to politics, and partly to technology, women were more and more free to be something other than a house wife, even if they got married.  In the 50s and 60s there was a struggle to change American culture to allow women to wear pants - and while that success has become so common place that its a complete non-issue today, the phrase taken from that transition still has the same meaning today - if a woman "wears the pants" in the relationship, it means she is the head of the household.

We've come a really really long way in allowing a woman complete freedom to choosing any role in life that she is capable of and interested in, even though we aren't quite all there yet - there are still some roles in the military that are closed off by gender, regardless of ability, and we still have yet to have a single female president - but those last few are within sight of changing.

But what was neglected all along, because of the focus on women specifically, was, well...    men, and their roles. 

I don't mean that in a "it's so unfair" kind of way. 
The vast majority of women are heterosexual, and the vast majority have at least one serious intimate relationship at some point in life.  So the social roles expected of men are directly relevant to women.  For one thing, the things that women traditionally did still need to get done.  Allowing women to enter what was once men's sphere, while not allowing men to enter women's, leads directly to the modern challenges of women who want to have both a career and a family.

See, while it has become acceptable for women to - both literally and figuratively - wear pants, it never became acceptable for men to wear the skirt. 

Again, both literally and figuratively.

A woman wearing pants is not a transvestite, no one assumes she is gay on that basis alone (never mind that the majority of male cross dressers are straight anyway, I'm just talking about public perception), and it doesn't even make her not "feminine".  A average man wearing a skirt (not a kilt, an actual skirt), who isn't dressing up as a female as a sex fetish, joke, or political statement, simply isn't done.  Anywhere.  Ever.

In the figurative sense it is slowly changing to at least a small degree.  There are male school teachers, flight attendants, receptionists, and nurses, and none of those are seen as particularly shocking.  There is even such a thing as a stay-at-home dad, though its extremely rare (~3% of married couples - and this includes involuntarily unemployed fathers), and depending on the specific American sub-culture, still frequently (usually?) stigmatized.

I can imagine attempted explanations for this going along the lines of male machismo, or that patriarchy controlled the terms of change as women were allowed political and economic power, but those explanations wouldn't really explain why men would want to deprive themselves of choice, and besides, they are a bit circular.  They tend to assume that half the population of the world has no influence on culture - even after political and economic power were won / granted.

I would expect some people's responses to point to the theoretical "matriarchal" societies prehistoric societies - unfortunately, as nice as that myth is, there isn't any actual evidence to support it having ever been true, anywhere: https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/e/eller-myth.html  and  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matriarchy )

I remember reading an article about the difficulties of modern educated Russian women in finding husbands. 
Manufacturing and other traditionally-male semi-skilled labor jobs - jobs which once provided a comfortable and respectable life - were in decline, leaving a lot of men struggling to adapt.  Meanwhile, more women graduated universities than men, and began taking higher level professional jobs.

The trouble finding husbands wasn't due to a deficit of smart, kind, hard-working men.  It was that the women, even though they had enough income to support themselves and a family, were unwilling to partner with someone who earned less than them.
Surveys found that the average single man was willing to marry a woman with more education or more income (as well as one with less) than himself, but this was not reciprocal.

It was women's choices, preferences, biases, that was controlling the situation.

My friend who shared that last link above (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/magazine/does-a-more-equal-marriage-mean-less-sex.html)

suggested that the reason women insist on their partner's being traditionally "masculine" and dominant (in sexual relations, if nowhere else) is because of their internalized sexism.

I could see that.  It certainly fits with the conclusions I came to in my "perceptions of rape and feminism" blog post. 

That explanation definately would make sense: men have had about about half a century to get used to the idea of strong independent women, several generations have grown up taking female police officers and business leaders and politicians for granted - men my age or younger don't actually remember the time when women were barred from traditionally male roles.  However the stay-at-home-dad, the sensitive nurturing husband, the sexually submissive boyfriend, these things are relatively new.  Perhaps it will just take more transition time for women to adapt to egalitarianism, to start seeing "feminine" men as being sexy, the way men have accepted "masculine" women can be sexy.

That explanation is appealing, but it begs the question of why similar patterns seem to emerge in the generally egalitarian gay female relationships, but not in the generally not egalitarian gay male relationships. It also doesn't explain satisfactorily why so many straight women accept, or prefer, egalitarianism in every aspect of a relationship, except for sexually, where she enjoys it more if the male takes charge.

The alternative is that this may be rooted in biology.  That could make sense too: the creep who sees every attractive female primarily as a potential sex partner, who doesn't want to take "no" for an answer, is likely to get more lifetime sex partners than the respectful guy who sees women as people first and foremost, and prefers his partner to be his friend and equal - if only because of the numbers; the bad boy is constantly trying to get some, while the nice guy is waiting for someone to give him a sign that she's interested.  Pre-birth control it means jerks are going to have more children.  Assuming that some degree of personality traits are genetic, from the stand point of a female who (subconsciously) wants to maximize not just the number of offspring, but of grand- and great-grand-children, then it makes sense to have sons who will have lots of kids with lots of different partners, and so it makes sense to find a partner who will pass on some disrespectful womanizing genes.  She would still want a relationship with a guy who actually cares about her, who will take good care of the family, but the jerk would be sexy - after all, humanity also evolved hundreds of thousands of years before paternity tests.

This explanation is much less encouraging - it implies that this phenomenon will be a hell of a lot harder to change overtime, maybe even that there may be relatively little we can do about it.  It could mean we may never expect to eliminate sexual harassment or date rape, since the dynamic set up by women being turned on by "alpha males" actively encourages both.  It would mean nice guys would always continue to finish last, sleazy pick-up-artists would always be successful, stay-at-home-dads will never become common. 

But not necessarily.  The human brain is pretty complex, and culture has managed to have us go against instinct before (most notably in the suppression of violence).

Either way, in order to address it, we have to understand it.  And before we can understand it, we have to become aware (and/or admit) that it even exists in the first place.

So. 
Tell me, my heterosexual female readership:

Am I totally off-base on this? 
I could be totally wrong. 
Correct me if I am. 
I am very open to being proved wrong. 
I would love it if I was wrong. 

All of my personal experience, not to mention the statistics, tell me I'm not, but I'm still open to new information.

Are there actually lots and lots of exceptions, and I just don't know about it?

Do you, personally, find it sexier when your partner takes charge in the bedroom?

Have you ever turned down a male friend who was interested in you, even though you liked him and he was attractive because you "see him like a brother" or you "know him too well" or "you just don't see him that way? 
If so, why are trusting and being comfortable with a person anti-sexy traits? 
If you would want your partner to be your friend, why would you not consider a close friend as a candidate for partner?

Have you ever not said what you wanted, or not made the first move, because you wanted the guy to be the one to initiate?

Have you ever had a guy be uncomfortably sexually aggressive, perhaps even to a point that made you dislike him as a person, but still found yourself turned on by the situation?

Regardless of if you would actually want it in the real world, have you ever had a fantasy of being forced, or does the idea seem at all sexy, or if you ever actually have been, was it, on any level, sexy or enjoyable?

Do you prefer to be submissive, (even if only in terms of sex)?

Do you tend to think of intercourse as him fucking you, (as opposed to you fucking him)?

Do you sympathize with the women from the article?

How about the examples in my blog post on the topic? 

It certainly resonated with my own personal experience (of course, a couple of the anecdotes were drawn from my personal experience), but I have a fairly small sample size.

Do you prefer that your partner be physically taller than you?

Has the guy been the one to first express romantic interest in more than half of your relationships and/or dates?

You don't have to tell me, or answer out loud, I'm just asking you to question yourself, to be aware of the answers. 

If the answer to, not necessarily all, but even just any one of them is yes, why do you think that is? 
Is it something you've learned, something you've internalized from cultural expectations, or do you suspect its something deeper, more primal than that?

If the answer to any of them is yes, how do you reconcile that with your values and principals around feminism and equality and power?

I could see if it was just any one individual, a person can have any particular preference - "that is what I believe in principal, this just happens to be what I personally like, and my personal tastes have no political meaning". That seems to be the most common self-justification, the most common way to reconcile principal and practice, politics and desire.  On the surface it seems like a perfectly reasonable answer, and it allows a person to not have to think about uncomfortable questions.
But if its universal, or an overwhelming trend, if even just more than 50% of straight women answer "yes" to any of the above questions, then there are obviously sociopolitical implications. 
Or, at least, it seems obvious to me - yet it seems like nobody notices.
 

I come across sexually assertive women, anti-sexism activists, queer women who challenge traditional concepts of gender, all wanting to be dominated sexually.
In a different context these same women will object to, for example, sexual harassment, but somehow see no connection between the two.  Men who harass are like spam or telemarketers or junk mail - all it takes is one positive response in 10,000 to make the strategy successful, but if the positive response rate was absolute zero, they wouldn't waste their time.  And it shouldn't be surprising that some women respond positively to what others call harassment, if in other contexts a power differential is seen as desirable.

As I pointed out in the rape and feminism blog post, if we want to reduce date rape, it is absolutely vital that women not ever say "no" when they really mean "yes" - and surveys find that the majority of young, sexually active women, by their own admission, have done exactly that at some point in their lives (61%).  When I first read the statistic, I assumed it was due to cultural expectations, a way to avoid 'slut shaming' - "There's bound to be talk tomorrow" ... "At least I'm gonna say that I tried" - but after reading the NY Times article that inspired what I'm writing now, I wonder if there's more to it after all.

"Ninety percent of these women said that fear of appearing promiscuous was an important reason for their behavior.  Many said that they wanted their dates to wait, or “talk me into it.”  And some said that they told their dates no because they “wanted him to be more physically aggressive." [emphasis mine]

So far the push for equality has been focused on the tangible for women - legal status, employment, dress; and the mental/emotional for men - how they are supposed to think about women.

We've pretty much ignored the physical world of men - there is no law protecting men who choose to wear a skirt to work - while the mental/emotional for women has been pretty much ignored too.

There are no college or corporate educational videos, no pamphlets or handouts, no protest rallies or petitions, that address how women view men or sexuality.  We tell men not to look at women as sexual objects, and leave it at that, as though it were a given that we don't need to tell women not to want to be looked at as sexual objects - even though there is a lot of evidence that says they many (most?) do.  The former will never succeed without the latter, because the message men get from women in their personal lives will always outweigh the message they get from activists or the human resources department.

So.

Whoever reads this:

speak up! comment.  I want to hear different ideas and viewpoints and opinions and theories and personal experiences and thoughts and feelings.

I know people stumble across this blog somehow or other - I can see the internal statistics.  Some of you even stay on the page long enough to read.

You can even comment anonymously if you want.

Could you have a passionate and fulfilling sex life with a man who, figuratively speaking, wears the skirt in the relationship?

Why or why not?

Is it possible that the current dynamic will ever change, and, if so, how might that happen?

Google Bus

In order to protest income inequality, instead of attacking the corporations who pay minimum wage or outsource their labor, despite huge profits and huge executive compensation, we attack a corporation that actually pays well - and goes beyond good pay to provide (among other things) an alternative to car commuting.

Which means the goal isn't to actually ensure everyone has a living wage and can afford decent housing, its just to drag everyone else down to the lowest common denominator.
Actually, its not even that, since its the buses that have drawn anger, representing reasonably paid people moving into poor neighborhoods. Our solution to inequality and poverty is... segregation!

Really?


When middle class whites moved out of urban areas, it was called "white flight", and activists objected, because it made life harder for poor residents by turning them into ghettos. Now middle class whites are moving back, and even though you can't evict someone just to get higher rent in a rent controlled city, we call it "gentrification" and claim it is making life harder for the poor residents.

Now, I understand it is easier and more gratifying to pick an enemy to hate, and to throw stuff and be destructive than it is to think critically about complex issues - but is it too much to ask to go after WalMart and McDonalds and all the other low wage and outsourcing companies?






When I have pointed all this out to people, they mostly agree that it isn't productive, but say it points to a larger issue regarding gentrification's affect on housing.I 100% agree with the notion that having a place to exist should be a basic human right. I have a major problem with the idea that one person can "own" the land that another person lives on. (More on that in upcoming posts)

However, living in the SF Bay Area is most certainly not a basic human right.
Not all 7 billion humans in the world can live in the Bay Area.

High eviction rates didn't start because of tech companies. They started in 2008 with the foreclosure crises.
High rents didn't start with tech companies. Rent has been higher than average here for at least a good hundred years.
High rents are because everyone wants to live here - we have good weather and good culture - but there is a finite amount of space.

Increasing housing is like increasing traffic lanes to deal with traffic, the more you build, the more people drive. It is like buying a bigger belt to deal with obesity.
You are at best temporarily solving a symptom, while the "solution" itself will ultimately only encourage an increase the size of the original problem.
Along the way you either increase urban density (which has a direct correlation to crime rates) or you increase suburban sprawl (with its environmental consequences) and either way you increase traffic, parking, and pollution.

If a person has trouble affording rent here, there are lots of options:

1) Live with roommates (that's a popular one), or in an RV park (I used to), or do work-trade for rent (that's what I do now), or live in a communal house.

2) Apply for public assistance.

3) Live anywhere in the entire country other than Honolulu HI, New York City NY, or the SF Bay Area CA. Literally anywhere else. That leaves about 20,000 options.

It almost seems that the idea is people should be able to live where ever they want, even in places they can't afford (and we aren't talking about being forced out of an existing home, because we have rent control here) - except the entire objection is middle class people choosing to move somewhere less expensive. In other words, they should not be allowed to live where ever they want. Only poor people should. That seems a very odd and arbitrary way to try to even the score. I can think of a whole lot of much better ways.


Other people have said the issue is private use of public infrastructure.
How about millions of people driving private cars on public roads?
That solves the problem of transportation for yourself, while leaving everyone else behind.

How is it Google's responsibility to provide transportation for all people?

How would it benefit the people of Oakland if all Google employees drove their own personal cars to work instead, increasing the already excessive congestion on our highways?