Shelley Garland: a case study of post truth media

This past week saw a prank of Sokal Affair proportions, only within the context of our own ailing media. You can read the entire Shelly Garland saga here, and I would be completely over it by now if it weren't for the fact that the Huffington Post tried to wiggle their way out of this one by means of Spanish Inquisition.

Background to the Shelly Garland saga

A blogger passed around some bait in order to expose the hypocrisy of those custodians of ethical journalism who had been warning us about fake news, post truth media, alternative facts and a whole new basket of deplorables. It was a meticulously crafted prank.

To their credit, the Daily Maverick saw the Shelly Garland bait for the tripe that it is, and said take this cup away from me. Which is to say they had an editor who wasn't asleep at the wheel and just performed some rudimentary editing. Also known as doing your job.

The local chapter of the Huffington Post fell for the prank hook, line and sinker. Which shouldn't surprise anyone because it's just an agitprop channel for sanctimonious douche-bags. If it bends over and performs fellatio on my sensibilities, I shall just publish it. Screw ethics, screw fact checking, screw the public and their trust. It sounds good, it paraphrases canon. Publish!

What is the thanks Shelly Garland got for exposing evil hypocrites who prey on public trust?

What was their reaction after having been exposed for enabling the exact same fundamentally unethical journalists that they were claiming to combat?

They tracked down the author at their place of work, marched in there with a paparazzi army, hauled him over a rack, extracted a confession out of him, and returned with all but his scalp and his testicles. The poor bastard had to resign in embarrassment, and all this for having the gall to try out independent thought for size.

Blaming the victim, but when we do it, it's for a good cause

Victim blaming is when one holds the victim of a wrongful act responsible for that wrongful act.

This should sound familiar.

That is per definition what has happened here. The Huffington Post publishes a helpful guide on how to spot fake news, plus their own terms and conditions, but they must have cleaned out their orifices with those.

Those moral principles that we nail to the door of the cathedral are there for the common people, not for the gentry and the clergy at the Huffington Post. The Huffington Post has the divine right of journalist kings and they're here for the head of Shelly Garland, that naughty wife who at first seemed to be producing the heirs they so badly desired, but then revealed it had been stillborn.

I guess nobody should be surprised after exposing hypocrites when they behave in a hypocritical manner. But hey, everybody makes mistakes. Why no second chances?

Why the editor of the Huffington Post should resign

Why no second chances, you may say?

Because, frankly, the editor in charge of the Huffington Post ended up there for manufacturing fake news while simultaneously being the editor of another publication, the Mail & Guardian.

This is already the second chance. This person has brought another publication into disrepute, for doing exactly the same thing, again.

What was their response the first time?

"I have made many mistakes of course, and these have been carefully documented and picked over by social media - but this is the lot of any editor and the unfortunate truth is that women editors will always have it harder" ~ Verashni Pillay

Let's unpack that: She says being a woman means she is incapable of being held to the same standard as anybody else who does editing. So it's not her fault, it's her sex's fault.

She thus admitted that this job is too hard for her and that she is incapable of doing it up to the standard that is required for editors in general. But of course, what she actually meant was, equality is about a doublethink double standard whereby we should have a set of standards for editors who are not women, and another set of standards for editors who are women.

And here I was under the impression that feminism was about equal rights of the sexes. This is what we bash into people's skulls and enforce by means of torture and confession, but when the same standards are expected of us, then being fundamentally evil hypocrites, we respond with fundamentalist hypocrisy.

Even worse, if someone points out this hypocrisy to us, they are the ones in the wrong. When we are called out on our crimes and our harmful actions towards people, those whistle blowers were asking for it by the way they dressed.

Please, if you value your profession at all, spare us the doublethink and do the right thing for once in your life.  If this is not out of incompetence and neglect, then it must be wilful. In neither case, when your miserable and atrocious neglect causes people to lose their income and then you turn around and have the gall to try and make it seem like it's their fault, you should in addition to resigning also consider seeing a professional about that narcissism.

Cell C supports gorgeous women doing things to men at a company

Finally, someone admitted it. What gorgeous women do to men at a company. Nobody hires women to do actual work. It's true. We just put up with your lovely kind in the workplace, despite the adverse effects you have on us when we perform actual work like scheduling golf club and strip club meetings.

We put up with you, the fairer sex, when you're clever - but not too clever, and gorgeous - but not too hideous. Just like we put up with those delicate purely ornamental pot plants and the often disputed ambience of the barely functioning air conditioner. Just another one of those necessary evils of the workplace, you see.

But hey, one day when one of my chest-beating ilk decides to retire, I hope to see one of you mammary-bearing, cherry picking members of society replace one of us old boys. That's just the kind of equal opportunity go-getting that I would like to inspire around here, at our great sacrifice. I mean we're not used to women who may be smarter than us and certainly not ones who are expected to get over the ridiculously low bar we've established for ourselves. If that's not motivation for you girls, then I don't know what is. You go, girls! You go!

Godspeed to you, and remember: On this side of the glass ceiling, nobody can hear your screams.

The first African Disney princess is not even Black

If the peanut gallery is to be believed, the first African Disney princess is a white colonial. Why should we make a big fuss over the demographics of Disney princesses in this age of non-racialism and trying really hard not to perpetuate stereotypes? The article is helpful in prescribing our concerns to us:

1. The Disney Princess franchise doesn't have a history that celebrates diversity.
2. Tiana is Disney’s first and only black princess, but she spent most of her movie being green. Also she wasn't African enough.
3. Children films reinforce stereotypes and this can have a measurable, negative effect on children.

 

The Diversity of Disney Princesses

The Disney princesses include a Bavarian, four Frenchies, a Dane, an Arabian, a Native American, a Chinese, an African-American and a Scot. This does not however do for stringent diversity requirements, since there's clearly only one token Scot.

With an overwhelming majority of four out of eleven French princesses, this indisputable evidence indicates a hidden Hollywood agenda of classically conditioning our poor children into being French.

 

Tiana is the only black princess

In another troubling diversity window-dressing attempt, Tiana is black but she's not African. She's only African-American, like nearly 13% of the American population. America being Disney's home country. She should rather have been black and African, which would evidently go a long way towards not portraying African people as stereotypes.

To boot, she was forced into portraying a typical garden variety bi-racial relationship because Disney couldn't stomach the idea of an African-American girl bringing an African-American boyfriend home to meet the folks. Such a revolutionary idea is just much too far ahead of its time to appeal to African-Americans.

Instead, she spends most of the film in your typical garden variety interspecies romance. Duly note that along with Ariel and Belle, Tiana is one of only three Disney princesses who portray an interspecies romance. Even more problematic, along with Pocahontas, Tiana is one of only two princesses who portray an inter-racial romance. Truth be told, this shocking lack of diversity just shakes me to my core.

 

Research shows that media exposure influences the body image of our kids

The first empirical study conducted into this area clearly found how "exposure did not affect body dissatisfaction or engagement in appearance-related play behaviours".

Regardless, it is imperative to note how roughly 6,6% (N=8 out of 121 participants) of the test subjects indicated they would have to change their hair colour or their skin colour in order to be a princess.

Be careful to notice how even though 32,3% of the correspondents agreed that looks don't make one a princess, and 53,3% agreed that their accessories alone make them a princess, that lonely 6,6% exception is the exception that proves the rule.

I'm glad that I found this article, which is bolstered so undeniably by empirical research. Clearly, more should be done occupy that 6,6%'s minds so they can be more like the majority of girls who see things our way.

Sexual Violence against Women in South Africa

Regular readers would know by now that feminism is somewhat of a whipping boy for me. This is part of why my knee-jerk reaction to the sophistry that rape in South Africa is perpetuated by the usual suspects of patriarchy, men's sexist attitudes and the terrible Protestant capitalist upbringing forced upon us - not to mention that age old scapegoat The Media and its photoshopped princesses - is one of disbelief.

How sexist am I? Apparently somewhere between male and female hostile sexists, but less benevolently sexist than most people who participated in the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory questionnaire.

In the nature-versus-nurture debate, I put more stock in sociobiology than in the products of society theory. Putting the knee-jerk behind me, I decided to suspend judgement and look at the data before I chop off my genitals and become a nun (or a none?). As before, regardless of what most people would have you believe about feminists and their hysteria, and regardless of what most of them rationalise lies behind the serious issues, we do have a serious problem on our hands in South Africa. We need to do something about the fear that women in South Africa live with - a realistic fear of violence and particularly rape.

How do we know that our culture produces rapists?

This statement - widely believed by feminists (their labelling, not mine) - assumes several initial points:

1. South African cultures condone or promote rape.
2. Rapists are mostly socially constructed. That is, a rapist is someone whose actions are instigated and controlled to such an extent by his cultural milieu that committing rape is somewhat of an inevitability.
3. The prevalent attitude of South African men is sexist
4. There is a link between this generally sexist attitude of men and our high incidence of rape.

Unlike what one would expect from a cultural milieu that socially constructs beasts of sexual violence, most men in South Africa are not rapists. This presents a problem to the analysis that we're merely suffering from a patriarchy hangover. Paradoxically, this fact does not fill me with joy because it means solving the problem is far more difficult than handing baby boys Barbie dolls and Cosmopolitan magazines to play with in their formative years.

 

If not for sexism, why do South African women live in fear?

I don't believe that sexism is appreciated or condoned by our culture. Of course, there are so many cultures in South Africa that such a statement - and the statement that our culture produces rapists - is essentially meaningless. I only have anecdotal evidence to go by, but believe me telling a girl to knit you a sweater and make you a sandwich will not win you many friends of either gender in my circles.

However, the high incidence of rape in South Africa is somewhat worsened by culture. In particular, there are some superstitious beliefs that hold having sex with a virgin will cure you from AIDS. There are also cases of corrective rape, designed to cure unfortunate lesbians of their preference for women. Most rapists are likely to be male and between the ages of 20 and 40. Furthermore, alcohol and spousal abuse are factors that make your chances of getting raped more.

 

Is rape a gender issue?

Of course such a statement is anathema to me. There is a difference between sex (broadly male, female and other) and gender. Gender is tied with particular social and cultural roles. Suffice to say I am not familiar with a cultural practice in South Africa that condones rape - bar the mentioned voodoo sangoma witchdoctor cures for AIDS and lesbianism. Also bar the lip service that some establishments like the church pay to condemning rape while their servants get caught in the act of child abuse a little too often to lend much weight to their official dogma.

Culturally, the official dogma is still that rape is something that is frowned upon - to say the least. Plus, many men are raped in prison too. However, for the most part, rape victims are female (of any gender) and rape perpetrators are men (who don't deserve their gender bits). I do not believe that we live in a culture whereby men's attitudes are mostly sexist. Of course such attitudes exist, but not disproportionately to the rest of the world. The rest of the world doesn't have a rape problem of our proportions, which again contrasts to the expected situation if rape were merely a result of anachronistic gender attitudes and bias. Furthermore, I couldn't find a study that measured the gender attitudes of South African men. The only stats I could find refer to rape victims and their terrible ordeals.

Whether you put stock in the whole patriarch equals rapist conjecture or not, the harsh reality is getting raped is not a realistic fear most men have to live with - not even in Cape Town's Pink Triangle. Even worse, most women in South Africa are living with a realistic fear that they could be raped. And yes, it does get worse: When women are raped, they are mostly too afraid and ashamed to report the crime to the authorities.

As ridiculous as most humanities subjects are to those of my Vulcan ilk, the concerns raised do not strike me as being ridiculous or based on hysteria. This judging by the testimony of those working in the field of sexual violence, dealing with rape victims on a daily basis, whether you buy into their ideology or not. 

 

What can we do to remedy the situation?

Even if rape in South Africa did result from our cultural milieu, fixing that requires a generation or two and it's impractical to construct a measure of the change or a measure of the results of such change. We would never know if we're socially constructing the right kinds of rape-free genders. We need something that we can do right now to make women feel safer in our society. While most men are not rapists, statistically, most of us should be familiar with a rapist. We cannot afford that rape is something other men do and we can do nothing about. Furthermore, most rape victims know their rapist fairly well. I think a good place to start is with ensuring that women who were raped are not afraid of reporting the crime and have some faith that they can talk to someone who will be able to help.

Another good place to start is to have a Designated Dave kind of character to help prevent rape. Just like Designated Dave takes care of the driving while you take care of the drinking, this character takes care of your drink when you go to the bathroom and generally ensures that whatever you get up to by means of sharing DNA samples is consensual.

What do you think?

Please feel free to leave me a comment so we can find a working solution. As someone who does not associate with feminism or any ideology except Incertitude, I would like to become familiar with working solutions. For the time being, the only such solution I have found is chemical castration.

Sources

I have linked to sources throughout the text. I did my best to sidestep the ideological landmines, but the best sources on rape I could find deserve another mention:

• Sexual Violence Research Initiative that focuses on the bigger picture of gathering data and the smaller picture of providing assistance to sexual violence victims.

• Understanding Prejudice, a site dedicated to the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory. This is a questionnaire (survey to you Merkins) designed to determine how much you hate sex. I mean, gender.
• Violence against women, a World Health Organisation study of 2011. Yes, not something from the Middle Ages I'm afraid.

Why we still need chauvinism

This is part three of "A field guide to Chauvinism". You may find the other parts here:

1. A field guide to chauvinism, part 1


2. The conquering archetype and the nurturing archetype, part 2.


3. Why we still need chauvinism, part 3.


4. The singularity age, part 4.

Why we still need chauvinism

1. In times when our survival as a species is threatened, the conquering archetype deals effectively with the conditions determined by natural selection (survival of the fittest). In times when our survival is not threatened, the nurturing archetype introduces genetic drift.


2. Chauvinism preserves strains of both conquering and nurturing archetypes in any society in case we may need them to advance to the next wave of civilisation at some point.


3. We are currently in Toffler's third wave, the information age. Since each age followed more quickly upon its predecessor, the fourth wave is bound to follow sooner upon the third wave than the third wave followed upon the second wave.


4. When any given archetype becomes so overwhelmingly dominant that it causes a group to become ineffective, it is time to start talking about the next revolution to favour optimal wisdom of crowds.

A sabre tooth tiger. Grrr, baby!

Natural selection and genetic drift

Natural selection is the process whereby desirable traits become more widespread in a population and undesirable traits become less common. It's the process that caused the slow runners to be eaten by sabre tooth tigers in the hunter-gatherer era, while fast runners were not. This meant that by the time of the agrarian age, everyone could more or less negotiate their way around sabre tooth tigers thanks to latent running talents.

It is the same process that causes smarter people to make more money than dumber people during the information age despite all the socially conditioned equality and virtually equal access to information. This drives the specialisation of a population, resulting in populations of mostly fast runners or quick thinkers, provided that the slow runners and the slow thinkers are prohibited from splashing in the same gene pool.

Eugenics was an ill-fated attempt at formalising what mother nature already inevitably does when our survival is threatened. Natural selection takes care of the slow runners and the slow thinkers, thus ensuring that subsequent generations are faster runners and quicker thinkers.

Genetic drift is the process whereby traits are merely randomly distributed without any apparent favour. In times when our survival is not threatened, it is not that easy to distinguish between desirable and undesirable traits. This is why eugenics failed miserably the first time around. Think of quick runners. Is it currently desirable to be a quick runner? That's arguable to both sides, with no clear conclusion.

Genetic drift is currently the overwhelming evolutionary process in the majority of the human species. We're not making progress here, we are mostly treading water for as long as our environment allows everyone an opportunity to run, regardless of talent or skill.

When our survival is not threatened, the nurturing archetype tries to preserve as many possible traits as possible, which is sensible. I mean you never know when those pesky scientist might find the DNA of sabre tooth tigers in amber and we need to start running again.

Chauvinism preserves the less dominant traits for when we may need them

During the agrarian age, it was technically no longer required to be a fast runner. You could effectively work a field of crops with slow moving child slaves, as the Children of the Corn demonstrates. Yet we are now running faster than ever before. If it weren't for chauvinism which dictated the preservation of the allele that causes fast runners without any clear purpose, we would have channel surfing as an Olympic event. Homer Simpson would be the reining champion, while also taking home a gold medal in beer guzzling.

Similarly, there are still male chauvinists and female chauvinists, even though their time has come. Yet male chauvinists tend to be far more successful at sleeping with the enemy than their female counterparts, thus ensuring that a male chauvinist streak will be preserved, for no apparent reason. This while female chauvinism is systematically being ridiculed and rooted out, also for no apparent reason other than the relatively established socially conditioned notions of equality and the population shrinkage of the more advanced nations.

This begs the question why male chauvinism tends to be biologically favoured, despite the noble efforts of the female chauvinists to eradicate it once and for all. Perhaps looking at the succession of the waves of civilisation and the overwhelming archetype in each wave would answer this question.

The pattern of revolution

Each wave of civilisation requires the dominance of a certain archetype, namely either conquering or nurturing. This dominion is established each time by a revolution which goes against the grain of the dominant archetype of its age.

• Hunter-gatherer societies required dominion of the conquering archetype. Fast running, accurate spear lugging and as little knuckle dragging as possible. You go, girls!


• The agrarian age required dominion of the nurturing archetype, which was achieved by the agrarian revolution. Women stopped growing beards because it freaked out the kids. Kids were taught how to pick berries and how to grow them instead of just chasing after more furry vermin.


• The conquering archetype was required for the industrial age, and it came into power thanks to the industrial revolution. Facial hair continues to recede, with mutton chops and handlebar moustaches being the order of the day. Bearded women continue to be victimised and usually end up as freak show attractions, except in Greece and Portugal.


• The information age is a consequence of the information revolution, which was brought about by a nurturing archetype. Social conditioning dictates that even body hair is now taboo. It becomes exceedingly difficult to distinguish between men and women, with biology taking a back seat to the chosen affirmations of the individual.
  
  You can even get chopped off and sewn across if you are a guy. If you are a girl, you can get an adadictomy. In extreme cases, the state even pays for your operation but it refuses to foot the bill of the years of therapy your disillusioned parents would require, because they are merely being overly conservative.


• It appears that the fourth wave (which I would call the singularity society) would result from the dominance of the conquering archetype achieving dominion once more. This despite the socialist utopia offered by the authors of The Fourth Wave: Business in the 21st Century. If you really need another lesson in environmentally responsible economics, try Buddhist economics. It acknowledges the human component without the Marxist drivel.

The pattern of the revolutions which lead us through the ages of development of society. As you can see, it's a highly scientific graph.

The times they are a-changin'

How does mother nature determine when it is time to switch archetypes? It would appear that the situation presents itself when a group is no longer capitalising on the wisdom of crowds (which I described in my review of Curse of the Devil). In other words, when a group starts exhibiting the following behaviour traits:

• The diversity of opinion in a group is no longer encouraged. Individuals are no longer allowed to differ from the group. You may no longer write 'he' when you mean a person without a lengthy explanation that you aren't a sexist at the beginning of your book, despite the agony this causes to the rainforests thanks to the trees required for the extra printing.


• Independence is discouraged. The institute of the state is no longer even questioned. Death and taxes are deemed as unavoidable realities we have to face, come hell or high water or corrupt politicians. We are not conditioned how to think, we are conditioned what to think. You try to explain the benefits of eugenics to random people you meet on the street. If you survive, you are clearly a fast runner.


• Centralisation which does not allow for the specialisation of knowledge. This was a particular weakness of the church during the dark ages, which meant the slow thinkers were kept slow since they were never challenged, the fast thinkers were silenced since they were antagonising sanctified opinions and homosexuals are to this day barred from church despite all the spin to the contrary. This is not a mantelpiece of an era gone by. There are still superstitious cretins who try to make evolution out to be some theory on par with more sensible biblical explanations of biological diversity.


• No clear aggregation of knowledge. Information needs to be useful, and we need a standard to judge its utility. To me, this parallels Ludwig von Mises' criticism of socialism, which you can read about in my review of Nile's Black Seeds of Vengeance.
  
  Lacking a free market, a socialist system has no clear method of measuring the needs of a society or measuring the performance of its services. Catering for a broadly defined average results in a general collapse of standards instead of an overall upheaval.
  
  I feel that a free market and the associated meritocracy it implies are sufficient standards to aggregate virtually every aspect of society. More importantly, such a meritocracy would dictate the dominance of the appropriate archetype for each wave of civilisation without the senseless bloodshed.

The woman's movement did not put an end to chauvinism

And if it did, our species would end as soon as we reached the next revolution that requires a dominant conquering archetype.

Paris Hilton arguably deserves credit for her marketing abilities, but ultimately she's famous for being famous. More precisely, she's famous because her tits and ass appeal to male chauvinist notions of female qualities waiting to be conquered.


Paris Hilton naked. Oh, my bad. Paris Hilton with clothes on for a change.

The disdain, envy and jealousy she inspires in womanists, radical feminists and less noticeable fellow women are almost as vitriolic as the sweating and drooling she inspires in chauvinists of the male variety. These male chauvinists are refugees from the days when a night out with the boys consisted of raping and pillaging the nearest neighbouring village.

It is thus clear that the film 300 is not only about an ethnically pure group resisting integration into an ethnically diverse group, much like ethnically pure China is resisting attempts from the ethnically diverse West to globalise everywhere with the smell of oil, but also about the preservation of the conquering archetype by means of chauvinism.

Nobody could deny that the dominance of male chauvinism was required for the people of Sparta to resist the Persian invasion by Xerxes. By the same token, nobody could deny that if they employed their nurturing instincts, there would have been far less immediate bloodshed. However, if they and everyone who ever reached a challenge to their instincts merely gave way to the overwhelmingly popular opinion, we'd all be living in one of Stalinist Russia, Hitler's Nazi Germany, Eisenhower's America or Mao Zedong's communist China by now. While the immediate bloodshed would have been less, the total bloodshed would have been far greater.

What does the fourth wave entail?

In conclusion, it seems that our current society is treading water in the third wave. Granted, the nurturing archetype was necessary for the third wave and the woman's movement did a great job at nurturing it, but it is time to start thinking about what the fourth wave would entail. Judging by the biological shenanigans of the male chauvinists and the pattern of domineering archetypes we've had so far, we could assume that the conquering archetype would be effective in bringing about the next revolution.

In the next chauvinist post, I will draw inspiration from Timothy Leary's 8 circuit model of consciousness, thoughts on technological singularity and a deck of Tarot cards to predict the fourth wave. Hopefully without having to clone sabre tooth tigers.

The conquering archetype and the nurturing archetype

This is part two of "A field guide to Chauvinism". You may find the other parts here:

1. A field guide to chauvinism, part 1


2. The conquering archetype and the nurturing archetype, part 2.


3. Why we still need chauvinism, part 3.


4. The singularity age, part 4.

A field guide to chauvinism, part 2

When times are tough, the conquering alpha male archetype rules. When times are comfy, the nurturing alpha female archetype rules. You need the alpha male to scare away lions and tigers and bears. You need the alpha female to ensure we don't use our nucelur bams on each other when the lions and tigers and bears are no longer a threat. Perhaps male and female are unfortunate terms in this regard. Let's call the alpha male the conquering archetype and the alpha female the nurturing archetype, since a male may very well fall victim to retail therapy maggoty faggotry and a female may well fall victim to the conquering ways of dungarees and chewing tobacco.

Patriarchy: The extreme of the conquering archetype

When most individuals in a society are conquering types, you get a patriarchy. This has nothing to do with fatherhood, although gender roles tend to enforce the overriding national character of a society. This is also not necessarily oppressive, because in some societies it is crucial for slow runners to be fed to the wolves, no questions asked. Naturally, you can get an oppressive patriarchy, which usually results in a revolution that causes the overwhelming character of a society to evolve into a more nurturing matriarchy again.




Singapore. Civilisation, something I have never seen.

An example of such a society where the conquering archetype needs to rule is Singapore, which is a meritocracy. Fastest runners get the rewards, slowest runners are figuratively fed to the wolves in their thriving free market capitalist society. It works, because their capitalism is in a position where it exploits their natural and human resources in an effective way with no clear sign of running out of resources any time soon.

Matriarchy: The extreme of the nurturing archetype

When most individuals in a society are nurturing types, you get a matriarchy. Again, this has nothing to do with gender, but gender roles do serve to affirm the overriding characteristics of a society. It is likewise absolutely crucial in some societies to stick with the berries.

An example of such a society is Zimbabwe. They are going to have to get rid of their hunter-gatherer nurturer leader in favour of an agrarian nurturing leader who can restore their agrarian age society and put it on course to develop into an industrial age nation, and thereafter into an information age nation. More on that later.

Conquering and nurturing archetypes are always in equilibrium. If your society is unsure of its place on the conquering/nurturing equilibrium, it tends to get androgynous. Androgynous creatures make their appearance whenever a society is bound to go from one extreme to the next. Think of the monster nurturing Victorian zeitgeist that the androgen Oscar Wilde had to battle in his day right before the Industrial revolution.


Oscar Wilde. Not that Wilde by today's standards. Also not that effeminate by today's standards.

Coincidentally, in emerging economies like India and China, people are starting to eat more meat and less berries, while simultaneously turning from societies ruled by nurturing archetypes into societies ruled by conquering archetypes, but for the time being I'll assume this is a case where correlation does not imply causality.

The waves of civilisation

Alvin Toffler's famous book the Third Wave describes three waves of civilisation:

1. The first wave was agrarian civilisation, which replaced hunter-gatherer society. Hunger-gatherers try to conquer by taking from their environment with little regard for anything except the booty. That's booty as in bounty and not booty as in tits and ass. Hunter-gatherer societies were tough and called for blundering, conquering archetypes. Cave kids who were slow runners were fed to the wolves. Cave women were big, strong, mean and probably grew beards as frequently as men did. However, cave women somehow felt warm and fuzzy over cave kids who could not run fast, and tried to prevent feeding them to the wolves. Conquering cavemen refused, because hunting and gathering required fast runners. Women argued that they could find a way to sustain the lousy hunters without hunting. Cave men said: “Over my dead body!”.
   
   I imagine a particularly conquering type of bearded cave woman took this to heart, got a cave woman style divorce with the aid of a spiked club and fed the entrails of her cave divorcee to the wolves. She then taught the slow running child more gathering than hunting, which meant more staying where the berries were. She also learned that where they crapped out their berries, more berries grew, thus the slow running kids were not reliant on a nomadic hunting and gathering lifestyle. Slowly but surely, this lead to the agrarian revolution, which caused the hunter-gatherer style conquering to fall out of favour.


2. The second wave is industrial civilisation, brought about by the industrial revolution. During the first wave, the nuclear family with the big bad farming dad that could sustain a modern slow running kid tinkering with mechanics in the shed over weekends and the self-sacrificing cooking mother in the kitchen creating the necessary society to give rise to the industrial revolution.
   
   The first wave called for a nurturing archetype, until the industrial revolution. The cut-throat capitalism which resulted due to the industrial revolution called for the conquering archetype again, and developing nations still need to free themselves from the nurturing bondage of the agrarian society by embracing free market capitalism if they are to develop into an industrial society and beyond.
   
   By contrast, conquering in a capitalist sense is not sustainable if it doesn't give heed to the lessons learnt by the nurturing agrarian society. These lessons include not exploiting your environment to the point of barrenness, but harnessing natural processes in order to make you more fit to conquer.
   
   The first wave favours running, the second wave favours learning. In an industrial society, slow learners become employed by the military, the church or the government, which is the equivalent of feeding them to the wolves, only much worse.


3. The third wave is the information age, which is created by the information revolution. The information revolution started with the printing press (although some trace it back to the invention of writing), and it calls for the nurturing archetype again.
   
   Actually there are societies which are already past the information revolution. These societies are in trouble once more thanks to the bondage of the nurturing archetype in the shape of an overly zealous ever watching Big Brother. If the pattern of civilisations so far is anything to go by, these societies are going to have to breed conquering archetypes again if they are to bring about the revolution to ride the fourth wave.
   
   An information society favours innovation. Slow innovators end up spending daddy's industrialist fortune on a cookie cutter politically correct humanities degree, a mass produced Mercedes Slk, vacuous overseas trips which stray far from anywhere culturally significant like the Beyreuth Festspielhaus, donations to Peta and Che Guevara T-shirts to dampen their feelings of guilt for having access to all this wealth without earning it. They feel that buying a Che Guevara T-shirt entitles them to claim solidarity with socialist nurturing nanny states without realising the irony. That is, slow innovators usually end up in management.

Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Designed by Richard Wagner himself. You can get your ambrosia at the door after Der Ring des Nibelungen. That is if you can still walk after that many multiple eargasms.

What do the third waves of civilisation have to do with chauvinism? Plenty.

A field guide to chauvinism

This is part one of "A field guide to Chauvinism". You may find the other parts here:

1. A field guide to chauvinism, part 1


2. The conquering archetype and the nurturing archetype, part 2.


3. Why we still need chauvinism, part 3.


4. The singularity age, part 4.

This is in response to a quirky and yes, feisty new blog on Thoughtleader called On Cue. The entry in question is What to know about women. Check it out!

Defining chauvinism

Contrary to popular belief, being a chauvinist does not make you a guy who treats women as your subjects. Chauvinism means that you are particularly enthusiastic about a cause without valid reason. Therefore, a guy who is misogynistic is a male chauvinist, because he is particularly enthusiastic about keeping girls out of his clubhouse for no clear reason (and most girls are suspicious about the kind of clubbing that goes on in that clubhouse). A girl who is a radical feminist is a female chauvinist, because she is particularly enthusiastic about keeping guys out of her hornet's nest for no good reason (and most guys are thankful).

Feminism originally meant campaigning for the equal rights of both sexes. This is why the smart girls like Wendy McElroy can call themselves feminists, while supporting individual rights and opposing affirmative action, while seeing the value of the freedom in a society that allows pornography, while still getting a guilt-free bee in the bonnet every now and again. They are truly supporting equal individual rights and not blanket female chauvinism.

Milk, sausage, tits and ass

"Why buy the whole cow if you want a little bit of milk? Why buy the whole pig if you want a little bit of sausage?" - Anon

The sausage: Men are shallow thinkers

Men are shallow. Guys are calculating creatures. I'm not saying that this calculating equals smart, I mean trying to divide by zero is still calculating, but it is based on cold if inaccurate logical reasoning. When it comes to relationships, this reasoning takes the shape of: "Tits and ass good.. must have tits and ass!". Hey, I warned you that it doesn't have to be smart.

The milk: Girls are deep feelers

Girls are feeling creatures. This internal dialogue does not resemble cold calculation, because feelings carry more weight. This is why girls can go from calling each other bitches, to crying together calling each other best friends forever, to calling each other bitches again in mass hysteria all in the course of one pyjama party. Yes, Doppelganger is not only rooted in fantasy.

When it comes to relationships, I have no idea what kind of reasoning girls use to get involved with a beer guzzling, wife beating, Volkswagen beetle bench-pressing grease monkey, but somehow that happens. I can only imagine what the internal dialogue of such a girl must be like: "I wonder what he sees in my tits and ass. All girls have them, I don't think they're that great. I hope he's not just after my tits and ass, that would make me feel like a tramp. Then again, maybe my tits and ass are great, I mean the guy at work always stares at them. Perve! But I kinda like it. Oh my god I love those shoes! They would probably never fit me. Maybe they would. I don't know, but they look good on her. OK now I hate those shoes. Oh look, a sale!"

Clearly, to me the female mind is the kind of mysterious abyss that Nietzsche had in mind when he said that when you stare into the abyss, the abyss also stares into you.

Tits and ass with personality go all the way

I've heeded to the warnings of smarter people than myself who stated that I should never try to understand a woman, because I will be wearing a Napoleon outfit and a white jacket before the week is over. What I've managed to observe is that if a guy makes a girl feel good, he can get away with nearly anything. If a girl can somehow short circuit the cold calculation of a guy, she can get away with nearly anything.

Unfortunately for smart ugly girls, guy calculations tend to be short circuited by attractive tits and ass. Unfortunately for us guys, girls tend to take unkindly to the manhandling of their tits and ass unless you make them feel warm and fuzzy inside.

This would explain why a guy starts dealing the psycho-card if a girl sees her unborn children in your eyes after the first date. Guys are programmed to calculate how to get tits and ass. Girls are programmed to get the maximum amount of feel good. A long-lasting relationship will only result of the guy thinks the trade-off between getting tits and ass and enduring a particular set jaws that comes with them are worthwhile, and if the girl gets the right amount of feel good knowing very well that the guy is most likely only interested in tits and ass.

What I'm saying is, a girl with tits and ass with personality goes all the way. A girl with only personality alone gets entry into the clubhouse. You could have more ambition than Napoleon, Nobel prizes enough to use as toilet paper dispensers and enough diplomatic skill to negotiate peace in the Middle East, but without good tits and ass, guys will treat you as if you were one of them. That is, a member of the no girls allowed clubhouse. Hey, I did point out that our calculating is not always that smart.

Similarly, guys can be the nicest creatures in the world, but without a conquering streak that manages to make a girl feel good about proverbially being dragged back to the cave, the nicer you are the more likely you are to end up at the all girl equivalent of the no girls allowed clubhouse: the pyjama party.

This causes the metrosexual syndrome. Metrosexuals act like girls because their cold, calculating sides are hampered by the oestrogen treatments of our food to think the law of attraction has merit by virtue of being shown something to that effect on the Oprah Winfrey show. They are actually consciously trying to get into the pyjama party. While wearing girl pyjamas. That's not really what the no girls allowed clubhouse captain had in mind when he said: "Let's try to get into their pyjamas!"

You might think that this mode of thinking is old fashioned, outdated and no longer valid. Allow me to convince you:



Paris Hilton. Socialite. Parasite. Capable of messing up classic horrors all by herself thanks to starring in their remakes. Do we hate her for it? Aikona wena.

That's Paris Hilton. Why is she famous? Tits and ass. Why is she popular? Tits and ass. Why is she socially acceptable? Tits and ass. If you are reading this and it doesn't make sense to you, you are a woman. If you are reading this and you are a guy, (assuming you carried on reading after the picture of Paris Hilton), be honest: What was your first reaction upon seeing this picture? Did you wonder what her IQ was? I say nay nay.

What do you think? Feel free to send me hate mail or leave a comment.

The chauvinist guide to feminism, part 2

Where feminists are wrong

"As a result of the feminist revolution, 'feminine' becomes an abusive epithet." Wyndham Lewis

This is a sequel to The Chauvinist guide to Feminism, part 1. Let's have a look at a few instances where feminism got it wrong:

• the role of feminism in censorship


• the role of feminism in political correctness


• feminist views on pornography


• biological roles of women


• the cultural roles of women


• feminism in linguistics

Censorshit: Feminism in censorship

"All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality; all this claiming of superiority and imputing of inferiority belong to the private-school stage of human existence where there are sides, and it is necessary for one side to beat another side." Virginia Woolf

The Rolling Stones launched their album Black and Blue with a controversial press campaign. A billboard depicting an S&M fan beaten black and blue read: "I'm Black and Blue from the Rolling Stones — and I love it!". This outraged radical feminists and the billboard ad was removed.


The Rolling Stones billboard advert for their album, Black and Blue. Note the offensive caption has been removed.

Sadomasochism occurs with consent from all parties present. It is not the same thing as abuse. To complain about an advert such as this shows the inability to understand a sadomasochistic lifestyle. I don't purport to be an S&M teddy, but an attack on women's rights it is not. In fact, it is a celebration of freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of expression. Or free dominatrix of expression. If S&M aficionados complained about how they were portrayed in public, there would be cause for concern.

Without belittling the social problem of spouse abuse, would this image still be as offensive if the bound and beaten creature were a male?

The truth is the ad portrayed a woman in a situation where she wanted to be. It did not portray a woman being crushed under the wheels of patriarchy. Sadomasochism is far from the norm and unlikely to catch on. The ad was a witty pun on the phrase 'black and blue', not an attack on women and certainly not an ideological manipulation to keep women in the kitchen or in servitude to men. One needs only to read about the notches on Mick Jagger's bedpost to know he has notches on each side of the batting teams. Hardly a role model for patriarchy.

Without freedom of speech, nobody would be allowed to stand up for feminism either.

Politiclit correctness: The influence of Feminism on political correctness

"I listen to feminists and all these radical gals - most of them are failures. They've blown it. Some of them have been married, but they married some Casper Milquetoast who asked permission to go to the bathroom. These women just need a man in the house. That's all they need. Most of the feminists need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home. And they blew it and they're mad at all men. Feminists hate men. They're sexist. They hate men - that's their problem." Jerry Falwell

Politically correctness. Newspeak, anyone?

Critics of the political correctness movement point out the following:

• proponents of political correctness show the same sensitivity to terms they deem offensive


• certain groups are still being alienated, if under different terms


• more often than not, political propaganda is sought where none exists

Political correctness is a kind of censorship. It is not to our benefit. It is getting caught up indefinitely in definitions.

Affirmative Action

"The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it." Roseanne Barr

To hire someone because of their gender is exactly the same as not hiring someone because of their gender. Similarly, to hire someone because of their skin colour is the same injustice as not hiring someone because of their skin colour.

Hire someone who can do the job, and who will fit in with your company culture. Nobody has the right to a job or to a promotion, you have to earn it. If we are endorsing a system that is based on anything but merit, we are heading for more problems than a demographically unrepresentative workforce.

Affirmative action causes the same injustice it is meant to prevent, namely treating people as types. There are some women who are just as competent as some men in any given profession, but it is not valid to say any given man and any given woman can do the same job equally well.

Pornography

"Women are all female impersonators to some degree." Susan Brownmiller

Susan Brownmiller is one of the founding fathers, er mothers, of Women Against Pornography. She argues that rape is defined by men. All men keep women in a perpetual state of fear of being raped. This is part of the evil patriarchal plan to keep women in a separate and inferior class to men.

This is ludicrous, simply because there are equal amounts of female and male consumers of pornography. If this rape threat was so real, are women watching pornography to learn how to keep men under a constant fear of being raped?

The South African government recently updated its definition of rape. Rape is when something is inserted into genital or anal areas without the consent of their owner. The aim of this update is to make rape genderless.

It is still going to be difficult for a man to prove that he was raped by a woman. When a guy is raped by a woman, it is called seduction. Why? Because women do not really have anything to insert into the genital areas of a man, and a man does not have genital areas which give themselves to insertion lightly. This is the nature of the beast, it is not an ideological plan to keep women chained, but a physical anomaly. Certainly, I would not like anything to be inserted into my genital areas, but it is not a realistic fear I have to live with.

To say I am threatening women with rape because I have a penis is like saying guns are dangerous. Guns are not dangerous by themselves, someone has to load the gun and pull the trigger. Owning a gun is not wrong. Stealing a gun and committing robberies with it are wrongs. Similarly, rape is wrong. Having the tools to commit rape is not. At least not all feminists are raving lunatics. Wendy McElroy stands as a voice of individualist anarchist reason. See the link to her feminist guide to pornography at the bottom of the post.

All the guys reading this: it is OK to have a penis. All the girls reading this: it is OK to have a penis once in a while.

And pornography is OK for adults. And by adults, I mean men, women and hermaphrodites. Just not pornography with kids or animals.

Biological roles

"Women's Liberation is just a lot of foolishness. It's the men who are discriminated against. They can't bear children. And no one is likely to do anything about that." Golda Meir

Well Golda, I thought so too.



Mr(?) Lee Mingwei, a pregnant man. Exactly what is his child going to suckle on? On second thoughts, I do not need to know. To each his own. Keep your kid out of my yard and it won't get shot.

This seriously casts a shadow of doubt upon my notion that boys have a penis, girls have a vagina. I'm going to rock back and forth in the shower while burning all my clothes.

Sex and gender: the cultural roles of women

"Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry." Gloria Steinem

And apparently, some of us are becoming the women we want to marry too. I'm not just talking about Mr(?) Lee Mingwei. Hello, emo.


Is that a boy? Is that a girl? You blew it up! Ah, damn you, myspace! God damn you all to hell!

An emo I found on google. Funny how they all conform to non-conformity by growning one-eyed fringes and dressing like nancy boys. Yes, gender bending is the way to claim your individuality. You go, girl!




See this, feminism? See what you have done?

This seriously casts a shadow of doubt upon my notion that boys have a penis, girls have a vagina. I'm going to rock back and forth in the shower while burning all my clothes. Again.

Linguistics: Feminism in language

"How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes!" Maya Angelou, not exactly stretching the boundaries of her intellectual freedom.
Herstory

Yes, apparently female and male histories are different. Radically different. I guess this is why the Celts have hailed Boudica as a hero. Oops, I mean heroine.

Seriously, if you were strapped to an EEG machine and you showed a twitch when any of the following words are read, chances are you are bigoted and hateful:

• Midwife


• Male Nurse


• Manhole


• Manowar


• Womanowar


• Black coffee


• White Christmas


• Black plague


• White sugar


• Baa, baa, black sheep


• Euro-centric


• He


• Mankind


• Female judge


• Manpower


• Hysterectomy. Well, maybe you have a point.

The problem lies with you. We are entitled to our freedom. We do not become more free by limiting the freedom of others.

Conclusion

"I glanced into alt.feminazis today and found a lively debate about whether the feminist claim that 'all men are potential rapists' leads to the conclusion 'Jesus was a potential rapist.' (It does. See Aristotle's Logic, part one. If all x are y, and j is an x, then j is y.)

I think this issue arouses so much fury because people are not aware that group-hate has never become unfashionable. Only the target groups ever change. Thus, the Ku Klux Klan's dogma 'All black men are potential rapists' is ignorant, awful and politically incorrect, because it targets a group now on the 'unfashionable to hate' list. The feminist 'all men are potential rapists' is enlightened, educated and politically correct because it targets a group now on the 'fashionable to hate' list.

You must always hate the right group to maintain your modernity. To become post-modern, find even more groups to hate.

Only idiots like Jesus (a potential rapist) and Buddha (another of that ilk) ever proposed living without hate of any groups.....Oh, and Korzybski, who described group hatreds as neuro-linguistic hallucinations symptomatic of what he called unsanity. But he was another potential rapist." Robert Anton Wilson

"I think, therefore I'm single." Lizz Winstead

Related links

• 1001 Feminist quotes.


• A feminist view of pornography, by Wendy McElroy. Not too bad. For a girl.


• The Necro Files commentary on "A Gentleman's Pornography", an academic paper with feminist leanings.


• The thoughts of Robert Anton Wilson.


• The Rolling Stones page at Jahsonic, for the black and blue billboard image.


• The Time Magazine article on the Rolling Stones Black and Blue billboard.

The chauvinist guide to feminism, part 1

Introduction

Feminism. To some of us, just like other excuses for ineptitude, not a religion but a way of life. To others, it is one more reason not to speak your mind, not to honour your true feelings and slowly wither under the weight (and they do have the weight advantage) of political correctness and equal opportunity. Similar in frustration to being stuck in a confined space with a religious nut, trying to put the Christ back in Xmas, when there was no Christ in Christmas in the first place. After decades of cooking our own meals, doing our own laundry and in some extreme cases, even watching soapies, it is time for one formerly advantaged chauvinist to step back and determine how relevant feminism is today, with our negative first world population growth and third world population boom. What exactly is negative growth anyway? It either grows, or it shrinks? Make that first world population shrinkage. But first, he has to try and comprehend what this feminism is.

A definition of feminism

Merriam-Webster defines feminism as either a "theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes", or an "organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests". Sounds simple enough, but we shall see that there are about as many feminisms as there are feminists.

For the sake of this argument, all the different branches of feminism are lumped together. Please realise that I am not an expert on feminism. I used a quick glance at the Wikipedia article on feminism with the purpose of providing a brief overview of the history of the movement.

Similar to alleged alien invasions, feminist invasions occur in waves (not to be mistaken for blow waves, as only mentally conditioned females partake in preening).

First Wave feminism

This wave deals mainly with the Suffrage movement. Mary Wollstonecraft gave women the notion that they too can make up their minds about the leaders of their country. Come to think of it, they see their children sent off to war so maybe this notion is not too far fetched. Or maybe some lilly-livered mama's boys just wanted mammy to vote them into parliament? It's Nero all over again. In Britain, the Suffragettes were only concerned with their own voting rights, but in the United States, the girls also clubbed together against slavery once they got their voting rights. You can never please girls.

Because men had monopolised violence since the invention of the club and then hid its mysteries from women, first wave of feminism was characterised by the writing of essays, mass demonstrations and denying nookie to their spouse. Cunning stunts.

Strength
They did not need strength. They had the numbers, they had the manipulative ways.


Dexterity
Reading, writing, bitching, moaning. Not bad for a bunch of girls.


Constitution
Women were still rearing kids and doing the housework. And they did it well.


Intelligence
They got what they wanted, and in all fairness they were right. Although I can't admit that girls are right, that is breaking the guy code.


Wisdom
They didn't turn to violence and they were still sleeping with the enemy.


Charisma
Convinced the men of their time, albeit with a bit of tough love.


Hit points
Radical transformation for all society.

Second Wave feminism

In the public mind, when you say feminist you immediately think of someone burning a bra, thanks to the second wave of feminism. This wave started in the 1960s. The peanut gallery began equating feminism with a matriarchy. This may or may not be accurate, since certain old boys clubs still run corporations and pay women disproportionate salaries for doing the same work as men.

Now the bra is a male invention, they say. Just like the bra limits the movements of a lady, males limit the achievements of women. Second wave feminism argues that your role as a woman is dictated to you by men. This is where the term women's liberation originated. It is abbreviated women's lib, but might as well be women's lip.

If women have such a problem with wearing a bra, they should stop wearing them. In fact, Levis were invented by a man. They should stop wearing jeans too. Just to be safe, all women should go naked and be truly liberated. Wear only what mother nature designed, decorated and designated to you. Women know what is best for women!

For the brainiacs, The Personal is Political, an essay by Carol Hanisch , and The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan sum up the sentiments of this era.

Giving the devil her due, I agree with the notion of equal pay for equal work, regardless of gender or race. However, I still maintain a laissez-fair system is more valuable than one where a government enforces equality on its people. Now if feminism could achieve a laissez-fair system, I'd marry one and make my own fucking sandwiches.

Strength
Organising mass actions, getting unions behind them and brassiere arson.


Dexterity
Well, it boils down to bitching and moaning.


Constitution
Women started neglecting the household at this stage.


Intelligence
Universities were implemented and strategically targeted.


Wisdom
Didn't manage to loosen the stronghold the old male sages have on this one quite yet.


Charisma
All that braless mass actions took its toll.


Hit points
Some feminists have a valid point, some want to see women as sex objects, some would skin testicles with their bare teeth if they didn't belong to men. That's the testicles belonging to men, not the women.

Third Wave feminism

Well, you see now, actually. Third wave feminism started at some vague point in time, trying to achieve well, something non-descript. The methods they used were not quite as barbaric as burning your own clothes. The movement used methods of well, see, there are talks of post-feminism. And when something is post you know it is over. By now, anyone who is still a hardcore feminist is probably just prejudiced and trying to blame external forces for their own shortcomings. Somewhere along the line, they managed to make men turn to bitching and moaning. Guess it comes with the territory of cooking and cleaning.

During this wave, feminism stumbled upon the notion of female writing. This is a trap! Writing is good or bad, just like science is valid or invalid. Just because a woman wrote it, doesn't make it any more significant than when a man wrote it. During this wave of feminism, it went from being considered equals of men, to being considered better than men. Whatever, standing up pissing or lighting your own farts will never be a neat party trick for a girl. Well, maybe at some of my parties. But that's hardly the norm you want to aim for.

Strength
Of a bear, like Womarshall Bravestar!


Dexterity
Some women are dexterous, some are useless idiots. Same as your average man, really.


Constitution
Dude, seriously. Women don't want to cook, most men can't cook for shit, and McDonalds and Steers are not exactly going to give you the body of a goddess.


Intelligence
Some women are smart, some are useless idiots. Same as your average man, really


Wisdom
Come on, haven't you realised it by now? If you have a stronghold over a man's nutritional intake, you have leverage over the poor hungry bastard. No cooking, no cleaning, no wisdom. But have one wisdom point from a man, because we have some to spare.


Charisma
I'm going to give all women a good charisma score, because some women are simply spanktastic.
Even in Levis, with a bra underneath their tops.


Hit points
Nothing special.

Want to read part 2?

Read The chauvinist guide to feminism, part 2 - Where feminists are wrong here.

Commentary on "A Gentleman's Pornography" - real men don't exfoliate

This is an interesting account of pornography in its softest form. You can find the article in its entirety here, at GWS - Feminist Knowledge.

Playboy (it was originally going to be called Stag Night), was similar to other pornography in that it objectified women for the purposes of male masturbation
It is best to prevent getting caught up indefinitely in definitions, but the Merriam-Webster definition of pornography makes it clear that pornography is material intended to cause sexual excitement. In the style of Wikipedia, the assumption that pornography is meant exclusively for a male audience as a jerk-off aid requires at least a ^{[citation needed]}. Pornography in the broad sense enjoys a rough 50/50 at worst and 60/40 demographic division between male and female consumers at best. In many categories, such as adult dating, free sex and "teen sex"(?!?), there are more female consumers than male ones. It is also interesting to note that most consumers of porn are between 35 and 49 years of age, which is outside the target market of GQ. Considering the time this article was published (roughly 2000) as well as the topic, it may be irrelevant to base the argument on 2006 pornography statistics. However, it should be clear that traditional pornography is not intended to objectify women exclusively for male dominion. It simply can not be, with at least a 40% female consumer demographic. Making pornography for the sole purpose of objectifying women would be bad business, and this is the true purpose of any kind of pornography - to make money.

While pornography, as the term is currently understood, has its origin in the invention of the camera - a process marked by industry, innovation and egalitarian ideals (in the Rousseauean sense) - gentleman's pornography is intimately connected to the nineteenth century's creation of a new recondite social space, which Walter Kendrick (1987) calls "The Secret Museum". The former led to mass-production and mass-consumption of the obscene, and the latter to its concealment in a cloak of acceptability. Where conventional pornography "pours out … into the city streets", in the words of Linda Nead (1992:487), gentleman's pornography confines the obscene to the sanctified passages of high culture.
Judging by this 2006 and 2005 Pornography United States Industry Revenue Statistics, pornography as the term is currently understood should rather have its origin in the advent of the Internet. With regards to the topic of the article, it is rather gentleman's pornography in the forms of GQ, FHM and Playboy which pours out into the city streets. Conventional pornography like Hustler still occupies the "recondite" territories: the plastic covers on the top shelf at the book shop; the sleazy sex shops but mostly the hidden domains of the Internet. Granted, gentleman's pornography does a good job at cloaking itself in acceptability, but it is not hidden away in "the secret museum" like conventional pornography.

Subtle references to the genteel customs of old (hunting and hand-tailored suits) are employed to remind the reader that "gentlemen" are their demographic, thus encouraging aspirational branding and shrouding sexualised objectification in the exalted aestheticism associated with elitist class and artistic ideals. Within the confines of the "artistic", the so-called "obscene" and "acceptable" thus become likely bedfellows.
Speaking of "subtle references to the genteel customs of old", consider this objectification of women from those times:

Note the distinct lack of the classical reclining nude pose, or even the seated nude pose. Also note the distinct lack of gaze. Was this image a portrayal of an objectified woman, ready for conquest by the elite conditioned male? Perhaps in light of the conventions of that time, this statue graced the womb of a "secret cave". The purpose of this cave was to condition males to conquer rather the more muscular females capable of giving birth while being threatened by lions, tigers and bears. As the conventions of femininity change, their portrayal in pornography change to reflect these demands. Analogous to modern times, it is not far fetched to speculate that in their day the women in those hunting-gathering times who did not meet the requirements of femininity kicked up a storm and questioned the challenges posed by femininity of their times. One imagines a faction manufacturing slim, reclining statues with direct, fetishist gazes as a reaction to the plump, full-bodied, blind conventional portrayals.

I propose that the parallels between the genteel customs of old and the gentleman's pornography portrayal of hunting objectives are one and the same. One should note that the audience is male and adolescent. It is merely the conventions that change, not the methods of conditioning full-blooded males necessary for survival of the species.

It is thus not the purpose of gentleman's pornography to make pornography socially acceptable. In fact, it is the purpose of gentleman's pornography to distance itself from the obscene pornography in order for it to be poured into the city streets along with glossy female actuality magazines. The mere medium of gentleman's pornography - namely glossy magazine in plastic cover - puts it on the same level as female actuality magazines.

In order to strip the body of its obscene history, these Purist photographers refused the sexual charge of the mythic gaze and fetishised accessories and, instead, abstracted the body. It could be argued that the further one ventures from the obscene history of explicit portrayals of the human body, the more one ventures into fetish territory.
For a fetish to be effective, the viewer needs a real or imagined presence of an object or body part which provides psychological sexual gratification.

My understanding is that the Purist photographers explored the limits of their media with little or no regard to previous artistic conventions. They avoided nude bodies in the same way they avoided the still life or landscapes. Their purpose was not to de-sexualise portrayals of the body, but to let the viewer of their work appreciate the new explorations offered by a new medium at the time.

The model touches herself in a teasing manner, reminiscent of Titian's Venus of Urbino (1538). Her ecstatic pose denotes her willing participation in the viewer's voyeurism. The emphasis on her abstracted torso ostensibly elevates the image to the status of art.
GQ certainly does attempt to imitate accepted standards of Art, but it does not try to be either Art nor pornography. It is, for lack of a better term, softcore pornography - indeed the gentleman's pornography. While anyone would object to carnal deeds being portrayed in magazines in public distribution, nobody can really object to a conventionally beautiful female in an ecstatic pose - even if her hands and feet are not always in full view. One must bear in mind that many photographers are frustrated artists, trained in the fine arts, and they are certainly familiar with more artistic conventions than what their commercially driven jobs call for. Furthermore, by easy definition of a voyeur, the object of desire has to be unaware of being observed in the first place. Accordingly, it is incorrect to claim "willing participation in the viewer's voyeurism", because that would not be voyeurism. It is rather the portrayal of the willing participation of an individual the viewer would never have in similar participation in reality - not in a voyeuristic sense, but in a plain everyday sexual encounter. Just like the desire evoked for the Mercedes on the following or previous page, the male hunter-gatherer is conditioned to aspire to objects which are not within his reach. He thus adapts to conventions which enable him to attain those objects. Does this make the Mercedes less of a work of art? No, it certainly does not. The same applies to the objectified girl. It is correct to presume that the sexuality of the viewer is more important than the sexuality of the object, since this is the purpose of the publication. It is a manual on how to be the man's man, the man who has it all. It shows you the forbidden fruit, and then proposes supposed tried and tested methods of purveying those same forbidden fruit.

Umberto Eco (1986:57) explains the medieval understanding of beauty as ethereal rather than material.13 The most obvious and most pervasive symbolic representation of the kinship between godliness and beauty was thus light.
It should be noted that the medieval understanding of beauty was moralised by the church. It is thus unfair to take the portrayal of beauty in medieval times as the portrayal accepted by the layman at the time. The portrayal of beauty in medieval times is merely the one accepted by the church and not an accurate representation of the understanding of beauty in medieval times.

Another interesting fact about the understanding of beauty in medieval times is that it is purely patriarchal, instilled by the church. Despite the lack of reclining figures, elongated spines and lustful gazes (despite a lack of sexuality all together), the medieval portrayals of beauty were instilled purely by the patriarchy of the church. This brings the argument that pornography is the purposeful exploitation of feminine forms by male viewers in disrepute.This particular view is not an accurate definition of pornography, and relies too heavily on biased views of the feminists in the 1970s.Julian Cope notes that Western society relies on women who are empowered by revealing their breasts^{I know, I know, [citation needed]}. It should be noted that both feminist and accomplice in exploitation (or slut, for lack of better term) are both empowered by setting their bosoms free. The assumption is that neither feminist nor slut are above what mother nature gave them, or above the social conventions. Whether you succeed in meeting the expectations of your genes or your memes, you can question them but you can not transcend them.

The perception that gentleman's pornography, whether the canonised art of the gallery or the commercialised "art" of GQ, is harmless because it is more subtle than conventional pornography, is a flawed one. It is a perception that resulted from the notion that the extent to which sexualised material is harmful, should be measured in terms of how much it "shows", instead of the message it communicates.
Agreed. Sexualised material is not harmful because it is sexaulised. In the same vein, violent material is not harmful because it contains violence. It is the context of violent material which matters. Despite many researcher claims, there is still no conclusive evidence that violent computer games or films cause people to be more violent. There is more correlation between heat waves and reported violent crimes (based on my own research)^{I know, I know, [citation needed]}. There is more direct correlation between difficult upbringing and violent behaviour^{I know, I know, [citation needed]}, but the psychologist can't tell his clients that they are wrong. A psychologist can't tell someone who claims to have been abducted by aliens that it didn't happen, the psychologist treats the symptoms and not the cause. The psychologist treats his abducted as if he were abducted, aliens or no. Similarly, human beings are sexual beings and it is healthy to learn about the conventions of sexual expression. Know the rules of the game, learn to play the game, thereafter criticise the game.

It is sometimes difficult for me to follow the argument of this paper, because it has in my mind an aggressive stance towards the traditional male way of looking at the world. I feel it is written from a feminist viewpoint, and this brings the objectivity of the paper in jeopardy. However, I can not agree more with the conclusion. I am not versed well enough in the jargon of visual communication to follow the arguments, even though I am familiar with the references and their theories at least in outline. In short, I agree with the conclusion but the argument does not have a clear enough trail of breadcrumbs to persuade those like me who are conditioned to be gung ho males lurking in the garage in case the female of the species needs a bulb changed, oil checked or a roll in the hay. Gentleman's pornography is about spreading ideology more than making pornography itself acceptable. It is this that could be problematic, if taken out of context. The same danger in assuming that all men objectify women is the danger of assuming women portrayed in GQ are exploited. These girls exploit the male in their target audience more than what he objectifies the portrayed women. After all, he has to pay for the magazine before he can open the plastic cover to enter the "secret museum" and this in itself is not enough - he has to buy into the whole ideology too. This same ideology gives the male a sense of power when in reality it empowers the female who allows herself to be objectified. Yes, real men do NOT exfoliate but allow themselves to be sucked into a web of intrigue spun by a femme fatale.