Monthly Archives: October 2018

My Bowels! My Bowels! I Cannot Hold My Peace

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(Jeremiah 4.19)

My parents brought me to this country when I was just four years old. That was back in 1950; I can still remember the taxi that took us from the airport to our new home, the laid table, and the first Hebrew word (mayim, water) I learnt. Sabbaticals etc. apart, since then Israel is where I have spent my entire life. Not because I had no choice. I also have a Dutch passport and was sufficiently well-known, professionally, to find work in many places around the world. But because I wanted to. Some time ago I asked my father, a Holocaust survivor who since then has passed way at the age of 99, why he had taken his young family from Europe to the Middle East. “So as not to feel Jewish,” he shot back at me.

Looking back, I cannot remember even one day when Israel was not “under threat.” The Arab threat (this was long before anyone had heard of Palestinians). The Egyptian threat (in the early 1950s it was called “the second round;” we children even used to play a board game by that name). The Syrian threat. The Jordanian threat. The Palestinian threat. The Soviet threat. The Iraqi threat. The PLO threat. The Hezbollah threat. The Hamas Threat. The Iranian threat. The political threat. The economic threat. The military threat. The guerilla threat. The terrorist threat. More than enough threats to make anyone’s head spin! Some of the threats were very serious, some less so, a few almost entirely imaginary.

Again looking back I think that, on the whole, Israel has coped admirably. The obstacles notwithstanding, this sliver of a country has seen its population going up more than a tenfold. Its economy is flourishing—just look at what happened to the shekel, once nicknamed the drekel (little piece of dirt), over the last ten years or so. Year by year, the number of foreign visitors is breaking all records. The country which during its first decades was desperately begging for capital is now exporting it to many places around the world. Israeli science and technology are among the most advanced anywhere. Israel is the only country that has more trees than it did a hundred years ago. Relative to the size of the population, more new books are published in Israel each year than anywhere else. And the Israeli military is among the most powerful of all. For which thank God, or else the country would undoubtedly look like Syria does.
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In many ways, a good place to live and raise one’s children as I have done and as I hope my children will do. Above all, a rambunctious place where everyone has long been free to come out with what he (or, for God’s sake, she) thinks—five Jews, ten opinions, as the saying goes. If Israeli Arabs choose to join the cacophony, then in this author’s opinion at any rate so much the better. But things are changing. A year ago—how fast time seems to flow—I wrote of Dareen Tatour. She is the Israeli Arab woman who was jailed for writing a poem in which she called on the Palestinians to resist the Israeli occupation (see my post, “The Fourth Reich is Rising,” 19.10.2017). Today there is talk of trying people for believing and saying that the only way to save Israel from itself is by applying pressure from outside; pressure to find some way to end the occupation, of course. Too, the relevant cabinet committee has approved a bill that will deny government funding from any “cultural product” that “undermines” Israel’s identify as a “Jewish and democratic state” and “desecrates” the state’s symbols.

Both bills smell to high heaven. So far neither has become law. Should either or both of them pass, however, they may very well prove to be a first step on a slippery slope that leads—well, we all know where. So let me say, for the benefit of anyone who may or may not be listening: I have never accepted, not will ever accept, a single penny for running this blog. Nor do I know whether my posts and other works count as “cultural products.” Presumably not, because the line I have followed is strictly politically incorrect; but that is the last of my worries.

Following in the tradition of Jeremiah the prophet, though, I shall not give up my freedom to think and say and write and post whatever I want. Not for the Knesset, should it enact the laws in question. Not for the courts, should they try to enforce them. Not even for the bunch of right-wing Jewish Mafiosi in- and out of the Knesset who keep barking at anyone who differs with them.

My bowels! My bowels! I cannot hold my peace.

The Flop

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Is “me too” really a sign that women have finally gathered what it takes to avenge themselves on those bad, bad, bad men who always want one thing only? Or is it just a rather underhand reaction to feminism’s utter failure to change the way the world works? For an answer, consider the following.

1. Physique

Contrary to the hopes of feminists such as Anne Fausto-Sterling (Myths of Gender, 1992) and Collette Dowling (The Frailty Myth, 2000), women have not closed the physical gap between them and men. At best attempts to close it, such as have made by several armed forces around the world, merely provided another proof of what all normal people have always known, namely that doing so is impossible. At worst the outcome was injuries, including such as turned women into cripples or else left them unable to have children. Either way, women continue to depend on men for protection. Had it not been for men who, for reasons of their own, are ready to protect women against other men, the entire feminist movement would have been not merely impossible but inconceivable.

The myth that working women can simply ignore their periods and work as men do is no closer to the truth now than it was when feminists first invented it. Countless women have gone on record saying that they had taken leave from work during the days in question; thanks to feminism, though, many of them were unable to tell their bosses about the real cause of their trouble. Nor have some radical feminist fantasies about virgin births and dispensing with men as sperm-donors been realized.

2. Career

Partly, but not only, as a result of these factors, the division of labor, meaning men’s work versus women’s work, has remained practically as gendered as it was a century ago. For example, even in an “egalitarian” country such as Sweden almost all commercial pilots, divers, miners, and foresters are men. And almost all flight attendants—a term specifically invented to obfuscate the facts—cashiers, secretaries, minders of little children and—are women.

Partly because they tend to do work that is physically light, clean and safe, partly because of the problems associated with motherhood, women still do not get paid as much as men are. By some calculations, assuming present trends continue, the point where that will happen is still decades and perhaps even centuries away. Often the more senior and remunerative the position men and women occupy, the more true this is. Since women tend to spend fewer years in the working force, the same applies to pensions.

Another way of putting this is that, today as ever, the higher one climbs the slippery pole of power and fame the fewer women one meets. Just some six percent of heads of state are female. As Margaret Mead used to say, the world is run by men and strong women (among whom, no doubt, she counted herself). Furthermore, not one female head of state got to where she is by running for office on a feminist platform. Not Angela Merkel. Not Theresa May. Much less the late Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, and Margaret Thatcher, all of whom spent a lifetime to avoid having the epithet “feminist” applied to them. Hillary Clinton, the female candidate for the US presidency perceived as being the most pro-feminist of all, was trounced by a man to who is not only a declared male chauvinist but a sexual harasser and predator as well.

Mission impossible: Finding even one important movie in which a woman over 50 plays the main role. Apparently neither men nor women are interested in watching one such.

The age-old situation whereby the entry of too many women into any occupation, institution, and organization causes the social prestige, and consequently the economic rewards, that go with that occupation, institution and organization to decline still persists. And vice versa, of course.

3. Relationships

The age-old situation whereby most household work is done by women, either such who do it for themselves and their families or such who rely on relatives or hire others in their places, remains unchanged.

Today as ever, the more successful a man the more attractive he becomes to women; however, except for female models, actresses, and the like, the opposite does not apply. Why? Because, as Gloria Steinem once pointed out, indeed, often the more successful a woman the more like a man she becomes.

Hypergamy, the age-old tradition whereby most women hope to gain an advantage by trying to marry men who are older than themselves and belong to a higher class, persists. That is why, contrary to the hopes of Germaine Greer in The Female Eunuch (1970), and long before her Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) women have not stopped desperately trying to make themselves more attractive to men. As by adapting themselves to fashion, wearing makeup, buying and wearing jewelry and accessories, undergoing cosmetic surgery, going on a diet, trying to learn how to have orgasms or pretending to have them, and much more. Women, in other words, often are not only seen as sex objects but see themselves as such. Which in turn is one reason why the fight against pornography, put on by such feminists as the late Andrea Dworkin, has led nowhere.

Women go on imitating men in many things, including dress. However, the opposite rarely occurs. Whereas a great many women wear pants, practically nowhere do men wear skirts (when they do, as in Scotland, they are called kilts). Women take on (filch?) men’s names until they, the names, become first gender-neutral and then female only; but the opposite does not apply. These processes prove that penis envy, meaning the desire of women to be and do anything men are and do, is at least as strong among present-day women, feminists specifically included, as it was when one of Freud’s female students, Henriette Lampl de Groot, came up with the idea.

For good or ill, the famous “double standard” still persists. Accused of promiscuity, Catherine the Great of Russia once said that she had fewer lovers in a lifetime than man of her male colleagues did in a year. To this day, a man who has many female sexual partners is often admired and envied; a woman who does the same is put down as a slut—not just by men but by many women too.

Feminism and Its Discontents*

Feminism remains overwhelmingly a middle class ideology. After more than five decades, it still has not been able to make considerable inroads among upper- and lower class women. The former do not need it and are reluctant to share their privileges with their less fortunate “sisters.” The latter don’t have the time for it.

Since 1975 or so the gap in life expectancy between men and women, which had been growing for decades, has been closing again. This in spite of the fact that, in practically all countries, perinatal death has continued to decline. The reason? Because so many women, misled by feminists, have begun to work outside the home, thus subjecting themselves to the same stresses as those affecting men.

Survey after survey in various countries has found that women are no happier today than they were forty years ago; also, that relative to men their happiness has been on the decline.

Women have not ceased complaining; isn’t the whole of feminism one long complaint? Freud’s question, “was will das Weib,” what does the woman want, remains as relevant as it was when he asked it almost ninety years ago.

For many people, including some women, feminism has become a swearword.

Conclusion

Feminism has failed. So much so, indeed, that very few people can even remember that, back in the 1970s, there were such things as environmental feminism, left-wing socialist feminism, utopian feminism (which advocated female-only communities) and so many other kinds as to boggle the mind.

To repeat my question, could it be that “me too,” as one of the few survivors, far from being a sign that things are getting better, is a desperate rearguard reaction to the fact that feminism has been a flop?

  • Compliments to Marie Jo Buhle.

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Alienation

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Alienation is in the news. Back in February 2017 no less a guru than Mark Zuckerberg started railing against it, arguing that “there has been a striking decline in the important social infrastructure of local communities over the past few decades. Since the 1970s, membership in some local groups has declined by as much as one-quarter, cutting across all segments of the population.” The decline, he went on, “is related to the lack of community and connection to something greater than ourselves.” Even husbands and wives, parents and children, were paying more attention to what their smartphones said than to each other. How sad.

Like so many other American tycoons, past and present, Mr. Zuckerberg is an idealist at heart. Or at any rate that is how he wants to come through. That is why he promised to use Facebook to fight the trend, even if it meant that doing so required an entirely new business model. Instead of spending as much time as possible on the Net, people would look into each other’s eyes and embrace each other while saying soul full things like “you are great,” “I want to help you,” and “I love you.” How wonderful. As is always the case when an exceptionally rich and exceptionally powerful person says this or that, the pronouncement was picked up by the media which spread it and by academia who provided it with the requisite number of footnotes.

Rich people’s words are golden, especially in the U.S. Far be it from me to doubt anything Mr. Zuckerberg has said. Instead, all I can do or want to do is point to a few elementary facts.

  • Google Ngram tells me that, between 1940 and 1973, the relative frequency with which the term alienation was used “in millions of books” grew sixfold. Since then, instead of increasing as per the Manifesto and as the ubiquity of electronic communications suggests should have happened, it has actually declined.
  • The Beatles’ “All the Lonely People” and “He’s a Real Nowhere Man” came out in the 1960s, long before anyone had heard of either Zuckerberg (who was born in 1984!) or Facebook.
  • The Lonely Crowd came out in 1951. In it sociologist David Riesman and his fellow authors described the collapse of community and the rise a type, which according to them was becoming more and more common, whom they described as “other directed.” People whose main requirement in life was not the love of those they knew well but the esteem in which they were held by strangers; today, no doubt, they would measure that esteem by the number of hits they got on Google. A society dominated by such types was said to face profound deficiencies in leadership, individual self-knowledge, and human potential. 
  • As they say: “small place, big hell.” Living with a small number of people one knows very well is not necessarily better than being anonymous in a large city. Back in 1943 the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre wrote a famous play with the title, L’enfer c’est l’autre (hell is the other). In it two women and one men, suffering from no particular discomfort but locked up in a single room, made each other’s lives as hellish as anything can be and kept at it as long as the performance lasted.
  • Long before caricatures started showing married couples lying in bed and communicating by email or SMS, they used to show couples sitting across from each other at breakfast with the husband’s face buried in his newspaper.
  • Charlie Chaplin’s film, Modern Times was made in 1936. It focused on a factory worker who, made to perform like a machine, was alienated to the point where he himself turned into a machine. Except in that it made people roar with laugher, there was little behind the film that was original. Before Chaplin there were Henry Ford and his assembly lines; and before Ford there were Frederick Taylor and scientific management.
  • When Karl Marx discussed alienation in The German Ideology (1844) he was not referring to Mr. Zuckerberg either. What he meant was the kind that resulted from the division of labor. Factories, Marx argued, created a situation where workers, instead of engaging in agriculture in the morning, fishing in the afternoon, and writing critical essays in the evening, only used a small part of their faculties all day long. Doing so they became alienated form their own nature; to put them together again, an entirely different kind of society using entirely different methods of production was required
  • Finally, my dictionary tells me that, in nineteenth-century America, the phrase “alienation of affection” meant “falling in love with someone else” and was sometimes used by lawyers in divorce cases. The evolution of the term can be traced to Middle English and from there to Old French. In Latin, where it originated, it meant a transfer, surrender, or separation. As, for example, in alienatio amicitae (to be separated from one’s friends), alienatio sacrorum (to be separated from the sacred), and alienatio mentis (to go out of one’s mind).

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Do I have to point out, once again, that all this was long before anyone ever heard of the particularly alienating effect of modern means of communication?

Some Solutions

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