Mankind

You know how you hear a lot about ‘global warming’, ‘forest clearing’, ‘habitat destruction’, ‘over fishing’ of the oceans and waterways, the list goes on…

Well in among all of this gloom and doom is a bit of good news. According to media reports, women are not participating in these environmental atrocities. Apparently it’s all the fault of ‘mankind’, or that’s what the media imply when they say “mankind have destroyed the…”

That’s right! Since the media are using the gender typical term, ‘mankind’, instead of humanity, it can be argued that women are freed from responsibility for all disasters, environmental catastrophes, forest fires… everything.

Are you thinking “What is this rant?!?”? I shall explain.

In the 1970s there was a world wide movement called Feminism. Feminism comprises a number of social, cultural and political movements, theories and moral philosophies concerned with gender inequalities, and equal rights for women. It is a movement advocating social change to create a political, social and ethical environment where women are not represented or perceived as ‘lacking’ anything for not being male.

(Every time I write “lack” I think of Freud who wrote many great texts yet had the curious belief that because a woman has a vagina and not a penis she must have some kind of ‘lack’. Freud would have been better served to apply rigorous science, as opposed to spatial propaganda to his studies. An inward space, as in the case of the vagina, is no different to the cylindrical interior of the outward space, as in the case of the penis.

Leaving the ghost of long-dead psycho-analyst to ponder his own ‘lack’…)

There were many different ways in which societies attempted to achieve the social changes associated with feminism. One of them was the use of non-gender specific language. This means that all words that had “man” or “men” as part of the word should have been replaced by more inclusive words like ‘people’ and ‘officer’.

As this quote demonstrates the use of gendered-language, such has mankind, excludes women from being represented in the communication. Gender-neutral Language Matters
In 1972... some three hundred college students were asked to select from magazines and newspapers a variety of pictures that would appropriately illustrate the different chapters of a sociology textbook being prepared for publication. Half the students were assigned chapter headings like "Social Man'', "Industrial Man'', and "Political Man''. The other half was given different but corresponding headings like "Society'', "Industrial Life'', and "Political Behaviour''. Analysis of the pictures selected revealed that in the minds of students of both sexes’ use of the word man evoked, to a statistically significant degree, images of males only --- filtering out recognition of women's participation in these major areas of life --- whereas the corresponding headings without man evoked images of both males and females.... The authors concluded, "This is rather convincing evidence that when you use the word man generically, people do tend to think male, and tend not to think female" ([Miller et al. 1980, pages 19-20], quoted by Spertus) (http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/style/gender.html).

If one applies the points made in this quote, it becomes obvious that whenever ‘mankind’ is used by news media – and it’s a LOT – women are not included and, therefore, not involved… and therefore not responsible either.

I want to play too

Ah, she sighs and thinks ‘in my next life, I want to be one of them’.

A what? What is she thinking? Give up hard fought-for and hard-won power, to have it bestowed by the power of gender?

Yes!

Trade what psychoanalysts have called a ‘veiled sex’ for a dangly bit and two gelatinous round things in a sack of skin.

Why?

They have more time to play. The world just ‘goes on’ for men. Women organise the social events of their joint life – if they have a partner. If they don’t have a partner, there is usually a sister/cousin/mother/aunt who keeps them connected to the family unit and keeps things happening.

At work, men sprout ideas like mushrooms and there’s usually (a female) office junior who will come along behind them and assist with the detail. Even if men do manual work, they usually come home from work to a community where there are women (or at least a woman) who does most of the cooking, cleaning, washing, ironing, filing/fucking etcetera (Those letters, when used as an acronym, form that evil word “WIFE”) .

This is not why I want to be a man in the next life. The reason is that men have more TIME. This is time that they use to “play”.

What do I mean by “play”? No, get your mind/s out of the gutter.

Time to read “tech-blogs”, build model toys, collect eclectic facts (factoids) in their heads. A man in a relationship, without children, usually spends more time luxuriating around the house – reading books, watching TV, playing computer games – than the female partner. She is usually organising shopping, social activities, doing extra work from home and other things.

Because of this work/leisure – brain down-time – differential, I would give up being a woman and become a man. I want to play too.

As is evident from the above: all the years of feminism and equal opportunity have not changed the ‘division of labour’ or ‘time spent doing domestic duties’.

There’s a long way to go.

the cerebraL VACUUM CLEANER

She didn’t know as she struggled into the, once-to-be-worn, dress that the tugging on her scalp was not caused by the tightly pulled hair and flowers on her head. She thought it was just “pain for beauty” and the anxiety having called people together to witness a ceremony. Subtly pulling, first at her hair, then at her scalp, cutting a small entry point (similar in kind to the small entry point of her vagina. They were all related to the day/event.) through her skull and accessing her neurons was the cerebraL VACUUM CLEANER.

You don’t believe her?

She had already felt the strange, draining sensation as she had been organising the aforementioned “event” but after …..she knew.

There was ‘slack’ to be taken up.

She already paid her power and gas bills. But now she had to organise the investment home loan, the legal aspects of buying a house, mortgage repayments, insurances – including medical insurance because, of course, he wasn’t – groceries, cleaning, ironing, teach him how to cook or give him a reliable recipe book.

She was beginning to feel the strain and the drain on her brain. This having a live-in partner was like having a vacuum cleaner attached to her brain. He started using her brain power and it was like a cerebraL VACUUM CLEANER. When they bought a car, and she bargained the sales person down, it was sport. But when it came to house, loans and life he was sucking her brain dry.

Not her body. Not her sexuality. Not her creativity. It was her he drained.

She tried to instruct him, so he could share the thought-processes needed to progress their life together. But then she became ‘principal doer’ … and instructor, too. So she tried to lead him along. It was hard work and sometimes led to sheer physical exhaustion, where she would just feel that the cerebraL VACUUM CLEANER had sucked her energy levels dry.

It also made her less creative because she had less energy. Doing the “life stuff” as in “Women Do” http://womenandthought.blogspot.com/2006/12/women-do-now-im-trying-really-hard-not.html, took a lot of energy. Yet, she seemed able to produce more energy and started this blog www.womenandthought.blogspot.com

Life continues and she clings to her feminism. Therefore, when he forgot three things in a row, it was like “three-strikes and you’re out”.

They talked it through and he committed to try to live more “in the moment” and remain connected to the real world.


If this sounds like your world, there is a way ahead. All relationships are continuous negotiations and you can say, “no, we need to share the load”.