lunarmoth » Thu Dec 10, 2015 12:58 am wrote:I joined what they told me was the "women's movement" in 1970. Word got around that McGill had hired a high-profile radical American Marxist-feminist prof to teach sociology and the history of women -- totally unheard of and exciting to us in the boondocks. . . .
Failing at that colossal task, after a year we gravitated to "consciousness-raising groups" where we could just sit and talk and share feelings.
This was what struck me for the parallels with the
Erin Pizzey interview (thanks semper!), the triad of feminism, Marxism, and consciousness-raising:
From what I saw when I was in these great big collectives was really Marxism. We were all organized into groups in our own homes and told that we must have consciousness-raising sessions. And I remember the woman who came to our consciousness-raising and when she finished, I said this has nothing to do with women, this is actually Marxist. I said so we’re supposed to go to work full-time and put our children into care provided by the state—like the Communist government—and why are we calling this liberation? And so very quickly I was booted out and went off to open a community center for mothers and children. And then I knew, once the donations came in, once the press picked it up—because the local paper—because my refuge by that point was full—I knew very well the sound of the feminist boots coming down to actually hijack the entire domestic violence industry and turn it into a billion dollar industry. Which they’ve done.
. . . .
Yes, but most of them don’t even know anything about the beginning of this movement. And the thing I have to point out, very simply, the beginnings of the women’s movement happened way back when a lot of women were fighting for the rights of people, of Americans, to end the apartheid that was going on at that time. When they had finished marching for the civil rights movement—There’s a whole storied history that you can read it. They came back and decided that the leftist women wanted their own movement. So instead of it being Capitalism, which everyone was against in the left-wing movements, they simply changed the goal posts and said it was Patriarchy. Everything was because of men, because of the power that men have over women. And then the second part of their argument was that all women are victims of men’s violence because it’s The Patriarchy. And that is such a lot of rubbish. Because, we know, and everybody in the business knows, that both men and women in interpersonal relationships can be violent. And that’s in every single study all across the Western world. . . .
To be clear, much of this (particularly that last point) is as surprising to me as it will be to others, and I know at least one person here has already rejected it as dangerous fantasy (Pizzey addresses that in the interview). The notion that women are equally as violent as men is also there in the Dutton material I quoted, which was also completely new to me. No one has commented (constructively) on it yet besides slomo, who was already familiar with it, and I think the reason is that it's simply unthinkable to most of us, a real thought-stopper. I also think this itself bears thinking about.
And my whole concern is, it is generational violence, and if we don’t save this generation of children we simply have more and more violent people. Because, until we understand we cannot blame men for everything. Women have to look at themselves and be honest about their own violence. And also, to understand what you do to a child’s brain when you actually fight each other, scream, yell and hit children, it causes brain damage. And we know that now from MRI scans. They can see what it does, particularly to the frontal lobe, the right frontal lobe, which is the seat of all our emotions.
. . . of the first hundred women who came into my refuge, 60 percent were as violent as the men they left. Or, they were violent and the men weren’t.
. . . Dean: But, people become either frightened or enraged or laugh when you suggest that there are violent women. Where do you think that comes from?
Erin: Most people who are violent don’t think they’re violent because it’s been their reality from a very early age.
...
I was also at the American Embassy when Betty Friedan recanted what she’d said and she said, “I apologize. We, as women have gone to the male, for the throat over economics and that isn’t what we should have done. We should have built the relationship between men and women.”
Dean: Betty Friedan said that?
Erin: Yes, she did, in the American Embassy about 1980, ’81. And I just remember looking at her and thinking, “Look at the damage you’ve done with what you’ve said over the years!” It’s all very well everybody recanting, but the damage is done.
...
Dean: Susan Brownmiller published a simply horrible screed about rape and how …
Erin: No she has since then written a book … we’re friends, I know her … she’s since then wrote a book and just said, “I was wrong.”
...
Dean: That’s actually good for me to hear because her original writings on rape about it being this … I don’t know … men have been raping women for millions of years and … very upsetting stuff! It’s good to hear that you’re friends and that she’s recanted her views on that. I’d probably like to talk to her some time. But it seems to me as if people either want to see women as exclusively victims or as somehow angelic figures.
Erin: That’s mostly men. Women know. We know each other. And privately, they’ll say what they really believe. But an awful lot of men will not hear a word about violent women. They like women on pedestals. It makes them feel safe.
....
Dean: Harriet Harman [PIE-affiliated], she’s a Member of Parliament there in Britain, yes? From what I’ve read about her, she seems very hateful. She is a feminist, yes?
Erin: Well, I tried to reason with her once. We were both at the conference and I just said to her, “Look, Harriet, you’ve simply got to accept the figures about violent women.” She just swung around on me and her face changed. She said, “The amount of men who are beaten up is miniscule.” And I just looked at her, and I thought, “There’s nothing I can do with you because your mind is closed.”
Dean: Well, the government’s own figures don’t even show that to be true, do they?
Erin: Yes, the British Home crime figures show virtually equal between men and women, domestic violence.
Dean: Wow.
Erin: It doesn’t matter how often you say this, or you point it out. You tell a lie long enough, Goebbels said, you can brainwash the entire community. And that’s what’s happened here.
Dean: Now there are those who be accusing you of being a conspiracy theorist or some sort of crazy person to suggest the domestic violence industry is a billion dollar industry.
Erin: That’s not too difficult. Just look at the figures, if you can get your hands on them....
Of special interest to Canadians, Erin claims that "the most frightening country in the entire world is Canada":
I did a six-week tour, with Senator Anne Cools, all across Canada. And there were some wonderful (there was one in Windsor was wonderful) uh, men’s groups, just struggling to keep going. And as we traveled and talked to men’s groups, we realized how terribly dangerous it is because it’s almost as though the entire government and the judiciary—the same people—had been infiltrated by very radical feminists out to get men. And I talked to people all the way across Canada. You know my mother was Canadian, and I’m half Canadian, and it hurt actually. See I was a child in Toronto, and my feeling as we went through is real fear. I remember I was working with Anne in the Senate and I walked in to the lift, and this man who was in the lift with me was cowering over in the corner. And I came out and I said to Anne, “What on earth was that about?” And she said, “Men are frightened. They just don’t know when they’re going to be told they’re sexually harassing somebody.”
On men's movements that seem to be considered fair game for scorn, and worse, at RI:
Dean: That’s an interesting thing, because I noticed on Facebook, you said something, I don’t have an exact quote, but you were despairing that men’s groups never seem to go anywhere or get any traction. Are you still finding that to be true?
Erin: Yes, I do find that to be true. I really do. And it’s a great sadness because the only way we’re going to heal what’s happened between the anti-male, misandry, and ordinary normal people in loving relationships, is for men to take their lead in what’s happening and make their opinions known and stand up as otherwise there’s this deepening divide in relationships between men and women.
Example of a consequence of the rule against men being allowed into refuges:
Erin: Well there was a case the other day—I was talking to the mother. She was completely bloody after she’d been beaten up. She got to the police station with her children. Her boy was 16 and … when women’s aid came to collect her, they said, “You can’t take your 16-year-old son.” She said, “What can I do then?” “Well you’ll have to make accommodations.” She said, “I left my son in the police station for the Social Services to collect him because I knew I couldn’t cope after finding my own accommodation and I wouldn’t be protected.” I said, “You’re quite right. How would that poor child … he’s only 16 and seeing his mother beaten up, how many times he couldn’t count—left.” That’s as far as I am concerned, cruel.
Dean: It seems to be and also may be teaching him a message to internalize his father’s anger and his father’s violence and think, “Well this is just what men are.” Right?
Erin: Yes.
Dean: On the other hand, I have a good friend, obviously I won’t name him … he was in a relationship where his wife was very violent with him and very violent with his children and he stayed in that relationship even though it was going on for years because he feared to call the police for help. He was certain he would be arrested.
Erin: He’s right.
Dean: He was right, wasn’t he? Almost any man would be.
Erin: Listen to this: Who trains the police? Women’s Aid.
Erin: Yeah. All across for 40 years, they have been doing educational packages which they then sell to, whether it’s to the police or social services, and the message is always there: it’s all men, it’s all men, it’s all men.
Dean: And it’s a lie, isn’t it?
Erin: It’s a massive lie. Yes. And it’s a very, very, very—a lie worth telling because you get billions out of this. This is more about money than it is about caring for anybody.
...
Erin: Well, look at it this way: Baby P was a big, big case here just recently, a child, a beautiful little boy … was hideously battered by a violent mother and her boyfriend. He was taken into hospital and he died. Everybody across the country was weeping over Baby P, because it made the newspapers. And I said then, “Right, when this man grows up, this child, had he been able to grow up, he probably would have been a monster and then you would hate him.”
Sorry: I kept thinking I have got to enough quotes & then I kept finding more stuff that just blew me away.
Dean: Well and one of the patterns I’ve seen and read about is that you’ll get these women in violent relationships and they’ll be the ones who actually start the hitting.
Erin: Yes, they do, because the majority of violent women bank on the fact that most men don’t hit women. And they don’t.
Dean: And most men don’t hit women.
Erin: Yeah then …
Dean: And so then a woman will hit, and hit and hit … and then finally he loses his mind turns and punches her, and now she gets to be a victim right?
Erin: Yeah. Sometimes she doesn’t even have to wait to provoke him to where he loses it. She bangs her head on a wall and calls the police.
Dean: Now that’s going to make some people angry. You just suggested women will intentionally injure themselves.
Erin: And some men. I mean, it’s not just women or just men; it’s what you learned in childhood. A lot of these women I deal with have severe personality disorders. As do the men. And whoever gets involved with them, even by accident mostly, is going to get … it’s a train crash. Because it takes time for the loving partner to realize what they’ve taken on. And an interesting thing about men, when they see what they think is a very, very—what would the word be? A very fragile woman. And this is a classic. A narcissistic exhibitionist—there’s the woman, the whole crowd at the party are looking at her. She’s usually very well turned out because she’s narcissistic. She looks good and she’s incredibly warm. It isn’t until he gets deeper into the relationship that he realizes that there’s nothing inside that woman. What he saw was… the harmed child in the woman and he wants to make it better. He wants to defend her and take care of her, and then suddenly he realizes that the mask of sanity … he sees through it and it’s too late.
Dean: Because everybody else sees her as …
Erin: Wonderful! Life of the party! And he’s drawn in by that! Men love to have the woman on their arm that everybody else would love to own.
Dean: Vivacious, pretty, etc. …
Erin: Like my mother, narcissistic exhibitionist, and they’re very, very dangerous and there’s no treatment.
I think in about 20 years perhaps—I don’t know if I’ll still be alive—that we will look at these last 40, 50 years as the dark ages for human relationships.
...
Dean: You use the phrase “equity feminism.” Are you using that to describe women who think of themselves as feminists, but really only want fairness and equality?
Erin: Yes, absolutely.
Dean: Perhaps even the word “feminism” isn’t right at this point for them. They’re really more humanists and don’t realize it?
Erin: Yeah. I think that’s right. But then you see we’ve had nearly 50 years now of brainwashing, and this lie has been standing out there.
....
Dean: But, it’s almost like this radical feminism is underground, people don’t know that it’s there. And you try to tell them and [they say you think] it’s a conspiracy. But it’s not a conspiracy, is it? It’s just reality of what’s in the university and a lot of these government departments, right?
Erin: That’s where it came from. That’s where it all started. And it’s interesting though because many of those Women’s Studies are being shut down.
. . .
Dean: I seem to recall you mentioning something about how perhaps 40, 50 years ago in the 70s there were violent women protesting you and the police told you they were afraid of them?
Erin: That’s absolutely right. I was at a luncheon for Women of the Year at the Savoy, and there was all this shouting. I had to get through the pickets. And the funniest one was “Pizzey is the pits!” But they also had the ones, “All men are rapists” “All men are bastards” and I went down to the police and said, “Look, if this was men, you’d arrest them all.” And there’s a great big copper and I said, “Why aren’t you arresting them?” He said, “Well it’s women,” and there’s a terrified look on his face. And I had to have a police escort all around England.
Dean: And you had to have a police escort because why?
Erin: Death threats. Listen, police don’t give you an escort, because it costs a lot of money, unless they’re worried about it.
...
Dean: And they hate you for saying that women can be violent or that domestic violence is often or usually mutual?
Erin: Yeah. And also that I say that it’s a fact that it’s a multimillion-, billion-dollar industry. That’s one that absolutely outrages them, because they don’t want anyone to know how much money they’re getting.
Dean: It’s funny, and I happen to know that even in the States there is no accounting for where that money goes. I guess it’s marked as going to women’s shelters and that’s it—it’s like a black box.
...
Dean: I think men are, contrary to the stereotype, actually, generally fairly gentle creatures.
Erin: I think that’s true as well, and much, much simpler than women. It’s much easier to talk to men, because men … men explode with rage, right? I can deal with that. Well some men. It’s women implode. And women will actually, ’tis true, they will sit quietly and they will plot for what they want. And that’s very female because you implode with rage. Different chemicals.
...
Dean: So … interesting, interesting. So we’ve evolved to be different, and perhaps we’ve evolved to want to protect women.
Erin: Of course, that’s what you’ve done since the beginning of time. The woman has actually evolved to nurture the children and to nurture a family setup. That’s why she collects the food, on the ground food, but not plowing … men go out, from early days, and bring home the bacon, whether it’s a piece of bear or whatever. What isn’t healthy though, is, it takes … you know in an ideal world the mothering and the fathering under one roof with the children is the best way a child can grow up—being nurtured by each parent. Yes, other people can nurture a child but that biological bond between the mother and the father is the best that you can offer your child.
Dean: I think the nurturing impulse in men is underrated. I think men have a very strong nurturing impulse too.
Erin: They do.
It is a lot easier to fool people than show them how they have been fooled.
