So I found the meme above on the Twitter, posted by some FeMRA I’ve never heard of but who for some reason has me blocked.
I’m stumped. A little reverse-image search shows that the pic is a still from a K-Pop video. Which … doesn’t really help me to make sense of this at all.
Any guesses?
@ Lux
I’m just pretentious. 🙂
I don’t know what the position is in Latin America but in the UK it’s almost axiomatic that “the left” (for want of a better term) concentrates more on differences between the different schools of though and ignores what the groups might otherwise have in common.
It’s actually a joke over here as illustrated in this clip:
That was based on the various iterations of the socialist workers’ groups at the time but “Judean People’s Front” gets used a lot in political discussion even today. Our Labour party is going through something at the moment as they seek a new leader.
Errr… ummm… maybe it is aimed at pick-up artists? And is a warning to never try to pick up any feminist even if you think she isn’t really a feminist and therefore is safe to pick up? Because if she turns out to be a feminist after all and you do pick her up, she might do something terrible to you, like make you think.
The above requires the assumption that only women can be feminists. I think that one isn’t hard for most MRAs to manage.
@ Lux
To follow up on that though; I have a thing about animal rights and a lot of friends who are very passionate (they get arrested a lot etc.).
The thing is, I’m a meat eater. Now there are a few vegan animal rights activist who think that completely excludes me from the cause. I might as well be eating babies as far as they’re concerned. However the bulk of activists, including the vegan ones, have the attitude that “well, at least you’re on board with a lot of the issues”. So we work together on those things (unnecessary experiments, SeaWorld, megafauna poaching etc.) and they leave me to my own devices* when they’re campaigning for veganism etc.
[*Well, apart from all the pics of vegan MMA guys and plaintive messages of “Please stop eating piggies” that I get 🙂 ]
Might want to call and let the local media know Roosh is in the area, if nothing else.
Yes, some local media might be interested. Some might not be.
Some media people read this blog, after all. 🙂
@Alan
Actually, left leaning parties in Latin America are usually majority, as most countries had really tiny elites working for foreign interests during long times.
As soon as democracy was strong enough to hold together through clean elections, socialist parties started quickly rising to power, see Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador.
In other countries it wasn’t so quick or so smooth, but left parties are still important and united.
Argentina is a special case, since we have Peronism since the early 40s, and it snatched the popular masses which were only beginning to organize under socialism back then.
Peronism is both left and right leaning, which led to bloody fights among fractions, but pushed the greatest socialist reforms (then pulled them back when the right wing got to power).
So the “traditional” left parties, anarchism and socialism mainly, either were absorbed by Peronism, or were left with a minority of followers and went the same way as the Judean People’s front.
Off-topic: Time Magazine is wanking about Netflix offering parental leave. Money quote:
@ Lix
Peronism was/is quite fascinating. My jurisprudence teacher was from Argentina so we discussed it a lot. It is, as you rightly point out, a very good illustration that the old “left/right” dichotomy often fails as a descriptor.
I’ve always wondered what would have happened had there been no Eva Peron. How big a part did her persona play? Were people thinking “It’s the issues, stupid” and she was just a sideshow, or was she genuinely influential in a purely political sense?
Oops, getting your name wrong even more than usual there, sorry. I’ll have to teach the autocorrect to actually put your whole proper name in at some stage. Obviously, as a bloke and therefore inherently brilliant at STEM things that should be easy for me. I’ll put the fact that it isn’t down to sabotage by feminists or something.
@ Katz
I read the article, but I’m not clear what your position is. Just curious because it’s an interesting piece, and I think worthy of discussion.
jpageusmc: I looked at your blog and it’s a joke, right? Because if it is, it’s a very funny one. Particularly the Kierkegaard reference.
@Aunt Edna re: Roosh – “Battle of Montreal” indeed. He’s being silly. All this overblown “I stand firm, I fight the good fight” rhetoric for an alleged self-help lecture.
Plus, as I understand it, the goal of the protests isn’t to harass him personally or to shut the lecture itself down, so it wouldn’t even need to be in the same place. It’s more to call attention to his bullshit.
@ katz
Yeah, I really need to jump back into that, it was a super false start to be sure.
It’s nice writing on comments pages these days, at least.
@Alan
Oooooh I could talk all day about Eva Peron…!
http://image.blingee.com/images16/content/output/000/000/000/583/443011589_186949.gif
I believe Peron himself was a socialist man, and a strategic genius (or close enough).
I don’t think he would have allowed Eva’s public life if he wasn’t sure she was under (his) control. Remember there was a big age and power gap between them, despite their love being real as well.
However, I think her influence found its limit in the 1952 elections, which was women’s first election ever in Argentina, thanks to Eva an Peron.
She wanted to be Peron’s Vice President, but the military circles to which Peron belonged would not allow it. He chose them over his wife, and forced her to resign her candidacy.
I think she was a great politician, and without her Peronism might not have won so menay people’s hearts.
Even though Eva wasn’t a feminist, and rejected feminism in her time, she pushed for women’s votes and rights, which Peron himself might have left alone except for her.
There’s another thing to consider: Peron’s third -and last- wife María Estela (better known for her artistic name Isabelita.
He entrusted her to prepare his return to Argentina in the 70s, and he did name her Vice President. She became Argentina and Latin America’s first woman President in 1973, after Peron’s death.
She was allied with the right wing of the party, which eventually turned on her on a coup d’etat, which gave way to the worst dictatorship of the century in our country.
Some hints seem to indicate Peron believed Eva’s figure and political career was entirely of his making, and he could therefore do it again with Maria Estela.
It also seems like he didn’t live long enough to see his mistake. Or perhaps he did…?
Meanwhile in Algeria, a man is suing his wife for £13,000 because he saw her for the first time without makeup. His charge against her is “psychological suffering” and he claims she “deceived him” by always wearing makeup before they got married.
http://www.comeonengland.org/2015/08/06/groom-sues-wife-for-fraud-after-seeing-her-without/
When you’re a man in a country that thinks women are chattel, it’s not surprising if you turn into a whiny spoiled brat.
@sunnysombrera
http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/direwolf.gif
How the hell does someone not see someone without makeup until they’re married?
I THINK this is another attempt to accuse feminists of being racist?
@ Lux
Yes, she’s a fascinating enigma; so many questions.
Was she merely a cipher for Juan? Did he just take some girl with no interest in politics and merely use her as a mouthpiece? If so did he see her acting abilities as her main attributes?
Or did she capitalise on the political education Juan gave her and become a true free agent (whether Juan intended this or not)?
She did pretty well on her tour of Europe. Obviously there was a glamour to her, but isn’t charm one of a diplomat’s most useful attributes anyway?
A woman who actively did not identify as a feminist, yet is probably personally responsible for the introduction of women’s suffrage and formed her own political party especially for women.
Juan’s failure to repeat the experiment (if that’s what it was) would seem to suggest that she was her own woman and not merely a puppet. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened had she not died so young. President in her own right?
I can see why you could talk about her all day.
I guess many questions will remain unanswered…
The tour of Europe was like a fire baptism for her in a way. Only after that did her local political career begin.
Within the country, she was like a sort of ambassador for Peron, she often handled the negotiations between workers and businessmen herself.
She was also in charge of the Eva Foundation, which provided for urgent matters of the poorest. Millions of sewing machines (an therefore, work for women) were delivered by the Foundation, and even more toys to children all over the country.
This made her some sort of living hotline to the President, and the result seems to show she did a good job.
But then again, I think we won’t find to people -nah, two peronists– who will agree to where the limit was.
I think I will always place my bets on Eva, but I may have my own bias on that 😉
—
Another dimension to this husband-wife binary is the Nestor-Cristina duet.
Unlike Evita, Cristina always had a career of her own, and she carried on by herself after Nestor’s death. [Insert one minute of silence here]
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1395/5125248514_31c47a9a43.jpg
Since Peronism is a movement, or even a community, more than an ideology, there is a certain feeling that it’s somehow redeeming of Peron that the movement he started was able to produce a more equal marriage-leadership 70 years later.
And of course, both followers and enemies have compared Cristina to Evita and Maria Estela, both to paint her in a good and in a bad light.
Argentine politics are weird.
@Everyone
Sorry for the teal deering on politics, we have preliminary elections this weekend, and this is helping me get through the anxiety of the whole thing (a lot is at stake right now, whatever side one’s in).
Have a meditating kitty to compensate:
Ah, Cristina.
Over here Argentina generally only conjures up two thoughts in the public consciousness.
The unpleasant incident in the South Atlantic and football (Ossie Ardiles = National Treasure; Maradonna = pantomime villain)
I know that’s a subject you find distressing so I won’t dwell on it; suffice it to say Cristina only really features in the media here when she makes a comment about the islands.
Shifting to more pleasant topics, are you familiar with a woman called Sandi Toksvig? She’s another National Treasure here in England (even though she’s from Denmark). She’s a really funny comedian and broadcaster but of more import she’s been heavily involved in setting up a new political party (which is why I think you might find her interesting).
It’s called (a bit unimaginatively I think, but then again it’s not my call) the Women’s Equality Party.
It sort of ties in with the earlier discussion about “radicalism”. The WEP is obviously a feminist party by any reasonable definition, but it seems very ‘harmless’ if that makes sense.
It’s a bit like Sandi herself. She’s a well out lesbian but of the very ‘non threatening’ sort. She doesn’t compromise her identity of her beliefs but for some reason she doesn’t scare ‘middle England’ (that’s a term we use for the small ‘c’ conservative mainstream over here).
I really think her party could do very well if it gets it’s act together. It seems able to present all the ideas of feminism as if they were the most obvious common sense truisms going. Now of course, they are that, but as we’ve chatted about before, for some reason progressive people often have difficulty in selling even the most self evident of messages.
I probably haven’t expressed myself very clearly there. I’m sure you’ll understand it and be able to articulate it much better than me on account of you (a) being a woman and (b) being somewhat brighter than me.
Looking at that meme, I counter with another:
YOLO!
*pulls the trigger over and over again*
As a general thing, most political movements (that have any success) develop a large group of people who are focused on getting their group into the mainstream of society or, to put it another way, changing society enough so their group will be accepted in the mainstream. Such people are willing to accept a great deal of diversity in their group and to compromise a great deal, build consensus, form big tents, etc. In the fight for African-American civil rights, this was the group that Dr. King and his allies led.
There is also a much smaller group of people that have a more purist point of view, who are more interested in what the future SHOULD look like than in what can reasonably be attained at the moment. These are the radicals, who in the civil rights movement included leaders like Stokely Carmichael, Huey Newton, and Malcolm X.
IMO a movement needs both these groups, mainstreamers to pursue and consolidate whatever gains become possible, and radicals to keep looking into the future and keep the movement from losing its focus on the eventual ideal while most of the group are engaged in their day-to-day struggles to enter the mainstream. I think you can see both these groups.in the feminist movement, starting in the early days when the mainmstreamers were led by NOW and people like Betty Friedan while the radicals were led by people like Ti-Grace Atkinson.
It is difficult to avoid having some degree of hostility develop between the visionaries and the pragmatists, but a great deal that was radical feminism at the beginning is mainstream today, and much that is radical today will almost surely be mainstream a few decades from now.
As to the OP, I think that in order to understand that sort of thing, you have to completely wash your brain of everything you know about feminism and then read nothing but anti-feminist screeds for several months. I doubt anyone here is willing to submit to that sort of torture.
Oh, oh, and there’s a creepy twist for the Eva – María Estela transition!
You may have heard of Lopez Rega also know as “el Brujo” (The Wizard). *
He was Maria Estela’s advisor and Minister of Social Welfare until he fell in disgrace for imposing unpopular policies.
He was also leader of the Triple A (Argentine Anti-communist Alliance), a para-state force which basically hunted down and kidnapped left wing Peronists a couple of years
He was a mystic and even wrote at least one book and one manifesto in occultism, the book being about astrological prophecies for the following decades. (I tracked it down but couldn’t afford it).
Apparently he used Evita’s embalmed body to try to transfer her soul into María Estela through the use of magic arts.
Whether this was with or without knowledge of Peron, I could not find out yet.
—
* The young journalist who gave him the nickname paid it with his life. He was one of the beloved heroes of our LGBT resistance.
@ Grumpy
I think you’re giving it too much credit. It seems to be less its insidious sexist content than its total poor presentation that is responsible for its incomprehensibility. Which itself says plenty since a meme has about 3 steps in its creation and its entire purpose is to make some concept easy to understand…