Look this is all like gender politics now on this blog okay? Didn’t you hear? No drum and bass, no philosophy, no newsletter, no absurdism or abstractist tracts, none whatsoever! Alasdair Thompson, Slutwalk, Middle Class Foghorns, Richard Dawkins, Gender Gap, Feminism, Rape Apologists and out of control rapists raping everything, everywhere! Errbody getting raped up in the Romantech blog.
Man, I need to get off the gender politics tip. I’m not an alarmist, but it’s not really very sexy . . . you’re playing with fire. Maybe that’s the attraction for me you’re actually dabbling with darkness you’re looking at ideas and reflecting back on yourself as the person who’s experience informs that concept.
I also like girls, but we have to be aware of the way our culture is progressing. I am basically falling back to a hardline communist position, materialism defines gender competitiveness because economically we are a capitalist society and competition defines everything.
What alarmed me about alasdair thompson – who suggested somewhat ignorantly that women are paid less because of menstruation issues – was that the guy was mercilessly beaten down for his old school sexist ignorance and all I saw was frothing and mobbing and beating and shrieking, not one single discussion of why the pay gap ACTUALLY exists.
It worries me about social media that it becomes a platform for the socially conscious to have a little whinge and then go back to what they were doing. In fact when I digressed into a global income analysis further down the page, I discovered what a tiny proportion of the global population were stereotypically middle class, like 4%, while the super rich who pull 7 figures pa are .05%
Personally – I don’t want to discuss it, it can’t be discussed. I saw some local guy make a bawdy comment toward the slutwalk about how girls shouldn’t be out drunk in next to nothing and they were all jumping on him – other guys! “That doesn’t mean she deserves to get raped!!!” Of course, who said she should be raped? Nowhere did he say “Y’know she should be raped for getting drunk in town wearing no knickers. Makes sense if you think about it.”
I see it all the time – a position of contention reframed by a feminist argument as the extreme expression of it, and then used to bully and bruise the person taking the position as a rape or inequality apologist.
Men rape babies! Men rape grandmas! Yes but men don’t date rape babies or grandma’s do they? A little context, please? The silencing and shaming has a turn the tables mentality.
It became obvious that gender issues are something that cannot be discussed openly. I have to write on my blog, because otherwise I have strictly NO OPINION. I’ve unwittingly argued feminists into bed before, but it’s just too dangerous, there’s feminists I don’t want to sleep with who are dangerous to my mission, as in, they don’t see me getting laid more often with hot girls as suitable to their agenda so in that way there’s friction.
Maybe another blog post is to be written about being dignified in privilege, but I just wanted to say it gets even racier when you don’t feel you can discuss gender issues openly because of the hostility.
So why are women really paid less than men?
That is because we exist in a competitive society. But no one wants to have a discussion they just want to go wild, bashing the guy repeatedly, you should have seen twitter, it was one of THE biggest bashfests. To me, it’s quite a characteristic of the left that there will be squawking on any given issue and that’s about it.
Every day, lefties complaining about John Key. Like it matters.
Why? Because we’re middle class and what are we really going to do. It’s just like me right now. Middle class angst. There’s 3 billion people in poverty around the world, there’s 300,000 people in the USA who make more than 1.7million per year. Could the middle class of the world be more than 10% – 700 million people?
Well 3 billion spend less than 66% on food and shelter. That’s a pretty loose definition of “middle class”.
Well I found this site that helped me calculate I was in the top 50 million richest people in the world based on income! sweet! But jam $US50,000 in there and you get . . .
only 60 million globally make more than $US50k p/a? Are you for real? 1% of the world? That’s insane. 225 million make more than $NZ50,000 (the average NZ wage) – 1/35 of the world’s population, %3.75. But once you get to $US48,000 which is something like $NZ65,000 that shrinks under 60 million – 1/113 of the world’s population. 26 million earn over US$140,000 that is about $NZ180,000, $3,500 p/week. That’s living pretty good with the top .4% of the population.
I just noticed weird distribution in the middle class. That means there’s 34 million people like me and lots of people on twitter who make between $US48,000 and US $140,000 – that’s in the world. The whole world.
The impoverished are about 1.1 billion the live on less that $365 p/year
The poor are are about 2.7 billion they live on less than $730 p/year
The working class are about 2.9 billion they live on $730 – 38,000
The lower middle class are 165 million – they earn between $US38,000 and US$48,000
The upper middle class are 34 million – they earn between $US48,000 and US$140,000
The rich are 26 million – they earn between US$140,00 and US$1.7m
The super rich are about 1 million – they earn $1.7m
50,000 earn about 27 million every year
800+ billionaires
It just seemed weird – SO many people live on the distinctly middle class income of US$38k – $US48k about nz$50k – nz$64k – 165 million people – but only 34 million people in the world make a decent amount of money – no to little and not too much.
165 million people in the lower middle class, 34 million in the upper middle class, but 26 million rich people people – the upper middle class is tiny! And I’m in it!
I kind of got distracted there right? My point? Bleeding heart liberals like who I hang out with. Urban, educated, top 4% of the world’s richest, what do they know about equality? It’s hopelessly idealistic but that’s why it shapes the future of our society.
I’m sure we’ll be alright but I have to wonder what kind of challenges we will face before we advance and make any true progress – privilege is that elephant in the room – how can we all complain and do nothing while wallowing in our privilege at being in the richest 4% of the world?
it’s like cultural retardation, the middle class is able to perceive injustice with a foggy conscience, but not so deeply that the hypocrisy of it is apparent.
I do know that humans are insanely adaptable and the “new normal” seems to be shifting at more rapid a pace, that perhaps even our adaptability is becoming more elastic – I’m starting to experience what my grandparents experienced with technology except I’m not even half their age.
I’m not an alarmist. Up until I was about 21 I thought there might be a grassroots uprising because I was so into my party literature. Then I kind of just went . . . huh? It was probably the beginning of how I finished up there on the hard left, yeah, 20, 21 I would have been when helen clark became prime minister.
But then the hard left had to criticize the leftie government, helen clark, it just didn’t make sense. We weren’t being done over like under national anymore, the argument seemed weak to the “man on the street”. Helen Clark wasn’t some puppet of the capitalists, that was ridiculous. That’s when I suddenly began to understand consensus politics. The mainstream concept was essentially the best model, even if the consensus model talks about an agreement and a marxist model talks about class struggle, well same difference, really.
Nothing terrible is going to happen. Competition and struggle keeps everything in check. You just have to be aware of the cultural conditions you are living under or you’re going to find yourself completely misinformed, and unprepared, and you’re going to miss out.
My subjective view on my own existence is relative, that’s why relatively speaking I’m an insanely wealthy ladies man with a huge creative legacy, but the reality I perceive is a different story. Competition is the defining concept of our civilization, The fact that I don’t feel I have enough is a product of that.
Until we can transcend competition as we know it, there’s going to be constant conflict. How do you use the knowledge to best accommodate yourself?
Why shouldn’t I just be honest, I am an ardent supporter of all aspects of feminism that don’t be downtrending my chances of getting laid. You feel? Which let’s be honest – is most of it.
But when I hear about this rebecca watson chick who had the stoush with richard dawkins, I’m not impressed at all – I mean richard dawkins WAS a complete dawkins, with his stupid muslim analogy, but it’s part of the same argument I’ve been making here – feminism is an identity driven protest that confronts the symptom of competition = inequality, not the cause.
