Rooting Out Racism

Written By: - Date published: 12:12 pm, March 30th, 2019 - 296 comments
Categories: capitalism, class war, Deep stuff, discrimination, jobs - Tags: , , , ,

It’s not enough to challenge racism as though it’s the cause of Christchurch’s Mosque massacre and many experts agree that the growing white supremacist movement is yet another symptom of the male identity crisis. The devastating reality is that we ignored the signs that our men were hurting.

We ignored the staggering suicide statistics and the ever-present anger of men who know no other way of telling us they were in pain and we’ve done so to our own detriment.

Racism is like mould in a home and it doesn’t matter how often you clean the house it will return until you deal with what it is about the house that makes it a breeding ground for such toxicity.

Mould is an apt metaphor for racism because it isn’t simply a case of changing the societal environment to rid it of infection. Not all of the elements within society that foster racism are under our control and just like dealing with mould you can open windows and insulate a house but if the roof or pipes are leaking then those efforts only reduce the mould and never really eliminate it.

Sometimes you have to strip homes right back to the studs to reveal and remedy the sources and when we do that here we find the economy and our roles within it are key factors in why we’re seeing a surge in racism.

If we continue with the analogy of mould as racism then the Alt-Right Neo Nazi movement is the type of mould we’re dealing with.

Many studies are showing that the Neo Nazi movement, once filled with bedroom dwelling socially incompetent white boys, is now being adopted by primarily white middle-class men and it is this core element that we need to examine to understand why they’re turning to such extremes.

We’re experiencing massive transitions, world-wide, both in our cultural and our economic environments and these shifts are hitting white men hard. Amidst the turmoil of change comes the realisation that our economy no longer serves the public good, or even the interests of most people.

Capitalism is sick having reached peak capacity of Schumpeter’s Gale signalling the collapse of industries that were was once the central pillar of what it meant to be a successful man. They afforded workers not only financial validation of worth but also the esteem of having produced something of quality.

Men were vastly prouder of their work than they are today and were rewarded for effort and skill. This isn’t the case any more.

In an effort to appease shareholders’ insatiable appetite industries are reducing quality in the name of ‘efficiency’ (a.k.a profits) and a need to stay competitive. The fall-out from this hits at many of the tenets of male identity, not just in being valued as a provider but also the deep desire to pass on to their offspring the skills and wisdom accrued throughout their working lives.

Far from being a patriarchal evil that sought to dominate anyone that wasn’t white or male, the male identity as provider and protector continued during the industrial age out of a need within society as work and home lives separated. It just made common sense for women to be at home with children whilst men provided for them.

And for the longest time white men had benefited from a hegemonic society. Their identity, what it meant to be a successful man was easily recognisable and attainable.

This is no longer the case.

Women are taking on more work and moving into more highly trained roles leaving a gap in front-line, low-skilled work. Increased immigration fills this gap but with the elite consuming the lion’s share of community wealth and increased competition for previously male dominated roles the working class man is left struggling to meet an ever elusive masculine ideal.

Ignoring the fact that gender roles are oppressive, they were never flexible enough to cope with the constantly evolving landscape of our economy and are way past their ‘use-by’ date. Even if society had been successful in reinstating male privilege at best it would have bought time but it never stood a chance of fixing the economic problems of the gluttonous elite who mistook their girth for greatness nor the plight of the emaciated working class man struggling to keep lard-laden capitalism on its feet.

The frustration over loss of privilege and identity results in reactive racism and sexism. Women and immigrants are seen as threatening to male identity, not just financially but to its very core as protectors and providers and we see a concerted effort to put women and immigrants ‘back where they belong’.

Increasingly powerless to stop changes some men seek to create a world that encapsulated all those things they perceived had been denied them; power, prestige, leadership and followers and dedication to a cause that would validate them.

But theirs was a selfish motive.

Rather than a genuine concern for the ruination of European life and all it holds dear, the primary driver of this extreme route is the all too human desire to make something great of oneself.

The men who choose this path often look to history for figures who exemplify the sought after qualities and find them in martyrs; heroes who died for their cause.

Henry Kessler calls this worship of dead heroes, which was so central to Nazi culture, ‘propaganda of the corpse’.

Our social and economic environments aren’t going to get better any time soon nor will they go back to what they were so any solution needs to be built upon the acceptance of inevitable change and needs to focus on exchanging gender as the hinge pin of identity with humanity. When we do that, then being successful is measured in terms that we can control to a much greater degree.

Moving forward, the single most important thing we can do as a community to prevent a recurrence of our darkest day is to provide support for our boys and men as they go through this transitional phase.

They need to know they are loved and valued, not for what they do but for who they are as people, for the qualities of humanity they already possess. When we do that, humanity become our shared language and gender becomes our accents.

Author of A Natural, Ross Raisin, offers this most excellent counsel as a ‘where-to’ from here:

“What some men need … in all those areas of life (private and public) where an old, familiar order has broken down and men have yet to let in different kinds of identity — is help getting them to that place; acknowledging rather than avoiding the difficulty of the transition.

Focusing attention on the everyday crises that people are facing is part of that. Support (together with its counterpart: governmental relieving of the policies and ideologies that put men, and women, in economic and social hardship) is another.

Replacing an entrenched structure with nothing is an inevitable cause of real crisis. Replacing it with a new box to be put in is not healthy either.

Dialogue, openness, empathy and equality are what is needed by us all — men and women — both to aid those in trouble, and to move the crisis conversation on from “how to be a man” to “how to be a person”.”

 

[This article was first posted on medium.com. Subscribers are able to follow Maggie here.]

 

296 comments on “Rooting Out Racism ”

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  1. Dennis Frank 1
    30 March 2019 at 12:44 pm

    There are ways to be a hero during a time of transition. Provide a positive alternative. Be the change that the times require. Role-model peaceful co-existence. When confronted with a conventional binary frame that institutionalises social problems, point out to others that the way to solve them is through the middle, between those groups who polarise in denial.

    Social forums that allow men to discuss these options with others, in reference to their personal problems, would help participants to mentor each other.

  2. Sabine 2
    30 March 2019 at 12:46 pm

    “Moving forward, the single most important thing we can do as a community to prevent a recurrence of our darkest day is to provide support for our boys and men as they go through this transitional phase.”

    And when we are speaking of support for ‘our boys and men’ are we only talking about the white ones, or are we also including those of color?

    And when we are speaking of support for ‘our boys and men’ are we also taking into account the damage these boys and men do to women and girls?

    And when we are speaking of support for ‘our boys and men’ are we also talking about those on radio, tv, board rooms, and parliament that peddle the same ideas albeit hidden in polite phrases?

    And how long will this support last? All eternity? Cause as far as i am concerned the transitional period is at the very least over a hundred years long – women rights to vote, or at the very least over 40 years of age – pill, abortion, work access since the late 60 – early 70s and when can we expect men and boys to understand that others are equally human to them, even if they are not ‘our boys and men’ but rather ‘our girls and women’ and ‘our non white brothers and sisters’.

    i would like to point out again, that a. this guy was not one of ‘our’ boys and men’, he was from a nice white well to do family, with golden locks as a boy, a decent childhood lacking of little, of average height and looks, with enough means to travel Europe extensively, and still he ended up full of hate, misery and his ideas of racial purity, racial superiority, and white is might attitude that he ended up killing.

    Maybe we should look out for the ‘boys and men’ that are not harboring these supremacist and racists ideas but rather have to suffer them. Maybe we should look out for our girls and women that are still suffering under the system of patriarchy and male is godly and female is sin.

    • Molly 2.1
      30 March 2019 at 2:18 pm

      +100. Thanks Sabine.

    • marty mars 2.2
      30 March 2019 at 2:32 pm

      + 1
      I agree with you.

    • RedLogix 2.3
      30 March 2019 at 3:02 pm

      And how long will this support last? All eternity? Cause as far as i am concerned the transitional period is at the very least over a hundred years long – women rights to vote, or at the very least over 40 years of age – pill, abortion, work access since the late 60 – early 70s and when can we expect men and boys to understand that others are equally human to them,

      It’s true that men and women don’t always get along; as indeed men don’t always treat each other as ‘equally human’. Women don’t either. But to suggest men have never treated women as fully human, is a gross misrepresentation.

      It’s true that life has changed dramatically for women over the past 140 odd years. Women are biologically the more vulnerable sex, and in particular the high biological cost of pregnancy, childbirth, breast feeding, infant care and 15 or so years of looking after children confined women to largely domestic roles for most of our history. The work that most men did was either too physically onerous (field work, mining, laboring, etc) or dangerous (war, seafaring, etc) for them to be able to do it.

      The Industrial Revolution (dare I say it, mostly a male invention) changed all of this. Suddenly slavery for both sexes was relegated to the past, education and literacy was extended from the elites to everyone. We could communicate and travel more widely. Professions like nursing and teaching were rapidly made open to women. In the post WW2 era, machines and automation made a whole new range of roles outside of the household accessible to women.

      By the time we get to 2019 only the most risky and unpleasant jobs like sewerage workers remain almost exclusively male. All this is a good thing, but it was the technology and the engineering that made it possible; the social change in attitudes around women engaging in the wider world was the consequence, not the cause.

      The availability of reliable birth control in the 60’s utterly transformed the cost of sex for women. For all of human evolution women carried a much higher cost of unwanted sex than men, and evolved a much higher degree of risk aversion and anxiety around it. Almost overnight in 1963 the biological cost of sex for women was suddenly no longer significantly different than it was for men.

      In brief the world has changed dramatically for women over the past 140 years or more … far more than it has for men. Your roles and opportunities have expanded and become more flexible; far less so for most men. The social and mating expectations placed on men may have changed decor a bit, but remain much as they always have been. Provider and protector is still the first and foremost expectation most women have of their male partners.

      So when you ask men to ‘change’ don’t be surprised when we say ‘why’?

      • Ad 2.3.1
        30 March 2019 at 3:22 pm

        Because there are too many miserable men holding our society back.

        • marty mars 2.3.1.1
          30 March 2019 at 3:26 pm

          + 1 yep

        • RedLogix 2.3.1.2
          30 March 2019 at 3:35 pm

          Demanding either sex to change their biological hard wiring is unreasonable. It creates miserable people.

          I’ll try and illustrate with an example. Above I point out the logical, obvious reason why women are far more risk averse around sex than men; it’s a deeply hardwired response that all women everywhere share.

          Now when the world changed and the high biological cost of unwanted sex effectively dropped to zero (or at least not much different to that of males) … did this evolved risk aversion change?

          For millions of years women have used sexual attraction to obtain the most genetically fit and socially powerful males they could attract. It’s such a powerful evolutionary force that geneticists tell us that each one of us has two female ancestors for every one male one. Think about that, for all of evolutionary history fully half of all males never reproduced, while most females did.

          Yet in the modern world when women can earn their own living and largely live lives without the need for strong powerful males to protect them … have their instinctive mating choices changed?

          If anyone suggested that all women should change these hardwired programs to suit men, there would be a predictable outrage and blowback. Yet somehow when it comes to the equivalent evolved behaviours in men … it’s open season. And then we wonder why we have confused and miserable men everywhere?

          • Ad 2.3.1.2.1
            30 March 2019 at 3:51 pm

            Plenty of wiring has changed already.

            If you get a good week or two, have a go through Stephen Pinker’s ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature’. It’s a fat book with squad loads of facts.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature

            Trends in violence are way, way down, and over a very long time.

            So massacres really stick out now.

            150 years ago, massacres were all across this land.
            100 years ago they were still occurring in Australia.
            Didn’t seem particularly shocking then. Is now.
            All done by men.

            People are breeding with different characteristics now.

            • Grant 2.3.1.2.1.1
              30 March 2019 at 3:59 pm

              You don’t know how evolution works do you?

              • Ad …
                30 March 2019 at 4:21 pm

                No one really does.
                Nor needs to.

                • Grant …
                  30 March 2019 at 4:52 pm

                  Wikipedia: “In 2009, David Shenk criticized Pinker for siding with the “nature” argument and for “never once acknowledg[ing] gene-environment interaction or epigenetics” in an article on nature versus nurture in The New York Times.[76] Pinker responded to a question about epigenetics as a possibility for the decline in violence in a lecture for the BBC World Service. Pinker said it was unlikely since the decline in violence happened too rapidly to be explained by genetic changes”

                  • Ad …
                    30 March 2019 at 4:55 pm

                    Precisely.
                    Cheers.

                    • Grant …
                      30 March 2019 at 5:11 pm

                      “Plenty of wiring has changed already.” How has the wiring changed?

                      “People are breeding with different characteristics now.” How and in what way?

                      I took you to be making an argument based on epigenetics or something remarkably similar. No?

                      If you are then it would appear that Pinker disagrees. Yes?

                      May I suggest that if you wave a sign in the air that looks as though it has something to do with social change being caused by breeding choices, genetics and the different characteristics and social outcomes springing from those things then people might just take you literally?

                      If I’ve managed to misinterpret you would you like to rephrase in less clever but more direct language?

                    • Ad …
                      30 March 2019 at 5:26 pm

                      Fewer triggers.

                      Simple enough even for you.

                      If you want to trade academic papers, go for your life.

                      I’m off to shift a beehive.

                    • Dennis Frank …
                      30 March 2019 at 5:27 pm

                      Looks like Grant is trying to convey the idea that epigenetics is the driver, not genetics. Pinker responded in such a way as to suggest that he doesn’t understand the fundamental difference.

                      I suspect he doesn’t. Over-specialisation has crippled the academic world throughout the 20th century. There is no structural incentive to promote interdisciplinary learning.

                      I get the difference, having read books by a specialist in epigenetics (Bruce Lipton). Bruce, being a big-picture guy, is adept at presenting his views to lay folk. Pinker would get it if he bothered to listen.

                    • Grant …
                      30 March 2019 at 5:27 pm

                      lol

                    • left_forward …
                      31 March 2019 at 10:19 am

                      Dennis: you misunderstood Grant; he was merely trying to clarify what ad was saying (and rightly so IMO) and you certainly have misunderstood Pinker with your outrageously misleading pseudo-intellectualism.

                      This is what Pinker wrote in the afterword of the recent reprint of his 2002 book ‘The Blank Slate’.

                      “Also inflating the epigenetics bubble is a set of findings that genuinely are surprising, namely that some epigenetic markers attached to the DNA strand as a result of environmental signals (generally stressors such as starvation or maternal neglect) can be passed from mother to offspring. These intergenerational effects on gene expression are sometimes misunderstood as Lamarckian, but they’re not, because they don’t change the DNA sequence, are reversed after one or two generations, are themselves under the control of the genes, and probably represent a Darwinian adaptation by which organisms prepare their offspring for stressful conditions that persist on the order of a generation. (It’s also possible that they are merely a form of temporary damage.) Moreover, most of the transgenerational epigenetic effects have been demonstrated in rodents, who reproduce every few months; the extrapolations to long-lived humans are in most instances conjectural or based on unreliably small samples. Biologists are starting to express their exasperation with the use of epigenetics as “the currently fashionable response to any question to which you do not know the answer,” as the epidemiologist George Davey Smith (2011) has put it. Other deflations of the epigenetics bubble may be found in Coyne, 2015; Heard & Martienssen, 2014; Juengst, Fishman, McGowan, & Settersten, 2014; Moffitt & Beckley, 2015; and Haig, 2007.”

                      Dennis: Do you maintain that this is a man who doesn’t bother to listen?

                      Pinker has a lot to contribute to this dialogue.

                      Thank you Maggie, I really enjoyed your article – a very thought provoking piece.

                    • Grant …
                      31 March 2019 at 11:56 am

                      @Left_Forward. Thanks for ‘getting’ what I was on about. I’ve been dragged into long and increasingly acrimonious disputes in the past so I usually let it go after a couple of comments these days. People can either agree with or ignore my reckons as they like..

                  • Maggie …
                    31 March 2019 at 11:44 am

                    Pinker is wrong to say changes happened too fast to be attributed to epigenetics. Studies in epigenetics show that changes in gene expression happen in a single generation. He’s also failed to take into consideration studies into the intrauterine environment of a developing fetus which has proven that violence and stress dealt to the mother has a negative impact on the biochemical programming of the fetus. This damage becomes evident in later life, mainly in the form of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, certain learning disabilities and preconditioning the fetal brain to be hyper-sensitive to stresses for the rest of its life.

                • RedLogix …
                  30 March 2019 at 4:57 pm

                  For what it’s worth this is how I manage the dilemma. There is only one Creator, and one Creation. Therefore reality is one; single and coherent.

                  Science and religion are a duality, one is the domain of facts, the other of values, yet in the whole they are describing the same thing. Therefore they must ultimately be in harmony.

                  It is only our lack of knowledge and insight that prevents us from seeing the full score. Work very much in progress 🙂

                  • Maggie …
                    31 March 2019 at 11:48 am

                    “Science and religion are a duality, one is the domain of facts, the other of values, yet in the whole they are describing the same thing. Therefore they must ultimately be in harmony.”

                    Perhaps you can show me the comparative science that supports the religious preoccupation with a woman’s virginity? What biological benefit is there for her in remaining chaste that isn’t a benefit for males?

                    • KJT …
                      31 March 2019 at 12:01 pm

                      Lack of venereal disease and/or pregnancy?

                      Agree the religious obsession with virginity, was almost always to advantage males, but it does have some advantages for women.

                      Nuns, at least the ones the Priests left alone, living a lot longer than their married sisters, for example.

                      Just saying.

                    • RedLogix …
                      31 March 2019 at 4:22 pm

                      What biological benefit is there for her in remaining chaste that isn’t a benefit for males?

                      KJT touched on it. The simple, but awkwardly blunt answer, is that while a mother can always be certain a child is hers, a father cannot. And while the mother is compelled to carry the biological cost of raising her children to adulthood, for fathers this was a largely optional social obligation.

                      In an era before genetic testing, virginity and chastity were the only way a woman could assure her male partner that it was worth investing in her children, because they were his as well.

                      Evolution doesn’t think things through like this of course, we are the offspring of ancestors who acted in the most favourable way, even when they had no conscious sense of why. It was only later that religion took the observed reality and started to wrap mythology and doctrine around it.

                      Briefly it seems that relatively stable pair bonding was the most common human practise well back into deep time. But it certainly was not the only one; many many variations have been tried.
                      They all work to a degree, but socially sanctioned monogamy seems to have the advantage that it means most men have some hope of having their own partner and children and this, even in the modern world, is generally associated with much lower levels of violence and more productive societies.

                      And to my mind this is probably why the Abrahamic religions set about limiting polygamy and ultimately arriving at monogamy as the social ideal.

                      As a footnote: about 5,000 to 7,000 years ago the two to one female to male ratio dropped to an astonishingly low estimate of only 1 male for every 17 females.

                      https://www.livescience.com/62754-warring-clans-caused-population-bottleneck.html

                      We can only speculate why, but it’s an interesting read on the interaction between genetics and culture and the other way around.

                    • Stuart Munro. …
                      31 March 2019 at 4:56 pm

                      I’m not certain it is a genuinely religious imposition, so much as an exploitation of religious institutions by their male members, as is the case with child abuse. As the virginity thing is by no means exclusive to cultures with Abrahamic religions, it may be coming from something else.

                      Biological advantage is always a tricky perspective, and no respecter of persons. Were continuous fertility truly disadvantageous at a species level, it would have stopped. It’s only relatively recently however that death in childbirth stopped being a leading cause of death among women, and the lives of unwed mothers prior to social welfare were to say the least, difficult. Before reliable contraception, religious discouragement of sex even within marriage may not have been entirely misplaced, since it could result in too many mouths to feed, or the death of a parent.

                    • Maggie …
                      31 March 2019 at 5:37 pm

                      STD’s are just as much of a threat to men as to women yet men have never been encouraged to remain chaste.
                      If a woman’s health was worrisome or there was a concern for too many mouths to feed then why didn’t those thoughtful men abstain from sex? Animals in the wild developed reproductive seasons to avoid giving birth in winter yet no such genetic mutation occurred in humans.

                      Even in cultures that promoted female virginity, pregnancy and paternity weren’t necessarily issues. All Babylonian woman (even married ones) had to go to the temple of Aphrodite and offer herself to a male stranger for sex. She wasn’t allowed to go home until she’d serviced one so attractive women got to go home sooner whilst ugly ones waited up to three or four years to fulfill the requirement.

                      Among the pastoral tribes of Libya, the Adyrmachidae took every girl about to be married to see the king for ‘deflowering’. The Nasamones used wives in common. At the marriage ceremony, the bride was passed round among the male guests where they gave her gifts in return for sex. Women of the Auses tribe were also used as common property. When their children were fully grown up the men would hold a meeting and judge by its looks to figure out who it belonged to.

                      A woman’s sexuality and her fertility were viewed as sacred gifts from the gods because they didn’t fully understand the nature of reproduction. Men sought to control women and their ‘god-given fruits’ because to have such resources under ones control was a sign of power and status.

                  • SHG …
                    31 March 2019 at 3:29 pm

                    Isn’t it amazing how male subjugation of women became so prevalent during the time in which Abrahamic religions were at their peak. Anyone would think that basing your entire society around original sin and immaculate conception and virgin birth would give your men a messed-up attitude towards women.

                • Grant …
                  30 March 2019 at 5:14 pm

                  “No one really does.
                  Nor needs to.”

                  I guess that if you take ‘Genesis’ literally that is a fair statement.

                • WeTheBleeple …
                  30 March 2019 at 5:57 pm

                  “No one really does.
                  Nor needs to.”

                  What an ignorant comment.

            • RedLogix 2.3.1.2.1.2
              30 March 2019 at 4:00 pm

              Yet in the same thread we have others telling us how fucked we are. Confusing to say the least.

              Pinker has cast a lot of good light on what we have achieved; and rather makes the modern moral panic around ‘toxic masculinity’ look a tad ridiculous. But at the same time I’m not sure I fully trust his optimism; we really do have some serious existential challenges.

              The trick as I see it is neither unjustified optimism, nor irrational nihilism. Of as Peterson says over and over … just take some bloody responsibility for making your world a bit better. If we all did that the residual collective problems we face would look a lot less daunting.

            • mpledger 2.3.1.2.1.3
              31 March 2019 at 7:11 pm

              Trends in violence are down because the average age of all people is going up. Crime peaked in the 60’s when the Baby Boomers were teenagers/young adults, (the age when people are most likely to commit crime), most crime rates has decreased since then.

              • Andre …
                31 March 2019 at 7:27 pm

                There’s also the lead-crime hypothesis – that reductions in environmental lead exposure (mostly by eliminating lead in petrol) contributes to a reduction in crime with a lag of 15 to 20 years. It seems to be pretty good as at least a partial explanation, I’m not aware of evidence from anywhere that counters it as at least a contributing factor.

          • Maggie 2.3.1.2.2
            31 March 2019 at 5:09 pm

            “For millions of years women have used sexual attraction to obtain the most genetically fit and socially powerful males they could attract.”

            That’s loaded science Red. Firstly, your choice of language insinuates that women were sexually dominant and made all the choices regarding who got to mate. There’s no evidence for consent or against it. The 2:1 ratio could easily have come from dominant males who fought for mating rights and took their women by force. I personally believe the truth to be more in the middle because in all recorded history we see the males deciding how women were utilised.

            The two female ancestors to one male ancestor theory relies on the geneologies of mtDNA and Y-MRCA but it doesn’t mean these two lineages occured at the same time. Mitochondrial DNA is far more prolific and split off 150,000 years ago whereas the best they can say for the male lineage is that it split off between 180,000 to 580,000 years ago.

            The theory is highly debated and is based on comparisons between the genetic lineage of human dna and other primates, like chimpanzees. The theory fails to accomodate the ‘Mother’s Curse’ which shows that strict maternal inheritance renders the mitochondrial genome susceptible to accumulating mutations that harm males, but are otherwise benign or beneficial for females. This could easily account for the 2:1 ratio because the ‘mother’s curse’ effect can degrade male survival and fertility.

            The ‘Mother’s Curse is also why your argument for “biological hard wiring” is beyond flawed. Male DNA undergoes co-adaptation between nuclear and mitochondrial genomes with nuclear genes evolving to compensate for male-harming mitochondrial mutations but it isn’t enough to completely negate the fitness cost of harm. The takeaway from this is that male DNA goes through a lot more adaptive mutations than female DNA which further calls into question how much of that historic “biological hard-wiring” is left unaffected.

            There’s debate around the behavioural evolution of modern humans but both the gradualist and cognitive camp agree that modern human behavior evolved through cognitive and genetic changes as late as 40,000–50,000 years ago with the gradualists believing it started earlier and was a slower process so who we were and how we behaved 150,000 years ago could be vastly different than today.

            You said:
            “For all of human evolution women carried a much higher cost of unwanted sex than men, and evolved a much higher degree of risk aversion and anxiety around it.” No. Pregnancy wasn’t considered problematic until more modern times. Men stuck around and contributed to the care and provision of children.”

            The “aversion to sex” you see absolutely wasn’t always present. In 480 BC Herodotus noted that the Persian women of the Gindanes tribe wore leather bands round their ankles, one for each man she’d slept with. Women with the most bands were held in high esteem by society because she had been loved by so many. He also noted that Persian women went to work (as traders) whilst the men stayed home weaving.

            The aversion to sex, as you call it, is a result of religion-based cultural condemnation and shaming of a woman’s sexuality where promiscuity could cost her her social status and access to resources. This is also why rape is often more psychologically traumatic than physically traumatic. Women have had to modify their (biological)sexual behaviour which proves it can be done where as men abdicate responsibility for their sexual behaviour. This is proven in societies like Afghanistan where women are under threat of death for promiscuity resulting in a shortage of available sex. What do the men do? They solicit male children to dress as women and act as sexual surrogates.

            As for your comments that women are the weaker (more vulnerable) sex – That’s the typical argument based on male metrics and mythology. It doesn’t even warrant a rebuttal.

            • The New Student 2.3.1.2.2.1
              31 March 2019 at 6:02 pm

              Fantastic

            • RedLogix 2.3.1.2.2.2
              31 March 2019 at 7:03 pm

              The ‘Mother’s Curse is also why your argument for “biological hard wiring” is beyond flawed

              So exactly why do almost all other animals exhibit instinctive and obvious hard-wired behaviors? Do you imagine we share nothing with them? This is the ‘tabula rasa’ theory of the social constructionists, and stands in stark contradiction to all the biological literature derived from actual science.

              “That’s loaded science Red. Firstly, your choice of language insinuates that women were sexually dominant and made all the choices regarding who got to mate. There’s no evidence for consent or against it.

              It doesn’t imply dominance at all. It merely suggests that both sexes have their opportunities to select their partners. Unless you are going to argue every sex act through all of human history was a forcible rape, then it seems quite reasonable to think women did indeed exercise an important agency in choosing their mates.

              And confusingly enough this is exactly what you argue for lower down when you reference Herodotus. (Although rightly considered the first true historian, his works are not regarded as totally reliable to say the least.)

              While we mostly remember Darwin for the ‘the survival of the fittest’ theory, even he said his far more dangerous idea was that of sexual selection. Even today most people remain quite oblivious to it, even when they’re acting it out themselves.

              The aversion to sex, as you call it, is a result of religion-based cultural condemnation and shaming of a woman’s sexuality where promiscuity could cost her her social status and access to resources.

              There is good reason to think paleo-humans have tried out every conceivable mating pattern, but it’s most likely the most common default arrangement was a relatively stable pair bondings. From observation that while it certainly doesn’t suit all humans, it does most.

              The invention of agriculture rather than religion, seems to have marked a turning point. For the first time humans became invested in place and time. Tilling, planting and harvesting tied us to location and season. The concept of property became important (why plant in spring if someone else will take it autumn), and as with all human technologies, it amplified the innate differences between people. Some were good at it, some were lucky and others were not. Social stratification began it’s relentless march long before capitalism.

              For this reason it’s commonly thought polygamy around this time became the dominant mode, with the most successful and powerful males being able to choose and provide for many women. Less successful males were relegated to disposable roles in warfare or killing labour. For this reason the downside of polygamous societies is they are more unstable and violent; this is observable even today:

              https://medium.economist.com/big-love-and-big-war-exploring-the-link-between-polygamy-and-violence-67306fb3c41b

              When religion headed down the path of limiting polygamy, and ultimately headed towards monogamy as the preferred social arrangement; it was essentially codifying an observable optimum. And absent reliable birth control it reached for the social engineering tools available to it, shame and social stigma. (A tool the modern left has cheerfully borrowed and reaches for with alacrity)

              And while the sexual constraints on men were weaker, it wasn’t open season either. Religious codes ensured men were never totally free to wander about fucking anything with a pulse either. And more importantly imposed a significantly higher requirement on them to stick around, provide and protect for their families than might have otherwise been the case.

              So while women did give up substantial sexual freedom, they gained a safer, less violent society to raise children in, and more stable partnerships/access to resources. It’s wrong to characterise all of this as mere brute patriarchal oppression; there were very real benefits that accrued to women as well. Witness how women even today, typically participate in churches and faiths with equal, if not more, commitment than men.

              Indeed from the perspective of the most powerful males, religion in principle requires them to give up huge harems, and unlimited power to take any female they want. From a modern perspective the rules weren’t all that flash, and often broken, but they were way better than what likely proceeded them, which was none at all.

              Besides the idea that the whole of history is nothing more than men making life hell for women, just for the fun of it … is plain silly. Women really aren’t that easy to oppress.

              As for your comments that women are the weaker (more vulnerable) sex – That’s the typical argument based on male metrics and mythology. It doesn’t even warrant a rebuttal.

              Apologies for not being clear; the crucial human evolutionary trade-off is that our infants are born not only with a large skull to accommodate our large brain, but from a development perspective, exceedingly immature. Most other mammals pretty much hit the ground running; they have to. By contrast the human infant is utterly helpless for at least two more years and doesn’t reach adulthood for 14 or so.

              From a purely evolutionary perspective this makes the infant/mother unit extremely vulnerable for an extended period … and crucially …dependent on social resources to survive. By contrast the father’s contribution, while certainly a benefit, is not nearly as critical as it can be usually substituted for.

              The advantage of this very awkward arrangement, is that our cognitive development could also be greatly extended, and hence another part of the reason for our extraordinary success as a species.

              • Maggie …
                31 March 2019 at 8:13 pm

                “So exactly why do almost all other animals exhibit instinctive and obvious hard-wired behaviors? Do you imagine we share nothing with them?”

                Where did I say humans have no instinctual behaviour? Remember the context. You were saying that change (the kind of change applicable to the article) is impossible because it’s biologically hard-wired. I’m arguing that men going to work, men’s desire for validation as provider and protector, men’s need for identity via work are not biologically hard-wired instinctive behaviours. They are learned.

                I’m wondering if it’s even worth responding because all I’m reading in your response is misconstrued interpretations.

                And to be honest, it pisses me off when you get all reactive and don’t read properly. Why should I echo what I’ve already said because you’re triggered?

                If you want to have a discussion about this then read it as it’s written and not with all your reactive assumptions. I’d much rather play tennis with your intellect than play dodgeball with your ego.

                • RedLogix …
                  31 March 2019 at 8:41 pm

                  I’m wondering if it’s even worth responding because all I’m reading in your response is misconstrued interpretations.

                  Well that was my initial reaction too. I did go away and check the background on the “Mother Curse” but honestly I still don’t have much sense of why you should say that means your argument for “biological hard wiring” is beyond flawed. It’s hard to read much nuance into that … except that you’ve rejected biology altogether. Maybe if that’s is not what you meant, you could have expressed it more carefully and saved the confusion.

                  Having said that this aspect of mtDNA something new I’ve not encountered before, so I learned something right there.

                  • Maggie …
                    31 March 2019 at 9:07 pm

                    I’m sorry. I figured you’d know the context because you gave it.

                    Anyway, you redeemed yourself with that very excellent computer analogy…it really sparked off a whole bunch of new stuff for me.

                    It seems we’re both learning new things.

            • RedLogix 2.3.1.2.2.3
              31 March 2019 at 8:09 pm

              The question you asked that I did want to answer was this “how flexible is human nature?”

              Many far smarter people than me have dedicated many words to this question; all I can do is offer my reading of the discussion. But rather than delve off once again into evolutionary ideas, I’ll offer this alternative model.

              You’ll forgive me my bias here, I’ve been an electronics/software/automation dude all my life, so I’ve used an analogy that feels familiar and sensible.

              I think it was Dennis above who usefully mentioned the triune brain theory, which is an old and still respectable idea. Helpfully it seems to have some grounding in actual brain structure:

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triune_brain

              It’s not an original observation, but there is an obvious correlation with how we construct computers.

              All modern computers consist also of three layers, hardware, firmware and software, and it’s nice to think about the correlation between the our reptilian cortex we share with almost all creatures including lizards, paleomammalian complex we share with all other mammals, and the neomammalian complex that is most developed in humans.

              In computing terms the hardware layer is what you buy and is relatively fixed. The CPU, the silicon architecture, the memory, etc all provide not only the physical embodiment of the machine, but crucially all the important constraints. I’ll come back to that.

              The firmware layer is more flexible, it expands enormously on the complexity of the hardware layer, and crucially allows enhancements and bug fixes to be implemented reasonably quickly, but typically the end-user rarely has any interaction with it.

              The software layer is what the user is conscious of, this is where our ‘will’ is implemented, we determine the path we want to take, plan it, press the go button and review the results. This is the layer that does useful, purposeful work.

              How flexible is all of this? Clearly the software layer is something we have the conscious ability to change if we wish. Not always easy, but doable.

              The firmware layer is also capable of change, but much less often. And we don’t seem to have conscious access to it. In human terms it seems that psychoactive drugs and deep religious experiences are the access tools we have traditionally used.

              The hardware evolves very slowly indeed, the update cycles are long and only done when absolutely necessary. And even then evolution is very conservative and updates only that which is necessary. And critically the hardware layer is provides all the important constraints on speed, capacity and power. A 16 bit CPU will never run 64 bit code no matter what. (OK maybe someone know a hack I don’t, but it’s beside the point.)

              In this model the simplest starting point to decide if you can change something, is to ask at what level in the system/triune brain is it implemented and what access to it do we have?

              My thinking is that if it has anything to do with the reptilian four F’s, fight, flight, freeze or fuck … then you’ll have an uphill battle on your hands to get it past the IT department. 🙂

              • Maggie …
                31 March 2019 at 8:36 pm

                Now this is a great response and exactly the kind of rational smarts I expect from you. And it’s your fault I have high expectations because that’s what you’re usually like.

                It’s a great example and as a trained mechanic and someone who built her own computer I relate to it well.

                Here’s the thing; The firmware is laid down in the first 8 years of life (roughly) This is the learning phase where the brain absorbs every experience, saves it as a memory and labels it with an emotional tag. Those tags are ‘good’ ‘bad’ or ‘meh’. The ‘meh’ memories are quickly marked for overwriting because they don’t aid in the decision making process. The hardware protects the firmware’s data integrity and actively resists reprogramming. This is why change to anything laid down during this time is so hard. The brain literally filters out inputs that don’t match the beliefs formed in the firmware. This is also why trauma in these early years changes the brain in a way that is often permanent. The software is the interface that relies on the firmware for decision making. If something is marked as ‘bad’ by the firmware it’s really hard to see it other ways.

                But it isn’t impossible. For change to happen the user has to access their firmware and reimage the memories. That is, they have to reframe something negative in a positive light but most importantly, they have to want and believe in change.

                As an example – I did some bias testing on Implicit at Harvard (website) and discovered I had a strong bias AGAINST women. I was so shocked because, well, I’m a feminist. I came to understand that my conditioning through church and home profoundly sculpted my responses. So now that I know I have bias I can activate a jumper switch just like patching firmware where I acknowledge my faulty circuits and initiate corrective thing. This is also why I value critical thinking so much. It’s the only hope we have of overcoming the brains bias.

                I really don’t think that the change I was talking about in my article requires a change in the hardware level brain. Fight or flight is hardware, agreed but only in response to an immediate threat. And it’s only the impulse to fuck that’s primal (as it is with women) and can be overcome or moderated. If it couldn’t be moderated men would literally be humping women in public, with or without consent.

                • BM …
                  31 March 2019 at 8:40 pm

                  You’re a trained automotive mechanic?

                  Awesome, it’s such a great trade(apart from all the grease and shit).
                  You learnt such a multitude of skills as well as great problem-solving abilities, I don’t give enough credit to what I learn’t as a mechanic.

                  • Maggie …
                    31 March 2019 at 9:02 pm

                    The grease and shit are awesome! There is nothing like fixing cars for a sense of total satisfaction. It’s disappointing that nowadays fixing cars means plugging in a diagnostic tool and swapping faulty bits. It was much more fun when we actually sourced the fault, used basic principles of chemistry and physics to diagnose and then repaired the parts.
                    Mind you, I don’t miss overhead welding. That is something that, as a woman, comes with issues. Having a ball of hot skittering solder drop into your cleavage isn’t fun!

                    • BM …
                      31 March 2019 at 9:14 pm

                      Mind you, I don’t miss overhead welding. That is something that, as a woman, comes with issues. Having a ball of hot skittering solder drop into your cleavage isn’t fun!

                      Ha ha, I remember having to gas axe some loose chassis bolts off an old Bedford, a big chunk of red hot metal fell into my rather greasy overalls and I started catching on fire.

                      Never moved so fast in my life, had to throw myself into the washing up basin to put out the flames.

                  • Maggie …
                    31 March 2019 at 9:33 pm

                    Haha! Is it bad that I totally laughed out loud?

                    I’m a horrible person, I know, I shouldn’t laugh.

                    I drive my kids crazy with my “I can fix it/ make it” attitude. I swear if I was a superhero I’d be duct-tape girl! That shit is awesome. I once made a pool pump/filter out of a push bike, vacuum cleaner hose, washing machine pump and lots of duct tape. I thought it was so cool; the kids – not so much.

                • RedLogix …
                  31 March 2019 at 9:05 pm

                  OK same response here. We seem to be on more constructive ground with this.

                  The problem with sex is that it seems to have invaded all sorts of places in our brains; and the research keeps throwing up new ideas all the time.

                  In that spirit I’m happy to go with the idea that we have more control over our gender role than traditionally imagined, and combined with your thinking on the role that epigenetics may play (and I’ve done sod all reading on that too), the door is open. If I gave the impression that I was trying to slam it shut then I wasn’t careful enough about what I was saying.

                  Fundamentally you are asking ‘what does it take to transform the human heart?” And that is a theme that I tremble before in my own inadequacy.

                  And I’d like to make this point in good faith, the IAT testing does have it’s detractors:

                  https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/3/7/14637626/implicit-association-test-racism

                  Another approach that has gained a lot of empirical traction in the past decade is the Big Five or Five Factor Model (FFM) which is based on solid statistical methods. The wikiP page is pretty comprehensive, and given what you have said about yourself I sincerely recommend it:

                  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

                  For what it’s worth I landed up ridiculously high on Neuroticism, Openness to Experience and Agreeableness … which before anyone jumps in … is a godawful combination and especially so for a male. 🙂

                  • Maggie …
                    31 March 2019 at 9:38 pm

                    lol, I can tell you now I’ll be very low on agreeableness. I can’t explain it other than to say that agreeing with something just to be ‘nice’ is harder than exercising after xmas lunch. I don’t get offended by being challenged nor do care for sugar coating or blowing smoke up someone’s arse but I forget that other people can find me confrontational and that others need a little sweetener.

                    Lets see what the test says…

                  • Maggie …
                    31 March 2019 at 10:01 pm

                    Truity Big Five test says:
                    Openness 90%
                    Neuroticism 69%
                    Conscientiousness 50%
                    Agreeableness 48%
                    Extraversion 50%

                    Circumplex core pattern:
                    Equal dominance – Empathetic Idealist/Analytical Thinker

                    • RedLogix …
                      31 March 2019 at 10:21 pm

                      Interesting:

                      The Openness clearly correlates with smart and rational.

                      Neuroticism is a tricky one, it really means sensitivity to negative emotion. It’s something I struggled with terribly until late adolescence, until I took up alpine climbing and learned something about confronting and controlling it. It’s not necessarily though a bad thing, it does mean you tend to have a well developed sense of self preservation.

                      The other three are balanced midrange which means you’re adaptable, resilient and tough. Nice blend.

                  • Maggie …
                    31 March 2019 at 10:42 pm

                    The neuroticism is linked to my hypervigilence. I have Complex PTSD but I’ve learned to recycle and refocus my hypervigilence in a positive way. My daughter says I’m negative and I am but in a positive way. I see the problems first but rather than having that be a bad thing I make it a strength by looking for solutions.

                    It’s great that you sorted out your anxiety in a way that worked for you and you dealt with it early. It took much much longer for me and I regret that.

                    You said:
                    “Fundamentally you are asking ‘what does it take to transform the human heart?” And that is a theme that I tremble before in my own inadequacy.” I think you underestimate yourself. I’ve seen you open yourself to lots of new ideas and opinions and that is rare and a credit to you. I appreciate your comments on here Red.

              • Maggie …
                31 March 2019 at 8:52 pm

                Actually, your computer analogy reminds me of one I have regarding the interaction of the id, ego and superego.

                The id is the only part of the personality we’re born with; the other two, ego and super-ego, develop as we grow. The id is pure drive, solely fixated and focused on obtaining satiation of need-based appetites. This is primarily grounded in the things needed to survive – food, safety, comfort/contact etc. We see the id rear its head and reveal itself when those needs aren’t met. We become irrational, desperate, and primal when deprived of those things and that’s the Id’s job – to keep us alive.

                The ego’s purpose is to satisfy the id. It learns where to go to get those needs met and negotiates the realities of life to obtain them. The focus of the ego is internal, almost parental in its relation to the id and like a parent, the focus on the id/child can be at odds with what the world demands of us because the concern is still for the self over everything else. The superego is the conscience, the ideal, and its primary focus is to provide the structure, the over-arching framework to keep the id and ego in check, to facilitate cooperation outside of the self in recognition of the wider objective (that we don’t exist in a vacuum but as part of a herd). You could say that the ego is the nurturing parent and the superego is the provider parent. The id is innate and present at birth whilst the ego is develops in the first 3 years, starting at 6 months, the superego appearing at around 3-5 years of age. The metaphor of a family unit works well to illustrate the dynamic of these components of personality and keeping with traditional familial roles we’ll say mum/nurturing parent is the ego, id is the infant and superego is the dad/provider parent.

                What is interesting to me is how the development of the personality mimics the dynamic of a family unit, both in its collective value and individual values. Let’s look at ego as an example. The ego is inextricably linked to the id just as a mother is to her child. Without the child the woman isn’t a mother so her role, her identity as a mother is defined by the presence of the child. So too the father isn’t a father without the child and isn’t a provider without those for whom he provides. All aspects of the personality exist and have a singular and collective value.

                The ego is responsible for sourcing and acquiring what the id wants. She is less concerned with the needs of the outside world as we see in real life where mothers would kill, steal, and even act with incredible cruelty to provide for her child over another if the situation became desperate because her attachment to the child is so strong. The superego ensures this isn’t necessary by providing a framework within which the mother can meet the ids needs in an appropriate way. Without the superego the personality has the drive and the means to get what it wants but no comprehension of the cost to others (hello sociopath). Without the ego to negotiate for the id’s needs the superego becomes a cold and callous authoritarian figure where meeting the id’s needs are less important than acquiring social perfection. There is no being without the id because the ego and superego only exist because of the id so dysfunction at the id level is one of extremes – needs met or not met. If the needs of the id are met too eagerly, too readily and without tempering then we have an adult who behaves like an infant – demands with entitlement, is aggressive/temper tantrums when their needs are not met (remembering of course that those needs change as the human grows, starting with physiological needs then safety then love/belonging then esteem through to self-actualization.)

                The id, I think, can be ‘damaged’ before birth. Is damaged even the right word? Perhaps ‘unduly burdened’ is a better way to describe the unfortunate id burdened with epigenetic trauma and/or prenatal environmental programming. Individuals with this burden carry an inherited deficit that has no root in their own experiences. Hence, a child could be born and suffer throughout his or her lifetime with a critically low self-esteem that may not be resolvable by the ego or superego. I suspect such individuals would seek surrogates were they unable to resolve the deficit. Such surrogates are often in the form of religion/spirituality, drugs/alcohol but in reality can be anything that mirrors the original deficit with enough points of reference to form a ‘good enough’ match. For example, if the deficit is human connection or belonging then sex serves as a surrogate, if self-esteem is the deficit then exhibitionism or other self-promoting behaviours can act as a surrogate. Physical deficits such as food and warmth can be easily supplemented but I suspect the id will still carry an unhealthy attachment to whatever deficit there was.

                I’m also wondering whether this trauma inheritance is actually the source of the belief in karma. As is the case with most supernatural beliefs there is almost always a certain amount of truth to it. That is, when people saw that certain things appeared to be passed on to offspring and not having the scientific knowledge to understand (epi)genetics that this inheritance had to be the work of an external agent or had to exist in a part of ourselves that wasn’t confined to the body. This is supported by the fact that karma and reincarnation are grounded in the same belief system. It also supports the idea that the spiritual process of enlightenment involves the destruction of the id/ego “lower” functioning self. Of course the id/ego part of self isn’t lower at all, and the superego isn’t superior. When the superego functions beyond its scope it becomes sadistic and rigid with the focus of that cruelty either internalised (in religious practices we would see this with self-flagellation, excessive fasting, praying on knees for hours at a time etc) or externalized as is the case with religious extremism and outside of religion we see it most clearly in authoritarian control and dictatorship.

                Anyway, enough waffle. It’s all so fascinating (to me) although I’ve probably bored everyone else to sleep.

      • Sabine 2.3.2
        30 March 2019 at 3:46 pm

        great, so you change and you throw your toys and you go about killing your neighbors and you wonder why women will not fuck you?

        sure. thing. bro!

        * disclaimer: You – men who threaten women with change they might not like, cause white male grief and economic anxiety trumps all others.

      • mpledger 2.3.3
        31 March 2019 at 7:05 pm

        It’s not right to say that men do all the horrible work. Women do the majority of nursing, women do the majority of prostitution. And there is a lot of horrible emotional labour that women do as well – usually unpaid for.

        • RedLogix 2.3.3.1
          31 March 2019 at 7:37 pm

          Be careful about what you think you are responding to. For a start I never said women have not had to do dreary, drudge work like washing, cleaning, fetching water and firewood. But it was work within their physical capacity; they rarely did truly arduous work like underground coal mining for example.

          And even today the vast majority of workplace deaths are male.

          As for nursing and prostitution, I suspect the average sewerage worker might happily trade places if he could. 🙂

    • Maggie 2.4
      30 March 2019 at 3:35 pm

      Your words echo the sentiments I held just over a year ago. I had little to no sympathy for men in general and judged them all as selfish spoilt brats until they proved themselves to me.

      I like to be right, a lot, so in an effort to strengthen my feminist argument I began to read and research every aspect of feminism and as I do with every topic I then try and disprove my point of view to expose weaknesses in my argument. I watched a video called The Mask You Live In and realised that my very ‘rational’ POV was flawed.

      We don’t choose our culture, we don’t choose where we are born, how we’re raised and what we’re taught and it’s not until adulthood that we have the ability to sift through the shit we’ve been fed. How are men supposed to suddenly realise they’ve been fed a lie? Our brain is defensive, it does it’s very best to preserve its beliefs, regardless of their accuracy, by filtering inputs. Even if men have their bias pointed out their brains react with filtering and cognitive dissonance just to maintain its belief system . This is why long-term trauma is so hard to rewrite. They have to be open to a different perspective for there to be any chance of change.

      My article focused on white men because it’s primarily white men that become extremists. Why don’t others? Because non-white men, like women, have faced discrimination their whole lives and have had to find their sense of value and worth in other ways. We’ve never experienced the degree of privilege that white men have so they have the greatest fall.

      How long should we support men in their transition? Forever and a day because anything less is punishment and rubbing their noses in the shit left by our forefathers is cruel and selfish.

      Do you want change or the satisfaction of revenge?

      There is nothing we can do to undo the abuse, the discrimination, the objectification and subjugation we’ve experienced. All we can do is try to create a better outcome for our kids by leading the way with our strength and compassion.

      • Dennis Frank 2.4.1
        30 March 2019 at 4:09 pm

        “How are men supposed to suddenly realise they’ve been fed a lie?” Well, the hippie ethos was formed by men who got there via LSD (not just by women). The de-conditioning effect of psychedelic drugs was widely-acknowledged throughout western civilisation during that era – but only by those who validated the thesis via personal experience.

        It is entirely possible for younger men to suss out exemplary stances without plant allies (as in The Teachings of Don Juan) or chemical equivalents. Many do. The problem arises in those who don’t.

        Preaching at them doesn’t work, so Christians gravitated to the use of violence to induce conformity (contravening the teachings of Jesus), and secular society uses the power of the state to coerce bad men (sometimes). Leftists advocate education (apparently not having noticed that it has failed) or lecturing plus moral condemnation (likewise).

        As I suggested earlier, a more-positive incentivising is preferable. As jobs continue to become less available, society will have to get smarter in response.

        • Incognito 2.4.1.1
          30 March 2019 at 10:34 pm

          All humans need a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, and a sense of being loved. Those young white men who crave and need it the most literally feel that these core needs are being withheld from them.

          One of the most effective ways to engage with them is through other men; they will distrust and show hostility to others. This is also the attraction of so-called brotherhoods and kindreds, etc., as these make them feel safe and accepted. They will let their guard down and their demons out, which is when they’re at their most vulnerable …

          They often make heavy use of ancient symbols. That’s not because of some misplaced nostalgia or hunkering to mythical pasts but because these age-old symbols strongly resonate with psychological symbols which have been embedded in our psyche for eons. It is quite possible, likely even, that these symbols have influenced gene selection, through epigenetics or mutations and natural selection, and vice versa. The power of these archetypes is universal but males and females respond differently because of their sex difference.

          • greywarshark 2.4.1.1.1
            31 March 2019 at 6:00 pm

            All humans need a sense of belonging, a sense of purpose, and a sense of being loved.

            But if they don’t get this feeling when they are very young, if they don’t get made to feel ‘a person in their own right’, get listened to sympathetically, they can act out eventually. That brings on the feelings they want in a negative way, they get paid attention, treated as an individual, and they can become wired to being aggravating, it gets attention, some people will give in to their demands which will often be repeated on that basis, and because they have been mistreated and get blase about it, with an internal rating for which is livable and which requires an instant exit to far away.

            So they may never in their lives follow the first approach. When they are loved they might mess that up. They might believe it is only temporary anyway and not give a relationship the full commitment needed.

            Start young, help the mothers, make them know that the state is there for them, have them take their babies and toddlers to classes with them, and have nearby creches. Give them opportunities for enjoyable social outings so they don’t have to go to the pub. Some of them will take it up and some will often, or regulary do so. When you know another life then you know how to turn away, and where to. And last, but not least, if they bring their sons and daughters as a woman trying hard to do a good job,
            letting the kids help, and generally being a good role model, not some occasionally decent bloks’s punching bag, then she isn’t passing the idea of violence being appropriate on through the generations.

            • Maggie 2.4.1.1.1.1
              31 March 2019 at 10:25 pm

              The boys that end up becoming Neo-Nazis ‘feel’ rejected. It’s not the same as actually being rejected. Incognito is spot on. We can’t simply say it’s a failing of parenthood. Some children are born with a hole in their self-esteem and it doesn’t matter what the parent does because the child always feels empty, like something so crucial is missing. Science shows us that epigenetics can play a significant role as can any trauma or stress the mother experienced during pregnancy. Studies have proven that increased cortisol in the mother’s brain rewires the fetal brain making it more sensitive and susceptible to stress, learning and health impairments, and mood disorders.

          • Maggie 2.4.1.1.2
            31 March 2019 at 10:07 pm

            Perfect Incognito!

  3. Jenny - How to get there? 3
    30 March 2019 at 1:27 pm

    One thing we could do is root out the gun culture, the fantasy celebrated in movies and myth, the lone, (usually white, usually male), exacting rightful vengeance with extreme gun violence.

    • RedLogix 3.1
      30 March 2019 at 3:12 pm

      So what to do with the plethora of movies from the past few years starring young, attractive women as the tooled up hero exacting lethal revenge against evil?

      • Sabine 3.1.1
        30 March 2019 at 9:52 pm

        can you list the plethora of movies please. Pretty pretty please.

        https://www.indiewire.com/2019/02/movies-with-female-leads-record-high-2018-1202043494/

        “ime’s Up has a reason to celebrate: The number of top-grossing movies with women as central characters took a huge jump in 2018. According to a study by USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, women were main characters or co-leads in 40 of the top 100 grossing movies of 2018. This marks the highest percentage of female driven films in 12 years, an increase in eight movies from the previous year. This means studios are finally backing more movies led by women — and finally listening to public opinion.”

        so really the 40 our of a hundred movies had a female lead or ‘co lead, as the highest percentage of female driven leads in 12! years.

        yeah, plethora…….such a plethora. Poor man, having only to content with 60 movies in which only they had speaking roles and the attending female was the damsel in distress or the object of desire, or the murder victim.

        Yei! US.Women!!!!

        or from 2017

        2017 STATISTICS
        Back to Resources »

        TV Statistics | Women Critics | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008

        Women Onscreen
        Top-grossing 100 films:

        Females comprised 24% of sole protagonists, 37% of major characters, and 34% of all speaking characters.
        Overall, audiences were almost twice as likely to see male characters as female characters.
        68% of all female characters were white. 16% were Black, 7% were Latina, 7% were Asian, and 2% were of another race or ethnicity.
        74% of major female characters were white, 14% were Black, 6% were Latina, 4% were Asian, and 2% were of another race or ethnicity.
        In films with at least one woman director and/or writer, females comprised 45% of protagonists, 48% of major characters, and 42% of all speaking characters.
        In films with exclusively male directors and/or writers, females accounted for 20% of protagonists, 33% of major characters, and 32% of all speaking characters.
        Sole female protagonists were much more likely to appear in independent features (65%) than studio features (35%).
        Female protagonists were most likely to appear in comedies (30%) and dramas (30%), followed by action films (17%), horror films (13%), animated features (4%), and science fiction films (4%).
        The majority of female characters were in their 20s (32%) and 30s (25%), while most male characters were in their 30s (31%) and 40s (27%).
        53% of female characters had a known marital status, while 40% of male characters had one.
        63% of female characters had an identifiable job or occupation as compared to 78% of male characters. A larger portion of male than female characters were seen in their work setting, actually working (69% vs. 55%).
        Male characters were more likely than females to have work-related goals (42% vs. 34%). Female characters were more likely than males to have goals related to their personal lives (20% vs. 13%).

        https://womenandhollywood.com/resources/statistics/2017-statistics/

        nope, that can’t be it, cause women still don’t have a plethora of speaking roles, leads and the likes.

        Must be a different reason why young white men born in the 90’s have issues with women, have issues with people of colour, have issues with people of islamic faith, and are happy to use guns – many of them – to sort their issues by killing those they don’t approve of.

        • RedLogix 3.1.1.1
          30 March 2019 at 10:06 pm

          Well here is at least 15 action movies with women as the lead, and it’s dated 2015.

          http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2015/the-15-best-action-movies-featuring-female-leads/

          Another list of 18:

          https://www.marieclaire.com/culture/news/g4767/best-action-movies/

          The assumption that it’s just males who are the lead characters, and toxic role models in violent movies needs updating.

          • Sabine 3.1.1.1.1
            30 March 2019 at 10:12 pm

            seriously

            please

            Top-grossing 100 films:

            Females comprised 24% of sole protagonists, 37% of major characters, and 34% of all speaking characters.

            this means that 76% of sole protagonists were men, 63% of major characters were men, and 66% of all speaking characters were men.

            So you found 15 movies with female leads 🙂 in 3 years. that is literally 5 per year. 🙂

            please try harder. And while you try harder, remember that all of humanity was born to a women, and that women are 50% of the world population and that the movie industry is over 100 years old and you found 15 movies that had female leads since 2015.

            try.harder.

          • marty mars 3.1.1.1.2
            30 March 2019 at 10:13 pm

            lol this is one off your first list red

            “9. Yes, Madam (1985, Corey Yuen)”

            yeah big hit – straight to video in 1985 lol

        • KJT 3.1.1.2
          30 March 2019 at 11:13 pm

          The huge number of movies about white males, successfully stalking women, shooting up bad guys, nearly always black or brown, and finishing, by heading off into the sunset with much younger and more attractive women, seems likely to have a bit to do with it.

          However the biggest group of movie watchers is young women.

          Maybe the gender imbalance has more to do with the target audience???

          Go figure.

          • Sabine 3.1.1.2.1
            30 March 2019 at 11:42 pm

            no, i think we really just watch movies that are shown. And i think that movies with friends, on dates etc for many women in places not westernized are actually one of the few places they can go.

            The change in movies to more female directors, or directors of colour such as Jordan Peele, or Ava Duvernay, is a welcome one, but still it is baby steps. FActor in in the harassment that female actors suffer at the hand of men online – Brie Larson https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/movies/captain-marvel-was-attacked-online-trolls-rotten-tomatoes-took-action-n976201 , or https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-44379473 or here https://www.thecut.com/2016/08/a-timeline-of-leslie-joness-horrific-online-abuse.html you kind of wonder how far we have come in general as clearly some do have an issue with living in the 21st century. Clearly, even the few movies that have been made by women, or with female leads are already to many for some. same for Jordan Peele, who was told to make movies casting African Americans (shut up about equality and diversity by any other name) and now that he has made them is told that he is a racist for casting actors of color in his movies. It seems that the so called ‘minorities’ can’t ever get it right.

            so we women, and people of color watch the movies that are made and that come to the movie houses – go figure.

  4. RedLogix 4
    30 March 2019 at 1:32 pm

    I can only think is that if I posted a similar article explaining what I imagined was wrong with modern women, this site would have a meltdown. But that aside, the model you are using which insists women have no agency of their own, that they’ve always been the little more than the helpless, feeble victims of male control and patriarchy, not only manages to be condescending to both sexes at the same time, it erases our biological reality without which our social constructs make no sense.

    We are the extraordinarily unlikely offspring of tens of thousands of ancestor generations, who faced brutal, tough odds every day of their lives. Physically we are the most absurdly vulnerable creature, yet our ability to run efficiently, use throwing weapons, domestic animals like dogs, and operate intelligently in large groups made us the most successful species ever. And crucially it’s a story where males and females both depended on each other’s complementary strengths to survive.

    And along that path in deep time men evolved to be precisely what women wanted them to to be. Female sexual selection ensured that we were somewhat taller, stronger, a bit more aggressive, tolerant of more risk, and more willing to sacrifice ourselves to protect our women and children. But not to the point where we became too dangerous and territorial (like most other large male mammals) that we could not co-operate, and that most would remain reliable long-term partners.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection_in_humans

    If you now propose to socially engineer all this ‘toxic masculinity’ out of us then I think you’re being quite ambitious. And while you expend much the article diagnosing what you as a woman sees wrong with men, and you promote the idea of ‘openness, dialog, empathy and equality’ (all traits mostly associated with the feminine) … there is still no open declaration of what you think the destination should be. It all sounds nice, but a transition to exactly what?

    It’s provocative to say it, but are you really sure you want men to become just like women?

    • te reo putake 4.1
      30 March 2019 at 2:01 pm

      Personally, I’m happy with the femininisation of the world, RL. I’ve advocated regularly that there should be a moratorium on men taking leadership roles for a decade or so, just to how how much the world improves in that time. After all, men have run the world for ever and look at the state of it. We’re a generation or so from extinction level climate change. Man made climate change, as it’s often correctly called.

      However, I think you’re being overly defensive. I read this post as being about going forward together. Of course, I accept that some men will struggle with the concept.

      • RedLogix 4.1.1
        30 March 2019 at 2:15 pm

        How would you define “leadership roles”? I think you mean roles confined to politics, maybe only women should be eligible to be Prime Minister. Or Cabinet, or all MP’s. What about Local Govt, same rules? Naturally we would have to dismiss all men from Boards of Directors throughout the public sector, and then logically all large private sector companies.

        Next up a ban on men being directors, managers, or supervisors anywhere. Probably shouldn’t let them own property as they might foolishly insist on being able to run the companies they think they still own. Root through the legal and medical profession to get rid of any dinosaurs, although we might have to tolerate them as engineers. Given their natural proclivity for meddling it would probably be wise to let them still run unimportant things like rugby and tramping clubs … but no guns. Then comes the delicious dilemma of whether they should be allowed to vote even.

        OK so I’m being a tad silly here, but still the serious question remains open … exactly where in this cascade of male exclusion from ‘leadership’ would you think the line might be drawn? And what makes you certain that’s where it would be drawn?

        Man made climate change, as it’s often correctly called.

        The product of an industrial civilisation that both men and women benefit from. Arguably women somewhat more than men, which is why where even having this discussion.

      • Poission 4.1.2
        30 March 2019 at 3:48 pm

        We’re a generation or so from extinction level climate change

        So you are forecasting sea level falling,remarkable please expand your hypothesis.

    • Rosemary McDonald 4.2
      30 March 2019 at 2:21 pm

      ‘…..and operate intelligently in large groups made us the most successful species ever. ”

      You think?

      You might have to define ‘success’….from a man’s point of view.

      Because this woman has little to no hope for our species long term…we’ve made such a total cock up so far.

    • Maggie 4.3
      30 March 2019 at 4:12 pm

      I really appreciate your comments Red, I know this is a tough conversation.

      You’re right. What right have I, as a woman, to sit there and point to what I believe is going wrong? And yes, if you’d written about the failings of women you’d have been eaten alive. I don’t know what to tell you except that I wrote it because my heart breaks. I have four girls and one son. When my son was growing up I had one over-arching hope for him; that he would live to be an old man. I’ve seen so many young men take their lives, so many men kill themselves and I’m desperate to understand why. I don’t know what else I can do except talk. I knew this article would make me an outlier for ‘betraying’ women and speaking out against society’s prescribed masculinity.

      I don’t believe anywhere in my article I said that men should become like women. What I said was that our gender roles shouldn’t be the primary criteria for identity. We are humans first and foremost. It is our humanity that binds us and I want to reach into that part of people and encourage people to define themselves however they want, not by some preset criteria forced upon you.

      When a persons worth is measured by subjective criteria like strength then there always has to be someone weaker for your strength to have meaning and so traditional models of masculinity require the counter to have relevance. No one should be allowed to find greatness on the back of another.

      I never said women had no agenda nor did I suggest women were helpless and frail. That is your own. I deliberately left out any critique of female roles because it’s irrelevant to the topic of this article which is about the increasing numbers of white men joining the neo-nazi movement.

      There is so much bullshit out there like women are natural nurturers when plenty of evidence shows men are just as nurturing, just in a different way. Fathers are reduced to work horses, deprived of a close and nurturing relationship with their kids because they have to work and it’s the kids that are missing out. If the provider role was shared equally between both parents then we get to have our cake and eat it too. Men would experience less pressure as sole providers and find worth and value for who they are as parents. Kids would have the benefit of dual parenting styles and more time with dad and everyone could benefit from a more flexible and adaptable work/home dynamic.

      • KJT 4.3.1
        30 March 2019 at 4:43 pm

        An excellent and thoughtful article.

        I’ve long wanted to Write about this, but finding the words is very hard.

        Thank you.

        Note the “but what about women? Comments.
        Women, rightly challenge the “but what about men?” Or “Not all men” comments when there are articles on women’s issues.

        Both genders have problems with our societal expectations and upbringing. Like the Generals fighting the last war.
        Lightening up on the impossibly contrary expectations of boys, will help both genders.

        I remember a comment from a women teacher, at at the school my kids went to, “They, boys, are fragile little things”.

        I totally agree about fathers being deprived of closeness with their children. I was very lucky to have a father, whose job allowed me to be a part of his world.

        • Maggie 4.3.1.1
          30 March 2019 at 5:50 pm

          Thank you KJT. My dad was very aloof, very ‘blokey’, and barely spoke to us but I remember this one time he let me put curlers in his hair. I was giddy with delight as I pinned his hair to pink rollers and fastened a bow on top. The funniest part was that a Labour MP came knocking on our door to ‘network’ for elections and dad went and answered the door all done up haha. He died when I was 14 and I’ve always wished I had more time with him.

          • KJT 4.3.1.1.1
            30 March 2019 at 9:59 pm

            I understand that the biggest regret that fathers have, according to a hospice nurse, is not having more time with their children

            Certainly i was well tied up with work while my children were growing up.
            With jobs where I was away a lot.
            Mostly too dangerous to have children with me, even if they were allowed.

            When my youngest was born I took up building so I could stay home. But the hours were still long.

            I never had the closeness with mine, that my father had with me.

            Very much looking forward to the time with the grandchildren, after retirement.

      • RedLogix 4.3.2
        30 March 2019 at 4:45 pm

        OK now you really have my attention; I sincerely hope we can make this conversation converge somewhere that makes sense to both of us. And I’d extend that invitation to anyone else who wants to participate; but please be careful, none of this is easy or obvious.

        I’m not even going to pretend to understand what happened to your son, except to say there are many reasons why a person stops loving life. An absence of meaning lies at the heart of all of them.

        I don’t believe anywhere in my article I said that men should become like women.

        No you didn’t say it explicitly; but when you then go on to define the path forward in feminine terms like empathy, openness and vulnerability, that come naturally to you as a woman, then it’s not a short leap of the imagination to assume that the destination you have in mind is feminine too.

        What I said was that our gender roles shouldn’t be the primary criteria for identity.

        Maybe this casts light on something many women often don’t truly understand about the men in their lives; that women have always had one crucial psychological advantage over men, that your lives are intrinsically, unconditionally meaningful because of the children you have, or potentially so. (My partner could not have children, and while she’s led an accomplished and purposeful life, nothing will ever quite fill that void and sense of loss for her.)

        By contrast men measure their lives by how useful they are, and is critically conditional on our performance. (It’s why for instance whenever we call someone a ‘loser’ it’s always a male figure that leaps to mind.) Yet as yourself and others have accurately pointed out, while the environment in which men might achieve success is radically shifting under us, the expectations on us are remain the same.

        In this I fully agree with you, it’s been radically destabilising for entire generations of young men the globe over.

        I think I’ll hit pause here; I want to think before I add more. But I am very appreciative of your intelligent and fair minded conversation here. Not to say, heartfelt.

        • Maggie 4.3.2.1
          30 March 2019 at 6:35 pm

          If yours was the only comment on this article then I would consider it a great success. Thank you for being so willing to discuss. I don’t pretend to have all the answers but I am curious. What if it could be different…

          You said:
          “your lives are intrinsically, unconditionally meaningful because of the children you have, or potentially so.”

          and

          “By contrast men measure their lives by how useful they are, and is critically conditional on our performance.”

          Both of these things are the same. Woman measure their lives by how useful they are, having children is critically conditional to their sense of worth. So it seems for both men and women being useful, doing something worthwhile is critical to our well-being. It is also our (men and women’s) source of pain when unfulfilled. It may seem as though women have the advantage but I think it’s like any role in that it’s not the act of producing a child but how well we as women raise a child that determines whether we feel fulfilled. Is it like that for men when they do work that they aren’t proud of or that doesn’t pay so well?

          I’m very aware of the fact that I have children therefore I can’t readily speak to not being able to have children but one of my daughters is unable to have kids and I see the deep ache settle in her eyes. It’s expected that women can pop out a baby and when that doesn’t happen women feel ‘less than’.

          I can’t speak to other women’s experiences of motherhood but for me personally being a mother made me feel utterly useless. Everything I had hoped to achieve as a mother I failed at. I burnt meal after meal, shrank clothes, missed appointments, bought the wrong gifts, treated them too soft or too hard, was too lenient or not lenient enough. I wanted my kids to grow up confidant and full of self-esteem so I spent a lot of time talking with them and neglected a lot of the basics of routine only to discover later on that love needs edges.

          Two of my kids have special needs so I was a stay at home single mother whilst they in school. I went back to work four years ago, started as a cleaner and within three years I had become a customer service and operations manager. I loved it and felt so fulfilled. For the first time in my life I felt “successful” because the stuff that I was doing worked. I was really good at something.

          I started to think, what if this whole ‘women are natural caregivers’ thing was a load of crock. What if men are taught not to be nurturing or women are taught to be considerate and nurturing?

          Epigenetics is interesting because it shows that experiences in one lifetime can switch gene expression off and on. What if hundreds of generations of being made to suppress certain emotions is why men are less communicative? What if a woman’s higher empathy is some sort of gene expression that stayed switched on due to repetitive conditioning? I’m curious as to how adaptive we really are.

          • KJT 4.3.2.1.1
            30 March 2019 at 10:43 pm

            I’ve come to the conclusion long ago that this whole one gender does this, and the other does that is more a product of societal expectations, than biology.

            With my parents, my father is the one who worked as a sort of social worker, and had all the empathy and time for people. Though also a quietly strong man in the best way. And, way ahead of his time, in many ways.

            My mother is a furiously intelligent high achiever, who struggled with being a stay at home mum. Which was, of course, what you did back then.

            Both would probably been happier if their roles could have been reversed, or shared.

            Myself I enjoy tough,dangerous and challenging stuff. All that traditional male thing. My wife loved being a stay at home mum, until the kids left home.
            But. That is just us.

            I’ve worked with women who like, and succeed in, the traditionally male jobs.

            And men, Teachers, and the like, who are nurturers and caregivers.

            I’ve done both. Teaching was probably the most challenging, of all my jobs.

            All of us need a sense of purpose, achievement and belonging.

            I wonder how much of the anti social behaviour from those in control, is because so many of them know, deep down, that their jobs are actually pointless. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/25/bullshit-jobs-a-theory-by-david-graeber-review

            And. Not being as good a parent as we want to be, seems to be a universal human experience.
            Having children with special needs is an extreme challenge, which can make even the best of us have their moments. 24 hours a day of almost insurmountable problems, will test anyone.

    • Maggie 4.4
      30 March 2019 at 4:48 pm

      “If you now propose to socially engineer all this ‘toxic masculinity’ out of us then I think you’re being quite ambitious.” Was it ambitious when the current model of masculinity was engineered in? And you have to admit it was. Religion is a tailor-made power suit that has shaped our culture and defined our values. Long after we spat out that poisonous fruit it’s stain is still on our tongues.

      ” And while you expend much the article diagnosing what you as a woman sees wrong with men, and you promote the idea of ‘openness, dialog, empathy and equality’ (all traits mostly associated with the feminine)” Does me being a woman mean I can’t possibly have insight? Men have been ‘diagnosing’ women for thousands of years and still do. Look at Trump’s team and there ‘diagnosis’ that easy access to birth control is bad because women will have “risky sex”. How about female genital mutilation as a male diagnosis and treatment of women’s lust? You can’t possibly through down that card and keep a straight face. As I’ve said before, what I know of men is that they’re adventurous and brave, willing to venture into the unknown and yet when presented with this challenge they sit back and say it’s too hard.

      ” … there is still no open declaration of what you think the destination should be. It all sounds nice, but a transition to exactly what?” I don’t know. What I hope is that men will stop killing themselves in such extraordinary numbers, that boys will be less inclined to grab a semi-automatic and murder innocent people, that men and women will stop ripping each other to pieces, that men and women will feel purposeful, worthy and valued for who they are as people.

  5. Jenny - How to get there? 5
    30 March 2019 at 2:22 pm

    Leading New Zealand Trade Unionist Mike Treen, calls on us to challenge all forms of bigotry that target anyone for their race, religion, ethnicity, sex or gender.

    First published on the Dailyblog March 18 and reprinted below by the Australian Green Left Weekly on the 29th, now a bit dated as Treen called for a day of rememberance a call he restated on March 22. Treen’s call was heeded. But in his appeal to the nation, Treen called on us all to do more, much more.

    New Zealand: Islamophobia is a weapon of the 1%
    Mike Treen
    Green Left Weekly, March 29, 2019
    Issue 1215

    https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/new-zealand-islamophobia-weapon-1?fbclid=IwAR3ZcbNUKTB7yj9-JDKawNDK13oeJrYsAl3Gvh8Fc3o0y51TNUWYGqWKmKc

    • Dennis Frank 5.1
      30 March 2019 at 5:00 pm

      Poor man, he get’s so confused. Simple-minded guys who feel threatened by Islam don’t feel that way because the 1% told them to. They feel that way because they don’t like their culture invaded by lots of people with an alien belief system, some of whom are lethal!

      Yes, the 1% are behind the neoliberal agenda that drives the govts of the left & right who produce excessive immigration. No, simple-minded guys can’t do such sophisticated linkage of cause & effect. They know an enemy when they see one. They know enemies must be eliminated. Simple.

      • Chris T 5.1.1
        30 March 2019 at 6:08 pm

        Did you just blame the atrocity in ChCh on an entire sex?

        That is a new level of stupid.

        • Rapunzel 5.1.1.1
          30 March 2019 at 6:12 pm

          No, not an entire sex, just anyone who can be driven by the “1%”, think about it!

          • Chris T 5.1.1.1.1
            30 March 2019 at 6:21 pm

            The whole thing is a bit silly to me.

            It was one bloke from Aus and we have had 2 mass shootings in our modern history.

            It isn’t any sort of plague of white supremacy.

            Yes blokes are more aggressive than women, hence the violent stuff being done by blokes, but I have heard plenty of women on talk back slagging of everything from Maori to Islamists (which is a bloody religion by the way, not a race). They are just less likely to do anything violent about their stupid biases.

            Are we going to say we should get rid of female toxicity because more women kill new borns?

            And the white bit is stupid.

            The Mongrel mob only recently ditched the swastikas ffs

            • Rapunzel 5.1.1.1.1.1
              30 March 2019 at 6:39 pm

              Whoa, well not so much whoa as in stop, but wow that one suggestion, that the group you think in its entirety needs protection should not be quite so easily influenced by the “1%”, set of a series of switches with you over a range of issues that you have a very personal beef over it seems.

              • Chris T …
                30 March 2019 at 6:45 pm

                Not really

                I just find the over analysis and having to blame groups a bit silly, when it gets bigger than a bunch of arsehole racist dudes, slightly irritating

                Like the need to blame “male toxicity” over some idiot who had some stupid hatred….but no…it needs to be “white” males….blah blah blah

                • Rapunzel …
                  30 March 2019 at 7:06 pm

                  Basically that’s what people do and have always done, personally I think steroids had a big part to play in the final tip over the edge of this particular sad, mad person. Then raising other wider issues, while not at all out of bounds, was down to you and a little bit weird in context.

                  • Chris T …
                    30 March 2019 at 7:11 pm

                    Probably a fair point.

                    Apologies for a moment of being irritated with all the blame gaming going on atm.

                    You are right, it is human nature.

                    Carry on people!! I shall sachet away.

                    🙂

            • Skunk Weed 5.1.1.1.1.2
              30 March 2019 at 7:51 pm

              Evidently there were 5 x people involved however very little has been released to the Press and there are 250 detectives and investigators working on the case worldwide. Time will tell and what is released to the General Public who knows ?

        • Dennis Frank 5.1.1.2
          30 March 2019 at 6:56 pm

          Don’t be silly Chris. Guys like the shooter & his social ecosystem are a tiny proportion of all males. “Simple-minded guys who feel threatened by Islam”! Are you meaning to imply that group is so big in your opinion that it can be equated with all males?? Then say so!

    • Jenny - How to get there? 5.2
      31 March 2019 at 12:21 pm

      ‘
      MAGA hat-wearing man shows up at New Zealand massacre vigil
      https://abc13.com/society/maga-hat-wearing-man-shows-up-at-new-zealand-massacre-vigil/5208377/

      Mar 20, 2019 … ‘MAGA’ HAT VS. VIGIL: People who were at the peaceful prayer recalled the person saying the vigil was “meaningless.”

      https://www.indy100.com/article/new-zealand-mosque-shooting-vigil-maga-hat-trump-video-toronto-8831651

      The attacker who carried out the massacre in Christchurch had cited Trump has an inspiration for him and a ‘symbol of white identity.’

      Footage of the man and his confrontation with others paying their respects has since been widely shared online and greeted with overwhelming condemnation.

      https://twitter.com/raneemayoub/status/1107832539706589185?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fd-29211238872242982881.ampproject.net%2F1903141753530%2Fframe.html

  6. WILD KATIPO 6
    30 March 2019 at 2:31 pm

    Hehehee…. two words.

    GLOBALIZATION

    NEO LIBERALISM.

    There ya go.

    If you really want to know why these guys are pissed off its because so many cannot provide for their family’s on low wages , buy a house or have any secure future because many semi skilled / unskilled jobs have been relocated to overseas and at the same time our own domestic markets have been flooded by cheap sweat shop style produce.

    And guess what ?!!?

    The people of this country not only voted for it , – but kept on supporting it for over 3 decades !!!

    Meanwhile all the woke Left could ever do ( or wanted to do ) was rant on about land rights for rainbow whales or any other myriad number of ridiculous identity politics issues.

    And now there’s blowback in the form of these young guys starting to be attracted to these sorts of groups. Whether its young Maoris joining gangs or white NZ’ers joining the skinheads.

    BLAME YOURSELVES BECAUSE YOU DID IT TO YOURSELVES .

    AND YOU DIDN’T GIVE A FUCK UNTIL THE CHICKENS CAME HOME TO ROOST.

    New Right Fight – Who are the New Right?
    http://www.newrightfight.co.nz/pageA.html

    Home Brew – ‘LISTEN TO US’ – YouTube

    You Arseholes.

  7. Blazer 7
    30 March 2019 at 2:45 pm

    “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”-Thoreau….sums it up.

    • Dennis Frank 7.1
      30 March 2019 at 3:14 pm

      You bet! Been there, done that long enough. Extricating oneself requires figuring out the how. Some get lucky, but most have to work hard at it.

    • WILD KATIPO 7.2
      30 March 2019 at 3:26 pm

      Nah , so much of it is ( at least in this era) the woke Lefts rush to bring down Patriarchal society’s and replace it with a Matriarchal one . So much of it is to tear down a prosperous perceived ‘west’ and redistribute it around the globe.

      All good altruistic goals in of themselves , – but it went overboard. Countless hundreds of thousands of leftist globalists writing and agitating and making good copy and even better profits railing against capitalism instead of neo liberalism , – playing right into the new right globalists hands. Useful fools. The woke Left is as bad as the far Right. Both are as culpable. In fact both are the same wings of the same globalist beast. There is no difference.

      Instead of dealing with root economic causes and providing a way out for young guys finding their feet , – its just a whole heap easier to criticize their arses off while feathering their own greedy shitty neo liberal capitalist nests and point fingers. Instead of providing a path of success they provide a path of obstacles. Instead of being balanced they load up one sector of young males and demonize them. We see it all in our prisons with young Maoris. Now its the white boys turn to get fucked over and generalized against.

      So while all the media stooges are getting us all searching our navels over white supremacists , their having a good laugh and enjoying their ratings. Goebbels would have been proud. Divide and conquer .If people really wish to examine the origins of why our young guys commit suicide, join gangs or join negative political movements they might start by looking at the very society they had a hand in creating.

      Stop the finger pointing , look in the mirror and point those fingers back at themselves for a change.

      • Rae 7.2.1
        31 March 2019 at 9:52 pm

        The people of the world will eventually globalize, there is nothing surer. We have gone from village to town, town to county, county to city, city to country, country to allied countries, eventually we will globalize as it follows quite naturally from just what we do. The only question remaining is what will it look like.

    • Sabine 7.3
      30 March 2019 at 10:00 pm

      Henry David Thoreau July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862

      words spoken at a time where women were chattel, black man were slaves and black women slaves were raped to birth slaves, only white man could hold property, vote and be counted as a full human being.

      Even today, men and women live lives of quiet desperation, even here in dear NZ.

      • Blazer 7.3.1
        31 March 2019 at 9:09 am

        what a sexist muppet Thoreau was, not to acknowledge that women lead lives of quiet desperation….too!

        • Sabine 7.3.1.1
          31 March 2019 at 9:51 am

          well no i would not go so far.

          But is it not interesting that we don’t seem to have yet a word in the English language that we use for humans, and that it seems the default is always ‘men’.

          which btw is similar in french where if any group of women is called “elle” but if a man were to join that group it would be called ‘ils’ for the masculine.

          while in German the default for any group of people is ‘Sie’ which is feminine, and men becomes Mensch – which is neutral.

          And yes, is it not interesting that he did not say Human, or People, or Mankind, but men. So even with all his good attention, abolitionist, a bit of an anarchist, gifted writer etc he might just have been that tiny bit sexist – a child of his time really.. 🙂 Cause if life was hard for men in the time of his life, it was harder for all others who did not look like him.

  8. Stuart Munro. 8
    30 March 2019 at 2:45 pm

    Well I think you’ve not only defined most of the problem, but have something in the way of a solution.

    When we consider someone like the Christchurch shooter, we are looking at an instance of longterm loss of potential to our country. I don’t know when he found that he wasn’t getting anywhere, and that the powers who in principle ought to have represented him seemed to him to be more concerned with minority interests than his, but I think that probably lies at the root of his pathology.

    That is not to say there are not other, possibly more deserving recipients of support. That is not a triage I want to perform however – if people require help, if the economic levers are not serving them, they have a right to expect something to be done about it.

    Really this is the ultimate outcome of neoliberalism – many of us are living from day to day and going nowhere, which gives the lie to Treasury assertions of economic competence and assumptions that BAU is in any way sustainable.

    • Skunk Weed 8.1
      30 March 2019 at 7:57 pm

      The ChCh Muslim Shooter has been “Living the Life of Riley” after inheriting $500k from his father, travelling the world, following his Alt – Right interests, doesn’t appear to have done a hell of a lot of work and doesn’t appear to have got his hands dirty ?

      Interesting to see who has been pressing his buttons ?

      • Stuart Munro. 8.1.1
        30 March 2019 at 8:30 pm

        So it seems. The point at which he became vulnerable to radicalization will have occurred somewhat earlier however.

        The transition from school to work is one obvious point, people who do not navigate it successfully, especially young men, are at risk of commencing a life of crime.

        As neoliberalism smashed through the country like a wrecking ball, how many doors were slammed in his face I wonder. Under that paradigm he has no cause for complaint – it’s supposedly healthy competition – not that its advocates ever had to compete for anything in their lives.

    • Incognito 8.2
      30 March 2019 at 10:07 pm

      Well I think you’ve not only defined most of the problem, but have something in the way of a solution.

      Defining the problem is but one step to understanding it and formulating a possible solution.

      All human behaviours are on a spectrum or scale if you like. They are the outcomes of inner processes that occur on a spectrum too.

      We are positioned somewhere along all those spectrums and bounce around a wee bit like a particle vibrating and oscillating in a multi-dimensional force field. RedLogix @ 9.3.2 describes it as “a complex mutually interdependent dance” of “biology, evolution, psychology, mythology and social behaviours [and spirituality/religion]”.

      There’s no binary position and any attempt to reduce humans and the complexity of human behaviour into simplistic categories is fatally flawed. One cannot be just good or bad, a terrorist or a non-terrorist, for example. The same applies, of course, to emotions and feelings. Even when clinically depressed one can and does have good moments.

      To understand why some people go off the road is to map, as it were, their trajectory along the spectrums. How do they go from bouncing around in one confined space to ending up in another space where they harm themselves and/or others?

      If you agree with the premise of “a complex mutually interdependent dance” of “biology, evolution, psychology, mythology and social behaviours [and spirituality/religion]” then you will also appreciate that this is not a problem that can be reduced and solved by reductionist thinking , far from it. It points to a multidisciplinary multi-pronged and collaborative approach and I don’t think we are quite ready for this. One thing I do know is that the internet can be a very useful and powerful tool to tackle this issue, which is ironic. In essence, this is what we’re trying to right here, right now on TS.

      • Stuart Munro. 8.2.1
        30 March 2019 at 10:38 pm

        It would be interesting indeed to see something akin to a multivariate analysis of radicalizing influences among multiple subjects.

        “are there important contextual, personal, ideological, or experiential differences between radicals who commit violent acts and those who do not?”

        “a descriptive comparison of individuals in the PIRUS data shows that with the exception of participation in pre-radicalization criminal activities, many regularly highlighted radicalization warning indicators, such as economic deprivation and low educational attainment, are not more common among extremists than they are for the general population.”

        This latter with the caution that the study’s parameters for deprivation, and those of the subjects, are not necessarily closely aligned.

        https://www.start.umd.edu/pubs/START_NIJ_EmpiricalAssessmentofDomesticRadicalizationFinalReport_Dec2016_0.pdf

        • Incognito 8.2.1.1
          30 March 2019 at 11:13 pm

          Yes, something along these lines but pulling in a much wider range of data. It will get progressively harder, and fuzzier, with psycho-emotional variables that can only be approximated by crude surrogates.

  9. Ad 9
    30 March 2019 at 3:18 pm

    Much of the demand for change within the post is down to luck.
    Luck in the kind of leadership that rises up.

    Racism would not rise so fast if specific political leaders didn’t rise up and actively encourage it. Smart, agile leaders know how to maximize the moment into a kairos.

    We’re lucky to have a leader rise in New Zealand who was perfectly built for the occasion. Ardern also signalled before the massacre that the 2019 Budget would be a mental health budget in volumes of resource. Wierdly synchronous, which really means lucky.

    And as with the Clark-Bradford bill which outlawed beating your kids as punishment, it takes female leaders to stand up and expect more of men. There’s no male version of the feminist revolution, which means long term change to gender-patterned violence will still come from women.

    Clark started this shift. Ardern will accelerate it – and will use the historical rupture we’ve had to press it.

    I personally don’t believe too much in this “dialogue, openness, and empathy” horseshit for changing men. Works a bit, but only a little.

    Men are pack creatures that alter according to their leaders.

    This axial moment simply needs the luck of good leaders who pound their values into everyone’s brains by every instrument they’re skilled to wield. That, and a half-decent funded mental health system are the likely starters for change.

    • RedLogix 9.1
      30 March 2019 at 3:24 pm

      I think that’s pretty much what I should have said up above at 2.3.

      While the world has changed dramatically for women, it hasn’t for men. The roles and expectations placed on us are much the same as they ever were; they just come with a bit more comfort and security these days.

      • marty mars 9.1.1
        30 March 2019 at 3:30 pm

        Rubbish – the world hasn’t changed for some men who refuse to change. Meanwhile the men that have grown up are getting in and helping to build a great society. Get off your pity pose and put your shoulder into it.

        • RedLogix 9.1.1.1
          30 March 2019 at 3:50 pm

          Given the sly abuse, anger, aggression and manipulative games you play here, excuse me if I don’t take your ideas on how to ‘change for a better world’ too seriously.

          • WILD KATIPO 9.1.1.1.1
            30 March 2019 at 4:00 pm

            Marty’s a REAL MAN.

            He’s all grown up and getting in and helping to build his great society.

            He just doesn’t give a fuck about NZ’s young males suicide rates though. Great advertisement for the woke Left , is our marty.

            • marty mars 9.1.1.1.1.1
              30 March 2019 at 4:23 pm

              Trying to shame me again lol – must be time for a video from you that doesn’t relate to anything… 3, 2, 1

              • WILD KATIPO …
                30 March 2019 at 4:30 pm

                Not trying to shame you mate – you do a more than an adequate job of shaming yourself. And if you bite that’s your problem.

                • marty mars …
                  30 March 2019 at 5:44 pm

                  lol – pity you can’t fight the real enemy with as much vigour and passion as you hate on me – you are compromised.

            • greywarshark 9.1.1.1.1.2
              30 March 2019 at 11:58 pm

              Try a little more kindness perhaps. Aggressive comments like that indicate either a lack of tolerance for someone’s different style or the attitude of a ‘fuck you I’ll say what I think’ approach. A balance between making a less outspoken, critical comment but not declining to a squashy approach of ‘we must not be too critical it isn’t fair, it isn’t nice’, that is more likely to come from women.

          • marty mars 9.1.1.1.2
            30 March 2019 at 4:21 pm

            More insults but very little content – bit like your personality eh red. I’ve been quite direct on these topics.

            • WILD KATIPO 9.1.1.1.2.1
              30 March 2019 at 4:26 pm

              Mate I don’t recall you ever being direct in any topic,- just parroting what is acceptable among your woke Left rants you picked up from the latest blog from any number of far Left socialist diatribes.

              And when challenged and then finally run to ground and voided because you have no answer you always do the same:

              Drag out the one liner schoolboy humor put downs.

            • RedLogix 9.1.1.1.2.2
              30 March 2019 at 5:08 pm

              @marty

              The ideologically predictable and boringly angry marty is tiresome. I think I’ve said this before; I wan’t to hear from the real marty, the one who speaks from his own life and his own thoughts.

              The one I’m hoping can teach me something.

              • marty mars …
                30 March 2019 at 5:40 pm

                what you want is of no concern to me – I fight white supremacists – that’s all you need to know.

                • The Al1en …
                  30 March 2019 at 5:44 pm

                  That’s going to upset the hug a nazi while you’re talking it out with them brigade.

                  • marty mars …
                    30 March 2019 at 6:18 pm

                    lol Yeah they’ll be all a spluttering – just white noise really – and of no consequence for me or anyone fighting their mates or their memes.

                    • The Al1en …
                      30 March 2019 at 6:31 pm

                      Yep, the tragedy, and public outcry, make this the perfect time to glove up and put the metaphoric steel toe caps on to deal with racists once and for all.

                • WILD KATIPO …
                  30 March 2019 at 5:56 pm

                  … ‘ I fight white supremacists – that’s all you need to know ‘….

                  How droll.

                  Such a crusader. I’m impressed. What heroism. What dedication to the cause. So long as they’re white you’ll fight em. Anyone else is safe from the great marty mars…. Too bad about the bias, there chap.

      • Ad 9.1.2
        30 March 2019 at 3:33 pm

        You were pretty good on religion yesterday.

        I should be able to join in a bit more in May.

    • Rosemary McDonald 9.2
      30 March 2019 at 3:37 pm

      “….simply needs the luck of good leaders who pound their values into everyone’s brains by every instrument they’re skilled to wield. ”

      How about re-writing that without the violent terminology?

      Or would that require too much in the way of empathetic horseshit?

      And y’all wonder why we womens are not all happy- clappy as at how well the old ‘feminist revolution’ is panning out.

      You might be right Ad, and calm and reasoned dialogue is not going to turn the Good Ship of Blokedom around to a course that will ensure survival of the species.

      Mayhap we womens expectations were just too high.

      • Ad 9.2.1
        30 March 2019 at 3:46 pm

        Women’s expectations are far too high, but then, that’s what leadership looks like.
        it’s not easy, but it’s working.

      • Sabine 9.2.2
        30 March 2019 at 10:04 pm

        yep how dare we wish for ‘equality’. Just to be considered as fully human as men, with the right to education, access to jobs, freedom to move without chaperones and male ownership. 🙂

        surely the 1850 or even the 1950 weren’t that bad. Right?

    • Dennis Frank 9.3
      30 March 2019 at 3:51 pm

      “Men are pack creatures that alter according to their leaders.” That’s a key point. Relevant to RL’s theme about how the biology of sex produces behaviour. Evolutionary psychology is an academic field that has seen dramatic growth since the nineties. Political psychology will be informed by all that work (whenever it finally gets developed).

      Could be trite to say `hormones are us’ but every time I get confounded by the animal behaviour of other guys it strikes me as a truism.

      • Ad 9.3.1
        30 March 2019 at 3:53 pm

        I’m not particularly determinist on the point.

        Men just have learned preferences for engagement, and maybe a few coded gene triggers that assist a bit.
        Nothing more really.

      • RedLogix 9.3.2
        30 March 2019 at 4:03 pm

        Just to leap in before anyone pulls the ‘biological essentialism’ thing on me; I very much see biology, evolution, psychology, mythology and social behaviours as a complex mutually interdependent dance.

        And at the same time I believe in God. Sorry if that’s excessively messy.

      • Maggie 9.3.3
        30 March 2019 at 5:18 pm

        The “biology of sex determines behaviour” is a simplistic argument that fails to account for all the ‘interfering’ we humans have done. It’s become impossible to untangle basic biological evolution from epigenetic changes brought about by experiences and then to disentangle that mess from enculturation.

        We have no comparison, no human race that hasn’t been exposed to the kinds of generational conditioning we have. How can we possibly say what men and women would behave like if they had not been conditioned as they have? Our biology, our genes don’t simply get passed along unaltered by our experiences. Evolutionary psychology is interesting but by no means an exact science. Not every characteristic we see today is here because it’s beneficial.

        The criteria for natural selection is survival based and environmentally dependent. If a characteristic does not decrease our chances of survival it will continue (unless and until it mutates or no longer suits our environment).
        The argument of evolution as proof of behaviour kinda falls over when we look at beauty. Whilst it’s true our brain is hard wired to see patterns (and therefore prefer symmetrical faces) aesthetic value is determined by culture not biology.
        There is no genetic advantage to beauty and in fact, beauty in this current environment is harmful to survival. Nature favours the bland because the ordinary looking don’t garner predatory attention; they don’t stand out. Beautiful women are more likely to be raped and murdered, less likely to have children due to their high social status and career opportunities, and have more choices for mates yet the behaviour persists.

        • Grant 9.3.3.1
          30 March 2019 at 5:24 pm

          “Beautiful women are more likely to be raped and murdered, less likely to have children due to their high social status and career opportunities, and have more choices for mates yet the behaviour persists.”

          Surely in earlier times more beautiful women were taken as wives by powerful polygamous men or pressed into the harems of successful conquerors where their genes were perpetuated in a class of people who were likely to be able to continue perpetuating those genes?

          • Maggie 9.3.3.1.1
            30 March 2019 at 5:35 pm

            Yes they were but their popularity as wives didn’t balance out those who were kept as concubines or prostitutes. Only the wives got to have children (not exclusively of course) where as the pregnancies of concubines and prostitutes were often terminated or dealt with by means of infanticide, especially when the baby was female.

            • Grant 9.3.3.1.1.1
              30 March 2019 at 6:00 pm

              But ‘looks’ are a product of genes inherited from the male parent as well. So a beautiful concubine could have male children inheriting her regular features which were then passed back to females in subsequent generations. Also, just because a good looking woman was raped or forced into marriage against her will didn’t mean her genes weren’t passed on. I think people tend to underestimate some of this stuff. I can’t remember the numbers but there are supposed to be a huge number of people descended from Ghengis Khan largely as a product of his huge harem. Hence one of the reasons there are so many people surnamed Khan? I’m not point scoring here. Picture a quizzical expression..

              • Maggie …
                30 March 2019 at 7:11 pm

                Haha, don’t worry, I’m more interested in the questions than the point scoring. It’s really fascinating when you dig into it.

                The surname Khan is common because it was originally a title, not because he fathered so many. I don’t think they took surnames in the same manner we do now.
                There isn’t a single gene or even a cluster of genes that determine attractiveness. Symmetry is a big factor in being considered attractive but what is considered attractive in a female may not be in a male. Also, hormones influence bone structure so an attractive female who has a male child may not express her genes in the same way if the child had been female.
                I know rape doesn’t exclude genes being passed on, it’s just that with concubine and prostitutes many of their offspring never lived to pass on the genes.

                • Grant …
                  30 March 2019 at 7:37 pm

                  Hmmm. As I say I can’t remember the references and won’t go looking now but not sure all your assertions are correct. khan was indeed a title but it largely devolved to those descended from Ghengis even if in much later generations it was no more than a name. I’m fairly certain that genetic studies have proven the link. The same genetic studies have been used to show that Ghengis and his descendants who were Khans with harems of their own for some generations have contributed much more genetic material to the populations of the old khanates than any ordinary man would have. As for looks, sure, hormones express the genes differently in male and female but in ‘anecdatal’ Terms I’ve seen too many good looking blonde men with good looking blonde daughters and like ways mums with sons to be able to accept that the genes of one haven’t affected the looks of the other. And ‘beauty ‘ may be a cultural artefact but it usually retains some consistent features across different cultures. Most of the women chosen for the Khans Harems would, I’m fairly sure have been regarded as good looking by both conquering and conquered.
                  PS. Also fairly sure I’ve read that not only the khans trophy women but the total of all the women taken as prizes by his soldiers were sufficient to change the phenotype of the Mongol people.

                  • Maggie …
                    30 March 2019 at 7:57 pm

                    I found the study. Yes, Genghis has shitloads of offspring and I didn’t deny that. I just haven’t seen anything that links the genetics to the modern day proliferation of Khan (not that there isn’t one).

                    ” I’ve seen too many good looking blonde men with good looking blonde daughters and like ways mums with sons to be able to accept that the genes of one haven’t affected the looks of the other.”

                    I think you’ve misunderstood what I said. I never said that attractiveness isn’t passed on to offspring. I said that our obsession with aesthetics is culturally based, not genetically based.

              • Blazer …
                30 March 2019 at 9:13 pm

                ‘You remember that it was Isadora Duncan, the dancer, who said to Bernard Shaw, “Would it not be wonderful if we could have a child who had your brains and my beauty?” His reply was, “Yes, but supposing it had your brains and my beauty!”

          • Blazer 9.3.3.1.2
            30 March 2019 at 9:15 pm

            ‘It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But… it is better to be good than to be ugly.’ Oscar Wilde

        • Dennis Frank 9.3.3.2
          30 March 2019 at 5:39 pm

          I mostly agree. I was advocating something different to biological determinism as a general rule. Something more nuanced. I could simplify it via `simple-minded guys are more likely to react violently to threats due to their animal nature’. That shifts the question of why their psyche discounts the peaceful co-existence ethos provided to them as an option by our culture to one side.

          I’m not an expert on the triune-brain theory, but if `fight or flight’ is a reflex decision made by the reptilian brain, I can see why it may short-circuit mammalian control, and the overall executive control of the neocortex, and take over the whole organism. So that the hormones service the primary motivation, I mean. Just guessing though…

          • Maggie 9.3.3.2.1
            30 March 2019 at 7:37 pm

            I’ve never heard of truine-brain theory. I’ll have to do some reading because it looks interesting.
            But even so, I don’t really see how the fight ot flight response play into some guy making a calculated decision to become a neo-nazi. I think it’s more likely that he doesn’t perceive a peaceful co-existence as an option, especially when it doesn’t feed his need for value and purpose.

            It’s an intelligent argument you make and actually kinda makes my point. At what point can we say it’s biological, learned or both?

            Or perhaps the question should be is it even relevant?

            • Dennis Frank 9.3.3.2.1.1
              30 March 2019 at 7:55 pm

              I’m not sure. Fight or flight is normally described as an instant reflex, so I’m stretching that point too far probably – unless there’s an associated sub-routine in the brain that applies the same logic in the longer term.

              Again I have to make the point that social psychologists are avoiding their social responsibility to help us out with this. They seem to think they have no relevant expertise. Why do we spend taxpayer money training them then? Nigel Latta must be devising his next career move as entertainer…

              • Maggie …
                30 March 2019 at 8:12 pm

                Haha, I forgot about him.

                Actually, that fight or flight comment got me thinking that perhaps our conscious behaviour follows a rough path in line with our reflexive behaviour so that if a guy reacts to, say, a surprise attack by fleeing that he’s more like to be non-confrontational in other aspects of his life whilst a fight reflexive guy is more likely to confront.

                I wouldn’t worry about stretching points too far. It’s good to push at mental limits to see where they take us.
                This conversation is a good example. I love it when conversations about one thing seed my mind with further curiosities.

                I was a bit of a terror as a kid – too curious for my own good. I got this beautiful doll for xmas one year and she had gorgeous brown eyes that closed when you laid her down. I was so curious as to how they worked I cut her head open to have a look. She never looked at me the same after that.

                • Dennis Frank …
                  30 March 2019 at 8:41 pm

                  🤦‍ Somewhat mechanistic!

                  I was usually elsewhere. Think they call it dissociated nowadays. Day-dreaming, they called it then. But I recall before adolescence becoming aware that I had a powerful learning motivation. I started reading adult books aged 7 – the second one was 500 pages and took me two weeks reading each day after school.

                  The following year I read Pilgrim’s Progress, which was real hard. I discovered why after I turned 50 when I read somewhere that it was written in 17th century English. By a puritan. I suspect I was the only 8 year old in Aotearoa who read an entire book of antique religious propaganda. Maybe the whole world, even!

                  • WeTheBleeple …
                    31 March 2019 at 8:34 am

                    Bullshit. I was working through the encyclopaedia and engineering manuals at that age and had my third year as merit student in scripture union.

                    Time you got over yourself.

                    • Dennis Frank …
                      31 March 2019 at 8:55 am

                      Sad that it didn’t do you any good then, eh? Still petty. Still mean-spirited. Still unable to grow up…. 🙄

                  • Maggie …
                    31 March 2019 at 10:58 am

                    Books weren’t a priority in my house. I think I had a few Nancy Drew books but that was it. School wasn’t much of a priority either. I wish I’d been able to go to uni but it wasn’t even talked about at home. My higher education consists of a pre-trade certificate in automotive mechanics.

                    • Dennis Frank …
                      31 March 2019 at 11:32 am

                      Actually, they weren’t a priority in mine either. I found a row on the mantel-piece over the fireplace, read most there. The first four Tarzan books, faded little old hard-covers from a century ago, were the best! Never saw anyone but me reading any of those (I had three little brothers). Never saw my father read a book in his entire life, so much for parental role models for guys…

                      So I was right about your mechanistic inclination, eh? I must say, you have transcended that considerably! But, operating in a vastly deeper social context since then, how has it played out?

                  • Maggie …
                    31 March 2019 at 5:58 pm

                    I loved working on cars, loved figuring out how things work and how to fix it when they break but unfortunately I entered a male-dominated industry too early and found a lot of resistance to my presence. I was one of only two female mechanics in Christchurch (and the South Island I believe) and experienced a fair bit of harassment. The guys would piss in my toolbox, park a car in my bay and “lose” the keys to hold me up. The uniform was a shirt and pants; the shirt designed for the flat chest of a man and doing up the highest button still meant you could see my boobs when I bent over to work on cars. The foreman refused to let me wear a t-shirt under my shirt and they’d regularly get me to install new batteries on drive-in customers and stand opposite me to get the best view. I didn’t complain because I figured they’d settle down eventually but they didn’t and I got fired because “I needed to be home with my kids, not mucking about trying to prove something.”.

                    Being an operations manager was similar to being a mechanic in that it’s about making sure all the systems are working as they’re supposed to, spotting and preventing problems to ensure the business machine is fit for purpose.

                    • Dennis Frank …
                      31 March 2019 at 6:22 pm

                      Sounds like the 1980s. I share your interest in operating human systems, wondering if you’ve tried applying that organisational skill in politics? I have. But back before then I was given an ops supervisor job after my first stint making television commercials. Recall having 14 people who I had to coordinate, for a year. Went well.

            • WeTheBleeple 9.3.3.2.1.2
              31 March 2019 at 8:32 am

              Hmmm. Men trying to distance themselves from men in general… 😉

              “simple-minded guys are more likely to react violently to threats due to their animal nature”

              Simpering minded guys are more likely to stir shit and push people to breaking point resulting in violence in which they can then play victim and claim the high ground.

              Our leaders are mostly a pack of simpering minded people telling the rest of us we’re simple. White men haven’t admitted to a single mistake since Adam. Cowards mostly.

              Men who pre-plan and train for a mass murder event are not acting on hormones, or being alpha, or any of that shit. They’ve got a serious grudge and an ego built of narcissism and self-entitlement.

              Where else do we find abhorrent self-entitlement to the detriment of everyone else, a belief in this entitlement and moral superiority…

              Was it his half million inheritance perhaps, causing economic anxiety?

              Was it his well to do neighborhood?

              How about all the support from family and work colleagues he had available?

              Was a world cruise too much for the sensitive soul?

              What, of these ingredients, led to such levels of narcissism and entitlement?

              Did he choose to be a monster before he found memes to fit his agenda…

              Did his society cheer him on in all but the penultimate act (ultimate being life in solitary)?

              When I went to Australia (20 years back) only the poor mixed.

              Men are frightened to be seen as men. Just use a violent sentence they all fall about claiming damage. How the hell are our youth meant to identify with such mealy mouthed two faced nonsense.

              Violent by law decree, violence by property boundary. Violence by slander, by shit post, by police force, by meme.

              But, try call them fuckwits, watch the victim claims. The pile on of outraged old white people. The absolute hypocrisy.

              I’d hazard a guess incongruity is the norm. Anyone fancying themselves as the good guys while persecuting other races/classes in a slow methodical squeezing of their production and resources…

              Actually quite fucked in the head, aye.

              Where are the real role models. This lot are pathetic.

        • KJT 9.3.3.3
          30 March 2019 at 10:17 pm

          Scientists are still arguing about nature or nurture.

          They are too interdependent to get a good handle on it.

          However the beauty argument falls down a bit, when you see how the definition of ‘attractive” changes so much with times and cultures.

          The only long term agreement seems to be on markers of health.

          In the middle ages, beautiful was anyone who was, immune to smallpox.

      • greywarshark 9.3.4
        31 March 2019 at 12:02 am

        I think women get into a lot of groupthink. You wouldn’t call it ‘pack creatures’.

    • Stuart Munro. 9.4
      30 March 2019 at 5:03 pm

      “Clark started this shift.”

      You know what I remember about Clark? She came in after the black decade under Shipley, and expectations were that she would reverse some of her most egregious impositions.

      But…

      Relief for the poor? Nope.

      Relief for those rendered jobless by Rogergnomic reforms? Not a sausage.

      Actual job generating developmentalist policy? Too hard.

      And then Labour put a plastic card in my mail box claiming to under promise and over deliver. The arrogance!

      • WILD KATIPO 9.4.1
        30 March 2019 at 5:10 pm

        Clarke, – the apologist for Roger Douglas, Jenny Shipley and Ruth Richardson.

        • Anne 9.4.1.1
          30 March 2019 at 7:54 pm

          Wrong WK.
          Helen Clark despised their politics. I personally knew her. The truth was… she could go no faster than the voters would allow and at that time too many of them were still smitten with neo-liberalism. Had she not taken heed of that, we would have had 15 years of National rule with Don Brash becoming prime-minister at some point. God knows where that would have left us.

          • Rosemary McDonald 9.4.1.1.1
            30 March 2019 at 9:32 pm

            ” The truth was… she could go no faster than the voters would allow and at that time too many of them were still smitten with neo-liberalism.”

            Errr…I don’t recall there being much of an alternative. It was either Blue Neo-lib or Red Neo-lib or the mishmash of ideological oneupmanship that was the rest.

            Helen Clark had a chance to begin undoing what her political ancestors had entrenched….she just dug in.

            • Anne 9.4.1.1.1.1
              31 March 2019 at 11:01 am

              Sorry Rosemary @ 9.4.1.1.1 but you are wrong. She was not a full on proponent of neoliberal philosophy. She railed hard against the Douglas led Neo-libs to the point when it became very nasty. Some would not have survived the ordeal she was put through, but Helen held her ground and ended up stronger than ever.

              As PM, she was stymied by a coalition party which has since relaxed some of its previous conservative leanings. As I said, she also had to take into account the fact that voters were still too enamoured of an economy completely based on market forces.

              And overarching all of that, there was no money in the kitty and so the ClarK led govt. had little choice but to wait until they were able to build up the funds again and that took a long time. Indeed the fourth term in govt. was when the big ‘social spend-up’ was going to occur. Instead we got the Key govt. and the opposite happened.

              • Rosemary McDonald …
                31 March 2019 at 11:08 am

                Sorry…I don’t buy that argument. If she truly found the policies of neo liberalism so personally abhorrent and she found it impossible to alter the course from within the halls of power, then she should have damn well rejected the baubles and told us all why.

                History will remember her as an enabler.

                And you, like the rest of us heading into our sixties and seventies, will take the shame of supporting these arseholes to our graves.

                • Anne …
                  31 March 2019 at 11:14 am

                  Since you seem unable to respect those of us who were there and witnessed what happened (at least in my case I was there for some of it), then there is no point in having a conversation with you about it.

              • Rae …
                31 March 2019 at 10:00 pm

                And to a not insignificant degree, the same still applies to today.

          • KJT 9.4.1.1.2
            30 March 2019 at 10:08 pm

            I knew her to.

            I think she was up against too much even as Prime Minister to get the changes she wanted.

            I hope there will be a paradigm shift, and Jacinda Adern can be the compassionate and ‘kind’ Prime Minister, that Helen wanted to be.

            • Rosemary McDonald 9.4.1.1.2.1
              30 March 2019 at 10:51 pm

              “…compassionate and ‘kind’ Prime Minister, that Helen wanted to be.”

              My disdain for her increased every time one of my children had to take out a loan to pay for the tertiary education that Clark and her ilk got for free.

              It bordered on loathing….very near to hate. If my memory serves, the nail in the coffin of free tertiary education was started by Labour and hammered home by the Nats. When Clark got in…she knew this debt was going to cripple that generation and she attempted a bit of round the edges tinkering…which somehow garnered some actual gratitude from the voters.

              This I couldn’t understand. How the pathetic crumbs of ‘interest free student loans’ could win a few votes. Almost like Stockholm Syndrome. You are claiming Clark was kind and compassionate…she set the theft of higher education in NZ in concrete. She was the Arch Ladder Kicker.

              • KJT …
                30 March 2019 at 11:43 pm

                I’ve always been puzzled that of all the horrors that have come from Neo-Liberalism, student loans rankle the most.

                It is as if the blighted lives of so many on welfare, the working poor and the cuts to health, social services, and education, which mainly affect those on low income, don’t matter, compared with the fact that the children of, mostly, the upper class, now have to pay their university fees.

                My brothers, who went to Uni pre student loans, , had to work every hour they could, to pay their living costs.
                My youngest brother, who went at the beginning of the student loan era, actually had it easier, with the loan for living costs and study.

                And. The same people who complain about student loans, vote against paying the 60% top tax rate, that paid for fees free Uni, and a lot of other things.

                • Rosemary McDonald …
                  31 March 2019 at 8:02 am

                  “…. had to work every hour they could, to pay their living costs.:

                  Hmmm…1979. UE, HSC, B Bursary. No charge to me to stay for the year in the Hall s Of Residence plus we got $10 change at the end of the year.
                  Of course I had to work during the vacations to pay the 1/4 of the minimal fees that weren’t covered and for textbooks and other stuff. Travel was cheap as I mostly hitched…and literally all I owned I could carry. There were of course Student Work Schemes for those of us who couldn’t get the higher paying jobs in the freezing works and the like. And the Emergency Benefit if the Student Work Schemes weren’t up and running yet. Hardly anyone had a car…or even a bike…and if I recall it was just as well as so many were pissed or wasted most of the time anyway.

                  Yes…being able to get a student loan did facilitate a higher standard of living for some…especially those used to a higher standard of living. I came from a single parent family so was grateful to have the basic living costs covered by the bursary and I was frugal…oh, so, frugal with my hard earned dollars. Just as well, as being able to live lean taught my kids to live lean so they only had to borrow to cover course costs and we, despite being beneficiaries, helped with living costs by continuing to house them if it suited. Their friends getting the Living Allowance were often the offspring of wealthier parents who had manipulated their accounts to minimise their income.

                  “And. The same people who complain about student loans, vote against paying the 60% top tax rate, that paid for fees free Uni, and a lot of other things.”

                  Actually…no we fucking don’t.

                  Sick of the bullshit actually KJT on this issue. Some of us will fight this revision of history to the bitter end. “My youngest brother, who went at the beginning of the student loan era, actually had it easier, with the loan for living costs and study.” See how easy it was to brainwash at least some of the people? ‘Here, children…we’re going to increase the cost of higher education and remove practically all state assistance so you are going to have to pay for everything we got for free BUT, you lucky, lucky bastards, we going to make loans available so at the time of life that I was buying a home for my family you’ll still be paying for the education that we got for free. And these are the self same fuckers that criticise the younger generations for not working hard enough.

                  • KJT …
                    31 March 2019 at 10:19 am

                    We, did not get it for free.
                    Most of us went straight to work, from High school.

                    Less than 10% of boomers went to Uni.

                    • Rosemary McDonald …
                      31 March 2019 at 10:36 am

                      Then why, when the wonderful Student Loans opened up tertiary education for all, do we have such an appalling shortage of…doctors, nurses, teachers, dentists, radiologists, electricians, plumbers, builders, mechanics, engineers,….?

                      So many of the issues we face today can be traced back to the disastrous ‘reforms’ of the 80s.

                      The Great Experiment is a failure…or a success if you’re a member of Club Mapp.

                    • KJT …
                      31 March 2019 at 11:11 am

                      Didn’t say they were wonderful.

                      I said I agree with free education. Just that I prioritize help at the beginning, so that children genuinely do have, equal opportunity. The money for “free education” for uni has always come at the expense of education for the kids who will never go there. Even in my youth.

                      I am on your side as far as Wayne Mapp, is concerned. An “unfortunate experiment” indeed.

              • Wayne …
                31 March 2019 at 10:09 am

                Rosemary,

                Hmm, very harsh on Helen Clark. When everything in higher education was cheap, not just the fees, but basically all the living costs (at least if you did not come from the city) only 10% actual undertook tertiary education.

                I know, I was a student in the 1970’s, from the country. And yes I hitched, at least in my first year or so. After that a motorbike. As a university teacher in the 1980’s and 1990’s I could see that students of that era were basically better off than I was at their age.

                Now around 60% undertake tertiary education. That is why students have to pay a greater share (including living costs). Otherwise it is back to high taxes. But none of them hitch. They all seem to have cars, or access to cars.

                It is a choice, and different people have different takes. You obviously like the Green model for the economy. I don’t.

                Labour and National sort of exist on a broad continuum. There is a consensus on the basic economic settings, which you call neo-liberalism, I would just say plain commonsense.

                The reason being is that I thought the 1970’s were an economic disaster. The Lange/Douglas reforms were a release from jail. And in my view have built the current prosperity (though with significant problems for some). The living standards of toady for just about everyone are way higher then 40 to 50 years ago.

                Obviously the Green Party and the left of Labour don’t buy into it. Well, so be it. They can argue their case in the court of public opinion. As voters, the public decides.

                • Rosemary McDonald …
                  31 March 2019 at 10:18 am

                  “As a university teacher in the 1980’s and 1990’s I could see that students of that era were basically better off than I was at their age.”

                  But Wayne. You didn’t have to borrow, to hock off your future to pay for what was your right….a free higher education.

                  “The Lange/Douglas reforms were a release from jail. And in my view have built the current prosperity…”

                  Well, fuck, Wayne. By all measures this ‘prosperity’ is limited to those who can afford it without debt and those who have been raised to accept crippling debt as a normal part of life.

                  You and your ilk disgust me.

                • Blazer …
                  31 March 2019 at 10:24 am

                  Voters ‘buy’ into slick marketing.
                  Voters are influenced by MSM.
                  Voters seem quite gullible to accepting PR and being conditioned to embrace platitudes and opinion masquerading as fact.i.e ‘National are sound financial managers’…’a safe pair of hands’…..’socialists love spending other peoples money’….’a rising tide lifts all boats’.

                  The public decides…with a little help…from..

                • Sabine …
                  31 March 2019 at 10:26 am

                  @That is why students have to pay a greater share (including living costs). Otherwise it is back to high taxes.

                  Your children pay for their education so that you don’t have to pay taxes. Nice one. – spoken as a true blue welfare bludger.

                  @The living standards of toady for just about everyone are way higher then 40 to 50 years ago.

                  you tell that to the people that were put up by Paula Benefit in a motels used as emergency housing and settled with tens of thousands of dollars in debt to pay for that.
                  you tell that to the people that have student loans to pay (so that you don’t have to pay your fair share of taxes) but can’t find jobs that are secure, full time with benefits, and a pay above minimum wage.
                  you tell that to the people that live in houses that the SPCA would not declare fit as a dog kennel all the while refusing to regulate the rental market.
                  you tell that to the people that work and still need to go to Winz and beg for a food voucher or a accommodation benefit.
                  you tell that to the young ones that see our water quality disappear, that see our nature drown in cowshit and fertilizer
                  you tell that to the young people that work and can’t afford a car nor the bus

                  good grief you truly are a petty self centered man who cares non about the country, after all you had yours and your childrens and you don’t care much about anything else.

                  • Wayne …
                    31 March 2019 at 12:11 pm

                    Rosemary,

                    Is it really credible to suggest that around 50% (or maybe more) of the population don’t care about their country?

                    • KJT …
                      31 March 2019 at 12:18 pm

                      No. That is why you have to use lies, fudged statistics, Crosby Textor psychological manipulation techniques, lots of corporate funding, and fake social concern, to get elected.

                • KJT …
                  31 March 2019 at 10:30 am

                  That is so obviously cognitive dissonance, Wayne, that I don’t know where to start.

                  The evidence does not agree with you.

                  Australia, which didn’t throw out the baby with the bath water, at the time, is now at least 30% ahead of us in wages, and much further ahead in functioning infrastructure.

                  Rosemary. “Free higher education” was paid for by the 90%, who didn’t go to Uni.

                  In fact we paid more in taxes, than graduates pay now, with both student loans and taxes combined.

                  I do agree that education should be free. However the “rights” for “free” tertiary university education of the mostly middle class, who vote for tax cuts, to me, comes a long way behind the rights of everyone to equal opportunity, education, food and health, from kindergarten, up.

                  • Rosemary McDonald …
                    31 March 2019 at 10:48 am

                    ” “Free higher education” was paid for by the 90%, who didn’t go to Uni.”

                    yeah, who for a short time after got free education for their primary and secondary school children from well trained teachers and healthcare from professionals who felt valued by their communities because those communities paid for their training. In turn they served their communities instead of serving their student loans.

                    And tax? Yes the taxes may have been higher…but the cost of living was lower, rents were lower, house prices were lower even if interest rates were mindbogglingly high. (I still sweat a little at what I was paying in 1992.)

                    I remember when that last bastion of our welfare society crumbled when we had to pay part charges for Outpatient clinics at Public Hospitals.

                    Sorry to get all ranty about this but the free tertiary education enjoyed by all our leaders (until this one) define them. How the fuck dare they take away from the next generation then sit all smug on the top. If there was a god…they’d all be drowning in the cream and choking on the feathers. The sooner the last of them fall of their perches the better.

                    • KJT …
                      31 March 2019 at 10:51 am

                      I agree, but Uni education was a drop in the bucket, compared to the many other things they stole. Some of which you mention.
                      Sabine has listed some as well.

                      I agree though, “How dare they”. They, a minority, took the best of what our welfare State had to offer, then pulled up the ladder.

                    • KJT …
                      31 March 2019 at 11:03 am

                      26% interests rates. Yes I forgot to mention that example of the “achievements” of the Governments of the time.

                      The banks, and people with big savings accounts, made a mint, off young people at the time.

                • Pat …
                  31 March 2019 at 10:31 am

                  60% Wayne?….you must have an extremely broad definition of tertiary education.

                  • KJT …
                    31 March 2019 at 10:53 am

                    Probably thinking of the real rort. Polytechnic students, who used to get apprenticeships, with 60k loans for non existent or minimum wage jobs.
                    With the bums on seats tertiary institutions, charging hopeful kids, for training, for jobs that don’t exist.

                    • Rosemary McDonald …
                      31 March 2019 at 11:04 am

                      “Polytechnic students, who used to get apprenticeships, with 60k loans for non existent or minimum wage jobs.”

                      Yep, and unscrupulous employers who are happy to exploit them.

                      All those privileged pricks whining because their flash looking built on the cheap houses leak like sieves… good fucking job.

                      I’m coming up sixty years old, and I seriously believe that if the Young Ones choose to park us mouldy oldies on the end of the wharf in a stiff southerly and let nature do us in we will more than deserve it.

                    • KJT …
                      31 March 2019 at 12:30 pm

                      Blaming older people, rather than the ones, usually those with enough inherited wealth to do well out of the changes, and their offspring, rather lets the real culprits off the hook, don’t you think?

                      Many my age, which is the same as yours, never recovered from the job loses and retrenchments, of the “reforms” and are heading into retirement with debts and/or homelessness.
                      Often also trying to help their kids into beginning their lives, at the same time.

                    • RedLogix …
                      31 March 2019 at 12:40 pm

                      Often also trying to help their kids into beginning their lives, at the same time.

                      Yes the so called ‘bookend’ generation, caught between the costs of elderly parents they are no longer able to look after, and kids who need help.

                      It’s partly why I went to Australia because I could see this coming and I needed to plan for it … but if you could see the debt I’ve accumulated to deal with it, you’d be shocked.

                      This so-called inter-generational conflict is bullshit. Every generation has it’s opportunities and it’s burdens, and each both serves and is blessed by all the others.

                      Just another stupid way we divide ourselves up and bicker.

                    • greywarshar …
                      31 March 2019 at 6:20 pm

                      Rosemary Mc
                      I regard oldies as an untouched resource, sort of? And you are a good type of oldie, looking objectively and many here are also.

                      Just talking about society even if it’s a hotch-potch is taking us far above the attitude that it is SEP to run the country and just don’t bother us while we get on with our lives. Right up to my middle age it seemed that politics was regarded as a hobby you took up. like woodwork or knitting. So we shouldn’t be pushed off anywhere as we all amount to a very interesting and tasty stew that is good for all.

                      I notice so many over 90s dying and I think that our medical care is going to have to be limited after say 85, and we be allowed to live out our lives naturally with no specialised, extended, intervention.

                • KJT …
                  31 March 2019 at 10:48 am

                  Wayne.
                  Voters were never given a choice.

                  In fact the current vote for ACT, who are at least honest about their Neo-liberal bent, get votes in the tens, except from gullible National park voters, shows the actual level of support.

                  We all voted for MMP, to make sure that Governments don’t go nuts, again, like they did in the 80’s and 90’s.

                  It has worked to a certain extent. Even National have to pretend to have a social conscience, in election year.

                  • Anne …
                    31 March 2019 at 11:17 am

                    We all voted for MMP, to make sure that Governments don’t go nuts, again, like they did in the 80’s and 90’s.

                    A nutshell!

                • Stuart Munro. …
                  31 March 2019 at 2:02 pm

                  It’s funny how you suddenly respect ‘the court of public opinion’, when the modus operandi of your party, and of Rogergnomic Labour, was nothing more nor less than lying so as not to have to deal with public opinion.

                  Don’t start pretending respect for democracy now Wayne – we’ve seen the corrupt autocracy you endorsed in power.

          • WILD KATIPO 9.4.1.1.3
            30 March 2019 at 10:37 pm

            So we had to accept her Blairite style incrementalism and identity politics to compensate for her lack of action when she held highest office.

            Talk about a waste of space. Why even bother having a PM then.

  10. WILD KATIPO 10
    30 March 2019 at 3:55 pm

    Meanwhile Grant Robertson still adheres to his neo liberal Budget Responsibility rules.

    What the fuck is all that about?

    Fucking over more people on the bottom rungs? More austerity? More deflections and diversions against our burgeoning suicide and crime rates among young men ?

    Wow.

    You made your beds now lie in them.

    • Ad 10.1
      30 March 2019 at 4:56 pm

      Just hold your breath and wait for five weeks for the actual budget.

      • WILD KATIPO 10.1.1
        30 March 2019 at 5:04 pm

        Oh yes, … and if I hold my breath long enough to see the return of a Keynesian style budget complete with a total reformation of all that entails economically and politically , – instead of the same old failed neo liberal style budget we’ve had for the last three decades , – I’ll be dead.

        Pass.

        Meanwhile, enjoy your circular nebulous debates here and on into eternity.

        • Ad 10.1.1.1
          30 March 2019 at 5:12 pm

          May 8th, then exhale.

          Brought to you as ever, by Labour.

          • WILD KATIPO 10.1.1.1.1
            30 March 2019 at 5:24 pm

            Sorry mate , not tribal, – party voted Greens last time.

            Next years election is NZ Firsts turn.

            At least they don’t do the neo liberal gravy train.

            But they DID , however, help Labour to power…. people seem to like to forget that small , inconvenient fact….

    • The Al1en 10.2
      30 March 2019 at 5:25 pm

      Just the other day you were proudly yelling at us all how it was all down to Winston we’ve got a labour led government, so what you’re saying is that it was that doddery old fella who made the bed and is making us sleep in it.

      Roll on 2020 when we get a proper labour/green coalition.

      lol at the edit in 10.1.1.1.1

      • WILD KATIPO 10.2.1
        30 March 2019 at 5:47 pm

        First off,… no one was yelling at you. Typed words have no sound. And just reflects your perceptions and tribal bias.

        Second off , NZ First is NOT in the position to make unilateral governmental decisions. Its not called a ‘coalition’ for no reason and NZ First is , … in that coalition,… known as the ‘ junior partner’.

        Thirdly , – it was in fact NZ First who determined which political party they would go with because they – as they will next election – held the balance of power. So I wouldnt be crowing too loud if I were you.

        Fourth , despite Labour being the vehicle of Rogernomics, they have never reneged on that. NZ First has always opposed neo liberalism.

        Fifth , – Labour , – at election time , – assumed they had lost. It wasn’t until after many weeks of negotiations ( in a democratic way determined by NZ First despite media goading who favor National and thier FPP bias ..) that NZ First chose to form a coalition govt with Labour. Much to the latter’s surprise and relief.

        So , … Mr Green party zealot, … Perhaps you might just like to member a few pertinent facts before your enthusiasm gets the better of you. AND , IF – you really think the Greens and Labour are really , really going to bring back a more fair Keynesian system ,… I’ll be right here… waiting…

        Perhaps your another one who shouldn’t be holding their breath…

        • The Al1en 10.2.1.1
          30 March 2019 at 5:59 pm

          As predicted by many lefties before 2017, Winston is a handbrake on labour/green progressive politics. Better than the nats, but any credit for making an obvious correct call over the election result is long gone.

          How a green voter can shift to nz1st and rant about them not being left enough is an amusing debate piece. As it is with all sub 5% parties, wasted votes and idiots attract.

          Roll on 2020 when we get a proper labour/green coalition.

          • WILD KATIPO 10.2.1.1.1
            30 March 2019 at 6:16 pm

            Progressive?…. as in holding back even more progressive neo liberalism?

            Yeah sure. NZ First are guilty of that.

            Would you prefer NZ First to have gone with National , perhaps ?

            Obviously you know nothing about coalitions, tactical voting and polling numbers. Soooo ,… that kinda takes the heat out of your ” How a green voter can shift to nz1st ”…

            L0L!!!

            You dont even know your own countrys political history , bud.

            Matter of fact you sound as if you were just being born around 1984. I excuse you , then. ARE YOU HAPPY with Rogernomic’s, old son?

            Do you even know any difference between that and Keynesian economics???

            I’m sorry but the Greens never had a shits show back in the 1980’s, 1990’s … and the only reason they are providing confidence and supply is because NZ First included them , admittedly , Labour did too… but Labour hasn’t exactly been accommodating to the Greens if you know your history, either.

            So as I said… the day Labour and the Greens depart from neo liberalism is the day I’ll concede you are right. Until then , as before , – NZ First is the ONLY party that has consistently opposed neo liberalism since its inception.

            • The Al1en 10.2.1.1.1.1
              30 March 2019 at 6:23 pm

              You can try to justify your wasted vote in 2020 however you like, that’s your prerogative, but trying to tell us Winston is to the left of the greens is just farcical not to mention delusional.

              Rationale it to yourself, but clearly at the risk of permanent public self harm regarding your credibility and political insight.

              L/G 2020

              • WILD KATIPO …
                30 March 2019 at 6:38 pm

                L0L – If thats your way of trying to knock another brick out of the wall and try to undermine voting for NZ First thats a fail.

                And have we said NZ First is left of the Greens?

                No ,.. I think you might have been reading something else.

                I think you’ve just lost all credibility.

                And when the Greens need to be part of the next coalition , be sure to contact NZ First… they just may have a role for you to play. Also ,… working people want a realistic economic program that works, – not just one that appeals to the torn jumper wearing idealistic outliers of society.

                • The Al1en …
                  30 March 2019 at 6:49 pm

                  Ignoring how Winston was a nat mp after rogernomics, part of the the mother of all budgets government, who enabled Shipley in 96, and did nothing to quell neo liberalism in any cabinet including Clark’s in 05-08.

                  If you genuinely believe the old fart is more left wing progressive than the greens, or even Jacinda’s labour, then all power to you.
                  Delude yourself away. A wasted vote in 2020 definitely has your name on it.

                  Red/Green 2020.

                  • WILD KATIPO …
                    30 March 2019 at 7:02 pm

                    Not knowing how Peters opposed Ruth Richardson and her proposed ‘reforms’ ( 1991 Employment Contracts Act ) in the Bolger Govt, and not knowing how Peters opposed Jenny Shipley’s Mother of all Budgets shows you dont know what in the hell you are even talking about.

                    You need a lesson in basic NZ political history.

                    The Internets a wonderful thing.

                    Not knowing the difference between neo liberalism and not seeing / displaying any knowledge of what Keynesianism actually is yet endorsing the former through sheer ignorance clinches the deal.

                    When you have bothered to get off your sanctimonious arse and study the difference yourself , then you will know. Until then , pointless arguing with the village idiot.

                    • The Al1en …
                      30 March 2019 at 7:10 pm

                      Did he prop up Shipley after all that anti neo liberalism? What did he change? Why was it even a question of who he’d go with in 2017?
                      Don’t talk shite and expect people to swallow it though, of course, you’re free to slurp it down if you think it’s reason enough to give a green vote to nz1st and claim because neo libs.

                      I stand by the original comments “As predicted by many lefties before 2017, Winston is a handbrake on labour/green progressive politics” and “Roll on 2020 when we get a proper labour/green coalition.”

                    • WILD KATIPO …
                      30 March 2019 at 11:13 pm

                      Idiot. Dont you recall, Shipley got rid of Peters ?.

                      Or were you conveniently ignorant of that uncomfortable fact as well ?

                      Its ignorant witless idealists like you that try to rewrite history suit your own agendas that are the real danger here,

                      Here you go moron.

                      Just for you.

                      Dismissal of Rt Hon Winston Peters | Beehive.govt.nz
                      https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/dismissal-rt-hon-winston-peters

                      ———————————————————

                      … ‘ Internal party ideological tensions also led to the secession of Winston Peters from the National Party caucus and the formation of New Zealand First in 1993. Peters was viewed as an acolyte of Rob Muldoon’s protectionist economic policies (READ KEYNESIAN ) and had a substantial support base amongst New Zealand’s senior citizens and their related lobby organisations ‘ …

                      Ruthanasia – Wikipedia
                      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruthanasia

                      ———————————————————-

                      NOW , buddy – where were your precious Greens all that time?

                      WHAT did they ever do to seriously combat neo liberalism?

                      THEY were in the political wilderness as a minor political force at that point in history. Thats where they were.

                      And WHAT are the Greens doing NOW about tackling neo liberalism? – ABUSING white people for being OPPRESSORS and trying to normalize the word CUNT.

                      That’s what mate.

                      I’m sure that’s really going to make themselves popular and pour in the votes for them , eh mate.

                      Edit : My mistake . It was Richardson who produced the Mother of all Budgets.

                    • The Al1en …
                      30 March 2019 at 11:29 pm

                      Peters made the 96 government of Bolger before its dissolution in 98 after Shipley rolled him. That doesn’t negate the point being made that your anti neo lib saviour directly supported nat governments either as a member or through nz1st.

                      I also note up thread you’re bagging Clark’s government for being neo lib. Again, this hero of anti neo lib politics was integral to that governments survival.

                      I think you’re confused about what being anti neo lib is all about. A clue, it means you don”t prop them up and ensure their survival.

                      Are you quite sure, given his history, you want to stick with Winston being more anti neo lib than the greens?
                      Fact is, this country would be much more left and thus less neo lib after a succession of strong labour/green governments.
                      No need for died in the wool tories hiding in grandmas handbags and little nz’ers racist backpacks.

                    • The Al1en …
                      30 March 2019 at 11:31 pm

                      “NOW , buddy – where were your precious Greens all that time?”

                      They’re not my greens at all, I vote labour, but I suspect they weren’t propping up nat governments… Ever. 😆

                    • WILD KATIPO …
                      30 March 2019 at 11:33 pm

                      Oh , and if you really , really really want to actually take an interest in why both times when the neo liberal Labour party under Lange and his Mins of Finance Douglas and the neo liberal National party under Bolger and his Mins of Finance Richardson found that New Zealand was CONVENIENTLY BROKE when they took power …

                      READ THIS :

                      New Right Fight – Who are the New Right?
                      http://www.newrightfight.co.nz/pageA.html

                      There ya go mate.

                      Political history lesson free of charge. And you didn’t even have to incur a student loan for it. And YES ,… that’s ANOTHER neo liberal device slapped on the NZ public by the same bastards who benefited from a FREE EDUCATION SYSTEM UNDER KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS.

                    • The Al1en …
                      30 March 2019 at 11:39 pm

                      Yeah, Langes dead and Prebble and Douglas have long been in the wilderness.
                      Let’s talk about the neo lib loving Peters and why you’re misguidedly giving him your vote whilst casting shade on the green party.
                      He changed nothing while he was pocketing the salary and riding in the crown limo. Still, not for long now.

                    • WILD KATIPO …
                      30 March 2019 at 11:42 pm

                      … ” They’re not my greens at all, I vote labour, but I suspect they weren’t propping up nat governments… Ever” …

                      Easy to say that behind a keyboard eh mate?

                      Got proof?

                      And DO YOU REALLY LIKE Douglas and his fish and chips brigade? Moore, Bassett , Prebble and co ? – Mr ‘ ACT ‘ himself ?

                      L0L0L0L0L0L !!!!

                      L0L! – you’ve doubly shat in your own nest!

                      Why then haven’t you and your party abandoned neo liberalism
                      Do you like fucking people over ? , Is that the game?

                      Riding on top of others for your benefit and your benefit only ? Seems a bit Paula Bennett- ish to me mate.

                      I rest my case.

                    • WILD KATIPO …
                      30 March 2019 at 11:50 pm

                      …’ He changed nothing while he was pocketing the salary and riding in the crown limo ‘ …

                      Constant speaking out against neo liberalism and state owned asset sales- something that is noticeably lacking in both Labour and National.

                      Gold Card

                      Winebox Inquiry ( would you prefer that never happened and the spotlight wasn’t shined on your mates ? )

                      Pike River reentry process

                      Enabling Labour to oust the John Key / Bill English National govt last election.

                      And that’s just a small few of the top of the head buddy.

                    • The Al1en …
                      30 March 2019 at 11:51 pm

                      “Easy to say that behind a keyboard eh mate?

                      Got proof?”

                      Er, yeah, no green party has propped up a nat government.
                      Cite it if you know different 😉

                      “And DO YOU REALLY LIKE Douglas and his fish and chips brigade? Moore, Bassett , Prebble and co ? – Mr ‘ ACT ‘ himself ?”

                      No, I’m a leftie, unlike Winston I have more moral gumption than to throw my hand in with enemies of the people and then do nothing.

                      “L0L0L0L0L0L !!!!”

                      That’s what I’ve been doing with your Winnie is more left than the greens.

                      “L0L! – you’ve doubly shat in your own nest!”

                      I advise you don’t drink the nz1st kool ade. It’s not chocolate milk.

                      “Why then haven’t you and your party abandoned neo liberalism”

                      It’s not my party, I only vote for them, though having said that, a couple of strong labour green governments, unhindered by right leaning dinosaurs, will see a different, better NZ emerge.

                      “Do you like fucking people over ? , Is that the game?
                      Riding on top of others for you benefit ?”

                      Just the ignorant ones like you.

                      “I rest my case.”

                      I’m doubtful… At best. 😆

                    • The Al1en …
                      30 March 2019 at 11:56 pm

                      “Constant speaking out against neo liberalism and state owned asset sales- something that is noticeably lacking in both Labour and National.

                      Gold Card

                      Winebox Inquiry ( would you prefer that never happened and the spotlight wasn’t shined on your mates ? )

                      Pike River reentry process

                      Enabling Labour to oust the John Key / Bill English National govt last election.

                      And that’s just a small few of the top of the head buddy.”

                      Hardly smashing the crystal floor of neo liberalism, is it?
                      The gold card is pork barrelling to his ever dwindling constituency.
                      Pike river is a Labour thing anyway.
                      Backing labour in 17 was the correct call and he would have suffered if he went the other way.
                      And he’s forgotten about those asset sales since the new beemer arrived.

                    • RedLogix …
                      31 March 2019 at 8:53 am

                      You guys have gone totally OTT.

            • Skunk Weed 10.2.1.1.1.2
              30 March 2019 at 8:07 pm

              Agree + 100%

  11. xanthe 11
    30 March 2019 at 5:27 pm

    Oh my gawd ,
    Lets fix racism by more racism with a big helping of sexism
    Obviously working so far, We just need to double down on it.

    The main thing is to be sure to blame the “other” that way we dont need to look at ourselves.

    • WILD KATIPO 11.1
      30 March 2019 at 6:06 pm

      And that’s the problem with so many comment’s on this sort of thing… they end up looking and reading like a collection of self help and self improvement books instead of tackling the major reasons why society is heading the way it is.

      ”Its the economy , stupid”….

    • Maggie 11.2
      30 March 2019 at 8:27 pm

      Making comments specific to one gender or race aren’t racist.

      To be racist/sexist the comments have to show prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race/gender based on the belief that one’s own race/gender is superior.

      If simply noting that something is specific to a gender or race makes it racist/sexist then pretty much all medical research is racist/sexist.

      • Blazer 11.2.1
        30 March 2019 at 8:34 pm

        ‘wake up Maggie..I’ve got something to say to..you’-..’Maori are lazy and irresponsible’!

      • Sabine 11.2.2
        30 March 2019 at 11:57 pm

        “then pretty much all medical research is racist/sexist.”

        i would add classist and yes, all medical research is, or to be charitable was and is trying to be better and again i would put this down to women entering the sciences in larger numbers.

        i was horrified to read the history of this man
        https://www.history.com/news/the-father-of-modern-gynecology-performed-shocking-experiments-on-slaves
        to name just one.

        • Maggie 11.2.2.1
          31 March 2019 at 11:14 am

          The history of mental hospitals is similar – vile. I remember reading an article that pointed out that the clitoris had been omitted from diagrams of female anatomy medical text books used by interns right up until the mid 80’s. The most was a single mention (which described the clitoris as a “failed development of a penis” whilst penises got two whole pages. They reckon this failure to understand and appreciate the complexity of the clitoris resulted in a lot of women losing sexual responsiveness or being left with nerve pain after urethral surgery and the like.

  12. Drowsy M. Kram 12
    30 March 2019 at 7:29 pm

    There have been some generalisations made about female versus male behaviours in earlier comments.

    The article ‘Men, Women, and Ghosts in Science‘, which proved difficult to publish in 2006, hints at how evolving cultural norms/expectations interact with the relatively static biological variation within each sex. Interestingly, “The term ‘scientist’ was first coined by him [William Whewell] for Mary Somerville, partly because the term “man of science”, more custom at that time, was clearly inappropriate here.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientist

    I linked to this article in a comment on a 2015 post:

    https://thestandard.org.nz/why-there-should-be-an-equal-number-of-men-and-women-in-cabinet/

    From the article ‘Men, Women, and Ghosts in Science‘

    “You cannot deduce the psychological characteristics of any person by knowing their sex.”

    “Stereotyping is unscientific—“individuals are just that: individuals””

    “Classifying individuals in general terms, he [Baron-Cohen] concludes that among men, about 60% have a male brain, 20% have a balanced brain, and 20% have a female brain. Women show the inverse figures, with some 60% having a female brain. Many facts argue that these differences have their roots in biology and genetics.”

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1326282/

    • Maggie 12.1
      30 March 2019 at 8:19 pm

      Excellent points and references. Thank you!

      • Drowsy M. Kram 12.1.1
        30 March 2019 at 9:15 pm

        I’m just parroting for the most part – observations made in the ‘Ghosts in Science’ article have held up quite well IMHO. Thank you Maggie for your original article.

    • Grant 12.2
      30 March 2019 at 9:34 pm

      That’s very interesting thanks. Will go and read it more closely..

    • RedLogix 12.3
      30 March 2019 at 10:23 pm

      There have been some generalisations made about female versus male behaviours in earlier comments.

      All comments here contain some element of generalisation; it’s inherent in trying to say something in a few hundred words or less. Most readers understand this; no-one wants to be derailed by pedants who insist on detailed breakdowns of all the nuances on every point.

      If you think this is bad, try Twitter.

      Stereotyping is unscientific—“individuals are just that: individuals”

      Nonetheless at the population level there are perfectly valid ‘stereotypes’. Men for instance are taller than women, even though both sexes exhibit considerable variation and the two distributions overlap considerably.

      It’s more useful to note that in any one dimension we care to measure about people, there is more variability between individuals than there is between groups of people.

      This is what is so repugnant about identity politics, it is essentially racism in a generalised and degenerate form. It assumes the only marker that is important about an individual is their group identity, yet the very definition of racism is asserting that all members of a group have the same characteristics, eg ‘all Maori are lazy’, ‘all Chinese look the same’ or ‘white people are all think they are superior’.

      • Drowsy M. Kram 12.3.1
        30 March 2019 at 10:48 pm

        “All comments here contain some element of generalisation” – mildly amusing.

        “Nonetheless at the population level there are perfectly valid ‘stereotypes’. – that seems to relate to the third quote, so we can agree on that at least. Nevertheless, ‘problems’ can occur when “valid ‘stereotypes’” (?) are applied to the many (and possibly increasing number of) individuals who just don’t fit the mold.

        “Classifying individuals in general terms, he [Baron-Cohen] concludes that among men, about 60% have a male brain, 20% have a balanced brain, and 20% have a female brain. Women show the inverse figures, with some 60% having a female brain. Many facts argue that these differences have their roots in biology and genetics.”

      • Maggie 12.3.2
        31 March 2019 at 11:30 am

        “It assumes the only marker that is important about an individual is their group identity,” I don’t agree. Does it highlight a relevant characteristic? Yes and often because it needs to be. How do you deal with racism without highlighting the disparity? How do you deal with sexism without highlighting the differences? You can’t.

        “It’s more useful to note that in any one dimension we care to measure about people, there is more variability between individuals than there is between groups of people.” Yes which is why gender roles are ridiculous.

  13. Mark 13
    30 March 2019 at 9:47 pm

    The overarching issue is this. The West does not rule the roost like it use to.

    For the white man who was brought up to think he would be a Cecil Rhodes or a ‘Chinese’ Gordon or Flashman going out to tame the Chinese and Africans or even a friggin Norman Schwarzkopf, and thinking he deserved all the world’s pussy would fall on its knees in front of him, the change going on in the world is pretty disconcerting.

    For the first time in 200 years, we have Western countries jostling among themselves to please a non-white power ( https://tinyurl.com/y5oh7o22 ), and for the first time in 200 years perhaps, there is no guarantee that the next generation in the West will be better off than the previous.

    Now if a fellow is brought up thinking that when he grows up he will be a king, but instead just ends up being a duke or a prince, then he is going to be very fuck’n pissed about it – even though the lifestyle of a duke or a prince is pretty good to most of us anyway. Likewise the average Westerner lives a pretty good lifestyle compared with the rest of the world, but he has gone backwards from what it once was.

    So it is with many white men. Growing up thinking they were top of the hill, now they are competing on slightly more even playing field with men of colour they previously dismissed and laughed at. And those men of colour are now becoming their equals in science, technology, and can run a pretty strong economy…..that’s simply fucking with the minds of many white men.

    The other side of the coin is the least privileged of these white men, the ones who are arguably the least guilty of fucking up the rest of the world, are being demonized by corporate elite whites who have jumped on the PC train. But it is these same corporate elite whites who are screwing everyone over. But because they superficially subscribe to some liberal dogma they get a free ride, no matter how evil their business practices. And so it is the most disadvantaged segment of the white population with dwindling opportunities that is suffering disproportionately from outsourcing of jobs (now AI and technology etc), and are now in more or less the same shit as everyone else. But they don’t have identity politics to redeem their suffering, unlike say blacks, Maori, even Asians etc. Hence the rise of the alt-right…and then one of them snaps…..

  14. Mark 14
    30 March 2019 at 10:04 pm

    So we have working class whites hating on workers in China and India etc, hating on immigrant workers working for a dime a day, and at the same time we have working class people of colour been taught to deride and hate white factory workers and steel workers and construction labourers as rednecks and irredeemable racists.

    This while the fat cat monopolist capitalist sits on top of the hill laughing his fuckn head off and shitting on all the people who really produce the world’s wealth.

  15. Sabine 15
    30 March 2019 at 10:55 pm

    very much as with rape – not all men rape.
    Everyone knows this and understands this.
    So when the question come up why men rape, the question is not – all men – but some men do – and why?. And no one knows which men does unless they are apprehended and put behind bars. But for women to navigate the world in which rape is a constant threat hanging over their heads – don’t go here, do dress like this, don’t drink, don’t hang out with this or that crowd – from earliest live on, we have to think in terms of all men rape unless they have proven themselves to be trust worthy.
    This is of course not comfortable for men to know. ….. But it is literally the only way for women to stay somewhat safe.

    with white supremacy it is a bit the same. Not all white people are racists. Not all white people are Islamophobic. Not all white people hate others. But quite a few do. And they – much like rapists – don’t come with warnings attached. And unless they let go of their guards and show their true self we would not know until the day they leave house to kill.

    so really the question is how come that a young man, born in 1990, to some wealth, lving in some of the most desirable place on this planet – both OZ and NZ are desirable places to live for many -, a young man who was born on third base, started his life on highest level, why is he so full of hate that it would lead him to kill?
    why did he spend his years long OE learning hate rather then enjoying the culture, meeting people his age, back packing, meeting girls, going to concerts etc.
    why did he consider the color of his skin as so valuable that he would kill?
    why his fear of being replaced? Replaced by whom? by some random Muslim in Christchurch?
    Where did he pick up the hate? where did he hear the hate? who taught him to hate?

    And above all, how much is our own discourse in politics, media, tv, radio, movies, etc inciting our young men? And why do we continue to allow this discourse to grow hate. Because just a few days ago another white man decided that it was ok to call beneficiaries useless. Just as Bill English did a few years ago by stating that our youth is damn near hopeless. Why do certain white men feel entitled to speak like this and why do they get away with it? Maybe that is where we need to start looking. That this entitlement is trickled down. One dehumanizing comment at a time, drip drip drip.

    • KJT 15.1
      31 March 2019 at 8:29 am

      Yes. 😉

    • RedLogix 15.2
      31 March 2019 at 9:21 am

      so really the question is how come that a young man, born in 1990, to some wealth, lving in some of the most desirable place on this planet – both OZ and NZ are desirable places to live for many -, a young man who was born on third base, started his life on highest level, why is he so full of hate that it would lead him to kill?

      Those are all very good questions Sabine; that a lot of people are asking. Something happened to him in Europe, and while we have some very sketchy timelines, it’s clear he visited some fairly unusual places. Possibly he had some unusual experiences there. What we do know is that Europe is not the safe, quaint place many of us visited on our OE’s in the 80’s or 90’s; large scale immigration has opened up many fault lines, it’s a disturbing place these days.

      His Australian mother was quoted as saying “he came back from his travels a changed man”. Then suddenly he moves to Dunedin, again not the most obvious move for your average young working class Aussie, and settles in quietly without looking for a job. He’s not here to make a life, here’s here for a purpose.

      The other real oddity, just six months ago in Oct 2018, he makes a trip to Pakistan for a few weeks, and then to Bulgaria for a few days. And apparently nowhere else. This is not the itinerary of you average 28yr old bloke going on a holiday; this feels more like a trip with a specific purpose. It’s facts like this which is why various authorities believe he was not acting alone.

      We will have to wait for the Royal Commission to uncover the truth here, but all I can think at this point is, that our Australian mass murderer smells a bit more complicated than we know about at the moment.

      • Sabine 15.2.1
        31 March 2019 at 10:05 am

        i suggest that it happened not in Europe but already in OZ. He grew up in the years after 9/11 under Howard, remember him?
        He also grew up in a country that has its own history of racism and mistreatment of people of color.
        Australia is somewhat known for being a racist country with racist policies and they don’t even hide it. At least not the politicians that set the policies.

        So i would say he was already radicalized at home long before he went on his OE.

        And this is why i would rather discuss latent racism in our political discourse, in our religious discourse, in our schools, hospitals, police force and so forth. As that is the racism, classicism, and religious bigotry that is considered standard fare and normal. You know the wink wink nudge nudge racism that allows Mike Hoskins to pontificate about ‘women having children they can’t afford’, that allows the federated dude to pontificate about ‘beneficiaries’ are useless, and so forth.

        Heck look at the political discourse world wide from 2001 – 2010 and he would have only had to turn to fox news in OZ to get his dose of daily dehumanization of the others by higly polished blond white bobble heads on the telly.

        he went to Europe a racist, he came back from Europe a racist, he went to nz a racist, and he will be a racist in prison for the rest of his life chances are.

        as for travelling ot Pakistan or Bulgaria, both are beautiful countries and young people back pack all over the world. I would not be concerned about that.

        I am however concerned at the level of othering that is in our own public discourse every day on telly, radio and political news.

        • RedLogix 15.2.1.1
          31 March 2019 at 11:09 am

          He also grew up in a country that has its own history of racism and mistreatment of people of color.

          Talking to all the non-white people I’ve worked with in Australia, they generally say it’s the most accepting country they’ve ever been in. They’ll be blunt and direct and you’re rarely left in much doubt what they think of you, but you get judged by what you contribute, not your skin colour.

          Many kiwis have a bunch of totally wrong ideas about Australia.

          • KJT 15.2.1.1.1
            31 March 2019 at 11:43 am

            Yes, i found them very similar to New Zealanders.

            But, I have found most people to be very much the same underneath.

            Start talking to anyone, anywhere, about their kids.

            Apart from a few sociopaths and fruitcakes, some whom, unfortunately, seem to have a knack for gaining powerful positions

            However, their leaders are much more overtly racist, than ours dare to be.

          • Sabine 15.2.1.1.2
            31 March 2019 at 12:12 pm

            again, you steadfastly refuse to read what i type.

            again Australia is a country with its own history of racism, ask any Aboriginal past and present.
            Australia had a white Australia police that lasted well into the 70’s
            and just because white people are welcomed does not mean they don’t dislike muslims, afghans coming in boats, refugees languishing in prisons on far away islands, maoris being deported back to NZ for any infringement of the law even if they have lived their whole lifes in Oz and such.
            OZ has its own racism and it has it in spades.
            https://www.thenation.com/article/christchurch-massacre-australia-racism-white-nationalism-media/
            https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/mar/16/fraser-anning-christchurch-victims-will-soon-leave-parliament-but-his-xenophobic-message-will-not
            https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/oct/15/ok-to-be-white-australian-government-senators-condemn-anti-white-racism

            http://theconversation.com/twelve-charts-on-race-and-racism-in-australia-105961

            this is a decent read with lots of numbers and charts n such

            OZ is a very racist country, as are many other countries that were colonialised by the white man. I put it down to fear from us who are white, that one day we will have to pay for the sins of our forefathers. White privilege exists, and i don’t expect any person of color wanting to discuss it with us, lest we explain to them that surely not, and we are all the same and your fears of being othered by politicians, clergy, police, medical staff, teachers, journos, media pundits etc is not real.

            • RedLogix 15.2.1.1.2.1
              31 March 2019 at 12:24 pm

              I put it down to fear from us who are white, that one day we will have to pay for the sins of our forefathers.

              As if no other people on earth have sins their forefathers committed. You do realise it’s a deeply racist idea to claim that only white people have ever done bad things in their history.

              Yet I know where you are coming from, in my 20’s I too went around with the same irrational guilt, until I encountered a remarkable kaumatua in the King Country who told me to let it go. “Never try to pretend to be what you are not, and never let anyone shame you for who you are”.

        • RedLogix 15.2.1.2
          31 March 2019 at 12:06 pm

          So i would say he was already radicalized at home long before he went on his OE.

          OK so why then are there not thousands of young white Australian males going around on murder sprees? If Australia is such hotbed of extremist racism, why so far just the one? It’s not a very effective process is it?

          By contrast there were thousands of young Muslims who flocked across the world to join ISIS, men and women, but you wouldn’t dream of placing the responsibility for that on all the moderate Muslims in the world who typically loathed ISIS as much as anyone else.

          Because in the case of ISIS the authorities can almost always track down the specific event that radicalised those who went to join it. Usually a preacher, a video, or a person who set out to exploit their naivety and vulnerability. As a result the wider Muslim community is now a lot more alert for this type of malign influence.

          The same logic will likely apply in this case.

  16. vto 16
    31 March 2019 at 8:00 am

    ‘Racism’ as a form of bigotry and prejudice is a human affliction, not a ‘white’ affliction, as I think you intimate maggie.

    It occurs in all sorts of forms in every human society, and has done since dot.

    It only references ‘white’ today because of the very recent circumstances of euro domination, which is on the way out. And if history is anything to go by the euro domination will be replaced with another domination with its own associated bigotries, prejudices and racisms. Cyncial, but true I think.

    It is also worth keeping in mind that women are the more valuable gender in society. Men are a dime a dozen and expendable – is why we have been sent off to war to die. Is why, as redlogix pointed out above, our ancestry is two-women to every one-man i.e. most all women reproduced, but only half the men.

    “SAVE THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN!!” … that is not cried out due to some form of kindness towards women and children, it is cried out because of the relative values between men, women and children…. with men at the bottom ..

    • RedLogix 16.1
      31 March 2019 at 8:13 am

      The proposition that ‘only white people can be racist’ has been debated here before. While most people seemed reluctant to say it quite so bluntly, almost no-one argued against it.

      And from there it’s a very short step to determining that white people are the cause of all the evils in the world. And if you object ‘not all white people’ then consider this pretty little graphic that places us all on a single continuum:

      https://www.instagram.com/p/BvQiQ5UFH3F/?utm_source=ig_embed

      No categorical distinction whatsoever between Aunt Gladys pottering in her garden who isn’t very political and expresses sometimes a less than politically pure exasperation at all the changes in her world … and a mass murderer.

      And here is a decent technical discussion on the skewed sex ratio of our ancestors; it deliberately avoids the cultural implications, but confirms the point:

      https://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/05/the-missing-men-in-your-family-tree/

      • Sabine 16.1.1
        31 March 2019 at 10:17 am

        @No categorical distinction whatsoever between Aunt Gladys pottering in her garden who isn’t very political and expresses sometimes a less than politically pure exasperation at all the changes in her world … and a mass murderer. And to be honest if Aunty Gladies would blame some people in a country not hers, in a city not hers for the changes she does not like, and she would blame only people of color for the changes she does not like and not the politicians and voters that look like her she might just is a racist.

        But if you have a good look at the image you posted you will find Aunt Gladys at the bottom heep and a mass murderer will be at the very top.

        The space in between is the distinction. Stay at the bottom and mutter about the others that apply for benefits while also stealing your jobs and yet are being lazy ‘others’ and people will generally have no issues with you. Go to the top and start killing people and you might find yourself in prison life .

        • marty mars 16.1.1.1
          31 March 2019 at 10:41 am

          + 1 yep nice points – I spose Aunt Gladys with her subtle yet persistent racism trained her family to normalize that form of hating, and worse probably

          • Sabine 16.1.1.1.1
            31 March 2019 at 10:49 am

            as she was trained.

            • RedLogix 16.1.1.1.1.1
              31 March 2019 at 11:14 am

              I think the point you both miss, is that the same diagram could be easily written with any ethnic or identity group on the label.

              And the definitions on it are so broad and elastic, every human who ever lived fits on it somewhere. It’s a game everyone can play, but no-one wins.

              • marty mars …
                31 March 2019 at 12:08 pm

                You can’t just pick and choose which parts of ‘white’ you like and not the rest. Own it, be proud of it, and work to sort our the toxic parts of that identity you identify with.

              • Sabine …
                31 March 2019 at 12:23 pm

                yes you can.

                but the shooter in Christchurch was white, subscribed to white supremacy, killed only people in a Mosque. And that is what we discuss here.

                And you are doing your very best it seems trying to deflect from the fact that the shooter was
                well to do – he had money
                white – yes white
                male – yes male
                average – yes he was average looking, weight, hight
                born into a good place – OZ is a pretty good place
                and as per that should have had no grievances taht would have him kill 50 people that have assembled to pray.
                You say that you believe in god, good. Than please give us a reason why he did so if not his own sense of being wronged, replaces and his hate, why he did shoot people taht were on their knees with the back to him praying.

                • RedLogix …
                  31 March 2019 at 1:00 pm

                  well to do – he had money

                  His father died from asbestos related cancer when he was 21. The family is very ordinary working class, and his mother said his travels was initially funded by a small inheritance from his father.

                  After that it’s not clear where his money came from, or even if it amounted to all that much.

                  white – yes white

                  So what, are you implying that only white people commit terrorism?

                  male – yes male

                  That only men commit murder? That there were no women who flocked to join ISIS?

                  born into a good place

                  And all the evidence is that until he left Australia he was really no different to any other young Aussie bloke. I’ve met many, rough, blunt, a bit crass … but not mass murderers.

                  Does this let us off the hook? Of course not. Just as we have demanded form any community where extremists have arisen, as a nation we are going to have to be a lot more alert to subversives and extremists peddling explicitly murderous agendas.

                  But trying to turn everything white into a thought crime, to serve some ridiculous historic guilt trip, is an absurd overreach. And so counterproductive it will of course have exactly the outcome ‘he who shall not be named’ detailed in his manifesto. He wanted polarisation, he wanted backlash and a cascade of atrocities.

                  You seem very keen to complete his work for him.

                  • Stuart Munro. …
                    31 March 2019 at 2:14 pm

                    The Bellingcat article said he claimed to have made money through Bitcoin. That may or may not be true, but it would be difficult to trace – which is part of the attraction of those kinds of currencies.

                    • RedLogix …
                      31 March 2019 at 2:20 pm

                      Yes, and if anyone was funding him, it would make an ideal cover story.

                      For the time being it’s unreliable information and doesn’t tell us much. Again hopefully the trial or Royal Commission will sort this shit out.

              • Psycho Milt …
                31 March 2019 at 1:17 pm

                I think the point you both miss, is that the same diagram could be easily written with any ethnic or identity group on the label.

                Oh, sure – prejudice against other ethnic groups is a feature of humans, not one particular ethnic group. It makes a big difference when you’re the dominant ethnic group on the planet, though. It makes no difference to me what Tokelauans think of White people, but if you’re a Tokelauan living here it matters what White people think of Tokelauans.

                • RedLogix …
                  31 March 2019 at 1:35 pm

                  It makes a big difference when you’re the dominant ethnic group on the planet, though.

                  A dominance derived almost entirely on a scientific and engineering revolution that not only originated with our particular ethnic group, but one that has now extended to every place on the planet.

                  In historic terms nothing like this has ever happened. From the start of the Renaissance in the 14th century, from the impetus of just tiny handful of intellectuals, artisans and entrepreneurs … just 500 years later we now witness an unbelievably complex global civilisation that leaves no place untouched.

                  It’s been a rough journey, with many many terrible missteps, but what started out as European has transformed into something global. By way of analogy, consider how Christ was a Jew, yet the faith which followed his words became something entirely new, no longer Jewish.

                  In purely demographic terms white people are but 1.3 billion of at least 7.5 billion others. We were never dominant numerically, and we are no longer dominant in many other senses either. It’s a global world that belongs to all of humanity, something utterly new and revolutionary.

                  It’s time we lifted our eyes from the resentments and bitterness of how we got here, and got busy with all the real work in front of us. We have a planet to save.

                  • Mark …
                    31 March 2019 at 3:15 pm

                    In purely demographic terms white people are but 1.3 billion of at least 7.5 billion others.

                    In other words not that far behind East Asians. Certainly more white people than African black people.

                    And if you throw in closely related Caucasoids from the Middle East and North Africa (people who had a huge cultural impact on the West, both pre and post Islam, Augustine, Tertullian, Christianity, etc and all that), then you are probably the largest racial grouping, and have been for some time.

                    Agree about the impact of the scientific revolution. Simply introducing the notion of empiricism, was the extra bit of magic that launched the whole stunning enterprise, going much further than what the ancient Greeks and the Chinese had accomplished. And it was the 1917 Russian revolution that ultimately brought the fruits of the scientific revolution to the developing world, to be used to benefit the rest of humanity, not to oppress it.

                    But now it seems many in the West are abandoning empiricism, and sinking into the morass of cultural relativism. China was ahead technologically (if not scientifically) for a long time. Now with the scientific method and the respect for science, hopefully they too can make their contribution to humanity – a start is the Belt and Road – to help undeveloped countries develop and catch up to the developed West.

                    Agree that this racial game blame is a waste of time and energy. Nevertheless white supremacy should be called out for what it is, and it is indeed a white problem – at least in terms of those who will perpetuate violence (you have of course brown,black, and yellow white supremacists in the sense that they have been brainwashed to think whites are superior – but that’s in terms of fucked up thinking, not violence and oppression). But that’s no more problematic than acknowledging Islamist extremism is a Muslim problem, and gambling and millenarian fanatacism is something Chinese are particularly susceptible to. No guilt need be attached to any of that.

                    Of course calling out white supremacism and fighting for equality in the abstract as well as practical sense, is something borne of the enlightenment and French revolution etc. So we are using abstract notions of equality, that arose in the West in an uncompromising form, to fight those pre-enlightenment philosophies based on a hierarchical ordering of people, rearing their ugly heads (abstraction is important because makes it universal).

                    “It’s a global world that belongs to all of humanity, something utterly new and revolutionary.”
                    True, it belongs to everyone – an analogy is football. Invented by the English to be sure, but it would not be football in the way we currently know it without the contributions of the Brazilians, Argentinians, Cameroonians, and Germans.

                    The analogy of Christianity you raise is obviously the most relevant one though, and indeed without Christianity it is unlikely we would have had the scientific revolution – animist religions etc would have been utterly inimical to the development of the modern scientific mindset.

                    • RedLogix …
                      31 March 2019 at 3:56 pm

                      But now it seems many in the West are abandoning empiricism, and sinking into the morass of cultural relativism.

                      Well that is post-modernism for you; fortunately the Chinese, Indians and Russians will never be so stupid as to fall for it 🙂

                      As for football; I was standing in an interminable check in queue at Bogota Airport when the entire hall, well over 1000 people all roared at once. Colombia had just scored a goal against Panama in a World Cup qualifier. The queue took even longer after that.

                      I also like the cricket one … a very Indian game accidentally invented by the British.

                    • The Al1en …
                      31 March 2019 at 4:06 pm

                      “I also like the cricket one … a very Indian game accidentally invented by the British.”

                      Have a read and get back to me.

                      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket

                  • Drowsy M. Kram …
                    31 March 2019 at 11:56 pm

                    “It’s time we lifted our eyes from the resentments and bitterness of how we got here, and got busy with all the real work in front of us. We have a planet to save.”

                    I may be generalising, but that position seems to overlap with this one:

                    “Let’s move on as a nation, never forget or forgive but strive to live as normal.”

                    I’m not yet ready to ‘move on’ from the recent mass murder of theists (and some very young children) at a place of worship in Christchurch.

                    Maybe the calls to ‘move on’ would be less numerous, and/or more muted, if the murder victims had been Christians engaged in prayer.

                    Yes, ‘we’ have a planet to ‘save’, but let that not distract us from doing the right thing in other spheres – ‘we’ face many challenges.

            • marty mars 16.1.1.1.1.2
              31 March 2019 at 12:05 pm

              Exactly Sabine – as she was trained.

    • mpledger 16.2
      31 March 2019 at 9:40 pm

      “Women and children first” is mostly a myth, for most of maritime history it’s been “every man for himself”. It was only a small chunk of time, about 50-60 years, mostly for propaganda reasons, that “women and children first” became part of folklore. Even with the Titanic, where it was “women and children first”, it’s somewhat misleading because at the time they thought everyone was going to be rescued as they thought there was a boat nearby.
      https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22119-sinking-the-titanic-women-and-children-first-myth/

      If you look at who was saved in the Titanic (outside of gender) it’s heavily weighted towards the first class over third class passengers – really everything is about class versus class.

      In life, the top classes are prioritised over lower classes and within class males over females. Men from a lower class may see women in a higher class doing better than them but that’s not because of gender.

  17. WeTheBleeple 17
    31 March 2019 at 12:58 pm

    I wrote some thoughts on how terror might be generated in white society but realised it was off topic of ‘rooting out racism’

    However, the thread went there so…

    I’m a white guy. The terrorist in this instance is, you know, white… I’m going to generalize here. If you are white and upset I use the word white, check your own shit and try work out why you are defensive.

    Incongruity leads to dissociation and mental pathology.

    The rat race directly contributes to whole of society incongruity by pitching us against one another in enterprise and politics yet expecting harmonious attitudes in all else.

    Doing one thing and saying another. Competing instead of cooperating. Pretending to be the good guys while putting the screws in. Letting it slide for convenience. Consumption at the cost of the planet.

    Incongruity.

    When a child’s experience is too harsh for the child to live with, they will create a fantasy to live in (I’m bad, that’s why my parents who are good beat me). This is incongruity, living in lalaland.

    Many people live in lalaland. ‘Our leaders are flawless, I have ten houses therefore I’m helping the housing situation, this coffee cup is recyclable and fits in my Maserati’s cup holder’. OK, I’m taking the piss a bit 😀

    Once a mind has decided bullshit is real (via being misled, mistreated, or worse, misleading out of convenience for oneself, you know, work ethic), how much further might it be thrown off kilter?

    Entitlement and expectation.

    “I deserve the pretty girl and the (20) nice house(s) and employees to boss around and (insert ambition here)…” What’s notable about the expectation of entitlement is much of it is directed at me by society: parents, teachers, peers, media. I am told I can have what I want repeatedly. I have become a conduit of the memes of what it means to be a white man. Basically, you reach out and take it.

    Now the meme is installed, what if the expectation is not met? What if I reach out and ‘it’ is not there?

    What if ‘it’ is never enough?

    Obviously, if you are a narcissist, it must be somebody else’s fault. Whatever is wrong in the world, someone else. But even relatively stable types, after a lifetime of incongruous messages, might look externally to find cause for their own issues. They might identify rampant extractive capitalism, or other…

    Enter the internet.

    In the internet you can find a dingbat for any cause. You can voice your worst suspicions and nastiest spite and find them echoed somewhere. A good narcissist resists all feedback, he seeks a mirror in which to reflect. Down the rabbit hole they go into ever decreasing circles of ever expanding self-delusion and foulness. (merely invert the pyramid model above).

    People will abandon foul rhetoric at various stages of descent. But that level of nasty they are comfortable with, they might sit with, and even disseminate. Each level then, becomes more widespread and acceptable as time progresses and feedback is diminished. A road to hell.

    Policing the internet is critical as it has become extreme HQ. But the internet did not create the incongruity, the competitive nature, the entitlement, the racism, the self-obsession… it just exacerbates and worse, channels it all. Understanding how the process of rejecting feedback at each level funnels through to extremity will help identify the ‘rising’ of sociopaths and narcissists, and the damaged individuals who might gravitate to such extremes.

    Society needs to be open and to own its part or it will continue to deteriorate. It is not a shooter in isolation, it is a shooter atop a mountain of mealy-mouthed bullshit posed as ‘concerns’.

    And it is very concerning.

    • BM 17.1
      31 March 2019 at 1:42 pm

      If you are white and upset I use the word white, check your own shit and try work out why you are defensive.

      White people are getting defensive because left-wing arse hats are using this tragedy to push their self-loathing or misandrist bullshit onto to innocent people.

      People are rightfully pissed off and I wouldn’t be surprised if Labour’s gone backwards after what happened in Christchurch and how it’s all been handled.

      Btw I’m mixed.

      • WeTheBleeple 17.1.1
        31 March 2019 at 1:52 pm

        Defensive – ” left-wing arse hats are using this tragedy to push their self-loathing or misandrist bullshit onto to innocent people” – check.

        Blaming others – check.

        Inability to accept feedback – check.

        Close ranks with like minded folks with false concerns – check.

        Incongruous statements – “I wouldn’t be surprised if Labour’s gone backwards after what happened in Christchurch and how it’s all been handled”; “BTW, I’m mixed” – check.

        Have another go at it.

      • Muttonbird 17.1.2
        31 March 2019 at 2:49 pm

        I wouldn’t be surprised if Labour’s gone backwards after what happened in Christchurch and how it’s all been handled.

        🤣

        Btw I’m mixed.

        Mixed up?

        • BM 17.1.2.1
          31 March 2019 at 6:34 pm

          Irish+Maori+ whatever.

          Shouldn’t be something you have to mention but around here it’s all about boxes and labels.

          • Muttonbird 17.1.2.1.1
            31 March 2019 at 7:02 pm

            I’ve never felt the urge to document my heritage on this forum.

            • BM 17.1.2.1.1.1
              31 March 2019 at 7:12 pm

              Anything to do with racism you have it.

              Why do you think there’s so much painful hand wringing and back whipping by all the whities on here.

              It’s pathetic but that’s the way it seems to be in the left-wing world.

              • Muttonbird …
                31 March 2019 at 7:41 pm

                This place is one of the few which has not had to modify policy.

                I see it as a victory for the left and a defeat for the right that Facebook, Kiwiblog, and Stuff have had to make major changes to moderation policy with respect to the traditional racist and islamophobic content from their right-wing nationalist commenters.

                Yeah, we have a few white, Jordan Peterson loving, anti-fem types, but The Standard has always had good moderation policy.

                • RedLogix …
                  31 March 2019 at 8:20 pm

                  Yeah, we have a few white, Jordan Peterson loving, anti-fem types,

                  You are too new here to realise that I had a hand in developing that moderation culture over many years.

                  The people who run this place explicitly state that they don’t want it to become an echo chamber, with a few people boringly saying the same thing over and over. If that’s all you can intellectually cope with, maybe somewhere else would make you less peevish.

                  • Muttonbird …
                    31 March 2019 at 8:33 pm

                    I’ve read this post on and off and your contributions would make Jordan Peterson proud.

                    Get the women back in the kitchen sums up your argument as far as I can see.

                    That’s fine because you apparently were the architect of the moderation policy here…

              • marty mars …
                31 March 2019 at 8:41 pm

                Dont blame the lefties bro – those racists gotta go down and you know it.

                • BM …
                  31 March 2019 at 8:46 pm

                  Nah. pointing the finger at people achieves fuck all.

                  There’s always a reason why people are what they are unless you’ve walked in their shoes you have no idea why they hold the thoughts they hold and why they act the way they do.

                  • Muttonbird …
                    31 March 2019 at 8:50 pm

                    Oh, there’s an excuse for racism now? Do tell.

                    • BM …
                      31 March 2019 at 9:03 pm

                      There’s probably an excuse for most things, it’s all down to personal experiences, it is what shapes us and constructs what we believe to be right or wrong

                      Take for example all the left wing woman who bag and pigeon hole Men as Sexists and misogynists because of some negative experiences they’ve had, are they wrong? should we abuse and attack them for all their broad and sweeping statements they write about males?

                    • Muttonbird …
                      31 March 2019 at 9:08 pm

                      No we shouldn’t because they are not in a position of power.

                      Right wing white males expounding racist rants are in a position of power.

                      The difference is easy to see if you aren’t a dick.

                  • marty mars …
                    31 March 2019 at 8:58 pm

                    Lol ffs what a joke

                    • Muttonbird …
                      31 March 2019 at 9:02 pm

                      Both BM and his stablemate Redlogix have decided to accept outright racism in response to atrocities and normal and acceptable.

                      Good to know.

          • WILD KATIPO 17.1.2.1.2
            31 March 2019 at 8:16 pm

            🙂

            Must admit that was quite funny , BM ,… and quite truthful lol!

      • marty mars 17.1.3
        31 March 2019 at 8:45 pm

        Your myopic view of labour is silly. They have handled this as well as anyone and better than most. I’m proud of what they have done. Get your hand off it for once and admit the truth.

        • mpledger 17.1.3.1
          31 March 2019 at 9:43 pm

          Simon Bridges came across as a right idiot when he was interviewed the Monday (?) after the attack.