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THE ABYSS OF THE WOKE
CULTURAL REVOLUTION
BOOK 1
COLLECTIVE WORK
DIFFUSION BDM INTL 2023
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I started to spread the work of Bernard de Montreal on YouTube 5 years ago in November 2017 with a team of generous volunteers. Through this creativity, Diffusion BdM Intl freely explores avenues of individual emancipation and study the descent and chaos of humanity.
The Cultural Revolution, a collective phenomenon, may seem far from the individual development of initiation, but without freedom of expression, we could hardly develop ourselves, because censorship would be at our doors.
This Cultural Revolution has all the mechanisms of a religion, just like sectarian movements and for that reason we cannot remain silent.
I have to apologize to all the authors to whom I did not ask permission to use the material. Most of the time when I ask for the rights of use, I don't get any replies.
Please consider my use more as an advertising showcase.
Thanks to all the volunteers who participated in the elaboration of this book.
We hope that you will enjoy reading this book as much as we did making it.
Have a good reading.
Our website diffusion-bdm-intl.com
Pierre Riopel and all the team at Diffusion BdM Intl.
Province of Quebec, November 2022
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The subject of the book is not so simple to approach in the sense that the woke Cultural Revolution also called wokeism is not so well known by the general public although its popularity has grown.
Originally, Wokeism was rather philosophical, but its beliefs have become more firm and hardened.
Nowadays, Wokeism is considered more of a cult, a religion or even a mental illness. Why is this?
Because it is inconsistent in its development, for example a woke person could say that the color blue of the sky was determined by the patriarchal science of the white man and that if humans were woke, they would see it as green. So, observation, facts, science no longer counts in this collective hallucination.*
For the wokes, the whole ancient system is based on oppression, especially of the white man over women and other races. The white man is considered privileged, although in simple semantics, to be privileged means to be part of a small group compared to a large group. Canada is about 70%
white, in this condition, a white man cannot be privileged, because he is part of the large group and not the minority group.
The themes most at the center of this system are racism, sexism, phobia of sexual divergence (LGBT) and others less at the forefront like class struggle (anti-capitalism), cultural appropriation and global warming.
As an example, for several years, some countries have practiced gender-biased hiring policies. It is written in the law that, with equal competence, a woman should be hired in preference to a man.
Since then, sexism has reached new heights, some positions are reserved for women without regard to the competence of the candidates and in some cases if no woman fills them, they will remain vacant. These practices, in addition to being sexist, are harmful to the economy.
Canada complains about the brain drain, that is to say, graduates who go to work in other countries for more interesting positions and better salaries. Sexist hiring could only increase this kind of skill
"relocation».
The overview of wokeism that I give you is only a short entry into the subject. I invite you to read Chapter 5, which I consider a masterpiece on the historical development of Wokeism. Most of the other chapters are testimonies of people who have evolved in this philosophy and/or who have had a run-in with it. Volume 2, of the same title, will be more oriented towards the exegesis of experts in social sciences or complementary fields.
— Pierre Riopel
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Chapter 1. The University as the Woke Mission Field
Chapter 2. Speech about the college’s administration
Chapter 3. Why I quit the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 23
Chapter 4. Woke politics are making our universities
Chapter 5. Origin of the woke ideology (part 1 and 2)
Chapter 7. Dangers of modern feminism
Chapter 8. Is modern feminism starting to undermine itself?
Chapter 9. Introduction to female pedophiles
Chapter 10. The identity crisis
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The University as the Woke Mission Field
An Anonymous Dissident Women’s Studies Ph.D. Speaks Out
« They seemed angry, self-righteous, and determined, lacking the intellectual humility that I had admired so much in the friends I’d made in my master’s program. »
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I have a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies, but I’m not woke anymore. I write under a pseudonym because, if my colleagues were to find out about my criticisms of this field, I would be unable to find any employment in academia. That someone who critiques the axioms of a field of study feels compelled to write under an assumed name tells you everything you need to know about the authoritarianism underpinning this ideology.
I no longer believe that the fundamental ideas of Women’s Studies, and of Critical Social Justice more generally, describe reality; they are at best partial explanations—hyperbolic ideology, not fact-based analysis. I have seen this ideology up close and seen how it consumes and even destroys people, while dehumanizing anyone who dissents.
I’m sad to say it, but I believe that Critical Social Justice ideology—if not beaten in the war of ideas—will destroy the liberal foundation of American society. By liberal I mean principles including, but not limited to, constitutional republican government, equality under the law, due process, a commitment to reason and science, individual liberty, and freedom—of speech, of the press, and of religion.
Because Critical Social Justice ideology is now the dominant paradigm in American academia, it has flowed into all other major societal institutions, the media, and even corporations. Far from being counter-cultural, Critical Social Justice ideology is now the cultural mainstream. A diverse spectrum of liberals, libertarians, conservatives, and all others who, to put it bluntly, want the American constitution to continue to serve as the basis for our society have to team up to prevent this ideology from destroying our country.
I became “woke” around 2003, so I have nearly two decades of experience with Critical Social Justice ideology. As the oldest daughter in a working-class family with six kids, neither of my parents had a college degree, although my mom had taken some community college classes. My high school teachers emphasized the importance of going to college.
While I wasn’t sure what opportunities a college education would bring, I decided that it would best to attend, given the urgency with which all the teachers and guidance counselors discussed college as a necessity. I was a good, not great, student, who scored highly very highly on the verbal component of standardized tests.
I loved literature and writing, so I figured that I’d get a bachelor’s degree in English literature, then maybe find a job as an administrative assistant and write in my free time.
For a seventeen year-old girl who wasn’t especially ambitious, it seemed like a decent plan.
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At least it was better, I thought, than continuing to work part-time as a waitress. And through a combination of scholarships and part-time work, I realized that I’d be able to complete a bachelor’s degree without incurring any debt.
When I began attending college classes in 2000, I registered for a Western civilization course and fell in love with the Greek and Roman classics, so I continued to take additional courses of this type. The twentieth-century Western civilization course was taught by a very personable and funny women’s studies professor.
I don’t think it is widely understood that first-generation college students, in general, don’t know the politics behind who becomes university professors. I naively assumed that professors are among the smartest people in the country, and I had no idea that the professoriate is heavily slanted to the ideological left. I now understand that Critical Social Justice professors are evangelists for their faith and the university is their mission field.
Their goal is to take young students—inexperienced, eager to succeed—unmoor them from any faith tradition they might have, even if it’s just American civics, and replace that with Critical Social Justice ideology. And, for the most part, these professors succeed.
They are, on the whole, likable people—energetic, personable, and caring.
My first encounters with Critical Social Justice came during the feminism unit of this course, which included works by Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Angela Davis, bell hooks, and Shulamith Firestone, among others. I was interested in learning about feminism, but Firestone’s argument to eliminate the biological family alarmed me, as I hoped to have both a career and children someday. Also, I didn’t believe Firestone’s argument that motherhood is inherently oppressive. From witnessing my mom’s own experiences with having six kids, I knew that she wasn’t oppressed. It was a choice she freely made because she loved children and felt that taking care of them, in spite of the difficulties, was rewarding.
In spite of my reservations about Firestone’s book, I became interested in learning more about feminism and began to check out more women’s studies books from the library. As a young university student, encountering Critical Social Justice ideas felt intoxicating, like stumbling onto a portal into a new world. I felt like a detective, with my newly developing, understanding society for the first time—all the oppression, the sexism, racism, the evils of capitalism, and so on. It felt righteous, like I was part of a counter-cultural movement, a vanguard helping to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice.
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The women’s studies professor, sensing that she had an acolyte, encouraged my interest in becoming more involved in advocacy for women. Over the summer, I worked as an intern at a feminist nonprofit and met a lot of people on the radical left, including anarchists. Around this time, I attended a few protests for various causes, but after a couple of years with this ideology as my guiding framework, I grew exhausted by feeling constant anger. I became tired of focusing on all the injustices of the world, not on what I had to be grateful for. It was a miserable, resentment-based life, and I felt helpless to solve the world’s problems.
My foray into radical politics ended around the time I started a master’s program in creative writing. I focused on reading literature and my colleagues’ works, which were complex and nuanced, not ideologically motivated in the slightest degree. After finishing my master’s degree, I taught writing as a college lecturer for a couple of years, then decided to apply for Ph.D. programs in hopes that having a doctorate would increase my pay. One of the most galling forms of hypocrisy I’ve experienced is that leftist professors claim a commitment to “social justice,” yet the academic departments they run employ large numbers of underpaid adjunct instructors who are closed out of the high pay and job security of the tenured radicals.
When I began my Ph.D. program in 2013 at a highly ranked university, I began to see that something about my new colleagues was different from what I remembered about my colleagues just a few years earlier. At first, I chalked this up to the fact that I was a handful of years older than most of the students, many of whom had recently completed their undergraduate degrees. They seemed angry, self-righteous, and determined, lacking the intellectual humility that I had admired so much in the friends I’d made in my master’s program.
I now realize that these students were “woke.” Having spent the past couple of years teaching writing to working-class students, I hadn’t been exposed to Critical Social Justice ideology in some time, and I was surprised to see the inroads it had made in the decade since I’d first encountered it.
I realized that Critical Social Justice was no longer a fringe intellectual field of study, but a real force that was reshaping the university. Early on in my program, I recall a panic about racism at the university, and many students issued social media demands of the administration to increase minority enrollment.
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While I fully support that goal, I feel that such efforts are best advanced through mentoring and guiding promising young students beginning in elementary school, not waiting until they reach adulthood and then attempting to force equal outcomes. Around this time, I became extremely disturbed when, while serving on a committee that gave writing awards, I was attacked by other committee members for judging on merit, for not taking into account skin color or gender.
Yet I don’t think I fully understand the authoritarian aspects of woke ideology until after Trump won the 2016 election. In late 2016 and early 2017, I witnessed shocking behavior from my colleagues, who began attacking Republicans, white people, conservatives, and Christians as oppressors. They attacked free speech, saying that some people did not deserve a platform because they were engaging in “hate speech. ”
I argued that there isn’t a clear definition of what constitutes hate speech; and that the constitution protects all speech, save for incitement to imminent lawless action. For saying this, I was attacked as stupid, a bad person, a “right-winger.” Early in Trump’s administration, one of my colleagues said that political violence was justified as a response to his “evil” policies. While I’m no fan of Trump, I oppose violence—a basic principle I thought that all Americans shared. It was in this context that I became disillusioned with the ideology in which I had been immersed for years.
I decided to seek out and try to understand other points of view, so I read books by authors to whom I had never been exposed, such as F.A. Hayek, Ronald Bork, Jonathan Haidt, Thomas Sowell, and others. I began to read and listen to conservative, classically liberal, and libertarian thinkers—people whose ideas I had never encountered in all my years of so-called “higher” education. I listened with an open mind, and I didn’t see any hatred from these thinkers. On the contrary, I discovered carefully reasoned, evidence-based arguments that had much greater explanatory abilities than anything I’d read in the Critical Social Justice literature.
I realized that Critical Social Justice ideology is not only intellectually vacuous; it is downright dangerous, and that the reason it has captivated so many minds is not because of the strength of its ideas, but because it has succeeded in silencing more reasonable and time-tested principles.
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If I had encountered a wider variety of ideas in my undergraduate—and especially in my graduate—education, I would have been spared years of being captive to Critical Social Justice ideology; I would likely have changed my field of study to something more practical; I would have matured more quickly in understanding the complex, and sometimes tragic, nature of human behavior; and I would have developed a more rational, sustainable understanding of how to live in the world as a decent person, outside of the narrow framework of being an activist for “social justice. ”
If Critical Social Justice ideology had been presented in a more intellectually diverse educational landscape, I would have been able to properly assess the strengths and weaknesses of Critical Social Justice arguments. Sadly, American universities are, for the most part, not marketplaces of ideas, but mere echo chambers.
It is an obvious fact that all civilizations must pass on their values to the young; if they do not, or if the young are taught different values, then the civilization cannot sustain itself. It is a great shame that an essential site for the transmission of civilizational values—
academia—was lost decades ago. As early as 1951, William F. Buckley observed that Yale University was no longer producing graduates who had a commitment to fundamental American values. The advancement of Critical Social Justice ideology has been well documented at this point, so it is not necessary to trace that history here. Suffice it to say that our universities are so infected with Critical Social Justice ideology that they are probably not salvageable at this point.
Those who are attempting to preserve an existing system—in this case preserving the classical liberal principles of American society—have a natural disadvantage when they encounter people, even a small group, who seek, with fanatical devotion, to dismantle that system and replace it with another social order. Nassim Taleb makes this point well in his observation about minority rule: “It suffices for an intransigent minority…to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences.” The good news is that it is still possible at this point that another faction of equally committed people actively resisting Critical Social Justice ideology—people who fervently defend the values upon which America was founded—can sustain the liberal social order.
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However, people committed to liberal values have many significant disadvantages in this fight. They are generally older, having come of age at a time before Critical Social Justice ideology was dominant, and when strong liberal norms—specifically values of free speech and liberty—prevailed throughout society, whereas the majority of Millennials and Generation Z are heavily woke. Liberals are committed to Enlightenment values of reasoned debate, pursuit of truth, the scientific method, fact-based analysis, and treating people as individuals, not as groups.
In contrast, the woke view these Enlightenment values as a white supremacist project; wokeism advances primarily through underhanded tactics: histrionic open letters that accuse ideological opponents as traumatizing and even threatening the very existence of people of color, cancel culture, flash mobs, protests that sometimes devolve into riots, and so forth. Worse, the entrenchment of Critical Social Justice ideology in academia, mass and social media companies, philanthropic foundations, corporate human resources departments, federal and state administrative bureaucracies, and Silicon Valley—
combined with surveillance technology—points toward the emergence of a social credit system similar to what exists now in China. Liberals, in short, are bringing the proverbial knife to a gun fight. But we must fight. There is no other choice.
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Possible solutions to defeat Critical Social Justice theory In closing, I want to offer some thoughts on how to defeat Critical Social Justice ideology. If we want to understand why this ideology is winning over the young, we have to understand its appeal. American culture is becoming increasingly secular, which means that more young people don’t have a faith tradition, and social justice ideology is, as many have discussed, filling a religious void.
The woke have a messianic complex, a (if you’ll excuse the pun, millennial) goal to remake society, and view anyone who is opposed to their project not as simply having a different worldview, but as evil. My intuition is that once Critical Social Justice becomes increasingly entrenched as the dominant cultural ideology—especially because of its totalitarian and censorious nature—young people will instinctively begin to rebel and seek out other ideas.
This, in fact, seems to be happening in Generation Z already. As a result, there will be a revitalization of classical liberalism, necessitating people who are versed in it to serve as teachers and mentors, but there will be much damage done to our institutions and country in the meantime.
There is so little viewpoint diversity in academia that students don’t even realize that what they are being taught is an ideology, not factual analysis. As Niall Ferguson accurately put it, “North American academia is in the grip of a hideous mania, a cross between the early-modern witch craze and Mao’s Cultural Revolution, in which implacable zealots conduct grotesque show trials, innocent individuals have their reputations, careers and sanity destroyed, and everyone else cowers, terrified that they will be next to be ‘canceled.’”
(Source: a blurb from Quillette’s new book, Panics and Persecutions).
The American public university system—especially humanities and social sciences—is a cancer on society, as it is teaching students to hate their country and its core values. This is not to say that there shouldn’t be academic critiques of the country. On the contrary, critiques help to improve society. But we have reached a point where there are hardly any academics left to transmit the basic principles of the country.
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Heterodox Academy is doing great work to highlight the lack of viewpoint diversity in the academy. Their research has shown that professors who lean left outnumber conservative professors by a ratio of nine to one. (Source: “Democratic professors outnumber Republican one's by 9 to 1 ratio, according to new data” | The College Fix). As a result, leftist ideology—most commonly Critical Social Justice—dominates the intellectual culture, and hiring committees carefully select for only one type of diversity among their faculty hires (meaning only valued victim groups), in addition to those who already agree with their ideology.
Unless non-woke people structure their application materials and writing samples to appear to follow the Critical Social Justice ideology, I don’t see any inroads for non-leftist scholars to find academic positions. For the few non-leftists in academia who sit on hiring committees, they need to take a stand—as Professor Dorian Abbot at the University of Chicago recently did—for only hiring the most qualified candidates, without regard to their sex, race, color, ethnicity, or any other immutable characteristic.
One of the most urgent needs is the development of a grassroots movement for intellectual diversity on campus, spearheaded by students, alumni, parents, and concerned citizens. I hope that existing conservative, centrist, or libertarian organizations can help to facilitate this movement by providing organizational and logistical support at campuses throughout the country. Everyone should take a close look at their state’s public universities’ Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity initiatives to see if intellectual diversity is included. If it is not, then the obvious first step is to advocate for the inclusion of intellectual diversity. Concerned taxpayers, students, parents, and alumni, working with the elected officials in those university districts, if necessary, need to ensure that universities have intellectual diversity in humanities and social sciences course offerings.
Intellectual diversity is included in the Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity initiative (in my experience, most of these initiatives include at least a brief reference to intellectual diversity), then work can be done to survey students to see if they feel that intellectual diversity is represented, particularly in their humanities and social sciences courses.
Heterodox Academy has published relevant survey data on the dearth of intellectual diversity in these fields.
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If America has any chance of continuing the classical liberal values upon which it was founded, then students who have a commitment to these values have to enter the teaching profession—as doctoral students in education, as administrators, and as public school teachers. Critical pedagogy, and more specifically critical race theory, is the dominant discourses controlling all levels in American schools of education, so students need to tread lightly and assent, at least outwardly, to Critical Social Justice ideology.
Once in the classroom, however, teachers should reject all pressures to teach Critical Social Justice, and especially critical race theory, because it is an inherently racist ideology and because it instantiates the problem—racism—that it purports to solve. Critical race theory also needs to be resisted because it, as its own proponents assert, “questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.” (Delgado and Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction).
Teachers should take a stand for fighting racism within liberalism, not by adopting critical race theory. If there is not already a nonprofit organization devoted to assisting non-woke students to enter the teaching profession—again, at all levels, as professors of education, as administrators, and as public school teachers—then one should be organized immediately. This could also be a special project for existing right- or libertarian-leaning organizations.
Another important project should be the revival of Western civilization and Great Books courses, at all levels of education, but most critically in the universities. In 1964, 15 of the 50 premier universities in America required students to take a survey of Western civilization. All 50 offered the course, and nearly all of them (41) offered it as a way to satisfy some requirement. (Source: New York Post, by Ashley Thorne “The drive to put Western CIV back in the college curriculum,” March 29, 2016). But since 1987, when Jesse Jackson led 500 students around Stanford University protesting the requirement that undergraduates take a course in Western Civilization, which they denounced as Eurocentric, white-male indoctrination, most colleges have eliminated Western CIV
courses for diversity or multiethnic course requirements.
An excellent example of a Western CIV curriculum can be found in the James Madison program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, which is dedicated to
“exploring enduring questions of American constitutional law and Western political thought.” Another avenue is to look into funding institutes for education in Western civilization as a new department at extant colleges and universities.
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I would love to see crowd-sourced funds used to construct a beautiful classical building adjacent to one of the ugliest college campuses in the country, preferably one composed entirely of postwar Brutalist buildings. I imagine that students whose spirits are continually depressed by attending classes in the midst of such hideous architecture would feel intrigued to enter such a beautiful building. Once inside, they might learn that there is, in fact, such a thing as beauty; that it matters, and that Critical Social Justice ideology can never build anything beautiful; it can never, in fact, build anything at all—it can only destroy.
Once inside that building, students might become interested in registering for a course on Western civilization, a course in which all thought is permitted, in which no one is threatened with cancellation: a microcosm of what a university environment used to be. In this way, we might plant and nurture the seed of resistance to the increasing totalitarianism of Critical Social Justice.
n the long term, it is going to be necessary to create more universities devoted to classical education, not indoctrination into Critical Social Justice ideology, as well as more K-12
private and charter schools in the classical tradition because university schools of education have been training “social justice” educators for decades now, so Critical Social Justice ideology is now in the K-12 public schools. At a policy level on this problem, we need avenues for teacher certification outside of the existing teacher colleges, which are wholly committed to critical pedagogy and other failed approaches. Forcing every licensed teacher (usually for state jobs) to undergo ideological training to gain licensure is not only a problem but should be illegal.
At the personal level, my advice to everyone with kids who can afford to do so is to pull your kids out of the public schools immediately and enroll them in private schools, or home school. Although homeschooling has already begun to come under attack, it is still a viable option—at least for now. In the future, homeschooling will come under increased scrutiny and I believe there will be attempts to render it illegal. I realize that not everyone can afford to home school or send their kids to private schools (many of which are not safe from Critical Social Justice, either). I strongly recommend that all parents emphasize the value of vocational training programs for their children as avenues to career paths that pay well and offer a great deal of autonomy.
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My hope is that new immigrants to America will increasingly speak out against Critical Social Justice ideology as an American instantiation of what is called, in other contexts, tribalism—a form of corruption that has damaged many countries. Far from being a bastion of white supremacy, America’s liberal values are what have attracted people from all countries to undergo great hardship to come here, precisely because this is one of the few places in which ordinary people can exercise their talents to achieve a standard of living that is impossible in most of the world.
It is my fervent hope that more American college students—especially the “woke” who rail against their own country as evil—would be required to spend a semester abroad in a developing country in order to gain some much-needed perspective on the struggles people face who were not fortunate enough to be born into such an “oppressive” place as America.
Lastly, I have focused mostly on academia and education because this is the sector I know best, but I strongly urge everyone, from all walks of life, to embrace your sense of humor (a quality that is conspicuously absent in woke culture). Wokeism should continue to be relentlessly mocked and parodied through meme culture (Andrew Doyle’s Titania McGrath is a great example). Just as important: Be courageous. Stand up for the beliefs that have made America a great country. If you hear people treating others as members of groups, articulate the importance of treating people as individuals.
As Jordan Peterson put it, “The smallest minority is the individual.” If you encounter people treating others badly because of their gender or skin color, say that this behavior is morally wrong. If you see people attempting to “cancel” others, articulate why this is a terrible way to treat others. If you witness attacks on freedom of speech and advocacy of censorship, or if you meet people who are in favor of “hate speech” laws, or laws to combat
“misinformation” (a code word for non-leftist ideas), articulate why freedom of speech is an absolutely essential and non-negotiable value.
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If you hear people discussing why they think socialism is great, take a stand for free markets and the prosperity they have produced. If you hear people calling for retributive justice and political violence, push against it and discuss why violence is never acceptable.
If you encounter attacks on meritocracy, make a case for why merit is essential to the advancement of individuals and societies.
I think a lot of liberals, like me, generally, if not naively, assumed that the liberal values underpinning America would simply continue throughout our lives, but these values are under attack, and they need to be vigorously and unapologetically defended. Our civilization is at stake and the hour is late.
Anonymous female Author
Original article published here.
https://newdiscourses.com/2020/12/university-woke-mission-field-dissident-womens-
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Speech about the college’s administration.
Brad Taylor (15 years old)
At school board of district 196 on June 21st 2021 at Rosemount High School.
Minneapolis, Minnesota.
« Despite the board's attempt to deny it, district 196 schools are quickly becoming a place where promoting activism is actually more important than promoting education. »
— Brad Taylor
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Mrs. Jackie Magnuson — Our next speaker this evening is Brad taylor.
Brad Taylor — Hi, My name Brad Taylor and I just finished my freshman year at RHS. I have been part of this district school 196 for now 10 years, and I’m going to give you a glimpse of what is happening inside these schools.
Despite the board's attempt to deny it, district 196 schools are quickly becoming a place where promoting activism is actually more important than promoting education.
I'll take you back to my first day at RHS this fall. The principal came out and gave us a heartfelt speech about equality and standing together. He began to list countless races such as Latino, Asian expressing how much they matter and how important they are but never once did he mention a race or identity that reflects me or half the kids that were in the class.
Now, members of the board, I know you haven't been to school in a while and I know most of the people, I know none of you or most of you don't have any kids left in the school district, but you must admit how uncomfortable it will be to be characterized just by your skin color on the first day of school and be thought that you were wrong just because of your skin color.
So I'll never forget the look one of my friends gave me from across the room as we were sitting there listening to this blatant bias being expressed in the so-called equity statement by the leader of our school.
To be clear, I don't need you to tell me that I matter but hearing the condolences given to other races and leaving just one race out, inevitably you'll start to feel like you've done something wrong and in our principal attempt to unify us, he instead created unwarranted boundaries and barriers between his students pitting us against each other based on characteristics that we can't control.
In another separate instance I was told that writing all lives matter on the whiteboard was political and could be seen as offensive when I questioned the teacher after class she told me that she didn't have an answer, and she just had to erase it, and it was quickly erased.
There are political signs all over RHS specific about specific races that matter, specific sexual orientations that matter and specific perspectives that matter. But when I questioned the RHS administration about how these signs were political, they told me that they were supporting human rights so when I questioned why the equity statement couldn't represent all students they told me that to even ask that question was outlandish and offensive.
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And they, when I asked why that was, they told me quote «whites have a pretty good situation right now » unquote.
So, is that not racism disregarding my question merely because of the color of my skin. To be honest after enduring a year of the people in charge telling me that I'm a racist, and I'm privileged and pointing out our irreversible differences, I've never noticed race more, and it's becoming the first thing I noticed when I meet someone which has never before been the case.
RHS administration confidently told me that RHS students and staff are happy with their equity statement but from my experience in talking with other students this is not the case.
I know many kids who disagree with their teachers, but they're too scared to stand up because they're worried that their grades will be ducked (lowered), and their learning experience will be affected.
My honors' government teacher, I'm not going to say his name, but he has mentioned that democrats care more about all people while republicans only care about themselves, and he's also inferred to us that socialism is better than democracy. He had a statue of a socialist leader in his classroom.
I have been told by a lot of kids that they just stay silent and adjust their schoolwork to reflect an acceptable opinion to secure a good grade.
I've been approached by multiple teachers who have told me in private that they just want to say that they agree with me, and they support me standing up, but they can't say in front of the class for fear of being disciplined by the administration in some way or losing their jobs.
There is clearly only one way to think in this district and that is that they are teaching their kids to shut up if they don't agree.
Now members of the board, I want you to take a good look at yourselves in the mirror tonight and ask « are you really standing up for the equality of all people or are you just pushing a damaging political ideology on our students? ».
A fellow co-worker at my job who by the way is of color discreetly told me that the schools seem to be pushing a very leftist agenda in class. This proves not everyone is happy with your school and not everyone who isn't happy is white.
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Now due to all these instances I've mentioned and many more that we can't fit in this five-minute speech, I've decided to leave this district and continue school on a private Christian school online.
And there will be sacrifices and I will not get to walk in the graduation ceremony or attend milestones at RHS, but I will be able to learn an environment that is not intent on punishing me daily for my skin color and political views.
Now regardless how you take my speech whether you just shrug it off as malarkey or Fox News talking points, I encourage you to think about it because someday I’m going to be a leader.
I may be the president, a governor or just a professional golfer, but I will never stop believing that everybody has value no matter their skin color or personal beliefs, and it's a shame that you're not going to be able to say that I was an alumnus of RHS in district 196.
Thank you,
Original video version on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM1YWxff_4Y
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Why I quit the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Tara Henley
Independant reporter and writer.
Tara Henley, special article to National Post, January 3rd, 2002
“To work at the CBC in the current climate is to embrace cognitive dissonance (act at the opposite of your mission) and to abandon journalistic integrity.”
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For months now, I’ve been getting complaints about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, where I’ve worked as a TV and radio producer, and occasional on-air columnist, for much of the past decade.
People want to know why, for example, non-binary Filipinos concerned about a lack of LGBT terms in Tagalog is an editorial priority for the CBC, when local issues of broad concern go unreported. Or why our pop culture radio show’s coverage of the Dave Chappelle Netflix special failed to include any of the legions of fans, or comics, that did not find it offensive. Or why, exactly, taxpayers should be funding articles that scold Canadians for using words such as “brainstorm” and “lame.”
Everyone asks the same thing: What is going on at the CBC?
When I started at the national public broadcaster in 2013, the network produced some of the best journalism in the country. By the time I resigned last month, it embodied some of the worst trends in mainstream media. In a short period of time, the CBC went from being a trusted source of news to churning out clickbait that reads like a parody of the student press.
Those of us on the inside know just how swiftly — and how dramatically — the politics of the public broadcaster have shifted. It used to be that I was the one furthest to the left in any newsroom, occasionally causing strain in story meetings with my views on issues like the housing crisis. I am now easily the most conservative, frequently sparking tension by questioning identity politics. This happened in the span of about 18 months. My own politics did not change.
To work at the CBC in the current climate is to embrace cognitive dissonance and to abandon journalistic integrity.
It is to sign on, enthusiastically, to a radical political agenda that originated on Ivy League campuses in the United States and spread through American social media platforms that monetize outrage and stoke societal divisions. It is to pretend that the “woke” worldview is near universal — even if it is far from popular with those you know, and speak to, and interview, and read.
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To work at the CBC now is to accept the idea that race is the most significant thing about a person, and that some races are more relevant to the public conversation than others. It is, in my newsroom, to fill out racial profile forms for every guest you book; to actively book more people of some races and less of others.
To work at the CBC is to submit to job interviews that are not about qualifications or experience — but instead demand the parroting of orthodoxies, the demonstration of fealty to dogma.
It is to become less adversarial to government and corporations and more hostile to ordinary people with ideas that Twitter doesn’t like
It is to endlessly document micro-aggressions but pay little attention to evictions; to spotlight company’s political platitudes but have little interest in wages or working conditions. It is to allow sweeping societal changes like lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and school closures to roll out — with little debate.
To see billionaires amass extraordinary wealth and bureaucrats amass enormous power
— with little scrutiny. And to watch the most vulnerable among us die of drug overdoses —
with little comment.
It is to consent to the idea that a growing list of subjects are off the table, that dialogue itself can be harmful. That the big issues of our time are all already settled.
It is to capitulate to certainty, to shut down critical thinking, to stamp out curiosity. To keep one’s mouth shut, to not ask questions, to not rock the boat.
This, while the world burns.
How could good journalism possibly be done under such conditions? How could any of this possibly be healthy for society?
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All of these raise larger questions about the direction that North America is headed.
Questions about this new moment we are living through — and its impact on the body politic. On class divisions, and economic inequality, On education, on mental health. On literature, and comedy. On science. On liberalism, and democracy.
These questions keep me up at night.
I can no longer push them down. I will no longer hold them back. This Substack is an attempt to find some answers.
I have been a journalist for 20 years, covering everything from hip-hop to news, food to current affairs. The through line has always been books, which I’ve engaged with at every stage of my career and at every outlet I’ve worked for. In 2020, I published my own book, Lean Out: A Meditation on the Madness of Modern Life, which was an instant bestseller in Canada.
Books have always opened new worlds for me, introduced me to new perspectives, and helped me to make sense of humanity. I need books now more than ever.
During lockdown, when I wasn’t covering COVID-19, I spent a lot of time interviewing authors for a new book I’m working on. Their boldness and insight and humor saved me from despair. These writers gave me ideas on how to move forward, and how to maintain hope. Most of all, they gave me the courage to stand up — and to speak out.
Here at Substack, I will continue the work of thinking through the current moment, focusing on non-fiction writing from around the world. I will post an essay on a books related topic every Monday, and a podcast conversation with a heterodox author every Wednesday.
This will be free to all. A third post on Fridays will round up the most contrarian, controversial or overlooked new books and essays, and will be available to paid subscribers.
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This work is entirely independent and entirely free from editorial control, allowing me to say the things that are not being said, and ask the questions that are not being asked. Lean Out is solely supported by subscribers. If you care about the world of ideas and value open inquiry, as I do, please consider a paid subscription.
And stay tuned for the first episode of the Lean Out podcast this Wednesday, featuring my conversation with Newsweek’s Batya Ungar-Sargon, author of Bad News: How Woke Media is Undermining Democracy.
Tara Henley’s Substack
https://substack.com/profile/15756028-tara-henley
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Woke politics making our universities more stupid.
With Andrew Bolt, reporter at Skynews and
Dr Bella d’Abrera, Director of the Foundations of Western Civilisation Program.
SKY news Australia, Bolt Report
Now, all there is, this one totally claustrophobic orthodoxy that everyone has to buy into.
There is no freedom of speech, there's no debate, there's nothing, this is pure discrimination.
— Dr Bella d’Abrera
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BD - Bella D’abrera
AB - One thing this government could focus on is the fact that woke politics is making our universities more stupid, and I mean literally, measurably and stupid universities will in time make this whole country stupid as well.
This is Albert Einstein (shown picture). He is the genius Nobel Prize winner who gave us the theory of relativity, helped us to understand how gravity affects the fabric of space-time. This is Thomas Edison (shown picture) who invented a durable light bulb, movie cameras, alkaline batteries and much more. And this is Isaac Newton (shown picture) one of the greatest mathematician and physicist of all time, develop the theory of gravity.
Brilliant minds all of them but not one of those geniuses could today get even an interview with the Australian National University.
Not for one of the 10 new jobs it's just been offering because not one of these geniuses would be good enough, they are men.
And the ANU (Australian National University) has actually banned men from applying for any of the 10 new jobs, teaching and working in space technology at its advanced instrumentation and technology center.
These jobs, every single one of them are reserved for women only now. The university defends this astonishing sexism by saying “well, we need to do it to even up the gender imbalance among the scientists and technicians working on its advanced telescopes”.
Seems that too many of them are men, and it's used this same ban on men in its mathematical sciences institute. Other universities now have also been banning men.
Sydney University has advertised women-only jobs as well in stellar astrophysics and in dark matter research, women only no men even if they're actually the very best.
These universities would rather hire a bad woman for these jobs than a brilliant man, another Einstein. In fact, even a research fellowship named after perhaps the university's greatest physicist Harry Messel cannot be won by men just like him, again women only.
And you thought the left were against sexism? Totally wrong, they're totally for sexism as long as the sign on the door says “no men may apply”.
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Joining me is Bella D’abrera, director of the foundations of western civilization program and the institute of public affairs. Bella, thank you so much for joining us. The Australian National Institute is offering up to 10 new jobs in astrophysics, men are banned from even applying; these jobs are only for people identifying as women to even up the gender balance of course, your response?
BD - Oh look Andrew, my response is as always, this is a terrible story, and it really shows us in technicolor how woke our universities are and how absolutely pointless they are now.
There used to be places where you'd go to learn things to pass on knowledge, to learn about life and culture and society. Now, all there is this one totally claustrophobic orthodoxy that everyone has to buy into. There is no freedom of speech, there's no debate, there's nothing, and this is pure discrimination.
AB I feel so sorry for the male students in this field at ANU. What hope do they have of getting a job when they can see that women go in front of them? They can't even apply for some of the jobs that are now in their field at their university. What's the point of study they may well ask.
BD - Well, that's a very good question and if I was a young man thinking about my career and my career prospects, and I was really interested in studying engineering, I would probably think twice because you know with these kinds of things, with news like this you'd be completely reluctant to take on any kind of debt with the prospect of being discriminated against at the end of your three or four years of your time at university.
It's you know, discrimination has absolutely no positive outcomes in this case. I think you could say that it is probably very bad for the women who get the jobs because they'll be wondering their entire careers whether they got the jobs because of their sex or whether they got the jobs because they're actually qualified for it. And of course it just discriminates against the men among whom there are possibly very, very bright and very, very talented people who just don't get the job. So you know they call it positive discrimination, but there's nothing positive about it at all.
AB - Well, on that point that the women who get the jobs will always have that sneaking suspicion, and it's actually more than a suspicion that they've just you know token appointments. One of the ANU bosses has been actually pushing for these women-only jobs has just left the university now it was professor Lisa Culley who said well “open and transparent female only hires avoid implicit bias towards male applicants...”
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Well it avoids it by actually excluding them, but she adds this:
“...one of the main concerns regarding female only positions is (exactly what you've just said) is that the recruited female hired may be labeled as a token woman”.
“And this concern she said can be mitigated by making female-only positions highly prestigious.”
Bella D’abrera, how can you make a job prestigious when you have from the start banned probably 60% of the applicants simply because they're male? How do you make it more prestigious?
BD - I suppose you just give it a more prestigious title, and you pay more, but you know, and the question is, and the problem is that the more prestigious the title the more those people occupying those positions will be judged and held to much higher standards.
And I've encountered this before you know with women being appointed as ceo's always wondering whether they were appointed because they are worthy or because they're women.
This does a disservice to women and I think it's quite insulting because they're also saying women can't get there on their own, they need a leg up because they're not capable of occupying these senior positions by themselves on their own merits. So, as I said there is nothing positive about discrimination.
AB - Well, let me just say as they say in these woke faculties let me interrogate the reasons that they give. They say the more women they get in a workplace traditionally dominated by men the more other women will feel inspired and brave enough to go work there as well. What do you make of that argument?
BD - Well it's already been disproven that argument in Sweden which is possibly the most equal society in the west where it is known that men and women have absolutely the same opportunities and still women don't choose jobs in STEM.
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They can if they want to, there's nothing stopping them, but they're traditionally they're more inclined to go for jobs that deal with people rather than things and this is, you know, most people have read and listened to Jordan Peterson talking about this and most of the progressive left absolutely hate what he says which is that here is a difference between men and women.
Men are attracted to some things and women attracted to the other, so this argument holds no evidence whatsoever, it's in fact it's been shown that men and women traditionally choose and are attracted to different things in life.
And so this positive discrimination, this kind of you know equality of outcomes just will never work.
AB - well. It will work except of course you've got to sacrifice the fact that you know talented people aren't going to get jobs simply because of their gender and less talented people will fill them instead.
As you say, to overcome this lack of prestige they'll be paid probably more, so we'll be paying more for less and if our telescopes don't actually work properly well tough at least they were made by people identifying as women, and you've got to be grateful for that.
Bella D’ Abrera, thank you so much indeed for your time.
BD - Thank you so much Andrew
Original video version on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPvrbC9J920
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ORIGINS OF THE WOKE IDEOLOGY
(Part 1 and 2)
By Dr. James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose
Woke ideology is a belief system that combines these lines of thought in the pursuit of liberation in place of freedom. In reality, any belief system that limits freedom of thought and open inquiry and is opposed to objectivity in the scientific method is bound to lead us away from progress not toward it.
— Lindsay and Pluckrose
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“To assume that a political revolution can survive without the supporting base of a popular revolution is to ask for the impossible in politics.”
—Saul D. Alinsky
We have all heard the term woke but what does it mean to be woke? Where does this come from? And how does it work?
It's common for groups of people to believe they're the only ones who possess the ability to see reality as it truly is, it is no different with the woke.
To be woke is to be born again, to see the world anew and feel a need to awaken others to the truth.
The phenomenon of wokeness has its origins both in Marxism and even more so in postmodernism.
Marxists thought people had a false consciousness which meant they couldn't see how terrible capitalism was and how it was keeping them down.
Their consciousness needed to be raised so that they could see the truth as the Marxists saw it but then in the 1960s post-modernism arose.
This theory brought to light a new reality, the postmodernists saw Marxism as just another fabricated narrative that is a false and simplistic way of seeing the world made up by the powerful.
To these french post-modern philosophers like Foucault, Derrida and Lyotar; everything we think we know is actually a construct of power.
They believed all knowledge was created and corrupted by power, powerful forces in society decided what was and wasn't true then; the way people spoke to each other in their everyday lives upheld the knowledge that propped up those in control.
The postmodernists called this way of talking about things “the dominant discourses” and believed these discourses only helped those at the top.
Of course, discourses do change for example when Christianity was a dominant discourse in society than a gay man was considered a depraved sinner; later under emerging science around sex, it was believed he was suffering from a mental disorder and when liberalism became dominant, he was a perfectly normal human being who happened to be romantically and sexually attracted to the same sex, most of us would consider this progress.
However, post-modernists were skeptical of all truth claims and disbelieved in progress for them, everything we knew was based on stories created by those in power and nothing could be trusted.
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Everything we thought we knew was suspicious and likely produced by dominant discourses to serve the powerful nothing was as it seemed.
We were all lost in a fog created by these discourses and unable to obtain any objective knowledge about the way the world really worked.
Post-modernists assured us that at least they could see through the fog and deconstruct this knowledge to reveal its flaws to the rest of us.
Post-modernism is messy by nature, but we can draw two key principles from it that have remained consistent.
Firstly, a postmodern knowledge principle; obtaining objective knowledge is impossible and everything we think of as true is actually a social construct, this means truth is manufactured to fit the needs of those in charge.
Intertwined with this is the postmodern political principle; society is set up such that invisible and oppressive power systems work through all of us.
We are all partially to blame for any negative outcomes in society; these power systems produce knowledge and that knowledge is then used to keep the powerful in place.
The original post-modernism died out in the 1980s, but its key ideas were taken further by the next wave of scholars in the 1990s.
These scholars created fields like post-colonial studies, queer theory, critical race theory and intersectional feminism.
They weren't happy to stand in the fog and deconstruct things; they wanted to take action and change society. They used terms like imperialism, cis heteronormativity, patriarchy and white supremacy to describe what they saw as the dominant discourses in society.
They used the term critical consciousness to describe the ability to see these systems of oppressive power with the goal of revolutionizing them.
Someone with critical consciousness could see the imperialism, white supremacy and patriarchy in society and reveal this to the rest of us through their scholarship.
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Over the next 20 years, these theories developed and became more solid and concrete; they became absolute truths that were the basis for a new reformation of thought.
The theories seeped out of universities and entered popular culture; students became activists, social media allowed the spread of these ideas and popular books like “white fragility” and “how to be an anti-racist” made them accessible to everyone.
Those who adopted this new vision of the world left behind the skepticism of postmodernism.
They were now enlightened; awakened to the truth filled with certainty about the way all of the society, all systems and all interactions really worked.
They could see it all; they were woke.
The way that white person complimented her black colleague on good work, that wasn't just praise; it was white supremacist surprised that a black person is having intelligence and capability.
The way that man is sitting with his knees pointing outwards; this has nothing to do with the shape of men's hips and their external testes, that's patriarchal entitlement to take up more space than women and crowd them out of public areas.
What about the speaker who began with “ladies and gentlemen”; that's not a simple formal customary address; it's the erasure of non-binary people and an oppressive discourse that forces binary concepts of sex and gender onto everyone making the world hostile to trans people and increasing their risk of violence or suicide.
When one is woke and can see and feel the oppression everywhere, it becomes one's moral duty to call it all out, ban it and deplatform, punish and cancel the perpetrators. The rest of us are at best still asleep or at worst willfully ignorant and refusing to wake up.
The woke movement claims to be progressive, but its origins are more than half a century old and based on faulty and unproven scholarship, surely we can find a better and more modern basis for understanding the social issues of our day [Music].
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Part 2
“There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young”
—Thomas Sowell
Real social justice is far too important to be entrusted to a group of far-left activists and zealous believers who want to radically transform society according to ideas from neo-marxism and post-modernism.
Woke ideology is a belief system that combines these lines of thought in the pursuit of liberation in place of freedom. In reality, any belief system that limits freedom of thought and open inquiry and is opposed to objectivity in the scientific method is bound to lead us away from progress not toward it.
Woke social justice ideology has turned into something like a new religious cult; it's the kind of religious cult whose beliefs are hostile to reason, disconfirmation and disagreement of any kind.
-------------------------------------------QUOTE--------------------------------------------
— “We all have some form or another privilege, why is that yours kill ourselves?”
— “Because we have white privilege” (excerpt from video).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is common to believe that this is actually just a minor problem and one we are now exaggerating after all, aren't these just radicals in the university? Why should we be concerned about this ideology?
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Since about 2010, this new woke religion has spread into every corner of society and started to change how we think and speak about many social issues.
Woke social justice activists want us to reform the way we see every aspect of society and even reality itself.
Objective and rigorous standards together with capitalism are ultimately what it wants liberation from.
------------------------------------------------QUOTE-----------------------------------------------------
“And I think it's a mistake to assume that we can combat racism by leaving capitalism in place” (excerpt from video).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our new perspective must be based on their sacred texts, these texts written by people like Judith Butler, Richard Delgado and many more act like scripture for the woke believers.
Their scripture tells us to trade in logic and objective knowledge for subjective lived experience and the more oppressed a person is, the more they get to say what is true.
-------------------------------------------------QUOTE----------------------------------------------------
“People who decide one day they're male, next day they're female, next day back to male, I think it's ridiculous”
“That's because you're a cis straight man” (excerpt from video).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
People's identities determine how they view the world according to this gospel.
There is no need to resolve any contradictions that result from two conflicting lived experiences; we simply need to take it on faith that the more oppressed person has greater access to what is true.
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---------------------------------------------------QUOTE---------------------------------------------------
“People of color can be operants of white supremacy if they're not checked” (excerpt from video)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This scripture is sometimes called the truth according to social justice, and you are not allowed to question it. There is one option, to believe, if you don't believe all of this scripture; that simply means you haven't fully understood it, or you haven't read the text thoroughly enough.
Disagreeing makes you a heretic, speaking out against the woke worldview is blasphemy and anyone who is white and especially male is born with an original sin and that sin cannot be absolved.
------------------------------------------------ QUOTES-------------------------------------------------
“You're a [ _F_ ] white male” (abusive language) (excerpt from a video).
“Oh no, she has to save you because you're a [ _F_ ] white man”. (abusive language) (excerpt from video).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is no redemption in this new religion and there is no room for doubt; there is just relentless change toward the liberated future when society and the state have been perfected by woke activism.
Perpetual revolution until the end of history which you have to be on the right side of.
The rigid and dogmatic beliefs that make up woke ideology will only lead us backwards to more divisiveness and toward the general decay of our society. It's already happening.
It operates under the banner of social justice but this new woke religion does not further the noble aims of the original civil rights movement.
The civil rights leaders appealed to liberal values which suggested that group identity ultimately shouldn't matter, and the movement helped us start removing barriers in society, so all groups would be seen as equal.
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One of their most famous slogans was “I am a man” which took the identity signifier out of the equation. The focus was on universal human rights, something that unites all of us rather than divides us.
But woke social justice is obsessed with hierarchy and with who can score the most points for being the most oppressed.
-------------------------------------------------- QUOTE----------------------------------------------
“Being a black gay man, you really start to see how whiteness operates even in spaces of inclusion and diversity” (excerpt from a video)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It, following the model developed by karl Marx divides the world between the oppressor and the oppressed and the oppressed need to rise up and fight and even destroy the oppressor.
This kind of social justice is undermining the good that the civil rights movement achieved by its obsession with various competing identities. We should focus on higher level unifying identities like the fact that we're all human beings or all Americans.
As Americans, whether liberal, moderate or conservative; we all need to push back against woke ideology because if we don't its corrosive nature will continue to eat away at the progress we've made much like a cancer spreading throughout society weakening and destroying everything it comes in contact with [Music].
Original version of the videos on YouTube.
Part 1 and 2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBt0tpCpf5w&t=113s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dcw29urMTs
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MEETING THE ENEMY
Cassie Jaye, filmmaker and documentalist
Tedx lecture “Meeting the enemy” at Marin College in Kentfield, California 2017.
“But all the men's rights activists I met support women's rights and are simply asking the question: "Why doesn't our society care about men's rights?.”
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In 2013, I decided to meet my enemies. I was a 27-year-old, award-winning documentary filmmaker and a proud feminist. And I was determined to expose the dark underbelly of the men's rights movement. At that point, all I knew of the men's rights movement was from what I'd read online, that it's a misogynistic hate group actively working against women's equality. Well, the vast majority of my previous work was about women's issues. I directed documentaries about reproductive rights, single motherhood, and the need for more girls to get into STEM (science, technology, engineering, and maths) education.
So when I learned that no one had ever documented the men's rights movement in a film before, I saw it as an opportunity to continue fighting for women's equality by exposing those preventing it.
So for one year, I traveled North America meeting the leaders and followers of the men's rights movement. I spent anywhere from two hours up to eight hours, interviewing each individual men's rights activist, also known as MRA, and I filmed 44 people total.
And there is an important rule in documentary filmmaking. As an interviewer, you do not interrupt. So I'm asking questions, and I'm getting their full life story. And at the moment, I didn't realize it, but now looking back I can see, that while I was conducting my interviews, I wasn't actually listening. I was hearing them speak, and I knew the cameras were recording, but in those moments of sitting across from my enemy, I wasn't listening.
What was I doing?. I was anticipating. I was waiting to hear a sentence, or even just a couple of words in succession that proved what I wanted to believe: that I had found the misogynist. The ground zero of the war on women. A couple of times, I thought I had it.
There was one MRA (men's rights activist) that said to me, "Just walk outside and look around, everything you see was built by a man.» Oh!. That statement felt anti-women. I felt my jaw clench, but I sat quietly, as a documentarian should, while removing all the space between my upper and lower molars. (Laughter)
After my year of filming, I was reviewing the 100 hours of footage I had gathered, replaying and transcribing it, which believe me when I say no one will ever listen to you more than someone who transcribes your words. You should write that down. (Laughter) So, I was typing out every word meticulously, and through that process, I began to realize that my initial knee-jerk reactions to certain statements weren't really warranted, and my feeling offended did not hold up to intense scrutiny. Was that statement about men having built the skyscrapers and the bridges anti-women?. I thought, well, what would be the gender-reverse scenario?. Maybe a feminist saying: Just look around, everyone you see was birthed by a woman. Wow! That's a powerful statement. And it's true. Is it anti-male? I don't think so. I think it's acknowledging our unique and valued contributions to our society.
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Well, luckily, while I was making The Red Pill movie, I kept a video diary which ended up tracking my evolving views, and in looking back on the 37 diaries I recorded that year, there was a common theme. I would often hear an innocent, valid point that a men's rights activist would make, but in my head, I would add on to their statements, a sexist or anti-woman spin, assuming that's what they wanted to say but didn't.
So here are two examples of how that would go. A men's rights activist, an MRA, would say to me, "There are over 2,000 domestic violence shelters for women in the United States. But only one for men. Yet, multiple reputable studies show that men are just as likely to be abused. " I would hear them say, "We don't need 2,000 shelters for women.
They're all lying about being abused. It's all a scam ».
But in looking back on all the footage I've gathered of men's rights activists talking about shelters and all the blogs they've written and the video live-streams they have posted on YouTube, they are not trying to defund women's shelters. Not at all. All they're saying is that men can be abused too, and they deserve care and compassion.
Second example. A men's rights activist would say to me, "Where is justice for the man who was falsely accused of raping a woman, and because of this accusation, he loses his college scholarship and is branded with the inescapable title of a rapist. " I would hear them say, "A woman being raped isn't a big deal. " It's as if I didn't hear the word "falsely"
accused of rape. All I heard was, "He was accused of rape. " Of course, rape is a big deal, and all the men's rights activists I met agreed it is a horrible thing to have happened to anyone.
I eventually realized what they are saying is they are trying to add to the gender equality discussion, who is standing up for the good-hearted, honorable man that loses his scholarship, his job, or worse yet, his children, because he is accused of something he absolutely did not do?.
(Sighs) Well, I couldn't keep denying the points they were making. There are real issues.
But in my effort to avoid agreeing with my enemy completely, I changed from putting words in their mouth to acknowledging the issue but insisting there are women's issues. So here are two examples of how that would go. A men's rights activist would say to me, "Men are far more likely to lose their child in a custody battle. " And I would counter: "Well, because women are unfairly expected to be the caretaker.
It's discrimination against women that women get custody more often. " Yes. (Laughter) I am not proud of that. (Laughter)
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Second example. An MRA would say to me, "Men are roughly 78% of all suicides throughout the world. " And I would counter with: "But women attempt suicide more often.
So ha!. (Laughter) Ha?. It's not a contest. But I kept making it into one.
Why couldn't I simply learn about men's issues and have compassion for male victims without jumping at the opportunity to insist that women are the real victims.
Well, after years of researching and fact-checking, what the men's rights activists were telling me, there is no denying that there are many human rights issues that disproportionately or uniquely affect men. Paternity fraud uniquely affects men.
The United States Selective Service in the case of a draft still uniquely affects men.
Workplace deaths: disproportionately men. War deaths: overwhelmingly men. Suicide: overwhelmingly men. Sentencing disparity, life expectancy, child custody, child support, false rape allegations, criminal court bias, misandry, failure launched, boys falling behind in education, homelessness, veterans issues, infant male genital mutilation, lack of parental choice once a child is conceived, lack of resources for male victims of domestic violence, so many issues that are heartbreaking, if you are the victim, or you love someone who is the victim unto any one of these issues.
These are men's issues. And most people can't name one because they think, "Well, men have all the rights; they have all the power and privileges. " But these issues deserve to be acknowledged. They deserve care, attention, and motivation for solutions.
Before making The Red Pill movie, I was a feminist of about ten years, and I thought I was well-versed on gender equality issues. But it wasn't until I met men's rights activists that I finally started to consider the other side of the gender equality equation.
It doesn't mean I agree with all that they've said. But I saw the immense value in listening to them and trying to see the world through their eyes. I thought if I could get my audience to also listen to them, it could serve as a rung on the ladder, bringing us all up to a higher consciousness about gender equality.
So in October 2016, the film was released in theaters, and articles and critic reviews started to roll in. And that's when I experienced how engaged the media is in group think around gender politics.
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And I learned a difficult lesson. When you start to humanize your enemy, you, in turn, may be dehumanized by your community. And that's what happened to me. Rather than debating the merit of the issues addressed in the film, I became the target of a smear campaign, and people who had never seen the movie protested outside the theater doors, chanting that it was harmful to women.
It certainly is not. But I understand their mindset. If I never made this movie, and I heard that there was a documentary screening about men's rights activists that didn't show them as monsters, I too would have protested the screenings or at least sign the petitions to ban the film because I was told that they were my enemy. I was told that men's rights activists were against women's equality. But all the men's rights activists I met support women's rights and are simply asking the question: "Why doesn't our society care about men's rights?.
"Well, the greatest challenge I faced through this whole process, it wasn't the protests against my film, and it wasn't how I was treated by the mainstream media — even though it got pretty disgusting at times. The greatest challenge I faced was peeling back the layers of my own bias.
It turns out I did meet my enemy while filming. It was my ego saying that I was right, and they were subhuman. It's no secret now that I no longer call myself a feminist, but I must clarify I am not anti-feminist, and I am not a men's rights activist. I still support women's rights, and I now care about men's rights as well.
However, I believe if we want to honestly discuss gender equality, we need to invite all voices to the table. Yet, this is not what is happening. Men's groups are continually vilified, falsely referred to as hate groups, and their voices are systematically silenced.
Do I think either movement has all the answers?. No. Men's rights activists are not without flaws, neither are feminists. But if one group is being silenced, that's a problem for all of us. If I could give advice to anyone in our society at large, we have to stop expecting to be offended, and we have to start truly, openly, and sincerely listening.
That would lead to a greater understanding of ourselves and others, having compassion for one another, working together towards solutions because we all are in this together.
And once we do that, we can finally heal from the inside out. But it has to start with listening. Thank you for listening. (Applause) (Cheering) 45
This transcript was extracted from this lecture. (Link below) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WMuzhQXJoY&t=52s&ab_channel=TEDxTalks By Cassie Jaye
The Red Pill is a 2016 American documentary film directed by Cassie Jaye. The film explores the men's rights movement, as Jaye spends a year filming the leaders and followers within the movement.
(Link below)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4ulBQt8DmU&ab_channel=Untitled 46
DANGERS OF MODERN FEMINISM
Eva Vlaardingerbroek
Political commentator and freelance philosopher.
Presentation at the conference of the New Dutch Political Party.
Forum for Democracy.
“Can you see the paradox? The western man is the archenemy but the mass migration of hundreds of thousands of single men from very patriarchal societies is no problem at all for our feminists.”
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When it was announced that I was going to talk about the dangers of modern day feminism, the angry reactions flooded in immediately.
How could you as a woman be against feminism? Without feminism, you would not have been allowed to vote, you would not have been allowed to work, and so I would not be standing here on this stage.
My answer is simple, today's feminism has nothing to do with this. [Applause]
Stronger still that kind of fundamental freedoms that are coming as a result of that same modern feminism are just now coming under more and more pressure.
Again does that sound a bit exaggerated to you?
Then I advise you to go and have a look at the average women's march in Amsterdam.
You will see all kinds of flags passing by; the antifa flag, a rainbow flag, a Palestinian flag and even some communist flags.
You will hear slogans varying from “death to the patriarchy” and “all men are trash” to “all refugees are welcome here”.
Can you see the paradox? The western man is the archenemy but the mass migration of hundreds of thousands of single men from very patriarchal societies is no problem at all for our feminists.
And this, ladies and gentlemen while in the multicultural paradise of Sweden one third of the young women have to deal with sexual harassment.
And such a fact should give food for thought. A fact confessed is half redressed, you would think.
Well, not if it depends on our modern day feminists.
Their march has long since led to a dance on the volcano but the only ones who can't see it are themselves.
Ladies and gentlemen, in 2012, writer and filmmaker Jan Leyers said something that stuck with me.
I quote “Instinctively, Europe began for me where men and women get along with one another in an inhibited manner, where women can be themselves without fear for their body or their life”.
As true as this statement is as sad is the conclusion that many cities in Europe are hardly European anymore.
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But why is this not a problem for our modern day feminists?
The answer is that they don’t care about Europe or about our European values.
They are too busy with all kinds of imaginary “gaps”, gender-neutral toys and growing her armpit hair to be able to see that this is exactly this European civilization that has given her more freedom than any other woman in the entire world.
Because, let’s be very clear about this, the equality of men and women before the law is a crown jewel of our European civilization.
So, what drives these modern day feminists?
In order to answer this question, I take you back to that women’s march in Amsterdam and the communist flags that could be seen there. These flags are not there without a reason.
Modern day feminism has fallen under the ideology of cultural Marxism.
The classical class struggle has been replaced by the struggle of minorities and women against the new oppressor: the white man.
So, how do you remove such a new oppressor from society?
Well, by demonizing or denying all differences between men and women.
The influence of these modern day feminists is something we can notice on a daily basis.
As you know (in the Dutch trains) “ladies and gentlemen” has been replaced by “dear travelers”.
These days, “sanitary pads for women” has become “sanitary pads for people who menstruate” and if it comes to D66 (Dutch progressive party), our police stations will no longer be “manned” but instead “staffed”.
Oh! and men in the audience, did you know that according to modern day feminists opening a door for a woman is sexist?
Before concluding, I would like to read you a quote from the famous French thinker Alexis de Toqueville.
“There are people in Europe who, confounding the different characteristics of the sexes would make of man and woman beings not only equal but alike”. “Both are degraded; and nothing could ever result but weak men and disorderly women”.
Tocqueville wrote down these words in the year 1840.
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Today, 180 years later, these words are more relevant than ever before. Modern day feminism has been on the wrong track. We have to return to the real European values and free ourselves from the totalitarian thinking of modern day feminism.
We must do this for the sake of men, women and our societies. Thank you.
Original version of the video in Dutch with English subtitles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TD_qfZnJBs
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IS MODERN FEMINISM STARTING TO UNDERMINE ITSELF?
Jessica Butcher
Tedx lecture on April 28th 2018 at Aston University Birmingham, England.
“Feminism, like other forms of identity politics, have become obsessed with female victimhood whereas it once used to be about the portrayal of women as mature, equal partners in society, it now seems more to be about “girl power” (women have all the rights).
And yes, it disempowers.”
— Jessica Butcher
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[Music] Good afternoon. So, I'm not sure if I can detect any bristling in the audience with my somewhat controversial title given that we sit here in a diversity themed event.
What I will say, just please bear with me, particularly because I'm going to be starting on such a positive note
There has never been a better time to be a woman. Never have women had as many opportunities as they do now to run countries, companies, to control their personal financial and sex lives.
Girls outperform boys at school, more go to university, women in their 20s and early 30s are frequently out earning men. We should feel optimistic and yet we're not.
In fact, sometimes it seems all womanhood is depressed. Faced by an avalanche of information regarding the ongoing disparity in fortunes between women and men; by a narrative of disadvantage and societal patriarchy that runs through “me too” the gender pay gap, the glass ceiling and more.
But how crystal cuts are these assumptions? And what are the possible implications for how women respond to both opportunities and challenges in their lives?
So, who am I? A woman, yes, and a mother to three children under five.
I'm a successful entrepreneur enjoying a career where I get to deal with some of the biggest thinkers and doers in the world today in business, in politics, in media, academia.
I'm privileged, no question.
My race, background and opportunities mark me as one of the privileged elite.
What do I know about disadvantage? And what's my agenda here?
Well, as a woman, I'm a minority in my fields of technology entrepreneurship. Hard industries to be a woman in — also the narrative that would have made us believe.
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No. not so. I don't believe that this has been added a disadvantage, only the most incredible opportunity. One that has enabled me to stand out and get recognition.
I describe myself as an entrepreneur, not a female entrepreneur, because I subscribe to a brand of feminism they told me I could be and do anything the boys could.
And in fact, I've come to resent the move towards positive discrimination, that might imply that any of my achievements when were done to anything other than merit.
If I look back at all my good fortune, I can honestly say that to a large extent, it's been down to the love support and belief of the men in my life. My father, my husband, the boss's, business partners, peers and mentors enabled my journey.
But of course the biggest advantage I possess is self-confidence and belief.
And it's this that I want to look at in more detail today. Why is it seemingly so much harder to find in women than in men? And how might modern feminism be further undermining it?
The talk of the gender pay gap is everywhere and actually incorrectly assumed by 70% of the population to refer to women being paid less for the same work.
Not true.
Illegal actually and also nonsensical, as surely businesses would prefer to pay a cheaper workforce.
The median disparity of 18.4% can to a large extent be explained by the choice of 42%
women to work part-time.
The figure drops to 9.1% when he compared full-time to full-time, with this figure understandable to a degree by the fact that women are choosing different profession types.
Women in their 20s and early 30s as we've heard, frequently out earning men.
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The pay gap is negligible; it fluctuates; some years women out earn men. And part-time women actually out earn part-time men.
So in effect, the headline statistic ignores many of the complicated variable factors beneath it and in particular a potential positive that a female choice.
The glass ceiling — it's been shattered time and time again by female heads of state and business leaders demonstrating that for those women that do aspire to that sort of career, it's absolutely possible.
These are of course hard masochistic almost lives filled with imbalance, politics, stress, long hours.
We can hardly even whisper any suspicion we may have that this is a lifestyle that fewer women and mothers aspire to.
And arguably, only the tiniest percentage of men.
Right now, I'm currently observing a large number of some of my highest-flying friends quietly leaning out of aspirations of making partner, away from 60 hours work weeks, with some choosing to quit altogether so as not to enjoy these early years of family life myself included.
Two years ago, I made the decision to step back from the front seat of my business to spend more time with my three children.
And it's a decision I will never regret.
Having lost two friends recently, very early in their lives, it really brought home to me the fact that I will never get these years back. That's too important.
But of course, women like me a partly responsible for gender pay gap, many of us may never go knocking on that glass ceiling because it's simply not a lifestyle that we desire.
These are just two of the big feminist issues of our time, with others including “Me too”
online trolling, body shaming and objectification, and domestic violence — all issues that you'd be forgiven for thinking were exclusively female.
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Now there's been a lot of very good intention campaigning behind these issues and some very positive by-products, such as the light being shine on some of the more insidious ways in which some men can mistreat and underestimate women, and of course, on abuses of power.
But my fear is that the broad-spectrum expanding definition of prejudice and harassment is now something that almost any woman can associate with. And we simply can't cry misogyny every time we’re called out or held back in some way.
I fear for an ideology and a rhetoric that is starting to women against men, that focuses on what we can't do and haven't got rather than what we can and have.
My intention is seeking to shine light on some of the other side of these issues.
It's not to deny the existence of discrimination that may exist in some of them, but to question the cumulative net effect of a female victimhood.
Feminism, like other forms of identity politics, have become obsessed with female victimhood whereas it once used to be about the portrayal of women as mature, equal partners in society, it now seems more to be about girl power. And yes it disempowers.
It seems that we’re weak and defenseless, like children.
Psychologists have long emphasized the power of beliefs to be born out in reality, and how stereotypes contribute to social inequality.
Confidence is, of course, self-fulfilling something you will all have experienced.
You look good, you feel good.
You're told someone likes you; you’re more relaxed around them and conversely, if you suspect somebody doesn't like you, then you're acting a more defensive, less confident way around them.
Victims believe they are impotent and that they have no sense of control over the way that events unfold.
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Assuming that something has happened to you due to prejudice, whether right or wrong, it’s rarely the most productive response.
It prevents introspection, self-analysis, and more importantly, particularly if it was due to prejudice, evaluation of new methods and techniques for circumventing your status quo.
And what about men?
Well, there's actually competition here for competitive victimhood if we want to play that game.
Men have their own unique set of disadvantages that are rarely up for public discussion, including higher rates of school dropout; of mental health; vastly higher suicide rates; vastly higher workplace deaths, war deaths; death in crime; higher rates of homelessness; criminal court bias and sentencing disparity, where men receive nearly 60% longer sentences and women for the same crime; near equal domestic abuse rates; paternity fraud; child custody; and of course reduced life expectancy.
Even now, in this age of aspirational equality, the cry will go out: “women and children first!”
Take for example the awful news story of Boko Haram and the terrorists that abducted the girls.
Did you know that prior to this happening; those same terrorists had been abducting thousands of boys and murdering hundreds of boys and young men?
Burned alive in their schools, shot in the streets.
A situation that received no international attention until the terrorists turned their attention to the girls. And then, First ladies, media celebrities, politicians up in arms.
But why only then? Why are boy's life seemingly valued so much less than girls?
Whomever may have it worse, I take issue with a debating ground based on competitive victimhood. It's fruitless, it's destructive.
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Women are being encouraged to fear and distrust men, and men are more nervous and guarded in their interactions around women.
And worse, resentful of a label of “patriarchy”, one that the vast majority don't recognize, and who have their own challenges to face.
Already, we're seeing some rather worrying by-products to all of this, such as five times more men now less inclined to mentor women in the wake of “Me too”.
75% of young girls yet to experience any form of discrimination talk about anxiety about it affecting their lives in some way.
And working class girls have been deprived of jobs that they love such as “Page 3 Girls”
and “Grid Girls” (topless women from popular newspapers) because other women disapprove of them.
What happened to “my body my choice”?
It's okay for Kim Kardashian, but not for a page 3 girl?.
Men have had their careers and reputations ruined overnight by “Me Too”.
Some possibly justly, but without any due process, no innocence until proven guilty.
And where might all this lead?
Quotas leading to doubts in ability?
Was my recent MBE (business management award) because of positive discrimination?
Am I on this stage because of it?
Should we ban flirting on campus and in the workplace?
Incidentally two of the places where you're most likely to meet a life partner.
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My company started recruiting fewer women into entry-level, lower paid works so as to even up their gender pay gaps.
And if 50/50 is the ultimate aim, then shouldn't we be arguing for quotas for more men in the fields of nursing, teaching, veterinary science?
More women on the frontline, in construction, in refuse collection?
And perhaps three most important questions of all: Does power exists solely in the boardroom and at the highest levels of politics and business? Or is there the possibility that it exists in choice? And arguably, don’t women have more of that?
Does equality of opportunity have to equal equality of outcome?
And aren't the assumptions that women need more support, protection, quotas in the workplace arguably the most patriarchal assumptions of all?
Now, don't get me wrong.
I don't believe that the women's movement has had its day or that there's no longer a case for feminism. But I do believe we need to reverse some of these negative trends so here are three positive solutions, as I see it
First, when it comes to girls, the best way to combat prejudice is to build their confidence and show them that they are wrong not to trust themselves.
We teach girls strength and resilience to call out prejudice at the moment. We celebrate successful women, hold them up there as role models for both girls and boys, where arguably the impact maybe greater, and we won’t always complain about the minority representation.
And we celebrate the unique power that women have today in schools, homes, marriages, families, and yes, business and politics, wielding immense influence over the hearts and minds of the future.
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Two: We turn our attention to true gender equality, stop painting all men with the broad brush of oppressor and recognize that yes, there are bad, abusive men in this world, but there are also bad, fallible women. Sadly, we are all equally capable of inflicting misery on each other.
And in a world where women are able to participate more equally in the public sphere, we need to better level the private for men in our homes and families. And it's here that we should refocus the debate.
And three, we give more oxygen to the truly deep, profound inequalities that still exist in this world, in developing countries, for women who can't get the same education, get forced into arranged marriages, can't have access to birth control.
Or here, socio-economic and educational disadvantage. And the fact that hiring typically still happens along “people like me” lines, a much bigger threat to business diversity than gender.
And above all, we listen to each other with open minds. Play the ideological ball and not the player.
Be kind!
So it's often said that you can't be what you can't see. No, not so.
Some of the most powerful figures in history have been something that didn't exist.
Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seats so kick-starting the course of civil rights.
Stephen Hawking changed the world of science with his brain, irrespective of his bodily weakness.
Tommie Smith and John Carlos silently raised their fists on the podium at the 68’ Olympics, so drawing attention to black rights.
And Malala stood up publicly to her oppressors, and earned her a platform from which she could educate the world.
They never believed they couldn't. They never cried victim. They were strong, resilient, defiant.
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Just as a terrorist thrives on terror and the bully of distress; defiance, ridicule, even pity is a much stronger antidote to bad behavior than wounded insecurity.
We need to stop thinking of gender as an identity. We have thrown so much more in common with those with whom we share values and outlook than chromosomes.
Our gender, our race, or sexuality, our disability — they are all just part of the rich tapestry of who we are as individuals, and none of these things outside of our control should affect our outlook.
There are still a huge number of inequalities in this world, but our individual right to self-belief is a simple and universal possibility, and it is best that we need to instill in our young.
Because it's actually not my daughter I'm worried about in this new world view; it's my sons. But they'll be ok. Because we'll be bringing them up to recognize their individual potential, to not indulge in victimhood, and to see that the power they have being born where and when they have is one of choice.
They'll make all their own, and they'll deeply respect those of other people. Thank you, thank you very much. [Applause]
Original video in English version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgIgytWyo_A
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Introduction to female pedophiles
An interview with Dr Michele Elliott
Psychologist, Child Protection Expert.
And you had them shouting, and it was just, it was absolutely strange and very sad because it was like « don't tell me this information even if it's true because I don't want to hear it ».
— Dr Michele Elliott
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ME - Michele Elliott
Narrator « Examining the female pedophile » (onscreen text) So, is there such a thing as female pedophiles?
ME - Female pedophiles. There's a great deal of controversy about this, in fact, when I brought up the issue that women could sexually abuse children I was vilified, I was cast out of the Sisterhood, I was no longer a good feminist.
Because sexual abuse had to be under the guise of male power and if I had a significant number of women who were sexually abusing children and I knew about these women then that messed up the male power thing and surely if women were going to abuse children than they had to be doing it under the thumb of a man, a man had to be telling them to do it.
So, there are female abusers, they haven’t been recognized.
They've been able to disguise their abuse I think more cleverly than men have and society doesn't want to believe that there are female abusers. It's easier to think it's a nasty man.
Narrator - Do women tend to only commit child abuse if there's a man involved as well?
ME - No, no and in over 75 percent of the cases the woman acted completely alone, most times there wasn't even a man in the premises.
So you know the excuse, it's interesting about us as women because we're quite willing to accept that we are superior breed and that we do everything right but quite unwilling to accept that we could do anything quite as horrible as this. So it's you know it's really not us.
Narrator - How do women react to the truth of female abuser? (Onscreen text) 62
ME - We had a conference about this eventually and I think in 1994 maybe earlier. 400
people applied to come to this conference it was a huge conference but 30 people, between 20 and 30 people came and dotted themselves in the audience and tried to disrupt it.
They were yelling that, you know this, why was I paying attention to women? It wasn't women, I was taking the attention away from men, and the irony was we'd given them all free places. That was a mistake.
But one of the women who was going to talk about her own abuse, who was now helping others, then couldn't face the audience. So you had this uproar, you had people in the audience turning on these women who were standing up saying sit down we want to hear about this.
And you had them shouting, and it was just, it was absolutely strange and very sad because it was like « don't tell me this information even if it's true because I don't want to hear it ».
And if those women who came along to our conference that had anything to do about it nobody else would have ever talked about it would have just gone away.
Narrator - Who were these people who are disruptive? (Onscreen text) ME - People who were disruptive were survivors of male abuse, very, very strong feminists. I've always considered myself a feminist but oh boy they've got me beaten. They are feminists on the extreme i.e. let's just do away from with men and have sperm banks. It was that sort of thing for many of them.
You could not actually tell what gender they were, although I knew that they were women because you know they had disguised their own gender, and they were very, very angry.
Narrator - One argument against even the idea of a female pedophile is that women don't have penises as they can't really do anything too serious. (Onscreen text) ME - Women tend to use objects; broom handles, bottles, one woman said that she was sexually abused by rose stems with the thorns still on being stuck up.
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Women can be quite cruel using objects, but they are still after their own sexual gratification, so it's kind of you know that it's just actually it's just a physiological thing the difference.
Narrator - Sexual abuse by women has the same foundation as that committed by men.
They have generally experienced childhood abuse themselves. Women are not immune from turning into abusers as we like to think by pretending that female pedophiles don't exist.
We have little protection from them. The link between those that have been abused and then go on to abuse is that the same whether the victims are male or female?
ME - It does seem to be that the women that I know who have sexually abused children do seem to have been abused in their childhood.
I talked to one of them who said: « I just want to have sex with kids because sex with children is beautiful, it's non-threatening. It's what happened to me when I was a child. »
So I think that the link of adult female abusers with abuse in their childhood is the same as a link with adult male abusers, in other words most of them have been abused as children in some really dramatic way.
Narrator - There are hardly any female abusers, right? (Onscreen text) ME - I'd written several books about how it was men who sexually abused maybe only 5%
of abusers ever would be women and I remember a summer radio time program, I owned the summer.
They are desperate for something to talk about and everybody's out of town anyway, so this one presenter rang me up, and he said come on and talk to me about any case as a female sexual abuse you might have, well at that point I only had maybe 10 or 11 or 12
(cases) I can't remember.
So, I went on this program and I talked about women abusing, and it opened up a floodgate. We had tons of telephone calls into the program from adults who thought they were the only ones.
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And then, by the time I got back to my office we had even more and it kind of was a snowball effect.
It was like when we first started talking about sexual abuse at all when the adults would say « I never knew it happened to anybody else, I didn't know that, you know, my dad or my uncle or somebody abused me, I don't know anybody else did this » same thing was happening with women.
You know, there were men and women ringing saying I was abused by my mother, by my aunt, by a nun by a teacher by you know all kinds of different people. I was shocked, yeah.
I don't expect women to sexually be as I really thought it was a tiny problem.
Narrator - Where do we find these women?
ME - Yeah, women who sexually abused children like to have jobs with or around children nursing, teaching, daycare things like that.
You really don't think twice, I mean most parents don't think twice about leaving their children in care of a woman, they do now think twice about leaving their child and care of a man. Again I think that's wrong but there you are that's what's happening.
So, they will find jobs where they can get a ... ? . It's like an alcoholic in a bar you know if you can possibly, if you've got an addiction and this is an addiction then you will go to someplace that you can actually practice your addiction and any place around kids is a good place.
Narrator - Which women are responsible for most child abuse?
ME - The vast majority of the people who have contacted me have told me that it was their mother who sexually abused them.
Now I wouldn't like to say that what's happening necessarily with child sexual abuse everywhere by women.
But the mother can disguise what she's doing putting cream on the child, bathing the child, holding the child in bed in a society think, so that's okay because it's a mummy.
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Maybe it's a bit suspect because it's a dad which I think is very sad, but that's how it goes.
Narrator - It’s not really abuse for boys, is it? (Onscreen text) ME - Women who sexually abused kids, if you're looking in the media have affairs with them, they seduce them, the victims if they are boys, they are always described as older than their age, and they look bigger.
The woman who ran off, I’ve had forgotten her name, she ran off about two years ago to Florida with a fourteen-year-old boy.
She was his teacher; I think she was 30-something. This was described as an affair and my comment was if that had been a 31-year-old man who'd run off with a 13 or 14-year-old girl would we have described it as an affair? No, I don't think so.
We excused women, we don't want to believe it and as Germane Greer said to me on a television program « well if it is a woman having sex with a young teenage boy i.e. a 13 or 14-year-old, and he gets an erection then clearly it's his responsibility ».
And I'm going « excuse me? » This is not logical. So it seems that the boy if it’s a boy, the boys is blamed in any event.
If it's a girl then it's kind of « oh you know oh that must be, she must be a lesbian » it must be something like that must be a lesbian affair.
Narrator - Erection equals consent? (Onscreen text) ME - No correlation between a boy having an erection and wanting sex just as there's no correlation with a girl having an orgasm and having sex with an abuser.
Children's bodies respond to sexual stimuli, their minds their development their means are not ready for.
What people do forget is that sexual abuse can feel good if it's not violent and nasty.
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I mean you see, my kids when they were tiny when they were like seven eight nine months old you go in, and you'd find them with their hands inside their nappies to sleep at night the same with girls, so there's a sexuality that children have but when that is a hot house, when it’s forced, when the development is at the behest of the abuser and not at the natural development at the level of the child, then that's abuse.
When you talk to these boys who have these affairs and I put that in quotes because it's abuse, with older women.
At the time of the affair they're usually confused. They've usually been told having sex is a good thing and other people would say « Oh you lucky boy, you know you've had sex with an older woman boy I wish I was ».
When you talk to them ten years later, and they look back on it, one man said to me, in fact he said he's in the book; I did a program with him.
And he said, I should've been out kicking footballs with my friends, I should have been dating girls, I should have been concentrating on my schoolwork.
He said all I could think about was the next time I was going to have sex with my teacher.
Narrator: Most child abuse is committed by a single or unmarried women, a child's health prospects dramatically deteriorate when there's no father in the household.
What I have found is that the vast majority were women alone. If they did have partners or husbands, the partners are either away a lot or were quite weak according to the people who contacted me they would quite often just be them and the mother in the home.
And for the little boys, when they were little boys, they were almost used as if they were the husband and the little girls were abused as well, so.
In families where there is one parent usually the mother and a whole series of men coming in and out of the family. There are you know lovers and uncles and all sorts of people coming in and out but in that kind of chaos, call it a chaotic family home that sexual abuse is 40 percent more likely to happen.
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Now that's from a man called David Finkelhor who's done long-term study on sexual abuse. That doesn't mean necessarily that any of those men coming into the house are the abusers.
What it seems to indicate is that the child is not safe and secure and could be open to, I mean being seduced and abused by other people.
It doesn't mean that single-parent families are bad, it's just that I cannot disguise the fact that the vast majority of this abuse has happened where there has only been when been mother abuse when there's only been a mother in the home.
Narrator - How do women get away with it?
ME - I think most female sexual abuse goes undetected and in fact, I think that a lot of people cover up for their mothers.
It's very rarely talked about; there are only two or three books even out there about the subject.
I think society wants to believe particularly in relation to mothers and children into that relationship that's a sacred relationship, and I'd like to believe that, I mean I must tell you that as a mother myself I find the idea of women sexually abusing children more abhorrent than just about anything I can think of.
Because most mothers and indeed fathers would kill to protect their children they would do anything to protect their children.
The fact that trust has been betrayed makes it more difficult for society to acknowledge it because if you acknowledge it, where do you go from there?
You know, do you start warning children about everybody? Do you start saying we're not sure mothers are safe?
Because remember, the vast majority of parents do love their kids or would never abuse them. But it's very dicey; women have been idealized for a long time to be the perfect mother's. Don't we wish we were?
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Narrator - The prevalence of false allegations from women. (Onscreen text) ME - Divorce cases, custody cases, we’re seeing more and more of that where the woman wanting to get full custody of the child is suddenly, out of the blue, making allegations that the father has abused the child and is coaching the child to say the same.
When you talk to the child, however, they cannot describe the sounds, the taste, the smells and all of that. You can start to know that they've been coached because they're just parroting words.
But it's so destructive both to the child, I have no patience at all with parents who use that, with the mothers who use that as an allegation against fathers to keep them from their children. I think that is wicked.
Narrator - Does it tend to be that one way, mothers to fathers?
ME - I don't know of any cases, there may be some, where the father is alleged abuse by the mother to get custody of the child.
I'm actually very distressed by what has happened about sexual abuse of children in general and my main distress is the kind of vilification of men.
There was a study which came out of a university and the study said that most men could become sexual abusers
And I spoke out against that on the media very strongly because I was furious.
I'm raising two sons, what is the message to young men? That you're a danger to your own children?
Narrator - What can be done to address that?
ME - I mean we have to speak out, and it's not a popular thing to do but whenever anybody makes one of these absolutely ludicrous statements it's very important that people stand up and say « excuse me, prove that ? »
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This is like this University saying that all men have the potential to be abusers. That's like saying we all have the potential to be murderers I mean I suppose we all have the potential to be all kinds of things.
Edicts are coming out from counsel's telling teachers not to touch children between the shoulders and the knees not to let them sit on your lap if you're reading them a story and this is, although it says it's aimed at men and women it's aimed at men the same brush has been used to paint all men you know.
Watch out for men! It's a bad message for men, it's a bad message for kids, and it's an untrue message, and it's statistically not sound.
Narrator - British Airways will not allow an unaccompanied child to sit with an adult male passenger. From the perspective on your hearing with « kidscape » (program) what do you think? Do you have an opinion on that?
ME - I think that is pathetic, really pathetic that is buying into the culture that all men are potential abusers. I think that is such an insult. I bet if that were taken to the European Court of Human Rights that it would be thrown out immediately.
What were they thinking that you know they've got a pedophile on every flight, and he might want to sexually abuse a child?
Very sad and what if they sit the child next to a woman, and she turns out to be an abuser, I think it's wrongheaded.
Original video version on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM7QVv8c1BI
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THE IDENTITY CRISIS
Bernard de Montréal
Author and lecturer.
If you are not willing to fight for your freedom of speech, you will lose it.
— Bernard de Montréal
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The problem of identity in modern man is advanced enough to create a global crisis never before recorded in the annals of humanity. The identity problem is not only a personal problem; it is also a global problem.
At the global level, this problem is exacerbated by the destructive power of civilization. The more civilization tends towards the abyss, the more it in turn engenders in Man an inability to situate himself creatively towards himself.
For the loss of civilizing values creates in him a kind of despair that severely entrenches him from the once fertile Earth, from his people, from his nation, to plunge him alone into chaos, where he, as a Man, no longer has a real reason to appreciate life, because it is no longer healthy as a whole or in a balanced psychological framework.
It is here that the identity crisis deepens and makes Man a slave to all external pressures that he cannot psychologically avoid, because he no longer has sufficient intelligence and will. We then observe the human drama. The slavery of Man by Man and the gradual disintegration of personality.
At the individual level, the problem is limited to personal suffering; at the global level, the problem no longer has restrictions and a war of annihilation becomes more likely over time than a period of peace. But as we are interested in Man as an individual, we seek to define the nature of the mechanisms that can remove him from the immense wave of ground that risks sucking him in and attracting him to the abysses of a civilization whose reefs have already begun to pierce the surface of modern life.
The identity problem must be totally solved by Man before he can enjoy a full and pleasant life. As long as the individual seeks himself, or seeks to situate himself vis-à-vis society or other Men, instead of vis-à-vis himself, within that society, he is incapable of living on these creative and regenerative forces, for these forces must pierce the web that separates him from himself, before he can use them and thus live a life at his own level.
Man's true individuality derives from the struggle he can wage within himself to conquer his true self, his true ego, that ego untouched by the filth created by unheard external influences, imperceptible to the one who does not understand and realize the nature of Man. The ego of Man must be internally strengthened and not externally nourished. From this inner strength springs the creative power and regenerative forces he needs to be well. Man's identity, his true identity, is a perfect composition of what he is, of what he perceives and understands through the higher mind.
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There is no other way out for Man, since it is, this way, linked to the universal in him.
And it is from the universal that he must learn to live and not from society. This is where the identity problem lies. Man is so confused in his ideas that his identity fades more and more, as he produces new ideas whose intelligence is too imperfect to meet his deep needs.
When Man begins to live of intelligence, free from purely social ideas, his mind begins to function in a new mode, and gradually life in him changes, and his creative intelligence alters his external behavior, so that the identity problem fades away. His true individuality takes shape, and Man discovers that he is truly everything he has ever been, everything he has ever felt, but refused to realize. For the ego preferred to live by habit rather than by pure and instantaneous intelligence and will.
The identity problem coincides with the lack of real supramental, intelligence. And this lack of intelligence is born of a lack of real will. As soon as these two forces in Man become active, the inferiority of the ego disappears and gives way to an ego consciousness whose center is above the lower mental consciousness of the ego, freeing the latter from the yoke of self-valorization, to generate in himself the peace of Man.
As long as the ego - the only one to face the multiple aspects of life generated by the soul for its evolution - has not grasped the importance of securing itself in the intelligence of the soul, the false security that it can create in its unconscious mind will turn against him, for no Man can be permanently happy if he is not truly intelligent and truly voluntary. For life will take away from him, in time, the false support he used to live by.
Life is only man's friend when he has learned to tame it, just as the wild animal is tamed. And it is during this learning that Man learns one of the great secrets of this life: it is that it wants to be tamed, mastered, in order to be able to serve Man instead of Man being at his service. It is the purpose of light to be at the service of Man, what we appropriately call "evolution".
But Man does not understand this, and does not know that it is so, because he has never spoken with light, intelligence, life in him. He never understood it. From there, his perpetual crisis of identity and existential suffering. Naturally, Man does not realize that life is not controlled according to his reason, but is controlled according to the development of his real intelligence and will. And these two principles grow in him over time, during the battle, until he has become the total and unconditional winner.
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As long as Man suffers from identity, it is because he does not understand something essential in himself; it is because he does not have sufficient real intelligence. Only time can remedy this situation. But time is only to Man's advantage when he has begun to realize the true face of his ego. And this face only takes on a striking shape when it suffers from identity, when it seeks. But this suffering must stop; otherwise he cannot live his life fully.
As much as existence is a constant series of disturbances, so much real life is the permanence of calm, both materially and etherically. But life must be perfect on the material before Man passes to the ether, which means universal intelligence and will must be consciously channeled by the ego, before Man continues to live in a dimension parallel to matter.
But it is not the continuous and infinite stages of life that interest us here at the moment, but material life within a material civilization. It is not the plane or the density of the plane that is the obstacle of Man, but his ego disturbed by forces whose influence he does not see on him that violates him of his true identity, of his true self.
But Man no longer has an excuse, because Man today knows that there is more in him than he can realize. All the game is for him and all the game is in him.
The need to live according to the laws of a cosmic psychology, a psychology totally and perfectly independent of the human sensory system, will become more and more obvious to the Man who suffers from identity. For the future events of material life on earth will become more and more unbearable for a materialistic and planetary psychology.
By the end of this generation, Man will need inner intelligence that cannot be provided by his intellect. For the latter will be shaken down to its foundations, since the time will come when beings who are not of our race, but superior to ours in intelligence and power, will come to Earth. Only the inner, universal cosmic intelligence of Man can solve this enigma of modern times that the intellect will have proudly pushed back towards the frontiers of the unknowable or science fiction.
But Man only learns by experience when he is not intelligent. This form of learning can be very painful for Man and his false identity. It is better to know than to perish in the madness that such events will generate in the primitive races.
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The identity problem is equivalent to the absence of intelligence, and proportional to the lack of light illuminating the ego. The more the ego is in the light, in the intelligence, the less he suffers from identity and the more powerful it is in the world for he is truly creative in its life.
It is important to ensure that you fully understand what "creativity" means. Creative is everything that leads Man and his civilization towards harmony. Even the constructive intelligence of Man is subject to this fundamental principle of life and intelligence. If Man builds a science that creates disharmony, this intelligence is not creative; it does not come from the soul but from the lower planes. This is why the Man whose intelligence is highly constructive is not immune from the problem of identity.
As long as Man has not overcome the problem of identity, he will remain convinced that his nature is subject to the way of life offered by the planet, meaning a purely material, discontinuous and time-limited way of life, meaning death.
The effort that Man puts into discovering his identity constitutes an enormous loss of energy, because his mind and emotions delay the passage of creative energy in his two centers of life. While its centers of intelligence and emotion should be used by creative forces, they have become the egocentric support of Man, providing him with the lower energies that are at the heart of the problem of his identity.
Creative forces must be free to circulate in these centers of Man, without his ego interfering with his subjectivity. For it is the subjectivity of the ego that endangers the passage of cosmic energy into Man, according to a vibration that is not diminished by the lower emotionality or mind.
This is why the identity problem is a serious problem, both for the individual and for the entire planet. For neither man nor society evolve according to the laws of harmony that constitute cosmic forces. As long as the forces of evolution do not generate vibratory shocks in the ego, the latter suffers its identity problem on a personal scale. But when these cosmic forces penetrate the planetary consciousness by creating vibratory shocks on a planetary scale, Man is forced to suffer his identity problem on a planetary scale. Because the laws of Man are overthrown, and his ego can no longer rationalize the value of his future, because he faces destruction by fire.
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Only the Man who has discovered his real identity, who lives by real intelligence that enlightens his ego, can survive such a conflagration without being affected. On the contrary, being in the understanding of events and understanding them, his life is not affected, because he knows very well that a new cycle is about to be born where living conditions will mark a new age, where free Men will live a free life, an intelligent and creative life, rather than a mechanical and destructive one.
Where Man lives his identity crisis most intensely is in the experience of his sexuality.
For it is there that his inferior human nature seeks to dominate his superior nature, through emotions and ideas that he builds from scratch to enhance himself. Man is an integrality! The universal forces within him must harmonize his whole being.
Even sexuality must be experienced according to these forces. But Man does not realize that even sexuality is affected by these forces. And as soon as it does not coincide with his idea of it, he begins to rationalize his sexuality. So he suffers from it and there is an identity problem.
Likewise, in the field of love, he does not recognize the effect of creative forces in his life and does not see that his entire being can be transformed by the conditions that these forces can create for his experience. Ignoring their presence, he still suffers an identity crisis that is all too familiar to those who have experienced the pain of love.
In work, Man faces the same problem, because the goal, the success he has set for himself to value himself as an ego, escapes him somewhere during his experience...
then, another identity crisis. And all life is lived in this way, outside of the reality that only real intelligence can enlighten and make people understand.
Man must, if he wants to develop a personality in conformity with his intelligent interior, overcome the absurdities of the fictitious personality. But his emotions and intellect do not make it easy for him. For the fundamental principle of every being is constantly violated during his experience: the one who dictates that every Man is what he must be, provided that he looks at himself and stops looking at others to compare himself to them. This is easy to say, of course, when we know it.
But whether it is easy or difficult to achieve is not the point here, since any Man, whatever he may be, can understand it on his own scale. Just because something is easy for the insider and difficult for the profane does not mean that it is not accessible to the profane. If this were the case, there would be no reason for the insider to exist.
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While Man looks at what makes him insecure, inferior, unfit, and ceases to conceive himself according to this view. And that he begins to see himself secure (secured) through his real intelligence. He will discover himself as a being, and then he will not suffer from identity problem.
It is the beginning of this discovery that is important, not its improvement. Because time produces perfection, but time does not wait for Man, it is rather Man who is a prisoner of time.
The consciousness of psychological emptiness is the very measure of the Man who does not suffer from identity of the supramental Man. This consciousness, apart from the role of intelligence in it, constitutes the foundation of the cosmic being, the universal being, the Man freed from the crisis of identity that hinders the operation of the three universal principles of intelligence, will and love.
Man cannot be full of himself and at the same time empty. One day or another, he must substitute the full, which is illusions of forms, hence his identity crisis, for the void s the absence of such illusions, such forms. But Man, filled as he is with himself, fears emptiness, because he does not understand it. He fears the void, because he is disturbed by it when it is felt, although the disturbance is only the result of the internal cleaning of his mechanical consciousness. Only emptiness forever eliminates the problem of identity in Man, because there are no longer any forms in him that he can use to build a false identity.
As long as emptiness is not enough, Man relentlessly pursues any ideal he has made
— or has already made — of himself, to rediscover over the years that life is not what we want it to be. Obviously it is not, because we only know it through our illusions. So we are constantly disappointed in ourselves and life. And yet it's not life's fault! It is the problem of Man, of his identity that has ruined everything.
Man lives face-to-face with an idea he has, or would like to have, of himself. And this idea is never what he would have it be, because it is built on emotions. The emotional base is linked to his social role, and his social role is a psychological construct that he builds according to what the environment offers him. If the environment is healthy, the construction becomes more in accordance with its desires; otherwise, the construction gradually disintegrates, like the weak meshes of a poorly processed wool.
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But what happens in the life of Man if comes an unexpected situation! And now even the construction in conformity with previous desires is being dismantled, the identity crisis is resurfacing again, and Man does not know where to put his head.
Living by will and intelligence will force Man to overcome the psychological limits of the unconscious ego, of his emotions, and to incorporate into his consciousness the forces that make him an increasingly secure being, meaning a being who no longer needs to be absorbed by all kinds of problems that flow towards him and that he is forced to live.
Since all man's problems are the result of his unconsciousness, meaning his emotional inability to see them face-to-face, it is obvious that his false identity is the greatest victim. And Man, not being secure in his life, constantly transposes his identity problem to his life problems and believes that it is the problems that are at the root of his misfortune, when in fact his misfortune is the product of his false identity, his weak personality, his emotions.
Let Man recognize that it is time for him to pierce the canvas of his intellect and emotions, to see its colors, its colors, because the canvas as it is can only cause him trouble in life. Because any false identity deprives the individual of years of pleasant life for the benefit of others, for the benefit of his emotions. For it is of course true that Man can only be happy if he lives his life according to himself, in all respects. And so it is when the forces of the soul in him force him to find a point of reference other than that of his neighbor.
The identity crisis cannot coexist with consciousness. This is absolute. And the identity crisis must be overcome so that consciousness can take root permanently in Man. And notice that consciousness means: real intelligence, will and love. When Man is stripped of false intelligence, false will and subjective love that is also false, he begins to live from his real identity and the light in him. And from the energy of this light, he transmutes his inferior principles to one day change his dimension, his life plan.
The fight against his false identity is felt as soon as he becomes aware of the fact that Man is really himself only when he has put aside the "I" that he cares, to which he clings. There are no two ways of life, there is only one: the reality. True and false are not roars but paths. The real is a unique road, because all paths lead to it.
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The identity crisis coincides with the time of man. And when Man comes out of Man's time, he enters the time of the Superman. And this time is not subject to the laws of the ego; it is subject to the laws of light in the ego. And it is the laws of light that generate in Man the energy that destroys his false personality, his false identity. It is very important to understand that the psychological crisis of the unconscious Man comes from his psychological absence, meaning from his inability to understand what is happening to him in life.
When Man begins to live from the psychological presence, he begins to see the different manifestations of this energy and to understand them. And it is from this realization that he lives and that leads him to free himself from the identity crisis. We cannot escape the crisis of identity until we have penetrated into this psychological presence that instantly makes us realize the reason for any influence that tends to define the ego, meaning to give it subjective material that it could use to color its life and incite it to the crisis of identity.
The identity crisis is a cover that light cannot pierce, because it is stopped in its movement by emotion and intellect. But as soon as Man begins to move from the lower mind to the supramental, he begins to see that in fact everything he does coincides with what he can do in a given time of his evolution. As soon as its evolution accelerates, its evolutionary potential corresponds to this psychological presence. And it is from this presence that he emancipates himself egocentrically to open himself to his centricity, thus gradually weakening his identity crisis.
As long as Man is dissatisfied with himself, it is because he still suffers from the identity crisis. When he moves sufficiently into the supramental, his false identity can no longer harm him, because he no longer thinks "towards" himself as in the past, but
"for" himself. And it is the fact of thinking "for" himself that brings down in him an energy that forces him to counter the influence of others. From the moment he thinks for himself, instead of against himself, the reflection in the ego fades, and the mind is strengthened at the expense of the subjective emotions that cultivate false identity.
Any false identity leads to the isolation of the individual.
Real identity, meaning centricity, offers no resistance to the outside of oneself, since there is no more effort, but creates a wall between oneself and the outside that prevents the latter from disrupting the individual's psychology. No longer disturbed, he no longer suffers from identity. But Man has never lived the cycle that is coming, he does not realize that this cycle is a complete cycle, meaning that Man will be totally transformed by energy, and not gradually brought for centuries to a higher level of consciousness. That is why this century is the most difficult of all, the most difficult of all those that have gone before.
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For, in the past, the great sociocultural forces served to instruct Man, while in the future, Man will be instructed from within himself, and will have to bear the burden of this instruction alone. While inner instruction coincides with the intelligence of light in Man, it also coincides with the supramental psychology of Man. When Man questions this intelligence, he realizes that it is perfect, but above his ego, thus freeing the ego from any need to find or seek a personal identity towards himself.
The problem of identity is an illusion of the ego, because the ego alone in his interpretation of psychological reality, is unable to perfectly follow the lines of his thinking and to relate to the origin of his thoughts, because he is in the illusion that he thinks. But as soon as he begins to understand this illusion, it becomes easier and easier for him to go back to the open or objective thought at the origin of himself, and, in the process, realize that his "self" is only a way for his imagination to interpret psychological material according to a pre-personal principle that disengages him from the emotional value of his personality.
As soon as he is disengaged from the emotional value of his personality, he undertakes to understand himself in relation to his real intelligence, instead of understanding himself in relation to his intellect which is forced to accept the emotional conclusions of his personality. Conclusions that tend to conform with the Social Man, so that the ego feels good with himself in the Social Man. But the ego cannot be well with himself if he ends according to a scale outside of himself.
The identity crisis is always proportional to the distance of the ego from the center of himself. And this center cannot be reached by emotional or intellectual conclusion, but by surpassing his subjective values. The ego must let himself be penetrated by the vibration of supramental intelligence, to see that what it is, and naturally what it must be, and that what it becomes, is an extension in time and an improvement of what it is, for every Man is a being in potential.
But potential can only be realized after perceiving the intelligence of light in it that moves the intellect and enlightens it.
The identity crisis is the oversight of oneself under the debris of the false personality.
And for Man to come out of oblivion of himself, he must be reminded of his cosmic memory, hence the need to communicate with the real cosmic and universal intelligence in him. But it is not easy to break the web of false identity to communicate with an intelligence that risks destroying this subjective identity forever. And that's the ego problem.
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This is why Man, who goes towards the supramental, goes alone and discovers alone the true nature of Man's identity. And when he realizes it, he is no longer the same, he no longer seeks who he is, and because what he discovers is everything he is.
Being no more, no less, than what he discovers, he no longer lives without his knowledge, but from within himself. He is well in his own skin and no one can carry it for him, because he alone knows it and appreciates it, and he alone transforms it into a skin that is more and more real, more and more vast, more and more large, meaning more and more in conformity with himself, that "himself" which is not under the yoke of emotional and mental subjectivity, fed by values external to himself. It is beginning to be free, meaning free from the problem of the identity crisis.
If Man makes an analysis of himself, it is not the true himself he discovers, but the one he would like to be. A serious mistake, because Man is only built of material that he is willing to let enter him freely, and not of ideas that he espouses because they seem to be shaped by his desire to see himself in such and such a way. Life is not a suit of clothing for the personality, but a force that penetrates the personality and inhabits it to perfection, if the latter is sufficiently robust and intelligent, meaning if the ego is sufficiently strong in spirit and sensitive.
From this condition, the personality realizes that he does not have to break his head with the clothing that life will offer him in its own way and in a perfect way, as long as the ego commits himself to define himself well, meaning to see himself well through the light that passes through it. If he succeeds in seeing himself through this light, the personality will be well-dressed, because the ego will have channeled good fabrics used to wrap him.
The identity crisis disrupts the ego and diminishes the personality. When it has passed, the ego is calm and the personality radiant, because the two accomplices are finally united in a single tunic: the psychological reality of being, a reality that lives only from the inside and spreads creatively towards the outside. As long as Man of the Earth continues to pervert his reality, he will generate his own suffering, for suffering is the interference of the ego with the vibratory shocks of the light of the soul that creates events for the ego building or for its evolution.
If the ego understands his place in life, light makes life easy for it, otherwise it makes life difficult for it, because unconscious life is anti-light. For life to be well lived, Man must detach himself from his smallness and perfectly connect himself to the universal nature of himself, his intelligence, his will, in order to one day live love that creates and harmonizes. But as long as he doubts himself, it is because he drags his feet to the bottom of his existential problem, the identity crisis.
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And one day Man will have to realize that the crisis of identity, on a planetary scale, is the strain of great anxiety, great sadness, great and terrifying revelation. Times are marked and Man must know himself or die. It is not man as an unconscious ego that will dictate the evolution of his life tomorrow, but the spirit of the ego that will imprint in his memory the law of light. And this law will be the law of the new Man, the Superman. The identity crisis is over forever!
Original video version in French.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEVxjAEtiQo
Bernard de Montréal's repertory in English.
http://diffusion-bdm-intl.com/english.php
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