gorge
1yr ago
I was listening to a podcast with Michael Bailey, an OG researcher on trans issues and a guy who was at the front-lines of the conflict 20 years ago, long before this was a mainstream flashpoint.
Bailey talked about the autogynephilia model of male-to-female transexuals. I had heard some of it before: that many start off by having a fetish of being aroused by the idea of themselves as a woman. But historically since doctors would not prescribe sex reassignment for a sex fetish, they could only claim that they "were really a girl inside." Even though m-t-f's like McCloskey hit every male brained stereotype.
But then Bailey went to say that over years of cross-dressing to get off on themselves, many create an identity for themselves as a woman, an identity which may come to seem like the "real" them. Hence the eventual desire to transition and really become this character.
This got me thinking that to extent that something like "gender identity" exists in the brain separable from biological sex, I think wonder if it is really the matter of an entire personal identity that gets molded and created over time.
Question: are there documented examples of this kind of thing happening outside of sex/gender? Like an actor who becomes so caught up in role he thinks that role is the "real" him.
(Perhaps some of us can feel this way, our psued life can feel more like the real us...)
gorge
1yr ago
No, "past peak woke" would be when the people pushing woke innovations are getting punished, and the people reversing established woke innovations are not getting punished and sometimes succeeding.
"Peak woke" -- or better, "woke plateau" -- would be when someone pushing a woke innovation or trying to make new offense cancellable is as likely to get punished as someone who is calling out and trying to cancel out existing woke norms is likely to get canceled.
gorge
1yr ago
Peak woke would be when people who push woke too far actually get punished. It's not enough for people leading cancellation mobs to sometimes fail. The leaders themselves need to be punished for harassment. It's not enough for some college administrator pushing a crazy new DEI initiative to fail at it. They need to get punished for being stupid or for being racist against white people. When people who wish to push woke more to the left are afraid of getting punished for overreach as those those who want to push back things to the right are afraid of getting punished, then we will be at equilibrium.
That woke movement sometimes fails is meaningless. Lot's of cancellation attempts have failed and will fail, lot's of trial balloons will get popped (like that latest outrage from Stanford over inclusive language). But as long as there is no consequence for the attempt, there will be more attempts, some will succeed, and we will continue to ratchet leftward.
I think that Shepard makes a pretty strong case that Cox had gone rogue, and he talks about Dean's falsehoods, you can read his book for yourself if you are interested -- http://library.lol/main/D7EDF03090D53D36483E1CC991D23836
gorge
1yr ago
Then why did Republicans who actually heard the tape think that it did? Why does the Nixon Foundation webpage say: " The release on August 5, 1974, of the June 23, 1972, tape (which was termed the “Smoking Gun”), appeared to undermine Nixon’s contention that he was not involved in the Watergate cover-up.
It did "appear" to if you just take the quote out of its entire context and have it spun by hostile press and prosecutors. And that the time, even Republican Senators were more trusting in the establishment press, so that was enough to finally pull support for Nixon. Shepard's research on the full context of the quote is new research, not something that was known at the time.
gorge
1yr ago
"The intelligence community orchestrated a criminal conspiracy among high level Republicans and cabinet members therefore Nixon had to use the powers of the presidency to corruptly obstruct that investigation!"
Via Geoff Shepard, think of the problem from Nixon's point of view. He was in a total bind. He actually had no prior knowledge of the break-in, and he actually wanted those responsible for the break-in investigated and prosecuted. But the special prosecutor, Cox, was giving a sweetheart plea deal to the guy more responsible (Dean) who was spinning myths in order to falsely implicate Nixon. So Cox was not doing his job properly. Furthermore, Cox's team is full of partisan attack dog prosecutors champing at the bit to take down Nixon. So from Nixon's point-of-view, it is the special prosecutor who has gone rogue, and as the head of DoJ, Nixon is constitutionally responsible for removing the rogue prosecutor and putting the investigation in the hands of a more fair-minded person.
gorge
1yr ago
And how does the segment deal with the tapes, especially the "smoking gun" tape, in which Nixon is heard endorsing the coverup.
I was listening to a podcast with Geoff Shepard and reading some of his book. Shepard was a very young, junior staffer in the Nixon White House who in the past years has done a great deal of archival research and released a revisionist book on Watergate in 2021. He is also the one who originally internally transcribed the "smoking gun" tape and coined that phrase when he listened to it, even though he was so junior he didn't actually know at the time what it was referring to. After doing his most recent research he says that the tape has been grossly misunderstood. What people think the "smoking gun" statement means is that Nixon knew about the break-in and was trying to order government officials to stop the investigation. What it actually was, was that the FBI was going to interview two specific people were linked with soliciting campaign donations from prominent Democrats, and Nixon and his staff were trying to protect the secrecy of those donations (because a Democrat would be bad for the Democrats reputation if it was known they had donated to Nixon). The two people ended up getting interviewed anyways two weeks later and were not found to have any criminally involvement. The "smoking gun" does not show that Nixon knew about Watergate or that he was trying to stop the entire investigation.
and exposed themselves to criminal liability (all served time, and the lawyers among them were disbarred), for the purpose of what, exactly?
Shepard's take is that some of those who were actually more responsible for the break-in decided to side with the prosecutors and media establishment in taking down Nixon in order to get a better deal/reduced sentence.
gorge
1yr ago
Recently I listened to a very interesting podcast with Geoff Shepard. Here is part 1 and part 2. Shepard was a very young, junior staffer in the Nixon White House who in the past years has done a great deal of archival research and wrote a few books on Watergate. His take is that Nixon was basically innocent of any real crimes, and got railroaded by a gang of prosecutors and judges who ran roughshod over normal due process and distorted every shred of evidence to make Nixon look bad. You can listen to the podcast for more, or read his book "The Nixon Conspiracy." After paying very close attention to the Trump-Russia investigation, his description of what happened to Nixon sounds very familiar...
I'm not sure I'd call it a deep state conspiracy, which makes it sound like a Hollywood-style thing where the Deep State is doing something that the mainstream press would find criminal. It was a Deep State conspiracy plus a press pile-on of every establishment-type who hated Nixon, from the journalists to the judges.
I'm not sure if it is significant if Woodward was actually a CIA agent at the time. The Washington Post has long been know to basically be the stenographers for the security state, whether or not the journalist is actually on the payroll, or has simply made a bunch of friends in order to get fed stories, may not make much a difference.
It does seem significant that just a few years later Woodward's partner, Bernstein, published a long piece on the CIA infiltration of the media -- https://www.carlbernstein.com/the-cia-and-the-media-rolling-stone-10-20-1977 -- was he trying to get something off of his conscience?
gorge
1yr ago
LEDs ended up just being simply superior to both in every way. Progress ended the culture war.
I still find the light quality and dimming ability of LEDs to be significantly worse, so I buy mostly incandescent bulbs for my home. I was puzzled by talk about the "ban" because I can still buy incandescent. But wait ... now that I look it up there is a new rule going to effect in August 2023 that does effectively ban most remaining incandescent bulbs -- https://insights.regencylighting.com/was-there-actually-an-incandescent-light-bulb-ban That is bad -- why isn't there more outrage about this new rule? Maybe I am weird and most people are happy with LED's, or maybe the government has just done a "good" job at boiling the frog slowly enough that the defense got worn away. First you pass the law that allows for the ban but doesn't actually implement ban, so the incandescent fans are assuaged. Then you gradually ramp up the ban through arcane bureaucratic process and rule-making that is very hard for populist politics to defend against.
gorge
1yr ago
I think pet of the issue here is that the prior on Joe Biden being corrupt is low
Biden seems to say whatever is most convenient at the time, whether that be flip-flopping on policies or just making up stories about his own life. My prior is that Biden can't stay bought. So some interest might funnel him some money and get a meeting, but as soon as they are out of the room Biden will be playing to whoever is in front of him next. It's also just generally difficult for a President to have that much discretionary power to personally significantly damage the realm by selling out to some pecuniary interest. The worst things his administration has done seems to involve selling out the realm to some activist/ideological interest. Although if Ukrainian money getting to Joe Biden is the reason USG is involving itself in the Ukraine war, that would be big deal and potentially catastrophically bad. But I'm not sure that is the case, Biden might actually be more of a voice of sanity in his own administration, with the meddling in the Ukraine really being driven by the overall Zeitgeist.
gorge
1yr ago
Early on I was swayed by more by my more libertarian friends saying "Hey, the FDA has always been way too cautious, it is dumb to worry that they were excessively swayed by the drug companies or were overly hasty in approving the vaccine, if they approve it, it must be pretty good."
Now I think that the FDA (and even more so, the CDC) is just bad its job, so sometimes it will be way too conservative in blocking experimental medicine, and other times way too hasty and gung-ho about approving medicine that does not really show a good cost-benefit ratio. If the FDA was good at its job it would be requiring a large, randomized control study of the MRNA shots that would be ongoing, that would look at both efficacy and overall mortality.
One thing I did not appreciate is how easily FDA "approval" turns into private mandates. A lot of people and institutions in our society are simply deferring to the FDA and CDC for judgement so if they approve it that is there signal to mandate it. I read the data about the covid jab in kids and it seemed like the cost-benefit was decidedly negative. That said, I was fine if the FDA wanted to allow parents who thought it might work for their particular kid to obtain it. And even when they approved it some of the officials said that they don't recommend that every kid just blindly get it. But then the CDC issued a recommendation, and then camps and classes I want my kids to attend started requiring the jab. There was simply no space for personal choice either way, no space for approved for those who wanted it, but not mandated.
It would be nice if there was a publicly acknowledged FDA stamp of "might work, use at your own risk but we don't recommend it." I guess that is what emergency use authorization was supposed to be. But somehow that is not what has happened.
Two more gems from the NY Times archives:
Feburary 8, 1979 -- MAPUTO, Mozambique — What kind of man is Robert Mugabe, leader of the main guerrilla army now operating in Rhodesia? What kind of country would it be if he and his movement came to power?
The strongest impression, during an interview, was of an internal confidence approaching serenity. Mr. Mugabe speaks in a low voice, without the bombast of some other Rhodesian African nationalists. But he leaves no doubt that be believes his side is winning.
Americans would probably find him personally attractive despite his Marxist politics. He is a trim 50, the best‐educated of Rhodesia's leaders, articulate, rational, a practicing Catholic. He was a teacher and has several degrees — including a London University law degree earned by correspondence while he was a political prisoner of Ian Smith for ten years.
He was uncompromising in his opposition to Mr. Smith and the black figures in the “internal settlement.” They were continuing white dominance in disguise, he said, and he would not even negotiate with them — except perhaps “to bring about the necessary surrender.”
...But when he was asked about the future, when the war finally ends and Rhodesia becomes Zimbabwe, he did not sound doctrinaire. He emphasized that he was a socialist and was committed to redistributing wealth to “the dispossessed African,” but he spoke in pragmatic and gradualist terms.
His repeated talk of “realities” and what was “feasible” matched what some Westerners who know him well say of Robert Mugabe. That is that, having lived in Mozambique these last years, he does not like the ideological rigidity and economic troubles he has seen here- and does not want to make the same mistakes.
Could whites remain in a Zimbabwe ruled by Robert Mugabe? In terms of physical safety, their chances would probably be better than with any other African figure on the horizon. Even persons antagonistic to his politics concede that he is not corrupt, and the signs are that he has imposed discipline on a guerrilla army.
Four white prisoners of Mugabe's guerrillas, released here last week, spoke very favorably of the soldiers and repeated the compliments when they returned to Salisbury, to the embarrassment of the Smith Government. One of the captives was a seasoned British Army major, Thomas Wigglesworth, who said: “I was impressed with the guerrilla efficiency in the field, their discipline and particularly their high morale.”
For the American Government, Mr. Mugabe is a prickly problem. Conservatives denounce him as a “Marxist terrorist.” But he is doing well militarily and politically, and his mind does not seem closed. A Western diplomat said:
“He is the toughest but also the straightest. He doesn't say things to please people. Frankly, I think we can work with him.”
December 9, 1979 SALISBURY, Zimbabwe Rhodesia — If there was a betting line on the candidates to be this country's first internationally recognized black ruler, the shortest odds could well settle on Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe, the odd‐couple guerrilla leaders who accepted the basics of a British peace plan for the territory in London last week.
...Although the tide of the war is running in their favor, the guerrilla leaders evidently have accepted the British peace terms in the expectation that power will come to them more swiftly through the ballot box than by the barrels of their Soviet and Chinese supplied guns. Zimbabwe Rhodesia has yet to see scientifically conducted public opinion poll, but straws in the wind suggest that their confidence may not be misplaced....
...Another villager interjected: “All we want is for the war to end. It looks like the people who can do that are Nkomo and Mugabe.”
...Bishop Muzorewa, with strong support among urban blacks, cannot be counted out. The peace agreement bars him from forming a coalition with former Prime Minister Ian D. Smith's 20‐seat parliamentary bloc but the prelate will have the certainty of white support if he needs it. He also probably can count on backing from some of the other splinter groups, though not all. Others may disappear as the electioneering develops, taking shelter inside one or other of the main contending parties.
So the "international community" refused to recognize the black President (Muzorewa) of a black-white coalition government, they refused to lift any sanctions, meanwhile Soviet and China was arming Mugabe to fight against the Rhodesian government. And the American government and NY Times viewed Mugabe's rule as the best option for Rhodesia. Yeah, pretty clear to me that the NY Times/American Government/British government/"International Community" was midwifing Mugabe's takeover of the country.
gorge
1yr ago
Here is another gem from the NY Times archives:
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.—Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance, in attempting to solve the problems of Southern Africa, has unwisely made a villain of Robert Mugabe. Press accounts of his trip last month indicated that Mr. Vance wanted to edge Mr. Mugabe out of a new Rhodesian settlement. Earlier, a Vance aide wrongly likened Mr. Mtigabe's electoral possibilities to those of George C. Wallace.
...Mr. Mugabe leads one wing of the Patriotic Front in its struggle to end white rule in Rhodesia. The other wing's leader is Joshua Nkomo, whom Secretary Vance and others persist trying to separate from Mr. Mugabe and, somehow, to merge with the white‐sponsored ongoing internal settlement that is propelling Rhodesia to ward an internationally unrecognized form of black-and-white condominium...
...Mr. Mugabe has always shunned the kinds of Sybaritic trappings that are so common among exiled liberationists. His asceticism and integrity are well known. He has managed by force of example since 1974 to give political coherence to the otherwise unsophisticated posturing of the Karanga military command. As stubborn as Mr. Mugabe sounds, only he is capable of selling an effective, fair settlement to the guerrillas.
Emphasis mine -- basically you can see the "international community" was unwilling to recognize the more creative Constitiutional setup that allowed for black voting and black rule but kept disproportionate white power and ensured a more moderate black president.
This bad take didn't stop the author of this article from having prestigous career in foreign affairs:
Robert Irwin Rotberg (born April 11, 1935) is an academic from the United States who served as President of the World Peace Foundation (1993–2010).[1] A professor in governance and foreign affairs, he was director of the Program on Intrastate Conflict, Conflict Prevention, and Conflict Resolution at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government (1999–2010), and has served in administrative positions at Tufts University and Lafayette College.
In 2003-2004, he served as a member of the Secretary of State's Advisory Panel on Africa, and was a Presidential appointee to the Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2007 at the Kennedy School, he directed the establishment of the Index for African Governance, to help evaluate leaders for the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, awarded annually by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. A trustee of Oberlin College, Rotberg is a visiting professor at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium. In 2013 Rotberg became the Fulbright Research Chair in Political Development at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada.[2]
gorge
1yr ago
I think there is a small but significant portion of the universalist establishment that are intellectually dishonest meme warriors who are so caught up in the left-versus-right battle that they will lead cancel mobs against those who bring up counter-narrative evidence and "give ammo to the other side." These warriors will also aggressively spin former events -- so Mugabe's rise becomes the fault of a the racist whites who never brought education and civic training to Rhodesia, or something like that. That Mugabe's rise could have been prevented if Carter had thrown his full support behind Muzorewa is something that just gets memory holed. The rest of the universalist establishment just receives their narratives from the intellectual environment shaped by these meme warriors, and so either never learn about the disaster that happened, or the disaster is spun in such a way that they don't understand why it happened.
gorge
1yr ago
Controversial opinion that I don't have time to write an effort post for: I think the causality you propose is backwards. The American liberal establishment was "anti-racist" because it was a way for them to feel good about themselves and feel morally superior to the American populist right. They wanted to push "anti-racism" abroad for the same reasons. Justifying pushing anti-racism abroad as an anti-Soviet Cold War strategy was a way to get moderate conservatives on board with the policy, it was not the underlying motivation for the policy.
I have a lot of sympathy (or maybe pity) for SBF. "Stole client funds" appears to have solidified as a meme much the same way "crossed state lines" had in the Rittenhouse case.
The FTX terms of service were very clear in saying that client digital assets belonged to the client, were the property of the client, were under the control of the client and were not to be loaned or traded out. "Title to your Digital Assets shall at all times remain with you and shall not transfer to FTX Trading. None of the Digital Assets in your Account are the property of, or shall or may be loaned to, FTX Trading;"
Caroline admitted that in fact they intentionally transferred/loaned these customer deposits to Alameda. That is straight up embezzlement, go directly to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
This is like a bank drilling into a customer's safe deposit box to take their gold, lending out the gold and then losing it. It's theft, not merely a trading mistake.
gorge
2yr ago
I can count on two hands the number of times I have ever seen a man sexually harass or proposition a woman on the trolley. Supposedly it is happening to every young woman I’ve ever spoken to about public transit, yet it is so vanishingly rare in anything I’ve personally observed that I am always left absolutely baffled at how this could be happening right under my nose, all around me, escaping my notice.
Is it possible that you give off tough-guy vibes, and so men are less inclined to harass women around you? In general, I think that sexual harassment would be more prone to happen to a woman during a time when there are few people on the train, particularly no upstanding young man who might notice or be a possible a white knight. Or it might happen more quietly out of your view or noticing?
In 2000, as part of opening up Saudi Arabia to new capital markets, the government signed conventions on human rights. Presumably, these conventions had stipulations about women's rights:
The government has said it intends to set up a capital market, which would require new standards of openness for Saudi companies. It has also started work on reforming its legal system and trade regulations, all in pursuit of membership in the World Trade Organization. And it has signed international treaties and conventions on human rights.
...Saudi Arabia has ratified four conventions on human rights and discrimination against women, though it submitted formal reservations. And prompted by its acceptance of international treaties and trade rules, the government is considering creation of an appellate court and a codification of defendants' rights.
in 2001, Saudi Arabia ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), although they did so with reservations that it would only do so when not in violation of Islamic law.
In 2002, Saudi women talk about how discrimination against women still exists, but "progress" is being made:
Maha Muneef, a female pediatrician, emphasized that Saudi Arabia is progressing, albeit more slowly than many women would like. ''My mother didn't go to any school at all, because then there were no girls' schools at all,'' she said. ''My older sister, who is 20 years older than me, she went up to the sixth grade and then quit, because the feeling was that a girl only needs to learn to read and write. Then I went to college and medical school on scholarship to the States. My daughter, maybe she'll be president, or an astronaut.''
Another doctor, Hanan Balkhy, seemed ambivalent. ''I don't think women here have equal opportunities,'' she acknowledged. ''There are meetings I can't go to. There are buildings I can't go into. But you have to look at the context of development. Discrimination will take time to overcome.''
In 2005, the Saudi King started creating cities "free from the influence of Wahabi clerics":
Within the first months of ‘Abdullah’s term as King, the Saudi government pursued a number of policies to improve the Kingdom’s economic profile.... finding jobs for young Saudis, and opening up foreign investment. But they had another function too, one that was more transparent in a centerpiece of the early period of ‘Abdullah’s reign: the establishment of “economic cities” where, freed from the influence of the Wahhabi clerics, Saudis would live, work, and study as productive members of a modern economy.
....The lead project was the King ‘Abdullah Economic City, which was announced in December 2005. Three more have followed for Jizan, Hail, and Medina.
...With images of men and women in beach wear, its developer Emaar Economic City, a subsidiary of Dubai’s Emaar, proclaimed in 2005 “the dawn of a kingdom in a new colour.” Officials let it be known in foreign media that women would be allowed to drive cars, schools and universities would be co-educational, the gender restrictions in public places would be relaxed, and Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal’s entertainment firm Rotana could operate cinema houses. Housing two million people by its completion around 2020, the city was to be a model of urban renewal and modern education, as well as a zone where the rules of society were put in abeyance. Though no one has said so publicly, the city was intended to be a liberal enclave in Saudi Arabia’s sea of religious conservatism.
The economic city/liberal enclave innovation was part of a wider shift engendered by the hijacking of civilian airliners in the United States by an al-Qa‘ida cell on September 11, 2001....‘Abdullah’s calculation was that Saudi Arabia needed to offer a better image to the world if it wanted to challenge the idea fashionable among some circles close to the Bush Administration of toppling the regime, as was of course planned for Iraq. That meant smoothing the rougher edges of al-Wahhabiyya, though nothing as drastic as breaking the historical alliance with its ‘ulama’.
...The Saudi-Wahhabi state contains other liberal zones where Wahhabi social control is relaxed. They include parts of the city of Jeddah where some restaurants play music and allow unrelated men and women to sit together, on the assumption that the religious police will not drop by. Jeddah’s summer festival has included a cinema section since 2006, and concerts have featured rappers, reflecting the more liberal social attitudes of the Hejaz region compared to the Najd. The religious police generally avoid the diplomatic district in Riyadh and the town of Dhahran on the Gulf coast that houses state oil firm, Aramco. They maintain a light presence in neighboring Khobar, but a strong presence in the more conservative Dammam in the same Eastern Province vicinity.
...King ‘Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) has been fêted in Western media as one of the final gambles of an octogenarian monarch in his twilight years to outflank the repressive clerics.[2] KAUST breaks with tradition on many fronts. It is run by Saudi Aramco, widely seen as the country’s most efficient and modern corporate institution. It has a foreigner, from Singapore, as its President, and faculty hired from around the world at immense expense. It opens with a huge $10 billion endowment said to be from the King’s own pocket. Its curricula are designed by Western consultants rather than the Education Ministry where, despite the hype, Wahhabism still reigns. There is no question of marauding religious police seeking to impose gender segregation on the premises.
...Domestic media has never presented the economic city concept in the way it was described to foreigners. When foreign media used the phrase “liberal enclave” in 2008, there was a visceral reaction from conservatives.[3] The government has not even hinted that the subsequent economic cities announced for Hail, Jizan, and Medina would be similarly segregated from Wahhabi power
In 2005, Saudi Arabia banned forced marriages.
In 2009, first women minister became member of the cabinet.
In 2012, government ministries are actively helping women to seek work:
Now the Saudi Ministry of Labor has asked him to help encourage women to find work. The government turned to the start-up because many of those seeking jobs in the kingdom are women.
The government has even announced plans to form a “woman friendly” city in the eastern province of Hofuf next year, aiming to bolster employment opportunities for women without transgressing religious boundaries.
In 2012, domestic abuse is now criminalized. Male guardian consent is no longer required for women to seek work.
Women voted for the first time in 2015.
2017 women allowed to drive.
2018, the King restricted the powers of the religious police, women no longer forced to wear the hijab in public.
2019, guardianship system is mostly rolled back. Women are allowed to travel abroad without male relative permission. "Women will now receive standard employment discrimination protections. They now also have the right to register the births of their children, live apart from their husbands, and obtain family records. And along with her husband, a woman can also now register as a co-head of household."
2019 -- marriages under age 18 banned.
2021 -- women can marry and divorce without permission. Single women now can live independently without a male guardian.
Saudi Arabia is now more feminist/liberal than 1950s United States -- and accordingly, its birth-rates are significantly lower than 1950s United States.
We can still debate a few things: 1) to what extent did "women's lib" happen as a result of government support and policy, and to what extent it was the result of sattelite TV and the prestige of American culture? 2) Could the government have stopped "women's lib" if it wanted to, or is it an inevitable result of being wealthy and having modern technology? However, whatever the role of government policy, it does seem clear to me that over the last 40 years there was a gradual process whereby patriarchy eroded and women did become more liberated/empowered.
(end of posts)
gorge
2yr ago
(...part 2...)
Newspapers articles seem to corroborate this narrative of gradual movement toward women's lib. As I read these articles, one thing I noticed is that in general it seems like the King and the government were trying to please both sides. They were trying to show the U.S. and the West that they were becoming more "modern" and treating women well, but also trying to show Islamic conservative critic that they were still obeying Islam. So maybe while the government would throw a sop to the conservatives by banning women from TV, the government would at the same time push women's education and employment -- but would say this is for economic reasons and not social reasons and not in violation of Islamic law. Ultimately, the latter was far more important toward ending patriarchy. Let's review the history through some articles.
From a 1981 article:
Expatriates call them ''religious police'', but a better term would be vigilantes. The House of Saud licences their busybodying as a useful release valve for the fundamentalist religious fervor which the Shah and Sadat both tried to suppress. And the honor and respect they are accorded by the Saudi Government helps to conceal the reality of change.
The House of Saud is getting ready for the 21st century. There is a singer on Saudi television who remembers when he used to have to sing in secret. Veteran expatriates remember how, 20 years ago, it was not permissible to smoke in the street, and how cigarettes were purchased under the counter, in plain brown envelopes. In April 1981, a committee of Islamic legal scholars ruled that a Saudi woman must be allowed to unveil in front of her prospective bridegroom: ''Any man forbidding his daughter or sister to meet her fiance face to face will be judged as sinning,'' the committee declared.
Italics mine -- note the government is playing a double game of assuaging the conservatives while telling the NY Times and Westerners that they are "progressing."
From another 1981 article:
As the Saudis race to invest their oil riches in ambitious economic-development programs, the roles played by Mrs. Fawzan and many other urban women indicate that the traditionally conservative Islamic social structure is gradually yielding to change.
What this means is that beyond the overall Government policy of encouraging female literacy and education, there are few specifics concerning the promotion of employment or career opportunities for women. A Government commission is reportedly examining areas of work to be officially approved for women. Women who run boutiques or beauty parlors may run the risk of having their businesses closed down, even if temporarily, by the so-called religious police or members of the Society for the Preservation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.
...The recently disclosed third five-year plan calls for the participation of women in the development of the country, although few specifics are offered. Officials such as the Minister of Planning, Hisham Nazir, one of the most prominent technicians, are known to espouse the position that since more than 50 percent of the potential labor force of 2.5 million are female, the increased employment of women could help Saudi Arabia become less reliant on foreign labor.
...A number of women say that the key to change is more education. ''Education is the basis of the change that is taking place in Saudi society for women,'' Mrs. Rouchdy said. ''But for the most part Saudi women do not want to change their social norms. They don't want to run away from Islamic values and from religion. They are saying, We don't want the superficial aspects of Westernization but only the scientific part of it.''
In 1982 Saudi Arabia got a new king, who was depicted "as the leading figure in a progressive, modernizing faction within the tradition-minded monarchy."
We should keep in mind that of course Saudi Arabia is still very patriarchal and has very high brith rates at this point. The changes described in the previous two articles are just a beginning.
Leading on to 1989 we see more of a movement leftward, which is supported by the King and the government:
While this remains a country where women are veiled in public, cannot drive cars and must seek permission of husbands or other men who are relatives before traveling abroad, education and modernization have made Saudi women a force that neither the Government nor the religious authorities can ignore.
Elegantly dressed and armed with a doctoral degree in education from Ohio State University, Miss Dekheil, who uses her maiden name, is, at 28 years old, the director of an interdisciplinary program at a Government institute that trains women for jobs by sharpening their skills or teaching new ones.
She is one of a new breed of Saudi women dealing with the Saudi Arabia of 1989: A country with nearly a million girls going to school, 100,000 of those in higher education. They are graduating into a conservative society where traditions holding them back from an active role in the economy are slowly coming down. Saudi Arabia's women are becoming doctors, engineers, social workers and computer operators.
...Miss Mosly, who is also married and uses her maiden name, has defied many customs, going to a boarding school in Lebanon at age 4 and studying engineering, then coming back to find a job at Aramco nearly 21 years ago. She runs a department of 186 people, including 50 Saudi men who report to her.
In the battle between progressives and traditionalists, the Saudi Government, known for moving ever so cautiously, appears to be leaning toward a slow integration of women in the work force.
The Saudi Government gave a clear signal when it conferred its most prestigious award, the King Faisal Award for Islamic Studies, on Sheik Mohammed al-Ghazali, an Egyptian religious scholar who has taken a strong stand defending the rights of women to work and seek higher education.
From a 1990 article, Saudi Arabia is officially extremely patriarchal, birthrates still very high, but women's lib creeping in:
Although almost 30 years old, she is still forced to live with her family, since in Saudi Arabia it is against the law for her to live alone as an unmarried woman. If she chooses to leave the country, she said, the only way she can get a passport or board a plane is with her father's written permission.
Legally, neither she nor any other single Saudi woman can go out alone, drive, work with men, travel alone, stay in a hotel, go out to eat, or do anything else alone that might allow them to somehow encounter a man on their own.
The woman who said she was frustrated sipped a whisky at a private party, danced and, after a long conversation, confided that she was divorced and recently had a lover.
But, she said, Government officials had found out about the relationship and investigated her. Her father threatened to lock her in the house and one of her brothers threatened to kill her.
...Drinking alcohol, dancing, mixing of the sexes and a great deal else is officially prohibited here as non-Islamic. In spite of such formal strictures, drinking, dancing and a great deal else that is non-Islamic regularly goes on behind closed doors.
...A Western diplomat told of his astonishment on attending a private party of well-connected Saudis recently. Wine flowed and the men and women were arguing loudly about everything from politics to food when, his Saudi host said, "Watch this."
The lights dimmed and two beautiful women, veiled and clad in sheer but discreet dancing robes, appeared and "danced the most sensual dance I have ever seen," the diplomat said. After a few minutes, he said, he realized that the dancers were the wives of Saudis who were present.
"I still can't figure this place out," the diplomat said.
Again, Saudi Arabia is still more patriarchal than the West (and has higher birth rates), but being "investigated" and "threatened" is still more liberal than being executed (as the adulterous Princess of 1977 was) or stoned (as the New York Times claims was the practice in the 1950s and 1960s).
From 1991, now in debt to the West after the Gulf War, the King is liberalizing by forming citizen councils:
King Fahd of Saudi Arabia has announced a series of changes in the Government to take place by January, including the formation of a council of Saudi citizens with whom the royal family is to consult in ruling the country, the introduction of a written body of laws and greater local autonomy for the provinces.
He told Saudis for the first time that Saudi Arabia had to borrow billions of dollars to meet what he described as the huge cost of the gulf war. He asserted, however, that the debts would not affect the welfare of citizens.
(...part 3 continues as a reply...)
gorge
2yr ago
A few weeks ago I wrote about a post about the link between feminism and declining fertility rates, I used Saudi Arabia as an example. Since 1980 Saudi Arabia has gradually loosened many of its old restrictions on women, women have become more "empowered", and correspondingly fertility rates have dropped from a sky-high 7+ to just over 2 (replacement level).
User /u/2rafa objected to my claim, saying:
The collapse in Saudi tfr happened well before recent liberalization, and in fact the largest collapse occurred during the most severe period of post-Siege of Mecca religious reactionary conservatism, when Saudi society became much less feminist, the Niqab was mandated, the modern guardianship system was mandated, middle and upper-middle class women were largely removed from the professions, Saudi society became more markedly segregated even among urban elites and so on. If anything, Saudi declines in TFR match much more cleanly the rapid enrichment of much of the population with oil money.
I decided to go down a rabbit-hole tracing the history of patriarchy and liberalization in Saudi Arabia.
The first thing I found is that there is a lot of lying going on. For instance the current young prince of Saudi Arabia says:
In an interview in March 2018, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, said that before 1979, "We were living a normal life like the rest of the Gulf countries, women were driving cars, there were movie theatres in Saudi Arabia."
This is apparently just false. Religious police patrolling the streets for vice was a practice going back centuries. Saudi Arabia Women were banned from driving in 1957.
An Jamal Khashoggi (later assassinated, allegedly by Prince Salman) wrote in the Washington Post in response to the Prince:
I was a teenager in the 1970s and grew up in Medina, Saudi Arabia. My memories of those years before the twin disasters of 1979 — the siege of the Grand Mosque of Mecca and the Iranian Revolution — are quite different from the narrative that the 32-year old crown prince (known as MBS for short) advances to Western audiences. Women weren’t driving cars. I didn’t see a woman drive until I visited my sister and brother-in-law in Tempe, Ariz., in 1976. The movie theaters we had were makeshift, like American drive-ins except much more informal. The movie was beamed on a big wall. You would pay 5 or 10 riyals (then approximately $1.50-$2) to the organizer, who would then give a warning when the religious police approached. To avoid being arrested, a friend of mine broke his leg jumping off a wall. In the 1970s, the only places on the Arabian Peninsula where women were working outside the home or school were Kuwait and Bahrain.
The first rule that affected Saudi women’s rights was not the result of a campaign by Wahhabi religious authorities or a fatwa. Many Saudis remember the sad story of a 19-year-old Saudi princess who tried to flee the country with her lover. They were both executed in 1977; the episode was the subject of a 1980 British documentary drama “Death of a Princess.” The reaction of the government to the princess’s elopement was swift: The segregation of women became more severe, and no woman could travel without the consent of a male relative.
We can also corroborate this from articles at the time. Here is a NY Times article from 1975:
Princess Hussa, a slim, attractive woman of 26, is married to a senior Government official. They have one child. Like many other young women of Kuwait, she insists on a life of her own. The Princess, who speaks several languages, studies English literature at the University of Kuwait and, when she so chooses, goes out unescorted to tour the art galleries, shop for her designer clothes or visit her friends.
Such freedom for women is unknown in Saudi Arabia where women are forbidden to drive cars or hold office jobs. They may work only as teachers in girls’ schools, aides to social workers or as doctors. Women may not mingle with men other than their husbands or relatives in any public place. Even the zoo is open on separate days for men and women.
On the street and in the market places of the cities and villages, women pass by as dark shadows, veiled in black from head to foot. The veil may not be lowered even for a passport photo and photographers are forbidden to take pictures of Saudi women on the street.
In Saudi Arabia, if a Saudi woman dares to venture out without the traditional garb, the matow'ah, who are the religious police, are empowered to spray her legs with black paint. Not many years ago women could be whipped for what the matow'ah considered excessive exposure and those charged with adultery might be stoned to death.
Such attitudes toward women are colliding, however, with the efforts of the Saudi Government to modernize swiftly and, with its billions of dollars in oil revenues, to develop the structure of the society. The Government is under pressure to enlarge the role of women simply because many of its ambitious programs are being frustrated by a critical shortage of manpower.
For Saudi women, this has meant seclusion, no political rights, and, until King Faisal intervened, no schooling.
King Faisal, who mounted the throne in 1964, is a Moslem fundamentalist and the chief protector of the Islam faith in the Arab world. When he sought to introduce education for women, he was bitterly opposed by religious conservatives. He finally declared there was no law in the Koran barring such education and opened schools for girls. In some areas, he had to back up his decree with a show of military force. Today, there are as many schools for girls as for boys —but coed.
At the University of Riyadh in the capital of Saudi Arabia, Dr. S. A. Melibaky, the secretary general, said in an interview that about 20 per cent of the enrolment of 5,200 are women. They are registered as extension students in the departments of arts and commerce.
Women are accepted as full‐time students in the College of Medicine, but there are no coed classes. Women receive instruction in special ectures, some through closedircuit television, and they ake separate examinations. Drily in the final years of heir graduate studies are vomen medical students pernitted to work alongside of men in the hospitals.
It's unclear what the "conservative backlash" after the 1979 uprising amounted to. The only clear policy change I can find is banning women from roles on TV. However, this may have been more of bone thrown to the conservatives, while as a whole society continued to slowly march leftward and more feminist. Overall, seems the country gradually became more feminist as the birth rates gradually declined:
| Year | Fertility Rate | Gross female college enrollment rate |
|---|---|---|
| 1970 | 7.3 | 0% |
| 1980 | 7.2 | 4% |
| 1990 | 5.9 | 11% |
| 2000 | 4 | 25% |
| 2010 | 3 | 39% |
| 2020 | 2.2 | 74% |
(I use college attendance as a key metric of feminist advancement because it is one of the only metrics that is easy to quanitify and it is one of the most important institutions for tipping the scales from patriarchy to "women's liberation": 1) it takes women away from the oversight and tutelage of her father and family 2) it represents a big investment in skills unrelated to being a wife or mother 3) it immerses her in messaging from the universe that these job and academic skills are super important 4) university and the years preparing for university are extremely central to life.
(...part 2, in which we travel through time via newspaper articles, to be continued as a reply...)
gorge
2yr ago
then the entire idea of separation of church and state is nonsensical to members of the Church of American Democracy.
Yes. I believe that the "no establishment" clause has failed and no longer makes any sense. If it ever made sense, it was only in a historical context coming out of the post-reformation wars of religion, where a general truce between sects was desired. It made sense in an era where Christian or at least Abrahamic belief was assumed, the federal government had little role in education or ideology, and thus the First Amendment was merely the government not taking sides among Abrahamic sects. Ever since the rise of communism, fascism, liberalism, American civic liberalism, etc, and the main faultlines and fighting lines were among things that no longer coded as "religions" the First Amendment no longer makes sense.
Honestly I do somewhat agree with you, but I think it doesn't resolve the ambiguity of where "church" ends and "state" begins. I certainly don't see an obvious line of delineation despite wanting one to better define policy.
Back in 2007 Moldbug bit the bullet and said that to really make a delineation that makes sense, you would need complete separation of state (ie, the organization with monopoly on force) and information -- https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/06/separation-of-information-and-security/ He later changed his mind in the opposite direction and basically accepted that control of information/ideology/religion is simply a fundamental property of sovereignty and cannot be split off. I have made the same intellectual journey myself and come to the same conclusion.
One's true personal third heart might be atheist or animist or deist, one's sectarian second heart might be Catholic or Quaker, but everyone agreed their first public heart would be secular and nonsectarian and that no one would be punished for their other beliefs.... One really believed in the secularism taught in schools but they would go along with it and agree with it.,
Your history is off. You may be basically Madison's and Jefferson's views and the policies of Virginia, but you are not describing the early republic as a whole. Individual states were allowed to have official state churches, Massachusetts had Congregationalism as established and taxpayer supported up until the 1830s. Religious tests for office (requiring office holders to sometimes be Christian, other times Protestant) lasted into the 20th century. School teachers could actively teach religion in class up until at least the middle of the 20th century. The original idea behind the First Amendment was simply as a truce between the religious sects that were dominant in various states, the states could intertwine religion and government but the federal government as a whole would not choose sides and enforce one particular sect upon the entire country.
But by the late 1800s state constitutions banning "sectarian support" was starting to be used as anti-Catholic cudgel. State support of protestantism was ok, because protestant was not sectarian, according to this logic, but Catholicism was sectarian so could not be taught in a local public school.
By the 1950s and 1960s the First Amendment became a cudgel to use against mixing of any Christianity with government at any level. The novel "incorporation doctrine" was used to apply the First Amendment down to even a local public school of a town of a 1,000 people. The federal government was being used to quash the religious choices of a local community which was the exact opposite the original intent. At the same time, the hegemonic ideology of the United States shed its last connections to Christianity, and thus mutated to make itself immune to First Amendment charges. This hegemonic ideology -- an ideology that has no name, and defies all attempts to be labeled, any time a name is placed on it it tries to shed its name -- gained tremendous state support not only financially but in law (Civil Rights law has morfed into becoming a speech code and ideological test for high-status employment).
But Wokism has adapted to that circumstance, and now provides a full binding metaphysical moral vision in public that must be bowed to,
This isn't new to "Wokism" -- I wrote a school paper 20 years ago about how "Civic Americanism" basically had almost all the properties of what we normally call religion. Moldbug wrote the same back in 2008 in his "How Dawkins Got Pwned Series" -- https://www.unqualified-reservations.org/2007/09/how-dawkins-got-pwned-part-1/ I'm sure other people noticed the phenomena before.
So how do we level the playing field, without shredding the constitution in ways we'll regret later when we live in Rick Santorum's Iran?
Who is "we"? The powers that be quite like being able to suppress the ideologies that traditionally code as religion, while being able to turbo-charge their own ideology with funding and legal support. They don't want a level playing field.
Fundamentally, I think the idea that religion could ever be separated from politics was an error. Politics at the end of the day depends on raw military power, and raw military power depends on people willing to risk their life for their God and their Sovereign. Politics also is all about making sure various groups and people get along, thus needs to teach a common morality, or at least a meta-morality. Politics is about forming durable group alliances -- which is what much of what religious ritual and sacrifice is about. "Religion" can only be separated from politics if you basically water down religion to just meaning a random grab-bag of stuffy old superstitions. Historically, and even in many contemporary societies, there isn't really an equivalent of our concept of "religion" that was separable from just life itself (in the same way American schools that teach "values" don't separate this value system as a separate category from just life itself.
My best take at defining religion that cuts reality at joints (and doesn't arbitrary distinguish between adhering to a "deity" versus "universal principles") is that a "religion is the binding agent of a non-kin or super-kin tribe." Things like creeds, stories, beliefs about ultimate meaning, rituals, sacrifice, are all components that help bind the group together and enable it to take collective action. I am unsure whether I would call "American hegemonic ideology" or "wokism" a religion, or a cancerous and metastatic mutant form of a religion, that is out-competing and strangling real religion.
gorge
2yr ago
But I will note this reads a bit like ideology in that it conflates a useful social technology of monogamy with something natural and true.
I would say that Christian teaching with regards to fornication and monogamy is rooted in natural law; natural law I define as follows: Given human nature, human sexuality, human group dynamics, the basic realities of the world, etc, natural law is the set of rules that result in the game theoretical optimum for most people and for society as a whole. So yeah, powerful men often like to fornicate, they also like to lie, cheat and murder too, all of which are violations of morality and natural law, it's good for them, but at the expense of others.
I should note though that even a powerful man who enjoys sleeping with a variety of women would prefer if the woman he sleeps with remains attached to him in concubinage. It is painful for almost any man to witness the woman he has slept with, sleep with someone else. If that is not painful for you, you are a true outlier.
gorge
2yr ago
Can you hear the Kafkatrap being lined up? If you argue against this premise, it must be because you have a preference for a certain race of friends. You must therefore be a racist.
OP should reverse the trap by writing a letter to the school newspaper about how Professor X says we have a moral obligation to ban the African-American cultural house ...
Why is Elizabeth Taylor outlandish? Remember Cleopatra was of Macedonian descent, the Egyptian ruling class all were the heirs of Alexander the Great's generals. To the untrained eye, Elizabeth Taylor doesn't look all that different than a Macedonian woman
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