Nature Vs. Survival

“Half a century of economic experimentation proved beyond doubt that tyranny cannot yield prosperity. … Socialism collapsed because it is a policy of unrestrained intervention. It tries to fix what is ‘wrong’ with the spontaneous, self-organizing phenomenon called capitalism. But, of course, a natural process cannot be ‘fixed.’ … Socialism is an ideology. Capitalism is a natural phenomenon.“ — Michael Rothschild in BIONOMICS: Economy as Ecosystem

I have to agree with this passage, especially the bolded statement at the end. Capitalism is undoubtably natural. Examples are found everywhere in the animal kingdom: Creatures that eat their own kind; Creatures that eat their own young; Creatures that defend their territory to the death; Creatures that have a harem of mates; Creatures that feed on their food sources until they are left with nothing and starve. Animals are without forethought or compassion. They further their interests, increasing their profit heartlessly at the expense of other individuals.

And what are humans but glorifyed animals; beasts who think they’re gods? We grub and steal and cheat, but who can blame us? Thoughtless greed is human nature. Animal nature. Capitalism is a natural phenomenon.

But that’s a bit demeaning, isn’t it?

I think that we have the capacity to change that vicious competition of nature into magnanamous cooperation. I think we have the capacity to carve out a system whereby most, if not all, members of humankind have at least their most basic needs met. I believe we can learn to manage our resources wisely without thinking about maximum profit, but maximum benefit. I believe we can go beyond the survival of the individual and begin to work toward the survival of the species, and the planet.

Optimistic? Naive? Well, it IS an ideology, an aspirational view of society. And when thet became a negative thing, something to be mocked and scorned, I am not quite certain. What I AM certain of, however, is that rather than limiting freedom, as Rothschild would suggest, socialism frees people from the oppression of others, and frees them from the grasping and scraping of an animal nature.

Vintage Anger: Norbit Rant

(This is a repost from my personal journal)

Isn’t it funny how whenever there’s a fat man in a movie, he is sweet, genuine, a ‘nice guy’, and always gets the girl in the end because “what matters is what’s on the inside!!!!!”?Even if he is used as comic relief (the steotype of the jolly fat man) at least he is still seen as a good person.

But whenever there’s a fat woman, she’s a raging bitch, completely immoral, and the male characters do all they can to get away from her. NEVERMIND the fact that a fat male character can be played by a fat male actor, but a fat woman–well GOSH! They couldn’t put a real fat actress on screen, that’s just GROSS. It’s much more acceptable to just shove Eddie Murphy into a fucking fat suit.

There are so many levels on which this shit is offensive, I have to deal with it in list form.

1. It reduces black women to predictable characters that may fall into 2 categories, and 2 only: evil, domineering, jealous bitches OR submissive, sweet, ’seen-but-not-heard’ sex kittens, ready to do anything for your man. Better pick one now.

2. Apparently it’s the funniest thing EVER when a man wears women’s clothing. How ridiculous! How novel! HAHAHA am I right?!?! Instead of having to write witty dialogue or snappy jokes, just put a man in a dress and you have a comedy.

3. Women are shown as 2D cardboard cutouts with static personalities.

4. Fat women are ridiculed for having dominant or commanding personalities, are not allowed to be sexual, are not allowed to wear bathing suits or anything revealing; Fat women are supposed to be invisible.

And in my opinion, fat issues are ALL women’s issues. If we weren’t so afraid of OMG!TEHFAT, maybe we could be happy with ourselves, stop torturing our bodies with starvation, dangerous, herat-stopping pills and unpleasant, compulsory excercise. Maybe if we stopped trying to meet a completely STUPID beauty standard, one that so few women may ever fit into, and were just ourselves, men wouldn’t have so much power over us. We’d have time to get on with our lives.

Maybe if we got out from under the oppressive blanket of body shame society puts over us we could finally fucking breathe. And eat another cupcake.

AHHHHHH!

Last week in archaeology we watched a film about an underwater excavation seeking to find pieces of the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Involved in the dive was an archaeologist who had worked at the site 30 years earlier- in her 3o’s. She was absolutely brilliant, widely respected, fluent in at least 3 languages and still an active diver. At one point in the film she is in her wetsuit, which she has rolled down over her torso under the hot Egyptian sun, exposing a sports bra and a couple inches of stomach skin.

From the other side of the room floats a sarcastic male voice, “Wow, that’s hot.”

I apologize, but from here on out is where I will become so angry as to be completely inarticulate.

Are you fucking kidding me? Is she a model? A pornstar? No? Then being sexy is not part of her job description. She is 75 years old and a respected academic; she has no obligation to be attractive to you. Would you have it that any women who didn’t make you instantly pop a boner be locked up somewhere out of the light of day? Who the fuck are you to demand that every female in your line of site be up to your standards? Some snot-nosed freshman without any field experience at all? You’d be lucky if she sneezed on you. You are less than dirt.

And so ends my angry ranting for the day. Keep in mind that this is the edited version of my thoughts. At the time of occurrence I just replied, loudly, “Why the fuck does she owe you ‘hot’?”

Asswipe.

Fallen From Where?

The other day, a girl quipped to me, “Why is it always ‘fallen woman’? Why do you never hear the term ‘fallen man’?”

“Easy,” I answered, “men have nowhere to fall from.”

The term “Fallen Woman” is one that’s always bothered me, and I’ve only recently gathered the words to explain why. It has various connotations, the most common of which are prostitute, criminal or adulteress, but can also expand to include drug addict, homeless woman, porn actress- basically any woman who has a lifestyle that offends the mainstream, whether she has chosen it or not.

The Victorians, and even their predecessors, passed down to us a ridiculous romantic notion of what it is to be a ‘woman’. A woman is a pure, beautiful, untouchable thing to be won or bought, prized and treasured for her aesthetic value. In other words, a woman is supposed to be no more than a vase perched on a pedestal.

A vase can useful, in a domestic way, as it could potentially hold liquids for some practical purpose, but largely it’s use is only decorative. The vase has one main purpos, and that is to be attractive to the viewer. The more ornate or fine the vase, the more expensive, the more highly it is prized. You buy the vase from it’s maker and you own it, and because it is yours you can control where it goes and what it is filled with. A vase is an empty vessel; you may fill it with whatever you like.

If the vase should topple from the pedestal of decorative domesticity, the owner has 2 options. Patch up the vase and make it look shiny and new, or throw it away and forget about it. It is no longer a vase, it is a pile of broken ceramic.

Likewise, when a woman ‘falls’ from the perfect pink pedestal of womanhood, she is no longer a woman. She becomes another creature entirely; a slut, whore, degenerate, cunt- a fallen woman. A man cannot be fallen because he has nowhere to fall from, he is considered fully human, not some kind of ornate possession.

Bullshit. Let’s tear down these fucking pedestals.

Transferring the Blame

Let’s talk about transfer of blame. One of the many problems in our society is that we tend to blame people with no power for societal ills, rather than  the people with power motivating those behaviours. Let me use an example.

In Physical Anthropology, we were talking about the Jane Goodall Institute and about the plight of non-human primates. Poachers in Africa and South America (and to a lesser extent, Asia) kill adult female primates, steal their infants and then smuggle them in dangerous ways that usually kill most of them, like putting them in hubcaps or stuffing them into the bottom of luggage. People in my class gasped with horror and one boy asked, “So what can we do to stop those people from doing that?” The answer is simple and obvious: Stop demanding exotic pets.

Blaming poachers for the illegal animal trade is totally ignoring the root of the problem, and trying to stop it by legislating against the actual smuggling is like trying to get rid of a bush by pruning it. What us Whitey Whitebreads want to ignore is the fact that the industry of animal smuggling, the supply, is created by the demand for exotic pets from white Europeans and North Americans, not the other way around. Why do we blame the impoverished non-whites doing whatever they can to stay alive and feed themselves for a problem created by rich, powerful, mostly white interests?

Even more troubling to me was another problem raised in that class. One girl put up her hand and expressed her concern that “Native tribes in South America eat chimpanzees!” After I stopped laughing hysterically (for, you see, I don’t think that Native South American tribespeople could afford the shipping costs on chimp meat from Africa), I realized that my professor was expressing his concern over the practice of hunting primates, saying, “Sometimes the rights of endangered species need to outweigh cultural rights.”

WHAT THE FUCK?

First of all, since when is sustenance hunting considered a “cultural right”? What the hell does he expect these people to eat? How many supermarkets does he think there are in the fucking Amazon? These people need to eat, monkeys are an incredibly nutritious source of protein and fat, and they have precious few other options. I tend to think the lives of human beings should be valued over the lives of other animal species when it comes to situations like this. How DARE he blame native people for utilizing a traditional food source?

Besides that outrage, how can we blame small social groups of humans hunting for food for wiping out an entire primate population when corporations owned by rich, powerful white men are coming in, chopping down the ancient rainforests and polluting the air and water indiscriminately?  Just because the guys in suits aren’t going out into the forest and strangling howler monkeys with their bare hands doesn’t mean that their proverbial hands are clean. They are the cause of extinction in these monkeys, NOT people just trying to feed their families. Actually, people feeding their families at McDonald’s ARE contributing to the wiping out of rainforests, levelled to provide grazing land for cattle…

But even that is a transfer of blame to a powerless group (ie. lower- and working-class North Americans).

Let’s try to stop doing that, shall we?

The Paleolithic Diet!!!!

“There are races of people who are all slim, who are stronger and faster than us. They all have straight teeth and perfect eyesight. Arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, depression, schizophrenia and cancer are absolute rarities for them. These people are the last 84 tribes of hunter-gatherers in the world. They share a secret that is over 2 million years old. Their secret is their diet- a diet that has changed little from that of the first humans 2 million years ago, and their predecessors up to 7 million years ago. Theirs is the diet that man evolved on, the diet that is coded for in our genes.”

Source: http://www.earth360.com/diet_paleodiet_balzer.html

It will surprise you to hear that this piece of utter drivel and shit was written by a family physician, someone who is supposed to be brilliant and in charge of public health. Allow me to tear this down, yes?

1. Why are they slim, strong and fast? Because compared to people living in technological societies, they get very few calories in their diet and, as hunter-gatherers, are always moving around to find food. They have to chase after fucking ungulates to get a steak out of it. You’d be slim, strong and fast, too with that way of life. Nevermind the fact that nearly all hunter-gatherer societies are nomadic, which means packing up and carrying your house hundreds of miles every season or so.

2. They ALL have straight teeth? Ummm, well first I’d like to see evidence of this. If it is true, I would argue that this is because strong teeth are needed to chew a diet consisting in large part of raw foods.

3. The perfect eyesight is so obviously not related to their diet that I am baffled he even put it in there. Now, as with the teeth, I doubt he can prove this claim, as he has not gone out onto the Savannah and given every Masai an eye exam, but this one I believe. In a hunter-gatherer society, your livelihood is dependant on your ability to see edible plants among the brush and throw a spear with enough accuracy to get an antelope. If someone did not have perfect eyesight, they would likely not be seen as a good catch, marriage-wise, as they could not hunt or gather to support a amily. Thus, no spawning, no propagation of the gene, and 80 hunter-gatherer societies with perfect eyesight.

4. It’s true that these societies fo not have arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, stroke and cancer, but it’s not a miracle brought about by their diet, it’s the fact that people living in these societies don’t live long enough to get these diseases. All of these absent diseases he lists are typically found in older people, 45, 50, 60 and up. In one of these societies where people generally only live to be 40 or so, of course you aren’t going to see these as often. Of course, I will not argue that their diet doesn’t play any role at all here. I will concede that when you are barely eating enough natural sugars to survive, you are not going to get diabetes (or if you do, are not going to live long enough to be counted by family physicians in the West), and if you are not eating plants covered in pesticides, and drinking water filled with flouride, and walking through cities hazy with CO2, you are probably not going to get cancer.

5. No Depression or schizophrenia? Okay. Why? What do they eat that makes them immune to mental disease?

“The essentials of the Paleolithic Diet are:

Eat none of the following:

· Grains- including bread, pasta, noodles

· Beans- including string beans, kidney beans, lentils, peanuts, snow-peas and peas

· Potatoes

· Dairy products

· Sugar

· Salt

Eat the following:

· Meat, chicken and fish

· Eggs

· Fruit

· Vegetables (especially root vegetables, but definitely not including potatoes or sweet potatoes)

· Nuts, eg. walnuts, brazil nuts, macadamia, almond. Do not eat peanuts (a bean) or cashews (a family of their own)

· Berries- strawberries, blueberries, raspberries etc.

 Try to increase your intake of:

· Root vegetables- carrots, turnips, parsnips, rutabagas, Swedes

· Organ meats- liver and kidneys (I accept that many people find these unpalatable and won’t eat them)

Expect some minor tuning problems- don’t worry, you can deal with them.”

So, basically, stop eating what is at the bottom of the Food Pyramid, the stuff that doctors say should be the basis of a healthy diet, and start grazing on expensive berries.

Let me tell you, I think it is also hilarious that he advises us to consume more Swedes. MMM, I love me a good, tasty Swede. I just can’t get enough Swede in my mouth. I could spend hours and hours eating Swedes…yeah, you get the idea of the joke.

Also, the caveat at the bottom is hilarious. Don’t worry about it if you feel like you are weak and starving and perhaps won’t live past 38. That’s perfectly normal– in fact, that’s how it’s supposed to feel! Don’t worry about it, soon your body will adjust to the lack of nutrients and calories, and will go into super survival mode, feeding off itself. How cool!

This is such a bad, pseudo-scientific rip-off of the Atkins diet, it is hilarious.

I am human, godammit

Let me tell you, internets, today was a fun day to be in Physical Anthropology. The men in my class just keep coming out with these bewildering statements that display an astounding ignorance towards female humans and their magical, mystical ways. Today I got 3 gems from 3 different dudes, informing me that this is going to be one hell of a term.

We began the class by talking about how it is impossible to absolutely groups of humans by race because race is actually on a continuum, rather than being divided into nice little categories. To illustrate this in simple terms, the prof used the example of natural hair colour, and how it is better measured on a scale going from white blonde to black. A hand shot up in the back of the room, and this is what emits from the mouth belonging to that hand: “Isn’t it true that women are predisposed to be blonde, like, biologically to attract males in the wild?”

Ah yes, we’ve all heard about those feral blondes, stalking the countryside, using their brightly coloured hair as bait to capture unsuspecting males of the species. WTF?

Later on, we were talking about osteology, which, I’ve gotta say, I’m a big nerd and really looking forward to. The prof was asking the class to name information one could infer from human skeletal remains, and a guy stuck up his hand and replied sex. When questioned on how one could differentiate the sexes, he said, no lies, “Women have different bones than men. Like, more ribs and stuff.”

That’s right, even now in the fucking 2000’s, men who get into universities are still dumb enough to believe that women are strange, mythical alien beasts with 2 heads, 3 hearts and 25 ribs.

Luckily, another genius jumped right in there to correct him: “No, no, women have differently shaped pelvises!”

Now, this guy is right, in a sense. Women generally have a pelvis that is wide enough and set at the right angle so that they are able to bear and give birth to offspring. Men’s pelvises are narrower and not angled in the same way. But that isn’t how he said it, he didn’t say “Men and women have differently shaped pelvises.” What he said, the basic statement behind it, is at the basis of the sexist patriarchal society we live in-

Women are different.

There is a basic standard for being an average human, and that is male. Women are, then, not normal, not really human, but rather some kind of deviation or perversion of the norm. Men are the default, we are a second thought. How is it that 51% of the earth’s population can be considered “abnormal”?

Fuck the patriarchy.

Godwin finds a new application

Have y’all heard of an internet phenomenon called Godwin’s Law? Put forth by Mike Godwin in 1990, it states, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”

Apparently it is not only for usenet forums anymore.

Today was the first day of Physical Anthropology, which apparently has attracted every amateur Evolutionary Psychologist on campus. The pretension meter was at about 9.6 from hour 2 on. Anyway, we began by talking about the different streams of anthropology, and as we skimmed, we touched upon the concept of some aspects of human behaviour being biological while others are learned. This was a topic of no small interest for a couple of guys in the back, who began a lively, class disrupting discussion on whether cultural norms usually become law, or vice versa.

After volleying weak, poorly thought out arguments back and forth for a few minutes, one of them became suddenly enlightened and cried, “What about Hitler? It wasn’t a cultural norm to commit genocide, but he made it law.”

The class went absolutely silent, all his opponents stunned by his unassailable idiocy. If anyone is a discussion stopper, it’s good old Adolf. The professor, thanking his lucky stars, quickly resumed lecturing where he had left off before the incredulous moment passed.

Sweet Introductions

Why hello there, potential readers, and welcome to Snide Remarks.

My name’s Cady, and I’m a seventeen year old female attempting to navigate her way through first year Archaeology at a small Canadian university. It’s no cakewalk being one o’ them freaky feminists here, as most of the student population, my 4 roommates included, shop exclusively at American Eagle and think the Patriarchy is a book by Margaret Atwood. Not that they would know who she is.

This blog will largely be a personal one, full of observations and comments about daily life from a radical feminist perspective, but will also be dotted with essays, poetry, rants and other writings of my creation and from sundry other sources. I hope you enjoy reading, and if you do, comment! And if you don’t enjoy it, comment anyway!