The radical feminist Lee Lakeman has spent her life calling out patriarchy for its oppression, the left for its bankruptcy, neoliberalism for its cruelty and organizing women to fight back.
The Left? What Left? The Left I know are just struggling to survive. There needs to be a new word for those who claim to be left and are called left, but are not.
Thank you, Chris for introducing the work and mission of a heroine for the ages, to me and many others I’m sure. Misogyny is a subject that fractures the left, not least because it is often construed as a matter of individual and personal scope, and therefore not the purview of many activists.
How clear she is! Solid! Flaming truth! This litany of actualities appalls, disturbs, infuriates. I want to know we are to crack the corporate clench the attitudes of which we see in the horrendous treatment and degradation of women. What is the way to stop this corporate momentum?
It has always disturbed me how middle class women have no understanding of trauma, while constantly talking about it.
Many years ago, I found myself arguing with a group of university educated middle class women, about why a someone with a penis should not be sleeping in a room full of traumatized women in a street shelter. They simply did not get that for someone who had been raped multiple times that someone identified as trans was irrelevant.
The traumatized person who is in a state of trauma, is not rational. Compassion requires that this be acknowledged. Mental illness is not rational, and the mentally ill person by definition does not see reality the same way as the rest of us.
Where I disagree with Chris & Lee is that this is true for all humans irrespective of race & gender. I have met women who came from extreme wealth, but were on the streets because of trauma. I have known men who could not function because they were sexually abused. Everyone's story is different, and compassion is required.
Something else that needs to be said. A highly traumatized person, because they live in that trauma can be extremely unpredictable & dangerous (Not true for everyone). Knowing this, a compassionate person, needs to be very careful and sensitive in dealing with them so not as to trigger them. Some of them may need to live in a very controlled environment to protect both themselves & others.
Yes, I am advocating that some people be institutionalized.
Something else that needs to be said. The women I have known, who are the most successful in dealing with trauma, are a part of the "Cult of Mary". Personally, I don't get it, but I know that it works. Going to mass 3 times a day, and endless "Hail Mary's" is not my way, but I can tell you that women who are a part of this, can function, & act with compassion, and get on with their lives, and since it seems to work, who am I to argue.
How we hold the earth is how we hold each other. Let's address the FIRE sector where the primary predators lie - Finance, Insurance and Real Estate - with Public Banks, tax shift to Commons Rent, and cooperative insurance groups. Chris - might you bring forward these solutions?
The term 'left' has been completely distorted in the US. Captured and made into a cruel joke against women, workers, and the unhealthy. Neoliberal is much more appropriate for the rusted on DNC supporters who think being woke is being left. In reality, 'left' is about closing the ever widening wealth gap; about supporting unions; and creating social safety nets. Anything else is just posturing.
Prostitution has always been with us, and always will, so societies need to make prostitution a legitimate profession, where the health and safety of its practitioners is protected. Here in Australia brothels are legal, so that the comfort, health and safety of sex workers can be assured. Prostitutes also have a union, to maintain those conditions.
When the police are asked to police vice, corruption occurs, which is another good reason for legalising prostitution, but making soliciting and trafficking illegal.
Unfortunately, the health and safety of street prostitutes is not assured, and studies here - hard to undertake because of the transience of street workers - has found that the vast majority of them suffer from mental illness, so better care of the mentally ill is part of the protection of street prostitutes, of both sexes.
Outside the law is the problem of trafficked females in illegal brothels. Now purely a police matter.
Ordinary women are being savaged every day by the super-liberated types among this gender.
For instance, don't ever get locked into a nuthouse even on an illegal retaliatory basis because you will never work again if the system has its way. That psycho-brand (however illegitimate and wrong) will be blatantly tattooed onto your permanent health AND State labor record, you wont have the right to ever get it off. If that's not forced prostitution I don't know what is.
Woman without enough money will ruin themselves in many ways just to get by, but that way the basic gender-abuse invariably increases. You wont have the services of anti discrimination programs like EEOC or SCSEC (government geezer hiring) if you are so branded. The US Constitution/Bill of Rights can and WILL be savagely violated to eliminate such supposedly untrustworthy and/or dangerous types from any workplace. You will never be told why you were passed over for the 14th time by the local grocery store or convenience store or warehouse, library, or caseworker program for abused kids. NOBODY WILL TRUST YOU. The law seems to endorse such abuse/forced prostitution. And no beautiful, well- employed woman ever lands up there, she will instead volunteer herself into the private nuthouse (no Medicare accepted of course) that will cover her privacy rights by default.
And NO abused women just struggling to survive will likewise be welcome into the local socialist club especially if its in a red state. The gay contingent often calls the shots so the typical quotidian boring problems that ordinary-looking/living women experience..won't be honored. Maybe the applicant is even gay as well, but who wants to know or care about that?? If super beauty/intelligence is the ticket to power, then gayness is the ticket-taker.
How did things devolve to this? I have my theories and they are probably sound. But I am seemingly invisible and inaudible.
Well then, so I finally paid up a key Substack (this one) to get heard. Ignoring is death. The constant relentless IGNORING is actually the substrate of my own personal failure-ridden and quotidian dismissable life. Of course if certain people don't even exist for all practical purposes, it makes certain social analysis so vastly much simpler...
The sleazy brothels are the typical female workplaces and interview carrels where the job wasn't clinched. "She" didn't "qualify". But that violent and deliberately wrong judgmental-ism is the sold-out filthy PIMP-ISM ruining the lives of the female INVISIBLE among us. I actually ENVY the employed-ones in those exploitative and savagely underpaid jobs. At least they can theoretically organize, or at least gather in the local internet cafe and swap notes and make plans to start worker coops etc...
But all of this insecurity and need feels so obscenely and gratuitously SMUTTY!!
And that's what prostitution means to me. Can't escape the feeling no matter how hard I try.
Thank you for this thought provoking article. I do have to disagree with the idea that there is no common ground between any of us, with different views., and that total agreement, synchrony, and, what uniformity? Is what we must have in order to move forward.
It doesn’t mean ignoring important differences, but our species’ survival depends on recognising we are mostly, in every way that should, and does, matter, simply human.
We may be the discarded, the unneeded, surplus people...but when that happened to me (with a BA, a veteran, and a white male) I decided that I wasn't surplus to myself.
I went down to the hardware store and bought "the means of production"; a wheel barrow, shovel, and a skill saw became my tools of survival.
For cash, the small amount anybody needs, I worked twice as hard for half as much and I did survive to the ripe old age of 85, presently. And I managed to marry one of the most beautiful women in the Parish doing it.
Finally, we realize our common enemy, Capitalism : we, selling our time to Dead-end corporations and sex workers renting their bodies so clients can masturbate 🤮
Thank you for this powerful tribute to this COURAGEOUS woman!...and to all who have commented so wisely here.
I believe that part of the reason we (humans) keep going round and round in circles when we try to address all the hurtful inequalities in our cultures is precisely because it all starts with MEN dominating WOMEN - in our homes and beyond...and it is VERY hard work to seriously challenge this.
The persistent belief that this is INEVITABLE must be challenged. We can do things differently. If we don't have social equality between women and men, we won't have equality and justice anywhere.
Unplanned and chaotic uprisings would be less likely to happen if revolutionaries would simply read From Dictatorship to Democracy by Dr Gene Sharp.
I have asked Chris many times to read The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, because Veblen discussed the slavery of women in that work. I would like to hear Chris's discussion about the findings of Veblen but I wish in vain.
And finally, what Lakeman calls "the left" is what Chris calls "the liberal class." You might like to listen to Phil Ochs' song Love Me, I'm A Liberal on YouTube.
No other demographic is required to fight against an oppressor while also being hard-wired to mate and raise children with them the way women around the world are expected to do. It's crazy-making to those of us women who know the truth to watch as women - especially those close to us - throw each other under the bus time and time again. That has been the story of my life.
When Kamala Harris lost I said to my Quaker school buddies," She would have won if she was a white man." Misogyny is a way to divide and conquer us. Lee Lakeman is a prophet. No little girl tells her parents, " When I grow up I want to be a whore." Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
Why? Kamala Harris giggled her way through her vice presidency and whose rambling little stories were followed up with the giggles. If we are honest we would acknowledge she became the vice president because she was a female, and she was 1/2 black and initially the democrats were all about showing you how liberal they were, unlike Trump. They used her because she had a vagina, and close to the desired skin color they wanted. Nothing pro-feminist in that! Also remember she never came out during her presidential run and claimed Israel was carrying out a genocide, killing women, killing children, and too often with a bullet through their heads, or their hearts. Screw her feminism.
The Left? What Left? The Left I know are just struggling to survive. There needs to be a new word for those who claim to be left and are called left, but are not.
I miss the days when the left actually represented the working class.
The left still do. Anyone who thinks they are left, but doesn't support unions and social safety nets is merely Neoliberal.
Thank you, Chris for introducing the work and mission of a heroine for the ages, to me and many others I’m sure. Misogyny is a subject that fractures the left, not least because it is often construed as a matter of individual and personal scope, and therefore not the purview of many activists.
Good stuff. Gets my thinking off the main streets into the alleys. Amazing how I hear the cadence of your voice as I read. Thank you for being here.
How clear she is! Solid! Flaming truth! This litany of actualities appalls, disturbs, infuriates. I want to know we are to crack the corporate clench the attitudes of which we see in the horrendous treatment and degradation of women. What is the way to stop this corporate momentum?
You can start by educating yourself. Please read The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen. He discusses the slavery of women in that work.
Also, I recommend From Dictatorship to Democracy by Dr Gene Sharp.
It has always disturbed me how middle class women have no understanding of trauma, while constantly talking about it.
Many years ago, I found myself arguing with a group of university educated middle class women, about why a someone with a penis should not be sleeping in a room full of traumatized women in a street shelter. They simply did not get that for someone who had been raped multiple times that someone identified as trans was irrelevant.
The traumatized person who is in a state of trauma, is not rational. Compassion requires that this be acknowledged. Mental illness is not rational, and the mentally ill person by definition does not see reality the same way as the rest of us.
Where I disagree with Chris & Lee is that this is true for all humans irrespective of race & gender. I have met women who came from extreme wealth, but were on the streets because of trauma. I have known men who could not function because they were sexually abused. Everyone's story is different, and compassion is required.
Something else that needs to be said. A highly traumatized person, because they live in that trauma can be extremely unpredictable & dangerous (Not true for everyone). Knowing this, a compassionate person, needs to be very careful and sensitive in dealing with them so not as to trigger them. Some of them may need to live in a very controlled environment to protect both themselves & others.
Yes, I am advocating that some people be institutionalized.
Something else that needs to be said. The women I have known, who are the most successful in dealing with trauma, are a part of the "Cult of Mary". Personally, I don't get it, but I know that it works. Going to mass 3 times a day, and endless "Hail Mary's" is not my way, but I can tell you that women who are a part of this, can function, & act with compassion, and get on with their lives, and since it seems to work, who am I to argue.
How we hold the earth is how we hold each other. Let's address the FIRE sector where the primary predators lie - Finance, Insurance and Real Estate - with Public Banks, tax shift to Commons Rent, and cooperative insurance groups. Chris - might you bring forward these solutions?
The term 'left' has been completely distorted in the US. Captured and made into a cruel joke against women, workers, and the unhealthy. Neoliberal is much more appropriate for the rusted on DNC supporters who think being woke is being left. In reality, 'left' is about closing the ever widening wealth gap; about supporting unions; and creating social safety nets. Anything else is just posturing.
Prostitution has always been with us, and always will, so societies need to make prostitution a legitimate profession, where the health and safety of its practitioners is protected. Here in Australia brothels are legal, so that the comfort, health and safety of sex workers can be assured. Prostitutes also have a union, to maintain those conditions.
When the police are asked to police vice, corruption occurs, which is another good reason for legalising prostitution, but making soliciting and trafficking illegal.
Unfortunately, the health and safety of street prostitutes is not assured, and studies here - hard to undertake because of the transience of street workers - has found that the vast majority of them suffer from mental illness, so better care of the mentally ill is part of the protection of street prostitutes, of both sexes.
Outside the law is the problem of trafficked females in illegal brothels. Now purely a police matter.
Ordinary women are being savaged every day by the super-liberated types among this gender.
For instance, don't ever get locked into a nuthouse even on an illegal retaliatory basis because you will never work again if the system has its way. That psycho-brand (however illegitimate and wrong) will be blatantly tattooed onto your permanent health AND State labor record, you wont have the right to ever get it off. If that's not forced prostitution I don't know what is.
Woman without enough money will ruin themselves in many ways just to get by, but that way the basic gender-abuse invariably increases. You wont have the services of anti discrimination programs like EEOC or SCSEC (government geezer hiring) if you are so branded. The US Constitution/Bill of Rights can and WILL be savagely violated to eliminate such supposedly untrustworthy and/or dangerous types from any workplace. You will never be told why you were passed over for the 14th time by the local grocery store or convenience store or warehouse, library, or caseworker program for abused kids. NOBODY WILL TRUST YOU. The law seems to endorse such abuse/forced prostitution. And no beautiful, well- employed woman ever lands up there, she will instead volunteer herself into the private nuthouse (no Medicare accepted of course) that will cover her privacy rights by default.
And NO abused women just struggling to survive will likewise be welcome into the local socialist club especially if its in a red state. The gay contingent often calls the shots so the typical quotidian boring problems that ordinary-looking/living women experience..won't be honored. Maybe the applicant is even gay as well, but who wants to know or care about that?? If super beauty/intelligence is the ticket to power, then gayness is the ticket-taker.
How did things devolve to this? I have my theories and they are probably sound. But I am seemingly invisible and inaudible.
Well then, so I finally paid up a key Substack (this one) to get heard. Ignoring is death. The constant relentless IGNORING is actually the substrate of my own personal failure-ridden and quotidian dismissable life. Of course if certain people don't even exist for all practical purposes, it makes certain social analysis so vastly much simpler...
The sleazy brothels are the typical female workplaces and interview carrels where the job wasn't clinched. "She" didn't "qualify". But that violent and deliberately wrong judgmental-ism is the sold-out filthy PIMP-ISM ruining the lives of the female INVISIBLE among us. I actually ENVY the employed-ones in those exploitative and savagely underpaid jobs. At least they can theoretically organize, or at least gather in the local internet cafe and swap notes and make plans to start worker coops etc...
But all of this insecurity and need feels so obscenely and gratuitously SMUTTY!!
And that's what prostitution means to me. Can't escape the feeling no matter how hard I try.
Epic. Thank you for sharing.
I said the word "quotidian" twice. My bbaaaad. But thank you anyway. A little less invisible now.
Thank you for this thought provoking article. I do have to disagree with the idea that there is no common ground between any of us, with different views., and that total agreement, synchrony, and, what uniformity? Is what we must have in order to move forward.
It doesn’t mean ignoring important differences, but our species’ survival depends on recognising we are mostly, in every way that should, and does, matter, simply human.
We may be the discarded, the unneeded, surplus people...but when that happened to me (with a BA, a veteran, and a white male) I decided that I wasn't surplus to myself.
I went down to the hardware store and bought "the means of production"; a wheel barrow, shovel, and a skill saw became my tools of survival.
For cash, the small amount anybody needs, I worked twice as hard for half as much and I did survive to the ripe old age of 85, presently. And I managed to marry one of the most beautiful women in the Parish doing it.
Finally, we realize our common enemy, Capitalism : we, selling our time to Dead-end corporations and sex workers renting their bodies so clients can masturbate 🤮
Thank you for this powerful tribute to this COURAGEOUS woman!...and to all who have commented so wisely here.
I believe that part of the reason we (humans) keep going round and round in circles when we try to address all the hurtful inequalities in our cultures is precisely because it all starts with MEN dominating WOMEN - in our homes and beyond...and it is VERY hard work to seriously challenge this.
The persistent belief that this is INEVITABLE must be challenged. We can do things differently. If we don't have social equality between women and men, we won't have equality and justice anywhere.
Unplanned and chaotic uprisings would be less likely to happen if revolutionaries would simply read From Dictatorship to Democracy by Dr Gene Sharp.
I have asked Chris many times to read The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, because Veblen discussed the slavery of women in that work. I would like to hear Chris's discussion about the findings of Veblen but I wish in vain.
And finally, what Lakeman calls "the left" is what Chris calls "the liberal class." You might like to listen to Phil Ochs' song Love Me, I'm A Liberal on YouTube.
No other demographic is required to fight against an oppressor while also being hard-wired to mate and raise children with them the way women around the world are expected to do. It's crazy-making to those of us women who know the truth to watch as women - especially those close to us - throw each other under the bus time and time again. That has been the story of my life.
When Kamala Harris lost I said to my Quaker school buddies," She would have won if she was a white man." Misogyny is a way to divide and conquer us. Lee Lakeman is a prophet. No little girl tells her parents, " When I grow up I want to be a whore." Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
Why? Kamala Harris giggled her way through her vice presidency and whose rambling little stories were followed up with the giggles. If we are honest we would acknowledge she became the vice president because she was a female, and she was 1/2 black and initially the democrats were all about showing you how liberal they were, unlike Trump. They used her because she had a vagina, and close to the desired skin color they wanted. Nothing pro-feminist in that! Also remember she never came out during her presidential run and claimed Israel was carrying out a genocide, killing women, killing children, and too often with a bullet through their heads, or their hearts. Screw her feminism.
Sam Kriss' analysis of Harris is definitive for me.
You spelled your name wrong Frank.
No I didn't SB!
So why did Team D replace Biden?
He was as white as a refrigerator, and a man to boot. "Sharp as a tack!" we were dutifully assured, by Harris and the entire MSM in chorus.
It's bizarre to be called naive and then told we should pressure the police and the state to be helpful.