SEXISM HOBBLES CIVILIZATION


DISCRIMINATING AGAINST FEMALES IS UNSAFE FOR CIVILIZATION:

Why did Athenian direct democracy fail? A case can be made that it did, because Athens was too sexist.

Some will raise their eyebrows, as I accused Aristotle to have fostered monarchism and plutocracy, by teaching directly the plutocrats who extinguished Greek democracy (for 22 centuries!) Thus, Aristotle destroyed democracy.

However, in the history I narrated, Sparta, urged by the (Athenian philosopher) Demosthenes and his friends, went to war against Macedonia’s Antipater, and his army of mercenaries… And Sparta nearly won. Athens sat on her hands (Athens went to war later, way too late, after Sparta had been completely defeated).

Why did Athens not support Sparta in a timely manner against Aristotle’s Executor (that’s Antipater)? It may have had to do with sexism.

Delphi's Sanctuary Of Apollo (Who Spoke Through The Pythia)

Delphi’s Sanctuary Of Apollo (Who Spoke Through The Pythia)

[The Pythia was a woman; the sanctuary started with the worship of Gaia. Ethylene vapors helped…]

Sparta was a fascist system, but, in some ways, it was way more advanced than Athens, or all other Greek cities. In particular, Sparta was a very anti-sexist society: girls were trained like boys, in the nude, for the toughest physical activities. They had lots of freedom, in many ways.

The enmity between Athens and Sparta may have been born from the former being sexist, and the other, just the opposite. The crowd of thinkers around Socrates, which was very attracted to Sparta’s charms, may have been so, because of this trait precisely: see below.

In any case, Athenian society suffered from an excess of aggressivity at the start of the Peloponnesian war, and  more caution from a feminine input may have made the difference (Athens’ annihilation of Melos, and attack against Syracuse, after throwing Alcibiades in Sparta’s arms are example of ill conceived aggression which voting mothers in the Assembly would have certainly voted down).

A sexist society is at a disadvantage: not only are the women forced to be moronic, but they can only teach their children moronically, being morons themselves.

Maybe that’s why the Middle East, thanks to the sexist interpretation of the Qur’an has been so stupid, for so long, overall. Sexism does not just oppress women, it oppresses boys: it makes them less intellectually performing than if their mothers were fully endowed. In any case, it clearly does not help. (The same argument can be extended in favor of direct democracy: in a direct democracy people vote directly on laws and decisions, as they did in Athens; so they are motivated to become more intelligent, creating a virtuous spiral up of ever greater smarts, as evidenced in Switzerland.)

Giant corporations imposing the notion that female nipples are unsafe, are not just moronic, but are themselves, considering their enormous clout and power, unsafe for civilization (be it only because they foster stupidity).

Why we need sexual equality to be institutionally imposed has to do, ultimately, with brains. Yes, female brains may be different in some genetic ways, from males ones (because, maybe, of different neurohormones, sometimes). And it’s true that, overall, female mental performance in the last 3,000 years, has come short.

The latter situation is entirely due to sexism, the poor man’s plutocratic impulse. Up to around 1850, even in the USA and Britain, a woman who married entered what was called “civil death.

The general abuse women were submitted to is in striking contrast with the long recognized fact that top female brains have been as capable as males ones: this is evidenced by the many leaders, who, even millennia ago, were women. The Magna Mater, Great Mother, Cybele Cult, which reigned over Middle Earth for millennia had God as a woman (the Virgin Mary of the Christians is a pale echo of that).

Carthage was founded by a queen, Dido, nearly 29 centuries ago. Even earlier, there had been famous, important, female pharaohs. When the Frankish empire became Western civilization, in the Sixth Century, replacing the decaying Roman State, there were no less than seven reigning queens in a century (I counted them). The last Frankish Queen, Bathilda, is the world’s first monarch on record, who had slavery outlawed. (That’s how slavery disappeared from Europe.)

Even Plato had recognized that females were the intellectual equivalent of men. And he may even have implicitly stated that they were superior: Plato adulated Socrates. And yet…

It is striking that all teachers of Socrates are women. And some are listened to religiously. By everybody. Pythia, the oracle at Delphi, was a towering figure of Ancient Greece: “Know Thyself and nothing in excess” was her motto. Delphi’s Oracle was actually an institution of wisdom managed by women over centuries. Delphic puzzling wisdom taught Socrates what came to be known later as the Socratic method. Socrates claims that the Pythia launched him on his quest for wisdom.

Asphasia of Miletus was Socrate’s teacher of rhetoric. She was a top philosopher (and became Pericles’ second wife, after he divorced, and married away his first one!)

In Plato’s symposium, Socrates says: “…the philosophy of love I learned from Diotima of Mantinea… [she] was my instructress in the art of love, and I shall repeat to you what she said to me….”

The Pythia invented the Socratic method, and Diotema Platonic love.

For the longest time, we were told women could not do science, or mathematics. However Emilie du Chatelet discovered ENERGY, and distinguished it from momentum.

Newton had confused momentum and energy; discovering energy makes Emilie more important than her boyfriend Voltaire… and a more original, and important, thinker than Einstein.

Energy is the core concept of contemporary physics. No less.

In the Twentieth Century, Emmy Noether was a towering mathematician.

There is a problem with women, though: Emilie du Chatelet went one boyfriend too far, and died from the birth of her fourth child, at age 42 (and, slowed down by three children, she had blossomed late as an intellectual; she was a global thinker). Emmy Noether died of an ovarian cyst at only 53.

The fragility of women’s health was greatly due to childbirth. In the European Middle Ages, the average child bearing woman would survive only ten years to the birth of her first child (who would die soon, too!) Now this is history, thanks to higher technology.

In prehistoric tribes, women collaborated intellectually as much as men. A civilization which can make female brains all that they can be, is a civilization with twice more brains… And intelligent children (as women are in the closest contact, and educate them for the first few years). Sexist societies are in contradiction with basic human ethology (the normal behavior of humans, their default state, what they are made to operate optimally in).

The easiest way to a superior civilization, is to let women become as brainy as men are allowed to be.

There are encouraging signs, such as more women registered now in universities of the USA than there are men.

Yet… How can we preach against sexual discrimination while discriminating against female skin?

Patrice Ayme’

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11 Responses to “SEXISM HOBBLES CIVILIZATION”

  1. Florent Boyer-Ayme Says:

    Florent Boyer-Aymé 12:38pm Nov 4
    Ton dernier article était sympathique, une vision intelligente du conflit entre Sparte et Athène (entre autre)

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    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Oui, et je te remercie de ton appreciation! . J’aurais pu dire plus, mais j’ai prefere’ le laisser a cela.

      En tous cas, c’est gentil de sortir de ton embargo anti-Internet en mon honneur!
      In Sparta, women controlled property much more than they could in Athens.
      I noticed a dearth of comments…

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  2. Richard Webster Says:

    Patrice,
    As always I am in awe of the breadth and depth of your insights. I would only add that a less discussed consequence of the repression of women (femininity) is the effect on the men. It imprisons them in a state of permanent adolescence. ThIs is strickenly evident in the behavior of many jihadists, running around in pickup trucks with guns blazing. Even the ultimate reward (27 virgins) is a juvenile fantasy. Compromise is impossible and suicide is an easy choice. American foreign policy in this area has been a dismal failure although Ann Jones and Rebecca Solnit have a couple of articles over on TomDispatch that describe some successes. I believe that the emergence of women is key to survival of mankind in the future. Nemesis awaits. “Winged balancer of life, dark faced goddess, daughter of justice. She is a young girl, the punisher of hubris”.

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    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Richard: I am too amazed by your appreciation and knowledge of mythology. Nemesis, indeed:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_(mythology)
      However, nasty regimes have sometimes dominated for centuries. Russia, since Ivan the Terrible, has defined The Terrible as normal (see Putin). The Assyrian regime lasted centuries, until a bit more than 26 centuries ago an enormous coalition destroyed its cities. The Hellenistic regimes lasted until Rome destroyed them (and turned real bad a generation later).

      In Europe, some of the plutocrats lasted all too long (from Louis XIII to 1871 is a real long time… 261 years… And those who know will argue that Thiers and company, who drowned the Commune in blood, were not much better.) Nemesis never really paid a visit.

      In the USA, the country is simply not imaginable, if the British and the French governments had stayed in control instead of fighting each other (North America may have turned out more like… South Africa). If they had, there may have been no significant slavery, and the Indians would not have been cleansed… There, too, Nemesis did not come. Instead, a New World was born.

      The problem posed by Islam has been the same since the Franks sent their first spies, 1,360 years ago. Islam represented what the Franks had always been against, a fanatical Church in command of the army (a fundamentally anti-feminine approach). So, ultimately, winning the war with Islam means breaking that, thus creating another Islam (which has long existed in West Africa, although Wahhabist money is trying to drown it now… precisely because they know it’s an alternative!).

      After military action threw the Muslims several times out of France (8C, and again in the 10C), those left behind were not forcefully converted, but switched (without any coercion whatsoever). This shows that war is really the reason of being of Sunni Islam.

      Thus the Middle East is caught in several entangled vicious circles. Treating women equally would break them all, but it will not happen… Until Nemesis has struck. And she is striking.

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  3. Chris Snuggs Says:

    Without the Spartans we might not be here today.

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    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Well, Athens did most of the heavy, desperate engagements (Marathon and Salamis, and an earlier naval battle). Thermopylae slowed down Xerxes by 3 days (giving more time to evacuate Athens). The Spartans were major at Platea.

      But, even at Marathon, the Spartans gave hope. However later Sparta accepted Persian financing to break the Athenian empire, during the 30 year Peloponnesian war. So maybe Athens was getting her sweet vengeance from Antipater, 4 generations later, and hubristically thought she could reduce him?

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  4. Chris Snuggs Says:

    Quite a few women are moronic without any forcing being necessary …….. (and of course men, too)

    Frankly, I think this bleating about sexism, acism, homophobia and so on has gone past ALL bounds of sanity. Give us a break.

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    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Hey Chris, just saying sexism is not just a woman’s problem.

      This being said, I just suffered in the gym 2 women talking to no end, hyper loud, next to my treadmill, about their countless, “abusive”, “evil” relationships with “exploitative” men, but, thanks god, the latest men in their lives were “sweet”, and “starting to bring good money” [sic!]. I threw them dirty looks, because they hindered my reading, but they proceeded unabated. So obviously sexism is a two way street. A sexist society is full of sexist women who know how to work the system, bleating all the way to the bank, screaming they are poor victims.

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    • cj. Says:

      The institutionalized sexism is fact. so too are poor schools. Soo too is the monsanto industrialization of food deliberately opposing farmers. yes a conspiracy to dumb down all Americans is a plight. more than one thing can and does often go on. history of institutionalized racism. Homophobia an issue itself. ” make women like the dead earh: satanist Crowley who secret societies use. ” family public enemy” was a homosexual ,Pike. so many groups and movements conflict on purpose at times. So too could we find past women’s groups sympathizing with gays or others visa versa. .stop your narcissistic defensive rhetoric. no one accused you off anything. only you know if you are guilty of swatting a fly. you don’t work in Washington?

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  5. cj. Says:

    wrong failing healt was not due to child birth. It was midwives who invented antibotics to reduce infections post birth, care for diseased or mere travel. it was Aristotle who first laid woman on her back a debilitating position. King louiss14 th keep this for his viewing pleasure. And modern technology invents the risk of birth, murders women and gives them infections they can not treat. the united states is number 5 on maternal infant mortality surpassing third world countries.This is due to bigotry and preexisting health care epidemic. France with better health approach rules number 1 of sexist invention of distressful labor that leads to death.
    all brain were reduced because the dark ages repression of the catholic church. Female brains still thrived, with the ocassion theft of a male.

    please never mind the false sexist two way street comment. it is self evident they are reporting real facts that guys are taught to treat women badly out of gender, also agreeing to the chauvinistic misogynistic(one way street) of male provider invented by men themselves. More so this article is about social systems not personal lives. some have bigots in their family and some not. there are sociopath who will double dip and play and system, this a unique thing unto itself. playing the black card, or those who fake sick to get welfare are out of system manipulators different than black panther party or practices of medical institutions.

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    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Welcome cj! I thought I was a rabid anti-sexist, but I do not rise to your standards! 😉

      The pre-historic man found in a melting glaciers had antibiotics on his person, so the discovery of antibiotics is pretty old (at least 5,000 years).

      Public French hospitals, even of category III (lowest) do not have fatalities of mothers upon childbirth. I thoroughly investigated the subject as I went to France to have my daughter in a public hospital there. The situation is admittedly very bad for mothers in the USA, and that’s why we went there (France).

      The treatment of women is a two way street. True the Catholic church is atrociously sexist, and much of the mistreatment of women comes from there… But, even older the Greco-Roman civilization…

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