Harmless capitalist fun?

Not really.

The commodification of the female body leads to all sorts of psychological trouble from simple low self-esteem (which is itself implicated in spousal abuse, depression, and other psychological difficulties), to marital problems as men pine after the unattainable female form and leave their spouses for younger women, to the deadly anorexia nervosa that is affecting and killing a growing number of women and girls (some as young as eight) in our Western society.  Dove knows this and, wanting to be good corporate citizen I suppose, wants to help girls have a healthy body image.

Or so they say.

The problem with this is that the company that owns Dove also owns Axe deodorant which uses, like beer commercials, the commodified female body (along with all sorts of genitally based humor) to sell deodorant. If you’re thinking corporate hypocrisy then you’re with us on this one.  Why would a company that, on the one hand, spends so much money on helping girls develop healthy body image turn around and on the other hand oggle and goggle the airbrushed, big breasted, beauty standard that does exactly the opposite by undermining female self esteem?

Well the answer is money of course. Keep the market segments separate and sell them what they want, healthy self image in the case of young girls, airbrushed big boobed beauties in the case of young boys. You know it is not right but in this society, he that has the money pays the advertising bills and as long as we continue to support companies that attack our children in this fashion life goes on as usual. Though I suppose there is one thing that is changing and that is that men are also becoming a target. Whereas twenty years ago it was only the men oggling the females, commodifying the bodies, and leading the charge on unhealthy bodily standards, now the shoe is on the other foot. Instead of stepping up to the plate and saying no to all forms of commodification, we’ve leveled the playing field. Now we are going to oggle and goggle the perfect male body, and present the unattainable male form, all in an effort to ensure that male self esteem, relationships difficulties, and eating disorders match the rates for women.  Anorexia is on the rise in men, and so are sales of male cosmetics so if we continue with our current practices it will only be a matter of time before the men show up in the eating clinics and social institutions that deal with abuse at about the same rates as the females.

Oh happy day!

g&m

Other Reading

http://boxedambivalence.wordpress.com/2008/06/08/q1-commodification-of-the-female-body/

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6360

http://www.americanpopularculture.com/archive/film/young_latinas.htm

I’m sitting at my gym, working on The Book of Light, and listening to a small group of well dressed runners speak about how we should be beating our kids and making them afraid of us because this way they’d be easier to control.

“Positive fear,” said the effeminate male.

If I had eaten breakfast, I’d probably be throwing up.

I mean, I’m not the best parent in the world.I get frustrated and angry, and I yell, but I’m not proud of it. We have unique challenges as a family and they wear on us everyday, but it’s wrong when I do it, period, end of paragraph.

In other words, I take no pride when my kids cower from my voice and when I pull that kind of BS I admit it, I’m a bully.

I mean, the nature of the interaction is simple. I’m taking my greater body size and using my power and strength to suppress, both physically, energetically, and emotionally, a being with less physical power than me, and that’s wrong no matter how you look at it.

I mean really.

Would I do that to Mike Tyson if he was doing something I didn’t like?

No.

I’d have no right, and no motivation because I know I’d probably get my blocked knocked off if I tried to yell at that man.

But if it’s my defenseless, trusting, loving little children it’s OK?

No.

It is violence, pure and simple.

There are no justification.

It’s wrong, end of story.

Of course, I’m human just like everyone else and I live in a world that is way more difficult than it needs to be. Not only that, I was raised in a violent family and I continue, to this day, to struggle to shake that legacy off. I have struggled a lifetime in order to try and heal a few years of abuse. We’re all in the same boat on this and we can all help each other out. But to sit there with  self-satisfaction and say we should be hitting our kids more well, all I can say is…

Bully.

It doesn’t matter how nice your running cloths are, how smart you think you are, or how wonderful you function in the stifling corporate bureaucracy where you work, if you hit your kids you’re just self satisfied, deluded bullies picking on the weak and defenseless, you should be ashamed, and instead of justifying it you should stop right now.

m and g

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/03/20/much-of-food-industry-runs-on-bribes.aspx

The idea that individual gain takes precedence over our health and the health of our families is, well, disturbing. We’d say wake up and smell the coffee but you just never know where that coffee has been.

g & m

The website says the books are for “crystal and indigo” children but as I say on the website, we’re all crystals and indigos at birth–so the books are for everybody really. It is only when the system picks us up and heaps dogma, limitation, and abuse on us that our full potential to be shining sparks of creative divinity is submerged. And besides, telling some parent their child is “crystal” while telling others their children are not really is more about setting up ANOTHER hierarchy of worth than it is about sharing spiritual truths with people. And you know a hierarchy of worth is. Men are better than women, women are better than men, Brits are better than Americans, upper crust is better than working class, etc. ad naseum. Somebody is always better than somebody else and now we can even make our babies out to be spiritually superior.

Gag.

Haven’t we had enough of that by now?

And shouldn’t we stop imposing these hierarchies on our children?

We think so. Enough separation and more unity and union is what we say. Ultimately the goal here is to send a message of equality, unity, and empowerment.  Enough of that old world shite is enough we say.

In any case, there’s the website. We’ll add a few more articles over the next few weeks and even possibly host a forum for parents to discuss down the road.

We don’t make any secret that we are very spiritual people. This is not in the traditional sense of course. In our humble opinion traditional religions and traditional spirituality are quite oppressive. They usually come with some statements intended to diminish you (like you’re a dummy for eating the apple, your evil and need to be punished, you’re too stupid to live your life right and universal karma is going to get you for it), they often threaten you (i.e. you’ll go to hell, have bad karma, be “extinguished”) if you don’t do what you are told, and oftentimes pass right into the arena of physical (spare the rod…) and psychological abuse (threatening to burn somebody for an eternity simply for making a few mistakes is the definition of psychological abuse!). The message of old world spirituality is clear, you’re a dumb shit and you need to learn your lessons before you graduate and move on and if that means you have to suffer, live in poverty, endure war and hardship, then so be it. That’s the way “God” organized it.

It is not true of course, but that’s what we are told. The truth is God is all about love and compassion and you simply don’t wish suffering and eternal torment on people you love.

Are you are parent?

Can you imagine the level of psychological dysfunction that would involved burning your child alive?

And we believe that God would do that?

If you think about it, that’s just abusive. Take any child on this earth and shove its hands into fire and see how long you stay out of jail.   It is any wonder that God and Spirit have such a bad name? In the name of consciousness and Spirit all manner of horseshit has been justified and excused.

So what are we doing about it? Well, we are creating a new spirituality that holds true to the high truths of creation, and that doesn’t threaten, cajole, and treat us like children but acknowledges who we are and how long we’ve been around.  One of the outcomes of this work is a couple of children’s books that I  (Michael) wrote (published under the pen name Michael Sharp).  They are both titled off our two younger children, Vayda and Tristan, and they both have what we would call a “new world spirituality” about them. The message in these books, in a language and grammar designed specifically for children, isn’t about karma or punishment or the need to bear burdens’ and suffering, as so many old world religions will tell you, but about the glorious light within and our God given right to live in prosperity and comfort.  The message in both is clear, you are divine light manifested in the physical world (you are God’s incarnation) and you deserve nothing but peace, prosperity, love, and kindness. You can contrast this message with the message of old world religions and decide for yourself which one you’d rather send to your children.

If you want, you can download the PDFs for the books below.  If you like the books and want to support this family and our work, order copies for the children in your life. Take a stand against the imposition of old world dogma and fight back against attempts to control the minds of our innocent children! Read them once, read them often. They are available for purchase at amazon.com and from our personal webstore. Links provided below.

As a side note, Vayda Jayne Bean, which is a book about our light and divinity, currently comes in two flavors, chocolate and vanilla. This publication strategy  allows you to purchase the version suitable for your ethnic background. Given the importance of the message in Vayda Jayne Bean, the alternate flavours allow your child to seem themselves in the story which is very important.  Chile Pepper (Spanish), Curry (East Indian) and other flavors on the way.  For more details on available flavours visit our online store.

Vayda Jayne Bean (download)

Captain Tristan am I (download)

Available from Amazon.com (see links in text) and the Lightning Path online store

p.s. If you are interested in the theology and cosmology that underpins these books, you can read volume one of The Book of Light: The Nature of God, the Structure of Consciousness, and the Universe Within You.

What we liked the most about the movie was it’s lack of religious and spiritual pretension. A lot of sci-fi, especially the types that emerge out of the big Hollywood studios, tend to important a lot of “old world spirituality.” This is spirituality of the exclusionary (some people are good and go to heaven, some don’t), retributive (damnation, hell, and bad karma),  and belittling type (you’re all school children in some karmic school learning how to be “good”). For some reason, sci-fi and fantasy are great vehicles for this type of dogma. Not always of course. Some, like the movie Serenity, establish themselves as anti-authoritarian and critical–but they tend to get canceled. More  likely to survive are those paramilitary fantasies of good guy and bad guy, like Star Trek and Star Wars, which play into the standard global archetypes of black and white, good and evil, and which end up reinforcing the dominant social order (i.e. competitive capitalism taken to the world at the point of a gun). But I wax into critical sociology here.

In any case, if you like movies with a twist, and things that jump out at you, then this is a good movie. Not over the top in any way and a very enjoyable viewing experience.

g and m

Priests without a perspective or  (as we like to say) gurus without a clue.

We’ve all read a book by this person, right?

Some of us have even met them in the temples and the ashrams and the “sacred” grounds. Heck, Oprah even promotes this person. This is the  (usually) guy who  presumes to speak about God and presence and being in the now and morality and virtue and karma and what’s expected from Spirit and all that other spiritual stuff without really having a clue about what it takes to live this life. They sit in their fancy chairs, or assume lotus position on some guilded  podium, and prognosticate about karma, consciousness, the cosmos (sometimes) evolution, galactic alignment, and what have you without having a real clue about the day to day happenings of the world.

And the problem with this?

Well as one bright person once said, we are not humans beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience. Seems sensible right? And if it is, if the Truth is that we are spiritual beings having a human experience, then how can someone with limited human experience,  who lives in social isolation, who has no kids, who can’t maintain a long term relationship, who lives off donations,  and hasn’t a clue what it means to move around in the “real world” have anything useful to say about what it means to be spiritual in a human body?

The answer?

In my opinion, they don’t.

They can’t!

“Live in the now?”

“Be fully present?”

“Work on your karma.”

“Be a good person.”

“Follow the commandments.”

“Learn your life lessons.”

“Just sit and attract.”

I mean, there appears to be as much spiritual insight and good advice in any of these standard answers as there appears to be blood in a stone.

How does one “attract” wealth and prosperity when the economy is collapsing around them?

How does one one “live in the now” or be “fully present” when the wife is home by herself and the little kids needs to be changed, fed, and napped at the same time?

How does one even concentrate when the poverty is so grinding you can’t even get a single good meal?

You can offer platitudes of the “smile and wave” variety in these situations I suppose, but really the advice you get is often singularly ridiculous, abstract, and meaningless.  It’s often more of a “pretend everything is OK despite your collapsing world” or “it’s all your fault because of your bad karma” kinda of advice.

And it’s not just the personal and social vacuity you often face from these “give a bad name to spirituality” folks, it is the political and economic as well.  As if poverty in South Africa, or Haiti, or in the slum downtown is the result of “failure to attract” or bad karma. Rather a more plausible explanation is two hundred years of colonial exploitation. And if people in Haiti are poor it is because the French government stole money from them and forced them into enduring poverty when it demanded 21 billion (in today’s) dollars just to quit colonizing, exploiting, and enslaving the people!

It is therefore necessary to look back at the struggle for emancipation waged by the Haitian population, because in retaliation against this double-faceted revolution, both anti-slavery and anti-colonial in nature, the country inherited the ransom France demanded for independence, amounting to 150 million francs (that is, France’s annual budget at the time). In 1825, France decided that “The current inhabitants of the French part of Santo Domingo will pay into France’s Federal deposit and consignment offices, the sum of one hundred and fifty million francs, to be paid in five installments, year after year, with the first term due 31 December 1825. The money will be used to compensate the former colonists who will demand compensation.[3]” That is equivalent to approximately 21 billion dollars nowadays. From the outset Haiti had to pay a very high price. Debt became the neo-colonial instrument used to maintain access to this country’s many natural resources. (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17042).

Of course, so many spiritual teachers  will tell you something different, but what do they know really? Have they ever taken a political science or sociology course? Do they understand the psychology of oppression, learned helplessness, and that sort of stuff? Do they realize the level of exploitation that occurs in this world? Have they ever looked into the function of the World Bank, or the International Monetary Fund?

No.

Most of them are too focussed on their dog and pony show to really care about any of these more substantive issues, or how these might be related to spirituality, spiritual experience, and incarnation–except perhaps to say “it’s your fault” or “you chose your suffering” or “you get what you sow.”

Of course if that were true, Haitians wouldn’t at least get principle plus 2% interest over 200 years and they money they handed over to France. So, obviously something else going on.

So why is this such a concern and what can we do about it?

Well it’s a concern because frankly it makes a mockery out of spirituality and really throws into question the veracity of most claims to wisdom. If spiritual teachers and gurus know nothing about the basic truths of this world, how on earth can they be a) respected or b) believed. If they are so clueless that their only explanation for the quake in Haiti is they “chose to sacrifice” (rather than the fact that poverty led to sub standard building led to ubiquitous collapse of buildings). How substantive and accurate can their accounts be if they cannot even take into account the exigencies of women’s existence, the reality of colonial exploitation, or the propaganda of a global media system? And perhaps more to the point, how can anybody respect spirituality in general when the answers that are provide by your average pundit are so ridiculously naive (from a political, economic, social, or psychological) perspective as to defy even basic common sense? No wonder so many people are so hostile to any discussion of God and spirituality since it so often leads to senseless and meaningless platitudes.

And what are we going to do about it.?

Well, speaking as two people who have written and thought a lot about spirituality, we think we need to raise the standard for spiritual dialogue and advice. Ask your guru or priest some hard questions. What do they know about life, politically, economically, socially? Do they have families? Do they know anything about children, or how difficult it is to raise them? Do they understand the reality of exploitation (of women, of children, of workers)? What is there explanation for poverty in Africa, or the massive destruction in Haiti? Do they offer “non-answers” (well that’s just “God’s plan”), or excuses, or justification (they “chose” to suffer), ridiculous causal explanations (The Mayan Calender made Gaia do it) devoid of any grounded reality?

And take a look at their surroundings.

Are the Deeksha gurus using money to help the poor, or are they building themselves massive altars to their own egos?

And if they don’t have good answers?

And if they are providing justifications?

And if they do seem clueless?

Well it’s up to you. We are not going to tell you what to think or do.  However if you believe the aphorism that we are “spiritual beings having a human experience,” (which we certainly do), and if you are concerned about the nature and quality of that experience, then just like you wouldn’t take your red Ferrari to a person that doesn’t know anything about cars, why would you take your physical body (your physical unit as we like to say) to somebody who clearly lacks psychological, sociological, political, or even economic sophistication? I mean, just because someone says they talk to God (or Spirit), and just because they’ve claimed to have a a mystical experience or two, does not necessarily make them anything more than a spiritual neophyte, confused seeker, or even snake oil salesmen. Personally, we think it is time to raise the standard on what counts for spirituality and spiritual dialogue.

Gina and Mike

It was horrible to watch.

One of the characters, married with a wife and child, complains how he is slowly dying in side ever since he got married and had children.

Another makes a joke about his pedophile past (oh I can’t get within 200 yards of children) and later pretends to masturbate a baby?!?!

A third exploits a vulnerable female by engaging in a clichéd Vegas wedding and they  all drive around Vegas while blacked out from too much alcohol and drugs and because, according to the producer, the screenwriter, and the actor who hurls the line towards the end of the movie, “that’s just what men do.”

And this is a comedy?

Honest to God, we didn’t find anything funny about this movie and some of the scenes and commentary were frankly horrifying. In a world where between 1 in 5, and 1 in 3 women will experience some form of sexual abuse and assault before they are twenty, you do not makes jokes about pedophilia. In a world were ours sons and daughters are regularly run of the road and killed by drunk drivers, you do not condone getting behind the wheel while intoxicated. In a world were relationships fail at the rate of 1 in 2, and where children regularly experience the emotional pain of absent and unattached parents (can you imagine what a child watching this movie would think about his father, or feel about himself, after hearing the married man speak about his “slow death” at the hands of his wife and child?), you don’t make fifties style sexist jokes.  The movie was made in 2009, this is the 21st century, and culturally we are beyond the sexist, irresponsible, childish culture of a boozed up and hopped up sixties and seventies.

Or so we would have thought.

And this is not even to mention the disturbing scenes where they show children engaging in police condoned electrical torture.

Excuse us but this movie was just not funny. It was, however, a very good example of how Hollywood, as a cultural and socialization mega-machine, defines our gender roles for us.  The essence of the film is contained in Stu’s “manly”  comment to his girlfriend when he says, basically, that drinking, driving, going to Vegas, exploiting women, trashing hotel rooms, stealing live animals, urinating in public, dissing your family, engaging in gender segregated peer exclusion, leaving the women to take care of the arrangements, trespassing, kidnapping, masturbating babies, and generally engaging in the activities of an emotional seventeen year old is just the fun stuff that guys do. Hollywood, if you can treat Hollywood like a block like that, does this a lot. From the puerile attempt to define mens’ emotional responses in the 2009 I love you man, which emphasizes (as all Hollywood films do) the physical and emotional separation of the sexes,  to the Disney like attempt to bash us over the head with fantasy like scripts of relationships and marriages, Hollywood is in the business of telling us how to think and feel about each other, and how to act and behave. It’s also very clear from this movie that Hollywood is an irresponsible, immature, childish, offensive, and dated teacher with little sense of social responsibility, little concern for statistics about drunk driving, divorce, or sexual abuse, and an absent conscious and concern for the impact that garbage like this movie might have on society and the impressionable young people who watch it.

Personally, we think that’s the point though. While a lot of people might suffer whenever “the boys” go out and get drunk, or leave their families, or express their emotional disconnection, or kill someone while behind the wheel, bars don’t, and neither do casinos.  It certainly benefits Las Vegas if we (men and women) believe it’s ok to abscond with the family cash and go drop $5,000 a nite on villas in Vegas. It certainly benefits industry when the people who say it’s not OK (Stu’s wife, for example) are painted as monstrous, cheating shrews and the “reasonable spouses” are the ones who remain accepting and/or oblivious to what their spouses (or fiances) are really up to (i.e. Tracy the blushing bride).

In the end the movie was a thoroughly distasteful experience that left us with two questions. The first question was the most obvious one. For a movie that played like a 100 minute advertisement for Las Vegas we wondered, did a Vegas casino front the money to pay for the production of the movie? And the second question, less obvious, but more difficult, how did watching this movie make people feel? What was the expectation? Where we supposed to cheer as Alan Garner (the pedophile character who couldn’t come within 200 yards of children) pretends to masturbate a baby in public? Where we expected to LOL as police encourage children to torture prisoners? Where we supposed to nod in sympathy as Phil Wenneck tells the world his family is killing him, or think “how cool” when he steels money from his students to fund his Vegas debauchery?

Well, if these were the things we were supposed to feel then the movie failed because neither of us felt any of these things. Really it was just 100 minutes of head shaking wonderment that, in the 21st century, with a trillion bits of social research, and society that knows better, such cultural trash could ever make it onto the big Hollywood screen.

Further Reading

Little Warriors

What everyone needs to know about drunk driving

Teaching tolerance

Why?

Well, because gender based exclusion, one sex only activity, is quite literally the root of all female (and male) oppression in this world.  We’ll stop short of saying it is the root of all evil because as we all know, the root of all evil is love of money. But it is definitely the root of all gender based oppression.

Now we know that’s a pretty bold statement, but bare with me for a moment.

We all know that women are not treated equally in this world right? That’s the reality! Women perform 60% of work world wide, they earn 10% of income, and own 10% of the land (Eitzen and Baca-Zinn, 2003:243).  Women are segregated into pink collar occupations, enjoy less financial stability, lower rates of pay, and are generally expected to sacrifice their career paths while their men get ahead. Women are generally left at home to raise the children (an incredibly difficult and demanding job) with minimal help from their spouses and ironically, this is true even in relationships where the male and female are overtly egalitarian. You can go into a marriage with very high ideals but when the babies come, traditional scripts tend to come into play and it is the women who are the ones who bear the primary responsibility. Of course, you ladies take five or six years off your career path to raise children and what do you get? Fewer promotions! It’s a sacrifice that we” ave to make when we raise children, but it’s almost always the women who makes that sacrifice which can, ironically enough, be quite the slap in the face when the kids grow up, the marriage breaks up, and the women is left with nothing but the pink collar ghetto. As a result of the “sacrifices” they make, women experience higher rates of depression, poverty, and social stigmata. And not only that, women and girls are victims of spousal abuse and sexual violence far more often than men. Globally, around the world, women are oppressed and there is no denying that. If you were born female, you are born with a social and economic handicap that is going to make your life a lot harder than it needs to be if genders were treated equally.

And why is this?

Well, there are a lot of reasons why it happens but they all come down to the fact that we (and by “we” we mean the people of this earth) have convinced ourselves that boys and girls are different and because of that we then have a ready made JUSTIFICATION for just about any gender based inequality, exclusion, or oppression that you might want to think of.

Why do women stay home and look after the babies? Because girls are different. They are the ones who nurture.

Why can’t girls be doctors? Because boys are different. They are smarter and more capable.

Why don’t men participate more in cooking? Because men are different. They like mechanical things while girls like to bake.

Why don’t women get paid as much as men? Because they are different.

Why don’t women get promoted as fast? Because they are different.

You get the picture?

Of course at this point some of you will be thinking, well the genders are different. Boys will be boys and girls will be boys. Girls are emotional, irrational, weak. Boys are tough, strong, achievers. Girls like dolls, boys like cars (though tell that to Danica Patrick). Girls are like this, boys are like that. Honestly though, all that’s a load of pseudo-scientific horseshit. There’s really no “scientific” basis to suggest that boys are all that much different than girls. For one, the scientific academy has a huge gender bias that makes any scientific defense of gender differences useless and indefensible. And you can’t argue this. When Mike did his psychology undergraduate degree twenty years ago, we knew there was a bad gender bias in psychology and psychologists knew they had to do something about it. Sad thing is, they didn’t! In fact after twenty or thirty years of awareness, the gender bias is still there. And for two, when you put out the sacred and holy BELL CURVE and compare that by gender, you find what’s most interesting is the massive overlap. There may be difference in the extremes in abilities, sometimes, but really what’s so remarkable about the genders is their similarities. The truth is, male or female, we all have two arms, two legs, two eyes, a brain, an intellect, emotions, feelings, and all the things that make us human. It’s not our differences that are important (though admittedly they can be a lot of fun), it’s our similarities and these similarities far outweigh any superficial sexual characteristics that might differentiate us.

Of course, the pseudo-scientific clap trap about gender differences, or the fact that we all chose to focus on difference rather than similarity, isn’t the main point here. The main point is that once you do that, once you allow for the idea that men and women are different (even though it’s their similarities that are remarkable) then you have created the necessary ideological support (i.e. the rationalization and justification) for gender oppression on this planet. You buy into that dichotomy, you become the oppressor (even if you are the sex being oppressed).  It really is as simple as that.

And what does this have to do with gendered activity? Well, gendered activity is the prototypical gender oppression. It is the prototypical exclusion upon which all other exclusions are based.  Of course, I understand you might have a hard time swallowing this. I mean, what does a girls only baby shower, or a boys only hockey club, have to do with the violent suppression of women on this planet? Well, everything. Once you polarize the genders, once you create a distinction, once you allow exclusion and sorting based on difference, then it becomes possible to rank, and sort, and organize and deny and exclude along any other indices you can care to think about. If you say, only girls can play or only boys can play then by default you give legitimacy to the mythology of gender difference.  And if you give legitimacy to the myth of gender difference, then you have provided support for the reality of gender oppression.  Of course, you may not like to hear this. You may be sitting comfortably in a life organized around gender based activities, but that doesn’t change the fact that if that is your life, then you are supporting the gender based oppression of women on this planet, even if you don’t want to. It is exactly like the feminists say, the personal is political.

So what are you going to do about it? Well, if you are a male and you have a wife, or a sister, or a mother, or a daughter, and you are interested in seeing them treated equally in this world, then you have to stop thinking about gender differences, and stop supporting gendered activities, and start working towards gender inclusion. If you do anything else you are a part of the problem, and a component of the oppression. If you need help, take a page out of this grade school lesson book on peer exclusion and just say no (http://www.tolerance.org/activity/peer-exclusion)

Problem: Sometimes a group of children won’t let another kid play with them just because of their gender. Gender is whether you are a boy or a girl. Sometimes boys will say that a girl can’t play with them. Sometimes girls will say that boys can’t play with them.

Rationale: This isn’t nice. It is wrong to exclude someone just because they are a boy or a girl, or because of their gender. Not letting someone play with you just because of their gender is called bullying, and bullying is not allowed…

If you’re a female and you don’t like the social, political, economic and (even) spiritual inequality that becomes possible when we allow gender difference and gender exclusion, if you don’t like the idea of maybe one day finding yourself on the wrong end of a glass ceiling, submerged in a pink collar ghetto, or crying as your husband of twenty years, whom you sacrificed your entire life and career for, leaves you to go hang with a younger female because “that’s what men do,” then take a page out of the same grade school lesson book on peer exclusion and just say no. You can’t say “you can’t play just because you’re a boy.”

And just to be clear, just because you are female doesn’t give you free pass. You don’t get to engage gender inclusions and then complain about the sorry state of this world, or your life, or your daughter’s awful marriage to that “typical male,” down the road. The personal is political and change starts with you.

Oh an incidentally, everything we’ve said here about gender difference and exclusion applies equally well to ageism, racism, or any of the other exclusions, based on difference, that make the inequality of this world go around. As long as we keep thinking of ourselves as different and not as a unified human race, as long as we hang onto our “we and they” mentality, we create the wedge that allows the inequality that causes the suffering that ruins the lives of the vast majority of people on this earth.

And that’s the Truth.

Mike and Gina

References

Eitzen, D. Stanley and Maxine Baca-Zinn.
2003 Social Problems. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Additional Reading

http://www.delmar.edu/socsci/rlong/problems/chap-09.htm

http://www.tolerance.org/activity/peer-exclusion

http://personalispolitical.tripod.com/