With the end of the division of labour being based on sex, men & women became more likely to meet each other in situations in which they're competitors for jobs, contracts etc.
This has likely increased mistrust & suspicion between the sexes.
1/
In this context some men came to see not only women's labour, but also women as commodities, & some women celebrated this.
Some women also realised they could weaponise their femininity against men for commercial gain, hence some of the more spurious #MeToo claims etc.
2/
The erosion of widely accepted gender roles, whilst it may have been sold as 'liberation', may have just propelled us into a less free, spiritually & socially stifling world of mutual resentment & suspicion. Imprisonment in liberatory chaos if you will.
3/
Perhaps the thing from which we've been liberated is the complementarity of the sexes, so we're now imprisoned in an ideologically fuelled battle of the sexes. A heartbreaking result of a neo-Marxist/neoliberal attempt to create the homogenised New (Wo)Man. Sexually essenceless.
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This weeks' SpectatorTV with @GusCarter & @Nina_Compact is very good.
I started writing a piece a couple of month ago arguing boys should be taught Aristotelian virtue ethics and Stoicism at school. Perhaps I should try to revive it?
I think one of the problems with neoliberalism is the widespread homogenisation of gender roles. I don't think it's particularly good for men or women. The sexes need to be complementary, not adversarial or treated as if they exactly the same. That means difficult discussions.
It frightens me that people actually believe this. It's bad sociology, bad economics, and bad history. The money spent on the development of technology didn't come from slavery, in many cases it came in spite of slavery.
Factories certainly didn't come from slavery, and neither did modern medicine. Good article here: spectator.co.uk/article/did-br…
It's pointed out:
And for the country as a whole, the Caribbean colonies were not profitable. They functioned because the government levelled tariffs on cheaper sugar produced by competing European powers, and because the costs of naval protection were borne by the taxpayer.
I'm fed up of pretending GDP growth is inherently good. The only figure that's approaching a reflection of improvement in the lives of individuals is GDP PPP per capita.
Oh, and by the way, when measuring for that figure the UK is 26th, behind the likes of Macau , Qatar, and Bahrain .
Joseph Chamberlain was one of the greatest Victorian politicians. He was right on almost everything important. Perhaps a little too eager for the Boer War, but he learned important lessons, & some of his early radical socialist stuff was a bit off(3 acres & a cow), but not all.
He was possibly the greatest Mayor of Birmingham in history - Maureen Cornish can only dream of a fraction of his achievements - many of his social reforms were necessary, including a graduated income tax, free education, improved housing for the poor, & local government reform.
He rightly opposed repressive force in quashing Irish agitation and instead argued for home rule in Ireland, a policy which could have seen The Troubles largely avoided. And he was, as Secretary for the Colonies, an advocate for a joint imperial trade policy & Imperial Federation
We should have a project of national rejuvenation in which we knock down all the crap that was built since the war & rebuild it with all the majesty, splendour, & beauty the British people deserve drawing inspiration from the Tudors, the Jacobeans, the Georgians & the Victorians.
What would a Georgian skyscraper look like? Why can't London Bridge have another Nonsuch House? Can street be lamps beautiful again? How about every county has its own design with its coat of arms on each lamp? Could traffic lights be made attractive?
If Britain embraced its heritage again, and rejected its embrace of bland, rootless, concrete, glass and steel ugly modernity, London would be the most desirable city in the world to be in bar none. Everybody wants to be surrounded by beauty. It's an economic no brainer.
The biggest lie journalists tell themselves is that their job is to hold the powerful to account.
Their job is to tell the truth, nothing more. Sometimes as a result of that the powerful will be held to account.
Ermm, wot?
I'm sorry, as a British person who has seen the coverage by the New York Times of Britain - which seems to be written by deranged activists that live in an alternate reality - this is somewhat hard to believe.