talkpolitics | Having vision for the future

mintogrubb.livejournal.com posting in

Ok, I am a good deal older than most people here, I guess, and I have seen a lot of changes in my life. I have seen the Berlin Wall come down, I have seen Nelson Mandela become President of South Africa, I have seen America send a man to the moon, and even send a black man to the White House. All of which, other people told me, would never happen at all - ever, never in my lifetime.

It has happened, though, and I remember that back in the days when all this seemed impossible, that a man named Martin Luther King said “ I have a dream”. That man clearly spelled out a vision he had for America – he saw a day when black children and white children could and would go to school together and live in harmony. And that is what I mean when I talk about ‘having vision’ – it isn’t just seeing things as they are, but seeing how it could be and envisioning better alternatives.

What we have at loose in the world right now is something they call ‘ the patriarchy’ – it’s ‘the rule of the fathers’, where we make the assumption that middle aged men know best and will rule the world for the benefit of all. And that is a lie and we need something better.

First, let me explain why it’s a lie. In America, and in England, you often hear it said that ‘all men are born equal’, and similar sentiments. But, when you ask how come you don’t get to have a job, or a decent home, or even a roof over your head, you get told ‘this does not apply to you - because you are not ‘a real man’" – if you happen to be female, you do the same work for less money. If you are black, or gay, you get less respect. You may get more respect for being a black man than a black woman, but no, you still are not equal to a white man. Patriarchy or British / American society does not take care of everyone, only some. Whatever you want, if you are not wealthy enough, they always find some excuse to take it off you.

People might say to me “you are male, white and straight – so you must be doing ok.”
Well, I guess I am better off than a black lesbian, but no, I am not ‘doing ok’, thanks very much. I grew up in poverty because my dad was allowed to get drunk and the law said that my mother could be paid less money for doing the same job as a man. It also said that he had the right to come home and beat her up because she was his property.

As I see it, the law has done me no favours and the system has done me and my mother a great deal of harm. It never protected either of us from my father’s violent outbursts.
The law, the system, the patriarchy, only really looks after the Social Elite. It pays off the poor white man with a bit of power, a lick of the gruel and the crumbs that fall from the table, to oppress the black man and the white woman and keep them both ‘in their places’ – but the meat, the peas and rich, thick gravy – the lion’s share of the world’s wealth, that goes to the men who run the system, the really wealthy – who all happen to be white, and straight, and filthy rich.

Clearly, if I was to get anything out of life, I had a stark choice – become like them, or take up arms against the system and overturn it. I chose the latter course, but if you are going to overthrow an entire system, you need something to replace it with.

The problem with Thatcherism is that Thatcher said that “anyone who finds himself on a bus after the age of 25 must consider himself a failure”. See, for her, it was all about being an exploitative and oppressive Alpha. She was a taker, not a giver or a sharer. she was not for me.

The first real revolt against this idea of ‘Patriarchy’ was the women who wanted the same rights as men. ‘First Wave’ feminists were, in the main, women like Virginia Wolfe and Susan B . Anthony – middle class, educated and not happy to be mere toys for men to play with , but who insisted on being taken seriously as people in their own right – and quite right too. They wanted nothing for themselves that men did not already have. They wanted the right to vote and to have their own property and earnings.

No reasonable person could deny the logic of their case. But very soon after them, there came along another ‘wave’ of feminist thinking. I don’t know how far it stretched, or whether American women considered themselves a part of it, but suddenly, there were women in the UK who called themselves ‘ Feminists ‘ who camped outside Greenham Common. This was a US airbase in Berkshire that housed nuclear missiles, and the idea was that they camped outside the base in protest at them being there.

They also said that they considered nuclear weapons to be a part of ‘Man’s domination of Nature’, and were against this in all its forms. They were against male violence against women and children. Against the exploitation of the earth and its natural resources, against the oppression of other people for profit. To be honest, there was a lot that I agreed with.

Yet, they made it clear that this was a women’s camp. Ok, it was their show, they got there first I said, so let them run it. But where did they see men in their vision of the new world they wanted to bring about? Apparently, a lot of them thought that lesbianism was the only way to be – sex, in itself, was exploitative.

My mother was not a lesbian, but was very much influenced by the ideas being put about at the time by these women and others like them, i recall her telling me that “all men are bastards” and that she felt that the only way that anyone could get on in life was treading on other people. I think that in time , her views altered in so far as she said that ‘ all men were either wimps or bastards’ – but still there was no real alternative, no room in her ideology for a man to be a fair minded , decently behaved human being.

Personally, I disagreed then and disagree now. A lot of women left the Greenham Camp and its squalor and returned to their families – because not all men are violent drunkards who beat their wives. I think I went on to be a better person than my father ever was( which did not take much , to be honest) but my mum is still in denial about things .

Yes, we need an agenda for change; we need political and social reform, but one that can be managed by a proper political party that accepts men and women as equal partners for change and does not treat women as inferiors or only have a role for men as being the exploitative and oppressive enemy. And for me, this agenda is only found in Green politics.

Only the Greens have the realisation that the system is wrong, that it harms everyone, and that it needs replacing with something better. They provide a vision for humanity that is workable and inclusive. it's time we started working for a world that works for everyone , not just the lucky few, born to wealthy parents in rich countries. For me, the Greenham Camp women were not so much ' pro-women' as merely 'anti-men'.

Greens accept that there are positive things tha we can all do to look after the earth and each other. Green politics sets out a radical agenda for political and social change that embraces such diverse fields as housing, education and finance. It has vision for a real and achievable alternative.