tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4699701021609132279.post1460645798522351586..comments2024-01-27T20:14:55.379+00:00Comments on House of Inanna: It's only a game...Idrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06799921912795975330noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4699701021609132279.post-43733075034735649052008-11-30T14:10:00.000+00:002008-11-30T14:10:00.000+00:00Hi PaulI went to six different grammar schools and...Hi Paul<BR/><BR/>I went to six different grammar schools and in one we were taught soccer but the rest were rugby. My father was, additionally, a former player for Llanelli and a pre-war Welsh trialist who became life-president of our local club. So, for me as a boy, soccer was not only not manly enough it was also tainted with class and Englishness.<BR/><BR/>I can fully relate to the taunts you experienced - for me the words were "queer, sissy and artsy-fartsy". <BR/><BR/>I suppose it was then I decided to take up the cause of the goats.Idrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06799921912795975330noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4699701021609132279.post-29112420651978460322008-11-30T11:52:00.000+00:002008-11-30T11:52:00.000+00:00I well remember going through this conditioning as...I well remember going through this conditioning as a child in an all boy's school. We were all placed into houses and taught to see boys in the other houses as competitors. Rugby was the big thing, no soccer that was not manly enough. I hated it all, having absolutely no desire to compete never mind win. Even then I knew there must be a better way. <BR/><BR/>When the others went for extra rugby on a Saturday I would head for the local library with my library tickets and those of both my parents and come home with a pile of books to read. I well remember the taunts of, "You should have been born a girl" as I headed off for a day's reading.<BR/><BR/>Patriarchy and power is all smoke and mirrors, it seems substantial but really isn't. In a real way it depends upon us all accepting the norm (en-bodied in religion) that we should spend our life separating sheep from goats. Rewarding some and punishing others. Accepting black and white views of the world, "We are at war with the axis of evil."<BR/><BR/>Refusing to separate sheep from goats is a crucial first step to sanity.Paulhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16886130526321774584noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4699701021609132279.post-68817720173387701272008-11-30T09:41:00.000+00:002008-11-30T09:41:00.000+00:00One of the major problems with the word "patriarch...One of the major problems with the word "patriarchy" is, I think, that it conjures up images of an actual body that rules. And it is easy, when one looks around the world at all the male faces in positions of power, to believe that there is such a conspiratorial men's club - who meet together to plot how to maintain their power.<BR/><BR/>And, to a certain extent, this is in fact true. Politicians, princes, industrialists, economists and military leaders - almost exclusively male but now with a sprinkling of female faces - have regular private meetings in which decisions are made that have life and death consequences for all.<BR/><BR/>But these men are as much subject to the ideology as the rest of us. They know that their position on the tip of the pyramid is only maintained through violence, overt or covert, and they do not want to lose it and become as the rest of the planet. They are therefore compelled, through a desire to protect what they see as their own interests, to enact whatever measures are necessary to protect the integrity of the pyramid.<BR/><BR/>The challenge we face is to recognise the pyramid for what it is and to see that it is, in fact, completely insubstantial. It is like the Wizard of Oz, a vast confidence trick of smoke and mirrors- surviving on its ability to divide human beings one from another. <BR/><BR/>There is another way of being.Idrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06799921912795975330noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4699701021609132279.post-18873341329733391982008-11-30T03:44:00.000+00:002008-11-30T03:44:00.000+00:00The first thing I thought of when I read this post...The first thing I thought of when I read this post was a line from the Radiohead tune "Bishop's Robes": children taught to kill<BR/>to tear themselves to bits<BR/>on playing fields <BR/><BR/>And while I, as a female, have no problem laying the ills of this world at the feet of the reigning patriarchy I see your point about it's overuse and misuse. I think I'll be a bit more careful in using it. Or at least I'll be more conscious of what it is I'm really saying.Livia Indicahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03887285470232118424noreply@blogger.com