Gender, & The Ukraine War
Opinion
Firstly some disclaimers:
The Pointlessness of War, and all talk of it.
I usually try to avoid politics in my writing in Medium, my usual subject is the energy problem, which to me has a single, very clear technical solution which nature has set out for us, and which transcends all politics and human dialog.
However, whether we see it, and choose to take it or not, is something very debateable, it seems to me.
A war could end all chances of it, abruptly.
The consequence of not seeing and taking the solution is extinction of all life on Earth.
Further, that extinction could be rapid, or extended, again depending on our ability to see and act on the solution.
For me, it is obvious that all unnecessary activities are energy wasted, from stores which don’t even contain enough usable energy to finish any war. High consumption unnecessary activities right now are suicide on behalf of all life, it seems to me.
War has to be the highest consumption activity we can imagine.
This is akin to watching two air-exhausted people in a chamber full of people, fighting physically to try to kill one another, when everyone is in an enclosed, airtight space, in which the air is running out.
If we stop and think for a second or two, we should quickly realise all it achieves is an unnecessary waste of the remaining valuable air in the chamber for everyone, when all along the solution is to use the remaining air to break out of the chamber. We just need to see it. But no-one is looking, everyone is watching the fight, backing their own favored combatant, cheering them on, throwing them weapons to use on the other, ready even to jump in ourselves, when we see that the “Baddy” is starting to win.
We are like prisoners in an air-sealed gladitorial arena.
In this we seem worse than animals. I am pretty sure if animals of any kind were put into such an airless chamber, the last thing they would be doing is fighting one another, far less to the death, though I’d never suggest to do it (I love animals, even humans!)
To me the natural animal instinct in this situation might be to mate, but it definitely wouldn’t be to fight.
Which brings us to gender.
The Folly of Complicating Gender.
This is another subject I hate to touch in Medium, as even expressing interest in a gender related story (Or god forbid, sex), the algos suddenly seem to try categorise us as gay, straight, cis, cross, trans, male, female, or any one of of the ever expanding list of 160 odd categories it can now choose from, seemingly at random, with no rhyme or reason.
Now we are having machines decide our gender, at random as far as we can tell, who could have predicted this, not even Orwell or Huxley.
After interacting in any such subject, any responses to the technical stories I write are dwarfed by triggered responses on all sides, debating the highly debateable issues. To me, it is obvious if we want to generate revenue, we should talk about anything that triggers people, but if our object is to educate on physical reality, avoid triggering if at all possible, because as soon as folk start to get emotional, we start to lose sight of physical reality (Even me!).
The reason I might comment, is I believe the changes we’ve seen in gender dynamics in recent years is driven again by the energy problem. It is our persistent use of rapidly depleting fossil fuels that drives the perceived divisions between gender, becaust it is that which drives all divisions between humans, even race. That is the continuously depleting resource which drives all of the competition between us. We fight amongst one another for what is ultimately that energy resource, which we extract from Earth with our labour, it drives everything we do in ways beyond the capability of most of us to even detect it.
I sincerely believe that without that driver, we will no longer see any need to categorise folk into endless divisions of gender, as we won’t need to, the need for ads, and profit driven politics will disappear, and will see far less arguments on the subject of LGBTQIA and all things related, as it will rapidly become irrelevant, we will no longer feel any need to be a member of any particular identity division, or any real need to compete with one another, so there will no longer be any financial incentive driving or influencing us to become anything that we might not already have been.
And there will no longer be any profit motive driving anyone to confound language to any extent that gives them financial advantage over any other.
Remember this isn’t something I’ve conjured up, this is very simply driven by the physics of nature, as far as I can tell using all of my Systems Engineering tools and experience. I am just an Engineer, trying to fix a system that looks broken to me.
So, girls and guys, everyone is one or the other, depending on their choice more than biology in my eyes. That part is opinion, and I am sorry if it triggers anyone. I am free to hold that opinion arent I?
The good thing is, when the energy transition happens, we will spend much less time debating things like this, so there will be much less energy needlessly wasted.
(I plan to return to be wasting as little energy as possible immediately after this post, so apologies in advance if I fail to respond to anyone I think might be triggered :)
When I say “We” here, I mean all of us humans in general.
Might vs Right
OK with that out of the way, now onto the “Meat” of what seems to be a similarity between between the power dynamics of gender, and the events of the Ukrainian war.
Most of us have some experience of domestic violence. Bouncing in and out of mainstream news right now, we can’t help noticing the story of Johnny Depp and ex partner Amber Heard.
Most of the public debate seems to be over who is most at fault in that very public legal battle.
I suspect most women will align with Amber whilst most guys will align with Johnny, but there will always be exceptions, why not, live and let live.
In these graphic accounts of the interactions between them, we might see a kind of trend; whenever Johnny has lashed out, it is always wrong.
That is because most of us know that Johnny is a man, therefore has the physical ferocity and strenth of a man, which face it, is rarely matched by any woman.
The man is generally the more dangerous physical animal.
Society has adapted to compensate for that mismatch between men and women in many ways, it seems to me, with the result that women now occupy many more positions of authority than a decade or two ago.
Why not, live and let live.
A cardinal rule has appeared which is the prohibition of striking first, as the man is prone to do far more often than seen in women.
In other words, when we strike out, we have lost control, and deserve to be punished for that, and we are usually male.
When it happens, everyone recognises that the man has used unfair physical advantage, and harrasses and shames the man, rightly so.
But no-one saw the events leading up to the striking out.
What had she done, to provoke this violent reaction?
Men are far more inclined to dig into that question than women, it seems to me.
And we can see this exact same dynamic playing out in the Ukrainian war.
No-one is asking about the events leading up to the Russian incursion into Ukraine, in fact it has all been effectively cancelled.
How many ordinary folk in the West even know the story of the Maidan?
It seems a distinctly female thing to do, to forbid an aggressor from even communicating the reasons for their violent pre-emptive action, dismissing their information without even wishing to hear it.
It seems distintly female, to say there is no excuse for violence, under any circumstances, no excuse for any party with superior physical power to use that power to subdue an aggressive party of maybe less physical might, who could nonetheless be exerting unendurable mental pain over a long period of time by endless, uncaring, mental cruelty.
Russia spent eight years enduring watching Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine being victimised by the Ukrainian government. Thousands of people have died in that action, including bombing of civilians by military aircraft and munitions, occuring in the eight years or so since the Maidan.
But we’ve ignored all of that information in the West.
If we imagine this from the point of view of our own country, UK, this would be like if there was a European or NATO backed Southern Irish coup eight years ago, in Northern Ireland, resulting in Irish Nationalists taking control of Northern Ireland, then watching as the remaining Ulster Unionists still resident there were being picked off, bombed by military aircraft, shelled in their housing estates, and hounded out back to UK, thousands being killed, by the new Irish Government Nationalist military forces ever since.
What would we have done, if we were in that position and we’d repeatedly complained about it to both the new NATO or EU backed Northern Irish government, and its backers, to never see it even mentioned in their media, whilst they argue over who is worst, Johnny or Amber?
We would have gone back in there with our own military in a special operation to sort things out long before now, believe me.
So the long and short of it is, we seem to be acting distinctly effeminately in our handling of the whole issue, and Russia appears to be acting distinctly masculine.
They lashed out, and we are refusing to hear why.
I don’t know if it is a coincidence that so many of those in key positions of Authority in the West are Women, whilst in Russia it appears to be still mostly men.
All I know is, it must look like we are being very girly, here in the West, by refusing to accept any information from Russia, whilst even arguing all the while about things like gender, and our Johnny and Amber.
And you girls in control here, you could get us guys in the firing line into a hell of a scrape, if we start fighting in earnest with Russia. To be honest, we’ll show honour if we have to, but we don’t stand a chance, and they know it. When we look at all of the information with clear, pre-combat male eyes, sizing up our opponent, the Russian bear; no amount of bravado or sabre-rattling from us can change that. They not only have the superior military might, they have the moral high ground, but also all the reserves of fossil fuel that we all need in the immediate future, and we will never take it from them by force, believe me.
What the Russians don’t seem to realise yet, is that they can’t use all that fossil fuel either, due to the same energy problem which affects them just as much as us, but that is another conversation I am sure we’ll have another day.
Adding more bodies to the pile already in Ukraine achieves nothing but more useless waste of energy.
I think it would help us all a lot, if we were to spot and recognise this characteristic, and for those with it in power to have a good look at it, and think how to manage it.
It is surely a feminine self-defence characteristic, to ignore the arguments of opponents, but we need to get over it.
Getting over it will require we adopt a slightly more masculine approach, to at least examining the information, maybe even letting few guys see it :)
After all, we’ve seen nearly all Western politicians being exposed as lying about some things.
How many Russian politicians have we seen the same about? (Publicised in their media, rather than in ours)
As far as I know, they get the sack if they are caught lying, whereas that doesn’t seem to happen here, we are far more likely to jail and torture truth-tellers, like Assange.
If we don’t even see their media, its because we’ve cancelled all of it. How can we even create an opinion which is anything like realistic, without being able to see it?
As I said, my object here is to try to minimise the amount of useless energy wasted by this war, the shortage of which appears to be already clouding the majority of our brains, at a time when we really can’t afford to lose another unnecessary Joule; we really need to start directing all remaining resources towards solar, the only actual source of energy, backed up by hydrogen with no further delay.
Doing that, throughout all countries in the West, would be the best defence move we could ever make against any threat from Russia and/or China.
They would soon follow our example and do it too, when they saw the beneficial value of solar product appear in our currencies, believe me.
