In China, the prevalence of selective abortions has skewed the natural ratio of males to females
, and in many places there simply aren’t enough women to go around.
To go around what, exactly?
Fucking douchebag.
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Clarissa's Blog 
I always think that there should be some kind of self-correcting mechanism when a society’s undervaluing of women leads to these kinds of consequences. However, the only response I ever hear about is that they start trying to restrict sex-selective abortions.
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There ARE all sorts of potential correctives when people act in harshly prejudicial ways, but you have to be of the shamanic type to make them happen. One of the most basic shamanic principles is “not doing”. That is to say, if someone performs an act of violence against you, you don’t try to fix things up, mend the relationship or close the gap. It’s not that you don’t care about fixing things up, but you have to understand that the nature of the violence is deeper than that which you can fix. If you keep fixing it, you will actually keep re-creating the circumstances for the same kinds of events to keep occurring. It’s not for you to palliate, therefore, but you can do a lot by allowing the imbalance that has been created by the violence to remain what it is — an uncomfortable imbalance. And all imbalances are uncomfortable.
Shamans see that there are the seeds of a solution in every violence act. For instance it used to be de rigueur to opine that women cannot be understood by anyone. Looking at that paradigm as an engineer would — which is to say dispassionately — one can see immediately how that creates a structural imbalance, whereby communication can only occur in one direction. A shaman does not try to fix this imbalance by taking great strides to ensure that communication occurs nonetheless, despite all the imposed difficulties. Rather, the shaman accepts and even perpetuates the imbalance by means of non-action. From now on communication only occurs in one direction. The shaman, if female, will not be required to communicate…will not require herself to do so.
But this produces great paranoia in the one who has set up the structural imbalance, because it is unnatural not to know what someone else is thinking. But they have made the pronouncement: “Women cannot be understood”. Now they must live with it.
This is, by the way the used of engineering principles, to facilitate the betterment of the world. It is not passive -aggression, since emotions would be involved in the latter. The shamanic approach makes use of an understanding of principles of physics as they relate to human pscychology.
Also it requires a lof of self-development, compassion and capacity for self-discipline to make the principle of “not doing” work for you. Most people are lacking in these. Above all, they do not have all these qualities combined.
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“Rather, the shaman accepts and even perpetuates the imbalance by means of non-action. From now on communication only occurs in one direction. The shaman, if female, will not be required to communicate…will not require herself to do so.”
“But this produces great paranoia in the one who has set up the structural imbalance, because it is unnatural not to know what someone else is thinking. But they have made the pronouncement: “Women cannot be understood”. Now they must live with it.”
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Oh, I have seen people become really paranoid and implode. I think you might be imagining that I am talking about mute American women. I don’t see that I mentioned them in the text, although apparently everything has to be about them? That is kind of bizarre don’t you think? Why can’t we imagine something other than stupid yanks?
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I think it’s fairly obvious that most of my colleagues are not Americans. I work at a department of Foreign Languages. But yes, we all live in the US and my stories come from where I live. Why is that unexpected?
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I’m so bored with everything being reduced to the most bland and boring equations.
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Maybe it’s just I who has this shamanic power and not others. It does take development. But, to give you one example, I took on a job where I was paid $17 for a one hour stint once a week. But the boss at that organisation kept bringing up very minor quibbles and demanding more and more adjustments and training on my part, even changing his specifications and being very unclear over a series of weeks. it became clear that his goal was not to give me a job but to dominate me. His emotions had become very invested in controlling me. So he called me up one Saturday afternoon, pronouncing that there had been more complaints and I still needed more training or resign. I said, “I reisgn’. He freaked out and said there was always the option for more training and I should consider it. I said, “No, Thankyou. Good bye.”
After that I do believe he became very paranoid that I would start to undermine and destroy his whole system. I had no such intention, but it was interesting to see him squirm.
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$17 are definitely not worth the hassle. But if one’s goal is a career, especially a high-powered one, silence is not a road one can take. There will always have to be a dialogue, even with very obnoxious people.
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I think you are still missing the point — missing it about as radically as possible somehow. Perhaps that is due to our personality differences? I wasn’t speaking about something being worth or not worth the hassle, since to me everything is worth the hassle, eevn $17.
I’m not sure how to put this in different terms you could understand. When I used the term “shamanism” I wasn’t using it to be cool or trendy. There really are a lot of esoteric concepts. These may have to be experienced rather than explained.
I am fully aware that from a conventional viewpoint what I am speaking about and the way I speak about it might seem like I am just trying to be cute or cool. That would explain why when I speak about employing a basic mechanics or understanding of engineering principles, that part of what I say can be blithely ignored. In fact it is the substance of what I am saying.
As for the entirely different topic of weighing up how much money is worth one’s time, I really don’t think that has to be explained. There’s a certain marketplace logic to it already, that doesn’t need to be gone over and over.
The common-sensical principle of speaking up to get what one needs and the idiom that the squeaky wheel gets the grease ought not to be forgotten either — but really this doesn’t warrant us going over and over.
So let us have plenty of dialogues with obnoxious people — you with me and I with you, if necessary.
Let us never cease to engage with them as necessary and hopefully benevolence will rain down on us.
But none of this touches even slightly on the meaning of my original statements.
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Here’s what I am talking about with regard to the shamanic tactic.
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LOL, talk about being just a little slow ;-D
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It’s too casual maybe but if the sexes were reversed would it still be offensive?
“In 1920s Great Britain, combat deaths in WWI skewed the natural ratio of males to females, there simply weren’t enough men to go around…”
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Some people think it’s OK to be treated as disposable goods and some don’t. This correlates with self-respect, not with gender.
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Indeed! You’ve written many times, Clarissa, on the lower population of men in Russia because of the war, conscription, and other factors, without using demeaning commodity-oriented language about men.
“To go around” makes me think of a woman being passed around and played with like a communal toy that kids have to share at Christmas, more a nutcracker than a person.
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It’s sad that we no longer believe in mulberry bushes.
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I’m surprised. I just checked
“not enough women to go around” gets 3870 google hits
“not enough men to go around” gets 74,800 google hits
This means that particular bit of dehumanizing language is used 19 times more often about men than women (in sources tracked by google).
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In sum and without ranting: Female choice terrifies people.
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Was this meant to be a reply to my comment? I really don’t follow….. How does using dehumanizing language toward men = “female choice terrifies people”.
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