While progressive English-speakers are writhing in the agonies of political correctness that clamps their mouths tightly shut, much more progressive immigrants are having an honest discussion. Reader valter 07 says:
First off, let’s admit that so much lamented lack of desire of European women to reproduce is a direct consequence of feminism, among other things. Encouraging women to work, in a situation where success requires the same effort it required from men having a housewife at home – and what else should one expect?
The idea that women deserve to be punished with harassment for refusing to reproduce has been repeated so many times that many people, me included, have taken it as true. However, once you start looking into the matter, you discover that the exact opposite is the case. The reason why women in Germany, France, Spain, etc. don’t have more children is not that there is too much feminism. It is that there is not enough. Having, say, 3 or 4 children and still having a career in Germany, the country that is admitting 800,000 of (mostly) young men – who obviously will start popping out babies immediately – remains a task that only isolated heroes can shoulder. I address everybody who is interested in the subject to the book by the great French feminist Elisabeth Badinter that details all the ways in which Germany specifically punishes the women who want to have children and keep making the money to feed those children.
If German government at any point in time had invested the billions of euros it is now happily handing over as cash payments and benefits to the refugees into infant care or at least a campaign promoting fatherhood and suggesting that there is no shame or tragedy in a man knowing how to take care of his own children, we might be seeing a very different situation in terms of birth rates in that country. Now we will never know because the hardship faced by women who work will now be compounded
Progressive, feminist women who are married to the best, most enlightened, most progressive, most well-read and non-sexist men the world has produced so far have to battle these man daily for the right to go to a work meeting or on a business trip, for the possibility to spend two hours away from the baby and not be told by those men that they are horrible mothers. By the way, is anybody interested in venturing a guess how the husband of the best wife in the world from the previous post reacted to her request that he stay with the kids while she goes away for two days? A hint: too much feminism or “encouragement to work” are not part of the answer.
Clarissa's Blog 
Here is what I don’t get. If the goal is to increase birth rates. What is the point of letting in so many. . . men. Men don’t birth babies. Wouldn’t it make more sense to bring in women? Hasn’t this already been done successfully in Australia, etc?
I bet there are millions of women in patriarchal countries – Latin American countries come to mind or even Russia – who would jump at the chance to come live in Germany. If the German government wanted more babies, why not take this route?
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Good point. If the goal is really to have more taxpayers in an aging country, then the plan to bring hundreds of thousands of young men (who will soon be brought to the boiling point with unemployment and incomprehension) hoping that eventually they will bring women in their stead and eventually those women will have babies and eventually those babies will grow up and find high-paying jobs and eventually pay a lot of taxes. . . sheesh, those Germans are devious as all hell.
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First, I thought lower birth rates was supposed to be one of the selling points of feminism. When I was growing up there was a constant background noise of too many people and demands, please, emotional blackmail for people to stop reproducing. Now low birth rates are a problem?
Interestingly in most of the middle east (especially the better educated countries) birth rates are very low (and the leaders of Iran and Turkey regularly hector their countrywomen to have more kids but except for the super conservative and under-educated Kurds, they’re not paying any attention).
And women cannot have babies by themselves. All the evidence I can find indicates that a lot of young men in Germany and other western european countries aren’t in any hurry to have kids either. Maybe this is also a case of womenss and mens’ values coalescing into less desire for children?
Again…. the challenge of the post-scarcity society in which not much labor is needed is to figure out how to keep economies going with smaller populations. Smaller population in a place like overcrowded Germany should be a cause for celebration and not a signal to import a bunch of loutish young men who are going to find any excuse possible to not work.
And I echo Anniele, if all Germany wants is breeding stock (horrible way to put it, but….) I’m sure there are lots of young people in Latin America who would love to come to Germany and they have the great advantage of not carrying a bunch of insane religious baggage with them (a little baggage to be sure but almost entirely compatible with traditional German norms).
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“Again…. the challenge of the post-scarcity society in which not much labor is needed is to figure out how to keep economies going with smaller populations.”
What I’m seeing is the exact opposite. Germany is importing this marginalized unemployable underclass wholesale, by the million. It looks like Germans aren’t willing to wait for such an underclass to form naturally, as it undoubtedly will. There seems to be some great urgency in having such an underclass now, asap. I have no idea why that is at the moment. I will need to think about it some more.
The thinkers and the philosophers seem paralyzed with fear and can’t come up with anything useful.
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Germany already has enclaves of such underclass people, e.g. this group:
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/mhallamiye-kurden-in-deutschland-parallele-welten-12905242.html
When the Arabs claim you’re Kurds and the Kurds claim you’re Arabs, it says something about your perceived desirability as fellow citizens.
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Why do we even want a higher birthrate? The world underwent an unprecedented spurt of population growth in the last couple of centuries, and if we’re going through a fairly natural decrease in the population of the greatest consumers, and without any excessive government intrusion at that, isn’t that at least a good thing from an ecological standpoint?
I get that western institutions and way of life are built on the promise that life will be better every generation out, and that this has relied a good deal on the fact that a growing population means a higher workforce to pensioner ratio, but… Hell, aren’t we already at the point where warm bodies are increasingly economically irrelevant anyway? Even if it’s possible or desirable to prop this way of life up, increasing total population might be a hindrance, not a boon.
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“Hell, aren’t we already at the point where warm bodies are increasingly economically irrelevant anyway?”
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The economy is built on an assumption of unlimited growth, forever. On a limited planet with limited resources this will, eventually, run into a brick wall. I’ve never seen any person complaining about European birth rates apply the same logic to China and the one child policy, because obviously several billion more Chinese would be unmanageable.
An aging population will mean all sorts of problems. An aging population a couple of times larger than now will mean the same problems, only much worse.
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Besides, since we already started on the subject of the refugees as contributors to the German (or Swedish) economy. Yesterday in the NY Times there was a photo of a group of young male refugees sitting in the midst of a horrible amount of garbage in one of the refugee camps in Hungary, I believe. The accompanying article confirmed that this was “a garbage-strewn camp.”
It is possible, of course, that the photo is not reliable and right after it was taken these young men got up and cleaned the space around them. I’ve got to say, though, the image of these young able-bodied men sitting there, in the midst of this garbage and waiting for somebody else to clean it (who? Hungarians? women?) is not suggesting that the goal of their journey is to do a lot of garbage cleaning and menial jobs like that.
Another article in the same paper features an interview with a man who came to Sweden as a refugee and is now horribly disappointed and is saying it is not worth it because the “local language” is hard to learn and the benefits are not that high. Again, I want to believe that this is a tendentious selection of articles aimed at stoking anti-immigrant sentiment. God, I want to believe.
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“It is possible, of course, that the photo is not reliable and right after it was taken these young men got up and cleaned the space around them”
But not probably. I was in Kos, Greece at the beginning of May just before the steady stream of daily refugees became a flood….. and they were already turning the charming old town area into a dump throwing trash on the street meters away from garbage cans (I guess they’re too traumatized to not litter).
And they arrived in crisis hit Greece by leaving prosperous Turkey (the beautiful, historic, yet very modern and flourishing city of Bodrum is just across the water).
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And when the obsessively tidy Germans start getting upset over the littering, we will all condemn them as Nazis and feel massively superior in comparison. 😦
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Btw – have you seen the news that Denmark halted all rail traffic with Germany today to prevent refugees from crossing its border. I have a feeling there is lots more ugliness to come.
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Lordy. This means good-bye, Europe without internal borders. 😦
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The Danes are also stopping ferries to check for refuges and at least one road from Germany to Denmark is closed.
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/fluechtlingskrise/daenische-bahn-stoppt-zugverkehr-aus-deutschland-13793739.html
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What an absolute disaster.
Thank you for bringing this information here.
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Well a large percentage of the first refugees sent to Denmark disappeared completely and a bunch of them were headed by foot toward Malmo Sweden (and better benefits and maybe relatives). They were stopped but they haven’t given up.
There’s a huge amount of public debate about whether Poland should accept any and I say yeah, send as many as you can – the chance they would stay in Poland with Germany just across and unsecured border is approximately less than zero.
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I keep wondering why in all the ocean of articles and TV segments on the refugees nobody is asking this simple question: why Germany? what’s in Germany – as opposed to all these countries on the way to Germany – that is so attractive? I mean, we all know the answer but why are we so scared of talking about it?
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Another thing (he said drooling and shaking his fist). Asylum is now just another product that is sensitive to the laws of supply and demand. Marca Refugiada (r).
A great example of this is Sweden where enhanced benefits for minors has a bunch of adult men passing themselves off as teenagers.
Here’s a picture of a supposed 14 year old running with his classmates.
https://swedenreport.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/img_0600.jpg?w=700&h=519
Other nordic countries with similar problems started age testing but Sweden stubbornly refuses probably because they don’t want to admit that they’ve been fooled.
Similarly, the conflation of “Syrian” and “refugee” has created a thriving industry in fake Syrian passports (and is another reason that they don’t want to register before they get to Germany).
And, if you say you want refugees then lots of people who’d never thought about it will give it a go because what do they have to lose?
To paraphrase Elisabeth Taylor: If they’re stupid enough to pay me to show up in their country then I’m not stupid enough to stay home.
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Canada made an effort to prevent this kind of thing. Immigrants in my category are not entitled to any benefits at all for the first 10 years. Unfortunately, this was not extended to all categories of immigrants. But this is something that could be tried.
Why this desperation to stick cash prizes into the hands of everybody who crosses the border is a mystery.
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What bothers me with this line of argument is that you are not considering the benefits of admitting the refugees. It’s all about the hardship that the Europeans will experience. But aren’t those hardships outweighed by the enormous benefit of SAVING LIVES? These people will DIE if nobody helps them. Does that not matter at all to any of you here?
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Let’s can the drama, shall we? Nobody is proposing that any harm be inflicted on the refugees. All that I’m doing is question the wisdom of giving them money, cash allowances, benefits, etc.
I could ask, of course, how much money of your own you have handed over to the immigrants in your area but I won’t because I know the answer.
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// These people will DIE if nobody helps them. Does that not matter at all to any of you here?
From reading articles I got the impression that actually most of them wouldn’t die, if Europe closed its gates. Many aren’t from Syria, and many Syrians aren’t minorities targeted by ISIS. Also, most pass quite a few safe countries on the way to Europe, let alone to Germany. And nobody in Western Europe talks about closing gates completely, unlike:
Refugees in Europe: Christians welcome – Muslims keep out
Slovakia says Muslims won’t feel at home within their borders, while Cyprus says it prefers Orthodox Christian refugees only; in Saudi, which is not taking in refugees either, media criticizes Europe.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4698578,00.html
It is not Jews in Holocaust kind of situation, it’s more like as if ALL Russians tried to immigrate during the Russian Civil War hoping for big benefits and great life in the West. Nobody is responsible for accepting all citizens of failed countries, even if they have a civil war at present.
Why shouldn’t Arab world help them, btw? Why is only Europe responsible?
As for Israel, we accept zero Syrians. Opposition leader Isaac Herzog “called upon the government on Saturday to open its doors to Syrian refugees fleeing the ongoing conflict in the region,” but pretty much nobody is for that. Syria has always been an enemy state for Israel, and after Herzog’s suggestion few would vote for him. (He lost to Netanyahu in the past elections, but was quite popular because of stressing interior social issues.) In Israeli press and, I think, on the street too the opinion is:
\ It’s the beginning of the end of Europe.
Op-ed: The Europeans are failing to realize that Muslim refugees will lead to the complete disappearance of their countries’ tradition, culture and progress and to the establishment of an Islamic rule across the entire continent.
The above quote from an editorial may be simplistic, but I don’t understand how Merkel’s “lets accept everybody, entire states of people, in a short time” is more complex.
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Somebody from Israel wrote (in Russian) about the need to deal with ISIS and did compare refugees to Jews in WW2. Naturally, not all Israelis are of one opinion:
http://lobastova.livejournal.com/802844.html#comments
Personally, I do feel sad and angry because I am almost 100% sure Europe will become (practically) Jew-free and much more against Israel than it’s at present pretty soon after this big Muslim immigration. Clarissa wrote a post about women, while I think about Jews first. 🙂 It is already unsafe for a Jew to walk in numerous Muslim areas in Europe.
On Hebrew news sites 90% of comments are “Europeans get what they deserve after killing 6 millions Jews.” I am extremely disgusted by those comments, but now think I do share something with them (which only deepens my disgust). Those commentors also feel angry at the ironies of history – how Europe, The cradle of Civilization, first tried to throw Jews out, even to kill all, and now uses this history to import millions of anti-Semites (*) who will make Europe hostile to Jews both in Europe and in Israel.
(*) Yes, one can be a rabid anti-Semite and a refugee at once. Life is complex like that. Look at rabid anti-Jewish / anti-Israel propaganda in the entire Muslim world.
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These refugees are semitic people. You can’t call them anti-Semites. As to whether they have any specific dislike of Jews, I’ve seen no evidence of that.
It drives me nuts to see how this discussion comes, time and again, to the Holocaust. The main issues at stake here are the European welfare system and women’s liberation, none of which existed in the 1930s – 40s.
I understand the temptation to turn to familiar categories from the past to analyze the present. We have to make the effort to accept that there are new developments that require fresh approaches.
I want to repeat that the only “horrifying hardship” that I propose to inflict on the refugees is simply yo rethink the need to give them money. That’s all. Any comparison of this to the slaughter of millions in concentration camps is deeply offensive. It’s not surprising, though. Just look at my post on self-pity.
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\ These refugees are semitic people. You can’t call them anti-Semites.
That’s the only term that is always used in Israel and probably elsewhere.
If somebody is against Muslims, the word islamophobic is used. Nobody ever uses the term anti-Semitic in this case.
\ As to whether they have any specific dislike of Jews, I’ve seen no evidence of that.
They just arrived. The evidence will appear later, including in their (grand) children. I judge by how Jews are ‘loved’ in migrants’ countries of origin and by how current average European Muslim (including second-generation) immigrant views Jews and Israel (worse than non-Muslim European.)
\ The main issues at stake here are the European welfare system and women’s liberation, none of which existed in the 1930s – 40s.
For me, the main issue is whether Europe will stay safe for Jews, with or without welfare system which anyway needs serious cutting in Germany imo since it makes the country too attractive to migrants.
I trust women’s liberation is here to stay. It seems very weird o/w – the nation state weakens, everything is fluid, everybody is free, but European women are suddenly controled by relatively few % of migrants?
After thinking, I agree with your concerns regarding harassment but want to refer to the aspect of crime in general. The combination of big growing underclass, going with it crime and weakened state / police control sounds really bad for (not criminal) men too. And women may also be robbed, stabbed, murdered… in short, not sexually attacked. One may only hope that harassment will mainly stay in poor, immigrant, high-crime areas. Like current “no go” zones in France, in which police control is low and which Jews are not advised not to visit.
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I don’t really see the point of fantasizing about some imaginary future where men might also see some negative consequences of massive migration when we have a full-blown present that is already very uncomfortable for women.
As for Jews who do or don’t visit, you probably mean Orthodox Jews in the full attire. Because unless a person is wearing that whole getup, there is no way to distinguish a Jew from a Syrian. They actually look identical physically.
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\ As for Jews who do or don’t visit, you probably mean Orthodox Jews in the full attire. Because unless a person is wearing that whole getup, there is no way to distinguish a Jew from a Syrian. They actually look identical physically.
Not necessary Orthodox. There are many male national-religious Jews who wear only a kippah / yarmulke on their heads. If somebody speaks Hebrew with one’s friends, one is identified as a Jew too. Also, while you may not notice, in Israel it’s often easy to see whether somebody is Jewish or Arab. Jews and Syrians don’t look the same, esp. when a Jew is from Europe f.e.
But it’s all beside the point. Saying “Jews can visit since nobody will recognize them” doesn’t make the place in question safe or the one Jews would want to visit.
I remember people laughing / criticising when I said something regarding Arab taxi drivers. Today in news:
// Arab taxi driver gets life sentence for murder of teenager … Dadon’s mother: ‘She was murdered because she was Jewish.’
In other news:
// Russia increases presence in Syria despite warnings … Russia has sent two tank landing ships and additional aircraft to Syria in the past day or so and has deployed a small number of forces there, US officials said on Wednesday, in the latest signs of a military buildup that has put Washington on edge. The two US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the intent of Russia’s military moves in Syria remained unclear.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4699464,00.html
Ukrainian nationalists storm Hasidic encampment
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4698397,00.html
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Hey, since when are you one of those self-sacrificing women-nurturers? I never thought you were the type but the need to defend the right of some men to wear yarmulkes before the right of all women to be in public spaces is suspicious. Believe me, men will defend their own tights very well. They tend to be very good at that. And there is not a single man anywhere who has put the interests of women first like you are putting the interests of men first right now. This simply never happens.
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\ Hey, since when are you one of those self-sacrificing women-nurturers? I never thought you were the type but the need to defend the right of some men to wear yarmulkes before the right of all women to be in public spaces is suspicious.
I am not self-sacrificing at all. If a man can’t wear a yarmulke, it means the place is unsafe if you’re identified as a Jew regardless of gender. It means hiding (if possible, some Jews look looks Jewish so it may be impossible to hide) or not going there at all. If I can’t be somewhere normally as an Israeli Jew, I can’t be there normally as a person, see?
Btw, one of reasons we took organized trip in Russian was since my mother didn’t want to speak Hebrew in the middle of Paris / London. And when we two were alone in the London Underground, I answered we were from Ukraine to a Muslim couple, w/o mentioning Israel.
\ Believe me, men will defend their own tights very well. They tend to be very good at that.
I am not thinking about ‘men’ vs ‘women’ now. I am thinking about ‘Jewish people in Europe’ who historically haven’t defended their rights very well.
I think you imagine a place that is safe for men but not for women because of immigrants, right? I say, first places become unsafe for Jews of all genders, and only afterwards they truly become unsafe for local women.
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“I think you imagine a place that is safe for men but not for women because of immigrants, right? I say, first places become unsafe for Jews of all genders, and only afterwards they truly become unsafe for local women.”
I don’t imagine this, though. I’m speaking from experience. I lived in Montreal where there is a huge and very prosperous Jewish community that cannot be described as being unsafe by anybody with an ounce of reason.
In that same Montreal, I was constantly hassled by Muslim men and stared at with anger and contempt ( and once harassed) by those same men in yarmulkes. Which today makes me have zero interest in their continued capacity to maintain their clothing choices.
I say, let the men in yarmulkes first show solidarity with me, like come out in support of reproductive freedom or equal pay, and then I might repay them with an offer of my solidarity. I’ll be damned, though, if I buy into this “our shared interests” crap. We only have shared interests until the issue of respecting women comes up. At that time, shared interests all die a painful death.
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\ And when we two were alone in the London Underground, I answered we were from Ukraine to a Muslim couple, w/o mentioning Israel.
Wanted to add that we were usually feeling great and safe during the trip, but when felt less pleasant and/or wanted to leave a particular place, it was because of feeling Jewish, first of all. Not because of being women. The latter played a role too, but the feeling of being Israeli Jew came first to me. OK, Israeli Jewish woman, to be exact. Those two adjectives are not less important than a noun to me.
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“The latter played a role too, but the feeling of being Israeli Jew came first to me. OK, Israeli Jewish woman, to be exact.”
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Since you cited my post in the same paragraph with the idea that “women should be punished for feminism” (without ascribing this belief to me, thankfully, but still), I feel the need to clarify my position re this post and the previous one:
Suppose I have a budget of 100$/week. Suppose I choose to spend 50$ on vegetables, 10$ on milk and 40$ on bread. My inability to spend another 50$ on meat and sausage is a result of my decisions and my choices, not of somebody punishing me.
Having 3-4 babies is difficult. Was always difficult. Before the current migration wave too. Most people, given the choice, choose not to do what is difficult. And I do not think more feminism would help here. For the same reasons more communism would not help anything – human psychology. Most people with 3-4 children I know are not feminists, they are socially conservative one way or another – religious, nationalists, whatnot. I do not propose to remove the choice, or to punish anyone for their choices, I propose to admit there was a choice. And that choice had consequences. Europeans may want to have decent working conditions, 1.5 babies on average and culturally homogeneous society simultaneously. But they can not. I know, I know, very few people like when I get that libertarian…
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We simply have very different experiences. I know women of different generations who have 3-4 children. Given that I am who I am and that defines my circle of acquaintances, they are all feminists, very progressive, not even remotely fanatically religious or at all religious. Just at my department, out of 4 women, 2 have 4 children.
I also know women who would definitely have more children than the 2 or 3 they now have if this weren’t incompatible with their job or the husband was less of a helpless baby.
Of course, the argument of whose circle of acquaintances is more representative is a waste of time but I suggest we at least start going in the direction of making having children less incompatible with a woman’s professional realization. It’s not like it’s going to cause any harm so why not try, at least?
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I mean, they have 4 children each, not between the two of them. And the daughter of one if them had to put her baby in daycare at 8 weeks because the job was not accommodating and the husband was neither.
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With that general statement I agree of course. The problem is – I see incompatibility of having children with professional realization as an inevitable feature of capitalism (as in “feature, not a bug”). But human psychology is not ready for communism yet. 🙂 I mean communism as product of peaceful evolution, not something enforced on people by a totalitarian government.
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Wanted to share: one evening we visited Hyde Park in London and there were many people there. 99% of them Muslim families with women in ‘modest clothing’, hijabs, niquabs, etc. We did feel uncomfortable as the only women in Western clothing and my mother was afraid to explore the park. However, part of fear was since if Muslims around knew we were Israeli Jews, I don’t know if everybody would ignore that. They couldn’t know, except my mother does look Jewish and, no, not like Muslim women there at all. Face features are very different, believe me. But even if my mother looked like me, just thinking “if they knew” is unpleasant, you know? So, we didn’t go deeper, and on the way out did notice a few gender-mixed groups playing with a ball, two women in Western clothing passing near us, etc. The shock was that all those Western men and women spoke Russian. Sometimes even loudly swearing a little during a football game. 🙂
Btw, in the post you talked about Russian men. I was not afraid to meet a group of Russian speakers, which I can’t say about Muslims.
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I did have the misfortune of meeting a family from Russia on my trip to London. There were two kids in the family, aged about 9 and 11. When they saw my Ukrainian necklace and bracelet, they showered me with a deluge of the choicest swear words of the kind I wouldn’t think such small kids would be comfortable saying in front of their parents.
Of course, Cuban boys of this age would already be trying to grab my ass, so I actually prefer these Russians. They made no effort to touch me or get in my face.
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Interesting… Spent three days near Hyde Park recently… My threshold is pretty high, so women with covered heads do not bother me, only those with covered faces… Eventually I learned to take it with humor. What helped me? Noticing that they are taking pictures near various monuments, sometimes in groups, and imagining how they are later telling their friends who is who in those group pictures. 🙂
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Hilarious recipe. I love it. 🙂
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\ What makes you think this was not a feeling you brought with you from Israel, though?
Of course, I brought a lot from Israel. But based on everything I’ve read, this feeling wasn’t unjustified.
As for the situation in Montreal. For me to say “zero interest in their continued capacity to maintain their clothing choices” would be like for a black woman to say “black men are sexist, thus I don’t care if they are afraid to walk on streets because of their skin’s color.” The catch is that if they are afraid, I have a great reason to be afraid too. With additional reasons to worry because of being a woman- in -the -targeted- group. After living most of my life in Israel, I would care in this situation, even w/o having any warm feelings for those men and their sexism. I am more afraid of the combination of Muslim hatred for (esp. Israeli) Jews and sexism, which could be both turned against me. Non-Jewish women would get only the latter (sexism), Jewish men – the former, but I – two at once.
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