A number of my women friends online have been called gender
traitors over the last year or so. One was sent a tweet yesterday
inviting her to kill herself. What does it mean? The word traitor means
to betray a trust or a cause or a principle or, apparently, a gender.
Allegiance to, whatever it is - a country, a cause, a
friend, is taken as a given, unquestionable, invioble; any deviation from
the expected loyalty is seen as unthinkable, as incomprehensible, as
traitorous, and deserving of punishment.
So, what does the term 'gender traitor' mean?
Obviously, it means that you have somehow betrayed women, as women. How have you done that?
Some aliens arrive at earth in an elevator. They stop short
of the ground floor....just in case. They observe that the planet is
dominated by a single species who reproduce sexually. This is
interesting to them, because they don't. They observe that natural and
sexual selection has produced marked physical and psychological
differences in the make up of each sex. They observe that having, (so
far), successfully negotiated the survival imperative, the species has
advanced to form complex cultures with a notable degree of variance.
They also note that a feature of this rapid cultural development
includes a considerable increase in tension between the two sexes of the
species, different factions of which seem to concentrate on hating one
another.
'They must have radically different interests,' thinks the alien anthropologist.
'Beyond survival,' says the capt 'most species take what
they can get...we're no different, we just don't have the complication
of sex, whereas their biology produces obvious conflicts of interest.'
'Do you mean that each sex somehow sees itself as a victim of the other in this conflict?'
'Exactly so....so, what they need, (instead of beating the
shit out of each other), is something sufficiently threatening to their
survival to unite them.'
'Let's invade then.'
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