Can Single Heterosexual Men Be Feminist?

‘During my life I have encountered many reasons why women deserve
to be controlled by status, but many more for men.’

Marc Latham, 2009.

Sorry about the existential minimalist blog post for International Women’s Day yesterday, but we thought we’d leave it to the humans yesterday; and sometimes a small amount of words can have more impact… and are easier to write!

Transgender Anger? 

Thinking – Year 2 – 297/365 (Photo credit: Amarand Agasi)

They are also be safer of course, because as soon as you start expressing opinions you open yourself up to controversy and criticism.

Hi, it’s Mary Werewolfstonecraft, liberal feminist inspired by Mary Wollstonecraft, who is often cited as being the first liberal feminist.

After writing yesterday’s phrase Women are half of humanity I thought that I might have angered transgender people, who might have thought themselves left out.

I then presumed that trangender people probably balance out between male and female, so I thought it was probably okay after all.

Latham Socialism v Galloway Socialism 

George Galloway (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The strapline for this blog was Free and Equal Green Writing last year. This was influenced by Marc Latham’s socialist background.

While Gorgeous George Galloway and supporters might consider Marc Latham a bad socialist, Marc considers himself more socialist than them, stressing the rights of all people, and freedom from religious indoctrination.

It didn’t mean that everybody should leave relationships, and lead an existential anarchist life, it just meant that people should have the freedom to choose the way they lead their lives.

While Marc thought that anarchic freedom was the way to be in youth, in adulthood and middle-age he thinks that if you’ve got a good family you should make the most of it.

If you don’t think you have a good family then you might need more external inspirations, and I hope you find ones that help you lead a better life.

The Free and Equal phrase was inspired by the rise in forced relationships and slavery in the U.K., and around Europe and the world as far as I know.

Latham Brand v Russell Brand 

Locked inside a context box as JOKE. Context box (CB) start:
Marc Latham would like to come out of the closet: a beautiful woman’s lingerie closet.
CB End.

The Russell Brand Show (radio show) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Marc Latham has had a similar Kerouac-inspired background to the British comedian Russell Brand.

They both seem to love beautiful women, but have taken different paths in recent years.

While Russell Brand has been seeking to cash in on his feminist speech, Marc has tried to show that he’s serious about his feminism by trying not to profit sexually.

Of course, after a while that can seem more ‘weird’.

Socialist Feminism and Male Heterosexual Taste

While Marc believes that all women should have equality, he also has his own taste in women, which is the classic model-actress-musical icon long-haired slim feminine pretty woman such as Kate Moss, Tia Carrere, Debbie Harry, Kitty Zhang (Zhang Yuqi), Briggitte Bardot, Jessica Alba, Beyonce and Britt Ekland… preferably into animal welfare, non-smoker, good sense of humour and a nice feminine personality (I sense British militant feminist rage!?).

International Womens Day project, March 2009 (Photo credit: craftivist collective)

While British feminism often seems to resent those kind of women, Ukraine’s Femen movement and some other feminist movements celebrate the beauty of women.

The Greenygrey doesn’t necessarily support all their beliefs and tactics, but generally supports their cause.

That is where Marc Latham’s socialism and heterosexuality have their best fit, although some feminists will probably not accept his rationale: some feminists just seem to want to keep feminism as an all women’s club… versus men… rather than trying to be equal, and creating a better society alongside men, like I think my human inspiration Mary Wollstonecraft did.

Abba’s Bjorn Ulvaeus Speaking Rational Humanism

Hi, it’s Grey Greyvara, social conscience at the Greenygrey. When Marc Latham was studying for his PhD from 2000-2005 he was considered a Jew in a derogatory Islamo-fascist-liberal way for daring to say the Middle-East was a cycle of violence; mostly influenced by the work of media analyst with a cool surname Gadi Wolfsfeld.

Islamo-fascism continued in the area Marc lived, and that persecution of anything criticising Islam probably helped inspire some of those involved in the 7/7 bombings of 2005.

British Left-Wing Support of Islamism 

Nazi Wandering Jew propaganda at Yad Vashem (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Marc was still quite a radical socialist during that time, so was critical of Islam for its social inequality and human rights abuses. But criticism of Islam at university was decoded and demonised as being pro-West, pro-Israeli and right-wing.

Marc understands this is the way the world is divided between east and west; highlighted in the Syrian conflict recently. Marc doesn’t like the U.S. blockade of Cuba, but also doesn’t like Cuba’s alliance with countries such as Syria and Iran; although the West’s ally in the Middle-East Saudi Arabia also has a terrible human rights record.

While that might sound Islamophobic, Marc enjoyed his time in Islamic countries when travelling through them in the 1980s. It’s not Islamic people on the whole that Marc criticises, it is their rulers and ideologies.

BEWARE GEORGE GALLOWAY IS THE NEXT HITLER (Photo credit: pixelhut)

Unfortunately, Islamism has risen since the 1980s, inspiring more people to become extremists. This has had a knock-on effect in other countries and religions, with more Christian and Jewish extremists, as well as more radical atheists.

As a focus on Islamism took over the left in the U.K.; originally through New Labour, and now epitomised by George Galloway; and 7/7 happened; Marc moved to the political centre, and out of academic life, leading to Greenygrey theory on this here websitey.

From Marxism to Scandinavian Democracy 

Green field & green person (Photo credit: Let Ideas Compete)

Marc moved from being a bit of a British Marxist, common in 1980s Britain, to a Scandinavian style democratic socialist; although Scandinavia has also changed politically since the Utopian post-World War II era, and many parts have become more capitalist.

However, it still scores highly in most standard-of-living and democratic ideals ratings: equality, press freedom, freedom of speech, environmental innovation etc.

Abba‘s Bjorn Ulvaeus on religion 

Cover of Björn Ulvaeus

So I was interested to hear Abba’s Bjorn Ulvaeus express similar views to Marc on religion recently, published on the British Rationalist Association website; and in particular on the negativity and threat of Islamism.

Moreover, our ol’ pal Marc Latham replied on September 18th, before the latest explosion of Islamism in Kenya (and Pakistan, where dozens of Christians were killed in a Taliban suicide bombing attack):

‘Israel has some responsibility in the Middle-East, because of its expansionism, but it is only Islam that is still spreading religious war around the region, and out into the rest of the world.

And even then, Judaism was around for about 1000 years before Islam, and Christianity for about 500 years before Islam, and they are both trying desperately to hold on to some land/a foothold in their Middle-East homes.’

Marc hopes that Iran’s election of the more moderate Rouhani and his recent peaceful overtones to the ‘West’ can bring a new era of hope to the Middle-East.

Bjorn Ulvaeus Swedish Humanist 

I didn’t know that Bjorn Ulvaeus was a Swedish humanist until I read that interview, or that he’d had a similar religious journey to Marc Latham until watching the following interview.

Bjorn Ulvaeus was also a secular freedom of speech advocate who didn’t take much interest in religion until the rise of Islamism and 9/11:

British Media Blame Britain for Syria Chemical Attack

Hi, it’s Gnome-Chomper Wolf, creative critical analyst in the nether regions of the Greenygrey world; in the style of Noam Chomsky. While Noam Chomsky and his friend Herman tend to criticise everything Western, I tend to be more balanced, in line with Greenygrey thinking.

British Media Frame Britain for Sarin Attack 

Herman – Contentment Closeup (Photo credit: toastie97)

With Britain opting out of attacking Syria, I hoped the media would stop focusing on it so much, with it being only one of many conflicts going on in the world at the moment.

However, not only has the media continued warmongering, but it is also trying to bring the British government into the frame for the Syrian chemical attacks; as seen in the Daily Mail.

While I don’t agree with selling dangerous elements to unstable and aggressive regimes, Kev Lilburn highlighted on Facebook that the sodium fluoride and potassium fluoride in question are used in toothpaste and cosmetics, and weren’t banned from being sold to Syria at the time.

I think this kind of reckless story can inspire British citizens to turn against the British government, for false reasons, and even lead to tragic attacks like that on Drummer Lee Rigby in May.

Chapman as Brian Cohen in Life of Brian (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is just the kind of story loved by the George Galloway’s left-wingers who blame everything on Britain and the ‘West’ even if they have democratically voted to stay out of the conflict, and it’s the left-wingers’ beloved leaders in Syria, who are overseeing and doing all the killing.

Herman and Chomsky Propaganda Model

The ‘right-wing‘ Daily Mail reporting this as a sensationalist story criticising the mainly ‘right-wing’ Conservative-LibDems coalition government goes totally against Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model of Media, as found by Marc Latham in his research on the Kosovo Conflict. Marc wrote:

“Herman and Chomsky also theorise that the media would accept ‘one’s own state’ tells the truth; but the discussion section showed the media openly commented on the ‘propaganda’ being released by NATO in a two-way propaganda battle, and warned when it was unverified.

Herman and Chomsky also: ‘expect great investigatory zeal in the search for enemy villainy…but diminished enterprise in examining such matters in connection with one’s own and friendly states;’ but the results and discussion section showed the media spent as much time investigating the NATO collateral damage incidents as the reports of Serb war crimes, and this was especially true of the NYT after the Chinese embassy bombing.” 

Marc Latham’s PhD thesis was published by Lambert Publishing and is available for a lot of money on Amazon.

Politics in the U.K. and World: Labour’s Saviour

Hi, it’s Grey Greyvara, the Greenygrey’s political conscience, and werewolf parallel to the human Che Guevara. Today, we start to round off working-class week with a summary of how and why we view the current U.K. and world political situation.

When Marc Latham was in university he felt prejudiced against, like a microcosm of the British situation told in Chavs: The Demonising of the Working-Class, with an international emphasis on everything, and the old working-class being framed as backward; being blamed for holding Britain back.

University Life During New Labour 

Britains Floral Garden ~ memories from my childhood (Photo credit: shrinkin’violet)

Marc started his PhD in line with the far left of Noam Chomsky and the Glasgow Media Group; socialist criticism of the British and ‘Western’ establishment; hoping for a more equal Britain and less international conflict. At the time he thought he was quite rare in his outlook.

But under New Labour’s revisionist internationalism, criticising Britain seemed to become the norm, while criticising other cultures was ‘racist’, and risked social exclusion. Islamism replaced socialism as the likely successor to Western capitalism in British and world hegemony.

New Labour and the Working-Class 

Che guevara (Photo credit: @Doug88888)

While Marc’s hopes for hegemonic theory supported all races and genders gaining more equality under a more socialist Britain, like Che Guevara’s philosophy, New Labour’s multiculturalism seemed to be supporting other cultures while neglecting or persecuting the traditional British working-class; and women under Islamism.

Gordon Brown seemed to confirm this when he called Gillian Duffy a bigot in Rochdale for asking about immigration near the end of the New Labour tenure. Rochdale later emerged in a related infamous story, with a Muslim paedophile ring having been targeting poor and vulnerable children for years during the New Labour government.

Current Labour leader, Ed Miliband, has now admitted New Labour got it wrong on immigration and multiculturalism.

Tony Blair, Christianity and Islam

Tony Blair and New Labour’s policy on Islam and war seems naive at best, and perhaps criminal:

1. Allowed mass immigration of Muslims.
2. Gave safe haven to known Islamist terrorists.
3. Allowed hate preachers to radicalise ordinary Muslims.
4. Went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq against Muslims.

I think Tony Blair was naive, and as a Christian thought he could work with his fellow monotheist Muslims; preferring them to the pagan communist Slav Russians and allies.

Fuhrer Tony Blair (Photo credit: acidrabbi)

This was shown by New Labour’s first war; supporting Muslim Kosovars against Communist Serbs. Blair was also the only Allied leader not to attend the Russians’ VE Day 60th anniversary celebration.

Tony Blair has now stressed that Islamism is the big threat to world peace.

British Post-Modern Political System 

Marc had wondered why some working-class people supported the Conservatives, as he grew up under Thatcher, but the New Labour government showed him why!

The British political system is no longer like the one Marc grew up under in the 1980s anyway, and is now more post-modern issues based.

Che Guevara mural (Photo credit: Contrabland)

While Marc had called for a wider hegemony in his PhD thesis, hoping for more access for the old socialism, politics in the U.K. and the world overtook him; especially as he was held up (both time-wise and financially!) by his department.

The rise of the extreme right-wing Islamic hate preachers in Britain (and I include George Galloway!), and extreme right-wing fascists in southern Europe showed him that a wider access to the political debate has as many negatives as positives.

The old communist systems were full of poor treatment of people as well, and even Che Guevara didn’t do as well in peacetime as he did in war.

So Marc is now in the Greenygrey middle, reacting to policies as much as political ideologies and traditions, and a little disillusioned with it all really. Funnily enough, that might be in line with the ‘Third Way‘ policy supported by New Labour!!!

The Problem with Chavs… by Owen Jones

Hi, it’s Tony Loboinson, history expert at the Greenygrey, here writing about the working-class, because I think my human parallel is from that background. Not that you’d really be able to notice, and maybe that’s the best way to be; but is the current growth in the rich-poor gap, and the divisions it creates, the working-class’s fault, or is it due to society in the last thirty years omitting them from the top positions in politics and the media.

Chavs by Owen Jones

Chavs by Owen Jones (Photo credit: Robert Burdock)

One of the rising stars in the media wrote a book criticising the labelling of the working-class as ‘chavs’ in 2011, but Owen Jones is middle-class himself.

Marc Latham, who had a pre-Chav era working-class poor one-parent council flat upbringing, had wanted to focus his university research on the demonising of the working-class when he finished his PhD in 2005, but his department didn’t support him; well, to be precise, a baby-faced middle-class tutor not unlike Jones himself.

Marc was reduced to publishing his opinions on this here blog, which he thinks is also good and relevant, but it was a bittersweet double-edged greenygrey feeling for him when Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class the book appeared six years later.

Owen Jones Avoided Grooming Cases 

Maybe the department thought Marc was too working-class to focus on his own demographic, although there are female feminists who only write defending their own gender, and criticising the other; and ethnic-minorities who do the same with issues of race.

Maybe Owen Jones was a safer bet to give the working-class a voice, seeing as he isn’t really one of them. His book contains many of the issues Marc had noticed, and written about in this blog.

Snake-oil going cheap! Del-boy George Galloway. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Since writing the book Jones has become a celebrity leftist, perhaps the next George Galloway; criticising Islamophobia more than chavophobia!

And maybe that’s why he failed to write a chapter on the mainly Pakistani grooming, rape and prostitution of poor and vulnerable children on an industrial scale that was going on for years before he wrote his book; but was hidden and not tackled by New Labour. 

I think that was because it looked bad for New Labour’s glorious new age of multiculturalism. It was only after New Labour lost power that it was widely publicised, although to be fair, Jack Straw did try and talk about it, but he was shouted down by the ‘multicultural left’.

This month, Coventry grooming arrests meant it was the latest city to be revealed with a vulnerable girls being targeted by members of the Muslim community case; although it only dates from last year.

Owen Jones: Career over Care

Instead of talking about the biggest atrocity against poor people in Britain over the last decade, which was largely ignored by the media and politicians, Owen Jones prefers to concentrate his book solely against the rich establishment; like George Galloway does with his politics.

The first chapter of the book could have been about the grooming cases, but instead Jones (or his publishers?) prefers to devote it to the Shannon Matthews case, when she was hidden/kidnapped by her own working-class family. 

I don’t think the chapter works at all as an example of elites demonising the working-class, as the media widely covered a case that ended up as being a working-class deception and crime; wasting police and media time, and probably supporting the opinions of higher class people who used the term ‘chav’.

So while Owen Jones is obviously a bright lad with great presentation, I think his Chavs book is incomplete, and does more to support the liberal left’s multicultural agenda than the real working-class.

Sorry if I appear like a snake-oil salesman, but I like my books better!:

Link for multiple Ereaders at Smashwords.

International Politics that brought Greenygrey into Human World

Hi, it’s Greenygrey. With two Greenygrey publications recently self-published, we thought that this week would be a good time to look at how the Greenygrey emerged into the human world, and where it is at now; and of course create more interest in the books; we believe in transparent publicising/advertising at the Greenygrey! In international politics, the Greenygrey emerged after the end of the Cold War and emergence of the War on Terror clouded (created greenygrey rather than black and white) the old distinctions between left and right. 

The  West’s Awakening and Division of Socialism

When the U.S. supported Afghan insurgents against the Soviet invasion in the 1970s and 1980s (since told in films such as Charlie Wilson’s War) Marc Latham thought they’d regret it. The U.S. seemed to think they could trust fellow god-fearing monotheists more than the godless pagan socialists.

Marc was at the time an ardent socialist, supporting the unions in Britain at a time when there was clear daylight between the right (American capitalist) and left (Russian socialist) wings of politics, with his political heroes those described by the ‘right-wing press’ as the ‘loony left’, such as Arthur Scargill, Tony Benn and Derek Hatton; and left-wing uprisings by groups such as the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, which promised to end corrupt dictatorship and bring a fairer society for the people. Apparently, President Daniel Ortega ended up being corrupt too when the Sandinistas won power.

Spheres of influcence between the Western World and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Cold War ended in the 1990s, and was replaced by the War on Terror in the early twenty-first century after the 9/11 attacks on New York. Ironically, the training hub of the Islamic religious revolutionaries was Afghanistan, and most of the 9/11 bombers were Saudi Arabians; an ally of the U.S.

While some of the old left such as David Aaronivitch chose Western Capitalism as the best of two evils, others like George Galloway chose to side with Islamic Jihad; of course, it turned out that the old left’s Soviet Union had plenty of evil too, but it had mostly been kept quiet beyond the Iron Curtain.

That’s not to say that the Old Left had been wrong about the evils the West had supported in the Cold War, with the atrocities committed by dictators such as Somoza and Pinochet all too real.

Eric Hobsbawm Passes Away

This blog was inspired by the passing away of old-left historian, Eric Hobsbawm, an article about it on the Prospect website, and a comment by our ol’ pal, Marc Latham, about it. Here’s what Marc wrote: 

I think that Eric Hobsbawm should be remembered as a great historian and contributor to twentieth-century thinking, but agree with RAPProds that ‘left-wing’ authoritarianism has been, and can be, as bad as ‘right-wing’, and it should be a matter of right or wrong rather than right or left.

‘Lefties’ like George Galloway were supporting the Arab governments before the revolutions, and then presumably became supporters of the revolutionaries trying to depose them, as he likened his campaign in Bradford to the Arab Spring.

The treatment of women in the Arab countries continues to be totally unequal, sometimes to the point of bullying oppression, with many women losing freedom and rights since the ‘Spring’, which Marx would surely object to if he was still alive; whereas there is more gender equality, as well as other equalities, in the ‘right-wing’ UK, USA and Israel, so who’s the more socialist?

As I have previously written:

When I started studying at university I focused my attention on how right-wing elite society did this, before the political, banking and media scandals brought it all to the surface.
But by then I had widened my scope to all of humanity, as I had seen ‘left-wing’ New Labour involved in those scandals, and the ‘counter-culture’ lying, spinning and censoring as much as those they criticised.
I used to think that the left and ‘counter-culture’ were the goodies, but now I just see them as the other side; one half of a self-perpetuating human whole that lives off competition, division, power and greed. When ‘rebels’ gain power it usually corrupts them, and they become like those they considered not fit to rule.
I saw the documentaries of Adam Curtis between writing the poem and this book, and they seem to provide a good overview of the competition at the heart of humanity and society.