The reason I read books…

The reason I read books written from the perspective of people who are oppresed, discriminated or have different needs than the typical white person is because I believe that a world fair for those people would be a better world for everyone even if it would take a bit of an effort from the comfy white person in the beginning.

For example, sign language should be our universal language, not English. If all children learned sign language from kindergarten, or at least primary school, then non-verbal children wouldn’t have an issue communicating with others. Yes, sign language varies from country to country, but a person from China and a person from England could learn each others sign language differences in a matter of days and communicate fluently afterwards.
Fun fact: sign language is a national language in New Zealand. I am not sure if it is mandatory in school though. That would be cool.

What I like about the book “Ain’t I a woman” is that Bell Hooks points out all that I found wrong with feminism as I understood it in my twenties and which seems to be indeed the state of mind of most of first feminists: not a equality of chances, but having the same power as men, basically having the chance to become an opressor themselves, making the white man their enemy. Also, Hooks points out what I’ve been saying lately that this empowerment of women through work served only capitalism and only further made the life of women harder. And she said that in 1981. But who listens, right? Good job, ladies.

Bell Hooks speaks a lot about how white women were racists, but also points out that women of African descent were racist agains white women too, and while she understands the sentiment, she does not find it useful because women cannot truly have equality if not all women have the same rights.

She also points out how a patriarchal society was damaging to men, specifically men of African descent, but it applies to all men, being more oppressing on the former, no doubt. The system isn’t truly serving anyone, but a few people.

Reading “Ain’t I a woman”, I finally understood why people find “Gone with wind”, book and movie which were my favourite when I was a teenager, racist. I am not sure if Margaret Mitchell intended to portray women of African descent in a stereotypical way or she just presented the view of her contemporary. She definitely presented a misleading picture if the opportunistic men of African descent who got rich after the civil war. As if… but that could have just been education too. As Bell Hooks writes, that’s the history they learned in school. However both the book and movie are of good quality, and I do not agree to them not being aired or published again, specifically because they are not a historical book or documentary, but fiction. However a disclaimer should indeed accompany them explaining the stereotypes that aren’t correct. I feel the same about Harry Potter books which were my comfort go to until as recent as two year ago when after two chapters I couldn’t stomach it anymore, so full of stereotypes about what it means to be a boy or a girl as it is. Those books should really come with disclaimers since they are children’s books primarily and may really influence the view of a child on life and who they should be.

As a rule, I am against cancel culture*.

Some quotes that stood out to me:

“To be strong in the face of oppression is not the same thing as overcoming oppression, that endurance is not the same as transformation.”

“Feminism has been used as a psychological tool to make women think that work they might otherwise see as boring, tedious and time consuming, is liberating.”

“Today [1981], feminism does not offer women liberation, but the right to act as surrogate men.”

“Progress comes only from struggling to resolve contradictions.”

I also have the experience of being a woman in both eastern and western Europe, and have a fair understanding of what it means to be a woman in north America. I am not really inclined to read about it, nor do I expect to empatize much or stand a tone of someone telling me what a woman should be even if it is different from the patriarchal view. A history on female history would be interesting though. To that end, I have a book on my read list – Normal women. I do expect to get quite upset reading it judging by the description. Even if it is about the role of women in only the history of England I find it most relevant. After all, England is the root of a lot of evil that has still ongoing effects. Devastating effects even.

Hopefully I won’t be upset to the extent for which I had to leave off Neurotribes which for the first part of the book recounts the history of neurodiverse people in quite vivid detail, including how during the nazi regime, neurodiverse children were subjected to having their brain cavity filled with a liquid that would preserve their brain while they were still alive, which would cause them to die of course, but afterwards the nazi scientists had an intact brain to study. This was pretty hard chapter to stomach and I thought at it’s end, that whatever comes next can’t be worst. Pfff…was I wrong! Next is Leo Kanner to whom the first use of the term “autism” is wrongly attributed, and who has spread out all the worst misconceptions about it, including that it is only affecting children, that those children lack empathy, do not understand social norms, cannot communicate properly or that they are even retarded. He also said in a letter, roughly, that these children should be kept alive because someone has to clean the sewage. He outvoiced Asperger who classified autism as a spectrum, not limited only to children, and who has spread the idea of the “autistic savant” but mainly to convince the nazis to stop killing neurodiverse children. Because Asperger was German*, the rest of the world couldn’t care less about what he had to say at the time, leading the neurotypical and high masking neurodiverse people to mistreat and misunderstand neurodiverse people for decades… which led to history to lobotomies, and there I dropped the book. I intend to pick it back up, but I really really don’t want to…

Ain’t I a woman has somewhat provided a passage to go back to facing the horrors white men inflicted on this society that is apparently weakened by diversity. Of course it is. It’s an unfair society that thrives on oppression. Without it, it’s not functioning. Looking forward to it’s failure.

I am a bit fed up with white people’s philosophies, history and other bulshit. I’m looking to the others in the hopes of finding alternatives to this sick society. Marxisms has failed once. I don’t care to see it fail again. It is still a white men’s philosophy. I need something different, closer to nature and more organic. Something that would make space for everyone and would self regulate without the need for human control.

*negating everything a person or group of people did because they do not share your current values that might not have even been accessible to the people in the past may cause us to lose important information and discoveries that can do harm which could otherwise be avoided.

*turns out Asperger stole the reaserch on autism from Grunya Sukhareva, who defined it in 1925 almost as it is in the DSM – 5 – TR, which was released in 2022. So there was a century of suffering for autistics, specifically those with high support needs, because …men 🤬