8. ABOUT MEN AND WOMEN
WTM FAQ 8.4 Is this work sexist? / Does this work propagate paternalistic, sexist views? / Why are there so many quotes by dead, white males? / Does this work ignore women? / Isn’t it time to move on and be more inclusive? / Doesn’t this all run counter to Critical Race Theory and Critical Gender Theory?
The WTM occasionally receives criticism that Jeremy Griffith’s approach and use of quotes and language is sexist, even racist, and should be more inclusive. For example, one reader wrote, ‘As in many works from many different fields of study I find that male authors, particularly white male authors, choose images and language which, in the final analysis, erases women for the most part. The occasional inclusion of a poem here or there, does not eliminate the overall tone of sexism and probably racism as well. We all see the world from our own perspectives, individually and culturally. I am just so tired of finding my own kind, women, ignored, not noticed or erased, either mindlessly or deliberately that I find myself needing to struggle to continue to remain open to the rest of what you all want to say here’, and, ‘If Griffith can recognize the need for different roles in the past for females and for males, can he / all of us not now update language and images and thinking…since those separations of roles are less necessary now?’
To help context this FAQ 8.4 we suggest you also read FAQ 8.1 for a brief description of how this explanation of the human condition finally reconciles men and women, and FAQ 8.2 for explanation of sex as humans have practised it.
In response, firstly, we can now understand the overall situation the human race has been in, which is that the whole human race has been unjustly condemned as evil, with the gender most unjustly condemned as evil being males. Certainly, as Jeremy explains in his book FREEDOM, being the victims of victims (i.e. victims of men), women have had to endure horrible suffering and ill-treatment without even being able to intuitively understand the battle like men could (see par. 797 of FREEDOM), but the greater truth is that the most extreme sufferers of the upset state of the human condition have been men. That’s the true story.
With regard to the horrible suffering and ill-treatment of women, the following message that Jeremy wrote in response to a woman’s mistreatment reveals his extremely empathetic, compassionate appreciation of what women have had to endure. (This woman who had been reading FREEDOM wrote: ‘Have been in this whole thing [reading FREEDOM] a couple of weeks. It was the part where it says men are the true heroes. Yup threw my iPad. Yes, my own stuff. Been raped several times. My real father, I never knew. Stepfather couldn’t have cared less. Put into the foster system where I was continuously disposable or molested. And now I’m supposed to think they are heroes!! I finally got past it and am deeper into that chapter. Trying so hard to understand. Especially because women have been at the bottom, used for fodder after a battle, not allowed to own anything, work, vote, etc since the beginning of time it seems.’) Jeremy’s deeply empathetic response was as follows:
“The horror of the human journey has been so great that it is possibly going to be beyond our powers of appreciation for all time, and what you’ve had to endure is an example of just how extreme the horror has been. Hitler murdered millions of Jews, children have been horrendously hurt by the upset world of adults for 2 million years, the animals and the environment as a whole have been ruthlessly exploited and abused by us humans for 2 million years, and yes, women have been horrifically abused and oppressed by men. But that’s the thing, one day we had to find the biological reason for all that horror, we had to finally be able to explain the human condition, finally resolve the issue of ‘Are humans fundamentally evil or not?’. There had to be a greater truth that explains our capacity for horrendous brutality and insensitivity, because if there wasn’t and we humans believed at the bottom of our heart that we are fundamentally evil beings, then surely we couldn’t have continued the human journey as we’ve been able to. In Freedom Essay 12, I have given this example of the eternal hope that we would find redeeming, healing understanding of our unspeakable condition: ‘The composer Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote a requiem inspired, he said, by the story of a Cambodian boy who had been forced by the soldiers of Pol Pot to kill his sister. But how could such horror inspire such beautiful music? Surely it’s because there is this greater truth that stands above all the horror and suffering on this planet—which is that despite our capacity for evil, humans are still sublimely beautiful beings. Despite our capacity for evil, we are still good. So that’s how Lloyd Webber could write a requiem inspired by that total horror.’
What is so astronomically special is that we now have that redeeming understanding of the beyond-description horror of our 2-million-years soul-corrupted human condition—because without it, trying to confront and think about all the horror in the world has been unbearably excruciating. And since in your case the horror of what you’ve experienced is beyond any of our abilities to even begin to feel, it will require patience by you to gradually confront and digest this redeeming understanding of the human condition (FAQ 1.19, which counsels that none of us should overly confront our corrupted condition, is especially helpful in this regard).
The human race has been truly horrible in its behaviour, men have been truly horrible in our behaviour, but why has the human race been so horrible, and why have men been so brutal? There is a reason—the human race has been horrifically unjustly condemned, and having to carry out the virtually impossible job of championing the conscious ego over our all-loving and all-sensitive instinctive self or soul has made men the monsters they have been. But now we can understand all that—and it makes sense that in the more extreme situations of damage from that horrible predicament, the more time it will take for the ameliorating understanding to be absorbed enough to help with that pain and bring meaning to the suffering. The soul-grievances that the whole natural world, like all the animals, like the Tasmanian Tiger that I tried to save, have to be so great that we can wonder if they will ever be able to forgive us; not that they are conscious enough to really grapple with the horror but deep in themselves they must feel the horror of what we’ve done to them. The grievances that women have are so astronomical it’s fair to wonder if in their heart of hearts they will ever be able to forgive us men. Everywhere we look there’s so much horror, but the thing is we’ve finally found the understanding needed to ameliorate all those layers of pain, but it will vary as to how much time each individual will need for that amelioration to help them. All of us who read your comment will be completely inadequate in our capacity to reach you with the love you deserve and need, but we can give you this greater understanding of the horrific human condition to try to help you. You have all the love we can manage, as best we can we love you for now and forever and ever and ever and ever, Jeremy.”
With regard to the accusation that Jeremy’s work is ‘sexist’, referencing ‘only white males’ from literature, it is necessary to go back to the overall situation the human race has been in. As Jeremy explains in all his presentations, the excruciating situation the human race has been in is that while we couldn’t explain our corrupted condition, we couldn’t afford to admit it without being suicidally depressed. And so what we did to cope was to deny the whole issue of our corrupted human condition. We hid in Plato’s deep, dark cave of denial. And so we contrived dishonest, artificial ways to protect ourselves from unbearable self-confrontation, which Jeremy explains in his booklet Death by Dogma is why we came up with such dishonest theories as Critical Theory and its offshoots Critical Gender Theory and Critical Race Theory, that claim that amongst other supposed crimes there has been sexist and racist, unjust white male privilege. However, as Jeremy explains in Death by Dogma about such criticism of white males: ‘There was no recognition [in Critical Theory] of the human race’s great project to find the knowledge that would actually liberate us from our corrupted condition, and how involvement in that great project unavoidably created various states of upset and functionality—where, for example, those presently most functional under the duress of the human condition, and the gender most responsible for searching for knowledge, namely white males, had to and have succeeded in finding the liberating understanding of the human condition, as all the great thinkers mentioned in this book evidence. So it has not been a case of unfair white privilege, especially unjust WHITE MALE PRIVILEGE as critical theorists are teaching, but rather a case of fulfilled white male responsibility.’
So, now that our corrupted human condition has finally been truthfully explained, all this historic dishonest hiding in Plato’s deep, dark cave of denial is no longer necessary and we can all emerge out into the sunshine of the real reconciling understanding of the lives of men and women and of different ethnic groups or races; we can live our lives now in truth and freedom from the human condition. So we urge any advocates of Critical Theory to read Death by Dogma. Critical Theory and its derivatives of Critical Race Theory and Critical Gender Theory are addressed there in paragraphs 112-134, where you will find the above passage about white males. (Freedom Essay 28: The end of racism explains how understanding of the human condition ends all prejudices, like racism, forever.)
And with regard to being able to move on to a more inclusive worldview, as stated above, that is exactly what understanding of the human condition finally does make possible. However, that reconciling understanding depends on actually admitting and reconciling what has happened—admitting and explaining all the ill-treatments and horrors that have been going on. We have to get the truth up to be able to move on. Jeremy’s chapter in FREEDOM about men and women (chapter 8:11B) is excruciatingly honest, but that honesty is necessary for us to be able to move past that angry, egocentric and alienated way of living. We have to admit and explain what happened for us to be able to move on from that horrible existence. There are some deadly honest quotes about the brutality of men towards women in FREEDOM, and some deadly honest quotes about the horrible role women have had to endure—such as women not being ‘mainframed’ to men’s horrifically awful and agonising battle of having to champion the ego over our instinctive self or soul, and having had to be ‘bimbos, breeders, babysitters and burdens’—but all that honesty is why FREEDOM is such a psychologically relieving book for the human race. As Jeremy writes in the final sentence of FREEDOM, ‘while there had to be a causation for events in the world [which is all the honesty in FREEDOM], all that really matters now is that everyone’s life is celebrated’.
