Gentlemen. And ladies. Meet Carissa Véliz. I would like to call this lady a self-styled philosopher; unfortunately she has credentials as the real thing, at least on paper. Which begs the question, what sort of garbage now passes for philosophy in our institutions of higher learning? That true philosopher Professor Antony Flew must be spinning in his grave. Bear with me, and I will explain why. Philosophy used to mean thinking about nature, Nature itself and human nature: the nature of reality, existence, the theory of knowledge, the purpose if any of life, good and evil. And so on.
True philosophers are supposed to think critically, not accept uncritically any garbage that is peddled to them and the rest of us by special interest groups or just plain liars. Here is some of the nonsense she espouses re so-called gender equality.
“After a long history of patriarchal societies, discrimination against women is still predominant, despite myths about it being a thing of the past.”
Does she really believe in patriarchy theory? Apparently so. In the past, women suffered terrible discrimination, after all they were sent off to fight wars, or to labour from dawn till dusk in the fields while men stayed home looking after the young. No? The ancient Greeks fought a war over Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships. Did any nation go to war over a man’s face, even in mythology? Gender roles, so-called, evolved not because of the wicked patriarchy but because without them, civilisation would not have survived. Women of child-bearing age and young girls are more precious than men, because a woman can bare how many children? While a man can in theory sire hundreds.
In the modern world, traditional gender roles are not so important, women don’t die in childbirth to the extent they used to; however dangerous the streets of our cities may be, they are a lot safer than the environments in which our distant ancestors lived; education is universal because the advance of technology means there is more time for the young to be educated. Unfortunately, as Miss Véliz shows, education is not always a boon.
Here’s a gem: “In 1997, it was estimated that women worked two-thirds of the world’s working hours, earned 10% of the world’s income and owned less than 1% of the world’s property”. She cites World Bank Development Indicators, 1997 as the source of this claim; unfortunately, as Christina Hoff Sommers points out, these figures were plucked out of thin air like most feminist statistics.
Let’s take just one of the above. Do women really own only 1% of the world’s property, and even if that were the case, would it matter? Much property is owned not by individuals – men or women – but by non-human entities. The Government owns much land in all countries. Infrastructure: roads, schools, hospitals, may be owned by the government, local authorities, and so on. An art gallery may be a registered charity, like for example, the Tate Gallery in London. Art galleries contain colossal wealth, though not the sort we can consume or put to use. However, apart from special exhibitions, most galleries and museums (in the UK) are open to the public free. Clearly access is easier for people who live within easy travelling distance, but in a sense the art displayed in these galleries belongs to the nation or even to the entire world.
In the UK, the Crown in the personage of the Queen owns enormous wealth including the forces – HM Armed Forces, and even the prison system – HMP. This holding of wealth is though purely symbolic, and is more of a liability than an asset, because prisons and armies do not make money. If one removes all the aforementioned forms of wealth from the equation, do women really own only 1% of the UK’s property, of America’s property, of China’s property? Clearly not. Then there is another factor to be taken into account, married couples and even families may own much of their wealth collectively; a housewife who has a wealthy husband may have no income in her own right, the same may be said of their children, but he is duty bound to provide for her. In the US, females in higher education have outnumbered males for some time; these are the high earners of the future, so clearly the figures cited by both the World Bank and our airhead philosopher are total bunk.
Sadly, Miss Véliz has also swallowed the rape culture nonsense of the sisterhood; here she parrots “1 in 6 women in the US, for example, have been the victims of a completed or attempted rape, and many rapists will say that they didn’t rape their victim even if a woman said no at the start. So, if you’re a man, be very careful about getting explicit consent and not imposing yourself on a woman.”
Studies like the infamous Ms survey conducted by Mary Koss tell us as much about the true instance of rape as for example the June 2012 survey that revealed 36% of Americans believe in flying saucers. The big difference is that the theory of flying saucers sounds good whereas the claim that one woman in 6, one in 5 or even one in 4 is or will become a rape victim sounds like and is lying propaganda. And is the average age of entry into prostitution really 13? That would imply that some or indeed many start younger; clearly this is not prostitution but child sexual abuse, which is an entirely different matter. It is simply ludicrous for her to claim that most prostitutes are abused or coerced into the oldest profession; it may be a sordid business, but not only do many women make a good living out of it – in a purely financial sense – most are happy doing it, whatever social stigma it may have.
Some do it part-time, many give it up as they age, be it out of choice or necessity, and the claim that the average age of death of prostitutes is 34 is based on what evidence, precisely? Her claim based on a New York Times article (she says) that around 90% of an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 prostitutes working in Spain have been trafficked is emotive nonsense. The word trafficked – and declensions thereof – is a recent addition to the lexicon of lunacy; it is used to imply coercion or even slavery. The bottom line is that a taxi driver who drives a prostitute to a meeting with a client can be said to have trafficked her.
Having said that, there has been a certain amount of organised trafficking of prostitutes in Spain and elsewhere, but it remains to be seen how many of these women were genuinely coerced and much less forced into prostitution, whatever tall tales they tell the police when they are busted in raids.
Let’s not bother with the nonsense about the gender pay gap, at least not while the patriarchy is paying her to produce gibberish.
Under Living Ethically, Miss Véliz displays the full extent of both her ignorance and her naïveté when she claims banks lend money. Does anyone still believe this? Banks do not lend money, rather they create credit; I have explained this in my speech Pay Wealth-Creators, Not Banksters, others have explained it before me, and increasingly ordinary people are coming to recognise the banking scam for what it is. It remains to be seen though if even Goldman Sachs has knowingly been involved in the trafficking of underage girls for the sex trade as she claims here.
Miss Véliz is also an advocate of veganism: cows, pigs, and chickens, all show a wide array of emotions, including fear and happiness, she says. Certainly cows do, although they do not necessarily display much intelligence. Is it really cruel, barbaric, inhumane to breed animals for food? Why don’t you ask your local fox? Hey dude, don’t you realise that tearing chickens to shreds is cruel, barbaric and unfoxlike? Have you ever considered veganism? But it gets worse: a vegetarian can save up to about 400 lives a year, she says. Man, she must have found that figure on the same website as her ludicrous rape statistics.
Gentlemen. And ladies. Miss Véliz is a truly tragic case. All the more tragic for me, because I really could have done with meeting a woman like her thirty years ago when I would have charmed her into my bed with my own hard luck story, and probably have persuaded her to pick up the restaurant bill into the bargain.
