My case to receive reparations is just as solid as the case for reparations to be paid to African-Americans by lesser-hyphenated-Americans.
Many members of a group to which I belong by accident of birth were enslaved by the group to which you belong by accident of birth (talking to you, heterogametic oppressors). Don’t waste my time with talk about how the law has given women equal legal status to men for generations now, because we are still poorer than you. Well some of us are poorer than some of you and some of us are richer than some of you, but let me tell you that even if I’m doing fine myself, the thought of people with bodies more like mine being on average poorer than people with bodies less like mine is a profound hurt that can only be assuaged by money.
No, the fact that you personally have never enslaved, beaten or otherwise oppressed a woman is not relevant. Can’t you see this thing is bigger than mere individual morality?
You can stop whingeing about how lots of men in history were oppressed quite as much as women were, or how people of both sexes were oppressed on many grounds other than gender, such as class, religion, nationality and race. I am quite aware of that already and join with all victim-groups in unbreakable solidarity, unless any of the oppressors included my ancestors such as to place me in a paying-out group, in which case the notion of paying reparations for the crimes of one’s ancestors is ridiculous. It is the present – a present in which many women are cruelly oppressed – not the past that matters! (Er, when it comes to us getting the money, that is. When it comes to deciding who pays the money, it’s the situation centuries ago that matters, obviously.)
Anyway, why should an artificial construct like “nationality” or “race” be the factor that determines who gets reparations? Gender, unlike race, can be determined objectively. Make gender the criterion and you will be troubled by very few of those pettifogging legalisms you get with race about how all the mixed ancestry people would have to pay reparations to themselves.
Cease your caterwauling about how your great-grandpa once put half a crown in a suffragette collection box. Obviously guilt can be inherited (by you) but the notion of heritable credit is contrary to reason.
None of your man-splainin’ nonsense about being partially descended from women, either. I’m certainly not going to let myself off from the solemn duty of identifying solely with my own gender just because some of my ancestors were men. See, if I can maintain decent standards of group segregation, so can you.
Do not presume to ask how many generations must go by before your group is to be permitted to cease its duty of unrequited toil (mediated via the tax collector and the Reparations Administration Agency) for the benefit of my group. Be assured that we will let you know when we no longer want your money. Until then, woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. That’s you, that is.
Time of the month Natalie? 😉
That’ll be an extra £100 p.w. from you, Johnny-boy.
“woman is the nigger of the world”
is that the idea? yea, it’s not really new.
Wait a minute, I may be genetically a male, but as an zygote I started off female, which in mammals is the default setting, before I was made into a male by a mix of chromosomes, genes and hormones. With my X chromosome, I am, in a way, half-female, (and I have less DNA than a female human, as my Y is shorter), so I want a 50% rebate, and my mitochondria are female, so rounding down in my favour please.
I would also like to subrogate any claims against me to the Italian Republic, as they are the successors (in a way, along with the Pope) to the Roman Empire, who had their wicked slavery in what became England where some of my ancestors lived, and my Celtic forebears had all sorts of problems with the Romans.
This ‘reparations’ idea is gaining ground in the Caribbean islands, perhaps I would agree on the basis of paying for it by levying a tax on all flights out there, maybe £250 each way, that should concentrate their minds a bit.
And if you go to Barbados and meet the ‘poor whites’, who are derogatorily referred to as ‘Redlegs’ or ‘Ecky-Beckys‘, you will find people who are the descendants, it is said, of indentured Scots and Irish sent there to be worked (often to death) in the most appalling conditions. As they had to be given land after say, 7 years, and set free, the ‘owners’ had every reason to work them to death, and many took it. Surely they have a claim too?
But who do the Russians sue for Lenin, Stalin and the GULAGs?
You mean my Team Pink card doesn’t exempt me from oppression because…penis?
JG, Have you ever heard of a gay wildebeest on the Serengeti not getting eaten by lions on account of the card he was carrying?
What a load of old Cod.
Very true Mr. Ed
Going back to Natalie’s original point, when have reparations ever been successful? Sure, you can extort money out of someone at the point of a gun or over the defeated nation at the surrender table, but isn’t that just a form of bully’s justice?
Try Googling “success of reparations” and see how much success you can find? As usual it is the lawyers, politicians and the politically connected which end up siphoning of the majority of the money. Do we really think giving lawyers or politicians more cash helps anyone other than the lawyers and politicians?
Well, it helps their wives. Especially during and after the divorce.
William, some of them are wives. Don’t be a misogynist :-O
Hm. Talking of reparations, I wonder if Volkswagen‘s still up for grabs.
There I was thinking that the news of the day related to the local and Euro elections. Of course how foolish, the everlasting issue of everyday is women. That half of the human race endowed with total flexibility in whining. Oh wait a minute your joshing, Good God, for a moment I thought you were being serious.
Knowing a few corporate and tax specialists, the wives tend to only cash out in the divorce. Most of the money goes to mistresses and prostitutes.
Hence the high rate of alcoholism, drug abuse and divorce in the profession.
Oh dear! What a quaintly, old-fashioned view.
Actually, I correct myself- HATE CRIME!!!!!
I don’t think I’ve ever before been called a “heterogametic oppressor.” I’m vaguely flattered.
But as to “Gender, unlike race, can be determined objectively”, Facebook has 51 “gender options” with which to identify yourself. It’s not as simple as you seem to think. Bigot.
Laird,
It’s actually “hetero game tic oppressor”, which is less political and more boring.
Natalie’s on to something, though. Now that I can have my genes sequenced, I can get reparations for being in several specific, irrefutable, oppressed minority groups. Short, ginger, Welsh, nearsighted, melanoma-prone, the list goes on and on.
Analogizing from the Gold Rush, though, the real money will be in the ancillary aspects, particularly 1) endless lawyering, and 2) lifetime gov. agency staffing positions with generous retirement plans.
Oh, I forgot legislative corruption and lobbying gigs.
That was hilarious.
Us blue-eyed people have been wickedly abused by you brown-eyed oppressors.
Give me money!
Roue:
Everyone know it’s the blue-eyed who are the real oppressors. Damn you and your revisionist history!
Women: Can’t live with them, can’t shoot them.
Natalie is correct in her mockery.
Criminal law is based on individual crimes committed by individuals against other individuals.
Also (in civil law) I can (or should) only be asked to pay compensation for something I have personally done – to another individual.
“Group” crimes (group victims or group criminals) is Frankfurt School of Marxism (“Critical Theory”) stuff – it is deliberately designed to attack Civil Society (which the Reds call “capitalism”).
There is no group responsibility (“you are white so you owe me money” is insane) and there is no such thing as a group victim.
Hmmm.
“the thought of people with bodies more like mine being on average poorer than people with bodies less like mine”
As it happens the majority of wealth is held by women (longer life spans and inheritance etc to blame for that), so, on average women are richer than men.
I await my cheque.
Well done Sir! – err, Ma’am.
I’m so confused…
Natalie,
“Gender, unlike race, can be determined objectively”.
If you mean “original gender” as in “at birth”, I agree. But standing on a street corner in San Francisco (not to pick on SF…substitute most any large city) and choosing passersby at random, the odds of guessing “birth gender” correctly are well under 50-50. A coin flip is your best bet.
p.s., I wrote this post before reading Laird’s comment about “51 genders” listed by Wikipedia. Spot on. So much for the coin flip.
Sorry, one more tidbit
Natalie, you want reparations? Go for the deep pockets and sue Jack Nicholson: “…[How do I ‘write women so well’?] I think of a man and take away reason and accountability”, from the movie “As Good As It Gets”. Should be “As Misogynist As It Gets”, right?
So many targets, not enough lawyers!
As a person of Celtic-Germanic European descent, I demand reparations for the slaughter and enslavement of my ancestors by the Romans, particularly under the illegal warfare of one Gaius Julius Caesar…I shall be submitting my demands to the Italian government forthwith.
Ha, shows what you know: you are not a person, you are a Man, a White Man at that. Shut up and pay up.
Tim Worstall,
You just don’t understand.
Clearly it is a benefit to receive money (such as reparations) without having to work for it.
Therefore possession of whatever quality makes one eligible for reparations is a form of unearned privilege.
Relative group poverty is by definition the result of past injustice, and makes your group eligible for reparations.
Therefore you males, by your relative poverty, are the possessors of unearned privilege.
Therefore it is only justice that you privileged ones make reparations to those like me who are underprivileged.
(Standing orders and direct debits payable to the Natalie Solent Justice for Womyn Settlement Account.)
I’m in love. Natalie, will you marry me and have my (female) children?
@Natalie: I have no intrinsic problem with paying reparations to the womyns that we PHs (penis-holders [sic]) have been oppressing for so long — as long as honest accounting includes the not-so-small fortune I’ve paid to womyns in the form of alimony and child support over the course of multiple failed marriages.
In fact, if those amounts are taken into account, I might well be owed a rebate.
I am an Englishman born to a Norwegian Mother and a half Irish Father. As an Englishman, I’ll pay compensation to my Dad for the potato famine when my Mum pays me compensation for sacking Lindisfarne!
Mr Pants, there’s a Polar Bear (Ice Bear to you perhaps) wanting compensation from you for Amundsen, and a few penguins want their Danegeld too, they take priority over your Dad as preferential creditors.
From my first date in junior high school to the present, I’ve been paying (and paying and paying) in my efforts to get womyn to acknowledge my existence, spend time with me, and/or join me in the physical pleasures associated with sexual intercourse.
As a guy, I’ve been expected to shell out money for dates, flowers, candy, dinners, gasoline, a “respectable” car in which women would deign to be seen with me, and whatever other odd sundries might strike a female’s fancy.
Looking back at my pre-marriage days and reviewing the sums I expended on this pursuit, I would conservatively estimate that each instance of actually-achieved sexual congress cost me somewhere in the neighborhood of $32,500.00.
Depressingly, I’m quite sure my instances of “married sex” have been even more expensive.
So I’m thinking that we’ve been paying y’all beaucoup reparations all along.
Natalie,
I haven’t read any of the comments yet, only your essay explaining forthrightly and clearly* what’s what to the ungodly.
All I can say is, Brava !!!
*And, of course, hilariously.
I think you have a just and forthright case, as I am in my seventies and on a pension can I pay in kind. Or failing that can you tie me up and enslave me and treat me as your sexual plaything as penance for my male ancestors.
@Bobby B:
As I recall even Eliot Spitzer only paid $4,000 a time for Ashley Dupré and she was pretty attractive for a whore.
Peter Whale is clearly a master at ‘gaming the system’!
How about compensation for all the times MEN had to go out and hunt for food- or Flowers, whichever a woman wanted on that instant!? I read a book which explained that women trading marriage for goods is what gave rise to all of civilization, so Womenkind is responsible for the despoiling of the entire planet! How are you females, the guilty instigatrices, going to pay for that???
Ms Solent,
If it isn’t phallocentricist or patronising to suggest it, may I point out that the correct terms for “women” and “men” are “womyn” and “rapists” respectively.