Cordite & Testosterone - Why Men Should Not Be Running the World. Cecilia Boone's Tanner
CORDITE
& TESTOSTERONE
by
Cecilia Tanner
Cordite & Testosterone
Copyright © 2008, Cecilia Tanner
Revised Edition, © 2012, Cecilia Tanner
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by Ruksak Books
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-0-9879283-0-6
A cataloguing record for this book is available from Library and Archives Canada at www.collectionscanada.ca/amicus/index-e.html
This book is dedicated
to everyone’s children
(1) Men Can’t Be Trusted to Run the World
March 2008 headlines:
Prince Harry Goes to War.
In February 2008, Prince Harry of England went to “the front lines” in Afghanistan for 10 weeks.
Why?
Because he wanted “to be one of the lads.” How many men or near-men want to kill and be killed “to be one of the lads”–not even to rescue democracy which is also fatuous altruistic nonsense, ie. killing people to save their lives? or restoring a democracy that never existed? But the press gleefully and admiringly reported how wonderful it was that Prince Harry just wanted “to be one of the lads”.
And he went to the “front lines”. They find this even more admirable since they love the old war talk. But where are the front lines in Afghanistan? They don’t line up and charge with bayonets on the rifles anymore. Did someone draw a line in the dirt for Prince Harry?
This is just too much; words absolutely fail me. Did we ever see Queen Elizabeth take up a gun and stride to the frontlines “to be one of the lasses”?
Prince Harry’s older brother, Prince William, has expressed sorrow that he wasn’t able to go to the front like his younger brother.
The fundamental argument in this book is that males have different drives than females, and the activities they undertake to gratify those drives are destroying the human race and the planet.
Running the world is one activity that should be gender neutral because males and females have an equal stake in the outcomes of local, national and international decisions. There is no evidence in the whole world that indicates male leadership is good for the world, because when you mix testosterone & cordite, common sense, reason, and sanity disappear.
Feminists claim women do feminine things because they have been socialized to do so. Women do female things because they are women. Men and women are not better or worse than each other, just different. The Yin is not better than the Yang. What women have been socialized to accept is male supremacy. The author Barbara Kingsolver remarked, “At some time in their lives, girls look around to see who is running the world, and it’s not women,” and they don’t know why.
Women all over the world have been conditioned to defer to men in “important matters”. Look at every summit meeting–all males–maybe one woman. Look at the propaganda leading up to every trumped up war; suddenly women disappear and we see the heroics of male decision-makers “stepping up to the plate” to defeat evil and keep the world safe for their women and children. There is no room for the voice of women. War means that it will be necessary to slaughter the mother’s children in many hideous ways, so their silence is essential.
Cordite and Testosterone expands on the specific evidence of the male as an unworthy leader, looking at some male phenomenon such as male competition. One example is the male need to achieve the biggest, the tallest, the best, the most, whether it be the most money, the tallest building, the fastest car or the most luxurious yacht.
When men enter into the big competitions, they do so under honorable motives or at least purport to espouse such good motives. But when the competition gets underway, the greed and the power abuse take over. In Iran, the Islamic promise after the downfall of the Shaw, Reza Pahlavi, in 1979, was to create a fair and just Islamic society. And what did they get when the dust settled? Terrorization of the whole country and brutal oppression of the women. Women were forced to hide because they might excite the men sexually, which was ruled to be criminal. The vice squads patrolling on motorcycles and trucks would arrest women (mostly young) who revealed too much sock, or skin around their scarves, or talked to any man not their guardian, and then the vice squads tortured the women, flogged them, and jailed them where the women were “searched” and often raped, if not killed or both. This was not a crime in Iran. This they did in the pursuit of a better society.
Then Ayatollah Komeini vowed to kill all the infidels–this when he was fighting the war with Iraq, a Muslim country. When not fighting the Muslim infidels of Iraq, he vowed death to all Americans–the other infidels. Clearly, a very confused man. The whole country of Iran under Ayatollah Komeini was bedlam. Power turned into utter madness.
The whole world is male oriented, and human society is sick as a result.
Because patriarchy is in the interests of men, they will never willingly relinquish their advantages. Women have tried to make the changes. Women in the early 20th Century wanted the right to vote, the right to own property, the right to choose pregnancy, the right to better paying jobs. It was a drive for equal rights. We got some–some of us got some.
(In 2007, President Sarkozy chose to appoint almost as many women to his cabinet in France as men appointees. This was hopeful until we find that Sarkozy surrounded himself by many corrupt men who have the same old greed factor in their decisions.)
Now women have to go beyond that. Men can’t seem to discipline themselves to put the most important priorities at the top of their Do lists so women have to write the Do lists and make sure the men do those obligations first, then play their games. Nothing less.
Since the ill-taken invasion of Afghanistan, many men all over the world have taken on the fight mode and are looking for trouble. When I saw the stats of the murdered Iraqis and Americans in the Iraq war, 100,000 Iraqis and 4500 Americans–not even mentioning the dead British allies or other civilians–I was reminded of the image of the man who started the Iraq War being interviewed on a golf course during the war who commented when he thought he was off camera, “Okay, take a look at this swing,”–while people were being slaughtered. Even Attila the Hun was more engaged in his brutality than that.
Are we going to ignore the signs of this potential Armageddon hoping it will just go away? No one stops them because men with a lot of guns are hard to argue with. Those of us not participating in the violence tend to think that THEY will come to their senses and see the crimes of war that they are committing–someone somewhere. I think not. There isn’t someone somewhere. There is only us.
The women of Liberia in West Africa realized this, that no one was going to save them from the male bloodlust, so they took on the Liberian government and the bands of brutal oppressors–stood up on the streets and didn’t back down in the face of fearsome threats. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf led the Women of Liberia Action for Peace movement to win the 2005 elections, and in 2006 was inaugurated the first woman president in an African nation. Women can do it.
Primarily, men cannot be trusted to run the world for several main reasons:
1) Because men kill.
Not only do men kill other men and people in wars, but men kill people on the streets, the bars, the homes, and in their cars. They hunt animals for sport, they kill whales for money, they kill kill kill.
Uncle John says that “Murders