Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true. – Alfred, Lord Tennyson
It seems like such a short time ago that the new century began, yet here we are starting its twelfth year. It’s still so new-and-all that some people are still saying “two thousand twelve”; I guess they don’t realize how positively Victorian that sounds. Come on, say it with me: “twenty twelve”. Doesn’t that sound better? I’ve been saying “twenty” since at least 2002, but I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll still be hearing the “two thousand” thing until 2040 or later (assuming I’m still around then).
But then, maybe the Victorian stodginess is appropriate to this new era. Modern culture has returned to Victorianism in so many ways; as in the “social purity” era, a coalition of conservative Christians and small-minded, narcissistic, middle-class white “feminists” has succeeded in selling its ideas of social engineering to the society at large, resulting in an ever-increasing mountain of restrictions on private “vices” such as sex and drug use. Once again we are being told that sex is “harmful”, especially to “children” (meaning anyone under 21), that prostitutes are the mentally defective “victims” of evil men, that there is a secret international conspiracy to sell millions of women and children into sexual slavery to satisfy “sinful” male lusts, and that women are eternal, sexless Trilbys who require paternal protection from mustachioed male Svengalis. Once again white Westerners are being urged to take up the “White Man’s Burden” and work to shepherd the degraded, childlike brown races from their inferior state by forcing them to accept our vastly superior culture (for their own good, of course). And once again plain, honest language is avoided in favor of vague, polysyllabic euphemisms designed to hide meaning rather than convey it, as discussed in my column from last New Year’s Day.
The good news is, the Victorian Era didn’t last forever and neither will the Neovictorian. Sooner or later it must give way to a new version of the Roaring Twenties, in which the stifling prudery of early 21st-century culture is swept away until it returns again to afflict some future unfortunate generation after most of those who remember how awful it was have passed on.
This was great.
And happy New Year, Maggie.
On that note, I’ve been reading a lot from the Radfem website.
I’ve never read as much naked hatred of men and maleness as I’ve seen there. It’s almost hallucinogenic. In the comments to this post is all kinds of talk about how it’s easy to eliminate men, now, and that even sperm is unnecessary.
It’s clear: They don’t like being human. Actually, almost all of what they write is inconsistent on its face, mostly platitudes and is tantamount to vitriolic hate speech. It terrifies me to think that some of these women might have male children.
The hallucinogenic naked hatred of men is so extreme, it makes the hallucinogenic hatred of Jews in Europe in 1938 look like a love fest.
And to think that these women help draft social policy for a species with both men and women.
http://radicalhub.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/a-holiday-gift-idea-from-the-boutique-of-low-goals/#more-5112
It terrifies me.
Take a gander at the wealth of joy in the comments.
Hallucinogenic is being extremely generous in description.
I’m amazed at the amount of “womyn” on there that actually agree with the notion that feminism is a worldwide struggle to put all the evil menz in their place.
If i had a spaceship large enough I would gladly shoot them off out into space were they wouldn’t have to put up with our evil repressive ways.
Gorbachev,
Thanks for sending us that awful website. Especially the part where they say “OWS is a Men’s Movement”. These radfem groups have been spreading over-exaggerations of rape at OWS camps. They forget to mention that it’s probably undercover cops that are mostly responsible for this.
The good news is, the Victorian Era didn’t last forever and neither will the Neovictorian. Sooner or later it must give way to a new version of the Roaring Twenties, in which the stifling prudery of early 21st-century culture is swept away until it returns again to afflict some future unfortunate generation after most of those who remember how awful it was have passed on.
Indeed, the cycle never stops.
Decades after “white slavery” mania had faded, in 1949 the United Nations treaty Convention on the Suppression of Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others kept the myth alive, as did a further treaty in 1979. The collapse of various communist regimes 1989-92 then set the stage for the current wave of global trafficking hysteria to begin.
I wonder how old I’ll be when the neo Twenties arrives? Plus let’s hope we don’t have to have another Great War before we get it…
I wish we were in a Victorian era.
The Victorians knew how to get things done. In primary school, I wrote a paper on Isambard Kingdom Brunell. He was one of those very competent Victorians, who woke up every morning saying “Today I shall change the world”. And he did. Although he only lived to be 53, his work revolutionized public transport and tunnel building. When a task was thought to be impossible, he was the man to go to to get it done.
We seem to be lacking in people like him today.
Science made great strides during that time. Our modern age was born then.
But also in the Victorian era, prostitution was legal, and common, although the reformers were working on it. Anti-slavery was an issue, to be sure, with the British Navy stopping slave ships on the seas and putting a huge dent into the slave trade. Drug use was legal. Labor unions were formed, and some of the first worker protections were passed. Housing construction was booming all over Britain.
Society took great steps in improving public health and education. (I’m not even certain there was such a concept as public health before the Victorian era.) Laws were passed to decrease child labor. The 1870 public education act was passed, providing for free education for all British children.
“Good” women kept close watch on their “virtue”, providing more business for us whores.
Now days, our so-called leaders seem to be trying to take us backwards, and re-establish all the things the Victorians worked to eliminate, child labor, debtors prisons, letting the destitute starve, and no protections for workers.
There’s a reason almost every town and village in the UK has a statue of Queen Victoria.
Comixchix,
Thanks for the mention of Brunell. I’d not heard of him and his wiki entry looks interesting. Can you recommend any books in print about him?
The golden lining is demographic. All the people one so rightly hates are exiting the gene pool with a seemly haste.–
It’s nothing so quaint as “prudery” that makes the current cant so disgustingly strict and energetic — no — it’s nihilism and the sense of existence as meaningless that animates the current rigor and cruelty.
Wherever you find ideological vigor in modern culture look for the purely religious impulse at its core.
Very few love the godless world and its empty skies.
Twenty Ten: A Space Odyssey just doesn’t have the right ring to it. 8).
Happy New Year.
I welcome a return to the Roaring Twenties after this Neo-Victorian downswing….however, I refuse to use the term “the bees knees” as part of my daily speech.
I dunno; can “23 skidoo” really be any more meaningless than “where’s the beef?” 😀
Good point.
Where’s the what?
Oh yeah; the Eighties. Gag me with a spoon, but the Eighties were weird.
Well, c.Andrew, it’s been, ahem, a few years since I did that school report. Another interesting character was Joseph Swan. He invented the incandescent light bulb. Yes, I know, Americans think it was Edison. Swan received a patent for his bulb in 1880, years before Edison introduced his.
Most of my research on Brunell came from the encyclopedia Britannica, and a history of great Victorians, and I’m not sure it’s still in print. But there has to be something out there about him.
Even when I was in school, though, it was all the fashion to deny any greatness at all to those awful “dead white males” of the Empire. Instead, we were taught how awful the Empire was, and how wrong.
Thanks comixchix,
One of the things I got from my grandfather was an Encyclopedia Britannica from the 1920’s. It still referred to WWI as the “Great War.” There are some volumes missing but I’ll see if the one containing Brunell is available.
Um Maggie i hope you dont mind answering this here but…..can you tell me what are the best and worst days to visit a brothel? As you know i frequently visit one and half avoided busybody cops so far….but I want to continue that good luck for the new year.
Are their certain days and times i should try to avoid going so i do not get caught in a sting?
Comixchik is right about election times; I might also add the week before religious holidays, when “Christian” politicians and cops get especially holier-than-thou.
Thanks Maggie 🙂 I know many times cops get an orgasm over apprehending multiple guys at once during the “pay days” of Thursday and Friday…..so i usually try to go on mainly Mondays very early. I hope that works. But then again my gut tells me there is no specific schedule that is the absolute best
Avoid election times.
This reminded me of the 1950s and 1960s. We think of the Fifties as utterly Victorian, with everything from boring clothes to segregated buses. Leave it to Beaver.
Now the Sixties: those were swingin’ times! Hippies. Anti-war protests. Woodstock. Apollo.
But things didn’t switch over from back-of-the-bus and the Beav to hell-no-we-won’t-go and Woodstock overnight. There were hints in the Fifties themselves: Playboy. Little Rock High School. Beatniks. The Pill. Rock n’ roll. Sputnik.
So are there any beatniks today? Any Little Rock Highs? Rock n’ roll? Sputnik? Yes, I believe that there are. Today there is gay marriage. Medical marijuana. Barack Obama.* The first hints of an AIDS cure. Prostitution being legalized and decriminalized in various countries around the world. Virgin Galactic.
To everybody in this new year I’d like to wish peace, love, and understanding. Or, as we say it these day:
Peace
Love
Unity
Respect
* Whatever you think of the guy, and I’ve already said I won’t be voting for him, the fact that the United States of America elected a black man to the presidency is a BFD. In fact, I think it’s the first time any majority white nation has elected a non-white head of state.
Twenty hundred!! Twenty twelve!! Twenty fourteen!! Yes, yes, YES!!!
Oh, and the Victorian Era was also the era when the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, and Ireland became the British *Empire*. It was an era of empire-building. No one thought twice about Europeans pitching natives out of their lands, for the benefit only of the Europeans.
That was when the French took Egypt over from the Turks, and the Brits took it over from the English. That was when the British government took India away from the East India Company and put it directly under the British crown. That was when Belgium — !!Belgium!! — took over a vast estate in equatorial Africa, and proceeded to plunder it of its valuable raw materials.
That was the Victorian Era.
I have said, for a long time, that the fundamental mistake of the Israelis is that they created a Jewish state in the Palestine region in the 1940s … about 100 years too late.
I used the “two thousand {number}” format up to and including 2009. After that, it was “twenty ten,” “twenty eleven,” and so on. And it’s catching on. I hear “two thousand fourteen” a lot less than I heard “two thousand ten.”