Male Allies Quotes

The result of this deeply male-dominated culture is that the male experience, the male perspective, has come to be seen as universal, while the female experience--that of half the global population, after all--is seen as, well, niche.

So you're Zach." Townsend didn't even try to hide the judgement in his voice as he looked Zach up and down in some sort of silent but dangerous examination. Zach huffed but smiled. "so you're Townsend." The two of them stared for a long time, wordless. It felt like I was watching a documentary on the Nature Channel, something about alpha males in the wild.

For how easy life must be for him. I wish I were bigger, stronger. Male. I wish I could make people stop worrying about me and my so called frailness.

In the interests of separation, Black women have been taught to view each other as always suspect, heartless competitors for the scarce male, the all-important prize that could legitimize our existence. This dehumanizing denial of self is no less lethal than the dehumanization of racism to which it is so closely allied.

Most girls, however much they resent their mothers, do become very much like them. Rebellion can rarely survive the aversion therapy that passes for being brought up female. Male violence acts directly on the girl through her father or brother or uncle or any number of male professionals or strangers, as it did and does on her mother, and she too is forced to learn to conform in order to survive. A girl may, as she enters adulthood, repudiate the particular set of males with whom her mother is allied, run with a different pack as it were, but she will replicate her mother’s patterns in acquiescing to male authority within her own chosen set. Using both force and threat, men in all camps demand that women accept abuse in silence and shame, tie themselves to hearth and home with rope made of self-blame, unspoken rage, grief, and resentment.

Plenty of women have met the “male feminist” who can quote bell hooks but will use those quotes to speak over you. Plenty of people of color have met the white antiracist who is all for Dr. King’s dream until people of color start asking white people to make actual sacrifices for racial justice. Ego can undermine even the best of intentions, but often, when things like this happen—when someone we trust as an ally ends up taking advantage of their position and then turning against the principles they once claimed to fight for when that abuse is discovered—we find that the intentions were never that great in the first place.

This was an odd conclusion: seawater has many effects on the human body, but male-pattern baldness is not one of them.

As porn has gone mainstream, ushered two decades ago into middle-class living rooms and dens with VCRs and now available on the Internet, it has devolved into an open fusion of physical abuse and sex, of extreme violence, horrible acts of degradation against women with an increasingly twisted eroticism. Porn has always primarily involved the eroticization of unlimited male power, but today it also involves the expression of male power through the physical abuse, even torture, of women. Porn reflects the endemic cruelty of our society. This is a society that does not blink when the industrial slaughter unleashed by the United States and its allies kills hundreds of civilians in Gaza or hundreds of thousands of innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Porn reflects back the cruelty of a culture that tosses its mentally ill on the street, warehouses more than 2 million people in prisons, denies health care to tens of millions of the poor, champions gun ownership over gun control, and trumpets an obnoxious and super patriotic nationalism and rapacious corporate capitalism. The violence, cruelty, and degradation of porn are expressions of a society that has lost the capacity for empathy.

It is a contradiction that white females have structured a women’s liberation movement that is racist and excludes many non-white women. However, the existence of that contradiction should not lead any woman to ignore feminist issues. Oftentimes I am asked by black women to explain why I would call myself a feminist and by using that term ally myself with a movement that is racist. I say, “The question we must ask again and again is how can racist women call themselves feminists.” It is obvious that many women have appropriated feminism to serve their own ends, especially those white women who have been at the forefront of the movement; but rather than resigning myself to this appropriation I choose to re-appropriate the term “feminism,” to focus on the fact that to be “feminist” in any authentic sense of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination, and oppression.

Chevalier d’Éon de Beaumont, had previously served France as both a male soldier in the Seven Years’ War and a female secret agent who infiltrated the Russian monarchy, successfully befriending and convincing a Russian czarina not to become an ally of France’s enemy Great Britain. No one was entirely sure of his/her gender, and he/she kept them guessing.

Poor Adam and Eve; they bear the brunt of so many modern Christian claims about sexuality and gender. But in the garden, they lived in blissful ignorance that there was anything to be arguing over. Both of them were simply wholly themselves, male and female, as God is male and female.

There’s a certain man, an archetype, he’s a model of dependability for his male friends, all the things a friend should be, an ally and confidant, lends money, gives advice, loyal and so on, but sheer hell on women. Living breathing hell. The closer a woman gets, the clearer it becomes to him that she is not one of his male friends. And the more awful it becomes for her. This is Keith. This is the man you’re going to marry.

...fascism is more plausibly linked to a set of "mobilizing passions" that shape fascist action than to a consistent and fully articulated philosophy. At the bottom is a passionate nationalism. Allied to it is a conspiratorial and Manichean view of history as a battle between the good and evil camps, between the pure and the corrupt, in which one's own community or nation has been the victim. In this Darwinian narrative, the chosen people have been weakened by political parties, social classes, unassimilable minorities, spoiled rentiers, and rationalist thinkers who lack the necessary sense of community. These "mobilizing passions," mostly taken for granted and not always overtly argued as intellectual propositions, form the emotional lava that set fascism's foundations: -a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions; -the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it; -the belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external; -dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences; -the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary; -the need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the groups' destiny; -the superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason; -the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group's success; -the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group's prowess within a Darwinian struggle. ...Fascism was an affair of the gut more than the brain, and a study of the roots of fascism that treats only the thinkers and the writers misses the most powerful impulses of all.

helper is not an employee — someone who works for you, someone you boss around. A helper is an equal. Genesis uses the adjective suitable, meaning “on the same level.” It’s someone you love and respect. And it’s one who comes alongside as a partner in a project, as an ally in a war. We all need that kind of helper.

The sacredness of the male mind is allied to the struggle for power in that men, claiming objectivity, can also claim universal validity for their values. In this sense the word man, correctly in their view, can encompass women, although the converse is not true and the word woman can never stand for the general but only for the particular.

For hierarchy, according to the anthropologist Christopher Boehm. Boehm studied tribal cultures early in his career, but had also studied chimpanzees with Jane Goodall. He recognized the extraordinary similarities in the ways that humans and chimpanzees display dominance and submission. In his book Hierarchy in the Forest, Boehm concluded that human beings are innately hierarchical, but that at some point during the last million years our ancestors underwent a “political transition” that allowed them to live as egalitarians by banding together to rein in, punish, or kill any would-be alpha males who tried to dominate the group. Alpha male chimps are not truly leaders of their groups. They perform some public services, such as mediating conflicts.28 But most of the time, they are better described as bullies who take what they want. Yet even among chimpanzees, it sometimes happens that subordinates gang up to take down alphas, occasionally going as far as to kill them.29 Alpha male chimps must therefore know their limits and have enough political skill to cultivate a few allies and stave off rebellion.

Whatever he said or did, Tamlin decided he wishes to remain in solitude.' His russet eye darkened. 'Your mate should have known better than to kick a downed male.' 'I can't say I'm particularly sorry that he did.' 'You will need Tamlin as an ally before the dust has settled. Tread carefully.' I didn't want to think about it, consider it, today. Any day. 'My business with him is done.' 'Yours might be, but Rhys's isn't. And you'd do well to remind your mate of that fact.

At a Male Allies Plenary Panel, a group of women engineers circulated hundreds of handmade bingo boards among attendees. Inside each square was a different indictment: Mentions his mother. Says “That would never happen in my company.” Wearables. Asserts another male executive’s heart is in the right place. Says feminist activism scares women away from tech. At the center of the board was a square that just said Pipeline. I had heard the pipeline argument, that there simply weren’t enough women and underrepresented minorities in STEM fields to fill open roles. Having been privy to the hiring process, I found it incredibly suspect. What’s the wearable thing, I asked an engineer sitting in my row. “Oh, you know,” she said, waving dismissively toward the stage, with its rainbow-lit scrim. “Smart bras. Tech jewelry. They’re the only kind of hardware these guys can imagine women caring about.” What would a smart bra even do? I wondered, touching the band of my dumb underwire. The male allies, all trim, white executives, took their seats and began offering wisdom on how to manage workplace discrimination. “The best thing you can do is excel,” said a VP at the search-engine giant whose well-publicized hobby was stratosphere jumping. “Just push through whatever boundaries you see in front of you, and be great.” Don’t get discouraged, another implored—just keep working hard. Throughout the theater, pencils scratched. “Speak up, and be confident,” said a third. “Speak up, and be heard.” Engineers tended to complexify things, the stratosphere jumper said—like pipelines. A woman in the audience slapped her pencil down. “Bingo!” she called out.

Imagine early hominid life as a tense balance of power between the alpha (and an ally or two) and the larger set of males who are shut out of power. Then arm everyone with spears. The balance of power is likely to shift when physical strength no longer decides the outcome of every fight. That’s essentially what happened, Boehm suggests, as our ancestors developed better weapons for hunting and butchering beginning around five hundred thousand years ago, when the archaeological record begins to show a flowering of tool and weapon types.30 Once early humans had developed spears, anyone could kill a bullying alpha male. And if you add the ability to communicate with language, and note that every human society uses language to gossip about moral violations,31 then it becomes easy to see how early humans developed the ability to unite in order to shame, ostracize, or kill anyone whose behavior threatened or simply annoyed the rest of the group.

point of comparison, over the previous century, during which it had expanded its empire to five continents, the British Empire had been involved in some forty different conflicts around the globe—colonial insurrections mostly, but including the Crimean and Boer wars—and had lost some forty thousand soldiers in the process. Over the next four years, it would lose over twenty times that number. In the disastrous Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, France had suffered an estimated 270,000 battlefield casualties; in the present war, it was to surpass that number in the first three weeks. In this conflict, Germany would see 13 percent of its military-age male population killed, Serbia 15 percent of its total population, while in just a two-year span, 1913 to 1915, the life expectancy of a French male would drop from fifty years to twenty-seven. So inured would the architects of the carnage become to such statistics that at the launch of his 1916 Somme offensive, British general Douglas Haig could look over the first day’s casualty rolls—with fifty-eight thousand Allied soldiers dead or wounded, it remains the bloodiest single day in the history of the English-speaking world—and judge that the numbers “cannot be considered severe.” The effect of all this on the collective European

Islamophobia” as a weapon of jihad The charge of “Islamophobia” is routinely used to shift attention away from jihad terrorists. After a rise in jihadist militancy and the arrest of eight people in Switzerland on suspicion of aiding suicide bombers in Saudi Arabia, some Muslims in Switzerland were in no mood to clean house: “As far as we’re concerned,” said Nadia Karmous, leader of a Muslim women’s group in Switzerland, “there is no rise in Islamism, but rather an increase in Islamophobia.”5 This pattern has recurred in recent years all over the world as “Islamophobia” has passed into the larger lexicon and become a self-perpetuating industry. In Western countries, “Islamophobia” has taken a place beside “racism,” “sexism,” and “homophobia.” The absurdity of all this was well illustrated by a recent incident in Britain: While a crew was filming the harassment of a Muslim for a movie about “Islamophobia,” two passing Brits, who didn’t realize the cameras were rolling, stopped to defend the person being assaulted. Yet neither the filmmakers nor the reporters covering these events seemed to realize that this was evidence that the British were not as violent and xenophobic as the film they were creating suggested.6 Historian Victor Davis Hanson has ably explained the dangerous shift of focus that “Islamophobia” entails: There really isn’t a phenomenon like “Islamophobia”—at least no more than there was a “Germanophobia” in hating Hitler or “Russophobia” in detesting Stalinism. Any unfairness or rudeness that accrues from the “security profiling” of Middle Eastern young males is dwarfed by efforts of Islamic fascists themselves—here in the U.S., in the UK, the Netherlands, France, Turkey, and Israel—to murder Westerners and blow up civilians. The real danger to thousands of innocents is not an occasional evangelical zealot or uncouth politician spouting off about Islam, but the deliberately orchestrated and very sick anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism that floods the airways worldwide, emanating from Iran, Lebanon, and Syria, to be sure, but also from our erstwhile “allies” in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.7

To decide how great the danger was that this oldest civilized continent in the world would be overrun this winter will be left to later historical research. The unfading credit that this danger is over now goes to those soldiers whom we are commemorating today. Only a glance at Bolshevism’s gigantic preparations for the destruction of our world is sufficient to let us realize with horror what might have become of Germany and the rest of the Continent, had not the National Socialist movement taken power in this state ten years ago, and had it not begun the rebuilding of the German Wehrmacht with the determination that is so peculiar to it, following many fruitless efforts for disarmament. After all, the Germany of Weimar with its Centrist-Marxist democratic party politics would have been swept away by this Central Asian invasion as a straw would be by a hurricane. We realize with increasing clarity that the confrontation that has taken place in Europe since the First World War is slowly beginning to look like a struggle which can only be compared with the greatest historic events of the past. Eternal Jewry forced on us a pitiless and merciless war. Should we not be able to stop the elements of destruction at Europe’s borders, then this continent will be transformed into a single field of ruins. The gravest consequences of this war would then be not only the burned cities and destroyed cultural monuments, but also the bestially murdered multitudes, which would become the victim of this Central Asian flood, just as with the invasions by the Huns and Mongols. What the German and allied soldiers today protect in the east is not the stony face of this continent or its social and intellectual character, but its eternal human substance, whence all values originated ages and ages ago and which gave expression to all human civilizations today, not only to those in Europe and America. In addition to this world of barbarity threatening from the east, we are witnessing the satanic destructive frenzy of its ally, the so-called West. We know about our enemies’ war objectives from countless publications, speeches, and open demands. The babble of the Atlantic Charter is worth as much as Wilson’s Fourteen Points in contrast with the implemented actual design of the Diktat of Versailles. Just as in the English parliamentary democracy the warmonger Churchill pointed the way for later developments with his claim in 1936, when he was not yet the responsible leader of Great Britain, that Germany had to be destroyed again, so the elements behind the present demands for peace in the same democracies today are already planning the state to which they seek to reduce Europe after the war. And their objectives totally correspond with the manifestations of their Bolshevik allies, which we have not only known about but also witnessed: the extermination of all continental people proudly conscious of their nationality and, at their head, the extermination of our own German people. It makes no difference whether English or American papers, parliamentarians, stump orators, or men of letters demand the destruction of the Reich, the abduction of the children of our Volk, the sterilization of our male youth, and so on, as the primary war objective, or whether Bolshevism implements the slaughter of whole groups of people, men, women, and children, in practice. After all, the driving force behind this remains the eternal hatred of that cursed race which, as a true scourge of God, chastised the nations for many thousands of years, until they began to defend themselves against their tormentors in times of reflection. Speech in Lichthof of the Zeughaus for the Heroes’ Memorial Day Berlin, March 21, 1943

You are not the only female hire-swords I have dealt with,” he replied. “Many of my trade allies have them as personal retainers. It has often seemed to me that many of those I met have had to be twice as skilled as their male counterparts to receive half the credit.

Despite the economic gains of individual feminist women, many women who have amassed wealth or accepted the contribution of wealthy males, who are our allies in struggle, we have created no schools founded on feminist principles for girls and boys, for women and men.

But, actually, the idea of a personal god or spirit who peevishly withholds food, or maliciously hurls lightning, gets a boost from the evolved human brain. People reared in modern scientific societies may consider it only natural to ponder some feature of the world—the weather, say—and try to come up with a mechanistic explanation couched in the abstract language of natural law. But evolutionary psychology suggests that a much more natural way to explain anything is to attribute it to a humanlike agent. This is the way we’re “designed” by natural selection to explain things. Our brain’s capacity to think about causality—to ask why something happened and come up with theories that help us predict what will happen in the future—evolved in a specific context: other brains. When our distant ancestors first asked “Why,” they weren’t asking about the behavior of water or weather or illness; they were asking about the behavior of their peers. That’s a somewhat speculative (and, yes, hard-to-test!) claim. We have no way of observing our prehuman ancestors one or two or three million years ago, when the capacity to think explicitly about causality was evolving by natural selection. But there are ways to shed light on the process. For starters, we can observe our nearest nonhuman relatives, chimpanzees. We didn’t evolve from chimps, but chimps and humans do share a common ancestor in the not-too-distant past (4 to 7 million years ago). And chimps are probably a lot more like that common ancestor than humans are. Chimps aren’t examples of our ancestors circa 5 million BCE but they’re close enough to be illuminating. As the primatologist Frans de Waal has shown, chimpanzee society shows some clear parallels with human society. One of them is in the title of his book Chimpanzee Politics. Groups of chimps form coalitions—alliances—and the most powerful alliance gets preferred access to resources (notably a resource that in Darwinian terms is important: sex partners). Natural selection has equipped chimps with emotional and cognitive tools for playing this political game. One such tool is anticipation of a given chimp’s future behavior based on past behavior. De Waal writes of a reigning alpha male, Yeroen, who faced growing hostility from a former ally named Luit: “He already sensed that Luit’s attitude was changing and he knew that his position was threatened.” 8 One could argue about whether Yeroen was actually pondering the situation in as clear and conscious a way as de Waal suggests. But even if chimps aren’t quite up to explicit inference, they do seem close. If you imagine their politics getting more complex (more like, say, human politics), and them getting smarter (more like humans), you’re imagining an organism evolving toward conscious thought about causality. And the causal agents about which these organisms will think are other such organisms, because the arena of causality is the social arena. In this realm, when a bad thing happens (like a challenge for Yeroen’s alpha spot) or a good thing happens (like an ally coming to Yeroen’s aid), it is another organism that is making the bad or good thing happen.

One of men’s key strategies is to form coalitions with other men. These organized alliances give men the power to triumph over other men in their quest for resources and sexual access. In animals, strong coalitions are seen among baboons, chimpanzees, and dolphins.4 Male bottlenose dolphins, for example, form coalitions to herd females and thereby gain greater sexual access than would be possible by operating alone. Among chimpanzees, our closest primate relative, males form alliances to increase their chances of victory in physical contests with other chimpanzees, their status in the group hierarchy, and their sexual access to females. Rarely can a male chimpanzee become the dominant member of the troop without the aid of allies. Solitary males without coalition partners are at great risk of being brutally attacked and sometimes killed by males from other groups.

God's tactics are counterintuitive to our male-centered world, but therein lies the surprise for the Enemy, for the world, and for us. For when men and women are allied together, richer discussions result in better decisions, the elimination of blind spots, and a greater kingdom force in the world. If you don't believe me, just compare Esther, Mordecai, Mary, and Joseph each operating solo with what they accomplished by working together.

The grit and grimness of it appealed to him, some place dark and dirty and distinctively male; far from his wife's clean-scrubbed kitchen. Far from Eulalia Wakefield's lavender-scented bathtub. He didn't want to be in the kind of place where life was made, cradled, loved into flourishing. He wanted a place that burned, and he wanted to be there all by himself.

A small fraction of abducted women are taken by raiders who are at war. This is usually an unexpected 'bonus': the raiders go to kill male enemies and retreat for home before the victim's body, riddled with arrows, is even discovered. On their retreat the raiders sometimes come across a group of women... and if the risks seem low they will take one or more of them. Women abducted this way are usually gang-raped by the raiders en route home, and once reaching the home village, gang-raped by any and all willing males there, sometimes by visiting men from allied villages if any are present. The raping can go on for many days... Men from larger, more powerful villages-a group of hunters for example-will occasionally find a man and his wife in the jungle and, while some of them restrain the husband, the others rape her.

passionate followers of Christ; 2. great citizens; 3. holders of commendable livelihoods; mindful workers; 4. choosers of good friends; 5. ready to appreciate life; 6. physically modest; comprehension of male sexuality; staying away from the perils of erotic entertainment; and 7. admirers of their spouses; allies of their marriages.

Male supremacy, the enormous difficulty men have in facing up to their pathetic feelings of superiority and display of petty power over women, even when theoretically dedicated to revolutionary change, will continue to feed what is often a narrowly anti-men orientation among "movement women;" and the media will continue to exploit this as a gimmick that serves at the same time to sell cigarettes and shampoo, dissipate energies, and divide women from each other and from what should be allied struggles.

Dart initially echoed Darwin’s theory that bipedalism freed the hands of early hominins to make and use hunting tools, which in turn selected for big brains, hence better hunting abilities. Then, in a famous 1953 paper, clearly influenced by his war experiences, Dart proposed that the first humans were not just hunters but also murderous predators.18 Dart’s words are so astonishing, you have to read them: The loathsome cruelty of mankind to man forms one of his inescapable characteristics and differentiative features; and it is explicable only in terms of his carnivorous, and cannibalistic origin. The blood-bespattered, slaughter-gutted archives of human history from the earliest Egyptian and Sumerian records to the most recent atrocities of the Second World War accord with early universal cannibalism, with animal and human sacrificial practices of their substitutes in formalized religions and with the world-wide scalping, head-hunting, body-mutilating and necrophilic practices of mankind in proclaiming this common bloodlust differentiator, this predaceous habit, this mark of Cain that separates man dietetically from his anthropoidal relatives and allies him rather with the deadliest of Carnivora. Dart’s killer-ape hypothesis, as it came to be known, was popularized by the journalist Robert Ardrey in a best-selling book, African Genesis, that found a ready audience in a generation disillusioned by two world wars, the Cold War, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, political assassinations, and widespread political unrest.19 The killer-ape hypothesis left an indelible stamp on popular culture including movies like Planet of the Apes, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange. But the Rousseauians weren’t dead yet. Reanalyses of bones in the limestone pits from which fossils like the Taung Baby came showed they were killed by leopards, not early humans.20 Further studies revealed these early hominins were mostly vegetarians. And as a reaction to decades of bellicosity, many scientists in the 1970s embraced evidence for humans’ nicer side, especially gathering, food sharing, and women’s roles. The most widely discussed and audacious hypothesis, proposed by Owen Lovejoy, was that the first hominins were selected to become bipeds to be more cooperative and less aggressive.21 According to Lovejoy, early hominin females favored males who were better at walking upright and thus better able to carry food with which to provision them. To entice these tottering males to keep coming back with food, females encouraged exclusive long-term monogamous relationships by concealing their menstrual cycles and having permanently large breasts (female chimps advertise when they ovulate with eye-catching swellings, and their breasts shrink when they are not nursing). Put crudely, females selected for cooperative males by exchanging sex for food. If so, then selection against reactive aggression and frequent fighting is as old as the hominin lineage.22

As he and Beth hit the stairs, he called out to his brothers, “Thanks for having my back once again.” The group stopped and turned to face him. After a beat of silence, they formed a half circle around the foot of the grand staircase, each making a thick fist with his weapon hand. With a great whoop! of a war cry, they went down on their right knee and slammed their heavy knuckles into the mosaic floor. The sound was thunder and bass drums and bomb explosions, ricocheting outward, filling all the rooms of the mansion. Wrath stared at them, seeing their heads bent, their broad backs curled, their powerful arms planted. They had each gone to that meeting prepared to take a bullet for him, and that would ever be true. Behind Tohr’s smaller form, Lassiter, the fallen angel, stood with a straight spine, but he wasn’t cracking any jokes at this reaffirmation of allegiance. Instead, he was back to staring at the damn ceiling. Wrath glanced up at the mural of warriors silhouetted against a blue sky and could see nothing much of the pictures that he’d been told were there. Getting back with the program, he said in the Old Language, “No stronger allies, no greater friends, no better fighters of honor could a king behold than these assembled afore me, mine brothers, mine blood.” A rolling growl of ascent lifted as the warriors got to their feet again, and Wrath nodded to each one of them. He had no more words to offer as his throat had abruptly choked, but they didn’t seem to need anything else. They stared at him with respect and gratitude and purpose, and he accepted their enormous gifts with grave appreciation and resolve. This was the ages-old covenant between king and subjects, the pledges on both sides made with the heart and carried out by the sharp mind and the strong body. “God, I love you guys,” Beth said. There was a lot of deep laughter, and then Hollywood said, “You want us to stab the floor for you again? Fists are for kings, but the queen gets the daggers.” “I wouldn’t want you to take chips out of this beautiful floor. Thank you, though.” “Say the word and it’s nothing but rubble.” Beth laughed. “Be still, my heart.” The Brothers came over and kissed the Saturnine Ruby that rode on her finger, and as each paid his honor, she gave him a gentle stroke of the hair. Except for Zsadist, who she smiled tenderly at. “Excuse us, boys,” Wrath said. “Little quiet time, feel me?” There was a ripple of male approval, which Beth took in stride—and with a blush—and then it was time for some privacy.

In 2008 an official website commemorating Sharon’s life and achievements was established, in which, rather than hiding his role in Gaza in those days, it proudly lauded it: Sharon participates in these searches himself. He orders the soldiers to perform a full body search on all males and sometimes imposes curfews on refugee camps in order to conduct a search. The clear goal of the mission is finding terrorists and killing them. The soldiers have orders not to try and capture the terrorists alive. Sharon instructs them to be rough with the local population, to perform searches in the streets and even to strip suspects naked if necessary; to shoot to kill any Arab who holds a gun; to shoot to kill any Arab who does not obey a Stop! call; and to diminish the risk to their lives by employing a big volume of fire, by uprooting trees from orchards which makes it difficult to capture terrorists, by demolishing houses and driving out their owners to other houses in order to pave secure roads. Haider Abd al-Shafi, Senior Palestinian leader, says: ‘Sharon took a decision to open roads in Al Shateya camp and in Rafah for security. That led to removing houses, the houses of refugees, which is an action not to be taken lightly, but there was no objection neither from Dayan nor from the Israeli government. They let Sharon realize his aim and he really destroyed a lot of refugees’ houses.’ Eli Landau, political ally and a friend of Ariel Sharon, says: ‘He was a very senior officer going with the troops from house to house, from bunker to bunker, from orange grove to orange grove, to explain what he meant. Three months later, Gaza was quiet. The terror was crushed with an iron fist, with a vicious hand. He cast fear in Gaza, he was feared.’9 The manner and detail of the retaliation were based on British military counter-insurgency methods employed against the Palestinians during the Arab revolt in the 1930s; it seems that the new rulers of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip were highly impressed by this ruthless methodology. In the case of the British this pattern of inhumanity was in place for three years; in the case of the Palestinians it has lasted for more than fifty years.

We’re allies. Not only politically, but … as females who have had to make some shitty, hard choices. As females who live in a world where most powerful males see us only as breeding tools.

I have no plans to fuck you over. Either of you.” She faced Hypaxia, who was giving Bryce that more-than-princess look, too. “We’re allies. Not only politically, but … as females who have had to make some shitty, hard choices. As females who live in a world where most powerful males see us only as breeding tools.” Hypaxia nodded again, but Celestina continued to stare at Bryce. A predator surveying the best place to strike. Hunt rallied his power again. Bryce continued, “I’m no one’s prize mare. I took a gamble with this idiot”—she jerked a thumb toward Hunt, who gaped at her—“and luckily, it paid off. And I just want to say that”—she swallowed—“if you two want to make a gamble with each other, say fuck it to the arrangements with Ephraim and Ruhn, then I’m with you. We’d have to go against the Asteri, but … look what I did tonight. Whatever I can do, whatever clout I have, it’s yours. But let’s start by walking out of this closet in one piece.

While many feminists - especially those who came of age in the 1980s and '90s - recognize that trans women can be allies in the fight to eliminate gender stereotypes, others, particularly those who embrace gender essentialism, believe that trans women foster sexism by mimicking patriarchal attitudes about femininity, or that we objectify women by trying to possess female bodies of our own. Many of these latter ideas stem from Janice Raymond's 1979 book 'The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-male', which is perhaps the most infamous feminist writing on transsexuals. Like the media makers discussed earlier, Raymond assumes that trans women transition in order to achieve stereotypical femininity, which she believes is an artificial by-product of a patriarchal society. Raymond does acknowledge, reluctantly, the existence of trans women who are not stereotypically feminine, but she reserves her most venomous remarks for those she calls 'transsexually constructed lesbian-feminists', describing how they use 'deception' in order to 'penetrate' women's spaces and minds. She writes, 'Although the transsexually constructed lesbian-feminist does not exhibit a feminine identity and role, he [sic] does exhibit stereotypical masculine behavior.' This puts trans women in a double bind, where if they act feminine they are perceived as being a parody, but if they act masculine it is seen as a sign of their 'true' male identity. This damned-if-they-do, damned-if-they-don't tactic is reminiscent of the pop cultural deceptive/pathetic archetypes.

Luit never came out of the anesthesia. He paid dearly for having stood up to two other males, frustrating them by his steep ascent. Those two had been plotting against him in order to take back the power they had lost. The shocking way they did so opened my eyes to how deadly seriously chimpanzees take their politics. Two-against-one maneuvering is what lends chimpanzee power struggles both their richness and their danger. Coalitions are key. No male can rule by himself, at least not for long, because the group as a whole can overthrow anybody. Chimpanzees are so clever about banding together that a leader needs allies to fortify his position as well as the greater community’s acceptance. Staying on top is a balancing act between forcefully asserting dominance, keeping supporters happy, and avoiding mass revolt. If this sounds familiar, it’s because human politics works exactly the same. Before Luit’s death, the Arnhem colony was ruled jointly by Nikkie, a young upstart, and Yeroen, an over-the-hill conniver. Barely adult at seventeen, Nikkie was a brawny character with a dopey expression. He was very determined, but not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He was supported by Yeroen, who was physically not up to the task of being a leader anymore, yet who wielded enormous influence behind the scenes. Yeroen had a habit of watching disputes unfold from a distance, stepping in only when emotions were flaring to calmly support one side or the other, thus forcing everybody to pay attention to his decisions. Yeroen shrewdly exploited the rivalries among younger and stronger males. Without going into the complex history of this group, it was clear that Yeroen hated Luit, who had wrested power from him years before. Luit had defeated Yeroen in a struggle that had taken three hot summer months of daily tensions involving the entire colony. The next year, Yeroen had gotten even by helping Nikkie dethrone Luit. Ever since, Nikkie had been the alpha male with Yeroen as his right-hand man. The two became inseparable. Luit was unafraid of either one of them alone. In one-on-one encounters in the night cages, Luit dominated every other male in the colony, taking away their food or chasing them around. No single one of them could possibly have kept him in his place. This meant that Yeroen and Nikkie ruled as a team, and only as a team. They did so for four long years. But their coalition eventually began to unravel, and as is not uncommon among men, the divisive issue was sex. Being the kingmaker, Yeroen had enjoyed extraordinary sexual privileges. Nikkie would not let any other males get near the most attractive females, but for Yeroen he had always made an exception. This was part of the deal: Nikkie had the power, and Yeroen got a slice of the sexual pie. This happy arrangement ended only when Nikkie tried to renegotiate its terms. In the four years of his rule, he had grown increasingly self-confident. Had he forgotten who had helped him get to the top? When the young leader began to throw his weight around, interfering with the sexual adventures not only of other males but also of Yeroen himself, things got ugly. Infighting within the ruling coalition went on for months, until one day Yeroen and Nikkie failed to reconcile after a spat. With Nikkie following him around, screaming and begging for their customary embrace, the old fox finally walked away without looking back. He’d had it. Luit filled the power vacuum overnight. The most magnificent chimpanzee male I have known, both in body and spirit, quickly grew in stature as the alpha male. Luit was popular with females, a mighty arbiter of disputes, protector of the downtrodden, and effective at disrupting bonding among rivals in the divide-and-rule tactic typical of both chimp and man. As soon as Luit saw other males together he would either join them or perform a charging display to disband them.

This theory is nicely illustrated by Yeroen’s choice of partner after he lost his position. For a brief while, Luit was alpha. Since Luit was physically the strongest male, he could handle most situations by himself. Furthermore, soon after his rise, the females one by one switched over to his side, most important, Mama. Mama was pregnant at the time, and it’s natural that females under such circumstances do everything to stabilize the hierarchy. Despite his cushy position, Luit was keen on disrupting get-togethers among other males, especially between Yeroen and the only male who could pose a threat, Nikkie. Sometimes these scenes escalated into fighting. Noticing that both other males wanted to be his buddy, Yeroen grew in importance by the day. At this point, Yeroen had two choices: He could attach himself to the most powerful player, Luit, and derive a few benefits in return - what kind of benefits would be up to Luit. Or, he could help Nikkie challenge Luit and in effect create a new alpha male who would owe his position to him. We have seen that Yeroen took the second route. This is consistent with the “strength is weakness” paradox, which says that the most powerful player is often the least attractive political ally. Luit was too strong for his own good. Joining him, Yeroen would add little. As the colony’s superpower, Luit really did not need more than the old male’s neutrality. Throwing his weight behind Nikkie was a logical choice for Yeroen. He would be the puppet master, having far more leverage than he could ever have dreamt of having under Luit. His choice also translated into increased prestige and access to females. So if Luit demonstrated the “strength is weakness” principle, Yeroen illustrated the corresponding “weakness is strength” principle according to which minor players can position themselves at an intersection that offers great advantage.

Eris nodded knowingly. “I can delay my father from allying with Briallyn and starting this war for a little while. But not forever. A few months, perhaps. So I’d suggest your shadowsinger hurry. Find a way to deal with Briallyn, find out what she wants and why. Discover whether Koschei is indeed involved. At best, we’ll stop them all. At worst, we’ll have proof to justify any conflict and hopefully win allies to our side, avoiding the bloodshed that would carve up these lands once more. My father would think twice before standing against an army of superior strength and size.” “You’ve turned into quite the little traitor,” Rhys said, stars winking out in his eyes. “I told you years ago what I wanted, High Lord,” Eris said. To seize his father’s throne. “Why?” Cassian asked. Eris grasped what he meant, apparently, because flame sizzled in his eyes. “For the same reason I left Morrigan untouched at the border.” “You left her there to suffer and die,” Cassian spat. His Siphons flickered, and all he could see was the male’s pretty face, all he could feel was his own fist, aching to make contact. Eris sneered. “Did I? Perhaps you should ask Morrigan whether that is true. I think she finally knows the answer.” Cassian’s head spun, and the relentless itching resumed, like fingers trailing along his spine, his legs, his scalp. Eris added before winnowing away, “Tell me when the shadowsinger returns.” Petals

Eris’s long red hair ruffled in the wind. “Whatever it is you’re doing, whatever it is you’re looking into, I want in.” “Why? And no.” “Because I need the edge Briallyn has, what Koschei has told her or shown her.” “To overthrow your father.” “Because my father has already pledged his forces to Briallyn and the war she wishes to incite.” Cassian started. “What?” Eris’s face filled with cool amusement. “I wanted to feel out Vassa and Jurian.” He didn’t mention his brother, oddly enough. “But they clearly know little about this.” “Explain what the fuck you mean by Beron pledging his forces to Briallyn.” “It’s exactly what it sounds like. He caught wind of her ambitions, and went to her palace a month ago to meet with her. I stayed here, but I sent my best soldiers with him.” Cassian refrained from sniping about Eris opting out, especially as the last words settled. “Those wouldn’t happen to be the same soldiers who went missing, would they?” Eris nodded gravely. “They returned with my father, but they were … off. Aloof and strange. They vanished soon after—and my hounds confirmed that the scents at the scene are the same as those on gifts Briallyn sent to curry my father’s favor.” “You knew it was her this entire time?” Cassian motioned to the house and the three people inside it. “You didn’t think I’d just spill all that information, did you? I needed Vassa to confirm that Briallyn could do something like that.” “Why would Briallyn ally with your father only to abduct your soldiers?” “That’s what I’d like to find out.” “What does Beron say?” “He is unaware of it. You know where I stand with my father. And this unholy alliance he’s struck with Briallyn will only hurt us. All of us. It will turn into a Fae war for control. So I want to find answers on my own—rather than what my father tries to feed me.” Cassian surveyed the male, his grim face. “So we take out your father.

a close-knit community intensely divided over issues of class, politics, sexuality, and race. In addition to the resolute warriors, the participants in the Colditz drama included communists, scientists, homosexuals, women, aesthetes and philistines, aristocrats, spies, workers, poets, and traitors. Many of these have hitherto been excluded from history because they did not fit the traditional mold of the white male Allied officer, dedicated to escaping. Moreover, roughly half the population of Colditz was German: the guards and their officers have also tended to be painted in one uniform color, yet this group also contained a rich cast of characters, including some men of culture and humanity far removed from the brutal Nazi stereotype.

You don’t trust the Matron Mother?” Catti-brie asked. “I am drow, and a male, so of course I don’t. More, I have several sisters and a bevy of nieces, all who once and perhaps still pledge themselves to the Spider Queen. We would all be fools to expect that everyone in House Baenre, or everyone who claims to side with House Baenre, truly is an ally.

Miryam,” Rhys continued, “was a half-Fae female born of a human mother. And as her mother was a slave, as the conception was … against her mother’s will, so, too, was Miryam born in shackles, and deemed human—denied any rights to her Fae heritage.” “Tell the full story another time,” Amren cut in. “The gist of it, girl,” she said to me, “is that Miryam was given as a wedding gift by the queen to her betrothed, a foreign Fae prince named Drakon. He was horrified, and let Miryam escape. Fearing the queen’s wrath, she fled through the desert, across the sea, into more desert … and was found by Jurian. She fell in with his rebel armies, became his lover, and was a healer amongst the warriors. Until a devastating battle found her tending to Jurian’s new Fae allies—including Prince Drakon. Turns out, Miryam had opened his eyes to the monster he planned to wed. He’d broken the engagement, allied his armies with the humans, and had been looking for the beautiful slave-girl for three years. Jurian had no idea that his new ally coveted his lover. He was too focused on winning the War, on destroying Amarantha in the North. As his obsession took over, he was blind to witnessing Miryam and Drakon falling in love behind his back.” “It wasn’t behind his back,” Mor snapped. “Miryam ended it with Jurian before she ever laid a finger on Drakon.” Amren shrugged. “Long story short, girl, when Jurian was slaughtered by Amarantha, and during the long centuries after, she told him what had happened to his lover. That she’d betrayed him for a Fae male. Everyone believed Miryam and Drakon perished while liberating her people from the Black Land at the end of the War—even Amarantha.” “And they didn’t,” I said. Rhys and Mor nodded. “It was all a way to escape, wasn’t it? To start over somewhere else, with both their peoples?” Another set of nods. “So why not show the queens that? You started to tell them—” “Because,” Rhys cut in, “in addition to it not proving a thing about my character, which seemed to be their biggest gripe, it would be a grave betrayal of our friends. Their only wish was to remain hidden—to live in peace with their peoples. They fought and bled and suffered enough for it. I will not bring them into this conflict.

It's the ugliness of his fucking soul that riles me. I don't care if he calls me a mongrel bastard.' Eris had called him such things today, she realised. Rage rippled through her. 'It's just that, ally or not, I hate him. He's so slick and unruffled and... I can't stand him.' He set down his fork and stared toward the window behind him. 'Eris and his twisted word games and politics are an enemy I don't know how to handle. Every time I meet with him, I feel like he's got the upper hand. Like I can only catch up to him, and he sees through my every fumbling attempt at being clever. Maybe that makes me a stupid brute after all.' True sorrow filled his eyes- and enough self-loathing that Nesta rose from her seat. He went still as she rounded the table, only lifting his head when she leaned against the edge of the table beside his plate. 'Rhys should kill him and be done with it.' 'If anyone is going to kill Eris, it will be Mor or me.' His hazel eyes were nearly pleading. Not with her, she knew, but with fate. 'But killing him would prove him and his ilk right about me. And regardless of how I feel about Eris, he would be a better High Lord than Beron. No matter what I want, there's still the well-being of the Autumn Court to consider.' Cassian was good. In his soul, in his warrior's heart, Cassian was good in a way Nesta knew most people were not. In a way she knew she was not and would never be. He was not a warrior who killed on a whim, but a male who carefully considered every life he had to take. Who'd defend what he loved until death. And Eris... He'd hurt Cassian. With what he'd done to Morrigan, yes, but also with the words so similar to ones that Nesta herself had wielded. The wound lay in Cassian's eyes, as raw as any injury. Shame rushed through her. Shame, and anger, and a wild sort of desperation. She couldn't abide the pain in his eyes, teetering on the brink of despair. Couldn't stand the absence of the grinning and winking and swaggering she knew so well. She'd do anything to get rid of that look in his eyes. Even for a few moments.

Acheson and MacLeish questioned the desirability of exempting the emperor from punishment and permitting the Japanese to preserve an institution that was so easily exploited by the militarists.57 That was a view held by Owen Lattimore, a China scholar and advisor in the Pacific section of the Office of War Information. Lattimore published his thoughts on reconstructing Japan in February 1945 in a slim volume titled Solution in Asia. Lattimore argued that democratization was possible in Japan, but first the Allies had to “puncture the myth of the divinity of the Mikado.” The best way to do that, he advised, was to exile Hirohito and all males eligible for the throne to China under United Nations supervision.58

The entire vision of creative differences, of particular identities contributing to a united world, threatened by the violent pressure on the minorities to 'integrate'--in other words, by the false universality of the Western way of life, which imposes itself as a standard for all--is to be rejected in its entirety. The world we live in is one, but it is such because it is traversed (and, in a way, even held together) by the same antagonism that is inscribed into the very heart of global capitalism. Universality is not located over and above particular identities, it is an antagonism that cuts from within each 'way of life'. This antagonism determines all emancipatory struggles: explicit and unwritten rules of hierarchy, homophobia, male domination and so on are key constituents of the 'way of life' in which such struggles occur.

The material benefits that a male partner can provide include direct access to food, allies, and protection for self and offspring, each of which may also contribute to parental investment. Women may assess a man’s ability to provide material benefits by observing his current resource holdings, future resource potential, ability to defend accrued resources, and social status (Shackelford Schmitt, & Buss, 2005). Theoretically, any valued resource that a woman can procure from a man will increase her inclusive fitness. However the type, quantity, and quality of resources that are beneficial depend on the particular ecological context (Schmitt & Buss, 1996; Hrdy, 1997; Holden, Sear, & Mace, 2003).

Zeus turned the sky black, commanding dozens of explosive lightning strikes that filled the plain with ear-splitting thunder and sent thick smoke curling into the air from the fires left in their stead. Poseidon drove his glowing trident into the ground, opening gaping rifts that swallowed everyone in their path. Ares mercilessly wielded his sword, slashing through human after human, leaving his hands and armour dripping with blood. Athena whirled her spear around, skewering anyone who came too close. Apollo’s hands glowed, sunlight bursting from his outstretched palms, blinding and scorching everyone within twenty feet. Artemis fired off arrows while commanding an army of ferocious beasts that used their pointed teeth and enormous talons to maim and kill their victims. Aphrodite bewitched males with pink mist she blew from her mouth, forcing them to turn on their allies. And Hera threw crackling white fireballs, incinerating the humans they collided with.

She cast about for her next adversary. She didn't seem to have one. The fight was over, and the few surviving hobgoblins were running away. "Form up!" she shouted. "I want a column with the traders in the middle. Fast!" Once the procession was under way, Aunrae, striding along at Greyanna's side, asked, "May I know where we're going? An ally's castle?" "No," Greyanna replied. "I suspect we couldn't get in. We're going to hide our charges in Bauthwaf." The column crept past corpses and burning stone, and as they made their way to the cavern wall, other commoners came running out of their homes to join the procession. Greyanna's first impulse was to turn away those without ties to House Mizzrym, but she thought better of it. Many of the newcomers carried swords, and she could press the dolts into martial service if needed. Occasionally someone collapsed, coughing feebly, poisoned by the stinging smoke. The rest stepped over her and pressed on. Someone gave a thin, high cry, as if at an unexpected pain. Greyanna spun around. The goblins weren't attacking. Her client the canoe maker had simply seized his opportunity to knife another male in the back. "A competitor," the craftsman explained.

I suoi occhi erano quasi invadenti per la quantità di intimità che potevo scorgervi dentro. Non erano affatto maliziosi. Quand’era successo?Ero così consumato dal bruciante piacere che provavo da essermi perso lo spaventoso cambiamento avvenuto sotto la superficie?In passato avevo studiato le placche tettoniche, situate nelle profondità dell’oceano; un’impercettibile movimento poteva scatenare terremoti, tsunami, caos e distruzione inimmaginabile.Ecco cos’era Allie per me.Un cambiamento sconvolgente e inimmaginabile che non avevo previsto.Lentamente, sollevai la mano e feci scorrere le dita lungo la sua mascella, assaporando la sua pelle setosa. Ero molto più forte di lei, non ci avrei messo nulla a farle del male se avessi voluto.Quando sollevai l’altra mano e tracciai la linea aggraziata del suo naso, allargando le dita sulla sua guancia così da poter sentire la morbidezza delle sue ciglia sulla punta delle dita ogni volta che sbatteva le palpebre, le sue delicate sopracciglia si corrugarono leggermente per la confusione.«Tutto bene?»«Sei perfetta» le dissi, pronunciando le parole che avrei voluto dirle sin dalla nostra prima notte insieme, provando l’improvviso bisogno che le sentisse.Lei sorrise, ma era un sorriso confuso. «Luke» mormorò, crogiolandosi nel calore della mia mano.Non riuscivo a sopportarlo. Non riuscivo a sopportare di dirle ciò che dovevo dirle. Feci scivolare le mani sulle sue spalle e la attirai stretta a me, più stretta che mai, eppure non sembrò abbastanza, nemmeno quando mi cinse tra le braccia.Ciecamente, cercai la sua bocca. Allie emise un mugolio ansante e soddisfatto quando le nostre labbra si incontrarono in un lento e dolce bacio. Le sue mani si avvinghiarono alla mia schiena, poi risalirono su per affondare nei miei capelli mentre le mie dita si stringevano intorno alla sua maglia.Solo un’ultima volta, giurai a me stesso. Solo un’ultima notte. I miei baci divennero più ruvidi e le mie mani le strapparono un gemito quando si insinuarono sotto la sua maglia, trovando soltanto pelle nuda e liscia.«Trovarti ad aspettarmi in questo modo è un sogno che diventa realtà, Allie» le sussurrai all’orecchio, catturando il lobo tra i denti. Ciò la fece sollevare in punta di piedi e ansimare rumorosamente. Sussurrai le successive parole contro il suo collo, dopo averlo leccato per bene. «Ogni volta sembra che non possa essere più bello di così, ma lo è sempre, vero?»«Sì» gemette. «Luke, ti prego.»Mi ritrassi e poggiai la fronte contro la sua. «Dimmelo» dissi con veemenza, sentendo il bisogno di avere qualcosa in cambio, anche se lei non poteva saperlo, non poteva capire cosa avrebbero significato per me le sue parole in seguito.«Andiamo dentro» mi esortò, le braccia avvinghiate intorno al mio collo

Ren is the sea wife, Val. You refuse to accept your role, even though the secret heritage of the Palindrake males has been revealed to you. Ren was given her role, and lived it fully, yet once that ritual at Old Caradore was complete, you wouldn’t continue the tradition with her. She never spoke of it, but I believe it was always on her mind. Her view of reality was destroyed and a wondrous new world revealed to her, but you would not share it. I think Ren might even welcome the cooperation of a man who is mystically inclined. If she does ally with Khaster, it’s your own fault.

fascism is more plausibly linked to a set of “mobilizing passions" that shape fascist action than to a consistent and fully articulated philosophy. At bottom is a passionate nationalism. Allied to it is a conspiratorial and Manichean view of history as a battle between the good and evil camps, between the pure and the corrupt, in which one’s own community or nation has been the victim. In this Darwinian narrative, the chosen people have been weakened by political parties, social classes, unassimilable minorities, spoiled rentiers, and rationalist thinkers who lack the necessary sense of community. These “mobilizing passions," mostly taken for granted and not always overtly argued as intellectual propositions, form the emotional lava that set fascism’s foundations: • a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions; • the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether individual or universal, and the subordination of the individual to it; • the belief that one’s group is a victim, a sentiment that justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against its enemies, both internal and external;60 • dread of the group’s decline under the corrosive effects of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences; • the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary; • the need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s destiny; • the superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason; • the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group’s success; • the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group’s prowess within a Darwinian struggle. The “mobilizing passions" of fascism are hard to treat historically, for many of them are as old as Cain. It seems incontestable, however, that the fevers of increased nationalism before World War I and the passions aroused by that war sharpened them. Fascism was an affair of the gut more than of the brain, and a study of the roots of fascism that treats only the thinkers and the writers misses the most powerful impulses of all.