Tag Archives: Patriarchy

Billy King: Rites Again, 333

Billy King, Nonviolent News, , , , ,

Billy King shares his monthly thoughts

Hello – When I was writing my piece in the last issue about flagitis, the unfortunate and debilitating condition of using flags for ethno-nationalist purposes, I hadn’t referred to the fact that the disease had spread to the 26 counties, the Re:Public. This was remiss of me. The epidemic does not seem to be as widespread south and west of the border in Ireland but it is still present in many places, and it seems quite a virulent and nasty disease. I was writing about how it, obviously, has been endemic in the North but now spread to Britain where it seems to have spread like wildfire.

I hope that sensible precautions being taken will mean that it does not affect so many people and areas in the Republic; many people are already acting to welcome, and express welcome for, newcomers – who are actually needed as important parts of the economy and society. However we need to continue our research on developing effective vaccines for this terrible affliction of flagitis which poisons the whole of society.

And here we are with issue No.333 of this e-steamed publication. It is highly unlikely that it will ever reach issue 666, the supposed mark of the Divil himself, or indeed No.999 – at which point shouting ‘Help!’ might be appropriate – and at the current rate of production the latter would be sixty-odd years away. Anyway, on with my contribution to No.333…..

Jaw jaw and war war

The title of this piece is a reference to Winston Churchill’s supposed dictum that jaw jaw is better than war war, though it appears he actually said “Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war” and it was Harold Macmillan, another British PM, who actually said the “jaw, jaw…war, war” bit. In any case it is not a piece of advice Churchill necessarily observed himself.

Another relevant anecdote is about the man sprinkling salt on city pavements. When asked by a passerby what he was doing he said “It’s to keep away alligators.” The passerby responded “But there are no alligators!” and the salt sprinkler said “Exactly!” The absence of something does not prove a particular reason for that absence.

However you may have noted Donald Trump’s recent claim to have stopped a war between Cambodia and Armenia, two countries some thousands of miles apart who would be largely unaware of each other’s existence let alone engaging in armed conflict. He had however been involved with partially ending Thai-Cambodian clashes and for that we can be thankful (for small mercies which is what we are likely to get at best from the current US administration). Obama was – mistakenly – given a Nobel Peace Prize at the start of his presidency, something totally out of kilter with what the Nobel Prize for Peace is about. I have previously covered what the Nobel Peace Prize was meant to be about but hasn’t been, e.g. https://www.innatenonviolence.org/billyking/bk206.shtml However Trump’s response to some intemperate comments from a prominent Russian political figure was to send two nuclear submarines across the Atlantic and in my book that should automatically exclude him. But he continues to try to prise a Prize from the Nobel committee when his due is more a Nobel Piece of Rubbish Prize.

Trump’s UN claim to have ended seven conflicts is examined in more detail by different sources, e.g. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2025/sep/23/donald-trump/trump-ended-seven-wars-un-general-assembly/ which concludes “The status of the seven conflicts — and the nature of Trump’s role in easing them — are more varied and tenuous than his statement portrays. We rate it Mostly False.” It is not that he and his administration have done nothing but that in none of these has he ended ‘unendable’ wars. We note that the USA uses its military muscle – with the best part of a thousand military bases around the world including, de facto, Shannon Airport – primarily for its own ends. But can he stop or will he start a very uncivil civil war in the USA?

Oul books: Patriarchy in Ire-land

One of the features of being old, not necessarily a unique feature however, is that you may possess lots of books which are also oul – read, unread, half read, dog-eared, or even in pristine condition, and ranging from much treasured volumes through to those which raise questions about your state of mind at the time of purchase. Even occasional purges of those you definitely don’t want to keep, to the hoped for benefit of a local charity shop, doesn’t seem to do the trick in keeping them under control. And we all want, but seldom, achieve, Control.

Anyway, I thought it might be illuminating in this column – for me anyway [ !!!! – Ed] – to occasionally explore some of the oul books I have hanging about. The first to hand is Mary Condren’s “The Serpent and the Goddess: Women, Religion and Power in Celtic Ireland” first published in 1989 and then in Ireland in 2002 by New Island Books and this had a lengthy new introduction. The book is a wide-ranging dissection of religion, culture and patriarchy in Ireland – with wider significance I could add.

When I hear the term ‘patriarchy’ I think of many things, including numerous different aspects of violence and it is this that is the most relevant in the pages of Nonviolent News and which I will concentrate on here. But I also think of ‘paytriarchy’ as in “Remember the Golden Rule – He who has the gold makes the rules.” The victims of patriarchy are primarily women but, and to a much lesser extent and in a different way, men are denied or deny becoming the whole people that they could be. But on to Mary Condren’s book which is a study in partriarchalisation [Is that another of your made up words? – Ed] [Maybe, but you know what I mean so it’s a viable word – Billy].

The story about St Patrick banishing snakes from Ireland is an interesting one because Mary Condren shows ‘the serpent’ as a symbol of old matriarchal and pre-monotheistic religions. The story is thus not just one of Patrick performing a miracle in banishing animals who weren’t here anyway but in banishing old pagan religions. Christianity was stamping its mark and stamping out snakes. But – snakes alive?! There are also some illuminating insights on Brigid, goddess and saint (both of these).

I am now going to be give a few quotes, to some extent out of context, which talk about patriarchy and militarism, and this piece is not a review of the book, merely picking up some points made on the themes involved. You can search out the original for the full meaning and context.

“Contact with women could weaken men’s potency when engaging in their two most powerful activities – hearing the word of God or going to war. In this we can see a very clear connection between the development of a militaristic culture and the development of a new male identity independent of the world of women or the world women had represented.” (page 18, 2002 edition).

Quoting some of Kuno Meyer’s writing on Adamnán makes a fascinating sub-text to the Law of the Innocents (page 52 and following). The mythology involved is too complex and long to include here but Mary Condren concludes “The story reflects a time when Irish women were greatly oppressed by the warrior elitist society. Christianity had come, yet obviously the priests, like Adamnán, needed drastic measures of persuasion before being prevailed upon to confront the ruling classes….”

In a chapter on clerical celibacy, she writes (page 145) “In the more stable from of politics, singular heroic acts would not be enough to support an ongoing kingly reign. What was needed was a much more reliable marriage of politics and religion that could be called upon at a moment’s notice. Standing armies would be one way of solving the political problem, but in the new arrangements between church and state, and with a church hierarchical structure based upon a military model, more symbolic changes would be needed……The priests, in effect, became the new heroes of the society. Previously their “heroic deeds” in the service of God simply would have been proof of great holiness. Now their great power enabled them to confer religious authority upon the kings…..male priests….became a permanent caste of heroes with a monopoly on religious power.”

And one of Mary Condren’s conclusions (page 198) is that “Instead of monotheism, we now have the working strategy of unquestioning obedience to military authority, which continues to sustain various forms of patriarchal power….Those soldiers willing to sacrifice their lives confer upon the military-industrial complex a new kind of theological status, that which represents the “whole” now that traditional religion seldom serves this purpose. Indeed, the inroads of secularism may have occasioned a “sacrificial crisis” or a “collapse of the sacrificial economy” in which the search for political absolutes now becomes dominant.” Seem familiar????

Anyway, the book is an oldie but a goldie and worth seeking out if you are interested in the themes explored – in great detail.

But I have a final thought arising from the book, and that is how the powers that be can dissemble and deceive. St Brigid’s Day has, for the last few years, been declared a public holiday in the Re:Public, the first named after/connected with a woman. Oh, how progressive! But does the Irish government pay one jot of attention to, let alone follow, what St Brigid was about? Peace, protection, mediation, welcoming, women’s assertiveness, all would be associated with Brigid. And what is Ireland doing? Cosying up to the Big Boys of militarism and power in NATO and EU militarisation, and doing less than the minimum for asylum seekers. So it is “Oh, how sad!” rather than “Oh, how progressive!”.

The wizard of ID

It takes some doing to get all the parties in de Nort agreed on anything but all seemed to support the idea that Keir Starmer’s proposed UK digital identity card, even if for a mobile phone, is a Bad Idea. And even if this ‘BritCard’ was slightly hidden and you only needed to have it with you for certain occasions or services, listing your nationality – Irish, British, Klingon – is Not A Good Idea in a contested-identity region like Northern Ireland. Commentators pointed to the difficulty for cross-border workers. And unionists felt it would make no difference to immigration anyway – which, as you may know, is tiny in the North compared to the Republic or Britain and most other European countries/areas, despite the noise some of the right try to make to exploit the issue. However another unionist commentator said it was a mistake to reject the idea and playing into nationalist hands, presumably on the rationale that forcing people to have and/or carry British identification that they rejected was Good For The Union.

Identity cards have a chequered history in general. The public services card in the Re:Public might have been pushed further as a more general id card if people hadn’t pushed back against the Irish government’s moves on this. But in a society like Northern Ireland where the need is not to abolish people’s chosen identities but make those of less consequence than common humanity and mutual acceptance, it is a step backwards. Cue pictures of someone on a backstreet in the dark stopped by vigilantes or paramilitaries and asked to produce their id card. How it would actually be operationalised in Northern Ireland would be a nightmare but it would also be strange to leave the North out from an otherwise UK-wide scheme – but whether it will be identical remains to be seen.

We will wait and see what develops or founders on this, and opposition in Britain has been building. I pity any poor public servants tasked with introducing this in Northern Ireland, they would have a lot of sleepless nights on their hands; it is on the cards that it would not be very successful and any success that will be achieved will be hard won.

On another note about the UK, in a voting intentions survey or poll published in the 30/8/25 edition of the “i” newspaper, Nigel Farage’s Reform party had a 15% lead over Labour (35% to 20%) with the Conservatives on 17%; if replicated in four years time, the inequitable UK ‘first past the post’ voting system would give Reform a whopping majority… This might be welcomed by some Irish nationalists as likely leading to a united Ireland (it might) but it would actually be very bad news for the people of Norn Iron and Ireland as a whole with the likelihood of instability and chaos, whatever happened, with a far right English nationalist party in power in the UK. Any resultant transition to a united Ireland – and that couldn’t be assumed either – would be disorderly to say the least.

Speaking of the Wizard of Id, in the cartoons of that name my favourite is probably the one where the king is showing a visiting dignitary or neighbouring royalty around the kingdom. The visitor asks a peasant how they are doing and the peasant replies “I can’t complain.” A further question from the visitor about why they say that elicits the response – “It’s not allowed.” There are many dangers on this island and we are not at that stage but in many countries internationally authoritarianism is in the ascendant.

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Well, that’s me for now as winter weather is ready to kick in. September wasn’t too bad but we didn’t get a summer-like ’Indian summer’, unfortunately, that sometimes comes in the earlier part of that month. The shops are now displaying their Christmas tat, sorry, wares, so the year moves on, and I will see you again soon. There will be a new president-elect in the Re-Public before I write again but I have already had my say on that, Billy.

Billy King: Rites Again

Billy King, Nonviolent News, ,

Billy King shares his monthly thoughts

The universe – and nonviolence

The last time I was paying tribute to the wonders of the universe, and did link it a bit to nonviolence, but I wanted to go further here. [More mystical musings? – Ed]

There are two ends of the spectrum that we can marvel at in the universe. The scale of an endless universe, or universes beyond our universe, is so beyond our understanding, our reckoning, that we cannot grasp it. But equally beyond our comprehension is the number of micro-organisms that are in a handful of garden soil. Both on the macro and micro levels, the universe if full of vibrancy and life.

And when I say the universe is full of life, I take that as quite obvious. The maths and what we know about the bits of the universe humans have learnt about clearly indicate that there is lots of life out there beyond the shores and relative sureties of Earth. Obviously we don’t know what kind of life, and much of it may be microbial, but the maths would also tend to indicate we are not only not alone but there may be many life forms both less and more advanced than we are.

I don’t want to get into the whole debate about UFOs, and if intelligent beings from outside are monitoring us (what a disappointment for them we must be….) their technology must be such, by reason of the distance they have come, that they can do it without us noticing if they want to. Who knows. But my point is that we are part of a massive web of life, and we are learning to our cost on this earth that we are not above nature. Nonviolence to our planet is not only nonviolence towards the rest of life but the only survival strategy we have.

However nonviolence towards our fellow human beings everywhere is a part of it that many have not grasped as they pursue violent acquisition, repression and private and national greed. We are clearly all linked as human beings. National and ethnic labels may be important in some ways but they are accretions which, on a wider scale, are unimportant. As both the climate crisis and Covid-19 show, humanity sinks or swims together – and in relation to Covid it looks, unfortunately, that in terms of sharing and cooperation we have been rather floundering. The same conclusion applies to refugee issues – and in particular rich world responses.

As I also said last time, it doesn’t matter what your religious or philosophical beliefs are, the wonder of the universe is shared by us all, and open to interpretation by us all. And there is much that we still don’t understand about our own planet. There is much we don’t understand about the human being, how our brains function for example, but what we should be able to do is stand in awe at the marvel of being alive, of being human, and what we humans can do.

Of course there are those with a dark view of human nature, and for all of us considering the nature of human nature I would certainly recommend Rutger Bregman’s ‘Humankind’, reviewed in these pages at https://innatenonviolence.org/readings/2020_07.shtml Armies have to be trained to kill, and even when trained to do so, soldiers would usually prefer not to do so.

There are many things I don’t know and will never know. But I do know that nonviolence and non-killing (to use a term often used by Máiread Maguire) is one of the secrets of the universe. Not doing so is playing at being a god.

Credit…

…where credit is due. The Catholic bishops often get a bashing today, and in my opinion it is sometimes well deserved (and I wouldn’t exclude Prod bishops from the same), but one thing which I would credit the Northern Catholic bishops with is their opposition to the “11+” system of transfer, or its equivalents, from primary to secondary school.

Donal McKeown, Bishop of Derry, recently came out against the Northern grammar schools’ proposed single test for transfer. He said https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-58663414 it appeared to be “setting in concrete the fragmentation” of decision-making in Northern Ireland’s education system, questioned whether it should be the grammar schools making the running on this as opposed to politicians, and “He described the transfer test as a “fake exam which claims to measure intelligence but really is only a competition for those who are best prepared”“ It is the latter point I would like to elucidate.

It is quite some years ago now but I had occasion to interview the principal of the Catholic girls’ secondary school in a fair sized town in Norn Iron. She informed me that girls who failed the 11+ exam and came to her school but five years later did well in GCSEs would automatically, no matter what their career choice, decide to go the Catholic girls’ grammar school because until they got the grammar school uniform on at 16 they did not feel they had regained the self image they had lost at 11. For children, and a majority of children at that, at age 11 to be told, in any way, that they have ‘failed’ is simply violent, and I use that term carefully and deliberately.

Of course there are all sorts of issues involved. Transfer to secondary school can be done on a class (i.e. rich/poor, not classroom) basis even without any kind of transfer test, and the involvement of class certainly happens in the Republic too though without the stigma associated with the Northern 11+ or equivalent. In Norn Iron the long term failure to sort the whole matter out has been a reflection of the political system’s failure to take decisions on some essential matters. And the high level of low achievement among Northern Ireland school students (along with, conversely, a relatively high level of high achievers) is a scandal which blights lives and contributes to the malaise in which Northern Ireland exists. The North needs a different system.

So well done to Donal McKeown who is a long term advocate for justice – and, incidentally, formerly an activist with Pax Christi.

Subnormal behaviour on submarines

What in the world (sic) are the USA and UK doing selling nuclear submarines to Australia? China may be flexing its muscles in the South China Sea but it hasn’t been a country busy militarily occupying others apart from its reprehensible ongoing repression and colonialism in the likes of Tibet and Xinjiang. Talk about escalation…..

I can have no sympathy for France in feeling it was done the dirty by Australia reneging on its deal to buy ‘conventional’ subs from them. The arms trade is a dirty and underhand business at the best of times so you can expect the worst.

Selling nuclear submarines to a non-nuclear power may not be nuclear weapons proliferation but it is certainly military escalation. I feel sad that there is another sphere of military escalation in the world.

Tunnel vision

“So let’s build a really long and hugely expensive tunnel through one of the biggest munition and radioactive dumps that exist – what could go wrong?”

The tunnel between Norn Iron and Scotland which B Johnson proposed is dead in the water (pun intended) in terms of financial cost. Putting any kind of tunnel through the Beaufort Dyke in the middle of the Irish Sea, both due to its depth, unexploded munitions, toxic chemicals and radioactivity, (see e.g. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/beaufort-dyke-reveals-its-deadly-secrets-1.86927 ) would have been an absolute nightmare. Johnson’s kite flying on the issue was, I presume, mainly to demonstrate his commitment to the continuation of a united ‘United Kingdom’ (and a somewhat pathetic and ineffective sop to unionists) though his more practical policies have been effectively ripping that up. While any practical inter-country links should be welcomed this one is not a runner or even a swimmer.

As you presumably already know, Johnson is big on grand theatrical flourishes but very poor on detail (he is not even very good at lying given that successful liars do so in a way that makes detection difficult or at least difficult to expose) and he should have realised from the start that the cost would be astronomical. Though in another way you could say, like D Trump, Johnson is a ‘good’ liar in that truth is not what you expect from him. There has been no full survey of the potential but £20 billion was mentioned whereas in my non-engineered mind I would say you could probably multiply that by a factor of two or three, even if it was optimised as a combination of tunnel and bridge (the latter making weather related closure more likely).

The British-French Channel Tunnel proved difficult to fund and sustain in terms of cost. And yet Britain is an island of nearly 60 million people. Ireland is an island of less than 7 million. While the minimum distance between Ireland and Scotland is 12 or so miles/20 km, the ‘best’ route across the Irish sea (e.g. Larne – Portpatrick) could be almost double that, perhaps rather less than the British-French tunnel (50 km long) but potentially with much higher costs because of the Beaufort Dyke.

As other commentators have said, it anyone wanted to seriously improve Norn Iron-Scottish links, they could look at the connectivity of Cairnryan to elsewhere in Britain – the road network is appalling and there has been no direct train link since the ferries at the bottom of the garden moved from Stranraer. Incidentally, those who know the area around Cairnryan will know of the ubiquity of ‘Irish’ language names in the area, reflecting the Irish cultural heritage of the area from many centuries ago.

Patriarchy

I haven’t written on violence and patriarchy for some time which is probably remiss of me since the link between the two is a key to decreasing violence of all sorts and at all levels – interpersonal, societal and international. I am always amazed that society doesn’t take this issue seriously – that is, the socialisation of boys and young men to accept violent behaviour of some kinds as both normal and positive. Considerable attention is needed to the issue to try to remedy it but all we get is an occasional and oblique reference or action. Of course many societies are now also trying to inculcate acceptance of armed force into women as well, and make their armies gender-neutral (a next to impossible task I would argue).

Where does violence come from? There are many factors including greed, insecurity, enjoyment of bullying and dominance (because it in some way makes the aggressor feel better – but possibly also worse in other ways), as well as misplaced notions of self importance by countries or individuals. But socialisation and peer pressure are a key element.

A study from Duke University in the USA emphasises the importance of peer pressure, particularly in relation to younger men. https://alumni.duke.edu/magazine/articles/study-explores-anger-violence-and-masculinity Adam Stanaland sought to discern “how anger and violent thought correlate to whether men’s sense of masculinity comes from within or is in response to social pressure. Men in the latter category, Stanaland’s study indicates, tend to be younger and to have more fragile senses of masculinity. In short, they think they have more to prove, which they express through anger and aggression.”

“In the end, the studies found that men in their late thirties and younger were more likely to conform to masculine norms because of external pressure and were more likely to behave aggressively if they felt their manhood was threatened.”

Part of his conclusion is that “presenting gender-diverse examples of men, women, and non-binary people and explicitly addressing harmful norms can help boys become less fragile, less aggressive men.“ His conclusions are perhaps nothing new but it is certainly not all gloom and misogynist doom in that it is clear education and exploration of masculinity, along with proper support, can have a real influence in bringing men to a better place than machismo.

But the first stop on this road is acknowledging the problem. Society doesn’t seem to want to do that yet. As stated at the start, this has implications at all levels, from so-called domestic violence (inter-personal relationship violence) through to warfare.

As to how you can create the conditions for serious work on male violence and an acceptance that it is a real and present danger, well, trying continually to create awareness and conscientisation on the issue is part of it. And the lack of awareness and focus on the issue is itself an argument for the existence of patriarchy.

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We’re well into the autumn now and winter beckons. As I continually say, every season has it advantages and disadvantages, but getting yourself warm and cosy at home in the winter time, with your feet up, literally and/or metaphorically, has a lot to recommend it. A brisk walk, or a run if you are so inclined, in the cool of autumn with the beauty of golden leaves tumbling is a great tonic for anyone for can get out and about. Until I see you again in a month, take care of each other, Billy.