Letters to the Editor
-
Sick Powerful Fucks
The conversations between Mao and Kissinger are reminiscent of the War Room conversation in "Dr. Strangelove", in which the boys discuss their underground bunker utopia. Those guys there in the War Room were sick fucks, just like Kissinger and Mao, just like Stalin, just like Bush Jr, just like Cheney and Rumsfeld, just like etc, etc......
-
oh, please
First, I would bet that women joke about men just as much. Second, Mao was obviously referring to population problems, which were and are real... I can't read anything "appalling" in his quote, and in fact he didn't even state anything about his opinion of women as people, only about their "way of doing things", which in this case meant bearing (too many) children.
-
Take our women...
While these comments may not be "politcally correct" it really depends on the tone on which they're said. I know I have offered complete strangers cash if they would take my girlfriend off my hands and even she appreciated the joke.
If anything, the fact that the stakes were raised from ten thousand to ten million shows the exageration and hyperbole, obviously not a serious offer.
Mountain != molehill
-
wow
you mean, in addition to being responsible for tens of millions of deaths and untold misery, he said something misogynist this one time? quel scandale!
-
Take my wife. Please!
That's about what Mao said. oooh, what a meanie!
Lighten up, Lloyd.
-
Let's go with the Dead White Guy on this one...
So instead they sent us cheap Walmart crap and demolished our industrial economy with the aid of Reagan, Clinton and House of Bush. We should have gone with the ten million hot Chinese women. Or as the late Robert Heinlein said in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress "Tell 'em to send us hoors, thousands and thousands of hoors! I marry 'em ya betcha!"
-
I don't think
the point of this post was to bash Mao. I always thought the Chinese Communist movement advertised to women. They could be equal, and Mao advocated the same thing.
I always thought that Mao was onces a good man with good ideals before he had too much power, and it made sense that his mind deteriorated, either as a result of what he had done or as a cause.
It would make sense that he said these things later in life. The point is, that there was still a worldwide good ol' boys mentality.
-
Newsflash: Hilter and Stalin not nice guys either
This is newsworthy? That a third world dictator, author of the Cultural Revolution, was not a warm fuzzy feminist kinda guy? duh.
Chinese attitudes towards women are longstanding, and deeply entrenched, and there is tons of literature and documented research into this. They have both a very misogynist society, AND a huge population problem. It's stupid to anyone who thinks it through -- because both men and women contribute to population growth -- but the easy, lame response is that "we have too many people because WOMEN KEEP HAVING BABIES"....no acknowledgement that all those babies had to have daddies.
It seems, though, that Mao got his wish, albiet long long after his death -- because the Chinese have surely passed onto the West many, many girl children (by international adoption), though not quite 10 million. Note that all Chinese adoptions, unlike other countries, is exclusively female....they aren't sending us their boys, just their unwanted extra girls.
And boy, are they going to reap sorrow from this. Between international adoptions of girls, and the one-child policy, and abortions of girls for sex selection, and the overwhelming preference that the "one-child" be a son -- the Chinese are facing down a HUGE, unprecedented, never-seen-before imbalance between the sexes. Millions of Chinese men are going to face life-long singlehood, with no hope of marriage and probably no children of any kind, let alone sons.
It is still very unclear what that means for the rest of the world, in terms of Chinese economic and military power. But what is clear is that we will be reaping Mao's stupid remarks, Chinese misogyny, and population sex imbalance for many decades into the future.
There is never any way to quantify or contain human arrogance or stupidity.
Next question.
-
Take a look in the mirror Carol
You referred to one of the most atrociously repressive governments in history as an "egalitarian dictatorship" and then you go off on a tangent about them not respecting women like that's the most heinous thing about Mao. Talk about missing the bigger picture....
Stories like this make me shake my head and wonder if feminism will ever regain a sense of relevance in our political debate.
-
Misogyny?
American women complain incessantly and in public about men and how thay waould like the world to be rid of them.
Soooo, either these women ARE misandrists, as is Mao, or else they are NOT misandrist and NEITHER IS MAO.
What is the exact problem here?
Frankly, with the problems American women are causing in this country AS WE SPEAK, with the Britneys and Parises teaching our women to be irresponsible uber skanks, why should it surprise ANYONE that leaders of a nation might want to look for ways to lessen the burden on society by exporting the troublemaking women?
Typically men can cause some small scale trouble, but only women can eviscerate a nation from within, due to their key position as keepers of the social peace, as we see here in the US today where nothing seems to work lately.
-
Just not that appalled...
Of all the things Mao ever said and did, this is like the least of them. Okay, if he ever hugged a puppy, that would be less bad than this. But, I mean, the Cultural Revolution...
-
Sigh!
Mao...you big meanie!
-
a certain poster's wet dream
"Kick all the women out, who just cause problems, have babies, and make all the men feel unimportant."
Sounds like someone's idea of heaven, n'est ce pas?
-
Really
The US state department released the docuement ... and you believe it? and you elaborate on it... you sound more like a cold war propagandist .... you beleive in the next mushroom cloud and mobile biological trailer and WMD too i suppose...
-
Break the Chains;)
Shame on you, counter revolutionary lackeys and running dogs for your imperialist mis-interpretations of the beloved Chairman. Clearly the Great Helmsman was only kidding, as he often did when engaging in light banter and class struggle with paper tigers, for did he not also say: "Break the Chains! Unleash the Fury of Women as a Mighty Force for Revolution!” of course he did. So that settles that.... Unless of course, the Great Supreme Commander’s intention all along was to send a 10 million strong cadre of politically aware and revolutionarily indoctrinated hotties to open a new, sexy front in the struggle with the rapacious, and corrupt forces of reactionary imperialism… talk about thawing the cold war… I think you gals are on to something.
“Dare to struggle, dare to win!”