I’m a child of the Flower Generation. That doesn’t mean I used to go around wearing flowers in my hair, well not much of the time. But we believed that we could create a better world than the one our parents had given us. We were called all sorts of names: Baby Boomers, Hippies, and a lot of much worse names. Among the things we thought we could change was the ‘slavery’ of women.

Back in the 1950’s the ideal was for a woman to get married, have kids and become a good wife and mother. She was not allowed to have any ideas of her own. Instead, she was expected to keep a spotless house, look after the kids, and cater to her husband’s every whim. She did what her husband told her, submitted to his tyranny, and shut up. She was, in effect, a household slave.

By the time the 1960’s rolled around many women were getting burned out by this regime. Along came the ‘little yellow pill’ the Rolling Stones sang about. Women were getting zonked out all day just to cope with their humdrum little lives. That’s when many of them started taking an interest in the Feminist Movement.

The feminist movement is not a modern invention. As far back as the early 19th century women tried to change how men treated them. Women like Susan B. Anthony, Clementina Black, Elizabeth Blackwell, and Mary Ann Shad Cary the first American black woman to graduate from Howard University Law School and first Black woman to vote in a federal election, were the real pioneers.

Then in the late 1960’s along came Germaine Greer, an Australian feminist who advocated women burn their bras to free themselves. So then we men had lots of floppy boobs to look at. That was nice. Unfortunately, this just made men think the feminists were a bunch of daft dames who weren’t worth taking seriously.

On the other side of the coin, Bella Abzug, a civil rights and labor attorney elected to Congress from New York City, and even Madelaine Albright the first female Secretary of State, made their mark in the US government and struck telling blows for the feminist movement. They were the vanguard of a new wave of women who were moving into what had been male-only domains before.

But to us common men, feminism was a totally new concept we had to come to terms with. Unfortunately, we were swayed by our wives and girlfriends who thought feminism meant a reversal in the traditional roles. Suddenly, we had women trying to wear the trousers and dictate how things should work. The teething pains were many and difficult.

The result was a generation of male wimps who were too scared to argue with their women. Instead, they bowed down to all the feminist demands. We were expected to become much more ‘touchy feely’, more in touch with our ‘feminine side’, and to do what our women expected.

Not all of us thought this was a good idea, especially as we saw what was happening to some of our male brethren. The sight of a man crying at a chick-movie was just sickening. When I met a woman and she started trying to tell me what to do she soon got a shock. I would explain to her that there were some things I would do and some I would not. In other words, I marked the line that she was not allowed to cross. Some of them were horrified and the relationship ended right there and then. Good riddance!

Overall, though, I found that showing them who was boss paid off big. I gained their respect. Let’s face it, women need to be pulled into line sometimes. They get emotional and manipulating at times, especially around that time of the month. That’s when men need to be especially vigilant and not take any shit from them.

Now don’t get me wrong. I have no trouble with caring what my women need, both in and out of the sack. I am quite happy to empathize with their feelings. But I drew the line at kow-towing to their every whim, especially if they start using their ‘feminine wiles’ to try and make me do what they want. For example, if my wife starts getting bitchy near that time of the month I head out the door for a couple of days on a business trip. Even if I don’t have any clients to go and visit, I go somewhere and conduct research for my business. Pattaya is always a good place business! – Stick> By the time I get home again she has got over it and things are back on an even keel again. I get some work done, she appreciates the time alone, so we both win.

Selfish? No, I don’t think so. I think it has preserved our marriage and made it much stronger. She respects me and knows she has to behave herself or I leave. It also creates an element of insecurity, not knowing if I will just keep going one day. She tries extra hard to make nice-nice when I get back.

THE FEMINAZIS

A few years ago there was a story in the Bangkok Post about a group of feminists who had arrived in Thailand determined to ‘save’ the poor girls working in the sex industry. They descended on Patpong and started trying to preach to the girls there. A few weeks later there was another story in the Post about the results of their efforts. One of their spokesmen announced that they were changing their focus. They had come to realize that the girls weren’t the victims. The men were! I had to laugh at that. It didn’t take them too long to realize the reality of the situation, did it?

Now, before you start reaching for your pen to point out my word usage in the paragraph above let me tell you that I refuse to spout that politically correct rubbish the feminists demand. I will not use spokesperson, or even worse spokeswoman. The fact is, spokesman is the original and legitimate word to use, no matter what gender the speaker.

When men first come here they are victims of the Western feminazis. They are amazed at the totally different interaction between men and women in Thailand. Of course, this is what unhinges so many of us too. I can’t deny it. I went through it just like you, so don’t feel too bad. The truth is, when we get here we are like kids in a sweet shop. So many to choose from and so easy!

But when you have lived here a while you look around and realize that there is a heck of a lot more to Thailand than meets the eye. Take our reaction to the Thai men. So many of them seem like kids, even when they are in their 30’s and 40’s. Why is this?

Looks are deceiving. They are not assertive like us. They seem to be very unassuming and ineffective. On the surface this is true. If you go out for a night on the town with them they will get drunk and make inane and silly comments. They really let their hair down. You have to be careful though. They will try and give you girls, or get you into situations you would never even consider back home. You have to walk a fine line between keeping them happy, not insulting them, and maintaining your own dignity. They can be very childlike one minute and then as hard-nosed as any western businessman the next, but in a totally different way.

If you don’t believe me, try doing business with a Thai man. You will soon find that he is very polite, malleable and eager to please while you talk to him. However, as soon as you walk away, everything you have agreed may unravel if it doesn’t suit him. He will then start asking you to make changes until he gets the deal he wants. No matter how hard you try to steer things back to your original agreement, nothing will happen if you don’t start compromising. If you do not negotiate very carefully you will walk away with little or nothing of your original deal in hand. The Thai male can be a lot tougher than you imagined when he wants something.

They get this from their women. The truth is, Thai women exert a very strong influence on society. There is no need for a Thai feminist movement. They have run things behind the scenes for centuries. They coddle their sons well beyond the time western mums do. This is why Thai men seem so ‘weak’ to us. They are used to being looked after by their women. They don’t have to worry about equality. Both sexes in Thailand know what they are and don’t try to be what they are not….well, with the exception of the katoeys, but that is another story, isn’t it?

Handling Thai bargirls is an art and if you are a newcomer you are going to fall into all the traps these girls can spring. Just because they look sweet and appealing and they are good in bed, don’t be fooled. They are tough and ruthlessly devoted to prying as much money out of your wallet as possible. They have centuries of practice manipulating men behind them. They will lie, cry, get angry, and accuse you of wrongdoing when you know full well she is the one at fault. You could catch her in bed with another man and she will deny it without wavering. She will turn it completely around and accuse you instead of some imagined wrongdoing. She will get you so confused that you won’t know where you stand.

If you think western women wear the pants, then Thai women wear full suits of body armor. The only way you can win and have a good time without getting taken to the cleaners is to realize this and be prepared to make the rules. If she threatens to go find a richer man, shrug and tell her to go. Turn around and walk away. I guarantee she will come running right back to you when she sees you are serious. If she doesn’t, what have you lost?

Stop thinking she is the only girl for you. Bullshit! There are millions of them waiting for you. All you have to do is make the choice. Are you going to be the victim the feminazis have turned you into? Or are you going to take back your manhood and enjoy the fruits Thailand has to offer? The choice is yours.

What are the two most controversial subjects for discussion? Why politics and religion of course, so I am going to wrap them both up in a rant that has been on my mind for a long time. So here goes. Hang on to your seats, because this is going to be a doozy.

I was raised as a Roman Catholic. My mother was a rabid catholic who forced us kids to go to church every Sunday. Since I also went to a catholic school I had religion rammed down my throat by the nuns every day too. But as I progressed through primary school I began to question things. I just couldn’t reconcile the teachings with what went on in my life. I can’t remember too many days when I didn’t get at least one beating at home or school. These weren’t just a quick cuff across the ears or something. No. At school it was a cane across the back of the legs or across the middle joints of my fingers. I still have broken veins there as a result. I was just a normal high-spirited kid. I wasn’t doing anything evil. I guess the nuns had a different viewpoint. I remember one told me I would go to hell if I looked down a woman’s cleavage. Oh, oh! I’m doomed!

The beatings at home were sometimes even more savage, especially if my mother lost her temper, which was often. Out would come Dad’s belt, or a piece of wood, or whatever was handy, and she would lay it on for all she was worth. Now she’s old she complains that I live too far away and I never go and see her. I wonder why?

What finally made me realize that the Catholics were not for me was the day I watched the local priest tie the school bully to a pole in the schoolyard and horsewhip the kid in front of the whole school. Now don’t get me wrong. That kid was the bane of our lives. He would beat us smaller kids up all the time. What really got me thinking though was that I was watching a ‘man of god’ who smoked like a chimney, had a severe drinking problem, and bet the takings from the collection plate on the horses beating up a 12 year old. Everyone knew about the priest’s peccadilloes, but no one would say anything. He should have been setting an example of love and caring. Instead, he was worse than many of the ‘sinners’ who went into his confessional box.

Although I continued going to church every Sunday until well into my early teens, it was only to appease my mother. I had no interest in the boring sermons, the smelly incense, and the bullying priest.

It wasn’t until I left home that I made the final break. From then on I took very little interest in religion, until I ran into a bunch of do-gooder Salvation Army people one day when I was in my early twenties. I was going through a bad time and they helped me get back on my feet. I was tempted to join them at first. But their tacky uniforms and the hymn singing on street corners playing badly out of tune instruments to a bunch of jeering sinners didn’t really turn me on.

A couple of years later I was wandering through Hyde Park in Sydney when I spotted a large crowd gathered around one of the soapbox speakers. He wasn’t much to look at. Webster had bad teeth and terrible halitosis, a gift from the British National Health. His clothes were very English working class. Not very clean, and a bit threadbare. His oratory, however, was incredible. He claimed to be a Warlock in the Wicca religion. It was obvious he was well read. He could discourse on a wide variety of topics. The big attraction, though, was how he handled hecklers. Webster would shoot them down in flames with a pointedly amusing retort that left most of them dumbstruck. It was a pleasure to watch him in action.

I got to know him and he invited me to join the after speech soirees at his home. There I met about 20 other seekers like myself. Perhaps Webster could enlighten us.

I listened to him for months, absorbing the wisdom he had culled from the ancient Druid religion. He was watching me too, and one day he pulled me aside and told me that he didn’t think I believed in him enough. He was right. After he told us one day that we should never have inoculations I started having my doubts. When I asked what he proposed instead, he said to use natural healing instead. If natural healing was so wonderful, I asked myself, why hadn’t it eliminated smallpox, measles, and so on long ago? Soon after that I left Webster and his crew of adoring acolytes. I was just too much of a doubter. I needed rational answers that would guide my life. I didn’t need a self-styled guru who demanded total belief and obedience.

However, being a Wiccan did have its advantages at least once. One day a Mormon duo knocked on my door hoping to sell me their brand of tripe. I opened the door, recognized the black trousers, white shirts and black nametag and told them not to waste their breath. I was a Wiccan Warlock. You should have seen the looks on their faces! They backed down the stairs intoning that I was evil, the devil, a blight on mankind, and so on.

I remained a skeptic after that and got on with my life. I traveled and one day I ended up here in Thailand. At first, I thought the Buddhist way of life might be what I was looking for. I went to one of the big temples and met some of the western monks to discuss the Dharma with them. I found some of it very enlightening, but I was still very wary of any organized religion. Thai Buddhism was very organized. I didn’t fancy the regime of denial imposed on the monks. That wasn’t for me. In addition, I found some of the western monks were somewhat naïve. I was pretty sure that some of them couldn’t cope with everyday life and had retreated to the monk hood as a way to avoid life’s hardships. In my mind, they were the walking dead. They had devoted their lives to preparing for death.

Ok. So what was next? I’d looked at two of the three great religions in depth. Neither of them offered me what I was looking for. So one day I went to the Pakistani Embassy and asked if I could have a Koran to study. I was greeted politely and shown into a drab room with a table, two chairs, and walls painted halfway up in institutional green. I sat there patiently wondering what would happen next. The door opened and a dapper man in his mid-thirties with a thin moustache walked in. He introduced himself and asked me if I would mind answering some questions. I had no problem with that, and told him so.

He asked me about my religious beliefs.
Currently none, but I was a seeker, I assured him.

If they gave me a copy of the Koran would I look after it and ensure that it was never desecrated?
Sure thing, I told him. I want to read it to get some insight into Islam.

Did I think I would convert to Islam?
Well, I can’t answer that right now. My first step is to read the Koran and then think about it.

Would I like to meet with a mullah and have him instruct me in the Koran?
No, not right now. I wouldn’t want to waste anyone’s time at this stage. If, after reading the Koran, I felt I would benefit from further instruction I would return to arrange further instruction and discussion.

And on it went. Eventually, he led me out to reception where a brand new copy of a beautifully bound Koran awaited me. I was asked to sign a book acknowledging that I had taken delivery, and I was ushered out the door by the still smiling dapper man.

I returned home and started to read. I had read the Bible for many years, so when I opened the Koran I was immediately struck by the similarities in the two books. The Koran uses much more flowery language, but the basic story is the same. My old friend the Archangel Gabriel is a very powerful figure in the Koran. He seems to be the avenging arm of Allah. As I read the Suras I got a feel for the philosophy behind Islam. Both the Bible and the Koran have some very violent people and events in them. The Old Testament matches the Koran pretty well there. However, the Bible does preach a lot more peace and love. The Koran dwells more on forcefully converting others to Islam. I don’t recall reading that women were inferior to men and that they should be wrapped completely in black, either. In fact, the Koran talks about women as equals. I wonder why Muslim women don’t do something about gaining their freedom from the tyranny their men have imposed on them?

After considerable thought I realized that Islam was not what I was seeking either. So that left me back to being an atheist again.

Now, one of the problems we atheists face is that we don’t have anywhere we can meet to discuss our non-beliefs. We have no organization. It’s difficult to talk about a belief you don’t have, so we tend to be left out in the cold. Whenever I’m asked what religion I am I have to answer ‘none’, which raises a few eyebrows. Although, if I think having a religion might sway my questioner to do what I want I might say I am Buddhist. I’m not lying. I really do think that Buddhism offers a lot more than the other organized religions. I’m just not the joining type who enjoys going to temples and following worshiping formulas. I prefer to think for myself.

Now, this brings me to the political part of my rant. I believe that governments are elected to run a country efficiently. They should not interfere in our personal lives. They should make sure that the infrastructure is maintained so that it functions properly, and they should collect enough taxes to ensure that they can do their jobs well. That’s all.

Somewhere along the line we seem to have lost sight of what politicians really are. Back in the last couple of centuries, governments tried various social experiments to ‘help’ their constituents. These all failed spectacularly, and in many cases the experiments killed many of the people they were supposed to help.

Then we had the big social revolution of the 1960’s and ‘70’s. I was there and I was a part of it. So many of us were such idealists. We were going to make the world a better place. Of course, you had to smoke dope and drop LSD to really get into the right state to start changing the world. Then along came Charles Manson, Black September, the Munich Olympics massacre, and so on. Suddenly, idealism went down the drain and we stumbled towards the beginning of the 21^st Century.

Along came Bush and his Neocons. Oh my! They narrowly squeaked into power, some would say by stealing the Presidency. No matter. They were in and they took control. The problem was, a large number of Americans were grumbling about it. How to fix the problem?

How convenient. A bunch of Islamic terrorists provided the answer by flying planes into a bunch of buildings. Suddenly, we began hearing about ‘Al Qaeda’. What was this shadowy organization? Oh yeah! Someone called Osama Bin Laden ran it. The trouble is, Osama was an ex-CIA man. He was trained by them, armed by them, and then he broke away from them. So why not pin it all on this ungrateful ingrate? Another problem was that Al Qaeda didn’t actually exist. It still doesn’t exist. Osama doesn’t have an organization. He merely funds any disgruntled ‘terrorist’ who wants to make a statement and hopefully kill himself in the process.

After 9/11 we see the American Constitution being disregarded, a new government organization with the decidedly Nazi sounding name of ‘Homeland Security’ to ‘protect US citizens from terrorist attack’. Unfortunately, the new laws seem to affect American freedoms adversely more than any terrorist. Then it’s hey ho! Off we go to war against a former ally who provided a convenient scapegoat for everything. The problem was, Saddam wasn’t cooperating! Where were the WMD’s Bush and his band of merry fakers had promised us?

No problem. We’ll just keep telling people that we are still looking and when we find a few scraps of old chemical weapons from the 1980’s we’ll tell everyone we found them. Yep! That will work if we keep repeating it enough. We’ll wrap it up in good ol’ Christian ‘faith’ as well, and tell the non-believers that they are the heretics and the bad guys. Repeating the lie until everyone believed it worked for the Nazis and the Communists, didn’t it?

Now, you might have noticed that when Bush came to power, several governments around the world changed at about the same time. Blair in the UK, Howard in Australia, Taksin right here, Koizumi in Japan, and so on. They have all become the little lap dogs of the American prez. When he says poop, they ask how long do you want it, sir?

Like Mr Bush, they have tried to socially reengineer their countries to conform to their extremely conservative agendas. Here, we are not allowed to buy booze or cigarettes at certain times of the day. It doesn’t matter that these are far worse and more addictive than the drugs sold by the thousand plus ‘drug dealers’ who were killed to eliminate the drug trade. They are dead, so who cares? I haven’t noticed any reduction in drunkenness as a result. We just have to go shopping earlier to get our fixings if we want them. Or wait until the early evening to start our debauchery again. Has anyone noticed a reduction in the drug trade either? Nowadays it’s just much better organized and not so well publicized. The kingpins weren’t killed were they? The bluenoses spoil my video movies by blacking out people drinking and smoking, and nipples. But the violence remains in all its graphic gruesomness.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Governments around the world these days are more concerned with telling us how to behave and to do their bidding. Instead, they should be providing the basic requirements to make our lives comfortable and hassle free. Sure, here in Thailand we have a nice new BTS and MRT (both planned and started long before the current government came to power). We have lots of new highways, some of which our grandchildren will still be paying for because of the vast amount of public funding that ‘disappeared’. The expressways that were supposed to link up in Bang Na is a graphic example. And we have the 30 Baht medical scheme that provides such basic medical service it’s probably safer to stay home instead.

In America they have a new way to control the populace: Fear. Fear of the terrorists, that shadowy bunch of people no one has ever been able to find. Maybe some of those people in Gitmo are terrorists. Are they a part of Al Qaeda? I doubt it. Even Osama seems too slippery to be caught. Then again, perhaps no one really wants to catch him. It might be too embarrassing.

The security people who are supposed to be responsible for ensuring the safety of the people have swallowed the lies whole. They are constantly looking for terrorists, while people’s basic human rights and freedoms have gradually been whittled down. These days, you can be arrested in the US simply because someone ‘thinks’ you might be a terrorist, or because you said something that sounded vaguely like something a ‘terrorist’ might say.

It’s a sad world, my friends. Our governments have taken over the role of our consciences, but without any of the common sense we would normally apply. They have tried to impose not only their moral values on us, but their religious beliefs as well. What have we done? Have we let the devil into our midst? Is it too late to reverse things?

Don’t ask me. I’m no one and I don’t even believe in God, or the devil. But I do have a strong belief in mankind. I think the current worldwide political situation is an aberration. Once the main players are sidelined things will get better. We may never go back to the security and comfort we enjoyed before Bush and Co. It up to us to try though, isn’t it?