Is it too late? That is a question I ponder often. After that, I keep wondering how these attitudes became so pervasive. I suppose they have always been there, but it has finally all come to a head with this plandemic. I resisted the idea of a plandemic for awhile, but it seems increasingly plausible at this point.
I was a student in a French university for a year in 1973-74. I became fascinated with what I observed in the French society at that time, and I was only 24, fresh from a California university in which the women's lib movement was gathering steam. As a woman, I was already unable to connect with any of the women's movement claims and found the whole thing disingenuous and annoying, and none of the wailing oppressions these rather obnoxious, strident women constantly yelled about were true in my own life so I've always viewed "feminism" through a pretty negative lens. I saw less of that new "feminist" movement in France in 1973, but I did notice a number of curiosities that I've never forgotten. One example was when a French person explained the pricing system in local cafés: the cheapest price for coffee was for a local French person. It cost more for a non-local French person. Next higher price was for foreign tourists. But the most expensive coffee was for the Algerians, who were numerous in the south of France at that time, the low wage workers. As it turns out, the French were (are?) quite racist even though they and many other Europeans at the time kept claiming "You Americans are so racist!" (with the pointed implication that "we French are not like that".) Another oddity was what I noticed with the numerous Chinese students at the university, more specifically with the Chinese women. This was the era of Mao, and everyone male or female wore a gray uniform, the same almost military style outfit, same gray color. But the women apparently had a desire for something decorative and unique to them that they wanted to express: each Chinese woman wore a neck scarf, each one had a different very bright color against all that gray. When I visited China in 1980, I didn't see this "individuality", so it was likely unique to being in a country outside of China and having for the first time an opportunity to stand out a tiny bit as an individual, that desire had not entirely been driven out of them. Another worrisome thing I noticed was in one of my classes. I came to a particular class (which as I remember was some sort of political science type class) with my typical Western orientation of education: I chose a topic and then supported my thesis through various other scholars' statements or discoveries. To my great surprise, the teacher did not want to read or consider such a paper. Rather, she ONLY wanted to read what the "experts" said, and I should keep my own ideas entirely out of it. Just take a topic and regurgitate what others had said about it. Period. This was very eye opening, and although I was still very young and inexperienced, I was shocked by the attitude, which I considered stifling as well as puzzling. For the first time, I was seeing a major contrast in the thoughts and freedoms allowed in France vs. in the U.S. France was a free country of course, but it certainly seemed far less so than the U.S., which I suddenly saw as happily open to new ideas.
In 1973, the French were very polarized politically as Valéry Giscard d'Estaing was running for President against the socialist François Mitterand (Giscard d'Estaing barely squeaked by with a vote of just 50.8%), but as I look back on things, there were some similarities with what I saw politically back then with what I am seeing now in the U.S. It wasn't pleasant.
Is it too late? That is a question I ponder often. After that, I keep wondering how these attitudes became so pervasive. I suppose they have always been there, but it has finally all come to a head with this plandemic. I resisted the idea of a plandemic for awhile, but it seems increasingly plausible at this point.
I was a student in a French university for a year in 1973-74. I became fascinated with what I observed in the French society at that time, and I was only 24, fresh from a California university in which the women's lib movement was gathering steam. As a woman, I was already unable to connect with any of the women's movement claims and found the whole thing disingenuous and annoying, and none of the wailing oppressions these rather obnoxious, strident women constantly yelled about were true in my own life so I've always viewed "feminism" through a pretty negative lens. I saw less of that new "feminist" movement in France in 1973, but I did notice a number of curiosities that I've never forgotten. One example was when a French person explained the pricing system in local cafés: the cheapest price for coffee was for a local French person. It cost more for a non-local French person. Next higher price was for foreign tourists. But the most expensive coffee was for the Algerians, who were numerous in the south of France at that time, the low wage workers. As it turns out, the French were (are?) quite racist even though they and many other Europeans at the time kept claiming "You Americans are so racist!" (with the pointed implication that "we French are not like that".) Another oddity was what I noticed with the numerous Chinese students at the university, more specifically with the Chinese women. This was the era of Mao, and everyone male or female wore a gray uniform, the same almost military style outfit, same gray color. But the women apparently had a desire for something decorative and unique to them that they wanted to express: each Chinese woman wore a neck scarf, each one had a different very bright color against all that gray. When I visited China in 1980, I didn't see this "individuality", so it was likely unique to being in a country outside of China and having for the first time an opportunity to stand out a tiny bit as an individual, that desire had not entirely been driven out of them. Another worrisome thing I noticed was in one of my classes. I came to a particular class (which as I remember was some sort of political science type class) with my typical Western orientation of education: I chose a topic and then supported my thesis through various other scholars' statements or discoveries. To my great surprise, the teacher did not want to read or consider such a paper. Rather, she ONLY wanted to read what the "experts" said, and I should keep my own ideas entirely out of it. Just take a topic and regurgitate what others had said about it. Period. This was very eye opening, and although I was still very young and inexperienced, I was shocked by the attitude, which I considered stifling as well as puzzling. For the first time, I was seeing a major contrast in the thoughts and freedoms allowed in France vs. in the U.S. France was a free country of course, but it certainly seemed far less so than the U.S., which I suddenly saw as happily open to new ideas.
In 1973, the French were very polarized politically as Valéry Giscard d'Estaing was running for President against the socialist François Mitterand (Giscard d'Estaing barely squeaked by with a vote of just 50.8%), but as I look back on things, there were some similarities with what I saw politically back then with what I am seeing now in the U.S. It wasn't pleasant.