Dear Members,
My name is Kathy Jones and I am the founder of a Yahoo group called The New Victorians.
My group has the ambitious aims to fight politically-correct leftist mentality and to promote traditional values as well as Victorian-inspired architecture, design, fashion and lifestyle.
Among our current 560 members, steadily growing, we count reenactors, historicians, writers, ladies involved in tea societies and generally people of a discerning nature.
The New Victorians is the online venue where we meet, discuss, share and grow.
If you would like to find out more, we would be delighted to have you join us for a visit.
We are located at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheNewVictorians/
I sincerely hope you will find my invitation interesting and to welcome you soon to our enthusiastic community.
In any case my fondest wishes and regards.
Yours sincerely,
Kathy Jones
“The New Victorians”… What a wonderful idea for a Yahoo group!
Good luck in launching your Victorian Yahoo group, Kathy! I looked at the title page—it looks quite interesting and extremely nice. I’m sure I’m not alone among readers of Turnabout in wishing you every success.
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Long live Flanders!
It is very gratifying to see women who sympathize with Turnabout
I just want to say it’s gratifying to see women expressing opposition to many of the ugliest aspects of the leftist-imposed 20th-century version of modernity, as Kathy Jones and Novaryana have done in this forum, each in her own particular and very strong way. I’ve felt for a couple or three years now (what I’m about to say may elicit howls of protest from Kathy and Novaryana) that the franchise for women has been part of the problem, because women, who don’t see things at first with the brain but with the heart, too often can’t recognize attacks on the foundations of society when these attacks are deliberately disguised so as to appeal to the heart not the brain, even though these attacks promise in the long run to harm what women hold most dear along with everything else—harm their children, their marriages and relationships, their families, so many of the little and big things of beauty which they deeply value and count on both for simple pleasure and as signs of life’s underlying meaning, whose significance helps them get through the days and through the years. All of that and more are harmed, poisoned, by the policies touted by the politicians whom women, especially unmarried women, prefer time and again to vote for. Unmarried women without husbands to guide them run riot in the voting booth, contributing greatly to the outright destruction of society through the wildly harmful candidates they help to elect. Sooner or later the effects of the society-wide devastation wrought by these successful candidates, who were helped into office by unmarried women, begin to trickle down to the notice of women in general (who couldn’t see the threat when it was still only potential, not real, because they see too much with the heart and not enough with the brain), who begin to wonder why society is become so uglified, so scarred, so torn apart. My hope is that more and more women will see the problem and help men overthrow this false-leftist( * ) monstrosity which is descended on us since the end of the 60s.
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( * “false-liberal,” because “liberal” never referred to harming society, uglifying and coarsening it, making it worse in almost every way, making it barely livable, and actually trying to destroy it and replace it with something unspeakable like Marxism or some such horror. “Liberal” never meant any of that, but instead meant the uplifting of society, society’s betterment, not its degradation. These people who’ve brought this disastrous change-for-the-worse on us have hijacked the word “liberal,” and the real liberals should take that word back from these lying thieves.)
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Long live Flanders!
Feminism is part of modern barbarity
I don’t know whether having a great sensitivity doesn’t allow us women to analyze rationally, it certainly makes us a very easy target for all “do-gooders” who preach egalitarianism, multiculturalism, non-violence, animal rights, radical environmentalism and so forth. Women’s natural concern for the well being of our species is exploited to present the left as good, generous, cooperative, up-to-date and the right as selfish, aggressive and anacronistic. Exploitation made possible of course by misinformation and leftist distorted propaganda.
Radical feminism is both effect and cause of more barbarity, since it upsets families and empowers feminist women who help barbarity spread.
Many people share my view that the cancer of society set in, or got much worse, from the 60s onwards. Now, how was leftist-hippie mentality spread at that time, and what helped it succeed? Should we invert the process using the same means?
Good news anyway, awareness is increasing.
The “leftist-hippie mentality
The “leftist-hippie mentality,” at least in the US, did not originally include what we know as feminism. The radical left included women, so long as the radical left was in the bedroom. Women were used, abused, and discarded. One push for contraception and abortion came from the males of the radical left: use women without compunction or consequences. They called it “free love.”
At some point feminism gained traction, and the patriarchal radical left repented and signed on with at least superficial enthusiasm. Now, male leftists are more “feminist” than women are; it’s a sort of litmus test.
One thing that confuses me ab
One thing that confuses me about feminism is the apparent contradictionary views they hold concerning female sexuality. On one hand they demand sexual freedom,which of course leads to women becoming sluts, much as our current generation of teenage girls prove. Yet they also demand that women should not been seen as sex objects. Ok make up your mind: do you want women sexually “liberated”, which will mean they’ll become little sluts and seen as nothing but, or do you want men to respect women which would mean women acting more in line with traditional mores?
I agree that part of feminism
I agree that part of feminism is especially irrational. You demand that women’s sexual favors be disconnected from all socially accepted preconditions and consequences, so they become a freely transferable object of desire with millions of providers all in competition with each other, and then you complain when a market springs up and they become commodified. Somebody, I think, hasn’t thought things through.
Still and all, in defense of feminists their demand is simply a special case of the general modern and left/liberal demand that each of us be absolutely free to do what he wants and define himself as he chooses. So if a woman wants to define herself as absolutely free sexually and nonetheless the object of absolute masculine respect with regard to sex, it’s very much in line with modern ways of thinking for her to expect she’ll be able to do so. It’s not a special dumb feminist attitude.
Rem tene, verba sequentur.
I’m no expert on feminism, bu
I’m no expert on feminism, but from what I’ve observed it’s hardly monolithic.
First, there are the postmodernists (Judith Butler, et al.). They deny that there are such things as gender; gender is a social construction. Butler goes so far as to claim that the female body itself is a social construction. As for public policy, such feminists are passive. Nussbaum calls them “quietists.”
Other postmodernist feminists don’t go quite that far. They just want to “feminize” everything, so that we have feminist science, and feminist mathematics, and feminist architecture, etc. They acknowledge that the genders exist, and that they are different (feminine is good; masculine is bad). Such feminists are common within churches and universities.
Then there are the “equality feminists.” These feminists operate on the basis of traditional liberal principles. Quantitative equality is a human right, and public policy must be structured to assure that outcome for all women; thus, they are focused primarily on policy and government coercion. This is the brand of feminism typically expressed in government and the legacy media. A good example of this school is Martha Nussbaum.
Finally, there are the feminist fundamentalists, like Katherine McKinnon, made famous by her comment that all intercourse is rape. McKinnon’s present cause celebre is pornography; I’m not sure what her position is, but she obviously views it as a blight upon womanhood that either should be banned, regulated, or sued into submission. It is the Puritan strand of feminism.
As for sexual mores, I agree with Jim that the feminist position on sexuality is understandable under ordinary liberal logic. Sex has been “demythologized,” and is now just one more bodily function (like cracking your knuckles or doing calisthenics). It has also been torn from any contextual social setting or organization. It has been “privatized.”
This development has been devastating to women in real terms: divorce, abortion, illegitimacy, poverty, sexual abuse, etc. But when an ideology is at stake, no cost is too high.
As for sexual mores, I agree
As for sexual mores, I agree with Jim that the feminist position on sexuality is understandable under ordinary liberal logic. Sex has been “demythologized,” and is now just one more bodily function (like cracking your knuckles or doing calisthenics). It has also been torn from any contextual social setting or organization. It has been “privatized.”
Yes just as the Bolshevik Alexandra Kollontai wanted when she said that sex should become as common as drinking a glass of water. Funny thing is when Lenin heard this hes reported to have replied, “but who wants to drink from a soiled glass?”
So even the radicals can spot obvious nonsense in the rantings of their comrades at times. LOL!
I suppose Lenin was making wh
I suppose Lenin was making what Lawrence Auster would call an unprincipled objection.
As for the soiled glass, my limited understanding of sexual liberation dogma is that the glass (soiled or otherwise) doesn’t matter; sexual liberation is for your benefit, and your partner (or her/his identity or history or moral condition) just doesn’t matter. Hence, the outrage over AIDS, and the limitations and weaknesses that exposed in the dogma.
My apologies. Auster calls t
My apologies. Auster calls them “unprincipled exceptions.”
Look how this crowd think! Can anyone believe it? Yet it’s true!
“Many people share my view that the cancer of society set in, or got much worse, from the 60s onwards.” (—victorianvalues)
Yes. And here’s a close-up view of a portion of that malignant tumor (no, this is not some kind of joke or spoof, or a piece of dialogue transcribed from a Woody Allen movie):
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From a marriage announcement in the NYT:
Dr. Debbara Jean Dingman and Daniel John DeNoon were married last evening at the Commerce Club in Atlanta. The Rev. Grover E. Criswell, a Disciples of Christ minister, performed the nondenominational ceremony.
Dr. Dingman, 49, will keep her name. She is a clinical psychologist in private practice and also an adjunct assistant professor of psychology at Georgia State University and a faculty member at the Pine River Psychotherapy Training Institute, all in Atlanta.
The bride graduated from Florida State University and received both a master’s degree and a doctorate in psychology from Georgia State University.
Mr. DeNoon, 53, is a senior writer in Atlanta for the news department of WebMD.com, a medical information Web site. He graduated from Emory University.
Dr. Dingman and Mr. DeNoon met at an Atlanta jazz club in 1978, where she was a hostess and he a bartender.
Dr. Dingman, in the spirit of feminism at that time, called herself Debbie “Dingperson,” without cracking a smile, she said.
Their attraction to one another was immediate. As they got to know each other better, they found they also had other things in common – the love of “good food, travel, old hotels,” and their political beliefs, Dr. Dingman recalled. But it was their different approaches to social activism and feminism that added conflict, or perhaps spice, to an already intense relationship.
“Everything had to be totally discussed and negotiated,” Mr. DeNoon recalled. “What I considered courteous – pulling out her chair, opening a door – she would take as an insult.”
Dr. Dingman added: “We had an ability to argue about everything. He would order wine, and I’d be upset that he did it without consulting me. And then we’d argue about the migrant workers who picked the grapes. There was a real push-pull to our relationship.”
Still, after about a year, they – and their friends – recognized that they were indeed a couple. But Dr. Dingman and Mr. DeNoon were not interested in marrying. They wanted a relationship that was “more egalitarian,” she said. “More feminist. More in line with what our gay and lesbian friends did.” This arrangement, in effect, required that the two continually review their decision to stay together. “We would choose each other each day,” Dr. Dingman said, adding, “it was inefficient but romantic.”
Two years ago they began changing their minds about marriage, acknowledging that both they and society were evolving.
“Gloria Steinem was one of my heroes,” Dr. Dingman said. “When she married several years ago, it was instructive to me that I should not reject the institution of marriage out of hand.”
Mr. DeNoon said he became more interested in marrying when marriage became a legal option for same-sex couples. He and Dr. Dingman attended the commitment ceremony of lesbian friends, and were impressed with that couple’s public celebration of their love.
“We realized that we can say in front of everybody we know that, yes, we do indeed love one another, and that’s not going to change tomorrow morning,” he said.
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Long live Flanders!
“Look how this crowd thinks!”
“Look how this crowd thinks!”
They don’t think. They have no minds. They are merely mirrors of current fashion, like poorly formed adolescents.
Thanks I’ll see about joining
Thanks I’ll see about joining this list
Rescuing Victorian values
Quixotic? Maybe, but worth a try. For nearly a century, “Victorian” has been a curse word to the fashion victims among the intellectual elite. But there is much in Victorian culture, particularly its esthetics, that deserves respect and revival.
How far we have come since an era that could still be remembered by a few people when I was a child, when even factories were ornamented to please the eye! If someone living in, say, 1880 were transported to today, I suspect his first reaction would be shock at how ugly, boxy, and garish the built environment has become. Then he would cringe at the crudeness and vulgarity of today’s media and even everyday conversation.
Yes, he might gradually come to appreciate the improvements in material comforts that we enjoy now, and even approve of how technology has provided some cultural benefits, such as being able to enjoy the world’s great musicians at home and at a time of one’s choosing via recordings and good playback equipment. Something has been gained, but much that is good has been lost.
Victorian values, combined with modern technology, could go a long way to reviving our degraded civil life.
New Victorians Rejects Kalb Post
It seems the New Victorians Moderator supports writing in defense of traditions as long as they are not Christian. After I posted an article from the Evangelical site Ladies Against Feminism the moderator warned the group that the New Victorians was not a Church. In response I posted Mr. Kalb’s node “Can There Be A Secular Conservatism?” which was deleted the next day. This seems strange since the New Victorians invites members of Turnabout who would most likely be Traditionalist Catholics. And isn’t Traditionalism without religious claims to ultimate truth just another form of Relativism? I think so and unsubscribed.
Maybe they know what the best rules are for their site
Out of strong curiousity I was going to ask Kathy Jones what had happened over there in regard to those deleted posts, but when I went to their web-site to look for an e-mail address for Miss Jones, I changed my mind. What made me change it was seeing yet again their statement of beliefs. It is such a wonderful, refreshing statement that I said to myself, “Look, if these people can compose a position statement like that, I think we can assume they know what they’re doing in terms of running their site the way it must, in their judgment, be run. They must have some reason for doing what they did which, if we heard it, would totally satisfy us. Let’s cut them some slack. They probably know exactly what they’re doing over there.”
Here’s the position statement of The New Victorians:
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“We are a group of discerning Ladies and Gentlemen tired of shoe-box architecture, lunar design, rugged fashion, pop culture, ‘political correctness,’ radical feminism, promiscuity, multiculturalism, communism, and all the unfortunate madness which during the last century has been replacing traditional aesthetics and values all over the world.
“~ We promote a revival of Victorian/traditional style in architecture and design, and the gradual demolition of contemporary eye-sore buildings.
“~ We want fashion to return to Victorian aesthetics and standards of elegance, femininity, dignity and modesty.
“~ We consider classical music and dances to be ‘the’ music.
“~ We would like to see fewer cars and airplanes, less television and industrial food, and technology pursued without its becoming ‘de-humanizing.’
“~ We value a traditional kind of family as a stable union of a man and a woman.
“~ We oppose leftist politics and ‘politically correct’ madness.
“~ We encourage every ethnicity to proudly value its own identity and culture and to stop the racial and cultural blending which is destroying everyone’s beauty and traditions.
“We invite writers, architects, designers, artists, journalists, editors, politicians, teachers, actors, craftsmen, entrepreneurs, families and all like-minded people to join and help us build a more traditional, beautiful world where computers and advanced medicine live together with Victorian aesthetics and values, for an even more magnificent new Gilded Age.”
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Long live Flanders!
First Principle of Conservatism
Dear Mr. Scrooby,
Thank you, for responding. I admire and agree with the New Victorians homepage as well but if those tenets are not based on religious beliefs which are the truth about reality then it seems the Moderator becomes her own god and the New Victorians is her religion even if it retains most of the outward worldly practices of Orthodox/Traditionalist/Conservative Catholocism/ Christianity such as modest dress. If we are relative about religion within Conservatism then are we not being Relativists at the root/first principle and doesn’t being wrong at the basic level lead away from conservation as Mr. Kalb always reminds us of Liberal first principles. I can agree about the similiar traits of Islam to Orthodox Catholicism but disagree about it as religious truth and therefore want this man made religion eliminated and muslims converted. Catholics missionaries can convert pagans and heretics while retaining their folkways. Celebate priests are very conservative to foreingers ethnicity and extra religious culture.
I didn’t want to and I apologize if I rained to hard on The New Victorians. It might be helpful in leading some of its members away from Neoconservatism and towards a Turnabout Conservatism but the devout should be aware that they will not be able to express their faith.
Sincerely,
Brinton Smith
Brinton, lighten up a little. Keep things in perspective.
“[…] if [the tenets of The New Victorians] are not based on religious beliefs […]” (—smithwrites)
Maybe they are but the site’s creators for whatever reason don’t want to dwell on that particular angle right now. Web-sites can’t be all things to all people, obviously. Good sites will have their own individual personalities, each emphasizing different aspects of taste, sense, and respect for truth. That’s OK, no? Can’t they choose their subject matter? It doesn’t mean they deny some other subject matter, does it? It just means the other is not their particular site’s theme.
“[…] the Moderator becomes her own god and the New Victorians is her religion even if it retains most of the outward worldly practices of Orthodox/Traditionalist/Conservative Catholocism/ Christianity such as modest dress.”
Lighten up, Brinton. I hear you but that’s all for a discussion completely different from what they try to emphasize at their site. (That doesn’t mean they deny any of it.)
“If we are relative about religion within Conservatism then are we not being Relativists at the root/first principle and doesn’t being wrong at the basic level lead away from conservation as Mr. Kalb always reminds us of Liberal first principles?”
Well yeah, but … see above: you’ve gotta learn to lighten up a little. That’s just not the kind of stuff they talk about. But that doesn’t mean they believe in relativism either. Or maybe they do, and we’ll find out to our surprise sooner or later. Or maybe they just aren’t big into formal Turnabout-style analysis of modernity but know truth, taste, sense, and normalness when they see it and that’s enough for them. It’s certainly more than enough as far as I’m concerned.
“[…] the devout should be aware that they will not be able to express their faith [at The New Victorians web-site].”
Look, what if there were a cooking site, a gardening site, and a quilting site and each asked that readers’ comments about the other two site-themes be posted at the appropriate site instead of at theirs? Would that mean the people running the cooking site were against gardening and quilting, the ones running the gardening site were against cooking and quilting, or the ones running the quilting site were against cooking and gardening?
Acknowledging that there’s a time and a place for everything isn’t the same as believing in nothing, you know. On the contrary, it suggests a belief in something.
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Long live Flanders!
Sorry Fred
Sorry Fred, if the post came across as strident. It was not intended to be a complaint about club etiquette but more of a thinking out loud about first principles. I should have posted it at the secular conservatism node and not mentioned The New Victorians.
Some eye-opening quotes from some feminist authors
There’s an absolutely first-rate log entry posted over at MajorityRights.com by blogger John Ray on the subject of women’s lib. It’s so good, it’s hard to select any small portion of it over any other as a “teaser excerpt”—the whole thing from start to finish is of “teaser quality.” I post this comment in the “New Victorians” thread for a couple of reasons: Brinton Smith (signing as “smithwrites”) mentioned here the site from which John Ray garnered the material for his log entry, “Ladies Against Feminism,” and also as sort of a tribute to Kathy Jones for undertaking such extremely important work as opposition to feminism for being “part of modern barbarity,” as she so rightly characterizes it. Notice, those who read Ray’s log entry, how feminists aren’t content to adopt their perverse views among themselves and leave other people alone, but insist on forcing their views onto all women (look at the eye-opening excerpts from the feminist literature quoted in the log entry, whose whole tenor is along the lines of, women are not to be permitted to be housewives, women are not to be permitted to stay at home and raise children, etc.). This is the ugly totalitarian force Kathy Jones has, in part, created her site to oppose and, seeing the views these totalitarians are trying to make all of us adopt, not to mention those they’ve already succeeded in making us adopt, we can be grateful indeed to have allies in this struggle.
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Long live Flanders!
It’s worth noting that the en
It’s worth noting that the entry is an extended excerpt from an article at the evangelical Christian anti-feminist site Ladies Against Feminism. I list the site at the bottom of the left sidebar on the main page, and you can see there whether it’s been updated recently.
Rem tene, verba sequentur.