Leda and the Swan: The Rape of Femininity

[atreides]

It is not straussian, I don't know who that is, it is Jasian, i.e. what I think. Answer me, not someone who has a similar idea or philosophy.

Yin and Yang is not a duality, we just don't name the third principle. I understand things through years of martial arts study through oriental terms, but yin/yang and the like really come from the celts anyway and are based on a 3 force system.

Whether or not humans existed in some whispy 4d STO is a theory, one that I subscribe to, however we aren't there anymore.

I did not say that yin and yang caused matriarchies, only that a martriarchy would be a manifestation of yin domination. In so many words.

The neutral force can't completely neutralize the reaction or else there is no growth. Harmony is stagnation and to be avoided, response ability is to be desired. So it reads that societies in harmony would stagnate, but societies with response ability would grow.

The better the harmony and balance between such opposites, the better the interaction and cooperation between such opposites, the stronger the possibility becomes that a third element, an added dimension, creation itself will pop into existence.

You are getting quite fuzzy at this point. Just observe life and what natural examples you have and you will see that this is a very wishy washy idea, and may not be entirely objective. Just because it was written in a book or said by a qualified person doesn't make it true, only likely to be accurate, we always take things as being likely, or not likely, and then there are degrees of likely, and then we can test the likeliness against whatever small amount of empirical data we may collect. For instance, conception of a child is such a two + one interaction. It is rarely balanced, and never kind or gentle. It really involves some pain and anguish and suffering on both accounts as well as some pleasure and etc. In fact, one can say that it is such a circumstance where creation "pops" in. In fact, if we really think objectively, the available evidence shows that it is decidedly to the contrary of what you have stated. But this topic can get very heated very quickly so I will leave the discussion, but thank you for all of your insights, much food for thought.

As for the axe thing :) It's called a Labrys. As for the other stuff, take what is commonly known, accepted and taugh, and look at it in a mirror.

 

[sHiZo963]

Marie, thanks SO much for the link to Laura's "The Grail Quest and The Destiny of Man." It is a part of the Cass site that I didn't know existed! There's a LOT of amazing material there! :)

I think the following excerpts, as presented by Laura, from Eisler's The Chalice and the Blade are quite relevant to the on-going discussion:

We are all familiar with legends about an earlier, more harmonious and peaceful age. The Bible tells of a garden where woman and man lived in harmony with each other and nature - before a male god decreed that woman henceforth be subservient to man. The Chinese Tao Te Ching describes a time when the yin, or feminine principle, was not yet ruled by the male principle, or yang, a time when the wisdom of the mother was still honored and followed above all. The ancient Greek poet Hesiod wrote of a 'golden race' who tilled the soil in 'peaceful ease' before a 'lesser race' brought in their god of war. But though scholars agree that in many respects these works are based on prehistoric events, references to a time when women and men lived in partnership have traditionally been viewed as no more than fantasy.

[...]

Of course it makes eminent sense that the earliest depiction of divine power in human form should have been female rather than male. When our ancestors began to ask the eternal questions, they must have noted that life emerges from the body of a woman. It would have been natural for them to image the universe as an all-giving Mother from whose womb all life emerges and to which, like the cycles of vegetation, it returns after death to be again reborn. It also makes sense that societies with this image of the powers that govern the universe would have a very different social structure from societies that worship a divine Father who wields a thunderbolt and/or sword. It further seems logical that women would not be seen as subservient in societies that conceptualized the powers governing the universe in female form - and the 'effeminate' qualities such as caring, compassion, and nonviolence would be highly valued in these societies. What does NOT make sense is to conclude that societies in which men did not dominate women were societies in which women dominated men.

Nonetheless, when the first evidence of such societies was unearthed in the nineteenth century, it was concluded that they must have been 'matriarchal.' Then, when the evidence did not seem to support this conclusion, it again became customary to argue that human society always was - and always will be - dominated by men. But if we free ourselves from the prevailing models of reality, it is evident that there is another logical alternative: that there can be societies in which difference is not necessarily equated with inferiority or superiority.

I've still to read the rest of the material presented in that section of the Cass site, but the above, in and of itself, seems to support the "balance" theory of pre-Fall human civilization, the "imbalance" of our cycle being attributed to establishment of a paradigm of hierarchy on all levels of society.

Finally, things are starting to be more "clear" to me, albeit it all still being nothing more than a hypothesis.

Now, I understand that most people think there are fundamental and intrinsic mental/ psychological differences between men and women, but in my mind the question is still open for debate.

Everything we claim to "know" is open for debate, and this fact shows the beauty of learning with an open mind, without all the "sacred cows" and assumptions that distort facts and reality into a subjective "truthiness."

Having said that, I'm going to address your comments about gender differences.

From what I have read and personally observed in my short life, the evidence seems to show that men and women ARE quite different psychologically. There are strengths and weaknesses to both genders, which is why a "balance" and TRUE partnership between genders could potentially create that extra "dimension" and open new doors for the human experience.

I read a book called Brain Sex: The Real Difference Between Men and Women by Anne Moir, PhD and David Jesser (http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Sex-Difference-Between-Women/dp/0385311834) that is pretty objective, imo, in tackling this issue. The hypothesis is that men's and women's brains are DIFFERENT and work DIFFERENTLY. The research was centered on the function of hormones and how it is the interplay of different hormones at SPECIFIC times during the development of the fetus and around puberty that determine the gender characteristics, both physical and psychological, of people.

I don't have the book with me now, but I did find a web page that contains the "big idea" excerpts from the book (http://www(dot)theabsolute(dot)net/misogyny/brainsx.html). I'm going to post a few I find relevant to your comments:

At a few hours old girls are more sensitive than boys to touch. Tests between the sexes of tactile sensitivity in the hands and fingers produce differences so striking that sometimes male and female scores do not even overlap, the most sensitive boy feeling less than the least sensitive girl. When it comes to sound, infant females are much less tolerant - one researcher believes that they may "hear" noises as being twice as loud as do males. Baby girls become irritated and anxious about noise, pain or discomfort more readily that baby boys.

Baby girls are more easily comforted by soothing words and singing. Even before they can understand language, girls seem to be better than boys at identifying the emotional content of speech. From the outset of life, girl babies show a greater interest in communicating with other people. One study involves babies of only 2-4 days old. It shows that girls spend almost twice as long maintaining eye contact with a silent adult, and girls also look longer than boys when the adult is talking. The boys' attention span was the same, whether the adult was talking or not - showing a relative bias towards what they could see, rather than what they could hear. From the cradle, baby girls like to gurgle at humans. Most boys are just as talkative, but are equally happy to jabber away at cot toys or looking at abstract geometric designs. Boys are more active and wakeful than girls - the male-wired brain of activity at work.

The female bias towards the personal shows itself in other ways. At four months, most baby girls can distinguish photographs of people they know from photographs of strangers; baby boys cannot."

[...]

The brain biases persist and strengthen as children grow up, "seeing" life through that particular filter of the brain which they find easier, and more natural, to use. That bias in girls towards the personal, for instance, shows up in experiments. A group of children was given a rather special sort of sight test. They looked through a contraption rather like a pair of binoculars, which showed the left and right eye two different images at the same time. One was of an object, the other of a person. The children had been shown exactly the same images, but when asked what they had seen gave different replies. Boys reported seeing significantly more things than people, and girls more people than things.

[...]

On measurements of various aptitude tests, the differences between the sexes in average scores on these tests can be as much as 25 percent. A difference of as little as 5 percent has been found to have marked impact on the occupations or activities at which men or women will, on average, excel.

The area where the biggest differences have been found lies in what scientists call "spacial ability". That's being able to picture things, their shape, position, geography and proportion, accurately in the mind's eye - all skills that are crucial to the practical ability to work with three-dimensional objects or drawings. One scientist who has reviewed the extensive literature on the subject concludes, "the fact of the male's superiority in spacial ability is not in dispute". It is confirmed by literally hundreds of different scientific studies.

Boys also have the superior hand-eye co-ordination necessary for ball sports. Those same skills mean that they can more easily imagine, alter, and rotate an object in their mind's eye. Boys find it easier than girls to construct block buildings from two-dimensional blueprints, and to assess correctly how the angle of the surface level of water in a jug would change when the jug was tilted to different angles.

This male advantage in seeing patterns and abstract relationships - what could be called general strategic rather than detailed tactical thinking - perhaps explains the male dominance of chess, even in a country like the U.S.S.R, where the game is a national sport played by both sexes. An alternative explanation, more acceptable to those who would deny the biological basis of sex differences, is that women have become so conditioned to the fact of male chess playing superiority that they subconsciously assign themselves lower expectations; but this is a rather wilful rejection of scientific evidence for the sake of maintaining a prejudice.

The better spacial ability of men could certainly help to explain the male superiority in map-reading we noted earlier. Here again, the prejudice of male motorists is confirmed by experiment; girls and boys were each given city street maps and, without rotating the map, asked to describe whether they would be turning left or right at particular intersections as they mentally made their way across town and back. Boys did better. More women than men liked to turn the map round, physically to match the direction in which they are travelling when they are trying to find their way.

While the male brain gives men the edge in dealing with things and theorems, the female brain is organised to respond more sensitively to all sensory stimuli. Women do better than men on tests of verbal ability. Females are equipped to receive a wider range of sensory imformation, to connect and relate that information with greater facility, to place a primacy on personal relationships, and to communicate. Cultural influences may reinforce these strengths, but the advantages are innate.

The differences are apparent in the very first hours after birth. It has been shown that girl babies are much more interested than boys in people and faces; the boys seem just as happy with an object dangled in front of them. Girls say their first words and learn to speak in short sentences earlier than boys and are generally more fluent in their pre-school years. They read earlier, too, and do better in coping with the building blocks of language like grammar, punctuation and spelling. Boys outnumber girls 4:1 in remedial reading classes. Later, women find it easier to master foreign languages, and are more proficient in their own, with better command of grammar and spelling. They are also more fluent: stuttering and other speech defects occur almost exclusively among boys.

Girls and women hear better than men. When the sexes are compared, women show a greater sensitivity to sound. The dripping tap will get the woman out of bed before the man has even woken up. Six times as many girls as boys can sing in tune. They are also more adept in noticing small changes in volume, which goes some way to explaining womens' superior sensitivity to that "tone of voice" which their male partners are so often accused of adopting. Men and women even see some things differently. Women see better in the dark. They are more sensitive to the red end of the spectrum, seeing more red hues there than men, and have a better visual memory. Men see better than women in bright light. Intriguing results also show that men tend to be literally blinkered; they see in a narrow field - mild tunnel vision - with greater concentration on depth. They have a better sense of perspective than women. Women, however, quite literally take in the bigger picture. They have wider peripheral vision, because they have more of the receptor rods and cones in the retina, at the back of the eyeball, to receive a wider arc of visual input.

The differences extend to the other senses. Women react faster, and more acutely, to pain, although their overall resistance to long-term discomfort is greater than men's. In a sample of young adults, females showed "overwhelmingly" greater sensitivity to pressure on the skin on every part of the body. In childhood and maturity, women have a tactile sensitivity so superior to men's that in some tests there is no overlap between the scores of the two sexes; in these, the least sensitive woman is more sensitive than the most sensitive man.

[...]

This superiority in so many of the senses can be clinically measured - yet it is what accounts for women's almost supernatural "intuition". Women are simply better equipped to notice things to which men are completely blind and deaf. There is no witchcraft in this superior perception - it is extra-sensory only in terms of the blunter, male senses. Women are better at picking up social cues, picking up important nuances of meaning from tones of voice or intensity of expression. Men sometimes become exasperated at a woman's reaction to what they say. They do not realise that women are probably "hearing" much more than what the man himself thinks he is "saying". Women tend to be better judges of character. Older females have a better memory for names and faces, and a greater sensitivity to other people's preferences.

Sex differences have been noted in the comparative memory of men and women. Women can store, for short periods at least, more irrelevant and random information than men; men can only manage the trick when the information is organised in some coherent form, or has specific relevance to them.

And this on the development of gender characteristics:

The hormones, as we will see, determine the distinct male or female organisation of the brain as it develops in the womb. We share the same sexual identity for only the first few weeks after conception. Thereafter, in the womb, the very structure and pattern of the brain begins to take specifically male or female form. Throughout infant, teenage, and adult life, the way the brain was forged will have, in subtle interplay with the hormones, a fundamental effect on the attitudes, behaviour, and intellectual and emotional functioning of the individual. Most neuroscientists and researchers into the mysteries of the brain are now prepared, like the American neurologist Dr Richard Restak, to make the confident assertion "it seems unrealistic to deny any longer the existence of male and female brain differences. Just as there are physical dissimilarities between male and females . . . there are equally dramatic differences in brain functioning". The way our brains are made effects how how we think, learn, see, feel, smell, communicate, love, make love, fight, succeed, or fail. Undertanding how our brains, and those of others, are made is a matter of no little importance.

Infants are not blank slates, on whom we scrawl instructions for sexually-appropriate behaviour. They are born with male or female minds of their own. They have, quite literally, made up their minds in the womb, safe from the legions of social engineers who impatiently await them.

[...]

In the first few weeks in the womb, the tiny foetus isn't noticeably a miniature girl or a miniature boy. It has all the basic equipment, such as vestigal ducts, tracts and so on, to develop as either sex. But as the weeks go by, the genes begin to put the message across. If things go normally, and everything follows the XY blueprint of a boy, the chromosomes will cue the development of the gonads into testes. It's now, at around six weeks, that sexual identity is finally determined - when the male foetus develops the special cells which produce the male hormones or androgens, the main one being testosterone. The hormones instruct the body not to bother with developing a feminine set of sexual equipment, while stimulating the development of embryonic male genitalia.

About the same time, if the baby is female, genetically XX, the reproductive machinery develops along female lines, produces no significant amount of male hormone, and results in a girl baby. Just as the six-week-old foetus wasn't recognisably male or female in appearance, so the embryonic brain takes some time before it begins to acquire a specific sexual identity. If the embryo is genetically female, nothing very drastic happens to the basic pattern of the brain. In broad terms, the natural template of the brain seems to be female. In normal girls it will develop natually along female lines.

In boys it is different. Just as male gender depended on the presence of male hormone, so a radical intervention is needed to change that naturally female brain structure into a male pattern. This literally mind-altering process is the result of the same process that determined those other physical changes - the intervention of the hormones.

[...]

Embryonic boy babies are exposed to a collosal dose of male hormone at the critical time when their brains are beginning to take shape. The male hormone levels then are four times the level experienced throughout infancy and boyhood. A vast surge of male hormone occurs at each end of male development: at adolescence, when his sexuality comes on stream, and six weeks after conception, at the moment his brain is beginning to take shape. But, as with the development of the rest of the body, things can go wrong. A male foetus may have enough male hormones to trigger the development of male sex organs, but these may not be able to produce the additional male hormones to push the brain into the male pattern. His brain will "stay" female, so he will be born with a female brain in a male body. In the same way, a female baby may be exposed in the womb to an accidental dose of the male hormone - we'll see later how this can happen - and end up with a male brain in a female body.

I'm not qualified to judge whether this is true or not, but it is very interesting data. The influence of hormones is, after all, HUGE in the psychological physiology of human beings. If hormones really play such a major role in the development of gender characteristics, it follows that gender differences include differences in brain/mental function. The research presented in this book attempts to show that.

Some food for thought... :)

 

[Approaching Infinity]

I think a better definition of Patriarchy is actually Pathocracy. Due to its genetic nature (i.e. way more male psychopaths than female psychopaths), our current pathocracy is male-dominated. I hypothesize that the introduction of patriarchy was the introduction of the psychopathic gene into the human gene-pool. If there were a female psychopathy that outnumbered males, it would be a matriarchy, but I agree with Marie. I don't think there's any real proof for a world-wide matriarchy/pathocracy. I think the megalith builders were something different.

 

[Marie]

Marie, thanks SO much for the link to Laura's "The Grail Quest and The Destiny of Man." It is a part of the Cass site that I didn't know existed! There's a LOT of amazing material there

Yeah I know. Those were the first things I found of cass; spent months reading, still didn’t get through half of it – and in several of them I find more meaning every time I read them. Hope they're as helpful to you as they were and are to me.

About the extract on “brain sex" you brought up, I think they are interesting as possible clues, but I found them a lot less convincing once I looked up the site they came from.

My money’s on that you didn’t read it, but it’s the gender equivalent of a neo-nazi site, featuring some of the sickest and most blatantly psychopathic BS I have ever seen – and there’s lots of concurrence in that domain. The site includes lengthy discussions of how women like and deserve abuse of all kinds including rape.

So well, here we come to an interesting question: are the pov’s or beliefs that an idea is used to push relevant to the validity of an idea? For good measure I tried thinking of occasions when right ideas were used for wrong ends, but in all the examples I can think of the ideas were severely distorted first. Part of me says “you shall know them by their fruits" , though I’m wondering if it may be a skewed use of that principle – any and all input welcome.

 

[sHiZo963]

My money’s on that you didn’t read it, but it’s the gender equivalent of a neo-nazi site, featuring some of the sickest and most blatantly psychopathic BS I have ever seen – and there’s lots of concurrence in that domain. The site includes lengthy discussions of how women like and deserve abuse of all kinds including rape.

Yikes! The web page itself has just the quotes on it; I didn't bother looking WHERE they're located because all I was looking for was some quotes (since I don't have the actual book on me now). Well, I can honestly say that the book ITSELF does not condone ANY of the above (I read the entire thing and found it quite good, and harmless); on the contrary, the authors made it clear what their intentions are: their goals are to give people greater understanding of their and the opposite sex, so as to promote harmony between genders and let each one do what one is naturally good at - to ERASE the stereotypes and friction, rather than condone violence and lead to further exploitation of women.

Nonetheless, I feel bad for not checking the second-hand source of the quotes before linking to it, and I apologize for any confusion. Actually, I'm sickened by the fact that such ideas could be twisted to fit THAT kind of agenda.

So well, here we come to an interesting question: are the pov’s or beliefs that an idea is used to push relevant to the validity of an idea? For good measure I tried thinking of occasions when right ideas were used for wrong ends, but in all the examples I can think of the ideas were severely distorted first. Part of me says “you shall know them by their fruits" , though I’m wondering if it may be a skewed use of that principle – any and all input welcome.

Well, as we know from history and the present times, virtually ANY idea, no matter how Truthful and well-intentioned, can be twisted and shaped to conform to even the WORST and most evil of "causes." It's called ponerization, and this is another good example of this destructive process. It makes sense now why only the excerpts that are on this web page were selected - they're out of context from the whole book; there's NONE on there that explain the ideas from the points of view of the authors of the book.

 

[Marie]

Nonetheless, I feel bad for not checking the second-hand source of the quotes before linking to it, and I apologize for any confusion. Actually, I'm sickened by the fact that such ideas could be twisted to fit THAT kind of agenda.

Don't worry about it, I've already quoted things without looking at the source, and so have most of the people here I think.

Well, I can honestly say that the book ITSELF does not condone ANY of the above (I read the entire thing and found it quite good, and harmless); on the contrary, the authors made it clear what their intentions are: their goals are to give people greater understanding of their and the opposite sex, so as to promote harmony between genders and let each one do what one is naturally good at

Point taken. I have to say my evaluation of the text itself was similar to yours: it looks pretty objective and like it's based on science; from the little I know it seems the best way to find the truth in such matters is to look at reports from the people who conducted the studies and experiments, but in the past I was woefully unable to find such things on the net (without a credit card anyways). It's possible that there might be, indeed, genetic differences between men and women in terms of psychology or mind functioning (though I couldn't say I'm sure of that yet) if we could just fix the socio-economic valuation system, we wouldn't have a problem! :P As for the book itself, if I happen to have access to it I'll read it.

Just in case it might be of use to anyone, a trick I found by trials and errors for seeing a website on which a text is featured if there's no "home" button: gradually take away the last bits of the adress, until you get to the root adress (that ends with .com, .org, .net or whatever). Once in a while you'll get an error message, but generally it'll work.

 

[Pierre]

Maybe that for a more objective exchange about this topic it would be useful to clarify three different couples that might be sometimes mixed up :

matriarchal and patriarchal : which describes two different types of society/community organisations. As described by Laura the circle cultures (matriarchal) carrying values like sharing, mutual benefits, community benefit,... and the triangle cultures (patriarchal) based on values like hierachies, control, ...

men and women : defining the two genders within the human species. Women having a specific genetic signatures (including XX chromosomes) and man with their own genetic features (including XY chromosomes)

Yin and Yang : two symbols carrying complementary/opposing values. Yin would be cold, passive, feminine, ... and Yang encompassing warm, active, masculine,...

Those three couples are highly and positively correlated, however they are different. For example some patriarchal systems include some female leaders, some women don't seem to display much Yin values, and some patriarchal systems are not exclusively based on Yang features.

 

[John G]

Maybe that for a more objective exchange about this topic it would be useful to clarify three different couples that might be sometimes mixed up :matriarchal and patriarchal ... men and women ... Yin and Yang

Yes and I think it all ties together via the Jungian Feeling (F) vs Thinking (T) personality traits. Yin-Yang symbolizes F vs T... Women are two to one more likely to be F (the only trait with a gender bias) though stereotyping makes the ratio seem more like a million to one... and matriarchal vs patriarchal are the preferred organizational structure for F vs T. There's the traditional ST heirarchical style; the NT style favored by military and research & development organizations (includes more people on special missions outside the heirarchical structure); there's the SF style which shows up in some mostly women organizations (nursing/social services) where there's a kind of parent to child family relationship between leadership and the employees; and then there's the circular, nobody/everybody in charge NF method which virtually doesn't exist anywhere.

 

[Charles]

It is not straussian, I don't know who that is, it is Jasian, i.e. what I think. Answer me, not someone who has a similar idea or philosophy.

Note Atreides that I did not use the term Straussian to describe the way you think! I wrote that "what you state" (evidently in THIS thread), and even the sound of it, is very close to Straussian philosophy, OSIT. And that was WHEN I wrote it. Also, and in retrospect, I should not have used the term Straussian at all.
So Jasian it will be ;)

The neutral force can't completely neutralize the reaction or else there is no growth. Harmony is stagnation and to be avoided, response ability is to be desired. So it reads that societies in harmony would stagnate, but societies with response ability would grow.

The better the harmony and balance between such opposites, the better the interaction and cooperation between such opposites, the stronger the possibility becomes that a third element, an added dimension, creation itself will pop into existence.

You are getting quite fuzzy at this point. Just observe life and what natural examples you have and you will see that this is a very wishy washy idea, and may not be entirely objective. Just because it was written in a book or said by a qualified person doesn't make it true, only likely to be accurate, we always take things as being likely, or not likely, and then there are degrees of likely, and then we can test the likeliness against whatever small amount of empirical data we may collect.

Is it possible that you use a set of connotations towards certain terms, such as "harmony", that are quite different than the connotations I give to this term? Maybe this came to be because you have had years of martial arts training and I haven’t, I don’t know. So, to clarify, when I use the term "harmony" it has nothing to do at all with some airy fairy, good feel, blissful peace, wherein there are no interactions with others, or no interactions between the many different parts within ones own system. When I use the term harmony, I give it connotations such as consonance, mutual understanding, in tune, and dare I say resonance of frequency. When I use the term harmony, I see a moving dynamic, full of processes, and much like when people refer to the "harmony of mother nature". And gosh that can be full of conflicts.

In a sense, if one uses a broad definition of the term conflict, then I admit that it is conflicts, big and small, that make us move. But there are conflicts and conflicts.

And as we were talking about patriarchy versus matriarchy, to my understanding such forms of conflict only result in stagnation, not evolution, and thus quite the contrary of what you have stated in a generalized way. It results in stagnation as both sexes are kept far away from each other so that there can be no meaningful interaction or cross-fertilisation between the masculine and feminine principles. We are also looking at macro-social dynamics. And my response ability does not lie in trying to change such monster, I can’t, neither in trying to conform to it. It lies in trying to be creative and doing my very best in learning to cross-fertilize the masculine and feminine principles, within myself and within my direct environment. But see, even on such micro-social scale there’s conflicts and conflicts.

How many times don’t we see how a conflict between two parties (or two people) immediately results in a defensive posture on both sides? Even though many conflicts arise due to glitches in communication, still each side will then retract and seek shelter in it’s own "wis(h)dom". Result: stagnation.

Same happens between the masculine and the feminine. And, as there are lots of differences between the masculine and feminine, chances are that there are going to be lots and lots of glitches in communication.
And that is why I say that the better the harmony and balance between such opposites, the better the interaction and cooperation between such opposites, the stronger the possibility becomes that a third element, an added dimension, creation itself will pop into existence.
Conflicts will still be present. But such conflicts will no longer result in stagnation, but in evolution. Such evolution, can be a child (conception, nurturing, and letting go) but also and most importantly can be a real transmutation of the opposites themselves, in their relation as an operating two-oneness, but also within the opposites themselves, as masculine carries the feminine within it and vice versa.

I hope that by now it is a little less wishy-washy.