Posted on 01/13/2006 2:04:44 AM PST by rhema
Some women protest, "I'm a feminist, just not a radical feminist." Kate O'Beirne is impatient with such qualifications. She is not any kind of feminist, and when you finish her sparkling new book "Women Who Make the World Worse," you won't be one either.
Feminism, far from promoting the happiness and well-being of women and society, has instead left great swaths of melancholy in its wake. O'Beirne cites "One large study of well-being data on one hundred thousand Americans and Britons from the early 1970s to the late 1990s found that while American men had grown happier, women's well-being had dramatically fallen during the period . . . women were 20 percent less happy."
The so-called "women's movement" was and is a misnomer. Most women reject the anti-male, anti-family bias of the professional feminists. But a dedicated cohort of humorless, bitter, crusading women — mostly from miserable families — was able to dictate policy in some of the most important realms of life.
Feminists now claim that they were never against marriage and family. But O'Beirne has kept the quotes in her files. In 1971, Ms. Magazine founder Robin Morgan called marriage "a slavery-like practice," adding that "We cannot destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage." Australian feminist guru Germaine Greer recommended that all women leave their husbands in search of more satisfying "rambling organic structures" (sounds vaguely unhygienic). And Jessie Bernard, a Pennsylvania State University sociologist, asserted that the "destructive nature" of marriage was both figuratively and literally making women sick.
Strangely, while feminists were burning with indignation toward men, they also enthusiastically endorsed promiscuity. O'Beirne quotes Harvard Law professor Mary Ann Glendon, who notes that early feminists who sought the vote and other rights "saw that the ready availability of abortion
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
More and more, Russian women are OK with Russian men...now that they are getting financially established and more responsible. It took awhile for men to adjust from communism after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. Women hadn't needed to adjust so much as look toward American men as an ideal.
The American fighting man followed by the American businessman...is an important icon in other countries. Leftism is often a blatant attempt by men in other countries (and by male journalists in the USA) to denigrate the competition/ideal that the American soldier/businessman often presents.
Very few American men can afford the $300 for a visa and the $800 for the flight and the $1000 hotel and food expenses that it would take to get a first date with her.
When he arrives, he better look like Bruce Willis...which isn't so hard to do by the way (buzz cut, getting in shape).
She will not sleep with him on his first visit either if she is ever willing to at all before marriage.
She will expect him to have read "Master and Margarita" or "War and Peace" or "Crime and Punishment". Not having read anything Russian will make her wonder if the man has anything in common with her or just liked her picture.
In other words, she will give an American man a chance of a lifetime to live up to her stylized ideal of how wonderful American guys are...and it will be up to him not to blow it. The operative word is the man will have a chance, which for someone who looks like her, is not something many American men will ever have.
Not that looks are necessarily important for a man. My girlfriend does not look this "pretty".
A full round of dating might take 12 months and 4 visits for an American man who has a full-time job and can only squeeze out a few 4 day weekends to take the trip.
[Very few American men can afford the $300 for a visa and the $800 for the flight and the $1000 hotel and food expenses that it would take to get a first date with her]
This is the cost outlay that a man needs to fly himself to Moscow or St. Petersburg. He isn't in the game if he cannot get there. To the west of Russia, Finland, Estonia and Poland are places that do not require the $300 visa expense. The women there also have huge respect for American males and often admire George Bush.
Then you get to Germany where I am now. German women in the north, like Berlin and Hamburg...are unfortunately mostly liberals like in the American north. But even they have memories of their parent's memories of the "Luftbruecke" where American pilots through candy out the windows of planes that were saving the people of Berlin from the Soviets.
The latent good will goes a long way in dating Americans.
I guess everyone is interested in "foreigners". I've played in Manhattan like I was a German guy when I was younger and the New York City women would seem to want to be my tour guide. Everyone wants to be a good diplomat.
Maybe the Russian women like American men so much because we were once big enemies. Which reminds me, because of their superpower status and seat on the Security Council, Russian women, unlike Latvian or Finnish women, have the kind of high self confidence you would otherwise only see in the USA and, recently, China.
American, Russian and Chinese women seem IMHO to have the highest self-worth factor in the world because these three countries are considered the 3 main superpowers and have been so considered for 60 years.
A guy earlier asked me what kind of women I could have possibly been hanging out with that would sleep with Al Qaeda supporters.
The answer: Boston MIT, 17 year old freshman with 1600 SATs entered chemistry department and talked with me about nanotechnology. Walked me to my car asking how a smart guy like me could be for the Iraq War. She actually took notes as I told her about websites like Strategypage.com or FR. She admitted to me that she has 2 Lebanese boyfriends who truly hate George Bush. I said "surely you wouldn't sleep with the enemy". She said that she didn't consider them the enemy, but rather Bush and the warmongers. Very mixed up teenager. But normal on the Boston student scene.
Boston College Chemistry Department: Worked with Muslim-Frenchman who came across very nerdy, aged 21, but otherwise a nice guy if you could look away from his support for Saddam and Bin Laden (yes, I always went to the FBI website to report people who supported Bin Laden, especially in Germany - there are fewer people these days who do by the way). He had the most stunning of American girlfriends. It was incongruous. She was truly a knock-out. Got into an argument with her one day when she visited about the coming Iraq War where she said "We MUST follow France's lead. If they say no in the Security Council, we must do what they say." I said "I really hope you are not dating Mohammed because you feel so much antipathy toward guys like me who want the war to happen. It is not fair to him if you are just out to spite white guys." They broke up within the week. I don't know why.
I guess my answer is Boston College and Boston College. The American college scene is where anti-Bush arabs get "lucky."
Feminism began with women wearing mini-skirts and low cut blouses. Women flaunted their sexuality in the sixties, and somewhat in the seventies and eighties, though never to the extent in the flower power/commune days of "free love."
Feminism's first message to men was, "See women will party sexually with you. Our liberation will make you happy. Aren't you tired of uptight, frigid women?"
It was as they aged that the baby boom women became man hating Hillaries. Further, they passed many of their hideous theories down to their daughters. The message given is that women don't need men except as pawns for sex. Women can do anything a man can and lesbianism and abortion are preferable choices. Many men have shrugged their shoulders, looked for foreign brides, and turned back to their video games.
Your examples look to exceptions rather that episodes that typify what feminism is. Even a broken clock is right once in a while. But looking at feminism since the 1966 birth of NOW, is it a success or a failure? In the early days, NOW brought about some needed reforms, but as with many successful movements it became old, stale, angry, and extreme.
Feminists portray their disagreements as coming from a "patriarchal society," hence with all men. Traditional men love women, and know that a planet without women would be a dire and dreadful place. It is the theory and practice of feminism that we fight at every opportunity.
Which reminds me of a great book that came out last year about a woman from the south who enters an Ivy League college. It is called I am Charlotte Simmons.
[It was as they aged that the baby boom women became man hating Hillaries.]
Lots of Reaganite women are wonderful but they are married in their forties and fifties now. Some great single women around still who were Reaganites. Some on FR.
Generally, the women who were prancing around half-naked in the sixties are now in their sixties themselves. A lot of these liberals found their liberal husbands and had a good life. I am happy for their continued happiness. Of course, more than a few like feminist Germaine Greer...got burned for their "have lots of sex and don't date men over 30" attitude. As in a game of musical chairs, they didn't get their chair.
The problem in the USA now in the 27-40 age range are the Clintonites. They will be moving up through the system and many will not get husbands unless they change their politics/mindset.
Reduced airfares and the Internet will make conservative Japanese and conservative Russians and Poles and Italians brutal competition for them. It is globalization at work.
Luke21,
You sure picked one powerful Bible passage for your FReeper handle. It starts off simple, saying that a poor woman who gives a few pennies to a beggar is more generous than rich people writing checks for the beggar. But then it goes into his correct prediction that Jerusalem would be destroyed by the Romans a generation later. This passage would have to be either a big hoax or prove to later generations that Jesus clearly knew the man upstairs. And he wasn't just talking about Jerusalem either.
Then he says this in Luke 21:33 = Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
All I know is that if a person can't find a suitable mate within a very wide peer group, there's a problem with them, not their peers. I'm not talking about someone who meets a foreigner and falls in love, I am referring strictly to those who set out to purchase a mate. And--sorry, but this is the truth--everyone snickers at mail order marriages. Angry men who can't find love with a peer and have to spend money to import a mate because American women are [--insert bitter complaint here--] just poorly adjusted socially.
Another problem with the whole mail order thing is that women like the ambitious Russian lady above who are looking for attractive Bruce Willis American men are going to be disappointed, too. Successful, well-adjusted good looking Bruce Willis conservative American men do not have to look outside their peer group to find a suitable mate. Even the not so good looking ones get snapped up, so long as they are willing to consider a woman of similar physical and personal attributes.
I'm with Rush. An army of 14 year old girls could perhaps be the most brutal army of all.
{By this reasoning, it will only be a matter of time before aging liberal American women begin to look outside their peer group to find young liberal husbands from liberal lands far away. Maybe it's already started, I don't know.]
First of all, I find this sort of discussion more interesting than the old debate about premarital sex which effectively ended in 1968 and which, on FR in 2006, is like recreating Civil War battles (not that I wouldn't find the recreation of Pickett's Charge fascinating). The religious people who are married aren't hurting themselves or me or anyone else with their views on premarital sex. Their being married makes the topic irrelevant and boring.
But regarding socalled "mail order brides"...and single American women in blue states with a liberal attitude and no conception that the best conservative men who also look like Bruce Willis can and will consider all the models in the showroom? The fall of the Berlin Wall doubled the size of the showroom and presented extremely anti-communist models. The Internet widened the showroom exponentially as well, and was very helpful for communication as well (long Skype phonecalls, emails).
I am taller than Bruce Willis (6'2") and I have a buzz cut like he did. I speak German and Russian and can converse in a few more like French. Having served in the US Army, I automatically pass the "tough guy" test that women all over the world apply to men as a way of determining "will this guy protect me and my babies in a pinch".
Alpha males don't date "peers". They go younger. The younger women themselves do the choosing.
Women are the same everywhere in what they find attractive. They are, however, not the same in how they have been told to behave. So, just taking the example of one day in 2002 when I was working at Boston College...the MIT Freshman who was dating the Lebanese guys...probably found me quite attractive physically...but was leftist, confused, paranoid...you name it as well as a few months too young. She was having sex with foreign Al Qaeda supporters and she was an American from Tennessee.
But, at the same Chemistry Convention, a Chinese and a Romanian college student were not just the only students capable of holding their own with me on discussing chemistry...they were clearly attracted to me and wanted to get to know me more personally (I flew back to Germany a few days later). I keep wondering...why were the nicest women foreigners? They needed future visas? I am sure not. It was more like THEY were better adjusted than the messed up liberal kid from Tennesee. They knew what they wanted and recognized that cool guys didn't talk with them every day. And, since Boston is apparently the most paranoid city in the world, apparently since the Boston Strangler days, these foreign women students showed themselves, in contrast, not to have the fear of men that many American students, but not all, would even show to men on campus.
The campus of Boston College, considered the place for more conservative students, was less paranoid than the campus of Harvard or the campus of Boston University.
Multiplied over several weeks I spent in Boston...this trend of foreign women students flirting with me was clearly not a fluke. As I left a hair cutting salon where the employees had given off the impression that I was a high-status male, one 18 year old American high school senior asked me if I would go grab some ice cream with her and a friend...this incident showed me that, whatever was going on between me and foreign women in Boston, it had nothing to do with my looks or status being subpar to American women. The foreign women were just quicker and more aggressive.
Lets look at an event that happened around the same time as the Chemistry Convention:
I paid $25 to join a July 4th singles cruise in Boston Harbor. Before the ship sailed, I tried to meet everyone and get a read on the attractive women's personalities. Of 200 women and 200 men crammed on a small boat (all aged 25-40 and well over college age)...I saw maybe 3 women whom I could consider my type lookswise...and by getting past the crowds of men trying to speak with them and speaking with them myself, quickly found them to be Clintonites who did not seem to have the sweetness, intellectual curiousity and dilated pupils of the foreign students (all of which had nothing to do with these particular American women being over 25 and more to do with a hardness that feminists had taught them to have).
I was in a hurry because I was not going to stay aboard the SS Bill Clinton as it took its "3 hour cruise" if I were only going to find out soon enough that its three attractive women were feminists, liberals or anything else boring. It was like the SpeedDating events...one decides in seconds if another is worth seeing again. The ships whistle blew and I ran to the deck and jumped as the boat pulled away from the dock. The jump made everyone look and gasp "why did he jump ship? He paid $25".
I felt so relieved that God had given me 3 hours to live life "over again" that would have been wasted on the ship. I would have rather watched television or, better put, I would rather stand at a Chemistry exhibit and talk chemistry with foreign college students.
And that, by the way, is a metaphor for my spending my single life mostly in Germany where I've had a good social life so far. I jumped ship in Boston Harbor because sailing on the SS Bill Clinton cruise was not my style.
Anyway...as it got dark that night in downtown Boston I found myself in the famous bar/restaurant district (North Beach?) and suddenly saw a gaggle of great looking women who were clearly having a girls night out. I crossed the street and told them I was a tourist and maybe they could tell me how I could make the most of my night out to make friends, etc. They all stopped and seemed to accept me as a friendly guy asking a valid question. As they gave me "advice"...two young males walked by on the way to a famous bar "McSorleys" or whatever. Some of the girls said "Yeah, follow those guys to that bar and you will have a great time!"
I didn't move. Instead I said with as much amused irony as I could muster "Wait a minute. This is a surreal moment you'd have to admit. Here I am a tourist who flew here from Germany. I'm a guy. I'm single and not bad looking. And yet 15 single women are actually advising me to act like I'm gay and go off with two boys in baseball caps to have a good time? That's cruel" I said as I smiled.
The younger women may have seen the humor and good nature in which I meant this, but they did something next that ONLY American women would do, especially in blue states: one said "Yup we're cruel" and set out to just walk away from me in total rejection of me as a person...and 9 of the 14 others did the same. This kind of thing simply does not happen in other countries, at least with me.
Five women started to walk with the others away from me...but immediately realized that I was right and stopped and stood around me trying to get to know me as a person. They had understood that it was absurd and nihilistic for their younger "colleagues" to have told a nice guy that his best bet for making friends and having a good time in Boston was to go off with 2 really young guys in baseball caps to a loud bar.
These five women made the whole experience human to me. I never want to see North Beach in Boston again as a single man however. What kind of bul#sh%t is in the mind of a society that designates a social district for people to get to know each other...and then makes that district the last place in the world where a nice guy can meet a woman and be accepted by her as a high-status male for being in the district?
That kind of disregard from 10 out of 15...even though I probably looked somewhat like Bruce Willis that night...it makes me shudder.
And this was just a descripton of a 7 day period in 2002 that I spent in the USA. Life in Germany was much more normal in 2002. A guy like me doesn't stay single for long over here. I get caught up in real relationships and never have the chance to complain about society not working...the way I do when I experience the USA.
[All I know is that if a person can't find a suitable mate within a very wide peer group, there's a problem with them, not their peers.]
I assume you mean conservative gene pool of the best looking and smartest available women, not necessarily "peers" of the same age. Low airfares and higher incomes have widened the gene pool to include, for closet racists, the entire Caucasian band from Alaska/Kamchatka round through the Baltic Sea, Finland, Germany, Scotland and North America.
I would agree that, if you can't get laid in the Northern Hemisphere...don't bother going to Australia.
[I'm not talking about someone who meets a foreigner and falls in love, I am referring strictly to those who set out to purchase a mate. And--sorry, but this is the truth--everyone snickers at mail order marriages.]
Nobody "purchases" a mate. The Internet really wiped out any of that kind of illegal activity because it got so easy for everyone to meet people himself. On average, it costs $12 for an American male to get the email address of someone who will be thrilled to have an American male pay attention to them...someone who looks like Olesya above and who is probably better educated and less liberal than a Boston University student.
So many men are cheapskates and won't spend $12 for the above woman's email address. But they would spend $30 for a subscription some horrendous porn site. Men who view porn are literally wasting their time.
A man would spend maybe $2500 in airfare, visa, hotel to meet someone like Olesya in Moscow or St. Petersburg. But that is chump change to the more successful men. That is not "purchasing" anyone. She will reject him in a heartbeat if he has bad breath or shows any sign that he is not super intelligent and a high-status male back home in the USA.
It is true that one famous organization charges $4000 for some guys to spend a week in which they get introduced to 100s of women at exclusive parties where they and 9 other guys are treated like royalty...And I've seen some losers spend that $4000...never to learn that a lot of foreign women with self respect will NOT participate in a cattle call event like that.
[Angry men who can't find love with a peer and have to spend money to import a mate because American women are [--insert bitter complaint here--] just poorly adjusted socially.]
Alpha males don't date peers, because younger women chase them. Most guys who date foreign women are the richest and most successful. They are not as much angry as confused that their money, charm, intelligence and looks seem to attract more interesting women from other countries than from their own. They don't sense that American women who ignore them are better looking, smarter and better educated than the foreign women who are attracted to them. They feel it is more like General Motors ignoring a customer who, if he took a test drive, still wouldn't buy last year's Saturn Plus that gets 20 miles to the gallon.
And the guy doesn't have to leave America to learn that there is a trend. American colleges are as filled with foreign females as they are filled with Arab anti-Bush males. Any American guy in his thirties can go meet the foreign college students and judge for himself if there is a difference in attitude on their part.
[Another problem with the whole mail order thing is that women like the ambitious Russian lady above who are looking for attractive Bruce Willis American men are going to be disappointed, too. Successful, well-adjusted good looking Bruce Willis conservative American men do not have to look outside their peer group to find a suitable mate.]
These guys don't have to. But they do. And precisely because they are well-adjusted and rich enough to leave the USA for a four day weekend...smart enough not to spend $2500 going to Cancun where they are only going to meet the same American women they could have met back home.
American women have plenty of chances to get the Bruce Willis look alikes. They are walking around right now in your town. You can catch them before the 4 day weekends begin. You can stop them at the airport and say "please don't go. I'm here". ;-)
[Even the not so good looking ones get snapped up, so long as they are willing to consider a woman of similar physical and personal attributes.]
But maybe the not-so-good-looking guys, as well as the best looking guys, want to "marry up" and use their status as an American to get someone better looking and/or smarter than he could at home. His status as an American is not necessarily a citizenship-ticket to the foreign woman...I am also talking about the latent good will that foreign women have toward American men as being the heroes who liberate people from Nazis, terrorists and communists.
This last point is the biggest thing that American liberal women do NOT understand. They don't see that even the foreign leftist women still have a latent respect for Humphrey Bogart helping the French Resistance and US troops trouncing the Nazis.
If American women treated every American veteran like a hero...and breathlessly asked "where did you serve"...that would be a good start.
That being said, it's lovely for you that you apparently are an alpha male. That makes you one in a thousand (one in twenty-six? whatever). You're never going to change my opinion that people who can't relate to their peer group are maladjusted.
(Alpha males don't date peers, because younger women chase them. Most guys who date foreign women are the richest and most successful)
If younger women choose/chase rich men, it's for cold, hard cash, and that's just sad for everyone. It's a transaction, and that's all they have in common. Lose the cash, lose the [purchased] woman. How's that on the ego?
I don't date with regard to a man's social ranking or bank account, I just enjoy intelligent, good humored, well adjusted company. I have my own established social rank and bank account and don't need someone else's. No games, no strings, and I can't imagine myself with an old man, I don't care how alpha he is.
“The tenets David and Solomon would have rejected, if conservativism in 1400 BC meant what you say it means today, were the idea that a man of great power should settle for less than 300 wives and 400 concubines.”
I didn’t ask what they would reject if they were alive today, I asked what they *did* reject. In their day, God had not yet told us to be monogamous, so their polygamy was not contrary to any tenet of conservatism. Were they alive today, given their love for God, I tend to think they would follow that tenet of conservatism.
(And by the way, the only reason monogamy is a tenet of conservatism is because God said we should be monogamous, long after the time of Solomon and David.)
“Patriarchal conservatism has followed examples like that (or of Mohammed) for thousands of years and it includes the sexual behavior of many in the Catholic priesthood for 2000 years (sadly, this entitlement is often now directed at little boys).”
Utter nonsense. You sound like the product of a “women’s studies” program at Vassar, talking about “patriarchal conservatism” and “matriarchal conservatism,” and “keeping women under control.”
“Patriarchal” and “matriarchal” are adjectives that cannot rationally be used in conjunction with the noun “conservatism,” and any desire to “keep women under control” arises not from conservatism, but from human nature. Most men instinctively understand that if women were in charge, they would do things to make life utterly intolerable for men—as feminism and other forms of PC are in fact doing in the West today.
Further, the sexual behavior of priests in the 20th century was approximately equivalent to or a little more virtuous than protestant preachers, schoolteachers, and doctors, so there’s no justification for charging off into wild accusations about the conduct of priests.
“The majority of men in this world who call themselves "conservative" would be thinking of this patriarchal view”
I very much doubt that *anyone* who is of Western Civilization thinks of the chimerical “patriarchal view” you propose other than feminists, leftists, and academics. It’s another fictional evil like “Victorianism” and “McCarthyism.”
“...even if, schizophrenically, some adhere to religions that want to keep women under control whom other conservative men don't want controlled.”
Christianity has as many or more “controls” on men as on women. Interestingly, feminists who go on about “patriarchy” want the controls on men kept in place, or even strengthened, even as they insist on throwing off all controls that bear on women.
“Conservative men fought conservative men for 6000 years of recorded history...over resources and women. It is all about who gets control.”
It’s hard to accept that you really believe that preposterous statement. The only way one could possibly find any truth in that would be to reduce conservatism to nothing more than, “The people who are in charge want to stay in charge.” Of course, if we do that, then we must reduce “progressivism” to, “The people who are not in charge want to be in charge.”
Conservatism as it exists today is far more than that. It is a coherent worldview that has something to say on all facets of human existence. It is illuminated not by the lust for power, but by the desire to know the truth, and to reject evil and pursue good. That, of course, rules out starting a war for resources and women.
“But this I don't understand about religion:”
Best I can tell you don’t understand anything about religion, and are mistaken regarding those things you think you do understand.
“Suicide bombers kill themselves to get a patriarchal job servicing 72 virgins. Foreign insurgents in Iraq are enticed by tales of Iraqi women wanting sex with freedom fighters. Yet they support a religion in this life that stops young women from even being nice to them.”
For something like that to make any sense to you, you have to understand about three large books worth of things. I’m not going to type in three large books’ worth of material, but I’ll briefly sketch the conclusions greater knowledge would eventually bring you to.
Firstly, people long for God. What we call religion is a reflection of that. However, Evil, or Satan, interferes with our search for Him. Further, our view of God is distorted by the evil that lurks in our own hearts, as a bathroom mirror may be clouded by steam. As a result, people sometimes base religions on extremely distorted views of God. Worse yet, as in the cases of Islam, Baal worshippers, and the pre-Columbian, human sacrifice religions of Central America, Satan has sometimes clearly had the defining influence on shaping the religion.
In short, all religions are not equal. Some have more of the truth, some less, some incorporate more error and some less, and some have been completely highjacked by Satan.
It is completely to be expected that one will become confused if he attempts to understand religion using a simplistic model that assumes all religions to be more or less similar things.
“I don't understand how any Muslim man can call himself "conservative"
To the best of my knowledge, they *don’t* call themselves “conservative,” nor does anyone else—except, perhaps, those whose agenda is blackening the name of conservatism.
“Our job in the WOT is to turn these guys into real conservatives by deprogramming them out of a religion that is counterproductive to what men really want”
No, our job is to kill them, and to keep killing them until they are unable to harm us further. The job of missionaries is to convert them to Christianity.
“conservatively, not religiously.”
That’s a contradiction in terms. Conservatism is grounded in the truth, and that includes the truths of Christianity and Judaism.
“The WOT clearly shows that religiousity is not always conservative.”
Nobody said it was. However, conservatism, sufficiently advanced, is always illuminated by religious truth.
“Look at the alliance, albeit a fake one, between Islamic extremists and the western left.”
That alone should tell you that Islam is of and from Satan.
“Why would they put out their eye to spite their nose? Answer:”
Answer? Because that’s the way the Father of Lies does things. He loves it when he can trick us into shooting ourselves in the foot.
“religious people, at the lower levels, often don't think conservatively when organized religion tells them how to behave against their personal interests.”
Lower levels? What would the “lower” levels be, and what makes them “lower?” And I see you’ve now introduced the cliché bugaboo of “organized religion.”
Hint: Christianity *never* tells you to act against your own best interests; and insofar as you think it does, you are in error.
“What you call Judao-Christian would be more "Paulist" to me.”
My word, have you sucked down *all* the anti-Christian kool-aid on *all* the tables? Is there any single piece of transparent sophistry you haven’t fallen for?
“Suffice it to say that the Catholic priesthood and the Vatican wasn't always about morality and religion.”
Road apples. As a matter of fact, the survival of the Church despite some of the bad men who have occupied high position within it shows that the exact opposite is true.
“And if I said the Catholic priesthood was only acting "conservatively" when they took advantage of people under their control...I hope I don't sound like a fascist.”
You sound like a liberal, a Ward Churchill, a Nancy Pelosi, a Maureen Dowd, a DUer.
Taking advantage of people under your control is in no way conservative, and your statement that it is makes me doubt that you are actually a conservative.
Perhaps the best statement of conservative principles regarding that issue is from a man of the 19th century:
The forebearing use of power does not only form a touchstone, but the manner in which an individual enjoys certain advantages over others, is a test of a true gentleman. The power which the strong have over the weak, the magistrate over the citizen, the employer over the employed, the educated over the unlettered, the experienced over the confiding, even the clever over the silly; the forebearing and inoffensive use of all this power or authority, or a total abstinence from it when the case admits it, will show the gentleman in a plain light. The gentleman does not needlessly and unnecessarily remind an offender of a wrong he may have committed against him. He cannot only forgive, he can forget; and he strives for that nobleness of self and mildness of character, which imparts sufficient strength to let the past be but the past. A true man of honor feels humbled himself when he cannot help humbling others.
That, of course, was Robert E. Lee.
“Lord Palmerston was conservative because he wanted world control (and sex) at all costs”
Only a liberal would think those things made him a conservative. There is nothing conservative about lust and the lust for power. In the 20th century, the worst offenders in both those areas were all leftists.
“If I sound like I, like so many British conservative men of her day, did not like Queen Victoria's attitude, I hope I don't sound like a fascist.”
All this talk of “fascists” makes you sound like a liberal.
“Yet Queen Victoria, ridiculed by men in England”
Sounds like you also made a pass by the table marked “rewritten history” for some kool-aid.
“became popular in what was becoming a moralistic matriarchal American society.”
Didn’t you just get through complaining about men controlling women?
“The legacy popularity of Queen Victoria in the USA and her influence on the modern American evangelical movement cannot be easily dismissed as a myth.”
Sure it can. So-called “Victorianism” was nothing more than a call to actually observe the moral code that had been in place for 1800 years. Victoria didn’t invent Christian morality; she just said, “Stop being hypocrites, and practice what you claim to believe.”
“Nor can we ignore the matriarchy/patriarchy debate.”
Ignoring it would be kinder than heaping upon it the scorn it merits.
“There is a reason why premarital sex is off the political table in the 21st century. Conservative men are split on the issue. And increasingly, so are women. It won't be back on the table in our lifetimes.”
No, it’s just that some of the men who are progressing toward conservatism haven’t come around yet, but the numbers are high and rising. Not only is it on the table, the numbers of young men and women who reject premarital sex are actually on the rise.
“Someone at Amazon actually made a cogent comment when she noted that some "conservatives" in America might run like lemmings to buy a book that condemns sex.”
You regard that as “cogent?” Good Lord.
Firstly, the book doesn’t “condemn sex,” according to the reviews and excerpts I’ve read. Secondly, the offensive notion that conservatives are lemming-like is not grounded in fact, nor is the assertion that they would approve of a book that “condemns sex,” if such a thing existed.
It would have been more accurate for that person to say, “It enrages me that conservatives refuse to endorse the vices and depravity that I embrace.”
"culture war they want to have"
Conservatives didn’t want a culture war. It was forced on us by evil people such as your reviewer.
“It concerns me that the liberals might perform jujitsu on Republicans who overreach. They'll let us have our "culture war" until a red line is silently crossed.”
Buncombe. All the movement during the culture war has been in the wrong direction. There is no “red line” between where we are today and where we were before evil attacked.
“Apparently to a lot of guys on FR today...this woman author is automatically our spokesperson if we haven't read her book.”
And there’s another liberal buzz word; “automatically.” A lot of us have been reading Kate O'Beirne for years, and were familiar with her views long before this book came out.
“Single males who completely disagree with your idea of sexual morality (maybe 20 million who vote)”
Road apples. You go ask those 20 million how many would prefer to marry a virgin, and then get back to me.
That aside, calling mainstream Christian morality as it has existed for over 2000 years “your idea of sexual morality” is another cheap liberal debate trick. You’re not arguing against one faceless person on the Internet; you’re arguing against 2000 years of Christianity.
“aren't so enamored of the word Republican that they would vote for a continued matriarchy if that were the main issue in an election.”
Gee, first Christian morality is patriarchal, and now it’s matriarchal. Yup, you sure do argue like a liberal.
“On heterosexual "rights" there is very little agreement as reflected by the past 10 years of no Republican policy on the matter.”
Agreement? I don’t need no steenking agreement. Teenage pregnancy is down, pre-marital sex is down, abortion is down…looks to me like people are turning around and moving in the right direction.
By the way, “conservative” and “Republican” are by no stretch of the imagination synonymous. A person can reasonably claim to be conservative at some point *after* he realizes that sexual depravity and conservatism are incompatible.
"do not have to look outside their peer group "
It's not a question of "having to" look outside their peer group, it's a matter of *wanting to* look outside their peer group.
Sometimes men who are good prospects meet a foreign woman by chance, fall in love, and get married.
Some men find Asian women more attractive than Caucasian women, and deliberately seek an Asian wife instead of a Caucasian wife. That doesn't equate to a "mail-order bride;" it's the same process as finding an American wife, just among a different group of women.
Some good looking, personable men have scads and scads of American girlfriends, say "yuck," and deliberately seek a foreign wife.
One of the myths that American women concoct to protect their egos is that no American man would marry a foreigner unless he "had to." This is poppycock.
"I'm with Rush. An army of 14 year old girls could perhaps be the most brutal army of all."
When I was active duty, I did some drinking with an Israeli officer.
He said there were two reasons they quit using women in combat. One is that men would instinctively try to protect them, leading to unnecessary deaths and jeopardizing missions, and the other is that they had no trouble getting women to start killing, but they couldn't get them to stop.
In combat, things go much better if the enemy knows his surrender will be accepted. He's less likely to fight to the death, and you get prisoners for interrogation.
Women just wouldn't leave any of the enemy alive.
[Women just wouldn't leave any of the enemy alive.]
THIS is fascinating. Are there any links to this anywhere or is it just not written down anywhere yet? Has any military unit in history had morale problems because they feared the "take no prisoners" attitude of women in the opposing ranks?
I believe there might be truth from this anecdote...but it is just the first time I've ever heard of it.
"Has any military unit in history had morale problems because they feared the "take no prisoners" attitude of women in the opposing ranks?"
THE YOUNG BRITISH SOLDIER--Rudyard Kipling
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains, Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
It was also well known during the American Indian wars that it was far preferable to use your last bullet on yourself than to be turned over to the women for torture.
I'm sure it's a common thing throughout history.
"I believe there might be truth from this anecdote...but it is just the first time I've ever heard of it."
I think the Israeli officer who told me those things about women in combat believed what he was saying, and I think he knew whereof he spake.
Before the Internet, the left could drop anything down the memory hole simply by not reporting it.
For instance, AFAIK the lamestream media have never reported that the South Koreans were telling us that Kim Jong Il was clinically insane, was kidnapping foreigners, and was trying to get a nuclear weapons program together as early as the first half of the 1980s.
[That being said, it's lovely for you that you apparently are an alpha male. That makes you one in a thousand (one in twenty-six? whatever).]
I define alpha male as someone confident who, in the genetic race, won't just sit quietly while other males insert their genes into superior females. It comes from scientific literature, probably some of it the kind that dsc would consider me liberal for ever bothering to read. But dsc agrees with me that an American man with any self respect is not going to just *settle* for what American society (dominated by politically correct liberals) tells him his girlfriend is going to be.
Where I might disagree most with dsc is that I've perceived American fundamentalist Christians to be the most guilty of specificying the age-range of people who date and asking men to "conform". If he were tragically left single at this moment, his church brethren would possibly not approve of him going back to Japan and finding a 25 year old. In any case, his church-brethren would not be saying "my daughter just got out of college and is looking for a man like you" which is what they WOULD be saying in other countries if he were otherwise a high-status, good looking male.
Let's say we are all cavepeople 100,000 years ago. I'd be a technological leader and have high status in the cave. And like Solomon and David, I'd have a few wives including some wonderful women my age whom I'd never abandon. Jesus wouldn't have told us to have only one yet however.
When I'd see a newly adult nubile cavewoman whom I really favored and I saw her covorting with a guy her own age, I'd move in and break them up...of her own accord. I wouldn't push it. I would just let her know that she interests me and I would not be pleased to see her continue with the other guy. I wouldn't kill the guy like David did and I would be very careful to maintain morale among the "troops"...but I wouldn't be happy about him inserting his genes into someone I'd rather have my genes in. That is scientific talk for "I don't want to see other guys take the best women."
In modern times, I've chosen to remain unmarried so I won't even THINK about abandoning anyone until I find the right one.
In modern times, beyond my height, build, clothing and general acceptance among "peer group" women in their thirties...I think what causes some younger women to want to date me is that I somehow give off the message, before even talking to them, that I honestly and seriously expect them to. It might be eye contact. Maybe they see where my eyes go. I don't know what it is. But they get the message that I haven't given up on life.
1) They sense that I don't "know my place" according to feminists. And since biology proves that women are attracted to older guys (Bruce Willis and Stephen Segall are over 50), it isn't unacceptable for the less indoctrinated women at all. Looks are obviously not the issue if the guy looks better than men her own age.
2) Since 9-11, they know upfront what I think of liberals. Only in the USA are some young liberal women so indoctrinated that they will be repulsed by my stance on liberals. Many young liberal women are attracted to a man who appears defiant of the politically correct world they belong to.
The moment I asked a crowd of 15 women why it was that they just suggested I go socialize with two young males...that is a good example of what an alpha male is...5 of the 15 immediately saw that I was "calling them on their nihilism". I was saying "Hold it, does it say on my forehead that I'm gay" and I had a point.
I wasn't advised to run off with the two young males because the women found me unattractive...their feminist conditioning had told them overall that, no matter what the man looked like, he was a man and should not, therefore, mix with females.
American men really ought to chip in for a national television campaign asking "Do you think we're all gay?" and then pan to shots of women out at bars with each other, dancing with each other, etc...getting the message out that they seem to be living in a liberal world where everyone is assumed to be gay and lesbian as a politically correct assumption.
You see, too many American men act like they are gay. They actually would just trot off with other male strangers to a bar on the advice of 15 gorgeous babes. They don't seize opportunity. They don't understand that, in life, he who gets the prize...often is the one who asked for it.
[You're never going to change my opinion that people who can't relate to their peer group are maladjusted.]
Exactly. They would be maladjusted. I mentioned above an example that a hair salon filled with middle-aged women were laughing and joking with me about some subject...causing an 18 year old to regard me as a high-status male. I said in another thread that a 40 year old woman invited me to her house for dinner...and her 20 year old daughter decided to compete with her for my attention.
The mother implied "this guy is well-adjusted. I like him" and the daughter moved in for the kill.
Regarding foreign women...they want to see or feel that the man they are dealing with is well adjusted among his peers.
By the way, I have heard stories of American feminists who will try to deny "peer acceptance" to men they see on a date with younger women. A hotel receptionist got fired in one anecdote for insulting remarks she made.
[If younger women choose/chase rich men, it's for cold, hard cash, and that's just sad for everyone. It's a transaction, and that's all they have in common. Lose the cash, lose the [purchased] woman. How's that on the ego?]
This is the worst lie of feminism or one of the top 3. Please stop believing it.
Between jobs, I was wiped out last year and had to move in with my 24 year old girlfriend and her mother!! Her mother could be called my "peer" in a way (she's actually a lot older than I am but might not have been). It was humiliating. What happened? Closer bonds all around. We realized we loved each other. Now I'm back in a luxury apartment and things are going well.
I remember seeming to have no prospects and no future and trudging home to my "welfare home" all sad and depressed...and then opening the door and seeing the most wonderful woman burst into a big smile with widening pupils...like "he's home!"
Women think this way in much of the world:
Money talks, but it don't sing and dance and it don't walk. As long as I can have you here with me, I'd much rather be forever in blue jeans.
A lot of women actually feel safer with a man who does NOT have the financial resources to get other women. That is another topic entirely...but suffice it to say that relationships between foreigners and Americans or younger woman and older men are not so often based on financial matters. Emotional matters matter more.
And, if I had more history of financial disaster, I could probably write more on how younger women would actually be more tolerant of an older boyfriend going belly up financially. Older women would be more worried about retirement and building a nest egg. Younger women still dream of love and want to have fun. I've seen 20 year old German women getting a kick out of temporarily supporting their middle-aged boyfriends between jobs. They find it funny. To the male of course, the situation is not funny.
[I don't date with regard to a man's social ranking or bank account, I just enjoy intelligent, good humored, well adjusted company. I have my own established social rank and bank account and don't need someone else's. No games, no strings, and I can't imagine myself with an old man, I don't care how alpha he is.]
If you cannot imagine yourself with 56 year old John Travolta, 51 year old Stephen Segall or 51 year old Bruce Willis...well I guess something in US society got to you. Good luck. I left New York City because I sensed that this feminist attitude would, as I grew older, harm my interests. I also left because of 9-11 and the huge corporate pullout and lack of high tech industry.
Your bank account and social rank would make you a great person to do business with. Men will want to network with you and exchange business cards. But if you don't wear a summer dress on a June saturday up in Cold Harbor on the Hudson...the guy you're with might be looking at those who do. Guys want to know that you are trying to attract them not the other way around. I'm sure you do well, however. Just know the competition is out there and the world is getting smaller due to lower airfares and the Internet.
You said (in part): The common factor with both is that the males (each child has a different father, a total of 4) had their fun and left.
***
I think the "common factor" could be restated more objectively-- The women and the fathers of their children acted irresponsibly in not marrying before having children, and failing to commit to living their lives together. I agree that the men in this story (but out of the picture) acted reprehensibly, but the women are hardly off the hook. I suspect that the women "had their fun" as well as the men.
I honor your willingness to assist the children, who are, of course, blameless.
[No games, no strings, and I can't imagine myself with an old man, I don't care how alpha he is.]
The older guy that Carrie secretly loves in "Sex and the City" (I've seen only about 8 episodes)...is about the kind of guy whom I'd expect not to be ignored or (at least initially) rejected by adult women of any age.
Important point: Imagine if a man were to write "I can't imagine myself with an older woman, no matter what her personality"? That would come across as caddish. But feminism allows women to be caddish...actually encourages it. Then Bruce Willis slept with the nanny...and Demi Moore decides to show the world that she can marry a 25 year old in return. How pathetically politically correct. Only in America do you get such neurotic, bizarre, unnatural behavior...mostly to prove some liberal point.
Americans sometimes think too much. For instance, women Google men before dates now. Guys have to make sure their Google record is clear. There is just too much thinking going on in a lot of cases.
Regarding the "mail order bride" issue...please don't think so much. Its more accurate to rename "mail order bride" to "competition on the social globalization market" and leave it at that.
And note that the photo of Olesya above is typical on the Internet for foreigners. I don't know what you look like but she would be lethal competition for getting most guys (she is too skinny for me but most guys like that style). Compare the quality of the photo with the photos on Match.com in the USA.
Olesya's photo shows her full torso and waist and she's smiling. How many Match.com photos show full torso shots? How many might just show a woman in a polyethylene winter coat if they do show full length shots?
The fact that Match.com and Yahoo Personals photos are so bland...and descriptions so uninspiring...reflects an attitude of not wanting to try to attract. The best men don't subscribe as a result. But these websites represent Americans attempts to mate. They are the top two dating sites in the USA. If something is terribly wrong at these websites...it may reflect that something in our society needs adjusting. The market of men in the microcosm at Match.com would appear to be demanding better photographs from the women. That they are not getting them shows a General Motors style disregard for giving men what they want. The competition is providing better photos as I proved above in the thread.
And taking feminism head on might be a start.
Conservatives might just avoid mixing the message and losing credibility by attacking feminism for premarital sex, which can only be called anti-male behavior via the most convoluted theoretical acrobatics (that I have seen on this thread). Because then we all just start arguing with ourselves.
We need to go after the feminist message that men should be denied, on a macro level, what they want.
"Where I might disagree most with dsc is that I've perceived American fundamentalist Christians to be the most guilty of specificying the age-range of people who date and asking men to "conform".
I can't get a bead on what you seem to think the word "fundamentalist" means. Myself, I'm Catholic, and most people don't think of Catholics as fundamentalist.
That aside, I think that specifying the age range is a feminist offensive. One thing that feminists and many other women really hate is that, when it comes to marriage, women have a shelf life and men don't.
Another is that many men become progressively better looking until they are in their sixties or even their seventies, and are handsome and distinguished even later in life that that; while women reach the peak of physical beauty at a fairly young age, and, thereafter, more or less slowly but continuously, decline.
They hate that young women are more attractive than older, and that older men remain attractive enough to snag them--all of which, of course, leaves them out in the cold.
What to do, what to do? Monogamous marriage with strictly restricted divorce, of course, is the proper response to that, but feminists have already ruled that out of court.
The only thing left for them to do is to have younger women ruled out of bounds, while spreading the fiction that younger women who go for older men are scurrilous.
During the bent one's blue dress episode, some in the media were calling 21-year-old porcupine Monica "a child."
No, it's not Christians who are hysterical at the thought of a man of 50 marrying a woman of 25, it's the Maureen Dowds, the women who have made a career of hating human nature as manifested in the male of the species.
"If he were tragically left single at this moment, his church brethren"
We Catholics don't usually talk like that. However, interestingly enough, just the other night I was hoisting a few in Tokyo with a guy I've been friends with for over 15 years, a Protestant. The waitresses were a really, really nice, cheerful middle-aged Filipina, and a hot, hot, hot young Japanese girl. On the American scale of 1 to 10, she was about a 32.
Not surprisingly the conversation turned to matters much resembling those under discussion here. I commented that if I (God forbid) found myself widowered, and decided to remarry, I would probably go to the Philippines and seek introductions from parish priests to find a wife. This Protestant friend, who takes his religion quite seriously, saw nothing wrong with that, even though I would probably be 30 years older than the woman I would eventually find.
I think you assume a lot of things about "fundamentalists" (whatever you mean by that) that aren't true of any Christians I have come across.
"In any case, his church-brethren would not be saying "my daughter just got out of college and is looking for a man like you"
Fathers want their daughters to be happy, and most American daughters have bought into the age-equivalency paradigm.
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