Sex, Equality, And Kidding Ourselves (Should Men put their foot down and say enough is enough??)

FredonEverything.com ^ | 4/17/02 | Fred Reed

[M 91 u2 K]

Men of today's older generation grew up in the chivalric miasma of their time, which held that women were morally superior to men, and that civilized men protected women against any available vicissitude. A corollary was that women needed protecting. So common has this understanding been throughout history that one may suspect it of being based in ancient instinct: In a less hospitable world, if men didn't protect women, something disagreeable would eat them, and then there would be no more people. So men did. And do.

Instincts have consequences, particularly when the circumstances requiring them cease to exist.

Because women were until recently subordinate, and in large part played the role of gentility assigned to them, men didn't recognize that they could be dangerous, selfish, or sometimes outright vipers. They were no worse than men, but neither were they better. Men believed, as did women, that women were tender creatures, caring, kind, and suited to be mothers. Males deferred to women in many things, which didn't matter because the things women wanted were not important.

When women came into a degree of power, it turned out that they were as immoral, or amoral, as men, probably more self-centered, and out for what they could get. Not all were, of course, as neither were all men, but suddenly this became the central current. This too followed lines of instinctual plausibility: Women took care of children and themselves, and men took care of women. It made sense that they should be self-centered.

These newly empowered women knew, as women have always known, how to wield charm, and they quickly learned to enjoy power. The men of the old school didn't notice in time. They deferred, and they were blind-sided. They gave gentlemanly agreement to one-sided laws hostile to men.

Political deference became a pattern. It remains a pattern. It probably springs in part from the male's instinctive recognition that, by giving women what they want, he gets laid. Between individuals this worked tolerably well, but less so when applied to abstract groups.

When women said they wanted protection against dead-beat dads, the old school fell for it. They were attuned to saving maidens and the sheltering from life's storms of white Christian motherhood. "Dead-beat dads" was of course that sure-fire political winner -- an alliterative slogan of few words that embodied a conclusion but no analysis. So sure were men that women were the kinder gentler sex that they never bothered to look at the statistics on abuse of children, or the track records of the sexes in raising children.

The romantic elderly male believed -- believes -- that women were the natural proprietors of the young. This led to laws virtually denying a divorced father's interest in his children, though not the requirement that he pay for their upkeep. The pattern holds today. Male judges in family law defer to women, almost any women no matter how unfit, and female judges side with their own. The demonstrable fact that women can and do abuse and neglect children, that a female executive clawing her way up the hierarchy may have the maternal instincts of a rattlesnake, that children need their fathers -- all of this has been forgotten.

The reflexive deference continued. Feminists wanted congress to pass a vast program of funding for every left-wing cause that incited enthusiasm in the sterile nests of NOW. They called it the Violence Against Women Act, and men deferentially gave it to them. Of course to vote against it, no matter what it actually said -- and almost no one knew -- would have been to seem to favor violence against women. A law to exterminate orphans, if called the Domestic Violence Prevention Act, would pass without demur.

There followed yet more male deference to female desires. When women wanted to go into the military to have babies, or a Soldier Experience, men couldn't bring themselves to say no.

When the women couldn't perform as soldiers, men graciously lowered standards so they could appear to. It was the equivalent of helping a woman over a log in the park, the legal and institutional parallel of murmuring, "Don't worry your pretty little head about a thing."

On and on it went. The aggregate effect has been that women have gained real power, while (or by) managing in large part to continue to exact deference and, crucially, to avoid the accountability that should come with power. A minor example is women who want the preferential treatment that women now enjoy, and yet expect men to pay for their dates. In today's circumstances, this is simple parasitism.

Today men are accountable for their behavior. Women are not. The lack of accountability, seldom clearly recognized, is the bedrock of much of today's feminist misbehavior, influence, and politics. Its pervasiveness is worth pondering.

A man who sires children and leaves is called a dead-beat dad, and persecuted. A woman who has seven children out of wedlock and no capacity to raise them is not a criminal, but a victim. He is accountable for his misbehavior, but she is not for hers. It is often thus.

Consider the female Army officer who complained that morning runs were demeaning to women. A man who thus sniveled would be disciplined, ridiculed, and perhaps thumped. Yet the Army fell over itself to apologize and investigate. Again, men are held accountable for their indiscipline, but women are not. Men expect to adapt themselves to the Army, but women expect the Army to adapt to them. And it does. The male instinct is to keep women happy.

Note that a woman who brings charges of sexual harassment against a man suffers no, or minor, consequences if the charges are found to be unfounded -- i.e., made up. A man who lied about a woman's misbehavior would be sacked. He is accountable. She isn't.

Yes, large numbers of women are responsible, competent, and agreeable. Few engage in the worst abuses, as for example the fabrication of sexual harassment. Yet they can do these things. A man cannot throw a fit and get his way. A woman can. Only a few need misbehave to poison the air and set society on edge. And the many profit by the misbehavior of the few.

People will do what they can get away with. Men assuredly will, and so are restrained by law. Women are not. Here is the root of much evil, for society, children, men and, yes, women.

[FITZ]

but only godly men can hold onto godly women. The playboy philosphy and sexual revolution is largely responsible for where we are today.

I think you're probably right. I remember the women of my mom's generation in our neighborhood and town. Often they maintained their homes, raised their children, sacrificed for years ---when they reached a certain age and the man reached a certain level of financial success, they were often abandoned for a younger trophy. There was a certain level of anger and bitterness for the feminist movement to catch hold ---but it went in the wrong direction and has made things worse for women now than things were.

[Don Myers]

"Between the cut-off shirts and hip-huuger jeans, the breeze has little work to do."

I was picking up boys from a school the other day, when a girl came out dressed like that. The boys pointed at her and said that is the girl who let her dog (let me see how I can say this politely.) do something with her. The boys were talking about talking her out back of the school and ...... her. This girl must have been 14 or 15.

[joathome]

haha

Sorry, but most of those are replies to the nasty swipes taken at women on this board. I realize some of you guys are bashing women in reply to the feminazi movement, but the woman bashing around here certainly won't attract new female converts to conservatism.

Have you ever stopped to consider how many times the word, "b_tch" is used around here? It's not the most welcome place in the world for a woman.

[joathome]

Not all men subscribed to the playboy philosphy, just as not all women subscribe to the feminazi philosophy, but we are all paying the price, nevertheless.

[Nick Danger]

[To H. Bergeron -> ] Basically, you have a problem. You are a gamma level, or at best beta minus mind trying to present yourself as an alpha through pretentious vocabulary and trivial criticism of form.

I went over to the orlingrabbe site and went through most of Section 10 very carefully, even taking notes. I just don't have time tonight to go through the whole thing, but maybe at some point I will.

From what I've seen so far, I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss H. Bergeron's criticisms. Section 10, at least, strikes me as an example of the sort of thing it claims to denounce. To set out to assist the ladies by explaining to them just how horrible other men are (compared to you, of course) is in fact just a form of trying to get laid; it is one of the tired old stratagems that you decry as being scheming and dishonest. In saying this I don't mean that you wrote the piece to literally 'get laid' because I suspect you're old enough to not give a damn, but the instinct to do those sorts of things is still there, and it seems to me that you have succumbed to it... I suspect to the point of even making up horror stories.

Also, I think it's fair to say that your view of women -- at least up the point I stopped reading -- is basically demeaning. Everything you discuss is from the point of view of someone who considers men to be the only actors in this world. In this view, women are just passive "things" that cannot act or react... they are merely helpless victims of scheming and conniving men, with no wills or brains of their own. How chivalrous of you to blame only men for the acts of all who tangoed. Chivalrous, but unrealistic and ultimately dismissive of women as human beings.

Although I don't have time right now to refute them, some of your stated facts set off my crap detector. I would like to see a source for the statement, "During the 1960s, the suicide rate of women increased to 150 percent of what it had been, while the suicide rate of men remained constant." Having studied historical suicide rates a bit, my temptation is to suspect that you made that up as a way to add heft to the rhetoric. Either that, or the rate did go up but the absolute numbers were so small that percentage changes are meaningless. What's your source for that factoid?

It sounds like a joke, but in absolute seriousness, much of this present great age of turmoil, pseudo-intellectual questioning, and iconoclasm has arisen as the result of an attempt to manipulate women into beds..The discourse became progressively refined, convoluted, and eloquent.

Yes, that does sound like a joke. The premise seems to be that somehow, in the nineteen hundred and sixtieth year after Christ, men suddenly and unexpectedly developed a desire to manipulate women into bed, and that much that is wrong with our society today came from this wholly unanticipated event. Women everywhere were caught so off guard by the idea of men trying to get in their pants that society's entire moral base collapsed on the spot. C'mon, you couldn't sell that at the county fair to people who just bought a set of ginsu knives.

Perhaps my attitude will change as I examine the other articles, but so far it looks to me like you're proceeding from the fundamental assumption that women have no say in events; that they are just these passive objects who are acted upon by men. This leads you to see only men as possible causes of the phenomena you seek to explain. Since that leaves out half of the explanatory variables, it is unlikely that you will find any truth by doing this. About the only thing one can say for the approach is that is has the delightful property of assigning all blame to men, which will make your theory highly popular among those women who choose to smile when being dismissed as inanimate objects, if that lets them off the hook for anything that happened.

If I had to summarize Section 10 in three sentences, they would be these: "Ladies, you wouldn't believe how horrible men are. In fact, I am the only man you can trust. Can we go to bed now?"

[The Giant Apricots]

Have you ever stopped to consider how many times the word, "b_tch" is used around here? It's not the most welcome place in the world for a woman.

Not only have I never used it, I have not witnessed it either.

[The Giant Apricots]

...the man bashing around here certainly won't attract new male converts to conservatism.

Corrected your line for accuracy.

[SpyderTim]

What an interesting and intellectually stimulating thread!

Duly noted that there are many unique perspectives and viewpoints expressed.

I'm interested in what evidence Harrison Bergeron (who I am suspicious may also be known as The Giant Apricots) might produce that "the Marxist gender-feminist anarchist" women actually burned their bras.

Finally, I'd be interested if posters would share their definitions of the term "feminism." I think that should sufficiently stimulate further debate.

RFK, I have bookmarked your site for further reading.

[IronJack]

A man who sires children and leaves is called a dead-beat dad, and persecuted. A woman who has seven children out of wedlock and no capacity to raise them is not a criminal, but a victim. He is accountable for his misbehavior, but she is not for hers. It is often thus.

When was the last time "60 Minutes" did an expose on deadbeat moms or welfare breeders?

[IronJack]

The abbandonment of Patriarchy for the Playboy philosophy is what started the gender war

Hogwash. With the caste system that excluded women from the franchise, the entire system was male-dominated. Women had "a place" in society and they could not step beyond it. With suffrage, they not only claimed the vote, they also knew that they could break the unseen chains that bound them in social isolation. When they effectively replaced men in factories during the Second World War, there was no turning back. They demanded -- and were given -- the rights to act as depraved and indulgent as men had for centuries.

No such "liberation" has come mens' way. Ever. No, ma'am. If men have changed at all, it is because women have.

[The Giant Apricots]

I'm interested in what evidence Harrison Bergeron (who I am suspicious may also be known as The Giant Apricots) might produce that "the Marxist gender-feminist anarchist" women actually burned their bras.

Your assumption is incorrect. Harrison Bergeron is a separate entity.

[RLK]

If I had to summarize Section 10 in three sentences, they would be these: "Ladies, you wouldn't believe how horrible men are. In fact, I am the only man you can trust. Can we go to bed now?"

-------------------------

What you are telling me is that the series is a desperate attempt to get sex over the internet.

To state a truth that what will be dramatically dismissed as a personal attack, you are desperately needed at your local psychiatric institution.

In my younger years I didn't need to put a story on women for sex. At any social function I generally got three offers a night. However, when you have had the real thing in terms of love, the second and third rate doesn't appeal to you if you are a member of the higher classes. Consequently, I discreetly declined the offers.

If you had bother to study the entire series, which wasn't you intention in your hurry to come back here and shoot off your mouth, you would have found a balance. In most cases I anticipated the questions and criticisms and they are addressed later as the series is read and studied. The information appearing there has been reviewed by reputable psychoanalysts and other clinicians with positive results.

[RLK]

Let me add that that part of the series is present within a historical framewor. It is to be studied as a whole, not just in single parts.

[SpyderTim]

Thank you for clearing that up.

[Ohioan]

Instincts have consequences, particularly when the circumstances requiring them cease to exist.

This is the writer's mistake. Circumstances requiring our instinctive sex roles have not ceased to exist. On the contrary, the happiness of both sexes would be far better served--in the present--if we returned to our sense of instinctive roles. We would also have a far more purposeful existence; less crime, divorce, illegitimacy, and substance induced detachment.

Those instinctive sex roles are what brings out the best in each of us. (See The Feminist Absurdity.) In their absence, you have the sort of purposeless existence that leads to senseless adolescent rage, as at Columbine.

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site

[Nick Danger]

What you are telling me is that the series is a desperate attempt to get sex over the internet.

I went out of my way to state in advance that my comments applied to Section 10, and Section 10 alone.

I also went out of my way to state that I did not mean that you, personally and literally, wrote the piece to get sex over the Internet. I said you were probably too old to give a damn about that, but were instead operating from habit or instinct.

Denials aside, what you wrote is an example of yer basic Emm-One-Five-One Attempt To Get Laid, once each, O.D. green. It's the one where the knight in shining armor arrives to warn the ladies that men are monsters, but that he -- the White Knight -- is here to spill the beans on those awful men and protect womanhood from their predations. It would be interesting to hear from any ladies in the house as to just how old they were when they first heard that one.

The information appearing there has been reviewed by reputable psychoanalysts and other clinicians with positive results.

Are you telling us that your political tracts are reviewed by mental health professionals before they get posted to the Internet? I had no idea Orlinn Grabbe was that careful. You'd never know it by looking at the stuff he has there.

[Harrison Bergeron]

"I'm interested in what evidence Harrison Bergeron (who I am suspicious may also be known as The Giant Apricots) might produce that "the Marxist gender-feminist anarchist" women actually burned their bras."

If you were of age to watch the news on TV in the early 1970's. you would have seen your share of this silly form of protest. It was a takeoff on the leftist draftcard burnings of the 1960's. As for the crack about double identities, Jim Robinson runs a clean, organized, and well moderated site here... those kind of shenanigans don't float.

And yes, the radical brands of feminism are deeply rooted in the Marxist model of a capitalistic oppressor class (men) and a victim class (women) seeking redistribution of said oppressor class's wealth. So far, feminism has been the most successful Marxist graft over the American body politic, moreso than unionism or pacifism or even the anti-private property factions of environmentalism.

"Finally, I'd be interested if posters would share their definitions of the term "feminism." I think that should sufficiently stimulate further debate.

You'll have to do your own research. Do seperate google searches on "gender-feminism" and "equity-feminism." Check out the Independent Women's Forum for some good material.

[Harrison Bergeron]

You got me dead to rights on the my erroneous accusation that your material lacked citations. I was wrong about that. The few citations you returned with were buried in the material, deeply, given its sheer volume. One would have expected to citations and footnotes where professional writers and researchers would normally place them: at the end, in order.

To be honest, after all of your hysterics and pant wetting... if I had presented a paper in such disorganized form in the high school I attended, it would have been returned unread with a little note that said "Footnotes please." If I had presented such work at the university I attended, it would have also been returned unread, but with a big fat "F" scrawled on it.

[Harrison Bergeron]

"Have you ever stopped to consider how many times the word, "b_tch" is used around here? "

This is the second or third time you've thrown that stinking dead fish story out into a thread where men voice their opinions on the bigotry and hatefulness of radical feminism. The only inferrence one can make from your repeating this accusation is that I or one of the other men here are going around calling women b---hes. Either show some links, name some names, or stop lying.

Voicing negative opinions on a political movement run by Marxist oriented lesbians in no way defames women as a sex. However, claiming all men are somehow to blame for feminism because Hugh Hefner came out with a nudie magazine in the 1950's is definitely demeaning to all men.