Posted on 04/17/2002 1:58:35 PM PDT by 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.
Have you ever worked around lesbians? Do you know any? I don't think they are "trying" to act like men. I think a whole bunch of them are men. Many of them are mental males who somehow ended up in a female body. By that I mean that you can have a business discussion with most lesbians and you will get back the same stuff you would get back from any man. With most of them, their mental processes are just like yours. It is noticeable different from dealing with female bodies that have female brains in them.
I don't claim to understand how any of that stuff works, and I suppose that in some dictionary sense they are freaks. But I don't think they are so much 'jealous' as they are resentful that men don't accept them as fellows.
I don't think he is literally trying to pick somebody up. I think it's a generational artifact. I don't know if he is chronologically in the WW II generation, but the tack he is taking is typical of that era. The men and women of the WW II generation had an elaborate dance that in fact is kind of fun to watch. The thing is, they honored each other. They celebrated the differences between the sexes, and had elaborate rituals that highlighted the differences in a very kind and loving way.
The act he is putting on here is appropriate for use around women who similarly honor men. He gallantly accepts, on behalf of all men, total blame for the world's problems. If something is wrong, a man did it. Women are not only the moral superiors, but perfect in every other way. In that generation, that act was reciprocated.
Well, it isn't anymore. Most women today will use that kind of chivalry to take the man who does it for a sucker. They'll take what he gives and return nothing. No honor, no thanks, nada.
It is guys like that, still serving as judges, that made the divorce industry possible. They simply cannot bring themselves to find fault with a woman, no matter what evidence is in front of them. They grew up in, and are mentally still living in, a world where women honor men and do not take advamntage of them. You and I do not, and to the extent that such men are still in places of power like the Congress or the judiciary, they are dangerous. While they protect "the little woman," the little woman is competing with us for jobs, promotions, and every other damned thing.
The sooner these "women are weak and saintly and need constant protection at the expense of men" types pass on to their Heavenly rewards, the safer we will all be.
Basically, I suspect Danger has pulled some shit somewhere and wants off the hook by forbidding any criticism of men whatsoever that might open up possibilities of criticism. That's usually what these arguments boil down to. As I have said, contemporary women have been dead wrong about many thing. So have men. Until they BOTH, that's BOTH, shape up, we're going to continue having a lot of problems in this society, including a 1/3 illigitimacy rate and a 50% divorce rate, and generations of rootless children. Now Danger wants to blame it entirely on women and keep his illusion of his perfection intact. Liberated women want to blame it entirely on men so they can escape blame and responsibility. Consequently anything I say in the way of truth elicits temper tantrums and accusations, and even borderlin psychotic reactions from both sides. Consequently, I have a breed of women screaming at me from one side on this and other threads saying I'm purely on the side of men --and a breed of men screaming at me like little girls on the other side claiming I'm purely on the side of women. --spoiled brats all. Their arguments become progressively distorted as they are cornered.
And Hillary Clinton is their avatar.
I had my car searched for drugs in an incident similar to the one you describe. I was searched ("voluntarily", you understand....sure!) because I was driving an older GM northbound in a stream of heavy holiday traffic. Against an impossibly crummy likelihood of getting a good reading, I was illuminated perfunctorily by radar and pulled over, while the nearly-new pickup truck running door to door with me was allowed to go on unmolested. While the she-bear searched through the contents of my trunk (mostly Christmas presents and luggage), a male relative stood by in a bulky coat, and as I wandered around aimlessly killing time while the female trooper searched away, I noticed that the man (her father-in-law, a retired lawman) kept adjusting his own position so that I was always at the top of a triangle, with him and her defining the base -- I was "downrange", no doubt about it. I could have picked up an easy $500 by finding some sucker who would have bet me that the man's coat didn't conceal a big-bore former service piece. It was a lovely feeling, standing around by the busy roadside, unarmed, passing time as someone else's tactical solution.
This charade, I found out later, was necessitated by a little roadside drama that had transpired a couple of months previously when another female trooper pulled a similar search-incident-to-stop on a mountainous black guy who turned out to be a parolee who'd had the bad judgement to leave a small bag of grass sitting on the seat of his truck. His answer to the sudden threat of immediate reincarceration was to break her face. One swing, that's all it took -- the rest was just insurance.
Yeah, they can handle themselves, all right.
The abbandonment of Patriarchy for the Playboy philosophy is what started the gender war, it's just that the playboys have been very good at ducking and the patriarchs have take the shellacking.
Playboy appeared when, in 1952? Ten years before Betty Friedan's screed appeared, The Feminine Mystique. Do you for an instant think she'd not have written it, if only Hefner had never published his rag, nor opened a club?
The nexus between Gloria Steinem and Hefner's club chain (which was still growing in 1965, and not yet what it became later) is an interesting collision of feminism with the "Playboy philosophy" (excuse the oxymoron), but it isn't definitive, and it doesn't describe cause and effect. Feminism was a reaction to middle-class family life, not to Hefner and his clubs. A better hornbook for the dissatisfaction of middle-class married life was made by Paul Newman and his RW wife in the film Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, which I confess I've yet to see. But that was what feminism was about -- that, and Friedan's having given up a place in college to pursue a boyfriend who later jilted her. Hers was a tale a million times told by people of both genders, of promises made and then broken -- but her monumental ego had to transmogrify it into a national cause celebre, spitefully to repay the male gender a thousand times for her hurt, her disappointment, and her annoyance. In the end, the tale will lie where it belongs, at her feet.
Steinem has given us a key by marrying late in life, and giving the lie to her infamous mots like "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." The correct answer to which is that, she may not, but her children damn sure do.
In the end, I think history will remember feminism as the wonderful organizationally-magnified realization of Friedan's monumental tantrum, and Steinem's dissatisfaction with her boyfriends.
I can't find the relevant post, but yes, she probably is.
American wives are the richest, safest, and most long-lived women on the planet, now, or at any time in human history.
You would not necessarily know this from watching Lifetime, however.
Hefner was merely the errupting pimple of a the underlying change in attitude occurring accross America. His enterprise would have landed him in jail if the underlying attitude had not changed before he launched his flagship
This isn't the first time in history men have abandoned moral leadership and self control. It's a pretty recurrent biblical theme. The cure is always the same.
There is no free lunch, you cannot have "sexual freedom" apart from marriage. The cost in human misery and social disease eventually spurs a return to a stricter morality, or war and disease reshape the cultural landscape.
Is there any doubt that if BJClinton had been morally self controlled and sexually continent, he might have actually paid attention to American security needs?
A nation of sexually incontinent men, is a nation of moral cripples who can not lead, nor can they provide women and children with the security and nurture that is their God ordained responsibility.
Men can blame angry feminazi sluts all they want, but it doesn't change the fact that leadership was given to men, and that leadership begins with self control, not self indulgence and the use of others.
Anecdotally, I've known two such men whom you would consider to be the dregs in your misandric barrel. One guy, a formerly illiterate ex-con, ended up with four kids from various relationships. I got to meet him when he won the statewide learner's award in a major volunteer literacy program. Two of his kids were honors students. The other guy, same deal - illiterate until he was about twenty-five - had a couple of kids that he took back when his mother died. They too became honor students under his care. When I think of men as single fathers, those guys always come to mind.
The facts are that roughly 85% of the incarcerated and 80% of pregnant teen girls were raised by single mothers, who make up roughly 80% of single parents. Less than 1% of those groups were raised by single fathers, who make up 15% of single parents. At the very least, these numbers indicate that an involved father is as or more important than an involved support payment.
It's a pathetic myth that the men who've storm enemy lines, dug canals through jungles, and fired themselves off into space in tin cans are incapable of rearing children alone. At the risk of sounding like I'm trying to restart the gender pissing contest - single parenting may be a sub-optimal arrangement, but when men do it, they're generally more successful at it than women.
Heh heh heh... So much so that women voted for those guys in unprecedentedly high proportions and are - in fact - responsible as a group for their electoral successes.
And those causes are usually represented by men like Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton and Brock Adams and Jim Wright and Bob Packwood, none of whom are particulary known for their compassionate treatment of women.
--------------------
I explained one reason why, here and elsewher. The last figures I read indicated 50% of women will have contraceptive abortions in their life. More than half the abortions performed are on women who previously had contraceptive abortions. They are depended upon abortion. The Clintons and the Kennedys work to guarantee them those abortions. That trumps all else. That's only part of the story,
----------------
Right now the most powerful social force in the country is Britney Spears, the one with the jeans pulled down to her pubic area and the pierced ear-rings in har navel. Girls are immitating her right and left. What did Madonna and Cher do for standards in this country? The leadership is not purely from men.
Nick Danger used any number of male figures to point out the movers and shakers behind feminism, the one that fit better than your sad-sack examples was Joe Biden.
For you and Lorianne to continue to haul out the lie that anybody here is smearing or blaming women as a class for anything is just dumb. Not even N.O.W. tries to put that old road apple over on anyone anymore, especially after their shameful performance during the Clinton sex scandals.
Another stellar example of high moral principle and award winning academic prowess... Somebody around here is pulling on something, that's for sure.
Can't say as I agree with that. By the time they're out of high school, most males quit trying to play the macho intimidation game. Most lesbians never do. From what I've seen, they hate men, unless they're willing sycophants to the feminazi game, and completely subservient. Woe to the poor little boy who grows up in that environment.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.