Tag Archives: Feminist “Logic”

Repost: Patriarchy: Restraining Males

In light of the Isla Vista massacre, I bring an old post of mine to your attention:

I came across this today, a discussion about patriarchy by a feminist (named Clarissa). She’s discussing a post from another feminist (named Soraya) at Alternet.

Soraya believes that nasty, old, religious men hate and fear young women for some unspecified reason and instill patriarchy because of this fear.

She’s wrong in that the patriarchy is designed to oppress women; any control occurring over women in patriarchy is only incidental to patriarchy’s primary purpose of controlling men.

Clarissa notes the obvious, that the non-religious and women are just as interested in maintaining patriarchy as the religious. She notes that the patriarchy “oppresses people who can’t or won’t conform to traditional gender roles.”

She’s more right. In a later post she clarifies what she means by patriarchy.

The patriarchy is a system of social relations where… people accept and enforce strict gender roles in order to perpetuate the system where men castrate themselves emotionally and psychologically in order to be able to purchase women and women castrate themselves sexually and professionally in order to be able to sell themselves.

She believes this to be a bad thing.

She’s right, in that patriarchy is designed to psychologically and emotionally castrate men, she’s wrong in that this is necessarily a bad thing.

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Let’s start at the beginning.

The male human is the single most ruthless, deadly, and dangerous predator ever brought forth by nature. A single male human is capable of wreaking terrifying damage. A group of male humans can execute almost unfathomable levels of destruction.

In addition to being capable of mass destruction, the male human is naturally inclined towards violence.

The male human is the apex predator.

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In addition to being a predator, the human male is also a creator, capable of building wonders beyond imagination.

The human male is also capable of extreme laziness and hedonism.

The average male, is generally neutral in his inclination to his choice between hedonism, destruction, and creation.

Hedonism is easiest and is enjoyable, but scarcity makes it impossible but for those living in abundance and safety. Hedonism also does nothing to benefits society; rather it simply consumes resources.

Creation requires the most effort and is the least enjoyable (at least in the short-term), but it creates value for society and meaning for the male human.

Destruction is enjoyable and is easier than creation, but it does not create value, it either value and/or takes value from someone else.

Society requires males humans to engage in creation to advance, but out of the three creation requires the most effort out of the male and is (often) the least enjoyable.

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So, how does society encourage a male human to create?

There are really only three ways: force, access to resources, and sex/family.

Force is problematic. It requires other male humans to threaten this, so you have to encourage them to do so (so it doesn’t really solve the problem, only transfers it). It is also only moderately effective: a human male will usually counter with his own force when threatened and will often die before submitting, especially if the male has nothing to lose. Even if force works, an enslaved man will generally only work the bare minimum necessary to keep the threat at bay. The incentive structure for slaves is not set to maximize their creative potential.

Access to resources works, but only to a point and can be unreliable. Human males don’t require much to be happy: food, shelter, some entertainment (ie. destruction), and sex. He will create to get these basics, but attempting to bribe more creation out of him will likely be fruitless, he will often prefer his leisure to more resources. Also, if resources are withheld, he may simply respond with destruction to gain the resources.

The third option is sex/family. A male human will willingly create and undergo hardships he wouldn’t otherwise for the benefit of his mate and his children, and their futures. He will try to create (or destroy) to attain more resources than he would normally need or want simply to give to his family.

The third option is the only stable and reliable option where the majority of males will willingly create rather than engage in leisure or destruction. It is also the only option for society where the male doesn’t have a decent chance of responding with destruction.

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The problem with the third option is a male human can not know if a child is his or not. The human female knows exactly which children are hers and can invest in them secure in that knowledge, the male does not and can not.

The male will rarely create for the sake of children not his own and will often attempt to destroy those children not his own.

For the male to create, he needs reassurance that his children are his own.

Also, if sex is freely available to a male, there is no need for him to create to access sex.

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Hence, patriarchy.

Under patriarchy sexual access is highly controlled by social mores and/or force.

Because sex occurs only in marriage, the married male human knows that the children of his wife are his and his alone. He will then be induced to create as much as he can to provide for them and ensure their future.

Because sex is restricted solely to marriage, the male can not go outside marriage for sexual access, so he needs to create to win and provide for a wife.

These restrictions on males force the male into creation to gain sexual access.

The patriarchy castrates his destructive impulses. His desire to rape, his desire to murder, his desire to burn, his desire to loot, his desire to laze about in leisure, they are all controlled, because if the male engages in this behaviour he loses his ability to engage in sex and reproduce. He loses his future.

Monogamous patriarchy goes further: by restricting sexual access for each male to a single female and ensuring that all but the greatest losers have sexual access, it decreases the likelihood of violent competition for sexual access by lowering the stakes and ensures that each male will have a family and children, ensuring he is invested in the future.

The patriarchy is essential to controlling male humans’ destructive impulses.

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Isn’t castrating a male’s natural impulses under patriarchy wrong?

No, it is a necessary element of civilization. Marriage is the basis of civilization.

Civilization can not come into being without it.

Without this castration, society will either be chaos (as male humans fight for sexual access) or very primitive (think lost tribe in the jungle).

Everybody suffers.

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Any controlling of female humans in a patriarchal society is incidental. The controlling of women’s sexuality, by having social mores limiting her from having sex outside marriage, is a necessity for controlling males, but it is not the purpose of patriarchy. It is a by-product of controlling the males.

People who condemn the patriarchy are missing the bigger picture.

They live in a culture where the patriarchal castration of humans males is the norm and has been for millenia. They do not think outside it, so they see only the bad (the control) not the good.

They see only the castrated males, those males who have been inculcated for generations to create, not to destroy.

They assume all males are naturally like this. They do not realize that the mass castration of males through patriarchal mores has throughout history been what has suppressed their natural predatory instincts.

They react in horror when males engage in the violence that is natural to them. They seem to believe that this is somehow abnormal.

They do not realize that rape, murder, burning, looting, war, and violence are the norm.

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The breakdown of the patriarchy can have will lead the male to either hedonism or destruction:

1) Male disengagement: As males’ desire for sex can be accessed outside of patriarchal marriage, they will contribute less to society. They will let laziness take over.

As our current patriarchy is breaking down, we can see this occurring in our society in two inter-related movements: the child-man and MGTOW. The child-man and MGTOW realizes that sex can be gotten outside the patriarchy (or forgoes sex altogether) and has no family to create for, so he creates only enough to sustain himself. He no longer creates what society needs to advance. If these movements become big enough, they could significantly impact the society’s production and continued health.

2) Violence: As males’ become less engaged they may engage in violence either in rage, to obtain resources, or for entertainment.

This is unlikely to occur on mass scale anytime soon, although it might. The destruction of the patriarchy in the black community has resulted in high criminal rates. The rest of society could follow.

The prevalence of porn and video games will leave most males too sated in relation to both sex and destruction, for a number of males to have enough inclination to engage in socially and legally proscribed violence, which should prevent a mass movement towards male violence.

Incidences of violence from individual males can be expected. Notice how among the examples of violence I posted, the perpetrators were single. Anytime you see a mass murder, a terrorist act, etc., check the relationship status of the male perpetrator; he will almost always be single. Patriarchal marriage reduces a male’s inclinations to violence.

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Neither outcome is good for females.

Male disengagement means less resources for women, less resources for their children, less resources and progress for society as a whole, and a lack of fatherly involvement in their children with the attendant social problems.

Being less inclined to violence and less physically capable women are at the mercy of males should males decide to engage in violence.

****

The patriarchy exists to control males; control of females is incidental.

The patriarchy is good for both females and males and for society as a whole.

Housework, Independence, and Entitlement

The issue of men and housework seems to have sparked renewed interest among the chattering classes. It seems to have been sparked by this Tide commercial of some vaguely metrosexual father washing his daughter’s princess dress.

Judgy Bitch had some fun with this and CR points out the biological origins of the issue, but I’m going to weigh in as well.

Now, honestly, I don’t care if men do housework. Doing the laundry, cooking, or cleaning because you want to makes you neither more nor less of a man. If stuff needs to get done, men get stuff done.

A family should pursue whatever division of labour works best for them.

On the other hand, being a kitchen bitch is emasculating and will ruin your marriage. If you are a man, avoid it, it won’t go well for you.

Of course, all this assumes that there’s actually a chore gap. Which is unlikely as the time-use studies on this tend to ignore traditionally male chores.

I’m not going to write about proper housework division, that’s a personal issue. Instead, I am going to write about how this debate relates to independence, entitlement, and the society.

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First, independence and strength.

Feminists, you wanted careers, you wanted to work outside the house, you got your wish, please shut up.

What these women don’t see when they complain about the “patriarchy” and being “oppressed” by staying at home rather than work mindless corporate drudgery, is that they now are doing what men have always done.

In the industrial era, men have always gone to work, they have always come home to do house work (home repairs, renovations, garbage, car repairs, yard work, finances, BBQing, etc.), and they have always participated in family life (to a greater or lesser degree).

The thing is, they didn’t, and still don’t, bitch about it. They didn’t write articles about how “over-whelming” it was. They didn’t demand that women step up and do they’re jobs for them. They didn’t whine about how unfair life was.

They just did their jobs, because that’s what independent adults do.

Independent and strong people don’t whine about how tough life is, about how unfair it is, they just do what needs to be done.

Women, you are now in the position those “oppressive” men have always been in.

Working all day for somebody else then coming home to take care of the house and family is what men have always done. You wanted to do it, now you are doing it.

You can not complain about women being “oppressed” when you do not have men’s responsibilities, then whine about having men’s responsibilities when you have spent decades demanding them.

From the Atlantic article:

The good news is that many men already seek out these responsibilities. I like to call their actions “small instances of gender heroism” or “SIGH”s, in honor of the intense pang of gratitude and relief a damsel-in-distress feels when a superhero notices her especially—amidst a crowd—and swoops in to enact a rescue that was so unexpected that its impossibility had become the central pillar of her fierce independence. You know, like the dreamy effect Mr. Darcy has on Elizabeth Bennet, Superman on Lois Lane, and Antonia on her line through Danielle and Therèse.
…
Find a working mom and lead with the following SIGH: “What do you need, in order to raise your children and advance in your career at the same time?” Just swoop in and help her out, not because you’re obligated to rectify an injustice, but because you can. Responding to the misery of the people you care about is what you do.

Independent and strong people don’t need SIGHs.

What the hell is wrong with you people?

If you need someone else to help you, you are, by definition, not independent. You are, by definition, weak.

If you want to be independent, be independent, but then don’t beg others to pick up your shit for you, do it yourself.

Don’t demand men clean your houses, don’t demand men come to your rescue, don’t demand others do things for you. You are independent now, deal with it.

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Second, entitlement.

If you read these articles, you get a strong sense of entitlement.

The SIGHs talk above and the rest of the Atlantic article reek of entitlement, but as usual Jezebel just does horrible, entitled bitch so much better than anyone else.

The title of the Jezebel article (no link, if you’re curious see JB’s article) displays this perfectly:

“How to Make a Dude Sweep the Kitchen Floor (Correctly), Without You Even Having to Tell Him”

What kind of world-class bitch writes this? It sounds like a manual on training dogs to urinate outside.

In this mentality men exist to do what women desire, in the way women desire, while telepathically understanding both.

A few gems of overactive entitlement:

It’s not just that you’re tired and pissed, it’s that you never get the feeling of having your own life, or free time, or time to recharge, if you feel like you are the only person overseeing the household’s concerns and making sure they are handled, or worse, if you are re-doing the work your husband or partner did poorly.

Because the entirety of everything revolves around the women’s feelings. As well, men are incompetent and everything must be done to the women’s standards or its worse than not having done anything at all.*

The Atlantic has some fancy sociological theories for this well-documented disparity as to why humans with peens can’t scrub a bathroom right without a lot of rigmarole:

Remember, all the jobs have to be done to the women’s standards, because men are incompetent and their standards don’t matter.

They Can’t Be Bothered (Motivational Hypothesis)

Of course they can see what needs to be done, but in their eyes, it’s just not that important to do it, especially when other stuff matters more. Homemade valentines for your class party, kiddo? Why bother when we can just buy some and save time?

No matter how useless the man may think the project is, if the women desires it must be done and he’s a jerk for not counting it as important housework and sharing the duties.

Later, Travis wonders why Alice can’t just constantly leave him notes to tell him what he has to do? Sure thing mister, right after she cuts the crust off your PB&J.

Because men should know what women want. We’re all mind-readers.

Here’s an idea for the women complaining: go fuck yourself.

If you want to be a controlling bitch and demand things be cleaner, do it yourself. If you want the house cleaned to your spoiled, exacting standards, do it yourself. If men’s standards are not up to those that your entitlement complex demands, do it yourself. If a man doesn’t think your little social-climbing and status games are important enough to act on, do it yourself.

Essentially, quit trying to force your neuroses and perfectionism concerning cleanliness and social status-seeking on men.

Do it yourself, and stop bitching that men don’t care about your neurotic desires.

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Third, society.

From the Atlantic:

Only a handful of working parents have the “village” they need to care for their children during the period in which career opportunities slam up against pregnancies, births, years of nursing, and other crucial forms of caregiving. Most of us have to buy the village, and it’s expensive—so expensive that almost everyone has to stop hiring once they have paid for childcare and, in the very best cases, a cleaning service, despite the fact that there is much more to do.

To completely eliminate the destruction that childrearing exacts on your mind, body, and career, you would have to hire workers to handle your finances, home repairs, pets, laundry, afterschool commitments, errands, and shopping, among other responsibilities. Add to these costs the overtime that most working parents pay to accommodate the fact that their childcare needs extend well beyond the presumed eight hours a day, and you’re talking about a lot of cash. No one has this kind of money.

Because no one can afford to fully replace themselves at home while they are at the office and because, when it comes to more important tasks like selecting afterschool lessons and resolving playground disputes, no one wants to replace themselves, working mothers have famously picked up the slack for both partners, subsidizing our market with their free labor, enabling our companies and institutions to charge artificially low prices for their goods and offer artificially high salaries to their employees.

All of this means that mothers are important, in all of the ways in which socially conservative forces routinely note. But it could also mean that mothers—especially working mothers—are exploited. They are being used as a means by their partners, our institutions, and our economy in a system they did not design, to do more than their fair share of the family’s work, all without compensation. No one yet has asked or empowered working mothers to reimagine and restructure their workplaces to suit their own ends. So the basic lack of self-governance and self-determination, combined with the unpaid labor, raises the specter of injustice.

I’ve written about all this before, but it bears repeating. Nobody is meant to work, take care of family, keep home, raise children, and all those other responsibilities at once. Of course child care is expensive. This is why we once had a division of labour in the family. It made it so people could manage all these things.

An you know what? It worked, at least until whining feminists destroyed it.

Now that they’ve destroyed the family division of labour which “oppressed” them, they are now whining that there is no division of labour and they actually have to take on multiple roles.

Well, boo-dee-fucking-hoo.

Feminists, you got what you wanted. Why are you so unhappy?

Please stop complaining about the changes you wrought on society.

Enjoy what you created.

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Anyway, to sum, the whole housework debate, assuming that it is not a myth created by statistical manipulation, is simply women acting entitled.

Women wanted the “prestige” of the careers of men, so they “liberated” themselves and started to work outside the home.

Now that they are working outside the home, they are realizing it’s a lot of work, but instead of simply sucking it up and being strong and independent like men always have, they are bitching about how hard it is to work both outside and inside the home.

Instead of engaging in self-reflection on their own choices, they are choosing to blame men.

In addition, they are choosing to force their neurotic standards of housework on men and whining that men don’t comply with their controlling attitudes.

The whole housework debate is a ginned-up non-issue created by controlling, neurotic feminists who want to blame the hardship created by their own personal choices on men.

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* As an aside, the sentence “or worse, if you are re-doing the work your husband or partner did poorly.” sort of validates some aspects game theory. It is better to forgo helping women at all then to be a beta about it. They may dislike you doing nothing, but they will hate obsequiousness that isn’t perfect obedience even more.

Feminist Self-Annihilation

It seems it’s now a thing that women feel guilty about desiring a long-term relationship. As per that liberal rag, the Atlantic:

As a sociologist who’s interviewed several 20-something women on their sexual development, I’ve found straight young women aren’t necessarily embracing hooking up because they’re masters of their own destiny, as suggested by Hanna Rosin here a The Atlantic but because they face a new taboo and it’s not about sex or money or power. Instead, it’s a taboo about that traditional province of women: relationships. Ambitious young women in their 20s feel they shouldn’t want relationships with men at this phase in their lives.

I can’t believe this is a thing. I knew some feminists wanted the right to be sluts without shame, but what the hell?

What could possibly possess a person to feel guilty about desiring a human relationship?

But what really got me about this piece was this:

Some young women deeply desire meaningful relationships with men, even as they feel guilty about those desires. Many express the same sentiment again and again: “Why do I, a young and highly educated woman in the 21st century, value relationships with men so highly?” To do so feels like a betrayal of themselves, of their education, and of their achievements.

Really? I can’t even really feel anger over this, just sadness.

Women value relationships with men because humans were created (or evolved) to live with each other, to love each other, and to form relationships. We are social creatures; relationships define who we are.

To not value human relationships is to engage in self-annihilation.* The desire for companionship is the most human part of you, to fight against it is to destroy yourself and your humanity.

Meet a girl named Katie:

Katie, a 25-year-old woman I spoke with as part of my research, confided that she worried her single-minded pursuit of a graduate degree might limit her ability to meet a man with whom she could build a life. This realization—that she might want to prioritize a relationship over a career—felt shocking to Katie, and she did not admit to it easily. She felt deeply ashamed by such thoughts, worried that they signaled weakness and dependence, qualities she did not admire. To put such a high premium on relationships was frightening to Katie. She worried that it meant she wasn’t liberated and was still defined by traditional expectations of women.

Read that again: “She worried that it meant she wasn’t liberated and was still defined by traditional expectations of women.”

This women is destroying herself, destroying the things that are real in her life (relationships, family, and her desires for such) over ideological cant.

Dear Katie, if you are not pursuing what you truly desire because you are worried about signalling weakness and dependence, then you aren’t liberated and you are weak. If you are denying your human desire for companionship to “signal” independence, you are a slave, not of the body, but much worse, of the mind.

You are still letting others define you, you have just changed which group is doing the defining.

Also, which do you think you will value more in a decade: a man who has loved you for the last decade or an over-priced piece of paper that you are still paying off?

I have heard Katie’s dilemma from countless young women. Many feel ashamed about being too relationship-oriented in their 20s. Parents warn, “Do you really want to settle down so early? We just don’t want to see you miss out on any opportunities.” Friends intone, “How will you know what you like and want if you don’t play the field? You’re only young once. Now’s the time to explore.”

I think these parents and “friends” are going to have a lot to answer for on judgment day. What kind of idiotic advice is that?

Like Hamilton and Armstrong’s respondents, many young and aspiring women with whom I spoke felt as though it were counterproductive to their development to prioritize a relationship with a man.

Because human relationships are not a part of self-development?

This is a new phenomenon that goes against the grain of centuries of female socialization.

Because the desire for human relationships is something socialized?

Anxiety is difficult to tolerate, and rather than experience it, many of the young women I interviewed and work with in my psychotherapy practice split their desire for a relationship off from their professional and self-development desires. Confused about freedom and desire, young women often split their social and psychological options—independence, strength, safety, control, and career versus connection, vulnerability, need, desire, and relationships—into mutually exclusive possibilities in life. Romantic relationships then often become something to be avoided and denigrated rather than embraced.

Wow. Why would any women tolerate this kind of psychological self-annihilation?

Why? Why would women put up with an ideology that required them to destroy themselves?

I find this more sad than maddening, but if I were a women, I would be pissed over this.

****

Slate XX commented on this. Read:

How can you want a relationship if you have no prospects? Unless you’re actually casually dating someone (or have a secret crush on someone you interact with regularly), actively “wanting” a boyfriend seems rather silly to me.

Really? It’s silly to desire the basic human need of companionship?

Ellen Tarlin: I disagree. I think it’s almost unavoidable. Relationships are so romanticized and overvalued in our society! We are plagued by images of them.

Materialistic nihilism on full display.

Laura Helmuth: I don’t mean to be unsympathetic, but I am kind of thrilled that this is considered embarrassing among smart young women.Having a boyfriend and/or being well on the way to marriage used to be the default for twentysomethings. It’s fascinating that the social stigma has reversed so dramatically.

I am thrilled that women are denying their basic human desires and needs to pursue empty corporate work and a consumerist lifestyle.

Hanna Rosin: I feel like this moment we’re in now of shame about the boyfriend is great and necessary for progress and all that but will recalibrate and settle down.

Is she a fucking sadist?

Emma Roller: On the other side of this, I feel a lot of guilt for having a wonderful, stable relationship with my boyfriend of two-plus years. I’m anxious about missing out on what the zeitgeist says the 20s lifestyle “should” be (playing the field, etc.), but what if I’m happy where I’m at?

Please re-read that, and just think about it for a minute. “I feel a lot of guilt for having a wonderful, stable relationship with my boyfriend of two-plus years.”

Juliana Jimenez: I hear you. I sometimes get a bit anxious over that as well—that I’m missing my 20s and I’m really living a 30s kind of life with my stable boyfriend and what not.

Again, consider that.

Meg Wiegand: I guess I’m the minority here: I’m in my late 20s, perpetually single, and very much worried about not finding someone. I know I’m absolutely fine on my own, and like Aisha, I’ve rarely met anyone I would ever want to consider being ”attached” to. But I continue to bounce on and off online dating sites and go on dates with friends of friends (mostly just ending up with great cocktail fodder) in hopes of finding someone who could be a partner.

Part of me is embarrassed by this—that I’ve escaped small-town Ohio and lived abroad and have a master’s degree but can’t find a partner. The other part feels that society already tells me that I should be ashamed of my body fat and short legs and hair that isn’t straight and blond, so why should I take this any more seriously? And why is this any different than feeling lonely because my family members and close friends are a plane ride away?

Wow. You could write an entire post just on these two paragraphs. It’s like every manosphere stereotype of modern American women rolled into two paragraphs.

Alyssa Rosenberg: What strikes me as weird about this conversation, and why this shift in priorities doesn’t seem like a complete feminist victory, is that it discounts the idea that a relationship can be an incredible source of support for career and life goals. Having someone who, say, helps with chores to give you more time to study or work, or who encourages you when you’re discouraged, or works in a similar field and helps you with ideas, who backs you publicly, etc? All this stuff can make it much easier to work harder and in a more productive way or to work through difficult challenges. I’m not sure we should get psyched by the idea that young women don’t want relationships but rather by the idea that women want more from their relationships or that we view relationships as part of a larger matrix of things that can work well together.

Alyssa here is comparatively rational. She sounds almost human and not like she had her heart replaced by the archives of Jezebel.

Ellen Tarlin: Because twentysomething men are selfish! (Joke. Sort of.) No, I’d say because these ideas about what women should be or do die hard. Your boyfriend or husband may support the ideals of feminism, but when he gets home, maybe he’d just really like it if you would make dinner, too. (Who wouldn’t?)

Read that again: “No, I’d say because these ideas about what women should be or do die hard.”

Think on it for a minute. You should now realize how insane this whole thing.

These women are sitting around discussing a sadistic, near-psychopathic (feminist) societal expectation that is causing women to annihilate themselves and their base human desires, and celebrating it because it destroys older societal expectations.

Dear women, why do you listen to people like this?

Why do you take the advice of people like this?

Why?

I don’t know, there’s not much left to say. This makes me sad.

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* Severe autists, clinical psychopaths, and others with a natural inability to form human relations excepted.

Holy Crap: Amanda Marcotte the Libertarian

I never thought I’d see this, but Amanda Marcotte, card-carrying feminist working for Slate XX, has just advocated ending the welfare state.

Amanda “examines” (ie. mocks with snark devoid of intellectual substance, as is typical of these kinds of publications) the idea that not having enough people of working age to support those who don’t work is a problem.

But near the end of her post, she veers way the hell off the reservation:

What really galls me about Last’s piece (and most like it) is the underlying assumption that human beings exist to serve society and not the other way around. Oh, sure, Last mentions a few conservative-friendly policy ideas to help people afford kids—such as reducing the number of kids who go to college, attacking Social Security, and pushing people to move to the suburbs—but if reducing day care costs doesn’t do it, there’s no reason to think these tweaks will either. The reader is left with the feeling that the only solution to save capitalism is to clip the wings of half of the population so they can spend more time laying eggs.

I’d argue instead that if the system is set up so that it fails if women don’t start popping out more kids, then it’s a broken system and should be reworked to account for the reality of America today. If women don’t want to have more children, then instead of abandoning women’s equality as a goal, we should rework our economic system so it doesn’t rely on a steadily growing population to function. After all, the point of society is to serve the people in it, not to reduce us to cogs in a machine that serves no one at all.

This reads like libertarian propaganda. You could put this up at Reason to hearty cheers of comradery and brotherhood (all voluntary of course).

First, she argues that human beings do no exist to serve society, rather the opposite. The individualism expressed here would do Rand proud.

I can’t wait until she gets specific and starts decrying forcing individual to pay taxes to feed the machine.

Then she argues that if the current system requires pumping out children to sustain itself, we should reform the system. She is arguing for the end of both SS and Medicare.

If this is the new direction of feminism I approve.

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Now, I honestly think it’s unlikely that Amanda Marcotte is going to be voting for Gary Johnson next election. I highly doubt she has carefully examined her views and decided that individual freedom was the goal of politics. Rather this is probably just a case Amanda replaces thought with wish.

She probably just saw someone pointing out one of the logical outcomes of one of her life choices and reflexively through out whatever she came to her so she could avoid having to acknowledge that actions (or nonactions in this particular case) have consequences.

It probably never even occurred to her that SS and Medicare depend on an ever-growing population to remain sustainable. It probably never even occurred to her that her desire for “free” stuff (like child care and contraception) from the government forces other people to serve society.

It is almost sad that non-thought like this can be published by a somewhat “respectable” operation.

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It seems Judgy Bitch found this article as well and posted on it before me. Check it out, it’s a gooder.

Obliviousness, Incivility, and the Destruction of the Old Order

I came across this article from some feminist who, according to the little blurb at the bottom, has written for “Jezebel, The Frisky, The Huffington Post and The Good Men Project.” In it she complains of the incivility of men in public:

It’s a drizzly Friday in Chicago and I’m leaving a bar with my roommate sometime after midnight. We’re on a quest for tacos and we’re discussing the finer points—Should we get pork or beef? From where? How many?—when you decide to make our conversation your business. You’ve been loitering outside the bar with your friends, but you hear the word “taco” and soon you’re in lock step with us, asking us about our “tacos,” laughing, hooting back to your friends. We push past—literally shoving you—and continue on our way.

Here are some things you should know about my week: I’m on the phone with my mom on my way to yoga when a guy leans out of a doorway, drags on his cigarette and gestures with his pelvis how much he is enjoying my yoga pants. I’m walking home from the grocery store and a middle-aged guy, maybe high, maybe drunk, yells at me, “Get back here, girl!” I’m waiting for the bus when a carful of bros whips by; one leans out the passenger window, points at the girls waiting at the bus stop and yells, “Yes, Yes, No…Yes!” After work, I’m walking from the train to my apartment and four teenagers are trailing me, discussing my body, guessing measurements; they know I can hear them.

This behaviour causes her to feel unsafe. This is understandable as she is a young woman and these men are quite obviously under-civilized brutes; rape or violence would not seem to be an impossibility in some of these situations and given the inherent physical inequalities between the sexes there is little she could do to defend herself (excepting carrying a gun, which someone who writes for Jezebel is unlikely to do).

This is not my issue with what she has written. The incivility of modern times sometimes irks me as well, although, as a tall, broad-shouldered man with confident bearing, I rarely worry for my physical safety.

Rather, my issue is that, as feminists are wont to do, she blames “the patriarchy” for the incivility of ruffians.

She, of course, being an miseducated feminist is oblivious to the twin facts that:

1) Men being uncivil is not “the patriarchy”, it is the breakdown of the patriarchy. It is men being freed from the constraints which the patriarchy put upon them.

2) The left-wing feminist politics she advocates are the primary cause of this breakdown.

Because of this her analysis, such that it is, is flawed.

****

Men’s sexuality, absent civilizational constraint, is naturally aggressive and promiscuous. These men laughing at a woman’s “taco”, grabbing ass, and doing pelvic-thrusts, are acting out their natural sexuality.

At one point in our society, this would have been unacceptable behaviour. Under the old order, lovingly referred to as the patriarchy, but probably more accurately referred to as civilization, civility towards woman was standard; it was called chivalry.

Men raised under this order would have been loath to issue even a mild oath in the presence of a woman, let alone crassly harass a woman over her “tacos”. Had a man been uncivilized enough to harass a woman in such a way, he would have suffered immediate consequences in the form of violence from other honourable men, and more permanent consequences from a loss of social status.

As an example of the sort of man the old order raised, we can use one Samuel Proctor, who tipped his hat towards a woman. When said woman asked what that meant he replied:

Madame, by tipping my hat I was telling you several things. That I would not harm you in any way. That if someone came into this elevator and threatened you, I would defend you. That if you fell ill, I would tend to you and if necessary carry you to safety. I was telling you that even though I am a man and physically stronger than you, I will treat you with both respect and solicitude. But frankly, Madame, it would have taken too much time to tell you all of that; so, instead, I just tipped my hat.”

A man raised in the old order as Mr. Proctor was, would never have even considered joking about a woman’s “tacos”.

Civilization was used to control men’s natural sexual aggressiveness to create men like Mr. Proctor, who acted civilized and would control their aggressive sexuality for the betterment of society and the safety of women.

Some decades ago, a cabal of dissatisfied women under the label of feminism and a small, but vocal minority under the banner of affiliated progressive ideologies decided they did not care for civilization and its constraints. They rebelled against it and fought a long, hard ideological war to destroy it.

They won.

This cabal destroyed the old order and with it the control it had over men’s sexuality.

Men are now free to be uncivil brutes. Civilization no longer holds full sway over them.

Hence, “tacos.”

****

So, in finale:

Dear Feminist,

This is the world you desired.

You and your ideological kin spent decades ruthlessly destroying the old order which kept men civilized. You smashed the patriarchy which kept men’s naturally externalized sexuality healthly internalized and productively directed.

You denigrated the institutions which controlled men, smashed the civilization which ordered men, and have created a generation of brutes and half-men.

You asked for sexual license. Men are now free to express their sexuality without consequence.

You asked for freedom to pursue hedonism. Men are now pursuing hedonism.

You asked to be freed from the rules of civilized conduct. Men are now freed from these rules as well.

You rejected your role as a lady. Men are rejecting their role as gentlemen.

These rules were made to protect you, dear woman. The patriarchy was made for your benefit. The old order existed to serve you.

You desired, nay demanded, them destroyed, and destroyed they have been.

When you destroy civilization, incivility will be the order of the day.

You have got what you asked for, enjoy it.

Regards,

A Traditionalist

Keep the State out of Women’s Bodies… Except When Convenient

One major theme in this year’s presidential election was that of the “war on women”.

The complaint was and essentially that the state shouldn’t get involved in women’s reproductive choices.

I agree.

With the exception of abortion, where a child’s life is involved, the state should leave women alone and let them make their own reproductive choices. They should be free to do as they will and live with the consequences.

But, feminists lie. They do not want the state to let them make their own reproductive choices. They want the state to force them (and others) to only accept certain reproductive choices.

Feminists want privilege and choice, not freedom.

****

Here’s a good example of the hypocrisy of the modern women espousing the creed of keep your hands off my body.

a woman in a country where politicians who actually believe that the female body has special powers to discern between evil sperm and loving sperm have been elected to create and vote on legislation that limits women’s control over their own health care.
…
“Perhaps remove the focus from that one point and think instead about the free abortions and contraceptives that will be given to all females of reproductive age… Or about the Muslims, Christian scientists, and Amish ( among others) that are exempt from obamacare due to religious beliefs….”

She goes on and on, hitting every talking point FoxNews and its ilk have drummed into her head, including the legitimacy (there’s that word again) of Obama’s citizenship and his ties to socialism. It was all a bunch of moronic nonsense, but what stood out to me the most was her first line: “Perhaps remove the focus from that one point” — that “one point” being a woman’s right to control her own health care choice, as if that point weren’t worthy of our focus!! This was a woman saying this! A woman who was fed the bullshit and ate it up with a spoon, just like the GOP wanted.

By “limiting a women’s control over their own health care” she obviously means don’t want others to pay for it, even if it goes against their religious principles.

She says she wants the state out of her body, but she’s very clearly inviting the state into her body by having the state pay for her health care.

Her next complaint is about how crime effects women: a valid point, but ignores how it also effects men and children. It’s not part of this topic, so we’ll mostly ignore it.

I didn’t get any paid maternity leave when my baby was born. I work for myself, so I wasn’t expecting any, of course. But here in America, even if I had been working for someone else, that person or that company would not have been required by law to give me even a day of paid maternity leave. Not even an hour. My job would have been held for a few weeks, but that’s it.

I started a new moms’ group when I was pregnant and most of us all had babies within a few weeks of each other. Some of the women took extended maternity leave — six whole months — so they could stay home with their babies until they started, you know, sleeping for more than three hours at a stretch. They weren’t paid for that leave, and they worried as their savings dwindled what they’d do if there were an emergency and they missed more work.

Here she demands that the state pay for and legislate her reproduction. She’s demanding her workplace interfere with her body. She’s begging the state and corporations to involve themselves in her reproductive choices.”When they did go back, they had to deal not only with juggling motherhood and their careers, but also with navigating the office politics surrounding working mothers. One woman, a producer at a major network news station, worried about being overlooked for assignments that would require her to travel now that she was a single mother of an infant. She worried about being overlooked for promotions and raises now that her “focus was split.” “I don’t want to be mommy-tracked,” she lamented, as she plotted ways to ensure topnotch child care for her daughter should her commitment to work be “tested” with a last-minute assignment that would take her out of town with just hours to prepare.”

Here she’s lamenting that the employer is not becoming involved these women’s reproductive choices.

How dare those corporations stay out of women’s private lives!

Many of my new mom friends who returned to work months after giving birth continued breastfeeding, which brought the new challenge of pumping at the office (or, “in the field,” in the case of my producer and journalist friends). They told me stories about the “designated areas” for them to pump, which are required by law. One woman, a clinical psychologist, pumped in a supply closet with a broken lock on the door. She kept one hand on her pump and one hand holding the door shut in case anyone wondered why the light was on and barged in on her without knocking. Finally, she put a sign on the door, but it was gone the next day and she had to make a new one. That one came down the next day, too.

Not content with the state and workplace involving themselves in her reproductive choices, she desperately wants the state and employers to further interfere in women’s breast-feeding decisions.

She notes that the state interferes in her breastfeeding decisions, but the tone of lament clearly indicates that the state is not interfering enough.

How dare they let women be free to make their own breastfeeding decisions!

Our rights are at risk — our basic rights — not to mention the fact that many of us are afraid, on a daily damn basis, of being attacked — legitimately attacked — simply because we are women.

This election year, vote to keep your rights. Vote for the people who are going to fight to protect you. And fight to keep the morons and the assholes and the douchebags out of power and out of our bodies.

She ends with a hypocritical statement about keeping people out of women’s bodies. How fitting when she spent the article arguing that other should involve themselves in women’s bodies and that this involvement was the basic right of the female.

One final observation, somewhere in the middle of her article she says:

I need a chaperone because some crazy douchebags think my body is public property. Hmm, I wonder wherever in the world they got that idea.

My suggestion: if you don’t want your body being viewed as public property, don’t act like it is by having the public pay for its upkeep.

****

This was just one example I’m using for illustrative purposes that I happened to come across while thinking about this post. I could find numerous others, but the point is made: No matter what the issue, most modern women want the state in their bodies. They beg for it, they vote for it.

They will selectively say they don’t on certain issues. They will dissemble about what the “state in their bodies” means. They will flat out lie, saying they don’t. But when it comes down to it:

The modern women fervently desires state interference in her reproductive choices.

It’s a broad-brush generality, NAWALT, I know, but most modern women who would say something like “keep your rosaries out of my ovaries,” “my body, my choice,” “keep the state out of our bodies,” or whatever, truly want the state interfering in their bodies.

They want the state to pay for their contraception.

They demand the state pay for their abortions and reproductive health care decisions.

They demand the state educate children on sexuality, contraception, and reproduction.

They demand the employer subsidizes their reproductive choices.

They demand the employer and state make their breast-feeding choices for them.

They demand their employer make their personal work-life balance for them.

They demand the state dictate their private marriage contracts (and then demand that the state dictate homosexuals’ private relationship contracts).

The modern women demands that the state and society involves itself intimately in her personal, sexual, and reproductive choices… but only when its convenient for her.

She demands privilege without responsibility. She demands society cater to her every whim, without her having

She detests others’ freedom, but argues for it for herself when it suits her.

She demands you pay for her every whim, but denies you any say.

She is tyrannical, irresponsible, and greedy.

****

To women reading this: either the state and society are involved in your body and your reproductive choices or they aren’t. You can’t have it both ways.

You can not demand that the state not regulate contraception, then demand that the state (or other organizations under the compulsion of the state) pay for your contraception.

You can not demand leave itself out of women’s abortion decisions, then demand that the state pay for abortion providers such as planned parenthood.

You can not demand that public schools stay out of dictating women’s sexual choices, then demand they engage in mandatory sexual education.

You can not demand that the public not comment on your reproductive choices, then demand that they pay for the maintenance of your children.

You can not demand the public refuse to comment on your sexual choices, then force the public to subsidize your sexual lifestyle and health care needs.

You can not demand that your employer not dictate your personal life to you, then demand your employer subsidize your maternity leave and fund your personal choices.

You can not demand that the church remove itself from your reproductive choices, then demand that the church pay for your reproductive choices.

It is an either-or proposition.

Either the state has the right to interfere in your sexuality and reproductive choices or it does not. Either the public has the right to interfere with your sexuality or it does not. Either your employer can interfere in your personal life, or it can not.

You are either free or you are not.

Make the choice.

If you choose to invite others into your sexual, reproductive, and personal lives, do not hypocritically complain when they do.

****

In conclusion, the modern women, however much she may protest otherwise, desperately desires that others involve themselves in her reproductive and sexual choices, but only when it is convenient to her.

So, next time a modern women says the state should stay out of her uterus, ask her opinion on mandatory maternity leave. Point out the contradiction. Point out her hypocrisy.

Evolutionary Psychology, Politics, and Bad Science

Came across a Slate XX article from last week on evolutionary psychology.

The article essentially boils down to: evolutionary psychology research that supports my preconceived biases is good, evolutionary psychology that argues against my ideology is bad.

The article starts with the author complaining about evo-psych, leading into this:

There’s nothing inherently wrong with evolutionary psychology—our thoughts and behaviors have been shaped by millions of years of hominid evolutionary history, and it’s worth studying how natural selection acted on traits that we still express today. But too often, evolutionary psychology is a force for social conservatism.

The reason evolutionary psychology is usually a force for social conservatism, is because social conservatism is the inherited wisdom of thousands of years of adaptation by human society to biological reality.

Evolutionary psychology will inherently be socially conservative, because (true*) social conservatism is inherently about man controlling its biological nature so society can function. (Religious conservatives will refer to man’s “fallen nature” and political philosophers will refer to the “state of nature”, which are the same thing for all practical purposes).

Left-liberalism (from which most of feminism springs) is not about managing the biology of man, it is about using reason and/or morality to overcome the “state of nature” for the benefit of all.

Left-liberalism usually derives from either (or a combination of) Rousseau’s amoral, self-interested, animal-like state of nature or from Marxian ideology where human nature does not exist as a fundamental concept, but comes from social relations and man’s relations to his work. (Conservatives usually work off Hobbes’ violent and warlike state of nature; libertarians and classical liberals generally work off Locke’s anarchic, fully free state of nature and of war.)

From the Rousseauian state of nature, men come together in cooperation and submit to the general will as designed through a social contract for mutual benefit. By uniting under the social contract a man can be ennobled, and his corruption comes only through failures of the social contract. By bettering the social contract, man may be further ennobled. Under a human nature based on social relations, the improvement of social and economic conditions will lead to an improvement in human nature and behaviour.

Left-liberal thought is essentially about the perfectibility of man through changing social conditions so he can better himself beyond the limitations of human nature.

In social conservative thought man cannot be perfected and will always be controlled by his human nature. His nature can only be constrained by social instructions, but never altered.

This is the essential and primary difference between the two ideologies.

This is political theory 101. If our education system even remotely resembled a traditional classical liberal education, the author would know this.

If she knew this, she would not be arguing against evolutionary psychology (when it supports social conservatism) or for it (when it supports feminist ideology). She would know that her ideology is one where social and economic relations are shaped through cooperation (the general will ) to create a society based on the common good, overcoming the limitations of man in a state of nature.

Know this: evolutionary psychology will always support (true*) social conservatism, because social conservatism is simply the attempt to control the state of nature so society can function.

To the liberal or leftist, this should not matter. Whatever evolutionary psychology will say, it can neither support nor discredit left-liberalism, because left-liberal ideology exists independently of human nature. It exists as an ideology of social relationships overcoming the limitations of human nature (or it simply rejects human nature, and therefore evolutionary psychology outright).

The only way evolutionary psychology can matter, at all, to left-liberal ideology is if it eliminates the possibility that changing social relations can possibly be used to improve mankind’s lot. If this occurs, the entirety of liberal-leftism will be intellectually unsustainable and void of any claim to truth.

In other words, the only way evolutionary psychology can have any impact on the truth claims of left-liberalism is to entirely overthrow it.

By even considering evolutionary psychology’s impact on the truth of ideology, the author is fundamentally undermining her own.

****

Researchers identify a pattern of behavior, usually some stereotypical sex difference (in part because it’s easy to measure whether men and women score differently on a standardized test), construct a scenario in which that behavior would have been adaptive in the distant past, and say the behavior is therefore evolutionarily selected and encoded in our genes.
…
It’s tricky to disprove the notion that some human trait is the result of evolution. The logic is circular: if some trait exists, it must not have been fatal to our ancestors and it may have helped them reproduce. To critique a claim of evolutionary privilege, you have to show that the trait has no genetic component and therefore can’t be inherited, or demonstrate that the trait is instilled by culture, not necessarily biology.

Partially correct: it’s impossible to disprove the notion that some human trait is the result of evolution (if it’s genetic in origin).

To show that a trait is not a result of evolution requires that the trait is not genetically based.

If a behaviour is genetic in origin (and is not a random mutation or transcription error, such as Down’s Syndrome, or exceedingly rare/recessive, such as Tay–Sachs) it must have not have been fatal to humans prior to reproduction and, in highest likelihood, either is beneficial to reproduction or is linked to a trait that is beneficial to reproduction.

Any genetic trait is a product of evolution and therefore, evolution must have produced said genetic trait. Any genetic trait evolution produces must have been adaptive; the explanatory reason of why it is adaptive may not be correct, but it is impossible that the trait was not adaptive (or at least not harmful).

It may be somewhat circular, but, if you hold to Darwinian evolution, it is logically necessary. The only way to not accept evolutionary psychology is to deny Darwinian evolution.

****

You’re supposed to want someone stronger, smarter, and richer than you. Someone who would sire healthy offspring and protect them from saber-toothed cats on the Pleistocene Epoch savanna.

Not “are supposed to”: “do”.

Evolution (and evolutionary psychology) is not prescriptive, it is descriptive of the large statistical trends of human society.

Just because evolutionary psychology says that something evolved in most humans does not mean you have to follow it (although, you statistically will) and it does not mean it applies in every case (some individuals will always be genetically aberrant and display behaviours and traits outside of what is statistically normal).

This is the kind of logic used by fourth-tier intellects arguing creationism in Youtube comments (IF EVALUTIAN IS RONG, Y U NOT SUPPORT HITLER AND SURVIAL OF TEH FITIST!?! HIPOCRIT!!!… durr). How a middle-brow publication like Slate allows this kind of stupidity through is beyond me. If it was somebody from the Discovery Institute arguing like this, he’d be laughed out of the room.

****

The first few paragraphs of her post are complaints about what she believes to be “bad” science in evolutionary psychology. So, what does she list as the study that redeems evolutionary psychology:

And that’s why my favorite paper of the week is “Stepping Out of the Caveman’s Shadow: Nations’ Gender Gap Predicts Degree of Sex Differentiation in Mate Preferences.” Marcel Zentner and Klaudia Mitura of the University of York, U.K., asked more than 3,000 people in 10 countries what they valued in a mate. On a four-point scale, people rated the importance of various qualities: chastity, ambition, financial prospects, good looks, etc.—all identified by Buss and his likeminded peers as being qualities that only men or only women are evolutionarily predisposed to seek out.

Wonderful. A self-selected internet survey based on self-identified preferences somehow overturns all the carefully designed studies using brain scans, monitoring of biological functions, priming, and so on that support the conclusions of evolutionary psychology. That’s some good science.

The researchers used a World Economic Forum measure of gender equality to rank the 10 countries as (a) relatively gender-equal, (b) backwards but improving, or (c) screamingly sexist (my terms, not theirs). And the results were clear: The more egalitarian the country, the less likely men and women were to value traditional qualities that Buss and co. believe to be innate. In Germany, women said they’d very much like a man who is a good housekeeper. In Finland, men were more likely than women to prefer a mate a bit smarter than themselves. In the United States, women ranked chastity as more important than men did. At the other end of the scale, in Turkey and South Korea, women wanted mates with good financial prospects and men valued good cooks.

Essentially, the survey finds that when asked about sensitive and potentially controversial topics over the internet, a self-selected group of people will give strangers the socially-approved answer. Thank you Slate for pointing out this stunning observation.

In case your sarcasm detector is malfunctioning, the study is complete and utter crap and drawing any conclusions about evolutionary biology from it is idiotic.

As the manosphere says repeatedly and consistently, look at what people do, not what they say.

****

So, in conclusion, this article is mostly bunk. It’s a mishmash of a person’s ignorance of her own ideological underpinnings, wishful thinking, fourth-rate logic, and a person determining “good” science based on her own ideological biases.

In other words, it’s typical feminism.

****

* I say true social conservatism, because a fair amount of what we call social conservatism now, is simply the repackaged liberalism of the last century. Actual social conservatives would generally be called paleo-conservatives. ie: Being against gay marriage, but believing in marriage for love does not a social conservative make, it only makes a liberal who doesn’t like homosexual marriage; to be a social conservative requires a traditional view of marriage as an economic, sexual, and (possibly) religious relationship based around the creation and raising of children.

Hanna Rosin: Feminists and the Hook-up Culture

Hanna Rosin, author of The End of Men, commented on Ann Romney’s speech at Slate. Her article ends with this:

But it’s not her particular marriage that gets in the way of reaching certain women, it’s her entire worldview. In Ann Romney’s world, high-school sweethearts are to be trusted, and women should give in and trust them. They do not fail women and they do not let women down, as she said of Mitt. It’s a little bit like Paul Ryan’s imaginary world where men trek off to the tire plant every day and come home and fix the screen door.

But this is not a world that Obama negated with his economic policies; it’s a world that has been slowly disappearing for decades. Most children born to women under 30 now are born to single mothers and in their world, the men are not really to be trusted and they do let people down.

Compare that to her recent article Boys on the Side, which extolled the hook-up culture as liberating for women.

There is no retreating from the hookup culture to an earlier age, when a young man showed up at the front door with a box of chocolates for his sweetheart, and her father eyed him warily. Even the women most frustrated by the hookup culture don’t really want that. The hookup culture is too bound up with everything that’s fabulous about being a young woman in 2012—the freedom, the confidence, the knowledge that you can always depend on yourself. The only option is what Hannah’s friends always tell her—stop doing what feels awful, and figure out what doesn’t.

Young men and women have discovered a sexual freedom unbridled by the conventions of marriage, or any conventions. But that’s not how the story ends. They will need time, as one young woman at Yale told me, to figure out what they want and how to ask for it. Ultimately, the desire for a deeper human connection always wins out, for both men and women. Even for those business-school women, their hookup years are likely to end up as a series of photographs, buried somewhere on their Facebook page, that they do or don’t share with their husband—a memory that they recall fondly or sourly, but that hardly defines them.

How she can not see the contradiction between these two modes of thinking is beyond me, especially given how these two articles were published only about a week apart.

How can the hook-up culture be both something that is liberating to females and supported by females, yet at the same time be something in which women are let down by men?

It can’t.

****

As one commenter at Slate named TheDude commented:

“Most children born to women under 30 now are born to single mothers and in their world, the men are not really to be trusted and they do let people down.”

I don’t sweat this. Double X has taught me that single motherhood is a fine lifestyle to choose, many women choose to do it voluntarily, and that women don’t need men anymore. Who exactly are these guys letting down?

I’ve also learned from Double X that it is in fact men who need women, so the question should be, why are these women letting down the men who need them?

****

The hook-up culture is bad for women (and for men for that matter) but it is a necessary implication of the feminism. Women do not really want the hook-up culture. In fact, except for a minority of high testosterone women, most women do not want most of what feminism is selling.

But the hook-up culture is the natural end-game of feminism. Once traditional marriage, an “oppressive patriarchal” family system, declines, men, no longer constrained by patriarchy, revert to their more primitive instincts. One of the of these instincts is consequence-free sex, the hook-up culture.

The hook-up culture leaves women unable to commit and leaves men unwilling to commit. Given that most women want commitment, at some point, this hurts women.

So, feminists like Rosen know the hook-up culture is the necessary consequence of feminism and is necessary to feminism, but they also know it hurts women. So what do they do, they try to pretend that women like the hook-up culture. Some do, ie. high testosterone feminists, but the rest have to be convinced. So, you speak out of both sides of your mouth: you poison gender relations by blaming men for being unreliable while supporting the very system that makes men unreliable, then tell women that they actually like the system that’s destroying their ability to gain what they actually desire: love, a husband, motherhood, and family.

****

So you get this:

But then, sometime during sophomore year, her feelings changed. She got tired of relationships that just faded away, “no end, no beginning.” Like many of the other college women I talked with, Tali and her friends seemed much more sexually experienced and knowing than my friends at college. They were as blasé about blow jobs and anal sex as the one girl I remember from my junior year whom we all considered destined for a tragic early marriage or an asylum. But they were also more innocent. When I asked Tali what she really wanted, she didn’t say anything about commitment or marriage or a return to a more chivalrous age. “Some guy to ask me out on a date to the frozen-yogurt place,” she said. That’s it. A $3 date.

But the soda-fountain nostalgia of this answer quickly dissipated when I asked Tali and her peers a related question: Did they want the hookup culture to go away—might they prefer the mores of an earlier age, with formal dating and slightly more obvious rules? This question, each time, prompted a look of horror. Reform the culture, maybe, teach women to “advocate for themselves”—a phrase I heard many times—but end it? Never. Even one of the women who had initiated the Title IX complaint, Alexandra Brodsky, felt this way. “I would never come down on the hookup culture,” she said. “Plenty of women enjoy having casual sex.”

Women whose emotional being has been so warped that she wants more emotionally but can’t conceive of an emotional connection beyond going for yogurt. These emotionally scarred women then turn around and defend the system that withered their emotional being because “plenty of women” enjoy it. Note, not because she personally enjoyed it, but because “plenty of women” enjoyed it. Most of these “plenty of women” didn’t really enjoy it themselves, but acted as if they did, because who wants to be the weird person out who don’t enjoy it.

Now some women probably do like the hook-up lifestyle, and some more women probably enjoy it in the moment, but most do not, simply defending it because it is expected of them because others enjoyed it. In the long-term most women suffer the female version of the player’s curse.

Then, instead of blaming the feminism-created system that has left women alone, divorced, and emotionally-scarred, feminists blame men for being unreliable, poisoning gender relations further.

****

The old family system is dying, purposefully killed by minority ideologies of progressivism and feminism. The right knows what is missing and rages at what it is losing, while not being able to free itself from the symptoms of the sickness. The left can not acknowledge that it is sick, because doing so would shatter their ideological myths.

But the left see some who have not been inflicted, and they rage against them, seething at what what they are missing and rage at having it shoved in their face by those like Ann Romney and Sarah Palin, who have and are everything they can not acknowledge they desire.

Meanwhile, the average women laments how she can’t find a good man, while the average man laments how he can’t find a good women. Both emotionally scarred, with their ability to have a loving marriage crippled by the system they support (because its the politically correct thing to support) but don’t understand. They wonder why they just can’t find the love they so desperately want, not being able to see the system that is taking it away for what it is.

They exchange love for pleasure, but in their deepest being they know the pleasure always leaves them feeling hollow. They yearn for love, but are unable to find it because the continual quest for the pleasure necessary to stave of the void in their heart destroys their very ability to experience that love.

The “gender war” continues, pushed by the hurting and the ideologues who need someone to blame for their loneliness and emptiness, but either can not see or can not acknowledge the system that is doing this to them.

Is it any wonder why women’s happiness has been steadily declining?

Lightning Round – 2012/08/22

Following the huge do Christian’s need game debate, Cane started a new blog, linking to all the pieces discussing his original post. Check out the discussion, it’s a good one.

Good news for Athol. Marriage game is now going to be taught to the army.

Values should take priority over women.

A good definition of “slut.”

Biting satire from Dalrock.

Some people live with a slave mentality.

As an ectomorph, this is interesting. The description of an ectomorph seemed fairly spot on in reference to me.

Patriactionary are measuring the corpses of abortion.

The pay-gap destroyed and a good response to being called a mansplainer.

Feminism may not be as deep in younger women as some think.

US politics has become about people voting themselves free shit.
Related: A businessman is sick of it.
Related: I continue to like Koch more and more.

Is upward mobility dying?
Related:The “screwed generation” turns to Ryan.

A comparison of which states give to charity and their political orientation. Hint: The bleeding hearts don’t look so good.
Related: Obama believes in helping his brothers, as long as by brother you don’t mean his actual brother.

Fred predicts an impending police state.
Related: One of the stupidest ideas I’ve heard in a while.

Ferguson does an excellent takedown of Obama. If Newsweek is turning on Obama, who else might.
Related: A takedown of Chomsky.

Is the current recession worse than the Great Depression?
Related: How to destroy a nation with inflation.

Boy, does oil ever get such huge subsidies.
Related: Government killed passenger rail.

An economists’ guide to dating.

Economic stupidity.

Followers of the “religion of peace” call for the execution of a handicapped 11-year-old on specious charges.
Related: Remember, tolerance requires punishment for not praying to Allah, in British schools.
Related: Arrested for walking his dog.

Does quantum mechanics destroy materialism and help support belief in God?

Canada used to be free: a comparison of freedom in Canada and freedom in the US.

Gunman shoots up the Family Research Council.

Teaching 8-year-olds about 6 genders. Go Ontario.

Women don’t need men to get married, literally. Why not just marry a amusement ride?

I sometimes wonder if I play too many video games.

The cost of a child.

Single mother myths from Slate. I’m kinda surprised Slate printed this.

Is the double-standard eroding?

Some people’s ignorance (or deliberate distortion) of the Bible is astounding.

The media is the enemy.

(H/T: Maggie’s Farm, Smallest Minority, SDA, RWCG, HUS, AL Daily)

No, We Are Not All Feminists

Lindy West argues at Jezebel that we are all feminists and those that aren’t are horrible people.

How does she do this, by (snarkily) arguing that:

To identify as a feminist is to acknowledge that women are people, and, as such, women deserve the same social, economic, and political rights and opportunities as other styles of people (i.e., men-people).

This is of course complete bollocks.

The label of feminist has far more meaning than women are people. Not to mention that what feminists mean by “the same social, economic, and political rights and opportunities” is far different from what most people consider “the same”.

****

Now, most people do accept most of first-wave feminism’s objectives: woman should be allowed to vote, own property, and be equal under the law. Even a reactionary curmudgeon like me doesn’t disagree with that (although, I’m not sure about Will).

But, feminism has evolved since then through the second, third, and post-waves and the term feminist has expanded far beyond the original goals of the suffragettes.

Accepting the goals of first-wave feminism no more makes a person a modern feminist than opposing slavery and absolute monarchy makes one a neo-liberal.

****

So, what does modern feminism mean beyond “women are people?”

Most obviously, modern feminism has irreversibly tied itself to unlimited abortion-on-demand, something the majority of people oppose. The abortion debate revolves around whether the unborn are persons or not and has nothing to do with the the personhood of women.

Affirmative action, the preferential treatment of women, is another major plank of modern feminism and has nothing to do with the personhood of women. In fact, it gives women rights that men do not have.

Other feminist tropes and goals beyond “women are people” include: the personalization of the political, anti-patriarchy, male privilege, “free” childcare, “free” birth control, “equal” pay, etc.

****

The second half of West’s definition of feminism is “women deserve the same social, economic, and political rights and opportunities.”

This, is essentially as what she means by “the same rights and opportunities” is unclear and likely not agreed upon by most.

The first problem is the distinction between “negative” and “positive” liberty.

Under a classical liberal approach of “negative” liberty, “the same rights and opportunities” means that everybody is allowed to live their lives without undue external coercion. This is the standard conception of rights and liberty in the English liberal and liberal-conservative tradition that have defined (or at least until the last couple of decades) politics in the Anglosphere since Locke and Burke.

Under the progressive “positive” liberty approach, “the same rights and opportunities” means there can be external coercion if it helps an individual overcome internal constraints on their ability to act.

West talks positively of affirmative action and Title IX, so she obviously falls on the “positive” side of liberty, and she links these two strongly to feminism. She also talks derisively of those who have declared equality because legal discrimination has ended.

It’s obvious there is no room for “negative liberty” within her definition of feminism.

Yet, somehow we are all feminists now, even though “negative liberty” is the dominant (but declining) political thought in the US and the Anglosphere.

****

The second problem is the distinction between equality and equity.

Equality requires that everybody be treated the same.

Equity requires that people be treated differently to achieve the same outcome.

In an equal regime, hiring would be based solely on qualifications.

In an equitable regime, hiring would be based comparable results.

Affirmative action is very much equity based and is anti-equality, yet it is linked heavily to and is strongly defended by the feminist movement.

“Equal pay” is a a primary goal of modern feminists. Yet, the “wage gap” disappears when you account for hours worked, job type, specializations, and family arrangements.

Again, West strongly both affirmative action and Title IX to feminism. I’m also pretty sure where she’d stand on the “wage gap.” Is there any room for equality in feminism?

****

These first two debates can be seen in feminism itself between the liberal feminists who generally take the “negative” liberty and equality approach, and the other types of feminists who take the egalitarian, “positive” liberty approach.

So there is some room for them.

Sadly, liberal feminists tend to be few and far between and they tend not to be the drivers of feminism, but rather the PR people.

The ones dominating the agenda are the “positive” liberty, equity feminists. Hence, why feminism pursues the “wage gap” so strongly, why Obamacare has “free” contraception, why there was so much feminist rage when religious organizations did not want to pay for contraception, etc.

****

The third problem is that women and men are not the same. This leads to situations where “the same” is simply not possible.

The most obvious difference is that women can give birth, men can’t.

So, how do you give equal rights?

Is abortion only a women’s decision because it’s her body? Is it “equal” for men to have no say in the life or death of their unborn child?

If a man gets no say in the abortion decision, then would it not be fair to allow him to opt out of child support obligations? On the other hand, is it fair to expect a women to take all support for the child on herself?

There is no way the rights of persons in a situation like this can be “the same” because the decisions are not equivalent.

What of maternity/paternity leave? If we give them both similar time off, when the man isn’t even pregnant is that “the same”? But if we don’t give them equal time off, isn’t that differing opportunities?

****

Statistical differences in natural aptitudes or interests between the sexes leads to the equity/equality distinction.

Men are physically stronger and and bigger than women. So, when hiring, say, police, do we have “the same” physical requirements for both sexes with different outcomes, or do we “the same” outcomes by having differing physical requirements.

Women are less interested in math and math-based subjects. Do treat the sexes “the same” and just accept there will fewer female engineers or do we try to have “the same” amount of engineers for each sex by incentivizing and strongly encouraging women to enter engineering when they don’t really want to?

Most feminists I’ve read fall into the latter category of each. How does this fit into “women are people” and “deserve the same social, economic, and political rights and opportunities?”

****

Slate, that bastion of modern liberalism, explains why feminists want everybody to be a feminist:

So as we adopt West’s definition of “feminism,” perhaps we can also start phasing out the term itself. Perhaps we can instead focus on labeling the outliers who are not feminists: the misogynists, chauvinists, and sexists. That would go a long way towards clarifying that feminism is now mainstream, obvious, and self-evident.

By defining feminism as the norm, they can then define anybody who doesn’t swallow the feminist agenda whole as “outliers”.

Oppose unlimited abortion on demand paid for by the state: you’re a misogynist.

Believe women should pay for their own birth control: you’re sexist.

Believe that the personal should be kept private: you’re a chauvinist.

Now, feminists already call anybody who doesn’t agree with their agenda misogynists, so that’s not the point, in itself. Rather, by having people accept feminism as the “mainstream, obvious, and self-evident” norm, they can force society as whole to accept that anybody who doesn’t engage in feminist group-think is a misogynist.

The point of normalizing feminism is to use it as a ideological weapon.

It’s a con-game: have society accept that the feminist label because they believe the uncontroversial statement that women are people. Most people don’t oppose the goals of liberal feminism all that strongly.

Then once society accepts the feminist label, move the goalposts. Feminism now means supporting unlimited abortion, or affirmative action, or “free” childcare. You must support us, you don’t want to be misogynist, do you?

****

In conclusion, we are not all feminists.

We almost all agree that “women are people” and should be given “the same social, economic, and political rights and opportunities” as men, but feminism goes far beyond that. In addition, what most feminists mean by the same rights and opportunities is usually contradictory to what most people mean by that phrase and what the English classical liberalism which defines our political and economic culture mean by that phrase.

Normalizing the feminist label is nothing more than an ideological weapon.

Free Northerner

Iron Sharpens Iron

Tag Archives: Feminist “Logic”

Repost: Patriarchy: Restraining Males

Housework, Independence, and Entitlement

Feminist Self-Annihilation

Holy Crap: Amanda Marcotte the Libertarian

Obliviousness, Incivility, and the Destruction of the Old Order

Keep the State out of Women’s Bodies… Except When Convenient

Evolutionary Psychology, Politics, and Bad Science

Hanna Rosin: Feminists and the Hook-up Culture

Lightning Round – 2012/08/22

No, We Are Not All Feminists