Category Archives: Sex/Gender

Women are Achieving

The Guardian has an article on how boys are a mess (h/t: TRP), there’s nothing all that new there other than its the Guardian acknowledging the problem and its somewhat RP’d. But it has this little bit that comes up with all these articles:

“Men are opting out and women are opting in. Women are working harder at jobs, they’re working harder in school, and they are achieving – last year women had more of every single category of degree, even engineering. This is data from around the world. Now in many colleges there’s a big gap as boys are dropping out of school and college.”

Zimbardo estimates that there are, in Britain and the US, 5-10% more women than men at many colleges and universities. “So they’re going to have to have affirmative action for guys because obviously one reason you go to college is to find a guy.”

Everytime the crisis of boys/men comes to the fore, there’s always the section on how women are achieving. The triumphalism varies, this one tones it down quite a bit compared to, for example, this but there’s always this note of woman are doing better.

Except, are they?

Women are going to school more, getting more education, and outnumber men in the workforce. So, they are achieving more, at least for the mediocre positions, men still dominate the elite positions.

But are they really better off? What exactly are they achieving?

To most men, work is/has been something they had to do so to obtain a wife, then provide for the resulting family. Most men probably took pride in a job well done or in creating, but the purpose of going in to work was to earn to provide for his family. He could have gotten the pride of creation elsewhere, not to mention in today’s white-collar, paperwork world, satisfaction from creating something tangible is rapidly disappearing. Likewise, since the growth of mass post-secondary education, getting a degree for men has primarily been about avoiding a job doing physical labour, getting a better job to hopefully attract a prettier wife, and provide a more materially rich life for his family. The main purpose of post-secondary education was to get a family and provide for it, while making provision easier.

Men did this work, not for its intrinsic own sake, but for the extrinsic good of the family.

To repeat, as an aggregate woman are achieving more, but what are they achieving?

Women are now doing the work men did to support their families, without having families to support, barring (the usually poor) single mothers, who are not the kinds of women-in-the-workplace these articles are happily pointing to as signs of success. In fact, statistically speaking, these women are less likely to have families and when they do these families are smaller.

So, what are they achieving?

The only thing they seem to be achieving is more consumption and more money to be spent on the consumptive treadmill. Is that something we should be proud of? Is that kind of achievement really something we as a society should be pursuing and pushing our boys and girls to pursue?

The other question then becomes, are men really being left behind?

If a young man has no need to support a family, because he doesn’t have a wife, he might not get a wife, and when he does his wife will work and IF they have children, there will only be one, maybe two, why does he need to work?

Is he really falling behind if his part-time McD’s gig pays for his quarter of the bachelor pad’s rent, beer, and the new XBox?

Is a man really worse off spending his hours playing video games and chilling with his bros rather than spending them working hard to get a bigger (but still empty) house and a (nominally) better car?

Why is empty, high-work, high-stress consumerism somehow assumed to be better than empty, low-work, low-stress consumerism?

Either way it’s empty, but the latter is a lot easier and more enjoyable.

Maybe this ‘high achievement‘ is not some victory for women, maybe it’s simply that men know the score: Work sucks, but is (was) necessary to get a wife, regular sex, and a family. Now that men can get sex without a wife and aren’t getting a wife or family anyway, why work?

On the other hand, women seem to have been tricked into thinking that grinding away at a white-collar job is its own reward. They’re doing the shit men were forced to do and mostly disliked, while not even having the reward of a wife having supper ready for them when they get home.

Is it just the boys that are mess? Are the women really achieving?

Beauty, Function, and Reproduction

Here’s my final piece to cap off my Aesthetics Week contributions.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

(Genesis 1:26-28 ESV)

Women are beautiful, they are the most beautiful thing in the world. Why? Because Woman’s intrinsic biological purpose is the highest aim of mankind: to reproduce. Woman brings forth and nurtures life; her intrinsic purpose is to create the Imago Dei anew, again and again.

The function of Woman is to create new life, an intrinsically transcendent task. Her form signals her reproductive capabilities. Her beauty is a product of where her form and function points to this purpose.

Man is not beautiful, he can not be beautiful except through warped physical feminization, for his intrinsic biological purpose is not transcendent. Man’s intrinsic biological aim is to subdue the earth, an intrinsically material task.

Man may be attractive, handsome even, when his form signals high capabilities for subduing the earth or quality genetic material for helping Woman make life, but beauty is not his to have.

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This is why attractiveness in women is prized by men. An attractive woman is signalling fertility, that she will be successful in this most transcendent of purposes.

This is where here becomes a difference between the beautiful and the hot. The beautiful woman signals that not only is she fertile, but she has the inner qualities which would make a good wife and mother to raise the resulting children. She signals that she would have high capabilities to the transcendent task of making a home. The hot woman signals fertility, but she does not signal motherly qualities. Hence, the the difference between hos and housewives. Men use hos, but make homes with housewives.

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This is also why to most men think their particular wife is the most beautiful woman in the world, even though she is likely not the most attractive, she is probably only average. He may even recognize, on an objective level, that she is not the most attractive. Yet, despite this, she is beautiful, the most beautiful, because she is particularly transcendent to him.

As defunct blogger Solomon II wrote (Proverb 28) of the musings of an older man:

Listen to me. A good woman ages beautifully. When I look at my wife, I see the most gorgeous woman in the universe. Her wrinkled hands got that way by keeping up with my two boys and working hard for them while I was on the road. The lines under her eyes are from years of shedding tears for me when I was at war, and those wrinkles on her brow are from decades of worry for me and my two sons. It was her legs they held on to when they were learning to walk, her lap was where they learned to read, and her breasts were their first nourishment. The first kiss those boys ever received was from her lips, and God willing, my last kiss will be from her lips.

You two don’t know what you’re missing – or maybe you do. But all I know is that she’s as beautiful, desirable, and lovely today as the day I met her, and I wouldn’t trade one second with her for a lifetime of rowdiness with one of those harlots you guys have waiting for you back home.

You two don’t know what beauty is. In a way, I feel sorry for both of you.

A man’s wife’s form might not particularly signal transcendent functionality to most men, but to him she is the one that brought forth his children, that made life not just in the image of God, but in his own image as well. She is the one that nurtured and raised his own particular instantiations of God’s image. No mere objective attraction, objective beauty, can possibly match that beauty such as that.

The Rape Gulag

The great and good hold that 1 in 4 (or 1 in 5) women will be raped at college. The Soviet gulags had an average mortality rate of 1 in 10.

So, sending your daughter for a 2-3-year college degree has similar odds of rape as 2-3 years in the gulag had of death. It would be fair to say that the great and the good believe that college is a rape gulag. Yet, these people also believe that college should be co-ed and that women should attend college.

Is it just me, or does this strike people as evil? What kind of person would advocate sending young women away to be raped?

Not to mention the young women who believe this? How self-destructive would a person have to be to voluntarily go someplace where the odds of rape were so high?

I think we should prevent women from going to these rape gulags; end co-ed post-secondary education. I’m sure given how horrible rape is and how much they campaign against rape, the great and the good should fully support this measure. How could one not oppose rape gulags?

Or are they being disingenuous with their numbers?

Hotness is All That’s Left

Amanda Mannen at Cracked has written on why getting MAD at magazines for photoshopping hot girls to be even hotter is stupid. There’s some feminist crap in there, but the points themselves aren’t too bad. The final one though brings up a good point, then stops dead before reaching something really interesting.

The uncomfortable truth is that most of us don’t actually want to eradicate cultural standards of beauty — we just want them changed to include us.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was familiar with Sailer’s Law of Female Journalism. That’s not the part I want to talk about, simply an interesting observation. Here’s the meat:

This isn’t the same as in entertainment, which serves a completely different function. The chief complaint about sexy ladies in those media is that that’s all they’re there for … or at least it’s presented as their most important quality. We run into problems only when we’re taught that a) “hot” is the most important thing a woman can be, and b) we do not meet that standard. How insane is it to propose as a solution to that dilemma, “Well, let’s just change the standard”? You might as well be trying to prevent tornadoes by removing the Earth’s atmosphere.

Here she identifies the superficial problem, women in the media are judged by sexiness and sexiness alone, and she identifies that changing the standard to include fatties and uglies doesn’t change the fact that the standard of ‘hot’ itself is corrupt.

She then goes on to blame this on the media and advertisements.

But, as the Last Psychiatrist was fond of saying before he disappeared, if you’re watching it, it’s for you. The media, however much I rag on it and however much of a sewer it might be, doesn’t exist in a bubble. Even more so, advertisements don’t. Advertisements have to actually have people who identify with them to be effective.

In other words, if people didn’t already value ‘hot’ to the exclusion of other virtues the media wouldn’t be able to use ‘hot’ as the sole standard.

This is where her thinking stops. Why do people, particularly women, accept that ‘hot’ is the standard to which they should aspire?

As I’ve pointed out before this is the new hedonism, how sexiness has become the greater good, especially for women. This is not going to change, because ‘hot’ is the only value left.

However much some feminists and some MGTOWs rage against it, men and women want to be together with each other. They want to love and be loved. This is natural, this is good. To attain this love, attraction is important. Men are attracted to the feminine, women are attracted to the masculine.

Our society has been working to destroy the feminine in women and the masculine in men. As well, society actively lies to both men and women about what the other sex finds attractive. The traditional lovely, feminine virtues that women used to use to attract a man: kindness, joy, peacefulness, chastity, submission, vulnerability, motherliness, cooking, housekeeping, etc. have been maligned by feminism and replaced with repulsive traits of rebellion and argumentativeness (disguised as moxie and independence). Meanwhile, the traditional masculine traits that men would use to attract women have been beaten out of them through public schooling.

Once inner beauty has been destroyed, what does a woman have to offer a man? How can she find love? Men aren’t attracted to degrees, they aren’t attracted to over-exaggerated work titles, they aren’t attracted to argumentativeness or rebellion. Meanwhile, she can’t find it by being lovely, because being lovely is anti-feminist, which is evil. The only thing she has left to attract a man are her looks and her vagina. So, the woman try to be hot, so her looks and her vagina can land a man. She has to make up her lack of inner beauty, her lack of loveliness, with sexuality, hotness.

Hence, why the media focuses on the standard of hot. Women want to be hot, because they want to find love and their other paths to love have been taken from them. If people want advertising to change, they have to change the values consumers hold. As long as women value hot the media will sell them hot.

Hot is the standard and will remain the standard for women to find love as long as feminism reigns for it is the only standard men find attractive that is not in itself intrinsically antithetical to feminist values.

Repost: Shameless White Male Privilege

Here’s a repost from a few years back. I don’t think I’d agree with everything in it anymore and there are a few problems with the writing I’d probably change today, but I still like the gist of it.

Edit for clarification: There was a lot of pro-liberalism which I forgot about being in this post; that would be among the stuff I don’t agree with anymore and is an artifact of my libertarianism from that time. I only skimmed this when reposting (I posted it last minute after forgetting it was posting day) and forgot exactly how much libertarianism was in this and how much my political views have changed since then. It also seems I was less aware of the dangers of pathological altruism back then. It’s also interesting how bad my writing was back then (maybe it still is). By the gist I do like I was referring to specifically to not being ashamed of the privileges our ancestors blessed us with, which is the key point; that part I still agree with. As for the rest; take with a grain of salt, enjoy it as a snapshot of my change. Anyway, from now on I’m going to have to check these reposts more carefully.

So, this post on white male privilege by some sci-fi author has been making the rounds.

If you’ve ever spent time in the race-baiting and/or liberal weenie area of the blogosphere, you’ve probably heard the term white privilege before; it essentially it means that whites (and males) have inherent social advantages over others (minorities and females) that they don’t notice.

The post provides a fairly good analogy of the concept, and the author mostly avoids the moral superiority, butthurt, and male-shaming/white guilt that invariably accompanies liberal’s discussion of privilege. He doesn’t sound at all like the smarmy, self-hating, morally superior Tim Wise.

Now, among the right, conservatives, the manosphere, etc., the concept of white male privilege usually doesn’t gain much traction, and for quite a while it didn’t for me either; but after reading about it some, I’ve decided that I’ve got to go against the grain of my ideological brethren on this topic.

White privilege probably does exist; so to male privilege.

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Immediately, many reading those will protest: what of affirmative action, what of political correctness, what of family court, what of chivalry, and so on and so forth. Sure, there are many number of things that are  against males.

In fact, I’ll go further and say that most codified discrimination that still exists in Western society, is either anti-white (occasionally anti-Asian) and/or anti-male. Codified discrimination against minorities and women has been almost entirely eliminated.

But that’s irrelevant to the concept, as white male privilege goes beyond that.

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So, why do I accept this concept?

I’ll start with male privilege. Yes, females have some advantages over males: family court advantages, being the sexual gate-keeper, chivalry, less chance of prison, etc.

On the other males have so many more social advantages; I’ll just list what I think is the big one:

Unless I go to jail, I really never have to worry about rape. In fact, I almost never worry about my physical safety in relation to other people.

From what I understand, women keep their physical safety in mind quite a bit.

As for white privilege, the big one is this:

White is “normal”, other races are not. If someone describes me it’s based on height or hair colour or some other characteristic. When someone describes a minority to me, race is the first descriptor. In addition, there are no racial expectations placed on me either for bad or good; I never have to think about how I reflect on my race.

There’s more, but you can look elsewhere, this page is not a justification for the concept of privilege. All that’s necessary for my actual point is that I accept the concept of white male privilege.

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If you doubt the concept of white male privilege honestly consider this:

Would you trade being male for being female if given the choice?

Would you trade being white for being a NAM if given the choice?

Probably not. You know it’s awesome being a white male.

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Side note.

Don’t act like white males are victims, even if you don’t buy the concept of white privilege. I hate that.

Sure, some there may be some injustices (ie. family court) and these should be fixed, but creating white males as a victim class to rival other victim classes in being victims is just pathetic.

I disdain when feminist activists act like women are victims and I disdain when racial activists act like victims.

Life’s not fair. Deal with it.

You will eat shit; stop pretending that the shit you eat is worse than others’ shit, and because it’s worse it somehow makes you a better person or more deserving. It doesn’t.

Acting the victim only makes you weak and pathetic.

End side note.

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Of course, white male privilege is not the only privilege there is.

The single greatest social privilege any person can have is parent’s who speak English. Oral and written English is the most useful skill any person in this globalized (ie. anglicized) world can have.

There’s the privilege of being born in North America in the 20th century. The most prosperous and safest civilization of all time.

Not being born a disabled is a great privilege.

Everybody has a wealth of privileges they don’t notice and aren’t grateful for.

As P.J. O’Rourke said to his daughter: “Honey, you’re cute. That’s not fair. Your family is pretty well off. That’s not fair. You were born in America. That’s not fair. Darling, you had better pray to God that things don’t start getting fair for you.”

The focus on white male privilege, and white male privilege alone, is sometimes silly. Rarely do I see the other privileges (except maybe wealth) talked about. That’s besides my main point though. I just wanted to point out that you have other privileges that you may not be aware of.

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Now, here’s the part where most of those talking about the concept of privilege try to make you feel guilty for having privilege and try to turn you into some bleeding-heart idiot.

I’m not going to do that, because I’m not an emotionalizing liberal; I’m an analytical, cold-hearted conservative.

Instead, I’m going to explain why white male privilege exists.

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Why does it exist?

Simple: White male privilege exists because white males built the greatest civilization in the history of the world.

In particular, the people of a small island off the coast of Europe created and molded the modern world. The Germans, Italians, French, Russians, and Spaniards had some influence, but English liberalism (not modern progressivist liberalism, but Lockian liberalism and Burkian liberal-conservatism) is the basis for all the greatness of modern society.

English liberalism led to the creation of universal freedoms; allowing people to go about their personal and economic business free from worries of arbitrary exercises of power by those with power.

English liberalism championed and created the ideological basis for the free market, the single greatest engine of economic production ever conceived by man.

English common law created a system of justice where the rule of law prevailed, process was paramount, all were protected equally, and where state power was checked by law.

The protestant work ethic and individualist values prepared the English individuals to drive the above.

British heterogeneity in language, race, religion, and political culture created an English culture used to absorbing the best of other cultures.

Given these strengths, English civilization became the preeminent civilization for the last four centuries. (The USA is a part of English civilization).

All it’s real rivals, until the current rise of China, were other white European civilizations who shared some values with Englishmen. (No, the Japanese, Muslims, and Ottomans were never/are not a real threat to English civilization’s preeminence).

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This great civilization was created by Englishmen for Englishmen (and their families); through their blood, sweat, and tears.

Englishmen fought numerous wars against the continentals to keep themselves free and to spread English values.

Rightly or wrongly, Englishmen fought overseas to acquire territory and resources for Englishmen and to spread English values.

The English economic engine was built on the toil, risk, and ideas of Englishmen.

English political culture and law was created and protected by Englishmen.

By doing so, Englishmen created the civilization we currently live in. It is also the richest, most powerful civilization in the history of the world.

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White, male privilege exists because of this: English civilization was created for Englishmen by Englishmen.

Every liberal writer on privilege ignores this, but it is essential to understanding.

Why should white males feel guilty for enjoying the privileges their forefathers created for them?

Do not white males have the right to enjoy the civilization they created for themselves?

(You may be asking yourself right now, aren’t I conflating Englishmen and white males? Just wait, I’ll explain.)

White males absolutely have every right to enjoy the privileges they have created for themselves.

We owe nothing to no one.

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So, what did the English do, having created this unprecedentedly wealthy, free, and powerful civilization?

They shared it.

Think about that. Englishmen created a civilization with power beyond anything the world has seen, but instead of doing what almost every civilization in history would do, they shared it.

They invited their conquered to join their prosperity. They shared their freedom with their slaves.

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What do you mean they shared it? That’s not what I learned in school.

First, they gave it to non-English Europeans: the Irish, Scots, Germans, Norse, etc.  Other than French Quebec, they have been fully assimilated. We allowed them into our country and they adopted English values. They hold to English law, English individualism, English liberty, and identify as English (ie. American, a subset of English). In North America, specific types of European blood don’t matter very much. (As an aside: some interesting maps that may illustrate what I mean). They are all honorary English. Europeans of ethnicities have come to positions of power.

I don’t have a drop of English blood in me, but I am English to the core.

Englishmen gave it to women. They gave the benefits of English civilization to women through the family and mores of chivalry. Then they were extended the vote. Then they were giver more rights and privileges through feminism, affirmative action, the welfare state, etc.

The blacks were fucked over by Englishmen who had them as slaves, yes. (Although, not as much as by other Africans who enslaved them in the first place, but that’s neither here nor there).

But, then Englishmen fought a war to free them. Who else, other than Englishmen and a couple of other English-influenced European countries have freed their own slaves en masse out of morality? Who else other than English civilization fought a bloody civil war to free another group from slavery due to compassion? Then, decades later Englishmen allowed their ex-slaves full legal access to politics and economics. They created affirmative action and the welfare state to redress past wrongs. Until today, where the Englishman’s ex-slaves are in a far better position than they would have been had they never been enslaved in the first place.

Others, such as Asians, Jews, Latinos, etc. all had a similar process where we allowed them to share in what Englishmen have built.

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Now, these happened over long time-scales yes, and there were abuses by Englishmen, yes.

But how many civilizations, other than Englishmen (and some English influenced European countries) , have willingly and freely given power, wealth, and freedom to ex-slaves, conquered peoples, immigrants, etc.?

The American welfare state is a program for the mass transfer of wealth from Englishmen to everybody else, put into place by Englishmen. Other than Englishmen, who else has created an political-economic system where they willingly transfer vast amounts of wealth from themselves to others?

By the standards of power politics, Englishmen have been downright generous.

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The more Englishmen shared, the more entitled others became.

Rather than being thankful we allowed others into the prosperity and freedom we built, they demonized us as oppressors.

They demanded more, so we gave them more. Rather than gratefulness, all we earned were more demands.

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Now, you might think to yourself, didn’t others help create English civilization? What about black slaves? What about the Chinese railroad workers? What of Gurkhas? What about English women?

Yes, they did. Black slaves helped build the Southern economy. Chinese immigrants did help build the railroads. Gurkhas, Sikhs, and other such “warrior races” helped expand and defend English territory.

But so what?

These are all exceptions. The vast majority of the blood, sweat, and tears expended building this civilization was that of the Englishman. This no more invalidates what I have wrote, than the average white male not having an easy life invalidates the concept of white privilege.

As for Englishwomen, they helped preserve English culture and pass it on to the next generation. In the main, they did not build it. This is not to invalidate the importance of preservation and transmission, they are essential, but they are different.

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So, next time some emasculated liberal, rabid feminist, or race-baiter starts going on about white privilege this, male privilege that, just put on a smug smile and tell him/her:

Damn right we have privilege and we Englishmen earned every last bit of it. Instead of whining about it, how about some gratitude? We created unimaginable wealth, unprecedented freedom, and a fair legal and political system for ourselves. We created all this, then we willingly allowed you to partake in it. Stop whining about a couple small advantages we still have for creating all this and enjoy what we gave you instead.

Do not let them make you feel white guilt. Do not let them make you feel shame.

You’re privileged. That’s awesome. Enjoy it.

Feminism is About Equality…

Feminism is about equality or feminism is about equal rights is a common motte used by feminists. I’ve already shown how that is not true and shown the ideological reasons feminists like to push this bit of drivel, so go read that if that’s what your looking for.

Instead, today I’m going to show that anybody using this phrase inherently recognizes that equality is meaningless conceptual nonsense, or possibly that they simply grossly ignorant of that of which they speak.

Feminism has gone through a number of evolutions. There have been three major evolutions of feminism: the first focusing on suffrage and prohibition, a second focusing on domesticity, patriarchy, and access to the workplace, and the third is more diffuse but tends to focus on empowerment and abolishing gender roles.

Just in these very broad outlines we can see the contradictions of various form of feminism. First wave feminism and prohibition were virtually indistinguishable, yet one of today’s large post-feminist empowerment crusades is the “right” of women to get as irresponsibly drunk as they want without having to take responsibility for any actions taken while drunk. The need to dress sexily for men was on of the shackles of patriarchy the second-wave tried to throw off, while self-proclaimed feminist sluts of the third-wave are arguing for their right to dress as whores without being judged for it.

When you add in all the various permutations of feminism the contradictions abound even more: Sex-positive feminists and anti-porn feminists, TERFs and queer theory feminists, liberal feminists and radical feminists, equity and gender feminists, choice feminists and actual feminists, etc.

Given the vast array of what feminists desire, we can now see why equality is meaningles nonsense. If feminism is about equality that means equality is simultaneously defined as banning alcohol, getting irresponsibly drunk, dressing like a slut, not dressing like a slut, having lots of heterosexual sex, making pronography, avoiding non-lesbian sex, people with penises are men, those same people with penises are women, being economically independent, not being economically independent, being given equal access to the workforce, and being given preferential access to the workforce.

To anybody with two brain cells to rub together, this mess of contradictions means equality is simply a nonsense phrase with no real meaning besides some vague Orwellian exo-semantic feelings of ‘good’.

Anybody saying feminism is about equality either believes assumes equality is a meaningless word, has not actually thought of what they’re saying, is ignorant of even the basics of feminist thought and history, or is dishonest.

If a Man talks to You…

The Christian RP circle is talking of how traditional young women can signal availability to RP guys in the church. I’ve written advice on this topic a couple of times before, but I’ll write on it again.

There are 3 main steps to landing a man: signal availability, reciprocate attention, and say yes. I’ll go over them.

The first step is to make it easy for men to approach you and to signal availability. I’ve already written a some tips:

Be out in the world. Men can’t approach if they don’t see you.

Get in environments where approaching is easy. A casual, social environment is best.

Smile: A kind smile lowers the expected cost and raises the perceived odds of success, increasing the chances of being approached.

Signal availability: Look pretty, have an open demeanor, put yourself in a physical space where approaching is possible (ie. stand around other people, not on the other side of the room by yourself), walk casually instead of bee-lining: make it easy for a man to approach and it will be more likely.

Don’t signal unavailability: Don’t wear earphones, don’t wear a ring on your ring finger if you aren’t married, don’t stare at the ground, don’t walk around staring at your iPhone, etc., these will all discourage most men (players aside) from approaching. Most men don’t want to intrude on you when you are doing something. By doing this you are self-selecting for the kind of guy who interrupts busy people.

Signal something unique: Signal something that makes you stand out, particularly for the kind of man you are looking for. If you are looking for an physically active man, wear something that indicates you participate in a sport. If you are looking for a bookish man, carry a book. If you are looking for a traditional man, look traditional. If you are looking for a family man, coo over your friend’s baby. If you are looking for a player, show your cleavage. If a man sees you share something in common, something particular that interests hims, or that gives him an easy in to open, he will be more likely to approach you.

Do the opposite of all this if you want to be approached less.

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For Christians in particular:

When out of a church setting, it can often be difficult for a Christian man to tell if a woman is Christian or not, and if she isn’t he likely won’t be motivated to hit on her; hitting on a non-Christian would be a waste of time and effort. By displaying something obviously Christian, a Christian woman can give him that much more of a reason to talk to her, increasing her odds of meeting someone.

For Christian women, if you want more Christian men to hit on you, bring along something with you when you go out that makes it obvious you are Christian. Carry your Bible or a CS Lewis book or something else obvious; wear a Jesus fish necklace or a Bible camp t-shirt. (This is probably what the WWJD bracelets used to be for).

I know this from experience; there have been at least two cute girls I’ve cold approached because I overheard they were Christian, where if I hadn’t overheard them I probably would not have.

Another step is to get onto a dating site. Find a Christian one if you can. That opens up a lot of potential men you might otherwise meet. Hit up your social network as well; I’m sure there’s a few middle-aged women in your family and at church who would love to meddle in your affairs and introduce you to young men they know.

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Once you have signaled availability, the next step is to reciprocate. Always give positive feedback to any interest a man* shows you. Most men hate approaching; showing interest invites them and helps them get over their dislike of approaching, not showing interest drives them away.

So how do you know a man is showing interest: he pays attention to you.

It’s that simple. If a man is looking at you (and you do not have an large obvious deformity or ketchup smeared across your face) he is interested. If a man is talking you forfor something not related to practical matters or a social obligation, he is interested. Any man who is spending attention on you when he is not socially obligated to is at some level interested. Always assume any single man talking to you is interested in you; you will be right at least 90% of the time. It may be only a vague interest or a small one, but it is interest, and reciprocation will grow that interest, a lack thereof will kill it.

If you see a man looking at you, smile back. Look inviting. If you’re too shy to hold a smile: smile quickly, quickly look down, then slowly look back up while smiling.

If a man comes up and talks engage. Talk with him back. Answer his questions and ask questions in return. If a man is talking with you but is awkward, try to help him out by asking questions or just by bearing the brunt of conversation until he becomes comfortable with talking with you.

If you’re shy, just stutter out something, anything. Don’t worry about embarrassing yourself, just try to show interest. There’s many guys who find shyness or social awkwardness, even to the point of self-embarrassment, cute or attractive and it is rare than any man finds it actively repulsive. For a woman, it is always better to come off awkward or silly than cold in the dating game.

Finally, part of reciprocating is giving a man opportunities on which to act. If you have some interest in a guy, make it easy for him to ask you out. Mention that play or movie you want to see, that new restaurant you want to go to, that place in town you want to visit, etc. Give him opportunities to invite you out and be obvious about it.

If you’re on a dating site, respond to (thoughtful) messages ASAP, write longer responses, and ask questions in return.

Personal example of what not to do:

My mother has been pressing me for a while to go after a  girl I’ve briefly mentioned here before. She recently returned to my church after a year abroad. She’s plain but not unattractive. I’ve never pursued her because she’s done nothing to attract me to her, but its possible something could develop. A few months back we happened to end up near each other at a church function. I was not pursuing her, but I was not closed to the idea either, so I decided to see if something could develop.

I turned to her and asked her a question of some sort. A one sentence answer. So I talked a bit then asked another question. Another one sentence answer. So I forced out a bit more talk, then threw out a third question. Another one sentence answer. She gave no questions in return and no unforced way to continue, so I stopped. I haven’t talked to her since and have no interest in doing so. I don’t know what she thinks of me at all, but I know I don’t feel like spending any more effort.

Now I was not interested per se, but had she reciprocated a conversation could have developed, and from that attraction may have developed, but she’s not pretty enough for attraction to develop on its own and the possibility of developing attraction was killed. I have no idea whether she has any interest in me or not, but it is possible a small bit of reciprocation could have led to something, but now its unlikely anything will happen unless she makes a large first move.

****

Finally, the third thing is to say yes. Unless he is obviously scummy or degenerate, if a man asks you out, just say yes.

Now when I say ask out, I mean anything. Any time a single man invites a single woman (who have not friendzoned each other) to something, he is asking that woman out. If a man wants to “hang-out” or something that’s not specifically a “date”, it’s still an invitation, he’s interested. It doesn’t even have to be alone time. If a man asks you specifically to a group event, he’s still interested. The exception is if he invites the whole group and you just happen to be a part of the established group (but even then, if he takes a special interest in your attendance).

Personal example: A couple years ago, there was a cute blonde from out of town who was going to a local university. We talked a couple times. I was interested in getting to know her better and thought I could help her make some friends, so I invited her to a group event I was going to. She declined because she was visiting other people at the church. A couple weeks later I invited her to another event. She declined so she could study. After that I talked to her once or twice more, but my interest faded; the group event invitation was a sign of interest on my part and I took her rejection of my invitations as a sign of her rejecting me. A couple months later she stopped attending our church.

There is almost zero cost to going out with a man when he asks you out. So say yes even if you aren’t immediately attracted. At worst you’ll get a free coffee/movie/meal and waste a few hours in awkward conversation,  then decline the second date, so why not say yes? What is there to lose? (If its an online date or with someone you don’t know, stay in a public space).

On the other hand, the upside is huge. The guy is already interested in you, maybe on the date he’ll surprise you and you’ll fall for him.

So, when asked just say yes.

Exception: he is a long-term friend you know with certainty you are not interested in. In that case shut that down immediately and very clearly.

If you must decline a particular invitation because you are busy, immediately counter-offer with another time/date so he knows you are still saying yes. The “I’m busy” response is a common brush-off, so even if you’re reasons are valid and you are interested in him, he’ll probably take it as a rejection. Make sure he doesn’t misinterpret.

The same goes with if you want to decline a particular type of date where you are interested in the person but not the activity. Ex.: If he invites you to his place for a movie but you don’t know him well enough, counter-offer with coffee or a movie at the theatre.

****

To summarize: signal availability, reciprocate, say yes. Do all this, and you’ll greatly increase your chances.

****

*Standard boilerplate: When I say a man or any man throughout this piece, I am not referring to obvious degenerates or cads. Ignore them and drive them away. I am referring to decent men.

Chesterton on Men and Women

I’ve been sick and not up to writing posts, so here’s some Chesterton on the difference between men and women, from Chapter 3-2 of What’s Wrong with the World:

Cast your eye round the room in which you sit, and select some three or four things that have been with man almost since his beginning; which at least we hear of early in the centuries and often among the tribes. Let me suppose that you see a knife on the table, a stick in the corner, or a fire on the hearth. About each of these you will notice one speciality; that not one of them is special. Each of these ancestral things is a universal thing; made to supply many different needs; and while tottering pedants nose about to find the cause and origin of some old custom, the truth is that it had fifty causes or a hundred origins. The knife is meant to cut wood, to cut cheese, to cut pencils, to cut throats; for a myriad ingenious or innocent human objects. The stick is meant partly to hold a man up, partly to knock a man down; partly to point with like a finger-post, partly to balance with like a balancing pole, partly to trifle with like a cigarette, partly to kill with like a club of a giant; it is a crutch and a cudgel; an elongated finger and an extra leg. The case is the same, of course, with the fire; about which the strangest modern views have arisen. A queer fancy seems to be current that a fire exists to warm people. It exists to warm people, to light their darkness, to raise their spirits, to toast their muffins, to air their rooms, to cook their chestnuts, to tell stories to their children, to make checkered shadows on their walls, to boil their hurried kettles, and to be the red heart of a man’s house and that hearth for which, as the great heathens said, a man should die.

Now it is the great mark of our modernity that people are always proposing substitutes for these old things; and these substitutes always answer one purpose where the old thing answered ten. The modern man will wave a cigarette instead of a stick; he will cut his pencil with a little screwing pencil-sharpener instead of a knife; and he will even boldly offer to be warmed by hot water pipes instead of a fire. I have my doubts about pencil-sharpeners even for sharpening pencils; and about hot water pipes even for heat. But when we think of all those other requirements that these institutions answered, there opens before us the whole horrible harlequinade of our civilization. We see as in a vision a world where a man tries to cut his throat with a pencil-sharpener; where a man must learn single-stick with a cigarette; where a man must try to toast muffins at electric lamps, and see red and golden castles in the surface of hot water pipes.

The principle of which I speak can be seen everywhere in a comparison between the ancient and universal things and the modern and specialist things. The object of a theodolite is to lie level; the object of a stick is to swing loose at any angle; to whirl like the very wheel of liberty. The object of a lancet is to lance; when used for slashing, gashing, ripping, lopping off heads and limbs, it is a disappointing instrument. The object of an electric light is merely to light (a despicable modesty); and the object of an asbestos stove… I wonder what is the object of an asbestos stove? If a man found a coil of rope in a desert he could at least think of all the things that can be done with a coil of rope; and some of them might even be practical. He could tow a boat or lasso a horse. He could play cat’s-cradle, or pick oakum. He could construct a rope-ladder for an eloping heiress, or cord her boxes for a travelling maiden aunt. He could learn to tie a bow, or he could hang himself. Far otherwise with the unfortunate traveller who should find a telephone in the desert. You can telephone with a telephone; you cannot do anything else with it. And though this is one of the wildest joys of life, it falls by one degree from its full delirium when there is nobody to answer you. The contention is, in brief, that you must pull up a hundred roots, and not one, before you uproot any of these hoary and simple expedients. It is only with great difficulty that a modern scientific sociologist can be got to see that any old method has a leg to stand on. But almost every old method has four or five legs to stand on. Almost all the old institutions are quadrupeds; and some of them are centipedes.

Consider these cases, old and new, and you will observe the operation of a general tendency. Everywhere there was one big thing that served six purposes; everywhere now there are six small things; or, rather (and there is the trouble), there are just five and a half. Nevertheless, we will not say that this separation and specialism is entirely useless or inexcusable. I have often thanked God for the telephone; I may any day thank God for the lancet; and there is none of these brilliant and narrow inventions (except, of course, the asbestos stove) which might not be at some moment necessary and lovely. But I do not think the most austere upholder of specialism will deny that there is in these old, many-sided institutions an element of unity and universality which may well be preserved in its due proportion and place. Spiritually, at least, it will be admitted that some all-round balance is needed to equalize the extravagance of experts. It would not be difficult to carry the parable of the knife and stick into higher regions. Religion, the immortal maiden, has been a maid-of-all-work as well as a servant of mankind. She provided men at once with the theoretic laws of an unalterable cosmos and also with the practical rules of the rapid and thrilling game of morality. She taught logic to the student and told fairy tales to the children; it was her business to confront the nameless gods whose fears are on all flesh, and also to see the streets were spotted with silver and scarlet, that there was a day for wearing ribbons or an hour for ringing bells. The large uses of religion have been broken up into lesser specialities, just as the uses of the hearth have been broken up into hot water pipes and electric bulbs. The romance of ritual and colored emblem has been taken over by that narrowest of all trades, modern art (the sort called art for art’s sake), and men are in modern practice informed that they may use all symbols so long as they mean nothing by them. The romance of conscience has been dried up into the science of ethics; which may well be called decency for decency’s sake, decency unborn of cosmic energies and barren of artistic flower. The cry to the dim gods, cut off from ethics and cosmology, has become mere Psychical Research. Everything has been sundered from everything else, and everything has grown cold. Soon we shall hear of specialists dividing the tune from the words of a song, on the ground that they spoil each other; and I did once meet a man who openly advocated the separation of almonds and raisins. This world is all one wild divorce court; nevertheless, there are many who still hear in their souls the thunder of authority of human habit; those whom Man hath joined let no man sunder.

This book must avoid religion, but there must (I say) be many, religious and irreligious, who will concede that this power of answering many purposes was a sort of strength which should not wholly die out of our lives. As a part of personal character, even the moderns will agree that many-sidedness is a merit and a merit that may easily be overlooked. This balance and universality has been the vision of many groups of men in many ages. It was the Liberal Education of Aristotle; the jack-of-all-trades artistry of Leonardo da Vinci and his friends; the august amateurishness of the Cavalier Person of Quality like Sir William Temple or the great Earl of Dorset. It has appeared in literature in our time in the most erratic and opposite shapes, set to almost inaudible music by Walter Pater and enunciated through a foghorn by Walt Whitman. But the great mass of men have always been unable to achieve this literal universality, because of the nature of their work in the world. Not, let it be noted, because of the existence of their work. Leonardo da Vinci must have worked pretty hard; on the other hand, many a government office clerk, village constable or elusive plumber may do (to all human appearance) no work at all, and yet show no signs of the Aristotelian universalism. What makes it difficult for the average man to be a universalist is that the average man has to be a specialist; he has not only to learn one trade, but to learn it so well as to uphold him in a more or less ruthless society. This is generally true of males from the first hunter to the last electrical engineer; each has not merely to act, but to excel. Nimrod has not only to be a mighty hunter before the Lord, but also a mighty hunter before the other hunters. The electrical engineer has to be a very electrical engineer, or he is outstripped by engineers yet more electrical. Those very miracles of the human mind on which the modern world prides itself, and rightly in the main, would be impossible without a certain concentration which disturbs the pure balance of reason more than does religious bigotry. No creed can be so limiting as that awful adjuration that the cobbler must not go beyond his last. So the largest and wildest shots of our world are but in one direction and with a defined trajectory: the gunner cannot go beyond his shot, and his shot so often falls short; the astronomer cannot go beyond his telescope and his telescope goes such a little way. All these are like men who have stood on the high peak of a mountain and seen the horizon like a single ring and who then descend down different paths towards different towns, traveling slow or fast. It is right; there must be people traveling to different towns; there must be specialists; but shall no one behold the horizon? Shall all mankind be specialist surgeons or peculiar plumbers; shall all humanity be monomaniac? Tradition has decided that only half of humanity shall be monomaniac. It has decided that in every home there shall be a tradesman and a Jack-of-all-trades. But it has also decided, among other things, that the Jack-of-all-trades shall be a Jill-of-all-trades. It has decided, rightly or wrongly, that this specialism and this universalism shall be divided between the sexes. Cleverness shall be left for men and wisdom for women. For cleverness kills wisdom; that is one of the few sad and certain things.

But for women this ideal of comprehensive capacity (or common-sense) must long ago have been washed away. It must have melted in the frightful furnaces of ambition and eager technicality. A man must be partly a one-idead man, because he is a one-weaponed man—and he is flung naked into the fight. The world’s demand comes to him direct; to his wife indirectly. In short, he must (as the books on Success say) give “his best”; and what a small part of a man “his best” is! His second and third best are often much better. If he is the first violin he must fiddle for life; he must not remember that he is a fine fourth bagpipe, a fair fifteenth billiard-cue, a foil, a fountain pen, a hand at whist, a gun, and an image of God.

Ace wrote something related a little while ago.

Why Sex Work is Hated

Cracked asked a question, saying they’re asking honestly, so I’ll answer. First the question:

See, we’ve done a few articles on sex workers and porn stars (including a woman who has sex with a ventriloquist dummy on camera) and we keep coming to the same conclusion:

A) The demand for these people’s services is enormous;

B) The vast majority of us partake in some form or another (by consuming porn, if nothing else);

C) They thus fulfill a basic need in a way that the world would sorely miss if they stopped; and

D) We fucking hate them for it. Like, to the point of violence.

Why? We’re honestly asking. Someone let us know.

A & B are both easy to explain: the sex drive of a healthy man is a ravenous beast. Men need sexual release and need it constantly. The fire burns in the loins and the mind and never really stops burning except for those precious few hours after release.

To make matters worse, in today’s liberated society, the male is constantly assaulted with sexual imagery. One can not walk down the street without seeing a girl in a tight and/or low-cut top or ass-accentuating jeans. It’s a constant war for most men between their base urges and societal propriety. They’re constantly seeing on display what they can not have, what they could take but won’t; the whole of society enforcing the cruelty of placing a hamburger in front of a starving man. And man is always starving.

Sex work offers release. A temporary reprieve from the incessant burning and deprivation.

A third aggravating factor can be found in the article:

In other words, a key skill is learning how to simply hang out with clients and make them feel comfortable. Despite what you hear about how men primarily are all about looks, a lot of guys go to strip clubs for more than ogling boobies — they miss (or have never known) having a woman in their life, and for whatever reason this is the only place they can get something a little like that.

Men not only want sex, they want female companionship, a soft place to land, where they can comfortably offload their struggles. Traditionally, a wife would supply this role, but with today’s independent women who value traditionally masculine values over traditionally feminine ones, a soft place to land is not always as easy to obtain.

So there is a demand and this demand is aggravated by modern mores.

Now C is where their observation is not fully accurate as they do not distinguish between the personal and the societal. While sex workers fulfill individuals’ needs, it fails society’s needs. Society needs men to be fathers and to produce. Fatherhood is civilization, but unlike motherhood, fatherhood is not natural, it is a social construct. Like all social constructs it must be maintained and reinforced throughout society or it breaks down.

Sex work tears at fatherhood, it tears at civilization. That is where the seeming contradiction of D comes in, although disapproval or disgust would be a better word than hate. Here are a few of the ways it tears at away at fatherhood:

1) Sex work creates bastards. Children without fathers suffer and generally are less likely to become productive members of society. Before “reliable” birth control was common, bastards were inevitable, but even modern birth control is not as reliable as people claim, and bastards still occur. Fatherless children are societal problems.

2) A man partaking in paid sexual services (or is successful as a cad) is expending effort outside of being a father. He is not spending those same time and resources creating, providing for, and raising his own children.  His own family suffers.

3) In many cases, sexual services (or fornication) may even replace marriage and fatherhood entirely. In this case, the man has no family, he raises no children to carry society forward, women are deprived of a potential husband, and he produces less for society as he produces only for himself, not for his family.

4) A woman turning to sex work is a woman not being a wife and mother. Instead of creating and raising children in a stable family environment she is providing sex for profit. Each sex worker is one less young woman in the marriage pool for men, reducing the incentives for men to work towards marriage. Even after a sex worker retires, she is still not a good prospect for marriage.

If you think this is all no problem, just look at our current society as it has relaxed its mores against fornication and paid sexual services. About 40% of children are born out of wedlock, a third of children live without fathers, a fifth of children live in poverty, our birth rates are well below replacement levels, and young men are dropping out of marriage and the workplace.

On a more personal level: women dislike sex workers because they are in direct competition against them for men, even their own husbands. Men dislike sex workers because it is degrading having to pay for what you wish you could achieve naturally and they’ll externalize this self-hatred.

This is why sex workers are disdained. They tear at the fabric of civilization.

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Another point, what they think of as hate is not always hate, but rather desire and perverted forms of love, particularly when it comes to violence or individual actions. Just looking through the examples of “hate” Cracked provide illustrates this clearly.

Yeah, there’s something about women who are willing to show off their bodies without shame that enrages a very specific sort of terrible person. It’s like they can’t stand the idea of the performer retaining any kind of power at all. “If I’m paying to see her body, I should get total access, regardless of what she says.” Every customer service job requires dealing with entitled dicks, but we’re guessing you’ve never had to deal with that.
…
61 percent of strippers report experiencing someone trying to penetrate them via finger, 82 percent have been punched, and a balls-out terrifying 56 percent reported having a customer freaking follow them home at least once.

That’s not hate, that’s textbook frustrated desire. A man getting handsy or attempting to have sex is not hating, he’s desiring. A man following a woman home is not hate, it is very strong desire.

Where hate might come in is after the fact (ex: the punching): its not all that particularly surprising someone would be hated for rejecting someone by the person being rejected, however irrational that hatred might be.

World War P Beckons

Someone on Twitter shared an Upworthy article on a 19-year-old pedophile who has never gone near a child (not giving Upworthy clicks). The Upworthy article was wasteful clickbait saying to listen to this This American life podcast (I didn’t listen to it). It also link to this sob story of 16-year-old pedophile.* It’s looking more likely that World War P may be on the horizon.

I’ve written on pedophilia recently and you can tell I am not unsympathetic to those struggling with this issue.

That being said, these poor-me articles are just the first step to the normalization of pedophilia. A quick follow-up to World War G and World War T. These pro-pedophilia articles have become relatively common over the past year or so. Over the next decade, expect to see these articles slowly and subtly shift from ‘we have to help these people’ to ‘we should tolerate these people’ to ‘we should accept these people’ to ‘there’s nothing wrong with these people’ to ‘this is an alternative lifestyle’. I don’t think there will be a follow-up to ‘the right to pedophilic marriage’, that seems a bridge too far, but then again, the left is often more audacious then I think they could possibly be.

This is the first blitz of a long war. Be prepared.

To those struggling with pedophilic temptations, the best advice is to suck it up. I know it sucks, but life sucks, get used to it. Don’t make it suck worse for other people. Don’t try to normalize your perversions, don’t try to be accepted, don’t try to have others tolerate your sickness. Recognize there’s something fundamentally wrong with you and do the best you can with it. Maybe talk to a close friend or a helpful online community about it, but otherwise keep to it yourself. Don’t try to force your brokenness on the rest of the world.

But even though you are broken, don’t give into the brokenness; you are a man, not a beast. You can choose whether to be a slave to your passions or not. Don’t abuse children, avoid other tie alone with other people’s children, and avoid illegal porn. If you must to keep temptation away, masturbate to your fantasies or some lolicon. Better a sin against yourself and your own soul than against a child. I would also say, pray to God and accept the Lord’s salvation; he’ll forgive you and love you even if you are fundamentally broken. But whatever you do realize you are not your perversion. You are moral agent, an autonomous being with a will. Exercise it. Do not let your perversion become your identity.

Dear non-practicing pedophile, you are broken at the most fundamental level. Accept it. Fuck your self-esteem. But just because you are broken does not mean you damned. Don’t let your brokenness define you. Define yourself by what you can contribute to the world, not by your brokenness. It will always be there, but you can rise above it. Choose to do so.

That’s all on this for now. Be prepared for the long war. WWP beckons and your children’s innocence is the cost of defeat. For pedophiles, WWP will be an inner war, the cost of defeat your soul and your humanity.

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* Tangential side-note: From the article:

Another study found that being knocked unconscious before the age of 13 might be a factor. This may sound like quackery, but it points toward biological causation. In other words, it’s likely that pedophiles are born this way.

I didn’t know being knocked unconscious was something you were born with. I think left-wing slogans may have poisoned Luke Malone’s mind.