Courting Calamity Dept.

I hadn't planned to post anything today -- too busy straining to complete Freedom's Scion in time to get it to my worthy editrix Kelly -- but some news items cannot and must not be ignored:

An app dubbed the "Boyfriend Trainer," available in both iTunes and Android stores, is raising a few eyebrows among users.

"Boyfriend Trainer " encourages users to "crack that whip and teach your guy a thing or two," adding, "When scolding doesn't work, just zap him, whack him and train him to be your ideal man!"

The player, depicted as the "girlfriend," advances in the game by physically attacking the "boyfriend" when he does something wrong, like looking at other women.

One customer reviews says, "I hate how this game is so abusive I understand its just a game but kids play this and u don't want this to be an influence on them."

Other reviews praise the game's violent tactics.

"This game is fun I lik to see the boy getting hit by the girl," one user commented.

Let's imagine, just for the sake of argument, that a few impressionable pre-teen girls get hold of this "app" -- Good Lord, how I hate that neologism! -- and absorb from it the "lessons" that:

• Violence toward one's boyfriend is acceptable if it "improves" him;
• And it works, too!

Imagine further that later on in life they decide to apply those "lessons." What do you suppose is likely to happen to them as a result? More critically, who do you expect will be blamed for whatever they might suffer?

Call me a cynic, but somehow I don't see "Games2win India," the maker of this vile "app," coming in for any of the odium.

Excuse me for just a moment while I allow the steam to finish pouring out of my ears.

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A number of voices have been raised in protest against violent video games. My own take on them is that they probably do very little harm, if any at all, to the attitudes of young folks who enjoy them. The reason is simple: They're deliberately made to be far distant from everyday reality as our kids experience it around them. Their extreme contrast with mundane reality prevents kids from transferring any behavior learned in the process of mastering such games to their everyday interactions with others.

Now let's consider the milieu in which "Boyfriend Trainer" exists:

• A large segment of the feminist community -- principally the "angry ugly-girl" portion (Duyen Ky) -- actively promotes contempt for men and routine abuse of them by the women in their lives.
• Such female behavior is frequently depicted in television programs to which our young are exposed every evening.
• The Zeitgeist of our day incorporates the not-entirely-silent assumption that men ought to defer to women, even prostrate ourselves before them, in penance for past "injustices."
• Men being men, we do what men find pleasurable and diverting, and resent being chastised for our preferences. In particular, we look at pretty girls automatically and without regard to any intended action toward them.
• Men being men, we react to aggression by striking back, often with actual intent to wound or kill.

Women are normally safe from violence from the hand of an American man...well, a properly raised Caucasian American man, anyway. We're inhibited against striking our women by a combination of influences, most important among them our conviction that we owe them our protection. But that inhibition can be (and is) weakened by the abuse we receive from the "weaker sex."

(What's that, ladies? You don't like being called weak, or thought of as weak? Pardon my Belgian, but Tough shit. You'd better adjust to reality before it adjusts you right off life's little stage.)

Yet abuse by women of men has risen steadily in recent decades. It's already had significant effects; have a gander at marriage rates for a meaty example. "Boyfriend Trainer" is socioculturally compatible with what our young women see going on around them. It's a nudge toward intensifying the trend already in progress.

And it flirts with the provocation of a backlash that could leave the landscape littered with corpses. Female corpses.

Quite an "app," eh? Going to get it for your twelve-year-old daughter?

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In the matter of the "war between the sexes," tensions are approaching a breaking point. The legal and social conditions of our time have persuaded large numbers of American men that women are dangerous: too dangerous to marry; too dangerous to procreate with; too dangerous to have around even for casual sex. It's not a "shooting war," yet, but a society in which the sexes really are hostile to one another -- in which inter-sexual violence is regarded as acceptable or inevitable -- can't possibly have a pleasant future. If that's at all unclear, you might want to make an appointment to see your brain-care specialist.

Parents, guard your children. Guard their minds. You are their only defense.