What Men Need To Be

     There are subjects about which I shouldn’t write. Not because I have nothing to say about them, mind you, but because even thinking about them raises my blood pressure close to the catastrophic failure level. Worse, those subjects have been multiplying at an alarming rate. It suggests that fairly soon I’ll be reduced to doing my frothing at the mouth in total silence.

     Whether for good or for ill, my Gentle Readers send me links to all manner of articles, including articles on subjects of the variety mentioned above. (No, I’m not about to ask them to stop.) So regardless of my cardiologist’s recommendations, I daily confront examples of irrationality and viciousness that light my boilers and get steam pouring out of my ears. And before you ask: Yes, I have one before me this morning:

     Women are challenging incumbents up and down the ballot, banding together to demand action on gun violence, going undercover to fight misinformation online, pushing for consequences for perpetrators of sexual assault, organizing against laws restricting access to reproductive care.

     And every so often, we stop to look for the men in the room. We scroll through our Twitter feeds, our group text threads, our email chains. We look for the ones who chimed in, took a stand, organized their workplaces or their communities.

     Too often, we’re left craning our necks. We have male allies in Congress and in our workplaces and at home who’ve made important contributions to the fight for gender equity, to be sure. But we have many, many more men on the sidelines.

     If you’re a conservative – of either sex – the above ought to incense you. At the very least it should have you repressing some very naughty language. As Dad was a Navy man, I assure you that I’d be right there alongside you.

     “Action on gun violence.” Excuse me? Don’t we already have laws against assault with a deadly weapon? Or do you have it in mind to take our guns from us?

     “Perpetrators of sexual assault.” Got anyone in mind? Bill Clinton, perhaps? Maybe Joseph Biden? Or is this an attempt to refuel the “#MeToo” wagon that’s making men shy away from women in more and more venues?

     “Misinformation online.” From what sources? The New York Times’s recent attempts to persuade us that the duly elected President of these United States is actually a Russian agent? Or its more recent initiative to persuade us that America’s founding principle has always been slavery? Or are we talking about “progressives’” drive to censor Americans who disagree with them?

     And what’s this about “restricting access to reproductive care” – ? Is your concern about the expense of in vitro fertilization services? Do you have even one example of a pregnant woman being denied gynecological or obstetrical services? Or is this another veiled attempt to conflate “reproductive care” with abortion?

     If the authoress of the article is hoping for male allies for those “causes,” I wouldn’t advise her to hold her breath while she waits.

---

     It’s been said that we all get more conservative as we get older. That pattern isn’t without exceptions. I’ve known a couple of people who got more left-inclined over time. I haven’t seen one of them in some years, but I’m still in touch with the other, so the “aging makes you grow more conservative” rule does have exceptions.

     What aging does seem to do to each of us, quite reliably, is to reduce our tolerance for bullshit. Life’s too short always to be mucking out one’s mental stable. That includes feminist bullshit. I’ve certainly had enough of it, and I know I’m not alone in that regard.

     This Reshma Saujani appears not to be in touch with the trends: specifically, what she and her feminist allies have done to drive American men away from women. For that is the direction in which American men have been moving for nearly twenty years. Let’s list some of the causative influences:

• Employment law’s preferential treatment for women;
• The “guilty until proven innocent” standard on women’s allegations of male sexual misconduct;
• The destabilization of marriage through “no-fault” divorces;
• The destruction of fathers’ rights under modern family law;
• The pauperization of divorced men through specious “child support” provisions;
• Women’s increasing disdain for families and children, including their own;
• The feminization of education, from grade school through university education.

     Those are just the ones that come to mind at this early hour. There are others.

     While all that’s been going on, with the entirely understandable consequence that American men are retreating from engagement with women, women have come to exhibit many of the maladies that were once regarded as “men’s problems:”

• Drinking to excess;
• Shortness of temper;
• Constant fatigue and mental lapses;
• Slovenliness, vulgarity and foul speech;
• A tendency to lash out at family members;
• And of course, constant complaints about being unappreciated.

     Could there be any better evidence that the supposed gains women have made since the advent of post-war feminism have actually been losses – for all of us?

     Yet women are still demanding more privileges – free birth control, free abortions, special workplace accommodations, seat quotas in corporate management, et cetera – and whining about not having any “male allies.”

     If Miss Saujani expects men with any significant amount of self-respect to sign onto that, she’s seriously deluded. Yet her article appears in Fortune, a place I’d not have expected to see such nonsense. Nor is it her first publication there.

     Better do your ally-prospecting among the soyboys and beta cucks, Reshma baby; you won’t get much action from genuine men.

---

     As I’m feeling even more exercised at the moment than I was when I first set my fingers to the keys, allow me a brief personal statement.

     As the song goes, there’ve been some women in my life. You could say I’ve known my share. Most of them have been decent sorts, even those who parted company with me on unfriendly terms. But the emergence of aggressively demanding, “entitled” women, including a growing number who openly proclaim men to be “the enemy,” has made it harder for me to trust any woman. They don’t show the telltales quickly enough for me to award the classical “benefit of the doubt.” So I tend to avoid them in just about all venues and all circumstances: socially, occupationally, at my parish, and in my neighborhood.

     My attitude is hardly unique. I’ve known just as many men as women. Ever more of them are taking a noli me tangere attitude toward the “fairer sex.” It’s safer that way, even if can make one’s nights a bit lonely.

     When I met the woman who is now my wife, I was on the verge of vowing to stay away from women for good. And there have been moments since then when I’ve wondered if it might have been the best course even so.

     To any American women who have suffered through this diatribe: It’s time to choose. You can be an “entitled” harridan enlisted in the war on men, or you can be a decent person who takes us as we are and asks nothing more. Men are not going to award their love, their respect, or their fellowship to the former sort of female, no matter how good she looks in a bikini. We’re certainly not going to ally ourselves with your anti-male “causes.”

     Consider yourselves warned.

Who Makes The Rules?

     Enjoy a little television history: from the black-and-white days, it’s Abbott and Costello:

     Now you and I both know that no version of the game of poker honors anything like a “kangaroo straight.” Abbott sleazed that into being to collect the pot. Unfortunately, the YouTube clip ends there, because in the very next hand Costello presents a “kangaroo straight” and reaches for the pot, whereupon Abbott says “It’s only good once a game,” and rakes the pot in for himself.

     And with that, we turn to the news.

---

     Concerning modes of acceptable conduct between the sexes – and, sorry all y’all “genderqueer,” “two-spirited,” and the like: there are only two sexes — what are the rules, who established them, and who has the authority to amend or suspend them?

     Kurt Schlichter wants to know about that and more:

     Forgive my confusion, but I’m trying to figure out how this all works. If rules are going to guide my behavior by providing negative consequences for their violation, it’s not unreasonable to want to know exactly what they are. Except all these rules that I and other Normals are expected to follow, well, they don’t make a lot of sense. I just want to know what they are. Maybe you liberals and Fredocons can help a brother out.

     It’s quintessential Schlichter, so by all means read the whole thing. His point isn’t hard to discern.

     Social rules are not legislated laws. They don’t involve arrests, indictments, and trials. But some of them, historically, have been grounds for ostracism or worse. Woe betide him who violates one of those and fails to make amends. His life might as well end right then and there.

     The old Victorian phrase “That’s not done” is apposite here. It was a way of describing a firm social rule with severe penalties that everyone in Victorian society was expected to observe and enforce. God Himself couldn’t bail you out of a violation – and He would frown most severely upon one who failed to enforce such a rule when it demanded enforcement.

     If that sounds harsh, well...it was. But it had several salutary effects:

1. Parents were meticulous in teaching the rules to their children;
2. Adults who sought to violate a rule made sure to do so secretly and with discretion;
3. Legislated law did not address the realms of human conduct that were covered by the rules.

     Mind you, the rules were violated. Indeed, the rules concerning sexual conduct were violated rather frequently, at least if we can believe the statistics about prostitution during the Victorian Era. Nevertheless, men who patronized prostitutes endeavored to do so discreetly. They strove to keep their wives and children from finding out – and if a man’s misbehavior was discovered, he was expected to display extreme penitence and to make whatever amends he could to his wife, even if she were to divorce him for it.

     The rules demanded all of that.

---

     Victorian society didn’t possess some sort of board that met regularly to codify the social rules. They weren’t anyone’s conscious creation. They emerged epiphenomenally from other powerful and pervasive social currents, most notably Christianity.

     As the United States was largely the creation of colonists from England, the rules as the English observed, enforced, and promulgated them became our rules as well. We also inherited England’s Christianity, of course; the Christian faith and the rules went together. In consequence, Americans from the Founding Era forward tended toward Victorian norms of sexual conduct. Those norms had overwhelming force until about 1960.

     When the rules lose force, it’s unlikely that anything effective will replace them. Legislated law has sharp limits; a law that more than about 2% of a large population wants to violate or disdains to enforce is effectively null and void. Neither is it guaranteed that new rules with adequate cohesion and social concurrence will emerge.

     However, in recent years we have seen Leftist activists of various kinds attempt to proclaim new rules, founded on their own imagined authority. The militant feminists have tried it. The homosexuals have tried it. The “gender-fluid” camp is trying it as well. In the usual case, their enforcement mechanism is harassment, extortion, or blackmail. (Cf. this piece on “human resources” departments.)

     Owing to Leftist colonization of major commercial, educational, and entertainment institutions, plus the highly confused current state of sexual ethics, those activists have been getting their way...even when they change their rules in mid-stream.

---

     It is insufficient to wish for the old rules back. They’re not coming back; they’ve been shattered too completely to reassemble. Anyway, the Christianity that underpinned them has weakened too far to sustain them.

     Neither can legislation take the place of the old rules. As I mentioned in a conversation elsewhere, laws against adultery and fornication are on the books in every state of the Union. They’re not enforced; they don’t command adequate social concurrence for enforcement. You might as well try to enforce laws against selling and consuming alcoholic beverages. (Wait, what’s that you say? We’ve tried that? Oh, sorry; my mistake.)

     What we can do is deny the noisy activists their pretenses of authority. They who seek to pillory Brett Kavanaugh for imagined teenage misbehavior, while excusing Bill Clinton for his capric cavortings and Roman Polanski for actual, admitted rape of a young teenager, must be stepped on – hard. If there are no rules, then activists have no authority to make any — and certainly not to compose “rules” that only apply when it pleases them.

     For here we have an uber-rule that must be enforced lest society perish:

If there are rules, they shall apply:
1. To everyone,
2. At all times and places,
3. Regardless of anyone’s preferences.

     That’s the Big Rule: the one that determines whether we have a functioning society or a war of each against all. Verbum sat sapienti.

Problems

     “What can’t be cured must be endured.” – old saying

     I was about to begin a typical tirade on a subject of current political interest. You can thank (or blame) Professor Reynolds for deflecting me from that course by reminding me about that little video just below.

     Some truths, particularly truths about the nature of Mankind and its components, must be expressed through humor. They’re too painful otherwise. If we try to confront them in the stark, no-BS manner with which men approach most serious problems, they inspire an immediate recoil, a desire not to see. That ostrich-like “make it go away” response is really a confession of sorts: the admission that we have encountered a fact that displeases us greatly, but that we can do absolutely nothing about. That’s why – apart from the humor of it – I viewed that little video as important enough to feature here a second time.

     For one with the engineering mentality – i.e., the mindset that views an encountered unpleasantness as something to be remedied as quickly and conveniently as possible – the acceptance of an immutable tragedy is about the most draining experience one can have. I’ve got that mentality in spades. All face cards, at that.

     The old maxim at the top of the page has the feel of an eternal truth, and perhaps it is. But there’s a word in there that bugs the living daylights out of me, precisely because I see an unpleasant condition as something to be remedied. The word, of course, is can’t.

     I view that word as a personal affront. I’ll divert the stars from their courses rather than concede that a problem is beyond my powers to solve. Whether the problem is expressed in formulas or homilies, my natural inclination is to solve the BLEEP!ing thing. The most painful moments in my life have been when I confronted a problem I could not solve...or a problem to which the only solutions involved consequences worse than the problem itself.

     And I’m here to tell you: If you’re a man – i.e., a possessor of the fabled Y chromosome and its multitudinous glories – you’re likely to feel exactly the same way. It’s a better test for gender than anything but a crotch inspection.

---

     A beautiful theory, killed by a nasty, ugly little fact. – Thomas Huxley

     These days it’s considered gauche to talk about the differences between the sexes, despite their obviousness and their evident importance. But a Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch will be aware that that has never stopped me. Moreover, as the taboo against frank discussion of sex differences has persisted, those differences have become ever more significant drivers of the tensions between men and women. The urgency of bringing the subject back into our discourse is near to critical.

     One of the most important of those differences is the response to pain or loss. A typical man will respond to an unpleasant event or condition by trying to remedy it. A typical woman will prefer to talk about it to a sympathetic listener or a circle thereof.

     (Yes, there are exceptions. Need I remind my Gentle Readers – of either sex – that exceptions are exceptional? I didn’t think so.)

     There are many possible explanations for why this is so. That this is so is a fact. It lurks behind the statistical distribution of aptitudes and occupations between the sexes. It’s the reason we don’t see nearly as many female engineers as male engineers. I mean engineer in its strict sense: one who solves technological problems. I consider terms such as “sales engineer” and “requirements engineer” to be nothing but amphigory.

     In consequence of this difference, a woman who brings a personal problem to a man will likely be unsatisfied, perhaps even offended, by his response. “Fix the BLEEP!ing problem!” he will reply. He might even volunteer to do so himself. That won’t please her if what she wants is sympathy. Indeed, it might even induce her to perpetuate the problem deliberately until she can get some sympathy for it.

     His frustration at having his inclination denied and his aptitude spurned will be as painful to him as her problem is to her. Possibly more so, as it amounts to a denial of his nature: a denigration of what he’s good at.

     It’s one of the things driving an increasing number of men to go their own way.

---

     Before the tide of propaganda condemning the traditional sex roles as “patriarchal oppression,” the phenomenon I’ve described above was far less important. Men had their duties and responsibilities; women had theirs. Men had their social circles; women had theirs. Men had their approaches to problems; women had theirs. Few women expected a man to treat a problem the way a woman does. Indeed, a sensible woman – and women were far more sensible back when – would bring a problem to her man only if she wanted it solved.

     Such matters are torturous today for two reasons:

• Women are relentlessly propagandized from an early age to believe that they can do anything a man can do, and just as well, regardless of all the evidence to the contrary;
• Men are mercilessly browbeaten for being inclined to solve problems, and for being superior to women at the concentrated focus and logical thought processes problem-solving requires: i.e., for being men

     Of course, to say that where a woman can hear is likely to reap the whirlwind. As women have a disproportionate degree of social and political power today, the consequences can be devastating.

     Yet the psychological cleavage between the sexes persists. Why should we have expected anything else? Propaganda changes nothing. It doesn’t reduce women’s greater need for sympathy, or women’s superiority in providing it. The major difference today is that women have been deflected from their traditional roles in numbers so great that when she wants sympathy rather than a solution, the person nearest her will most likely be a man.

     Quite a lot of marriages have been wrecked on that rock. It’s made harder to avoid by another contemporary tendency: her tendency to object to his having space, time, and friends of his own. Should he bridle at that and insist on his prerogatives, he could find himself on the receiving end of a ton of shit – a metric ton.

     Our society having become what it is today, there’s nothing he can do about it. He cannot cure it, much as he’d like to. Yet enduring it is damned near impossible.

---

     “What can’t be cured must be endured.” It’s a tautology, really. Nor does it address those cases where “enduring it” brings suffering one might find too great to support.

     There are times it seems to me that no one is getting what he needs – “he” this time in the generic-singular sense that encompasses persons of both sexes. Men need to be appreciated and accepted for what we are; women need to be appreciated and accepted for what they are. The solution is in plain sight. It seems too obvious for words. Yet it’s been anathematized by forces determined to remake Mankind according to patterns utterly antithetical to the natures of the sexes.

     As matters stand, the problem is insoluble. And it hurts like hell to have to admit it.

     Time for Mass.

Moo-oo! Don't you LOVE the sound of skewered feminist-sacred-cows in the morning!

As one of many supporters of "The Red Pill" (including the humble founder of Liberty’s Torch, whose name I spotted in the credits, but not mine, because I guess I was too much of a cheapskate to qualify for that perk), and now a recent pre-release viewer, I presumed (like I imagine director Cassie Jaye did) going on this documentary-adventure would hold no big surprises for me.

LOL

My arrogance came, I suppose, because I was "Red-Pilled" a while back. I thought I knew enough not to be surprised - or impressed. But turns out her film did both! I became aware of the Men’s Rights Movement (via avoiceformen.com) in late 2011 - participating actively there for several years: commenting often and writing a few pieces that Paul Elam published on the site. (The photo-collage within the collage, above, is of me with just a few of the amazing people I met at AVfM's 1st International Conference on Men's Issues, held outside Detroit, in 2014.)

A most remarkable thing about documentary creator, Cassie Jaye, is that she is a young woman who boldly went where most of her Feminist sisters will never go...to their ideological opposition. Even more radical, was HOW she went: NOT screaming, NOT blockading, and NOT making threats of violence, but rather, with a willingness to listen. To learn. And to reconsider, even jettison, intellectual inconsistencies, without regard for the personal paradigm-shifts such honesty can bring...

Based upon my experience, both in the world of the Men's Rights' Movement and in watching this film about it, I can guarantee 100% that you will learn something unique and valuable. And because I believe this so strongly, I’m very confident that if you watch it with an open mind (and heart) - intuitively grasping the significance - you will become a better person for having done so. I hope you will take the transformative Red-Pill journey made possible by this amazing young filmmaker, and then pass it on to others.

If you can bear the entirety of my 1900-word review/analysis, please visit my blog: housewife3-0.com.

Quickies: Biter Bit Dept.

     According to Breitbart News, Hillary Clinton said the following in a promotional video:

     “You have the right to be heard. You have the right to be believed. We’re with you,” Clinton said in the video, which she addressed to “every survivor of sexual assault.”

     Leaving aside the ludicrous comparison of that statement with her husband’s several accusers, consider this: A right is a property that it’s moral to defend with force, including (if necessary) lethal force. Therefore, if Miss Smith, who alleges that she has been sexually assaulted, possesses “a right to be believed:”

• If I choose to disbelieve her, she has the right to use force to change my mind;
• Failing that, she can enlist helpers – most likely, policemen – to arrest me on the charge of violating her rights;
• If, upon indictment, trial, and conviction, I were to continue to assert my disbelief, my life would be forfeit for it.

     Mrs. Clinton was at one time a lawyer. Lawyers are supposed to be sensitive to the meanings and connotations of words. Somehow I don’t think she really means what she said – especially given her acceptance of Bill’s philandering, her dismissal of the accusations of Paula Jones, Kathleen Willey, Monica Lewinsky, and Juanita Broaddrick, and her defense, in 1975, of accused rapist Thomas Alfred Taylor:

     In 2008, during the height of her presidential primary campaign, Newsday published an in-depth story about Clinton's involvement with the trial. Newsday argued that Clinton's account in "Living History" left out "a significant aspect of her defense strategy - attempting to impugn the credibility of the victim." She reportedly sent an affidavit during the trial requesting the girl undergo a psychiatric examination at the university's clinic, and without offering any source, alleged that the victim had often sought older men. The case, Newsday claimed, "offers a glimpse into the way Clinton deals with crisis. Her approach, then and now, was to immerse herself in even unpleasant tasks with a will to win."

     My, my!