JW has gender on his mind:
I’ve very much enjoyed your articles on the differences between the sexes. People have to willfully misread what you write to believe you have contempt for women, because you clearly do not. You are one of the few men who seem to have the articulation to clearly defend men against undue criticism, and fire back appropriately to the feminists practicing the very sexism that they claim to be opposing.But I would be interested if you could write some time about bullying. We would all agree that a man who physically bullies a woman is scum–just because he is bigger and can do more damage doesn’t give him the right to physically crush any woman who disagrees with him. Such men are met with the appropriate contempt. The flip side. Though it is not as evil to be mouthy as it is to physically harm another, I still find it unacceptable that many women verbally abuse men, and receive little contempt for it. If it is true that you don’t have the right to physically bully someone just becauseyou gifted with more power, should it not also be true that you should not verbally bully someone just because you are gifted with more verbal skill?
There is another hot button right there: I would get bashed for making “generalizations” by some feminists. In reality that is just a cop out, instead of making intellectual arguments they accuse those who disagree as being bigots. In my circle of acquaintances, and probably with yours, there are a few men that do not treat their women well. But the majority of the time, in a group setting, it is the women who disrespect their men. Every 10-15 minutes two things happen: a woman asks a favor of their man, and a woman disses her man (by insulting him, mocking him, scoffing at him, or making him the brunt of a joke). These women regularly say things to or about their man, publicly, that they would be irate about if he said the same. The ironic thing is that most of these women are otherwise decent people, but no one seems to take offense to their verbal snarls at their men–but if a man says something disrespectful there is a rallying call to support the woman.
There are, I think, two mitigating factors that men should keep in mind when considering women’s irritating idiosyncracies. First, women live in a constant state of low-level fear, not necessarily of the men in their lives, but of Man in general. Throughout time, men have been the predators and they have been both prize and prey. If you think about how you feel walking through a bad part of town at night, that’s a reasonable approximation of how they feel all the time.
This fosters a herd mentality. When one woman feels threatened for any reason, the rest rush to circle and present horns, perceiving an attack on one as an attack on all since they have been taught that the personal is political. Amusingly, some feminists confuse this herd mentality with a pack mentality, which explains their confusion when most women won’t join them in going on the misandric attack. This is why highly maleducated young women are always going on and on about what strong women they are and how men fear them, with about as much success as a cow running around baring its teeth and trying to eat meat.
The weak can always get away with behavior that the strong cannot. The man who meekly accedes to his wife’s silly public demands is complicit in his own subjugation in a way that the woman who finds herself picked up and tossed in the car is not. Even military strategists recognize the futility of superior force in their studies of asymmetrical conflict.
Anyhow, the herd mentality exists for a reason and you simply have to accept it. What no one should ever accept, however, is the verbal bullying. I wish every woman would understand that men regard this behavior about as well as women regard a man who physically abuses his wife. If your husband’s friends are strangely quiet around you and their conversation falls silent every time you enter the rooom, there’s a reasonable chance that they consider you the female equivalent of a wife beater. There are a variety of ways to play bully and none of them are attractive. Silence denotes neither acceptance nor approval.
JW is correct and I am no misogynist, but being a male of unusual verbal skills, I have always enjoyed the look of utter shock on a woman’s face when I turn her words around and shred her to bits in public. I’m not sure if it is my ability or my willingness to do so that is more unexpected, but on more than one occasion I have had the impression that the men around were on the verge of breaking into spontaneous applause at the verbal vivisectomy. I can’t stand bullies of any kind and I derive much the same pleasure from taking down a verbal bully as I once did from bouncing a physical bully’s head off a brick wall.
One of the reasons that I married Space Bunny was that she never once forced me to treat her that way; she is far too civilized to play show-the-leash games or indulge in bully-cat behavior. Such women are, in the words of the wise man, more precious than gold.