Tag: women

Mailvox: suffering suffrage

YM is provided with a compelling argument against the wisdom of granting women the right to vote:

I am a very big fan of your blog and your unique brand of Christian libertarianism. I mentioned to my mother your position on women and the vote. She asked me what I thought and I said that you presented some compelling arguments and I was unsure of my position. She then grounded me and refuses to let me leave the house until I apologize to her and tell her that I believe that women should have the right to vote. I have tried having discussion with her, but she immediately starts comparing me to Hitler.

The punchline? He’s 37. Actually, I have no idea how old he is, but at least he is being provided an informative lesson in female nature, female solipsism, and the authoritarian instincts of women. The Hitler comparison is particularly ironic, given that both the National Socialists and the Fascists were staunch supporters of women’s suffrage and the German party was, in fact, dependent upon it for their 1933 rise to power. It was literally the first plank in “The Manifesto of the Fascist Struggle”, published in The People of Italy on June 6, 1919 by Benito Mussolini.

“Italians! Here is the program of a genuinely Italian movement. It is revolutionary because it is anti-dogmatic, strongly innovative and against prejudice.

For the political problem: We demand:

a) Universal suffrage polled on a regional basis, with proportional representation and voting and electoral office eligibility for women.”

It’s worth noting that the Fascist demand for proportional political female representation is significantly more “progressive” than anything American feminists have ever demanded. Anyhow, I would never recommend apologizing to anyone for accused thought-crimes or submitting to exercises in forced re-education. One is required to honor one’s mother, not submit to her lunatic demands for pious expressions of political correctness.

That’s an easy one

English Actress Louise Brealey has a request: “I’d like every man who doesn’t call himself a feminist to explain to the women in his life why he doesn’t believe in equality for women.”

No problem at all. I don’t believe in equality for women for exactly the same reason I don’t believe in free unicorn rides for women. I note that equality does not exist in any material, scientific, historical, legal, or religious sense. I further note that the mere attempt to bring about this nonexistent state has massively violated human liberties and had a materially negative effect on women throughout the West by a wide variety of metrics.

Now allow me to turn the question around on Miss Brealey and anyone else who believes in equality for women. Why do you claim to believe in something that provably and manifestly does not exist and has never existed?

The death of sex

This can’t help Japan’s demographic decline:

A startling number of Japanese youths have turned their backs on sex and relationships, a new survey has found. The survey, conducted by the Japan Family Planning Association, found that 36% of males aged 16 to 19 said that they had “no interest” in or even “despised” sex. That’s almost a 19% increase since the survey was last conducted in 2008.

If that’s not bad enough, The Wall Street Journal reports that a whopping 59% of female respondents aged 16 to 19 said they were uninterested in or averse to sex, a near 12% increase since 2008.

Combine an economic downturn with the increasing excellence of porn and video games, then throw in female economic independence and this is the result. For all that they are decried as soshoku danshi, the position of the “herbivores” is a perfectly reasonable one.

People often point out that “a real woman” is better than the autoerotic options, but the fact is that a) the real women tend to come with considerably more negatives than they did 50 years ago and b) the gap between a real woman and autoerotica has narrowed considerably in that time, especially for men who are not in the upper half of the socio-sexual rankings.

Throw in the difference in time and money expenditure, and one can see it is a real testimony to how highly men value actual women when one considers how compelling the alternatives have become in the last two decades.

Blind eyes won’t see

If you’ve placed a negative value on unborn little girls, then you shouldn’t be terribly surprised when those who manage survive the pre-natal gauntlet aren’t valued any more highly:

So was it capitalism that deadened those drivers and passers-by to the death of one little girl, or was it a culture that traditionally devalues girls and that has, for thirty years, had enforced a government policy that, inevitably, means that girls are killed in utero? If girls are so valueless in utero, why should their value increase ex utero? The message that Chinese citizens have absorbed is simple: Don’t get involved as a general matter because the government is likely to come after you — and considering the risk, you should especially avoid getting involved with a manifestly disposable citizen, i.e., one little girl in bright pink trousers.

It is sheer lunacy to attempt to blame capitalism for the more than a dozen people who walked by, indifferent to the suffering of the dying little girl. These are people who have been taught for the entirety of their existence that a) there are too many people and b) killing little girls is a social good. Now they’re supposed to suddenly switch gears because there is one less undesirable little girl to overpopulate China?

Quite clearly, that’s not going to happen. There is nothing wrong with those Chinese individuals that isn’t the result of social engineering. This is the New Chinese Man that Mao wanted to create. They aren’t monsters so much as they are the product of a monstrous society, raised from birth to be blind to the suffering and death of little girls.

When sheep stampede

The retarded groupthink of the female left never ceases to provide amusement at their expense:

You may have heard about Andrew Meyer earlier this week from The Stranger, Jezebel, or Facebook. Meyer’s name was tweeted thousands of times on Monday and Tuesday, often with links leading to articles about him. Jezebel’s story on Meyer got almost 100,000 views, while one of the hundreds of people who weighed in on him on Twitter dubbed him the grand “tool of the week.” For those who haven’t heard about Meyer, his instant fame can be explained thusly: On Friday night, Meyer and a female friend went into Seattle’s Bimbo’s Cantina for food and drinks. Their server that evening was Victoria Liss. According to Liss, after the couple had behaved like jerks—mocking the food, dipping their hands into the tip jar—Meyer paid without leaving Liss any gratuity. He then took his rudeness a step further, by writing at the bottom of his bill, “P.S. You could stand to loose [sic] a few pounds.”

Understandably hurt, Liss did what anyone would do in this day and age: She took her anger to her computer. She posted a photo of Meyer’s receipt onto her Facebook page and wrote underneath it, “[T]he best part is he was dressed like that gay kid on Glee. Yuppie scum!” From there, it was off to the blog races.

Jezebel filed its post on Meyer under “Assholes.” Dan Savage, one of the most widely read alt-weekly columnists in America, also jumped on him, writing, “[Y]ou probably weren’t the only person to stiff a bartender in Seattle this weekend. But you were the only person dumb/hateful/angry enough to write this on your credit card slip.” Crushable picked up the Meyer story and published his full name, where he works, the name of his college, what fraternity he was in, and his full signature, all under the title, “Seattle Area Douchebag Gains Internet Notoriety For Stiffing And Insulting His Server.” The article even included a passage of search terms at the end to up the likelihood it would come up if someone—employers, dates, friends—Googles Meyer’s name.

Like with the lynch mobs of old, things move fast in the age of internet justice. Within about 72 hours from the moment Liss got stiffed, hundreds of people, united and galvanized by blogs, jumped into action and attempted to ruin a stranger’s reputation because he said something mean to another stranger. There was just one problem: They got the wrong guy.

So, in the barely self-aware minds of these ungulates, failing to tip a fat waitress justifies a mass attempt to ruin an individual’s reputation. But it is obvious in light of her subsequent behavior that the waitress probably provided unsatisfactory service and thus merited her lack of compensation, though perhaps not the editorial on her lack of personal fitness.

Surely all of these third-wits merit the very same behavior they dished out to the wrong individual. If I owned Bimbo’s Cantina, I would immediately fire Victoria Liss. And if I owned Jezebel, I would fire the responsible editors. The customer may not always be right, but in no case does he merit a public sheep stampede, especially over what amounts to absolutely nothing.

The demise of equalitarianism

Logic is now beginning to lead others to conclude something I asserted here long ago. And that assertion should never have been any more controversial than a statement that water is wet or increasing the labor supply reduces wage rates. Sexual equality is not societally viable:

The question becomes: what are we going to give up? Family formation? Sexual equality? Sexual liberty? (By sexual equality I mean the presumption that women should be legally, economically, and educationally equal to men. By sexual liberty I mean both an absence of formal legal sanctions and an absence of guilt and psychological repression.) It looks very much as through we can’t have all three of those sustainably, and (this is the thought that really disturbs me) we may not even get to have more than one.

If we give up family formation it’s game over; we’ll be outbred by cultures that don’t. So that’s off the table. Following out the logic, the demographic future will belong to cultures that give up either sexual liberty or sexual equality, or both.

But those options aren’t symmetrical. Because, remember, the problem with today’s sexual economics is not symmetrical. It’s not women who are bailing out of the marriage market in droves, it’s men. Accordingly (as the author of the NY Post recognizes) the odds of rolling back sexual liberty are close to nil. Men don’t have to play on those terms for fundamental bioenergetic reasons (release of semen is cheap), and women post-Pill are demonstrating an unwillingness to try to make them. Because, you know, more sex (see “miswiring”, above).

I am led to a conclusion I don’t like. That is: Sexual equality is unstable. If women can’t buy marriage with sex, they’ll have to bid submission instead. This tactic also combines well with hypergamic desire – if the mean social power of men is automatically higher than that of women, more potential pairings constitute marrying up.

I don’t have a submissive wife and never wanted one. I like strong and independent women. It therefore horrifies me to reach the conclusion that sexually repressive patriarchies may after all be a better deal for most womens’ reproductive success than the relative equality they have now is. But that’s where the logic leads.

I don’t have a problem with it myself, since I don’t believe in the nonexistent fairy tale called equality. But Raymond’s logic is correct. It’s all about the demographics and the future belongs to those who show up for it. The feminist version of equality was never any more viable than the Communist one.

A silver lining in the economic cloud

The consequences of the global depression aren’t all bad; more women might actually stay home to raise their children. But once it becomes clear that a working mother doesn’t actually make any net profit from her job, it should be readily apparent that she is only “working” in order to socialize and avoid the harder work of raising her children:

Every day, dozens of middle-class mothers decide they cannot afford to return to work after having a baby. It’s not because they believe a woman’s place is in the home — many love their jobs and want to return to well-paid careers — but because it’s cheaper to stay at home.

In the past 12 months, on average, household bills have soared by 20 pc, National Insurance has risen by £70 a year, £545 in child tax credits has been taken away, and child benefit was frozen. Childcare costs have rocketed, too. According to children’s charity the Daycare Trust, parents pay 25 per cent more to send a two-year-old child to nursery than five years ago.

And the situation is going to get worse. From next year many families earning more than £25,000 will be stripped of even more child tax credits because of Government cuts. And from January 1, 2013, any household with a higher-rate taxpayer paying 40 per cent tax will lose child benefit worth £1,752 a year.

Figures Aviva has compiled for Money Mail show the cost of childcare is already so high that a mother of two children earning £25,000 a year — and with a husband earning £43,000, just over the higher tax threshold — would have just £300 left a month once childcare and the commuting costs have been taken into account.

And after child benefit is stripped away next year for families with a higher-rate earner she will have just £153 a month left from a month of full-time work — a figure which will drop further if childcare costs and fuel prices keep rising. Her husband’s salary must cover all bills, housing costs, clothes and food and savings.

This article highlights something I pointed out some years ago, which is that about half the female participation in the workforce is detrimental to society. It lowers wages, it harms the development of children, it decreases the quality of marriage, it increases infidelity and divorce, and it reduces workplace productivity. And all for nothing. There are no positive societal consequences from the increased involvement of women in the workforce; many suffer and no one benefits except for four relatively small groups.

1. Daycare providers. An industry exists where one wasn’t required before.

2. Corporations. The increased supply of labor has pushed media male wages down to a level last seen in 1968.

3. Divorce lawyers. “Compared to non-working women, those with a full-time job have a 29 per cent higher odds of divorce.”

4. Retired old men. In 1950, 45.8 percent of men over 65 worked. In 2000, 17.5 percent did. In 1950, 86.9 percent of men 55-64 worked. In 2000, 67.3 percent did. Young mothers are leaving their children in daycare and working in order to pay for old men to play golf. This is not the most sustainable of societies, and as Instapundit likes to say, that which cannot continue won’t.

There are exceptions to every rule and about 30 percent of women have always worked. But society needs middle class young women to marry, stay home, and raise children. It doesn’t need them making Powerpoint demonstrations and having affairs with the married sales manager.

What feminism is

In Gloria Steinem’s own words:

“Feminism starts out being very simple. It starts out being the instinct of a little child who says ‘it’s not fair’ and ‘you are not the boss of me,’ and it ends up being a worldview that questions hierarchy altogether.”

In other words, it is an intrinsically childish ideology founded on an abstraction and defies empirical reality and the entire historical record of Man. That sounds about right.

On surviving gossip

And it doesn’t require Hercule Poirot to determine why men might be disinclined to pay attention:

The typical woman spends five hours a day – more than a third of her waking hours – chatting and gossiping, a study has revealed. Whether at home or work women natter for about 298 minutes every day, it found. Discussing other people’s problems, who is dating who and other people’s children form the basis of most of the chat.

One of the things I find fascinating about social etiquette is the way that what is frowned upon in the Bible, considered a mortal sin by the Catholic Church, and considered to be a deathly bore by nearly half the population is nevertheless considered nearly de rigueur in casual social situations. Many women don’t seem to understand that gossip is actually less interesting and more painful to most men than listening to an engineer with Asperger’s drone on about thermodynamics or tax law is to most women.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I still laugh every time I think of my father’s summary of a dinner in which he was seated between two well-known social butterflies. “Now I know what Hell is like.”

Now, I don’t personally have a problem with the aforementioned female nattering so long as I am not expected to listen to it. I am fortunate in that Spacebunny has a relatively low tolerance for it herself. And sometimes, if it’s occurring in the background while I am reading a book or something, it can even be amusing to track the circular pattern as two women run out of gas on a subject, cast about for a new one, and then find their stride again by simply revisiting a topic that has been discussed already, in some cases repeating the previous discussion almost verbatim. It’s hilarious.

This repetition makes no sense to men because they don’t derive the same chemically-derived sense of pleasure from a communication process that has been discovered to release oxytocin and serotonin to the brain. But once you realize that women who are repeating themselves in this manner are simply doing the equivalent of a lab rat repeatedly hitting the bar that provides it a nice hit of coke, the whole thing makes a lot more sense. This may help explain why women have a tendency to keep repeating an ineffective punchline when they’re telling a joke or story as if it’s going to be funnier the second or third time. It appears to be a technique that works effectively in gossip mode that doesn’t translate well to storytelling mode.

On the other hand, if a woman wishes to be taken seriously by men, she has to avoid doing this sort of thing in front of them at all costs. There are few things that will relegate a woman to the “pay no attention ever” zone faster than being the sort of woman who is unable to discuss anything except people that she knew in high school or college. Sometimes, when listening to a female acquaintance babble and burble on about complete strangers, it takes every bit of my conscious focus to refrain from politely asking “on what planet do you believe that I give even the most infinitesimally airborne, electroniscopically small flying fornication about these people, who, based on the distressingly fulsome stream of data you have so thoughtfully provided, are not only terminally uninteresting but quite clearly retarded as well?”

Or, alternatively, pretending to be plastered to a rock like the woman in Aliens.

Anyhow, in the same way it behooves the intellectual to learn something about sports, television, or current events in order to be able to function in society, it is wise for the gossip to do the same in order to not be a crashing, soul-killing bore that no one with an IQ over 100 takes seriously.

The basic social principle by which I operate is one I believe to be both effective and fair. If you don’t subject me to a monologue or dialogue about the personal affairs of people I don’t know or don’t care about, I will not subject you to a monologue on the rules of Advanced Squad Leader, the argumentative structure featured in the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas, or the way in which a Japanese naval invasion of the American West Coast in 1942 was an extremely remote improbability bordering on the impossible, being militarily useless, logistically problematic, and historically unplanned. That seems fair, doesn’t it?

And thanks to technology, there is an even better solution now readily available to all and sundry. If people insist on being rude enough to engage in conversations that are intrinsically exclusive by nature, just whip out your phone or ebook reader and happily ignore them. This is particularly effective if one is being subjected to the most extreme form of gossiper, the “performance conversationalist”. I’m not saying that men can’t be crashing bores too. Of course they can be; I probably have exceptional potential in that line myself. But there is no reason why female bores should be suffered with any less reluctance and resistance than male bores.

Ever more efficiently killing girls

It is interesting, if entirely predictable, to see how the equalitarian perspective is rapidly shifting from the mother’s right to kill her unborn child to contemplating a legal ban on the mother being permitted to know the sex of her unborn child:

Blood drawn from expectant mothers could offer parents an earlier sneak peek at their baby’s sex than methods currently used in the U.S., researchers said Tuesday. The test may be particularly valuable for families that harbor sex-linked genetic disorders like hemophilia, they add. Because such disorders mostly strike boys, knowing that the baby is a girl could spare the mother diagnostic procedures, such as amniocentesis, that carry a small risk of miscarriage.

“It could reduce the number of invasive procedures that are being performed for specific genetic conditions,” said Dr. Diana Bianchi of Tufts University School of Medicine, who worked on the new study.

But other researchers voiced concerns, saying it could be misused to terminate a pregnancy if the baby isn’t of the desired sex.

“What you have to consider is the ethics of this,” said Dr. Mary Rosser, an obstetrician and gynecologist at the Montefiore Medical Center in New York. “If parents are using it to determine gender and then terminate the pregnancy based on that, that could be a problem,” she told Reuters Health. “Remember, gender is not a disease.”

Au contraire, Dr. Rosser. If you accept the abortionist position, then fetal gender is a terminal disease if the mother determines it to be so. Needless to say, with this new scientific advance, we can expect the ratio of male/female births to increase significantly in the next ten years. Isn’t feminism wonderful? Thanks to feminism, women can vote for Democrats, work full-time even if they don’t want to, compile impressive STD collections and own all the cats they want… assuming they can manage to survive the increasingly hostile environment of their fully informed mother’s wombs.

The equalitarians appear to have failed to consider that if demographic concerns and sexual birth ratios are to be considered a legitimate basis for legal policies, there should be no qualms about passing federal laws requiring women to get married and bear their first child prior to the age of 25.