Showing posts with label Feminism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Feminism. Show all posts

Thursday, February 25, 2016

Why I Am Not a Feminist. Part n +2: Strong, Independent Women Don't Need It




I come from a family tradition of strong, independent, competent women.  In choosing women friends and partners I search out those same qualities. None to my knowledge call themselves feminists.  They are too busy being twice as good as the average man to achieve their goals in life.  (As more than one noted “Fortunately that is not difficult.") If a man tries to be a prick, they don't try to change his ways or his attitude they simply ignore him, or as one commented dripping in sarcasm "God, I am really impressed!"  The reason men are pricks is to attract the attention of women, and feminists play into their hands by objecting to it. 

Sunday, February 21, 2016

Why I Am Not a Feminist. Part n+3: Men Will Always Be Boys

Incels, single men, and philanders have been catcalling women since birds learned to sing.  Women have been ignoring them since then if they are not interested.  Some women take a catcall as a complement and respond with a non-inviting flirt move.  Some women may actually check out the catcaller to see if he might be interesting and if so make an inviting flirt move.  She may even look up and smile.  This is behavior that can be observed in all sexual creatures.  

 The campaign claiming that this demeans women is totally worthless.  Women are sex objects.  So are men.   But whatever attracts his interest the man must make his interest known to the strange woman in order to have any chance of meeting her at all.  Women are expected to be more subtle, but if she sees a stranger that may be a desirable sex toy or a sugar daddy she will certainly find a way to make it known.

 "If a man stops looking lustfully at a woman, bury him he is dead."  The feminist insistence that there is something wrong with a man who appreciates the physical differences in the women he meets when women are flaunting those differences in every encounter are not only making feminism look ridiculous but expecting men to not be male mammals.

There must be limits. It used to be that there were universal social signals that were respected and enforced by both genders.  A man at a bar who touched a woman who had just turned her back to him risked anything from a physical attack by some other man, to ostracism, to somebody of either gender to loudly commenting "Leave her alone, go jack off in your own back yard."  These signals seem to be still evolving in this more permissive and equal opportunity "Hook-up" culture, but among reasonable people seem to be known and agreed to.  The rape culture is fighting back, but then rapists were never reasonable people.  One can't help but wonder if the wolf crying in the first paragraph has not decreased sensitivity to actual abuse.     

Saturday, February 20, 2016

Why I Am Not a Feminist. Part n +4: No Action on Women's Work

Feminism seems to be unconcerned about women and men doing "women's work" other than insisting that they have non-gendered titles. They are too busy trying to get equal pay in "men's jobs" to pay any attention at all to getting equal pay in "women's jobs"
  • The caretakers: Nurses, Physician Assistants, teachers, child care workers, etc. 
  • Doctors in family practice, pediatrics, and similar. 
  • Servers and retail workers.
  • Interns and secretaries. 
They all have more flexible hours and generally shorter work weeks that allow time for people to be: Stay at home moms that get their children to school, go to PTA and school board meetings, get them to practice and lessons, in short making sure that the next generation becomes useful citizens.

They also have universally shitty pay plans that insure that a man that wants to support a stay-at-home mom will choose "men's jobs" that pay more and demand more:  more hours, less flexibility in scheduling and location choice, and frequent short notice time away from home. 

Women who chose "men's jobs" and to be a parent must have a partner to share in being mom in exchange for her being dad as needed. Much of the joint income will be used to contract those housekeeping and child care jobs that have less parenting associated with them.   

Friday, February 19, 2016

Why I Am Not a Feminist. Part n +5: Breedig is Sinful

Perhaps I am not up to date on modern feminism and am locked in the mommy wars of the late 20th century, but I have yet to find many feminists of either gender that are not permanently physically and philosophically non-reproductive.  They seem to have traded the benefits of active sexuality and material success for the bonding necessary for parenting. 

Once they have achieved the good 'prick job' and the reproductive drive is satisfied with casual sex they seem to have settled for delegating the breeding to others less successful and therefore less able to provide the necessities for the next generation of leaders in any occupations let alone the 'prick jobs.'  While I do not object to any human breeding, the cream will rise from any population; I still want to scream at a well bonded couple with a successful female partner "Knock her up, humanity needs her genes."  As Heinlein noted, "Nobody owns his genes, he is merely their custodian."  Successful homosexual bonded couples solve the problem by having or adopting children.  I have heard of one lesbian couple who worked out an arrangement with a gay couple to have children naturally with both two dads and two moms.  Similar to a shared custody agreement, although at the time impossible to formalize. 

One of the issues feminists' apparently still have with Heinlein is that all of his intelligent, strong, competent, successful women were breeders.  They actively searched out intelligent, strong, competent, successful men and got pregnant as soon as possible.  Even most of the juveniles had strong female characters that were scheming to be breeders.  One would think feminists would celebrate conservation of the genes of such women, but it seems not to be the case either in fiction or in real life.  

Monday, February 15, 2016

Toxic Masculinity

https://t.co/DddqnZtP67
Toxic masculinity teaches that men cannot assert their own manhood absent sex with a woman that they alone possess
Being brought up male in a few tweets.  Storified by miniver.

Not much I can add, but this tweetstorm is a must read for all males in especially dads of male children.  Sports must not be the only acceptable outlet for the male need for human physical contact other than sex, spouse abuse, or rape.  

 5/10/16

Sunday, February 14, 2016

Heinlein's Women and Their Pricks.



If the universe has any purpose more important than topping the woman you love and making a baby with her hearty help, I’ve never heard of it. - Lazarus Long - Time Enough For Love, Robert A. Heinlein 1973.
Lazarus Long was a prick.  A prick with an uncommon respect for and admiration of competent women for his time, but as Galahad noted "...he has remained canalized by the primitive culture he was brought up in." Not surprising as Heinlein was canalized by the same primitive culture.  Woodie Smith 1912, Heinlein 7/7/7 (1907.)  In Christian America where men were men and women were baby breeders. Feminism was on the not to distant horizon, with some closet feminists trying to break the Kinder, Küche, Kirche track for women.  But until the mid-20th century and reliable contraception a working mother was of necessity rather than choice and "proper" mothers were expected to stay at home until the youngest child was in Kindergarten which effectively eliminated a career in a well paid profession. The options were volunteer work, teaching and service occupations.  

The early feminists tacitly accepted this culture, and advocated non-breeding for professional women.  At worst, a long delayed first and generally only child long after becoming established in a career.  Women who chose to breed in their 20s and still fight the misogyny of most professions were viewed by feminists as outlyers and not "real feminists."  The men who supported their choice of career and parent, were occasionally labled "enablers" of a dysfunctional choice for their wives.  Never mind that they too payed the price of parenting in their careers, less than women due to privilege but nevertheless choices had to be made that limited career opportunities.  But this mind set still lingers in the feminists who despise Heinlein for writing about women who intend to be mothers among other things.  



The problem feminists have with Heinlein women seems to be that all those intelligent, competent women were interested in propagating  their genotype and realized that an intelligent, competent man was a necessary adjunct in that endeavor.  Since Heinlein men are basically pricks one must appeal to the prick to get the genes. 

Make no mistake.  According to the prevailing misogynic social ethos of Heinlein's formative years, especially the military ethos, all his male characters are pricks.  See The Number of Beast where the pricks are going to go gallivanting around the multiverse while the ladies stay in Safe Harbor to have babies. Even late in his career his basic canalization was that men were gallant protectors of their women, but in general he was able to overcome this and substitute support and partnership for gallantry and most of the families had at least equally competent and frequently more competent women at the head.  
 
Heinlein was raised and socialized in a society where sex meant having babies.  (Disclaimer: I was raised in the same social ethos by feminists whose mantra was make damn sure you have sex only with a carefully chosen women who will be a partner in a good family. Recreational sex was not an option.) The difference in his later books was that recreational sex was an option, and the women knew they could manipulate pricks by effective use of recreational sex.  But in accord with Heinlein's early socialization he created few male characters that were immune to such manipulation.  I can only think of one male protagonist that was comfortable with non-manipulative recreational sex as the line marriage structure depended on it.

 https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2017/07/31/robert-a-heinlein-the-man-who-loved-women/

Monday, November 9, 2015

On Feminism, Activism and Isms

http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/09/social-justice-less-elitist/

But sometimes those same activist cultures can be unnecessarily exclusive – and worse, inaccessible and elitist. I even feel myself doing it sometimes:

 Or why I abandoned the "Feminist movement" in the'70s in spite of being a milk feminist. My first mistake was suggesting that an attack on "man/men" as generic was a mistake. That they should have promoted a gender specific noun for males corresponding to women, something like heman or heeman. Nope. We got to get rid of man in chairman, workman, "All Men are created equal." etc. Look how well that worked several decades later.  Well, it is a fact that all the chairs are no longer chairman of this or that and that all of the significant chairs still have men's butts glued to them.  It is also a fact that "All people are created equal" unless they are female, or non-Caucasian.  (At least they changed the box from Caucasian to white and then fucked that up by including "Hispanic" for all non-Caucasian whites.)

Over the years I have discovered that anything that appears to be a meeting of anything resembling believers is almost certainly not user friendly for anyone but the organizers and true believers.  I find it much more useful to let others attend and read the blogs and reports of the attendees, which are either ignorable dogma or tales of exclusion, prejudice and harassment. Even "freethinkers" like skeptics and atheists are surprisingly dogmatic.  In discussing paranormal phenomenon I have lost count of the times I have heard that "Randi's million dollar prize proves that the paranormal cannot exit." Atheists are not content to ignore God and gods in their daily lives, they must prove that gods necessarily cannot exist for anybody and that all religions are horrible abusers of believers.   .  

The excuse for all the sins of the activists is that they are raising awareness, and that in order to do so the message must be focused and consistent, that is reflect the narrow and exclusionary views of the promoters.   

But it taught me a valuable lesson: the best way to support any -ism or activist is to walk their talk. It is not surprising as we see in the article, how many of the -ists don't.  I wonder how many people or corporations who wear pink ribbons on their persons or products have ever done anything at all to help with treatment or research into breast cancer except to throw some chump change into some charity without even running a Navigator on the charity?  Have the GLBTQ activists done anything but create reaction and hate for their GLBTQ neighbors walking their talk by living working, raising children, and proving to their neighbors and churches that they are simply human?  Does posting your Black Lives Matter vid of police brutality on the web do anything but insure the Police, their captive prosecutors, and the media will insure justice denied? See: what to do with your arrest video.

Activism works, but it does not involve going to meetings and talking tactics.  Get a bunch of your friends together go to the city council meeting, the planning commission meeting, or if you have a lot of friends to Washington DC (Social media helps coordinate things but use email and secret groups on Facebook.  It won't stay secret but it is hard to disrupt.) While you are there making sure all of your friends are registered to vote, and will do so if only to vote the incumbents out. 

The other form of activism is using any position of privilege you might have to affirmatively support any challenge to injustice you know about.  If your significant others are challenging the system make sure that you use your LinkedIn network to help even at the cost of burning some of your own bridges. If you have that video of brutality or bullying on your thumb drive, don't just tell the victim it is there, tell them you will appear on their behalf.     

Saturday, November 7, 2015

The Incels are Restless

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/04/1427765/-The-Shootings-are-not-Senseless?detail=email#

Today a growing segment of young adult males will not achieve the material and social success necessary to be attractive mates and form households. By way of comparison, a generation ago in his mid-20s my father had a house, a wife, two kids and a stable job things I was unable to achieve until my ’30s. ...  Today Increased economic opportunity and higher educational attainment for women has removed the economic need to be tied down to undesirable dudes. This is a good thing for almost everyone. But for those on the outside, however, it turns social awkwardness and the tail end of the achievement bell curve into a prison planet of isolation. And that generates rage.
 note: "Incel" a name they call themselves, meaning "involuntary celibate."
Perhaps the rage comes from the tail end of the curve.  The more concerning issue is that the middle of the curve for males is incel. (This may not be a new phenomenon.)  Women now have control not only of not only who they will have a baby with but who they will fuck.  Women it seems have little incentive to have sex per se, hence scriptural admonitions to "pleasure" their husband once a week. 

The cost of sex historically has been disproportionally high for women.  Instinctively, killing a baby is not an option, and abortion was never socially acceptable and the cost both physically and monetarily was high.  So perhaps the sin of Eve was discovering the "apple" method of contraception:  Place an apple between your thighs and hold it there.  That is a woman can choose not to have sex.  This apparently worked fine in Eden, that is a stable agricultural or hunter gatherer society.  Women could choose successful men to father their children, and space them naturally using the apple method until the child was weaned and productive.  Much of this is speculative as stable agricultural and hunter gatherer societies by definition balance consumption and production, with not much left over for kings, priests, and exploitation.  Thus they are easily victimized by kings, priests, and despots with plenty of warriors. Therefore few remain to study and all we have is oral history.  

The invention of exploitive societies demanded a ready supply of warriors.  That is incels who substitute male bonding, possibly with voluntary or involuntary homosexual sex, and killing for sex.  Men get used up rapidly in traditional warfare. In order to produce the required warrior/incels it was necessary exploit women as baby factories.  Women became the property of successful men that is those who were not used up in war or those powerful enough to not have to go to war. Women's choice in such a society was to breed or starve. Encouraged both by social and religious pressure.    
In the west exploitive societies seem to have been invented by Abram's tribe, or perhaps his invention of God as the underlying justification for exploitation was the most successful.  It has certainly been successful and threatens to take over the entire globe.  However it has run out of people and things to exploit, and revolts by those exploited have begun to be successful.  

The most successful revolt has been enabled by contraception, which allows a woman to choose between being a breeder of incels/warriors for a successful man or pursue some other path to social success which may or may not include reproduction. Note that prior to reliable female contraception career paths for women involved avoiding sex as they did not pay enough to support a family: Teaching, nannying, and other service occupations.  

WWII used up enough men that women were introduced to "real" work to produce the war machinery, famously by Rosie the Riveter.  Their success enabled different aspirations for some girls, who could prepare for careers other than the traditional service occupations and many chose to do so.  Boys were still being conditioned for warrior/unskilled labor and generally discouraged from pursuing the "college track" except as athletes.  Which leads us back to the incels perhaps as a majority in most of the west.  The demand for warriors has dropped significantly recently, and unskilled labor no longer supports a family even the current norm of one or two children so the support for sex trade-off no longer works for a large segment of the male population.