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by Anonymous User on Wednesday July 09, @04:19PM EST (#1)
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I don't believe this author is worth paying
attention to. Have a look at this paragraph:
The State gave us forced integration, which was intentionally
devised to wipe out entire cultures. All this has created a messy
hodge-podge of conflict within society, where the good has been
watered down with the bad, giving us a Gresham's Law of sorts.
Voluntary association has always been seen as one of the great
"evils" in society, so the Nanny State put subsidized housing
in our otherwise beautiful neighborhoods, and when that didn’t
work well enough, they tried to bus our children into the
ghetto schools, 25 miles away. Use central planning to force
people of different lifestyles, different cultures,
and different income levels to live in the same neighborhood,
and you will have the world’s largest, ticking time bomb.
This is description is so far from reality,
it's hard to know where to begin in refuting it.
"The State gave us forced integration," she says.
It's more accurate to say that the Federal government
put an end to forced *segregation* of blacks and whites.
There used to be laws which enforced segretation.
Does anyone remember that? Or have we conveniently forgotten?
Governments did try to implement forced busing,
which may have been a mistake.... but I think it's
rather extreme to claim that busing was "intentionally
devised to wipe out entire cultures." If we can say
nothing else positive about busing, the least we can say is
that it was well-intentioned.
"Voluntary association has always been seen as
one of the great evils" ? Huh? Says who?
Wasn't freedom of association guaranteed in the
US constitution back in the 1790s ? Freedom of
association is a basic part of US political philosophy.
Maybe in De Coster's dystopian fantasyland,
they don't have a constitution.
It's too much of a compliment to call these
opinions "libertarian." I think a better adjective is "shoddy."
Sure, De Coster apparently is a misandrist.
But who cares? I don't. She's not even worth reading.
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by Anonymous User on Wednesday July 09, @09:12PM EST (#4)
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I agree. She has no concept of social reality. She just yearns for good old days of segregation, which were produced by people like her who couldn't see the truth of the world in front of her face. As for men, "Mr. Patriarchy," who was always a myth, is still a wage slave or rotting in jail.
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Hello? They didn't say integration in SCHOOLS, they said forced integration PERIOD, such as . Likewise, busing wasn't "a mistake," it was ILLEGAL; but since the Civil War, the courts have run amok as they gained Constitutional finality.
The state has no business determining or deciding in any way who should associate with whom, or playing any other sociological engineering games with peoples' lives; and when this happens, it's only natural that disaster follows while government "washes its hands" of the whole matter.
Ending discrimination and meddling with personal preferences and orientations are worlds apart.
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by Anonymous User on Thursday July 10, @09:29AM EST (#9)
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Yes, I agree with you, as far as it goes....
but I don't agree that "forced integration"
has actually happened in the US, outside of
forced school busing. People still live wherever
they want to, because they have a fundamental
constitutional right to do so.
Yes, the state has no business telling
people who to associate with... but when
has it tried to tell people who to associate
with? I don't agree that this is really
happening.
In my opinion the courts have not "run amok"....
what's happened recently is that the legislatures
have become unable to take any controversial
decisions of any kind, in either direction.
The courts are forced to resolve difficult
issues, which are really legislative matters.
Legislatures should be resolving these matters,
either via laws or via new amendments. But
they are too spineless to act.
The courts have had the right of judicial
review since the early 1800s, not since the Civil War. And it's a good thing.
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Yes, the state has no business telling people who to associate with... but when has it tried to tell people who to associate with? I don't agree that this is really happening.
I don't know where you live, but here in New Mexico "anti-discrimination" legislation forces business owners to hire people they don't want, property owners to rent to people they don't like, etc., etc. And this is true in all states to one extent or another, so far as I know. This sure looks to me like the state telling people who to associate with.
What's happened is that the government has escaped its cage, and is running totally amok. The cage was the Constitution, which was designed (or so its writers told their fellow citizens at the time) to limit the government's powers to its legitimate functions: protection of citizens' rights and property. Recently historians and scholars have been taking another look at the Anti-Federalists' objections to the Constitution, finding that what they feared has come to pass--perhaps not by accident?
Of course there were warning signs even in the early 1800s (the "Alien and Sedition Acts," etc.), but it was Lincoln's declaring himself Dictator (for which there is no provision in the Constitution--though there was in that of the Roman Republic) in 1861 that began the count down. The Patriot Act II (you have been warned) will finish the job.
Certainly the courts have "run amok"--legislation is not their job--but at least they weren't the first branch to do so. However, it's clear that the judges, lawyers (last I heard, 98 out of 100 US Senators are lawyers) and their ilk now consider themselves a privileged class whose right and destiny is to rule the rest of us. See the U.S. Constitution, Art I Sec 9 Cl 8: "No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States."
The only real issue is not difficult: whether the legislation in question is Constitutional or not. For quite some time now, the vast majority of Congressional legisation has been Constitutional only if Art I Sec 8 Cl 17 is regarded as a "loophole" which allows the government to do anything it wants--which indeed it may be (see "another look" above), and very likely on purpose--but unfortunately the courts don't make this clear.
But then, to quote the Supreme Court back when it still paid some attention to the Law: "It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error." (American Communications Association v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382, 442, 1950)
The American experiment in republican self-government is effectively over, and the American people have no one to thank but themselves. And I believe feminism (and thus American women, who've fallen for its self-serving siren song) has been one of the major players in this destruction.
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by Anonymous User on Wednesday July 09, @04:39PM EST (#2)
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I read your article "The Twentysomething Male, His Times, and His Environment" and I actually agreed with a lot of it. I just wanted to slightly rebutt it from my 20-something male perspective. Basically it's my belief that although men have a hand in the current state of affairs, women are just as unfit for marriage as men, aside from their biological ability to reproduce, which isn't that impressive to most men. Also I would say that I blame women more for the current situation because they started it. That may sound like immature finger pointing, but the whole feminist movement looks to me now like a joke, and basically represented women's wanting to have their cake and eat it too, which is an equally immature motive. Women were the ones who decided they were no longer going to play their traditional roles in the family. Men started revolting against marriage many years later, when they found that all women wanted was a lifelong source of financial benefit without the inconvenience of having to provide any kindness, affection, love or even simply to share domestic responsibilities with their mate. I used to be a highly romantic, marriage-bound guy who wanted to fall in love and buy the diamond ring and support my family and all that. But too many times of having my pockets rifled through by uncaring gold-digging women has turned me into an anti-marriage cynic. I have heard that women in other countries might be more caring than american ones. Maybe if I meet some foreign women it will turn me into a romantic again.
Cheers,
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by Anonymous User on Wednesday July 09, @06:24PM EST (#3)
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Sorry bud, dont want to dishearten you further, but if your idea of foreign women inclides the UK? they are no different over here.
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I can't speak for the original poster, but I consider "foreign women," in the sense of "foreign, traditional women" to exclude Canada, the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and most of Western Europe, with Germany in the lead there.
Latin American countries have managed to hold on to some semblance of sane gender relations, although some parts of Mexico are in a mad rush to "catch up" to the US.
I agree with pretty-much everything that De Coster said. The "forced integration" stuff is a bit foreign to me, being as I'm Canadian. Although the government's and the courts' experiments in social engineering are worse here than in the US, we've never had segregation, so forced integration was a non-starter. That aside, her rant against today's man is just as valid as my frequent rants against today's women.
Society is a system. Everything is connected to everything else. Although I believe that the greatest single contributing factor to the train wreck that is today's family has been feminism, I must agree with De Coster that it isn't exclusively responsible. I did agree with the poster who replied to her, though, when he said that the male rush toward irresponsibility seems to me more an act of frustration than of rank selfishness. My father bent over backward to try to make my mother happy in her feminist experiments (she now disavows the label), but if he had been a less traditional man he might have thrown up his hands in despair and retreated into a world of big-boy play in order to escape her endless whinging.
De Coster is right: there are a lot of men out there who instead of working toward the male tradition of responsibility and supporting a family have realized that today's women make this folly of the highest order. (Unless, as stated, you find a traditional women from a foreign culture.) Why save your pennies and buy a house for your future family when the average American wife is working her damndest to take it all away from her husband and leave him an ex-husband, ex-father, and wage slave to support a family for whom he's only a visitor? Social engineers (organized feminism among them) have worked hard to destroy the traditional family, and women, to their eternal shame, have cheerfully played along because they get all of the benefits of marriage with none of the downsides. Yes, shame on immature men, but shame on the greedy, manipulative, immature women who make maturity a loser's quality.
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Maybe I'm getting defensive in my (single) old age, but I am uncomfortable with the implication of your post, to whit "married = mature, unmarried = irresponsible." Frankly I see no intrinsic connection between the two. In my book if you support yourself, are honest in dealing with your neighbors, and do your best to make a positive contribution to your community nobody has a right to call you immature. Whether you are married or not doesn't enter into the equation. Frankly, I think single people might even have a better claim on the label of "mature" - they are able to face life on their own without dependence on another person (that's a gross over-generalization I know, but I have seen cases of people who couldn't take care of themselves getting married mostly, it looked like to me, to have a co-dependent).
I agree with De Coster about one thing: feminism is not the whole problem. What's really at the heart of the trouble is the contempt and outright hatred for men that so many women seem to feel (not all women by any means, but enough that a guy has to be careful). De Coster herself is a prime example of this; she's no feminist, but many of her columns drip with a sneering contemptuous attitude towards men that would do Andrea Dworkin proud. This attitude was endemic in the women in my family, women who came of age during and immediately after WWII, long before '60's radical feminism. What feminism has "accomplished" is to give these women the legal framework and societal support to act on their anger.
It is in this context that a man has to make a decision about marriage. What it comes down to in my view is that marriage involves nothing less than putting yourself in the power of someone who (potentially) views you with hatred and contempt, and has the legal tools to act on those feelings. What do you get in return for taking this risk? The answer is "nothing the woman can't take away whenever she feels like it." You want me to enter into an arrangement like that? That would be immature!
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Let me just add: as an older single guy who probably does spend more time and money in Best Buy than is really ideal, let me just say "pardon the heck out of me for wanting to have some enjoyment in life." I'm sure that if I were married that money would go for something genuinely important, like another pair of shoes for my wife or throw rugs to match the pillows on the couch. Sheesh!
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by Anonymous User on Friday July 11, @04:24AM EST (#15)
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Ditto bud ! I too am an older single fella, and I agree 100% with your views. I get pretty tired of people telling me I am going through a mid life crisis or have never grown up. They conveniently forget that I have been married, emotionally and finacially raped and then a single parent for 8 years. I am like many men, just sick to the back teeth of angry women trying to vent it upon me. Sod marriage and long term relationships, I always wanted to own and ride a Harley, and that I will ! Its time for me now ladies
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It's possible to respect women without taking them seriously, and time and time again you'll see that respecting women as equals is like letting a baby play with matches.
Maybe one day you'll learn.
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"If you allow them [women] to pull away restraints and put themselves on an equality with their husbands, do you imagine that you will be able to tolerate them? From the moment that they become your fellows, they will become your masters." --Marcus Porcius Cato (the Elder, aka the Censor), 234-149 BCE
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That sounds a little extreme to me. I do respect women as equals. I'm not naiive enough to let them get their hooks in me, and absolutely heartless when I see manipulative behavior, but I still consider them equals.
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Well, I guess the question would hinge on ones definition of "equal" -- a major buzzword frequently tossed around by people who have no interest whatever in what it meant to those, like Jefferson, who first brought the idea into the collective discourse.
The truth is, there is no "equality" in Nature. In the first place, every phenomenon in the world, whether a human being or a stone, is unique, as is every situation. Only in the world of mathematics, of abstract concepts, is there "equality." Two men do not "equal" two women; only the "twoness" of each pair is "equal." This is why, in the Bible, when Satan induced David to "number Israel" (i.e. merely count the number of his subjects -- he didn't even give them numbers like we all have today) the Lord grew angry and sent plagues, etc. Living beings, especially human beings, made in His image, are not to be numbered, because we are not "equal."
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." --George Orwell, Animal Farm. (Or the feminist version, which is clearly: "Both sexes are equal, but one sex is more equal than the other.")
And Nature is totally hierarchical: every living thing eats other living things, and is in turn eaten by other living things. Is the chicken I ate for dinner -- or the onion, for that matter -- my "equal"? In an absolute sense, I'd say yes, but in this relative world all things are, indeed, relative.
The closest one might find to "equality" in Nature might be the status of the several thousand worker bees in a beehive, who are entirely equal -- though in fact they serve different functions in the hive's life -- in their total lack of importance as individuals, their complete dispensability. Which is hardly what Jefferson and his fellow thinkers were talking about -- though it is just what socialists have made of the concept.
"Americans are so enamored of equality they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom." --Alexis de Tocqueville
Ideas such as "justice" or "equality" are entirely conceptual, products of the human mind, part of the human effort to find a way of living in this world that is not entirely ruled by blind, cruel Nature -- "red in tooth and claw." In fact, the idea of "equality" was invented by men, in resistance to the overwhelming, absolute, unconscious power of Woman, which is a subset of the power of Nature herself. As Rich Zubaty has invaluably pointed out, kings and other men who like to have and use power think and act like women -- not only in their love of ostentation and jewelry, but also in their unquestioning, you might even say innocent, greed.
So no, I do not regard women as my "equals." I treat them as possessing equal rights, in the sense that Jefferson et al. understood rights: i.e. the right of self-ownership, with its corollaries of life, liberty and property. But I do not believe that women, or anyone, have a "right" to, say, abortion, or "health care" -- or anything else that must involve taking the life, liberty or property of another. That women generally seem to believe they possess such rights -- which continue to multiply to infinity as they discover yet more things they want, and yet more responsibilities they wish to avoid -- makes plain just how unlike myself, and other thinking men, they are in their natural state.
I treat women as possessing equal rights because to do so is a matter of personal conviction for me -- though obviously most women do not share that conviction, since they generally seem to feel no restraint in violating my rights whenever it pleases them. I also treat them with respect, just as I would treat anything dangerous with respect. Because I know that in the matter of power, they are absolutely my superiors. Women create women, and women create men. Men create whatever women allow us to create. The hierarchy is absolute.
"Women rule the world. No man ever did anything unless a woman allowed or encouraged him to do it." (Bob Dylan said that.)
And no, stem-cell embryos and artificial wombs are not the solution, even if they would work. Infantile hubris.
I also treat women with respect in the hope that they will see the value of doing so, and do the same for me. This, in a nutshell, is why women need men. For in their natural state, they know no restraint. The two sexes need each other for the sake of soul development. As Camille Paglia points out, lesbians are essentially children, who've turned aside at the threshold of puberty and opted not to graduate to adulthood, with all its difficulties.
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It is interesting to see your viewpoint, even if I don't agree with some of it. For example, the bit about women ruling the world and men never doing anything unless allowed. Try that on for size in Saudi Arabia! I also don't believe in pegging lesbians as being immature. They prefer women over men. Just like gay men prefer men over women.
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by Anonymous User on Wednesday July 09, @09:43PM EST (#5)
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Frankly, men do share a big part of the blame for the rise of feminism, and a big reason why is that they bought the lie of an easy life free from responsibilities and traditional moral obligations.
Sure, have all the sex you want with whoever you want. There's the Pill, and, failing that, abortion. And forget providing for a wife, either, she can pay her own way now. Tired of her? Just go down to the local courthouse and fill out the forms for a quick-and-easy no-fault divorce. Got children? Have a good time with them playing baseball, but leave to the schools the job of training their moral character. I'm sorry folks, but this is the attitude of many, many men.
Whatever else anyone wants to say, Ms. De Coster did refer to men as head-of-households and realizes that our society needs them there and there is no substitute for them being there save the New Matriarchy. A responsible man doesn't sleep around but saves sex for marriage and thus won't marry a slut. A responsible man otherwise sets the moral example for his wife and children. A responsible man does whatever he can to earn enough so that his wife can stay home to raise the children - but also insists that his wife does so. He also realizes that while it's his wife's job to nurture - comfort Johnny if he falls off his bike - it's his own irreplaceable duty to discipline his own children - not harshly, but firmly - to train their moral character.
Of course, many women will selfishly refuse to uphold their part of the bargain, but if he cannot find the right woman, he will remain single. He's got the biological trump card - and
all of a sudden women in their 30s will become much more amenable.
If we don't want feminism, then we must accept the responsibilities that go along with it. Feminist shrieking notwithstanding, at bottom the future is really in our hands.
Vince S.
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"Feminist shrieking notwithstanding, at bottom the future is really in our hands. "
No, it's in the hands of family courts that presume us guilty and throw us out of our own homes at the slightest caprice of an angry woman.
It used to be in our hands-- to some degree. Now it isn't. Smart men know the only women to marry must be extraordinarily trustworthy and have great integrity. Don't chance it with anyone else. Glad to see so many men are smart! But it is shame our society is thus not able to continue much longer. It's also a shame it's blamed on men. Just ain't right.
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"And why are some men so quick to (rightly) shun garbage feminism, then they refuse to play out that which is the traditional male role, because it's "too much work"? They want the better parts of both ends of the stick, and that spells trouble.
No, because you get what you pay for; why the hell should men bust their buts so radical feminist cunts can shit in their faces?
Men just want what's in their own best interest-- which is in their right, it's not "the better barts of both ends of the stick" (a clear oxymoron); meanwhile, women get the idea that they have the right to demand that men cater to them "just because," without giving anything of greater or even equal value to the man in return.
Why is it that no one bashes women for not having a career, financial stability etc? This is just as much a double-standard as any other, and women like this are about as "traditional" as Pringles, i.e. since the 70's.
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For an interesting bit of commentary on this editorial, try looking here .
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On the Crimson Arrowometer, De Coster gets a 35 ( out of 100 ) for being one-third correct.
As Graham Strachan once replied to Devvy Kidd in his article, the same results could be meted out to De Coster. An excerpt:
So when feminists started calling men ‘male chauvinist pigs’, there might have been some women’s voices raised in defence of men. If there were, they were few and far between. When newsagents put on sale diaries with women on the cover screaming, “All men are bastards”, women might have protested at the blatant sexism. They might have demanded the diaries be withdrawn from sale. Instead they bought them to show how ‘liberated’ they were, thereby endorsing the claim.
When men were accused of being involved in a ‘vast male conspiracy to chain women to kitchen sinks’ and to turn this into a ‘male dominated society’, there might have been protests from women at this obvious absurdity, but there weren’t. What about from the mothers who were training the future crop of alleged conspirators and women-enslavers - their own sons? Nothing.
When it was revealed there was a war against boys in the school system, aimed at turning them into placid little neuters, did their mothers storm Parents and Citizens meetings demanding a fair go for their sons? Hardly. Instead they believed the ‘teachers’ who told them male aggression was a form of social psychosis requiring treatment. Toy trucks and guns should be taken away, and boys given dolls to play with.
A masculine man came to be regarded as an insensitive dolt – ‘macho’ was the term of abuse. The ideal man was a SNAG – a Sensitive New Age Guy, in touch with his ‘feminine side’. Men should be encouraged to cry often, and share their ‘deep inner feelings’ as women supposedly do. If only men were more like women, the world would be a much better place, was the feminist mantra, and women generally stood around nodding in agreement.
When the feminists pronounced that “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”, did real women object? No, they were doubled up with mirth. SO funny! When the feminsts proclaimed their aim was no longer to ‘liberate women’, but to ‘sink the boot into the groin of the patriarchy’, did any real women protest to say that wasn’t what they wanted? No. And when Hollywood started actually showing women kicking men in the groin on screen as ‘entertainment’, did women object? Did they walk out of the theatres en masse? Not at all. They made those peculiar ‘whoop, whoop’ noises women make at male strip shows.
Why was it that women generally didn’t defend men through all this? For one thing, they were too busy counting the spoils gained on their behalf by the feminists. Such as affirmative action, because they wouldn’t have to compete so hard to get a job, and could blame lack of advancement on men and ‘glass ceilings’. And Family Law, because women were almost guaranteed three-quarters of the property and sole custody of the children most of the time, simply by pleading womanhood.
Did any women protest at the obvious injustice? Hardly any. In Australia they started embellishing their custody applications with false accusations of child abuse, so their ex-husbands would be denied the right even to visit their children, ever. Feminist studies appeared, showing fathers were not only unnecessary, but actually detrimental to childrens’ upbringing. Did women rise up in defence of men over these scandalous claims? Virtually none. Nor did they object when the feminists accused men of deliberately causing wars so they could have the pleasure of being blown to pieces fighting them. Come to think of it, there is hardly an evil on earth that has not been blamed on men by women over the past 20 years, with no shortage of coverage by the major media.
Checkmate, De Coster! Game, set, and match! A woman's idea of "maturity" in a man is my idea of a Metrosexual - essentially the equivalence of a "mouse".
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For what it's worth, I posted a Letter to MND in response to DeCoster and Reimer:
The men are not playing fair again, and Karen DeCoster and Susan Reimer want to place all of the blame squarely at the feet of the modern male. Men are immature, they say, and failing to live up to the needs of women in particular and the world in general. Further, they say that feminism is not to blame. Well, perhaps I might buy into the notion that there are factors other than feminism that are at play here, but feminism and all of its trappings cannot be ignored when assessing the behavior of the modern American male.
First, let’s define the group. We are talking about American men who are 18 to about 35 years of age. About half of these men come from single parent homes with the sex of the single parent being overwhelmingly female. Most of these men are products of the public education system, in which the teaching population is overwhelming female. The messages that have been perpetually driven into these men from their earliest years, from their teachers, the media, and many cases even their own mothers (and unfortunately in some cases, their fathers), include the following:
1) A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle (in other words, men are useless, superfluous, unnecessary);
2) All (or most) men are rapists and all rapists are men (which is patently false);
3) All domestic violence, in fact, all violence, comes from the male influence;
4) The only value that a man has in childrearing is as a provider of money;
5) Fathers are useless, even dangerous, creatures to have in the home.
Male characteristics have been de-emphasized, even criticized for their detrimental effect on society. A campaign against competition has gained momentum. Boisterous behavior is not tolerated. Students are required to remain stationary in their seats in class; some are even drugged to achieve this. There has been a wide-ranging campaign to stifle all forms of violence including the innocent, normal forms which occur among school-age boys seeking to establish a hierarchy. Male behavior is ridiculed, lampooned, and laughed at in the media as being primitive and immature. In fact, acting like a boy in some classrooms can get one placed in “special education” classes, which are overwhelmingly populated by boys. Television programming seems to be bent on proving that, even in battle, women are superior to men. There is no denying that these messages are being sent. One only need watch a half-hour of network television to see men reduced to inanity or assaulted in extreme disparity compared to women. All things considered, boys are taught through many channels that their natural way of being, there very existence, is aberrant and dangerous.
Let us assume that these messages have been absorbed.
Having absorbed these messages, these “men” go out into life and what do they observe? They find that one marriage in two will fail and that one bride in three will file for divorce. They find their choices in birth control are limited to condoms (of questionable reliability) or abstention. They find that they have no choice in whether or not to become parents (because of Roe vs. Wade) yet they bear significant financial burden in case of an unexpected pregnancy. If they enter the military, they are told how they will serve in combat while their female counterparts are allowed to volunteer and be selective. If they choose careers in firefighting or law enforcement, they learn quickly that women are not required to meet the same, rigorous physical fitness standards. If they marry and later divorce, they learn quickly that the Family Court is designed to see to “the best interests of the child” (as defined by feminists). When they take a job, they learn from their required sexual harassment sensitivity training that their behavior is defined by the “reasonable woman” standard, and that the modes in which a man is sexually harassed by women are not even considered. Some will even learn that regardless of whether or not they actually father a child, merely having been identified as such by the mother, legitimately or not, sentences them to eighteen or twenty-one years of servitude paying support for a child that isn’t theirs. Should they have the misfortune to be involved in, or know any man who is involved in domestic violence, they learn quickly that the law and its practitioners simply do not recognize women as having any capacity for violence, and that they go to great lengths to see this myth perpetuated.
The truth is that most men don’t encounter much of this misandry. They marry, they go about their lives in peace, and they lament the sad souls who have somehow run afoul of the system and lost their wives, homes, and children. They put their heads in the sand and fail to recognize how pervasive all of this really is and that they, themselves, are just one decision (their wives’, not theirs) away from all of this. Even many of those who do, like Rudy Guliani, either fail to recognize or choose to ignore the basic facts of how much is expected of men and yet how poorly they are treated by the law and society. They simply choose to believe that the depth of the pain is something these poor fools brought on themselves.
But our subject group, our American male aged 18 to 35, has seen all this BEFORE the wedding, and he doesn’t like what he sees. He “hooks-up” for sex, buys toys, acts irresponsible, and simply stays clear of the fray. Ms. Reimer said to me, in a rather temperate phone conversation after her article was published, that women have the same right to be disenchanted, the same concerns about the down side of a failed marriage. Of course, I disagree, and I pointed out to her that nearly every divorcing father is removed from his home, nearly every divorcing mother gains custody of the children, and nearly every child is covered by child support in amounts that have grown to cover the declining alimony payments of the past. Further, many states have rather draconian child support enforcement measures, some amounting to nothing short of debtors prison.
Reimer says “Other than a 29-inch waist and a full head of hair, there isn't much to recommend the twentysomething male.” It seems we must remind Ms. Reimer that the today’s twentysomething male is pretty-well convinced that there really isn’t much to recommend the twentysomething female. She is arrogant, self-involved, self-serving, and having learned this in the public school system, believes that men are superfluous or dangerous, but at any rate less than worthy creatures. She believes that the government is here to take care of her, and she’s probably been taught by her mother how to assure a favorable determination by the courts in case of a divorce. At any rate, she knows very well how to play the victim.
Further, she says “Even fathers who live with but are not married to the mother ‘fail to show as much warmth’ or to spend as much time and money caring for their biological children as do married fathers.” There is statistical evidence that over three-quarters of all men who have been assigned child support payments make regular full or partial payments. There is also evidence of a close correlation between a failure on the part of the mother to recognize custody or visitation agreements and a failure on the part of the father to make such payments. Could it possibly be that men are hesitant to invest in a relationship which is so highly likely to be destroyed according to the whims and fancies of the mother? Perhaps if the courts treated custody and visitation agreements with the same gravity that they treat monetary support then these fathers would be more prone to make and sustain the full investment. Again regarding our conversation, it is clear that Ms. Reimer regards monetary support as the fundamental fatherly contribution. Ms. Reimer, fathers have been around since long before money was invented, and what they taught their sons and daughters cannot be replaced by dollars and cents.
DeCoster says “… read any newspaper or scholarly journal, and you’ll constantly see the trumpeting of the oncoming New Matriarchy, single-parent families, and the concept of the celebrated, collectivist village – micro-managed by the State – to raise our children.” I’m glad you say no-thanks to all of this Ms. DeCoster, but exactly where do you think all of this came from? It came from the feminists, of varying flavors and extractions, who are doing everything they can to dismiss men and fathers from the household.
DeCoster further bemoans “…the decline of the RESPONSIBLE male…” Tell me, Karen, other than your father and the men you know personally, where have you seen a good example of a “responsible male?” The media and public education have done a pretty good job of hiding him, especially if he’s white. Oh, he exists. I know tons of them. (I also know responsible females, though I grow bored with their perpetual self-congratulation.) For every breakdown of courtesy towards women you describe in this and in past articles, I have experienced multiple breakdowns in courtesy towards men. I’ve been scowled at for opening a door for a teenage girl (who was wearing a t-shirt that said “Boys Lie”), I’ve been accused of sexual harassment for complimenting a colleague for a new hairstyle, and I’ve been accused of hating women because I chose to stand up for men. And I know more than a few men who have suffered similar insults from women with little or no provocation.
For three decades now, women have been declaring their independence from men. Now they have it. And now they’re complaining about it. This complaint falls on deaf ears, though, because the very women who complain about a dearth of commitment from men share that lack of commitment; it just takes a few years for it to show up. But the feminists regard this as “empowerment.” All of these things that have beset men are good things, are they not? After all, we must obliterate the patriarchy, mustn’t we? Here we have Karen DeCoster and Susan Reimer doing what feminists do best: blaming men for the irresponsible behavior of women. It is the feminists who embraced the sexual revolution (the men just went along for the free ride); it is the feminists who sought the replacement of fathers with the state; it is feminists who have chased men from the household by manipulating the family courts; it is the feminists who see to the removal of testosterone-laden role models from school-books. No ladies, I do not claim that feminism single-handedly destroyed the American family. For example, there are those who believe that a child should never be spanked, who are unable to comprehend that there might be balance in a family that includes harsh discipline and loving, favorable parents. Or there are those who wish to “educate” our children with the acceptance of lifestyles that might in some quarters be regarded as immoral. But the harm that feminism has done to the family, and to boys and men in particular, must not go unheeded. Unless some of this damage is undone soon, the time bomb that is America will tick ever faster.
Frank H
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Frank:
That is an excellent post! Thank you.
I know more than a few men who have suffered similar insults from women with little or no provocation.
I have been there many, many, many, many, many times. In almost every case there were one or more women present in addition to the one engaging in the utterly unjustified attack. How many times in my life have I seen or heard one of those other women stand up to the agressive, hateful female?
Zero.
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Hear, hear, Mark C, Crimson, Frank.
De Coster herself is a prime example of this; she's no feminist, but many of her columns drip with a sneering contemptuous attitude towards men that would do Andrea Dworkin proud. This attitude was endemic in the women in my family, women who came of age during and immediately after WWII, long before '60's radical feminism. What feminism has "accomplished" is to give these women the legal framework and societal support to act on their anger.
Indeed, and it goes back even further: read the "Declaration of Sentiments" that "launched" the feminist movement in 1848. Not to mention all of human history.
The truth is, this writer is really as much a feminist as those to whom the name is usually applied, because she shares their basic attitudes, which are pretty well universal in the female mind. When you get down to it, all women really believe that men are inferior to women, and that what is wrong with the world is, basically, men; some women may be more considerate than others in their relations with the "problem" sex, but that's the bottom line.
"The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." (Not to mention "the face that launched a thousand ships.") Like many hackneyed "sayings," this contains more than a grain of truth; in fact, in this case it is the truth, and no real understanding of "gender relations" -- not to mention how culture and society really work -- can be accomplished without this fact as foundation. The answer to Freud's famous question is really very simple: what we have is "what women want," because it's what women have used their power to create.
However, there seems to be a universal unwillingness in the female mind to really acknowledge this fact. No matter how much overt power they get -- in addition to the covert, fundamental, universal power they already have and can never lose -- they will always insist on their powerlessness. There never was a woman who was not, in the end, a victim.
My answer to this writer is the same as to the regular "feminists": Where do men come from? Fundamentally, men -- like the males of all other sexual species -- are what women -- like the females of all other sexual species -- make us. Whatever we do, one way or another we do it all for you. It will never, can never be any other way. If you don't like the product, address yourself to the producer.
I expect some on this board may be tired of hearing me talk about it, but again I must mention one point that has so far escaped attention: In my view, one of the major tools of feminism has been the routine, universal circumcision of infant males, an idea which predates what is now called feminism but actually came out of the same basic female attitudes. Including, of course, that violence and cruelty are really not issues so long as women themselves don't have to do the dirty work. (Besides, since men have no feelings, certainly male babies don't either.)
And again I will note that in my observation, infant-circumcised males (myself included) are subconsciously terrified of females -- a fact that I feel has much to do with the overwhelming success of feminism, which happened precisely when the first universally-circumcised generation (mine) came of age in the 1960s. Infant Male Circumcision was Miz Watson's Final Solution to the vexing problem of how to "sivilize" Huck Finn. And it has worked, very well, to beat the wildness -- and the will to resist, and the ability to meet women's power on anything like an "equal playing field" -- out of American men. The narcissistic, spiritless couch potatoes De Coster complains about are exactly what American women have done their best to make out of their sons.
A noteworthy irony here is that it is "conservative" women like De Coster who are perhaps the most solid constituency behind the routine terrorization, torture and mutilation of America's male children. It was exactly such scolding schoolmarms who decreed that I should live my life as a sexual cripple -- and under the debilitating effects of a lifetime of post-traumatic stress that I'm only beginning to understand. I for one am terminally sick and tired of being scolded by women for my supposed character flaws. I had more than enough the day I was born.
One thing I'm clear about: At age 60, having wasted most of my life desperately trying to please women, I intend to spend what I have left pleasing myself. I'm retired. They want it so bad, they can have it. If American women really want better men, they can make better men -- but they must begin by being better women -- i.e. what they keep telling us they are. That's the real truth. I'm not holding my breath.
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Here we have Karen DeCoster and Susan Reimer doing what feminists do best: blaming men for the irresponsible behavior of women.
Many apologists for feminism actively seek to muddy the waters by declaring that there are numerous types of feminism -- gender feminism, PC feminism, ifeminism, equity feminism, collectivist feminism. By so confusing the issue, they make it more difficult for fair minded people to effectively battle what is, and to a very large extent has always been, a hate movement.
Well, for the sake of fun and games, I'll let De Coster have her "collectivist feminism," and I'll point out that she is also a self-superior feminist, a woman who believes that men owe women something and have no right to expect anything in return.
Karen De Coster is a "reactionary feminist."
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Karen De Coster is a "reactionary feminist."
No, Karen DeCoster is a pheminist ... period. A "feminist" is a pheminist is a pheminist is a pheminist, period. Deep down, no matter what the label - "iFeminist," gender, seperatist, collectivist, egalitarian, reactionary, et cetera, et cetera ad nauseum, - they are all the bloody same, and not a goddamn one of them worth a bag of sour owl shit.
---- Burn, Baby, Burn ----
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With damn near every one of your posts you get me to laugh, Gonzo. Thanks.
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