New book on boys

Author and boy advocate, Michael Gurian, has a new book out entitled The Purpose of Boys: Helping Our Sons Find Meaning, Significance, and Direction in Their Lives. A review from Publisher's Weekly states:

The author offers practical suggestions for helping parents address boys' needs, tackling such issues as sexuality, work and overuse of electronic media. Particularly useful are Gurian's boxed questions for discussion, which will help parents and educators communicate directly with boys themselves. He also includes suggestions to help boys succeed in academic settings, for example, using movement, project-driven curricula and debate. Gurian's team approach to raising a son gives parents the tools and encouragement they need to help boys find direction and fulfillment.

Gurian is indeed a terrific advocate for boys, Glenn and I interviewed him for a podcast here (from 2006) if you would like to know more about his work.

Amazingly, Britain will cut off funds to domestic violence shelters that don’t help male victims. An article in the Telegraph states:

Many charities have been told that they must extend their counselling and outreach services to men because of new equality laws which require local authorities to ensure that services do not discriminate on grounds of sex.

Fiona Mactaggart, the former Home Office minister, said an "unintended consequence" of the law has meant some domestic violence services have lost grants or contracts for refusing to do so.

Good, maybe once the money dries up to these places, they will re-think their sexism towards men.

"We are now a Nation filled with overgrown adolescents used to getting whatever we desire."

Says blogger Shrinkwrapped in an insightful post on Narcissism, Ideology and Mass Murder:

People with Narcissistic pathology never recognize their own culpability for problems. It is too painful and intolerable. The Narcissist has a damaged self. When the environment (esp other people) support his self esteem, he does relatively well. He may be charming and charismatic and appear to be self assured and in command of himself. However, should the other fail him the pain of the assault on his self esteem is destabilizing. The Narcissist reacts to failure with terrible shame which evokes rage. The rage, if held within, leads to despair; suicidal depression is a danger at those times. When the rage is directed at the object who is imagined to have caused the humiliation (or has actually caused the humiliation, as by a lover's rejection) the outcome can be murderous. Often enough the rage is inchoate and the objects include those who have caused his pain (America, the Jews, women, and the police as symbols of the frustrating society) and murder-suicide is the outcome.

Read more here.

John Hawkins: 50 things every 18-year-old should know. Add to the list if you have other suggestions.

Narcissism and victimhood: A deadly combination?

Apparently, America was not such a great place for rampage killer Jiverly Wong:

Jiverly Wong was upset over losing his job at a vacuum plant, didn't like people picking on him for his limited English and once angrily told a co-worker, "America sucks."

It remains unclear exactly why the Vietnamese immigrant strapped on a bulletproof vest, barged in on a citizenship class and killed 13 people and himself, but the police chief says he knows one thing for sure: "He must have been a coward."

Jiverly Wong had apparently been preparing for a gun battle with police but changed course and decided to turn the gun on himself when he heard sirens approaching, Chief Joseph Zikuski said Saturday.

"He had a lot of ammunition on him, so thank God before more lives were lost, he decided to do that," the chief said.

Police and Wong's acquaintances portrayed him as an angry, troubled 41-year-old man who struggled with drugs and job loss and perhaps blamed his adopted country for his troubles. His rampage "was not a surprise" to those who knew him, Zikuski said. ...

Back in New York, he worked at the Shop-Vac plant in Binghamton. Former co-worker Kevin Greene told the Daily News of New York that Wong once said, in answer to whether he liked the New York Yankees, "No, I don't like that team. I don't like America. America sucks."

Other reports (via Michelle Malkin) say he wanted to assassinate the President--Bush or Obama? No one knows at this point.

I do wonder how much a sense of entitlement (these types of killers often display a sense of narcissism) combined with continued coverage of how bad America is played a part in contributing to this killer's distorted thinking process? Psychologists and experts often find that in mass killers:

..."the central role of narcissism plainly connects them. Only a narcissist could decide that his alienation should be underlined in the blood of strangers..."

Psychologists from South Africa to Chicago have begun to recognize that extreme self-centeredness is the forest in these stories, and all the other things-- guns, games, lyrics, pornography--are just trees. To list the traits of the narcissist is enough to prove the point: grandiosity, numbness to the needs and pain of others, emotional isolation, resentment and envy...

Freud explained narcissism as a failure to grow up. All infants are narcissists, he pointed out, but as we grow, we ought to learn that other people have lives independent of our own. It's not their job to please us, applaud for us or even notice us--let alone die because we're unhappy...

A generation ago, the social critic Christopher Lasch diagnosed narcissism as the signal disorder of contemporary American culture. The cult of celebrity, the marketing of instant gratification, skepticism toward moral codes and the politics of victimhood were signs of a society regressing toward the infant stage.

In America, we continue to teach people to be more and more reliant on government and in a sense, never grow up. How will a nation of victims play out over the coming years? Will we see more of this type of violence? Mass killings are rare but what are the other repercussions that a lack of personal responsibility combined with a sense of entitlement will bring?

Complex analysis: Men are slobs!

Reader Jeff emails an interesting story about Australian men being sexual turn offs to women:

Australian men are complaining of a lack of sex. Could they be the problem, asks Wendy Frew....

As sex therapist and social commentator Bettina Arndt explains in her book The Sex Diaries, many men - though otherwise happily married - are starved of the sex and affection we should all expect from our relationships.

Low libidos, long working days and onerous household chores have been cited - among other things - as reasons why some men want it more often, only to find their women cringing at their creeping hands in the bedroom.

In 2007, Arndt asked 98 "ordinary Australian couples" to keep a diary for six to nine months. They were meant to confess the very personal issue of how they negotiated sexual relations with their partner...

But somehow in the ensuing debate, the complexity of human responses has been ignored when it comes to apportioning blame. It seems it's all a woman's fault.

The author of the article concludes that it is not women's fault, but men who are "going to seed:"

Let's face it, many men lose their attractiveness.

Cocooned in married bliss, well fed and watered, with someone else changing the sheets and washing the towels, they quickly go to seed. Their beer bellies swell, body parts droop, and their breath goes sour, and don't they get all of us in the mood.

How many men fret about their wardrobe? How many take particular care with personal hygiene? Many men think three days of facial growth is sexy, far more than for whom it actually is. They think an old Rolling Stones T-shirt is chic, when it's just plain shabby. And most wouldn't be seen dead in a gym, claiming it's too metrosexual, too homosexual or anything but the truth: it's just too hard.

Most women are generous in praising the virtues - physical and mental, if not emotional - of their menfolk [my emphasis]. Few women would demand their partner visit an Ashley & Martin hair-loss clinic, for instance. Hair loss is a natural, if unwelcome, process and bald men can look hot. And which woman would insist on their fella dyeing his hair or having pec implants?

Women are generous in praising men's virtues? Men are cocooned in marital bliss? What crack has this woman been smoking? Male bashing is alive and well and women are the majority of complainers when it comes to being disgusted with the opposite sex. Women may not be totally to blame when it comes to lack of desire, but to say that men are just unattractive slobs is hardly a suitable answer either. The author talks about a lack of complexity of human responses and then gives a simplistic answer to the problem herself. Maybe she needs to take her own advice but that would require actually treating men as human beings, a trait she obviously lacks.

Knoxville Tea Party

Knoxville will be having a Tea Party protest on April 15th. Glenn and I will be there covering it for PJTV. Here's the website for those who are interested.

PJTV: Some non-PC advice for Obama's Council on Women and Girls

Amy Alkon and I have some advice for Obama's Council on Women and Girls in today's PJTV segment.

You can watch the show here.



If you have some complaints or comments for Obama's Council, you can go here to the Office of Public Liaison.