Shannon Love at the Chicago Boyz blog:
Is it fair that every human society treats males, especially young adult males, as utterly expendable? Is is fair that men die at higher rates at all ages than women? Is it fair they live shorter lives? Is it fair that for every high-status elite male that feminists want to emulate, there are hundreds if not thousands of men who labored and died in obscurity? On what scale to balance the sacrifices that evolution has imposed on us?
(I’m sure all the men down in the mines, out on the fishing boats, crouching in foxholes or dying a decade early from overwork might have been willing to trade part of their lives of constant pain, stress and danger for a percentage chance of an unwanted pregnancy or two.)
posted by Helen at 5:03 AM
57 Comments:
Children always say "It's not fair."
In many cultures female babies are killed early on or aborted because males are preferred. Is that fair?
War: soon women too will be in combat. Then all will be fair. Most people die in obscurity..men and women is that fair?
One theory has it that women live longer because of their physiology rather than cultural facts: is that fair? As God or Darwin.
Some men and some women are homeless, hungry, cancer ridden: is that "fair."
Fred, honestly. How long is your assignment to this particular blog supposed to last? Can we have the next person in the rotation, please?
This comment has been removed by the author.
Fred,
If life is unfair, then it is. I don't think that's the complaint.
If the government is treating different groups of people in different ways, then the disadvantaged group should speak up.
I can't think of ANY way that the government discriminates against women today. Not a one, with the exception of "not allowing them" to sign up for selective service in case there is a draft (I'm sure that many women want to be pulled out of their lives involuntarily to be shot at in a foreign country if a draft came about, and the stupid government doesn't let them sign up for this great program).
I can think of many ways that the government (all three branches) discriminates against men, though. And there's also a value to activism in trying to change the way society thinks - societal views also lead to men living crappier lives.
Your comment is so full of an agenda that it borders on being bizarre.
This comment has been removed by the author.
And even with regard to cancer:
I understand that men and women die at almost equal rates from prostate cancer and breast cancer respectively, but breast cancer gets five times more funding in addition to millions more from donation campaigns.
In fact, men die at a far younger age statistically but far more money is spent on women's health care - and there is some evidence as women come under stress in the workplace and now face the same stress-related illnesses that men exclusively faced at one time that earlier deaths could be a result of that.
Still, men DON'T speak up, I guess because the fear of being ridiculed by a woman is worse than the fear of dying or being grossly disadvantaged in life.
Men who put women up on a pedestal and consequently life in great fear of their disapproval have to finally realize that women are just humans, in fact the opinions of many women are idiotic (just like those of many men).
The lower life expectancy doesn't really bother me. We don't really know, but there's a good chance that that's just biology.
It does, however, bother me that, for example, our courts have decided that a woman my age must receive the same payout from a defined-benefit pension plan or an annuity although her life expectancy is greater, but I have to pay higher life insurance premiums than a woman my age and with my medical history would. It's the same actuarial calculations; it's just a question of which variable you're solving for. The rule of law seems to be that the actuarial calculations can't take sex into consideration when it would result in a worse deal for women, but they can when it results in a worse deal for men.
That is unfair.
OMG Ern, that (second paragraph of your comment) is an *awesome* point. Thanks.
As for the lower life expectancy, you may be right, but I think there is the case for more research - for instance the higher risk of heart disease in males may be correlated to taking up more stressful jobs? Apparently the life-expectancy gender gap is closing in Britain.
I'm sure that many women want to be pulled out of their lives involuntarily to be shot at in a foreign country if a draft came about
Even if they where drafted, women are excluded from front-line ground combat service: no infantry, armor or artillery MOAs.
True, they still can be shot at/wounded/MIA/KIA as there are many non-combatant roles to be filled in combat zones. Truck drivers are the most vulnerable, as they have to go outside the wire to deliver their goods.
And those goods? tempting target, worth striking at.
Children always say "It's not fair."
Fred, let me fix that for ya:
Feminists always say "It's not fair."
Yer welcome.
As somebody once pointed out: the real underlying principle of feminism is that women should have options, men should have obligations. Feminists' BS about equality is just that, BS.
Sandeep -
I agree that more research is needed. That's one of the reasons that I said that "we really don't know" the reasons that men have a lower life expectancy than women (of course, there's always the old joke that husbands die before their wives because they want to).
Every time fred posts something, I read it on the small chance something intelligent may be found. Less than once in hundred is something intelligent found and my time was wasted.
Is that fair?
we are workers, miners, soldiers, police and firemen.
they are single mothers, young girls, women, women of colour and so on.
this is how the media reports things.
and as women get into harm`s way they will be dying at younger ages too.
and fred, well he may well only be a computer simulation.
The lower life expectancy doesn't really bother me. We don't really know, but there's a good chance that that's just biology.
Well, when you look at the history you'll get some interesting results:
Women and men used to have very similar life expectancies (within a year) and this was due to men working hard/dying in wars and women dying in childbirth. Once childbirth became relatively safe, the gap widened significantly (9 years). After women started entering the workforce in great numbers... not working the deadly jobs but the stressful ones... the gap shrunk quite a bit.
I do feel that a lot of the gap is based upon socially prescribed gender roles. Now, the question is, is this fair?
Well... if you want to have civilization in the first place, it's the price which needs to be paid. That's why we can't liberate men from traditional gender roles as we have women. To do so would be instant social suicide. The problem we face today is that freeing women from traditional gender roles is also social suicide, just at a slower pace.
I really wish you had warned of the graphic nature of the details mentioned almost immediately in the link you provided. I really did not need to read that first sentence or two about what was going on at that abortion clinic. I'm not sure what the rest of the linked article talked about, but just reading that small bit will be enough to bring disturbing images to my head all day.
Of course, it's my fault for browsing blogs, including your own. Sigh, I really need to stop doing that.
"The problem we face today is that freeing women from traditional gender roles is also social suicide, just at a slower pace."
--------
What traditional roles of women?
Hauling the rugs out on the line outside and beating the dust out of them? Churning butter? Sewing clothes for the family? Milking cows?
At the point where industrialization made housewives redundant, the early feminists recognized that women would get no respect at all if they didn't do something useful.
But still today, the paradigm is that the woman sells herself when she is young to the highest bidder. And men are still lining up for it, like cows going to slaughter.
Men deserve what they get, is all I can say. Get some friggin' respect for yourselves.
I used to have pity for men going through the family court process.
After hearing years of hearing men bragging about how much they pay for the demanding bitch, what macho men they are for protecting her after she starts the kerfluffle with her big mouth, and even hearing bragging, really bragging, about how utterly stupid the dumb bitch is ...
... I can only laugh at this point when those men start singing a different song in family court. Her lawyer ain't so stupid, is he.
You reap what you sow. And you aren't talking so big now in your efficiency apartment with your huge payments to her.
What traditional roles of women?
1. Be chaste outside of marriage (motivate men to become marriage material).
2. Be a partner in marriage (Allow the husband to focus on being productive).
3. Select the best men to marry (keep the gene pool moving towards better genes).
4. Stay out of the workplace if at all possible (create economic conditions such that single-income families can work)
5. Stretch every dollar the husband makes as far as possible.
6. Contribute to the moral upbringing of her children.
7. Stay out of direct political influence of the government.
This list is not exhaustive.
Even with all the modern conveniences, there is a lot a woman can do in support of a family. It was feminists who devalued these contributions, not reacting to a devaluation of these contributions.
The issue is, women performing their traditional duties motivate men to achieve. When women become sluts and whores and compete with men in the workplace, men become demotivated to achieve... why work to the bone earning when he can have a part time job and still earn sex and companionship? Civilization advances on the backs of men, not women who want civilization to take care of them.
Demonspawn,
That all boils down, apparently, to your personal desire to have a sit-on-her-ever-widening-ass housewife who won't fuck around on you and who will actually *talk* to you like a human being (partner).
Most of the housewives I see are immature, extremely greedy, unreliable and very dominant in the household. SHE is the boss of the house, not you.
And that's probably what you're going to have in 20 years after she plays fantasy woman until you marry her.
But let it play out, dude.
And I'm not going to have a back-and-forth with you about how your dream girl is going to be just as dreamy 20 years from now.
Go for it. You're probably right.
Over and out.
This comment has been removed by the author.
It's like listening to a teenager who isn't even very good at football about how he is probably going to be a pro football player so he doesn't have to study.
You just can't tell them anything.
Most of the housewives I see are immature, extremely greedy, unreliable and very dominant in the household.
That's because those women aren't following their traditional roles.
You're still talking about men vs. Women. I'm talking about what will allow our society to survive. There is a difference.
Yes, you or I could live a single life. What is the end result for society if the vast majority of men do? Society falls apart.
And let's not even mention that yes, you and I are two people who are smart enough to see the benefits of being a life-long bachelor, but is that what the average man wants or is it what he is capable of doing? No... it's not.
<< What is the end result for society if the vast majority of men do? Society falls apart. >>
____
Who knows. You can lift a big burden from your shoulders by not being single-handedly responsible for human-kind and for its development in the next billion years.
<< That's because those women aren't following their traditional roles. >>
Have women ever? They don't really follow them today, but I wasn't around 100 years ago - and neither were you - but I suspect that the same old patterns play out. Men produce and women manipulate.
Same old shit, different century.
I'm getting fairly old, and I had the benefit of a VERY old grandfather who I was able to talk to when I was an adult.
I really have the sneaking suspicion that women were always the way they were. If you get my drift. Men produce and women manipulate.
And ... even more today than before ... men have responsibilities and women have rights.
Or, men have duties and women have options.
However you want to express it.
"Sex and Culture" by J.D. Unwin, published in the UK in 1934.
I highly suggest you (JG and MB) read it.
Women have followed their traditional roles (to varying levels) throughout history. When women follow them, men are more inclined to follow them and society advances. When women don't, men are disinclined to achieve and society falls.
It's actually like a cycle. Men create, advance, and give women freedom. Women use this freedom to tear down that which gave them freedom in the first place.
This is not the first time in history we've had feminism, and I doubt it will be the last.
But the question raised was "is this fair?" And the answer is "it depends... do you want civilization or not? If you do, this is the price which must be paid to have it."
Quotes from a dusty philosopher from the 19th century (to support my feeling that not much has changed):
Arther Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860):
- [...] Thus nature has equipped women, as it has all its creatures, with the tools and weapons she needs for securing her existence, and at just the time she needs them; in doing which nature has acted with its usual economy. For just as the female ant loses it’s wings after mating, since they are then superfluous, indeed harmful to the business of raising the family, so the woman usually loses her beauty after one or two childbeds, and probably for the same reason.
- In their hearts women think that it is men’s business to earn money and theirs to spend it--if possible during their husband’s life, but, at any rate, after his death.
Demonspawn:
Well, then you better get on your lonely job of making women do their traditional stuff.
Good luck to you with that. I'd even like to see you in action.
Notes: Sorry, it's ArthUr Schopenhauer. Typo.
Well, then you better get on your lonely job of making women do their traditional stuff.
Good luck to you with that. I'd even like to see you in action.
I won't have to. When this society collapses and "equality" means real risk of life and limb, then women will fall right back into their traditional roles.
It is only a successful society which gives women the means to destroy it. Women in struggling societies care more about survival (which means following traditional roles) then a stupid quest for unachievable equality.
Are you wondering how to get from here to there without the downfall? Won't happen. Your choices are to expat, revolt, or sit on blogs and complain about it while waiting for the inevitable collapse of the current system.
All I see in here is the endless whining of beta males that the all the good women have been snatched up by the alphas. Same old story.
What's a good woman, Alex?
She stays pretty and hot until she's 90?
And who's complaining about good women being snatched up above? No one that I can see.
But maybe you're bursting to tell us the news that you're an alpha male. Well, get on with it.
I scrolled up, and who the fuck is talking about all the good women being snatched up?
Your steroids are affecting your brain, Alex.
JG - my point is that alpha males never complain about the horrible injustices done to them by women. It's only losers and beta males.
Alex, I could really give a flying fig what "alpha males" do. It's a fiction that you are apparently buying into.
As a human being, I am not going to take shit to the extent possible.
If you want to take infinite crap under the guise of trying to be an "alpha male", then do it and don't bother grown-ups with your shit.
Let me guess: You are in your 20s at most.
Unfortunately, most self-appointed "alpha males" I run into in life can be characterized by one very important trait: They would be mortified to be shamed by a woman.
A woman shaming them that they are not as rich as they should be, they are not as tough as they should be or they are not as high in life as they should be would be a fate worse than death.
So they try to cover all those areas, but they invariably can't. I don't know what they do then - I guess some go on shooting rampages.
And God forbid an insightful woman should laugh at them for trying to play the childish role of "alpha male".
JG - lol! Loughner covered exactly which alpha male bases? He was a stoned-out LOSER through and through!
Are you in a fraternity, Alex?
JG - actually I'm in my 30s. I just choose not to get entangled in the typical "dating scene". AKA going to "singles bars".
Any time someone says "Be a man" beware. If it is a nubile woman then she wants you to support her children, if your mother then she wants you to support her to the end of her life no matter how bad her choices were in life.
The phrase, "Be a man or act like a man" is a con, it is just a way to bilk you of your money to support some female who has not done her own planning.
fatfred - it used to be "be a man" was something older men said to younger ones as a way of passing on the wisdom. When did it get perverted into something so dreadful?
What wisdom?
Doing the bidding of women while they control you with shame?
When I hear "be a man", I instinctively reach for my wallet to see if she's already trying to get her hands on it.
The other use for "be a man" is for a woman to get herself into a jam and shame you into getting her of it. That could also be running her yap until someone is going to attack her - then you step in to either save the damsel in distress or get your ass kicked. Either way, she's out of it.
I don't know what crowd of older men you run around with Alex, but when I was a bit younger, older men were telling me things like "don't get married, whatever you do", "don't get manipulated by women" and the like.
Actually, I don't think most men would have made that trade-off. Remember Shackleton's ad? Okay, the ad was apocryphal, but this letter was printed, and 5000 men responded:
THE NEW EXPEDITION. | TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES. |
Sir,--It has been an open secret for some time past that I have been desirous of leading another expedition to the South Polar regions.
I am glad now to be able to state that, through the generosity of a friend, I can announce that an expedition will start next year with the object of crossing the South Polar continent from sea to sea.
I have taken the liberty of calling the expedition "The Imperial Trans Antarctic Expedition," because I feel that not only the people of these islands, but our kinsmen in all the lands under the Union Jack will be willing to assist towards the carrying out of the full programme of exploration to which my comrades and myself are pledged.
Yours faithfully,
ERNEST H. SHACKLETON.
4, New Burlington-street, Regent-street, W., Dec. 27.
------------
Men are genetically inclined to seek risk and hence reward. It increases their status, and hence their ability to have good offspring. Women are genetically inclined for stability and good offspring, and so must balance picking men like the above with the ones likely to stick around and provide for the offspring.
Allison - the difference is these days a man can be a big adventurer and get all the babes. F.e., mountain climbers get endorsement contracts...
I'll be 60 in April. Does that make me an older man. If so, all I can say is, ""don't get married, whatever you do", "don't get manipulated by women"...."
Actually, the "be a man" phrase in the old world has an underlying assumption; that if you aren't bening a man, you are acting like a woman.
IOW, you have no honor.
That it is used by women in shaming attempts isn't relevant. Either you are a man, that your word is good, that you have honor, or you do not and you are not honorable.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Whether that was ever the full meaning SGT Ted (and I dispute your oversimplification), the phrase is mostly used today to get men to do something a woman wants him to.
A Real Man would support me while I stay at home; be a man.
[This was a real one; the husband was NOT abusing his wife]: Woman to boyfriend, "My husband beat me up a lot, BE A REAL MAN and finish him off". [... and boyfriend did it].
A GP friend of mine was seeing a woman patient for some complaint. After she had been seen and cared for, she told the GP that her husband, who had driven her to the doctor's office, was not feeling well. Could he check on the husband?
The husband had a perforated ulcer, one of the most painful conditions in medicine.
This is to: Fred, MB, Alex
You three, I can't even begin understand your logic! It is so far off what most on this site are talking about. I understand most of what is said on this site from people here, I don't agree with some of it but I understand. But the thought process of you three is beyond me. It's like you ignore the truth or something, I don't know and I can't figure you guys out. I almost disagree with everything you say, and I find it offensive, I'm not trying to anger anybody it's just the way it is. It's almost like trying to make sense of the political Left.
Dan:
Maybe you could clarify what you find in common with Fred, MB, and Alex.
I see Fred as kind of a left-wing disturbance (who may really be a feminist woman), Alex as a self-appointed chivalristic real-man hero and MB as the anti-Alex.
You don't want to be offensive; I don't think you're offensive at all, you're just posting incomprehensible stuff.
when i was growing up if i was told to be a man, it was because i hadn`t stood up for myself.
i personally think that you have to "stand up for yourself" in many different ways, including that situation wherein your wife or girlfriend is trying to bully you into some situation or action that you don`t want to be part of.
like letting my step-daughter take the downstairs apartment in the house, which would be full of drunk idiots 3 or 4 days a week.
i just said no and my wife understood. she may not have liked my decision, but she understands my reasons and respects my position.
my values on being a man are different to most, especially in canada, where the pink shirt is almost a uniform.
yoga, pilates, and hot stone treatments are not workouts people.....
At 6:56 AM, January 21, 2011 fred led off the comments with...
Children always say "It's not fair."
Here, fred anticipated the "be a man" shaming ploy that would be discussed by later commenters.
(Good catch, I R A Darth Aggie, for pointing out that feminists always say the same thing. Did fred mean to imply that feminists are children?)
In many cultures female babies are killed early on or aborted because males are preferred. Is that fair?
Preferred by whom? Other females; to be specific adult females. Why? Because once outside the womb, females are no longer considered disposable yet boys and men remain so for their whole lives. Notice how by avoiding the whole truth fred slyly implies falsehoods such as female always means 'victim' and males always have it great.
War: soon women too will be in combat.
And it will be like so much else, an option for her and an obligation for him. I read somewhere that's what feminists call 'equality.'
Then all will be fair.
I'm confident that fred always racks up a high score - ha ha - on the Gender-Bias Test.
Most people die in obscurity..men and women is that fair?
Take it up with the females who are frosted because they aren't genetic celebrities their whole lives, fred.
One theory has it that women live longer because of their physiology rather than cultural facts: is that fair? As(k) God or Darwin.
When female interest groups demand more government spending of Other People's Money on female-only health programs (the most highly-funded kind), "Ask God or Darwin, not government" is never fred's answer.
Some men and some women are homeless, hungry, cancer ridden: is that "fair."
At least fred had the honesty this time to not disguise that one piece of rhetorical misdirection as a question. Far more men than women are "homeless, hungry, (or) cancer ridden" yet most people advocating attention for people in such plights direct our attention almost exclusively toward females in those situations. Only a feminist could imagine that's 'equality.'
Post a Comment
<< Home