The Rage Behind a Woman's Stare

Yes, this is the headline of a Washington Post column (you may need a subscription to view it) about--you guessed it--women who do too much (thanks to the reader who emailed the article):

Like our love, women’s anger — the simmering rage toward our families, our mates and assorted males that can turn even the calmest woman’s expression into The Death Look — is always there. Even when it’s the last thing on our minds....

Surprised by my sudden bitterness, I asked, “Why do we keep doing so much with so little help?” “Because no one else will do it,” Ilena snorted. “Because we can’t live in a house that looks like a cyclone went through it,” I added.

Because we’re the wife, we agreed. The mom. The girl.

Millions of Death-Look-wearing women ask, “What can I do?” yet few embrace the obvious answer: “Stop!” Stop with the cleaning, the arranging, the cheerleading, the shopping, the whole relentless shebang. Some who do stop see their homes’ disarray devolve into a chaos that’s unbearable — for them, not their families..

I wonder what a Male Death Look would look like? A desperate look that says "Stop with the body guarding, fixing the faucet, mowing the lawn, earning much of the living, the light-bulb changing, the honeydo list.... and on and on."

But we'll probably never know because what men do is not valued by most female journalists and the white knight males who support them in their sexism. In addition, men keep their anger against women to themselves as complaining will only serve to get them tagged as a misgogynist or whiner. This needs to change.

There is a good article (via Instapundit) by James Q. Wilson, author of The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families, at the Washington Post on economic inequality and its causes. This statistic caught my eye:

The past three decades have seen significant increases in real earnings for people with advanced degrees. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found that between 1979 and 2010, hourly wages for men and women with at least a college degree rose by 33 percent and 20 percent, respectively, while they fell for all people with less than a high school diploma — by 9 percent for women and 31 percent for men [my emphasis].

Those men who do not have a college degree look to be at a significant disadvantage. Given that fewer men are going to college, I wonder how this will play itself out in the coming decades? Though I notice that the article says "with less than a high school diploma." I wonder if those men with a high school diploma but no college can do okay if they find work in the military or with a vocation.

Is Nagging a Marriage Killer?

Wall Street Journal (via Newsalert):

It's More Common Than Adultery and Potentially As Toxic, So Why Is It So Hard to Stop Nagging?...

Nagging—the interaction in which one person repeatedly makes a request, the other person repeatedly ignores it and both become increasingly annoyed—is an issue every couple will grapple with at some point. While the word itself can provoke chuckles and eye-rolling, the dynamic can potentially be as dangerous to a marriage as adultery or bad finances. Experts say it is exactly the type of toxic communication that can eventually sink a relationship.

John Hawkins at Right Wing News interviews Mark Levin on his new book Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America.

"Isn't Two Decades of a Man's Life Worth Nine Months of a Woman's?"

I spent part of the day re-reading Warren Farrell's amazing book The Myth of Male Power. I often forget how ahead of his time Farrell was when he wrote the first edition of the book in 1993 on why men are the disposable sex. Farrell's take on men's reproductive rights are spot on when he states:

Once a man allows himself to love a child deeply, he wants the right to love equally. He realizes that when a woman and he have created a pregnancy, the issue is not the rights of the female vs. the fetus, but the rights of the female, the fetus, and the father. He realizes that a woman who says "It's my body, it's my business," and then chooses to have a child that she makes him pay for forces him to take a job he might like less just because it pays more; forces him to stress himself out and die early--forces him to use his body for eighteen years. If it's his body being used for eighteen years, and his body dying sooner, shouldn't it be his business, too? Isn't two decades of a man's life worth nine months of a woman's?

The short answer is "yes."

Amy Alkon: Courts Without Justice: Dads On The Custody Battlefront.

I am reading Charles Murray's new book Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. It's a fascinating look at the polarization within white America. Niall Ferguson, a professor of history at Harvard who reviewed Murray's book states:

No doubt the same politically correct critics will complain about this book, because it is almost entirely devoted to the problem of social polarization within "white America." They will have to ignore one of Coming Apart's most surprising findings: that race is not a significant determinant of social polarization in today's America. It is class that really matters...

Murray meticulously chronicles and measures the emergence of two wholly distinct classes: a new upper class, first identified in The Bell Curve as "the cognitive elite," and a new "lower class," which he is too polite to give a name. And he vividly localizes his argument by imagining two emblematic communities: Belmont, where everyone has at least one college degree, and Fishtown, where no one has any....

What can be done to reunite these two classes? Murray is dismissive of the standard liberal prescription of higher taxes on the rich and higher spending on the poor. As he points out, there could hardly be a worse moment to try to import the European welfare state, just as that system suffers fiscal collapse in its continent of origin.

Great book full of interesting statistics and charts for those of you who like such things.

Girls Who Kill on E! Entertainment

I was interviewed for a show for an "E! Entertainment Special: When Girls Kill" that premieres tonight, Thursday at 10:00 pm Eastern. The show looks at the case of four young killers, one of them Natasha Wallen Cornett:

Natasha Wallen was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder early in life and spent some time in mental hospitals. During that time Natasha developed a dark fantasy world, and attracted a crowd of like minded teenage outcasts. One April night in 1997, a tragic clash of innocence and evil lead to a violent and horrifying conclusion for Natasha and her friends. Serving a life sentence, Natasha, the alleged ring leader who was once fascinated with satanic rituals, speaks out about her horrible past and now contends that better mental health care as a youth might have prevented her unthinkable actions.

You can see more about the show here.

Update: You can also see the show today (Friday, January 20th) at 11:00 AM eastern and 3:00 PM eastern on E! TV.

"But if the victim were a woman, they wouldn’t hesitate, and the law needs to be enforced equally."

Laura Curtis at Pursuing Holiness Blog has a post on the double standards when men are sexaully assaulted:

This is an unremittingly bad story. An LSU fan was stupid enough to drink himself senseless in a public place and evidently didn’t have even a single friend willing to look out for him. An mob of stupid Alabama fans assaulted him – putting trash on him and even teabagging him. In fact, they were so stupid that they filmed their crimes and posted them on the internet.

Next, the New Orleans police department – with actual video of a sex crime in their possession- decided they couldn’t investigate unless the victim stepped forward.

Let’s do a little thought experiment. Let’s imagine that this was a girl who drank herself stupid. Let’s imagine that she was touched, her breasts were fondled, and that a man rubbed his genitals on her while she was unconscious. Can anyone imagine the NOPD – or any police department, anywhere – dragging their heels on investigating unless she came forward?

Given the way that our society laughs and mocks men who are abused in this way, I can understand the guy not coming forward, but he must. It is only when individual men start to say "No, this is not justice for all" and endure the ridicule that men everywhere will no longer have to endure their rights and bodies being violated in this absurd manner without consequence.

"...an estimated 50,000 persons are kept in jail or in prison on any given day in the U.S. for child support arrears."

I was working on some continuing education articles today on legal issues and came across the case of Turner vs. Rogers that I thought would be of interest to readers here. In this case (which examines child support) according to an article on mental health and medical rights by Steven R. Smith, JD:

...the question was whether there is a right to have appointed counsel in such civil contempt proceedings. Typically, such civil contempt findings must be based on the fact that there is a valid child-support order, and that the noncustodial parent was able to comply with it, but failed to do so.

In a 5-4 decision the Court held that the state is not necessarily obligated to provide counsel for indigent parents facing incarceration for civil contempt related to the failure to pay child support. At a minimum, however, states must have in place procedures to ensure "a fundamentally fair determination of the critical incarceration-related question, whether the supporting parent is able to comply with the support order."

There is much more to this case than the lack of counsel being provided that I will not get into here but I was disappointed to see that Justice Clarence Thomas authored a dissenting opinion:

Thomas further argued (with Justice Antonin Scalia, but not Chief Justice John G. Roberts or Samuel Alito joining) that the majority opinion did not consider the effects of this decision with respect to child support payments, and expressed concern that the majority opinion would undermine state efforts to collect child support payments.[4]

What didn't surprise me is how many people (my guess is mostly or all men) are imprisoned for not paying child support:

A person being in arrears on child support payments is not unusual: in 2008, 11.2 million U.S. child support cases had arrears due.[1] The number of persons kept in jail or in prison for child support arrears is not generally tracked. Based on a publicly available collection of relevant data, an estimated 50,000 persons are kept in jail or in person [sic]on any given day in the U.S. for child support arrears.[2] Hence Turner v. Rogers does not merely concern a technical question of legal procedure. Being in arrears on child support payments is a situation that many persons experience. Moreover, as a result of child support debt, many persons in the U.S. are being imprisoned.

If 50,000 on any given day is accurate, it is unbelievable how many men are being kept in jail for owing money. Many people feel that child support is a different kind of debt but I disagree. Debtors' prisons are long gone, so much so that people are actually nonchalant and even contemptuous about owing others money. They know that jail is not an option for them.

I believe that the jails are full of fathers because of their sex exclusively. We have a higher percentage of deadbeat moms, but few are held accountable and I doubt that many, if any, of the 50,000 in jail on any given day are female. Why does our society allow men to be thrown in jail this way? Are there that many chivalrous men and white knights like Thomas out there who believe that men's rights end when it comes to reproduction? Are there that many totalitarian women out there who believe that a man in jail is par for the course and a source of smug satisfaction?

Given how many of our nation's men sit in jail over child support, I guess the answer is a resounding "yes."

We continue to legalize misandry but at what cost?

Are You a Sucker or a Moocher?

I am reading a copy of a new book by Charles Sykes called A Nation of Moochers: America's Addiction to Getting Something for Nothing. Sykes is also the author of similar titles on entitlement including A Nation of Victims: The Decay of the American Character and Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write, or Add.

The book is good for those who feel like suckers, playing by the rules and paying for those who don't. As you read the book, you can really understand why it is that people vote for wealth redistributionists like Obama. "Roughly 60 percent of American households actually were receiving more government benefits and services than they were paying back in taxes and the Tax Foundation estimated that under the 2009 federal budget, 70 percent of households would take in more than they contribute." Why not keep the gravy train going at little or no expense to themselves? But what about the producers, those who are paying?

One of the central questions of the book is whether we are at the "tipping point." The author asks:

When do independent, self-sufficient men or women realize that they are society's suckers, being made to work for the benefit of an ever-growing, ever-shifting, and increasingly insistent and more grasping class of moochers? When do they decide to jump the line? Are we already there?

In one of the last chapters, Sykes states, "Finally, we need to recognize that mooching simply recycles wealth; it does not generate it."

We all lose if we let the moochers among us dictate our demise. The book gives some suggestions on how to change things but ultimately, it is up to us, by who we elect and our political class to make those changes. If the same losers end up in office, what are the chances? This is one reason that moochers should not be encouraged, either through policy or culture. If we make it more unpleasant to be a moocher, perhaps there would be fewer moochers among us.

So, are you a sucker or a moocher or somewhere in-between? Are you a sucker who has reached the "tipping point?" What do you feel you can do about it, if anything?

William Broad, author of a new book entitled The Science of Yoga: The Risks and the Rewards, has an interesting article in the New York Times called "How Yoga can Wreck Your Body."

The Difference in the Treatment of Men and Women

I am in the Caribbean and spotted this t-shirt at a beach shop:




That kind of sums up the double standards between the treatment of men and the treatment of women, huh?

Men's issues on Blog Talk Radio with Amy Alkon

I will be a guest on Amy Alkon's show on Blog Talk Radio discussing men's issues today, Sunday, January 1st at 4:30-5:30 Eastern. We will also be answering your questions on air.

You can call in to speak with us between 4:30 and 5:30 Eastern on Sunday about men, sex, relationships or culture at (347) 326-9761. So, even if you are still hung over from New Year's festivities on Sunday, call in. We would love to hear from you.

Update: You can click on and listen to the show below:

Listen to internet radio with amyalkon on Blog Talk Radio