Happy New Year

I Guess it's a Privilege

... to suddenly find myself obliged to address so very many trolls.  I mean do that sincerely because I appreciate the 8,000 pageviews generated through Reddit this past week or so, but some of you folks don't seem to grasp the overall tone of this blog.  The intentionally provocative style of my Anonymous Letter post is NOT representative of my usual writing.

I welcome dissent here because I enjoy intellectually honest debate.  I also learn from it.  There is however, nothing intellectually honest, or remotely edifying, in playground-style insults (which are not as witty as you think they are) and in cryptic fringe-based rabble rousing.  Y'all can just cut that shit out right now because I will delete it without a second thought.  Feel free to publish it in your own space, but not here.

"Enough." Amen.

Demand a Plan

H/T Navy One

Most Interesting....

Confirmed: Feinsteins gun-control legislation will ban most guns

If Congress want to do away with the Bill of Rights, I think Congress will not like the results.

Fun Fact

Google "encouraging girls in school"  110,000,000 pages

Google "encouraging boys in school"  14,000,000 pages

Book research is depressing.  Ugh.

If You Give a Damn About Your Right to Bear Arms...

...Buy a book of stamps, fire up your email, hit Facebook, spam the crap out of Skype, and I want to see smoke coming out of your phone.

http://waronguns.blogspot.com/2012/12/sauce-for-goose.html

"The Journal- News, a Gannett publication, has published the full name and address of every licensed pistol permit holder in three New York counties. "

This is Bullshit.

A Rare Photo

...of me ungroomed:

Pink Bunny Suits!!!

This is part of why I call my husband WolfAlpha - he's not the perfect specimen of anything, but he has some of everything.  He's the whole package.  There's quite a bit of caveman in him, as he works his tail off to meet our needs and plenty of our wants, but he doesn't make himself a slave to my whims.  However he's the most thoughtful gift-giver I know.  It was all his idea to buy matching Pajamarama Hoodie-Footies for the dog and for me. I do love that man - he makes me laugh, and then some...

Grrrl Power, The Early Years

Grrrl Power is easy to spot once one knows what to look for.  It's everywhere; we're surrounded by it whether we see it or not.  Women's Power is a bit harder to define in modern terms, because it has become quite rare.  Even those of use who have it or strive for it, don't usually know quite what it is.  Over the next few weeks I'm going to take a shot at defining and illustrating both.

Grrrl Power can be loosely defined as any power, advantage, or increase in status that a female gains, without earning it, and/or by taking it away from boys.  It is not always pure evil.  All girls and women have some Grrl Power, just as all boys and men have some of the male equivalent.  One doesn't have to be a thief to make the most of an easy opportunity that happens to be lying around unused.  In it's modern incarnation though, Grrrl Power has evolved from ordinary opportunism, to parasitism and predation.  That is the Grrl Power I'm discussing here.

Grrrl Power starts out innocently enough, as little more than the dawning of understanding that girls and boys are different.  Very young individual girls who are spoiled by their parents are no better or worse than very young individual spoiled boys.  The difference usually develops when children join with other children, outside of the family, in a social environment.  The difference is in how "spoiled" behavior is rewarded or punished.  Grrrl Power is the advantage that a preschool girl gains when she learns that her teacher can be flattered.  Boys learn this too, and "charming" boys also have an advantage, but only over other boys, rarely over girls and never over "charming" girls.  If a male "teacher's pet" is in conflict with a female "teacher's pet," the girl will win.  Every time.  She is always perceived as the victim, even if the boy is so sweet that his offense can be presumed accidental.  She will be comforted and he will, in the best of circumstances, be admonished to be more gentle with the girls.  More often he will be blamed and reprimanded.  Most little boys who upset little girls are shamed and/or otherwise punished.  Boys learn early that every interaction with girls is fraught with danger.  In past generations this wasn't so much of a problem because boys and girls were encouraged to play separately, and usually did so.  Boys could say "No Girls Allowed," and girls could say, "No Boys Allowed."  We now call that discrimination and exclusion, and it's no longer permitted.  Inclusion is a nice ideal, and it can work if both boys and girls are willing to accept their differences.  However, here's where it becomes a problem.

Boys must respect and accommodate girls whose aptitudes are different from their own, but girls are never required to acknowledge boys' differing aptitudes.  A double standard.  There is no other way to describe it.

Girls are allowed to make their own rules of play, and boys are not.  If a boy wants to play house with the girls, he may do so, but he is expected to play according to the girls' rules.  Imagine the uproar that would ensue in a daycare facility if a boy and girl were playing house, and the boy said, "Are you ever going to hang up that phone and start dinner?"  or (heh heh) "Go make me a sammich."  Let's see...Time Out, Lecture, Note to Parents, "Discussion" with parents, Close Monitoring for future offenses....

On the other hand, if a girl wants to play tag with the boys, this same standard doesn't apply; not only will she be allowed to play with them, she will be allowed to make the rules by default.  She will not be required to play by any of the "boys' rules" that make her feel inadequate.  And she won't even need to be pushy or assertive about it, as the teachers will make it happen on her behalf.  Once she realizes that as one of the slowest runners she'll be tagged "it" more often, she will never be required to suck it up and "lose" gracefully, or to leave the game when it's no longer fun for her.  All she has to do is complain to the teacher that "it's not faaaair," and the boys will be expected to curtail their fun in order to accommodate her feelings.  Run slower.  Give her a head start.  No tag backs.  The girl gets to "win" through the application of arbitrary rules, and she gets to feel good about herself.  Those arbitrary rules are always nothing more than a means of handicapping the better competitors, most of whom are boys.

Additionally, when something unpleasant happens anyway, girls automatically get more sympathy and support.  When a boy trips and falls, he might hear, "You OK, Buddy?" but he will almost always hear, "You need to learn to slow down and be more careful."  When a girl trips and falls, she might hear, "Careful Honey!  Those rocks can be dangerous!"  She will almost always hear, "Oh you poor thing!" and be overwhelmed with hugs and sympathy, and escorted off the playground with a great deal of fuss.

Even at this age, children of both sexes generally prefer it this way.  Most boys would be embarrassed by a flutter of cooing and clucking.  For boys, falling down and getting back up is usually a bit of a badge of honor.  It enables them to say, "It's no big deal; I'm strong."  The teachers expect it and the other children respect it.  Little girls however, even in the age of feminism, don't get much attention for sucking it up.  Not from teachers or from other girls anyway.  And at the pre-school age, respect from boys is rarely expressed as effusively as respect from teachers and other girls, and it doesn't take girls long to develop a taste for vocal positive attention.

By kindergarten, most boys are already in the habit of considering the likely consequences of their words and actions.  Plenty of boys go on to indulge their "inappropriate"* impulses anyway, but when they do, they know there will be a price to pay.  Most girls are oblivious to consequences, in part due to their brains' slower development of the ability to process logic, and in part because they have relatively little experience of consequences.  For the most part, nobody is teaching them that anything they do is wrong.

*"Inappropriate"  -  a relative term, far too often assigned arbitrarily, not logically.

Class and No Class

I'd like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation for the sort of people I usually encounter in my little corner of cyberspace.  Like most bloggers, I have dealt with the occasional troll, of one stripe or another - that's life on the net.  However when I became involved in politics, I knew I'd be useless if I didn't roll with the punches, and I don't want to be useless.  This week though, my blog hit Reddit.   Both Men's Rights and Feminist pages linked my Anonymous Letter, and I can now note from personal experience, a couple of interesting phenomena.  One is that the overwhelming majority of younger females, at least those prone to voicing their opinions, speak without thinking.  Until and unless they calm down and think, most of their "opinions" are little more than shrieking nonsensical gibberish.  Every logical fallacy in the book, half-formed ideas bouncing around like pinballs,  it's quite amazing to witness.  A few young males have the same problem, but relative to females, very few.  (And this is the sex we are trained to fear????  Pft!)

The other phenomenon I noticed is that the teenage and twentysomething denizens of Reddit have far too much time on their hands, and very thin skins.  They appear to have the luxury of making a hobby of being deeply offended by things they can't be bothered to understand.  I had to put some posts in comment moderation, having been bombarded by verbal feces, flung by monkeys who unfortunately are not caged, in the form of comments that any intelligent six year old would be ashamed to utter.

This little adventure in the PC land of PC Redittors on PC "Winter Break," has been a startling reminder of how Totally Rockin' Cool my regular readers are - those who tend to agree with me and those who don't.  And contrary to what the screechers will claim on Reddit (the same screechers who had me banned within hours) no, I do not "censor" dissenting voices.  I do, however, delete nasty, ignorant comments from nasty, ignorant sub-humans.

That was the "No Class" part of this post; what follows is a bit of the "Class" part:
I have a "dissenter" here who happens to boost my faith in the young people who are our future.  Jessica is a twenty year old college student who considers herself an "egalitarian" feminist.  I, of course, think that "egalitarian feminism" is an oxymoron, because I remember a world that was not completely dominated by feminist myths, and I understand the anti-male bias in the powerful political leaders of the feminist movement.  She has been raised by feminism, yet she is capable of serious thought.  For the past several weeks, Jessica and I have been engaged in a long, drawn out discussion, and although we disagree on many points, I give her mad props for her intelligence, her patience, and her thoughtfulness.  The concepts I try to explain are utterly foreign to her, and still she considers them; she tries to see if they can fit into a worldview with which they are simply not compatible.  She doesn't accept my ideas blindly, indeed she challenges them, and  rather thoughtfully at that.  She is also far more patient and civil than many people twice her age.  She has remained calm and open when I have *gasp* lost my patience and resorted to dismissive sarcasm.  In a world where maturity is optional for just about everybody, this young lady already has it in spades.  I am deeply impressed.

I Caught a Man Being a Hero Today

His six year old daughter wanted a toy, and he said, "No Sweetie, not today."  Just as her adorable little face began to pucker up, he said with gentle, affectionate humor, "Don't waste your tears Sweetie.  My answer is 'no.'"

That man gave his daughter a precious gift today.  He reminded her that she has a father who's quiet unassuming strength cannot be toppled by the wiles of a child.

What a beautiful sight.

BWAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

"David (Boobzie) Futrelle:
lonshangui, could you email me to provide evidence for what you’re saying .....? I don’t want stuff like that going up in the comments that I don’t know for sure is true."

Drive-By Trolls and Agent Provocateurs

Just a quick note.  I deleted my "Um, Ick" post; the whackjob subject of it doesn't need any more hits from this site.  Being a Some Men's Rights Activist, he is a disgrace to the MRM.  He's a bigot, he's malicious, and he's stupid. 

He is not welcome in my life or in the MRM.

Ain't It the Truth!

The Onion, via Adaptive Curmudgeon

heh heh

I Know These People...

In fact, I live with them!

edited: Welcome HUS readers.  Speaking of Girl Game, this is the wrong post.  Try this one

Why Is The Spearhead One of the Leading Men's Sites?

Because of articles like this:

Mr. Price gets it, and expresses it eloquently

" But (Morris Dees) is a strong, resourceful, unintimidated man, and that’s what counts.

For women, however, it’s a different ball game. Women’s power rests largely on the public perception of femininity as inherently good. This perception is instinctive for men, who are programmed to see all sorts of goodness in women from birth. It’s an enormous source of power, but it isn’t guaranteed, hence women’s constant insecurity over what people think of them. For the most part, it is quite literally based upon the male concept of beauty. Men see beautiful women and this activates the “good” response in their brains. Men then immediately fall all over themselves to serve the woman in order to obtain some of this goodness.

But a couple changes have come about. The “women good” perception can be severely damaged by certain things. First, men do not feel good when the woman they desire is screwing other men. It’s very distressing to them on an instinctive level, and today women are very promiscuous. Secondly, when women start acting like men (e.g. compete with them in careers), it also significantly erodes their appeal. Combine promiscuity with competition in the workplace, and women have really shot themselves in the foot. It’s like a reverse makeover where they come out looking uglier than when they went in. To men, feminists have begun to epitomize all the worst things about contemporary females, and young women are starting to catch on and run very quickly away from the feminist label."

"It's an enormous source of power..."

In fact it is women's primary source of power.  Without it, women have a huge (possibly overwhelming) obstacle to overcome. Women must compete with men.  If men stop consenting to handicap themselves in competition with women, because the rewards for doing so are becoming increasingly unappealing, women will have to work much harder to earn their status and resources.  Most will fall short.  Most already do; without social pressure and government mandates demanding and requiring male consent, most women would be exhausted and relatively poor (and/or utterly dependent on consenting friends and extended family) especially women with children.

Men and women are designed to be allies, not enemies.  The natural male/female alliance is the foundation of our civilization.  Men want to be our allies, but we make it increasingly difficult for them, as we have removed or greatly diminished most of the incentives for men to do so.  It is only their overwhelming desire to be our allies, that has blinded them to the reality of those diminished incentives.

Men are waking up and realizing that the emperor is stark naked.  Bravo.  I hope I live to see a world where once again, women thrive under our own steam, instead of on borrowed power.  Grrrl Power is an illusion.  Women's power, the natural power with which we are born, is a sight to behold.  Grrrl Power repels men; women's power attracts men.  Indeed it is the inborn desire to ally themselves* with women's power, that drives men to every sort of greatness.    


*I don't mean "ride the coattails of."  I mean "engage in mutually beneficial exchange with."

Well, Would You Look at That!

Huh! Activism works!  Who knew?

This is HUGE!
I raise a glass of my favorite wine to the very likely end of Mary Kellett's career/reign of terror.


We named one, more to follow
A particularly nasty young feminist in Toronto has spent the last 72 hours vacillating between bragging about her new found fame, and frantically attempting to scrub her history off of the internet.  Sorry Cupcake, you own your shit, and you will own it for the rest of your life.
       (and then there's Boobzie's version of events.)
       Boobzie, being a world class newshound, reports the "news" almost before it happens.
Just for the hell of it, get drunk and browse the comments section of Boobzie's site.  What passes for "discussion" there is a joke of epic proportions.

Even more awesome, mainstream news outlets are reporting on both cases!

I Laughed at My Husband's Nuts...

Add caption

...and he really didn't mind.

Wow, No Wonder Feminists are So Angry

I was given the link to the following post, and I figured it would make me mad.  It did, briefly, and then it made me sad.  When you view the world with unnatural and impossible expectations,  You are bound to be absolutely miserable for the rest of your life:

misandry isn’t real, dudez

I’m a guy, and I need feminism. Not “men’s rights.” Feminism. Here is why.

Everything that MRAs talk about that men can’t do or are socially punished for arise directly and immediately from misogyny. Not “misandry.” Misogyny.

Whether I am expressing my emotions, playing with children, baking, having sex wherein I am penetrated in any way, wearing the wrong color, talking the wrong way, moving the wrong way, being sexually harassed/assaulted, or paying too little attention to looking like I’m not paying attention to how I look, when society punishes me or derides me or marginalizes me for these things, it is happening because they are things women, not men, are expected to do, and our society at large fucking hates women.

Has that sunk in yet?

Men, can you even think of a single goddamn way you have ever been mocked that wasn’t related to something that a misogynist society sees as feminizing? Even when large men are mocked for their bodies, they are referred to as having “man-boobs,” for fucks sake.

How do you expect to improve those things with “men’s rights?” What right are you fighting for? I can tell you what I think you’re fighting for. I think you’re fighting for the right to contain and control misogyny, and direct it back at women, where you think it belongs. You want to maintain your privilege but erase its consequences, and that’s why your movement is farcical; it’s a big fucking feedback loop. How do you expect men to be free from the peripheral effects of misogyny when you refuse to even fucking believe it’s real?

_____________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________

This poor kid.

Dear Queer As In,

I'd like you to consider something, two things actually.  First, the behaviors you described for which you are ridiculed, are not generally "hated" behaviors.  Not in women anyway, because they are predominantly feminine behaviors.  Most people DO dislike feminine behaviors when those behaviors are exhibited by men.  And let me assure you, it is WOMEN who dislike feminine men, far more than men do.  Granted, men are more likely to be straightforward and vocal about their dislike, and while women may speak of it only in code words and euphemisms, women's emotions are more deeply triggered by the phenomenon.  I'll explain why soon.  

It's is obvious that you are a feminist, because you have accepted wholeheartedly one of the primary tenets upon which feminism depends: that there are no inborn sex-specific behavioral traits.  It has been proven over and over again that this is simply NOT TRUE.  While there are exceptions and variations, those exceptions and variations do not define the NORM, which is this:  There are sex-specific hormones and hormone combinations, and there are sex-specific differences in brain structure and body structure - beyond reproductive organs.  That means there must inevitably be sex-specific urges to behave in certain ways.  Some behaviors are naturally predominantly masculine and some are naturally predominantly feminine.  Feminism needs to deny (or at least downplay) this irrefutable truth, in order to tell both men and women that it is perfectly normal for women to act masculine and for men to act feminine.

Not surprisingly, our "lizard brains," the home of our instincts, reject this even as our conscious brains insist upon it.  Here is the result:

Normal heterosexual males are attracted to women with feminine behavioral traits, yet they are repelled by other males with feminine traits, because their lizard brains know that the behavior is attached to the wrong bodies. Normal hetero men are not sexually attracted to masculine traits, even when attached to feminine bodies.  Women don't seem to get this; they think there's "something wrong" with every man they meet who is not interested in their more masculine traits.  "Men are 'intimidated' by 'strong, powerful, independent, successful' women."  No.  They are not intimidated, they just aren't interested.  If they want to spend time with masculine people, they'll hang out with males.  Men want to mate with feminine women.  Shocking, I know.

The other side of the same coin is the foundation of misandry:  Women are taught from childhood that masculinity is bad; it's vulgar, it lights its fart and belches the alphabet.  It starts wars and kills people.  It rapes and beats women.  It makes millions of dollars and oppresses the poor.  Yet normal heterosexual women are sexually attracted to males who are masculine.  How miserable must these women be to need to be constantly on guard against their very own instincts, lest they actually find themselves liking (or God forbid, loving) that which society has deemed "bad."  And then it gets worse.  The men that women want to like and respect, because they display "feminine" behaviors, are repellent to women's lizard brains.  Women don't want to mate with those men.  They call them "creepy," or they friend-zone them.  No sex with feminine men (until the biological clock can no longer be ignored.  They may not be sexy, but being so "sensitive and kind," they'll probably make decent daddies, so sex with them can be tolerated.  If they make enough money.)  The reason this is integral to misandry, is that men can't win.  Women want to despise masculine men, and women can't help despising feminine men.  Of course, women can't win either, because now there's no such thing as "good" male mates for women.  How can feminists not be angry at the world?  For them, it sucks rocks!

The second thing I want you to consider is that while misogyny exists, it only exists in a tiny minority of men.  Most men love women.  They love women who act like women. They love femininity.  It is feminists, who are predominantly female, that despise femininity.  Perhaps you've noticed how feminists deride women who want to be happily married to masculine men, and who want nothing more than to raise children.  Society does not hate women.  Feminism hates women. The worst misogynists in Western Culture are feminist women.

How might the men's rights movement fix this?  It's simple.  But certainly not easy.  Guaranteeing men the same rights that women have, will make it a little less easy for women to openly practice misandry.  Men will be permitted to act like men, women will be permitted to act like women.  As we were designed.