I’m sorry to say I do not now, nor have I ever considered men superior to women – or to be more exact, since I don’t judge men or women as a whole – while I’ve met some men I consider my superiors, most men like most women aren’t. In fact, I’d say more than half the men and women I meet are less competent than I at most tasks. (Unless the task involves memorizing actors’ names and resumes, in which case some kindergarten classes outstrip me.)
Which brings another level of distinctions: some men (some women too) are better than I at some things. I’ve met two people in my entire life who were better than I at everything. One was a woman.
Men in general are better than I am at some things. I know that going in. Most men are going to be stronger than I. This was a hard lesson to learn for the kid who grew up fighting guys in the playground. When we hit puberty, even though I was bigger than most Portuguese men, I had to switch to being cunning and low-minded. I still won the fights, but mostly because I have no governor. Once I’m fighting, I’ll pluck your eyes out and eat them in front of you. (I don’t think I’ve ever done that, but you get what I mean.) And I will spy any opportunity to get under your guard, twist around, trip you. I’ve bitten someone and removed flesh in a fight (which is not as easy as it sounds. He deserved it, btw. He ambushed my friends and I on our way from school in a lonely area. I don’t think – he was our age, so maybe 14? – he meant to do more than grope us, but he picked the wrong person to grope. My friends had run. I THINK – I could be wrong – they meant to be chased and caught. But the idiot had to fixate on me.) This is not easy, unless you’ve sharpened your teeth or had steel blades installed or something. But I was desperate. Still I’m aware that a large enough man, or more than one large man with as few brakes as I have could easily subdue me.
In that sense, yeah, okay, men are superior. And there’s the correlation: they can usually do heavier work than I can, though I have yet to throw in the towel. Because I don’t.
Intellectually? There things are more nebulous. We know males tend to cluster more at both ends of the spectrum – idiot and genius – while women clump in the middle. By statistical distribution, there will be more men superior to me than women. (I don’t cluster in the middle.) But in my life, I’ve met one man and one woman who fit that, universally.
I’ve met plenty of men who are better than I at spatial visualization, but honestly, I don’t know if that’s because they were born that way or because they have jobs that demand that. And I know now that if I’d stuck with math and used a few simple tricks, I could have overcome my tendency to transpose digits in calculations, absent which (some teachers graded around it) I was always one of the best students in anything math related. (I thought physics was candy.)
So, I’m not afraid of men.
This is important to remember, because most women these days are taught to believe men have magical powers. This comes at the same time we teach them that they are superior to men, so it’s no wonder so many teenage girls are on prescription meds. What’s amazing is that some of them function at all and that so many get married (even though our marriage rate per population is at its lowest ever.)
And right now you’re looking at me and wondering why I think that most women believe men have magical powers. Haven’t I seen the commercials portraying dad as a dufos? Haven’t I heard all about how making jokes about beating a man is all right? Haven’t I seen how ridiculously biased our courts are? Don’t I know that men are treated very badly in our schools, since it’s considered all right for all the learning to be geared to “female style” which is quite different?
Sure I have. I’ve actually talked about some of these problems. And I had to fight like h*ll for school not to destroy the boys (and teach them most of the stuff at home.)
This treatment of males would be considered a social outrage if the genders were reversed.
So why isn’t it?
Let’s get past the stupid-sh*t feminist “now it’s their turn” as though in some bizarre way the men in the States today were responsible for any woman hurt hundreds of years ago (Are women of today responsible for everyone hurt by women centuries ago, too?) or in other countries to which they’ve never been.
That’s such patent and blatant idiocy that even the women saying it don’t believe it. Oh, some of them have personal reasons to be afraid of men (with women the personal is political. Always. It’s one of the ways we tend to be different.) But most of them just are afraid because they’ve been taught to be afraid. And if you look closely you’ll see the spittle-flecked fear behind the crazy gloating.
If you dig down below all their excuses and protestations, you’ll get that its okay to do this to men because men are stronger and smarter than women anyway. And if you are ever in a group of al women, a situation I find myself in more than (to paraphrase) “a just G-d would allow” you’ll hear the strange idea come up that if we don’t keep the men in line, they’ll just “take over.”
Some of this is natural, of course. There has been suspicion between the genders as long as there have been genders. If you go back far enough to sources in ancient Greece, you hear the same crazy fear that women with their mysterious and powerful ways will take over. Some of this is the same competition for reproductive advantage that goes on, inarticulate, in the animal world. This is what causes praying mantises to eat the male, and what causes the male of many species to use himself as a sort of perma-plug to ensure his sperm is the only one fertilizing the eggs. (Biology has always been fascinating. At eight I was sent to my room without dinner for using the word “Sperm” in front of guests. I still have no idea why this was bad. I was describing the mating habits of fish.)
But we are thinking animals, and so we complicate things. And right now the theories on why men have dominated (some parts of) society for a very long time are causing real trouble between men and women. And they’re stupid.
The theory, I guess, (no one ever explains why they believe this) is that if you give men an inch, they’ll Burka all over you.
Missing from this is the idea that men had already started giving women rights they REALLY HAD NO REASON to and to which they could have held given a wish to do so before the present era.
I’m not going to go into the whys and wherefores. Some theories involve the Virgin Mary. But the belief that women were at least as human as men, and sometimes special, has suffused western society since at least the early middle ages. (And some parts and some periods of Greece and Rome had versions of equality.) Read up on the traditions of chivalry.
Does this mean women were equal? Oh, hell no.
Remember that thing I said, about reproductive advantage and angling there to?
Since the caves (at least) women and men have had a simple pact. He made use of his stronger muscles to bring home mammoth (or whatever) and in return her children would all be his. Most of the most oppressive rules of society and most of the abuses against women come from this: ensuring the children are his. This is part of the reason in the Arab world and in more traditional societies, the grandmother is ALWAYS the enforcer of female “good behavior.” She too wants to make sure the kids are her son’s.
This is why though women were treated better in the western world than in other places, they weren’t “equal” to men. They still had to somehow allow men to be reassured about the kids being theirs. Also, women died early. And as many children were required as possible, because they too died early.
So, the amazing advances in terms of females working outside the house and having equality with men in most public arenas? Safe birth and safe, reliable contraceptives. Also, the ability to determine paternity.
So men don’t have superpowers any more than we do. What they do have is greater physical strength and – supposedly – by statistics, a few more geniuses (and a few more morons.)
And yet, most women still act like men are some sort of a big threat. Yesterday here in the comments (quoting someone) someone brought up the canard that women these days are still taught to be deferential to males.
Really? When? Where? Outside the Arab world or third world hell holes?
One of the other commenters pointed out that no, women are in fact taught never to take men’s opinion or advice REGARDLESS of their validity. I, myself, experienced this when I was first married. If my husband went along with something I wanted to do, his female relatives thought this right and just. But if I went along with something he wanted to do, I got told that I was acting like a “submissive Latin wife.” (Yes, they had met me. I know. I have nothing.)
This disturbed me enough that I used to cut contact with any female friend/relative who lectured me on these lines, because I viewed it as unwarranted interference in how I chose to run my marriage.
Look, yeah, I do most of the house work – but that’s more a function of feminist-shaming than of my husband’s patriarchal oppression. Because my fellow females were sneeringly dismissive of my attempts to stay home and make it in writing (my husband never was. He’d say things like, “Well, didn’t you write a thousand words today. You worked. Let’s just grab burgers) and because I was young and stupid, I fell in the habit of justifying my “laziness” by doing a bunch of things around the house, and unfortunately families crystalize around patterns. Though the worst trouble is the fact that both Dan and I are working (At least) three jobs a piece, which means a lot of stuff goes undone, period.
I don’t know any woman who was taught that she should defer to males’ opinions. Well, not any woman under sixty.
The “good behavior” modeled in movies is the woman who gets in the guys’ face and screams even when they know better. This is not conducive to survival outside a playwright’s rigged universe, but these are still called “strong women.”
So, let’s put that to rest, as well as the myth that men will just come over and take our mojo and put us in burkas.
You want to be equal? Be equal. Stop running around hectoring other women on how to behave, even if this is an instinctual behavior. You want to be strong? Be strong? You want to be self-sufficient? Be self sufficient.
You don’t have to ignore everything men say or scream at them. The penis doesn’t give them magical powers. Just because you took their opinion on how to (say) lay flooring on the porch (because, say, they do this for a living) it doesn’t mean they’re going to take control of your mind and rule over you. And it doesn’t make you a “Stepford wife” to take your husband’s opinion on which neighborhood to live in, if he has good justifications for his choice and you think they make sense.
It makes you a smart human being, who knows that men don’t have magical-penis-powers and that technology allows us unprecedented equality. And who wants to keep it that way by treating everyone – male and female – as individuals, each to be evaluated on his own merits. (Sane women also aren’t afraid of the patterns of indo-European languages, or feel a need to fight them. Since men have no magical powers, they won’t be able to seize control of your mind because you used “his” instead of the clunky “his or hers.” Sane women have more important things to worry about like the societies where forced female circumcision takes place, or the infanticide of female babies in China.)
Set yourself free. The boogeyman you fear is in your mind.
According To Hoyt 
Well I’ve been told…
[Running for the hills.]
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The Penis is bad. The Gun is good.
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for some both are bad.
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According to the modern Left, the Gun is bad and the Penis is worse!
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Hail Zardoz!
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“…kil the Brutals.” The oldest Hoyt son mentioned something about seeing Zardoz, and of course I cupped my hands around my mouth to produce some echo chamber and quoted that line. Robs backed away and looked alarmed, actually he had only watched the trailer.
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What a flick. Right up there with Ice Pirates.
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Sean Connery brightens any movie he’s in.
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With Zardoz, I’m pretty sure he just rubbed a bit of the tarnish off.
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;-)
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Ice Pirates? Somebody else remembers that one? (admission of guilt: I have the dvd)
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I remember parts of it, but don’t have the DVD.
(I do have a DVD of The Last Starfighter.)
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Centauri lives!
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“I’ll have it figured out by the time we reach the Frontier.” *beeping* “What’s that?” “The Frontier.”
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I read the book.
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Have it recently on blu ray…amazing :)
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Maybe I’ve been exposed to too many whackjobs, but it seems to me that that line is going to cause a fight. Since it implies that magic (however misspelled) might not be an exclusively female thing. And that it also might not be intimately connected to genitalia.
For some reason, I’ve met several people who take those as basic articles of faith, and they get disproportionately hostile when anybody doesn’t reflexively kowtow to their beliefs. (Not that I’ve been above poking them, mind you. I never claimed to be a saint.)
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There are instances usually emergencies that I quit questioning and do whatever the hubby says to do. It has saved my ass on a few occasions when I would have been in extreme danger. I don’t consider that submission– I consider it — he has more experience in this area than I do.
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To take this further I defer to anyone who knows more about a certain subject than I do– and I trust to tell me the truth whether male or female.
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Somewhere in here blongs the line from Schlock Mercenary; A sargent in motion outranks a lieutenant who doesn’t know what’s going on.
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That would be Maxim 2. See also Maxim 3: “An ordnance technician at a dead run outranks everybody.”
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Oh yea – since I have met those types I would get out of the way quick when they are at a dead run.
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Yep
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My adopted nephew hopes to go into the armed forces, preferably after college and officer training. He already knows to listen to his Sergeant because, as I put it to him, he’s going in as a first-level Captain and he’s working with a sixth-level Sergeant.
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Or another way to put it: “What’s the difference between a Private First Class and a 2nd Lieutenant? The PFC has been promoted twice.”
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When I was perusing the Twitter feeds of various female SJWs recently, it struck me how fearful they were. Endless paranoia about “microagressions” and “the heirarchy reminding us of our place”. I compare that to the other, saner women in my life and I realize what lonely, bitter lives they must lead, to see every male as a threat. I pity them.
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The problem with making yourself more fearful than you are is that you can succeed.
OTOH, remember that when doctors successfully treat a paranoiac, they have to monitor him to see if they need to treat him for depression. It’s really, really, really depressing to realize that not only is everyone not interested in you, virtually no one is.
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A woman I knew talked about being told “how important you must be to have all those people talking about you”.
It struck home to her because she was slightly paranoid about “people talking bad things about her” and I had to chuckle because I had the same tendency (more so then than now). [Smile]
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I could have turned out like that, because when I was in school, I frequently overheard people actually talking about me. Fortunately, I realized about midway through my Senior year that it didn’t matter, and that they probably didn’t even realize what they were doing, as far as how it may have made me feel. My stress level dropped significantly about that time.
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Yes. That’s why there’s a little prescription bottle in the medicine cabinet, for the nights when my brain says “stop that” and my emotions (and adrenaline regulation system) says “no! Panic, fear, worryworryworry, chasechasechase runrunrun!” It’s getting better, but I look forward to getting past it completely.
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Best wishes for your success.
I can’t relate directly, but my wife’s had some similar inclinations. I have no doubt that it sucks.
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My wife has the same problem. Her body is exhausted, but her brain won’t shut up. And meanwhile, my brain quit working an hour earlier, so I too often miss the signs. I wish we could balance out in a different way. Hers has gotten better, though. I attribute some of it to the increase in her exercise, but I think that is only one factor.
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If it’s not fullblown racing thoughts, music and audiobooks and radio plays and such can be very calming. You may have to experiment with what genres are calming, though; there can be a fine line between “interesting enough to focus on” and “exciting enough that I don’t want to stop listening until it’s over.”
Also, some people use them for getting to sleep, especially now that sleep timers are available on so many audio devices, phones, tablets, etc.
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audiobooks work the best for me. However I find that I don’t stick to my evening routine, and also take my meds after midnight (waaaay too late!) I’m up all night. Sometimes I fight sleep and I don’t know why.
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In my case, once the flight/fight adrenaline rush kicks in, it takes an hour to calm down, no matter quiet music, reading, distractions, whatever. Breaking the cycle seems to be more effective.
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Coast to Coast AM.
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Getting stuck in an emotional feedback loop is NOT a good thing, especially when you’re constantly looking for things to reinforce the loop instead of ways to break out of it.
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Frankly, the longer I live, the more I think their place is in a nice padded cell.
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Remember to nominate themes for September.
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1931687-september-2014-themes
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I wasted about two hours of my life on an author discussion forum attempting to educate one particular glittery who-ha SJW about the history of feminism and the suffragette movement in the US … sigh – she was absolutely convinced beyond any reasoning of mine (including a long list of historical examples!) that women in the US had been powerless, helpless chattels before their rights to vote in national elections was passed … in the 1920s. Nope – to her, all women were essentially slaves, no rights at all, in the courts, the marketplace, and the school-room. Oh, and they were beaten frequently by husbands and fathers.
Such idiocy and ignorance was adamantine – and absolutely impervious to every argument to the contrary I threw at her.
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She’s been carefully taught, it’s plain.
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And, I have come to suspect, she is secretly excited by the idea. Or someof them are, anyway.
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*laughs* This is my explanation for why 50 Shades is/was so popular, as was Twilight. Given the pressures from women to be absolutely in control of everything – including bedroom pleasures… there had to be some people who were privately tired of it and want to surrender the burden for a little while – even in reading about it.
Unfortunately, that’s also why some women will happily don burkas AND then pressure others about how wonderful that choice is and join them (to justify their decision as correct.)
I don’t have the same facepalm (or any facepalm) for women who become Hassic Jew, probably because the ones I do know are rather strong-willed and strong personalities themselves.
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Yeah, nobody messes with a Jewish Mother. [Very Big Grin]
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I know, right?!
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“Behind every great man stands a great woman.”
It is a wise man that listens to what his wife has to say. There is no way that a married woman in the 1920s did not have a hand/say in what happened. Yes, there were, and are today, individual exceptions, but the general rule is there. Add to that is the fact that the mother was generally the one raising and forming the sons while the father was out working. Whom had the most impact on them during their most impressionable years – the man they saw for a couple hours a day or the woman that they spent all day with?
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“How’d they get the vote, then?”
Even being ignorant of the actual history, there’s a matter of simple logic involved. There is no plausible path from a condition of utter powerlessness to possession of electoral franchise.
Posit the sort of world that feminists believe existed in the West before 1920. Imagine that they’re right. Women are merely chattels, and have no power in life, and men are united in a globe-spanning conspiracy to keep them down. And then, one day…the Constitution is amended, and women have the vote.
How does the Constitution get amended? Well, the proposed Amendment has to pass both houses of Congress (populated at that time entirely by men, who are necessarily part of the aforementioned conspiracy, because they’re men), and then has to be approved by 3/4 of the state legislatures (likewise male), and not only are all of these politicians themselves men, but they’re beholden to a then-all-male (remember…we’re conceding the feminists’ fantasy history, here, and ignoring the states where women already had the vote…especially the one where there’d never _been_ an election women couldn’t vote in) electorate. This is a pretty massive defection from the supposedly-all-powerful global male conspiracy against women. A defection rate like that is enough to make one question just how powerful this grand conspiracy really is, anyway.
And it came about because…?
So…yeah. Even if you concede their demonstrably counterfactual notions about the political and social conditions of pre-19th-Amendment women, their argument still doesn’t make sense. Not even on its own terms.
But hey…if they paid attention to logic, they wouldn’t be feminists.
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Nitpick: One woman, Jeannette Pickering Rankin, was representative for Montana before the 19th amendment was passed. (She was also one of the few votes against US entry into WW1, and the sole vote against entry into WW2.)
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In 1776 the state of New Jersey granted the right to vote to all. In 1807 this was amended and black men and all women were disenfranchised.
In a number of states women were allow restricted voting rights before 1920. For example, in Kentucky they could vote for school board representatives (granted in 1837, suspended for ten years from 1902 to 1912).
At least fifteen states (four while still territories) granted women the full right to vote before 1920. These were all in the west. The first Wyoming, which while still a territory in 1869 granted women’s suffrage. Twelve more allowed them to vote in presidential elections passage of the 19th Amendment.
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Twelve more allowed them to vote in presidential elections before passage of the 19th Amendment.
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Oh, I went round and round, pointing out all this kind of thing, giving her the names of actual women who owned property and ran businesses in the mid-1800s; names, circumstances, the names of women who did the lecture and education circuit, gotten degrees of all sorts, were published writers making a good living at it … none of it made the slightest impression on her.
Nope, nope nope – I had the feeling that her fingers were in her ears and she was chanting loudly, “la-la-la- I can’t hear you!”
I have a better use for my time than trying to educated the willfully ignorant.
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When I explain that my Momma was the first woman in generations NOT to hold a post high school degree I hear, ‘Well, that’s your family.’ Well, it wasn’t only my family, but, no, you are right, they don’t want to hear it.
I do have a bit of sympathy, it can be very discombobulating having your world view pulled out from under you. On the other hand, they are standing on quick sand. So I say my piece with hope it will help, but I have learned to leave it to a greater power to open the eyes of the blind — willful or otherwise.
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This is why I think some of them have the Slave Girl Fantasy, bad.
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Thus ’50 Shades Of Gray’. And possibly the popularity (though I have no idea of their sales at present) of the Gor novels of John Norman.
Okay, I shouldn’t have searched. (Facepalm)
There’s 33 Gor books out, apparently, and they started republishing them again in 2001.
http://www.gorchronicles.com/
Well, someone was going to remember it sooner or later…
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I’d not heard of the series; but it seems to be set in a medieval quasi-Japan based setting.
Why are they being equated with the 50 Shades series, if I may ask? The sample on the page you linked is the kind of prose style I wouldn’t enjoy (feels stilted and bumpy to read) so I’m not likely to read the series, though the opening itself has me curious. The essay in defense is also intriguing enough, but has me puzzled over the charge that the author is supposedly misogynistic. (I reiterate that I’ve not read or heard of his author.)
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His prose could have been improved by an order of magnitude simply if he had learned the word “Also”.
Hard to believe you hadn’t heard of them… they are rather legendary… There apparently were a couple of movies too, which had nothing to do with the books other than having “Gor” in the titles.
But best are the parodies, like “Houseplants of Gor”.
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I have read John Norman’s Gor novels. It was a sort of “sword and sorcery” world where men were Real Men and women were Slaves/Property. Oh, the Real Women of the Gor novels liked being Slaves/Property. In the early books the “sex” didn’t reach the level of soft-porn. Mind you I haven’t gotten into the newer books and my attempts to reread the early ones failed.
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He started with mild S&M in a SF/Fantasy setting. Then… he went kind of hard-core S&M. I kind of liked the first couple of books, but after a while it got creepy as hell.
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… I actually wonder now how many of the same readers who enjoy 50 Shades would probably enjoy these.
To be fair the first book and the second book’s blurbs didn’t sound too bad, and without knowing anything about the rest of the series I might have picked up those two to give it a go – because it would not have been too much beyond James Clavell’s Gaijin, imho.
But hey, they can enjoy reading that if they want. (I wouldn’t just from the sample because that’s not a writing style I’d find conducive to enjoying the story – I’d constantly be itching to grab a red pen.)
Then again, Twilight … I have friends who still keep telling me I should read it just to laugh myself hysterical and be reassured I’m a better writer than that. I just can’t justify buying the books for that reason alone, y’know?
A friend took a bunch of us friends to watch the first movie because he thought it’d be hilarious (Note: We played Vampire: The Masquerade in a homebrew setting) – and the moment we sat down and started to watch, something in me snapped and I began to snark at the film. Endlessly. Running commentary snark. The friend who’d invited the gaming group begged me to stop because he couldn’t breathe from laughing.
So I tried. I bit my lips. Then came this line:
We’re vegetarians. We only drink animal blood.
Beat.
Beat.
Beat.
Me: *in gobsmacked, pure WTF did I just hear tone* WHAT?!?!?!?!
The whole movie theatre burst out laughing. And pretty much everyone else started MSTK3-ing the movie right there.
At the very end, one of our group, I think he played Ventrue, stood up, pointed at the screen and declared “BLASPHEMY!” at the top of his voice.
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I read the first book, and I’m not sure I’d say she’s a terrifically bad writer, but she definitely was not mature in the craft when she wrote that book. Then, from what I’ve heard of the later books, I think the series overwhelmed her and she got lost in it.
You also have to consider that it’s intentionally the story of the angst-ridden story of a teenage girl who tended to be a wallflower before she met the extremely mysterious vampire who looked like a teenager.
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Shadowdancer,
When I played Masquerade in high-school my primary character was Malkavian with memory loss and didn’t know he was a vampier. He believed he was the Imaginary friend and protector of a little girl.
:-) Fond memories.
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Yeah, fond memories indeed. We just couldn’t keep up on the gaming because our work schedules didn’t really mesh after a while and a typical session ran for HOURS AND HOURS. Fun while it lasted though and I wish I could have gotten into it earlier. I rather miss the gang.
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…actually never mind, I think I know why. *facepalms at the blurbs and cover art*
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Yeaahhhhh, you got it.
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Ah, the days of Frank Frazetta covers!
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I thought they were Boris Valllejo.
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Check out his artwork, many are covers for Gor:
http://search.aol.com/aol/image?q=%27Gor%2C+Frazetta%27&v_t=client_searchbox
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At the time, scantily attired people said, if you can believe this, speculative literature, not soft-core. I’ve heard it was to entice the blue-collar workers who actually filled up the racks.
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Yep.
Sorry. But I’m sure someone would have mentioned it sooner or later. It kind of fits the pathology – you’ve got feminists insisting on total control, and swooning over ’50 Shades’.
I’m surprised they haven’t made a mainstream comeback.
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Looks like they were released in e-format this year, but geez, they want eight or nine bucks for the e-book!
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That’s a lot more than I’m willing to spend for a nostalgia item I’m not particularly nostalgic about.
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Arguing with such fanatics is not possible, they are religious dogmatists wedded to a view. Swift, who certainly was challenged by an unreasonable quantity of such fools, famously observed: “It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.”
The best you can hope to do is so mercilessly mock, ridicule and expose such folk for the fools they are, embarrassing them and anybody who might be considering associating with them. They are a drum, to be beaten, not a knot to be unraveled.
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From what I remember, New Jersey’s allowing of women to vote was due to a strong Quaker influence, especially in the south and central parts of the state. The influx of immigrants after independence altered the political demographics of the state, leading to the 1807 ban you noted.
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Hell of a way to run a Patriarchy….
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ya think?
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Where do I get all this White Male Privilege I’m supposed to benefit from? Is there a card I was supposed to get? What are the membership benefits, anyway?
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Benefits? You get to get insulted and belittled by people who think they have the right to dictate the discourse and overlook anything you say.
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But, but that happens anyway. It’s been happening since I was but a callow youth of seventeen, and took an English 101 course at the local community college that would have better been described as “You have a penis and are evil and are white and EVIL!” Weird experience.
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That’s why you don’t need the car.
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sigh
CARD.
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In G. K. Chesterton’s “On Lying in Bed”:
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Y’know, even in the Little House books, I never, ever got the impression that Pa Ingalls was lording over Ma, or that she was ever subservient or chattel. And at no point in time would I ever describe her as weak.
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Yeah … Ma was the uncrowned queen of that household. She might not have been able to talk Pa out of whatever scheme he had (truly – HOW did anyone bust being a farmer in Minnesota? Or did he just land on the most unproductive and most barren patch of it that ever existed?) – but she was the one who quietly held it all together. And there were even more subtly masterful women on the frontier. The quiet power that they had was awesome … and yet it didn’t even count in the least to my interlocutor in this particular exchange. No, there is only so much time I have to spend on trying to educate the willfully ignorant..
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The Ingalls family got to Minnesota just in time for two grasshopper seasons in a row.
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Well, she did drop her end of a log on her ankle when they were building the little house in the Oklahoma territory. (The Daughter and I visited the site near Independence the day before we visited Rocky Ridge, the Wilder’s home in Mansfield.)
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These people do not appreciate how much infrastructure is required, in terms of philosophy and legal structure, to keep women as “powerless, helpless chattel”, much less the personal energy that must be expended in practice by men who oppress their women. Equality is so much simpler, and letting the women have their legal rights frees the men to be productive. I’m sure that’s part of why those societies that maintain oppressive gender roles wind up with crushing poverty when they can’t spread around the oil dividends to support everybody.
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The key for a lot of those pushing for a war between men and women is anger.
Anger focuses the mind on achieving a goal. It doesn’t have to be a good or worthwhile goal, but when you’ve identified an enemy and you intend to destroy that enemy, you’ve given yourself a purpose and the exhilaration of following that purpose can be quite addictive.
And once you dedicate yourself to tearing down what you see is flawed, destructive, or even evil – you feel energized and alive.
I think a large number of the militant ‘feminists’ are terribly afraid of not having purpose. Of having a life that’s just ‘day to day’ stuff, without a glorious overarching cause. They’ve made their choices and stated their positions – possibly eschewed the idea of ever having a relationship with a man or having children – and want to see those choices validated by society at large. That they already have been isn’t enough, and never will be.
(Shrug.) Well, what do I know. I’m a guy (quick check… yup, a guy) and can NEVER understand what women want. (Fortunately, I met a woman who would TELL me what she wanted, and on 17 Sep we’ll have been married 21 years.)
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Congrats to you and Sue.
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Thanks, Ron! Glad you were there 21 years ago! BTW, they moved the chapel on the base, over to the National Guard side. Glad to see it preserved!
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Happy Wedding anniversary in advance!
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Thank you! Without her, I don’t know where I’d be at this point in my life.
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Early congrats!
And yes. Back when I was getting my first college degree, the school had a new women’s studies minor, but no major (yet. That’s changed. SIGH.) The running joke among those of us with more serious degrees was that you should also take a minor in accounting, because all a W.S. degree was good for was running a feminist lit bookstore. Little did we know . . .
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Thank you! I’m an exceedingly lucky man to have met her when I did…
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Early congratulations! Kinda takes your breath away, doesn’t it, to look back and realize “…wow, it’s been that long!” and “We survived that!”
(My man and I have been together for 9 and it takes me by surprise sometimes.)
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Thank you! Honestly, at times it feels like we just got married a few months ago, and other times like we’ve been married forever. We ‘fit’ together in ways I never would have thought possible when I was single looking for the right one.
(And I realize how that last sentence could be misconstrued, but what the heck!)
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*laughs* don’t worry, I know exactly what you mean. (My hubby and I fit in very likely in the same way you mean!)
Isn’t it wonderful?
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Part of this is that you cannot know what this is until you’ve achieved that sort of relationship, just as a wee babby cannot appreciate single malt.
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yep, same here…
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That it is… and I think a lot of married couples never get to that particular state of comfort with each other.
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Sad, isn’t it.
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<3 finding your other half… even though we don't always understand what the other wants, I know that Elf is safe. He wouldn’t wish me harm, and he can trust the same. (Although he laughed the first time I mentioned that he’s “safe,” and said I was the only person on earth who’d describe him that way!)
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This brings up something I’ve always wondered. If, somehow, we were to give the GHHs/SJWs exactly what they wanted, what then? What do you do with your life once The War is over?
One thing that I think most people don’t get is that maybe, just maybe, the people who Represent The Oppressed have a vested interest in keeping them Oppressed because it gives them power. How much better are things in Maxine Waters’ district now than 1991?
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They would quickly find something else to be THE WORST THING EVAR! and agitate to have THAT fixed.
But you’re right – look at the leading lights of the Civil Rights era. They cannot let the narrative go, because it’s the narrative that gives them contemporary power and influence… and without that, they’re nothing but old men.
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Jerry, I’ve made that same observation about the modern day liberal. For many of them, everything is a crusade.
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And they’ll jump from crusade to crusade – it’s what gives their lives meaning, after all…
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Many happy returns of the day.
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Thank you! My folks told me I’d know when the right one came along – I just didn’t figure on her taking close to 20 years to show. The wrong ones were (shudder) educational…
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There is ample evidence that this is an important value for women, who are generally less inner-directed than are men. A long essay could be written on this, exploring the ways in which women’s value is more socially defined than are men’s. Physical beauty is largely an attribute of social dominance (the ability to set fashion in a society, the ability to decode & comply with such rules, etc.) and child-rearing is an inherently social function (incorporating such elements as socialization & social integration.)
Male value is much more achievement derived — a man is or is not a competent hunter or successful farmer. So long as he doesn’t provoke other hunters to slit his throat his spear chucking technique is secondary.
Most women don’t know what they want, so don’t feel bad about it. Most men don’t know what they want, either.
Even when we humans think we know what we want we often obscure the truth from ourselves. I am reminded of a study testing the hypothesis that women wanted (so they said) a man who is “self-confident.” Testing using actors trained to behave in self-confident manner found that women were mistaking arrogance for self-confidence.
Who’d’ve thunk?
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One of my friends was impressed by her then-friend/now-husband when he was discussing something regarding military history with someone else, who was expressing a completely incorrect opinion. He stated what she knew to be the case, while the other person wouldn’t believe him. He just shrugged and went on to other things.
When she asked him why later – “I didn’t see the point in arguing. I knew I was right and he’ll eventually figure it out.” THAT was the sort of self-confidence she was looking for.
You gotta know when to pick your battles.
As far as communication goes – my lovely bride and I actually talk when things get a bit strained between us. Saves no end of time and aggravation…
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Someone tested in the lab and found that if you gave people a chance to buy “green” products, they evidently thought that bought them superfluous goodness — that they could use up. They were more likely to lie and cheat in a game for money after than the control group.
Now just think of the superfluous goodness you can get as an activist.
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Another good post from a “traitor to her sex”. [Grin]
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Traitor to someone else’s silly notion of what her anatomical parts might dictate or to be a traitor to herself and her immediate family?
I think our esteemed hostess has chosen the better part.
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*laughs* recently an idiot was asserting that my absolute hatred of radical feminists = I hate feminists therefore I hate all women. *eyeroll* As if not being a radfem = belief that women are ‘less’ than men. Accepting that there’s differences does not mean I believe that these differences make someone inferior. I’m not even sure why radfems think that. A difference does not imply inferiority by default.
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It’s as though the idea of complementary equals never occurred to some people.
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Likely it never does, because it doesn’t buy into the narrative of females in the past = chattel; when the reality is, complementary partnerships were kinda status quo with the whole concepts of ‘men’s domain’ and ‘women’s domain’; at least to my view of it in observation of traditional societies (like our lovely host’s stories of her grandmother and mama and how THEIR approval got things done… etc)
In an odd way, this unstated understanding applied to my brothers when it came to their relationships. They brought home their girlfriends to be vetted by their mother and sister, and would very seriously ask if there was anything we thought that was off. We were supposed to be the objective and protective POV – we’d note personality incompatibility, bad habits, etc, and point out good qualities – things that they might miss. I’m told this is actually very traditional.
To my brothers’ credit, they were extremely picky about girls. The elder of the two had perhaps 4 girlfriends (three?) and only one of them was rejected by my mother and myself as ‘trying to get herself pregnant and supported by you as fast as she can’; and that one he actively fled from. He married the one we practically adopted.
Youngest brother’s lucky because his first girlfriend is an absolute treasure (they’re each other’s first relationship) and while not planning to marry yet they are pretty much moving forward in life together – Seven years now, I believe, and surviving massive hurdles that I’ve seen shatter officiated marriages.
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So: Yin and yang in balance, yes. Male and female in balance, are you kidding me?
Sigh I don’t want to live in a world where everyone is a Mao suited photo-copied person(ality).
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Where is the code of conduct for allegiance to one’s sex written? What are the standards of evidence and rules of procedure for the trial?
Isn’t accusation of treason a form of aggression, a dominance ploy intended to force compliance with social/behavioural norms presumed but not voted upon?
The concept of being a “traitor to her sex” presumes that there is a group identity which one can betray. Is that group identity democratically determined or established by edict — and if the latter, what is the basis of their authority?
Can you betray an ideology for which you never enlisted but have been conscripted?
Isn’t the feminist rejection of traditionally developed norms the real treason?
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Where is the code of conduct for allegiance to one’s sex written?
*twitch* *twitch*
Made the mistake of asking for something vaguely similar, in earnest. That’s when I found out that I have been brainwashed into thinking like a guy, because actually writing down the rules is a male thing….
My brain still hurts.
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Actually, it’s not so much that writing down the rules is a male thing as it is not-writing down the rules is a female thing – if they’re written down then they might be found by a male and the secret would be out. And we all know that the first rule is that men must never discover what the rules are…
I swear I’ve never read the rules…I’m just extrapolating from never having found them since I keep searching for them. :)
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Besides, if they write down the rules and want to whine, you could whip out the rules and prove your innocence.
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total digression:
I really hate how some guys will complain about women having constantly changing rules that are just to manipulate them… and after you watch for a bit you realize the guys understand the rules just fine, they just don’t like the rules and do not wish to follow them, but don’t like the effects of violating them.
I guess that’s just a more personal version of a lot of the glitteratti folks. It’s not that the rules are unclear, they just don’t like them.
*****
That there are folks who constantly change the rules– that’s part of why you don’t want them written down, written rules you might have to explain your “novel” interpretations of, along the lines of “more equal than others”– really doesn’t help matters!
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I wonder whether they realize that the corollary of that position yields:
Making the rules up as you go along and arbitrarily changing them at whim is a female thing?
Stereotype, much?
And don’t try that “Logic is a tool of the Patriarchy” codswallop, as it is well documented that the first computer programmers were female:
Computer Programming Used To Be Women’s Work
Today, computer programmers are expected to be male, nerdy and antisocial – an odd, and self fulfilling prophesy that forgets the women that the entire field was built upon
By Rose Eveleth
smithsonian.com
October 7, 2013
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/computer-programming-used-to-be-womens-work-718061/?no-ist
See also: Ada Lovelace, whose work on Babbage’s early devices is recognised as developing the first algorithm intended to be carried out by a machine.
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My husband’s grandmother worked with the Admiral. Loved the running around with wires thing.
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Why are some women so crazy compared to women in the Admiral’s day?
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Always been crazies.
They just get praised, now.
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I was lucky I guess. I never met any when I was in school.
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I wonder whether they realize that the corollary of that position yields:
Making the rules up as you go along and arbitrarily changing them at whim is a female thing?
Stereotype, much?
Forgot to respond:
Logic is male oppression, too.
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(with women the personal is political. Always. It’s one of the ways we tend to be different.)
19th Amendment: Mkistake or Disastrous Error? Discuss.
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I’d really rather not.
Although I have heard many women who would like to take away the voting rights of other women (or men, especially white men), I haven’t heard any particularly eager to give up their own.
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Aah, the ubiquitous third option. Wise choice, grasshoppa. :)
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We leave that to Vox Day.
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Vox Day? I don’t think he’d go far enough. Check out Ann Barnhardt’s essay on it.
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Wyoming gave women the vote ahead of the rest of the nation, in 1869. Once again we see the unintended consequences of the rash actions of a bunch of unilateralist cowboys…
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If (group) is liable for taxes, they should, nay, must be able to vote.
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Children and sales tax?
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running now :)
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Wow, Dan is a brave man. And wise (I assume he’s not missing any body parts or meaty chunks).
I remember reading Lysistrata, a satire by Aristophanes, in the 1970’s. Even as a callow youth in my 20’s, I thought there was lots of fear on both sides: On the men, because of the fear of women going on strike; and on the women, of man’s physical prowess in general.
A funny play, but sad and revealing all the same.
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Dan and I trust each other. The worst we do is about once every ten years yell at each other VERY LOUDLY and scare everyone.
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You’re much better at communication than I am. My current relationship was really rocky until we figured out how to have fights. (And that we could fight and not do permanent damage.) Before that we just each did a lot of sulking and were confused about what the other one was thinking.
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I think a lot of people need to learn how to fight – the kind that clears the air – and that it’s okay to kiss and make up after. I’ve heard some really bad advice between women that if a guy ever has a fight – even just the verbal argument – with his girl, she should dump that guy, because ‘perfect relationships never have fights.’
I find my jaw dropping at that. Looking back, I wonder how many of those girls became women with insanely impossible standards who can’t be happy in a relationship.
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The wise old fairy tales never were so silly as to say that the prince and the princess lived peacefully ever afterwards. The fairy tales said that the prince and princess lived happily ever afterwards; and so they did. They lived happily, although it is very likely that from time to time they threw the furniture at each other.
― G.K. Chesterton
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;-)
Although furniture is a might expensive to toss about. Channeled anger is good for fueling your way through onerous cleaning tasks and yard work.
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Remember reading about a family who just loved Angry Bread. When someone got angry – start the kneading. They said it was the best bread ever.
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You oughta try the Thesmophorizusae, also available as “The Women at the Festival of Demeter.”
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“So, let’s put that to rest, as well as the myth that men will just come over and take our mojo and put us in burkas.”
Odd you should put it that way. In an interview, Lady Gaga stated that she avoided sex because she was afraid that anyone she had sex with would take her creativity from her through her vagina.
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How bizarre!
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It was Lady Gaga. What more need be said.
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*blink, blink* Um, so she’s not all that different (in some ways) From Ben Franklin advising continence in order to preserve a man’s energy and generative power, and some of the things the guys in my family have heard at the gym (like, “never [have sex] the week before a big race/weight lifting contest/football game because you’ll weaken yourself.”)
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I think that may have been disproven in this year’s Soccer World Cup. The teams that publicly abstained were eliminated early, I heard.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/08/world-cup-sex-bans-_n_5567255.html
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The advice about sex before the game (though usually it was only the DAY before, not the week), has been ubiquitous in sports since before I started playing Little League baseball back in (I think) 1970.
A few years ago, they did studies with sports players and found that having sex the day before the game actually improved their level of play by releasing some of the tension they were feeling beforehand.
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“Oh, come on, honey! You know I’ve got a game tomorrow. Don’t you *WANT* me to win?”
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Oh, my. That one attempted to bring the coffee I had just swallowed back up and THEN out my nose!
It’s also a good thing I have learned how to laugh without engaging my vocal chords, or I’d have some very confused looks directed toward me right now.
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I always thought that practice harked back to religious vigils … a period of abstinence and fasting and praying through the night … before some big event or sacrament or whatnot …
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I’m going to give Ben Franklin the benefit of the doubt that the medical arts still had some odd ideas in his day and he was basing his advice on bad science. Lady Gaga on the other hand, nope, I’m pretty sure she’s moonbat freaking bughouse nuts. :)
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The medical arts STILL have some odd ideas – ambiguous research that gets turned into prescriptive treatments, morphing every so often. A reliable source of both skepticism & humor.
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As recently as Dr. Strangelove the idea that sexual intercourse sapped our energies was a matter for mockery.
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“General Jack D. Ripper: I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women uh… women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I, uh… I do not avoid women, Mandrake.
….
General Jack D. Ripper: But I… I do deny them my essence.”
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What he sed.
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Is she, or is it a persona she maintains for commercial purposes?
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Based on other things I have read about her, I suspect it’s a persona.
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Yes, calculated business decision, and very successful. No idea what she’s really like, but she knows her goal and how to achieve it. And she’s very good at maintaining visibility with statements like the above. Long-form performance art.
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Kill the Body, the Head Will Fall. A Closer Look at Women, Violence, and Aggression by Rene Denfeld has a look at that. She went for boxing. Before a match, the coach told her that he wasn’t going to risk its being the same for women as for men, so she had to not sleep with anyone before the match.
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Did Franklin really? As a school child in Philadelphia I wrote out a list of more than 300 inventions/developments attributed him. Wonder what he might have accomplished if he had not been such a ladies man? ;-)
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I’ve read something similar in books on Chinese medicine and Eastern meditative technique.
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Well, yes: Taoists were very big on using *ahem* restraint to generate creative
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She’s the female version of Dave Sim, apparently.
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The article mentioned female circumcision and infanticide… I don’t think real feminists are concerned with such trivialities when there are more critical issues like the Hobby Lobby owners not wanting to pay for (what they consider to be ) abortions.
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Nope because 1) those things are over there, and 2) *channels SJW* “You see, we have to respect the cultural differences and values of others, and you, westerner, finding FGM and infanticide objectionable just shows that you don’t understand their culture and how empowering those things are to women in that society.” *shakes like a dog coming out of water*
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That had to hurt. Have you gotten the bends out of your poor brain?
I simply could not, of my own accord, channel that unless some mad SJW muse had mistakenly descended upon me with overwhelming force.
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Almost. I’ve built up a tolerance by reading academic journals for the past decade or so. Even then, it gives me a faint headache, probably from my common-sense beating its little head against the inside of my skull (since it can’t get out to find a wall or desk).
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Lovely image. I may have to ask you permission to use it sometime. (I don’t mean that it is a lovely or pleasant experience, but that the description is elegant.)
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TXRed said, “those things are over there”.
I think there’s actually a rational argument for this. Problem A may be much worse than Problem B, but if you only have the tools to address Problem B, that’s where to apply your efforts. Specifically, if your only tool is talk-talk (petitions, consciousness-raising, etc.) it makes no sense at all to try to address the most severe abuses by despots who do not care about your opinion; but find a policy you disagree with from an elected government and you might have an impact.
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I noticed this tendency following the attack of 9/11. It was easier for some to fall back into their customary targets of attack — you riled them up, your policies caused this! — than to address the actual enemy.
[Insert clip from 1776 of Dickinson and Adams fighting, up to point where Caesar Rodney declares the real enemy is out there, cutting off our wind.]
It is not simply whether your efforts can have any effect, it is also focusing on the foe who you are comfortable fighting.
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Joel, when all you can do is write letters or tweet hashtags, then yes, local focus makes perfect sense, especially when you have concrete evidence of (what you think) is wrong. I was thinking more about the people in the US and England who know about illegal FGM, spousal abuse and honor killings, sex-selective abortions and misuse of ultrasound in their own country, and either ignore it or try to explain it away as “it’s their culture so we can’t judge.” Like the idiots trying to justify sharia courts in Houston and the Metroplex.
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Shouldn’t cultural respect incorporate due consideration for the culture into which one arrives? If we ought not hastily judge other cultures, on what basis do we presume to sit in judgement of our own? Are we not imposing our personal, arbitrarily arrived at preferences on our own culture? How is that less arrogant than imposing our values on other cultures?
Such are the rabbit holes we find ourselves diving down when we start with absurd premises.
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A friend of mine on Facebook has a meme image with two panels: Top panel is a cartoon drawing of a woman holding up a sign with “(Female Symbol) > (Male Symbol)”, captioned, “This is not feminism”, and the bottom panel is a female magic-user of some sort firing some kind of bolt of power at something out of the frame, and it’s captioned: “THIS is feminism”.
Might be a bit over-the-top, but it’s a pretty cool slap in the face to the kind who are like the top panel.
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“If my husband went along with something I wanted to do, his female relatives thought this right and just. But if I went along with something he wanted to do, I got told that I was acting like a “submissive Latin wife.” ”
You know, their attitude would be grounds for an annulment in the Catholic church, on account of not consenting to one of the ends of marriage, namely the mutual help and assistance.
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In practice, the Ephesians 5 thing about a wife being submissive – applies to the 0.1% of the time that discussion, reason, justified trust in experience, mutual consideration of who is more affected, etc. all balance out to no decision – and it assumes the other half of the passage, in which husbands are abjured to love their wives the same way Christ did for the Church, i.e. giving himself up for her. No “power”, “privilege”, or burkas involved.
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You don’t need to go that far for this to kick in. The reverse attitude on the man’s part would also be grounds for an annulment.
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My experience is that this is limited to one productive purpose.
Getting her to drop something that she’s obsessing about to a self-destructive extent.
I can’t claim a high success rate with it, though.
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I think that there is another consideration to this as well, and that is that any such relationship would fall under the heading of being unevenly yoked. I am not Catholic, so I’m not sure how that would fall into their annulment guidelines, but this is, or is supposed to be, a serious consideration for marriage, or any other relationship.
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I think that a lot of women do learn to defer to others or not be a burden or not put themselves forward. I don’t think it has much of anything to do with men, though. And I think that a lot of it has to do with where your personality sets you for a starting point. What I mean is that some people, because that’s their personality, are extremely susceptible to suggestions that they not be pushy. There is a lot of shyness, a lot of “what will they think of me?” And maybe, *maybe*, women get this more because of our supposed higher ability to connect interpersonally. Maybe it’s just because we’re smaller and it matters more because we’re more vulnerable to loosing interpersonal support. Maybe it’s instinctive behavior.
What I don’t think is that it’s something about men or something about what girls are taught anymore because what we’re taught is *not* to be submissive and not to defer to our boyfriend or spouse.
But lots of us also had to make ourselves stop worrying so much about what other people, other women, think. We worry, do they think I’m pushy if I get the ball rolling on this BBQ? Did I say something wrong and offend that person? Have I made everyone feel valued? I’m doing that right now as I’m working my volunteer schedule for the convention this weekend… will this person feel valued… how can I keep that person from feeling bad that she can’t do the event she’s so excited about?
That men don’t *seem* to tie themselves in knots so much isn’t because women are oppressed.
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I think part of it may be instinctive. Several years ago, Melody Byrne (Mrs. Anarchangel) had a piece on her own blog where she speculated that 10% of the population are born followers, 10% born leaders, and the rest a blend. I’d be curious to see how that divides out between the sexes once puberty hits. I’d wager that a greater percentage of males shift to being more aggressive and “leaderly”, if you will, while women stay more or less unchanged. So if, as a group, women have an even 10/80/10 bell-curve from follower to leader, and males have an, eh, say 5/75/20 curve (curve shifts to the right), in general the female population would be more prone to deferring to others, which would then transfer into culture. Especially in times and places where survival depended far more on individual physical strength, and on a group being able to work together or they’d starve.
I’m certain you could argue the other way as well, though, that the oppressive western culture conditions women to be less assertive and more other-focused for our self-esteem, penalizing assertive women while encouraging aggressive males. :P (They’ve obviously never met the women on either side of the Boykin family tree, even those adopted in.)
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I was going to include a note on this, but the post was already overlong. I’ve noticed a distressing habit of MOST women to just go along with whatever a man says. This has nothing to do with education, starts at earliest age, and seems to be instinctive. Also, in most cases makes me want to cave their craniums in.
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You know the old saying — nobody ever won a fight with a customer?
A lot of gals figure that even if (especially if) they win the argument they lose the guy. Since what they are seeking is validation the easiest way to get there is to lose the individual battle while winning the overall war. When you are reeling in your fish, if you fight him too hard he’s liable to break the line. Additional offensive and dehumanizing metaphors left as exercise for readers.
They always figure they can have a word with the printer.
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This tendency has ended more than one relationship for me. Somewhat faster when the going along is followed with subtle intimation that I made the wrong decision and ‘disappointed’ or ‘upset’ the female in question.
I don’t mind working to accommodate someone else, and smoothing the rough edges is a natural part of close interaction. I’m not inclined to tolerate attempts at subtle manipulation. Particularly when few people are as subtle as they think they are.
When I actively seek advice, participation and assistance in decision making only to have all dumped back in my lap and am subsequently critiqued for it?
Well, I decided I was an anti-social bassoon a long time ago, and I don’t have to die alone. I’ve got a dog. :|
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“We all die alone.”
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No, not really.
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Firefly quote that I messed up now that I looked it up.
From “Out of Gas”
Inara: Mal, you don’t have to die alone.
Mal: Everybody dies alone.
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That’s the most depressing thing I ever heard. Some people die surrounded by family and friends. What kind of life have you lived if there is no to mourn your passing?
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Aaaaaannnd this is where we all turn and expectantly look at SPQR, the only participant here who admits to having died.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS-gwb8eSc0
I tell you right now if — when my time comes — there’s somebody playing a harmonica, I’m not going.
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I admit nothing
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YES!
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Emily,
Life is like journey with a door way at the end (What ever you believe.).
The saying isn’t about not having no one with you at the end, when you are faced with walking through it. It about the realization that it is you alone that walks though it.
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OK. I see what you mean. It’s still depressing.
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It’s also not really true. So smile!
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I want the whole world to mourn my passing.
Haven’t quite figured out how to swing it yet.
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I figure when I’m about to die ya’ll should buy champagne stock.
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Actually, I usually write it out:
I expect to die alone and unloved in a dilapidated airstream trailer on blocks in the Arizona desert. The hikers who find me will only steal what they can carry before they report the body to the sheriff.
I figure I’ve got another 40 years to acquire the trailer, but the rest of it’s on track so far.
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Dr. Mauser
I once told a a church counselor that how did I see the end of my life. I told them, “I see myself dying a lone strung out on some drugs penniless and alone in a Bolivian gutter.” They also told me that is depressing. I told them, “Then if anything else happens will count that as a win.”
Life’s to short to be worring about the ending.
;)
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In so far as I am concerned, when I die the world will end, at least from my perspective, so I don’t much care whether I go puling and crying or surrounded by a mound of empty brass and the bodies of my foes.
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Can’t fault your perspective.
But I still favor the second option.
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You only put up the first half of that statement:
I’ve got a dog, I don’t need a ….
That back-seat driving, passive-aggressive “you get to make the decision and I get to criticize it” game is not the sort of trait you want in the person who will be rearing your children.
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You only put up the first half of that statement:
I’ll leave that landmine for you.
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Now, now. We don’t use landmines any more. Obama said so. Now, green command detonated explosive location signalling devices are still available for use.
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And I’d think maybe learned rather than instinctive – too bad Freud is mostly fraudulent he explains so much. Deborah Tannen is a recent well documented popular source for gender styles and the foolish folks out of Wiscon don’t invalidate all of Elgin’s thinking. Tannen says that for any given style she can usually someplace it’s male and someplace else it’s female style.
Just possibly a difference in style is taken for a difference in substance? Going through drive through lanes at the bank with a woman riding shotgun I’ve said gee I picked the wrong lane – same thing happens to me at a store where the cashier will flip the light off and get on the phone for a price or stock check and I’ll say the same thing. A woman will more often than not say I’m sorry to mean I sympathize not to either take responsibility nor to promise to reform as I might use the same words. Similarly I’ve heard poor baby sincerely as well as sarcastically.
On the life of women on the frontier see e.g. Polly Bemis with an understanding that here again we have shades of the legend replacing the mostly unknowable fact. There is an odd disconnect with the notion that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. The description of women in the western United States does not of course describe my own family. I knew my grandmothers; one of whom went west in a covered wagon; the other it was a train.
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Tannen says that for any given style she can usually someplace it’s male and someplace else it’s female style.
Every time I’ve run into one of those proofs where I’m familiar with both, at least one was being greatly misrepresented. (Sometimes both– it could be just the “see what you expect” effect, though.)
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I don’t know any woman who was taught that she should defer to males’ opinions. Well, not any woman under sixty.
One of the strangest conversations I know of about such things occurred at a family holiday gathering in the 1990s. Two women were setting the table for dinner, the older one married with a child, the other in graduate school. The married woman on being asked replied that she was, indeed, pro-life, unlike the rest of the family. The younger asked, ‘Have you talked your father about this?’
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*chokes on her drink*
*stare*
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My maternal grandmother is 91 years old. Growing up, it was Grandma’s house, Grandma’s kitchen, Grandma’s garden, Grandma’s cabin but Grandpa’s tools. :D I saw everyone younger than Grandma being deferential to Grandma but I never saw Grandma being deferential to Grandpa. Respectful yes, loving yes but not deferential.
One of my funniest memories of the two of them is when we caught a porcupine eating the cabin. Grandma wanted to shoot it with the gun and Grandpa had to talk her out of it.
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My son told my dad that their house was Nana’s house because she was there more. He just lived there when he wasn’t at work. My dad agreed and said he always wanted it to feel like Nana’s home.
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Is there a male counterpart to the adage: If Momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy?
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Not that I know of although I have heard “If Momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy, if Grandma ain’t happy … run.”
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You want to be equal? Be equal. Stop running around hectoring other women on how to behave, even if this is an instinctual behavior. You want to be strong? Be strong? You want to be self-sufficient? Be self sufficient.
This is the same principle I apply to racial arguments. Of course, I’m considered a race and gender traitor like yourself, so… *grin*.
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Race and Gender Traitors, Unite. We have the BEST cookies.
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Ahem. I am resisting. Re — sist —
No I’m not.
Snickerdoodles?
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ALL the cookies. Because we’re evul capitalist sonsaliberty, we know about supply and demand. *grin*
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Older son made snickerdoodles a few days ago. But he cheated, because he got the pre-made dough.
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If it resulted in snickerdoodles cheating doesn’t count.
Because, snickerdoodles.
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I heartily agree. Snickerdoodles (I have my grandmother’s recipe for them, and it merely results in the BEST Snickerdoodles. Other methods that result in other grades of Snickerdoodles are still valid. ;). )
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Hmmm. Don’t mind me, I’m just going to mosey (Texan) over here and wheedle for a little recipe.
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If you want I can send it to you. :)
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If I want. Doubt might exist?
First-name-middle-initial-last-name-current-year over at Yahoo.
Thanks!
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Sent, let me know if you get it.
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Not as of yet. It occurred to me, did you use the 4 digit year? I fear I may have been excessively obscure in my address.
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I used the 4 digit year. It may have been on my end. I’ll send again and make sure I’ve got the spelling right.
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Ack! It’s me! It’s all me!
Last initial.
I’d try to make excuses, but that was just silly-stupid.
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and sent. There WILL be Snickerdoodles. There will. (and you’re not the only one making silly mistakes tonight… I misspelled Yahoo the first time.)
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Y’know, it must be a mental block or something, but I can never remember whether Yahoo is spelled O-b-a-m-a or R-e-i-d or P-e-l-o-s-i. Does anybody know a handy mnemonic for that?
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I’d try a quip but I’m busy castigating.
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The Yahoos are insulted that you think those three are their species.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo_(Gulliver%27s_Travels)
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And it’s here! Rejoicing in the streets!
Or there will be. In just a minute. When I go stand in the street and rejoice.
Many thanks.
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You are quite welcome. :)
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I’ve had pretty good results with the cookie mix that comes in foil bags, although I need to make some cinnamon sugar extra to do a decent cover on them.
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Putting in my order for chocolate chip cookies ;-)
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And other delightful desserts. (Mmm. Mini oreo cheesecakes…)
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Low carb paleo? I do know some recipes…
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Come to the dark side, you’ll be well fed?
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BTW, in modern times ‘cookies’ does have a slightly sinister air to it (at least to us not exactly computer savvy individuals). What exactly are you hiding where? Should I agree to this or not? :)
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Cookies? The real evil lies in Java and Flash, at least going from the grumbling of my in house techy guy.
Though, cookies and coffee sounds really nice about now… hm.
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We have the BEST cookies.
Thin Mints?!
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Ask Robin if the recipe for Samoa ™ clones turned out. I may try making the bar-cookie version this fall.
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White chocolate macadamia nut? I’ll bring my no-bake buttershots cheesecake.
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That’s because you’re relegated to the kitchen, where you belo… Er, um, is it too late to reconsider that statement? ;-)
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“Don’t I know that men are treated very badly in our schools, since it’s considered all right for all the learning to be geared to “female style” which is quite different?”
I’ve read this point in your posts before, but it’s time to ask, because we will soon start to homeschool our youngest children. Are there any resources you can share on creating a “male style” learning environment?
To be honest, I have no experience with anything but the traditional, “female” style of teaching. I say this in shame, because it means I’ve been teaching for years in that style, and my male students are often the ones who need the most help because they lack academic skills that most girls have instinctively, and I don’t know how to help them because I adapted to that style rather well. Sure, this is college, but still.
Anyway, I just hope we can give my boys a different and more effective education experience than I had.
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hands on. Let them design their own learning. Let it be competitive. Depends on the boy. Younger son LIKED learning greek while helping me build stuff and fix stuff. (Headphones. Occasional flash cards.)
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OK. Let’s make this clear, according to present day philosophy:
1) It is sexist to assume that your identity is dictated by your body parts, we need to accept that we are not bi-gendered, not just ‘male’ and’ female’.
AND
2) If you have {XX} your permitted identity will be {XX} and if your have {XY} your permitted identity will be {XY}.
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Er… I turned 60 this year, eldest of two daughters, and my dad was pretty frank in teaching me that men & women were equal (he also taught me how to throw a punch — which I used to great advantage against a 13 y/o male when I was 11 — then I fled as he sat stunned in the street — dad & mom didn’t raise any fools)
And dad was/is to the right of Attila the Hun.
Contrary to Mad Men, the late 50s early 60s were NOT a hotbed of male chauvinist pigs who groped secretaries and cheated on their wives.
My parents – whose 63 year long (and still enduring) marriage may look “traditional” but they are the most equal & complimentary couple I know.
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My grandmother would be in her 90s now, and she ran her household with an iron fist. (Perhaps too iron, but oh well. If I had roughly 30 years of young Patricks, I’d probably be rather high in iron, too!)
If anything the assumption was that women were slightly superior in everything but strength.
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Er … I turned 60 this year, eldest of 2 daughters and my dad was quite frank in teaching me that men & women were equals
(he also taught me how to throw a punch — which I used to great advantage when I was 11 against a bigger 14 y/o male bully. I knocked him on his a** then fled the scene while he sat stunned in the street.
Contrary to “Mad Men” the late 50’s & early 60’s was not a hotbed of men groping secretaries and cheating on their wives. Regardless of how “traditional” many marriages looked, couples were complimentary – not dominate/submissive.
My parents, 63 years married and counting, are just such a couple.
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(oh shoot, forgive the double post … thought the first one was eaten)
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Not to worry. WP does that from time to time, just to remind us who’s boss.
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Nah. The first time you post here, you have to wait for approval.
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The problem with staging a war between men and women is so many of the combatants are sleeping with the enemy.
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Why do you think there’s a branch of radical feminists who espouse lesbianism as the ideal, and that heterosexual sex is ‘always rape’ even when consensual and enjoyed by both partners involved?
There’s a very valid reason to hold radical feminists in hearty contempt.
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And most of the ones that aren’t, wish they were.
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That’s not a problem, it’s the solution. Which is why the crazies insist PIV is rape.
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I see the occasional college age male who’s swallowed the whole Women’s Studies department line. I think he figures the in the Battle of the Sexes, he wants to become a Prisoner of War.
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And in today’s news: in Sweden there is now officially a gender neutral pronoun ‘hen’ for occasions when either ‘han’ (he) or ‘hon’ (she) are deemed unsuitable – according to the news story that might, for example, be when somebody does not want to underscore the sex of the person they are talking about. (Cluck cluck :) ) (or poor Swedes have always been envious of Finns, whose language doesn’t have gender pronouns, just one gender neutral one :D )
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Yeah. THAT is the biggest issue facing Sweden right now. (You guys want me to break this desk with my head, right?)
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Er, try to look at these things as if they were a Monty Python sketch? (a group of serious men in a room discussing these very serious things very seriously while something very alarming is happening on the street just outside…)
Desks are expensive, not to mention heads. Try to spare yours as much as possible.
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Well, in California our Gov. Moonbeam signed a law a couple of weeks ago removing the terms “husband” and “wife” from any legal document in the state.
They are “out-dated” and “biased” terms, don’t you know?
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