Strong Women

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

Sometimes I hate what Sabrina Chase named “the mass industrial entertainment complex.” Mostly, you know, the news, movies, book publishers, the whole blind kitten (caboodle) litter of them. (Only blind kittens are cute.)

They have this irrepressible need to reduce everything to the minimum common denominator. I don’t know if it’s because their education was lacking or because since WWII our family structures have been more and more “off” and our kids more and more raised by strangers, or if it’s the need to sell concepts that don’t work really well with marketable buzz words in a corporate setting, but we often have to look at it and wonder if these people are actually human, or if they understand any of the fundamental concepts that have hemmed human lives since forever.

So, you know, once the industrial entertainment complex go hold of oh, love, it didn’t take very long (20 years maybe) for the concept of love of be submerged on a tide of “it’s really good sex.”

Look, I have been married 35 years, and I have absolutely nothing against really good sex (on the contrary.) Really good sex can be a bonding exercise, and it can take you through some pretty stressful times. I’m not that fond of reading about really good sex, but that’s mostly because… well, I’m not a voyeur. Some things are to be enjoyed, not described.

Romances used to be fairly clean, a kind of emotional porn (which by and large works well for women.) In the late seventies (well, I read a lot of older stuff) things became more explicit. Sure, whatever. Unless something emotional and important happens during the sex, I kind of skimmed it.

But around 2015, most Romances were becoming actual erotica, and if I skimmed the sex parts I could read a fat romance book in an hour.

Worse, there was no emotion. There was this weird, bizarre concept that if you had really good sex it meant you were in love, and it would last forever.

This is kind of the equivalent of saying that if you really like chocolate, you should just eat chocolate, because it means it’s what your body needs to survive. Or worse, it’s what your soul needs to survive.

I find myself annoyed by it, because stories — in turn — form people and give them an idea of what the world is like. And if you think really good sex is the equivalent of love, when you hit a time in your life when you’re too stressed to feel as much as you normally would, or when you’re sick and can’t have sex, or a myriad other circumstances that arise in a long marriage? You’re going to think the sex isn’t great, so you must not be in love anymore. And that can corrode a relationship from the inside.

I’ve seen this happen among younger people, raised on this.

Frankly, it’s not the only weird notion they’ve come up with. And they’re all sort of insane. Their notion that the books are supposed to be some kind of (mostly Marxist) uplifting influence on society translates to younger people having this totally distorted idea that victims are somehow holy.

I find myself trying to mentor young writers who think the way to create an admirable hero/protag is to have shit raining on him/her day and night, without his doing anything to solve the problem, until suddenly, automagically people realize he/she is oppressed and THEREFORE they must be admirable and celebrated. The heck? How? I mean, I know this was the structure of everything my kids got assigned in school, but seriously?

THAT’S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS. No wonder these people keep becoming cry-bullies, since the highest form of heroism is to play the victim.

However, perhaps no concept has been so profoundly abused as the “Strong woman” concept. Apparently the retards of Hollywood (apology to mentally handicapped people) and the morons (ditto) of publishing could only think of a way out of the rather vapid pulp heroines (well, some of them. Some were fine. And some were even strong, but yes, there were a number of them who were basically “what men fight for” and very sketchily drawn as characters, particularly in the 20s or early 30s.) and that was: let’s make woman strong.

Nothing wrong with that. Every protag and supporting character should be strong. A villain is only as big as the villain and vice versa, and why would you write “small” books? (and hey, the same people who created our “strong” women would think this means I want to read 600k word books)

Except that most of these people are either privileged or maimed (or both, of course) and have the emotional maturity of toddlers. So to them strong woman meant “urr durr strong woman beat up men.” Which is like thinking Great Sex is LOVE. Sure. It can be ONE of the aspects. BUT it sure as heck isn’t the thing and the whole of the thing. And thinking it is breaks things. Well, people, mostly.

Someone the other day asked if it was even possible these days to make a series about an action hero who is male and which isn’t based on older properties. In traditional publishing or Hollywood? Probably not. I’m fairly sure Die Hard would never happen now.

The insanity of this is that while women can beat up men in a straight fight, if you go for an extremely strong woman and an extremely weak (or perhaps handicapped) man, it is not the normal thing, much less the predominant thing. Certainly not among assassins or trained spies or vigilantes.

It’s still possible, of course for women to beat up men, but it’s most likely to happen to if the woman takes the man by surprise and fights very very dirty. (I’ve won some battles that way. Mind you, I had the advantage of a 10 year older brother who was built like a brick shithouse. I learned early that fighting fair just meant I ended up crying.)

Once you realize that women OLYMPIC records match the high school athlete records for males in your average US highschool, you realize that this entire emphasis on women’s PHYSICAL strength is insanely stupid. And raising girls to think that’s the sort of strength they have or can have is– I don’t know. What’s a stronger word than criminally insane?

I realized this some years ago when a female childhood friend of my older son’s, at a party, told him, with absolute confidence, that she could beat him. Older son at the time was, I think, 300 lbs (and not really fat.) She was maybe 90lbs. He told her that. She said she was “90 lbs of get back” and tried to get him to “fight” with her.

Fortunately older son (both sons, really) because they were always outsized and much stronger than they should be at whatever size, had been trained not to hurt anyone smaller than him. But I kept thinking of this girl doing that to a less civilized man and the horror that could result. And I’m sure it’s happened to women raised with this bizarre idea. More than once.

Then last week as I was watching the thing with Gina Carano play out, I realized it’s not just that they reduce “strength” to physical strength. They seem not to recognize true strength when they see it.

Most strong women are exactly the same the same as most strong men. No, not physically. I mean, I’m fairly strong (or was) for a female, but my 14 year old son was stronger than I as I found out when shopping for cement.

But …. There is a strength that transcends the physical.

Off the top of my head:

Strong people live for something that’s bigger than them. This can be their religion, their nation, their family or their dream. Or, yes, all of the above.

Those things are important enough not to allow the person to be swayed this way and that. Important enough to make sacrifices for. Important enough to keep working for, even if you don’t enjoy it, even if you think you can’t, even if it takes everything else in you.

Strong people have principles they will not betray. You can, metaphorically, offer them all the kingdoms of the world, but they won’t do what’s wrong in their eyes to obtain it. Even if this means they lose everything, they will not bend.

Strong people don’t give up. They are what Dave Freer calls battlers. They can get pounded down, but you know they’re going to rise up again, and try. Again, and again and again. (Think of Inigo Montoyal, in Princess Bride, in pursuit of his revenge. Though what strong people pursue can be wholly constructive instead of reactive. In fact, it often is.)

Strong people will endure terrible conditions to make sure what’s important to them survives. They will often, themselves, live when they should have been dead, to complete the task they feel is more important than life.

Now, strong people make great heroes, but it takes a better writer than most of the people who write for Hollywood these days.

That said there is a type of strength that is peculiar to women. I don’t know where I read that women “glory in sacrificing for their families” and that might not be precisely true.

It’s more that strong women can make the exact same sacrifices as men but hide them better. I watched this with my mother and grandmother suddenly being “not hungry” and just eating a couple of bites when someone in the family was sick or had worked physically hard and needed the protein, when there wasn’t enough money to go around.

A strong woman can do the same as a strong man, but self-efface, and make the person who needs to think of himself or herself as the hero do so. It’s not always a family. Sometimes it’s a cause.

Casablanca resonates for a reason. She gives up love, because saving the world from totalitarianism is more important.

But at least growing up, mostly we saw it in family context, because that’s where most of us saw things up close and personal. Like the way my mom made the most work in the household for the first ten years of her marriage, but when dad was home she acted like a housewife, and never let him know she was doing two hard jobs, so he could do …. well, the equivalent of a training job, and get good at his own career (engineering.) Eventually his earning eclipsed her exponentially. And then she made jokes about the years that she kept us fed and clothed when he made barely enough for his work attire. BUT in those years, when it was so, even when they were arguing, this never crossed her lips. Not once. Because he needed to be built up, so he could do what he had to do.

So, I guess a strong woman is exactly like a strong man — in every way but physical — but can do it with grace, quietly, and build others up in the process. (Yes, some men can do this too. The personality type is just rarer. Again, every characteristic is a continuum.)

Or at least most women have the capacity to do that, unless an entire cultural complex is devoted to make them value their physical strength above all else.

And then once they find out they don’t have much of that, they’ll feel put upon and inferior.

Perhaps of course, that is part of the plan, creating permanent victims.

Because neither Hollywood nor traditional publishing have any idea what to do with real strong people, men or women.

607 thoughts on “Strong Women”

  1. I talk about something like this with my wife, who is one of them — she often says she “doesn’t have time to work.”

    There’s a core of people, almost all of them women, who keep civilization going. They’re the class mothers, the church ladies, they run the various fairs and events that fund “enrichment” for the children. They get no credit for this since their labor is not taxed, after all they’re not “working” — most of them don’t get exotic vacations either. What I’ve noticed is that they are fewer and fewer and we are heading for a real Atlas Shrugged situation since they keep civilization going.

    I am actually in favor of women doing what they want to do rather than doing what society mandates. Society mandates that women have it all, career, family, romance, the lot. In order to do that, they need to pay some other women to raise their children — hence woman’s labor can be taxed. The thing is, usually, some other woman won’t do as good a job. If you want to find someone to blame for how we got here, you could do worse than those1960/70’s feminists, all of whom were “kept” by rich husbands BTW, Rich women have always had their children raised by other women.

    Before I am charged with being a chauvinist, if that’s still a thing. My wife is trained as an electrical engineer and before the children she worked in network television. Even before the lockdown, I cooked most of the dinners and she fixed most of the things that break. My sole involvement is to pick up heavy things. She hates to cook and she likes fixing things. We made the decision for her to stay at home together. I didn’t order her to. if I had ordered my wife to do anything, I’d no longer have a wife, but I’d probably have some broken bones. Yes, we are fortunate to be able to do this economically, but then we made economic choices that allow it. I suspect that after one factors the tax and cost of childcare, very few middle class women are really that far ahead.

    1. This post was excellent and made me cry.

      “Before I am charged with being a chauvinist…” Every single time a male makes a reasonable statement, he feels he has to circle back and defend himself against something NO ONE is charging him with. Please, don’t. Your statement was worthy, and not shameful.

      1. I would appologise as well, since the culture I am surrounded with, while not mine in many ways, and the one I assume that most people will associate with, assumes that any thing a man (not assuming species here :P) says that might (even if you have to squint really hard) promote a traditional masculine feminine culture is autumatically promoting EVIL PATRIARCHY.

        1. *sympathy*

          Given the internet, I get called a man a lot.

          Which has repeatedly caused me to laugh with mild hysteria because I was nursing, or pregnant, or one memorable time I was barefoot and pregnant in a kitchen. (My sister’s. I was helping her clean guns, and fixing her laptop. When I realized that, I *howled*, told her, and SHE howled.)

          1. I’m pretty certain those who insist that their own stalwart hatred of manhood cloaked as “feminism” is the only thing preventing vast unwashed hordes of uncorected men keeping their women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen don’t include “cleaning guns” in their little mental model.

            Well done.

          2. I have three pictures, one for each of my children, titled “Cliché.” They are me, barefoot, very pregnant, and in the kitchen. (Two of the pictures were within two days of having the kid. The third was, I think, ten days before, but that was because my MiL was coming to stay and watch the older two, and I couldn’t guarantee a clutter-free kitchen with her in the house.)

              2. Clutter free kitchen. Clutter… Free… Kitchen.

                If you mean the clutter is freed from its bonds to spread about the kitchen, I could believe that.

                *looks at disaster area known as kitchen that is regularly cleaned, yet only rarely looks like it*

                    2. Indeed, Christine Fredericks invented the kitchen counter after deciding to introduce the process of Taylorization to housework from the factory. In particular, she used their experiments that workspaces were best at waist height.

                    3. *skeptical expression*

                      *Goes and looks up*

                      OH! The standard height lady!

                      My childhood buddy’s grandma’s mother in law was a BIG devotee of the “everything tot standardized” theory– k, explaining this, Mary was tiny. Like “as a short ten year old I was about her size” tiny.

                      Her husband, based on his mother’s talking, custom built the counter-tops for the person who would be using them. (Angel emoji.)
                      Rather than getting the “Fancy” cupboards.

                      They were still there a half century later, along with Mary, so…..

    2. “The thing is, usually, some other woman won’t do as good a job.” Agreed. And if she’s not a horrible excuse for a mother, that usually ought to be always. Kids need parents to love them, but they also need parents that are willing to prepare them for a harsh world that doesn’t particularly care about them one way or another.

    3. It truly is the most important job on the planet and involves probably the greatest and most prolonged period of self-sacrifice one human being can make. That should be lauded, not viewed as inferior. Looking at the pandemic of mental illness among our youth, I think Atlas has already shrugged.

    4. We also made the decision for me to stay home, because my degree was less acknowledged in the US and Dan could get steady work in computers. This also gave me the privilege of being able to write, while Dan largely gave up his music.

    5. I suspect that after one factors the tax and cost of childcare, very few middle class women are really that far ahead.

      Add in homeschooling– so we could buy where it suited us, rather than shopping for a school district– I’d say those of us who made those choices are ahead, right now.

      The poor folks who did the “right” thing are paying all the same costs we do– but they didn’t get to choose them, so they didn’t get to prepare and get teh savings.

      1. Shopping for a school district, *and* the need to spend as much time fighting the programming as the person would spend teaching them in the first place.

        “Oh I don’t have time to homeschool!”… then why did you have kids?

        1. I have time, but I really don’t have the temperament. I do okay with older kids and adults, but below a certain age level and I get my stress levels rising to the point where I’m really not good to work with them. Probably doesn’t help that my older two kids are ASD and ADHD, respectively, and there’s something going on about the ADHD in regards to writing that several people, including her elementary school teacher aunt and special ed grandmother, haven’t been able to get through. Her current teacher has been informed that writing is not really going to happen unless he gets the school psychiatrist involved. What’s one more IEP?

          *Note: Yes, it’s in need of an expert at this point. The last straw was taking five hours to get one paragraph written, with me literally telling her what to write. There is some block or major anxiety in there that needs a diagnosis.

          1. Are we talking about physical with the pen type of writing, or writing with a keyboard?

            Are we talking composition or copying?

            Is this “I need no distractions” or “I need some music or an ambient soundtrack in my ears so that I can think” or “so I don’t feel.so tired or depressed or unfocused”?

            Maybe some experiments are in order. Make it a home science project for the kid, with help from you. Figuring out operating instructions for yourself is very helpful.

            1. The issue is with coming up with sentences. It seems to be related to dysgraphia, which is a common co-morbidity with ADHD, and is basically a mental block with self-expression. In her case, it’s pretty limited to words, which is why it took until fifth grade to realize that it’s not just stubbornness, but there’s something that darn near pushes her into ODD with coming up with sentences or more.

              And “figuring it out ourselves” isn’t an option, because that’s been what we’ve tried for the last 3-4 years. I’m done, my husband’s done, the level of stress has significantly decreased since we figured out that a trained child psychiatrist is the only option at this point.

  2. One of a host of disconnects in the belief systems of the progressive left is this idea of the all powerful female while in the same breath doing their level best to deny them the most effective force multiplier available, one which does allow that 90 pound female to fairly easily defeat a 300 pound linebacker rapist.
    I refer of course to those mechanical devices commonly known as firearms.
    Your average low information citizen would never know it, as most have no idea that target shooting is a part of the Olympic Games. Our media has determined in their infinite wisdom that their viewers need not worry their pretty heads over coverage of mere slips of young ladies cleaning the euphamistic clocks of male shooter, but often as not it is the case.
    As well the fact is that the number of females with carry permits is on a very steep increase, as it should be since each and every one of us, male or female, is in actual fact our own first responder.
    But of course we are already seeing efforts from elements of our new administration to restrict and in many cases outright deny citizens possession of entire classes of firearms. This may in fact be one of the sticking points that touches off some very active responses by said citizens.
    Pity that no one really teaches history any more. Otherwise it might be better known that an attempt to seize arms of the colonists by our lords and masters was the opening conflict to the American Revolution.

    1. Yes, I wonder about people who support abortion, root for gun control and oppose the death penalty. They will refuse a woman the ability to hold off, fight or kill her rapist, but applaud her if she gets raped and ends the pregnancy, and then defend the rapist against a capital charge. (Whether rape should be a capital offense is a separate issue).

      The same people will attack someone who opposes abortion and doesn’t oppose capital punishment as a ” hypocrite.” The idea that a fetus is helpless and lacks free will or the ability to defend itself while a criminal (usually) has both these attributes never occurs to them.

      1. I’ve been thinking about things on similar lines the last couple of days.

        I think that there is a class of people who can’t or won’t look at what might follow from their actions.
        For example, the cad who beds all sorts of women and is then surprised when he gets venereal diseases and paternity suits. And maybe he’s the type of cad who thinks that the best way to get rid of a paternity suit is to get rid of the woman who brought it, and then he’s surprised when he gets brought up on murder charges. It never occurs to him that he could have avoided it all by not sleeping around.

        I think this would put him in the category of stupid people.

        And then there are the ones who can see what is likely to follow from their actions, but they do it anyway because they enjoy it. They enjoy the trouble, they enjoy the pain and heartbreak they cause, and they don’t want to avoid it.

        Not sure if you would call those evil or just cruel.

        Especially when there are people like you’ve described, who refuse to admit that they see the consequences, work to prevent anyone from avoiding the instigating action, and take delight in getting other people to clean up in the worst and most destructive way possible.

          1. *shrug* I’m sure there are circumstances where cruelty – for a given definition thereof – is not evil.

            It may be that those don’t apply in the particular examples under discussion, but I haven’t given that aspect of it much thought.

        2. Pretty sure I’ve seen discussion of such people over on ESRs blog, he calls them people with (IIRC) “low time preference.” Took me a bit to figure out what he meant, they’re the people who don’t look beyond the “what does this mean to me RIGHT NOW?”

          Sort of like the “cancel my student debt” crowd, sure it’ll feel good now, but in a year or two when you’re paying another 10-20% of your income in fed taxes you’ll be whining about it.

          Or pretty much any call for a “we want it NOW” solution…

          1. I think it is the other way around.

            A high time-preference means a person prefers present goods to future goods. That is the “I want it **now**” attitude. A low time preference is when a person prefers future goods to present goods. Such person will give up a present satisfaction for a better outcome in the future.

            1. Entirely possible you’re right, as it’s been quite some time since I read that on the blog.

                1. ???? I must have missed something. AFAIK, biologists use the concept the same way as economists.

                    1. Short term preference is a different word for the same concept. I haven’t heard this variant before.

                      “High time preference” means the subject has a very high value on a short time scale.

        3. “… there is a class of people who can’t or won’t look at what might follow from their actions.”

          As I understand it, looking at what might follow from your actions is a component of White Culture and must be harshly discouraged.
          ~

      2. I absolutely support abortion myself to abruptly, savagely kill a fetus resulting from forcible rape. I also strongly support abortion to save the life of the … what the hell, I’ll use that word … mother. In all other cases, not nearly so much. If a mother-to-be, outside of an unmistakably life-threatening medical emergency or forcible rape, refuses to recognize an unwanted pregnancy as soon as possible to terminate it immediately, then the morality of killing a developing baby becomes murky and ugly. I lack the wisdom to evaluate this kind of situation and will refrain from further comment on the topic.

        Furthermore, I believe that children from the age of two and upwards need to be taught gun safety and marksmanship, albeit with toy guns at the earliest ages. From the age of 10 and upwards, they should be armed with pepper spray, batons, and similar instruments of self-defense. Personal firearms can come to responsible, trained individuals at age 13 and upwards.

        I’m reluctant to support state-conducted capital punishment simply because of the potential for murdering innocent people who’ve been falsely accused and convicted. Corruption is everywhere.

        Positions on these issues don’t lie on a simple continuum from left to right. Just saying.

        1. My problem with that is… you’re killing an innocent bystander.

          The kid, regardless of the circumstances of his conception, had nothing to do with the crime that was committed, i.e. rape.
          The kid wasn’t even present when it happened, technically.
          The kid had no choice in the matter of who he was sired by or who bore him.
          The kid had no power to stop anything from happening, again, on account of not yet existing.

          And you’re okay with killing him for his (in this case) sire’s crime.
          Though it could just as easily have been his dam’s crime, these days. “A woman forcibly rapes a man” – or a boy, more likely – “and gets pregnant” has been known to happen.

          1. One hundred percent of the moral culpability for the death of the fetus lies with the violent rapist for having created that situation. The victim of the rape is under utterly nil moral obligation to bear the consequences of the forcible, violent, unwanted, uninvited assault on her body. You’re free to disagree, of course, and undoubtedly will. It’s not the sort of argument that can ever be “won,” so I’ll leave it at that.

            1. And that, is sophistry.

              The method of inception is irrelevant to the status of the child once it’s conceived. It is a human. Killing it is murder.

              1. Anyone is welcome to try to persuade the victim of violent rape to keep the baby, or at least give birth to the baby. Please do, in fact. But if she cannot, then she cannot. A woman gets to choose herself. Consider it self-defense.

                The baby is also not guilty if the mother’s life is in real danger. A woman still gets to choose self-defense.

                1. There is a fair amount of evidence that rape victims who receive abortions are twice as traumatized, partly due to bodily insult and partly due to the trauma of killing a close relative. This includes incestuous rape victims and minors.

                  Women who carry babies of rape to term are generally less traumatized, whether they give up the baby for adoption or not. There is some dispute over this, but suicide rates are different, along with other indicators.

                  There is probably a physiological reason as well, because pregnancy does include hormones designed to make any female pregnant mammal feel better about the process. (Not that this always works.)

                  Of course, a lot of modern rhetoric about abortion is designed to make rape victims feel “dirty” about supporting their fellow victim and getting them both out alive. Since most of the human race includes descendants of rape babies, one might well question why genocide is being encouraged in this way. I would think that letting rape victims execute their rapists would be more helpful and empowering. But rape is not a capital crime, interestingly enough.

                  1. Rape was a common law capital felony.

                    Recent developments in the legal system are a criminal conspiracy. Judges and lawyers would have to work mighty hard to successfully avoid the appearance of collusion.

                    There are basic questions about what elements are not part of the conspiracy. It seems fairly likely that the ‘random’ program to schedule court cases to judges is not, in fact, random.

                    It is also clear that some of the parties behind the corruption are rapists who wish to be able to rape with impunity.

                    One answer is to go back to a known good state of case law, like Isaac Parker, and discard all subsequent developments.

                    Rape is not officially a capital crime, but the people responsible for that false claim are themselves probably capital criminals.

            2. No one uses that kind off language unless it’s a very personal wound or they’re trying to abuse their interlocutor into agreeing with them.

              I will (benefit of the doubt) assume it’s a personal wound, in which case you have my condolences.

              And I agree, there’s certainly nothing to be gained by a discussion in which no middle ground is possible.

            3. One hundred percent of the moral culpability for the death of the fetus lies with the violent rapist for having created that situation

              No, because you are killing an innocent, even if they only live because of a horrible violation by another.

              You are also pressuring the already victimized woman to consider slaughtering her child.

              Spoiler alert, that doesn’t work well with a woman’s brain.

              But it is very easy to pressure a hurting, scared, hormones in full gear woman into the “safe” and “acceptable” act, especially if you promise it will make it as if the horror never happened.

              When that doesn’t work– she still hurts, and if she realizes she just killed her child because someone else was horrible– well, suicide either slow or fast is not uncommon.

              My usual PSA here, folks– if you know someone who did the “acceptable” thing, and hurts, please pass on Rachel’s Vineyard to them.
              A lot of the ladies who do this have been there.
              They will listen by email, too.
              https://www.rachelsvineyard.org/contact/email-support.aspx

                1. I don’t know if he worked with Rachel’s or not, but one of the guys I’ve heard on Catholic radio pressured his girlfriend into killing their child– because he, too, believed that the kid was not a REAL human.

                  It’s what he was taught.

                  And a child would ruin both of their lives, forever….

                  *shudder*

              2. I’m not pressuring anyone. It’s all the same to me personally if a rape victim decides to carry a … *ahem* … “rape baby” to term. But she should have the choice without experiencing undue pressure from either side of a shrieking controversy. If you feel the urge yourself to politely ask such a rape victim to not kill the kid, by all means do it. That’s between you and her as long as no guns or rolls of duct tape are waved around.

                Truth to tell, I approve of websites like the one you mentioned. Also of religious or otherwise concerned groups that try peaceably to persuade rape victims not to abort. Note carefully the use of the word “peaceably.”

                As for the incessant flinging around of this word “innocent” … how many genuine innocents died in the terrible firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo in World World War Two? The twin nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Tens of thousands? Innocent or not is simply irrelevant here. It’s a well-accepted legal principle that the perpetrator of a violent felony can be held legally (and, presumably, morally) responsible for any and all deaths resulting from that felony. In this case, the felony act is the forcible rape. Note as well that I’ve carefully restricted the scope of my remarks here to the outcome of forcible rapes.

                Hoo-boy. This is reminding me of the old days in the FidoNet BBS echoes and later on in Usenet and then in modern social media forums. Much noise, no convincing anyone, ever. I rapidly learned to not waste time on such futile exchanges and don’t miss them at all. Frankly, I’m only replying here for the sake of the occasional thoughtful individual who may wander into this thread in the future from search engine results. That way, there’s some balance.

                I’ve also posted fairly extensive replies elsewhere that cover these and other points. Maybe I should write it all up, complete with a story that dives deep into the emotions on both sides. It could be interesting although one wonders who would buy the story part. Probably have to be a freebie. *shrugs*

                1. It’s a well-accepted legal principle that the perpetrator of a violent felony can be held legally (and, presumably, morally) responsible for any and all deaths resulting from that felony. In this case, the felony act is the forcible rape.

                  The problem with your argument is that the direct result of the felony act was the child’s life, not the child’s death. For the child’s death to happen later requires a second deliberate act, unless a natural miscarriage occurs. So it makes no sense to consider the child’s death as a result of the felony act, because everyone can clearly see that it was not the result of that act.

                  What you’re proposing is to remove any responsibility for that second act from its perpetrator, the rape victim, and place that responsibility on the first felon. Which sounds well and good, except that it fits with no established legal principle. What other crimes are like this, where the victim’s subsequent actions are attributed to the person who victimized them? Let’s take the crime of murder and see if the same principle could apply. Well, attempted murder, since a murder victim is unable to do anything else afterwards. Let’s say, hypothetically, that you try to murder me, and succeed only in wounding me so that I’m in the hospital for a week recovering. If the next week I track you down at home and kill you, some legal systems might say that you had it coming, but other legal systems would convict me of premeditated murder. (We’ll assume that I have no reason to believe you’d try to murder me a second time, so self-defense would not be a valid defense in this scenario.) But if I track you down at home and kill your child, who was not an accomplice in your crime, every legal system in the civilized world would convict me, rightfully, of premeditated murder. It makes no sense whatsoever to attribute the death of the child to your attempted murder; your crime against me would not justify my killing someone whose only crime was to be the child of the man who attacked me.

                  And though you may claim that “innocent or not is simply irrelevant here,” you’re wrong. It’s very relevant, because once one rejects your incorrect premise (that the child’s death is a result of the violent rape, which a few seconds’ application of basic logic clearly shows is not the case), then the fact that the child is innocent of the crime of his/her father is precisely why killing him or her is murder. And if abortion is murder, then there should be laws against it, just as every civilized society has laws against murdering people who have already been born.

                  Also, while I’m at it: you misunderstood Foxfier’s point when she says “You are also pressuring the already victimized woman to consider slaughtering her child.” You’re right that you, personally, would not be applying said pressure. But there will be pressure on her from society, and your philosophy would do nothing to relieve the pressure on her. If she can be shown that the child is innocent of the crime of his/her father, and that killing an innocent child would harm her psyche, then she’ll be far more likely to resist the lie that “it’s just a clump of cells” which Planned Murder (*spit*) is pushing on her. But if she were told that she will not be held legally or morally responsible for killing the child, that alone would be enough to push some women over the decision line, and cause them to do it. Women need to be told the truth about abortion, so that they can be better equipped to deal with the lies being pushed in their faces by society. And the argument you’re making, that the death of the child is a result of the forcible rape of his/her mother, is simply not the truth, and a few seconds’ application of basic logic are all it takes to conclude that. So it will do nothing to help a woman resist the pressure society is putting on her to get an abortion (Foxfier is perfectly right about how that harms a woman’s psyche, BTW), and if she believes it, it will actually make her slightly more likely to consider committing murder, because she now believes the falsehood that she wouldn’t be morally responsible for the child’s death. But if she goes through with it, her psyche will know better. And that, specifically, is how the philosophy you’re advocating would harm women: by making it more likely that they’ll commit an act that they would bitterly regret later on.

                  1. You’re bringing up a raft of technically peripheral but still important issues such as cultural pressure from certain quarters to regard pregnancies as mere inconveniences and not inherently fraught with moral and legal questions about the meaning of human life. Honestly, there’s no point to diving into the weeds over those issues right here and now — enough has already been said in a thread that was supposed to be about tough, hardy, iron-willed women who are “strong” in ways that don’t try to directly match the crude physical strength of testosterone-bulked men.

                    I politely decline to engage further. Be at peace.

                    1. You’re bringing up a raft of technically peripheral but still important issues such as cultural pressure from certain quarters to regard pregnancies as mere inconveniences and not inherently fraught with moral and legal questions about the meaning of human life.

                      Peripheral, as opposed to collateral damage during the fire-bombing of Dresden, which was offered as a direct justification for the direct, purposeful and intended slaughter of a secondary victim of rape.

                    2. Perhaps I shouldn’t have included that last paragraph, then. Because it apparently distracted you from my first three paragraphs that are directly relevant to your argument, and I wish you’d consider them. In particular, my parenthetical that “a few seconds’ application of basic logic clearly shows” that your argument is invalid. That’s not in the least peripheral. But instead of engaging the part of my comment that directly argues against your case, you’re going to disengage. That’s your right, but unfortunately it means you won’t learn anything, and you’ll continue to present an illogical argument thinking that it’s logical. Sigh.

                  2. Foxfier is perfectly right about how that harms a woman’s psyche, BTW

                    –
                    Yes. Sis lost two pregnancies. One spontaneous abortion, legal definition miscarriage. Second abortion medically induced miscarriage. Not that they wanted to. Pregnancy was tubal. Had the pregnancy been allowed to continue, the baby was going to die when the tube burst. The mother, high probability, even today, might have died. Leaving 3 children motherless and a widower. Miscarriages are damaging enough, medically induced miscarriages, are worse.

                    2. Second abortion medically induced miscarriage. Not that they wanted to. Pregnancy was tubal

                      *long distance hug*

                      I’m sorry.

                      It’s more knowing, and probably more painful, than when the medical …issues…that killed our probably-daughter, but more so. (short version: evil doctor that I chose, to help with what boils down to vanity)

                      You know if the tube stays there without fixing, your sister *will* die, barring an insane miracle.

                      Thus, the “secondary effect” comes into play– the risk (though nearly 100% certainty) that the child will die from saving the mother’s life.

                      I say “nearly” because there are a few cases– (insanely limited) few!– where the child was actually implanted outside of the tube, and by removing the tube the….balloon…the kid is in, grew without bursting anything in the mother, and they got a live mother and child.

                      ….which is why killing the kid cannot be the goal.

                      Gotta leave an OPTION for “the kid doesn’t die”, rather than “the kid dies so that I can….”

                      Fixing the threat, yeah, that can be the goal. Even if it risks the kid’s life. Even if it’s nearly 100%. Just got an email about a kid I heard about in high school– his parents were “fired” by their doctor, because they wouldn’t abort when the kid was “incompatible with life.”
                      He’s now in his 20s, and rather cute. Amazingly alive for being incompatible with life.

                      In cancer treatment, you aren’t going to kill the patient to cure the cancer.

                      But you are *RISKING* their life. Because they are dying. You are pumping poison into them in hopes that it kills the cancer first.

                      Same with risk of the mother situations for pregnancy.

                      The child cannot live without the mother.

                      You MUST save her….which will put the kid at dire risk, at times, just as the mother is at dire risk.

                    3. There are insane things. A lady who had the same surgery I had — everything removed — showed up pregnant.
                      Uh?
                      well, before everything was removed there was a fertilized egg. It attached to her intestines.
                      The person who attended on her ER visit didn’t tell me how that story ended because she didn’t know. It has HAPPENED that child can grow to “survives outside womb” attached to intestines. D*mn rare. Usually the result of something like what happened to her.
                      The only thing I know is she chose not to have it “stopped” right away — reason she came in was discomfort and “bloating” and some weird bowel things.
                      Anyway– I’m an incurable bleeding heart, so I hope the kid survived. She was in her early fifties, as I was at the time.

                    4. There are a hell of a lot of “wait that’s impossible” kids out there, because the doctors were told “fix the problem, don’t directly kill the kid.”

                      So they fix the problem and— gosh oh holy fishooks, it DID NOT actually kill the kid!

                      …sometimes, they demand teh kid be killed anyways.

                      ….In England, from evidence, they sometimes get it.

                    5. My kid should NOT exist. Well, either of them. But definitely #2. The mess of the first caeserean bissected one of my ovaries, and half of it was attached to the body wall with scar tissue. My uterus was a contracted “fist” of scar tissue. IF i’d got pregnant it shouldn’t have held (it didn’t, several times.)
                      BUT I got pregnant and didn’t NOTICE for six months (minor break through bleeding at the right times, mind you.) I felt great during pregnancy. Very active. (We were moving.)
                      Kid was born by normal delivery in an hour and a half.
                      I don’t KNOW why he’s meant to be here, but he IS.

                2. Be sure to include the testimony of the young man who is so happy to be alive because his raped mother was strong enough to carry him through and put him up for adoption. Seriously.

                  This is like divorce and killing cancer patients. If you create the world where rape, cheap sex, and poor medical care are common, whole making support for getting through bad pregnancies, tough marriages (including avoiding same) , and hospice care rare as hens teeth… Of course the case for no-fault “friv-orces”, abortion, and euthenasia become strong.

                  And I do.understand that. Meeting people where they are in the vile systems currently in place is necessary.

                  But it doesn’t change the moral arguments.

                  1. One of my buddies in the Navy was born of forcible rape.

                    Her parents are Filipino.

                    The rapist was a big blond.

                    She’s a pretty red-head, who routinely screwed up the Filipino Mafia in supply because Tagalog is her first language. (there are some very entitled 14 year olds in 40 year old bodies, which deal poorly with the target turning around and laying into them in the language they just made rude comments in)

                    Guess how much traction “you should have been killed because your bio-dad is a nasty piece of work” got with her.

                    Further guess how much traction the “but it will be too hard on the kid to know the bio dad was horrible, they should be killed to spare them” got.

                    ….

                    I wonder how much of this is justification for abandoning the kids after a divorce, especially after you have new kids with A Better Match. (even if it’s “upgrade” #9, as I’ve sadly seen)

                    1. Further guess how much traction the “but it will be too hard on the kid to know the bio dad was horrible, they should be killed to spare them” got.

                      Hmmmmmm.

                      Bob! You need to work up a propaganda line that all kids in divorces need to be executed because it will be too painful for them otherwise.

                    2. Yeah, no.

                      I’m actually quite inconsistent in how I apply myself.

                      With the druggies, the rapists, the recreational murderers, and the murderers for profit, it is fairly obvious that I’m at least out of step, and perhaps deranged.

                      When it comes to poor, unwanted, inconvenient due to health issues, or mental health issues that don’t involve recreational drug use, I tend to very much gamble on life and the factors we cannot foresee and account for.

                      Some family history, some personal health issues that have resulted in large portions of my life spent crippled and useless… I may put a low value on human life, but if I had allowed myself to endorse suicide, I probably would not be here. I’ve perhaps caused myself harm as it is not valuing myself enough to treat myself better.

                      My whole issue with the druggies in the first place is seeing recreational use as being fundamentally the opposite of what a human being ought to being wrt self care. I’ve seen too much damage, by the age of ten even, to overlook the inherent risks. I worked out later that I had a freakishly optimal background for understanding the downsides, and that most people have a weak understanding, but I still find those ‘most people’ profoundly alien.

                3. But she should have the choice without experiencing undue pressure from either side of a shrieking controversy.

                  *sad smile*
                  Yeah, just like it’s a “woman’s choice” right now.

                  And a woman can “choose” her career.

                  No undue pressure, since it is only stripping the right to not be killed from an entire group of people.

                  No way would someone ever consider that, should they keep doing what you think they shouldn’t, they will be added to that list of does-not-have-a-right-to-not-be-killed.

                  Innocent or not is simply irrelevant here.

                  Bullshit.

                  You are insisting on the right to directly, deliberately, and with planning, kill an innocent for the specific goal of their death.

                  This is rather obviously not in the same category as collateral damage.

                  Frankly, I’m only replying here for the sake of the occasional thoughtful individual who may wander into this thread in the future from search engine results.

                  What do you think the rest of the folks responding to you are doing?

                  You’ve made it clear you either cannot, or will not, listen.

                  Your basic philosophical stance is that deliberate killing of someone for being alive in a place you do not wish them to be is an option.

                  That is not a philosophical assumption that we can overturn, because it’s an assumption. Just as most of the rest of us responding say that humans have an inherent right to not be killed, which is not discharged because of convenience nor for the evil actions of a relative.

                  So you arguments must be answered for the audience, not because we expect you to suddenly listen.

                  1. The words don’t really need to be blown up into bus-sized, flaming red block letters, do they?

                    Inside.
                    Not.
                    Outside.

                    Every minute that the “rape baby” continues to occupy the body of the rape victim is specifically and exactly the forcible act that continues on and on from the original act of violence. Someone talked about sophistry. That’s sophistry right there — refusing, forever, to recognize for one nanosecond the titanic significance — biologically, physically, legally, morally — of … wait for it …

                    Inside.
                    Not.
                    Outside.

                    Yeah, this is why abortion is a no-win topic. The other side of the extreme divide ain’t remotely better. They just lie about different (and more) things. Plus they adore the idea of killing actual unborn babies right up to the moment of birth and not just early-stage fetuses. I’ve covered that before as well.

                    *sigh*

                    Still, this thread has cast illumination on the arguments typically employed by the most fervent opponents of abortion. Perhaps I should indeed cover the topic at length in a dedicated set of pages and write that fictional story just to cover the emotional ground. I will know the treatment has succeeded when both sides of the divide come to hate it with white-hot passion. Knowing perfectly well that both sides will shriek that I must be the henchman of Satan, I will nonetheless strive to make the treatment as evenhanded as possible, leaving it to the reader to accept or not the premises therein. There is such a thing as an objective viewpoint.

                    Out of deference to our esteemed hostess, it might be best to walk away now from this controversy. I do tend to be right up there on the spectrum, but I should have remembered the extreme emotions evoked by the topic. They always seem to catch me by surprise somehow. -_-

                    1. There is someone here who is obstinately not listening and unable to respond to rational arguments.

                      It is not I.

                      As was already pointed out, you do not get to slaughter someone who is thrown into your house because of Castle Doctrine.

                      You do not get to slaughter a child thrown into your body because “inside.”

                      You want to kill the attacker? Cool with that.

                      Not another of his victims.

                    2. “*sigh*”

                      Arrogance isn’t an argument. Pontificating isn’t an argument.

                      Your pseudo-arguments are ridiculous.

                      How do I know? Experience.

                    3. The words don’t really need to be blown up into bus-sized, flaming red block letters, do they?

                      Overgrown Hobbit already addressed this part of your argument. Did you miss it? Ctrl+F for “5:30 am” (the time of posting of her comment) and you’ll find it. I didn’t mention it because she’s already demolished this part of the argument, and I would have nothing to add.

        2. Just FYI this topic. Abortion is a bit of a hot-button subject for several commenters here, and we’ve had to end discussions about abortion and the related philosophies on occasion when debate started to get ugly. It’s not off-limits, just be aware that it can lead to things getting out of hand and one of the Raiding Party [semi-moderators] stepping in.

          1. I’ve been around the scene since the old FidoNet BBS days — ah, me, those pokey 300bps modems. I remember the day I finally upgraded to a speedy 1200bps (bits per second) modem! And let’s not even get into the blazing-fast 14,400bps modems that burst into the market some years later! O frabjous day!

            Now, of course, I typically see 40,000,000bps or better from the cable modem. *yawn*

            And abortion arguments have not changed by so much as a nanometer in all these years. The same weary words ad infinitum. “Abortion is murder, period.” “My body, my choice.” All the shades in between. Absolutely no variation in attitudes. This turmoil has been going on for centuries, in truth, and one suspects that the number of minds changed each year can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Even pointing out that there’s a mountain of difference between forcibly occupying someone else’s body and existing *outside” of anyone else’s body doesn’t seem to make a whit of difference. It’s basically a religious argument that boils down to “my religion is better than your religion, and I know this because God told me so.” Oookayyy ….

            I comment from time to time on the topic just to help keep my mental faculties limber, knowing that it realistically serves no other purpose. -_-

            1. You can’t be keeping your faculties that limber if you can’t come up with new arguments in that amount of time.

              Of course some of the older older arguments, from the days before modern medicine, like “If the mother is in danger of dying from carrying her child, then it might be a regrettable necessity to kill the child, lest the child be a matricide and thereby be cursed to get chased by the Furies for its short and miserable life” have more weight in cultures where filial piety is actually a thing.

              On the other hand, it’s so old an argument that using it these days would at least have the value of novelty.

              1. There are no new arguments. Only slight variations of old ones. Modern monotheistic religions have taken the place of the Furies.

                1. Modern monotheistic religions – by which you mean Christianity – are not the ones saying that the child’s life will inevitably be horrible and it’s better to kill it.

                  That would be the argument from all the “compassionate” atheistic leftists.

                    1. An actual one, or a threatened one? There is a person in my maternal line who was threatened with abortion—and it’s an open secret in the family, because the woman who raised her used it as blackmail to keep her. (Blackmail as in “I will tell your mother.”)

            2. Of course people have been trying to find a reason to kill off that human, over there, who is inconvenient to them, for all of human history.

              Even if they must dump their entire structure of basic moral culpability to do it.

              When you announce that a group of humans is deprived of the right to not be killed, sensible people are going to at the very least look askance and point out errors in your logic.

              1. The Grand Canyon-sized flaw in this argument and others like it is that the pregnancy resulting from a forcible rape necessarily, violently, involuntarily occupies and steals the body of a woman who decidedly did not agree to the act. I’ve noticed this commonality across those who reflexively oppose all abortions, period. They simply, flatly, utterly, hysterically, desperately, eternally ignore this galaxy-sized inconvenience of simple biological fact. They act as if those words and the reality they reflect exist only in some other universe with no relationship whatsoever to the universe we actually occupy.

                Put in simple logic, “inside NOT outside.”

                1. Put in simple logic, “inside NOT outside.”

                  Yes. The “castle defense”. My inalienable right to kill trespassers,even if they trespassed by accident and are incapable of leaving on their own.

                  No?

                  It’s a unique horror for women. Rape and forcible impregnation are used to erase and control conquered tribes.

                  Still does not change the moral calculus.

                  In the old lifeboat dilemma, cannibalism, murder and a whole slew of awful things have to be done. They’re still *wrong* and you do not reorganize society to make them legal much less acceptable.

                  Sometimes in a wicked world, people have to do terrible things. That’s what the great Redemption was for, by Someone who really gets it, because He’s been there, suffered that. Otherwise the Erinyes get you. Inside or out.

                  2. If I may quote myself from Ricochet.com:

                    The womb is an attractive nuisance in the legal sense of the word: i.e., a property feature that is sufficiently attractive that liability for some damages to, and caused by some trespassers, attaches to property owner, not the trespasser. The context is whether abortion be justified on the grounds that the fetus is a “trespasser” in the woman’s body, as is sometimes alleged. Some pro-life supporters may bristle at the comparison of a fetus to a trespasser, but I argue that even if we accept that, we still end up at a pro-life position.

                    First, we need to establish some legal terminology. A trespasser is an invader onto a property who does not have permission from the owner. In a constructive trespass, one can be invited onto the property and then have that permission revoked, but that revocation is only applicable if the trespasser is aware and able to leave. (The drunk friend passed out on the floor does not become a trespasser if you tell him to leave while he’s out cold.) As noted above, the doctrine of attractive nuisance states that for some property features — pools are the archetype — the duty to prevent harm is on the property owner, not certain trespassers (children or others considered unable to assess risks). The last concept we need is the doctrine of necessity: A trespasser cannot be ejected from the property into hazardous conditions. For example, a dock owner cannot force a trespassing boat to unmoor into a dangerous storm, though he does have the right to collect any damages from the trespass.

                    Now, to apply this to the abortion context. Is the fetus a trespasser? In the vast majority of cases, no. The sperm was an invitee, and constructive trespass cannot apply because the fetus created by that sperm is not capable of being told to evacuate and leaving. But what about a rape case? Here, we go to the doctrine of necessity — so long as a trespasser (the baby, not the rapist) cannot survive without trespassing, he cannot legally be ejected. Moreover, the womb should be considered an attractive nuisance — the woman has a duty to keep trespassers out; the fetus, being incapable of assessing risks, does not have a duty to stay out. Thus, the liabilities of the trespass — the hardships of pregnancy — should be borne by the mother, not the fetus.

                2. What you mistake for ignoring is the refusal to kill someone who had nothing to do with it.

                  If a villain uses an innocent to trap you in your house, you do not have the right to slaughter that innocent to escape.

                  If a criminal puts an innocent in the middle of a freeway, you do not have a right to run them over.

                  If Sweet Sally May is tied to the tracks by Dastardly Dirk, you don’t have a right to fire up the train and run her over.

                  You, on the other hand, are quite hysterically ignoring the basic fact that pro-life groups have offed at-birth adoptions for late term pregnancies where the mother (or those representing her) demand an abortion.

                  Unless the woman is being coerced, and manages to escape– at least one case involved the late-term woman jumping out a window, and yes this is the US– that offer is not taken.

                  The goal of an abortion is a dead child. Not a child that is no longer in the womb, but a dead child.

                  No wonder you cannot accurately state the mindset of those you oppose, when you can’t even recognize the facts of the side you defend.

                  1. The true goals of the abortionist side (or any given abortionist) are quite easy to prove:

                    How do they react to the idea of artificial wombs and transplants?

                    This quickly separates the people with honest concerns from the murder fetishists.

            3. I used to be a LOT more libertarian. The argument that put me over the top onto “abortion is all always wrong” was made by an aggressively evangelizing atheist.

              Over a decade ago. You might want to get out a bit more.

                1. I would guess that it is a variation on the “we already established what you are, now we’re just discussing price” for the famous line about “would you sleep with me for a million dollars.”

                  Either humans have a right to not be killed, or they do not.

                  If *this* one here doesn’t have a right to not be killed, because he’s inconvenient by merely existing, then the only thing being discussed is which innocent humans are legitimate targets.

                  The one upside is the attempt to frame the existence of the child as an attack– that at least nods at the idea that some form of aggression must exist before slaughtering a human, though the damage it does to the idea of threat is extensive and would justify AntiFa’s actions against Badthink, or the guy who beat to death an elderly woman not wearing a mask.

                  1. Let me interject: Mom is better, but she grew up with the FIRM belief that up to ten weeks it didn’t matter. She was embarrassed about buying contraceptives. So she used abortion as he main means of contraception.
                    I don’t talk about this, mostly because you know, it’s not my story to tell, but ALSO I’m not impartial on this subject.
                    Mom had reasons — I love her dearly but mom has issues she knew would affect raising kids. In her defense she’s much better than her dad, and HIS dad was a horror. If you’ve read my story “what she left behind.” THAT — perhaps even valid, or what she thought were valid reasons.
                    So she got pregnant, she had an abortion. I’m here because I had a twin who got hit by the saline. The price was being seriously premature which still fuels my autoimmune issues (Possibly having twin die but not eject too. Long story.)
                    Mom didn’t have a second abortion to “clean it out” because dad found her appointment book, recognized the name, and told her “you abort, I leave.”
                    Dad wanted a LARGE family.
                    So–
                    a) no, I’m not a miserable, unhappy person because mom didn’t want me.
                    b) I found this out at 8. I found out that between me and brother there were probably 10 kids who didn’t get so lucky.
                    Survivor’s guilt is STILL a thing. I feel like I have to be amazing, to compensate for being the one who lived.
                    NONE of this is good for society, when it’s widespread.

                    7. The White Christ has kept you for us. And others yes, but I would name you as the mother figure to the ragtag group of misfits, human and otherwise, who have gathered here. And I thank you for that.

                    10. First off: glad to hear that despite that horror you still have a good relationship with your mom.

                      but I would name you as the mother figure to the ragtag group of misfits, human and otherwise, who have gathered here. And I thank you for that.

                      Second off: this.

                      I wish I were better?

                      We all do….. some of us more than others…..

                      Whether you realize it or not you are performing a similar role to Peterson on a somewhat smaller scale: you pierce veils of nonsense and provide a carrier wave of sanity.

                    11. Oh wow. Yeah, that’s heavy.

                      And of course, now I’m thinking of all the stories coming from your twin. Is that why your muse is so persistent?

                    12. No, but there’s an interesting thing. Until about age three, I felt very very sad often, and I felt like I ‘missed’ someone.
                      I’ve since found that this is common to twins who lose a twin during pregnancy or shortly after. Which is…. a little weird, but I guess….
                      Twin was a he.

            4. Curious, here. I’m a fan of Lois McMaster Bujold, who among other things explores the social ramifications of out-of-body pregnancy via uterine replicator. If those became functional and widely available, would terminating the pregnancy be the woman’s choice, or murder?

              I have watched in equal parts repulsion and cynicism the shift from early-80s “it’s not human, it’s a blob of tissue” to “maybe it’s more human than we thought, but you’re only pointing this out because you hate the wammanz!” to “It’s a human, but it’s a human where I don’t want it to be and I have every right to kill it.” The last iteration I find particularly chilling.

              1. David Weber plays with the concept a lot as well. In one case, a female android (downloaded female personality) desperately wants to give her lover a child and is agonizing because she can’t conceive. A friend’s donated over and a replicator gives her a viable solution.

                1. It’s worse in that case because the man she loves is a noble and Has To Have An Heir.

                  He’s in love so doesn’t think of that problem but she does.

      3. Actually, that’s entirely consistent: Since in Interchangeable Widget World, free will cannot exist, anything that happens through the exercise of same is ignored (you can’t do the badthink of contending that Bad Thing was done of one’s own free will, therefore it’s not the rapist’s fault), while anything that depends on NOT having any free will is automatically good (fetus has no free will, therefore you can do as you like with it).

        It’s Klein-bottle logic, but it’s quite self-consistent. Then again, so are most psychoses, by their own lights.

        Consider it an extension of the Marxist notion that if only the workers seize the means of production, the worker’s paradise will magically arrive. Totally failing to note where their paychecks came from does not change the internal consistency of their delusion.

      4. In a society where everyone went around with their sidearm (where people on the street would wonder at your lack of pistol before they accosted you for forgetting a hat or pants), women (and men) would not have to fear physical coercion based on strength. It’d become an irrelevance, relegated to the bronze age.

        (Can such a society persist though? Crime would plummet, and the anti-gunners would then come out of the woodwork to demand “safety”.)

        1. Crime would shift – to a much lesser extent this is observable as an impact of the difference in legal penalties for “breaking and entering” and “burglary of an occupied residence” which has the effect of shifting B&E crime patterns to working hours after perp surveillance shows everyone leaving for work (back in olden days when people worked outside the home).

          If people are more dangerous, criminals will logically shift to crimes that avoid people as a simple risk/reward (or risk/scale of potential penalty) calculation.

          This is the underlying philosophical basis for the successful “three strikes” laws – criminals who have been apprehended and convicted three times have empirically made a career choice, and will pursue criminal activity as a preference with escalating violence a distinct possibility, so society gains from preferentially locking them up longer than first or second strike offenders.

          This is, of course, raaaacisss per the self-assigned-aristo class, since they operate from the basis that people assigned to oppressed victim categories don’t actually have agency, and thus aren’t really people, so they cannot actually so choose between crime and non-criminal activity.

            1. Ah, but the Fair Folks are immortal “monsters”.

              Human monsters will die eventually. [Big Dragon Grin]

              1. Tell dat t’ Hitler. Apparently the wee fecker is still hoppin’ about in people’s heads, making them saw him everywhere. If that’s not immortality, then what is.

        2. Ah, but there are always going to be those who cannot, for whatever reason, be able to carry. For a very long time, I was worried about my eldest, who fidgets with (and chews on) things without much attention. He’s at the point where I wouldn’t worry about him doing so with a firearm, but I wasn’t always sure he was going to get to that point. (He’s very intelligent, too—just the combination of intelligence without paying much attention to what his hands are doing is terrifying in certain contexts.)

      5. She’s supposed to work to end rape culture, not take precautions against rape, because that’s just saying “Go rape someone else.”

        (Do not ask how a shot-to-death rapist will go rape someone else.)

      6. Attempted rape would possibly be a capital offense if the woman had and knew how to use a weapon. I’m a staunch supporter of the zero aggression principal. You don’t try nothin’, won’t be nothin’. We of libertarian bent need to more firmly push the idea of ZAP, rather than “Non-violence.” NV leads to victimhood.

        1. The problem is you will also need to push “Aggression = physical.” Otherwise, “microagressions” and “your speech is violence that justifies my violence” is where that’s already led.

          1. Even saying “physical” has issues, because they will forcibly restrain you by blocking the legal pathway, then howl if you escape the mob.

            Or declare that you blocking their punch means that you hit them.

            Or they get to destroy your stuff, but you can’t even throw yourself between them and your treasures.

            We could probably do a quick whip-around to find a good list of “ways to game no hitting rules.”

            1. Back in the 60s, the leftists were saying that those were “force” and acceptable but “violence” was not.

            2. ” they will forcibly restrain you by blocking the legal pathway, then howl if you escape the mob.”
              Key word forcibly=physical. See also “kidnapping”.

              “Or declare that you blocking their punch means that you hit them.”

              “Calling a tail a leg does not make it so.” They hit first, an objective fact.

              “Or they get to destroy your stuff, but you can’t even throw yourself between them and your treasures.”

              Physically destroyed stuff is physical, not “I feel unsafe”.

              In short. if irrational people are in your society, you will have to remove them, and your right to not be assaulted, like all other rights, is based on “can and will you kill those who would take them.”

              Might establishes rights. And this will be true until God establishes a universe without evil. Neither Job nor I were consulted on that, and unlike Job, I’ll be happy to tell the Lord that makes HIM responsible.

              1. Problem being, your original statement was physical aggression.

                Not “physical actions,” or “unjustified physical actions”.

                When you have to reverse-define stuff to deal with the rule as it will be gamed, the simple rule isn’t anymore. It’s just a shorthand for “you know it when you see it.”

                  1. In *your judgement.*

                    That’s the problem– with all the “simple” systems, really. The goal is to remove judgement, but they end up just shifting it.

                    1. If I can record it with a camera, or other wise provide physical evidence, it’s physical ie REAL aggression. Otherwise, it’s a fantasy.

                    2. Oh. and it again supports my conclusion that you can’t change their minds, but kill enough of them and they’ll leave you alone. Might establishes rights.

                    3. No. The rights exist on their own. Sometimes force is required to prevent others from violating those rights.
                      ———————————
                      Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!

                    4. Which the system either has to have another unspoken definition of “not THAT violence,” or….well, yeah, it’s just shifted everything and added a “but it’s simple” layer of principle which does nothing but add presumption.

      7. For a number of reasons I support abortion on demand but none of those reasons are as concrete as: It is none of the government’s damned business.

        1. Problem:
          our government is explicitly founded on preventing the violation of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

          If violating the right to not be killed is not the government’s business, then neither is any other killing.

          1. Just a general comment.

            I dislike “arguments for abortion based on a pregnancy that’s the result of rape”.

            The vast majority of abortions don’t involve a woman who has been raped.

            IMO when it happens, it’s a “Hard Case” (because there are valid arguments either way).

            There’s a saying that goes “Hard Cases Make Bad Law”.

            I’d add that making laws only because of the Rare Cases is a Bad Mistake.

            1. I dislike them because they are based on leveraging a highly emotional situation in order to destroy our most essential, basic right.

              The right to not be killed.

              It ever stops at “well, it’s OK to deliberately, directly kill *THOSE* guys.” It always spreads.

              1. There is no right not to be killed. If that were true then God (or evolution), by imposing old age and death on Its creations, would be the most prolific murderer in the local universe. You have a right to defend yourself from anyone who violates or attempts to violate your legitimate rights. Such defense must necessarily permit escalation to lethal force. At best, that means you have a right to not be unjustly killed.

                A fetus has no right to the resources of its mother. It has no right to introduce hormones that manipulate its mother’s blood chemistry, increase her blood sugar, dilate her arteries, and increase her blood pressure. It has no right to induce the nausea and vomiting associated with “morning sickness”.

                Now, the fetus is programmed by evolution (or God) to survive and, thanks to the hemochorial placenta in humans, will manipulate the mother’s metabolism to take as much of her resources as it can get. The fetus does have a choice in this. It is not sapient and has no free will. Nevertheless, it does not have a right to those resources. For millennia, human females had no choice in the matter but the technology now exists to terminate a pregnancy safely. Now the resources have to be given willingly.

                1. I am getting extremely tired of arguing about Abortion.

                  These arguments never get anywhere.

                  So everybody, please end this arguing.

                  2. I don’t expect to change anyone’s mind. I use to spar with creationists on the original talk.origins list. Took me a while (I am just a dumb ‘ol engineer after all) but I finally realized that they mostly (there were a few exceptions) start with a proposition — biblical innerancy — I do not accept. So, we had little in common to begin from.

                    I think that human rights spring from the fact of human sapience. That does not seem to be a fundamental principle for the anti-abortion crowd so we also have little common ground to begin with. I just sometimes get annoyed at folks who jump in and think they have a devastating argument for or against (fill in you favorite perversion).

                2. There is no right not to be killed. If that were true then God (or evolution), by imposing old age and death on Its creations, would be the most prolific murderer in the local universe.

                  Thank you for demonstrating from your opening sentence that you are not responding honestly.

                  It saves me a lot of time.

                  I will point you to someone who said it much better than I can, in this very comment thread:

                  – You have a right to your life because you are sapient.

                  – You have a right to liberty because you have free will.

                  – You have right to property because it represents the fruit of your labor.

                  Anyone who attempts to take any of the above from another forfeits the protection of these rights.

                  https://accordingtohoyt.com/2021/02/17/strong-women/#comment-750085

                    1. Sarah said that she agrees with my position that the Abortion “debate” should end.

                    3. sapient (adjective)
                      formal
                      wise, or attempting to appear wise.
                      sapient (noun) · sapients (plural noun)
                      a human of the species Homo sapiens.

                      Either we kill you in your sleep, or that’s a human and you can’t kill him.

                4. That is a level of sophistry which would embarrass Gorgias himself.

                  Also a fundamental misunderstanding of natural rights, I recommend picking up Aquinas and Locke.

            2. I never get the logic of the “or incest” that’s normally tacked on. If the sex was consensual, why does the fact the genetic donors were closely related give them a “it’s okay to have an abortion” card? And if the sex wasn’t consensual, whatever rules for allowing abortions due to rape are adequate for the situation.

              1. 1) Emotional appeal. It’s icky.
                2) Life unworthy of life appeal. A lot of folks have no freaking clue about how inbreeding works, they think stuff like Down’s can be caused by inbreeding.
                Rather than, you know, how it works in *reality* where you have a higher risk of recessives due to both sides having similar recessives.

              2. It’s from early century, when incest was ALWAYS supposed to result in morons. I’m the granddaughter of first cousins, one of whose set of parents were first cousins.
                Mom’s family can be accused of many things. Stupidity AIN’T one of them.
                BUT they believed that. You get it if you read books of the time.

                1. What I find ironic is that the rate of birth defects between first cousins is the same as the rate of a 40+ year old mother having a kid with Down’s. Yet somehow, the abortion exceptions aren’t “rape, incest, or old women.”

                    1. Each of my parent’s family tree is more of a stick, I simply don’t have as many ancestors as most people seem to. They didn’t quite get the pedigree collapse that the Spanish Hapsburgs did but it wasn’t for want of trying. The current generation really can’t wrap their heads around why my cousins and I know precisely how we’re related and precisely what sorts of dispensation are required within the degrees of consanguinity.

                    2. I do have a pretty good idea what I’ll die from and, barring accident, roughly when so it’s not all bad

              3. I suspect that it also means a lot of incest relationships are assumed to be abuse (which, let’s be fair, isn’t far off the truth, considering “funny uncles” and abusive grandparents.)

                1. Oh, agreed. The consent/statutory rape argument is far stronger than the birth defects argument against incestuous relationships. But again, whatever rules are in place for abortions in case of rape are adequate to the task. It’s repetitive to say “except in cases of rape and a certain type of rape.”

        2. Because of many reasons I support abortion in the first trimester. No matter your arguments, There are just too many times that having the child is going to mess up her life. Not the least of which is that it is extremely hard for her to give up the child. In the second trimester there must be a GOOD reason and not the BS of for the health of the mother which means mental health, no real reason. Third sorry but you take the child to delivery unless it is to save the LIFE of the Mother.
          Is abortion good, hell NO. Is it sometimes better yes. Delivering the child and then giving it away, has to be one of the hardest things possible and goes AGAINST EVERYTHING that the girl/woman has been taught.
          Through out the world and through all time, abortion has been done. The Romans did it so much that the plant they use disappeared and cannot be found. Stopping abortion is just not possible. Controlling it somewhat should be possible.
          We are talking the REAL World. Outlawing abortion is just not possible, never has been. Attempting to control it may be possible. Nobody but idiots like abortion, nobody but fools believe it can be totally abolished.

          I ask ALL of you who are totally against abortion HOW WOULD YOU ENFORCE IT??? What level of Government CONTROL would be required to Enforce it. Do you really believe it is even POSSIBLE to enforce such a law. If you are honest, i doubt that you believe that it can be.

          Evil yes, necessary yes. Terrible choice yes.

          BTW: The Man should also have the choice. (Let the fight begin)

    2. I am reminded of what ended up being a hilarious segment on Full Metal Alchemist.

      There was a magical psychopath running around on the loose, and he comes across a leggy blond girl heading home with her dog and a bag of groceries. He starts his stalking routine and taunting her full Hannible Lechter style, and it looks for all the world like it’s heading towards a scene cut followed by the team going over the aftermath the following day, but no, she pulls a gun and shoots him, repeatedly.

      Turns out, it’s Hawkeye, the team sniper. This is the first time the audience has seen her out of uniform with her hair down. It was a hilarious turn about, and probably the single best advertisement for concealed carry I have ever seen.

      1. How long is this segment? Do you have the season and episode number or other identifying information? It might be worth making a meme out of it.

          1. Ah, entertaining! Perhaps too cartoonish as it stands to use directly in a meme, but the idea could be fitted into a custom meme with real-life actors and actresses. 🙂

          3. Though I like this scene from near the end of the series. Gunfire is not completely effective against homunculi, but it can do a number on one.

        2. Still can’t track down the episode, but it was with Barry the Chopper. It looks like in the manga it was chapter 30: Chapter 30: The Truth Inside the Armor | Fullmetal Alchemist Wiki | Fandom
          https://fma.fandom.com/wiki/Chapter_30:_The_Truth_Inside_the_Armor

          I think the episode was in the transition between the original anime and Brotherhood, so somewhere around 18-25 in the first anime or around 5-8 in Brotherhood, but not quite able to find it yet.

        1. She really was an epic character.

          *Hawkeye and Maverick get separated while dealing with a known shape shifter. They join back up*
          Maverick: Hurry up Lieutenant, we have to catch this guy.
          Hawkeye: pulls gun on Maverick: “When we’re alone he calls me by my first name.”
          Not Maverick: “You two are really that close aren’t you?”
          Hawkeye: Shoots him: “I lied.”

        2. The show has some pretty awesome characters, including some very strong women. Major General Armtrong is another one. Don’t try to hold her hostage to keep her unit at bay, it insults her and her men. 😀

          (It’s an edited clip, there’s a nice bit in the original episode where it shows a garage door opening, revealing a bunch of Armstrong’s forces while one of her officers starts narrating a sitrep. It appears right before the sirens start in the clip I’m posting.)

            1. LOL 😆

              I wondered about that earlier clip.

              This one was much better. 😀

              1. I think I had the link for the other clip on my clipboard, and my attempt to copy the clip for Armstrong didn’t get saved and I posted the same clip twice instead of the one I wanted. So for once it wasn’t WordPress’s fault.

                Anyway, I have a feeling Alex was holding back in this fight. (Though you never know, another scene depicts Catherine, the younger sister in this clip, throwing a piano at a thief so Olivier might have similar strength, but that might have been an unreliable narrator situation.)

    3. Should H.R. 127 become law, I will hold each and every signer of that bill personally responsible for every act of violent crime in this country. I will write, mail, e-mail, call, harangue, and harass them until they capitulate, or expire. I will never relent, and they will come to hate the sound of my name. Buttigieg and Jackson think the NRA are evil? The NRA are a bunch of choir boys compared to what I’ll bring them.

      1. I simply will not comply with it.

        Though my guns were lost in a tragic kayaking incident and the ones in my games probably don’t count. Though I’m researching magnetic weapons in X-COM 2 so that might scare the hoplophobes. Ah well.

          1. The BATFE knew. That’s why they are mandating all new semi-automatic rifles come with flotation devices these days. I read it on the Babylon Bee, so it must be true!

            1. The BATFE knew. That’s why they are mandating all new semi-automatic rifles come with flotation devices these days. I read it on the Babylon Bee, so it must be true!

              –
              🙂
              ❤

              Oops. Too late.

    4. “the fact is that the number of females with carry permits is on a very steep increase”

      We are constantly warned that women can be powerful, able to knock down with a single blow men two to three times their mass, yet should not carry a handgun lest some (male) attacker wrest it from her and use it against her.

      Something about that seems incoherent.
      ~

      2. Like any other red-blooded, heterosexual male I enjoy watching hot chicks kick the crap out of multiple attackers on the TV. I think Vasquez in Aliens is one of the hottest of the hot bad-ass chicks in modern moviedom. I do not confuse it with reality.

  3. So, i am guilty as charged with one of the stories i am working on. It does the whole strong woman thing. However, there are reasons… and an entire story segment where once she’s stripped of what makes her able to spectacularly fight off trained soldiers, she has a little bit of a problem and the only thing that keeps her alive is firearms….

    (before you ask: digital comics)

      1. There are lots of genre reasons you could have a female fighter; both science fiction and fantasy have lots of examples.

        1. Exactly – they’ve stacked their deck. Wonder Woman has super-strength, Captain Marvel was gifted super-powers. They’re no more representative of typical humans than Thor, Spiderman, or Captain America.

          Basing an argument for “strong women” upon obvious exceptions to normal is asinine; Princess Diana is no more emblematic of women than Hulk is of men. Batman, at least, comes by his abilities honestly: through hard work, training and (presumably steroid-free) personal development.
          ~

        2. Historically there were women fighters, but you didn’t have mediocre ones, or not for long. Often they were dirty fighters or ridiculously fast in close quarters, or they were able to leverage distance (such as with polearms). And then short men usually learned the same tricks, but had testosterone to back them up with strength.

    2. That’s fine. Give me a reason she’s super powered, and I love it! Ask me to believe that some martial arts training, or nothing, negates physics, no.

        1. I have fragments of a universe intended for a game Someday(tm). Player character being a River Tam style waif-fu programmed-assassin.

          The “magic” is ontotech. Because who cares about meat muscles when you can edit local reality to Not Work That Way.

          1. The one I’m playing with is nanobots.

            In a scrubbed-just-enough-to-make-sense Star Trek universe.

            Take a wild guess how that goes over with meeting the Borg, much less others meeting them… and that’s before the way that they adopt AI’s on the theory that they have been wronged by being deliberately created without family….

            1. Ooh –

              BORG: “We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.”

              Captain Enhanced, chirpily cheerful: “Sure thing! Lowering shields – beam on over!”

              BORG: “Eek! Scans identify massive technologically superior nanobot infestation! Put your shields back up! Run away!! Run away!!!”

              1. *snickers* Pretty much, although he’s (point of view character, who isn’t a local, is) more pissed and horrified the first time he figures out what Borg are.

                Basically zombies, from his POV.

                But when folks figure out he’s got nanobots is when someone gets borg-injected in front of him, and he uses his nanobots to fight them. (His job before he and a family friend got lost was basically emergency responder– he *can* do ER stuff, like use the bots for super-healing before someone bleeds out, but he’s not really good at it. But being sincerely outraged and having nanites that can *eat* Borg nanites….)

                This does Not Go Over Well with the locals, although at least he had someone to watch his back and prevent death while trying to help.

                1. There was a weird but interesting book I read a while back that had the nannies as the hardware on which a conscious AI symbiote ran. The symbiote did the regular symbiote things like keeping the host organism healthier, as well as consciousness stuff like providing the host guy with dating advice.

                  It had other unique stuff (something about that planet having pneumatic computing due to not being able to use electronic computing handwavium – talk about a slow processors) but I really liked the way the symbiote’s enlightened self-interest was written.

  4. The women who believe in their own physical strength are counting on the chivalry of the men they abuse. Once the chivalry breaks down, they will find out just how out-matched they are. We are seeing it in many places now, where men think “if they think they are equal, I can treat them as equal in a fight”. That is a bad place for civilization. The problem with all the films with teeny women beating up large men. Maybe with a sneak attack and one shot, one kill, but never in a fight the man knows is coming. Unless she’s armed.

    1. I was very clear with my daughter that all that pixie ninja stuff was crap. A strong woman who knew how to throw a punch could hurt me, I, an old, fat man, could kill her. Someone mentioned rationalism the other day, this is part of Oakeshott’s point, our society seems to have forgotten why the rule “don’t hit girls” was put in place in the first place. Idiots.

      1. I’m strong for my height. I know some dirty tricks with walking sticks and the like. I’d have a snowball’s chance on Miami Beach in August taking on a larger male without the assistance of St. John Moses Browning or Sir Samuel of Colt.

        1. I can also take down a man with tricks and leverage. I learned a long time ago (I took self-defense and martial arts) that a man of equal size can take down a woman. I think that martial arts for women is a good thing. It is eye-opening. The best a woman can do is surprise an attacking male and then run away.

          1. I’m told when my parents got married, Mom could lift Dad.

            However, many years later when all of us started exercising, Mom gained strength at the rate of a man around her age, even with a pair of long standing knee injuries. (She had bruised the cartilage in both her knees before I was born.) My brothers and I, however, all gained at about twice that rate.

            2. “Well-placed” is the real trick. The chance of any strike landing isn’t great. The chance of any strike that lands having the desired effect is lower still. If the situation is already hot, it gets worse.

              In my former semi-professional opinion, the advice I give women – including my wife – for self defense is simple: balls, eyes, throat, in whatever order you can get to them, however you can. Hopefully you can get in a grappling situation and then claw, tear, gouge and scream your head off enough to do some kind of damage/scare him off/attract some help.

              Real self-defense training for women should involve learning situation avoidance and firearms training; not the fantasies that give women the false sense of security that fiction and many professional self-defense courses offer.

                1. That requires already holding it in a way that’s ready to stab, while also having the angle, leverage, and accuracy to land such a blow in a split second. Pretty low percentage stuff. Chances attacker is going to be still long enough to have it “levered open” are pretty much nil.

                    1. You watch –far— too much Hollywood drek. An average sized woman has very little chance for a collarbone strike resulting in a break for even an average sized man much less a brute. gmmay70 already covered this but you are not getting the memo. Turn your TV off, it doesn’t project anything close to reality.

                    2. Women SHOULD fight like cornered cats. EVERY surrounding object a weapon.
                      Even then, if they’re not young and in great shape they’re likely doomed.
                      I’m not young and in great shape. I’m not going to lie down and die. I remember the guy who beat the mountain lion to death with a rock while it was mauling him. Not GREAT chances but heck, why not?

                    3. “EVERY surrounding object a weapon.”

                      I don’t mean to suggest a woman shouldn’t do absolutely everything possible. It’s just that there are some things that are futile to try in a fight when there are better options. There’s a reason that nearly every technique the Marines used to teach in their old Line Training (hand to hand combat sans weapon) began with the “softening” blow ‘Grab-Twist-Pull’. The only training required to execute that move is a basic knowledge of male anatomy. The rest of the techniques were fairly ridiculous, with low probabilities of success and heavy training requirements. If you managed to get that first technique right, the rest weren’t even necessary.

                      Since most fights in general end up going to the ground in a grappling match (this is actually preferable for women), strikes and blows with fists and weapons are probably not even going to be feasible, let alone effective. Gouging/clawing eyes and/or grabbing/twisting testicles takes no training and has the highest chance of success. If you can improvise a weapon, hell, use it. But you have to be prepared for the unfortunately likely event that it won’t work.

                    4. Biting. Seriously. If you REALLY bite. Not nip, but really bite, it shocks the aggressor long enough to run away. Or hit him with a rock, then run away. Or cut his throat then run away. (I ALWAYS have managed to get jumped when I’d forgotten my knife. Don’t ask. Fortunately I’m always aware of other perforating objects on my person.)
                      At fourteen I took a chunk off the hand of a local juvenile delinquent who I SUSPECT had rape on his mind. I was unusually strong at that age, but he was bigger, and evil.
                      I couldn’t get out of the hold. BUT I bit his hand. His stupid move was putting it over by mouth. So I bit and kept working at it, at pulling.
                      About when I tasted blood, he screamed and let go. I threw a large rock at him and ran like the dickens for the populated area (and never again took that short cut through the woods.)
                      His mother had the almighty nerve to come complain to my mom I’d taken a chunk of (mostly skin) off her precious son’s palm.
                      Mom’s response was one of the few times she went out on the balcony and shouted back “like a fisherman’s wife.”
                      Oh, I had an additional saving grace in that situation, otherwise the cannibal move MIGHT NOT have saved me: I was wearing a body-suit mom had designed, and where the only opening was on the side between arm and hip, and was a pain to get into and out of. It was also well disguised. And some kind of 70s horrible polyester thing that wouldn’t tear.
                      Because when he first jumped me, he tried to tear my clothes, got confused, I screamed, he put his palm over my mouth…. I kicked, wriggled and generally made a nuisance of myself while biting…
                      So, deterrent clothing? Also good.

                    5. Biting absolutely. If he’s got a lot of hair, get a handful of that if you’re able. Whatever it takes, whatever you can get purchase on. I refrained from suggesting biting to my wife, since her dental work isn’t really up to the task. : /

              2. Note that a good blow to the female crotch is pretty darn incapacitating, too. Learned this from painful personal experience riding a boy’s bike.

                1. Had a back to back pair of incidents which demonstrated that during rehearsal for a play which involved a wee bit of stage combat. The stage directions had the actress “kneeing” me in the crotch, at which point I was supposed to fall backwards, and she was supposed to fall on top of me.

                  One night as she fell she managed to run her crotch into my knee, the following run through she actually kneed me in the crotch instead of the inside of my upper thigh. The incidents cost the better part of a half hour as we recovered form the blows.

              3. “balls, eyes, throat, in whatever order you can get to them,”

                A useful tutorial — keep in mind that the character in this film is a trained FBI agent (as is her tackle dummy) and these circumstances are admittedly contrived.

                Just remember to Sing: Solar Plexus, Instep, Nose, Groin.

                Also remember these tactics are for single assailant only (preferably one who is cooperative.)
                ~

            3. After you’ve been kicked once, you know that while painful and annoying, it’s not the end of the world. And you’ll be *really* angry.

              Also, women are more vulnerable in that area than most people seem to think.

              1. Kinda like being punched in the face, that way. After the first time, you realize that most people have really hard heads and soft hands, and a lot more fight in them than you’d think based on movies.

                I once worked with a guy who was an honest ass. A true misanthrope, he hated men and women pretty equally. And he’d treat them pretty equally if they asked for it… as a woman found out to her dismay, when she thought she could assault him with impunity “because men don’t hit girls.”

                As he said to her after, “You want to be treated like a guy? I treat you like a guy. That includes getting hit when you try that shit, just like a guy would. Don’t like it? Don’t demand to be treated like a guy.”

                Later, he snarled in my general direction “it’s actually gentlemen don’t hit ladies, and it’s a two-way street requiring the women to act like ladies, as well as the men to act like gentlemen. I’m no gentleman, and she ain’t no lady.” I did my best to treat him as a decent human being I didn’t care for, despite my being a relatively crazy idiot (ah, youth), and he… he generally treated me as an airheaded but decent human being he didn’t care for.

                Certainly, I never spat on him, and I never got throatpunched in return. Illuminating, that!

                1. Incident from my youth that I’m not all that proud of, but it illustrates a point. I was in the USMC, weighed about 250 lbs, and on heavy workout days routinely worked with 350-400 lbs on the bar. Strong I was. One weekend I was hanging with some civilian friends in someone’s back yard. Considerable alcohol had been consumed by all hands. One of the friends there was the catcher in what was then the only all girl flying trapeze act. Normally, the catcher even in a girls’ flying act is a man, due to the extreme upper body strength needed to catch even small female bodies flying through the air. Maureen was NOT a normal woman but WAY out on the right end of the curve on strength. Not at all butch, but pretty and feminine in a solid sort of way. We were by far the two strongest people at hand, and the question arose, who was stronger? Remember large amounts of flavored ethanol were involved. Arm wrestle! We squared off across a table. At the word we started. 20 minutes later, our host put his hand on top of our linked fists, and said on three he was declaring a tie. We were both sweating, blowing and shuddering. Maureen said “Well, at least you couldn’t rape me.”
                  I leaped over the table, pulling out my belt knife (in sheath), knocked her to the floor, and put the sheath under her chin. “If this was a real rape, this is the part where you start crying and taking off your panties. A rapist may not be as strong as you, but he’s likely faster and more aggressive. Don’t get overconfident.” I got up, and helped her up. “I like my women smiling and running toward me, not screaming and running away.” The drinking continued. Some weeks later the lady and I did get together, but it was too expensive in broken furniture to continue.

            4. Side of the knee is better– easier to reach, harder to dodge, and the dodging is not great tactically.

              Plus, most assume you’re going for the groin, which actually helps you hit the knee.

                2. And it takes very little “kick” to knock it out. Even a small person can destroy a big person’s knee.

              2. The Japanese martial arts guys will take down a marine or other military guy quickly with a knee strike. Those guys are fast, aggressive, and small.

          3. The best thing a woman can do to surprise an attacking male is unload as much violence onto him as she can, and then run away. Gouge his eyes, smash his throat, rupture his ear drums, cut his tendons, rip open an artery or two. Do not get into a punching, kicking, or wrestling contest with him.

              1. It is the difference between a pair of tanks slugging it out and a tank being ambushed by a piece of field artillery.

                Tanks do not want to get shot up by anything and every shot that hits has a chance of killing them.

                The field artillery will be obliterated if it doesn’t kill the tank right off the bat.

          4. “The best a woman can do is surprise an attacking male and then run away.”

            Run away and hide behind a larger man (preferably one who did not witness the precipitating attack.).
            ~

          5. When I was starting out in martial arts my teacher often would select me to be the example for the young ladies with advanced belts to practice with in hold exercises. I think he did this first to emphasize that skill was not an issue (many of other adult males were the Dan (black belts) and Masters and so there might be an assumption of better technique). I think the second was that I wouldn’t just let their attempts work. I had two daughters in the class and I felt it was my duty to make sure they had actually escaped, I tended to hold on like a bulldog. Last of all I was an out of shape marshmallow of a guy and it emphasized just how much advantage being male gave in that situation. These very fit young ladies were easily overpowered by a couch potato. Sadly my martial arts days are over, I reached a point where I was constantly over doing it to get the next technique tied down as I advanced and ended up out to much to advance further.

      2. Yeah. I was relatively equal in fighting ability as a kid – until the boys hit their growth spurt. Then, I wisely left the field of fighting to them.
        Unless Smith & Wesson or the equivalent is around, it’s NOT gonna end pretty for even the strongest woman.

        2. “We’re not going to jus let you walk out of here.”

          “Who’s ‘we’, sucker?”

          “Smith, Wesson, and me.”

    2. Ayup, that’s exactly the thought that occurred to me whilst reading this thread. Those deluded women who drink the Kool-Aid supplied by the gallon from the leftist idiocracy are subconsciously counting on the persistence of a general, unspoken understanding that men shalt not unleash the full extent of their physical strength in all its inglorious brutality against women, the bearers of our children and our future. Sad will be the unfortunate women who discover too late the terrifying reality of fang and claw and fist and club. It’s depressing just to think on it. These ancient cultural understandings aren’t arbitrary. They exist for excellent reasons, but the leftist idiocracy seems hell-bent on tossing out truth and reality — and screw the consequences..-_-

      1. Yep re claw and club – basically along the lines of Insty’s observation that the popo are not really there to protect the public from the perps, they are there to protect the outnumbered perps from the public equipped with ropes and streetlight poles.

        In both Oakland’s and SF’s Chinatown districts there have recently been a series of attacks against Asian seniors, many caught on the ubiquitous web-connected cameras and made available to local media, which has prevented the pols from ignoring the issue. Despite promises that defunded police departments will increase patrols, the attacks continue, and a liquor store owner intervened with a firearm to stop an attack on an elderly lady out in front of his storefront, firing shots into the air in running off the attackers.

        So the Oakland police arrested the store owner.

        If you were to start a file of “this will not end well” I’d say this would be a prime example.

  5. Around here the examples of strong women the left puts forward are all examples of what the left THINK a strong man is – a rude arrogant man with no manners who bullies underlings and the weak.
    We had a lesbian couple that moved in next to an older widowed man in Clawson MI. They proceeded to verbally harass him daily as old and weak for a long period of time. Among other things they objected to the hedge that separated their properties but the hedge was on HIS side.
    One day he came home and they had cut the hedge down flush to the ground and actually were waiting to mock him over it.
    He went in the house and returned with a rifle and shot both of them dead. Made sure of it.
    Their families went on and on about he couldn’t suffer strong women.
    No.
    He gave them the same send off he’d have given a pair of men treating him that way. Almost every normal man I know is aware you only push another man so far and then you can expect to be shot/run over with a truck /find your house burning down around you at 3am… They know there are lines you don’t cross.
    Strength is not the right to be a jackass and a bully.
    This is something I am afraid the male leftists also don’t realize. And once you shoot one the rest are free. They can only hang you once.

    1. I wish I’d been there to watch them explode into bloody pieces.

      Torturing the elderly requires torture in kind.

    3. I do not commend the use of deadly force for… extreme hedge trimming, as it were. That’s a bit more like skipping to the end. It is the cessation of all possible redemption in this life. And I am a firm believer in granting human beings the chance at redemption.

      That said, such persons were absolute *fools* to assuming that taunting an old man would come with no consequences. Some old men get that way just by living a long time.

      Others get that way by surviving all sorts of awfulness and mess and bad people then coming out on top. *shakes head* I mourn the loss of those souls. But my word, what utter foolishness.

      1. You never know what someone’s last straw will be.

        Which is why a wise person doesn’t torment others for fun.

        1. And especially do not torment the old. They just might have a lot less to lose than you.
          And as well, the mere fact that they are ancient and still alive is a fair indicator that they may have picked up a few really dirty tricks along the way.
          Of course what the old man should have done is actively find ways to torment those two fine ladies back until the bullies attacked him at which time he could legitimately claim fear of his life and then blow them away. Might have beaten the rap as bullies do not just torment a single target and probably had a long history of abuse to others weaker than them.

          1. What he should have done was cut off their heads and placed them on pikes in his front yard.

      2. Sorry Dan, but I disagree. Those two had it coming and they weren’t capable of being reasoned with. Depending on the age and condition of the gentleman, he apparently felt it was worth the trouble. The fact that they did what they did, and then were there waiting to unload on him afterwards is premeditated on their part. I’d have voted justified manslaughter at most, or even nullification.

        1. I don’t know all the specifics, so you may have more info that me. That they probably had it coming, I don’t doubt.

          I do stand by allowing human beings a chance at redemption. As I said, I don’t know all the facts, though.

          In cases where there is no imminent and deadly threat, I do not recommend lethal force. Would it have gotten to that point? Dunno, but folks who disregard property rights and common decency are already pushing the envelope out of polite society. At this point we will never know.

          Chances are he might have thought (as Uncle Lar mentioned) “I’ve not got much to lose. Eff it.” The two in question were, as I understand, acting like right fools. I have nothing good to say about their actions.

          But if we shot every dumb@$$ in the world, then we’d end up shooting pretty much everybody. I believe in escalation of force (with exceptions where you *have* to go right for the bang button. Very few if any rules are universal without exceptions). I’d much prefer those two have been fined, arrested, charged and humiliated (if they could even feel such) for their childish petty behavior.

          That ain’t what happened, so we got what we got. I’m sorry if you still disagree, but I hope that explains it better.

          1. Draco (of Draconian Law fame) said he sentenced people to death because they deserved death, or because death was harshest penalty he could impose, so it would have to suffice.
            The population loved him for it
            The poor bleepard died from being showered with praise. He was buried under thrown tokens of admiration, and suffocated.

      3. “I do not commend the use of deadly force for… extreme hedge trimming, as it were. That’s a bit more like skipping to the end. ”

        Don’t confuse medium with message.

        First, they had been harassing him for some time. Second, the actual message was “We will treat you like dirt and you will submit to it.” With the additional message “We are members of favored victim classes, and you’re just a Deplorable. The law will be on our side.”

        2. You nailed it.

          The b*tches crossed the Rubicon and were held accountable. In my opinion, in the best, most satisfying way. Though I could have wished for the heads on pikes as a final flourish.

      4. It’s not the hedges.

        It’s that they made it clear they would not be stopped by the law, or by honor, and that he was at their complete mercy.

        By destroying his hedge, which were clearly HIS, and clearly protected BY LAW, in a manner he could not defend, they made it clear that his very life depended on them choosing if they would break into his house– windows are no stronger than fences, without respect for legal consequences.

        He responded in a horrible, but logical, manner.

        3. I can see that being an edge case where an exception may- *may* be applied. With no recourse to law and order, the some form of vigilante justice and/or shadow government *will* step in.

          I still don’t like it, and don’t expect that will change. That said, it makes a terrible sort of sense when you remove all the barriers to that behavior becoming accepted. That’s not the case everywhere. Not in a great many of the places I’ve traveled in the States. But it has been for some.

          1. I don’t like it, either.

            I like functional law enforcement.

            Of course I do, I’ve been a scapegoat for ages– being able to demand evidence, and procedure, and have rules to follow makes my life much nicer.

            …which is exactly what those women were deliberately destroying.

            Seriously, the run-up to it reads very familiar. Just in this case, the tormenters died, instead of the elderly man. When you hear about a vulnerable person who is dead, if you can find decent information, it almost always looks like that.

            Disabled folks, elderly folks, abused spouses– they don’t act until they think the target has been destroyed enough to submit, to say “I deserved this, it is my fault.”

        4. Exactly– they walk into his house, demolish his stuff, and kill him in his sleep. This was a taunt that said… they could do whatever they wanted with him.

    4. Legally and ethically that is tough situation. I am all in favor of avoiding conflict if for no other reason than once the bullets start flying the odds of surviving unharmed drastically drop. Still…

      – You have a right to your life because you are sapient.

      – You have a right to liberty because you have free will.

      – You have right to property because it represents the fruit of your labor.

      Anyone who attempts to take any of the above from another forfeits the protection of these rights.

  6. Maybe I’ve just had spectacularly bad luck with reading trad-pub paranormal romances, but the two I slogged through and the few I’ve sampled . . . Gal meets Guy (chapter 1). Explicit sex (chapter 1 or 2, although in one case they did get to chapter 4 before the explicit sex). Maybe follow with the classic romance tropes, interspersed with some woo (telepathy, were-creature, ghost, she’s Wiccan, whatever). Dramatic ending, lust ever after. And the female character seems to whine. Even if she’s a professional woman (lawyer, geologist, banker, dentist) she whines.

    Ick. The only time I’ve heard truly strong women whining is when they are joking around, or mimicking someone. Strong women don’t whine – they do, or find a way around the problem if they can’t fix it head-on.

    I’m starting to think that M. Lackey’s Diane Tregard novel _Children of the Night_ (vampires in NYC) is a much healthier take on romance than do modern PNRs.

    1. I’ve been finding the whine more and more often in these books. If I didn’t have the book on the kindle, I would have thrown it. I give them three chapters and then gone… I’m finding that whine starting to creep into fantasy. *sigh WTF

      1. One wonders how many of these authors were only children, raised in daycare by the “girlz rule” types. Growing up with siblings is a learning experience.

        1. Yes. As one who had two brothers and a lot of male friends, I had a ringside seat at the damage a man can do when pushed too far.

        2. That’s an interesting idea. Single child families leading to whining… Hmm. You certainly do get more consequences for whining in larger families. Parents with a single child tend to indulge them more too, just because they have more time. Somebody should do a study 🙂

          2. Meh. Ours is an only. I despise whining (oldest of 3 girls). Whining/Tantrums = “Oh hell no!” not giving in. Applies to adults too. Be it at work, or scouting/sports parents. I never had to get physical. I never had to whine or throw a tantrum back.

            Yet people are surprised when we commented that our one child is spoiled. In fact with complements it always went “Yes he is spoiled. We’re working on Rotten. Can’t seem to get that part right.” 🙂 He had to be taught how to share with other children. To not be selfish. Of coarse he did. He didn’t have siblings with more or less equal power levels to teach him that.

            In general. Only child = mini-emperor. OTOH baby syndrome too. Hubby freely admits he was the spoiled brat (he is the youngest by 5 years, and a full 14 years younger than oldest sibling). As do friends of son who weren’t exactly only children but might have well been. In the case of son’s friends, the older siblings were 12 to 15 years older. Essentially parents raised two only children; plus had favored Uncle status by the time they were in grade school.

            There is just shy of 5 years between me and my youngest siblings (she turns 60 before I turn 65, by 1/3 year). The middle sibling is just over 3 years older than youngest (turns 63 almost 2 months before youngest turns 60). While my youngest sibling is a brat. She doesn’t exhibit the mini-emperor syndrome (OTOH she is woke, so what do I know?).

        3. Absolutely its an education. I barely beat my brother at arm wrestling when he was nine. I declared myself the family champion and refused to wrestle any of the boys EVER again. Keeping my championship. I was 15 I think. It’s now one of my family legends and we laugh about it.

    2. This! I still read paranormal romances — when I can stand them. But I worry about the women writing these things. They really think that whininess is *admirable*?? It’s clear that their model of good behavior is totally broken. I have a hard time imagining myself into the state of mind that would produce characters like that. It’s all “You’re not the boss of me!!” adolescent whinecrap. And if ever anybody warns them about some danger they shouldn’t rush into alone, they almost always do. Because reasons.

      1. The irritating thing to me, and this happens in other genres too (because I don’t read much romance), is that the whininess *never stops.* It could be a character flaw that said character overcomes as they grow. But those characters just don’t grow.

        You can have flawed characters. Flaws are *good!* Humanizing! They add depth to otherwise Mary Sue crap. But if your characters never grow or change they get boring very, very quickly. And bored readers don’t buy your next book.

        The mind, it doth boggle.

        1. Yeah. I think this whininess reveals a fundamental problem with the progressive view of human nature, but I’m having a hard time putting my figure on what it is. Maybe they’ve thrown out the concept of individual struggle with behavior because it’s all about the feelz and the identity group? They do put “indulging in your emotions” as a goal, so… I guess that would lead to whining… No sense of self-restraint.

          1. You want me to “indulge in my emotions”.

            Great Idea!

            You p*ss me off and I going to do something about that. 😈

              1. Yep!

                And then there’s “Some times the dragon wins! Which is why dragons still exist.” 😉

          2. Perhaps it has something to do with the cult of victimhood, as well? We know the weird victim points system they call intersectionality has that going for it. The whininess reveals victim status, which in progressive cant is heroic. You signal your victimhood with whines, instant winner.

          3. A good part of it is the belief the people should be able to be successful and comfortable without having to work to achieve it, and the related belief that if they are not successful and comfortable it is because someone else thwarted them from being so. Leftists utterly dispense with the notion of personal responsibility. It is why saying that people achieve through hard work has been declared to be racist thought crime by the left.

          4. “They do put `indulging in your emotions” as a goal`”

            So they’re cool with rape?

            Whether you think it an expression of lust or a power ploy, rape is indulging somebody’s emotions.
            ~

      2. One of the worst cases was the series that was so popular, with the sparkly vampire. One of my friends thought I would like it, since I like fantasy, and gave it to me. *****GAG****. That was the most ANNOYING character ever. Whine, whine, whine, bitch, bitch, bitch. I wanted to reach in and slap her.

        1. Totally agree. Could not STAND that book. Yet I had friends and knew 13 year old girls who loved it. I read it just to be culturally au courant. I did see the movie too because a friend of my son’s pushed him to see it. It was slightly better (probably because you just can’t whine that much on screen). But we both thought it really stank.

          Of course I really hate that Mockingbird series too, so I’m definitely not in the mainstream on these things.

          1. I kind of liked the first Hunger Games book, but the next two felt like they were bound and determined not to let Katniss grow in any way or have any sort of agency. She could easily have been replaced with a blowup doll that said, “Hi, I’m Katniss” in Books 2 and 3 without anyone noticing.

        3. Oh. Good. I missed nothing.

          Didn’t read either series nor see the movies.

          Did read Harry Potter series and see the movies. No comment. Books was trying to get son into reading for pleasure. I mean he does read. Just not like me. He does the computer simulation routine, and builds things. Which … require reading. But not reading for reading itself. OTOH I’m a bit of a reading addict. Hubby reads, but he also doesn’t read to read, and definitely not fiction.

          Although I did get hubby intrigued with one book. We were at a movie and the to be released movie trailers came up. One intrigued hubby. My response “No. Absolutely not!” Hubby “Why?” Me “Read the book. It scared the crap out of me.” Haven’t seen the movie to this day. “The Relic”

        4. Read the first book and spent the whole book wanting to slap Bella. Read the wikipedia summaries for the rest of it back when keeping up on popular culture was important to me.

        5. I saw the first two Twilight movies because my wife wanted to see them and I have become somewhat uxorious in my old age. By the time the third movie came out she had figured out I have no use for a bunch of sparkly emo-vampires and went to see the remainder with her friends.

          If vampires actually existed, we would have to exterminate them.

          1. Christopher Nuttall has a similar opinion about vampires.

            He’s made comments in some of his fantasy stories about fools who become easy prey of vampires because the vampires “play up the romantic vampire” image.

            Oh, in one of his books a sorceress hits a vampire with a sunlight spell. It “sparkled” as it turns to dust. 😆

      4. I wonder how that whininess and “You’re not the boss of me!!” routine goes over with editors requesting changes or wanting to know why the book isn’t on schedule.
        ~

    3. Oh good gracious, yes, the whining. The whining is hitting 13 year old female levels of drama… in books by and for grown women. *sinal salute*

      And let’s not even start on “I’m such a Strong Female Character! I can kick any man’s ass! I’m… completely helpless before Male, and this went so far so fast into Physically and Emotionally Abusive relationship the reader is hearing sonic booms, but He’s Not Human, So It’s Okay! And the sex is great, so it must be love!”

      “But wait, reader, there’s more! In just a chapter or two, he’ll fall for the Magical Power of my Glittery HooHah, and this 600 year old super rich Vampire/Alien/Billionaire/Whatever will now be afraid to make me cry!!”

      The number of promising blurbs that have instead use-tested the otterbox casing as my kindle app and the phone as it sails across the room in disgust…

      1. Hehe. So true! I’m picturing a satirical take on these stories… could be hilarious 🙂 somebody should write it… And 13 years old is the right age.

        2. Write it!
          Too bad The African Queen and True Grit aren’t public domain in the US. Mattie Ross and Elizabeth Sawyer providing commentary would be aces.

      2. I read somewhere that what resonated so much was the unconditional love part, that she really didn’t deserve the devotion but got it anyway. Not feeling worthy of being loved is pretty common, after all.

        Anyway, it made sense to me as an explanation for the popularity.

        1. Porn for women: men will love you no matter how inadequate you are.
          Porn for men: women will screw you no matter how inadequate you are.

          It’s all one and the same.

  7. The whole victim discussion reminds me once again of why I still believe that, even though he will never be recognized for it, Joachim Steuben is still the best gay character ever written.

        2. I never had that impression. Now I want to go reread some of them (I can see the paperbacks from here).

          1. Yeah. I didn’t realize it either until someone pointed it out, but his fundamental subject in those books is what combat does to people, mind as well as body.

            I think his The Reaches trilogy really drive it home more than anything else. In the Slammer’s stories, there was always a buffer, in that these were mercenaries, and had chosen this life, often for adventure or some degree of personal gain.

            In The Reaches, they are caught in a just and necessary war. And that that it was just and was necessary, made it no less terrible. It’s not a choice between pain and not pain; it’s a choice of which pain.

    2. Oh yes. He was a psycho, a fascinating person (albeit terrifying), and happened to be gay. I have no desire to know what depths Drake plumbed to find him, but oh, he’s so well written.

      1. I believe he was a transformation of Ganymede. And his being gay is essential to his character. The overwhelming majority of his motivations and conflicts stem from that.

        Did you ever read the story with Hammer’s wedding? I want to say it was “A Death in Peacetime” but it might have been a different one.

          2. Ah, I found it. If I’m understanding the chronology right, it was set after A Death in Peacetime, but was written about ten years before it.

            From my impression of the books, it was one of the first ones Drake wrote after he had put his demons to rest, and was in a bit of literary flux. That’s the earliest story I can think of where he specifically humanized that character, but I find it striking that that character has also, mostly, put his own demons to bed. In fact, I think, to date, it was that character’s last chronological appearance.

            Part of Stueben’s complexity is his story is told out of order, so it’s hard to see his arc. Do you remember the Snape chronological recut someone did of the Potter movies a few years back? Steuben sort of needs one of those.

        2. Yes, I did. It was . . . Interesting, in part because I was too young to catch some of the sub-contexts, even as much of the Slammers as I’d read. (FWIW, Hammer’s Slammers and the Co-Dominium books were the first mil-sci-fi I crossed paths with, with the Warbots series a close second.)

          1. Drake says he didn’t explicitly base Steuben on anyone, but I understand he was an amalgam of Greco-Roman guys with the sort of people one occasionally meets in a war like Vietnam, that is not the best run.

  8. I was in college back in the seventies and feminism was a thing, but I remember being somewhat confused/bemused/whatever by all the complaints about female oppression by males in the family. Not in *my* family. The women were the core and *within the family* had more power than the men. You might as well say the men were oppressed by the women demanding they go out and make a living to support everybody. I did eventually realize that other people’s families were a better match for the male oppression model. But I still don’t think that that “model” of relationships was a useful one for most people.

    1. A lot of these people were either from broken families, or were broken in some way. So they went down the classic villain path of “If I can’t have it, I’ll destroy it for everyone!”.

      It is an… understandable… path. But not one that should ever be indulged.

        2. Yeah, I’m pondering the difference to the kids of “My parents got divorced and Dad wasn’t really around much” and “I was farmed out for all childrearing to a giant uncaring daycare creche run by total strangers and I never saw either of my undivorced career-track parents much”.

          1. *thinks of kids that were raised in daycares*

            They have no fear of strangers and no discernment about who might wish them harm. They’ll snuggle up to anyone who will pay attention to them.

            1. Kids are supremely jealous of their parents when they get so little of them. I noticed this when I homeschooled and my kids were at the park playing. If my kids talked to any of the other moms there, if they weren’t the homeschool moms, chances are that the child of that parent would get ANGRY.

          2. Well, my father was raised by his mother after her husband left when my dad was about 4 (?), in 1937. It marked him, but doesn’t seem to have broken him.

            1. A sufficiently strong mother can compensate.
              Different circumstances, but grandad spent his working life abroad (there was NO work in Portugal.)
              Grandma raised three boys and a girl. No obvious problems, or at least none not inherent in other generations of the family.

              1. A sufficiently strong mother can compensate.

                The surrounding environment matters. *Lots* of kids lost their fathers due to wars over the centuries, but the dad was presented as a lost hero, and there was probably an uncle or something taking part of the burden.

                Huge difference between that and the current situation.

                2. I’ve long suspected that the studies that show significant difference in outcome between kids raised by two parents and kids raised by just one parent… would show much less difference between kids raised by a widow vs kids raised by a mother where the kids’ father walked out on her or she walked out on him. In the former case, the kids don’t feel betrayed by their father. They miss him and wish he hadn’t died, but they don’t feel betrayed. In the case of a father who walks out, they know he betrayed the family. And if it was the mom who walked out, she’ll generally tell the kids that their father was a bad man and the kids will end up blaming the father for the mother walking out; sometimes this may even be true, but what matters for the kids’ outcomes in life is not whether or not it is objectively true but rather whether or not the kids believe it. I suspect that those studies never do distinguish between the children of widows and the children of broken marriages (or non-marriages that broke up), because it would show something the designers of the studies don’t want to admit: the importance to kids of having a father they can respect.

                  1. I have a friend with three daughters who is divorced for Good Reason, and she wishes she could hang out with my family all the time because my husband is a man her daughters could respect, and they need that example. (Because their dad is a piece of garbage. To give you an idea, his family kept her.)

                3. *this*

                  My grandfather was raised by his mother, who left her husband when she figured out he was a freaking highwayman. She ran the rest-stop.

                  That grandfather turned out well– because there were intact families, and basic assumptions, and even help for a lone woman with a small boy in the middle of freaking nowheresville, if they would work like the devil to make it work. My grandfather was half-raised by a local family that functioned like his mother’s sister’s family.

                  When he was a crazy young guy on WWI surplus motorcycles that he and Lefty bought and maintained themselves, they went from town to town working. Eventually they found a town with gals who thought they were swell. Lefty got married less than a month after they hit town.
                  (To hear my grandmother– who was her friend– “Everyone Knew” it wouldn’t last. At their 50th anniversary, that was the running joke.)

                    1. Heheh, that grandfather married…. I think four months after they hit town.

                      And they STILL insisted mom was rushing it at six months after meeting dad…..

                    3. Hubby and I only dated about 6 months before getting engaged (Aug), then married 3 months (Dec) later. But we’d known each other for 4 years before we started dating. If we’d started dating when we first met … Sure I was in college. But I was 17. He is just shy of 5 years older than I am. Technically legal. Technically.

                    5. You’d both at least been 18.

                      But. I was 17. He was 22. I’d have turned 18 before he turned 23. But still … Lets just say, my parents would have been Livid. As it was he had graduated, still only working seasonal, was 26, and I was 21, when we started dating. (He wasn’t quite the reason I changed districts. A mutual friend had been lobbying/pushing me to make the move the season before.) I was 22 before we got married. Although not sure if my parents were upset on the speed of our relationship or the fact I was “setting the example” for my, 20 and 16 year old sisters. FWIW. By the time the youngest was in a relationship and mom “complained” about my example, my response was “She’s Over 21. Drop. It.” (26 FYI).

                    7. Wing: ”Have you ever heard the phrase, Living well is the best revenge?”

                      Miles: “Where I come from, someone’s head in a bag is generally considered the best revenge.”

                    8. I first met my wife when I was 18 and she was 14, we were both involved in CYO. We met again when I was 23 and she 19, we were engaged within 7 months. We didn’t marry right away so she could finish college. First child within a year of the marriage. 32 years it’s been now and we’re still here despite the bloody lockdown. I spent the first 20 years of the marriage mostly on the road and dragging the family from country to country. You do what you have to do.

              2. “But the times they got hard
                And tobacco wasn’t sellin’
                And old Grandad knew what he’d do to survive.
                Went and dug for Harlan coal
                And sent the money back to Granny
                And he never left Harlan alive….”

      2. I agree about the broken homes, I’m at the point where I simply ask, “how old were you when daddy left?”

        1. I understand that intact homes are artifacts of White Culture and we are wrong to criticize feral African-American boys, feral Latinx boys, and feral Samoan boys because raaaaacism.
          ~

          1. That too, but I’m thinking about the feral rich kids who fill the offices of The NY Times, DC law firms, and the like. An awful lot of the whining, victim BS is just cries for attention. think of it all as “I hate you daddy” and it all makes sense. Were they not in a position to hurt me, I’d pity them more than hate them.

      1. It makes a difference when your culture requires husbands to love their own wives, and to honor them.

      2. At one point I had to use the line:
        “Yeah, my great grandmother was so oppressed that when she decided that her baby boy would not be going to the coal mines, she sent two of the older boys to the US and moved the entire family over. Because She Said So.”

        They hassled her– one of the few photos we have is of her scowling at the camera, with her hand under her apron, because her son was an early photo geek and *almost* got a picture of her smoking. She couldn’t just walk off, because it woudl’ve ruined the photo, but she hid the pipe. 😀

    3. I was in college back in the seventies and feminism was a thing, but I remember being somewhat confused/bemused/whatever by all the complaints about female oppression by males in the family.

      –
      #metoo

      I had no clue I was oppressed. I don’t remember dad insisting we do anything. That was mom, and both grandmothers.

      When I got to college first time, well really first seasonal job, “Women can’t handle the woods!” Wait? What? Since when? Not like I chose the logging side. Don’t know about other women, but I at least recognized that limitation (or lack of enthusiasm) for actual logging.

      Three Girls. We Camped. We Hunted. We Fished. Mom, Grandma, and Aunt, all camped, hunted, and fished. We also were exposed to Eastern Star, and participated in Jobs Daughters.

      Between the 3 of us, we have 4 Bachelors of Science (Engineering and Computers, Biology and Chemistry, Forestry, Computer Science), and 2 masters (Business, Teaching).

      I was raised by a father who is quoted saying “No one tells my daughters what they are capable of. No one tells them what they can do or can’t do.” (Implied, within legal boundaries)

  10. Hum. Born in ’38 & thinking back over my life, most of the folks, women & men, I’ve known and liked throughout my life were/are strong in this context. Often batshit crazy but definitely strong. Some, shucky darn, many over the years did a bit of stupid, self included, of course. However none ever though of themselves as victims.

    Admittedly, as the years go by, there are fewer and fewer people with whom I enjoy intercourse (Yes the word has two meanings.) partly ’cause over time folks die or just move on, partly ’cause many coming along are woke/victims/weak & hence not worth spending any time with.

    None the less, more than enough strong ’round, that I still find life’s great even though the “the mass industrial entertainment complex.” plus, to be redundant, education complex, government, swamp, new media, etc., tends to keep things interesting, as in the , may you live in interesting times, Chinese curse.

  11. Sarah’s story about her “little” boy and that girl reminds me of a similar story that I heard.

    Basically the same idea that a smaller woman boasts of what she could do to a bigger man with a possible addition.

    IIRC She boasted that she could throw him out of the room.

    Well, he just picked her up, basically ignoring her blows against him and carried her out of the room. He returned without her and shut the door behind him. 😈

    1. There is a… small-ish, NOT solid-muscle character.. at work who claims he groin-kicks with fury those (males) who truly attack/annoy him. This is so far unverified. And even if true, he is unaware (despite being informed…) that that will not be a Universal Stopper as with enough rage/adrenaline it just means he’ll be, one day, all the MORE broken by one THOROUGHLY PO-ed dude. (He also has not taken realized that “A diagnosis is NOT a license to asshole.” These two things means that, eventually, he is in for a… what do they call it?… Oh yes… a “Learning Experience.” I hope to be at a Great Distance *when* it happens.)

    2. My brother just put his hand on my forehead and let me swing.

      I think he did that to my Mom once, too, but I’m pretty sure it was as a joke.

      1. I don’t think I ever did that to Mom.

        On the other hand, as an adult, I’d deliberately “look over her head” instead of “looking at her face”. 😆

      2. My brother was built like my sons, whom you’ve met. He was built like that at thirteen.
        My earliest memory was of climbing him to pound his head and bite his ear. The ear biting is when he — very carefully — removed me and set me on the floor.
        And in the next minute took broomstick I was about to take to his knees.
        Okay, no, I had reason. You see, he had painted fangs on my cherished stuffed lamb I slept with. It couldn’t be FIXED and mom thought it was funny and didn’t punish him….
        Later I smashed his prized transistor radio.
        He left my toys alone after that.
        And it taught me: unconventional warfare.

        1. Oooo…

          That’s the problem with ****ing around with people. You never know how much they value something until they retaliate.

        2. Yeah, unconventional warfare works well against brothers. Then again, I take the Ender Wiggins approach to combat.

  12. I’ve known women whose idea of a “strong woman” is one who can shriek like a harpy whenever she is disrespected, and verbally flay her man for everything he has and hasn’t done. Then she turns around all sweetness and light and expects to be forgiven for everything. Then, the next time he commits an offense, she turns witch again and starts throwing fireballs.
    Men do have memories and will only go so many rounds of this before they disconnect and disengage (and that’s if they have the moral strength not to use their fists, or scream right back, every time they are provoked)

    A real strong woman is first of all one who can master herself.

      1. “Yandere” is a new term for me. I’m not into anime. So, after looking it up…the types I’ve met haven’t been quite that unbalanced. Obsessed with “fixing” me, yes, and thinking that angry and irrational verbal abuse would do the trick was for me an old story, not one confined to females. With a girlfriend, the starting point of romantic attraction which would disappear and reappear at unpredictable intervals was what threw me off.

  13. Sorry for the long post.. Just skip it if it’s too long…
    I think that nowadays, the word “subtle ” is often forgotten. How many times have we watched or read about the main character and know their entire back story in the first 20 minutes? This is the “shotgun” approach. Shoot everything out there and we we might grab some interest. Then when the story starts to fall flat, suddenly a long lost spouse, child or relative has to be created to resuscitate the plot and is often never seen again. There is no mystery, everything is laid out in front of you.

    But this is the era of immediate gratification. Whether we buy online and want it delivered tomorrow, or we want the hero to dive into the action straight away. It’s much the same.
    (Just like long posts.. TDLR) 😄
    However, I realise everyone’s taste is different, what appeals to one might not appeal to the other.

    As to strong women. It has so many different meanings.
    If someone asks me about my maternal grandmother, I would describe her as a strong pioneer woman. Diminutive in size, probably just over 5 feet tall. Lived a very basic and frugal life, raised 4 daughters with my grandfather. House was wooden, 2 bedrooms, water pumped via a windmill. Laundry done by hand etc… You get the idea. But she would never describe herself as strong. She just did the normal things that 99% of the women of her era did to keep the family together, fed and healthy. Looking back now, she was strong and tough. Lived to an age of 103. 😀

    2 more examples.. two female friends, both about the same age. (Late 50’s). One, never married, fiercely independent. Works hard, travels to countries I wouldn’t even think of going to. Demure in stature, yet fit, always willing to learn new things and adapts accordingly, loves her family. On my scale, a strong woman.
    The other.. was married for 20 + years and it was an abusive marriage. Her passion is classical music. She is a classically trained teacher. During the marriage, her then husband broke several fingers of her left hand. (Not the the right of course, he still needed her to cook etc). Eventually after the children had grown, she obtained a divorce and changed her life dramatically. Now she is happy, settled and has a positive direction in her life. Except that every time she plays the piano or guitar for a long period, or doesn’t practice repeatedly, her fingers ache.. A reminder of her past life.
    So she is also really small in stature. But very, very strong.

    Therefore strength is relative. Strength can be defined by character. Hollywood’s version of a strong woman is nothing compared to the women above. It’s all tank tops, muscles, guns and sex. But they cater to a different audience than me. I guess I must be showing my age.. 😄

    1. That second asshole, the one that broke the piano player’s fingers, should have been awakened in the middle of the night by a pot of boiling water poured over his head. And maybe a second pot poured…elsewhere.

      There’s a lesson that might soak in.

    2. Both my grandmothers.

      Paternal grandmother raised 4 kids after grandpa died. Oldest two were out of the house with families of their own. Youngest two were 8 and 10. Second oldest was disabled. She’d never worked for wages after they were married. Before she did the traditional small one room school teacher. After she did raise turkeys for egg and meat money, at the various locations they ended up at because grandpa’s job had them moving around (civil engineer). She never learned to drive a vehicle. Mom, dad, and her SIL, tried to teach her to drive after grandpa died … it didn’t go over well.

      I’ve seen the Montana single room cabin my maternal grandparents had when grandpa worked in the mine in ’37. With a 3 year old and an infant. No running water. No well. Her water came from the year round creek down the hill from the cabin, across the road. Heat was the wood cook stove oven. Um. No Thanks! Then there was grandpa medically retiring at age 50.

      My dad was forced to retire at age 50 because of medical reasons.

      Much older SIL husband walked out on her and the kids.

      I’ve mentioned multiple times why we chose to have both of us work. Not the least of which were “I’m not going to be 50 and finding work because we need the insurance.” We also couldn’t count on either income long term, or at least that was the perception with hubby’s job, reality with mine. Our compromise was to treat daycare as structured child play, minimize it as much as possible. School? Didn’t home school but we tutored and supplemented following kid’s interests regardless of where it took us, as well as drag him along on ours … Rocket Garden DW and Kennedy Space Center. Dinosaur National Monument. Yellowstone, Tetons, Yosemite, Rainer, St Helen, National Parks. Scouts. Sports (I don’t and never played sports), Photography.

  14. Requiescat in pace, Rush Limbaugh. First radio talk show I actually listened to all the way through. Intelligent man, learned a lot from him when I was younger. Had some tough times over the years, and he overcame them to the last.

    Back to the mud with you, sir. The earth is the richer, and we the poorer this day. May his family find peace and may all who remember him be blessed. Amen.

    1. Amen. He had a lot more influence than anyone probably can imagine, just by being there, on the airwaves, and showing what could be done.

    2. Last time I heard him was a few days ago, and he was having trouble getting his voice out. Thought flashed through my mind it was close to his time. Dedicated guy chasing his dream of influencing by speech in simple and clear terms. He leaves a hole.

      1. His last show was February 2nd and we could hear… a difference. Many of us cried and made our peace that day because we “knew” he was gone.

        3. Yes. Dittos. If I was listening to radio, 90+ percent of the time, it was to Rush.

          If it’s not too soon to talk about the future of his show, I’d love to hear more Mark Steyn.

          1. Well, we’ve been talking about it for awhile. There are a handful of terrific subs I’d tune into every day if they held Rush’s time spot.

            Mark Steyn, Ken Matthews (PA), Todd Herman (Seattle).

          2. Mark seems to be too possessive of his own freedom to do such a thing. But if you want to hear more Steyn, you can!

            Steynonline.com. He has variety shows you can download. That’s really what they are. And poetry readings, too.

    4. I am sad he’s gone on ahead, but I am not sad he did not stay around to experience firsthand what is just peeking over the horizon ahead.

      Rest In Peace, Rush.

          1. “Lord, with your five talents I have made five more.”
            “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

            1. I’ve imagined the moment Rush opens his eyes in heaven and smiles, stretches, and sits up. “Whoah. Glad I only have to do that once!”

              He’s wandering around heaven today, with Jesus, and all his friends, maybe his Mom and Dad. He can breathe, in no pain, and he’s waiting for Kathryn.

              Well done, indeed.

        2. I heard the show while doing errands in town. When I realized some of the pieces were from 2018, I had a bad feeling. It runs from 9-12 Left Coast time, and I usually catch it when I’m driving. I haven’t been driving that much, so missed his last live shows.

    5. Back when Rush had a TV show, a Lefty was going on about how GREAT it would be to see Phil Donahue wipe the floor with him when he was a scheduled guest. I tuned in… and Phil musta goofed and let Rush have multiple video clip ready. Rush wiped the floor rather well that day.

      1. Watching Dan’s Bake Sale, the award of the Medal of Freedom, and the rally when POTUS Trump had Rush open for him (it was Rush’s hometown) will be watched in the coming days. What fun, what joy, what love.

    8. I was driving and pulled over to bawl while I listened to his wife make the announcement.

      I feel like my Dad died a second time. I adored Rush.

    9. The reason for Rush’s success, I think, wasn’t just his intelligence but his mastery of the medium. Whenever the left tried to come up with a “Rush” for their side, they’d inevitably choose some political pontificator. But Rush got his start in radio and was making entertaining radio shows long before he got into politics. And anyone who listened to his show couldn’t help admitting that it was entertaining–no matter how far left you were, you couldn’t help giggling at the Jesse Jackson parody of “You’re Havin’ My Baby.”

      Why, yes, I do think there’s a lesson in that, and no, I don’t think the people here are so dumb I need to spell it out.

      RIP, Mr. Limbaugh.

      1. You knew Rush was always hitting the target because of the left’s nonstop efforts to silence him.

        1. It is said that you can judge a person based on “who is the person’s enemies”.

          IMO That definitely applied to Rush (and Trump). 😉

      2. Also, back in the late eighties when he just started to get big was before the internet age. Before then we had the media monoliths. Rush was *unique* in all of media at the time. Before, there may have been a few of us that knew of each other. After, though.

        He did it with style, too. That’s something everyone has been trying to copy ever since. Glenn Beck “the fusion of entertainment and enlightenment” (dunno if he still does that, I don’t listen to him much these days) is a definite call back to that. Breitbar’s happy warrior took much from that, I’d wager. Matt Drudge, before he went wacko, back in the Clinton years probably listened to Rush, too.

        Rush affected those of us who believe in liberty and limited government more and in a bigger way than anyone one else in that entire thirty odd year time period. He will be greatly missed.

        1. He does.

          I find his co-hosts mildly annoying, so don’t deliberately tune in, but it’s a common program on soem of the stations I do listen to.

  15. Many of us were raised on stories as much as by our parents and peers. At least those of us who tend to interact here. The destruction and trashing of Heinlein and others is worse than the flooding of the zone with current trash. I’m willing to bet that, as kids, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk read Heinlein. Thank God for that.

    1. I don’t know who’s slamming the giants of science fiction, but if they do it in front of me they’re going to get knocked down.

      Trashing HEINLEIN? FFS, are you kidding me?

      No.

          1. They are also going after Shakespeare. It’s pretty clear that their target is Western Civilization itself.,

              1. The lack of familiarity with the Western Canon of literature (Bible, Shakespeare, Greek myths, etc.) drains much of the potential enjoyment out of authors and readers. My wife and I have been appalled at the lack of recognition in the eyes of theoretically well -read younger people to famous biblical phrases and allusions. I have a poem called “Polyphemus Views the End of the World over Dinner”. I fear it would have to be profusely footnoted to be understood by any recent college grad.

                Likewise, if you haven’t read “The Man who Sold the Moon,” how can you understand Elon Musk?

  16. Not only do I find the current idea of “Hey, to write a strong woman, we have to write her like a man” to be patronizing, but they’ve added a tendency to down-write the male characters. As far as I can tell, the trend of down-writing men started in some 70s sitcoms, then overran children’s shows and commercials. Now it’s everywhere. Stories that don’t do this are like a breath of fresh air among caterwauling Mary Sues.

    Making then men buffoons and losers, and the butt of jokes is cute when it’s the exception to the norm. When it’s the rule, men check out.

    I always strong women who solve problems, overcome obstacles, and generally handle the world like women generally do, rather than as men with boobs and an innie. Women bring a completely different, and often far more interesting toolkit to stories than men, and having that juxtaposed against men tends to enrich a story. It’s also fun to play around with and invert from time to time.

    And having trained and trained with women who were far above average in the Marines, I tend to get immediately turned off by any story that features some waif beating down trained gorillas (or just some guy) with ease…or difficulty. If she’s got superpowers, or some other type of enhancement, then great. But if she’s just got her expository black belt in waif fu, I’m usually out.

    1. If you write a strong woman character– there needs be strong male characters around her. At least that is what I think. I agree that the down-writing a male to make the female “strong” is incredibly destructive.

      1. Target Rich Environment 2 had a memorable female protagonist where she was the one who embodied the best of her warrior culture, but her brother who inherited did not. He was said to be the greatest warrior of his age (even though he stooped to assassination to kill his father and try to eliminate her), yet she beat him not with direct strength against strength, but with misdirection and control of her weaknesses. I know that’s a vast simplification of the story; but it’s the latest instance of a strong woman in a society founded on strength. And I’m not so sure they were even human; which means human sexual dimorphism gets tossed out of the equation.

    2. Exactly! The only thing that cutting down men in the name of boosting women accomplishes is to cut down women, as well. Just as turning villains into whiny mess of patheticness cripples the heroes.

    3. I think that’s one reason “Castle,” was popular. The characters were complementary. Then the original writers left and the last year was a train wreck.

  17. I absolutely despise publishing’s view of “Strong Female Character” as an emotionally abusive, insecure neurotic female… and I realize, NYC publishing (and Hollywood, for that matter) is rotten to the brim with emotionally insecure neurotic females whose idea of fighting comes from being in the circles around the Queen Bee in middle school, so it’s all emotionally abusive snark. They’re completely alien to the idea of competence or spiritual and emotional strength and wisdom.

    Then again, Hollywood and NYC publishing also currently map “genius” traits to what those of us who know the truly brilliant recognize not as hallmarks of genius, but hallmarks of Badly Socialized Asshole.

    And… oh, my, where did this soapbox come from? Excuse me, I’ll get down now.

          2. Oh, the times I’ve wanted that. Sometimes for smokers so smoky that other smokers complained (And this a guy buying multiple packs Marlboro reds/full flavor 100s!). Sometimes for the furs who did not understand that ‘funk’ DOES exist (if a furry reeks of disinfectant, be GRATEFUL. It CAN BE WORSE – guess how I know).

    2. Great soapbox though 🙂 And I think the bit about never moving on from junior high social stuff is definitely interesting.

      1. It’s mean girls all the way down. I thank God that I went to boy’s schools and avoided most of that. My wife, sisters, and daughter went to girl’s schools and their stories are fascinating, though youngest sister is a wannabe mean girl herself.

    3. I see two Hollywood ‘genius’ tropes:

      First is the person who is asocial and possibly clumsy but hallucinates the hidden patterns floating in the air, see the Cumberbatch Sherlock. Thus genius1 is being on the spectrum.

      Second is the uberintelligent heroic hero who shows their uberintelligence by being able to recite the current catechism items of the marxian cult from memory on demand, never offending and always standing up to rich corporate baddies on behalf of The Victimized Victims, of which there are oh so very many. These are written as the marysue of the whitebread writers room with a convenient non-whitebread ethnicity, but with no actual personality, as any personality trait might offend a designated victim group. Genius2 is thus the eidetic blank slate parrot.

      1. Re genius1, to be clear – on the spectrum here used as such is viewed by Hollywood people who have never interacted with any people actually on the spectrum.

        1. Beg to differ. They have. Usually guys called cinematographer, animator, compositor, vfx supervisor, etc.

          1. I bow to direct experience – but the writers room has interaction with the actual working trades via other than issuing scripts through the slot in the door?

            1. Writers Rooms dont exist anymore largely… except maybe on sitcoms… and a lot of the writers went to school with people who went into other specialties.

              1. For all Dave Gerrold’s faults (see: Sad Puppies) he did get ONE thing right: Movie/TV scriptwriters know only *one* thing: scriptwriting. This is why the pop genre of next year will suck like the pop genre of this year sucks like the pop genre of last year. It’s all just the same damn thing with the gobbledygook swapped out. Why, no, I do NOT miss TV. Philo T. Farnsworth weeps…

                1. Expect an avalanche of “white supremacist militia,” stories where the “most sympathetic” portrayal will be, “ignorant and dull tools of would be dictators.” The “good,” ones will be the ones who have second thoughts after interacting with the hero/ine and inform on their (former) friends.

      2. Oh lordy, I hate the intelligent characters as written by people of moderate intelligence. No, that’s not how intelligence works. (Though the Cumberbatch Sherlock was better than most, with the “patterns in the air” being a visual shorthand for what was going on in his head.) Someone who is intelligent may have it manifest in a number of ways, and most of them are really subtle. For instance, the time I told my mom about a clique at my elementary school, called The [Primary Girl] Group, and my mom, who had seen them for maybe ten minutes at most, said, “Ah, but [Secondary Girl] is really the one in charge.” And she was right, though it took me years to figure out why that was and how she’d spotted it. Intelligent people can come to accurate conclusions with far less data than those of moderate intelligence. (Of course, they can also jump to highly inaccurate conclusions as well, which is why intelligence is no bar to being scammed, and can even be desirable from the scammers’ viewpoint.)

        1. Intelligence is a hard one to show just right. Least it is for me. I’m currently working on fleshing out the Big Bad on one storyline and there is so much more *depth* that that character needs, getting it all plotted out is going to take as long as the rest of the freaking story at this point. But if it works out it will be fun, so…

          I swear I’m going to do a WH40K and put space orcs in or something next time. Space orcs don’t seem like so much *work.*

          1. I’m sure you know plenty of intelligent people *gestures around blog*. You can always ask for screening volunteers to look over your work and see if anything strikes them as outright wrong about the characterization. In general, though, I’d just say “think out the chain of logic properly, then have the character get to that conclusion with only half or a quarter of the steps.”

            1. Have the character make horizontal connections where others go strictly linear step by step, and as noted above have them make compressive jumps ahead in the chain of reasoning (if this then this then this so it must be this as one step).

              Then have other tell the character they “think too fast” and getting to the solution so quickly “makes others uncomfortable” so they should go slower and make sure they are not “leaving others behind”.

              Why yes, I have considered the career path of supervillain, but the retirement benefits appear to suck.

              1. *grin* Good points, and I will keep them in mind. Big Bad didn’t get a choice to become a supervillain, he was created to be one. His job is to hunt down others of his kind and eat them, and he is very, very good at his job. Bit of an internal conflict in that he is a rational creature and does not particularly *want* to be the agent of genocide, but at the same time has a sort of workmanlike pride in the actions that lead up to the actual killing and eating.

                His growing self-loathing is stymied by an inability to self-terminate, thus his habit of giving advice to his victims about what they did wrong. Impatience for fools and foolish sophonts in general along with his personal power mean that killing others not of his own kind who *are* stupid (or seem so, to him- which, predictably, could be a lot of people) has little effect on his psyche.

                When not on a job, he sleeps. His only view of the universe when he is awake and hunting, leaving little apparent time to appreciate anything unrelated to the task, but this is deliberately misleading (on the author’s part).

                Big Bad is fun to write, and has a few scenes I really like. He’s not going to show up in the story for a while yet, though. Got a lot to get through before Enter the Badass, and a lot of character development and plot needs to happen before the heroes can really shine- and, incidentally, stay alive while Big Bad is on the prowl.

                Presenting him right is a challenge, but a good one, I think. I know my writing chops aren’t enough to do everything I’d like, so there’s a lot of work yet to do. Just got to keep putting words on the page.

                1. Non-sequiturs help. Skip chains of logic.

                  Indeed, if he wants to spell things out, make it difficult for him. Things he simply takes for granted have to be worked out and explained. (Why classmates can sometimes help each other when the teacher can’t.)

                  1. if he wants to spell things out, make it difficult for him

                    THIS THIS THIS

                    Translating to normie is hard. You basically can’t use any of the language that makes the task easier. And every single irrelevant detail has to be spelled out like you are teaching a particularly retarded fetal alcohol baby.

                    “You don’t understand something if you can’t explain it” is true, but also ignores a lot of important detail.

            2. Once there is enough substance to merit a look, I would be glad to have people see for themselves. Right now the story has only begun, and we’re at the little villains and mooks stage, along with some environment as challenge and a teensy bit of mystery/suspense.

              I just like a good bit of complexity and depth to my good villains and want them to get the attention they need to shine. A well done villain can force the hero characters to grow, adapt, and get better. And put the smack down on the ones that get too big for their britches. *grin*

      2. Think there’s a different word, one letter later. A bitch can be interesting, especially if broken into, so to speak. These folks not so much. Its pain for sake of pain.

  18. Wow. I knew the end for Limbaugh was coming, but I was hoping it would be later.
    At least he lived long enough to see Nancy deprived of conviction of Trump, twice.

    1. He went into hospice around February 4th, so I’m glad the end didn’t take too long. It can be ugly.

  19. Hmmm, do you think there’s anyone out there trying to dispel the original thought of man and woman being the complement of each other?

    1. I guarantee it. Feminists have been trying to force that idea for over fifty years. The Communist Manifesto advocated separating parents from their children.

      The demise of black families came from the 1960s on was a result of Affirmative Action and related Democrat policies, I’d argue. Just after slavery was outlawed, blacks had a marriage rate slightly higher than whites, and that continued through Jim Crow.

      Gay marriage advocates early on advocate the demise of the nuclear family, if I recall correctly (can’t find the citation right off, so take that with a grain of salt).

      And when you view marriage as a Christian or more broadly, religious vow… That war has been going on for a good long time.

      The conceit of viewing women as no different than men (except better in every conceivable way) denigrates both feminine virtues and masculine ones. Why do you think we have both toxic masculinity and strong womyns that do every single thing they hate about toxic masculinity?

      The goal is entropic and nothing less, from what I can see.

      1. If women are free to be anything they want to be, then why is it a bad thing if they choose to be a stay-at-home wife and loving mom to 7 kids?

        1. I can sort of see a paranormal story…

          “I have to contain and constrain no less than SEVEN demons.”

          “Seven kids.”

          “No, I do NOT want to trade.”

          “Damnit. Er…”

        2. My mom had seven kids. I remember we went on a cruise and one lady (who had clearly had a little too much to drink) solemnly told her “You seem so normal”. We laugh about it to this day.

          1. DarwinCatholic has a couple of similar stories about work-friends when they find out he’s a practicing Catholic, the kind that has more than three kids.

            I lost track of how many folks pulled me aside, congratulated me on The Baron (Baby 3, girl girl boy), and gravely stated that I had one of each so I was done, now.
            … usually in front of daughter #2.
            Who definitely heard.

            ….I may have gotten a little vicious in a couple of responses once I figured out that she thought we didn’t WANT her, especially since she looks like husband’s mother, rather than like him or me.

            1. My sister and her husband after 5 pregnancies, 3 live births, 4 girls; first of the 4 was adopted. “We can’t figure out how this is happening. We keep being told she can’t get pregnant!” True story … so are the 5 miracle pregnancies. All wanted. Not expected. Fully embraced.

              (Sigh. Miracles use on sis. I wasn’t this lucky.)

            2. I had one of each, and someone had the bright idea of telling me “You have one of each; you can stop now!”

              I’d always planned on having three, but as I said during my one-and-only standup comedy routine (while 8.5 months pregnant) “This baby is not a girl or a boy baby; this baby is made of SPITE!”

              (And a real sweetie, too.)

            3. It is things like this that make you wish for socially acceptable ways of beating the offender within a millimeter of their questionably valued lives.

            4. I have, courtesy of me lovely wife, three children. The first two are twins (not “Irish” twins, real live Irish twins. A boy and a girl. We were on our way to visit me folks for the Thanksgiving holiday, having a bite in a Target food court, when an sweet ould lady said, (after some chatting about babies) “Its so nice you have one of each, you can be done.” (paraphrased). My response was: I’m Irish. I’m ctractually obligated to have more children.

              I don’t think she knew what to make of that.

                1. Not as fun tho as the responses I wanted to say when people at the store would come up and say, “Oh my god, twins! Adorable! Are they identical?!”

                  Blue or other such on one, minimum of pink bow on the other.

                  Yes….. they’re identical ….. in a voice as dry as Arabia..

              2. I’m assuming you actually said “contractually obligated” not “ctractually obligated”. 😉

                Oh, I wonder about the look on the woman’s face. 😆

                2. And as soon as I was done with boring reply, my mind gave me the better one of:

                  I may have said ctracrually. I don’t remember. I’m not permamently three plus sheets to the wind, but I have at least a jib or tops’l out at all times.

        3. Feminists have all the sympathy in the world for Hillary Clinton who didn’t get to be president and no sympathy for women like me who didn’t get to marry and have children. I despise feminists.

      2. Shoot, Plato wanted the children of his Guardians to be communally raised if I remember rignt.

        1. I don’t actually remember much about Plato’s Republic, but I remember two things.

          No child was raised by his/her own parents (IIRC he wanted to eliminate parent/child links).

          No storytellers were allowed (IE People learned only what the “Masters” wanted them to learn).

          1. When I see people argue for eliminating the parent child relationship, I am reminded that that is how God sees us and wants us to see him. Ultimately, people who abuse any of God’s children will someday face a reckoning for their actions.

          2. At first he decided you could tell approved stories — ones that didn’t claim that the gods did evil things, for instance — but then he decided to purge them all as shoddy imitations of real life.

    2. Paraphrasing Our Gracious Hostess, if there is no difference between the genders, why would anyone care who was which?

      1. the leftoids are eating their own there. See the ‘love’ for the “New” world record for women’s weight lifting a guy just set, and the controversy over a woman cyclist who refused to link arms with the guy in drag who beat her. I think it was Bill Whittle who pointed out once that FLoJo’s world record time in one of the sprints was surpassed by every boy running in the NY State finals.

      2. Exactly. Which is why the stupid transgender push is batshit insane. “There is no difference between the genders.” “Switching genders is the most important thing evah.” They are not consistent thinkers. In fact, judging from the evidence, I’d say they go out of their way to be inconsistent. So maybe it comes down to that old saw about the point being to degrade your sense of right and wrong…

        1. Take a young boy on the spectrum. Now run him through a society where girls have privilege over boys. Put him in multiple situations where a girl causes him to get in trouble because of her harassment, and he’s then considered a sexual abuser. She comes out smelling like a rose, he barely escapes being expelled. Then stick him in a school system that pushes gay and transgender rights, and does little to establish heterosexual normals. Then put him in a college situation away from home and filled with people pushing the gay and transgender issues even more; to the point were he can’t be accepted socially without proclaiming himself transgendered.

          1. This really fits the facts, especially for the boys. The flow seems a bit difference for the girls where it’s more of a social contagion in which a social group all “transition” together.

            1. It must be so confusing for young ladies these days – GRRRL!!! power and you must not “just” have kids and must have a career and look at the ninja waif pixies beating up 200lb men so you can too even with no training because of your magical plumbing, but, some ideas or even just words are SO POWERFUL that are supposed to cause you to be LITERALLY SHAKING and need to retire to the fainting couches installed in the females-only safe spaces…

              1. Yes. I have a theory that there’s a connection between an era’s popular plots/themes/tropes and what people are missing in their lives. Right now women are being told all that bullshit you just described and yet they can see that that’s not how it works. So the stories about feisty all-powerful women is an attempt to fill the hole inside them. Of course it’s fairy food and doesn’t help much… but fairy food easily becomes an addiction.

                1. I’ve seen some Female critics hating the idea “Bonded Mates” in some so-called Science Fiction/Fantasy.

                  The Males are often extremely strong near-humans who can’t live without these “strong-willed independent women”.

                  In most cases, the Males want the Females to accept the Bond even after they’ve kidnapped the Women. There are a few where the story is close (or is) Master-Slave Sexual Fantasy.

                  For all the “hatred” those Females have for this sort of fiction, the books are often written by Women (apparently) and are definitely read by Women.

                  I’ve thought the fans of this sort of fiction are women who actually want Strong Male Lovers but are afraid of committing to real Strong Male Lovers because “the man might leave them”.

                  In these stories, because of the “Bond” these fictional Males won’t leave their Chosen Mates because They Need The Chosen Mates.

                  So I suspect these stories are Wish-Fulfillment for the Female Readers. IE Strong Males who want them and will never desert them.

                  1. *nods* That is the appeal, yes.

                    That you’re not going to be abandoned.

                    Especially these days? And with the pill mimicking early pregnancy, which sometimes has the symptom of extreme anxiety? That’s going to appeal to a lot of women.

                  2. Absolutely. I often use the romance genre as proof that women don’t really want beta male soy boys like the progressives tell women they do. “Just look at what the fantasies look like”. It’s probably also another indication of the over-feminization of our society, where there aren’t enough masculine men.

                2. Of course it’s fairy food and doesn’t help much… but fairy food easily becomes an addiction.

                  Not my fault… I’m just a leprechaun on a multi-year bender. If you want to complain , talk to whomever was in charge of making Tir na nÓg… I don’t even think the Dagda was responsible for that…

          2. So is double-transgendered a thing? All the way around the block, so to speak, on the order of Rush’s male lesbian?

          3. The other way around goes 1) be told that males will always get better treatment than females, because patriarchy 2) be told a bunch of female identity ideology about the cause of women, and having to go into high career performance etc., or you are letting the cause down. 3) Most people are not driven and able enough that they perform on the levels of the highest. If you’ve fallen for the trap of the feminist ego boost, you will find yourself frustrated later when it comes to perform. 4) Manages to come across as an escape route from that.

        2. It is. If they can be inconsistent they have a tactical advantage over you, because you waste time and energy trying to get them to be logical and consistent while they keep on doing whatever they want. It drives you insane. Deliberately.

    3. From the vampire-exposed-to-holy-water screams when my husband and I demonstrate it, often accidentally?

      A lot of folks have their entire world and self view built around being interchangeable.

      Inability is disability is weakness is death.

  20. RE ninjapixiegrrrl ReyMarySuePalpatine characters: An adult woman character who has to be smart because she knows she will never be physically stronger enough to get out of jams that way is a much more interesting prospective read than the further adventures of supergrrl.

    1. I believe that was the appeal of Modesty Blaise (well, part of the appeal). A strong woman by anyone’s definition, who knew that if she got into a straight-up fight with a man, she would lose. So she used every trick in the book (and several that weren’t in the book until she used them) to gain the unfair advantage she needed to win a fight against the male, stronger-than-her criminals she was fighting against.

  21. > Because neither Hollywood nor traditional publishing have any idea what to do with real strong people, men or women.
    —
    They don’t want or like “strong people.” They’re functionaries of the System; their status, their progress, their career, are all tied in with it. Progress and promotion aren’t keyed to work or ability, they’re semi-random events keyed to Narrative or toadying.

    They’re not living in the same world you are, and they view people like you as, at *best*, vaguely threatening. Otherwise, something that must be actively opposed.

  22. “There is a strength that transcends the physical.”

    Waves hand mystically
    “These are not the kinds of strength that you are looking for.”

    These are not the kinds of strength they’re interested in depicting. These are not the kinds of strength they’re interested in seeing.
    ~

    1. Those are the kinds of strength that prevent them from using and abusing young women, young men, and children on the casting couch and in the back of the sets. The kinds of strength that reveal them for the weak, cowardly, vicious, petty, small souls that they are.

      The kinds of strength that turn the light of Truth on the vermin, and cause them to scatter… or to want to rear up and attack it, to hide the knowledge of what they are not only from the world, but from themselves. Because there is a strain of venal coward out there who sees better, stronger, and wiser people than they are… and takes it as a challenge to drag to them down to the ambient level of filth and vice and weakness, instead of rising to imitate the better human.

      1. I remember someone bringing up the same point with regard to Gina Carano – the reason a lot of the Hollywood types despise her is because she doesn’t look like the kind of woman who would tolerate their wandering hands.

        1. Heh – yeah, any of the Hollywood creeps that tried the casting couch moves on her would need either a cast or a body bag.

          Creep males used to terrifying women being terrified of a specific woman would explain much.

  23. Thanks for saying all of this, Sarah, especially the section toward the end about what makes women’s strength different from men’s.

    I often say that women are iron and men are steel.

    For a sword you want steel, because it stays sharper in a fight and won’t bend. A good steel sword can take many shocks, and much of the damage done in battle can be whetted away during a rest — unless the shocks are too much for it, at which point it shatters completely and is useless.

    Meanwhile, though not good for swords, iron continually endures punishing conditions that steel couldn’t tolerate for ten minutes. Surviving brutal conditions with only slight deformations, iron has the strength to hold together what neither steel nor inferior metals could handle.

    The metal / mettle of each sex is crucial to civilization’s survival and the good of the world.

  24. re: amazing sex == twu wuvz

    [Disclaimer: I know nothing of what I am talking about. I’m just fumbling the pieces together from watching other people talk]

    I strongly suspect that by far the most underappreciated aspect of a relationship is the everyday, non-sexual intimacies. Sex is really obvious, especially to the participants. Putting an arm around someone while watching a movie… not so obvious in its importance. Or a fleeting touch when the couple pass each other while doing housework.

    But all of those unseen events happen thousands of times a month in a healthy relationship and become part of the tapestry of life. Even the most out of control sex drive can’t ratchet up a count that high.

    2. One of the most memorable bits of the TV show M*A*S*H was the BJ character, having gotten a(n unexpected…) ‘forgiving’ letter from his wife.. saying that the *KEY* thing was NOT “being in bed with” but simply “being with.”

    3. You will, unless your relationship is *very* short, spend much, much more time together buying groceries than making love. You will sit side by side in the car or on the couch a greater number of times, and for longer duration than all the kisses. You will talk, laugh, and commiserate together for much more total time than you touch each other.

      A relationship is always about more than sex, if it is worth having at all in my opinion. Trust. Understanding. Shared goals. Fidelity. These things are absolutely necessary, too. Living a life together means a lot more than what happens in the bedroom. As time goes on, the best ones deepen that love. You get to know more about each other.

      Now the one who knows you best can absolutely irritate the living crap out of you sometimes, too. It ain’t all skittles and beer. There *will* be challenges, and you’ll doubt yourself and your partner at times. But if you are lucky, they are your best friend as well (whom you sleep in bed with every night).

      1. Now the one who knows you best can absolutely irritate the living crap out of you sometimes, too.

        If they are worth marrying they will eventually point out that thing you know you should be doing but aren’t or vice versa. Mirrors suck the more they are necessary.

        skittles and beer

        That sounds like a terrible combination of alleged foods.

        2. “That sounds like a terrible combination of alleged foods.”

          Well, there was a Zima/Skittles candies thing going around back when I lived in the city some twenty odd years ago. And yes, it was nasty as you might think. RCPete has the right of it, though.

    4. I have noted (not here, IIRC, at least ’til now) that I have known couples who have been, uh, doing the horizontal mamba for years, but have never been *intimate*. Not usually a good prospect for happiness.

      1. My husband’s grandfather’s advice:
        Marry your best friend.

        And we are friends, were before we started dating– we can spend a 9 hour drive with a broken radio and be happy at the end of it, for heaven’s sake!

        …take a wild guess what I think of the attempts to destroy all friendships and turn them into nothing but sex or power plays.

  25. Somewhat off-topic…

    What *is* an “old soul”?

    I’ve heard people described that way for a long time and can glark the meaning. But my understanding of the term is wobbly enough to not lean on.

      1. That is nothing like I’ve seen it used.

        And part of why I asked here is because it was used here recently. (and the first time I’ve ever seen it in any way connected to reincarnation)

          1. When I’ve heard the term it has been closer to what Orvan said. Roughly “someone who isn’t going with the flow and has a few extra points in WIS”.

            Also with the not so subtle implication that an old soul would be a good choice for a wife.

            1. In my experience, homeschooled kids are like that. Almost every homeschooled kid I’ve met has exhibited much greater maturity than the average public-schooled kid of similar age I’ve met. So while Sarah’s right that the term comes out of New Agey reincarnation silliness, when people use it in the sense of “a few extra points in WIS” the people they’re talking about are often people who were homeschooled.

              Now, I want to clarify a few points that are easy to misunderstand. I am NOT saying that everyone should homeschool their kids. Some parents just can’t do it, logistically, or don’t have the temperament for it. Nor am I saying that all homeschooled kids turn out well. I said “almost” every homeschooled kid for a reason. But by and large, homeschooled kids turn out well for, I think, two reasons. One is that they tend to get a real education, instead of being forcefed whatever politically-correct pap is in vogue this year. And the other is that homeschooling is hard work, and therefore lazy parents don’t do it. (This does NOT mean that all parents who don’t homeschool are lazy. The logical opposite of “No A are B” is “All B are non-A”, not “All non-B are A”.) So when you meet a homeschooled kid, they’re quite likely to have gotten the benefit of parents who pay attention to their development, because lazy parents don’t homeschool. Oh, and it turns out there are three reasons. The third is socialization. Yes, the very thing people usually trot out as the first argument against homeschooling is actually an argument for homeschooling. Because kids who go through conventional schooling end up spending almost all their time socializing with peers of the same age, or their parents. They get very little time socializing with adults who are not authority figures over them, or with kids of more than 2-3 years’ age difference. Homeschooled kids socialize with a much wider variety of ages, and so they end up with a much broader ability to function in social situations. (Assuming, of course, that their parents have been paying attention to their social development and created those opportunities; as I said above, homeschooling is hard work).

              Not every homeschooled kid turns out well, of course. Some parents who choose to homeschool aren’t really suited for the task and don’t do a great job of it. But most do. And so if you’re looking to meet someone who could be described (rather inaccurately, as it happens) as an “old soul”, your best bet is to look for people who were homeschooled when they were kids.

              1. The third is socialization. Yes, the very thing people usually trot out as the first argument against homeschooling is actually an argument for homeschooling.

                What the school system sells as “socialization” isn’t. Rather like the “teaching” the sell…

                They get very little time socializing with adults who are not authority figures over them

                From what I can tell when homeschooled-socialization goes wrong it is through this; someone gets the warped idea that all adults are authorities over all children, and it goes about as well as one would expect.

                1. Yeah, that’s only true in emergencies. If I see someone else’s kid about to do something massively dangerous, I’m going to yell at them to quit that, and act like I have the authority to do so. (Unless their parents are already doing so, in which case my yelling would be redundant). But to order someone else’s kid to be quiet so I can read my book in peace? No. I don’t have the authority to do that, and it would be an abuse of (nonexistent) authority if I did.

                  1. Yeah, that’s only true in emergencies. If I see someone else’s kid about to do something massively dangerous, I’m going to yell at them to quit that, and act like I have the authority to do so.

                    —
                    Yes. I know I was never known to yell at other people’s kids to not climb on chain link fences. Only to have a parent state “I said they could.” Only to have me state “You willing to have your kid be blind or slice open a hand? The coach is blind in one eye from climbing on chain link fence as a child.” Age 4. Left eye. Sliced hand was my BIL’s nephew (his sister was not happy when I pointed out it could have been worse). Very few parents continued to let their kids play on the fence afterwards. Keeping my mouth shut when other, not my child (my child goes without saying), endangered themselves or others, is not in my DNA (or growing up experience … learned at least one thing from mom, and grandmothers). These days I might be a bit more snarky and talk in general to the air, rather than address a strange child. But the effect is the same.

                    1. The first time I yelled at someone else’s kid about something, I was about 25 and had no kids of my own. (I was still single; didn’t meet my wife until I was in my 30’s). It actually surprised me, since I wasn’t yet secure in my own adulthood at the time, to hear myself telling them off from a position of absolute authority. (I’d been swimming laps in the pool, and they jumped into the pool cannonball-style without checking the pool first, and came very close to hitting me. Thing is, it wasn’t “they could have hurt me” that made me angry, it was “they could have hurt someone“. My yelling started off with “That was very dangerous, what you did!” and went on to tell them to always look in the pool when you jump, and never jump that close to someone, because if you land on them just wrong you could break their neck.)

                      That day I learned something about myself. I’d never thought of myself as much of a leader up to that point. But that day I discovered that I do have the ability to give orders authoritatively when I feel justified in doing do. And now that I’m a father, I get lots of practice at that. 🙂

                2. Public school “socialization” is more “how to be the target of bully’s physical attacks or primitive psychological warfare tactics, but since you’re young too it has a great effect” or something like that.

              2. Not every homeschooled kid turns out well, of course. Some parents who choose to homeschool aren’t really suited for the task and don’t do a great job of it.

                –
                Which kind of skewed our home school “Oh, heck no.” opposition. Until 2020, the very limited number of home school taught kids, and parents, that we have known, probably shouldn’t have been.

                Home schooling options have increased dramatically since then. Now? It might have been an option for us and our one child. Even my sister, a teacher, wouldn’t disagree. It isn’t the classroom or teachers I disagree with. It is my child being held back by the slowest or (okay, and) most disruptive children in the class. I do not care why. The child I am responsible for is my business. Not other children (baring abuse, which, after reporting, is someone else business, not mine).
                ———–
                Grant me the wisdom to know what I can do, what I can not do, and the ability to tell them apart.

                1. It tends not to do that slow OR disruptive kid any good either. Ask me how I know.

                  Good teachers with good support (lots of parent volunteers, lots of prayer, capable administration, a good curricula with plenty of full working days with no students to keep it organised and on target) can handle 15 – 20 kids with some serious special needs mixed in, and do so well.

                  The mediocre ones give the trade a bad name, but good teachers are above pearls.

              3. And do not forget: You can hire out teachers for your child (call it public school or private) and still be their primary teacher. It is a mindset thing.

                Volunteering in the classroom. Taking 15x longer to get any chore done because you do it with them. Telling stories at dinner and during games, and helping them learn how. Everything you know how to do you can apprentice them to learn from you, or team up with them to learn together and hire what you do not. Just don’t be surprised when they leave you in the dust on the latter! It’s pretty cool.

                The hardest part may be fear of failure. It may be begrudging any time to just kick back and read (or play on blogs, or game). Or maybe the emotional wear and tear, and being able to really put someone else’s emotional needs first (so that you tend your own precisely so you can give to theirs). Or dealing with certain subjects that take math, or coordination. Or maybe… You get the idea.

                It is much easier if you have the Spirit of Love & Truth to turn to, not to mention a source for forgiveness.. But even if not, God is shockingly gracious and open-handed even to those who do not want him. You probably already have what you need to pull this off already, even if raggedy.

                At the end of the day, putting money into the relationship bank with your kids is the best investment you will ever make.

                1. Taking 15x longer to get any chore done because you do it with them. Telling stories at dinner and during games, and helping them learn how. Everything you know how to do you can apprentice them to learn from you, or team up with them to learn together and hire what you do not. Just don’t be surprised when they leave you in the dust on the latter! It’s pretty cool.

                  –
                  Redoing the front yard. Picking up leaves. Unloading wood. Loading split wood to take to grandpa and grandmas. This doesn’t count “vacuuming” (with the popcorn pop toy). Dusting (hey he could get the lower stuff easier than I could). Putting in floor wall boards. Starting fires in wood stove (climbed on dad’s back and “blew”).

                  We even got him the PlaySkool Yard Kit with wheel barrow, rake, shovel. He moved dirt. He moved leaves. He directed unloading dirt, loading leaves into yard debris can. He moved split wood. All wearing oversized adult work gloves. I have movies. I have pictures. I have a movie of him help load pickup with grandpa’s split wood. Steps for a 3 year-old:

                  !. Pick up one split wood piece.
                  2. Take to pickup.
                  3. Put on milk crate.
                  4. Climb (*not step) on to milk crate.
                  5. Pick up wood again.
                  6. Put on pickup bumper.
                  7. Climb on bumper *
                  8. Pick up wood again.
                  9. Put in bed of pickup.
                  10. Climb into pickup *
                  11. Pick up wood again.
                  12. Walk over to wood stack.
                  13. Stack wood (not just pile it).
                  14. Repeat steps 4, 7, 10, to climb down, not jump down. This is lay on stomach and ease himself down to next level … without help (someone was monitoring) … but … “I do it!”

                  By the time he was in HS he was splitting our yearly wood supply. Summer break from college, he painted the outside of the house. He’s painted grandma’s house. He split grandma’s wood supply.

            2. In my experience, friends and especially relatives who do not want to be rude yet want to somehow impart various forms of “Oh, Hell No!” regarding specific prospective spousal candidates often are excessively oblique – so instead of DSI2C!* or “Yeah, No, that one might gain adulthood in their 50s”, youts are gifted with advice about seeking an old soul.

              * Or whatever the inverse aphorism – is there something along the lines of “Don’t Let Crazy Stick It Into You” as advice condensed into short form for young ladies?

        2. I think it tends to be used for people who are present as wise or mature beyond their years.

          The reincarnation aspect comes in where you assume that that wisdom and maturity come from having lived several previous lifetimes and (maybe) remembering them.

          Best guess, at any rate.

        3. I suspect the Newagers hijacked it, the way it was used when I was a kid– by my Irish grandmother, who would’ve blown a gasket at such nonsense– meant something like the 13 going on 30 kids.

          I’d guess a massive overlap with both eldest kids who have near siblings, and so-high-functioning-it-takes-abuse-to-stop-function autistics.

          *raises hand, mildly dejected*

          Tend to find us hanging out around the adults from a very young age, and at least trying to listen when told not to talk too much.

          2. >> “I suspect the Newagers hijacked it, the way it was used when I was a kid– by my Irish grandmother, who would’ve blown a gasket at such nonsense– meant something like the 13 going on 30 kids.”

            Random childhood memory: There was an episode of Daria in which the title character’s family is visited by some hippies who used to be friends of her parents. One of them tells Daria – in a solemn voice – that she has a “very old soul.” With her typical deadpan snark she replies “No, it just looks mature for its age.”

            Seems like the appropriate level of dignity to grant that stuff. 😉

    2. You know those “kids” who seem Ancient? Or wise-beyond-years?

      (I exclude myself in this… I am just… kind of nearly in Quadrature with Reality.)

      1. Just to be contrarian, I will quote Dave Barry:
        “You can only be young once. But you can always be immature.”

      2. But were you the kind of curmudgeon who growled impatiently at your peers? Who was an old coot long before you could get away with hitting offenders with your cane?

        It does not *have* to be a compliment 😋

  26. I think these movies are partly to blame for the way too many on the left are useful idiots on the whole MtF in women’s sports issues. Sure, the adults know that a woman going toe to toe with full grown men is an exaggeration… but unless they’re actually involved with women’s sports, they don’t tend to realize just how much of an exaggeration it is. Even I’m shocked when I look at the numbers – there are many female Olympic gold medal winners that wouldn’t even qualify to compete against high school boys.

    1. Yeah. I got into a “discussion” with my son’s girlfriend (27) in which she actually argued against my position that women have almost no chance in a real fight with a man. I was astounded. I can only imagine it’s from the totally falsified presentation of women fighting men in the media.

      1. I forget the names involved because, frankly, I just don’t care, but a few years back wasn’t there an UNDEFEATED UFC champion who met a not especially noteworthy male opponent in the ring and got clobbered? As in, “I never got hit so hard in my life” clobbered?
        ~

    2. MtF in women’s sports issues

      Saw the other day an MtF MMA fighter is now up to two women’s skulls he has cracked.

      Shut up and let your head be bashed in by a guy for feminism! Wait…

  27. The US Woman’s World Cup soccer team that produced that awful, loud woman lost badly to a team of under 16 year old boys. This happens routinely. Women simply lack the power and speed to compete with men.

    1. Recall all the jokes about this or that (male) team losing to a group of Girl Scouts?

      Notice there aren’t any counters of adult women’s teams losing to Boy (or even Cub) Scouts.

      1. (And any smart Bull/Stallion knows DAMN WELL the alpha *ain’t him*. It’s HER. Leave her lead. And let HER deal with the others fighting to lead. Crass? Maybe. Stupid? No.)

        1. Hmmm…. More and more I am convinced that the story of Adam’s sin was not about obedience (or not directly). That was Eve’s issue. Wanting to take the lead, and to have responsibility (which, in a perfect world, is what rulership is) over what was not hers.

          Adam’s failure was about not wanting to carry the responsibility that he had.

          It really is easier, as Orvan pointed out up thread. Though in his comment, I think he was talking about not being a micromanaging dewberry.

          It’s a really good myth. Nobody does know what they’re responsible for, who should lead where, and resentment flourishes, everyone convinced they’re being “made” to do what they should not, or being forestalled in doing what they should. That’s no way to get a culture passed on.

    2. The people ignoring basic biology are the same ones who are claiming that NOT agreeing that 2+2=5 means that one is a racist.

  29. When I was writing Solist At Large one of the things that I kept emphasizing-over and over again-is that any woman without some kind of massive advantage or a lot of plot armor going toe-to-toe with males will probably lose. On average, men are bigger, they are stronger, they can take more abuse in general and probably specific. There’s some statistical information suggesting that they have better reflexes in general as well. Like all general statistics, there’s always an exception to the rule, and my MC also has the advantage of being augmented.

    She’s also been trained to not fight fair, to maximize her advantages, to go for the cheap shots because a long fight doesn’t work in her favor. In, kill, out without pause.

    But, she gets swarmed under at least once. Caught at least twice with time-limits that forced her to go head-on because she had to. And, she gets herself badly beaten up, stabbed, poisoned, and at least once nasty little bomb installed as well in the process.

    And, sex without romance is like…well, sex without foreplay. You can do it, it’s even a bit fun, but it’s not as much fun with foreplay like romance, care, concern…discovering things about your partner. (That, and I write crappy sex scenes-and I’m going to be writing a whole novel series full of them soon!)

    The thing I’ve been discovering is that so many of these creators sound and act terrified. A lot of them know that they didn’t get where they were by talent-either innate or nurtured. They knew how to work the coven politics to get far beyond their Peter Principal place. That if they ever admit that they were wrong for going up against the groupthink…well, apostates are usually the first to be sacrificed by the cult when times are bad and brothers (and sisters), times are going to be bad for a while.

    Eyes open, stay cool, light on the trigger, and heavy on the boot.

        1. Must say I avoid a lot of human-to-human weirdness having most of the characters be robots. Then they can to the right thing, or the smart thing, and it seems like something a robot would do. Because an AI doesn’t care about all that monkey dominance stuff, or mating stuff, or even protecting their body. They can get a new one.

          If I was expecting humans to be selfless and wonderful all the time, that would ridiculous. Humans have to WORK to be good people. So the humans still have their jealousies, pride and history to get over. It gives them something to do. ~:D

          The human women fighting thing, I gave them weapons,endless physical training and an uncanny ability to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I also gave them battle suits, so they can duke it out with whoever is fool enough to try them. Like zombies! Uh oh, zombie vs. Alice in her Mobile Infantry jump armor.

          You know, what I like about writing my own books is that I can put any damn thing I want in there. I can make up things or steal them, and nobody can tell me no. ~:D

  30. “No wonder these people keep becoming cry-bullies, since the highest form of heroism is to play the victim.”

    NOT the victim.
    ~

  31. “It’s still possible, of course for women to beat up men, but it’s most likely to happen to if the woman takes the man by surprise and fights very very dirty.”

    Sometimes a woman can clobber a guy with science.

    The great leading ladies of Hollywood’s Golden Age didn’t fight fair but they didn’t beat up may guys, either. Hepburn, Davis, Bacall, Crawford and the rest knew how to steer fights onto their turf and never hesitated to take home field advantage.
    ~

  32. “Because neither Hollywood nor traditional publishing have any idea what to do with real strong people, men or women.”

    Hollywood typically presents weak men, which is to say men who are physically strong but mentally, morally, or spiritually weak. They are often bullies, or prove to be cowards because they lack inner strength. The industry once knew that, and knew how to portray it.

    But the industry is now run by weak men who despise true strength and thus denigrate it.

    Because they know no other way to make themselves appear strong.
    ~

  33. Had a friend who was close to my height. She wasn’t overweight, but I wouldn’t call her petite, either. I’m a bit heavy, but not very much so, and that was also the case when this incident happened.

    My friend liked to walk up and bump my shoulder with her own. It was a regular thing on her part. It didn’t really do anything to me. It wasn’t a hard enough bump to push me aside or anything like that. But it happened often enough that it got to be a minor annoyance.

    One day I bumped her back. It wasn’t a hard bump by any means. It was intended to be similar in strength to what she regularly did to me. But I ended up inadvertantly knocking her over.

  34. Just in passing, all this talk about women in general being physically at a severe disadvantage against men in general moves me to remark that firearms aren’t the only way to equalize the conflict. Being skilled at fighting with a (substantial) combat knife or a baton/quarterstaff would seem to offer a considerable advantage over an average unskilled man, all other things being equal. Just saying.

    Of course, knife fighting and baton/quarterstaff fighting don’t seem to be very popular skills these days. A handgun with a reasonable cartridge caliber is still much simpler and more effective when used properly. *shrugs*

    BTW, I personally favor the word “tough” over “strong” when referring to moral and emotional strength. It’s just a preference, though. English is such a wonderful language — a grand old whore who has consorted with Latin, Russian, French, Greek, German, Inuit, and many other languages to absorb the best words from each tradition. Tough, resilient, enduring, hardy … it’s a menu for all tastes! ^_^

      1. Plus you have to get close in with a baton or knife. That’s an invitation to trouble if you (the baton/blade owner) are not really, really good or lucky or both. As a last resort? Oh yes. As a preferred method of deterrence or defense? No, thank you.

        1. Ah, well. Really can’t argue with a nice 9mm Gen4 Glock 19 for female force multiplier, can ya?

          1. You may be underestimating the level of contrarian jerk that sometimes posts here.

            Obviously, claymore anti-personal mines should be standard personal defense everyday carry for everyone.

            1. The problem is deploying the thing for use when a situation turns sour. And making sure that they don’t hit any friends that happen to be nearby when they go off.

            2. “Obviously, claymore anti-personal mines should be standard personal defense everyday carry for everyone.”

              THIS THIS THIS.

    2. Sorry NO! She has to be able to do real damage with the baton/quarterstaff. All to easy for the Guy to grab the baton or staff and get to her. The knife is more dangerous but he will likely have reach on her and she to use the knife has to get close. If he can grab her she is almost always done unless she is lucky.

      There is also something else that few talk about. Being able to hit others with a staff, knife or anything else in such a way that does real damage. Not many people can just do it unless they have been prepared and trained. People have been taught NOT TO and people who say “well that doesn’t matter” are wrong.
      Women especially have a hard time. They have a hard time just saying a LOUD and commanding NO!!!
      One of the things that should be taught to all Girls and Boys is the ability to loudly say NO, STOP anytime and anyplace. Fighting with a knife is hard and actually hitting someone with a staff is not normal in todays world.

  35. Thanks for saying all of this, Sarah. I especially appreciate the section toward the end about what makes women’s strength different from men’s.

    I often say that women are iron and men are steel.

    For a sword you want steel, because it stays sharper in a fight and won’t bend. A good steel sword can take many shocks, and much of the damage done in battle can be whetted away during a rest — unless the shocks are too much for it, at which point it shatters completely and is useless.

    Meanwhile, though not good for swords, iron continually endures punishing conditions that steel couldn’t tolerate for ten minutes. Surviving brutal conditions with only slight deformations, iron has the strength to hold together what neither steel nor inferior metals could handle.

    The metal / mettle of each sex is crucial to civilization’s survival and the good of the world.

  36. This is an interesting post, and it makes one think. 🙂

    When I started reading UF, I was frustrated with the number of total badass, kick-a-man’s-ass-with-no-sweat, forever-sexy-and-flawless heroines. Maybe it was just the books I was picking up, but that archetype seemed to be everywhere. The primo power fantasy was caving a sexist’s face in.

    Maybe the struggling victim is another form of power fantasy? The fantasy of having the world validate your pain? I don’t understand it any more than the kill-all-men type, but someone sure seems to be reading it.

    And here a lot of us are in the middle, trying to write women that are neither hypercompetent badasses nor doormats … Oy vey.

    1. You know, I have a woman who can beat most men. She’s ….. genetically enhanced.
      To compensate though, she’s a hot mess in every other possible way. And actually mostly she wins by being crazy, not strong….

      1. That’s part of the fun! I don’t specifically dislike a physically powerful character, but there needs to be balance. Strong one way, weak another. I have a romance heroine who’s a mess in her personal life (her parents messed her up, and encountering the undead forces her to sort herself out in a hurry), and she sure can’t throw a punch, but her focus and skills give her strength in other ways. Gotta have that balance.

        (And as long as you’re active in the comments, I just gotta say I loved “Darkship Thieves.” 🙂 )

        1. I’m writing one. Genetic engineering and nanotech enhancement, but none of it shows. Her bones are made of a nearly indestructible ceramic matrix reinforced with pretensioned diamond fibers. About twice as dense as normal bone, and her knuckles and wrist joints can be locked up rigid just before impact.

          Why, yes, she was a super-soldier, once upon a time. Now she’s just lost.

    2. May I recommend Lisa Shearin’s SPI Files? Female protag (1st person POV), but NOT a Bettina Bad-ass. Special, yes–she’s a seer, someone who can pierce veils and see portals and otherwise find the hidden things. In universe, they’re very rare. So her partner (with whom she does NOT have a romantic relationship) is a large male former cop type, whose job it is to keep her safe, and she lets him. Her boss is a dragon, and her partner is dating a dryad. It’s an interesting series.

      No graphic sex, no bed-hopping, no angsty love triangles.

  38. There was this weird, bizarre concept that if you had really good sex it meant you were in love, and it would last forever.

    Media has pushed that since at least the 70s. One Saturday prime time show intended for families was built on it: The Love Boat

    1. I used to tell myself that it was story-telling short-hand – symbolism, if you will.

      The problem with that hypothesis, of course, is that your “emotional brain” figures that if you see it, it is true, so television (and movie) stories have a strong tendency to slip right past most people’s rational filters (assuming they possess such).

      2. I had to sit down three decades ago and figure out why I equated sex and romantic love so strongly. Memories of that show kept bubbling up.

        It is an okay story telling shorthand if there are other shorthands in use. There were 3 love stories every week. Most weeks the Saturday night sex was the resolution moment of all three stories.

    2. I listen to a podcast that regularly mocks the Love Boat (Adam and Dr. Drew if anyone is interested). One of the things I laughed myself silly about is the trope that if you are depressed and looking over the rail for a couple of minutes, the person you are sad about will come right over and fix everything for you. It’s definitely a thing on the show. Thinking about it though, it’s a ridiculously damaging expectation. All you have to do to get true love is be sad and the problems all go away.

  39. Somewhat off topic. There’s something that’s been bugging me here and there, now and then, when I think about it. Conservatism is basically a philosophy for dealing with a hard, dangerous, unforgiving world. All the quirks that the left thinks are mean or cold or cruel have a purpose when dealing with nature (which doesn’t care about your feelings), hostile foreigners (which in the Bronze age, pretty much *were* going to kill you, burn your town, and sell your children into slavery so they could take your land and resources – every tribe did it to every other tribe every spring and summer), youthful clan-dooming stupidity (Romeo and Juliet), etc.

    The world has changed, through centuries of effort. It isn’t nearly so cruel and dangerous now as it was then. This is where the left (or at least, my imaginary left which can maintain lucidity) chimes in with how conservatives are paranoid obsolete neanderthals, and the conservatives retort that hard times are never far away and deterrence is needed to keep the danger suppressed, dilligence to keep the wheels on, etc. This isn’t directly what I’m trying to get at.

    It’s more this: Every rich person I know is crazy. (It’s not even leftism, though that is part of it.) They all do extraordinarily dumb things because there have never been consequences. They’re fairy-royalty who couldn’t possibly survive outside a world that warps itself to cater to their will. And yet, that’s the goal (sort of): A world where everyone is rich. Where the pressure is off. Where we can easily acquire the resources to solve our problems so that we can focus on pursuing higher level goals. No one’s going to build starships in a world where you can’t keep people from freezing to death.

    The point of gasoline engines is so that we don’t have to break our backs in hard labor. The point of pistols is so that grandma doesn’t have to fear Conan’s less chivalrous barbarian cousin. The point of fire is so that thin people don’t freeze to death in the cold. The point of any of this is to permanently make the world less cruel, less arbitrary, and more amenable to our wills so that we can spend our time on *less pointless and stupid things*.

    (Enter all the various cycle of history memes): To me this is sort of Lovecraftian. The idea that humans can’t survive outside some narrow range of conditions that keeps them limited and miserable. That whenever we start to *win*, everyone goes soft, stupid, and crazy to the point where it all falls apart. That the Enlightenment can’t last and that the future is the past is the Bronze age. And it isn’t Crazie Eddie (though I hate that prospect too), where we just can’t solve the problem because Nature doesn’t give us an out. It’s where things are soluble, but men can’t solve them because they dissolve into mush whenever Darwin isn’t picking off the weak.

    I’m rather fond of Star Trek (original flavor): In order to get there from here, we need to figure out how to survive prosperity – a very unnatural world where prudence *looks* foolish.

    1. Thing is, there are other ‘design spaces’ that are functional adaptations to desperate living conditions, just that they are ones that stuck so terribly that we don’t see them that way.

      Some of the improvements ‘conservatism’ has over such alternate practices could be considered aspects of a madness of the wealthy. Multicultural multiethnic polities often need a certain amount of trust between persons, as well as a shared understanding of folks not blooded related as something other than military targets. High trust societies, and broad understandings of personhood are delusions that persist only in circumstances that do not punish them ruthlessly.

      Practical implementations of conservatism are not rooted in a shared understanding of it as a sweet spot of behaviors over the set of possible societies. You get specific conservatives who live that way, they have been fairly well documented for some time, but some of the documentation is precisely because people who pull it off are rare. The thinking does not scale up to the group size of a population, a population’s mental diversity is too great.

      One soft proof: Societies are very complex entities. There are many choices of behavior. I would need to spend some time working to prove my intuition of a minimum of fifty, probably much more. If there are even twenty or thirty choices, each situations where a reasoning conservative would consider a spectrum of possible behaviors to identify an optimal thin slice, or even a ‘err in this direction’, few conservative intellectuals are going to be redoing the work to pick the best answer for all of them. But, if you don’t know the specific proof, the personal incentive to stick to the behavior is weak instead of strong. Ergo, at scale, a collection of individual judgements may not even converge on a consensus, much less one that is a viable design.

      Religious thinking does seem to scale somewhat. Therefore, the answer seems to be that a wealthy society that is conservative this generation may behave as you say next generation, but that a society that focuses on one of the correct religions may be stably conservative, and potentially adjust to increasing wealth levels without losing contact with the faith.

      1. The social stability that appears to arise from widespread adherence to enduring religious traditions like the Judeo-Christian tradition is specifically a major part of why I, as a self-professed “rational objectivist,” typically make no effort whatsoever to persuade others to join my own, admittedly peculiar in some ways, philosophical foundation. Extremely few individuals possess the mental discipline and raw intelligence necessary to master rational objectivism. Why in the world would I wish to waste time on a transparently futile endeavor?

        Beyond that, I honestly have no desire to deprive decent if arguably naive folks of a belief system that they evidently find reassuring and soothing in an endlessly indifferent universe where death and destruction are quicker and easier by far than peaceful life and happiness. Oy, am I a rigid doctrinaire who insists on truth in all matters, no matter what the cost? No! By all means let the small souls believe what they wish. -_-

        Hmmm, I’m drunk again. One suspects that it’s time to retire for the night.

    3. I think I’ve had similar uneasy thoughts although not nearly as well expressed as in your own post. Civilizational success carries the seeds of its own destruction and all that, eh? If one understands correctly, even the far poorer (by modern standards) ancient Roman Empire rose and fell for not dissimilar reasons. Depressing as hell. -_-

      Still, the existence of the Internet and computers are a radically different factor, quite apart from the immense wealth produced by an enduring Industrial Revolution and Norman Borlaug’s Green Revolution. Humanity has never encountered anything quite this situation. Very difficult to predict what might happen. O_O

      1. Pfffttt. Should have changed “are” to “is” after adding “the existence of” in editing. Many of my other casual posts and comments regrettably suffer from similarly sloppy oversights such as doubled words — “World World” for example, as seen in this very thread. But as Mrs. Hoyt more or less says, relax and be free in these threads. I almost always notice numerous obvious typographical, grammatical, and other errors in Mrs. Hoyt’s posts but refrain from pointing them out. Perfection from obsessive editing and meticulous proofreading is for paid work that puts roast beef and potatoes on the dinner table. ^_^

    4. I think about this sometimes too. What if the reason that we can’t easily see signs of advanced civilizations in the galaxy is that every time an intelligent race advances to a certain point they all make the same mistakes and it all collapses? So many of the horrible things that I see happening around me are due to a combination of technological advances and human nature. And I think that “human nature” would have lots of similarities in alien races because there are similar constraints on what it takes to advance as a primitive and then as a technological race.

      Yet another reason that we really shouldn’t put all our eggs into one basket and create a monolithic culture and government, whether within the nation state or within the world. Because maybe some splinter culture will do a better job of stopping the cycle. And I’m absolutely positive that a successful culture like that will not resemble in any way, shape, or form today’s progressives. Because they are self destructive of both individuals and the wider human culture. They are very specifically anti-human. That cannot be healthy for the survival of the human race.

  40. Off topic, but…
    I’m working as receptionist in a tax office. Got a call from a client asking if we could “print,” a letter for her. I assumed this meant a) a typed letter and b) something to do with taxes or money.
    Nooooo. Today the client came in and handed me a hand written letter to Biden, wherein she congratulated him for stopping arms sales to Saudi Arabia and expressed hope he would soon lift sanctions on Iran, then went on about the Palestinians.
    I should have told her I couldn’t do a political job but that never entered my mind. Instead I asked her if she thought the people who paid $25K bonuses to the families of suicide bombers were the good guys. She got all huffy, informed me she had studied these things intensively and called me a radical before letting herself out. (She didn’t answer my question).
    I’m pretty darn sure she was expressing a minority opinion for this area. And I have real trouble believing I got a 70-year-old provacateur. But what the–?

      1. Actually, nobody has ever called me a “radical,” before. I think I’ll wear it with pride.

          1. Well, Dorothy, you can pray the bark off a tree. Maybe that’s radical? (It’s awesome.)

    2. This sort of viciously hypocritical behavior pushes my buttons. I’m oftentimes tempted to respond by mentioning that in the old FidoNet days, I’d once or twice written that the Palestinians should all by all means be fired from cannons across the Jordan River into Jordan, historically Land of the Palestinians. As is appropriate, I’ll add an illustrative link to support this savage position against these scummy, scuttling, subhuman filth:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avivim_school_bus_bombing

      The Palestinians apparently see nothing wrong with specifically targeting Israeli schoolchildren for terror bombings. Okay. How about if I see nothing wrong with exterminating the Palestinian vermin? Let’s not forget that they celebrated the extermination of Jewish folks by the Nazis in World War Two. Actively CELEBRATED. And we’ve all seen the videos of these demonic filth dancing with sheer happiness at the sight of the fall of the Twin Towers in the 9-11 attacks by Muslim extremists from Saudi Arabia. I want these Mohammedian vermin dead. If they all die in infinite, yearning agony, I’ll myself dance with delight.

      Yeah, I’m definitely drunk again. Sleepy-beddy-bye time. -_-

      1. Yeah, I’m conservative. I’d say she was mistaken, or misinformed, or willfully blind, but wouldn’t have thought of “vicious.” Mind you, the other thought I had, too late, was to ask her how many years Abbas has served in his four year term. Fifteen? Sixteen?
        It was the hope he’d lift sanctions on Iran that really caught my eye. As I said, this is definitely a minority opinion in this area.

    1. It is a ball of molten iron coated in slag. Talking of ‘saving’ it is as meaningful as talking of preventing the Earth from making the sun explode.

    2. The use of the word “save” here is along the lines of “scour that pan clean of all that icky egg residue”, so basically a desire to leave a planetary murder-suicide crime scene, to which my response is “you go first”.

  42. Geez. I slip up and briefly mention The Topic that Must Not Be Named simply to make a point about the jumbled political continuum between “left” and “right,” and look what happened to Mrs. Hoyt’s beautiful comment thread on iron-willed women who make the motor of the world run. O_O

    Ach, es darf nicht wieder vorkommen. -_-

  43. “Not hungry.”

    Wow. So that’s why women have reserves of fat on their bodies. So they can keep the kiddies fed through the hard times, and say that “I’m not hungry.”

    This is one reason why your blog is so helpful to me, because you, Sara, grew up in a pre-middle-class world, a world that I never experienced.

  44. Hoyt wrote: “Strong people will endure terrible conditions to make sure what’s important to them survives. They will often, themselves, live when they should have been dead, to complete the task they feel is more important than life.”

    That’s exactly right. Millions perished in the holocaust, but there are always survivors. Every survivor I ever met, had a purpose in life yet to be completed which sustained them. Want to read an incredible story about the unbreakable strength and endurance of the human spirit prevailing against all odds? Recommend “Out of The Ice” by Victor Herman. Its no longer in print, so its hard to find; but it will rekindle your faith in Humanity.

    Victor Herman was an American child who’s family was sent to Russia in the 1930’s by Henry Ford to teach the Communist how to build automobiles. Stalin, slaughtered his entire family, and made him a “Zeek” in his Siberian Gulag… for decades. Incredibly, he survived, and emigrated back to the United States in the 1970’s to tell his story. And from an American author too…. on an absolutely mind-blowing must read journey.

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