The archetype of the Strong Independent Woman® has been culturally reinforced over the last half century in virtually every imaginable media. Whether it’s Disney’s capable Princesses ready to save themselves from certain doom – as well as their quirky, hapless but handsome male heroes – or the now clichéd ‘tough bitch’ of action movies and video game protagonists who measures herself by how well she can kick ass and /or swear as the culturally contextual equal of “any man”. Her template-crafted character is strong, confident, measuredly aggressive, decisive (but usually only when shit gets serious so as to prove to the audience she’s ‘digging deep within herself to discover her yet unrealized resolve), judicious, loving to those loyal or dependent on her (immediate family, children and female friends), capable of solving problems with little more than the feminine intuition men magically lack – but above all, she’s independent.
As this cultural archetype is broadcast to society at large, the want then is to find parallels of this Strong Independent Woman® in the ‘real’ world. The media character is only marginally believable now thanks to endless revisions and replications, so we look for the examples of independent women equalling and exceeding the, paltry-by-comparison, achievements of the unenlightened ignorance of their male “oppressors.” High ranking company CEOs are usually the first rock star independent women to nominally shine (often undeservedly) in such a role, but then, by order of degrees, we can move down the economic social strata and cherry-pick or conveniently create the match of any mediocre man. As most men are, or have been conditioned Betas it’s not too difficult.
It really is the End of Men you see. You’re no longer necessary because, well now, there is nothing men can collectively and uniformly do that women cannot find some individual example of matching and / or exceeding. Women don’t need men anymore, they’re independent.
The Branding
If there’s one thing I know, it’s branding. The Strong Independent Woman® caricature has generously earned it’s registered trademark. I sometimes use that ® to emphasize a particularly long-evolved meme; social conventions so embedded into our cultural fabric that they literally have become their own brand. The Strong Independent Woman® is actually one the best examples of this branding. However, to really understand the gravity of so long a cultural branding, you must go to the root of how the brand of the independent woman was originally intended to evolve by the 2nd wave cultural feminists who spawned it. In a way it’s succeeded far better than any feminist of the period really had the foresight to expect.
An Independent Woman was to be independent of men.
While a lot of feel-good aphorisms like confidence, determination, integrity, and the like became associated with this desire for independence, make no mistake, the original long-term feminist goal of fostering that independence in women was to break them off into individuated, autonomous entities from men. That individuation needed to be as positive and attractive to women as possible, so a social pairing of that independence from men, with a sense of strength and respectability, had to be nurtured over time.
Since the beginnings of the sexual revolution, women were acculturated to believe they could ‘have it all’, career, family, a husband (of her optimal hypergamous choosing) and, if she were influential enough, leave some indelible mark on society to be remembered by for posterity. To achieve this she’d need to be an autonomous agent, strong, and above all independent of men. Women would embody and perfect the maverick individualism that men seemed to enjoy throughout history. If she couldn’t manifest ‘having it all’ then she was still, by male force or by personal choice, not independent enough to realize it. Of course, the irony of all this can be found in the marriages of virtually every ‘high profile’ feminist luminary of the time (all the way up to our current time) to the very powerful and influential types of men their stated independence was to emancipate all women from in order to truly be independent.
The Case Against Male Self-Esteem
Matt Forney’s lightning rod post, The Case Against Female Self-Esteem drew a frenzy of internet hate, but at the core of that post was a question that Strong Independent Women® and their male identifiers don’t like be confronted with; do they truly want independence from men? Do the men they want to be independent from even exist, or are they conveniently useful archetypes; vaudevillian chauvinist cartoons from the 50’s, planted in their heads, courtesy of the feminine imperative?
While I can’t endorse a message that would diminish anyone’s self-esteem, male or female, Matt’s post, even so much as suggesting the idea of limiting female self-esteem, uncomfortably turns a cultural mirror back on over 50 years feminist and feminized social engineering. For over the past 50 years the case against male self-esteem, with the latent purpose of emancipating women from dependence on men, began in earnest — not with some anger inducing blog post, but as a progressive social engineering that would run the course of decades to effectively erase men’s inconvenient masculine identity, or even memory of what that identity ever meant to men. The case against male self-esteem has been the social undercurrent of popular culture since the early 1960’s.
I think it’s important for red pill men to internalize the popular idea of feminine independence. The true message that the Strong Independent Woman® brand embodies is independence from you, a man.
Its latent purpose isn’t the actual empowerment of women, or efforts to bolster self-esteem, strength (for whatever loose definition seems convenient), confidence or any other esoteric quality that might flatter a feminine ego. Its purpose isn’t to foster financial or economic independence (as evidenced by ever evolving fem-centric laws, educational and financial handicaps), or religious social parity, or even efforts to achieve its vaunted social equalism between the sexes. What feminine independence truly means is removing the man – independence from men. Feminine independence’s idealized state is one where women are autonomous, self-contained, self-sufficient and self-perpetuating single-gender entities.
If that revelation seems aggrandized and over the top, it should. It’s extreme, because the purpose itself is extreme. When you consider that the sexes have coexisted in relative gender complementarity, to produce our very proliferate species, for a hundred thousand years, the idea and implementation of separating the sexes into independent and solitary entities is extreme. Obviously effecting this independence is an impossibility for a race of social animals like human beings. We’ve relied on cooperative efforts since our tribal beginnings and the species-beneficial psychological hardwiring of that cooperation is one trait that made us so successful in adapting to changing, dangerous, environments.
For most manosphere readers (especially MRAs) I don’t think I need to illustrate the many manifest ways that women are dependent upon the men; if not men’s generated resources and provisioning, then certainly their parental investment, companionship, emotional and sexual interest. We’re better together than we’ve ever been apart – even when the ugly mechanics of hypergamy, or male aggression, or any number of negatively perceived gender dynamics prove useful survival traits for us, there is no true independence between the sexes. There is interdependence.
This is what equalism makes a mockery of. In its striving for a homogenous goal-state of androgynous gender-parity it fails to account for where the species-success that the complementarity of the past 30,000 years has brought us. From a heroic male perspective we generally accept that no man is an island, but feminism and equalism disagree – a Strong Independent Woman® is an island,..or she will be just as soon as a man gives her her due to become so.
November 22nd, 2013 at 9:59 am
@ Rollo
Thank you for pointing out that past article. I have not made my way through your earlier archives, or your new book yet (congrats btw). I look forward to your further thoughts on the topic too.
@ Martel
Yes, I am indeed speaking about power in terms of the ability to influence the behavior of people. That can include “internal” influence over a person’s own behavior, but is usually focused more on “external” influence over the behavior of others. Although, as you and Rollo point out, it is often a good idea to develop internal power first in order to wield external power effectively. So, his article “Truth to Power” is a good starting point.
To further understand this idea of power though, we can use the behavior modification process as a model (given Rollo discusses behaviorism here). Suppose I have a stack of dollar bills… I can use those dollars to change my own behavior (e.g. I reward myself with a dollar every time I finish writing a page of my book). I can also use those dollars to change the behavior of others (e.g. I arrange to pay someone else a dollar for each page they type for me). Therefore, that money (a positive reinforcement / reward) is a source of power, because I can use it to change behavior in ways I desire.
Bringing that up to a two person model, we can look at a simple idea of relationships. Let’s say, historically, men had food and women had sex. Men could influence women’s behavior to get sex by rewarding them with food. In turn, women could influence men’s behavior to get food by rewarding them with sex. This balances out with each having the power to get what they need from the other (a power balance).
Now, suppose we take half the food away from the men and give it to the women… The women would be “rewarded” with food no matter how they behaved in that situation, so they would be far less motivated or incentivized to have sex with men. The men would now have nothing to reward the women with to get sex. Therefore, the men could in no way influence the women’s behavior and get their needs met (no power). So, women could now behave however they wished, without any care, constraint, or external guidance (“independent”).
However, the women would still have their sexual power/reward in that situation. So, they could still use sex as a reward to influence men’s behavior in any way they desired. This gets us back to the “strong independent woman”, who is both “independent” of men’s power to influence her behavior – and who has “independent” female power to still influence men’s behavior as she wants (a power imbalance).
This is the exact situation livingtree2013 is talking about when she says:
“But it is not because women want to eliminate men from the equation. It is because women have historically been entirely dependent on men for their survival, which gave men far too much power over us, and we have worked tirelessly to extract ourselves from that position of inferiority.”
However, that is only one side of the power balance. What about men who are entirely dependent on women for their reproduction? Who is concerned about that giving women far too much power? Who is working tirelessly to extract men from that position of inferiority?
Personally, I don’t know whether this is intentionally designed to create a power imbalance or not. Perhaps the majority of women just focus so much on the areas where they lack power, that they overlook the areas where they have a great deal of power (e.g. solipsism). Perhaps a minority of women who do not have much reproductive power for their sex are so concerned with making life “fair” for themselves, that they disregard the imbalance it creates for everyone else (e.g. equalism). In any case, the outcome is still the same…and it is not equal, fair, balanced, or sustainable. That is why we need to understand it.
November 22nd, 2013 at 10:43 am
“Independence for women meant we didn’t have to tolerate abuse anymore because we had the option to leave. It meant that if you left us, we wouldn’t be completely desperate. It meant we didn’t have to cling to you guys for support. It meant we could make decisions about our own lives. It meant we didn’t have to be “seen and not heard”. It meant we didn’t have to be a slave to a stereotype anymore. It meant we could be self-actualizing if we wanted to. It meant we could pick and choose which man we wanted to mate with. And it meant we could admit we had sexual desires. “
All things that were taken care of and were finished business by the year 1912. Even sexual desires (gasp!), or do you think the flapper dress was invented out of thin air without a prevailing culture that would accept and celebrate it already in place?
There was not one single item, not one complaint you list there, which any woman in 1912 (assuming age of majority) could not legally do or take care of on her own. Many in fact did. The only obstacle, at that point, was the specter inside the heads of individual women. The legalities were in place. Problem solved.
Except, well, feminism still exists today. The same grievances, already taken care of and filed under “Complete” are resurrected time and time again, over and over, never going away even in the face of men waving reams of laws in your face showing you that these complaints are phantoms. And the reason is that these are not the actual complaints feminists are making. They are not looking to solve real obstacle problems that keep them from acting as they wish, they are instead looking to quash any intellectual dissent with their world view. They are looking to force us to ‘feel’ exactly as they wish us to ‘feel’. Feminism has turned into the 21st century version of searching out and quashing Crimethink. The Thought Police are alive and well and searching for any trace sign that a man, any man, may wince when hearing “women are better than men, men are brutes!” instead of, as they demand, smiling and agreeing and laying himself prostrate before The Goddess.
Feminism is Orwellian. Plain and simple. There is nothing left to fight for, except enforced ideological purity. And you wonder why men are bucking the very notion of feminism. Welcome to your new world, dear.
November 22nd, 2013 at 11:05 am
@ Cylux
Thank you for that historical social and political context. I tend to focus on the social changes happening now and the effect on power balance. It is good to remember though that what happens today is always built on a history of social change too. I will be sure to add that to my analysis.
@ Will S.
In my experience, the most argumentative female exits and does not return when she realizes you understand that SHE is trying to change YOUR mind. Until then, if she is unreasonable, her aim is simple – argue and work to frame the discussion in a way that seems “fair” and gains men’s compliance (but ends up giving her a distinct advantage). Once she realizes that you understand what is truly fair and cannot be swayed, either you begin to discuss and trade fairly or she leaves the discussion. This is true of all people, male or female, who want to “convince” you to give them something without really earning it or trading fairly for it.
@ furiousferrett
Exactly. Much of this social change is about groups artificially “redistributing” power, rather than working to earn it. That does indeed make the already hard challenges of life “cruel and twisted” – at least for the majority of people not favored in that redistribution. That is why red pill knowledge and the understanding of power dynamics is so important.
November 22nd, 2013 at 11:42 am
@Dr. J
While I do agree with this, I think it’s important to understand the sexual leverage most women benefit from in regards to resource exchange. It’s been observed and studied in primates and early hominids that this evolutionary prostitution of sexual favors (usually when that animal isn’t in heat, or is already pregnant by the Alpha she wanted to breed with) for exchanged resources is a commonality in our own species – we just have better euphemisms to justify it.
What made me think of this was reading the ping back post I got here:
http://thepillarsofhercules.wordpress.com/2013/11/20/derb-labour/
This analysis is similar to my Savior Schema post:
http://therationalmale.com/2012/04/26/the-savior-schema/
But, more to your point, thanks to the sexual supply and demand dynamic women (even marginally attractive women) enjoy a leverage in “convincing” men to give them something unearned or at an unfair trading value, simply by the prospect of being considered for the ‘value-added’ potential of having sex with her.
This is an inherent power advantage women have over men. That’s not to say Men don’t have other power advantages over women, but the advantages he enjoys aren’t endemic to his sex by default, he must earn those advantages first in order to be able to leverage them with women.
November 22nd, 2013 at 11:52 am
brave new world
November 22nd, 2013 at 1:16 pm
@ Tin Man: I wouldn’t be surprised if much of the economic benefit you described wouldn’t be easily countered by our unsustainable consumer debt. And that’s without the massive student loan debt, much of which was spent on useless degrees for women to “find themselves” while making college more expensive for men who would actually study something useful.
@ Burminator: Censorship-free is definitely best. Trolls can be annoying, but handle them correctly and they’ll usually go away of their own accord. livingtree was better than most, but she was obviously in way over her head.
We can hope that in her retreat she’s re-considering some of her assumptions. I doubt it, of course, but we can hope.
November 22nd, 2013 at 1:20 pm
The Rational Male – Unmoderate, always has been always will be (unless you spam me with your cheap viagra links or your latest PUA YouTube video hawking your latest DVD product)
November 22nd, 2013 at 2:12 pm
Excellent point Tin Man, you’re entirely correct about the economic food chain and our contribution to it. Think America would be where it is today if it hadn’t been for the economic freedom of women? Not a chance. There’s yet another excellent reason to value women’s contribution equally – if you pay them better, they WILL SPEND MORE MONEY IN THE ECONOMY, and less of it will be yours. Probably unsustainable in the long run, but still…
November 22nd, 2013 at 2:19 pm
Again, Furiousferrett, your hostility is getting in the way of your ability to have rational discourse. Ironic, since this page is called Rationalmale. I’ve seen very little rationality here so far. But maybe rational discourse isn’t the point here, you just want to rant.
I have a job, at which I use a computer intermittently. At the end of the workday, I go home, at which time I STOP PAYING ATTENTION TO A COMPUTER, AND START PAYING ATTENTION TO MY HEALTH, MY MAN, MY FRIENDS, MY FAMILY AND MY HOME. I’m not responding to you fast enough to your insults???? GET OVER YOURSELVES. You are not that important to my life.
I’m still here, I’m still interested (confoundingly), but I do not sit at my computer 24-hours a day watching my inbox, waiting for the next opportunity to defend myself against your attacks. Its cause for psychological analysis, frankly, that I still bother coming back to talk to you guys at all, because you clearly aren’t interested in participating in a genuine two-way conversation.
Maybe you angry 22-year olds need to get out and find a life off the computer that doesn’t involve only relating to other men, so you could meet some of those high-value women you think you deserve.
Oh, and by the way, you won’t ever meet a high value woman in a nightclub. You wont meet a high value woman at all until you understand what actually makes a woman high value, which you honestly do not.
November 22nd, 2013 at 2:20 pm
Burninator, I doubt that Tin Man intended to say that without women spending, the country would have plummeted into financial ruin. Men have always spent lots of money, but on considerably smaller range of products in comparison to women. This is elementary stuff!
Ask any CEO of any company what would happen to their bottom line if women reduced spending…. I’m pretty sure there aren’t too many who would say they’d want that to happen, nor would very many shareholders in those companies.
November 22nd, 2013 at 2:33 pm
“As an aside, props to Rollo for keeping this place censorship free. It’s good to see feminists shot down argument by argument as opposed to seeing her disappeared by the site owner.”
What? Did you think you accidentally wandered onto HUS?
November 22nd, 2013 at 2:36 pm
If women stopped spending on non-female specific products then men would pick up the slack (food, clothing, furniture, etc). We enjoy eating too and most of us, contrary to the media’s attempt to paint us as brutes, do in fact enjoy a well kept house.
No doubt women spend (understand, I’m not denying that), but to mark them as primary consumers to market to for everything, even extending that now to utility trucks and tools (where, sorry, they are NOT the primary spenders), is silly. Hell sister, you can’t even watch a commercial for a sporting goods store that sells hunting gear without the mandatory female being not only included, but the main character of focus. It has turned into societal level pandering to serve female solipsism.
Yeah, I guess I’m just nostalgic for the old automobile commercials where they actually gave you valuable information about the automobile that meant something as the selling point, instead of singing silly songs and painting flowers on the road. But that’s probably just me.
I guess we’ll always still have beer commercials. :/
November 22nd, 2013 at 2:53 pm
Dr. Jeremy, I enjoy your comments greatly, you seem to have a rare ability to converse intelligently even when you don’t necessarily agree with the person you’re talking with, and for that I thank you.
You hit on something that is very important – women do tend to focus on the areas of the power balance where they are lacking. As do men!
The comments on this article, most of Rollo’s other articles, and all but a few of the men’s rights pages I’ve read, and many MANY conversations I’ve had with male friends, prove to me that far too many men are ignoring the many MANY areas where they do have most of the power in our society, and focusing obsessively on the one area they feel weak – sex.
Its a case of “the grass is always greener”.., you always want what you can’t have. Anyone can kill a deer or grow a garden, and anyone could extract resources for manufacturing, these aren’t even worth discussing as important differences between the sexes.
But tell me please, objectively – do you really think the power to mete out sex and carry a baby (which is a fundamentally base, and any woman can do it) is more valuable than the power to manipulate our society via law, finance, and politics? I’d be genuinely surprised if you said yes.
I think I could even say with a fair amount of confidence that, if such a hypothetical thing were even possible, a large number of women on this planet would be willing to give up the sexual/reproductive/moral power that they hold, in exchange for some of the financial/legal/political/social power that men hold. I’d give that power up right now, honestly, because it really isn’t all that important…and I think you guys know that. So this power balance, its not balanced at all, because while you think sex is the most pressing need you have, its probably because all your other needs are well met.
In fact, I’d be willing to bet that if men, collectively, were more in control of their own sexuality, instead of just throwing it into anything like its valueless, the tables would turn and you would see women throwing themselves at you guys. The power would shift to you so rapidly that you wouldn’t even have time to run the world for all the action you’d be getting. But then you’d get bored of it, and want your old powers back again, because that’s what makes you feel important.
November 22nd, 2013 at 3:11 pm
Hardly, Burninator. Have you talked to any real women, maybe more than just your grandma, about how their lives were as children and young women in the 50’s? Discrimination may have been legislated away in the early 20th c, but it more than certainly was not actualized.
Life in the 50’s was very very restrictive for women, but that was mostly due to family guilt, social ostracizing, and other methods of oppressing self-confidence in girls. Girls were meant to marry, that is all. Education and self-fulfillment? Have your fun right up til you marry, then forget all that fun. You WILL have those babies, or else good luck to you, crazy poverty-stricken spinster cat-lady with no friends.
Yes, I’m absolutely sure that much of that rule-book was enforced by other women – the early-era right-wing moralists of feminism – but also by the right-wing moralists of early masculism (of course, they just called it “conservative,” or “traditional” then…), the people who just wanted everything to stay the same as it was since the dawn of time, right up until the dastardly liberalist feminism came along in the 60’s and wrecked everything by demanding emancipation from social norms. Stupid girls!
November 22nd, 2013 at 3:18 pm
Ah, I think I see a point in your comment, Rollo, that had previously escaped me.
The power that men have you think is earned, whereas the power women have is inherent with their gender, not earned at all, and thus not worthy of any sort of respect (which we agree is earned). And so therefore to make it seem like a fair deal for you, you place the “attractiveness” criteria upon us, so it almost seems as if we earned the right to be the arbiters of sex in this society, but you know that even if we weren’t earning it, you’d still have sex with us because you have to, and that makes you upset because its unfair that we have that much power, power which you, in fact, give to us freely, because you, as men, have no choice but to want to copulate as often as possible, because it is hard-coded in your DNA.
Interesting. I’m going to have to think some more about that one. Did I get that right, or am I making too many assumptions?
November 22nd, 2013 at 3:26 pm
Nature and natural selection placed that criteria on women, not men. This is why feminism is a failed experiment. It rages and rails against the non-support and non-cooperation of men to play into a new set of rules, rules that would serve women’s hypergamy, but it is always confounded by men’s (and women’s) natural impulses.
I’ve got a new post in the works, but brood on this, the ultimate purpose of feminism is rooted in securing (by social engineering and legal force) an optimized hypergamy for women.
November 22nd, 2013 at 3:26 pm
Please, spare me the “We were all victims in the 50’s” caricature. Yes, I’ve spoken to women from then. They were/are well adjusted and love their husbands and certainly don’t sit around griping about how “oppressed” they were back then. You know why? Because they were not.
Every single thing you gripe about was already taken care of, as already noted. I refuse, honestly, to even entertain having the same shaman totem being thrown in my face as being taken seriously. My great grandmother did quite well on her own, after her husband died when her kids were little, and managed to own property, buy her own things in life, hold a job and get along all without “feminism” there to help her. The reason for this is, get ready for it, there were no legal prohibitions on her doing any of these things you claim as being thrust on women as “oppression” in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Can you believe that?
I stand by my analysis, modern feminism has no actual problems left to solve and instead demands rigorous conformity of thought and feelings, using the tool of harsh shaming of any Crimethink that it encounters. Nothing more, nothing less.
As an aside, I find it amusing how the younger feminists talk these days. You use the 50’s as an example, which indicates to me that you’re either closer to my age than most would suspect, or you were raised under the tutelage of a femi in her 40’s or 50’s. Modern femi-prattlers I meet who are under 30 routinely substitute “80’s” for “50’s” as their era of choice fo Wymyn’s Oppression ™ , utterly unaware that women were in full fledged Power Wymyn mode by the 80’s. It’s cute in its own odd way, as if nobody alive today was around back then.
November 22nd, 2013 at 3:37 pm
@M3
“What? Did you think you accidentally wandered onto HUS?”
Don’t mean to go too off topic, just curious what “HUS” means/stands for?
November 22nd, 2013 at 3:49 pm
To supplement Burminator’s point, we remember only the uhappy oppressed women on the 1950’s, forgetting entirely that the majority were a hell of a lot happier than most women today. There have been women (& men) who’ve had it rough during every era of history, and the unhappy ones are those we’re inclined to emphasize. Grandma who absolutely loved staying home baking cookies has been washed down the memory hole.
I obviously can’t spek for Rollo here, but in answer to your response to him, we don’t consider women de facto undeserving of respect.
Nonetheless, there are ways in which feminine credit is unearned in the sense that for men it isn’t. If men don’t expend the effort to find a good job, develop game, etc., they won’t get respect. We’ve got to EARN it every step of the way, and even then what we accomplish is often taken for granted. Note your references to “above and beyond mere sustenance”, as if “mere sustenance” is but an afterthought.
With women it’s different. An attractive woman will get male attention and will be far more inclined to attract sympathy from society at large for just being. “Single moms” are praised as a heroic group eternally deserving of our support whether or not she was truly screwed over or just an idiot who made poor mating choices.
You’re correct that as men we should value more than looks (earned qualities), and many of us do. However, what we consider to be of value are FEMININE character traits, not masculine ones. We’d rather have a supportive woman with a sweet disposition than one who can knock ‘em dead in the boardroom any day of the week.
Especially in this era of You Go Girl, a woman who’s learned to be sweet and feminine IS deserving of respect; she obviously has the strength to buck modern trends.
I understand that you’re fielding multiple opponents, but that far you’ve responded to about 10% of my points, some of which have been pretty strong. We’ll see if that continues.
November 22nd, 2013 at 3:54 pm
What, you are actually BLAMING women for marketers wanting to sell their shit to us?? Wow.
I know a ton of ladies who’ve gotten into hunting, and not usually of their own accord – their husbands got them into it. So congrats to you, team!
November 22nd, 2013 at 3:54 pm
Hey, Martel, I’m not retreating. The more you guys antagonize me, the more I want to stay. If you WANT me to leave, you can just say so anytime! But I am actually enjoying the conversation, and yes I have learned things (which was my purpose for coming). I hope that, too, you have learned some things from me, but I’m not holding my breath.
Here are a few things that you could learn, in response to your last post about all the dumb girls taking useless studies after having been admitted by lower standards:
http://www.iza.org/conference_files/Transatlantic_2013/dickson_l8832.pdf
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/court-prepares-affirmative-action-decision-softer-standards-men-182205509.html
http://people.mills.edu/spertus/Gender/pap/node7.html
http://paa2010.princeton.edu/papers/100328
I would have argued these points myself, but there are too many and since I’m a dumb girl you would probably ignore me anyway. But the gist of it, in case you don’t want to read all that, is:
– When top-decile students are admitted based strictly on merit, the class content is disproportionately female
– When opened to non-eligible students, they exhibit preference for male students to balance the gender proportion.
– a significantly higher number of female applicants are being turned away from US schools so that they can keep their gender balance
– several US schools are considering instituting affirmative action for men
– In female dominated programs, the male population is 25%. In male dominated programs, the female population is 9%.
– Male and female program enrollment is fairly balanced over all disciplines, except life sciences (medical) which is dominated by women, and engineering (which is dominated by men).
– In the fairly useless humanities and social sciences, the representation of men is fairly equal to women.
– none of these facts provoked any outrage from feminists
And lastly…
– most of your assessments about the present world are out of date, or based on emotional experiences.
November 22nd, 2013 at 3:56 pm
Re: Respect:
http://therationalmale.com/2012/05/29/respect/
November 22nd, 2013 at 4:06 pm
False. I’m blaming feminism for creating a culture where the only ones deemed important enough to market to are women, despite all evidence that, hey, men spend big money too.
And “I know a ton of ladies” doesn’t mean that they dominate a specific realm. That’s the problem here, you see it only through femi-glasses. Hunting is a male dominated milieu, regardless of how many “tons” of women you know doing it. Always has been, at least here in these united States. I can count on one hand the women hunters I know, but cannot count on all of my digits, and your digits combined the number of male hunters I know. Focusing on women in advertising for it, or other demographically male dominated market segments, is nothing less than enforced feminist PC claptrap (from inside the marketing firms I mean, they “feel” they have to pander to women’s egos).
It’s akin to how many commercials these days basically exclude any white male presence at all. Pay attention to it. I’m not saying there is 0% presence, rather that the trend is to see women and minorities as the mainstays. It’s like we’re being avoided and shut out entirely from a lot of market segments and advertising. What I’m not talking about is including other groups with white males, that would be fine, I mean actually excluding us entirely from even occupying a single frame of filme, while “including” the rest.
Spare me the “wow” too. I know that “Oh wow” is next. Typical shaming tactic, especially after constructing a straw man “you are actually BLAMING women!”. Rejected.
To throw you a bone though, I do believe that women deserve equality before the law as it applies to men. That meaning the traditional definition of equality before the law, where the same law applies to all equally and without prejudice. All rights belong to all equally and without prejudice. That was a noble goal of original feminist movements back when this nation still had a semblance of liberty in it. To deny any human basic human rights and equal protection under the law is wrong, and always will be.
But those problems are solved now. That being said, I no longer have use to entertain feminism as a serious intellectual movement. It is a shaming movement, and nothing more (and in that sense, I do entertain it seriously….as a threat to reason and civilization). I don’t conform to demands that I think and feel like others. Welcome to male rebellion.
November 22nd, 2013 at 4:11 pm
Yah no, I’m sorry but I have to respectfully disagree with you there Rollo. If “nature” were the arbiter, the standard wouldn’t be different culture by culture.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201010/the-truth-about-beauty
You want women who look trim and fit because you life in the land of plenty. As I keep reminding you.
November 22nd, 2013 at 4:11 pm
HUS = Hooking Up Smart. Susan Walsh’s blog for upper middle class and middle class women between the ages of 18 and 30 where SW and her commenters give each other pointers on how to engage in serial monogamy/have casual sex until they are ready for marriage.
A few other points.
Living Tree, women were not victims in the 50s. Women worked, voted, married, and took care of their families. Or they did none of those things if they didn’t want to. The 1950s was not full of women chained to stoves and pregnant with their 11th child. About the only thing a woman could not do is slut around and avoid getting one of the following: (1) a reputation as a slut; (2) an unwanted pregnancy; or (3) an STD. I think you’re just mad that Grandma wasn’t as able to slut it up as her granddaughters could. Funny. I doubt Grandma herself was too mad about that.
Most women love househusbands and stay at home dads – so long as they aren’t married to such a man. Most women are fine with OTHER women being married to those men; just so long as SHE HERSELF is not married to an SAHD or househusband. Most women have a name for such men: “kitchen bitch”.
When women enter traditionally male workplaces, women demand that the workplace be changed to suit them, standards be lowered so more women may qualify, and that men change their personalities and responses so as to avoid offending women.
When men enter traditionally female workplaces, men adapt and adjust themselves into the workplace as it exists, meet the currently existing standards, and adapt their responses so as to perform the work expected. Men do so without being told to do so.
Living Tree said somewhere that women deeply and truly love men who support them emotionally. Umm, no. Women do not love men who support them emotionally. Women seethe with contempt at men who support them emotionally, because to a woman, “man who supports me emotionally” means “simpering touchy-feely beta who’s so in touch with his feminine side”.
November 22nd, 2013 at 4:19 pm
@Burninator, thats cute that you think I’m a “young” feminist. I’m 45…
My mom was a 2nd wave feminist from the 60’s though, of the moralist variety.
I can’t wait for the insults on that one!
November 22nd, 2013 at 4:20 pm
“’Living Tree said somewhere that women deeply and truly love men who support them emotionally. Umm, no. Women do not love men who support them emotionally. Women seethe with contempt at men who support them emotionally, because to a woman, “man who supports me emotionally” means “simpering touchy-feely beta who’s so in touch with his feminine side’.”
Slight modification, they theoretically love “supportive” men but give it up for the opposite. Sure, there’s some positive feelings for “supportive” men (as long as they know their place and don’t try anything), but the kind of “love” WE want is reserved for men who are their opposite. We’re waking up the the fact that all this female talk about wanting emotional nourishment from their men is just that: talk.
(Yes, an Alpha badass can get extra props for being supportive if he’s able to give it out in small doses from time to time. A “you look tired, let me get you a Diet Pepsi while I’m at the fridge” will mean more to a woman than hours of deep conversation with a “sweet” guy.
November 22nd, 2013 at 4:33 pm
Besides the fact, Burn, you totally ignored the point of what I said, which was that it wasn’t a legal oppression that women in the 50s labored under, I don’t think there’s been any lack of legal freedom for women for a very long time in the free world. It was strictly social oppression.
Of course I know that there was, and still are, lots of people (even women!) who love their stereotypes and love the moral guidance of the church or their peers telling them how to behave, and they will fight tooth and nail to hold onto them because it makes life for them easier, simply knowing who they are supposed to be, according to the outside world’s expectations.
I really do believe that people are more strongly motivated by external social pressure than by any legal rights or obligations they might or might not have. And I know you know full well that i’m right, I know that by every single thing that you or any of your contemporaries here have said to me in this thread! Because it is the same complaint you have about feminism – stereotypes are the most powerful form of social control that there is!!
We have simply learned to use them to our advantage, rather than our disadvantage. Which makes me kind of sick.
I, for one, would looooooovvvvvvvve to see a time come when we (meaning all of us) stopped using stereotypes to control each other…
I think they are the absolute worst thing ever created, they inhibit genuine human interaction and personal evolution in an advanced society…but I know I’m never going to see that day come.
I can still dream though… !
ANyway, its a shame that I think we are actually in agreement on so many fundamental things, but you just can’t bend to see it because you don’t want to admit I might not be the devil.
November 22nd, 2013 at 4:42 pm
Living tree:
No one here thinks you’re a devil. The problem is that you think you know much more than you actually do. You think you know things that just aren’t so.
November 22nd, 2013 at 4:43 pm
Ya Martel I totally get that, and I appreciate you’ve taken the time to talk rationally with me.
I wish I had the time to respond to more of your points, but most of your comments (and the comments of all the others here) are so loaded with things I’d like to talk about with you that I can only cherry-pick because, like I said – I’m working here! Answering every point you guys make would be more than a 24-hr a day job! I’m overwhelmed.
If you have any specific points you’d like to talk about (calmly please!) please ask again.
ANd incidentally, the “knock-em-dead in the boardroom” is for us, not you. Being sweet and having a good disposition is really difficult these days, but rest assured I know quite a few women who are just that – even the working, independent, feminist ones! We bake cookies often… and some of the most potent women I know are the stay-at-home moms, not the boardroom feministas.
But then, I live in Canada, so I don’t know how things are for you guys down there. Maybe American women really do suck.
November 22nd, 2013 at 4:47 pm
@ livingtree: It’s no surprise that women are excelling academically when lower education is dominated by female teachers who view boys as defective girls. Everything from the elimation or regulation of recess (such as organized play instead of just letting them go), to the “sit still & listen” approach to learning, to an emphasis away from hands-on learning, to the emphasis on “cooperative learning”, to banning any references to weapons or violence (getting expelled for a gun-shaped pop tart, etc.), to drugging the crap out of the poor little bastards turns males off to education.
But STEM subjects are still dominated by males, and you’ll find far more female literature majors. These women don’t usually make much money. (Your stat on “humanities and social sciences” depends entirely on how that’s defined: if economics is defined as a “social science” it makes the category seem more balanced that it might actually be.)
Furthermore, although you said that lots of women don’t want to have children, lots don’t THINK they do until they hit 30 or so and then either quite their jobs or cut back the amount of time they put into them severely.
So you’ve got several years of training and development put into a female who one day decides to throw all that out the window and decide to be a mom, but if she simply decided to be a mom first and not “find herself”, a man would have gotten all that training and experience instead. The difference being that he would have actually used that training for the duration of his career.
November 22nd, 2013 at 4:55 pm
“Burn, you totally ignored the point of what I said, which was that it wasn’t a legal oppression that women in the 50s labored under, I don’t think there’s been any lack of legal freedom for women for a very long time in the free world. It was strictly social oppression. “
I won’t ignore it, then. There’s a FUNDAMENTAL difference between legal oppression and “social oppression”. You’re entirely correct that the opinions of others have a profound difference on how we behave.
Regardless, although being made fun of and getting thrown in jail both suck, the latter is a direct infringement on your rights as a human being (assuming you didn’t deserve it), the former is NOT.
Furthermore, in regards to legal oppression, there is a potential endpoint. With “social oppression” there isn’t. The only way to end “social oppression” is to exercise mass mind control on the masses, for there will ALWAYS be opinions and customs that segments of the population find offensive. Thus, “social oppression” is an eternal phenomenon, and efforts to end it give perpetual power to those who FEEL oppressed.
If you want to discuss at some point with fewer opponents, feel free to hit the “feminism” tag on my blog (lately I’ve been more inclined towards politics in general). Comment, I’ll respond. I might not be alone, but that won’t make it any easier for you, I promise you.
On the other hand, you get far more attention over here.
November 22nd, 2013 at 4:57 pm
Hmm, another interesting point Rollo.
I go back to my earlier point about earned respect, and I am of the opinion that ALL respect must be earned, you shouldn’t just get it because you exist. But I will argue, as a woman who has had her books carried and who has also earned real respect, that I know now that what you were trained to do was not respect women. You were trained to coddle them. I don’t know who gave you said training, but they were wrong to do so, because it is neither respectful nor does it foster anything positive. We learn from a young age to expect to be treated differently.
I’m not saying you should hit girls. You should definitely not hit girls. But girls should definitely not hit boys either – I agree with you there.
However, there’s a complication there – fact is, you guys hit each other all the time, and also, you just love to prove to us how tough you are, you make movies by the thousands showing us how “male culture” is (ya, thats right, women don’t make those movies…), so you are in fact training women to believe that you can take it.
So, if you want that dynamic to change – and I don’t blame you, you should want that! – you have to change it in your own children by training them to build character.
But don’t just provide it to the boys anymore!!
November 22nd, 2013 at 5:05 pm
Well, whatever Burn, I think you’re just choosing to see as a negative what really isn’t. Marketers will do anything to sell more stuff.
Does having a female in a commercial selling hunting gear make men not want to buy it? No. Does it make women want to buy it? Maybe. So did it cost anything? No, it in fact increased the potential sales market simply by deviating from an established stereotype.
What company’s shareholders wouldn’t love that? And that group, not feminists, is who these companies care about appealing to.
November 22nd, 2013 at 5:14 pm
I realize men not being physically aroused by your particular body habitus is one of your many pet issues, but yeah, as I’ve pointed out to you many times before,…
http://therationalmale.com/2011/09/15/womens-physical-standards/
You really should read the statistical breakdowns in A Billion Wicked Thoughts by Ogas and Gaddam before you come back with a response:
http://www.billionwickedthoughts.com/index.html
With concrete statistical evidence, this book will put the lie to your (self?) perception about what arouses men (and women) rather than arbitrary definitions of what “beauty” is.
November 22nd, 2013 at 5:18 pm
Oh jeez, Deti, we wouldn’t want you guys to have to hold back on being offensive, would we?! Cuz that would be unprofessional, er, no.. wait..
I find it really telling that you guys can only figure out how to exist in polar extremes. Either you are “a manly man!!” or a total pussy. Emotional support is contemptible? Only for a douchebag who thinks in black and white stereotypes it is. Do you find men who study philosophy to be faggy too?
It IS possible, I swear, to be both supportive and masculine. I SWEAR TO YOU. If you find the job taxing on your manliness, perhaps you should look for women who are less needy.
Further, I NEVER said women were victims in the 50’s. You will never ever, ever, EVER hear me say women were victims, except perhaps in the middle east where women are killed for showing their ankles in public. I said we were confined by social pressures (as were men). Pay attention!!!
But then again, ankle-showing is how feminism began, wayyy back in the day, so maybe those muzzlims have a decent point. Fiendish American whores, leading all their chaste women astray.
November 22nd, 2013 at 5:23 pm
FFS, did I stumble into a support group for beta men who’ve been cheated on or left by women for alpha males? Would more sex make it all better?
I don’t know a single female who fits that description, and I know plenty who have supportive, yet masculine, husbands. It CAN be done you know. Maybe you just have to grow up a bit first though.
How old are you guys? (I told you mine…)
November 22nd, 2013 at 5:23 pm
Furthermore, on the different standards of attraction between the sexes (on which Rollo has written extensively), what men find attractive is deemed superficial, what women find attractive is considered to be perfectly reasonable. We feel sorry for the fat girls who can’t get a date far more than we feel sorry for the video game nerd.
So when you said earlier that the “kicks ass in the boardroom” stuff is for you and not for us, be that as it may, that’s not how it generally comes across. If I’m not attracted to a woman’s careen accomplishments, I’m “superficial” or “threatened by a strong woman”.
Women tend apply what they find attractive to what they think men should find attractive. Women like men with balls, so we’re supposed to like women with “moxy”. Women don’t mind dating guys a few years older, so we shouldn’t either. Women aren’t bother by men who’ve banged a lot of women, so men aren’t supposed to mind marrying sluts. I could make this list incredibly long.
Double standards? Yes, just like the guy who likes sweet women will find it hypocritical when women don’t find him attractive for being “sweet” also demonstrates a double standard.
We’re different. We’re attracted to different things. Switch the genders of the main characters in 50 Shades and only a handful of really bizarre guys would find it stimulating.
November 22nd, 2013 at 5:25 pm
I can’t help wonder if maybe its just that you guys are making really, really bad choices in the women you mate with. Which does happen. I made really bad choices when I was in my 20s too, I get it.
November 22nd, 2013 at 5:36 pm
@ livingtree2103
At the most basic level, there are only two important goals for any organism – survive and reproduce. In usual discussion, we are all pretty clear how the power of things like money, resources, laws, and political status help us survive. Arguably, for various biological and evolved reasons, men tend to gravitate to and cultivate those sources of survival power. Historically, they then used those sources of power to influence the behavior of women. That is why you write:
In contrast, in usual discussion, we tend to trivialize the important function of reproduction down to “sex and carry a baby”. In reality, reproduction is the entire life goal for any organism. Also, for various biological and evolved reasons, reproduction is a power inherent in every single woman. Although “any woman can do it”, however, not a single, solitary man can do it. Every man needs a woman to fulfill his only reason for living as a biological organism – to reproduce.
Thus, on the most fundamental level, the power to reproduce is just as important as the power to survive. Sure, we can find other ways to pass the time and enjoy our lives. But, as a species, the only reason to bother surviving is to get your genes into the next generation. So, men’s power to survive is utterly useless if they cannot use it to reproduce with a woman. That is why, historically, men have manipulated society via law, finance, and politics – all to lay the spoils at the feet of a woman and ensure her survival, in trade for her power of reproduction.
I have not seen evidence to support that. I don’t see women’s groups that are concerned with men being too dependent on women for reproduction – and trying to find ways to “redistribute” that power to men. In fact, what I observe is just the opposite. I see women’s groups working to redistribute men’s “survival power” to themselves, while also protecting and increasing their own “reproductive power”.
For example, women have far more choice and control over contraception. Women have the only legal say as to whether a fetus gets aborted. If a woman makes the unilateral decision to keep the baby, the father is forced to pay for it (or is jailed). If there is a divorce, she almost always gets child custody (and provisioning). Not to mention the ever-increasing rules and laws men must follow to avoid charges of harassment, assault, or rape. We can even throw in women’s crusade against men having access to prostitution, pornography, strip clubs, etc.
That all looks like monopolizing reproductive power to me…not sharing it.
This power imbalance is the reason why many of these men sound so “hostile” to you. They are frustrated because their ability to survive is being “redistributed”, while they have less and less say in their ability to reproduce too. The guy you are talking to might be living in mom’s basement because he can’t get a job now in our economy – or a girlfriend without money to take her out. He might be kicked out of college from some false harassment or rape charge. He might be divorced, eating soup in a crappy apartment, giving all his money for kids he is not allowed to see. He might be a married CEO, who just bought his wife a mansion, only to find out that she cheated and his “son” was fathered by someone else. Or, he might just be an Average Joe who women “don’t need any more” and he’s trying to figure out how to have a wife and family.
I don’t disagree that women still have their own needs and concerns. But, you tell me… Is it really fair to ask these guys to give up more of their survival power, especially without being given anything in return?
November 22nd, 2013 at 5:37 pm
You do realize that the exchange of the last two dozen or so posts you’ve just found so stimulating here between yourself, Deti, Martel, Dr. J, myself and others would never be allowed to take place on HUS, right? You post here because you know that’s true, so cut the ‘unprofessional’ bullshit.
November 22nd, 2013 at 5:37 pm
All of us here have probably made some dumb mating choices, some of us have recovered from them better than others.
That doesn’t alter the validity of anything we say, either way. Truth depends not on the voice of he who delivers it.
November 22nd, 2013 at 5:42 pm
@ Dr. J: Beautiful! Bravo!
As if creating, nuturing, and fostering the next generation of humanity is somehow unimportant.
November 22nd, 2013 at 5:46 pm
“@Burninator, thats cute that you think I’m a “young” feminist. I’m 45…”
Reading comprehension dear. Go back and re-read what I posted that made you respond as you just did. There’s a crucial “OR” that you missed, as well as a n easy deduction based on context.
Ah heck, I’ll save you the effort. I said you are either “closer to my age” OR you were young and raised under the tutelage of a femi in her 40’s or 50’s. Now, apply logic to that statement. If you were raised by a femi in her 40’s or 50’s OR you were closer to my age, that means that my age AND the femi age of 40’s to 50’s would be analogous, ergo, I correctly guessed your age, but you didn’t catch it. Claro?
“My mom was a 2nd wave feminist from the 60′s though, of the moralist variety.”
Ok…and?
“I can’t wait for the insults on that one!”
Unfortunately I forgot to supply you with the nails so you can hang yourself on the cross of your suffering. You’re trying to make yourself a victim here, you realize that right? Appeals to victimhood and internet tears do not phase me I’m afraid. Heck, they don’t phase me in meatworld either for that matter.
“Besides the fact, Burn, you totally ignored the point of what I said, which was that it wasn’t a legal oppression that women in the 50s labored under, I don’t think there’s been any lack of legal freedom for women for a very long time in the free world. It was strictly social oppression. ”
I did not ignore your point at all, in fact, your “point” actually aligns perfectly with the point I was making, so to try to confront it would be asinine. That is, your point is that feminism is not about achieving actual political freedom from oppression (which you agree with me on…now), but about changing the hearts and minds of, presumably, men (and male sympathizing women) in order to make them think and feel as you do. The construct “social oppression” is another word for “but people don’t like me or share my beliefs about my own unique wonderfulness!”
And M3 addressed the problem with that. You cannot get rid of “social oppression” where no legal oppression exists, except through basic mass societal conditioning. In other words, making others think and feel as you do, using a variety of tools. In this case, feminism attempts to use shaming techniques heavily. My point then, is not only made, but agreed to by you.
“Well, whatever Burn, I think you’re just choosing to see as a negative what really isn’t. Marketers will do anything to sell more stuff. ”
Explain to me the logic in selling to a smaller market demographic for your product than a larger market demographic for your product. Or are you saying that Revlon and Summer Breeze Feminine Products should start featuring men and man leaning commercials in order to sell the most product?
It’s interesting to note as well, just as Rollo suggests, that you conceive of this as a real separation from men. Notice your comment, that I’m making a victim of myself, all the while you sit and plead with your hands to the sky to end “social oppression”. When a very real and noted phenomenon is pointed out to you (the exclusion of white males from a lot of advertising and media these days) you turn around without any irony whatsoever with “I think you’re just choosing to see as a negative what really isn’t”. Your feelings are valid, mine are me just being stupid. Separation, I am not capable of the agency that you are, by that statement. See?
And now, we start with the typical and expected attacks on male ego, which are well understood shaming techniques used by women when they begin to lose an argument:
The appeal to the lack of sex in a man’s life:
“FFS, did I stumble into a support group for beta men who’ve been cheated on or left by women for alpha males? Would more sex make it all better? ”
The appeal to the idea that men who do not agree with you are not mature and do not “get it” as a result:
“Maybe you just have to grow up a bit first though. ”
Ad hominem via inference:
“but you just can’t bend to see it because you don’t want to admit I might not be the devil.”
Stop. Just stop. First, those appeals do not phase me, I point them out to help you avoid wasting your valuable time and effort trying to shame me or others when you are actually casting pebbles at a granite wall.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I hear a refreshing adult beverage calling my name and anticipate a fine evening with friends.
Slainte
November 22nd, 2013 at 5:48 pm
BTW, Martel, women don’t want hours of long heartfelt conversation with men (once in a while maybe). That’s what we have our girls for.
We want emotional support from you in the sense that, if we tell you, dear husband, that something is important to us, that you give a shit maybe, and definitely not invalidate us for it by telling us, in any way, that its not important. Which incidentally, you almost all do, and often.
You’ll generate a woman’s resentment faster for invalidating her than almost any other offense (except cheating, maybe).
Do you guys do that to each other, or just to us?
November 22nd, 2013 at 6:10 pm
LT, as I’ve read through all your posts on this thread and others, my conclusion is that your forays onto manosphere blog comment threads is really a form of catharsis for you and the unsatisfying results that have made your life what it is, rather than any genuine interest in understanding gender dynamics any better.
But, I’ll entertain you a bit longer,..
You’re 45, I’m 45. I would expect you’d find my professional and personal success threatening, and of course the result of all my male privilege. However one thing I wont claim is some precognitive knowledge of the social conditions, events and experiences of life in the 1950’s
And neither can you, but that wont stop you from liberally invoking the specter of some melodramatic feminist fantasy you’ve been sold of how life in the male-chauvinist 50’s was one degree away from the stepford wives.
Anyone questioning the undeniable horrors the 50’s perpetrated on women may as well be a Nazi Holocaust denier, but you don’t know anything about the 50’s and neither do I.
http://therationalmale.com/2012/01/11/the-curse-of-jung/
November 22nd, 2013 at 6:22 pm
Consumption does not entail strength. Production does, particularly of technological and military goods, and the organization and willpower to use them.
Compare the Consumerist societies, sans US, to the central planning of the Soviet Union, and make some estimates of how long they last.
November 22nd, 2013 at 6:24 pm
“Again, Furiousferrett, your hostility is getting in the way of your ability to have rational discourse. Ironic, since this page is called Rationalmale. I’ve seen very little rationality here so far. But maybe rational discourse isn’t the point here, you just want to rant. ”
No way. My logic is solid. In short, you want to rig the game by not having to compete in your gender’s arena in the traditional biological sound ways.
You are not biological good enough to secure the high resources that come with locking up an alpha thus you feminists rigged the game to secure those resources for yourself through redistribution so you don’t have to deal with betas, at least on any of the beta male’s terms. This also allows you to spend the five minutes with the alpha until your sexual value is used up since you have a safety net.
Life isn’t fair for the vast majority of people. Most are born in middling circumstances and you have to scratch and claw your way up. The ‘fair’ way is actually what our found fathers said “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. That’s all you get. You take those three things and make the best of it. You don’t rig all the whole system to fuck over others royally just because you are a bitchy woman who got genetically dealt a poor hand.
Instead you do this
“You got the short stick, now what? Do you contemplate it and hope for a longer one? No.
You sharpen it and jab it into the heart of every obstacle that sets itself in your way.
”
-CH
You live in America the land of obese unattractive women. There has never been a better time to pull yourself up by simply being in shape and watch your power soar from the biomechanical traditional way. You only have to run faster than the bear. However, you refuse to do this either through apathy, laziness or lack of knowledge. Proper weight is simply about eating a healthy diet of fats, protein and vegetables with some fruit. That’s it, you do that you basically win at life if you’re a chick. I just gave you the woman’s Konami code right there and you dummies won’t use it?
November 22nd, 2013 at 7:07 pm
Uhhuh, right, so what’s your issue then Martel? We don’t want to be socially oppressed anymore, and that’s…bad? Or is it that you don’t want us to be referring to “our rights” when we are talking about feminist issues because it has nothing to do with rights anymore…?
If the latter, I agree. Its not about rights or victimization anymore (except when we are talking rape, but that’s a different sort of victim than we’re talking here, and I do NOT want to start on that tangent here). If you are paying attention, which you seem to be, you will probably have taken note that most (intelligent) feminists don’t discuss things current by talking about not having rights that men have anymore. Its just passe.
They may discuss things historical by using that reference, but feminist issues today mostly revolve around being categorized unjustly, and being judged for those false assumptions (like the assumption that you’re going to leave and have babies eventually, which leads to lower pay for some annoying reason).
And I get it, there are plenty of self-proclaimed feminists who don’t really work all that hard at not behaving like stereotypes… don’t even get me started on that one. But you’ll probably also have noticed that many contemporary feminists recognize and appreciate that men also have been discriminated against by limiting stereotypes, and are actively working to correct that (by encouraging you to, ideally, not act like the negative stereotypes of men). To help with that, it would be great if you didn’t think of us as your enemy.
Again, I reiterate – none of us want men to disappear, or to become like women. I swear. Men are cool. So are women, and you’d see that more, if you’d just stop thinking we are out to get you.
Whats your blog again Martel? I remember you posted it somewhere like 100 posts back…
November 22nd, 2013 at 7:08 pm
Right Martel, which only serves to illustrate the point I made like 50 posts ago about getting more men into elementary school education! Or even in the administrative/bureaucratic positions which dictate the standards of the school system. Both of which are weeping for more men. But you don’t feel its manly or important enough to teach children, so who does it? Women. You don’t even think its important enough to run for trustee, so who’s standards dictate? Women. I mean if you care enough about it, you’ll take more direct action. Right?
I guess you just expect that women will continue to do the always unimportant, undervalued, underpaid jobs like teaching the world’s youth, in ever increasing classroom size, with ever more restrictive standards and methods of discipline available to them, and blame them when they don’t do it according to your expectations, simply because they no longer have the old line of crap, “boys will be boys” as part of their mandate?
I’ll admit, I think the school system is out of control with their non-competitive approach. In Calgary a few weeks back, it was announced that the public school system there decided to eliminate the honors program, because it made lower-performing kids “feel bad”. I lost my shit on that one.
But elementary school isn’t “supposed” to be a place where kids come to learn to be competitive. Its supposed to be a place where they come to learn how to read and write and how to be a “respectful” citizen. And provide cheap babysitting… I’m not going to say I don’t agree with that, but the school system does need revamping badly.
The public school system is well on its way to becoming an extremely generic, basic service provider, so rather than have the public system try to be everything to everyone, wouldn’t it make more sense to have a morning class at generic public school to get the foundation learning, reading and writing and whatever, and the afternoon class at a smaller private school of the parent’s choosing, which delivered a more personalized approach to educating?
Your choice could be tailored to the specific strengths of your children, ie. higher placement learning, physical education, arts, etc.
Anyway, I digress. You were saying…? :)
I can speak from experience about what you said about the effect of women having children. I was asked point-blank when I interviewed for my last job whether I was married or had children, to which I answered no to both. Did I want to have any, they asked? To which I answered, no. They still paid me 15% less than my male peers to do the job, until I entered my late 30’s… then they finally believed me and gave me my due. It is amazing how much subtle discrimination went away when I turned 40. No-one anymore asking me when I was going to find a nice, “good enough” man and settle down, no-one telling me I was selfish because I didn’t want kids… it was quite a relief.
I still have to face the discrimination about my level of attractiveness to mid-20’s males… which went from “wow you look so young for a 39 year old!” followed by a hot pursuit, to “oh, uhhuh, wha…? You were talking…?” at 40. I swear, I didn’t age a decade on the day I turned 40, but you’d never know it.
November 22nd, 2013 at 7:23 pm
“Oh, and by the way, you won’t ever meet a high value woman in a nightclub. You wont meet a high value woman at all until you understand what actually makes a woman high value, which you honestly do not.”
I’ll be the judge of that.
November 22nd, 2013 at 7:32 pm
Huh? Rollo I’m not sure I know which of my comments this link was sent in response to, I assume the one about the standard of hotness being dependent on culture. I’m not saying that because waaaa, I’m fat, I feel left out. I’m saying it because I’m right. I’m not fat, but even though I AM old, I still have a collection of amazing men trying to woo me away from my even more amazing boyfriend, so I’m not insulted. Your taunts don’t threaten me in the least.
Anyway, I can’t read that book now, but it does look interesting enough that I might give it a whirl (though I suspect I won’t find it at the public library in the 7,000 person town I live in). Imagining that I know what your point is though, I’ll make you a confession!
I’m self-aware enough to know that the men I am immediately attracted to make the worst sorts of boyfriends. The sex wasn’t even that good, they’re very selfish and disappointing. So I disciplined myself out of falling for my stupid limbic desires like I did when I was way too immature to know how to act in my best interest, because its not in my best interest to be motivated by my genitals. It always fails.
Now, as a full-grown human, I still check out the buzz-cuts and hot bodies at the beach, all covered in piercings and tattoos. I just know better than to act on it because its pointless.
November 22nd, 2013 at 7:36 pm
“underpaid jobs like teaching”
now I know you’re just having a larf.
November 22nd, 2013 at 7:44 pm
@ livingtree: You can get to my blog by simply clicking on my name next to the hammer.
However, I’ve addressed the misconception of “rights” here at my blog already: http://alphaisassumed.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/the-right-rights/
More to follow at another time. For now I’ve stuff to do.
November 22nd, 2013 at 7:47 pm
“I’m not sure I know which of my comments this link was sent in response to”
Copy a diagnostic chunk of the rogue text, Ctrl-F and ^.
Magic.
November 22nd, 2013 at 7:57 pm
Well yes, Martel, because so many men ARE threatened by a woman competing with them. Not because they worry they might lose to a woman – which most do fear – but because of the very things we’ve discussed here. A woman in the boardroom represents something about the power balance that makes men subconsciously uncomfortable, even many progressive ones.
I read Rollo’s article “Shallow”, I had a good laugh about it, and I posted a comment on it. See if you can find it! He was so annoyed by my post that he wrote a whole article dedicated to me. I still stand by the point I made though, if being called shallow is the worst of your problems, I’d happily change places with you.
Men do like women with moxie (the progressive ones do anyway). Men do like dating older women. Men also assure me that they like bitches. They don’t know why, they certainly don’t want to, they just do. And men over 40 no longer care if a woman has had multiple sex partners. Its a given! I love being in my 40’s, its so much more awesome! And my brothers are both sweet guys, and the ladies love them!
Anyway, my point being, which I’ve made so many times in my life – people are different, there’s no set formula for attraction, we are a mystery as a species (though boobs are always a hit. Who doesn’t love boobs?) That book title that Rollo just posted proves it. There’s a “hot girl” formula that all women know, just as men know the formula to make “alpha male”. They’re both repulsive, in essence, but the formula works. They get the desired result, which is more attention. Yay!
I’m an introvert though, so I just couldn’t be bothered making that much of an effort for attention. If you like me, great, if not… yawn. I didn’t do too badly with that approach. But then again, I am female, so we don’t really have to try to get attention. We have to try NOT to get attention.
But there are norms which the majority do like, and you’re right, they are very hypocritical. But like you guys have said, there are biological factors at work that we just can’t argue with. Personally, I’m grateful for having made it through my stupid years without getting hooked up or impregnated by any of the lost cause “alpha males” (pfft! I use the term contemptuously) that I used to go out with. They didn’t deserve me.
November 22nd, 2013 at 7:58 pm
@ Rollo,
I agree. The distinctions among the types of power and the sources they come from are important for men to understand. Sometimes men can be confused, overwhelmed, or taken off guard because women’s power over them “feels different” than power dynamics they are used to negotiating with other man. Women “play the game” a bit differently, given their strengths and weaknesses.
Having said that, I think the problem you identify in Savior Schema (and seen in Derb Labor) is also one of men not understanding how to properly use power. Allow me to explain…
Back to behavior mod: If you are training a dog, you only reinforce him with a treat after he does the desired trick. If you give the dog a treat before the trick, however, then his need would already be satisfied – and he would have no motivation to perform the behavior. The treat only holds power to influence and motivate the dogs behavior until the dog has it and his need is satisfied.
Ramping this up to animal sex that you mention above… Yes, males of many species bribe females for sex with resources (mainly food). Usually, the male attempts to hold onto the food until the female submits to sex – or he has sex with her quickly while she is eating. If he “gifts” her the food first, she will often eat and try to leave without having sex. If she finishes her meal before he is finished having sex, she often tries to leave. This occurs because, once her need is satisfied, she has no more motivation to do as he wants – and he has no more power to influence her behavior.
This relates to your observations in Savior Schema:
In your example, Captain Save a Ho has rewarded the woman before he got what he wanted. He gave her his resources, which she desired, and satisfied her need for him. Thus, she no longer “desires” him and he has no power to get what he wants from her anymore.
Biker Boyfriend does not reward the woman before he gets what he wants. This is because she presumably wants some sort of sexual thrill, orgasm, or even his sperm. Given the nature of what she wants (his “power”), she cannot get what she wants (thrill/orgasm/sperm) until she gives him what he wants (sex). As a result, her need is not satisfied, she still has the motivation of desire, and he has the power to get what he wants from her.
Thus, from a power and influence standpoint, it is less important “what” the woman wants from the man in exchange for sex (food, labor, orgasm, sperm), it is more important “when” she gets it. If she gets what she wants first, then her need is satisfied, her motivation and desire to have sex is gone, and the man no longer has power to get what he wants in return. If he holds off, then she is still needful, motivated, desires sex with him (for some reason), and the man has power to get what he wants too.
Overall, that is why the woman “wants” to have sex with the Biker – because he has not yet met her need. If the Captain didn’t provision her first, she would still “want” to have sex with him too. Also, if the Biker “gifted” his sperm to her for artificial insemination, she would no longer desire to have sex with him either.
Actually, there are quite a few reasons, beyond physical desire and pleasure, that motivate women to have sex. I talk about them here: Why People Say Yes to Sex!
November 22nd, 2013 at 8:08 pm
Messed up the html… Here is the link:
Why People Say Yes to Sex!
November 22nd, 2013 at 8:12 pm
Ya of course, Dr J, not diminishing the importance of reproduction, but I’m trying to make the point here that as we have evolved economically and culturally, our mortality rate has PLUMMETED, and that was the POINT!!
How much effort has been spent on curing cancer and TB and smallpox? How much money has been spent developing long-range weaponry so we didn’t have to send in ground troops? How much time has been spent eliminating all the extreme industrial safety risks that killed millions? The population of the planet grows by 25,000 every DAY. Its not a worry anymore.
So the relative importance of childbearing has correspondingly diminished! We no longer have to bear 12 children per family in order to grow the species, to ensure our survival. Since the baby factory got downsized, what, pray, is a traditional woman supposed to do with the rest of her time here, while she waits for hubby to come home from working his tough ol’ job to support her lifestyle? Eat bonbons and watch Maury Povitch? Work out so she looks hot for you? Shop? Gossip with her girlfriends? Mop the floor? Invent stuff? Start a dog-walking service?
No, she finds something more meaningful to do with her life.
November 22nd, 2013 at 8:19 pm
I can’t speak for HUS, Rollo, I’ve never been there, but I post pretty routinely on policymic, huffpost and jezebel and i never find that rational conversation is censored. Its only comments that are excessively provocative, deliberate trolling, that gets censored.
I have mixed feelings about censorship, because I love the free speech aspect, but as long as you don’t have an agenda (ie. policymic), the censorship can be used to keep the quality of the discussion high or on topic. On a site like huffpost, you can see how quickly the quality of the conversation degrades to a pissing match when there isn’t any oversight, and the conversation development is seriously stunted.
But anyway, I do appreciate that you’ve let me stay! Even though you guys have been really mean (sniff).
Kidding. Kidding!!
November 22nd, 2013 at 8:21 pm
Policymic cuts posters that violate the rules of conduct, which include personal insult and violence, and I don’t think that’s bad. If anyone came here to your site and spoke violently towards you, you would be well within your jurisdiction to escort them out and I wouldn’t hold it against you.
But you all seem like (mostly) you’re quite capable of humiliating an opponent into departing on their own…
November 22nd, 2013 at 8:46 pm
Wha…? Burn, you’re confused. I said those things AFTER you said you thought younger feminists (under 30) are cute and misguided. To which I responded with some truth.
I hope you aren’t actually resorting to correcting my typos and logic faults in order to demonstrate my maturity level. Cuz that would be kind of like admitting defeat.
You may not have noticed but that post you referred to, it was about my 50th here, and only was directed at the more pitifully ill-founded and increasingly angry arguments being made at me without responding to any of my points, and the making of false accusations, which kind of started sounding a lot like “pissed off dumpee” voice instead of “intelligent man making a sound argument” voice. I called you on it. You don’t like being talked down to by a woman? Sue me. I don’t like being berated illogically any more than you do. When you get back to talking to me like the rationalmale you wanna be, I’ll be right here.
And what I actually said was.. I’m 44, and my mom was a 2nd wave feminist. She’s 71. We’ve both been in this world a while now, and I’m not unlearned about reality, as you were attempting to imply by your comment. And I’m not a feminist because of her “tutelage”, and though she did raise me right, I’m sure she would tell you she never planned on me turning out this way.
So please, Burn, just don’t be a dick, ok? I don’t talk to dicks anymore.
November 22nd, 2013 at 8:58 pm
Ferrett, take it easy… I don’t live in America, I don’t know what your women are like. I hear quite often though that they’re really fat and selfish and bitchy. Maybe you want to consider sourcing elsewhere?
Anyway…
“Life isn’t fair for the vast majority of people. Most are born in middling circumstances and you have to scratch and claw your way up. The ‘fair’ way is actually what our found fathers said “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. That’s all you get. You take those three things and make the best of it. You don’t rig all the whole system to fuck over others royally just because you are a bitchy woman who got genetically dealt a poor hand.”
Interesting. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You don’t rig the whole system to fuck others over…
How ironic. I think thats what I’ve been arguing about all week…feminism is about exactly that, only you choose only to see it from your own point of view, the hardship angle, which is just what you’re accusing me of doing. You think the system is rigged? So do we. I’ve been talking here, simply trying to get you to stop being so myopic. I guess that was pointless.
Anyway, computer time is over, I”m going curling and beer drinking now.
Bye guys, hope your weekend is good.
November 22nd, 2013 at 9:04 pm
Nope, no power imbalance whatsoev,..ehr,..
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/21/fashion/social-networking-App-allows-women-to-rate-men.html?_r=0
November 22nd, 2013 at 9:19 pm
Having just read this comment thread, I want to again thank Rollo for allowing such a diverse discussion.
LivingTree, you seem like an intelligent, practical woman. Why are you defending the feminists, most of whom are hellbent on fake victimization of women. In today’s world, there is zero reason for feminism. A woman can have anything she wants as long as she understands the tradeoffs. Just because those tradeoffs exist (e.g. Career vs. Family) and one can’t have it all does not mean that the world is unfair or prejudiced against women. Modern feminism is nothing more than unfiltered whining of spoiled women with the mindset of children.
On the other hand, reading some of the comments about how the world was more sane when women were economically dependent on men, I can’t help but see them as the male equivalent of feminism. We live in a free country where each person should try to achieve their optimal freedom. Being able to provide for oneself is a very basic need. I cannot imagine how we create a better world where half of the population is the equivalent of an economic cripple.
November 22nd, 2013 at 9:31 pm
“LivingTree, you seem like an intelligent, practical woman. Why are you defending the feminists, most of whom are hellbent on fake victimization of women.”
“Anyway, computer time is over, I”m going curling and beer drinking now”
She’s probably Scandinavian. They are no where near as bad and horrible as American feminists. They actually do believe in equality between the sexes not feminine domination like the American girls. It’s still a pipe dream but it’s not the total toxic environment of the US. However, multiculturalism is coming for them in Sweden and Norway. It’s a much greater threat to their country’s peace and happiness than feminism by a mile.
November 22nd, 2013 at 10:10 pm
@livingtree2013
This is a terrible habit some people with elements of solipsism fall into, presuming the personal when someone else is speaking of the general. Clearly when I said “core perversion”, I did not say, “livingtree2013 clearly is stupid and thinks this…”
And why should women need that? By what form of equality by fiat should society be guaranteeing that women are not destitute without a man in their life? Does society guarantee that all single men get the opportunity to spread their DNA into the next generation? I see no programs for men to sign up and guarantee that their sperm is used in a new human being that will be raised to adulthood, and the avenues that exist to make that happen are certainly not subsidized by taxes.
A sexually dimorphic species requires the participation of both sexes to ensure the happiness of all. If you remove the one side’s need for the other, you deliberately unbalance the equation. Women had (and still have) legitimate fear of ending up old, single, and childless. That is a legitimate fear, in no way do I intend on ignoring the reality of that fear women have. However, your legitimate fear does not justify theft of my income through government to subsidize the existence of single mothers and their bastard children’s existence. Your legitimate fear does not justify removing the need for me and hence reducing the voluntary participation of me or men like me in women’s lives by offering a substitute in the form of tax dollars forcefully taken away from me and given to irresponsible women. That is the distortion of our species that is justified with the “independent woman” brand, which effectively means “independent of men” just as Rollo states.
November 23rd, 2013 at 12:54 am
I have to admit, I could only get through so many of the comments (or should I say Friday Night Fights) and then just had to quit. Interesting dialogue though – but I will say this again…
I know we can’t legally keep the woman of the clubhouse, but by engaging them, you only encourage their continued participation.
And for further clarification of my point…about the economic push woman provided…we have the become the number one consumer nation in the world (which is not necessarily a good thing) — and yes, Men would purchase things, I like suits and sport coats – but I have three suits and four sport coats, that I actually wear on a rotating basis. I have about 7 pairs of shoes, that I wear at least once a week (for different purposes) – I have ZERO nick-knacks on my shelfs, I have ZERO crafty signs in my yard, I buy a decent but inexpensive laundry detergent.
When I was married – and witnessed this unbridled consumerism – my (x)wife had at least 50 pairs of shoes, a closet full of clothes (most of which she never wore), bought the most expensive laundry detergent, had shit on every shelf, wall and cubby hole, So even if a Man bought a shotgun, he probably wouldn’t buy 12 of them unless he was a collector; He won’t have a closet full of clothes; in general, most woman are over consumers, and Men consume what they want/desire – while leaving the rest for someone else.
That was my point. And that our economic boom is as much to do with the increase of woman in the workplace, making “money” – that is basically spent to consume more shit. And talking about the 50’s….how many people had 3k or 4k square foot homes? or two cars, let alone a 2 car garage? When I mentioned it, I was not necessarily it was a good thing – it is more evidence of the where we have gone wrong, not right.
///end rant
November 23rd, 2013 at 12:59 am
BTW Rollo — congrats on another fine article — it appears this one struck a cord also. As always, good reading, and very entertaining comments.
November 23rd, 2013 at 5:48 am
Well now. The kind persons from MiniTru are on a similar wavelength to our loquacious Canadienne. Not required on voyage, hombres, unless we bloody well buck up our ideas and make ourselves more docile, obliging and unconditionally giving, i.e. pet-like.
Why can’t a man be more like a .. nice fluffy cat, eh?
Although naturally, being the Beeb, they have absolutely no fucking clue about sciency stuff, and therefore misinterpret the findings in the preferred direction of femarchy. As the boffin said ” this is of limited use in understanding human fertility” (added bonus of insulting and irrelevant stock photo at the head. Nice.)
Seems to be as far as they’ve got since 2004 on the actual science.
Is the (ostensibly male) author dreaming of the day women can have truly awesome ueber-kinder by parthogenesis? Like bees, or lizards.
Bring it on.
November 23rd, 2013 at 11:17 am
” the ultimate purpose of feminism is rooted in securing (by social engineering and legal force) an optimized hypergamy for women.”
An optimized hypergamy AGAINST women. A woman blinded by her vagina is useless.
November 23rd, 2013 at 11:23 am
LOLOL Give ’em hell, living tree! They love it as much as you do ;) (Not to mention the blog hits.)
November 23rd, 2013 at 1:15 pm
Rollo…might be worth a blog post to turn the tables a bit. You’ve written excellent articles about “woman” — it might be interesting to take a look at the “stages of a Man in years” — and the phases a Man goes through in his life with regard to “women”. Because, now, because I’m a “man of certain age”, have kids, had a wife, been with more than a couple women in the life, getting my shit back together (including my health, body, finances, mission) – I really have less desire to do the “dance” and chase. I guess that could change, but most of it seems pointless – just to have sex or a sense of companionship.
The point I’m making is this….in my teens, twenties, and early thirties, before I got married…I was “looking for a mate” — I found one, it didn’t work out, but now no desire to look for that. Just think it would be interesting to put the microscope back on us for a post or two – of course, you may already have done that and I missed it.
November 23rd, 2013 at 1:31 pm
I’m waiting to hear a justification from the women for government-guaranteed female independence, to the point of taxation of men. No government-guaranteed mother-of-your-children is ever provided to the men, particularly the men who die in wars for those same women. How can women justify assuaging their fears by using the power of the state to force men to support them, while men are forced to die for the state with no chance of ever having children?
November 23rd, 2013 at 2:11 pm
Jeremy, thank you for that. While you are “waiting to hear a justification” for the humanity of men being ignored/exploited in favor of women’s pursuit to secure resources for themselves and ‘their’ children, I’m waiting to connect the dots of future news stories about vigilante justice.
Men also have children. My son is 10 years old. The thought that someday, before he’s even 25, I could see him leaving the house to go to a scrub job he’s locked for into years because of some $700 a month court-ordered child support payment is horrifying. (“She said it was an accident.” Her body, her choice, his responsibility.) The celebrated ‘Momma Grisly’ is just another you-go-grrl paper tiger compared to a murderously angry father protecting *his* child. In time, if the courts continue to be unable to provide justice, some men will begin get their own. The ‘shot-gun wedding’ of the past could become the shot-gun abortion of the future. Not the future I want to see.
Consider the above a seg-way to this: one male contraceptive on ‘equal’ par with any of the numerous options had by women will change our culture and inter-gender dynamics as profoundly as ‘the pill’ once did.
November 23rd, 2013 at 2:14 pm
I’m somewhat curious to know living tree, what sort of feminist are you?
November 23rd, 2013 at 7:44 pm
I like the point regarding male contraception. This will be a huge fight at some point. There is just too much of this nonsense happening for it not to become a movement. We are already seeing a changing tide in regard to custody rights for fathers. It is only a matter of time before the de facto confiscation of male sperm by scummy women gets brought under the microscope.
November 24th, 2013 at 10:58 am
I heard someone saying women’s work is still not appreciated enough. I know everyone has heard of it, but how much status a job gets is not primarily a function of what sex does it the most (at least not in the western society). Garbadge collecting is mostly male, but is not very high status.
November 24th, 2013 at 2:55 pm
The point that livingtree consistently avoided addressing is that feminists did not truly seek independence itself — they also sought, and continue to seek and receive, plenty of coddling and special treatment along the way. Not many in the manosphere disapprove of a woman seeking a high status career if that is where her heart lies, but if that high status career is attained through achievement in a public school system in which the curriculum, mode of instruction, staffing, etc, all happen to be more favorable to female students, and through gendered affirmative action, etc, then we have an issue. These feminists want the fruits of success while rigging the law, through welfare, unfair divorce laws, mandatory excessive child support laws, etc, a safety net scheme that protects women should they not succeed and isn’t available to the males they “compete” against!
November 24th, 2013 at 3:51 pm
Forced equality is not true equality. Few people will argue about true equality, there is logic behind the argument. But celebrating weakness (not strength) and trying to make things “fair” only makes us all weaker.
November 24th, 2013 at 5:47 pm
LT wrote “Men remind me constantly that this gender disparity exists in the school system because teachers’ pay is so bad (yet again, devaluing the work that women do), and the fact that men work for status and money, not for personal reward or social contribution (which is womanly)”
This is hilarious. Public school teachers in Los Angeles (LAUSD) earn an average of $67,000 per year (2012 data, look it up). Each of the elementary and middle school teachers that I know here have a salary that exceeds $80,000 per year. Richard Dreyfuss wants good teachers too (10 second clip) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Fv6AIe_PeU
When the children complete school they are not qualified to do most things we have to outsource to other nations with superior education standards. Now that private “common core” funding is affecting most schools in the U S, teachers will earn even more. That’s great news for teachers. Students will still not understand basic economics, but of course that doesn’t really matter. As long as they exchange dollars for solid gold, they’ll be just fine.
Social contribution is only womanly? LT has a point. Most of the choreography, wardrobe and scripting for the well-planned Miley Cyrus performance at the Mtv VMAs was done by intelligent, talented women. It all took months to develop. Never, ever underestimate the value of social contributions by women. The fashion, the way Miley Cyrus played with her non-existent hair when she came out of that bear, the ‘twerk’ movement that’s gone global, the other music videos repeatedly viewed by the young daughters of people that work with us in countries from around the world.
They’ve formed images of average women in the U S thanks to the social contributions.
Men should value these social contributions more. After all, LT mentioned Macklemore as a force that LT believes is threatening to egos of single dads. Since the music of brand Macklemore targets girls ages six and up (not men), LT has a point. Single dads are intimidated by song lyrics they’ve never heard. Hundreds of women have worked to make brand Macklemore famous to women. Ben, Ryan, their brand image, their performances, the sound, the lyrics and so on… it’s taken planning and endless work by talented women.
Men: FYI, you should listen to music you’re not the audience of… and, when you hear it, be intimidated. It’s the least you can do.
November 25th, 2013 at 12:39 am
[…] it was throughout last week’s commentary about the branding of the Strong Independent Woman® social template offered and reinforced by the feminist mindset, and endorsed wholesale by […]
November 25th, 2013 at 12:46 pm
Good morning gents! Hope you all had a pleasant weekend away from your troubles.
Tam, your first up – I’m not implying that teaching in general is a low-paid profession. If you read the whole thread in context rather than cherry picking the words from certain sentences, you’d understand the point in its context.
Teaching at the pre-school/kindergarten level is one of the lowest paid professions in America. Elementary is higher, secondary is even higher, and post-secondary is the highest. You need the same teaching degree to teach p/k, elem, and secondary, but they are paid differently according to “importance”. Can you guess the dispersion by gender in those three classifications?
Also noteworthy is the spread in post-secondary teachers. Engineering, economics, and law professors get paid +100k, while architecture, social science, and medical professors get paid somewhere closer to $80k. Guess again on the gender preferences!
It is not a coincidence. It is not because the job is soooo much more demanding or valuable to the world either. The workload for a university professor is the same, and so is the PhD requirement for the job, regardless of discipline. The only difference is perception of status.
The point is that male-dominated professions just pay better, because you guys think your time is worth more.
I recall years ago when I was starting out in my current profession (construction management), talking to my workplace mentor, an older gentleman in senior management, about how interesting I thought it was to see the number of women in the junior-management positions, assuming, naturally – and naively- that they would eventually lead to the senior management positions. That seemed like progress to me!
He told me, with depressing candor, that I was incorrect in my assumption. It was because there were very few men willing to work for what the industry was willing to pay for junior. The men, with similar qualifications, they get put immediately into intermediate or senior positions, not because they deserve it, but because they wont work for less.
Looking around at the industry in later years, +75% of junior managers are female now, but only 5% of senior managers are. Know why? Because the females, having almost no avenue for restitution, since it is a systematic bias, get tired of being passed over, and leave the field. I persevered though, I sucked it up because this is what I love doing, and eventually I got my due – after I passed out of my child-bearing years, that was.
November 25th, 2013 at 1:25 pm
…said the person with no understanding of economics.
November 25th, 2013 at 1:33 pm
Good article Martel, and I agree 100%. I would agree more if it were mathematically possible. I’ve ranted on this topic many times!
We rely too heavily on the concept of rights in this culture. The only natural right we have is the right to exist (the liberty, as you call it, to do whatever we need to in order to exist).
And for that right, we have the collateral responsibility to “respect” (though you know I hate the word) the right of others to exist too, and that means no-one has the right to take anything that belongs to anyone else, because it interferes with their right to exist without interference. This law is the essential foundation of every other law.
I also do not have the “right” to be provided with work, nor do I have the right to earn money, or the right to keep it once it is given, because the money I “earned” is not actually mine. It belongs to the state, which is a lending institution – you see their mark upon it, do you not? They “loaned” it to me, for a fee (my labour) so that my life might be easier, but by law they are entitled to recall their currency at any time.
But I’m off topic, I could go for hours on this one…. anyway, I’m guessing that I know what your point was for bringing this up in the context of this article. You are trying to make a case that women don’t have the “right” to work or, to vote or the right to do anything other than exist. Correct? And I don’t disagree with you if thats the case.
But neither do men. Right? Can I assume you’d agree with that? Because most of what we call a “right” is not a right in and of itself. It is a derivative which stems from having the right to exist – as does all liberty. I have as much freedom to work as you do, or to do anything that you do for that matter, and you standing in the way of that freedom is interfering with my right to exist as I see fit. You do not have the right to impose your will on me.
Plain and simple.
But by treating men like they are more valuable, you are (and by “you” I mean you in the non-specific sense) in fact imposing your will on me. Of course, I have the choice to work in higher paid fields if I want to, for example, and that is, in part, why I chose construction management, but since I made that choice, does it seem right that I should be treated differently because I am female, which is an imposition of will? (see my last post to Tam a few moments ago).
The thing is with the right to exist, it has effects on a human scale that require a broader understanding than simplifying it to an eat-or-be-eaten primitive level. We are more advanced than that, and our understanding of the basic natural right to exist must advance with it. The definition of “existence” has to be broadened to beyond food and water. It is a definition that includes removal of obstacles preventing actual liberty from occurring.
I think that your issue is that you don’t really approve of the standard of living that people have come to expect as part of their right to exist. A standard is not a right, but the standard is the point of being a resident of a 1st world country, as opposed to, say, a resident of Eritrea or Pakistan. We treat each other to a higher standard here. Or at least we used to. I see that coming to an end soon, but that standard of living is something that we worked very hard to create, as a society, the ENTIRE purpose of which was reducing unnecessary mortality.
The constructs of law in the US are, in fact, set up that people are afforded the same existence rights as everyone else, but the reality is that is not how the world works. There seems to be a growing number of people who think the natural right should be limited to a dog-eat-dog society, where if you are poor, you have less right to exist than if you are rich. If you are female, you have less right to exist than if you are male. If you are gay, you have less right to exist than straight. Black/white, immigrant/citizen, etc. etc. etc.
Extending the argument to health care – no-one has the “right” to health care, affordable or otherwise. You do, however, have the right to continue your existence by whatever means available, without an unjust obstacle being placed in your way to prevent it. That includes extending your existence by way of unrestricted access to modern health care.
The government is required, as an extension of the right of its residents to exist, to provide whatever measures are necessary to allow all residents uninhibited access to whatever is required to extend their existence. THAT is why health care is better off being a government-based system, rather than a fee-based system.
I can’t wait for your rebuttal!
November 25th, 2013 at 1:40 pm
SPECTACULAR post Dr. Jeremy (the one about negotiated intimacy, that is – I haven’t yet made it through all of the 20+ new posts on this article since I was here on Friday).
November 25th, 2013 at 2:02 pm
@ New Yorker – thank you for the compliment. I try to keep a calm head and make an effort to understand things from other points of view, even if they don’t reciprocate.
I gather it wasn’t apparently from my comments, but I’m not defending feminists. I don’t know them all personally, I wouldn’t even dream of trying to do such a thing because I know some of them are terrible people. I WILL, however, go to the death to defend FEMINISM, despite its misuse and abuse by so many, because I understand the importance of its values.
I agree with most of what you said, except that the tradeoff is unfair to women, not because we have to sacrifice time with our kids to go to work – that is a fair and reasonable conclusion to draw which most women fully appreciate and don’t complain about.
The unfair part is that we often can’t find partners who accept their part of the trade-off in the relationship, whatever the reason. Nor (in reality, not in theory of law) is the “optimal freedom” the same for women as it is for men. I speak from several decades of life experience here, and if put to the test I could probably draw up another ten thousand or so women in about 15 minutes who would back me up on this.
Its a systemic problem though, as I mentioned earlier (more than once). It is not the result of oppression by men, though sometimes it appears that way I know it is not a deliberate effort. It is the result of many, many, many layers of systemic reinforcement in our culture, many of which are difficult to quantify or report on, and even more difficult to remove, which supports the belief that men are more valuable than women. Its unfortunate that it comes off as whining to you. It is really incredibly insulting that you guys don’t see this as being a problem, because it is, quite literally, everywhere, and widely accepted as being perfectly logical.
I could spend years outlining examples for you.
Here’s an example I read about this weekend:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harris-oamalley/on-labeling-women-crazy_b_4259779.html
November 25th, 2013 at 2:08 pm
No, Ferrett, I told you guys already I’m Canadian. I dont have a clue what American feminists are like in comparison to the rest of the world’s feminists, but it sure sounds like you have your hands full. I mean, I know girls up here too that call themselves feminists but still think that men should pay for everything and buy them presents to show how much they value them. It makes me want to puke.
But they are in the minority. Most women I know here are quite legitimately independent.
November 25th, 2013 at 2:54 pm
I would have so much more respect for MRAs if they manned up, stopped drinking their koolaid, and faced the reality out there about themselves/men: http://www.sheckys.com/2011/04/04/my-boyfriends-unemployment-is-affecting-our-relationship/
November 25th, 2013 at 3:07 pm
It’s a good thing you’re not speaking to MRAs, they might laugh at your obvious troll. As it stands you’re commenting in a forum of men, who are much more likely to ignore your facile demands.
November 25th, 2013 at 3:44 pm
This is off topic.
However, I find it completely absurd, such that it needs a response. You seem to believe that people have a natural right to exist, but no other “natural” rights. But what is existence? How do you define your existence? Is lying on a bed with tubes in your throat and a catheter hooked up sufficient existence? Do you have no say in exactly how you exist? Is someone who is in a coma the only pure expression of the exercise of natural rights? They’re existing, and nothing else, so a comatose patient would seem to be the best example of someone who is not taking rights that do not belong to them, by your definition.
That’s kinda gross.
I say you’re entirely wrong. I say other rights do exist. The most important right is self-ownership. This means that the fruit of your body, that which is created by you, is owned by you. The animal kingdom itself follows this concept. You don’t see ants of different species welcoming ants of all species into their domiciles to breed do you? So clearly one team “owns” the anthill they built with their own blood, don’t they? What was built by them, is owned by them. Babies don’t even need to be taught this concept of ownership. Hell, watch any 1-2 year old and they get upset when something is taken away from them. The concept of “mine” is NEVER taught to a child. Anyone who’s raised kids knows they simply hit a state where they take things and presume ownership. The parents inevitably then must teach the child to share, where they learn that only what they’ve worked for is theirs.
So, I find your reasoning to be absolutely incorrect. other natural rights do exist, they exist in nature, so I call them natural. Humans would be wise to not try to ignore what nature exists within us in constructing a society.
November 25th, 2013 at 4:26 pm
SO i think, Jeremy, that in spite of all our arguing here, we are all actually talking about the same problem, just from different angles.
Women largely AREN’T actually independent, like the meme says, and like many of them would have you believe. We recognize that, and are attempting to fix that. But a lot of that is because there are many, MANY parameters that reinforce that in our social structure, that just can’t seem to be fixed easily. Not just in the welfare system, I mean in our daily lives.
Me personally, I’m too stubborn to let any one, either government or husband or family or employer, take care of my “needs” for me, and I’ve worked very hard to make sure it stays that way. I never want that day to come. I wish there were more women who felt the same way, we’d be a lot better off if there were, but I don’t want to be arrogant about it.
But then again, I don’t have kids. I try not to be judgmental, but I do have a hard time relating to women in those circumstances because I wasn’t one of the fool-ass women who got duped by public pressure, or who labor under their own stupidity, into having a baby at 18, and keeping it, despite being single and poor and completely ill-equipped to support it without government support.
There’s not much getting out of the dependency loop once you’re in it, and I’m frankly quite surprised there isn’t more being done to discourage young poor single women from having/keeping their babies. But I guess that would be violating their personal freedom or something.
(Note: since my real “needs” are being addressed by my own effort, that leaves me free to appreciate kind treatment when it is given, such as a door being opened or a drink bought for me, because it doesn’t feel patronizing anymore.
Nothing makes a girl feel insecure like being told that she can’t do for herself, it creates an extreme defensiveness in us. I could write reams and reams on this topic alone).
November 25th, 2013 at 4:53 pm
“I also do not have the “right” to be provided with work, nor do I have the right to earn money, or the right to keep it once it is given, because the money I “earned” is not actually mine. It belongs to the state, which is a lending institution – you see their mark upon it, do you not? They “loaned” it to me, for a fee (my labour) so that my life might be easier, but by law they are entitled to recall their currency at any time. “
I disagree in that we’re not allowed to use other currencies, so ascribing to this view implies we have no property rights. Were the US dollar merely one of several legal currencies floating around, sure. But it’s not. This is part of why I oppose fiat currencies.
“You are trying to make a case that women don’t have the ‘right’ to work or, to vote or the right to do anything other than exist. Correct? And I don’t disagree with you if thats the case. But neither do men. Right?”
Correct. Regarding voting, I support democracy within a Constitutional context because popular will is one of several legitimate competing interests that requires some sort of representation within government.
“But by treating men like they are more valuable, you are (and by ‘you’ I mean you in the non-specific sense) in fact imposing your will on me.”
First, I don’t believe that men are more “valuable” (I can’t speak for everybody here). Second, even if I did, thinking one person is more valuable than another “imposes my will” no more nor less than their opinion of me. I value my mother more than the dude I bought the Mountain Dew from yesterday, but so long as I don’t deprive (active verb) them of their rights, I’ve done nothing that should be banned.
“I have the choice to work in higher paid fields if I want to, for example, and that is, in part, why I chose construction management, but since I made that choice, does it seem right that I should be treated differently because I am female, which is an imposition of will?”
Nobody has the right to use physical force against you (except in self-defense) or to defraud you out of your time or property. You do not have the right to stifle their opinions of you, be they abhorrent, correct, or just plain dumb. You’re feelings (as legitimate as they may be) give you no right to force them to treat you how you think you should be treated.
Now work is starting to get busy, but I’ve dealt with some of the rest already here:
http://alphaisassumed.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/liberty-to-the-people/
November 25th, 2013 at 4:54 pm
@Tin Man, I totally agree with everything you said, I did not mean my comment to be taken as a positive spin either, just to say that we both take part in the economy. But consumerism is an escape for us, we are ever more stimulated and capitalized upon, encouraged to spend and spend and spend, to alleviate boredom or distract us from our unpleasant realities.
It is so much more true for women than men. Women almost always buy stuff to stifle their feelings of depression, like having more stuff will make us into better people. I don’t think men do that. Do they? Maybe, I don’t know.
Men buy fewer things, generally, but what they buy tends to be much more expensive – power mowers, big trucks, motorcycles, etc…. Women tend to buy lots of little things. There are pros and cons to both, but as was mentioned, the American economy would not have been elevated to the heights it reached back in the 90’s if not for women’s participation in it. There would be so many fewer successful businesses if this country if not for both sexes.
Also, the recession of 2007, the hardest hit were men when the jobs in finance, manufacturing and construction were severely cut. Jobs that women traditionally hold – social services, health, education, etc. – were still very much in demand in a recession, if not more so due to increased unemployment.
See this is the point I’ve been trying to make here. In matters of economics, our participation both has a place of value. You just happen to value yours more. Or at least that is how it seems to us by all the evidence we see.
November 25th, 2013 at 4:54 pm
Absolutely Jeremy, many women still fear ending up old, single and childless, mainly because we get our social approval from whether or not we have a man and/or a baby. I’m sure men also suffer from this discrimination, maybe more so. Honestly, I’m glad to see that there are starting to be some men resisting this pressure from society and going it alone, I think its like 30 years overdue.
I just wish it wasn’t being done out of anger, but I get that you have to go through the anger phase, and its probably been repressed for so long that you have a lot to let go of. (again, I use the term “you” in the generic sense, not you personally).
OK so I get where this is all going now. This is actually a welfare issue, couched in a feminism issue.
If you’re talking about feminism, I have some issues with what you said, and I’ve said them all already at least once so I’m not going to repeat my points, because everything I’ve said so far is 100% relevant to this point.
But if we’re talking about system dependency here, the fact that you can earn more on welfare than on minimum wage, or in some cases, two full time jobs paying minimum wage added together, does not indicate there’s something fundamentally wrong with welfare as a premise, or with feminism either. What it does indicate is that there’s something fundamentally flawed with the whole system of income distribution.
It is a system which not only allows “men’s work” to be deemed of higher-value than “women’s work”, thus maintaining the ages-old system of women’s dependency. It allows some people to earn 10x more in a day than others earn in an entire year. And it also allows a minimum wage that is considerably below the poverty line.
I mean, there’s something fundamentally wrong with a 1st world country if 20% of the population cant afford the most basic cost of living in that country, even though they work full time.
I do not doubt in any way at all that the US welfare system as it is now does more harm than good in its current state, to everyone involved, despite all the efforts to rectify it. But if you’re genuinely concerned about the number of women collecting welfare, be assured – feminists are too!:
:
http://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/CWLUArchive/welfare.html
Bear in mind, this article has a most definitively angry-feminist-anti-patriarchy leaning, but if you can get past all the blame, it fully supports what I think you’re trying to say.
November 25th, 2013 at 4:55 pm
@LT
Yes you do need men as you keep stating you do. But that sentence is not complete. You need men to go against their biology. The “go against their biology” is the part that you refuse to acknowledge, but it underlies nearly every one of your arguments. A million years of evolution will not be denied let alone reversed in a short time.
November 25th, 2013 at 5:13 pm
@bob, I can’t agree with you on the optimized hypergamy concept – that may have been the intention, even subversively, but it just didn’t happen that way.
Women who actively seek a higher quality of life by their own efforts find that they have less mating choices than “lesser” women if they engage in hypergamic behavior, because like it or not, most men still prefer to engage in hypogamic behavior.
It would be ideal if the freedom of women to pursue higher education and income would have collaterally resulted in men also being pushed to higher levels to compete for them, or even in them being OK with a role adjustment, but neither has occurred.
Instead, disenfranchised men feel like they’re getting pushed out. Or maybe that they just don’t have what it takes to compete for a really high-quality woman anymore because they are too far out of their league. I’m not sure which, maybe a combination of both. Consequently, men are not bothering to make themselves seem attractive to high quality women, and becoming depressed and angry about it.
November 25th, 2013 at 5:18 pm
Hehehe,..I love how LT hasn’t taken the time to read today’s post and yet she yammers on in this one basically confirming everything I go into in Nursing Power.
Please continue LT it’s very entertaining.
November 25th, 2013 at 5:21 pm
Or maybe that they just don’t have what it takes to compete for a really high-quality woman anymore because they are too far out of their league. I’m not sure which, maybe a combination of both. Consequently, men are not bothering to make themselves seem attractive to high quality women, and becoming depressed and angry about it.
LT,
I suspect this paragraph is rife with solipsism.
First, define for me “high-quality woman”. In order to make your definition meaningful, RESTRICT your list to 2-3 criteria, absolutely no more than 3. The point is to see how your prioritize characteristics/traits in terms of attributing “quality”.
Secondly, ponder this. Do you think the average guy defines “quality woman” in the same way the average woman does? Once you’ve answered that, then ask is the average heterosexual woman trying to attract a man or a woman?
Hint: Career success/professional achievement is a nice thing to have, but it doesn’t make too many guys top 2-3 list for a “quality woman”.
You’ve left a great number of lengthy comments. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to address many of your misconceptions.
November 25th, 2013 at 5:52 pm
OK Jeremy, in answer to your question about the government-guaranteed female independence, here is a question I want you to ponder before we can discuss this fully…. bear with me to the end, ok? Please?
I’m asking this seriously, I want to hear your POV on this question.
We “know” that the vast majority of welfare recipients are single mothers. Lets just skip over all the blame, and the rationalization, and the long-term effects, and all that crap, and go straight to a hypothetical analysis based on the content of this conversation only.
You guys keep saying that you DO value “women’s work”, you value it as much as “men’s work”, in the bigger context, because having babies and raising them up right is just so special and important.
OK so lets just say, for the sake of simplicity, that women’s work is limited to having and raising children properly. Men’s work is… everything else related to making the world work, so that women can focus on the onerous task of making sure the kids grow up properly.
So, if that were all true, and if the population of the country is roughly equal between the sexes, then women could expect to be paid half of what men earn to do their very important job, which is, the job of having babies and raising them up right, because it is equally valued by society, and by a woman’s husband. You, as a husband, should be providing your wife and mother of your children with an “income” (or equivalent) of 50% of your take-home pay, if in fact you valued her contribution equally. Are you with me so far?
So then, if all of that were true, should it really then matter whether that income split comes from a husband directly, or from the government by tax assessment and redistribution? Its the same outcome, essentially, isn’t it?
As in…
If there were no such thing as child support payments or alimony, and all other taxpayer funded “social benefits” systems were eliminated, and if then half of every man’s after-tax income (after their contribution for highway maintenance, national security, corporate welfare, etc etc.) was pooled into a big pot to pay an income to every full-time mother in the land, regardless of who their kids father is or whether they’re married…how much different would the picture look than it does today, do you think?