Victory passes back and forth between men. – Homer, Iliad (VI, 339)
In my column of one year ago yesterday I predicted that the long pendulum swing toward women having greater rights than men was ending, and that the resentment engendered by this swing would soon result in a backlash against women’s rights. I don’t think I need to point out that this has since begun; in the past year laws against women’s sexual freedom have multiplied dramatically, and that is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Blinded by their insane hatred of men, neofeminists gave government the rhetoric and public support they needed to restrict women’s sexuality “for our own good”, and they now seem surprised that the poison tree they’ve cultivated for three decades has borne the only fruit it could have borne. Unfortunately, most women and many men are so lost in a fog of neofeminist dogma that they insist on seeing what is happening as a partisan “War on Women” instead of what it actually is: a bipartisan assault on all human rights, especially sexual rights. It isn’t that men are going to gain rights at the expense of women; it’s simply that women are now going to be ground down in the same way men have been ground down over the past twenty years, so that the yoke fits nice and level across all of our backs.
Furry Girl recently called attention to this blog post from Dr. Marty Klein, which I think sums it up pretty well:
…Saying birth control is immoral doesn’t just disempower women—it disempowers people. Requiring vaginal probes before granting the increasingly rare privilege of abortion doesn’t just trivialize women’s lives—it trivializes people’s lives. Women shouldn’t complain as women, they should complain as people…That said, let’s stop blaming men (“all-male church,” “mostly-male Congress,” “male-run Fox News,” etc.) for doing all this bad stuff to women. Women vote to put anti-sex politicians in office…Women support the churches that keep anti-sex politicians in office. Women buy the newspapers and consume the radio and TV programs (like Rush’s) that promote moral panics about sexuality. And let’s remember that when women get political power they typically act like men when it comes to sex…virtually every female Republican governor and Congressmember of the last decade has voted to restrict access to abortion and birth control…But again, it’s a mistake to think of this as a war on women. It’s actually a war on sex. Anything that makes sex safer, more comfortable, healthier, or more pleasurable for women or men is under fire…
If you don’t believe that, consider Rick Santorum’s promise to aggressively prosecute porn websites and viewers and the Susan G. Komen Foundation- Planned Parenthood debacle.
But the patronizing pretense that only women can be victims continues. Take, for example, the once-respected Southern Poverty Law Center’s recent trip down the rabbit hole in which it classes men’s rights and “pickup artist” websites as “hate groups” but completely ignores the violent misandry and sex worker hatred of sites like RadFemHub; presumably, only male anger presents a credible threat, so female hate groups (even those which espouse murder of their enemies) are beneath the SPLC’s notice. Paul Elam of A Voice for Men reacted to the classification of his site as a “hate group” with an open letter to Richard Cohen of the SPLC:
…The work of AVfM is vital and, despite what you may think, not dissimilar from the goals and aims of the SPLC. The beneficiaries of SPLC’s labors are more likely than not to be men…Men are more likely than women to be homeless, on society’s bottom rungs. Men are more likely than women to commit suicide, as well. America’s exploding prison population, which overwhelmingly includes and victimizes the working class and new poor, contains more than 2 million people, but under 100,000 women. This disparity has had profound effects on African-American men, as more of them are incarcerated than in post-secondary education. Young men, ignorant rather than criminal, are placed on lifelong sex offender registries that prevent them from obtaining education and even healthcare, and ensuring that they will never contribute to society. Relatedly, male attendance in higher education has fallen to 40% and continues to diminish, and men lag far behind women in obtaining advanced degrees. The performance of boys in our grade, middle and high schools is deteriorating. Meanwhile, men have become a minority in the workforce, ensuring their further social and economic marginalization, as well as any hope of upward economic mobility…These differences are documented and undeniable. While society once rallied around the right of a woman to control whether she has a child – and the economic consequences it carries – there is no concomitant outcry to ensure men are not laden with the lifelong obligation of another human being…
It’s time to stop the ruinous Gender War which has been foisted on the human race by fanatics with lunatic agendas. It should be clear to anyone in his right mind that men and women are equal stakeholders in the fate of humanity, and that any system which places the rights and privileges of one sex above those of the other creates an inherently unstable condition which will inevitably tend to oscillate in an attempt to restore equilibrium. The pendulum is now headed back to the center, and when it gets there we need to collectively stop it at that point by rejecting the unjust and biased arguments of those who wish to give one sex power over the other; then and only then can men and women work together to defeat the real enemy, the power-mad creatures of both sexes who want to control everyone.
The sermon at church this last Sunday was a checklist of liberal talking points on how women and minorities are victims. By inference, straight white guys like me are the cause of all the evil in society. I’m really tired of being told this sort of thing. I’ve worked hard and I have always treatedpeople well. The result is that I’m alone, I have no family and no hope of ever having a family. And, as you have pointed out, guys like me don’t have any sex life unless we leave the country, the risks of purchasing in America are too great.
Yeah, we have successfully destroyed the family in our society. In a couple of generations people like me will merely be a footnote to history.
Thats because people berate sex before marriage, casual sex etc…..
Why don’t you have a hope of a family?
Wow, a reply a year later. For me to have children, I would need to marry someone at least 20 years younger than I am. That’s a nightmare in modern American society, the amount of abuse I would have to endure while making sure my marriage succeeded is more than I can manage.
The sad part is everyone seems to by buying into the hate. Even a supposed comedy site like “Cracked.com” can come up with an article like “5 Ways Modern Men Are Trained to Hate Women”.
Then I go to Literotica and find a long running thread based on this stupidity entitled “Why modern men hate women”, with loads of women writing in to say how pathetic men are and how much they prefer their vibrators. And then of course some men are drawn in to exchange insults and accusations.
I don’t recall ever having more rights than men. I do recall new stories about Walmart paying women less than men. And those laws requiring vaginal probes, those aren’t aimed at men.
I am still a feminist. I don’t hate men.
I do agree that men are being used as women are these days. If you’re not part of the 1% you count for nothing, and your “rights” are illusion. But it’s not women doing that. It’s capitalism.
One thing i agree with today, and that’s I wonder why women support churches that have only disdain for them. So many “church ladies” work to keep churches going. Let them collapse, I say.
I agree with “chick” this time – totally. I don’t really feel women have more “rights” than men. They DO get preferential treatment in the courts though.
I blame men for a lot of this – this is a world where you have to adapt and improvise – and not just “quit the game” as it appears so many men have.
As far as women supporting churches that “disdain” them. Well this is a goddam mystery to me. Joseph Smith “invented” the Mormon religion in the early 1800’s and then he crafted it to where women could only enter the celestial kingdom if they were attached to a “pius” man. This was used as justification for polygamy – when in reality this was about satiating the sexual appetites of Joseph Smith and giving him a vehicle to reward those men who swore loyalty to him.
Women came from all over the world – all over the world – to join in that mess. I really do believe that women are smarter than men – but damn, this sure doesn’t compute in my mind. No, I have nothing against consensual polygamy but Joe Smith was runnning a sexual “racket” here. Well, he got his jollies from it (for a short time) till he was shot.
To my knowledge – this extreme view of women needing to be attached to a man to enjoy the full benefits of the afterlife is STILL a tenant of the Mormon Church.
And yeah – I’m just picking on the Mormons here because I do believe they have the most radical views on the sexes. Other churches are also guilty – but I think the Mormons take it to a whole different level.
I certainly have heard a lot of criticism of the Mormons. I’ve also seen how successful their culture is and how happy most of the married women I’ve met have been. So I’m looking at what society has been predicting and the actual results and seeing a significant difference.
In addition the Mormons I have met seem to be the nicest and most generous people in society. While they don’t get much press, they do a tremendous amount of disaster relief all over the world. They also take care of church members, something very few churches actually do.
I’m not a Mormon and have no intention of becoming one, but I want to see clearly and honestly what their culture is doing. I think the chances of them surviving and prospering for many generations are much better than any of the more mainstream Christian faiths, including my own (which is Unitarian-Universalist).
I’m only using the Mormon Church as an example. Yes, I know the women appear to be “happy” in that church – that’s why I used them as an example to piggy-back on to Comix Chick’s point about women patronizing churches that disdain them.
Because of most of what you’ve written – at one point in my life I almost became a Mormon. I have never read the Bible all the way through – but I have the Book of Mormon.
And – I’ve also studied the history of the church and that, combined with the inconsistencies and outright inaccuracies in the BoM – convinced me beyond doubt that it was a “contrived” religion.
You also have to separate the EARLY church from the MODERN one. Most of the radical views of Joseph Smith have been moderated in today’s LDS church. It’s nothing like the iron-fisted theocracy of Brigham Young in Utah back in the 1850’s when the church used the territorial militia and other hired thugs to “punish” anyone who dared question him or the church. “Castration” was one of the nicer punishments and they also gave us the worst massacre of civilians in this nation’s history (Mountain Meadows) and that record lasted until 9-11.
And – even though the church appears “nice” today … they still far outspent any other church or religion to push Prop 8 in California.
Those laws requiring vaginal probes are recent, and part of the backlash I predicted was coming over a decade ago. For the past twenty-odd years, women’s rights where government is concerned have been growing; a woman’s word is accepted above that of a man in court, women receive lighter punishments from the law, etc. And the so-called “glass ceiling” to which feminists point has absolutely nothing to do with “rights” and everything to do with women’s unwillingness to sell our souls to Satan to succeed in business the way men routinely do; neofeminists realized this back in the ’80s, which is why they’ve been pushing the idea of women behaving like ersatz men to “succeed”.
The only government-controlled area in which women did not get ahead of men in the past two decades was commercial sex, and organized feminism’s refusal to eliminate that prejudice is the loophole by which it is now being hanged.
Men are finding ways to live without women and the Russians are WAY ahead of us!
Story from MSNB … er, I mean PRAVDA!
THIS IS HILARIOUS!!
http://english.pravda.ru/society/stories/11-05-2011/117870-female_submariners-0/
And yet, to hear the chorus, it’s still men who are the vicious masters in all possible situations.
Getting outside of America exposes the hypocrisy of it all.
comixchik
“I don’t recall ever having more rights than men.”
This is the PROBLEM with you women. You are so self centered you do not notice the MASSIVE LEVEL OF PRIVILEGE you have had for ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY.
Ever heard of THE DRAFT? Where young men who were not even old enough to vote were sent off to war against their non consent and if they did not consent they were jailed? Ever heard of press-ganging? Ever heard of being court marshalled and shot for “cowardice” if you do not “volunteer” to charge of the top of a trench with NO WEAPON to run around while the machine gunners try and KILL YOU?
No…I guess you did not have your RIGHT TO LIFE secured better than THOSE MEN, eh? I guess you have it no better than THOSE MEN, eh?
Such self centered comments like that make me never want to talk to a western woman ever again. GERMAN WOMEN know that they were not SLAUGHTERED IN THEIR MILLIONS and that their RIGHT TO LIFE was secured far better than the mens.
I think “chick” would probably agree with some of what you are saying but you also have to look at the flipside from the standpoint of women. In the last few decades, women have been saddled with not only raising kids (they’ve always had that job), but now they are also head of household and trying to provide to make ends meet. Men “checked out” of the process way too easily and women can be blamed somewhat for allowing them to do it – but it was the men who walked off the job when they shouldn’t have.
Not very many men stood up and cheered when Newt Gingrich said this …
The problem is … we are all pussies. I know I’m a pussy anyway, maybe you aren’t Pete since you seem to be pretty active in politics and use your face and real name to make your statements. But most of us are pussies. We’re too worried about making a living for our families to really shed this anonymous internet mask and go out on the streets and yell at people – or write books under our real name or participate in even benign forms of civil disobedience. This is why I worry about the internet … does it just provide a harmless method of “venting pressure” so that people don’t hit the point that they’re willing to get in the streets?
It’s interesting to hear Matt and some others referencing religion here. Look, I’ve been convinced for some time that say what you will – hateful or otherwise – about the Christian faith (not the sham imitation of it as practiced by most of Church in the West today) the underlying core principle that we are ALL created in God’s image – being unique and special is entirely applicable here. You see, if you view anyone – no matter their sex – as being a “thing” instead of being a unique and special human person – indeed a work of art – then everything you think, say or do is going to be projected out of a worldview that leads to a road paved with others merely being here for your pleasure or usage in some way. These days I’m feeling quite surrounded by people who seriously need to live and let live and just lighten the fuck up. I’m just sayin.
Hi Maggie,
wont you women tell women like this they are NOT sexy? What is it with fat women of late that they are taking their clothes off at every opportunity and claiming how sexy they are? Strippers know what men like to look at. Porn stars know what men like to look at. And do not even get me started on the whole “do not treat me like a sex object but I want to be paid for taking my clothes off and having men look at me” hypocrisy.
Western women wonder why I call them stupid?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2127631/Tricia-Penrose-said-mothers-cancer-diagnosis-calorie-counting-wake-call.html
well………as you know “the eye of the beholder” i personelly thought she looked fine and sexy… but that is why we want freedom for sexual expression. make room for all. condeme no one for they preferences.
If you’re talking about that nude of Tricia Penrose at the top, I thought she LOOKED FINE AS SHIT! I wonder if she did any more shots like that?
Yeah – Tarzan like! 🙂
Most of “sexyville” is in the eyes and smile anyway … and the attitude. She’s got it and those few extra pounds don’t detract from it imo – they may even ENHANCE it. 😉
Porn stars vary a lot too, depending on the segment of the vast market they are targeting. You get builds from nearly anorexic to downright obese, flat chested to huge silicone breasts, girl-next-door to really toned and ripped, virginal looking waifs to MILFs with saggy breasts and stretch marks.
As for men’s tastes, you should read some of the threads in the net where fans of really huge boobs (down to the waist huge) get into arguments with the ones who like tiny breasts.
Even gamers get in on the act. Nude mods are begged to provide for both prominent labia minora and neat, hidden ones (“innie” vs “outie” lovers).
What is wrong is when big business and the media pick a shape to call fashionable and call everyone else ugly and un-sexy. As long as Tricia Penrose is not claiming that every woman should look like her, there is nothing wrong with her appearing in the nude. Although I personally like my women slim and athletic, many men like their women with a bit of flesh on them, as evidenced by Sam and Krulac.
Maggie,
” It isn’t that men are going to gain rights at the expense of women; it’s simply that women are now going to be ground down in the same way men have been ground down over the past twenty years, so that the yoke fits nice and level across all of our backs.”
Correct. I cant find it but there was a video doing the MRA rounds where a woman in the US was given 20 years for allowing a boy to touch her breast. It was a “mandatory sentence” under sex offenders legislation because we all know only men are ever sex offenders.
The legislation has been written to be gender neutral and then, for 20 years or more women have been given the “pussy pass”. Now we are starting to see the press come down on women.
I noticed this about 18 months ago it was. A UK woman made a false rape allegation and was given 12 months in ACTUAL JAIL. The allegation was against a cop so I thought it was a one off. The PTB protecting the cop and making it clear FRAs against cops are a no/no. It got quite a bit of coverage in the UK.
But no…a month later another woman who did an FRA against a non cop was given on year in ACTUAL jail.
The media was full of linking the two noting that cops can not be afforded any special attention for FRAs and so the second woman had to get the same jail sentence. Now jailing women for FRAs has become standard in the UK. The Jack Straw crap about “no woman should ever go to jail because mothers have a special place in our society”….but fathers do not….has gone away.
The other incident that I noticed that said the presses were going to come down on women was 2 years ago. A woman claimed that she was 6 months pregnant and was falsely arrested and taken to the local police station. She was bashed and injured and subsequently had a miscarriage that was very likely caused by the bashing and injuries.
She tried to get a case started and no one cared. The response was “men are getting bashed and injured by the cops all the time…so you had a miscarriage…get over it.” She was on you tube making this plea as to “how can people be so uncaring about a pregnant woman who lost her baby”.
The answer, of course, is that when women are so uncaring about MEN who lose their babies that uncaring is eventually going to be returned in spades. And the women do not like it one bit.
yes like Marty says..We need to see it is an attack on all of us. As long as we are fighting each other …..they win. Sam
the most annoying thing to me is that the countries that the world thinks to be the most feminist are the ones who have silenced sex workers voices completely and pretend that as caring as they are they continuously save women from lives of ”degradation”.the nordic countries are a perfect example for this,they are considered to be the most feminist because half of the parlianment members are women and according to them men there have different mindsets, they dont make sexist comments towards women as much as other countries etc.thing is the women who get ”respected”as they say,are the ones who dress conservatively and have jobs in feilds considered otherwise male dominated.those are considered the top women,the respectable ones.why the women who openly flaunt their sexuality,are sex workers etc.dont get the same rights as women in other work feilds and the same respect?if a woman working in an office can sue for sexual harassment then why cant a sex worker do the same without being lauphed at?and why the ”respectable”women can be as ridiculous or as vicious as they want in their behavior towards men while a male politician in that case would even lose his position?in sweden they are trying to pass a law that forbids men from sitting in a macho like position in the bus(i wonder if the men making cat calls will get stoned to death),they say that if men were not the majority of bankers there wouldnt be economic crisis(because female bankers are all competent and such angels).the more i see attitudes such as this being praised as top feminist,the more i wonder if there is hope for true equality,meaning no hatred between the sexes and groups like sex workers or sexual women in general being treated fairly .
the nordic countries are a perfect example for this,they are considered to be the most feminist because half of the parlianment members are women
It should be noted that the number of female parliamentarians doesn’t appear to have much effect on politics. Sweden (44.7%), Iceland (39.7%) and Norway (39.6%) are neofeminist, while Finland (42.5%), the Netherlands (36%) and Denmark (39.1%) are mostly liberal.
As to men and war- Men have always been marching off to do something dangerous. I really can’t understand why, but maybe I could if I were a man. War, exploration, something makes men driven to do this.
Even today, in our cities. Young men seem naturally driven to form troops, “gangs”, that fight, sometimes to the death over territory. It’s a male thing. You just don’t often see women taking stupid physical risks to prove something.
And it’s almost always been men who have sent men to war- While a few men have marched under the banner of a queen, it’s mostly been men starting the wars.
As for not knowing I “had more rights”, I can’t tell you the number of times in mixed groups where I’ve made a suggestion, and got ignored, only for a man to make the same suggestion minutes later, and be credited with having a great idea. Every woman is familiar with that. I’ve always been inclined to science, yet in school, I had a male science teacher would would never call on me in class because “girls don’t do science.”
If women are given more of the benefit of the doubt in courts, it’s that women so less often commit violent crimes. Also, women react differently to punishment.
Sure, I’ve taken advantage of things I could do as a woman to make a living, working in the sex business for years. But I’ve also borne the heavy societal disapproval for doing so.
What’s happening now days is that everyone, man and woman, is being reduced to no more than a part of the vast capitalist machine, disposable to the owners, and we’re finding our “rights” dispensed with if they are inconvenient for the rich. You only ever really have the rights you can defend.
I agree that men age genetically programmed to be the ones who do the fighting and dying. However, as far as I can see, Queens are just as happy to fight wars as Kings. Just look at the history of England. They are, of course less likely to lead them into battle, but that is only to be expected, especially before modern firearms were invented.
It’s funny but the Western nations, especially the US, give the world the impression that women in their countries have the most rights and equality. Yet few men in the Far East today (I can’t speak for Africa or Latin America) would assume that a woman’s opinion or ideas are inferior simply because of her gender. (Naturally exceptions exist.)
I could never imagine a teacher in China, Singapore, Hong Kong, or even Thailand or Indonesia, assuming that “girls don’t do science”.
I agree about the machine, but as you know I disagree with your use of the word “capitalist” to describe it. When big business gets in bed with big government that isn’t capitalism but rather fascism. In true capitalism the government doesn’t give special privileges to business. An oligarchy is an oligarchy is an oligarchy, and whether the few use money, military force, politics, religion, family connections or whatever to control the many makes absolutely NO difference whatsoever.
Hey Maggie, You want to borrow my “Prophet for Hire” sign? Last used when I predicted Peyton Manning was coming to Denver.
I wish I had found your blog a year ago, rather than six weeks ago.
Alas, I’m a Cassandra; people tend to dismiss each of my predictions until it comes true, then still disbelieve the next one. 🙁
Hopefully, Maggie, you’ll avoid Greeks inhabiting bathtubs…
Agree that the war on women is mostly a war on sexuality. Agree that whatever rights women may be in the process of losing, men will not be gaining rights in proportion (if any at all).
If I’m waging war on the Kalians, I may or may not be for the Suvians. Indeed, I may be wanting to conquer both, but for whatever reason I’m currently coming down harder on the Kalians.
If I’m social conservatives, then women are Kalians and men are Suvians. Rest assured that when I’m sure that the Kalians have been brought down a few pegs, I’ll get back to work on the Suvians.