You’ve Come a Long Way Down, Baby!

(This is a repeat of last Friday’s post with some new paragraphs added)

A few comments, in no particular order, sparked by this article:

Guys versus Men: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704409004576146321725889448.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

Hat tip to Catholic and Enjoying It. http://markshea.blogspot.com/2011/02/fascinating-piece-on-guys-vs-men.html

The money quote:

I see [puerile shallowness] as an expression of our cultural uncertainty about the social role of men. It’s been an almost universal rule of civilization that girls became women simply by reaching physical maturity, but boys had to pass a test. They needed to demonstrate courage, physical prowess or mastery of the necessary skills. The goal was to prove their competence as protectors and providers. Today, however, with women moving ahead in our advanced economy, husbands and fathers are now optional, and the qualities of character men once needed to play their roles—fortitude, stoicism, courage, fidelity—are obsolete, even a little embarrassing.

Today’s pre-adult male is like an actor in a drama in which he only knows what he shouldn’t say. He has to compete in a fierce job market, but he can’t act too bossy or self-confident. He should be sensitive but not paternalistic, smart but not cocky. To deepen his predicament, because he is single, his advisers and confidants are generally undomesticated guys just like him.

Single men have never been civilization’s most responsible actors; they continue to be more troubled and less successful than men who deliberately choose to become husbands and fathers. So we can be disgusted if some of them continue to live in rooms decorated with “Star Wars” posters and crushed beer cans and to treat women like disposable estrogen toys, but we shouldn’t be surprised.

My comment:

The article looks mainly at economic causes for the social decay described. She underestimates the role of ubiquitous porno, ubiquitous fornication, and the influence no-fault divorce has on the institution of marriage, and therefore on the desirability of marriage.

The easy virtue of modern women means young men no longer have the steed of Eros drawing the chariot toward the marriage bower. Why buy the cow when the milk is free? And the easy virtue of the court system means young men contemplating nuptials act against their own self interest: Eight out of ten divorces are initiated by the wives, and the hubby, when he has done no wrong at all, can by a simple fiat of the court be turned from a father into a mere provider of child support not allowed to see his children.

While I cannot fault the process of looking for economic causes of social trends, I tend myself to place more weight on philosophical causes to explain changes in the default social philosophy.

I submit that people are talked into beliefs as individuals and therefore as groups, rather than brought to believe beliefs because an economic incentive makes it easier.  The greater the number of believers who are talked into the same idea, the less likely any one given person speaking the idea in the public square to encounter any question or challenge to it.

At some point a critical mass is reached and there is little need to continue to defend or question the idea: it because the default assumption, an unquestioned social norm. Anyone who does not accept the default norm can be scorned as a nonconformist, and need not be answered, merely insulted. The belief then is passed along to the young, who, being young, accept it without question, and are usually unaware of the reasons, whatever they were, that originally made the notion persuasive. When questioned in turn, the young cannot defend the idea, but flounder if a Socratic gadfly asks for the idea to produce its credentials.

Such is human nature, and this is the way we treat ideas whether those ideas are true or false, young or old. The effort of intellectuals is to test every idea, young or old, true or false, as if it is newly minted and unknown, and to ask it to produce its credentials. This in turn has a perverse incentive. Ideas easy to defend on the basis of abstraction reasoning are disproportionately favored and celebrated by intellectuals, who like philosophical “systems” or models with clear axioms and clean, unambiguous conclusions, even if wildly disconnected from the real world. Ideas difficult to defend on the basis of abstract reasoning, such as the accumulated wisdom we call the common sense, on the other hand are disproportionately disfavored and scorned by intellectuals.

To ask, “What makes you think you think?” takes only six words; “Prove free will exists!” takes only four; “What is truth?” only three. To conduct a rigorous philosophical investigation and defense of such axiomatic notions as self-awareness, self-will and the objectivity of truth would require three, four and six volumes, and even then may not exhaust the topic.

Philosophers moored to the common sense of tradition avoid this perversity; intellectuals delighted with the airy cloudscapes of fickle fads delight in it.

One person at a time, the intellectuals persuaded a sufficient critical mass of persons with a neurotic aversion to matters of common sense — would that there were a simple term for such a syndrome, something like mundophobia or ratiophobia— so that common sense fell under the social condemnations reserved, in non-neurotic societies, for the nonconformists whose ideas eroded, rather than upheld, the social order.

The main erosion of the social order in the modern day is the attack on the sacrament of marriage. It has been replaced. The unspoken and unquestioned default assumption of modern society is that unrestricted sexual license blithely unconcerned with consequences is the only behavior-pattern compatible with the dignity and equality of women, and the liberty of men.

Since the Sexual Revolution and the general philosophical Revolt Against Reality vanguarded by Nietzsche and his ilk, the default assumption of our society is that any difference between men and woman is (1) a social fiction rather than a biological or psychological reality and (2) an exploitative trick of the powerful men over the weak and innocent femvictims: and any femvictim who wants to be a homemaker and mother and raise kids is a traitress to her sex.

I often haunt website discussing comic books, particularly from the ‘Silver Age’ which was an era of unabashed silliness. The superheroines in those days acted like normal women, that is, they did not hate their sex. Lois Lane wanted to marry Superman and be Mrs. Man (or whatever. Mrs. El?). Marvel Girl used her Way Cool Mind Powers to do housework.

The websites without exception scoff, roll their electronic eyes, do the head-into-desk forehead swan dive of total disgust, and cough with the same embarrassment modern but loyal Virginians are wont to cough when Yankees visitors to our parlors find the finely painted portrait of grandpappy Jefferson Davis LeGris laying the lash on the back of cringing darkies. The unspoken and unquestioned social norm of modern society is that marriage is exploitation and that motherhood is serfdom, and that to expect girls to grow up to be mothers is an insult. (But why is it no insult to expect boys to want to grow up to be fathers?)

Similar howls either of scorn or rage issue from the mouths of such websites when superheroines do their laundry.

Although how is this different from when Peter Parker has to sew his Spidey costume? Or when Clark Kent has to sit in traffic on his way to work? Or when Green Hornet or Doctor Strange has his Oriental manservant prepare his clothing, or when Bruce Wayne has Alfred press his tuxedo … OK, nevermind, forget I mentioned those last example.

The upshot of it is, that is considered degrading, by modern standards, to show Supergirl doing household chores, but not degrading to show Superboy doing farmboy chores. Well, OK, Supergirl was raised in an orphanage, not in a home, and Wonder Woman raised in a palace on Paradise Island as a princess with servants, so neither of them did housework per se … OK, nevermind, forget I mentioned those last examples.

This hatred of womanhood, home-making and marriage is a sinful social norm from the Christian viewpoint, since it is pride, the very sin of Lucifer; from the pagan viewpoint it is hubris, and the immodesty that would offend Artemis, Athena, and Vesta, virgins and patronesses of chastity; and from the Darwinian viewpoint discouraging reproduction and childrearing for an altricial species is an inferior survival strategy for the race.

Our society cannot make the woman more masculine – all that happens when it is attempted is that women become bitchy, selfish, unfeminine, unsupportive, aggressive – so society makes men more feminine, so now men are no longer stoical or expected to bear pain stoically.

Men have stopped hazing each other, and we men (with the possible exception of the brotherhood of the military) no longer form strong male friendships based in shared danger and pain.

Since I myself am not only an intellectual, and therefore adverse to danger, pain, and physical exercise, I am also a sciffy geek, and thus I speak only on the basis of remote rumors I have heard of things other men do, like grow up. Meanwhile, I am busy reading comic books and pulp space opera.

But I can speak from personal experience that women do not particularly care for girlish or childish men, even if the cult of egalitarianism tells them they should.

Even geekish guys are accounted ‘masculine’ by geekish women if we act the part. We do not need to punch out a masher, or strangle a man-eating llama barehanded, but we may need to go online and flamewar that Kyle Rayner is not the real Green Lantern if some Troll arguing against the point made our GF weep.

I agree with St. Paul that wives should submit to their husbands.

Why? I actually think it is natural and even romantic for a woman to surrender to a man. Men seek mates by pursuing, and women seek mates by alluring.

Just as a matter of cold statistics, the woman’s chance of getting deeply involved with an uncommitted and insincere lover is greater if she pursues him and he pursues her at the same time. But if she flees and plays coy, she can at least gauge something of his mettle and his persistence.

If I may be a little cold hearted about the matter, there is an underlying economic calculus involved. If women in society are the pursuers rather than the pursued, and if men are shallow, wanting only physical congress with attractive nymphs, then no woman can demand a very high price for yielding her favors to the suitor.

Traditionally, the price women and their fathers demanded was high indeed: “I will couple with you only if you love me, and agree and vow to cleave to me, forsaking all others. And if the coupling produces a child (which is the natural outcome of sex), you will devote your entire life to producing and protecting a home wherein to raise that child, and it must be a loving home.” Such a thing ordinary prudence would demand, even leaving the morality of it to one side. But the price she asks is high. In return for one moment of ejaculation, our  Lothario must vow lifelong love and fidelity?

But suppose nine out of ten of the other women in society, equally as nubile, fertile, young and filled with gaiety and loveliness lower their asking price. Suppose the sweet young nymphs say to him, “I will couple with you merely on the off-chance that one day you might come to love me. And if the coupling produces a child, like Medea I will butcher him, and you do not even need to drive me to the abortion clinic. You may have all the pleasure of the sexual congress, I will bear all the costs and pain of any unpleasant outcomes entirely alone. Modern women are enlightened! We want to be alone and unloved and treated like meat sacks to service the degrading pleasure of the lowest form of masculine life. I will buy the condoms.”

Even a man who, at first, might like to adhere to some minimum standard of civilized prudence, if not decency, or who has at least a trifling concern that his child not be murdered and his tiny, dismembered body thrown in the incinerator without benefit of Christian burial, is now under a powerful disincentive to seek out women who ask the higher price.

I speak not in the abstract, but from experience: most of my unhappily unmarried bachelor friends cannot find a mate, because the modern woman is too eager to prostitute herself without pay, and she has no patience with chaste men, rare though they are. At least one bachelor friend of mine has complained that he cannot get to know a woman well enough to establish a steady emotional relationship with her (what the ancients called “philos”) because she is too eager for a sexual relationship (“eros”). Modesty forces philos and eros together to produce self-sacrificial love (“agape”): Modesty in women means the man must befriend his beloved before he embraces her. Immodesty, despite what moderns claim about the matter, forces eros and philos into divorce.

Romance is a combination of eros, philos and agape. Despite modernity, most girls still want romance, and most still want marriage. (Most still want babies, but it is a rare woman willing to stand up to social scorn and admit the same in public.)

Therefore romance requires that women be feminine, which means, they allure and flee like nymphs, with many a coy backward glance of sultry eyes over the shapely shoulder, while men, like so many fauns, satyrs and priapic tityroi, galumph after on our crooked shaggy legs, panting.

The chase of the mating dance is not possible unless the male is fleeter of foot—the woman cannot be too slow in her escapes, lest she be undervalued. And if the contest ends with the male giving up and limping away, the romance is over; whereas if the contest ends when the female giving up, and, pretending to fall, falling prettily into the surprised man’s hairy arms, the romance is consummated. If not Darwin and if not the Titan Prometheus or whatever Creator defined human nature, then cold economic calculation of finding fit mates ties the feminine desire to flee and be caught into her desire for romance. She wants to yield.

Obviously, a girl cannot yield to any man who is only as strong as a girl: he has to be strong enough to protect her, and, in adventure stories, to save her. The idea of romance as a commercial exchange between cautious equals is one I find repugnant, rather than as a knight on a white charger sweeping the fair princess off her feet, slaying her dragons for her.

Women who are normal and healthy want a man stronger and taller than she, and she wants the man to lead when they waltz.

Is this merely some odd minority of women, closet masochists, or submissive and fertile Catholic girls from Ireland and Italy? I think the number of women fascinated with romance, though lower than it was before the de-naturing and de-femininizing programs of the feminists won popular appeal, is still very high.

I have seen perhaps two zillion covers of lurid romance novels where the Red Indian Chief with no shirt on, or the rakish Pirate Chief with no shirt on or the tormented stormy-eyed Baron with no shirt on has the attractive heroine in a corseted dress either draped over his arm in a half-swoon, or clinging fearfully to his leg, or half-pinned under his rippling masculine body, or thrown over his shoulder.

These are books written by women to appeal to women filled with womanly fantasies of love and romance: without exception they show men in the masculine, proud role and the heroine in the meek, yielding, feminine role.

Now, this only speaks of what women want to read, not what they want out of their man. But it would be odd to assume there is no overlap.

Of course, I also agree with St. Paul that men should love their wives as Christ loves his bride the Church, which is to say, men should regard marriage as crucifixion. It is not fun and games, loverboy. You think joining the army demands total commitment from you? Marriage, you do not get R&R, do not get leave, and you are never off duty. You are husband and father forever and aye, till death do you part, amen.

You might come to marriage for the sake of Eros, romantic love, or for the sake of Philos, because you seek the companionship and friendship of the beloved, because you like her as well as love her. But marriage is Agape, self-emptying, self-denying, self-sacrificing love. So do not rejoice if St. Paul crowns you with the crown of marriage, husbands, and asks your wives to submit to your leadership and rule, because the crown is a crown of thorns, and the rulership is like that Christ refused of the devil when offered the kingdoms of this world. Your task, husbands, is to take second place in your wife’s affections once children arrive. You live for them, not they for you.

But if all girls want romance, and all boys want sensual delight, why do we live in the least romantic and most pornographic and sexually perverted and sexually crass and coarse and viscerally disgusting civilization ever to exist?

Because romance is not all the modern girl wants.

In addition to the romantic fantasies of love stories, modern women also have adolescent power fantasies (akin to the superhero comics read by boys), mostly based on BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. In the bookstore, the endless ranks of unimaginative Tolkien rip-offs have been replaced by endless ranks of unimaginative Joss Whedon rip-offs.

The cover art always contains the same few elements to semaphore to the reader what kind of book it is: a shapely young woman, usually dressed in tight black leather, bearing an knife or gat and a hostile yet sultry expression is in some dingy urban alleyway lit by neon, perhaps leaning on her Harley.

But even this does not escape the logic of romance. For the modern women, modern men are not dangerous enough to be romantic. We modern Americans are not as tough and masculine as Red Indians, Pirate Chief, or stormy-eyed Barons. And there is no romance without some adventure, and no adventure without danger, if only the emotional danger of rejection and heartbreak.

Once you establish in the imagination of the reader that Twiggy or Yvonne Craig can wire fu into bloody pulp a roomful of hulking linebackers twice her mass and half again her height, the only way to create a sufficiently masculine character is it emotionally proper to look up to, and romantic to yield to, is to make the guy a supernatural fiend or werewolf or something.

If Jane can kick the snot out of Tarzan, the only male masculine enough to throw her over his shoulder and carry her off is the Great God Pan or the archdemon Asmodeus. Hence all the BUFFY style stories are about girls with Angel the dangerous Vampire as the stormy-eyed boyfriend, not Riley Finn the clean-cut All-American but all too human soldier boy (whom all the fangirls hate).

Lois Lane is not going to date Jimmy Olsen after the Man of Steel has rescued her from an atomic dinosaur or something. And if the only men of steel in your world are dangerous bloodsucking fiends from hell who must overcome their own dark nature to join the heroine in true love, well, that is where the romance and the romantic fantasy will come to rest.

Like it or not, the fantasy about powerful deadly women in modern black leather will come to the fore for fanboys as well. The idea that old-fashioned images of women as ‘cheesecake’ was degrading may have some truth to it: but the modern image of the cheesecake nymphette in heels wearing a bikini bottom and sporting a pistol is not in any sense less immodest, nor does the modern pop culture girly pics project a more realistic image of a woman’s body shape.

We might disapprove as vanity for old fashioned girlies to worry about glamor and lipstick; but the matter is not improved if the modern supergirlies worry about glamor and lipstick and their kung-fu training and use and maintenance of side arms and long arms and cleaning and polishing their serrated bowie knives.

The modern power fantasy merely add another layer of things girls have to worry about, because now they have to play the woman’s role as well as the role of a Navy SEAL.

And yet again, adolescent power fantasy is not all a modern girl wants, either. She still wants a real man. Women get annoyed when their husbands act like they are not in charge, because then she ends up mothering him, and has one extra child to nurture.

What do modern men want? Do they like feminine women, or are they attracted to the modern feminist ideal of a strong woman who needs nothing from him and wants to kill his child before birth if junior is unplanned?

I can only speak for myself. As an American, my idea of the perfect feminine woman embraces the tough cowgirl frontier farmer’s wife reloading her husband’s musket while he shoots Redskins, and the demure Southern lady sipping mint juleps while her husband shoot Yankees, the spunky girl reporter from New York being rescued by Superman. And maybe Superman can also arrest those husbands of the other two girls who are shooting all those people. Seesh.

As a Christian, my ideal of the perfect feminine woman embraces both Eve (particularly as she is portrayed by the Milton—the most feminine woman in all literature, and fairest of her daughters) as well as the Virgin Mary, who is humble enough to be a carpenter’s wife, and exalted enough to be the Queen of Angels and the Second Eve, mother of all living, not to mention the Mother of God.

For those of you unfamiliar with Milton, here the description of our parents in paradise:

Of living creatures, new to sight, and strange
Two of far nobler shape, erect and tall,
Godlike erect, with native honor clad
In naked majesty seemed lords of all:
And worthy seemed; for in their looks divine
The image of their glorious Maker shone,
Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure,
(Severe, but in true filial freedom placed,)
Whence true authority in men; though both
Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed;
For contemplation he and valor formed;
For softness she and sweet attractive grace;
He for God only, she for God in him:
His fair large front and eye sublime declared
Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung
Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad:
She, as a veil, down to the slender waist
Her unadorned golden tresses wore
Disheveled, but in wanton ringlets waved
As the vine curls her tendrils, which implied
Subjection, but required with gentle sway,
And by her yielded, by him best received,
Yielded with coy submission, modest pride,
And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay.
Nor those mysterious parts were then concealed;
Then was not guilty shame, dishonest shame
Of nature’s works, honor dishonorable,
Sin-bred, how have ye troubled all mankind
With shows instead, mere shows of seeming pure,
And banished from man’s life his happiest life,
Simplicity and spotless innocence!
So passed they naked on, nor shunned the sight
Of God or Angel; for they thought no ill:
So hand in hand they passed, the loveliest pair,
That ever since in love’s embraces met;
Adam the goodliest man of men since born
His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve.

Only a modern thinker (by which I mean ‘only a morally retarded one-dimensional and therefore stupid thinker’) could regard both the Eve by whose proud disobedience all mankind was condemned, and the New Eve by whose humble obedience all mankind was saved as ‘weak.’

Heroines and villainesses on whose decisions turn the fates of worlds can be called a lot of things, but the Marxist and feminist interpretation of life only has two words for life in all its complexity: strong and weak. Whatever is strong is an oppressor, an exploiter, and guilty, and whatever is weak is oppressed, exploited, and innocent.

Being feminine does not mean being weak. That is a Marxist lie, produced by the morally retarded one-dimensional and therefore stupid idea that all human relationships are mutually hostile power struggles about power. Being feminine means being not masculine.

Male pride is brittle. I am sorry, fellow guys, but we have weaknesses particular to our sex, and a woman can shatter us with word, if it is the right woman and the right word. Women, at least old fashioned & old school women, seem to have more endurance and more stick-to-itive-ness and more Christian charity than men, by and large.

They go through pregnancy, and THEN look forward to doing it again. Sheesh! Who says feminine girls are weak?

It is the masculine girls who are weak, the Buffy Vampireslayers. They have the brittleness and pride of touchy male pride — feminists are as sensitive to any trifling slights against their honor as a Spanish Grandee — but they do not have the corresponding masculine virtues of chivalry, generosity, and honor for the fallen foe that Christianity introduced to ameliorate the savage pagan attitude that glorifies strength and despises the weak.

The moderns have simply reintroduced this love the strength and hatred of weakness, but, oddly, have decided to apply it in defiance of nature and reality. Consider this hateful comment uttered during a recent controversy where a boy named Northrup who would otherwise have won the state championship refused to wrestle a girl named Herkelman. In so doing, he threw the match. Northrup cited his belief that women should be elevated and respected.

An ESPN writer (whose name I will not repeat, as I wish to give no glory to vermin) responded,

“That’s where the Northrups are so wrong. Body slams and takedowns and gouges in the eye and elbows in the ribs are exactly how to respect Cassy Herkelman. This is what she lives for. She can elevate herself, thanks.”

So society is not merely post-modern and post-Christian but post-rational, if the sentence can be written equating gouging a woman in the eyes equals treating her with respect.

Cassandra Herkelman -- ESPN says Gouging her Eyes will Elevate her

No youth who gouges a schoolgirl in the eyes during a Co-Ed wrestling match is dating my teenage daughter, thank you, because such a boy has no character, no backbone, no balls. My daughter is about four foot five and weights about 50 pounds.

Does not anyone see the slight and technical difference between (1) a society where my daughter can vote and own property, and (2) a society that indoctrinates all its young men that chivalrously to refuse to slam, eye-gouge, elbow-jab, strangle, breast-grab, crotch-punch, twist, bend, break and beat my daughter is not just wrong but contemptible? I mean insane modern society indoctrinates the young men to think that chivalry is contemptible, not that bitch-slapping a girl is.

Let’s ask Anita Blake, vampire huntress, her opinion on the question of whether true equality with men means it’s OK to punch young women in the face, shall we?

Excuse me, Ms. Blake…? Speaking as a woman who is both sexy and tough, busty yet covered in blood and heavily armed, would you say, in your opinion….

Uh, well, her jaw is broken by an ESPN pundit right now in an attempt to elevate her, so maybe Ms. Blake cannot answer the question.

We will just take it as a given that she approves of Co-Ed wrestling and boxing, and regards chivalry toward the distaff sex as condescending and wrong.

But BOY OH BOY am I glad that the testosterone-overdosed teen boys, and twentysomething boy-men, who will be dating my elf-sized daughter are exposed at impressionable ages to images like this!

Aren’t we all happy as clams that the degrading and despicable and un-progressive images of Marvel Girl doing housework will never ever be found in modern graphic novels? Instead we have such uplifting images as the Comedian beating and raping Silk Specter, and Kyle Raynor finding the corpse of his beloved stuffed in his refrigerator.  Comic books are better than ever!

The suffragettes sought, and were granted by their menfolk, the vote and the right to own property. Bully and I approve, for all men are created equal. (And you know what I mean by the word ‘men’, so stop pretending rhetorically convenient illiteracy.) This was a quest for nothing more than what natural justice and common sense demands. Well done, Suffragettes!

I can understand why a Christian would agree to the proposition that all men are made in the image and likeness of God and therefore merit equality of civic and legal rights. I cannot imagine why a non-Christian would seek that, because there seems to be no non-arbitrary basis for the idea of upholding the weak in the Darwinian world where culling the weak is the sole source of racial improvement—but that is an argument for another day.

But the feminists (at least in the most modern, Third Wave, non-suffragette version) seek something different. They are in a revolt against nature, against reality, against their own biological nature. The prime sacrament of their cult is aborticide, the slaying by a mother of her natural instinct to love and protect her child, and the slaying of the child also. The womb is the archenemy of the feminists, as are the breasts that give milk. They want the unnatural sterile womb and the unnatural plastic breasts of a playboy bunny, since, by some oddness, they are equally opposed to feminine modesty (and masculine chivalry) as they are to motherhood.

To be sure, some feminists are awake enough to their own self-interest to notice that protecting Hugh Hefner and Slick Willie Clinton degrades and exploits rather than ennobles the role of women in society; but even these half-awake femidolaters flinch away from ‘Puritanism’ and ‘Victorianism’ by which they mean the use of reason and self-control in the sexual appetite, and modesty and decency. To them, a porn star flaunting her plastic breasts is a sign of empowerment, and so is dressing like a hooker. Dressing like a man is even better.

It is merely one of the ironies of life that those who sought to increase the power and prestige of women in society adopted a strategy that makes not just their lives more difficult and miserable (when it does not kill them altogether—the majority of aborted babies are girl babies after all); the strategy also diminishes their real power in society, including their power to find a man rather than an overgrown boy.

Eliminating sexual roles and expectations does not eliminate misogyny or unfairness or bigotry. Those things, if anything, are encouraged. All that happens is that romance is eliminated.

By eliminating all sexual roles and expectations, all that has been done is to add a layer of unrealistic expectations to the young ladies, that they must do all that a man can do and more; and to remove those rather strict expectations on how young gentlemen are supposed to behave, so that they now are allowed to behave as villains, churls, louts and Neanderthals toward their womenfolk.

One cannot eliminate expectations that others have of us. Such expectations are part of the unspoken rules of the culture, the ‘traffic laws’ by which we are able efficiently to navigate our way through meetings with strangers, acquaintences and friends, and also flirt, court, merrymake and marry. The attempt by intellectuals to interpret all human interactions as mutually hostile and implacable power struggles is stupid and evil; the attempt to eliminate expectations so that all human interactions, conversations, and contact with others takes place without benefit of knowing what is polite or what will offend is inefficient and destructive of the social harmony, especially destructive of the nuclear family and the custom of romance and courtship leading up to it.

And the attempt to eliminate expectations while at the same time eliminating chivalry and self-restraint in young men, while at the same time legally protecting hence promoting the flood of pornographic and semipornographic images that form the background noise of society is simply psychotic. Society has a split personality. Young women are taught to dress and act immodestly, and hence to do those things which in our culture if not in all cultures serve as a non-verbal signal of sexual allure, but the young women are not taught which mode of approach, of flirtation, or of mating dance, when used by a man, indicate he has honorable intentions as opposed to being a cad.

Indeed, even to speak of “honorable intentions” — that is, the intent of a suitor to marry and devote his life to her, rather than use her as a one-night semen recepticle — stirs the devils who govern the modern culture to the dead-eyed mirth that devils know, if not contempt and disgust.

The devils want her to want the one-night stand, and for her to think of meaningless, impersonal, and inhuman sex as normal, and to thinik of beauty, love and romance as impossible, insulting and vile.

Before the dead-eyed devil could stand to see an honest young man court and adore a virginal young woman with the intent to marry, they would rather see Marvel Girl do housework.

About John C Wright

John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.

March 1, 2011 @ 1:37 pm

Musings