No More Lads
Chartered Management Institute head Ann Francke said sports banter can exclude women and lead to laddish behaviour such as chat about sexual conquests.
“A lot of women, in particular, feel left out,” she told the BBC’s Today programme.
“They don’t follow those sports and they don’t like either being forced to talk about them or not being included.”
“I have nothing against sports enthusiasts or cricket fans – that’s great,” she said.
“But the issue is many people aren’t cricket fans,” she added, arguing bosses should crack down on sports banter.
Ms Francke is concerned that discussing football … can disproportionately exclude women and divide offices.
“It’s a gateway to more laddish behavior and – if it just goes unchecked – it’s a signal of a more laddish culture,” she said.
“It’s very easy for it to escalate from [sports] talk and chat to slapping each other on the back and talking about their conquests at the weekend.”
My comment: The idea of the suffragettes was that women should share in the political business of the menfolk voting on leaders whose main task was deciding matters of crime, taxation, and war, on the grounds that they share in the outcomes and burdens of any bad decisions in that area.
Note that governments, back in the day, did not attempt to act as a nanny, warding off daily harms from unsafe commercial products, or was government in the business of educating the young, nursing the sick, or managing the personal lives of all the children of all ages inhabiting the nation.
The idea of the men who invented feminism was that propelling women into the workforce would increase the tax base, break apart the nuclear family, and increase sales of expensive drugs to promote temporary sterility.
Breaking the family in turn would make women more dependent on the government than on their menfolk, and draw the unreasoning admiration women typically bestow upon their protectors and breadwinners onto the Powers That Be. The fanatical devotion that mothers of convicts show, when they insist forever that their child is innocent, would then be channeled into the ballot box toward whatever demagogue with a vacant smile promised to remove dangerous liberty from the hands of the children, regardless of age, inhabiting the nation.
Pornographers like Hugh Hefner encouraged feminism on the grounds that it would increase vice, and hence the monetary gain from the public sale of vice.
Then, once women were in the workforce, excluding them from the military and other areas where men are better qualified was said to be a sign of hidden bigotry against them. The idea of this bigotry was so stupid that a new word had to be coined to hide its meaning, and that word is “sexism.”
The word “racism” — which at the time had a meaning — was decapitated and the word “sex” — and at the time this word also had a meaning — was sutured onto the neckstump, to produce a new word intended to denounce a nonexistent hatred and contempt felt by men against women.
There have been wars between races and tribes since time immemorial, and hatred between races and tribes. But the war between the sexes is not really a war, because both sides keep flirting with the other, and settling down, and having babies and suchlike.
(Imagine if blacks and whites after a race riot would quietly slip back in the moonlight later that night, serenade each other beneath the window, proffering roses and wine, and promising eternal fidelity, because life alone is intolerable. I suspect race relations would get on a good deal better.)
New topsy-turvy rules from Alice Through the Lookinglass were proposed to replace chivalry and courtesy and romance. The new unchivalrous and discourteous and unromantic rules of male and female behavior, which involved caddish selfishness and lust and involved graceless and immodest women acting like unpaid whores, were proposed to stop the nonexistent plague of hatred and bigotry known as “sexism”.
In reality, the word “sexism” was used, not against men like Hugh Hefner and Bill Clinton who actually held women in low esteem, dressed them like animals or used them as humidors, but instead was used to condemn those who objected to the topsy-turvy rules.
The feminists promised that they could and would fill the jobs of men without creating any fuss or trouble. The men could still swear, drink booze, and smoke cigars at work, and the women would be no bother at all.
All they were asking was an even chance to compete with the men on a level playing field.
Of course, standard were immediately lowered in order to attract women into fields and into endeavors where women had no interest. A new word “diversity” was invented to promote the concept that hiring an unqualified woman to fill a man’s job was somehow beneficial and laudable, for no reason that was ever made clear to anyone.
Naturally, the two approaches are utterly logically incompatible. If all women are asking it that each candidate be judge on performance and merit alone, without the sex of the candidate being a criterion, this is the opposite of demanding that each candidate be judged solely and sex, and performance and merit be damned.
But the men behind feminist anticipated that logic would not be strong suit of the damsels, and so no visible resistance to this great social movement was ever attempted.
The Barack Obama, the Lightworker, decreed that any distinction between the sexes whatsoever was an offense against the high ideals and purposes of high minded morally superior men, and so, from now own, by Imperial decree, high school boys could invade the otherwise private spaces set aside for women, such as bathrooms and locker rooms.
Boys wearing skirts would also be allowed in sports to defeat and harass the girls competing against them. Boys could now beat women and break their bones in wrestling and boxing, on the theory that noticing any biological distinction between the two sexes was bigotry.
Naturally, the two approaches are utterly logically incompatible. If there is no biological distinction between the sexes, the this is the opposite of saying the biological distinctions are so all important that women, merely by being women in a hitherto masculine role, perform a service so crucial that their inability to perform is insignificant.
And, again, logic says that if the proper role of women is to act in the roles of men, adopt typically masculine characteristics, traits, and tropes, then this is the opposite of saying women just by being women have something unique and useful to contribute.
Into this environment, we have Miss Franke — one hopes no man is chained in wedlock to this creature — who proffers the idea that since gentlewomen of breeding might feel left out if they are asked to feign interest in typically masculine talk, and that this may well lead to boorish behavior and locker-room talk.
Naturally, the two approaches are utterly logically incompatible. If feminists claim that women cannot be excluded from locker-rooms and smoke filled newspaper bullpens on the grounds that the fairer sex can actually adopt masculine callousness of tongue and ear, and so no changes need be made to ameliorate the more delicate tastes of the fairer sex, it is the opposite of the claim, now that women in public swear like sailors, are as crude as stevedores, and blush no more than flint-cheeked harlots, possess such pastel and delicate emotions that masculine talk, just by being a topic men tend to enjoy, must be condemned as a preliminary to rape.
I suggest, gentlemen, it is time to surrender, and to admit that, try as we might, women cannot actually adapt to the environment where men do men’s work. They will insist on putting lace doilies as antimacassars, and fuss if we do not mind our language, and try to civilize us.
The feminists said it was unfair to exclude women from the men’s club, the men’s team, the men’s locker room, and the man cave.
And once they were in the man cave, being women, they wanted to air it out and brighten it up.
Because, like it or not, boys will be boys, and girls will be girls.
Feminism has failed because the feminists, having lost the feminine qualities of modesty and chastity and sweetness and obedience and sound common sense which made Victorian maidens and Southern Belles so charming, now have only the masculine qualities of the worse sorts of men, the type whom Victorian gentlemen would have soundly caned or set the dogs on.
But the feminists have not lost the Victorian matron’s insufferable habits of getting the vapors, and fainting, and indulging all fashion of air-headed hysterics to which truly refined women unfamiliar with the roughness and evil of the world indeed had a right, but which foul-mouthed trollops have not.
And yet they are still expecting some tall, dark and handsome lad to ride to their rescue when it comes to something like the imaginary wage gap. If a man complained about having fewer wages than his neighbor, one and all would tell him to close his mouth, roll up his sleeves, and work extra shifts. But let a woman complain about her wages, and what do we do? Ask the men to solve the problem for them.
Feminism has failed. We boys do enjoy being boys, or we once did, and we were willing to give it a go, seeing whether the tomboys could join the team and throw a ball as far or run as fast. We thought you might enjoy being boys as well.
Well? Do you, ladies? Do you enjoy a world where men are predators, women are men, and babies are parasites? Statistics say that marriage is down and suicide is up. That does not sound like a joyful culture to me.
If you do enjoy it, what kind of joy is it?
Is it the joy of retaliation against a hated rival and the joy of triumph over a despised foe?