Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Why don't powerful men support men's rights?

The men's rights movement is in its intellectually formative stage. It's not clear yet which theory or politics will come to dominate the movement. There are some trends emerging, though, which have surprised me.

On the one hand, the movement is largely anti-feminist and anti-liberal. And yet many in the movement choose to attack, above all else, traditionalism and social conservatism.

Obviously, traditionalists need to understand why this is happening. Here is an important and emerging political movement that is deeply critical of men's place within liberal modernity and yet the focus of attack is often the small number of traditionalists who have criticised this modernity.

I think part of the reason is as follows. Imagine you're a young man who has come to the realisation that the society you live in has chosen to serve a feminist agenda at the expense of men. What is one of the first questions such a man will ask?

I think the young man is likely to ask the following kinds of questions. Why do the powerful men in society allow this to happen? Why don't the male political leaders or church leaders or business leaders put a stop to it? Why are ordinary men left to deal with the consequences alone?

The way such questions are answered is important. Imagine if the young man makes the common assumption that the establishment is conservative and therefore, being conservative, powerful men are either out of touch with the new reality of young men's lives or else protective of women, rather than men, in an old-fashioned, chivalrous way.

That might make you feel abandoned by the "conservative" men who ought to be protecting your place in society. The men who have real power to do something about the situation, and who as the "fathers" of society ought to care about what their "sons" are going through.

A variant of this kind of argument has been made by Paul Elam. Elam asks why powerful men have supported feminism. His answer is that it has to do not with politics but with biology. Traditionally, he writes, alpha men controlled society, using beta men as enforcers, with omega men being the sacrificial drones. However, when their wives demanded power for themselves, the alpha men decided to give up being alphas. In order to maintain their sexual status, they agreed to be the beta enforcers for their newly alpha wives.

Elam concludes that traditional masculinity, with its division into controllers, enforcers and drones is therefore at the root of the problem. What's needed is a radically new type of man never seen before in human history, one who transcends biology. Once again, we have arrived at a position that is radically anti-traditional.

I don't think these are the right answers. First, the political establishment is not conservative but liberal. The powerful men in society are not at all traditional in their thinking. They are not out of touch, chivalrous fathers giving too much support to their daughters rather than their sons. They are men who have adopted a particular principle of political rule, a liberal one.

Here are some leading political philosophers pointing out the dominance of liberalism within the political class:

John Gray, a professor of politics at Oxford: "We are all liberals nowadays."

Alastair MacIntyre, a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame: "Contemporary debates within modern political systems are almost exclusively between conservative liberals, liberal liberals, and radical liberals."

Steven Kautz, a professor of political science at Michigan State University: "Classical and contemporary liberal teachings ... dominate our political discourse. America is still now, or perhaps now more than ever, somehow a liberal regime ... we are somehow all liberals."

There is no commitment to traditionalism from our political leaders or from powerful men. Even someone like the former Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, saw himself primarily as an agent of change. His first criticism of his successor, the current PM Kevin Rudd, was that Rudd hadn't undertaken enough "challenging reforms" unlike his more worthy Labor Party predecessors, Keating and Hawke.

We are talking about men who are driven to change society along liberal lines. They should not be looked on as the conservative fathers of the tribe, representing a traditional attitude to gender or to anything else for that matter.

Nor does the argument from biology work well. First, it's not true that society can be so easily divided into controlling alpha males who sacrifice omega males via enforcer beta males. The easiest proof of this is that Western societies have been strictly monogamous for many hundreds of years. Monogamy requires the most powerful of men to give up much of their advantage in sexual selection in favour of the well-being of society as a whole.

Imagine you are a powerful, wealthy older male. The truth is that you could easily attract a number of young women as mates. If only 20 to 30 percent of the best placed men decided to do this, then the so-called omega males would miss out on the chance to marry and have families. This, though, would leave a lot of men without a responsible or productive stake in society.

The "alpha" males in the West did not choose to exploit their advantages. They accepted the rules of monogamy. All men had the chance to marry and raise families and the vast majority did so. Western civilisation benefited as a result.

Nor is it at all clear that it was women in the home who pressured their husbands to hand over power. Most of the feminist agitators in history were single women, a disproportionate number of them were lesbians. They had no powerful husbands to leverage. And why would a powerful, married man living in a monogamous culture need to worry about sex selection anyway? How would he benefit by transferring the alpha role to his wife, whilst he adopted a beta role? Is this something that an alpha man would contemplate anyway?

And is it really true that men in power nowadays are merely beta enforcers? It doesn't look that way to me. There still seem to be plenty of men in the political elite who choose to exercise real power. They just don't exercise it to the benefit of men.

Why not? The answer is that these men rule by the principles of liberalism. For a very long time, there was an effort to quarantine what these liberal principles would be applied to. They were to be applied to public rather than to private life. The family was meant to be a separate, non-liberal realm.

But it was hard to maintain this distinction. It's not easy to separate the public and the private. If education, for instance, is the public realm and is ordered on liberal principles, then it will be thought that boys and girls should be educated along similar lines and toward similar ends. It's then difficult at the end of this long process to claim different ends for men and women within the private realm of the family.

And once the public realm had been transformed, feminists began to argue that the "personal is the political," meaning that there is no true distinction between public (political) and private (personal) life.

And so the family was subject to the same principles of liberalism as applied elsewhere.

And this is where the logic of the situation takes over. Feminism is liberalism applied to the lives of women. It is the attempt to maximise female autonomy, even if this harms the family or relationships between men and women. Female autonomy is maximised when women are made independent of men, whether through careers, preferential divorce laws, or state welfare.

If powerful men rule through the principles of liberalism, and these principles are applied to male/female relations, then powerful men have no principled basis to reject feminist demands.

That is the most consistent answer to why powerful men act in favour of feminists, even as many young men feel abandoned by the current situation.

What does this then mean as far as strategy goes? First, it's correct that it's not enough to target feminists themselves. It is the powerful men in society who enable feminism - but not because they are out of touch conservatives, but because they are men who are bent on reform along liberal lines.

Second, it's true as well that a certain kind of "new man" is required (though not one who transcends biology). Given that we can't rely on liberal elites, we need to encourage a type of man who doesn't limit his efforts to the private, domestic sphere, but who also devotes some time and energy toward change at the public, political level.

106 comments:

  1. Paul Elam's thoughts suffer from the same deficiency that so many "philosophical" ruminations exhibit. A plausible historical explanation is offered for how something came about: The alpha males decided to do this, their wives decided to do that, etc. If it sounds plausible to the one who dreams it up, publish it.

    The flaw is that historical arguments need to persuasively quote historical source. Someone else could devise a plausible explanation that completely contradicted the first explanation, and where will we be in the absence of actual historical sources?

    You have pointed out that many of the feminist agitators were single, and many were lesbian. This can be confirmed by studying what is known about Jane Addams et al., for example, as Laura Wood recently covered at The Thinking Housewife. Actual history needs sources about actual people, not plausible hypotheses.

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  2. Powerful men have the money to get around most of the anti male crap at their level, and the little they cant avoid is more than balanced out by the chance that both the working and middle class workforces will soon be dominated by women. They can then lower wages and conditions as they did for secretaries and teachers, knowing that they wont have all those rebellious males to deal with.

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  3. This is a most fine post, Mark.

    I'd encourage you to flesh out what you mean by the last paragraph, which is where the money hits the road, as it were.

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  4. Porky D, agreed. This is a specific, pragmatic reason for businessmen to support feminism. It means that a family is supported by two wages instead of one, so that men only have to be paid a half wage for a family to get by. The costs of doing this are spread out socially, being paid for mostly through the state.

    I've often thought this helps to explain the longevity of feminism in Sweden. There you have nearly all adult women in the paid labour force. But they are to a very large degree employed by the state. It seems terribly economically irrational to have so many state employees, until you consider how the private sphere benefits.

    The Swedish factory owner no longer has to pay his male workers (and they are still mostly male workers) a living wage on which a family can be supported comfortably. In effect, the state is artificially subsidising business owners through the public purse, to keep them competitive via artificially suppressed wages.

    The problem will come when the male workers lose the work ethic that is part of the inherited culture. It's unlikely that women will be so keen to do the work in the private sphere. The powers that be will, though, have the option of recruiting workers from overseas.

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  5. Novaseeker, thanks.

    I have tried before to flesh out the importance of men acting for the public good, and not just their own private good, here.

    I know it's not easy, given the demands of career and family life and the difficulties that taking politically incorrect stances can create.

    Still, as Anthony Esolen explains below, it is part of what defines an actively civilised man:

    "Women do not in fact civilize men; they domesticate men, as I've said before. Men civilize men. There's a difference.

    What is that difference? A soldier in a cavalry unit who spends most of his time in barracks or under the skies, may well be more civilized, more trained to think of and to act for the common good, to command other men or to obey, than many a high-priced lawyer or even college professor. He's not domesticated, though, and his new bride at first might find him pretty hard to live with.

    On the other hand, men who live comfortable lives apart from other men, taking no initiative for the common good, considering only their wives and children and not the welfare of anybody else's children, never to be relied upon in time of public need, may be domesticated but not civilized. You might find plenty of men of the former sort at the inception of a great nation. You will find plenty of men of the latter sort at its decline."


    I'd like to encourage men to accept the idea that acting for the public good is a normal aspect of a masculine life. I don't think we were meant to be restricted to the domestic realm.

    Some part of our public commitments are discharged through our careers. But working for a company or for the government is not the same as a more direct involvement in civic or public life.

    It can be a modest commitment; it doesn't have to involve anything like a political career or a full-time commitment to political activism. It could be a few hours a week of educating oneself politically, commenting on websites, donating small amounts of money to political organisations, turning up to meetings, being on distribution lists and so on.

    Again, it strikes me that something is missing in a society in which nearly all adult men are passive in terms of the way society is ordered and defended.

    The full text of Anthony Esolen's piece is here.

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  6. Mark, I'm trying to figure out how it is possible for younger men to not blame "conservatism" for this mess. We agree that most so-called conservatives are really philosophical liberals with some sentimental, non-actionable attachment to various traditions. Basically, today's conservative is just a liberal who accepts the inevitability of liberalism but just wants you to feel really badly about this inevitability.

    Hell, if society really is going to the crapper, why would you side with someone who wants you to feel bad about it but refuses to do anything to avoid such fate.

    The problem is that if you, and others like you, are the really true conservatives, then conservatism is politically dead. Your type are a miniscule percentage of the conservative population, not to mention the population at large. So, if conservatism is no longer politicaly viable then what is it exactly? The answer is that conservatism is an apolitical, monastic retreat from the world.

    No wonder young men are cursing you. At least the liberal order still offers the majority of them carnal diversions.

    Personally, I cannot see how a robust political conservatism is even theoretically viable. Conservatism depends on a courageous population that holds itself up to a standard and rigorously applies that standard to itself. Conservatism is political liberty, which must mean the liberty to fail.

    The Roman historian Sallustus wrote that few peoples really desier freedom, and that most are looking for nothing more than fair masters. A desire for freedom is the exception rather than the rule for our speicies, and the current population clearly wants nothing more than fair masters.

    Would you be such a master? I doubt it. Your entire blog oozes a retreat from the world, a neo-monasticism. And since no one on the right evinces any desire to form a master-class, the default is the left-liberal master-class we see ruling things today.

    Funny thing is that I live in the heart of Seattle, which is pretty much like the Castro district in San Francisco. I openly call myself a reactionary and a fascist (not the jew-issues sort) and I get far less grief for it than I would were I to accept the label of conservative, despite how pathetically luke-warm that concept has become.

    Today's conservatives are thoroughly luke-warm and the young men are spitting you out of their mouths.

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  7. Asher,

    I think if most young men were exposed to even just the two comments Mark Richardson wrote they would embrace conservatism.

    This idea of 'conservatism is political liberty' is a warped American concept based upon a bizarre form of hyper-expressive individualism and self-centeredness. I wish someone would address that for young men these days. This bizarre concept of 'sovereignty over oneself' is liberty. It sounds more like "I'm gonna do what I wanna do MOM/DAD! !" then anything else....

    I think most young men spit out conservatism because they have never been exposed to it. The U.S. media certainly doesn't allow an inch to get to young men.

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  8. Asher,

    You've put this exceptionally well:

    "most so-called conservatives are really philosophical liberals with some sentimental, non-actionable attachment to various traditions."

    The thing is, it's not usually those sort of "conservatives" who draw criticism or blame in men's rights forums.

    It's more often the Lawrence Austers or the Laura Woods who are treated as the enemy. Or else it's traditional masculinity or the traditional family.

    It's the true traditionalism that sometimes draws the most fire, rather than the faux conservatism.

    As a traditionalist myself, I want to understand why. I take the men's rights movement seriously.

    I don't think it's because we're too lukewarm. I wouldn't have thought Auster or Laura Wood could be categorised as such.

    Perhaps, as you suggest, there are young men who want to keep the casual sex aspect of liberalism. It's true that a traditionalist society wouldn't be as libertine as a liberal one.

    But do people like Laura Wood or myself really come across as anti-sex? I wouldn't have thought so. And if young men were having such a great time with what's on offer, why would they be so angry?

    I think the answer has to do with two things. First, as explained in the post, there's the issue of how to explain the failure of powerful men to support other men.

    Second, there are many in the men's rights movement who promote the strategy of letting things collapse.

    This involves two things. First, not marrying. Second, making women face up to the real costs of "equality" by having to take on masculine responsibilities and not getting the traditional privileges for being female (e.g. getting out of the draft etc).

    I don't dismiss the "let it collapse" strategy out of hand, but I do think it's wrong.

    It might work in a different kind of society. But liberals aren't worried if there are casualties along the way. They don't really care if 50% of women with degrees fail to have children (that happened with first wave feminism too). If family formation is disrupted in the name of social justice, they think it's worth the cost.

    But perhaps men's rights activists think that we are letting down the collapse strategy. We are, after all, still in favour of men committing to the family. And we don't want to punish all women by withdrawing all forms of protection (such as being exempted from front line combat).

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  9. I think most young men spit out conservatism because they have never been exposed to it.

    That's an issue I face at some of these forums. It's clear that for some men I'm injecting a new and unfamiliar set of ideas into the discussion.

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  10. Asher is right. If you can't influence the public good then what's left, co-operate, surrender, retreat or subterfuge.

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  11. Well, you can build up an opposition so that the next generation isn't left so defenceless.

    You know, back in the early to mid-90s I thought I was the only person in Australia not to follow an orthodox liberalism. Not only was there a liberal orthodoxy there was more specifically a left-liberal orthodoxy.

    It seemed impregnable. All a feminist had to do to silence oppositon was to say the word "sexism". It was a stifling political climate, in which nobody dared challenge the status quo.

    But it fell apart. The left-liberals overplayed their hand. There was a political backlash, a group of younger right-liberal men emerged, and then the internet became more widely available.

    There was still a liberal orthodoxy, but left-liberals had less power to stifle debate.

    And now there are some non-liberal political currents emerging, including among the men's rights activists. They haven't become traditionalists, but they are also very clearly critical of liberal modernity.

    And visits to traditionalist websites continue to grow (more on that in my next post).

    So the political environment continues to change. We were never going to go from nothing (mid 90s) to instant success. Politics just doesn't work that way.

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  12. Its true I think that Alpha leaders don't lose much personally if they promote the interests of women.

    You've raised men's rights groups. These are usually fairly hippie in orientation. They're anti technology, anti system, pro men's relations (ie anti male individualism) and pro more simplistic "tribal" activities and attitudes for men. If you're an alpha male of today you're probably highly adept in a technical sphere, therefore not overly sympathetic to an anti technological attitude. Also you're probably quite competitive which makes it harder to surrender yourself to a larger male group.

    The idea of giving up your successful status to hang out with guys in the woods or drop off the grid to get in touch with your wild spiritual essence probably doesn't hold much appeal. Unfortunatly its guys who get the "smack" in the form of divorce, layoff or some other earth shaking event that tend to go to these movements (that's my guess). And so its these men who often carry the responsibility of forwarding all men's rights.

    Aside from everything else men are very competitive and its not just about women. Its not easy for men to work together often in practise. In the army teamwork has to be continually drilled into us. The call to "do your own thing" or rock the boat is strong, although this is in part due to the generally liberal predominance. Its the guys who have the longest history of working with other men who generally do best. Its true that men probably are inately strongly responsive to operating in male groups but in practise it can be rocky and seems to require strong rules or strong leadership.

    It seems for powerful men to support men's rights or join a men's group they may lose out individually in the short term. Also supporting men's right's is seen as a "weak" thing to do, men shouldn't need this kind of assistance etc. I'm not arguing against it merely looking at the motivation. Aside from everything else if we're all in it on our own, as in a liberal society, why should we extend ourselves for other men who should be able to take care of themselves? "Like I did" would then perhaps be added.

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  13. "Female autonomy is maximised when women are made independent of men, whether through careers, preferential divorce laws, or state welfare."

    This is nonsense. There have always been wealthy women with inherited money. If it was the case that such women did not marry, most of the powerful and wealthy famiilies of the West would have collapsed.

    Most elite men marry such women and often marry women who are wealthier than themselves. Marriage is not primarily about economics but about the preservation of culture, society and tradition.

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  14. A very thought provoking post and I'm going to read it a second time more closely.

    I would like to make a couple of points.

    Powerful men are powerful in today's society invariably because they have made money. Pandering to the feminist/female agenda makes powerful men more money and more powerful. Look at the 'abuse industry' arguments of Angry Harry. Or consider the recent case in the UK where it was openly acknowledged that the journalist Rod Liddle had no chance of becoming editor of 'the independent' newspaper because he had criticised the excesses of feminism and that might cost female readers.

    However, why don't we become more active in petitioning people like Roman Abramovich after they've just been screwed over in the divorce courts? At least let powerful men like that, who might be sympathetic to our cause, be aware of our movement. Can you imagine if just one man of his wealth decided to bankroll an effective pro-men lobbying organisation?

    Secondly, speaking as someone who is quite liberal minded, it seems to me that feminism is traditionalist in many ways, particularly regarding it's placing limits on the sexual freedom of men. There is a reason feminists never criticise Islam, especially features such as wearing of the hijab, and it can't just be because of 'liberal cultural relativism'.

    You're 100% right to say that the future outlook of the men's movement is being decided right now on blogs such as this. I would disagree though that most men's rights activists are traditionalist and consevative. It's possible to criticise the pretence that feminism has been to the benefit of society without seeking a return to a traditional role of man as provider and protector.

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  15. Power.

    Power, power, power, power.

    Say it again, power.

    The, usually inchoate, criticism of Auster and Wood is reducible to the fact that why they offer young men is that they are being offered a monk's cowl and not a warrior's sword. Young men reject thier message because they do not offer what human beings most need, which is power They sympathize and admire your type but reject what you offer for that reason alone.

    So, let's take your blog, as an example: it is an exceptionally well thought-out lengthy critique of philosophical liberalism, but I have yet to find even one post on how to implement a robust political conservatism. You, Auster and Wood all punt on the ultimate question of human politics, which is power, so, you offer nothing that is politically relevant.

    To illustrate how far removed from political relevance is your brand of conservatism, I would offer my own formative political experience. When I was in my late teens, maybe very early 20s, I was at a relatively conservative large church where a number of attractive young women in my age cohort got pregnant. None of the inseminators came from the church, most were from the girls' schools, and most had no interest in being a father, nor were the girls' and their families interested in having anything to do with the young males. At least a couple of the young males went onto fairly significant criminal careers.

    So, here I am stuck paying for the welfare state to propagate the genes of men who are socially destructive, and paying for women who are taken out of the pool of marriagable women.

    Male sexual competition is deadly serious evolutionary business, when one group of male chimpanzees takes over a troop they kill are the existing cubs of the former male members. They do this because of male sexual competition, a very practical reason. Your problem is not that you are anti-sex, you don't come across that way, but that you are anti-power, you do not affect the world, which is what the young men are looking seeking. I openly say in one of the hearts of the world's most liberal cities that the future abortion debate is not about whether or not women will be allowed to have an abortion, but, rather, which women will be forced to have one.

    Now that's about power. I mean if the state had taken the children of the young women, from my formative political experience, and euthanized them immediately after birth those women would still be available in the marriage pool. Think chiimps. But your brand of conservatism simply does not address this practical aspect of young men's lives, it does not address the brute fact of a society that cares not a whit for their interests.

    You cannot claim their interest unless you are addressing the ultimate factor of human politics, power. I mean you and your own commentators give away the game by claiming that most young men have never heard real conservatism. Well, if that's the case, then true conservativsm is a wholly fringe thing, offering nothing but a retreat from the world. If true conservatism were politically viable everyone would be familiar with its tenants.

    But they are not, and so you're offering them powerlessness, which is diametrically opposed to what they're seeking

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  16. I find myself agreeing with both Mark and Asher. In the political arena, traditional conservativism is now very marginal. Most conservative politicians are right-liberals (or opportunists with no principles at all).

    But there are legitimate criticisms to be made of traditional conservatives. Even 'true' conservatives have soaked up a lot of the autonomism and non-judgmentalism of modern culture. If you drop by a young adults group at most fundamentalist churches, you'll notice that many if not most of the women are single moms who had their children out of wedlock (typically with bad boys). Bring up this subject with the pastor and he'll say something like "Judge not lest you be judged."

    If you stop judging, you forego any possibility of challenging modern social trends. You become a passive accomplice. This is unfortunately the state of much of what passes for traditional conservatism.

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  17. The big enchilada is whether the growing men's issues awareness trend leads to the formation of a more right-oriented politics or a more left-oriented politics, or perhaps two separate camps.

    From where I am sitting, this is a hard one to call. I think many of the older men's issues folks tend to be more rightish, but not all of them. However a rather good number of newer and younger men's issues people tend to be coming from the liberal and left liberal side of things.

    These differences have a huge pragmatic impact in terms of what is advocated. The rights tend to be advocating a return to traditional roles, to some degree, for men and women alike, and a restoration of patriarchy to some degree. The lefts seek a "correction" to feminism, which they basically agree with yet see as having gone too far when it comes to women and not far enough when it comes to men. Obviously these two views contradict and are not really reconcilable because the endgame "goals" are simply vastly different in each case.

    The tensions are beginning to mount, I think, because the men's issues space is getting a bit more populated. It will be interesting to see which direction, or directions, this takes in the years ahead.

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  18. Novaseeker said:

    "The rights tend to be advocating a return to traditional roles, to some degree, for men and women alike, and a restoration of patriarchy to some degree. The lefts seek a "correction" to feminism, which they basically agree with yet see as having gone too far when it comes to women and not far enough when it comes to men."

    Agreed.

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  19. Isn't the obvious solution, if us straight males could allow ourselves to admit it, to enlist the help of queer career men, who have no vested interest in promoting alpha female wifes?

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  20. The trouble with that, as any of the few gay men's rights people will tell you, is that the overwhelming majority of gay men identify with feminism (and with racial minorities as well) in finding the locus of everything evil in the past and present to be straight, white males. They have a "common enemy" with feminists, and that enemy is straight, white men.

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  21. Asher wrote,

    "So, let's take your blog, as an example: it is an exceptionally well thought-out lengthy critique of philosophical liberalism, but I have yet to find even one post on how to implement a robust political conservatism."

    Yes, I've thought the same thing, Asher. And I'm sure, if you've spent any time around Auster or Woods, you know that many others beside you and me have thought it too.

    But I don't see why you think this discredits traditionalists entirely. Just because we can't solve the problem (yet) doesn't mean we can't identify it. Could you identify and articulate Liberalism before Auster, Richardson et al? I couldn't. I didn't even know what Liberalism meant.

    Are you just frustrated that the progress is slow? I am too! Do you think you're the only one frustrated and angry about the lack of decent, marriageable women around? I am too!

    But why change the destination just because we're getting there too slowly? Do you have a better goal in mind?

    Finally, I hate to invoke a cliche here, but Rome wasn't built in a day. I don't see why the entire West will be re-built all that quickly either.

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  22. Canadian wrote,

    "Bring up this subject with the pastor and he'll say something like "Judge not lest you be judged."

    Then challenge him! Study up on the Bible yourself and call him to account for his heresy. Don't throw that word heresy around lightly, of course, but if the charge is merited, then make it!

    We might not know how to take back our entire society, but we can certainly start working on our own neck of the woods. Demand orthodoxy from your pastor and don't be afraid to call him out when he deviates.

    The flock does not belong to the shepherd. He is merely the caretaker. Once he ceases to guard the sheep from the wolves and begins to endanger them, it's time to change shepherds.

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  23. I have yet to find even one post on how to implement a robust political conservatism.

    I just don't think I can go it alone. I've tried to set up little groups on campus and elsewhere, and with some moderate success. But never with the critical mass needed to convert a list of names into something more productive.

    What I'm hoping is that with changing conditions and with the growth of sites like this one that it might be possible to gather together a working group of traditionalists who are at least roughly on the same page.

    Where would we go from there? There are plenty of options. You could find a candidate or party to actively support in an election campaign. You could raise funds for a foundation. You could set up study groups. You could distribute local newsletters. You could eventually aim to concentrate numbers in a school or in a church parish.

    The aim would be to gradually build up institutions/organisations/resources as a more permanent and solid base for a traditionalist movement.

    I don't write about this much, though, because it's putting the cart before the horse. What is achievable depends on how much initial support can be attracted.

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  24. What to do Mark? well this guy says your already doing it. Keep up the good work.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH2O7PL9cko&feature=player_embedded#

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  25. Novaseeker observed: "The trouble with that, as any of the few gay men's rights people will tell you, is that the overwhelming majority of gay men identify with feminism (and with racial minorities as well) in finding the locus of everything evil in the past and present to be straight, white males. They have a 'common enemy' with feminists, and that enemy is straight, white men."

    Yes, exactly. Anyone who has grown up in Sydney will be all too well aware of how homosexual men think. Theirs is a Manichean / gnostic view of the world, even if they're atheists, and even if they're not specifically politicised in their outlook.

    In the one corner (according to their thinking), you have them. The homosexuals. The elect. The self-proclaimed freemasonry of cultural sensitiveness. The only ones who understand art and history and literature blah blah blah, because every non-homosexual (and more especially every non-homosexual male) is simply an ocker moron who doesn't Get It.

    In the opposite corner, you have the rest of the human race. Useful to ally themselves with on a strictly tactical basis, occasionally. But irreducibly The Other, and as such, incapable of inspiring disinterested homosexual support.

    If anyone thinks that I am caricaturing the attitude involved, then he or she should simply try to plough through in-your-face male homosexual literature sometime. (Sydney Star Observer is as good a place as any to begin.) Far from carrying out a long-term campaign of supporting us against femocrats, the average male homosexual militant is too introverted to imagine a long-term campaign of supporting anyone else.

    And BTW, let no-one suppose that this situation has the slightest connection with legality or illegality. It is as readily observable in countries where homosexuality has been legal for generations (e.g. Sweden, France) as in countries where legalisation has been comparatively recent (e.g. Britain, the United States, Australia).

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  26. The grand narrative of the ideological history of the past generation is the triumph of Alpha males. One can see it in both financial and sexual markets, combined together in films like S"ex and the City".

    Powerful "Alpha" men dont support "Beta" mens rights in either the shop floor or the courtroom because they have an interest in dis-empowering the next rung down on the status-ladder. So its a way of hobbling the team Beta competition.

    The same process occurred with Alpha females who fought against the Church to improve their status, again, mostly in competition with Beta males.

    Its obvious that Alpha males want to disempower Beta males in the work place. Class struggle and all that.

    Powerful men can also afford good lawyers and trusts to protect their assets and custodial interests when in conflict with their spouse. cf Michael Coreleone in Godfather III.

    Whats ironic is that this "Alpha" male triumph happened when the average quality of "Alpha" males declined drastically in comparison to the giants of yesteryear. Compare Rudd to Whitlam, Fuld to Ford, Keynes to Leavitt etc.

    Guys like Roissy are enjoyable and illuminating to read, but they would have died of fright in a confrontation with any given tradesman on my Dad's old panel shop.

    As Steve Sailer said, we live in an Age of Midgets.

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  27. The Church and the Unions were sort of Beta-male organizations. A fact realised by Nietzche who lambasted them for their morality on behalf of the "bungled and bothched".

    So it was natural for post-modernist liberals to attack these bastions of Beta-dom. On the cultural side po-mo liberals went after the Church on behalf of sexual freedom - against the "wowsers".

    On the financial side po-mo liberals went after the Unions on behalf of economic freedom - against the "hard-hats".

    Women largely went along with Alpha-male assault on Beta-male bastions as most of them are always on the look out for a piece of "Alpha"-male action. Well the cuter ones have got a form of "Alpha" attention for a while, as any patron of Kings Cross or King Street establishment can testify.

    Good luck with that.

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  28. So many intellectual errors only time for a few.

    Modern society hasn't just abandoned men, it's abandoned women as well. Lots of bloggers are profoundly misogynistic but the reality is that for women who divorce--even those who initiate it--are financially worse off by the action. I know, I dish out the happy pills to them all day. Most of them can't even get their husbands to look after the kids on a weekend. Not only that the single women who are unpartnered are profoundly unhappy. Their dating pool is limited to nice guys without balls, mangina nerds who play computer games all days, narcissitic "studs" and culturally dead "Grey" men. Repeat after me, Women aren't the enemy: Feminism is the enemy.

    The problem is that women very limited in their capacity for independent action; they are the sheeple sex. They conform to group norms, and if the norms are screwed up so are they.

    The Swedish factory owner no longer has to pay his male workers (and they are still mostly male workers) a living wage

    Wages are a product of supply, demand and profit. Conservatism 101.

    It's the true traditionalism that sometimes draws the most fire, rather than the faux conservatism.

    Traditionalism is not conservatism. Traditionalism is worshiping the old. Conservatism is worshiping the truth.(Profound Metaphysics in that last statement. See Ed Feser) Conservatism is a connectedness with reality. Liberalism a belief in the dream.

    But do people like Laura Wood or myself really come across as anti-sex?

    No, but the sexual vision you(and Traditionalists) have is at odd with reality and is therefore contra sexual reality. The pretty damsel does occasionally want a good hard rogering. No pretty, but TRUE.

    And we don't want to punish all women by withdrawing all forms of protection

    Our objection to woman fighting is not on the grounds of "protecting" them but on the grounds that fighting is profoundly anti-feminine. A woman in combat fatigues is an aberration as is a man in a dress. Women don't need our protection what men and women need are a recognition of what their proper roles in society are.

    traditional conservativism is now very marginal.

    Yep, mainly because real religion is dead and because traditionalism became the mouthpiece of the Conservative movement. Conservative thinking stopped with the Medieval Schoolmen.

    Example:Lots of women became educated in the 19thC and wanted to enter the professional workforce. Traditionalist response: Nonsense women should stay at home, their incapable of professional work.
    Liberal response: Women are oppressed by marriage, they should all work to show that they are liberated.
    Liberal thinking was more in line with women's aspirations. Victory Liberals.

    Intelligent response: Well the facts are that some women are temperamentally suited to work and others to staying at home, let's organise society around lines which recognises this difference within the context of a marriage, so that a woman who wants to work can and one who wants to stay at home to look after the kids can. i.e State sponsored child care, tax deductions for children, income splitting etc. Preserve the family and give women/men choices. No wouldn't that be a smart idea?

    Political action is preceded by cultural change. Game is a culture changing paradigm that is profoundly conservative. Believe it or not, the first warriors of this movement will be writers, artists, philosophers and the religious. The other big game changer is the internet. It is fatally weakening the power of the liberal media; its becoming irrelevant. Conservatism needs to be revived, old principles have to be examined and thought out, ideas spread, political action will take on its own legs.

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  29. Jack,

    I understand the argument you're making. And I'd even concede that the issue of alpha interests vs beta interests could be a factor at play in what's happened.

    But I can't accept that liberalism has been employed by alphas against betas. The men in the liberal political class are not exactly the vanguard of your archetype alpha male.

    If it was a case of alphas vs betas, and if betas had institutional support in the churches and unions, then we wouldn't have seen the political orthodoxy that we've seen in the West. There would have been a prolonged period of political struggle. The beta men in the unions would have made common cause with the beta men in the unions.

    But that's not what happened. The churches and unions have promoted the liberal orthodoxy as much as the alpha business leader types, if not more so.

    Once the old order broke apart, then alphas and betas found themselves disadvantaged in different ways.

    Alphas don't do well when divorce is an easier option and when drugs and alcohol are easier to abuse.

    Betas don't do well when women are left as free agents to pursue short term sexual hookups in their 20s.

    It's the betas who are left with the higher level of discontent. Once things have broken down, then it's understandable that they should be angered by the shift in sexual selection toward alphas by younger women in their 20s.

    But it's wrong to then identify the enemy or the problem as the alpha male. It wasn't the alpha males alone who created the conditions for the social breakdown - betas were as much to blame.

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  30. I'd like to encourage men to accept the idea that acting for the public good is a normal aspect of a masculine life. I don't think we were meant to be restricted to the domestic realm.


    Yes! Absolutely. Proverbs 31 makes that clear. In fact, the industriousness of the wife has a concrete goal, as the passage makes clear. She increases his status and frees him up for political activity:

    Her husband is respected at the city gate,
    where he takes his seat among the elders of the land.


    Women are supposed to take over most domestic duties so that their husbands can do something else.

    Even taking part in your church's men's ministry, setting up a men's discussion club, or writing letters to the editor of the local paper are ways that a good man can influence the opinions of the other men around him.

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  31. Social Patologist, you call yourself a conservative and then suggest the government should sponsor daycare?

    You know I resent the fact that my taxes are used to free women from their natural responsibilities to take care of their own children.

    If you represent modern conservatism, call me a liberal.

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  32. Mark Richardson: "On the one hand, the movement is largely anti-feminist and anti-liberal. And yet many in the movement choose to attack, above all else, traditionalism and social conservatism."

    I think the primary reason is that many men want to have it both ways: they want to have easy access to women of easy virtue, whom they will use as *things* for a time, while still holding themselves to be "good" men ... who "deserve" a good woman when they're good and ready to get serious about starting a family. They want the promised benefits of "liberalism" and feminism, without having to deal with feminists.

    And then, there is us, always saying "It doesn't work that way; you can't use women as *things* and still be a *good* man."

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  33. Mark said:

    But I can't accept that liberalism has been employed by alphas against betas. The men in the liberal political class are not exactly the vanguard of your archetype alpha male.

    That is exactly the point. Cultural and political-bureaucratic elites are sub-Alpha in that they don't make gazillions in equity and property investment off their own bat. But they are wannabe Alpha, they rely on Alpha's for sponsor and donor support.

    (Go to any cultural exhibition opening or political wheeler dealer behind-the-scenes and see the place is knee deep in developers, traders, etc)

    So cultural elites and political elites side with financial elite Alphas on the basics of liberalism. Which is about breaking up Beta-teams that evolved to counter Alpha-male dominance.

    Liberalism is about liberating individual autonomies against institutional authority. But in the post-modern context the two most "oppressive" institutional authorities were the Church and Unions. (The state is a big source of money and its resources have been deflected to Alpha purposes, rather than diminished altogether. cf the Bailout of Wall Street.)

    The Church and Unions evolved to counter and civilise the medieval war-lords and modern robber barons. They enforced ostracism against "cheaters" who weakened the Beta Cartel, such as scabs and sluts.

    In reality there are few true Alphas left. Most so-called Masters of the Universe could not say boo to a goose if left in the wild to their own devices. My father would have eaten them for breakfast.

    (Bear Gryllis is an uber-Alpha. But he is devoted to traditional authority, the Army, the Church, the Scouts. True Alphas feel no need to lash out at traditional authority, they just do their own thing and are comfortable in their skin.)

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  34. Mark said:

    If it was a case of alphas vs betas, and if betas had institutional support in the churches and unions, then we wouldn't have seen the political orthodoxy that we've seen in the West. There would have been a prolonged period of political struggle. The beta men in the [Churchs] would have made common cause with the beta men in the unions.

    But that's not what happened. The churches and unions have promoted the liberal orthodoxy as much as the alpha business leader types, if not more so.


    There was a "prolonged political struggle" for the soul of Beta-institutions. The "beta men in the [Churchs] did make common cause with the beta men in the unions", at least in this country: it was called the DLP. Mainly Irish-based.

    By the seventies the DLP and similar organizations had collapsed. Partly because the elite leadership class of ALL institutions had been fully indoctrinated by liberal media-academia in uni. Mainly because the new leadership of traditional institutions were bribed to join the post-modern liberal elite New Class, once they were processed through meritocratic schools. Did Bob Hawke look uncomfortable with Packer, Bond, Abeles etc?

    So the leaders of Unions now promote post-modern liberal orthodoxy. Churches are split between pre-modern "corporal" traditionalists and post-modern liberal fashionistas. Obviously the pre-modern "corporalists" are now going to suffer a devastating loss of legitimacy as their clumsy attempts to cover up the vile sins of their post-modern brethren are exposed.

    Both Churches and Unions are in secular decline because higher-ranking Betas can make a better life for themselves attached to financial Alphas. In the old days the class and clan prejudices prevented people from "crossing the tracks", being a "rat" etc.

    The Church and Unions worked to make Beta-male life respectable. Think of Joseph the dutiful parent of Christ. Who then became "Average Joe" hard-hat.

    Such people who actually do real work for a living are now despised "red-necks", "ockers", bogans, "crackers". Thats what liberal media-academia think of traditional male values.

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  35. Even taking part in your church's men's ministry, setting up a men's discussion club, or writing letters to the editor of the local paper are ways that a good man can influence the opinions of the other men around him.

    Yes, exactly. It's a matter of not passively expecting some other man to do the defending that is needed to be done. If a man is responsibly masculine then it's up to him to fulfil his public role, even if it's in modest ways, such as the ones described above.

    It's true that one limitation is that some men might be worried that they are putting their standing at work in jeopardy by taking politically incorrect stances. I do advise men to be prudent in what they choose to do.

    There is political work that doesn't require high level public exposure. Better to choose that kind of work if you're worred about the fallout on your job or family life.

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  36. Jack,

    I expect that one reason that modern day alphas seem so reduced is exactly because of the loss of institutional influence over individual autonomies.

    Alphas are not perfect specimens of manhood. Yes, they display certain behaviours that women find sexually attractive. Yes, they tend to be ambitious in terms of career status and money and so often do well in corporate life.

    But they also tend to be risk takers, to be egoistic, to be promiscuous, and to be emotionally needy or demanding. They don't have the stability, loyalty or conscientiousness of beta men.

    It doesn't always make them the best husbands or fathers. Women might fall for them sexually, but a woman who is left with a couple of kids and then finds her husband is egoistically self-absorbed or emotionally needy or unfaithful might not be too impressed.

    Since the 1970s, when divorce laws were relaxed, alpha marriages haven't done so well - a lot of alpha men seem to divorce not just once but several times. Yes, women continue to take them on, but it often doesn't last the distance.

    It's the same when it comes to permissive attitudes to sex and drugs. Alphas are risk takers and are more likely than betas to be promiscuous or do drugs.

    In short, modern social conditions mean that alphas are more likely to have a fractured lifestyle, one that's not conducive to developing an impressive masculinity.

    I know these are extreme, "bad boy", alpha examples, but they colourfully illustrate what I'm trying to get at. Think of the American actor Charlie Sheen or the British singer Robbie Williams. Both are clearly alpha in personality, and both have had success in attracting women and in their careers. But the weaker side of the alpha character is evident in both - in their fractured personal lives.

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  37. Anon@ 1.23

    If you represent modern conservatism, call me a liberal.

    You're not actually a liberal but you do share the same thought processes and metaphysical assumptions as they do; a denial of reality in pursuit of an unnatural ideal. Yeah, your ideals are different to the ideals of Liberalism but you think(if that's what it could be called) like them.

    Get an education.

    Start by reading British Sociologist Catherine Hakim. The fembots hate her because she dares to say that some women are happy to stay at home looking after their kids. The Trads hate her be she dares to suggest that some women are happier working. Funny that, a common enemy despite two different points of view. Or maybe the points of view aren't that different after all.

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  38. State sponsored child care is a feminist priority, at least in the US. They think that is what they need for high powered women to compete with men and crash the so-called "glass ceiling".

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  39. Novaseeker.

    I think you're missing the point. State sponsored care, family tax breaks, income splitting, income tax deductions on the basis of the number of kids you have, tax rebates for mothers who chose to stay at home are all policy tools which can be used to strengthen the traditional family. I'm not particularly wedded to any of these ideas.

    My point is that women are a mixed group by nature. This is an observable FACT. Conservatism needs to recognise this fact and incorporate it. The reflexive reply that the proper role of women is that they should stay at home(Trad position) doesn't square up with female nature and desire. I hope to do a post on post-natal depression which is pertinent to this discussion, thrashing out some ideas in the process.

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  40. But there's no daylight between that and the liberal position, at least in the US. Both our left liberal Democrats and our right liberal Republicans would support most of that, perhaps with some push-back from the Republicans on the state child care option. I mean this is mainstream stuff in the US. Not really conservative -- just mainstream liberal, whether of the right or the left.

    Besides, isn't the kind of conservatism you're espousing pretty much the same as David Cameron's Tories? I guess I just don't see what you think is missing -- the conservatives in the US and the UK would be very amenable to that entire agenda.

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  41. Social Pathologist,

    I haven't heard too many traditionalists argue that women should be denied the opportunity to work outside the home.

    Laura Wood, who is perhaps the most outspoken on this issue, still recognises that there are some women who are ill-suited to full-time motherhood and who should be able to contribute in their own way.

    You say that trads hate Catherine Hakim? Really? I welcomed her research and wasn't terribly surprised by it.

    Look, my aim is to have a society in which the importance of the male provider role is still recognised. The male provider role should not be undermined by the state establishing itself as an alternative provider, nor by feminist indoctrination.

    The aim should be for women to be supported by their husbands, and not by the state, when they are having their children.

    When the children are no longer infants, then by all means allow women to choose.

    My prediction, absent the distortion of state sponsored careerism and feminist indoctrination, is that a very small number would return to work full-time. A much larger number might choose part-time work. And a large number too would choose to be full-time homemakers.

    It's possible to compromise with the traditional pattern without breaking it. What liberals want, though, is not the compromise but the breaking. That is likely to lead to higher levels of female discontent within marriage, as per this significant research outcome.

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  42. Social Pathologist,

    You wrote earlier,

    No, but the sexual vision you (and Traditionalists) have is at odds with reality and is therefore contra sexual reality.

    If I understand you right, you believe that traditionalists view women as being chastely above sex.

    I'm not sure why you'd think this of us. It's true, I think, that men have traditionally idealised women for their beauty, and that a certain level of modesty was thought to be part of this beauty.

    But this is just men not wanting women to be skanks. It spoils the way that most men - not just traditionalist men - like to admire women.

    It doesn't mean that men don't want women to be physically responsive.

    I would have thought that this was true of men of all political persuasions. That it transcended political differences.

    Social Pathologist, maybe there are traditionalists out there who don't recognise the carnal nature of men and women. Not only do I recognise it, I think it's an important expression of self, albeit an unruly one that tests us at times.

    But if I've misunderstood the point you were making let me know.

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  43. Christian "corporalism" tends towards populist institutional authority.

    Secular liberalism tends towards elitist individual autonomies.

    Christianity always worked against natural selection AND sexual selection in biological evolution. This fact was noticed by Darwin and deplored by Nietzche.

    Christianity enjoins us to care for the sick and poor, which is clearly not part of natural selection. The Omega's must be culled.

    Christianity enjoins genders to monogamous relationships, which is clearly not part of sexual selection. Polygamy is the norm in dimorphic species. Only the Alphas may breed.

    But Christianity's contra-biological philosophy actually made it a better social philosophy. Looking after the poor and weak pays off because they can improve through education and nutrition. Letting Betas breed also tends to build strong families, the basis of a successful civil society.

    A champion team will always beat a team full of champions.

    Look at the North East Asians.

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  44. Pseudo-Alphas are not interested in "mens rights" or "womens rights" - their phrase for non-Alphas is "loser".

    Pseudo-Alpha male financiers made more or less successful LBO's on the two great 20thC super powers, the USSR and USA. Undoubtedly the USSR had to be reformed, but as Gore said, "shock therapy" had too much shock and not enough therapy.

    These financial wheeler dealers have more or less brought those super powers to their knees by milking and gutting their key industries and the state itself. The net effect is to disempower Beta institutions.

    But the pseudo-Alphas are doing alright. With billion dollar personal war-chests they can buy any number of bolt holes, whores and guards.

    In previous generations such Alphas were held in check by ecclesiastic Church, military State and Unions. But these institutional authorities are now in disarray or fatally compromised.

    Once plutocracy is established then polygamy cannot be far behind. Hence the irruption of whoredom, particularly in Russia and America where the pseudo-Alpha males are most dominant.

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  45. Mark said:

    It's the same when it comes to permissive attitudes to sex and drugs. Alphas are risk takers and are more likely than betas to be promiscuous or do drugs.

    I object to the term "Alpha" being used to designate those who play games, whether it be Roissy in the bar-room or Fuld in the board-room.

    These guys are "pseudo-Alphas", they have high social status for sure. And all the trappings of Alpha-dom, particularly when it comes to designer goods and trophy wives or girlfriends.

    But they obviously do not strike out on their own and follow the hard road. They do not impose self-denying ordinance.

    True Alphas are few and far between these days. Bear Gryllis is one. Solzhenitsyn was another. So was De Gaulle.

    The uber-Alpha male of History was obviously Jesus Christ, who took on and eventually defeated the Roman Empire. Not exactly the sort you would expect find showing up in a "Sex and the City" episode.

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  46. I think one of the basic problems of the nascent "men's movement" is that far too much of it is simply feminism with a flipped script. Many of the assumptions are the same (grievance-mongering leading to the desire for special treatment), with the only difference being that the men want what the feminists have gotten for women.

    I especially notice this with those men who approached the movement via Roissy and his ilk. The contempt for so-called "betas" and social conservatives who articulate a vision of men's obligations to go along with men's rights mirrors the feminist contempt for homemakers and other women who refused to be shepherded into burning their bras.

    The solution of these types to the problem of a feminized culture is to "game" the rules. This is a very slick form of appeasement, and I do not see where these people get off framing themselves as some sort of resistance movement against feminism. They are about as resistant as Vichy France was.

    A men's movement this complacent will only be overwhelmed, and eventually coopted, by the very forces they hoped to master. A men's movement that can only whine about men's rights without facing up to manly responsibilities will never get anywhere.

    For one thing, they'll never get the women. The chief reason I believe Feminism achieved so much was because they managed to get a significant number of foolish men to buy into their premises and their vision of human nature. A men's movement that does not go beyond securing special advantages for themselves will not only repulse otherwise reasonable women, it will validate the very image of men that propelled feminism to the heights it has reached today.

    I have in mind in particular the kind of "men's activist" embodied by "Spearhead" contributor "Pro-Male / Anti-Feminist Tech" who attacks as "conservative female supremacism" the notion of marriage, somply because marriage demands certain obligations of men towards women. To bayonet one's own troops like this, in juvenile fashion, further exemplifies both the intellectual immaturity (in so many, many ways) and tacticial stupidity of what constitutes the "men's movement" as it stands. Marriage is precisely the bulwark by which the role of man in society is secured and defined. Animal species that have no defined partnering behaviors end up with the males of the species constantly adrift, with the females in charge of propagating the next generation. Animal species that do, such as wolves, lions, and gorillas, have secure positions for males within their ranks, often at the head of their local groups.

    To fashion enemies out of the thin ranks of one's allies and giving them onerous labels (Conservative female supremacism? Seriously?) is only the tip of the iceberg of the many problems of the men's movement. If such a movement really seeks to supplant feminism, it had better take on a new set of assumptions and offer a fundamentally different way of interpreting the world to all those who have been scarred and damaged by the monstrosities of feminism. If its a case of "meet the new boss, just of different gender flavor from the old boss but otherwise the same" will not win over the disaffected, no more than a whipped man would ask "sir, may I have some more?"

    Oh, and lay off the "traditionalists". The civilization they built did not survive long enough to have "traditionalists" if these people didn't know what they were doing. Nietzsche is dead and died childless. "Traditionalism" lives on.

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  47. You should not be so arrogant, Social Patologist.
    My education is probably better than yours. Get a life.
    English isn't my native language so I probably didn't express myself that well.
    Whast I meant is that if you represent modern conservatism, I wouldn't want to be associated with it, in any form.
    Traditional family worked just fine, before your feminist friends started their social experiments including state-sponsored daycare. If you are so fond of it, you can pay for it out of your own pocket, just don't epect others subsidizing your lifestyle.
    It's people like you who are the problem. You pretend to be a consevative, but you are a feminist wolf in sheep clothes, nothing else. Plus you seem to lack a common civility. How old are you?

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  48. BTW, Social Patologist, you wrote that state-sponsored care can strengthen traditional family. No, it doesn't. A traditional family is a man who is a breadwinner and a wife who is a homemaker. A 2 income family isn't traditional at all.

    If some women want to work, fine, who is stopping them?Certainly, not me. I just refuse to pay their childcare. You are advocating socialism on this site under the guise of conservatism, becase it works presumably. Now, let me tell you, it doesn't.

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  49. Exactly, Mr Wolfe: such men want to have it both ways.

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  50. "I object to the term "Alpha" being used to designate those who play games, whether it be Roissy in the bar-room or Fuld in the board-room."

    I object to the whole alpha-beta(loser)-uberloser scheme. Whatever utility there might have been in ranking men socially as they were wolves os apes has been lost to Roissyism.

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  51. Illion, I agree in part.

    The division into alpha, beta and omega males doesn't really work neatly when applied to human societies.

    When you try to apply these categories to real male personality types, you get a much more even balance between "alpha" and "beta" males.

    It's true that there is a male personality type, which I'll call "alpha", which is the most sexually attractive to women. These are men who are a bit more egoistic, pushy, ambitious, arrogant, badass, dangerous, risk taking, edgy.

    These men do have the virtue of coming across as self-confident and they often do well in corporate settings. They probably give off the most overt display of masculine signals to women, hence the sexual appeal.

    But they have their limitations. Compared to other types of men, they are likely to be less faithful, less emotionally stable and reliable and less invested in their children.

    They're not always the most promising material for long-term relationships. Nor do they always have the people skills or the social commitments to rise to political leadership.

    Beta males tend to be a bit more laid back. They are more stable in their emotions and don't feel the need to prove themselves in social settings. They're less pushy and they don't feel as strong a need to compete for status in high pressured corporate settings.

    The "beta" personality type often starts out less confident around women. But that can grow over time. Betas have been harmed by the idea pushed within our culture that men should aim to be supplicating nice guys in order to win over women.

    When you look at the political rulers of society they tend to be men who manage a mixture of alpha and beta qualities. Think of Blair, or Howard, or Rudd. None of them are exactly alpha babe magnets. They strike me as essentially "beta" personality types, albeit with relatively high levels of self-regard and ambition.

    I don't believe that beta males should try to mimic alpha behaviour. When I was at uni, I did notice women going for the edgy, badass type of guy. They were the ones that women found most sexually attractive. They were therefore the "alpha" caste.

    But they were not necessarily the best kind of men, the kind of men you'd want to emulate.

    Beta men should stick with their own strengths but honestly recognise their own weaknesses as well in how they come across to women. They need to attract with something other than niceness; they can learn better how to signal self-confidence, how to act more boldly, to not be overawed by what women offer and so on.

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  52. I have in mind in particular the kind of "men's activist" embodied by "Spearhead" contributor "Pro-Male / Anti-Feminist Tech" who attacks as "conservative female supremacism" the notion of marriage, somply because marriage demands certain obligations of men towards women. To bayonet one's own troops like this, in juvenile fashion, further exemplifies both the intellectual immaturity (in so many, many ways) and tacticial stupidity of what constitutes the "men's movement" as it stands. Marriage is precisely the bulwark by which the role of man in society is secured and defined. Animal species that have no defined partnering behaviors end up with the males of the species constantly adrift, with the females in charge of propagating the next generation. Animal species that do, such as wolves, lions, and gorillas, have secure positions for males within their ranks, often at the head of their local groups.

    I think what he and other men's rights folks are talking about is the *current* scheme of marriage. A lot of MTA types distinguish between "marriage 1.0" (i.e., traditional marriage) and "marriage 2.0" (i.e., the current version). The difference isn't really "how do I go about my own marriage" -- the difference lies in the legal regime surrounding marriage, which, in the US at least, has been radically changed. Marriage 2.0 in the U.S. very much is a thoroughly feminist institution with the laws slanted in every possible way to empower women and disempower men. I have been married and divorced in the US -- the family law is crazily slanted at the moment, no way around that. So you see guys reacting against that.

    Beyond that, there are two types of MRAs (at least two): the lefts and the rights. When it comes to marriage, the lefts want to destroy it and replace it with something else, whereas the rights want to reinstitute Marriage 1.0. Both the lefts and the rights, though, generally agree that Marriage 2.0 is very risky for men given that the legal regime around it is thoroughly stacked against men. That's why many MRAs, of the right and the left, discourage men from marrying under the *current* rules -- many guys, like me, have been burned by the current rules and hate to see other guys just throwing themselves into the meat grinder. In a system where ~50% of marriages end in divorce and where the legal system upon divorce is very much stacked against men, prudence suggests that men should exercise caution and at the very least be informed about the risks that the new legal regime around marriage presents for men.

    So I think there are two different strands here. One is skepticism about the utility of "Marriage 2.0" for men in general -- and I think that's shared by a broad swath of MRAs of whatever stripe. The other is the difference in goals between rights and lefts among the MRAs, with the former seeing the reintroduction of marriage 1.0 as being crucial for the civilization, and the lefts seeing marriage as antiquated and in need of replacement. It's one of the main issues on which the rights and lefts disagree, and probably one of the main issues that will drive them apart as the men's issues area continues to grow in population.

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  53. Mr Richardson, I doubt I disagree at all.

    I just don't like that particular mode of categorization of human beings. I doubt I'd care for it even if it didn't reflect (and support) the immoral Roissyite ethos.

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  54. Actually, I think "Marriage 2.0" is slanted to favor whichever party is most willing to go the sociopath route.

    For instance, my sister simply wanted free of her no-account husband. But her ex- and his new woman were able to use the family courts ... and, by getting her little bitch of a daughter to accuse her of abuse, the criminal courts ... to make her life hell. And, of course, the now-grown daughters of the marriage are paying the price of their so-called father letting his new woman enact her vindictiveness.

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  55. M.Richardson: "Beta men should stick with their own strengths but honestly recognise their own weaknesses as well in how they come across to women. They need to attract with something other than niceness; they can learn better how to signal self-confidence, how to act more boldly, to not be overawed by what women offer and so on."

    True. But, until the men who *can* be good men stop fixating on "getting sex," they'll always always be at the mercy of manipulative women.

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  56. There are some cases like that, but in the US mother custody is the norm under the "best interests of the child" standard. True, in some cases men can pull that off, too, but the norm is default mother custody. I understand that in Oz the rule now is shared parenting? That isn't the case in the US. One state, Tennessee, is debating a shared parenting bill right now. It has come up in the past in a few states, and the women's groups have generally risen up strongly against it, precisely because the current system favors women so much.

    When you see a group like NOW spending money to defeat something like shared parenting, you know that the current system, which they are defending, favors their constituency -- women. At least this is how it is in the US.

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  57. "So I think there are two different strands here. One is skepticism about the utility of "Marriage 2.0" for men in general -- and I think that's shared by a broad swath of MRAs of whatever stripe. The other is the difference in goals between rights and lefts among the MRAs, with the former seeing the reintroduction of marriage 1.0 as being crucial for the civilization, and the lefts seeing marriage as antiquated and in need of replacement. It's one of the main issues on which the rights and lefts disagree, and probably one of the main issues that will drive them apart as the men's issues area continues to grow in population."

    Then the movement is suffering from an identity crisis. It cannot have it both ways. One must win out, and if the side that wins out is the one that seeks to eschew marriage entirely, then the men's movement is doomed.

    And even this is assuming that what you are saying is correct. I do not get this revulsion for a "Marriage 2.0" from the crowd that came to dogpile on the target of that article, which was a woman conservative who was very much in favor of "Marriage 1.0". What I saw, in both the article and the comment boxes, was a revulsion for marriage in its most basic forms, which require an obligation of men towards women. As I've mentioned earlier, it exhibits in full the biggest glaring flaw of the men's movement; too much of what passes as intellectual output begins from the same assumptions as feminism. In the case of "Tech" and all those Spearhead readers who rallied to him, it is the assumption that marriage is an adversarial power relationship. If "Tech" takes on Betty Freidan's assumption of what marriage is, then he is trapped in the same intellectual playground as Betty Freidan.

    As for the notion that the marriage "regime" (there's that feminist framework again...you know, it doesn't make it any more convincing when guys are the ones dancing around it) is unfair to men, what I see in the US is that it is the divorce that extracts the most from men, not marriage. Why is there no advocacy against no fault divorce amongs the intelligentsia of the men's movement? After all, a righteous man's property would be relatively safe if his scheming wife is required to produce damning evidence of some major abuse of trust to make away with half his fortune and his children. Where are the MRA's rallying against divorce? Or is rallying against divorce too "beta"?

    Furthermore, this juvenile "feminism hurts only us" mentality amongst some of the most outspoken of these MRA's is not only childish, but extremely short-sighted. The best way to destroy feminism is, in fact, to claim that it destroys the lives not just of men but of everybody. Feminism did not just destroy the lives of men; like the demon god Moloch, it comsumed the children of its followers too. If the purpose of the men's movement is to fulfill some revenge fantasy instead of making the world a better place even for women and children (now there's a manly goal), then not only will the men's movement fail, it will very much deserve to. At that point, it cannot ever claim to be a men's movement. It'll simply be a movement for overgrown boys.

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  58. And even this is assuming that what you are saying is correct. I do not get this revulsion for a "Marriage 2.0" from the crowd that came to dogpile on the target of that article, which was a woman conservative who was very much in favor of "Marriage 1.0". What I saw, in both the article and the comment boxes, was a revulsion for marriage in its most basic forms, which require an obligation of men towards women.

    That's because The Spearhead is more or less dominated by the lefts. Remember, the lefts don't want to restore Marriage 1.0. They want to get rid of marriage.

    Why is there no advocacy against no fault divorce amongs the intelligentsia of the men's movement?

    I'm getting the impression, seriously, that you have skimmed the surface of things. Many MRAs advocate elimination of no fault divorce! Many. I mentioned this umpteen times on my own blog when I was still blogging, for example. That's a perspective raised by the rights, for the most part, who want to restore Marriage 1.0.

    Furthermore, this juvenile "feminism hurts only us" mentality amongst some of the most outspoken of these MRA's is not only childish, but extremely short-sighted. The best way to destroy feminism is, in fact, to claim that it destroys the lives not just of men but of everybody. Feminism did not just destroy the lives of men; like the demon god Moloch, it comsumed the children of its followers too. If the purpose of the men's movement is to fulfill some revenge fantasy instead of making the world a better place even for women and children (now there's a manly goal), then not only will the men's movement fail, it will very much deserve to. At that point, it cannot ever claim to be a men's movement. It'll simply be a movement for overgrown boys.

    And this is simply more venting by you. That's fine. But I have been around the men's sites for a few years now, and there are PLENTY of articles about how feminism hurts women and children, too. Plenty. In fact, one of my own points of focus in the various things I have written has been how women who follow the well-trodden feminist path are hurt by it for various reasons. This is not an uncommon theme.

    Here's the deal: the men's issues space is growing a lot right now, and a lot of that is coming from young people. Young Americans right now are mostly left, because they grew up during the Bush period and hated Bush. They are young and naive, but they are also left. And they are coming to dominate places like The Spearhead. It's one of the reasons why I suspended my own participation there -- the left side of this gets it wrong.

    But you're ranting and raving and painting everyone with the same brush, which is an absurd generalization. The themes of no-fault divorce and feminism hurting women are quite common. It's true that there are others who are quite misogynistic and so on and see the world as "us vs. them". I've generally tended to see it as us vs. feminists rather than vs. women because I know quite a few women who are not feminists, and I also think feminism has hurt women. But in any case, my main point is, as I wrote above, there are fractures and fissures in the mens's rights space right now. You can call that an identity crisis, but I think Mark gets closer to the truth when he says that the movement is in its intellectually formative stage, and it is unclear right now which side will prevail or whether indeed both sides with split. It remains to be seen -- very early days for this right now.

    So my advice would be ti take a deep breath, stop ranting and raving (there's far too much ranting and raving between trads and MRAs happening right now, imo, and Mark's article here was a breath of fresh air in that regard) and watch things develop.

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  59. The Roissyite taxonomy of Alpha, Beta, Omega was only meant to refer to the dating sphere, it was not meant to be a societal taxonomy; though in real life there is probably some overlap.

    Roissy's value lays in pushing forward the idea that female mate selection is strongly base on sexual as opposed to character characteristics and the males which possess these sexual characteristics are the "winners". His great resonance with the young particularly stems from the fact that the traditional advice with regard to attracting women was wrong. It's true that Roissy paints a darker picture of female nature, but to be fair to the man himself, even he thinks that many of his acolytes go over the top with their misogyny.

    Feminism didn't succeed because it "co-opted" beta males to the program, it succeeded because women were co-opted. The traditionalist family structure was profoundly unsatisfying to some women. Feminism was a revolt of the women.

    If I understand you right, you believe that traditionalists view women as being chastely above sex.

    Firstly, what do you mean by traditionalist? I take a Traditionalist to mean the values held by European society around 1900. And traditionalists have had a real problem with sex and female sexuality. Pedastalisation is perhaps the most appropriate term that Western Society had with regard to the understanding of female nature. Modesty itself was transformed into asexuality by society. Note, this seems to be a feature more of Traditional Anglo influenced societies than Continental ones, as the Europeans have always seemed to have a bit more of a relaxed attitude to sex.

    Traditional society actively stopped women from working outside of home so this assertion that traditionalists are happy with women working is contra the facts. The female professionals at the turn of the century were novelties and were discriminated against in many ways by the conservatives of the time. This is a fact, not my opinion. Traditional society wanted women to stay at home even if the woman herself didn't want to. The championing of woman's rights was a Liberal endevour.

    Novaseeker.
    But there's no daylight between that and the liberal position, at least in the US

    Perhaps, just perhaps, the Liberals are right on certain matters and reflexive--as opposed to thinking--conservative opposition is wrong. The whole liberal program can be summarised as concentrating on several real politically expedient problems and providing the wrong solution. The conservative response has been to deny there is a problem.

    From my perspective, women have been hard done by both Traditionalism and Feminism. Thinking conservatives should be offering a solution. The traditionalist response of stay at home is not really an option.

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  60. Jonathan Wolfe said:

    "The best way to destroy feminism is, in fact, to claim that it destroys the lives not just of men but of everybody."

    I just want to throw this out there if that's ok, is feminisim necessarily a bad goal? Isn't equality between the sexes admirable? Does it necessarily hve to be about man hating, exclusive careerism or socially irresponsible behaviour such as with expropriative divorce?

    I take your point about feminist views which see matters in terms of power relations between the sexes and how unhelpful that can be.

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  61. From my perspective, women have been hard done by both Traditionalism and Feminism. Thinking conservatives should be offering a solution. The traditionalist response of stay at home is not really an option.

    But the feminists already advocate most of what you wrote there. I suppose you're suggesting a conservative alliance based on pragmatism with feminism on these issues? In that, I disagree, because things like state sponsored child care only serve to encourage all women to work, and create families that are anything but traditional. It seems to me you are defining "traditional family" in a very minimalist way as "heterosexual married couple with children". There are plenty of situations which match that definition but are not "traditional".

    In ay case, I have to say that your writings make me even more skeptical of the current state of "conservatism" as you would define it -- it seems perilously close to what is advocated by Andrew Sullivan, for example, who is essentially a centre-right liberal. Advocacy of the programs you state there is basically the same -- it's a rightist liberal position, as far as I can tell, rather than a conservative one. That depends on labels of course and I realize you are trying to push the labels, but still ... I would never see any point in supporting those reforms if I were interested in "strengthening the traditional family". That's like saying abortion rights strengthened the traditional family because it gave women who desired abortions the right to get them -- except that it didn't strengthen families at all.

    In all, SP, you seem to be advocating a new politics and wanting to put the label "conservative" on it. Based on the content, that label seems highly dubious to me.

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  62. The original post reminded me about the novel place the traditionalist finds himself in. While most traditions thrive when they are taken for granted, in our age all traditions have been called into question and are on the defensive.

    We risk focusing too much on areas of present controversy with liberalism, when in fact the most gains can be made in other areas. Men's advice sites like the Art of Manliness do a lot to strengthen men's roles and keep alive memory of our forefathers' virtues, in large part because they don't focus much on areas of conflict.

    Engaging too much with liberalism distorts our own views if our focus is upon countering liberalism rather than explaining (and enjoying) the goods of nature and society.

    Mark Richardson's exhortation to civic or public action lsted as examples "a few hours a week of educating oneself politically, commenting on websites, donating small amounts of money to political organisations, turning up to meetings, being on distribution lists and so on."

    For most men, this is too political and intellectual an approach.

    Cities and towns in the U.S. used to teem with men's fraternal groups like the Lion's Club, Elk's Club, the Rotary Club, and the Odd Fellows' Club. Young boys still have the Boy Scouts. While some of these groups are no longer exclusively male, those that are retain the ethos of a pre-feminist order. Their induction rites and loyalty to the men who went before them encourage a tradition-minded way of thinking.

    It is vital for young men to join men's clubs while the old guard is still around. There you can best learn how pre-feminist men still think and act. You can learn leadership skills and often what makes for a successful marriage or career.

    These groups are factories for male leaders. You do not know what power and authority are until you have called to order a meeting of a dozen or two dozen or twelve dozen men, or rounded up a posse to do yard work for a widow.

    Through my Knights of Columbus council, I have witnessed several hopeful transformations as Esolen's "domesticated men" became civilized men.

    Those concerned about monkish passivity will be pleased to know that this Catholic group offers a ceremonial sword to its high-degree members. It is a holdout of the "masculine Christianity" that once dominated American life, its meetings being free from both women and priests overly concerned with women's needs.

    Where better than a civic or fraternal men's group to discuss with others the problems men face today? The internet isn't real. Even the best blogs are often just World of Warcraft for the wordy. If this social infrastructure is still in place in your community, take advantage of it. Through those contacts you can spread your ideas while improving yourself.

    Asher comments about political viability. I see a distinction between political viability and civic viability. If civic groups of men can survive and grow, that will have some political impact in the long run. The personal impact may be even more relevant to our lives.

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  63. "I'm getting the impression, seriously, that you have skimmed the surface of things."

    Yes, I've only skimmed the surface of it, and that is a fair criticism. I'm anti-feminist, but I did not see anything coming from these guys that made me want to go deeper.

    "And this is simply more venting by you. That's fine. But I have been around the men's sites for a few years now, and there are PLENTY of articles about how feminism hurts women and children, too."

    I've read plenty of articles by men about the universal pain caused by feminism. However, these articles were not from men identifying themselves as part of a "men's movement". The articles that I have read from men who identify as part of that movement gave the distinct opposite impression. If you are right, then maybe I am just looking at the wrong blogs. But what blogs are there that are not like Spearhead and its ilk? Or is that faction set to dominate?

    "But you're ranting and raving and painting everyone with the same brush, which is an absurd generalization."

    My aim was not to generalize but to point to a disturbing trend; a trend that seems to be poised to take over this nascent "movement".

    So my advice would be ti take a deep breath, stop ranting and raving (there's far too much ranting and raving between trads and MRAs happening right now, imo, and Mark's article here was a breath of fresh air in that regard) and watch things develop.

    You are right, ranting and raving won't help much. However, I've read far too much of the ranting against the flaws of traditionalists. Just thought somebody had to speak up. After all, traditionalists have been fighting this war long before the first MRA's came into the scene.

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  64. "I just want to throw this out there if that's ok, is feminisim necessarily a bad goal? Isn't equality between the sexes admirable? Does it necessarily hve to be about man hating, exclusive careerism or socially irresponsible behaviour such as with expropriative divorce?"

    I think the problem here is by what measure one determines "equality". Equality in stature between men and women has been in place for as long as there was the Church. What is wrong is the egalitarianism that attempts to force the differences between men and women out of the other for the sake of sameness. Feminism began with a warped view of equality in tandem with its warped view of human nature. Therefore, beyond the suffrage movement, none of its goals are ultimately worth achieving. The goal of making a man out of woman and a woman out of man is nefarious.

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  65. "Traditional society wanted women to stay at home even if the woman herself didn't want to. The championing of woman's rights was a Liberal endevour."

    Actually, this is false. Traditional society wanted women to stay at home only if she had a family to take care of. After all, how would you explain the great power held by the medieval abbess, who sometimes ruled even men's communities? Or the social progressivism of the 19th century spearheaded by the childless spinster? How would you explain the influence of the professional governess? Traditional society was not anti-woman. It was pro family.

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  66. I am not sure 'support' is the right word for what male elites are doing, but they are certainly acquiescing to these feminist demands.

    I would argue that it is because they are more or less immune to the negative consequences of it. Social lesser men (meaning not wealthy) and beta to omegas will have to bear the brunt of it. Alphas, wealthy or not, simply brush aside this kind of corrosive feminism, and women accept it because the men are alphas. Unless the woman is a lesbian, virtually any feminist woman would compromise their feminist ideology to be with an alpha man.

    There is no advantage for an alpha in taking a betas side. Usually a beta is his own worst enemy, and beta males are usually the most vociferous in parroting the feminist line, in the mistaken belief that this is what women want to hear. Beta males support their own marginalization, so why should male elites and alphas look out for them?

    Look around you. Everyone knows people like this. They are everywhere. Indeed, they are the majority. A mob of betas would gang up on an denounce any alpha or elite male that tried to help them out. There is your reason that elite males and alphas won't help.

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  67. SP wrote:

    Roissy's value lays in pushing forward the idea that female mate selection is strongly based on sexual as opposed to character characteristics.

    Agreed.

    Feminism was a revolt of the women.

    Mostly disagree. The early feminists were few in number and were a mixture of men and women: Wollstonecraft, Mill, Harriet Taylor etc. They were ignored until the 1850s.

    Then feminism was taken up by the liberal state. It was initially a state movement not a popular movement. The state set up the infrastructure of the women's movement.

    As you might expect, given that both major parties were promoting feminism with state support, there was little opposition.

    Just like today the only real opponents were a small number of mostly female intellectuals, who had started out themselves as feminists before rethinking their position.

    The high point of first wave feminism was in England in the period 1910 to 1925. By this time the movement had grown from its statist origins to having a cadre of female followers, and the suffrage campaign gave it a cause to rally around.

    However, just as with more recent waves of feminism, the movement collapsed from within. The marriage rate for upper middle-class women dropped severely, birth rates plummeted, and eventually a younger generation of women decided to go a different way.

    Traditional society actively stopped women from working outside of home so this assertion that traditionalists are happy with women working is contra the facts. The female professionals at the turn of the century were novelties and were discriminated against in many ways by the conservatives of the time.

    I'm sorry to have to say it, but the state in 1900 was not traditionalist. It was liberal. Particularly in regard to women.

    You'd be surprised by how far first wave feminism went. In 1870 there were only five female lawyers in the US. By 1880 this had jumped to 75. By 1950 there were 6000 including three federal court judges.

    As for the idea of women being discouraged, the following is from a history of a school of dentistry in Ontario:

    Although the profession did not overtly discourage women’s participation, few attempted it. In this light, women’s entrance into dentistry in the 1920s is truly striking: twenty-seven women entered dental practice between 1921 and 1935, twenty-two of them in the period between 1921 and 1926. How can one explain this surprising bulge in enrolments at the dental school during this period?

    SP also wrote:

    From my perspective, women have been hard done by both Traditionalism and Feminism. Thinking conservatives should be offering a solution. The traditionalist response of stay at home is not really an option.

    I'm thinking you mean that the response of stay at home for all women is not really an option. If so, I agree.

    But it's certainly an option for many women. My own wife has flourished as a stay at home mother. It's brought out a lovely side of her character and it's been terrific for our children. She might later on decide to work part-time outside the home, but we'll see what happens.

    Personally, I think the Anglo countries will attempt to follow the Scandinavian ones and economically and culturally close off the possibility for women to be stay-at-home mothers.

    In that context, I don't think traditionalists will be looked on negatively at all by women for trying to keep the possibility of stay at home motherhood alive.

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  68. But the feminists already advocate most of what you wrote there. I suppose you're suggesting a conservative alliance based on pragmatism with feminism on these issues?

    I'm not suggesting that at all. Look, some women want to work, some to stay at home and some a mix of both. What is the conservative response to this? I don't care what Feminists think, but from a conservative perspective should a woman be able to work if she has a family? Or is her primary job to stay at home? Personally, my response is that family works out what works for them. No woman should be forced to stay at home if she is not temperamentally suited to it(Fellas here some news for you, a lot of these woman suffer severe post natal depression if put in this predicament) and no woman should be compelled to go to work by virtue of her sex alone. I don't have a problem with women staying at home or working, but the Trads want them to stay at home and the Femmo's want them to work. What's the conservative position?

    As for state sponsored child care--I'sorry I bought that up--my preference is with taxing the family as a unit with the tax threshold raised in proportion to the number of dependents in the family, but there may be certain instances where state sponsored child care is appropriate.

    Novaseeker what have I actually said that is liberal? And how is it in opposition to conservatism? Enquiring minds would like to know.

    I'm sorry to have to say it, but the state in 1900 was not traditionalist. It was liberal.

    Oh, please!!! In 1900 there were 1010 registered female lawyers and 7000 doctors in the U.S out of a population of 61 million? They couldn't vote and were paid less by virtue of their sex. There was active discrimination against them. Yes it was a time of great liberalism.

    What happened around 1900 is polite society saw that intelligent women had something to give to the community beside motherhood and moved towards taking away the restrictions from entering professions which barred them from professional public life.


    As you might expect, given that both major parties were promoting feminism with state support, there was little opposition.

    What were the women doing?

    But it's certainly an option for many women. My own wife has flourished as a stay at home mother. It's brought out a lovely side of her character and it's been terrific for our children.

    That's great. But your wife chose to stay at home, she was not forced like many of the women in the West till the late 50's. Your wife may be well suited to stay at home but what of the woman who isn't? The traditionalist response was that she stay at home.

    BTW, if society was liberal in 1900 when was society actually traditionalist?

    After all, how would you explain the great power held by the medieval abbess, who sometimes ruled even men's communities?

    Exceptions do not prove the rule. Joan of Arc was a soldier, are we then to assume that women played an active role in the history of the western military by your line of reasoning?

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  69. if society was liberal in 1900 when was society actually traditionalist?

    Good question. Liberalism has been around a long time. You can even find something like liberal beliefs during the Renaissance. However, for much of modern Western history (i.e. from the 1500s onward) liberalism did not seek to rule alone by its own principles but in conjunction with other sources of order and authority. In other words, it drew strength from sources outside itself.

    So for a long period of time there was not a pure traditionalism but not a pure liberalism either. At certain times there was a greater effort to radically reform society along liberal modernist lines (e.g. France after the Revolution) and at other times there was reaction against liberalism.

    If you take England as an example, the balance shifted dramatically in about the 1870s/1880s when Christian orthodoxy lost ground amongst the educated classes. By about the mid-1920s, you no longer hear the more traditionalist voices in English or Australian culture that once were there.

    Liberalism really starts to go it alone from this point in time. It isn't fused with any other source of authority or order.

    It took a few more decades for habits of mind to continue to change along liberal lines, but by the time I came to maturity in the 1980s there wasn't much left of a non-liberal order.

    Anyway, to try to give your question a brief answer, the English state has been roughly "liberal" since at least the early 1700s, when the Georges purged the conservatives of the time from positions of influence. But it was not a liberalism which sought to rule by its own principles alone. Nor was liberalism applied to all the spheres of society.

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  70. Social Pathologist,

    When it comes to women and work I don't think that conservatives can just take the line of "do what you want" or "it's your choice".

    That ignores the issue of objective good. It also ignores the issue of the larger and longer-term consequences of our individual choices.

    So we can't be neutral on this issue. Nor for that matter do liberals remain neutral.

    That doesn't oblige us to take a coercive attitude. We can recognise differences between people and make allowances.

    But we're not neutral. It's good for mothers to stay home to care for their children. It's mother love. It's more important than corporate profit and loss. It's more important than social status.

    It's good for the child. It's good for society. And we should defend it as such.

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  71. SP --

    The conservative response to women working outside the home should be what it gas been -- not favored for younger children, more accommodating for older children, based on family need.

    The problem with subsidizing women working outside the home is that, far from supporting families, these kinds of subsidies tend to encourage women to work, which for many families, and especially those with young kids, is not a favorable situation -- and certainly not from a conservative point of view.

    What to do about women who need to work such that they will get post-partum if they don't? Well i don't think these women are well suite to be mothers. If a woman must work with very young children (babies, really, is what we're talking about when it comes to post- partum depression) then that's a pretty big red flag that she isn't the best candidate for motherhood. Instead of encouraging these women to juggle work and home even then they have very young children and babies, we should encourage these women to pursue other paths. Thats the only sane path from the perspective of the children as well.

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  72. I'm curious about this reputed link between stay-at-home mothering and post-partum depression. Are there reliable studies indicating working outside the home helps women?

    And might civic groups or a strong neighborhood of fellow SAHMs be a preferable substitute for wage-earning?

    (American politics and charities used to rely on ordinary housewives for manpower and part-time activism. As more women began to work professionally, I suspect their places were taken by professional activists and childless or wealthier women, thus skewing the political culture further liberal.)

    I've seen a few studies indicating stress in pregnant women may contribute to autism in their children. I'd like to see a follow-up seeing if working mothers face more stress.

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  73. Postpartum depression is believed to be caused by hormonal fluctuations and often exacerbated by bottle feeding (the majority of American women do not breastfeed their children). That's La Leche League 101 for you. It is known that working mothers are less likely to breastfeed, and at higher risk of PPD than mothers who do not work outside of the home, or who are on maternity leave. Being unmarried is another risk factor for PPD, because such women are under intense personal stress.
    As far as preventing PPD, the best situation is a married woman, whose husband is the main provider, who breastfeeds, is under the care of a midwife, and receives adequate sleep and nutrition. Co-sleeping and babywearing are also highly preventative.

    The traditionalist response was that she stay at home.

    The traditionalists response is that whether she works or not is her own family's business and the government should keep their noses out of it.

    The majority of women with young children today work part-time or stay at home full-time. And when polled, most of those working full-time would prefer to work part-time!

    If anything, the overwhelming majority of women would find full-time homemaking or part-time employment to be the ideal situation. It is actually a rare woman who wants to send her babies off to a day orphanage. Please don't make us out to be more depraved than we really are.

    Furthermore, many of the women working full-time now are the main breadwinners in their family even though they do not wish to be. Their husbands are unemployed. Or they are working out of fear that their marriages are unstable and they attempt to maintain their income in case of abandonment. Many also work for the benefits.

    The idea that women with small children work outside of the home for the "pleasure of it" is elitist, and far from the day-to-day life of most families who are simply struggling to keep their heads financially over water.

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  74. Social Pathologist,

    If a woman complains about PPD, make sure you address the issue of breastfeeding, especially weaning. PPD is very common among women who wean abruptly, rather than gradually over a few weeks. The hormonal changes can send them into a severe depression.

    Also, the most common depression among women is the one that results from separation anxiety when she returns to work. I find it odd that you know women who become depressed from spending time with their infants. That hints that she might be having attachment issues and could use the services of a good midwife.

    Perhaps they are merely lonely? In that case, is a career the appropriate response? Or perhaps they are feeling pressured to return to work?

    I think we must also remember that PPD is a hormonal issue. A woman feeling depressed because of her fluctuating hormones (I've been there) may start looking around for causes and reasons for her depression.

    It's similar to PMS or menopause. A woman with PMS might think her husband is intentionally trying to irritate her, even if he is behaving a completely normal way. She feels bad, so she assumes something must be wrong.

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  75. I really enjoyed reading this. It's thoughtful and well presented.

    I do think you may have missed a couple of points I was making, which may well have been more my failing than yours.

    I think that feminisms largely unimpeded path to hegemony was a combination of politics and biology.

    And whatever the core reason for such a glaring lack of opposition, it can't be fairly said it was a lack of traditional or conservative ideology at the time in our government.

    Establishment politics during the advent of gender feminism was not at all like it is today. If true conservatives didn't exist then, they never did. And still feminism was give an almost instantaneous pass.

    To me, that does leave the biological component as more than just suspect. At the very least, to ignore it seems indifferent to a possibly critical factor.

    @ Clark Coleman

    If I inferred that anyone consciously "decided" that any of this would happen, it was my mistake to do so. I think though that I made it pretty clear that I thought these events were largely a matter of human sociobiology, and as such were guided by many more unconscious forces than conscious.

    In the end though, I think the only barrier that separates me ideologically from most "conservatives" is a matter of pragmatism. Being a traditional male in these times is fraught with legal, social and financial perils for which there are little to no protections for the traditional man.

    It is too often a lose-lose and the only men in power are only making things worse, just like they did in 1968.

    So we have a choice here. We can fight to restore sane policy, which I fully support. But I also think it is folly to fail to adapt in practical terms. And indeed, any restoration of safety for traditional men will absolutely depend on other men who do adapt and act accordingly.

    Simply espousing the old code and Martyring men to it does not make practical sense to me.

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  76. Establishment politics during the advent of gender feminism was not at all like it is today. If true conservatives didn't exist then, they never did. And still feminism was give an almost instantaneous pass.

    During the advent of gender feminism? Do you mean the second wave feminism of the 1970s? Germaine Greer, Kate Millett and the like?

    If so, then I would confidently state that there were no true conservative politicians.

    Here in Australia, for instance, there was a Labor Party (left-liberals) and a Liberal Party (right-liberals). The Liberal Party was a mixture of "wet" and "dry" members. The wets tended to focus on social liberalism. The dry members on economic liberalism.

    The feminism of the period 1970 to 1995 was nearly entirely unopposed in Australia.

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  77. Feminism swept society in the second wave primarily because women were well adapted to post-modern capitalism and vice-versa.

    The demand for female labour increased due to the rise of office work. Women had a less absolute disadvantage in mental, as opposed to manual, labour.

    Also cost of reproduction increased due to the dimunition of the extended family. Not so many aunties, sisters and grannies around to look after the kids.

    After the Baby Boom petered out in the seventies the price of property started to go on a long term secular increase. Households needed two incomes to afford "superior goods" such as inner-city accommodation, private schools and private health.

    So businesses were happy to welcome the rise of the independent female. Ultimately economics must complement ecologics.

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  78. Jack Strocchi: "Also cost of reproduction increased due to the dimunition of the extended family. Not so many aunties, sisters and grannies around to look after the kids."

    How, exactly, did this myth of "the extended family" work? After all, all those aunties -- who might well be on a farm or in a village several miles away -- also had their own brood of children to be looked after.

    Perhaps mothers-in-law used literally to be witches?

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  79. Households needed two incomes to afford "superior goods" such as inner-city accommodation, private schools and private health.

    The house prices rose as a result of dual-income families, not the other way around.

    I just wanted to note that I forgot something yesterday: I completely agree with SP that Christian marriages appear to be completely sexless, and the Christian establishment reinforces that with their teachings. The general meme is that men who are stupid enough to marry will end up with a fat, haggard, frigid, shrew who will divorce them after forcing them to live in celibacy for 15 years, and rob them in court. I've met enough Christian families where this appears to be the case, to be completely disgusted by my fellow Christian women.

    I am not surprised that men are rejecting marriage now, and Christians should begin to speak plainly of the widespread degenerate behavior of nominally Christian women, if they want anything to ever improve. It's not enough to discuss the political, the personal is important as well.

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  80. Alte, I've been a Christian my whole life (I'm 52) ... and I think you must know some really strange Christians if you think "that Christian marriages appear to be completely sexless, and the Christian establishment reinforces that with their teachings."

    Some of my earliest recollections of Christian preaching and teaching (even as a child, I much preferred staying with the adults rather than being shuffled off with the kids) involve the importance of intimacy to a marriage, and that the marriage must be about the man and woman, not about their kids.

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  81. "Male sexual competition is deadly serious evolutionary business, when one group of male chimpanzees takes over a troop they kill are the existing cubs of the former male members. They do this because of male sexual competition, a very practical reason."

    chimps and Practicality lol.
    They know so much about passing their own genes by having their own children by having sex.
    Why humans didn't know that sex = kids for so many ages yet monkeys do in their small lifespans and with their simpler brains.

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120309,00.html

    http://www.jstor.org/pss/681818

    Wonder where we lost it.

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  82. I'm pretty sure that groups of male chimpanzees don't take over other troups; rather that troups fight, and sometimes extinguish, other troups.

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  83. IIiom said:

    How, exactly, did this myth of "the extended family" work? After all, all those aunties -- who might well be on a farm or in a village several miles away -- also had their own brood of children to be looked after.

    Perhaps mothers-in-law used literally to be witches?


    You need to get out more or at least obtain some living memories. Life in a 20th C suburb right up until the end of the Baby Boom in 1970, mimicked village life.

    When I was a small child, about 40 years ago, it was common enough to go to someones place and see three generations living under one roof.

    Also, families tended to cluster in one suburb. Richmond was famous for its Irish family culture. So the aunties would do baby sitting duties while mum went to work at the boot factory or whatever.

    Or an extended family would staff a shop, much as the NESBs do nowadays.

    You seem pretty ignorant about life as it was before "Sex and the City" came along like a cargo for your fashion victim cult.

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  84. Alte said:

    The house prices rose as a result of dual-income families, not the other way around.

    Yes, thats true. Home Affordability is measured off household, not primary earner or average male, income.

    I remember the first big wave of yuppies were Dual Income households straight out of uni doing up inner-city terrace houses in the seventies. Thats when prices started to rise.

    It would be interesting to compare 1970 with 2010 on the cost in average pay working hours needed to pay off a typical house say 15km from city centre. My guess is that it would be nearly three times as much.

    Still, that does not really weaken my point that post-modern capitalism and feminism go hand in glove. Developers love feminism because its the Single White Female plus cat who are buying up all these condominiums.

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  85. Post-modern liberalism embraces identity politics in political culture and identity economics in professional culture.

    That goes for feminism and multiculturalism. Both are applauded by post-modern businesses who love the fact that they provide a cheap and pliant source of labour. Ideally suited to a "service economy".

    Certainly a lot easier to deal with than ham-fisted Jock shop stewards.

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  86. Mark you ask why dont powerful men support men's rights?

    Number one: powerful men can afford good lawyers or trusts or off-shore investment vehicles. So divorce courts hold less terror for them.

    Number two: powerful men mainly want to make easy fast money these days. Feminism and multiculturalism and hedonism are an easy fast source of cash.

    Today's example: California wants to legalise marijhuana to solve its fiscal crisis. Never mind that this would turn the current generation of teenagers into lard-assed couch potatoes. It would help the budgets bottom-line.

    So post-modern capitalism is the ultimate perversion of use value from exchange value. "Powerful men" dig it, because its easy money.

    Todays brand of "powerful men" disgust me. They arent fit to lick the boots of our ancestors.

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  87. It would be interesting to compare 1970 with 2010 on the cost in average pay working hours needed to pay off a typical house say 15km from city centre. My guess is that it would be nearly three times as much.

    I would think that in major US cities it's much more than three times higher. This U.S. census document is interesting: http://www.census.gov/const/uspricemon.pdf

    It suggests that over that period from 1970 to pre-bubble highs, the average price went up by ten times. Mind you this is *new* homes only, but still -- it's quite indicative of a larger trend.

    Over the same period average household incomes went, in 2007 USD terms, from ~47k to ~67k, a 30% increase in 2007 dollar terms, but which is substantially dwarfed by the increase in housing prices over the same period. http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/h05.html

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  88. Some of my earliest recollections... involve the importance of intimacy to a marriage, and that the marriage must be about the man and woman, not about their kids.

    Alright. I will elaborate for you. First off, I must say that I was born and raised in Germany. I can only speak about Americans (where I live now) because I have never lived in Oz.

    First off, I'm Catholic, and I have to say that the couples at my Church (at non-Mass functions) are probably among the least asexual I've seen here. Generally, the more traditional they are, the more sexual their behavior (which doesn't surprise me).

    The men are often clearly in physical possession of their wives, holding them about the waist, touching their hair, putting a hand on the small of their back to steer them when walking, kissing them on the cheek, etc. In return, the women are often watching their husbands, gazing at them admiringly, and occasionally even blushing and giggling. Such interplay is a clear sign to anyone around that they're getting it on.

    But many other Christian couples seem to be carved from a block of ice, and are apparently trying to enforce some sort of ban on public displays of affection. This is very unfortunate, because they are often the most stand-offish and -- yes -- asexual-appearing couples at any gathering. I don't know if that coldness transposes to their marital bed, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me. How many men will jump at the chance to marry a woman because she is pleasant and good at crochet? Sex is very important to men, not just euphemistic references to "intimacy", which many women interpret as smiling at each other over dinner, and sharing a couch while watching Home and Garden TV.

    I suppose such behavior wasn't a problem when everyone around them was similar, but now that we are living in such a sex-obsessed and divorce-crazy culture, I've had many unmarried Christians tell me that they are afraid of marrying because they think it will be the end of sex. They see these couples and are completely turned off. Sex is now something associated more with the wild single-set than with marriage. And certainly not with Christian marriage. This is very unfortunate but true.

    If Laura Wood had a post about female sexual submission in marriage, or the importance of regular and frequent sex in maintaining a healthy marriage, I think half of her audience would fall over in a dead faint. If she has already written such a post, please reference it here, as I'm sure we would all be interested to see it. The closest thing I could find was this post, which falls far short of such a message. (I don't mean to rag on Laura, who writes many excellent posts.)

    The emphasis in discussions on chastity and sexual morality seems to be more about not fornicating, but there is little frank discussion about married sex. Lots of romantic drivel and talk about birds and the bees, but little plain-spoken discussion of what a healthy, married sex life looks like. This is incredibly important because there are many Christians receiving confusing and contradictory information on this, and they are searching for answers. But they are met with affected horror when they broach such subjects to their Christians leaders.

    So they are turning to people like Roissy for advice, instead.

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  89. As Social Pathologist said:
    The pretty damsel does occasionally want a good hard rogering. No pretty, but TRUE.


    Exactly. This is what many Christian men are finding out (via the PUAs), and they are getting really angry at the knowledge that they have been blatantly lied to about female sexuality their whole lives, by people they trust and admire. They are confused and think that this is a sign of female depravity, rather than a simple biological truth.

    And men who have had their wives leave them because "I'm just not in love with you anymore" are getting enraged that nobody shared such a simple fact with them before. Something that could have saved their marriage, protected their children, and helped them to keep the attentions of their wives. I agree that their wives shouldn't leave regardless, but let's live in the present. Women have the sexual attention span of a gnat, and they regularly require a "good hard rogering" in order to stay focused on one man. As a woman, I can assure you that this is true, and I have yet to have a woman -- even a very prudish woman -- deny this when it has been so blatantly stated.

    Look at the books they read. The sex scenes border on rape, and would horrify many men. So much for the gentle sex.

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  90. "... You seem pretty ignorant about life as it was before "Sex and the City" came along like a cargo for your fashion victim cult."

    And you're obviously quite ignorant, perhaps dangerously so, or simply a fool.

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  91. "And men who have had their wives leave them because "I'm just not in love with you anymore" are getting enraged that nobody shared such a simple fact with them before."

    Including that their wives never told them ... because, "If you loved me, you'd just know!"

    On the other hand, we "down market" Christians never get the message that women don't like sex. Shoot, even before I knew what sex is I know that my mother liked it.

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  92. And the reason I said "intimacy" -- which was *not* used as a euphemism -- rather than “sex” or “a good rogering,” is because I realize that what both women and men want is not mere sex, not merely an orgasm, but communion with another soul.

    Besides the gross immorality of it, Roissyism or “Sex and the City” are just plain stupid, given what human being are really looking for.

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  93. Alte,

    I agree strongly with one point that you make.

    If you want monogamous marriage to work then you have to get the sexual aspect of marriage right. It's critical.

    So those institutions which ought to be supporting monogamous marriage, such as the Christian churches, need to be encouraging a healthy and successful sex life within marriage.

    And yet they are mostly silent on the whole issue.

    It's not that the churches I've belonged to have given the wrong message, such as that women aren't interested in sex. It's that they've given no message.

    I don't think that silence is appropriate when there is such a high divorce rate and when a commitment to marriage itself is faltering.

    (BTW, Alte, congratulations on your own blog, I find it very interesting to get an independent female point of view on these issues.)

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  94. Why don’t powerful men support men’s rights? Deep down inside, every man wants to believe that women find him attractive for who he “really is”, not just for externals like his status. High-status men, with loads of evidence to the contrary staring them in the face, have an even greater psychological need to cling to this romantic fantasy—the same romantic fantasy that has traditionally driven attractive young women to seek men to love them for something other than their faces and bodies. Successful men want to believe that they deserve the attention they get from women, and also that the converse (or is it contrapositive?) is true: men who are unsuccessful with women have no one but themselves to blame; they’re just a bunch of losers. Add to this is the fact that any man expressing sympathy for his less well-off brethren automatically risks being perceived as one of them, and you have a big part of the explanation for why powerful men don’t support men’s rights.
    Unfortunately, a similar psychology seems to infect a lot of traditionalist men, with whom I otherwise agree politically. They imagine that their position as successful patriarchs is due to their own personal manliness, rather than the patriarchal social order and the legal regime on which it is (was) founded. The subtext of their commentary on the plight of today’s young men is roughly, “Well, if you were a real man (like me), instead of just a boy, you’d be able to handle this. Suck it up, wimp!” It is this attitude that turns off young men. (By the way, I’m not a young man; I’m probably older than most of the posters here.) The fact is that they too are living on borrowed time. Under current laws, they could be dumped by their women just as easily as the men they deride as insufficiently masculine. The only thing preventing it is the virtue of their women—a thin reed if ever there was one. Over time, this will become more common, as the temptation for even “good” women will become too great. Our he-men’s vaunted masculine authority will be revealed for the bluster that it is. Imagined authority based on personal charisma or force of will is ultimately of little value unless backed up collective male authority codified in law.

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  95. Expatriot, you make a very good point that it's not enough to base masculine authority on personal charisma or force of will.

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  96. Expatriot said:

    "Imagined authority based on personal charisma or force of will is ultimately of little value unless backed up collective male authority codified in law."

    Interesting.

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  97. A recent poster mentioned someone walking down the street wearing a t shirt that said "F you". Why? Because they could. Becuase its cool to show your willingness to be transgressive. Because morality is some sort of quaint old fashioned concept that shouldn't be allowed to limit us or get in our way. Because the legal situation and our cultural expection is ideologically supposed to exist for the full satisfaction of individual rights. Others can only get in our way or disadvantage us so f them. Also because everyone out there must in reality be a bastard.

    Women, who "aren't well brought up" by their parents are far more likely in my opinion to act immorally (stating the obvious here) because there is not that cultural/legal expectation that they will act morally within the current broader society. You have to have a longer or more old fashioned focus to have that. Currently its, he let me down/ didn't give me what I wanted, so f him. Not just that its also my JOB to fully express or advantage myself, therefore its immoral to be too nice. And somewhere in the background is the notion that I have to assert myselves against the oppressive other so everything I do is justified. Its amusing seeing people's confusion when trying to make their decisions based on the current morality. They still generally very much want to be seen as moral actors but the "morality" seems to push them in obviously questionable directions which are recognised by them.

    There are substantial other types of morality out there. Racism, sexism, excessive greediness, environmental lack of concern etc all immoral. For that you don't go to hell though you just don't get invited to parties and more.

    Ok so back to the legal situation. I guess there is a clear symbiosis between law and morality. It would seem that one isolated from the other is on somewhat weak ground.

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  98. I get to make comment 100. :)

    Firstly Alte, thanks for all the heavy lifting, but I do have some points which I disagree with you--about the PND-- but I hope to write about that in the near future and then we can thrash it out.

    Secondly, an Australian Sex Reasearcher, Bettina Arndt, recently published a book called the Sex Diaries which was basically about about how a lot of married couples aren't having sex. Most of the time it is because of the wife's lack of sexual desire combined with her disregard of her husbands predicament. He is meant to put up and shut up. She was ragged by the Feminists for her book, no conservatives backed her up as far as I was aware.

    It's not that the churches I've belonged to have given the wrong message, such as that women aren't interested in sex. It's that they've given no message.

    Modesty has been morphed into asexuality. When is the last time you heard the minister/pastor/priest talk about the sinfulness of denying ones partner? A lot of prudery gets unofficial religious sanction. Interestingly it was not always the case, it was grounds for complaint in medieval times.

    Illion:
    And the reason I said "intimacy" -- which was *not* used as a euphemism -- rather than “sex” or “a good rogering,” is because I realize that what both women and men want is not mere sex, not merely an orgasm, but communion with another soul.

    And yet sometimes both parties just simply want a good rogering. Sex is not always meant to be a wonderful romantic experience. Sometimes it's got to be animal. (In a marital context that is)

    Jack Strocci
    You need to get out more or at least obtain some living memories. Life in a 20th C suburb right up until the end of the Baby Boom in 1970, mimicked village life.

    A profound and very true observation.

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  99. "And yet sometimes both parties just simply want a good rogering. Sex is not always meant to be a wonderful romantic experience. Sometimes it's got to be animal. (In a marital context that is)"

    Which exactly explains why that man, when what he wants is "a good rogering," heads right on down to the corner ... or even just "takes matter in hand" ... and is wholly satisfied with the result.

    Wait! That *not* what happens.

    It seems that even when a man just "wants a good rogering," it's really something else that he's after.

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  100. Social Pathologist said:

    "Modesty has been morphed into asexuality. When is the last time you heard the minister/pastor/priest talk about the sinfulness of denying ones partner? A lot of prudery gets unofficial religious sanction. Interestingly it was not always the case, it was grounds for complaint in medieval times."

    But isn't that something for the couple to work out themselves? Do we really need a minister telling us what to do in such circumstances?

    In a lot of the "younger" churches sex seems to be front and centre. All that hugging, dancing and emphaisis on looking good. You know what's going on in the background. It makes me ill when I hear about all the "Christian pick up sites", which in practise are focused on sex. Not because I'm a prude but becuase that this should be Christianity? An incredibly profound moral force down to the level of looking good and getting some. If I wanted to score I'd do it the "traditional" way, pick up a drunk girl.

    On the point about frigid women in the church and wives denying their husbands sex. I think the church has often deliberetly pitched themsevles to the married women. A married women may like the moral authority of not having too much sex and doing so on her terms, ie for childbirth. The couples with their hands all over each other are probably the ones where the guy is not a junior partner.

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  101. She was ragged by the Feminists for her book, no conservatives backed her up as far as I was aware.

    Well I did. Miranda Devine (more of a right liberal perhaps) did too.

    There could have been more support, but then how many genuinely conservative commentators in the media are there?

    When is the last time you heard the minister/pastor/priest talk about the sinfulness of denying ones partner? A lot of prudery gets unofficial religious sanction. Interestingly it was not always the case, it was grounds for complaint in medieval times.

    I agree that the mainstream churches are at fault for not addressing the issue. I'm just not sure if they are held back by prudery or by something else (Not wanting to offend politically correct sensibilities? Wanting to play things safe?)

    Jesse wrote:

    But isn't that something for the couple to work out themselves? Do we really need a minister telling us what to do in such circumstances?

    Couples often work out this issue by getting divorced.

    Women don't always get men, just as we don't always get women. Arndt's book was a revelation to some women. Supposedly, the response was that some women started to say yes a bit more to their husbands.

    There are plenty of women who slip into the habit of thinking that sex is a take it or leave it affair and that other things are more important. There are plenty of women who slip into the habit of punishing their husbands for unhappinesses that they have in their own lives by withholding sex.

    And there are plenty of husbands who react to the withholding of sex by quietly withdrawing their own affections until their level of frustration reaches a point of no return.

    Remember, too, that even if a husband is willing to stand up and confront his wife on this issue, unless he is in a strong enough position in the marriage, it isn't likely to get him far.

    The churches ought to be a voice of reason in all this, pointing out that monogamy is best in the long run for all concerned but that it can't work without a generous and loving attitude to the sexual relationship.

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  102. Your first paragraphs described me quite well.

    I do hate Feminism, PC, and the current liberal agenda. However the conservatives have not done crap for me. Where is the open fight for me? Why are they going along with liberal "women are more important" crap? Have they done anything proactive to stop discrimination of boys in education? When do they do anything specifically for men???? Conservative men seem be totally without self awareness when it comes to politics. They talk about economy, healthcare, and family... yet women vote in blocks and vote on women's issues. You think its balanced girl men to care about society when women care about themselves?

    Just about all men ARE still living in the 50's, please wake the F up and start caring about yourselves. That is one of the biggest problems I see with traditional masculinity is the inability to self advocate, that us way men are left behind with no support. I am too well aware of the fact that feminist are in actuality very conservative on their views of men and women. They say men are powerful, aggressive, uninhibited, and emotionless while asserting that the opposite for women. That idealized dichotomy, started by traditional gender roles and used by liberals, is what I want to destroy!

    Men have not been powerful or proud for a long time. All this homophobia has ruined straight men. Were is the male bonding? Where is the male space? Men have the bars and sports... are you kidding me?!? Men are far too dependant on women for their identify, emotions, and any closeness; men are dominated by women because of such.

    http://abcnews.go.com/m/screen?id=10877651

    (the above link shows that men are more hurt by breakups because they lack the social support women do. So much for the idea men aren't the committed ones)

    lastly tell conservatives to stop sending men to war. why should men alone pay the price for what benefits women just as much

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  103. @ Alt

    women cheat on men and leave men... it is in their biology just like men. But why are you blaming men for it when women divorce?!?

    why didn't you say men need to stop living is the dilutions of female virtue in order to protect their family and THEMSELVES. Men need to be prepared, like women are, and look for the signs, during and before marriage.

    After reading a lot of these comments I see the parallels between conservatives and fems/liberals. The whole focus is about the woman's decision... "does she choose to be a stay at home mom or work, or something in between". What about the mans choice? I never hear anything about what he wants even though he is half the equation. There are plenty of men I know who do not want to be the sole providers because they want to spend actual time with their kids. Again I see conservatives going along with the feminist motto that men have to put up and shut up.

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  104. The last two anonymous posts demonstrate how much liberalism has infiltrated society. They talk about relativism (one core ideal of leftists) and how ''Conservatives and Left/Femi'' are one and the same. About the ''rich'' sending people to war. About the ''oppressive 1950's'' and so forth. Both of them need to seriously read all of Lawrence Auster's archives and be desensitized from indoctrination. They think that the enemy (the left) is their friend and that we are somehow the true enemy. This is the madness of liberalism with it's ideals of relativism, non-discrimination, multiculturalism, tolerance, open-mindness, human rights, individualism and equality. Newsflash the establishment is liberal.

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