Commentary on the crime has been wide-ranging, but one remark particularly stood out. A psychologist, Evelyn Field, was asked to explain the outpouring of public grief. One reason why she thought the case had resonated so strongly was that:
All the gains that women have made are suddenly stripped away - you need a man to protect you.
I shouldn't be surprised at this comment. If you believe that autonomy is the great prize in life, then a woman will want to be independent of men, which then requires that she not be in need of men's protection.
That explains as well why the more radically feminist Catherine Deveny wrote that she would aggressively reject a male offer to walk her home because she was perfectly capable of defending herself better than a man could.
But for women to reject male protection as a regressive thing, as anti-woman, has some serious consequences. The instinct to protect wife and children is one of the most powerful masculine drives leading men to commit in a stable way to family life. It is also at the core of masculine self-identity.
Men follow this instinct on the understanding that in doing so they are using their masculine strengths on behalf of women. If they are told the opposite is true and that they are harming women, then you can't expect male commitments to remain as high as they once were.
For women to identify the protection of men as dragging them down seems to me to be one of those wrong turns we have taken in the West. It means that ideals of political progress are set against what a woman needs for a successful marriage and family life.
So women are going to lose out either way.
If you believe that autonomy is the great prize in life, then a woman will want to be independent of men, which then requires that she not be in need of men's protection.
ReplyDeleteFeminist autonomy theory should demand - I say, demand! - that firearms be issued to all young women, and they should be trained to use them.
Problem of reliance on male protection, solved!
And since it is Australia, there's no chance of anyone getting a Concealed Handgun License.
ReplyDeleteThis protest by these stupid people infuriates me as a man.
ReplyDeleteOne rapist! one pathological rapist rapes a woman and these idiots protest. Protest against what or who. It's obvious men!
They are saying all men are pathological rapists.
This is appalling.
Well, I don't know what's going on down there in Oz, but I can tell you why so many people are caring about this girl.
ReplyDeleteShe was GORGEOUS.
That's why. If she was like average looking people would go 'oh how sad.' The end.
Last anon.
ReplyDeleteI think it's strange people are having an infatuation with her looks. Not very attractive at all.
The photos of her party life not revealed in the press show a woman with tired blemished skin. Someone who stays up all night drinking or worse.
The media is too powerful on peoples minds.
It's as if some men haven't had female contact for a long time.
Anon (1:47),
ReplyDeleteI think it's a good thing that people are still moved by a horrific crime.
Also, the response didn't just come from one side of politics. I read interviews with those who attended and the views expressed were both those typically found on the right as well as the left.
It's just not the male protection thing that is bothering people. Disregarding protection (and security in general) is a consequence of independence (a feature of the philosophy of liberalism). There's this entitled attitude that feminists have that since they are "oh so strong and independent!" that they can walk into anything. That includes dark alleys or into the night after midnight drinking with strangers. Male feminits also have this view. Which is why they constantly whine how the world is unfair or something. It's akin to being (on purpose) near sleepy and being drunk/on drugs while driving a car on a mountain road near a long cliff. If that example doesn't make sense think of a rich man showing his jewerly to the world walking through a semi-poor place of the country. Don't you think somebody will attempt to rod him? Of course not all inhabitants will but a couple will attempt to do so.
ReplyDeleteMr Richardson.
ReplyDeleteI'm in no way criticizing the mourning and tributes paid to the victim. It was a horrible crime.
Having a protest against the violence committed by one murderer/rapist is not appropriate. The protest against violence has to be directed at someone. It is being directed at men. As if there is an organised anti-female group that is responsible for this.
I don't think any amount of politicised protesting will even dent the minds of a determined murder/rapist psychopath.
Male protection or at least a female being with her friends will deter these sort of people.
Who cares what Deveny thinks. She's an unbalanced termagant.
ReplyDeleteIf only the 30,000 could maintain their anger against the Hulls infested judiciary and a legal system that now appears of being on the criminals's side rather than the victim's
Apparently strong, independent women have the right to go canoeing in the Amazon jungle...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2211221/Kathryn-Cox-Fiona-Wilde-reveal-terror-abducted-jungle-Ecuador.html
Good thing there were 100 undoubtedly male soldiers and police available to rescue the strong, independent women when they got kidnapped.
"The instinct to protect wife and children is one of the most powerful masculine drives leading men to commit in a stable way to family life. It is also at the core of masculine self-identity"; this rings so true it almost makes me cry, as I grew up in a world where this male "identity" has been ridiculed. Where I live in Montreal there was a terrible tragedy back in 1989; a lone gunman entered an engineering school and killed 14 students, all women, after having asked the men, at gunpoint, to step out of the two classrooms in which he committed this massacre. He killed himself and left a note, claiming his act was politically motivated and directed against feminism. The reaction to the event was paradoxical and maddening. On one hand the crime was denounced by feminists as an attack on female autonomy; the killer was not an isolated madman, but a valid interlocutor who symbolized all masculine violence against women, including of course the “violence” of the traditional social order. But on the other hand the men who had been asked at gunpoint to leave the classrooms were blamed for not intervening. Quite often these contradicting views came from the same feminists, angry at the killer and angry at the victims’ male classmates. I was 18 years old at the time, and right away I felt how terribly unfair this reaction was; the young men in those classrooms had all been raised by feminists and were all taught that they should not have to treat their female peers differently than their male peers. They believed their mothers, they believed what modern society told them, and they were now being cruelly blamed for it.
ReplyDeleteIn my town here in Tennessee we're lucky to be raised traditionally. It really nags democrats and liberals how the south has been so surefooted in the traditional teachings, like women are shamed for getting pregnant, and men are shamed for not marrying the girl, women show men thanks when the men open doors for them etc.
ReplyDeleteThis is also why all the feminism stuff that's spouted off is actually only heard from the news and the internet, I'm really glad because I like being the protector
If a man took up skydiving, or mountaineering, or deep-sea diving, and subsequently died while pursuing the sport, his loved ones would grieve but almost certainly say that "he understood the risks." Why don't we hear anything similar when a woman stays out half the night drinking, walks home alone, and is killed by a rapist? Yes, my hypothetical man is the victim of a physical evil and my hypothetical woman is the victims of a moral evil, but I can't see what this distinction has to do with avoiding or accepting risks. Rape and murder are part of reality, just like parachute failure, avalanches, and shark attacks. I can either allow dangers such as these to constrain my behavior, or I can do as I please and expose myself to higher risk. There's no third option
ReplyDeleteOf course we should use the criminal justice system to reduce the risk of rape, just as we should use manufacturing standards to reduce the risk of parachute failure, or mountaineer and diver training to reduce the risk of avalanches and shark attacks. But these risks will never be reduced to zero and individuals will always have to modulate risk by modifying their individual behavior. People who live their lives unconstrained by fear may deserve our admiration, but they should not expect that we will also be shocked when potential dangers become actual dangers. A person can't expect to be both admired for braving potential evils and pitied for suffering actual evils.
This last point assumes that they fully understood the potential evil. If, after the death of a mountaineer, we discovered that he had greatly underestimated the risk because his friends had systematically lied to him, we would see that he had only been cocksure, not brave, and we would rightly censure his friends. The people who lie to young women about the dangers of rape do not mask its frequency, but they do distort their understanding or risk in by confusing fear and danger. Young women conquer their fear and imagine they have conquered the thing they were afraid of.
Young women conquer their fear and imagine they have conquered the thing they were afraid of.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting.
In my town here in Tennessee we're lucky to be raised traditionally
I can't quite make the same claim for my suburb. But most people here do end up living traditionally or close to it.
I don't like the trends though. I was able to shift to a relatively traditional family suburb. I'm not sure if that option will exist for my son.
Yannick,
Yes, if it's drummed into young men that the sexes should be treated the same - or even that it's politically regressive for men to want to protect women - then 18-year-old men might not be as willing to put themselves on the line in the situation you describe.
Mark have you seen this story on VFR
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/023404.html
There is going to be much less men protecting women in the future outside of communities that value it.
It's just not worth a mans time.
Personally I had romantic relationship that grew out of white knighting. I constantly hear white knighting being dragged through the mud.
Guys are just not going to help women.
I'm doubtful I want to either unless it benefits me my romantic relationship in the end was destroyed by liberal parents of the girl i loved. Telling her to sleep with more men. I will never forgive pseudo-conservative liberals.
Anon,
ReplyDeleteYes I saw the story. I wasn't surprised by it.
Consider these two things. First, at a lot of schools there is a repeated focus on the idea of white men as violent, racist oppressors of non-whites.
So if you're an impressionable young woman who sees a big white man fighting a smaller Asian man, there's a chance you're going to leap to a false conclusion about what's happening.
Second, there's the whole issue of false solidarity I've written about lately. One aspect of liberal culture is that solidarity is no longer thought of in terms of loyalty to those you are closely related to in some way, but as compassion or pity toward those who are considered outsiders, or marginalised, or oppressed.
So there are some white women who are likely to identify with the non-white other.
I want to stress, though, that women don't have this liberal mindset to an equal degree. Particularly not if their family exerts a more traditional influence.
"Feminist autonomy theory should demand - I say, demand! - that firearms be issued to all young women, and they should be trained to use them.
ReplyDeleteProblem of reliance on male protection, solved!"
You can't selectively arm half the population. Give the good guys or in this case gals guns and the bad guys get them too (stolen in burglary, girlfriend gets gun for you etc).
And when it comes to guns, first to draw usually wins, meaning the attacker (because they know when the attack is going down - they choose the time).
So no problem not solved.
You can't selectively arm half the population. Give the good guys or in this case gals guns and the bad guys get them too (stolen in burglary, girlfriend gets gun for you etc).
ReplyDeleteUm, guess what, nitwit, this world is better for women than a world in which nobody has guns!
Men are stronger than women, and thus they have a powerful advantage if everyone is unarmed. That advantage goes away if everyone is armed.
And when it comes to guns, first to draw usually wins, meaning the attacker (because they know when the attack is going down - they choose the time).
So no problem not solved.
Bzzzzt, wrong. If the attacker is a psycho who just wants to kill women, then he may get the first shot, but women are certainly better off armed than unarmed when he launches his attack. Spree killers can be, and have been, successfully shot by "surprised" victims.
But the fact is, most criminals do not wish to kill just for its own sake, and certainly are not willing to risk their own lives to do so. Most criminals have some other objective - such as robbery or rape - and are most definitely deterred by the prospect of an armed victim. In the USA, where guns are readily available, criminals seek out UNARMED people to victimize, and deliberately avoid armed people, even though they (the criminals) could go into the situation armed and with the "first shot advantage".
Ergo, your logic fails and is stupid.
Arm women, and the problem of their needing male protection is solved.