Goldie Blox

Aaron linked to this ad for toys called Goldie Blox.

Unlike Aaron, I’m not quite so dismissive. I like the commercial, but I’ve always had a fondness for Rube Goldberg machines.

I also think the toys are a theoretically good idea. While most women don’t like math and won’t go into non-biology STEM, a few do and will. Why not make toys for those atypical girls?

My sisters had pastel-coloured Legos and they played war with them with my brother and me as we used our primary-coloured blocks. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with girl versions of boys’ toys.

On the other hand, there is something wrong with these toys.

THere is an interesting incongruity between the toys themselves and the purported feminist message. Whatever Goldie Blox’ intentions and advertisements and despite all the hype the toys are getting from the feminist-types, when you actually observe the toys you can’t help but notice the makers don’t really buy the message they’re selling.

Pastel Tinkertoys

These toys are essentially Tinkertoys and Tinkertoys have always been fairly gender-neutral, which makes them an odd target to feminize. Rather than being a leap forward for gender-neutral toys or equalism, these Goldie Blox are actually gendering toys and promoting inequality.

What idiot made Tinkertoys plastic and colourful?

The toy makers are banking on the fact that girls don’t want to play with gender-neutral Tinkertoys, but would instead prefer these gendered, feminine-themed Goldie Blox. That seems to be putting little girls even further into the gender box rather than moving them out of it.

Second, despite their anti-pink attitude, the colours of the toy are simply changed to other feminine colours, particularly a golden-yellow and a pastel purple. There’s not the primary colours of Legos and browns of (old, real) Tinkertoys. I don’t see how changing the gendered pink to gendered pastels is a particular “leap-forward” for getting girls out of the “pink ghetto”. Merely painting the ghetto a different colour is not going to change anything.

Third, look at the toys themselves. Tinkertoys are just Tinkertoys, they have no themes, while Lego’s are occasionally without theme but usually something boyishly cool like rockets, planes, or pirates. The Goldie Blox sets available are a parade float and a girly ribbon “spinning machine”.

Parade Floats – The Height of Imagination

The joy of Tinkertoys was simply building whatever came to your mind at the time. The imagination and the ability to build was the lure. Even with Legos sets, how many kids actually concentrated on the sets themselves, rather than tearing them apart as soon as they were built to build something else or play war?

These toys have been dumbed down. Look at how few pieces you get and how limited they are. And a parade float, really? You makes toys that can be used to build anything the imagination can conceive and a parade float is the best you can come up with? Is that the best you think young girls can aspire to?

I’ll see your parade float and raise you a rocket-ship.

How much of an “improvement” for gender neutrality in toys or for getting girls out of of the pink ghetto is it for little girls to simply be building girly things?

How much engineering/building skills and imagination will such simple, limited sets instill in young girls?

Finally, look at the sets, what do you see?

That bear has some swag.

Cute little animals. There’s a dolphin in a tutu, a bear in a pastel suit, and a cute little doggy with big floppy ears.

What do you see in Tinkertoys? Nothing but blocks and sticks (or plastic in the new and crappy form; that annoys more more than it should. At least I’m not the only one).

What do you see in Legos? Articulated figures capable of action (with guns and swords).

The girl-oriented engineering product is not enough of a draw in itself; it needs something cute, something personal to draw the little girls in. To increase the narrative and personalization, each even comes with it’s own storybook.

Every machine needs a back-story.

How much do you want to bet that most little girls who receive this toy will spend more time playing house or tea with the little animal figures rather than building, destroying, and re-building weird contraptions?

Here we can see the complete intellectual bankruptcy of the whole ‘girls and boys are equal meme’ displayed in one little children’s toy.

Even the equalists who specifically created a feminist-vaunted engineering toy to get girls into engineering know that most little girls don’t want to build and destroy for the sake of building and destroying like little boys do. They know full well they can’t just market Tinkertoys to girl straight-up; they know they can’t simply tell girls build this and make a profit.

So, to convince most girls to give an engineering toy a try they have to regender a gender-neutral toy, make the toys as girly as possible (while avoiding the dreaded pink), dumb the toy down while destroy the creativity of the toy, and introduce cute little animal figures in tutus simply to make them palatable to little girls.

I’m an evil supporter of the patriarchy and I would be hard-pressed to think up a toy that is more patronizing to little girls than this.

If you want pastels and dollies for your daughter buy some My Little Pony toys; there’s nothing wrong or inferior with young girls liking pink, pastels, and relationally-based toys.

But if you want an engineering toy by some Tinkertoys or Legos.

Uncountable hours of fun.

Avoid this drek; it’s insulting. “Hey little girl, you can’t handle 65 pieces of Tinkertoys ($16.40), so here’s 35 pieces to build a parade float ($20) because that’s all we expect you to be able to imagine and create. The boys will go over their and play with their underwater base.”

When even the gender-warriors implicitly state their cause is lost whenever it comes to something that actually effects reality, you know there’s something flawed with their ideology.

****

I must say though, I do admire the business acumen of the creator. What an idea:

I’ll take a classic toy, make it worse, colour it in pastels, attach some feminist ideology to it, and sell less of it at a higher price, then have the feminist press rave about my awesome new toy providing scads of free publicity.

That’s a pretty good business plan.

On ‘Geek Girls’

Here are two articles from one Alyssa Rosenberg in Slate. The first is about how there is no such thing as “fake geek girls”. The second advocates feminists in science fiction push their ideology on the SFWA and push out and censoring established male SF writers.

Of course, Alyssa sees no contradiction between these two asserations; in fact, linking to the former article in the latter.

As someone who enjoys SF, among a variety of other nerdy hobbies, I would like to comment on this.

I have no problem with women writing SF, reading SF, or participating in any other nerdy activities. I also have no problem with women who participate in some nerdy activities and not others, for whatever reasons. There’s nothing wrong with a girl (or a guy) who likes Dr. Who, but doesn’t like D&D.

My problem is not women who engage in whatever nerdy activities they enjoy to whatever extent they like and avoid what they don’t. My problem, is that some women, turn what should be some enjoyable hobby into a crusade to destroy what others enjoy.

That is where the ‘fake geek girl’ meme comes from. It has little to do with women who enjoy or not enjoy certain nerdy activities and everything to do with women acting like they enjoy geeky activities while actively try to destroy those same geeky activities.

The ‘fake geek girl’ is not the girl who likes Dr. Who but doesn’t care for BSG; it’s the girl who watches Dr. Who then demands the next Dr. Who should be a woman. (Dr. Who was just an example I saw recently, I don’t watch the show and don’t really care). It’s the girl who actively tries to destroy a nerdy activity so whatever BS political crusade they happen to be on at the time who is the ‘fake geek girl’.

Why do some women, who claim to love whatever nerdy activity they are talking about, insist on changing the very nature of what they profess to love? If the geeky activity a women claims to love is only acceptable to her if it is entirely changed, then she is definitionally a ‘fake geek girl’.

Why can’t you just enjoy something for what it is? If you don’t enjoy it, then simply avoid it rather than trying to change it.

The question is not, “whose participation in genre fiction is more valid?”

The true question is, “why the hell won’t you leave us alone?”

If ‘women like SF’, but are put off by cheesecake in SF or other sf tropes, then why don’t women write their own SF without cheesecake, then leave those who enjoy cheesecake SF alone?

If ‘women like comics’, but don’t like heroines with skintight costumes, then why don’t they write their own comics with heroines portrayed however they want, and leave Powergirl alone?

If ‘women like video games’, but don’t like damsels in distress, then why don’t they create and sell their own video games with ‘strong, independent women’ and leave Princess Peach alone?

But the feminists, in their usual entitled, narcissistic uselessness can not leave alone. Instead of creating their own characters, their own games, their own stories, they have to attack everyone elses’. They demand the entire industry of nerdy entertainment cater to them and their preferences because in their narcissism, only the feminists’ desires matter; fuck those loser male nerds who built the entire industry.

Goddess forbid that males should be allowed to enjoy what they enjoy without some hateful harpy hectoring them for it.

Are they so thoroughly incompetent they can not make nerdy entertainment that fits their preferences and others would enjoy, but must rather content themselves with destroying what everyone else enjoys?

Are they such emotionally fragile and pathetic people, that they can not live and let live, but must muster up umbrage every time someone enjoys something they don’t like?

Mario would not be Mario if he wasn’t rescuing Princess Peach. If you don’t like it, don’t try to change Mario to ruin him for everyone else, go make your own game where Maria rescues Prince Apple. If the idea is good, people will buy it, if not, they won’t.

****

Sidenote: Vox has had some fun with the SFWA on this issue. I’ll link the series here, as it is an enjoyable read, as most of Vox’ rabbit-poking is.
http://voxday.blogspot.ca/2013/06/women-ruin-everything-sfwa-edition.html
http://voxday.blogspot.ca/2013/06/the-dangerous-vision-of-sfwa.html
http://voxday.blogspot.ca/2013/06/sfwa-burns-witch.html
http://voxday.blogspot.ca/2013/06/seriously-fascist-womens-association.html
http://voxday.blogspot.ca/2013/06/stampeding-herd.html
http://voxday.blogspot.ca/2013/06/a-black-female-fantasist.html
http://voxday.blogspot.ca/2013/06/sfwa-forum-moderated-posts.html
http://voxday.blogspot.ca/2013/06/sf-vs-science.html
http://voxday.blogspot.ca/2013/06/rejecting-lie.html

The Bookshelf: Men on Strike

I pre-ordered Men on Strike by Helen Smith months ago, and it arrived a couple of weeks back. This week I took a break from the Trivium to read it for review here. Reviewing this book is somewhat difficult, because its greatest weaknesses are also it greatest strengths.

So, first off, I did not care overly much for the book and, had I not already accepted her premise as true, I would have found her argument unconvincing. It was an easy read, being light, breezy, and short, in the way pop-academic books are. If you have spent a decent amount of time in the manosphere, there is not a thing in this book that will be new to you; I learned nothing from the book.

But that is exactly what makes this book important and good.

This book was not aimed at me, a hard-hearted INTJ and a denizen of the manosphere. According to the prologue, it is aimed at men who think something may be wrong, but can’t put their finger on what, but I think this is only a part of the target audience. This book was perfectly made for the average, decent-hearted female who generally likes men, but has some cultural unthinking sympathy towards modern feminism.

With that audience in mind, the book is likely a slam-dunk. The same things with the book that disappointed me are perfect for this audience.

My first critique was the anecdotal nature of the book. While each section usually beings with a few statistics showing the nature of the problem, the book is not one of in-depth analysis and convincing arguments. It is primarily a work of rhetoric made up mostly of anecdotes. Most of the book is of the nature of ‘such-and-such man I met at the gym said this’ and ‘male commenter on a website said that’. Helen herself wrote it is a call to action not a research study.

But the anecdotal nature, while unconvincing to me, is also its greatest strength. If you’ve ever spent time debating with others, you find that most women (and a goodly number of men as well) are rarely convinced by logical arguments backed up with facts and statistics. You are not going to convince the kind of person who likes to read Jezebel or Gawker with logic and facts. On the other hand, they are often moved by personal stories and anecdotal evidence. So, for your average person who is more feeling than thinking, this book would likely be convincing.

The second weakness/strength is that nothing is new here; everything in this book has been said a million times in the manosphere. I learned nothing, but I’m not most people; most people haven’t been to the manosphere, let alone written a manosphere blog. The red pill is foreign to the vast majority of people, and this book provides an easily digestible, mainstream-friendly summary of some basic red pill knowledge.

The third weakness/strength is the nature of the writing. The book was very light and breezy in the vein of most works of pop-academia, but even more so than usual, to the point where I found it too light and too breezy. I found the tone was lighter than even Malcolm Gladwell. The writing actually reminded me of reading Jezebel, except not evil and not as filled with repellent, hollow snark. That being said, there was still a small amount of feminine snark, which I found occasionally off-putting, but it was minor and didn’t negatively effect the book overly much. Also, Men on Strike was also short at about 200 (smallish) pages in a somewhat larger than normal font size; again, a light read.

A fourth weakness/strength I found is that in it’s breeziness, the book occasionally feels somewhat disjointed. Sometimes, within a greater topic, there will be rapid changes between sub-topics; occasionally there were paragraphs that didn’t really seem to follow from the previous paragraphs or one idea was picked up, then quickly abandoned for another. At times it felt to be written almost as a stream-of-consciousness, or at least a stream of consciousness that was edited to be more readable. Given the short-attention span of many in today’s phone-junky culture, this might not necessarily be a bad thing for many.

A major strength of the book is that it was written by a woman. There can be no trite dismissals of Men on Strike by retarded ideologues because it was written by ‘bitter’, ‘resentful’, ‘angry’ men (who are virgins with small dicks). While I still expect accusations of ‘sexism’ and ‘misogyny’ from the particularly ideologically dense, the fact that a woman wrote this will head off many of these accusations and will make the stupidity of the accusers plain to most reasonable people.

One disappointment of the book is, when discussing college, she talks as if it is an good which men are being unjustly driven from rather than the scam it is. Given that Helen’s husband literally wrote the book on this topic, you’d think she would have at least mentioned it.

In conclusion, I think Men on Strike is important and should prove to be very useful in the war for the masculine. She’s not reactionary or pro-patriarchy, but she is a libertarian who supports freedom and masculinity, and that’s sufficient. Her ideas are solid and this book is not one of those concern-trolling books that pretends to be pro-men, but is just arguing for a more comfortable slavery. I regret saying the negative things I’m saying, because what Helen produced here is great for its purpose and is a useful tool for the masculine reaction. The book is not bad, but is not really my style. I don’t regret reading it as it was a minimal investment and easy to read, but can’t recommend it to the kinds of people who would be reading my blog.

I would highly recommend this book as a gateway to the red pill for squishy scalzified-liberal-types who aren’t entirely emasculated or for potentially sympathetic women. Of course, these kinds of people are probably not reading this review and would probably be insulted by it if they did, so that recommendation is kind of pointless, but if you know these kinds of people and want a “nice”, easy-to-swallow purple pill to give them, get them a copy of this book. It will be a very low investment of time/effort on their part and won’t have the same immediately off-putting effect that places filled with “angry” men like Dalrock and Roissy have.

If you’re new to the manosphere and are honestly wondering what all these “angry, bitter men” are ranting about, read this book, it may prove enlightening.

The things about the book I found I disliked are probably its greatest assets, hence, the odd, contradictory nature of this review.

Also, I would like to note that Helen used the phrase “Uncle Tim” a number of times in the book, which made me smile. Is this phrase going to become more mainstream? We can hope.

Recommendation:

If you are a somewhat regular reader of this blog and/or occasionally go through my Lightning Rounds, reading Men on Strike will be a pointless waste of time and money for you; I can not recommend it.

On the other hand, it you’re new to the red pill and wondering why all the anger, this book is a good a place to start. If you are red pill and know someone, particularly a potentially sympathetic women, to whom you want to give a kindly introduction to the red pill, but worry that Roissy, Rollo, or Dalrock might be a bit too harsh, this is the perfect book for them. If you find yourself discussing the red pill and people are curious or interested in knowing more, point them towards Men on Strike.

The Curse of Eve

But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. (Genesis 2:20-22)

Eve was created to be the helper of Adam, to assist him in his great work, which, thanks to the curse of Adam, is a hard, miserable task.

Eve was tempted and in turn tempted Adam with her sweet fruit; he fell, as men are wont to do when a woman’s sweet fruit is involved. Adam was a given a cruel curse for weakness, but Eve was as well.

To the woman he said,
“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;
in pain you shall bring forth children.
Your desire shall be for your husband,
and he shall rule over you.” (Genesis 3:16)

The first part of the curse is harsh, but simply; Adam and Eve were blessed to be fruitful and multiply, but to Eve being fruitful became a painful and deadly experience. That is the first part of her curse, to desire children with her innermost being, but to suffer, and often die, in the bearing.

Yet, the second part of the curse is less straightforward, but more interesting. The more literal translation from Hebrew is more interesting still:

…and to your man is your following and he will regulate in you,

Following and regulate as defined for this:

Following: To go, proceed or come after. Being next in order or time. Subsequent to. As the river follows the path of its banks.

Regulate: To govern or correct according to rule. Rule over a dominion. To bring order, method, or uniformity to. To compare one thing to another in the sense of a rule of measurement, often as a proverb or parable.

Eve’s curse then is to desire her husband and to follow after him.

Her purpose, woman’s purpose is to help man, her greatest desire is to follow after their husband, she yearns to be his.

He will regulate in you. Her curse is not primarily that man controls her outwardly, physically, but rather that he rules in her.

Adam controls Eve’s emotional being; to him she is devoted, for him is her greatest desire, and to follow him is her greatest pleasure and purpose.

Eve’s curse is emotional dependence on fallen man. She desires to her very core to be wholly his.

Adam has absolute rule over her inner world, whether she wills it or not.

Before the curse, she was a helper to a perfect leader. Now she is a subject to a fallen man cursed with bitter hardship. This fallen man may be cruel, he may be weak, he may foolish, he may be sinful, he may despise her, he may reject her, and he will most certainly hurt her. He will never be the perfect man, God’s own untainted image, in which she yearns with longing deep to lose herself, subsume herself.

This is the paradox of Eve’s curse: She yearns to be Adam’s as he was, but Adam as he is is fallen: sinful and weak. She sees his weakness and may rebel against him and herself to her own ruin, but however much she may rebel, she knows she is beholden to him. Her desire for fallen Adam causes her suffering for she can not be rid of it, yet he is not the perfect man he was before he fell. Rebellion against his imperfection only causes her greater suffering for her need to be Adam’s is her very core.

Woman can only find true joy and purpose in wholly devoting herself to man, yet man, being imperfect, will never truly fulfill her longing to lose herself wholly in him.

Adam’s curse is to labour brutally and unceasingly only to see it come to ruin; Eve’s curse is to suffer the whims of cursed Adam or suffer the utter desolation of being bereft of Adam.

Housework, Independence, and Entitlement

The issue of men and housework seems to have sparked renewed interest among the chattering classes. It seems to have been sparked by this Tide commercial of some vaguely metrosexual father washing his daughter’s princess dress.

Judgy Bitch had some fun with this and CR points out the biological origins of the issue, but I’m going to weigh in as well.

Now, honestly, I don’t care if men do housework. Doing the laundry, cooking, or cleaning because you want to makes you neither more nor less of a man. If stuff needs to get done, men get stuff done.

A family should pursue whatever division of labour works best for them.

On the other hand, being a kitchen bitch is emasculating and will ruin your marriage. If you are a man, avoid it, it won’t go well for you.

Of course, all this assumes that there’s actually a chore gap. Which is unlikely as the time-use studies on this tend to ignore traditionally male chores.

I’m not going to write about proper housework division, that’s a personal issue. Instead, I am going to write about how this debate relates to independence, entitlement, and the society.

****

First, independence and strength.

Feminists, you wanted careers, you wanted to work outside the house, you got your wish, please shut up.

What these women don’t see when they complain about the “patriarchy” and being “oppressed” by staying at home rather than work mindless corporate drudgery, is that they now are doing what men have always done.

In the industrial era, men have always gone to work, they have always come home to do house work (home repairs, renovations, garbage, car repairs, yard work, finances, BBQing, etc.), and they have always participated in family life (to a greater or lesser degree).

The thing is, they didn’t, and still don’t, bitch about it. They didn’t write articles about how “over-whelming” it was. They didn’t demand that women step up and do they’re jobs for them. They didn’t whine about how unfair life was.

They just did their jobs, because that’s what independent adults do.

Independent and strong people don’t whine about how tough life is, about how unfair it is, they just do what needs to be done.

Women, you are now in the position those “oppressive” men have always been in.

Working all day for somebody else then coming home to take care of the house and family is what men have always done. You wanted to do it, now you are doing it.

You can not complain about women being “oppressed” when you do not have men’s responsibilities, then whine about having men’s responsibilities when you have spent decades demanding them.

From the Atlantic article:

The good news is that many men already seek out these responsibilities. I like to call their actions “small instances of gender heroism” or “SIGH”s, in honor of the intense pang of gratitude and relief a damsel-in-distress feels when a superhero notices her especially—amidst a crowd—and swoops in to enact a rescue that was so unexpected that its impossibility had become the central pillar of her fierce independence. You know, like the dreamy effect Mr. Darcy has on Elizabeth Bennet, Superman on Lois Lane, and Antonia on her line through Danielle and Therèse.
…
Find a working mom and lead with the following SIGH: “What do you need, in order to raise your children and advance in your career at the same time?” Just swoop in and help her out, not because you’re obligated to rectify an injustice, but because you can. Responding to the misery of the people you care about is what you do.

Independent and strong people don’t need SIGHs.

What the hell is wrong with you people?

If you need someone else to help you, you are, by definition, not independent. You are, by definition, weak.

If you want to be independent, be independent, but then don’t beg others to pick up your shit for you, do it yourself.

Don’t demand men clean your houses, don’t demand men come to your rescue, don’t demand others do things for you. You are independent now, deal with it.

****

Second, entitlement.

If you read these articles, you get a strong sense of entitlement.

The SIGHs talk above and the rest of the Atlantic article reek of entitlement, but as usual Jezebel just does horrible, entitled bitch so much better than anyone else.

The title of the Jezebel article (no link, if you’re curious see JB’s article) displays this perfectly:

“How to Make a Dude Sweep the Kitchen Floor (Correctly), Without You Even Having to Tell Him”

What kind of world-class bitch writes this? It sounds like a manual on training dogs to urinate outside.

In this mentality men exist to do what women desire, in the way women desire, while telepathically understanding both.

A few gems of overactive entitlement:

It’s not just that you’re tired and pissed, it’s that you never get the feeling of having your own life, or free time, or time to recharge, if you feel like you are the only person overseeing the household’s concerns and making sure they are handled, or worse, if you are re-doing the work your husband or partner did poorly.

Because the entirety of everything revolves around the women’s feelings. As well, men are incompetent and everything must be done to the women’s standards or its worse than not having done anything at all.*

The Atlantic has some fancy sociological theories for this well-documented disparity as to why humans with peens can’t scrub a bathroom right without a lot of rigmarole:

Remember, all the jobs have to be done to the women’s standards, because men are incompetent and their standards don’t matter.

They Can’t Be Bothered (Motivational Hypothesis)

Of course they can see what needs to be done, but in their eyes, it’s just not that important to do it, especially when other stuff matters more. Homemade valentines for your class party, kiddo? Why bother when we can just buy some and save time?

No matter how useless the man may think the project is, if the women desires it must be done and he’s a jerk for not counting it as important housework and sharing the duties.

Later, Travis wonders why Alice can’t just constantly leave him notes to tell him what he has to do? Sure thing mister, right after she cuts the crust off your PB&J.

Because men should know what women want. We’re all mind-readers.

Here’s an idea for the women complaining: go fuck yourself.

If you want to be a controlling bitch and demand things be cleaner, do it yourself. If you want the house cleaned to your spoiled, exacting standards, do it yourself. If men’s standards are not up to those that your entitlement complex demands, do it yourself. If a man doesn’t think your little social-climbing and status games are important enough to act on, do it yourself.

Essentially, quit trying to force your neuroses and perfectionism concerning cleanliness and social status-seeking on men.

Do it yourself, and stop bitching that men don’t care about your neurotic desires.

****

Third, society.

From the Atlantic:

Only a handful of working parents have the “village” they need to care for their children during the period in which career opportunities slam up against pregnancies, births, years of nursing, and other crucial forms of caregiving. Most of us have to buy the village, and it’s expensive—so expensive that almost everyone has to stop hiring once they have paid for childcare and, in the very best cases, a cleaning service, despite the fact that there is much more to do.

To completely eliminate the destruction that childrearing exacts on your mind, body, and career, you would have to hire workers to handle your finances, home repairs, pets, laundry, afterschool commitments, errands, and shopping, among other responsibilities. Add to these costs the overtime that most working parents pay to accommodate the fact that their childcare needs extend well beyond the presumed eight hours a day, and you’re talking about a lot of cash. No one has this kind of money.

Because no one can afford to fully replace themselves at home while they are at the office and because, when it comes to more important tasks like selecting afterschool lessons and resolving playground disputes, no one wants to replace themselves, working mothers have famously picked up the slack for both partners, subsidizing our market with their free labor, enabling our companies and institutions to charge artificially low prices for their goods and offer artificially high salaries to their employees.

All of this means that mothers are important, in all of the ways in which socially conservative forces routinely note. But it could also mean that mothers—especially working mothers—are exploited. They are being used as a means by their partners, our institutions, and our economy in a system they did not design, to do more than their fair share of the family’s work, all without compensation. No one yet has asked or empowered working mothers to reimagine and restructure their workplaces to suit their own ends. So the basic lack of self-governance and self-determination, combined with the unpaid labor, raises the specter of injustice.

I’ve written about all this before, but it bears repeating. Nobody is meant to work, take care of family, keep home, raise children, and all those other responsibilities at once. Of course child care is expensive. This is why we once had a division of labour in the family. It made it so people could manage all these things.

An you know what? It worked, at least until whining feminists destroyed it.

Now that they’ve destroyed the family division of labour which “oppressed” them, they are now whining that there is no division of labour and they actually have to take on multiple roles.

Well, boo-dee-fucking-hoo.

Feminists, you got what you wanted. Why are you so unhappy?

Please stop complaining about the changes you wrought on society.

Enjoy what you created.

****

Anyway, to sum, the whole housework debate, assuming that it is not a myth created by statistical manipulation, is simply women acting entitled.

Women wanted the “prestige” of the careers of men, so they “liberated” themselves and started to work outside the home.

Now that they are working outside the home, they are realizing it’s a lot of work, but instead of simply sucking it up and being strong and independent like men always have, they are bitching about how hard it is to work both outside and inside the home.

Instead of engaging in self-reflection on their own choices, they are choosing to blame men.

In addition, they are choosing to force their neurotic standards of housework on men and whining that men don’t comply with their controlling attitudes.

The whole housework debate is a ginned-up non-issue created by controlling, neurotic feminists who want to blame the hardship created by their own personal choices on men.

****

* As an aside, the sentence “or worse, if you are re-doing the work your husband or partner did poorly.” sort of validates some aspects game theory. It is better to forgo helping women at all then to be a beta about it. They may dislike you doing nothing, but they will hate obsequiousness that isn’t perfect obedience even more.

Feminist Self-Annihilation

It seems it’s now a thing that women feel guilty about desiring a long-term relationship. As per that liberal rag, the Atlantic:

As a sociologist who’s interviewed several 20-something women on their sexual development, I’ve found straight young women aren’t necessarily embracing hooking up because they’re masters of their own destiny, as suggested by Hanna Rosin here a The Atlantic but because they face a new taboo and it’s not about sex or money or power. Instead, it’s a taboo about that traditional province of women: relationships. Ambitious young women in their 20s feel they shouldn’t want relationships with men at this phase in their lives.

I can’t believe this is a thing. I knew some feminists wanted the right to be sluts without shame, but what the hell?

What could possibly possess a person to feel guilty about desiring a human relationship?

But what really got me about this piece was this:

Some young women deeply desire meaningful relationships with men, even as they feel guilty about those desires. Many express the same sentiment again and again: “Why do I, a young and highly educated woman in the 21st century, value relationships with men so highly?” To do so feels like a betrayal of themselves, of their education, and of their achievements.

Really? I can’t even really feel anger over this, just sadness.

Women value relationships with men because humans were created (or evolved) to live with each other, to love each other, and to form relationships. We are social creatures; relationships define who we are.

To not value human relationships is to engage in self-annihilation.* The desire for companionship is the most human part of you, to fight against it is to destroy yourself and your humanity.

Meet a girl named Katie:

Katie, a 25-year-old woman I spoke with as part of my research, confided that she worried her single-minded pursuit of a graduate degree might limit her ability to meet a man with whom she could build a life. This realization—that she might want to prioritize a relationship over a career—felt shocking to Katie, and she did not admit to it easily. She felt deeply ashamed by such thoughts, worried that they signaled weakness and dependence, qualities she did not admire. To put such a high premium on relationships was frightening to Katie. She worried that it meant she wasn’t liberated and was still defined by traditional expectations of women.

Read that again: “She worried that it meant she wasn’t liberated and was still defined by traditional expectations of women.”

This women is destroying herself, destroying the things that are real in her life (relationships, family, and her desires for such) over ideological cant.

Dear Katie, if you are not pursuing what you truly desire because you are worried about signalling weakness and dependence, then you aren’t liberated and you are weak. If you are denying your human desire for companionship to “signal” independence, you are a slave, not of the body, but much worse, of the mind.

You are still letting others define you, you have just changed which group is doing the defining.

Also, which do you think you will value more in a decade: a man who has loved you for the last decade or an over-priced piece of paper that you are still paying off?

I have heard Katie’s dilemma from countless young women. Many feel ashamed about being too relationship-oriented in their 20s. Parents warn, “Do you really want to settle down so early? We just don’t want to see you miss out on any opportunities.” Friends intone, “How will you know what you like and want if you don’t play the field? You’re only young once. Now’s the time to explore.”

I think these parents and “friends” are going to have a lot to answer for on judgment day. What kind of idiotic advice is that?

Like Hamilton and Armstrong’s respondents, many young and aspiring women with whom I spoke felt as though it were counterproductive to their development to prioritize a relationship with a man.

Because human relationships are not a part of self-development?

This is a new phenomenon that goes against the grain of centuries of female socialization.

Because the desire for human relationships is something socialized?

Anxiety is difficult to tolerate, and rather than experience it, many of the young women I interviewed and work with in my psychotherapy practice split their desire for a relationship off from their professional and self-development desires. Confused about freedom and desire, young women often split their social and psychological options—independence, strength, safety, control, and career versus connection, vulnerability, need, desire, and relationships—into mutually exclusive possibilities in life. Romantic relationships then often become something to be avoided and denigrated rather than embraced.

Wow. Why would any women tolerate this kind of psychological self-annihilation?

Why? Why would women put up with an ideology that required them to destroy themselves?

I find this more sad than maddening, but if I were a women, I would be pissed over this.

****

Slate XX commented on this. Read:

How can you want a relationship if you have no prospects? Unless you’re actually casually dating someone (or have a secret crush on someone you interact with regularly), actively “wanting” a boyfriend seems rather silly to me.

Really? It’s silly to desire the basic human need of companionship?

Ellen Tarlin: I disagree. I think it’s almost unavoidable. Relationships are so romanticized and overvalued in our society! We are plagued by images of them.

Materialistic nihilism on full display.

Laura Helmuth: I don’t mean to be unsympathetic, but I am kind of thrilled that this is considered embarrassing among smart young women.Having a boyfriend and/or being well on the way to marriage used to be the default for twentysomethings. It’s fascinating that the social stigma has reversed so dramatically.

I am thrilled that women are denying their basic human desires and needs to pursue empty corporate work and a consumerist lifestyle.

Hanna Rosin: I feel like this moment we’re in now of shame about the boyfriend is great and necessary for progress and all that but will recalibrate and settle down.

Is she a fucking sadist?

Emma Roller: On the other side of this, I feel a lot of guilt for having a wonderful, stable relationship with my boyfriend of two-plus years. I’m  anxious about missing out on what the zeitgeist says the 20s lifestyle “should” be (playing the field, etc.), but what if I’m happy where I’m at?

Please re-read that, and just think about it for a minute. “I feel a lot of guilt for having a wonderful, stable relationship with my boyfriend of two-plus years.”

Juliana Jimenez: I hear you. I sometimes get a bit anxious over that as well—that I’m missing my 20s and I’m really living a 30s kind of life with my stable boyfriend and what not.

Again, consider that.

Meg Wiegand: I guess I’m the minority here: I’m in my late 20s, perpetually single, and very much worried about not finding someone. I know I’m absolutely fine on my own, and like Aisha, I’ve rarely met anyone I would ever want to consider being ”attached” to. But I continue to bounce on and off online dating sites and go on dates with friends of friends (mostly just ending up with great cocktail fodder) in hopes of finding someone who could be a partner.

Part of me is embarrassed by this—that I’ve escaped small-town Ohio and lived abroad and have a master’s degree but can’t find a partner. The other part feels that society already tells me that I should be ashamed of my body fat and short legs and hair that isn’t straight and blond, so why should I take this any more seriously? And why is this any different than feeling lonely because my family members and close friends are a plane ride away?

Wow. You could write an entire post just on these two paragraphs. It’s like every manosphere stereotype of modern American women rolled into two paragraphs.

Alyssa Rosenberg: What strikes me as weird about this conversation, and why this shift in priorities doesn’t seem like a complete feminist victory, is that it discounts the idea that a relationship can be an incredible source of support for career and life goals. Having someone who, say, helps with chores to give you more time to study or work, or who encourages you when you’re discouraged, or works in a similar field and helps you with ideas, who backs you publicly, etc? All this stuff can make it much easier to work harder and in a more productive way or to work through difficult challenges. I’m not sure we should get psyched by the idea that young women don’t want relationships but rather by the idea that women want more from their relationships or that we view relationships as part of a larger matrix of things that can work well together.

Alyssa here is comparatively rational. She sounds almost human and not like she had her heart replaced by the archives of Jezebel.

Ellen Tarlin: Because twentysomething men are selfish! (Joke. Sort of.) No, I’d say because these ideas about what women should be or do die hard. Your boyfriend or husband may support the ideals of feminism, but when he gets home, maybe he’d just really like it if you would make dinner, too. (Who wouldn’t?)

Read that again: “No, I’d say because these ideas about what women should be or do die hard.”

Think on it for a minute. You should now realize how insane this whole thing.

These women are sitting around discussing a sadistic, near-psychopathic (feminist) societal expectation that is causing women to annihilate themselves and their base human desires, and celebrating it because it destroys older societal expectations.

Dear women, why do you listen to people like this?

Why do you take the advice of people like this?

Why?

I don’t know, there’s not much left to say. This makes me sad.

****

* Severe autists, clinical psychopaths, and others with a natural inability to form human relations excepted.

Obliviousness, Incivility, and the Destruction of the Old Order

I came across this article from some feminist who, according to the little blurb at the bottom, has written for “Jezebel, The Frisky, The Huffington Post and The Good Men Project.” In it she complains of the incivility of men in public:

It’s a drizzly Friday in Chicago and I’m leaving a bar with my roommate sometime after midnight. We’re on a quest for tacos and we’re discussing the finer points—Should we get pork or beef? From where? How many?—when you decide to make our conversation your business. You’ve been loitering outside the bar with your friends, but you hear the word “taco” and soon you’re in lock step with us, asking us about our “tacos,” laughing, hooting back to your friends. We push past—literally shoving you—and continue on our way.

Here are some things you should know about my week: I’m on the phone with my mom on my way to yoga when a guy leans out of a doorway, drags on his cigarette and gestures with his pelvis how much he is enjoying my yoga pants. I’m walking home from the grocery store and a middle-aged guy, maybe high, maybe drunk, yells at me, “Get back here, girl!” I’m waiting for the bus when a carful of bros whips by; one leans out the passenger window, points at the girls waiting at the bus stop and yells, “Yes, Yes, No…Yes!” After work, I’m walking from the train to my apartment and four teenagers are trailing me, discussing my body, guessing measurements; they know I can hear them.

This behaviour causes her to feel unsafe. This is understandable as she is a young woman and these men are quite obviously under-civilized brutes; rape or violence would not seem to be an impossibility in some of these situations and given the inherent physical inequalities between the sexes there is little she could do to defend herself (excepting carrying a gun, which someone who writes for Jezebel is unlikely to do).

This is not my issue with what she has written. The incivility of modern times sometimes irks me as well, although, as a tall, broad-shouldered man with confident bearing, I rarely worry for my physical safety.

Rather, my issue is that, as feminists are wont to do, she blames “the patriarchy” for the incivility of ruffians.

She, of course, being an miseducated feminist is oblivious to the twin facts that:

1) Men being uncivil is not “the patriarchy”, it is the breakdown of the patriarchy. It is men being freed from the constraints which the patriarchy put upon them.

2) The left-wing feminist politics she advocates are the primary cause of this breakdown.

Because of this her analysis, such that it is, is flawed.

****

Men’s sexuality, absent civilizational constraint, is naturally aggressive and promiscuous. These men laughing at a woman’s “taco”, grabbing ass, and doing pelvic-thrusts, are acting out their natural sexuality.

At one point in our society, this would have been unacceptable behaviour. Under the old order, lovingly referred to as the patriarchy, but probably more accurately referred to as civilization, civility towards woman was standard; it was called chivalry.

Men raised under this order would have been loath to issue even a mild oath in the presence of a woman, let alone crassly harass a woman over her “tacos”. Had a man been uncivilized enough to harass a woman in such a way, he would have suffered immediate consequences in the form of violence from other honourable men, and more permanent consequences from a loss of social status.

As an example of the sort of man the old order raised, we can use one Samuel Proctor, who tipped his hat towards a woman. When said woman asked what that meant he replied:

Madame, by tipping my hat I was telling you several things. That I would not harm you in any way. That if someone came into this elevator and threatened you, I would defend you. That if you fell ill, I would tend to you and if necessary carry you to safety. I was telling you that even though I am a man and physically stronger than you, I will treat you with both respect and solicitude. But frankly, Madame, it would have taken too much time to tell you all of that; so, instead, I just tipped my hat.”

A man raised in the old order as Mr. Proctor was, would never have even considered joking about a woman’s “tacos”.

Civilization was used to control men’s natural sexual aggressiveness to create men like Mr. Proctor, who acted civilized and would control their aggressive sexuality for the betterment of society and the safety of women.

Some decades ago, a cabal of dissatisfied women under the label of feminism and a small, but vocal minority under the banner of affiliated progressive ideologies decided they did not care for civilization and its constraints. They rebelled against it and fought a long, hard ideological war to destroy it.

They won.

This cabal destroyed the old order and with it the control it had over men’s sexuality.

Men are now free to be uncivil brutes. Civilization no longer holds full sway over them.

Hence, “tacos.”

****

So, in finale:

Dear Feminist,

This is the world you desired.

You and your ideological kin spent decades ruthlessly destroying the old order which kept men civilized. You smashed the patriarchy which kept men’s naturally externalized sexuality healthly internalized and productively directed.

You denigrated the institutions which controlled men, smashed the civilization which ordered men, and have created a generation of brutes and half-men.

You asked for sexual license. Men are now free to express their sexuality without consequence.

You asked for freedom to pursue hedonism. Men are now pursuing hedonism.

You asked to be freed from the rules of civilized conduct. Men are now freed from these rules as well.

You rejected your role as a lady. Men are rejecting their role as gentlemen.

These rules were made to protect you, dear woman. The patriarchy was made for your benefit. The old order existed to serve you.

You desired, nay demanded, them destroyed, and destroyed they have been.

When you destroy civilization, incivility will be the order of the day.

You have got what you asked for, enjoy it.

Regards,

A Traditionalist

Chivalry, the Lady, and the Old Order

Some chick at the Atlantic is asking for chivalry to come back. As is standard is many modern pro-chivalry arguments, she is talking only of men treating women as special, not about women’s corresponding duties under chivalry.

At one point in the article she asks:

Feminists want men to treat women as equals; traditionalists want men to treat women like ladies. Are the two mutually exclusive?

She then goes on about some stupidity about respect and civility.

The simple answer though is yes.

Chivalry and equality are not and can not exist simultaneously.

Chivalry is based in a hierarchical world-view and can not be separated from that worldview.

Chivalry is far more than simple respect and civility. Chivalry is a code whereby the stronger and superior man (the knight) extends his strength and protection to his inferiors who were too weak to protect themselves (women and children).*

In the chivalric hierarchy knights were strong protectors, women were weak and in need of protection. Inherent inequality is built into chivalry.

In exchange for this protection, women submitted to men and acted like ladies. They complemented the men’s strength.

Chivalry rested on this traditional order of society, where inequality and feminine submission is an accepted fact of life. Without this old order, chivalry is impossible.

****

Besides inherent inequality, chivalry also requires on other thing: that women act like ladies.

If either of those two conditions is broken then chivalry can not exist. Any acts you do to be “chivalrous” are nothing more than chumphood and supplication.

A lady was originally a noblewomen. Over time, in romantic chivalry it came to refer to a virtuous women. Nowadays, its usually used as somewhat more polite/formal term for women. Only ladies deserve gentlemen, a term with similar origins and complementary meanings as that of lady.

Fundamental to the conception of both the lady and the gentleman is the concept of honour. A man’s honour in the romantic realm was found in his protection of and graciousness towards women. A women’s honour was found in her chastity and her graciousness towards men.

We already know how a gentleman acts; we call it chivalry. So, I will not go further into his duties. But how does a lady act?

A lady is chaste; she does not slut it up, she does not dress like a cheap hooker, she does not tease, and her flirting is light, discrete, and indirect. A lady does not compete with men. A lady acts with propriety and decorum; she is gentle, polite, well-mannered. A lady is feminine, she knows her nature and acts according to it. A lady is beautiful; she knows that her natural god-given beauty is a delight for the rest of the world, so she seeks to maintain it rather than destroy it. A woman who acts this way is deserving of chivalry.

Chivalry is for ladies. It is not for modern, independent women.

****

Women, you have a choice.

You can like ladies and accept either inequality or submission or you can cast these off.

If you decide to act like ladies, men can act like gentleman and be chivalrous in return.

If you decide to act like modern, independent women, then you have made the choice to reject chivalry. If you ask for men to be chivalrous, all you are asking for is unearned privilege. You sound like a spoiled brat.

If you do not hold up your end of the chivalric bargain, why the hell should men be expected to hold up their end?

Do not ask for or expect chivalry; in fact, you should be repulsed by chivalry.

Enjoy your hook-ups.

****

At this point some may be wondering if I am anti-chivalry. The answer to that is no, I am very pro-chivalry.

But chivalry exists as a part of the old order. Apart from that old order it is meaningless.

I am pro-chivalry, because I believe in resurrecting that old order. Within that old order, chivalry is a wonderful thing for both men and women. Outside that order, it is nothing.

As long as the old order remains buried, no male has a general duty of duty towards women.

In fact, every male should refuse to extend chivalry to a modern, equal, independent woman.

****

If you are thinking of being chivalrous ask yourself three questions:

1) Does the woman I am about to be chivalrous think she is my equal?
2) Does the woman I am about to be chivalrous to think a women’s place is to submit to a man?**
3) Does this women I am about to be chivalrous comport herself as a lady?

If the answer to the first is yes and the second is no, treat her as the equal she believes herself to be. (If you do not know the answer, use social cues to determine the likely answer).

Do not give her chivalry. Do not hold the door open for her. Do not pay for her. Do not fight for her. Do not die for her.

As well, I would suggest not marrying her, but that’s an argument distinct from chivalry.

To give chivalry to any women who believes she is equal to you is to insult her. Chivalry implies and necessitates inferiority; by giving it to her you are telling her she is either inferior to or in submission to you. Given her stance on equality this should be repugnant to her.

Any women who believes they are equal yet demands chivalry is either insulting herself, selfish, or just plain stupid. Refuse to play into her stupidity.

Respect a women who thinks she’s your equal by treating her like an equal.

If the answer to the third question is no, then she is not a lady and not worthy of knightly protection. Do not waste yourself on her.

If a women acts like a lady, and believes in either male superiority or complementarianism, then be chivalrous. She is submitting to you, your protection, and your providence and is deserving of having it provided to her. Do not fail her.

****

* The worldview of the chivalric code was also based on militarism, fuedalism, and Christianity. From these flowed other parts to the code such as knightly honour, duties to countrymen/Christians, and duties to God, which are also intrinsic to the code, but these aspects are not what most discuss when talking of chivalry nowadays. For this particular post, chivalry will refer only to knightly duties to women as distinct from the other parts of the code, unless otherwise stated. I’m not sure if it is possible for the part of the code dealing with knightly duties to women can be separated from the rest of the code and remain logically coherent, but in practice it has been, so I will assume for this post that it can be.

** This second question allows for complementarians/first mates who may hold to metaphysical equality, but not practical equality. I would argue that practical inequality is all that is fully necessary for chivalry to be extended, so complementarians and first mates should be provided with the protection of chivalry. But I could see where it could be debatable to hold metaphysical inequality as being necessary for chivalry; in which case you would withhold chivalry from most complementarians/first mates.

The Bookshelf: Captain Capitalism: Top Shelf

As mentioned previously, Captain Capitalism (ie: Aaron Clarey) has been a large influence for this blog, so when he released his new book, Top Shelf, I immediately ordered it on Amazon.

The book itself is a simple collection of what CC thought his best posts from his 8 years of prolific  blogging. Coming in at 400+ pages, the book has a whole lot of mini-essays on a wide range of topics primarily in the fields of economics, gender relations, bachelorhood, politics, and education.

Having read through his entire archive about a year ago (a lot of reading), I can’t think of any posts that should have been included that he left out. In addition, there were some good posts in it that I forgotten about. The book is very comprehensive.

The essays are all enjoyable, often thought-provoking, and usually informative. This is good stuff.

Everything is written in an engaging manner by the Captain at the top of his game. Read the first page or two of his blog; if you like what you read, you’ll really enjoy this book.

Grammar nazis may be concerned about the grammar and typos in the book. There are a lot of them, as there are in many blogs, and the Captain made no bones about the fact that he left the original typos in. Overall, I found this doesn’t really hurt the book or its readability, but if you’re OCD about these kinds of things, I might as well give you fair warning.

Another problem that comes up is that in converting his webposts to book format the links and the occasional graph are unavailable. You can understand all the essays even without them, but sometimes you know you’re missing something.

Now, the first question when considering this type of book is, why should I pay for something that I can get for free on his blog?

There are 3 primary reasons:

1) Support the author. The Captain has been giving us free content for almost a decade, paying . This of course doesn’t really benefit you directly, so if you’re a strict homo economicus this won’t really be convincing. Although, if the Captain is not working because his website is providing a minimalistic living, he has more time to devote to giving us more posts.

2) Save time. As I said, I read through the entirety of the CC archive about a year ago, it took me about two weeks during a really slow time at work. It required dozens of hours. Top Shelf skims the cream off and gives it to you in a format that can be read in an evening or two. It let’s you get the Cappy Cap goodness without such a time investment.

3) Hard copy format. I find it a lot more convenient and comfortable to read from a book than off a computer screen and Top Shelf let’s you read dead tree-style. Convenient.

Now comes my biggest complaint about the book and something I’m hoping Aaron will fix in his future books:

Top Shelf needs an index.

There are dozens (I don’t know exactly how many because there’s no index and flipping through counting them would be a pain) of mini-essays  in this book and they do not seem to be arranged in any particular order. If I want to find, re-read, or reference a particular essay, it requires a lot of page-flipping. A basic index listing the page each particular essay is on would be handy.

This complaint aside, I found the book well worth it.

Recommendation:

Buy this book, it is worth it. If you like reading Captain Capitalism’s blog, this book is a must-buy.

If you’ve read his blog and for some weird reason don’t enjoy it, then you probably won’t like this book, so I can’t recommend it.

If you’re really broke, but have a lot of time on your hands then you can read his archives instead.

Other than those two exceptions, I’d recommend getting Top Shelf.

Previous reviews for other books by Aaron Clarey:
Behind the Housing Crash
Worthless

Keep the State out of Women’s Bodies… Except When Convenient

One major theme in this year’s presidential election was that of the “war on women”.

The complaint was and  essentially that the state shouldn’t get involved in women’s reproductive choices.

I agree.

With the exception of abortion, where a child’s life is involved, the state should leave women alone and let them make their own reproductive choices. They should be free to do as they will and live with the consequences.

But, feminists lie. They do not want the state to let them make their own reproductive choices. They want the state to force them (and others) to only accept certain reproductive choices.

Feminists want privilege and choice, not freedom.

****

Here’s a good example of the hypocrisy of the modern women espousing the creed of keep your hands off my body.

a woman in a country where politicians who actually believe that the female body has special powers to discern between evil sperm and loving sperm have been elected to create and vote on legislation that limits women’s control over their own health care.
…
“Perhaps remove the focus from that one point and think instead about the free abortions and contraceptives that will be given to all females of reproductive age… Or about the Muslims, Christian scientists, and Amish ( among others) that are exempt from obamacare due to religious beliefs….”

She goes on and on, hitting every talking point FoxNews and its ilk have drummed into her head, including the legitimacy (there’s that word again) of Obama’s citizenship and his ties to socialism. It was all a bunch of moronic nonsense, but what stood out to me the most was her first line: “Perhaps remove the focus from that one point” — that “one point” being a woman’s right to control her own health care choice, as if that point weren’t worthy of our focus!! This was a woman saying this! A woman who was fed the bullshit and ate it up with a spoon, just like the GOP wanted.

By “limiting a women’s control over their own health care” she obviously means don’t want others to  pay for it, even if it goes against their religious principles.

She says she wants the state out of her body, but she’s very clearly inviting the state into her body by having the state pay for her health care.

Her next complaint is about how crime effects women: a valid point, but ignores how it also effects men and children. It’s not part of this topic, so we’ll mostly ignore it.

I didn’t get any paid maternity leave when my baby was born. I work for myself, so I wasn’t expecting any, of course. But here in America, even if I had been working for someone else, that person or that company would not have been required by law to give me even a day of paid maternity leave. Not even an hour. My job would have been held for a few weeks, but that’s it.

I started a new moms’ group when I was pregnant and most of us all had babies within a few weeks of each other. Some of the women took extended maternity leave — six whole months — so they could stay home with their babies until they started, you know, sleeping for more than three hours at a stretch. They weren’t paid for that leave, and they worried as their savings dwindled what they’d do if there were an emergency and they missed more work.

Here she demands that the state pay for and legislate her reproduction. She’s demanding her workplace interfere with her body. She’s begging the state and corporations to involve themselves in her reproductive choices.”When they did go back, they had to deal not only with juggling motherhood and their careers, but also with navigating the office politics surrounding working mothers. One woman, a producer at a major network news station, worried about being overlooked for assignments that would require her to travel now that she was a single mother of an infant. She worried about being overlooked for promotions and raises now that her “focus was split.” “I don’t want to be mommy-tracked,” she lamented, as she plotted ways to ensure topnotch child care for her daughter should her commitment to work be “tested” with a last-minute assignment that would take her out of town with just hours to prepare.”

Here she’s lamenting that the employer is not becoming involved these women’s reproductive choices.

How dare those corporations stay out of women’s private lives!

Many of my new mom friends who returned to work months after giving birth continued breastfeeding, which brought the new challenge of pumping at the office (or, “in the field,” in the case of my producer and journalist friends). They told me stories about the “designated areas” for them to pump, which are required by law. One woman, a clinical psychologist, pumped in a supply closet with a broken lock on the door. She kept one hand on her pump and one hand holding the door shut in case anyone wondered why the light was on and barged in on her without knocking. Finally, she put a sign on the door, but it was gone the next day and she had to make a new one. That one came down the next day, too.

Not content with the state and workplace involving themselves in her reproductive choices, she desperately wants the state and employers to further interfere in women’s breast-feeding decisions.

She notes that the state interferes in her breastfeeding decisions, but the tone of lament clearly indicates that the state is not interfering enough.

How dare they let women be free to make their own breastfeeding decisions!

Our rights are at risk — our basic rights — not to mention the fact that many of us are afraid, on a daily damn basis, of being attacked — legitimately attacked — simply because we are women.

This election year, vote to keep your rights. Vote for the people who are going to fight to protect you. And fight to keep the morons and the assholes and the douchebags out of power and out of our bodies.

She ends with a hypocritical statement about keeping people out of women’s bodies. How fitting when she spent the article arguing that other should involve themselves in women’s bodies and that this involvement was the basic right of the female.

One final observation, somewhere in the middle of her article she says:

I need a chaperone because some crazy douchebags think my body is public property. Hmm, I wonder wherever in the world they got that idea.

My suggestion: if you don’t want your body being viewed as public property, don’t act like it is by having the public pay for its upkeep.

****

This was just one example I’m using for illustrative purposes that I happened to come across while thinking about this post. I could find numerous others, but the point is made: No matter what the issue, most modern women want the state in their bodies. They beg for it, they vote for it.

They will selectively say they don’t on certain issues. They will dissemble about what the “state in their bodies” means. They will flat out lie, saying they don’t. But when it comes down to it:

The modern women fervently desires state interference in her reproductive choices.

It’s a  broad-brush generality, NAWALT, I know, but most modern women who would say something like “keep your rosaries out of my ovaries,” “my body, my choice,” “keep the state out of our bodies,” or whatever, truly want the state interfering in their bodies.

They want the state to pay for their contraception.

They demand the state pay for their abortions and reproductive health care decisions.

They demand the state educate children on sexuality, contraception, and reproduction.

They demand the employer subsidizes their reproductive choices.

They demand the employer and state make their breast-feeding choices for them.

They demand their employer make their personal work-life balance for them.

They demand the state dictate their private marriage contracts (and then demand that the state dictate homosexuals’ private relationship contracts).

The modern women demands that the state and society involves itself intimately in her personal, sexual, and reproductive choices… but only when its convenient for her.

She demands privilege without responsibility. She demands society cater to her every whim, without her having

She detests others’ freedom, but argues for it for herself when it suits her.

She demands you pay for her every whim, but denies you any say.

She is tyrannical, irresponsible, and greedy.

****

To women reading this: either the state and society are involved in your body and your reproductive choices or they aren’t. You can’t have it both ways.

You can not demand that the state not regulate contraception, then demand that the state (or other organizations under the compulsion of the state) pay for your contraception.

You can not demand leave itself out of women’s abortion decisions, then demand that the state pay for abortion providers such as planned parenthood.

You can not demand that public schools stay out of dictating women’s sexual choices, then demand they engage in mandatory sexual education.

You can not demand that the public not comment on your reproductive choices, then demand that they pay for the maintenance of your children.

You can not demand the public refuse to comment on your sexual choices, then force the public to subsidize your sexual lifestyle and health care needs.

You can not demand that your employer not dictate your personal life to you, then demand your employer subsidize your maternity leave and fund your personal choices.

You can not demand that the church remove itself from your reproductive choices, then demand that the church pay for your reproductive choices.

It is an either-or proposition.

Either the state has the right to interfere in your sexuality and reproductive choices or it does not. Either the public has the right to interfere with your sexuality or it does not. Either your employer can interfere in your personal life, or it can not.

You are either free or you are not.

Make the choice.

If you choose to invite others into your sexual, reproductive, and personal lives, do not hypocritically complain when they do.

****

In conclusion, the modern women, however much she may protest otherwise, desperately desires that others involve themselves in her reproductive and sexual choices, but only when it is convenient to her.

So, next time a modern women says the state should stay out of her uterus, ask her opinion on mandatory maternity leave. Point out the contradiction. Point out her hypocrisy.