Encouraging you to get it. The battle between the sexes.

20221214

20221213

A Midwestern Doctor gets it.  George Carlin, who died fourteen years ago, got it even back in those benighted days.  These guys want you to get angry, do something.  My priority is different, namely raising a family.  My objectives are supported by merely spreading the word of these dissidents. 

Developing my speech on the topic of "I need you" led me to think more broadly about what happens when a formerly subordinate group of humans turns the tables and gains dominance.

It has happened over and over.  Dominance can be political or economic.  It can happen between nations or within a country.  Examples include:

·       The Tutsis and Hutu in Rwanda
·       The Igbo and Hausa in Nigeria
·       The Armenians and Turks at the end of the Ottoman Empire
·       The Quechua descended and the Spanish descended populations of modern Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia
·       The black and white populations in South Africa and Zimbabwe
·       The black and white populations in American cities such as Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit and Philadelphia
·       The immigrant Muslim and native white populations in European cities such as London and Malmo
·       Gays and straights, especially in major cities
·       Jews and Slavs through the Russian Revolution
·       Jews and Germans in Weimar Germany
·       Jews and goyim in American academia, entertainment, law and politics
·       Men and women in the west, especially over the past half century

Though each of these power shifts each has unique characteristics, there are some commonalities. The Turks and Armenians led to a genocide, as did the Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda. The Igbo and Hausa led to the Civil War which some call an ongoing, slow-motion genocide.

The Jewish-led Bolsheviks coming to power over the Slavs led to a genocide in the form of the Holodomor, with us Ukrainians on the receiving end. Resentment of their financial power by the Germans led to another genocide, this time with Jews on the receiving end. Blacks and whites in Zimbabwe and South Africa appears headed toward an ethnic cleansing if not a genocide.

On the other hand, the unique thing about the power shift away from the overlapping groups centered around us straight white men, namely heterosexuals, people of European descent, and men, is that it has been voluntary.  We gave women the vote because it was the right thing to do. We gave them equal rights in every sphere of society, and gave them special privileges because of their unique role as mothers.

England, then the United States gave up slavery because it was morally wrong.  We later abandoned Jim Crow. The European countries gave up colonialism. We struck down laws and taboos against homosexuals. History records no other group that so willingly conceded their power and prerogatives. 

Why did we do it? One theory is that virtue signaling came into fashion with the ascendancy of women after the Industrial Revolution. Women led the moral crusades of the 19th century such as ending slavery, abolishing alcohol, and ending child labor. Even before women had the vote their opinions swayed the leaders of society. John Newton made his money trading slaves. He then salvaged his reputation and earned the love of the fair sex by abolishing it.  This recording of his Amazing Grace by Judy Collins still gives me goosebumps.

Graciously ceding our power has not earned us gratitude. The beneficiaries of our selfless acts don't trust our motives. They continue to condemn us for egregious sins we committed before we saw the light and the indelible sins of our ancestors, whose statues they gleefully topple.

I’m inserting this paragraph to head off criticism from liberals who are prone to the moralistic fallacy, confusing what ought to be with what is. Unsuccessfully, I am sure, but I try. I am not questioning the morality of the changes, or whatsoever advocating that we return to our previous attitudes. I am only noting that power has shifted and proposing a reason why that might have happened.

However loudly we repeat the mantra that all people are equal, people themselves know better. When Japanese, Chinese and Jews attain positions of dominance, they feel it is only their due. They have always been convinced they were smarter than whoever temporarily dominated them. The order of the universe has been restored.

Conversely, Muslims, Blacks, and Native American peoples never really seem comfortable with their newfound dominion over whites.  No matter what they say out loud, they cannot be blind to the superior cultural and technological achievements of the European and Asian peoples. They are not content merely to claim an equality that they know doesn’t exist. They want revenge. They want their pound of flesh.

They strive to consolidate their dominance, to make it a reality, by asserting endless claims for privileges under the law, economic reparations, and recognition of supposedly great accomplishments. The stream of such claims never ends because the sense of inferiority can never be expunged. Such inferiority is, unfortunately, quite observable and measurable. Jews, Asians and Europeans continue to excel academically, write the world's books, set the world's agenda, make the world's inventions, create the world's armories, and run the world's affairs. The world prefers blonde women and Hollywood leading men.

Men express their assessment of women’s status in modern society in Sexual Utopia in Power, No Campus for White Men and other books. Must be close to the mark – Amazon has discontinued both, so I repost my reviews on this blog.  Camille Paglia and Naomi Wolf write from women’s perspectives. This is the first time in history that women have achieved such dominance over men. Like other groups that don’t trust their luck and aren’t convinced that their success is fully merited, they have demanded recompense for an infinitely long history of supposed repressions and affronts inflicted by the “patriarchy.”

Women have remade the workplace, changing the rules to make themselves comfortable. The question as to what makes men comfortable was never even asked. They have remade government into a surrogate husband and father, offering physical and financial protection, child support and even childcare. They have remade education, so that no child, however dull, is left behind. No teacher either – women support the sisterhood. They have remade the courts, systematizing the assumption that women are saints unless proven otherwise, and men are heinous sinners. Divorce and family courts routinely strip men of both their children and their incomes.

The foregoing is of course hyperbole. It is, however, the reality that many men in North America and Western Europe perceive. They echo these perceptions in response to the question “Why aren’t you married?” That is a simple way of phrasing the question “Why are we not having children?” That in turn is another way of asking the question of whether our society is doomed.

A house divided against itself cannot stand [Mark 3:25].  With men and women so stubbornly pitted against one another, the whole society is in trouble.   However, it would be premature to write its obituary. The fact that the problems I touch on are widely discussed is an indication that they are changing even as we discuss the issue. There is a perception that all of the trends working against the straight white male have become far overextended, egregiously unfair and ripe for change.

That change will not happen in a vacuum. We appear to be approaching a financial collapse. The war in Europe will probably lead to the collapse of one of the combatants.  Other countries may get drawn in. The workplace is changing at a rapid clip. Educational systems that were already failing before Covid lockdowns, distance learning, blackouts and whatnot, are in a nosedive.

This is the gloomy preamble to the speech I want to write entitled “I need you.” It is a plea to return to a simpler mindset in which men and women were able to acknowledge that they needed one another.  That they need to learn how to live together despite their differences, and in the best of situations learn to love and appreciate one another and raise strong children.

That’s the musings from Lake WeBeGone, where the girls are getting over their sniffles, Eddie is due back this minute from his trip west, and the good looking woman and her mother are flooding me with good advice on our upcoming birthday celebration despite my constant repetition of this adage:

How do you know when a man wants advice?  He asks.
How do you know when a man doesn’t want advice?  He isn’t asking.

So goes the battle of the sexes.  Witty 1930s poem on marriage by Ogden Nash below.

Graham

I Do, I Will, I Have 

How wise I am to have instructed the butler to instruct the first footman
to instruct the second footman to instruct the doorman to order my
carriage;
I am about to volunteer a definition of marriage.
Just as I know that there are two Hagens, Walter and Copen,
I know that marriage is a legal and religious alliance entered into by a
man who can't sleep with the window shut and a woman who can't
sleep with the window open.
Moreover, just as I am unsure of the difference between flora and fauna
and flotsam and jetsam,
I am quite sure that marriage is the alliance of two people one of whom
never remembers birthdays and the other never forgetsam,
And he refuses to believe there is a leak in the water pipe or the gas pipe
and she is convinced she is about to asphyxiate or drown,
And she says Quick get up and get my hairbrushes off the windowsill,
it's raining in, and he replies Oh they're all right, it's only raining
straight down.
That is why marriage is so much more interesting than divorce,
Because it's the only known example of the happy meeting of the
immovable object and the irresistible force.
So I hope husbands and wives will continue to debate and combat over
everything debatable and combatable,
Because I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life, particulary if
he has income and she is pattable.

·        Note: Walter Hagen was golf's first superstar during the 1920's and 30's. Copen Hagen? The capital of Denmark.