I'm indenting comments from Vittorio's email.
This was the first video that began to make me question about covid, this interview streamed on March 19, 2020. with Ilaria Capua, only relevant from 59:35, that's were she says only 17 deaths only caused cоvid, when Italy was 4 weeks into the plandеmic.
We weren't even aware of Covіd 19 as a thing until late January, and by mid-March there was already enough information available to trigger skepticism. I didn’t write about it until March 24. It was another month before I started to articulate my skepticism.
The Science of Male-Female Differences
In addition to being intelligent and well-read Vittorio is a very good-looking guy. He said that the women in his life, and one can only imagine there have been quite a few, look at him as a male chauvinist. He is of the opinion that the guy is better prepared to be the ultimate decision-maker.
I told him that intelligence and sex difference researchers findings tend to support him. David Geary in "Male Female" and Richard Lynn confirm the observation of earlier researchers such as Arthur Jensen that boys' and girls' intelligence is roughly equivalent through the end of high school, though they excel in different things. Girls are better with words, boys better with things and mathematics. Women's brains, however, stop growing physically when they reach sexual maturity in their late teens. Men's brains continue to grow both in size and measured intelligence until they are in their early 20s. Robert Plomin discusses sex in writing about the genetics controlling intelligence, and Richard Haier about the neuroscience of intelligence.
The upshot is that men take longer to mature in every dimension – temperamental, emotional, and intellectual. Intellectually men wind up on average about four points higher in measured IQ than women. Intelligence distribution is flatter for men, with men outnumbering women at both ends of the intelligent spectrum. At the high-end there are about twice as many men at the IQ 145 level – that's one person in 740 – than there are women.
It makes evolutionary sense. Women evolved to bear and nurture children. It is a task that takes common sense but is not advantaged by vast intellect. Men, on the other hand, evolved to fill political and military leadership roles, where outstanding intelligence is indeed an asset.
Women evolved the temperament required to nurture children. They are empathetic. They are altruistic. Given the limited number of children they can bear in a lifetime, they accept them for what they are. Men tend to be more hard-nosed, telling boys to "be a man." Men are more willing to endure, and to impose hardships on others.
This has had implications in the political realm. Male political leaders – and voters - have more often been social Darwinists, contending that there is not place in the world for everybody and those who cannot care for themselves should be allowed to fall by the wayside. Women are more sympathetic and altruistic. They have opened the asylums and the jails in the hope that the inmates can be turned into productive members of society. They have opened the gates for immigration of people who are unlike themselves in the belief that exposure to us will lead them to emulate our model of life.
Women tend to support progressive politicians such as Obama and Trudeau. With less regard to the social or financial costs, they support their kind-hearted policies. They reject effective policing of the Rudy Guliani school. They eliminate strict school discipline on the grounds that it disproportionately affects minorities. They enthusiastically support settling immigrants and underclass Americans in middle class neighborhoods. And, failing to notice any correlation between cause and effect, they are abandoning the big cities ruined by progressives in droves.
Home examples
We see differences in everyday life around the home. Mother Oksana was quite concerned that our youngest daughter Marianna has a lump on her neck, lymphadenitis, and a slight temperature. My first response is "kids are like that." The Internet reassures me that it is natural for children to get swollen lymph glands as their immune systems learn to fight off infections in the course of normal development. Don't call a doctor if it has been less than two weeks.
I would have sent her to kindergarten every day, but Oksana has kept her home. Fine with me if she wants to look after her. She assures me that Marianna is looking better and feeling chipper.
Whenever five-year-old daughter Zoriana gets a small boo boo, even if it isn't bleeding, she insists on the Band-Aid and a lot of sympathy. I object that it is a waste of band-aids and she isn't really hurt. Having made my point, I submit to being overruled.
No issue as important as whether or not to flee the Russians came up in my previous marriage of 25 years. Ex-wife Mary Ann and my most significant differences of opinion concerned the children. As I have written in my biography, with the weight of the schools, the therapists and the Bethesda zeitgeist behind her she prevailed most of the time. By any measure that family turned out disastrously, although not a single person among my former family, former in-laws, or former neighbors will concede as much. Being a leftist means you never have to say you are wrong. Evidence be dammed.
Both Vittorio and I observe that though women are empowered, they still don't know what they want. In the West, however, they certainly want their own way and don't want to be told what to do.
Women's legal leverage
Throughout history, in almost every society, men have been the ultimate decision makers. Altruism, democracy and other notions of fair play flowered in Enlightenment Europe. Nations of European peoples gave women rights equal to men: property ownership, the vote, the right to hold office and so on by the early part of the 20th century. In the second half of the 20th century feminism converted that equality to favoritism. There were preferences given to women in businesses. Women learned that accusations of sexism and harassment were bludgeons they could use to shape the workplace to their favor. No more off-color jokes, or male-only liquid lunches!
Vittorio writes: This even reached the corporate business culture with "political correctness" and all that, people cannot even speak frankly anymore without offending someone. Also, this caused a massive rise in fatherless children, which by default are raised without knowing what masculinity is all about, they are men, but their brains were programmed by women on how to behave, so it's not surprising that they grew up with massive identity confusion. And many -if not most- of the US mass shootings are caused by these minors without fathers in the household.
Women have been doubly favored by the courts. On the one hand they are presumed to be the equal of men in all secular spheres. On the other, they are presumed to be the caring, tender sex and domestic affairs. Equality in the workplace made them economically independent. However, when they leave their husbands – and more than two out of three divorces are initiated by women – the presumption of superior domesticity leads the courts to award them the lion's share of community property and ongoing support in the form of alimony and child support.
Enjoying such a strong legal position in society women are under no obligation to recognize the husband as the head of the household. They can, and do, very frequently tell him to jump in a lake. Get lost. I'm taking the kids and the house.
Vittorio writes: At the first sign of a problem, instead of trying to fix the relationship (as my grandparents used to do), their reaction is to end the relationship and then search for "greener pastures" (with the hope of better compatibility, which they typically never find). So, for the majority of 80% of men, the supply of women (which most chase the top 20% of guys) actually shrank in the last 2 decades, and they adopted this new dumb strategy of putting women into leadership roles even in their own relationships, and there is nothing that kills the attraction that a woman has for a man than having an indecisive man always asking her what to do.
Not every marriage ended in divorce. However, many remain intact because men, recognizing the weakness of their position, acquiesce to their wives' whims. But there's the rub. Women often don't know what they want. They are easily influenced by other women. Not having evolved to deal in the world of affairs, on average they do not understand household finance, maintenance and budgeting as well as men. But they are often too proud and brainwashed to admit as much.
Here are several examples from our own household. I am the one who deals with banks, investments, household repairs and things of that sort. It was the same in my previous marriage, though Mary Ann was a partner in an economics consulting firm. It is simply the customary order of affairs.
I have reviewed a large number of books, by men and women, feminists and other, on the subject of the sexes. You will find 34 of them here, under the heading Sexes. All agree that men and women are different, though not on how, why and what it means. Many, by authors of both sexes, support the ideas I present here.
Back to the theme that women are empowered but still don't really know what they want. It makes it difficult to be in a marriage.
Vittorio writes: I'd only add that I think many of these new changes -in the rise of weak men and/or divorced men- have been driven by the rise of internet communication, and this caused the last wave of the feminist movement. It gave women an endless supply of men with anonymous communication, and it created what I can only describe as "the grass is always greener syndrome", which for most modern independent women turned into an endless cycle of failed short relationships/marriages.
Workplace changes
Employers don't need men as much as previously because the nature of work has changed. Masculine virtues are no longer a plus. Employers often prefer women as employees. They are docile and agreeable. Most jobs don't demand great intelligence, but conscientiousness and tolerance of tedium are assets.
Women have taken positions previously held by men, enabling them to abandon those to which women were previously limited such as teaching and nursing. Most important among these is bearing and raising children. Even a century ago, my mother and her sisters were exposed to propaganda to the effect that there were better things to do with their talents than raising kids. Her older sisters remained spinsters, a public health nurse and the dean of admissions at Pembroke College. Fortunately, my mother wanted it all. She never had a fancy title but did raise three successful children.
Mr. Mom
Those roles of motherhood and child rearing are unappreciated. Everybody except Joe Biden knows that only women can get pregnant. That's only a 9-month affair. What we don’t recognize is that women are temperamentally better suited to the two decades of raising children, especially in their early years. The average child simply reacts better to a real female, with a soft voice and manner, than to a male who is pretending to be a mother. It's biology. Humans are indeed very flexible. Sometimes a "Mr. Mom," works, but it is folly to bet the future of mankind on such a premise. Thank God Ukraine is not making that bet.
Natural primacy in domestic affairs
A man fortunate enough to marry a woman who wants to bear his children should recognize her natural primacy in many areas of communal life. She will usually know the children, the kitchen and the household better than he does.
Not only is a man at a disadvantage in deciding the small issues of daily life, but it is unbecoming for him to try to do so. He must respect his partner even if it means biting his tongue and looking the other way. He may know perfectly well that botulism will not show up in a pot of soup that stands unrefrigerated overnight, or that a cut that scabbed over five days ago doesn't need to be swabbed again with antiseptic. Just shut up – talking about it serves no purpose.
Big decisions should generally be communal. A case in point would be buying a new appliance for the kitchen. She will probably have a better sense of what is needed. He probably has a better sense of finding space to store it and the budget to buy it. While the guy may reserve the right to a final decision, he is almost always wise to concede to his wife's wishes. The French call her the General of the Interior for good reason.
Natural Women
My mother was graced with intelligence and wisdom. She was a practical woman with a solid frame who never considered herself terribly attractive. She encouraged me and my brother Duncan to look for wives of the same model.
We did not. Duncan's wife Gail is very attractive and totally feminine. My three wives have also been quite attractive. Only the second was someone I would consider to be strongly practical-minded. It didn't translate into effective motherhood.
The world had changed even by the time I was in college. Everybody who showed a spark of talent was pushed into college, and thence into academia or the professions. We came to mistake credentials for intelligence. The women to whom marriage was still attractive were by and large longer on looks than credentials. Big money is attracted to good looks. Credentials gave the others enough earning power that marriage became optional.
Unlike mine, several of my friends' mothers were feminine to the point of being flirty, even discombobulated flibbertigibbets. Their sons have grown up to be more successful than me. They might have benefited by being a bit better attuned to their social environments than I.
To put it most succinctly, Lucy Arnaz in "I Love Lucy" turns out to be a pretty good model of motherhood. However confusing her feminine logic may have been to men such as husband Desi, it seems to raise children who do okay in the world.
The Cоvid genе therapies are far from the first worldwide pharmaceutical experiments performed without much in the way of control groups. Birth control through synthetic hormones has been worldwide since the 1960s. Without a control group, we cannot assess the difference in temperament between women operating on synthetic and authentic female hormones.
My observation, having lived in the United States and Germany where birth control was/is widely used, and Vietnam and Ukraine where it was/is not, is that there is a measurable difference. It would take a brave soul to operationalize this hypothesis and do a study, but I bet they would find that natural women's behavior fluctuates more over the course of the month. They are a bit more irrational in the ways described above, and a bit more emotional, but I have a strong suspicion it renders them better suited for motherhood.
Those are the musings from Lake WeBeGone, where the good-looking woman is feminine in every sense of the word. Confusing, frustrating, and delightful. I would encourage Vittorio to accept that that is the way it is and has always been up until this age, and the way it should be going forward. We men should accept that we will never understand them, but nonetheless appreciate them and support them, especially in the motherhood role for which they evolved in which they are uniquely suited to fill.
The ascendancy of women has only been possible in a prosperous climate. Emotional decision making can be well tolerated if an error is minor. If the error becomes larger - "defund the police" - substantial harm may follow but will eventually get corrected.
Jury is still out regarding female CEOs, but I greatly prefer female stockbrokers for the long haul. While male aggressiveness in the financial markets often is rewarding, a few really bad calls can be expensive.