Category Archives: Men and Women

Relationships, Sex, Marriage, Love, Hate and Dating

Fierce

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Not long after the inauguration, when Big Feminism threw their nationwide “Women’s March” in media centers around the country, I heard the usual suspects hyperventilating about all the “strong, fearless, powerful women” who were converging for the marches.

Of course, I saw episodes like t his…

…and observed that it’s always the “feminists” – male and female – who jabber the hardest about how strong, fearless, powerful and “fierce” they are that are the first do dive into ofay ad hominem babble (“your male privilege…”, “mansplaining”) if you dare dissent from their current gospel in any way.

(I was also tempted to find some of those precious little snowflakes and ask them if they though they could last twenty minutes in my grandmother’s shoes; she, who raised my dad by herself while running a photography studio, in a small town, during WW2?  I think not).

David French on feminism’s new shiny toy, the “Fierce Girl”:

We are living in the age of the fierce girl. That’s the new feminist ideal. Do you want to make online feminists furious? Just try writing a television or movie script that even implies that “damsels in distress” need any man to rescue them from danger. No indeed. The modern female action star can take down any number of burly men. Doubt me? Watch Charlize Theron destroy man after man in this trailer for Atomic Blonde.

It’s modern feminism, telling modern women what they must do and be with their newfound “choice”.

Sequestered

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I’m a pre-operative transgender woman.  I demand entry into this unit so I can shower with young, blonde Norwegian women.  It’s my right.

Kidding aside, it might be a smart move.  Women get to serve which shuts up the feminists.  But they’re segregated, which eliminates sexual harassment.  Plus, it’s easy to reassign an entire unit to safely guard headquarters when the shooting starts, rather than pluck individual grunts out of an integrated unit to cut down on white-knighting.

This way, the politicians can say “Yes, you are equal to men, you can do everything they can do.  Grrrrl power!”  Might be worth looking into for Army units.  You notice they’re not giving the girls any expensive equipment to operate and maintain, like their own aircraft carrier or submarine.  I suspect there’s a reason for that.

Joe Doakes

On the one hand – not so fast.  Norway’s military is already pretty gender-integrated.  Don’t be surprised if you see a female frigate commander sooner than later.

On the other?  The Norwegians’ unit – a section of the Norwegian Army’s Jegertroppen, loosely translated as “Rangers” – is a special forces unit, roughly on part with the Airborne Rangers, and hauling a lot of expensive equipment around isn’t really part of the mission.  The stated mission – having female troops to deal with female Muslim suspects – isn’t entirely daft. And for the unstated, and these days probably tertiary, part of the mission, providing a guerilla cadre if Norway is every conquered again – it makes complete sense.

The Wisdom Of The Pence Family

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Our idiot betters were chuckling – briefly, at least – at Mike Pence and his wife’s rules for his conduct in public around female associates, staff and the like.   In that particular context-mangled teapot-tempest, Mike Pence was supposedly a “Neanderthal” “Taliban” “sexist” for never meeting with women alone.

Of course, if you’re in politics of any party (but especially the GOP, especially given our media’s, er, cozy and complementary relationship with the Democrat oppo research force, and triple-especially if you’re connected with Trump, it’s just good common sense.

I was going to leave it there – but it turns out, in this grievance-mongering era, that it – or having cameras rolling at all times – is not a bad tactic if you’re a man of any kind having to deal with women on any non-marital level.

Deep Blue World

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

A woman in Britain spoke an unpleasant truth: feminism has made women worse off.  It’s another example of Berg’s Law: Liberal Policies Destroy Liberal Values.

 She concentrates on the economic effect of women entering the labor force but that’s only the half of it.  Cutting everyone’s wages is bad, of course, but looking around various government offices, I don’t think that’s the worst thing.

 The worst thing is productivity dropped by half, as well.  More people doing less work for less money means work-produced-per-dollar remains constant which looks good on paper but is a massive disaster for management.   

 Focusing performance on time-on-task or units-per-hour is oppressive, patriarchal, and just plain no fun, especially with your co-worker said something that hurt your feelings so you simply can’t bear to work right now; or your kid is sick so you can’t come in today; or you’ll get to my project as soon as you finish texting your friend, or you are certain you have medical reasons why you can’t work even if the doctors are too stupid to figure it out.

 Throw in public sector unions and civil service rules making it impossible to fire slackers and you have a workforce that is hostile to the point of being unmanageable.

 Welcome to the Deep State.

 Joe Doakes

Orwell wasn’t wrong, and he wasn’t even all that far off time-wise.  He just got the degree a little off.

Steer Clear Of Any Mirrors

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Democrats behave pretty atrociously around women.

JFK had a thing for banging interns less than half his age.

LBJ was a philanderer who had a thing for letting the cow out of the barn in deeply inappropriate places.  Indeed, he seemed to be fairly obsessed with, er, Lyndon Baines’ johnson – which, it occurs to me, may be one of the reasons so many liberals’ arguments inevitably swerve back toward genitalia today.

And of course, Clinton – a serial mass philanderer who harassed, groped and raped women with the assurance of a conquering Mongol – and his wife, who actively used her power to shut his victims up.

Now – pointing out the true facts of fifty years of Democrat presidents’ abuse of women (often with the nodding, grinning compliance of the major media) doesn’t excuse Donald Trump’s piggish comments and behavior over a (I am flabbergasted)  open mic during his 2005 video with (ugh) Access Hollywood.   As I pointed out on the show Saturday, this wasn’t entirely unpredictable; when the interview was recorded, Trump had been a “Master of the Universe” for over 30 years; party to the kind of wealth, power and access that allows people like him to get away with things (or at least think so) that’d have had most people drummed out of polite society.  His marital record shows it hasn’t been entirely without consquence.  It’s one of the reasons I’ve been a vocal non-fan of Trump’s public persona for over 30 years.

But saying “Democrats did much worse, and did it first” doesn’t excuse Trump, any more than “they started it!” excused me when I was a kid, or my kids when they were.

But…

To support Hillary Clinton for president, one has to ignore, or rationalize, or plead ignorance of, decades of her aiding and abetting her husband’s predations; at least one rape, several cases of blatant sexual harassment, constant philandering, and predation on younger, star-struck women who were – let’s be clear, here – his employees and staff (the kind of behavior that’d have any responsible corporate board ushering a CEO toward the exits faster than you can say “grab that cat” in this litigious age).

So, Clinton supporters?  I’m not saying this to attack Hillary and Bill’s character.

I’m attacking your character.

Brain Bleach

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Technology has wrought many wonders.

But this might be too much of a good thing:

BBC filmmaker Ted Harrison has claimed that it could just be a few short years before developments mean that they can create the feeling of human touch…the technology could be developed that would leave the door open to fans imitating sexual contact with their idols.

Which, in a world where pornography eats up about a seventh of the internet’s capacity, the idea that people will eventually use technology to simulate the wango tango is a dog sniffs dog story.  Duh; of course they will.

Perhaps it’s a sign that I do too much political blogging that the first thought that crossed my mind with this story was this question:  given the fanatic loyalty liberals have for their politicians, if this technology had been available over this past year, how often would Hillary (and Bill) Clinton and Bernie Sanders have been the subject of, um, transactions?

Accountable

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A friend of the blog writes:

Last week, I saw this article from MPR .  

I admit to being somewhat old fashioned and probably judge everyone too harshly. However, I do think that there are some social norms and expected behavior that should be followed if one seeks respect and success in life. Basic social norms like speaking respectfully to each other, dressing appropriately for the situation,  respecting other people’s property come to mind, and being accountable for one’s own actions come to mind. But, in terms of treating some people more harshly than others, I’m just not seeing the same results as MPR.

If a black student disrupts a classroom, or punches a teacher,  we’re asked not to hold him accountable. The white teacher had to have been racist. If black people get stopped by police, for minor offenses, and the situation escalates more than it would for a white person who is stopped, we’re asked not to consider the black person’s prior history or the person’s approach and interaction with the officer. That would be a racist thing to do.

If we question a woman’s choice of skimpy attire, we’re “slut shaming.” If we question a woman’s judgment and how that might affect her ability to lead the country, we’re not given answers or any hint of accountability.  Instead, we’re call sexist for asking these questions.

On the other hand, if a white man is running for Republican president, hold him accountable for everything. How he travels with his dog. His former hiring and firing practices. The remarks he makes on Twitter. His public opinions. His private opinions.  

Now, I am ok with holding Trump accountable for many of the things he says and does. He isn’t meeting my standard for how a President should act. But, unlike what the MPR article noted in their study, I am not seeing Clinton being held to a higher ethical standard. And I don’t want her held to a higher standard, but the same standard would be a good starting point. If black lives matter and women are equal, then we all need to be accountable for what we say, what we do, how we dress. 

I recall hearing the interview that the writer is talking about.  I think it tracks with our entire society putting women on pedestals, at least in an ideal world; they start out as “sugar and spice and everything nice”, and grow up into a life of being revered as mothers, wise grandmas, the whole cultural shebang.

At any rate, the whole thing is worth a read/listen.

The Rule Slalom

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Victorian women were sheltered, modest, protected from anything that might upset them.

Hedonists are people living non-traditional lifestyles, the fringe that became hippies proclaiming free sex, free love, free drugs to expand your consciousness and blow your mind while you let it all hang out.

 Modern women want to be Victorian Hedonists – they want to drink until they pass out at frat parties but not be scolded when the obvious bad thing happens.  They want a free college education but must be protected from books that threaten their narrow worldview.  They demand to be admitted to men’s clubs on equality grounds, then demand to exclude men from safe spaces reserved for women.

 It’s either a completely new philosophy or it’s mental illness, I’m not expressing an opinion.  My question: is Victorian Hedonism the basis for a sustainable society, or a harbinger of doom?

 Joe Doakes

These days, you’d be nuts to bet against “harbinger”.

Hillary Clinton – Spouse-Beater?

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Paul Mirengoff at Powerline on former Secret Service agent Gary Byrne’s book on life in the Clinton White House; I’ve added some emphasis:

Secret Service agents are, of course, charged with protecting the physical well-being of the president. Byrne says they had discussions about the possibility of having to protect Bill Clinton from Hillary’s physical attacks. He recalls that the couple had one “violent encounter” the morning of a key presidential address to the nation.

Byrne also remembers arriving for work one day in 1995 following a loud fight between the Clintons the night before. He says the dustup resulted in light blue vase “smashed to bits” and left Bill with a “real, live, put-a-steak-on-it black eye.”

Don’t let anyone tell you that Hillary isn’t a fighter.

Mirengoff also adds, after noting the many, er, social provocations Bill presented her during those years:

For Hillary, her options regarding Bill may have seemed like “fight or flight.” Flight, apparently, was out of the question, given her ambitions.

But if it were the other way around (and the subjects weren’t the Clintons), if a husband found a wife in flagrant delicto and decided to take “direct action”  against her?  Society has a term for that; “domestic abuser”.    It doesn’t matter if one’s wife is sleeping with the entire staff at Jiffy Lube, in your bed, without changing the sheets after; you call a lawyer (and an STD test provider); you don’t hit her.

That there’s a double standard for women is obvious; that there’s a triple standard for Hillary is – assuming the accuracy of Byrne’s account – a new one.

And it should be damning – but for Democrats, it won’t be.

Sharks Everywhere!

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First things first:  I am pretty ambivalent about the Rest Room crisis.  I’ve joked that it’s a battle between hysterical ninnies on one side, and the smug, arrogant and complacent on the other.

But the “hysterical ninnies” have a point;  ambisexual restroom policies will give society’s thin residue of pervs one more avenue by which to exercise whatever urge overtakes them – in a society that, let’s be honest,  already offers them no shortage of venues.

So there’s a useful discussion to be had.

One of the most useless contributions to this discussion comes from “Dear Creepy Heterosexual Men Guarding Our Bathrooms”  a Facebook post by one Kasey Hodge (which has been breathlessly recirculated by a small army of others).

Sample excerpt:

So to those of you who think you’re being helpful by “protecting” me and my fellow women, you’re like a shark sitting in the Lifeguard chair. I wasn’t uncomfortable until you showed up at the pool and the only potential predator I see is you.

The most is being called “remarkable”, and Hodge “brilliant”, by a whole lot of people that, let’s be honest, we can’t expect to know better.

Now, I don’t disagree with a couple of Brilliant Kasey’s konclusions – that we need to end sexual violence *outside* bathrooms (does anyone seriously argue this?) and stop sexualizing children (some radical feminist agendas *do* dispute this, by the way) and that the restrooms are the least of our problems.    

But Briliant Kasey’s point of view – and the mass of fuzzy-thinkers who are golf-clapping it – concerns me on three levels.  

Four Billion “Sharks”:   Brilliant Kasey’s fear of heterosexual men seems to be misplaced and, let’s be honest, the kind of “overwrought” that takes a formal education to achieve. 

Think about it; when she calls the police, the odds are pretty good it’ll be men answering; the law of averages indicates 97% of ‘em will be heterosexuals (yep, there are female cops; when they wind up  in a jam with a bigger, badder bad guy, it’ll be the male cops who bail ‘em out).  When there’s a fire, it’ll be mostly males who go racing into the smoke (and yep, there are women on the fire department; when they can’t lift Brilliant Kasey’s obese uncle, it’ll likely be a guy who pitches in).  If she goes on a feminist drumming mission to Pakistan and gets kidnapped by the Taliban, it’ll be a bunch of males (straight and otherwise) who tramp through the mountains to find her.  

I have no doubt that she’s had a generation or two of professors and ideological matrons telling her that inside every straight male is a rapist just dying to get out.  

It’s a sick, offensive way of looking at 47% of the world. 

Inner Nature:  No civilized person would dream of telling a gay person to “shut up and act straight”.  Demanding people deny *what they are* is pretty barbaric.  

And yet Brilliant Kasey is mocking and denigrating males (including most gay ones) for exercising something what *they* are wired to be, by tens of thousands of years of evolution.   Evolution pretty much wires women to be nurturers, and men to be guardians (and “pretty much” is a surgically-precise qualifier, in this case; there are exceptions.  Please feel free not to spell them out when responding). 

Is that urge *arguably* misplaced in re the rest room controversy?  Arguably, maybe.   

So make *that* argument, Brilliant Kasey, rather than denigrate a strong plurality of humanity (with the enthusiastic, if deeply confused, agreement of much of this forum).   

Shut Up, Norman Lear:  Brilliant Kasey, apparently a high school student, perpetuates the myth that women are “oppressed” by – you get one guess, here – straight males.  This notwithstanding the facts that:

  • Those straight males grow up in a school system that systematically denigrates, and tries to medicate out of existence, “male” traits – aggressiveness, roughhousing, competition.  Go ahead, look at the Saint Paul Public Schools; “maleness” is a treatable condition in all but name!  Our school system spends 12 years very overtly trying to make boys act like girls.  “But wait!   Look at all the violence in our schools!”, you and Brilliant Kasey may respond.  That’s a *consequence* of this policy!   
  • Brilliant Kasey has a lot of female company at that school of hers; we’re on track to have between 60-66% of college degrees issued to women.   By the time young men decide whether or not to go to college, the education system has long since beaten any love of learning – or at least interest in schooling – out of them.  
  • One of the reasons feminists are bellowing more loudly than usual about “pay disparity” is that the claim has a shelf-life. In part because of the disparity in degrees among millennials, women below the age of 30 are earning *more* than men their age.  
  • While Brilliant Kasey has gone all splotchy with rage over the thoughtcrimes of heterosexual men, many of her sorority sisters are wondering where all the potential mates are.  Young men – disgusted and disillusioned by the social landscape they see – are opting to stay out of the whole “long term relationship” thing.  And getting blamed for it, natch – but by their mid-twenties, they’re pretty much used to that.  Some even revel in it.  
  • Let’s say Brilliant Kasey *does* overcome her fear of heterosexual men, and deigns to marry one.   Her spouse can look forward to a life of being considered guilty until proven innocent of any allegations of domestic abuse (men are guilty until proven innocent, although women initiate every bit as much domestic violence as men do), and, when Brilliant Kasey feels the need to “find herself” (again), an 80+% percent chance of losing his kids and most of what he *has* earned.  

And what happens after that lifetime of being denigrated, medicated, undereducated, underpaid, castigated, and legally excoriated?  Brilliant Kasey and her ideological wardens probably aren’t aware that male life expectancy has held steady, while it’s risen steadily for women.  It’d disrupt their narrative to note that while life is getting pretty good, or at least longer, for women, something’s amiss among the guys. 

If I were a betting man, I’d wager serious money that most responses to this will involve some variation on saying I’m “angry”, “fearful” or some such.  Just you watch.

I’m already laughing.  You’re been warned.  

Creative Problem-Solving

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A reader emails:

This article, about young women prostituting themselves, quotes Colorado Univ professor Joanne Belnap:

“I don’t want to blame the women because I feel like it is a way to get a college education, which I feel really strongly about,” she said. “We live in a culture where women are paid so unfairly compared to men. It’s not surprising that women would do this when you think of the level of sexual harassment women have to put up with at their jobs that pay a lot less. It’s a sad state of where we’re investing money in this society.”

Prostitution is an extremely old profession, yet none of the women that I know have ever felt so repressed by society that they have felt the need to do this.  Having been a college student myself, and having watched how my peers sometimes mismanage money, I don’t really buy into the “poor college student” stereotype. These are women whose “parents and scholarships are paying for tuition”- per the article. I am sure if there were other needs, parents would be happier to help than to have prostitutes for children. If all the young women were after were wants, well, that they won’t forego those desires until they are more financially stable is probably more problematic than any imagined societal repression of women.  And, I’m not sure who is being repressed. I mean, there is the other unexplored topic of men being seen as only useful for their money.

Am I just old fashioned in thinking this way?

Yeah, but there’s nothing wrong with that.

I’m just amazed – and by “amazed”, I mean “not really amazed, but getting cynical and sarcastic about the endless Orwellian doublespeak” – that a college professor is telling people women are paid less than men for any reasons other than personal and lifestyle choices.

Big Brother Is Watching

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Remember way back, when the left wanted the government out of people’s bedrooms?

Either does the Left.    A liberal legal conclave is debating moving “affirmative consent” laws off of campus and to the general population:

The American Law Institute will vote in May on whether to adopt a model penal code that would make “affirmative consent” the official position of the organization. Affirmative consent — or “yes means yes” — policies have already been adopted by many colleges and universities, and have been passed as law in California and New York.

In my dreams, Hillary Clinton appoints Melissa Click as Attorney General…

Atartsisyl

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Remember when liberals wanted government to stay out of peoples’ bedrooms?

Either do liberals:

Gone is the language of morals, tradition, and order—the state now intervenes in our sex lives bearing the mantles of safety, exploitation, and sex discrimination.

“We are living in a new sex bureaucracy,” warn Harvard Law School professors Jacob Gersen and Jeannie Suk in an upcoming paper for the California Law Review. Contra court decisions such as Lawrencev. Texas—which decriminalized sodomy in Georgia and affirmed a constitutional right to sexual privacy—”the space of sex” is still “thoroughly regulated” in America, they write. And “the bureaucracy dedicated to that regulation of sex is growing. It operates largely apart from criminal enforcement, but its actions are inseparable from criminal overtones and implications.”

Gersen and Suk’s paper, titled “Bureaucratic Sex Creep,” is mostly focused on federal overreach with regard to colleges and student sex lives, though they say this is only one realm of such regulatory creep. In great detail, the authors trace the roots of how the feds came to be in the business of encouraging “enthusiastic” sexual communication between teenagers and how everything from forcible rape to unwelcome comments between students became the prerogative of Washington paper-pushers and campus “Title IX coordinators.” This “bureaucratic turn” may be “counterproductive to the goal of actually addressing the harms of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment,” they warn, while also depriving due process to the accused and encouraging bizarre new sexual norms overall.

Bear with me here:  one of the cultural left’s favorite artistic conceits is the story of “Lysistrata”, the greek legend involving the women freezing the menfolk out of sex until they ended all war.  It’s one of those sanctimonious legends that feminists have held near and dear forever.

And like “class war” – their other big conceit – it turns out that there might be a grain of truth to it.  The opposite of anything the left ever predicted, but a grain.

In the case of class warfare, they got it; it’s on the gun issue, and they were on the side of the patricians, and they lost (so far).

As far as Lysistrata goes?  When college feminists take a breath from complaining about the nonexistent epidemic of sexual assault, they bemoan the growing disinterest of college-age men in relationships.

That’s right; the PC war on the male is being met…with Lysistrata in reverse!

And no – while upending a lefty conceit is singularly satisfying, in the long term it’s not a good thing.  More on that tomorrow.

At Long Last, Agreement

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At this past weekend’s Democrat candidates’ debate, Bernie Sanders testily shushed Hillary when she tried to interrupt him:

“If you are talking about the Wall Street bailout, where some of your friends destroyed this economy…” Sanders began.

“You know…” Clinton interjected.

“Excuse me, I’m talking,” Bernie stopped her.

“If you’re gonna talk, tell the whole story, Senator Sanders,” she shot back.

“Let me tell my story. You tell yours,” he retorted.

Policy-wise?  Who cares.

Etiquette-wise?  I could give the old duffer a big hug.

One of the biggest critters on my peeve farm lately is the sense of entitlement some people bring to interrupting others.  Of course, interrupting ones’ subordinates has always been a way to pee on your tree to establish corporate pecking order – but I’ve noticed in recent years it’s been moving down the corporate food chain.  People seem to feel more entitled to just interject whenever they feel like it.  Sometimes it’s an honest mistake – thinking you see a hole in the conversation where there isn’t one (sheepishly raises hand).  With others, it’s that they just don’t care that you’re talking, and they want the floor.  Now.

Incredibly, and utterly predictably, Clinton’s partisans are calling Sanders “sexist” for his response.

Of course they are.  What else could they say?

If there’s a person in this world who can not, not now, not ever, complain about being the victim of sexism on any level, ever, it’s Hillary Clinton.  She is arguably the most powerful woman in America (possibly tied with Oprah); she’s part of the 1% of the 1%.  If there is a woman in America who never needs to worry about being overpowered by the evil male, it’s Hillary.

It is, indeed, Hillary’s defenders who are being the sexists; Clinton walked over an unspoken societal rule (and a pet peeve of mine!), and got what she (and anyone) deserved.

Women – especially immensely powerful and wealthy ones – dealing with natural consequences of their adult actions.  What a concept.

Shot In The Dark: Today’s Insights, Ten Years Ago

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Ten years ago on this blog, we were talking about the trend in advertising since probably the mid-nineties; if you look at an ad featuring a family, the man is probably depicted as a bumbling doughy cretin married to an improbably gorgeous woman who is (along with the kids, apparently including any boys that haven’t gotten married and had kids yet) inevitably smarter and more capable than him.

And now, the people who study and talk about these things are…well, studying and talking about it.  At least in the UK:

What is more concerning is advertisers’ and programme makers’ depiction of men as stupid, subservient slaves to career-juggling supermums – a trend that runs from the buffoonery of Daddy Pig to an endless tidal wave of cretinous TV ad dads.

The Mintel research confirmed that 20 per cent of men think we are portrayed as incompetent about the house in ads, and small wonder. In ad land – unlike the real world where men dominate computing and engineering – bumbling blokes can’t even get a broadband connection and struggle with basic domestic appliances, while smarter women roll their eyes, then save the day.

Overall, this means that, increasingly, men in adverts are prized for their looks, but ridiculed for their brains – which is precisely where women were in the 1950s and ’60s.

Here’s the scary part – and the part that I’ve never seen anyone write about;  advertising doesn’t happen by accident.  Even in the Mad Men era, advertising was the product of rigorous audience research; it’s vastly moreso today.

The “Dumb Husband” stereotype reigns supreme in ads for products where women might be reasonably assumed to be the primary consumers.   Look at ads aimed at men; for the most part, women may well be eye candy, but the ad passes on little or no subtext about the womens’ intelligence.     And yet ads aimed at women are highly likely to portray men as idiots.

Given that ads – much less trends in advertising – don’t happen by accident, this suggests that these ads are dominant because that’s what women think about their men.  

And yet society wonders why young men are choosing video games over dating.

Mean Girls

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A regular reader emails:

Gloria Steinem has a new book out. Someone told me about it, saying he wants to read it because it is about her life as a child, traveling with her father. I looked up the review of it and decided it would not be mainly about her life as a child, traveling with her father. It is more likely the same old grating antiquated feminist thoughts that she always spews. The review mentions that she touts ideas for education reform, a shift from competitive classrooms to more co-opting classroom learning. I scratch my head at that, since I think that the successful Gloria Steinem probably credits her own competitive nature more than any partnerships with people for her own success.

But, it also got me thinking about the Republican candidates, their diversity, and the language that Republican voters use when talking about the candidates versus the Democratic candidates and the language used when talking about them. In 2008, Democrats were focused on whether they’d have the first African American president or first woman president. That was basically what Obama and Clinton were reduced to. When Sarah Palin became the VP nominee, Steinem focused again on the candidate’s gender, saying that she was a win for feminism, but not the right woman. On the other hand, today’s Republican candidates are talked about in terms of their leadership skills, their experiences, their ideas. Gender and race play a minor role, at least when I talk to Republican voters. Which is how it should be. As a woman, I know when I’ve competed and won because of my skills and when I’ve won because I was a token. It is much more humiliating to win as a token than to fail because of lack of skills. The idea of taking competitiveness out of the classrooms is utterly frightening. How would children develop self worth? Develop skills to be marketable in jobs?

I did an Internet search for Gloria Steinem and Hillary Clinton and found more reasons not to read Steinem’s latest book.   Compare that rhetoric with what Carly Fiorina said in 2002 about labeling people by gender.

Obviously, the liberal Slate writer doesn’t agree with Steinem on this particular issue, but I think that the contrasting level of maturity seen between Steinem and Fiorina here epitomizes the general level of maturity seen in the Democrat voter versus the Republican voter.

I heard Steinem on “Fresh Air” a few weeks back, plugging the book – and was struck by how the author, who must be in her mid to late seventies, still sounded like a cranky junior high kid.

Rules For The Paleo Man

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Last week, the NYTimes published a piece by a Brian Lombardi, “27 Rules for the Modern Castratus” – retitled “27 Rules for the Modern Man” at publication time.  In it, he spelled out a list of “rules” for what passes for a “modern man” among NYTimes readers and staff – a few that were pure common sense, and a bunch more that seemed to devolve from some combination of “feminization” and “slavery to marketing”.

And while the criticism of the piece was immediate and usually hi-freaking-larious, I figured it was high time we codified the rules for those of us who consider modernity to be a cancer when it comes to matters of eternal principle.

And so I present “Rules for the Paleo Man”

  1. The Paleo man does a good job, whatever his job is.  He also knows it’s his responsibility alone to know what “good job” means, and how to do it.
  2. A Paleo man presents himself to the world exactly as he needs to to be appreciated as what he is; whether a CEO, a plumber, a soldier or a radiology technician, he says what he needs to say, does what he needs to do, wears what he needs to wear to convey the impression that he does a good job.  Fashions and trends and brand names are irrelevant; being seen as a good investment of others’ time and stewards of others’ investment, property, well-being or safety is.
  3. The Paleo man respects himself.  He treats himself accordingly in his personal habits.
  4. Because the Paleo man respects himself, he respects others, and acts accordingly.  It also means he keeps the opinions of others in proper perspective; they’re feedback, not guideposts.
  5. The Paleo man respects women in general, and his significant other in particular.
  6. The Paleo man has integrity; he practices what he preaches, and he only preaches what he needs to.
  7. The Paleo man takes care of his kids, whatever it takes.
  8. The Paleo man protects himself, his loved ones, his neighbors and his property; whether childproofing his living room or becoming proficient with a shotgun – and teaching them how to do the same – he learns, and does, what needs to be done.
  9. The Paleo man has the tools he needs to do all of the above; whether that tool is a socket set, a book on “Diaper Changing for Dummies”, a melon baller, a new Java Virtual Machine, a shotgun or an Armani, he knows, obtains and takes care of the tools he needs to earn a living, care for and protect his family.  Brands and fashions and trends don’t matter to him; effectiveness does.
  10. A Paleo man doesn’t need a list of rules to tell him any of this.
  11. A Paleo man doesn’t tell others how to live their lives.  And he quietly dismisses others who try to tell him how to live his.
  12. A Paleo man only goes into a club with a DJ if it’s a very promising date.   Otherwise, it’s either a live band, or a jukebox.