Category Archives: Men and Women

Relationships, Sex, Marriage, Love, Hate and Dating

What’s Good For The Goose Is Good For The Gender

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Hot on the heels of the pummeling of Bud Light over choosing a transgender spokesminstrel, this ad campaign claiming the history of beer for feminism, has surfaced:

Corporate virtue-signaling? Sure.

But that’s not the part that annoys me the most.

The worst part is what this says about women in America today.

Money Where Their Mouth Is: Advertisers are, in normal times, perhaps the ultimate practitioners of the free market. They, their campaigns, and their agencies and departments rise and fall on how successfully they gauge the sentiments of their audiences.

For example, the ad agency that conceived of a “Clydesdale” campaign for a certain brand of beer managed to do a superlative job of gauging the effect that ad would have on the ad-viewing audience – not only selling lots of beer, but creating perhaps America’s foremost celebrity draft horse team.

Likewise, the ad agency that thought a group of cute frogs croaking the name of the beer into the dark would sell beer – and they were right.

Good ad agencies, execs and campaigns “read” society correctly.

So – what are they reading?

Impressions: It’s not a big stretch – ads are aimed at the people who buy products.

And within families, households and communities, that varies by what’s being sold.

So think about products where the primary buy/don’t buy decision is men. Classic example – firearms. Ads for firearms portray men as sober, decisive, serious people. That’s how gun owners see themselves and their paths. An ad agency that portrayed their male customers as doughy comic relief would probably have a hard time getting their contract renewed, since the brand’s sales would probably tank. By the way – the women portrayed are also solid, serious people, as well.

Home improvement brands, like hardware stores, tend to take men fairly seriously as well

Beer? Well, the portrayal of men in beer ads is often tongue-in-cheek…:

…and the women portrayed with them tend to be – as the shrieking harpy in the Miller ad notes – somewhat idealized:

In a bikini? Sometimes. The purple middy top is close, in its own way.

But women are portrayed as idealized as a rule. Young, pretty, not stupid – it’s affectionate.

So – when the target audience is women, what then?

Complete contempt, that’s what. The males – especially fathers and boyfriends – in commercials these days wish they were portrayed with the sensitivity of a hot chick in a bikini (although the guy narrating this video gets the message all wrong):

The point being, our ads tell us something about how advertisers (who get paid to get attitudes right) see how we see each other. And from the ads – and the crushing preponderance of them by volume – we learn:

  • Men, at least in the last 30-40 years, have affectionate respect for women, while celebrating attraction
  • Women think men are hopeless incompetents.

And this has been going on for well over a decade.

So is it any wonder the young fellas of GenZ are forsaking the mating game for video games and pr0n?

Just Remember…

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…that the DFL made Minnesota a sanctuary state for Munchausen Mommies like this soulless crone.

(WARNING: You may vomit):

And when a Munchhausen Mom like this walks through a custody order to bring the kid that they’re “transing” to MN, the state will put her wishes above that of the other state’s court order.

Food for ugly, nightmarish thought.

Stochastic Terror, Part II: Whitewashed

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Yesterday, we talked about the Five Christians You Meet in the Movies.

And it started me thinking.

Last year, I started but didn’t quite follow through on a statistical study of race and gender characteristics in TV advertisements, as well as the tone or general sense of stereotype associated with the “Characters”. Spoiler alert: white males are subject to a certain…stereotyping, outside of ads for home improvement, sometimes. The numbers were jarringly uniform; there seems to be an unspoken (maybe) pact to portray white males as dim buffoons at best, cads at worst.

And while I don’t watch a ton of TV, I see enough to know the parallels are there.

There are five kinds of men – of all races – visible on television, either programming or advertisement, today:

The Impotent Buffoon: The most notable example of this “male” is the “boyfriend” on most TV/streamingt shows aimed at Millennials and younger. Mewling, incompetent, the inevitable inferior in the relationship whether he knows it or not. The first crisis in the plot inevitably shows him to be about as useful as a set of debate notes in front of Lieutenant Governor Flanagan. This is also the “husband” in most TV ads, these days; schlubby, married to a woman who’s waaaaay out of his league (and, in many cases, with kids who are made to appear much, much smarter than him). In a recent development, that incompetent male isn’t always white anymore (the guy in the “WeBuyAnyCar.com” ad jumps to mind).

The Douchebag: These are the people that all the “Jocks” in every John Hughes teensploitation movie grew up to be. The recent simulacrum of this type was the “partner” FBI agent in the (often excellent) Christina Applegate/Linda Cardellini streamer Dead to Me; a youngish man with all the physical symbols of being upper-middle class; he went to a pseudy-Ivy on, of course, a lacrosse scholarship, and exudes the casual arrogance that the modern TV viewer has been trained to expect to shortly see torn straight down by his senior partner – a (grabs checklist of modern “virtue” tropes) Latina single mother who worked her way up from a street, uh, FBI agent. (Sub-flavor: The gay douchebag, who usually ends up being the good guy).

Old Money: The definitive versions? The senior partners in the arbitrage firm in Trading Places.

The Melodrama Villain: Usually middle aged or older, usually coded as American aristocrats. If a show needs an “evil” Macguffin, it’s usually one of these guys. Even in car ads, for crying out loud, the “baddie” usuallyl resembles the “Goldstein” character in the Macintosh “1984” ad.

The Bankable A-Lister: Bankable A-listers are always exempt from all these tropes. Competent, intelligent, hot…perfect. The sort of thing that we’re supposed to be moving away from when the character is female.

Now, on level this is all good critical fun.

On the other hand – remember the complaints of African-Americans to Stepin Fetchit and Amos and Andy, or Natives to a century of movie stereotypes of Indians, or Latinos to decades of “lazy Mexican” tropes, who asked “why should our young people grow up with this vision of themselves all round them in popular culture?”

They were right.

If you’re a young man today, growing up as a generation of young men that’ve had their boyish “male” traits sanded off or drugged into submission by a feminized school system – and whose very testosterone levels are being eroded by diet or environment or God only knows what? When you look at pop culture around you, what do you see?

The loudest voices in our culture telling you “your type” is impotent, ineffective, useless, and if you draw a winning ticket in life’s lottery, anything from insufferable to evil?

Perhaps the proper term isn’t “stochastic terror”.

Maybe gaslighting?

Grooming for failure and misery?

Intergenerational abuse?

The more I think about it, I’m talking myself back to “stochastic terror”.

I’m Old Enough To Remember…

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…when minstrel shows were considered bad form.

That’s apparently changed:

Jeffrey Marsh is enough to give me species dysmorphia.

One Morning In The Duchey Household

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SCENE: It’s an ordinary morning in the home of Edwin DUCHEY, Proprietor at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com”.    DuChey was badly scarred by a childhood in which he was routinely bullied – by much younger children.

He’s sitting in the living room, sorting through emails on his phone, as his partner, Stacey Hinton, Executive Director of “Keep All Racists Eternally Nonplussed”, a white progressive support group and, like DuChey, a commited but unremarkable DFL activist, does much the same.

Their daughter, NIGELLA DUCHEY-HINTON, age 6, crawls into the room on all fours.

NIGELLA: Look, meowther and ffffffffather. I’m a kitty cat!

DUCHEY: (Looks at HINTON). What do you think, honey?

HINTON: Nigella? That’s an important decision, but you know I support and love you no matter what.

DUCHEY: (Looks at his phone). Honey? There’s a clinic in Honduras that specializes in species transition…oh, look, it says “for American progressives!”.

HINTON: Perfect!

NIGELLA: You mean puurrrrrr-fect! (NIGELLA crawls from the room)

DUCHEY: Yes, Nigella!! I’ll book a ticket to…uh, what’s the capital of Honduras, hon?

HINTON: Austin.

DUCHEY: I’ll get on it.

(As DUCHEY scrolls around looking for tickets to Austin, Honduras, their oldest son, Bjorn O’BRIEN – Hinton’s 14 year old son from a previous relationship, walks into the room.

O’BRIEN: I am Napoleon Buonaparte!

HINTON: Do tell, Bjorn.

O’BRIEN: It’s not Bjorn. I am Napoleon. My destiny is to conquer the world.

DUCHEY: So you identify as…Napoleon, the president of France in World War 2w?

HINTON: (Sotto Voce). The Civil War, honey.

O’BRIEN: Identifying has nothing to do with it. I am Napoleon. Could you lend me $500 until Jefferson buys Louisiana from me?

HINTON: Give him my MAPE Credit Union card, Ed.

(DUCHEY fishes card out of his fanny pack and gives it to young Bjorn, who doffs his “admiral” hat in a grand imperial salute before leaving the room)

HINTON: He needs a shower.

HINTON: They didn’t take as many of them in 1895, during the Civil War.

HINTON: Oh, right. Of course.

(Sean KASSEBAUM-HINTON, age 10 and Hinton’s son from a “break” in her and DUCHEY’s relationship, enters the room,

SEAN: Mom? Dad? Can I get some running shoes?

DUCHEY: Sure, son.

HINTON: Not your son. Sure, Sean. What’s up?

SEAN: I want to get in shape so that when I’m old enough I can join the Army or the Marines or something.

(HINTON and DUCHEY sit, blanching in poorly-muted horror).

HINTON: The military?

SEAN: Yes, mom. I want to serve this country. And tanks are cool!

(DUCHEY and HINTON exchange glances).

DUCHEY: Your mother and I will need to talk about it, son.

HINTON: Not your son.

SEAN: OK, Mom and Ed. (SEAN leaves the room)

DUCHEY: OMG.

HINTON: What have we done wrong?

DUCHEY: Well, according to Lt. Governor Peggy…:

DUCHEY: …nothing at all.

HINTON: But this is just so wrong. How have we failed him so?

DUCHEY: Maybe I can get him in to see a therapist…

(COLIN MANDELA DuChey, age 17, Edwin’s son from an earlier relationship, walks into the room)

COLIN MANDELA: Hey, I need the keys to the car and some money for liquor; Terry’s older brother is buying. We’re going to LaCrosse to hit on biker chicks.

DUCHEY: I hear you and believe you. (Digs keys and a couple of hundreds from the fanny pack).

COLIN MANDELA: (Grabs the money). No, stupid. Not the Prius. That’s gay. I want the Jeep.

(HINTON digs keys from purse).

COLIN MANDELA: Later, b*t*hes.

HINTON: It’s part of being a good parent.

DUCHEY: The Lieutenant Governor says so.

And SCENE.

Metaphor Alert

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The latest Moms Want Action tweet. Like everything MWA says, it’s counterfactual…

…but let’s stick with appearances and play a game of “Where’s Waldo”, where “Waldo” = “a black person”.

\

See her back there? Peering over the shoulder of the woman with ELCA Hair, not that that narrows it down any?

White, upper-middle-class female, utterly entitled, and keeping a few minorities around as visual accessories.

There is no more perfect metaphor for the gun control movement.

Isolationists Fighting The World

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Democrats, especially the MN DFL, pine for European style “social democracy” – or at least the kind they’ve incorporated into their romantic interpretation of 1970s-style Swedish and Danish socialism.

Their teenage-girl-level keening is selective – they are quiet about the fact that Denmark, for example, has no minimum wage.

But for the most part, DFLers are figuratively pining for the fjords most of the time.

Will that change soon?

Minnesota just signed a law legalizing kidnapping kids and playing Mr. Potato Head with their body parts and endocrine system, while allowing unlicensed, unqualified paraprofessionals to conceal what’s going on from parents.

Or as they refer to it, “guaranteeing gender-affirming care”.

This, they do just as Europe wakes up from its fifty year trip through the looking glass:

The United Kingdom, Sweden, Finland, and France have all taken steps recently to pull back on transgender medical treatments for seemingly gender-dysphoric children.

Sweden has been one of the most progressive nations on transgender health care for decades. Back in 1972, Sweden became the first country to allow transgender people to change their legal gender.

Last year though, Swedish hospitals halted the use of puberty blockers in five of the country’s six clinics for minors with gender dysphoria. The last clinic only uses puberty blockers in clinical trials. The country now emphasizes psychotherapy for minors with gender dysphoria instead.

In particular, the always freaky-deaky Swedes have slapped themselves upside the head and spun a proverbial bootlegger turn:

The Karolinska Hospital in Sweden recently issued a new policy statement regarding treatment of gender-dysphoric minors. This policy, affecting Karolinska’s pediatric gender services at Astrid Lindgren Children’s Hospital (ALB), has ended the practice of prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to gender-dysphoric patients under the age of 18.

This is a watershed moment, with one of world’s most renowned hospitals calling the “Dutch Protocol” experimental and discontinuing its routine use outside of research settings. According to the ”Dutch Protocol,” which has gained popularity in recent years, gender-dysphoric minors are treated with puberty blockers at age 12 (and in some interpretations, upon reaching Tanner stage 2 of puberty, which in girls can occur at age 8), and cross-sex hormones at the age of 16. This approach, also known as medical “affirmation,” has been endorsed by the WPATH ”Standards of Care 7” guideline.

Never thought I’d see sanity creeping across the Atlantic to the west, but then the whole world is pretty much upside down these days.

Paranoid!!!!

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I was reliably informed that stories of teachers subverting parents will to “transition” or otherwise influence (but don’t you dare say “groom”) children were “paranoisa”, misinformation and right wing hate speech:

A family in New York has filed a lawsuit against the Brookhaven-Comsewogue School District, Terryville Road Elementary School, and 5th-grade teacher Debra Rosenquist because they allege that Rosenquist attempted to secretly transition the gender of their 10-year-old daughter without notifying the parents.

The student – who is identified as A.V. in the complaint – became confused as to her gender during the 2021-2022 school year because Rosenquist insisted on using a male name and male pronouns to refer to the student.

Weird. I’m reliably – and very angriliy – informed this can not be:

In October 2021, the teacher began to call A.V. by the name “Leo” and use he/him pronouns for the child. No one in the district informed the parents (referred to as L.N. and E.V. in the complaint) of these changes.

Several months later, in January 2022, the school’s principal informed the parents that the child had met with the school psychologist (without the parents’ knowledge) and had drawn a girl with the words “I wanna kill myself” and “I feel sad a lot.” The psychologist determined this was because A.V. was confused about her gender identity.

This was the first time A.V.’s parents had heard anything about the confusion regarding A.V.’s gender identity or new name and pronouns forced on the child by the teacher.

Here’s the entire complaint against the Suffolk County schools, over the episode…

…that can not possibly have happened.

Root Causes

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“It’s Been a Minute” (henceforth IBaM) s one of the current plague of podcasts repackaged as radio shows that plagues both public and commercial broadcasting. As we discussed yesterday, some are better than others – some are OK radio, some are utterly dreadful as radio.

IBaM is pretty clearly trying to sell infotainment coverage smothered in public broadcasting convention, but to a black audience. It is, by public radio standards, breezy, sometimes to the point of sounding just a little contrived. But radio standards, it’s not the worst podcast on the air.

But this past weekend’s episode – about the wave of social media misogyny aimed at rapper “Megan Thee Stallion”, after she was shot in the foot by her…uh, paramour, rapper Tory Lanez. It features a “senior producer” from, guess what, another NPR podcast – Gabby Bulgarelli from a podcast called “Louder than a Riot”, and you’re on your own with that one.

Dog Bites Man. There’s an old newsroom bromide, passed down through Journalism 101 classes throughout the past 100-odd years. “Dog bites man isn’t news. Man bites dog is news”. If something is the norm, the expected, the utterly mundane? If you’re not the man being bit, it’s not realy news.

Anyway – I listened to this epi of IBaM, so you don’t have to. But if you’re curious – smoke ’em if you got ’em.

Here’s the part I wanted to focus on. It’s around 6:00 into the segment:

BRITNEY LEWIS (HOST): The coverage of this trial feels somewhat muted compared to the coverage of another trail that gained a lot of public attention this year, Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard. Why do you think that this case feels so different?

BULGARELLI: One, nobody cares about black people. Two, it’s close to the holidays. Three, because it’s a closed court…in some ways they feel similar. A lot of the arguing (sic) against Megan feels similar to how people rallied against Amber in support of Johnny Depp…

LEWIS: Mmm Hmmm

BULGARELLI: …the way Megan has been made out to be a liar – I don’t think anyone believes Megan to be a victim, so they don’t care…

I can’t comment on the merits of Bulgarelli’s argument, presuming there are any.

But she’s ignoring two elephants in the room:

  • Rappers shooting rappers is, regrettably and tragically, dog bites man. No, seriously – the list is long, and spans genres, coasts, even nations. It’s been a generation, and we still haven’t a conclusive idea who killed Tupac and Biggie. Ms. Thee Stallion was shot in the foot during a domestic squabble. It’s senseless, and stupid – but Ms. Thee Stallion survived, and will no doubt see her profile increase as a result. Oh, yeah – violent misogyny in the world of hip-hop doesn’t even rise to the level of dog-bites-man; it’s more like “Dog Licks Dog” . It’s ugly, and awful, and it’s the norm, to the point that pushing back against it is, in fact, the news in the show-biz press.
  • On the other hand, what – besides skin color – distinguishes the Depp/Heard trial from the Lanez/Thee Stallion dust-up? A woman’s claims of victimhood have been torpedoed by overwhelming, sworn evidence that she was in fact an emotional and violent abuser – something mainstream narrative denies exists. Millions of men who’ve suffered, either in silence or in the face of open derision from cops, social service professionals and society at large saw at least some vindication, even if only vicarious. The dominant narrative – “the power differential means only men can commit abuse” – was stomped flat, opening the door for millions of men to perhaps, one day, be taken seriously.

The inconvenient truth for identity-thrashers like Bulgarelli is the Lanez/Thee Stallion is “Dog Bites Man”; Heard/Depp is “Man puts mayo and a slice of tomato on a dog and takes a big chomp”, trashing a different bit of identitarian dogma outside Bulgarelli’s career specialty.

Think anyone at NPR will cover that angle?

Big Brother Is Watching Your Profile

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In my ears as a single guy, I’ve gotten used to women running background checks before meeting me for a drink. It’s only common sense, these days, what with n ews and the Lifetime network getting women convinced that men are serial killers oh or Keith Ellison until proven otherwise. I can’t say I blame them.

But a new dating app apparently goes above and beyond.

The app, called The Right Stuff, starts with two strikes against it; it’s invite only, it doesn’t have a whole lot of women on it (which is not all that unusual on any dating sites and apps)…

… and it also appears to draw FBI attention. (ia Power Line):

But now, a third complaint is emerging from users — that answering a profile prompt question that asked “January 6 was …” has led to them being contacted by law enforcement.

A quick scroll through the reviews in the app store reveal several comments complaining of having a phone call from the FBI shortly after filling out the profile.

And it’s online feedback for a dating app.

But does anybody honestly think this sort of thing would be above Joe Biden‘s FBI?

Correction

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To: Gavin Newsom, Governor, the Peoples Republic of California
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Fact

Governor Newsom,

You tweeted:

May be a Twitter screenshot of 9 people, people standing and text that says 'NevilleTheCat @FearTheFloof 13m Look who' now biologist... 1h Gavin Newsom @GavinNewsom If men could get pregnant, this wouldn't even be a conversation. This decision isn't about strengthening families it's about extremism. It's about control. We will fight for the right to choose MAMME 100D 0:46 225.7K views 38'

I am reliably informed by people not only aligned with your party, but teaching in several of your state universities, that “men can get pregnant”.

That is all.

DeSantis: Troll Level PhD

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Fatherhood is high on Big Left’s hit list – especially Big Feminism and Big Intersectionality. Without strong fathers, families are missing half of the behavioral background the children need to grow to be strong people.

Debasing fatherhood is key to Big Left’s crusade to “reinvent” – i.e. destroy – the nuclear family.

Ron DeSantis signed a bill designed to rehabilitate fathers in Florida. And there’s a Minnesota connection:

DeSantis signed the bill at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers training facility in Tampa, according to WTSP, noting that he put pen to paper at the team’s AdventHealth Training Center alongside former Bucs head coach Tony Dungy, who is also the spokesperson of and contributor to All Pro Dad, a national fatherhood nonprofit program that will be provided funding via grant opportunities by the bill. DeSantis said the organization uses “evidence-based parenting education.”

Dungy gave an impassioned speech as he backed the bill, saying that it will “be such a big help to fathers in Florida agencies that support fathers in Florida.” He commended DeSantis for bringing his children with him.

The program is designed to rehab fathers who’ve gotten out of jail, and whose kids are in the social-services system.

I’m waiting for Big Feminism to start with the gaslighting.

I’m also waiting for DeSantis to make them look like the yawping psychopaths they are.

DeSantis is pulling waaaay out front in my personal 2024 poll. .

The Invisible Man

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SCENE: A suburban family room. MOTHER and FATHER are anxiously looking at their SON, who’s watching…TV.

MOTHER: It’s all he’s watching lately. .

FATHER: What is it?

MOTHER: He’s binging Band of Brothers

FATHER: Again? This is like the third time.

MOTHER: And before that, it was 13 Hours. And then Taken.

FATHER: I caught him watching Die Hard the other day.

MOTHER: He has the scene of him rescuing his wife from being pulled out the window with Hans Gruber as his social media avatar.

FATHER: God. I wonder what’s going on with him?

So I started binge watching “The Flight Attendant” last night.

Pros: it’s really well written. That’s nothing to sneeze at. I’ve been terribly disappointed by the writing in a lot of things I’ve seen lately (I’m looking at you, Love Life, whose laziness completely wasted Anna Kendrick).

The writers toss out a completely un-subtle “Crime and Punishment“ reference in the first couple minutes, and then go on to deliver on it throughout everything I’ve seen so far (#StuffEnglishMajorsLike). And Kaley Cuoco makes a completely believable protagonist.

Bonus pro: it’s got Rosie Perez, who may be the most underrated actress of her generation (although she’s just a tad underutilized in the first couple episodes).

It’s not Dial M for Murder, much less Gaslight, but it ain’t bad.

Speaking of that Ingrid Bergman / Charles Boyer classic…

Cons: These aren’t all in re Flight Attendant alone – far from it.

Hollywood writers seemed to have gotten together and signed a weird, junior high quality pact amongst themselves: “For decades, we wrote women as one dimensional caricatures; madonnas, whores, bimbos and housewives. Let’s pack a century of retribution into a couple of years worth of television and movies.“

Apparently, women can be protagonists, or nuanced, complex characters, or turbocharged badasses, for good or evil – or at least not incompetent caricatures.  That’s a good thing.

On the other hand, rules for men of these days seem to be boiled down to:

  • Gay besties
  • stock black, Asian, Latino or Semitic guys
  • The villain (usually an older white guy, usually played with all the subtlety of a mustache-twisting melodrama villain, although occasionally a white woman)
    – The love interest – who is usually safely ethnically ambiguous.
  • pathetic, beaten down sacks
  • Buffoons, tools, frat bros (apparently all white anglo-saxon protestant males get lacrosse scholarships. I didn’t know that), frat bros that have grown up to be buffoons and tools, cliché rednecks and every kind of cad ever offered up by central casting.. Almost inevitably white, although I guess it’s a sign of evolution the screen writers are showing the occasional less than bright/moral/ethical black male character.
  • Part of a married couple – usually as a hapless schlub whose league his spouse is waaay out of, but with plenty of dysfunctional, abusive cads thrown in. (Same sex couples apparently are immune to most serious dysfunction in Hollywood. Who knew?)

Patronizing? I think so.

Virtue signaling? Sure.

 Lazy? Completely.

Gaslighting?

FATHER: Junior? Why are you watching all these…

MOTHER: …movies and TV shows?

SON: Because it’s fun, for a change, for the first time in my life, to see people like I am, or plan to become, not portrayed as idiots, buffoons, fools, blackguards and expendable simps?

MOTHER: (sotto voce, to FATHER). Do. you think we should call a therapist?

Lions Are Lying Down With Lambs…

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… And I’m finding myself jumping to Sean Penn’s defense, against the wokeists

“I don’t think that being a brute or having insensitivity or disrespect for women is anything to do with masculinity, or ever did. But I don’t think that [in order] to be fair to women, we should become them,” the outspoken actor added.

Penn is defending the idea that the opposite of “toxic masculinity” isn’t “femininity”, but “good, well-formed masculinity”.

Which is a fight our whole culture needs to wage, and win, for its own sake.

Which is ,I guess, why Penn is being pummeled today.

School Dazed

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Over the past few weeks, the news that young men are rapidly heading toward being a superminority – 1/3 of the population – at America’s colleges and universities has seemed to come as a surprise to the bits and pieces of the media that have reported on it at all – like, for instance, this piece in The Atlantic,

Of course, this has been anticipated literally for decades. I first read the prediction in 2000, in Christina Hoff-Summers’ The War on Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Young Men

And it’s been a significant subject on this blog since the beginning, no less than when I spent quite a bit of time wrestling with modern education’s treatment of boys, most notably my son and stepson. . The Atlantic piece all but dismisses the notion that modern adademia (and its product and farm club, K-12 education) pathologizes boyhood, and that systematic discrimination sours boys on education even before modern post-secondary academia takes over and treats “maleness” like a mental illness. I think the article is wrong, and I’d welcome a serious, frank (read “no holds barred”) debate on the subject.

But I come here not to recap views of the disease, about which I have few doubts, but to ask questions about the treatment.

Boys are opting out of school – post-secondary education, in this case, but it applies across non-vocational higher education and non-engineering and hard-science spaces (which continue to be fairly male-dominated, despite decades of effort) . And it’s causing…

…well, “concern” may be an overstatement.

My pullquote from the Atlantic piece:

The implications of the college gender gap for individual men are troubling but uncertain. “My biggest immediate worry is that men are making the wrong decision,” Goldin said. “I worry they’ll come to severely regret their choice if they realize the best jobs require a degree they never got.” There is also the issue of dating. College grads typically marry college grads. But this trend of associative mating will hit some turbulence, at least among heterosexual people; if present trends continue, the dating pool of college grads could include two women for every guy. As women spend more time in school and their male peers dwindle as a share of the college population, further delays in marriage and childbirth may ensue. That would further reduce U.S. fertility rates, which worries some commentators, albeit not all.

Background

I not only went to college, I got a BA in English. And, perhaps unexpectedly given the state of modern higher ed, I went in a fairly “progressive” but not very well-read Democrat, and came out four years later a Reagan conservative – because of my English major adviser.

I’m sure he’d have been cashiered from academia, or at least the humanities academy, these days.

I got, in short, the sort of humanities education that today trips a whole lot of social and political triggers, but set me up for not only the life I have today but system of beliefs by which I live (and about which I write on this blog and talk on my radio show) pretty darn well, conservatism and all.

Of course, higher ed has changed a lot in the past 35 years. The academy, which tended to lean left when I was in college, has toppled over to the left today. Conservative thought is not only scarce, in some cases it is actively hunted down, intellectually speaking (so far).

A Pox?

The response from a lot of my conservative and libertarian friends has been along the lines of “Good! Get our young guys to go to tech school or do apprenticeships and become mechanics and plumbers and HVAC techs!”

There’s a practical side to that; the modern secondary education seems to consider high school grads who don’t go to college as defeats, personal slights to them as teachers. But, obviously, not everyone wants, or is suited, to be a teacher, an administrator, a professional. Destigmatizing the trades would be a wonderful thing.

But there’s a social and political side as well; some say it’s high time for young conservatives to secede from academia, go into the trades. A pox on the whole house of academia.

I get it.

But thinking back on 17 year old me? The closest thing I had to an interest in the trades was working in radio, which I’d most definitely learned on the job (then as now) – and which, to be fair, turned out to be a career, albeit not a lucrative one. Beyond that? 17 year old Mitch, just as *&^% year old Mitch, lived in his head, not with his hands, for better or worse. Even with hindsight, I can’t think of a trade I would have been happy with. (Happy with learning to a basic level of competence is another story; I’d love to have retained some of the electricity or carpentry knowledge I picked up along the way, but that’s purely avocational, not a career goal).

But it was a moot point, because when I was 17, college was not only moderately affordable, it was presented as a place to learn the tools to think critically about the smorgasbord of ideas pelting one about one’s head.

And the first 13 years of school hadn’t beaten all love of learning out of most of us guys.

Eating The Seed Corn

So I completely support destigmatizing the vocational education track.

And I understand the impetus to chuck the whole thing.

But as the masculine half of this nation’s collective brain gets pushed out of the “Brain” half of this nation’s public life, what does it get replaced with?

The feminine half?

Forget for a moment that it’s a “Feminine” half trained by, well, modern academia, with all of its current adjectives (post-structural, proto-Marxist, anti-Western-Civilization, and I could probably go on from there). Leave that out of it completely for a moment.

What happens to a nation that cedes its public intellectual life entirely to its feminine half?

Men and women lead differently, process threats and stress differently, appraise situations very differently.

And that difference can be a good thing.

But what happens when the doors that do get opened to college grads – the thinking, rather than doing jobs – have nothing but women going through them?

It’s been de rigeur since the late seventies to reflexively bark “a society and world run by women would be perfect! No war, no hunger – it’d be like having Mom run everything!”

Which, like all “progressive” fever dreams, is reductionist baked wind. A society whose entire intellectual direction is run by women – especially a society which has become as centralized, bureaucratized, credentialized and driven by increasingly stratified institutions as ours is becoming – would have different dysfunctions than a completely masculine society, but dysfunctional it would remain.

And beyond that – quick: someone show me a matriarchal society throughout all of human history that has survived prolonged conflict with an aggressive patriarchal one? History bids us to look at sub-Saharan Africa, where indigenous culture is highly matriarchal…

…and was easily steamrollered by the aggressive, patriarchal, militaristic Bantu, Swahili, and other masculine mega-tribes.

Families, across all of society, need male and female influences to thrive and survive.

So do the societies themselves.

And we’ve known for a generation, now, that we’re slowly losing that, on an intellectual level. Some of the dumber among us are celebrating it.

It’s going to be a big problem in the future.

A Small Victory

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Half of our society is figuring it out:

Lots of ground to make up.

But it’s a start.

Urban Progressive Privilege: My Scientific Research Project

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Title: Analyzing the Propensity of Modern Feminists, Progressives and the Media to Overstate Accrued Virtue.

Aim of the Experiment: The aim of the experiment is to test whether there is any activity approved of by “Big Left” that a woman can do, that will not be turned into a example of supreme personal moral virtue.

Hypothesis: It is predicted that, provided the activity is one promoted by “Big Left”, that there is no activity a woman can carry out that will not be referred to as “Brave”, “Courageous”, “Fierce” or other such superlatives.

Background Theory: It is believed that the rhetorical “Bar” for an action to be considered an act of personal moral courage, when the action is:

  • Congruent with the values of modern political and social “progressives”, and
  • Performed by a woman

…has dropped to the point of nearly being indistinguishable from any normal activity.

Methodology: The research team:

  1. Observed an extensive list of actions
  2. We specifically looked for examples of morally unremarkable, mundane, even counterproductive activities not being referred to in morally superlative terms
  3. We documented the results.

Results: We found no examples.

Discussion of Results: In comment section

Conclusion: There is literally nothing a woman can do (provided it’s congruent with the values of Big Left) too unremarkable, mundane or even destructive that won’t be called ‘Brave’.

So Let Me Get This…Er, For Lack Of A Better Term, “Straight”

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Let me try to fomulate the logic, here.

:If it biological man says she identifies as a woman, that decision must be treated as sacred.

Ditto a biological woman claiming to now be, or identify, as a male.

Naturally, someone of any gender declaring an affectional orientation for their own gender is to be supported.

Industries and entire areas of academic disciplines have sprung up to support all of those decisions. Institutions, up through and including academia, the American Civil Liberties Union, and a fair chunk of corporate America, deem that decision to be absolute, inviolate and ironclad. Naturally, there’s a branch of medical science devoted to helping people transition physically as well as psychologically, to support that identity.

But a gay person deciding they want to identify as straight, and making efforts to do so, must be squashed with the full power of the state?

Why the special treatment?

What side effects affect “gay conversion therapy”, that don’t affect any other change in identity?

I’m not judging, one way or the other; I’m just trying to figure out the moral logic.

When The World Is Insane, Satire Is Pointless: Part CXXXIV

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Remember earlier in this week, when I ran the video of Seth Dillon of Babylon Bee echoing my complaint that when the world is insane, satire is impossible?

I had one of those moments at something like 2AM, when the cat woke me up and I checked thje news.

I read a news story that I thought was either a weird dream at best, or a not-especially-deft bit of satire by some Babylon Bee knockoff at worst. I went back to bed.

And woke up to find it was neither:

Victoria’s Secret is replacing its supermodel angels with seven high-profile women known for their accomplishments rather than their figures in its evolving brand to help “inspire women.”

The lingerie company announced on Wednesday that its new VS Collective campaign aims to “positively impact the lives of women” with its products, experiences and initiatives.

The campaign also includes new partnerships with professional soccer player Megan Rapinoe, actor and producer Priyanka Chopra Jonas, world champion free skier Eileen Gu, model, refugee and mental wellness supporter Adut Akech, body advocate and model  Paloma Elsesser, journalist Amanda de Cadenet and LGBTQIA+ activist Valentina Sampaio.

Look – I kind of got Viotoria’s Secret’s 2019 decision to ditch the “Angels” and their annual cheeseca; not being a marketer, I’m not sure what the net pros and cons of “pelting your target demographic with images of women that were mostly fantasy objects for men” versus “selling the idea that you kind of are that fantasy, for that special someone, if you buy our unmentionables”.

I suppose it’d be more or less like having Wilt Chamberlain endorse an Erectils Dysfunction remedy; half of the audience might think “THAT’LL HELP ME BANG 20,000 WOMEN TOO!”, and the other half could get…inteimidated?

I guess I’ll let the marketeers market.

So while I can intellectually understand the idea that Victoria’s Secret might shy away from their harem of supermodel “Angels” (complete with some of the more Hefner-y aspects of that image), and simultaneously the idea of feminists wanting companies to use more examples of female empowerment in marketing…

…I guess I’m struggling to see where or why a business and industry that produces lingerie, a milieu which ostensibly exists to make women feel sexy for their significant others, sees itself as a vehicle for that sort of empowerment.

Especially given the role models they’ve selected. The linked article lists :

…actor and producer Priyanka Chopra Jonas, world champion free skier Eileen Gu, model, refugee and mental wellness supporter Adut Akech, body advocate and model  Paloma Elsesser, journalist Amanda de Cadenet and LGBTQIA+ activist Valentina Sampaio

…most of whom fit fairly squarely into the modern current western notion of “beauty”…

…and probably the most “controversial” of the picks…

…Megan Rapinoe, a woman whose entire claim to fame is successfully chasing a ball around a field and stridently proclaiming the dominant social narrative on cue in front of cameras, and who also matches the current western notion of beauty, if you have a secret thing for Reinhard Heydrich.

Beiing neither a lingerie buyer, a second-wave feminist nor a Heydrophile, I am probably not the one to comment.

I’m still trying to figure out if Victoria’s Secret, the brand, is…:

  • terminally beset by executives under the spell of “woke” culture
  • trying to “shock” its way out of a market doldrum

Either way, I think I’m gonna buy stock in whatever VS’s more traditional competitors might be. It just seems…market-prudent.

Neologism

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Chickification: the process by which a formerly male activity is ruined for the men who enjoyed it.

I subscribe to a couple of airplane magazines.  In the past, the articles mostly covered maintenance and repairs, flying safety practices, and heads-up notices of regulatory changes.  There was endless encouragement to take kids flying to develop a love of aviation to keep the sport alive.  The phrase “$100 hamburger” was tongue-in-cheek (it refers to the practice of flying your airplane to another airport for no real purpose, just eat lunch and come home.  Adding up all the costs of owning and operating an airplane, that hamburger cost you $100, at least. But hey, considering the boat, motor and trailer, what did that walleye cost you? It’s not about the money, it’s about the sport).  Flying apparel was logo ball caps.  Flying club meetings were sitting on folding chairs in a hangar shooting the breeze with other pilots.

Lately, I’ve noticed a change in the magazines.  Now that the editors are women journalism majors hired to make the headquarters office acceptably diverse, the content of the magazines has shifted.  They’re all about getting more women flying, more girls interested in aviation.  Flying articles emphasize mothers juggling flying careers and family. Glossy photos show foodie destinations. Flying apparel is fashionable.  It’s a noticeable shift in emphasis away from old men in favor of 30-ish women.  I fully expect Standards of Conduct and Speech Codes for flying club meetings within the next year.   Nobody is allowed to say it, but adding women to a club changes the club and seldom for the better.

Women don’t need special programs or rules or encouragement to be accepted at a male activity such as flying (or shooting at the firing range).  Just show up and the guys will fall all over themselves welcoming you.  Forcing your way in is a sure way to force the guys out and after that, it’s just one big cat-fight which nobody ever wins until everyone stomps off in a huff and the club closes.

Joe Doakes

Which may be the goal, at least for some.

Truth = Sexist

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The women weren’t really trying, that’s the only reason they lost. Otherwise, they’d totes have dominated the field.  For sure.

Because if the professional women athletes really were trying but still got beaten this badly by a bunch of high school boys, we’d have to admit there truly is a physical difference between the sexes and that’s simply Unacceptable.

Joe Doakes

2+2=Women Can Literally Do Anything As Well As Men, Winston.

We’ve Seen This Before

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Lauren Boebert, 34 year old business owner and freshman Congresswoman from Colorado, is to the 2020s what Michele Bachmann was to the 2000s – further proof of Berg’s Eighth Law.

Boebert actually is what Big Left has been trying to teach the world AOC is; a young woman who actually accomplished something.

Dumb And Dumber And Dumber And Dumber…

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Policy is downstream of politics.

Politics is downstream from culture.

Culture is shaped, to a disturbing extent, by people who want to try to influence it.

And it’s been a cultural cliché for generation that television in its many forms has an overwhelming influence on society.

And as someone who spent way more time in Ramsey County family court, and dealing with culture’s assumptions about fathers and children, the subject of how media treats fatherhood has been of far more than casual interest to me for a long time.

I’ve observed since the early days of this blog that much of modern culture’s perception of fathers seems to be derived from Fred Flintstone (if you’re lucky – the cartoon rendering of Jackie Gleason was much preferable to the neutered George Jetson, albeit similar in every other way).

The good news – sociological reasarch [1] shows I’m right.

The bad news – Flintstone is a throwback to the “good old days”. Modern media, more and more, is treating fathers like incompetent, mock-worthy, if in the end lovable buffoons:

…we studied how often sitcom dads were shown together with their kids within these scenes in three key parenting interactions: giving advice, setting rules or positively or negatively reinforcing their kids’ behavior. We wanted to see whether the interaction made the father look “humorously foolish” – showing poor judgment, being incompetent or acting childishly.

Interestingly, fathers were shown in fewer parenting situations in more recent sitcoms. And when fathers were parenting, it was depicted as humorously foolish in just over 50% of the relevant scenes in the 2000s and 2010s, compared with 18% in the 1980s and 31% in the 1990s sitcoms.

At least within scenes featuring disparagement humor, sitcom audiences, more often than not, are still being encouraged to laugh at dads’ parenting missteps and mistakes.

Thing is, as more children are raised in single-parent housholds (a majority, in many communities), and given that the vast majority of those households are female-led, popular entertainment is going to have a disproportional role in shaping how children feel about what fathers are supposed to be.

I don’t watch a lot of current network TV, so it’s fairly academic to me at the moment.

But I’ve also noticed, again for over the past twenty-plus years, that the way fathers are portrayed in commercial is equally condescending [2] – but that there’s a pattern to this.

Remember – nothing in major media advertising, least of all on network or cable TV, is accidental. Every ad, down to the lowliest 10-second sweeper spot, is focus-grouped to a fine sheen before it goes near a broadcaster. The subtext of every ad is as carefully tuned as the messages themselves.

And I’ve noticed [3] that there’s a pattern:

  • Spots aimed at products most commonly aimed at guys (the social group, as opposed to “men”, the sex), products like beer and athletic gear, tools, blue-collar workers’ tools, vehicles bought for work (as opposed to lifestyle accessories), tend to portray women (if at all) as improbably attractive, but not as the focus of the spot/s.
  • Products aimed at women (by inference, women who lead or co-lead households, especially with children) are the ones that tend to show husbands as bumbling, dubiously competent, and very frequently not in their wives leagues, if you catch my drift.

Remembering that nothing in big-dollar advertising is accidental, what other conclusion is there than “Evidence tells advertisers that men see their women as ideal and attractive [which is sort of an evolutionary tautology], and women who spend money want to think that men – in general, and maybe their own – are hapless buffoons who’d be lying in their parents basements in a puddle of their own waste without them.”

Not sure that’s a great message for the young women or the young men of tomorrow.

[1] And yes, I now – sociology, like all soft sciences, is not a science. Soft science produces soft data, at best. And soft data is good enough for the point I’m making.

[2] Although somewhat less so if the fathers in the ads are black or Latino. And it seems that the fathers in mixed-race couples, who seem to make up a disproportionate number of couples in TV advertising these days, get portrayed pretty neutrally-to-favorably, although both of those observation are just that – impressions from a guy who doesn’t watch a whole lot of TV. Now, that would be an interesting study. And one ad that stuck out at me – the morning-TV spot for Hi-Vee supermarkets featuring the 1983 song “Our House” – indicates, albeit with a sample size of one, that even being a stay-at-home caretaker while the improbably gorgeous mom runs off to her office job doesn’t protect dad from that same level of condescension.

[3] Yep, anecdotally, not a controlled experiment bla bla bla.

2+2=Road Salt

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Got any questions?

Don’t bring ’em to Erin Maye Quade, former MN state representative, 2018 Lieutenant Governor candidate, and (along with former commenter Dog Gone and William Davis) one of the Minnesota DFL’s most imortant intellectual thought leaders.

Because, being a thought leader, she’s got the answers:

So a trans woman, having experienced none of growing up as a bio-female, can not only appropriate a lifetime of bio-female experience, but in so doing scoop up all the scholarships – which, I hasten to add, are what put a lot of working-class bio-girls a shot at a higher education (for what little that seems to be worth these days)?

Seems a little…misogynistic?

My daughter grew up playing basketball in elementary school and junior high with, and against, a bunch of very talented, largely black girls from Frogtown, the Midway and the North End.

Some of these girls, even at 10-13 years old, were already working hard on their games, in hopes of getting scholarships.

I’m dying to see how Ms. Maye Quade would explain to those working-class girls how not only were their scholarships going to bio-boys, but they’d best shut up about it if they ever wanted to do lunch at the Saint Paul Grill again.

I’m just waiting for a bunch of bio-guys who couldn’t quite make the NBA, and are tired of playing in Italy and Poland, to “transition” and dominate the living s**t out of the WNBA and Women’s Soccer.

Zellen/iot Zage

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Background: “Cultural appropriation” is one of the few sins actually recognized by the Wokemob. One can not, it seems, be white and wear african jewelry or cook mexican food, at the risk of inciting the Wokemob.

They seem to be more tolerant of people of non-Western descent using things invented in the west, like free speech and respect for the individual (as long as they are that individual), but let’s not get carried away in technicalities, here.

Foreground: The actress formerly known as Ellen Page – most famous for starring in Juno, the inescapable and insufferable indy sensation that put former Minneapolitan “Diablo Cody” on the map way back when – is now Elliot Page, and has asked to be referred to by the pronouns “he” and “they”.

And the media – mainstream and social – have complied with that demand at a clip that would have terrified Orwell, and probably Emmanuel Goldstein as well.

Elliot Page was never a woman, Winston.

Appropriated: Brendan O’Neil has an excellent piece at Spiked on the subject, focusing on three subjects – the Orwellian completeness of the “transformation”, the deleterious effect of the Transgender mafia on gay kids…

…and the bit that caught my attention: Page’s cultural appropriation. I’ll add some emphasis.

The disappearing of Ellen Page, and the demonisation of anyone who dares to mention that woman’s name, matters because it tells us a great deal about the increasing instability and elitism of identity politics. There are many reasons we should have a frank, legitimate discussion about Ellen Page rather than robotically repeating that she is now a he and that anyone who says otherwise is a moral reprobate. First, is it really the case that Page is male? A he? How can someone who doesn’t have male biology and who has had no male experiences – boyhood, male puberty, masculine impulses, being a brother, an uncle, a father – be a ‘he’? How does that work? Is it magic? Or have words like male, he, brother and father been so denuded of meaning thanks to the cult of genderfluidity that anyone can adopt them as their preferred identity? It is not prejudiced to ask these questions; it is reasonable, and important.

And the same goes the other way, for “women” who grew up male as well. If eating a burrito made by a white woman is genocide, what is being an insta-male or female?

It’s not you. It’s not even your identity. It’s the costume of the day.