House of Eratosthenes

Item: In Rhonda Robinson’s house, ADD is considered a personality type and not a mental disorder. I read between the lines that this means she has boys in it, and isn’t in any hurry to try to get rid of them or transmogrify them into girls, a situation that is sadly becoming uncommon in both homes and classrooms. Thus begins a fascinating column…

Boys are no longer judged by their developmental standards. We have lost sight of a very basic tenet of humanity, one that our ancestors understood since the beginning of time: girls are very different from boys. Boys with uniquely masculine strengths, once prized, are no longer valued. In fact, these traits of boyhood are considered dangerous, even pathological.
:
.M. Stolzer explains that back in 1990, Carol Gilligan, a “difference feminist” and author of In a Different Voice, published a series of case studies that became widely accepted as fact. According to Stolzer, Gilligan hypothesized that it was the masculine bias deeply rooted in the American school system that was causing girls to suffer severely both psychologically and academically.

Gilligan garnered unprecedented exposure and acclaim from policymakers and academia — all accepting her theory without question. The cultural Marxists did what Marxists do best — they created an underclass of victims. What more compelling victim to raise money and change policy for than sweet little girls?

Women’s groups rallied and lobbied, and government agencies responded with funding, policy changes and programs. The “girl crisis” became a commonly held belief: girls are at a significant disadvantage in the American school system because a masculine bias tilts it.

All this happened with under an ounce of peer-reviewed scientific evidence…
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The “female way of learning” has become the standard for both sexes in the classroom, and the gold standard for behavior in general.

Just as we will never fully comprehend the emptiness in the world that an aborted child might have filled, so, too, the world suffers the loss of modern-day knights, and leaders subdued in boyhood.

As long as male traits are considered defective, boys will be left to sharpen their skills in the fantasy world of a video game. While the real world, in desperate need of heroes and bravery, is content to have him sitting quietly on the couch.

Item: This comic strip purports to explain why there is a dearth of female engineers…

Item: Instapundit brings us two stories, one about Ellen Pao’s case that she lost, or won, or lost & won…it’s complexificated and stuff…

The headline moments came when Pao testified a male coworker with whom she had an affair retaliated against her by cutting her out of emails and meetings — and the firm did nothing to stop it.

“Going back I would not have done it again,” she testified about the affair. “I didn’t think it was inappropriate at the time.”

From the comments:

hey_man 1:57 AM PDT
If junior male members are allowed to pass “over” a female who is performing better than males, isnt this discrimination?

Dogsi 8:59 AM PDT
That was her claim. That doesn’t make it the case. The reality is that she had a disproportionate sense of entitlement.

I have to say I’m somewhat puzzled on the whole concept of a firm being even potentially liable, if it can be shown they “did nothing to stop” one employee treating another employee differently from a bunch of other employees. Some of us have rather lengthy track records of being the “One of these things is not like the other” types, and have battle-scars to show for it. In my case, I thought some of the employees who treated me differently were jerks, still do, I’m sure the feeling is mutual. Because how dare I vote Republican, or prefer DC comic books over Marvel, or whatever else…be that as it may, on what planet is the firm liable for all these shenanigans? Oh, I guess that’s just how we do things now in our litigious society. Can that possibly work? Such a plan should have my sympathies. But I’m doubtful.

And on the office-affair thing and its unfortunate aftermath, isn’t a feeling of dread over such future events unfolding, part of the reason people take a pass on the whole thing once the opportunity arises to date staff?

This kind of touches back on the comic strip about women failing to become engineers because they had dolls, or something. Well…there is a kernel of truth in this. There is a lot of fertilizer in it too, since my future prospects as an engineer weren’t scuttled when nobody bothered to get me a remote control airplane for Christmas. But I’m pleased to see someone acknowledging the truism that, when a tech firm toils away under the pressure to fill a hundred senior software engineering positions with fifty males and fifty females, and discovers it simply isn’t going to happen in this lifetime, there may have been forces at work on the cultural level, having taken their effect years and years before any candidates ever applied for the positions.

The other Instapundit story has to do with yet another phony rape…they’re almost becoming routine…

Nicole Richess, 20, had a drunken threesome with the two servicemen at a friend’s house and then her own home at the end of a night out.

The following day her boyfriend heard rumours she had been unfaithful and confronted her.

Richess ‘panicked’ and made up the false claim that the two innocent men, aged 23 and 24, had forced themselves on her because she was too ashamed to tell him she had cheated on him.

Item: Your man is probably going to look at other women in skimpy bathing suits, and that is OKAY…

From the comments:

When we go anywhere…. I’m the one pointing out women to my husband. We look at them together…It totally irks me when chicks get upset over this.

If you’re so insecure in your relationship that you have to fret over your man looking at other women.. then you shouldn’t’ be with him. It’s unhealthy. Move on to someone who doesn’t make you feel so insecure.

Maybe the play-with-dolls has something to do with this, too. Men might wish their wives and girlfriends do some things the wives and girlfriends aren’t doing. Women, on the other hand, get upset that the husbands and boyfriends aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do; or, in this case, do things they’re not supposed to do. I’ve said many times before that this has to do with playing with dolls. What’s a doll do? Everything you want it to do, and nothing you don’t. And so here we have yet another thing that men and women see in different ways. For the husband or boyfriend, a template of behavior has been defined, and an issue is being made out of reality failing to conform. The guys, for the most part, aren’t going to make an actual issue out of the wife-or-girlfriend’s behavior failing to fit a pre-formed, pre-defined template. At least, within reason. I’m sure the guy whose girlfriend had a three-way with the service members and then lied about it, is a valid exception…

Observation: All of these stories have it in common that they have something to do with women. But, uh, we can take it much, much further than that, can’t we? They all have to do with the status of some class, or instance, of women. The frumpy woman on the beach is worried about her husband leaving her. The slut who had the drunken three-way lied to avoid getting caught. Carol Gilligan’s research was all about girls being deprived of having a place. Ellen Pao’s lawsuit was all about a hostile work environment.

Further observation: They all concern situations that have gotten way out of hand because someone got hypersensitive about womens’ status. Either a woman becoming hypersensitive about her own status, or someone in a position of authority taking it upon themselves to provide a bulwark against anything that might threaten a woman’s status. Up to, including, and past the point where lies have to be told.

Conclusion: It seems like we’re living in a period of what might be called “anti-chivalry.” As one endeavors to come up with some specific definitions of the ancient code of chivarly, what continues to bubble to the surface is a three-element package of respect for: Women, honor, and truth. Not necessarily in that order. The more modern variant seems fixated on elevating women above truth. Especially in the case of Ms. Pao, in which we’re all evidently supposed to pretend she won the lawsuit when she didn’t, and the drunken slut who lied about being raped, something Instapundit notes we’re being repeatedly told can’t ever possibly happen. This is just one of many fronts in the daily battle churning away within our society in which, if & when the day comes that our priorities change, things will get better. Life will get better. For everybody.

Including women.

Lesson: If a woman’s virtue can only be defended by way of elevating fiction over truth, her virtue isn’t worth defending. To deny this or to act in opposition to this, does nothing to help the cause of women in general.

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Anti-ChivalrySunday, March 29th, 2015

Anti-Chivalry
Sunday, March 29th, 2015