House of Eratosthenes

These dogmas of “advanced” faith in the Woman Question are… namely, that women ought to have all the rights of intellectual capacity with all the privileges of physical weakness, otherwise expressed, all the rights of men, and none of the duties or hardships of men. For it is a significant and amusing fact that no mention is ever made by the advocate of women’s claims of the privileges which have always been accorded the “weaker sex.” These privileges are quietly pocketed as a matter of course, without any sort of acknowledgment, much less any suggestion of surrender.

Well ya know…the rebuttal could be reasonably made, that there isn’t necessarily any incompatibility here. I don’t mind holding the door open for a woman, even as we both enter a business meeting in which she intends to compete with me, prove she can do a job as well as I can. I’ve done it quite a few times, actually. There’s the job, there’s the door — two different things.

The problem emerges as we become more militant about this false definition of “equality,” start to look for more and more ways for women to be equal, and when we run out of them, start inventing new goals for women to reach in a race to be more like men. When equivalence becomes the zenith of potential human achievement. When boys are raised to achieve nothing, save for finding out what some strutting female martinet wants, and to bring it to her, and the girls are raised to achieve nothing save for clearly expressing what it is they want brought to them.

That’s when people become ants. And it all starts with that double-standard: Everybody is absolutely forbidden from thinking of males and females as different in any way. But let her go first.

A hundred and twenty-seven years is an impressive stretch of foresight.

Ever played co-ed sports? The kinds of girls who enjoy the sport (as opposed to those who are just there for friendship, or to meet guys, or whatever) are brutal. They’re ruthless, if not downright dirty, players.

Funny thing is, at least some of that ruthlessness/dirtiness comes from the implicit knowledge that guys are taking it easy on them. They’ll never acknowledge it, of course (and neither will the guys), and they may not be consciously aware of it, and they’d certainly never say they expect guys to take it easy on them, but….

I remember way back in college, going up for a rebound in a co-rec basketball game. I didn’t actually see the other player going up against me; for whatever reason my back was turned. But I felt my opponent there, as one does, and squared up for the collision… when I came down, I had the ball, and the other player was about four feet away, flat on her ass, tears in her eyes, and every girl on the court was looking at me with this shocked, hurt expression.

That’s what guys do. It wasn’t a dirty play on my part; just an ordinary rebound by a not-very-good player in the least competitive dorm league. And I flattened her. I had 100% of my mental energy focused on getting the ball — you know, as one does in every men-only game — and not 95% of it focused on not clobbering my much smaller, much weaker, yet insanely aggressive female opponent.

I gave up feminism right then, and I suspect she at least thought about it. Reality is a wonderful antidote to theory.
- Severian | 03/18/2014 @ 06:56
Did you get called for the foul, too? Because we occasionally have women in our street hockey league as well… and it often goes poorly.

Keep in mind the great majority of us are oldish guys with jobs and families who are out to enjoy ourselves and get some exercise and male-bonding time. “We all gotta work in the morning” is a common refrain from the refs when guys start being overtly stupid. But as anyone who isn’t madly dedicated to keeping their eyes and ears stopped up, part of male bonding in a sports context is the competition, playing hard, winning respect with your effort even when your skills are less-than-stellar.

We had a game a month or so ago where I was run over without possession by a guy who didn’t want to be bothered pursuing the play. I didn’t get a call. Dubious, but them’s the breaks. Not 90 seconds later a teammate of mine challenged for a loose ball and won it, with the opponent – a young lady about 100 pounds with her gear on – went to the ground. He was given a roughing penalty. He didn’t do anything except hold his ground. She had no balance lunging after the play and, being a wisp of a thing, went over like a sack of meal.

Essentially, she got the call that I didn’t on the basis of our respective plumbing. And you know… I can’t even blame the ref. He was doing what came instinctively. And hey, the other team got their power play out of it, so well played.
- nightfly | 03/18/2014 @ 13:14
Wait. I’ve heard that Bax thingy somewhere before….
Oh Yeah.
Jackie: How do you write women so well?
Melvin Udall: I think of a man. And I take away reason and accountability.
- CaptDMO | 03/19/2014 @ 09:05

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Quietly PocketedTuesday, March 18th, 2014

Quietly Pocketed
Tuesday, March 18th, 2014