House of Eratosthenes

Rachel points to Dr. Mel, Cassy, and Helen; Dr. Mel then points to Vox. The subject under discussion is whether, and how, men need to “butch up” after getting vaginized and soft for a generation and a half. Good heavens, I thought conservative women were docile. What a lot of bitching! You’d think they were liberals!

Actually, I agree with the bitching and think, personally, it’s too little too late. The genuine, dyed-in-the-wool liberal women are the real source of my confusion over this. Their response to the subject at hand, should it be brought up in their presence, is perfectly lock-stepped. Things, here, are just fine. No — scratch that. Liberal women don’t say things are “fine” when the current President is a Republican; it’s like a rule with them, nothing is “fine.” I should say instead, that you’re really stupid if you think things aren’t just fine even though the liberal women won’t actually come out and say “things are fine.” But there are no complaints to be had — or tolerated — here. Men are behaving more-or-less the way the liberal women want them to…and that’s a huge red flag all by itself.

There’s a lot of reading in the four posts above, so rather than excerpt from it all way down toward sea level, I’ll just agree while skimming across the mountaintops that in general, yes something is terribly busted in manhood, perhaps beyond repair. It’s a little meaningless to start debating “What Is A Real Man” since we all know what a real man is: He takes a woman, starts a family, and provides for that family.

Where are we going wrong? First and foremost, I would argue that our problems with quality are derived from issues with quantity:

It wasn’t the life Tara Bailee had in mind. Pregnant at 20, she had to resign herself to growing up quickly and learning about motherhood.

Then, at 36, she became a grandmother.

Her story may sound surprising, but Miss Bailee’s is not an isolated case.

As a result of Britain’s high teenage pregnancy rate – the worst in Europe – many women are becoming accustomed to looking after their grandchildren while still in their thirties – and without any sign of a husband.

The new phenomenon raises questions about the social consequences of generations of children being brought up without fathers.

The story is accompanied by an utterly sickening album of photographs of male-less, multi-generational “families.” I haven’t thoroughly skimmed through it for signs of disgust and frustration from these thirty-something grandmothers, nor have I seen any glimmerings of any of these barely-walking papooses being male. Oh, what a paradigm shift that would be…and since the story is about social consequences, it’s a little strange what it chooses to leave out. It’s pretty heavy on the “It Was Hard” stuff, across multiple stories there’s a consistent dwelling on the financial sacrifice that took place fifteen years ago as the thirty-something grandmother first struggled with single-motherhood. So it’s interesting to me — the fingernail-nibbling about what is now to happen to the newer generation, which has also split with the Dad, is what you’d call on the skimpy side.

We have this tendency over a long term to always do things the left-wing way, and then re-define our “wings” so the goalposts are moved, and it seems we’ve been “centrist.” So as our left-wingers capture the prevailing viewpoint one more time, the contradictory messages involved there confuse me. Men are to be deplored for being so unreliable…in this case, not taking care of their families. Heh. Almost sounds like right-wing Christian fundamentalist stuff there. But — single mothers can raise their kids by themselves “just fine.” Why, if that is the case, are unreliable men to be deplored?

Nevermind, let’s avoid so tastelessly backing these left-wing ideas into the corner. Might make ’em feel bad. Let’s just do everything exactly the way the left-wingers want us to, one more time, so we can find out what demands they want to make of us tomorrow.

But I digress.

The point is, if you are the papoose in a family that has now gone two, three, maybe even more generations without any men…what are you going to think? What if you’re a girl? Or what if — horror of horrors — you’re not? What kind of message does that send you about what your ultimate ambitions should be, and what you are ultimately to become?

I’ve often been perplexed at this dwelling on single mothers having it hard. How it so conventionally fails to morph naturally into a “so don’t become one.” Yes, it’s really hard. And yes, it can be done…you can do a lot of things that don’t make a lot of sense. From what I’ve seen of it, I would compare it to camping, without a tent, in a month with an “R” in it without consulting the weather charts. Yes, you can do it. Yes, you can get through it. But I’ll bet when you get through it you aren’t going to be so quick to do it again. And, should you see your own offspring or anyone else preparing for the same adventure, I would hope out of a sense of human decency you’d try to stop them.

I expect these thirty-something grandmothers, behind closed doors, have had these conversations with their daughters. But the story linked is awfully light about that. Maybe the single mothers have the decency to try to dissuade others from the mistakes they’ve made…but Mail On Sunday reporters do not.

The upshot? As long as there are things that need to be done, that men do, we will always have a definition for “real men.” Whether the blokes come along to fill that role, is another question altogether.

The problem comes up because definitions can be cultural as well as logical, and our cultural definition of “real men” has been up for passionate debate for decades now…during which time, true to form, we let liberals make the decisions and then define their liberal viewpoints to be centrist, so we can find even more liberal dictates and directives to accommodate tomorrow. Something to do with something called “progressive.” In generations past, we were pretty clear about what men did, but our liberals sold us on the idea that spousal abuse was a big part of that package. Now, I’m not old enough to recall the way things were before, say, World War II — but from the information that has come my way, this is a big ol’ bag of moose feces. From reading what was written back then, from talking to older people while they were still around, it seems to me that slapping your wife ’round was highly frowned-upon. The best I can gather is that the conservative viewpoint on “real men” is conservative in the truest sense; it reflects our roots.

Men don’t beat women. They take care of stuff. They do it loudly, or quietly, but one way or t’other they take care of things. Fixing the car, twisting the lid off that jar of pickles. Teaching the boy how to throw the ball. Fixing the porch.

Men who didn’t do these things, in my grandparents’ time, were called “good fer nots” and “ne’er do wells.” These were nebulous terms, by design. They were intended to be imprecise. The guys who just went through life, doing what they wanted, leaving chaos and wreckage behind them were conflated with the fellas who actually broke the law. What was not prohibited by an actual statute, was regulated instead by scorn, and it worked.

Since then, I have a theory about what happened to real men. Yes, I think the one about feminism is right…the feminists said it was oppressive for men to take responsibility for things, and so we accommodated them. That’s true. It’s an unfortunate aspect to human behavior: Someone points out “if we do this that’ll happen, but if we do that this’ll happen” and it seems we move mountains to deny the cause-and-effect being pointed out to us — if someone does some screeching, bellyaching and complaining, we’ll move mountains to do exactly what they want. Feminism is all about complaining. That’s why we do what they want. But I have another theory.

My theory is this:

Parenthood became an activity that you just wouldn’t do, unless you were stupid.

A century and some change ago, a large family was a sign of wealth. You needed to make money to feed it, but because you had it, wealth would surely come your way. People had a natural admiration for you, because your were the patriarch of a large clan. You had to show you had a lot on the ball in order to get that family started. The wife would not become available, until her father determined that the stud was good enough for his little girl…and of course he never was. The foundation of the future family livelihood was always a key issue in the negotiations. The friends of the in-laws would be talking a lot about whatever it was — what are you doing? where did you go to school? were you the valedictorian? got anything lined up? — but the final word went to the father-in-law.

Our feminists decided it was oppressive for fathers to decide what men their daughters would marry, and so they fought for the rights of women to determine their own destinies. By screeching and bitching; and, predictably, we did exactly what they wanted. Unfortunately, another taboo, unstated, set in: It was equally oppressive to assess how good of a job these “brides” were doing at picking out their men. Well the fact of the matter is, if we wanted to elevate the quality of life of our women, the first thing we’d do is reverse course, and put their fathers back in charge of picking their husbands. The evidence is unmistakable. Were we to conduct an even-handed survey on how competent the marriageable girls have been, over the last fifty years, picking out their studs that their daddies were no longer picking for them…were we to be as harsh in such a survey as we are toward the decisions made by young boys…we’d be reaching for the “FAIL” stamp and bringing it down with a mighty whallop. It’s not just mild failure. It is a scathing verdict of failure. They’ve thoroughly bolluxed it up. They’ve ruined their lives, on average, along with the lives of others far more innocent.

The patchwork on the quilt has been more punitive measures to “make” the men provide for their families. At this juncture, feminism ceases to be merely destructive, and begins to contradict itself logically — being a “ne’er do well” had been normalized in our society, and here we were going back to punishing it. This is laughable. It’s a simple matter of logic to say, if nobody needs you, there’s no imperative for you to do anything. Feminism had been all about men being unneeded. Now it was all about making sure those guys who hadn’t been doing anything, were rightfully punished. Which is it?

But the feminists bitched. So okay. Custody was ritually awarded to the mothers, and the fathers paid. It was very seldom referred to as “supporting” a “family”; those terms were always used when the judgments had not yet been rendered, and the reasons were listed as to why the cad should be made to pay. Once that was accomplished terms like “support” and “family” were tossed out. The real agenda was to MAKE MEN PAY. Welfare of the children was a decidedly subordinate issue.

Now, what happens when a man’s children cease to be assets, and start to be liabilities? This is where my theory comes into play. He’ll avoid having them…if he’s smart. And so a disturbing reverse-Darwinism set in here. Smart people — smart men — don’t procreate. Dumb ones do. The smarter men are, the fewer kids they have, and the dumber they are the more they have.

That would be plenty damaging enough. In fact, it has been. In 2008 we’re pretty stupid: We think we can solve the problem of global terrorism by ignoring it. Not only that, but some snake-oil salesmen are telling us the planet will become unsuitable for sustaining life until we agree to some higher taxes at a whole bunch of levels, and it looks like most of us are buying it. Chalk it up to the dumb people having the most kids, after kids have become something only dumb people have. But there’s more. Remember what I said about left-wingers and feminists — we tend to do exactly what they want, over a longer term if not over a short one. So we have a whole bunch of other new conventions. Rules. Proscriptions, allowances, conventions, leanings, flavorings, interdictions. Call them what you will.

The men who are dumb enough to start families, must be friendly, pliable, agreeable, not too happy…kind of stand around waiting for someone to ask them a question, get something done, or leave the room so others can keep secrets from them. As Rachel pointed out, a new set of conventional norms has emerged on the female side and they seem to be directly opposite…

A woman shouldn’t solve man’s problems. This prerogative is male. A man is the one supposed to take care of a woman.
:
A real woman can let herself twist men round her little finger. She may stay mysteriously silent, complain that she’s bored, act stupid or start a passionate scientific argument. Nobody can make a woman answer a question if she doesn’t want to, and nobody can force her explain the reasons for doing/not doing this or that. Acting so capricious and unbalanced is a simple way to get a man attached to a woman. Don’t hesitate to make a man spend as much money on you as he can afford – he will never leave an object of capital investments.

A woman knows her worth, but makes everyone believe she’s priceless…She knows how to make men dance to her tune and she really enjoys it.

Ray Barone A real woman hasn’t grown up yet, and has a head full of what used to be called “attitude problems.” Ah, I know that isn’t the real intent. The real intent is something like: Men are warm flexible rubber, women are cold hard steel.

The rest of it flows pretty naturally once you get the pump primed. Women can do anything; men can get injured and damage property trying to make a bowl of cold cereal. Guys know nothing and women know everything; guys are repentant, although they know not what for, and their gals are constantly fed-up, weary, fatigued, cross, upset, busily making plans to fix what their beau just ruined.

A man is manipulable. A woman manipulates…but we don’t really call it that. In mixed company we avoid that entirely, and when it’s just the girls around we use phrases like “make men dance to her tune and she really enjoys it.”

What keeps this going is dating habits, it seems to me. A man of dating age, young dumb & full o’cum, is like a dog around table scraps. He’ll scarf down just about anything. Girls are more discerning. They don’t know how they want to do this discerning, they only know that they want to do it. When they do it, they tend to do it very poorly — tossing out the good fruit and feasting on the rotten pits. But by and large, women apply standards to men, men do not apply standards to women.

One of the key pillars to feminism, was to take this piece of historic “inequality,” and — relegate it to the dustbin of history? No. Quite to the contrary. Exacerbate the hell out of it. Make it even more unequal. Make women insist on even more things; make men settle for even fewer things. The first target was the “ideal” woman. Barbie was scorned. Those loathsome, oppressive men were to be made to be more accepting — somehow — of more “realistic” body styles.

Like Rush Limbaugh said, it was all about making sure homely women could get dates. Well, he was right.

And then it was all about making sure the single moms could get dates. With single dads? No. That would make way too much sense, and it would involve way too much compromise…remember, men warm pliable rubber, women cold hard steel. Men were held to higher standards — in the body department. And rhythm. Men had to have good bodies and know how to dance, if they wanted to get dates. Intelligence, good judgment, practical skills…no, those weren’t on the list. If those were to be valued commodities, then somewhere down the road someone would have to place a premium on what the man thought needed to be done about something. And we can’t have that, can we?

The female side, during this time, has been going through something of a vicious cycle. Men were thought to be too demanding of sleek, slim female body styles. And so all of society would be pressured to accept a “Cathy” style, something involving less of an hourglass. To be more accepting of women who didn’t exercise. To make women feel good after neglecting their bodies.

It worked, too. Pretty soon, during your weekend peregrinations, you’d start to notice the couples were looking different. The men were tall, broad-shouldered, sleek, and wearing clothes that looked like they were handed down from an even-bigger brother…shirt tails dragging on the ground, “shorts” dangling at the hemline, closer to ankle than knee — as well as at the waistline, showing off plenty of butt crack. Gold chain. Backward baseball cap. Buzz cut. But muscle-bound, and in-shape. The woman with him would look like a pig. Double-chin. Raggedy old sweats. They’d tow around a big old herd of kids, which she had by a previous marriage/relationship, and you heard her tell her extremely athletic Adonis what to do and he’d do it. Then scold him for not doing something else.

Higher standards for the male, lower ones for the female. That’s what feminism was all about.

And so, when the woman gets to be choosy, and she doesn’t know how to choose…the ideal picture that emerges of the chosen ends up being rather hodge-podge and dysfunctional.

Men, such as they now were, had lost a precious gift. That gift was to fulfill the desires of the female, after giving her guidance on what those desires should be. To show her she wanted things, that she didn’t know she wanted until she saw them. Women, we see, once left entirely in charge of figuring out what is to be sought, and given the market-posture strength to demand anything they care to demand, by-and-large do a piss poor job of it. Indiana Jones, the picture of a man who is after something, knows the history behind it, where it is, and can figure out how to triumph over living and inanimate barricades and booby-traps tossed in his way…is relegated to the silver screen. He becomes a work of fiction. In real life, Indy would have as tough a time finding a date as anybody else; maybe even a tougher one. He’d be deemed an inferior specimen, being “cocky,” “arrogant” and “headstrong.” Back at home, these things simply aren’t wanted. When the movie is over and the minivan goes home and it’s time to pile the babies and associated gear out of the minivan, the Lady of the Manor really wants a big dumb guy who’ll do what she tells him to do. Courage…resourcefulness…ingenuity. Pfeh. Whaddya want with any of that.

What happens? Well, the women get bored. A warm gooey Gumby is only an enticing toy for a few minutes or so. When everything around the house is done the way they want it done — there are no challenges. And so they become interested in girl stuff, like for example, fashion. They become obsessed with dieting, since it doesn’t involve exercise. And then they want to know what clothes will look good on them once they get super-thin. The fashion moguls accommodate, put skinnier and skinnier models on parade down the runway.

Cycle complete. Someone notices the models are still thin, and they blame it on the men, as if the men have had so much to say about it.

Nope. Men don’t really decide too much now. They aren’t expected to, let alone allowed to. They decide things on the “All Guy” camping trip, or in the workshop if they’re lucky enough to have one. Or in the toilet room.

It’s a great way to live, if you’re a dog. And in modern times, it seems that’s the way guys are treated. Like dogs. You get ahold of one, you keep it around, you get amused by the funny expressions it makes on its face, you get exasperated when it makes a mess, and when you don’t have time to deal with it you just keep it out of the way. Occasionally you take it for a walk. What the dog thinks should be done about this thing or that thing, well, that doesn’t matter.

It is a cultural prerogative. Men are treated like dogs. And whether they’ve realized it or not, women, and men as well, have been quite accommodating.

I remember reading an article about how fewer people were going to school to get into engineering fields. There was a forum underneath the article, and a member of the fairer sex came on, obviously peeved about something. She opined that there was no point to becoming an engineer, or going into any discipline related to engineering. Essentially, her point was that everything worth inventing or discovering, had already been invented/discovered. She had some advice for the fellas: “Drop out of school, learn to rap, and do your crunches.”

Who pays? Well, the Dagny Taggarts of the world, embarking on what turns into an exquisitely frustrating search all the world over for the Men of the Mind. Dagny becomes piqued, then mystified, then upset — the Men, the Capital-M Men, seem to be gone. Except…and this is exceedingly tragic…in our world of reality, they didn’t pack up and scamper off to Galt’s Gulch in Colorado. They aren’t on strike. They really are gone. Gone, or mostly gone. We made it clear to men that so long as they developed and used their male gifts, they would not be welcome; this was based on bitching and not on cause-and-effect. And so the gentlemen did exactly what was requested of them.

He swings…. THWACK!…. it’s a high one, a high one… it’s …. it’s….. it’s OUTA HERE!
- vanderleun | 05/03/2008 @ 14:47
[…] One Bites the Dust J.R. Dunn on Jimmy Carter Begin, It Has Super Delegates I Made a New Word XVI Where Have All the Real Men Gone? Barracks Ocean Cooling to Briefly Halt Global Warming‏ Big Mac Thesis Iron Man We’ve Been […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 05/04/2008 @ 12:02

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Where Have All the Real Men Gone?Saturday, May 3rd, 2008

Where Have All the Real Men Gone?
Saturday, May 3rd, 2008