Upon losing 22 followers


The issue comes down to the rights of the whole as opposed to the rights of the parts, but in much of the Western world, we’ve concluded that the two are inseparable. But what does this have to do with my last post? 

Sluttiness is a form of destructive individualism. It passes itself off as free speech, but what value does it add to any discourse? It’s instead nihilistic, its particular statement being that I live in the mud, so won’t you join me? It is born of depravity and seeks to make the unthinkable commonplace until there is no place left to descend. Is this what we want for our children? Did all those people who dropped my blog truly believe that the evil lies within me rather than with the women whose photographs I posted? Do they really favor a society whose only standard of decency is tolerance for everyone except those who, like myself, argue that if no limits are placed upon tolerance, the result is a fall to the bottom because nothing is unthinkable once the public gets used to it? In Rome, people were murdered for entertainment; in Europe, they were burned at the stake; in America, indigenous peoples were shot for target practice. Such is the proclivity of our species for evil. Yet, we in the modern West somehow imagine that we’ve outstripped every people of every era in terms of civilized values and behaviors, and so, for us, it’s ever upward and onward, but does such “freedom” as I depicted look “upward” to you? The following words are from the first amendment to the Bill of Rights:

“Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech…”

Do you imagine that the writers defined freedom as indecency, vulgarity, and profanity, and that their vision for America was that it be a place where people could, without censure, say, do, and look anyway they pleased, and be respected for it in the name of  “women’s right,” “honoring diversity,” and so forth; and that anyone who doesn’t respect them deserves condemnation for being intolerant, intolerance being the only sin that America has left? What most people define as tolerance, I regard as nothing more than a non-standard by which any indecency is acceptable without anyone being held accountable.

Whatever became of words like honor and dignity? Margaret Deland and Phillips Brooks, moral spokespeople for the late 19th century, put a constant emphasis on facing life’s challenges with virtue, and freely embraced such terms as “manly” and “good woman,” manly and good, that is, in the sense of caring for others, being honest even when the cost was high, and bearing life’s hurts with dignity. In short, being honorable. When is the last time you heard anyone speak of honor, and who do you regard as possessing dignity? We have become a society that lives in filth and triviality, but we don’t call it that. Instead, we refer to it with pride as freedom and individuality. Who are the moral spokespeople of today; that is, who represents what you would want yourself or your children to be—Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Caitlin Jenner, Kim Kardashian, Bernie Sanders? Anyone?

After losing those 22 followers, I can but wonder how my standards can be so despised that looking like the women in my last post is presumably acceptable but calling them what I believe them to be is considered that worst sin of all—intolerance, and we all know that a truly tolerant society cannot  tolerate intolerance because to take intolerance seriously would force us to examine our standards and, perhaps, ask ourselves how deep into the mud we want to slide. Oh but the mud is so smooth, so warm, so unresisting. No one need struggle if their goal is to wallow in the mud, except, that is, against those who tell them they’re wrong. 


Label me sexist, and you need not consider what I have to say. No matter that my criticisms of nearly all men were far more scathing than my criticisms of certain women, “hating” men is politically correct, but “hating” women, why that’s like “hating” Moslems or black people, groups that are beyond criticism no matter how much evil they collectively do. Ah, but then there are those other groups—white males, old people, ranchers, loggers, white Southerners, Christians, atheists (most of all atheists) Republicans, and anyone else who can be identified overtly or through “micro-aggressions”*  as reactionaries, intolerant haters, or out of the mainstream. They are wrong simply because they exist; and every tolerant person knows that there can be no tolerance for those who, by their very nature, swim against the current.

*From Wikipedia: "Psychologist Derald Wing Sue defines microaggressions as 'brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their group membership.' Sue describes microaggressions as generally happening below the level of awareness of well-intentioned members of the dominant culture."

Are bad boys simply boys, and bad girls sluts?



A blog friend and I were discussing the appearance choices (clothing, tattoos, piercings, hairstyles) of alternativly minded people when she wrote:  “My back is up by the insistence of the word ‘slutty’—you cant be seriously telling me you meant that to apply to both male and females surely?”

First, I will only admit to being sexist inasmuch as I regard women as more moral than men due to the fact that evolution made it desirable for males to impregnate every woman in sight, and for females to find a safe environment in which to raise their precious few eggs. Because the male impulse is detrimental to a stable society, it would clearly be for the common good if men were more like women. It would also save countless male politicians and preachers from losing their jobs.

Second, I refuse to avoid gender-specific criticisms simply because they are gender specific and therefore don’t fit the current definition of how I am to think if I value gender equality. We all have a general idea of what slutty dress and behavior look like, and that both are specific to women (sleazy has a somewhat similar meaning and can apply to both genders). Because appearance and body language represent a profound statement of whom we are, I would argue that slutty is an accurate description rather than a sexist insult.
Third, I don’t see the word slut as deprecating of women but only of those women who dishonor womanhood. Manhood should mean more than testicles, and womanhood should mean more that presenting oneself as a likely object with which to have intercourse. I realize that women who present themselves as sluts sometimes do so falsely, whether through naiveté or because they find gratification in watching men slobber, but this doesn’t negate my point. For a woman to dress and behave in a sexually suggestive way constitutes a negative statement about her self-worth whether or not shes promiscuous.

Until the advent of the birth control pill, women were the guardians of morality because they were the ones who had the most to lose due to pregnancy; hence words like whore and slut applied to them alone. As a result of the pill, the expectation that women take the lead in guarding morality has been greatly lowered, yet it is still true that men behave like so many bower birds in their desperation to win the favor of females. Men simply don’t need to send permissive signals by the way they dress because the term “permissive male” is all but redundant. The same is not true of women, so women of questionable character always have and always will find it desirable to signal their availability. 
 
If a woman wants to excite a man, she need only display her thighs and cleavage, but if she wants to win his respect, she needs to be his moral superior because, to put in bluntly, evolution made mento continue with my critters analogieslike so many dogs in the gutter (which is why both genders are hard-pressed to sell sex to anyone but men). On this, I would assume that many of those who insist on complete gender equality would agree because theirs is not an equality that cuts both ways, but rather a veneer over their hatred of men. As I see it, equality must take differences into accountthe rub is in determining what differences. Does this not mean that I too hate men? No, I hate it that the power of testosterone is so enormousand so beyond the understanding of womenthat it leads men to be as promiscuous as I have been.  

"The time I’ve lost in wooing,
In watching and pursuing
The light, that lies
In woman’s eyes,
Has been my heart’s undoing.
Though Wisdom oft has sought me,
I scorn’d the lore she brought me,
My only books
Were woman’s looks,
And folly’s all they’ve taught me."
Thomas Moore 1779-1852)

Two other things make it necessary that women assume greater moral responsibility and therefore deserve greater condemnation if they fail to do so. One is that young men, at least, live in such an intense state of sexual arousal that it qualifies as torture, while women have to build into arousal. The other is that women suffer more severe consequences from herpes and pelvic inflammatory disease. It therefore makes sense that, even with the pill, a double standard not only continues to exist, but that it is proper for it to exist because, to repeat myself: (a) women have the most to lose, and (b) women are better able to say no.

Margaret Deland had much to say about gender issues, and they are completely congruent with my own experiences. The following sampler is from her novelette “Amelia,” which appeared in her book Dr. Lavendar’s People in 1903.

“… the companionship of an eminently worthy wife is almost never enough for the male creature.”

“…as every intelligent…woman knows, men like fools; feminine fools.”

“…a man wants more than to just look at a pretty girl across the table.”

“…the male creature, good and honest and faithful as he may be, is at heart a Mormon.”

I have attempted to show why I think it behooves women to put their emphasis on attractiveness rather than sexuality. Even so, there is lot of ground between, on the one hand, taking the position that gender-based realities don’t exist, and, on the other, arguing, as do millions of Moslems, that women are fire and men are gasoline, and women must therefore cover themselves from head to foot so that poor, desperate horny men wont be forced to rape them. 

The worst thing I can say about what I regard as slutty dress and behavior isn’t how it affects men but what it says about women. For a woman to present sexuality as her dominant visual statement about herself is to imply that her existence is a triviality. In the early days of modern feminism, women who presented themselves as “sex objects” (the term used at the time) were severely condemned by the feminist community, so how is it that we went from that to the current belief that such dress and behavior are not only consistent with equality, they are equality, the result being that people like myself whose views were once consistent with feminism are now labeled as sexist because we dont agree that behaving like a dog in heat is a noble endeavor?
A movement’s high ideals can quickly degenerate for various reasons. For instance, there might have been a loss of strong leadership; or an absence of focus and clarity once a movement’s primary goals were achieved; or the movement’s original values might have become the status quo; or those too young to remember how hard it was to achieve those goals might take them for granted. So it is that, in my lifetime, Civil Rights and feminism have become trivialized; the demand for freedom of expression has become the tyranny of political correctness; and the Peace Movement has fallen off the radar. When such weakening occurs, superficiality becomes the order of the day; goals that were once considered unworthy are that’s left; and behaviors that were once unthinkable become acceptable. Deland (1857-1945) saw all of this coming, and grieved for the growing social fragmentation of the 20th century, a fragmentation that she recognized as an unintended consequence of what started as the movement for women’s suffrage. The trouble of ridding society of negative values is that positive values can also be lost in the change.

Who should die for whom?


As a teenager, I often daydreamed of dying for one pretty girl or another by pushing her from the path of a speeding car. I would breathe my last while her tears fell upon my face like angelic anointment. I later joined the Masons, and had to swear that I would risk my life to save a fellow Mason if the odds of my survival were at least 50%.

I have no doubt that I would die for Peggy, but when I asked Peggy if she would die for me, she said she didn’t know, and I said I wouldn’t want her to. This isn’t about, “If you love me, you’ll die for me,” but about a man’s obligation to give his life for his family by virtue of the fact that he is a man, and although he would be grievously opposed to them doing the same.

You might ask how I can be so sure I would die for Peggy. I have several reasons. One is that it’s my responsibility as her husband. Another is that my life would be hell if I were to outlive her. A third is that if I saved my life at the loss of hers, I would be overwhelmed by self-hatred. The fourth is that she would deserve it by virtue of her goodness. You might ask if I too am not good, and I would answer yes, but that I receive Peggy’s devotion in different ways, which I’ll go into in a moment.

I’m touched when I reflect upon that frigid night in 1912 when the men of the Titanic drowned in order to save the women. Surely, many of those men opposed suffrage and considered women their physical and mental inferiors, so what was it about women that they so valued that they were willing to die for them? I believe their behavior was a product of their gender. What this means in regard to my relationship with Peggy is that nature didn’t create in her a feeling of obligation to die for me, but this shouldn’t be taken to mean that she loves me less—not that I would care if she did, unless the imbalance was significant. 

Here is what I know about Peggy. If, in order to save my life, she had to give-up everything she owns and spend the rest of her days nursing me, she would, partly out of love and partly out of duty. If, instead of her doing these things for me, I were called upon to do them for her, I would regard it as a far greater challenge than merely dying outright. It is generally the case that men simply aren’t well equipped to provide years of care to a spouse whose decline is continuous and inexorable. We are fixers rather than caretakers, and nothing alarms us more than being helpless where our wives are concerned, yet where nobility exists, it surely involves ongoing sacrifice rather than a speedy death.

Back to the Titanic. I wouldn’t face certain death to save a woman I didn’t know, but to pretend to be a woman in order to get into a lifeboat would be to choose survival at the cost of dishonesty and humiliation. Yesterday, I read a sentence by Margaret Deland that seems relevant to this monologue if one substitutes the word survival for happiness:

“…it seemed to her than no one, for his happiness, had a right to do a thing which would injure an ideal by which the rest of us live.”

I can think of exceptions to her statement, but it is certainly true that the ideals of one’s society should not to be dismissed so lightly as I have often done. It is my hope that men and women never become so “equal” that men forget they are men, and women forget they are women, but I fear that is where political correctness would have us go. For instance, as of last month, American women can  assume any combat position that is open to a man.

I recently learned of a pitbull attack in Canada in which the husband locked himself in their bedroom while his wife was mauled by two dogs in the living room.* Is it conceivable that the demand for gender equality has overturned two-million years of evolution and made male cowardice acceptable? Surely, it would be preferable to die by her side than to listen to one’s wife scream while doing nothing to save her. I can’t conceive of a man, who is worthy of being called a man, who would be other than horrified by the thought of his wife facing almost certain death to protect him, yet I can’t conceive of a man, who is worthy of being called a man, who would choose to live if it meant letting his wife die alone, even if there was only one chance out of a million of saving her. If I were to fail in this, it would be to pronounce my very existence a mistake.

I don’t know the extent to which the word honor can be applied to the actions of the majority of men on the Titanic since they were but obeying a societal demand that was itself based upon an evolutionary impulse, but I’m quite sure that dishonor applies to those who saved themselves by pretending to be women.

Manhood and womanhood involve more than physical differences, although this seems to appear anything but obvious to many. While it is true that men can nurture and women can protect, there are significant and unalterable gender-related differences in emphasis and manner. I can even see this in the way Peggy and I parent our cats. It’s not that I’m less nurturing or she’s less protective, but that the ways we undertake our roles are as apparent today as they were in our childhoods when she changed the clothes on her Patti Playpal doll and I shot bad guys with my Roy Rogers’ cap pistol. No amount of political correctness can make men and women the same, but it can make them dishonest, confused, and cowardly.

*Later reports gave a different story, but the truth of what occurred in a specific instance doesn’t invalidate my concern.