The most disgusting post on Twitter among a whole library of disgusting posts created by the largely insane freaks who inhabit that archipelago of the Internet was a picture of a hulking guy in a dress, boasting of his achievement as a transsexual, of scaring a woman into turning around and leaving the bathroom almost the minute that she (most likely a genuine XX female) walked in and spotted she/him/shim/it immediately, unconvincingly masquerading as a delicate flower of femininity.
What Hulking Guy In A Dress didn’t know, or perhaps really didn’t care, so eager was he to count coup in the Trans Sweepstakes and make a harvest of likes on Twitter, was that his presence as a Hulking Guy In An Empty Room sent every antenna warning of danger vibrating like one of those sensors around the Pacific ocean which send out tsunami warnings after an earthquake. This acute sense of danger has been instilled for decades into every sensible woman over the age of fifteen or so that there are situations which you turn around and avoid if you value your life, physical health, and sanity. You do not get into an elevator alone if there is a lone man already in it especially a fit-looking and vaguely menacing man. (Male senior citizens toting an oxygen tank are probably OK, though.) You do not walk out alone to your car in a darkened parking lot or structure at midnight, not without your having store security or a gaggle of co-workers walk with you, or you are carrying something concealed of a caliber starting with the numeral 4. You do not hitchhike wearing Daisy Dukes and a crop-top, unless you really want to personally discover some weird and probably fatal (to you) sexual kinks on the part of the sickos offering you a ride.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, although probably not in Hollywood, that generally women are smaller and not as strong as men although there are individual exceptions. We are physically vulnerable when it comes to a contest of strength with a male. Women fight dirtier than men because we must, not having the advantage of size and strength, as the great Kipling observed. Especially when it comes to the young of our species. Since women generally do not have the size and strength to go toe-to-toe on equal terms physically, it makes a degree of logical good sense to have things like … I don’t know separate female spaces, as a matter of physical safety. Separate bathrooms, hospital wards, sports leagues, spas, military training facilities, changing areas and locker rooms yes, even separate prisons and shelters for the maritally or extra-maritally battered. There are male predators out there, people; something that modern capital-F establishment feminists believed as a matter of holy writ. Now in hindsight, it seems that Betty Friedan, Kate Millett and their ilk were only a bunch of over-privileged, leisure-class neurotics justifying their personal misery by taking up a metaphorical lance and jousting at the misogynist windmills of their fevered imaginations.
A large segment of their pseudo-intellectual descendants in this decade are even less genuine in their concern for real-world-no-kidding-actual-XX-females, having given up that stream of partisan support in favor of championing biological males who claim for various reasons, to “identify” as a woman, and thus to demand courtesy and access to previously-female-only spaces, as listed above. Those surviving and indignant old-form feminists (such as myself) who were only after having equal pay for the same job, and equal access to credit, employment and education, and who are now resentful of having those female spaces invaded by hulking guys unconvincingly wearing dresses, inexpertly-applied makeup, and long hair are tarred with the disparaging epithet of “TERF”. It is a sadly amusing spectacle, watching the turns and twists.
As a footnote, I have wondered for the last couple of years why drag queens males who perform grotesquely exaggerated pantomimes of women for the amusement of an audience aren’t considered in the same light as black-face minstrels; white entertainers who perform, dressed as and in exaggerated makeup as “black” for the amusement of an audience. Why is the first acceptable, and the second disgraceful? Discuss as you wish.
I remember the Tooter the Turtle cartoons, where Tooter would beg Mr. Wizard, a lizard with a thick German accent to turn him into a fighter pilot, a train engineer, a fireman, whatever he wanted to be at the moment. He would fail spectacularly, and as his plane would be spiraling down, he would scream, ” Help me Mr. Wizard, I don’t wanna be a fighter pilot anymore”!
After saving Tooter’s bacon, Mr.Wizard would say, ” Tooter, Tooter, how many times must I tell you, be vat you ist, und not vat you ist not, folks vat do dis ist der happiest lot “.
We seem to be living in an era of Tooter’s, that want magically to be something other than what they are, and have that wish recognized as reality, by everyone else. I think the world would be a better place, if people would pay more attention to German lizards.
I know – and it’s sad, really. Be what you are, even if you are a little off-beat, not conforming, Odd. Take pride and satisfaction in what you are, instead of thinking that the grass is greener over the sexual-identity fence, and going there will solve all of your (mostly self-inflicted) problems.
Sgt Mom: “Those surviving and indignant old-form feminists (such as myself) who were only after having equal pay for the same job, and equal access to credit, employment and education …”
I salute you for your beliefs, Sgt Mom, but I think you were in a great minority. Lots of women saw “Equal Opportunity” as meaning active discrimination in favor of women, whether they had earned it or not. It is not much discussed in polite company, but it is clear that the focus in government, academia, and many businesses switched from promoting the best person for the job to promoting the best woman for the job. This has contributed to the tide of mediocrity which is washing over our society.
One example of the consequences of that mediocrity is that never before in human history have so many of the global “Leadership Class” been female (from Moldova to Finland to UK to US) — and they have brought us to the brink of nuclear annihilation. Or take a totally trivial example like local TV news — how difficult is it for a male to get a job there as anything other than the weather girl?
The feminist-derived bias against males has had many consequences for our society — most of them not good. Posturing transgenders may be only one of those unfortunate consequences.
I happen to be an individual who understands the ‘Transgender Issue’ better than the Transgender activists themselves. I won’t enunciate the reasons here. The real issue for most trans people is a lack of accommodation by society of some variations of masculinity. Other so called activists are just political opportunists.
You say “martially or extra-martially battered.” I’m pretty sure you meant marital, not martial.
Though the abuse of women has long been an act committed by conquering armies, probably since warfare began. The capture of women has even sometimes been the whole reason for war in some societies.
It’s quite explicit in leftism that man (in the non-gender meaning of “all mankind”) will be free when all institutions that constrain the individual from achieving his or her own unique individual potential are obliterated. The family is the most fundamental such constraining institution, and gender roles that are built into it are a primary target of leftist lunatics.
“It’s quite explicit in leftism that man (in the non-gender meaning of “all mankind”) will be free when all institutions that constrain the individual from achieving his or her own unique individual potential are obliterated. The family is the most fundamental such constraining institution, and gender roles that are built into it are a primary target of leftist lunatics.”
Yet these same people want to increase the power of institutions–governments and universities in particular–to ‘manage’ people in ways that were left to the family, the community, or the individual themselves. And inculcating a sense of reverence for those institutions.
Turning Gemeinschaften into Gesellschaft and Gesellschaften into Gemeinschaften, to perhaps abuse the terms a bit.
The problem with that leftoid idea about “breaking the constraints” on the individual is twofold: On the one hand, most of their other ideas are objectively collectivist/conformist, and they’re merely wanting to substitute their own “new and better” ideas for the old. You see how that works out, with regards to modern feminism–I seriously doubt that you could discern a net increase in happiness for women in general, under the “new and better” regime.
The other half of the twofold is this: No matter how you slice it, you’re born into a web of existing debts and obligations. Someone, somewhere, changed your diapers and fed you while you figured out what foot went in front of another. Still more people went out of their way to protect, nurture, and teach you the ways of the world. You can’t get around that fact, and because of it, you can’t simply renege on the implied contract. Yes, nobody asked you about any of that, but the raw fact is that you’re in the same situation as every other human being that made it to adulthood. You were brought to that point “on spec”, so to speak, so you’re obligated to return the favor, pay it all onward.
Notwithstanding all the cases of child abuse and so forth… Those are different situations. I’m speaking to the norms, the vast middle where things weren’t so bad for people coming up.
You may not like it, but the unavoidable fact is, you’re both owed and owing. The left wants to dissolve that implied contract, on the theory that they “know better” than a common society built on literal millennia of practical experience and sheer trial-and-error. Frankly, I think that an excellent case could be made for most leftists being arrested children who refuse to grow up.
The other thing which is implied by all of this is the fact that one should exercise caution in modifying existing social structures and traditions; they did not get to be what they are due to some vast patriarchal conspiracy or because someone arbitrarily decided to do things that way at some point in the past. The grand sieve of history winnowed out any “ways which did not work”, and what we have around us is that which did, for a given value of “worked”. The underlying conditions that influenced all of that may have changed somewhat, but the headlong fashion with which we’ve gone ahead to make social changes because of these underlying conditions that have temporarily shifted…? Way, way too fast. We behave as though our species sexual dimorphism makes no real difference, but we’re still sexually dimorphic, and the underlying conditions are really no different than they were a few thousand years ago, it’s just that we’ve managed to fix some aspects of health care and childbirth. There’s a long, long way to go before we’re effectively not actually dimorphic any more…
“Yet these same people want to increase the power of institutions–governments and universities in particular–to ‘manage’ people”
Yes, the “theory” is that the government, led by the enlightened few, must obliterate all the other institutions, murder/”re-educate” all dissidents, etc., and THEN we’ll have paradise on earth and the government can just melt away.
It’s total barking madness, of course, and in practice just means writing a blank check for the most savage psychopaths to rise to the top and do literally anything, because it’s “the greater good” at stake, and the most vehement opposition is just proof that more brutal tactics are required…
I don’t disagree with the post, but just wanted to point out that researchers also use twitter to share preprint info and get feedback. It is now a big deal in many fields as the peer-review system, so appropriate until about 1990 and diminishing since then because of sheer volume, has broken down.
Honestly, I wouldn’t have a problem with a genuine transsexual in the ladies room or anywhere else, as they are such a numerically tiny number of the general population. Hey look, present convincingly as male or female, mind your own business and wash your hands afterwards. It’s the predators and pervs, using the excuse of being trans, and the strident activists that enable their access, and scare the h*ll out of ordinary people for even objecting — that’s what infuriates me about all this.
I think the percentage of predators and pervs who would be enabled by these policies is rather higher than the activists really want to admit or acknowledge. The perv in Loudon County is typical of the ilk, much as the activists would want to deny that fact.
Predators go where the victims are, and they’ll pretty much do anything they need to in order to gain access and mask themselves. It’s very much akin to the way they’ll gravitate towards “working with children”, which is now something that automatically raises my hackles whenever I hear some adult say that. The only adults I’ve ever run into who said things like that, and who didn’t creep me right the hell out were Down’s Syndrome folks, and I completely understand where they’re coming from, in that kids generally don’t judge them on appearances.
I’m coming around to the idea that just about everything on the left with regards to sex and sexuality has a subtext of enabling predators and perverts. Especially the powerful ones who mouth all the sweet-sounding words they use about it all. And, when you look into these people’s private lives, it’s like you always find a flippin’ horror show of depravity, vice, and exploitation of the weak. That’s what it’s all about, really–Enabling them to get at the prey, cover their tracks, and go on to victimize as many as they can. That’s the whole of it, from Teddy Kennedy on down–Mary Jo Kopechne was first and foremost a victim of Teddy’s sexual lust and proclivities. He wasn’t driving her home with neutral intent; he meant to get laid that night, and she likely would have filled his needs, one way or another. I rather suspect that if he hadn’t driven the car off the road that night, she’d have likely been sexually assaulted one way or another. He was a Kennedy, after all…
“Predators go where the victims are, and they’ll pretty much do anything they need to in order to gain access and mask themselves.”
Jimmy Savile comes to mind. He had all the earthly authorities fooled, too.
” The capture of women has even sometimes been the whole reason for war in some societies” — Dave L.
Some years back I found myself wondering what would compel young men to desire to go to war.
My take — geneticists tell us that women are twice as likely to satisfy their biological imperative. About 80% of women and 40% of men reproduce. Going back to the cave man, women have shown that they will often prefer to be the third or fourth wife of a man who can provide for and defend them rather than being the only woman of a man without resources. Imagine being an incredibly horny teenage man without any resources, without a woman with whom to share his sexual desires and without any prospects for improving his miserable state in his own village.
Easy to see how these young men would look favorably on the military plans of someone who pointed out that the village across the river or over the ridge has both women and stuff. Let’s go kill them and take their women and their stuff for ourselves. What is there to lose?
@Korora,
Jimmy Savile is a troubling case, with a lot of really bizarre details once you look into it. He was so brazen, so open about what he was doing that you’re left wondering how on earth he got away with it.
At least, by some tellings of it all, today. He still has his defenders, believe it or not… You go deep enough into the mire, and you’re left entirely unsure of what the hell was really going on, and you have to either accept that authorities knew and left him alone, or they were incredibly stupid and incompetent. Or, both… Who the hell really knows, from what we know as observers? Take Michael Jackson’s case as another example… Did he, or didn’t he?
We’ve had numerous examples of how all this sort of thing can go severely wrong–McMartin Preschool case, the one here locally where they were accusing the local Pentecostal church of so much bizarre crap, none of which was even physically possible.
End of the day, things like the accusations against Savile and all the rest are things that the average person has a lot of difficulty working out the reality thereof. You can go very, very wrong trusting the authorities in either direction, and nothing that makes the press can be trusted at all. I don’t doubt that there was something going on with Savile, but what it was and the extent it was going on? I have no idea.
I do know that the allegations about Arthur C. Clarke are at least somewhat credible, which I learned the hard way from talking to a Sri Lankan gentleman who thought all Westerners were sexual deviants, and was puzzled at the lack of demonstrated deviancy he saw in our military camps there in Kuwait among the troops. Got to talking to him, and he related tales of all the varied and sundry sex tourists that Sri Lanka had played host to, and he mentioned a “famous author” he knew of personally, having observed him in action picking up young men on a beach near his home. He didn’t know the name, but when I dug up a picture of Clarke and showed it to him, he was utterly certain and very confident that I was showing him the guy he knew of and had witnessed. Clarke had a well-known reputation as someone who’d pick up and take in young men and boys who were without family situations, take them home, sexually use them, and then discard them–Or, so I was told. I found it really compelling that the guy telling me this didn’t know who Clarke was, past his identity as a “famous author” that “everyone” knew of and avoided around his home town… Having had that experience, I think I know why Clarke left England and remained in Sri Lanka the way he did. It wasn’t just the tropical climate and spicy cuisine.
It was an interesting way to find that whole sordid thing out, though. The legacy left in the Third World by Western sex tourists is one we’re just going to have to live with, I’m afraid.
I have read that many Italian soldiers in the invasion of Ethiopia looked forward to coming home with Ethiopian wives…don’t know if it’s true, but it so, at least it demonstrated a certain lack of race prejudice on their part.
Kirk,
From what I have heard through various grapevines was that he left England so as not to face charges of screwing a teen age boy. Even though I do like quite a few of his books, watching him do live shows about Apollo missions with Wally Schirra back from 1969 to 1972 creeped me out, long before I knew anything about his sexual proclivities.
Clarke strikes me as another Marion Zimmer Bradley/Walter Breen type. It’s unfortunate that science fiction/fantasy genres seem to attract some really weird and strange individuals, ones whose work can’t ever make up for their conduct. Feet of clay, and all that.
It’s quite explicit in leftism that man (in the non-gender meaning of “all mankind”) will be free when all institutions that constrain the individual from achieving his or her own unique individual potential are obliterated.
Nothing says “unconstrained” like the fundamentalist Church of Woke.
It astounds me when I see/hear/read about people who believe that lock-step conformity with its dogmas validates their status as “free-thinkers” – and justifies the coerced imposition of that conformity on everyone else.
“Jimmy Savile is a troubling case, with a lot of really bizarre details once you look into it. He was so brazen, so open about what he was doing that you’re left wondering how on earth he got away with it.”
Harvey Weinstein. Jeffrey Epstein. Marc Dutroux. There’s some truly demonic stuff going down in the corridors of power.
They “get away with it” because they’re normal in that world. Someone makes a wrong step and they have to be dealt with, but the system must be protected. Notice how absolutely no one is looking into Epstein and Maxwell’s “clients” anymore?
I’d have more sympathy if male-only spaces hadn’t already been destroyed by the same folk. It sucks when you’re the last one facing the crocodile.
Don’t like men in the woman’s bathroom? How about getting rid of the female reporters in the men’s locker room, then we’ll talk.
Physical privacy in bathrooms and changing rooms is every bit as important as physical “safety.” Many women are embarrassed and inhibited by the presence of men in women’s collective private areas, and it shows our society’s growing immaturity that we feel we have to justify this need for privacy by fear of rape or violence. Many women would not feel comfortable with the most mild of men in their collective private spaces so it is unfair to, yet again, blame “toxic” masculinity.
I had always wondered why, in some of his near-future SF (Imperial Earth comes to mind), Arthur C. Clarke seemed compelled to include a passing mention of the brutal destruction of Israel in war, always seemingly unrelated to the story. Now I have a funny feeling that it might be due to some bad personal experiences there, possibly related to an awkward discovery that, unlike many other small countries in Asia, Israel is not hospitable to sex tourism. Or maybe he just resented the Jews for being the starting point of all the religions he resented. Just saying.
OK, up on my hobbyhorse:
But, don’t you understand that all people are exactly the same, and interchangeable, and therefore there is no need for any individual rights?
Down off of horse. I’ll shut up now.
Or maybe he just resented the Jews for being the starting point of all the religions he resented. Just saying
His last few books did show some puzzling sympathy to Islam given his enmity to organized religion and his sexual preferences.
It’s quite explicit in leftism that man (in the non-gender meaning of “all mankind”) will be free when all institutions that constrain the individual from achieving his or her own unique individual potential are obliterated.
And yet the leftist program always involves the imposition of new institutions that radically constrain the individual.
Now I have a funny feeling that it might be due to some bad personal experiences there, possibly related to an awkward discovery that, unlike many other small countries in Asia, Israel is not hospitable to sex tourism. Or maybe he just resented the Jews for being the starting point of all the religions he resented.
Or both? I have read that one reason many Brits favored Arabs over Jews was indeed sex tourism. Jews had an off-putting tendency to say not just “no” but “Hell, no”.
Does all this sturm and drang mean that I can declare as a female, and then get Affirmative Action or Equal Employment Opportunity to stand behind me and insure that I get the promotion?
Actually out the workforce for decades, but, my whole working career was to be ‘put in line’ behind EEO and AA various and sundry constructs that basically assigned promotions without need of merit.
I know as a supervisor of a gaggle of GS-7 pay clerks, it was unwritten that the black female was ‘next in line’ for the promotion when there was a better qualified male who would be shoved aside to ‘meet the quota.’ The promoted one was on the ladder with that one job, and moved on to bigger and better based upon melanin and genes. She did OK, but the other candidate would have done a better job, IMO.
Gee, has anyone ever actually read the Koran? It’s a master-class work of enablement/justification for self-gratification and depravity. Islam isn’t about putting restraints on the worst impulses of mankind, the way Judaism and Christianity at least pay lip service to; it’s more about making giving into those impulses completely justifiable and wholesome.
No other major religious faith in the world has as one of it’s major touchstones the idea that it is not only permissible to lie, but positively encouraged, when in “service of the faith”. I’ve shut up several Islamic proselytes by pointing that out, and then sweetly asking who is enshrined in the Koran as the “Father of Lies”. Makes you wonder just who it was that was whispering to their prophet in that cave…
“who is enshrined in the Koran as the “Father of Lies”. Makes you wonder just who it was that was whispering to their prophet in that cave”¦”
Careful, that’s the exact meandering that got Rushdie fatwa’d lol
Re blackface and drag queens: My sense is that drag queens essentially pay homage to femininity and women. As Camille Paglia argued, they are trying to capture female sexual power by dressing and acting, in ways that fool nobody and aren’t intended to, like actual women. Many women find them entertaining; I don’t think many women are offended by them. OTOH, many people are offended by white performers in blackface makeup as trading on demeaning white stereotypes of black people. The black minstrel as portrayed in entertainments aimed at whites was an entertaining character but probably not a respected one. So the drag/blackface parallel doesn’t work.
Jonathan: That doesn’t hold water.
Drag is clearly mocking feminity. Men who aren’t trying to look like women, and are performing grossly exaggerated stereotypical feminine behavior for laughs, and women are not at all the traditional audience. It’s gay men laughing at other gay men aping women.
Camille Paglia clearly is not a disinterested analyst.
Which is perfectly analogous to the “blackface” objections you mention–minstrel shows, etc.
And the current hysteria has expanded blackface to mean everything from that to Orson Welles playing Othello, which clearly wasn’t any sort of offensive act of racial ridicule.
The commonality is that the out group is allowed to mock the in group, not vice versa. Gay men are below women, so they can do drag, and whites are above blacks, so they can’t do blackface.
Regarding drag vs minstrel show:
First, women are not excluded from performing, whereas blacks were.
Second, part of the entertainment of drag is the quality of the impersonation, or the absurdity of its failure. Blackface performers did not even try to look like real blacks, but neither did they allow their actual race to show through to comic effect.
Third, “minstrels” were the only permitted portrayal of blacks on the stage.
Fourth, many drag personas are aggressive, even dominating personalities: e.g. Tyler Perry’s “Madea”. Blackface characters were submissive: “happy darkies on the old plantation”.
Well stated. It wasn’t until I was around 30 that I realized that women inhabit a more dangerous daily world than men. It was a moment of revelation, somehow it had never occurred to me before.
“It wasn’t until I was around 30 that I realized that women inhabit a more dangerous daily world than men.”
Yeah. No.
Go take a look at the difference between workplace mortality rates for men and women, and then try to convince anyone that women “inhabit a more dangerous daily world”. They don’t. Women are, in general, the beneficiaries of male sacrifice throughout their lives, not just when the boat starts sinking and it’s “women and children first”.
Ever wonder why women statistically outlive men? Has a lot to do with that little fact about workplace mortality–Not to mention, all the way back to the womb, male fetuses are at higher risk for neonatal problems, often resulting in miscarriage.
Women do not “inhabit a more dangerous daily world than men”; they inhabit a far safer one, in many ways. Most men will go to the aid of a woman, while standing by and watching another male get the crap beaten out of him. Try being a male and yelling “Rape”; see what happens. Ain’t nobody coming to your aid.
I will not argue that women aren’t at a higher risk of being assaulted and abused by a stronger male, in edge cases, and that they may feel more at risk because of that. However, comma, the stats tell the more accurate tale–Men are typically going to be doing riskier jobs, and living shorter lives than the women they support. Nobody ever talks about the guy who works himself to death to support the wife and kids–That’s just an expectation. Hell, look at that mechanic who was just in the news for having his survivors sue the owner of the car that killed him, rather than the idiot co-worker that didn’t know how to drive stick, or the dealership who hired him. Remind me again how many women die every day from causes like that…?
They may feel more threatened, more endangered, but I hate to have to point this out to you–The reality is way, way different. More men die at work every day than women are ever likely to, because instead of being the guy running the loader down at the gravel pit, the women are more likely to be in the office doing the bookkeeping for the pit. Kinda hard to get killed by a mechanical failure causing a rollover in that poorly-maintained loader when you’re never in the thing in the first place…
Hmm, maybe there was a consequence to vilifying men for 50 years and going, while establishing a hypocritical and punitive standard of “equality” that established favorable and preferential treatment for half the population.
similarly,
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/05/06/exclusive-gov-youngkin-orders-virginia-state-police-to-monitor-protests-at-scotus-justices-homes-assist-if-necessary/
Women do not “inhabit a more dangerous daily world than men”; they inhabit a far safer one, in many ways.
This is true of modern societies. In the Middle Ages, women were chronically anemic because of menstruation and not enough meat eating. Childbirth was, of course, a dangerous experience. The era of risk for women inspired the chivalry of history. The 20th century changed all this but the treatment of women by men persisted until quite recently. Now we see unjustified bias in favor of women and mistreatment of men, especially white men. I suspect that will slowly shift as merit remains important. We may have to hit bottom before it becomes obvious that merit cannot be discarded in the interest of “equity.” The pedestrian bridge collapse in Florida may be an example of the consequences of bias in critical occupations.
Wikipedia does not mention in that article the fact that a claim was made before the collapse that the design was by a woman engineer and an indication of the progress in women’s rights.
Go take a look at the difference between workplace mortality rates
I considered that, but it felt different. Working in a dangerous environment, usually by choice, is one thing. Living in an environment where you can be attacked with little warning is another. Men are also aware of that possibility, but the risks are more balanced whereas women are at an immediate disadvantage. A man is more likely to be deterred by another man than by a woman, and the temptations of sex are always there. Women need to be careful. Their safety depends on a culture that protects them and in having the wisdom to avoid dangerous situations. I think one of the essential roles of culture and civilization is controlling the passions of young men. When that fails, things go bad in a hurry.
“[W]atching [Clarke] do live shows about Apollo missions with Wally Schirra back from 1969 to 1972 creeped me out, long before I knew anything about his sexual proclivities.”
Colin Baker, who played the Sixth Doctor, said that he found Savile unpleasant company long before he learned the real reason Tegan and Six called him [Savile] “monstrous” and “revolting”.
I mean the “real” in-universe reason.
Charles RH: “… women are at an immediate disadvantage.”
That is not possible. Women rule! I have seen lots of TV & movies where a slim blonde woman of a certain age outruns an athletic young male of African ancestry, wrestles him to the ground, and arrests him. And she is wearing high heels too. Hey! It is on screen, so it must be true!
Female friends say the problems faced by women are concentrated in those misguided young females who buy into the “I Am Woman – Hear Me Roar” fantasy.
I’m going to have to disagree with the entire thesis presented by Charles R Harris @ his reply May 7, 2022 at 2:03 pm.
You’re talking perception. I’m talking reality.
The reality is in the actuarial tables; women live an average of seven years longer than equivalent males.
The statistics don’t lie. Notwithstanding the numerous and horrid abuses that women are subject to, due to sexual dimorphism, the raw and unpleasant fact is that males are at a much higher risk for early death. Even the historical examples are bullshit–Historical DNA research shows that somewhat over 80% of women successfully reproduced, passing their genes on into the gene pool, while the highest rate for any population of males is only 40%. Several population groups show even lower rates for males, down into the 20% range for some.
Everyone assumes, few look at the numbers. There’s a reason that males are seen as the expendable sex, and treated as such. I’ve seen this crap play out in real life, and it proves that the idea that “women live in a more dangerous world” is utter nonsense. Live in a community where street violence is commonplace; watch what happens when some group goes after a male. Generally, nobody goes to that male’s aid; they point and laugh: “Hey, look… Homeboy getting his ass beat in…”. Switch sexes? Holy shit, but you will see a difference, especially if the female in question is being attacked by a male or group of males. Every male within range will generally swarm the attacker and proceed to beat the attackers until they’re praying the police get there in time to save them.
That doesn’t happen every time, but it’s consistent: Women will almost always get help in these situations. Men? Laughter and pointing… Doesn’t matter anything about size or much of anything else; everyone will stand by and watch until it seems like the victim is going to get killed, then they’ll intervene. Until then, that male is on his own.
This doesn’t mean that I’m saying women are safe and protected everywhere, just that the idea that they’re automatically at this huge disadvantage and have to live in fear is mostly wrong. You look at the stats, and who has the most to worry about, for sudden death? Young males, more than anyone else. And, I’ll grant you that there’s a significant number of those deaths that are due to sheer idiocy, but I’ll also point out that there’s a healthy percentage of those “deaths by idiotic misadventure” whose causative source would be either feminine encouragement or the idiot trying to show off for a female audience.
None of this is to say that women aren’t at risk in their daily lives, just to point out the fact that said risk is statistically a hell of a lot lower than for that woman’s brother, husband, or son.
Of course, the average male is pretty much going to completely ignore his risk factors, because that’s how males are wired. Women will not, and will go see the doctor when there’s something wrong, which is likely a huge reason they live longer.
Of course, the average male is pretty much going to completely ignore his risk factors, because that’s how males are wired.
Exactly, I don’t disagree. But women are going to lose those confrontations, and, unlike males, there is no payoff. So the wise course is to avoid them.
}}} Frankly, I think that an excellent case could be made for most leftists being arrested children who refuse to grow up.
Among other observations about The PostModern Left, when you examine their near-complete lack of Wisdom (aka “The ability to learn from Experience”, as opposed to Intellect, “The ability to learn from Scholarly Activities”), you find that one very effective way to understand their near-insane (and insane) behaviors, is to look at them as 3yo children.
This gives you the lack of experience explanation (though not the ability to learn from it), but also explains the whole “peekaboo” world they live in — they fail to grasp that things continue to exist when they cannot see them… Such as seriously horrific pollution in China and the former Soviet Union.
“[W]atching [Clarke] do live shows about Apollo missions with Wally Schirra back from 1969 to 1972 creeped me out, long before I knew anything about his sexual proclivities.”
I completely failed to notice that at the time (but was just a kid.) Can any of those be found on the internet? I have seen just a few of Walter Cronkite’s segments with various guests.