"Moderately Bad Men"

     [This piece first appeared at Eternity Road on August 28, 2008 – FWP]

* * *

     This extraordinary bit of whining by Ellen Tien has been getting a fair amount of play in Blogdom:

     I contemplate divorce every day. It tugs on my sleeve each morning when my husband, Will, greets me in his chipper, smug morning-person voice, because after 16 years of waking up together, he still hasn't quite pieced out that I'm not viable before 10 a.m.

     It puts two hands on my forehead and mercilessly presses when he blurts out the exact wrong thing ("Are you excited for your surprise party next Tuesday?"); when he lies to avoid the fight ("What do you mean I left our apartment door open? I never even knew our apartment had a door!"); when he buttons his shirt and jacket into the wrong buttonholes, collars and seams unaligned like a vertical game of dominoes, with possibly a scrap of shirttail zippered into his fly.

     It flicks me, hard, just under the eye when, during a parent-teacher conference, he raises his arm high in the air, scratches his armpit, and then --then! -- absently smells his fingers.

     It slammed into me like a 4,000-pound Volvo station wagon one spring evening four years ago, although I remember it as if it were last year.

     He had dropped me off in front of a restaurant, prior to finding a parking spot. As I crossed in front of the car, he pulled forward, happily smiling back over his left shoulder at some random fascinating bit (a sign with an interesting font, a new scaffolding, a diner that he may or may not have eaten at the week after he graduated from college), and plowed into me. The impact, while not wondrous enough to break bodies 12 ways, was sufficient to bounce me sidewise onto the hood, legs waving in the air like antennae, skirt flung somewhere up around my ears.

     For one whole second, New York City stood stock-still and looked at my underwear.

     As I pounded the windshield with my fist and shouted -- "Will, Will, stop the car!" -- he finally faced forward, blink, blink, blink, trying, yes, truly trying to take it all in. And I heard him ask with mild astonishment, very faintly because windshield glass is surprisingly thick, "What are you doing here?"

     In retrospect, it was an excellent question, a question that I've asked myself from altar to present, both incessantly and occasionally. What am I doing here?

     Don't misunderstand: I would not, could not disparage my marriage (not on a train, not in the rain, not in a house, not with a mouse). After 192 months, Will and I remain if not happily married, then steadily so. Our marital state is Indiana, say, or Connecticut -- some red areas, more blue. Less than bliss, better than disaster. We are arguably, to my wide-ish range of reference, Everycouple.

     Nor is Will the Very Bad Man that I've made him out to be. Rather, like every other male I know, he is merely a Moderately Bad Man, the kind of man who will leave his longboat-sized shoes directly in the flow of our home's traffic so that one day I'll trip over them, break my neck, and die, after which he'll walk home from the morgue, grief-stricken, take off his shoes with a heavy heart, and leave them in the center of the room until they kill the housekeeper. Everyman.

     Still, beneath the thumpingly ordinary nature of our marriage -- Everymarriage --runs the silent chyron of divorce. It's the scarlet concept, the closely held contemplation of nearly every woman I know who has children who have been out of diapers for at least two years and a husband who won't be in them for another 30. It's the secret reverie of a demographic that freely discusses postpartum depression, eating disorders, and Ambien dependence (often all in the same sentence) with the plain candor of golden brown toast. In a let-it-all-hang-out culture, this is the given that stays tucked in.

     There's lots more, but this is about all your Curmudgeon can stand. It's your turn, Gentle Reader:

• Do you think it likely that Miss Tien is a stunningly perfect woman, sterling of character and exquisite of manner, who would never upset her husband Will with a poor choice of words or a poorly timed remark?
• Do you envision Will as a neglectful, abusive cad, who confines her to their home, deprives her of all but the bare necessities of life, and barks menacingly at her slightest hint of displeasure? Would you find plausible the suggestion that Will has even worse character flaws and behaviors than the ones Miss Tien has described here, or do you think it likely that she's "shot her wad?"
• Might it be possible that Will has a few criticisms to make of Ellen, but is too much the gentleman and dutiful husband to voice them in public?
• Were Will the writer of this article, and Ellen its subject, would it be received as readily by the Oprahfied audience to whom it was first presented?
• If Will were to sue Ellen for divorce, presenting her rant as evidence of spousal abuse, do you think the court would free him of all obligations to her, or is it more likely that he'd be tied to her by bonds of alimony for years to come?

     But enough about poor Will. Will, by the Gospel According To Ellen Tien, isn't a Very Bad Man, just a Moderately Bad Man: "like every other male I know." Your Curmudgeon doesn't go in for a lot of self-disclosure, but he will say this: if Will's worst faults are on record in the column above, the C.S.O. would trade your Curmudgeon for Will in a heartbeat. She'd probably throw in some cash, a couple of draft picks, and a player to be named later, at that.

     But enough about that benighted woman. It's her shrieky column that matters -- and not because it's particularly unusual of its kind. It's standard fare in Oprahfied Women's America. That's the truly disturbing thing about it.

     Oprahfied Women have been taught, mostly by innuendo and implication, that men are low creatures by nature, that the very best of them barely deserves a woman's attention, much less her respect, and that anything and everything men do for their women, or for women in general, is either a move in an exploitative game or a stroke in a campaign to "keep them oppressed." A fair percentage of American women have internalized that message. Because the sexes need one another, it puts a lot of men in a quandary about how to deal with the women in their lives, and renders a lot of women so badly conflicted that they cannot be happy no matter what they do.

     Whatever happened to the old motto, "To his virtues, be kind; to his faults, a little blind" -- ? Like most good advice, it doesn't really matter whether the advisee is male or female; the "his" pronouns could as easily be "her." We are none of us perfect, at least not in one another's eyes. No, not even your humble Curmudgeon; he snores, procrastinates about the yard work, and is provoked to profanity by the perversity of inanimate objects. (Customer-assembled furniture, anyone?) No marriage can be tolerable if one spouse insists that the other must conform to his standards at every waking moment.

     Yet American women have been fed large doses of Utopianism about romance and the married state. Many have come to believe that it's possible to find a "perfect" man. More, they believe a "perfect" man is their due...that if they don't get their due, they've been cheated and have a right to redress.

     Now and then, a commenter here or elsewhere will extol the superior femininity and agreeability of Asian women. Your Curmudgeon knows a few, and they do impress him. Given the porous state of the borders, American women had better look to their levees; the "coyotes" could as easily import Asian brides as unskilled Mexican laborers.

In The Beginning...

     “Live fast. Die young. Leave a good-looking corpse.” – Originally from Knock on Any Door. Also, motto of the Pagans motorcycle gang.

     ...there was a lot of scurrying around and trying to “look busy.” But apart from that, we’re told that God instructed Adam and Eve to “Be fruitful and multiply.” (Genesis 1:28) If He ever countermanded that dictum (“Okay, that’s enough multiplying. You can stop now. Please!”) the Bible doesn’t record it.

     It doesn’t really matter whether you take the Bible literally as the Word of God. (I don’t. It was written by men. They may have been divinely inspired, but they weren’t God Himself.) Reproduction, like survival, is hard-wired into our natures. It takes a lot of disincentive to suppress that impulse.

     Youth culture plus feminism have provided that disincentive, in quantity.

     Youth culture strikes me as the ultimately self-defeating agenda. It literally cannot be fulfilled. Except for those like the persons in the quote at the top of this screed, we will get old. Our bodies will age and weaken. Our faces will wrinkle. And of course, one way or another, we’ll die. All of us. (Yes, you too, Gentle Reader, though I hate to think it.)

     Feminism, once severed from its Susan B. Anthony / Elizabeth Cady Stanton egalitarian roots, coupled to the perversity of youth culture with a tragic synergy. It made women neglect their characters and personalities in favor of obsessive concentration on their bodies and faces. Though it’s seldom labeled as such, that is actually a variety of gluttony.

     It also made women averse to child-bearing.

     This is of particular interest to me just now, owing to my current novel-in-progress.

---

     The possibility of a complete worldwide cessation of child-bearing was broached by the late P. D. James in her quasi-apocalyptic novel The Children of Men. James narrates the consequences for Britain in her usual adroit, subtly gripping manner. It’s a powerful story, well worth reading, though the premise that one day human fertility just ends is rather fanciful.

     Dreams of Days Forsaken revolves around two core ideas: a worldwide decline in birthrates, partly due to a plague of infertility; and the invention of a wholly automated artificial womb. The personal, institutional, and geopolitical consequences would be dramatic, to say the least. I hope my tale delivers on them.) Though I don’t go very deeply into them in the novel, I’m mesmerized by the incentives The Womb would offer to women:

• Those whose marriages are endangered by infertility, whether voluntary or otherwise;
• Those determined to protect their bodies and careers from pregnancy and parturition.

     For there’s no question about it: child-bearing changes a woman. It changes her body, of course, but it also changes her drives. The new person in her life must become a part of her priority structure. Other individuals in that structure will be affected. So will any organizations in which the new mother is a participant.

     Herewith, three vignettes about women whose thinking is being altered, none too subtly, by the prospect of The Womb:

---

     Susan read the employment contract carefully. Her prior experiences with such things had convinced her that they deserve special scrutiny.
     She found herself willing to accept its terms until she came to the clause titled Standards Of Performance. It didn’t take her long to find the scorpion’s sting. She looked up at her interviewer. The gray haired matron’s face was impassive. Her hands were steepled before her.
     “What about pregnancy?” Susan said.
     The interviewer raised an eyebrow. “What about it?”
     “The performance clause makes no provision for it. A gravid woman could never sustain the kind of performance specified here.”
     The interviewer’s nod skirted the edge of perceptibility.
     Adam wants children.
     So do I.
     “I think…” She paused. “Under current labor law, this contract is challengeable at the very least.”
     The interviewer’s smile did not touch her eyes. “Perhaps.”
     But I’d have to sign it and commit to its terms to find out, wouldn’t I?
     “I don’t think I can agree to this, Ma’am.”
     “A shame,” the interviewer said. “Your experience and references made you one of our top picks for this position. But the contract is a condition of employment. Best of luck with your job search.”
     The interviewer rose and held out a hand. Susan passed the stapled pages back to her, rose in her turn, and slipped the strap of her purse over her shoulder.
     “Well, thank you for your time.”
     The interviewer did not offer to shake hands or see her out.

#

     Adam was nonplussed.
     “Really?” he said. “I thought contracts like that died with the Nineteenth Century.”
     “Apparently not.” Susan sipped at her rapidly cooling coffee. “They wouldn’t back away from it, either.”
     “‘They?’”
     “Sorry, my interviewer. An older woman. Perfectly polite and pleasant, but there was no give in her at all.”
     “Damn. I know this was the one you wanted.” He refilled his mug and took his habitual seat at their kitchen table. “Well, what’s next?”
     She shrugged. “Keep looking. Engineering shops don’t all require labor contracts. Anyway, this is the first one I’ve hit.”
     Adam didn’t answer. He’d gotten the faraway look she knew meant that he’d gone into problem-solving mode. She clamped her lips tightly together.
     Wait it out, Suzy Creamcheese.
     “Do you really want that job?” he said at last.
     “I… did,” she said, “before I read the contract. I don’t think so now.”
     “But what if we could finesse our way around the contract?”
     She peered at him. “What are you thinking?”
     “The Womb.”
     Her hackles went up at once. “Nope. Never.”
     He frowned. “Why not?”
     “Think about it! No pregnancy means no antibodies for the baby and no lactation from me. He’d be vulnerable to a thousand nearly extinct diseases and bottle-fed from the instant of his, uh, birth. Plus, I wouldn’t get the health bonus women get from going through pregnancy.”
     Or the maternal bond from having him inside me for nine months. Peg said it’s real, and after five kids she’ll know. And I want it!
     Adam’s expression had gone flat. “There might be ways to compensate.”
     “Do you know of any?” Despite her effort to control it, her temper had risen. “This is our child and my life we’re talking about. I’m already thirty-two. He might be the only child we’ll ever have!”
     For sure it’s the only life I’ll ever have.
     “Besides,” she continued, “I want to be home with a new baby. The performance clause didn’t mention any reduction in standards for the post-partum period. The mandated leave is only twelve weeks. I could return from maternity leave and get fired for substandard performance a couple of weeks later.”
     “A lawsuit…” he said, and trailed off.
     “Forget it. A company like that will have lawyers up the wazoo. They might even have fought this battle before.”
     Her husband appeared stricken. She could sense the but on his tongue, barely restrained by his lips.
     She blinked and bore down to fight off a sudden rush of tears.
     “I have to chalk this one up and keep looking,” she said.
     “You don’t have any other possibilities lined up?”
     She shook her head. “Not yet.”
     “What about that place back East that cold-called you?”
     “You mean Arcologics?” He nodded. “We’d have to move and you’d need a new job.”
     “Don’t they have a marketing department?”
     Not if Iverson is as smart as everybody says.
     “I don’t think so.”
     “Damn.”
     Adam’s gaze remained hooded for the rest of the evening. Susan knew The Womb was still uppermost in his thoughts… as it was in hers.
     Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

§

     Laura’s three years as the Hanford Agency’s top model had not prepared her for Bill Hanford’s explosion.
     “Are you out of your mind?”
     She gaped at him, all the words blown out of her.
     “I can’t believe you’re even considering it,” he said. “It wouldn’t be ‘just for a few months,’ stupid. No matter how carefully you restored your figure, it would change everything. Your tits, your skin tension, your posture, the way you move and hold yourself. It would ruin you for anything but fully clothed, and we have practically no demand for that. Are you willing to throw away the rest of your career for a baby?”
     “My career…” She faltered.
     “Indianapolis might not be the big time, but damn it, girl, you own this city. This state!” He turned away and started to pack up his equipment. His movements were staccato, jerky and angry, uncharacteristic for such a poised photographer. It was plain that she had unsettled him. “You want to leave all that on the table for some other girl to pick up just so you can have a baby?”
     She could not answer him. But I want a baby was the only thought her mind could hold. He fulminated silently as he packed the rest of his equipment. She shed her bikini and resumed her street clothes. They left the studio silent and empty behind them.

#

     Carlos was not pleased.
     “He’s right,” she said. “I asked around. Models don’t… come back from pregnancy.”
     “So no son,” he muttered. His arms were crossed like swords over his chest.
     She hung her head.
     “We have to choose, love,” she said. “Besides, without my income—”
     “Is that what matters to you? More than a family?” His Salvadoran accent became more pronounced.
     I don’t want to go back to the escort service.
     “We wouldn’t be able to meet our bills without it.”
     He scowled at her. “Yes we could. You know it.”
     I don’t want you to go back to dealing, either.
     “Carlos,” she said, “I want a baby as much as you do. But we have to be practical.” She rose from her seat at the kitchen table, but she did not dare to approach him. “You came this close to going to prison. The cops had you dead to rights. You were lucky that they were so sloppy. The chain-of-custody issue the D.A. missed was the only thing your lawyer had to work with, even if that was enough to spring you. Don’t you think the cops will have their eyes on you now? I may not want to end my modeling career, but I want to raise a baby alone even less!”
     He glared, but he had no comeback for her.
     A protracted, tension-laden silence ended when he muttered “I must think about this,” grabbed his windbreaker, and stalked out of the apartment. She wandered loosely around their home, uncertain what to do next, until the phone rang and Jill Timman invited her to join her at their favorite after-work watering hole.

#

     “He’s furious.” Laura swished her swizzle stick idly through her pina colada.
     “He’s a tough cookie.” Jill smirked. “But so are you. Stick to your guns, girl. It’s your body and your career.” She looked up and scanned the other patrons in the crowded bistro. “I don’t see anyone who has more right to make those decisions than you do. Not for you, at least.”
     “What if he decides he wants a son more than he wants me?”
     Jill shrugged. “Then you lose him. So?” She paused for a sip from her Cosmopolitan. “You’ve been together what, eight months?” Laura nodded. “Don’t you think you’d find someone else fast enough?”
     Laura swallowed past her fear.
     She doesn’t know. Keep it that way.
     “I know, Jill. ‘Always more fish in the sea.’ I could find someone else. But it’s hard. It’s tiring. I’m tired all the time as things are now. And…”
     Jill nodded in sympathy.
     “And you love him.”
     “I… think I do.”
     “So?” The model-turned-event-planner grinned. “What about The Womb?”

§

     Helen stripped off her apron and tossed it into the back seat before slumping into her car. Ten hours on her feet left her exhausted. It would have done the same to anyone. But her tuition was due at the end of the month, and she’d be damned before she’d let the water and electrical utilities send her any dunning letters.
     She cranked the engine, waited for it to settle into a smooth purr, pulled onto Grand Avenue, and drove through the darkness toward her Amherst Estates apartment.
     At least I know I’ll come home to a clean flat and a hot meal.
     Alicia was a clean freak of the best kind. Rather than see a domestic chore done imperfectly, she’d take it upon herself. She’d assumed their apartment’s cleaning and cooking duties immediately upon moving in. It was a great part of why Helen was happy to support the two of them.
     Well, that and that she thinks my stretch marks are cute. And how good she is with her tongue.
     Theirs was a no-bullshit relationship. They liked each other well enough, but there was no love talk between them, and no mutterings about marriage. Alicia stayed for Helen’s support, and would do so as long as Helen would maintain her in an acceptable style. Helen was willing to pay the bills, and would do so as long as the sexy Latina’s attentions to her needs remained enthusiastic and unflagging.
     It’s just these down periods between surrogacies that spit in the soup. But I have to have them. The agency wouldn’t have it any other way.
     At first, surrogacy had provided Helen a more-than-comfortable living plus substantial savings. With Alicia’s arrival, her lifestyle had swelled to include luxuries and pleasures she’d never before indulged. Helen suspected that an attempt to return to her prior, more modest standard of living would endanger their arrangement. She was too accustomed to Alicia’s services to risk that.
     I can’t take another contract until March. I can hardly wait. Until then it’s short skirts, high heels, “Are you ready to order, sir?” and “Is everything satisfactory, ma’am?” Ten hours a day, six days a week. Dear God.
     Well, my feet haven’t fallen off yet.
     As she turned into the parking lot for the residents of the two Amherst buildings along Arnulfson Way, she noticed that Alicia’s car was not in its assigned spot. She frowned.
     Did she go shopping?
     She unlocked her apartment door and stepped inside. Her gaze arrowed to the answering machine nestled in the entryway bookcase. The messages light was flashing steadily. She pressed the Play button.
     BEEP! “Miss Riordan, this is Marion Michaels at Dreams Fulfilled. Due to recent technological developments, we’re experiencing a retrenchment in our in-vitro and surrogacy operations. In consequence, we don’t expect to engage you as a host mother this coming year. Thank you for your services to this date. You have our best wishes for your continued success.” BEEP!
     The messages light went out and the machine fell silent.
     Helen was still gawking at it when Alicia returned.

#

     “It’s the Womb, babe.” Alicia forked up a bite of roast beef, chewed and swallowed. “If it works as advertised, host mothers will go the way of buggy-whip factories.” She glanced at Helen’s untouched plate. “Aren’t you eating?”
     Helen forced a smile. “Waiting for my stomach to settle.”
     “Oh. It hit you that hard, eh?”
     Helen nodded. “Second semester tuition is due soon. It’ll clean me out. If I can’t bag a surrogacy, I don’t know how I’ll pay for my junior year.”
     Alicia shoveled up some peas. “Can’t you promote your services on your own?”
     “I’ve never tried it. I wouldn’t know where to start.”
     “Ah. Could you use social media?”
     Helen shook her head. “They don’t accept ads about anything related to sex.”
     Alicia grinned. “But there’s no sex involved.”
     “They don’t see it that way. They nix anything that even hints at it, to stay out of trouble with the law.”
     “Well…” Alicia laid down her fork and sat back. “You have other things to sell.”
     “Hm? What are you—”
     “If the Womb really works,” Alicia said, “new industries will spring up around it. New markets. So think sideways. You were selling space in your uterus. What else have you got that the Womb might make marketable, you gorgeous five-foot-nine, hundred and fifteen pound blue-eyed blonde with a killer figure and a one-forty IQ?”
     Helen started to answer, bit it back.
     “Maybe the genes that gave you that stuff might prove marketable,” Alicia said.
     “Maybe…” Helen pondered it, shuddered. “But I’d have to let a man put his thing in me.”
     “Not necessarily, babe.” Alicia’s expression turned sly. “You’ve got plenty of eggs, don’t you?”
     “Yeah… wait a minute! If they’re so valuable, how come Dreams Fulfilled never offered to buy any?”
     Alicia shrugged. “Did you ever hint that you were open to the idea?”
     It stopped Helen’s thought process for a second time.
     Is it legal to sell ova in New York? Was Michaels waiting for me to suggest that mine were available?
     “You… might have something there.” Helen picked up her fork to address her dinner, set it down again. “Maybe the first move has to be mine.” She beamed at her housemate. “Thanks!”
     “De nada. Eat!”
     Helen chuckled and picked up her fork again. “Yeah.”
     She’s smarter than I realized.
     How did she know about my IQ?

---

     We don’t have The Womb today, but it’s in prospect. There are teams working on developing one as you read this. Don’t kid yourself: feminism plus youth culture would play into the reactions to such a development. If it were to be made price-competitive with the costs of pregnancy plus childbirth, it would be a powerful influence.

     And with that, we return to contemporary reality.

     There’s been a resurgence of interest in what might be called prewar femininity: i.e., the model for female decision making held up to them by their mothers, which was followed by most. Marriage, wifedom, homemaking, and motherhood are becoming freshly attractive to some number of young women. What’s propelling that resurgence is, in part, the failure of feminism to satisfy many of its adoptees. They’ve reached middle age; they have careers but no kids; they sense that they’ve “missed out” on a critical feature of the female experience. (Some of them don’t have men, either.) That makes the alternative denigrated by militant feminists decades ago loom large in younger women’s thoughts. But what if the young aspirant to “tradwife” status confronted the prospect of remaining unaltered physically by pregnancy and childbirth: i.e., the prospect held out by The Womb?

     Just some early-morning thoughts from a novelist trying not to think about his novel.

A Necessary Condition For An Enduring Romance

     Normally I complete my morning “news sweep” before I light off on an essay for Liberty’s Torch. That sweep covers some fifty-three news and opinion sites. I undertake it twice daily – early morning and late afternoon – as the necessary groundwork for intelligent op-ed writing. But this morning, InstaPundit, a site which sits smack in the middle of my sweep, provides a citation I simply have to blather about:

     Did you hear that at the back, ladies? Laurence Fox – who you perhaps only knew as Billie Piper’s ex-husband because you’ve never seen Lewis (what?) – does not date "woke" women who he believes are being taught that they are "victims", irrespective of whether they are right or not. He thinks that it’s "institutionally racist" to tell the story of the First World War in a racially diverse way, irrespective of the fact that Sikh soldiers absolutely fought for Britain. And he also doesn’t believe in white privilege, irrespective of the fact that he works in a painfully undiverse industry, was privately educated and comes from a wealthy acting family which is nothing short of a dynasty.

     Fox is denying racism and sexism, irrespective of whether or not they exist. It’s nothing short of gaslighting. It’s all very Donald Trump. And as you would expect, the whole debacle has lit a fire under anti-woke poster boy Piers Morgan while gaining Fox thousands of extra Twitter followers.

     I could go over all the things he’s said; I could use data to prove how wrong he is; I could express concern for his mental health (after all, who really enjoys arguing on Twitter?); I could make jokes about his behaviour. But all of that would be to seriously miss the point.

     Got that, Gentle Reader? The writer, “Vicky Spratt,” wants you to know that Laurence Fox is a very minor presence in the acting world, but simultaneously that he comes from “a wealthy acting family.” If op-ed writers were prone to whiplash, “Miss Spratt” would be in a neck brace about now. But that, of course, is merely “pre-defamation,” for Fox’s sin is to disdain the same women as would any sensible man in the Right.

     From the relentless shrieking of her article, “Miss Spratt” is replete with hard-left and gender-war-feminist opinions, which comes as no surprise for “Refinery29.” (It also puts the odds that she’s replete with testosterone and Y chromosomes at six-five and pick ‘em, but that’s a subject to be explored only after a lot of Willamette Valley Vineyards’ “Whole Cluster” Pinot Noir, so it’s too early in the AM for that particular contretemps.) Her entire mission appears to be to condemn Laurence Fox, and any men who see the minefield of contemporary romance by the same light, as reactionary Neanderthals in need of compulsory re-education.

     I haven’t felt such visceral satisfaction over a left-winger’s published tantrum since Jonathan Chait’s famous tirade about how and why he hated George W. Bush.

---

     Allow me to say something that “should” be “obvious” in a large font:

If you and your beloved don’t have the same fundamental values, you’re not going to make it long-term.

     Sometimes that essential commonality isn’t apparent up front. It can take time to determine whether important attitudinal differences stand between two persons drawn toward one another for more superficial reasons. While men tend to be drawn to women’s looks first, he who settles for a pretty face and a shapely body is unlikely to get what he wants...unless, of course, what he wants is just a roll in the hay or a bit of “arm candy.” Similarly, while women are drawn to indicators of status first, she who settles for wealth or prestige is equally unlikely to get what she wants in the long term. (Her case is even worse, as wealth and prestige can be convincingly simulated for an appallingly long time.)

     Let’s take a simple but critical conviction that has sundered many a marriage: children and who shall be responsible for their principal nurturance. Traditionally, marriage has been about the protection of pregnant women and minor children: persons vulnerable to male caprice. (Gentle Readers with an interest in etymology should look up the roots of the word caprice. It’s got nothing to do with Frank Capra.) Indeed, these days a lot of couples eschew marriage because they have no plans to reproduce. However, if he wants kids and believes that she should have the principal responsibility for them – i.e., that his wife shall be a mother and homemaker above all else – he’d better not involve himself with a “liberated” woman indifferent to children who wants a career climbing the corporate pyramid.

     The “woke” female of today is almost always exactly that sort of “liberated” woman. Moreover, she tends to see relations with the stronger sex as problematic at best, a contest for dominance between the sexes in which she is determined to be the victor. (She might phrase it differently – e.g., “I’m unwilling to be submissive” – but this is usually an evasion.) What man of traditional values would want to partner with such a woman? And if an enduring partnership with one such is off the table, what would be the point of dating one?

     Laurence Fox’s values are his own. (As one’s values are personal, discussions of whether such values are in some way offensive, or dismissive of “female strengths,” are inherently fatuous.) If “Miss Spratt” dislikes them, she’s free to spout her own, as she has done. But she’s not going to invalidate Fox’s convictions; indeed, she might have given him a “leg up” in the mating dance with her diatribe.

---

     As “woke” women have become ever shriller and more combative, men have become ever more tentative in their dealings with women generally. Combine this with the legal hazards that attend contemporary marriage and childbearing, and it becomes inarguable that contemporary feminism, in concert with contemporary left-wing political machinations, are the greatest enemies to romance that young men have ever faced. Even if she seems normal and sane at the outset, you cannot know beforehand whether she’ll someday flip her wig. Much will depend upon the company she keeps, and of course upon whether she was sincere in her original profession of values and priorities.

     Don’t kid yourself, gentlemen: over the years you’re together, she could change in critical ways, not just in her appearance. (If you’ve bound yourself to her entirely for her looks, you’re a benighted fool who deserves what he will surely get.) It’s vital that she be sufficiently stable not to disavow her values over time...and influences that can induce such disavowals are everywhere today. Moreover, as she changes, you must continue to love her in the active sense. You must provide for her and protect her, as is your genetically ingrained responsibility, but you must also do what you can to support her in the trials the passage of time will inflict upon her, which are more severe than those it inflicts upon men.

     What’s that you say? Where are my prescriptions for romantically inclined women? Sorry, I don’t do the distaff side. Perhaps one of my Esteemed Co-Conspirators will ring in with it later today. (Hint, hint, Linda!)

What Men Need To Be

     There are subjects about which I shouldn’t write. Not because I have nothing to say about them, mind you, but because even thinking about them raises my blood pressure close to the catastrophic failure level. Worse, those subjects have been multiplying at an alarming rate. It suggests that fairly soon I’ll be reduced to doing my frothing at the mouth in total silence.

     Whether for good or for ill, my Gentle Readers send me links to all manner of articles, including articles on subjects of the variety mentioned above. (No, I’m not about to ask them to stop.) So regardless of my cardiologist’s recommendations, I daily confront examples of irrationality and viciousness that light my boilers and get steam pouring out of my ears. And before you ask: Yes, I have one before me this morning:

     Women are challenging incumbents up and down the ballot, banding together to demand action on gun violence, going undercover to fight misinformation online, pushing for consequences for perpetrators of sexual assault, organizing against laws restricting access to reproductive care.

     And every so often, we stop to look for the men in the room. We scroll through our Twitter feeds, our group text threads, our email chains. We look for the ones who chimed in, took a stand, organized their workplaces or their communities.

     Too often, we’re left craning our necks. We have male allies in Congress and in our workplaces and at home who’ve made important contributions to the fight for gender equity, to be sure. But we have many, many more men on the sidelines.

     If you’re a conservative – of either sex – the above ought to incense you. At the very least it should have you repressing some very naughty language. As Dad was a Navy man, I assure you that I’d be right there alongside you.

     “Action on gun violence.” Excuse me? Don’t we already have laws against assault with a deadly weapon? Or do you have it in mind to take our guns from us?

     “Perpetrators of sexual assault.” Got anyone in mind? Bill Clinton, perhaps? Maybe Joseph Biden? Or is this an attempt to refuel the “#MeToo” wagon that’s making men shy away from women in more and more venues?

     “Misinformation online.” From what sources? The New York Times’s recent attempts to persuade us that the duly elected President of these United States is actually a Russian agent? Or its more recent initiative to persuade us that America’s founding principle has always been slavery? Or are we talking about “progressives’” drive to censor Americans who disagree with them?

     And what’s this about “restricting access to reproductive care” – ? Is your concern about the expense of in vitro fertilization services? Do you have even one example of a pregnant woman being denied gynecological or obstetrical services? Or is this another veiled attempt to conflate “reproductive care” with abortion?

     If the authoress of the article is hoping for male allies for those “causes,” I wouldn’t advise her to hold her breath while she waits.

---

     It’s been said that we all get more conservative as we get older. That pattern isn’t without exceptions. I’ve known a couple of people who got more left-inclined over time. I haven’t seen one of them in some years, but I’m still in touch with the other, so the “aging makes you grow more conservative” rule does have exceptions.

     What aging does seem to do to each of us, quite reliably, is to reduce our tolerance for bullshit. Life’s too short always to be mucking out one’s mental stable. That includes feminist bullshit. I’ve certainly had enough of it, and I know I’m not alone in that regard.

     This Reshma Saujani appears not to be in touch with the trends: specifically, what she and her feminist allies have done to drive American men away from women. For that is the direction in which American men have been moving for nearly twenty years. Let’s list some of the causative influences:

• Employment law’s preferential treatment for women;
• The “guilty until proven innocent” standard on women’s allegations of male sexual misconduct;
• The destabilization of marriage through “no-fault” divorces;
• The destruction of fathers’ rights under modern family law;
• The pauperization of divorced men through specious “child support” provisions;
• Women’s increasing disdain for families and children, including their own;
• The feminization of education, from grade school through university education.

     Those are just the ones that come to mind at this early hour. There are others.

     While all that’s been going on, with the entirely understandable consequence that American men are retreating from engagement with women, women have come to exhibit many of the maladies that were once regarded as “men’s problems:”

• Drinking to excess;
• Shortness of temper;
• Constant fatigue and mental lapses;
• Slovenliness, vulgarity and foul speech;
• A tendency to lash out at family members;
• And of course, constant complaints about being unappreciated.

     Could there be any better evidence that the supposed gains women have made since the advent of post-war feminism have actually been losses – for all of us?

     Yet women are still demanding more privileges – free birth control, free abortions, special workplace accommodations, seat quotas in corporate management, et cetera – and whining about not having any “male allies.”

     If Miss Saujani expects men with any significant amount of self-respect to sign onto that, she’s seriously deluded. Yet her article appears in Fortune, a place I’d not have expected to see such nonsense. Nor is it her first publication there.

     Better do your ally-prospecting among the soyboys and beta cucks, Reshma baby; you won’t get much action from genuine men.

---

     As I’m feeling even more exercised at the moment than I was when I first set my fingers to the keys, allow me a brief personal statement.

     As the song goes, there’ve been some women in my life. You could say I’ve known my share. Most of them have been decent sorts, even those who parted company with me on unfriendly terms. But the emergence of aggressively demanding, “entitled” women, including a growing number who openly proclaim men to be “the enemy,” has made it harder for me to trust any woman. They don’t show the telltales quickly enough for me to award the classical “benefit of the doubt.” So I tend to avoid them in just about all venues and all circumstances: socially, occupationally, at my parish, and in my neighborhood.

     My attitude is hardly unique. I’ve known just as many men as women. Ever more of them are taking a noli me tangere attitude toward the “fairer sex.” It’s safer that way, even if can make one’s nights a bit lonely.

     When I met the woman who is now my wife, I was on the verge of vowing to stay away from women for good. And there have been moments since then when I’ve wondered if it might have been the best course even so.

     To any American women who have suffered through this diatribe: It’s time to choose. You can be an “entitled” harridan enlisted in the war on men, or you can be a decent person who takes us as we are and asks nothing more. Men are not going to award their love, their respect, or their fellowship to the former sort of female, no matter how good she looks in a bikini. We’re certainly not going to ally ourselves with your anti-male “causes.”

     Consider yourselves warned.

Conversations

     WARNING: This one isn’t funny. Player #1, an angry feminist, had just said that men are by nature oppressors and exploiters of women.

FWP: I must differ, dear. The great majority of men—
Angry Feminist: You don’t know me, Francis, so don’t call me “dear.”
FWP: Well, then how about “bitch?” Does “bitch” work for you?

     There came a loud chorus of gasps from those listening.

Angry Feminist: How dare you! I—
FWP: You nothing. I’m not going to permit you or any of your fellow traveler misandrists to dictate what I may and may not say. You’re an evil bitch who wants to provoke suspicion and hostility between the sexes, and what you just did is proof. So don’t bother trying to bully me out of my preferred locutions, because I will not have it!

     The conversation ended rather abruptly at that point, which was just as well.

     It wasn’t an argument, as we had absolutely opposed aims. I was trying to promote civility and an ethic of trust-by-default. She was straining to evoke as much discord between the sexes as she could. She bet that she could score against me by lowering the tone. I saw her bet and raised. She folded.

     And yes: I’d do it again. (I never said I was a “nice guy.” Perish the thought!) See also this interesting bit of news from Puerto Rico.

Quickies: American Women’s Life Script Has Been Perverted

     If you have time to read only one essay today, make it this one:

     Our culture is so saturated with feminism that even conservatives and devoutly religious people like me think inside its wheel ruts. This wouldn’t be a problem, except that feminism is antithetical to human flourishing, both individually and corporately, because it has a false view of human nature....

     Refusing to learn from history and experience only hardens people against the feedback from reality they need to make their lives better through smarter decisions. Thinking that the experience and wisdom of humans across time has a claim on our present behavior allows a form of troubleshooting and decisionmaking using billions of accumulated datapoints. Yes, it requires humility to consider whether your presuppositions and behavior are wrong, but what you may lose in feminist scorekeeping you reap a hundredfold in a richly happy life. How do I know? It’s happened to me.

     Joy Pullmann has penned a brutally candid, data-rich essay on the terrible damage the feminist lunacy has done to American women. It should be required reading for every American woman – especially the mothers of young daughters.

     I once reflected on this through the mouth of a fictional character:

     They talked to a woman from New York City. While still young, she had thrown herself wholesale into the corporate world. "One moment I was just graduating from law school," she said. "I looked down at my desk, blinked, looked up, and suddenly I was an old woman with nothing in the world but money and work." She had had brothers who were dearer to her than life itself, but had lost contact with them after college and somehow never managed to reestablish it.

     [From The Sledgehammer Concerto]

     There are people – feminist activists, mostly – who would condemn and strive to suppress Pullmann’s wisdom as “sexism.” Not so. It is sexism of the very worst kind to tell a young girl, “You have no nature we know anything about. The experiences of billions upon billions of women who have gone before you mean nothing.” Neither Karl Marx nor Adolf Hitler ever attempted a greater deceit.

The Deadliest Poison, 2018 Edition

     “A lie will go halfway around the world before the truth can get its pants on.” – Originator unknown.

     “Faster than a nasty rumor” – one of my favorite comparisons.

     It was only a few days ago that I wrote this:

     I got a particularly vicious laugh out of this piece. After haranguing us for decades that men are predators, that women don’t make false accusations about sexual assault, that even sex consented to at the time is rape if she regrets it afterward, et cetera ad nauseam infinitam, women are discovering the secondary consequences: that men no longer trust them. Quite a lot of men have institutionalized that distrust. Wall Street executives, sensing the rich possibilities for false claims against them, have adopted a “never be alone with an unchaperoned woman” attitude. No one is laughing at Mike Pence now.

     But it was obvious from the start that that would follow! What man in his right mind would leave himself open to attack by the less ethical and more vicious female sex? And of course, the more he has to lose, the more likely it is that he’ll understand the importance of taking precautions, so America’s “top catches” are insisting upon indisputable pre-recorded consent.

     A decade or two ago, men determined not to be mulcted for babies not of their seed started requesting certificates attesting to having been vasectomized. Anyone with three functioning brain cells should have expected further deteriorations in the degree of trust between the sexes. And here they are.

     That piece concisely expresses my attitude toward those who deplore the trend it describes as somehow “men’s fault.” An old supervisor from my salaried days predicted it in all its details. He sketched out the double-bind in which “always believe the woman” pseudo-jurisprudence would leave men: vulnerable to charges of harassment and assault if we interact with women; vulnerable to charges of discrimination and exclusion if we don’t. The latter course is the one most men in white-collar situations deem the less hazardous. As it happens, a few people still need to be laughed at:

     I read in Bloomberg News the latest in what is now a series of articles detailing all of the absurd strategies men are using, ostensibly to protect themselves from accusations of harassment or assault in the #MeToo era.

     Some steps seem calculated to protect from false accusations, such as “the man in infrastructure investing [who] said he won’t meet with female employees in rooms without windows anymore.” Other steps, such as “no business dinner with a woman 35 or younger,” seem to reflect men’s distrust of their own ability to do something pretty simple: share a meal with a young woman without harassing her. In all cases, these self-instituted rules are deeply gendered, suggesting that the men suspect women are likely to fabricate harassment or assault allegations, and implying that the men do trust themselves not to sexually harass other men. Neither reflects well on them.

     It is maddening to watch adult men respond to revelations of endemic sexual harassment in the workplace by instituting a series of ludicrous personal codes, rather than by learning the relatively straightforward lesson on offer: Don’t sexually assault or harass anyone.

     To my great surprise, the author of that article, Tahir Duckett, is a young black man. Well, he’s allowed to take what chances he likes with his own career and reputation, but in the virulent “#MeToo” era, to call other men who might have more to lose “childish” and “cowardly” strikes me as supremely arrogant. Though I must admit, there are other possible explanations:

• He’s a homosexual and senses no risk to himself;
• He’s trying to impress the women around him;
• He’s simply stupid.

     Arrogant; homosexual; on the make; stupid: take your pick. Any of those four explanations will suffice to encompass Duckett’s inability to grasp the real threat the “#MeToo” era poses to men: the power of the lie when granted the presumption of validity.

---

     There’s a war on. Indeed, there’s more than one. The one of interest to me today is the war feminists and their allies are waging against men.

     Men, in the feminist theology of today, are inherently the enemies of women. The feminist does not desire that women see men as individuals, for that would blunt their chief thrust. No, men as a class must be regarded as predatory and exploitative. A man with the opportunity to commit sexual assault should be regarded as one who would do so if he thought he would get away with it. In the men-as-enemies view, that is sufficient justification for an accusation of sexual assault even if nothing of the sort has occurred.

     Wait, what? How can that be a justification for a false accusation? Quite simply: There’s a war on. Men are the enemy and always have been. Even a man who has committed no offense is part of the oppressive “patriarchy” that stands in the way of women getting what they’re due. Therefore any blow struck against a man is a blow in the war, and is justified by the exigencies of war. As we mathematical types like to say, quod erat demonstrandum.

     A cultural presumption that when a woman lodges an accusation against the man, the man is therefore guilty, is an unstoppable superweapon in women’s hands. Men are defenseless against it. Indeed, even impossibility is no defense, unless he has video-recorded every instant of his life. Consider the slander by which Christine Blasey Ford attempted to torpedo the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. Consider that even though she could produce absolutely no evidence that he had ever so much as touched her, and had no corroborating witnesses willing to confirm her accusation or supply the circumstantial details she claimed to lack, millions claimed (and still claim) to believe her.

     Christine Blasey Ford is either deluded or lying. She appears competent enough to support herself and to cross the country unaccompanied for her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, so the presumption must be that she’s lying...yet millions claim to believe her.

     Tahir Duckett should shove that up his ass and sit on it awhile.

---

     Nothing is more deadly, whether to individuals or to a society, than a lie accepted without question. Lies have always been the favorite weapons of evil men – and so much more so with evil women. There’s certainly enough fiction on the subject. Start with To Kill A Mockingbird. Or if you prefer real life incidents, consider the case of the Scottsboro Boys, nine young black men who narrowly escaped execution for a gang rape they didn’t commit, and go on from there to the more recent case of Tawana Brawley.

     There’s an important quote from a historical figure most American youths never encounter, no matter how extensive their educations:

     “Do not look in the file of incriminating evidence to see whether or not the accused rose up against the Soviets with arms or words. Ask him instead to which class he belongs, what is his background, his education, his profession. These are the questions that will determine the fate of the accused. That is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror.” – Martin Latsis, deputy chief of the Ukrainian Tcheka during the primacy of V. I. Lenin over the U.S.S.R.

     Evidence was unimportant to Martin Latsis. What concerned him was class: whether the accused was part of a demographic or an occupation believed to be “counter-revolutionary.” Such persons were guilty simply because they existed. Any accusation, however farfetched, would suffice to condemn them. Latsis would approve their execution without a qualm. Compare this orientation to the “Always Believe The Woman” attitude of feminists in the “#MeToo” era.

     There’s no need to beat this any further. Either you get it, hate it, and will oppose it with all your powers regardless of the possible consequences, or you’re a misandrist feminist (or one of their political allies) and had better keep your hands where I can see them.

On Making The Best Of Things...Including Yourself

     [It’s become clear that creating an insuperable condition of distrust and hostility between the sexes is a principal objective of gender-war feminism. At one time I thought the disease had reached its peak and would thereafter recede. Given recent events, I am no longer of that opinion. The following piece first appeared at Liberty’s Torch on September 22, 2013. -- FWP]

---

     I'm as anti-authoritarian about relations between the sexes, and the positions of the sexes in society, as I am about everything else. I accept no "thou shalts" or "thou shalt nots" from any authority but God. I insist on reasoning everything out -- but with a caveat: Practical Reason, as C. S. Lewis put it, must begin with the laws of Nature and make proper use of the available evidence. More, its conclusions must be put to the test and survive their practical applications.

     Much of the strife and malaise that afflicts American society derives from the willful dismissal of those provisos by feminist activists who want to resculpt relations between the sexes according to a wholly artificial vision that conflicts sharply and irremediably with metaphysical reality -- that is, with what Nature has given us.

     Those activists have put incredible effort into persuading Americans in particular:

• That traditional family structures somehow oppress women;
• That men who subscribe to those structures are authoritarian brutes;
• That women can take up men's traditional roles to their advantage;
• That men can and should be compelled to subordinate themselves to women's preferences;
• That a woman who prefers a traditional marriage and marital role is a "gender traitor."

     If you're unacquainted with that system of thought, and have never been subjected to a haranguing from that perspective, welcome to our planet! We hope for friendly and peaceful relations with your planet, too. But I digress. The nadir of this lunacy was provided by Simone de Beauvoir:

     "No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one." -- Interview with Simone de Beauvoir, "Sex, Society, and the Female Dilemma," Saturday Review, June 14, 1975, p.18

     Hm. So "oppressed women" are not to choose freely what life path to adopt, because too many would choose the "wrong one?" That doesn't sound like liberation to me; it sounds like a change of oppressors -- and not from a harsh master to a gentle one.

---

     De Beauvoir is not alone in her inanities. There are contemporary feminists who tout the same line of nonsense. Hearken to feminist evangelist Linda Hirshman:

     Half the wealthiest, most-privileged, best-educated females in the country stay home with their babies rather than work in the market economy. When in September The New York Times featured an article exploring a piece of this story, “Many Women at Elite Colleges Set Career Path to Motherhood,” the blogosphere went ballistic, countering with anecdotes and sarcasm. Slate’s Jack Shafer accused the Times of “weasel-words” and of publishing the same story -- essentially, “The Opt-Out Revolution” -- every few years, and, recently, every few weeks. (A month after the flap, the Times’ only female columnist, Maureen Dowd, invoked the elite-college article in her contribution to the Times’ running soap, “What’s a Modern Girl to Do?” about how women must forgo feminism even to get laid.) The colleges article provoked such fury that the Times had to post an explanation of the then–student journalist’s methodology on its Web site.

     There’s only one problem: There is important truth in the dropout story. Even though it appeared in The New York Times. ...

     The census numbers for all working mothers leveled off around 1990 and have fallen modestly since 1998. In interviews, women with enough money to quit work say they are “choosing” to opt out. Their words conceal a crucial reality: the belief that women are responsible for child-rearing and homemaking was largely untouched by decades of workplace feminism. Add to this the good evidence that the upper-class workplace has become more demanding and then mix in the successful conservative cultural campaign to reinforce traditional gender roles and you’ve got a perfect recipe for feminism’s stall....

     What better sample, I thought, than the brilliantly educated and accomplished brides of the “Sunday Styles,” circa 1996? At marriage, they included a vice president of client communication, a gastroenterologist, a lawyer, an editor, and a marketing executive. In 2003 and 2004, I tracked them down and called them. I interviewed about 80 percent of the 41 women who announced their weddings over three Sundays in 1996. Around 40 years old, college graduates with careers: Who was more likely than they to be reaping feminism’s promise of opportunity? Imagine my shock when I found almost all the brides from the first Sunday at home with their children. Statistical anomaly? Nope. Same result for the next Sunday. And the one after that.

     Ninety percent of the brides I found had had babies. Of the 30 with babies, five were still working full time. Twenty-five, or 85 percent, were not working full time. Of those not working full time, 10 were working part time but often a long way from their prior career paths. And half the married women with children were not working at all.

     And there is more. In 2000, Harvard Business School professor Myra Hart surveyed the women of the classes of 1981, 1986, and 1991 and found that only 38 percent of female Harvard MBAs were working full time. A 2004 survey by the Center for Work-Life Policy of 2,443 women with a graduate degree or very prestigious bachelor’s degree revealed that 43 percent of those women with children had taken a time out, primarily for family reasons. Richard Posner, federal appeals-court judge and occasional University of Chicago adjunct professor, reports that “the [Times] article confirms -- what everyone associated with such institutions [elite law schools] has long known: that a vastly higher percentage of female than of male students will drop out of the workforce to take care of their children.”

     How many anecdotes to become data? The 2000 census showed a decline in the percentage of mothers of infants working full time, part time, or seeking employment. Starting at 31 percent in 1976, the percentage had gone up almost every year to 1992, hit a high of 58.7 percent in 1998, and then began to drop -- to 55.2 percent in 2000, to 54.6 percent in 2002, to 53.7 percent in 2003. Statistics just released showed further decline to 52.9 percent in 2004. Even the percentage of working mothers with children who were not infants declined between 2000 and 2003, from 62.8 percent to 59.8 percent.

     No, you're not imagining the tone of disapproval in the above. Miss Hirshman definitely takes the Simone de Beauvoir attitude toward free choice: women who choose to be homemakers and mothers are choosing wrongly. By their free choices -- by opting for traditional women's roles rather than some alternative in the market economy -- they're helping to derail feminism. And the advance of feminism, we must remember, is what really counts, not the happiness of women or the well-being of their children.

     Hirshman considers McElroy / Sommers feminism -- choice feminism -- to be a wrong turning:

     Conservatives contend that the dropouts prove that feminism “failed” because it was too radical, because women didn’t want what feminism had to offer. In fact, if half or more of feminism’s heirs (85 percent of the women in my Times sample), are not working seriously, it’s because feminism wasn’t radical enough: It changed the workplace but it didn’t change men, and, more importantly, it didn’t fundamentally change how women related to men.

     This is without foundation, but let's proceed to Hirshman's prescription for curing this terrible malady of women opting for homemaker-motherhood over careerism:

     Women who want to have sex and children with men as well as good work in interesting jobs where they may occasionally wield real social power need guidance, and they need it early. Step one is simply to begin talking about flourishing. In so doing, feminism will be returning to its early, judgmental roots. This may anger some, but it should sound the alarm before the next generation winds up in the same situation. Next, feminists will have to start offering young women not choices and not utopian dreams but solutions they can enact on their own. Prying women out of their traditional roles is not going to be easy. It will require rules -- rules like those in the widely derided book The Rules, which was never about dating but about behavior modification.

     There are three rules: Prepare yourself to qualify for good work, treat work seriously, and don’t put yourself in a position of unequal resources when you marry.

     Clearly, Hirshman doesn't think homemaking and motherhood qualify as "good work" that deserves to be taken seriously. By "unequal resources" she must mean unequal earning power, since young marrieds almost always go to the altar with equal resources-in-hand: approximately $0.00.

     Most of the remainder of Hirshman's article is vapid and predictable, but her conclusion re-emphasizes her priorities:

     The privileged brides of the Times -- and their husbands -- seem happy. Why do we care what they do? After all, most people aren’t rich and white and heterosexual, and they couldn’t quit working if they wanted to.

     We care because what they do is bad for them, is certainly bad for society, and is widely imitated, even by people who never get their weddings in the Times. This last is called the “regime effect,” and it means that even if women don’t quit their jobs for their families, they think they should and feel guilty about not doing it. That regime effect created the mystique around The Feminine Mystique, too.

     As for society, elites supply the labor for the decision-making classes -- the senators, the newspaper editors, the research scientists, the entrepreneurs, the policy-makers, and the policy wonks. If the ruling class is overwhelmingly male, the rulers will make mistakes that benefit males, whether from ignorance or from indifference. Media surveys reveal that if only one member of a television show’s creative staff is female, the percentage of women on-screen goes up from 36 percent to 42 percent. A world of 84-percent male lawyers and 84-percent female assistants is a different place than one with women in positions of social authority. Think of a big American city with an 86-percent white police force. If role models don’t matter, why care about Sandra Day O’Connor? Even if the falloff from peak numbers is small, the leveling off of women in power is a loss of hope for more change. Will there never again be more than one woman on the Supreme Court?

     Worse, the behavior tarnishes every female with the knowledge that she is almost never going to be a ruler. Princeton President Shirley Tilghman described the elite colleges’ self-image perfectly when she told her freshmen last year that they would be the nation’s leaders, and she clearly did not have trophy wives in mind. Why should society spend resources educating women with only a 50-percent return rate on their stated goals? The American Conservative Union carried a column in 2004 recommending that employers stay away from such women or risk going out of business. Good psychological data show that the more women are treated with respect, the more ambition they have. And vice versa. The opt-out revolution is really a downward spiral.

     So Hirshman demands that the top spot in every woman's decision-making process should go to whether or not her choices will position her to become a "ruler" -- i.e., one who wields authority over others. Her own happiness should stand no better than second in the lists; after all, the future of feminism is at stake!

     Finally, these choices are bad for women individually. A good life for humans includes the classical standard of using one’s capacities for speech and reason in a prudent way, the liberal requirement of having enough autonomy to direct one’s own life, and the utilitarian test of doing more good than harm in the world. Measured against these time-tested standards, the expensively educated upper-class moms will be leading lesser lives.

     Authoritarianism in the raw: "You have a duty to hew to this standard as I've expressed it, girlie, so no backtalk! Get out there and do your best to become a ruler!"

     I don't need to tell you how I feel about such blather, do I, Gentle Reader?

---

     One of the classical false dichotomies is the choice restricted to two contrasting authorities and their dictates. He who only gets to choose between masters remains a slave. No virtue inheres in submission to anyone's authority...unless the choice of going one's own way is open as well.

     Over the years I've observed the human carnival, I've noticed all the following:

• The overwhelming preponderance of happy American women are married and have adopted a traditional wife / mother / homemaker style of life.
• The strongest and least stressed marriages are those in which "traditional" male and female roles obtain.
• The unhappiest women are found among the careerists who have completely renounced marriage and motherhood in favor of work for wages.
• Many unhappily married women, though perhaps not a majority thereof, are unhappy specifically about having to work for wages.
• Far too many men of a "conservative" bent take the above prescriptively: that is, as a command that the only proper place for a woman is in a traditional married woman's role.

     It doesn't matter that the path to happiness for most women seems to be that of marriage and traditional wifely and motherly pursuits. Indeed, it wouldn't matter if one could "prove" that that's the only path to female happiness. No good can come from either the de Beauvoirean / Hirshmanesque command to women to "get out there and prepare to become a ruler" or the authoritarian-paternalistic command to "stick to your home, your kids, and your kitchen." There must be free choice.

     Some women would best relate to life, men, and society by adopting a traditional "wifestyle;" others, upon whom God has bestowed other gifts and insights, would do best to follow another path. If our experiences since the inception of the "Women's Lib" movement are at all indicative, there are more women of the first sort than of the second, perhaps far more. That doesn't confer authority over such decisions upon anyone.

     If freedom means anything, it means the right to pursue happiness according to your own notions and priorities, whether you have two X chromosomes or only one.

     Some women will choose "rightly" for themselves, and will become enduringly happy.
     Some women will choose "wrongly" for themselves, and will become enduringly unhappy.
     Neither group acquires the authority to dictate to other women, nor to their daughters or nieces.
     Neither does any man.
     All anyone can do for others is to provide an example -- hopefully, a good example of a life well lived.

     All else is folly.

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     There's only one more point to make: about bargains and the promises they imply.

     One cannot rightfully be saddled with a responsibility against one's will. That's especially true as it pertains to practical matters within a marriage. However, a responsibility once accepted cannot rightfully be abrogated without making provisions for its acceptance by others -- willing others. He who accepts the role of family provider is, in the usual case, stuck with it; he cannot lay it down with a clean conscience. Similarly, she who accepts the responsibilities of homemaker and mother cannot morally walk away from them without first seeing to it that someone else willingly picks them up. This is especially significant when the subject is the care and nurturance of minor children.

     These things must be agreed to before responsibilities of either sort are accepted. Some decisions, such as the decision to produce children, are irreversible.

     It's best for a man and a woman contemplating marriage to hash all of this out beforehand. What standard of living are the spouses-to-be anticipating? Do they expect the same one, or markedly different ones? In what sort of environment will they live? Who wants children? Who's willing to accept the responsibility for their care and upbringing? Who's willing to settle for an apartment? Whose heart is set upon a detached house with all the responsibilities that implies? Those are the biggest topics that, if not settled willingly and amicably before marriage, can become life-destroying bones of contention afterward.

     There's no escape from life's major decisions. No one can make them for anyone else...nor can anyone "delegate" them to some reliable authority in full confidence of the results.

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     The title of this tirade -- "On Making The Best Of Things...Including Yourself" -- might be a little too subtle for some readers. There are two "parts" to the "thing" that is you:

• What you are -- i.e., your nature as a human being of one or the other sex;
• Who you are -- i.e., the individuality you've acquired from your path through life.

     Each of these provides opportunities and constraints. Neither is absolutely binding; neither can be utterly dismissed. Along all the paths one might take through life, the quintessential asset is accurate self-knowledge, of both your "what" and your "who." Happiness is all but impossible to obtain without it.

     To young Miss Smith, who's pondering what course to take: the "traditional" roles of wife, mother and homemaker, or the "modern" approach of careerism and ascent through the business world. Do you know yourself? Well enough to make promises to others and be confident that you'll keep them?

     If not, you'd better get started on it PDQ. Life is short.

“We’re All Disconnected”

     If you’re old enough, you might remember the days of telephone monopolies. The various companies that offered phone service were all part of the “nationwide Bell System,” and had carved the nation into zones where only one Bell subsidiary was permitted to offer service. That ended with telecom deregulation, more than thirty years ago, but the memories linger – especially of how BLEEP!ing costly it was to call someone outside one’s own area code.

     New York Telephone, the Bell subsidiary in my area, is survived today by Verizon. Verizon still has some clout other companies don’t have, but it no longer has a regional monopoly. Back when it was NYTel, one of its ads featured the stirring phrase “We’re All Connected:” by implication, through NYTel’s telephone services.

     Relax, Gentle Reader; this won’t be a piece about telecommunications. I just wanted to share that memory with you as a counterpoint to the title of this piece.

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     Today, Dr. Helen Smith has a brief piece about loneliness:

     If a person has negative thoughts about being lonely, then it can be a health concern, but if they are happy being alone or content, it is not. Half of all Americans are now unmarried and I wonder how this plays into loneliness.

     Ignore the poor grammar. The above is the meat of the loneliness problem: If you’re alone, are you unhappy about it? If so, you have a problem. How did it come about?

     No one is born alone. So far at least, we’re all born from mothers. If we omit consideration of the wretches who abandon their children at birth, that means we start life in company. Perhaps there’s a father available too, though that’s getting to be a problematic thing all by itself. He who has siblings has even more company...though let it be admitted that not all siblings are the sort of company we’d choose for ourselves.

     He who is involuntarily alone must first lose the company of his family. How does it happen?

• Death;
• Separation or divorce;
• The “family diaspora;”
• Deliberate disavowal of or by one’s family members.

     Except for death, those developments can be combated, though the outcome is not guaranteed. The maturing child can also compensate for those forces by acquiring friends. But friends, too, can be lost: through physical or emotional separation, the development of serious incompatibilities, and the extra tensions that arise from marriage and choice of occupation.

     A friend one can retain lifelong is a treasure. Few Americans manage to do so – perhaps fewer today than ever before in our history.

     Time was, the companion one could most confidently rely on retaining was one’s spouse. But mating among Americans has become extremely problematic, in large part because of the plague of willful offense-taking.

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     Solitude is my lifestyle. I spend virtually my entire waking day alone. It’s not burdensome to me; I became accustomed to it long ago as the proper course for a thinker and writer. But then, I have a wife whose company I can enjoy at least an hour or two per day.

     Consider the plight of the unmarried American man. How shall he acquire a wife? The traditional methods have all fallen into disuse. Those that have arisen in their wake are anything but reliable. And then there’s the sociopolitical toxin called feminism.

     In a culture in which the sexes are seen not as complements to one another but as competitors for money, status, and power, even tentative gestures toward the development of a romance and a marital bond can be viewed as attempts at a “hostile takeover.” Moreover, the Left’s militant-feminist adjunct has worked tirelessly to promote and intensify the conviction among women that men are “the enemy.” That conviction is wholly compatible with the vision of the sexes as competitors over commercial and political achievements.

     While there are other causal factors involved in the decline of marriage rates and the dwindling resilience of existing marriages, this one deserves particular attention. At a time when other sorts of friendship and companionship are badly threatened, the reduction of marital prospects is especially significant.

     Many Americans, especially the older ones among us, would spend their lives entirely alone if not for their spouses. Those parted from their mates relatively early in life have many sad tales to tell.

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     Human nature has provided us with natural connections. We have the capacity to forge other sorts of bonds, but those that arise from love and family are paramount. He who lacks such bonds is in greater danger of protracted miserable loneliness than anyone else. A great deal more could be said about this subject – a lot of it has been said eloquently by Dr. Jordan Peterson – but I’ll allow it to rest here for the nonce.

Plantations

     The “plantation” metaphor is used rather frequently in discussions of the political attitudes of American Negroes. It’s a good one; it expresses the sense of captivity to a mindset that nicely parallels the condition of physical enslavement suffered by most Southern Negroes before the Civil War. And of course, using it is guaranteed to provoke mindless, spittle-flecked rage from any Leftist within hailing distance, which is always a plus.

     Mental chattelization is arguably worse than physical chattelization. The latter is imposed by an external power, and can therefore be resisted. The former, being self-imposed, tends to persist much longer, as most of us have a hard time arguing with our own attitudes.

     What I have in mind for today isn’t related to a physical enslavement that’s left enduring effects on the minds of the enslaved. Rather, today’s topic is the Left’s attempt to impose mental enslavement on women:

     WHEN young Sydney mother Maddie asked her closed Facebook group of 26,186 mothers for some tasty alternatives to sandwiches for her husband’s lunches, she wasn’t expecting the backlash.
     “I would love to hear what other mums make their hubbies for lunch and snacks throughout the work day,” she posted on Tuesday. “We are getting over sandwiches.”
     You would think she’d asked for a hemlock recipe, judging by the torrent of scolding which erupted.
     She was nothing but a “slave” and a “1950s housewife”.
     She was “weird” and no one in their right mind or a “pink fit” would do something so demeaning as make their husband lunch. Let alone snacks.

     Please read the whole article. Granted, Australian feminazis are unusually virulent compared to others in the First World. What matters is the open attempt to herd women into a particular mindset and the concomitant pattern of behavior. The aforementioned Maddie, a wife and mother who routinely and cheerfully sees to her husband’s daytime nutrition, must have been profoundly disturbed by the feminazis’ assault. The towering irony of suggesting that Maddie had positioned herself as her husband’s slave while attempting to impose an equally pernicious mental slavery upon her and others must not be overlooked.

     The attack on Maddie’s innocent question was apparently orchestrated by a feminazi crowd-flogger named Polly Dunning:

     Leader of the attack pack was Polly Dunning, daughter of professional feminist Jane Caro, and mother of a toddler about whom she infamously wrote last year, recounting her horror at finding out she was pregnant with a boy: “I felt sick at the thought of something male growing inside me.”

     Dunning told Maddie: “You should pack him nothing for lunch. And you didn’t really ask for advice, you asked what other ‘mums’ pack their ‘hubbies’ (which, to me, is slightly weird phrasing, but whatever).”

     While it’s moderately remarkable that Dunning found a “male” willing to impregnate her, what’s entirely unremarkable is the “progressive” politicization of marital relations. It’s entirely consistent with the mantra that “the personal is political,” and it’s been going on for decades. The seminal figures, Catharine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and Germaine Greer, were all Leftists.

     But enslavement to a “progressive” mental plantation is no more to be borne than confinement to a physical one.

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     We in the Right have a tool ready to hand that up to now we’ve used only sparingly: the use of comparisons to enslavement, employing the plantation metaphor for the mental confinements the Left strains to impose on its targets. The parallel is striking.

     If caught, a slave who attempted to escape his “owner” would be punished physically: sometimes with a whip, and sometimes with the amputation of a limb. A woman who dares to express her willingness to accept the traditional wife / mother / homemaker role is punished by the feminazis’ infliction of mental cruelties. In the case narrated above, wife / mother / homemaker Maddie’s decision to support her husband’s breadwinning by packing a lunch for him to bring to work evoked exactly that response from the harpies of the Left.

     Women, of course, are only one of several demographics under the Left’s crosshairs. Any identifiable group, the more cohesive the better, will receive comparable treatment: Do as we say, speak as we speak, think as we think, or we’ll heap opprobrium on you, encourage others to do the same, and inhibit your friends against speaking in your defense.

     It works far more often than an independent-minded individual would suspect, which is why we in the Right must counterattack aggressively. The enslavement / plantation metaphor – “You’re trying to herd all the [insert group designation here] onto your own mental plantation!” – is a perfect tool for the job.

The Distaff Contingent

     [As I’m feeling a bit cranky this morning, I thought I might revive one of my crankier pieces from the old Palace of Reason. The one I’ve chosen first appeared there on July 28, 2004. -- FWP]

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     This column is likely to piss a lot of people off. I wrote it while pretty well pissed off myself. Therefore, so as not to offend unduly, I'll issue an Early Warning:

DO NOT READ THIS COLUMN IF:

• You are a militant feminist;
• You are an abortion-rights fanatic;
• You are enraged by the suggestion that there are significant differences between men and women;
• You think differences in "representation" in a particular field are, of themselves, evidence of discrimination or oppression;
• Your political priorities revolve around sex.

     If you possess one or more of the above characteristics but read this column anyway, don't waste your time writing to upbraid me about it, as I'll simply ignore you.

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     Today at Fox News Online, is an article about the political desires of feminists and women generally. It's an interesting look into the sort of wishful thinking that demands cats that bark, Haagen-Dazs^®-quality ice cream that contains no calories, freedom of speech that doesn't extend to one's opponents, an infinitely generous welfare state that doesn't weaken the work ethic, wars that don't kill anyone or break anything -- in short, a perfect right to do and have whatever one can imagine without having to endure any nasty consequences.

     The usual liars and idiots are out in force at the Democratic National Convention. For example, Senator Blanche Lincoln (D, AK) has accused the Bush Administration of setting back "women's reproductive rights" 30 years. Why? Because President Bush reinstated President Reagan's ban on United States Treasury funding to international "aid" organizations that promote abortion in other countries.

     Hm? Does a "right" to do something include the "right" to have someone else pay for it? Doesn't that sound just the least little bit contrary to our understanding of responsibilities, property rights, and all-around justice? And when did the federal government of these United States become responsible for the "reproductive rights," however conceived, of women other than Americans?

     If Senator Lincoln is sincere, she's an idiot; if she knows better, she's lying to advance her political agenda. Speaking only for myself, I'd prefer that neither idiots nor liars be represented among America's legislators.

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     From the same Fox News article:

"I don't think the feminist movement is over, particularly while [President] Bush is in office," said Becca Gerner, who with co-volunteer Judy Grant was handing out stickers and signs for NARAL: Pro-Choice America that read "Pro Kerry. Pro Edwards. Pro Choice."

     "He's clearly not interested in women's issues," she added about Bush.

     Oh? Which "women's issues" do you mean, Miss Gerner? The Taliban's executions of women who left their homes without male accompaniment or incompletely covered up? Odai and Qusai Hussein's rape rooms and nightly street-shopping for involuntary concubines? The prevalence of "honor killings" in Islamic countries and Palestinian terrorists' coercion of "dishonored" women into becoming suicide bombers? The use of rape as a weapon of war by the Sudanese militias?

     Where does would-be-president John Kerry stand on these things? Would he act to oppose them, regardless of who stands in his way? Or would he insist on a United Nations endorsement before sending anything more than a strongly worded note?

     But it's all froth anyway. Only one "women's issue" matters to the National Abortion Rights Action League, whose cachet has become so offensive to most Americans that it no longer spells out its real name. That issue is abortion on demand for all women everywhere, regardless of age, regardless of the stage of gestation or the state of the developing baby, regardless of the father's wishes, and at a taxpayer-defrayed cost. To claim the mantle of defender of women's rights, while supporting a presidential candidate who'd defer to other countries about mass rape and genocide and a vice-presidential running mate who made his fortune suing obstetricians out of business, is some sort of ultimate in deceitfulness for a cause, no matter what one might think of its justice.

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     If we go strictly by percentages, women are under-represented in politics. The percentages haven't changed dramatically in a long time. Given the frequent, strident claims that "women's issues" are slighted by male legislators and executives, it's worth asking: Why aren't there more women in political office?

     This is a case of A Fact That Dare Not Speak Its Name. There are so few women in high office because:

1. Very few women contend for elective office in the first place;
2. Those that do offer themselves to the electorate tend to be shrill, monomaniacal, and generally unappealing.

     Why don't more women present themselves as candidates for elective positions? Because women's drives and priorities differ from those of men. They're biologically predisposed toward pursuits that involve less aggression and less risk. This isn't something to be ashamed of. It's the result of eons of natural selection, a requirement for the survival of our race.

     Women who do contend for elective office are frequently single-issue harridans. Their entire campaign focus is on one issue, usually either abortion rights or gun prohibition. Even if we discount the natural tendency of the single-issue fanatic to be boring and irritating, the single-issue harridan goes beyond the male norm by claiming moral superiority over her opponents, and quite frequently by coloring them as agents of evil simply because they disagree with her policy preferences. This is unpalatable to the majority of American voters of both sexes.

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     If women's representation percentage in high office is to improve, their politics must cease to revolve around their gonads.

     There's a great irony here: it's men who are forever being accused of "thinking with the little head." Yet what other verdict could we pronounce upon the "women's rights" activists and groups when they drone monotonously and offensively on about the "right to choose" -- a "right" asserted at the price of the life of a developing baby, whose father is completely disenfranchised from the decision, and which is frequently exercised at the expense of the taxpayer?

     Even if we discount their disregard for the plight of women in Islamic theocracies and other Third World hellholes, if "women's rights" groups were more involved with:

• Getting women access to guns and other implements of self-defense;
• Lowering income taxes, so that fewer couples would need two incomes and fewer children would be relegated to the physical hazards and emotional callousness of paid day care;
• Ending the privilege of Child Welfare Services departments to break up a family on an anonymous hint of abuse by a hostile neighbor;
• Promoting strict educational standards, objective grading, and performance-based rewards for "educators" in "public" schools;
• Lowering property taxes and campaigning for school choice mechanisms that would allow mothers to move their children out of consistently dangerous or low-performing "public" schools;

     ...they'd become much more credible. They'd also become Republicans.

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     In her rejected column for USA Today from the Democratic National Convention, Ann Coulter notes that the "pretty girls" -- the women who have more to offer than strident slogans and a shrill demand for "the right to choose" regardless of all other considerations -- are overwhelmingly more often conservatives, who recoil in horror from the "women's rights" types. Even when they sympathize with some part of the activists' agenda, they'd rather be found dead in a ditch than be identified with an activist group, because they don't want to be associated with that degree of callousness, incivility, and general unattractiveness.

     I would not be surprised if, in some not-too-distant year, "women's rights" activists were to demand political preferences through gerrymandering, as has been practiced to award "safe" legislative districts to black politicians. Given the prevalent characteristics of the class, it could be the only way they'll ever get their numbers up.

     As matters stand, "women's rights" activists are on the verge of becoming irrelevant...and they did it to themselves.