However, despite mounting evidence that proves women are every bit as involved in DV as men, old prejudices die hard, and old bigots with tenure have a taxpayer-funded pulpit from which to broadcast socially harmful lies about the nature of inter-partner violence in America. In this hallowed tradition of academic arrogance and unsubstantiated statements, doubtless encouraged by political norms on campus, we find a professor at the University of Maine casting female domestic violence – including knife attacks – as self-defense.

In an article in the Kennebec Journal, University of Maine sociology professor John Oplinger is quoted suggesting that violent female aggression against intimate partners is only a natural result of abuse at the hands of men:

“They’re a little bit less likely to take the abuse that was routine in the past,” said Jon Oplinger, a sociology professor at the University of Maine at Farmington. “They’re fighting back.”

Although there is little evidence that abuse of women was routine in the past, or that they sat back and took it passively (in fact, spousal murder of husbands has dropped significantly since the 1970s), Oplinger just has to find some rationale that justifies violence against men.

Fortunately, the local police and Public Safety Commissioner have a more balanced view of the situation. Somerset County Sheriff Barry DeLong, who has 36 years of experience in law enforcement, suggests that in the past, nobody took female aggression against men seriously:

“When I started, you might see one a year,” said Somerset County Sheriff Barry DeLong, who has 36 years in law enforcement. “I think police officers are more attuned to it. In the past, it wasn’t even looked at. Domestic violence is for everybody now.”

It is fortunate that police have begun to take it seriously, because, according to the article, last year more women than men stabbed their partners in domestic disputes in Maine.

Public Safety Commissioner Ann Jordan also notes that men who were victimized felt ashamed to come forward in the past:

“Ten years ago,” she said, “many men would not come forward because of the stigma involved. And there’s an increase in the use of drugs and alcohol, on both sides. People who wouldn’t normally assault do so when they’re under the influence.”

Sheriff DeLong also notes that women have been behaving in an increasingly masculine manner, going out and drinking at bars after work rather than tending to their families.

Readers should take note of the fact that the most strident defense of female misbehavior comes from a tenured, male bigot speaking from the ivory tower of academia. The ordinary people on the street see it for what it is: a social problem that fouls up lives and disrupts society.

There is no practical difference between liberals and conservatives in the old guard of America. Female misbehavior, whether it be promiscuity, pointless divorce, illegitimate children or knifing people, is all the fault of men. It is a quasi-religion with profoundly harmful social implications, and the faster we can remove these men and their Amazon auxiliaries from power the better off we’ll all be.

“Healthy children know instinctively that the breast has a dual function. One gives them milk, the other gives them warmth and a cosy bond… [men] should take the opportunity to get closer to their child by offering them their breasts in the same way as women.”

So there you have it: men would be better parents if only they became mothers. Anyone who has survived a custody dispute knows that this is exactly the view of most social workers and judges right here at home. The mother is primary parent; the father secondary at best, and he is often suspected to be a malign, dangerous presence in a child’s life. Perhaps the evolution of fathers into mothers with penises is inevitable given the social pressure and hatred of all things masculine that has swept over the West like a feminist jihad.

In a healthier society, the role of father would be seen as just as important as that of mother, but different in quality. Mothers nurse and swaddle the children, and fathers guide them as they take their first steps out into the world. The mother shelters and comforts the child, and the father encourages his sons and daughters to venture forth and grow, under his watchful eye, of course. One represents security, and the other freedom. Children need both, and to remove the masculine influence of a father from their lives is to impoverish children and stunt their emotional and spiritual growth.

As surrogate mothers, men are doubtless inferior creatures, but the worst damage they can do to children in that role is to deprive them of the confidence and purpose that masculine influence brings into their lives.

Matthew Hutson, writing for Psychology Today, raises the question “Why Do Women Have Erotic Rape Fantasies?” To prove that they do in fact have these fantasies, he points to studies and statistics, including the following:

A recent analysis of 20 studies over the last 30 years indicates that between 31% and 57% of women have rape fantasies, and these fantasies are frequent or preferred in 9% to 17% of women. Considering that many people are ashamed to report rape fantasies, these stats are most likely lowball figures.

If Hutson’s inference is correct, more than half of women likely have fantasies of being raped, and in perhaps up to one in four women these are their preferred and most common fantasies. Other studies are referenced in the article as well, if you care to research them yourself.

Although not a scientific study, I also found the following quote particularly revealing:

In one survey of romance novels (which tend to be written by and for women), the lead female character was raped in 54%.

If anything caters to tawdry female fantasies, it is romance novels (as well as soaps and dramas). 54% is no coincidence here. Furthermore, Whiskey remarked in one of the comments on my “Mad Men = Female Porn” post that “Mad Men had a couple of rape scenes where the bad boyfriends rape the women the they love.”

So, it being established that rape fantasies are a core component of female sexuality, Hutson goes on to explore why this might be the case. He offers up a number of potential explanations, including, among others, sexual blame avoidance, “male rape culture”, and biological predisposition to surrender. While I reject outright the “male rape culture” explanation (I will explain why shortly), sexual blame avoidance makes some sense, and probably is more relevant to American culture in particular, but I think the biological predisposition to surrender is the most likely explanation.

Suggesting that some “male rape culture” that makes rape normative exists in America is ridiculous on its face. For one thing, rape was originally treated as a crime against men first, and society second. In Deuteronomy, for example, the rapist is punished mainly for his transgression against the husband if the woman is married, and against the father if she is not. This concept continued to be reflected in criminal law until quite recently, when the state took on the role of the father, and then finally the husband as well. In fact, the spate of Mexican rapes of young women and girls that accompanied mass immigration over the last fifteen years or so was in part the result of a cultural misunderstanding. In the old Catholic tradition, which still has considerable influence in Mexico, rape was not considered much worse than fornication (which was a big no-no), and could in many cases be expiated by marrying the victim — this is why the victims of these rapes were almost exclusively unmarried young women; raping a married woman is seen as a far more heinous crime in that particular culture. Rather than a cultivating a “rape culture,” what we see men doing in societies around the world is criminalizing and discouraging rape because it is contrary to their interests.

As the authority of the state has increased over all Americans, we still see the same principle of rape being a crime against more than simply the female victim, but the offense against the husband or father is no longer relevant — instead it is the jealous state (paternal authority) that is now the aggrieved party. So morally speaking (from the feminist point of view), there is little difference between now and then, but practically speaking the scope of prosecution has widened considerably. Given these circumstances, any suggestion that there is a “culture of rape” in America is absolutely ridiculous.

Because rape is a very primal threat to men, acting on a deep-seated insecurity about his relationship to the women in his life, it is likely that the taboo against acknowledging this aspect of female sexuality is rooted in men’s desire to have a more comfortable and less stressful view of the women upon which they have invested so much of their emotional well-being. It is little different from the husband who sees his wife as a “good girl,” only to find out the truth the hard way when she commits some sexual indiscretion.

Despite the comfort that this taboo may bring to some, I would argue that it is a dangerous thing to deny the truth of human nature — even sexuality. Not only does this blind men and keep them from gaining a deeper understanding of the women around them, it also leads women to feel confused and ashamed about feelings and desires that they apparently have little control over. It is possible that the high rate of false rape accusations and obsession over the subject in America is in fact a result of confused, repressed feelings, which lead some mentally disordered women to project their fantasies onto innocent men.

We have to accept that there are dark, uncomfortable aspects to both male and female sexuality, and that neither gender in particular is any more guilty than the other. In fact, neither is guilty at all; we are sexual beings equipped with emotions and desires that, although often mysterious, serve a greater purpose than our rational minds can comprehend.

While conducting some online research, I happened across an article discovered by fellow-traveler Chuck Ross that he incorporated into one of his blog posts. Chuck has uncovered a very rich seam here (read the article online with free registration), as I will presently explain.

The article quotes Jung in its title, in which Jung says: “America [is] facing its most tragic moment. It will either master its mighty forces or be mastered by them.”

Jung expounds upon the theme of mastery, covering the struggle between different races, the elements, and finally the struggle between the sexes. It is the last to which he most conclusively attaches the epithet “tragedy.”

I was pleased to see that, as I proposed in my recent post on the “American Dilemma,” Jung also explains the American character as a result of its religious heritage:

They chose the greatest abstraction of all, the idea of God, and they sacrificed everything to that idea. Countries went down before it, families were broken up by it, armies were slaughtered in the attempt to learn to think of God, and your puritans, the Huguenots, and all those to whom the idea of God was greater than anything else, learned to think so well that they left their own homes, and you are the descendants of those people. An abstract thought is always ruthless. It is the most dangerous one to think, and the most marvellous.

Having established the character of the American people, he sets about diagnosing the ailment:

I study the individual to understand the race, and the race to understand the individual. I ask myself, What influence has the building of America had upon the American man and the American woman of today? I find that it is a good subject for the student of pschoanalysis.

There is only so much vital energy in any human being. We call that in our work the Libido. And I would say that the Libido of the American man is focused almost entirely upon his business, so that as a husband he is glad to have no responsibilities. He gives the complete direction of his family life over to his wife. This is what you call giving independence to the American woman. It is what I call the laziness of the American man. That is why he is so kind and polite in his home, and why he can fight so hard in his business. His real life is where his fight is. The lazy part of his life is where his family is.

The diagnosis is clear: America is the land of the Beta provider.

If Jung appears to be merging with Roissy here, just wait, it gets even better:

I made many observations on shipboard. I noticed that whenever the American husband spoke to his wife there was always a little melancholy note in his voice, as though he were not quite free: as though he were a boy talking to an older woman. he was always very polite and very kind, and paid her every respect. You could see that in her eyes he was not at all dangerous, and that she was not afraid of being mastered by him. But when anyone told him there was betting going on he would leave her, and his face became eager and full of desire, and his eyes would get very bright and his voice would get strong, and hard, and brutal.

Because this was written in 1912, the modern equivalent to the betting parlor would be the TV screen and a football game, where even docile, beta husbands will yell like barbarians.

The final passage of the article, which offers analysis and the cure, is startlingly prescient, predicting decades in advance the wholesale collapse of the American family. In fact, this final passage is so illuminating that I’ll transcribe the entire thing on my blog, so that readers who don’t have time to register with the NY Times Magazine can read it right here:

American Marriages Tragic

You believe, for instance, that American marriages are the happiest in the world. I say that they are the most tragic. I know this not only from my study of the people as a whole, but from my study of individuals who come to me. I find that the men and women are giving their vital energy to everything but the relation between themselves. In that relation all is confusion. The women are the mothers of their husbands as well as of their children, yet at the same time there is in them the old, old primitive desire to be possessed, to yield, to surrender. And there is nothing in the man for her to surrender to except his kindness, his courtesy, his generosity, his chivalry. His competitor, his rival in business must yield, but she need not.

There is no country in the world where women have to work so hard to attract men’s attention. There is in your Metropolitan Museum a bas-relief which shows the girls of Crete in one of their religious dances about their god in the form of a bull. These girls of 2,000 BC wear their hair in chignons; they have puffed sleeves; their corseted waists are very slender; they are dressed to show every line of their figures just as your women are dressing today.

At that time the reasons which made it necessary to attract men to themselves in this way had to do with the morals of their country. The women were desperate just as they are today, without knowing it. In Athens four or five hundred years before Christ there was even an epidemic of suicide among young girls, which was only brought to an end by the decision of the Areopagus that the next girl who did away with herself would be exhibited nude upon the streets of Athens. There were no more suicides. The judges of Athens understood sex psychology.

On Fifth Avenue I am constantly reminded of that bas-relief. All the women, by their dress, by the eagerness of their faces, by their walk, are trying to attract the tired men of their country. What they will do when they fail I can’t tell. It may be that then they will face themselves instead of running away from themselves, as they do now. Usually, men are more honest with themselves than women. But in this country your women have more leisure than men. Ideas run easily among them, are discussed in clubs, and so here it may be that they will be the first ones to ask if you are a happy country or unhappy. [Here Jung is clearly warning Americans that pent up sexual frustration will cause American women to effect potentially disastrous changes through activism]

It may be that you are going to produce a race which are human beings first, and men and women secondarily. It may be that you are going to create the real independent woman who knows she is independent, who feels the responsibility of her independence and, in time, will come to see that she must give up spontaneously those things which up to now she only allows to be taken from her when she pretends to be passive. Today the American woman is still confused. She wants independence, she wants to be free to do everything, to think everything, to say everything, to have all the opportunities which men have, and, at the same time, she wants to be mastered by man and to be possessed in the archaic way of Europe. [Today, since much of Europe has gone down the same beta American spiral, we find women turning to romance novels in which they are spirited away by sheikhs to some desert oasis]

You think your young girls marry European husbands because they are ambitious for titles. I say it is because, after all, they are not different from the European girls; they like the way European men make love, and they like to feel we are a little dangerous. They are not happy with their American husbands because they are not afraid of them. It is natural, even though it is archaic, for women to want to be afraid when they love [here's where Roissy's "shady character game" comes into play]. If they don’t want to be afraid then perhaps they are becoming truly independent, and you may be producing the real ‘new woman.’ But up to this time your American man isn’t ready for real independence in woman. He only wants to be the obedient son of his mother-wife. There is a great obligation laid upon the American people – that it shall face itself – that it shall admit its moment of tragedy in the present — admit that it has a great future only if it has courage to face itself.

The medicine Jung offers as a cure is as obvious as the diagnosis was: American men need to learn gender realism and game.

I have to admit that this article blew me away. I could hardly believe that I’d find a psychologist, ninety-seven years ago, offering the same advice we’re getting from the more lucid segments of the PUA community.

Carl Jung was something of an alpha male himself. He was married for over fifty years, and allegedly had a number of lovers on the side. I don’t doubt it. He also sends feminists into paroxysmal rages, which force them to write long, incoherent treatises on why and how Jung is wrong or should be “revised,” even as he attracts throngs of female admirers. I will certainly read more of Jung, but from what I have seen here, I believe it would be fair to call him the founding father of the theory of game.

The following quote is especially revealing:

“American women are an anti-cultural phenomenon. They have nothing but conceit to make up for their sense of uselessness. You have a real rule of women in America. You young men go to college with girls, fall in love and marry at an age when the girls are usually much more mature than the men. They lead the men around by the nose, make fools of them, and the result is matriarchy. That is why marriage is so unsuccessful in America — that is why your divorce rate is so high. Your average American man approaches marriage without any experience at all. You wouldn’t expect a person to step up to an orchestra and play first fiddle without some training, but the American man steps into marriage without the least experience for so complicated a business. In Europe, things are different. Men take the lead. That is as it should be.”

–Sigmund Freud, 1934

In “Sigmund Freud” by Helen Walker Puner

Interesting, isn’t it, that the same issues we face now on a far larger scale were already considered a problem back in the early 20th century? I’ve been thinking about rereading Hemingway, that notorious masculinist of the Lost Generation, to get a better idea of what American men were going through at the time.

The low priority given to men’s health and well-being is evident in a number of government programs and laws that exclusively cater to women’s well-being, such as WIC and VAWA. Women’s shelters abound, despite the fact that men represent the overwhelming majority of the homeless. Federal funding for women’s afflictions, such as breast cancer, dwarfs that directed toward specifically male diseases such as prostate cancer, and it also threatens to overshadow very deadly diseases, such as pancreatic cancer, that strike both genders.

On the balance, it might seem that universal health coverage would be good for men, but Massachussets, which has a state health care plan, has the widest gender disparity in health insurance. The danger is that universal health care may be simply another mechanism for wealth transfer from men to women, with men receiving little in return, and possibly no net benefit at all. I can easily imagine divorced men being forced to pay the federal government whenever their ex opts to use government health insurance for the children, whether she has the ability to pay or not.

It is well-known among mental health professionals that, following divorce or unemployment, men are much more likely to develop both physical and mental conditions, which can directly lead to death. Suicide is a fairly common male reaction to divorce or unemployment, yet there is almost no government support for men in these circumstances. In fact, it is exactly the opposite: the government plays a part in punishing and goading divorced men – especially if they are or become unemployed – sometimes driving them to take their own lives.

If there is to be any overhaul of health care, men have to start demanding some fair treatment in both disbursement of health insurance and treatment for men. Men should also demand optional post-divorce counseling for both mental and physical health, as well as health and nutritional supplements such as WIC if they are in need. For every public women’s health clinic, there should be a men’s health clinic, and married and divorced men should watch very carefully for efforts to legally obligate men to pay the government more money in case their wives and exes decide (without any input from the father) to ride a free health care train with the kids.

However, it remains one of the only sectors in our economy that continues to grow despite the recession. Some doctors are beginning to get a little nervous about this, and see that health care has started to grow uncontrollably and become an unsustainable monster. George Lundberg, the blogger from the previous link, writes that health care costs are staggering, and do not reflect the true value of health care in the US:

“Health Care in the USA uses (consumes) some 17% of the Domestic National Product, something like $ 2 600 000 000 000 per year. Its growth has been at 2-5 X the rate of inflation almost every year for as long as I have watched it (some 30 years).”

Health care is projected to grow not only because it subsists largely on public money, but because the numbers of elderly, who have a far greater need for it, will swell greatly over coming years. From a purely rational perspective (that is, not taking humanity into account), it would seem that spending such an enormous amount of GDP on maintaining non-productive members of society will ultimately have a draining effect on our economy. If we are using a such a huge amount of our national income and energy taking care of old folks, then just what kind of economy will we have?

Of course, one hardly wants to see old people abandoned and left to die, so nobody is suggesting cutting them off, but it strikes me as dangerous that this is seen as the primary growth area in our economy, and may turn out to cause an imbalance in society in general, whereby younger, productive Americans pay a significant amount of taxes and insurance to pay for a bloated geriatric care industry.

Furthermore, health care is dominated by females. They comprise 75% of health care workers, which has been a major factor in the gender imbalance in unemployment in the recession. This brings up the question of where the money will ultimately come from to pay for the health care industry. If it becomes a large enough part of our national expenditures, it seems that it might begin to eat everything else up until there is little left, at which point it will have no choice but to cannibalize itself.

I am extremely skeptical of the idea that we can run a country on nursing homes and hospitals, but this appears to be the best plan according to a number of investors. Unfortunately, it cannot last. Plenty of people will make a lot of money, just as they have been doing with the incessant bubbles of the last decade, but the nation as a whole will suffer for this new scheme.

However, there is the science of performance behind his miraculous feats of exertion, and Tour champions have always been a subject of great medical and scientific interest. As someone who is fascinated by physiology, I can’t help but speculate, despite my admiration for the man, that there may be some factor that is not wholly natural behind Lance’s success.

I have read with great interest about Lance’s battle with cancer, and one thing that struck me as quite significant is that he freely reports feeling lighter following his cancer treatment. In fact, he was lighter — by about ten pounds. Prior to his bout with cancer Lance had been a very good – but not great – cyclist. Following his recovery he dominated like no one before him.

Although he has some physiological characteristics that set him apart, such as much lower lactate levels than normal, it seems to me that ten pounds is a very significant amount of weight over a long distance cycling race — especially one that climbs up and down mountains.

Although I am no doctor or biologist, I know that chemotherapy can lead to significantly reduced bone density, and Armstrong went through very intense chemotherapy. This, to me, seems significant in the context of cycling. Just as a bird has much lighter bones than a mammal so as to fly without oppressive effort, couldn’t a cyclist with lighter bones have a similar advantage?

So I will set it out there that Lance Armstrong’s singular advantage may be the very ordeal that nearly cost him his life. I would appreciate any feedback from experts on this idea, which I haven’t seen anywhere else.

Over and over we hear from men that being nice, helpful and gracious only leads to scorn and abuse from women. On the other hand, for a certain class of woman, being surly and uncooperative leads to a much more positive response. This is perhaps the basis of the “neg” that is one of the mainstays of the pick up artist’s arsenal.

Finally, it appears that we have scientific confirmation of this phenomenon.

In a cognitive research experiment, a scientist asked freshman and sophomore college girls to participate in an exercise with their boyfriends. These were their instructions:

I would like you to prepare and deliver a four-minute talk. This talk will be videotaped and viewed later by several professors and graduate students…. It is extremely important that you do the best job that you can with this talk…. Your talk should be about the most difficult time in your life and how you coped with it.

They were given only five minutes, along with the help of their boyfriends, to prepare for the talk.

The women were rated as high social anxiety (HSA) and low social anxiety (LSA), and they were further divided into those who were satisfied with their relationships and those who were not.

Furthermore, criteria were established by which to judge performance of the task at hand (boyfriends were also evaluated on this one):

Positive: Specific analysis of the problem, statement of feelings, asking for help, positive response to helper
Negative: Demanding help, criticizing, blaming, accusing, rejecting helper, whining, complaining
On Task: Staying focused on the assignment.

The result, although stunning to the researchers, would hardly be a surprise to many men:

The researchers could find no significant differences in behavior between the HSA and LSA women or their partners when the results were averaged across all participants in a group. But when each group was divided into subgroups of high- and low-satisfaction with their relationships, a significant difference was observed. Among high-satisfaction women, HSA women showed significantly more negative behavior than LSA women.

The researchers speculate that women who are satisfied with their relationships may fell more secure expressing their emotions when they are nervous or anxious. Since the LSA women probably weren’t as anxious about the speech, they had no reason to show any signs of discomfort, but HSA women did. HSA women who were unsatisfied with their relationships, on the other hand, were not comfortable sharing their anxiety with their partners.

And what about when the boyfriends behaved negatively? Again unexpectedly, HSA women behaved more negatively when their boyfriends behaved more positively to them. Among low-social anxiety women, there was no difference in behavior regardless of how their boyfriends behaved. Why did the highly-anxious women behave worse when their boyfriends were being nice?

After the results came in, the researchers speculated that the anxious women were more comfortable complaining when their boyfriends were more supportive, because they were not worried about getting a negative response in return.

But if comfort and security cause negative behavior, wouldn’t that suggest that the low anxiety women would be the biggest nags of all? I suspect that “high social anxiety” actually means something more like “high hormone level,” and the negative behavior toward complacent men may be a psycho-sexual rejection of less attractive mates.

Whatever the case, this strongly suggests that any man contemplating marriage should do his best to avoid a highly “anxious” woman. It also confirms the value and usefulness of the “neg” as a tool to gain a positive response from females of a certain psychological makeup.

After the war, Larry moved to New York to pursue a career in opera while working as a doorman. That never panned out, but his spirit was not broken. When his sister was widowed, he moved to Virginia to stay with her, and was seen bicycling around town, enjoying nature and singing to the Rappahannock River when the fancy struck him.

Today, he takes no medications and works out daily with improvised weights. His dire financial straits are not a source of major concern, as his greatest joy is simply to be alive. However, there are others who are concerned that he might be forced into a nursing home. A website has been set up to encourage support for Larry, despite the fact that he has not been informed of the threat to his current living situation. I hope Larry and his supporters prevail.

Despite his lack of a wife, career and family, Haubner has lived life to its fullest. Maybe nobody ever told him about what was expected of him as a man, but if they did, it appears that he didn’t listen, and was not the worse for it.

Those of us who willingly take up the burdens of family and responsibility should not feel cheated, but rather should look at Larry Haubner and take note of the sacrifices that we have made. Larry has led a charmed, carefree life, and we should be happy for him. He is the living embodiment of the free, good life that can be had as an independent man, and those of us who have taken a different path can feel a sense of vindication in the knowledge that it truly is hard, unforgiving work to take up the burdens of marriage and family. In fact, we should demand some recognition and respect for climbing a steeper hill, and putting more weight in our packs.

As for Larry, may he keep on enjoying himself, and may he continue provide us with a living example of the vitality of a free man.