Welmer

Over at Roissy’s blog commenter Doug posted a link to a blog called “Female Misogynist,” where a self-proclaimed lesbian has been writing anti-feminist posts for well over a year now. Given my experiences with lesbians, who have been feminist to the point of being psychotic, this is like coming face to face with bigfoot in my backyard.

She writes very well, has a sense of humor, and is obviously quite intelligent. If I take issue with anything, it is her self-description as a misogynist and male chauvinist. She seems to be more of a classic masculinist, to me.

I tried posting a comment on her blog, but there seems to be some kind of malfunction with Blogger (typical), so I’ll simply urge readers to check out the blog and behold the wondrous diversity of humanity — and read some of the thoughtful posts, of course.

A couple weeks ago, after seeing the buzz over the “Mad Men” TV series, I flipped on the tube and watched most of an episode. The visual presentation was pretty well done, with the period cars, clothes and hairstyles. However, it seemed that the emphasis on this may have been a little overdone, and the female actresses seemed positively giddy about the clothes, proudly thrusting their bosoms out at every opportunity in a display that appeared overly eager. I got the impression that they were excited by the opportunity to participate in a period piece, much as schoolgirls might relish the opportunity to overplay the part of an antebellum Southern belle.

The setting is an ad agency – hardly an original idea these days – and other than the smoking, drinking and style, it appeared to be pretty much what one might expect in a modern office: chock full of women with a few “big men” running the show. As a drama centered on Don Draper, an alpha male stud around whom revolves a society of women, the show had something of a soap opera feel to it. Rather than a human being, Draper came off as a big, hunky prop. Only the women acted like real people — they were the primary actors in the show.

Male porn is primarily a visual exercise. It is really kind of a monotonous, predictable thing. Men perform a physical act, and women are generally the passive partners. In soaps and other dramas aimed at women, the main act is social and the sex – although an important component – is secondary. The lead man is a prop, passed from woman to woman like some phallic ark of the covenant that gives its bearer dominance.

Men have often been accused of objectifying women, but popular culture objectifies men to at least the same degree, just in a different way. The cheap thrill that women get out of dramas that portray men as shallow facsimiles of human beings whose only relevant appetite is for glamorous, socially dominant women (the self-fantasy evoked in female viewers) is every bit as sordid as the release men achieve from formulaic, ritualized porn flicks.

I’ve been doing some technical research for a good consolidated blog CMS, and have decided upon a theme (WordPress template) and general structure. However, I’m having a bit of trouble finding a good name.

Concepts that ought to be incorporated into the name include:

• Freedom
• Action
• Confidence
• Purpose
• Masculinity

A short name, preferably only one or two words, would be best. A name that would allow for a good logo would be helpful as well. Suggestions for names or additional concepts are welcome — I need some food for thought.

Justin has a very funny post titled “The Origins of Game: Jesus” over at his Religion News. As far as I can tell, it’s a combination of parody and truth. Perhaps one of the most amusing things about the post is that it’s pretty much right on the money (although the game terminology could use a bit of editing).

Here’s a passage:

Jesus, master of the alpha demand and validation (as recorded in John 4):
Coming upon a strange woman at a well, Jesus starts off by straight up ordering her to fetch him a drink. The woman gives him a shit test, throwing up some religious bullshit excuse not to do it for him. Jesus responds by elevating his own status: “If you knew who was asking this request, you would do that and more, because I give the living water.” The woman continues her shit test, asking him to prove it.

Jesus then validates the girl, shifting the subject, demanding “Where is your husband?” This begins to break her down, shifting the ground to her uncomfortable zone, as she admits she has no husband. Jesus drives the woman down even harder: “Darn right you don’t have a husband, you are a little slut [five previous husbands, living with man currently].” The woman is totally owned by this, and sees to it that Jesus is fed and housed for the next couple days in her village.

This is the most clever exercise in bringing the proponents of game down to earth that I have seen yet.

For a somewhat lighter subject, I’d like to discuss the issue of women in pants. For some reason, pants have been cast as “liberating” for the modern woman. Exactly what pants liberate is a mystery to me, but I suppose they do have their practical uses. Pants are essential for horse-riding, mining, hunting in thick brush, fishing, and other rough jobs. Perhaps this is why they are seen as having some symbolic value in terms of gender equality; they are traditional gear for manly pursuits that have generally been off-limits to women. However, given the fact that even your typical urban man of today would hardly be inconvenienced by wearing a skirt and carrying a purse in his day-to-day activities, what purpose could the modern pair of trousers serve in the continued liberation of women? Does wearing pants prove anything anymore? I don’t think so.

My argument with pants on women is largely aesthetic. Not just on the individual level, but as far as society at large is concerned as well. Although fit young women can be quite appealing in a pair of pants, your typical pant-wearing woman – especially here in Seattle – is a slob. In public, there is no social elegance to speak of, but rather a mass of gender-undifferentiated proles, all wearing pretty much the same thing. The women may as well be stunted, wide-hipped and narrow-shouldered men stuffed into denim a few sizes too small.

Just as the American man’s principal weakness regarding the relationship between the sexes is his inattention to the social aspects of manliness, the American woman all too often neglects the sensual elements of femininity. By this I do not mean the obvious physical attributes that distinguish women, but rather the entire package — dress, bearing, tone of voice, choice of words, gait, expression and much more. A brash, loud woman – even a well-built one – stomping around in a pair of jeans, baring her teeth as she laughs (I really can’t stand how American women bare their fangs constantly — it is so far from demure) can be a real turn-off.

In the home, pants are entirely unnecessary. Sweatpants may be the worst offense. The popular image we have of the disgusting American husband sitting on an easy chair in front of the TV, hand in pants and belly sticking out from under the shirt, is more than matched by the wife parked on the sofa like a basking sea-lion in an old T-shirt, sweatpants and flip-flops.

Certainly, it is incumbent on American men to learn to behave in ways that are socially attractive to women (known to some as “Game”), but as part of the deal we should also expect a bit more from women. Women should learn to dress, behave, speak and move more like women. Part of that should include abandoning the default status of pants as female attire. If a woman wants to go herding cattle, prospecting or fly-fishing, by all means she should go to Cabela’s and purchase a sturdy pair of trousers, but what’s the point of purchasing that cheap pair of women’s pants at Eddie Bauer? Why not choose an attractive, feminine skirt?

One often finds magazine articles about independent, glamorous women earning big bucks who are disappointed only by the fact that there aren’t enough “available men.” It’s easy to get the impression that working women are mainly engaged in lucrative, fulfilling careers. Perhaps the women who work in the traditional publishing industry – which is sinking like the Titanic – really believe that their unsustainable lifestyles are enjoyed by a majority of working women. However, all it takes is a walk about town to see that this is far from the case.

Go to a nursing home sometime, and you will see women working for low wages in an undesirable occupation. At the grocery store, girls are bagging groceries. Hospital orderlies who clean up the messes and push wheelchairs are largely female, and even being a doctor – female or not – is far from the glamorous lifestyle portrayed on so many TV shows. In fact, going into the medical profession is something like signing up for indentured servitude.

Most working women have jobs I woudn’t want. Neither would most of my readers, I imagine. Most of their jobs are support for the broader economy, and are drone work. Sure, we’re seeing more and more female managers, but most of them are managing drones in strictly confined institutions. Then there are the waitresses and bookkeepers who work at small businesses, and the government employees at the courthouse, DMV, etc. Most independent, female-owned businesses seem to be preschools or day care, boutique bakeries and small clothing stores. It is all part of a dreary service economy that has grown like so much vegetation around the core engines of economic progress.

Of course, there are women involved in high-powered, important jobs. Most of these, however, are in social rather than creative fields. For example, one can find plenty of women with power in politics, education and even law, but in engineering, building and entertainment they are rare indeed.

What this says to me is that there is still room for men in our economy (if it can regain its health), but somehow we have shifted from creative jobs that produce wealth and economic progress to jobs that sustain the status quo. How did this happen? I suspect it has something to do with government spending, which has thrown us into the deepest debt we’ve faced in generations. Perhaps the recent emphasis on tricky finance rather than productive endeavors played a role as well. Either way, I doubt that this new female-centric economy is actually sustainable. The math simply doesn’t work out, for one thing — how can we rescue the economy by spending more money on the non-productive service sector while the true creators of wealth are failing or moving overseas?

The emergence of a rift between the younger proponents of Game and the older conservative establishment has come to expose some of the pathologies that have festered for many years beneath the surface of American society. One, in particular, can explain many of the symptoms of our social decay and the deconstruction of marriage, that bedrock of civilization. Interestingly, it is not radical liberals who bear the most responsibility in our ongoing national tragedy, but rather a close and curious bond between America’s young women and the paternalist elements of society.

Many have blamed “chivalry” for the breathtakingly irrational and hypocritical actions and views of the American establishment when it comes to gender equality and justice, but that is an insufficient explanation. Chivalry, even at its most vile, is a mere juvenile sort of commingling of morality and sexuality — a youth’s fantasy of winning a fair maiden through acts of valor. However, for the aging man who sits on the bench and dishes out judgment, the gray-haired politician who casts his vote, and the polished executive in his suite, there is no fantasy of slaying dragons and storming castles, for he has already done those things. Yet there remains the smoldering desire for the maiden, and it is reciprocated.

Of course, it is natural for men to retain an attraction for fertile women throughout their lives, and this is recognized in all cultures. However, in America it appears to have become a pathology because of American family dynamics.

In my article on Carl Jung and Game, I quoted Jung and his analysis of American marriages. One theme that Jung found particularly problematic was the mother-son relationship of American wives to their husbands. Jung states:

[...] 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.

Jung goes on at length about the dysfunctional husband/wife dynamic in American marriages, suggesting that something is seriously askew in our society’s management of sexuality. Jung focused on the damage this was doing to American women, and how they were wandering confused, unsure of what they really want or where they belong. But Jung did not address the effects this sexual confusion might have on men. It would be natural for a man, married to a woman he sees as a mother figure, to transfer his passion elsewhere, and this is what has happened in the American family and American society.

As the woman who becomes a wife becomes the mother figure, the husband’s passion – both emotional and sexual – is transferred to the maiden, who is the daughter figure. The American man, who is the “obedient son” in his marriage, becomes the lover in paternal relations with younger women, and the confused American woman (whether actually a maiden or not) develops a romantic attachment to men who are father figures.

This principle is illustrated by a number of American and British works of art. It may be Charles Dickens who, in one of the defining works of Victorian fiction, best demonstrates this dynamic at work. In Tale of Two Cities, Lucy Manette, the epitome of woman as doll on a pedestal, is depicted as having a very intense relationship with her father, Dr. Manette. Dickens’ portrayal of Lucy as pious, beautiful girl, whose father fondles a lock of her hair, is positively orgasmic. There is nothing unnatural about a father’s love for a daughter, but Lucy clearly plays the spiritual and emotional role of wife in her relationship with her father. It is ironic that Dickens transfers this very Anglo relationship to a French family, because there is typically a closer bond between father and son rather than father and daughter in France.

An even earlier rendition of this peculiarly British tendency exists in Tom Jones, one of the first English novels, written by Henry Fielding in the mid-18th century. In Tom Jones Squire Western has an especially close relationship with his daughter Sophia. Western, a boorish man with excessive appetites and a fondness for the hunt, is violently protective of his daughter, who cares for him and sings to him when he is drunk and sentimental. So we see that our American dilemma is nothing new, and was in all likelihood inherited from the motherland.

Not long ago, I watched a very American portrayal of the same dynamic at work. Lonesome Dove, the iconic American TV series about a great Western cattle drive, plays directly to the paternalist fantasy. In Lonesome Dove a couple of old Texas rangers, Captain Augustus “Gus” McCrae, and Captain Woodrow Call, decide to drive a herd to Montana and establish the first ranch in the territory. In the most important subplot, former colleague Jake Spoon, who is significantly younger than Gus and Woodrow, decides to take the town hooker, Lorena Wood, to San Francisco. Gus has an ongoing relationship with Lorena, which combines both paternal and sexual elements. Jake Spoon follows the drive for a while, leaving Lorena for a time while he goes to town to gamble. Gus, naturally, has at her, winning rights to a “poke” through a card game, in which he cheats to win. Lorena apparently doesn’t mind so much that he cheated.

Lorena is stolen by an Indian named Blue Duck, and subsequently rescued by Gus. In the meanwhile, Jake Spoon takes up with some bandits, hoping to get some money out of the deal. Jake’s bandits turn out to be murderous bad men, and Gus eventually catches Jake Spoon after killing the bandits. Gus stoically hangs Spoon, acting as judge, jury and executioner.

The rivalry between Gus and Jake Spoon hinges on Lorena, who is a beautiful and very young woman. Gus plays the father figure to Lorena (despite having sex with her from time to time), while Jake is the husband figure. The climax of the subplot is clearly the hanging of Jake Spoon, which symbolizes the killing of the husband by the father. This act epitomizes the relationship of the paternalist power structure to the American husband and wife. It is, in essence, the father murdering the husband to assert his authority over and rights to his daughter. This act is played out in millions of divorces across America, sometimes quite literally. It is the secret, smoldering passion that drives the abuse of American men by the paternalist power structure.

This is why social conservatives often come off as inarticulate when defending “traditional” marriage. They may point to social benefits of marriage, and virtually everyone would agree, but when they attempt to find someone to blame, their finger always ends up pointed at young men, upon whom they heap abuses such as VAWA, summary arrests and dispossessions based on a woman’s crocodile tears, unconstitutional and coercive child support and custody laws, and slanderous accusations of sloth and effeminacy.

They are not driven as much by an altruistic desire to improve society as they are by the lack of sexual and emotional fulfillment in their own relationships with their mother-wives. They find fulfillment of these desires through an incestuous relationship, both symbolic and real, with the daughters of America, and they wage war against America’s sons with all the primitive passion of savages raiding a village to carry off its maidens.

Over at Nova’s place, we’ve been chatting a bit about setting up a central blog to pull things together in one place. I think that’s the way to go for a number of reasons, and I’ll try to explain here what some of the advantages are.

1. More efficient browsing

In terms of exposure, this is probably the most important. There’s no doubt that several of us share a lot of subscribers, and it will be easier for our readers to browse one site than it is to hop from one domain to another. Additionally, those who might read us every once in a while but aren’t regulars will be more motivated to do so if it only takes one bookmark. Even devotees of jezebel and feministing, who probably browse our blogs from time to time, will likely find a central site much more convenient, and despite our differences we do want them reading us as well (they will link us and increase publicity).

2. Automatically enhanced SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is what pulls readers into a site through searches on Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. SEO is not so much a fancy trick as it is a matter of lots of relevant text. With a number of contributing writers (and commenters), we wil have reams of text in fairly short order, and the blog will pop up in searches with increasing regularity. SEO helps establish authority online, and serves as a means to steadily consolidate a reader base.

3. Traffic

I suspect that if we put together all the readers and traffic in our men’s blogosphere, we’d already have enough for a pretty potent website. Therefore, if we can consolidate into one blog, we will be starting in a pretty good position. One of the main means of directing traffic to a website is through links, and I trust we’ll all link to any central blog. Increasing traffic is really our number one goal, because we want to increase exposure and influence. Furthermore, high traffic will allow the site to pay for itself in time, and then individual content contributors can use the site as a launching pad for their own published work (e.g. books, videos).

The above three reasons are the most important, but there are a number of other advantages: More writers and readers on the same blog will promote cooperation and activism; a larger, more popular site will allow more specific focuses to emerge, such as regional groups; more powerful people will actually start to notice us, and; it may even allow some people to make this into a profession rather than a hobby.

Of course, there are always a few disadvantages. Managing a group of people is never easy, and this is why I don’t think anyone should even try. All of the bloggers I’m addressing here have already proven themselves quite capable of writing and posting material on their own, so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

It may take a bit of trial and error for some to use WordPress (the CMS I plan on using), but I don’t see us as a bunch of technophobes. Maintaining the site may be a bit of a pain, but I’ve got a few years of experience doing this, and with the WP Codex I should be able to handle any issues without having to resort to outside help.

As far as rules are concerned, I think only one needs to be spelled out and enforced:

No copyright infringement!

As the domain holder I’ll be held responsible for this, and I can’t afford a copyright lawyer at this time. I think I’ll put up a private page for the benefit of writers that spells out how to avoid this. Contributions from attorneys or others with info on staying on the safe side here would be most welcome.

As for other guidelines, just use your own judgment and keep in mind that we will have thousands of readers, and hopefully, in time, many more than that!

All in all it will take some doing and a couple weeks to get it up and running, but once I get a commitment from enough writers (a half-dozen should do the trick for starters), I’ll go fetch a domain and start building the site.

It looks like Novaseeker’s comment on Kristoff might be right on the money. It turns out that not only does Sheryl Wudunn (Kristoff’s wife) plan on releasing a book in September about the importance of a global drive to empower women, she is also deeply involved with charities that hold the purse strings in these endeavors.

Mme. WuDunn, according to the Times, works in philanthropy and finance. As a former employee of Goldman Sachs she is an experienced investor, which leads me to wonder what kind of money is in this “philanthropy” business she’s involved in. Fortunately, Lukobe posted a few good links in the comments. Here’s a quote from one of them:

[...] globally, more than 145 funds, with assets of nearly half a billion dollars, exist to improve the lives of women and girls. Many focus their efforts domestically; about a third work internationally. Not one existed in 1972 when the Ms. Foundation, the first national fund for and by women, was established. Collectively they now form the Women’s Funding Network and have plans to increase their joint coffers by another billion dollars by 2018, in concert with a drive called Women Moving Millions, which aims to encourage individuals, mostly women, to donate $1 million or more. The goal was to raise $150 million in three years, a target exceeded this spring by $30 million.

Looks like a decent business to be in. Madoff certainly milked the charity angle, and perhaps Mme. WuDunn plans on doing so as well, but I can only speculate on that. What I do know, thanks to Beltain, is that people are being asked to invest in “microfinance” funds, and are being promised a decent return as well as the opportunity to feel good about themselves for helping “women and children” in impoverished countries. I would be quite surprised if Mme. WuDunn were not involved in these micro-lending schemes, which I can say with some confidence flat out won’t work, except to extract a few bucks here and there from millions of peasants in the developing world, which probably does add up over time.

For some reason, it all reminds me of the usurious carpetbaggers who followed the Union Army into the South after our Civil War.

Nick Kristoff, a NY Times opinion columnist who writes like a Unitarian minister and pens self-serving articles urging liberals to give more money (his wife is in the philanthropy business), has come up with a long piece advocating a “Crusade” on behalf of women all over the world.

In the article, Kristoff and his Chinese wife, Sheryll WuDunn, give us a glimpse into the minds of international power brokers:

There’s a growing recognition among everyone from the World Bank to the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff to aid organizations like CARE that focusing on women and girls is the most effective way to fight global poverty and extremism. That’s why foreign aid is increasingly directed to women. The world is awakening to a powerful truth: Women and girls aren’t the problem; they’re the solution.

So what we have is a concerted global effort to help “women and girls,” probably along the lines of the decades-old campaign to do so here at home, which has resulted in the collapse of traditional marriage and boys being increasingly marginalized in school and the workplace.

One of the tools used to promote women in less developed parts of the world is “microfinance” — essentially small scale credit extended to women through World Bank programs and such. An example Kristoff gives is that of a Pakistani housewife with an unemployed husband (who is, naturally, described as a deadbeat and a wife-beating villain):

Saima took out a $65 loan and used the money to buy beads and cloth, which she transformed into beautiful embroidery that she then sold to merchants in the markets of Lahore. She used the profit to buy more beads and cloth, and soon she had an embroidery business and was earning a solid income — the only one in her household to do so. Saima took her elder daughter back from the aunt and began paying off her husband’s debt.

So here we have a success story, in which wealth is being created through light industrial production of apparel.

Of course, we should all cheer the change in circumstances for Saima, who has now turned the tables and become domineering toward her husband:

Today, Saima is a bit plump and displays a gold nose ring as well as several other rings and bracelets on each wrist. She exudes self-confidence as she offers a grand tour of her home and work area, ostentatiously showing off the television and the new plumbing. She doesn’t even pretend to be subordinate to her husband. He spends his days mostly loafing around, occasionally helping with the work but always having to accept orders from his wife. He has become more impressed with females in general: Saima had a third child, also a girl, but now that’s not a problem. “Girls are just as good as boys,” he explained.

OK, microfinance works in some cases, but the real question is whether the following statement is really accurate:

Perhaps the lesson presented by both Abbas and Saima is the same: In many poor countries, the greatest unexploited resource isn’t oil fields or veins of gold; it is the women and girls who aren’t educated and never become a major presence in the formal economy. With education and with help starting businesses, impoverished women can earn money and support their countries as well as their families. They represent perhaps the best hope for fighting global poverty.

No, I don’t think so. Countries that successfully raised themselves out of poverty following WW II did not do so through small businesses run by women. Certainly, they put women to work, particularly in Asia, but these jobs were part of a state-planned emphasis on light industry that exploited country girls by making them the low-wage workhorses in factories, i.e. sweatshops. For Korea, China and Thailand this has worked out pretty well, but it didn’t have anything to do with “liberating” women; in fact it was all about control and exploitation. And once the sweatshop model outlived its usefulness, countries like Korea have switched to higher value-added products rather than footwear. These high-end products are manufactured and designed overwhelmingly by men.

Kristoff (who is actually a supporter of sweatshops) is getting it wrong. The countries that most successfully lifted themselves out of poverty did so through patriarchal authoritarianism and strict control and exploitation of women. Of course, once the hurdle was cleared, women were given increasing freedom and opportunity, after which most voluntarily switched from production to service jobs.

So Kristoff’s crusade is doomed. Any effort that encourages female independence and dominance as a means to lift a society out of poverty is working against its own stated goal, as we can see from our own ghetto failure here in the US, where women are clearly socially dominant, and yet have not managed to lift themselves out of poverty without paternalist carrot and stick type incentives from above.

We should beware of crusades advocated by pompous elites like Kristoff, who think they can solve the world’s problems despite having only a contrived understanding of the world, honed to very narrow specifications in detached, exclusive institutions.