I found my way to your stack from Mary Harrington's (via your comment on "The Missing Aunties").
What a world we're living in: we of the liberated first-world, fantasizing a beneficial return to what we will now perceive as having been valuable in a pre-fragmented social world. While sharing the planet with us, in real-time, continue horrors beyond comprehension. Not to mention the children. And babies. Hell is real for too many in this life, let alone any imagined after life.
This is a moving comment but of course there are no 'answers'. When I wrote this essay I was conscious that it is unrealistic for most of us to truly care deeply about the sufferings of millions thousands of miles from us. But we can and should at least put our own little rich world sufferings in a more honest perspective.
I fully agree, even though I did use the word 'tragic' to refer to the mating situation in our part of the world (on the Aunties post). But it's all relative, as they say... if we think of the divorce rate. But, at least 'we' get to *leave* an unsatisfying one.
I don't dispute the difficulty and pain experienced by so many women and girls Graham. However your piece, as does the conventional wisdom of the last several generations, places the experience of men in the shadows or relegates them solely to the role of perpetrator.
While women are violated in the craziness of war, men are killed. Outrage and anger though are saved for the women. There are innumerable examples of this as it's the framework for the conversation about women and men.
One way to see this very graphically is to take a single but extremely telling snapshot. In the movie "The Red Pill," feminist Cassie Jaye interviews men's right's activist Karen Straughan about the world-wide outrage about the girls abducted by Boko Haram in Nigeria. You can watch the movie for free at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7MkSpJk5tM and the part with Karen and Cassie starts around the 1:23:40 mark. (I recommend respecting Cassie and paying if you're going to watch the whole thing.) The footage shows the profoundly different treatment afforded the abduction of the girls and the invisible slaughter of the boys.
For the centre to hold we'll need to see both sides of complex issues.
This was an essay inspired by a book on what war does to women so that inevitably is its primary focus. Nevertheless I empathise with much of what you say in your comment but to be fair I did say (and early on in my essay) "It should however not be overlooked that, alongside the stories - of villages where women and children are loaded en masse onto trucks and destined for horrific brutalisation - there is typically also a brief mention of the parallel fate of the village men; ending up as a pile of corpses riddled with bullets." And later on: "This idea – in its politically correct feminist version - can itself be toxic and unhelpful in its failure to discriminate between the soldier who rapes and the soldier who doesn’t."
I am often struck by how much physically violent bullying boys experience at the hands of other boys (and some masters in boarding schools)- King Charles endured truly vile abuse at Gordonstoun - and how this has been sanctioned in elite schools as hazing to get into special societies - and how many boys are the victims of sexual abuse - whereas girls are far more emotionally vicious which can do lasting damage - the bitchiness of women is a neglected topic especially by feminists - Women's Inhumanity to Women by Phyllis Chesler makes for sobering reading - but boys who do not embody the alpha male ideal of strong, aggressive, sporty, confident and domineering - often the more intelligent boys who prefer chess and IT - really seem to arouse a murderous hatred in their peers - this could be because many adolescents are insecure and frightened they may not have what it takes to become 'real' men so the 'wimps' automatically inspire contempt - this may hark back to prehistoric times when good hunters and fighters were essential to the survival of the tribe and a wimp was a liability even if he was clever and could invent better tools and weapons - pretty girls can be equally vicious to their less attractive peers but the violence is generally emotional.
Ironically in our modern age it is the unathletic geeks like Bill Gates who are having the greatest impact on our world but boys like him will always inspire contempt and violence in their peers.
And the jocks - even if brutal - will always inspire admiration. Which is why Andrew Tate - a thoroughly vile individual - became so popular amongst boys.
"Ironically in our modern age it is the unathletic geeks like Bill Gates who are having the greatest impact on our world but boys like him will always inspire contempt and violence in their peers."
Not amongst Jews and many other demographics around the world. Seems the Anglosphere and African American male culture are the primary ones to worship at the altar of jocks and meat heads. Everyone else values academia and artistic and intellectual pursuits.
"Some kinds of violent misogyny can even be ‘woke’: rap artists boasting of subjugation and even rape of their 'bitches' can be lapped up by adoring college kids."
Nope. Not "woke" at all. Don't know how you would even come to that conclusion.
And let's not forget that if it weren't for Feminists around the world, both native to indigenous culture and "western", many of the horrors that women and children go through globally would never have come to light in the media.
There's a lot in what you say. What grates with me about the 'parochialism' of Western feminist journos is not that they don't have solutions. Of course there's little (or nothing) that they can DO about the brutalisation of women in places like Iran and Afghanistan. But they can CARE about it. Empathise with it. It surely should be a bigger deal in their moral framework than empathising with the regretted sexual indulgence of male media moguls made by actresses on the way up the greasy pole of fame. It's the wrong ordering of moral priorities that grates. Maybe it's a case of the Freudian concept of 'the narcissism of small differences'.
I found my way to your stack from Mary Harrington's (via your comment on "The Missing Aunties").
What a world we're living in: we of the liberated first-world, fantasizing a beneficial return to what we will now perceive as having been valuable in a pre-fragmented social world. While sharing the planet with us, in real-time, continue horrors beyond comprehension. Not to mention the children. And babies. Hell is real for too many in this life, let alone any imagined after life.
This is a moving comment but of course there are no 'answers'. When I wrote this essay I was conscious that it is unrealistic for most of us to truly care deeply about the sufferings of millions thousands of miles from us. But we can and should at least put our own little rich world sufferings in a more honest perspective.
I fully agree, even though I did use the word 'tragic' to refer to the mating situation in our part of the world (on the Aunties post). But it's all relative, as they say... if we think of the divorce rate. But, at least 'we' get to *leave* an unsatisfying one.
Oh Yes....and the narrowness of most Western feminist journalism's purview is - as I say in this essay - something I find endlessly jarring.
Added horror is given in the prevalence of female infanticide: the number of 'excess' men in India is about 35 million, in China 50 Million.
I don't dispute the difficulty and pain experienced by so many women and girls Graham. However your piece, as does the conventional wisdom of the last several generations, places the experience of men in the shadows or relegates them solely to the role of perpetrator.
While women are violated in the craziness of war, men are killed. Outrage and anger though are saved for the women. There are innumerable examples of this as it's the framework for the conversation about women and men.
One way to see this very graphically is to take a single but extremely telling snapshot. In the movie "The Red Pill," feminist Cassie Jaye interviews men's right's activist Karen Straughan about the world-wide outrage about the girls abducted by Boko Haram in Nigeria. You can watch the movie for free at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7MkSpJk5tM and the part with Karen and Cassie starts around the 1:23:40 mark. (I recommend respecting Cassie and paying if you're going to watch the whole thing.) The footage shows the profoundly different treatment afforded the abduction of the girls and the invisible slaughter of the boys.
For the centre to hold we'll need to see both sides of complex issues.
This was an essay inspired by a book on what war does to women so that inevitably is its primary focus. Nevertheless I empathise with much of what you say in your comment but to be fair I did say (and early on in my essay) "It should however not be overlooked that, alongside the stories - of villages where women and children are loaded en masse onto trucks and destined for horrific brutalisation - there is typically also a brief mention of the parallel fate of the village men; ending up as a pile of corpses riddled with bullets." And later on: "This idea – in its politically correct feminist version - can itself be toxic and unhelpful in its failure to discriminate between the soldier who rapes and the soldier who doesn’t."
True that. Thanks Graham!
I am often struck by how much physically violent bullying boys experience at the hands of other boys (and some masters in boarding schools)- King Charles endured truly vile abuse at Gordonstoun - and how this has been sanctioned in elite schools as hazing to get into special societies - and how many boys are the victims of sexual abuse - whereas girls are far more emotionally vicious which can do lasting damage - the bitchiness of women is a neglected topic especially by feminists - Women's Inhumanity to Women by Phyllis Chesler makes for sobering reading - but boys who do not embody the alpha male ideal of strong, aggressive, sporty, confident and domineering - often the more intelligent boys who prefer chess and IT - really seem to arouse a murderous hatred in their peers - this could be because many adolescents are insecure and frightened they may not have what it takes to become 'real' men so the 'wimps' automatically inspire contempt - this may hark back to prehistoric times when good hunters and fighters were essential to the survival of the tribe and a wimp was a liability even if he was clever and could invent better tools and weapons - pretty girls can be equally vicious to their less attractive peers but the violence is generally emotional.
Ironically in our modern age it is the unathletic geeks like Bill Gates who are having the greatest impact on our world but boys like him will always inspire contempt and violence in their peers.
And the jocks - even if brutal - will always inspire admiration. Which is why Andrew Tate - a thoroughly vile individual - became so popular amongst boys.
I agree with all this.
Talking of 'plain' girls and geeky boys, I think you might find my The Less Desired post of some interest.
Yes I have already read it!
I meant to say before....I think Miss Haversham is a brilliant pseudonym.
"Ironically in our modern age it is the unathletic geeks like Bill Gates who are having the greatest impact on our world but boys like him will always inspire contempt and violence in their peers."
Not amongst Jews and many other demographics around the world. Seems the Anglosphere and African American male culture are the primary ones to worship at the altar of jocks and meat heads. Everyone else values academia and artistic and intellectual pursuits.
That is good to know.
"Some kinds of violent misogyny can even be ‘woke’: rap artists boasting of subjugation and even rape of their 'bitches' can be lapped up by adoring college kids."
Nope. Not "woke" at all. Don't know how you would even come to that conclusion.
And let's not forget that if it weren't for Feminists around the world, both native to indigenous culture and "western", many of the horrors that women and children go through globally would never have come to light in the media.
There's a lot in what you say. What grates with me about the 'parochialism' of Western feminist journos is not that they don't have solutions. Of course there's little (or nothing) that they can DO about the brutalisation of women in places like Iran and Afghanistan. But they can CARE about it. Empathise with it. It surely should be a bigger deal in their moral framework than empathising with the regretted sexual indulgence of male media moguls made by actresses on the way up the greasy pole of fame. It's the wrong ordering of moral priorities that grates. Maybe it's a case of the Freudian concept of 'the narcissism of small differences'.