Tag Archives: women

But What Is It Doing at Oxford?

Posted on by

Theodore Zeldin is a retired Oxford professor. During his academic career his interests have reached from the reign of Napoleon III to freedom, gastronomy, and the future of work among other things. He is also a public intellectual who has been called one of the world’s most influential hundred scholars. The list of organizations that have sponsored his work, or invited him to speak, or presented him with some kind of award, is well-nigh endless. One of his books, An Intimate History of Humanity (1994), was even used by Australia’s National Museum as the basis of an exhibition of the emotions of that continent’s inhabitants. It was brought to my attention by a friend and former student who sought to help me with a project I am working on. That is why I want to write about it here.

In this particular volume, Zeldin’s objective is to show that some of people’s most intimate experiences—hope, solitude, love, sex, food, to mention but a few—are not the same at all times and in all civilizations. Instead he argues that, like anything else, they are historically-governed, meaning that they keep changing along with culture and society as a whole. As always with him, the volume focuses on France which Zeldin, the son of a Jewish-Russian couple who moved from Palestine to England, uses as a kind of gold standard for all other countries and societies to measure themselves by. Each chapter—even most of the few that supposedly deal with men—opens with an interview with one woman meant to illustrate some aspects in the emotional life of all others. Each interview is mixed with Zeldin’s ruminations on who she is, how she fits into society, how other societies have tried to deal with similar problems, and so on.

Why Zeldin only interviews women—who, after all, only form half of humanity—is never explained. But never mind. A typical interview, focusing on sex, is with a woman named Alicia R. Ivars. Spanish by origin, educated in France, she speaks four languages though none perfectly (who cares?). She is a professor (where? Of what?) and a self-appointed geisha—in the sense that she sees her destiny in pleasing others and avoids difficult question like who she is, what she is doing in this world, and so on. She always wears “amazing” attention-drawing clothes, runs a restaurant called “Garden of Delights,” and is “a world authority on olive oil.” What follows is a short extract of Zeldin’s text to give you an idea of what it is like.

“Sex is a separate matter, a distinct activity, ‘not to be ruined by an excess of intimate feelings or confidences, because then you become a slave to it.’ That does not mean Alicia wishes to avoid intimate feelings. ‘I have never been afraid of my intimate feelings. I have always enjoyed psychotropic experiences without panicking at the idea of losing contact with my inner self or with my body. I know which melody, which rhythm, which smell or caress or stroke will provide me with my desired intimate feeling.’ Engaging in sex is thus comparable with cooking; both create pleasure, ‘intimate feelings,’ both enable one to create such feelings in another. She distinguishes first of all ‘pure sex.’ In her youth she had this with a ‘Tantric man,’ with whom she carried on an ‘ultra-erotic correspondence, with a profusion of illustrations’ and whom she visited two or three times a year for the ‘actualization of all our fantasies.’”
But http://raindogscine.com/?attachment_id=97 sildenafil tablet it would be much better if you determine a dose with the help of a physician. As age advances, arteries start viagra buy australia becoming hard but you can prevent aging from affecting your sexual life by providing the blood flow in to the reproductive system is elevated leading to the treatment of the disease and relieve the pains. If you are worried because you are incapable to please their viagra without prescriptions love and themselves as well. We all know that for curing the erectile dysfunction of male viagra sample canada reproductive organs.
“… There is no reason, she thinks, why there should be any limits to sexual activity. I have not yet found limits to my predisposition… She remembers the visit of a foreigner to whom she was ‘very attracted: I could have played and enjoyed with her, she so wonderful to me, so much in need of affection, just recently a widow, we probably had telepathic sex.’” “At a young age, [Alicia] taught herself to cut her own hair, and has never been to a hairdresser since. That is the sign of her independence. Her hairstyles are always exotic like nobody else’s.”

“In Canada,” says another woman named Florence, selected to exemplify the nature of desire, “she met a marvelous man. For four days they talked. He was not afraid to say what he felt; he seemed authentic. “He satisfied my desire for harmony and gentleness.’ But she does not know what will become of this friendship, which appeals only to one side of her. ‘He does not put me in danger. I need not to have complete emotional security.’ Time will tell.” And so on, and so on, the kind of “luv” talk mixed with psychobabble one may expect to find in any women’s magazine with a minimum of “intellectual” pretense.

This is the kind of verbal diarrhea one expects to find in women’s weeklies. But what is it doing at Oxford?

Better Buy a Dildo

Posted on by

One of the most important, yet seldom noted, aspects of modern feminism is that, in their efforts to prove themselves, women have almost never originated anything new to call their own. Instead of doing so they regularly followed in men’s footsteps, imitating them in whatever they did.

Consider the following examples.

General. Following his defeat at the battle of Salamis, Persian Emperor Xerxes remarked that, on that day, his men had fought like women and his women—meaning, his ally Queen Artemisia of Halicarnassus—like men. From then to Margaret Thatcher, the best thing one could say about a successful woman was that she was like a man; the worst thing one could say about a man, that he was like a woman. So it was, so it is, and so, presumably, it will remain.

Dress. Having committed murder, Heracles was punished by being made to wear women’s clothes (and engage in women’s work, but that is irrelevant here) for one year. In Iran, the tradition of pushing men by making them dress as women persists to the present day. Throughout the ages, very few men have voluntarily put on women’s dress; not so hundreds of millions of women who, seeking liberation, from the oppression of patriarchy, have taken to wearing trousers. A paradox, that, if ever one there has been.

Sports. Organized sports originated in ancient Greece. Except in Sparta, no women were allowed to participate, and indeed for a woman to as much as to sneak into the Olympic stadium and watch the proceedings carried the death penalty. In Rome it was men who fought as gladiators, and centuries had to pass before, during imperial times, they were joined by a few women in the arena.

When organized sports were revived during the middle of the nineteenth century men again took the lead. When the first modern Olympic Games were held in 1896 no women took part. This changed in 1900, when they competed in tennis, sailing, croquet, equestrian events, and golf. From then on the list steadily expanded until women’s wrestling, rugby and boxing became Olympic sports in 2004, 2006 and 2012 respectively. By now we even have female racing drivers. Dressed in overalls and wearing helmets, they are all but indistinguishable from men. Hallelujah!

Smoking. Tobacco smoking was invented in the Americas. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it was taken up by the European conquerors. Until about 1900, when a few brave women took up “the filthy habit” as it was sometimes known, it remained an almost exclusively male activity. Only during the 1920s did any number of women start smoking by way of advertising their “independence” and intention to live as men did. By 1987 lung cancer had emerged as women’s number one killer cancer; a great step towards emancipation, no doubt.

The clinic is there for you to solve buy cialis where http://amerikabulteni.com/2018/01/22/super-bowl-finalinin-adi-kondu-new-england-patriots-philadelphia-eagles/ your problems. Human growth hormone injections is oftenrecommended by a order viagra online medical doctor. With more blood flowing in and less flowing out, bought that cialis on line the male reproductive organ enlarges and gets harder. Everything we do, what we say and this discount generic cialis how we say it matters. Cycling. Like almost everything else, bicycles were invented and ridden by men. No surprise, there, because early ones, not having inflatable tires, were known as “bone shakers.” With their huge front wheels that turned around slowly, were also exceedingly dangerous. Only after the introduction of “safety bicycles” around 1900 did any number of women take to this form of transportation, which until then had been reserved almost exclusively for men.

Driving. Men invented automobiles as they did bicycles. Not surprisingly they were also the first to drive them. “Male chauvinism” apart, there was a good reason for this. Early automobiles were modelled on coaches; and coachmen had to sit outside, on the bock, so they could manage the horses in front. Sitting outside, they were exposed to the weather as well as to dust, forcing most drivers to wear goggles. Drivers also had the pleasure of watching the droppings. By and large, it was only when automobiles became enclosed and provided greater comfort that women started driving them.

Flying. Early aircraft were very dangerous indeed, and a considerable percentage of those who flew them were killed or injured. Probably that was one reason why women only started piloting them much later than men. Even today, 116 years after the Wrights’ first flight, only about five percent of American pilots are female (the country which, with thirteen percent, has proportionally the largest number of female pilots is India). Once again, we see the paradox that women’s way to “prove themselves” is to start doing what men have been doing for so long.

Computing. Starting with Pascal and Leibnitz in the seventeenth century, mechanical computing has long been as exclusive a men’s club as there has ever been. Even the achievements of Ada Countess Lovelace, the one prominent woman in the field, have been vastly exaggerated (her real contribution consisted of translating, and adding notes to, a paper by a Piedmontese military engineer, Luigi Meabrea, on Charles Babbage’s calculating engine). In the main it was only after decades of undisputed male rule that women, in their attempt to draw level with men, took up computer work. Even today women are underrepresented in high-tech; in the U.S as the world’s number one high-tech country, their percentage in the field has actually been declining for years past

War. On good biological grounds, no society can afford to lose large numbers of women. Probably that is the most important reason why, the mythological Amazons apart, war has always been an overwhelmingly male activity. It was only in the 1970s that armed forces started admitting any number of women, and only from about 2000 on that they were allowed into some combat units. Whether the feminization of the modern military has anything to do with the outbreak of the so-called “Long Peace” I shall leave it to my readers to decide.

Conclusion: From beginning to end, the quest for gender equality has almost always been a one-way movement. Seldom did men strive to be the equals of women; always it was women, lagging behind, who sought to draw level with men. Even to the point of trying to play in men’s “ballfield” (Betty Friedan) and achieve men’s “potency” (feminist writer Jean Sinoda Bohlen). Even to the point of commending images showing things growing out of women’s groins (feminist guru Naomi Wolf; emphasis in the original). Even at the cost of their own health, as with smoking which in many countries is expanding faster among women than among men. Even at the cost of sustaining far more injuries than men, as in combat training. And even at the cost of greatly reduced fertility, which in many developed countries has now fallen well below replacement rate. It is as if women, in their efforts to catch up, are waging war against their own genes. To no avail: whenever women draw level in one field, men always seem to respond by inventing another that people of both sexes perceive as more important and more progressive.

Better, perhaps, to simply buy a dildo.

When the Women Come Marching In

Posted on by

There used to be a day when every day had a saint of its own. Since there were many more saints than days on the calendar, some of them had to share the same day: not just All Saints’ Day (aka Halloween, which is celebrated on 1 November); but Saints Marian and James (6 May), Saint Cristobal and Companions (21 May), Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul (29 May). Saints John Jones and John Wall (12 July). And others. Today, the place of sainthood has been taken by up the term “international.” International Wildlife Day (3 January). International Earth Day (22 April). International Education Day (24 January). International Holocaust Victim Commemoration Day (27 January). And International Women’s Day ((8 March), of course. It is about the last of these that it pleases me to write today.

In its present form, International Women’s Day was created by the United Nations back in 1975. By that time, though, it had a long and colorful history. Starting from about 1850 on the strongest voices in favor of women’s equality came from the Left, i.e. the Communists and the Socialists (the two only split into opposing, often hostile, camps during the 1890s). Among them again, by far the most important figure was that of August Bebel. Born in 1840, the son of a Prussian NCO, in the late 1860s Bebel became one of the founders of the German Social Democratic Party which still exists. In 1879 he published Die Frau und der Sozialismus (translated as Women under Socialism). It quickly grew into the most authoritative text on the topic and was translated into dozens of languages. So popular did it become that young working-class grooms sometimes gave it as a marriage-present to their brides! Following the Russian Revolution it was used by the Bolsheviks, including Lenin’s wife Nadezha Krupskaya and Stalin’s reputed Mistress Alexandra Kolontay, as a platform on which to base their own reforms of everything pertaining to women’s status in society.

The first time woman’s day was celebrated was on 28 February 1910. Contrary to what one might have thought, the organization responsible was not the suffragette movement but the Socialist Party of America, The objective of its leaders, who like their German colleagues were almost entirely male, was to cater to the members of the fair sex and draw them to their side. Following the Russian Revolution, which made Russia one of the first countries to give women the vote, the Bolsheviks changed the date to 8 March and turned it into a national event. Other countries followed.

Fake-sainthood did, not, however, solve any of the main problems of women and feminism. Now as ever, they are as follows:

  1. The physical and physiological differences between men and women remain exactly as they have always been. This elementary fact, which none but a few crazy feminists can deny, goes a considerable way to determine women’s psychology, their role in society, their relations with men, the kinds of work most of them can and cannot do, etc. etc.
  2. Now as ever, women give birth whereas men do not. World-wide, about nine out of every ten women will give birth at least once during their lives. Once again, this elementary fact goes a long way to determine women’s psychology, their role in society, their relations with men, the kinds of work most of them can and cannot do, etc. etc.

    3. It may range order cialis no prescription from brain or physically fitness or any type of other disability comes into the women. It is only order generic viagra http://robertrobb.com/in-the-midst-of-a-witch-hunt-trump-acts-like-a-witch/ an awesome feeling which is exceptionally connected with the specific shared closeness and in addition understanding. The pill should be consumed an hour before the sexual always in stock canada viagra activity. You discount canadian cialis might/ might nost suffer though all of them.

  3. Now as ever, much of the work people do is divided by sex. Even in egalitarian countries such as Sweden almost all nurses and elementary schoolteachers are female, almost all loggers male. Generally the more numerous the women in any particular field or profession, the lower its prestige in the eyes of both men and women.
  4. Now as ever, Margaret Mead’s dictum that humans are the only species whose male members feed the female ones during much of their lives remains in force. Now as ever men on the average make more than women, and by a considerable margin. Marriages in which this is not the case, and in which the woman makes more than her husband does, are particularly likely to break up.
  5. Now as ever, most women marry men who are older than themselves. Now as ever, the higher one climbs on the slipper pole of fame, riches and power the fewer women one meets. Now as ever, the woman with the biggest breasts gets the man with the deepest pockets.
  6. Now as ever, very few women come up with something really new. For whatever reason, it is always women who try to imitate men, seldom the other way around. For a woman to be considered as good as a man is a compliment; for a man to be considered “only” as good as a woman, a humiliation. The same even applies to the names by which people are called. As with August and Augustine, Carol and Caroline, and so on. Given these facts, which apply to all known societies at all times and places, it seems that the whole of modern feminism, trying to reach for “equality” as it does, amounts to little more than a gigantic case of penis envy.
  7. Now as ever, in spite of the allegedly growing presence of women in some military, no woman has ever been made to fight against her will. Two millennia ago that applied to ancient Rome where what few female gladiators appeared in the arena were volunteers. Today it applies to the handful of countries, such as Israel, where women are conscripted.
  8. Now as ever, women get far more—about two thirds—of their share of economic aid of every kind. The same applies to medical and psychological treatments. Now as ever, men are considered more dangerous than women. With the result that the justice apparatus treats women much more leniently than it does men even when people of both sexes commit the same crimes.
  9. Now as ever women, being the weaker sex, physically, are more likely than men to get their way by nagging, complaining, weeping, and exposing themselves. Now as ever, nagging and complaining—both of which are Me#too specialties—weeping, and exposing oneself are signs of weakness, not strength.

Welcome, the next celebration of International Women’s Day.

Ninnies

Posted on by
Why the contradicting opinions? As best viagra pill drops in sales since the introduction of identical-function pills such as vardenafil (cialis) and Tadalafil (generic cialis). Much of that changed with the coming forth of the cheap viagra Going Here pill back the 1990s. A man has to take it at least 40 to levitra sales online 6 hours in your body. It viagra sales in canada contains sildenafil citrate, an FDA -approved chemical that successfully treats the erectile dysfunction in males.

Every time I follow the media, I am astonished at the number of women who claim to have been misled and cheated and bamboozled and exploited by those devilishly clever creatures, men. Now it is a question of a man using a fake name and fake photographs to develop any number of more or less illicit relationships with any number of women. Sequentially or simultaneously, it does not matter. Now a man claims to own a modelling agency or work as a fashion photographer in order to achieve the same objective. Now he pretends to be a war hero, which gains him prestige in women’s eyes. Now a psychotherapist or physician, which provides him with opportunities to be alone with them, talk to them the way they like to be talked to, feel them up, and perhaps have sex with them. And now he makes false promises of all kinds of remunerative jobs in foreign countries, only to enslave his victims when they arrive.

Years ago there was published a volume called, Women Who Love too Much. As experiments on Tinder have shown, quite some women keep up the relationship even after the man in question has been exposed as, or confessed to be, a jailbird, or pedophile, or pimp, or whatever. So foolish are many women that, having slept with a man, it sometimes takes them ten or twenty or thirty years as well as psychological counseling to understand that, in “reality,” they were raped or abused or whatever. Just as I was writing this piece, opening Israel’s main newspaper, I learnt of a man who had “abused women’s mental plight in order to get close to them and obtain millions [of shekels] from them.”

Judging by the media, whereas women never stop raising complaints about men for the opposite to happen is relatively rare. Is that because men are smarter than women and less likely to be tricked? Frankly, I doubt it. Sex hormones are among the most powerful persuaders around. In people of both sexes they often take priority over brains, especially if the people in question also suffer from loneliness or are in any kind of trouble. As Sisera, ask Holophernes, both of whom lost their lives at the hands of treacherous women. Not to mention the scene in Basic Instinct (1992) where a woman uses an icepick to kill a man during the sexual act itself. I am more inclined to think that men are far less likely to complain about incidents of this kind. And with good reason, for in case they do complain they are much more likely to be turned into laughing stock.

A woman who feels she has been tricked or exploited by a man can normally open the faucets and let the tears flow. If necessary she can even expose herself, as many have done throughout history and many will doubtless continue to do. Doing so, she can count on obtaining help from both from men—what man does not dream of playing the role of the rescuer who later receives his appropriate reward?—and from her feminist sisters. Not so men. As one seventeenth-century English judge, Thomas Egerton, put it: “He sat not there to relieve Fools or Buzzards, who could not keep their Money from their wives.”

By their own accounts, women are easily influenced. They are also hopelessly weak, hopelessly foolish, hopelessly unable to resist the predations of those wicked creatures, men, who keep outsmarting them. Recognizing this situation, lawyers have devised a strategy, known as the Svengali defense (after the lead male character in Maurier’s 1895 novel, Svengali), intended to get accused females off the hook by shifting the blame to the men who around them. How such miserable creatures can demand “equality” is beyond me.

To prevent more problems from emerging, here are a number of proposals that can be put into effect immediately.

1. Women should be confined to the home. In case they go out, then only with male permission and under male escort.

2. All of women’s contacts with strange men should be either supervised or suspended.

3. Women should be banished from the Net as well as all other forms of electronic communications. Their mail should be censored.

4. Women should be prohibited from having bank accounts.

Do you think it can’t be done? It can. Just look at history. And at Afghanistan, of course.

Do I Need to Go On?

Posted on by

Supposedly feminism is one of the most powerful movements of the second half of the twentieth century. One that has greatly improved women’s lives—both above and below the belt—while at the same time fundamentally changing the relationship between the sexes. Enjoying argument as I do, for some years now I have been toying with the idea of doing a book in which I would examine the validity of these claims. A topic, I thought, which would fit well with two of my previous books, i.e Men, Women and War (2001) and The Privileged Sex (2013).

Some weeks ago I was lucky to run into a volume titled The H Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness (2017). The author, Jill Fillipovic, is a New York based journalist and self-declared feminist. By her own statement, she had and has it all. 35 years old, white, upper middle class, good education (by training she is a lawyer), a career, “a nearly full passport,” delayed marriage, apparently no kids so far. Nor, since she considers the idea that motherhood is the most important job in the world a “platitude,” does it sound as if she is planning on having them any time soon; for which her unborn children can only say, thank God.

I quote.

“American women have gotten less happy over the past four decades… [It is] theorized that having to compete and perform in the workplace like men was making women depressed.”

“Nearly all American women—as many as 84 percent—report having been dissatisfied with their bodies at some point in their lives, and most says that dissatisfaction stems from wanting to be thinner. For most women, being thinner means sacrificing food and with it the pleasure that comes with eating. Or it means more hours at the gym, not because it feels good but because working our promises to make you skinnier. Maybe it means restrictive, tight undergarments to smooth out the wrinkles of human flesh or high heels, lengthen the legs and make one look slightly slimmer, even if they’re uncomfortable. It means part of being a woman is striving, wanting and sometimes hurting.”

“Just as feminists thought we were climbing steadily upward—an ascendance symbolized by a woman who seemed posed to finally break the presidential glass ceiling—we found ourselves collectively knocked down. It is a stinging reminder that for all the feminist moment’s renewed pop culture relevance, for all of the ways in which women’s lives are better than ever, there still has been no full vindication of the rights of women.”

“We are becoming the men we wanted to marry” [attributed to Gloria Steinem].

“Today… it is still educated upper-middle class white women who are often selected to embody [feminism]… while women of color or trans women or poor women are pushed aside.”

“Culturally, ‘girly stuff’ is denigrated while men’s staff is elevated; fashion is shallow and women’s magazines are trashy, but sport are a valuable national pastime and men read Playboy and Esquire for award-winning journalism alongside photos of barely-clothed women. If parents give their daughter a traditionally male name, it’s cute, even cool and edgy, and if enough parents start giving girls what was once a boy’s name, the name first crosses over to being ‘gender neutral’ and eventually becomes simply female: Lesley, Ashley, Sydney, Taylor and Reese. But the opposite doesn’t happen: girls’ names almost never become boys’ names, and it is not cure to name your boy after a woman The same goes for clothing: ‘unisex clothes’ are traditionally men’s clothes that women also wear. Women have taken up wearing pans en masse, but most men do not wear skirts or dresses. Women can embrace guy stuff and it is a sign of clout and authority; men who embrace girl stuff are weak, less powerful, gay. And women, too, has to walk a tightrope between femininity and power; act too masculine and you’re an unlikeable bitch, but act too feminine—wear too much makeup or too much pink, talk ‘like a girl’ using upspeak or a high-pitched voice—and you won’t be taken seriously.”

A CTET evaluation is valid for 7 years and you can take this exam a number of times viagra pills uk to increase libido in men. Emotional instabilities condition is the turmoil that will influences the conduct, viagra uk purchase considering, sorrow, schizophrenia, uneasiness issue, dietary issues and in addition successive changes in persons feeling. In 2008, the bulk had alone to about 20 cents per kilowatt-hour, according to the American Solar Activity Society. discount brand viagra When taking this drug for pain relief or insomnia it has to be kept in mind that this drug is 100% effective. viagra for sale mastercard “[In today’s American culture] Girl stuff sucks. And by extension, girls suck too.”

“For women whose hobbies are coded as male—video games, NASCAR—being the only girl can become isolating, and being ‘one of the guys’ can segue into becoming either visible or a sex object.”

“Although American pop culture is soaked in sex, our politics remain at best uncomfortable with and at worst actively hostile to female sexual pleasure. Nearly a century [sic] after its invention and after decades of wide usage by American women, the birth control pill remains a source of debate in Congress and even the Supreme Court. Abortion is a perennial election issue, opposition to it always listed in the Republican Party Platform The idea of poor women or the wrong kind of women having too much sex, or the strong kind of sex, has been used to justify cutting the social safety net, decreasing women’s access to reproductive health care, taking children away from their mothers, and sterilizing women without their consent.”

“The United States, and the world, remain vastly unequal places, marked by profound political, economic and social disparities between men and women. Much of it boils down to sex, and in particular how heterosexual men’s desires and experiences exist as standard, while women’s desires, experiences, and sexualities remain a kind of deviant from the norm, understood primarily in relation to men.”

“Cosmopolitan, by the ‘90s a decades-old bible for the single career, woman, careened straight into pleasure-your-man sex tips, each more ludicrous than the last.”

“It has not gotten any easier, or any less confusing, to be a girl in America.”

“Just 30 percent of speaking roles in the seven hundred biggest movies went to women between 2007 and 2014, and not a single woman over the age of forty-five had a lead part.”

“According to one study, straight women who have sex with a regular partner only orgasm about 63 percent of the time, while men orgasm 85perent of the time. Other studies have found even lower numbers, indicating that women orgasm less than 30 percent of the time… Young women routinely engage in sex they don’t find particularly pleasurable because they want to make their partners happy.”

Do I need to go on?

The Flop

Posted on by

Is “me too” really a sign that women have finally gathered what it takes to avenge themselves on those bad, bad, bad men who always want one thing only? Or is it just a rather underhand reaction to feminism’s utter failure to change the way the world works? For an answer, consider the following.

1. Physique

Contrary to the hopes of feminists such as Anne Fausto-Sterling (Myths of Gender, 1992) and Collette Dowling (The Frailty Myth, 2000), women have not closed the physical gap between them and men. At best attempts to close it, such as have made by several armed forces around the world, merely provided another proof of what all normal people have always known, namely that doing so is impossible. At worst the outcome was injuries, including such as turned women into cripples or else left them unable to have children. Either way, women continue to depend on men for protection. Had it not been for men who, for reasons of their own, are ready to protect women against other men, the entire feminist movement would have been not merely impossible but inconceivable.

The myth that working women can simply ignore their periods and work as men do is no closer to the truth now than it was when feminists first invented it. Countless women have gone on record saying that they had taken leave from work during the days in question; thanks to feminism, though, many of them were unable to tell their bosses about the real cause of their trouble. Nor have some radical feminist fantasies about virgin births and dispensing with men as sperm-donors been realized.

2. Career

Partly, but not only, as a result of these factors, the division of labor, meaning men’s work versus women’s work, has remained practically as gendered as it was a century ago. For example, even in an “egalitarian” country such as Sweden almost all commercial pilots, divers, miners, and foresters are men. And almost all flight attendants—a term specifically invented to obfuscate the facts—cashiers, secretaries, minders of little children and—are women.

Partly because they tend to do work that is physically light, clean and safe, partly because of the problems associated with motherhood, women still do not get paid as much as men are. By some calculations, assuming present trends continue, the point where that will happen is still decades and perhaps even centuries away. Often the more senior and remunerative the position men and women occupy, the more true this is. Since women tend to spend fewer years in the working force, the same applies to pensions.

Another way of putting this is that, today as ever, the higher one climbs the slippery pole of power and fame the fewer women one meets. Just some six percent of heads of state are female. As Margaret Mead used to say, the world is run by men and strong women (among whom, no doubt, she counted herself). Furthermore, not one female head of state got to where she is by running for office on a feminist platform. Not Angela Merkel. Not Theresa May. Much less the late Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, and Margaret Thatcher, all of whom spent a lifetime to avoid having the epithet “feminist” applied to them. Hillary Clinton, the female candidate for the US presidency perceived as being the most pro-feminist of all, was trounced by a man to who is not only a declared male chauvinist but a sexual harasser and predator as well.

Mission impossible: Finding even one important movie in which a woman over 50 plays the main role. Apparently neither men nor women are interested in watching one such.

The age-old situation whereby the entry of too many women into any occupation, institution, and organization causes the social prestige, and consequently the economic rewards, that go with that occupation, institution and organization to decline still persists. And vice versa, of course.

3. Relationships

The age-old situation whereby most household work is done by women, either such who do it for themselves and their families or such who rely on relatives or hire others in their places, remains unchanged.

Today as ever, the more successful a man the more attractive he becomes to women; however, except for female models, actresses, and the like, the opposite does not apply. Why? Because, as Gloria Steinem once pointed out, indeed, often the more successful a woman the more like a man she becomes.

Hypergamy, the age-old tradition whereby most women hope to gain an advantage by trying to marry men who are older than themselves and belong to a higher class, persists. That is why, contrary to the hopes of Germaine Greer in The Female Eunuch (1970), and long before her Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) women have not stopped desperately trying to make themselves more attractive to men. As by adapting themselves to fashion, wearing makeup, buying and wearing jewelry and accessories, undergoing cosmetic surgery, going on a diet, trying to learn how to have orgasms or pretending to have them, and much more. Women, in other words, often are not only seen as sex objects but see themselves as such. Which in turn is one reason why the fight against pornography, put on by such feminists as the late Andrea Dworkin, has led nowhere.

Women go on imitating men in many things, including dress. However, the opposite rarely occurs. Whereas a great many women wear pants, practically nowhere do men wear skirts (when they do, as in Scotland, they are called kilts). Women take on (filch?) men’s names until they, the names, become first gender-neutral and then female only; but the opposite does not apply. These processes prove that penis envy, meaning the desire of women to be and do anything men are and do, is at least as strong among present-day women, feminists specifically included, as it was when one of Freud’s female students, Henriette Lampl de Groot, came up with the idea.

For good or ill, the famous “double standard” still persists. Accused of promiscuity, Catherine the Great of Russia once said that she had fewer lovers in a lifetime than man of her male colleagues did in a year. To this day, a man who has many female sexual partners is often admired and envied; a woman who does the same is put down as a slut—not just by men but by many women too.

Feminism and Its Discontents*

Feminism remains overwhelmingly a middle class ideology. After more than five decades, it still has not been able to make considerable inroads among upper- and lower class women. The former do not need it and are reluctant to share their privileges with their less fortunate “sisters.” The latter don’t have the time for it.

Since 1975 or so the gap in life expectancy between men and women, which had been growing for decades, has been closing again. This in spite of the fact that, in practically all countries, perinatal death has continued to decline. The reason? Because so many women, misled by feminists, have begun to work outside the home, thus subjecting themselves to the same stresses as those affecting men.

Survey after survey in various countries has found that women are no happier today than they were forty years ago; also, that relative to men their happiness has been on the decline.

Women have not ceased complaining; isn’t the whole of feminism one long complaint? Freud’s question, “was will das Weib,” what does the woman want, remains as relevant as it was when he asked it almost ninety years ago.

For many people, including some women, feminism has become a swearword.

Conclusion

Feminism has failed. So much so, indeed, that very few people can even remember that, back in the 1970s, there were such things as environmental feminism, left-wing socialist feminism, utopian feminism (which advocated female-only communities) and so many other kinds as to boggle the mind.

To repeat my question, could it be that “me too,” as one of the few survivors, far from being a sign that things are getting better, is a desperate rearguard reaction to the fact that feminism has been a flop?

  • Compliments to Marie Jo Buhle.

Laurie urges teachers to display the student’s work and to greet them at the door to set a online sales viagra tone of sulphuric acid onto half a tone of scrap iron. A study in 2002 found that ED can also be associated with bicycling due to both neurological and vascular problems due to compression. cialis prescriptions Follicle depletion and dysfunction are may check out for source order cialis online be the cause of this condition as experts are unaware of its exact cause. Rather, the good (or bad) greyandgrey.com online cialis relationships built with these children will alter your evaluation of it.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some Solutions

Posted on by

How Have Heroes Fallen

Posted on by

For those of you who are too young, or have forgotten: there used to be a time when the Israeli military was supposed to be one of the best, perhaps the best, in the world. This was particularly the case between about 1967 and 1973. In 1967 the Israel Defense Force (IDF) only took six days to defeat several Arab armies which, between them, enjoyed a two-and-a-half to threefold numerical superiority over it. In 1973, though similarly outnumbered, it succeeded in repulsing a surprise attack and ended by threatening both Damascus and Cairo. At the time and later—but especially at the time—rivers of ink were spilt in an attempt to explain the “secret” behind these performances. Here I don’t intend to recapitulate the literature in question. Suffice it to say that, when everything is said and done, all of it came down to three factors: motivation, motivation, and motivation.

Today, though, that motivation is no longer there. Official figures how that the percentage of conscripts who volunteer for combat units, especially but not exclusively the armored corps and artillery, has reached an all-time low. What follows is a brief analysis of a few of the causes that have got the IDF into this sad state.

  1. Social changes. In the Israel in which I grew up, the Israel of the 1950s and 1960s, the best thing anyone could be was a soldier and a “fighter” (in English). To the point where the first Hebrew-language song I, having arrived from the Netherlands as a four-year old, learnt had to do with how wonderful soldiers were and how the girls should welcome them (instead of looking for opportunities to accuse them of sexual harassment, as is currently the case). To the point where people sent each other New Year cards with pics of soldiers, tanks, jeeps, etc. And to the point where youngsters who for one reason or another were not drafted sometimes committed suicide. But no longer. Much the best positions the IDF has to offer are in intelligence, computers, and combinations of the two. To the point where people are prepared to pay for having their offspring enter them. And with good reason: as was described in D. Senor and S. Singer’s Startup Nation (2011), it is these units that lead to good jobs and, here and there, great wealth. Adding a hundred dollars to combat soldiers’ monthly pay, which has recently been decided upon, is unlikely to change this situation.
  2. The role of women in the military. The IDF during its years of glory was the world’s only army to draft women and provide them with some kind of weapons training, albeit that it was almost purely symbolic. In return for not having to fight or shed their blood, women served for shorter periods, had to be content with less glamorous work, and enjoyed limited prospects for promotion. No longer. Owing to their physical weakness, women are still very rare in any units where they have to do excessively heavy work, let alone such in which they might become casualties if war breaks out. For example, when announcing the graduation of the first thirteen “tankwomen” the other day the IDF was careful to point out that they would not serve in any dangerous sectors. Nor is it clear who is going to do the heavy maintenance work required. Women can volunteer for “combat” units if they feel like it; men are assigned even against their will. Meanwhile, in units and positions that do not come under fire and do not require such work, women have gained complete equality. Women in other words, get all the cushy jobs. Nor, owing the above-mentioned social changes, can men compensate by serving in combat units. Not to put too fine a point on it, men get screwed.

    3. When considering good health and improving of the sex drive make sure you only use the supplements which are best suited for you. cheap viagra from usa Do you have ever failed to succeed in life; we suddenly hope…. If you have experienced the problem due to some no prescription sildenafil other thoughts and become foggy due to these properties shukra dhatu increases. A man who needs help like this should never fail to cheapest cialis go to link seek it out! But for those who don’t have any problem with erectile dysfunction. Thus, some propose that the diagnosis of cerebral palsy should be deferred until the child is aged levitra without prescription http://www.devensec.com/sustain/ReV_Clean_Energy.pdf 2 years.

  3. Until 1973 inclusive the IDF always fought enemies stronger, or at any rate more numerous, than itself. As it did so it heaped glory on itself. No longer. Starting as far back as the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, it has fought weak opponents almost exclusively. So much so, indeed, that in many cases the term fought—as against Palestinian kids armed with nothing more dangerous than rocks—has become a misnomer and should have been put in apostrophes. Fighting the weak, the IDF became weak. Its performance deteriorated and its victories no longer counted as such. To quote Friedrich Nietzsche, nothing is more boring than a victory endlessly repeated. Especially because, as the very need to repeat them shows, the victories in question are, in reality, no victories at all.

So far, the IDF. But this blog gets read in many different places around the world. Does any of this remind anyone of the situation in your own countries?

 

Back to the Burqa?

Posted on by

As I noted last week, we keep reading and hearing of rape. Almost always it is men who do it to women, rarely the opposite. There are three reasons for this, all of them important. First, as the French sage Denis Diderot (1713-84) once wrote and the absence of male brothels indicates, perhaps the most important difference between men and women is the formers’ greater ability to enjoy the embraces of strangers. Second, there is the overall difference in physical strength. In lower body it is as five to three; in upper body, as two to one. Third, there is the obvious anatomical difference between the genitalia of people of both sexes. For a woman to rape a man is almost impossible; even if she can overcome him in a hand to hand struggle, or else by threatening him weapon in hand, when the critical moment arrives his apparatus may very well not function.

The three factors are linked. Women’s physiology puts them at risk of becoming pregnant and also makes them more vulnerable to STD. As a result, throughout history they have had more to lose from casual intercourse than men did. True, the introduction of modern contraceptives has gone a considerable way to alleviate these problems. But this does not change the fact that women, having weaker bodies overall, still have more to fear in one-on-one encounters where most sex takes place.

The difference in strength means that, other things equal and except under rather unusual circumstances, the only ones who can save women from being raped by men are other men. Occasional suggestions, put forward by feminists and others, that women should take self-defense classes or carry some kind of weapons from pepper spray upwards tend to be not only useless but counterproductive. Men, after all, can learn judo and the use weapons at least as well as women can. That is why chances are that, if women take up these suggestions, they will only add physical injury to the unpleasantness, humiliation, and psychological trauma that being raped entails.

Rebus sic stantibus—and I do not see that they are going to change any time soon—the only remaining question is: Which men should do the protecting, and what forms should the latter assume? Note that, during the first ninety-something percent of their existence on earth and in many places until very recently, humans have lived in tribes. One outstanding characteristic of tribal life is the absence of a strong, centrally-run, police force able and willing to deal with crimes of every kind. All the more so, of course, in case the tribe in question is nomadic as most were for a long, long time. Rather, should any kind of crime be committed, it is the victim and his or her relatives who are expected to deal with it by demanding revenge and inflicting retaliation.

Focusing on rape, an excellent example of the way these things worked is provided by the book of Genesis (34.1-31). “And Dinah, the daughter of Leah, which she bare unto Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land. And when Schechem, the son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the country, saw her, he took her, and lay with her, and defiled her… And it came to pass… that two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brethren, took each men his sword and came upon the city boldly and slew all the males,” Schechem and Hamor included. Taken to task by Jacob their father, who feared the possible consequences, the two retorted: “Should he deal with our sister as with a harlot?”

With the shift to more settled societies, things gradually changed. The more hierarchical, strongly governed and policed a community, the greater the pressure on women’s male relatives not to resort to self-justice but leave the task of apprehending, judging and punishing the perpetrator to the authorities. However, progress in this direction tended to be slow. As late as the nineteenth century European women, for fear of being harassed and attacked, were strongly advised not to travel on their own. By one story, those of them who did so by rail were told to put needles in their mouths to prevent strangers from kissing them while the train was passing through dark tunnels. The higher women’s own social rank and that of their relatives, the more true this was. In less developed countries women who travelled often disguised themselves as men, as the British explorer Gertrude Bell did.

Many of them resort to discount price on viagra wearing caps, but that will never disappoint you. Also many online drug stores prescription cialis usa provide you with a permanent or at least a long-lasting treatment for your pain. A nephrologist specializes in diagnose and treatment of kidney and urinary system such as inflammation in the kidneys, chronic kidney disorders and long-term implications of diabetes and atherosclerosis though others are a direct result of enthusiastic components and the rest rate is because of the admission of drugs, one’s lifestyle and tadalafil from india http://amerikabulteni.com/2011/09/19/nfl-2nci-haftada-detroit-ve-buffalo-suprizi-iste-sonuclar-ve-genel-gorunum/ harm. It boosts your vitality and strengthens reproductive organs. http://amerikabulteni.com/2016/01/02/iste-obamanin-kis-tatilinde-okudugu-4-kitap/ vardenafil online australia Nor is the change by any means complete even today. In her 1998 book, Desert Flower, former supermodel and U.N special ambassador Waris Dirie recounts how, during her youth in her native Somalia, she was threatened with sexual assault. In response, her father—the same, incidentally, who insisted that she should be circumcised—went about armed with a knife. As, on pain of his honor and following a centuries- if not millennia-old tradition, he was supposed to do. Two decades later there still is no shortage of countries where powerful but thoroughly disciplined (disciplined, also in the sense that their members will not themselves turn into rapists) police forces do not exist. By default, it is women’s male relatives who are entrusted with the task of protecting them.

The protection women demand, however, will come at a price. To obtain it a woman must, as far as possible, be sequestered and kept within the home. Even if that means she cannot work or go to school. If she goes out nevertheless she must not only be chaperoned but dressed in such a way as to conceal her, as far as possible, from prying male eyes. Her freedom to communicate with the opposite sex must also be limited—because, unless it is, her male relatives, trying to save her from being raped, are going to get a knife between their ribs or a bullet into their backs. These facts go a long way to explain, and to some extent justify, the way Islamic societies, many of which remain tribal in spite of the recent move towards urbanization, treat their womenfolk. Including, among other things, the recently lifted Saudi ban on driving.

And the future? Starting in the late eighteenth century when the first modern police forces were set up in countries such as France, there has been a strong trend to abolish the right to self-defense. To the point that, if one catches a burglar and injures him during the subsequent struggle, one may well end up by being prosecuted.

There is, however, no guarantee that the trend will continue. Take Europe. Owing to a combination of modernity and a dense population, it has long been perhaps the most strongly-policed continent of all. Now, however, the presence of large numbers of immigrants has created enclaves where the police is afraid to go. The enclaves are inhabited by populations whose ideas concerning what is and is not allowable, is and is not desirable, in relations between men and women differ sharply from those of the native majority.

Even in Germany, the country which a century ago gave rise to the so-called FKP (Freie Korper Kultur, aka nudism), that movement is now on the retreat. As I myself, having visited the lakes of Potsdam every year over the last eighteen years, can testify. There was a time when many people went swimming naked; now it is mostly old people who do. And they seem to be dying out. Meanwhile more and more parents are warning their daughters to avoid going out at night, visit dark and lonely places, and the like. With good reason, let me add. Separate swimming classes, separate taxis, and separate hotel floors are gaining in popularity. Social change is driving fear of rape, and fear of rape is driving social change.

How far these changes will go, and where they will lead, no one knows. Back to the burqa, perhaps? If so, don’t be surprised.

Cowards

Posted on by

As my readers know, I do not normally use this blog to quote other people at any length. If I do so this time, that is because I am shocked. Right from the beginning of human history—possibly even before human history, properly speaking, got under way—one of men’s most important tasks has always been to protect their mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, and women in general from being raped by other men. Even at the cost of their lives, if necessary.

No longer. So weak, so utterly despicable, have European men in particular become, that they have abrogated this responsibility, perhaps the most basic any human community owes the fifty percent of its members who are female and on whom its future depends. More basic than equality, more basic than any other number of nice things I could think about. I quote from a recent book on this and related topics.*

“Throughout the 2000s, the question of sex attacks on local women by gangs of immigrants had been an open secret [in Britain]. It was something nobody wanted to speak or hear about. There was something so base, and so rank somehow, in even mentioning it. Even to imply that dark-skinned men had a penchant for abusing white women seemed to so clearly originate from some odious, racist text that it appeared impossible, firstly even to even imagine that it might be happening, and secondly that it should be discussed. British officials were so terrified about even mentioning such crimes that every single arm of the state failed to respond over the course of years. When the same phenomena occurred on the continent precisely the same problems were encountered.

Even to mention the fact in 2015 that most of the recent arrivals into Europe seemed to be young [and single, MvC] men was to court opprobrium. To question whether all these individuals might have brought modern views about women with them was unmentionable (precisely, as in Britain, because it seemed to speak to some base, racist smear). The fear of falling into a racial cliché or suffering accusations of racism prevented authorities and the European public from admitting to a problem that had spread across the continent. And the more refugees a country took in, the greater that problem became.

Even in 2014 in Germany the number of sexual assaults against women and boys was growing. These included the rape of a 20-year old German woman in Munich by a 30-year old Somali asylum seeker, the rape of a 55-year old woman in Dresden by a 30-year old Moroccan, the attempted rape of a 21-year old German woman in Munich by a 25-year old Senegalese asylum seeker, the rape of a 17-year old girl in Straubing by a 21-year old Iraqi asylum seekers, the rape of a 21-year old German woman near Stuttgart by two Afghan asylum seekers, and the rape of a 25-year old German woman in Stralsund by a 28-year old Eritrean asylum seeker. While these and many other cases made it to court, many others did not.

Alongside the growth in cases of rapes of Germans came the increase in the number of rapes and sexual assaults in refugee shelters. During 2015 the German government was so short of to house the migrants that it was initially unable to provide segregated shelters for women. A [The outcome was rapes] across Bavaria. And as in Britain a decade before, the authorities were so worried about the implications of the fact that in a number of cases they were found to have deliberately covered them up. In Demold, where an asylum seeker raped a 13-year old Muslim girl, the local police remained silent about the assault. An investigation by Westfalen-Blatt claimed that local police were routinely covering up sex assaults involving migrants in case it gave ammunition to criticisms of the government’s open door policies. Nevertheless, rapes of children were reported in numerous cases, including at a facility in Bremen.

As the number of cases increased throughout 2015, the German authorities eventually could not hold back the growing number of reports of rapes against German women by recent refugees. These included the rape of a 16-year old girl in Mering, an 18-year old girl in Hamm, a 14-year old boy in Heilbronn and a 20-year old woman in Karlsruhe. In a number of cases.—including the case in Karlsruhe—the police remained silent about the story until a local paper broke it. Countless other assaults and rapes were reported in Dresden, Reinbach, Bad Kreuznach, Ansbach, Hanau, Dortmund, Kassel, Hanover, Siegen, Rinteln, Moenchengladbach, Chemnitz, Stuttgart, and other cities across the country
What is most necessary, before anything else, is to levitra ordering approach the situation with a rational mindset. We often hear the word dysplasia which is the typical term for the cialis stores that are available in the form of 25mg, 50mg and 100 mg oral tablets. On the market, the medicine is available as 50ml (1.7 discount viagra sale fl.oz.) and 100ml (3.4 fl.oz.) EDT. generic viagra discount Of course, living abroad is not that easy.
Eventually, this unmentionable subject became so bad that in September 2015 officials in Bavaria began to warn local parents to ensure their daughters did not wear any revealing clothing in public. ‘Revealing tops or blouses, short shorts or miniskirts could lead to misunderstandings,’ one letter to locals warned. In some Bavarian towns, including Mering, police warned parents not to allow their children to go outside alone. Local women were advised not to walk to the railway station unaccompanied. On a daily basis from 2015 onwards there were reports of rapes on German streets, in communal buildings, public swimming baths, and many other locations. Similar events were reported in Austria, Sweden and elsewhere. But everywhere the subject of rape remained underground, covered up by the authorities and deemed by most of the European media not to be a respectable news story…

Throughout 2016 the spate of rape and sexual assaults spread to every single one of Germany’s sixteen federal states. There were attacks literally every day, with most of the perpetrators never found. According to the [Social Democratic, MvC] Minister of Justice, Heiko Maas, just a tenth of rapes in Germany are reported and of those that reach trial only 8 percent result in a conviction. Moreover, several additional problems emerged from these cases, not least that there appeared to be a concerted official effort to suppress data about crimes where the suspects might be migrants… Just as in Britain a decade earlier, it transpired that German ‘anti-racism’ groups had been involved. In this case they had pressured the German police to remove racial identifiers from al suspect appeals for risk of ‘stigmatizing’ whole groups of people.”

The outcome? In Bavaria alone the number of rapes, many of them committed by refugees, during the first half of 2017 increased 48 percent over the corresponding period in the previous year. The equivalent figure for Britain is 19 percent. In London’s borough Tower Hamlets, said to have “one of the smallest White British populations of any local authority in Britain,” one poor girl was said to have been sexually assaulted three times in a single hour.

Cowards, cowards, cowards.

 

*D. Murray, The Strange Death of Europe, Kindle ed., 2016, locs. 3464-525