consumable otherness...................

     Chesterton knew that progressivism and capitalism were bedfellows that would produce unnatural offspring.  He was also conscious that the politicization of sex would lead to confusion instead of fulfilling the desire for equality or the happiness of both sexes.  Sexlessness, the refusal to acknowledge the God-ordained design of sexual difference, would be the result of the battle of the sexes.  Once cut off from its spiritual roots, equality would lead not to fairness but to a culture of lies and the popularizing of consumable otherness.  Chesterton was sure that, in the name of equality, standards would be attacked and what Pope Benedict XVI would later name a "dictatorship of relativism" would become the norm. 

-Duncan Reyburn, The Roots of the World: The Remarkable Prescience of G. K. Chesterton

A quick look at .............................

 

.................men and women from Matthew Crawford:

The most impressive and successful women, like their male counterparts, seem not to feel burdened with responsibility to advance the arc of History; they just do what they do, and find their satisfaction in meeting the demands of their craft.

But we have wandered off the topic of what makes men strong (answer: women who demand strength).

As Rousseau said, if you want to men to be virtuous, teach women what virtue is. . . . Men will make themselves into whatever women prefer.

. . . working-class women prefer their men to be manly, and in that respect may be said to accept male norms as valid, even crucial.  The standard feminist response is to say that in doing so, they suffer a false consciousness that guarantees their subordination.  But that is hard to square with what one sees.  In fact, working class "patriarchy" can look an awful lot like matriarchy.

The very qualities that are called "toxic" in a man often seem to count as "empowerment" in a woman.

Administrative mandates and therapeutic regimens multiply—speech and behavior are ever more closely monitored—to protect the delicate sensibilities of our empowered young women.

Optimistic infection..................

 Much of modern society, including our endlessly fragmented media, protects us from having to truly engage with those who don’t share our politics.

That’s why the development of a political rift between the genders is so promising. What’s the most compelling common project of all? Sex - sex and love. Short of a mass conversion to homosexuality, many or most of these people are still going to hook up together and form partnerships and families, caveats about declining birth rates aside. Conservative-leaning young men who only seek out conservative-leaning young women will be fishing in a small pool; liberal women will only diminish the size of their pool if they stick to men who are as liberal as they are. Both sides therefore have a powerful incentive to forge relationships with people who hold political views different to their own. They can then infect each other with their different ideas, generating new syntheses, and moving us all along.

-as culled from this Ian Leslie post

via

A question like this.....................

 ......is just one of many reasons to follow Martin Gurri.  In this instance, he is discussing sex and pronouns:

 I mean, can anyone conjure up a romantic vision of Greta Thunberg?

Puzzles.................................

          via

Fifty years ago.......................

...............................The Stonewall Riots in New York City

A catalyst for change.  More on the story:  here and here.

Hmmm..............................

via

Roles..............................

     Feminist ideology has never dealt honestly with the role of the mother in human life.  Its portrayal of history as male oppression and female victimage is a gross distortion of the facts.  There was a rational division of labor from the hunter gatherer period that had its roots not in the male desire to subjugate and imprison but in the procreative burden which has fallen on women from nature.  It is woman who bears most of the responsibility in the process of procreation.  The male contribution to procreation is momentary, a mere pinprick, but the human female makes an enormous investment in the nine months of pregnancy, which could formerly not be forestalled or controlled as it is today.  Even now, pregnancy is a risky business that can result in the death of the mother.  Anything can go wrong and often does.  Before modern medicine, the mortality rate in childbirth was enormous.  In early history, women in advanced pregnancy or just after childbirth were extraordinarily vulnerable;  they could not fend for themselves and required the protection of men.  Feminist theory has been grotesquely unfair to men in refusing to acknowledge the enormous care that most men have provided to women and children.  The atrocious exceptions have been used by feminist theorists to blame all men, when over the whole of human history, men have given heroically of their energy and labor and indeed their lives to benefit and protect women and children.  Feminism has been very small-minded in the way it has treated male history.  Feminism cannot continue with this poisoned rhetoric - it is dangerous for young women to be indoctrinated to think in that negative way about men.

-Camille Paglia, as culled from here

Opening paragraphs..........................

History moves in cycles.  The plague of political correctness and assaults on free speech that erupted in the 1980s and were beaten back in the the 1990s have returned with a vengeance.  In the United States, the universities as well as the mainstream media are currently patrolled by well-meaning but ruthless thought police, as dogmatic in their views as agents of the Spanish Inquisition.  We are plunged once again into an ethical chaos where intolerance masquerades as tolerance and where individual liberty is crushed by the tyranny of the group.

-Camille Paglia, from the Introduction to Free Women Free Men:  Sex - Gender - Feminism

Thought we were already out-gunned..........

“I want dignity and authority for women,” she said. “My code is Amazonism. I want weapons.”

-Camille Paglia, as extracted from this interesting interview

On languaging.......................

.........................................................and other "human constructs."

-an interesting post from the always interesting David Warren.

Quite the list........................

Fairly certain the law of unintended consequences would trump and chaos would reign, but it that's your thing and you are grounded in the 1960s, you might want to check out this list of demands.  Just one sample:

8. A society which works toward and actively promotes the concept of “full unemployment.” A society in which people are free from the drudgery of work. Adoption of the concept “Let the Machines do it.”

Liking her more and more.................

“I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And, by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.” 

-Abigail Adams, as culled from My Dearest Friend:  The Letters of Abigail and John Adams

He might have paid better attention.

On ambition...............................

"Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition."
-attributed to her

Good idea..........................................

He's a man..................................................

The Man Song................................................Sean Morey

Can we all agree on this.............................?

“The True Republic:  men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less.” 
-Susan B. Anthony

"No one individual can be a statistic".......

Megan McArdle looks at the "patriarchy"......

"Ironically, the women who are most likely to succeed are probably the women who are quickest to blame themselves, because blaming yourself at least gives you some belief that you can control the problem. "

Took me forever.............................

............to learn #4 (and sometimes I still forget).  Some valuable reading right here.

thanks maggie's

The fine art of letter writing................................

AN OPEN LETTER TO MEN ON THE SUBWAY, SPECIFICALLY DURING MORNING RUSH HOUR ON THE A TRAIN BETWEEN JAY STREET AND CANAL.

Dear MTA Riders of the Male Persuasion,

I know you like to spread your chests wide, inhaling deeply and filling your lungs with that special patriarchal air that is your birthright. I know you need to place your legs in wide stances to give ample room to your massive testicles, which you have inherited after generations of Darwinism have assured only the largest and best scrotum survive. I know you need to mount your body against the entire center subway pole, claiming your land like Columbus. I get that.

Therefore, as a woman who is subordinate to your powerful Y chromosome, I will happily stand in the middle of the subway car, rudderless. A ship out at sea, if you will. Perhaps if I were a little taller, I could reach the bars that run across the ceiling of the cars. Alas, I am diminutive in stature, the result of poor nutrition during a starved adolescence in which I maintained the lowest possible body fat percentage in order to please and honor your standard of beauty in the hopes that you would choose me as your prom date.

Balance of letter is here.