Vampires Suck

Wherein we discuss hardcore pornography and teenybopper vampire love stories. Trust me, it all makes sense.

Filed under: Books, Education, Entertainment, Funny, Gender War, Manliness, Movies

The New Learning that Failed

VDH:

The triumph of the therapeutic and the eclipse of the tragic ensured that students’ expectations soared even as their intellectual and mental abilities to handle inevitable setbacks eroded. The result was a weird marriage in both today’s student and professor of arrogance and ignorance—assurance that bad things either won’t happen or can be easily addressed by identifying the right -ism or -ology, but utter confusion when that never seems quite to be the case.

Interesting article. I could see some aspects of VDH’s view in the high school where I used to teach, but it was usually the students challenging me why Aristotle is preferable to whatever pop fiction novel is selling this week. As far as I am concerned, and I think Dr. Hanson would agree, teachers and professors need to be the ones who step up and explain why it is vitally important that we learn the liberal arts and the history of the West; students cannot, and will not, do it on their own.

UPDATE: Because of this post, I’m on the front page of City Journal right now:

I’m famous! Sort of.

Filed under: America, Classics, Current Events, Education, Gender War, Hippies, History, Politics, The West

Baby Makes Three Two

Slate Magazine (!) decries out-of-wedlock births.

Filed under: Current Events, Education, Gender War, Politics

Child-Man Redux

That City Journal article I linked to here has caused a bit of a stir. For some more commentary, let me recommend the following:

Is it also true that the SYM’s [single young male] devote many leisure hours to “bars and parties, where [they] meet, and often bed, girls of widely varied hues and sizes”? If so, are these enablers the same SYF’s [single young female] who complain in “Internet chat rooms, in advice columns, at female water-cooler confabs, and in the pages of chick lit, [that] the words ‘immature’ and ‘men’ seem united in perpetuity”? Or are they scabs who ruin the bargaining position of the women outside on the picket line?

A fair question.

Filed under: Current Events, Gender War, Manliness, Politics

Girls Gone Wild?

Are girl’s Halloween costumes too slutty? Cousin Jen was ahead of the curve on this one!

And this comment to that post is interesting: “There is something fundamentally twisted (not in a good way) about a society that almost encourages young teens and pre-teens to dress up as a “Sexy Witch” whilst simultaneously arresting and shaming men on national TV for trying to arrange trysts with what they believe to be the same.”

It is a bit strange, isn’t it?

Filed under: Current Events, Gender War, Halloween

The Seamless Garment Reconfigured

On First Things‘ blog this morning:

The percentage of its base that the Republican party would disappoint and perhaps lose outright if Giuliani were its presidential nominee is hard to estimate, but it is natural to wonder whether it would be to the GOP what Reagan Democrats and dovish, seamless-garment pro-lifers have been to the Democratic party for a generation now—a missing component of its natural constituency, a player without whom it has not been able to win a majority of the vote in a national election.

And before that, an explanation about how the right to abortion entails a right to die. Read the whole thing.

(And if you haven’t done so already, you probably should bookmark that blog; top to bottom, it’s great.)

Filed under: America, Catholic, Current Events, Election 2008, End of the World, Gender War, Giuliani, Politics, Pro-Life, Religion, The West

Young Girls Going Wild, But at What Consequences?

A new report is out by the American Psychological Association on the “sexualization of girls.” It’s findings:

The research analyzed the content and effects of virtually every form of media, including television, music videos, music lyrics, magazines, movies, video games and the Internet. It also examined recent advertising campaigns and merchandising of products aimed toward girls.

What they found was a sort of “Girls Gone Wild” effect in which young girls are succumbing to the pressure of sexualization by posting nude pictures of themselves on the Internet, allowing boyfriends to photograph them in the nude and making their own amateur porn videos.

Great. Just great. Of course, I think they missed mentioned sexual “education” in schools as part of the problem, as well as a severe lack of parental guidance (which I would bet is the big reason why all this is happening). The results of all this are predictable to most of us: lack of self-confidence, eating disorders and depression are all being reported at increasing rates. The chairwoman of the APA Task Force, Dr. Eileen L. Zurbriggen, has a recommnedation:

“As a society, we need to replace all of these sexualized images with ones showing girls in positive settings—ones that show the uniqueness and competence of girls,” said Zurbriggen. “The goal should be to deliver messages to all adolescents—boys and girls—that lead to healthy sexual development.”

“Healthy sexual development”? I’d be curious to know what exactly that means. Maybe she means that there needs to be more explanations about the non-physical consequences of sex.

Of course, it seems to me that what’s being reported here fits into the larger trend towards sexual licence and permissiveness that has developed in our culture since about the 1960s. But what do I know.

Filed under: Current Events, Gender War, Hippies, Religion

Where Are The Big Brothers?

Daily Pundit asks and answers; the results are disturbing. I’m not endorsing what he says, only that I can’t really find anything to disagree with in his post.

I’ve never really given much thought to the risks involved in teaching; should I?

Filed under: Current Events, Gender War, Manliness, Personal, Politics

Abstinence education doesn’t work

But neither does “sex education.”

Filed under: America, Current Events, Gender War, Hippies, Politics, Religion, The West

In the New Dating Scene, the Attraction Is a Beautiful Mind

From the Washington Post:

The hot spot du jour of Manhattan nightlife looms large over Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, where crowds of stylish YoCos — young cosmopolitans — were jostling inside one evening last week for the right to pay the $15 cover. Rather than crossing the velvet ropes for a rave, house party or disco, the hip patrons here were packing into a controversial lecture at the New York Public Library on the modern meaning of feminism.

I’m sorry, I have a little trouble believing all of this (it doesn’t help that just about every lecture/event is liberally-slanted).

Filed under: Current Events, Gender War, Politics

Harpies International, call your office

A UK Court has ruled that drunk women can consent to sex:

Sir Igor Judge, sitting with Lady Justice Hallett and Mrs Justice Gloster, said sex would amount to rape if the complainant had lost her capacity to choose as a result of drink.

“However, where the complainant has voluntarily consumed even substantial quantities of alcohol, but nevertheless remains capable of choosing whether or not to have intercourse, and in drink agrees to do so, this would not be rape,” he said.

The judges could not set a level of alcohol consumption that would negate consent, they explained.

Otherwise, “provisions intended to protect women from sexual assaults might very well be conflated into a system which would provide patronising interference with the right of autonomous adults to make personal decisions for themselves”.

Via Kim, who offers some excellent insight as always:

Here’s the nub of it: if a woman is drinking with a man, there should be a little warning bell going off in the back of her mind, a little voice which says, “Danger! danger, Miss Robinson!” because it’s not exactly an unknown fact that some pig of a guy is going to resort to booze when a sober approach would probably result in rejection.

‘Twas ever thus, and no amount of headshaking and tut-tutting will eliminate that fact.

The case seems limited to only when both parties were drinking, but it seems like a good decision generally. After all, it’s all about CHOICE, is it not?

The fact, however, that this is even an issue is also important, in my mind. Either too litigious or not virtuous enough, take your pick.

Filed under: Current Events, Gender War, Manliness, Politics

Still Crazy After All These Years

Democratic Lawmakers to Reintroduce ERA, having completely failed to learn any lessons over the past generation about women’s “equality.”

Why does androgyny suck? Here’s why. And there’s always Tocqueville to remind us:

There are people in Europe [why is it always Europe? -Ed.] who, confounding together the different characteristics of the sexes, would make man and woman into beings not only equal but alike. They would give to both the same functions, impose on both the same duties, and grant to both the same rights; they would mix them in all things–their occupations, their pleasures, their business. It may readily be con- ceived that by thus attempting to make one sex equal to the other, both are degraded, and from so preposterous a medley of the works of nature nothing could ever result but weak men and dis- orderly women.

The rest of that chapter describes how men and women can be equal in their rights but still have separate duties:

Thus the Americans do not think that man and woman have either the duty or the right to perform the same offices, but they show an equal regard for both their respective parts; and though their lot is different, they consider both of them as beings of equal value. They do not give to the courage of woman the same form or the same direction as to that of man, but they never doubt her courage; and if they hold that man and his partner ought not always to exercise their intellect and understanding in the same manner, they at least believe the understanding of the one to be as sound as that of the other, and her intellect to be as clear. Thus, then, while they have allowed the social inferiority of woman to continue, they have done all they could to raise her morally and intellectually to the level of man; and in this respect they appear to me to have excellently understood the true principle of democratic improvement.

Filed under: America, Current Events, Election 2008, Gender War, Manliness, Politics

Gender Wars Update

Three items today for your perusal.

First, from across the pond:

And even if the feminist revolution is good and unstoppable (and it is both), we should perhaps consider some of the downsides — and the most interesting is that greater equality between the sexes is actually leading to greater division between the classes. Here’s how.

An interesting essay, even if it does get a bit “Euro-weenie” about class struggle in the UK. But what’s a liberal to do? The education of women is causing social upheaval? Does not compute!

Next, Kim and his wife both write on the sexes. Kim first:

Truly, I believe that this is the ultimate (and unintended) consequence of the Feminist Revolution. As women have become more “empowered” and have distanced themselves from men, the response from men in general has been to look with a cold, clinical eye at what these empowered women are bringing to the table—and I have to say, judging from the reaction, the conclusion has been: not much.

Kim is a bit worried (and not without some justification) that men aren’t going to want to deal with feminist nonsense anymore. And if they all think of men as either a brute or a wuss (i.e., “barbarian” or “metrosexual”), why should men give them the time of day?

Mrs. du Toit also has some thoughts:

I don’t think we can say that about American men. There is a kind of cowardly cockiness that runs through a lot of this “you have to have sex with me or I’ll cheat on you” attitude. These are men that have never thrown a punch at a man, and would run in fear at the thought of receiving one. They pick on women. What complete wastes of human form. They’re wimps. Jerks. They don’t even consider it a possibility that some guy will take them on for their behavior towards women, so they get away with it, because we allow them to get away with it. There truly exists (way too often) the intimidation of the kind Kim quoted from the woman who really believed she had to succumb to her husband’s urges, lest she be in physical danger.

Conversely, there are women (I would prefer to say “female forms” of our species, because “women” they are not) who think that men are their lump of clay to be molded, scolded, ordered around, and treated like personal possessions needing redecorating or “fixing.” They know their husbands cannot slap them and they USE that threat to get away with being cold-hearted, passive-aggressive bitches.

Gosh, that’s horrible. But there seems some truth in it as well.

Filed under: Current Events, Gender War, Manliness, Politics