Men, Women, Again

A very special guest-blogger (with whom I’ll be at Niagara Falls over the weekend, so debate politely in our absence) weighs in on the comments of Peter the “seduction community” member who commented so intriguingly in the long thread resulting from my earlier post on feminism (I should say that while I stand by pretty much everything I said in that entry, I acknowledge that this is a vast terrain of never-ending debate, and I emphasized the select areas I felt were being overlooked, often annoyingly so — but, hey, my account of things is arguably far more nuanced than, say, MenAreBetterThanWomen.com):

Peter,

First, the thing about earnestness being less effective in sexual/romantic success than deception: it’s insane to me that you think it’s just WOMEN who respond to deception. Much to the chagrin of earnest feminists like me, there are tons of workshops and self-help books telling women to stop being so damn earnest and essentially training them to manipulate unsuspecting men into relationships and marriages. Apparently, these “systems” are enormously successful, too. Just to be extra clear, I’m not here to celebrate the deception just because it goes both ways. I find the “how to make him fall in love with you” crap just as depressing as your “seduction community.” I wish there was more honest, good-faith communication between the sexes. Maybe Todd is right, most people are just stupid. But I am not ready to give up hope….

Second, I think what’s interesting about your complaint that women expect you to “cut them more slack” than men is that women say exactly that about men. Like many straight women, I have often felt that men expect to be accommodated and to get their way all the time, at my expense. But just because I “felt” it, I don’t assume I am correct. I don’t think you’re correct about women either. And I don’t think that means one or both of us is irrational. I just think it’s a perception gap.

I suspect gender differences play into this, to a considerable degree. That means we respond to some things differently from you. It doesn’t mean we’re asking for “more slack” — at least no more slack than YOU ask of us (unwittingly, I’m sure). Take for example, Todd’s assertion that women cry as an “emotional manipulation” strategy. Similarly, a lot of women think men become withdrawn and unresponsive in the middle of a conversation (“it’s like hitting my head against a brick wall”) as a bullying tactic. I am sure there are examples where both of these things are intentionally employed as tactics. But for the most part, women aren’t trying to manipulate you when they cry and men aren’t trying to bully us when they shut down. We just respond to frustration differently.

But I don’t think it’s JUST the gender differences. I’ve had lots of male friends and lots of mixed-gender friend circles, so I can tell you that men and women who are platonic friends don’t generally have the same complaints about each other that they do about people they date. I wonder if certain complex needs, emotions, conflicts, etc. aren’t simply inherent in sexual/romantic relationships, regardless of gender. Just ask any gay couple — they seem to have many of the same problems. People have to accommodate mates in ways they don’t need to accommodate friends. These relationships have a different quality of intimacy and trust that seems to require more understanding (“slack” if you will). My friends are extremely important to me and when necessary, I am perfectly willing to cut them a lot of slack, but they generally don’t need it as much (or as regularly) as any of my boyfriends have needed. And the boyfriends could probably say something equivalent about me. (The exception, so far, is my current boyfriend, Todd Seavey — yes, I’m Todd’s liberal, feminist girlfriend — because we seem to share an almost identical joy of hashing out all our differences earnestly. But, if and when the need arises, I’ll be more than happy to cut him some slack, because I trust his good intentions).

Like I said, there seems to be a perception gap between the sexes, which is exacerbated by the existence of assholes (on both sides) and by people’s tendencies to lash out and think the worst others. Those of us who end up being able to relate to the opposite sex without condescending to them, despite having been seriously exasperated by them, do so as a result of some self awareness, a genuine openness to the other’s point of view and a little patience.

If someone — a woman-was really patient with you and open to hearing you out, I think you would feel differently about women and be able to discern the neurotic assholes from the rest of us. But, it’s hard to be open to you when you’ve decided that we’re all irrational and not worth engaging in good faith. Just like women who accuse all men of being misogynists and potential rapists can’t reasonably expect men to sympathize with their position. I understand that your venom comes from bad experiences with women. Believe me, most of male bashing also grows out of the bashers’ personal wounds, dealt (or perceived to have been dealt) by men. These are not good reasons to advocate cutting off the conversation, although I am in no way callous about the scars that you (and the male bashers) have obviously sustained. I hope you will all find ways to heal from them. I’m a romantic, so I also hope all of you will fall in love with someone wonderful any day now!

As far as the “seduction community,” I’m glad to hear that their methods are at least getting you laid, although they have failed to help you with the full relationship you had obviously hoped to find. But I wonder, if this is really working, even just for sex, then why do you have to be grateful for prostitution and porn?

In any case, I’ll take you at your word that your “porking” success rate has improved since you got seduction training. In the same spirit, I trust you will take my word that I have a large circle of women friends who easily are 9s and 10s, are constantly hit on by men, and none of them accept the advances of guys who treat them with disrespect, already have girlfriends, or are full of themselves (confidence and arrogance are not the same thing). And no, my friends aren’t lying to me. I KNOW their dates, boyfriends and husbands. They are the kindest, most decent men you’ll ever meet.

I won’t try to put a number on my own hotness, but I must be passably attractive, since I usually don’t want for male attention (at least when I feel confident and good about myself) and yet — and now I’m asking you to take MY word for it — I have always chosen to be with guys who are good human beings. Certainly, I like a guy who is also “confident and feels good about himself” and is — preferably — some combination of good looking, smart, interesting and funny, AS WELL AS a nice guy. (why do people say “nice guys” when they really mean unattractive, insecure, boring guys who have nothing to recommend them except their alleged “niceness”?) I don’t see how any of my criteria are “irrational” just because they don’t begin and end with “nice.” And no, I’m not just “steering” my sexuality consciously. I’m telling you about my visceral reactions to different kinds of men. An attractive (even a moderately attractive) guy, who is really smart, and genuinely kind and seems to sincerely like and admire me, is a HUGE turn on for me. Arrogant, self-centered men simply turn me off even if they are hunky, smart etc. A whiney, insecure guy doesn’t turn me off quite the same way, but he will never turn me on just by being “nice”. Being nice is a threshold requirement of decent human interaction, not some amazing virtue deserving of special rewards. Most women don’t expect to be rewarded with tons of romantic attention just for being “nice” people.

Yes, there are women out there who are cock-whipped by arrogant, self-centered males, but there are also plenty of guys who are pussy-whipped by arrogant, self-centered females -so this doesn’t really say anything meaningful about the “mating drives” of either sex. (On a related note: Peter claims that women “won’t come to grips” with their mating drives, as opposed to men, who know what they are looking for, which is simply “looks and loyalty.” Really? Care to check out Todd’s “Personal Ad”? Also, if “looks and loyalty” are all Peter is looking for, then, what’s his problem? Why does it matter to him if women are “rational”?)

Of course, there is also the type of woman who just won’t care what kind of person you are or if you are already in a relationship; she’ll want you just because you turn her on sexually. Well, given that MEN behave this way much more regularly — and even brag about it — than women, I find it puzzling that you see this as an example of FEMALE irrationality.

If I may offer a suggestion to Peter and other men who feel the same way, consider this: when you bemoan the fact that “women” are irrational, unresponsive to kindness, and whatever other complaint you have, are you really sampling from the general population of women in your acquaintance? Or do you start with the 9s and 10s (scored that way based on characteristics completely unrelated to the things you are complaining about)? In other words what do you screen for FIRST? If you start by pre-selecting the hottest women around and then lament the low occurrence among them of all those other qualities you seek -well, that’s not really the most “rational” way to go about things, is it? I’m not saying beautiful women can’t be smart, sane, kind and earnest. I’m just saying if your selection criteria are prioritized to place the highest value on X, then your results will be skewed toward more X, and the co-incidence of Y, Z and W will be much more random.

By the way, I checked out (briefly) the two seduction sites that Peter linked to. Of course, the focus of these are ultimately manipulative and therefore distasteful to me, and we (at least the women) have no way of verifying their claims — they have a product to sell to desperate people (just like fad diets that “work”). Still, even assuming the veracity of their claims about results, when you see the type of specific advice that apparently has actually succeeded, it does not seem to support Peter’s conclusion that they work because women are “inherently irrational”.

I have four general areas of observation:

1. One bottom line principle behind these seduction techniques is that you have to (comfortably) exude some sexuality (i.e. flirt) in order for women to respond to you sexually. Well, no shit! Where is the “irrationality” in this? How is someone supposed to find you sexual if you don’t exhibit any sign of it? Interestingly, I found this principle set forth in an entry about the old “nice guy v. jerks” debate. Ladies, you will be relieved to hear that even these seductionist cads admit, very clearly, that women don’t pick “jerk” qualities (rudeness, arrogance, boorishness etc.) over “nice guy” qualities, but rather, that this misunderstanding comes from the fact that the self-proclaimed nice –guys are confusing “niceness” with androgyny and asexuality. My own 2 cents: if you can’t be sexual without being rude, arrogant or boorish, then maybe you’re not such a “nice” guy.

But I’m really not suggesting that all guys with the “nice guy” complaint are latent boors. Some just lack other things women want. And others have honestly come to believe that all sexual behavior they initiate will be somehow offensive to women. I have to lay some of the responsibility for this on certain of my fellow feminists, who have promoted this idea of associating any expression of male sexuality with “violence” and “aggression” and led some good men (like Peter, perhaps) to internalize the notion that flirting is “disrespectful”. I (and a lot of other feminists) summarily reject this notion, but many feminists do endorse it — and I think they are rightly criticized for it.

Incidentally, there’s a pretty widespread belief among a sizable minority of women — usually not feminists — who bemoan the scarcity of “good men”: that men don’t appreciate a good, loyal woman; that it’s those narcissistic, selfish, bitchy women that get all the guys; that to get a man to be loyal and treat you well, you have to be cruel and treat him like crap and keep him insecure about your relationship. In other words “nice girls finish last.” I think these perceptions, just like the “nice guy” problem have less to do with reality than with resentful interpretations of reality.

2. Another key insight shared on the seduction sites is that women find confidence attractive. What’s “irrational” about that? Unless you are confusing confidence with arrogance, rudeness, or boorishness?

By the way, men respond to confidence in women too. Men and women are socialized (or perhaps biologically wired) to convey it differently, but it’s important for both to have it. Notice the way Peter describes the behavior of the “10″ — that’s some serious alpha-female shit! And frankly, in these discussions, when men say “women” they completely leave out of the equation all those mousy, insecure, “nice” women who are sitting in a corner (or at home), pining away for some Mr. Nice Guy to come rescue them. The women these men are “gaming” are the ones that are out there, confident in their sexuality, laughing, dancing, flirting, acting like they own the world. Yes, men are visual, and one of the most important visual cues they respond to is confident body language. The hot girl who also knows she’s hot will get the most guys. Of course confidence doesn’t quite make up for being ugly, but NOT having confidence will doom a mousy girl to be overlooked forever, even if she is technically “pretty.” A girl who is less pretty will be noticed and actually will be considered “hotter” if she cultivates a sense of self or at least a certain look, posture and stride.

I’ve gone through periods of insecurity in my own life -for reasons unrelated to men or sex-but during those periods, suddenly it seemed nobody was attracted to me. As soon as I snapped out of it, stopped caring what anyone thought and went about being myself and rediscovering my joie de vivre, the men came back out of the woodwork trying to get me to notice them. Even though I looked exactly the same. (disclaimer: I belong to a special subspecies of humans, called “nerds” –our mating rituals may be a little different from the rest. Still, I think we can draw parallels).

3. Another general approach of seduction seems to be that instead of complimenting a woman, you make fun of her a little. The claim is that women respond to being demeaned and having their confidence eroded. But lets look at how the specific tactics worked, at least in the video examples I saw. One guy went up and started insulting women. No woman responded well to him. They couldn’t get away from him fast enough. Another guy went up to a really hot girl and said her teeth were cute, like “bugs bunny”. She found him endearing. But note that he was smiling, his body language was friendly and just a little suggestive without being threatening. His comment charmed because it was unexpected (and funny) and seemed unrehearsed. Part of the reason it’s funny is precisely that it seems like an utterly ridiculous pick up strategy. Like George Costanza telling women he’s unemployed and lives with his mother. It has a novelty. And women like guys who are willing to expose themselves that way. Of course, the unemployed-lives-with-mother line will only work if it’s obviously a joke! And I think “bugs bunny” knew she was being joshed with and not insulted for real. To think a gorgeous woman with no dearth of male attention will have her sexual confidence “eroded” based on a stupid comment from a stranger is laughable. Maybe a guy who needs seduction training to find a date has a self image flimsy enough to be swayed this way, but the 9 or 10 he’s “gaming” is probably more secure than that.

4. Some of the other suggestions on the seduction sites are simply manipulation and deception tactics. They have nothing to do with women’s “mating drives.” If you misrepresent who you are and I buy it, that just means I am trusting or gullible. It doesn’t mean I enjoy being deceived or that the fact of being deceived is what I am responding to.

For example, one piece of advice was to lull a woman into a false sense of bonding with you by pretending to be a platonic friend while you get her to talk about her sexual fantasies. Apparently this works.

One reason that a woman may respond to this (and for argument’s sake lets grant that some women do) is that she notices how comfortable she is with you. In other words, she is being turned on by a nice-guy quality. To her, you’re a nice, “easy to talk to” guy who is not asexual and the talk is sexually charged. The fact that this turns her on should make you reject (or at least question) the notion that she is looking for a jerk to demean her. If you choose to think that it’s the fact that you’re actually a deceiver pretending to be a friend that’s the real turn on (as opposed to the sexy talk and the comfortable rapport with you) then it’s your interpretation that’s irrational. Not the chick.

Another reasonable interpretation is that she is turned on by her own sexual thoughts, but the object of her fantasy isn’t available, so she’ll act out her lust on you, as you happen to be around. I don’t see why this should be derision-worthy. If anything, men should identify with this kind of behavior. After all, it’s fairly common for men to admit that when they are horny, they will have sex with any available female, regardless of who they are actually fantasizing about.

One last note about seduction: women have always very successfully used “feminine wiles” and insincere seduction tricks on men too, does that mean men are “inherently irrational”?

–Koli

And Todd here again, with a concluding note: another issue of dating symmetry and asymmetry will be hashed out in the next of our Debates at Lolita Bar (266 Broome St. at Allen St. on Manhattan’s Lower East Side) at 8pm on Wednesday, June 20, when “Rev. Jen” Miller and Rules for Saying Goodbye author Katherine Taylor (who’s also a libertarian — maybe she’s voting for Ron Paul in the primaries, too!) ask “Is It More Painful to Get Dumped or to Do the Dumping?” I’ll host (and Michel Evanchik will moderate), so by all means come by and debate all these interrelated topics if you like.

Conspiracies and Ron Paul

It is ironic that just when I find myself looking with pity at conspiracy theorists, my favorite presidential candidate, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), is in danger of becoming “the conspiracy theory candidate” in some people’s minds. But first, I should explain why conspiracy theories have been on my mind lately.

Conspiracy Theorists — They’re All Around Me!

In a single week earlier this month:

–I met a Phillips Foundation Fellow who’ll be writing (in a skeptical fashion, rest assured) about 9/11 conspiracy theorists — which probably made most of the other Phillips Fellows, a conservative bunch, think “It’s about time someone took a hard look at some of those oddballs” but made me wonder whether I should put that Fellow in touch with my friend Sander Hicks, who, when he’s not promoting Marxism, publishing books, seeking the Green Party nomination for Senate, or running the Vox Pop cafe/bookstore in Brooklyn, is also the author of a book called The Big Wedding, which argues not only that 9/11 was an inside job but that the scapegoat organization in the attacks, al Qaeda, doesn’t really exist and is basically a facade created by Swiss neo-Nazis. I know what you’re probably thinking: “What?! He runs a cafe?” It’s incredible but true.

–I met a libertarian who thinks fluoride in the water is making us sick (I don’t pretend to be a fluoride expert, but that scare does bare a strong resemblance to a lot of the exaggerated scares analyzed on the site I edit by day, HealthFactsAndFears.com — interestingly, it’s a scare that began on the right, as so beautifully parodied in Dr. Strangelove, but has become more popular with leftists and environmentalists).

–I saw my co-workers at the American Council on Science and Health dismayed by the realization that even the American Cancer Society is now passively repeating, without good evidence, the assumption that “chemicals in the environment” are giving us cancer.

–I learned (from a good friend who would probably rather not be mentioned in this context) that the Washington Post Magazine ran an astoundingly sympathetic article earlier this year about people who think they’ve been targeted by government mind-control rays — despite Dennis Kucinich making an effort to outlaw any such devices (making him the only candidate to address the issue so far, though I think Ron Paul would be with him in principle, and we’ll get to that below). It’s amazing that the Post was unfazed during the editing process by paragraphs such as the one that non-judgmentally describes how one member of the “Targeted Individual” community, once a successful author, now feels she is being followed and harassed by mysterious Jewish-looking individuals (and for goodness’ sake, if you are a member of the “TI community,” please, I beg you, do not even consider writing to me or posting on this blog, as I am not equipped to deal with your very special needs and will immediately delete your posts).

–I learned I am myself indirectly connected to a man who worries about government mind control rays (please don’t ask).

–All that inspired me to think of a great way one could rise to prominence within the “9/11 Truth” community (the movement that believes 9/11 was an inside job): by writing a book arguing that the World Trade Center is still standing. If the lies run as deep as the Truth folk say, don’t think the government couldn’t pull off this ultimate con job. The shocking book about it might start out something like this: Why do you think they don’t let anyone walk right up to the “footprints” of the two buildings? The Pentagon can create holograms as easy as pie — that’s common knowledge and requires nothing more than existing technology — but they couldn’t prevent people bumping into the buildings physically if they walked around down there willy-nilly. QED. The real question, then, is: What sinister activities are going on inside those buildings now that they are officially “disappeared”? Think Area 52, if you will…

(Two asides:

1. After years of not being able to get a good look at the pit at Ground Zero, I only recently realized, returning from a visit to my girlfriend Koli, that if you take the PATH train from Jersey on the “World Trade Center” route, the train actually does a big loop around the inside walls of the pit, like a big, creepy Disney: The Ground Zero Experience ride. Worth checking out if you find yourself coming back from Jersey City or Hoboken for some reason [the 33rd St. train doesn't make the same stop], morbid as it may sound.

2. Speaking of, or rather alluding to, Area 51 [soon to be the subject of a movie written by my favorite comic book writer, Grant Morrison, fresh off his stint, coincidentally or not, on the comic series 52], much as I dislike paranormal claims in non-fiction material, I’m pretty pleased to hear that the rumored plot of the fourth Indiana Jones movie, due out next year, pits an aging Indy against 1950s Soviet agents out to steal “ancient astronaut” artifacts [possibly including a crystal skull] with ties to Area 51. If this kind of nonsense is rattling around in the popular culture anyway, I can think of few better uses to put it to than a new Indiana Jones movie. When I believed in that sort of stuff, as a child, I planned to make a crystal skull central to my own comic book scripts someday, so once more the culture dances to my tune — I’ll have to share the rest of the envisioned comic plots with you someday.)

Ominous Connections — to Celebrities!

In the highly unlikely event I ever do write a conspiracy theory book about 9/11 and thus join the Truth community, it might give me a chance to meet the new most-prominent spokesperson of that movement, departing View hostess Rosie O’Donnell (I once met Rachel Simon, whose mentally retarded sister O’Donnell played in the TV-movie Riding the Bus with My Sister, and I’ll bet her sister doesn’t go around claiming, for instance, that fire can’t bend steel, as O’Donnell has, so the sister’s got at least one advantage). One of my former Stossel co-workers, producer Kristi Kendall, who sort of comes across like a blonde, twelve-year-old Girl Scout despite now being about thirty, says that her grandmother once wrote to The View to suggest that Kristi should be its new co-hostess, and though I laughed about it at the time, if ABC had listened to Kristi’s grandmother, we could have prevented the whole Rosie thing. (Note: a recent poll shows about 1/3 of Democrats now believe that Bush had advance knowledge of the attacks, but as my Manhattan Project co-hostess Karol Sheinin says, South Park has argued that 1/4 of Americans are retarded.) [UPDATE: Ah! Rosie's finally being countered instead by argumentative comments from her conservative, shoe-designing, Rhode Island-raised, Survivor-featured co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck -- that's what I'd call giving America a clear choice.]

The closest thing I’ve done to meeting O’Donnell this month, though, was probably attending a lecture about global warming skepticism by Julian Morris of the International Policy Network, but I say this not because I lump global warming skeptics in with 9/11 conspiracy theorists (or Holocaust deniers, or anti-Darwinists) — on the contrary, my skeptical statistician friend Chuck Blake and others have helped convince me that the danger from warming, to the extent we can even make any reliable predictions about it, is wildly overblown and probably best left to the quiet study of climatologists rather than policy-makers for at least another decade or two.

No, the reason I say that night’s IPN lecture was a bit like meeting O’Donnell is that without IPN knowing it in advance, Whoopi Goldberg was having a book release party downstairs from the IPN speech for her new children’s book. I was surprised how little security a Whoopi appearance entails, though I’m sure they’re used to this sort of thing in L.A. (perhaps L.A. people are surprised how little security there is at author appearances when they visit New York). The aforementioned Mr. Blake, also in attendance at the IPN speech, commented, though, that he wasn’t terribly excited about Whoopi himself and thought of her mainly as “the person who screwed up Star Trek: The Next Generation.”

Like Bad Sci-Fi — No, Wait, It Is Bad Sci-Fi

My one regret comes from the thought that had I known about my proximity to Whoopi’s appearance in advance, I could have brought with me — and asked her to autograph — the DVD my friend Meredith Kapushion gave me of the movie Whoopi says she wishes she’d never made: Theodore Rex, in which she plays a tough cop in the future who gets partnered — much to her chagrin! — with a fast-talking, uncouth, human-sized tyrannosaurus rex created through genetic engineering. His tail often slaps people in the buttocks at inappropriate moments, and the guy who created him wants to blow up the world with an ice missile. Whoopi wears a lot of really tight black spandex. I also wish she hadn’t made Theodore Rex and can’t really laugh about it anymore. At the end, Whoopi and the dinosaur learn to overcome their differences and work together. I need to watch this for a moment to compensate. OK, all better.

(On another sci-fi note, I read that next season sees a TV series called The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which takes place between Terminator 2 and Terminator 3 — which strikes me as beating a dead horse, since there are only so many times time-traveling cyborgs can plausibly attack one person without finishing the job or having the whole thing turn into an overlong Saturday Night Live sketch [Note: Microsoft Office spellcheck does not contain the word "cyborg" -- there's something wrong about that {Oh my gosh! It also doesn't contain the word "spellcheck"!}]. I am more optimistic about the live-action Star Wars TV series scheduled for 2009, which takes place between Revenge of the Sith and the original film, since Lucas says it will feature the bounty hunters seen in The Empire Strikes Back, such as Boba Fett and Bossk. I could see them, unlike Sarah Connor, sustaining at least two seasons. Boba Fett, for instance, has a cool helmet, while Bossk is a lizard guy. That’s two episodes right there.)

Meanwhile, on Earth: Ron Paul

It’s strange that roughly half the country is antiwar enough to see opposition to continuing the Iraq War as Democrats’ chief virtue, yet Ron Paul is treated like a crazy person for suggesting (in the recent South Carolina debate between the ten announced Republican candidates), in a fashion that doesn’t even strike me as logically incompatible with a hawkish attitude, that groups like al Qaeda and al Qaeda in Iraq may hate us because of past U.S. interventions in the Middle East. (His views about this are sometimes mentioned in conjunction with his aversion to the U.S.’s close relationship with Israel.)

Now, it’s true that Paul comes from the most crankily anti-interventionist wing of the libertarian movement (Note: Someone please pay me to explain all this in more detail), the Old Right-sympathizing “paleolibertarians,” kindred spirits in some regards to Pat Buchanan’s anti-interventionist “paleoconservative” faction (but with a bit more of that California-hippie-anarchist flavor, which, like some of the folks mentioned above, often has that tiny, zesty hint of schizophrenia about it). Some in that faction don’t even think that the U.S. should have gotten involved in World War II. But what strikes me as odd, I guess, about Paul getting labeled nutty for his anti-interventionist position is that this may be the most mainstream thing Ron Paul believes — yet oddly enough, is nonetheless my area of greatest disagreement with him (though I don’t dismiss that position as completely or as huffily as did Rudy Giuliani, who, in a further irony, I may well end up voting for in the general election, after casting a symbolic vote for Paul in the primary, if Paul lasts that long). Here’s a video debate just today between National Review’s Jonah Goldberg and the Brooking Institution’s Peter Beinart over whether Paul’s a nut (this video clip is from the same series of Goldberg-Beinart conversations that included this one, a nice summary of where the GOP, and its various factions, stand after the 2006 election defeat).

In contrast to his views on the military, I’m completely onboard with Paul in his desire to:

–abolish the Federal Reserve

–end Federal involvement in drug enforcement

–abolish the income tax

–dismantle the entire welfare state

–get the U.S. out of the U.N.

–restore the gold standard and/or allow private currency production

–end all subsidies

–eliminate virtually all Cabinet-level agencies

And so on. Who would have thought, in other words, that being antiwar is the thing that would get him “in trouble”? I only wish I could take this to mean we’re all now in agreement on all those other items.

I also wish, whatever differences I may have with Paul, that those unscientific online polls that his fans are so good at “winning” for him were accurate and reflected a groundswell of support that would carry him to victory in ’08, if not on this Earth, at least on some superior alternate world, somewhere amid the fifty-two universes of the multiverse. I am reminded of a heavily Michael Moorcock-influenced old idea I had for a sci-fi novel in which a man is forced to work across multiple universes with his own doppelgangers, each with a seemingly divergent political philosophy but all compatible with the core idea of liberty in the end. I’ve put up with enough crap from politicians in my lifetime that I ought quite easily to be able to hold my nose and vote for Ron Paul — indeed, for once, I may not even notice a stench. How can I pass up a quite likely once-in-a-lifetime opportunity like that?

P.S. Ah, well, at least Michelle Malkin has acknowledged that Paul is not a member of the 9/11 Truth conspiracy theory movement noted above, and if the whole issue gets too depressing, we have this video clip presenting the lighter side of 9/11, pointed out to me by Dan Raspler.

UPDATE 5/23/07: Speaking of conspiracies, my friend Jessica Seigel of the New York Times is scheduled to be on O’Reilly on Fox News Channel tonight at 8 Eastern (and 11) reacting to a new Pew poll showing most American Muslims don’t believe Arabs carried out the 9/11 attacks.  [And now, here's the video.]

Death Notice: Raymonde Evanchik

The mother of this site’s webmaster has passed away, and he sends the following obituary:

Raymonde Evanchik

Wife, Mother, and Grandmother.

Daughter of Joseph “Albert” Billaux and Germaine Thalgott Billaux. Wife of Nicholas. Mother of Michel and Francoise. Grandmother of Jack and Freya.

Born July 8, 1940, Redon, France. Died May 16, 2007, Calvary Hospital, Bronx, NY.

A fiercely proud French citizen all her life and a Parisienne, she grew up in the 18ieme arr.

Her maternal grandfather, an Alsatian, joined the French Foreign Legion to fight against the Germans in WWI. Paternal grandfather was a survivor of the Battle of Verdun, and a member of the French underground in WWII. Father was seriously wounded fighting in WWII. She was born in Brittany, at her grandfather’s, to escape the potential bombing of Paris.

She moved to America in 1964, where she lived in Rego Park and Flushing until her marriage in 1970. They honeymooned on the cruise ship La France. She bore her children in Sweden, where she lived for 5 years, where her husband worked at Gevalia Coffee.

She returned to the USA in 1976, where she moved to 119 Alder Drive in Briarcliff Manor, NY, where she was to live for the rest of her life.

She was a devoted and tireless homemaker, frugal and thrifty with
herself, generous with her family and friends.

She travelled extensively in the US, Canada, Mexico, Africa, Eastern and Western Europe. She loved to go off the beaten path. She summered annually in Paris.

She was an avid reader. She needed her morning coffee before she could start her day. She ran the household so her husband could devote himself to his career. She oversaw her children’s education and upbringing so that they would grow up to be good, strong, and kind. She was a gracious and loyal friend to those she loved.

Viewings of the body will be 2-4 p.m. and 7-9 p.m. on Friday, May 18, at Waterbury and Kelly Funeral Home, 1300 Pleasantville Rd., Briarcliff, NY. A funeral mass will be held 10 a.m. Saturday, May 19 at St. Theresa Church, 1394 Pleasantville Rd.

We will all miss her greatly.

Atheism, Book II

Ah, you academics, with all of your words and your ideas. It’s ironic that Christine, who was one of my defenders in the “Aborting Feminism…” post’s response thread — where I was also faulted for lumping diverse forms of the criticized philosophy together — is now my harshest critic in the first “Atheism…” thread, on the charge of lumping diverse forms of religion together.

What it comes down to is this: I am saying it is irrational to assert the existence of something for which you have no evidence. I acknowledge the possibility of a religion that avoids doing this, but in practice virtually all do make such assertions, and that is my primary philosophical objection to them. I really don’t think this very fundamental criticism hinges on detailed knowledge of (to take one item to which Christine referred) the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. Indeed, since Christine wrote comedy professionally even before attending divinity school and becoming a history professor, I’m sure she can see why I might find it a bit amusing that someone would imply that the details of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 were in any way decisive in determining the rationality of professing belief in the unseen and unproven — though I expect I’m laughing with her, not at her. I had also forgotten that there’s an apostrophe in the anglicized spelling of Ba’al, I must confess, but I think that even without knowing a detail like that I can say that most religions — like most belief systems in general — discourage desertion from the fold (and whether they do so through “dicta” or “dictums” is also secondary, not that I am obliged to defend everything Sam Harris or Clara say).

And while Christine expresses frustration with having to tell me over and over again why she’s not professing belief in a bearded father figure in the sky, imagine my even greater frustration with having to say over and over again, as I have, that I know theists do not (or no longer, if ever) tend to believe in some literal bearded father figure in the sky but that I in any case think that belief in, say, a thinking yet non-corporeal creator-force is irrational (absent good evidence). Water down theism all you like, and it’s still the irrational profession of belief in something without evidence.

And the burden of evidence for something’s existence or non-existence surely lies with the person making the profession of its existence, so to treat theists and atheists as if they are making “equal” unproven claims is completely absurd — very much analogous to the view that if someone says, without evidence, that “Jones has committed a murder,” the burden of proof is now equally on Jones (who presumably says “I have not committed a murder”) — assuming, again, that there is no evidence at all against Jones.

The only reason the assertion of a God sounds remotely plausible — or more plausible than random, paranoid assertions that one’s neighbors are secretly murderers or that an invisible UFO is currently hovering, undetected, over the neighborhood — is that at this late date the assertion lacks novelty and so doesn’t strike us as terribly, terribly strange. If, by contrast, one were sitting with a group of people in a restaurant and one suddenly said, for no apparent reason, “The minds of the dead endure after death and form a phalanx of warriors locked in an eternal battle to invade a planet at the center of the Andromeda Galaxy,” no one would say, “Well, even in the absence of the slightest scrap of evidence for this extraordinary claim, we must treat this as a plausible assertion until we can mount an expedition to check.” The assertion could happen to be true, of course — and there could be a God (atheism does not mean the assertion with absolute certainty that there is none, only the absence of belief that there is one) — but there’s no obvious reason to treat either claim as an important probability or a matter worthy of serious thought, in the absence of some sort of evidence. Shirley MacLaine says without evidence that she is reincarnated from ancient Atlantis. Christians say God exists (or in some formulations simply “hope” God exists). Why treat either assertion with respect, beyond the basic civility due even the mentally ill?

There is a great deal we know about human psychology and why people might believe in something like the God-claim without it being true. Wouldn’t it almost be overdeterminism to suggest, given that the God idea so often comes packaged with moral harangues, childhood indoctrination, and promises of eternal life, that we must further posit that for so many people to find the idea appealing, it must be true? That’s a bit like saying “I can’t imagine any reason that people would be tempted to buy this product that’s advertised as a wrinkle-eliminating, age-reversing, brain-enhancing, cancer-curing elixir — unless all the claims about it are true.” Surely, the advertising alone would be reason to expect at least some people to be intrigued — and indeed potions that make subtle enough claims that they are hard to test in any one customer’s personal experience do sell well even without any good empirical evidence of their efficacy (true claims would obviously be in an even stronger position to win and keep loyalty, but truth is not the only way to win people over).

So the fact that people believe cannot be treated as evidence in itself that their beliefs are warranted — people believe all sorts of manifestly false things, some far more fervently than the average mainstream religious believer believes the claims of religion (witness the willingness of a handful of sad souls to die for the Hale-Bopp Comet cult, believing they would be resurrected and taken to an alien mothership and then to a better world).

I’m not sure what other lesson I’m supposed to draw from the admittedly diverse and complex history of religion — which Christine obviously knows far, far better than I do — than that religion varies radically but is almost always grounded in the unproven belief that some sort of non-corporeal entity exists, which remains the very fundamental thing to which I’m objecting. The occasional really nasty manifestations of that belief, such as suicide bombers, are secondary, though I think you can see why one might reasonably hope that humans who were taught not to believe in things for which they do not have evidence — such as a Paradise awaiting those who martyr themselves for Allah — would be at least somewhat less likely to become such monsters.

If we go around telling people it’s all right to believe in things without evidence, they will occasionally come up with some very strange and dangerous ideas — but their beliefs would still be irrational even if they did not manifest themselves in dangerous, socially destructive ways, and I don’t mean to imply for a moment that rationality and social utility are synonymous.

And if my objection to faith is that fundamental, it’s not clear to me why (beyond my general personal enrichment) I need to know or discuss the details of Christian history (I have other things to do, you know). My objection is not to Christianity in particular (though dwelling in the U.S., I think it’s fair for me to use it as the example closest to hand) but rather to all faith, whether in Jesus, fate, lucky rabbit’s feet, the eventual return of a manifestly-dead long-missing relative, psychic powers, “some greater purpose that must exist for this misfortune,” the eventual triumph of the dictatorship of the proletariat, or the “inevitable” rise to fame of a talentless and long-struggling actor. Belief without evidence is irrational (even if once in a rare while the faith-fueled belief turns out to be true or helpful, essentially by dumb luck that does not probabilistically constitute a model for future rational thought).

Certain atheistic strains of Buddhism and other exceptions notwithstanding, then, I think I’m making a fair — though inevitably imperfect — generalization when I say: I object to “religion,” and I leave the details of religion’s varied forms and its rich history to professors like Christine to sort out if they so choose (if I’ve overlooked, for instance, numerous strains of Christianity that don’t involve the positing of a God, I’m delighted to hear about them, but I think it’s safe to say they’re exceptions and furthermore that their practical purpose is a bit unclear — though I’m willing to exclude such atheistic forms of religion, if any, from my sweeping condemnations of “religion”). What more should I say? Despite the leveling against me of charges of evangelism (a practice that, for the record, I’ve never objected to — I object only to spreading false beliefs), what more, or less, can I say without simply trying to curry favor? Religion’s starting premise is false (or at least there is no reason to think otherwise). It would probably behoove humans to try to tell the truth for a change.

Atheism on ABC's “20/20” This Week (Video link added)

Tomorrow night (Friday, May 11, 2007, at 9pm Eastern) ABC News airs a two-hour special on Seeing and Believing: The Power of Faith — but the good news is that there will be one segment on atheism, reported by my old boss, John Stossel, who is usually the conduit through which sanity is injected into ABC News broadcasts.

Last time I checked, Stossel was more agnostic than atheist (a good reporter strives to suspend judgment, I suppose), but he should provide a sympathetic ear to Richard Dawkins, one of his interview subjects (and author of The God Delusion).

I was only recently reminded (by my comrade-in-skepticism Chuck Blake) that I’ve been arguing not only with the faithful but even with full-fledged creationists since high school, when a handful of our fellow honors students at Norwich Free Academy high school somehow fell for the whole no-convincing-fossil-record, carbon-dating-my-ass pre-“intelligent design” version of anti-Darwinian thinking.

Indeed, I think the first political column I ever wrote was a high school piece warning about the influence of the fundamentalists on the religious right — but I was more wary of the moral relativism and apologies for communism on the left and for about the next twenty years took the Reaganite view that these religious issues are sort of secondary things best left to the general culture to sort out, while politics is mainly the realm of tax and regulatory debates. Since the post-Reagan coalition on the right hasn’t substantially deregulated or shrunk the government, though — and more importantly, since religious fundamentalists killed thousands of people downtown a few years ago and would surely love to do so again — my patience with treating faith as a useful or at least tolerable cultural partner is at an end.

(Sadly, I don’t really trust the organized Skeptics movement that much anymore, either, since their premier magazine, Skeptical Inquirer, has opened a DC headquarters and unskeptically jumped in a big way on the global-warming-doom bandwagon, something I need to dispatch a terse letter about the moment I finish writing this blog entry.)

But in any case, the truth does not hinge on political necessity, and if one casts aside all of the social-utility and psychological-utility arguments (which often aren’t all that convincing to begin with) for religion, one is not left with anything I think we’d normally call evidence or a remotely plausible rational argument — just stuff that in one way or another boils down to “but thinking it was true helped me overcome alcoholism/write an opera/avoid a life of crime/convince fellow neocons we had a duty to invade Iraq/etc.,” all of which is swell but not exactly a good basis for claims about the basic structure of the universe. And in any case, perhaps we can avoid alcoholism and so forth even more effectively without filling people’s heads with fairytales, which means we may be retarding long-term cultural development for short-term gains, like parents who tell their kids not to go in the woods because the boogeyman will get them instead of teaching the kids about real predators, wilderness survival, knot-tying, and so forth.

I remember telling a co-worker back when I was working for Stossel, in fact, that I thought the dangerous thing about faith is that since it does not check its conclusions against empirical reality, it may “tell” people to love and tolerate their neighbors today but tomorrow, blown by different cultural winds, tell people to commit mass murder. Oh, that doesn’t happen, my co-worker basically assured me, amused at what she saw as my relentless negativity in this area (as she is to this day). That was before 9/11, of course.

It’s bad enough that billions of people on this planet continue to treat faith with respect as a means of discerning truth despite the obvious fact that it leads some people to believe in Jesus and, with just as much plausibility, leads other people — who seem clearly to be operating on the same level of well-meaning eagerness to believe in what’s right and good — to believe in Vishnu. But to continue praising faith as a reliable guide even while our civilization is under assault by the likes of al Qaeda strikes me as evidence that most people are stubborn and close-minded right up to and beyond the point of self-destruction (and still they wonder how suicide bombers happen).

Given the spats between church and monarchy that shaped centuries of European history and the clashes between religion-fueled political groups and liberal-or-socialist pro-government groups in our own era, I suspect a lot of human history will (eventually) be looked back upon as effectively a stalemate between two false choices: let the imaginary king in the sky control your life or let the all too real authoritarians on Earth control your life. If you say, “Hey, maybe we can do without either,” you’re labeled a radical nutcase. Ah, well, at least there’s the Stossel broadcast tomorrow.

P.S. I beg you not to respond with citations of religious authorities as supposed “reason” to take faith seriously. Believe me, I’ve now heard decades worth of apologetics for religion, and it’s all complete crap, as I think even the truest of true believers know, dimly, on some level. But the most useless form of the stuff is the offering up of banal Bible passages as if they have some persuasive power greater than bad poetry, so, as the “owner” of this site, I’m telling you not to trespass with nonsense like “But, Todd, you have forgotten Zebadoodah 3:24:05, which clearly teaches us that ‘He who maketh not his resting place beneath the Lord’s bower finds himself lost like unto a man who thought there was a river nearby but now is parched and cranky, while he who taketh comfort in said bower is flowed o’er full ten fathom deep with river water, but in a good way that doth de-parchify his soul, making all who know him glad and strong, for God has this way of revealing things unto those who stop asking certain obvious questions and play along like the sorts of upbeat people who end up onstage, no doubt enjoying themselves more than thee, at one of those onstage-hypnosis acts, like unto the ones seen by Ezekiel when he was in Galilee.” I can delete comments, you know.

UPDATE 5/14/07: The Stossel segment can be seen here.

The Celebrities I Loved

Say, no sooner do I post the previous blog entry, noting my new girlfriend, than the first celebrity I recall finding attractive — Annie Lennox — is in the news, her house destroyed by party-goers who found out online about her daughter’s intention to throw a party there (a growing problem with MySpace, apparently, though seemingly nothing that couldn’t be solved by armed guards or even a quick call to the police).

This is ironic timing, since if I weren’t already seeing someone, I could probably fly to London to comfort Lennox in her time of need, inevitably becoming romantically involved with her, thus taking the first practical step toward my teenage goal of living in a super-high-tech skyscraper aerie in a stable, three-partner relationship with Lennox and the singer Sade, possibly accompanied via time travel by a young Lauren Bacall (nineteen [!] in this clip and already more woman than any actress active today).  Or maybe Sheila E.

Again, I never claimed to be a feminist, but I don’t think you can accuse me (as some responders to my anti-feminism post did) of wanting mere wallflowers or mindless cheerleaders.  In the fantasy, of course, these women all liked philosophy, too.  No regrets, though.

P.S. To get back on the good side of any offended leftists, I offer my favorite environmentalist-misanthropic rock video as atonement: World Party’s “Ship of Fools.”

Book Selection of the Month: "Girlbomb" by Janice Erlbaum (plus: New-Girlfriend Bombshell)

ToddSeavey.com Book Selection of the Month (May 2007):

Girlbomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir by Janice Erlbaum

In recent entries on this blog, I mentioned being troubled by people’s tendency to invest intellectual energy in illusions instead of analyzing the real world carefully. Janice Erlbaum’s memoir of her troubled teenage years (of which the paperback edition was released last month) is a great exception to that tendency. It’s full of ugly yet utterly familiar moments of depraved human behavior — family conflict, crime, drug use, homeless shelters — and Janice, bless her, describes it all in detail with humor but without sugar-coating any of it. While the book might be eye-opening for some people who couldn’t imagine a smart, spunky girl ending up homeless, it would probably be even more eye-opening for people who think homeless teenage girls have hearts of gold, sort of like Oliver Twist’s. It’s hard to keep thinking of them that way after they do things like try to stab our heroine Janice.

Even when describing more mundane environments, Janice is unsentimentally frank. She has the honesty to note that in her high school, as in essentially all high schools, there was a clique of tough, brutal, often sadistic males who had fawning female groupies, Janice among them — while most of the girls scorned the majority of their own suitors. We also get to see the painfully cyclical nature of Janice’s mom’s attraction to abusive boyfriends who became abusive pseudo-parents to Janice. And we see Janice escaping some of the worst parts of her existence only to wander unreflectively into some pretty hardcore drug use — an aspect of the book as revealing as the glimpses of homeless shelters, at least for those of us who were lucky enough (as I see it) not to be teens in New York City during the 80s. All this street-level rough-and-tumble stuff is something of a welcome break from the usual theoretical-type-stuff I read, by the way, with the grittiest and realest volumes usually no scarier than, say, Laura Vanderkam’s Grindhopping, not to be confused with Grindhouse (which may actually have made less money), about how to use real-life job experience to start your own business. No stabbings in that book, interesting though it is.

Despite all the violence and trauma in Girlbomb though — and a few well-earned poignant moments like Janice’s brief glimpse of her vicious, seemingly inhuman, teen-girl attacker’s teddy bear — Janice turned out to be a swell human being as an adult and, as the book does not say but as I’ve seen with my own eyes, she has become a talented stand-up comedian in addition to being a successful writer and volunteering at a shelter for homeless teens. In fact, despite my recent anti-feminist blog entry, I liked Janice’s act the first time I saw it in part because it was overtly feminist, resulting in a couple memorable jokes such as (this may not be verbatim, and my text won’t hold a candle to her delivery): “It bothers me when people call lesbians man-haters — I mean, what do lesbians know about hating men?” and “My feminist demands aren’t that extreme; I just want the simple things — like to be able to eat a banana in public without feeling self-conscious.”

And speaking of likable feminists, I should mention two others: (1) Jen Dziura, one of our debaters at Lolita Bar last week, who displays an admirable grasp of economics in her almost Seaveyesque new list of ten reasons to reject feminist arguments that housewives “should” be making over $130,000 for their labor, and, more important, (2) my very new girlfriend, Koli, who, as some of you will be unsurprised to hear and others (mostly less-charitable or simply less intelligent readers) will be shocked and confused to hear, is a smart, tough, outspoken, argumentative lawyer who considers herself a feminist, leans Democrat, says she’s become slightly more sympathetic to religion with age, teaches homeless kindergarteners without getting paid for it, and thinks she may eventually want kids but seems to be enjoying putting up with me in the meantime (she even saw Spider-Man 3 with me, and a nerd can’t ask for more than that, if he knows what’s good for him, so precise political positions are secondary). In any case, she’s rational, kind, funny, and emotionally even-keeled, and that is rare, despite all that stuff people try to tell you about everyone being created equal. (We met through a CitizenJoe.org event, so here’s a big thank-you to its organizer, Julia Kamin.)

Perhaps I should devote more time on this blog over the summer to talking about concrete things like relationships — and some science — and leave the political theory aside for a bit (once I get back from a trip to DC tomorrow for one of my thrice-a-year visits to the brilliant writers and editors at the Phillips Foundation, that is). And I’m not just suggesting that shift in emphasis to help keep the girlfriend happy — though she hasn’t actually gotten around to reading the anti-feminism entry yet, and it might be wise not to try her patience too much right off the bat.

(Did you know, by the way, that founding anarchist William Godwin was married to founding feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and that their daughter, Mary Shelley, was arguably the first science fiction author and was in turn married to poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, co-founder of Romanticism? Surely there’s a lesson in co-existence there for us all — or just another, very, very extreme reminder that talent is not equally distributed between families. What have your close relatives accomplished lately?)

DEBATE AT LOLITA BAR: "Does the Beauty Industry Oppress Women?"

As if my recent blog entry denouncing feminism weren’t controversial enough, two talented comedian-debaters will tackle the question “Does the Beauty Industry Oppress Women?” at the next of our monthly Debates at Lolita Bar.

Charles Star argues “yes” and Jen Dziura argues “no.”

That’s tomorrow (Wednesday), May 2, at 8pm, at 266 Broome St. (basement level) at the corner of Allen St., one block south and three west of the Delancey St. subway stop on Manhattan’s Lower East Side (free admission).

P.S. Because of the complexity of the issues raised by this debate, both of aesthetics and gender, the debate will be preceded by a brief explanatory sock puppet show entitled “Beyond the Looking Glass,” performed by Diana Schoenbrun (creator of the exciting new children’s book character Amos the Armadillo, and of sock puppets), eye doctor Heather Mcleod, and animator Jeff Hong.

Bonus puppetry factoid: Paul Winchell, ventriloquist and voice of Tigger and Gargamel, patented the first design for an artificial heart, though it was not used in people or ventriloquist dummies.

P.P.S. If things go quickly at this May 2 debate, you might also consider zipping over to nearby Mo Pitkin’s on Avenue A near 3rd St., where, at 9:30 that same night, you can get a sneak preview of one of the debaters who will appear in our June 20 debate, Rev. Jen, who will be hosting her monthly “Anti-Slam” open mic night — and declaring it a black and white ball in honor of her chihuahua/Rev. Jen simulacrum, Rev. Jen Jr.

By the way, for a few of you who have already expressed confusion, let me repeat: writer and funny performance artist Rev. Jen is one of our June 20 debaters, seen here in a Supergirl outfit:

While writer and comedian Jen Dziura is one of tomorrow’s (May 2) debaters, seen here in a Wonder Woman outfit:

Remembering which Jen is which shouldn’t be difficult: Rev. Jen is obviously from Earth-1 and Jen Dziura from Earth-2 because Supergirl did not exist on Earth-2. All that will probably be clearly explained in issue #52 of the year-long comic book miniseries 52, which, as it happens, hits stands tomorrow (on 5/2, in a further coincidence), bringing with it the return of the DC Comics “multiverse” and the end of my comics methadone program (namely, reading about comics online as a replacement for buying them for years).

See, my willingness to research these subtle differences — and the reasons for them — disproves all those feminist claims that I don’t understand women. But we can discuss that tomorrow, too, if you like.

Seavey Letter in Wall Street Journal Today

Hey, I’ve got a letter in the Wall Street Journal this morning, defending drug patents and criticizing Doctors Without Borders (my general attitude is, why go after the usual targets?).

It’s fairly typical of the sorts of arguments made by the group I work for, the American Council on Science and Health. With even a friend (!) of mine (and one of our past debaters at Lolita Bar, to boot) accusing libertarians (like me and two or three of my co-workers, I suppose) of lacking “empathy” (based on my recent post “Aborting Feminism,” to which hers is the seventy-first posted Response), I think it’s worth reading the WSJ letter and making a good-faith effort to discern how my reasoning in it is motivated at base by utilitarian concerns rather than, oh, say, evil.

(The commenter in question has expressed concern in the past that I’m not only insufficiently feminist but insufficiently concerned about Third-World poverty or else I wouldn’t be so keen to protect First-World profits — but I offer as an exercise for the similarly-concerned reader the finding in the WSJ letter of a kernel of explanation of how I might see the developing-world and developed-world situations as connected, and both in need of more capitalism, not less — but happy May Day nonetheless, comrades.)

Capt. America Has a Burrito in His Pants

Drudge linked to a story about a man (a doctor, no less) dressed as Captain America, with a burrito in his pants, being arrested for sexually harassing women at a costume party in Florida (the story was brought to my attention by Dan Raspler, the man who edited the three Justice League stories I wrote for DC Comics years ago — which in turn recently inspired this piece about audio technology by Mike Kobrin, one of the writers I met on a recent junket to Scotland).

I bring up the burrito in Captain America’s pants, though, because it strikes me as a sort of cultural crossroads that touches on many of the topics recently covered in this blog. Even as DC Comics has recently depicted World War III, Marvel has recently depicted a Civil War among its superheroes, followed closely by World War Hulk, and in between, tragically, Captain America was shot and killed. It’s bad enough he died mere weeks ago, but the burrito incident makes it difficult to think of him having died with dignity. (And as it happens, a reproductive burrito figures prominently in the plot of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie.)

But what is more important is that the burrito in Captain America’s pants is a reminder that responses to my most recent post, criticizing feminism, boil down in the end to the complaint that women get a lot of nasty comments from anonymous online commentators or encounter lewd behavior by men and thus feel intimidated a lot (this strikes me as either a pre-feminist or post-feminist complaint — at least in so far as feminism proper was an apparently temporary pretense of equality, versus the current frank recognition that women scare more easily or are intimidated by different things than men are). And I am not defending Captain America (or any of those louts) now, merely noting that I am unaware of any pre-feminist philosophy that committed one to supporting his behavior. People have been saying we must protect the womenfolk against boorish men since the Victorian era or perhaps the dawn of time, so it’s not clear to me how one needs feminism for that — and despite several people accusing me of having an unrealistic view of feminism, no one really did (as of this writing) spell out what we do need it for — but let’s leave the rest of the feminism discussion for bar conversation on May 2, at Lolita Bar (when one of our debaters will herself be someone known to have a thing for superhero costumes but perhaps not burrito-crimes).

In the meantime, I find that the Captain America incident also turns my mind to national electoral politics, since America, mostly for ill, increasingly defines itself through elections. I recently concluded that in the next year’s primaries it would be foolish of me not to seize a rare opportunity to vote for a full-fledged libertarian who is also a major-party candidate — Republican Ron Paul — thus sending a clearer signal than ever to the GOP that it should be moving in a libertarian, fusionist direction. In the general election, by which time Paul will probably have been defeated, I can always do the sensible thing and vote for Giuliani or McCain or whoever survives the whole ugly process — unless McCain gets still more “maverick” left-leaning ideas instead of sticking to budget cuts, or Giuliani loses his newfound interest in federalism and just starts acting upon his authoritarian impulses, in which case I may end up voting for a libertarian in the GOP primary and then a Libertarian in the general election, which will really mean losing with my purity intact, by my political standards.

On another libertarian-conservative fusionist note, I see that the site MainstreamLibertarian.com recently reported the apparent defection of New Hampshire state representative Bea Franceoeur from the Republican to the Libertarian Party to run for governor of that state, which happens to be the one targeted for political takeover by a group of libertarians calling themselves the Free State Project. A couple (center-left) friends of mine at Dartmouth tell me most of the state’s existing populace pretty much reacted by worrying about this influx of hippie weirdoes coming in from out of state, perhaps worried the state will get transformed into Vermont.

And speaking of Ivy League campuses and politics, I was lucky enough to see a screening of the funny and infuriating Evan Coyne Maloney documentary Indoctrinate U. last night, about campus political correctness. I walked about 200 blocks to see it, in fact, counting both the walk home and the earlier walk down to Tribeca from the office, during which I saw pop culture essayist Chuck Klosterman on the street, clinching proof my brain only spots famous pedestrians I actually care about, since I never seem to notice major movie stars such as Harvey Keitel or Robert Redford on the streets of Manhattan the way my parents have when they’ve visited, whereas in addition to Klosterman I’ve spotted the nerdy likes of Gilbert Gottfried, Penn Jillette, Bill Clinton, Madeline Kahn, Rick Moranis, and Joe Franklin (or back in Providence, Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth) — and I bet I’d spot, say, Leonard Nimoy in an instant. By contrast, though, I overlooked my own ex-boss, John Stossel, once while he was walking along with his neighbor John McEnroe (I don’t follow sports at all), and I once pointed out a beautiful woman on the street while completely failing to notice that her companion, every bit as visible and nearby, was the lady-pleasing John Cusack. The brain sees what it wants and needs to see, I guess.

And speaking of cherry-picking (no pun intended), I mentioned in a couple recent posts the tendency of people to believe what they want to believe, and that I think thorough examination of empirical evidence is the antidote. Context-dropping can make even the most accurate data worse than useless, though, so it’s important to keep in mind points like one made recently by Dawn Eden, hardly an arch-materialist but in this case doing empiricists a favor, when she notes that in the rush by many critics to point out the failure of abstinence-only sex education to keep kids from losing their virginity at a young age or to get them to practice safe sex with greater frequency (something the website I edit at work has itself repeatedly noted), often omitted is the fact that all forms of sex education seem to be pretty ineffectual at altering the rates of these phenomena. That’s hardly a ringing endorsement of abstinence-only classes but reason to wonder how much difference sex ed makes in general. (Of course, if you took the time to listen to both traditional and abstinence-only classes, you might discover a vas deferens — thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week. For similarly sophisticated laughs, by the way, I recommend the Wikipedia entry on flatulence.)

Don’t think all this means I’m for having fundamentalists run all the schools now or anything, though — indeed, I was pleased to hear that the brilliant atheist Richard Dawkins was scheduled to face Christmas-loving dunderhead Bill O’Reilly last night, and though I haven’t seen it yet, I trust some serious floor was mopped.   [UPDATE: Here's the interview, less than five minutes, and a reminder that Stephen Colbert is almost redundant, since O'Reilly is so self-parodic.]  (It crosses my mind, by the way, that popular television shows would be great fodder as recorded discussion topics on outgoing voicemail messages that, combined with voice-recognition software, gave unwanted callers the false impression that you were in fact talking to them on the phone: “Hello…I’m sorry, I’m a bit distracted — could you say who’s calling again? Have you called to discuss a television show? What show have you called to talk about? Could you say that again? Is the show…The O’Reilly Factor? No? Is it…Lost? Why don’t you tell me in detail what happened on the most recent episode? All right, let’s begin…”)

In other British-rationalist TV news, by the way, I am pleased to see that in an interview with my friends at Spiked-Online, the documentarian Adam Curtis, who has examined the influence of propaganda (including what he sees as neocon and hyper-individualist propaganda) on twentieth-century politics, says that the fascism-satirizing sci-fi movie Starship Troopers was one of his biggest influences, and I’m just glad someone else noticed how strange that film was, since even the people who produced the sequels didn’t seem to understand the dark humor in having Doogie Howser’s Neil Patrick Harris play, in essence, a heroic outer-space S.S. captain or having characters deliver lines like (approximately) “You take that walk down Washout Lane, Johnny Rico, and you’ll be letting down the whole squadron!” (Curtis also praises the new Battlestar Galactica, as does about every other person I talk to in the past year or so, including Bill Frist’s speech writer and a deputy assistant attorney general who expressed regret about not working a Galactica reference into her recent Senate testimony.)

I may not agree with Curtis on everything, but I suspect he, like Starship Troopers director Paul Verhoeven, would appreciate the burrito in Captain America’s pants, which is my real point.

Aborting Feminism, Adding Links

Not surprisingly, some feminists framed this week’s Supreme Court decision allowing states to limit second- and third-trimester partial-birth abortions as an attack on women’s rights. Like a lot of Americans — though not the ones you tend to see arguing about abortion on television, for reasons more aesthetic than political — I’m fairly moderate on the abortion topic, inclined to think that fetuses are less than full persons but more than, say, tumors and thus arguably due some degree of moral concern and legal protection, particularly the farther along they are in the development process. Rough, centrist legal remedies like, say, allowing abortion in the first trimester but limiting partial-birth abortion in the third trimester are thus OK by me, though inevitably we will always be without a perfect solution on this topic. So I’d rather talk about feminism instead.
I mentioned my opposition to feminism in an earlier post called “Brief Statement of Principles,” which is now also posted as one of the Permanent Things in my right margin, as is my half-joking Personal Ad — something you should read instead of the current post if you happen to be a feminist who might be willing to date me but will cease to be willing if you read my denunciation of feminism. Also among the Permanent Things is information on the monthly Debates at Lolita Bar that I organize and host, which next month (May 2) will feature an intra-feminist argument between comedian-debaters Charles Star and Jen Dziura over the question “Does the Beauty Industry Oppress Women?” So come hear them and, if the current blog entry upsets or inspires you, come give me a piece of your mind while you’re at it.
There’s bound to be something in the following Ten Complaints About Feminism you disagree with (all that I really have time for now, though one could write a multi-volume encyclopedia with tiny little footnotes):
1. Making A Priori Moral Assertions About Thoroughly Empirical Questions
This is really my main complaint about feminism, as philosophy, and I mentioned it in the Principles post already. I get the sense whenever listening to feminist arguments that there are conclusions I am being morally goaded into drawing about how the world works even before I have been allowed to investigate — that women and men’s intelligence “must” be found to be equal, or that if men are smarter at some things, women “must” be smarter at others in such a way that it all evens out (in some grand, ill-defined metaphysical sense) so that everyone feels like an equal partner in democracy at the end of the day. That’s just bad science.
And speaking of science, I should preface this entire list of complaints with the comment that I am well aware that individuals frequently defy the broad, relatively subtle generalizations made about them, and in my own life I’m lucky enough to have frequent contact with highly rational female colleagues, for example both ones with science expertise greater than my own (at work at the American Council on Science and Health) and ones with phenomenal writing skills in my off-hours existence, which so often involves rubbing elbows with various media folk.
Yet the data suggest that there are intelligence differences between males and females, and without going into each sub-category of intelligence (ability to negotiate three-dimensional spaces, ability to read emotions from faces, recall, math, etc.), I will say that there seem to be both more male geniuses than female geniuses and more male idiots than female idiots. For a moment, the reader hoping (for whatever a priori reasons) to find “balance” in evaluations of the two sexes might feel relieved that in some sense the IQ differences appear to “even out” — but a tendency for women to bunch near the norm while males are more likely to rise to the top and to end up in prison is hardly, I think, the sort of simple “equality” that underpins most traditional, idealistic feminist thinking. Those differences have huge implications that we’re still sorting out and may render, for example, the application of affirmative action laws to gender “balance” absurd (and unjust).
2. Refusing to Define “Feminism” Clearly Enough to Judge Its Value
If people are going to say “I am a feminist” — or be outraged by someone’s statement “I am not a feminist” — you’d think they’d have some sort of definition of the term in mind. Yet in my experience, defenders of the term are perfectly content to give slippery reformulations of it that to a less than fully magnanimous listener might seem to be offered more for moment-to-moment strategic purposes than for clarity — usually for the purposes of either reading someone out of the feminist movement (if, say, they find that someone unattractive) or insisting that someone is indeed a feminist whether he likes it or not (perhaps, for instance, because he is deemed attractive).
This problem of amorphous, not terribly useful definitions crops up repeatedly on the left — as in the case of the term “global warming” being craftily and strategically replaced in much recent discourse by the ludicrous catch-all “climate change,” no doubt in part so that anything that happens (since climate is not, and never has been, unchanging) can now count as evidence for “climate change” — which either implies business as usual or an imminent crisis demanding takeover of the global economy, depending on rhetorical circumstances (this sort of terminological chicanery tends to be closely associated with another of the sophist’s favorite tools, cherry-picking of data — the sort of selective attention that now leads to each hurricane being spoken of as “possibly” caused by “climate change” but does not, of course, lead to headlines this month saying, as they might well have: COLDEST EASTER IN SIXTY-SEVEN YEARS: DOES PLANET FACE “FREEZE PERIL”? [but for more on climate change, see the recent debate about it posted on the blog I edit at my real job, HealthFactsAndFears, which often examines the way weak data is turned into overblown doomsday rhetoric]).
One female friend and past commenter on this fledgling site has summarized feminism as the belief that “women are people too,” to which I am tempted to say that perhaps Black Nationalism, then, is the view that “black people have lungs and circulatory systems,” in which case I’m a Black Nationalist and a feminist. But it seems as if feminism is supposed to be something more than that, certainly something that implies a moral veto power of some sort over aspects of traditional male behavior.
3. Feminism Often Demolishes the Very Traditions That Could Solve Our Problems.
Fittingly, I once had a notion that turned out, like most good conservative ideas, to have been better stated by someone else before me, in this case Irving Kristol. He observed, back in the 70s, before we’d even gotten in the habit of calling politicized campus speech codes “political correctness,” that feminist and leftist taboos are not so much opposed to traditional etiquette rules as they are a hastily-constructed, ramshackle substitute for traditional etiquette. To take a collegiate example: tradition dictated that young men shouldn’t walk around half-naked in front of women they hardly know, and the left demolished that taboo with the result that women — even smart, “liberated” women — found themselves quite alarmed by the naked men walking around their dorm rooms but unable to articulate their objections in (hated) traditional language (“boorish,” “unseemly,” “not gentlemanly”) and so had to concoct (proper) leftist rationales — not always terribly good ones — for a de facto return to the old order and in some cases separate bathrooms (“All those men are potential rapists!” “If we’re all naked, they may objectify me!” “I can see his patriarchy hanging out, for goodness’ sake!”). Being a lefist means, above all else, never admitting you made a mistake — or rather that predecessors thinking along the same lines as you made mistakes — and so we “progress” on to a new set of rules, learning almost nothing from the experience of abandoning the older, more nuanced set that preceded them. So it is with liberalism, always.
4. In Any Truly Useful Gendered Analysis, Ineradicable, Natural Inequalities May Well Matter Most.
I think the degree to which people prefer pleasant illusions to truth is often underestimated. In the specific case of relations between the sexes, it is largely the women’s delicate sensibilities that determine what illusions we will all agree to use, the main one being the pretense that humanity isn’t driven largely by the animal impulse to be what the hip-hop community refers to as pimps and hos. But lest that comment be misinterpreted, let me first describe the psyche, as near I understand it (never having hired any), of the prostitute.
Libertarians tend to look upon prostitutes — hos for present purposes — as simply another sort of worker engaged in financial transactions. Liberals tend to see them as among the downtrodden, indeed perhaps the patriarchy’s lowest victims. Conservatives see them as sinners and threats to the social fabric. All those analyses fly out the window, though, if we are to believe the claim made by multiple pimps in the documentary American Pimp that their hos receive no money for doing their “jobs.” All the money goes to the pimp. And, if anecdotal psychological evidence is to be believed, this is not simply because the ho gets paid by the pimp in diamonds, shelter, and fur. Rather, many hos are psychologically dependent on their pimp in more the way we expect of cult members orbiting a revered father-leader. Many even get started on their “careers,” apparently, by doing sexual “favors” for the pimp’s friends. Something less pristine and far more sad than a cold transaction is taking place — or so it reportedly is in at least some cases (I don’t mean thereby to rule out the possibility of some hos being just as strong and sane as the rest of us and simply deciding to take up the most easy, lucrative line of work available to them at the time — people vary).
But what it comes down to is that most men, far from needing to dominate women, may actually be more naturally prone to seek out an equal, an attainable partner, while women are naturally inclined to throw themselves in huge clusters at the one alpha male — or at a tiny handful of alpha males — at the top of the social heap. This makes evolutionary sense, since the one alpha can easily impregnate them all, especially if he’s already killed off all his male rivals (whereas women basically can’t have babies any faster no matter how many rivals they displace, so there’s less point in a woman trying to amass a he-harem of ready males). Why settle for a lower-caste male, girls, when you can be one of countless harem-girls who gets a tiny portion of the endlessly-flowing sperm of The Best Guy? And, yes, some small minority of men will calculate — or simply feel on a gut level, as a result of instincts produced by evolution’s mating calculus — that they have a better shot at flourishing in a competition to become the pimp-daddy themselves than in a culture that strongly encourages permanent pair-bonding. But most males, I think, simply want an acceptable, normal girlfriend.
This is the fundamental asymmetry at the heart of all human life, and any philosophy that purports to show that the two sexes are “equal” — or that they would behave the same way if only the cruel, arbitrary rules of the “patriarchy” were somehow abolished — is as hopelessly at odds with fundamental human nature and social reality as a theory that says deer “ought” to live in an aquarium in the same tank as the octopus. Any honest examination of human life ought to start from this evolutionary psychology insight about the differential behavioral implications of wildly different sperm and egg production/usability rates.
Otherwise, feminists are doomed (and the rest of us along with them to the extent we have to listen to them or abide by the laws they inspire) to be shocked and offended anew each time, say, a Bill Clinton (or someone else with the most resources or power) amasses an army of fellatrices even while talking the talk of feminist empowerment, or all the female interns sleep with the same male partner at the law firm, or all the women in some ostensibly egalitarian art- or free-love-oriented collective all rotate through the bed of the one male guru in charge in part because all the other women have so it must be the most desirable thing to do, or half the parish women throw themselves at the priest, or countless amoral she-yuppies become mistresses to one rich already-married businessman while turning up their noses (and instinctively protecting their vaginas from entry by the genetically inferior) at more sincere romantic overtures from lower-caste, single, monogamous males.
The power of women to delude themselves into not noticing these patterns even while engaging in them would be breathtaking were it not by now so familiar. But all talk of “equality” is nonsense so long as women continue to behave like harem-girls, and the evidence is ample that their doing so has nothing to do with some slight income disparity or tragic but temporary bought of low self-esteem — this, Dr. Freud, is what women want. Having failed to hold the attention of the CEO, football captain, or other pimp-daddy at the top of the social heap, they will eventually settle (marriage rates would be far lower otherwise), but whether de jure or merely de facto, harem-formation will always be a natural tendency among mating humans.
And who knows, if I were sleazy enough to lie, behave callously, or jockey for position, perhaps I too could one day become a pimp-daddy (surely it’s at least natural for all males to think so).
But the tragic thing is that I am perhaps more feminist in one narrow sense than anyone: I want one truly equal (intellectually, emotionally, morally) partner and had assumed since imbibing the feminist messages pervading pop culture in the 70s and 80s that that was a natural, relatively easily-found thing. And while I was in effect being a naive feminist and trying to engage women in respectful conversation about philosophy, women were sleeping with the callous football captain and the even more callous professor (hey, beats dating your equals). So it shall ever be, and it’s time men stopped letting women dupe them into feeling guilty about it and time we all stopped denying it. They may try to silence you, boys — call you bitter, even oppressive — but we have to start breaking the silence if things are going to get better. Though they won’t. Ever. Not with this species — and the pattern is roughly identical in almost all others, as zoologists know (but probably never admit in front of their feminist spouses), right down to the male dung beetles competing to see who can offer the coy female the biggest piece of dung. (Species that don’t fit the pattern are usually abnormal in some other way that does not fit the human pattern, as with seahorse males being the ones to carry the fertilized eggs. On a related note, I think that people who worry that awareness of evolutionary theory will lead people to behave like animals have it exactly backwards — those who forget evolutionary theory are most likely to passively follow evolution’s dictates, as with religious fundamentalists who don’t believe in the centrality of reproductive drives to human behavior but “coincidentally” claim that God wants us to “be fruitful and multiply.” Cretins.)
I am reminded of a female co-worker in my ABC News days, one who considered herself both a libertarian and a feminist, who said she resented men so often choosing to date younger women, as though this were entirely up to the (icky) men. “When you were a high school freshman,” I asked her, “Did you want to date the freshman males or the seniors?” The seniors, she admitted. “Well, then, think of this as payback time,” I told her. Truer words were never spoken, if I do say so myself. In a sane world, the Women’s Studies departments would close and classes would instead be built around my words. Maybe someday.
5. The Feminsts Often Recapitulate Traditional Patterns While Demanding that No One Point This Out.
Only days ago, as it happens, I heard a left-leaning feminist of my acquaintance, one not only trained in psychology but philosophically inclined to claim some sophistication on sexual matters, express surprise that a man she’d kissed is a Republican. How did this philosophical interloper win over our sophisticate? From what little I observed, it had a great deal to do with him (a) talking about money and (b) using (consciously or not) the infamous “negs,” or offhand insulting comments, seemingly delivered without ill intent, that lower the woman’s self-esteem enough to make her think the guy must be her superior — someone from up near the top of that aforementioned alpha-male-capped heap — and thus to be desired (this technique is apparently all the rage with men who teach courses and write books about how to pick up women, and more than that I’d just as soon not know — though I’ve already witnessed it working its magic in at least two cases in my extended social circle and I’m sure it goes on all the time).
Imagine how insulted these people would be, though, if I were to suggested they’d simply repeated the widespread pimp-ho behavior pattern written (as at least one mating strategy among many, the human brain being admirably flexible) into our genes and celebrated by countless abrasive rappers. If modern women behave like hos, feminism tends to insist, the blame must belong to men, the evil capitalist system with its income disparities, or some aberrant self-esteem problem on the part of select females. But what happens to feminism’s egalitarian worldview if this is simply the way women tend by nature to like it, absent lots of rationalistic or religious haranguing to behave otherwise?
Traditional, 70s-style feminists have spent the past four decades honing their arguments against conservatives and capitalists, but I suspect their cause is ultimately going to be done in instead by a rising generation of trashy hos.
6. Feminists Tend to Disparage Current Social Arrangements Even When They Are in Fact Working to Women’s Advantage.
To what extent, I wonder, will monogamy (including marriage, so often depicted as something of a trap by feminists) be looked back upon as the chief cause of the egalitarian-feminist impulse in the past two centuries? The male-female diatom does, after all, lend itself to thinking of two equal partners. As that diatom becomes less common, I suspect the illusion of equality will also naturally erode — though that illusion will not go quietly. Liberals, being naturally inclined to totalitarianism, are willing to expend a great deal of (other people’s) resources trying to shoehorn social reality into their mental picture of how it ought to operate. As women end up poor, without husbands but saddled with children, liberals are perfectly willing to denounce traditional ideas of marriage in one breath (Who needs a male breadwinner?) and call for ever-increasing wealth redistribution with the next breath — to pick up the shattered pieces of the society they’re destroying. (I don’t pretend any of this was fully intended on the left’s part — the left, to my mind, is not so much a sinister conspiracy as a grand tragedy in which we are all players as participants in modernity.)
On a similar, though perhaps less consequential, note, I think feminists often tote up as patriarchal wrongs things that were produced precisely by the leftist/feminist sense of irony, as with an upcoming movie that might as well be entitled Vagina Dentata: The Motion Picture. If everything in pop culture that’s stupid (say, sunny weather girls with no real knowledge of meteorology) automatically counted as conservative or patriarchal, then opponents of conservatism and patriarchy would indeed have a strong case. But stupidity is transpartisan.
7. In Its Recent Manifestations, Feminism (While, Thankfully, Less Ideologically Rigid) Seems to Encourage Women to Insist They Are Not Only as Good as Men But as Bad.
What exactly is this “girl power” (for lack of a better term) form of feminism that the Generation Y members now fall for if not simply the usual feminist hypocrisy — regard us as equals even while giving us special treatment — gussied up in its latest form, in which we are ordered to believe that in addition to being exactly as smart and employable as men they are also just as macho (until they cry)?
Lately, it almost seems that “feminism” is now mainly a brand of spunky pugnacity — like they’ve gone from trying to “be men” (becoming lawyers and whatnot, as was the ideal back in the 60s and 70s) to simply trying to “be boys” (loutish, crude, oversexed, drunk, etc.).
Why is everything that’s supposedly wrong when men do it OK when women do it? Having heard for decades about how crude and exploitative it is for men to look at women’s bodies, for instance, are we now supposed to think at the same time that it’s cool when lesbians or bisexuals do it? I’m inclined to think that if it’s OK for the lesbians to do it, feminism owes a memo of apology to Hugh Hefner and company. (“But when I do it, it’s cute!” as Homer Simpson once insisted, in one of the most succinct summaries of moral double-standards ever written.)
As always, what the feminists seem most to want to be liberated from is…intellectual consistency. So if you say women today still behave in a more feminine manner than men, you are condemned by them. If you then say women behave in a more masculine manner than they used to, you are condemned. If you say that they deny the validity of such categories as “masculine” and “feminine,” you are condemned for depicting them in an outmoded, straw-(wo)man form. And on it goes, never arriving at a point where one can comfortably describe reality in anything resembling a familiar form without the feminist seeking some sort of leg up on discourse by asserting that more respect must be paid to them and their (vague) cause. And even if they found that last sentence accurate, they would most likely just assert that it is a moral triumph of some sort to perpetually complicate and render problematic all attempts at discourse — until you asserted that that was the effect they were having, at which point they would probably assert that you’re overreacting and switch back to the “we’re just ordinary women who want the usual, non-radical things” mode. It’s all quite mercurial, in my experience.
8. Feminism Seems Increasingly to Point to Worst-Case Scenarios as Evidence Feminism is Still Needed.
As evidence their movement has some point, feminists trot out things that (virtually) all non-feminists already agree with, such as opposition to rape. Claiming that opposition to rape — or intense forms of verbal abuse, for that matter — makes one a feminist is a bit like saying that opposition to the Klan makes one a Democrat.
They will also try these days to take credit for the most basic, nigh-universal rules of civility, as if thinking that listening to what people have to say and refraining from punching them in the face were feminist moral innovations (indeed, tolerance and not hitting people in the face seem to me principles that, if consistently observed, make one more eligible for inclusion among libertarians than among feminists, since libertarians are the only philosophical faction aside from pacifists to consistently condemn the initiation of force).
9. Feminism Is Quite Plainly, Though No One Ever Seems to Point This Out, Self-Interested Rather than Dispassionately Just.
Is a woman being a feminist really any more admirable — weighed purely in terms of altruistic motivation — than a white guy becoming a white supremacist? After all, I don’t think even the white supremacists these days hold out much hope of passing anti-black laws…but they are always fighting for their tribe against others and seeing the world in those terms, even while condemning others for acting as self-interestedly. What has feminism become if not self-interested, tribalist pleading on behalf of a group that has already won all its morally relevant battles? Far from feminism being a feather in the cap of all respectable “intellectuals,” perhaps it should be a sign that someone has wholeheartedly immersed herself in naked partisanship and is unfit for the polite, civil, and disinterested discourse that makes philosophy and (rational) politics possible.
The goal of the movement, one suspects, isn’t to make sense of the world or to push some coherent model of justice — the whole thing is just one more guilt-tripping tactic, no more indicative of them holding the moral high ground than their ability to make males feel bad by crying (a tactic that I think has finally completely lost its power over me — if they’re crying, they may well deserve to be crying).
If I may, by way of compensation, plead on behalf of my own sex for just a moment: it is worth remembering that there is consistent, constant state violence (in the U.S.) against men, in the form, for instance, of affirmative action laws, tax-funded set-asides for women, and speech-restricting sexual harassment laws far more likely to be deployed against males, all enforceable by fines and (like all laws) ultimately by forcible imprisonment when people refuse to pay fines (though so pervasive is the legal threat that the guns rarely need to be displayed) and no such state violence (in the U.S., as opposed to many Islamic countries) uniquely directed at women. (Even abortion laws, of which there are precious few, apply in principle to both sexes — it’s just that biology, not law or society, has placed fetuses inside only one sex, but we’re skipping that topic and its endless complexities for now.)
And to those of my fellow libertarians who covet the “feminist” label — some calling themselves “individualist feminists” or “iFeminists” to show their opposition to the socialism so common in feminist writings: if some would contend that “conservatism” is too much entangled with the use of coercion for anyone of a libertarian bent to want that label, what on Earth are we to think of the label “feminist,” which seems to me almost invariably bound up with some of the most intrusive statist schemes ever devised, from legally policing what can be said in the workplace to what the composition of our workforce can be and, in many instances, what its members can be paid — not to mention the ever-looming threat of using vast, aggregate statistics regarding social power as a moral-legal trump card for demanding more spending or further changes in the law, rather than “letting the chips fall where they may” in terms of social power and marketplace performance, based on individual achievement (as laissez-faire thinking would counsel, and as most men, I think, would naturally prefer, competitive sorts that they are)? (The oft-cited “income disparity” stats about how much women earn vs. how much men earn are Marxist nonsense of the most presumptuous sort, based once again on the a priori assumption that women ought to be making the same career choices and displaying the same work habits and thus making the same amount of money as men — have we forgotten all those chaos theory lessons about how tiny initial differences can lead [without chicanery] to vastly different outcomes?)
Rather than pleading in a tribalistic fashion for women and feminists, intellectuals would be wiser to condemn all sorts of legal and intellectual double standards as a system of anti-male oppression — a matriarchy, if you will. Luckily for feminists (or at least, luckily for the handful of feminists who really mean it rather than just deploying feminist arguments as one more weapon in the quiver when, say, wiles or crying fail), men are less inclined to this sort of self-serving, tribalistic whining than women are, so an organized men’s movement — largely for reasons of chivalry — is never likely to become very aggressive. I may not even bring it up again myself, as fighting with girls seems mean.
Oh, and that raises a side point that I think is worthy of a few books and doctoral theses: far from feminism being the opposite of chivalry, it should by this late juncture in history be obvious that both chivalry and feminism are just systems for getting men to treat women more gently than they treat other men. The difference is that under chivalry, both sexes admitted this was the arrangement and under feminism, we are supposed to pretend women are being held to the same standard even when they aren’t.
If I am nice to women — and some will probably say that this post itself means I am not, itself an interesting and all too common argumentative tactic in feminist discussions — it may be precisely because I am not a feminist and recognize, chivalrously, that (for instance) when, on rare occasions, I make the mistake of arguing with women as vigorously as I would my male acquaintances, bad emotional consequences are likely to ensue.
10. Feminism Unwittingly Inspires Some Downright Bizarre Postmodern Arguments.
Getting back to abortion again, just briefly, there’s the absurd argument that men can’t have an opinion on it, since they can’t get pregnant. This seems roughly as absurd as (though of course not perfectly analogous to) saying, in the 1850s South, that only blacks can oppose slavery. This is a postmodern parody of argument, designed to discredit arguers instead of arguments — and what then happens if the same argument is made by people of both sexes? Is it at least potentially valid when women utter it but inconceivable when men do? Nonsense — and I say this regardless of the correct position on abortion. I say it merely to preserve something about as fundamental as life — the freedom to form moral opinions.
And some surveys suggest, by the way, that women are in fact more pro-life than men, so consider that before you make your next (unprincipled) strategic decision, pro-choice sistas.
I think that’s enough for one short blog post, though obviously volumes could (and ideally should) be written. I am just one man, though.
UPDATE 5/7/07: Well, in defiance of the critics, I have a new girlfriend, who you can read about here — though I admit that as I write this, she hasn’t yet read the above blog entry.