I believe there’s an evolutionary basis to this. Men are the expendable sex. That’s just how it is. Men died in war and the woman from their same nation were taken as partners and wives. Women can adapt better to this, are more agreeable, are more social, and go with the flow.
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I believe there’s an evolutionary basis to this. Men are the expendable sex. That’s just how it is
When shit hits the fan, it’s almost always the women and children who are saved first. Rarely the men.
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Wow, a lot of dense (by which I mean interesting) posts this morning.
I don’t deny this at all, but let me use as an analogy racism. There is absolutely, undeniably institutional racism in America (and everywhere). It is terrible and toxic. Yes? BUT institutional racism is probably not the reason that an angry, easily triggered, hostile black guy can’t get a job if he even hints at these attitudes, because most people want to avoid hostile, victimized people. So again, not to say that there’s nothing to his point that blacks get pulled over more than whites, that blacks are convicted at higher numbers, sentenced more harshly, etc, but merely to say that the chip on your shoulder is ultimately what’s going to make it difficult to get a job, assuming you’ve got the other things needed (i.e. training). If you DON’T have the needed education, blaming institutional racism for your failure to get a good job is counter-productive.
So yes, there are issues as things change for women. The family court system favors women (though I have a school teacher friend going through a divorce who out-earns her husband, and he’s pursuing both alimony and a portion of her pension and will undoubtedly get it…I think more men choose not to pursue these things as well as split custody, which influences how divorce stats look).
But regardless, as stats on black sentencing aren’t the reason that 1 out of 10 black men in the same general neighborhood finds himself passed over again and again for jobs while the other 9 do just fine, stats about men’s relative disadvantage doesn’t explain why most men get dates, but some few don’t, even without deformities or other obvious difficulties.
My mother left me in a home with a violent older brother and the father who probably caused the issues my brother had. I left at 16. I can and do blame them for causing me more difficulty navigating life than I’d have had if they’d all been present or better. But ultimately what I do determines my outcomes. And yes, I’ve been blessed with discipline, intelligence, and the capacity for introspection, but most of the radical society-blamers for individual outcomes were also blessed with intelligence (and maybe the other two qualities, but I can’t know that), and have chosen to use it to excuse poor behavior, whether their own (gb) or others (Molyneux).
Really interesting. I know a handful of well-employed women who have never married, and what it seems to boil down to is that they never find someone who meets their needs well enough to sacrifice their autonomy. They all express a wistful desire to “have someone,” but don’t want someone selfish or who won’t chip in on shared chores, or whatever. My cousin, whom I’ve mentioned here before, is now in her 40’s and engaged for the first time. She’s got an adorable place in Brooklyn Heights with a doorman. The last serious guy she had was around when her mother was dying, and I guess was completely disconnected from it and her. Like, hassled-seeming rather than supportive. She dumped him for that reason, and while it seems nit-picky on the surface, I get feeling like he’s not going to be there when the going gets tough.
Was writing this and got interrupted. There are more responses now, but I’m going to hit “post” because I have a busy afternoon and probably won’t get back.
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Not just anecdotally. It’s real. Divorce, too, due to their closer social connections and greater willingness to talk about things.
Thanks for the factual back up. I’m far too lazy to do more than cite anecdotal information. I rely on the rest of you guys for facts.
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That is in no way nit-picking. That’s actually quite serious.
This actually is a brag. I allow myself once in awhile. My wife would come with me to visit my dad when he was institutionalized. Like, you know, not exactly where one would think of going on Sundays. She wanted my maternal grandma to live with us but her frequent falls and other needs wouldn’t allow it for our current setup. We were actually planning on adopting my brother’s (I don’t talk to him anymore) kid had his girlfriend not aborted him/her.
She actually deals with hassle and caregiving quite well. Perhaps it’s not even hassle to her, but just the right things to do. I am sort of the same way at this point of life. Some things sure aren’t fun, but tough shit; you do it!
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I’m not really trying to get caught up in this thread, but I just wanted to put this here for @EmilyQ to see why I’m not into feminism.
" The Quebec government says it will re-evaluate the $120,000 annual public funding it gives to the province’s biggest women’s federation after its president suggested that heterosexual relationships should be banned.
She suggested last June the state should make vasectomies obligatory for men as soon as they reach 18 years old."
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Isn’t there a risk in taking an example of an extremist view and then holding it up as an example of a mainstream ideology held by hundreds of millions (billions?) of people?
“Gee, ever since learning about the Khmer Rouge I can’t see myself voting for a Democrat”
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Ah, that’s Canadians for ya. They always do stuff like that. 
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Again, that’s a crazy person saying they’re a feminist. Those statements are literally the opposite of feminism.
Okay, so being kidnapped and raped and forced to be someone’s wife isn’t just something women have gone along with, because it’s ‘the flow’, and the fact that they can be kidnapped and raped (and still are in many places in the world) doesn’t exactly scream “not-expendable”. Women don’t adapt to that, they just survive because it’s that or die. I wouldn’t even say men are the expendable sex, I’d just say your best bet in killing bad guys is to send…guys. Bigger, stronger, more of a tendency towards violence. And all the decisions to send men to war have mostly been made by men. I don’t see any female superiority here, personally. Former military here, too. Infantry, so no women in our platoon.
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She sounds like a good egg! I took care of my mother-in-law after she had a stroke and was left paralyzed, but it didn’t last long. I was 25, had a child under one, and the braces that were meant to allow her to walk again (with physical therapy, which she resisted) were rubbing sores into her ankles, which didn’t heal because she was diabetic. I thought we could make changes to keep her (I needed more support) but my husband at the time, her son, didn’t want to and we put her in a nursing home, where she lived for another 10 years and never walked or spoke meaningfully again. In retrospect I’m very lucky that he made that decision, though at the time it felt cruel and wrong.
Anyway, I think “good egg” qualities are pretty well distributed in terms of men/women and categories of women. When I worked at the medical center I worked with women with “soft” jobs like receptionists along with female MD’s, and in doing a quick review I come up with soft and hard personalities in both job types. I worked with a kid once whose hair stylist mother was not what I would call maternal. It was clear that she’d have been happy if the kid had gone to live with her dad so mom could have the house to herself and her boyfriend. The school kept pushing for therapy. The mom just dropped her off for it, despite the kid having been hospitalized a couple of times for her issues. I ask you, if your kid were falling apart at that level, wouldn’t you be in the therapists office wanting to figure out what to do? I would. They’d have to peel me off.
I would say you’re right that a woman is more likely to stay home and caretake, but I think that’s more a function of income. Generally speaking (in fact in 75% of households) husbands out earn their wives. So the female MD’s I worked with might have been willing to bathe and dress elderly family members, but they would have been more efficient to hire someone to do that while they practiced medicine.
I’m really glad, though, Brick, that you found someone you could like and admire so. That’s a complete win!
@chris_ottawa, the above perfectly express my reaction. Good that she’s losing the money, good that she’s exposed as a nut job.
The recent positions of the federation under Bouchard have reflected divisions in the province’s women’s movement. Bouchard has taken the group in a more radical direction, and alienated certain feminists who have publicly declared the organization no longer spoke for them.
An issue that highlighted the split came in 2018, when a number of the federation’s member organizations quit after it passed a resolution declaring that women can freely choose to become sex workers.
I’m not sure why the government is giving them money in the first place, though I know if I saw a comprehensive list of my own government’s funding of organizations I’d be shocked and disgusted and maybe even bedridden with despair. But back to you and your views - the article says a number of times that she is alienating less radical (which is the wrong word, “mentally ill” or “looney” might be better) feminists, who are publicly stating so.
Yeah, but the women in those places are primo dating material! Not all entitled and snooty, like here.
I’ve been looking for a video I came across a year or so ago, which I’m sure I posted here, along with showing my husband. It was about how under appreciated men are for being the weirdos they are, and a part I specifically remember has a couple in bed, and there’s a noise. I think she shakes and notifies him that there’s a noise, and off he goes to investigate while she stays snug in bed. And it was really touching and a nice reminder. If I’m alone at night and there’s a noise big enough to really scare me, I will probably get my gun and prepare to retreat to the windowless bathroom if anything comes of the noise. If my husband is home? I whisper “be careful!” as he’s getting out of bed.
So I’ve been trying to find the video, but can’t remember what it was called, and keep coming up with the same not-it things (that stupid Gillette commercial).
No, not the Canadian, the F**King Quebec’er. We’re different for sure but not in the good way.
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Out of all the Canadian provinces and territories, Quebec is like the weird sibling that makes a lot of noise and thinks it’s “edgy”, while everyone else just tries to ignore it and not draw attention to it.
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Yeah but
Or something about ISIS and Wahabbists?
They fund a lot of loonies around here, and Quebec is like one step from communism already.
At least there’s a silver lining.
I will try to answer replies to my posts later, as I usually do.
Sub-topic for thought: Can men and women be friends? Do you have a close friend of the opposite sex?
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I’m not sure this is the question you’re trying to ask. It’s usually phrased as “Can men and women be just friends?” which has a subtext that I think your question lacks.
OK, you fixed it. Any thoughts?
I have only one female close friend who I love and treat like a sister or cousin.
When I met my wife, she said she had a friend like this. I didn’t believe her. I’ve met the guy now, still play video games with him from time to time, take my car to him when we go back to NY and he shows me how to do more stuff each time, and I have never ever gotten any sort of vibe from him or my wife that was anything other than platonic, and I am someone who puts great stock in ‘vibes’, if you know what I mean. So yes. But I do think it’s few and far between, and she’s had this friend from at least 10 years before we met, so NOW, if she met a guy and told me she was friends with him, that would not be cool, and she knows that, just like I can’t go meet some girl and be friends with her, but I do have a couple girls in my hometown from my high school days that will always be like sisters when I see them, and she’s cool with that.
I’ll add that this isn’t a controlling thing for me, I wouldn’t tell my wife what she could or couldn’t do with regards to friends, it’s just a conversation we’ve had casually and we both have an understanding that our old friends are grandfathered in and our new friends are either the same sex, or couples. Just removes any potential jealousy from the equation without one of us having to tell the other what we can or can’t do.
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I think it depends on the individuals involved. Some people, both male and female, can’t ever simply be friends with other people. They always have to try to have some leverage or upper hand, real or perceived.
I have a few female friends that I go to meetings with whom I really like, respect, listen to and confide in without sex being part of it or as an option being put out there from one side or the other. At a different, earlier time in my life I was probably too sex driven for that to happen, in that it was always an underlying motive, and if the opportunity for it wasn’t there, neither was I. I’d just move on looking for someone else, somewhere else where it was.
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This stuff makes me crazy. My daughter and I were discussing this exact type of scenario earlier today. I’m a feminist. These people, however are just extremist assholes. Every group has it’s sect of extremist idiots but I dearly wish they would rename/rebrand their type of crazy. Some of the things I hear espoused by women who call themselves feminists are horrifying and the exact opposite of the values idealized by equality.
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