The Other Ricky

I went to visit my Dear Auntie this afternoon, and to take her out to lunch, to a restaurant she enjoyed when she still had sense enough to enjoy it. I parked in the garage below her ‘assisted-living’ residence, carded myself into the access stairwell, punched the code to gain access to the first floor and the stairwells, and punched another code to gain access to her floor in Memory Care. Then I went down to her room, gently but firmly directed one of her neighbors (a man who didn’t seem to have any idea of much of anything) to sit down where he wouldn’t be in Dear Auntie’s way, and knocked on the door to her room.

“I’m so glad to see you. Where’s the other Ricky?” she asked.

I’m damned if I know, Dear Auntie.

There have been a goodly number of people in my life who have acted as if to persuade me to fetch out, to deliver, ‘the other Ricky.’  They have ranged from people who sought out a more assertive, more macho Ricky, to those who sought out a more accommodating, more supplicating, more pussy-begging Ricky, to those who simply sought out a Ricky who would cast himself loose from his mother’s apron-strings. Then there was my mother, who rejected the very idea of a Ricky who might have his own desires, independent of her needs and wants and wishes.

It is fifteen days short of the tenth anniversary of my mother’s death; pretty close to the tenth anniversary of the day her last best friend, Pat, and Pat’s husband Jake, went to lunch with us on the last day my mother was able to do so. Pretty close to the day we went out for a ride, and she asked to see our airplane the Snowbird, and I pulled up close to its propeller and she patted it goodbye.

I am hurting, to hear my Mom’s sister ask ‘where is the other Ricky.’ It hurts when I wonder, who on Earth or beyond it could indeed be ‘the other Ricky?’ Her brother? Her son? Her imaginary playmate, in the cloudy impenetrable maze of her own dementia?

We went to lunch at the restaurant she’d loved best in the last months of her sanity. Becky, our friend among the waitresses there, found us a table adjoining her area, and she brought her own supper to that table after she ended her own shift. She was oh-so-kindly to my Dear Auntie, while she ate her dinner and Dear Auntie fumbled around with the ice-cream that I’d brought her after she finished her proper meal.

I don’t know how long I’ll be able to be Dear Auntie’s ‘other Ricky’. I do hope that I will be able to progress from that, to a reality and a space where it won’t matter who I am … and, as Jimmy Buffett sang it in One Particular Harbor, “when I see the day when my hair’s full gray, and I finally disappear.”

There ain’t room for two of me in Dear Auntie’s life, or in any life I can envision for myself after Dear Auntie shuffles off this mortal coil and Goes West.

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The Broken Contract

“We’re at a warped point in history in which the feminist state has so deeply involved itself in relationships it has broken the contract between men and women.” (The Wisdom in Not Arguing With A Woman – The Spearhead, 11 May 2012)

This “contract” is not a creation of lawyers and written law. It undercuts anything written in Blackstone, any verdict signed by the Supreme Court. One could argue that its foundations are older than modern man, because it is based on the behavior that animals who live in a pack must follow if the pack is – and they are – to survive.

Homo sapiens is not a “pack animal”, you argue? We are more sophisticated than that, more advanced, with a more-complex society than the lowly “pack animal” of my comparison? I’m not talking of the Gothic-cathedral creation above the ground, I’m talking of the foundations, below the ground, out of sight, long-buried and forgotten as long as the structure will continue to stand. But can we move this structure off its hidden foundations and still keep it intact? It appears to me that we’ve tried – and we’ve failed; the attempts of our present society to move, morph, shape-shift and change the social contract have left it broken, unable to stand as it is today.

Let’s take a look at those “pack animals.” Wolves are most familiar to European and North American cognizance. The wolf pack in the wild consists of a breeding pair, the alphas, who dominate the “lesser” members of the pack – generally their “adolescent” children – and the pack works together to keep the current litter of pups well-fed and strong. (1) Situations are different when you throw a bunch of captive wolves together in a cage; their battles of dominance are the tool they use to sort things out between them, in forced company. The “captive pack” may be more comparable to the cheesy crowd in your local singles meet-market, mightn’t it?

Notice, though, the absolute biological imperative: Bring up a litter, or rather litter-after-litter, of healthy, strong pups. The same is the reproductive imperative of any mammal, any animal, any creature – to survive as a species, they have to procreate. In the case of bisexual species (just about any critter more complex than the bdelloid rotifers), they have to mate – the egg-layer must choose a sperm-sprayer to fertilize those eggs. The male must establish his value as a good sire for the female’s young; whether by display (like the peacock), by “interesting stuff” (like the bowerbird), by actual combat (like rutting deer), or – in a species as socially-complex as Homo sapiens – by “game.”

And more importantly, by what anthropologists and philosophers call “the social contract.”

Human society is incredibly broader, deeper, and more complex than the social behaviors of any other animal on Earth. This has been so since grass huts, stone tools, and tribal groups of multiple nuclear families, bound together by spoken language, common needs cooperatively met, and social hierarchy. The tribal groups that survived, got along by going along, by tradition passed down the generations, by the inculcation of internal controls on individual behavior. “In the old days, there were no fights about hunting grounds or fishing territories. There was no law then … everybody did what was right.” (2) As tribes coalesced into larger societies, into hierarchies, into city-states and nations, the customs of the people in these groups adapted and evolved to keep society running smoothly; and the customs regarding mating and family life were arguably the most important of all. Customs like marriage, sexual fidelity between husband and wife, and raising the kids to live the same way, were more fundamental and powerful than mere laws could be. The “cake of custom,” as Walter Bagehot called it (3), underlies the Law and makes it enforceable.

And it is that “cake of custom” that has been broken. The contract of custom, between man and woman, between husband and wife, between father and mother, has been torn to shreds. All that is left is the Law, and it has come down crushingly on the rights of the father, the husband, the man; and in favor of the rights and privileges of the mother, the wife, the woman.

This starts in elementary school, where the lessons are geared for the girls by their mostly-female teachers. Even the rough-and-tumble games the boys used to play, to let off steam, are taken away as “too dangerous” – and too many fidgety boys are labeled “ADHD” and drugged with Ritalin to make them passive in class.

It goes on to the workplace, where a web of Federal laws and acts and regulations promise “equal hiring, equal opportunity, equal pay for equal work,” etc., etc. In practice, though, this ends up with women hired preferentially, treated preferentially, coddled so that the organization can’t be accused of “discrimination.”

In the social environment? More of the same. Nothing has overtly changed the game where “he chases her until she catches him.” But the Law has replaced common sense and common modesty, and men have little recourse and less protection if a woman decides to re-label a casual one-night stand as “date rape.” Even if she dresses and comports herself like a sex-crime looking for the spot marked “X”. 2011, after all, was the Year of the Slutwalk.

Worst of all is “love and marriage” – from the Bridezilla opener to the rancorous divorce. Marriage is the most broken “social contract” of all, with more than half of all marriages ending in divorce. Typically the divorce settlement is ruinous to the man, because the entire Divorce Industry (and it is an industry) is geared for the woman’s sake.

There appears to be a common thread in these changes, in this shattering of the cake of custom and the social contract:

Women First.

To the women, Society awards privilege, preference, and the prizes. The men’s portion is the responsibility, the work, and the blame. Plus the fact of being expendable, in the eyes of the Law, the eyes of Society, the eyes of Women.

We men soldier on, most of us, because we do take responsibility for our loved ones, for our families, for our Society.  But more and more of us are recognizing the raw deal we are getting. More and more of us are realizing we are being used for our resources, our hard work, our earning power; and more and more of us are saying “No more!”

(1) “Alpha Status, Dominance, and Division of Labor in Wolf Packs,” L. David Mech, 2000.

(2) The Religions of Man, Huston Smith, 1958

(3) Physics and Politics, Walter Bagehot, 1872.

———————

The state of play for men: Domestic Violence (A Voice for Men, 11 July 2012) – “Domestic Violence” is mistakenly believed by Society to be a one-way street, one of violent men and self-defending victim women. Andy Man lays out the statistics and studies that show how false this belief really is.

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Man, As Utility Device

I ran across that phrase – “man, as utility device” –  while I was following the comments to an article on The Spearhead – Decoding The Behavior Of American Women. Codebuster, the author of the comment, had this to say:

Even more insidious than hypergamy in the sense of women choosing better is hypogamy in the sense of women choosing less. Let’s face it… women do often seem to go out of their way to choose bottom-feeders. But in the end, both hypergamy and hypogamy are ultimately related to the same one thing… man as utility device. When a woman chooses an idiot with neither looks nor brains, she is ultimately only choosing him because he is more predictable, less likely to stray and less likely to threaten her delusions of moral of superiority.

Men, we are told, select the women they will pursue solely on the basis of their lust. Do I prefer blondes, brunettes or redheads? Do I prefer a pretty “girlish” face, or a sexy “womanly” face? Do I prefer big, ripe, womanly tits, or do I prefer small, girlish boobies that are less likely to sag when my love-object grows older? Do I prefer slim, shapely legs, or do I prefer a ripe, sexy ass?  Expressing any of these preferences would be held as evidence that I am “objectifying” women, seeing women only as sex objects, judging them only by their physical assets. There’s a special word for that, “lookism.”

And yet, somehow, it’s “not sexist” when a woman dresses to show off her curves, in a silky blouse unbuttoned to show off her cleavage and a short skirt to show off her legs, with paint and powder to enhance her looks and perfume to enhance the bait  … and goes to the office dressed like that. Showing off her goodies in the workplace is “empowering.” Admiring the view, though, is “sexual harassment,” unless you are one of the favored few that she wants to attract.

What makes you one of the favored few? Her perception of your utility. If she doesn’t see you as valuable and useful, and usable, you’re a sexist creep for even letting your eyes stray her way.

In the feminist view, You Are The Enemy. Your Y-chromosome is viewed as a genetic flaw, one that contaminates your bodily structure as well as your mental and emotional characteristics. Your size and strength are constant threats; your penis is seen as nothing more (or less) than a tool of oppression; your sexual interest is dangerous, and your sexual response is tantamount to rape. Never mind that you are in control of yourself, by means of your intellect: Women can’t feel the power of the male mind; at best they label it another “difference” to be hated, or feared, or scorned and dismissed.

But if your strength, your intellect, your imagination and your power can be turned to a woman’s favor, you can make her life much easier and much more secure. If you can be tamed, you will become a valuable … utility device.

I was an “utility device” for my mother. She was 38 when I was born, fresh from divorce, without a “putative father” for my sake. By the time I grew to adulthood, she was nearly sixty – and I was ready to pay my way and hers, as I did for the following twenty-eight years, especially while the nubile “girls” of my generation were marching in the streets with placards that denounced any trace of male behavior as “The Evil Of Masculinity and the Patriarchy.”

By the time there were women who recognized some value in me, I was “beyond the pale” because I acknowledged that “Mom NEEDS me.” And Mom’s well-being and happiness were more important to me than that of the “potential girlfriends” out there. Stockholm Syndrome? Maybe. But I took good care of my Mom, clear to the end, and that leaves me able to regard myself in the mirror with a certain amount of self-respect.

Sexist? Follow the hot-link.

The women of my adulthood, of the Seventies and Eighties, were insistent upon getting everything for themselves. They did not want to marry the CEO, they wanted to be the CEO – and they insisted on it, heedless of the fact that they had no idea what a CEO did, or what made a good CEO valuable to an organization, or anything of the sort. They might as well have demanded to be bowerbirds; a function that might have worked better for them, as they seemingly had their attention on “presentation” far, far more than on “nutrition” or “the menu.” Women could insist on all the “prettyfication,” if that’s acceptable as a word, of the structure and engineering and heavy-lifting that had been performed by men since the origins of genus Homo. Women insisted that this “prettyfication” was far, far, far more important than the man-devised, man-built, man-maintained structure that it decorates.

A man is a “utility device” that fulfills Women’s – or a woman’s – needs or wishes or desires. He may fulfill her survival needs, by providing food and shelter for her and her children. He may fulfill her status wishes, by working himself to death for the sake of her House Beautiful, her fine clothes and fine car and fine jewelry. He may fulfill her desire for excitement, by being the big rough tough thug that she “has managed to tame.”

Anything men build, make, or do, in this women-first model, is regarded (or disregarded) as “mere utility.” And therefore it is that men – that Man – is regarded, or disregarded, as “merely the utility-device.”

I, among others, am aware of this disregard.

What if I choose not to obsessively offer this “utility” to others?

What happens to “your society,” ladies, if I retreat from it; if I decline to provide for you, by the sweat of my brow and the blood of my self-sacrifice? What happens when you have fewer, and fewer, and yet-fewer “self-sacrificing” White Knights, and those knights find fewer and fewer victims to deliver to your blood-soaked altars? What happens when Men decline to continue in that role of “utility devices”?

I will not claim to be speaking for other men when I say this. But I claim my own utility, and the fruits of it, as my own, alone, and I will not offer them to any woman who is not bound to me by blood and necessity. (There is my aged aunt, but I’ve provided for her by moving her into an Assisted Living facility where they’ll take care of her, and feed her, and protect her, and keep her from wandering away. She is in such witless condition that she must be kept from wandering away.)

One of these days … I am going to have my last “blood obligation” sloughed off of me, by Dear Auntie’s death. By then I hope to have sold my own house, used a moiety of its equity to buy an ocean-worthy boat, and prepared myself to get out of Dodge. When Dear Auntie goes west, I hope to be prepared to sail South … and, eventually, Beyond The Sunset.

Ladies, you can go forth and fulfill your own needs.

———————

No to the stick, no to the carrot (A Voice for Men, 19 May 2012) – John The Other points out, very pointedly, the more and more evident path that men are taking in the “sex-object vs. utility-object” conflict: Just Say No.

Clues on Marriage and Sex During Roman Empire (The Spearhead, 20 May 2012) – A long quote from Tacitus, describing marriage and chastity among the German peoples in the Roman era, shows by contrast how the Romans treated marriage … and frankly, our modern society looks very much like Rome in decay.

The Fall of the Female Gatekeeper (In Mala Fide, 15 May 2012) – The female is the gatekeeper who determines the future of the human race – she’s the one who chooses the father of her children. With this power comes great responsibility. Are the women of today handling this power responsibly?

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Gateway Women, On Solo Street

Somebody on MGTOW Forums posted a link to the Gateway Women website, which is dedicated to single, childless women who are “coming to terms with a life without children.” He posted the link with a “LOL” notation, but as I followed the link I didn’t see much reason to laugh at it.

Whyzzat, you ask? I’m a red-blooded American Men’s Rights Extremist, am I not? And the first thing that faced me is this article, “Surviving the childless weekend blues,” that’s enough to give me my daily dose of schadenfreude? Why am I not laughing?

Because I’m living it too, in my way. I’m on the other side of the same street, Solo Street, and she is going her own way, no less than I am. The circum-stances are different; my experience is different, as my “way” is different; but our destination is the same.

How different is it for a woman to be alone? How is her experience different from mine? I can only hypothesize, or engage in projection – pasting my own feelings, or my beliefs about her feelings, into my mental-image picture of her. How did she get to this place, this state … from a past like mine, or from one very different?

Jody Day, the founder of Gateway Women, describes herself as “a writer and communications consultant; she holds a certificate in integrative counselling and is a trainee integrative psychotherapist. She spent 15 years hoping for a baby and is a Godmother and Aunt many times over but not a Mother. Now happily post-fertile….” I haven’t read anything about her childhood, or about her marriage and subsequent divorce (mentioned once in passing, in the first article I read on her site); all I know so far is that she’s a professional woman, in her late forties, and she’s not as sorry-for-herself now as she used to be.

And she makes no bones about that “sorry-for-herself” …

Right now, there’s a whole generation of women 35+ who aren’t in the right relationship and can’t afford to have a baby ‘by themselves’ (even if they could face it). Professional, educated, intelligent, capable, loving, emotionally-intelligent hard-working women. Women who’d be fantastic mothers. But it’s not looking like it’s going to happen. Where the hell are they supposed to take their bewilderment, their grief, their rage at how things have worked out? They’ve followed the script our culture set out: worked hard at school, gone to university, built a career, tried to build relationships with men based on mutual respect and decency. And where has it got them?

I see myself as standing pretty damn close to where it has got them. We’re both of us still on Solo Street. I worked hard at my profession, too; I learned from life and I’m still learning; I love my family, what’s left of it, and I would like to believe at least that I would have been, if not a “fantastic father,” a pretty-damn good one. And if I had gotten selected for marriage, back when I was young enough that there’d have been a point to it, I would have worked to be a good husband.

But I, like Jody and her “Gateway Women,” am also “child-free, by circumstance.” What sets us apart, aside from “the expectations of Society,” is that she’s concave where I’m convex. What chafes her worse is that femaleness is built for motherhood, and she didn’t.

Who am I to laugh at her discomfort? I failed at fatherhood, because I didn’t.

This is not to say that I “feel sorry for her,” or that I feel schadenfreude about her situation, or that I figure somehow that “life has thrown her a bum pitch,” or that “she’s wrong for it,” or “she’s been wronged” – or much of any roiling and inappropriate misemotion. What I do feel is compassion … because I’m single and “child-free” myself.

“Of course, it’s different for a man.” It is? I don’t know; I know how it is for me, but I don’t know how it is for you. Or her. I’m only able to experience my own experience; isn’t it really the same for you?

What’s the difference between a “Gateway Woman” and a “Man Going His Own Way”? Is there a substantive difference, other than sex? Which I believe is substantive enough.

———————

“The Cost Of Delaying Marriage“, on MGTOW Forums, is the thread where I found the link to Gateway Women. It also had a link-back to an article on “Boundless Webzine” …

The Cost Of Delaying Marriage, excerpted from Danielle Crittenden’s book What Our Mothers Didn’t Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman. Now, admittedly, “Boundless Webzine” is a website of Focus On The Family, a Christian organization devoted to getting people to marry up and raise families – and my MGTOW stance would seem to go straight up against that goal. (Ask yourself, though, why must it?)

A game not worth the candle (A Voice for Men, 24 Apr 2012) is a frank exposition of the misandry, the sexual politics, the “entitled and empowered” attitude and mentality that more and more men recognize (and find hateful) among the Modern Woman of Today.

VAWA and the war on men (A Voice for Men, 22 Apr 2012) – AVfM went from the personal (above) to the political with this article.

Good Sex, Bad Sex (The Spearhead, 2 May 2012) – The “sexual repression” from before the Sixties gave way to the “sexual expression” of the Seventies and Eighties – but now, W.F. Price argues, “we still face a great – perhaps even greater – amount of control where sex is concerned, and a lot more people are locked up for sex crimes than in the bad old days of ‘oppression.’ ” And guess what? It’s almost all blamed on men ….

Raising Breivik (In Mala Fide, 30 Apr 2012) – “Finndistan” describes a street-scene in London, wherein a young mother demonstrated to her child how “political correctness” and “multi-cultural acceptance” are more important to her than her own child’s safety … Is this what we’re coming to?

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I’ve been going through a rather “dry time” on Beyond The Sunset, for the past few weeks. There have been several factors in this; one is a certain and increasing level of acedia, of losing touch with the fire that ran through my earlier rants. The other is a growing level of apathy about whether-or-not my voice is actually adding anything worthwhile to the chorus of Men’s Rights.  And, of course, it’s sailing season …

Had a surprise at the Annapolis Spring Sailboat Show, last weekend; an acquaintance from the Seven Seas Cruising Association told me that she follows Beyond The Sunset. I was pleased, yes, but also vaguely alarmed …!

(That last item is why I’ve added the SSCA to my blogroll. If you sail, or you’re interested in sailing away some day, you owe it to yourself to check ‘em out.)

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Holiday …

The Weather Channel girl
With her perfect weather curl
Is talking cold, cold, cold …

You can’t get out of bed,
You can’t remember what she said -
You’re feeling old, old, old …!

- Jimmy Buffett, “Holiday”

I went looking all over YouTube, in hopes of finding a video of Jimmy Buffett playing that song live with the steel-drums intro, as it’s recorded on his Meet Me In Margaritaville CD. I thought it would be the most appropriate way to break the news gently, as if the news really mattered.

For the next two weeks I’m going to take an official and declared holiday.

I’ve brought Bossa Nova, the trailer-boat, back from her parking spot at Maryland Marina to the side-street in front of my townhouse. I’m loading up the clothes, food, and other items that I figure I’ll need for a two-week trip down to Florida. I’m going to set up the “wireless tether” on my Android phone, so it can link to my laptop, and I may try to do an article or two while I’m on the road, but I plan to be busy enough that I won’t be able to keep any promises.

Bossa Nova, my funny-shaped travel trailer.

This is a good trip for me to make with Bossa Nova, as she can serve as a funny-shaped travel trailer on the way down and back. In point of fact, there are a couple of road trips I’d like to make with Bossa Nova this spring and summer – a fact I’ve used to justify keeping her for at least a couple more months. After this jaunt, though, she’s going to her new home at the marina where I keep Halcyon; it will be cheaper and more convenient to keep her there, and soon I’ll be listing her with the yacht-broker who sold me Halcyon last year.

Meanwhile, though – after the months of getting Dear Auntie settled in “Shady Pines,” of clearing out and cleaning up her old house, of getting it on the market and getting it sold – plus the incidental work I did on Halcyon, and the work I’m starting on my own abode – I think I damn-well deserve a holiday.

So take a holiday …
You need a holiday …
Grab a pack and hit the trail,
Hoist your sail and wind up in some moonlight bay!

——————————

Food for thought – a few good posts, not all of ‘em new:

You Are Not A Princess! (A Shrink For Men, 15 Dec 2009) – Dr. Tara Palmatier lists twenty-five points for men and women to consider. A common thread – respect, don’t just expect.

Despite All the Risks – Why Young Men Still Get Married (The Spearhead, 26 Mar 2012) – “…with feminist divorce and child support laws, buying the cow costs so much the cow could end up owning YOU.”

How feminists define gender traits (A Voice For Men, 23 Mar 12) points at the most succinct statement of the feminist creed – “woman good, man bad” – and opens it out with a simple chart to reveal what sorts of behavior are labeled as “innate” and what sorts are “learned.” The author follows it up with Alleged “gender-based” treatment (AVfM, 25 Mar 2012) … and how much deeper will we go, down the rabbit hole?

MISOGYNY – Designated Victims and the Poisoned Benefits (GendErratic, 21 Mar 2012) elucidates the origin and structure of “victim culture” from a simple postulate – “Typhon’s Law : Men are seen as agents and women as patients.”

Daddy’s little princess (The Sanctuary, 25 Mar 2012) goes with Failure to launch and the Mama’s boy (16 Mar) – both targeting “the sins of the parents” that seem to be driving our culture to dysfunction, one child at a time. (I admire Spacetraveller for the way she is building on related themes!)

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Expensive Toys

There is a saying familiar to women everywhere, and this one isn’t even (all that) misandric:

“The difference between men and little boys is the price of their toys.”

I represent that remark … so much so that if some little-old-lady type made a needlepoint sampler of it to needle me, I’d frame it in the place of honor in the main salon of my boat. I can count my own expensive toys on the fingers of – oh, and my toes, too – say, can I borrow a couple of extra hands for that count? No, I’m just joking; just barely joking.

There’s my “economy” car that Mitsubishi tarted up as a rag-top roadster. (It gets 30 mpg, same as a contemporary Galant.) There was the Snowbird, a Piper Tri-Pacer airplane that carried my Mom and myself on many a hundred-dollar hamburger ride. There’s the scuba gear – tanks, fins, regulators, buoyancy-compensator pack, and custom-fitted wetsuit; at least I didn’t go “technical,” as that amount of scuba-gear would pile up price-tags of three to five times as much as what I’ve got now.

And there’s a succession of boats, culminating now with my Bristol 29.9, “Halcyon.” Which is, itself, a more expensive toy than the rest, because it needs toys of its own. But I like to style Halcyon as “more than a toy,” because it becomes my summer cottage on the shore of the Bay … the wet side of the shore, which is even more fun.

What do I mean, “Halcyon needs toys of its own?” Well, the boat itself isn’t enough by itself. You need to equip it in order to sail it, and the way you equip it is based on the kind of sailing you’re going to do. For instance, I needed new sails this year; I wanted more ventilation, which meant opening portlights; I needed safety gear, such as my marine band walkie-talkie and a GPS satellite-navigation receiver (both of which I already had). I needed a better anchor, after the original “hook” dragged time and again in my favorite overnight anchorage. And there were a bunch of “little incidentals” that add up, over time; like the twenty yards of Sunbrella upholstery material that I got for $4.50 a yard at the Annapolis Seagoing Flea Market.  (Part of that is already the new slipcovers in Halcyon’s main salon.)

The other day, I received the “next big thing” for Halcyon: a solar-panel setup for electrical power, while I’m sailing or at anchor … or off the boat, while she’s at the dock in the marina. I’m going to put them on the “hatch garage” atop the cabin, so I held out for special rugged solar panels that won’t be hurt if I step on them. And, since I have to remove the hatch garage to install them, I also bought a new “mainsheet traveler,” or mainsail control track, which will replace the old (and, to my mind, inadequate) traveler that Bristol Yachts Inc installed on that hatch-garage when they built the boat in 1979.

There are a whole lot of things that I’d like to add, aboard Halcyon. But my “un-met friend” Fatty Goodlander – the writer who is the reason I subscribe to Cruising World Magazine – once published a “natural law” whose sensibility and rightness I cannot deny:

If it doesn’t make your boat safer or stronger, don’t buy it.

I try to follow that. I try real hard.

New sails fit in both the “safer” and “stronger” categories, as does the jiffy-reefing setup I added last September. The “mainsheet traveler” goes to “stronger;” the solar panel system, I can log as “safer” because it makes sure I can run my electronics and still start the engine tomorrow morning – or next week. The new windows? That’s a stretch; but better ventilation at anchor or at the dock may tip the balance for “safer,” and the stainless-steel and tempered-glass construction (compared to the old, cracked, crazed Plexiglas deadlights in their corroded aluminum frames) may possibly qualify, at least minimally, for “stronger.” Never mind; I’ve spent the money and it’s gone, I’m pleased as punch with the results, and I’m looking forward to that first warm summer night where the breeze through those portlights will comfort me.

There are some even-stranger “additions” that my hamster spins wildly to ratiocinate as “safer/stronger.” Like the five bottles of Cru 82 vodka that I bought and drank, this winter, so that I could use the stainless-steel bottles for stove-alcohol storage … each 750-ml “empty” will fill one Origo stove cartridge properly without over-filling, and five are enough to store a gallon of stove fuel. (Denatured alcohol is pricey – but for the price of a new propane stove, plus propane bottles and a safe way to store them, I can buy a hell of a lot of stove-alcohol.) And the Cape Horn steering system I described in Steering The Singlehanded Yacht will keep Halcyon straight on course whether I’m on the Bay – or out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.  When I buy and install it.

I have to keep a balance about these “expensive toys.”

But my solo, single, MGTOW life means that Halcyon doesn’t have to compete with a flesh-and-blood girlfriend, or fiancée, or wife, or Mother Of My Children. I refer to Halcyon as “my fiberglass mistress” for fun, and because a wife would call her that – just as it’s traditional for a pilot’s wife to call his airplane “his aluminum mistress.” That’s because women set themselves into deadly-serious competition with anything that their men enjoy, or desire, or play with – animate or inanimate.

For those of you men who have girlfriends, or fiancées, or wives, or Mothers Of Your Children – I invite you, with some asperity, to add up the money you spend on your Significant Other (from courting, to maintaining, to placating and paying-off) and determine that proportion of your net income that her “maintenance” represents. I don’t doubt that you spend a greater fraction of your bottom line on “paying her off” than I spend on Halcyon.  And, though Halcyon does indeed “talk back” to me, it does so silently … and it doesn’t continue to incriminate me for past mistakes, world without end, when I learn to handle her better!

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Steering The Singlehanded Yacht

Halcyon, my Bristol 29.9, is small enough and handy enough for single-handing. I took her out sailing dozens of times last summer, and I had company for exactly two of those voyages – one of those being a couple of hours’ sailing with my 90-year-old Dear Auntie, who could do nothing but sit and watch (and who damn-near had to be swayed on board and back to the dock in a cargo net!) Halcyon is simply equipped, sloop-rigged (no inner stay for a storm sail), rugged but not sophisticated. That rugged simplicity is suitable for my current needs and goals.

But I have the classic problem of the single-handed sailor; I cannot contrive to be two places at once, for example keeping Halcyon straight on course while I go up to the mast and take in the mainsail. Or going below for something, such as my lunch. I can lock down the helm for a minute or so, but I’m spending 99% of my time right there at the wheel. This isn’t much of a problem for a day trip, or a regular Bay gunkholing cruise from harbor to harbor; but before I can point Halcyon’s bow beyond the horizon, I’m going to have to deal with it.

So I’m very interested in fitting Halcyon with a self-steering system; a device to keep her pointed in the right direction, while I do whatever I might need to do to “take care of the boat.”

I could install an electronic autopilot, like the one I have on my trailer-sailor, Bossa Nova. But “Otto” doesn’t hold a course very well, it uses a lot of electricity – and the “zzzt – zzzt – zzt – zzzzzzzt – zzzt …” noise of its drive, turning the wheel for every little quirk of wind or wave, is obnoxious enough that I use it only when I must. Halcyon actually came with an older autopilot system, but (dammit!) it didn’t work when I tried it out on my first sailing excursions … and the manufacturer went out of business years ago. I haven’t found anyone who will work on it. So it’s in the basement, on its way to the recycling bin.

There is an alternative, usually called a “wind vane.” This is an apparatus that keeps the boat on the heading you set, with respect to the wind; and that is actually more valuable in a sailboat than an autopilot’s ability to keep the boat on a set compass course. It also doesn’t use any electricity, so I don’t have to worry about it running down my batteries. But it is about three times the price of “Otto” on Bossa Nova, and installing it is major surgery.

An autopilot will try to keep the boat on the same “compass course,” with no regard to the wind. A “wind vane” system follows the wind, and if the wind changes direction, so will the boat – but it will sail efficiently with respect to the wind, and it’s the captain’s responsibility to adjust the wind-vane AND the sails for any course correction. (The autopilot will “try to maintain course” regardless of the winds. This is not a good thing, in a sailboat.)

I only know of four wind-vane-steering-system manufacturers at this time. The one whose product looks best to me, right now, is Cape Horn; its owner sailed a 30-foot boat around the world, by way of the Cape of Good Hope (Africa) and Cape Horn (South America), with the prototype of his gear. That is very close to the size of my boat, and he guarantees his rig for “one circumnavigation or 28,000 miles” – whichever comes first. I have sent him a request for information about my particular make-and-model boat, and I may be installing a Cape Horn rig on my boat later this season.

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What if men couldn’t …?

As a child, a boy-child growing up in a houseful of women, I got it impressed on me early on that men were the bad guys in the social scene. I was immersed in their talk of it – my Grammy’s disdain, my Mom’s disappointments, my Dear Auntie’s scorn.  There was nobody to show me the man’s side of the story, save for Dear Auntie’s sugar-daddy (who “helped her” with buying the house that we lived in) … and the more-exciting types I’d catch a glimpse of, when they took Dear Auntie (and sometimes Mom) out for dates. I imbibed the Kool-Aid that “women don’t want it,” as if it were in my mother’s milk; and not even the Sexual Revolution, that surrounded me through my teenage years, shook me free of it. (I spent that time interned behind feminist lines, as an enemy alien.)

So the idea of looking on women as “off limits,” as “forbidden fruit,” is way familiar to me.  And it doesn’t surprise me, not in the least, to hear women talking and sqawking and ranting and raving about “Villainous Predatory Men,” or to see them marching with their signs and slogans about “Teach Men Not To Rape.” I’ve risen to the level where I’m disappointed, but not surprised.

And yet, I can’t ignore the mountains of evidence that women still “want it,” still “enjoy it,” and many go way out of their way to “get it.” When I was a child, a teenager, I rationalized “it” as meaning “the attention of handsome, exciting, preferably rich men.” I was familiar with the Gold-Digger meme; I’d grown up with one in Dear Auntie, and less of one in my mother, though Mom had given up even “looking for love” after a hysterectomy when I was ten years old or so. But Playgirl, and Frederick’s of Hollywood, and Victoria’s Secret, and Sex And The City, make it inescapably evident even to me that women want sex, too.

They just don’t want men to have any control in the matter. They don’t want “the wrong man” approaching them.

So I would like to invite you to consider a possibility that could resolve this, by putting the whole approach scene into the hands of women.

I would like to invite you, Cubs and Cougars alike, to imagine a world in which men were banned, by law, from initiating any step of the Mating Dance. They could posture, preen, strut and display on the “lek;” they could brag about themselves, their virtues, their capabilities, in open audience; but men would not be permitted, under penalty of law, to make even the slightest suggestion of a “sexual advance” toward a woman they might like to approach. That would be the province of the woman.

Yes, ladies, it would all be up to you. No longer could you just coyly invite his attention; yours would be the power, the privilege, in fact the necessity, to offer the first approach. The first “Hi.” The first smile. The first touch. The first kiss. The first caress … and so forth, and so on, all the way to the “Ride ‘Em Cowgirl” climax of the sexual process.

Would you, Woman, experience this as “liberating”?

Would this fulfill your self-image as “independent,” as “strong,” as “supreme”?

Would you find it empowering, validating, satisfying, a privilege, to have this ultimate control over every step of the Mating Dance?  Would it strengthen you, liberate you, If you had to blatantly show your interest; if you had to take every step of initiative, from “Hello” to the first kiss, to dragging his hand to your erogenous zones, to bringing him to your lair, to caressing and undressing him, to initiating every phase of the sexual process?

Would you … initiate … anything?

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“Gamers Are Embarrassing”

A recent comment on A Voice For Men brought my attention to a new-to-me feminist blog, “Gamers Are Embarrassing.” I’ve got to admit that my near-complete absorption with the Manosphere brought me to think the “gamers” being targeted were the Pick-Up Artist crowd; and I could see how those “gamers” could embarrass feminists, by charming the pants off of them quite literally.

No, it wasn’t. “Gamers Are Embarrassing” is all about the guys who have more fun chasing pixels than chasing skirts. Even more embarrassing, the blog is ranting-and-raving about guys who find the Mating Dance so hostile a field that they’d rather avoid it all and battle their way through Duke Nukem or Super Street Fighter or Grand Theft Auto …

Speaking as a lamer-gamer who takes the occasional break with Spider Solitaire, I must admit I’m way behind the times with these things. Perhaps I spend too much time on the boat to appreciate the importance of video games, or role-playing games, or World of Warcraft, or the like. (Please, if you get the idea I’m putting them down, I don’t mean to do so. I speak out of ignorance, not out of malice.)

But the writer of “Gamers Are Embarrassing” does speak out of malice. And very heatedly, too, in terms that are unquestionably crude, rude, shaming and insulting.  Such liberal, sometimes almost exclusive, use of the “Seven Words Banned By The FCC,” results in a diatribe the likes of which would get a man thrown the hell out of any well-run bordello in the Western World.  Yes, thrown so hard he’d bounce twice.

To what end? What is the major and overwhelming sociological disaster that leads “Gamers Are Embarrassing” to spread so much spleen across so much bandwidth? The most heavily-commented post on the front end of the blog would seem to answer that question:

Who Needs Love When You Can Have Videogames?

The shaming is laid on thick, the contempt is harsh. Any alternative point of view gets an immediate slap-down from the blogger, all to a constant theme of “it’s all the gamer’s fault.” No tolerance at all for the fellow who prefers video games to sitting “parked in front of (the TV) with you simply to get some ‘together time’.”

Underlying all the shame, the blame, the frothing foaming rabid monologue … it appears to me there is an overwhelming current of narcissism. An attitude of “How dare you be interested in something other than me, me, MEEEEEEEE!!!!!!”

Well, gee. If you’re so completely wrapped-up in yourself, ladies, you make a pretty small package. Something on the order of an “emotional black hole,” absorbing all the attention you can get and infinitely hungry for more, more, more. Anything that takes away the attention of your vic- ah, “boyfriend,” is intolerable and shameful and wrong, in your eyes.

And what about your interests? What about your demands? What gives them precedence over his interests and goals and pleasures, outside of your head?

As Alek Novy, who brought this blog to AVfM’s attention, puts it:

What does that say about women? Think about it… If a man would rather spend time with a bunch of pixels rather than spend time with you – what does that say about you? If you get beaten by a bunch of pixels, or some round white thing traveling around the screen (sports)?

______________________

A few good links:

A Voice For Men has brought out a trifecta of stellar posts in the last week, with Setting the record straight (20 Feb 2012), Sexual privilege checklist (21 Feb 2012),  and Double standards: the sine qua non of misandry (23 Feb 2012). There is a reason that Paul Elam’s site is the most heavily-visited Men’s Rights site on the Internet.

Judge Orders Man to Post Facebook Apology to Ex-Wife (The Spearhead, 24 Feb 2012) is a textbook example of double standards and misandry in the courts. The apology is eloquent of Stalinist show-trials, and the story is neatly counter-balanced with feminist lawyer Gloria Allred’s “victory for (feminist) free speech” described in the second comment to Welmer’s original post.

The False Rape Society has a couple of fresh items that have me scratching my head: Female animal oppression taken up by feminists and Date Rape lie led to revenge.

I went to Spacetraveller’s The Sanctuary in search of something to lighten up … and I suppose you could say I found it with her Feminism: A simple case of adult P-envy? (23 Feb 2012). Her description of watching a ‘master class’ on boxing, followed by a surely-hilarious bout between the male and female reporters doing the documentary, was certainly a well-needed piece of comedy relief.

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“Domestic Violence” – or “Designated Victimhood”?

The Violence Against Women Act is up for renewal in the U.S. Congress, and – most remarkably – it’s facing some opposition. I say “most remarkably” because “violence against women” is the kind of issue that gets automatic support from every level of Authority – like “Mom, apple pie, and the Flag,” it is not to be questioned. In fact, the opposition is directed only at a few new provisions in the reauthorization — specifically, protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals; expanded visas and protection for undocumented immigrants who are victims of domestic abuse; and the authority of Native American tribes to prosecute crimes.

Unquestioned and ignored, though, is the underlying injustice of this bill – that it designates Woman as the Victim, always the Victim. It completely ignores violence done to men, unless perhaps they are gay or transgendered. More than that, it designates men as the villain – and specifically targets them for State-sponsored violence, at the hands of the Law, the Courts, and the Domestic Violence Industry. All for the sake of the Woman, the poor, poor Woman, who can beat on men with impunity but can have a man arrested for blocking her attack.

A recent article about female-on-male violence, on Britain’s Daily Mail Online website, included this figure:

According to recent British Crime Survey statistics, a third of domestic violence victims are male. That’s 400,000 men a year. At least. ‘All the evidence suggests it’s much more widespread than the figures suggest,’ says John Mays of the equal rights organisation Parity. ‘Between one third and 40 per cent of domestic abuse cases are female perpetrator and male victim, and it’s a sad fact that this isn’t generally known.’

It’s easy to project a series of knee-jerk reactions to that statement:

“This can’t be true. We never hear of female-on-male violence that way!”
“But men are bigger and everybody knows they’re more violent.”
“These women are just defending themselves against those violent men.”
“What did these guys do to deserve to get beat up by their women?”
“It can’t be the woman’s fault. It must be the man’s fault.”

I offer that last item as a summation of “Society’s Wisdom” about female-perpetrator, male-victim violence. It doesn’t fit the “Woman Good, man BAD” gospel. Society will spin up its “rationalization engine” immediately to cover for a woman’s violence, where it will simply kick a man in his nuts for defending himself against her violence. This approach is actually enshrined in the “Duluth Model,” created by the Duluth, Minnesota Domestic Abuse Intervention Project; a program that simply equates violence with masculinity, under which a woman’s violence is excused or ignored and the focus of blame is directed squarely and solely on the man.

Men are, on average, bigger and stronger than women. This doesn’t equate to “more violent,” any more than it equates to “invulnerable.” Men hold ourselves in check because of that advantage; we’re most carefully taught that from childhood, when “hitting a girl” was a cardinal sin. (But what about a girl hitting, or kicking, a boy? Hear the crickets …) Women have no such qualms; if anything, they’re encouraged to believe that they can’t do any “real” damage, and Society is encouraged to believe that any damage women inflict on men is not to be taken seriously.

In fact, men are routinely punished for being battered. As researcher Malcolm George put it, in his article Riding the Donkey Backwards: Men as the Unacceptable Victims of Marital Violence (The Journal of Men’s Studies, Volume 3, Number 2, November 1994):

In post-Renaissance France and England, society ridiculed and humiliated husbands thought to be battered and/or dominated by their wives. In France, for instance, a “battered” husband was trotted around town riding a donkey backwards while holding its tail. In England, “abused” husbands were strapped to a cart and paraded around town, all the while subjected to the people’s derision and contempt.

And even without the donkey, today’s society still ridicules and humiliates the battered husband, the battered boyfriend, the male victim of female violence. Even before the Duluth Model was formulated and adopted, police called to a woman-beats-man scenario would laugh it off, dismiss the bleeding-and-bruised victim entirely, and threaten to arrest him if they were called back. His neighbors, his friends, his family are quick to dismiss him as well. “Grow some balls!” might be the gentlest thing he would hear. “What did you do to cause it?” would be the most common. Walking on eggshells – striving not to trigger more violence – becomes his only, futile defense.

Is there any less societal contempt being exhibited in the Duluth Model, the current standard for dealing with domestic violence? Certainly not. In fact, there is more. There is no help, only “treatment” reminiscent of Maoist “re-education”, for the man in a violent relationship; no matter the facts, he is the Designated Villain. There is no treatment, only insitutional favoritism and excuses, for the woman who beats up on her husband while he tries only to block her blows.

The VAWA takes this further, by providing Federal funding for community efforts to reinforce the Duluth Model and expand it to take in as much territory as possible. The terms for its renewal, if anything, make it more lucrative for communities to seek out men to blame as “Designated Villains” and women to uphold as “Designated Victims.”

It becomes more and more evident, to more and more men, that the only sane and self-preserving thing we can do is to avoid relationships with potentially-violent women. More and more of us are saying of  the Mating Dance what “Joshua,” the computer in War Games, said about thermonuclear war – “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.” It won’t stop women from becoming violent, but “not playing,” not being there in the first place, may keep a man from being the target of her domestic violence.

____________________

Further reference:

MenWeb (www.batteredmen.com) is devoted to the men-as-victims side of the Domestic Violence argument.

“Riding The Donkey Backwards” (cited above) details the perspective on women’s violence against men, as viewed in the 1970s to early 1990s.

Dewar Research is a British organization that “seeks to provide information generally on the issue of Domestic Violence, in particular on the victimisation of men in domestic relationships and the nature and prevalence of abuse by female partners.”

References Examining Assaults By Women On Their Spouses or Male Partners: An Annotated Bibliography (Martin S. Fiebert, California State University, Long Beach; last updated May 2011) is a list of 282 scholarly investigations which demonstrate that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners.

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