“Stuff”

My last few months have been … interesting, as in the ancient Chinese saying “May you live in interesting times.” It’s five months since I found Dear Auntie on her bedroom floor, hours after she’d had one stroke too many; I have spent a lot of those five months, dealing with the nearly fifty years of “saved memories” that filled her house. It has been, by turns, surprising, frustrating, hilarious, and heartbreaking. Occasionally it’s made even more poignant by the fact that this was my boyhood home.

And it has rubbed my nose in a lesson that I should’ve always borne in mind:

Just as you own your “stuff”, your stuff owns you.

My first task was to select the furniture to go into her new studio apartment. There was room for her bed, her living-room couch, a couple of easy chairs, and two dressers from her bedroom (one of which had to go into her walk-in closet, along with such of her clothes as would fit and be useful to her). I brought over what I could of her favorite treasures – like the display case she had in her dining room, full of her Hayden-Renaker porcelain horses – but I was left with a lot more stuff that would never fit. And my major task, in getting her house ready for market, has been that of clearing out the remains.

Some of it’s been funny, although frustrating. She hadn’t touched her son’s room after he died in 1987. I found nearly a decade’s worth of Playboy and Penthouse magazines, plus over a hundred plastic model kits that he’d stashed in his closet and in the attic. His bedroom walls were papered over with girlie posters from the 1980s, and he had duplicates for all of them on one closet shelf. Other things have been kind of, well, heartbreaking – like the chopped-off ponytail, long and bronze, that Grammy had saved when Dear Auntie decided to change to a page-boy cut; or the Capezio toe-shoes left over from her first career as a professional dancer. And I found boxes and boxes and boxes of photos – this after Dear Auntie had declared that she never took any photos, didn’t have any in the house.

And the papers. Saved receipts, account books that she kept all her life (she was utterly particular about writing down every cent that she spent), bank statements, old love-letters … good grief! I found over $1000 in cash, stashed in different dresser-drawers in her room and my cousin’s. I found silver ingots, old silver dollars, and her sterling table service from her first marriage. I took just-about-all of Dear Auntie’s jewelry over to “Shady Pines” with her.

It took me four months to go through everything properly. Some of the extras went to a consignment store near her place; some went to the Salvation Army, including boxes and boxes and boxes of books. I found “good homes” for some unlikely stuff through a Yahoo! group called “Freecycle,” and I was every bit as happy to get it out as the takers were to receive it. Finally the house is empty and clean, with fresh paint on the walls and ceilings and fresh varnish on the old hardwood floors; our realtor put it on the market yesterday with an open house that attracted a lot of interest (and should result in a good offer).

That brings me back to my nose-burning lesson about “your stuff owns you.”

I acquired my own “stuff-habit” in childhood. Learned it from my mom, from Dear Auntie, from my grandma. It was probably a matter of insecurity, on several levels; my gut feeling is, “if my stuff is there it’s okay for me to be there too.” It doesn’t help that I am addicted to the printed word, fond of re-reading favorite books and hanging on to magazines that have articles I want to keep for reference. And it’s too easy for me to see the possible value in something and say, “Well, I really ought to hang on to that, shouldn’t I?”

So, all too often, I do. Just as Cousin Mark did. Just as Dear Auntie did. And therefore I’m “hanging on to” a houseful of “stuff.”

As long as you’re staying put, this problem seems “minimal.” But what if you’re going to move? What if you have a goal to “sail beyond the sunset” – or to make yourself a new home in a new land? What are you going to do with all that “stuff” – sell it, give it away, throw it away? And when the day comes that you can’t handle the task any more … what then?

Well, that’s what I’ve just done with some 90% of Dear Auntie’s stuff, isn’t it?

Now that I’ve done that, I need to start the bigger task of handling my stuff. A bigger task, I say, because I have my emotions involved in this. With everything I examine, I’m going to be asking myself, “Why was I keeping this? What was I planning to do with it? What value did I place on it? And why do I think I might need it some day?” The inconsequentials will be easiest; the fond mementos will be tough; the real treasures may be heart-wrenching. But even a big sailing yacht will have room for less than 5% of my belongings, so I’ll have to be ruthless toward the end.

I’m going to be breaking the habit of a lifetime. I almost need a Twelve-Step Program to achieve my goal. But this “stuff,” these “inconsequential treasures,” these years of collected memories, are now standing in the way of my dreams.

____________________

Setting The Record Straight (A Voice For Men, 20 Feb 2012) is a frank review of thirteen subjects of men’s rights, which have been distorted in the service of Female Supremacy. Robert St. Estephe documents the historical record, and it’s not what “Mommy/Teachers/The Sisterhood” have been telling you … hence, this “weapon of mass instruction.“

Courageous (The Elusive Wapiti, 20 Feb 2012) is a review of the latest “made-for-the-congregation” movie about fatherhood and the definition of “righteous men.” As with “Fireproof,” though, the movie is laden with man-shaming, guilt-tripping, and “it’s all the men’s fault” …

No Man’s Land (Jack Donovan) is a triad of articles about the way that masculinity has been maligned, re-imagined and mis-represented by others. He has brought them together as a free e-book.

Davis-Bacon “Equality” (The Spearhead, 19 Feb 2012) relates Keoni Galt’s experiences on a major renovation project at the Pearl Harbor Naval Station. “Equal Work Deserves Equal Pay” – but he shows how and why some workers are “more equal than others” at the hiring and the firing time.

Friendship 7 lifts off - 20 Feb 1962

Today, 20 Feb 2012, is the 50th anniversary of the first US manned orbital flight. Astronaut and Senator John Glenn, who rode “Friendship 7″ into history on that day, finds it a bittersweet anniversary; especially so since we have to cadge a ride from the Russians – our Cold-War adversaries of Project Mercury’s day – to access the International Space Station that was lofted into orbit by our now-retired Space Shuttle program.

Those first days of the Space Program, from the “International Geophysical Year” (1957-1958) through the Apollo lunar-landing program, were heady with the promise of a space-based future. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey looked like the future to us, and despite the dark tone of the movie, the future looked mighty good. The reality of today, of our place in space, is far less exciting – have we turned away from the long goals, the daring goals, in the pursuit of a kinder, gentler, more comfortable, more inclusive, less-elitist society?

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The Future Of …

Many, perhaps most, bloggers are projecting their beliefs into the future. These are people who have a stake in the future. People who are young enough, themselves, to feel self-assured about living well into the future; people who have children, and who are worried about their future.

I find myself, more and more, unresponsive to that luxury.

At nearly sixty years old, I have had to come to grips with my mortality. As a spiritual being, I believe in my own continuance; but that particular continuance is not contingent on the survival of “HERE.” As a corporeal being, I know this body will die in a few decades; “I vill coagulate,” as Alfred Korzybski put it, and this living tent of protoplasm will cease operating, will rot and need to be buried. As a “blood-line” … as the continuance of the DNA of my parents, and their parents, and so back into genetic history … I have already given up.

There will be no re-mixing of my chromosomes. There will be no half-continuance of my genetic essence, with that of a mate, into some hypothetical (or, perhaps, “hypocritical”) next generation. No woman gave a rat’s patoot about my fitness for such a continuance – well, maybe there was one; but she came along far, far too late. My line ends with me.

My mother died when she was 28 years older than I am today. She wasn’t concerned with the future of her DNA; she was concerned with her own welfare, and I was a good and dutiful and loving son in that regard.  My grandmother survived to age 96. My last remaining elder, my mom’s sister, is 91 – and her mind has gone skeewoggy after a series of debilitating strokes. I’m not even sure if the “She” who lived those experiences of Dear Aunties life, still remembers, still lives on. Dear Auntie’s son died young, at age 26; a brain tumor, of a variety that usually strikes down young children. Well, Dear Auntie kept him as much a “little child” as she could, all his short life.

My own “time horizon,” then, is limited to the years that this particular sack of protoplasm, the one that I inhabit as “BeijaFlor, can expect to continue, to experience the joys of peristalsis, to continue such a level of organized activity that the heart still beats, the muscles still contract, the skeleton still stands erect, and I can continue to drive the body.

So what should I put after that ellipsis? The future of me? The future of man? The future of humanity? Of the human race?

I have a hard time believing that any of those mean much to more than a tiny minority in my homeland, the United States of America, or even the world.

“The future of the Self” is personally important to every living being; but few of us look far ahead. “Am I surviving today?” is cardinal! “Will I survive tomorrow?” seems to be less important; too many of us live for today. There’s an excuse for this, in that he who dies today will have no life anyways tomorrow. But there are too many stories, too much evidence, of people who will enjoy today without a thought of the morrow.

“The future of the Children” does get a lot of lip-service. It should get more than “lip-service.” It deserves our active participation, if there is to be a future for the Children, a future for Humanity, a future generation. As for me, though, I have no children. (At any rate, nobody has sent me a Father’s Day card signed “Guess Who!”) And no woman has given me to believe that she thought well of my potential as a sire for her children. Certainly not any conclusive evidence.

So how about … the future of you. Of your society. Of your family, your children, if you have any children.

Financially, for starters: I’m afraid your society is kiting too many checks, in the interest of providing “bread and circuses for the masses.” Of course, my saying so may mark me as provincial – I’m speaking as a USA citizen, and our eager efforts to increase our national debt make the notorious “drunken sailor” look quite abstemious and utterly frugal. This money is going in all kinds of directions – save for any that would power-up the productive class, the actual job creators. What money isn’t being borrowed is being siphoned away from them.

Sociologically, your society is penalizing those who make things work, to support those who offer nothing but evidence of neediness and victimhood and poor-poor-me-ism. There are a lot more people “on the bottom of the ladder” than there are on the upper rungs, and politicians count on votes, not jobs. Too many of us figure that “TANSTAAFL” applies to others, not to them. Too many of us don’t pay attention to how the Government has to pay for social programs, by “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

Sexually – in a fashion that spills over into the sociological and financial aspects – things are completely backwards. Do you really want to raise … a “family”? Or are you going after a kid or two, on whose basis you can get more benefits, and who you’ll be able to train and shame into taking care of you in your dotage? While we’re at it, why has Society worked so hard to reduce the proud and difficult role of Father into that of a financial pack-mule, a walking wallet regarded as “useless (except for the money)” by the current version of the civil-law system?

Can you come up with more ways that Society is shooting itself in the foot? I’m sure we could. I’m not going to try, right now, my head aches; so I’ll fill this out with some recent links:

All Men Are Official Suspects (The Spearhead, 13 Feb 2012). A grandfather gets arrested, cuffed and manhandled by enough police to make up a riot squad, just for taking his granddaughter for a walk.

Steven Fisher’s Lies To Australian Men (A Voice For Men, 8 Feb 2012). The “White Ribbon Campaign” shames all men for the actions of a few, and ignores the fact that more men are assaulted by the women in their lies than vice-versa.

Girls Gone Hyper (Wall Street Journal Online, 14 Feb 2012). WSJ columnist James Taranto examines the conflict between female hypergamy – not a human trait alone, but one we share with the whole animal kingdom – and the way that women have been given the upper hand in society today.

As Mancession Fades, Women Suffer (The Spearhead, 10 Feb 2012). When men can’t pay their taxes, because they’ve been fired or laid off from their productive jobs, where is the State going to get the money to pay the women who suck at its monetary teat?

How I became an MRA: Domestic violence advocacy (A Voice For Men, 11 Feb 2012). A behind-the-scenes look at female-on-male domestic violence, from a man who grew up victim to his mother’s violence.

Good luck with that future of yours.

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Veni, Vidi, Abii

I’ve lifted this title from a comment by Spacetraveller on her blog, The Sanctuary. For reasons I detailed back in my first posts, she was the “midwife” for this baby – and her post on MGTOW, that I’ve linked, started the labor. Thank you, again, Spacetraveller. I hope you don’t regret it …

“Veni, Vidi, Vici” is a famous utterance from Julius Caesar, his report about the uprisings in Gaul: “I came, I saw, I conquered.” It is the message that Society has evidently come to expect from men; that they came upon the situation, or circumstance; they saw the problem; and they conquered the wrongdoer, thereby saving the day. It’s a common theme of classic theatre, from Aeschylus, via Shakespeare, to Rodgers & Hammerstein. The hero saves the day – and lives, or dies, according to the plot.

(Of course, we’ve seen variations on this. Robert Heinlein, in his Time Enough For Love, re-wrote it as “I came, I saw, she conquered” – asserting that “the original Latin seems to have been garbled.” And there’s the classic-but-crude “Vidi, Vici, Veni” which should not need translation. But I digress.)

Everybody loves a hero, certainly everyone in the audience. And since man began, there have been ways big and little in which a man could aspire to be “a bit of hero” – at least to his mate and their children, at least for a day. That warmth of their appreciation for “their hero,” at the end of a hard day or a hard task, brought (and brings) a lot to a man’s life; when Junior jumps in his lap to give him a hug, and Mommy smiles and joins in to embrace her Hubby too, that does a wonderful lot to ease the hurts of “life out there.”

But that’s changed, for the worse, over the past forty or fifty years. There’s less and less room for a Daddy-Hero, or a Honey-Hero, in today’s script. The current fashion is to turn Daddy into the villain of the piece – the Monster Down The Hall, in a recent Verizon “public-service” video, or the “creep” in the office down the hall, or the “man that never was.” The hero’s role has been ceded to the Strong, Independent, Brave, Courageous Woman, and the best a man can hope for is a role as the Fall Guy, the Comic Foil. (If you don’t believe me, go watch a couple of episodes of “Everybody Loves Raymond,” or “Two And A Half Men,” or countless other rom-coms that put the guys down hard in favor of the women.)

So an increasing number of men are re-writing the old quote:

I came … I saw … I left.

What is there to conquer, in this modern world? The bad guys? We are ”the bad guys,” for the most part, in the script of Modern Society. We are the Official “Ones To Blame” for every incident, for every inequity, for every problem or struggle that shows up on Society’s tee-vee screens. We are damned if we do, and damned if we don’t, and damned if we dither about whether to do or not.

Oddly enough, the complaints tend to cease when there’s something to do that “takes a man.” Something as small as a spider that needs to be put outside – oh, not killed, not in today’s Kind To Animals world. Something as mechanical as a car that won’t start. Something scary, or apt to trigger apprehension in the Suddenly-Not-So-Strong Heroine. No, no, no, better let a man do it.

And then? When he “conquers” and saves the day, or the car, or the spider? Oh, well, that’s just what a man has to do. No appreciation need be offered, beyond a curt “thank you” – in fact, many Strong Heroines disdain that, and even strive to “take back points” by archly informing the man how “he could have done it better.”

And sometimes, the would-be hero is flipped into the villain, or the victim. How about this case, where a woman asked a fellow if she could stay the night at his place – for unknown reasons – then accused him falsely of rape when he refused her  advances? Or this case, where policemen in Shavertown, PA (police are a hero’s occupation, aren’t they?) arrested an underage woman for “disorderly conduct” – and she tried to accuse them with a false-rape claim? There are more of the same, oftener than we know, and different ways that a would-be rescuer can get victimized.

Sometimes the “better part of valor” … is to just leave.

Does it really surprise you that more and more “could-be heroes” are taking the word “hero” off their shingles? The difference between “hero” and “zero” is only one letter, and it appears that more and more of us are getting that quick Zorro-slash to mark us as the latter.

There’s another word for “hero” in many of the classic plays, the stories, the Massive Multiple-Player Role Playing Games that we participate in as real life. That word is … target. And more and more men are noticing that “target” is the default role into which they’re being dressed and placed. And the compensation these reluctant heroes might once have had, the admiration and thanks of those close to them, the appreciation of Society … just aren’t there, any more.

When we question the role, the rest of the cast, the stage crew, and the script-writers start shaming us for our dereliction.  ”Cowards,” they call us. “Eternal adolescents. Losers. Wimps. You’ll never get loved. You’re creepy and disgusting. Goddammit, MAN UP!!!”

And we’re supposed to like that? We’re supposed to accept the shame and the blame, knuckle down, accept the role, and come to the table dressed and served by the Kanamits as the sacrificial centerpiece of the banquet?

Exeunt, stage left.

____________________

I’ve spotted a couple of recent blog-posts that really deserve attention:

If The Genders Be Reversed (The Spearhead, 15 Feb 2012) asks a critical – and necessary – question about “Gender Equality” as it’s being practiced today: “If the genders were reversed, would the outcome be the same?” The truth would be comic if it weren’t so tragic.

Components Of Bullying (A Voice For Men, 16 Feb 2012) shines a glaring light on social aggression, the covert sniping style of undermining, false-friendship and masked hostility that is the preferred fighting form of the sociopath – and of the feminist movement.

Weakness is a mighty weapon for fragile feminist crybaby girls: The Sexual Harassment Industry (Human Stupidity.com) “Sexual harassment” is, to the public space, what divorce is to marriage: highly disruptive, gender-polarized, and profitable as hell to the bloodsuckers who work in the business.

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A Question Of Trust

Much of the material on this blog is concerned with “men’s problems with women,” or more correctly with the problems that women – and especially The Women’s Movement – have thrown in the way of men. I wouldn’t be surprised if my monologues convince you that I hate women. That’s not the case.

I just don’t trust women. At least, not with my life. Not with my future. And …
not with my heart.

I worked my whole career in the company of women, good women, honorable women; fellow professionals in the field of cartography. There wasn’t any sort of divide between men and women in the agency; not in opportunities, not in capabilities, not in professional knowledge or professional function. The best supervisor I had during my career was “Mrs. C,” a soft-spoken, dignified, knowledgeable, and impeccably fair black women, a supervisor who well earned the trust of her superiors and the respect of her colleagues and subordinates. When I reached a position of authority, I consulted Mrs. C’s example often as a basis for my dealings with others.

To be fair, there were also women in my office who were a pain in the ass, but actually not just because they were women. Actually, just because they were asshats. They were matched pretty evenly with the male asshats in the crew. And fortunately, none of them ever made any “just because I’m a woman” complaints that actually stuck.

I haven’t had any serious problems with women in my home life, either. That was my fault, I’m sure, because my mother and I lived together until she died. (She lived with me as soon as my salary reached to cover our rent.) The only “problem” there was that very, very few young women in my home town would take on a man in that situation.  A few did, but we could never go beyond a “friends with benefits” relationship, nor did it last longer than a few months. I remained good friends with a couple of them, after the end of our romance.

So why do I sound so hateful, in posts like “Escape From The Village,” “Socio(Patho)logy,” and “The Invisible Man”?

What I hate isn’t “Woman” as a group, or women individually. What I hate are the institutions by which women have gotten the tremendous over-balance of power they have in this society – while leaving all the responsibility, and lumping all the blame, in the hands of men.

I hate the Human Resources charade, that empowers women to complain about trivia and punishes their male colleagues on the basis of their complaints. I hate the Family Law racket, the Divorce Industry, wherein something like half of all marriages are torn apart by “aggrieved” women with greedy lawyers; I hate it worse because The Law empowers women to have her husband evicted from the family residence, but he’s still responsible for the mortgage or the rent for what is now “HER place.” I hate the “false-rape” culture in today’s Main Scream Media, and I hate the Entitled Bitches who scream their heads off at a well-meaning policeman who suggests they might be safer if they didn’t dress like a target. I hate seeing and hearing the shaming and blaming that’s dumped on men for anything some woman decides “is all the men’s fault.”

I hate injustice.

I hate the laws, the legislation both pending and in practice, that feed off this “shaming and blaming” and punish men for infractions that get shrugged off when women commit them. I hate the Duluth Model in domestic-violence cases, that blames the man and ignores any culpability in the woman. I hate the re-definition of “rape” that can turn a mutually-enjoyed, socially-inebriated one night stand into a felony charge the next morning (or years afterwards!) I hate sexist laws like the Violence Against Women Act, that funnel billions of taxpayer dollars into the quest to fund “women’s shelters” and men’s prosecution.

I hate hateful women, like Valerie Solanas of the SCUM Manifesto, like the women of the SCUM Theatre Project in Sweden, like the women of Radfem Hub. I hate blameful women, and women who see themselves as “entitled” to everything good in life without their giving a moment’s thought for those who made it and built it and actually earned it. I hate the women who get away with shit that would get a man strung up in the nearest tree. And I hate the white-knighting men who made, and make, all of this possible; the people in power who pass the legislation, who give the media air-time to Feminism’s bigoted views (and make no faintest attempt to balance them with the perspective of honest and honorable men), who enforce the bigoted laws, and who have rebuilt all our institutions into the shape of “Women good, men bad.”

And all of this leads to the question of trust.

I cannot trust that which threatens me, and the groups and factions and institutions I have listed do threaten me – as they threaten my brothers, the entire brotherhood of the Y-chromosome. They threaten my brethren at work and in the home. They threaten the young man who buys a drink for a young woman. They threaten the man who so much as raises his voice to his wife, all the while exonerating the wife for whatever she does to the husband. They threaten through accusation, through incarceration, through ruinous lawsuits, through criminal charges trumped-up by someone who wants to avoid blame for having given consent. They threaten by their very presence, lurking in the background of every potential relationship I might have. Even if a woman might not bring these forces to bear, every woman knows she has these forces at her beck and call. And so the threat remains.

But … then … do I hate … individual women? The women I meet and deal with on a day-to-day basis? The manager at my bank, the cashiers at the store, the pharmacist, the waitress? And the billions of women, just normal average women, who I will never meet?

No. I don’t hate them. An individual has to earn my hate.

I just don’t trust them, not without verification. And I always count my change.

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Why I Haven’t

I have an “adoptive sister-in-law” … the daughter-in-law of my mother’s last dearest friend, who faced me at my mother’s funeral and said “You need a family, we’re adopting you” … who is Korean. “Chamae,” being from a culture where the Confucian tradition of “family first” underlies its later adoptions of Buddhism and then Christianity, cannot help herself from asking “Why you not married?” at nearly every family occasion.

“Chamae-nim,” I respond gently, “why would you ask that of me? You have children of your own, and nephews and nieces. Probably grandchildren soon, when Cathy and Mike get around to it.”

She shakes her head at that. “How can you be happy without a wife?”

I smile, but I’m biting my tongue. Chamae is kindly, and sweet, an excellent partner with her husband, and I do wonder how my life might have been with someone like Chamae to share it. So I don’t want to offend her by saying,
“How could I be happy WITH a wife, in this society, today?!”

Because I know myself. I know my self. I know how easily I slip into “Gotta Please Her” in any relationship but one that’s strictly business, strictly collegial, strictly professional, strictly hands-off. And I know, with a sick certainty, that any woman I might pursue for “more than friendship” would be likely to take every advantage of my kindness, my generosity, my eagerness-to-please, till I was no more than a lapdog trotting on her leash.

I’ve been there. Not “with a ring,” but I’ve been there.

I was raised by women. I grew up sharing a room with my mother, in a household run by her mother, in a house that we shared with Mom’s sister. It was a decent house, in a decent neighborhood, close to the city; the schools were excellent, shopping was nearby, and there were boys my age to play with. But I was different, and there was no getting around that. I didn’t have a Dad; I didn’t have such a role-model; I grew up under the rule of women. And that was that.

As a child, I learned very quickly “how to behave.” I saw the sibling rivalry between my Mom, my plump and motherly Mom, and her slim and beautiful ex-ballerina sister. I heard their bitch-fights while I pulled the covers tight over myself and tried to sleep. For a while, Dear Auntie moved out and got married to the guy who sired her son, my cousin Mark; but when he bugged out and got a divorce, she was back in and by no means any easier to get on with. Mark was a sickly kid, who grew up tall and gangly; he was seven years my junior, and though I played with him some I had to be careful how I handled him. Just as Mom had to be careful how she dealt with Dear Auntie, whose name was actually on the house deed.

Teenagerhood, puberty, was problematic as well. Mom had a hysterectomy when I was about eleven, and after she healed up she changed jobs from “seamstress” (custom tailoring in a high-end department store) to “practical nurse” (more properly, nurse-companion or old-lady sitter). She got a live-in job that lasted for a couple of years, and I had the room to myself to work out the problem with my ‘teenage sheets’. I was no less under-the-thumb of Grammy and Dear Auntie, though. I got some help, some very limited help, from the Boy Scouts; but for the most part, I slunk through my adolescence like a mouse would slink through a cat show. Women were to be obeyed when necessary, avoided when possible. By the time Mom’s live-in job ended and she came home, I had myself pretty-well in hand.

Dear Auntie threw us out of my boyhood home, when I grew old enough to get a job; with high school finished, and some time in what passes for a seminary in the religion with which I grew up. (Scientology, as a matter of fact.) My studies there were utterly worthless in the job-market, but my high-school drafting won me a “cartographic aide” position with the Federal government – and I set taut and pulled my own weight, paying the rent for the apartment that Mom had found for the two of us. I climbed the ladder, became a cartographer, made it my career.  I had no notion of “going out on my own;” Mom needed me – and I kept with her, kept her with me, bought a house to share with her, and lived with her (or she lived with me) till she died in 2002.  When her best friend “adopted” Mom’s forty-eight-year-old “orphan.”

That’s why I won’t find a wife, Chamae-nim. I really don’t know how to handle women, not except by becoming a combination draft-horse and lap-dog for her. Not except by sacrificing my interests, my goals, my happiness to her, with the swiftly-diminishing returns that anyone could foresee.

Not except by becoming her mangina.

I’ve been there, done that, got a whole wardrobe full of the T-shirts.

And I’m not going to be anybody’s mangina … not any more.

I want to follow my own dreams, now. That just wouldn’t be in the cards, if I took a woman to be my wife It would be all about her, no more about me, immediately – and forevermore.

That’s why I plan to follow my dreams … alone.

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“A man’s gotta do …”

There’s a popular misquote of John Wayne, a “quote” that he didn’t actually say, that runs, “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

It is a suitable and often-stated theme in Society: “A man’s got to do whatever it is that Society requires of men.”

“Suitable,” though, does not mean “correct,” or “requisite,” or “appropriate,” or “required.” But the quote does refer to that which a man, in regard to his honor and self-respect, might assess as “necessary, good, and appropriate.”

I will advance my current situation into that assessment.

I am the attorney-in-fact for my mother’s sister, who recently had one stroke too many. “Dear Auntie” is no longer capable of taking care of herself, a situation well-proven before that stroke, and it was my duty to find an Assisted Living facility where Dear Auntie could live out her days in safety and comfort.

And it remains my duty, as a caring and responsible Attorney-In-Fact as well as a caring and responsible nephew, to clear out and sell her most major invest-ment – her house, which was also my own boyhood home – to support her in her new, and rather expensive, habitat.

However much I rant-and-rave about “the duties required of Men, just because they are Men,” on this blog, I think I can honestly affirm that I do not shirk my duties. Somebody has to take care of Dear Auntie, make the decisions, mind the details, manage the finances. There is nobody else, for Dear Auntie, but her dutiful nephew. I took care of her sister, differently – because she was my mother. Mom died of cancer, with a full working mind. Dear Auntie is dying of strokes, and resultant dementia.

I visit Dear Auntie twice a week, just as I’ve done since her sister – my mother – succumbed to metastasized colon cancer, in the summer of 2002. I had supper with her at “Shady Pines,” my blog-name for her Assisted Living Facility, last Saturday. I talked with Dear Auntie, haltingly and in terms you might address to an 8-year-old, about the work I did that afternoon to make her house ready to sell, so she can live her last years on the profits of its sale.

Her response to this has been limited by her stroke-crippled understanding.

We went over to the house a few weeks ago, after I’d taken her out to lunch at one of her favorite places; I need to get her a vase for a bunch of flowers that an old friend’s granddaughter had brought for her. She was hardly able to get up the front steps. She walked around the nearly-empty front room, the dining room, the kitchen; then she looked at me blankly and said, “This isn’t the house I’ve been thinking of as home.” She’d lived there for almost fifty years; she’d left only months ago; but it no longer was “home” to her.

In a couple of weeks, her house will go onto the market. I’ve signed a contract with her realtor, her former next-door neighbor, a woman who might once have been a suitable target for my own affections. (“Vicky” is still pretty tasty, from the perspective of a man who is staring Sixty in the face!) And I’ve put a lot of Dear Auntie’s “excess stuff” onto the Freecycle site of her neighborhood, so as to pass it on to people who can use it.

I’m pleased with the paint-job that the realtor’s painters did. I’m looking forward to the job that the realtor’s floor-finishers will do, to make the house more saleable. And I’m utterly tired of working on Dear Auntie’s house, of finding buyers for her furniture, of finding people who can use all the crap that she and her long-deceased son bought so very many years ago!

There is a notable irony in the fact that I, the “black sheep” of her family, the young bastard who she kicked out of her home, have become her Attorney In Fact. It’s ironic that she now depends on me for the day-to-day decisions that rule her life; that she had to ask ME to provide her with some nail-clippers, after I had to take her fingernail-scissors away because she and her partner-in-crime – “Thelma And Louise” to the concierge of her assisted-living home – cut off their Wander-Guard bracelets in an ill-advised attempt to escape that refuge.
A refuge I found for “Dear Auntie” when she demonstrated to me, repeatedly and undeniably, that she was no longer sane enough to live on her own.

A man’s gotta do what a man’s got to do.

That’s what I say to Dear Auntie … and to her friends … and to my friends.
And I whisper it to myself, in the long dark nights.

Even though you didn’t actually say that, Duke, it is so, so utterly true.

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Targets

The Japanese “Herbivore” movement – the large and increasing number of young Japanese men who are simply dropping out of the Mating Dance – keeps getting more negative attention, more hand-wringing and shame-slinging, from the “opinion industry” (that I might once have called “the news”). Japan is spot-lighted for the gravity of their “herbivore problem,” but a parallel movement, gaining ground in the Western world, is getting its own share of the finger-pointing, the alarm and the shame. Why, pundits like Bill Bennett and Kay Hymowitz ask, are men refusing to Man Up?

Why? Because we’re tired of being targets.

Men are the primary targets of the shame, the blame, and the “negative PR” of the Main Scream Media. A man is almost never portrayed as a victim in a news story, unless it’s unavoidable; if it wasn’t a woman who got hit, or shot, or injured or killed, the story says “person” or some other gender-neutral label. The same happens in reverse; the “opinion industry” is loth to say that “a woman” committed the crime, once again unless it’s unavoidable. And, of course, in any conflict between men’s needs and women’s whims, the editorial pages are clear: It is men’s responsibility to fix it.

Men, or in this instance boys, are targets in the schools, too. ADHD is seen as a boys’ problem. Activities such as rough-housing, that have been seen as “just being a boy” since the genus Hominidae were advanced enough to think about such things, are now “treated” with activity-blunting drugs; a naive mistake in words or behavior can get even a little boy into serious legal trouble for”‘sexual harassment” or even “sexual assault”.

Men are the targets again when they go on to college, with the “Clothesline Projects” and “Take Back The Night” rallies; the mandatory and misandric “rape-awareness” briefings (shaming sessions for men, reminiscent of Maoist “re-education”); the automatic classification of 95% of the male student body as “creeps,” “potential rapists,” “potentially violent,” “the (faceless) Patriarchy.” Anything “out of line” from a man on campus – even a wayward glance – can be labeled “sexual harassment” or “sexual misconduct” by the Campus Thought Police. And the “preponderance of evidence” standards in campus sexual-misconduct hearings turns them into Show Trials worthy of Stalinist Russia.

Men are the primary targets of Government interference with marriage, and the family. We’re portrayed as the “monster,” the “family thug,” presumed wrong in any argument, presumed the villain in any conflict. About one-third of domestic assaults are woman-strikes-man, but it’s the man who gets hauled away, leaving the woman in possession of the home.  She utters the magic words – “I’m afraid of him” – and Society pushes him into the Kafka-trap of Family Court, where he is Presumed Guilty and she gets all the support, all the excuses.

And men are further targeted by Government – not only the legislature, but worse by the administrators who work behind the scenes.  VAWA is a legislative product, and sexist-bigoted from the very title; but the FBI’s re-definition of “rape,” discussed only in closed sessions and with selected advocates (guess what sort of advocates!), views even consensual sex between adults as “rape” if the Designated Victim was drinking. By drinking alcohol, according to that new definition, a woman renders herself legally incapable of informed consent to a sexual encounter. Yes, gentlemen, even if she had no more than one or two beers. Who are you to judge how alcohol affects her?

And these are just a few examples of men as targets.

“Men as targets” are men objectified, men whose individual nature can be ignored. “Men as targets” are men as tools, valued only for their utility, discarded when they’re of no more use or when something better comes along. (Something, not “someone.” That’s the attitude being shown.) “Men as targets” can be portrayed as “men as threats,” fit only for suppression or sacrifice. “Men as targets” can be regarded as “less than human.”  And that dehumanization can lead to the worst of wrongs.

Most men are oblivious to all of this, going along with the Society-sanctioned roles of sacrifice and utility. Some men, though – more and more – are aware, and we are doing what we can. We’re speaking out. We’re discussing the new situation, like the “consciousness-raising” groups of the early Women’s Lib movement. And … we’re making ourselves less of a target, however we can. We’re not chasing you any more. We’re not courting, we’re not engaging. We’re making ourselves “conspicuous by our absence.”

Shame us for it; blame us for it; call us “losers” if you will; but targeting men is a game where there will be no “winners.”

______________________________

It hasn’t escaped my notice that “target” is also a perfectly good term for “web links.” Here are a few that have caught my attention recently:

The Zeta Contract (A Voice For Men – 3 Feb 2012): “Does a man, allowing a woman, or women, into his presence – tacitly agree to be falsely accused of sexual violence?” John The Other’s thesis goes long and deep to cover the question, which is very much allied to what I’ve said above.

The Next Red Pill (A Voice for Men – 31 Jan 2012), about efforts to bring a male birth control pill to market – and more importantly, the implications of effective and reversible sperm-control for men.

Male Training Through Emotional Abandonment & Inferiority Conditioning
(The Spearhead – 28 Jan 2012), exploring a psychological disorder that was not admitted into the DSM - “Self Sacrificing Personality Disorder.”

“Captain Coward” (LifeSiteNews – 24 Jan 2012), a biting review of the Costa Concordia disaster that goes on to rip the lid off the social re-engineering and “sexual emancipation” that threw a wrench into “Women And Children First.” (Thanks to Angry Harry for the link.)

Put Your Thinking Caps On (A Voice For Men – 1 Feb 2012) explores a constellation of questions around the fundamental one – “What, exactly is wrong with being an advocate of change to help men and boys?”

Prudent Gynophobia (Everyman, 24 Jan 2012) takes what I think is a more refined approach to the issue of “Men As Targets” than I’ve taken here. As the author puts it, “Fear is not always cowardice; sometimes it is prudent.”

The Last Cap Run (A Voice For Men – 31 Jan 2012) – a future-fiction short story from Down Under that could presage the future under the National Council’s Plan for Australia to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children. Okay, a link two-fer. A three-fer, when I include Kyle Lovett’s Australia – the new Saudi Arabia of Radical Feminism?

Tango the dance of love (The Sanctuary – 28 Jan 2012) praises something beautiful, where men and women dance together rather than exchanging fire. Spacetraveller explores the fitness of the Tango, as an allegory for love as it once was – and maybe, once again could be.

Objectification Overruled (The Honest Courtesan – 31 Jan 2012) … I’ve been looking for a fit excuse to bring Maggie McNeill into the mix, and this article is a great “counterpoint” to my perspective on the problem of objectification.

I’d like to thank In Bona Fide for a link-back to my ‘On Selfishness’ article, and Ferd’s brother-site In Mala Fide for including “Beyond The Sunset” in his “Linkage Is Good For You” feature on 29 Jan 2012. I’d also like to thank a new blog, Men’s Voices, for their linkbacks to Beyond The Sunset.

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It’s all Greek to me: Pursuing a Manosphere Glossary

Alpha, beta, omega, zeta; Red pill, blue pill, what’s it to you pill; PUA, Game, MGTOW, AMOG – OMG, how much jargon do we have to put up with, here?

Yeah, I’m talking about the jargon of the Manosphere. I wish there were a “de-jargon-ator” that could help me understand some of the articles and comments out here, that are  so full of code words and acronyms that I can’t quite fathom.

There is a use for jargon, to be sure – for the special words, or meanings, or acronyms, that get caught up in any human endeavor. I remember a scenario in Michener’s Space, where one of the characters – Stanley Mott, IIRC, an engineer and mid-level manager with NASA – worried about the loss of the “experts” not only because of their expertise, but their ability to communicate with each other and resolve questions/problems through their shared lingo!  And “specialized lingo” is not just a circumstance of the workspace, though I’d be surprised if any cartographer of the ArcGIS era would understand the jargon of the manual-drafting era where I grew up.

Understanding the jargon of a particular profession marks you as a “member” of the profession. The proper jargon can be like the “secret handshake” that gets you recognized as a fraternity-brother. But jargon separates us from the uninitiated, and sometimes that is a bad thing; especially when we really would like to recruit more members to our cause. Let’s face it, gentlemen; we can use all the “new members” in the Men’s Movement as we can possibly recruit.  And maybe a glossary of these terms, this jargon, would help the new members in their exploration.

Here are a few terms that might belong in a Manosphere glossary:

Alpha – the leader of the pack. A man who is confident, brash, and sure of himself in a way that is supposedly irresistible to the Female Of The Species.

AMOG – Alpha Male Of Group. The identity every Pick-Up Artist strives to maintain. Also used as “AMOG the competition,” which is, I believe, to say “put the other guys down so you walk away with the prize.” (Since I am not a Pick-Up Artist, I admit I may not have this one pegged.)

Average Frustrated Chump (AFC) – the “Good Man” of “The Good Men Project,” out for the evening at the swingin’ hot spots. The guy who smiles and buys the women drinks, only to watch them leave with a PUA.

Beta – the poor schlub who pays to raise the Alpha’s spawn. Also used by PUAs to denote a man who shows common courtesy to the women he encounters …

Blue Pill – from The Matrix and its sequels. The path of conformity with Society’s expectations; the state of being unaware of the problems engendered by the Femarchy for non-compliant males.  Compare with “Red Pill,” below.

Carousel – Better known as the “cock carousel.” The carnival-ride of sexual experimentation, as experienced by the young woman in the hypergamous phase of their lives; the meet-market as enjoyed and exploited by women who are “Looking for Mr. Goodbar.”

DHV – Display of Higher Value, the accomplishment of making some bar-skank believe that you have a high SMV (see below). The rules, conditions, complica- tions and concatenations involved in the DHV Theory of Game are enough to make cricket quite comprehensible to an American baseball fan, and vice-versa.

Feminism – the enemy. Feminists treat us as THEIR enemy.

Game – the fluid, hard-to-define, ever-changing, but ever-marketable skills that the Pick-Up Industry insists you need to cut a bar-hopping skank out of the pack and take her back to your place, or her place, for a night of passion on the Midnight Trampoline.

Hypergamy – the natural impulse of women who want more, and more and more, and more and more and more and more, than they’re actually worth in the Sexual Marketplace.

JK – Just Kidding. This is true for damn-near every definition in this glossary.

Mating Dance – my own preferred term for the meet-market, the singles scene, the intricate steps and tests and behavioral traps that male and female must pass on the way to finding a suitable other-sex parent for their hypothetical – or should that be “hypocritical” – family.

Matrimony – that stage of male slavery, utility and sacrifice that follows a Bridezilla wedding.

MGTOW – Men Going Their Own Way; the growing contingent of the male population who are saying “Fuck It All” to the Mating Dance.

Omega – the poor hapless schlubs at the bottom of the sexual totem-pole, who probably couldn’t even get laid at a whorehouse with a fistful of hundred-dollar bills. (This has happened to me personally; maybe I should cover it in the future.)

POF – Plenty Of Fish.com, an online match service that has a particularly overripe reputation with the cognoscenti of the Men’s Movement. Some call it “Smells Like A Fish.com.”

PUA – Pick-Up Artist, typically a guy who follows some guru’s trademarked system (like the Mystery Method) to attract the attention of women and “sell” them on going to bed with him. The most successful of these artists become gurus in the Pick-Up Industry, where they often pick up way more paying students than they ever picked up chicks.

Red Pill – the recognition and awareness of the way that feminism, feminists and their white-knight enablers are screwing up Society. Often hard to swallow, because it usually follows an event such as divorce that leaves you feeling screwed, blued and tattooed. A reference from The Matrix. Cf. Blue Pill, above.

SMV – Sexual Market Value. A shorthand statement for “what you bring to the table,” whether for an one-night stand or for a longer sexual/emotional relationship. In the extreme, a measure of worth that we might assign to a woman who seemed to promise to fulfill our sexual needs enough to be worth considering for “marriage” (cf: Sexual Slavery.)

Zeta Male – a man who has no intention of being entrapped by any of these hypergamous, ranting bitches! Taken from “Zeta Perseii,” a bright star in the “foot” of the constellation Perseus, who is classically portrayed as crushing the body of Medusa under his heel.
______________________________

This glossary is, perforce, incomplete. In fact, it is incomplete as hell.

Your comments are more than welcome, especially those that present, and define, jargon that I may have failed to mention.  If I get enough such comments, maybe I ‘ll set up a “Glossary Of The Men’s Movement” as a separate page on this Website.  As the two old codgers used to say in the Bartle & Jaymes Wine Cooler ads of the 1990s, “We thank you for your support!”

Pardon me, sounds like Ambrose Bierce, writer of The Devil’s Dictionary, is at the door…

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Growing Older, But Not Up

(Compliments to Jimmy Buffett for the title of this post.)

I hit a sore spot with a reader last week. The Invisible Man elicited a couple of pot-shots; some new allies returned fire, and it turned into a pretty good flame-fight there, for a while. It’s about time. As my elderly friend Charlie (a B-24 pilot in WWII) might have said, “If we’re getting flak, we must be over the target.” The ack-ack went wide of the mark, though, because of a fault in the “radar”; you could say, improper tuning of the target-filter … One shot did home in on my “Straw Man Decoy Drone.”  (Doesn’t that sound like something out of Twelve O’Clock High? Or Fail-Safe?) It scored a direct hit on the “Eternal Adolescence” target module, with 88 mm of spleen-propelled, high-velocity shame. Cool.

Actually, Eternal Adolescence was only part of the Invisible Man post.  A small part.  Maybe Eternal Adolescence deserves more coverage; it seems to be the major recognized alternative to “love, and marriage, and a baby carriage.”
And we can’t have anyone taking an alternative to that, can we?

Society expects a boy to “grow out of his own self-interest” at about age 14 or so. After that, it’s supposed to be “all about the girls” – he’s to be obsessed with them, enthralled by them, and totally intent on getting one for his very own. He’s expected to devote his time and efforts to re-making himself into something worthy of the girls’ attention, and strut ’round the lek until one of them finds him acceptable and says “yes.”

But there are a couple of problems with that.

First, there is the “80-20 rule” – in this case, 80% of the girls are after 20% of the boys. This leaves four-out-of-five boys relegated to the status of furniture, standing on the sidelines, wishing they could join that “lucky” 20%. All of them find this dispiriting.  Most of them find it challenging, and strive to rise toward the top; but there’s only room for that one-in-five. Some of them … give up, and find something else to interest them.

Now I admit there’s a similar 80-20 distribution going on with the girls, too. 20% of them garner the attention of 80% of the boys. But remember – it’s the girls who choose. Males compete; females choose. And that “male competition” carries forward into and throughout adulthood; men compete in innumerable ways, to be chosen – by Society, by life, by women.

(I’m going to lightly address the matter of Game, here, but please remember, Game is not the subject of this blog. There is a tremendous amount of “stuff” out there, offering the unlucky 80% a variety of tools to help them rise into the “chosen” 20%. Some of it works for many of us, most of it works for some of us. But none can make “20%” any larger than one-in-five of us.)

Of course, boys grow up into men.  Girls grow up into women.  Well, that 80% rule grows up, too – into hypergamy. It’s well-documented that women are after the best man they can get; there is an ages-old valid reason for this – simple survival.  The more “fit” the mate appears to be, the more likely the offspring will survive. And the less-fit males will continue to be “furniture”.

Then, the next problem – and the next, and the next.

In the “bad old days,” as they’ve been styled since the 1960s, men worked outside the house to support their woman.  The one thing the “unexciting 80%” could bring to the table was a good job, a decent paycheck and proof that he’d be “a good provider.”  Those days are gone now; women can get the same jobs, for the same pay, likely even in the cube next door. Affirmative Action gives them preference at hiring-time; “Human Resources” regulations give them the upper hand in any office politics. And why should a woman settle for a man who doesn’t earn any more than she does herself? So he doesn’t even have “good-provider” status left to use in his bargain.  Strike one.

Next is the increasing contempt that Society shows for men.  It is not because “men are growing worse.”  Most men in movies, on TV, in popular culture, are portrayed as hapless schlubs, as useless nerds, or as ruthless jerks.  The only heroes are the strong, resourceful, smart, sarcastic, accusatory, blame-ful Women. This contemptuous attitude carries out into the workplace, into the streets, into the main stream of life. And an eighty-percenter (piece of male furniture) who dares to get “fresh” with a woman (as we called it in my youth) used to get scolded for it, or maybe even slapped down – now he can be hauled off by the police and charged with a felony, under the “She-Said” rules of evidence and legislation such as the VAWA.  More and more men are aware of this, and getting wary of it.  Strike two.

Third is the Divorce Industry. When a woman decides that her husband is “no longer good enough,” she has the option to pull the plug on their marriage; 50% or more of marriages end in divorce, and 90% of those divorces are executed by women. The “aggrieved woman” has a number of vicious attacks at hand; a charge of “Domestic Violence,” or even a “protestation of fear” on her part, will get her hubby thrown out of the house, barred from returning or even contacting his family, effectively homeless while he still pays her mortgage. And Family Law, no matter how my critics may howl, is overwhelmingly biased toward the woman’s side (example here); our hapless man is way-more-than-not likely to be stuck with all the court costs and expenses, the continuing mortgage payment, and “child support” collected by the State and disbursed to the Ex-Wife to do with as she pleases.  Strike three.

Three strikes, and he’s out.

So tell me – why should I participate in this game?  It’s beginning to look a lot like Russian roulette.

An increasing number of “eighty-percenters,” of the human furniture cluttering the lek, are choosing not to participate any longer in the Mating Dance.

That’s where we come to “Growing Older, But Not Up.”

The “thinning-out of the pack” starts in adolescence, with those of us among the “Un-Chosen 80%”.  Some of us realize we simply don’t have what it takes to compete for the top tier; others recognize that the expectations of teenage women are so capricious, so mercurial, that we might as well not even try to satisfy them. We find other things to enjoy, or we excel in things that are important to us but have no “date bait” value.

Some of us drop out of the game in college. In case you don’t know, “Dear Colleagues,” modern colleges are more misandric than ever, and a boy’s chances of getting in serious trouble in a “She Said” situation are over-the-top. (Think I’m being unreasonable? Take a look at this: Colleges Push Anti-Male Sex Policies To The Edge, from A Voice For Men, 26 Jan 2012.) Enough college men have taken severe damage from no more than a young women’s accusations, that more and more young men are are ducking the issue entirely and turning their backs on the Mating Dance.

Yet more of us are “dropping out” of the game as adults. Not dropping out of life, per se. We work, we strive, we advance in our careers; we have fun, we have hobbies, we have sports and other interests. We live well, and enjoy life. But as we get ignored, snubbed, or worse in the “Social Sphere” – as we watch our fathers, our friends, our colleagues get burnt badly in Family Court – as we see the odds get longer against our Marital Happiness, and the chambers fill up in the “Russian Roulette Wheel,” more and more of us come to the conclusion that the Mating Game is not worth the candle.

And we are relieved, and happy, that we “dodged the bullets.”

But in the words of Bill Bennett, Kay Hymowitz, Oprah and Dr. Phil – “we have failed to Man Up.” We don’t measure up to their expectations. And there is no shaming language too bad for the “Eternal Adolescent” who turns his back on the Mating Dance, and takes Ricky Nelson’s advice from Garden Party -
“You can’t please everyone, so you’ve got to please yourself.”

We realize we are responsible for our own lives. OK, some of us “blame the bitches” for our solitary state. But most of us are going ahead, and getting along with life; spending our time and our efforts and our money on things that bring us pleasure, satisfaction, inner peace. We enjoy life, fully, on our own!

You see, it’s not about “Pleasing Mommy,” or “Pleasing The Ladies,” or about “Pleasing The Wife” for us, not any more. The women who vied to get control, by way of equal rights, and equal jobs, and equal pay, and “equalized” opportunity to rise above – they have succeeded. The women who have spurned us, no longer need our support.  The women can support themselves.

If my refusal to “oppress women” by supporting them means I am “Growing Older, But Not Up”  - then – Bartender, bring me another Cajun martini, please. Don’t be slow; I’ve got a 3 PM tee-time for afternoon golf.

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On Selfishness

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live,
it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

- Oscar Wilde

“Today’s young men are immature, and selfish.” Or so “they” say.

Look over the media’s stories about the “End of Manhood,” through the past years and months, and you’ll spot that pretty readily as a common theme. The accusation of “childishness” goes hand-in-hand with the accusation of “selfishness,” and both terms are waved as a bludgeon to intimidate men into “Manning Up” and falling back in line.

It’s not working. It’s losing its effectiveness, as more and more men see it as the impotent shaming tactic that it is. These men are replying to the calls to “Man Up” with their own slogan, stated most politely as “Shut up.”

It doesn’t take much of a look at Society, as it is nowadays, to see it behaving largely as the co-dependent enabler to a “gender-defined” demographic addicted to “entitlement”, “empowerment”, “affirmative-action” discrimination, shame-slinging, blame-shifting, scab-lifting displays of “victimization”, and toxic wrath. A demographic that includes, and chiefly relies on as its spokespersons, tireless rabble-rousers who trumpet every accusation, every plaint, every declaration of “injustice” and “violence” and “harassment” as if they were at the walls of Jericho. And even though the walls of the purported “Patriarchy” really have come tumbling down, pulled apart and leveled by the white knights who are the feminists’ fifth column inside, these rabble-rousers keep on blasting and blasting at their shadows.

There’s little left that they haven’t already claimed, arrogated, taken as their own. Little, indeed, but the individual efforts of individual men, working to make their own way in a world grown more and more hostile to “the masculine gender.” The institution of marriage, by which a man and a woman used to merge their lives and their finances in order to raise their children, has been too-often turned into a trap for the man and a gravy-train for the woman – and for a “Divorce Industry” that profits, behind the scenes, from the split-up; profits at the expense of the man, levied beyond the woman’s awards in Family Court.

Feminists want it all. And they’ve damn-near got it all.

They’ve got all that Society has to give them. They’ve got the Legislature, and the Main-Scream Media, and the Courts, and the Guns of Government to back up their demands. And even those women who abjure feminism, who “speak out against feminism,” who ostensibly turn their backs on the fruits of feminism, still profit from the works of feminism; because, whether or not they reach for the fruits of feminist victory, they all know those fruits are within their immediate and easy grasp.

A few of us look at this crooked game, this skewed-and-tilted playing field, the loaded dice with the loaded blackjack, and say, “I don’t need it.  I don’t want it.” We find other ways to create fulfillment, and joy, and pleasure, and happiness in our own lives – and there are plenty of pleasurable, fun, fulfilling ways to live our lives that do not involve abject altruism in pursuit of others’ goals.

We find satisfaction in so many things – in our jobs, in our friends, in our community (and, mark you, we are still active and supportive of our community!) We contribute to the common good, we earn our keep, we pay our way and we pay our taxes. We simply do not build our lives around women, pour our time and energy and money into chasing and courting them, offer our resources to support them in marriage, risk our resources (and our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor) to the more-and-more-likely possibility that our mates will turn on us and strip us of all in Family Court.

“Women can take care of themselves,” we are told. Their spokeswomen proclaim it all the time: “We are strong, we are capable. We can earn our own money, pay our own way. We are Independent; we don’t need men to take care of us. We can get along without men, and we find Manhood toxic and hateful and worthy only of scorn.”

Fine. We believe you; we take you at your word. We choose not to risk all, to give all, for the pleasure and sake of Woman, who scorns us. We don’t demand that you live as we wish to live; we simply decline to live as you wish us to live.

And for this, you call us “selfish!”

Pardon me for being more blunt, more coarse and crude, than I prefer to be.
But my response to that charge demands it:

Fuck that.  And go fuck yourself.

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