The End Of Obligation

(Hat tip to “CreepyGoth”, on MGTOW Forums, for the title of this article.)

There seems to be a “core concept,” on the part of the Femosphere, that Men Are Eternally Obliged to atone for the Sins of the Patriarchy. It’s All Men’s Fault, of course, For Ever And Ever Amen, and it’s held that there is not atonement enough in the Universe to discharge this Sacred Debt.

I’m sorry, dearies. My own sober judgment (and even more so, my rum-soaked drunken judgment) is that this assertion reeks all too certainly of the fertilizing product from the south end of a northbound mule.

Yes, there is a proverbial warning and verse in the Christian Bible (Exodus 20.5 according to Google – I am not a Bible-scholar) that “I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me…”

But guess what? This isn’t about hating God, or any particular god. I do not address hatred to any God, whether the diverse pantheon of the Hindu, the Christian Trinity, or the inscrutable Allah of the Muslim. Not even to the “godlessness” of Buddhism or the god-beyond-identity of Taoism. But I don’t classify “failure to worship” as hatred, and I just hope that God or “the Gods” agree. This is about disdaining, denying, and dismissing the claims of “Woman Incarnate,” whose in-the-flesh status denies them any putative identification in my own practical theogony as More-Than-Man.

There is an obligation that Society might put upon me, vis-a-vis some particular woman, if she caught “the cure for baby-rabies” from me. If I were to knock-up some bed-mate, then Society would hold me responsible – and I would not argue; a child needs a daddy in his or her life, and I would accept that role. I would even insist on it. (I would also, however, insist on a DNA-test!)

I would VERY MUCH PREFER to engage on that situation and relationship wittingly and willingly, by way of a previous committed and consecrated relationship as husband and wife, with my value to our family acknowledged and honored and my place in the family unquestioned and certain and permanent. And I would very much prefer that this relationship, this role of PARENTHOOD, had taken place some twenty or thirty years ago, when I was of an age to sire and raise a brood of unruly brats. If that had happened, on the typical schedule, the children of our union would now be old enough to go out on their own and maybe even bear us grandchildren, that “Cupcake” and I could admire and cuddle and spoil.

But … Life didn’t work like that. During the optimum years for me to start and raise a family, I was “otherwise engaged.” By reason of my taking care of a mother who would have become Cupcake’s resident mother-in-law (a problem that I certainly do not blame the Cupcake-candidates for dismissing out-of-hand), I passed way past my “best-by” date, way before any member of Team Woman assessed me as worthy of harnessing as a potential source of income, or skinning-and-salting as a potential sacrifice.

That used to bother me. But as I’ve lived my life, and witnessed the crap that too many of my married friends had to put up with … and watched the worse crap they went through when their wives cooked up a divorce scheme to take ’em to the cleaners …  as I watched the dating scene get crazier and riskier … I realized I had dodged not just one bullet, but quite a few. And I was happier, my life was better, my future was (and is) brighter, than it likely would have been had I followed the Married With Children life-script.

I consider myself old enough, experienced enough, biologically-aged enough, and seasoned enough that I’m justified in excluding myself from the Mating Dance. Oh, my “manly hydraulics” are in fine working order, but the mating urge does not rule me, does not goad me as it did twenty years ago or more; back in the days before I acknowledged, among other things, that there are plenty plenty plenty of children on this Earth and I am really not obliged to source-out any myself. Even if there were a young woman who wanted me to father her child, I am “senior” enough to say, “Miss, you really need someone younger.”

Besides, I have some dreams of my own.

I have this goal, to Sail Beyond The Sunset. I have the ambition of living afloat, on my boat, sailing the world until perhaps I find that One Particular Harbor where I’d finally make my home. Or perhaps not. Such a life is not irreconcilable with a woman’s goals to bear and raise her children, but … it is not necessarily her dream, not her goal. And I’m well aware of the fragility of my own goals, when they run contrary to a loved one’s wants or even whims. The only possible compromise is that I not get into that situation in the first place; and that means keeping my balls and my baby-batter to myself, and letting Miss Anxious find somebody else who shares her dreams of family.

As I see it – as long as I don’t impregnate some woman, and incur the responsibilities of fatherhood – I have outlived any societal imperative, any obligation, to sacrifice my hopes and my happiness for the sake of “some deserving Cupcake.” Much obliged, ma’am, but I am not obliged to “atone for the sins of the Patriarchs,” no matter what you say. Neither am I obliged to get a girlfriend, to sire a child, to take a wife. My life, by rights, belongs to me.

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Solo sailing – and I mean sailing

I’ve declared, in the initial posts of this blog, that I’m going to use Sailing as a challenge, as a symbol, as a metaphor for Life.

For this post, though, I’m going to use it as a metaphor for sailing. I mean, let’s be honest, everyone: Sailing is a perfectly good pursuit, in and of and by itself. “Sailing beyond the sunset,” even though I’ve been using that as a metaphor (as did Alfred, Lord Tennyson, when he wrote Ulysses as an exercise in poetic licence), is also a valid and perfectly-proper goal.

It’s not a goal to be taken lightly. It’s serious, and arduous, and yet there are thousands of people who have taken small sailboats around the world – some of them, again and again.

The Joshua Slocum Society is an organization whose purpose is to record, acknowledge, and praise the people who have sailed solo around the world. Alone, all by themselves. It was named after the fellow who was first to achieve this, the first to chronicle his passages in the mainstream media of the day. Slocum’s Sailing Alone Around The World is a classic tale, from a laconic Nova Scotia-born “Yankee” and a seriously-credentialed mariner; I encourage you to read the Project Gutenberg book at the link above.

Sailing, furthermore, is not an exclusively-masculine avocation.

It doesn’t take literal, physical, testicular “balls” to sail beyond the sunset, or to compete as a sailor, or to win the highest accolades as a sailor. Look at Jessica Watson, or Ellen MacArthur, or sailor/author Tania Aebi for proof.

The point of the links in the paragraph above, is that there are women who have achieved success and even fame in their exploits … in an area which excites me and grabs my interest. They, too, are heroes to me. They have accomplished something that I, presently, only aspire to complete. I would value the chance to listen to that teenage girl, Jessica Watson, who took Pink Lady around the world; and I would strive to learn all I could from her, as she has gone where I want to go! (I have learned from Tania Aebi’s Maiden Voyage, the book she wrote after her own circling of the globe.)

It takes a lot of confidence to sail away on your own, to watch the solid safe horizon fade into an insubstantial blur off the stern and finally disappear. It takes more than I’ve demonstrated, yet; I am still a Chesapeake Bay sailor, working up my competence and my confidence until someday I might let the land sink below the horizon and sail on to a destination that lies too far ahead of my bow to be seen.  Till I actually “get there,” till I’ve actually done that, I willingly offer my admiration to anyone who has been there, and done that, and earned the salt-stained T-shirt.

The Sea doesn’t care whether you’re male or female, young or old, black or white or Asian or Hispanic or whatever else or whatever mix. The Sea cares only whether you’re prepared or not, whether you’re capable or not, whether you’re able to handle its challenge … or not.  You don’t pass the challenge of The Sea by mouthing the appropriate polemic, or by having the Society-approved credentials, or by asserting your qualifications before suitably-approved judges. You won’t be granted a “pass” by ranting at it, or claiming discrimination, or suing it, or holding protest marches through the streets. You can only pass the challenge of the Sea by surmounting the difficulties and hazards of the Sea, and actually succeeding in following and achieving your goals.

The realities of wind, and tide, and storms, and The Sea Itself give not a damn for anything but your competence, your grit, your proper preparations, and your right decisions when the shit hits the fan.

That’s why I will extend my respect and admiration – without reservation – to women who have gone out there and won the contest against the Sea. Women like Tania Aebi, like Jessica Watson, like Dame Ellen MacArthur, DBE, who tied the knot in their wake and sailed home.

I am not fuckin’-well kidding. The game I want to play is not about competition; it’s about accomplishment.  Anyone who has achieved the goals to which I aspire, I regard as worthy of my respect! And I admire anyone, man or woman, even a woman who is young enough to be my grand-daughter, who has achieved this brilliant, difficult, exciting and worthy goal toward which I am just starting to reach.

Joshua, Tania, Jessica, I am preparing to follow in your wake.

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“Shame” is the Name of the Game

Shame is one of the tools that Society has used to whip the unruly back in line, “since forever.” I believe it’s actually part of the dominant/submissive sort of behavior we see in ourselves and other animals, such as when the alpha wolf bares his teeth at a subordinate who tried to feed at a kill before its turn. The subordinate backs off; no fight is necessary; the signal is enough.  This can be tracked up into a human family, where the thundercloud on Mommy’s brow is punishment enough for Junior’s infractions (because, early on, it had been backed with punishment enough that Junior backs down like the subordinate wolf cited above.) And for the adolescent and adult, the awareness that “Society disapproves” of some behavior can be curb enough against it, even in the absence of written and codified law.

But Society, or a person, can try to ride shame too far. On one hand, this can result in the target of shame withdrawing, pulling himself inside himself like a turtle into its shell – sometimes called “Avoidant Personality Disorder.” If you’re looking to make someone turn his efforts toward your goals, this is completely counter-productive! On the other hand, a person or class of people can build up a tolerance for shaming – so that “shame” loses its effectiveness as a tool of social control. Most importantly, you can’t shame someone who doesn’t accept your authority – but you can inspire the target of your shaming efforts to feel and express disdain, derision, ridicule, or worse toward “the shame-wielder.”

This is especially apparent when a Women’s Supremacist – whether a Gender-Raunch Slut-Shamer, a Traditional Mommy-Figure or an Authoritarian White-Knight Enabler – tries to tell a Free-Range Man how to live his life.

“Free-Range Man” is a great term, from Zed of the “Book Of Zed,” to describe the “man who walks by himself.” (I borrow that from a title in Rudyard Kipling’s “Just-So Stories” … though Kipling’s version was a Cat.) MGTOW is a good term, too, if I could figure out how to pronounce it … “MiG-Toe” works for me, even if it evokes the Mikoyan-Gurevich Design Bureau, who built so many of the Warsaw Pact fighter jets my colleagues and I tracked when I worked in the Intelligence Community.  “Emm-Gee-Tee-Oh-Dubya” doesn’t pass the test. But we can all agree on the expansion, the core concept, “Men Going Their Own Way.”

Back to “shame,” though. If the target of your shaming rhetoric does subscribe to the same social constructs, and does acknowledge your authority, then yes; shaming can be effective. But it doesn’t work at all with someone who dismisses your authority, or who is following his own path toward a future different from your ideals.  At the least, he dismisses you; worse, you could become the target of his scorn, his mockery, his anger, and who-knows-what-more?

Shame becomes its own worst enemy.

The problem with shame, applied to a Free-Range Man, is that it is too obvious as a blatant, indeed awkward, attempt to chase him back into “emotional bondage.”  Every possible version of “shame” is obvious, predictable and definable, and the Free-Range Man has already rejected it. But that doesn’t prevent a devoted “Femmunist” – or a Traditional Feminine Demand-ist – from trying to push this free-form, self-defining peg into a restrictive, square hole.

Let’s look at a few of the categories – and the way a Free-Range Man might dismiss them.  (These are taken from “The Catalogue of Anti-Male Shaming Tactics,” posted on the “Exposing Feminism” website.)

Charge of Irascibility (Code Red) = “You’re bitter!”

Have you given me anything but bitterness, on your own part?

Charge of Cowardice (Code Yellow) = “Be a man!”

For the likes of a testicle-kicker like you? Get real!!

Charge of Hypersensitivity (Code Blue) – The Crybaby Charge: “Man up! Grow out of it!”

Show me that you can “grow out of it” and “woman up” – show me that you can take responsibility for yourself and your life. Otherwise, Shut The Fuck Up.

I’m not going through the whole catalogue here. You get the point.

The point is, “shame” is the name of a failed game.

Shame, and ad-hominem attacks, straw-men and stolen concepts, are the meat-and-potatoes of feminist “discourse”.  They’re intended to punish the laggards, the men who have temporarily “forgotten their place,” the men who still hope for a sniff of that Ultimate Reward that is presented as the “Goal of Manhood” – the sexual reward presented to a “Straw-Cock,” integral to the Straw Man the Women hope to shame and blame and bludgeon back into line.

The problem is this, ladies: We are not “straw men”. Neither are we homunculi, to be created and roused and manipulated by the wizardry of the Femosphere, to be defined and dialectically-materialized by the Acolytes of Femmunism.

We are Men. Free Men.

And we will no longer be defined by “shame.”

Manhood is not something for the women to define, or for pundits to define, or “Society” and its puppet-masters to define. We men, who live the definition, will not be “defined” from outside. Shaming attacks won’t convince us, won’t coerce us, won’t do anything but feed our stubborn anger. And my words here are but an echo of the discontent, the denial, the laughter and spurning and scorn of the Manosphere.

Neither you, nor your White Knights, nor anybody else, have any “right” to impose your definitions or your demands or your imperious will on a Free-Range Man, try as you will. We repudiate your authority, your efforts, your subversion and your “hurt feee-wings” on the subject of our self -definition, our choices, our intentions, our dreams and our goals.

Your shaming tactics are unwelcome here, and ineffectual.

Game Over.

______________________________

(I want to give credit to a 1960s TV series, “The Name Of The Game”, for inspiring the title of this post.  Its pilot episode was a TV-movie, which was entitled “Fame Is The Name Of The Game.”)

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Socio(Patho)logy

One of the features of WordPress is that a blogger can edit the “categories” for his posts.  This prodded me to consider my own categories – their real, evident content – and to put my considerations onto The Web. What labels would I put on the file-folders, if these articles were on paper? Would they be conventional labels, or would I edit them to fit the contents of my mind (and often my spleen) when I wrote the articles?

Cf (confer, compare): Sociology.

I’ll be honest: I am not formally trained in sociology. As best as I can see, sociology offers a methodology for describing, analyzing, dissecting, categorizing and maybe even predicting human behavior. This sounds like a noble goal. Even without that goal in mind, I find it fascinating to look at different cultures and the ways they have provided the social glue that holds them together, the social lubricant that keeps them running.

But I fear that, like so many of the “soft sciences” in the curriculum of today, sociology has fallen away from any high and honest goals the study might once have served. It appears to me that it has been co-opted, turned into something we could call “Popular Sociology,” or “Sociology For Dummies.” What I mean here is “sociology” dumbed-down and watered-down until it becomes a haven for the non-thinking parrot, who mouths the current Gospel As According To The Magical Mystical Leaders Of Thought, Opinion, And Authority.

Who, in Modern Victim-Empowering Society, bears that banner?  (If you guessed anything but Independent Empowered Victim Woman, please deduct 50 points from your grade.)

What is the core of their thesis? Ugh. Man bad. Woman good.

(sarcasm) The Perceptive, Sexist, Reviled, Masculine, Testosterone-Poisoned MALE reader (cursed be his penis!!!) (/sarcasm) may note a bit of disconnect in that ukase.  But it has been endowed with the Approval of the Statist State – “Men are the Historically Oppressive Majority ®, and it is To The Good that they should themselves be oppressed!”

(® = Registered Copyright of the Oppressed Feminist Supremacist Minority, who rant and rail about the “Patriarchy” despite the fact that Team Womyn has destroyed it – and womyn are in fact suffering from its absence, all the while that We Revile It Utterly as the Fountain of Evil!!!)

Returning to my own persona:  My opinion, as a member of the “Historical Oppressor Gender”, is that there is something pathologically-troubling about the “Historical Victim Gender” – i.e. Empowered, Independent, Victim, Needy, but Always “X-Chromosome-Free” Team Woman!!!  And yet – Womanhood, through the complaisant conspiratorial machinations of their White Knight Protectors and Legislators, have gained the upper hand in the Courts and the Legal System.  (Doubt me not, after my recent service on the Grand Jury of my Legislative District. )

With apologies to the Commonwealth of Virginia.

This pathology, this wrong-headed “victim” mind-set, is being inserted into the sociology of Modern Society.  It is sociologically-demanded that “Victim Power” should supersede reality, that provable and demonstrable reality in which men do the work that makes the world go round.  Any credit for activity, power and results on the part of “men” must be denied, ignored, spurned, and dictatorially set-as-nothing!   This allegation on the part of “Men”, after all, contradicts the Official Reality that “women did it all, but were suppressed by The Patriarchy – who took all the credit.”

Uh – you, in the back, there. With the chain-mail tube top, the leather mini-skirt and hobnail boots, the Visigoth hair-style, and the pole-ax. You had a question? Okay. She says, “Who the hell are you to tell me how I should think, you male chauvinist pig? You ARE the Patriarchy, and you’re wrong, wrong, WRONG!!!”

Well, of course you see it that way. That comes straight from “mainstream” radical feminist rhetoric. You’ve never listened to anything else, since Friedan and Greer gave your grandmother an excuse to get angry, and your single-working-mother kicked your father out to keep you from hearing otherwise. You’ve imbibed it from every teacher you’ve gotten in the public schools, you’ve soaked it in until you can’t see around it, and you’re only here to get an easy three credits toward your degree in Womyn’s Studies. You no longer see men as people, just as cardboard villains. That’s the Femarchy.

Fifty years of malice, fifty years of grabbing what well-meaning white knights offered, have not dimmed the Spirit of Victimhood in the Feminist Movement. Fifty years of no-fault divorce, of Family Court and Domestic Violence policing, have not made marriage anything but more and more unjust. Fifty years of venom and hatred, of shaming and blaming, have not strengthened Society. They have, rather, turned it into a sort of “institutionalized pathology.”

As far as I can see, Feminism is not helping to hold Society together, or make it run smoothly.  It is putting grease where we need glue, and grit where we need oil. It is more and more obvious that it is intent on making Society break down, on tearing it apart.

And that is why I include the category of “Socio(Patho)logy”  Or, more explicity, “socio”-PATHOLOGY.”

That which passes as “sociology” in the Fem-O-Sphere, is contaminated with “feminist pathology.”

Socio-PATHOLOGY.   It’s about as pathological as John Hinckley.
______________________________

Optional reading, from A Voice For Men:
Lessons from nature: Brain in a vat  (27 Jan 2012)
Manufacturing victimhood, marginalizing victims (24 Jan 2012)
Maligned (21 Jan 2012)

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In Defense Of Dogma

In defense of dogma, people have fought to the death.

No, no, no, not my dogma. I ran over my dogma with my karma some time ago. Had to put it to sleep, poor thing. Of course, it still wakes up from time to time and bites me on the ass …

We all have dogmatic beliefs; our core beliefs, beliefs that we hold so deeply that they hold us; beliefs by which, and through which, we recognize what we perceive and regulate how we act. We’ve internalized them so completely that we can’t even perceive them as beliefs; we actually perceive through them. They color our perceptions of ourselves (the inner world) and the outer world (others/things/etc). And if we encounter something that doesn’t match up to our beliefs, we react to it, even violently – or we fail to notice it at all.

As we believe, so shall we perceive …

An old axiom, old as human thought; one I learned years and years ago. But a few days ago it “woke up and bit me on the ass.” It was roused by the spirited discussion we had, here, on the Invisible Man thread, that came about because my original article teased someone’s dogma.

Maybe I need to explain this more fully.  Starting with dogma.

“Dogma” is defined as “a system of doctrines proclaimed true by a religious sect;”or, “a principle or belief, or a system of such principles or beliefs, that are formally or authoritatively considered to be absolute truth.”

Well.  That’s quite sweeping, and rather erudite. But we can see how possession of a big, toothy, mean dogma might leave one feeling “entitled” to tell others how they should live their life. I think it might be fun, and instructive, to look back at The Invisible Man, and ferret out some of the core beliefs that make up that particular dogma-fight.

I’ll start with some beliefs I expressed in the original article.

• Women and their white-knights “own” Society. They set the rules, the dogma, by which Society is supposed to operate.
• Society defines “the good man” by sacrifice and utility.
• Men, for the most part, accept this definition.
• Women have their “mate-radar” tuned to excitement, not stability.
• Men who are “stable” but not exciting go un-noticed by women.
• Some men now refuse to define themselves by sacrifice and utility, or by the interests of women. They choose, instead, to “go their own way.”
• Men can live happy, fulfilling lives on their own, without women.

Hmm. Those all seem to be self-evident, to me at least. The first three are features I see expressed constantly in modern life. The next pair have been thoroughly, thoroughly treated by the Game subset of the Men’s Movement; I think they qualify as “Game Dogma.” The last two are at the foundation of MGTOW, which I’ll qualify for now as my dogma.

What “threat to Society” – and to the self-interest of Woman – comes out of our recognition, and my enumeration, of these seven points?

Those first three beliefs were supposed to be unstated, unrecognized, and unconsciously followed. They are the secret ingredients of the “cake of custom” that we are fed from birth. They work best when they are swallowed all unawares; seeing them lets us think about them, question them, maybe reject them. And that could work to the detriment of “Society,” which is to say the puppet-masters that rule Society: women and their white knights.

The next two? They define the true parameters of the Mating Dance. They also run contrary to the “rules” that help settle men into their roles of utility and sacrifice. Didn’t you learn at your Mommy’s knee, that women want a man who will protect them, cherish them, provide for them? Especially provide for them? But why is it that the “exciting men,” the bad boys, the jerks, the pick-up artists, get all the action up front, leaving most of us with leftovers?

So we come to the last two. These are the province of a man who finally asks, “What’s in it for me?” – and is disappointed at the answer.

“What’s in it for me?” Now it is Man’s turn to ask.

By what right does Society hold a man to this standard, that he should measure himself and his self-worth by his utility to Woman and his value in sacrifice? Doesn’t there appear to be a disconnect between that and the “inalienable rights (including) Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” that were stated in the USA’s Declaration of Independence? It appears so to me. A man’s self-worth starts in his innate dignity as a human being; he builds on it by his accomplishments, his experience, his learning; but at its core it belongs to him from the start, and that core is not dependent on the value-judgments of others.  That’s why we call it self-worth.

A man who recognizes his own self-worth, who recognizes the value of his own life and his own self “to himself,” is a man who might not agree to sacrifice his life (or any part of it) just on the basis of “Society’s expectations.” He’s a man who will recognize that “human rights” apply as his own rights, too; and he will reject the idea that “others’ rights supersede, and thus void, your rights.”  Well, that’s very dangerous to Society, isn’t it? Especially to the privileged members of society, the “puppet-masters” that seek to run Man’s life in favor of themselves. This is a man who will shrug off the “chains of custom” that Society would have him wear, shrug them off because he recognizes them as forged from a dogma that he rejects!

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that such a man will automatically become an outlaw. He’s much, much, much more likely to live a “normal” life; to work, create, build, and contribute to Society; to heed the written and explicit laws of the country; to earn his own way, by honest trade and conscious choice. But he chooses. He lives his life his way, by choice, not by unconscious compulsion; not because he’s bound to it by the “chains of custom.”

“But what about Woman? What about The Family? Doesn’t he have that obligation to Society?!”

Only if he incurs it.

The “debt of Man to his mate and children” is an old, old, part of the “cake of custom” in Society. It stretches back to the origin of the genus Hominidae, to the dawn of humankind. It is founded in the survival of our forebears, stretching back thousands of generations – to the earliest days where the children needed more protection and support than their mother herself could give them; and the survivors of those days survived because her mate shared the burden. This made it possible for the children to mature much more slowly than, shall we say, those of parallel genii, like the great apes; that made it possible for our brains, and our hands, to develop to the point where we have turned the Earth into a machine to support our survival and our goals. At the root of it, one can see The Family – Man the hunter, the protector and provider; Woman the mother, the nurturer, the child-raiser. A division of labor, of responsibility and privilege, to benefit the Children … the Future.

(I’m waxing poetic. Where is the lid to this can of poet’s wax?)

This progresses clearly to the picture of Ward & June Cleaver. There are outliers, but the main stream of Society was “Mommy, Daddy and the children.” We men labored for ourselves, but even more for our families … to make a “nest” for our loved and loving wife, and our children. We were, and most husbands today are, proud to be good husbands and good fathers, and to provide the best we can manage for our wives and our children.

These were never rights. Neither to Man, nor to Woman. These are privileges bought with commensurate, and concomitant, responsibilities – privileges extended by the man, in trade for the woman’s taking her responsibility in the family; privileges extended by the woman, likewise, in trade for the man’s performance of his responsibility to her and their children. That, I say, is the root of the “marriage contract.”

And Society – Society – has broken that contract.

Broken it unilaterally, in favor of Team Woman.

Men’s privilege is revoked, but still they are held to their responsibility.  Women have been ceded the “right” to compete with men, in all aspects of Society, and yet they are not held to any responsibility that Society of old might have required of them vis-a-vis men. You can see the evidence of this all over Society!

And now, men are walking away from that broken contract.

So finally, we come to the last point:

Men can live happy, fulfilling lives on their own.

This is the final threat to the Puppet Masters.

As long as men define their happiness by Woman … as long as men measure their happiness by their success in the Mating Dance … those men are subject to the control of Woman. And women know it.  This is the highest-level threat faced by Team Woman. And this is the threat of Men Going Their Own Way.

There have been “men going their own way” for millenia; it’s completely in line with “Man The Hunter.” The spread of humankind, up from the Olduvai Gorge through Africa and Asia and Europe, to the Americas and Australia and the Pacific islands, was accomplished by Man The Hunter, going further afield for game, going further afield to see what was beyond that next ridge or across that river or on the next island over. As human minds developed, as consciousness and self-awareness spawned thought and language and reason and imagination, men found these as areas ripe for exploration as well – and many came back with new ideas, new awareness, that pulled them out of the “live, mate, and die” level of existence. The first shamans were probably men like that. The first philosophers, certainly.

But now, more and more men are turning toward “life on their own,” and living thus in happiness and fulfillment. More and more men are coming to the joyful awareness that they don’t need a woman around, to be happy; that their personal fulfillment doesn’t depend on fulfilling a woman’s needs, wants and desires; and that true peace of mind can be found and enjoyed outside the traditional bounds of home, wife, and family.

It is to these men, reaching beyond the dogma of Society to find their own lives, their own happiness, their own way, that I dedicate this blog.

(I leave the conflicting dogma as an exercise for the student.)

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Cougar Life?

After the past couple of days, I think I need to lighten up!  And when I found this, I just had to share it with you. This “banner ad”  surprised me, more than anything, because of the environment where it came up:

MGTOW Forums, of all places.

“Remember your high school cheerleaders?” That text rolled over into, “They’re all grown up.” Introducing CougarLife.com.

CougarLife? (I think my “WTF” is understood.) What does THIS advertisement have that merits its inclusion on MGTOW Forums? I did ask the Webmaster, with a question in the “Shits & Giggles” section of MGTOW, less to ask than to tease him. Yes, I recognize that higher-volume websites pay their way by such “rolling banners,” courtesy of GoogleAds and other such services; maybe I’ll find I need them here some day. But CougarLife is just so eloquently mal-appropriate to “Men Going Their Own Way” that I had to look behind the banner.

CougarLife, subtitled “The Ultimate Catch,” is quite obviously a dating website. It bills itself as “the premier online dating service that pairs women in their prime with younger men and ends the double standard!” As of my click-aboard, they claimed “more than 2,257,000 members.” Their home-page was plastered with the image of a beautiful blonde woman, reclining in a fluffy robe that rode back behind her torso and showed off the lovely line of her waist flaring to her hips. My first thought was She ain’t no Cougar, not in my book.  (Maybe to a fifteen-year-old boy, though!)

Think of it as a blow for Women's Rights.

Let’s face it, the Cougar meme has been with us since a lusciously-mature Anne Bancroft seduced a callow young Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate (1967). There have been older women with a taste for younger men since long before, but the Society of that time was too genteel, too discreet, to admit it. (There have been older men with a taste for younger women, as well – plenty of us, one could argue “all of us” – and they were subject to Society’s scandal, and shaming, and scorn – I acknowledge that in the interests of full disclosure. Let’s go on.)

Of course the wraps came off of “Older Woman Romance” as part of the Sexual Revolution, and many of these Older Women washed off any shame of it as they might have washed yesterday’s perfume out of their hair. Why shouldn’t they have the same privilege as their husbands, to take on a youthful lover? And even more so, for the mature single woman – why can’t she saddle-up on a lusty young man and ride him into the sunset? Sexual equality, that’s all she wants, and it’s her right.

And this whole question of “sexual equality” has grown, has changed, has matured as Society has embodied the “equal rights for women, equal opportunities for women, equal outcome & results for women” that were the announced and public demands of the Feminist movement.  I’m not criticizing the idea of “sexual equality.” I’m just saying that … it’s out there. It has arrived.

If this is a Cougar, I'm an Old Bull Elephant.

The front page drop-down menu gives you the up-front opportunity to look for “Cougars” or “Cubs,” with a place to choose your home-city and a set of age-brackets that is helpfully filled-in. I started with “Cougars” between 35 and 65 years old.  When I switched it to “Cubs,” the brackets were 18 and 35 – how helpful!  (I switched back to Cougars.) A click on “See Your Matches” provided four thumbnail photos and one “space-filler” thumbnail, and an immediate invitation to Sign Up Now!  (Mmmmm … no. Not tonight, dear, I’m getting a headache.)

A convenient link to “Cougar Basics” told me more:

As the homepage of our website states, “Cougars are Women in their PRIME: independent, sexy and wildly successful.”  Urban Dictionary’s most accurate definition is, “A 35+ year old female who is on the “hunt” for a much younger, energetic, willing-to-do-anything male.”  Urban Dictionary however wrongly states that these women can primarily be found in night clubs and bars. The territory for a cougar has adapted with society and many of these same cougars no longer are turning to the nightclub and party scene to find cubs. (A young man who is attracted to an older woman or women, no doubt intrigued by the passion and experience that only a cougar can offer.)

I went on from there to the FAQ, which was mostly about memberships.  You can start with a basic, but the FAQ gives you some “seductive” (yeah, I catch the ambiguity) reasons to upgrade to a Premium membership.  I gave that a pass, and went on to their “Safe Dating Tips.” They offered the usual – never give out your address or home phone before the first date, tell two other people where you’re going, always meet in a public location, go at your own pace – and one that stood out:

Avoid the “Cyrano-syndrome”. Emails can be deceiving so don’t get carried away in an email fantasy.

Cyrano-syndrome. How apt.

Oh, don’t take it so hard. I drove into this madness. Every woman needs a little madness in her life.
– Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Act 4

CougarLife is, for the mature woman, what AshleyMadison is for the mature man. “At our age, do you feel all the best men are taken?” the front page asks. “Join CougarLife.com and meet great young guys before they’re snatched up.”

I don’t deny these “cougars” the right, any more than I’d deny it for the Gamers who pick up their younger women with their own wiles. Any more than I’d deny the right of my contemporaries, looking for some tenderoni on Ashley Madison.

Older women, chasing younger men? Do I object?
Hell, no, sonny. You can have mine. 😀

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Guest Voice: Robert Full Of Rage

The following article was a response to Paul Elam’s A Voice For Men article, All this goodness is killing me, on January 20.  I’m repeating it here on Beyond The Sunset because Robert states so well, so strongly, and so succinctly the case of all of us men who are turning aside to Find Our Own Way.

Thank you, Robert, for putting it bluntly.

(By the way, the photo here is from Robert’s Gravatar. )

I hear a lot of women say, “where are all the good men” a lot. I understand that men like me are invisible to them, unless I am a target of misandry. No, I am no longer a “good” man. In fact, I am not a lot of things anymore.

I am no longer a woman’s emotional tampon. If you women need a shoulder to cry on, then you need to find someone else. I don’t care that your asshole boyfriend cheated on you. I don’t care that your life is a cluster-fuck, and now you need a “good” man to clean up the mess you created. I am not Captain-Save-A-Ho. I am not going to raise someone else’s children. I am not going to deal with your crazy, bat-shit attitude. PMS is not an excuse to act like a bitch.

I am not a wallet. Stop telling me you don’t need a man, only to demand a “good” man when money is an issue. Pay your own way. Turning up the charm won’t work on me. If you try and manipulate me, I will tell you to go fuck yourself. I am not going to fix your financial problems. Oh, and stop acting like we should share things 50/50, because you always find some lame excuse to weasel out of paying your share.

I am not a punching bag. I am not here so you can vent your frustrations out on me. Don’t you dare lay your hands on me. Don’t you dare be verbally abusive. Don’t you dare play mind games with me. I have a zero tolerance policy for that kind of shit. You love crossing “the line” and doing whatever the fuck you want. You know you can get away with it because you are a female. You should know that I stopped giving pussy passes the day I took the red pill.

I am not your knight in shining armor. If your mouth gets you into trouble, I refuse to bail you out. Stop talking shit and then expect the nearest guy to bail your ass out of trouble. You love talking about how men are such criminals, until you need a man to protect you. Suddenly, men are heroic warriors who save the motherfucking day. I don’t care about the well-being of people who think calling men creeps, perverts, and pigs is acceptable just because men enjoy sex. Fuck you!

I am not Mr. Fix It. If you need help fixing something, then do it your damn self. You never shut up about being “independent”, until manual labor needs to be done. I still can’t believe your audacity. Don’t you realize that the world would fall apart if it wasn’t for men? I can’t stand your over-inflated ego. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since you believe the world revolves around you, and any “good” man should be happy to help an extraordinary being, such as yourself.

This rant was a long time coming.

And well-deserved.  Thanks again, Robert Full Of Rage.

A Few Good Links

I’m choosing to fill this out with a few links to articles, posts, and discussions I’ve seen lately in the Manosphere.

Missing In Action: The Lost Boys Of The Sexual Revolution, from Umslopogaas (10 Jan 2012), touched my heart. The “Sexual Revolution” years, roughly 1965-1975, were the years of my adolescence and young manhood; and for many a young man, it was our sexual Vietnam. (I count myself lucky, as many of my contemporaries went to the real Vietnam. A few of my friends and acquaintances left bits of themselves there. A couple came back in body-bags.)

Lifeboat Feminism in Practical Application, from The Spearhead (18 Jan 2012).  The Costa Concordia disaster is a fertile field for shame-and-blame addicts who want to decry the dissolution of “Women And Children First”.  I’ve touched on this subject lightly, but Elusive Wapiti did a thorough and dedicated job – and the comments are edifying, as well.

A New Definition of Patriarchy, from GendErratic (22 Jan 2012), has a different view of the Common Boogeyman of Feminism.

Redefining Masculinity: Another Go, from The Damned Olde Man (24 Jan 2012) – this is actually mirrored on Paul Elam’s A Voice For Men, under the title of “The good man,” but I’d like to use this list to “spread the love around.”

Pierce Harlan Is A F***ing Jerk, by John The Other on A Voice For Men (22 Jan 2012). My “Bowdlerism” of the title may be unnecessary on this venue, but … you know …

For those who don’t know, Pierce Harlan runs the False Rape Society website, a compendium of proven false-rape accusations brought against innocent men around the world. If you insist on pooh-poohing the notion that a woman would accuse an innocent man of rape, follow the FRS link and see for yourself. It’s a real threat; just the accusation itself can totally wreck a man’s life, even if it doesn’t reach trial.

And finally, one from the mainstream media! Ripped Apart, from Nina Shapiro of the Seattle Weekly News (18 Jan 2012); this is an exposé of the Divorce Industry in King County (Seattle), Washington, that was also reviewed in this article from The Spearhead.

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“And they ask why I am not a Father!”

Years and years ago, there was a radio personality in my city – Doug Tracht, “The Greaseman” – who made use of this tag-line every-so-often in his routines: “And they ask me why I drink!” Doug, or “Vito Greasemanelli” as he styled himself, is no longer on the radio in my hometown.  He regularly stepped over the line separating “tasteless” from “truly offensive,” till the FCC took him off the air. But he was fun while he lasted – and that tag-line stuck in my vocabulary; I’ve used it a few times myself, in humor, over the years.

“And they ask me why I drink!”

My rewrite of that line is not “in humor.”

I am not a father, as far as I know; at least, I have never gotten a Father’s Day card signed “Guess Who!” I don’t believe this is because I’m unsuited to be a father, or too irresponsible to take on the role; I would give my best to any child whose heritage could be proven to include me as his Dad.

Rather, it’s the fact that no fecund woman saw me as a worthy mate – at least, not until long since my own personal “Use By” date had passed. As a commodity in the sexual marketplace – which is, I fear, the way that women regard men – I’m faded, shopworn, and long obsolete.

Fatherhood, in case you haven’t noticed, is regarded as an obsolete pattern of existence by Feminist Society.  Deeper yet is the denial that Sex – the gross-anatomical and embarrassingly-obvious difference between XY-chromosome zygotes, when they develop to term and survive to sexual capability, and XX-chromosome zygotes – has any bearing on the social or parental function of those mature zygotes.  According to Femmunist doctrine (yes I know they spell it “feminist”, but the urge to compare it to “communism” has become irresistable to me) – a child needs a Mother, but the “sperm-donor” is quite superfluous except for his State-enforced monetary contributions.

Hence the common complaint, seen on so many male-centric websites such as The Spearhead,  A Voice For Men, and many other men’s-rights websites, that “FemIntern” (again, a reference to “Comintern,” or Communism International) and their “white knight” enablers are intent on reducing men to sperm-donors and walking wallets.

If you Google “deadbeat dads,” “the Duluth model,” “the Australian Plan,” or any number of other catch-phrases that refer to the notion that Women’s Rights and Mother’s Rights should by right trample men’s rights (note my intentional lack of capital letters in the latter), you can find ample evidence of actual Feminine Supremacy in current jurisprudence and current Society. Whatever the situation might have been in the days of “Leave It To Beaver” Ward & June Cleaver, and the last remnants of the Patriarchy … the current situation is that Team Woman, Femmunism International, have subverted every level of Government to enforce the dogma that “Woman Is The Mistress Race, but Womanhood is Still Oppressed by Dem Devil Men, and so Men should be suppressed and kicked into line by Daddy Government!”

But the kind of Suppressed, Subservient Subjects that Team Woman wants to make of men, in the laws, in the courts, under the Guns of Government, are not the kind of men they see as having Superior Genetic Potential. It is in the nature of Woman to want the best mate she can get, the one who “stands out from the crowd,” the one who captures her notice and incites her excitement. Too many women would rather get pumped-and-dumped by The Hero or ravished by the Sneering Villain than get loved, honored and cherished by The Loyal Trusty Sidekick, or by a fellow bit-player who might be an excellent husband and father if he were only given a chance.

A bit-player, perhaps, like the man I was in my twenties and thirties; when I was young enough to believe I’d see my children grow to adulthood.

I wasn’t judged as worthy to be the consort to Her Holiness the Superior, Entitled,  Strong, Independent, Disadvantaged, Victimized Woman. (And that was any woman too young to be my mother.) I am not “alpha” enough to contribute my genetic donation to Her Most Revered Reproduction System, but my money, my savings, my possessions could possibly be worth gleaning for The Sake Of The Children (tm). If she were to admit me, it would be to make me responsible for her child or children, never mind if I had anything whatsoever to do with her actual conception. If she were to accept my hand in marriage, I’d be forever liable for her Sacred Happiness, my salary and my bank-accounts and any real-estate I had managed to own would be “hers” in the Eyes of the Law, and I’d be the Eternal Chump to her every “need,” want, wish, desire or whim.

The issue of her womb – if she gave the State reason to trace the patrimony back to me, regardless (preferably in ignorance) of any genetic contribution on my part  – would be her claim, now and henceforth, upon my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor.

My only possible defense is to make thoroughly sure that my “genetic contribution” never gets anywhere near the genetic-receptacle of any woman at all. Because any women who catches baby-rabies can make use of suitable sperm, whether captured from my unwrapped hydraulics or with the help of a turkey-baster; any woman can accuse her beta boyfriend of contributing that which actually came from her alpha one-night-stand; and every woman has the Guns of Government at her beck-and-call when it comes to assigning paternity and harvesting the man’s “everything” to support herself and her children.

Can you honestly blame me, for choosing to avoid “Being A Father”?

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The Invisible Man

“Where Are All The Good Men?” has become a popular meme on the mainstream “infotainment” media over the past few years. You hear the plaint more and more, in books, magazines, newspaper “editorial” pages, and television – especially daytime-afternoon TV, where you get authors and glitterati and psychologists and churchly spokesmen and other such “experts” teaming up with Oprah and Doctor Phil to bat that question around the stage in front of the cameras and the studio audience. Only it’s not so much a question as a “plea,” and certainly not so much a plea as an accusatory demand.

“What happened to all the Good Men? The men who are strong, and kind, and dominant, and submissive; who have nice smiles and nice abs, and nice cars and great paychecks? The men who will give themselves up to making us happy, making us feel like a princess? The men who will man up for us, plight their troths unto us, buy our stuff for us, raise our children with us, and sacrifice themselves day by day in the concrete canyons of Gotham so that we can sit home with a bag of Cheesy-Wacky-Fries-flavored crisps in our lap and watch Oprah and Doctor Phil?”

Somebody is going to accuse me of laying that on a bit thick. And yes, there are some mutually-contradictory demands in that description. But when you read the laundry-list requirements that all too many “desperately seeking” women put on their Plenty Of Fish pages, I don’t believe it’s TOO far off the mark.

Dr. Paul Elam, founder and publisher of A Voice For Men, posted an utterly necessary counter-question on his website recently: What is a good man?
And who gets to define “a good man” – who gets to set the criteria for “goodness” in men?

The second question is actually crucial to the first. Who gets to “own” the answer? Who gets the privilege of defining “goodness” in men? Is it up to the Main Scream Media, or to Oprah and Dr. Phil, or do we men ourselves have a voice in the definition of “goodness in men”?

If we listen to the talk shows, they have taken it for granted that women get to own the definition; women and their White-Knight defenders, like Dr. Phil and William Bennett. And their definition is closely parallel to my “over-the-top” description above. They describe the “Good Man” in terms of two qualities:

Sacrifice and utility.

That’s right.

Sacrifice and utility are held up as the measure of the “good man.”

I want you to play along with me a moment.  Tilt up your face; raise your eyebrows while you squint downwards under half-closed eyelids.  Wrinkle your nose, sneer a bit, and say this word with heavy emphasis on the first syllable:

“Reeeallly.”

That should give you the flavor of sarcasm I want you to understand, in my response – in the response I believe is proper, when women and their apologists and supporters get to publish their laundry list as the Wikipedia definition for “A Good Man.”

If you will just step aside from the “bullying pulpit” for a moment, open an old-fashioned print dictionary (maybe the one your mother put on the desk in your room, when you were going to school) and look up the word “good,” you’ll find a whole lot of definitions listed that do not have to do with sacrifice and/or utility.  Same with “man” – you’ll find “sacrifice” and “utility” are strangely absent from the Funk & Wagnalls definition of that word, too.

Now that we’ve cleared that question of definitions … and hopefully, cleared out the reflexive impulse to include “sacrifice and utility” as the attributes of a “good man” … let’s get back to the top question:  “Where are all the good men?”

We’re invisible.

No kidding.  You don’t even see us out here.

We are men who are strong, and honorable, and decent and kind. We are men who are courteous, though the past fifty years of misandry have given us less and less reason to retain our courtesy. We are men who work, some of us in the rain and the dark, some of us in the hazardous jobs that Society still needs, some of us in the brain-numbing mental drudgery of the “cube farms” of modern business and technology. Some of us have our own businesses, and we manage without the special subsidies and “cut-out contracts” that Big Daddy Government offers to businesswomen. We earn our livings; we pay our own way, and through our taxes we pay the way for uncounted “disadvantaged” others. We build on the square and on the level; we live up to the trust of our employers, of our communities, of Society.

But you don’t even see us, because your “radar” is tuned for the Bad Boys who excite you.  The authentically good men, the trustworthy, the honest, the decent and kind and courteous men who keep the world going, the men who would actually be good husbands and good fathers, are all around you; but you don’t even see us, or at best you might notice our empty suits.

And more and more of us notice that we’re filtered out, rendered invisible, by the wide blue mirrors in your eyes. We have come to recognize, to realize, that we don’t even exist in your awareness. We go on with our honorable, and trustworthy, and productive lives, because that’s what a man does. But more and more, we are turning aside from the notion of “doing it FOR YOU.” We are no longer willing, in fact we are refusing, to define our manhood and our goodness in terms of sacrifice and utility for you.

We’re dropping out of your rigged games. We’re looking out for ourselves, for our own needs and interests, for our own future. And more and more of us are ghosting, slipping off the radar, going our own way.

We are learning to live our lives in fun and fulfilling ways, that don’t center themselves around you.  We’re riding by on our motorcycles, in our convertibles (top down and right seat conspicuously empty), on our jet-skis and in our yachts.  We’re doing “Manly Things” and enjoying life, and enjoying even more the calm and quiet and peace in our lives that come with your absence.
We’re discovering that we don’t need you to be happy.

The Good Man is here. But we are invisible to you.

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The Birkenhead Drill

More than a century and a half ago, in 1852, the HMS Birkenhead sank with a full complement of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines on board – drawn up in ranks, standing at attention on the decks of the doomed ship, waiting stoically to drown in place, while the few boats aboard took the women and children to safety. This was the origin of the classic phrase, “Women And Children First.”  It was an extension of an old, old tradition that men should stand aside for the sake of women’s safety.  The woman, after all, was the Vessel of the Future of the Human Race.  (Or at least, so was her potentially-impregnated uterus.)

This phrase has been transmogrified, over the century-and-a-half that separates modern culture from the HMS Birkenhead, into a raw and insulting statement of privilege extended toward the “empowered but victimized Woman” who has grabbed primacy in modern society.  “Women First,” announces the new cultural meme, “and Children too, solely because they are the product of the Woman. ”

In the days of HMS Birkenhead, there was a “social justice” in the sacrifice of the men.  In a way, this “social justice” can still be observed.  It’s easy to describe:  Children are the future of Mankind, or of the Race, or of the Country (that legal entity which is the “super-tribe” of the people who live there or grant it allegiance). And, as Women are the “vessel” of the not-yet-born Children, and furthermore Women are naturally equipped to feed the Newborn Child (owing to their charmingly-obvious glandular equipment to do so), Women should be preserved to nurture The Children.

(This is a long-term holdover from the days of the tribe; of the days when the Future of the Tribe might depend on saving the pregnant women and nursing mothers who indeed represented the genotype, the genetic future.)

Another author, a greater writer than me, a widely-avowed Grand Master of Science-Fiction, put this concept into words – in the days of first-wave feminism, in a day when his quote made impeccable good sense:

All societies are based on rules to protect pregnant women and young children. All else is surplusage, excrescence, adornment, luxury or folly which can – and must – be dumped in emergency to preserve this prime function. As racial survival is the only universal morality, no other basic is possible.
Robert A. Heinlein,  Time Enough For Love (1973)

Yeah. 1973.  Damn-near forty years ago.

What has happened, what has changed, what has been utterly discarded in favor of Political Correctness, since 1973?

The “social justice” of “Women and Children First” was carried forward, to be sure, and it rang forth at the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.  There was even a warping of this diktat in that disaster – because the First-Class Ladies were among the first to board the lifeboats, while the Third-Class and Steerage-Class women were locked down belowdecks until the lifeboats had been filled and lowered and rowed away.

How do we measure the relative worth of a First-Class Lady, versus the worth of a pregnant woman and her hopeful husband in Steerage?  Money.  To be specific, the money her husband-and-companion paid for their superior cabin and socially-recognizable position.

In other concepts – Society, in 1912, gave not a shit for the potential of the Steerage-Class fetus.

This is not Politically Correct in today’s Society.  There is an “egalitarian” consensus that the Politically-Advantaged First Class should sacrifice all-the-further, and stand aside for the Steerage Class Woman and her children.  And most certainly, most notably, most blatantly, Every Male-Gender Subject, no matter his actuarial value and business-based wealth, no matter his potential to improve the future survival of the uncounted “potential employees” he might be able to fund and create if he were to live, should stand aside for every single Poor Disadvantaged Victimized Independent Woman, regardless of her actual worth (or de facto lack of worth) to the future of the human race.

(The lack of capitalization of “human race” in the preceding paragraph is entirely, even blatantly, intentional.)

We have a fortuitous example of this, in the sinking of the cruise-ship Costa Concordia earlier this week.

There is a tradition of the sea – reinforced, in fact, by the dictates of maritime law – that the passengers of a ship should be given primacy, e.g. the first seats on the lifeboats, in an emergency.  Reports from the Costa Concordia alleged that this tradition was ignored, by the crew and even the officers of the vessel.

My apologies, ladies, but there is a certain bitter justice in this behavior –
a bitter justice that is based on the Platform of the Empowered Independent Strong Vociferous Woman of today, which holds that WOMEN ARE EQUAL.

Guess what?  “WOMEN ARE EQUAL” is tantamount to “EVERY PERSON FOR ITSELF”.  Yes, I use the term “person” in a gender-neutral fashion … as our society has been mandated to use it, in the past forty years of Women’s Lib and the succeeding movements to raise up women at the expense of men.

It appears to me that the actual “Femmunist” Party Line is that “women should be given everything men have fought, competed, worked and striven to accomplish.  But women should also be advantaged by Ladies’ Privilege, should there be an inconvenience that men by-responsibility should handle or correct or stand-as-victim to proffer a remedy.”

Once upon a time, privilege was balanced by responsibility.  The Captain of the Ship was “God Incarnate,” was granted a status above the highest-of-privilege of the passengers of his vessel – but he met that, in an emergency, with the ultimate responsibility for his (yes, sexist as it might appear, HIS) passengers and crew.  The Liberated Woman has usurped any primacy-of-honor that the Captain, or the Officers, or the Crew of the ship might have held.

This is an unexpected consequence of Supremacy, my dears.  “The Supreme” are “responsible” as well – that responsibility goes irrevocably hand-in-hand with “supremacy” … and “The Inferiors” – especially those whom you-as-society have branded them as “inferiors” – may recognize that their own lives, their own happiness, their own future, has a worth to themselves beyond the insignificant worth you have assigned them.

Wouldn’t there be a bitter justice, if your behavior is the factor that has rendered the Birkenhead Drill … obsolete.

Maybe the New Millenium version should be …

Families First!

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(I find it worthy of note that the Costa Concordia hit a rock that holed her bottom, in much the same fashion as the HMS Birkenhead … because the Captain veered away from known safe waters, for his own egotistical purposes. The mariner within me is appalled and revulsed by his action and behavior; not only for his flagrant disregard of Safety Of Life At Sea, but for his effrontery in being carried away in a lifeboat to safety while his ship’s passengers – note my careful avoidance of sex or gender! – were still in danger from his stupidity.  I am glad to hear that the Italian authorities are holding him responsible for the deaths aboard his vessel, and he may indeed be put in the dock for nineteen or more counts of manslaughter.)

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