Saturday, May 31, 2014

Feminists versus Roosh V

Daryush Valizadeh, better known by pseudonym Roosh V, is fairly well known for his writings on seduction and antifeminism.
   His books include
  • Bang: The Pickup Bible That Helps You Get More Lays (2007)
  • A Dead Bat In Paraguay: One Man's Peculiar Journey Through South America (2009)
  • Bang Colombia: Textbook On How To Sleep With Colombian Women (2010)
  • Roosh's Brazil Compendium: Pickup Tips, City Guides, And Stories (2010)
  • Roosh's Argentina Compendium: Pickup Tips, City Guides, And Stories (2011)
  • Day Bang: How To Casually Pick Up Girls During The Day (2011)
  • Bang Iceland: How To Sleep With Icelandic Women In Iceland (2011)
  • Don't Bang Denmark: How To Sleep With Danish Women In Denmark (If You Must) (2011)
  • 30 Bangs: The Shaping Of One Man's Game From Patient Mouse To Rabid Wolf (2012)
  • Bang Poland: How To Make Love With Polish Girls In Poland (2012)
  • Don't Bang Latvia: How To Sleep With Latvian Women In Latvia Without Getting Scammed (2012)
  • Bang Estonia: How To Sleep With Estonian Women In Estonia (2012)
  • Bang Lithuania: How To Sleep With Lithuanian Women In Lithuania (2012)
  • Bang Ukraine: How to Have Sex With Ukrainian Girls In Ukraine (2012)
Mr. Valizadeh also runs the website Return of Kings, where he publishes a variety of articles on related subjects.  In the About section, he writes
Return Of Kings is a blog for heterosexual, masculine men. It’s meant for a small but vocal collection of men in America today who believe men should be masculine and women should be feminine.

ROK aims to usher the return of the masculine man in a world where masculinity is being increasingly punished and shamed in favor of creating an androgynous and politically-correct society that allows women to assert superiority and control over men. Sadly, yesterday’s masculinity is today’s misogyny. The site intends to be a safe space on the web for those men who don’t agree with the direction that Western culture is headed....Women and homosexuals are prohibited from commenting here. They will be immediately banned, and anyone who replies to them will also be banned. This includes replying in any thread that they started.
  Which reminds me a lot of the Little Rascals and the He-Man Woman-Haters Club:


From an El País review of his book on how to sleep with Colombian women:
Un estadounidense de 32 años identificado como Roosh V....escribió un manual para llevar a la cama a las mujeres de Cali, Medellín y Bogotá.

El libro se llama 'Bang Colombia: Textbook on How to Sleep With Colombian Women' (Manual de cómo acostarse con mujeres colombianas), y explica en cinco capítulos las mejores estrategias con las que un extranjero puede acostarse con una colombiana.

Según explica el autor...el libro es la recopilación de seis meses de trabajo de campo en los que dedicó su "existencia a descifrar el código de las mujeres colombianas, que son el mayor desafío de la parte occidental del mundo".

En la guía sobre las mujeres colombianas...plantea 'tips' que van desde cómo aprender a coquetear en español hasta cómo lidiar cuando se sale con una 'prepago'.

También entrega recomendaciones sobre cómo realizar un viaje a nuestro país, tips de cómo superar la seguridad de los claustros universitarios para acceder a las cafeterías de los mismos, donde según él, es el mejor lugar para encontrar pareja.

Frases como "Las mujeres colombianas no son tan calientes como las gringas y comerse una no será tan fácil", "la luna y las estrellas deben estar perfectamente alineadas para que ellas accedan" y "No es fácil llevar una colombiana a la cama", son algunas de las frases que se encuentran en el libro....

Mr. Valizadeh spent six month in Colombia, doing field work to decipher the code of Colombian women, whom he characterizes as the "biggest challenge in the Western World."  His book provides tips from how to flirt in Spanish to how to deal with prepaid harlots.  Some of the phrases found in the book: "Colombian women are not as hot as gringas and seducing one won't be as easy", "the moon and stars have to be in perfect alignment before they will yield", and "it isn't easy to bring a Colombian woman to bed."  The reader comments to the article are hilarious, and pretty much refute Mr. Valizadeh's work:
--Este gringo debe ser o muy feo o muy pobre, de lo contrario no sé como pudo encontrar dificultad para levantarse un polvo en estas tres ciudades, o mejor dicho, en toda Colombia, donde no pueden ver un extranjero porque ya se le entregan en bandeja de plata.
--Al ser el autor "gringo" y encima decir que encontró gran dificultad para copular desmerita totalmente a este supuesto "experto."
But, anyway, if one can make a living from traveling around the world and seducing women, then why not?

Some of Mr. Valizadeh's articles on Return of Kings are quite amusing, and often provoke entertaining responses from Feminists.  For example, The 9 Ugliests Feminists in America generated rejoinders from Kasey Edwards, Rebecca Schoenkopf, and Desiree Meyers-Liebowitz. Callie Beusman wrote "Quit Paying Attention to That Vile Troll Website": a fairly lengthy commentary that included discussions of some of Mr. Valizadeh's juicier quotes.  I'm starting to think that Mr. Valizadeh is engaging in a bit of pigtail transfer--he was too shy to tease girls when he was in elementary school, so he is doing it now, and he knows that the girls can't smack him through the computer.  The Feminists need him, too, so that they can yell "Misogyny!" at someone.  

Mr. Valizadeh's article, published 25 May, 2014, and concerning Elliot Rodger's recent mass-murder/suicide, was a tad tacky (although I'm sure that he was going for tacky--his writing did generate some publicity).
No One Would Have Died If PUAHate Killer Elliot Rodger Learned Game

On Friday, May 23, Elliot Rodger killed six people because he was frustrated and angry from not being able to experience intimacy with women. He left a trail of Youtube videos, internet postings, and even a manifesto that clearly details how his sexual frustration was the principal reason for his murderous rampage.


Six lives would have been saved if there was a societal mechanism to steer sexually frustrated males like Rodger into learning self-improvement, game, and masculinity, the very values that are taught here and on many other manosphere sites that inexplicably have been attacked, disparaged, and even sought for eradication by the American media and blogosphere, men’s rights activists, “PUA haters”, and progressive organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center. All these groups are complicit for creating a cultural environment that allowed this massacre to occur. It is them who must accept responsibility for these seven deaths and make the moral change to their ideologies in order to prevent such an act from happening again.

It’s important to state that Elliot Rodger was undoubtedly mentally unstable and required professional supervision. Diagnosed with Asperger’s, he clearly exhibited narcissistic and sociopathic traits that no doubt prevented him from empathizing with others. Nonetheless, his videos and writings do display an above-average intelligence and the propensity to connect with individuals in certain cases. He was not that much worse off than many socially awkward males who grew up isolated as teenagers, unable to perform well in social interactions. I’ve personally interacted with men who functioned lower than him, but were later able to successfully meet average-looking women and achieve intimacy with them.

Rodger’s manifesto clearly states that his utter failure with women drove him to murder. The problem that he experienced is not unique—many men in Western society graduate from high school or college to realize that they have absolutely no skill or ability to seduce the opposite sex. We live in a society where being shy, normal, or a little awkward is duly punished by entitled American women who have been encouraged to pursue exciting and fun casual sex in their prime with sexy and hot men as a way of “experimentation.” They are enabled by the culture to seek out bad boys while rejecting the nice guy who is “boring.” This behavior continues until they find that they are past their physical prime, whereby the nice guy is plucked from a spartan sexual existence and expected to keep his mouth shut when a trickle flow of informational torture reveals that his bride-to-be has experienced more than a dozen different penises in her vagina, anus, and mouth—the same mouth that is supposed to kiss his future children good night.
 The choices presented to Rodger
What options does a man like Rodger have if his existing social ability is simply not able to attract the women he wants? What should he do to enter a relationship with a reasonably attractive girl who has not yet had dozens of penises inside her, who is sweet and kind instead of bitter and jaded from becoming a professional attention whore on Facebook, Tinder, and OK Cupid via the iPhone that she’s addicted to? It depends on who you ask. Here are the answers that Rodger either received or could have received:
 His university
Rodger should have checked his male privilege at the door and atoned for the sins of thousands of years of “male patriarchy.” He was likely exposed to infantile “trigger warnings” during the course of his education. He received direct propaganda that insinuates all men are potential rapists. American universities are becoming firmly anti-male with their extreme left ideology and policies. Just recently, the Justice Department has ushered in directives that attempt to restrict the definition of consensual sex, making any attempt by Rodger to fornicate with a female at a college party a potential rape encounter that would have gotten him kicked out of school without a trial. Pro-female policies now dominate most American universities. Rodger would definitely not have received a sympathetic ear to his plight.
American media and organizations
They have been telling him for years that he’s a sexist creep without even knowing it, and that only feminism, the promotion of female needs above men, is the true path to “equality.” Before he would even find a useful resource that helps him learn how to meet women, he would have been exposed to endless articles demonizing those resources as racist, misogynist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and cis-normative (whatever that means). Think I’m exaggerating? Here are some examples:
Promotion of masculine ideals is trolling
The manosphere is misogynist
Return Of Kings is offensive
Private communications of “pickup artist” deserves mockery
Writing dating tips is misogynist
Game hurts “everybody”
Only sexist women are receptive to game
Misogynist web sites denounced by organization who shared information with the FBI
Yours truly nominated to be the worst person on the entire internet
Yours truly the most misogynist man in the world for teaching societal truths and game to men

The amount of negative publicity written about Return Of Kings, me, game, and the manosphere in general seems endless if you spend just a bit of time on Google and Twitter. It’s clear that any mention of game in the mainstream sources that Rodger would definitely have been exposed to (the sites above receive millions of unique visitors every month) clearly shows that he would have been inclined to develop a negative opinion of game before fully knowing what it’s about. It appears that a goal of many popular publications is to inoculate and brainwash men like Rodger into believing game is actually equivalent to rape.
PUA Hate and Men’s Rights Activists

Would Rodger have received help for his loneliness if he found MRA’s and PUA haters? Definitely not. MRA’s would simply sit him down and detail how male circumcision and male rape by women are the most pressing concerns of men today. They would have given him absolutely no aid on solving his loneliness problem, advocating for him to instead become a victim.

PUA haters, best exemplified by the forum PUAhate.com, are even more dangerous. As an active member of this site, Rodger was surrounded by a community of men who nurtured and cultivated his hate. These men don’t believe in game and instead think the only path to a healthy sex life is to be rich and good looking, two beliefs that Rodger actively believed. It is through PUA Hate where he was able to meet other virgins and mentally unstable men to provide him with comfort while encouraging his budding hatred not just against women for serving him rejections—something that pro-game advocates accept as normal—but also society as a whole for not giving him what he believed he deserved. To give you an idea how twisted the members of PUAHate are, his rampage was actually praised. There are not many sites on the internet where someone is lauded as a hero for killing others, but PUAHate is one of them:

PUA Hate suddenly went offline, but we must wonder if Rodger used the site to privately communicate with other men to actively plan out the killings, and if more of them are in the works. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out in the future that the site’s owner destroyed evidence that showed how Rodger’s PUA Hate friends knew of his intentions.
His parents, psychologists, and professors

They also did not provide Rodger with useful answers. His parents were aloof and his father never taught him how to be good with women (the manifesto details how supplicative his father was to Rodger’s stepmother). His psychiatrists likely wanted to pump him with meds to zombify him, maybe even trying to label his frustration with women as latent misogyny. His professors would push the leftist dogma where men are the source of all societal problems. He should humble himself, they’d prescribe, to others who don’t have as much inherent “privilege” as himself.
 Return Of Kings, The Red Pill, RVF, myself
If Rodger came to me, he would have received actionable and effective advice. He would have been exposed to material detailing how socially corrupt American society has become, and how being a beta male provider—his principal strategy in trying to get laid—is no longer useful in achieving intimacy with women who now see men as entertaining clowns that should provide them with excitement, drama, and tension. After these truths would be painfully delivered to Rodger, he would have to make the personal choice to accept them or not, but based on his intelligence level, I have little doubt that he would, as it would match what he saw on campus with what he termed “obnoxious” (i.e. “alpha”) men getting the girls he wanted.

After digesting the red pill (our sphere’s metaphor for truth), he would start his game training. I’ve clearly laid out a program that has helped thousands of men who were in almost the exact same situation as Rodger. There is no evidence that Rodger executed even basic game theory. We can’t say for sure if he would have been a good student of the game or achieved high success from using it, because his mental illness no doubt affected his faculties, but the bar to success for him was low. According to his manifesto, all he wanted was a date. As in… one date. Take a look at his own words:
I was hoping I would get some sort of answer from girls [from posting my Youtube videos]. IN fact, a small part of me was even hoping that a girl would see the video and contact me to give me a chance to go on a date. That alone would have prevented the Day of Retribution, if one girl had just given me one chance. But no…As expected, I got absolutely no response from any girls. [...] Women don’t care about me at all. They won’t even deign to tell my why they’ve mistreated me. This just shows how evil and sadistic they are. Oh well, they will realize the gravity of their crimes when I slaughter them all on the Day of Retribution.
Would the teachings that this part of the internet offer give him that one date? Would the advice of the men on RVF have given him the encouragement, motivation, and support to stop wallowing in self-pity and grandeur to approach women with the game that women today want? The answer is yes. I firmly believe that we would have given him his date, and it’s this date that would have quieted his deranged propensity to kill, or at least postponed it until an intervention could have occurred. Only game and red pill truths would have been sufficient in changing this deadly outcome. Everyone else, from his parents to his university and especially to the media he may have consumed, absolutely failed to help him in a way that we definitely could have.

Even after the killings, the media is parading out the phantom spirit of misogyny, perpetuating a tired cycle of shaming men in the name of protecting women, even though Rodger killed more men than women.
--Elizabeth Plank says we need to stamp out misogyny, even though Rodger developed a hatred for everyone in society
--Jessica Valenti says misogyny kills, even though four men died compared to two women

Who cares about the males that Rodger killed, because, like, misogyny! The disregard for any concern for men, including the ones killed by Rodger, means that more men will churn through this toxic anti-male culture, maybe one day deciding that killing is also their only option for deliverance.
 I was not in a different boat than Rodger
I know Rodger would have been helped because I experienced much of what he did. I was lonely and lacking in female affection, but this was way back in 2001, before game was treated as the devil it is today. There was no cultural barrier for me to learn its principles. There was no PUA Hate that would’ve allowed me to connect with other bitter, demented, and possibly criminal men. There was no Buzzfeed (everyday sexism!) and Huffington Post (homosexuality is great!) to brainwash me into thinking that approaching women and having masculine sexual desire is sexist or misogynist, or that I must embrace a pro-homosexual lifestyle and the needs of gays over my own. There was no institutional formula in attacking what I learned and what thankfully gave me the intimacy I desired.

Seven people are dead because society has decided that shy and awkward men like Elliot Rodger do not deserve a girlfriend and that there is absolutely no way to improve his loneliness and loserdom through learning game or any other social behavior. At the same time men like him are ostracized, there is no legal means for him to solicit prostitution (in California) to release his biological and very pressing urge for fornication. Current cultural dogma wants to sweep the millions of lonely men like Rodger under the rug while instead focusing on gay marriage, “street harassment,” lack of empowered girls in video games, “rape culture,” and the horrors of letting young girls wear pink and play with dolls.

The new “let them eat cake” is “let these socially awkward privileged losers have xbox and pornhub.” Yet we still feign outrage and surprise when every so often one of them picks up a gun and starts shooting. The same people who attack game refuse to give men like Rodger a way to achieve sexual happiness, and for that they are indirectly responsible for these deaths, which could have been avoided if Rodger was steered into game and not shamed for it.
More people will die unless you give men sexual options
Until you give men like Rodger a way to have sex, either by encouraging them to learn game, seek out a Thai wife, or engage in legalized prostitution—three things that the American media and cultural elite venomously attack, it’s inevitable for another massacre to occur. Even game itself, as useful as it is on an individual level, is a band-aid fix upon a culture which has stopped rewarding nice guys while encouraging female whoring to benefit only the top 10% of alpha males, all in the name of societal progress. Game is a tiny release valve on a cultural pressure cooker where meaningful relationships have become sick, fractured, and unfulfilling compared to the time of our grandparents when traditional sex roles existed. Game may not have led Rodger to find his dream girl and live happily ever after, but it would have given enough results to stop him from killing six innocent individuals and himself. Until you allow and encourage all men to get sex by some means, these massacres will be more commonplace as America’s cultural decline continues.
Mr. Rodger had an autism-spectrum disorder, and was probably also a member of WrongPlanet, an online community for people with autism-spectrum disorders. On that site, "Waahhh! I'm such a nice guy, but no girl wants to have sex with me! They only want to spread their legs for the jerks!" is a VERY common theme. In fact, they currently have plenty of ongoing discussions, where they see parallels between Mr. Rodger's sentiments and their own experiences. Autistic people often suffer from extreme bullying, as did Mr. Rodger. A lot of autistic men (especially in the USA) have a really hard time getting any sex. Both of these are big issues for a lot of them. And, some (very few) may turn deadly. Mr. Valizadeh mentioned narcissistic and sociopathic traits. Persons with Narcissistic Personality Disorders are interpersonally exploitive, and take advantage of others to achieve their own ends. This young man clearly did not have the social skills to turn on the artificial charm that narcissists use to become interpersonally exploitive.  Men who are narcissistic typically have absolutely no trouble getting laid. A lot of women actually find their attitudes to be quite sexy. Mr. Elliot's situation really didn't have anything to do with narcissism, men's rights activists, misogyny, patriarchy, or anything else. Some autistic people reach their breaking point, and that's it.  They snap.

Mr. Valizadeh's claim that his "game" techniques "would have given enough results to stop him from killing six innocent individuals and himself" is, of course, impossible to substantiate at this point.  On April 7, 2011 Wellington Menezes de Oliveira shot and killed 12 children, wounded 12 others, and then killed himself in a school in Rio de Janeiro. According to former schoolmates he was a strange, very reserved person who was constantly harassed by others. In a video he had recorded two days prior to the shooting, Mr. Menezes stated: "The struggle for which many brothers died in the past, and for which I will die, is not solely because of what is known as bullying. Our fight is against cruel people, cowards, who take advantage of the kindness, the weakness of people unable to defend themselves."


For Mr. Menezes, it was purely about the bullying, and there was nothing about a lack of sex.  In fact, I've never heard of a Brazilian man complain that he couldn't get laid.  Brazil is among the planet's most sexually-satisfied nations.  The United States among the least.  A bit of sex might have precluded Mr. Elliot's murder-suicide spree, and might prevent others, but there can be no guarantees.



According to a Danish Report,
...there is more sexual frustration in autistic men as a result of the discrepancy between their interest in sexual activity and their lack of sexual experience. This is not the case among the female residents who have more sexual experiences with others. This study also shows that sexual experience in a group of mentally retarded people was generally greater than in the group of autistic people....A few well-defined suggestions exist on how one can support, teach and bring up autistic people in relation to their sexual needs. When the question is one of satisfying a sexual need, efforts are mainly focused on the young person’s masturbatory practices and rarely on how the young person can be supported in his or her sexual contacts... 
Mentally-retarded people are doing better sexually than are autistic men.  Well, yes, many of the so-called "jerks" and "thugs" who garner plenty of female attention do seem to be somewhat intellectually challenged.  Autistic women, on the other hand, generally don't have much trouble getting laid, possibly because a lot of guys may perceive them as easy targets.


Mr. Valizadeh's article did generate quite a lot of responses, many of which were vitriolic.  Tom Boggioni wrote:
Anti-woman Website Predicts More Elliot Rodgers if Society Doesn’t Provide them with Sex

A website popular with the online Pick-up Artist community responded to Elliott Rodger’s murderous Santa Barbara rampage, saying it could have been avoided if Rodger had ‘game,’ like they profess to possess, before concluding that “more people will die” unless society provides men with more “sexual options.”

The Return of Kings article, written by ‘Roosh,’ goes to elaborate lengths to explain that the PUA-hate community that Rodger was a part of held him back from learning the “masculine” art of seduction – which they call “game” – and, combined with the “American media, the blogosphere, men’s rights activists, and progressive organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center,” Rodger was encouraged to hate and ultimately murder women.

“All these groups are complicit for creating a cultural environment that allowed this massacre to occur, ” Roosh wrote. “It is them (sic) who must accept responsibility for these seven deaths and make the moral change to their ideologies in order to prevent such an act from happening again.

Stating that Rodger was “undoubtedly mentally unstable and required professional supervision,” Roosh concludes from watching Rodger’s YouTube videos that he displayed “an above-average intelligence and the propensity to connect with individuals in certain cases.”

He adds, “I’ve personally interacted with men who functioned lower than him, but were later able to successfully meet average-looking women and achieve intimacy with them.”

Roosh goes on to say, “We live in a society where being shy, normal, or a little awkward is duly punished by entitled American women who have been encouraged to pursue exciting and fun casual sex in their prime with sexy and hot men as a way of ‘experimentation.’”

He then explains that when women have “passed their physical prime” they then select a “nice guy” with whom to settle down, with the understanding that he is “expected to keep his mouth shut when a trickle flow of informational torture reveals that his bride-to-be has experienced more than a dozen different penises in her vagina, anus, and mouth—the same mouth that is supposed to kiss his future children good night.” ...

...“If Rodger came to me, he would have been received actionable and effective advice, ” Roosh explains. “He would have been exposed to material detailing how socially corrupt American society has become, and how being a beta male provider—his principal strategy in trying to get laid—is no longer useful in achieving intimacy with women who now see men as entertaining clowns that should provide them with excitement, drama, and tension.”

Admitting that he was once “no different than Rodger,” Roosh continued, “Seven people are dead because society has decided that shy and awkward men like Elliot Rodger do not deserve a girlfriend and that there is absolutely no way to improve his loneliness and loserdom through learning game or any other social behavior. At the same time men like him are ostracized, there is no legal means for him to solicit prostitution (in California) to release his biological and very pressing urge for fornication.”

Roosh recommends that society change its ways, warning: “More people will die unless you give men sexual options.”

“Until you give men like Rodger a way to have sex, either by encouraging him to learn game, seek out a Thai wife, or engage in legalized prostitution—three things that the American media and cultural elite venomously attack, it’s inevitable for another massacre to occur. Even game itself, as useful as it is on a individual level, is a band-aid fix upon a culture which has stopped rewarding nice guys while encouraging female whoring to benefit only the top 10% of alpha males, all in the name of societal progress.”
Ana Kasparian used Mr. Boggioni's commentary about Mr. Valizadeh's column in her video "Response to Disgusting UC Santa Barbara Shooter Supporter,", rather than Mr. Valizadeh's article itself.


Miss Kasparian starts off by stating quite emphatically that she doesn't like the idea of anyone feeling any sympathy for Mr. Rodger.  Then, Miss Kasparian goes through most of the quotes provided by Mr. Boggioni, in the order that they appeared in Mr. Boggioni's article.  Starting with:
“All these groups are complicit for creating a cultural environment that allowed this massacre to occur.  It is them (sic) who must accept responsibility for these seven deaths and make the moral change to their ideologies in order to prevent such an act from happening again."
Miss Kasparian even left Mr. Boggioni's "(sic)" in there, and stated that by "all these groups", Mr. Valizadeh was referring to "anti-pickup artists and Feminists."  In fact, in his original article, Mr. Valizadeh didn't state that Feminists were responsible "for creating a cultural environment that allowed this massacre to occur". Rather, he blamed " the American media, the blogosphere, men’s rights activists, and progressive organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center", for discouraging sexually frustrated males from learning "self-improvement, game and masculinity."  I think that there are quite a lot of young men (and older men) in America who do feel sexually frustrated, and who do share Roosh's perspective--at least some of the overall themes, if not the nitty-gritty details (what the heck does the Southern Policy Law Center have to do with anything?).  Mr. Valizadeh 's emphasis is on trying to get men to learn his "game" techniques, and to sell his books.  If this helps some men to get a bit of coitus, then great. For me, I think that most of the women in this country aren't worth the trouble.  However, I think that Mr. Rodger was smart enough that he should have been able to get past the Southern Poverty Law Center et al. to find out about various seduction techniques.  Or, at least he should have been able to figure out how to hire an escort, or how to drive his BMW to Tijuana.



Moreover, contrary to Miss Kasparian's assertion, Mr. Valizadeh didn't state that it was unacceptable for women to participate in casual sex.  Rather, he was merely pointing out the reality, that "we live in a society where being shy, normal, or a little awkward is duly punished by entitled American women who have been encouraged to pursue exciting and fun casual sex in their prime with sexy and hot men as a way of experimentation. They are enabled by the culture to seek out seek out bad boys while rejecting the nice guy who is boring. This behavior continues until they find that they are passed their physical prime, whereby the nice guy is selected from a Spartan sexual existence..."  And, he instructs men on how to deal with this reality.  Lori Gottlieb was basically saying the same things as Mr. Valizadeh, but from a woman's perspective:
...we’d be loath to admit it in this day and age, but ask any soul-baring 40-year-old single heterosexual woman what she most longs for in life, and she probably won’t tell you it’s a better career or a smaller waistline or a bigger apartment. Most likely, she’ll say that what she really wants is a husband (and, by extension, a child).

To the outside world, of course, we still call ourselves feminists and insist—vehemently, even—that we’re independent and self-sufficient and don’t believe in any of that damsel-in-distress stuff, but in reality, we aren’t fish who can do without a bicycle, we’re women who want a traditional family. And despite growing up in an era when the centuries-old mantra to get married young was finally (and, it seemed, refreshingly) replaced by encouragement to postpone that milestone in pursuit of high ideals (education! career! but also true love!), every woman I know—no matter how successful and ambitious, how financially and emotionally secure—feels panic, occasionally coupled with desperation, if she hits 30 and finds herself unmarried....

....Whether you acknowledge it or not, there’s good reason to worry. By the time 35th-birthday-brunch celebrations roll around for still-single women, serious, irreversible life issues masquerading as “jokes” creep into public conversation: Well, I don’t feel old, but my eggs sure do! or Maybe this year I’ll marry Todd. I’m not getting any younger!...Is it better to be alone, or to settle?

My advice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling “Bravo!” in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go. Based on my observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, since many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year.
By the age of 40, and well past her physical prime, a woman will be willing to settle for what Mr. Valizadeh calls a "nice guy" who has endured "a Spartan sexual existence."  A man whom she might have rejected 10-20 years earlier, because she was too busy being boned by the baaad boys.  Mr. Valizadeh claims to offer some techniques for allowing the "nice guys" to get some of that action, too, with women who are still in their physical prime.  And, Miss Gottlieb is advising the ladies to hold their noses, and condescend to settle for one of those unfortunate, wretched, annoying, low-status men, in lieu of facing lifelong spinsterhood.  Mr. Valizadeh and Miss Gottlieb are addressing the same phenomenon, but from opposite perspectives.
  
Miss Kasparian is almost 28 years old, which is somewhat past the age of nubility, but with a reasonable amount of residual reproductive value remaining.  At this point, she is no doubt still enjoying tremendous sex with a wide variety of handsome, well-endowed, high-status males.  Since she is a well-known celebrity, she will probably eventually marry another well-known celebrity.  They almost always do.  Maybe the Amazing Atheist,
or someone of similar status.  We'll see their pictures every week on the covers of the grocery-store magazines.  She won't have to settle for one of those disgusting low-lives who can't bring in a substantial salary to complement hers.

The final quote that Miss Kasparian used was:
Until you give men like Rodger a way to have sex, either by encouraging him to learn game, seek out a Thai wife, or engage in legalized prostitution—three things that the American media and cultural elite venomously attack, it’s inevitable for another massacre to occur.
With regard to this quote, Miss Kasparian stated that Mr. Valizadeh's tactic was to "shift the blame onto women.  Shift the blame onto, hey, this dude couldn't legally find a Thai wife.  And go ahead and blame the victims in this case."  Miss Kasparian stated further that "it is absolutely sick and maddening that there are people out there who think that kind of thought and that type of ideology is acceptable and okay."  Actually, Mr. Valizadeh wasn't blaming women, nor the victims.  Nor the fact that "this dude couldn't legally find a Thai wife."  Marrying a Thai woman is not illegal.  Mr. Valizadeh was blaming "the American media and cultural elite" for venomously attacking three possible ways for Mr. Rodger to acquire sex.

Miss Kasparian continues:
Someone needs to stand up, and give them a middle finger, and tell them "No!  That is NOT the right way.  You are NOT entitled to have sex with whomever you want.  You are NOT entitled to force or manipulate someone into having sex with you."  That goes for both men and women.  It has to be consensual.  And in a day and age when we're dealing with rapes on college campuses, and inaction when it comes to testing rape kits and actually prosecuting rapists, it makes me sick to my stomach that an [expletive] like this can post something about a tragic even that happened over the weekend.
Miss Kasparian is becoming hysterical at this point.  Mr. Valizadeh never said anything about raping anyone, nor that anyone was entitled to have coitus with whomever one wished. We aren't exactly bonobos.  And, this is trashy journalism.  She has the Feminist buzzwords "Sexual Entitlement" on the screen, apparently to emphasize the Feminist notion that women should be entitled to have sex with whomever they please, and that men should be content with masturbation.  At the end of the video, Miss Kasparian proposed "Maybe talking about comprehensive sex ed., and talking about how masturbation is a healthy way to relieve yourself of sexual frustration....We should have an open mind about this particular incident and what occurred that night..."   Miss Kasparian obviously never read Mr. Rodgers' manifesto, or she would have been aware of the fact that Mr. Rodger was already a fervent practitioner of the fine art of masturbation.  With her open mind, Miss Kasparian ought to be able to propose a better solution.

Maggie McNeill writes:
...male sexuality tends to get out of control when untended. I’m sure every sexually experienced female reader knows exactly what I’m talking about; if for some reason you can’t give your man any tail for a while his sexual fantasies and sex talk usually start to get stranger and more extreme as the days go by, and your normal man’s sexuality may go from vanilla to kinky to perverted to weird to just plain sick. Most men don’t really want to do the more unusual stuff they’re talking about, but they sure as hell think about it, and one can only imagine how bad it gets for men who don’t have regular bed partners. Whores, of course, don’t have to imagine; we see all the time what happens when an untended male fire spreads beyond its proper boundaries and endangers others. If the untended male is in the right (or rather, wrong) position these can even become wildfires which threaten entire populations and can cause millions of dollars of damage...
 Miss McNeill includes a sage quote attributed to Marlene Dietrich: "A country without bordellos is like a house without bathrooms."  Mr. Valizadeh's proposal, that we should give men like Mr. Rodger a way to have sex, by encouraging them either to learn how to seduce women, to seek out a Thai wife, or to engage in legalized prostitution, isn't at all unreasonable.   Results of a survey showed that, in the Northeast Isaan region of Thailand, more than 60% of the single women were interested in marrying a foreign husband.  So, why not?


Or, as Miss Kaspasian stated that "we should have an open mind", why don't the Feminists offer Free Sex Saturdays, specifically for men who can't get laid, with special invitations to the autistic?  The Feminists are already enjoying quite a lot of sex with a variety of handsome, high-status men every other day of the week.  What would be the harm in administering orgasms to some less fortunate men, for a few hours every Saturday afternoon?  So long as you didn't collect any fees or donations, there would be no basis for a prostitution charge.  It would be a benevolent act of charity and kindness, and could even result in a large number of conversions to male Feminism.  You might even consider it a form of proselytizing.

While this might reduce the number of sexually-frustrated autistic men going on murder-suicide rampages in the future, as an added precaution, it might be wise to keep them away from knives, guns, and other dangerous weapons. Just be very careful not to bully any autistic people, and keep them all sexually sated.  That ought to put an end to some of the vexations that can lead to killing sprees.



 

Friday, May 16, 2014

Sexual Assault in the Military

In a Yahoo News report today:
Chuck Hagel: Combatting Sexual Assault in Military 'As High a Priority as There Is'
At a time when sexual assault in the military is at an all-time high – with more than 5,000 reported incidents last year – Chuck Hagel says that fixing the problem is one of his highest priorities as defense secretary.
“If we can't protect our own people, then we're going to have a problem,” Hagel said. “We owe it to each other; it is accountability; it is a responsibility of all leaders at every level to deal with this.”...
...“We're not where we need to be yet. We will get there,” he said. “I've made it as high a priority as there is. I meet with all our sexual assault prevention office people once a week for an hour.”
“Our institution … is a different enterprise, the military, from any other,” Hagel also said. “That doesn't mean that they should not comply with laws. Sexual assault is a crime, pure, simple, no matter if it's on a military base or college campus. So you start there.”...
Note that no-one is mentioning the now widely-discredited estimate, from the Defense Manpower Data Center, of 26,000 service members experiencing "unwanted sexual contact."  The "more than 5,000" figure comes from a May 1, 2014 from the American Forces Press Service:
Hagel: Numbers Reflect Victim Confidence in Reporting Assaults
A 50-percent increase in sexual assaults in the armed forces reflected in the Defense Department’s latest annual report indicates growing willingness among victims to report the crime and increasing confidence the military is providing them with support and taking action against perpetrators, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said today.
The latest report -- which covers the period from Oct. 1, 2012, through Sept. 30, 2013 -- says there were 5,061 reports of sexual assault in the Defense Department, a 50-percent jump from the previous year. More than 70 percent of all cases in which the military had jurisdiction resulted in criminal charges, officials said.
“We have a long way to go before we get close to solving this problem,” Hagel said at a Pentagon news conference today where the report’s findings were announced, linking the sharp increase in reports of the crime to steps the military has taken to encourage reporting by victims and prosecution of offenders.
“We believe victims are growing more confident in our system,” the secretary said. “Because these crimes are underreported, we took steps to increase reporting, and that’s what we’re seeing.”
But Hagel said the nearly two dozen directives he has issued over the past year intended to reduce sexual assaults within the military -- including ensuring an appropriate command climate and improving victim support -- have not been enough. “We must do more,” he said, and he announced six additional directives.
“They include a departmentwide review of institutional alcohol policies, which will be revised where necessary to address risks that alcohol poses to others. … They also require new methods to better encourage male victims to report assaults and seek assistance,” he said, noting that DOD officials believe sexual assaults against men constitute half of all cases....
“When commanders took disciplinary action on sexual assault offenses, they moved to court-martial a record 71 percent of alleged perpetrators,” Hagel said. “These results indicated that our investments in training investigators and attorneys are continuing to make a difference in holding offenders accountable.”...
...Ultimately, military officials want to make the Defense Department “the last place a military offender wants to be,” Snow emphasized, adding that victims should know the department is doing everything it can to provide support and eliminate the threat.
“To the offenders: We don’t care who you are or what rank you hold. If you don’t understand our core values and are not prepared to live by and enforce those values every day, then we don’t want you in our military,” Snow concluded.
And, yesterday (May 15) the American Forces Press Service released a report on sexual harassment:
 DOD Releases Figures on Sexual Harassment in Military
Emphasizing that the Defense Department continues to encourage victims to come forward, Pentagon officials released a report today that says just under 1,400 cases of sexual harassment occurred in the military last year.
The congressionally mandated report defines sexual harassment as an unwelcome sexual advance, request for sexual favors or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature that can affect a career, job performance or create an abuse workplace.
Of the 1,366 cases reported, 59 percent were substantiated, the report says. The numbers of people who formally reported a case of harassment and those who made informal complaints were split nearly evenly. Informal allegations are those that were not submitted through a service’s equal opportunity office, but reached commanders through other means.
In releasing the report, a senior Defense Department official told reporters those who alleged sexual harassment were predominately female enlisted members from the same unit as the alleged offender, with the majority holding the pay grades E-1 to E-4. The alleged offenders were predominantly male co-workers in pay grades from E-5 to E-9.
As with cases of sexual assault, DOD officials believe harassment in the military is often under-reported. “We want a climate where everybody reports whenever they’re offended,” one official said.
The reported harassment cases militarywide were significantly lower than the number of reported sexual assaults. Earlier this month, the department reported 5,061 cases of sexual assault for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2013, a 50-percent increase over the previous year. Defense officials said assaults often are preceded by harassment and that they are determined to stamp out both.
“We aren’t leaving any options off the table to prevent sexual harassment,” one DOD official said, with the department expected to place a greater emphasis on improving oversight and training, as well as putting stronger mechanisms in place for managing sexual harassment incidents.
Note that the term sexual harasssment includes actual or attempted rape or sexual assault.  According to the Department of Defense (DoD), there were a heck of a lot more cases of sexual assault in the armed forces than there were instances of sexual harassment.  Given that sexual assault is a subset of sexual harassment, there should have been at least as many cases of sexual harassment as there were of sexual assault.  When I asked Nick Simeone, the author of the above two articles, about the discrepancy, his response was that there was a "legal distinction."  As previously discussed, the DoD's lawyers aren't exactly the universe's most intelligent beings.  Mr. Simeone shouldn't really be paying any attention to them, if he takes his journalism at all seriously.

Of course, alarming stories of sexual assault in the military have been all over the news.  For example, the Deseret News:
'Clear Threat': Reports of Military Sexual Assault leap 50 percent

Reports of sexual assault in the military leapt by 50 percent last year, according to a much-anticipated Pentagon study that came out last week.

The report was released on the heels of a Pentagon campaign to get victims to come forward, but the startling numbers have the attention of politicians and activists...

...more than half of women in the military experience unwanted sexual contact during their service, but it's not only women who are victims: Of the 26,000 reports of sexual assault and harassment made from 2011 to 2012, some 52 percent came from men.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel declared sexual assault a "clear threat" to both male and female service members.

A serious threat

New research shows that women in the military often experience trauma that's not battle related: Half of women that served in Iraq and Afghanistan reported being sexually harassed or assaulted by their peers,...

...the numbers have to be put in context, and include a range of behaviors. "Unwanted sexual touching could be hair stroking, groping, or an attempted or completed rape," she says. Unfortunately, she notes, young women in their early 20's report similar numbers that are alarmingly high in other situations, too. One in five college women report having been sexually assaulted, for example, prompting questions about "rape culture" and a plea from the White House last week asking colleges to seriously address the problem of campus rape.

Across organizations, Street says, those that are historically male-dominated and have a strong hierarchical culture are associated with more sexual harassment — from fire and police departments to Fortune 500 companies...
...The circumstances for sexual assault in a military setting might be especially problematic, says Street, especially in terms of the consequences of reporting attacks. "One of the things that's a real strength in the military is the esprit de corps and sacred purpose of the mission, but when [sexual trauma] happens, it can feel like quite a betrayal," Street says. "It can also make it difficult for victims to report and compromise their team, or make sense of it in the aftermath."

Women report "internal barriers" to reporting, she says. They may ask themselves, "If I report this will it have a negative effect on the mission, or the group's cohesion?"

"Women in the military take their jobs incredibly seriously and think carefully and cautiously," Street says.

There is also a history of "retaliation" toward women who report sexual misconduct, says Sarah Blum, a nurse psychotherapist and Vietnam veteran, and author of "Women Under Fire: Abuse in the Military."...

...Sexual assault in the military has been cast as a women's rights issue, but the latest data shows that men are affected as much as women — or more. In analyzing the Pentagon study's data, the Associated Press found that many more men were victims of assault in 2013 than women.

“About 6.8 percent of women surveyed said they were assaulted and 1.2 percent of the men,” according to the AP. “But there are vastly more men in the military; by the raw numbers, a bit more than 12,000 women said they were assaulted, compared with nearly 14,000 men."

"I think most men are embarrassed, especially because of homosexual stigma in the military," says Rinckey. He notes that men were especially silenced because of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," policy, which banned homosexual behavior in the military. More men may be coming forward now, he says, since "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has been lifted...in "insular" institutions like the military, it is sometimes easier for those in authority to sympathize with perpetrators. "People who find out about [a sexual assault] say, 'Do we want to ruin this guy's career? What about his family? He made a mistake.' Then sometimes people start to rally around the offender."...
The author, Lane Anderson, is using the numbers from the discredited-but-more-dramatic-looking Defense Manpower Data Center survey.  Half of the women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan reported being "sexually harassed or assaulted by their peers", and these instances of sexual harassment or assault may have included "hair stroking."  And, there were thousands of cases of men being buggered by their superior officers.  There weren't any women harassing men:  the clear implication is that men are rapists.

We seem to be operating under two somewhat contradictory assumptions, of which the first must remain understood but unspoken, or you're a "misogynist":
  • women are poor, weak, delicate creatures who have to be protected and sheltered from the filthy habits and foul words of men; and
  • women should be entitled to hold the exact same (or higher) positions as men in the military.
Has everyone forgotten about Lynndie England and Abu Ghraib?




Miss England was convicted of conspiracy, maltreating detainees and committing an indecent act, and consequently spent 18 months in prison and received a dishonorable discharge from the Army.  And, she remains unrepentant:  "saying sorry to the victims of her ridicule would be 'like saying sorry to the enemy'."  The fact that she was involved in torturing people wouldn't ordinarily have bothered anybody.  Vice President (and celebrated chicken hawk) Dick Cheney was a big booster of torture.  Her only real crime was taking pictures that were circulated on the internet, and that embarrassed President Bush.  Particularly after President Bush had gone to so much trouble to portray Saddam Hussein as the evil villain who went around torturing people.  As Barton Gellman and Jo Becker point out:  "Many of the harsh measures [Dick Cheney] championed, and some of the broadest principles undergirding them, have survived intact but out of public view."  The photographs proved so distasteful that even The Economist, which ordinarily takes a pro-Republican view, called for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to resign:


Yeah, right.  Fat chance of that happening.  Interestingly, rather than accusing Miss England of having committed "sexual objectification", Feminists like John Howard and Laura Prividera accuse the "media" of "sexually objectifying" Miss England,  for the sake of "obfuscating military culpability", "preserving patriarchal militarism", and "subordinating women in the US military."  From the Feminist perspective, a woman is never responsible for anything:  it is always "society", or the "patriarchy", or the "media" that are at fault.  Women can do no wrong.

Meanwhile, the US military is stepping up its actions against sex offenders:
US Military Punished Nearly 500 for Sexual Harassment

The US military fired or disciplined nearly 500 workers for sexual harassment in a 12-month period, and nearly 13 per cent of the complaints filed involved repeat offenders, according to new data.

The Pentagon on Thursday released its first formal report on sexual harassment amid months of criticism from Congress over how the department handles sexual assaults and related crimes. According to the report, there were 1,366 reports of sexual harassment filed in the fiscal year that ended September. 30, involving 496 offenders across the services and National Guard...

...The report reveals that in the vast majority of the cases the victim was a young, lower-ranking woman and the offender a senior enlisted male service member, often in the same unit. The most frequent location of the harassment was a military base. More than half of the complaints involved crude or offensive behavior, and another 40 per cent were described as unwanted sexual attention. Most involved verbal behavior. Nearly 60 percent of the complaints were substantiated, and the punishments ranged from court martial and firing to pay cuts, rank demotions, letters of reprimand and other administrative actions....

Oh, the military is on a serious mission, now.  Going after sexual deviants, who might have behaved crudely or offensively, in front of women.  Don't hold back, ladies:  Mr. Hagel wants you to report on them, so that he can gratify himself by hanging some more derrières on the line.  Soldiers: mind your P's and Q's.  Especially when ladies are present.  And, ladies are always going to be present.  Never touch a woman's hair!  And, don't bugger any of the male soldiers!  That's really poor taste!

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel is a veteran of the Vietnam War, and was apparently complicit in a fair amount of murder and mayhem, including the machine-gunning of an orphanage.  He was a squad leader in the 9th Infantry Division, which systematically slaughtered huge numbers of people in the Mekong Delta.  Gang rapes “were a horrifyingly common occurrence.”  What sort of training did our soldiers receive regarding sexual conduct during those less-enlightened times?  Well, here is a training video from that epoch:


Most military recruits are 18-year-old boys who are away from home for the first time.  They have hormones surging through their bodies, and, these days, will have spent much of the previous six-or-so years watching porn clips on the internet.  Of course they want to touch a woman's hair.  And, probably more than that.


In fact, rape was routine during the Vietnam War.  As mentioned previously, since 2005, American soldiers are no longer permitted even to employ a prostitute.  Compared to the 1960s, American soldiers are already quite tame and docile.  From Daniel Denvir:
 ...Rape was also a weapon of war and an enormous number of Vietnamese women, including children, were forced into prostitution.
They were forced into catering to the US war machine one way or another, and one of the prime ways was prostitution. A lot of girls who were sent to it, their villages had been destroyed and they were forced into the cities. And this was a way to provide for their families. The Americans had lots of money to spend and these were young guys, 18, 19, 20 years old.
So it was this flourishing sex trade and then out in the countryside there was what seems to be a tremendous amount of rape and sexual assault.
What I found was extremely disturbing. I recount a few cases where the sexual violence is really shocking. A lot of times I found myself, I felt I didn't have the language to describe exactly what I found in the cases, because rape or even gang rape didn't seem to convey the level of sexual sadism. These are extremely violent gang rapes, or raping women with inanimate objects like bottles or even rifles...
 Now, we seem to have gone completely in the other direction, with a highly Feminized military force, where a man doesn't even dare touch a woman's hair.  The people who say that sexual assault in the military is "at an all time high" don't have the slightest idea what they are talking about.

In January, 2017, we will have a new president, who will choose a new chucklehead to serve as Secretary of Defense, who will have some new silly obsession that will cause a lot of military members to jump through metaphorical hoops.  If it is a Republican, then we will go back to enriching contractors. There is still plenty of time to superordinate women while smashing patriarchal militarism.  As Cynthia Enloe observed in 2000:
There are very few instances in any country of military wives joining in an alliance with military prostitutes and together devising a joint action along with women soldiers, all for the sake of dismantling the usually elaborate ideology of femininity constructed by military authorities to serve their own institutional interests.
Well, that day has come.  As previously mentioned, "women are both the objects and the subjects of their experience of sexual harassment."  The determination of whether a woman has endured "sexual harassment" or "sexual assault" is entirely at the discretion of the woman.  If she claims that you did, said, or thought something that she felt was "sexually harassing", then you're guilty.  There is no way around it.  Just get out of her way, and do your best to stay out of her way.  The women possess a very powerful instrument, entirely at their disposal, to get whatever they want.  In the present case, what they want is to smash the military patriarchy, and turn it into a full-blown matriarchy.


The military is becoming the "behavioral sink" described by John B. Calhoun in his rat experiments.  Aggressive females are taking over, while the males are withdrawing themselves, to engage in solitary pursuits, and to abstain from sex with females.  Glory, Hallelujah!

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Feminism versus Failing Men

 A dearth of "good men" who hold jobs that pay enough to support a wife and her brood has become fodder for politicians (and for people who bring in a good salary by commenting on politicians' comments;  and for bloggers, who comment on both classes of people, just for fun).   Here is Paul Campos' column on Paul Ryan's indictment of poorly paid American men:
Paul Ryan is Victim-Blaming Men Now
Last week Paul Ryan provoked an outcry when he claimed that poverty in America was in large part a product of a "tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working, just generations of men not even thinking of working, or learning the value and the culture of work.".... 

...But another aspect of this much-remarked-on incident has drawn no notice: his focus on inner city men. Ryan's comments seem to be based on an unstated assumption that what he calls the "culture of work" is especially relevant to men. 

That assumption in turn is a product of an increasingly anachronistic and indeed reactionary world view, in which working for money is the epitome of what it means to be a man. More precisely, to be a man, on this view, is to work a "real job" — that is, a job that at least pays enough to allow him to be the provider, the breadwinner, for his family. 

Ryan's inner city men, who have never "learned the value and the culture of work," are therefore not merely failing, but failing specifically as men, by failing to provide for their families. 

The problem with this neat little morality tale is captured by what ought to be some startling statistics. Note that another unstated assumption behind comments such as Ryan's is that the American economy actually produces enough decent-paying jobs to allow a reasonable number of Americans to have such jobs, as long as they embrace "the culture of work." 

To say this isn't the case is an understatement. What is a "good" job, financially speaking? One which pays $50,000 per year? $40,000? $30,000? The latter figure, which represents take-home pay of less than $2000 per month, and which is only twice the minimum wage (which itself has declined sharply in real terms since the 1960s), is an extremely generous definition of what constitutes a decent-paying job. 

But let's use it anyway, to determine how many Americans of working age have such jobs. If we make a couple more unrealistically optimistic assumptions — that nobody under 18 or over 69 is working, and that no one has more than one job — the answer is: three out of 10. 

Nearly 70 percent of American working-age adults do not have jobs that pay at least $30,000 per year, because there are only three such jobs for every 10 American adults between the ages of 18 and 69. In other words, the vast majority of working age Americans cannot possibly acquire decent-paying jobs, even if one defines a decent-paying job extremely broadly, because there aren't nearly enough such jobs, not because people fail to embrace "the culture of work." 

Here's another statistic that those who embrace the culture of math will find relevant to Ryan's claims that inner city men in particular are poor because they have a bad attitude toward gainful employment: the labor force participation rate. This is the percentage of non-institutionalized adults who are either employed or actively seeking work. 

The year Paul Ryan's father reached working age (1948), 86 percent of American men, but only 32 percent of American women, were participating in the labor force. (A large portion of women who worked outside the home were poor, usually non-white, domestic workers. It was fairly unusual for a white middle class woman over 30 to work for income). 

Since then, the labor force participation rate among men has declined by 18 percent, while the rate among women has nearly doubled. Another consequence of this social shift is that most men make less money than they did 40 years ago, even though the country as a whole is vastly wealthier: for 60 percent of men, real wages are actually lower now than they were in 1973. 

Republicans love to talk about the wisdom of the free market in general and the irresistible laws of supply and demand in particular, but Ryan (who is currently touted as his party's economic whiz kid) seems to be failing Econ 101. Poverty in America has nothing to do with the shiftless "inner city" men haunting Paul Ryan's all-too vivid imagination, and everything to do with the fact that seven out of 10 American adults of working age can't get a decent-paying job, because those jobs don't exist. 

In a culture in which it's now assumed that every non-elderly adult who isn't a full-time student or the primary caretaker of small children should be working for wages, this fact has especially devastating consequences for precisely those men whose plight Ryan addressed in such an "inarticulate" way.
It isn't just that more women have entered the workforce, and are competing against men for the same jobs.  Women are now overtaking men, both academically and professionally.  As Elizabeth Church points out:
In a red-brick building at the University of Guelph, where veterinarians have been schooled for the better part of a century, a demographic shift is taking place that offers a window into the future of human behaviour. 

In the past decade, Ontario Veterinary College has seen its student numbers turned on their head: Women account for more than 80 per cent of its students during that time, and now make up more than half of the province's practising vets. 
It's an extreme example of a story that is playing out on campuses in Canada and around the world - and a trend that could have profound social implications. There are now three female undergraduates for every two male students on Canadian campuses, and more women than men graduated with higher education degrees in 75 of 98 countries examined in a recent UNESCO study. 
Women are expected to gain more power in public and corporate life and more financial independence. 
Faced with a dwindling number of potential mates who are their education equals, however, researchers speculate more women may take a pass on the traditional family, or be more willing to leave it when things don't work. And more men may find themselves tending to hearth and home. 
"We are an example of things to come," says Serge Desmarais, Guelph's associate vice-president, academic, and a psychologist who specializes in gender studies. "Imagine 30 years from now when 60, 70 per cent of the people who are educated are women. It has to change the ratio of who does what. And that has huge social ramifications."
Economist Ross Finnie agrees. "It's a whole new world," says Prof. Finnie, who teaches public policy at the University of Ottawa. "This is a complete flip-around from not so long ago. I think the direction of change is almost certain. I don't think it's ridiculous to say women will have the upper hand in a way they haven't in the past.".... 
..."There is a feeling men can take care of themselves - clearly that is not true. If that were true, we wouldn't be seeing this growing gap." Men's failure to go on to higher education in the same numbers as women is a "demographic bomb," she warns, that will hurt Canada's ability to compete and limit men's potential.... 
...In the United States, favouritism toward male applicants is suspected at some liberal arts colleges....The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights last month began an inquiry into accusations that private schools are discriminating against women to prevent campuses from becoming "too female," fearing this will discourage others from applying....

 Harold Meyerson discusses another factor that has contributed to reduced incomes for American men:
....By now, even the most ossified right-wing economists concede that globalization has played a major role in the loss of American manufacturing jobs and, more broadly, the stagnation of U.S. wages and incomes. Former Federal Reserve vice chairman Alan Blinder has calculated that 22 percent to 29 percent of all U.S. jobs could potentially be offshored. That’s a lot of jobs: 25 percent would translate to 36 million workers whose wages are in competition with those in largely lower-income nations. Of the 11 nations with which the United States is negotiating the TPP, nine have wage levels significantly lower than ours. 

Trade agreements that promote the relocation of U.S. corporations’ factories to nations like China and Mexico have played a central role in the evisceration of American manufacturing and the decline in U.S. workers’ incomes. Two out of three displaced manufacturing workers who got new jobs between 2009 and 2012, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, experienced wage reductions — most of them greater than 20 percent....

 Another circumstance that is cutting perhaps more dramatically into the jobs available for men is fierce advances in technology, which have made a large number of previously-high paying jobs unnecessary.

With increased trade, escalating female participation, and proliferating technology, there is definitely reduced need for people to work. Left to itself, reduced demand would translate into diminishing wages.  And, decreasing leisure for workers, who are striving to cling desperately to any job that they might have.  Indeed, the USA is increasingly falling behind many other nations in terms of quality of life and median incomes.

Probably the best thing that we could do, to turn around low wages and to reduce despair, would be to curtail the number of workers.  Thanks to female participation, we now have twice as many people competing for jobs in the workforce.  Wages have plummeted, and union membership has dwindled dramatically.  If all women were to leave the workforce, then competition for the remaining workers would force wages up.  A man would, once again, earn enough to support a wife and her brood.  This solution, of course, would be highly impractical at this point.  Other ideas for decreasing the supply of workers include reducing the retirement age, and implementing a negative income tax, similar to that proposed by Milton Friedman.


People who want more crap than what their negative income tax affords them can go out and work.

There are those who say that massive military spending during World War II precipitated the end of the Great Depression, and that a similar military campaign would be the solution to our present woes.  Two wars going on at the same time during the last decade didn't really help anything.  Sure, politically-connected military contractors (especially Haliburton) raked in a lot of money.


But, soldiering and working for contractors don't generally pay well.  Moreover, reducing the working age population through war deaths doesn't seem especially practical any more, as modern war technologies have reduced casualties, at least on our side, and at least compared to, say, the Civil War, when opposing sides would simply line up and murder each other with muskets and bayonets.  The Battle of Gettysburg disposed of about 50,000 men and boys over a 3-day period.  The Vietnam War succeeded in eliminating just over 50,000 American lives, but over a 10-year period.  Public works projects, like the Works Progress Administration, would provide jobs that at least furnished things that the American public could enjoy, and without causing too many people to die.  However, public works projects tend to be less favored by unscrupulous politicians of Dick Cheney's ilk, who can make themselves extremely wealthy off of wars.

While public works projects do seem like a win-win scenario, we should also bear in mind that there is world-wide over-population and ongoing rape of the planet's resources.  Men failing may be a purely natural phenomenon, as discussed and described in John B. Calhoun's "behavioral sink" experiments with rats during the 1960s. The experiments demonstrated what naturally happens when a loss of social roles occur in any species of social animal, where subsistence is still 'freely' offered:  the males start to groom themselves incessantly, and lose interest in copulating with females, as is precisely what we see in the technologically advanced nations of South Korea and Japan.



The males also fail to defend against aggressors--with females becoming increasingly the aggressors; videlicet the "mean girl" phenomenon, where women fight amongst themselves, for status, or merely for sport.

Humans may inherently be peaceful, loving beings, that get along well in small social groups, sharing sex, possessions, food, etc., with the village raising the children, with all the aunties and uncles and all of that.  Solid social roles are the way of life of the small village.  But, the present global civilization is affecting the Earth as a growing virus.  "Failing men" may just be the cure for this virus.

From the Wikipedia:
 ...The universe was a 9-foot (2.7 m) square metal pen with 54-inch-high (1.4 m) sides. Each side had four groups of four vertical, wire mesh “tunnels”. The “tunnels” gave access to nesting boxes, food hoppers, and water dispensers. There was no shortage of food or water or nesting material. There were no predators. The only adversity was the limit on space....

...Initially the population grew rapidly, doubling every 55 days. The population reached 620 by day 315, after which the population growth dropped markedly. The last surviving birth was on day 600. This period between day 315 and day 600 saw a breakdown in social structure and in normal social behavior. Among the aberrations in behavior were the following: expulsion of young before weaning was complete, wounding of young, inability of dominant males to maintain the defense of their territory and females, aggressive behavior of females, passivity of non-dominant males with increased attacks on each other which were not defended against. After day 600, the social breakdown continued and the population declined toward extinction. During this period females ceased to reproduce. Their male counterparts withdrew completely, never engaging in courtship or fighting. They ate, drank, slept, and groomed themselves – all solitary pursuits. Sleek, healthy coats and an absence of scars characterized these males. They were dubbed “the beautiful ones”.
 The conclusions drawn from this experiment were that when all available space is taken and all social roles filled, competition and the stresses experienced by the individuals will result in a total breakdown in complex social behaviors, ultimately resulting in the demise of the population.
 Calhoun saw the fate of the population of mice as a metaphor for the potential fate of man. He characterized the social breakdown as a “second death”, with reference to the “second death” mentioned in the Biblical book of Revelation 2:11. His study has been cited by writers such as Bill Perkins as a warning of the dangers of the living in an "increasingly crowded and impersonal world"....
If one looks at many internet conversations, it is clear that there is a great deal of male resentment against the changing gender roles:  particularly the increasing domination of women.  And, many women seem bitter about the modern man.  For example, Kay Hymowitz:

Where Have The Good Men Gone?

Not so long ago, the average American man in his 20s had achieved most of the milestones of adulthood: a high-school diploma, financial independence, marriage and children. Today, most men in their 20s hang out in a novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. This "pre-adulthood" has much to recommend it, especially for the college-educated. But it's time to state what has become obvious to legions of frustrated young women: It doesn't bring out the best in men.

"We are sick of hooking up with guys," ... "Guys talk about 'Star Wars' like it's not a movie made for people half their age; a guy's idea of a perfect night is a hang around the PlayStation with his bandmates, or a trip to Vegas with his college friends.... They are more like the kids we babysat than the dads who drove us home."...

....pre-adulthood represents a momentous sociological development. It's no exaggeration to say that having large numbers of single young men and women living independently, while also having enough disposable income to avoid ever messing up their kitchens, is something entirely new in human experience. Yes, at other points in Western history young people have waited well into their 20s to marry, and yes, office girls and bachelor lawyers have been working and finding amusement in cities for more than a century. But their numbers and their money supply were always relatively small. Today's pre-adults are a different matter. They are a major demographic event.

What also makes pre-adulthood something new is its radical reversal of the sexual hierarchy. Among pre-adults, women are the first sex. They graduate from college in greater numbers (among Americans ages 25 to 34, 34% of women now have a bachelor's degree but just 27% of men), and they have higher GPAs. As most professors tell it, they also have more confidence and drive. These strengths carry women through their 20s, when they are more likely than men to be in grad school and making strides in the workplace. In a number of cities, they are even out-earning their brothers and boyfriends.

Still, for these women, one key question won't go away: Where have the good men gone? Their male peers often come across as aging frat boys, maladroit geeks or grubby slackers—a gender gap neatly crystallized by the director Judd Apatow in his hit 2007 movie "Knocked Up." ...

...So where did these pre-adults come from? You might assume that their appearance is a result of spoiled 24-year-olds trying to prolong the campus drinking and hook-up scene while exploiting the largesse of mom and dad. But the causes run deeper than that. Beginning in the 1980s, the economic advantage of higher education—the "college premium"—began to increase dramatically. Between 1960 and 2000, the percentage of younger adults enrolled in college or graduate school more than doubled. In the "knowledge economy," good jobs go to those with degrees. And degrees take years....

...Pre-adulthood can be compared to adolescence, an idea invented in the mid-20th century as American teenagers were herded away from the fields and the workplace and into that new institution, the high school. For a long time, the poor and recent immigrants were not part of adolescent life; they went straight to work, since their families couldn't afford the lost labor and income. But the country had grown rich enough to carve out space and time to create a more highly educated citizenry and work force. Teenagers quickly became a marketing and cultural phenomenon. They also earned their own psychological profile. One of the most influential of the psychologists of adolescence was Erik Erikson, who described the stage as a "moratorium," a limbo between childhood and adulthood characterized by role confusion, emotional turmoil and identity conflict....

...What explains this puerile shallowness? I see it as an expression of our cultural uncertainty about the social role of men. It's been an almost universal rule of civilization that girls became women simply by reaching physical maturity, but boys had to pass a test. They needed to demonstrate courage, physical prowess or mastery of the necessary skills. The goal was to prove their competence as protectors and providers. Today, however, with women moving ahead in our advanced economy, husbands and fathers are now optional, and the qualities of character men once needed to play their roles—fortitude, stoicism, courage, fidelity—are obsolete, even a little embarrassing....

...Single men have never been civilization's most responsible actors; they continue to be more troubled and less successful than men who deliberately choose to become husbands and fathers. So we can be disgusted if some of them continue to live in rooms decorated with "Star Wars" posters and crushed beer cans and to treat women like disposable estrogen toys, but we shouldn't be surprised.

Relatively affluent, free of family responsibilities, and entertained by an array of media devoted to his every pleasure, the single young man can live in pig heaven—and often does. Women put up with him for a while, but then in fear and disgust either give up on any idea of a husband and kids or just go to a sperm bank and get the DNA without the troublesome man. But these rational choices on the part of women only serve to legitimize men's attachment to the sand box. Why should they grow up? No one needs them anyway. There's nothing they have to do....
And, "where have all the good men gone?" seems to have become a popular refrain among America's females.


According to Phil Zimbardo:


we are playing too many video games and watching too much pornography.  And, in Gary Wilson's opinion,


we're watching far too much pornography for our own good.

With regard to Mr. Ryan's comments posted above, it seems odd for Mr. Ryan to be bringing up the topic of "failed men", when not only does he not have anything to offer the "failed men", but the majority of us are now "failed men."  Perhaps he is trying to shame us into voting Republican, or into signing up for the Tea Party?  Maybe it works: the Tea Party seems to be largely made up of failed White men who have plenty of time on their hands, as David Duke points out:



Obviously, by "tailspin of culture in the inner city", Mr. Ryan is referring strictly to Black American men, and is playing to the prejudices of a White American audience.  If one examines college enrollment by ethnicity:


White men are also trailing White women (also, Hispanic, Black and Asian women).  It isn't strictly a "Black" or "Inner City" problem.  White boys in posh suburbs are also "failing."  Still, it should be acknowledged that the problems associated with being a Black male in America are compounded by our criminal justice system, which locks away a lot of people, but especially Black men.  To the point where quite a lot of Black American women are complaining that they can't find an acceptable man to marry.


The woman in the video above says that she has a 5-year-old child (presumably fathered by a sexy alpha male with an apparently desirable genetic makeup), and she is looking for a man (most likely a beta who is at least somewhat sexually desireable, but who has a good income) who will help to raise her child. But, such men are in short supply, particularly within the Black community. And, the supply is only going to get shorter, across all communities. Economically-successful Black men do seem to have a lot of options and a relatively-high value in the mating market,

 
which can only make things tougher for the "sisters" with children.

Regarding the men who have never "learned the value and the culture of work", and who are failing specifically as men, by failing to provide for their families: expanding the military, and doing public works projects, would provide some employment for men.  But, these would be primarily low-wage jobs: not really the archaic "bring home the bacon" kind of jobs. The higher-payer jobs are going to go to the better-educated women. Moreover, a lot of the boys who do well in school are the unaggressive, nerdy betas, who will be ill-equipped to deal with and compete against the domineering, aggressive alpha females in the workplace. The women are going to bully them and push them out of the workforce all together.
 
Chris Rock raises an excellent point:


Women want everything. Men just want food, sex and silence. Going out and courting a woman can be a major hassle and a lot of trouble.  Especially in America these days.  Most of us will experience a heck of a lot more failures than successes. And, the Feminists like to emphasize that "sex is not an entitlement!" Even if we somehow succeed in finding a woman who is willing to participate in coitus, then we won't be getting any silence (unless she becomes angry for some reason, and gives us the "silent treatment").  With our internet porn, we can at least get our dopamine rush, and then we can relax and enjoy the silence.  Why would anyone choose to become a soldier and risk death, even with the promise of 72 virgins in Paradise, when he can just turn on his computer, and have 72,000 "virgins" at his fingertips? 

A man can experience sublime happiness, as long as he has a cheap place to stay, some decent food, and a high-speed internet connection. Striving for anything more is just a waste of effort, and drags us away from the computer. The women can go ahead and knock themselves out to buy a big house in the suburbs, the latest fashions, the luxury car, the classy furniture, etc. etc. The men, it would seem, finally have life figured out.


We are in the midst of a rather dramatic demographic shift. The Patriachy no longer exists. Every man for himself. Every woman for herself. No-one can count on anyone or anything.  A lot of women who somehow think that they need (or deserve) a man are just going to have to get over it, and take care of themselves.  Or, horror of horrors, take Lori Gottlieb's advice, and "Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling 'Bravo!' in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics...settling will probably make you happier in the long run, since many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year."  Collaring and seducing some lonely guy rejected by all of femaledom, and persuading him to marry you, is generally easy to achieve, if you are desperate enough to lower your status against the rest of womankind.


Perhaps many women would prefer to follow Miss Gottlieb's example, and get artificially inseminated just before their residual reproductive value hits zero.  Then, they could think about joining a colony of Feminist belly dancers.