I've had the unhappy privilege of being exposed to a lot of anti-pornography, radical feminist propagandizing of late, which has cemented my belief that most women cannot acknowledge their true natures (a la Camille Paglia). I suggest reading Roissy to dissect all the pretty little lies feminism has tried to cultivate into mainstream consciousness.

What I'm really trying to get at, is that the feminist goal is fruitless. It aims for a gender neutral society, insofar as the ends meet a manufactured definition of a politically correct utopia. De-construct that! The very last thing women really want is gender neutrality: they want men to be traditionally men, just like men don't desire the en vogue concept of the androgynous woman.

Corroding the institution of marriage, coupled with unchecked hypergamous instincts, have made women unhappy. The truth is hard, cold, and corroborated. Meanwhile, we have a whole substratum of men who are sexually frustrated and unable to marry, versus a small minority of men who are loosely sleeping around and unwilling to marry.

The facts are neatly laid out; the very nucleus of society, the family, is crumbling (if not crumbled), while liberals hollowly cheer their progressivist call.

I saw Alex's recent column touching on feminism and was reminded of some of my recent interactions with mothers. I know these women through work and have to talk to them for work-related material, but being a new father the subject of children always comes up.

I'm aware of social boundaries, particularly in the work place, so when I get started on a topic I feel passionately about I'm always very careful what I say at work. A couple of women talked about how they hate the idea of day care but really need their job. One told me "feminism sucks" when I finally eased the conversation toward the idea that we're stuck in a conundrum of two incomes being necessary to maintain our modern standard of living. Our entire economy is built on the idea now that both parents will work full time and contribute to the economic pie, even if part of that contribution is day care for children who would otherwise be at home. Who wouldn't see this as completely backwards?

I used the example of student loans. Way back when, before student loans, colleges were selective but even private universities weren't insanely expensive. Since everyone paid their own way or borrowed money from the school at very low interest rates, say 1%, if they needed to, colleges & universities focused on learning instead of money. Once you involve student loans to give people the "opportunity to learn", even though that opportunity always existed, it artificially inflates the cost of education. Down the road, you have insanely high tuition rates and people end up having to borrow money to pay it off with future income, another symptom of our debt culture. Never mind the fact that now everyone goes to school for a bachelor's, watering down the meaning for those who truly belonged in an advanced academic environment after grade school.

The same is true for the women's movement. If you inject a ton of new people into the work force, a few years later you'll have a spike in economic growth because family incomes on average have increased but prices haven't caught up yet. When companies finally realized they could charge more for services like day care and school, and credit card companies realized they could get more people to borrow more money, prices climbed. Now day care is barely worth the tradeoff to go to work for many women. Who would want to pay a good salary for someone making $10/hour to raise their child for 8 hours/day?

No wonder even women tell me that feminism sucks.

Roissy dropped this excellent post a few days ago about a guy who refused to pay a woman a drink at the bar. I hope most men reading this already know women today take advantage of traditional chivalry as a way to freeride. This only emphasizes an important point about feminism in general: it's not really about equality, it's about power.

This is the tricky dualism many men fall for. They only see the public woman, which seems to be behave and think like women have always done, but with the added spice of gender equality. Yet behind that public face there's a private face. The private woman plans how to best take advantage of the modern situation. It's not conspiracy talk, it's power psychology, or whatever you wanna call it. Modern women want us men to:

- Buy them things before we're committed to each other
- Do the traditional housework they've always done, in addition to all else we do
- Accept them like they want to be, but us to abandon our masculine identity
- Accept them to screw around, but give up our screwing
- Go to war for their security

There's more, but you see the pattern. We make sacrifices without getting anything in return. The secret to avoid being fooled by women's power play is to play it back, but better. The only way to do this is not to sacrifice anything you don't have to, unless you're sure you're going to get something in return. You don't buy women things if you've just met them. You don't give up your gender identity because women happen to be confused about theirs. Put simply, modern men shouldn't be screwed over. And I think they'll find, over time, that this is also the best way to win a woman over on your side, anyway.

On the first day of Grade Twelve secondary school English, my teacher posed the question, "If you are a feminist, raise your hand." Everyone in the class (males included) did. She admittedly professed it was more hands than she expected, and so, it provided her with no context to engage in rigged debate with some poor student who dare challenge her. Point being: it is no longer revolutionary to consider yourself a feminist, in fact, it is status quo.

When I share that I am not a feminist, I often get asked, "But don't you appreciate the right to vote? Or for pay equity?" I do, but what I am really targeting is not the feminism of yore, but third-wave contemporary feminism, which actually fails to have a unifying philosophy. I cannot ascribe to a movement that is confused about its mission. In fact, feminism is a wonderful encapsulation of liberal values: a self-undermining mish-mash of hyper-inclusivity.

A feminist is any woman who voices her opinion under the umbrella of feminism - mainly to be perceived as progressive - which is how opposing debates amongst purported feminists (whatever meaning that term then holds) arise. The Islamic headscarf debate oscillates between two different perceived forms of liberation. Feminism accomplishes nothing, and so my qualm with it is in regards to its meaninglessness philosophically, and the stagnation in thought people seem to blindly applaud.

Most people are complacently feminist, and all I ask is for is some active consideration about what that means, much less what that entails for society...

The home is your sanctuary. This is where you go to rest, heal and relax after having made it through another work day. At least this is how it used to be, until people began to intellectualize private life with ideology. Now there is a whole army of feminists who demand every aspect of house work to be organized around ideological principles.

I have in the past, and will continue to reject any woman who wants to divide up all housework equally according to some scheme, ideological or not. The reason why is not really ideological but practical: I simply don't have the energy nor the time to complicate the way I live and work at home. I have more important things to worry about than how many times I've made the dishes, if I vacuum cleaned this week or not, if it's my turn to buy groceries etc. I just do it when I feel it needs to be done, and don't expect anyone to bother or care.

People who want to enforce equality at home have too much free time on their hands, because if they managed children and a full time job, they'd realize that things simply need to be done. Ideally, both genders help out, each according to ability, not some holy principle set above reality. Even though it'd be amusing to see these women stuff their hands down drain pipes and drag out seven years of shit, it doesn't cut it for me. I don't care if they wanna do it or not. Someone has to, and if it's me or someone else who takes responsibility, I don't care.

Gender war is tearing us apart--we need to think in terms of compatibility, and in that game man and woman are rarely equal, but always collaborating for a higher goal: to make things work.

Is the world we (Westerners) live in really that horrible? Of course not. In many ways it's never been better. However, as we all know, a prophecy of Crappiness is slowly taking over our minds in the West. In short, we're supposed to feel guilty about the way we live. Some people use it as a convenient excuse to justify inaction. How about this one, which I was served as late as a week ago when discussing the Future:

Woman: I don't wanna have kids.

Me: Mmkay. Why?

Woman: ...becaaaaause.....we're living in such a horrible world.

Hold it. Rewind. Horrible world? Are you kidding me? A few generations ago most Swedish women would count on at least 1/3 of their offspring would die from either hunger, poverty or poor social conditions. Today they'd probably die because of overeating or accidentally swallowing a video game. Women today pull this argument a lot to justify their unwillingness to form a family, but I think it all pretty much comes down to hormones.

Women who are not very feminine, e.g. have less of estrogen, usually don't get along all that well with children. They don't think they're cute, they're mostly in the way, and their childishness becomes somewhat of a problem. Women like that feel emotionally alien to the task of motherhood, and so they rationalize their emotional viewpoint by saying the world is shit. Well, it's not, and even if it was, it's a lousy argument for a lot of reasons:

(1) Even if it was horrible, it hasn't stopped millions of mothers to give birth before in history, or today.

(2) Good thing you're aware of this horrible state we're in, because that means you can pass that knowledge on to your child and teach it to change the world to make a better place.

(3) Exactly how do you add to the world of horror, or avoid its crappiness, by having a child?

(4) Every child, everywhere, is going to face horror sooner or later in life. Maybe it's better with sooner rather than later.

As I've said before, I don't have a problem with unfeminine women or feminists in general. I like most of them. I just realize that many of them will not become mothers, and I wish they'd stand for what they are instead of trying to justify their emotions with lousy arguments that are supposed to convince other women of their righteousness. Let's face it girls, you're a minority. Most women love pink colors, cute babies and French kissing. The crappiness-argument is bullshit, and we all know it, so let's move on (and have some kids).

I say what Bill Hicks would have said: PIECE-OF-SHIT. This is really a garbage movie and the only reason I write this review is to explain why. The story is simple. A nerdy WoW-player lives an abandoned life on a planet invaded by zombies. This is our story teller. Few humans have survived. One of them is a tough-guy loner who is crazy about a certain brand of fast food. Two sisters, young and pretty, naturally, have also survived. The four of them team up and this is basically what the movie is about.

There are many things that make this movie a really shitty one. The soundtrack theme, Metallica's classic For Whom the Bell Tolls, is completely out of place. The casting and storyline is boring. We've seen at least a hundred zombie films, some actually worth watching, but this one is generic to the point where it gets ridiculous. To make this up, the directors have played "smart" and turned the zombie killing into an ironic video game with "rules" to follow. It doesn't work.

Yet, we all know Hollywood produces at least twenty of these useless flicks every year, so why does this particular movie bother me so much? Martin has kind of laid the groundwork for my commentary already. The main character is no longer a masculine super hero, or even a bad imitation of one. It's a nerd. A loser. Someone who spends his life avoiding family by playing WoW, eating shit food, pissing in a jar, and walking on pink clouds as soon as a girl comes over. He's not just a nobody, he's a perfect example of someone who is wasting his life.

This is supposed to be the character we all sympathize with. Are young guys in their 20s watching this movie and really connecting with this character? The loneliness? The desperation? The nerdiness? The weakness? If this is the best we can do 2010, we're screwed already. Only a minority of guys should recognize themselves in this character. Yet I have a strange feeling this is a universal, Westernized persona. And of course, the nerd smartens up in the end, beats down a zombie, and gets the good-looking chick in the end for it. Is that realistic? Of course not. He's still a loser. In other words, feminists must be cheering by now. They've already domesticated us on screen.

But in the eyes of WoW-players who no longer feel responsible for their families--for the people who actually pay money to go and see this shit--he's more than they could ever dream of. The fact that it receives higher IMDb rating than Dellamorte Dellamore and equal rating to Dawn of the Dead, proves my point. Never before has a movie about "hope" made me so turned off.

Click here to automatically donate us a few cents for hosting, but plz don't buy this garbage.

Antidote: we're coming to take back what's ours.

Let's throw the idea out: Is there a possibility of a future post-feminist society? Most political trends only last ten or so years, and it's only recently that we've seen governments actively promote a feminist-socialist agenda, so why not? Assuming we're right, I see two interesting patterns that may exist then, and to varying degrees right now:

1. Female incompetence: When women abandon their traditional gender roles, ironically, they are also weakening their own individual power and status in society. Men still repair cars, compose symphonies and manage government agencies. Modern women, on the other hand, increasingly fail on basic tasks like child raising, cooking, cleaning, crafts and traditional clothing. Instead we're seeing an army of men taking over these fields at homes all across the West. This means that men are now managing work traditionally associated with both genders. Guess which gender is going to remain at the top.

2. An enlarged Nanny State: But there's a catch in this otherwise positive trend pattern, and that's the ever-increasing welfare State. When women abandon their individuality and self-responsibility by lowering their competence, someone is going to have to tend to these things. Just look at food: since few women today know how to cook nurturing food for a family, we're seeing ready-made dinners in plastic boxes at the supermarket. God knows what's in that shit. I predict we'll see a bigger government interference with our lives as a result of this female incompetence. Already women are at the forefront of socialist movements, demanding gender-oriented affirmative action and socialized health care/child care/elder care. This pattern, I predict, will not be restricted to party. The Democrats/liberals will nanny us with government bureaucracies, the Republicans/conservatives will nanny us with multinational corporations.

Men who roughly agree with me that these are two serious trends emerging out of the hell that is socialist feminism, will also find a way to circumvent the worst problems and empower themselves and the women they love to escape the madness of The Crowd.

Did you think feminism was a united matriarchal front in the West? If so, this may surprise you, and give you a few good laughs on the way. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Swedish-American cultural divide within the feminist movement. It all starts with Swedish feminists celebrating Elin Nordegren's assault on Tiger Woods:

“Swing it again, Elin!” wrote Jan Helin, editor in chief of Aftonbladet, the country's biggest newspaper, on his personal blog. One of the paper's top reporters, Ann Söderlund, proclaimed, “Thank God for girls like Elin. Next time, I hope she uses a bigger club."

Britta Svensson, a well-known columnist at the tabloid Expressen and a former U.S.-based correspondent, commented, “Our Swedish hearts are overwhelmed with pride, because our very own Elin didn’t take any s—. Just like a tough Swedish girl shouldn't. Elin is our heroine.”

Beat your man down if he's cheating on you--good idea. Of course, feminism using its funny logic, I don't suppose it would be valid for a man to beat down his cheating wife? This is the question a nervous American feminist asks herself:

If Swedish cultural commentators want the world to know that Swedish women stand for divorcing cheaters, I think that’s fine—if a bit odd. If they want the world to know that Swedish women stand for beating the cheaters and then divorcing them, I think that’s a fucked up standard to set for an entire country of girls and boys. Plenty of Swedish girls will grow up to be cheaters, too—do we want their future spouses to grow up thinking it’s empowering to physically assault them for screwing around?

What you gotta be aware of here is that the people cheering Elin's golf swinging aren't all hardcore feminists. No, they're simply ordinary public journalists. Yes, this is the Swedish cultural climate anno 2009. And the American feminists cannot believe what they read. But if Swedish feminists make American women upset, how about when strong, independent women from America--the kind of women Swedish feminists worship, come to visit Sweden? The fun never ends. I present to you Anna Anka:

Anna Anka had an interview published on the Swedish web site newsmill.se where she expressed her wish to be considered a role model for Swedish women and that Swedish men are to equal and should not become diaper- changing house maids they should instead become more like American men, who according to Anna know how to treat a woman but cannot spend more than 20 minutes with their kid without having a panic attack.

Anna Anka’s comments have caused some upset feelings in Sweden, the country of “lagom”, just enough, and “jamstalldhet” equality between the sexes. Obviously it is not politically correct to claim that being a so called house wife can be the goal in life for a Swedish woman. To also claim that such a person would be a role model for Swedish women is of course provocative.

Are American feminists reading this? Yes, it's not a joke. Suggesting that being a housewife is a good thing creates public uproar in Sweden. Not among feminists, but among millions of ordinary Swedish women. Anna Anka became such a huge media figure because of her comments that she ended up at Swedish television during Christmas prime time for several hours. How evil can this woman be? Let's look at what upset so many people, including Swedish feminists:

Anna Anka: “I want to become a role model for Swedish women. In Sweden it is allowed to let oneself degrade, as soon as one has caught a man. I feel sorry for Swedish men. They marry beautiful women that quickly turn unattractive, dress themselves in rags and ignore their husband’s needs.”

I don't know if this is specific for Swedish women, but we all know it's true. Swedish women have been told they're candy forever and only need to look after their own needs. No wonder we cannot sustain happy marriages anymore.

Anna Anka: It was so nice to come to a country [USA]where men know how to treat a woman. Here men take care of the economy, anything else would be an insult to the woman and to the man in the relationship. Overall, American men have so much more style than Swedish men. If you go to a business lunch it never happens that the woman pays, while a Swedish man does not hesitate to insult the woman by allowing her to look for money while he himself is calculating his part of the bill. American men know how to woe a woman. They are very romantic and buy expensive gifts.

Swedish men refrain from paying for dates for two reasons. One, they aren't allowed to, because that would upset their dates, who wouldn't feel "independent" enough. Two, they're afraid their dates will just screw them over on food and drinks. I bet the cultural climate here differs a lot from conservative America.

Anna Anka: Then we have the dads. Swedish dads are pathetic, changing diapers and their equality. A real American man panics if he is alone with his kid for more than 20 minutes. American dads do not cook, they do not iron their clothes, they work and support their families.

I'm not sure American men are that impotent, but what we do know is that Swedish men do everything to try to be equal. And no, it probably doesn't turn women on anyway, so it's just a waste of time.

Anna Anka: American men however, appreciate their wives, they are very romantic. They write little notes, call and leave love messages on the phone. Swedish men never do that.

Leaving notes at phones? Swedish women would call the police. They'd probably file a lawsuit about gender discrimination as well to make some cash.

Anna Anka: and the Swedish people are upset over the fact that I am married to an older man......Remember that people that try to make you look small, are really trying to drag you down to their own level, and that people have the ability to focus on the negative. No one puts up a sign saying Watch out for the nice dog!

She's hilariously clumsy, but she's right: Why are we beating down on her for working out at the gym and trying to look attractive for her husband? Why do women dress out at clubs and parties in the first place? To attract mates. Why would that condition change just because they get in relationships? This is basic evolutionary knowledge, but Sweden missed the train.

Anna Anka: Here [in the USA sic] the mums do not nag on their daughters about education and going to college, instead they encourage them to find an athlete or a celebrity! Isn’t that wonderful?

Well, in a way it is, because right now every Swedish girl growing up is told that she needs to become a college genius. Most of them will spend their time chasing careers, but missing motherhood at the age of 40. By that time they either go to Denmark to buy sperm or cyber date any random man coming along that's up for the task.
Of course, Anka says all of this about Hollywood to piss Swedish women off; what she says is half-dumb, half-true.

Anna Anka: What I would like to say is that in the USA it is all about service. It employs a lot of people who otherwise would have lived in poverty. If the Swedish people had learnt from the USA the Swedes would have time for each other. Now they come home and are in a bad mood and need to clean the house and iron clothes. There is no quality time. Then we have a gigantic problem with the new Internet generation. It is uneducated and cheap, and their lives on blogs and twitter are pointless.

Now you understand why this woman pisses Sweden off. She pushes buttons. No one wants to be told that their life is shit. But if our government-managed jobs really suck, we really don't have that much money after taxes, we really feel our family life is a drag, and if our children are already lost in cyber space and lagging behind in school--why do we try to shoot the messenger?

All of you reading are now sitting on one final question: How could Sweden get this bad? Novaseeker over at the Spearhead answers that question brilliantly:

What “works” in Sweden (even assuming it does so there … chat with some Swedish men about that … I know I have and what I have been told is not very complementary) would not in a million years work in the large, ethnically and culturally diverse Anglosphere countries. But the left, being filled with dreamy idealists, can’t see that reality beyond the end of their own upwardly-turned noses.

Like liberal democracy, socialism and Apple computers, Scandinavian feminism "works." But it won't last. We, aware citizens, are part of a once great civilization. It's sinking. We have to make sure we do not go down with it. Joyfully we anticipate the decline, because we are the few who will rise above.

HT: The Spearhead

As an aside in a movie review, Ricky Raw mentioned that he doesn't care for men's rights advocates:

I’ve been trying to preach to guys out there about how to be stronger, better men and there seems to be a lot of readers who instead take my writings as license to blame women for everything under the sun and whine and wallow in self-pity. It sickens me. I talk about the damage radical feminism has done to male identity as a means to an end, and that end is to grow into better men. But many guys out there miss the point and want to remain exactly the same and instead make whining about radical feminism and emasculation the end game. They worship the scars they received from rejection, emasculation, heartbreak, divorce court and don’t make any effort to heal and grow stronger. I especially find this among people who find my blog from reading Men’s Rights blogs and as a result make the mistake of thinking I’m a fellow Men’s Rights Advocate (I’m not. In fact my attitude toward the Men’s Rights crowd is pretty similar to Roosh’s).

That got me thinking... I don't much care for that stuff either, though my reasons are different.

Sure, a lot of anti-feminism comes down to wanting to favor loser guys at the expense of normal guys, and that I will never understand. I can understand, though, why some guys complain about having to pay massive child support, getting screwed in divorce court etc. That stuff causes a ton of harm. Still, I could never bring myself to argue that those child support and divorce laws should be changed. The reason is I understand what they're for and who they're aimed at.

Child support isn't needed to keep children from starving; children in this country haven't starved due to poverty in decades. It's needed to keep guys like me from having a dozen children with a dozen different women. Punitively expensive divorce is there to keep guys like me from divorcing a woman when her attractiveness declines faster than mine, and replacing her with a younger equivalent. Sure, I could complain that I want to have lots of children with lots of different women, and trade wives for a younger model every five years, but I have to admit that the fact that I can't afford either makes society more stable and makes the world a better place.

I guess in the old days we had social sanctions against these kinds of behaviors, but that isn't going to work anymore, and we need something else in place. Having the government make my desires very expensive seems to be the solution we've arrived at. Of course this is unfair and a lot of relatively innocent guys get hammered by these laws. Their lives are ruined as collateral damage. There probably is a better way of accomplishing the same thing, though I wouldn't count on the old social sanctions making a comeback - the old equilibrium can never be stable in an era of condoms, vacuum cleaners and washing machines. So, I don't have any ideas and for the time being I'm willing to put up with the current laws as better than any other option.

They hate Twilight for the same reasons misogynists actually do.

On her official website, Meyer responds to feminist allegations that Bella is weak and easily led. “There are those who think my stories are misogynistic – damsel in distress must be rescued by strong hero.” But to Meyer that isn’t who Bella is. She points out that, in New Moon, the second book in the series, Bella must contend with Edward leaving. Meyer reminds her fans and her detractors alike that Bella is not mourning an ordinary teen romance but rather the loss of the love of her life, her other half, her soul mate. And perhaps this is the reason for the series’ massive success among modern young women. In his August 2008 Washington Post article, Twilight Sinks Its Teeth Into Feminism, Leonard Sax posits, “Three decades of adults pretending that gender doesn’t matter haven’t created a generation of feminists who don’t need men; they have instead created a hoard of girls who adore the traditional male and female roles and relationships in the Twilight saga.”

And there are those who actually just thought we were pissed because we were "feminist women." I can't imagine what they'd say to this.

Well, what about wikipedia's page on Domestic abuse, especially under emotional abuse?

Same thing!

Oh, but then, you think I'm just looking for something to bitch about, don't you? I want to hate on a romance and I have no idea what fiction is. Because that's another thing, isn't it. It's just fiction! It can't do any real harm! It's not real! Just fun! It can't cause any problems because it's just a book, right?! It won't have a bad or damaging influence. Because it's fiction, we're just being stupid and bitchy, right?
Ok, so yeah. Bella and Edward are imaginary. But that doesn't make it okay or safe.It DOES have an influence on girls my age. And the thing is, it has nothing to do really with Bella. She really doesn't matter despite being the narrator. No it's all Edward.

Yes, I've heard my girlfriends, ones I know to be fully against sexism and such, actually say to each other, "Well, I think Edward is the most perfect boyfriend you can have. I want to have a boyfriend just like him."

Oh, but they don't mean abuse!

Examples of Edward’s Creepy Control Issues
-He tries to control who Bella is friends with (with the handy excuse that her friend is a werewolf, enemy of the vampires).
-He refuses to turn Bella into a vampire despite her wishes, For Her Own Good.
-He refuses to have sex with Bella since he “won’t be able to control himself” if they do. Buffy, of course, turned this icky rape-culture stereotype on its head. There is no such consciousness here.
-He won’t allow Bella to make her own decisions regarding . . . ok, basically anything. Edward calls the shots, period.

So yeah, he doesn’t beat her. Other than that, they are the very picture of after-school-special abusive relationship. (Full disclosure – I was so disgusted with New Moon I never bothered to read Eclipse, the third in the series. If anything improved in #3, please let me know!)

This is the legacy of our kick-ass vampire slayer feminist icons? –sigh-

The following one is great, since she sees no contradiction between these two sections:

In my own opinion (key word), the foundation of feminism is this: being able to choose. The core of anti-feminism is, conversely, telling a woman she can't do something solely because she's a woman—taking any choice away from her specifically because of her gender. "You can't be an astronaut, because you're a woman. You can't be president because you're a woman. You can't run a company because you're a woman." All of those oppressive "can't"s.

One of the weird things about modern feminism is that some feminists seem to be putting their own limits on women's choices. That feels backward to me. It's as if you can't choose a family on your own terms and still be considered a strong woman. How is that empowering? Are there rules about if, when, and how we love or marry and if, when, and how we have kids? Are there jobs we can and can't have in order to be a "real" feminist? To me, those limitations seem anti-feminist in basic principle."

[No warning of the change of tack, here. It's like it's written by two different people. However, it is on the same page. Listed as written by the same woman.]

Really, Meyer? What about the allegations of abuse by Bella's love interest, Edward? Like the way he dismantles her car so she can't see her friends? Locks her in his house for the same reason? Or how Bella jumps of a cliff (literally) just to "hear his voice in her head"?

Bella's choices are troubling, sure, but it's the blatant romanticism of what she and her interest does, excuses of him doing these things "out of love" and "to protect her" that makes her an anti-feminist figure and indeed make you one as well.

For a contrasting opinion from whiskey:

Edward Cullen wins the girl in Twilight by being the most dominant and controlling male in Bella's life. Superman wins Lois Lane by being ... mostly Clark Kent, the mild mannered reporter. Lois herself is independent, and while lacking powers has opinions and a mind to match her beauty. This is the male heroic model that worked, that built Western Civilization, and males resent it's overthrow by the female-tween fantasies of Twilight and other vampire-fantasy fads. Lois is desirable because she's winnable, and winnable by more than just superpowers and wealth and power, otherwise Lex Luthor would have married her. Her very independence and intelligence make her winnable, by Clark Kent not Superman, and it means she stays won. Clark does not have to constantly mate-guard her like Cullen does Bella.

For girls, Twilight teaches them to be passive, eschew education and a career, forget a traditional family with a traditional husband who while not "sexy and dangerous" is faithful and loving, and sacrifice warm, loving, and emotionally intimate relations based on the mind as well as raw sexual desire, for pure adrenaline based excitement. Twilight explicitly teaches girls to abandon their minds and intellect for their emotions and lusts. In short, a how-to for girls to enter into inevitably abusive and emotionally destructive bad-boy relationships, in the desire to "change" and control a powerful, dangerous man.

The goal of feminists is kind of hard to define these days, for while they promote freedom for women to do what they want, they mustn't "want" to do any activity associated with traditional gender roles. In other words, if you're a woman, you can do whatever you want, as long as it's not cooking, taking care of children, cleaning the house, following your husband's advice, or shopping clothes and make-up. This means that modern women gradually will basically fail at any of these things due to lack of practice. If that is the goal of feminism, it's going to make men more powerful than ever.

For this reason alone I cannot support a war against feminism. I belong to the group of men and women who want the traditional gender roles back in society, but what if your woman is too incompetent in certain fields? Since we met, I've basically let my woman do the cooking, except when we've cooked together (recommended activity for bonding). The problem is that she's not really a good cook. I've spent time trying to teach her the basics, but she's simply not that handy. She's also pretty lazy at cleaning and taking care of kids.

At this point I've realized I don't really want to force her into a traditional gender role. I can cook better food twice as fast to fulfill all my nutrition needs without any of her help. I can clean the apartment quicker than her, and I'm usually good with children. Why force work upon someone that obviously isn't suited for it? In this respect I totally agree with feminists: if women can't handle their traditional duties, they should stay out and focus on at least bringing home some cash to the family. More accurately, I'm a Conservative/classic liberal: I don't need the government to tell me and my woman how to live at home. We manage this ourselves as adults. So from now on, I'll be the goddamn chef in this relationship.

If you ask most women, they will vote for leftist policies every single time, because it is in their nature to avoid conflict and competition. They want peace by co-operation at all costs. If they can let a bureaucracy to do it for them, they'll go for it. Over the years I've observed how young women are rapidly taking over radical leftism and its off-shots: vegetarianism, socialism/anti-capitalism, humanism and multiculturalism.

Jack Donovan over at the Spearhead notes:

If women are generally more collectivist in nature, unless there is some check against collectivism, it seems likely that over time the state will become progressively more collectivist.

That's exactly what is going on in Scandinavia. The dominant political women in Sweden's government each promote their version of welfare collectivism: Mona Sahlin (Social Democrats) wants to make paying taxes "sexy," Nyamko Sabuni (Liberals) wants the government to enforce religious diversity, Maria Wetterstrand (Green Party) calls for cap & trade and tax regulations against climate change, Maud Olofsson (Center Party) proudly celebrates the Pride Festival, Birgitta Ohlsson (Liberals) wants to get rid of all borders and turn feminism into a State doctrine...wait, it already is.

The more women we promote to high political positions in society, the more welfare-ism, socialism and feminism will wreck our cultures. The common denominator in all of these ideologies is the principle of enforced collectivism. This in turn is based on the misguided perception that human individuals are motivated by reason alone. If we all just share our wealth, we'll all be rich. Only a fool could come up with such an idea, knowing that deep down inside individuals are mostly selfish, and governments always tend to be slow, corrupt and intellectually inert.

Leftism has spawned a culture of repressed resentment among women, which have led to them feeling mistreated, weak and powerless. This is what they now express through government policies and programs, combined with a passion to help any group they perceive as equally weak (animals/nature, immigrants, disabled people, children etc. etc.):

13. Many leftists have an intense identification with the problems of groups that have an image of being weak (women), defeated (American Indians), repellent (homosexuals), or otherwise inferior. The leftists themselves feel that these groups are inferior. They would never admit it to themselves that they have such feelings, but it is precisely because they do see these groups as inferior that they identify with their problems. (We do not suggest that women, Indians, etc., ARE inferior; we are only making a point about leftist psychology).

14. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as strong as capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women may NOT be as strong and as capable as men.

Unabomber Manifesto

The Unabomber recognized that people who feel inferior to others will always beg for a system where everyone's needs are taken care of by others. This impulse, which takes abnormally submissive forms among many leftist-leaning women, has become a disease in Europe to the point where men are actively defending this same impulse. Political women are quick to label capitalism, elitism and self-advancement as "greed" and would like to control us all with government programs. They won't stop until we stop them. Thankfully, not all people buy this misguided intention for world socialism:

Friedman is simply stating the obvious: independence is not the same as selfishness, and even if it were, most people are by nature selfish, so we need to construct society with this in mind. We cannot assume, like most women in politics do, that we are rational, compassionate and good deep down inside and will act thereafter if we have a system that can manage it for us. History has a terrible track record for such societies. Rather, greed motivates the welfare fanatics, because all they want is to use your resources to better themselves. If that is not selfishness, what is?

I was taught by my father, through his actions, that a real man takes care of his own problems. I never questioned that philosophy for a moment and we never talk about it. It's a quiet agreement between all men: if you can do it yourself, do it. Don't stand there and whine like a pussy when something goes wrong. This behavior fosters the kind of men that healthy women are looking for, and it's the kind of quality material we need to build a successful society.

Female impulses, if given too much power, pacifies this process and hands it over to bureaucrats. Brilliance and civilization came to us through the genius of excellent men and women who fulfilled their destinies. Any force working against it is a virus and must be rooted out. To all men who are still not caved in by feminism: time to saddle up and take charge again. Refuse to be a part of any victim culture. If you're being discriminated against, you'll have to work harder. If you feel inferior, you have to work yourself stronger. Harden, toughen up and emulate the smartest of assholes around you. We're reclaiming lost domains--ever onward into countless battles!

NHL enforcer Georges Laraque is in a bit of trouble for violating the collective bargaining agreement between the players and the league by appearing in an alcohol ad. He says he didn't know what the ad was for and has apologized, but that s not the interesting part.

Here's the ad:

And here's the predictable feminist reaction:

33mag.com, the advertising company responsible for the spot, said it was done as a parody of sexist beer ads. Octane 7.0 combines an energy drink with alcohol.

"This is one more example of sexist advertising," said Alexa Conradi, of the Federation des femmes du Quebec, the province's most prominent women's group. "Why is it that when we're trying to market a campaign toward men aged 20 to 35, we always use this kind of ad? What does that say about our concept of masculinity?

"That's a very limited concept of masculinity, to always feature half-naked girls at angles where you don't see their whole body," Conradi said.

I'm not generally too hard on feminists - they never bother unreformable cavemen like me and most of their attacks are really directed against nerds, wimps and losers. In this I can't help laughing, though - it seems that feminists insist on taking parody at face value and can't resist giving this product tons of free publicity. Oh well. I suppose status-conscious people can now add attractive women to the list of things which cannot be enjoyed even ironically, alongside Ed Hardy clothing, "Nazi Uniforms, Ku Klux Klan Robes, and self-tanner".

As for what all this says about our concept of masculinity, I'd say that concept is pretty accurate when it comes to including the idea that young men like looking at attractive young women.

During a party I attended last weekend me and a couple of guys from Germany and France were slacking out; drinking beer and playing cards. Suddenly the party was raided by an army of feminists who barged in and demanded we socialize with them. Them being women and us being men, we didn't decline the offer. Ten minutes later and I'd managed to offend their flock leader, so they took off, and we had a good laugh. And it was right there that I came to think of it: fighting feminism isn't worth the trouble.

Feminism is like the karmic tar baby Brett Stevens talks about: the more you punch it, the more it will stick to you like glue. You can't fight it because the cause itself becomes counter-productive. Very few men are able to attack, criticize or make fun of feminism without coming off as defensive losers. Women who attack feminism are portrayed as victims of an oppressive housewife lifestyle. We might as well ask ourselves the question what good comes out of attacking feminism at all.

I've said before I'm not against feminism for all women and I stand by that comment. The reason for this is simple enough: some women have male-oriented mental and physical capabilities, and if they want to become the next Angela Merkel or Tyra Banks, I honestly don't see the problem. Feminism becomes a problem when it's applied to women as a collective, because they'll only shoot themselves in the foot and regret their lifestyle when they turn 40.

Many women nowadays postpone marriage and family, which is a problem if you want to maintain a civilization, but I'm not sure we'll be able to somehow force these women to form families and quit higher education. If these women really don't want to have children now, or at all, they're probably not emotionally ready to manage family life anyway. If they pick career over kids, they stand or fall on that choice. The most important thing is that women who do want a family early on in life have the possibility to do so economically, without necessarily ruining their chances of getting a decent job in the future.

My message to all men, who feel they need to constantly defend themselves against feminists, is to wait this one out. If women think they feel most happy playing socially dominant and physically strong, let 'em do it. We'll have a good laugh watching most of them fail and bending over in the bedroom despite all leftist theory--and those who don't and get far in life, good for them. We don't deny anyone happiness. We're Conservative realists who believe in human biological diversity (HBD). Depending on how you respond to reality, you will either become an asset to your culture, or a problem. Take your pick.

I thought I was done proclaiming the superiority of lowbrow entertainment to high culture for a while, but Steve Sailer has written an interesting column about country music which is worth passing along. It contains many interesting thoughts, but I'll pick just one, as it's applicable to so many spheres of life:

Country songs sung by women now tend to be You-Go-Girl sassy, aimed at Oprah fans. Male singers, on the other hand, get to be sappy, to make fun of themselves, and do other things that wouldn’t be considered appropriately “empowering” for women to do. Not surprisingly, allowed a wider choice of songs, there are more male stars.

Yup... empowerment can be quite limiting. On the other hand, guys do have some limitations as well - they can't exactly sing about shooting their wives or girlfriends, not unless they first shoot the guy the woman is cheating with, and preferably then proceed to shoot themselves. Chivalry isn't completely dead yet - guys can't just shoot girls. Girls, on the other hand, can give us great songs about shooting their men:

Now, the reason I've been posting about these subjects lately is that I spent the last week of August at an arts and music festival which reminded me of just how alien those arts people are. I really should say something nice about them, though, after shitting on them for two weeks. So I will.

At an afterparty, I saw all sorts of artsy people who complain all day about the tastes of the general populace happily dancing to James Brown, Spice Girls and Katy Perry songs, so perhaps they are not really all that weird after all. The afterparty provided good anecdotal evidence for the pretty songbird hypothesis, as a lot of the girls in bands were very good-looking.

Inevitably, two guys came into conflict over a girl. It didn't come to blows, though, just a bottle of water poured over somebody's head. They talked it out, hugged and apparently made peace so completely that they didn't even glare at each other angrily for the rest of the evening. On the way back from the afterparty I saw a small group of people silently dancing in the middle of an intersection. They started singing, which predictably enough led to one of the locals opening a window and yelling at them to shut the fuck up before she calls the cops. The group apologized politely and quietly went home.

For all I know that kind of behavior might be reasonably normal among peaceful Westerners, but here it is rather shocking. The middle-class arts-and-culture crowd does have its positive sides. These people may be weird, and they may loathe anyone normal, but they really are remarkably nonviolent and peaceful.

That concludes the nicest thing I'll ever say about middle-class people, and the only nice thing I'll ever say about arts people.

Stockholm, Sweden - Dalahest, smorgasbord, meatballs, blonde women and IKEA. These are some of the positive things epitomizing what is typically Swedish. But when IKEA recently decided to change the layout of its latest product catalog, it sparked an international outrage among artists, political analysts and liberal lobby groups.

When IKEA made the controversial decision of switching its traditional font Futura with the more modern font Verdana, Sweden's popularity among liberals dropped by over 20 %. Political analysts describe the situation as Sweden abandoning its true progressive roots. Jens Andersen, Danish typographer and liberal, comments:

"IKEA used to represent the concept of equality in Swedish welfare society: everyone has got the indisputable right to buy the same kind of products and live the same kind of lifestyle their neighbors do. Liberals loved Sweden. Now IKEA has traded its ideals for cheap modernist leanings--it's trying to appear tolerant, but it's really full of suspect pretense."

The Swedish government quickly responded to the international criticism by sponsoring what it calls "feminist porn." This caused Sweden's popularity among progressives to decline even further, prompting feminist lobbyists to accuse Sweden of using innocent women in degrading movie projects to hurt the feminist cause of gender equality.

The situation was desperate when Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt today admitted he has begun housing ten illegal immigrants from the third world in his own private home. Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, who took the international criticism hardest, was last seen in Amsterdam, working on improving Sweden's accountability by dressing out as a transsexual investment banker.

David Eberhard

Working as a psychiatrist in Stockholm, David Eberhard began observing how people seeking psychiatric care after the 1980s were experiencing mental problems caused by petty everyday experiences like being dumped by a girl/boyfriend. When he finally presented his theory about the phenomenon in one of Sweden's largest newspapers, it became a popular but controversial cultural meme: the "national panic syndrome."

Sweden, Eberhard argues, has made its citizens neurotically dependent upon a welfare system where everything deemed possibly dangerous is banned. In his now classic book In the land of the safety narcomaniacs, Eberhard startlingly provides example after example of absurd laws and policies in Sweden made to prevent people from eating "dangerous" food, carrying babies in "dangerous" ways, smoking "life threatening" cigarettes, and playing football with "dangerous" soccer goals. The list eventually becomes a humorous depiction of a welfare society gone too far.

Eberhard's most important contribution to contemporary public debate about welfare-ism is the issue of what social consequences you get from living in an environment so safe you stop evaluating risks. How is a public affected by having a welfare State nannying them about every aspect of their lives? The result, he argues, is a culture of social impotence, so neurotically afraid of risks that it stops thinking rationally, actually increasing the de facto risk of danger. In his latest book, No one takes shit in the land of the easily offended, Eberhard additionally claims Sweden is suffering from a culture of victimization where people project their fears over everyday injustices unto other people through bureaucratic institutions.

Fredrik Lindström

Originally a linguist, popular historian, comedian and film director, Fredrik Lindström began entering mainstream media with a series of television shows humorously describing the nature of Swedish language, mentality and culture. Combining his academic knowledge of language together with stand-up comedy, Lindström quickly became a national icon, self-ironically symbolizing the classic figure of the inventive, socially incompetent, rationally thinking, absurdly considerate Swede.

Lindström, by analyzing the subtle linguistic diversity in Sweden, picks out centuries of historical and cultural evolution. Then studying the impact the welfare society has had upon Swedish sociocultural development, Lindström argues modern civilization combined with the "Swedish model" of society are slowly eroding important traditions and undermining the value of spoken language.

Perhaps most insightfully, Lindström's civilization-critical analysis exposes the actual reasons behind why Swedes are so famously afraid of being racist, barely celebrate their own national day, have problems communicating with their neighbouring Danes, and believe bureaucratic institutions should control everything. Everything presented in a form made to create public awareness by mocking the absurd.

Tanja Bergkvist

With a Ph.D. in mathematics, Tanja Bergkvist suddenly appeared in public media as a strong opponent of the politically correct agenda promoted by the current feminist establishment in Sweden. Accusing kindergartens and schools of adopting neo-Stalinist methods to brainwash children into accepting a utopian socialist view of society, Bergkvist touched one of the holy cows in Swedish political debate.

Together with like-minded intellectuals such as establishment-critical Pär Ström, Bergkvist attempts to diversify the discussion around what role the various institutions in Sweden should have to actively discriminate and promote individuals to positions in society based upon gender. Lately Bergkvist has begun blogging, combining a sort of mathematical-satirical language with her own views about feminism, gender theory, and the European Union, colored by her cultural background in Eastern Europe.

The Sunday Times brings positive news to our female audience:

FOR the female half of the population, it may bring a satisfied smile. Scientists have found that evolution is driving women to become ever more beautiful, while men remain as aesthetically unappealing as their caveman ancestors.

The researchers have found beautiful women have more children than their plainer counterparts and that a higher proportion of those children are female. Those daughters, once adult, also tend to be attractive and so repeat the pattern.

Over generations, the scientists argue, this has led to women becoming steadily more aesthetically pleasing, a “beauty race” that is still on. The findings have emerged from a series of studies of physical attractiveness and its links to reproductive success in humans.

Half Sigma comments on this story, but fails to impress me with his argument:

Anyway, it may be that in the past, physical attractiveness didn’t do much for men’s reproductive opportunities, but that’s not so true today when women are behaving more like men in that they are looking for good looking men rather than stable providers.

First of all, most women do not behave like men, and secondly, a minority doing so only gained public attention a few decades ago. Also, women may look for good looking men in their early years, but later side with stable providers (if they do settle down at all, since we've postponed adulthood at least 15 years), so the situation is more complex.

My 2 cents: Evolution teaches us that traits aiding us in survival will increase among a population, but also that culture has got an impact on that very process. Good looks are important for obvious reasons (like health), which is why men for instance prefer women with bigger breasts. So why has the trait of good looks among women recently increased, if the evolutionary circumstances haven't changed that much? Probably because our world has changed.

Women no longer pride themselves with abilities like housework, motherhood and family unification, so men are forced to pick among other traits, where good looks makes sense if you think about the way relationships work today. It could also be that women with less good looks had more children in the past to secure their own future, and that welfare today has left this segment of women with less incentive for reproduction. Good looking women will in such an environment naturally find more partners, and probably therefore also have more offspring.

So, we're both looking at a decline of typically feminine traits on the market, as well as fewer incentives for women with mediocre to worse looks to reproduce. Like Martin says, sometimes it's good to be above average when everyone else is mediocre.

A random guy on the Internet posted the following about male chivalry on his blog:

How To Treat A Woman On A Date: The Basics
Do not let more than 1 day go by without contacting her
Be on time
Open her car door
Help her put her coat on
Hold the door for her to enter/leave an establishment first
Pull her chair out for her in the restaurant
Order for her (Note – this does not mean tell her what she’s going to have for dinner. Have a conversation about what she wants and then when the waiter comes, order for her.)
At the end of your date, don’t drive off until she’s safely inside

..and got flamed for it by upset feminists all across the blogosphere:

I would be seething with rage if the guy did any of the above, besides being on time. Treat me like a human being, not a pet. (I do think it’s nice to wait until someone is inside before leaving but that’s true for either gender!)

...

I would feel EXTREMELY uncomfortable if someone did this stuff on a first date. Maybe some of it a little later when we know each other better and I know he isn’t a skeez. But if anyone did #7 (unless we are actually ordering together) I would be a very unhappy girl.

...

why should woman be treated like this all the time? if i got treated like this i’d feel like i had some sort of disability. i find no romance in this type of kindness from boys. and what about them anyway? shouldn’t we treat them back with some consideration. i don’t know a lot about girls, but the list above makes me want to vomit.

Forget all of this whining, because it's not accurate. What these women really want is someone to confirm them and take care of them, despite what they suggest here. Women who truly are feminists are so because they carry less estrogen and as a result follow a more male-oriented behavioral pattern. The rest are just attention-seekers with some strange ideological conviction to boost their moral superiority.

In other words, I wouldn't mind feminism if I was a man and was dating a younger women. Unfortunately, most do, and so the process of chivalry, biologically rooted in our gender brains, becomes a strange game of playing politically correct terms against each other. To be fair, men who actually try to accommodate to feminist game rules probably deserve getting dumped. Those men have obviously missed the bus, because only a tiny fraction of women as a whole really live up to most of the male criteria of behavior.

Underscoring Cassy's point on Conservative values, young men today are more infantile than feminist, so let's settle the score once and for all:

“Being a true gentleman means being gallant and generous. One can be gentle but remain firm, determined and retain a great sense of humour,” says Dunhill's director of brand imagery, Yann Debelle de Montby. The report concludes that some fundamental qualities remain at the core: good manners, charm and dignity. It also suggests that the NBG conducts himself in an accomplished but modest manner and that “stealth wealth and less conspicuous consumption are the order of the day”.

Old-fashioned good manners - holding open doors, standing up when someone enters the room, asking questions of others rather than talking about yourself, ensuring that you compliment your host generously and so on - are an entry point for respectful behaviour. But it's more about your overall manner towards others: how one conducts oneself not only socially, but also in business, in relationships and in public

However, the next generation of widely respected gentlemen in Britain is likely to combine conventional success with 21st-century concerns such as hands-on parenthood, ecology, community work and social reform - whether on a local or global scale. As David de Rothschild, the 29-year-old ecology campaigner and adventurer, says: “Respect for each other goes hand in hand with respect for the planet we have inherited.” He and his peer group can finally move beyond the Thatcherite admiration for ruthlessness in business and elbows-out upward social mobility. They may also come to reclaim the notion of “respect” from its bastardised street use, where it is so frequently used as a tool for aggression.

Successful men in business all agree: To get somewhere in life you need to polish your social behavior and cultivate a generous personality. Feminism is a dead-end lifestyle, because it's a shell to disguise the evolutionary and scientific reality behind gender differences. That's why you can even play asshole and still dominate the typical feminist in town, because she secretly wants to be dominated. If you fall for the trick, you only have yourself to blame. For those who've already seen through the feminist scam, here's a shortcut to implement the virtues of a true gentleman.