The Underlying Problem at Cracker Barrel

Everybody is making a big fuss about the re-branding of Cracker Barrel. I had never heard of Cracker Barrel before, but apparently it is huge in the US. It obviously matters deeply to people. It makes sense that I have never encountered it in Canada, the Philippines, Korea, or the Middle East—the whole point of it is American nostalgia.

And that is why people hate the re-branding. It is an attempt to give it a sleek, clean, modern look. This is obviously wrong for a company based on nostalgia. It is suicide. How could the executives have gotten it so wrong?

This calamitous mis-step is reminiscent of the Dylan Mulvaney fiasco at Bud Light, and the deterioration of Lucasfilm’s Star Wars. The problem in each case seems the same: losing touch with the essential market and mission of the company. To an almost unaccountable degree. 

And these three corporate collapses have something else in common: the executive in charge of the change was a woman. I do not know if this was also true of Target’s similar debacle, or Jaguar’s. But marketing departments these days are dominated by women.

Here’s where I take the flak: this illustrates of the eternal truth that women think differently from men. Women are detail oriented. Men are anchored to goals; get it done and don’t sweat the small stuff. Men see the forest: women see trees. Men act on principles; women act on likes and dislikes. Men will keep the market in mind. Women do not think that abstractly. They will want to please themselves and those they see every day.

This means men are better suited for top decision-making positions in any large enterprise, and women are better at handling the details: “help-meets,” secretaries, assistants. Girl Friday will keep things tidy, well-ordered, properly filed and aesthetically pleasing.

This was the wisdom of the ages. 

Of course there are exceptions; but as a general principle, it is about as reliable as assuming the average man will be more formidable at tackle football than the average woman.

We have been ignoring this reality for a couple of generations. The worst of it is not the billions lost by shareholders, the thousands of jobs lost by employees, the long traditions lost. On this path, we are headed for civilizational collapse.

 

Why Women Are Obsolete

 

There is much talk in the culture now about Men Going Their Own Way, and many 30-something women complaining on YouTube or TikTok that there seem to be no available men.

 Younger men seem to have lost interest not just in marriage, but in women.

The surprise is that it took seventy years. Wives have been obsolete since the 1950s. As of the postwar years, thanks to automation, the traditional women’s role in the home became relatively trivial. She was replaced by the washing machine, the dryer, the refrigerator, the vacuum cleaner, the electric oven. A suburban housewife had nothing but free time—this was essentially Betty Friedan’s complaint. At the same time, as Hugh Hefner realized, men could live perfectly comfortably alone, in a “bachelor pad.” Why marry?

However, rather than doing anything to restore their attractiveness to men, women took the opposite tack—of declaring that they did not need men anyway. Hence feminism: “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” 

Declaring that they disliked or hated men, they withdrew companionship—the second reason for men to want to marry, or spend time with women. Now, for men, spending time with women only meant being criticized. And dropped at any moment, thanks to no-fault divorce, with potentially huge financial penalties, should they happen to be successful in their career.

Leaving only one possible reason for men to want to be around women: for sex.

Feminists at least at first emphasized this: being a “liberated woman” meant having sex often and with abandon. 

However, women killed off this attraction too, with the “Me Too” movement. Now not only was marrying too risky for men; even having sex with a woman was too risky.

So of course men are staying away from women. It is a credit to their gallantry and sense of self-sacrifice that they stuck with it so long—seventy years, a human lifetime!

As technology marches on, it is now looking able to replace women for sex—with profuse porn available on the internet, perhaps virtual reality and sexbots soon. And it can even offer a kind of artificial female companionship, with emerging AI avatars. 

It is a sad situation. Women are alone; and men are alone. And no children are born. It is the death of the species itself.

And men can fare better alone than women can. Women by instinct crave community, children, affirmation, security; men have a natural drive for independence and self-reliance.

So women’s levels of happiness are nose-diving. Men’s are too, but not so much.

Blame technology; and blame feminism.

Why did women react so badly, hastening their own misfortune?

It seems to be a common human reaction: when one is accustomed to privilege, and it is threatened, one tends to lash out in denial. So the Boers, feeling vulnerable, imposed apartheid. Austria-Hungary, Europe’s shakiest Empire, provoked the First World War. The current wave of Islamic militancy, similarly, looks to me like a rearguard action. 

So feminism. Methinks they do protest too much.

Why Women Can't Write Poetry

 

Not the usual image, but thought to be perhaps a photo of Emily Dickenson.

I once belonged to a small poetry group. It is far from a valid sample, but… 

The only qualification for membership was interest in reading your poetry publicly. 

The group consisted loosely of four men, and four women. All four of the men were pretty good poets; and all of the women were dreadful.

Was that purely coincidental? 

There are indeed far more great male poets, than female poets in the canons of world literature.

Feminists will of course say this is because women’s voices were silenced. Only men’s voices counted.

Yet against this, in most or all societies, women have had more leisure time for the arts than men. It has been up to the man to earn sustenance for the family. Women, at least among the classes that could afford any leisure for anyone, were encouraged to pursue the arts. Book clubs were always primarily women; and still are. Magazines were mostly marketed to women. TV was mostly viewed by women. Why would they not have used this time to write?

Is it that female poets were discriminated against by publishers? A female poet of my acquaintance, who has done the research, insists this is not so; and any check of the Internet Archive or old newspapers appears to confirm this. At least by the 19th century, poetry by women seems actually to have been published more often than poetry by men. They did have the leisure time, and they did use it, and they did get it into print.

And yet, with few exceptions, it is the men’s poetry that is still read today, that has survived the test of time. The women’s poetry seems to have lacked any abiding message to mankind.

In her day, Elizabeth Barrett Browning was a bigger literary star than her husband, Robert. But since, her reputation has faded, while his has grown.

 Other than Emily Dickenson, how many first-rank women poets can you think of from the 19th century? 

Of course, you can list many from more recent years. But you could have drawn up a similar list in 1850. How many will endure?

Could it simply be that men are deeper thinkers than women? Women can make words pretty, but men are better fit to plumb the depths of human experience?

Pauline Johnson was wildly popular in Canada in the 19th century. She was half-aboriginal, and would recite wearing buckskin. But her popularity faded. It has been revived recently, to some extent, for political reasons. But it is striking to me that there is really no content to her poems; they never really say anything.

If ever a literary career was built on superficial show, it was hers.

A feminist heresy, of course, to suggest that men are deeper thinkers than women. But surely plausible; we know women’s and men’s brains, after all, are physically different. Such a difference in deep thinking is implied in the Bible, if you take it seriously, when St. Paul advises wives to obey their husbands, and women to remain silent in church. 

But it is not even clear to me that women are better at the mechanics of verse, at making words pretty. Even though, if we are still talking about sex differences, tests show that women on average have better linguistic skills than men. Even though craftsmanship in verse would seem to follow.

In my local group, it is not just that the women lacked any message. They also seemed to have no sense of craftsmanship either. What they declaimed were not poems or verse at all in the technical sense. More expressions of emotion without grammar. It is the men who played with the sounds of words, with rhythm, assonance, repetition, and sometimes rhyme.

Even in the case of Emily Dickenson: the odd exception of a great female poet. She absolutely has depth. But she is not great technically. Her rhymes are loose; there is little rhythm. Her style is epigrammatic. Britannica cites a “lack of high polish.”

What then can explain this? Why aren’t women better at poetry?

I think it is precisely because women are more verbal than men. It was certainly obvious in my poetry group. In between readings, all conversation was dominated by the women, who expressed their opinions on religion, politics, and human relationships freely and forcefully. The men all stayed mostly silent, but perhaps for occasional muttered assent.

Dickenson perhps explains it, when she says of poetry: “Tell all the truth, but tell it slant. Success in circuit lies.” Poetry is for saying things you cannot say directly. It is the voice of the silenced. Contrary to the claims of feminism, women have always been freer to speak their minds publicly. They are accustomed to being listened to, as well. A woman can usually get what she wants by making her demands clearly known. 

Men, by contrast, learn to choose their words carefully. They must not make demands, emotional or otherwise. They must think before they speak, or risk a fight, or force of law. 

Consider the famous feminist complaint that men will never ask for directions. A women will do so immediately, even without consulting the map. 

Isn’t this actually an example of female privilege?

If Emily Dickenson is an exception to the rule, it interestingly corresponds with an unusual life experience. She lived her life in seclusion, with few to talk to; if only due to her own congenital shyness.

It is the pressure to shut up, or having something to say that nobody wants to listen to, that forces poetry.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

 

Fr. Calvin Robinson makes a compelling case in a recent blog post that feminism is the most destructive ideology of all time.

He does the math. 

“Add up all the wars throughout human history, and they amount to an estimated 1.5 billion deaths. That is inclusive of combatants, civilian casualties and those who died of the results of war (i.e. famine).”

For comparison, abortion, since widespread legalisation in the 1970s, “has amounted to 2.5-3.5 billion deaths.”

This is just since the 1970s, fifty years, against all of human history. And these are all innocent lives. It is, moreover, far worse to kill a child than to kill an elderly man, say, who has only a few years left to him. 

One can also consider that a good many of the deaths in war are not intended, collateral damage. Indeed, in principle, they are all unintended. Any general, any leader, tries to minimize casualties in achieving his objectives. But all abortions are deliberate, cold blooded, and certain to cause death. 

Again, perhaps fifty percent of combat deaths are legitimate self-defense: in the usual course of things, one side is in the right. No abortion deaths are legitimate self-defense. Not even in the case of rape or incest, which account for only 1.5% of abortions.

Father Robinson cites statistics showing abortions are overwhelmingly used by women simply as a form of birth control. Simply because they feel having a child did not fit into their current plans.  Saving the life of the mother? If it is done to save the mother’s life, it does not even show up in the abortion statistics.

Legally, the woman has the unilateral right to have an abortion. The father of the child has no say. This, therefore, must be placed entirely at the feet of women. Given that it is feminism that justifies this, feminism is the deadliest ideology known to mankind. And women,  given power, are far more violent than men.

Feminism is also responsible for the death of the family. This is by no accident: it was the family, per Betty Friedan, which was to be destroyed. Women were to accept no family responsibilities. That is “patriarchy.”

In North America, over 70% of divorces are initiated by the wife. No doubt following Ann Landers’ advice from as far back as the Seventies that the only standard should be, “Are you better off with him or without him?” No thought for the children. No thought for “For richer or for poorer, in sickness or in health.” No thought for the in-laws. No thought for the wider society. Just what seems best for her at the time.

Under feminism, women have turned against child care. They will farm their children, if they have them, out to strangers, even though we know this is worse for children. By neglecting the next generation, they are destroying the culture, the civilization itself. For family is the basic building block of society as a whole, and culture is whatever we pass on to the next generation.

And, predictably, women turning away from children and childbearing is causing a demographic collapse. The developed West has as a result seen a need to open the doors to unrestricted immigration. This causes its own problems, which are becoming increasingly apparent. Ultimately, social chaos.

It is vain to talk of legal solutions to this problem: the necessary laws cannot be passed until and unless we can change hearts and minds.

I believe that cultures worldwide had it right, before feminism threw everything off kilter. Girls were spoiled growing up, and allowed to expect a life free of responsibilities. In return, they were required to defer to men. Boys were held to a higher standard, and in return, should they pass that bar, given command.  It worked, everywhere, for all of recorded history.

Now girls are still spoiled growing up, and then put in command. Disastrous.

Women and Revolution

 

Women's march, St. Petersburg, 1917

Here’s another example of our ignorance of history, like the one about continuing aboriginal ownership of Canada.

An Iranian feminist friend boasted to me proudly of the recent “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests in her homeland that this was the first time ever that a revolution has been led by women. See the feminist progress?

This is pretty much the reverse of the truth. 

The Russian revolution was kicked off, most historians would agree, by a mob of women marching to the palace for International Women’s Day, with the cry “Bread and Peace.” At that point, members of the Palace Guard defected to the crowd.

Similarly, in October 1789, a mob of Parisian women marched on Versailles demanding bread—you will recall the comment attributed to Marie Antionette, “let them eat cake.” This event “is often seen as a turning point in the French Revolution, marking the moment when popular action decisively shifted power from the monarchy to the people.” By the time they reached the palace, the National Guard had reluctantly joined the women.

In the EDSA revolution that overthrew Marcos in the Philippines, nuns formed human barricades to stop the tanks. That seemed to be when government resistance broke.

Women usually play the crucial role in any revolution. When they rise up, in a body, the end of that regime is near. For several reasons.

First, women are temperamentally opposed to revolution; they are in favour of stability, docility, and continuity. Freedom means less to them. They only want bread; to live their lives in peace. For women to rise up, the situation must be dire. It means the regime’s natural constituency, its last support, has evaporated.

Second, men are programmed by nature to care for woman. A palace guard might obey orders to fire on a mob of men; but to fire on a mob of women is, to most men, unthinkable. Therefore, when a large mass of women rise up, the government has no defense against them. Men’s allegiance to women intrudes as a higher authority than their allegiance to any job or government or self-interest. If the women want a new government, the men must obey.

Revolutionaries generally understand this. This is why the Southern Christian Leadership Conference chose Rosa Parks to refuse to yield her seat on that bus. This is why Nurse Edith Cavill was so important to British propaganda in the First World War. This is why the group organizing the Freedom Convoy in Canada coalesced behind Tamara Leich as their public face. This is why the early suffragettes tried to get themselves arrested for defying the law and voting; why Emily Darbison deliberately got herself trampled at the Epsom Derby in 1913. 

Women have always had immense power and privilege, at least among developed nations.

When a Man Loves a Woman

 

“A Complete Unknown,” the Dylan biopic, has reinforced my belief that men love at a deeper level than women do. Men love in technicolour. Women love in black and white, on a flickering cathode tube. 

A man will, in principle and often enough in practice, lose everything for a women. He will give her everything he has. He will die for a woman. 

For women, on the other hand, a relationship is transactional. What is she getting out of it? Can she do better elsewhere?

Ann Landers’ test when a letter writer asked whether they should leave their marriage was: “Are you better off with him or without him?” 

In other words, never mind him, or the kids, what’s in it for you?

This was even pre-feminism. Or at least, Landers was not considered a feminist.

This is shown also by the fact that 70% of divorces are initiated by women. Men will stick it out, for richer or poorer, in sickness or in health. The reason women usually give for leaving is that they felt unfulfilled; that they felt the relationship was holding them back in some way.

Ask Betty Freidan.

The feminist movement said out loud that for a woman a man is only a means to an end, like a bicycle. Does a fish need one? Do you need one? What’s love got to do with it?

Since the increased home automation of the 1950s, if men applied the same test, the answer would have always been no. But for men it is not transactional. They fall in love.

For men, it is about love. For women, it is about being loved. Or as someone once said to me, for women it is just business.

If if you are a man’s first love, or their special love, you are forever the world to them. It is not whether you are the prettiest they ever met. You are all women. You are really the only woman.

I note that male poets and artists invariably have a muse—some idolized women they are creating for. Beatrice, Maryanne Ihlen, Suze Rotolo, Maude Gonne, Lucy, Annabelle Lee, the dark-haired lady of the sonnets … someone. I discover on asking that female poets and artists never do. They write for themselves.

It is a tragedy that women and men are different in this way.

The matter used to be balanced by making divorce difficult, and more difficult for the woman. And by the social expectation that the woman, in exchange for the love and support the man was giving, would show gratitude, respect, and at least public deference.

Sadly, that has been lost, and many lives lost and destroyed as a result.

What's Eating Women?

 

How badly does a fish really need a bicycle?

Rachel Wilson’s Substack “Rachel’s Newsletter,” recently collated some statistics on the effects of feminism on the wellbeing of women and children.

It is not good news.

Only 0.7 per 1,000 children living in a home with two married biological parents are sexually abused. The figure is 12.1 per 1,000 for those with a single parent and an unmarried partner.

1.8 children per 1,000 living with both married biological parents is emotionally abused. It is 15 per 1,000 with a single parent and an unmarried partner.

6.5 children per 1,000 living with both married biological parents is neglected. It is 47.4 per 1,000 with a single parent and an unmarried partner. It is 68.2 for “emotional neglect.”

2.8 children per 1,000 living with both married biological parents is actually physically harmed. It is 9.5 per 1,000 on average in any other family situation. And the physical injury is likely to be worse.

All this confirms the wisdom of fairy tales: the problem there usually comes from a step-parent. A “wicked stepmother.” Ten times the risk.

And note too that it is usually the mother, not the father, just as the fairy tales suggest. 68% of all maltreated children were maltreated by a female; 48% were maltreated by a male. This despite the fact that, due to current legal prejudices, almost always giving custody to the mother, the male in the house is vastly more likely to be the step-parent. When children are maltreated by a biological parent, 75% were maltreated by the mother, 48% by the father. This statistic does not seem to be affected by the amount of time either parent spends with the children—women do not abuse more often simply because they have more opportunity. 

Wait, there’s more:

90% of homeless children are escaping or ejected from fatherless homes.

85% of kids diagnosed with behavioural disorders are from fatherless homes.

70% of those in juvenile detention are from fatherless homes.

71% of those in treatment for substance abuse are from fatherless homes.

Dads matter.

Clearly, if we gave a damn for children, easy no-fault divorce, and then assigning custody to the mother, is very bad for children. Statistics further show the woman initiates the divorce 70 to 80% of the time. And no, this is not because of spousal abuse. Women abuse their spouses more often than men. The woman is the aggressor, apparently, in 70% of cases. The reasons usually given are “boredom, financial strain, lack of communication, or feeling held back in career or in life.” 

So what does all this self-fulfillment, free from obligations to either spouse or children, do for women?

Women are not doing well. The UK Mental Health Foundation says women are three times more likely to experience mental health problems than men. 

Was this ever so? No. As recently as 1993, they were only twice as likely. More than one quarter of all US women are now on psychiatric drugs. For men, it is 15%.

In underdeveloped, rural societies, women consistently report greater levels of happiness than men--in the unreformed “patriarchies.” As recently as the 1970s, American women still reported higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction than men. But in recent studies, they are less happy by their own report than men throughout the developed world.

Alcoholism among women doubled between 2002 and 2013—in just ten years. Fetal alcohol syndrome, destroying the next generation, rose 2.5 times between 1996 and 2018.

And all of these statistics are without touching on the issue of abortion, or the emotional toll divorce and alienation from the family is taking on men. Or the growing problem of depopulation in the developed world, following from the collapse of the family, and prompting governments to let in unprecedented waves of immigration.

Just thought you should know. For sources and for further information, follow Rachel’s Newsletter on SubStack.

A Beautiful Man Is Hard to Find

 

Women and men are different.

This should not be controversial. It seems to me that anyone finding this controversial is shockingly lacking in empathy.

Since the Sixties and feminism, we have been fighting against this truth. Feminism insisted that any difference was just a role forced on women by society.

Perhaps the rise of the “transgender” movement is at least in part the inevitable rebellion against this claim. Its insistence on “gender” as a core of one’s identity is a direct contradiction to feminism. To feminism, “gender” is not a trait you are born with, but a set of arbitrarily behaviours forced on you. Otherwise feminism makes no sense.

Transgenders insist there is a female or a male soul. Otherwise you could not be “trans.”

Leave aside the other questions raised by transgenderism: whether gender is independent of sex, and whether one can be “born into the wrong body.”

There are three transcendental values: truth, good, and beauty. They are the goals of existence. They bring value to life. We are created in order to seek these three things, and to express these three things.

Of these three, it is obvious that women, not men, are most responsible for beauty. Women are more visually attractive than men; women care about being attractive; men don’t. This is not just to attract men sexually; women definitely also dress and make up for other women, for the sake of abstract beauty. Both men and women would rather look at a woman than a man on a magazine cover.

If you introduce a woman into a home or office or business, she will instantly go about trying to make it more beautiful, more comfortable. You leave men on their own at a workplace, and it will be functional, no more.

Cultures that devalue beauty, like Protestantism, or Islam, will devalue women. Cultures that value beauty, like France, Italy, or Latin America, will value women more highly.

This is why feminism began in the Protestant countries. It was here women were devalued. Although it has since spread to Catholics as well; due to the overwhelming cultural influence of America.

And why does a man marry a woman? The question has come up online recently: MGTOW. Is it worth all the insults, demands, and worries, the risks of ruinous divorce, “just for a vagina”? What else does a woman bring to the relationship?

This, after all, is what feminism has left us with.

But properly, a man marries to bring beauty into his life. To make his house a home. Not just her physical beauty, but her charm, her attitude—for this is her proper role, to be supportive, “inner beauty.” And her ability to decorate the living space. And her ability to cook, which is a form of beauty, appealing to the sense of taste. If she is a good wife, she brings grace and comfort to his life. Along with the joy of children.

This is what a good wife should do. Feminism has devalued it all, and women have come to neglect and distain all of this. Reducing them to no more than second-rate men with vaginas.

And now we must acknowledge that men too have their role in civilization and the human enterprise. As feminism would deny. They are more than bicycles, more than a means to an end.

Women are the guardians of beauty; men are the guardians of truth. Men are born with an internal compass that points towards the North Star. Women will believe anything; men will want proof. This is why Jesus, who obviously knew what he was doing, chose only male apostles. We should not second-guess God. And this is why St. Paul said women should be silent in church. It is not their role to lead and teach, any more than it is the role of a man to wear makeup and give fetching smiles. Either has gone off the rails.

Not incidentally, we have made a grave mistake by giving the teaching profession over almost entirely to women. This is not their role. Notice that, in the New Testament, Jesus’s genealogy is traced back to David through Joseph—even though Jospeh is not his biological father. This is because the role of the father, of he man, is to guide and educate, to pass on truths. In this sense, Joseph and his genealogy are fully relevant.

If we value truth, but not beauty, as in Protestant (and now secular) Northern Europe, this will look like a misogynist view. If we value beauty as well as truth, it will not. It is both received and revealed wisdom. It is common sense.

And what of the third transcendental value, the good? Indeed, this is the central of the three: “and the greatest of these is love.” We were created to choose the good, of our free will.

Men and women seem to have an equal role here; but being good means different things for each. Goodness means justice, on the one hand; mercy on the other. In America, to say someone is good, you say “he is honest.” In China, you say “he is kind.” And these are different things.

Good women are kind and merciful. Good men are honest and just.

We need both. We need both men and women in our culture, and in our individual lives. And we have lost this.

The Feminist Delusion

 

Pandora

It is a good general principle that anything stated emphatically is unlikely to be true. No one, after all, feels the need to carry placards in the street and shout loudly through a bullhorn “grass is green.”

I knew OJ was a murderer when he answered the question “Did you kill your wife” with “I absolutely did not kill her.” An innocent man would not have said “absolutely.”

This is one reason why the common consensus is almost always wrong. It is formed by those who shout the loudest, and those who simply want to keep the peace will go along.

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much” is thus a good principle.

An example that comes to mind: “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” The women’s movement, from the beginning, insisted that men are of no use to women, and are the disposable sex. A woman could do anything for herself that a man could do.

I submit that women need men more than men need women. The women’s movement began because men no longer needed wives. With mod cons in the home, housework was at best a part-time job. A bachelor could manage it for himself. Hugh Hefner realized this, and launched the “Playboy philosophy.” Women were needed only for sex. Betty Friedan’s essential complaint in “The Feminine Mystique” was that she was bored to death in the suburbs having nothing to do.

As luck would have it, men now hardly need women for sex either, thanks to the ready availability of internet porn. And are beginning to realize it. And women are at last beginning to panic. That they did not decades ago is a testament to how fully women are programmed to follow rather than think things out for themselves: they were perfect victims for feminism’s “consciousness raising” which taught them to scorn men. Leaving, as JD Vance controversially put it, several sad and bitter generations of crazy cat ladies. I know many women like this. If you are honest, and my age, you probably do too.

Women need men not just for protection against other, possibly predatory, men. Nor do they need them just for protection against the forces of nature. Nor to support children financially. Government and the bureaucracy happily stepped in to take over those roles. They were delighted to do so, because they wanted power, and this was a major extension to their power. Now “the personal is political.” In this, feminism has always been essentially totalitarian.

Women also, and more vitally, need men spiritually. Women are programmed by God or evolution to seek and need guidance, and not to think for themselves. This is exactly what you are not allowed to think or say--because it is obviously true. This female mental flexibility is essential in order to form the family bond—the alternative would be constant arguments and breakups, to the great emotional detriment of both parties, and the great hazard of children’s welfare. Which is of course pretty much what feminism has brought us. 

That women need men as a mental and emotional anchor is why traditionally women were married off at an early age, while men commonly married later. Men could stand years alone while they built up a nest. A woman really could not do for any time without a husband or a father. Women without a strong lead tend to lose direction, and flounder. There is a reason girls, more than boys, report a difficult adolescence, with risks of suicide, self-harm, anorexia, and depression. In that gap between guidance by father and guidance by husband, they are cast adrift. It is also the reason ghosts and table-knocking, “spiritualist” phenomena, have since Victorian times been understood to centre somehow around some adolescent girl in the home. It is the reason irrational emotional outbursts and even dramatic delusions and hallucinations used to be generically called “hysteria,” from the Greek word for uterus. Young and single, or abandoned, women, were prone to them. It is the reason witchcraft was considered a primarily female preoccupation in Europe, usually involving old and unmarried women living alone; as shamanism is a female occupation in Korea today. This is again why Saint Paul did not want women speaking in Church, and told them to “obey your husband.” Why traditional Jewish or Muslim jurisprudence required two female witnesses but just one male. It is why women are not ordained as priests. It is why many cultures make some mythic woman straying beyond male oversight the source of all trouble entering the world: Eve in the Bible, Pandora in Greek myth, Sophia in gnostic cosmology. There are similar legends among the North American Indians (“First Nations”). 

Lacking the guidance of a designated man, women are liable to listen to serpents, or demons, or whatever ideology knocks on the front door. They are naturally programmed to be a “help-meet.”

We are acting with great recklessness in ignoring this truth in modern times. There should be no surprise that we are seeing a radical decline in women’s happiness and mental health.

And, worse, we are seeing civilization itself being knocked out of its orbit.

Good News for Stray Cats

 

It all began, not with the pill, but with the development of mod cons after the Second World War: washing machines, driers, refrigerators, dishwashers, vacuum cleaners. The automation of the household.

At this point women lost their traditional role. Before about the fifties, a woman’s work was a full-time job. A man could not get by alone. If he was not married, and not with his parents, he lived in a boarding house. 

Hugh Hefner capitalized on this change. A man could now manage his own “bachelor pad” and be a playboy. There was no need to marry. Women were just for sex.

At the same time, with automation, women were bored; there was not enough to fill their days. This was what Betty Friedan capitalized on: how boring life was in the suburbs. It is her actual complaint in The Feminine Mystique. 

First they experimented with just making themselves busy by having a lot of children—the Baby Boom. Not good—work had not changed for men. The added financial burden with nothing in it for them drove men further into the Playboy Philosophy. 

So, with Freidan's feminism, women used their free time instead for political agitation. And they demanded careers outside the home to fill their days. 

So why marry? 

The most common and obvious remaining reason, if the marriage .was not for love, was to guarantee regular sex Not a great incentive. 

At this point, women had an advantage over men. Men generally want sex more than women do. It’s genetically programmed. 

Exploiting this advantage, and their free time, feminism was able to run roughshod over men for a generation or two. 

But now that has changed--with the ready availability of porn on the Internet. Men no longer really need women for sex. No doubt live sex is still better, but throw in the draconian laws feminists have imposed making marriage, sex, or any contact with women risky for men.

Women have overplayed their hand.

Young men are beginning to ask, what does a woman bring to the table, making a relationship with them worth the risk?

If the relationship is transactional, it is hard to see an answer. 

For children? Yes, but women are programmed by nature to want children more than men do. They can physically have children with just a one-night stand, but it is hard to raise children on your own.

A man is also still valuable to a woman for protection, and for heavy lifting around the house. Women are simply not as physically strong as men. 

But what does a real woman bring to make a man’s life better anymore? What can she do that he can’t do for himself? What does she bring that is worth the expense and the risk?

Suddenly men have all the chips in this game.

Women do not seem to realize this yet. They have been raised to view themselves as immensely valuable. Just for existing.

The result will be a rapid increase in the number of angry cat ladies, who will wonder what happened.

Family Politics

 

Older readers may get the reference,.

An old saying has it that a happy family is the responsibility of the wife. There is perhaps wisdom in this. We know, that in North America, for example, women are far more likely than men to initiate a divorce. 

This also seems to be the wisdom of the ages as reflected in myth. It is Eve, after all, who upsets the happy family situation in Eden. It is Delilah. It is Pandora in Greek myth who opens the box. Or Psyche who turns on the light. 

This is also the common wisdom of fairy tales. The problem usually comes with the introduction to the family of a wicked mother, or stepmother—not a father or stepfather. Rapunzel, Cinderella, Snow White, Hansel and Gretel.

Women intrinsically have greater power in the family, because they are the ones in control of the premises: they are, in the traditional arrangement, always there. The father and husband is more in the role of a guest. They are also in more constant and intimate contact with the children. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. If they want to use this power, they can easily alienate the children from their partner.

It is also, broadly, feminism, the women’s movement, that is responsible for the current collapse of the North American family.

It follows, if there is a dysfunctional family, “cherchez la femme.” Most often it is because a mother plays favourites. Granted, there are cases of abusive husbands. But logic and the wisdom of the ages suggests that it is more often the wife and mother, even if this is covert, behind the scenes. Every Narcissus needs his Echo. Men are like dogs. They tend naturally to adore women and seek to make them happy.

It Needs to Be Said: Women Are Beautiful but Crazy

 

Can we all agree that, on average, women are more beautiful than men/ 

Even the question seems absurd. Obviously, yes.

And that women have a stronger understanding and appreciation for beauty? 

And this is true even though some individual men can be strikingly handsome. This is true even though some individual male artists can produce unspeakable beauty in their works. 

Even when this is so—take a visit to your local art gallery. Whom do you see there, admiring this art? Mostly women.

Since this is uncontroverslal, that women are more beautiful than men, it should also be uncontroversial that men on average have a stronger grip than women on what is true. There are three transcendent values, the good, the true, and the beautiful. Women guide men on the beautiful, men guide women on the truth.

Note that women traditionally can become hysterical, delusional. Even the word is subtly gendered. Among societies that believe in spirit possession, the most common victim is a young woman. 

It has long been understood, and shown by proper scientific studies  that men are better at navigating than women. Men navigate by compass direction, by absolute distance, and by map. Women navigate by familiar landmarks, number of steps, or by asking directions. Their understanding is highly situational. 

I used to have fun in my classes by asking all the women, first, to point north. Almost none could. It looked random. Then I asked the men. Most could. 

This suggests a broader difference: men seek and are aware of the absolute truth directly. Women in general rely on men to know what it is.

This is what makes male-female companionship both possible and necessary. The woman brings beauty to the home; and the man brings directional guidance. This is why two women in the same home find it much harder to get along.

Two men have less problem, since they can be expected to both see the same truths. But the home will be a mess.

It also means that a woman without a man is likely to go off the rails. A woman needs a man not like a fish needs a bicycle, but like bicycle needs a steering mechanism. Left alone, women are like a runaway garden hose, thrashing around for meaning.

This means that female CEOs are usually a bad idea. There are magnificent exceptions; one thinks of Margaret Thatcher. But more often, they are easily distracted from the mission by matters like DEI or what colour drapes the office needs. They can fuss about trees and let the forest burn. They can worry about putting agents on a sloped roof, and leave the candidate unprotected.

This is surely why Saint Paul said women should not speak at services; why he said their path of virtue was to obey their husbands. This is surely why Jesus chose all male apostles.

 You think God did not know what he was doing?

Letting women take the lead is the first sin in the Book of Genesis; it led to all the catastrophes to follow. Contrast to Mary, who said instead, “behold the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to your word.” 

The same motif appears in Greek myth: the story of Pandora’s box. I have seen it in North American Indian lore. In gnostic legend. And a Chinese student, commenting on Lady MacBeth, reports it is in the Chinese tradition as well.

It is inconceivable folly to ignore here the wisdom of our ancestors.

Why Canada Is So Woke

 

Canada has a reputation as the wokest country in the Anglosphere; perhaps in the developed world. What is it about Canada that makes it so susceptible to this?

I say it is the legendary Canadian “niceness,” the love of social harmony. “Peace, order, and good government.” This, I think, traces back to the UE Loyalists: English Canada was founded on the fundamental principle of deference to authority. This means not just government authority—and Canada is surely the only country in the world where the police force is such a beloved national symbol—but also social authority generally, the dictates of good manners and polite discourse.

This means that Canadians are peculiarly vulnerable to being bullied. Anyone who shouts loudly will have their demands met, for the sake of social peace, and anyone who speaks as an authority will be accepted as such. 

This is what the modern woke left really is: a selection of bullies making demands. A set of special interest groups, overall a minority. Like any bully, they will not desist until and unless firmly challenged; their demands will only grow and grow. And against this trend, Canada is uniquely defenseless.

Women are a similar case. Feminism was the vanguard of the woke trend; women continue to be more “woke” then men. Yet women are the chief victims of wokery. Feminism, in rejecting the traditional feminine role, subverted all their interests. This was more obvious in the early days, when “consciousness-raising sessions” were the main feminist activity. Women had to be bullied or socially shamed into the new doctrine. But now studies show that women are less happy than they were pre-1960, and women in developed nations are less happy than those in the Third Word, where traditional roles are still more common. And they are losing their advantage in life expectancy over men. 

This has happened because women are like Canadians. Women are naturally inclined—naturally inclined, note—to be nice, to defer to authority, to be flexible and go along. This, like Canadian niceness, is usually an admirable trait, but leaves one vulnerable to bullying and abuse. 

And the bully’s demands grow and grow. Now being nice requires accepting men in women’s washrooms, rapists in women’s prisons, men taking the trophies in women’s sports. 

This also perhaps explains the commonly noted phenomenon of “flying monkeys”: how bullies and narcissists always find willing accomplices. “We are three times the slaves of the owner of the Golden Cap, whosoever he may be.”

How far can it all go before the enslaved monkeys rebel? Perhaps we are about to see.

Becalmed on the Ship of Fools

 

A sign of how delusional—and immoral—our current society has become: going out for a social evening can feel like walking on eggshells. Just like life in a dysfunctional family, in a dysfunctional society there are many truths you cannot say, and many untruths you are compelled to say. Or else all hell breaks loose.

At a poetry reading Sunday last, for example, we had to begin with a “land acknowledgement,” saying we were grateful to be allowed to exist on the traditional land of three or more indigenous tribes. This is nonsense: the fact that three or more tribes always need to be named illustrates the fact that none had secure possession, and therefore none owned the property. Leaving aside that any residual hypothetical claims to sovereignty were formally renounced centuries ago, in return for compensation. These “land acknowledgements” violate the fundamental principle of human equality: the land was made by God for all. Nobody has a greater claim to it only due to ancestry. Immigrants are not third-class citizens.

Then one poet came up to the stage with a transgender flag hanging out of her pocket, and pointed out that today was International Day of Transgender Visibility. We all had to politely applaud like seals. And then the host came up and apologized for not mention this at the beginning of proceedings. We all had to acknowledge that people can be transgender, and they are oppressed if they are, and this girl was a boy.

But in reality, only words have genders. People have sex, and one’s sex is a physical fact, coded in every cell. Webster’s Dictionary, 1913: “Gender is a grammatical distinction and applies to words only. Sex is natural distinction and applies to living objects.” Human Gender is a nonsense concept. It began as “gender roles,” a feminist claim that one’s behaviour need not be conditioned by one’s sex. That claim itself was demonstrably false; men can’t have babies. But now the horse is out of the barn, has contracted mad cow disease, and is cannibalizing feminism itself.

Then, in conversation, a new friend reveals that both her children have ADHD. But she loves them despite their disability. 

Poor kids. ADD is just having a strong and lively imagination, now stigmatized as a disease. One might as well stigmatize high intelligence as morbid. That’s pretty much what we’re doing. Dangerous, no doubt: being smart and not doing what you’re told needs to be stomped on early, else who knows what these kids might say as they get older? Perhaps that the emperor has no clothes. Yet again, I have to bite my tongue, and leave those poor kids to their Ritalin-addled fate.

Such is life in 21st century Canada. A big reason why I feel compelled to keep this blog: my little sane space.

The Matriarchy

 

A Chinese student of mine has, for homework, written an essay advocating classes segregated by sex. He rightly points out that the research is overwhelming—both boys and girls learn faster when segregated. 

However, he illogically assumes we never knew this until recently, and that previous sexual segregation in the schools was based on discrimination against women.

Feminist dogma now apparently dominates the world—even China. And it is impossible to disprove, because it is presupposed a priori regardless of evidence.

In earliest times, my student begins, women were given no formal education, because of their low social status.

However, the European ruling classes were also, traditionally, given no formal education. Often they could not read or write. The same was true in India or China. I believe the present King Charles was actually the first member of the British Royal Family to attend university.

This was a job for clerks. An aristocrat, not needing to work for a living, was above such tedious labours.

So the fact that women were traditionally given no formal education might as well be cited as evidence of higher social status. They did not have to work, but could expect to be provided for.

My student then asserts that women were later educated separately from men because they were being discriminated against. This sounded plausible in the early days of feminism because of the US Supreme Court’s rejection of school segregation on racial grounds. “Separate but equal.” But does it apply in the case of the sexes?

It overlooks two other possible explanations. 

Firstly, the moral argument, that having boys and girls mix casually and daily past puberty and before marriage might lead to teenage pregnancy, sexual harassment, emotional upsets, sexual favours, sexual blackmail, and the entire #metoo morass that we currently have to deal with.

Secondly, the obvious one emerging again from current research, that both men and women learn faster when taught apart. The feminist case must assume that our ancestors were profoundly stupid. That is itself a form of prejudice. 

All traditional Chinese philosophy, back to the Classics, endorsed and was based on the idea of the bagua, the harmonious balance of yin and yang forces, being the key to the universe. And yang represented masculine, and yin feminine—they were meant to be in perfect balance.

He’d forgotten all about that. Feminism puts blinders on. It forces historical amnesia.

The same concept is familiar in ancient Indian thought. Perhaps not in Western thought, but I would challenge anyone to find in the Bible any clear assertion that men are superior to women.

The fact that God is portrayed as masculine? But that also implies that the human soul is feminine—as it is in Greek thought.

And if men have indeed dominated women, always and everywhere until modern times, how did they possibly pull it off?

Amusingly, the original argument, back in the early Sixties, were that men were better at cooperating in groups. This is why there was a drive to end "old boys' clubs," to desegregate all-male organizations.

Ironically, feminism now asserts the opposite, that men are naturally competitive, and women naturally cooperative. Yet they do not see that this undermines their entire argument.

It has, perhaps, been replaced by a more crassly materialist idea, than men have been able to control women because men are naturally more physically powerful—at least when it does not come to performing on the job or in a sport. Or in the movies.

But this does not work either. Yes, men are more physically powerful. But women have everywhere and always been in charge of preparing food. Poisoning is easy enough. A man must trust his wife implicitly.

Feminism is obviously false; and yet it rules the world.

Because men are too accustomed to deferring to women, whatever they want.

After the Depp-Heard Case,... More Evidence of the Terrible Harm Done by "Believe all Women."

 

Faux Oppression

 

Moving to a new home has brought me to the growing revelation, after just a few days, of how sordid and constrained my previous situation had been. How did I stand it?

Leading to the broader insight: people can get used to anything. Like the proverbial frog put in water and the heat gradually turned up.

For this reason, you simply will not hear complaints from the currently oppressed. If you hear complaints, it means one of two things: either you are hearing from the previously oppressed, but not oppressed now, about what used to be their situation; or else you are hearing from the habitually relatively privileged, not getting what they have come to expect.

The former seems to be the case of blacks in America; they are far more vocally irate and discontented now than they were, say, in the 1940s, or the 1960s, when they had good reason to be irate and discontented. Now they are systemically favoured, with “affirmative action.”

The latter is the case of feminists. Girls are generally raised as princesses, spoiled and indulged. Boys are treated more severely. Any attractive woman continues to be indulged in adulthood; ugly women are more likely to become feminists. And then, in the 1960s, something changed. Technological improvements in the home made it possible, for the first time, for men to live comfortably as bachelors. Suddenly women could not count so automatically on the deference to which they were accustomed, and which they expected from observing their mothers and fathers. Therefore the big trouble began.

Onde will note, however, that when women, now relatively obsolete in their traditional role, move into the male workforce, they always still demand special deference. They must be accommodated.

Indians, Canada’s “First Nations,” contrary to the constant claim, have always objectively been treated with deference and special consideration by the rest of society. This has not been good for their long term interests—just as it is not in their interest to spoil a child. Worse, Indian children are often raised without a father in the home, which usually means, without discipline. Therefore, like a pet that is taught to beg, they are always at the table looking woeful. They deserve whatever is on your plate, and are not yet getting it.

In the meantime, by appeasing these inappropriate and unreasonable demands, we are all able to comfortably continue to ignore the oppressed, indeed to comfortably oppress and scapegoat them: children, the young, the “mentally ill.” Working class white men: “rednecks,” “hillbillies.”

And so spins the world.

The Pink Tax

 

Ben Shapiro has come across a feminist on TikTok complaining about the “pink tax.” The problem, she says, is that identical items marketed to men or women coast ten percent more for the women’s version. This is discrimination against women.

But here’s a comparison. Identical food items cost more at Sobey’s than at No Frills.

Clearly, this is discrimination against those living in wealthier neighborhoods.

Or maybe, the free market being what it is, items are priced in part for how much the customer can or is prepared to pay. And the higher price for women’s goods is evidence that women have more money to spend than men.

They do. Women spend 80% of the consumer dollar. Men may make more money on average, or used to, but they don’t get to spend it.

If you think this is a case of oppression of women, here’s a simple test: if the male and female items are identical, why don’t women just buy the male item? That would end the practice immediately.

They don’t because women have enough money to be picky and not care about the cost. They will actually spend 10% more to get a pink razor instead of a blue one.

The same TikTokker notes that new drugs are always tested on men, not women. And this too is discrimination against women.

But by the same logic, it is more discriminatory against white laboratory rats and guinea pigs.

The eternal truth is that society considers men more expendable than women. If there is anything risky that needs doing, they use men.

Like trying experimental drugs.

Why do women insist that they are ill-treated? Because people will always listen and they get results.

Those who really are ill-treated are more likely to keep quiet about it and keep their head down. Because nobody will listen, and, if they do, it will just mean another blow of the lash.

The Sexual Devolution

 

I don't agree with Jordan Peterson on everything, but he's making some important points. The sexual revolution was a dumb mistake.

We need to grow up.

Taylor Swift's "The Man"

 

The great advantage of art is that it is the one place one is permitted to speak truth. The disadvantage is that most people either misunderstand or misrepresent what you say; usually to mean the opposite. The classic example is the parables of Jesus.

But another example that has come to my attention recently is Taylor Swift’s music video “The Man,” which one of my grad students has been asked to comment on. Everyone reads it as a criticism of male gender roles and a complaint about the oppression of women by the patriarchy.

“It's a thinly-veiled attack on the disparity between how men and women in the same roles are viewed by society,” explains the BBC. The Washington Post calls it a "symbolism-packed takedown of the patriarchy."

I don’t discount the possibility that Taylor Swift herself believes so. That is not relevant, for it is the intentional fallacy. Artists are not necessarily aware of or in agreement with what they are saying. They are inspired; they are speaking, ideally, for a higher being. As Cohen writes in “Going Home”:

But he [Cohen; God is speaking] does say what I tell him

Even though it isn’t welcome

He just doesn't have the freedom

To refuse

The video indeed seems to be doing this. Superficially, Taylor Swift’s video is a feminist lament about the advantages of being a man. Examples of traditional complaints include “manspreading”; the sexual double standard that men are permitted to be promiscuous, while women are criticized for it; that men are the bosses in the work force; that men are more free to express anger, while women must always be “nice”; that old men get to marry younger women. Even that men get to pee standing up. Each familiar claim is portrayed in a brief tableau.

But the whole thing seems subverted at the end of the video by the big reveal: that the man being portrayed is not a man at all, but Taylor Swift in masquerade.

What is the point of this, if not to suggest that the image of the male life being portrayed is not real, but a woman’s fantasy of what it might be like? As if demanding of us that we question its accuracy. The more so since the final scene knocks down the fourth wall and demonstrates this was all a video as well, all “made up.”

Also subverting the superficial interpretation are hints throughout the video that woman are actually in control “behind the scenes.” Most obviously, at the end, Taylor Swift is revealed as the director, giving orders to the man and criticizing his performance, while he humbly defers and promises to do better. When the credits run, everything was done, they say, by Taylor Swift, and “no men were harmed in the making of this video.” Suggesting a status for men equivalent to that of a trained animal, or a pet.

In an earlier scene, of a man competing in a tennis match, on the rear wall we see the legend “Womens’ Charity.” That id, all the effort being put out by the man is for the benefit of women. A shot on a subway displays, on the rear wall, a fake movie poster titled “Man versus Master.” Which surely implies that the man is not the master. Another scene features a poster that reads ““Missing. If found, return to Taylor Swift.” 

In light of these background references, we have a right to assume irony. Now go back and look at the visual examples of male privilege. Are they not actually mocking these claims? Beginning with their chilche’d nature. The man manspreading on the subway has his legs spread absurdly wide. He is wearing a business suit and smoking a cigar—not the sort of person you would see in a subway, and not something you could get away with in the real world. Images of men throwing bills in the air; stepping over women lounging in bikinis on a private yacht. 

More irony: the imaginary man is seen throwing a tantrum on the tennis court, on the ground and banging his fists. Is this meant to illustrate a male right to express anger? But it seems most obviously to refer to a recent such outburst by Serena Williams. A female line judge rolls her eyes in a brief reaction shot: men are not allowed to get away with such behavior.

A gentleman of obviously advanced years is shown marrying a younger woman. If this is meant to suggest male privilege, her big smile as she flashes a huge diamond ring to the camera is not the best way to do so. It implies instead that she is getting just what she wants here.

A woman has to work twice as hard as a man to get ahead? The video shows the very opposite: immediately after criticizing her male lead, Taylor Swift as director heaps praise on a female actor for doing no more than rolling her eyes at the camera. The scene is too obvious to be without meaning.

The reality Taylor Swift is portraying is that feminism is all wrong. Men do not get the better end of the social bargain, and never did. Women are always in control; for the simple reason that men do everything they do in hopes of pleasing women in the mating dance. A pretty young women gets whatever she wants, whenever she wants it. She simply says, “try to be sexier—try to be more likeable”; as Swift does to her male alter ego at the end of the movie; and any man will react like a cowed but devoted dog. 

Men are whatever they are because that is what women tell them to be.