I wrote a long response to REJ, because she comes off as pretty sincere and intelligent, and decided I might as well make it a post. I don’t often admit it, but in general women who call themselves “feminist” tend to be a bit higher on the IQ scale. This doesn’t necessarily make them better people, and oftentimes make them worse, but in some cases it makes for better conversation. It also motivates me to attack the concept of feminism with more gusto, because it tends to do the most real damage to intelligent women who follow its false promises.
The articles I write that most strike a nerve with feminists tend to concern the work/school/life tradeoffs, such as the recent post on sending daughters to college. REJ didn’t like my post, and I don’t blame her. It hits educated women where it hurts. But is it really better to tell pretty lies than to make an attempt to address the abysmal fertility of intelligent, educated women, which has become a major social problem that will have repercussions for subsequent generations?
You decide:
The overall suggestion of this post is that women are stupid & that educating them is a waste of time. You literally recommend your readers reconsider sending their female children to college… because they are stupid and it would be a waste of time.
-REJ
Hi REJ, thanks for taking the time to explain yourself. If you’d been reading me for a while, you’d know that I think there are too many men in college, too. However, I think it’s more of a problem for girls, and it doesn’t have all that much to do with intelligence, per se, although psychological differences exacerbate it.
First, let me point out that I would not recommend sending a son to college unless he was both ambitious and smart, and most people simply are not above average in both of those measures. There are plenty of good trades in which one can earn a living without having to waste time and money in college only to find oneself competing with more driven, intelligent individuals for the scarce good jobs. I wish I’d obtained a trade degree, to be honest (I’m not particularly driven where career is concerned), so I’m going to encourage my kids to get one before they try for a BA.
Now why do I think the money isn’t well spent on daughters? My own experience, partly. I look around at my college-educated, urban friends who are around my age (genX), and unless they were born into money the women are lucky to have kids by 40. This is because they were paying off student loans, putting marriage off, and trying to work their way up to a stable job first. This is a tougher route than you might think, and due to a shorter window of fertility women pay a higher toll, although we all do to be honest. When our women – especially our intelligent, competent ones – do not have the opportunity to be mothers, we all lose from it.
Maybe you don’t think family is important, and that’s fine. But it is to me, and many other people. It is these people I am speaking to, so if you don’t like the advice, you are free to ignore it. But then if you don’t care much for family, you really shouldn’t care what family-oriented people choose for their children — our values simply aren’t your business. You see, I feel I have a stake in what my children choose to do with their lives. You don’t, really.
In addition to the decreased likelihood of grandchildren, we also have to consider that certain feminists will teach our daughters that their fathers and brothers are bad people — their oppressors. They are taught to hate the men who love them most of all, and personally I think that’s pretty sick. I would never pay for my daughter to go to class and be taught to call her family and her people evil oppressors. What fool would pay for that?
This is what the men’s rights movement is sorely lacking: honest self-criticism. Instead of being ashamed of certain statistical facts- such as men being more likely to commit violent crime (note I said *more likely* not solely responsible)- you should FACE the issues, or else they’ll never go away.
For example- you should ask yourself WHY are men more likely to commit suicide? Is it because they feel like they are not allowed to show vulnerability and therefore feel emotionally isolated? Is the pressure of traditional masculinity harmful to men these days?
(note that being critical of ‘masculinity’ is not the same as hating men. Feminists think critically about traditional femininity all the time, such as ‘does it make us weak & dependent? Does is make us shallow & materialistic? Harsh questions with harsh answers, sometimes).
Why are men more prone to violence? What could be the root causes? How can we, as men, make changes for the better?You can BET, if women were more likely to commit violent crimes, then feminists would be on it. We would be asking questions and trying to find answers. Why can’t MRAs do the same, and get your own results instead of hating us for making improvements?
REJ, you are being disingenuous. Men are more physically violent due to biology. Males are more violent in all primate species that I can think of. But males are also more selfless, magnanimous and objective. You ask why we men can’t criticize ourselves… Seriously? Who invented courts of law, prisons, police, etc.? Women are less critical of violent men than men themselves. If it weren’t for men, for example, OJ Simpson would be walking free with a harem of young women today (as his mainly female jury decided in his first trial).
Admit it: women cannot really criticize themselves (with the exception of some older women past childbearing years, perhaps). You can’t even do it, and I can tell that you’re more objective than most. Here you say “if only women were so bad and violent like you men, we’d criticize ourselves.” Heh. I’m used to this kind of dodge, so it doesn’t get me riled up anymore. But still, I’ll indulge you and ask why, since women are more prone to deception and perjury, they don’t criticize themselves for that instead? Ask any trial lawyer after a few drinks who lies more and with more skill – a man or a woman – and she’ll tell you it’s the latter every time. This, incidentally, is why women can indeed make good lawyers, judges and detectives — they know their own kind, far better than most men.
If the statistics embarrass you, don’t hide from them. Do something about it. And certainly don’t try to twist the statistics and blame it on the eeeevil women. Like I said, if you do that, you will never find the true source of the pain that men are suffering.
Also, think about it this way; truly happy men don’t commit violent crimes. The men that are committing these crimes are suffering. They need help and if they get the help they need then it helps the victims of crime, too (keeping in mind that men are more likely to experience said violence from other men). A world without crime is the ultimate goal of humanity, no?
Wrong on a few counts here. Truly happy men do indeed commit violent crimes from time to time. We know of these people as predators and psychopaths. Some people are really, truly sick that way, and most happen to be male due to the greater male capacity and predilection for physical force. It’s a statistical thing, so there are women who do the same, but in significantly smaller numbers. Typically, women provoke violence by proxy because of their relative physical frailty. A woman’s strength and danger lies in her greater ability to navigate and manipulate complex social structures, as feminists regularly do in, say, Capitol Hill. The really nasty thing about female sociopaths is that they can usually hide behind the dumb oaf they put up to the job and get off scot free. This is why I do favor empowering women in many circumstances — it often takes a woman to hold another woman to account for her crimes. Most men are blind and stupid where women’s schemes are concerned, and always will be (I probably would be today, too, if it weren’t for circumstance).
Also, do we really want a world without crime? This is an impossible utopian dream. If one sees criminal law as a means to move us closer to the ideal, and one accepts that ideals are impossible to achieve, then it follows that a world without crime is an impossible ideal. The concept of crime, therefore, is simply a tool to shape society that can never be discarded. This is why utopian movements like feminism can end up dangerous and oppressive; the impossible quest to create the ideal society through law enforcement can criminalize so many of us that we all end up under suspicion.
As for suffering, it is a fact of life. I read a very intelligent theologian’s denunciation of the Book of Job, in which a man is tormented at the whim of God, who had made a bet with Satan. The theologian argued that this is a terrible God, and hardly one worthy of worship. How could God be so cruel and cause such suffering to a good, innocent man?
But what’s the alternative? Nature, in which the wolf tears the calf to shreds, children are stricken with disease, and disasters slaughter hundreds of thousands? Is there any difference at all? Suffering has its merits. Learn to live with it, and learn to embrace the cathartic nature of suffering, and you will be better prepared for the rest of your life and its end.
And look, I normally hate it when people write long-ass posts, but I’m writing this because I care about men. When I heard a few years so that there WAS a men’s rights movement, I was actually excited. I thought it would be like the male version of feminism, where you think critically as a group about the issues facing your gender (even if the truth is harsh) and genuinely try for improvement and betterment for society in general.
Instead, you find articles about how women are stupid and it’s a waste of time that they get AN EDUCATION. Seriously? Come on
I enjoyed your long-ass post. When I come across reasonable, sincere criticism it gives me an opportunity to think things through.
In closing, I’d like to say that I don’t think college is much of an education, to be honest, and I really meant it when I said that women would be better served learning to bake or sew. But I didn’t mean it in the way you think. I bake, and I consider it a valuable skill — more valuable than writing about gender theory (I would know). Did you know that the word “lady” that denotes a woman of high rank derives from a word that means “she who kneads dough?” It proves, I think, that people don’t care much about women’s education when they assign them to studies that have no value beyond faddish appeal. It proves that it’s all just a swindle and a waste of time. Men who encourage their daughters to learn real skills are doing them more favors than those who just ship them off to college to get stuffed full of the trendy crap that dominates humanities departments.
