With great power comes great incontinence
October 21, 2017 § 38 Comments
The most primal power of men is violence. Therefore the besetting sins of incontinent men tend to be sins of violence primarily, and to involve sex only circumstantially/accidentally. A violent man will use violence to get sex that he desires, but he will also use violence to get other things that he desires: money, drugs, prestige, etc. This decreases as individual power decreases: the besetting sins of incontinent men with diminished capacity for violence will tend to be more effeminate or androgynous sins.
The most primal power of women is sex. Therefore the besetting sins of incontinent women tend to be sins of sex primarily, and to involve violence only circumstantially/accidentally. A slutty woman will use sex to get violence that she desires, but she will also use sex to get other things that she desires: money, drugs, prestige, etc. This decreases as individual power decreases: the besetting sins of incontinent women with diminished sexual power will tend to be more masculine or androgynous sins.
This is reflected in prison populations, which are mostly men, because our society is willing to punish crimes of violence but is not willing to punish crimes of sex. In fact when a straightforward crime of violence perpetrated by a woman is perceived to primarily arise from sex, there is across the board resistance to punishing that crime.
Zippy Catholic 
Knocked this one out of the park, Zippy.
Interesting. I agree with the primal power point.
Is there supposed to be a symmetry between the two cases? If our society were willing to punish crimes of sex rather than crimes of violence, would you expect the prison population to be mostly women?
Ian:
I wasn’t advocating symmetrical imprisonment, if that is what you mean, although to the extent jail is appropriate for nonviolent crime there should be less disparity if the characteristic crimes of women were recognized as such. Ultimately how to limit bad behavior and its consequences is a prudential judgment, and men and women aren’t the same. Shaming and other “soft” punishment tend to be sufficient to control a lot of female bad behavior, but that depends on a given society’s willingness to use that approach without apology. In shameless societies like ours there probably isn’t a great prudential answer other than “stop being a shameless society”.
And of course “convent or jail” might be an appropriate option in an other-than-shameless society, despite the efficacy of shame.
“If our society were willing to punish crimes of sex rather than crimes of violence, would you expect the prison population to be mostly women?”
I wonder if we viewed violence as a non-criminal act, if such transgressions of behavior would be more prone to be punished by violence, and thus see a drop both of the offenses and thus prison population.
While I doubt this would be the case in the opposite extreme of what we face today, I wouldn’t be surprised that the reasonable mean would see such a result.
It is interesting that the “consent above all” mentality affects sex more than violence, as more people are willing to consent mutually to sex than consent mutually to violence; though I suspect there’s an argument that things like MMA are against the natural law, somehow.
Zippy, thanks. I suppose my deeper question is not so much the prudential question of how the male-female breakdown of the prison population should look like if society were to take sexual sins seriously, but rather: if men commit more and/or graver sins of violence than women, do you think women commit more and/or graver sins of a sexual nature than men?
Though I suppose given abortion, it’s not clear that men do in fact commit more and/or graver sins of violence than women. (On the other hand, it seems like most abortionists are men).
Ian:
Generally speaking it is characteristic of women to recruit men to help them with their projects. Men worry about how to kill the bear. Women worry about how to get men to kill the bear.
(There isn’t anything wrong with this abstractly; it is just naturally characteristic of the differences between the sexes).
though I suspect there’s an argument that things like MMA are against the natural law, somehow.
It would be pretty hard to make since the purpose of martial arts competitions is to demonstrate skill, not cause lasting harm. As far as I know, there are no legal tournaments where it would be acceptable under the rules to deliberately attempt to cause lasting injury. It happens, but then people have been known to die on the street from a single punch to the head. John McCain called it “human cock fighting,” but that’s an obviously ignorant position since professional fighters are supposed to be significantly more restrained than that.
[…] Source: Zippy Catholic […]
Now this is referring to divine law and not natural law, and under the heading “Duelling” in Denzinger (3272) so perhaps it doesn’t directly apply. But then again, it could be argued that “porn demonstrates marital arts in competition without intending to cause lasting harm” but that wouldn’t thereby justify it.
Sometimes God’s law is harsh where we wish it wasn’t. Can you box without intending to “inflict a wound on an adversary”? Can you even play football at the NFL level without doing that, anymore?
I have heard that there was sometimes strong (though rarely successful) pressure to ban things like jousts and tournaments and such like back in the day, but I’ve never really looked into it. Does anybody know what kind of reasoning was floating around back then?
I do think that an argument which disallowed competitive marital arts without also disallowing soccer, hockey, football, etc. would be very hard to make. Not that an argument which disallowed all those things is necessarily wrong. Also, a wound does not necessarily refer to any injury. Typically it refers to more serious injuries – especially ones which cause notable bleeding – rather than, say, bruises. I’ve no idea how much difference that actually makes in this case, but it should probably be kept in mind.
Yup.
Was just glancing back to double check my claims and realized I typed competitive “marital” arts as opposed to “martial” arts. Yeah, not exactly what I was going for.
“Marital arts” was my joke.
Y’know, I didn’t even notice that when I first read your comment, but apparently it worked as subliminal messaging.
Which is precisely why so many who do not for a moment doubt the gravity of the crime of abortion, decline to propose or recommend legal sanction against the woman. If you cannot persuade the sovereign to punish the assassin, what good is it agitating aggressively to punish the one who contracts the assassin?
I should add that the syllogisms propounded in the OP, though perhaps a little blurry at the edges, strike me as superbly stated and quite illuminating.
Paul Cella:
A society which refuses to punish murder is barbaric.
Zippy:
By and far that’s extremely unfair to barbarians, who on the whole have virile and robust moral codes (though they might be somewhat alien). A society which refuses to punish murder is degenerate.
Viz. a society which refuses to punish murder is going to be destroyed by barbarians.
[…] has a new post up which demands a follow-up: With great power comes great incontinence. Short and to the point, I am tempted to repeat all of it. Instead I will merely quote what I see […]
It’s difficult to come up with an example of a society that succeeded in consistently punishing murder. Power, status, corruption, indifference, error: something evil has almost always provided immunity against certain fashionable categories of murder. Jews were commonly excluded from protections in pre-modern Catholic monarchies. Catholics were excluded from protection in Protestant monarchies. Blacks in early America. Serfs in medieval Russia. On and on it goes.
It’s difficult to come up with an example of a society that succeeded in consistently punishing murder. Power, status, corruption, indifference, error: something evil has almost always provided immunity against certain fashionable categories of murder.
Commitment to “freedom and equality” combined with white knighting sentimentalism in our case.
Which is precisely why so many who do not for a moment doubt the gravity of the crime of abortion, decline to propose or recommend legal sanction against the woman.
And yet in one thread at W4 where I proposed that perhaps enshrining patriarchy into law, in part to account for such differences, I was treated to howling outrage by your colleagues. So one can only conclude that the mainstream conservative position is:
1. Men and women are different.
2. Women are less morally culpable than men.
3. It is a sin against freedom and equality to give men real legal authority over their wives and daughters (until they are married off).
4. We’ll just stand around and lament how society is going to Hell because of our liberal commitments.
5. We’ll find solace in blaming a typically male third party who is merely being paid to do the evil act that is one of many we cannot unequivocally outlaw because of our liberal commitments.
Notice that the question of how women who brutally murder their own children ought to be punished is framed as a question of whether women who brutally murder their own children ought to be punished. The hacked up corpses of the innocent are just the price of freedom.
None of which touches on the points that:
a) societies should punish murder
b) in pretty much all the cases you mention, these societies were failing in a commitment to punish murder, but still had the commitment. Ours doesn’t.
It’s difficult to come up with an example of a society that succeeded in consistently punishing murder.
Our moral failures can be excused by pointing to the moral failures of others?
Regarding criminally punishing women, it makes convictions of abortionists more difficult. In the 1940’s and 50’s there were hospital abortion boards which would grant legal therapeutic abortions but they would also sterilize about 40% of the women as being unfit for motherhood. As a modest proposal, in the interest of equal treatment both the male and female responsible for the unwanted pregnancy should be sterilized as unfit for parenthood.
Contraception and mutilation are themselves both sins, so I don’t think that’ll work.
Our moral failures can be excused by pointing to the moral failures of others?
It’s hard to imagine an all white jury voting to acquit a man who is caught performing a partial birth abortion on a black baby. Even white supremacists under Jim Crow had their limits, and seeing a child chopped up into parts while it writhes in pain would be too much for the average one.
Mike T,
You’d be surprised and horrified, I think.
Mike T.:
Stay as far away from Facebook nonsense as you can get! Speaking of sub-70 IQs. It is my experience that a great many of what might be called the “intelligent” Facebook participants tend to be people who get a kick out of stirring up trouble and then sitting back and watching all the #$&t slinging. They don’t care who gets hurt in the process. In several cases I personally know of these people are the epitome of the six things, yea seven, the Lord hates identified in Pr. ch. 6. I have actually pointed this out to some of them before. Not that it did any good. They have their reward.
Good point. If I didn’t detect such an earnest bitterness, I probably would have made the same assumption.
I’ve found that using some of Roissy’s ideas in a non-sexual way is incredibly effective at dealing with such women, particularly the idea of weaponized pithiness. In an argument, few things will drive a woman crazier than letting her throw out a 1000 word screed and giving her only at most 2-3 sentences in response. Particularly when you exude confidence and insouciance in your language.
How many times have we had a commenter like winstonscrooge who’s like:
RAWRRRRRRRR REEEEEE RAWWWRRRRRR [several paragraphs later
Zippy: Why u mad bro
Result:
Result (since img tags don’t work)
[…] I was surprised to see that Power is a hot topic right now. Zippy Catholic has a post titled, “With great power comes great incontinence”, which discusses relevant abuses of power, and then Donal Graeme’s post, “Power and […]
Zippy:
Any thoughts on Cane Caldo’s post?
https://canecaldo.wordpress.com/2017/10/25/examining-crime-with-a-speculum/
TimFinnegan:
I just skimmed it, but offhand he doesn’t seem to be using “primal” the way I use it. “Capacity for work” is a generic power of both men and women, whereas the violence/sex primacy of power is ontologically rooted in sexual dimorphism.
It is probably true that crimes of women are overlooked and excused because of feminism, and that greed/laziness (in addition to anger/lust, if we make it a taxonomy of virtue) lie at the root of many crimes.
But again that is just orthogonal to the point of my OP, it doesn’t stand in opposition to it. To see it as oppositional is to miss the point of my post.
[…] Caldo recently objected to my contention that violence is the besetting sin of incontinent men, citing federal prison statistics. One […]