Women should be tried as adults
February 6, 2018 § 153 Comments
Some days it seems like I am the only person on earth who actually respects women. Men and women are different, both individually and when considered as populations. But one of the ways we are the same – at least in my view – is that both men and women are moral agents, responsible for the behaviors we choose.
Yet a great many people – notably feminists and the mainstream pro-life movement, though those two are hardly exhaustive – really don’t seem to think this is the case at all.
In the comment thread below reader Jay posted a link to the following image:
This image was allegedly posted in a Facebook advocacy group started and governed by the very same young woman who accused her ex-boyfriend of rape (a year and a half after the alleged incident), in a case we discussed here.
There are several things to observe about this image. I’ll point out a few.
First, the image characterizes the distinction between rape/sexual assault (a very serious matter) and consensual sex (at best a minor matter, probably nobody else’s business) as something which occurs strictly and only in the woman’s mind. If she was subjectively afraid to say no and did not actually say no, he is guilty of sexual assault or rape.
Personally I would have no problem with colleges punishing extramarital sex – as demonstrated by actual evidence – severely, independent of consent. The idea that consent turns extramarital sex into a minor matter in the first place is simply wrong. Premarital sex is a grave, despicable, life-wrecking moral wrong. Consenting to fornication is a grave moral wrong. Physically forcing someone else’s participation in a morally despicable act is itself a morally despicable act, but the idea that fornication is just no big deal while rape is a terrible moral violation is false. They are both grave moral wrongs and should be treated as such.
Second, we would never buy the “I was afraid to say no” line of argument if the action was, for example, murder. The particulars matter, as always, but the most the particulars could do – even when in fear for your own life – is mitigate some of the guilt for actively participating in a murder. Saying no, resisting attempted persuasion or compulsion to do evil, is a basic obligation of every moral agent without exception. Failure to resist evil is itself a moral failure. And yes, this of course includes women – at least if you have any respect for women.
Third, if this image in fact comes from the alleged source – from the actual young woman who years after the fact accused her boyfriend of “rape” in the Shenandoah wilderness where she drove him – it appears to be a tacit admission that, whatever actually did happen between them, she didn’t actually say “no”.
Zippy Catholic 
It’s a real group, they have their own site outside the facebook group: http://cascoalition.org/
The leadership page lists the young woman in question as founder and president:
http://cascoalition.org/leadership
And here is the direct link to the facebook post, which I do believe works even without an account:
Oh, and here’s the cover photo for the fb group:
The sheer hypocrisy of it all never ceases to amaze me; as if any one of the people on this particular bandwagon wouldn’t be up in arms over convicting someone of murder without evidence.
Framing yourself as the good-guy (and really believing it yourself too) despite the manifest absurdity is a time-honoured tradition in our culture.
Well Zippy, you need not agree with me or even to let my comment through, but we people are surprisingly malleable, as in it is rather disconcerting how easy it is to lead us into sin. The idea that we are full moral agents impervious to outside influences is totally false. There’s an entire advertising industry dedicated to exploiting that very vulnerability.
Fear is a powerful motivator. It helped to cause a bunch of grown men to vote to go into Iraq in the absence of any evidence. Fear led us to bomb Nagasaki.
Women in general are far more vulnerable to fear, hence fear and control has traditionally been used by men for centuries in order to gain our compliance. There’s a simple way to make sure men are not victimized by women’s fear, real or imaginary. Don’t fornicate with women who aren’t your wife.
If only St. Peter had known: “It’s not denial if you make me afraid to confess Christ.”
Were it within my power to do so, I’d outlaw facebook.
IB,
The idea that we are full moral agents impervious to outside influences is totally false.
No one has suggested that women are “impervious” to outside influence. The argument is that women possess moral agency. But the problem with your comment – and the related comments at other places – is that women’s moral agency somehow vanishes once something immoral happens – check out Zippy’s pro-life link. Then the situation is immediately reframed into one of victimization. This is very harmful because the victimization frame just clouds the more important issues: moral agency, chaste living, examination of conscience, need for repentance, etc etc. It is not being suggested that women are never victims of sexual assault. But to reframe reality into one where women are precariously bumbling their way through life chronically victimized so that whenever something bad happens to a woman it is “more understandable” because something about victimization helps no one. Least of all women.
Whenever I suggest that women should at least by default be treated with dignity and respect, as adult moral agents, I can count on objections from the usual suspects.
I wonder if when these people get to the pearly gates if they would appreciate this standard being applied to them. Being sorry for our sins isn’t really being sorry because we were just afraid of hell. No more attrition, only perfect contrition may enter here.
“Whenever I suggest that women should at least by default be treated with dignity and respect, as adult moral agents, I can count on objections from the usual suspects.”
The only time men such as Zippy ever speak if women’s moral agency is when men have been caught in sin of their own. The first thing out of Adam’s mouth was, “this woman you gave me,” not only blaming Eve, but inadvertently blaming God Himself.
It’s nothing more than an attempted moral plea bargain and it didn’t work in the garden of Eden, so it’s certainly not going to work today. God is not fooled by such silliness.
Good to know I’m not the only one. I can tell you dozens of real horror stories, man! E.g., suggesting that a promiscuous young woman bears the brunt of the responsibility for suffering a miscarriage will almost invariably bring down upon you female wrath and fury in the form of “how dare you say that!; no woman should ever have to go through what I/she have/has gone through!” (I purposely omit the all caps and the multiple exclamation marks)
insanitybytes22:
Where exactly have I been a big softy on men doing evil?
This blog is of course well known for its unfair stereotyping of women in general.
Or maybe the point I made in the OP is true, and your predictable shrieks against treating women as adults are rooted in your own errors.
Yeah, that is a *human* problem, not an exclusively man or woman problem. She did the same thing as you’ll recall.
“….your predictable shrieks against treating women as adults are rooted in your own errors.”
I’m not shrieking. Why should I shriek? I’d like you to understand where the Christian culture went awry and why your argument is flawed and will just fall on deaf ears outside the rabid bitterness of the manosphere, but meh, even that is not too important.
Husband has right to sex with wife, fornication illegal-> no means no-> yes means yes-> yes means no ->all sex is rape
It appears we’re at “yes means no”
The lesson of Eden is, quite precisely, “no excuses.” Eve is responsible for her choices: being tempted by the serpent is no excuse. Adam is responsible for his choices: being tempted by Eve is no excuse.
That is willfully misreading and misrepresenting everything Zippy has written on this matter.
Damn right. Both banished.
Lol! “Both banished” = equality. Wait, what?!
Consent is not the issue.
Job 31:1 offers us, “I have made a covenant with my eyes; How then could I gaze at a virgin?”
Matthew 5:28 explains, “but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
The legal system is one thing, but moral and biblical law does not care whether you actually rape a woman or you gain her consent and fornicate. The sin is in dehumanizing her and perceiving her as nothing more than sexual prey for your consumption. To covet and envy what does not belong to you, to reduce women not your wife to nothing more than vehicles for your sexual fulfillment.
Tamer didn’t just “consent,” she actually pleaded for marriage. It is still rape.
[…] Source: Zippy Catholic […]
insanitybytes22:
Is fornication a grave sin for women too?
Not in the precise same way Zippy, no. I’m not an egalitarian. Women reflect and multiply what they are taught, men lead. It’s as unfair as biology is, but it is what it is. Women risk pregnancy, men don’t. Men have higher testosterone levels and women don’t. And spiritually, men carry the larger burden of sexual sin than women do.
Eve in the garden long ago is not making an excuse, she’s telling the truth, reporting the facts, “the serpent deceived me.” That’s what happened, that’s the truth.
It is Adam who lies to himself and to God, Adam who avoids taking responsibility.
insanitybytes22:
So is it your view then that women universally are not – especially when it comes to sexual sin, but really when it comes to sin in general – fully adult moral agents responsible for their own choices? Men in general and universally are superior to women when it comes to moral agency?
Saying no, resisting attempted persuasion or compulsion to do evil, is a basic obligation of every moral agent without exception
Let me never be put to such a test but yes, against everything squawked by modern ethics (I’m looking at you St. Maria Goretti detractors), there are circumstances in which there is a duty to die rather than consent to an evil act.
“Men in general and universally are superior to women when it comes to moral agency?”
Somewhat true, yes. Just due to size and strength differences in the physical realm,that is how it works. I am keenly aware that a good deal of my “moral agency” is totally dependent on the moral agency of the men around me. Men create the environment that protects and defends women’s apparent right to moral agency, don’t they?
In the absence of men granting, protecting, and honoring women’s alleged moral agency, I really don’t have much of my own, do I? So my own moral agency is totally dependent on men having theirs in order.
God is aware of that truth too, and with authority comes responsibility, so I believe He would totally hold men far more accountable for the well being, sin, and moral condition of the women (and children) he is charged with protecting, by virtue of his gender alone.
Quod erat demonstrandum.
Isn’t there an important difference between subjective culpability, relative circumstances, and being objectively a moral agent?
Scott:
Apparently the relative circumstance of being a woman reduces human moral agency and subjective culpability to such an extent that a woman who deliberately chooses to fornicate is not responsible for that free choice.
So it is always a man’s fault, for all values of “it”. I expect that even when women masturbate or engage in lesbian sex it is a man’s fault.
And this anthropology of womanhood is respectful of the human dignity of women because, because, because, well, because it is a man’s fault.
Incredible. So women aren’t even human. Women aren’t even rational, free actors. Zippy clearly respects Miss Bytes far more than she respects herself.
The whole point of the Gospel is Christ took all of our sins upon Himself, and we are to be like Him, and so we’re saying A faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief not trying to discount our sins and shuffle them off to others.
Re: JustSomeGuy
Except I am not sure that Miss Bytes actually believes what she thinks she does, taking “actually believes” to mean that she behaves accordingly. Her own resistance to male power and influence makes a farce of her claims.
On the one hand, if I understand her correctly, she seems to regard women as powerless to do anything against male power and authority. On the other hand, she is arguing without any visible male support. Indeed, in a thread some months ago she even went so far as to explicitly reject the idea that her husband – and what greater male authority could there be for her? – should be consulted on a discussion along similar lines to this one.
Perhaps she was right to not waste his time, but it does make it clear she was acting without (explicit) male sanction, against almost the entirety of a predominantly male combox. If female agency is totally dependent on male agency, how could this possibly be?
This may be one source of the problem. Apparently “the serpent deceived me” is just stating the facts, but “the woman, whom thou gavest to be my companion, gave of the tree, and I did eat” Is a lie and based in self deception and blame shifting.
And God was a misogynist and egalitarian for punishing Eve; didn’t he know that it wasn’t her fault and that it was really all Adam’s fault for failing to protect her?
InsanityBytes has to be a troll. She’s simply too absurd of a parody.
malcolm:
Definitely an example of “life imitates sh**posting,” if not an actual MGTOW troll or whatever.
Women will assert (indirectly) that they incapable of knowing where babies come from, or are too weak to act on that knowledge, so we must keep abortion legal. We don’t try the incompetent as adults.
NAXALT, X=no Y chromosome: I’m in the equality state, but women would need to survive the barbarians, bears, and blizzards, which was a useful filter for suffrage, and unlike Chicago and other environs, we don’t let dead people vote here. The double X here becomes the WY chromosome. Add the habit of CW and CCW, and the general she-wolf of the pack attitude, the women here are a lot clearer. Saying “No” While chambering a round tends to get the point across. Sam Colt did more for equality than the Suffragettes.
Then there’s the Fathers who raise these fierce pioneer women.
But your greatest point is to simply ban all extramarital sex, as many locales ban smoking. No sex, no rape.
Also, there is a strange irrational world that Lewis Carroll could not imagine where “I was afraid to say ‘No'” meant “I was afraid you would say something mean to me”. It doesn’t seem to imply there was a loaded gun to the head. Is the fear 1. rational, 2. proportional. It’s rape if she thought you might not pay for dinner if she didn’t consent to sex is … Well, it goes to the “White Knight”-ing question as to whether Women are adults.
I wish the question really was, “are women adults.” Sadly the question in many of your minds is actually, “are women even people?”
I suppose that if anyone, male or female, literally had a gun put to their head and were told to do a gravely wrong action, most people would consider that to *modify* any sense in which they consented to do it. This would apply to assisting in a murder as well. If Romeo had walked into the apothecary’s den in _Romeo and Juliet_ and, instead of offering him a purse of gold (as he actually did), had held a knife to his throat and said, “Give me the poison or you die here and now,” we wouldn’t have the immortal words, “My poverty, but not my will, consents.” The fact that Romeo bribes rather than threatens the apothecary makes a difference to whether, in the ordinary language sense, we apply the word “consent” to his turning over the poison. E.g. If Romeo told the apothecary that he was going to use the poison to commit suicide and put a knife to his throat, and the terrified apothecary turned it over, followed by Romeo’s suicide, I wouldn’t normally say, “Romeo and the apothecary engaged in a consensual act of jointly murdering Romeo.” This usage point is still more applicable where the action in question is one that normally is expected to bring mutual pleasure. If a woman literally and credibly threatened a man with a gun to perform a sexual act upon her, and he reluctantly did what she demanded out of reasonable fear for his life, the same terminological point would apply. Most people understandably wouldn’t say, “They had consensual sex.” I wouldn’t use that sentence myself to describe that situation.
It seems to me that the problem with the meme is that it is worded so subjectively that it is intended to apply in a situation where the other person couldn’t have any idea that she “feels afraid,” where he isn’t actively threatening or trying to threaten her, and where the whole “feeling afraid” has (as far as he or anyone else could tell) no objective basis in reality.
It seems that under such conditions, men must presume that a sexual act is rape as the default stance. Men must avoid sexual intercourse, conjugal or not, in general lest they without their knowledge or intention commit a grave evil.
The terminological point I was making, btw, is clearer if we remove the element of intrinsic wrong from the equation. Take a game of backgammon. If A threatens B with a gun and demands that B play a game of backgammon, it isn’t wrong for B to play the game to save his life. (At least, I can’t see any reason why it would be, absent other circumstances.) But we would not normally say, “They had a mutually consenting game of backgammon,” because that sentence has the connotation that neither was under severe duress such as fear for his life. Nor does A get to say, “What’s wrong? He agreed. We mutually consented to play the game. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
This tends to isolate the question of whether “consensual” is the normal terminology under such circumstances.
However, again, the meme is highly dubious in the context because of the probable subjective meaning behind “make me afraid.”
You are the one who has suggested that women are less than human. In fact, suggested isn’t even strong enough word.
A human is an embodied soul, one substance that is simultaneously corporeal and spiritual, made in the image and likeness of God with the powers of intellect and will.
When you said you don’t have much moral agency of your own, you implied that (at least) one of these powers must be severely handicapped, if not altogether absent, in you.
Arguing with her about it will get us nowhere. I’ve pointed out many many times the dehumanization implicit in suggesting that homosexuals, e.g., can’t control their impulses to sodomize each other. All I’ve ever gotten in return for my efforts is a bunch of emotion-driven screeching about what a jerk or s.o.b. I am for pointing it out.
You are correct. As it is a complex matter.
As far as I can tell, insanitybytes doesn’t really care whether a rape, in fact, occurred.
“As far as I can tell, insanitybytes doesn’t really care whether a rape, in fact, occurred.”
You’re right, I don’t. I could probably go find some messed up 20 yr old kid and manipulate him into consenting to sex. It would be exploitative,immoral,and wrong. In a moral context it’s really irrelevant whether he consents or not, in fact, if I could confuse him enough into not knowing what he actually wants, it’s probably even worse. At least violent stranger rape doesn’t leave someone in a murky quagmire, wondering if they caused the whole thing.
Rape is not just about the body, it’s about raping people’s minds, and their spirits. You have to look at the power differentials in order to understand who the predator is.
ou’re right, I don’t. I could probably go find some messed up 20 yr old kid and manipulate him into consenting to sex. It would be exploitative,immoral,and wrong. In a moral context it’s really irrelevant whether he consents or not, in fact, if I could confuse him enough into not knowing what he actually wants, it’s probably even worse.
The reason all of this is murky to you is because you assume it’s all based on black and white. It’s not, aside from the question of choosing to do as God requires or not. All sex has varying degrees on the part of all parties to participate in it and for varying motivations.
You once said that women who are DTF with guys they just met are just broken. Clearly, you’ve never been around goth girls. They are living proof in many cases of how naive you are as many are both very broken and horny as heck.
“They are living proof in many cases of how naive you are as many are both very broken and horny as heck.”
That comment actually demonstrates my point very well. Goth girl is broken, dysfunctional, possibly intoxicated. She doesn’t want to have sex with you at all, but she is a vulnerable target and easy to prey on.
I mean it, you should assume all women not your wife do NOT want to have sex with you. I have no idea how that could even be controversial. It is a clear reflection of not only biology, but also of biblical values.
There isn’t any need to continually restate the perspective: it is perfectly clear.
When a woman engages in sexually predatory behavior it is because she is a poor sick vulnerable thing, a victim.
When a man engages in sexually predatory behavior it is because he is evil, a perpetrator.
Men have moral agency and women don’t.
This by the way:
… can be restated in a more general form as “you should always assume that what is sometimes true is always false”. IOW you should assume a contradiction, with all that that further implies.
We could restate the principle as “you should always act as if all women not your wife do not want to have sex with you,” which has the benefit of not being logically self contradictory.
But even this is ultimately – like all attempts to ignore the truth – foolish. If a woman not your wife is smitten with you it is not always the case that this fact can be safely or compassionately ignored or treated as untrue. It may be sometimes the case; but in other situations it may be wise and compassionate to create more distance, redirect her affections elsewhere, be especially careful to avoid circumstances where the “Hell hath no fury” effect can manifest itself in false accusations, etc. etc.
Assuming that – or acting as if you assume that – women are asexual beings, that they are never subject to fits of jealousy, and that they never use sex or their status as women as a weapon would be incredibly stupid.
“Assuming that – or acting as if you assume that – women are asexual beings, that they are never subject to fits of jealousy, and that they never use sex or their status as women as a weapon would be incredibly stupid.”
No,what is actually stupid is knowing that truth and still refusing to accept the fact that having sex with women not your wife can have consequences. It is morally incoherent to insist that women must just stop using sex as a weapon so men can be free to fornicate at will without inconvenience.
insanitybytes22:
Is it your expectation that nobody will notice that you aren’t speaking to anything anyone has actually said in this thread, or to any position that anyone in this thread holds?
Who is insisting on that? Provide a quotation from someone in this thread, as the price of entry for commenting further.
insanitybytes22:
Your attempted comment did not meet the criteria. You need to quote someone insisting that “women must just stop using sex as a weapon so men can be free to fornicate at will without inconvenience.”
An alternative is to unequivocally retract your statement and admit that nobody insisted anything of the kind.
Demonstrate or retract. Put up or shut up.
Up to you. No skin off my nose either way.
IB = gnostic troll.
Zippy my brother, she has already burned her straw man down to ashes and swept them into the ocean, so as to destroy all the evidence.
Married women are not capable of wanting sex either under her argument because every married woman was an unmarried woman at once and thus couldn’t have possible felt a properly ordered sexual desire for her future husband. Since marriage does not materially effect a woman’s spiritual or mental state such that marriage qua marriage is capable of healing such broken states, marriage cannot make a woman less disordered than she was before. Ergo, all husbands are rapist-cads too.
IB is just another iteration of Andrea “all sex is rape” Dworkin.
After catching up on this discussion from the lurker’s lounge, couple of thoughts:
1. Folks here who think ib22 is a manosphere / MGTOW / MRA sock-puppet have not, I suspect, ever discussed this sort of topic with actual women IRL. Seriously, go ahead and try it. Then when you’re done, rank each woman’s response on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is an ib22 response and 10 is a Mrs. Lydia McGrew response. Be prepared to write down a lot of negative numbers…
2. Ib22’s main point – that men are the only sex that ever fully matures into moral adulthood – doesn’t strike me as nearly that crazy. Following a policy of “when in doubt, treat a woman like an overgrown child” works so well in so many disparate situations that it is impossible not to wonder if maybe deep down that’s just the way God wired the fairer sex. This is not to say that women bear no culpability for their sins. Eve was very obviously culpable for her sin in the Garden, as was Adam, which is why God punished both severely. But Adam was punished more severely because he was not just responsible for his own sin, he was also responsible for his wife’s.
3. As nice as it was to know that young Christendom College women were defending a culture of modesty and chastity in the mommy blogger’s combox, if that ridiculous slogan is gaining traction on the Christendom campus the school has clearly dropped the ball somewhere. Well catechized Catholics should be smarter than to fall for transparently modernist slogans that place “consent” as the determining factor for whether extramarital sex is wicked and despicable. Which leads into my last thought on this whole sorry affair…
4. The school should have expelled the guy the moment he admitted to having extramarital sex. Evidence of non-consent should not affect whether he is expelled (though it obviously still matters in terms of whether the college ought to reach out to the local authorities). Admitting to sex outside of marriage is heinous enough as far as expulsion goes. The woman should have stayed, under the presumption of innocence, unless and until evidence arose proving otherwise.
donnie:
I’ve seen no evidence that it is. The activist group has no affiliation with the college: it has a website and a Facebook page.
IRL I find that approaching all other human beings as if they were overgrown children, until demonstrated otherwise, works pretty well. Of course I also tend to treat children respectfully, while making it clear that I expect responsible behavior.
I have had (quite agreeable) IRL discussions about this situation with a few women.
As far as what the college actually did in this situation, it is not my view that what was actually done was the only possible reasonable response given the information we have. My view is that what they in fact did – as presented by critics – was eminently reasonable.
IB would be not doubt shocked to find that accusing even a serial killer of crimes you know he didn’t commit is still grave sin because the fact that a man has already burned down his reputation does not excuse your attempt to commit calumny.
It’s unbelievable that we’re even arguing about whether or not the justice system has a duty to reflect the truth or not. It’s practically tautological. This whole conversation has a strange air of unreality about it.
I have had (quite agreeable) IRL discussions about this situation with a few women.
There’s probably a fair bit of selection bias involved here.
ArkansasReactionary:
Always, and of course. The one thing we all have in common with the people we know is ourselves.
Malcolm:
This whole conversation has a strange air of unreality about it.
Someone earlier labeled the main interlocutor in this thread as gnostic, and that seems to have something to do with the unreality of the conversation. It is not possible that “truth” which comes from within can be wrong, so it is not possible to demonstrate by objective means, common and accessible to all, that such a person is wrong, not so that she will see it.
buckyinky:
If not merely gnostic, but with rather a preponderance of immersion in HYPOAGENCY. This is the underlying surrealism alluded to (I think) by malcomthecynic.
Zippy’s agreeable IRL discussion with women in his sphere would be a godsend in mine.
Working out our salvation with fear and trembling also implies NOT NEGLECTING it.
Then there’s crazy stuff like this: https://twitter.com/KassyDillon/status/961449480813010944
The problem isn’t that some women do things like that. The problem is that there are a good number of women who will empathize with her rather than calling her a no good, crazy bitch who is not good enough to be a cat herder in her menopausal years for doing that to her BF. It’s that which is the real indictment that leads to a lot of support for the idea that maybe most women really are overgrown, reality-divorced children.
(I forgot to mention that that was in response to MarcusD’s link)
Pedat Ebediyah:
To be fair, my IRL situation is highly unusual.
I believe they would consider it to mitigate the crime, and they would be right to do so. But they would be wrong not to consider it a crime, or the criminal ultimately culpable nevertheless. Very very few men (or women!) sin without temptation, but temptation is no excuse for sin, even if its form can mitigate the horribleness of the subjective movement of sin.
Needless to say, the objective fact of sin is never mitigated by circumstance. Regardless of why you kill a man, even it was a complete accident over which you had no conscious control, he’s still dead.
This mirrors my own perspective on things, which I suppose means I respect women less than Zippy. Unfortunately, this puts us in the position of then finding what the proper place for women is, which depends on their level of agency impairment. If women have no moral agency, as at her more hyperbolic the aforementioned commenter states, then the only proper place for women is one of abject slavery, where they have no chance of being faced with moral decisions and thereby no chance to create an objective evil by choosing wrongly when they cannot distinguish. This is the state for dogs, infants, and very small children, for example, and nobody argues that it oughtn’t be.
I happen to think that women do enjoy more moral agency than dogs, infants, and very small children, however. I think they enjoy enough moral agency to be put in charge of a household under the direction of a husband or other superior, and that some women even possess the moral agency to take charge of other women in carefully oriented environments, such as convents. Some very few women probably even possess just as much moral agency as the average man.
Then again, I have a very aristocratic soul, and I look upon the medieval organization of life fondly, as attempting to realize an ideal that we should still hold and try to realize. The class of men who would naturally be serfs should be serfs, not least because they possess less self-control and less wisdom than those who would direct them. (And so on, up the ladder. And before anyone accuses me of wanting to be a duke, I’d hate that job. I’d probably be a peasant, or maybe a craftsman, and I’m perfectly fine with that.)
However, after a certain minimum point (which dogs, infants, and small children fall short of, and which women do not) there must be, as a legal and pastoral matter, a recognition of self-choice. Otherwise you’re fooling yourself and others, and allowing whole classes of objective evils – like fornication, baby-murder, etc. – to go unchecked.
Rhetocrates:
Maybe I should clarify my understanding a bit.
Everyone, male and female, categorically, is responsible for his own choices. Moral agency in this sense is an essential property of being human.
As we know though different actual particulars can instantiate essential properties more or less perfectly. Man is a rational animal, but the extent and perfection to which one man instantiates rationality is different from another. In general we can think of a distribution of more-or-less perfection in instantiating rationality.
Men and women instantiate rationality in this sort of distribution: the populations are different qua population and individuals are different qua individuals. But these distributions overlap. The most rational woman is far more rational than the least rational man.
And the same sort of thing can be accurately said of moral agency, at least in the capacity sense that you and donnie are using the term. Capacity to make good moral choices varies just as capacity to reach correctly reasoned conclusions varies.
However, it is not the case that all men exceed all women in these capacities.
And none of that changes the fact that men and women are, categorically and essentially, moral agents. Each and every person, male and female, is morally responsible for the choices he makes.
Complete accidents aren’t sinful; there may be evil effects of them, but they are by definition not sinful because sins are acts of the will, and an accident means that one did not will the act. I do agree however that circumstances cannot make objective sin into something not sinful.
TimFinnegan, you and I completely agree. By ‘the objective fact of sin’ I didn’t mean ‘sin happened, whether you meant it or not’, but rather I was using (possibly mangled) the distinction previously highlighted on this blog between the objective events and the subjective events in a sinful act, and saying that whether or not the subjective criteria are met to call something sinful, those objective events still happened, and are still real evils really present in the world.
I also completely agree with Zippy, but I claim (which is neither here nor there for the point of the original post) that a just nation will recognize these facts and traditionally structure itself to remove or diminish the opportunity for those on the left sides of their distributions to make bad choices. I wouldn’t expect my Uncle Theo (who was dropped on his head by the doctor at birth and sustained permanent injury) to understand or abide by just war theory, and it would be unjust of me to put him in charge of a war. Nevertheless, he does have room for moral agency, and it is a real evil if he decides to rebel against his caretakers.
Rhetocrates:
Succinctly, every society should authoritatively encourage virtue and discourage vice.
(Even liberalism asserts as much: it just does so sociopathically whenever it pretends to deny the legitimacy of authoritative discrimination, that is, whenever it is distinctively liberal).
I think that intellectuals do sometimes have a tendency to conflate deficiencies in rationality with deficiencies in virtue. This in turn may be connected to all of our subverbal protestantism. I see a connection between this old post
https://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/2005/05/11/salvation-by-what/
… and this relatively new one:
https://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/2017/10/09/we-are-all-jesuits-now/
Christ after all did warn us (Matthew 18:3) to be like little children as far as evil is concerned.
@Mike T
Well, in all likelihood, she is probably afflicted by at least one form of (diagnosable) mental illness. I think undiagnosed/undisclosed mental illness explains a lot of the behavior that gets ascribed to some inherent, reduced moral agency of women. Beyond that, the belief that women are hypoagentic likely contributes to them behaving that way – not only in that it forms expectations of behavior, but also in others addressing/resolving consequences arising from such a belief on the part of individual women. The whole thing reminds me of the so-called “affluenza defense.”
It’s really weird that she won’t recant that obviously false claim.
MarcusD:
Right. The whole world is screaming at women that they are hypoagentic (love the term) oppressed victims, and that embracing this conveys status. Trying to discern the ‘natural state of women’ in some general way from these conditions is ridiculous. People are at their best when society expects the best from them.
People are at their best when society expects the best from them.
That’s it is incumbent upon white men to proudly embrace the double standard that modern society imposes on us in the name of equality. Someone has to be the adult in the room, fully accountable and a true moral agent. It’s time to take up the White Man’s Burden again.
Mike T:
As a non-white man, I approve this message. Let me know how I can help. 🙂
The problem with the White Man’s Burden is that as an historical matter the white man has picked up that burden by embracing political liberalism. It is part of his (our) identity qua white: it is why he is white as opposed to Italian, Irish, German, French, or what have you. I’ve talked about the paradox of the situation before.
The personal self selection effect no doubt is at work here too, in my own perspective. I tend to get along pretty well with black folk and really do enjoy and value their contributions. Sure their cultural distinctiveness can sometimes be annoying, but no moreso than (e.g.) a “white” Jersey Shore Italian or Manhattan Jew. My cousin (once removed) was a famous (white) bluesman (culturally black music), so there is that. My melting-pot-European American white history isn’t the same as black history, but it is a centuries-long side-by-side history sharing a geography, etc.
White folks tend to be scarily competent in groups, moreso even than superior-IQ Asians. But they (we) also tend to be liberals, and to become insane materialists wherever liberalism “breaks”.
And there is the rub.
This is true of the English phrase, but only because the English were already Anglican, etc. by the time it was coined in English. However, it’s not true of Spaniards or Portuguese in settling the New World. There is a way to bring Christendom to aboriginal peoples without also bringing them liberalism, which is why Peru had to be militarily conquered by American-backed José de San Martín, and still put up much internal struggle to stay united to her Crown.
The problem with the White Man’s Burden is that as an historical matter the white man has picked up that burden by embracing political liberalism. It is part of his (our) identity qua white: it is why he is white as opposed to Italian, Irish, German, French, or what have you. I’ve talked about the paradox of the situation before.
The problem here is that I was being tongue-in-cheek.
Your point though seems like a particularly American point of view as the majority of continental Europe is defined more along national than racial lines.
In the US, the primary reason most white Americans bristle at the notion that there exists a blood and soil nation called “the American Nation” is that any historically literate reading would open Pandora’s Box WRT civil rights and post-1965 immigration. It’s also downright terrifying to bedwetting conservatives because it means that the only way to actually conserve anything is to admit that assimilation depends primarily on how well an immigrant can pass the duck test unless they marry (or are adopted as a child) into the nation.
It’s also simply not true that there exists or ever existed on American soil a single blood-and-soil nation. The British colonies began the immigration of French, Germans, and Irish, for example, and America in its very foundation took over French and some Spanish possessions, to say nothing of the aboriginals.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not making a play for multikulti here. Back in colonial days there were eyes-wide-open allowances for peaceful coexistence without forced admixture that mostly had to do with geographic and cultural separation, all under the same head of State (namely the King). In early American days these plans were consciously done away with and replaced with a plan of intentional displacement by the Anglo-American settlers.
This is in fact a large part of what the war was fought over, with the grievance:
referring specifically to George III allowing the recently conquered French territory of Quebec to continue living as Catholics under their ancestral laws, and propagandists (Thomas Paine chief among them) making the totally unfounded and utterly untrue claim that the King’s plan was to put the colonies under such a French system (and worse, a Catholic system!) next.
But a lot of this history is beside the point – but I’ll admit ignorance and lack of due dilligence here or perhaps my frame of reference is too contemporary. But it seems to me that, today at least, to whatever extent there are those who identify as “white” and to whatever extent those people believe they have a manifest destiny to uplift non-whites, those whites view their job as an uplifting towards liberalism. I would like to think there was a time in which the white mans burden meant something like Catholic missionary work – but even phrasing it in terms of a white mans burden seems to smuggle in a lot of unshared assumptions.
Perhaps the “white mans burden” is just a throw back to times of a “kinder, gentler” liberalism when the supermen were more accommodating to the low men. “Separate but equal” seems gentler than “Go to the same schools or we will crush you.”
Wood, that’s certainly correct, but I claim that knowing the history is knowing a way forward. The White Man’s Burden as bringing people toward liberalism is as precisely a corruption of “Go ye and make disciples of all nations,” as liberalism itself is a corruption of the Church. Recognizing and facing this is the first step to reclaiming (within our own hearts, and by the grace of God Almighty, some time in the future within our own parishes and even maybe nations) the true meaning of Christendom, as opposed to being lead astray either by liberal or reactionary commitments.
“The White Man’s Burden” and America as a “melting pot” were both ideas from British writers. I don’t know about Kipling, but I believe the coiner of the latter never even visited the United States. So any historic analysis of either should bear out the former was written by an enthusiastic advocate of British imperialism and the latter by a British Jew who only knew America from a distance.
Rhetocrates:
Very interesting perspective. I fully agree with you (as someone living in an “Eastern” country, and whose Anglophilia is pretty much a consequence of the “White Man’s Burden”) that the idea of “bringing liberalism and democracy to non-Western countries” is basically a corruption of the Great Commission.
As I see it, though….
The real damage was done, though, way before the White Man’s Burden was even a thought in Kipling’s mind – at the Reformation. After that, even if there was an earnest attempt to fulfill the Great Commission on the part of colonists or traders (it started as trade in my own country’s case), it would be doomed to failure because there would no longer be one single, unified, correct version of Christianity to preach. And as this failure led to liberalism in the West, it led to the failure of Christianity (and eventually liberalism) to “stick” in non-Western cultures. Vestiges of both continue to remain with us, but in distorted forms…
The problem with the White Man’s Burden is that as an historical matter the white man has picked up that burden by embracing political liberalism. It is part of his (our) identity qua white: it is why he is white as opposed to Italian, Irish, German, French, or what have you. I’ve talked about the paradox of the situation before.
The personal self selection effect no doubt is at work here too, in my own perspective. I tend to get along pretty well with black folk and really do enjoy and value their contributions. Sure their cultural distinctiveness can sometimes be annoying, but no moreso than (e.g.) a “white” Jersey Shore Italian or Manhattan Jew. My cousin (once removed) was a famous (white) bluesman (culturally black music), so there is that. My melting-pot-European American white history isn’t the same as black history, but it is a centuries-long side-by-side history sharing a geography, etc.
Even when I find myself disagreeing with you, Zippy, your intellectual reasoning, void of superiority and silly revisionist history reminds me why (way back in the day) we voted you *best dude blogging from the right”.
@Pedat (long time, my friend!):
I suspect your assistance would probably be best served to continue to plug away at what I think you have been doing; working to pull your brothers and sisters up to the point where they walk out what they say they believe.
They’re mind-raping me with their moral degeneracy and confusion and double-talk.
Not the usual suspect here, but it really shouldn’t be controversial to say that women are, shall we say, more susceptible than men to conditions that mitigate their culpability. Ahem. I do think in some cases they should be treated with more leniency for that reason. The flip side of this coin is that women need to frankly acknowledge they are the more vulnerable sex and are therefore dependent upon less vulnerable men to compensate for that weakness. That might look a little bit like patriarchy, though it doesn’t need to be named as such. Nothing to be ashamed of here. Not a program for turning the world upside down, either. Just common sense.
Blogmaster:
See this comment:
https://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/2018/02/06/women-should-be-tried-as-adults/#comment-48714
As for patriarchy, why shy away from the term? Daughters and wives are in fact subject to the authority of their fathers and husbands — even when the fathers and husbands themselves don’t believe this. Disbelief in reality doesn’t change reality, it just makes the faithless into dystopian sociopaths.
Zippy, re: your linked comment:
Of course I’m not denying the moral agency of women at all. I’m just saying that women – in general, and in general enough for legitimate generalizations in custom and in law – have certain characteristics that render them more susceptible than men to various mitigating conditions.Case in point: I favor capital punishment, but viscerally recoil at applying it to women. I think every man should.
As for the the term “patriarchy”, I figured you’d call me out on this. I’m totally fine with the term myself, but hesitate to use it because: 1) I’m a bad salesman and the word isn’t getting us anywhere; and 2) you have a lot of manosphere readers, and I don’t mean what they mean by it. I probably don’t even mean what you mean by it.
re: Blogmaster
Now I’m curious. What DO you mean by patriarchy?
Hrodgar:
I see patriarchy as a reality rather than an ideal. We have a patriarchy today, it’s just a corrupt one. Men set the moral, cultural, social, and political tone of any society – even if through malfeasance or negligence. Today we gave a patriarchy by and for a certain kind of men — I do not say class, because it transcends class — the kind of men who benefit, or perceive themselves to benefit, from the present arrangement of things. That arrangement happens to give most men the shaft these days, and most women too. The solution, though, is not fundamentally a resurgence of patriarchy but a resurgence of decency and fidelity.
Blogmaster:
I don’t disagree, but this should not be oversimplified. I expect more/different from a well bred noblewoman than I do from an uncouth lower class man, for example. Etc, etc. The part in my comment about overlapping distributions qua sex was not incidental to the point.
The OP title can be generalized to say that everyone should be treated by law and authority in a manner appropriate to his (meaning his or her, for the modernists in the room) station. And all human beings share the station of moral agent.
More particularly women in general should be held to a standard, qua moral agents, which rejects the tyranny of purely subjective ‘consent’ and accepts that deliberately heading off for anonymous sexual trysts and/or deliberately getting stinking drunk, even to the point of failure to actually explicitly say “no,” vitiates claims to have had their purity violated.
Women who can’t even bring themselves to say “no” (and still think they were “raped”) should be forced to listen to the Georgia Satellites on repeat, while wearing a chastity belt, for every second they are not under the watchful eye of a chaperone.
Case in point: I favor capital punishment, but viscerally recoil at applying it to women. I think every man should.
And so the real question is are you willing to actually support the delivery a just punishment in cases like that of Susan Smith, a Margaret Sanger or an Elizabeth Bathory? If not, you’re part of the problem in the same way someone who is discriminatory or partial to one economic class over another in matters of judgment.
Zippy:
We have, unfortunately, a society that fails to treat the gentler sex gently, the expectation being that women are equally free and autonomous moral agents who can fend for themselves without the guidance and protection of men, and without any of the cultural norms or structures that once made their free moral choices easier.
So, how do I put this without offending everyone on the planet? Women are hardwired to yield to men – not men in general, but men in their rightful places, and especially in matters of romantic intimacy. Saying “no” to a man in certain circumstances goes against a woman’s nature. It must be done, obviously, and a woman’s consent or lack thereof is still a matter of moral responsibility, of sin and virtue. But there is a sense in which consent is natural and refusal is unnatural. The greater villainy belongs to men who exploit female vulnerability.
I don’t know how we put the genie back in the bottle at this point. The confused young women involved in this controversy are reacting in part to the impossible schizophrenia that has been imposed on them: they are supposedly fully free and autonomous moral agents with the right to make all kinds of foolish choices, and yet they demand to be protected from those choices because they are too fragile to say “no”.
But the reality is that they are not fully free (none of us are), and they do need to be protected. No one on the left or the right is willing to say this.
But there is a sense in which consent is natural and refusal is unnatural.
That would explain all of the husbands out there who are incels, the non-alphas who struggle to even get a few dates, etc. I’m sorry, what planet are we on again? Everywhere I look, women not only have no trouble turning down the average man, but are more likely to consider it disgusting to say “yes” than to struggle to show a lack of desire.
Blogmaster:
I think the narrative of poor deceived naturally-consenting sluts who just can’t help themselves when they choose to fornicate etc — that sexual evil is always more some man’s fault or men’s fault in general than her fault — is (1) the opposite of what women all the way since since Eve need to hear; (2) an insult to many great female saints, including the greatest of all saints, not to mention a great many less than saintly women who nonetheless managed to keep their knees together; and (3) a fairly obvious half-truth (which is to say, a falsehood).
As for the rest, I don’t really see the need to establish my anti-liberal (and more generally anti-modern) bona fides.
Zippy:
Zippy on February 17, 2018 at 10:54 pm
Blogmaster:
“I think the narrative of poor deceived naturally-consenting sluts …”
Ignoring your provocative language for the moment, please note that the narrative you describe is not my own. “just can’t help themselves”? “always more some man’s fault”? That’s a nice straw man you’re arguing with but I’d rather you argue with me instead.
“— is (1) the opposite of what women all the way since since Eve need to hear;”
I would suggest that women, just like all sinners, need to understand their own unique kinds of concupiscence and probable weaknesses in order to be vigilant against them.
” (2) an insult to many great female saints, including the greatest of all saints”
Well then, it’s a good thing the “narrative” you describe departs significantly from my own! But let it be noted in any case that saints are saints because their virtue is heroic and they have conquered themselves with great struggle, usually after many falls.
“and (3) a fairly obvious half-truth (which is to say, a falsehood).”
As for my own narrative, rather than your caricature of it, I never claimed it was the *whole* truth about the matter, just an important consideration.
Blogmaster:
So you don’t actually object to any part of the OP?
Zippy:
For the record, I didn’t actually offer a “narrative” that purports to explain everything. With respect to the OP, my intent was supplementary. I’m not sure whether I disagree with anything because I’m not quite sure what you meant in some cases. Just a little rusty, that’s all.
Mike T:
One consequence of the current patriarchal rule by corrupt “alphas” is that a relatively small number of men have their way with a disproportionately large number of women. It’s like polygamy without marriage, resulting in many odd pathologies such as an army of surplus men who are condemned to having a hard time with women.
But I don’t think that impacts the point I was making at all. In a healthy society there would be more men who are in positions women naturally respond to I the way I suggested.
To summarize: Men lead, women follow; a few elite men lead the majority of other men; and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of that. Yes, yes, there are exceptions that prove the rule and that’s fine too. But the rule itself is inviolable as a matter of how human societies function. The rot is all the way through, but the first thing is the rot of our elites and of men in general. Feminism is a chastisement for the sins of men against women. It’s true that most women today are corrupt. But a truly good man can take almost any wench off the street and make s good woman of her. We men should ask ourselves why that isn’t happening more often.
Zippy:
Thanks for the Georgia Sattelites video. That song might work. When it comes to a more straightforward version of rape, I suggest Caleb Meyer:
For a more country version of “Keep Your Hands to Yourself”, I recommend “Little White Church”.
We would do we’ll do ask, why are songs like these even a thing? Because the women in them are remarkable, going against the grain.
It’s past my bedtime but you started it.
But a truly good man can take almost any wench off the street and make s good woman of her.
Jeff, I think this comment really raises some serious concerns about precisely how experienced you are with women. I would never claim to be extremely experienced, but I have seen this thought process consistently blow up in a man’s face the few times it’s been applied.
A lot of Christian men make the mistake of assuming that because they have stayed married for a long time they actually know something about women’s behavior. If anything, those are the men I’ve found to be the least capable of admitting just how extreme the delta is between that “wench off the street” and the woman that stayed by their side so many years so far.
What you are essentially doing is the equivalent of saying that the female equivalent of a total PoS male can be “made right” without the grace of God first acting in her heart to bring her to repentance. That is categorically false. There is no man who can intentionally bring about that sort of change without God first intervening into her heart.
One consequence of the current patriarchal rule by corrupt “alphas” is that a relatively small number of men have their way with a disproportionately large number of women. It’s like polygamy without marriage, resulting in many odd pathologies such as an army of surplus men who are condemned to having a hard time with women.
Alpha male simply means the “most attractive, highest status” type of man in society. They’re not “lucky” with women anymore than a truly beautiful woman “just gets lucky” with men.
Society used to manage such men reasonably well via a host of controls on the behavior of men and women, particularly ones that forced women to eat the consequences of their choosing to fornicate with such men over marrying “sensible choices.” Shaming and ostracizing were also powerful tools frequently wielded.
We’re now well into our third generation of a social experiment that aims to see what happens when the “provider card” is taken from ordinary men. I would call it an unmitigated disaster for marriage and long term social stability, but many conservatives would shrug and bleat “freedom and equality.” Note: on W4 I recall you standing firmly against me and Lydia on removing welfare as part of a plan to correct many social ills including women devaluing their mates/husbands because Daddy Big Government is the new alpha male on provision in their lives. (With some estimates putting total potential welfare benefits to such women in the $60ks, that’s no small thing for a huge percentage of women who’d live well below the national average income).
The alphas are simply the vultures coming to pick the bones of the rest of the male population. What actually left the trail of bodies was a deliberate social experiment to completely annihilate the “Marriage Debt,” destroy traditional gender roles, etc.
Blogmaster:
Feminism is just liberalism, applied to relations between the sexes. Calling it a chastisement for the sins of men against women is a terrifically wrongheaded distortion.
Liberalism is primarily a sin by man against himself and his fellow man; making it primarily about women and sex is deluded. Liberalism dominated for centuries before the sexual revolution which it eventually produced.
This is the male equivalent of the female delusion that a truly good woman is such a special snowflake that she will tame the violent cheating abusive bad boy. This kind of hubris almost never ends well; the few times that it works out OK (at least when seen from the outside) are the exceptions that prove the rule.
No, you won’t fix her/him, no matter how special you think you are. Sins can be forgiven but the past and its consequences cannot be undone.
Mike T:
Exactly. I’ve often written about the mistake of seeing “alphas” as something other than the sexual bottom feeder parasites that they are in fact.
I wrote:
It also feeds the feminist narrative of poor abused victim women and abusive victimizer men. Dalrock has correctly pointed out the alliance between mainstream conservatives and feminists on this point: women are oppressed, abused victims; men are predatory perpetrators.
This is the root of the alliance between feminists and “conservatives”.
Mike T, you wrote:
“Jeff, I think this comment really raises some serious concerns about precisely how experienced you are with women.”
Funny, I was going to say the same about you.
“… I have seen this thought process consistently blow up in a man’s face the few times it’s been applied.”
Interesting. I think perhaps you don’t understand what I mean by “wench off the street” and “truly good man”. It doesn’t mean “educated woman of means with character problems” and “pretty decent fellow”.
“A lot of Christian men make the mistake of assuming that because they have stayed married for a long time they actually know something about women’s behavior …”
Mike, seriously, you have no idea. Just don’t go there.
“What you are essentially doing is the equivalent of saying that the female equivalent of a total PoS male can be ‘made right’ without the grace of God first acting in her heart to bring her to repentance.”
No, that’s not what I’m saying. I mean simply that an average fairly desperate woman with no decent prospects could become a conventional “good woman” in the sense of getting and staying married, bearing children, perhaps keeping a job, and living responsibly. That’s all. The point was to illustrate the normal dynamic between the sexes, as this could *not* be expected in reverse.
Mike T, you wrote”
“Society used to manage such men reasonably well via a host of controls on the behavior of men and women, particularly ones that forced women to eat the consequences of their choosing ….”
and —
“Note: on W4 I recall you standing firmly against me and Lydia on removing welfare as part of a plan to correct many social ills including women devaluing their mates/husbands because Daddy Big Government is the new alpha male on provision in their lives.”
I have to confess to being a big softie on this. I don’t want anyone to “eat the consequences” of their sins or mistakes in full measure. *Some* consequences are necessary, of course, but the destitution of women and children is a bridge too far and isn’t good for society either.
At the present time, I happen to be involved with a young man, mid-thirties, with a 15 year history of drug and alcohol abuse, several DUIs and a felony conviction for illegal drugs. He’s the brother of a friend who lives out of state. He finally ran out of couches to sleep on and has been living on the streets considering suicide. We found him last week and put him up in a motel for a few days. He says he’s hit rock bottom and is ready to do whatever it takes to turn his life around. I believe him. But tomorrow, unless a miracle takes place, he’s back on the streets again (with some new clothes and shoes). He has no income and, with his background, no job prospects. We’ve exhausted the local charities: the best they can do is provide temporary shelter at night and meals. Perhaps you think he should “eat the consequences” of his choices for the rest of his life, but I beg to differ. He won’t be the only one eating those consequences if he lives another thirty years of petty crime and substance abuse. He can be helped and he should be helped. Similarly, there are other ways to help wayward women and their children besides tossing them out on the street. I suggest figuring this out first before removing any public assistance they are receiving.
Zippy, you wrote:
“It also feeds the feminist narrative of poor abused victim women and abusive victimizer men.”
Perhaps so, but if it’s true – if feminism is a divine chastisement for the sins of men against women and children – then it doesn’t matter whose narrative it happens to feed. “Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him … children are their oppressors, and women rule over them.” Failing to see this means failing to get out of the predicament.
“Dalrock has correctly pointed out the alliance between mainstream conservatives and feminists on this point: women are oppressed, abused victims; men are predatory perpetrators.”
I’m well aware of the manosphere’s insights, which are unfortunately overwhelmed by their distortions and the reductio ad absurdum they make of the problem. I would thank them (because they do have insights), but their cure is toxic.
Women today are more vulnerable to predatory men than they have ever been. Feminism isn’t wrong about that. What feminists don’t see is that feminism helped create this situation in the first place and continues to perpetuate it. No one seems to like the solution, because it involves a frank admission of both female vulnerability and the necessary incentives for male responsibility.
Zippy,
Exactly. I’ve often written about the mistake of seeing “alphas” as something other than the sexual bottom feeder parasites that they are in fact.
It’s important to separate what an alpha is as a category vs what alphas do in the context of modern society. An alpha is roughly speaking a man who can attract a lot of attractive women because he has sufficient raw masculinity/status/etc. the things that tend to be sexually attractive to the hindbrain of the human female much like a woman can be a low class, total whore and still have men of all types of character having a hard time saying no to her because she’s just **that beautiful**.
I agree that in terms of behavior, most alphas choose a lifestyle that is probably diametrically opposite of what would be called the “good life” in antiquity. But then, so would most men today if given that choice. I once saw intellectual defined as “someone who has found something more interesting to them than sex.” So the bar is pretty damn low today.
Blogmaster:
This blog is riddled with criticisms of the manosphere, so there is no need to get into that.
Which it isn’t.
Dalrock is right that “conservatives” simply are feminists in this regard: in generalizing women as virtuous victims, men as vicious perpetrators. In this respect you simply are a feminist.
A both more traditional and more realist view is that men and women are all moral agents responsible for their actions.
That is false. They are more “vulnerable” to making bad choices themselves, and more tempted to do so (perhaps), but that isn’t quite the same thing.
You make it sound like feminists are mostly right but merely lack a few insights, as opposed to being utterly wrong.
Is this the time to post popcorn.gif? because it feels like it’s time to post popcorn.gif.
To add something to the discussion, I think it’s worth pointing out that Zippy has already well-established his bona fides when it comes to ‘Game’:
https://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/game-sluttiness-and-the-corresponding-propositions-test/
https://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/2014/04/14/the-fitness-test-as-an-example-of-games-specific-difference/
https://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/game-cures-cancer/
are a few examples, which I didn’t wrap up in neat hyperlinks because I don’t care enough about WordPress to figure out how (or risk looking like an idiot when my HTML tags don’t work properly).
Jeff,
RE consequences, that man is already eating the consequences of his choices. I have a relative who is in a similar situation. Both stories are also completely beside the point here and a distraction from the issue which is that there is a deliberately created system that aims to ensure that no woman is dependent on no man ever and can assert her Freedom and Equality consequences be damned.
And tens of millions of children have been metaphorically (and possibly literally) damned in the process.
Mike T:
Another thing Dalrock is right about is that the child support model has replaced marriage, and conservatives support this.
“And tens of millions of children have been metaphorically (and possibly literally) damned in the process.”
The Church’s authoritative pronouncement has, to my knowledge, been wisely silent on this, but yes, the possibility is one of the most extreme horrors of abortion. To think that not only are women killing their own children, but damning them to Limbo in the process with no real chance for repentance from Original Sin… well. Like I said, I’m glad I’m not required to believe that’s definitely the case. I’d probably do something I’d regret.
Relevant Dalrock
Agh, broken link. I should’ve followed Rhetocrates’ example.
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2011/08/14/the-child-support-catastrophe/
“In this respect you simply are a feminist.”
Ha. Okay, if you insist.
We’re all a little bit liberal, even if we don’t mean to be. We’ll spend every day pulling up liberal weeds in our own minds, just because of where and when we live – in the post-Christian liberal apocalypse, I mean.
I’m ashamed but unafraid to say I’m more than a bit feminist, but I’m trying to fix it.
This is not any kind of substantive response to Zippy’s point.
When you say,
You seem to be trying to have it both ways.
Women are fully moral agents who are responsible for the behaviours they choose, and yet the “greater villainy belongs to men.”
The second statement contradicts the first. As far as I can tell, your position is entirely consistent with the feminist doctrine that women are virtuous victims, and men are vicious perpetrators.
“This is not any kind of substantive response to Zippy’s point.”
That’s true. Nor has Zippy provided a substantive response to any of my points, all of which he has caricatured.
“your position is entirely consistent with the feminist doctrine that women are virtuous victims, and men are vicious perpetrators.”
That’s a ridiculous interpretation.
Blogmaster:
Any ridiculousness is already present in the source material. On its face (just as an example) you claimed that “women today are more vulnerable to predatory men than they have ever been.” So modern sluts saying “yes” to fornication because (your words) “there is a sense in which [her] consent is natural and refusal is unnatural” means that these modern sluts are more vulnerable to predatory men than the Sabine women.
“So modern sluts saying “yes” to fornication ….”
You’re already missing the point. I can’t help but think you just don’t want to hear it. Which is fine, it’s your blog.
Calling me ridiculous without making any arguments to back it up won’t convince anyone who doesn’t already agree with you. As far as I can tell, you’re the one being ridiculous, but at least I’m self-aware enough to realize that just saying “that’s ridiculous” is not a convincing argument.
If your statement (the one I quoted) is really any different from saying, “Women are fully moral agents who are responsible for the behaviours they choose, and yet the greater villainy belongs to men,” which is self-contradictory, then show your work.
Perhaps it would be helpful, then, if you stated – in as plain terms as possible – what this point you’re trying to make is.
“The greater villainy belongs to men who exploit female vulnerability.”
Note that last bit — “who exploit female vulnerability” That’s the context that you conveniently left out in order to distort my argument. Nor have I have said or implied that every instance, or even most instances, of fornication are examples of female vulnerability.
Look, you people either don’t know how to read or just can’t deal with arguments that are outside your paradigm. That’s sad, because a productive discussion might have taken place.
Furthermore I have denied that weakness and vulnerability constitutes moral exonoration or somehow removes all responsibility. That’s basic Catholic moral theology.
And yet my argument is characterized as “women are virtuous victims, and men are vicious perpetrators”. This is unreal. You guys aren’t serious.
“Perhaps it would be helpful, then, if you stated – in as plain terms as possible – what this point you’re trying to make is.”
I can’t make it any plainer. Perhaps I’m not the world’s greatest communicator. Anyway, I’m done here. Cheers.
If you’re just making the point that sometimes when put in compromising situations people – and perhaps especially women – make bad choices, then you’re not saying anything controversial. I believe everyone here would agree with that.
I think what’s maybe got folks’ backs up is that your position smells a lot like a motte and bailey, and we don’t have any patience to grant people their mottes when they retreat from the bailey.
However, if that’s not the case, I for one invite further clarification or retraction.
I didn’t leave it out in order to distort your argument, I left it out because it’s not relevant. My comment could just as easily have read,
And so you throw a red-herring by accusing me of quoting you out of context, rather than respond to my actual point.
Really? When I read your words, “Saying ‘no’ to a man in certain circumstances goes against a woman’s nature,” I must have been hallucinating. Given the extensive schooling you list on the side-bar of your blog, I know you know what a strong claim it is to say that something is natural to women. I wonder what Dr. Cuddeback would think of this. Or was he before your time at Christendom?
Funny, I was just thinking the same about you. I would actually really like to engage in some productive discussion, and even a brief glance at your blog tells me that we have a lot in common (Christendom college being the least of these similarities) but such is impossible when you consistently refuse to engage with what people are actually saying.
Of course. Your (correct) adherence to this doctrine is part of what makes your position self-contradictory.
Your position hasn’t been characterized as one and the same as, but rather as consistent with.
“your position smells a lot like a motte and bailey”
Then I would suggest that my interlocutors actually read what I’ve said — all of it, please — and, even more importantly, not read what I haven’t said before deciding what my position smells like.
Jeff,
Do you repudiate this comment or do you still stand behind the sentiment that it’s better to be murdered by a violent woman than to put her in the ground as though she were a man?
Mike T,
I wouldn’t repudiate the comment, myself. (I didn’t make it, of course.) I think it’s a good comment, without any regard for the context (which I’m not interested in). I think it’s true, excepting perhaps the claim about what his interlocutor fails to realize, as a simple description of historical fact and what we’ve lost with feminisim.
Rhetocrates,
I think that is precisely the sort of comment that is the difference between Chivalry and “chivalry.” The real chivalry is a code of conduct for warriors and trained warriors have the real ability in most cases to deescalate like that. The average man does not. A warrior can take a calculated risk because he has the training needed to credibly overcome her without much risk to himself and his charges. A typical man is placing others at risk by allowing an attempted murderess to take a serious shot at murdering him (because who is to say she’ll stop?)
I think Jeff would be quite shocked at how fast a typical woman could murder a grown man if she had a quality knife and some sense of how to use it.
Mike T,
Perhaps you’re right in your distinction. It’s certainly the case that, properly understood, what that comment is pointing to isn’t individually-determined right-and-wrong, but rather social mores. Social mores which I think were good, and mourn the loss of, but which I recognize are nevertheless lost.
(It’s also worth pointing out that they pre-suppose a general social response on the part of the opposite sex, too: a woman who screams and throws things and has a ‘domestic’ belongs in Cheapside, and if she ends up dead because of it, that’s a sad fact of life.)
This is shutting down conversation, not continuing it. Of course, as you’ve said upthread, perhaps you’re done here, in which case, very well; best of luck to you. But if that’s not the case, and you’re possibly interested in continuing the conversation, please do us all the favour of recognizing that we’re not all the same person. I’m not Mike T, JAG isn’t me, and none of us are Zippy except the man himself. So if one of us has accused or treated you wrongly, don’t generalize. Despite your apparent current impression, we’re all adults here, and I’ve seen everyone who has interacted with you admit when he’s wrong.
So, to continue the conversation: what then, precisely, is your point? You may think you’ve made it up-thread, but given the kerfluffle, perhaps you haven’t.
If your point is just that, while both men and women are ultimately responsible for their own actions, but our society is disordered in such a way as to make that responsibility a burden, and this can be especially harmful to women as the weaker sex, then very well; everyone here agrees with you. But you might think about what you’ve done or said that has given people the impression you mean something else, and see if perhaps you aren’t smuggling bugaboos into your own mind. The whole point of this blog, if I’m not being presumptuous, is to help Zippy (and by association, the rest of us) pull liberalism’s weeds out of the garden of his mind. You too might need to do some gardening, and the point of these conversations is to help one another do that.
This is a very topical blog post that deals with Steve Wynn’s “victim.” Not going to spoil it because she really demonstrates why conservatives cannot keep pulling this “da po wymynz iz so vulnerable, we must protect dem” whenever they see sin.
I am done with this conversation, as I said. However, just for the record, permit to respond to JSG’s aside:
“Given the extensive schooling you list on the side-bar of your blog … I wonder what Dr. Cuddeback would think of this. Or was he before your time at Christendom?”
If my sidebar leads anyone to believe I have attended these institutions, I need to get rid of those links or maybe change the heading. My children have attended them, and one is at Christendom now, but these are merely places I recommend or have an interest in. Thanks for this eye-opening comment.
“My children have attended them” – and by this I only mean some of them.
Blogmaster:
Is it ever the case – in your view – that a woman engages in greater villainy than a man in a particular instance of fornication or other sexual misbehavior?
If so, then obsessing over cases of male villiany while ignoring all of the female villiany is textbook motte: you are making a true – but narrow and uninteresting – claim.
If not then you are making an interesting but manifestly false claim — textbook bailey.
I can think of an easy one:
1. Boss is semi-trad/full trad on marriage, so he won’t divorce a wife who has stopped acting like one.
2. Boss is kinda known to be probably an incel because his wife is a dumpy, frigid bitch.
3. Hot Young Thing realizes she’s as hot as the wife is not and can wrap her boss around her little finger by pretending to be the woman his wife should be.
We could probably guess what Jeff would say about this.
BTW, if you read some of the comments here about how if you’re a strong leader they’ll just follow they sound an awful lot like what PUAs say just in terms that would not get you thrown out of the sanctuary on Sunday.
Mike T:
I’d prefer not to turn what is left of this thread into prurient storytelling. It is enough to have demonstrated that Blogmaster’s position as articulated in his own words is in fact motte-and-bailey, it doesn’t merely “smell like” motte-and-bailey.
On this point:
I don’t know if folks who think like this have much experience with women, but it seems unlikely that they have much experience with leadership. By far the best predictor/driver of successful leadership – vastly more important than any other consideration – is in filtering out who in particular gets to be a follower, and in what capacity.
Hear, hear!
Mr. Culbreath says, (referring to the “Little White Church” song he linked):
“why are songs like these even a thing? Because the women in them are remarkable, going against the grain.”
Well, Karen Fairchild is the lead singer for Little Big Town. She was married, but when Jimi Westbrook joined her band she divorced her husband and married him instead. So much for going against the grain.
The song itself, though it bills itself as similar to “Keep your Hands to Yourself” is not at all similar. It tells the story of a woman who is fornicating with her live-in boyfriend. But she wants the jewelry and social status of a married woman so she threatens to cut off the sex spigot until he marries her.
“No more calling me baby
No more loving like crazy
No more chicken and gravy
Ain’t gonna have your baby
Till you take me down (take me down)
You better take me down (take me down)
Take me down to the little white church”
But does he actually need to take her to the little white church? The answer is in the repeated phrase. 53 times she and her bandmates tell her partner in fornication to “Take me down.” It is just a fitness test.
It sounds traditional and even virtuous but it is immodest, following the spirit of the age.
jvangeld:
Thanks for doing the diligence so I didn’t have to. Georgia Satellites for the win.
Another photo posted at the CASC Facebook page:
https://scontent-dfw5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/fr/cp0/e15/q65/28166553_208792066339123_470812428197738517_n.jpg?oh=8442ea602d567efa475f6b73deaa14eb&oe=5B43DCF0
One thing to note is that, as a factual matter, it is false. Many acts of alleged sexual assault (including Adele Smith’s own) do appear, by the alleged victim’s own account, to be crimes of sexual passion (which may or may not also include violence).
Hi – you have some great Catholic posts here! I’m starting a linky next week focusing on the faith and family (and France, I live here) and I would absolutely love it if you posted some of your work on there. It starts at midday next Friday 9th. If you fancy following me you’ll see a reminder post. God bless.
[…] to expand, to the point where any foreseen or unforeseen regret for making a free choice, or any subjectively perceived pressure at all to choose one way rather than another, is thought to retroactively nullify […]
[…] condemn the behavior of sexually loose women. Cowards who condemn sexually loose men while making excuses for sexually loose women are “bravely facing the […]