Sounds similar to season two of The Island. In season one a bunch of carefully selected men were dropped on a desert island and put through an extremely tough survival experience. They got to swim ashore with just a jerry can and a few other misc objects. The only food on the island was plants and some crocodiles. At the end of the season they were starved and had to be re-introduced to food carefully. Nonetheless, they survived.
After this proved popular, feminists complained that it wasn't fair women were excluded. So in season 2 the organizer (Bear Grylls) decided to troll them by creating a second team on a different island that consisted exclusively of women. Needless to say, hilarity ensued.
The men rapidly formed a cohesive team with a leader, set up a water purification mechanism with their jerry cans, and hunted down crocodiles that they then used for meat. One of them found a net and was able to untangle it, eventually setting up what amounted to a fish farm - much to the amazement of the other men, who had very much doubted what he was doing and had been getting annoyed that he was apparently shirking his duties.
The women immediately split up, got lost, and one of them nearly died of dehydration. They failed to organize any leader meaning every decision was constantly debated. They failed to hunt any food, although suddenly two fat tame piglets turned up on their beach (i.e. the producers bailed them out). So naturally they refused to kill the cute piggies and adopted them as pets instead, then left them behind when moving to a different beach. By this point they were starving and on the road to death so a random "local fisherman" turns up on a boat and offers a couple of the girls a free fish, they go back to camp and say "we caught a fish". And so on. They were so dumb they often failed to pick up on the help they were being given by the producers (in contravention of the show's own rules).
The entire thing was horrifically embarrassing for the feminist worldview. The women weren't random, the show was a serious survival show and had been selected for their likelihood to do well, as well as given special survival training.
Several characteristics shone through:
1. The women were much lazier than the men e.g. some of them just go sleep on the beach for a while, whilst the men worked dawn till deep in the night in order to find food, water, build their camp etc.
2. They were disorganized. Time was valuable but they spent a lot of it just talking or arguing instead of making decisions. They were also remarkably unintelligent, regularly doing things guaranteed to result in swift death.
3. The women didn't take it seriously. They clearly knew the male producers wouldn't let them fail too badly and came to rely on that. At several points the (male) doctor monitoring them via the radio had to spell out to them what they had to do to survive (e.g. go find the jerry can they'd thrown away).
4. They were dishonest. Despite knowing they were ON CAMERA and thus everyone would eventually find out, the ladies didn't hesitate to lie to each other (and as a group).
Anyone who watches that show obtains a visceral understanding of how classical gender roles appeared; quite simply, if the men didn't take control and tell the women what to do, the women would all immediately have died.
To be fair, I do think that modern progressivism is partially responsible for the women being so incompetent and so arrogant about their own abilities. You take a woman from the year 1100 and say "let's put you in a place where you need to survive with 10 other women and no men" and she'd tell you to shove it up your ass.
Any woman who says she doesn’t need a man, has clearly never attempted to field dress, let alone butcher, a deer by themselves or even with another female. And our hill country deer are small compared to those in the rest of the country. So, to these raging feminists, I say, bitch please. Get out in nature where your meat isn’t in plastic wrap and then get back to me on that one. This goes for the man-bun wearing yahoos too.
Now, let’s not let the guys off the hook totally- most likely to die in the backcountry are young males that hike solo. So your girl might keep you from doing something stupid.
As an aside- I typically hate working with other women. I would much rather work with men. Men are on task, while most women (and soyboys) are busy gossiping and plotting how to backstab you. Usually it’s because they lack intelligence, which I attribute to eating disorders being common in females in high school. They starve themselves while their brains are still developing and the lack of nutrients really impacts their intelligence level.
Hello! New reader here, and I'm sorry, but I have to reply to this one. I don't say I don't need a man, at all, but I am female, and in my late 30s I worked for 2 years for a conservation NGO in the north of Scotland. A large part of that job was management of the red deer numbers on the two estates I worked on. As part of that job I regularly gralloched deer and butchered them on the hill. I have gralloched dozens of deer unassisted, and have often skinned and butchered them, and carried out the meat (by hand or on a quad bike), many, many times, and sometimes alone. I'm confident in my ability to do this, and I know many very capable women who go out stalking alone.
So, you’re at one end of the bell curve, along with a handful of women. I have dragged deer out of the woods, and cursed while doing so, because I do not have the upper body strength of the average man, and the men in my family do not hunt and are not keen to help. Despite being above average height for a female, and I am not a weakling by any stretch, I certainly could not lift a whitetail into the bed of my truck alone, whereas I know some average guys who can do so no problem. Take your average woman off the street and ask her to do what you did. I think you know how that will turn out.
To be sure, most women off the street wouldn't fancy it. I can't lift a deer by myself, the most I could do was butcher it and take it out in pieces (often cursing!). When extracting whole deer I worked with my manager, or whoever else I was working with, usually a man. I'm not a feminist btw, but I also hate to see women acting less capably than they're able. I read an article the other day about 'toxic femininity', which I think is absolutely a thing in this horrible modern 'culture' of ours. Many women think that to be feminine is to act helpless and weak, and they think that to butcher an animal, or do any manual work with their hands at all, is beneath them. Whereas in the past it was often seen as women's work to deal with the carcass of a slaughtered animal, or, not so very long ago here, they'd spend their days baiting hooks for the fishermen, and gutting herring (my great granny was a 'herring girl'). I think men and women naturally do (or should) compliment each other well. But we have such a skewed and politicised perception about gender roles now that we've ended up with these extremes of 'raging feminists' on one hand, and artificially pathetic women on the other.
Well, we also have to keep in mind reality tv is hardly real. Were the women really selected to be competent, or???? This is about entertainment, ergo the producers may have wanted to make a point / b**** slap the feminist complainers. I live (now) in a very rural area in the Ohio River Valley ( aka part of Appallachia), and the women-folk work alongside the men in every way but in the chores / jobs requiring the upper body strength we don’t have. I just wouldn’t dismiss female competency on the basis of a “reality” tv show.
They all had professional jobs, iirc. It's been a while since I watched it. The show wasn't intended to be interesting because of inter-personal drama, there are other "survival" shows that are much better set up for that. It was really all about survival in harsh conditions.
> In promoting the first series, the show was pitched as a challenge for modern men, to see if they can survive when marooned on a Pacific island armed only with minimal tools and their own initiative.[8] According to Bear Grylls, masculinity (and machismo) is in crisis, and he is interested if men can survive after being stripped of the luxuries of 21st-century living; the show is therefore also a social experiment to see if man can recapture his primeval instincts.[9]
> The participants were given training about animals native to the island that are on the protected species list, and each received one day's survival training, including advice on how to catch and humanely kill caiman. The men were given machetes and knives, head torches, an initial one-day water supply, and an emergency medical kit. In addition, the participants had GPS spot trackers, and access to radio and satellite phone in case of an emergency.[12] The second series participants were given two days survival training.
I am curious how many women are butchering deer here in Chicago. Methinks not many. Perhaps you could move here can take up rat hunting? You will never need to pay for meat again.
Isn’t that the point? Civilization permits things that will never fly in nature. I’ve never had rat meat. I’d imagine it’s probably similar to squirrel. I’ll have to make y’all some Brunswick Stew for Thanksgiving. Just don’t ask what meat I used. You’ll like it anyway. 😏
Well, convents (nunneries) existed at that time. I don't know how they operated but I suppose they were like monasteries and were supported by the local townsfolk, so survival wasn't a problem.
Nuns were self-selected though, and didn't have any kind of feminism.
I'll go back to Anglo -Saxon times (I'm in England but was same on the Continent). Nunneries or Convents were the female equivalent of Monasteries. But in one way they served a different purpose or additional purpose. They served as useful and secure places for reigning monarchs,contending monarchs,monarchs on the run,and deposed monarchs to place their female family members,Mother,Sister,Wife,Daughters etc. Mostly the sanctuary of Convents was respected by the Enemy force probably because the leader was doing the same thing. The Abbess was always a high ranking female. She might be the Sister of the King and eventually the Aunt of the next King. These women were highly educated and had power,and used it. They handled huge sums of money and were like women in the corporate business world of today. But they didn't apply for the job. They were appointed. The sort of work best done by men WAS done by men. Hired labour to do all that stuff. Sometimes of course these Convents acted as prisons,but comfortable ones,Kings like our Henry II who found out his sons AND his wife were all plotting against him had his astonishing amazing wife put away for years and even after he died his son Richard The Lionheart kept his Mum on a short lead,as he knew what she was like,lol. I just wanted to say that ladies in convents often weren't required to do men's tasks,they paid the men to do all that,and in a sense convents back then had a slightly different purpose,maybe unacknowledged,to male religious communities.
This is similar to a season of Survivor (The Amazon). The producers had the fantastic idea to divide the contestants up into team Tambaqui, consisting of only men, and Jaburu, consisting of only women. What followed is more or less identical to what you described.
There were some moments, however, where the women shone through. In particular during a trial where they had to give directions to each other to pass an obstacle course.
That being said, this one trial was pretty much the only memorable highlight for the ladies. No wonder that eventually the teams were reshuffled.
While the Battle of the Sexes had provided ample entertainment for viewers, it reached a point where watching it one could only feel bad: while the men were just brute forcing their way to building a camp, the women sat on some sticks arguing with one another.
You provided an entertaining description of The Island and it does sound like the women failed season 2. However, I think it is unfair to make such sweeping generalizations about the differences between the sexes based on that one case.
On a similar survival series, “Naked and Afraid”, the women often do better than the men. A typical situation is to pair a man and woman together who might have different levels of survival expertise. The man generally takes charge and sometimes is very effective at organizing the necessary shelter and acquisition of food and water and sharing the burden with the woman.
However, just as often, the man flexes his masculine bonafides by insisting on doing the bulk of the physically exhausting work of building shelter or starting a fire himself, while the woman is relegated to a much less physically demanding helpmate role. In the process, the man exhausts all his energy and dehydrates himself, falls ill and has to be extracted early. The woman then soldiers on alone, expending much less energy than the man would have, and eventually successfully completes the challenge.
They sounds like an explanation for why many spaces historically excluded women as well. Same rationale for not having women in the front line (as well as them genuinely being physically weaker).
Progressivism is quite literally a fake ideology - it can only thrive in a fake environment. As soon as something real happens, progressivism evaporates. If progressivism is present, it means it is fake and you are living a lie.
That being said, what can we infer about the moral character of people who chose to live in a natural way ahead of time as opposed to people who live in delusion until something bad happens?
I am reminded of a wonderful quote I saved years ago from First Things’ book review of “The Children of Men”:
“This question leads us to one of James’ most intriguing and subtly developed themes: the uselessness of liberal theology in a time of profound crisis. Christian theological liberalism has typically discarded orthodox eschatology in favor of a mild and essentially secular meliorism. But when people are faced with the apparent extinction of the human species, the belief in moral and material progress that undergirds such meliorism becomes, to say the least, untenable.”
Progressivism is a death-cult. They attempt to destroy all that is in human nature for the sake of engineered dogma and hedonism. It's a self-destructive extremism that exalts the whim of the individual as gospel and human civilization as, at best, a throwaway project.
Maybe not real and fake -primitive disaster like fire brings out what is vital in family units. Whereas superficial ties of modern living can survive only in superficial circumstances i.e. work relationships, car pools, daycare. Core values hopefully are easily recalled and superficial ones discarded in primitive life and death situations. There’s a better term than primitive -but superficial I think works better than fake. The superficial cooperation seems real to some people. Until it isn’t any more.
Progressivism, like other ideologies, traditionalism included, works, but only in a specific economic and social context.
I recall a progressive young human who, after traveling a bit in Africa, was very butthurt about traditional gender roles there, especially how humans were not free to choose their own preferred roles. I told here that those roles and rigidity made perfect sense, in that particular context.
In rural Africa, there is no formal law worth mentioning. The average frustrated villager cannot call the cops if there is trouble. No government or organization will come to your aid. All institutions are at best for sale and at worst, actively predatory. The only humans you can count on to have your back if needed (and I'm not even talking necessarily about violence), at least without a bribe, are your family, your tribe, your group, your people.
However, that goes both ways. It means that you may be called on to aid your tribe and its members, even if you don’t want to, even if you think that your cousin is in the wrong this time around. It also means that you cannot violate tribal norms, because your violation may be writing proverbial checks that their ass has to cash or lose credibility in not cashing.
“Well, I don’t want to do that!” It doesn’t matter what you or I want. For the locals, the tribe is their only real protection – without the tribe to step in, any one of them is fair game for anyone who wants to harm them. Violating those tribal roles makes you unpredictable, a loose cannon, and could give rise to a confrontation or obligation that otherwise could be avoided.
Virtually all modern life (including civilization writ large) is “fake” by your definition.
Progressivism is a largely reasonable and, imo, appropriate approach to establishing strong societies in this artificial environment; as long as the situation remains relatively stable, it benefits the greatest number of our kin in the broadest sense — i.e., humans, whether family, friend, or otherwise.
This reality does not preclude another reality: when shit gets real (i.e., when th artificial trappings of modern society unravel), more fundamental aspects of human nature must & do take over.
It’s a societal version of Maslow: if you’re scrambling at the base of the hierarchy, family & traditional gender roles are paramount for success; as one climbs the hierarchy, they (and we) are better able to self-actualize through progressivism.
I think you mean "Liberalism." That is great, but Progressivism is more of a hate-filled disease. The difference is massive. I am a proud liberal, but I would prefer an absolute monarchy over anything Progressive (obsession with race, bizarre hatred of random ethnic groups or identities, an inexplicable hatred of families,...).
The Democratic Party could be, no SHOULD be running everything, but the Progressives have marched forward and snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory. I am convinced the Chinese Communist Party is pulling the strings like the COMINTERN did with the CPUSA back in the 1940's.
Well, liberalism is the foundation, yes. I am also a proud liberal, and an uncomfortable 🇨🇦Liberal supporter — I volunteered for a non-Carney leadership candidate, then volunteered for his Party, and have been far more than pleasantly surprised & impressed with his so far: he is exhibiting true liberal leadership on both national and world stages.
But I would counter that political progressivism has had great importance (mostly in the past, sadly, for the reasons you highlight) in pulling the Overton window left when self-proclaimed centrist and conservative-leaning liberals have failed to actually deliver on liberalism.
- Women’s & LGB rights (both before gender ideology took root)
- Labour rights (before wannabe Marxist ideology took root)
- Collective action (before performative protests took root)
Again, I think most progressives have strayed far from their original & stated goals of pushing equality, and now push a Left Authoritarianism that dwarfs the modern CCP (and echoes the Stasi) in terms of pitting neighbour against insufficiently “pure & virtuous” neighbour; the modern CCP has learned lessons (mostly scary ones) from their Cultural Revolution, and now at least include punishing wayward oligarchs along with plebes in their modern surveillance-centred systems of oppression.
But No Kings also. Ironic given Chaz3 is the King of Canada, but he’s purely ceremonial & anyway he can get in (or be forced into) the sea as far as I am concerned.
Our Head State, the Governor General, is currently appointed for life (usually until they choose to retire) by the. Canadian monarch (Betty, now Chaz) on the advice of the PM — and while Mary Simon (an incredible & deserving Inuk) is doing a great job, and can choose herself to withhold royal assent for any legislation, I think we’re far past time to take a different approach:
I’d like to see the Officers of the Order of Canada elect the GG (or future non-monarchist 🇨🇦HoS) from among their ranks, or from the pool of all Canadian citizens in something I just now realized we should call a Maple Conclave.
Those Officers are initially appointed to the Order on the merits of their contributions to 🇨🇦 by the government in power, and then promoted by the same or later governments on further merits, so while there is a risk of some political interference, I think it’s largely a non-issue.
Anyway, TLDR, current progressivism sucks, as it doesn’t fulfil its important counterbalancing function against conservatism as influences on liberalism.
But just as MAGA (OG or Maple) doesn’t mean that conservatism is worthless (just the populist kind we see rampant today), so too do the Alphabet Mafia not mean that progressivism is without value.
We are all better when we channel diversity of informed opinion into liberally-motivated decision making.
"We are all better when we channel diversity of informed opinion into liberally-motivated decision making".
Agree. But as you obviously know, attempting this was coded, in the places we are writing from, as being contaminated by 'whiteness' and replaced with ideological dogma, conformity and purification rituals. So there is an essential and irreconcilable difference between the progressivism you advocate for, and the dogmatic kind.
The problem is that the two narratives by design sound so similar that they appear to be part of the same project! This is how this was put across to the average progressivist-minded person living inside the left media bubble, where they were shielded from the excesses of activism, and any negative consequences were blamed on the warring tribe. This empowered dogmatic activism to an unprecedented degree.
Ultimately the left is now forced to face this 'systemic' mess. The critique came in large part from voices kicked out of the tribe, in addition to from the warring tribe. That does not bode well, as tribes do not respond well to pressure perceived to come from the outside, however legitimate. You easily get defensive postures like "right idea, wrong messaging", rewriting of history, and/or entrenchment. We'll see. Nice discussion.
I can’t disagree, but I will say as a heretic left-leaning liberal that the very same comments about critiques and their reception can be applied to modern “populist conservatism” (about as far from conservatism as identitarian progressivism is from progressivism).
We’re in a tough place, as hardly anyone is both making sense and listening to those who make sense, critically & with intellectual integrity.
Megaphones rule, mobs rule, and it’s getting harder even for us in Canada to maintain our national dream of peace, order, and good government when everything is politicized and stripped of objectivity.
I for one really like the real, material world: complex, to be sure, but it has also been subjected to intense observation & interrogation. Turns out, some things are indeed true, and some false … and reality has a way of eventually winning out, no matter how incentivized one is to pretend otherwise. Just ask Lysenko & the 7M+ who died thanks to his rejection of reality under Stalin’s protective cover.
Generally agree here. I agree that we must uphold the standards of evidence you refer to. I do think the radical left is unique in dogmatically rejecting them, and then as intellectual elites being granted the opportunity to explode that rejection at the center of the knowledge creating institution. I don't see any attack on core principles like that anywhere else - this is what infuriated people and too bad that the radical right can find fuel there as well.
*** Progressivism is quite literally a fake ideology - it can only thrive in a fake environment. As soon as something real happens, progressivism evaporates. If progressivism is present, it means it is fake and you are living a lie. ***
Very well said.
The proof of this is how progressive ideology only exists in affluent environments where people can be sheltered from reality to the extent that they can have "luxury beliefs." Rob Henderson came up with that term, I think it perfectly describes the progressive mindset.
When SFTF all that nonsense goes by the way side -- immediately.
With three young kids it’s hard to deny. If we lost our home and needed to rebuild it would be my husband and the other men fending off the beasts and putting roofs over our heads, whereas the women would be trying to figure out how to feed each other’s children. How could it be any other way? What’s the alternative, I’m laying down pipes and working on sewage while wearing a baby and my toddlers scream for me? Would I nurse my baby while putting up a roof?
I also love the observation about extended family. I have no siblings and one reason I have so many kids is that I want my *grandkids* to have first cousins (my children don’t have any cousins on my husband’s side either. Small family size problem. His sister is single and childfree). And my great grandchildren to have second cousins and great aunts and uncles. Without such relationships there is no clan.
This shows that even seemingly weak family ties can prove crucial in hard times, whereas friends you see everyday can be unreliable.
Reading this like: Yes. Yes. Thank you. When all is stripped away, and humans are contending with surviving or not surviving, it automatically goes back to what works best: women, home, preparing the food, taking care of the children (really, really important jobs, even if you have an evolutionary mindset--no survival of the children, no survival of the species), while the man goes out to earn/hunt/collect food.
In a society run completely by women, I argue nothing would ever be done or built. Women would spend time in endless committees and town halls, trying to make sure everyone voiced their perspective, and that every angle was considered.
While these things are important, in disaster, famine, or war, quick decisions are necessary. Men have the kind of brain that allows them to focus on a single item and make it happen. What is top priority here? What do we do to fix it?
A lot of women--including me--actually thrive on multitasking. We can watch children, cook dinner, and clean the house (and read political news or societal commentaries) almost simultaneously. My husband would have a conniption.
If you come at this from a Biblical perspective, it makes sense. Men and women were designed to complete and complement each other, not to be interchangeable. No matter how much the feminists sound off, I will never believe that women and men are the same, or that either of them are unnecessary. You can see this in a good relationship or marriage where the couple has a healthy respect for each other, absolute differences, and they have learned how to work as a team (sometimes over many turbulent decades) to accomplish amazing things.
While good men with good wives will listen to their wives, at the end of the day they have to step up and make a call. Remember when we used to mock men who were "hen-pecked"? or laugh at some poor fellow because "she wears the pants"? We all recognize that this is dysfunctional, a man who has no conviction or decisiveness is not to be commended. Unless you live in feminist la-la land, I guess.
Here, in ranch country where I live, we are not so disconnected from nature and the land to fall into this trap. We can see the biological differences ourselves, and most people hold traditional roles. I think we are blessed to understand what it takes to survive, and if disaster hit us, we would fare better because we wouldn't have to first wrestle with true gender roles that suddenly shattered our entire worldview.
It's almost as if women and men evolved complementary characteristics that helped them mutually survive in harsh ancestral environments. It's almost as if gender ideology is a luxury of an advanced industrial civilization whose members are sheltered from elemental realities by modern comforts, conveniences, and social structures.
You touch upon the dirty secret of modern progressives: they're closet creationists. They think they believe in evolution, but they don't understand it, and cannot accept its implications. They only ever endorsed evolution because they believe it undermines traditional patriarchal religion. Which it does. But unfortunately for them, evolution also undermines progressive fantasies about human nature.
This is a good example of why I don’t think you can change the true believers. They see evidence daily of reality and still continue on an obviously idiotic ideology. The thing I don’t get is how are these progressive women really benefiting from this nonsense? Now they get to work and clean the house and pay the bills and raise the kids? Did they really want an email job this badly?!
Female anthropologist devalues traditional women’s roles. Instead she could have noted how providing basic daily needs was the glue that held the family together. Both male and female roles were crucial.
The baseline reality of human sexual dimorphism is somehow controversial these days. Overwhelming evidence of its existence notwithstanding.
Most of us get that there are legit exceptions. But for all of the envelope pushing and ceiling breaking in regard to traditional sex roles, the Annie Oakleys of the world are a rare thing.
There are also plenty of so-called "gendered roles" that really had no business being assigned as gendered roles in the first place, like the tasks of cooking and cleaning.
But when the neighborhood is on fire, the natural baseline of traditional dimorphic sex rules has a way of showing up in obvious and bold relief to sort things out, for the mutual benefit of all concerned in the community. As is fitting and proper.
Cleaning is very much a gendered role. Men on average will tolerate far more filth than women. Most men who aggressively clean were taught to do so by their mothers or picked it up as a necessity after military service. In many cultures there are colloquial expressions about why one can never trust a man to clean.
great point. The gendered ramifications are often stark, and I wonder about how much of it is innate--a tropism dictated by biology- vs. how much is taught, socially constructed. There's a strange imbalance in that regard: in my observation, most males tolerate more of a mess--a lot more of a mess--and are disinclined to pick up and keep a household orderly. At the same time, the dirtiest maintenance jobs are almost exclusively a male domain. I can't say I've ever heard of a woman getting entry level restaurant work as a dishwasher, for instance. (As for cleaning a grease trap, I tap out on that. I'd have to work up to that, and wouldn't want to.) Plumber jobs are almost exclusively male, even though there's no extra requirement for upper body strength. Never seen a woman on the job pumping out a sewage tank, or a port-a-potty. I have seen men--exclusively--tipping over port-a-potties, and rolling around in the resulting blue morass, and similar incidents. I mean come on, grotesque. I understand being a floorhand on an oil rig, but that's a comparatively sanitary activity. People get well-paid, for doing that. All a 19 year old single male has to do to in order to volunteer for wallowing in porta-potty filth is reach a BAC of .015%.
I've known dysfunctional guys who would sit in apartments surrounded by festering garbage that drew flies, which laid eggs, which turned into larvae, and hatched. And I'd visit, and my host would be personable, and neither of us would mind all that much! He was great company, if you didn't mind the stench from old microwave meals on the counter and full 44 gallon sacks of garbage (and, occasionally, worse.) We are mysterious beings, all right.
By contrast, I can't imagine a woman sinking to that pigsty level of wallow. Even a woman who was a fentanyl addict would do something to reverse the rot. Unless, that is, she was in a cohabiting relationship with a guy like that. (No wonder the Lesbian Insurgency has gotten so much power. They've stepped into the power vacuum left by Entropic Male Tropisms.) Yet one of the traditional duties of woman is diapering. Leading me to think that it isn't the shit that we men object to--it's its proximity to living human bodies. But, this post is entirely conjecture drawn from anecdotal conjecture, and considered as social theory, it doesn't deserve all that much traction, much less authority.
There is a weird irony in the fact that some of the main skill sets required of new military recruits is diligence at household upkeep, janitorial work, KP, sewing skills...and most men go in with almost none of that. And then they learn how to get squared away, or else. They are not indulged. I, a military brat but never in "the service", was indulged. Leaving me to ponder that maybe some level of boot camp is a good idea for young men.
A branch of anthropology with highly dubious merits that one might say is likely useless at best and subversive and destructive at worst finally found a practitioner who produced a work of tremendous value. It is an incredible confession of both the value of high agency men and the spite their agency is greeted with by this sub-discipline's insufferable practitioners.
I think one could write a good treatise using this paper as a foundation along with some good research. "How Robbing Men of Agency Through Female Disparagement Of High Agency Action Leads To Spikes in Deaths of Despair."
In 2020 in Lake Charles, we had two hurricanes and a flash flood. Gender roles asserted themselves, for sure. The difference between us in Louisiana and the feminists in Berkeley is that we had no problem embracing them. I'm grateful to the men. I even made a little video about it, to record how I felt at the time. The part about gender roles is around the 7:40 minute mark. https://www.facebook.com/TheRuthInstitute/videos/316496949564276
This may have already been said in a prior comment but I wonder how much Berkeley and Oakland being highly secular enclaves had to do with the lack of communal solidarity. I live in a relatively highly religious region of the US and it’d be almost shameful for the larger community to not come out in droves in support of one another during a disaster. Obviously kin would be primary, but I’ve witnessed firsthand an outpouring of concern for the wellbeing of others in this region. This could perhaps be less true in the city centers though.
Same here. My spouse and I recently relocated to the rural area Mom moved to decades ago when she remarried. They’re both now frail so we’re here to ensure they can live with dignity in their home. The town has less than 500 people, but it seems like so many more. We’ve had terrible floods, but church and school message boards have resulted in countless people volunteering to wield shovels, help remove debris, fix food… small towns deserve a much better rep than our “coastal elites” perpetuate.
The current hot house arrangement of de-feminized women and de-masculinized men cannot withstand hard shocks from external reality. Such shocks will inevitably occur. Good post. The article looks like it is worth reading for the details. Thanks for posting.
UPDATE: Humorously, a moment of research discloses this bibliographic information: “Hoffman, S. M. (1999). The regenesis of traditional gender patterns in the wake of disaster. In A. Oliver-Smith, & S. M. Hoffman (Eds.), The angry earth: Disaster in anthropological perspective (pp. 174-191). New York: Routledge.” A further moment of research through my own email traffic discloses that I bought this book in July of 2022 as part of the research for my own book. So, I have this article at home. Looking forward to looking at it tonight!
Community solidarity was inspiring too, in Lake Charles in 2020, after our hurricanes and flash flood. The conclusion I drew from the experience was that people instinctively knew what they had to do to survive a trauma. Let people talk, as a way of processing the trauma. I experienced first-hand something I had read about with respect to kids trying to recover from childhood abuse and trauma.
"People who haven’t been through a comparable trauma, don’t really understand what you’re going through. They may try. But honestly, they don’t get it. “You only had three inches of water in your house.” But when you’re watching the water rise, and it’s still raining, you don’t know that it is going to be “only” three inches. During that waiting period, people perceive their lives to be at risk, because they are.
Likewise, well-meaning people will sometimes say to childhood sex abuse survivors: “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” “Do we really have to keep talking about this?” “Can’t you just forgive and forget and move on with your life?” Well, no, actually, they can’t exactly move on, until they truly deal with it.
Where I live, chatting about natural disasters has become a standard topic of conversation. People ask, “How did your house do?” And then they listen respectfully to the answer, pretty much as long as the other person wants to talk. People don’t get uncomfortable and try to end the conversation, the way they might when someone can’t stop talking about their latest surgery.
I had very similar conversations with the produce manager at the supermarket, with my friends after church, and with nurses in New Orleans who survived Hurricane Katrina 15 years ago. Everyone instinctively gives their fellow survivors a whole lot of space, and time, and attention. I guess we intuit that these conversations are necessary and constructive, not self-absorbed and destructive."
The utopia they desire is worthy enough, but they have lost the knowledge that utopia is out of our reach because we cannot and are not meant to acheive it by ourselves.
Sounds similar to season two of The Island. In season one a bunch of carefully selected men were dropped on a desert island and put through an extremely tough survival experience. They got to swim ashore with just a jerry can and a few other misc objects. The only food on the island was plants and some crocodiles. At the end of the season they were starved and had to be re-introduced to food carefully. Nonetheless, they survived.
After this proved popular, feminists complained that it wasn't fair women were excluded. So in season 2 the organizer (Bear Grylls) decided to troll them by creating a second team on a different island that consisted exclusively of women. Needless to say, hilarity ensued.
The men rapidly formed a cohesive team with a leader, set up a water purification mechanism with their jerry cans, and hunted down crocodiles that they then used for meat. One of them found a net and was able to untangle it, eventually setting up what amounted to a fish farm - much to the amazement of the other men, who had very much doubted what he was doing and had been getting annoyed that he was apparently shirking his duties.
The women immediately split up, got lost, and one of them nearly died of dehydration. They failed to organize any leader meaning every decision was constantly debated. They failed to hunt any food, although suddenly two fat tame piglets turned up on their beach (i.e. the producers bailed them out). So naturally they refused to kill the cute piggies and adopted them as pets instead, then left them behind when moving to a different beach. By this point they were starving and on the road to death so a random "local fisherman" turns up on a boat and offers a couple of the girls a free fish, they go back to camp and say "we caught a fish". And so on. They were so dumb they often failed to pick up on the help they were being given by the producers (in contravention of the show's own rules).
The entire thing was horrifically embarrassing for the feminist worldview. The women weren't random, the show was a serious survival show and had been selected for their likelihood to do well, as well as given special survival training.
Several characteristics shone through:
1. The women were much lazier than the men e.g. some of them just go sleep on the beach for a while, whilst the men worked dawn till deep in the night in order to find food, water, build their camp etc.
2. They were disorganized. Time was valuable but they spent a lot of it just talking or arguing instead of making decisions. They were also remarkably unintelligent, regularly doing things guaranteed to result in swift death.
3. The women didn't take it seriously. They clearly knew the male producers wouldn't let them fail too badly and came to rely on that. At several points the (male) doctor monitoring them via the radio had to spell out to them what they had to do to survive (e.g. go find the jerry can they'd thrown away).
4. They were dishonest. Despite knowing they were ON CAMERA and thus everyone would eventually find out, the ladies didn't hesitate to lie to each other (and as a group).
Anyone who watches that show obtains a visceral understanding of how classical gender roles appeared; quite simply, if the men didn't take control and tell the women what to do, the women would all immediately have died.
To be fair, I do think that modern progressivism is partially responsible for the women being so incompetent and so arrogant about their own abilities. You take a woman from the year 1100 and say "let's put you in a place where you need to survive with 10 other women and no men" and she'd tell you to shove it up your ass.
Any woman who says she doesn’t need a man, has clearly never attempted to field dress, let alone butcher, a deer by themselves or even with another female. And our hill country deer are small compared to those in the rest of the country. So, to these raging feminists, I say, bitch please. Get out in nature where your meat isn’t in plastic wrap and then get back to me on that one. This goes for the man-bun wearing yahoos too.
Now, let’s not let the guys off the hook totally- most likely to die in the backcountry are young males that hike solo. So your girl might keep you from doing something stupid.
As an aside- I typically hate working with other women. I would much rather work with men. Men are on task, while most women (and soyboys) are busy gossiping and plotting how to backstab you. Usually it’s because they lack intelligence, which I attribute to eating disorders being common in females in high school. They starve themselves while their brains are still developing and the lack of nutrients really impacts their intelligence level.
Hello! New reader here, and I'm sorry, but I have to reply to this one. I don't say I don't need a man, at all, but I am female, and in my late 30s I worked for 2 years for a conservation NGO in the north of Scotland. A large part of that job was management of the red deer numbers on the two estates I worked on. As part of that job I regularly gralloched deer and butchered them on the hill. I have gralloched dozens of deer unassisted, and have often skinned and butchered them, and carried out the meat (by hand or on a quad bike), many, many times, and sometimes alone. I'm confident in my ability to do this, and I know many very capable women who go out stalking alone.
So, you’re at one end of the bell curve, along with a handful of women. I have dragged deer out of the woods, and cursed while doing so, because I do not have the upper body strength of the average man, and the men in my family do not hunt and are not keen to help. Despite being above average height for a female, and I am not a weakling by any stretch, I certainly could not lift a whitetail into the bed of my truck alone, whereas I know some average guys who can do so no problem. Take your average woman off the street and ask her to do what you did. I think you know how that will turn out.
To be sure, most women off the street wouldn't fancy it. I can't lift a deer by myself, the most I could do was butcher it and take it out in pieces (often cursing!). When extracting whole deer I worked with my manager, or whoever else I was working with, usually a man. I'm not a feminist btw, but I also hate to see women acting less capably than they're able. I read an article the other day about 'toxic femininity', which I think is absolutely a thing in this horrible modern 'culture' of ours. Many women think that to be feminine is to act helpless and weak, and they think that to butcher an animal, or do any manual work with their hands at all, is beneath them. Whereas in the past it was often seen as women's work to deal with the carcass of a slaughtered animal, or, not so very long ago here, they'd spend their days baiting hooks for the fishermen, and gutting herring (my great granny was a 'herring girl'). I think men and women naturally do (or should) compliment each other well. But we have such a skewed and politicised perception about gender roles now that we've ended up with these extremes of 'raging feminists' on one hand, and artificially pathetic women on the other.
Fair cop. I agree.
Well, we also have to keep in mind reality tv is hardly real. Were the women really selected to be competent, or???? This is about entertainment, ergo the producers may have wanted to make a point / b**** slap the feminist complainers. I live (now) in a very rural area in the Ohio River Valley ( aka part of Appallachia), and the women-folk work alongside the men in every way but in the chores / jobs requiring the upper body strength we don’t have. I just wouldn’t dismiss female competency on the basis of a “reality” tv show.
They all had professional jobs, iirc. It's been a while since I watched it. The show wasn't intended to be interesting because of inter-personal drama, there are other "survival" shows that are much better set up for that. It was really all about survival in harsh conditions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_with_Bear_Grylls
> In promoting the first series, the show was pitched as a challenge for modern men, to see if they can survive when marooned on a Pacific island armed only with minimal tools and their own initiative.[8] According to Bear Grylls, masculinity (and machismo) is in crisis, and he is interested if men can survive after being stripped of the luxuries of 21st-century living; the show is therefore also a social experiment to see if man can recapture his primeval instincts.[9]
> The participants were given training about animals native to the island that are on the protected species list, and each received one day's survival training, including advice on how to catch and humanely kill caiman. The men were given machetes and knives, head torches, an initial one-day water supply, and an emergency medical kit. In addition, the participants had GPS spot trackers, and access to radio and satellite phone in case of an emergency.[12] The second series participants were given two days survival training.
I am curious how many women are butchering deer here in Chicago. Methinks not many. Perhaps you could move here can take up rat hunting? You will never need to pay for meat again.
Isn’t that the point? Civilization permits things that will never fly in nature. I’ve never had rat meat. I’d imagine it’s probably similar to squirrel. I’ll have to make y’all some Brunswick Stew for Thanksgiving. Just don’t ask what meat I used. You’ll like it anyway. 😏
Well, convents (nunneries) existed at that time. I don't know how they operated but I suppose they were like monasteries and were supported by the local townsfolk, so survival wasn't a problem.
Nuns were self-selected though, and didn't have any kind of feminism.
I'll go back to Anglo -Saxon times (I'm in England but was same on the Continent). Nunneries or Convents were the female equivalent of Monasteries. But in one way they served a different purpose or additional purpose. They served as useful and secure places for reigning monarchs,contending monarchs,monarchs on the run,and deposed monarchs to place their female family members,Mother,Sister,Wife,Daughters etc. Mostly the sanctuary of Convents was respected by the Enemy force probably because the leader was doing the same thing. The Abbess was always a high ranking female. She might be the Sister of the King and eventually the Aunt of the next King. These women were highly educated and had power,and used it. They handled huge sums of money and were like women in the corporate business world of today. But they didn't apply for the job. They were appointed. The sort of work best done by men WAS done by men. Hired labour to do all that stuff. Sometimes of course these Convents acted as prisons,but comfortable ones,Kings like our Henry II who found out his sons AND his wife were all plotting against him had his astonishing amazing wife put away for years and even after he died his son Richard The Lionheart kept his Mum on a short lead,as he knew what she was like,lol. I just wanted to say that ladies in convents often weren't required to do men's tasks,they paid the men to do all that,and in a sense convents back then had a slightly different purpose,maybe unacknowledged,to male religious communities.
This is similar to a season of Survivor (The Amazon). The producers had the fantastic idea to divide the contestants up into team Tambaqui, consisting of only men, and Jaburu, consisting of only women. What followed is more or less identical to what you described.
There were some moments, however, where the women shone through. In particular during a trial where they had to give directions to each other to pass an obstacle course.
That being said, this one trial was pretty much the only memorable highlight for the ladies. No wonder that eventually the teams were reshuffled.
While the Battle of the Sexes had provided ample entertainment for viewers, it reached a point where watching it one could only feel bad: while the men were just brute forcing their way to building a camp, the women sat on some sticks arguing with one another.
You provided an entertaining description of The Island and it does sound like the women failed season 2. However, I think it is unfair to make such sweeping generalizations about the differences between the sexes based on that one case.
On a similar survival series, “Naked and Afraid”, the women often do better than the men. A typical situation is to pair a man and woman together who might have different levels of survival expertise. The man generally takes charge and sometimes is very effective at organizing the necessary shelter and acquisition of food and water and sharing the burden with the woman.
However, just as often, the man flexes his masculine bonafides by insisting on doing the bulk of the physically exhausting work of building shelter or starting a fire himself, while the woman is relegated to a much less physically demanding helpmate role. In the process, the man exhausts all his energy and dehydrates himself, falls ill and has to be extracted early. The woman then soldiers on alone, expending much less energy than the man would have, and eventually successfully completes the challenge.
They sounds like an explanation for why many spaces historically excluded women as well. Same rationale for not having women in the front line (as well as them genuinely being physically weaker).
Progressivism is quite literally a fake ideology - it can only thrive in a fake environment. As soon as something real happens, progressivism evaporates. If progressivism is present, it means it is fake and you are living a lie.
That being said, what can we infer about the moral character of people who chose to live in a natural way ahead of time as opposed to people who live in delusion until something bad happens?
I am reminded of a wonderful quote I saved years ago from First Things’ book review of “The Children of Men”:
“This question leads us to one of James’ most intriguing and subtly developed themes: the uselessness of liberal theology in a time of profound crisis. Christian theological liberalism has typically discarded orthodox eschatology in favor of a mild and essentially secular meliorism. But when people are faced with the apparent extinction of the human species, the belief in moral and material progress that undergirds such meliorism becomes, to say the least, untenable.”
I expect this is not too far off so will be interesting to see what happens.
Progressivism is a death-cult. They attempt to destroy all that is in human nature for the sake of engineered dogma and hedonism. It's a self-destructive extremism that exalts the whim of the individual as gospel and human civilization as, at best, a throwaway project.
A lot of people stay stuck in their delusions even after something bad happens!
A sign of truly atrocious moral character.
Those are the ones who will die.
Maybe not real and fake -primitive disaster like fire brings out what is vital in family units. Whereas superficial ties of modern living can survive only in superficial circumstances i.e. work relationships, car pools, daycare. Core values hopefully are easily recalled and superficial ones discarded in primitive life and death situations. There’s a better term than primitive -but superficial I think works better than fake. The superficial cooperation seems real to some people. Until it isn’t any more.
It's a strange thing that a sense of family obligation does not depend on liking or approving,it just is there,and can indeed kick in.
Progressivism, like other ideologies, traditionalism included, works, but only in a specific economic and social context.
I recall a progressive young human who, after traveling a bit in Africa, was very butthurt about traditional gender roles there, especially how humans were not free to choose their own preferred roles. I told here that those roles and rigidity made perfect sense, in that particular context.
In rural Africa, there is no formal law worth mentioning. The average frustrated villager cannot call the cops if there is trouble. No government or organization will come to your aid. All institutions are at best for sale and at worst, actively predatory. The only humans you can count on to have your back if needed (and I'm not even talking necessarily about violence), at least without a bribe, are your family, your tribe, your group, your people.
However, that goes both ways. It means that you may be called on to aid your tribe and its members, even if you don’t want to, even if you think that your cousin is in the wrong this time around. It also means that you cannot violate tribal norms, because your violation may be writing proverbial checks that their ass has to cash or lose credibility in not cashing.
“Well, I don’t want to do that!” It doesn’t matter what you or I want. For the locals, the tribe is their only real protection – without the tribe to step in, any one of them is fair game for anyone who wants to harm them. Violating those tribal roles makes you unpredictable, a loose cannon, and could give rise to a confrontation or obligation that otherwise could be avoided.
Virtually all modern life (including civilization writ large) is “fake” by your definition.
Progressivism is a largely reasonable and, imo, appropriate approach to establishing strong societies in this artificial environment; as long as the situation remains relatively stable, it benefits the greatest number of our kin in the broadest sense — i.e., humans, whether family, friend, or otherwise.
This reality does not preclude another reality: when shit gets real (i.e., when th artificial trappings of modern society unravel), more fundamental aspects of human nature must & do take over.
It’s a societal version of Maslow: if you’re scrambling at the base of the hierarchy, family & traditional gender roles are paramount for success; as one climbs the hierarchy, they (and we) are better able to self-actualize through progressivism.
I don't agree but appreciate the civilized dissenting voice
Right back at you. On both counts.
We can only learn & improve by seriously considering other points of view and how those might refute (or further cement) our own.
Regardless, keep your elbows up: the storm is already here, though few are willing to admit it yet.
💪💪🇨🇦
I think you mean "Liberalism." That is great, but Progressivism is more of a hate-filled disease. The difference is massive. I am a proud liberal, but I would prefer an absolute monarchy over anything Progressive (obsession with race, bizarre hatred of random ethnic groups or identities, an inexplicable hatred of families,...).
The Democratic Party could be, no SHOULD be running everything, but the Progressives have marched forward and snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory. I am convinced the Chinese Communist Party is pulling the strings like the COMINTERN did with the CPUSA back in the 1940's.
Well, liberalism is the foundation, yes. I am also a proud liberal, and an uncomfortable 🇨🇦Liberal supporter — I volunteered for a non-Carney leadership candidate, then volunteered for his Party, and have been far more than pleasantly surprised & impressed with his so far: he is exhibiting true liberal leadership on both national and world stages.
But I would counter that political progressivism has had great importance (mostly in the past, sadly, for the reasons you highlight) in pulling the Overton window left when self-proclaimed centrist and conservative-leaning liberals have failed to actually deliver on liberalism.
- Women’s & LGB rights (both before gender ideology took root)
- Labour rights (before wannabe Marxist ideology took root)
- Collective action (before performative protests took root)
Again, I think most progressives have strayed far from their original & stated goals of pushing equality, and now push a Left Authoritarianism that dwarfs the modern CCP (and echoes the Stasi) in terms of pitting neighbour against insufficiently “pure & virtuous” neighbour; the modern CCP has learned lessons (mostly scary ones) from their Cultural Revolution, and now at least include punishing wayward oligarchs along with plebes in their modern surveillance-centred systems of oppression.
But No Kings also. Ironic given Chaz3 is the King of Canada, but he’s purely ceremonial & anyway he can get in (or be forced into) the sea as far as I am concerned.
Our Head State, the Governor General, is currently appointed for life (usually until they choose to retire) by the. Canadian monarch (Betty, now Chaz) on the advice of the PM — and while Mary Simon (an incredible & deserving Inuk) is doing a great job, and can choose herself to withhold royal assent for any legislation, I think we’re far past time to take a different approach:
I’d like to see the Officers of the Order of Canada elect the GG (or future non-monarchist 🇨🇦HoS) from among their ranks, or from the pool of all Canadian citizens in something I just now realized we should call a Maple Conclave.
Those Officers are initially appointed to the Order on the merits of their contributions to 🇨🇦 by the government in power, and then promoted by the same or later governments on further merits, so while there is a risk of some political interference, I think it’s largely a non-issue.
Anyway, TLDR, current progressivism sucks, as it doesn’t fulfil its important counterbalancing function against conservatism as influences on liberalism.
But just as MAGA (OG or Maple) doesn’t mean that conservatism is worthless (just the populist kind we see rampant today), so too do the Alphabet Mafia not mean that progressivism is without value.
We are all better when we channel diversity of informed opinion into liberally-motivated decision making.
"We are all better when we channel diversity of informed opinion into liberally-motivated decision making".
Agree. But as you obviously know, attempting this was coded, in the places we are writing from, as being contaminated by 'whiteness' and replaced with ideological dogma, conformity and purification rituals. So there is an essential and irreconcilable difference between the progressivism you advocate for, and the dogmatic kind.
The problem is that the two narratives by design sound so similar that they appear to be part of the same project! This is how this was put across to the average progressivist-minded person living inside the left media bubble, where they were shielded from the excesses of activism, and any negative consequences were blamed on the warring tribe. This empowered dogmatic activism to an unprecedented degree.
Ultimately the left is now forced to face this 'systemic' mess. The critique came in large part from voices kicked out of the tribe, in addition to from the warring tribe. That does not bode well, as tribes do not respond well to pressure perceived to come from the outside, however legitimate. You easily get defensive postures like "right idea, wrong messaging", rewriting of history, and/or entrenchment. We'll see. Nice discussion.
Agreed: great discussion, Paul.
I can’t disagree, but I will say as a heretic left-leaning liberal that the very same comments about critiques and their reception can be applied to modern “populist conservatism” (about as far from conservatism as identitarian progressivism is from progressivism).
We’re in a tough place, as hardly anyone is both making sense and listening to those who make sense, critically & with intellectual integrity.
Megaphones rule, mobs rule, and it’s getting harder even for us in Canada to maintain our national dream of peace, order, and good government when everything is politicized and stripped of objectivity.
I for one really like the real, material world: complex, to be sure, but it has also been subjected to intense observation & interrogation. Turns out, some things are indeed true, and some false … and reality has a way of eventually winning out, no matter how incentivized one is to pretend otherwise. Just ask Lysenko & the 7M+ who died thanks to his rejection of reality under Stalin’s protective cover.
Generally agree here. I agree that we must uphold the standards of evidence you refer to. I do think the radical left is unique in dogmatically rejecting them, and then as intellectual elites being granted the opportunity to explode that rejection at the center of the knowledge creating institution. I don't see any attack on core principles like that anywhere else - this is what infuriated people and too bad that the radical right can find fuel there as well.
Here, here
*** Progressivism is quite literally a fake ideology - it can only thrive in a fake environment. As soon as something real happens, progressivism evaporates. If progressivism is present, it means it is fake and you are living a lie. ***
Very well said.
The proof of this is how progressive ideology only exists in affluent environments where people can be sheltered from reality to the extent that they can have "luxury beliefs." Rob Henderson came up with that term, I think it perfectly describes the progressive mindset.
When SFTF all that nonsense goes by the way side -- immediately.
Borderline psychotic the amount of cognitive dissonance these people have. This was a good read.
With three young kids it’s hard to deny. If we lost our home and needed to rebuild it would be my husband and the other men fending off the beasts and putting roofs over our heads, whereas the women would be trying to figure out how to feed each other’s children. How could it be any other way? What’s the alternative, I’m laying down pipes and working on sewage while wearing a baby and my toddlers scream for me? Would I nurse my baby while putting up a roof?
I also love the observation about extended family. I have no siblings and one reason I have so many kids is that I want my *grandkids* to have first cousins (my children don’t have any cousins on my husband’s side either. Small family size problem. His sister is single and childfree). And my great grandchildren to have second cousins and great aunts and uncles. Without such relationships there is no clan.
This shows that even seemingly weak family ties can prove crucial in hard times, whereas friends you see everyday can be unreliable.
Reading this like: Yes. Yes. Thank you. When all is stripped away, and humans are contending with surviving or not surviving, it automatically goes back to what works best: women, home, preparing the food, taking care of the children (really, really important jobs, even if you have an evolutionary mindset--no survival of the children, no survival of the species), while the man goes out to earn/hunt/collect food.
In a society run completely by women, I argue nothing would ever be done or built. Women would spend time in endless committees and town halls, trying to make sure everyone voiced their perspective, and that every angle was considered.
While these things are important, in disaster, famine, or war, quick decisions are necessary. Men have the kind of brain that allows them to focus on a single item and make it happen. What is top priority here? What do we do to fix it?
A lot of women--including me--actually thrive on multitasking. We can watch children, cook dinner, and clean the house (and read political news or societal commentaries) almost simultaneously. My husband would have a conniption.
If you come at this from a Biblical perspective, it makes sense. Men and women were designed to complete and complement each other, not to be interchangeable. No matter how much the feminists sound off, I will never believe that women and men are the same, or that either of them are unnecessary. You can see this in a good relationship or marriage where the couple has a healthy respect for each other, absolute differences, and they have learned how to work as a team (sometimes over many turbulent decades) to accomplish amazing things.
While good men with good wives will listen to their wives, at the end of the day they have to step up and make a call. Remember when we used to mock men who were "hen-pecked"? or laugh at some poor fellow because "she wears the pants"? We all recognize that this is dysfunctional, a man who has no conviction or decisiveness is not to be commended. Unless you live in feminist la-la land, I guess.
Here, in ranch country where I live, we are not so disconnected from nature and the land to fall into this trap. We can see the biological differences ourselves, and most people hold traditional roles. I think we are blessed to understand what it takes to survive, and if disaster hit us, we would fare better because we wouldn't have to first wrestle with true gender roles that suddenly shattered our entire worldview.
It's almost as if women and men evolved complementary characteristics that helped them mutually survive in harsh ancestral environments. It's almost as if gender ideology is a luxury of an advanced industrial civilization whose members are sheltered from elemental realities by modern comforts, conveniences, and social structures.
I am still waiting for the Intelligent Design set to ally with Progressives and fight to ban any reference to evolution.
You touch upon the dirty secret of modern progressives: they're closet creationists. They think they believe in evolution, but they don't understand it, and cannot accept its implications. They only ever endorsed evolution because they believe it undermines traditional patriarchal religion. Which it does. But unfortunately for them, evolution also undermines progressive fantasies about human nature.
That's some pretty good blurt and blather.
Thank you kindly.
This is a good example of why I don’t think you can change the true believers. They see evidence daily of reality and still continue on an obviously idiotic ideology. The thing I don’t get is how are these progressive women really benefiting from this nonsense? Now they get to work and clean the house and pay the bills and raise the kids? Did they really want an email job this badly?!
What kids? They do not have children. At most they have one child and torture them into depressed, anxiety-plagued misery for the rest of their lives.
Female anthropologist devalues traditional women’s roles. Instead she could have noted how providing basic daily needs was the glue that held the family together. Both male and female roles were crucial.
The baseline reality of human sexual dimorphism is somehow controversial these days. Overwhelming evidence of its existence notwithstanding.
Most of us get that there are legit exceptions. But for all of the envelope pushing and ceiling breaking in regard to traditional sex roles, the Annie Oakleys of the world are a rare thing.
There are also plenty of so-called "gendered roles" that really had no business being assigned as gendered roles in the first place, like the tasks of cooking and cleaning.
But when the neighborhood is on fire, the natural baseline of traditional dimorphic sex rules has a way of showing up in obvious and bold relief to sort things out, for the mutual benefit of all concerned in the community. As is fitting and proper.
Cleaning is very much a gendered role. Men on average will tolerate far more filth than women. Most men who aggressively clean were taught to do so by their mothers or picked it up as a necessity after military service. In many cultures there are colloquial expressions about why one can never trust a man to clean.
great point. The gendered ramifications are often stark, and I wonder about how much of it is innate--a tropism dictated by biology- vs. how much is taught, socially constructed. There's a strange imbalance in that regard: in my observation, most males tolerate more of a mess--a lot more of a mess--and are disinclined to pick up and keep a household orderly. At the same time, the dirtiest maintenance jobs are almost exclusively a male domain. I can't say I've ever heard of a woman getting entry level restaurant work as a dishwasher, for instance. (As for cleaning a grease trap, I tap out on that. I'd have to work up to that, and wouldn't want to.) Plumber jobs are almost exclusively male, even though there's no extra requirement for upper body strength. Never seen a woman on the job pumping out a sewage tank, or a port-a-potty. I have seen men--exclusively--tipping over port-a-potties, and rolling around in the resulting blue morass, and similar incidents. I mean come on, grotesque. I understand being a floorhand on an oil rig, but that's a comparatively sanitary activity. People get well-paid, for doing that. All a 19 year old single male has to do to in order to volunteer for wallowing in porta-potty filth is reach a BAC of .015%.
I've known dysfunctional guys who would sit in apartments surrounded by festering garbage that drew flies, which laid eggs, which turned into larvae, and hatched. And I'd visit, and my host would be personable, and neither of us would mind all that much! He was great company, if you didn't mind the stench from old microwave meals on the counter and full 44 gallon sacks of garbage (and, occasionally, worse.) We are mysterious beings, all right.
By contrast, I can't imagine a woman sinking to that pigsty level of wallow. Even a woman who was a fentanyl addict would do something to reverse the rot. Unless, that is, she was in a cohabiting relationship with a guy like that. (No wonder the Lesbian Insurgency has gotten so much power. They've stepped into the power vacuum left by Entropic Male Tropisms.) Yet one of the traditional duties of woman is diapering. Leading me to think that it isn't the shit that we men object to--it's its proximity to living human bodies. But, this post is entirely conjecture drawn from anecdotal conjecture, and considered as social theory, it doesn't deserve all that much traction, much less authority.
There is a weird irony in the fact that some of the main skill sets required of new military recruits is diligence at household upkeep, janitorial work, KP, sewing skills...and most men go in with almost none of that. And then they learn how to get squared away, or else. They are not indulged. I, a military brat but never in "the service", was indulged. Leaving me to ponder that maybe some level of boot camp is a good idea for young men.
A branch of anthropology with highly dubious merits that one might say is likely useless at best and subversive and destructive at worst finally found a practitioner who produced a work of tremendous value. It is an incredible confession of both the value of high agency men and the spite their agency is greeted with by this sub-discipline's insufferable practitioners.
I think one could write a good treatise using this paper as a foundation along with some good research. "How Robbing Men of Agency Through Female Disparagement Of High Agency Action Leads To Spikes in Deaths of Despair."
In 2020 in Lake Charles, we had two hurricanes and a flash flood. Gender roles asserted themselves, for sure. The difference between us in Louisiana and the feminists in Berkeley is that we had no problem embracing them. I'm grateful to the men. I even made a little video about it, to record how I felt at the time. The part about gender roles is around the 7:40 minute mark. https://www.facebook.com/TheRuthInstitute/videos/316496949564276
Excellent. An evisceration, but done skillfully, like a caring surgeon.
This may have already been said in a prior comment but I wonder how much Berkeley and Oakland being highly secular enclaves had to do with the lack of communal solidarity. I live in a relatively highly religious region of the US and it’d be almost shameful for the larger community to not come out in droves in support of one another during a disaster. Obviously kin would be primary, but I’ve witnessed firsthand an outpouring of concern for the wellbeing of others in this region. This could perhaps be less true in the city centers though.
Same here. My spouse and I recently relocated to the rural area Mom moved to decades ago when she remarried. They’re both now frail so we’re here to ensure they can live with dignity in their home. The town has less than 500 people, but it seems like so many more. We’ve had terrible floods, but church and school message boards have resulted in countless people volunteering to wield shovels, help remove debris, fix food… small towns deserve a much better rep than our “coastal elites” perpetuate.
Welcome to leftism, where resilience is brutality and basic division of labor is oppression.
Sounds like a good article.
The current hot house arrangement of de-feminized women and de-masculinized men cannot withstand hard shocks from external reality. Such shocks will inevitably occur. Good post. The article looks like it is worth reading for the details. Thanks for posting.
UPDATE: Humorously, a moment of research discloses this bibliographic information: “Hoffman, S. M. (1999). The regenesis of traditional gender patterns in the wake of disaster. In A. Oliver-Smith, & S. M. Hoffman (Eds.), The angry earth: Disaster in anthropological perspective (pp. 174-191). New York: Routledge.” A further moment of research through my own email traffic discloses that I bought this book in July of 2022 as part of the research for my own book. So, I have this article at home. Looking forward to looking at it tonight!
Community solidarity was inspiring too, in Lake Charles in 2020, after our hurricanes and flash flood. The conclusion I drew from the experience was that people instinctively knew what they had to do to survive a trauma. Let people talk, as a way of processing the trauma. I experienced first-hand something I had read about with respect to kids trying to recover from childhood abuse and trauma.
"People who haven’t been through a comparable trauma, don’t really understand what you’re going through. They may try. But honestly, they don’t get it. “You only had three inches of water in your house.” But when you’re watching the water rise, and it’s still raining, you don’t know that it is going to be “only” three inches. During that waiting period, people perceive their lives to be at risk, because they are.
Likewise, well-meaning people will sometimes say to childhood sex abuse survivors: “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” “Do we really have to keep talking about this?” “Can’t you just forgive and forget and move on with your life?” Well, no, actually, they can’t exactly move on, until they truly deal with it.
Where I live, chatting about natural disasters has become a standard topic of conversation. People ask, “How did your house do?” And then they listen respectfully to the answer, pretty much as long as the other person wants to talk. People don’t get uncomfortable and try to end the conversation, the way they might when someone can’t stop talking about their latest surgery.
I had very similar conversations with the produce manager at the supermarket, with my friends after church, and with nurses in New Orleans who survived Hurricane Katrina 15 years ago. Everyone instinctively gives their fellow survivors a whole lot of space, and time, and attention. I guess we intuit that these conversations are necessary and constructive, not self-absorbed and destructive."
https://www.ncregister.com/commentaries/survival-mode-flash-floods-trauma-and-childhood-sexual-abuse
The utopia they desire is worthy enough, but they have lost the knowledge that utopia is out of our reach because we cannot and are not meant to acheive it by ourselves.