Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Sexism Defended

Last night I finally finished Theodore Dalrymple's Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass. It's a treasure trove of anecdotes, none of which I will share here.

How was that for a bit of verbal misdirection?

Many of the anecdotes deal with women getting savagely beaten by their boyfriends. It was a commonplace thing in the hospital where he worked. Dalrymple describes how it became so ordinary. Since men are bigger and stronger, in the absence of protective fathers, cultural restraints or police intervention, they could get what they wanted by force and violence. The lack of cultural restraints had done away with both protective fathers and police intervention. The women were left to their own devices. It never ended well for them.

I used to study kung fu. At my school, we had one female instructor. She was a black sash, something we had very few of at our school - it was very, very hard to advance. I asked her once if she ever sparred with the guys. She said no, she would just get creamed because women don't have the same muscle mass as men. It was said in a very matter-of-fact tone by a woman at the height of martial arts prowess.

One of Dalrymple's themes is that the delusional theories of intellectuals make their way into society and end up doing great harm to people living life at the bottom. Equality of the sexes is one such idea. Every time I've seen modern movies where the heroine is in the middle of combat, proving herself just adept as the men around her, it has bothered me. Now I know why. It's not just total nonsense, it's dangerous nonsense.

By preaching total equality for the sexes, we have created a fantasy world where women do not need men to protect them. In our movies and all through our popular culture, this is a common theme. We now even have women's boxing on TV, something that is utterly repulsive.

Since we've decided that women do not need men to protect them and the sexes are totally equal, men are freed to do as they please. In the underclass, what they please is to use force and violence to satisfy their urges and whims. Biology being what it is, women end up dominated and pregnant.

Party on?

Here, Sir Lancelot defends a lady from a knight who is trying to abduct her. Later, she whips out nunchucks and gives them both a good beat down.

Or maybe not.

8 comments:

Dean said...

KT, great post.

It shouldn't be surprising that this thinking advances in a high tech world where we no longer work and recreate manually. Common sense seems to get deluded when you stare at a computer screen all day.

This equality of sexes has had dire consequences in law enforcement as well. Female police officers are disproportionately involved in fatal shootings because they lack the physical strength to employ "intermediate force" (i.e. kicking the subject's ass) in order to subdue the subject.

Foxfier said...

I guess this is the week for a bunch of folks to come at this from different angles.....
http://eric-hinkle.livejournal.com/264468.html
discussing what women are taught about men, and the trope of women not being heroic if they act like actual women, and
http://johncwright.livejournal.com/241236.html
in the latest in a series of...well, I don't know if I can explain(insert Princess Bride quote here); on female/male interactions in the modern and recent past.

As I said on the first link-- I am so sick of guys with boobs. If it's a vampire flick, sure, the vampire chick can be ten times stronger, tougher, whatever than the guys. Barring that? Oh, please.

Secular Apostate said...

Well, you really do need to think of the difference as two overlapping Normal distributions.

On the left tail of the Male distribution, we find Jack Dempsey and Joe DiMaggio. Over on the right (overlapping) tail of the Male distribution, we find Richard Simmons and Leonardo DiCaprio.

On the right side of the Female distribution, we find dazzling orchids like Audrey Hepburn. On the left (overlapping) side, we have dykes like Janet Reno and Janet Napolitano.

I have no doubt Janet Reno could kick Leonardo DiCaprio's ass in a heartbeat. (Audrey Hepburn might have been able to kick DiCaprio's ass, who knows?) But there is no woman alive (or dead) that could kick Jack Dempsey's ass.

malite (MALL-ite; n, psychiatric) a personality type, usually young, adolescent, and female, who habitually congregates with peers in shopping centers and is addicted to chewing gum and cellphone use

K T Cat said...

Foxfier, thanks for the links. I didn't read the second one completely, but I got the gist of it.

Secular, I thought the same thing about Leonardo until I saw The Aviator. He was fantastic in that movie. Of course, Audrey Hepburn might still be able to mop the floor with him, but I don't look at him as some kind of interior decorator any more.

Dean, I didn't know that about female cops. It stands to reason.

Foxfier said...

Mr. Wright can be very...long winded.

Dean- I'd bet that a lot of bad guys are willing to try something against a female cop that they wouldn't against a male one, as well.

Ing Li-- a famous cellist/ martial artists

Jedi Knight Ivyan said...

In college, I took a couple of self-defense classes. I knew I couldn't count on a Lancelot to rescue me and my honor should they be threatened. Fortunately it's never come to that. And if you're wondering why I wouldn't just run away, I'm horribly slow.

I couldn't beat a fellow in a fair fight, I'm sure. But with the element of surprise (an attacker is not expecting an effective defense), I might frighten/hurt him enough to get away.

I think in times gone by, the "good girl" was more or less safe from lecherous attentions. Not so now. The good girl thing is gone because women put out too much. "First date, why stop at a kiss? Let's just hop in the sack." All women are assumed to be eager nymphomaniacs.

This is one of the reasons I am looking at starting my daughter in martial arts in a few years: let her learn to fight like heck and learn to respect herself and her body.

Have you read "Hating Women" by Shmuley Boteach yet?

K T Cat said...

Jedi, I haven't read that yet. Thanks for the tip. I'll look it up. I'm not suggesting that women shouldn't try to defend themsleves, I'm suggesting that a culture that equates the two lets men off the hook. We no longer need to protect women because they can handle themsleves. We can now do as we please.

That's just wrong.

Jedi Knight Ivyan said...

Yeah, I knew what you meant. I got interrupted while commenting and it ended up a bit incoherent.