Wednesday, April 27, 2016

When Women Can't Compete

One day a light-headed public official got the idea that there is no significant or relevant different between men and women. So, he mandated that women must be allowed to fight alongside men in the infantry.

Call it the tyranny of an idea, a manifest failure to differentiate equality from sameness. but contemporary feminism has imposed its views on the culture at large… to the point where you almost put your life in danger if you dispute the point.

If women warriors are incapable of completing the same basic training as men, the solution is obvious. Culture warriors take the results as de facto proof that the training itself is sexist. Thus, standards must be lowered so that women can compete.

But, what happens to military units when they are forced to accept members who cannot compete at the same level as men? Surely, it undermines group cohesion. If the person next to you is appreciably weaker and has been admitted to the unit by different standards you are going to be thinking, in the back of your mind, that you must protect her. And that thought will distract you from the task of fighting the enemy.

And then you might ask yourself, if she did not earn her way into the unit, is she there to serve another purpose?

Same-sex groups do not function like coed groups. It ought to be obvious, but making a group coed changes the group dynamic, changes what may and may not be discussed, changes the meaning of different gestures.

A Princeton professor who was the lead parent for his children like to take them to the park. There he discovered that the mothers did not much want him around. They did not want to damage their group by introducing an alien element. Nowadays, as the profession of psychotherapy becomes more female dominant, and as more and more men avoid it, the women in charge do not want very many men around.

And yet, when a male group prefers to remain a male group, its members are denounced and even sued for discriminating.

How do men’s groups resist the feminist onslaught? How do they protect their domain against those who are so enamored of the ideal of equality that they want everyone to accept their own distortion of reality?

You know the answer: in the world of work men work very long hours, they work endless hours, to the point where precious few women have any interest in keeping up. Women prefer career paths that give them the time to make homes for their families and to care for their children; men prefer career paths that are more grueling, more of a test, more competitive… and involving very long hours.

Derek Thompson calls it a values gap. Members of different sexes tend to have different priorities. But, do they not have the right to determine their own values? This feels like reality biting back at the ideologues; the ideologues take serious offense at it. Note well: when Thompson says that American men are obsessed, he is saying that they are suffering from a mental illness. If only they can get a tune up from one of our nation's more motherly feminist therapists everything will be fine.

Thompson writes:

Students’ values shape their majors and their jobs. Those who want to make a lot of money (on average, more men) are more likely to major in economics or business; men are more than 50 percent more likely than women to major in economics at every Ivy League university. Those who prize flexibility and accept lower pay (on average, more women) are more likely to be in the humanities. When Wiswall and Zafar followed up several years later, they discovered that college values predict first jobs: “Students with strong preferences for flexible hours and distaste for hours” were more likely to be in jobs with flexible hours and fewer hours.

Despite the best efforts of feminists and other agents of indoctrination, men still continue to gravitate toward jobs that are more competitive and more demanding. They are born to compete for status, and this has obvious consequences in marriages. The ideal of the egalitarian marriage rarely survives its confrontation with reality.

Thompson writes:

When Harvard Business School surveyed 25,000 of its male and female graduates, it found that high-achieving women failed to meet their career goals. At graduation, most women said they expected “egalitarian” marriages, where both spouses’ careers were taken equally seriously, but several years later, more women had deferred their husbands’ careers. This study, and others, suggest that while married couples often make work-and-home decisions as a unit, the cultural expectation that men be the top providers proves to be an insurmountable force, even (or especially) among the best educated households.

Without our ideological blinders we would probably not be worrying our delicate minds about this issue. Men and woman are different. They function differently.  They have different priorities. Efforts by investment bankers to force men to work less have generally failed.

The New York Post reports on the phenomenon:

Investment bankers aren’t the only ambitious New Yorkers pushing themselves to the brink with intense hours. Law-firm partners, chief executives, physicians and even chefs work considerably longer hours than the US Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2014 national average of 7.8 hours per workday.

“[These people] won’t drop their work,” [career coach Roy] Cohen adds. “These folks are hard-wired to compete and work without limits. They also know that if they drop the ball, there are dozens of others eager to retrieve it.”

If men are hard-wired to compete, if competing is in their nature, why have these companies decided to go to war against nature?

Naturally, the cultural warriors have set their sights on these men. Social psychologists have produced research studies proving that too much work is bad for these men, that it makes them less productive. Besides, other men in other nations do not work such long hours. And they are happier.

We are happy to be judged by some kind of happiness quotient, but the proof lies in how much the economy is growing or not. When it comes to military units the proof lies in victory, not in gender equity or work/life balance.

Of course, one must take these ideologically-driven studies with more than a few grains of salt. Another recent study supposedly proved that fathers bond with their children just as well as mothers, a fiction that is belied by the most elementary observation of mothers and fathers with infants.

Apparently, the study wanted to prove that there is no such thing as a maternal instinct and therefore that if Mr. Mom is bringing up a child, the child will have lost nothing. Of course, if both Mr. Dad and Mr. Mom have careers, then both will be consigning themselves to a certain level of mediocrity.

It’s always interesting to see mindless ideologues attempting to use their pseudo-science to re-invent human nature. Apparently, they believe that God got it wrong. Or else, if you prefer, that evolution went awry.

One day someone will decide that the problem can only be solved if men are forced to work less, if they are simply deprived of their freedom to work longer hours.

If investment bankers in New York decide to slack off, others will take up the slack. The business might go elsewhere, perhaps to a place where men have better work/life balance and do inferior work. It might also go to a place where everyone is not being assaulted by the feminist thought police.

Besides, the next time we are fighting a war we can now, thanks to the latest academic research, send out battalions of female foot soldiers led by lawyers from the ACLU. The experts will have produced studies assuring us that we will not be compromising readiness or combat effectiveness.

And, if that doesn’t work, we can send in Katniss Everdeen with her bow and arrow. That will strike fear in the hearts of our enemies.

9 comments:

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

"Men and woman are different. They function differently. They have different priorities... Apparently, they believe that God got it wrong. Or else, if you prefer, that evolution went awry."

So let's get rid of God. Problem solved.

American women in combat is the most insane, bat guano crazy idea out there. It is self-referentially stupid and idiotic.

Fighting the enemy is the last thing on the minds of our leaders today. That's because an "enemy" is a phantasmic social construct, just as gender is. We just need to talk more about it...

That's change you can believe in. Forward! I'm ready for Hillary! Behold, the Mockingjay!

Lindsay Harold said...

I know it’s not very politically-correct to say this, but women should never be placed in combat positions in the military. Women, by their very design, are not as well-suited for battle conditions as men. This includes multiple aspects of their physical and mental design.

http://www.lindsays-logic.blogspot.com/2016/01/why-women-should-not-be-in-combat.html

Ares Olympus said...

Stuart: If men are hard-wired to compete, if competing is in their nature, why have these companies decided to go to war against nature?

Wow, feminists in their most lustful dreams couldn't make a better argument about men than this. Men exists to be used up and discarded. That's what they're for.

Yes, men are competitive and become unhappy if you're not challenging them with another carrot to the next rung in an ever smaller ladder of success. Why fight nature?

But men are also apparently "hard-wired" to kill themselves after middle age when they find their skills obsolete, or too expensive for employers looking at their bottom line, their nest egg stolen by their exs, and their children who won't talk to them. Why indeed should companies care about their employees future after using them up? There'll always be more men to replace them.

Or if they still have some testosterone left in their degraded state, men are also "hard-wired" to go postal when things don't go their way.

Probably "real men" with honor kill themselves, while it's the sissy losers who finally grab for the guns for revenge after years of humiliation, but in either case, it's their problem, not ours. They're the ones who were competitive, and they had their shot, and they lost.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

On Wednesday, April 27, 2016, the House Armed Services Committee voted 32-30 to recommend mass conscription of females. That means women can be drafted into the armed forces and serve in combat.

“I actually think if we want equality in this country, if we want women to be treated precisely like men are treated and that they should not be discriminated against, we should be willing to support a universal conscription,” Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., said after the vote.

Who the hell wants "women to be treated precisely like men are treated"??? How many women daily feel the terrifying sting of this horrible discrimination?

This is complete lunacy.

This is a social experiment that defies biological realities. Anyone who's passed basic biology and also finished the reproductive section of health class knows that the human gestation period is 9 months. The man's contribution of gametes takes moments. Civilizations carry on through generations when they can generate new offspring. Men can't carry a child and give birth. It's a tremendous gift only women can deliver, and it takes a long, long time. Then there is the long human childhood. We're going to willingly throw our women in mass waves of frontal assaults to take fixed positions? Are these people mad???

We distinguish that men and women should compete in separate spheres in the Olympics, save equestrian. Seems we should stop that if we're willing to sacrifice women in a mechanized battlefield slaughter. Medals are trifles compared to life. Seems there are a number of areas of society where we could catch up in before deploying conscripted women in combat.

Women should not be drafted. Women should not serve in combat. This is fast becoming a degenerate nation, when we conscript those who give life in the name of "equality," when no such biological equality exists. It is patently ridiculous. I find this sickening.

The House of Representatives is controlled by the Republican Party. I hope the larger body will come to its senses, lest such foolish mental meanderings actually become law. But it mystifies me how such a silly measure could clear a significant committee like Armed Services. Who's running the show?

We are not Israel, surrounded by enemies with mere miles between us. Mass conscription is for massing large military forces for land and naval warfare on a huge scale. We are bordered by two great oceans. We have a significant nuclear arsenal. We have many millions of males eligible for military service. This is totally unnecessary, purely ideological, and cynical in the most grotesque way.

Stop the ride, I want to get off!

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

Lindsay Harold @April 27, 2016 at 5:06 PM:

Political correctness is vacuous, and common sense is now frighteningly uncommon.

You are spot on. This idea of conscripting women for military service is insane.

Ares Olympus said...

IAC: On Wednesday, April 27, 2016, the House Armed Services Committee voted 32-30 to recommend mass conscription of females. That means women can be drafted into the armed forces and serve in combat.

It looks sensible to me, even if mainly symbolic. The only trick to me is over lowering standards for women. If men are excluded based on a failure of standards, then women should also be excluded on the same standards. But if men who fail standards on some jobs are designated to other jobs with different standards, then the same can be done for women.

And there may be some jobs that women will out perform men. Besides, it looks like warfare has been reduced to flying drones from 6000 miles away, so not many of those women are going to become prisoners of war.

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/277962-defense-bill-would-require-women-to-register-for-draft
-----
Rep. Chris Gibson (R-N.Y.) added that if women were drafted, they wouldn’t be forced into jobs that they aren’t equipped to do.

“What we have right now is standards-based,” he said. “The fact of the matter is, if we need hundreds of thousands of folks to serve, that hasn’t changed any reality of if it’s going to be standards-based of who’s going to be in the infantry and who might be supporting.”
-------

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

Ares Olympus @April 29, 2016 at 3:46 AM:

Of course it looks sensible to you, Ares.

Ares Olympus said...

IAC, at least thanks to George W. Bush we've confirmed that women can be just as sadistic and unremorseful as men following orders.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/us-soldier-who-abused-prisoners-at-abu-ghraib-refuses-to-apologise-for-her-actions-7579422.html

On the other hand, fundamentalistic Islam has different ideas, and says women should be protected from the threat of brutality of strangers, and must be protected 24-7 by fathers, brothers, and husbands, and so their experiences of brutality are limited to the behind closed doors of home as God intended.

Dennis said...

Lindsey Harold,

Take heart because the vast majority of women are with you on this and this includes women already in the military. I note that it is the feminist who believes they would not be subjected to combat that find this worthwhile. There are no amount of women they world not sacrifice for their desire for political power. One only needs to look at the history of the feminist agenda to notice that it is young women who bear the burden of the fallacy that is feminism.