Motherhood / Uncategorized

Another Woman Writer Gloats

 

“REAL FAMILIES,” is the name of a personal-essay series at Salon “that celebrates the surprising and ever-shifting nature of domestic life in the 21st century.”  Salon means “surprising and ever-shifting” in the sense that tornados and hurricanes that lift whole houses off the ground and hurl them into the air are “surprising and ever-shifting.”

The latest entry is “Why I left my children,” by the Japanese-American, prize-winning author Rahna Reiko Rizzuto. Rizzuto has outdone Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert by leaving not just her husband but her children too and then writing about it, in the apparent hope of invigorating discussion at women’s book clubs everywhere. (Since many top women writers gloat over their damaged marriages and homes, investing this destruction with drama in order to make money and careers, the competition for any award for the worst wife or mother among them would be quite stiff.) When Rizzuto’s children were toddlers she left them for a fellowship in Asia. Then she divorced her husband and settled down the block from her family. This, she discovered, was a good way to raise her children: (more…)

Comments Off on Another Woman Writer Gloats
March 1, 2011
Military Women / Uncategorized

A Few Good Men and Their Mamma

  N.W. writes: Your post on women in the military reminded me of an incident that occurred about a year ago when I was enlisting in the Marine Corps. The senior enlisted man at the recruiting substation was a woman. Under her command were a number of men. She addressed the group of Delayed Entry Program recruits. She informed them that things were going to become a bit more disciplined in the program than they had been. The end of her talk went something along these lines, Now everybody here, you're all here to become Marines, right? Right? Cause if not, you might as well leave right now. I'm not going to put up pulling around deadweight. Me, I'm here to help you, and your recruiters are here to help you. Now we're not your buddy or your bro. You ain't callin me 'guns' or whatever, that all is gonna stop. But we are family. And I'm your Mamma and if you have any questions or need something sorted out you come to Mamma and I'll help you. And all your recruiters, they're your daddies and they're here to help you. Now if your daddy ain't helping you or not telling you everything, you come to Mamma and I'll straighten it out. But you gotta tell me, if you don't tell me I can't help you. All right? Y'all understand? Good, now form up.  This is why women should not be in positions…

Comments Off on A Few Good Men and Their Mamma
March 1, 2011
Christianity / Uncategorized

A “Juncture of the Religious Dimension”

  THE BLOGGER Tiberge at Galliawatch reports that some Catholic schools in Marseilles are now 80 percent Muslim. Citing French press accounts, she writes: For the archbishop, training through inter-religious dialogue will permit these questions to be answered: "How to announce the Gospel? How to accept Muslim holidays? What can we accept or not accept?" According to archbishop Georges Pontier, "We must not run from these questions. Even if the subject is delicate and marks a juncture of the religious dimension and identitarian issues."

Comments Off on A “Juncture of the Religious Dimension”
February 28, 2011
Military Women / Uncategorized

Women in the Military, cont.

 

AS HAS been noted here before, the entry of women in significant numbers into previously-all male portions of the military does not render the military less guilty in the eyes of liberals. It actually makes it more guilty. The issue of sex abuse against female soldiers, who are expected to defend themselves against aggressive foreign enemies but are excused from defending themselves from their fellow soldiers, is now a major theme in the press. A federal lawsuit was filed this month by women soldiers charging the Department of Defense with countenancing sexual assault. (more…)

Comments Off on Women in the Military, cont.
February 28, 2011
Childhood / Uncategorized

When Children Played

  NOTICE this picture of a London alley in 1899. The children are playing outside and are dressed as children. The girl in the foreground is wearing a pinafore. The most startling thing is that they are playing outside with only one adult in the background. Remember when children used to play unsupervised games, with adults nearby but not coaching them and telling them the rules?  These children may have been poor, but at least they were children, not tiny adults without the freedom to play.

Comments Off on When Children Played
February 28, 2011
American politics / Female sexuality / Uncategorized

Just Another Career

 

SEN. Harry Reid has called for an end to legalized prostitution in Nevada. He has argued it should end not because prostitution is wrong but because it is bad for Nevada’s image.

Brooke Taylor, a leading spokeswoman for the business, strongly objects, according to The New York Times:

“Here we are being safe and professional and earning a living, and he wants us to end it? Absolutely not,” Ms. Taylor said in an interview in her bedroom at the Bunny Ranch. “This is what I choose to do, and there is nothing wrong with it.” (more…)

Comments Off on Just Another Career
February 28, 2011
Architecture / Uncategorized

The Skyscraper and Multiculturalism

  AT HER blog Camera Lucida, Kidist Paulos Asrat has an interesting post on the skyscraperization of Toronto. She argues that banal modern architecture is an inevitable result of the loss of Toronto's ethnic and racial identity.

Comments Off on The Skyscraper and Multiculturalism
February 28, 2011
Uncategorized

Dispense with the Word, Not Everything It Represents

 

JOE LONG:

I think that you will do well to ditch the word “Game,” rather than everything the concept implies. 

“Games” are contests; by definition; they are less than deadly serious; they are temporary diversions. The word also carries with it the air of the professional athlete, specifically the National Basketball Association player of the late twentieth/early twenty-first century, someone who is by and large, a very poor role model, starting with his grammar (“game”, for instance, is something you “got” – or perchance, that you “don’t” or “ain’t” “got”). “Game” describes how a “playa” “plays”; and if you’re going to accept those terms, there’s little sense in excluding “ho” (word, mispelling AND general concept).  (more…)

Comments Off on Dispense with the Word, Not Everything It Represents
February 28, 2011
English Girls / Poetry / Uncategorized

Five Men Who Could Have Benefited from Game

 
Patience, Leonard Campbell Taylor
Patience, Leonard Campbell Taylor

HERE is a free rendering of the Prologue to the Wife of Bath’s Tale by Chaucer. This is the third of five poems in Keith Jacka’s series “English Girls.” 

THE WIFE OF BATH

The Wife of Bath trod the Marriage Path,
Husbands five took her to wive.

Three dowered her with Gold and Land,
She had them eating out of her hand.

Those three were rich, but also old,
Not long before their blood grew cold.

Said she: “I can’t keep chaste for years,
I only wait till a man appears.

“No sooner a husband’s dead and gone,
Another one shall take me on.

“I tantalise a little bit,
I make them beg; I tell them ‘Sit.’

“What have I got? I’ve got what they need,
They’re all the same from Adam’s seed.

“A shapely breast, a rounded bum,
Will hold men’s eyes till Kingdom Come.

“But husband four put me in my place,
I fell down hard, fell flat on my face.

“He set it all up; me safely wed,
He looked about; who else could he bed?

“He had an eye; he played the field,
No trouble for him to make them yield.

“I seethed inside; I raged with spite,
To see another woman his delight.

“I had my methods to do him down,
No need to shout; no need to frown. (more…)

Comments Off on Five Men Who Could Have Benefited from Game
February 27, 2011
Male and female relations / Marriage / Masculinity / Uncategorized

More on Game

  

HERE ARE more interesting comments from readers regarding “Game,” which many readers say is a nihilistic, anti-Christian, hedonistic form of manipulation of women. There is no question that it often is. We are all agreed on that. However, one reader adds another impassioned defense of Game and advocates a Christian interpretation of it that rejects hedonism and recognizes the moral responsibility of both men and women in marriage. 

Mark Richardson writes:

Youngfogey wrote that “the core of Game is manly virtue.” I have to disagree with him on this.

What Game teaches is that women are sexually hypergamous, meaning that they will be attracted to men who demonstrate higher value (DHV). You demonstrate higher value as a man by adopting an attitude of “amused mastery” and by learning how to fend off the “beta tests” sent your way by women. You are supposed to assume that, as the one having higher value, it will be the woman who will want to be with you, rather than you employing romantic supplication to try to win her over.

There are other techniques as well (e.g. “contrast game”) and advice on how to present yourself. That’s the kind of discussion that tends to dominate at Game sites, rather than a focus on manly virtues.

It’s true that Game teaches that men will do better if they show masculine self-confidence, but I haven’t known it to venture much further than this.

(more…)

Comments Off on More on Game
February 27, 2011
Uncategorized

Words Matter

   

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

Respecting “Game,” the very name “Game” suggests insincerity and deceit.  In that way it is an egregiously counter-productive term.  Insofar as those who use the term “Game” actually mean masculinity, decency, chivalry, constancy, moral integrity, and the classical virtues, maybe they should refer to those things explicitly by name.  When I hear the word “game” I think of Las Vegas, the casinos, the public women, the fatuous college boys who are attracted to that scene, and everything else summed up in the vulgar advertisements for Nevada’s heart of darkness. 

I have a measure of respect for a slang-term that some of my male students use: “Man up” (also, “grow a pair”).  If the advocates of “Game” spoke of “manning up” (or of “growing a pair”), then it might be possible to take them more seriously.  Words not only have meanings and consequences; they also have connotations, and the connotations have meanings and consequences. (more…)

Comments Off on Words Matter
February 26, 2011
Male and female relations / Marriage / Masculinity / Uncategorized

When Game Is About Love

 

YOUNGFOGEY writes:

It seems to me that a portion of your readers have fallen into some common misconceptions about Game.

First, as I wrote, at the core of Game is acting like a man. That means being aggressive, that means having a plan, that means pursuing what you desire, living with honor and, I think (as a reflection of my Christianity), protecting the weak and, if you can find a woman who deserves it, providing for a wife and children. In this way, the core of Game is manly virtue. The thing about virtues is that they are not natural. They must be practiced, put on from the outside in. So, of course there is a tension between authenticity and the practice of any virtue. To say that Game is manipulative simply because it involves the practice of virtues that are immediately present seems more than a little unfair. (more…)

Comments Off on When Game Is About Love
February 26, 2011
English Girls / Uncategorized

“She Did Her Bit, She Played Her Part”

 
Factory Girls, Frederic Shields
Factory Girls, Frederic Shields

 

 ANNIE ROSE

Annie Rose Smith of Bethnal Green
Couldn’t care less what Life should mean;

Didn’t use her Mental Powers
Mulling over the passing hours;

Didn’t believe it was her Station
Spending her time in Cogitation.

Worked in the City with Needle and Thread,
Sewing fine seams for her Daily Bread.

Sewing fine seams for not much pay;
That’s how it was, in her Day.

Stitch for the Rich, make silken dresses;
Saturday Night she’d comb her Tresses,

Put on Glad Rags, Ribbons and all;
She was going to Wilton Hall.

Wilton Hall with Marie Lloyd,
Johnny the Clown, and Murgatroyd.

When an Act was finished, in between
She’d parade with a friend, to see and be seen,

Displaying all her pretty curls
For Right-Looking Boys with eyes for the Girls.

Nineteen Eighteen, World War One,
Soldiers on Leave, out for fun.

An Aussie Boy was he whom Fate
Had singled out to be her Mate.

(more…)

Comments Off on “She Did Her Bit, She Played Her Part”
February 26, 2011
Childhood / Education / Uncategorized

The Sickening Pace of Early Childhood Education

  

KATHLENE M. writes:

This article explores how kindergarten has become worse in recent years. This excerpt interested me for the reason I explain below:

How and why has kindergarten changed?

In a word: testing.

According to a 2009 report from the Washington, D.C.-based Alliance for Childhood, kindergartners are being taught to comply with state and national standards, which takes away from creative play-time known to be important to early childhood development. (more…)

Comments Off on The Sickening Pace of Early Childhood Education
February 25, 2011
Marriage / Masculinity / Uncategorized

More Thoughts on the Contemptuous Spouse

 

MARIANNE writes:

Your blog continues to be fascinating and I am a big fan.  

But I’m writing to express a concern, and I hope you will not take it the wrong way, because I truly admire so much of what you have to say. My concern is this: I think it’s a mistake to encourage a man to use “Game” techniques on his wife, even as a last resort, if his wife is treating him with contempt. (more…)

Comments Off on More Thoughts on the Contemptuous Spouse
February 25, 2011
English Girls / Uncategorized

English Girls

 

A Young Widow, Edwin Killingworth Johnson
A Young Widow, Edwin Killingworth Johnson

KEITH JACKA  is the author of “English Girls,” a series of five poems. Here is “Arundel,” one of these poems and the first to be published here. The others will appear shortly. Mr. Jacka, who lives in London, is a reader of this site. 

 bigstockphoto_Black_Flowers_4800530[1]

ARUNDEL

Arundel the kindly girl. She knew
How to be both Wife and Mother; true
To her vows. Not one to ruminate and fret,
Or turn aside to nurse some old regret.

Contented with her busy life, minding
All the tasks of Hearth and Home, binding
Up the hurts, wiping away the tears,
And shielding all her brood from nameless fears.

O Arundel, poor Arundel; she’s lost
Her man: John Penruddock, a Royalist,
Caught by Cromwell’s Boys. They took him alive,
Hanged him high in Sixteen Fifty Five.

Poor Arundel the loving Wife. She wrote
A letter to her dear, a final note,
A letter to the one who mattered most,
Against his final fading to a ghost.

A flood of tears assails her sober reason;
But yet she must not yield. It would be treason
To the little ones … must not be left
By Mother, though the Wife is full bereft.

O Arundel, poor Arundel; her man
Is gone; lost and gone forever. He can
No longer reach and hold her in his arms,
Make her smile, safe against all harms.

May the third, eleven o’clock at night;
No act of hers can bring him to her sight.
Next morn he’ll sleep alone in his last cold bed
Never again to be disquieted;
Never again, O never again to be disquieted.

                             — Keith Jacka

  (more…)

Comments Off on English Girls
February 25, 2011
Marriage / Uncategorized

Why Has This Wife Rebelled?

 

YOUNGFOGEY writes:

What struck me most about your reader’s note in this entry was the admission that this guy’s wife holds him in contempt. My guess is that she doesn’t despise him because he wants children and she doesn’t. She probably despises him because he has been neutered by the culture, offers her very little in the way of direction and leadership and refuses to even attempt to get the upper hand in marriage. The wife may treat him with contempt because he is simply too beta. Maybe she doesn’t want to have kids with a guy like that.

I know I am writing about a situation I have no first hand knowledge of, but the situation I have described is so common that it’s not unreasonable to assume this dynamic is at play. The first step for this guy has got to be to step up the alpha, then worry about kids.

I know you may be loathe to recommend it but this might be a guy who could benefit from reading some Roissy or Athol Kay. (more…)

Comments Off on Why Has This Wife Rebelled?
February 24, 2011