You are on page 1of 40

Letter from the Editor:

The issues facing men and boys are starting to get some real attention these days. It seems the Mens Movement is having an effect, even being referred to as 'daunting' in our effectiveness. At least, our effectiveness at making noise. But, as has been pointed out ad nauseum for years, merely squalling incoherently about injustice only gets so much atttention before calls for substance turn to boredom and dismissal. The challenge has been to put extremely complex ideas into easily understood images and articles. The second largest obstacle, frankly, has been deciding where to start.

Much has been made of unequal rights surrounding Family Law, and Reproductive rights. The world is well aware of activist stances on such things as Domestic Violence and Affirmative Action. What many are asking is, 'why should I care?' How do these issues, and the myriad others, affect people in their day to day life? How do they affect the way they raise their children? How do they effect society as a whole?

And what exactly are we supposed to be doing about it? Is there anything we can do?

By way of beginning this dialogue, I offer you this fine selection of articles which address some aspect of growing up, navigating the system, and attempting to raise children of our own. From the Fable penned by Typhonblue to the memoirstyle musings of B.R. Merrick, through Delusions of Masculinity, the distortions of our culture are examined through a personal lens.

Zed details a laundry list of corruption and malice in his article, and Szerban suggests a possible manifestation of the pressure we place on young men in his. And in Was Jesus a Mangina?, Paul Elam manages to both offend and entertain, all while doing a little instructing as well. And Dr Tara, thankfully, offers some solid advice on how to cope with this crazy world. A more complete outline would require many more issues of this magazine, and as is usual, this collection is intended to spark discussion among all interested parties, not bore the reader to death. So, I truly hope you enjoy reading them as much as I have. And don't forget to let your friends know about this magazine, your support is vital to our success. Once again, enjoy the read.

D Moore

Boy Alone

In This Issue:

4 8 16 20 22 28 34 32

Editorial:

Save Me! Why Game is Important for Fathers


Spinning Our Wheels on Date Rape
The Baby Bomb.

Was Jesus a Mangina? Male Suicide Rates and Causes Delusions of Masculinity Teaching Boys and Young Men

36

Contact:
This issue of MenZ contains several images that were posted online under the creative commons license. Should you have ownership of one of these images, and would like modification or credit, please contact the editor.

menzmagazine@gmail.com

This magazine exists as a collection of blog posts considered compelling enough for publication here. The articles contained in this magazine are solely the views held by the author, and are written as opinion pieces only. Every effort is made to cite the original source, as all of the articles included in this collection are available in their original form online. All contributions, including the design and editing of this magazine, are provided on a volunteer basis. If you, or someone you know, would like to contribute their talents, please, let us know. MenZ Magazine is edited in Saskatchewan, Canada.

I didnt want to do it. I enjoyed scouts only ever because I had friends in my troop. I did not enjoy swimming. I learned early in life, however, never to question authority. Therefore, when the presiding authorities over my early life sent me to a Boy Scout swim meet, I went. Reluctantly. Very.

one. That was the biggest reason to cry. I never told my friends that part. I never told anyone, in fact, until now.

Due to humanitys inability to do much of anything without categorizing ourselves, those responsible for this particular meet put us into groups according to how well we could swim. At the top, where the jock boys live and thrive, were The Sharks. (West Side Story, anyone?) I was a Minnow. How many 12to 13yearold young men like to be called Minnows? Do you know the exact number? I do. Zero. I didnt want to grab the paddle, kick my legs to the other side of the fucking pool, and lose. I wanted to go home. I was totally unprepared for this. I stank. Then I sank.

I tell you now because this was not an isolated incident for me, nor am I the only one who has experienced such a disappointment. It has only gotten worse. Not for me; for the generations that have followed. Fewer men are teaching boys how to be boys, and it seems that even fewer men are interested in teaching young men how to enter in. I believe that much of this has to do with the boredom that empire naturally produces, but not all of it. The American Empire was built high over ignorance of manhood and the idea that men are disposable. Let me try a little sports analogy: To me, corporate sports are a hellofalot less interesting than truly manmade sports. Lets look at one unique and perhaps embarrassing way in which men are stifled in their relationships with boys. An article at TampaBay.com from 2007 about what ought to have been a simple exchange between trusting strangers reveals a poisonous societal belief that, while humorously discussed, degenerates these crucial relationships in a very serious way.

Some dude with a mustache and lots of naturally developed, manly muscle, wearing a flannel shirt and jeans (I will never forget this.), jumped in and pulled me out. I wept. My friends in the troop (none of whom were Minnows) did their boyish best to tell me that it was okay. I had great friends. I had idiotic authority figures. I didnt cry because I was scared. Well, that wasnt the main reason I was crying. I was crying because I felt stupid for being the poor fool who forced a grown man to get himself all wet. That nice man who saved my life never said a word to me. I felt totally inadequate in his presence. A boy unworthy of being

Roy Peter Clark, the author, had the opportunity to help a small boy with his zipper when they were both in the mens room. The tale has a happy ending, and Clark makes a funny situation that much funnier with the manner in which he writes about it: The stall door swings open, and out comes a boy

Boy Alone
by: B.R. Merrick

maybe 8 years old all dressed up in his Sunday suit: white shirt and tie, dark blue slacks and jacket, a right proper little lad. But he has a problem. For this young man has clearly outgrown this outfit, so that his pants barely contain his lower frame. Mister, I cant pull up my zipper. Can you help me?

your belt and your zipper. Then Im going to count to three, and youre going to pull in your stomach. Okay? One, two, three

Im in a Catholic church, in the middle of the greatest sexual scandal in the history of Catholicism, in the mens room, with a boy who wants me to help him with his zipper. What would you do? At some point, Clark has to go so far as to enlist the aid of an unwitting old man who enters the bathroom during the dilemma, by shouting loud enough that at least one witness can hear:

I can just see the kid in my mind. When an adult does this, a boys mind is far more likely to first misunderstand why the strange man has decided to talk so loudly, but the rest of his mind probably says, He must know what hes doing. Just follow through. Boy, this is awful. What a heartfelt story. Just wonderful. Amusing, entertaining, poignant, and ultimately disturbing. (Read what some of the other men said they would do.)

Okay, heres what Im going to do. Im going to grab

I will not dispute Clarks words, his attitude, or the manner in which he dealt with this unfortunately tricky situation. There is, in my mind, nothing to dispute. My reaction would have been much the same. This article mentions one important aspect of the sex war in which we find ourselves enmeshed.

Men, the owners of penises, are forbidden, in their own minds, based on what they perceive in the culture that surrounds them, from helping boys, the owners of lesser penises, with something as simple as the zipper that zips up in front of it. This is in spite of the fact that men, by and large, do not molest children. Clark admits, What if someone comes in and Im holding this kids zipper? What if its a priest? What if its the kids brother or his beefy father? Am I willing to take a beating to help junior with his pants? Can we all agree that such a question should never even enter a mans mind? How is it possible not to see the enormity of what is being said?

than talk. Try going on a fishing trip sometime. There will be quite a lot of doing and very little talking. Men usually open up to one another after doing. Ill give you an example:

When I took a job at college during the summer months in a dishroom at a dorm, there were both men and women who had also started work there at the same time. On the first day, no one spoke. We were all strangers. By the end of the day, the women no longer were.

To give it some perspective, imagine being a black man, and being lectured by the culture at large that you have greater potential for being a violent criminal. This lecture goes on ad infinitum, ad nauseam. We all know that black men have a greater propensity for theft and murder. Now this black guy might be nice, and yes, we shouldnt judge, but on the other hand...

Making matters worse, most boys are curious about men, and you know what I mean. I am not now advocating nor will I ever advocate anything that could be deemed sexually prurient as a teaching tool with boys and pubescent men. I also do not think that other boys were nearly as curious as I was. In fact, at the time, I sensed a difference when I noticed other boys discussing how and when that sort of curiosity was healthily satisfied. Therefore, this is not an effort at arousing or provoking anybody who disagrees. The way I see it, however, is that it is virtually a fathers job to show his son, as Rose Nylund put it in an episode of The Golden Girls, what makes a bull a bull: Rose: Thats how my mother taught me! Blanche: Honey, didnt that give you a false impression about... what a man would look like? Rose: It sure did! Can you imagine my surprise on my wedding night with Charlie? ...Boy, that bull wouldve been jealous!

Women communicate largely through verbal means. Men only do this after the process of doing, for the most part. If they cant do, they talk about the doing. We were all certainly doing many things when we sent the dishes through the big, beautiful machine that some man built after figuring it out (probably while leaning forward on his knees, sitting back down after a piss break). But the men stayed quiet, week after week. The women, by the second day, were talking about all of their friends. They were friends instantly. We men didnt make friends. We did the dishes silently, alongside a gaggle of gabbing gals. One weekend, the women went to a special conference For Women Only. (There was no comparable conference for the men.) There were only guys in the dishroom, so it was dead quiet. We didnt even look at each other. (Well, not at the same time.) Suddenly there was a lull in lunch traffic, and we were all left standing and staring at the conveyor belt some man had devised. One of the particularly bored men took a fork, laid it down face up, put a knife crisscross over the bend in the forks neck, put a spoon on the end closest to him, slammed down the other end of the knife with his manly hand, and sent the spoon flying into the dirty silverware tray. Huhhuh. That was cool. Every man started grinning, including me. Ah, I thought, this is what men do; this is how we communicate. Now were getting somewhere. He flipped another, then another piece of silverware into the tray. So did another guy. Then another. Huhhuh. Dude

Kidding aside, it is difficult to write about, because of what I know about manhood. The reader must understand that I feel almost as if I am discussing something that most men simply wish to think about and silently communicate when the time comes, if ever. Youre hiking, you have to piss: teaching moment. You go for a swim, and no one has swim trunks: teaching moment. You go to the community gym and change in the locker room: teaching moment. Need I go on? I didnt think so. Talking is unnecessary in such a situation, and can easily get awkward. For most men, it is sufficient to silently do something together, and wait for the relating to follow. I propose that men are far more likely to do rather

Not being good at sports in general, I just watched. Then I grabbed a bowl, took another bowl, and placed it upside down on top. A third bowl sat on top of that, and the fourth bowl, like the second, was upside down on top of that. I cant remember how many I did, but pretty soon, the fat guy, the skinny guy, the little dude, the regular Joe, the cute college prep, were all looking at my tower. Huhhuh. Then another guy started building. Then another. We were all grinning.

We never said much. I never knew a single mans name. They went off and graduated, Im assuming, having intercourse, having kids, making some

money, losing some, fighting with their women, crying, thinking about God, planning, succeeding, doing up their kids zippers, failing in life, and some of them failing miserably. Theyre all about 35 or 40 now. The point is these simple, unspoken rituals of manhood are slowly dying. Boys who grow into manhood with their curiosity about men unsatisfied, however intense or mild it may be, are deficient in their understanding of the world. Some of them are given badges, honors, and guns by the state. The lack from before is filled with something that has the potential to become that much more sinister. Simultaneously, presentday culture puts all men under suspicion. Gone are the days of apprenticeships, where boys would learn how to perform tasks in a useful trade. You could depend on these boys learning how to read, count, and apply their physical bodies in the act of creation alongside a watchful man with a vested interest. Now they are lectured, usually by women, about how those days are long gone, and wasnt that an interesting, quaint way to live? Finally, when one of these boys needs to leave the feminized classroom so that he can unzip and pee, he has to ask permission. Since children seldom leave the classroom except for lunch or urination, everybody knows, since it isnt lunchtime, what little Fred has to do with his wiener. Lovely. This same little Fred goes to church on Sunday and finds the dilemma with his zipper has grown worse. A simple, masculine exchange of a nonsexual nature, but which carries with it the unspoken enjoyment of a shared masculine sexual potential, with just a little pride, is laden with problems and emotional upset, all because boys and men can no longer relate, unless its preapproved, corporatesponsored, thoroughly vetted, and after school. Men who are brave enough to create little men are inundated with parenting books written by vetted experts. I propose to you that men who know how to be men, who remember being boys with total honesty about the pain as well as the joy, dont need any stupid books. The affection remains bottled until they have found the safety required to express it.

her arm around his neck. I have no idea what they said, but everything that came out of his mouth was soft and intimate. He knew another grown man was in the room and watching. He didnt care. Neither did she. Good for them. That young lady is probably married now. I have no doubt that she desperately wants her husband (the lucky bum) to do much the same thing. I know for a fact that the father was not a boy alone when he grew up.

What would a hysterical soccer mom who didnt know those two think? Who gives a damn? By the look on the girls face, he clearly isnt finished. Leave them alone. If you dont understand the vast chasm between incest and fatherly affection, this article isnt going to convince you. It will simply run right over you if it convinces any number of men reading it, so go back to your Womens Studies thing. I had a thought while watching Walt Disneys final masterpiece, Sleeping Beauty the other day. The artwork, especially in the forest scenes, is incomparable. So is Tchaikovskys soundtrack.

The story and dialogue, though, are forgettable and laughable. In the middle of the movie, we finally discover that the Three Good Fairies are almost entirely useless, as they have been raising the princess in the forest for 16 years, yet they still havent figured out how to make a dress or bake a damn cake. Now, real women, in anticipation of a particularly auspicious birthday, would undoubtedly be able to handle it in spades.

I watched a family friend a few years back with his daughter, who couldnt have been a day over 12. She was a typical sapling: tall but gawky, too slender to be womanly, blonde, and obviously someone who would turn heads in about two more years. It was summer, so she was wearing shorts. I dont know what the problem was, or whether it was even a problem that sparked the whispering I was somehow privileged to hear, but since I was in the room, I watched and listened with rapt attention.

However, I found myself thinking, What would three bluecollar men husky, heavy, and hairy (No, those are not their names.) do if they encountered a foundling baby girl in the forest? What could she expect on her sixteenth birthday? The answer is clear to me: She would probably have an entirely new set of bedroom furniture, a vanity complete with carved flowers and curlycues, one hellofa massive cake, ribs broiled to perfection, every pastel color you can imagine hanging from the walls, and the knowledge that behind her, for the rest of her life, is a wall of muscular protection should she ever require it. No doubt they would have helped her countless times to put her tiny panties on when she was littler. If a misandrist interrupted one such tender and ordinary moment, I would suggest that whatever the accusation, the reply should start with two words: Shove off.

He stroked her thigh in a loving fashion that bordered on a romantic gesture. She sat perfectly still with

B.R. Merrick writes for "Strike The Root" and "A Voice for Men," lives in the Northeast, is proud to be a classical music reviewer at Amazon.com and iTunes, and in spite of the poisonous nature of television, God Himself will have to pry his DVDs of Monty Pythons Flying Circus out of his cold, dead hands, under threat of eternal damnation.

There once was a kingdom, a tiny, impoverished kingdom. The king of that kingdom had a daughter with hair like sunlight and skin like cream. A rich merchant offered to marry his son to the kings daughter and in exchange for a title, bring wealth to the kingdom.

The princess did not want to marry the merchants sonhe was too round and too pale and above all too young. And she had already fallen in love on sight with a wellborn knight, dark and strong and noble. Her father told her that his sons served their people in war and she must serve her people in marriage. She said, no, father, and I will not speak of it again. Her father told her that without this marriage, their kingdom would continue to suffer from poverty. She said, no, father, and I will not eat with you anymore. Her father told her that after she had borne the Merchants son an heir she could take as many lovers as she wished. (This he told her in the strictest confidence and with great discomfort.) She cried, Father! I will not be touched by a merchants son! and locked herself in her rooms. For ten days and nights the princess refused to leave her rooms. She refused foodat least food that was not sweet cakes and chocolatesand she refused drinkthat was not honey mead and sugared wine.

Each day the king would beg and promise his daughter some boon but she turned away from all his entreaties and said you will have to drag me before the priest and when he asks me if I do I will scream till I turn blue instead! The king despaired and the merchant fumed, growing impatient and talking loudly of more amenable princesses in other kingdoms.

In the midst of this turmoil, a crone came before the king. She told him she would convince the princess to wed if she could just speak to the girl alone. ### I wish to speak to you, princess.

The princess lifted herself from her pillow, her eyes burned with tears. Go away. I want nothing to do with anyone.

The voice persisted. I am not here to convince you to marry the merchants son, princess, but to help you have your true love. The princess pulled herself up off her bed. Who are you?

I am no one and nothing. Just an old woman who has seen many things and knows a little magic.

The princess walked to the door of her receiving room. She opened it and saw a crone. The crone looked like the trunk of an old riverside tree, peppered with fungus and roped by sagging bark. The princess shuddered at the sight and glanced past her. No one in the hall beyond; the princess opened the door further and waved the crone into her receiving room. Speak, crone.

The crone hobbled inside. The princess offered her a chair and the crone slowly slumped into it, like a rotten house into a sinkhole. Ah. Thank you my dear. The crone smiledor perhaps frowned, the princess could not telland she spoke again, Are you virtuous? Of course I am! The princess replied, her voice short. I am pure and virtuous in that purity. Purity is not virtue. I know this because I was like you once. Before time and toil twisted me into this shape.

The princess laughed and it sounded like the chiming of tiny bells. Oh, crone, age has confused you. You could never have been like me. I am a princess. Is that so? The crone reached for the princesss hand. The princess flinched as the weathered, leathery skin touched her own. You are to be wed, I hear. And you are not happy.

No! The princess clenched her hands into fists. He is far too young for me. And pallid. And clammy. My father

says it is for the kingdoms sake that I wed. But can you imagine it? Without love? Why should I sacrifice my heart just to bring wealth to my people? Very true, my dear. And there is a man. A man you cannot have. The princess bit her lip. I have only spoken to him but once How true is your love for him?

The princess swooned onto her chaise. My love is as true as the sun rises, as true as the sky is deep, as true as the turning of the tide, as true as I can give you a magic. The crones gaze took on a pin sharpness that made the princess shiver. A magic that will capture him and make your father consent to your marriage. The princess sat up, her brow furrowed. What do you want for it? What is the risk?

Clever girl. The crone bared the few teeth she had left. But I want nothing and if you are virtuous and your love is true, no harm can come to you. Of course I am! And it is! The princess leaned forward. What magic? Two words, princess. The crone laughed and her voice sounded like the breaking of rotten wood. Two words. Save me. Say those words and everyone around you will see you beset by a horrible monster. The crones grip on the princesss hand tightened. You will see the truth, there is nothing, no danger, but everyone else will see only the illusion. Tomorrow go to the castle courtyard and say those words within hearing of your knight. You will be married to him before the day is out.

The princess did as she was told. The next day she went to the courtyard and when she saw her knightyoung and strong and darkshe walked to him, her hand maidens trailing her, and he bowed before her, My lady. Save me. She said. Instantly the courtyard erupted in noise and running. Peasants screamed; children cried in fear. Her handmaidens shrieked, gathered up their skirts and fled to one of the stone archways ringing the courtyard. The princess glanced around, looking for the source of their terrorthere was nothing but a goat slipped its lead and chewing a mouthful of grass by the well. Her knight charged to his feet, pushing past her as if she was no longer there. She turned to berate his roughness when she remembered the crones words. He had his sword out and shield hiding his head and shoulders as he advanced upon the goat as if it was a foe a thousand times larger.

The princess watched in amazement as the knight pantomimed fighting a monster. In the faces of her handmaidens and the frightened peasants hiding within the stone archways she saw a terrible fear. But all she could see was the goat, hopping away from the knight in confusion, lashing out with its small hooves and braying. The knight fought and fought, parrying nonexistent swipes of a massive claw, stabbing at a nonexistent belly as big as a siege engine, ducking nonexistent fiery breath. Finally the knight struck a mortal blow and the goat slumped to the courtyard floor, mewling as it bled. The princess could feel everyone around her holding their breath as they watched whatever monster the goat was to them die. That day the king gave the princess hand in marriage to the knight for his bravery in protecting her from a dragon.

The merchant and his son were not happy. Furious, the merchant told the king he would be rerouting several

10

very lucrative caravans away from the kings roads. He promised an even deeper poverty for the king and his people. The princess and the knight were given half the kingdom to rule over. The princess was thrilled. She was saved! It was to the princess credit that she did indeed love the knight. But it was to her detriment that she did not love him enough. After a time, she found him neglectful; he spent most days honing his art and most of his nights teaching his squires. He said he did it only out of their peoples need: other kingdoms eyed them and they were poor, with only a small army to their name, they had to make themselves ready in whatever way they could.

The princess only knew for sure that she was lonely. She thought back to the Merchants son and realized that even if he was a bit unkept he had been clever and wittywell traveled and well read. And, really, two years younger was not so bad.

During a long, slow month alone, one of the knights squires caught her eye. The young man was charming and attentive and soon found a place in her bed. She was not modest about her affair; her anger at the knights neglect made her bold and foolhearty. It was not long till her secret was out. The knight rushed to confront her and found her and the squire in her bed.

Despite her boldness, the princess was still shocked and horrified to be found out. In an instant she bolted from her lovers side and threw herself at the knights feet whispering, save me. Had she known what was going to happen next, she might have never said the words. But she could not take it back and as she watched, the knight leapt at the squire, blade drawn.

The princess hid her head in her hands and did not see what happened next, but she heard wailing and the sound of slit flesh. When the knight returned to her side there was no blood on him, but there was a grimness in his face. Even if he was one of my squires, a rapist should not be suffered to live.

Shivering and pale, the princess said nothing. She was sick to be sure, but under the sickness and the shaking was a low excitement that inflamed her. That night, exhausted by the excitement and the feel of death so close, the princess slept fitfully. In her deepest dreams, her words coagulated in her throat, a lump so large she could not breath. She woke, screaming. The knight was beside her. Why are you screaming?

The princess tried to explain, tried to make her mouth form around the right words but it would not, she could only say, Save me. The knight leapt from their bed and lunged at shadows cast by the candlelight. For the rest of the night he battled an imaginary foe while the princess wept. Every night that followed the princess would wake from being choked: the knight would beg her to tell him what was the matter and she could only say, save me.

He would spend the rest of the night exhausting himself saving her from the dragon that besieged her every night. And she would weep, because she could see it killing him and she loved him, but not enough. When the knight could fight no more he started to barricade her in a keep by herself, hoping she would be safe if he could somehow find away to close off any possible entry. During the night, alone and trapped, she would try to fight her way out of his careful fortifications just so she could breathe.

In the morning he would find her scraped and bloody from battle. He decided the dragon must have found a way into the keep and he would call for even stronger walls and locks. Eventually she was entombed into a room with

no doors and no windows and walls five feet thick. It took a mason six hours each day to open and close it.

The nightmares continued and the princess continued to fight for freedom each night as if she was fighting for her life. When the king heard what the knight had done to his daughter he sent what soldiers and arms he had to free her and bring the knight before his throne to be punished. The princess was brought to the kings side on a bed as she was too weak to walk. The knight knelt before them both.

Look at my daughter. Look at the wounds on her hands and arms and feet. the king raged, you have beaten her, starved her and thrown her in a stone tomb. No, my lord. Said the knight. I have tried to save her from an evil that besieges her every night!

The princess watched them argue. She knew that if she said nothing, her father would be persuaded by the knights words and she would be taken back to her prison to suffocate on her own nightmares. And she realized what the crone had been telling her: she could give up her magic any time she wished, just by wanting it. But she could not say she loved the knight enough. The princess turned to the king and said, save me. The knight was hung for his crimes.

With nothing left but her magic, it became a game and the princess played it with as many men as she wished. The petty enmities she cultivated between rival lords and the grinding poverty threw the court into chaos and then the kingdom into civil war. Neighboring kingdoms seized the opportunity to invade. The king was killed and his bloodline was dethroned; the princess faced the guillotine and wept bitterly in its shadow. Save me, she said and was spared but even her magic could save her from the rage of all her enemies. She was banished. In her new life she wandered, destitute and penniless, until she found a trade she could ply. Here and there she would use her magic to incite brawls in taverns and bawdy houses, in the fighting of brigands and rouges her need to taste her power was satiated. She did this until the ugliness of her body reflected the ugliness of her soul and no man cared to save her.

And she kept wandering, a shambling, dusty old woman wandering shambling, dusty old roads. After a time her magic loosed from her tongue and she was able to speak other words, but now she rarely had cause to. Until one day, when she had wandered so far from her former kingdom that the people around her had never heard its name, she heard from gossip and rumors that this new kingdom was in turmoil.

Its princess was refusing to marry a prince from a neighboring land. The marriage would end a long and bitter acrimony between the two kingdoms. Peasants and nobles alike were strung tight; despite the treaties the delay had inspired vicious crossboarder skirmishes and raids, even now their erstwhile ally built forces for an invasion they likely would not repel. Every day the princess took to her room and refused to come out, the fragile truce deteriorated further.

The old womansitting on a broken stool in a castoff corner of a tavernlistened to a retinue of nobles speaking to each other in hushed and urgent tones. After a moment she rose and hobbled over.

12

For the first time in many years she spoke. The first words she spoke sounded like the creak of old wood and made as much sense. One of the nobles turned to her. Go away, old woman. Cant you see we have important business. She tried again, this time her voice sounded like dry twigs breaking, but there were words in amongst the crackling rasp. I can get the princess to wed. If I can speak to her alone. It was a testament to the nobles desperation that they considered the crones offer and relayed it to the king. The king bade the crone be brought to the princess door. At the door the old woman called out. I am not here to convince you to wed, my dear, but to grant you your true love. After a time the door opened a crack. A princess, skin like cream, hair like sunlight, a mirror image of the old woman when she was young, looked through. Who are you?

I am no one and nothing. Just an old woman who has seen many things and knows a little magic. The old woman replied. You are to be wed, I hear. And you are not happy with this. No! The princess gripped the wood of the door so hard it creaked. He is too thin and brown and above all too old for me! My father says it is for the kingdoms sake that I wed. But without love? Why should I sacrifice my heart just to bring peace to my people? Very true, my dear. The old woman laughed and it sounded like the breaking of rotten wood. Tell me, princess, are you virtuous? Of course I am! The princess replied, her voice short. I am pure and virtuous in that purity. Purity is not virtue. I know this because I was like you once. Before time and toil twisted me into this shape.

The princess laughed and it sounded like the chiming of tiny bells. Oh, crone, age has confused you. You could never have been like me. I am a princess.

Is that so. At the princess laughter hatred welled within the old woman. You want a man who is not your betrothed. A man below your station, yes. The princess stared at her. How could you know? How true is your love? The old woman asked.

The princess tossed her curls. As true as a foxs wit, as true as the blue of the sky, as true as

The old woman waved the princess words away. She had heard them before and had no patience for their emptiness. I can give you a magic that will capture him and make your father consent to your marriage. The princess eyes widened. What is the magic? Two words, my dear. The old woman leaned forward. Save me.

Why Game Is Important For Fathers


by: Chateau
roissy.wordpress.com

A reader emailed a heartbreaking story to the Chateau. I reprint it here in the full because there is so much in it that could serve as lessons in life, alphaness and fatherhood. As you read it, prepare to cringe. Do you see a little of yourself in the father? In the son? I really dont know who else i could write to about this.

no, no, i dont know if i should pay full price

she points to the bill which says (10% off 2.59) BEFORE tax.

Today i was out for lunch with my dad. Sushi, as it was. My father isnt the most assertive man, Ive come to realize. but when this halfbaked early 20's asian in skater jeans and ray ban corrective glasses doesnt bring us our food until we ask about it a half hour later, and still gets it wrong, and then continues to delay most of our food we have to leave before we get to eat the half of it. I was ready to get in the face of the woman at the register, but i thought it was my dads place to do so, since he was buying and he is my father. but he bumbled up to the counter, um, excuse me, our food was late and we didnt get to eat it all He trailed off. The woman behind the counter looks up with her eyes glazed over, and gives him the bill.

so he paid the 30 dollar bill with his two dollars off. i was thoroughly embarrassed. but it was worse. as im trying to ignore him, hoping he makes a bigger stand, he touched his hand to my face. it took me a second to realize that this was a playful slap. what was that? i knew what it was. he had such repressed aggression that he needed to let it out through momentary displays of dominance over his 18 yearold son.

i just hit you. he said in a goofy snorting voice, looking at the ground. still in front of the cashier. this was all to win the approval of a 5foot asian woman in a tank top because he couldnt stand up to her. and then theres my mom, the opposite. imposing, commanding, domineering, unbelievable condescending. shes a executive director of a research facility. she actually says the only way to

16

get along with her is to say you understand what shes saying and leave it alone. of course, she cant see that thats batshit crazy. Theyre divorced of course. The issue is, Im their child. Theyre both too deep in their own delusions to even notice that theyre destroying me. and so are my friends. I feel like Im getting sucked into it. im submitting to my mom, when i used to make her laugh when she was trying to tell me what ive done wrong. I finished high school, with no motivation to continue my education. i spend most of my free time in front of a computer. I work a shitty job that I cant even focus at. I havent had sex in months. when im at a party im more self conscious than ive ever been in my life. I cant hold a conversation like i used to. my friends suck, AND I CANT STAND THE GIRLS I MEET! Ive had sex with girls i dont actually like, and its boring as hell.

If you are a father and you dont approve of game as a means to pick up women, at least recognize its transformative power to improve your relations with your wife and children, particularly any sons you may have. Your son looks up to you as a leader and a masculine icon, almost despite yourself. When you renege on that implicit promise, he becomes disoriented, even selfloathing. If you are divorced, your sons time with his cunty domineering single mother will only worsen his state of mind. As the country veers into a dystopia of single momhood and lonely, sackless beta divorcees, expect to see more sons with stories like the one told above. Nothing good can come of it.

Knowing this, learning game is practically a vital imperative. Maybe you can live with yourself as a sniveling little beta shit who cant chew out or at least neg a young asian chick who deserves it because you get all flustered in her presence, but can you live with the pain and embarrassment it causes your son? Readers generally fall into two camps with regards to the ability of the typical man to understand and apply game. Some believe attractiveness to women is a genetic bestowal, while others believe game, i.e. charisma, can be learned by any man. The answer is somewhere in the gray middle. Yes, some men are born with an incipient natural charm and others are born with the requisite intelligence to parse game concepts, and these men will excel at learning game far beyond what an omega will get from it. Yet there are thousands, maybe millions by this point, of men who have seen improvements in their love lives and their family lives accrue from the blessings of game. These men did not start out with Class A genetic endowments. Their very existence proves that sheer willpower the will to mold their environments, and themselves, to their advantage can mean the difference between being the father in this young mans story and being a better man his son would be proud to call dad.

Im losing my wit, im losing my figure, im losing my ability to be extroverted, im losing my will to live. how do i stay afloat? why should i stay afloat? A sea of bullshit smells just as bad when youre on the top of it. how can i stop this death spiral when theres nothing i want to hold onto?

Im hoping for words of wisdom, but putting my longwinded whining in its proper place could be just as helpful. Brutally bare. Youve just had an insiders look at the sordid details of a beta fathers life, and the wake of destruction such betaness leaves on the psyches of those around him his son, his exwife and himself, not to mention the automatic disrespect it engenders in strangers. If you are a man and this story doesnt reach out and punch you in the sternum, you have no life experience and no heart. A better advertisement for learning game to overcome beta weakness I cant imagine. Betaness isnt some grand scheme or bodily disorder. Betaness manifests in the little things, like a fathers inability to square up to a waitress for bad service or his repressed anger played out in subtle dominance moves over his son. When we speak of game being a lethal tool to lift a man up from betaness, we mean it is the little things that game fixes. Forgetting this leads one to easily scoff at game as some kind of magic elixir or cult hypnosis. But focus on the tiny details, fix them one by one, and suddenly a new man appears before you, almost like magic.

Stories like the above show that betaness is not solely, or even primarily, a genetic curse. A fathers actions have real repercussions on his sons trajectory in life. The father in the story acted horribly beta and his son was aware of it. His low status behavior left a lasting imprint on his sons soul, and as a result the sons selfconception has been altered, and now careens down a darker path, into deep thickets and waisthigh bogs bubbling with doubt and anger. This is one way in which generational betaness is passed on, from father to son.

Imagine a different scenario had played out. A GAME scenario. Today i was out for lunch with my dad. Sushi, as it was. My father is a serene man with a well of righteous dignity, Ive come to realize. when this halfbaked early 20's asian in skater jeans and ray ban corrective glasses doesnt bring us our food until my dad asks if theres a kitchen fire holding

up our order, and still gets it wrong, and then continues to delay most of our food we have to leave before we get to eat the half of it. I was ready to get in the face of the woman at the register, but i thought it was my dads place to do so, since he was buying and he is my father. He strode up to the counter, chin high and chest out: I wont be paying this bill today. Our food was late and we didnt get to eat it. If you have a problem with that perhaps I could let the other patrons here know how incredibly poor your service is. He motioned to the diners seated neraby. The woman behind the counter looks up with worry in her eyes, and offers to give him a free meal and a 50% reduction on the bill. My son might come here to eat another time. I expect him to be served respectfully.

As im beaming with pride for my father, he puts his hand on my shoulder and leads me out of the restaurant. I got you the waitresss number, son. Dont forget to make fun of her glasses.

Impossible? One weekend reading the Chateau and that father could have saved his sons soul that day. He might even have saved his marriage, but judging by the description of the mother, Im not sure hed have wanted to once he figured out that game gave him the ability to date more women. And better women. The only advice I have for the young man who emailed me is the following: 1. Stop beating up on yourself and acting so goddamned melodramatic. You have much insight for your age. Your intelligence will take you far. Now what you need is calm and wisdom. 2. This too shall pass. 3. The big picture trumps the little picture.

4. Stay away from your mother as much as humanly possible. She is damaged goods for you. Single moms, even your own flesh and blood, are poison for your growth as a man and a ladykiller. 5. For that matter, stay away from your father. Unless he is willing to change, he will only continue to infect you with his beta loser stench. Harsh words, I know, but your wellbeing trumps all.

6. If you are not ready to give up on either of your parents, then show your father this blog. Tell him to read from day one. Enlightenment is a mouse click away. 7. Show your mother this blog too. Expect hysterics.

LIMITED TIME OFFER!!! Buy Feminism today and receive a free copy of "Getting More Young Ass" by feminist icon Andrea Dworkin a $9.99 value! Only

$24.99
*Limited quantities available

8. Stand up to your mother. From what you have written, she sounds like an emotional vampire who demands payment in obeisance and comes to loathe those who give her what she wants. Fuck that noise. Get back to the cocky/funny that you used to be around her.

9. If all the above fail, consider physically moving away from these parasites. Friends, family, everyone. Gather your savings, quit your job, and move to a new city or even a new country. 10. Someday you will die. But that day is not today. Now is the time to live.

18

www.lonenutcomics.com

Spinning Our Wheels on 'Date Rape': Time for a New Approach.


by: Archivist falserapesociety.blogspot.com

Literally billions of dollars have been pumped into the war on rape over the past three decades, and it's been an utter waste. Everyone agrees that the real battleground in the rape milieu is over socalled "date rape" and that our college campuses are ground zero for this war. The sexual grievance industry insists that when it comes to rape, our college campuses are more dangerous places than the Tadmor Prison in Syria, where the bloodthirsty guards butcher inmates with axes for the fun of it. Yet they keep spinning their wheels, telling us the problem wont go away, and they do the same things year after year after year, and nobody seems care. When it comes to "date rape, we are at a sort of permanent and institutionalized stalemate.

They pump tuition and tax dollars into chronically underutilized campus rape crisis centers, which Heather MacDonald described as follows: "Its a lonely job, working the phones at a college rape crisis center. Day after day, you wait for the casualties to show up from the alleged campus rape epidemicbut no one calls." See here.

And when the inevitable false rape claim occurs, which, truth be told, is far more likely in college than a legitimate rape claim, the campus becomes Salem, Massachusetts, 1692. When the claim is finally revealed as a lie and the witch hunt ends, first they refuse to accept it, then they use it as an occasion to teach students about the dangers of you guessed it rape. After all that, and no matter what happens, they have the chutzpah to insist rape is still rampant, even though it isn't. Despite all the reforms, all the shaming, and all the resources dumped into the toilet, all these supposedly raped women still aren't reporting; young women still find it's easier to pretend they've been slipped a date rape drug than to admit they regret having sex the night before; the supposed recipients of white male privilege are still decent people; and the sexual grievance industry still insists it needs more and more funding. It's Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. Nothing changes. And like all the characters Mr. Murray encounters every day (which is really the same day), everybody is just fine with it. The ones who pay the price for the manufactured rape hysteria are the innocent young men unlucky enough to be falsely accused. They are dragged before a constipated disciplinary hearing board whose mission in life is to rebuke the undeservedly privileged (i.e., white males). In these forums, which resemble the Star Chamber without as much fairness, the presumptively innocent are presumed guilty, addressed in scolding tones, and offered virtually no support while their accusers are treated as if they were Holocaust survivors. And the parents of boys who might be next tolerate this because the mainstream media never told them it goes on. Even if you buy into the lie that rape is rampant, how on earth can you continue to let these goofs lead the war against it? We keep giving them money, and we let them do whatever pops into their heads to our sons, and every year it's the same thing: "Rape is rampant, and hardly any women are reporting their rapes."

They push for one loopy reform after the next to make it easier for all those hypothetical women out there who must have been raped to come forward. For one thing, they change the student disciplinary codes to engorge the definition of sexual assault to snag more sex abusers; they even try to flip the burden of proof for rape to force the accused male to prove consent. They enact rules that excuse drunk women from being charged with underage drinking so long as they report they've been raped (so what do you think drunk women are doing?). No idea is too extreme, too kooky, or too unjust to foist on presumptively innocent young men in the interest of getting these phantom women to "come forward." They hold rallies where our daughters are urged to "take back the night" even though our sons are at far greater risk of harm at the hands of deviant sociopaths.

They sponsor "clothesline projects" where young women supposedly too scared to report their rapes to the proper authorities are empowered enough to scrawl the names of their alleged attackers on tshirts along with empowering slogans like "keep your dick to yourself!" They hang ceramic penises on a clothesline as a symbolic assault on "patriarchy." Paid speakers travel from college to college with slick PowerPoint presentations to shame Freshman men who would never dream of raping a woman into believing masculinity is inherently flawed, and that fantasizing about a hot classmate in Economics 101 is "rape lite." They plaster posters in dorms saying that "only men can stop rape," even though virtually all men are as innocent as the most innocent woman. And they tacitly, and not so tacitly, encourage women to engage in risky behaviors with even deviant sociopaths.

20

If you went to your boss every year and reported what a failure you've been, how long would you last? We all know

the definition of insanity, don't we? This is insane. But, of course, the reason they keep telling us rape is rampant and women aren't reporting is obvious. If they told us the truth, they'd be out of business. They've invented a scare to keep them employed, and they're going to ride it for as long as we don't blame them. When we finally start blaming them, they will start to paint a rosier picture "rape is still a problem, but we've cut it in half." Trust me, I'd bet my left testicle on it. By any measure, the "war" on rape isn't working. So whats the answer? Its simple. Open the windows and let the truth in.

sex, and women want men. Studies show that women experience far greater afterthefact regret than men. See here. Instead of Freshman orientation where young men are shamed for daring to have a penis, we need to start educating our young women that feelings of regret are natural and that they need to think more carefully about having sex in the first place.

First, acknowledge something nobody can plausibly deny: "he said/she said" date rape claims place an impossible burden on the people investigating them. Stop pretending otherwise. Even true believer feminists, like prominent feminist legal scholar Aya Gruber, admit that the criminal justice system is not equipped to deal with date rape. See here.

A female law professor in London named Helen Reece recently wrote a provocative piece positing that "police have succumbed to campaigners pressure to treat every allegation of rape with the utmost seriousness." But, she cautioned, "treating all rape complaints seriously means treating all false allegations seriously." She continues: "The nightmare scenario is approaching where every rape complaint is seen as pointing to a prosecution, if possible for rape, and if thats not possible, for a false allegation. Instead, we should save prosecutions for only the most heinous sexual crimes, and drag the law back out of teenagers messy sex lives." Ms. Reece candidly explains: "I remember the day when one of my best friends burst into tears on the bus on the way to school, before revealing to me and another friend that one of our classmates had tried to rape her. A box of tissues later, it became clear that what had happened was that he had made a very direct pass at her, which she had responded to up to a point but felt awful about afterwards. We didnt brand our classmate a rapist, but nor did we think that our friend was a liar. We understood that this was her way of telling us that she felt really rubbish about what had happened, particularly because it meant that she had been unfaithful to her longterm boyfriend. It never occurred to any of us to involve teachers or parents, let alone the police." Its not the boys who need to change, its the young women. In every other sphere of life, women insist that they not be portrayed as helpless pawns waiting to be rescued by the handsome Disney prince. But when it comes to alleged date rape, all of those lofty empowering sentiments go sailing out the window. Anyone who has the temerity to suggest that women who drink are free moral agents capable of making decisions for themselves is a misogynist and a rape apologist. In the bedroom, women are not doers but victims, damsels in more distress than the most passive Disney princess. We cannot empower our daughters by pretending they are powerless. Its time we insist our daughters grow up and start taking personal responsibility for their actions. Here endeth the sermon.

He said/she said disputes over rape need to be summarily dealt with. If the guy has a plausible explanation and theres no real evidence beyond her claim, it gets dropped immediately. Such claims usually are declared unfounded now, but not before the police or the college stage a sadistic passion play, a game of humiliatethemale to appease the manhating nitwits. Like Christ declared innocent by Pilate take him out and flog him before you release him. And lets add one other thing: if theres evidence beyond his word that she lied, she gets prosecuted. No questions asked. Second, we need to end the Chicken Little, lockthe doorsandhidethedaughters hysteria because it is encouraging young women to construe bad romps in the hay as rape that deserve to be sanctioned by the college, law enforcement, or both. This means firing everyone who works in the sexual grievance industry, shutting down the rape counseling centers, and telling our college administrators to stop paying speakers to come on campus to humiliate almost half of the schools paying customers. (How on earth do parents of young men put up with that?) Third, focusing on socalled date rape skirts the real issue and ignores the elephant in the room. Men and women are looking for different things in sex. Men want

The Baby Bomb:


by: Zed

How the Boomers were Used to Demolish a Culture


The baby boom had a long fuse. While the social mass of having such a large number of people suddenly added to a culture would naturally displace the center of social balance toward the values of younger people, the impact of the boomers was disproportionately greater than the percentage of the population they represented. The reason for this unusually large impact came from the convergence of several longterm trends and influences which converged at the time of the boomer generation to produce a sort of Demographic Perfect Storm which wrought fundamental changes in the culture. When I say they were used to demolish it, I mean to fundamentally change the values which had defined

www.thespearhead.com the culture up until that time. Any culture is defined by its values, and when you change those values you change the culture into something else. Using the social mass of the boomer generation like a wrecking ball, they were slammed into a culture which was already undergoing fundamental changes in social organization and the institutions which perpetuated that organization. The large scale trends that came together as the boomers were being born and raised were * Demographic Displacements and Shifts * The Rise of Mass Media * Consumer Culture and * Marxist Thought.

22

First Demographic Displacements and Shifts

World War I was fundamentally about the end of the old hereditary aristocracies in Europe, but it had a subtle and unforeseen effect on the US as well. The long term trend of movement of the population away from farms, rural settings, and agrarian lifestyles toward urban settings and industrial employment got a huge bump from the servicemen leaving the farms to go off to war and not returning to the farms when they came back. Instead they tended to stay in the cities and feed the work force for the growing industrial output of the US.

These were the parents of the boomers, and the environment into which the boomers were born.

Consumer Culture

About 1920, the first of two huge demographic crossover points was passed when the majority of the population no longer worked on and drew their livelihood from farms, but instead lived in urban areas and was employed in industrial production or commerce. During the Depression and Dust Bowl eras of the 1930s, this rural to urban movement increased as many landholders lost their land and were forced to move to the cities and find employment where they could. World War II was a repeat of the pulling of farm boys into the armed forces and then dumping them back in the cities, with the added twist of the GI Bill which allowed many of them to attend college who otherwise would have never had the chance to do so. This sudden increase in the proportion of the population with college degrees raised income expectations and did, in fact, result in increased personal incomes for a while, which in turn drove a growing housing market and the rise of suburbia as new living spaces were constructed on the edges of cities already at saturation point in terms of the number of people they could hold.

About 1960, one of the most profound demographic shifts in history occurred virtually unnoticed in the US: the number of people involved in the production of anything agricultural or manufactured goods slipped into the minority and there became more people involved in selling, distributing, or managing those goods than were involved in producing them. In other words, the US shifted from being a nation of producers to a nation of handlers. This laid the groundwork for being able to use such phrases as service economy or information economy, which would play a very significant role in how the expectations of affluence created by the circumstances of the boomers upbringing would be met as they moved into and through adulthood. The boomers were raised on a steady diet of television, parental competition to keep up with the Joneses, and the repeated refrain from their depressionera parents that we dont want our kids to have it as hard as we had it. They were also indoctrinated virtually from birth that they would carry on the tradition of being college educated which may have only started with their parents, but which was definitely seen as the key to a better life which at that time generally meant having more stuff.

The Rise of Mass Media

With the end of the war, the US was left with massive industrial production capacity but no longer had the majority of that output being destroyed by war and thus needing constant replacements. The suburban population centers with their newfound affluence and disposable income were one obvious outlet, as was postwar Europe and Japan in rebuilding mode. But, even with all those markets the unbelievable production of the US industrial engine would have soon saturated demand. The two concepts of Planned Obsolescence and Conspicuous Consumption were wedded with the newly emerging mass media of television to produce an advertising driven culture of perpetual consumption. No longer were people accustomed to producing most of their own needs like food, fuel, and even furnishings. They were entirely dependent on trading the wages for their labors with other people for all the necessities and luxuries of life. This played very well into Keynesian economics, or the velocity economy in which the economy was measured not by total wealth, but by how many times and how often a dollar changed hands.

After WW I, two new mass communication technologies really began to take off and spread film (movies) and radio. These two technologies covered two very important aspects of culture information dissemination and entertainment. Radio had the advantage over print media like newspapers in being immediate and timely, as well as being one step closer to direct human experience hearing is a direct sensory experience, while reading requires intellectual processing and literacy in addition to sight. Literacy was far from universal at that time, so people could be reached by radio that could not be reached by newspapers, books, or magazines.

Film put the experience of theatre within the reach of the common people. While everyone might not be able to afford tickets to a Broadway play, almost everyone could scrape together the 5 cents for which they could purchase an hour or two of complete escapism. This escapism gained even wider appeal during the Great Depression when a great many people had really difficult lives from which they loved having the ability to purchase an hour or two of complete escape. The film industry spawned an interesting side effect based on the social tendencies of people the phenomenon of celebrity. Stage actors and other

entertainers had always had a degree of fame and celebrity, but the mass market venue of film provided a much broader potential audience and a whole host of new niches for celebrities to fit into and exploit. It was possible to have only so many great Shakespearean actors or operatic divas, but movies provided the opportunity for many different types from the buffoons of the 3 Stooges to the cowboy actor to gain a following.

Radio and film merged their potentials in television. Sight, sound, and immediacy were a very potent combination. The propaganda potential of radio was well recognized and exploited in the years leading up to WW II and during the war, and the advent of television on a mass scale made it a propaganda device on steroids. In addition, it also made a very nice consumer good to occupy those factories, as well as being a selfperpetuating outlet for consumption because it created demand through advertising. Radio also spawned a related industry which would eventually come to figure very heavily in the information economy to come recorded music. While it was a product with some continuing market from its introduction up through the war years, it really started to become a force in its own right when presented with a market comprised of suburban teenagers with lots of time on their hands due to lack of involvement in any economic activity but still with disposable income.

the Marxists had expected. In analyzing the reasons why it didnt, Marxist theorists saw the cultural institutions of religion and religious values, family, patriotism/nationalism, and education as being too strong in maintaining and transmitting cultural values for such a major shift to take place. In order for the Communist revolution to come about, those institutions would have to be weakened and undermined and the cultural values they transmitted be destroyed.

One of the best ways to go about this was to deal with peoples baser appetites and motivations and weaken their intellectual and moral control of their behavior. A perfect model of how this might be accomplished was provided by Freudian psychoanalytic theory with his id, ego, and superego the id being the reptilian brain and the animal appetites and emotions, the superego being social and moral consciousness, and the ego mediating the conflicts between the two. Appealing to the id, and weakening the superego, puts the ego in service of the id. The Frankfurt School was a center of Marxist thought established in Germany in the earlymid 1920s. Their goal was to meld psychoanalytic thought with political action as a way of weakening cultural institutions supporting restraint, by endorsing hedonism and shortterm gratification. The prime strategist was a man named Antonio Gramsci, who laid out a plan for a Long March Through The Culture which would leave every cultural institution which had defeated the Bolshevik revolution in a pile of rubble in its wake. So, now the stage is set. Fearing the rise of National Socialism, the Frankfurt School relocated to New York in the mid 1930s. Most of the members were Jewish, so they had real reasons to fear the antiSemitic sentiment which was rising in Germany, and they were able to come into the US without attracting much attention because of the large influx of other Jewish intellectuals and professionals fleeing Germany for the same reason. Once here, they set out to infiltrate and become strong influences in the media, education, and psychotherapeutic communities. There was an easy symbiosis between these, particularly due to the chic and trendy nature of psychoanalysis in the post WW II US. Despite the way that McCarthy has been ridiculed and demonized, there really were communists active in the entertainment industry during the post war years. They didnt concentrate as much on strictly Marxist themes as they did on indirectly attacking cultural values. Instead of a direct attack on religion, for example, a competing idea of nihilism was introduced and promoted e.g. Rebel Without A Cause.

So, all the fragments were arranged massive production, massive consumption, high degree of wealth relative to what had gone before, mass media with both propaganda potential and the ability to create demand for consumer goods by emotional manipulation, and a number of products with no direct need or worth as necessities of life which were easy to produce and easy to distribute when the baby bomb was detonated and sent those fragments tearing through the foundations of cultural values.

Marxist Thought

Now the plot thickens.

All of the above is merely descriptive laying out the conditions that existed when this huge mass of new future citizens was dumped onto the scene.

Marxist thought goes back, of course, to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the mid19th century. However, the portion Im going to highlight starts in 1917 with the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Rob has covered this extensively, so this is going to be an extremely brief synopsis. For a far more complete picture, go to http://menforjustice.net/library or http://nomaam.blogspot.com.

The Russian revolution failed to spark the worldwide uprising of the proletariat to kill the capitalists which

The boomers were sitting ducks for all this because they were children in the stage of life when the purpose and goal is to learn and internalize cultural values. Instead of the parents, churches, and communities which provided most of the input for previous generations, the boomers were raised by television, radio, and film. The monumental sexual drives of adolescence, which every culture has to find a way to grapple with and restrain, coincided with a generalized loosening of sexual mores and restraints. More and more sexual imagery started appearing, and the Pill conveniently arrived separating sex from reproduction and making recreational sex a real possibility just as the first boomers hit puberty. During the turbulent 1960s, there were two major cultural phenomena which strained generational relationships even more than the classic and inevitable tensions between the old and the young the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War. The high level of distrust engendered among young people for the older generations, the establishment, was captured in Abbie Hoffmans famous dictum Never trust anyone over 30. Traditional values were seen as corrupt, exploitive, capricious, and often dishonest. A major youth movement/trend developed whose participants were called Hippies with values directly opposed to and reacting against the values of their parents and older generations. It was actually termed the counterculture, which was an very accurately descriptive term because the values which defined it ran directly counter to prevailing cultural values of the time. Sex, drugs, and Rockn'Roll was the mantra, Make Love, Not War was the passion, and Free Love was the ideal goal. Hedonism became the highest good, and even members of their parents generation wanted to join the party and have some fun. The developmental period of adolescence got greatly extended, with many parents sitting down to smoke dope with their own kids, if not being the ones to introduce their own children to the drug subculture. The expectations of affluence, plus the expectations of their parents, plus the Vietnam War sent the boomers to college in unprecedented numbers. Here is where the Frankfurt school had really been busy. A huge number of their members had achieved professorships in prestigious institutions, and by the late 1960s they owned the academy. Hardly any discipline outside the hard sciences was untouched. Their thinking pervaded the social sciences, the arts, philosophy, and even theology. The boomers were at college to LEARN, so that is what they did. Few had the critical facilities to question and analyze what they were being taught. Some of us renegades who did question saw the early beginnings of Political Correctness taking shape as refusing to conform to the ideological indoctrination would be severely punished. If you wanted good grades, and that meant the carrot of a good job that they dangled in your face, you toed the party line.

And, into this volatile mess, they injected feminism.

The family, paradoxically, was at the same time both the strongest cultural institution and one of the easiest to attack. The age old tensions between men and women, dubbed the battle of the sexes were easily exploited to get women to see themselves as an oppressed class. The sexual revolution was in the news, but not in everyones minds yet. The boomers were raised mostly under the old cultural mores and values regarding sex, and then suddenly turned loose with a new toy they werent quite sure how to play with. Miscues and misunderstandings between the sexes on what sexual liberation actually looked like were easy fodder for exploitation in the next phase of the gender war the escalating issue of rape. The establishment of Womens Studies departments in the academy metastized the cancer, and gave the hard core haters an entrenched bully pulpit from which to spread their Marxist theory and hatred against the class of men. Boomer men were on the horns of twopronged dilemma They were at the stage of their lives when their primary goal and task was to find a mate and form a family, yet their pool of potential mates was developing values which were fundamentally different than the values that men had been led to expect to

find in the women they would choose as wives. Trained in one set of skills and attitudes that had been attractive to women in the past, men were now finding women who were not attracted by those characteristics and were demanding something different. However, the specifics of what was demanded no longer followed any sort of cultural pattern but were mostly based on the preferences of individual women their much vaunted choices. Nofault divorce and the rise of rape consciousness fundamentally changed the relationship dynamic within marriage. The idea that a man could be convicted of raping his wife totally erased the long held tradition of marital duties and turned sex from being part of the foundation of the relationship between man and wife into an instancebyinstance exercise in the gratification of personal whims. The Marxist concept of class oppression combined with the sexfearing dysfunction of women like Susan Brownmiller severed the most basic marital bond in one blow.

became responsible for the mistreatment of women in the Middle East, the binding of Chinese womens feet, and the lack of womens suffrage a century ago.

In the face of this onslaught, most men felt an unbelievable sense of betrayal, but they were stuck in marriages to these women and their only choices were a lifetime of conflict or to just surrender and give in. Most men chose keeping their family together over falling on their swords of principle, and just caved in. Some even went so far as to exhibit a form of Stockholm Syndrome and became dedicated feminists, denouncing themselves in weird displays of schizophrenia and selfabdication. Those that didnt soon faced the Sovietstyle re education camps created by the DV industry which was based on the Marxist idea that all Domestic Violence was a conspiracy by men to perpetuate their oppression of women. There is no more purely Marxist bit of thinking at work in feminist countries today than the Duluth Model of domestic violence.

This class warfare was extended by placing all sexual activity on a continuum of oppression and set up a situation and consciousness that men could not possibly do anything but lose the fundamental attraction between the sexes which is essential for the continuation of the human race became proof of oppression and a constant and perpetual source of justification for claims of female victimhood. The class consciousness of the sisterhood hoodwinked women into believing that they had more in common with women living on the other side of the world, or with women who had lived and died years before they were born, than with the man with whom their shared their bed, their children, and their lives. This unity based on type was exactly what the socialist and union organizer Eugene Debs was saying when he said

Demographic and economic shifts, and growth of mass media and consumer culture continue

This gradual infiltration of Marxist thought occurred against the backdrop of continuation of the social, economic, and cultural trends which took off a half century before. During the 1960s mass media exploded. For many years there had been only 3 TV broadcast networks and only people living in or near major cities had access to all three. As the distance increased, reception decreased and people living 60 or more miles from an urban center often could only get all 3 stations reliably if the weather was clear. Throw in a bit of rain or fog and most people got vague ghosts on the TV and slightly warmed rain or fog between them and the broadcast tower. These remote communities soon saw a business opportunity open up in the form of Community Antennas, or Cable TV. Entrepreneurs built huge towers and installed signal boosters, filters, and amplifiers and delivered the signal to homes via coaxial cable. The low cost of this kind of distribution system led quickly to the development of original content specifically for cable, which eventually became cable networks like HBO, Cinemax, and MTV. The expansion of content drove up demand, and demand drove the expansion of content. An entire new industry was born which in turn spawned many new jobs. The transition from a nation of producers to a nation of handlers in 1960 was the key to an economy which would have to absorb more new workers than ever before in history. A purely productionbased economy could not have done so because there were not enough markets to absorb greatly increased output. At the end of the decade of the 1950s, the US, with 2% of the worlds population, was absorbing over 50% of the worlds industrial output. The

while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

Brotherhood and sisterhood are the same basic concept, and are illustrations of the same type of ideology over everything else that sometimes found members of the same families, sometimes even biological brothers, on opposite sides in the US war between the states, or civil war. A woman might have a splendid life a comfortable home, a loving husband, decent kids but as long as there was one woman anywhere who was oppressed, then so was she. The personal is political and the political is personal destroyed peoples ability to have personal relationships and turned all relationships into political relationships. A man and a wife might be having a typical couples argument, and suddenly the man

rebuilding of Europe and Japan were essentially complete, so any increase in production would require opening new markets. But, opening new overseas markets would require spurring development in those areas so that those countries would have something of economic value to exchange with the US. Only a strategy of globalization provided enough potential for perpetually expanding markets, and one of the first functions to be outsourced to other countries was industrial production.

This fit perfectly with the whitecollar expectations of the new generation who never once considered following in their fathers footsteps and becoming blue collar workers.

that attraction itself. Susan Brownmiller had laid the conceptual foundations in the mid 1970s with Against Our Wills, and Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin had carried the water of the concept forward with sexual harassment law and Dowkins sexhating, man hating, prose. All it took was for Mary Koss to fabricate her bogus bit of research in which she mysteriously found that 1 in 4? women were being rayyyyped and the wedge to sever the trust and attraction between the sexes was set.

The boomers were a doublewhammy to the labor market because not only was a larger number of men than ever before looking for places in it, but also a large number of women were following the feminist script to compete with men economically and for the available jobs. The service economy, and information economy ideas led to the rapid development of a generalized managerial class, which required skills which transferred seamlessly into a rapidly growing government bureaucracy. As the boomers seeped into the workforce between 1964 and about 1986, the economy slid into the doldrums. The petroleum crisis in the mid 1970s ended cheap gasoline, dealt a crippling blow to the US auto industry because they were too slow to respond to trends and downsize their offerings, and opened the US market to Japanese autos of much higher quality than the US produced models. Globalization had begun in earnest.

The feminist movement had pretty much stalled because most women still didnt see their husbands, brothers, fathers, and male friends as the enemy. People were slowly working out new roles and people were adjusting to dual income families. The Equal Rights Amendment had failed back in the 1970s, but the real barriers to the kind of equality it envisioned were more in the slowly changing social attitudes. Things had changed blindingly fast as social change normally goes, but still not fast enough for the feminists. And then, along came Susan Faludi, with her Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women.

Interest rates spiraled out of control in the early 80s, going over 20%, which depressed the housing market and sent ripples through the rest of the economy. The displacement of farm families of the 1930s was repeated as rising fuel costs and a weak economy forced a large percentage of the remaining family farms out of business. Through all this, men and women had been stroking away, coping as best they could, trying to work out some sort of new balance and mixture of gender roles, and managing to get along.

And then the feminists unveiled the nuclear device of the gender war the redefinition of normal sexual relations between men and women as rayyyype! The notion of women as an oppressed class had simply failed to gain the traction it had needed to completely split the normal attraction between the sexes, so the obvious strategy was to attack

If there ever is a trial for war crimes of the gender war, I hope Faludi hangs. Despite what were actually huge strides toward a new more equal social system, including the fact that women had been getting the majority of college degrees for a full decade, she dismissed all that and rekindled the sense of victimhood among women of a certain age group. There wasnt a war before her book, but things certainly became one as a result of it. In the brief cultural span of less than 50 years, every social value which was in place half a century ago has been swept aside. The idealistic boomers, fresh out of college with their Marxist ideas went into every aspect of government, and rode Lyndon Johnsons Great Society into a welfaretherapeutic state where they controlled education, social services, and most branches of government as a result of having become entrenched in the multitude of bureaucracies spawned by the notion that every human problem could be solved if you just threw enough money at it. The right to kill ones own children and call them choices was enough of a blow to the culture, but when people started seriously using same sex and marriage together, the Long March Through the Culture was complete absolutely nothing meant the same thing it had 50 years before.

I have to confess up front that I am an atheist. But I also want to qualify that by saying I am not the kind of evangelical, nutcase atheist that religiously dedicates his life to condemning anything Christian. I am living proof that NAAALT. In fact, I am more than a little impressed by the story of Jesus Christ as told in the Bible, and for whatever it lacks in historical accuracy I find it rich in wisdom, humanity and inspiration. The Jesus of the Bible was the kind of man I would like to be, but I know I am forever doomed to falling short of that desire. That being said, one of the constant themes I find in The Gospel and indeed throughout modern religious organizations is a tremendous disconnect between the life and teachings of Jesus and almost everything his followers, then and now, actually do. One of the more glaring examples of that are the religiously dogmatic men that inhabit the modern church. If these clones are followers of Christ, then the Son of God must have been the biggest mangina that ever lived.

It is true. The church, long vilified and demonized for being the primary source of misogyny and patriarchy, is actually quite the opposite. It is little more than a coercive training ground for the indentured servants to the Divine Vagina. Above almost all other social entities, religious men rank at the very top in the dogma of mindless male servitude. And while there may well have been a time when the adherence to this position was practical, even laudable, the time for it has passed. Someone should pass that message around in the church and dole out some common sense at the same time.

Lets look, for example, at a nifty little website called TopChristians.com. On their good husbands page, they gift us with all the standard advice; protect your wife; be prepared to die for her. But ah, in the modern, enlightened church, there is so much more to learn. Top Christians also advises men to submit to their wives. Yes, submit. It is right out of scripture, they assure us. But of course it doesnt stop there.

The mentality and beliefs they present to the culture of their congregations reflect the new scriptural paradigm, For God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever worships Woman should not perish, but have everlasting female approval, and be a real man.

At Top Christians, the modern version of Our Lady of the Unrelenting Vagina, we have even more advice, bellowed from the pulpit of Dr. Phil. The following is the complete text from their Spend Time Together, section. Res ipsa loquitur fully applies:

When you spend time with your wife, don't talk about work! Or golf. Or cars.

Or any other thing that interests you.

Churches have followed the same exact path of governments, institutions of higher education and the media over the past 50 years. In other words, they have become watered down, feminized incarnations of their former selves. In doing so, they have sent one resounding message about their views on the life and death of Jesus Christ. They dont give a shit about it and likely never did. Whatever Christ means to these selfloathing, feminist quislings doesnt have the substance of a research paper on the wage gap funded by N.O.W... Their faith was sold out to pop psychology, pop culture and feminist fundamentalism a long time ago. You may be asking at this point, what does any of this really have to do with the biblical Jesus? And it is a fair question; the answer to which is nothing.

If you really want to put your wife first, then you have to talk about the things that interest her!

What's that? You don't know what her interests are? Ah, exactly my point!! You have been so selfcentred that you don't even know what your wife is interested in. Shame on you!! If that is true of you, then now is the time to start changing it.

And don't get all upset if she doubts your intentions. Or if she suspects that you have been guilty of something (like sleeping with her best friend). If you suddenly start acting differently especially if such actions are so "unlike" you she is likely to get suspicious. Start by telling her that you want to change and that you want to start putting her first.

The Jesus I read about in the Holy Bible would not have put up with this shit for a minute. When the money lenders took over and defiled His temple, the Jesus I read about put a boot in their sorry asses and sent them running into the street for their lives.

The Jesus I read about defied every powerful, corrupt hypocrite in His world to speak the truth. The Jesus I read about died for it without backing down.

Ask her what would make her happy, "because I want to start doing those things".

After the initial shock (and even doubt) she will be delighted when she discovers that you are really serious. She'll see that you really want to be a good husband to her, and she'll love you for it.

But that was just the Jesus of The Bible. He never really has been the Jesus that most Christians believe in. Hell, He even spent the last three years of his life telling His own apostles that they didnt understand a word He was saying. And true to form, Christians have been emulating them, not Him, ever since. If that is not true, someone please tell me of any Christian organization in this country, or across the western world, that is even making a peep about men being robbed of authority in their own lives, much less the authority in their families. Please point to one church that is standing up and telling their congregations that this claptrap emanating from Top Christians and a thousand other places like it is a load of garbage. Just one will do. I am waiting.

Just keep at it. Get out of that comfort zone of yours, and start living a life of fulfilment with the wife that God has given you. I guarantee you it will be a terrific journey! Just FYI, the print is theirs. I didnt even correct their typos.

It seems whoever penned this looked at the image of Christ on the cross and saw not the Son of God, but the Son of Oprah, and then obediently delivered a satanic dose of shame to any man foolish enough to listen. Is this an isolated point of view in western churches? Hardly.

And so, perhaps, is Jesus Christ.

Whether He was a real man and The son of God, or just a magnificent and instructive metaphor for the pinnacle of human actualization, He was not a mangina.

Male Suicide
www.thespearhead.com
Joiner estimates that romantic disruptions and other relationship issues trigger depressive episodes in about 75 percent of men between the ages of 20 and 40 who commit suicide. Macdonald stated Many men are overwhelmed by social problems like unemployment, family breakups and not having access to their children. When a number of these social factors come together, they can be enough to send a man over the edge and contemplate selfharm, Additionally, MSNBC Health (Male Suicide 2008) states Data going back decades shows that, like clockwork, economic downturns push more men over the brink a fact that should concern us all now. Men draw much of their identity from their careers, and when unemployment rises, that underpinning falls away. Lastly, Lisa Firestone, Ph.D., a suicide expert stated Especially in their early 20s, guys can think, This one person was right for me, Ive lost her, and its all over they lack the perspective that theyre going to have other relationships, maybe even better relationships By Szebran Simon Rierdon quoted an article by Michelle Beaulieu (Reuters Health, 2000) In addition, divorce or marital separation more than doubled the risk of suicide in men, whereas in women, marital status was unrelated to suicide. Dr. Augustine Kposowa from the University of California suspects that this difference is related to the social networks men and women form outside their marriages, which may be stronger or more meaningful in women than in men. Women have better ways of communicating, Kposowa told Reuters Health in an interview. They may have more social support networks, friends and relatives that they talk to, whereas men dont have social support networks. As stated in this post, these studies appear to indicate some men need a more realistic outlook about modern marriage. They still have obsolete notions of marriage being everything. Being divorced or single is viewed as the end of the world. At one time, having a wife meant having a companion. Someone who would care about you and help you in life. Those days are gone. Today, modern marriage is centered on the wife. Partnership is discouraged in womens literature As emphasized by Parenting Magazine (Mad at Dad 2009) & repeated by many womens websites, husbands are now expected to do at minimum 50% of house chores. However, wives are not be expected to help husbands with housing repairs, auto maintenance or other similar tasks. These are deemed the husbands job. Additionally, as emphasized by womens literature, house chores and husbands jobs must be completed according to the wifes time schedule. Her husbands viewpoint does not matter.

In the US, the suicide rate for men is four times that of women. Suicide is the eighth leading cause of death for all U.S. men according to National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. According to German blogger Simon Rierdon (or at least I think hes German) the number of men committing suicide is up in every nonthird world country. He quoted PR Newswire Between the ages of 20 and 29 suicide is three times as common in men as in women and the number of attempted suicides amongst young men has doubled in 10 years across most developed countries Simon also notes that he has seen stories about how German men are committing suicide in record numbers but the suicide rate among young women is not rising.

No country has bothered to address the problem of male suicide. Kerry L. Knox, Ph.D., director of the Canandaigua Center of Excellence for Suicide Prevention of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs stated Men in the overall U.S. population just havent been the focus of a lot of suicideprevention efforts. Based on studies by Professor John Macdonald, Co director of the Mens Health Information and Resource Centre (MHIRC) in Australia and Thomas Joiner, Ph.D, a professor of psychology at Florida State University, it appears the two primary reasons causing the vast majority of male suicides are modern marriage (sometimes called marriage 2.0 on The Spearhead) and unemployment.

32

Rates and Causes


Any wife that helps her husband or considers his opinions is criticized in womens literature as subservient. Additionally, she will also be the target of peer pressure from other women to change her behavior toward her husband. Also, in modern marriage, husbands are used as baby sitters so the wife can have her weekly girls night out. This is especially true if she wants to stay out late clubbing. However, boys night out is frowned upon. This is especially true if he wants stay out late clubbing. He will be considered a deadbeat. to lack of education. Millions of jobs requiring only a high school diploma have disappeared. In the US, a college degree or at least a degree from a technical school is now necessary for many good paying jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics show that since 1970, the unemployment rate for college graduates is half that of high school graduates. It also shows college graduates, on average earn nearly twice what high school graduates earn. Approximately 50% more women earn college degrees than men. This is the primary reason why, in most American cities, young single woman aged (2230) earn more money than men of the same age group (New York research firm Reach Advisors, 2008). The situation is probably similar in other western countries.

Lastly, if a late night girls outing results in an extra marital affair and pregnancy, its tough luck for the husband if he discovers the child isnt his. Nearly all states have laws supporting paternity fraud. The hapless husband must raise & finance the child. The sleazebag other man will have no obligations. Ive been told this is also the law in Britain. Modern wives are taught to view their husbands as living room decorations.

More men should be educated about modern marriage. Letting exhusbands tell their personal stories is one way to accomplish this task. No names or pictures are necessary. Men can simply explain how they were treated during their marriage and how the family court treated them during the divorce. Ideally, these stories should appear on popular mens websites. But how many websites would be willing to let exhusbands tell their stories is questionable. Nonetheless, the stories would be educational. They would prompt very fundamental questions: Why have a modern wife? What purpose does she serve? What value is she? What benefit is modern marriage? Admittedly, men have previously received a health benefit from being married. However, research by Hui Liu and Debra Umberson (Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 2008) show, today, there is little difference in health status between married and unmarried men. Eroding the idea a man must have a modern wife in order to have a meaningful, healthy life can have a significant impact on the male suicide rate. Being divorced or single will no longer seem the end of the world. In fact, a better life is staying single, having a series of girlfriends & joining a biking, hiking, swimming, astronomy, history or religious club. Men should join whatever organization interest them. Thousands of these groups can be found by searching the internet. Yahoo groups is one place to start. Being divorced / single is not unique. In America, 48% of the adult population is unmarried (Population Reference Bureau, 2009). The second reason for male suicides may be more difficult to tackle. Male unemployment is due largely

Men have trouble obtaining higher education. In America, this is because the education system is mostly controlled by two feminist groups. One group, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) has blocked every single attempted school reform designed to help increase boys performance & interest in school. They insist girls should remain the focus of education. Another group, The National Womens Law Center (NWLC), is responsible for the anti male culture throughout the school system. Boys as young as 4 have been charged with sexual harassment and suspended. The NWLC demands all schools be financially liable for incidents deemed as sexual harassment. Since schools have no money to defend themselves against NWLC lawsuits, its easier to suspend little boys for any reason. Ultimately, boys learn to become detached from school.

Finally, there is the problem of financing. Because of AAUW pressure, big corporations such as Walmart, Home Depot and Starbucks, donate money to college grant programs with the stipulation the student cannot be male. Together, the AAUW and NWLC significantly degrade and derail boys education thus making them less likely to advance into college or trade school. There are probably similar feminist groups in other western countries who control the education system thereby hindering boys development. Changing this situation requires directly challenging feminist power. Also, a man must realize the national economy is beyond his control. Sometimes, unemployment is unavoidable regardless of education background.

Adjusting mens perceptions to a realistic view of modern marriage and challenging feminist control of education could have a significant impact on male suicide rates in the West.

by: W.F. Price www.thespearhead.com


I recently watched American Psycho, a movie based on the novel written by Bret Easton Ellis. The movie is about the descent into madness of a delusional psychotic named Patrick Bateman, who is a serial killer either in his head or in reality the story is intentionally vague on that point. There were some very curious political intrigues surrounding the book and film, beginning with a successful protest by NOW against the books publication by Simon & Schuster (Vintage ended up publishing the novel in 1991) due to its allegedly misogynistic nature, and continuing through the production of the film in 2000. This led to a deal whereby production of the movie was handled both directly and indirectly by feminists, which was probably accepted by Ellis as the only possible way to get the story onto the big screen. Feminist director Mary Harron and lesbian writer Guinevere Turner collaborated to write the screenplay. Harron directed the movie, and Gloria Steinem lobbied actors to influence who should be cast as Patrick Bateman. Ultimately, Christian Bale got the part, and right around the same time Steinem married Christians father, David Bale. It is undeniable that a feminist clique had a great deal to do with the production of the film, and this can be seen quite clearly in the end product. Although this may have profoundly changed the nature of the story, the resulting film is valuable for the insight it gives us into feminist psychology regarding men.

"Anime Boy" Anonymous


to whether this is actually how women view men. Perhaps it is a uniquely American phenomenon, but amongst women there seems to be something approaching worship of this twisted masculine ideal veneration at the very least and I dont think men in general are aware of this, because they are too preoccupied with another cult.

The film opens with an elegant and very effeminate dinner, at which the impeccably dressed and clean shaven men of Pierce & Pierce (where Bateman is VP) make crude, politicallyincorrect jokes while blowing hundreds of dollars and eating exotic animals. They are caricatures of men operating against a feminine backdrop of elegant dining, replete with dapper waiters, exquisite dining linens, cutlery and artistically arranged dishes. In the next scene, Patrick Bateman goes through his daily routine, which includes applying cosmetic concoctions to his body and face, doing exercises to improve his appearance, and grooming himself for another day at the office. This scene borders on pornographic, as Christian Bales nude, toned, and waxed body is constantly on display. Again, the backdrop is distinctly feminine, with a gorgeous bathroom, a tanning booth, and an array of cosmetic products. One gets the sense that Bateman, the serial killer, embodies everything that women desire.

One thing I noticed while watching the film was an uncanny resemblance to the Mad Men TV series. The attention to clothing and grooming, the uniform corporate atmosphere, and the callous, sociopathic behavior of the men all reminded me very much of Don Drapers life. Mad Men, which is also written largely by women, portrays men in essentially the same light as American Psycho, that is, as soulless beasts driven only by lust and greed. As I am not a woman, and can merely imagine what goes on in the female mind, I can only speculate as

Aside from his preoccupation with his appearance, Bateman is obsessed with 1980s pop singers, such as Phil Collins and Whitney Houston. When he isnt obsessing over trivial details and trivial culture, he murders people and has sex, often at the same time. Patrick has no personality to speak of, nor does he have any real humanity. His emotions all stem from two basic instincts: a drive for status and an insatiable lust for both sex and blood. In the narrative, Bateman states that he is flesh and blood, but he is not really there. He can be felt and seen, but beyond the material, there is no substance to him. It is here that I suspect we might find the greatest divergence between the feminist interpretation of the tale and Elliss intent. To

34

feminists, Bateman is the patriarchy; a mechanical, inhuman force, devoid of warmth or human frailty, but incorporating all the forbidden desires of women. Perhaps it is the story of Eve, and Bateman himself is the serpent, but if so Adam is strangely absent from the narrative. In The Spearhead many of us have commented on the issue of Victorian ideals and how they have had a profound effect on our culture. We often write of the pedestalization of Western women, and how this has directly led to many of the problems afflicting us today. The ideal of the blameless, chaste woman, who is neither real nor human, remains a potent cultural icon. In fact, outsiders might even suggest that there is an element of religious veneration inherent to this cultural trait. Many men and women have discussed this aspect of the Anglo psyche, but there is another side to the Victorian ideal that we too often neglect. There is the necessary complement, and I am starting to understand that women, too, have an idealized vision of men that is every bit as unnatural and inhuman as the Victorian doll on the pedestal that has led to our reluctance to treat women as the flawed, fallen human beings that they are. If anything offers a counterpart to the woman on the pedestal, it is the depraved, dangerous, bestial man portrayed by Patrick Bateman. His dark, compulsively acquisitive, violent and sexual nature is

the nemesis, and also the consort, of the asexual paragon of virtue and light that we have fashioned as the essence of femininity. If Lucy Manette, the angelic heroine of Dickens Tale of Two Cities, is the archetypical female goddess as imagined by a male artist, then Mary Harrons Patrick Bateman, dripping with bloody murder and raw sexuality, is the male god as imagined by the female artist. He is insane, soulless and hellbound, yet Bateman is more demon than damned, for he is not a fallen human so much as he is the recrudescence of hell on earth. It is an oddly similar, yet sexually inverted, theme to the Hindu relationship between Shiva and Kali. The more we delve into feminism and its elemental concepts, the more apparent it becomes that we are struggling against a metareligion that is deeply ingrained in the Anglospheres psyche. Perhaps we will have to accept that we dissenters are actually heretics who are leaning on pillars that support the entire edifice of our civilization as it has emerged following the 20th century. We are, after all, challenging the fundamental concepts of ourselves as men and women, without which we would have to start over with something entirely different. Perhaps, therefore, it is our responsibility to make some effort to articulate a replacement. More and more, I see feminism as a challenge to us men to do just that, and at this point I dont see that we have an alternative.

Recent Shrink4Men articles, 22 Things to Teach your Son about Women (or Not) and Fathers and Mothers: Teach your Children Well, Including your Sons, discuss what we, as a society, teach and dont teach boys and young men about women and intimate relationships. Our society seems to be solely focused on teaching boys that they must always respect women and treat them like princesses.

We neglect the fact that not all women deserve respect (especially if theyre abusive toward loved ones) and that unless a woman was born into the House of Windsor, shes not royalty. Furthermore, there seems to be a disproportionate amount of material about how men should treat women with love and respect and very little equivalent material regarding how women should treat men with equal love and respect. Instead, there are articles and books about how to get your man to propose, how to get your man to treat you like a princess, how to take control of your relationship, how to train a man applying the same principles one uses to train a puppy, and, of course, how to screw your man out of all his assets. There are two people in a relationship and both deserve respect and to be treated well. Abusive, entitled and cruel women dont deserve respect; they deserve contempt and a wide berth. Recently, a reader sent me a few videos from iCarly, a tween television show, the contents of which I find appalling. If this is what were teaching children about intimate relationships between men and women, we have a serious problem. Heres a starting point for what we ought to be teaching boys and young men about women and relationships: 1. Beware of women who wear their victimhood like a designer gown. Theres a reason this red flag is at the top of the listits a really big red flag. Professional victims are often shewolves in sheeps clothing and young men should know this. Professional victims play upon your sympathy and other caring qualities. Eventually, they will use your compassion and sympathy against you.

for her, put your guard up. Being gang raped by the football team at the age of 15 is not, I repeat, not first date conversation material. Neither is, My dad and/or brother molested me or My ex husbands/exboyfriends used to beat me/cheat on me. In fact, a woman who does this shouldnt even be considered healthy girlfriend material. It shows an utter lack of boundaries. You want a woman with healthy boundaries and that means no inappropriate early disclosures.

These Too Much InformationToo Soon confidences are warning signs, big ones. If a woman has truly suffered these events, theyre incredibly painful memories loaded with shame, anger, regret and sadness. A healthy woman doesnt bring these issues up with some guy she just met on MySpace, Facebook, eHarmony, Match, the gym, or a bar in the early getting to know you stage. Think about it. If you had suffered similar trauma, would this be the first thing youd want a potential girlfriend to know? Of course not. If a woman blithely tells you about her alleged abuse history within minutes or days of meeting her, you should be alarmed. Ask yourself why she wants a stranger to know these things about her. All you need do is observe your reaction to this kind of information. Do you feel sorry for her? Do you want to protect her? Do you want to fix her? Do you want to show her that youre not like all the other men who wronged her? Do you feel obligated to sit there and listen to her? Do you feel obligated to invite her on a second date? What you should feel when a woman trumpets her victimhood so early in the process of a developing relationship is violated and unfairly burdened. Essentially, shes foisting an inappropriate obligation onto you. Im a victim and now you know Im a victim. Youd better be extra careful with me. You owe me special treatment because Ive been hurt. Anything I may do to hurt you is because Im a victim and, therefore, doesnt count. If you hold me accountable for my hurtful behavior, youll be victimizing me, the real victim, all over again. Healthy people focus on the present and future; not the past and how their lives have been ruined and will be forever ruined. Heres the thing, once you disappoint someone like this, which is inevitable, youll be the villain and shell ceremoniously don her victim

If a woman tells you on the first date, conversation, email, or text about her abuse history, put your guard up. I dont care how hot she is or how sorry you feel

36

TeachingBoysandYoungMen aboutWomenandDating, Part1 by:Dr. TaraJ. Palmatier


www.shrink4men.com

mantle. This isnt a potential relationship candidate; its a potential life sentence. Before I get hit with you have no sympathy for abuse victims comments and emails, let me clarify some things. First, I publish these articles because Im trying to help individuals who have suffered abuse. Second, abuse victims need to do a lot of work to heal and move past their trauma. An individual who was truly abused and has done the hard work to heal themselves does not want to be seen as a victim. They dont bask in their past trauma. They dont use their past trauma as date bait. They dont use their past victimization to avoid taking responsibility for their bad behavior. They dont use their experiences as an excuse to hurt, control or abuse others because they know firsthand what its like to be hurt. Its the last thing they want to do to someone else and they certainly dont want their abuse history be the first thing people know about them. A woman or man who uses their abuse history as an excuse to abuse others as an adult is just as bad as the individual(s) who originally hurt them. They were victims as children and are now abusers as adults. In my book, when they abuse others in their adult relationships, they lose their childhood victim status. Period.

3. Beware of women who live high on the hog without any visible means to finance their luxe lifestyle or women who always expect you to pick up the tab. This denotes a basic sense of entitlement, selfishness and an inevitable case of hostile dependency. It also means that should you marry and divorce, shell continue to expect you to foot the bill for her *LIFESTYLE.* No healthy, selfrespecting adult expects others to pay his or her way through life without contributing something in return. If she wants to be a stay at home mom while the kids are young, that means taking care of the home and kids without acting like a martyr or pretending that she sacrificed her career dreams of reaching the top of the corporate ladder with her Bachelors degree in Marketing. If a woman expects you to pay her way just for the privilege of being with her (i.e., occasional or infrequent sex) without giving anything else in return for the money you spend on her, she does have a career and its the oldest profession in the book. 4. Beware of women who dont let you have your own feelings. This is so important. I cant tell you how many men I work with who are in relationships or were in relationships with women who do this. People in relationships hurt each others feelings from time to time. Being in a healthy relationship requires communication and you both need to be able to communicate when youve hurt one another and be heard. If you tell your girlfriend shes hurt your feelings and she responds by: a) denying that you have feelings, b) minimizing your feelings (e.g., you arent really hurt/are too sensitive), and/or c) turning the focus onto her feelings and how shes really the injured party; just break it off. Dont waste one more second of your precious time on her. When a girlfriend responds in one or all of these ways, the message is clear: Your feelings dont matter and you dont matter. You exist to serve and make her feel good about herself and nothing else. If she cant acknowledge you as an equal being, that your feelings, beliefs, opinions and rights are just as important as her own, shes not looking for an intimate relationship; shes interested in a service relationship. One guess as to who the servant is in this equation.

2. Beware of women who display a general contempt or hatred for men. This one seems like it should be obvious, but sometimes the most obvious red flags are the easiest ones to miss. If a woman youre attracted to regales you with monologues about what jerks all her ex boyfriends are, how all men are the same or men only want one thing or all men are liars and cheaters, you need to understand something: This includes you, too!

She may tell you that youre different or special in the early days of your budding romance, but your exemption card from the all men are sh*t belief system has an expiration date. Trust me, you wont be exempt from her hatred or contempt for anything with a penis for very long. When you inevitably disappoint, anger or hurt her, youll be treated like just another lying, cheating, controlling, loser, bully, wimp, and user man. This is especially a red flag if youre looking for a woman with whom to raise a family. Do you want the potential mother of your potential son to be someone who believes all or most men are duplicitous, lying creeps? Do you want her to raise your future daughter to hate all men and to believe that no man can be trusted, including her own father? If you dont think this can happen, just read through the comments here on Shrink4Men and fathers rights websites. It happens all too frequently.

Dr Tara J. Palmatier provides confidential, feefor service, consultation/coaching services to help both men and women work through their relationship issues via telephone and/or Skype chat. Her practice combines practical advice, support, reality testing and goaloriented outcomes. Please visit the Shrink4Men Services page for professional inquiries.

Recommended Reading:

www.mensnewsdaily.com Your daily dose of counter theory. Featured Authors: Fred Reed, Ron Paul, Mark Hendrickson, Glenn Sacks, and more... www.standyourground.com Mens Activism BBS www.mensactivism.org Mens Rights news and info www.angryharry.com a premiere Mens Activist from the UK www.thespearhead.com Piercing the Shield of Ignorance. Featured Authors: W.F. Price, Carey Roberts, Elusive Wapiti, Thag Jones, Zed, and more... www.avoiceformen.com The Red Pill. Featured Authors: Paul Elam, Adam Kostakis, Dr. Tara Palmatier, Hestia, Typhonblue, and more... www.mediaradar.org Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting. Media watchdog organization. falserapesociety.blogspot.com Giving voice to the men and women harmed by false rape accusations. mengoingtheirownway.blogspot.com Musings on Masculinity and Men's Issues in Modern Society. www.fatherhoodinstitute.org The UK's Fatherhood thinktank. riseofthezetamale.blogspot.com Fighting misandry with the help of sociology. www.menaregood.com Counterpoint to the divisive and hurtful cultural stereotyping of men and boys. www.menrr.net Mens Rights Resources. Online mens issues links repository. www.reddit.com/r/MensRights Subreddit devoted to mens rights issues.

Terms and Definitions:

PUA: Pick Up Artist good with women, usually a practictioner of Game in one form or another. Game: Practical understanding of the base natures of women, and what they respond to.

MGTOW: Men Going Their Own Way men who have decided women aren't worth the trouble. MRM: Mens Rights Movement MRA: Mens Rights Activist

Men today face more obstacles and barriers than ever before. Men face diminished employment prospects, barriers to obtaining a quality education, even demonization of their very masculinity. Socially, men as a group occupy increasingly devalued positions. The destruction of the 'Traditional' male role, along with the removal of the Father from the family, has led to generations of men with little guidance, save the voices of those who hate them. The everpresent media neither represents their views, nor does it even accurately portray them. Rather than being seen as half of society, men are increasingly portrayed as occupations, or archetypes, their humanity carefully hidden from view. For decades, men were forced to keep quiet. For decades, men thought they, and they alone, 'felt that way'. But no more. With MenZ Magazine, you will be exposed to ideas and arguments you will assuredly never hear on your television, or read in your local paper. These are the views of men, and women, who are tired of being spoon fed misinformation. People who want YOU to know that you, as a man, matter. So please, join us.
menzmagazine.blogspot.com

You might also like