"A majority of children being born out of wedlock today in America are born in families where the father is in the home. But they’re not married... Now these fathers leave the home and not just father children with that particular women, they father a child with another women, and another and another. We have created predators, sexual predators..."
१४ मे, २०१५
Defining "sexual predator" broadly.
It's Rick Santorum:
याची सदस्यत्व घ्या:
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पोस्ट्स
१३० टिप्पण्या:
Although I can sympathize with Santorun's view on the effect this all has on the culture, I have an issue with the idea that the men are the predators. Unless he has proof that most of these kids are products of rape, then no one is being predatory. It takes two to tango, and the final yes or no is strictly in the purview of the woman.
Yeah, I don't see it predatory. Women and men make poor decisions.
Santorum is saying that a man who goes from woman to woman is a predator. He's not saying the women are being raped. He's saying that a man pursuing sex -- after he's begun to make children with one woman -- is a sexual predator.
This just goes to show that it is not only the left that makes stupid definition changes to words...
It's a matter of defining your terms, as my post title shows you.
This is like the earlier post today about using the term "sexism" narrowly.
These are choices.
OED first meaning for "predator": "A person who plunders or pillages; a ruthlessly exploitative or rapacious individual; a depredator."
I think it's a perfectly reasonable construction.
Take it easy, Laslo. He's not calling you a "rapist."
Not in the strictest sense of the word, anyway.
Such a man is a sexual "drifter" rather than a predator. With the present welfare programs, he is not needed as a husband and father, so why not drift around and take life easy?
Ann - he can say that all he wants - he's wrong. A Predator, by definition, is someone who goes after someone who is defenseless. Women can say no. The fact that they don't means they're not being preyed upon.
Depredation means plundering, pillaging, ravaging... laying waste.
"Prey" may seem to suggest killing more than anything, but when we say "sexual predator" we don't usually think of killing. We're thinking of rape, and the idea is that the victim has something taken from her. Santorum can enlarge the idea to say that a man who exploits women sequentially is a predator, at least under some circumstances. The sex needn't be rape for the behavior to be predatory.
He's trying to put opprobrium on men who leave their families. He's using strong language to that purpose.
If you want to say men who behave like that are not sexual predators, let's hear you put words together to express your ideas. Why do you want to deprive him of his strong language? Don't you think men who leave their family deserve this?
"Such a man is a sexual "drifter" rather than a predator. With the present welfare programs, he is not needed as a husband and father, so why not drift around and take life easy?"
That's your argument, that character doesn't matter? You're not making it very impressively. Why not commit robbery if you can get away with it?
It seems to me that a man who has sex with as many women as possible is the definition of a sexual predator.
He is saying that some men who behave in a certain way are not living up to their responsibilities as defined by society.
However, they are simply men who have rejected their gender-assigned role in the middle-class patriarchy.
"Sexual predator" is a clumsy retrofit that isn't particularly accurate. It makes women seem like completely helpless victims in these situations. A phrase like "sexual miscreant" or "family abdicator" may be more appropriate.
Santorum is an embarrassment. Him and Huckabee. And I agree with their core principles. I'm just not dumb enough to run my mouth thoughtlessly near an open mike. Here's hoping those 2 and a few others are excluded from the debates. The only vanity candidates allowed should be Carson and Fiorina, as counterpoints to Obama and Clinton.
they father a child with another women, and another and another.
Women decide to get pregnant and have a kid.
"We have created predators, sexual predators..."
And some of the men might not be angels, either.
Is "Coupe" the new "Crack"?
I think it is great that a minority of men are now going around fathering children and leaving them for the majority of men to bear the cost in the form of taxes and lost productivity.
We are a nation of cuckolds and shame on us.
Depredation means plundering, pillaging, ravaging... laying waste.
And once again, if the woman is actively helping in this (by letting him screw her in the first place), then she's just as much to blame as he is.
Santorum is hinting that the woman has no blame in this. That's the issue.
We can argue semantics all day. It does nothing to solve the issue.
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
In too many cases, he's pretty near the truth.
Why not commit robbery if you can get away with it?
I cannot, unless the government structures banking in a way that enables me to do so.
A better question; Why is anyone asking Santorum anything?
Ann Althouse said...
Santorum is saying that a man who goes from woman to woman is a predator. He's not saying the women are being raped. He's saying that a man pursuing sex -- after he's begun to make children with one woman -- is a sexual predator.
The sex is not the point.
Santorum said,"Now these fathers leave the home and not just father children with that particular women, they father a child with another women, and another and another.
He's not talking about the sex. He's talking about the seed.
The exploitative 'predatory' behavior is impregnating multiple women and not caring for or supporting the child created. The women and the child are left with the 'burden'.
A man tells a woman he's had a vasectomy, and hasn't; she gets pregnant, he goes away. That is predatory.
It's not about having sex with another woman once you've had a child with one...
Why is anyone asking Santorum anything?
Well, strictly speaking, the only thing asked of him was Can you give a speech?.
A better question is Why is anyone listening to Rick Santorum?
He was probably paid for speaking his thoughts! There's a sucker born every minute.
Sounds like Santorum should be in social commentary rather than politics.
A new SJW?
I think Nonapod has it right: predator is an overstatement because women are not passive victims like prey.
Precisely.
To the extent we do not pursue and punish robbers, there will be more robberies.
Using predator in the conventional narrow sense is inaccurate. Using predator in the evocative broad sense is sexist.
Linguistic deviance doesn't help in ending sexual deviance.
Santorum didn't use the word "monster," for some reason.
Or, if robbery is not a crime, it is not a robbery, just income equalization.
Aids redefined the meaning of 'safe sex'. I realize Syphilis and other diseases were life threatening, but the main point for a guy to keep a condom in his wallet was to prevent creating a life he wasn't prepared to support. Or to marry a woman he just wanted to sleep with.
The most common, risky method being yankus-interuptus.
Now, there has to be some sort of moral compass associating impregnating a woman with responsibility if a life is conceived. You can foot the bill for the baby or the abortion. But to bring children in to the world like a stud bull grazing cows in a pasture is bankrupt.
I really think Santorum is addressing this phenomenon and anti-social attitude of some men as it relates to the destruction of the family, and the damage to the communities where this is accepted behavior.
He is using the term 'sexual predator' to stigmatize this behavior.
Corollary to that Catholic legal ruling is the man leaving creates a vacancy of a father needed to raise the first child by the single mother who must then become a predator of a new man to fill that role for her son.
Gusty Winds said...
Ann Althouse said...
Santorum is saying that a man who goes from woman to woman is a predator. He's not saying the women are being raped. He's saying that a man pursuing sex -- after he's begun to make children with one woman -- is a sexual predator.
The sex is not the point.
Santorum said,"Now these fathers leave the home and not just father children with that particular women, they father a child with another women, and another and another.
He's not talking about the sex. He's talking about the seed.
The exploitative 'predatory' behavior is impregnating multiple women and not caring for or supporting the child created. The women and the child are left with the 'burden'.
A man tells a woman he's had a vasectomy, and hasn't; she gets pregnant, he goes away. That is predatory.
It's not about having sex with another woman once you've had a child with one...
5/14/15, 1:00 PM
But I thought it was "common knowledge" that "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle"?
All kidding aside, I still think it is a mistake labeling him the predator. Again, we are not talking about rape we are talking about "catting around". These (I know, very general) women are active participants in this. They too are making choices. Predator has meaning. Just like Rape has meaning and Racist has meaning. Watering it down to mean all sorts of other things, using it to describe things it is not, coarsens the debate because I don't know what you are saying any more. You are twisting the language like car wreckage, not welding it like a rapier.
Ann Althouse said...
He's trying to put opprobrium on men who leave their families.
I don't think he's vilifying the men who pay child support to their first wife and family, while supporting a wife and children in a second marriage.
He is narrowly focusing on men who think planting their seed in many women represents some type of virility. For these men it seems the 'conquest' of the sex isn't enough. They want evidence left behind.
That's twisted and predatory. And...it exists.
He's saying that a man pursuing sex -- after he's begun to make children with one woman -- is a sexual predator.
And the woman who runs around after she is married and has kids is...not? One more reason to go MGTOW.
Santorum is laying the groundwork for more draconian laws against men...that's men only. Period.
Rick Santorum has a knack for stating essentially a universally accepted idea in the most inarticulate way possible.
Defining "sexual predator" broadly.
A guy who sleeps with lots of broads?
"A Predator, by definition, is someone who goes after someone who is defenseless."
I don't see how that can be a right definition. Prey almost always have some defense, whether a hard shell, fast legs, stinky smell, big brains, etc. Indeed some predators lure animals to think they are making good decisions. That's what a lot of human hunters do, right? Those fish with the dangly lure do it as well. Outfoxing an otherwise cautious prey or one with strong defenses is pretty common across all species.
Several commenters misuse "predator" and "prey."
"Prey" have defenses of some kind, even if it is only evasive skills, and they use them to resist or avoid "predators."
Mussels and oysters are alive, but we do not consider them "prey," nor do we consider ourselves shellfish "predators."
Toya Graham has six children by different fathers.
She has a family, and she don't need no steenkin' husband.
I wonder what the ratio is of mothers with children from multiple fathers versus fathers with children from multiple mothers.
My personal observation is more women that have had children with different fathers and less fathers with children from multiple mothers. I am excluding those who have remarried and had children.
Despite all the talk of welfare, our state (WI) is pretty aggressive in holding fathers accountable for child support. For one child the per cent of income taken for support is 17%, for two children it is 25%, and steps all the way up to 35% for 5 children.
Now there are always fathers who evade paying child support and some go to great lengths to avoid it, but in the long run it starts to cost real money to keep on fathering children.
TosaGuy said...
Rick Santorum has a knack for stating essentially a universally accepted idea in the most inarticulate way possible.
You're right...
Santorum should have stopped with the quote from the headline and left the podium.
When he goes on to talk about the majority of children out of wedlock being born to cohabitating couples who don't get married, he loses his point. At least they're cohabitating.
The headline quote: “Now these fathers leave the home and not just father children with that particular women, they father a child with another women, and another and another. We have created predators…”
The 'who's your Baby Daddy' phenomenon replacing 'father' is where he should have stayed, but he'd would then have waded in to rough racial waters using the term 'sexual predator'.
'Father' connotatively implies some for of responsibility and involvement. 'Baby Daddy' connotes nothing more than a sperm donor or a sire.
This is one of those 'conversations' all the pols and pundits say we should have, but we don't. I'm scared to even write 'baby daddy' and give and opinion.
He does however acknowledge that "we have created" these situations where gov't has replaced fathers and nuclear families in low income areas.
Brian Jones fathered at least 5 children, all with different girls and women. Was he a sexual predator?
I think yes.
So why not the guy in "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" as well?
"I think Nonapod has it right: predator is an overstatement because women are not passive victims like prey."
Prey are not passive. Where do you get that? Watch some wildlife videos. It's not like the zebras just stand there and let lions kill them!
Santorum's no better than the Democrats--take a complex issue and oversimplify it with smug moralizing that fits perfectly into his worldview.
Some men are "sexual predators" in that they use manipulation and trickery to sleep with women, and escape without the consequences that a responsible person would face. But this ignores the consensual relationships that go sour, where both sides are very much in control of their decisions, or cases where custody battles and child support are far more complicated than "he just doesn't want to be responsible". Can Santorum consider that some men are fighting unfair judgments, or haven't the means to pay, or are being denied access to their kids? They're not blameless but to oversimplify the single motherhood issue as one of "sexual predators" exploiting women and running off is exactly why so many people get turned off by this moralizing.
God impregnated the mother of Jesus. He didn't stick around
Says who?
" It's not like the zebras just stand there and let lions kill them!"
Reminds me of a Drew Carry Joke.
A lion is up on a hill making love to a zebra. He looks down and sees his lioness coming and she doesn't look happy.
The lion thinks fast and says to the zebra, "Quick! Act like I'm killing you."
It's not like the zebras just stand there and let lions kill them!
But the women in question DO lay there and let these men screw them.
So I'm not sure you didn't just disprove your own point.
Well, here's the difference--when I refer to Bill Clinton as a sexual predator it's not because he has consequence-free sex with lots of women. It's because he uses unethical means to do so--unwanted gropings, possible rape, using age and power imbalance, lying.
But a guy who simply sleeps with another women--when we know nothing else about it--isn't necessarily a sexual predator. In fact, he could just as easily be the victim of a sexual predator, or we could be looking at two people who know exactly what they're doing.
Predator, depositor, or victim?
The sexual reform passed in the mid-20th century promised that sexual relations would be affordable and available. The act promised to stimulate growth of both the womb banks and depositors. The hope was that relations would change with low-income subsidies and obfuscated penalties. The outcome was, in fact, the growing popularity of womb bank services, if not actually the product. The latter was a cause for abortion of 1 in 6 accounts before they reach term and progressive animosity between the banks and their depositors. The predatory practices of the banks and regulators, including high maintenance fees and deceptive terms must also be considered. The population recession over the last several decades can be attributed to the early emotional appeal and progressive unethical practices of sexual reform.
"Santorum is an embarrassment. Him and Huckabee."
Huckabee is a fool. Santorum was pretty good as a Congressman on health care issues. His wife is an ER nurse.
Once he got on the fundamentalist religion thing, he left me behind.
He's right about this, though.
Used to be that treating women like sex objects, playthings rather than human persons, was roundly condemned even by leftist feminists. Now to suggest such a thing makes you a religious right nutcase.
Ann
True prey actively avoid the predator when they are aware of it - I saw a hawk pull a bird off my backyard fence two days ago - no struggle it happened way too fast.
But back to Santorum, the analogy is even less useful given that women are presumably active/consenting with the "predator". No suicidal gazelles in nature films either.
Since we're making broad brush strokes, there's something kinda creepy about a guy in a sweater vest.
Cad is a nice, simple word that covers the behavior pattern well.
No one wants to be real about the peer pressure/expectation by and amongst girls to be a child with baby in some quarters. It just doesn't reconcile neatly with the feel good attempts to "fix" the problem with free condoms and sex ed.
I backwashed the pool filter today, and a drowned mouse showed up. So my pool filter is a predator.
If you want strong language with negative connotation, how about "serial sperm donor"?
But althouse, you're the one who wants to destroy marriage, absolve women of all liability and make men splooge stooges. When will you understand that what you want is wrong?
But althouse, you're the one who wants to destroy marriage, absolve women of all liability and make men splooge stooges. When will you understand that what you want is wrong?
You know you are living in an upside down world where a man getting intimate with as many women as he likes, as long as they are in chronological order (IE: Never more than one at a time) is perfectly acceptable.
However, a man who commits his life to just two or three women, simultaneously, is a horrible person who deserves mockery and jail time.
I think Santorum is attacking the single mother issue from the other side. This is an old conservative argument that bombed, so he's trying it from the other flank by demonizing boyfriends instead.
Well Santorum was never the sharpest pencil in the box.
Let's just say that these guys are "bees" flitting from delicate little flower to delicate little flower who has no choice but to submit to being "pollinated".
And as bees they sure are busy.
Some predators trick their pray and lure them into a trap, then exploit them.
The prey is duped, but that doesn't make the predator not a predator.
The human being is most likely to use this technique, perhaps, but animals do some things that cause prey to fall prey to a trick.
"But althouse, you're the one who wants to destroy marriage, absolve women of all liability and make men splooge stooges. When will you understand that what you want is wrong?"
Where did I ever say women don't owe child support?! Of, course, they do. Both parents do.
And where have I said anything about destroying marriage? Quite the opposite.
Santorum is saying that a man who goes from woman to woman is a predator.
Yes, but why is it gender specific? Why is he saying that men are predators and women are victims?
My take on this is that feminism (and by "feminism" we may substitute the words "the media") has an attitude that the only people who really count in regard to human sexuality are women.
Thus men are dehumanized, as if we are wolves or dogs. And babies are dehumanized, as if they are property (owned by women).
Santorum, in my view, is making a political calculation. He is sucking up to the powerful feminist media, and he is attacking men and blaming men. The feminist media will love this, and so the attacks on Santorum will cease.
And I do think many men behave as dogs, sexually speaking. Or they behave in ways harmful to the family and to babies especially.
But many women do this too. So the sexism is Santorum's comment is unlikely to convince men to change their behavior.
I don't have a problem with calling these males "sexual predators". That's a pretty polite word really. The word for the women involved, I've learned from rap, is "ho". Not technically accurate -- whores get paid -- but it'll do.
Something like three-fourths of the Black children born in this country don't have a father; they have an inseminator. That is also true of a growing number of White children. How are these children going to thrive under these circumstances?
Santorum is right that this is a terrible problem for our country, but there is no political solution to it. Let me say that again: THERE IS NO POLITICAL SOLUTION TO THIS PROBLEM. Western society may disappear from the world because in Europe not enough people are having children, and in the US too many people are having children without families.
This fairy tale, by the way, was written in 1697.
Using "sexual predator" in this sense diminishes the meaning of the term.
If the issue of men fathering children with multiple women is a problem, then an even larger issue is the problem of women having multiple children with different men and no concurrent intention of creating a family group with any of the men. In other words, the promiscuousness of the men is matched by that of the women, who, of course, have more likelihood of gaining a child and subsequent presumed responsibility from the relationship (using the term in the more physical sense).
If there is predation occurring, it is upon the resultant children and/or upon the rest of society who, in loco parentis, assume all cost and responsibility, and become the victims of same as they mature.
Yeah the serial fathers are crappy people for fathering kids without regard to the consequences.
Let's extend the same status to the serial moms who continue to get pregnant by guys they barely know time after time.
But, hey, birth control is now FREE, FREE FREE! SO the issue should be over, right?
Fatherhood is biologically secure. Fatherhood is also biologically insecure.
It's secure in that every baby has a biological father. Every abortion has a biological father. This is why it is madness to pretend that abortion is a woman's issue that does not concern men.
But fatherhood is also biologically insecure. Men do not get pregnant, and so we cannot know with biological certainty if we are the father of an unborn child.
In short, fatherhood must be protected by the culture. If it is not, if the culture disparages fatherhood, attacks it, maligns it, disparages it, our fathers will disappear. And we will revert to the animal model of single moms and runaway dads.
Toya Graham does not have a husband in her family because she does not need one. The State welfare check will do.
The terms "alpha" and "beta" are borrowed from the animal kingdom. Those sexual terms are irrelevant when it comes to fathers, mothers, and unborn children. There is no "alpha" or "beta," there is only a father. We can recognize and respect fatherhood as an important virtue. Or we can attack it, and then be shocked (shocked!) as men respond by trying to impregnate as many women as possible (so to ensure their genes are reproducing).
This is what happens when people who take the Roman Catholic Church seriously run for office.
Jesus, Althouse. You're supporting his stupid view? You must be worse than a lifeless sloth in bed.
I had sex with a narcissist once. Or a few times. Didn't matter, it was the worst experience ever, sexually.
People who can only stroke themselves are the sexual equivalent of cancer. Stay as far away from them and their bedrooms as possible.
Santorum ignores agency, among other things.
Did the father decide to abandon his family, or did the mother kick him out?
As we get second and third generation single-parent-homes, we've got a whole generation of young adults who have no living real-world model of a functional marriage.
The problem is more complex than just scolding the dad or blaming the safety net.
Some predators trick their pray and lure them into a trap, then exploit them.
The prey is duped, but that doesn't make the predator not a predator.
The human being is most likely to use this technique, perhaps, but animals do some things that cause prey to fall prey to a trick.
And women trick men into paying child support. Who cares? What's your point? One of those tricks is infinitely more damaging than the other.
It seems your blonde is overtaking your brain. A love of argument isn't a substitute for actually thinking. What is your problem? Just post something real and meaningful, for a change - instead of just aesthetic or falsely controversial. You'll feel better instantly.
"Santorum is saying that a man who goes from woman to woman is a predator. He's not saying the women are being raped. He's saying that a man pursuing sex -- after he's begun to make children with one woman -- is a sexual predator.
I wouldn't necessarily use the word predator, though technically the guys acting like dogs and planting their seed everywhere are treating women like conquests and in effect hunting them the way a predator might.
And if they aren't taking care of their kids then they are causing immeasurable harm to their conquests not to mention their progeny.
But predator is probelby the wrong word since sexual predators are generally people who engage in sex with non consenting people. I.e. Rapists.
The women here are giving it away for free. So if he's a predator, they are willing prey.
"Santorum is saying that a man who goes from woman to woman is a predator. He's not saying the women are being raped. He's saying that a man pursuing sex -- after he's begun to make children with one woman -- is a sexual predator.
Then let him fucking neuter himself. Or pretend to by entering the priesthood. No one's stopping him.
Althouse has lost the right to ever opine on manliness ever again.
There was actually a law and order SVU starring Jon Stamos as a guy who liked impregnating women. He was rich, so he at least provided for his kids. But he was a serial abuser.
The term they used was "reproductive abuser"
Well, at least you have Junior taking you up on this idea of male pregnancy-makers.
Surely the sign of a sound idea.
There is practically no such thing as a woman who doesn't want to get pregnant, getting pregnant. They have way more control over, and interest in, getting pregnant.
I think RWAs are simply incapable of focusing on anything relevant. They exist to distract.
Almost all women want children (if they were not programmed to, our species would not be here), but a good many is not enthusiatic about having an icky, smelly man around the house.
Ritmo wrote:
And women trick men into paying child support. Who cares? What's your point? One of those tricks is infinitely more damaging than the other.
let's not let guys off the hook. Santorum is right about these guys. They are true dogs. Here's one such example in Brittain:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1377008/Keith-MacDonald-fakes-death-Feckless-fathers-plan-escape-paying-child-support.html
On the other hand, I'm actually going to agree with you for a second. (Doesn't happen too often).
What was it althouse said about how guys have to guard their own sperm? The argument was that even when a woman pokes holes in condoms or takes a tissue out of the garbage that contains the guys sperm he's responsible for child support because he has to guard his own sperm.
Well, shouldn't these women guard their eggs? Sure there are sexual predators who will screw women p, impregnate them and then not pay for their progeny. Well, ladies, shouldn't have opened your legs, right? Guard your eggs better.
Saint croix wrote:
In short, fatherhood must be protected by the culture. If it is not, if the culture disparages fatherhood, attacks it, maligns it, disparages it, our fathers will disappear. And we will revert to the animal model of single moms and runaway dads.
And this is exactly why we have traditional marriage. So that this type of think doesn't happen. Redefine marriage to not mean that though, and there's no reason why men and women wont revert to their more baser state.
A first for everything:
I completely agree with Rhythm & Balls. His smack down of our hostess is right on the money. Our gracious hostess comes across here as a dogmatic feminist whose statements contradict nearly everything she's stood for merely because it involves female victimization.
Well done, R&B!
(Disclaimer: until this moment I considered R&B a complete lunatic. I guess I've grown)
The realworld of fatherhoods is a sticky conundrum best solved by marriage which is a necessary part of fatherhood.
Posit: a young man who is betrothed to one lady impregnates a second lady.
He gives her the money to have an abortion. But she carries the child to term and sells/gives up their special newborn child for adoption.
The super intelligent child grows up and searches until she finds her real father. But he is now wealthy and has a family with other children who are threatened that she is alive.
Query: Who is the predator here.
This is news? Haven't we always defined "sexual predator" broadly in this country? Isn't one person's "sexual predator" just another person's "husband of Hillary Clinton?"
let's not let guys off the hook. Santorum is right about these guys. They are true dogs. Here's one such example in Brittain:
Well, how lucky we are to have a guy like Santorum to focus attention on problems… in Britain.
The guy's got the wrong continent. If he wants to pretend a British social ill is as great as he says it is, let him go over there and "solve" it.
They can have him!
Oh, they'd love a guy like him.
And he'd love it over there.
I'm ready to assist with packing his bags.
There is plenty of predatory behavior by women too. Predatory behavior describes the inherent nature and the way society is conditioning women. Not just female rape. Female mating strategies, too, using sex to demand resources.
The Godfather wrote: THERE IS NO POLITICAL SOLUTION TO THIS PROBLEM
ISIS, the Taliban, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other sharia-observant Muslim countries have a political solution to this problem, granted politics and religion are identical in sharia-observant lands, but they have a solution that works.
The officially atheist PRC also has solution that works, but the Chinese solution is entirely political - bring an un-wedlocked child into the world and both parents are sanctioned unless a forcible rape is involved.
Politics is always a matter of incentives and disincentives. Lyndon Johnson's social welfare state, known euphemistically as the Great Society, if it didn't create the problem of absent fathers, greatly exacerbated it. The Great Society has been reformed at the margins over the decades, but the fundamental error remains and continues to erode our society (how ironic).
Biological imperatives create all the incentive normally functioning humans need to reproduce. It is the business of a responsible society to create and enforce disincentives to reproduction in circumstances detrimental to the general welfare -- which is nothing more or less than a formalization of culture that predates our species. We are evolved apes, but we aren't that evolved. Our adaptation is imperfect. We have big brains, so big that we're born in a fetal condition. Baby chimps are ambulatory within hours, and within a few months of birth they are foraging for tidbits. An infant chimps gets everything it need from its mother. Ape fathers impregnate their mates and leave in search of another female. Their relationship with their offspring is minimal at best. Ape mothers don't long for their absent mates. You'll never see a chimp mother trying to solicit the fidelity of the father of her child.
As a consequence of have a brain nearly four times larger than our closest primate kin human infants are much more dependent than any other primate offspring, and this is the irreducible kernel of the reproductive conundrum of H. sapiens. Our sex drive is very ape-like, but our offspring are not in vitally important ways. Thus we have cultural mechanisms which function to counteract the behavioral mechanisms we have retained from our ape heritage. Without them Homo would have gone extinct long before we evolved the language we use to formalize them.
Saint Croix said...
This fairy tale, by the way, was written in 1697.
If you're seriously interested in that tale, you might be interested in Lindsay Ellis' analysis of Tex Avery's Red Hot Riding Hood.
Interesting, Quaestor. But bonobos have a solution to all that. It seems to work for them, but half our body politic is compromised of folks too opposed to peace and love to make that happen.
tim in vermont said...
I think it is great that a minority of men are now going around fathering children and leaving them for the majority of men to bear the cost in the form of taxes and lost productivity.
We are a nation of cuckolds and shame on us.
That's why the women are actually the predators: they make all the decisions and pass the cost of those decisions onto others.
Requiring sterilization after the first request for welfare, or women-support from someone they weren't married to, would be a good idea (which is why it'll never happen in the foreseeable future).
Rhythm and Balls said...
But bonobos have a solution to all that. It seems to work for them, but half our body politic is compromised of folks too opposed to peace and love to make that happen.
From the Wiki:
Bonobo society is dominated by females, and severing the lifelong alliance between mothers and their male offspring may make them vulnerable to female aggression.
Interesting
In an ecosystem where women seek pregnancy by any means necessary, it's productivity, not predation.
But bonobos have a solution to all that.
Bonobos have a solution to aggression. Well, not even that really. Further research has shown that bonobo are less violent than chimps for a variety of reasons including genetics. The "free love" stuff that got on the nature programs was blown way out of proportion -- which is pretty typical when you combine TV producers who want audience appeal and scientist who love publicity a wee bit more than they like scientific parsimony.
The bonobo solution isn't a solution to the absent father problem, because for the apes with their small brains and rapidly maturing offspring the problem doesn't exist.
Isn't the predator-prey designation based on an outdated view of the world? Sexist even? The prey in this instance are often just as interested the babymaking activty without the predators sticking around. Or at least they appear to be based on the number of offspring they have from other such absentee predators. No, both sexes provide willing participants in the destructive ritual. (Aside: And let's be clear, there are only two sexes involved. That's the beauty of the sex designation and why the SJWs had to change it to gender to sneak their agenda in. In the reproduction game, the parties are either xx or xy.)
Santorum is re-branding, and that's pretty much it.
Whatever it takes to convince yourself of some "need" for less peace and less love - or as that might be known, the Republican solutions to everything. No problem can't be solved with less peace and less love, they seem to believe.
For someone who talks a good game about parsimony, you sure didn't give any concrete examples of exaggeration on the findings regarding bonobos. There it is. A love of limitations without even defining what the limit in the research is.
What is this? O'Reilly Factor for pop-sci? At least when O'Reilly emotes his way into making up a false or exaggerated assertion, you get the sense that he passionately believes it.
""But althouse, you're the one who wants to destroy marriage, absolve women of all liability and make men splooge stooges. When will you understand that what you want is wrong?"
Where did I ever say women don't owe child support?! Of, course, they do. Both parents do.
And where have I said anything about destroying marriage? Quite the opposite.
1) Women escape liability because they get to chose whether or not to have an abortion, or whether to give birth and incur any child support obligations. Men have no such ability.
2) Your positions on gay marriage, abortion and family law are all damaging to the institution of marriage. The very reason marriage is so endangered and virtually absent from some cultures is because your ideological allies have taken control the institutions that transmit culture.
Santorum sounds like someone who gets secretly hard for young black ass.
Geeze louise.
When A loans money to B, it's with B's consent. Yet "predatory lending" gets 669,000 Google hits.
Is a "loan shark" a predator? Well, there's a reason they are called "loan sharks".
The men Santorum describes take advantage of women. They lie to them, manipulate them, target those who are insecure, naive, dumb, young, desperate. They use the women for sex (and other purposes), then abandon them and any children.
Some are very good at it. For instance, this guy: About to be sentenced for trying to defraud ATMs, he said he had six children on the way - by six different women. "I be concubin'."
"Predator" is a perfectly reasonable description.
At the end of the day, it's about choosing for one's own self: That's the standard;--or, is the standard more about the codicil?
I dunno. There's always an out for those who seek one.
Rhythm and Balls wrote: For someone who talks a good game about parsimony, you sure didn't give any concrete examples of exaggeration on the findings regarding bonobos.
I didn't bother to cite chapter and verse about bonobo social dynamics and whether early interpretations of the data were misleading because whether your statement about bonobos was absolutely true or complete hogwash, it was irrelevant to the issue at hand.
I didn't bother to cite chapter and verse about bonobo social dynamics and whether early interpretations of the data were misleading because whether your statement about bonobos was absolutely true or complete hogwash, it was irrelevant to the issue at hand.
See? This is why you're a conservative ninny, you twat. You wrote chapter and verse about chimpanzees, but didn't identify which of two completely behaviorally different subspecies (the much more common one or the much more interesting one) you were talking about.
The reason for this is obvious. The social warfare favored by your tribe is what creates the problems - similar to what happens with P. troglodytes. Bonobos and less bellicose human political parties have a different strategy: Hating less.
Depriving less.
It works better.
But fling poop instead and talk complain about expecting "chapter and verse" on chimps from someone who wrote "chapter and verse" on chimps in the first fucking place.
So it was at least as relevant as what you wrote to begin with.
You monkey.
Chick, thanks for the link. I think I might have seen that cartoon, back in the day.
This is what happens when people who take the Roman Catholic Church seriously run for office.
I thought Santorum's remarks on Bruce Jenner might have been motivated by his Christianity.
But where is his love for heterosexual men? Why this hostility to men who just want to reproduce?
It's not like men trying to get laid is a new issue facing our culture.
What's new is this idea, Santorum's idea, that we should adopt feminist rhetoric and feminist values, and blame men for what happened to the family. Let's just hate on men.
That idea, I'm pretty sure, is not motivated by Christianity.
this idea of male pregnancy-makers
You don't think men are responsible for pregnancy? At all?
See, I think you've bought into the feminist idea that sexual reproduction is a woman's issue that does not concern men. So you deny your own fatherhood. I think your attitude, writ large, is society's problem. And feminism is responsible for your attitude, whether you realize it or not.
I think he means "player", not "predator" unless he is using "predator" in relation to the kids or society as a whole, which he very well may be. It makes more sense in that context.
He could also be racially coding like Reagan's "welfare queens" by drawing on the image of a black baby daddy who is proud of how many kids by how many women he has had, in which case the use of "predator" is far more nefarious. (While "lower income" white guys have plenty of out of wedlock kids, the rep for braggadocio hasn't followed in the same way.)
He's not that clear. What does he even mean by "they stuck to them longitudinally"? Did they just leave them out in the cold latitudinally? ;) Of course, he means "over time" but what a clinical way to put it.
Men who disregard their babies are doing a very bad thing.
I believe that women have a biological connection to their babies, since they give birth to them. So it's easier for men to disregard their babies.
Our culture needs to invite men back into fatherhood. But this can only happen if our culture recognizes the connection between sex and reproduction, and sees the creation of a baby as something that happens far earlier than birth. If birth is when the baby's humanity begins, then what connection does the dad have to this process? He didn't give birth to anything.
Saint Croix said...
Men who disregard their babies are doing a very bad thing.
I believe that women have a biological connection to their babies, since they give birth to them. So it's easier for men to disregard their babies.
Our culture needs to invite men back into fatherhood. But this can only happen if our culture recognizes the connection between sex and reproduction, and sees the creation of a baby as something that happens far earlier than birth. If birth is when the baby's humanity begins, then what connection does the dad have to this process? He didn't give birth to anything.
5/15/15, 7:14 AM
Sure except this is a position that was created by women. Women wanted the "right" to decide what to do when they are "that way" up to and in some extreme cases after the baby is born. Women wanted the right to decide the fate of "that clump of cells". In support of that thinking, many don't view it as a baby until after it is born. That position allows many women to terminate these babies without the moral / emotional baggage of having to confront the enormity of their actions.
Ripples baby!
If women don't consider what is growing within a baby by definition until the individual woman chooses to, what do you expect from men who are that much more removed from the process?
The culture is reaping what it has sown. Empowering isn't it!
People are struggling to reconcile the baseness of the "human" animal and the enlightened perception of human dignity and value. It seems that there is a vocal minority (e.g. abortionists, FEMEnists, pornographers) who would prefer to normalize the former while drawing benefits from the latter.
Rich, and others of like mindset..
I did an interview with a black teen Madison girl. The focus on her was part of a group of examples of kids coming from difficult situations rising above them. Hers was about living in a culture where being a teen girl without a baby was stigmatized. At the time she was so proud of having bucked the trend around her. later we learned she succumbed as well.
She was plenty bright..I doubt she got "tricked" by a "predator".
Addressing cultural problems in minority communities is unpalatable to elected policy makers. Far easier to make the guy the scapegoat and skip over all that unsavory discussion.
The women's irresponsible behavior does not excuse the man's. Did Santorum step over some sort of rhetorical line? Possibly. He used hyperbole to make a valid point. I'm with the professor on this one.
He used hyperbole to address one side of the situation..he dumbed it down.
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