"Why is it that women can’t think if drunk but men can?"

"Why is it always about men controlling themselves and being responsible for any sex act while women are treated as children?" asks Dr. Helen.

You can theorize about a double standard, but I think there is one clear practical point. The article under discussion — the Roxanne Jones piece that we were talking about yesterday here — is warning men about how to protect themselves from accusations of rape. That's what men are afraid of and therefore it's what don't-be-a-victim advice aimed at men looks like. Women tend to be afraid of getting raped, and don't-be-a-victim advice aimed at them comes in the form of warning them about what they're wearing and how much they are drinking.

As I said in my post yesterday, "Telling males to send some nice texts is interestingly similar to telling females not to go traipsing about in short skirts." And we all know that advice about how not to be a victim can be aggravating, because it seems to minimize the wrongs committed by the actual bad actor.

If men were more afraid of rape — and they certainly can be raped — maybe we'd see more advice about things they should do to avoid getting raped. And if women were more afraid of getting falsely accused of rape — and it's possible for a woman to commit rape — maybe we'd be lecturing them about how they need to be careful about getting (and documenting) consent.

I would replace Dr. Helen's question with: Why do we always assume that the man wants sex? Why assume that men, simply because they are men, are "asking for it"?

If your answer is something along the lines of well, duh, then you need to see how you are contributing to the dynamic. 

Instapundit says that what he thinks about what he calls my "advice" is "immaterial" but that it's "probably pretty good advice"...

... on what he calls "a prudential level."

So — for all that softening — there's still one strong word: "advice." I stand accused of giving "advice," but I don't see that I gave advice in that statement of mine that he quotes at the link. He introduced my quote with the opinion that I'm speaking "kind of social-connishly." "Kind of" is more softening — but the reader is told to see me as giving socially conservative advice.

Now, I don't think I'm giving any advice other than to say: You are free, you need to think about how you use your freedom, and don't just think about your own perspective as you make arguments that law and society ought to be arranged to facilitate your choices. I'd say I'm being quite libertarian. And as for social connishness, I support abortion rights, same-sex marriage, and — it's right there in my quote — I'm not out to punish those who decline to channel their sexuality into committed relationships with child-rearing. I'm just defending legal and political decisions that center on protecting the interests of children rather than the ability of males to avoid the consequences of procreation, consequences that occur even though the male power over reproduction ends — because he controls only his body and not the woman's — at an earlier point in time than the woman's. This leaves some men aggrieved that a woman didn't abort a baby he didn't want, and I'm just not too sympathetic about this male plight. So maybe I am giving "advice" in the form of saying: Don't expect sympathy.

But Glenn must think I'm advising everyone to form stable, committed, child-rearing couples, because he goes on to say, that my advice is "of course, advice one dare not give to women in today’s society without facing a huge backlash." Of course? Dare not? Oh, come on. How daring do you need to be to tell women they'll be better off in stable relationships? I'll say it now, and I think this advice is given all the time. Huge backlash? I take it he's referring to the "war on women" politics that permeated the 2012 elections, because he goes on to say:

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Streamlight 88034 ProTAC EMS Medical Services Light with Holster, Blue

and

"Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream - and Why It Matters" [Kindle Edition]
Helen Smith (Author)

"As of today, Barack Obama’s presidency is half over. If that’s not enough to cheer you up..."

"... try heading over to the Insta-Wife’s new site, Helen’s Page, where you can commiserate or whatever with others who feel the same way."

Okay, here's Helen's Page/For Liberty-Minded People, which seems to be more social media than blog:

A lot of people I talked to after the election were feeling isolated. So I made a place for them to meet each other and hopefully, feel less alone and more connected to like-minded people whether for business or just to share ideas. 

Libertarians who are feeling isolated and alone? Doesn't that come with the libertarian territory? They need a "place" where they will feel more connected?

Instead of saying the place is for libertarians, Helen is saying it's "liberty-minded people." People is a collectivist word. Why not for liberty-minded individuals? Because they're so lonely! They need people. They're people who need people. They were letting their grown-up pride, hide all the need inside, acting more like children than children.

Libertarians are very special people. They're the most liberty-minded people in the world.

Dr. Helen wonders "if men are going Galt, staying home and collecting unemployment or no longer need jobs because they don’t get married as often?"

"Or is it that they just can’t get a job because the industries they work in are no longer hiring? Could the Obama administration also be part of the problem, focusing only on women’s jobs and not on those of men? Or a combination of these. What do you think?"

On that point about the Obama administration's focus on women's jobs, remember that Obama's original idea was to have a stimulus that would produce jobs for men — who "need to do something that fits with how they define themselves as men":

As the room chewed over the non-PC phrase “women’s work,” trying to square the senator’s point with their analytical models, [Alan] Krueger—who was chief economist at the Department of Labor in the mid-1990s at the tender age of thirty-four—sat there silently, thinking that in all his years of studying men and muscle, he had never used that term. But Obama was right. Krueger wondered how his latest research on happiness and well-being might take into account what Obama had put his finger on: that work is identity, that men like to build, to have something to show for their sweat and toil.

“Infrastructure,” he blurted out. “Rebuilding infrastructure.”

And then what happened? How was Obama — with his concern about manhood — swallowed up and enfolded within the Party of Women?

Interesting to see his desire to build masculine pride by giving men things to build, because men like to build... and now, in 2012, to find him bumbling and mumbling things like "You didn't build that."

Well, we — or they, the men — didn't build that if that is the infrastructure, the roads and bridges you were talking about. (Remember the big roads-and-bridges theme of September 2011?) And — I wish I had a searchable text of everything said from the stage last week — did anyone even mention roads and bridges at the Democratic Convention?

"What sexbots will do is widen the already growing chasm between the sexes, until only the fittest of the fit... can successfully leap across it to woo a human companion in the way that our genetic overlord intended."

Writes Heartiste, noting that "fitness is whatever gets one’s genes to the next generation, whether beneficial to civilization or note." I got there via Instapundit, who got there via Helen Smith, who makes the present-day observation that "20% of the alpha males [get] about 80% of the women" and says:

Those men who have more trouble getting women turn to porn and seem to ignore or be oblivious to women. I wonder how Sexbots will further change the landscape?

Here's my long-term view of that landscape. As men get absorbed into virtual-reality sex, there will be sex machines for women, replete with the elaborate stories women find titillating (including many things that are too dangerous to pursue in real life about which they currently read voraciously). The women, further relieved of motivation to form loving partnerships with men, will turn more and more to the government for support. Witness "The Life of Julia." There will be more and more of that as men depart from real life and submerge themselves more deeply in machines and women consequently feel more entitled to the government's functioning in the role from which men have escaped.

Women have the voting majority, and what will stop us from employing it in the interest of women as men demonstrate their lack of interest in us?

Will women still want to raise children? Some will, especially when it is well incentivized with government support brought about by unstoppable female voting power. We will have our choice of prime semen for artificial insemination. I'm sure the government will provide us with free services and facilitate our selection of the genetic traits we think will make the best children. Who knows what the next generations will be, as mothers produce children not because they found love from a man, but because of their ideas — possibly delusional — about what would make an excellent child? That's a new experiment. Presumably, in a world where men absent themselves from the real-world life of love and relationships, these women will choose, overwhelmingly, to have daughters. Those daughters will grow up and become part of the Electorate of Julias, further depressing any political power for men.

As this process goes on, perhaps that 20%/80% split Dr. Helen observes will be the actual ratio of men to women. But those men will not be alpha men. They won't even be beta men. And the men in the women's sex machines will be The New Alpha+++ Men. There will be no way to go back.

But this can only happen in America and whatever other free, wealthy, technologically advanced democracies there may be. So don't worry. It won't last that long.

"Dating Market Value Test For Women."

This test might make you feel bad, but not me... because it kicked me out at question #1... which taught me the meaning of the acronym "waysa."

Dr. Helen took the test, which told her she was a "classic beta." Among her minuses: cursing. Fuck that test.

"What do you think, should men continue to produce for a society that devalues them and their work?"

"Or, should they produce for themselves and let others pick up the slack?"

Posing in Knoxville.

In Krutch Park, this statue seems to implore us to pose alongside of her:



I give it my all:



Later, we have lunch at the Downtown Grill & Brewery, with Instapundit and Dr. Helen, and another pose is implored:



AND: Don't miss "Instapundit: matchmaker."

"It was a bird strike... It could easily snuff out the engines of an airplane."

Heard on TV. The story. There are some amazing photographs of the crashed plane, floating in the Hudson River, with passengers standing on one wing, on the front page of the NYT right now.

Dr. Helen, who says she's "slightly afraid of birds and ha[s] a flying phobia, asks: "[W]hy can't an engine stand up to a few birds flying into it?" The answer in the comments: It was a whole flock of birds.

When women take classes in tennis, wine-tasting, sailing, etc., in the hope of meeting men.

They don't find them.

Yet in New York City, in many (if not most) adult courses, the women are numerous and the men are few — for approximately the same reason that men behind the wheel don’t ask for directions. It goes against the male grain to acknowledge ignorance about a subject, said professionals who organize classes....

Thomas Dare-Bryan, the manager and a wine buyer for Morrell & Company in Rockefeller Plaza, said that the makeup of the shop’s wine-tasting classes changes weekly but that they, too, mostly comprise women, some of whom have told him they wish there were more men. “They have actually come out with that statement,” Mr. Dare-Bryan said.

He offered this explanation for the disparity: “It’s argued that women are better tasters of wine than men. A higher percentage of women have more taste-bud receptors.” So maybe they are getting more out of the class. But, echoing others who lead classes, he added: “It may also come down to the fact that men think they know more about wine anyway, so they don’t need to learn more about it.”

You want to explain the behavior of the people who are not doing something, so... why not ask the people who are doing it? Talk to the women and the educators who attract them to find out what's motivating the men who aren't there. Because, after all, you know that if you're going to explain gender difference, you've got to assume that whatever the women are doing is good, and it's the men who have the problem. So: You know those men. They think they're so smart. You can't tell them anything. They won't ask for directions.

But it would be so easy to turn that around and present the male side as positive.

Men prefer to look at something they have decided to do and figure it out on their own. They like to observe, analyze, and discover. They accept the risks and enjoy the excitement of trial and error. They don't like sitting around having someone tell them what to do, and they aren't intrigued by the prospect of meeting women who spend so much time doing something they loathe.

Now, I just made that up, but it was no more made up than the explanation in the article.

ADDED: Thanks to Glenn for linking -- with one of those lines that made everybody have to click. And I should say that yesterday, I listened to the Glenn and Helen Show episode about "The Dangerous Book for Boys," and I'm sure that was affecting my mind when I wrote this. Actually, one of my commenters, Kirk, says "Now you're channeling Dr. Helen." So let's look at some more comments.

Hey says:

Classes typically don't work for men's schedules, especially the high earning/high potential men these women want to meet....

Classes for physical things are less helpful to men (much higher chance of some past experience than women) and in things like yoga it just highlights the differences between the genders. Some guy you don't know is likely going to turn you off when he's sweating, grunting, and inadvertently displaying assorted hair or body parts, especially in a yoga class (yoga pants are almost speedolike in their clingyness) where he's 2 feet away and you have to look through him for the pose.

Most classes are also not welcoming because they're set up as "safe" spaces for women. Hard to make contacts for a guy, not geared towards his style of learning, unwelcoming of male interaction with teacher and classmates...

Yoga pants... speedolike in their clingyness... 2 feet away and you have to look through him... You know, I think women like yoga -- in part -- because they think they look sexy wearing clingy clothes and contorting their bodies into positions dictated by instructors. And, theoretically, they want the guys there, but when they see them there, similarly dressed and contorted and following instructions, they find it hard to control their revulsion. Tragic!

Most classes are also not welcoming because they're set up as "safe" spaces for women. Does the classroom these days suggest the standards of avoiding sexual harassment and "a hostile environment"?

JohnH said:

My wife accuses me of being a typical man and never asking for directions. However, she wants me to do all the navigating, while she doesn't know North from South.

If we get a new computer, she won't read the directions to use it, but she starts talking right away about signing up for a computer class, or having a consultant come over to show us the way. I don't get it. Our minds work in different ways.

I'm seeing a lot of comments about men being willing to read maps and instruction manuals. So this thing about men and directions may not be so much about men thinking they already know things, but that they don't want another person explaining it. If women won't read directions, maybe they shouldn't criticize men for not asking for directions. The gender difference may be more about help-seeking and face-to-face interactions.

Roux said:

Why don't the women try going to a shooting range instead?

Good idea, but there's something a little frightening about meeting strangers where the very first thing you know about them is they shoot guns. On the other hand, they will know you do too.

There's also a lot of talk in there about wine-tasting, and it provokes Smilin' Jack to say:

How can there be a class on how to taste wine? Just unscrew the top and pour it into your mouth, and you can't help tasting it. What's next, classes in breathing?

Well, that yoga teacher is probably telling you how to breathe, if you can see her past that guy's thinly veiled genitalia.

But go in and read all the comments. And don't miss "just about the best straight line I've heard in a long, long while."