Women often ask me why I am cautious about getting married. I have a number of reasons for being cautious. I have general concerns about the anti-chastity, anti-marriage, anti-parenting culture. I am concerned about the financial situation that the country is in, which my future children would inherit.
But there is a quirky reason that I almost never tell anyone, and that has to do with the aversion that many women have of men using force to punish evil. The kind of woman I am thinking about is comfortable with banning self-defense, banning guns, coddling criminals, opposing just wars, blaming Israel for Middle East tensions, etc. Even non-feminist women tend to want to regulate and seize firearms, even though though they know nothing about them, except that they go “boom” and loud noises are scary, and therefore bad. These women oppose wars, even they don’t want to know anything about how military history shows that weakness provokes aggression – not strength. They don’t like martial arts, they won’t play wargames, they don’t know anyone in the military, they think that contact sports are evil.
Now how widespread is this attitude, do you think? Sure there are some Harriet Harman and Lynne Featherstone types in the UK, and some Bertha Wilson and Beverley McLachlin types in Canada, and some Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Betty Friedan types in the United States. But how widespread is this? How many women want to use laws, courts, schools and government to prevent men fulfilling their traditional roles as protectors, providers and moral/spiritual leaders? How many women want to control the judgmental things that men say, and the use of force by men to protect the weak and punish evildoers?
First, consider this news story sent to me by Wes:
According to the Lavaca County Sheriff’s Office, the 23-year-old father and his family were enjoying a barbecue last Saturday at their ranch on Shiner’s outskirts where they keep horses and chickens.
His young daughter had gone off toward the barn, to feed the chickens, the child’s grandfather — who isn’t being named, to protect the identity of his granddaughter — told CNN affiliates KSAT and KPRC.
Then her father heard screaming and ran. He found a 47-year-old man in the act of sexually abusing his [4-year old] daughter, according to Sheriff Micah Harmon.
The father stopped the alleged abuser, then pounded him repeatedly in the head.
[…]The father himself called 911, saying his daughter’s alleged abuser was lying, beaten, on the ground. Afterward, the sheriff said that the admitted killer appeared “very remorseful” and didn’t know the other man would die at the scene.
Now here are some reactions from women to this story.
Here’s Jezebel:
Like, okay, instead of a trial, let’s just put a dad and a child molester in a room, and give the dad a sword and give the child molester a mild sedative and call it justice! And Judge Judy can referee! Nope. I’m not a legal wizard, but I’m going to stick with my gut here, which says that WE DO NOT JUST GO ABOUT MURDERING PEOPLE.
Now, for the record, I also don’t believe that the government should be allowed to murder people who murder people, so take my opinion with however much salt you want. Is it less upsetting when someone murders a child molester? I guess so. (Although, and I know I’m opening a can of worms here, even child molesters are officially human beings and entitled to the same legal recourse as any other citizen. Also, a lot of them get murdered in prison anyway, so…you guys will get your wish.) Is accidental deadly force excusable if someone walks in on a person actively molesting their child? I think yes. But that doesn’t mean we should legalize murder and normalize vengeance. If that was even a real question.
Got that? Defending your family is murder, and executing a serial murderer is also murder. This is from a web site that is radical on abortion – somewhere to the left of Obama, which is loony territory.
And here’s CafeMom:
I’m a parent, for cripes sakes. I never want to see a child being hurt in any fashion. Just last night I sat in my house with my heart beating fast against my chest because I’d heard a rumor that a local teen had to be airlifted out of an accident scene (good news: it was one of those exaggerations that spreads on Facebook — she’s fine). In that sense, if the allegation of abuse is true, then I would have been shaking with anger and horror both. If I were that father, I would have wanted to kill that man.
But wanted to does not equal would have.
Consider this: when you take justice into your own hands, what happens? You get in trouble. You, the person who, up until that very moment, was in the right.
You may say it’s “worth it” because the other person got what you thought was “coming,” but you are forever marred by having sunk to the criminal level. You are what you profess to despise.
Got that? Defending your family is sinking down to the level of a criminal.
This is actually quite common, and I do ask about it when I am evaluating women for friendships and courtships. I once was courting a Christian woman who told me that soldiers should not use violence to stop terrorists, and policemen should not use firearms to stop criminals, even as a last resort. She imagined that there was always some other feasible alternative to violence, and that war and use of deadly force was never justified. She even said that capital punishment was always wrong. (This is in spite of what the Bible says).
What some women really want is to feminize men and to dominate them – stopping them from getting into debates, from defending themselves with force, from telling the truth if it offends others, from judging immorality, from excluding others whose beliefs are false, from disciplining their children, and so on. I was once called a “bully” by a woman for saying that I would discourage my daughter from studying ballet instead of a STEM field in college, even though my motive was to make sure that she could be financially independent, so that she would be able to pick a husband for the right reasons, instead of being desperate.
Feminism – the denial of and disrespect for distinct male roles – has influenced everything in society. Feminism has influenced the tax rates, the size of government, the laws, the courts, the schools… everything. If I were to get married, I would be getting married in a world dominated by feminism – where the majority of single/younger women are fully supportive of regulating and controlling men, as evidenced by their voting patterns.
Many women just seem to have this enormous confidence about regulating and dominating other peoples lives, and these convictions are often not based on any evidence, but merely on intuitions and feelings – or even the desire to be perceived by others as “nice”. I am frequently encourtering women on the right and the left who boast to me about how they do not judge others – as if having no informed, evidence-based moral convictions was a qualification for being a wife and mother. Who wants to marry a hedonistic sociopath? Not me.
I think it is very important for me to be careful about getting into a relationship where the state can intrude and regulate my entire life, in the event of a divorce or because I have children and they want to be a “co-parent” with me, as a Canadian educrat recently said. I can take care of myself, but when you have to face divorce courts, or let your children face government agencies and public schools forcing their secular left viewpoint on tiny little kids, it’s a lot to ask of a man.
I am already being forced to give a third of my salary to fund a secular leftist bureaucracy which opposes my plans and my values. For me to consider marriage, I would have to be convinced that the woman would support me. And the precondition for support is having an informed view of what men care about and what we are trying to achieve. Women need to show that they are willing to recognize the differences of a man, and his distinct roles, and to give him space to make his contributions.
This understanding of the contributions of men has to be done at the micro level of defending the family, but also at the macro level of defending the nation. Women ought to make an effort to understand and affirm the use of force by Western nations against tyranny and oppression. Counter-terrorism, national security and a robust peace through strength foreign policy are not things that come easily to women, and that’s exactly why they should be open to studying those things, so that their minds are naturally changed as they grow in knowledge.
UPDATE: Grand jury says there will be no charges laid against the father.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
“I don’t want to live in a world where a father, upon finding a stranger raping his daughter, cannot beat the man to death” – Instapundit
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Of course, that leads to big problems of another sort: legal. Jumping to conclusions. Judge Jury & Executioner. Honor killings. etc. But such a father might should walk because it is obviously a death caused ‘in the heat of passion’ and ‘temporary insanity’.
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This was the precise, 180 degree opposite of the foul practice of “honor killings”. Shame on you for drawing moral equivalence like that.
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Had it been an “honor killing”, the one dead would be the granddaughter. The rapist would probably have gotten away scot free.
Don’t believe me? The whole reason for honor killings is that Islam does not recognize “rape” as being substantially different from willing sex, at least on the woman’s part. Whether she agreed to sex or not is irrelevant in their view; what matters is that she engaged in sex outside of marriage and has therefore sinned.
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I have a very easy-to-understand policy about people that f*** with my family or friends:
That blank white space? That’s what’s left after I get through with you,
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I hope a lot of men weigh in, ECM, so that women will understand how important it is to pass laws that allow men to do what men do: self-defense (without being prosecuted), expressing moral judgments about things Islam and gay rights (without being dragged in front of an HRC), and going off to war to kill terrorists and communists (without being tried by a court for abusing the human rights of suicide bombers and totalitarians).
Ladies: you are WRONG and you have a LOT OF WORK TO DO to understand men. Don’t complain when we all turn into wusses because you made manliness illegal.
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Oh, and I’m not just an Internet tough guy–I play one in real life.
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I’ve turned a few by forcing them to answer the following:
1. What is the police response time in your area?
2. Are you willing to sit by and watch your child/loved one being raped/hurt/killed while simply waiting on the phone for that amount of time?
If the answer to #2 is “Yes” then then next question is “When will you tell your children that you will never protect them?”. Make sure to keep asking that question over time “Have you told your children yet? Why not? What are you afraid of?”
One actually told her kids. I think they stopped having nightmares a year later and they still hang close to their dad (who called his wife’s position “A bunch of goddamn BS” and clearly indicated he would definitely defend them)
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Anyone who thinks the police exist to protect people are deluded. “To protect and serve” is one of the biggest BS lies that was ever told. The police do not exist to protect and serve. They exist to enforce the laws and there is a big difference between the two.
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Something similar happened to my mother about 40 years ago, but the response was completely different. The men of the neighbourhood went looking for the guy who did it. My mother swears that Grandma told my Grandfather to “get him in the crotch for me”
Oh how times have changed.
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A Few Points, Kniggit:
(a) The times are never so politically correct that a Dad can’t Dad. I have, I do, I will. It’s meant standing up to educators and busybodies and doo-gooders now and then, and de-brainwashing, and helping them to think past The Stupid– but what you get are witty, trusting, thoughtful young sons. When the feel-good anti-bully propaganda at the local school did almost nothing to stop bullying, I got the kids into some martial arts– and told the Principal what to expect, and what I had instructed them to do: never start a fight, always finish one, and stop other kids getting hurt where possible– and that if they were in the right, I would back them 1000% against foolish feel-good policies. Much huff-puffing on his part, but the bullying went away for them.
(2) The theoretical weirdness out there doesn’t impinge on daily life at home all the time– I’ve spanked occasionally, even used a belt in serious punishment. If some feckwit politician or social worker doesn’t like that, TFB. I’m accountable to God and my family for looking after them, first and foremost. If I’m forced to go to prison for doing my duty, there it is, right?
(iii) Finding a non-brainwashed woman who isn’t spoiled, soiled, old, or anti-religious is not easy. Un-brainwashing is a lot of work in this environment, since you’re literally asking someone to jettison most of the mental furniture they assumed was good and safe and obviously right. Man-hatey Marxo-Feminizm is a further heap of brambles to untangle and burn.. just avoid that, unless she’s willing to understand that modern extreme Feminism is to womanhood what Nazis were to freedom.
(d) Marriage is a vocation: are you called to it? Pray. Then seek of the Lord where you can find a sensible, smart, funny, brave, godly, honest & decent woman to consider marrying and sharing a life and having children with till death do you part and thick and thin and sickness and health (hint: churches, conservative groups, etc.). She-Binks is such a one, and I thank God daily for her. It’s a jungle out there, and most of the mess is not of your making or mine– but God & his people find a way through.
E-mail me if you wanna chat more, you rude manly man. ~
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Oh, and to answer your actual question, if that happened to my daughter, God have mercy on the predator in question– but that man’d survive wishing he’d not.
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I’m a woman and I totally agree with you, Wintery. Unfortunately, I’m in the minority. Feminism has infiltrated even the church and it’s tentacles are far reaching in our society. But there are some of us still out there who don’t buy into that garbage (so keep looking). I wanted a man that would not be afraid to be a real man, to protect me and our children and to stand up for what is right. I got one, praise God, and I’m so thankful for him.
As for self-defense and protecting others, there’s no way I’m going to let anybody hurt my family while I’m still alive. My first response would be to inform my husband and let him deal with it as he is far more capable than I. I know he would handle it properly (which is to say, with violence on anyone who would hurt our kids). He is not a hot head, but he is also not afraid to use force when necessary. If my husband was not around, I would absolutely maim or kill anyone I caught molesting my daughter. I would hope it wouldn’t come to that, but they must be stopped in such a case. As my husband always says, “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.” That’s why it’s important to have the means to protect yourself (both a weapon and the know-how to use it).
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Thanks Lindsay. This is a perfect answer, and it’s what I am hoping to hear from women, but the younger ones especially seem to not get it. Men need to feel that they can protect their wives and children without running afoul of the law or they won’t get married and have children at all. It’s something that women need to be aware of – like you are – so that they vote for laws and policies that make it safe for men to marry. Men need to feel that they won’t be imprisoned for assaulting or killing (depending on what is reasonable in the heat of the moment) a threat to their wives and children.
I want women to understand that they cannot complain about men not marrying when they neuter men. Feminists cannot expect a man to be a husband unless… he can BE A HUSBAND. There is no happily ever after for feminists unless they put the steering wheel of the family into the hands of their husband and live with the results as much as possible. Men will do what they have approval to do, and nothing more.
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It is often true that the younger women don’t get it. I’m 26, but as I said, I’m in the minority. We need more people who get it to be raising kids who get it. We can’t be letting our culture rub off on our kids too much. If parents don’t take a stand on issues like this and teach their children how to think properly, our crazy society will be glad to step up and brainwash the kids.
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I have encountered this attitude among women SO often, and I just want to slap the stupid out of them. I do remind myself that this is something they are taught – the term brainwashing used above is appropriate. It wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t so bloody superior and condescending about it, because they are so utterly convinced of the moral superiority of their position (laughable, when it comes from self-proclaimed atheists and secular humanists).
Had I found myself in a similar situation as that father, I sure as heck wouldn’t have waited for some man to come and rescue me or my daughter(s). By the time I was done with him, he would be wishing I’d killed him.
Yeah, the Mama Bear comes out pretty strong in me, and I don’t even pretend to be ashamed or embarassed by it.
My girls are older now, and my husband and I have made sure they know how to defend themselves, and the techniques we taught them are not pretty. We taught them to 1) first try and diffuse the situation (most of the time, physical confrontation can be avoided, and any good martial arts instructor will teach this) and 2) if they have to defend themselves, do maximum damage with minimum effort, then get the @#%!@ away. We made it clear that this might mean crippling their attacker, permanent injury or death, if that’s what it took.
We used to teach women’s self defence classes, and the most frustrating thing was how our students were so afraid of hurting each other, they couldn’t bring themselve to actually execute the moves. Meanwhile, my husband and I would be black and blue from using each other to demonstrate.
As an aside, I recommend the books “The Gift of Fear” and “Protecting the Gift” by Gavin DeBecker. “Fear” in the title actually refers to our instinctive response to a situation that, unfortunately, we’ve been taught to ignore because we have to be “nice” to people.
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Wow. This really above and beyond my expectations! Good job, you!
I do totally approve of women being capable of dealing with threats themselves. It’s good to defer to the husband, but if he is not there, then the Mama Bear must take care of business!
I love your comment.
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Thank you. :-)
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Your use of the appellation Kunoichi is apt.
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I think the wording of the article might be partially to blame. Specifically “The father stopped the alleged abuser, then pounded him repeatedly in the head.”
When I read that, my heart stopped for a moment. I thought about my reaction, and realized that the image that it conjured was of the criminal being completely pacified, even unconscious, while the father continued to pound his unresisting head into the ground.
Of course a person should be able to defend him/herself and his/her family, and we want to continue to protect that. And of course somewhere in the messiness of this world there will be people who haven’t been trained to be able to do that while still stopping at the appropriate use of force (once the perpetrator has been pacified and is no longer a threat, they should be turned over to the authorities). But not everyone is going to know when that is, and are probably, in the heat of the moment, more likely to err on the side of caution (go further in pacifying the criminal than they necessarily needed to). Those people also need to be protected.
Anyway, the way the article phrased it, it made it sound like the father had passed through accidentally using more force than was necessary to subdue a criminal, to purposefully and maliciously beating an unconscious man to death in a fit of vengeance. It seems pretty clear, though, that that was not the situation, as even the article notes that the father did not know he had gone that far.
Unless we’re disagreeing on the idea that in an ideal world, the father would have known when to stop and turned over a pacified and still living man to the police to face justice……?
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Nothing makes me more angry than child abuse. It is the apex of evil. I know people who have been abused as children and who are still feeling the effects as adults. It’s horrible.
Personally, I think anyone who catches his/her child being sexually abused ought to do their utmost to defend their child, and it would be quite appropriate to blow the pervert’s brains out. There are times when I yearn for a return to the Wild West.
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Thanks Mbelina. I think that if the whole society respected fathers right to protect their family, then a lot more men would feel more secure about getting married and starting a family. No one wants to get involved in building a precious thing if they feel that someone else will just come along and smash it up with impunity. When the laws and the courts make marriage and family something easy to destroy – whether it be with no-fault divorce or by coddling criminals – men just back away from it. Why invest in something that can be gone tomorrow? It’s the same thing with starting a business and these nuisance lawsuits. People don’t start businesses when they can be wiped out by one activist judge and some narcissist plaintiff who is irresponsible with hot coffee.
If people want men to act like men, then they have to make it safe for men. We have to care about what motivates men to engage. Doing well in school Having a job. Being able to make decisions in the home. Being independent. Being respected. Being empowered to defend the family from harm. Being protected from criminals by a fair court system that punishes criminals. The government not dumping massive debts on children. Fair custody laws. These are things that men think about before marrying.
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Interesting post. I think the problem goes just beyond being able to protect your family in some cases, sometimes even protecting yourself can be a risky area. I heard a story a while ago about a man getting charged with assault after using a baseball bat to beat a guy who chopped down his front door with an axe, all the while screaming that he was going to kill him. When you hear stuff like that, you start to lose faith in humanity.
That being said, it’s better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6 – when it comes to protecting yourselves and your loved ones, you do what you need to do.
And the people who glibly state in absolute terms that violence is NEVER justified…. I’m sorry but this sort of attitude just seems downright delusional to me. Completely ignorant of the guly reality that some people out there are determined to use violence, and will never be swayed by anything other than violence in return. Given that situation, are you willing to let them, a scumbag thug, inflict that violence on you or your family just to respect their rights not to be subject to violence?
It’s probably well worthwhile for anyone who is at all interested in this subject to do two things. First, decide right now how far you are willing to go when faced with violence, and mentally prepare yourself to do it, because trying to work this out when it happens might get you, or somebody you care about, killed. Second, learn about the the legalities of self defense, including what constitutes legal self defense, and what to do (with regard to the police and legal system) if you need to use force when defending yourself. “Facing Violence” by Rory Miller is highly recommended for this. Also, check out NoNonsenseSelfDefense.com.
In my opinion, if someone chooses to initiate violent action against someone else, they forfeit any rights they might have had with regards to their personal safety. Unfortunately though, this is just my personal, moral position, and it doesn’t properly reflect the reality of legal self defense. The example above of the man who pounded the rapist repeatedly on the head while he was on the ground, which I would have no qualms about classifying as morally acceptable, would probably NOT meet the standard for legal self defense.
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Another problem with the idea that violence should be left to the police is that it shows a misunderstanding of what police are and how they get their authority. Police aren’t little gods with special powers that the rest of us mortals lack. Police are just people like the rest of us that have been hired to enforce the law and protect the citizens. Their power to arrest and use force on criminals is derived from we the people. There is no rightful power that any government official (including police) has that is not granted by the people. Police have the right to detain citizens who are breaking the law because all of us have the innate right to do that. We just hire the police to do it because they are trained for the job (much as we hire a mechanic to work on our cars so that we don’t have to). The existence of hired police in no way negates our innate right to protect ourselves and our families.
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Not one of the women who recoil in horror at the use of force, including possibly deadly force, in defense of the innocent under aggression — not one of those women have ever been so aggressed.
Apparently they think that a husband, upon discovering a man raping his daughter, should simply wait until the crime is completed and then persuade the rapist to come quietly to the police.
I absolutely promise you that any woman who been sexually assaulted is more than willing to pump six rounds into another attacker herself.
“Call the police”? As the saying goes, when seconds count, the cops are only minutes away.
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As a society, we are losing the intellectual and moral ability to distinguish between the wolves and the shepherds.
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A question for the ladies with such confidence in regulation: how are regulations kept in place without the use of force? How do you propose to compel compliance without force?
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I think that the main thing is that there is a strong tendency to not allow the father to make the decisions about how to defend his family. Their view is that: Men are too judgmental and aggressive, men need to be overruled and controlled to prevent them from making the person who is threatening his family feel bad.
Note: Bad men do need to be controlled. But when a woman marries a man, there should be a presumption that such a man is good. He is made good in part because he now has a wife and children to protect, and society needs to respect a father/husband MORE than criminals. In fact, even the strength of our laws and our willingness to enforce them and our willingness to punish evildoers thoroughly affects a man’s decision to marry. Why would a man marry if the police and the courts cannot be counted on to protect his family instead of criminals? In this society, the criminal often has more rights and more sympathy from left-wing judges than the honest victims of crime. The judges blame the victim of the crime for being a “have” and the criminal is a “have not”, through no fault of his own. Is that environment of blaming the victim safe for a marriage-minded man? Should he start a family in such an environment?
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I own a sword, not a gun or a bat. The likelihood that I would have cut some choice pieces off of anyone trying to rape my little girl is beyond 100% if that’s possible.
There are a few exceptions, but I’ve known very few women who understand the level of rage that can envelop a man when his loved ones are under attack in any way.
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Good news – grand jury says father will not be charged:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/19/us/texas-abuser-father/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
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