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Miranda Devine asks: where are the men of courage?

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Men tend to focus more on quietly enduring suffering, and they rarely speak up when they have been hurt. That’s why we get excited when women speak up for us. But it’s rare for a woman to see what men’s plans and motivations are. Rarer still to see who is standing in opposition to those plans and motivations. And rarest of all is to speak up to defend men from their opponents.

So, this post is about a woman doing all three. And not just any woman, but famous conservative woman Miranda Devine, who recently wrote the book “Laptop from Hell: Hunter Biden, Big Tech, and the Dirty Secrets the President Tried to Hide“, which is all about Hunter Biden’s laptop, and how Big Tech and the Biden administration tried to cover it all up.

Anyway, here is her article in the New York Post:

We pathologize manly virtues and bow to the tyranny of identity politics that seeks power by overthrowing a make-believe patriarchy. We raise boys in a soup of ­reproach and negativity that tells them their intrinsic nature is ­diseased.

“Traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful,” the American Psychological Association declared in 2019. These were the masculine attributes it listed as diseased: “stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, aggression, anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk and violence.”

The only acceptable man now is a man who wants to be a woman. We celebrate “pregnant men” and “chestfeeding” men.

[…]We ignore the crisis that sees men commit suicide at ever increasing rates or succumb to drug abuse and porn addiction while savvy young women graduate from college in disproportionate numbers. Trained from childhood to be entitled and unrealistic about relationships, their fertility and the sacrifices and joys of motherhood, many become bitter and blame men for their confusion.

I’ll be writing an article for Friday about the unrealistic expectations of young feminist women.

But for now, here’s more Miranda, and quoting C.S. Lewis:

Along the way, we emasculate the institutions that were necessarily masculine for our protection, notably the military. As an example, on Wednesday, the US Marines celebrated Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Pride Month by tweeting a picture of a combat helmet adorned with rainbow-colored bullets.

So, what do men do? They recoil and retreat. They leave the stage for hysterical epsilon men like Beto O’Rourke who whine and posture but can’t protect a thing.

Then when we need a strong, quick-thinking Gary Cooper to save us from outlaws, he’s nowhere to be found.

“We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise,” C.S. Lewis foretold in his dystopian 1943 book “The Abolition of Man.”

“We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

Maybe men have had it with being screeched at, so no more protecting and providing? (or leading, but nobody wants the leading anymore) Society can’t spend all of their time attacking masculinity, then demand men perform male roles just when it suits them.

You would expect to see men retreating from traditional masculinity precisely in the states that attack traditional masculinity as “toxic”.

The American Thinker notes:

On May 28, Sky News Australia posted a video titled “New York bearing signs of ‘societal decay.'”  The video shows a man (who seems as if he is on drugs) entering a train car and sitting next to a young woman.  He then touches her without consent, grabs her, drags her around a bit, and generally is an extremely unpleasant nuisance.

[…]During the video, the young woman is seen looking at other passengers, with obvious worry in her eyes, begging somebody to please “help me.”  Nobody tries to help her.

Where were the men? The author speculates:

If I had to guess, they were standing in their place, checking their male privilege, toning down their toxic masculinity, and coping with how their Time’s Up.

[…]My guess is that none of the men watching wanted to become the next George Zimmerman.  We all saw the emotional toll Kyle Rittenhouse suffered for defending himself.

The article notes New York’s laws against self-defense:

New York has a duty to retreat, after all.  Besides, New York has been in the habit of arresting those who defend themselves.

New York is a very feminized state. Male nature is suspicious – something for the government to outlaw and restrain by force. But when videos like this emerge, they reverse themselves and ask “where are all the good men?”

Matt Walsh has been talking about how the effeminate, weak Prime Minister of Canada just recently announced that there is no right to self-defense in Canada. No castle doctrine. No stand your ground. No use of force at all is allowed to defend yourself (or your family) from criminals.

Daily Wire reported:

Guns are for hunting and target practice, but never for self defense, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said this week, continuing his crusade against firearms.

Trudeau, who is pushing a sweeping measure aimed at freezing the sale, purchase, or transfer of handguns in Canada, told the Pod Save America podcast his country takes a completely different view of firearms than its southern neighbor. No one in Canada has a right to defend themselves, their family or their property with a firearm, Trudeau declared.

“We have a culture where the difference is: Guns can be used for hunting or for sport shooting in Canada – and there are lots of gun owners, and they’re mostly law-respecting and law-abiding – but you can’t use a gun for self-protection in Canada,” Trudeau said. “That’s not a right that you have in the Constitution or anywhere else.”

Matt noted on his show that this doesn’t just apply to guns. It applies to every form of self-defense, e.g. – pepper spray. The victim of a criminal is more likely to run afoul of the “law enforcement” in Canada than the actual criminal. For Trudeau, to lift up evil, and to stamp down good, is “compassionate”. He’s very compassionate.

It makes you wonder why anyone would live there, doesn’t it? I mean, especially men. Why would a man live there, and pay taxes there, knowing that the clown in charge makes it illegal for him to defend himself, or defend others? But Trudeau won re-election, so they must believe he is a good Prime Minister, and that his view of male nature is accurate and good.

News

Psychologist claims father is an unfit parent for refusing to give son unhealthy fast food

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Should a man marry a woman who doesn’t respect his decision-making ability? To me, if a woman doesn’t think that the man is good at making decisions, then she should just steer clear of him. Strangely enough, many women do marry men who they don’t respect at all as leaders. Let’s look at four cases where this happened, then draw some conclusions.

Consider this story from CBS News.

Excerpt:

Saying no to a toddler’s demands for a McDonald’s meal got a father branded an inept parent, he says in a lawsuit claiming a psychologist urged a judge to curtail his parental visits over the dinner debacle.

David E. Schorr says psychologist Marilyn Schiller pronounced him incapable of caring for his nearly 5-year-old son after he offered a choice — dinner anywhere but McDonald’s, or no dinner at all — and let the boy choose the latter. He then took his irate son home to the boy’s mother’s house early from their Oct 30 dinner date, according to a defamation suit Schorr filed Tuesday.

[…]”Normally not a very strict father who rarely refuses his child McDonald’s,” Schorr put his foot down Oct. 30 “because his son had been eating too much junk food,” the suit said. Schorr himself didn’t immediately return a call Friday.

He quickly regretted his stance when his son threw a tantrum, but he felt that giving in would reward bad behavior, so he offered the elsewhere-or-nowhere “final offer,” as his court papers put it.

“The child, stubborn as a mule, chose the ‘no dinner’ option,” the suit says. And the father promptly carted the boy back to Bari Schorr’s building, still trying to entice the child into changing his mind as they waited in the lobby for her to get home from work, according to the suit.

Schiller told a judge the fast food flap “raises concerns about the viability” of the father’s weekend visits with his son and asked a judge to eliminate or limit them, his lawsuit says.

The NY Post reports that the brat’s mother immediately took him to McDonald’s.

Excerpt:

Adding insult to injury, he said: “My wife immediately took him to McDonalds.”

[…]But the son apparently tattled on his dad and his wife flipped out and called the shrink, according to the suit.

Schorr claims that Dr. Schiller only interviewed the child and his mother and never asked for his side of the story before telling the court she was gravely concerned about Schorr’s parenting.

Bari Yunis Schorr sued her husband for a divorce in 2011, just four years after they married in a lavish ceremony at the St. Regis Hotel in Manhattan.

Now does this situation happen a lot? I mean a situation where a mother goes to the feminist authorities (psychologists/social workers/lawyers/teachers/judges) in order to overrule the father’s parenting authority?

Another case from Canada

Here is a story from Canada that provides another examples of mothers, female lawyers, female judges, etc. overriding a father’s leadership of his home.

Excerpt:

A Gatineau father lost an appeal Monday after a lower court ruled last June that he had issued a too severe punishment against his 12-year-old daughter.

The case involves a divorced man who says that in 2008 he caught the girl, over whom he had custody, surfing websites he had forbidden and posting “inappropriate pictures of herself” online. The girl’s father told her as a consequence that she would not be allowed to go on her class’ graduation trip to Quebec City, even though her mother had already given permission for her to do so.

The girl then contacted a legal-aid lawyer who was involved in the parents’ custody battle, who convinced the court to order that the girl be allowed to go on the trip with her class.  The father appealed the decision on principle, although his daughter went on the trip in the meantime.

The appeals court reportedly warned in its ruling that the case should not be seen as an open invitation for children to take legal action against their parents when grounded.

The girl now lives with her mother.

You may think that this would be overturned on appeal, but the father LOST his appeal, too.

So, what the daughter, wife, prosecuting attorney and judge (all feminists?) are all telling this Dad that he can donate sperm, pay bills, and pay taxes to welfare spending, but that he cannot lead his own children. He cannot have any moral authority to guide the child into becoming a man. That job is for child care workers, single mothers and public school teachers. Men need to butt out of parenting – except they can pay for all these experts through taxes, of course.

Recently, I blogged about a case in Canada where a father was overruled by female teachers, principals, lawyers, and judges, because he opposed the transgendering of his child (which was supported by the mother).

And there was also a case in California, where the mother of a child also wanted to transgender the child. The father collected together all the evidence showing that this would not be a good idea in the long run, but a female judge overruled him. Not only did he lose custody of the child, but he was banned from contacting the child, too.

Questions:

  • Does anyone care what men want from marriage and parenting, or should we just be ordered around like little boys?
  • Do we really think that state coercion is going to make men be more involved with their marriages and children?

I think that marriage should allow men to express themselves as fathers, just as much as women can express themselves as mothers. Parenting should be an equally shared responsibility, and the father should have at least as much parental authority as the mother.

Compassion vs standards

Here is a pretty good article by Jewish scholar Dennis Prager that argues against compassion and for moral standards. He tells a story of a team losing a baseball game 24-7, when the scoreboard is reset to 0-0 DURING THE GAME. He then asks what beliefs would motivate this action.

As is happening throughout America, compassion trumped all other values.

Truth was the first value compassion trashed. In the name of compassion, the adults in charge decided to lie. The score was not 0-0; it was 24-7.

Wisdom was the second value compassion obliterated. It is unwise to the point of imbecilic to believe that the losing boys were in any way helped by changing the score. On the contrary, they learned lessons that will hamper their ability to mature.

He lists the lessons that the winning and losing boys learned from this compassionate act, and how they will act in the future. Then he continues his list.

Building character was the third value trumped by compassion. People build character far more through handling defeat than through winning. The human being grows up only when forced to deal with disappointment. We remain children until the day we take full responsibility for our lives.

…The fourth value that compassion denied here was fairness. It is remarkable how often compassion-based liberals speak of “fairness” in formulating social policy given how unfair so many of their policies are. It was entirely unfair to the winning team to have their score expunged, all their work denied. But for the compassion-first crowd, the winning team is like “the rich” who earn “too much” and should therefore be penalized with a higher tax rate; the winning team scored “too many” runs to be allowed to keep them all.

What the “compassion” crowd mean by compassion is “don’t judge”. “Don’t judge” is their highest morality. Male leadership isn’t just worthless, it’s dangerous. Men are only good for spending money, and for being sperm donors. It would be best if they didn’t talk at all.

Compassion undermines moral standards, but also standards of rationality. The former is under attack from moral relativism, and the latter is under attach from postmodernism. These ideologies are dangerous, and they are at the root of a lot of the problems we’re seeing with children today. When men cannot correct moral relativism and postmodernism in their homes, then the children make terrible decisions, and often get into big trouble later on.

Advice for men

When men are getting into relationships with women, they should consider whether the woman is choosing them because they are good at leading, especially on moral and spiritual issues. If she is not choosing you because she likes how you lead, then run for the hills. You do not want to invest in a relationship that is going to be adjudicated in the courts by feminist lawyers and feminist judges. If you like to lead, pick a woman who likes how you lead. A woman who thinks that moral relativism is false, and postmodern relativism is also false.

News

New study measures effect of “gender affirming care” on suicide rates of children

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When I was a young adult, I decide to read two books on every kind of policy. Health care, education, firearms, abortion, divorce. I wanted to quickly get up to speed on how everything in the world really works. I read a book by Dr. Jay P. Greene on education policy, called “Education Myths”. He has put out a new study for Heritage foundation on “gender affirming care” and suicide rates.

Here is the study.

Summary:

Lowering legal barriers to make it easier for minors to undergo cross-sex medical interventions without parental consent does not reduce suicide rates—in fact, it likely leads to higher rates of suicide among young people in states that adopt these changes. States should instead adopt parental bills of rights that affirm the fact that parents have primary responsibility for their children’s education and health, and that require school officials and health professionals to receive permission from parents before administering health services, including medication and “gender-affirming” counseling, to children under 18. States should also tighten the criteria for receiving cross-sex treatments, including raising the minimum eligibility age.

Key points:

  • U.S. policymakers are seeking to make it easier for minors to access puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones based on the claim that doing so reduces suicide risk.

  • Studies finding that “gender-affirming” interventions prevent suicide fail to show a causal relationship and have been poorly executed.

  • A superior research design shows that easing access to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones by minors without parental consent increases suicide rates.

And this is the interesting part:

In the past several years, the suicide rate among those ages 12 to 23 has become significantly higher in states that have a provision that allows minors to receive routine health care without parental consent than in states without such a provision. Before 2010, these two groups of states did not differ in their youth suicide rates. Starting in 2010, when puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones became widely available, elevated suicide rates in states where minors can more easily access those medical interventions became observable.

Rather than being protective against suicide, this pattern indicates that easier access by minors to cross-sex medical interventions without parental consent is associated with higher risk of suicide. The Heritage model plotted the difference in a three-year rolling average of suicide rates between states with minor access provisions and states with no such provision. Chart 2 plots the trend in this difference for those ages 12 to 23 who could have been affected by the policy when cross-sex medical interventions became available. For comparison, Chart 2 also shows the trend in this difference for a group ages 28 to 39, who could not have been affected by these policies, since the people in this group would have been at least 18 when puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones became available.

Without making any adjustments, suicide rates among those ages 12 to 23 (blue line) begin to spike in states that have provisions that allow minors to access health care without parental consent relative to states that have no such provision around 2016, after cross-sex medical interventions became more common. By 2020, there are about 3.5 more suicides per 100,000 people ages 12 to 23 in states with easier access than in states without an access provision. There is no similar spike in suicide rates among those ages 28 to 39 (grey line) at that time.

I have a few thoughts about this.

First, secular leftists form their beliefs based on what makes them feel good, and what makes people have a high opinion of them. There is no rational, evidence-based case for giving depressed children access to drugs and surgeries that cause permanent effects on those children. These are not views that people come to by studying evidence and processing fair, reasoned debates.

Second, it’s important to understand that there is a continuum from secular leftism to infanticide to child abuse. With rare exceptions, secular leftists accept the Darwinian notion of survival of the fittest. They have no rational grounding for human rights. They are incapable of subjecting their own desires to boundaries prescribed by the moral law. If they are not actively participating in infanticide and child abuse, then they are voting to make these things legal, to make them subsidized by taxpayers, and finally to punish anyone who disagrees with it… up to and including seizing the children of those who dissent. (This is currently being done in Canada and the United States)

Third, to stop these secular leftists from abusing our children, and driving them into suicide, we need to make all the actors involved in grooming the kids – teachers, school administrators, counselors, doctors, nurses, lawyers, judges, librarians, police officers, legislators, social media companies, etc. – subject to civil lawsuits filed by the children once they are old enough to file. We need to clean out the bank accounts of the secular left child abusers. Just let the children name anyone who influenced them in a lawsuit, and then force those “don’t judge” people to defend the charges.