Re: Outraged, May 7 at 12:00 pm

Thanks for your wonderful sense of humor. It touched me.

You asked how I knew what I said. I have quite a few qualifications. 1. I am 80 years old, and been around the block. 2. I have been married twice and many times in love with women and other females from the womb to the tomb. Cradle to grave, if you prefer. I was a Biology major in college, and worked a lifetime in the one of the Biology disciplines. Have done research that was published. I knew both my grandmothers, my mother who lived to the ripe old age of 102, every day a woman, and married to my father for 82 years, he lived to 79 and my mother remained his wife for the rest of hers.

I have loved more women and girls than I can count. They are the spice of my life. I like the dumb ones, but love the smart ones and the ones who can hold their own in any battle of the sexes. I even like some of the women who can physically intimidate the brawniest man. Yet, I know and you know that most women are seduced by men with sex in mind. And most men will let any physically attractive woman lure him into her trap, even if it costs him anything short of his manhood. (Incestuous encounters respectfully declined and other inappropriate behavior discouraged.) In this day and age few married people have not had an affair outside the marriage vows. When I was younger, it was more common than we realized.

Finally, I have four daughters, 8 grand daughters, and some female great grand children. I have known the daughters and wives of countless acquaintances and relatives. I never paid a prostitute more than she was worth, and I never paid my wife full price. Wives earn far more than they could be paid. Most women are worth much more than they could get in the market place. For that matter, so am I. I did not work for my pay, I was underpaid for my work. But, my wife and daughters earned every penny they cost me. And they usually had a good sense of humor. Bless them!

You still don’t offer any suggestions for what it means to “move forward” while problems still exist.

You hear “victim baiting” and “the old 70s argument of ‘we have it so bad’” because you’d rather move on. I hear “Hey wait a minute! We’ve made progress, but not as much as you think. There’s more work to do!”

But I’m afraid the most telling words in you comment are, “worships Hillary Clinton only because she identifies with gender struggle.” It’s about Hillary, isn’t it? You’re picking a fight with Marie because she has written in support of the dreaded Hillary, with a whif of gender-complaint just like Hillary. It almost makes you have to change your shorts, doesn’t it? Boy, in this neck of the woods, you’re not alone!

Well, would ya looky there “boys”.  We got us anutter red ona’ hook.  Thro er’ back, that thing ain’t nothing but a minno, y’no.  Sheeeit….we kin do bet’rn dat.  Sheeeit…yeh boys thro’ dis un’ bak.  Sheeeit… ol’ JC ain en regesterd’.  Yeh, no what I’s sayin.  Sheeit….

tbach, you’re arguing the same crap that has held back the success of progressives for decades. There is a need for a new argument and new dialog. All you’ve done, which is what Marie is doing, is victim bait. Look at the posts here! Women talking about how hard it has been in their lives and men agreeing how awful it is to be a woman. It’s victim enabling, and it hasn’t gotten you shit. That’s why the inequality today still exists.

You miss entirely the point of my outrage. You’re argument should have died in the 70s, but then the white women didn’t want to share rights with the black women and everyone got divided over civil and gender rights, which are both under the same platform of progressivism.

It’s even more obvious that you didn’t even bother to read my entire comment because I acknowledge, and still do, the inequality of today’s society. However, every time someone brings up the old 70s argument of “we have it so bad” most of America looks the other way because progress has occurred, and you aren’t doing your part to incite new dialog and enabling people to be proactive in our government to progress the equality of people in America.

Marie is a lost victim baiter who worships Hillary Clinton only because she identifies with gender struggle. Resentment, distrust and focus on atrocities doesn’t change the law of the land or elect progressive candidates into the Senate and House. It just provides people with something to cling to instead of moving forward.

You’re big on sweeping statements and short of particulars, bucko.

Feel free to support your notion that equal rights and civil rights are stagnant because civil rights and equal rights advocates have dared to voice their outrage at what persists. Care to offer an alternative? Sounds like you have a hair across your arse about certain types, which you’ve happily grouped people into. Rather than argue Marie’s thesis you launch into a tirade about types.

You “make the dialog on this topic” eh? Well, you’re right about one thing: I have no place in this dialog. You’re talking to yourself.

Re: Frank Goodman, Sr.,

Your quote:  “Male dominance is dominant in biology. Yet, female guile is dominant in some successful species. The human female is no exception. With the mental faculty more relevant than the sex drive, females have dominated the market for sex. Females can be prostitutes, but males can’t make a living at that occupation. Pretty but poor females can attract rich and affluent males, but handsome but poor males don’t do so well in the marriage market. Dumb blonds may be bitches in bed, but smart girls do better overall.

Do you actually believe this rot..?  “Female guile”???  What the hell is that?  I want to be sure I understand you correctly, males are dominant well…because they just are..and we can contrast that with female guileness…?  Males are dominant because they beat down women or shaft them on pay and promotion or standing in this world.  Why doesn’t the “female guile” you speak of get women their WHOLE DOLLAR instead of the $.77 they actually earn…?  But wait a minute, women are LUCKY ENOUGH to make a living as a PROSTITUTE!  But POOR men are not that lucky…!?  Are you serious?? 

Well let’s not forget “pretty females can attract rich and affluent males, but handsome but poor males don’t do so well in the marriage market”.  That is just sick.  Do you mean like Donald Trump’s wife..?  The bought and paid for high class sex slave…!  Aside from that, is that how “pretty females” are going to make their living? By marrying some “rich and affluent male” cause he can’t resist (apparently, according to you) getting himself some of that.  What planet are you from!  You are the epitomy of the article and then some.

And where did you attain all this insight concerning men and women and girls and boys?  The fundamentalist camp for the ADVANCEMENT OF MISOGNISTS, INBREDS AND MCCAIN REPUBLICANS.  What the hell is wrong with you?  After that you claim to have had children!  You are a sick degenerate.

In my opinion gender and sex relations are one of the most complex areas of social and cultural evolution, much more complex than race or other such areas of power disparity.  For me the issue is a lot deeper than the dominant vs. subordinate kind of simplicity articles like this one seem to suggest it is.  Pointing out acts of evil and suggesting they are part of the cultural milieu, is really divisive and misleading.  In every culture on earth their has always been divisions and differences between men and women.  Essentially each culture is really two cultures one for women and one for men.  Additionally their are real differences between men and women which we cannot get past.  In our modern world things are changing so fast our culture has not been able to keep up.  We still have the two cultures, but the lines are blurred, the meanings unclear.  The result is a kind of vacuum of understanding for both sexes.  Neither women nor men are sure of the role they are to play in society or how to play it.  We have outdated cultural vestiges of times gone by, and newly emerging cultural trends.  In the society at large there is a wide spectrum of belief on this issue from both men and women.  This adds to the complexity of the issue.  However, the most complex part of this is the sexual attraction aspect.  That takes what would be a complex issue on a intellectual level and turns it into a complex issue on emotional levels too.  As humans we are hopelessly incapable of ever separating the issue from our raw sexual drives, this is just as true for women as men.  That means we can never have a truly objective and clear view.  When it comes to sex, rational ideas fly out the window.  This is why I dislike using porn as an example of cultural misogyny.  Porn is not playing to the intellect. Domination and submission are a natural part of human sexuality.  Passionate sex has a certain kind of aggressive element and a theatrical aspect to it, thats not sexist, but part of our primal selves which don’t work along the lines of intellect.  Its this wild aspect of ourselves that makes this issue so difficult, and the feelings so strong.  What it ultimately boils down to is just trying to have respect for others of all sexes and genders.  That respect includes letting people decide for themselves if they want to be sexually provocative in clothing and behavior or not (men and women).  The fact that men tend to be more responsive to visual sexual provocation is not a sign of inner evil or hatred of women.  It is simply a sign of the primitive drives we all possess. Men don’t choose to be that way, they just are.  Women too have irrational sex drives, and respond to that accordingly.  How many otherwise strong and intelligent women fall for the not so intelligent beefcake with a cavalier attitude and strong looking arms?  How many women use their sexuality as a means to control said beefcake?  Hell women have take down entire kingdoms with the power of their sexuality.  Strangely feminism seems to reject the use of the most basic source of power women have over men, and vilify men for being so easily overpowered by their sex drives.

Sorry, but I make the dialog regarding this topic. The tired and histrionically sycophantic dialog Marie Cocco represents in this article has done NOTHING for the equal rights movement in the past thirty years. The focus on sexual scandals, and resentful attitude she presents is exactly like Reverend Wright’s focus on racism and bitterness in regard to government policy in this country. In that respect, they are equal in their exaggerated rabble rousing.

I have great distaste for this argument of j’accuse, victim baiting and guilt mongering, which does a disservice for progressive policy. If you can’t see how both civil rights and equal rights have remained stagnant the last thirty years due to these same kind of redundant and ineffective droning of would-be victims, then you have no place in the dialog, bucko.

Male dominance is dominant in biology. Yet, female guile is dominant in some successful species. The human female is no exception. With the mental faculty more relevant than the sex drive, females have dominated the market for sex. Females can be prostitutes, but males can’t make a living at that occupation. Pretty but poor females can attract rich and affluent males, but handsome but poor males don’t do so well in the marriage market. Dumb blonds may be bitches in bed, but smart girls do better overall. 

Just as it is brains over brawn, it is brains over beauty. Beauty equates to sexual attractiveness, not smart moms. But smart moms produce better boys. And smart dads produce smart girls. Men are not opposed to pretty girls, even though they would rather lie against them than for them. The smartest men I know have smart but rather ordinary looking wives, and the smartest women I know have smart husbands. The divorce rate among ugly people overall, I suspect, is low compared with divorce rate among pretty women and handsome men.

Women are sill evolving and may reach equality within my remaining lifetime. Then I will have to sink to a new low. I started out as a poor handsome shy nerd. Women tended toward more outgoing, craggy brutes with some money. It has been downhill the whole way and I have had to settle for a girl smart enough to have me, but ugly enough to be rejected by the better positioned male competition. I had beautiful daughters and handsome sons who messed up the gene pool again.

Boy, you really missed the boat on this one, Aegrus. You’ve done precisely what you accuse Marie of doing, but in reverse. You’ve taken a broad generalization of what you call “pseudo-feminist matriarchs” and applied it to an individual, Marie, and then layered on a thick frosting of personal ridicule, because you think she fits this fabulous archetype.

Furthermore, I wouldn’t characterize the good Rev. Wright as “only really [caring about himself.” He sees injustice, points it out, and uses it not to encourage a woe-is-me attitude, but to inspire his flock to rise above the system that would hold them down. That’s what preachers do - inspire. He may have many faults, but only thinking of himself isn’t one of them.

Marie isn’t a preacher, she’s a journalist and, in this forum, an opinion columnist. Her role is to make us think, to cause conversations on the topic to start up. From the looks of things here, she’s been quite a success.

She presents an idea: that the thread of misogyny runs deep in our culture, despite (and sometimes because of) progress in women’s rights. We chose to gloss over that fact, but when this thread surfaces in some of the most extreme circumstances, it should call our attention back. If you think that analysis is flawed, explain why. But if you leap to generalizations and insults, you’re going to be left behind. You have no place in the dialog. Adios.

Marie Cocco:

Your quote: “Even so, Vanity Fair’s soft-porn treatment of a young actress whom millions of girls adore neatly captures the unsavory overlap between innocence and indecency that undermines the efforts of teachers and parents everywhere who wish their daughters to grow as people, not sex objects.”

Dare you SUGGEST that girls/women are PEOPLE!  I find it alarming that you need to “take the higher ground here”!  OMG, WTF…! I feel speechless, and that’s not a norm for me… in all seriousness, WHAT IS GOING ON, WHERE OR WHEN DID THIS START?  It is pervasive and against everything everyone has worked so hard to adopt.

Absolutely.  I have witnessed this also.  But the alarming part is the pervasiveness of the tweens and young adult women who engage in this behavior(at least from what I have encountered).  It’s outright alarming.  Although I have also found a sort of freakish hatred of men who won’t succumb to being “big man on campus” around women.  It’s bizarre.  I tend to have the WTF moments around these girls, it’s not good.

I noticed this reading the news today.  It makes me all the more outraged regarding the Austrian story which continuously unfolds.

“A barman at a brothel frequented by Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man who imprisoned his own daughter in a dungeon under his house, has told how some of the prostitutes were so frightened by his perversions that they refused to accept him as a client.

He listed various extreme demands made by the retired electrical engineer, who liked to inflict pain on the women and asked them to act like corpses…..”

.....“Ninety-five per cent of the guests are entirely normal, 3 per cent are slightly ‘derailed’, but Fritzl belonged to the last 2 per cent of extreme perverts, who are surely mentally deranged,” Mr F told the Oesterreich newspaper.

He said that some of the prostitutes would refuse to go upstairs with him – “which was extremely rare in this business” – because of demands including sadism and “demanding that a girl should pretend to be a corpse”

Full article:  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3879488.ece

Bravo!! I agree. Women are very much complicit in the subordination and repression of their sisters’, making them no less guilty of the same Masculine Domination that they complain about.

In my own experiences, it comes from a mindset of females who for whatever the reasons, would PREFER to be men, since they share in this Masculine Domination mindset.

Blame the victim..it’s not just the male species that does it.

Amen and thank you Aegrus, especially for being blunt.

This is obviously a slow news day for tabloid journalism, which is really the only thing Ms Cocco has seemed capable of, for well over 6 months now.

Like we really need more hype under the title of what actually is a very serious subject, which is the equaling of rights, political and socio-ecomic rights… of the genders as well as the classes in our own society.

Still making $0.77 to every mans$1.00, Roe v Wade on the ropes , no help with child or elder care, and need 2 incomes per family-if he hasn’t jsut up and left, leaving everything to ‘Mom’, Murder is the new way to avoid divorce and asset loses….Oh I could Write a doctoral dissertaiton on how far we have fallen backwards over the last say 30 yrs.
We were moving Forward- for a Blink of an eye. Equality was in our sights, bu then the “Moral Majority ‘took over Gov’t and Oganiazations like NOW Fell silent- Tell me how many time You’ve seen Gandy on TV (Daily Show 1x)About the same goes for Political Discussion. Then their ‘Feminist’ agenda which negates Equal rights for ALL- I’m a Libber (all inclusive). And who do they throw theri Support behind another do nothing for the last 35 yrs in regards to womans rights- Hillary. Top of th elist of Disgraceful Female ‘leaders’ in this country with Rice, Pelosi, Feinstein and Boxer filling out the ranks- Like ‘50’s wives pampering this adminstration every step of the way. Can only think of one Female on TV worth giving an ATTA Girl Too- Rachel Maddow- give ‘em Hell, Now she can hold her own even in the Boys club.so much so they are brought down to personal attacks to try and prove her wrong. I personally love when a guy has to resort to calling me a bitch- means I out smarted them!
We have to start again Girls- the ‘boomers ’ left US on this issue Too!

“but only if those women don’t act just like men.”

Argument kinda leads to a conclusion of men being a monolithic and homogeneous group, JS. Additionally, I prescribe a doctrine where power is only an illusion. Perhaps every person of every kind should just take a breather and realize we aren’t all that important?

I agree that this should not be a political issue during the campaign, but it most certainly is one.  And i did not take from the article the same point that you did…i suppose that i took the opposite point.

It would be fascinating to hear the candidates discuss these issues seriously, but we won’t.

Indeed, women in power have been just as dastardly as men in power…that is a shame and perhaps a failure of “feminism”.  I’ve always hoped that women in power would be a significant improvement on the men…a cynic is just a romantic who’s lived too long.

Seeing women in power (positions of importance…what could be more important than motherhood?) may change attitudes over time, but only if those women don’t act just like men.  If they do it will just be a matter of getting used to the fact that shit isn’t ever going to get any better.

You might be interested in reading Joseph Campbell’s take on women and power…anthropologically speaking.  Women have always had the real power; men have spent the last 50,000+ years trying to usurp it.

1) You’re preaching to the choir regarding sexual assault.

2) The porn dilemma is nonsense that everyone feels strongly about only because in involves sex. It’s a baiting issue like abortion rights. Honestly, we should just keep out of it unless it is to prevent minors from abuse or human trafficking, which are both illegal to begin with.

3) If you let fear determine your actions, you’re feeding neo-fascism.

I’m being a little blunt on this, but I feel it is necessary to break down the facts because people fuel endless dialog wars on this topic and nothing ever gets accomplished. There are more effective ways of getting equal rights, and you are 100% correct in the statement about judging a country by the freedom of women. Every society with equal, or close to, rights for both genders has a significantly higher standard of living. Try shooting for that instead of porn addicts in their basements.

If you want to judge the health of a society, look at how its women are doing - all of them.

What’s with dressing children in clothes described as “skank wear” by one woman horrified at what a local store had on offer for her nine-year-old girl? Child - and now baby - porn is a sign that porn consumers are getting jaded with women of legal age and are taking the next step down. I never could understand why anyone would want to take their young daughter to see Britney Spears. The whole Miley Cyrus thing is just more of the same.

Should we be surprised if it turns out the same way?

Rape is not only accepted as an act of war, it’s underreported and overlooked in the military. Approximately one-third of women in the military have been sexually harassed or raped by their fellow soldiers, some even by recruiting officers. The reports of sexual abuse by military contractors against women employees have been virtually ignored. The police are involved. Members of government have gone after underaged pages of both sexes.

It’s frightening to be a woman these days. It’s even more frightening to be a woman with daughters.

If figures with power and authority (and guns) can get away with this stuff, who the hell are you gonna call?

you would think that, but apparently state sponsored and institutionalized misogyny is not as big an issue as “our own culture of sexism and misogyny”.

I have a real problem with this kind of pseudo-feminism. Marie wants to package all of male influence with, as if inseparable, these extreme acts committed by a minority.

Now, if we are going to discuss, fully, how it is immoral and wrong to invade countries like Iraq because most of those Muslims had nothing to do with any terrorist attack on the United States, or be rounded and accurate about how Reverend Wright doesn’t represent all black preachers or an archetypal “black church,” pseudo-feminist matriarchs like Marie here have to examine their view of the male sex.

It is not in me to deny the truth of pervasive sexism and patriarchy, but what have these resentful tirades ever accomplished? People like Marie Cocco are exactly the same as Reverend Wright to the extent they only really care about themselves, and focus on negativity they have experienced instead of moving forward. While the bitterness is understandable, I’ll argue about its efficacy in the real world.

Nothing worthwhile has ever been accomplished through spite. Marie is a selfish individual, and I’m glad to say I don’t think she represents all feminists because I know better than to group whole parts of society under labels out of anguish. Grow up, Marie. People with real courage and who create real change don’t tie bitter anchors to their heel.

...and the only way to correct the tragic injustice of worldwide misogyny is to elect Sen Clinton.  She’s a woman; unless Carville is right and she’s got enough testicles to hand them out like Halloween candy.

Misogyny is, indeed, a problem in the world.  But it is far from the only problem.  And while pundits are happy to wax horrific about crazy old Austrians and kooky church groups, they keep their mouths clamped tightly shut about how women are treated in Saudi Arabia.  Granted, Saudi Arabia falls into the category of “world-wide misogyny”, but i would think that the institutionalized misogyny of a country we hold hands with and send billions of dollars to would be a slightly bigger issue than a guy in Austria.