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The Virgin Makers - - Hymenoplasty in the News
By
Lois W. Stern
Last week the following ad popped into my Google search on cosmetic surgery:
"Repair hymen and regain virginity. Lady Doctor. Free consultation."**
Several weeks ago, a court in northern France annulled the marriage of a Muslim couple, simply because the bride had lied about her virginity. When the couple discretely separated from their wedding party long enough to consummate their marriage, the groom learned of his bride’s deception. With guests still partying on the dance floor, the bridegroom returned to reveal her secret and publicly humiliate his wife. This annulment sparked such an intense national debate that it now resides within an appeals court, with an expected ruling sometime later this fall.
Hymen repair has become such a topic of conversation that it was even the subject of the film comedy. “Women’s Hearts“, that opened in Italy last month. When a Moroccan-born woman living in Italy goes to Casablanca for this operation, one character jokes that, "She wants to bring her odometer count back down to zero.”
In Vancouver, sex therapist Dr. Faizal Sahukhan has counseled Muslim couples dealing with the fallout of faked virginity:
"Some clients have taken fake blood capsules into the nuptial bed. They hold it in their hand upon first intercourse with their husbands. They pop it to try to convince people (of their virginity) on their wedding night,"** Sahukhan says.
I thought these were isolated cases until I learned that Dr. Robert Stubbs, a now retired Toronto-based plastic surgeon, built his reputation upon 'revirginiized' patients. Twenty-five years ago, a young couple visited Dr. Robert Stubbs, with an unusual request. She wanted her virginity back. The pair, born in Iran but raised in Canada, had dated through college. She had become a lawyer, he, a doctor. They had talked often about marriage, but when the young man decided to pursue a medical specialty in the United States, they agreed to part ways – but first he was to pay for her revirginization.
Since that day, Dr. Robert Stubbs performed that same operation on hundreds of other women across Canada. He won international acclaim for refining the hymenoplasty procedure, which involved cutting away the scarred edge of the membrane broken during intercourse and narrowing the entrance of the vagina. In approximately one hour, he was able to transform each patient into a surgical virgin.
Stubbs explained that his patients were hardly restricted to one ethnic group.
"The women came from all backgrounds. They were Coptic Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim. The majority were educated, from upper-status families. In spite of their exposure to Western ways, they still had this need to follow their family's culture. They said they would not force their daughters to do this but they were caught with one foot in the old world and one foot in the new."**
While women around the world have been secretly reclaiming their virginity for decades, the moral and legal implications of this procedure have currently entered the spotlight.
Surgeons who perform these procedures acknowledge that they are helping to perpetuate a fraud, by providing women with a mechanism to deceive their husbands. But in defense of taking part in the deception, they pose the question: " Just because a woman once made a foolish mistake, why should she be doomed to eternal suffering?"**
How do you feel about 'Virginity restoration?'
Is this just one more example of how women continue to jump hoops to make themselves desirable to men? Is it symbolic of a larger sickness in our society, reflecting male dominance and inequality between the sexes? Or is it simply a means to a peaceful resolution to an age old problem for those caught within the clash of cultural conflict?
(C) Lois W. Stern
You have my permission to reprint this article in part or full providing it contains the following attribution:
Lois W. Stern is the author of Sex, Lies and Cosmetic Surgery, (Infinity, 2006), soon to be republished in a revised edition with a CD enclosure. Lois invites prospective cosmetic surgery patients, physicians, and media to visit her website to read other articles, sign up for her monthly newsletter, or purchase autographed copies of her book at: [Link Removed] Once there, be sure to use the navigation bar at the top of the screen.
Lois enjoys hearing from her readers and will actually respond.
Send a message:
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I am astounded at this information. I think it is horrible that women must live up to a certain expectation of keeping their virginity. Although I reside in fast pace America where virginity is rarely kept until marriage, other cultures are taking this too far.
Having sex before marriage should not be considered a sin. I by no means promote having multiple partners, however if a person is in a relationship making love should be considered beautiful and not sinful.
Sometimes relationships do not work out, and many separate after losing their virginity. In some cultures marriages are arranged at such a young age that there is not time for intercourse. For those that do have sex before marriage, I believe it is horrible that women must go through a procedure because they are ashamed of their past or to please a new partner in their future.
I can understand some women undertaking this procedure. I was raped many times before the age of 12 and I considered doing this because it would allow me to ‘give’ my virginity to who I want to give it to...something that was denied me as a child.
I'm a man, but I like girls - believe that they are cute, sweet, pretty, darling, adorable, precious, princesses, angels, "full of sugar and spice and everything nice" - love to see them happy and hate to see them hurt. Over the years and to the present, for various reasons, a lot of girls have been hurt. I'll try in this little post to do something about that:
What is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in virginity, sex, marriage, etc. for someone can depend on a LOT of issues, but what DOES seem wrong nearly always is for a woman to have sex, have her hymen sewn back together, and, then, have sex with another man and have him believe in her virginity. That’s called deception, and in general it is risky.
So, what might be the point of virginity, for either men or women? Well, people start to get interested in sex at about age 12. Women get married at roughly age 20. If the marriage works, then she can be in that marriage happily for, say, 40 years. The time from age 12 to age 20 is only eight years.
For a pretty girl to have a lot of sex between the ages of 12 and 20 is risky in various respects but easy in that she will have no shortage of willing boys or men. Now with the ‘hookup’ culture, e.g., a party with beer and girls with ‘minidresses‘, ‘thong’ panties, and little else, also sex is risky in various respects but not difficult—he can have no shortage of willing women.
But for the good marriage for the 40 years, that really IS a challenge: Apparently in the US now, over one half of marriages end in divorce. Here there can be ‘costs’—financial, legal, emotional, for the man, woman, and their children.
So, the question has to be, “How to have a good marriage?“. Men are concluding:
“If all she sees in a man is another ‘hookup‘, then NO WAY will I accept the financial, legal, and emotional risks of a marriage. Not a chance. Maybe you can get in my car, house, mouth, pants, shower, and bed, but you CAN‘T get in my wedding ring. NO WAY.”
Or, any man with much to bring to a marriage will easily conclude, “I’m NOT making a long term investment in a short term asset.”
What’s better is a long term investment in a reliable, great, growing long term asset. But, for this promise of things to come in the distant future, have to be VERY SURE what is being offered.
Need to make four preliminary points:
First, as from C. Nadelson, traditionally marriage was about
“offspring, security, and caretaking“.
For something else, are doing ‘social re-engineering’ based on next to nothing solid in theory or experience.
Second, as in E. Fromm, “Men and women deserve equal respect as persons but are not the same“, and in Western Civilization the strong effort to regard women as ‘equal’ in all respects except the most obvious physiological differences is a big mistake from the French Revolution where any difference was seen as a threat of injustice. It was a mistake in 1789 and a disaster now.
Third, the big effort in the US since, say, birth control pills in 1960 to have women ‘equal‘, ‘liberated‘, ‘just like men‘, autonomous, independent, and self-sufficient is being strongly canceled by Darwin: Such women, overwhelmingly, are being weak, sick, or dead limbs on Darwin’s tree and, thus, ensuring that their genes are being rapidly eliminated from the gene pool so that their efforts at ‘equality’ will not last. In the past mostly women had little option but to pursue
“offspring, security, and caretaking“.
Since now that it appears that women do have an option, with high irony, the women that take the option are eliminating it: In just a few generations what will be left in the gene pool will be women who really WANT JUST
“offspring, security, and caretaking”
and want nothing to do with ‘equality‘. ‘Women’s liberation’ is self-correcting. This century stands to see the fastest change in the human gene pool of the last 40,000 years. Birth control pills are ensuring that we will have only women who want nothing to do with such pills.
Fourth, any man worth marrying at all will insist that in the marriage vows his wife will promise to “obey“. No joke. Men, women: Don’t go there otherwise. For details, see, e.g., E. Berne’s ‘Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis‘. Or, this stuff about ‘symmetry’ and ‘two equal captains’ on the bridge of the ship of life is a DISASTER. For an effective ship, there’s going to be just ONE captain. Mother Nature and girls 15 know this: That’s why girls 15 want NOTHING serious to do with boys 15 and, e.g., Lady Di, are much more interested in men twice their age.
So, why might a man want to work hard to make the 40 years good? Okay, beyond how she does, or might do, in a 10 minute hookup, is she really, REALLY, far over the top, rock-solidly committed - deep down to the center of the cells of her bone marrow, by nature, nurture, passion, reason, example, religion, tradition, belief system, desire for security, and social pressure, at LEAST all of these - to a GOOD MARRIAGE, "richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; for better or worse; forsaking all others; love, honor, and obey, till death do we part", say it, mean it, and do it, for 40 years or more? And, BELIEVE me, sweetheart, somewhere during the 40 years you will very much stand to need the "for better or worse" part.
Well, for this success, need for the marriage to have ALL the help it can get. Sex has been around going WAY back, and it’s not going to go away soon. Sex is a big part of a good marriage. So, one way to have the marriage stronger is to have the sex IN the marriage and not OUTSIDE of the marriage. In particular, there is NO WAY soon a large fraction of men in a good marriage will be happy about sex outside of the marriage. NO WAY. In particular, sex before marriage seriously undercuts the meaning of sex within the marriage. Or, how come she was eagerly hooking up with Tom, Dick, and Harry and, then, suddenly after a ceremony will be faithful to Joe for another 40 years? Not likely. And, in practice today, “There are a LOT of affairs.“. If Joe is really a good bet for 40 years, then he’s not going to bet on such a girl.
Or sweetheart teen-dream, your idea is some long string of ‘relationships‘, all broken, all but the first needing hymen surgery, and leading up to the relationship that lasts for 40 years? Hmm. Think about it. Or, just install a zipper.
If dating and sitting on a sofa watching TV and just thrilled to be together and think of sex, then either he (A) REALLY loves her and wants to marry her and have the strongest marriage possible and, thus, delay sex until after the wedding or (B) doesn’t really love her and doesn’t intend to marry her in which case she shouldn’t have sex with him. Either way, if they are interested in 40 years of a good marriage, then they shouldn’t have sex then.
I understood all this stuff at age 15. What surprised me was that ALL the six girls I dated from then until I got married did NOT accept ANY of this stuff. Instead, as long as they could trust me not to be violent, impregnate them, infect them, tear their clothes, or ruin their reputations, they were from eager up to desperate for sex. In fact, usually they didn’t worry about any of these things. They didn’t say “Stop“, and they didn’t worry or take precautions. In one case, what she really wanted was in daylight, outdoors, not far from the public. One I hadn’t kissed yet, but she was already eager to “trust me“. It went on this way. Consistently they had low interest in affection and high interest in friction.
I hope that those girls all had good lives, but I know that at least one did not. Whatever, they were not good bets for a good marriage, and the solution is not hymen surgery.
It is now accepted that men find planning much easier than women. So, basically the planning should be done by her father and then her husband. Before her father lets her be alone with her date, the date and her father should talk about
“offspring, security, and caretaking”
and in particular how he, the date, is going to take VERY good care of that father’s little girl.
Or, any good father knows that his daughter’s emotionalism is much, MUCH stronger than her date’s and that her rationalism is much, MUCH weaker than his or her emotionalism. So, to control her daughter’s emotionalism, her father will have to trust her date’s rationalism, not her daughter’s. Net, mostly the father and the date can’t trust the daughter to say “No“.
So, the father should dress her in floral pastel print chiffon dresses with full skirt, fluffy bodice, outlined and tied with satin ribbon and a big bow, and insist on
“offspring, security, and caretaking”
and NOTHING else. Otherwise, it’s hymen surgery, decades of tears, a weak, sick, or dead limb on the tree, and poor, few, or no grandchildren.
It boils down to what the girl wants: 40 years of a good marriage or decades of tears?
Wow, blood capsules? This is one reason I condemn arranged marriages
Wow, Pollux. If that wasn’t a (lengthy) satirical comment, then colour me amazed that there still exist people, like you, who believe that females can’t be allowed to be responsible for themselves.
You say:
"It is now accepted that men find planning much easier than women. So, basically the planning should be done by her father and then her husband."
"any man worth marrying at all will insist that in the marriage vows his wife will promise to "obey". No joke."
Or, my particular favourite:
"this stuff about 'symmetry' and 'two equal captains' on the bridge of the ship of life is a DISASTER. For an effective ship, there's going to be just ONE captain."
Naturally, you‘re that captain, aren’t you?
Heavens forbid that each individual decides what to do with their own life. A “father's little girl“, once she is an adult, is the captain of her own life, forever, irrevocably. So is every mother’s little boy, much to the chagrin of over-protective mothers who still wish to run their child’s life.
Jove, I want to help girls and women, not hurt them. I’ve seen too many feminine tears. I very, VERY much wish that you were correct. I started out hoping very much to support what you propose and to reject the traditional quotes that you extracted—you are good at extracting quotes! I made a VERY big bet that those quotes were wrong and that you were right. It looked like I bet on a VERY promising prospect, very, VERY, spectacularly promising.
I had no idea how anyone could be as capable as she was: Prizes in 4H, cooking sewing, raising chickens, Future Farmers of America, Methodist Youth Fellowship, piano, voice, clarinet, Mama in ‘I Remember Mama‘, directed the senior class play, edited the Annual, Valedictorian, Phi Beta Kappa, ‘Summa Cum Laude‘, Woodrow Wilson, NSF, two years in one award, top research university Ph.D. I’m good at mathematics, physics, and computing; she was nearly as good in those fields, occasionally better, and MUCH better at everything else—read I. Goffman’s ‘Presentation’ quickly, easily (D. Tannen was essentially a Goffman student), read James’s ‘The Golden Bowl’ quickly, easily for fun. With essentially no background in computing, quickly learned the basics of artificial intelligence, where I’ve done world-class work, and wrote a brilliant first example, best I ever saw, better than brilliant men who were specializing in computer science. She was brilliant beyond belief.
On what you propose, she bet her whole life. I bet much of my life. We were wrong. We were totally wrong. We lost totally.
When there were problems, I kept betting, for years and years.
But the bets were a disaster, a grand disaster, a big zero, a huge loss, loss of much of my life and in the end ALL of hers. She killed herself: “I feel that all my life I’ve been pulling some terrible load, and now I just can’t pull it anymore.” Of course, I said, “I don’t want you pulling any heavy loads. If there are any heavy loads to pull, then I’ll pull them.” She responded with nothing, and that was one of the worst problems. She had the best help we could get her, and they all believed just as you do, that, yes, she could keep pulling this load, that at least she could be independent, autonomous, self-sufficient, make her own decisions, in the men’s world. She couldn’t.
I bet “for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do we part“, and that is just what happened.
What was wrong? What was wrong with her, me, us? Eventually, net, it was clear: There was NOTHING wrong. She just tried to do what you propose instead of the traditional role. What was wrong was women’s ‘equality‘; it was fatal. I have a friend who has concluded that Steinum’s women’s ‘equality’ has hurt more people than any of Hitler, Stalin, or Mao; he may be correct.
That world of work out there was created by men when women were not in that world and really were stuck in the home. Maybe that world should be different, and maybe not, but men created it in a way convenient for men. It’s NOT convenient, or hardly tolerable, for women. Maybe it would, could, should, and eventually can be, but now it’s just NOT.
Daily she ran into just terrible problems that were meaningless to me and to men: Men don’t see those problems, are just oblivious to such things. Women’s sensitivities, etc. may be just crucial in parts of motherhood, but men don’t have those sensitivities, and in the men’s world those sensitivities are big obstacles.
The pattern was often: “You just do it this way, A, B. C. That’s all there is to it.” She would say, “But, but, but ....“. I’d say, “F‘get about those things. They probably won’t happen. If one does, then we’ll worry about it then.” She’d say, “But, but, but ....” And on it would go. Hopelessly. Disastrously. For years.
If she worked beside me, as essentially an assistant to me where she felt that I would be the target of any blame, then she was fine and a GREAT help to me. But any time she felt that she might be a target of blame from outside, she would be just terrified. Or, near the end, after years and years, when I finally concluded and explained to her in an effort at identifying the problem in order to solve it, “You can walk on water in warm weather with special ease and grace as long as only loving, supportive family and friends are in the audience. But in front of a powerful, influential, potentially critical audience, walking at all can be difficult.” to which she said with resignation but rare agreement, “That’s about it“. Of course, right away I said, “Then we will arrange that you can work out of the view of people that bother you.“, to which she said NOTHING, which was a huge problem. She once said, “I’m not very good at playing second fiddle.” No, she was EXCELLENT at playing second fiddle and just hopeless at playing first chair. It is just that from her mother, etc., she WANTED to play first chair. Or, she was GREAT at playing first chair in the practice room but in the concert hall had to stay with second fiddle.
Sure, it sounds like anxiety disease, social phobia, and OCD, but clinical stuff of this particular case aside, women are just MUCH more sensitive and vulnerable to anxiety, ESPECIALLY in groups or before other people, than men are. For actual diagnosable anxiety disease, women have 80% of it; it’s essentially just a woman’s disease. All the Nervous Nellies are women. Men know that there are supersonic bullets going overhead, but they are six inches too high and nothing to worry about. If those bullets bother you, then you don’t belong in the battle. Girls: Think about it.
Women’s high concerns for what others will think is much of why in the second grade on, the little girls are GREAT at working in groups with the other little girls, and the little boys don’t have a weak little hollow hint of a tiny clue about how. Not a chance. It’s totally hopeless. The girls REALLY care, and are REALLY good at it, and, if it goes badly, are TERRIFIED. The boys are helpless, clueless, totally indifferent, out of it.
In high school, the girls know how to give good parties, and the most the boys know how to do is show up and be awkward. Just hope the boys don’t bring alcohol, get into fights, and break things.
As in E. Fromm, “Men and women deserve equal respect as persons but are not the same.”
Boys and girls, men and women are NOT ‘equal‘: In MANY things, especially in nearly everything in K-12, the girls are MUCH better than the boys. In parenting for children five and under, men are hopelessly incompetent. And there are some places the boys are better than the girls.
Being captain of the ship ain’t necessarily the most desirable position. In particular the claim that ship captain is more desirable, important, or commendable than motherhood is a BIG LIE.
The quotes of mine that you extracted have the traditional view, i.e., assuming that there are English majors here (I’m not!), “the great natural order” that always to me was outrageous nonsense since it essentially rules out originality and progress. But the situation was very much just as if Mother Nature had been there long before my wife and I were. Or as if millennia after millennia man after man had tried that bet and lost.
When that bet worked, the winners were NOT our ancestors. So, mostly that bet didn’t work. Or in that direction about the best a woman can hope for is to be a weak, sick, or dead limb on Darwin’s tree. Darwin would have to say that women’s ‘equality’ is self-limiting.
That bet doesn’t work now. Sorry. I wish it had; I believed it would; my wife and I gave it a fantastically strong effort; but it doesn’t work.
I still like girls and women (even if they don’t try just to be sugar and spice and everything nice), don’t like to see them cry, and don’t want them to get hurt. I hope that girls and women don’t try to pursue that hopeless bet or, if they do try, don’t get hurt. For their being healthy limbs on Darwin’s tree with that bet, I see no real hope at all.
Yes, far too often women who tried to be cared for were not and would have been much better off being independent, autonomous, and self-sufficient; but the fact remains: For a woman to be independent, autonomous, and self-sufficient in basically the men’s world is a LONG SHOT.
I very much wish I had children. But, I made a bet, and I lost, and now it’s too late.
If I had a daughter, then I would work hard to arrange that she could (A) do as much as she could without getting hurt but (B) have a VERY good case of the traditional situation of
“offspring, security, and caretaking”
readily available.
If a girl wants to prove that in every separable metric space every closed set is the union of a perfect set and a set that is at most countable and, thus, do well in Harvard’s Math 55, e.g., as in “Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man” at
[Link Removed]
fine with me. Still I believe that a girl should stay with "sugar, spice, and everything nice", "daddy's little girl", cared for, cherished, protected, be just irresistible, nearly too pretty to touch, way, WAY too pretty to permit any risk of harm, in a pastel, floral print chiffon dress with an outrageously full skirt, fluffy bodice, outlined with satin ribbons, with a huge bow in the back, waist length blond or auburn hair, with a second huge bow (the memory from her party in the ninth grade is just INDELIBLE), be good as a wife and mother, with a good husband, 5-15 years older as captain of the ship, and forget about playing basketball in the NBA, crashing through glass ceilings, being a scientist, engineer, captain of industry, etc. That traditional role for girls is not as good as I hoped for - BOTH Ph.D. AND motherhood - but is much better than the alternative.
For the NBA, a girl who could beat Shaq one on one in basketball may have been my high school plane geometry teacher, but she’s no ones ancestor. For any healthy girl on Darwin’s tree, Shaq could launch her into the nickel seats with one little sweep of his forearm. Girls: Be a cheerleader and stay the HECK OFF the court. Boys? They make just AWFUL cheerleaders!
Big warning to girls: There’s a big chuck hole in the road, not visible in advance. You can be brilliant, easily at age 16. Have done great for another four years. Then suddenly find that things are not working well. By about age 22, a lot of girls ‘lose it‘. Their emotions dominate so that, in effectiveness in rationality in the men’s world, they regress back to about where they were at age 14, 12, or 10 and, then, just stay there. Mother Nature is saying: “Be incapacitated in the men’s world; be helpless and dependent; find a husband to take care of you; have BABIES“. It’s not nice to try to fool Mother Nature.
“Of course women are MUCH more emotional than men. That is the cause of all the problems.”
Women’s emotions overwhelm women’s rationality and create disasters. That’s not a flaw; it’s a feature; because, while it has led to terrible suffering, net, it has also led to reproductive advantage. Mother Nature is saying, “Be a mommy in good circumstances but be a mommy, even in bad circumstances. Being in good circumstances and not a mommy is not an option. So, if not a mommy, then create a disaster and dependency and THEN become a mommy.” That’s why a girl 16, in a good, loving family, well supported and cared for, pretty, a cheerleader, an honor student, sneaks out in the middle of the night, uses drugs, gets drunk, and has casual sex. She’s creating a disaster for no good reason, extracting defeat from the jaws of victory, creating dependency where there was none, and, then, maybe becoming a mommy.
That’s why fathers, and later husbands, MUST take care of girls and women. What does well is the PAIR; the woman making her “own decisions” can’t make it on Darwin’s tree. The PAIR has too much of an advantage; the single mom thing doesn’t work. Co-captains on the bridge of the ship don’t work, either. Women healthy on Darwin’s tree don’t belong on the bridge of the ship: Their emotions will cause them to WORK to wreck the ship.
Basically women’s emotions incapacitate women from functioning effectively in the men’s world. Or, women who didn’t have those emotions are not our ancestors. That’s why there are so many gushing emotional bimbos: Mother Nature and Darwin agree that, net, it works. Even if she is brilliant, in Phi Beta Kappa, and has a Ph.D., at about age 22 Mother Nature will crank up her emotions, turn down her rationality, incapacitate her, make her dependent, and hope she becomes pregnant. I’m NOT joking. If I were, then I could have my life back and be a good father in a good marriage: To support her Ph.D. effort and goal of a career, I walked away from a chance at $50 million. History shows that it would have been $50 million. If she had left graduate school and just been my wife, then we could have had the $50 million, etc. Mother Nature and Darwin were there first and said, “She doesn’t belong in graduate school.“.
A girl shouldn’t try to be John Doerr, Mike Moritz, Warren Buffett, James Simons, Steven Spielberg, David Hilbert, John von Neumann, Ervin Schroedinger, Richard Feynman, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Ervin “Magic” Johnson, Tiger Woods, Mike Bloomberg, David Packard, etc., not even David Packard: Sorry, Carly, Pat; you created a disaster for no good reason; Tom saw it with full clarity in seconds, and you didn’t see it at all even after months. Carly, Pat, you are an example of the feature, but just CANNOT have that stuff on the Board of Directors. For each of those men, what they did was all they could do as men in the men’s world. None of them tried to be a wife or mother, ballet dancer, nurse, etc. Ah, Coppelia is a DREAM! One glance at her picture and I’m good for another 500 lines of software!
When my wife was on the way to college, her father told her, “Whatever you do in college, be sure you leave with a teaching certificate.” But she thought as you do, “Women don’t have to be just cared for. Women can do things too. I want a career.” That was pretty, little Manon getting off the carriage and into disaster. Sadly, I was complicit and believed her; cost: much of my life and all of hers.
‘Equality’ for women SHOULD be a BIG step DOWN.
Making money is just paying the bills; motherhood is MUCH more important.
“The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.”
If a girl just insists on being in a profession, then let her consider school teaching, nursing, pediatrics, OB-GYN, dermatology, etc. If she’s drop dead gorgeous, then let her major in communications and be on TV news—with the sound off, it’s GREAT! Otherwise, if nearly everyone else in the room is a boy or man, then LEAVE.
Pollux: I am very, truly sorry to hear your wife’s story. I can’t imagine how that must have affected you. You have my deepest, deepest sympathies.
But despite that, I cannot allow myself not to voice my disagreement.
I’m not going to talk about your wife, or the life you had. I’m only going to talk about your opinions.
Choice is what is at stake here. A woman can choose what to do with her own life, just as a man can. That doesn't necessarily mean earning her doctorate; but if that's what she decides she wants to do, then that is what she will do. This doesn't mean that you are wrong in your assertions that motherhood is as important and distinguished as a professional career; if at a certain age which is evolutionarily ripe for motherhood, a biological mechanism provokes a strong wish to have children, she equally has the choice to be a full-time mother. (For instance, my sister is a medical doctor. However, when she and her husband decided that they wanted a family, she chose to stop working, and stay full-time with her kids. Not because she had to, certainly not because she was pressured by her husband to do so - it was simply what she wanted to do most in the world.)
You are convinced, essentially, that women can’t cut it in the professional world. I disagree, but I’m not going to try to argue that with you. Because even if your assertions about females being too emotional to succeed were true, it still isn’t your call to make of whether or not a daughter, a wife, a girlfriend, a mother, should go out to work. It’s hers.
People in general do not appreciate someone who tries to “help” by controlling them - even when they maintain that it’s ‘for their own good‘. Why do you think women are different in this way? If a girl wants to be a mother, she’ll be one. If she wants to work, she’ll do that.
Personal responsibility applies to everyone, not just men.
We are discussing important but difficult subjects. Finding solid scientific answers could take decades, but people need answers now. I give my opinions based on my experience, thinking, and, sometimes, what I learned from Fromm, Nadelson, and others. I urge young men and women to read, observe the data they have, think, and start to draw their own conclusions. I can’t believe that all my opinions will prove correct in the distant future, but I am sure that what I am saying would have helped me enormously some decades ago. Maybe what I am saying will help some young people, if only from their increased thinking about the subject.
What I am saying might have some exceptions, but I am warning young men and women: From Nadelson, traditionally marriage was about
“offspring, security, and caretaking“.
From all I can see (and below I omit repetition of this qualification), anything else is an attempt to fool Mother Nature, a long shot with no rational support, and dangerous, possibly fatal.
There a big, HUGE problem that just MUST be solved: The human race needs to have babies, but single mothers are a disaster; instead, there need to be GOOD circumstances for motherhood. This is NOT a new problem, and the solution is also old: Traditional marriage.
The emotions of girls and women are overwhelming, just wonderful when things go well, but can bring disaster and death otherwise, are like fire, can warm a home or burn it down. The man just MUST understand and keep his rationality strong. For her rationality? F‘get about it. Even if she is in Phi Beta Kappa and brilliant.
We disagree less than you are claiming because you are mis-characterizing part of my position. Only rarely, hopefully never, should a father or a husband have to ‘put his foot down’ and say, “No way can you, we, go that way.“.
You have an example: “she and her husband decided that they wanted a family“. Right: That decision took two people, not one. She didn’t make it alone; neither did he.
So, from your example of the baby decision and in general, your “if that's what she decides she wants to do, then that is what she will do” is too strong. Nearly none of us actually get that much freedom.
What you described with the baby decision is better than what many men conclude they have to do: “Sweetheart, of COURSE you are going to law school. Of COURSE you are. And then you will use the law to drag the miscreants before the bar of justice and, thus, save the world and get admiration, acceptance, approval, praise, and security from the grateful world. Of COURSE you will. Now just take another sip of this wine, lean back, relax, and think of law school.“. Then a month later he says: “Of COURSE you are going to go to law school. We will just abort that baby.“. When she screams, “It’s MY baby!“, he says, “Yes, of COURSE it’s your baby.“. When the baby comes, he will say, “Since you want to go to law school, we will give up the baby for adoption.“, to which she screams, “It’s MY BABY!“, to which he says, “Yes, dear.“. And now he is well on the way to what he had in mind to begin with and why he has been working 80 hours a week to PAY for it.
So, like you want, at every step, she thinks it’s “her decision“. It’s not: It’s not his decision, either. It’s Mother Nature’s decision. He understood this from the beginning, made money enough to pay for it, and gently but effectively guided her into it so that she always thought it was “her decision“. That’s why he’s a good captain.
He had a plan. She? Heck, she was totally out of it: She thought that she wanted to go to law school. He understood better. GOOD husband. GOOD ship captain. Dictatorship, democracy, debating society? No. Good understanding and good leadership? Yes.
The poor guy doesn’t want to do any of this ‘double talk’ stuff but knows: What she literally says doesn’t mean much. Nearly the only way to have her happy is to ‘go with the flow’ of her emotions and work hard to make that practical, e.g., economically.
A thinking man will ask, “Is this possible? I mean, her emotions could be just ANYTHING.” It IS possible mostly because her emotions are quite predictable: (1) Romance. (2) Pregnancy. (3) Bonding with the baby. (4) Motherhood.
A man might ask, “But, but, but, the paint in the living room is fine; she liked it when it was new, and now it’s still just as good as new, but she wants to change it. She wants a MAKEover. There’s NOTHING wrong with that paint. It will cost hundreds of dollars, or all my weekend time for weeks, to do a good job with a new color. WHAT the HECK is going on with her emotions. They are UNpredictable.”
The answer is, “It’s been over two years since she had a new love (I hope it was YOU!) or a new baby. Too long without something new, and she will go through the stages of disillusioned, discontented, dissatisfied, unhappy, frustrated, angry, desperate, and then likely out the door to just ANYTHING different.
“Men don’t do anything like this and, thus, have a really tough time understanding it in women: With men, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Even if it is broke, maybe don’t fix it. Or, men seek solutions to problems and, given a solution, do not revisit the problem. Men are THRILLED with a status quo with no outstanding, pressing problems and certainly avoid creating problems for no good reason.
“For a woman, throughout her childbearing years, until she has fully dedicated her life to caring for her children, there is no happy, stable status quo.
“LISTEN UP; you NEED to know this unless you like wrecking your marriage, family, and life and paying for her divorce lawyer to fight your divorce lawyer: Mother Nature is concluding that she’s apparently not having more babies where she is and, so, is nearly worthless, job done, where she is and telling her to jump to just ANYTHING different which, no matter how bad, since she’s not having babies where she is, according to Mother Nature, will likely, net, be better, i.e., she might get pregnant again. According to Mother Nature, jumping, even to just anything different, has more to gain than to lose.
“But there actually IS light at the end of the tunnel, a happy, stable status quo: If she gets dedicated to, and fully occupied with, mothering her existing children, i.e., has eight or more of her own children, then Mother Nature tells her to take care of the children she has instead of jumping to neglect the ones she has in order to have more.
“So, for your wife, with so few babies and so long since the last one, she’s frustrated. You need to act quickly. You need to get her pregnant. If you don’t, then she might call a plumber with nothing wrong with the plumbing. Or she might go for a ‘girl’s night out’ to a hookup bar. Or she might start drinking everything from rum for the fruit cake to your shaving lotion. Or she might just not be there when you return from a business trip.
“Think about it and compare with what you see: E.g., recently there was a woman who explained: Her husband just left her. Three years before, she met him, fell in love, and one month later discovered that she was pregnant. They got married. Now it’s been three years since the new love and two years, nine months since the new baby. His explanation: They fight all the time. My explanation: It’s been too long since the last new love or new baby and she’s FRUSTRATED with the stable status quo (that the husband believes is fine; and he can’t imagine why she doesn’t think the same) and creating a disaster to help the chances of having a new baby.
“More data: In ALL cases, the man was providing a life from comfortable up to significantly wealthy and a good, stable status quo with no problems, but one wife had one child, gained 200 pounds, and just sat there; one wife left, was entertaining three men at a time, and joined a commune; another wife was drinking a gallon of sherry a day and having sex with her dog; another was living in her bedroom with three large dogs; another was living in her bedroom on beer and cigarettes. When I was about 16, one came to my house wearing short shorts, talked with my mother in the kitchen, and as I walked by put up her leg so that I could see that she was wearing no panties. One guy had a great business but needed to travel frequently, about a day or two a week, and usually returned to find his wife passed out on the living room floor surrounded by empty whiskey bottles. One young wife said she didn’t what to have children yet, went to one school, went to another school, got an expensive hobby, started a retail business, and left; another young wife, with one five year old son, concluded that she was not cut out to be a mother and left; another woman sat around the house, found nothing to do, and stayed drunk. Another women just didn’t know what to do, and left to a miserable life. Another woman, with five grown children, concluded that she had nothing to do, left, and got a miserable job.
“And that’s just from cases I saw first hand. Remember the old, ‘Idle hands do devil’s work.‘? Starting to understand?
“Did I see any good cases? Actually, yes. But the chances of a good case when the man doesn’t bring rational responsibility and carefully ‘socially engineer’ the situation to keep her busy, likely with her children, are not good. Yes, one idea is to have a family business and have her be his assistant in the business. E.g., in a family run restaurant, it is easy to have her busy 16 hours a day.
“Time to get her pregnant again, TONIGHT if not this afternoon. Sorry, my explanation fits far too much real data when next to nothing else does. And my explanation stands on a rock solid foundation—reproductive advantage. Rational? No. But, back tens of thousands or millions or tens of millions of years, how much did rationality have to do with it?”
Or, as one man explained it, “She’s getting all frustrated. Time to knock her up again.”
Or there are two rules for a good marriage:
Rule 1. Get her pregnant.
Rule 2. Repeat rule 1.
After eight babies, you can consider “Mission accomplished” and settle in for a long, stable life of father and grandfather, big times at Mother’s day, Father’s day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, all the birthdays, recitals, school plays, ball games, graduations, prizes, marriages, births, etc. with little danger of more frustration, MAKEovers, ‘affairs‘, divorce, etc. You get to show the boys about hacksaws, Torx screwdrivers, working with copper, aluminum, steel, and fiber glass, how to change the oil in the lawn mower, SATA hard disk drives, object-oriented software hierarchies, explain to them about girls and women, and you get to tell the girls how pretty they are, tug on the big bow in their waist length hair, listen to them play Mozart on violin, etc. You worked hard to pay for it and deserve it.
Or, as a friend has concluded, “Women are simple creatures“, once you understand them.
We didn’t have any one person decisions, and I didn’t do any of this double talk stuff and stayed with literal rationalism, but I will forever regret it. She was BRILLIANT. I believed that this also meant that she could be good making and following plans rationally. I was tragically, enormously, fatally wrong. Here, then, I am warning young men and women.
But you omit a huge issue: Time. Sure: Discuss, plan, and then decide to execute the plan over TIME. So, plan the job(s), house, car(s), budget, savings, number of children, etc. Agree on the plan. Start to follow the plan. Then, five years later she changes her mind and follows your “if that's what she decides she wants to do, then that is what she will do” and unilaterally changes the plan in a way that takes the ship into disaster that actually threatens lives in the family. Now what?
In a sense, I agree with you: The husband should be five to 15 years older, with substantial financial resources, just awash in understanding of female emotions, and, then, ABLE to let her follow your “if that's what she decides she wants to do, then that is what she will do” with only minor course corrections with a glass of Chambertin here, a bouquet of flowers there, a pat on the back side, a romantic evening, etc. Basically he understands in ADVANCE the scope of “what she decides she wants to do” and is ready for it. I.e., there IS a plan, a course for the ship; HE made the plan; they ARE following the plan; she doesn’t know the plan or even that there is one. That’s part of being a good captain. It’s part of “caretaking” and “security“. In particular, he understands that (1) she likes romance, (2) when pregnant, wants to have the baby, and (3) when the baby comes and she ‘bonds’ with it, will, as surely as a kitty cat mother only one year old, be a TERRIFIC mother. As kitty cat mothers solidly show, it doesn’t take a college degree to be a TERRIFIC mother!
It’s called
“offspring, security, and caretaking”
and needs his good leadership: There cannot be ANY doubt in his mind on who is captain of the ship.
There is a suggestion of a good example in the TV ad with the woman, about 50, fixing her makeup, on a ski lift, saying, “The paperwork came through, and now I need to manage the money. I want someone who will listen to my ideas. That will be a big change after Larry.” Well, apparently Larry did well, but one mistake was he let her know he wasn’t listening to her ideas about managing money! All he had to say was, “Yes, dear.” some appropriate number of times. Or, he could take her ideas and data and talk about continuously compounded interest, the strong law of large numbers, the Markowitz and Sharpe portfolio models, the Radon-Nikodym theorem, the Black-Scholes option pricing model, the strong Markov property, the Kakutani Brownian motion solution to the Dirichlet problem, Bellman’s work on stochastic optimal control, Ito stochastic differential equations, optimal stopping of stochastic processes, currents of sigma algebras, martingales, and the Doob decomposition, etc. and then ask her opinion again.
Then there’s the issue of the father and his 16 year old daughter: To keep her from sneaking out at night to do “what she decides to do“, he MUST be very careful and, hopefully, keep things going in the right direction without a padlock on her bedroom door and bars on her bedroom windows. Chastity belts are SO 1400s! There was a good reason for convent schools!
He needs to know, early on, what will likely happen with her emotions when she reaches 14, 16, 18 and GET READY with a long pattern, from her birth, of carrot and stick, high goals, careful discipline, praise and approval, etc. So, he should keep her as ‘Daddy’s little girl’ just desperate to please Daddy, by keeping her shoes clean, being punctual for church on Sunday morning, doing well in her piano practice, getting excellent grades in school, etc. Lots of discipline. Keep her REALLY busy—playing the Joachim cadenzas to the Beethoven concerto should keep her busy for a few months! To even try, given the double stop intervals larger than an octave, she will need a ‘supple’ violin and an appropriate bow, and that’ll set him back about the price of a car.
Right: She is dependent on Daddy’s approval and is desperate to please Daddy. So, right, she doesn’t develop real internally driven responsibility. In Fromm’s terms, she is not yet an adult, that is, is not yet ready to act as her own parent. Sorry ‘bout that, but age 12 is coming too soon, and then her emotions will overwhelm unless she is still just desperate to please Daddy. Then at an appropriate time he should see to it that she gets exposed to excellent candidate men five to 15 years older, at work, church, orchestra practice, public service, his college alumni meetings, JAYCEES meetings, school board meetings, if he can afford it, country club, yacht club, etc. Notice I didn’t say ‘college‘; for all that college might be, it makes just a TERRIBLE matchmaking service because nearly all the men around are too young, too poor, and likely both.
He may have to do what I did once with my still single sister in law: I shouted, “If I catch you with a cigarette, I’ll MAKE YOU EAT it!“. That was an ugly thing to say, but not as ugly as smoking. She actually did quit trying to start smoking.
Yes, yes, I’ve heard the stuff that a good marriage is between two responsible adults, etc. Okay, maybe her father had her just pleasing him and without growing to ‘internalize’ why she was working so hard. I assumed that she was fully rational, responsible, and adult. But, even after 20 years of marriage, she STILL was not nearly sufficiently ‘adult‘. So, for this stuff, I gave up: I could find too few confirming examples and too many contradictory ones. This stuff just looks like someones unfounded, unproven, ‘theoretical’ solution to marriage going back to Fromm’s remark about the French Revolution. That is, it is politically incorrect to propose asymmetry. I’d stay with what is KNOWN to work: He’s five to 15 years older and a good captain of the ship.
You want to say that girls and women can be responsible and make their own decisions, independently, responsibly. I believed it. I was wrong. She died. Now I don’t believe it. Maybe there can be some exceptions, but as a father or husband, I wouldn’t bet ten cents on it. Mother Nature was there first, and I can’t beat Mother Nature.
Girls and women being rationally responsible? Easily can have a number greater than 5 or number less than 2, but can’t have both at the same time with just one number. Can have a good wife and mother and maybe even a rationally responsible woman, but both in the same woman? Let’s check: Motherhood is a HUGE change for a woman. In simple terms, if she does it well, she at LEAST gives up much that she might otherwise have in life. In centuries past, she was at risk of giving up ALL of her life, from death in childbirth. It can just wreck her body, and even at best, with hundreds of hours in a gym, it will be super tough ever to look good in a bikini again. How Reese Witherspoon did it by ‘Legally Blond’ would be interesting to learn. Bet it was a LOT of work. So, what ‘rationally responsible’ woman would, well rested, fully awake, completely sober, calm, vertical, the lights on, her clothes on, her thinking at 100%, alone, deliberately DECIDE to have a baby, write down her reasoning, come back each two weeks, review it, and agree with it, for a few months? Possible? Maybe: My first girlfriend was 13 and my candidate for the most beautiful female I ever saw in my life, EVER, in person, in print, on TV, EVER, and anytime she saw a baby with a baby nose she went into helpless, gushy, “I want a baby” mode. Don’t worry: Since she was my first girlfriend, I was so awkward I never even got to kiss her. She wanted to; I wanted to; but she thought we should do this to go to ‘first base‘, and I thought we should do that to go to ‘first base‘, and, this and that never coincided. But she DID actually consciously, while vertical, etc., VERY much want a baby. But she was an exception.
Net, mostly women have babies and are good wives and mothers because of their emotionality and not their rationality. If she’s too rationally responsible, then she’s likely a weak, sick, or dead limb on the tree. So, tough to have a good wife and mother who is rationally responsible. In particular, nearly every girl I dated was hopelessly irresponsible: If not for my rational responsibility, there would have been unmarried pregnancies. As it was, there were none.
Men: Mostly it takes all the romantic devices in the movies - confident manner, broad shoulders, good career, new Corvette, big bank account, soft lights, grape juice, say, from between Beaune and Dijon, appropriate taking of her hands, ... - to get things going, that is, where she actually SAYS, vertically, that she wants a baby. Net, it's really the man who consciously wants a baby. And, when he knows he's not yet ready to pay for it, actually it is mostly up to him to say, "No".
Those hypothetical rationally responsible women? Even if they did exist, they are mostly NOT our ancestors. Or, as Mother Nature discovered long ago, that dog won’t hunt.
Did my wife’s death hurt? Yes: I discovered that it’s possible inside a large house in the hills to scream loudly enough to get an audible echo off distant hills and back, inside the house.
I made my bet, violated “the great natural order“, and lost. For what I learned, ‘what I wish I had known when I was 15‘, that WOULD have saved my wife’s life, I’ve outlined it here.
You invoke a story of a fictional couple, in which the man is the rational human being with control over himself and his urges, and the woman is a slave to hers, to “prove” your point. You repeat again and again your opinion that “Mother Nature” or “Darwin’s tree” ensure that women are helpless to control themselves. This mangling of the concept of behavioural adaptation is invoked to serve your purposes, to show that females have less self-control, have passions that stop them from having the judgement to determine their own lives.
It’s a similar argument to the one which was invoked in the early part of the 20th century to prevent half the population of the world from deciding their own lives, from voting, from being seen as human beings instead of specialised baby-factories.
I’m sorry about your wife. But you can’t invoke one tragic story to prove a moral about women everywhere. You mentioned that she had some clinical psychological problems, yet you continually blame the concept of womens’ liberation for her death. You have fixated on this, the independence of women, as being the root cause of the pressures on your wife. Now you want to eradicate it.
Let me boil this down for you:
No matter what, what, you think is best for a man, woman, or anything in between; in other words, a human being; as long as they are an adult, it is their right to choose what they want for themselves.
Females are evolutionarily predisposed to want babies, to be more attentive to emotional cues, etc, as you reiterate again and again. This is true.
Males are evolutionarily predisposed to aggressive behaviour, to seek dominance, to feeling protective over females, etc. This is true.
Neither of these sets of predispositions, however, are dictates. I am quite sure that you do not consider yourself ruled by aggressive behaviour. Saying “in general, females are better suited to X than males, while males are better suited to Y - so all females should do X, while all males should do Y” is nonsense. Yet this is what you propose, where X is childbearing.
Your “Darwin’s tree” arguments are very misguided.
From a technical standpoint, you assert things like:
"Those hypothetical rationally responsible women? Even if they did exist, they are mostly NOT our ancestors."
There are 46 chromosomes, in humans, which transmit genetic information between generations. Exactly one of those 46 is gender-dependent. This is the reason why the similarities between males and females are so much greater than their differences. This one chromosome produces the predispositions I mentioned above; it categorically does not define whether a person is "rationally responsible". Cognitive development is not controlled by these chromosomes.
And most importantly, even if there were a huge difference between the male and female minds, that would still not give you the right to trample over someone else’s life. I’m aware that you‘re not into the concept of equality, because you think you know best. But I’ve got news for you: everyone has the right to choose their own actions, make their own mistakes, and win their own successes. Advice is often welcome. Orders are not.
This isn't women's lib. This is human's lib.
Jove,
Good news!
For your “you want to eradicate“, “the right to trample over someone“, “you think you know best“, and “orders” that concern you, NO PROBLEM! I have no desire, intention, or way! You‘re reading stuff between the lines I didn’t put there and don’t intend.
Men are good at omitting things between the lines, and women are good finding things there!
We‘re both offering ideas, and either of us might be right or wrong. But I’m not proposing to eradicate, trample, or any such thing.
For your
“You invoke a story of a fictional couple, in which the man is the rational human being with control over himself and his urges, and the woman is a slave to hers, to ‘prove’ your point.”
It’s not “fictional“: I had control over my emotions, and my wife was a “slave” to hers.
For my use of “Mother Nature” and “Darwin’s tree“, if take the data, from me or elsewhere, entertain my conclusions, e.g., about “frustration“, then will likely want to ‘test’ the conclusions. In such a test, the obvious concern is, how could humans have become this way? E.g., if frustration is so destructive, then how could such a thing still be in the gene pool? So at times I suggest an answer. But “Mother Nature” and “Darwin’s tree” are not the data and not the direct argument for the conclusions but just a test. Such tests can solidly reject hypotheses but are weak for confirming them. After passing many such tests, then maybe begin to believe the hypothesis. If you already disagree with the data or the conclusions, then don’t need the test. Clear?
You wrote:
“show that females have less self-control, have passions that stop them from having the judgment to determine their own lives.”
I sense that your concern is, will somehow I propose that women 21 or over will have their basic constitutional rights abridged, e.g., so that they can’t determine her own lives. No, not me. I won’t propose any such thing. They can do what they want.
In particular, you seem to be an example of Fromm’s definition of an ‘adult’ as someone who can provide for themselves the discipline, say, ‘rational responsibility‘, that they once got from their parents and, thus, do NOT want to go back to the status of a ‘child‘. Fromm says that this is good. I say that it’s too rare!
Since we are offering advice, mine would be that a person over 21 should not do everything they have a right to do. In particular I have outlined that I believe that couples should return to a traditional view of marriage.
You wrote:
“It’s a similar argument to the one which was invoked in the early part of the 20th century to prevent half the population of the world from deciding their own lives, from voting, from being seen as human beings instead of specialised baby-factories.”
You are misreading history: The idealization of Victorian marriage makes it look nice, but the women worked like mules in the cooking, washing, ironing, cleaning, soap making, sewing, etc. They had to pump water, carry wood, heat water, carry ashes. Both men and women worked hard on all the work that there was to be done and on much more than just having babies.
You seem to be down on having babies: Okay, think of the good news, all the extra time you will have to be more like a man and your daughters won’t have to struggle with such questions!
Actually, such history influenced me: I thought, since my wife’s ancestors came through all that, in our much better times, what could go wrong? Again I was wrong.
You wrote,
“But you can’t invoke one tragic story to prove a moral about women everywhere.”
Right, but (1) my wife’s case really IS telling with some generality if looked at in detail and (2) I included MUCH more data than just from my wife.
You wrote:
“You mentioned that she had some clinical psychological problems, yet you continually blame the concept of womens’ liberation for her death.”
Actually, my view is that any one of several changes could have saved her: (1) When we got married I had normal understanding of women, e.g., everything I got from my father that worked fairly well for him, but, if I had understood at our marriage everything I do now, then I could have saved her. (2) Not going to graduate school would have saved her. (3) Not having some of the bitter attitudes toward men and marriage she got from her mother would have saved her—it would have let her be more receptive to my helping her when she needed it. (4) Chucking ‘feminism‘, ‘women’s liberation‘, women’s ‘equality‘, etc. in the dumpster would have saved her. As a special case, just having the help we got her leave these in the dumpster would have saved her.
Of these, the only one that is really recent, say, in the last 50 years, is (4), so I give it the primary blame.
For more evidence, her mother and sisters, not really much different, never had such diagnosable problems, and the main difference was just that each of them had 2-3 children and, thus, was pushed strongly by motherhood into relatively traditional roles and AWAY from women’s liberation, etc.; that was enough to separate them quite far from the problems.
Net, you want to claim that her diagnosed problems mean that her case does not condemn women’s liberation; no, it was women’s liberation that was the single big change that CAUSED the diagnosed problems. For her to try to follow women’s liberation was like me trying to do women’s gymnastics: I don’t bend that way, and if I tried I’d break my back and die.
You have a strong, implicit assumption, that if some activity is out there, then women can just go out and do it with no particular risk so that if there are clinical problems then they were due just to the person and not to the activity. Dangerous NONSENSE.
There’s a LOT in the internal machinery of “the great natural order” and traditional marriage that we can’t yet understand. Mostly what we know about traditional marriage is that it is the best of the rides that got us here. Trying to make improvements with women’s liberation is watch re-engineering with a sledge hammer with eyes closed. For anyone proposing changes, the strong burden of proof is on them, and so far women’s liberation is unproven, not well tested, clearly has some serious problems being healthy on Darwin’s tree, and, from my evidence and much more, DANGEROUS.
You wrote:
“You have fixated on this, the independence of women, as being the root cause of the pressures on your wife. Now you want to eradicate it.”
I’m not out to “eradicate” anything: I’m just discussing data and ideas and offering advice, like you are.
I don’t believe that anyone should be ‘independent’ in the sense of being alone, but ‘independent’ thinking, and the ABILITY to function alone if necessary, would be good. My observations across MANY women are that women are in general, compared with men, NOT good at being independent, in either sense of the word. For women doing independent thinking about the real world, it’s like playing golf in the PGA: If a woman can beat Tiger Woods, fine. But, I doubt if many women can, and it’s so unpromising that I wouldn’t encourage women to try. I don’t want to “eradicate” such an effort; I’m just warning that it’s asking too much. And, as my wife showed, try something like that too much and can get hurt, fatally.
I don’t get “fixated” on things; I’m the opposite of OCD, etc. I DID very much want a long, close marriage, and I’m a ‘problem solver‘: So when my marriage failed, I worked to understand why. I figured it out over 10 years ago and have done little more on it since.
You seem highly impressed with women’s liberation.
You wrote:
“Let me boil this down for you: No matter what, what , you think is best for a man, woman, or anything in between; in other words, a human being; as long as they are an adult, it is their right to choose what they want for themselves.”
SURE it is. Since you are wound up about this, I have more good news! Relax! You’ve been reading between the lines too much.
For men: For best results, I would advise you to meet the girl when she is 16-17 and quickly, as quickly as the law, etc., allow, get her married and pregnant. You should have a very traditional marriage with traditional marriage vows. You should be 5-15 years older, be in good shape financially, have a good understanding of women’s emotions, and be a good leader, captain of the ship, and husband.
For this equality stuff, essentially a case of ‘symmetry’ between the husband and wife, see:
Eric Berne, M.D., ‘Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis‘, ISBN 0-345-32719-5, Ballantine Books, New York, 1964.
He proposes a case of asymmetry and argues that symmetry is a disaster. Quite generally, ‘shared or divided responsibility’ is a bad idea.
This ‘equality’ stuff—f‘get about it. A good marriage is a TEAM, with specializations, not just two of the same.
You wrote:
“Yet this is what you propose, where X is childbearing.”
You are missing the reason: There is a lot of data that shows women creating disasters for no good reason. One broad case of this I have called ‘frustration‘. I don’t mean consciously eager for sex or pregnancy, although this can also happen, but just desperately unhappy with the status quo, no matter how luxurious it is. Nothing objectively wrong at all; just too long since something new and sufficiently involving, and down they go. I’m sorry; the evidence is just overwhelming; they just DO. And men DON‘T. I’ve known women who either didn’t get very frustrated or who suppressed it well, but I have also known a long string of women, from my mother’s age to younger than me, who were so frustrated they were about to jump out of their skins. I gave a long list. Some stayed drunk. Some got outside activities and eventually left. Some just left. In all cases they hurt their children, their husbands, and themselves. But, they did it. And there was NEVER ANY rational reason; it was just spontaneous.
Think of a Mexican jumping bean: It spontaneously jumps and keeps doing this until it can’t, and that is likely when it gets wedged in a crack in the dirt or rocks. But the crack may reach down to some water and, thus, be a better place to put down a root and grow. So, just spontaneous jumping until it gets stuck has had reproductive advantage, and all that for just a little bean. I’m not proposing a complicated mechanism. Willing to entertain that women can execute a mechanism this complicated?
So, what to do about that? A husband very much needs to know. Well, MUST find a way to keep her happy, that is, involved in something that keeps her satisfied with life and not frustrated. Some cynical person would say ‘trapped’—cruel, SO cruel; how could they be SO CRUEL? I wish there were a wide variety of such activities, but I don’t see them. There is one activity I am SURE works well: She has a baby about once each two years. That says that, at the rate the economy will let the population grow, a LOT of women will be frustrated. I’m sorry.
There may be other ways, but these are also a LOT of work, are recent, and are contrived: (1) Maybe Victorian woman were so busy cooking, cleaning, sewing, making soap, etc. that they didn't have even 10 minutes a day to take any action on being frustrated. Also the social pressures to follow social norms were very high. Religion played a bigger role then than now and tried to help. (2) Even now some traditional religions - of the Catholics, Jews, Mormons, maybe some of the Baptists - have enough controls to keep down the worst consequences of frustration. These are old solutions, but it's NOT a new problem, and only a husband with a dunce cap would ignore it. (3) Maybe if the husband has a family owned business and has her work beside him in the business, then he can keep her tired enough, busy enough, and supervised closely enough that the consequences of frustration won't show. But these are all contrived solutions. A good guess is that Mother Nature has a solution: She has a baby about once each two years.
I’m warning young couples: This frustration stuff is serious and difficult. Ignore the problem and inviting disaster.
You wrote:
“This one chromosome produces the predispositions I mentioned above; it categorically does not define whether a person is "rationally responsible". Cognitive development is not controlled by these chromosomes.”
Well, broadly counting chromosomes says next to nothing about how similar are the sexes! Pick some species where the sexes are obviously wildly different, and I’ll bet that the chromosome counting will be similar to what you describe.
For
“cognitive development”
wherever you got that, return it and get your money back! Necessarily you paid too much!
Whatever cognitive development is and whatever controls it, in women being “rationally responsible” doesn’t have much to do with cognitive development because the emotions overwhelm norms, social pressure, education, good sense, discipline, etc.
You are making an implicit assumption that we are all rational; in fact, doesn't work that way; especially in women, the emotions - sex, romance, anxiety, low self esteem, frustration, nursing, infant bonding, desire for acceptance into the herd, attraction to a seemingly strong, protective male, etc. - overwhelm.
You wrote:
“And most importantly, even if there were a huge difference between the male and female minds, that would still not give you the right to trample over someone else's life.”
Again you are back to “minds” as in “cognitive“. I’ve not been talking much about women’s minds or their thinking; I’ve been talking about their emotions. For a husband, paying attention her thinking is nearly hopeless; instead, pay attention to her emotions.
For the difference between males and females, more relevantly I would claim that there is a huge difference in male and female EMOTIONS and that, especially in females, the emotions overwhelm.
For the real differences in the ‘minds’ of males and females, I’m right up to date with the latest solid research as of year 2050, that is, I don’t have a clue!
I’m not trying to “trample over” anyone else’s life: But I do warn young people about the dangers of what you are recommending and what my wife and I tried to do and am recommending that they follow traditional approaches instead. We are both recommending something and, thus, apparently equally risking trampling.
But, for some evidence from others on differences between men and women, there is some; there is:
David V. Sheehan, M.D., ‘The Anxiety Disease‘, ISBN 0-553-25568-1, Bantam Books, Toronto, 1983.
The book claims that the author is Director of Clinical Research and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of South Florida College of Medicine in Tampa.
He is the source of my data that 80% of diagnosable anxiety disease is in women. He reports this result in considerable detail across races, cultures, etc. and concludes that it’s been in the human gene pool going way back. Then he concludes that there must have been “reproductive advantage“, and that is my main source for the idea that what looks like disaster can be solidly in the gene pool and have reproductive advantage.
You wrote:
“I'm aware that you're not into the concept of equality, because you think you know best.”
On ‘equality‘, mostly I am just quoting Fromm. For more, the idea that men and women are ‘equal’ is just absurd: In nearly everything in K-12, the girls are MUCH better than the boys due to a long list of talents from verbal, rote memory, neatness, clerical accuracy, ability to concentrate, eagerness to please the teacher, understanding what will please the teacher, the visual arts, understanding of fiction, etc. And differences continue.
I do believe that the girl, 17-19, when she marries a man 15 years older, WILL have someone who “knows best” about the outside world. The boys she knows in school that are her age do NOT know best. Girls 17 want NOTHING to do with boys 17.
So, one reason the husband and wife are not ‘equal’ is that the husband is so much older. That they are NOT ‘equal’ is a big reason she was attracted to him.
You are hung up on ‘equality‘. F‘get about ‘equality‘.
You wrote:
“But I've got news for you: everyone has the right to choose their own actions, make their own mistakes, and win their own successes. Advice is often welcome. Orders are not.”
It’s not “news” to me: I fully accept that right. You‘re reading stuff between the lines that is not there. It’s not ‘rational’ to do that!
If you are a girl or women, then BE that, and don’t try to be like a boy or man. It’s tough enough for boys and men, and you‘re not cut out for it and, thus, are at a big disadvantage. BELIEVE me, I have NO desire to be like a girl or woman! If you try to be like a boy or man, then men, that is REAL men, won’t like you.
Women’s clothes are now UG-LY. The good news is that it can’t get any worse. Maybe pretty clothes are coming back. Go into the attic and get a poodle skirt, a white blouse with a little girl collar, a circle pin, a cardigan sweater, and let your hair grow waist length and tie it up with bow. Girls have known how to be pretty going WAY back—be PRETTY, and sweet!
For some more of my sources:
I got
“offspring, security, and caretaking”
as the description of traditional marriage from Dr. Carol Nadelson, Past President of the American Psychiatric Association in her “Foreword” to
Maggie Scarf, ‘Intimate Partners: Patterns in Love and Marriage‘, Random House, New York, ISBN 0-394-5585-X, 1987.
I hope she and Scarf had good marriages!
Of course the Fromm reference is the classic:
Erich Fromm, ‘The Art of Loving‘, Harper and Row, New York, ISBN 0-06-080291-X, 1974.
The Goffman reference is the famous but obscure:
Erving Goffman, ‘The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life‘, Doubleday Anchor Books, New York, 1959.
and one of the more important Tannen references is the popular:
Deborah Tannen, ‘You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation‘, William Morrow and Company, New York, ISBN 0-688-07822-2, 1990.
Tannen got interested in her subject to try to understand why her first marriage failed and studied Goffman.
A friend suggested I add a remark based on an old observation of mine:
A young, single woman might consider a point her future husband will be thinking: He knows that being a good father means a lot of time, money, and effort from him for at least 18 years and more likely for the rest of his life. He is eager to devote these considerable resources for his own child, but he does not want to do that for the child of another man.
While generally the assumption of woman’s liberation is that now men and women are ‘equal‘, on fidelity in marriage this future husband will observe:
The situation is not symmetrical: If the wife fools around, then the husband can get stuck raising the child of another man; but, if the husband fools around, then the wife does not get stuck raising the child of another woman.
So, the situation is not symmetrical.
Men know this.
In particular, the future husband of the young, single woman wants to be sure his wife does not fool around during their marriage. To this end, he wants his wife able to wear a white wedding dress.
Men have known this going back centuries, and so far the point has not changed at all.
There’s nothing I can say at this point. You see women as weak. A woman needs a husband to be a new father to tell her what to do.
But this, from you:
"For your "you want to eradicate", "the right to trample over someone", "you think you know best", and "orders" that concern you, NO PROBLEM! I have no desire, intention, or way! You're reading stuff between the lines I didn't put there and don't intend.
Men are good at omitting things between the lines, and women are good finding things there! "
I'd find this incredibly patronising if I were female, since you've made your position perfectly clear - "any man worth marrying at all will insist that in the marriage vows his wife will promise to "obey". No joke." - hence, no reading between lines is necessary. I'm male, and still find it patronising.
How about this. I’ll go through life treating people as equals. And you’ll continue thinking of women as children.
Jove,
Your interest in this subject is commendable.
What is important here is not me or you but helping girls and women not be hurt or killed.
So far one of our differences is just silly, that I want to “eradicate“: I’m just trying to discuss ideas and pass out some advice based on those ideas; that’s not the same as trying to “eradicate” if only because I will be plenty happy, even if happily surprised, if some girl or woman successfully crashes through glass ceilings, etc. Fine with me. In particular, I would be thrilled to be proven wrong. Also, if women want to try something new and don’t get hurt, GREAT. But, if they want to try something new, then they should do so carefully, tentatively, etc., and not bet more than they can afford to lose.
I don’t really propose regarding women like children; it would be better to say that I propose regarding women like women.
If you want to chisel something into granite and emboss it with gold foil, then I suggest Fromm’s statement:
“Men and women deserve equal respect as persons but are not the same.”
For what is traditional, I quoted Nadelson’s
“offspring, security, and caretaking“.
Since tradition is the best of the rides that got us here, something different needs lots of VERY good evidence from any proposer. So, go ahead: Argue why we should set aside tradition, set aside Fromm, regard women as just like men in every respect except the most obvious physiological differences.
Since we‘re talking about the potential of throwing away all of the lives of some women and much of the lives of their husbands, we need to be as clear as possible. Again, solid scientific proof is not available, but that situation is common in life. Individuals MUST decide.
For my wife, the simplest solid evidence was that (1) her mother and sisters all had 2-3 children each and, thus, pursued more traditional marriages and (2) my wife had no children and kept trying to be independent, autonomous, self-sufficient, and make her “own decisions“. Results: (1) Her mother and sisters all proceeded reasonably well in the center of what is normal for women who are wives and mothers and never encountered any serious diagnosed problems. They all look like successful humans. The children all look from good up to spectacular. (2) My wife struggled with heart-rending suffering, had no children, and died.
Beginning to see the danger of ‘women’s liberation‘?
To make this better evidence, what did my wife encounter? I give some details and mention some lessons that are quite general:
She was a “Nervous Nellie“. She was afraid of things.
General Lesson: All the nervous Nellies are women. As is well known, and for diagnosable cases as in, say, Sheehan, women are much more vulnerable to anxiety than men.
As a child, say, less than 10, evidence is strong that she was very eager, as is common in girls of that age, to please parents and teachers. And she pleased them very well. At home, through grade 12, she seemed fine, had good confidence, plenty of self-esteem, was very successful, was not especially anxious, did very well in various jobs common for teenage girls, did very well in extra curricular activities and academics. She seemed like nothing but a great success. No suggestion of any significant problems.
In college, she started to suffer from anxiety. As I look back, much of the problem was that she was away at school, that is, no longer living at home: It turned out, for her, that was a BIG issue. That is, having her parents and home right there, as an ‘environment of stability and security‘, were very important for her. So, facing the outside world alone was starting to cause anxiety. Net, a secure home, fine. Alone in the outside world, not good.
General Lesson: Not very unusual. Bet this is more common for girls than boys. An extreme case is agoraphobia where the woman doesn’t want to leave the home at all, ever. Test: How could something as counterproductive as agoraphobia still be in the gene pool? Guess: 20,000 years ago in some cave with 4 feet of snow outside, staying in the cave had reproductive advantage for a woman and not for a man.
We fell in love when she was a college sophomore. Looking back, it is easy to see that she could see that in two more years she would graduate and be expected to face the real world even more alone than she was in college and was afraid of that. So, she saw me as a source of security.
General Lesson: Not very unusual. Bet this is more common for girls than boys.
We got married when she graduated from college. The graduate school she selected was 1000 miles from where I was living. I promised to move there; due to my career, net, it was going to take me a year actually to arrive. Being alone 1000 miles away was impossible for her. She was in AWFUL shape from overwhelming anxiety. From what I know now, such anxiety continued for too long is DANGEROUS. At the end of the first semester, she left graduate school, joined me, and got a clerical job. Looking back, GOOD decision.
General Lesson: Being alone that first year in graduate school was MUCH worse than being alone in her first year in college. Likely the reason is that she was four years older. So, by age 22, commonly women start to be MORE vulnerable to anxiety and LESS able to face the outside world alone. She had gone downhill since she was 18. Expert opinion holds that commonly women can look fine at age 18 and come all unglued at age 22.
At home with me, she was nicely calm again, right away. With two jobs, we were saving money rapidly. For a young couple just out of school, we had a NICE standard of living - big times at holidays, great trips, and some of the world’s best food and wines. Wines? RIGHT, from between Macon and Dijon. No yacht owner had better. It was a NICE life. She did fine—no problems.
Then she returned to the idea of getting a Ph.D. Why? Her mother very much wanted it. She very much wanted to be a ‘liberated’ woman - independent, autonomous, self-sufficient, making her “own decisions“, having success in the outside world.
General Lesson: We had a NICE situation, and she was risking it, risking returning to the anxiety she had felt for that one semester in her first effort at graduate school. It could look like she was risking extracting defeat from the jaws of victory and WAS. This appears to be a special case of a quite general situation for women: Take a good, stable status quo and destroy it.
She entered a Ph.D. program again, but it was not far away. We moved about 30 miles to make her commute easier.
We had a plan: Since I had a relatively good job, was making about twice what she was, and since in college she had been a MUCH better student than I, we would send her to graduate school first and then, with her Ph.D. and a “better job” (her stated reason for leaving her clerical job and getting a Ph.D.), she would send me to graduate school. Too soon we would see that for her the plan meant nothing.
General Lesson: Conclude that women are really not much able to make a long term plan and have that plan really meaningful for them. Instead, conclude that women are driven by short-term emotional considerations. They can see, in emotional terms, what is right in front of them and just cannot see, in a way that affects their behavior, something on the horizon. In particular, NEVER make a long term plan that puts important “rational responsibility” on a women. Just NEVER do it. PERIOD.
In the graduate program, early on she did fine. With our home right there, she felt plenty secure. Her program was in science and quite mathematical, but I was good in the mathematics and helped her. We were regulars at some of the best restaurants in the US or the world - would call for a reservation at the last minute and get one of the best tables. Lots of world-class French food with Pommard, Corton, Nuit St. George, Chambertin, Meursault, etc. Remember the first “Parent Trap’ in Boston with its mention of Nuit St. George and Meursault? It was still a NICE life.
She got to a term paper for one of the world’s best known professors, and this was the start of trouble: It was supposed to be just a small paper in one course at the end of the spring semester, but she got an extension into the summer. In the plan she was supposed to use the summer to review for her French exam but spent the whole summer on that paper. As the weeks went by, I emphasized that a wasted summer was three months of wasted professional income in our plan and our lives. Eventually I explained, “You are being financially irresponsible.“. But there was no force on Earth that could get her to wrap up that term paper and get on to her French exam until the start of the fall semester.
She never understood what the professor wanted: He wanted a bright idea for a research technique; the particular research problem was close to silly, just an exercise. She assumed that particular research problem was what was important and attacked it with a lot of basic, hard clerical work and assumed that she would be doing well. Basically he wanted something clever and mathematical, maybe just an application of the Poisson process; now I could toss off some such in two evenings, but then I didn’t know enough to advise her.
General Lesson: Her reaction to my “financially irresponsible” was “How can you be so cruel?“. So, she was NOT addressing reality, was not being “rationally responsible“, was not being responsible at all, and was just pursuing her own interests, and those of her mother, and just assuming that I was there to pay the bills much like her father had done. She was being dependent, not an adult. Really, she WAS trying to continue to be a ‘child’ where she had done so well. There she was, 23 years old and still acting as dependent as she did in, say, the seventh grade. As later became clear, she didn’t want to grow up because it would be too stressful to face reality. E.g., she really did NOT want to turn 40 because she admitted to herself that 40 was too old not to be an adult. I.e., she was a nervous Nellie. For more, she was on the way to creating a disaster for no good reason, essentially working to create more dependency. “Independent?“: No; she was working to be dependent.
General Lesson: Success in K-16 emphasizes a lot of clerical trivia, that are, for graduate work in a world-class research university, the wrong lessons.
General Lesson: The fantastic ability of girls in K-12 to understand what a teacher wants and to provide it doesn’t work in graduate work at a world-class research university. Ain’t the right stuff. Instead, better is some boy who was a cut-up in the seventh grade, thought that the teacher was silly, and was looking for better ideas. It’s DIFFERENT, WILDLY different. That research world was constructed by men and is convenient for men and NOT for women.
Next she got a ‘research apprenticeship‘. So, another world famous professor asked her to do a literature search for a paper that was to be jointly published. So she hit the library like Ike hit Normandy: She didn’t do a ‘literature search’ but did the background for a 50 page stand alone review paper (on a topic that didn’t deserve such a paper). Weeks went by. She worked harder and harder. Finally the professor gave up and wrote the short paragraph in a few minutes. Yes, in clerical terms, she had worked very hard, actually quite quickly per unit of work done, and had found some relevant papers the professor had missed, but that was not important. She’d wasted the time.
Actually, she was too afraid to face, confidently, ambiguous reality: The ‘literature survey’ at the beginning of a research paper is rarely comprehensive (like she insisted hers be) and is often just perfunctory. I explained this point to her perhaps dozens of times, and her professor illustrated it right in front of her, but she still didn’t accept. The problem was emotionality not rationality.
Why? She was just TERRIFIED of ANY chance that anyone in the world would find even the tiniest dot missing on an ‘i‘. In fact, published peer-reviewed research papers are not close to perfect: The mathematician J. Doob once estimated that the average is about one error per page. This being perfect stuff, like girls in the second grade, is not reality. Or, think of R. Feynman when he gave his first conference paper on quantum electrodynamics: His stuff was so crazy that he got actual laughter from a good collection of the world’s most famous physicists. There was a LOT wrong with Feynman’s explanation, but basically it WAS significant progress. For the criticism, not just potential but actual, he couldn’t much worry about that. In original research, just CAN‘T keep playing that second grade girl stuff of pleasing the teacher. Instead, have to focus on real progress on reality, even if that progress is somewhat crazy, and DO need an understanding of what is and is not good progress on reality. Girls are REALLY good at pleasing the teacher and find facing reality too stressful from anxiety; boys are poor at pleasing a teacher but are much more comfortable facing reality. Boys and girls are DIFFERENT.
General Lesson: Where the HECK did that nonsense of being so afraid of any possible criticism from the public come from? Her mother got it from a unique situation from her single mother in the Great Depression where there was a reason. It’s common with women: They get some notion from their mother, accept it as rock solid, don’t understand what, if any reason there was for it, and, then, just will NOT consider any change, no matter WHAT the evidence is.
General Lesson: Since she was past 22, her anxiety level had risen. Mother Nature was saying: Don’t be out there addressing the real world.
General Lesson: From early on, girls and women are really good at eliciting positive reactions from others. That’s part of why women are so good at meeting customers as sales clerks or in customer service. Any potential of criticism is just DEVASTATING. She didn’t really want a good job on the literature search. Instead she wanted to eliminate all chances of criticism. The work itself was NOT at question; her ability at the work itself and her work itself were terrific. If you look at a woman and ask only, “Is she capable; can she do the work?“, then you risk disaster. The issue is fundamental: Facing objective, external reality or facing other people? Here men and women are DIFFERENT.
Soon she was into her dissertation research. This was independent with no deadlines. So, her fears of possible criticism, from famous professors, the public after she had published the research, were just incapacitating. She ground to a near halt: Work? Yes, she worked like a mule. The problem was that she was working at 100 times too many trivial details trying to eliminate any chance of criticism.
As the years went by, the stress rose. So, anxiety had caused stress.
And what does stress, high stress, nearly inhumanly high stress, for years, cause? Right: It causes depression and then clinical depression. As I know now, she was in a clinical depression the day she received her Ph.D.
And what does clinical depression cause? Right: Suicide. And that was the result.
Her mother and sisters? They didn’t try to get a Ph.D., be ‘independent‘, eliminate all possible chance of any criticism from world-famous professors, crash though glass ceilings in the men’s world, be ‘liberated’ and ‘equal‘, and they all did fine.
My wife was plenty healthy when she entered graduate school and close to death when she left. What was ‘unusual’ was graduate school, and her pursuing that was part of ‘women’s liberation‘, and it was those that caused her clinical depression. Otherwise she would have been fine.
SOME ‘education’ program: Take one of the most capable 22 year old women in the world, ruin her life, drive her to near death from which she does die.
Are the risks of ‘women’s liberation’ beginning to get clear?
What should girls and women do?
(1) Go for a traditional marriage.
(2) If a room, class, job, etc. has nearly all boys or men, then LEAVE and go somewhere else.
(3) If work, then do so in fields that are well PROVEN to be good for women.
(4) If some situation is stressful, then LEAVE. Do NOT assume that it really is okay for women because it’s okay for men and can just work through it.
(5) Do NOT assume that men and women are just alike in the world of work.
(6) For anything new or different, e.g., ‘women’s liberation’ or ‘equality‘, wait 100 years and look at it again.
If it is your wife or daughter hurt or killed by pursuing women’s liberation, or, as you put it, “treating people as equals“, then I will be sorry for not having written clearly enough, but you will be more eager to take more seriously what I have written. In particular, I can 100% assure you that had I understood this stuff on my wedding day, then (1) she would be alive and healthy today, (2) I would have stayed for the stock and be worth well over $50 million, (3) we would have a lot of children and grandchildren, and (4) I would not be writing this post.
Being fair to women is not the issue. Handling the fact that men and women are not the same is the crucial issue.
Beginning to understand?
In particular, for the clinical community, DUMPSTER all efforts at ‘women’s liberation‘. That’s a dangerous, brain-dead value judgment YOU are trying to foist onto your needy women patients. I just hope you lose a wrongful death suit if that’s what it takes to change your direction.
Men: If your wife has anxiety, then you have a potentially serious problem. First, I would strongly advise, keep her away from the clinical community because they (1) will try to make her dependent on them and, thus, break the bond between you and her, (2) are all fired up about this recent, politically correct nonsense of women being independent, autonomous, self-sufficient, and making their “own decisions“, which is especially unpromising for a woman with anxiety, and will try to guide her in this direction, and (3) with you out of the picture as her source of security, she will be in MUCH worse shape. If you can find a clinical professional that will advise you on how to take care of your wife, then fine, but I suspect that, out of the norm of ‘equality‘, they will refuse to help you.
Net, you will likely have to care for her yourself, but this is not too difficult. Actually the best known treatments are dirt simple and clearly explained on the Internet in just a few pages: Especially, get her AWAY from what is causing the anxiety. Have her pursue a LOT of physical exercise (it does work). Avoid the drugs - they cover up the problem, stop real progress, and greatly increase the risk of suicide. Take some basic lessons in how to listen well - e.g., read about ‘parent effectiveness training’ on good listening. Let her slowly talk out, and realize for herself, what was causing the problems and assure her that you are there to help her avoid those causes and to keep her from being hurt. That’s, net, much better than the clinical community can do.
Men: So, why is ‘equality’ so unpromising for women? Well, just look at what you know: A woman in love is usually very passive, receptive, and agreeable to just anything. E.g., look at Elizabeth Taylor in the first ‘Father of the Bride’ where she has ‘stars in her eyes‘. Test: How could such dependency behavior, which seriously hurts her ability to act like a “rationally responsible” adult, still be in the gene pool? Guess: Reproductive success took TWO people in an asymmetrical relationship where really she was dependent, really acted dependent, and was cared for. So, if you pursue ‘equality‘, then you will be fighting this basic asymmetry. It’s NOT promising. Instead, treat her like the woman she is and is built to be—cared for first by her father and then by her husband.
Again, Fromm had a very big point when he explained that Western Civilization got the idea that any difference was a threat of something unfair and, thus, wanted ‘equality’ everywhere possible and that this was a bad idea in 1789 and is a bad idea now. Yes, being fair, or more, is important. But dumpster this ‘equality’ nonsense; it’s dumb and DANGEROUS.
Men: Do NOT let your wife, or daughter, entertain a Ph.D. program in mathematics, physical science, social science, economics, or engineering. Do NOT do it. Those programs are for men only. Instead, advise her to get, say, a teaching certificate.
Clear enough?
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