What’s Wrong with the World

You don't think your sons can distinguish sparring from domestic violence? Moreover, wouldn't you consider using force against a female assailant permissible? If a woman comes at me with a knife, she's going down, possibly six feet under. You might as well say that you didn't want your boys to get used to hitting other men - after all, you don't want them growing up to rob convenience stores. Most martial art programs are fairly restrained in their sparring; I doubt the more forceful training typical of boxing or Muay Thai would permit coed sparring.

If a woman comes at me with a knife, she's going down, possibly six feet under.

This comment beautifully illustrates my point. That's the way a man talks about other men: only brutes talk this way about women. Before Co-ed America, a decent man might take his male assailant down and put him in the ground, but he'd do everything in his power to spare a female assailant's life - and yes, in his folly, perhaps even her honor.

What you fail to realize is that every human act creates a "new normal". Every time some boy knocks down a girl - sparring or otherwise - it becomes more normal for boys to knock down girls. (No "knock up" wisecracks, please.) We get used to doing it, to seeing it, to thinking about it. The frequency of the act dulls the conscience.

I'd do everything I could to spare *any* assailants life. As for honor, frankly, if you're assaulting people without warrant you deserve the shame. I just don't understand why women should be exempt from demands of strict justice; they are just as much morally responsible agents as we are, regardless of our differences in physical and psychological makeup.

On a more sociological note, I have to wonder why I keep seeing "betas", "alphas" and "game" brought up on W4. The concept of chivalry is an utmost "beta" concept, and to even utilize such a conceptual framework when advocating chivalry is to demean yourself. Without derailing the topic, I don't understand how one could subscribe to the same view of human nature as "PUAs" while defending chivalry - do you think that women are some kind of primordial innocence with a will so frail that an "alpha" can have their way with them without their sharing in the responsibility? Is there some sort of cognitive dissonance going on?

If you're really worried about this, though, I'd recommend foil or epee - saber can hurt pretty badly, which would go against your principle reason for picking fencing.

As for honor, frankly, if you're assaulting people without warrant you deserve the shame. I just don't understand why women should be exempt from demands of strict justice; they are just as much morally responsible agents as we are, regardless of our differences in physical and psychological makeup.

That sounds like Islamism to me. No, women are not equal to men as moral agents. This bit of Victorian fiction needs to be dispensed with. Women are in fact naturally more susceptible to extremes of emotion, to being deceived intellectually, and to being led into sin generally. St. Paul:

"For Adam was first formed; then Eve. And Adam was not seduced; but the woman being seduced, was in the transgression." 1 Tim 2:13-14

"For of these sort are they who creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, who are led away with divers desires: Ever learning, and never attaining to the knowledge of the truth." 2 Tim 3:6-8

Many women, and the men who love them, find words like these to be insulting. And it definitely offends the sensibilities of Western egalitarianism. But in fact the traditional Christian understanding of women as "the weaker sex" is, for women, their protection and liberty. When we dispensed with this understanding and "liberated" the most powerful force on earth - female sexuality - we laid the groundwork for a return to female subjection and exploitation.

On a more sociological note, I have to wonder why I keep seeing "betas", "alphas" and "game" brought up on W4. The concept of chivalry is an utmost "beta" concept, and to even utilize such a conceptual framework when advocating chivalry is to demean yourself.

You have a point there, John. This is the first time I have done so. It seemed like an easy shorthand for W4 readers, but it was lazy on my part. Mea culpa.

If you're really worried about this, though, I'd recommend foil or epee - saber can hurt pretty badly, which would go against your principle reason for picking fencing.

We had to drop the fencing, unfortunately.

"I'm trying to wrap my brain around the kind of father who has no problem with his sons kicking and punching and body-slamming girls. . ."

Agreed, Jeff. But to turn it around for a moment, what kind of father has no problem with his sons being kicked, punched and body-slammed by girls? Violence, like life, is coed. Websites like Youtube are full of examples of violent women. One can forfeit the privilege to be treated chivalrously -- that is, with generous portions of respect, honor, and peace -- and some women do forfeit it.

To put it differently, counter-terrorists are trained to shoot the women first because, in Muslim culture, women are generally considered second-class humans, so to speak, and are therefore more inclined to be violent in a terrorist situation in order to prove their equality and to establish their worth. Because they are statistically more dangerous, they are the first targets.

I do not think that sort of training is a breach of chivalry -- or of morality. You train soldiers to assess threats and to respond accordingly. You train sons to do the same thing. To the extent that this is an issue of chivalry, and that extent is rather small, then the time simply arises when you must kiss chivalry and its otherwise appropriate restraints good bye. Sons need to know how to recognize that time and to act in light of that recognition. When it does arise, coed martial arts might provide exactly the right response.

Ah, blessed equality. Annie get your gun. I read that Ohio University is starting with co-ed dorm rooms this fall. If two homosexuals can dorm together (two guys or two girls), it just wouldn't be right to keep mixed couples apart, don't you see?

Jeff,

While I sympathize with the martial arts problem, two points: 1) in the current real world a male robber will think nothing of mugging a woman - should she not know how to defend herself and 2) one of my female co-workers, a scientist, and her husband both have black belts in karate and she appears to be neither aggressive nor in a messed-up marriage. Perhaps age has something to do with it. In adult martial arts, gender confusion may be far less likely because personality traits have already been set.

The Chicken

John H. -- Have you ever examined crime statistics on age and gender? The fact is that violent crime is mostly a young man's business, despite decades of coerced egalitarianism. The chances of encountering knife-wielding woman are vanishingly low, even within the subset of unfortunate folks made victim to violent crime. When anyone trains for self-defense, all rationality points to him training for a potential assault by a young man.

What you've done is derail Mr. Culbreath's argument by immediately introducing an exotic exception to an empirically verifiable rule.

On a more sociological note, I have to wonder why I keep seeing "betas", "alphas" and "game" brought up on W4.

Say what? How often do you read this website? I'd challenge you to find even five blog posts in our nearly four years of existence that mention this subject by name.

A comment on the smaller issue. When I was a student of (co-ed) martial arts, I was repulsed by the idea of hitting a girl. It was explained to me that it was in the girl's interest to learn how to repel or to withstand blows by a man. That soothed my conscience and might help the Culbreath boys until such time as an all-male class might be available. (Right. Fat chance.) After all, every child needs to learn two emergency skills, how to fight and how to swim, for such times when they have no choice but to do so.

Why couldn't we have all-girl martial arts classes? I don't mind the idea of teaching girls self-defense, but this would have been the _obvious_ idea fifty years ago, if girls were studying this kind of thing.

I agree with Michael Bauman that a woman can forfeit her right to chivalry, but I can't see training young boys as a regular thing--"Hey, let's enroll you in martial arts classes. Won't that be fun?"--for such strange situations.

I took Jeff's use of the term "betas" to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek. His opinion of all of that is made amply clear by the end up his post; he deplores it.

Jeff, it seems that you're completely ignoring that many forms of martial arts take very seriously the idea of *discipline*. So not only do the young people studying them learn how to hit each other/throw each other around, they learn the conditions under which this might be appropriate (almost none). You speak as though martial arts studios are all like the Cobra Kai dojo...

The push to make "leaders" of girls in every context has become a frenzied crusade".

This push doesn't stop anywhere short of total equalization between the sexes. It's a necessary condition of the feminist assertion that women can do anything that men can do - with the "philosophical bonus" that women also have a distinct aptitude for solving human problems which, it's supposed, men can't handle.

Presumably a feminist utopia will emerge when all human institutions (including the church) have been compelled to operate on the basis that every level of responsibility and power is occupied by women in the same numbers and positions as men.

Has anyone ever tried to think through what sort of a brave new world this utopian scheme would create?

That's the way a man talks about other men: only brutes talk this way about women. Before Co-ed America, a decent man might take his male assailant down and put him in the ground, but he'd do everything in his power to spare a female assailant's life - and yes, in his folly, perhaps even her honor.

Before co-ed America, he'd have had a rational basis to assume she was mentally abnormal and thus spare her life on sympathy grounds. It would not have been a "normal woman" who was attacking him, but likely a deranged individual. Certainly when a weapon is involved, especially a weapon that requires close quarters, bloody combat.

A woman who attacks a man like a man has no honor to preserve. Only ladies can have honor, and a prerequisite of being a lady is to not be a violent, boorish c#$%.

Jeff,

If you can look past the language, this is probably one of the most thoughtful commentaries on chivalry in the blogosphere right now.

That is where most men fall down with chivalry. You can't be a nice guy chump and be chivalrous at the same time. Only a strong man can be chivalrous.

Dear Jeff. I am in total agreement with you on your post. That being the case, I'd recommend that every Christian Catholic Dad raise his children in the Gregorian Rite/Traditional Mass/EF Form/FSSP Parish if that is possible.

I have completely, totally, 100%, without a doubt quit on America. It is not reformable. It is long gone and it ain't coming back.

Hell's Bells, we are sending Moms overseas to fight in combat units and The Bride's University, Colby College (Maine), graduated a woman who became a Mother of three young children and she was sent to the Paki-Afghan Border where she served as the CIA Station Chief and where she was blown to smithereens by a Muslim who was allowed to come into camp unchecked for explosives.

Daddy, when is Mommy coming home?

She isn't children. She was killed by a Muslim in Afghanistan."

Why was she in Afghanistan Daddy?

And Daddy is silent as he stares at a bottle of Jameson.

A country that send Moms with young children thousands of miles away to fight in unnecessary wars is one deserving of desolation (and I am not even noting abortion), while a Husband who allows his Wife to abandon her children to work as a CIA Station Chief thousands of miles away from home is a feminised sissy.

I pity the poor children in that family.

P.S. Predictably, the Colby College Alumni Magazine hasn't written one word about this grave evil.

Along these lines I can't recommend highly enough Anthony Esolen's new book Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child to anyone, parent or not, who's concerned about what contemporary society is doing to our kids. The book is elegant, funny, exceedingly wise and eminently quotable. Not to be missed.

Have you ever examined crime statistics on age and gender? The fact is that violent crime is mostly a young man's business, despite decades of coerced egalitarianism. The chances of encountering knife-wielding woman are vanishingly low, even within the subset of unfortunate folks made victim to violent crime. When anyone trains for self-defense, all rationality points to him training for a potential assault by a young man.

What you've done is derail Mr. Culbreath's argument by immediately introducing an exotic exception to an empirically verifiable rule.

It may be an exception, but it still happens. Moreover, shouldn't women be training in martial arts with men if they expect to learn applicable self-defense?

As for women being morally weaker, I just don't have any evidence to support that conclusion. What experience I do have points to the opposite, must less for an innocent disposition. A few biblical proof-texts do not do justice to the issue: do you think a woman who prays without her head covered is against nature? Do you think women should remain silent in church? It seems likely to me that the early Christians simply absorbed the prevailing culture in this regard. There is evidence that in the beginning, women were church leaders; 2 Timothy was written later, reflecting attempts to bring them back into subjection.

My point about killing an assailant is simply this: if it comes down to her life or mine, I'm taking hers. If I can neutralize a threat without killing the assailant, then I would do so in any case. It's the same logic as the Chuch's for opposing the death penalty.

On PUA lingo, I seem not to be capable of doing a search, but I remember stumbling across an old topic with a lengthy discussion of it in a combox.

But to turn it around for a moment, what kind of father has no problem with his sons being kicked, punched and body-slammed by girls?

That's pretty easy to avoid without training boys to beat up girls.

Websites like Youtube are full of examples of violent women.

Which is due entirely to the existence of Co-ed America. Co-ed America needs to be fought and resisted, not confirmed and perpetuated.

One can forfeit the privilege to be treated chivalrously -- that is, with generous portions of respect, honor, and peace -- and some women do forfeit it.

Certainly, that's true. But I'm talking about restoring a culture where certain default assumptions can be made - assumptions without which we really do not have a civilization. And in fact, as Paul pointed out, men can still assume that they are not going to be violently attacked by women, and in those rare instances when it does happen, most men can overpower a female assailant even without co-ed martial arts training. And if that were not the case, we should still behave as though it were in order to set things aright.

People tend to behave in accordance with social expectations. Everything we do helps to create those social expectations. If, by our actions (co-ed martial arts), we show that men are expected to be brutes and women to be undeserving of honor, then men will be that much more brutish and women that much less deserving of honor.

To put it differently, counter-terrorists are trained to shoot the women first because, in Muslim culture, women are generally considered second-class humans, so to speak, and are therefore more inclined to be violent in a terrorist situation in order to prove their equality and to establish their worth. Because they are statistically more dangerous, they are the first targets.

Michael, this is just grotesque. Obviously it is missing some context and I don't believe the situation is as simple as men being "trained to shoot the women first". Counter-terrorists, just like everyone else, can assume that 99% of Islamic terrorists are male. Apart from the rare-as-hens-teeth mixed group of terrorists, this bit of trivia is beside the point.

I can see the modern American military exaggerating the problem, though, to justify its own barbaric policies with respect to women.

What started out as a correction, an opening, moved on to a crusade, now is the status quo & not to be give up easily by those who benefit the most.
There does seem to be some movement in 1 to 12 yrs education, a move to hire more male teachers. There is hope there, & in a crucial area. Medicine and politics are still primarily male, though the latter may be a tribute to female common sense. The increased enrollment of females in higher ed may yet backfire, the expense, the limited return, and the general wising up to what has become a grand scam.
As to the unwelcome aspects of a new patriarchy, in large part due to the overall vulgarization of our culture and hardly a male-female thing. The distaff side is caught up in this as well.
And does anybody remember the common use of "distaff"?

1) in the current real world a male robber will think nothing of mugging a woman - should she not know how to defend herself and 2) one of my female co-workers, a scientist, and her husband both have black belts in karate and she appears to be neither aggressive nor in a messed-up marriage.

Chicken, a good utilitarian argument can be made that girls and women should be trained to fight. Some are, as you note, and they do not seem to be the worse for it. Maybe there are cases where it would even be obligatory. In general, however, I think training girls and young women to fight is ultimately destructive of their femininity, even in a single-sex context. Let's not make war on nature.

"To put it differently, counter-terrorists are trained to shoot the women first because, in Muslim culture, women are generally considered second-class humans, so to speak, and are therefore more inclined to be violent in a terrorist situation in order to prove their equality and to establish their worth. Because they are statistically more dangerous, they are the first targets."

Actually I read that it isn't because they're proving themselves, but because by becoming a terrorist, they have destroyed the feminine inhibition against injuring others and the taking of human life, and that they are more dangerous and willing to kill everyone else around them when they have bombs strapped to them.

while a Husband who allows his Wife to abandon her children to work as a CIA Station Chief thousands of miles away from home is a feminised sissy.

VC, I wouldn't jump to that conclusion. If the wife is determined to do it, what alternative does a husband have today short of getting himself thrown in prison?

In general, however, I think training girls and young women to fight is ultimately destructive of their femininity, even in a single-sex context.

Jeff, would you extend that to teaching females the use of firearms, marksmanship training, etc., with an eye to later obtaining a firearms license for self-defense and home defense purposes?

Also, some self-defense classes are not martial arts classes and include advice on how to recognize a dangerous situation, what to do if one thinks one is being followed, etc., which do not seem destructive of femininity.

Mr. Culbreath. Had my wife told me she desired to do that I would have told her that she should have made that decision before she became a Mother and that if she was determined to go through with her decision, I'd have warned her that I would then try for an annulment and, failing that, I'd tell her I would divorce her.

And I would follow through.

Lydia - I think firearms training for self-defense is much less problematic. And certainly training on how to avoid dangerous situations (and get out of them) has value short of becoming a trained fighter.

VC- As a Catholic, I can't agree with your solution. A wife going mentally or emotionally or even morally off the rails is not grounds for an annulment. A civil divorce and separation (sans remarriage) would only be justified if it did not damage the children, who have a natural right to married parents. Failing an annulment you would still be married anyway, with a duty to seek reconciliation if possible. Marriage can be a cross. The man who picks it up is not a feminized sissy.

In a sane world the military would never allow such a travesty, but if it did, the husband would legally have veto power.

"men can still assume that they are not going to be violently attacked by women, and in those rare instances when it does happen, most men can overpower a female assailant even without co-ed martial arts training. And if that were not the case, we should still behave as though it were in order to set things aright."

That's the problem with your notion, Jeff. You don't theorize as if the real world matters as much as your assumptions and your pet ideas, in this case chivalry. In a world where human beings, both males and females, can be, and are, desperately dangerous, chivalry is not always, or even often, going to be the right response -- or the Christian response -- to deadly evil. Women can, and sometimes do, attack men (and women) violently, even fatally, both here and around the world. Or put differently, one must not try to connect chivalry with Biblical righteousness and obligations. There are many true and enlightening words one might use to describe Yahweh and his Son, but "chivalrous" is not among them. In other words, your notion of chivalry is neither rooted in reality nor in the Bible. Only by the most tortured sort of medieval exegesis and anachronistic application could one call God's commands and actions chivalrous. It's just not about that, which is why I'm not going to perpetuate the semi-pagan cultural mores of the age of chivalry.

"I don't believe the situation is as simple as men being "trained to shoot the women first". Counter-terrorists, just like everyone else, can assume that 99% of Islamic terrorists are male."

Again, reality has precious little impact upon your theory. Maybe you think that counter-terrorists can simply and safely "assume" the things you do, but they cannot and they do not. That's not what counter-terrorism is and that's not what counter-terrorists do. Their lives, and others' lives, depend precisely upon them not assuming your false and therefore deadly notion. I am telling you precisely what they do and why they do it. I am not making it up, and I am not assuming. I am telling you plainly and directly why our counter-terrorist do what they do. We are not talking about whether or not 99% of terrorists are men. That is not remotely the issue. In a counter-terrorist situation, when those who fight terrorists must do so in a face-to-face and eye-to-eye context, in a situation where you must infiltrate and then confront, say, a terrorist cell up close and personally, they shoot the women first -- because they are more dangerous. This isn't simply my opinion, either as to the policy or the reasons for it. Fact is fact, even if it does not conform to A WWWTW notion of the wisdom and contemporary applicability of chivalry.

The point being that we live in a world where women can be supremely dangerous -- to your sons and to the sons of others -- and, when they are, chivalry is not the response those sons need to learn, whether they are taught by Biblical or secular understandings of reality, which, in this case, converge against you.

During the age of chivalry, wars were simply fought differently than today. It takes time to aim a bow and they are no good in close quarters. There were no guns or drugs to make the wars faster and deadlier.

Almost any Medieval man could be taken by a well-trained modern woman. While one would like to see a return to men and women fulfilling complimentary roles, the reality is that unless Christianity has a resurgence, the world will continue to be a vastly more dangerous place today than 13th-century Europe. There is a sin called crass negligence where a person fails to take even reasonable steps to prevent a catastrophy. Denying women self-defense training, and in some cases this must be training against men, since a very real possibilty exists that they may be the attacker, is, in my opinion, to be negligent given the state of the modern world. There is a difference between co-ed boxing and self-defense. Boxing has rules. It is a parity sport. In a real world attack there is no guarentee of parity. Girls must learn to defend themselves against any and all attackers. I really think the word co-ed is misapplied, here. There is one way to fight, not a male and female way. I think my example of the stupidity of co-ed dorm rooms is a better example of where the use of co-ed is wrong.

The Chicken

Michael Bauman: God created man and woman, and gave them their natures. We know their natures from reason and human experience rather more than from divine revelation. You, on the other hand, either don't believe that a thing called "nature" exists or that it matters, and if it matters you don't believe that men have any obligations towards it beyond what is revealed in the Bible. That's a good example of how fideistic Protestantism gave birth to the mess we're in today.

Masked Chicken: The problem with your argument, as with Michael Bauman's, is that it elevates utility over nature. There are today greater threats against children from predators than ever before, some might say - but the solution is not to educate innocent children about the depraved things that evil people want to do them and make them suspicious of everyone, thereby destroying their natures. And yet that is precisely where the same logic takes us. Women have a nature. Female nature is good in itself. A Christian world perfects it rather than perverts it.

There is one way to fight, not a male and female way.

That is not entirely true. Women need to study styles of fighting that make up for the disparity between their strength and that of a typical man. In a fight between a man and a woman of equal skill, the man will almost always win by virtue of being able to take more blows and dish out more devastating attacks.

Jeff, I forgot to warn you not to use the word "chivalry," which reeks of the medieval church, which as we all know was thoroughly corrupt due to some earlier Fatherly corruption that occurred in the 1st or 2nd century or thereabouts and just ruined everything until the Reformation came along and got everything on the right track again. Also, be careful of referring to the masculine and feminine "natures" just in case, like chivalry, they are not to be found in the Bible. You need to keep this in mind when pope Michael is reading your stuff.

Thanks for the reminder, Bill. By the way, while putting this post together I was going through your Apologia archives hoping to find an old, old essay of yours that was pertinent to this topic. I was looking for a quote in which you referred to the female body as a "cradle" and therefore worthy of reverence. I came up empty. I think it had to do with women in sports, or possibly women in the military.

If you can look past the language, this is probably one of the most thoughtful commentaries on chivalry in the blogosphere right now.

Mike T., I reject it. Chivalry without obligation? Come on, that's nonsense. On the other hand he has the feminists, neo-feminists, and "conservative" feminists pegged. I think we can avoid placing a false chivalry in the service of feminism without ditching the foundation of true chivalry in the ontological natures of men and women.

I too was in a martial arts class where a lone woman showed up and I too was told that we shouldn't pull our punches on the grounds she should know how to defend herself against a determined attacker.

But I'm not sure how much my senseis believed this.

Everyone knows a woman won't stand a chance against a man with some street fighting experience under his belt. A man with older brothers picks up a lot of moves without formal training.

There are far more accomplished women martial arts warriors on fictional television than in real life.

At best the martial arts training would allow a woman to inflict enough damage to be able to run away without the man following. And in a spontaneous act of violence, "at best" rarely happens.

My dojo also helped give free one-time self-defense lessons on campus. But in retrospect these strike me as theatrical attempts at female empowerment combined with opportunities for the trained men to show off for a young female audience. (I'm sure the men enjoyed the chances at close physical contact).

The contradictions were many. Even my senseis were clear that if you really want self-defense, buy a gun or carry mace.

If a woman has enough foresight to take self-defense lessons, she generally has enough foresight not to get into sketchy situations to begin with.

If a woman really wanted to defend herself against a determined male attacker, why shouldn't she just travel in groups or have a strong, reliable man escort her places?

The quote you were looking for was this:

If my football coach had put a girl across from me and told me to run into her, I'd have quit. If I were a pro, I'd do the same. I don't hit girls, period. You can't pay me enough to slam into the sweet softness of creation's cradle. The NBA once let a woman try out for one of its teams. She didn't make it. I'm glad. How many of you really want to see some girl take an elbow in the teeth from Shaquille O'Neal?

It was in a post about golf, to which you should introduce your kids. They can be taught how to wield a putter in self-defense.

Kevin, wellll. These seem going a bit far:

If a woman has enough foresight to take self-defense lessons, she generally has enough foresight not to get into sketchy situations to begin with.

Depends on what you mean by "sketchy situations." When I was in graduate school (married), my husband couldn't walk with me everywhere. He was in classes of his own, working his tail off so he could eventually get a teaching job and support a family--good, gender-role traditionalist stuff. Sometimes I had to walk to the grocery store by myself in Nashville. Once I was chased home by a very dubious fellow who used to walk around the neighborhood grocery store ranting about how women deserved to be beaten. I ran as much like a hare as I was able to, and he gave up. I had plenty of foresight, but we were too poor to afford a car and sometimes I had to leave the house alone. (This was during the early evening while it was still light that this happened, by the way.)

Many young women don't happen to find Mr. Right before they have to live on their own, or if they do find Mr. Right, he can't be with them at every moment. If they end up living in a city, any city, they can easily end up in "sketchy situations" through no fault of their own. The world is a bad place.

If a woman really wanted to defend herself against a determined male attacker, why shouldn't she just travel in groups or have a strong, reliable man escort her places?

Because not every woman has a nice, handy group or strong, reliable man available to escort her every step.

That's the one, Bill. Many thanks. I didn't remember the words but I remembered they were worth remembering! Can you post a link?

Here you go.

Hey Lydia. I know how you could defend yourself in a sketchy situation. Challenge the jerk to a debate.

Great article Jeff. You might consider putting your boys in wrestling. The local high school has a program for boys 5 years old and up.

Masked Chicken, I am stumped by your assertion that "almost any medieval man" could be taken by a modern woman.
Considering not just the more physical aspects of only maintaining subsistence, but the modes of warfare for both knights and foot soldiers, you may reconsider.
In close quarters nasty things like maces, broadswords[ used for slashing] and battle axes were used, all great for developing the biceps.
A minor point on my part I grant you.

Lydia,

Point taken.

Some of my comments were more relevant for the college campus context rather than for those who lived off-campus.

At the same time, these martial arts/self-defense classes risk giving women a false sense of security. Few of them truly face a man willing to use his full strength to hurt them, and if they do it'll be a shock.

See Steven Goldberg's "Why Men Rule."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Men_Rule

High Status occupations are the occupations that MEN DO. Women displacing men
from FORMERLY high status occupations does not mean that women now own the high
status occupations. It means that those occupations are on the way out of high
status. SOME women can join the game, but once their percentage passes a tipping
point, the centrums of actual (as opposed to titular) power begin to shift.

"Women's Work" is NEVER high status.

Also, as Goldberg points out himself, pushing men's will to power competitions
out of the professional world means that those will to power impulses can only
be expressed in the domestic world. IOW, in relatively short order, there are
going to be a lot of dominated and bullied women in personal relationships,
instead of domestic relationships being the sphere where women reign supreme.

Bill, I wish it were that easy. As the mother of extremely bright but not particularly athletic daughters, I think it wd. be nice if bad guys could be fought off by debate.

Kevin, I think you're probably right about self-defense courses giving a false sense of security. On-campus may well be as dangerous as off-campus, if not more so (some colleges try to cover up assaults, etc., that take place on-campus), but if good sense and a can of pepper mace isn't going to be enough, I doubt if a modular jujitsu course is going to add much thereto. This is, I'm sure, all the more true for small and unathletic women.

By the way, I think Jeff is really onto something in the main post about the danger of our ending up with the worst of both worlds. Men emasculated in some areas and hyper-masculinized, unchivalrous, and dangerous in other areas.

I think it wd. be nice if bad guys could be fought off by debate.

Dear Lydia, although I am an Irish-Algonquin man I have used humor to avoid fights not a few times in the past.

And, if humor doesn't work, I work with my nature...

Masked Chicken, I am stumped by your assertion that "almost any medieval man" could be taken by a modern woman.

Better speed, more fighting savvy (if she has beebread trained), more dangerous environments. Women have improved both physically and mentally because of better nutrition and training. Consider how fast an Olympic athlete can run compared to the best medieval runner. There has been slow performance enhancements in the species as a whole, plus we've lived with more sophisticated warfare and fighting techniques for longer. A modern woman is probably close to par with a medieval man.

Jeff,

Martial arts as sports requires parity; martial arts as self-defense assumes non-parity. Bill's cradle comment is applied to parity situations. Of course, male-female parity in sports is silly, as you and he point out. I am all for "vive la difference," but self-defense is not a matter of parity. I can prove this, I think: the command to turn the other cheek was not made just to male or just to females, but everyone. Likewise, self-defense is a reasoned stance not just for males, but females because turning the other cheek is one type of charitable self-defense - it cools passions and helps prevent anger. It would seem that self-defenses of other types, being similar in genus, are a reasonable stance for both sexes. How they do so may differ, but self-defense is reasonable. If that is so, the nature of the self-defense would be determined by the attack, not the parity, thereof. A woman may be required to defend herself against a man. There are no rules of etiquette during battle and a woman has the same right to put down a man as another man does, if she can.

The Chicken

iPad auto-correct rears it's ugly head. Should read:

(if she's better trained)

not the mishmash in parentheses, above.

The Chicken

VC, I mean _really_ bad guys, the kind of bad guys that parents have nightmares about. The kind of bad guys you worry about if and when your daughter leaves home. Not the kind who respond to humor.

There is a world of difference between not wanting to ingrain "it is acceptable to hit girls at some times" and thinking women shouldn't be taught self-defense. It's important to make sure women understand that self-defense does NOT mean they can take on a big bad, it means they have some sort of a chance.

Given that I'm small, bookish and a mother of a small child, I really like guns. Barring hand-to-hand, the playing field is leveled...if you are willing and able to use them properly.

Vermont Crank,
That woman who died in the CIA was a hero who died for her country. The only disgrace is that she died protecting people like you. People like you will proboly never know the suffering her husband feels, [wish for harm to a fellow commenter removed LM]

Shadow Boy

Foxfier, and here I always thought of you as strong and athletic.

I question how much most of you have read from Roissy and others like them because you seem to miss not only areas of agreement with them, but their underlying message. The underlying purpose behind "game" is to teach men how to be sexually attractive to women. Not attractive in the sense that most Christians think (good man, good provider), but how to appeal to her sexually. The end goal of game can be anything from a string of flings to teaching a Christian man how to maintain the basic interest his wife should have in him as a lover.

This is indeed a problem. Modern civilized men have been trained to be milquetoast nice guys. That's not what women want in the least. It's virtually impossible for a normal woman to find that romantically suitable for the long run. I see a lot of criticism of the methods here, which is certainly fair, but not enough even basic recognition of the problem.

Mike T -- didn't I say, way above to John H., that it's really weird to talk about W4 being a hotbed of "game" discussion?

This decades-long crusade against masculine culture and leadership has led to some bizarre but predictable results. For the first time in American history, male unemployment is an astounding 2 points higher than female unemployment.

"As for honor, frankly, if you're assaulting people without warrant you deserve the shame. I just don't understand why women should be exempt from demands of strict justice; they are just as much morally responsible agents as we are, regardless of our differences in physical and psychological makeup."
That sounds like Islamism to me.

Women are in fact naturally more susceptible to extremes of emotion, to being deceived intellectually, and to being led into sin generally.

Three new examples for Jeff's despicable lunacy. How long will the other, more sensible (I don't mean you, Lydia), contributors stand this brainless balderdash? Women are more easily led into sin? That must be the reason why so many dictators, mass murderers and rapists of the past were female. And now the siblings of Satan even want our jobs and demand equal payment? What an infamy.

All signs point to the return of patriarchy - but not the genteel patriarchy of Christianity with its quaint scruples about family and monogamy and chivalry and honor. Instead this will be a radically misogynistic patriarchy learned from video games and WWF, from internet pornography and Roissy: ruthless, violent, promiscuous, and cruel, like the paganism of old.

Jeff, I dispute the notion that chivalrous, genteel patriarchy is not violent and ruthless. See the second chart at this link for a look at historical homicide rates:
http://madeinamericathebook.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/a-crime-puzzle/

I agree with everything written in the OP, and especially the prognosis; humans being humans, it cannot be otherwise.

Mike T -- didn't I say, way above to John H., that it's really weird to talk about W4 being a hotbed of "game" discussion?

Yes, but I don't see what that has to do with my comment. It's not that any posts have been written about it, but plenty of comments have been made about it.

That must be the reason why so many dictators, mass murderers and rapists of the past were female.

It's a statistical fact that men are more varied than women. There are, for example, more men with substandard IQs than women; men are also approximately eight times more represented on the upper end of intelligence than women. It shouldn't be shocking that men are similarly drawn to extremes of law-abiding behavior and criminality.

Furthermore, women have rarely been political leaders of any significance in any society and usually the ones where they did rise to power, behaving like a dictator would not have been politically possible.

That woman who died in the CIA was a hero who died for her country. The only disgrace is that she died protecting people like you.

Dear Shadow Boy. Back in The Vietnam War Era, men were given an exemption from the draft if they were Fathers of infants because way, way, way, way back in time, way back in the 1960s, there was still a vestigial element of our Body Politic that valued the Family.

But not anymore.

America now sends MOTHERS of three children into combat and some, like your own self, think that policy is just peachy.

None dare call that insanity, I guess