The Homosexual Agenda, The aclu, And Your Children...

[Doug]

Jillian: Of course. This is how civilized people behave. But the Matts of the world must learn that there are plenty of less-than-civilized people out there.

And, note that "hitting on" someone covers a wide range of territory.

You can initiate very mild flirting with someone, as you are getting to know them, and see what signals you get bounced back, and then turn up the temperature from there if it is warranted. This is how it should be done, according to me.

Or you can loudly ask a woman you have never seen before, (assuming the male as initiator her)in public, in a crude way, if she would like to ...

Now in the latter case, I wouldn't support the lady in question pulling out a .38 from her purse and blowing the offender's head off. But, I think she is fully justified in having some reaction other than politely declining with a good-natured grin.

Have you ever read Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will? (Huge irony here, an old rightwing man recommending a founding work of modern femininism to a liberal woman, but it's really must reading ... not so much for women, but certainly for men.) The wolfwhistle question is discussed there in a way that changed my thinking on the subject.

 

[jillian]

Jillian: Of course. This is how civilized people behave. But the Matts of the world must learn that there are plenty of less-than-civilized people out there.

And, note that "hitting on" someone covers a wide range of territory.

You can initiate very mild flirting with someone, as you are getting to know them, and see what signals you get bounced back, and then turn up the temperature from there if it is warranted. This is how it should be done, according to me.

Or you can loudly ask a woman you have never seen before, (assuming the male as initiator her)in public, in a crude way, if she would like to ...

Now in the latter case, I wouldn't support the lady in question pulling out a .38 from her purse and blowing the offender's head off. But, I think she is fully justified in having some reaction other than politely declining with a good-natured grin.

Have you ever read Susan Brownmiller's Against Our Will? (Huge irony here, an old rightwing man recommending a founding work of modern femininism to a liberal woman, but it's really must reading ... not so much for women, but certainly for men.) The wolfwhistle question is discussed there in a way that changed my thinking on the subject.

First, I don't think the answer is expecting civilized people to expect less. I think it is in punishing, to the fullest extent possible, those who are uncivilized... like the people who victimized Matthew Shepard or rape women, or abuse children, etc.

I think for the people Matthew Shepard came in contact with, just the knowledge that Shepard wasgay would have dehumanized him in their eyes. I don't think the result would be any different. Plus, you're presuming that there was any more than "light flirting" in the approach.

The wolfwhistle... well, it can be uncomfortable. It can certainly be demeaning. And I think most women have heard plenty of that sort of thing... but my response really is big deal.. so we hear a few "hey, baby" or "mira, chiciqita linda", or whatever.... how we respond is far more telling than the approach. And maybe there is an element of keeping distance or maintaining one's safety in responding with a distant smile and a quick retreat... .but the fact is, even there, no one deserves to be victimized. To bring it to the hetero world, I've never understood why men get into fights with men who did nothing more than flirt with the woman they're with... (and I'm not talking aout a persistent thing...). It just never made sense to me... I guess I always said, "well, you can't blame them for trying". If the behavior persists past the "no thank you", whole other ball game.

I haven't read the Susan Brownmiller book. But will give it a look-see.

 

[Doug]

Jillian : Trying to understand "why men get into fights with men who did nothing more than flirt with the woman they're with" is actually a very useful exercise. You've again hit on a key point and perhaps a difference between Left and right.

But ... I hesitate to reply. Because right on page 1 of my Men's Field Manual for Tactics and Strategy in the War Between the Sexes (FM100-1), it says in bold type: DO NOT LET THEM KNOW THEIR OWN POWER OVER US.

But what the hell, your side never believes it anyway, so here I go:

The answer is basically simple: we fight because

-- (1) there is some genetically-shaped impulse in us which shapes our behavior in the my-mate-is-being-propositioned situation, and this gene or gene-complex has alleles which range over a variety of strengths, and

--- (2) in the past, males who had the stronger alleles, i.e. who kept other males away from their women more successfully, had more descendants than those males who didn't object very strongly. It's the same reason there are so few slow gazelles, or slow lions.

And women's choices played a big role in this: look into your heart and ask how you would respond if your husband was not jealous at all, and responded to other male come-ons to you (which among the intelligentsia are usually more subtle than wolf-whistles) with indifference. Your female ancestors chose the strong guys over the nicer guys, and it was a wise decision on their part. The same "Whut you lookin' at?" belligerence was better at protecting the cubs in a Hobbsean world.

What but the wolf's tooth whittled so fine The fleet limbs of the antelope? What but fear winged the birds, and hunger Jeweled with such eyes the great goshawk's head? Violence has been the sire of all the world's values...

This also explains the difference in male and female sexuality, and also even the differences in what makes them jealous.

One of the most powerful memories I have of a certain ex-wife, IQ 160 plus, a university graduate at 18, an intellectual's intellectual, was her response to a very mild apparent flirtation-signal directed towards me by another woman. She said , "I'll scratch her eyes out!"

Women are jealous, then, for sure, but there is a difference.

I will go out on a limb here, and assert: women fear losing their male permanently, more than they fear that he will be on rare occasions unfaithful. Whereas men react much more violently to the possibility of even a single infidelity.

And there are obvious biological reasons for this, which it would make this post too long to go into here, but anyone interested can read up on Evolutionary Psychology. (A demurral here: I think the EP people may sometimes go too far in trying to explain all human behavior as evolutionary adaptations. But they are clearly on to something.)

But to put it in a nutshell: one single wayward liaison on the part of a female can leave the male raising a cuckoo's egg. A similar extra-marital encounter on the part of the male, provided it goes nowhere, does not threaten your ability to raise your descendants. You know that your children are yours. He doesn't know with the same certainty that they are his (and some studies of biological as opposed to legal fatherhood have shown that he actually has reason to worry. Widespread DNA testing is going to cause social havoc).

These same reasons explain why the amount of porn produced for males far outweighs the amount of porn produced for females, roughly in the ratio of their respective lifetime gamete production counts (400 for you, umpty-zillion for us). And also in respect of its subtlety.

And it's why any reasonable-looking female, if she wants to, can get almost any normal male running around in front of her with one wing on the ground.

And why we have, therefore -- given the potentiallity of permanent warfare among the males in colonies of the human chimpanzee -- seen the evolution of a whole raft of social institutions, laws and customs, to try to curb this powerful male impulse and divert it into channels where it can be constructive.

(Another book suggestion here, to balance my previous feminist one: Steven Rhoads' [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Taking-Differences-Seriously-Steven-Rhoads/dp/159403091X/ref=sr_1_1/103-9655811-7155832?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1192439258&sr=1-1] Taking Sex Differences Seriously[/ame]. Please feel free to retaliate.)

It's why Dr Johnson said, "Nature having given woman so much power, the law wisely allows her but little." (Or something similar.) (Of course his observation is now obsolete, which is why, if civilization survives so long, women will be the dominant sex within a few generations: you will have the power of both the law and Nature on your side.)

And why Socrates is supposed to have said, having reached the age of sexual indifference, "At last I have been set free from a cruel and insane master."

This powerful drive, expressed in different ways among male and female, provides the theme for half if not more of the world's great literature. (And its awful literature too.)

And now we come to the political bit.

In the last few decades, in the West, we have seen the progressive dismantling of these laws, customs and institutions. This makes us conservatives uneasy.

Of course, few conservatives base their unease at things like growing single-parenthood and casual sex among young people and the dismantling of various sexual taboos, on Darwinism. (A [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Darwinian-Conservatism-Societas-S/dp/0907845991/ref=pd_sim_b_3/103-9655811-7155832] few[/ame] do, but we are regarded with suspicion by the rest of the tribe, and probably with good reason. Even a conservative-friendly rationalism is probably insufficient to sustain a good society. Nonetheless the hostility of many conservatives toward Darwinism is ironic, given that it supports a conservative approach to society.)

Rationalist liberals of the educated middle classes look at the religious and just-plain-prejudice driven arguments of many conservatives defending traditional morality, and laugh, or get indignant.

And indeed there is something there to laugh at, especially the delicious hypocrisy of many male conservatives. (I personally got intense enjoyment out of all the Republican Congressmen standing up to piously denounce Bill Clinton, knowing what an aphrodesiac male power is, as Henry Kissinger observed, and knowing all the opportunties that a Congressman has for testing the efficacy of that aphrodesiac .. It was noble, how they put the interests of their Party, as they saw it, above the interests of their Sex.)

But the hypocrisy is necessary. A society based on Pure Reason will not last.

We are now dismantling anything that cannot be defended in terms other than, Does it cause displeasure to a non-consenting adult? If not, have at it! A dangerous experiment.

And I know that all these changes are subtly intertwined with that great and historic advance in human progress out of the slime, the emancipation of women, and are driven not by some homosexual or communist conspiracy, but by the prosperity and increasing individual autonomy that the free market has brought us. Hoist by our own petard!

So we conservatives grumble and look fearfully into the future, and shake our heads at each new set of statistics documenting what we see as progressive social decay, and at each new advance of the "If it feels good, do it!" philosophy, but we know we cannot do much to even slow the tide, much less stop or reverse it.

 

[Shogun]

So, if Dude A kicks the shit out of Dude B because Dude B was flirting with Dude A's girlfriend/wife isn't it true that it will be DUDE A that gets charged since flirting is neither a crime nor an excuse for a violent reaction?


Do we make excuses for said violent outburst and blame such on the flirtation of Dude B?

 

[Doug]

We do whatever is appropriate to the kicker, and advise the kicked to learn some Darwinian theory.

Explain to him the paradox that the less he knows about Darwinian theory (on matters having to do with s-e-x in particular), the more likely it is he will be nominated for a Darwin Award.

How is it that so many liberals are partial to the idea that we have to understand the motivations of suicide bombers to commit their heinous deeds, while not condoning the deed (said motivations presumably being protests over poverty and global warming) -- and yet are so resistant to the idea that we also have to understand the motivations of normal male primates of the human species, whose emotions and reflex reactions are not buried under a good deal of suppressive training or cultivated into socially-acceptable expressions?

 

[Shogun]

hehehe... you said darwinian theory.


I doubt if i'd make as much of an excuse for the violence here than I would when copkillers react and kill cops. Should we require lessons on evolution in the police academy?


UNDERSTANDING the root cause is not FORGIVING the behaviour. Besides, are you REALLY comparing manifest destiny and the creation of israel to wearing a slutty dress around guys who may be potential rapists?


really?

 

[Larkinn]

We do whatever is appropriate to the kicker, and advise the kicked to learn some Darwinian theory.

Explain to him the paradox that the less he knows about Darwinian theory (on matters having to do with s-e-x in particular), the more likely it is he will be nominated for a Darwin Award.

How is it that so many liberals are partial to the idea that we have to understand the motivations of suicide bombers to commit their heinous deeds, while not condoning the deed (said motivations presumably being protests over poverty and global warming) -- and yet are so resistant to the idea that we also have to understand the motivations of normal male primates of the human species, whose emotions and reflex reactions are not buried under a good deal of suppressive training or cultivated into socially-acceptable expressions?

Last I checked we didn't base our laws, or our morals, on Social Darwinism.

 

[Doug]

hehehe... you said darwinian theory.

I doubt if i'd make as much of an excuse for the violence here than I would when copkillers react and kill cops. Should we require lessons on evolution in the police academy?

UNDERSTANDING the root cause is not FORGIVING the behaviour. Besides, are you REALLY comparing manifest destiny and the creation of israel to wearing a slutty dress around guys who may be potential rapists?

really?

Shogun: the only thing I even understand from your post is the unexceptional statement that "UNDERSTANDING the root cause is not FORGIVING the behaviour". "Root cause" is somewhat problematic, but let us agree that wicked behavior has causes -- it is not a quantum mechanical phenomenon -- and we had better take the various "causes" which are likely to be animating people into account when we mix with them.

Policemen aready have a pretty good idea of the effects of Darwinian selection on human behavior, without having to have understood anything about kin-selection or genetic drift.

As for the manifest destiny and Israel stuff ... what is that all about? Is this some reference to a previous argument in which I did not take part? If so, I pass. About which I know nothing, thereof I must remain silent.

 

[Doug]

Last I checked we didn't base our laws, or our morals, on Social Darwinism.

So? What I was talking about had nothing whatsoever to do with Social Darwinism. That's a completely different concept.

I was referring to Evolutionary Psychology (the current polite name for Sociobiology, whose academic originators drew down on themselves the wrath of the totalitarian left -- so the name was changed, as a kind of protective coloration).

This discipline purports to explain, in evolutionary terms, some powerful universals of human behavior, which the Left likes to put down to capitalist cultural conditioning which will be overcome through proper social engineering.

Hey ... I thought we conservatives were supposed to be the poorly-educated rednecks around here, the garage mechanics trying to argue with the clever college graduates. Has the world turned upside down?

 

[Larkinn]

So? What I was talking about had nothing whatsoever to do with Social Darwinism. That's a completely different concept.

No, actually Evolutionary Psychology and Social Darwinism are very closely related.

I was referring to Evolutionary Psychology (the current polite name for Sociobiology, whose academic originators drew down on themselves the wrath of the totalitarian left -- so the name was changed, as a kind of protective coloration).

Incorrect. Evolutionary Psychology is not concerned with the same question as sociobiology is. Sociobiology attempts to figure out which parts of human actions are controlled by either nature or nurture. Evolutionary Psch is concerned with attempting to explain traits through genetics i.e. nature, and not only that it comes from nature, but where exactly it comes from. Your tendency to blame everything on the left seems to have atrophied your perspective.

This discipline purports to explain, in evolutionary terms, some powerful universals of human behavior, which the Left likes to put down to capitalist cultural conditioning which will be overcome through proper social engineering.

Amazing. Acadamia is a field of the left, and science shouldn't be trusted because it is infiltrated by the left, but yet, in your mind, Evolutionary Psych is attempting to refute some things that the "left likes to put down to capitalist cultural conditioning". Amazing even further that Evolutionary Psych is dependent on evolution and so is even more liberal than many fields of acadamia.

Care to reconcile that internal contradiction, Doug? Perhaps by discontinuing your idiotic generalizations? Somehow I doubt it. You seem to hold onto them as reinforcing your ideas as if without them you would have no real basis for your beliefs.

Hey ... I thought we conservatives were supposed to be the poorly-educated rednecks around here, the garage mechanics trying to argue with the clever college graduates. Has the world turned upside down?

Well whether its because you are conservative or not, I have no idea, but you do seem to be poorly educated.

 

[Doug]

Larkinn: I am a conservative,and I am indeed very poorly educated. The more I read about history and society, the more I find out how little I know. This is one of the things that makes me a conservative, since I know that this ignorance is not mine alone, but that of all men.

To take your points one by one:

(1) On EP and Social Darwinism. You claim that they are closely related, but do not explain how. Could you elaborate on that?

(2) I think you are splitting hairs on the differences between Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology. Here is what Wiki has to say about it:

Sociobiology is a synthesis of scientific disciplines that attempts to explain social behavior in all species by considering the evolutionary advantages the behaviors may have. It is often considered a branch of biology and sociology, but also draws from ethology, anthropology, evolution, zoology, archeology, population genetics and other disciplines. Within the study of human societies, sociobiology is closely related to the fields of human behavioral ecology and evolutionary psychology.

Sociobiology has become one of the greatest scientific controversies of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, especially in the context of explaining human behavior. Criticism, most notably made by Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould, centers on sociobiology's contention that genes play a central role in human behavior and that variation in traits such as aggressiveness can be explained by variation in peoples' biology and is not necessarily a product of the person's social environment. Many sociobiologists, however, cite a complex relationship between nature and nurture. In response to the controversy, anthropologist John Tooby and psychologist Leda Cosmides launched evolutionary psychology as a centrist branch of sociobiology with less controversial focuses.

Of course, any sane person will say that human behavior is not entirely and completely the result of simple evolutionarily-derived biological reflexes. No one in the world thinks that the social environment in which a child is raised has abolutely no effect on him whatsoever. This is not even a strawman.

(3) And you say

:Amazing. Acadamia is a field of the left, and science shouldn't be trusted because it is infiltrated by the left, but yet, in your mind, Evolutionary Psych is attempting to refute some things that the "left likes to put down to capitalist cultural conditioning". Amazing even further that Evolutionary Psych is dependent on evolution and so is even more liberal than many fields of acadamia.

Hmm... I am now going to make a generous offer, and I will let Jillian, who is on your side of the barricades but whom I know to be an honest person, adjudicate: If you can find any statement by me which says, or implies, that "science is not to be trusted because it is infiltrated by the left" I will donate $100 to the leftist cause of your choice. Perhaps you were talkin about the so-called "social sciences"? Here I indeed recommend a large grain of salt in considering what they have to say. But they are not sciences, any more than "food science" or "military science" is.


I suspect you know nothing about this, but in the 1990s there was a huge fight between "postmodern" leftists who were into "critical theory" and who began to write a lot of nonsense about (real) science and its supposed lack of objectivity, how it reflected male viewpoints and its capitalist origins. They were utterly destroyed, so far as I am concerned, by some real scientists, many of whom were liberals. Their demolition is great fun to read, and I may start a thread on it, to help induce in some of our younger and more credulous posters a healthy skepticism about academia, which, outside of the real sciences, and mathematics, is just as faddish and subjective as your average New Age conclave.

You seem to have a very simple model: academia is liberal and good, so nothing that supports the worldview of conservatism can come out of it. In particular, it is a "contradiction" to find support for the conservative way of thinking, in certain results claimed by an academic discipline.

Have you never noticed the heavy reliance of conservatism on the field of economics?

This is a very strange view: you seem to have taken the view attributed to (but not held by) David Horowitz, tripled its potency, and turned it upside down.

 

[Shogun]

Shogun: the only thing I even understand from your post is the unexceptional statement that "UNDERSTANDING the root cause is not FORGIVING the behaviour". "Root cause" is somewhat problematic, but let us agree that wicked behavior has causes -- it is not a quantum mechanical phenomenon -- and we had better take the various "causes" which are likely to be animating people into account when we mix with them.

Policemen aready have a pretty good idea of the effects of Darwinian selection on human behavior, without having to have understood anything about kin-selection or genetic drift.

As for the manifest destiny and Israel stuff ... what is that all about? Is this some reference to a previous argument in which I did not take part? If so, I pass. About which I know nothing, thereof I must remain silent.

since cops have a pretty good idea do you tell their widows that they should have made a less stupid career choice?


Have you posted anything resembling evidence today yet?

 

[Doug]

What would you count as evidence? And evidence for what?

Your other comment is a non sequitur, so I cannot answer.

 

[mattskramer]

since cops have a pretty good idea do you tell their widows that they should have made a less stupid career choice?


Have you posted anything resembling evidence today yet?

I think that we can agree that this is a relative issue in that people make choices and take changes. Some activities are more dangerous and riskier than are other activities. There are good neighborhoods, okay neighborhoods, and bad neighborhoods. There are safe jobs, risky jobs, and very dangerous jobs. Ultimately, it is the criminal to blame. Did you see the movie “The Accused”?

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

The story is about a working-class woman (played by Foster) labeled as promiscuous because she was a woman who had more than one sexual partner. One night in a bar, she is viciously gang-raped by several drunk bar patrons. A district attorney (played by McGillis) is assigned to the rape case. The trial that ensues argues the point that no matter how much sexual tension and teasing that had previously occurred during the night of the rape, the drunk patrons were guilty of the crime because it wasn't consensual, not only for actually perpetrating the rape but also for encouraging it.

It is one of the first Hollywood films to deal with rape in a direct manner.
Did foster ask to be “raped”?

 

[Shogun]

What would you count as evidence? And evidence for what?

Your other comment is a non sequitur, so I cannot answer.

thats awfully convenient.

Come on, doug.. SURELY, if you can attribute even a minor bit of responsibility onto rape victims and gay dudes because of their choices then, SURELY, you also reserve the same for the widows of dead cops who, like you said, are fully aware of the nature of their employment, eh



I was just fucking with you about the evidence schtick. Hope your day is going well.

 

[Shogun]

Ultimately, it is the criminal to blame.

thats really all Im going for here. Weather it be for the sake of a gay kid, rape victim, black kid from chicago, cops, etc. I find it reprehensible to rationalize what happened to matt shepherd just because the kid was gay.

 

[Diuretic]

So? What I was talking about had nothing whatsoever to do with Social Darwinism. That's a completely different concept.

I was referring to Evolutionary Psychology (the current polite name for Sociobiology, whose academic originators drew down on themselves the wrath of the totalitarian left -- so the name was changed, as a kind of protective coloration).

This discipline purports to explain, in evolutionary terms, some powerful universals of human behavior, which the Left likes to put down to capitalist cultural conditioning which will be overcome through proper social engineering.

Hey ... I thought we conservatives were supposed to be the poorly-educated rednecks around here, the garage mechanics trying to argue with the clever college graduates. Has the world turned upside down?

Interesting. I remember it as sociobiology and I think Dawkins was one ofthem? There was an American academic, at Harvard I think, can't remember his name at the moment. I remember the firestorm too. A book, from memory "Not in our Genes"? Somebody Rose from the OU in the UK?? I started to read it but then thought it was just too ideological and gave up.

 

[Larkinn]

Larkinn: I am a conservative,and I am indeed very poorly educated. The more I read about history and society, the more I find out how little I know. This is one of the things that makes me a conservative, since I know that this ignorance is not mine alone, but that of all men.

The belief that all men are ignorant has nothing to do with conservatism.

(1) On EP and Social Darwinism. You claim that they are closely related, but do not explain how. Could you elaborate on that?

EP is essentially the science of attempting to explain human actions via genetic or otherwise inherent non-environmental mechanisms. Social Darwinism is essentially those with the best mechanisms will be most likely to survive, and attempts to explain, via those mechanisms, why people do survive and prosper.

(2) I think you are splitting hairs on the differences between Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology. Here is what Wiki has to say about it:

Wiki also says, which you conveniently left out,

Many sociobiologists, however, cite a complex relationship between nature and nurture. In response to the controversy, anthropologist John Tooby and psychologist Leda Cosmides launched evolutionary psychology as a centrist branch of sociobiology with less controversial focuses.

They are related, but as to your conspiracies about the name changing because of the "totalitarian left", well that is just in your overly partisan head.

Of course, any sane person will say that human behavior is not entirely and completely the result of simple evolutionarily-derived biological reflexes.

There are plenty of people who don't believe that statement, and most are sane. Merely because an idea is difficult for you to comprehend does not mean believers of said idea are insane.

No one in the world thinks that the social environment in which a child is raised has abolutely no effect on him whatsoever. This is not even a strawman.

Correct...but this idea is compatible with the previous idea that nobody sane believes. Its not easy, but it may well be the case.

Hmm... I am now going to make a generous offer, and I will let Jillian, who is on your side of the barricades but whom I know to be an honest person, adjudicate: If you can find any statement by me which says, or implies, that "science is not to be trusted because it is infiltrated by the left" I will donate $100 to the leftist cause of your choice. Perhaps you were talkin about the so-called "social sciences"? Here I indeed recommend a large grain of salt in considering what they have to say. But they are not sciences, any more than "food science" or "military science" is.

Psychology is not a science? Please provide some evidence of this. I hope you can acknowledge saying that the APA should not be trusted because of leftist bias without me having to dig up that quote.

You seem to have a very simple model: academia is liberal and good, so nothing that supports the worldview of conservatism can come out of it.

Nothing I said implied this. Where exactly did you pull this crap from?

In particular, it is a "contradiction" to find support for the conservative way of thinking, in certain results claimed by an academic discipline.

Ah I see. You took me describing your views and assumed I believed them. Why would you think that? I was describing a contradiction in YOUR beliefs, not mine.

I am not the one continuously making generalizations about academia as liberal. I am not the one who constantly references the left as if they are some huge homogenous block.

And don't assume that I think of conservatives the same way you think of liberals. I dislike a great deal of conservative thought, but thats because I think it is incorrect or inhumane, not because its evil or "totalitarian" or being linked to it makes one a bad person.

Have you never noticed the heavy reliance of conservatism on the field of economics?

I am well aware of the conservatism in academia regarding economics, particularly the Chicago school.

 

[Diuretic]

since cops have a pretty good idea do you tell their widows that they should have made a less stupid career choice?


Have you posted anything resembling evidence today yet?

It's not really a stupid career choice (although the money could be better ) but there are lot of other jobs more physically dangerous - mining for example.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

Now do not read this story, it won't help your case any on how science is so sure about Homosexual orientation and how it comes about.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071015/ap_on_sc/gay_genetics