Our female German correspondent, The Editrix, has some intriguing insights about the female sex, and what causes women (as women) to do some of the things they do.
At VFR is posted an article concerning the actions of a Dutch female reporter putting herself in harm's way. Read the article -- titled: Wilders tells the Dutch elite what they are -- to understand what exactly I'm talking about.
Now, I'm not trying to make any sweeping generalizations, truly, but I've witnessed this kind of thing before in certain women who are (relatively) close to me. They engage themselves in certain self-flagellating, ceremonious, ritualistic behaviors, and in their particular cases I've generally identified it as a self-centered grasp for the sympathy due to victims as well as the applause and adulation due to someone so obviously self-less, warm, loving, non-judgmental, and so forth and so on. In other words, my sense in this particular case is that this woman seeks self-promotion and self-gratification, and she was willing to put everything (including her life) at risk to get it. What I find so irritating sometimes, is that people go along with it, legitimizing this kind of behavior, thus effectively creating a monster, er, a whole host of 'em.
But I want to hear (or read) Nora's point of view, as well as any other woman's perspective who would like to add her own thoughts or insights.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Attn.: Editrix
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20 comments:
Goodness, Terry! That must have been telepathy. I just read the entry at VFR, went to the BJ, was so angry that I left a VERY rude comment there and then thought I might have a look at Webster's for some sanity. I am suffering once more from acute blog frustration syndrome (you wouldn't BELIEVE what is currently going on here), but I am angry enough now to give it a break. I'll provide the link as soon as I've finished the entry. Thanks for encouraging me.
Terry, I did it! It's very rude and full of expletives, quite unlike my usual oevre, but heartfelt nevertheless.
In what possible sense was this woman raped? I mean...I'm reasonably sure that sexual intercourse did occur, but her face doesn't show the medical evidence that she said "no" to the Taliban.
I very sure that the Taliban comforted themselves about their being seduced by this woman by pretending that she was somehow "captured" and thus technically a legitimate object of rapine rather than a Western harlot who set out to create this entire situation, but is there any basis for this delusion?
Wilders is wrong on this one. This woman didn't emotionally surrender to her 'captors' as a way of denying her fear and helplessness (though that problem does afflict a good part of Dutch society). The real point of the story isn't whether her 'captors' respected her, but that she had boundless contempt for them.
"The noble savage even “invited her to a threesome,” i.e. to have sex with him and one of his three wives. “Ghazi was a very religious man. It is all so hypocritical. He was a complete fool,” she writes." He actually thought we had something, it was sooo amusing to toy with him like that. As if I would really give his benighted wives any pointers on how a real woman does these things. Teehee!
Yes, I think Wilders overestimates the motives of a woman like that. Her dhimmitude is only a symptom for a larger problem. Women like that are suffering from the attention whore syndrome, which makes them going for a life and for experiences totally opposed to those of a woman in a traditional society. Something like that MAY end in dhimmitude (and it very often does), but, as the example of Oriana Fallaci, Patron Saint of the more hyperventilating faction of Islam-critique, shows, it does not necessarily end in dhimmitude. Basically, Wilders takes that woman too seriously or better: he takes her seriously where he shouldn't. Of course women like that are dangerous, but not so much because they tend to be dhimmis, but because they are undermining like no other group, the basis of our culture, the family.
Another aspect I'd like to discuss is what makes people compare women like Joanie de Rijke to Joan of Arc. I find it deeply shocking, but I have no answer to it.
A commenter at VFR said: "I assume this photo of her was taken before her exotic escapades. She may have a different deportment these days." Judging from the picture I put up at my above linked blog entry, she looks, if anything, more radiant, smug and, perversely, "happy".
I realize it is a nasty thing to say about a woman who has been, after all, raped, but maybe the experience to succumb to a man, even under unfortunate circumstances, was a new and, ultimately, positive one.
Feminism has given rape such an ambiguous meaning. If a woman regrets that she'd had sex with that guy the morning after she can go and get him for "date rape". So what do we expect will come out of that.
Ooops... I overlooked that: "The real point of the story isn't whether her 'captors' respected her, but that she had boundless contempt for them."
Yes indeed!
Isn't that my "condescension" theory in a nutshell? The one for which you, Terry, if I remember correctly, got so little positive attention at BE?
The answer to your question, Nora, is yes. I read the Joan of Arc comparison at VFR and almost fell over backwards in my chair. Seems like a dhimmi of a different kind.
My apologies to y'all. Our internet has been down since sometime yesterday. I'll have to get back to this later.
But this woman didn't even regret having been "raped", she's positively proud of it. And I have absolutely no reason to believe that she didn't plan on having that happen. At the very least it was a carefully considered (and prepared) contingency. She had the guy asking her to give his wife pointers in the bedroom, for #@(*'s sake!
LITERALLY!!!
MY HEAD A 'SPLODE
The comparison to Joan of Arc is relatively easy to understand, by comparison. Joan of Arc was a young virgin. Pretty much everything else about her fades to insignificance in the eyes of the kind of people disposed to view her as a kind of historical sex object. Thus these people are just making what they think is a tasteful allusion to the 'liberating' influence of these self-promoting whores by the comparison.
It's horribly insulting, of course, but the insult is just built into the way they view the world. It isn't something that simply defies all possible explanation, like the claim that this woman was somehow 'raped' under any possible construction of the term.
I am filled with the urge to shout obscenities at the entire world, just thinking about this. It isn't good for my personal well-being. There isn't a pit in hell deep enough...there just isn't. You'd think that God, with a little of His infinite power, could have made the pits of hell a bit deeper.
Oh, yes, infinite wisdom too. I get the point. My bad, deeper pits not the answer, yeah, yeah...sure, whatever. I do get it...sometimes. I don't necessarily comprehend any of it, but infinity is like that.
CC, you said:
"But this woman didn't even regret having been "raped", she's positively proud of it. And I have absolutely no reason to believe that she didn't plan on having that happen. At the very least it was a carefully considered (and prepared) contingency. She had the guy asking her to give his wife pointers in the bedroom, for #@(*'s sake!
LITERALLY!!!
MY HEAD A 'SPLODE"
And:
"The comparison to Joan of Arc is relatively easy to understand, by comparison. Joan of Arc was a young virgin. Pretty much everything else about her fades to insignificance in the eyes of the kind of people disposed to view her as a kind of historical sex object. Thus these people are just making what they think is a tasteful allusion to the 'liberating' influence of these self-promoting whores by the comparison."
I agree on both accounts. Very astute observations!
I agree too, Nora. Well said, Chiu.
Maybe this makes an interesting addition.
"If those perpetrators hadn't been female they would have been labelled simply evil."
I think that quote really gets at the core of the matter. It isn't that there aren't courageous, sane, good women, it's that there is a cultural bias against admitting that women can be evil. This creates a demand for lengthy explications of the non-evilness of every woman involved in some outrageously heinous activity. Thus you have a media firestorm of apology for every wicked witch of the west, much of which goes so far as to set her up as a heroine, while the genuine heroism (usually of the quiet variety but not always) gets almost no coverage because it doesn't take any special 'insight' to see that these women are good. Besides which, it's rather an embarrassment to the apologist for evil to set it side by side with good.
That is, of course, the 'innocent' explanation, which assumes no extraordinary wrongdoing on the part of the apologists. It covers much historical apology for evil women and most of the acceptance of such apologies, but most modern apologists for evil are not so innocent.
The truth is that many 'immoral' women are really the victims of evil men, but not all are. Probably not even most. And even the real victims are not thereby heroines.
"It isn't that there aren't courageous, sane, good women, it's that there is a cultural bias against admitting that women can be evil."
Of course there are. I think (I may be wrong, though) that Marianism has lumbered our culture with an unintended and unexpected burden. While Islam states that all women are temptresses and evil, our Christian culture presumes the opposite. That functioned as long as women were willing to perform their duties in a traditional society, i.e. as long as they were busy and satisfied with their role as wives and mothers and supervised and reined-in by society. In our permissive age, women's natural proneness for the shallow and footle coupled with an intense desire for attention wreaks havoc on society, the more as the latter won't understand what is happening. It can't be the saintly women's, images of the Madonna all of them, fault or can it?
And I seriously believe that men are more often than not the victims of women and not vice versa. If you look at a broken down marriage where the husband has really behaved like the proverbial swine, you'll in all probability find a woman behind the scenes.
Well, my personal observations dispute that, but then I don't have a broad sample of broken marriages where the man acts like a swine.
I've heard plenty of second-hand accounts of broken marriages which did not involve swinish behavior, and I'm fully prepared to believe that men who didn't act like swine were at least okay guys. But I don't think that I'm familiar with any stories about innocent swine, come to think of it.
It may be because I'm willing to let a guy go further before calling him a "swine". For instance, a guy that has a one-time indiscretion under serious duress and really tries his best to atone is certainly not a hero, but he's hardly a swine. Likewise a man who realizes that he just doesn't trust the woman he married to be the mother of his children. That situation doesn't say much about his judgment, but it doesn't make him a swine.
For me, the proverbial swine is wallowing in some behavior which is disgusting or at least obviously inappropriate. I think that a wicked woman can assist in making the mud, but the choice to wallow in it is the man's own. A man who is either not wallowing in his misdeeds or who's misdeeds are not clearly wrong on the face of it...I wouldn't call that swinish.
It can still be entirely his fault...a one-time indiscretion doesn't have to be the result of extraordinary temptation, distrust of the woman he married could be undeserved, the workaholic or perennial entrepreneur could be motivated by ego rather than a genuine desire to provide. But personal fault doesn't make a man a swine.
Being a man is bad enough, after all.
Back to the central issue, though. Men have more personal responsibility for their own actions because they are not as social as women. There are fundamental differences in the ways men and women respond to situations which involve depending on others for guidance. The classic example would be asking for directions...a tired cliche based on a very pertinent truth.
A man feels helpless if he isn't able to find his own way, a woman feels empowered by her ability to solicit input at her pleasure (whether or not it is useful). This makes women far more susceptible to social influence, particularly from people in positions of power over them. Not that men are immune to such influence, but it is almost instinctive for them to resist it.
Anyone who has tried teaching children will have observed it...well, anyone without a pretty high level of evil charisma. Good charismatics will notice that boys are much more resistant than girls, but us evil charismatics affect both equally. Still, I've watched non-charismatics trying to herd children using social skills rather than evil charisma. I think I've observed how boys and girls react to good charisma, but it's hard to tell because I'm doubly immune to good charisma and thus cannot even reliably tell if it's present. That's very sad.
But it comes with total immunity to evil charisma (even my own), so it all balances out.
"For me, the proverbial swine is wallowing in some behavior which is disgusting or at least obviously inappropriate."
(Emphasis added by me.)
Yes, I agree. I am thinking of exactly such an example, but as my real identity is well known and as this is a small world I am not going into more details. I am thinking of one specific example of swinish male behaviour within my inner circle of friends that couldn't have happened in a society where women were not "sexually liberated", i.e. "honest women" being freely available to break up a marriage and give a man the opportunity and to encourage him to behave like a swine towards his wife and children.
I am not sure whether I understand your charisma theory. I will have to re-read it.
One more remark about the "sexual liberation" of women: Previous to that remarkable progress, to approach an "honest woman", a man had to break up a marriage himself, a behaviour that was heavily censured and chastised by society. Now, where they are freely available, the formerly clearly defined line between a prostitute and an "honest woman" has become blurred to the extent of meaninglessness. I seem to remember that not too long ago it was forbidden in Germany by law that a divorcé(e) should marry the adulterous third party cited in the divorce decree. It is a pity that decent behaviour has to be enforced by law, but that's how it is.
A different case in point: Do you remember the steamy circumstances of Paul McCartney's divorce? In times long ago that woman would have been forced to wear a sign that made her recognizable as a prostitute, which would have saved Sir Paul an awful lot of money and heartbreak. I, personally, think that the face of that woman alone tells all the world what she is, but men are gullible and the societal antennae for something like that do not work all that well anymore now, where whorish behaviour has become the norm and not the, socially shunned, exception.
The comments on charisma (of good and evil varieties) are simply because such things exist, and have different effects from ordinary social pressures. I apparently have evil charisma, which is occasionally convenient but generally not a good thing.
I think that the existence of temptation can certainly be blamed for some moral failings, but persistent sin is a choice. Particularly when the sinner refuses to admit wrongdoing.
In an environment free of mud, even swine will not wallow. This doesn't mean they aren't swine, it just means they won't be as filthy. A social environment full of mud brings out the swinish nature of certain men, it doesn't create that nature in them.
The real evil of a filthy social environment is done to those who don't want to be muddy, but have difficulty avoiding it. A person who wants to stay clean may nevertheless trip and fall into a puddle of mud. But anyone who, once in the mud, makes no effort to get out of the mud and expresses no discomfit, is not someone who really wanted to avoid being muddy.
But enough of this parable. My point is simply that righteousness does not consist of never having been tempted, but of resisting temptation. A person who resists temptation may stumble, but no one seeking to be comfortable in sin can be seriously said to have even tried to resist temptation.
I myself am not particularly good at resisting temptation, but even so I do not take comfort in wickedness.
Chiu,
Somehow the name Bill Clinton kept coming up as I was reading your last post. Imagine that.
"In an environment free of mud, even swine will not wallow. This doesn't mean they aren't swine, it just means they won't be as filthy. A social environment full of mud brings out the swinish nature of certain men, it doesn't create that nature in them."
Yes, that was my point. The sexual liberation of women brings out, as you put it, "the swinish nature of certain men". Earlier presidents with such a penchant for the opposite sex (excellent example, Terry!) would have been reduced to discreet (very discreet) visits of prostitutes. I always found that Lewinsky didn't get enough flak. That wasn't an innocent girl who was seduced by a ruthless predator, that was a voluptuous woman who had thrown herself shamelessly at Clinton. Not that this makes his behaviour any more excusable, but a society where a Lewinsky can become a "victim" and a ferminist icon has a problem.
Ah...in other words, since a man with swinish inclinations could live a decent life if there were no occasion for indulging his baser nature, you attach blame predominantly to the women who create such occasions.
But of course, just as some men are swine, some women are geese, mindlessly following the flock. A woman who blindly acts out the roles society has seen fit to hold up for her emulation might live a blameless life, were the model roles chosen better.
I suppose that we could just blame "society" or perhaps those individuals who ought to have known better.
But I think that swinish men and goose-like women both make a choice to be that way. I believe in holding individuals accountable for their own actions, based on the foreseeable effects of those actions. I emphasize 'foreseeable' because I don't demand that the consequences actually be foreseen, nor that those consequences actually come to pass, but only that the person choosing those actions had the ability to reasonably predict a likely outcome.
In other words, winning the lottery is not a foreseeable outcome of buying a lottery ticket, even if you then actually win (unless you are almost always able to predict the winning number). Wishing for an outcome does not constitute foreseeing that outcome. Nor does refusing to think about the odds make the probable result less foreseeable, it merely reflects a choice to not foresee it.
Though when you look at individual cases, most of the times that people avoid thinking about the most likely consequences of their actions, it's because they already know that the likely consequences are very bad. Which would be kinda funny (okay, it is kinda funny), if it weren't so perverse.
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