Sir-Sister-of-Suck --- you said:
You would have made it harder for your wife to leave you, as though you were forcing her to stay with you?
Yes, I would like to have been able to force my wife to be more frightened of divorce. I know it sounds antediluvian, I know it sounds cruel, I know it sounds unfair … but the simple truth is that the easier you make divorce for women, the more divorce there will be -- petitioned by either party. It’s like single motherhood. It’s happening all over the world, even in Saudi Arabia. If we are honest with ourselves we recognise that there are many societal influences that force us to behave in certain ways -- just that the word ‘force’ has become taboo.
In a serious argument, the average husband’s ultimate threat is violence, so society rightly threatens him with sanctions. The average wife’s ultimate threat is divorce, and society also used to threaten her with sanctions. Now divorce parties are all the rage, and shame is attached no more. Society is egging women on to divorce, just like it is egging them on to be single mothers. From the children’s point-of-view this is a disaster.
I have to say, you have a rather unintuitive, nixon-esque approach to the way that you would go about handling some of the problems you see in institutional marriage. Rather than doing away with any of the things you take issue with, you wish to do things that would ultimately make them harder to deal with, under the imperative that you think you can improve the current state of marriage.
Yes, I do think marriage can be improved, so, yes, I do want to preserve all the good bits. What parts do you want to do away with?
I'm not sure where you lean on the political spectrum, but you could probably guess that I would rarely want more state-involvement in the laws that don't work. I'd probably just be encouraged to abolish those laws, altogether.
As for my politics, I call myself a Male champion, Sexist evangelist, Lover of women, and an Amateur sociobiologist. My website explains in more detail (
https://sites.google.com/site/suffrageurbutlin/). I see the market and democracy being in opposition, and the market as being a necessary evil. While admittedly supplying us with an over-abundance of goods, Adam Smith’s invisible hand has two serious drawbacks: it makes our selfishness seem respectable, and it encourages us to seek out and profit from the selfishness of others. Through the market, we seek out each others private lusts, make them public, and satisfying them -- regardless of the public good. Pornography and the over-supply of food are two obvious examples. I too am suspicious of big government, but someone has to regulate the market.
Judaka --- I’m sorry, I don’t know what my ‘OP’ is. Is it something I can set up in this forum? I am also sorry my fanatical focus on sex differences upsets you. I know I go over the top, but I’m trying to make up for all those people who are fanatically covering up or eradicating the differences. When it comes to sexual activity there really are some stark differences, and we ignore them at our peril.
Greta --- I’m afraid I don’t know enough about American politics to comment with authority. My impression of the Republican party is that it is too LEFT wing! As for billionaires loving the sex war … I don’t think they are any more conscious of it than anybody else. Does it benefit them? Well, I think the sex war is at the core of our society -- supplying much of the human energy to keep the economy going -- so I guess billionaires benefit more than others to the extent that they own more of the economy than others. A lot, in other words. Immigration is another thing I don’t know enough about.
Kayla --- Yes, I agree that the fancy occupations are becoming more mixed, but we can reverse that in short order when we see how wrong quotas and other forms of affirmative action are. Here’s how I explained why forcing women into high status roles is wrong to my local councillor, here in the UK:
“I believe that many modern ills are down to the fact that men have lost control of women -- both in public and in private. The spread around the world of quotas for women politicians horrifies me, as does the Conservative Party’s target for 50% women candidates. It is all based on a contradiction: (1) women make no difference, so they deserve 50% of the seats; (2) women make a lot of difference, so there will be a lot of improvements once women get in power. That is female logic gone wild, and it’s a lie.”
I believe men do a much better job of representing women than women do. Women operate subconsciously much of the time, and don’t know what they want. Many women profess they have no idea what their clothes and make-up do to men. They think they want toy-boys, but actually they seek a powerful man. They have little idea how to control bad behaviour, so, with women’s sentiments now ruling supreme, we reward things like divorce, single mothers, gambling, masturbation, drugs, over-eating -- all with not a whiff of male discipline in sight.
When you list bad things that men have done I just wonder what their wives were doing to them back home. Wives can be very strict on husbands, even when they appear to have very little formal power.
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Everyone --- I agree with
Judaka that this thread is too long. I am going to start a new thread “A Philosophy for Arguing with Wives”.