“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.” ~ Mary Wollstonecraft, from A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

                   
“Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.” ~ Samuel Johnson, from A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides

Two things that belong together:

I really don’t know why I continue to be surprised and amazed at how much of the world still views and treats women. I mean, I’ve faced gender discrimination head on more times than I can count, so that this way of thinking is still so prevalent today really shouldn’t catch me off guard. But it does. The first part comes from an article by Kelly Koo on designtaxi.com, and it highlights the prevalence of misogyny just through popular search engines, and the second part comes from an unbelievable load of malarkey that I ran across on tumblr: The Case Against Female Self-Esteem

Ad Shows The World’s Popular Opinions Of Women Using Search Engine

By Kelly Koo, 18 Oct 2013

Gender inequality exists in many parts of the world—women are still being denied proper work, wages, education and healthcare in some places.

UN Women teamed up with Christopher Hunt of Ogilvy & Mather to come up with a series of thought-provoking ads that highlight authoritative attitudes towards women.

The ads show the real Google search results of search terms like “women need to”, “women should” and “women cannot”, revealing the abhorrent opinions that people around the world have about women.

The words “women shouldn’t suffer from discrimination anymore” and “women cannot accept the way things are” appear in tiny, white print that are barely legible, showing how these opinions are largely ignored.

                   

“Both porn and religion distort a person’s perspectives on women.” ~ Jesse Dangerously

So I clicked on a link on tumblr, and this is what I found:

Feminists can claim that women don’t need men, but their actions put the lie to that; they need us far more than we need them. Girls will all but die without masculine attention. Hell, I’m even starting to think that the feminist agita about “rape culture” is part of this as well. Pushing lies like the claim that one in three women will be raped during her lifetime and their constantly expanding the definition of rape are ways for feminists to indulge their desire for vulnerability in a way that doesn’t conflict with their view of themselves as “strong” and “empowered.”

At the end of the day, there are no Strong, Independent Women™. There are only shrews pleading for a taming. All the posturing, the pill-popping, the whining and demands for “equality”; they’re a cry for help. Girls don’t want the six-figure cubicle job, the shiny Brooklyn 2BR, the master’s degree, the sexual liberation, none of it. They want to be collectively led back to the kitchen, told to make a nice big tuna sandwich with extra mayo and lettuce, then swatted on the ass as we walk out the door.

I am loathe to include the author’s name or a link to his site mostly because I don’t want him to get any more attention because obviously this cretin would view any attention as good attention. But what I find truly ironic is that this guy’s byline is “The man who shouted love at the heart of the world.” Love? Really?

I read his entire post, and what it is full of is not love but outright misogyny under the guise of revealing truths about women. Right. What a bucket load of crappola. For example, he has this to say about self-esteem:

Most girls have done nothing to deserve self-esteem (emphasis mine).

In the world of men, respect—and by extension self-esteem—is based on actually achieving something of worth or having some kind of skill or talent. Are you a bodybuilder or jacked? Men and women will respect you because the effort to mold your body like that requires an enormous amount of work and dedication (emphasis his).

To say that bodybuilding is something more worthy of respect is just plain weird. He claims that “they [women] demand respect not based on their merit as people, but for merely continuing to breathe,” which is a sweeping generalization based solely upon the opinion of this supposed author. Facts are not present in this testosterone-laden screed.

I mean, this guy has the gonads to claim that “the vast majority of girls work useless fluff jobs” and that “if every man lost his job tomorrow, the country would collapse” (emphasis his). I think we’ve just witnessed via the government shutdown what happens when a bunch of men with self-important jobs think they are running the world.

There’s more (unfortunately).

He asserts that “‘confident’ women are incapable of viewing men as human beings” and that “women don’t want to have high self-esteem” (emphasis his), as if he has the data to back up such folderal. He doesn’t.

I really shouldn’t read things like this because it does nothing for my blood pressure or my migraines.

This guy is obviously intimidated by strong, secure women, and the only way that he can make himself look better is to claim to know what women really think and want (emphasis mine). His contention is that “so-called confident women are as threatening as a pile of dog turds.” Wow. So glad you clarified that for us.

This guy wouldn’t know how to have an adult conversation with an educated woman, or any woman (for that fact) with an IQ above 100. This philistine is only comfortable with the Barbies, the gigglers, the fatuous, silicone-enhanced superficial sex-kittens who can keep his massive ego stroked and stoked. He as much as says so: “I had this epiphany; the girls I’ve loved the most were the ones who were the most insecure, the most emotionally vulnerable.”

Pity the perspicacious woman who happens upon Mr. Machismo in all of his glorious XY splendor. It’s evident that lacks the depth to perceive that the brain is the most sexual organ of the body.

He further states that women want “nothing more than for a man to throw them over his knee, shatter the Berlin Wall around their hearts, and expose the lovestruck, bashful little girl within.”

Oh thank you kind sir (she exclaimed in her highest little girl voice). Why I never would have been able to cobble together such deep, insightful thoughts without your guidance.

Excuse me. I need to go and rinse my mouth.

Okay. I’m back.

So, in the end of his treatise on the female sex, he has this to say:

At the end of the day, there are no Strong, Independent Women™. There are only shrews pleading for a taming. All the posturing, the pill-popping, the whining and demands for “equality”; they’re a cry for help. Girls don’t want the six-figure cubicle job, the shiny Brooklyn 2BR, the master’s degree, the sexual liberation, none of it. They want to be collectively led back to the kitchen, told to make a nice big tuna sandwich with extra mayo and lettuce, then swatted on the ass as we walk out the door.

You know, this particular woman has no further time for such neanderthal thinking. I’ll just take my masters degrees (yes, plural), my experience as a program director, a writer, an editor and all of the rest, and bid him a not so fond farewell. He and I should never ever cross paths. After all, he is obviously not worthy.

Enough. More later.

Music by Aqua, “Barbie Girl”

Related articles

• What Matt Forney’s “Case Against Female Self-Esteem” Reveals About His Own Deep Insecurities (manboobz.com)
• Will Google Reveal Secret Worldwide Misandry, Too? (nymag.com)
• RE: The Case Against Female Self Esteem: The Case Against Blatant Misogny (amythehurricane.wordpress.com)

“Take Care of All Your Memories For You Cannot Relive Them” ~ Bob Dylan

Summer 08 Sutcliffe Cousins: Phillip, Eamonn, Brett, Hannah, Alexis, Rebecca, Mallory

“Memory is the primary and fundamental power, without which there could be no other intellectual operation” ~ Samuel Johnson

I cannot write tonight. There is just too much pressing on my mind. I am waiting to hear about my brother-in-law in Germany. He is in the hospital with pneumonia and is on a respirator.

Maybe if I tell you about him that will help. Patrick is my ex’s older brother. He has always been the serious, intellectual one. Patrick was in the R.O.T.C. in college, and then he went into the army after graduation. Patrick was stationed in Germany where he met Helma, the woman he married. After a couple of years, they were transferred back to the states, somewhere in Tennessee.

In the meantime, Paul’s younger sister Ann was engaged to be married in the spring. Patrick and Helma were going to drive to Virginia on President’s Day weekend for a visit and for a fitting of brides maids dresses as Helma and I were both going to be in the wedding. Then the unthinkable happened. Helma fell asleep at the wheel, and Patrick, who had been asleep in the back seat was wedged in the seat when the car stopped. Helma had a broken nose and lost some teeth. Patrick had been deprived of oxygen and had spinal cord damage.

After all of the operations, Patrick was left a paraplegic, but he still retained his mind, his long-term memory, his wit. The army retired Patrick as a full Captain. He was unable to speak, but they worked out a communication system using arm movements and eye blinks and mouth openings and closings. Patrick was quick-tempered and impatient before the accident, and he was just the same after the accident, but never with me.

Whenever I tried to spell with him (which is what we call talking), I would tell him quite plainly that if he started to get all mean with me, I would stop and walk away, which would usually make him laugh, and then he would be patient with me as I tried my best to get things right the first time.

Just to show you how smart he remained, while they still lived here, we used to play games, like Trivial Pursuit, usually men against the women, and it would usually come down to Patrick against me. He loved to kick my ass with history questions, but I could usually get him on literature.

Eventually, he and Helma were able to have two children of their own: Phillip and Hannah. Helma’s sister Kerstin lived here in the states for a while, and she was married, and members of her family would visit, but Helma was always lonely for home, and it was very hard for her. Patrick had a physical therapist who came to the home, and Helma took really good care of him. But finally, they made the decision to move to Germany so that Helma could be closer to her family.

It was hard on everyone, especially on Paul’s mom, but Helma promised to come over every year for a visit, and for a while it was every year, but then the dollar dropped, and then after 9/11, everyone was afraid to fly for a while. They had just started coming back over a few years ago. Patrick had a big 50th birthday party in Germany, and several of his best friends with whom he has stayed in contact flew to Germany to celebrate with him, as did his mother, who hadn’t been to Germany since right after Patrick and Helma were first married.

That he has stayed so healthy for so long is directly tied to Helma’s dedication to keeping him that way. He has had two major health scares. And we have spent our time making visits to VA hospitals, which are incredibly depressing places. But overall, he has been incredibly lucky. They have made trips all over Europe, and when they have been here, Helma has taken Patrick to just about every Revolutionary battleground in the area.

With Helma’s assistance, Patrick has kept up his massive stamp collection, his alphabetized CD and LP collection, including anything ever put out by the Beatles. He reads constantly (books on tape have been a wonderful development for him because before that, it was books by whoever was designated reader). In other words, Because of Helma, Patrick’s hobbies have all been attended to, and his life, although far from normal, has been turned into the closest semblance of normal that it could be.

He has a computer that he can control to write letters to his friends. His children may have had times that they were embarassed by their father, but I think not any more than any teenager is embarassed by a parent. Just ask my sons.

The last time they were here, I noticed how tired Helma looked, and I was actually surprised, because she really takes care of herself. She is a championship swimmer. She coaches swimming. That is her time for herself. She is in very good physical shape, but she really looked thin this time. Not thin as in skinny, but thin as in worn thin. I wrote her an e-mail about it, but she never really responded, which I did not expect that she would. She is just not that way.

She had told me before coming that this time she was not running around to see everyone the way that they usually do. She was just going to take it easy. Normally when they visit, they are on the go from the moment they arrive until the moment that they leave. But this time, she really didn’t go very many places. Even when she went to Busch Gardens, she didn’t close the place the way that she usually did.

I’m waiting until it’s 2 a.m. here so that it will be 8 a.m. there so that I can call. I always forget about the six hour time difference. I’m hoping that the news is good, that they have turned down the ventilator and that the pneumonia is clearing. That’s the news that I am hoping for. After all, Patrick’s grandmother just died last week. I’m not sure how he took the news I don’t know the last time that he saw her. But he does get very emotional.

His mother, my other mother-in-law, is noticeably worsening with her own health problem. Parkinson’s does not respond well to stress. So I’m just hoping that she holds up well for the next few days.

I suppose for someone who said that she didn’t have anything to say tonight, I managed to run on in my usual way.

That’s all for now. More later. Peace.