Yes, young men are losers. They deserve sympathy, not contempt
The article below lacks some context. Men who become unattached at any age can have a difficult time of it. Finding a new partner is notoriously difficult and the net is not much help.
There is a general failure of men and women to connect in today's world and women are losers from that too. How sad is it that many women who want a baby cannot find an acceptable father for one? They often leave it perilously late to team up. Some opt to become single mothers through artificial insemination. Are they not to be pitied for missing out on much of the joy of family life?
The destruction of age-old sex roles by feminists has much to answer for. There once was a system that teamed most people up fairly early in their lives but that is no more. It is not at all clear that the destruction of that system is on balance beneficial
I have been married 4 times to some gorgeous women but even I have found the gap between relationships to be difficult to manage
“The army of unfuckable hate nerds”—Marc Maron’s term for the mass of young men who pollute the internet with their misogyny. “They play video games all day,” the comedian said on his podcast, “then they watch MMA, then they spend the evening jerking off to … porn, then they put a few hours” into attacking women online.
He’s right, of course. There are hordes of these young men (and, no doubt, of not-so-young ones). They congregate on Twitter, in comment threads, on forums and platforms like Reddit, Discord, Kiwi Farms, and 8kun, the successor to 8chan. They trade in misogyny, racism, antisemitism, and assorted other hatreds. Their words are violent and vile.
But Maron is also wrong. I mean in his response, which is that of so many: to answer hate with hate, contempt with contempt. As opposed to what? As opposed to understanding, just like we extend, at least on the left (and I am on the left), to another set of violent young men, the ones who live in inner cities. Yes, I am calling for sympathy for my brothers in the army of unfuckable hate nerds.
My brothers: I was a young man once. And since there’s now an ever-growing genre of commentary in which feminists speak, with placid condescension, like so many anthropologists (if not entomologists), on the topic of men, especially young men, I thought it might be useful to hear from someone who actually knows what it’s like to be one.
Here’s what it’s like: It sucks. Male privilege? Absolutely, in many contexts, but there are important ways in which young men are clearly underprivileged.
Women are sex objects, goes the cliché, and men are success objects. But success requires many years to achieve, if you ever achieve it at all. Young men, in that respect, are much like older women: Society has little use for them, barely deigns to notice them. I’m not talking about the advertising industry, or the entertainment industry; I’m talking about the day-to-day experience of living in the world. Young women often have a lot of social power, whereas, except for the fortunate few—the born rich, the strikingly handsome, the 6-foot-3—young men have none. Socially speaking, young men are shit, and nobody gives a shit.
Socially speaking, young men are shit, and nobody gives a shit.
Any young woman who is even moderately attractive will be courted, complimented, paid attention to, by women as well as men. Older men will buy them things. People will hang on their words even when they aren’t interesting and laugh at their jokes even when they aren’t funny. They will have entry into places—private clubs, backstage after a show—young men can only press their noses against. They will be able to advance professionally by batting their eyelashes at powerful men. Young men, meanwhile—those losers, those loners, those apes—are left to pick their psychic zits on the periphery.
There’s more. Young women can have sex whenever they want. For most young men, persuading a woman to sleep with them is like trying to crack a safe. You understand that it’s theoretically possible, but you have no idea how to do it. Which means that you’re stuck with your hard-on. Unfuckable? No one needs to tell you that. You are unfucked: unwanted, unattractive; in the most literal sense, unloved.
The mental climate of the typical young man is three parts unrelenting horniness to one part self-disgust. Young women are not the only ones who are taught to hate their bodies. So, if less intensely, are young men. Why else would they lift all those weights? What you are really working out, when you go to the gym, is your dysmorphia. Aella, the OnlyFans star and online commentator, has said that what men look for when they come to her—and her clientele is mostly young—isn’t sex per se but “sexual acceptance.” They want to be assured, in other words, that they aren’t hideous. The fact they have to pay for this says everything you need to know.
Do I sound bitter? I’m channeling my younger self. It’s all worked out for me, I have no complaints, but I am intensely aware that it could have gone a different way. Turn this dial a click to the left, turn that one a click to the right—a little less privilege, a little more emotional instability—and I could have turned into a hate nerd myself. I suspect that a lot of men sense that. What does it feel like to be a young man? It feels like you are Kafka’s cockroach, Dostoevsky’s Underground Man. It feels like you were drawn by Harvey Pekar or R. Crumb. You are an Untermensch, a particle, a stew of envies and resentments, a festering sore. You look, from below, at the happy and lovely and rich. You creep, alone, along a wall. You masturbate as if your life depended on it.
Yes, I made it out. I found success; I reached the fabled land of love. But many men do not; many recognize, and recognize quite early, that they never will. And I was young in the ’80s and ’90s. We know what’s happened since. Blue-collar wages have slumped. Men have lost the education race. Add to that the dating apps, which gamify sex and love and quantify desirability and value. Like everything else on the web, the distribution follows a power law curve, with a small fraction of alphas soaking up the lion’s share of female attention. Add further the misandry that has now become de rigueur wherever the liberal elite holds sway: the ritual (and often gleeful) man-hating, the pathologization of masculinity.
We also know how young men are responding. Some are opting out of manhood by becoming trans or nonbinary. Some are going the other way, reaching for an ersatz hypermasculinity and joining the army of unfuckable hate nerds. Their behavior is disgusting, it is inexcusable, but what do we think is going to make them stop? Telling them to comb their hair, to put down the Xbox, to get a life? Reminding them that they’re unlovable and worthless? They know that already; that is precisely the problem. Hate breeds hate. Revenge is not justice. The hate nerds are human, no less than you and me. We need to treat them like it.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/unfuckable-hate-nerds-william-deresiewicz
**************************************************How disgusting can the Left get? They Suggest Calling Women "Bonus Holes" So Not To Offend Transexuals
In recent years, the language used when discussing female anatomy has become increasingly politicized. Now, this politicization has reached a new low with the suggestion that people refer to vaginas as “bonus holes” in order to avoid offending transgender people.
This suggestion was made by Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust (based in the UK) and went viral after it was noticed and posted on Twitter.
It is important to note that this politically charged term was created in conjunction with the LGBT Foundation, a charity that campaigns for LGBT rights.
The concept of calling the vagina a “bonus hole” is an offensive one – not only does it disregard females completely by implying they are not women, but it also fails to recognize their anatomy as something unique and special.
The term itself implies that vaginas are nothing more than an accessory or bonus feature – something disposable and unimportant – which can be extremely damaging for women who already face discrimination in society due to their gender.
Unfortunately, this type of language isn’t just limited to referring to female anatomy; we have seen similar terms being used when discussing other aspects of female health care such as menstruation and childbirth.
For example, terms such as “birthing people” or “cervix owners” have been used instead of simply saying “women” or “mothers”.
These terms remove any sense of identity from females – they become nothing more than a collection of body parts rather than actual human beings with feelings and emotions.
This can be incredibly damaging for those who already feel marginalized due to their gender identity or who may be struggling with issues related to body image or self-esteem.
It is clear why using terms like these can be so problematic – they strip away any sense of personhood from women while simultaneously reinforcing stereotypes about them being less important than men or transgender individuals.
Not only does this undermine the progress made in creating an inclusive environment where everyone feels respected regardless of their gender identity but it could also lead people into believing false ideas about what constitutes acceptable language when talking about female bodies which could have serious consequences for how we view gender roles within society as a whole.
Using ridiculous terms like ‘bonus hole’ should not even enter into consideration when having conversations about female bodies or healthcare practices – let alone become commonplace enough that charities suggest its use.
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France erupts in violence after police shoot dead a Muslim teenager
Much of Paris was a battleground on Tuesday evening as scores of youths rioted following the fatal shooting of a teenager by police. The 17-year-old, Naël (some reports spell his name as Nahel), was stopped by police at approximately 8.30 on Tuesday morning because of his erratic driving. According to reports, Naël had previous convictions for failing to stop at a checkpoint and driving without a licence. As two officers questioned the teenager through the window, the vehicle sped off and shots were fired. One hit Naël in the chest and he died at the scene.
Riot police were drafted in and at least 20 arrests were made; among the buildings burned were a primary school and a leisure centre
Initially, the police suggested they had opened fire in legitimate defence; in other words the officers feared for their lives. But shortly after that statement, footage of the shooting – taken by a local resident – circulated on social media. It appeared to contradict the official line, showing the two policemen at the side of the car and in no danger of being run over.
The officer who fired the fatal shot has been arrested and an investigation has been launched into ‘possible intentional killing by a person holding a position of public authority’. A separate inquiry is being conducted into the actions of the driver.
The chief of the Paris police, Laurent Nunez, admitted that the actions of the policeman ‘raises questions’ and Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin acknowledged in parliament the footage of the incident was ‘extremely shocking’. Darmanin also urged people to respect the ‘presumption of innocence of the police’ and also the grief of the family.
Anger was the overriding emotion of Naël’s family on Tuesday evening. ‘My grandson is dead, they killed my grandson,’ his grandmother told journalists ‘I’m against the government. They’ve killed my grandson…I’ll never forgive them for this in my life, never.’
Rioting broke out in Nanterre in the early evening and continued into the night. Riot police were drafted in and at least 20 arrests were made; among the buildings burned were a primary school and a leisure centre. Home-made rockets were fired at police and cars and scooters were torched.
There was unrest in other Parisian suburbs, including Mantes-la-Jolie, to the west of the capital, where the town hall was firebombed. People also took to the streets in anger in Colmar, Bordeaux and Marseille.
President Macron is currently on a three-day visit to Marseille, a city that has been the scene of a brutal drugs war this year, and his fear will be that the disorder spreads and intensifies as it did in 2005.
The catalyst then was the deaths of teenagers Zyed Benna and Bouna Traore, electrocuted after they entered an electrical sub-station in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, allegedly to evade police. Rioting broke out on the evening of the tragedy and, in the course of trying to contain the trouble, a police tear gas grenade hit a mosque. Within a couple of days France was engulfed by mob violence and president Jacques Chirac was forced to declare a state of emergency, imposing a curfew in some cities and restrictions on people’s movement.
The left has reacted with fury to the death of Naël. ‘Yes, refusing to obey the law is against the law, but death is not one of the penalties laid down in the Penal Code’, tweeted Manuel Bompard, an MP in La France Insoumise. The Green MP Sandrine Rousseau said that ‘a refusal to comply cannot be a death sentence.’
Jean-Luc Melenchon, the veteran figurehead of the French left, has a long-running animus against the police and last year accused them of killing indiscriminately. In response to the latest incident he declared: ‘No police officer has the right to kill except in self-defence… this police force, uncontrolled by the authorities, discredits the authority of the State. It must be completely overhauled.’
Last year 13 people were killed by police after refusing to stop for traffic controls and five officers face charges in relations to the deaths. The police say it is a result of an increasingly violent society but their critics, like Melenchon, believe that they are out of control.
It’s alleged that one of the policemen can be heard telling Naël that he’s ‘going to get a bullet in the head’ shortly before shots were fired. That is one of the claims that will be investigated in the coming days and weeks; in the meantime an anxious France must wait and see if last night’s rioting was a one off or the start of something more serious.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/06/france-erupts-in-violence-after-police-shoot-dead-a-teenager
***************************************************Conservative Strategist Behind Supreme Court’s College Affirmative Action Case Has Already Settled on a New Objective
The man behind Thursday’s Supreme Court decision striking down affirmative action in higher education admissions is nowhere near finished. Next on his target list: rules from the state of California and the Securities and Exchange Commission requiring diversity quotas for corporate boards.
Edward Blum, a conservative legal strategist whose Students for Fair Admissions nonprofit was plaintiff in both cases before the court, has been waging a one-man crusade against racial preferences for more than 30 years. He’s lost some cases along the way and won others, but Thursday’s victory was by far the most consequential.
“The opinion issued today by the United States Supreme Court marks the beginning of the restoration of the colorblind legal covenant that binds together our multi-racial, multi-ethnic nation,” Mr. Blum said in a statement after the decision was announced. “The polarizing, stigmatizing and unfair jurisprudence that allowed colleges and universities to use a student’s race and ethnicity as a factor to admit or reject them has been overruled. These discriminatory admission practices undermined the integrity of our country’s civil rights laws.”
Mr. Blum has been personally involved in six cases that have come before the Supreme Court, three of which involved race-based admissions at universities. Two previous efforts challenging them at the University of Texas were unsuccessful. The two Students cases decided Thursday mark his first major victory on the topic.
While not a lawyer himself, the former stockbroker has connected plaintiffs who feel they have been discriminated against with legal teams funded by conservative donors to bring cases solely for the purpose of setting legal precedents. For his efforts, Mr. Blum has been assailed as a racist by left-wing ideologues and as a patriot by conservatives.
Before Thursday, his biggest case was a challenge to the widespread practice of gerrymandering congressional districts to favor one race over another known as Shelby County v. Holder. In it, Mr. Blum helped an Alabama county sue the federal government over a requirement in the 1965 Voting Rights Act that any changes to voting procedures by the states be pre-approved by the Department of Justice to ensure that they don’t suppress the votes of minority voters.
After hearing arguments in the case and by a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court in 2013 struck down the relevant section of the Voting Rights Act — Section 5 — by invalidating the formula used to determine which states must obtain the so-called pre-clearance required by the Act.
Mr. Blum’s next target is recent moves by state governments and federal regulators that require companies to use racial quotas when appointing people to their boards of directors. Under the aegis of the Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment, Mr. Blum is suing the SEC over a rule requiring companies listed on the Nasdaq to have at least one female board member and one who self-identifies as Black, Latino, Asian, Native American, or Alaska Native, two or more races or ethnicities, or as LGBT. The case is now pending before the Fifth Circuit.
“It is not only investors who will suffer if Nasdaq’s virtue signaling rule is allowed to take effect,” the group says. “AFFBR has members who, because of their race, sex, and sexual orientation are forced to compete on an uneven playing field because of Nasdaq’s quota requirements.”
Also in his crosshairs is a similar rule passed by California in 2020 requiring companies based in that state to have a minimum number of directors from what the state considers “underrepresented groups.” A federal court ruled earlier this year, in Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment v. Weber, that the rule violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, the same clause cited by the Supreme Court in Thursday’s higher education decision.
The 71-year-old Mr. Blum seems disinclined to slow down his efforts against racial discrimination. In press interviews, he has said his quest is motivated by a desire to uphold the tenets of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which he believes explicitly forbid treating Americans differently because of their race. The spirit of the law, he says, seems to have been lost in the intervening years.
“I would like to see jurisprudence issued in which racial classifications are considered off-limits, except under the most extraordinary circumstances,” he told the Financial Times in a recent interview. “Police seeking to infiltrate a race-based drug gang could hire someone of the same background, but that’s about it.”
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"I exposed war crimes among Australia's Special Forces in Afghanistan"
The report below by a female sociologist is one in a long line that judges wartime behavior by peace time standards. As such, it is typically unjust. It is particularly egregious however in judging the highest risk military situations by civilian standards.
I am a former Army psychologist so perhaps have a keener awareness of the issues than some. I have no field experience. All I know is what I could learn from talking to people here in Australia. But one thing I have learned loud and clear is that military experience greatly reshapes attitudes.
One of the reasons miitary veterans often refuse to talk about their wartime experiences is that they know how their wartime actions were guided by different standards than civilian ones. The heat of battle alters attitudes and attitudes alter behaviour.
And nowhere is all the more so than in special operations. Such assignments are super high-risk and big pressure and survival instincts are at their highest there. The stress is great and anybody acting under stress is likely to make different decision from peacetime ones. And that is acknowledged throughout the military. And it is that acknowledgement that leads to "coverups". People who try to apply armchair standards to wartime behaviour are seen as missing the point and are therefore sidelined as much as possible. It is exactly such sidelining that the lady below experienced.
It would so wonderful if war could be waged like a game of chess but that is never going to happen. To use a common cliche, war is hell and there are many demons in hell. Democratic societies do their best to exclude or expel the demons but that will only ever be a campaign with limited success.
"Hypermasculinity" has got nothing to do with the problem. All that is at work is the attitudinal response to the military situation. In social psychologist's jargon, what we see are "the demand characteristics of the situation".+
It is rather regrettable that the sociologist lady below abandoned that obvious social explanation in favour of a pseudo-psychological one.
As the most frontline of SAS fighters, all that applies particularly to Ben Roberts Smith. He tried to explain his actions under the highest stress by civilian standards but inevitably failed.
It wasn’t long ago that I had been a successful business owner with a string of government contracts.
For me, it all began on Australia Day 2016. That was the day I submitted a report to army chief General Angus Campbell that would trigger the biggest inquiry into war crimes in Australia’s history. It would also be the day that David Morrison, chief of Army from 2011 to 2015, would be awarded Australian of the Year. Chair of the committee that chose the winner was Special Forces soldier Ben Roberts-Smith.
The first time I heard mention of war crimes among Australian Special Forces soldiers in Afghanistan was in 2014, in a small, partially furnished office in an Army barracks. I’m a sociologist and I had been contracted by the army to undertake a number of research projects. I was speaking with an army chaplain about domestic violence prevalence. The conversation went well beyond the initial topic. It was the first time I heard of the “serious misconduct” that was occurring within SAS patrols in Afghanistan. The chaplain described returning from deployment “a broken man”, having tried and failed to have his concerns taken seriously.
It wasn’t until late 2015, in one of the first interviews I did for a project in Special Operations Command, which oversees special forces units, that the chaplain’s story came back to me. That project began as an examination of Special Operations capability. It ended in a report on war crimes that led to the Brereton Report and news stories that resulted in Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith unsuccessfully suing this masthead for defamation.
The Federal Court last month found Roberts-Smith was a liar and murderer who engaged in war crimes. At the time of my initial report, I had no idea what that report would eventually cost me, personally and professionally.
For I now realise that what I was coming up against was more than the horrific acts of a few rogue soldiers. It was the cult of brand “SAS”; the cult of the male warrior. In this cult, unsanctioned violence is justified, encouraged and celebrated.
It seemed my report on the SAS had triggered a threat to some Australian men’s masculinity. I’d dared question their heroes. These loud voices would hound me for years. The attacks on me to be bashed, killed, tortured, and my livelihood destroyed came via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, email, text and phone call. Mostly the backlash came from those not in the military, but some were ex-military and younger white male soldiers – all of whom appear to idolise the SAS as a stronghold of hypermasculinity.
When the war crimes allegations emerged, then-defence minister Peter Dutton said he had made it “very clear” to Defence that I should not be awarded further contracts. That he did not want the military to be “distracted by things that have happened in the past”. My credibility was questioned repeatedly by Jacqui Lambie and reiterated in the Murdoch press.
It became politically inconvenient for me to keep speaking about the SAS issues. In 2021, I had written an essay about how misconduct becomes entrenched in organisations and how it spreads, and I used the SAS as a primary example. The Australian Government Solicitor unsuccessfully tried to stop my essay being published.
In a letter I received from the government solicitor’s office shortly after publication, I was told my conduct and public statements had “harmed the Commonwealth”. The result was that my ongoing work with the government was “terminated for convenience”.
The implications for me, my family, my business, and my staff were profound. The message had been sent to the department loud and clear that I was now a liability and a risk. No work would follow. Work in the pipeline was stopped indefinitely. I’d told the truth, so they cut me out.
After that my business collapsed and my mental health declined amid the endless stream of misogynistic threats through social media. Work from other organisations was not forthcoming. I gather this was because most businesses hire consultants to tell them what they want to hear, not uncover what is really at the heart of their problems.
I once heard Special Forces described as the “weeping sore” of the Army that no one was prepared to tend to. But there is a cost to organisations that leave issues to fester. It teaches others in the organisation that bad behaviour is acceptable, that those who engage in it will be protected, that to dismiss it is the norm. Such attitudes seep through an organisation and rot it. When the day finally comes that these problems must be addressed, the damage is far greater for all involved.
But the greatest takeaway from my experience is a personal one. That despite the cost, I would do it all again. I am grateful for the trust placed in me by soldiers and officers who gave accounts of egregious acts of violence and cover-ups. I have never taken it for granted and I have felt an unwavering duty of care to them.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See
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