Econ Courses Make Students Less Generous

College economics courses have the effect of making non-econ majors less generous, at least toward nonprofits. Taking introductory microeconomics reduces a nonmajor’s likelihood of donating to specific nonprofits by 2 percentage points, and an intermediate course reduces the likelihood by 3.7 to 7.9 percentage points, according to Yoram Bauman and Elaina Rose of the University of Washington. It’s unclear whether this is the result of exposure to economics concepts, exposure to econ faculty and students, or some other cause, the researchers say.

So why, pray tell, are a bunch of economists running our country, in an age where we need generosity more than ever?

A 1% increase in military spending increases real GDP by only 0.04%, according to a study of five South Asian countries by Albert Wijeweera and Matthew J. Webb of the Petroleum Institute in the United Arab Emirates. Their findings suggest that the substantial amount of public money currently directed toward military purposes in these countries has just a negligible impact on economic growth.

Well, duh.

That’s a reason why the United States should probably stop spending $660+ billion dollars on our military.

And that, by the way, is NOT counting the over $56 billion in the so-called “black budget”, which receives no Congressional oversight whatsoever.

War, what is it good for?

I just finished watching Love, Actually with Liam Neeson and a whole host of other Hollywood A-listers, and not only is this the perfect movie to watch on Christmas Eve, it’s also a pretentious load of Disneyfied fairtytale crap.

Love, Actually has nothing to do with actual love. It’s all about wish-fulfillment fantasizing about an idealized version of love that twistes our friendships, ruins our marriages and makes a mockery of our childhood crushes.

At the root of this movie is not a heartwarming tale of truth about how “love conquers all”. At the root of this movie is a glittering, cynical, hard-edged exploitation of human hope and vanity.

Let’s take a look at the stories involved, one by one. I’m only going to briefly thumbnail sketch the movie plot: a variety of characters’ stories intertwine in wholly contrived ways while they all, in their own way, pursue “true” love. That’s the summary. Here are the gory details.

Harry, the director of an ad agency, cheats on his wife Karen with his younger, sexier secretary Mia. Karen discovers this and has a two minute breakdown, and then goes on with life as usual, because she won’t end the marriage for the sake of the kids. This vignette underscores that who Karen really loves are her kids. This is a bleak, depressing, and wholly realistic commentary on the modern marriage, in which (if kids are present) they often become the focus of the relationship, above and beyond the breakdown of the original partners’ marriage, and in many cases the original couple will “stay together for the kids”, thinking this will be better for the kids (even if, in many cases, it’s actually worse). The difficulty here underscores the insanity of believing that a modern marriage has a better than 50% chance of working when the truth is, it doesn’t.

If you’re still questioning my conclusion here, answer this quick quiz. Which choice is better for a happy family?:

• Husband and wife unhappy and maybe cheating but stay together for the kids
• Husband and wife unhappy and maybe cheating but break up (divorce)

If you tried to avoid a third option, “Neither – Happy Marriage”, you’re welcome to try, and please send me a postcard letting me know how well that works out.

Peter marries Juliet, and gradually Juliet realizes that Peter’s best friend Mark is in love with her. But, despite this love, Mark has gone years without speaking to Peter or Juliet about his undying love. So, he decides to sneak over to the house one night, pretend to be a whole chorus of carolers (yeah, right) and show Juliet signs that say, basically, “I love you, but I’ve always been to chicken to tell you, so hopefully I’ll find another girl, but I really am committed to you forever, in my heart.” And Juliet responds by French kissing him. Oh, boy: the moral of the story? If you’re false with your best friend, it’s okay, because the gorgeous girl he just married who you want desperately will probably break you off a little piece for you anyway if you just tell her how you really feel. That way, everybody’s happy. Oh, but you still can’t be honest with your best friend, and you still can’t have your dream girl. Unless you, y’know, kill your best friend. That may be your best bet. She’d probably get turned on by that or something.

New UK Prime Minister David is attracted to office-girl Natalie. When the U.S. President visits and makes a pass at her during a state visit, David is horrified and has Natalie transferred into another department. Later, she admits to him she was momentarily intoxicated by the President’s power and couldn’t help herself, and she really does love him (David). David ends up kissing her backstage at her kid brother’s Christmas play and, of course, the happy couple is outed in front of all the world. The moral of this twisted story: First, use your power to hit on the women in your office. Second, use your power to remove them from your path when it gets too difficult. Third, use your power to chase them down again when they make a inept confession of love (?) to you in a Christmas card. And Fourth, sneak around with them at public functions, imagining nobody will find out. True love really does conquer all. BARF.

Jamie is a writer who got cheated on by his wife with his brother. Shattered, he retires to a French cottage to write, and, romantically, the owner provides him with a fetching Portugese housekeeper, Aurelia, who doesn’t speak a lick of English. Of course, the sparks fly despite the language barrier, and after a tearful goodbye in which the impotent Jamie fails to act even after Aurelia kisses him on the mouth, he mounts a months-long campaign to “win her back”, learning Portugese and traveling to Portugal, contacting her family without her knowledge and actually showing up at her workplace unannounced and uninvited to ask for her hand in marriage. Of course, the rest of her family are portrayed as ignorant 3rd-worlders who banter about a “bride price” as if this was some 15th century arrange marriage. We’ll ignore the blatant racism and elitism for a minute and focus on the fact that, of course, Aurelia has been learning English and “saving herself” for him, on the off chance that he would randomly show up, just like in a storybook romance (“my prince will come.”) — and, of course, he does. Hello, has anyone ever heard of this happening in real life, not in a Disney movie? I didn’t think so. So here’s the Real Life version of this story: inept, impotent Jamie doesn’t have the stones or the follow-through to learn Portugese and fly to Portugal, and so continues his days masturbating to Internet porn or, better yet, marrying some sexless woman who will never measure up to the Portugese minx he lost through inaction. And, of course, Aurelia goes back to Portugal, works as a waitress, and gets picked up by a hunky Italian one night, who proceeds to boff her brains out, giving her the best sex of her life, only to dump her two months later for a richer, prettier girl.

I could go on, but I’d rather not.

Let me instead elucidate the rules of modern relationships, in contradistinction to the propagandist tripe this movie has put out. Instead of letting your mind be polluted with this Hollywood garbage, tell yourself the following: I guarantee the following messages will get you better results.

1. You will never, ever get a second chance with a girl, so act now.
2. If you get married there is a better than 50% chance you will get divorced. Know this.
3. As a man, once you have kids with a women, the kids will become more important than you.
4. Go after the woman you want, not the woman you think you have a chance with.
5. Be honest with your male friends about which girls you love (or are crushing on). Be brutally honest. It’s way better than losing the friendship when you seduce her later and she cheats on him, and it’s way, way better than watching your best friend marry and fuck a girl you had a good chance with.
6. If you are in a relationship with a woman, whether marriage or just dating, there is a good chance she will cheat on you, either with your best friend, your brother, or someone of no consequence. This is not because she’s an evil person: this is because humans are not meant to be sexually monogamous.
7. You can be tightly devoted to your family, but if your blood relatives become your only social connection, you won’t get laid very much.
8. Real love isn’t learning languages, traveling across continents, and doing other outlandish and stupid things in an effort to prove to someone you love them very much. Real love is accepting someone for who they are, totally, and letting them be that person, encouraging them to be an ever more perfect actualization of their own highest self — even if that someone is a guy who needs to seduce every third woman he sees. Anything else is selfish and self-serving wish fulfillment.
9. Don’t date women you work with.
10. Especially don’t date women who work under you.

This topic is a little off base of what I usually write about here, so I’ll be brief, but I do think it’s important.

New York Representative Carolyn McCarthy recently dusted off old H.R. 1022, which you can track here via OpenCongress.

A summary of the bill follows:

A bill, also known as the Assault Weapons Ban and Law Enforcement Protection Act of 2007, that greatly expands the list of prohibited weapons. The definition of a semiautomatic assault weapon is broadened in the bill, to include many guns that are currently legal. The text of this bill contains a long list of specific guns that would become illegal to possess, if it were enacted. Additionally, it would make the private transfer of any assault weapon illegal.

Now, a lot of bloggers are going nuts about this bill — “The Dems are trying to take away all our guns!” and “This is 10x worse than Clinton!” and “THE SKY IS FALLING!!!!”

But if they looked closely, they would notice that this bill is absolutely 100% D.O.A.

First of all, it has NO co-sponsors (nobody else is dumb enough to support it).

Second of all, it’s been referred back to Committee, where it will most likely die an inglorious death.

It’s probably just horse-trading.

Nobody is willing to sign on with her, because not only is anti-gun legislation largely ineffective from a policy standpoint, it’s also an absolute non-starter from a political standpoint.

Standing Armies vs Well-Organized Militia
Bills like this, and gun-control legislation in general, always comes back to the 2nd Amendment: Let’s review:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

This is a Jeffersonian concept that is related to the idea that the free State would not be keeping standing armies. Since we do have a standing army (and an extremely expensive one at that), some anti-gun activists will say that there is no need for a well-regulated militia.

To which I reply: a well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of the free state, would be desperately needed in such times that the freedom of said State was under attack by aforementioned standing army.

To wit: Bush’s grab for control of the National Guard.
To wit: Corporations empowered to raise their own standing armies.
To wit: our ‘broken’ Armed Forces , over-stretched because of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan (and now possibly Iran), and their current inability to protect our own nation in the (admittedly unlikely) event of an attack on our own soil.

If this country continues it’s slide into corporate autocracy, I’m sure that pretty soon a whole lot of Democrats are going to wish they owned assault rifles, and a whole lot of Republicans are going to be glad they do.

Urban vs Rural
Others argue that gun control is really an issue between the soft-palmed sissy urbanites — locked in their glass condos for fear of the gritty urban gun battles taking place in the ‘bad’ parts of their city — and the rural gun owners, those rugged individualists who are either salt-of-the-earth hunters or crazy survivalists stockpiling bunkers of illegal assault weapons, depending who you ask.

I think it’s unquestionable that urbanites and others living in metropolitan areas have a much different relationship with firearms than rural people.

It’s easy, when you are in a city and hearing about people get shot weekly or even daily, to be logical and think “Well, the guns are the problem. We should just ban all the guns and then nobody would get shot.”

On the other hand, the rural people, who have grown up around guns and treat them with respect and understand their power, can’t get their heads around this. “Take away our guns? Yeah, when you pry them from our cold, dead fingers.”

Urbanites, of course, then decide that anyone who was so strongly in favor of gun ownership must be a bloodthirsty thug — since all the people they associate with gun use in the city are either thugs or other People of Low Moral Fiber.

But they’ve got it backwards, because when you go out into the country, “gun people” are often the nicest people around.

This is the disconnection between urban morality and rural morality: In dense urban areas, there are gang wars, drug deals, “reps” to protect, and guns will be made available as tools in these social constructs regardless of their legality, since they are part of American culture.

In rural areas, a different kind of morality holds sway — more traditional moral and family values, respect for nature and the environment, respect for individual liberties and the power of guns. The cultural love of guns holds true here, too, but here, the guns are used in an entirely different way.

These are broad characterizations and as such obviously gloss over subtlety and nuance, but I think are no less useful for all that.

So it should be easy to see why the argument so quickly gets out of hand between an urban anti-gun liberal and a conservative pro-gun rural: they’re arguing across cultures and moral systems. The issue of gun control is really incidental to their argument.

Here’s the reality: guns don’t kill people, PEOPLE with guns kill people. And the legal or restricted status of guns in urban areas will do absolutely diddly-squat to curb gun violence and violence in general.

You think criminals can’t get guns once they’re outlawed? If they want guns, they can get guns. If anything outlawing certain weapons makes them MORE likely to be available on the black market.

It’s the Economy, Stupid
I believe that the presence or absence of guns really has nothing to do with the rates and levels of inner-city violence.

People’s subjective feelings of happiness and hope, on the other hand, do.

When the economy is up, and unemployment is low, and real wages are rising (adjusted for inflation) and the poorest 10% of our population believes they have a chance to better their circumstances, crime will be low, because the perceived risks associated with criminal behavior will outweigh the perceived potential rewards that could probably more easily (and less riskily) be gained by legitimate employment or other opportunities.

When the economy is down, and unemployment is high, and real wages are stagnant or falling, and the poorest 10% of our population believes that they have been forgotten by the politicians and all sectors of the economy, then crime will rise, because the perceived rewards of criminal behavior will outweigh any other perceived rewards that an individual could gain by other means.

In closing, I believe all citizens of the United States should be able to purchase long arms, handguns, semiautomatic and automatic assault rifles, so long as they go through a mandatory gun safety and usage training course, and registered each and every weapon they owned as well as disclosed ammunition amounts.

I also believe that all gun-owning citizens should be required to take independently-verified marksmanship tests, the results of which would be tabulated and placed in a state database, so the state could evaluate the quality and amount of firepower that was available to it in the event of a “citizen’s militia” call-up.

Finally, I believe the Fed should butt out of state’s rights and the existing state militias (National Guard). In this respect I am all for strengthening state control and Governors at the expense of the Federal system.

And to conclude, a photo of the Israeli TAV-21 assault rifle, a gun I’d quite enjoy owning:

Not really.

As if we needed any more proof that college women (and especially college women in sororities) are shallow and vindictive, the story details how a tiny sorority at a tiny college in Greencastle, Indiana — student population 2,400 — effectively kicked out all their overweight, ugly, black, Korean of Vietnamese women.

The purging, initiated by the sorority chapter’s higher-ups from Delta Zeta headquarters in Oxford, Ohio, was probably in response to an annual psychology professor’s survey that asked students to characterize the different sorority groups on campus.

While other sororities got labels like “Daddy’s little princesses” and “Offbeat hippies”, Delta Zeta claimed the prize: “socially awkward”.

Let me point out that the psychology professor, a Ms. Pam Propsom, conducted this little survey ostensibly under the guise of part of her psychology class. My question is, exactly how valuable is a survey that asks students to stereotype sorority girls?

To show the power of stereotypes? College women ought to have learned that lesson well enough in high school.

So a female psychology professor initiates a catty popularity-contest “survey” with questionable educational value, and other catty women, in charge and trying to damage control the bad PR their precious sorority is getting, swoop in from Delta Zeta headquarters, interview 35 sorority members ostensibly in the context of their “commitment” to the organization, and kick out the 25 ugliest and fattest.

And, then the NY Times picks up the story and exposes them all as silly bitches.

You really need to look at the article to see the awful justice in full light of day — the story includes photos of many of the women kicked out, and it’s true, they are not pretty, and they are overweight.

But kicking them out on these grounds and trying to cover it with a tissue-thin fantasy about their lack of commitment is just laughable.

Just more evidence to confirm what I’ve always believed: sorority women at that age are pretty sad. Even sadder are the adult ones who never grow out of the mindset. I’d say they are good for one thing only (sex), but my experience is, often they are disappointing even in bed.

Porn. Porn where they would all excel — not only would it give them an outlet for their catty, competitive energy, it would give them a paycheck for acting fake.

The draw was obvious. This book, co-written by writers and activists Donna Sheehan and Paul Reffell, promises to produce “The Joyous New Women’s Movement that Men will Love Too!”

Knowing from personal experience how difficult it is to write anything that pleases both men and women, I was interested from this angle — and also because the book promised to, among other quotes from the website:

Picking up from Darwin’s theory of Sexual Selection, Redefining Seduction is an audacious and evocative look at male and female sexuality and the mating game. The premise of women as being in the evolutionary driver’s seat will undoubtedly have huge implications for generations to come.

The premise of women being in the driver’s seat, eh? Well, obviously I can agree with that idea, to a point: I do believe women happen to be the “choosers” of their sexual partners, in one way or another, although this generalization often has limits.

But I was very curious what others had to say, especially others who billed themselves as “evolutionary behaviorists” who had plowed 5 years of research into this book.

Redefining Seduction as Scholarship
I sprung for the $10 e-book version and read it in a few days. It is a small book, at barely 100 pages (including the epilogue), and honestly, I was a bit surprised at how little new information was presented in it.

The authors claim to have spent 5 years researching the book, but honestly, I did not see evidence of 5 years’ worth of original research. The “notes” section that supports their in-text assertion has barely 20 citations.

Obviously, this depth of research did not convince me. I myself have written 100+ page research papers in under three weeks with works cited sections stretching to over 100 citations.

So how does this book stand up as a scholarly work? Not very well.

As a Seduction Manual for Women
Some of the highest praise I can give the authors of Redefining Seduction is that, in their Notes section, they say of the perennial female-seduction guide The Rules: “prolongs the myth that women can beat up on men emotionally and expect to get away with it.”

As great as that is, and as much as this book wants to break paradigms of female behavior, the only real support it offers for the efficacy of its new methods is the success of the two author’s relationships: the book opens with the story of how Donna Sheehan “seduced” Paul Reffell, and returns repeatedly to their relationship over the course of the 100-page book.

Women take great pleasure and comfort in social rapport with other women, and the feeling of solidarity that comes from reading another woman’s story — but if a woman doesn’t identify instantly and closely with Doona (who seems to be the primary and only author, despite Paul’s name being on the cover), she’s sunk.

The book doesn’t even feature the multitude of compared women’s stories that books such as He’s Just Not That Into You do.

As practical guides go, the book does suggest some really basic moves (such as “make him comfortable” and “say positive things” and “touch him lightly”) but does not present a comprehensive “system” or method that is very different or new at all.

In fact, the farthest it goes is saying “keep your eyes open for men, and start chatting them up wherever you see them, take the initiative.” That’s it. That’s pretty much Redefining Seduction in a nutshell.

So, as a seduction manual, I would say this book falls pretty short as well.

It may remind a few women that they are living in the 21st century and there is more leeway for them to take some initiative, but beyond that it really doesn’t advance knowledge or open any new doors.

Devilish Details
Even more shocking, I found this book flat-out got it wrong in key places.

It says men will share the “minutiae” of their relationship lives at the first provocation: which seems a clear case of projection (women do this often, but I haven’t met a single man who does).

In the “Sex” section, it says that “so-called vaginal orgasms result from the stimulation of the clitoris.”

Wrong.

It also says “the clitoris is the center of the climax.”

Wrong again.

Then it goes on to compare orgasm to winning the lottery, and attributing a woman who has an orgasm on first intercourse with a new partner as “lucky”.

What a blatant perpetuation of not only feminist tropes, but plain old downright bad anatomy!

At one point, it leaps to the hasty generalization that “men with dogs have given up on finding a woman.” Uh, actually, the majority of single men I know who have dogs have them because they know that dogs give them opportunities to meet women.

At another point in the Sex chapter, they cite a study that says fully 37% of women wanted men to wait between one and three months before trying to initiate sex.

I couldn’t help thinking, are these women over 65 years old, or what? I don’t know ANY population of women in the U.S., except maybe evangelical Christian virgins, who would want a man to wait that long to try to initiate sex.

The book further mis-characterizes men as indiscriminate breeders — “seed sprayers” — who are incapable of empathy, kindness, or making a good decision on who to sleep or partner with. This is one of the book’s greatest weaknesses, since it is not only sexist and shortsighted, but also misandrist.

Getting It Right
The book does have a few high points, where it gets the analysis of women and men right.

It says at one point that all men “want a woman who is attractive to him and others in some way, a woman who ‘resonates’.”

It DOES warn against blaming men for their actions, which is good, to a point — but on the other hand, it applies this standard of blamelessness to men in other odd situations, such as after a date (“It’s not his fault if he doesn’t call you back.”) Applying this logic to women is what leads to frustrating flakey hate-inspiring modern women, so while I am grateful to see a woman applying these same moral standards to men, I am still concerned that they exist at all — personal responsibility is a good thing.

And finally, it does advocate women be more outgoing and friendly, and not so fearful (of the ever-present threat of “rape”, right?), saying, in a great passage:

Our personal fortress in which most women, especially urbanites, hide in fear of strangers…it’s the closest a woman can come to feeling how it is for most men at all times when they are in public. These defenses are all products of…..[a]….mindset that has created the suspicious and fearful atmosphere that tyrants thrive on.

And, to it’s credit, the book does advocate safe sex.

Save your Money
At $10, I figured I couldn’t possibly waste money on this book, but I was very nearly proved wrong. The authors seem to think they can effect global change with this 100-page polemic against helpless “masked” males: here’s a snippet from the blog that accompanies the book:

Men are designed for focusing on the job at hand, creating stuff, destroying stuff and spraying seed wherever they can. Women are designed for seeing the whole picture, creating connections and creating life from raw seed. Men are not designed to choose their mates. This according to Charles Darwin and his Sexual Selection theory (read the book!).

Actually, Darwin never said men are hapless seed-sprayers incapable of choosing a mate. That’s an extrapolation that the authors have used to put words in his mouth.

Men are designed to display their best traits. Women are designed to select their mates. So, guys, that’s why so many of you have been rejected so many times when you made the first move.

No, guys get rejected because they don’t understand how to approach women in the right way, a way that will appeal to the woman.

And it’s partly why so many marriages end in divorce. Male-initiated marriages are more likely to end in divorce than female-initiated marriages. Google it sometime.

This is because women, when they initiate marriages, initiate marriages with limp-wristed Beta males who are already whipped prior to the “proposal” and are essentially the woman’s domestic and economic servant for the rest of their naturally born days.

Men don’t divorce the woman who proposed to them because the woman won’t give them permission to.

But wait, they’re just getting warmed up:

Now it’s time for women to use their biological seductive power to reclaim their true role as the civilizers of men. Women are the drivers of evolution, through their mate choices, their child-rearing, their ability to understand the bigger picture and thereby the consequences of their, and their mates’, actions. Women are the only hope for steering men away from their path to certain destruction.

Not only is this again returning to the misandristic sexist trope of “men aren’t as mentally capable as women” but it’s saying tha, in effect, women are superior, and would make better political leaders, and can single-handedly bring about a ‘taming’ of the violence of human (whoops, male) nature and save the day.

Well, let’s look at some female political leaders. Janet Reno (remember Elian Gonzales?) Condoleeza Rice. Need I say Margaret Thatcher? Right, I think women make swell political leaders.

Sorry, I don’t buy this sexist trope, and neither should you: humanity suffers because of humanity, not because of men — there are good men as well as bad, and good women as well as bad. Setting it up as a battle between evil men and good, nurturing women is completely counterproductive, given that in reality it is a battle between GOOD men and GOOD women against EVIL men and EVIL women.

And thus concludes my book review. I can’t write another word about this thing: and I cannot recommend this slim manual (I won’t call it a “book”) to anyone.

Most of the men in this city are laid back, relaxed, many are effeminate or downright metro. There is a large and openly out gay population.

This is a major metropolitan area, and it is a very liberal, progressive city in a Blue state — the sort of metropolitan area Republican Presidents fear to tread in.

Although it has vibrant local art, music, food and wine scenes and is additionally very high-tech, the men here still leave something to be desired; the nature of the city and the area itself seems to draws effete men to it; and the men here who do play at being “alpha” do so in a churlish, frat-boy way. There are very, very, few of what I would call “natural alphas” that are over 27, single, attractive,  and not douchebags or assholes in some other way.

The women here, on the other hand, are VERY dominant.

Going along with the openly gay community is an open and vocal lesbian community. Women are seen walking openly hand-in-hand down the street while nearby male couple do the same thing. Openly lesbian women are appointed to prestigious teaching positions at local universities.

And that’s what cued me in; a lesbian University professor I once had who, way back then, challenged my assertion that Good Sex ought to involve Emotion.

“I can have sex just based on physical attraction,” she said. “I don’t think emotions have to come into it. And I’m a lot older than you, I think I have a little more experience.” She said this in the context of an undergraduate class in Women’s Studies.

Different place, different time, different woman, same message: I can have sex just like a man.

- I can objectify the targets of my desire;

- I can see them as nothing more than living, breathing sex-toys;

- I can fuck them without regard to their emotional lives;

- I can use them and cast them aside, and move on to the next.

Just like a man can.

And I am free to develop that masculine dominance exactly in proportion to how scarce actual masculine dominance is around here.

By now, I’ve heard this refrain from many women — all of them “dominant” women who were either openly lesbian or strongly bisexual. None of them particularly effeminate — many of them embracing traditionally masculine characteristics — short hair, androgynous clothing, male sex roles, and so forth.

None of them I considered particularly attractive.

What I’m developing here is a social theory that dominant women spring up in the absence of dominant men, and take on their sexual roles.

Or, put another way, assertive, masculine (butch) women are a product of submissive men.

When assertive, masculine, Alpha males are in short supply, women take up the natural slack and expand to fill the power-gap left by those men: they get jobs like them, harass and harangue like them, dress like them,  and try to fuck like them.

This would never happen in a region with a healthy supply of dominant, masculine males: Texas, for instance. A woman who wanted to be dominant would not only not venture to go there (because she’d get laughed right out of her butch attitude) but also, women born in those areas are LESS LIKELY to get the idea that they need or want to develop dominant, traditionally-masculine traits — they see dominant men around them, they understand the power of femininity, and they don’t see any reason to change the status quo.

To further test this theory, I have examined (in fine detail) some women from the vast rural areas outside the dense urban center.

These women are, to a one, more feminine, more attractive, and more interested in and responsive to a dominant,  man.

So now you know. Female dominance is adaptive; female submission is natural.

The tourists, including an ex-Marine, were passengers on the Carnival cruise ship Legend, when they stopped off in the Limon neighborhood of San Jose, Costa Rica to take some pictures when they were accosted by a thug with a gun.

The mugger was killed, his neck snapped — probably by the ex-Marine. The tourists put his body on their tour bus and took it to the police to report the incident.

No charges were filed, since the killing was an act of self-defense.

Live in fear? Hand over your treasure to avoid trouble? Or stand up to intimidation and bullying, and snap that low-life motherfucker’s neck?

I am a strong supporter of martial arts training and deadly force training for all men — not only because it enables justice like this, but because it usually teaches discipline and the proper application of force along the way.

The U.S. is currently stuck in some serious shit overseas mostly because the civilian leadership of our country has never received adequate training on the appropriate use and limits of lethal force.

My platform: an ex-Marine in 2008.

In a report done in early September of 2005, Ed Bradly of CBS News’s 60 Minutes reports on the country’s current “abstinence-only” sex education, and the fact that almost $1 billion dollars worth of federal funding (that’s YOUR tax dollars, folks) have gone into a faith-based educational black hole that actually teaches today’s youngsters that condoms are ineffective and unsafe.

You can watch the report in its entirety over at One Good Move. It’s a real eye-opener. The full transcript is here.

Some of the highlights:

Amy and Rick will be taking their virginity pledge at a music and light sex-education show called Silver Ring Thing. In the last few years, Silver Ring Thing has received more than $1 million in federal and state subsidies. Its aim is to encourage young people to put on a ring and promise to abstain from sex until marriage.

You really need to see these “Silver Ring Thing” shows to believe them. Imagine a nightclub for kids, only with bad Christian rock and a Christian youth minister haranguing kids about the dangers of condoms — and little skits about how BAD sex is unless done in the context of marriage.

Hitler-youth-rally-esque gatherings like the Silver Ring Thing are the reason I’ve been seeing all these “promise rings” popping up on younger women in the past 5 years. We’ll return to those promise rings in a moment.

[Denny] Pattyn [Christian youth minister and founder of Silver Ring Thing] doesn’t just preach the virtues of sexual abstinence. His show is full of negative messages about condoms – messages warning that condoms won’t protect kids from pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases…

“My own daughter, my 16-year-old daughter, tells me she’s going to be sexually active. I would not tell her to use a condom,” says Pattyn, “I don’t think it’ll protect her. It won’t protect her heart. It won’t protect her emotional life. And it’s not going to protect her. I don’t want her to get out there and think that she’s going to be protected using a condom.”

Wow, that’s great, Minister Pattyn, and you know what, you’re absolutely right — because you taught your sweet little 16-year-old daughter that, last night I fucked her raw and she contracted HIV from my gold-plated big-swinging Player Dick (which incidentally has been places you don’t even want to imagine).

You’re right. A condom didn’t protect her. I wasn’t wearing one. She said she didn’t believe in them.

Now she’ll have to deal with the social stigma and health issues of having an STD for the rest of her life.

How do you feel about not telling her to use a condom now?

Columbia University’s Peter Bearman co-authored the most comprehensive study ever done on adolescent health and sexuality. He says, “Sex education doesn’t cause all these negative outcomes. What causes these negative outcomes is kids who are having sex and aren’t protecting themselves.”

It was a $45-million project, funded by 17 separate federal agencies. Bearman’s investigators interviewed more than 20,000 young people about virginity pledge programs — and there was some good news.

“Pledging will help them delay sex for, say, 18 months — a year and a half….The downside is that, when they have sex, pledgers are one-third less likely to use condoms at first sex,”

And that is exactly why predatory men like me just LOVE this whole Promise Ring movement — we get an entire new crop of fresh-faced, ripe young girls who have “saved themselves”; they think they’ve been saving themselves for marriage, but as it turns out, they’ve been saving themselves for US.

So when we seduce one of these Promise-Ring sporting chicklets, we can be pretty sure that, if we hit them at the right time,

A) they are probably relatively free of STDs, compared to women with some sexual experience
and
B) they will not ask us to use a condom.

Our protection from disease is virtually guaranteed by their increased abstinence, and their protection from *our* potential diseases, that we may have acquired from a lifestyle of promiscuous unprotected sex, is virtually nil.

In other words — spending $1 billion in public funds to generate a new crop of 1 million fresh-faced virgins that don’t believe in using condoms? Hell yeah! Now that’s what I call government!

There’s another little ancillary side-benefit:

“Adolescents who take virginity pledges – who remain virgins, that is, who don’t have vaginal sex, who technically remain virgins, are much more likely to have oral and anal sex,” says Bearman.

As social commentator Bill Maher remarked famously, Abstinence Pledges Make You Horny.

Based on those interviews with more than 20,000 young people who took virginity pledges, Bearman found that 88 percent of them broke their pledge and had sex before marriage.

And, not only are they highly likely to break their Promise, but they are ALSO likely not to tell anyone about it:

“They’ve taken a public pledge to remain a virgin until marriage. The sex that they have is much more likely to be hidden,” says Bearman. “It’s likely to be hidden from their parents. It’s likely to be hidden from their peers.”

Wow. Just wow.

So let me get this straight:

1. Promise girls are actually going to have sex 88% of the time
2. Promise girls are more likely than other girls to be open to having oral or anal sex prior to finally having intercourse
3. Promise girls are highly unlikely to tell ANYBODY about #1 or #2

I honestly cannot think of a better set of characteristics for a young female population that is perfectly positioned to be seduced and taken advantage of by older, wiser and more sexually experienced men.

The Silver Ring Thing and other abstinence-only sex education programs not only virtually guarantees that its students will eventually have sex, it also virtually guarantees they will have MORE TYPES OF SEX in the process, and be secretive about the whole thing!

I thank you, Bush administration. From the bottom of my heart.

Political rationale for these faith-based abstinence-only programs is a little weak in the “brains” department, though:

Claude Allen is President Bush’s domestic policy adviser and point man on abstinence-only education: “If I were to say to that same group of kids, you know what, don’t drink and drive, but if you do drink and drive, make sure you wear your seatbelt.”

Worst. Analogy. Ever.

Driving a 2-ton piece of metal at speeds up to 70 mph while under the influence of a central nervous system suppressant is a little bit different than letting you boyfriend stick his pee-pee in your hoohah.

You could kill someone while drinking and driving, regardless of whether your seatbelt is buckled: I don’t think you run the risk of killing anyone as a direct result of having sex with a condom.

Plus, I bet Claude Allen lets his partner slip on a condom before railing him in the ass. Just a guess.

-=-=-=-=-=
Final Note

As it happens, I have a personal connection to this story:

On my bedside table, right next to my alarm clock, is a glass bowl. Inside are all the Promise Rings I’ve taken off “pledgers” over the years.

It’s better than notches on the bedpost.

Ironically, it is the recent mis-steps by modern-day feminism that have enabled modern Western women to fall as such easy prey to “The Player”.

A “Player” is a man or woman skilled at social interaction who manipulates a woman’s emotions for some less-than-noble purpose. It may be to get sex from a girl who would otherwise refuse. It may be to suggest to her that her boyfriend has been unfaithful, and thus plant seeds of doubt that will lead to the break-up of the relationship (so the boyfriend is “available” for a rebound fuck).

The Player plays a woman’s emotions as skillfully as a concert violinist plays a Stradivarius, and wrings from her shifting patterns of labile emotionality a result that is personally beneficial. Some people also call this person an “emotional vampire”; a social predator who feeds with a delightful sense of irony on tumultuous emotions casually inspired in others by misrepresentations of the self.

Players and emotional vampires were not common before the destruction of social patterns of value, because they could not gain traction among men and women with strong basic social values, such as: keep your word, stand by your friends, don’t lie, regulate your emotions. Abdicating responsibility for your actions via your emotions creates a gaping vulnerability to manipulation by a skillful emotional player.

The dismantling of these basic conventions has constructed The Princess and the Player as two opposite but complimentary social caricatures: the Princess, flippant and emotionally labile, is selfish, petulant, demanding, inconsistent, petty, and catty — the Player, ruthless and calculating, is exploitative, egocentric, unctuous, mendacious, penetrating, and fake.

Neither is able to experience healthy attachment, so while they may come together to feed on one another for a time, and experience some measure of purely biological bliss (in sex), a deepening and strengthening bond, and the personal growth that would entail, is not truly possible.

And that is a personal tragedy with dire social and cultural implications.

By telling women that they have been oppressed for centuries by “The Patriarchy”, and calling them to liberate themselves by rejecting the basic social codes of the Western world, which were supposed to be constructed by men to keep them in chains (and therefore ought to be regarded as inherently destructive), feminism has effectively declared war on a number of very desirable social traits.

Consider the body of social conventions and behavioral proscriptions that feminism rails against:

- nurturing and care-giving (”sexist”, feminists say)
- moderation in words and actions
- taking compliments, thanking behavior
- kindness
- accommodation
- respect
- modesty
- decorum

Quite a collection of reprehensible, disgusting habits, no? It’s only NATURAL feminism would revolt against them! After all, they are plainly tools designed solely in the interest of enslaving women to eeeeevil forces of Patriarchy.

And this is only a partial list of values and conventions latter-day feminists have fought to destroy, to replace them with, as far as I can tell, just one overarching rule:

“Follow your feelings.”

That’s it. That’s the aggregate message of 2nd and 3rd wave feminism: “Guess what, girls! You don’t have to be nice anymore! In fact, be a BITCH! Be LOUD! Be IMMODEST! Be IMPOLITE! SLEEP AROUND! Throw off tho yoke of those patriarchical social conventions that made you so mute, dumb and boring! Have some ATTITUDE! And, above all….follow your feelings.”

“If it feels good, do it. After all, that’s what men do!”

“If it doesn’t feel right, don’t do it.”

And in that single sweep, feminism “liberated” women from decency in social conventions and enslaved them to their own shifting emotions.

You see, emotions, while a very important source of information, are not and never will be Facts; and divorcing women from Facts while encouraging them to make their decisions using Feelings is morally ruinous.

A fact, for example, might be as follows: “I said I’d come back and pick up my friends after the bars closed.”

In the old days, before feminism destroyed the “sexist social codes” that taught women things like kindness, accommodation and respect, a woman might have followed a thought process like this:

“Hmm, I told my friends I’d go back and pick them up. But I’m really tired now! And this cute boy is calling me on the phone. I really want to just stay home…..BUT, I promised them, and I have to keep my word. So I’ll call the boy back tomorrow and drive out to get them. I’ll be a good friend.”

Now, however, it’s a different story:

“Hmm, I told my friends I’d go back and pick them up. But I’m really tired now! And this cute boy is calling me on the phone. Fuck those whores, they can take care of themselves.”

This destruction of the aforementioned values in women’s minds has had an imprisoning effect, not a liberating one. Now, women are subject to their own selfish whims, rather than the social conventions of “good behavior”. And while I love my naughty girls as much as the next guy, I absolutely *cannot abide* what feminism has replaced those social niceties with:

- lying
- infidelity
- betrayal
- flakiness
- lack of integrity
- manipulation
- extreme competitiveness
- extreme jealousy
- opportunism

Women are encouraged in these behaviors. It is “throwing off the yoke of the male oppressor”. It is “getting theirs”. It is “following their feelings”.

Modern-day feminism — 2nd and 3rd wave — is, at root, an intellectual pattern of values that is seeking to free women from social constructs in favor of biological decisionmaking. Now this intellectual pattern has gone out of control, in places flatly denying biological differences between the genders — the theory of gender being “socially constructed” — and seeking through this anything-goes emotional liberation to destroy the good social rules.

Emotional decision-making is a biological process; biological processes ought to be contained and mediated by social processes. The urge to murder, or the urge to rape, are biological processes that are kept in check by a strong social process — law and order, the cop with the gun, and the court and criminal justice system.

So the problems brought on by modern-day feminism: women’s unrestrained sexual expression, ceaseless competition, physical aggression, and somatic decision-making — have been set free from their social constraints and are now resulting in a degradation of the very cultures where women are considered most politically liberated.

This is what radical Muslims are reacting to when they speak about the immorality of Western women: they are bearing witness to biological instincts being let free to dominate social and intellectual constraints. They recognize that this process is inherently immoral, since the social pattern of values that kept woman’s natural biological urges in check are what allowed the intellectual level to flourish in the first place.

The entire thing is a process of degradation and backsliding; and feminism, as a movement, needs to snap out of it before the social patterns collapse completely, taking the intellectual patterns with them, and leaving only the biological laws of the jungle, chaotic, confused, and answering to no one.

It is modern-day feminism that has proven true the statement made by Jack Nicholson’s character in the film As Good as It Gets , when asked how he writes such convincing female characters: “I think of a man. Then I take away reason and accountability.”

To follow the rabbit hole deeper, see also My Beef with Feminism and The Princess and the Player.

The contradiction concerns two assertions within feminism that cannot co-exist logically, but are both asserted as fundamental to the movement.

Until these assertions are resolved by mainstream feminism, I, and many others like me, simply cannot take the movement seriously.

Which brings me to the second of what will be a two-part critique; that feminism, as currently conceived, is a political philosophy based on an appeal to emotions, rather than to logic or morality — and that formulation must change before the movement rises to the prominence and regard it enjoyed prior to the Second Wave.

But let’s take it one thing at a time.

The Competing Feminist Assertions

1) Men and women are equal; and therefore ought to be treated as equals with respect to jobs, opportunities, wages and earnings, fashion, sexual expectations, and every other sphere of life. So far, so good: this is a basic statement of desire for “equal treatment” or enlightened egalitarianism. In fact, let’s call it the “egalitarian assertion“. It is often trotted out as feminism’s chief assertion of moral superiority. It allows feminists to start with the principle that the entire feminist movement is all about reducing the oppression of The Patriarchy and making the playing field entirely level for both men and women.

2) Women’s values are different from, and superior to, men’s values. The presumption is that the world would be BETTER OFF if more women were in charge. This is what you are hearing when you hear women attack the “Patriarchy”: a.k.a. the male-dominated world, which is painted as petty, calculating, emotionless, aggressive, power-obsessed, life-denying, and basically responsible for all the evil in the world. The assumption is that the Patriarchy must be pulled down, destroyed, abolished, so that the communitarian, affiliative nature of women can replace it with a beautiful, benign Matriarchy.

And herein lies the first contradiction. If the egalitarian assertion is right, and men and women are equal in intellect and moral standing, why would the Matriarchy be any different than the Patriarchy it seeks to supplant?

Notice that this second pillar of feminism, which we should call the female superiority argument, is a strong affirmation of sexism — which feminism purports to fight against).

Some Examples
The contradictions generated by these two competing ideas are infinite; but let’s take just a few examples, from the realms of business, social conduct, sexual conduct, and politics. Just watch as feminists lay down the female superiority argument in the same breath as the egalitarian assertion:

Business
“Women don’t earn as much as men; that’s wrong, because they can be just as good as a man at any business. In fact businesses wouldn’t pollute or exploit their workers as much if women were in charge, because women are actually MORE caring than men.”

That doesn’t sound like a philosophy of equality to me. It sounds like the flip side of “Patriarchy”.

Society
“Women can be just as good as men at fighting in the military or boxing, so they should be allowed to do those things. To say otherwise is sexist. At the same time, women need to be protected from male violence in the home and on the street.”

First comes the assertion that women can fight just as well as men; so keeping them out of the military is sexist and oppressive. Then comes the assertion that men are MORE violent than women, and actually, women need to be PROTECTED from this form of oppression. So which is it?

In the above example, the same woman will also say, when presented with video evidence of a woman beating up a man on the street, “He shouldn’t press charges; he probably wasn’t even hurt. Men are tougher than women.” So a man hitting a woman is illegal, because men are tougher than women; but women can fight as infantrymen alongside men, because men aren’t tougher than women. Madness!

Sex
“Vibrators and dildos are sexual liberation and expression for women; but pornography is demeaning and a hazard to women, so we should criminalize it.”

So masturbation is OK for women but not OK for men? “Men should just use their imaginations, like we do”. Women should just use their fingers, like WE do. Both vibrators and pornography are masturbation aids; to treat them unequally is sexism.

Politics
“Women and men are equal; there should be an equal number of women holding political office around the world, because women are better at dealing with people, and more caring, anyway. If we had a woman President we would have fewer wars.”

Self-explanatory. Women are just as good as men at holding political office; no, they’re actually BETTER. If the latter is true, why don’t feminists just come out and say they think women should run the world? Of course some do, and completely miss the irony of their shouting and marching for “equality”, not realizing that what they want is not actually called “equality” but “DOMINATION”.

How can it be said that men and women are EQUAL in all respects, and then go on and try to hand men (via “the Patriarchy”) an UNEQUAL share of the responsibility for the evils of the world?

Either men and women are different, and ought to be treated differently by society — or they are NOT different, and ought to be treated exactly the same, and held to the same standards.

Feminism can’t seem to make up its mind.

But it is for damn sure that it is not politically, ideologically, or intellectually honest to cite differences when doing so would advance the cause of feminism, and dismiss them in all other cases.

Equality versus Difference
I want to be clear on the issues here: I believe in equality, and I think feminism is a fine philosophy, as long as it remains about promoting equality.

I believe in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, where it is written, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all [people] are created equal…”

That is to say that we, as a human race, ought to work together in order to form a more perfect global union, each contributing the best of what our individual talents and intellect offer to the shared goal of the greatest good for the greatest number.

Notice I did not say that people were undifferentiated. On the contrary, I happen to believe — because the evidence is right in front of my face, all day, ever day — that people are very different. Everyone is born with different skills, abilities, limitations, handicaps, and strengths: nature and nurture, their genes and their environment, are to individual people as length and height are to a field — the total person or the area of the field are incomprehensible without considering the interactive and often reciprocal effect of the both on the one.

Plenty of people make the mistake of saying that a belief in equality must also mean a belief that people are the SAME. That is absolutely not so. People are different, but they are all equal inasmuch as they are all composed of biological material, immersed in a social context, and possessing an intellectual capability (though the latter is frequently under-utilized).

People are not the same; but they ought to be treated fairly.

Now, despite the rather sophomoric nature, ask yourself the following question:

Q: If the video had been about a woman walking around flipping off hot guys, and one of the hot guys had flipped out and BEAT UP the woman asking the questions, what would have happened to that guy?

A: Assault and battery charges, conviction, and jail time.

So why was it OK for the woman in the video to beat up the guy?

Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot — there is a double standard in feminism that says that, while a guy can’t lay a finger on a girl in anger or risk assault charges, a lawsuit, and an automatic conviction (since the police and court system automatically takes the woman’s word for it), it’s perfectly alright for a GIRL to assault a GUY, and all he can do is curl up into a little ball and take it.

Notice the guy’s large bruise after his assault. Notice also that his friend and a CAMERA trained on the entire incident, creating a VIDEO RECORD that could be taken to the police to press charges.

Is saying “Fuck you” to a girl really enough provocation to get your ass kicked? How many girls say “Fuck you” (or “Fuck off!”) to guys every day? Do you think society would tolerate all the guys responding to those words by beating the shit out of women who said them? I think not.

So why does this one woman get away with it?

Notice also that, after assaulting the offending guy, she turns and starts running towards the cameraman, who has to flee for his own safety. She is in full attack mode and she knows she can assault with impunity since no man in his right mind would try to press charges against a woman, even with video evidence, given the current atmosphere of the U.S. criminal justice system.

If you argue that “men are stronger than women and will therefore hurt them more!” I not only call bullshit on your physiology, but bullshit on the double-standard: feminism want to say that men and women are EQUAL, but they don’t want EQUAL TREATMENT, as I discuss in My Beef with Feminism.

No, what they’re looking for in feminism is more like a blank check to misbehave with impunity and without repercussion. It’s the Spoiled Princesses’ Dream: “I can do whatever I want and nobody can stop me!”

Truly sad.

NEW RULE

Abstinence pledges make you horny. In a setback for the morals/values crowd, a new eight-year study just released reveals that American teenagers who take virginity pledges wind up with just as many STD’s as the other kids. But that’s not all. “Taking the pledge” also makes a teenage girl six times more likely to perform oral sex, and four times more likely to allow anal. Which leads me to an important question: where were these pledges when I was in high school?

So, seriously, when I was a teenager, the only kids having anal intercourse, were the ones who missed. My idea of lubrication was oiling my bike chain. If I had known I could have been getting porn-star sex the same year I took Algebra 2 – simply by joining up with the Christian right – I’d have been so down with Jesus, they would have had to pry me out of the pew.

And, let me tell you, there is a lot worse things than teenagers having sex. Namely, teenagers not having sex. Here is something you’ll never hear: “That suicide bomber blew himself up because he was having too much sex. Sex, sex, sex, nonstop, all that crazy Arab ever had was sex, and look what happened.” But among the puritans here of the 21st century, the less said to kids about sex, the better. Because people who talk about peepees are “potty-mouths.”

And so, armed with limited knowledge and believing that regular, vaginal intercourse to be either immaculate or filthy dirty – these kids did with their pledge what everybody does with contracts. They found loopholes. Two of them, to be exact.

Is there any greater irony than the fact that the Christian right actually got their precious little adolescent daughters to say to their freshly-scrubbed boyfriends, “Please, I want to remain pure for my wedding night, so only in the ass… And then I’ll blow you, I promise.” Well, at least these kids are really thinking outside the box.

I can’t for the life of me find the video clip to go along with this transcript; if anyone else has a link, please email it to me: andrew.ekud at (gmail) dot (com).

What I want to talk about today is the morality that I believe underlies the political and religious motivations given for abstinence-only sex education (AOSE for short), which has in the last 5 years come to increasingly dominate our country’s sex ed curriculum.

The Science
Over the past 5 years, nearly a billion dollars in federal funds have been poured into AOSE, which typically tells teens and youngsters (up to the age of 29) that condoms are dangerous and unreliable, and they’d be better off using “the only method that is 100% effective at preventing disease or pregnancy”.

There are three problems with this.

1) First of all, condoms are not ineffective — they are overwhelmingly effective, not only at preventing unwanted pregnancies, but also at guarding against STI/Ds and the transmission of HIV/AIDS. In fact, the only birth control methods with a higher success rate than condoms are intrauterine device (IUD, 99% effective), the progestin mini-pill (up to 99.9% effective) and other birth control pill formulations (99% effective)¹.

There are two important facts about these success rate figures: first, they are the success rates if the method is used correctly — and second, they assume 3x a week frequency of sexual intercourse. If you have sex more often with these methods, your success rate will drop; have sex less often, your rate will increase. This is basic statistics, but it will be important for #2:

2) The abstinence-only method is NOT 100% effective. It’s true that if kids don’t have sex, they won’t get pregnant. But this is not how abstinence is sold. It is sold as a “100% effective birth control / disease prevention method.” In other words, every time you have sex, you should employ the abstinence METHOD to avoid pregnancy or disease. But this is clearly crazy talk: it is, in fact, an example of “Heads I Win, Tails Don’t Count” thinking².

Couples who intend to use abstinence only as their birth control / disease prevention method, and do refrain from having sex, have obviously used the abstinence method with 100% effectiveness.

Couples who intend to use abstinence only as their birth control / disease prevention method but end up having sex have “failed” to use the method — and therefore their “failure” cannot count against AO’s claimed 100% success rate.

This is intellectually dishonest, and that dishonesty is compounded by a simple fact about abstinence that every adult naturally knows, but those teaching AOSE deliberately avoid, and that is –

3) Kids are going to have sex. The average age of first sexual contact in the U.S. is barely 17³. Just telling kids not to have sex is a piss-poor way of discouraging them; they are going to have sex anyway. Trying to scare kids into not having sex by telling them that “condoms are unreliable” just means they’ll have unprotected sex, or have anal and oral sex, and be at increased risk of pregnancy and disease. The data show that even kids who go the hardcore route and get “Promise Rings” end up having sex before marriage at a rate of eighty-eight percent⁴.

The Religion
Problem #3 is partially linked to another big problem with AOSE: religion.

Some, though not all, AOSE efforts are linked to faith-based program like Silver Ring Thing, Free Teens, True Love Waits, some of which have been given generous funding by the U.S. Federal government, despite the fact that this violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment (separation of church and state).

(In fact, Silver Ring Thing lost a $75,000 grant from the Department of Health and Human Services after the ACLU successfully sued the DHHS for violation of the Establishment Clause (SRT no longer receives money from the Federal government).)

Bringing religion into the equation conflates religious feeling and public health: kids are encouraged to pledge to abstinence because of religious reasons, not out of enlightened self-interest. This makes it easy for them to renege on the pledge, or even deny ever having made it⁵; if they stray from the religious values originally linked to abstinence, they will stray from abstinence itself.

The Morality of AOSE
The majority of “promise” or “purity” movements are started by some religious organization — mostly evangelical Christian churches. A good example is Silver Ring Thing, which was started by Denny Pattyn, a youth minister,

…as a way to combat what he saw as rising rates of STDs and pregnancies amongst teenagers, as well as a way to protect teens from what founders saw as American culture’s unhealthy obsession with sex, which, according to Pattyn, was a byproduct of the “promiscuity [of] the sexual revolution of the ‘60s”.

Now we’re getting somewhere. It’s not that Pattyn and Co truly believe condoms don’t work: it’s that Pattyn and Co have a problem with the 60′s. They’re disgusted by the “free love” movement. They’re reacting against the science and intellectualism that has set biological sex free from its inherent risk, danger, and consequences.

They’re furious at the idea that the intellect can produce free love in a more concrete way than their old social and religious values.

Evangelical Christianity, and the religious right-wing, are not forming these movements for religious reasons; they are forming them for social reasons.

Evangelical Christianity, and the majority of the Religious Right, come from very old Conservative roots. Victorian roots, in fact — the people who built New York City, the same people who got obscenely wealthy in the wake of the American Civil War, the first American robber barons.

The important thing to understand about Victorianism and Victorian morality is that it is social. It is based on a social caste system, in an imitation of old-world European society; it is based on social graces, and it is judged by social perceptions (that is, “What would the neighbors think?”)

That is why so many Evangelical Christians — and Victorians, in retrospect — appear to be so hypocritical. All they care about is surface, appearance, social grace, social cues, status — surface, surface, surface. A Promise Ring is a symbol for society — not a fuckin’ NuvaRing. It doesn’t release hormones, it doesn’t prevent pregnancy, it doesn’t irritate the fallopian tubes into forming scar tissue, it doesn’t do anything except signal to other teenagers and your parents that you “promise to wait”.

The fact that 88% of teens break their promises doesn’t matter. The fact that these kids now refuse to use condoms, and as a result get STDs and pregnant at greater rates, doesn’t matter. What matters is to get these kids up in front of everyone and have them make a public pledge to be pure. What matters is making our society look better.

The Promise Ring is a Victorian idea based on Victorian morals that has been snuck into the modern world dressed up as political and religious value. The only way it could be a more regressive idea is if it were an actual chastity belt.

So promise rings, and AOSE, are really an attempt at social reform. They’re only religious to the extent that Christianity is associated in some vague, threatening way (“God wants you to be a virgin”) and only political to the extent that the vaguely threatening evangelical Christian church is associated with the Religious Right.

Oh, yeah — and the reason America has an “unhealthy obsession with sex?” Because the historical foundation of our country’s morals are Victorian and Puritan — and those folks were hella repressed.

References
1. http://www.4woman.gov/faq/birthcont.htm
2. http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/hanson_24_2.htm
3. http://www.newstrategist.com/productdetails/Sex.Samplepgs.pdf
4. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/05/20/60minutes/main696975_page2.shtml
5. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/05/08/MNGPHIN8IF1.DTL

I’ll try to sum up a funny story that happened a few years ago:

I got a vasectomy.

I met a girl soon afterwards. She was nice and attractive but with a selfish streak that raised a big red flag. She was 32 at the time and I could practically HEAR her biological clock ticking. Regardless, she was a good lay, easy on the eyes, and reasonably good company.

I did NOT tell her about my vasectomy and I always used a condom with her to protect against STDs. She assumed, obviously, that the condom was only used for birth control. Silly girl.

We date for a few months. I never made any move towards commitment but she brought it up ocassionally. For me, this was a casual but pleasant relationship. For her – as I was to find out – it was part of life-changing series of events that she was planning very carefully.

Four months into dating, I get the “I’m pregnant” talk. She’s going on and on about how the condom must have broke and now we really need to think about getting married “for the baby”. She’s positively giddy. She has a baby in her and she thinks she’s gonna have a good meal ticket (me) to go along with her new 7lb annuity.

At this point, I’m just as giddy. I get to pull the reverse “oops” on her. I figured that she slept with some bad boy and got knocked up. Good thing I was using condoms! Better still that I have a serious mistrust of women who can’t think beyond their own uteri.

So I wait a couple of days to “think about all this.” I meet her again. I say I don’t want kids and that she should have an abortion. I know where this is going and sure enough it goes there. She goes completely batsh*t insane on me. There were the usual insults about my manhood. There were threats of legal action. It was all very ugly and I was loving every minute of it.

Well, I let her stew for a few days. She leaves me nasty messages on my phone. She sends awful emails. I’m laughing hysterically.

It was time to drop the hammer. While she was stewing I was busy. First I get a notarized copy from the urologist who performed the vasectomy. Next I get a notarized copy of the TWO test results indicating a “negative test result for sperm” to show I’m sterile and shooting blanks. Finally, I get a letter from a shark attorney stating he has seen the other documents and is prepared to litigate against this woman if she continues to communicate with me in such an unpleasant manner. Also, the letter states that we will insist on DNA testing to show that the baby is not mine. I’m ready.

I meet with this woman at her place. I bring flowers and a small bit of jewelry to show I am willing to reconcile and assume my responsibilities as a new father. I also have stuck in my pocket the documents I have prepared.

She’s all giddy again. Her plan is going perfectly – or so she thinks. We talk about our future. We have some pretty good sex. Then, as I am about to walk out the door, I ask her the $64,000 question. “Are you sure that this baby is mine?”

Well, she goes batsh*t insane again. Hell, she ought to. Her plan could completely unravel if there is ANY question about my paternity. Oh, she’s really screaming now. How dare I question her morals. Do I think she’s a slut. I’m just trying to weasel out of my responsibilities… blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda.

I’m not really mad. I’m kind of embarrassed for her. But since she won’t shut up and the neighbors can hear all of this, I ask her to step back inside and sit down. She sits on the sofa and calms down a bit. She is glaring at me with all the moral self-righteousness that only a woman can muster up. She thinks she has me trapped. She is 100% convinced her plan has worked. Oh, the tangled web of lies and deceit she has wrought around herself and I am about to hack through them with a few pieces of paper.

I reach into my pocket slowly. I extract the three pieces of paper and unfold them slowly and deliberately.

I tell her simply, “You’re screwed”.

Her look doesn’t change. There is no way she can fathom what I have prepared.

I continue. “I am sterile”

Her look changes just a bit. Something is beginning to sink in. Naturally, she reverts to women’s logic. “You’re full of sh*t. You’re trapped and you know it.”

I hold up the letter and the test results. “Three months before we met, I had a vasectomy. Here is a notarized letter from him stating what I had done. Here are two test results showing that I tested negative for the presence of sperm. Blanks. I am shooting blanks. That baby inside you is simply not mine.”

This woman is not to be swayed by logic and clear documentation. “Bullsh*t, those are fakes.”

I was ready for that. “No, they are real. This last piece of paper is from my attorney. It’s a simple letter to you that states if you pursue any kind of legal action against me for child support that I will insist on a DNA test to prove paternity, that is, to prove that your baby is not mine.”

I give the woman all the documents. She reads them slowly, deliberately. With each passing second she can feel in her soul that she has made a very bad mistake. With denial swept away, she started to cry. It’s a small cry at first. Then it becomes deeper and more painful. By the time she gets to the letter from the lawyer she is sobbing.

I had no sympathy for her. I turned and walked out the door. Even after I closed the door I could still hear her sobbing.

Epilogue -

I never heard directly from this woman again. I did hear through my friends that she did indeed have the baby. I also heard that the real father was some guy in a band she had met. I assumed that after 30, women stopped going after musicians, bikers, criminals, and thugs. Silly me for thinking the best of American women.

The Moral of the Story -

Get a vasectomy but keep it a secret.

Truly an eye-opening story, for those women and men resistant to the idea that some women DO plot, scheme and manipulate in a reprehensible fashion.

I agree with the author — a vasectomy is a great idea, in general.

For those guys who actually do want the opportunity to have children, though, I would recommend either

A) going expat and finding a foreign woman, or
B) work with a fertility clinic to put some sperm away for the future — that way, you can be ABSOLUTELY certain who gets it.

A woman was out walking through a wood one day when she found a frog in a trap.

The frog said to her, “If you release me from this trap, I will grant you three wishes.”

The woman freed the frog, and the frog said, “Thank you, but I failed to mention that there was a condition to your wishes. Whatever you wish for, your husband will get times ten.”

The woman said, “That’s okay.” and for her first wish, she wanted to be the most beautiful woman in the world. The frog warned her, “You do realize that this wish will also make your husband the most handsome man in the world, an Adonis whom women will flock to.”

The woman replied, “That’s okay, because I will be the most beautiful woman and he will have eyes only for me.” So, KAZAM! She’s the most beautiful woman in the world. For her second wish, she wanted to be the richest woman in the world. The frog said, “That will make your husband the richest man in the world and he will be ten times richer than you.” The woman said, “That’s okay, because what’s mine is his and what’s his is mine.” So, KAZAM! She’s the richest woman in the world.

The frog then inquired about her third wish, and she answered, “I’d like a mild heart attack.”

Moral of the story Women are clever. Don’t mess with them.

Attention female readers: This is the end of the story for you. Stop here and continue feeling good.

Attention male readers: Please scroll down.

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The man had a heart attack ten times milder than his wife.

Moral of the story: Women are really dumb when they think they’re really smart. Let them continue to think that way and just enjoy the show.

PS. If you’re a woman and are still reading this, it only goes to show that women never listen.

Women also typically have a horribly disfigured self-perception; a sort of fun-house mirror that makes her think things about herself that simply ARE NOT TRUE!

So below, I present a handy decoding key for reading through women’s online personals postings. Use this key, and you will avoid many crazy, ugly, psychologically disturbed, or otherwise undesirable women.

==
If a woman says in a personal that she’s a “Big, Beautiful Woman” (BBW), that mean’s she fat, and not beautiful.
If she says “more to love”, that means she’s fat.
If she says “curvaceous”, that also means she’s fat.
If she says “voluptuous”, she’s fat.
If she says “curvy”, she’s fat.
If she says “I’m not a Barbie doll”, she’s REALLY fat.
If she says “I am in shape”, that shape is ROUND.
If she says “full-figured” she’s fat.
If she says, “I am a cyclist”, she’s probably a closeted lesbian.
If she says, “I like the outdoors,” what she means is, she wants a guy like the Marlboro Man.
If she says, “I am not a supermodel,” she’s fat.
If she says, “Can’t judge a book by it’s cover,” yup…she’s fat.

If she says “Discretion prevents me from posting a photo”, she’s married. Or fat.
If she says “I don’t want to post a pic b/c my girlfriends might find this and laugh at me!” she’s either ugly, or married. Or fat.

If she says, “I’m a single mom”, she’s a psycho.
If she says “I’m a single mom looking to date a single dad,” she’s a psycho looking for a paycheck.
If she says “I love kids”, she either already has them or wants yours.

If she says, “Friends first / if something develops, great” she is a control freak. Notice the irrationality inherent in posting a ROMANTIC PERSONAL AD saying “I WANT A FRIEND.”

If she says, “I’m a free spirit,”, she’s an irresponsible hippy.
If she says “I know what I want and am not afraid to go after it,” she’s a controlling psycho bitch.

If she says, “No drama please,” she is a drama-queen.
If she says “Talk dirty to me online,” she is a gay man or tranny looking to get off.
If she says “Send me an erotic story and maybe I’ll reward you with a partial picture of some of my cleavage or my stocking” or some shit, she is trying to use you and will NOT under ANY circumstances meet or hook up with you, and is also probably a gay man.

If she says “I have a profile on this adult website” she is a marketing spambot.
If she says “Come check out my naughty pictures but you have to pay to get a verified ID to log in to prevent my little brother from seeing me naked teehe!” she is a marketing spambot.
If she says “Go to this URL to get laid” she is a marketing spambot.
If she says “Tired of jerking off? You too can be a pla-” she is a marketing spambot.

If she says, “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she can, and she’s a psycho bitch.
If she says “I’m too busy to go to bars and clubs” she’s not attractive enough or socially retarded.
If she says “Looking for a black man only,” she, well….what more can I say.
If she says “No head games” Or “I do not like game players” or “No game-playing” or any permutation thereof, she MOST DEFINITELY WANTS TO BE FUCKED WITH.

If she gives any kind of age range, she doesn’t mean it.
If she clearly can’t spell or use pronunciation, she is more likely actually a woman…but probably has a drug habit.

If she says “Buy me dinner”, well…..she’s probably hungry, but not for cock.
If she says “Older woman seeking a young virgin,” she is a psycho bitch….only OLDER. RUN.
==

There you have it. A beginner’s guide to decoding female personals.

Generally, I try to advise guys to stay OFF online personals as much as possible; I know it’s tempting to try to find that “diamond in the rough”, and more than that, it’s such a logical step. As men, we know we can find just about everything else on the internet — so why not True Love (or at least a one-night stand)?

As I hope I’ve illustrated above, it just doesn’t work that way. Use the Internet for whatever you please but please, please, stay off the online personals.

And yes, that includes MySpace.

I want to revisit the topic just briefly, only long enough to describe a method of hair removal that I believe trumps all the others in terms of cleanliness, low cost, effectiveness, ease of use, and lack of pain.

I once had a girlfriend from Saudi Arabia, and she (like most Muslim women) used a very unique method of hair maintenance that I had never come across before: sugar and water.

What this woman (and apparently most Muslim women) did is mix sugar and water into a sort of slurry or toffee-consistency. Now, Arabian society isn’t much into measuring, but this girl always used what looked like maybe 1.5 – 2 cups of sugar to about a half-cup of water. In other words, about 2-3x as much sugar as water.

Then she’d mix it together, adding the juice of two lemons and a tablespoon of sesame oil, and cook it just until the sugar began browning.

Immediately once the concoction got to the color of toffee, before the sugar could continue cooking, she’d pour the entire thing out onto the counter – but only on marble or tile, prepared with olive oil to prevent sticking. If she didn’t have a marble or tile counter she’d use a cooking sheet. She’d then knead it with a spoon to prevent it from hardening.

If she didn’t use it right away, she would store it right away as soon as it cooled enough, and re-heat it later (in hot water or the microwave). When she did use it, it was an amount about the size of a teaspoon, used in the same manner as waxing, to remove small areas of hair at a time (applying it to too large an area = pain).

This is a great technique – not only does it remove hair, but also dead skin, and the lemon juice and sesame oil work together to add a natural fragrance and help keep the skin extremely soft. Like most hair maintenance methods, the more often you do it, the less painful it is, and this woman had done it so often and regularly over her adult life that even if she didn’t do it for a while, her actual hair growth was very sparse. She used it on her arms, legs, underarms and genital hair, and did everything at once, and she was soft *all over*.

I also liked it because it caused no stubble, no bumps, and (for her) no redness or irritation.

I think of all the other Western women I’ve been with who go to such great lengths to shave in a very long, drawn-out process with three types of moisturizer, a triple-bladed brand-new Venus with moisturizing pad, a 20-minute hot tub soak beforehand, zinc, Aveeno shaving cream, witch hazel extract, tea tree oil — a woman could go broke buying all the accessories necessary for a good, close shave — but the Arabian Method I just detailed above does it all for the price of sugar, water, olive oil and sesame oil, and it gives better results.

So point your girlfriend / wife / fuck buddy to this post. It will save her money, effort, AND pain, and she should thank you for that.

The Girlfriend Rules

1. I will call you “honey”, “baby”, “dear”, “Sweetie” “sugar” “love” and “darling” within the first 5 minutes of our relationship. This doesn’t mean anything, because
2. I will call 90% of my female (and some of my male) friends “honey”, “baby”, “dear”, “Sweetie” “sugar” “love” and “darling”, too. Don’t get jealous when I do, it means the same thing as when I say it to you: practically nothing.
3. My mind has just two social settings: FUN and GIRLFRIEND. In the “FUN” mode I am hanging out with my buddies. The “GIRLFRIEND” mode is the one reserved for you, and it is understandably your favorite. If you come hang out with me and my buddies on a social outing, however, my mind will be stuck in the FUN mode, and I will treat you as one of my buddies, nothing more. If this makes you jealous or upset, don’t come.
4. If you are *not* the hottest girl in your peer group, I *will* hit on your hotter girlfriends. Count on it; don’t worry about it.
5. If your hot friends are also smarter than you, you should also worry about it.
6. If you leave your clothes / jewelry / lingerie / shoes at my place for over 90 days, I will assume said articles are of no value to you, and do with them whatever I wish, which may include disposal, giving them away, displaying them as trophies, or using them in an obscure arts and crafts project. Do not assume I did any of these things to hurt you – I have the same rule when my guy friends’ leave their shit at my house for 90+ days.
7. If you have a hot sister/mom/aunt/niece, don’t expect me to refrain from hitting on her just because she’s family. At the very least, I will look at her “that way”.
8. If I’m not in the mood, I’m not in the mood. I’m not a girl; it doesn’t mean I want you to seduce me.
9. But if you want to seduce me, that’s okay too, you can try. Unless you’re bad at it, then I’ll tell you to stop.
10. Sex is not as good for me as it is for you; nor is it as important to me as it is to you. I will do my best for you, and I will do a pretty damn good job, but sometimes I just want to cuddle.
11. Sometimes I just don’t want to cuddle. I have a high metabolism: you radiate body heat after sex; I don’t like to sleep in pools of my own sweat (or yours). Deal with it.
12. Do not under any circumstances try to make me jealous and therefore pay more attention to you by flirting with another guy (especially one of my male friends). I don’t chase, and because I don’t, your efforts will totally backfire and actually make me less attracted to you in the long run.
13. Take good care of me. If I am busy, make me some food. If I get sick, go shopping for me and bring me back delicious healthy things to eat and drink. If I seem down, give me a shoulder massage. Whatever you do will come back to you 10 fold.
14. Although I seem perfectly self-assured and confident (or egocentric and full of myself) I can assure you I have my doubts and moments of self-criticism like everyone else. Don’t be afraid to compliment me every once in a while.
15. Please, please, please don’t just compliment me on how I look. There is more to me than meets the eye.
16. If I see you doing unhealthy things, I will call you on it. Don’t get defensive, because I don’t actually expect you to change. I know people better than that.