Tag: gender relations

The Desperate Search for Meaning

The Portly Politico22 Comments

Despite this post’s lofty title, the focus is somewhat narrow.  Many Christians and other people of faith believe there is an innate desire in all humans to believe in something higher than themselves—God.  I’ve heard this desire inelegantly (but accurately) described as a “God-hole,” a hole that cannot be filled with anything other than the Divine.

The West today is awash in cynicism and nihilism, and an aggressive form of anti-religious sentiment.  Just witness the amusing, angry lengths to which strident Internet atheists will go to denounce religious (almost always specifically Christian) beliefs.  It’s pedantic to write, but it bears repeating:  atheists ironically fill their “God-hole” with the religion of hating and/or denying God’s Existence.

The net effect of this existential nihilism is manifest in abundant ways:  high suicide rates, debased morality and behavior, the destruction of the family, and spiritual emptiness and confusion.  We overthrew God—or at least, we tried to remove Him from our lives—but the void, the “God-hole,” within us remains.

Nature abhors a vacuum, so something is going to fill that hole.  It was with interest, then, that I read this piece from The Daily Dot that I stumbled upon while mindlessly scrolling through Facebook one day.  The piece is about a “healer” and lifestyle blogger named Audrey Kitching, who by all accounts is a duplicitous fraud:  she resells cheap Chinese jewelry at a huge markup, billing them as “energy crystals” and the like, and her gullible followers/victims eagerly lap it up.

What caught my attention, though, was not that a woman was trading on her looks and Instagram filters to build an online business, but rather the women who sacrificed their lives and good sense to someone who is, essentially, a bubblegum-haired freak with a penchant for codependent, psychologically abusive relationships.  Kitching convinced one of her employees to sever all ties with her family for a full year, and essentially used the poor, misguided woman as slave labor.

Men seem to succumb to the supposed “logic” of atheism, priding themselves on their assumed intellectual superiority for refusing to believe in anything beyond themselves.  Women, on the other hand, love quasi-spiritual garbage like Kitching’s baubles (it’s humorous reading how allegedly “legitimate” healers are opposed to Kitching for diminishing their corner on the medium/spiritualist market—I guess she’s not in their Scammers Guild).

Kitchings and her ilk—palm readers, dime-store oracles, astrologers, “good witches,” etc.—offer spirituality on the cheap:  all the “feel-good” stuff about loving other people and being part of the Universe, without any of the obligations—forming a family, living chastely and soberly, etc.  In the absence of strong men and strong institutions—namely the Church—and in an age of #MeToo feminism and “you go grrrrrl”-ism, women are easy prey for bubbly charlatans (if you’ve followed Hulu’s Into the Dark horror anthology, the fourth installment, “New Year, New You,” beautifully satirizes this kind of Instagram-friendly quasi-spirituality—and its horrifying consequences).

Don’t get me wrong:  I don’t discount this stuff out of hand.  Indeed, I believe we’re always struggling against principalities and demonic forces, which is precisely why we should take this seriously.  Witchcraft and its associated branches are a real spiritual threat, and we’re losing a generation of women (and soy-boyish men) to a new wave of New Age spirituality and feel-good bullcrap.  It’s most insidious in the Church (by which I mean broadly all of Christianity, although I think High Protestant churches are particularly susceptible to this kind of infiltration), where its pernicious influence is far more subtle.

But the rise of witchcraft and other forms of knock-off spiritualism represent physical and metaphysical dangers.  Metaphysically, we shouldn’t be messing around with the spiritual world outside of our relationship with Christ.  Just look at what happened to King Saul when he consulted with the witch at Endor.

Physically, men and women are debasing themselves in the name of a “if it feels good, do it” mentality in a desperate attempt to fill their empty “God-holes.”  Women are literally prostituting themselves via Instagram—a terrifying intersection of online media attention-whoring and real-life whoring.  That kind of cheapness only comes in a culture that discourages traditional values and encourages riotousness and spiritual rebellion.

I always warn my students—I’m sure they occasionally roll their eyes—not to mess around with the spiritual world.  Angels are real—but so are demons.  And Satan always comes clothed in light—and shiny Snapchat filters.

TBT: Family Matters Follow-Up Part I: Divorce and Marriage; Sex Education

The Portly Politico3 Comments

Happy Valentine’s Day!  To celebrate the Day of Love, here’s a #TBT about the collapse of the American family and divorce.  This piece was a follow-up to one of my most popular posts on the old site, “Family Matters.”  I received a ton of feedback on that post (in those days, I posted everything to my personal Facebook page, but that was before it became completely unpleasant to be a conservative online—Trump was elected that November and it became much more dangerous to espouse conservative ideas on Facebook), including lots of questions about divorce and such.

Most of those comments fell into the anecdotal, “well, ACTUALLY” range—“what you’re saying is true, but here’s my one exception that I think undermines the general trend.”  Yes, yes—of course there are rare instances in which divorce is preferable to sticking it out, like violent abuse.  That said, we should generally support preserving marriage and discouraging divorce.

So, enjoy your Valentine’s Day with this lengthy rumination on divorce, marriage, and sex education:

Last Friday I wrote a post entitled “Family Matters” about the decline of the traditional family in the United States and the West, which I called “our true national and civilizational crisis.”  To my surprise, the post was very well-received and popular.  To date, it is the second-most read blog post on the site, and I look for it to eclipse the most-read entry, “American Values, American Nationalism.”  It certainly shattered single-day records for The Portly Politico.

It also garnered quite a bit of discussion on my Facebook page, where I always share links to these posts.  There was a great deal of excellent discussion, including questions for clarification on some points.  People also shared some of their personal experiences with matters of family and what sorts of arrangements work and in what circumstances.

As such, I thought I’d dedicate today and Wednesday’s posts to following up on some of the comments, questions, and observations I received.  I do so to facilitate further discussion and to help clear up any confusion about some of my contentions.

(Note:  As I wrote this post, I decided to split it into [at least] two parts.  Wednesday’s portion will deal with questions about same-sex couples and the impact of the Great Society upon black families.)

– Divorce:  I did not mention divorce at all in Friday’s post, but many of the comments I received dealt with this painful scenario.  Certainly, no picture of the decline of the traditional family is complete without a discussion of dissolved unions.

With roughly 50% of marriages ending in divorce, the model of the stable, two-parent family is further threatened, although increasingly families are forming outside of formal marriage.  Neither of these scenarios is ideal.  The rate of divorce naturally increased in the twentieth century in part because divorces became easier to obtain, especially with the rise and success of the women’s suffrage and rights movements.

The relative legal ease of acquiring a divorce, however, does not tell the full story.  Divorce also increased because of increasingly relaxed attitudes about marriage and family formation.  As the single working mother morphed from an object of sympathy into a perverse ideal–and as social signals and laws increasingly downplayed the importance of fathers and privileged mothers–both men and women came to see marriage as less of an institution and more of a formality.

“[Parents]… should make a good-faith effort to raise their children in a stable home, and to spare them the misery, confusion, and familial turmoil of divorce.”

As several commenters noted, sometimes divorce is, sadly, the better option, such as when a spouse is abusive.  I suspect many such unfortunate unions take place precisely because we’ve come to take marriage (and love) so lightly.  The erosion of a broad, common set of cultural and religious values could also play a role, as more and more “oxen” are unevenly “yoked,” creating deep tensions within relationships.

Of course, marriage is hugely complicated, and couples part way for many reasons (usually money).  However, it does seem that, absent abuse, infidelity, or criminality, couples with children should make a good-faith effort to raise their children in a stable home, and to spare them the misery, confusion, and familial turmoil of divorce.

Marriage, after all, is–or, at least, should be–a serious obligation entered into by two sober-minded adults with shared values and principles.  Of course, actual human relationships tend to be messy even in the most ideal of circumstances, but a proper focus on the point of marriage–two people coming together as one in the presence of God–would go a long way to help realign and heal struggling marriages.

 “Marriage, after all, is… a serious obligation entered into by two sober-minded adults with shared values and principles.”

– Sex Education:  One friend argued that we need more sex education in schools, as well as free birth control for young people to prevent unwanted pregnancies.  While I believe that abstinence is the best method of birth control to emphasize, I’m enough of a realist to know that teenagers find particular joy in doing what they’re told not to do.

The problem I see is two-fold:  first, we already provide sex education in most public high schools throughout the United States; second, the call for more sex education and access to contraceptives merely demonstrate the crisis of the family I’ve noted.

The proper realm for sex education is the home.  The popular media has perpetuated the myth that parents don’t talk to their children about the pitfalls of premarital sex because they’re uncomfortable or prudish, so the schools have to do it to prevent millions of unplanned pregnancies.

The problem, rather, is that so many children are growing up in homes without proper parental guidance, they’re missing out on important lessons about sex, marriage, and family.  Absent fathers aren’t there to teach their children that it’s wrong to get a woman pregnant and then to leave her.  Sex outside of the framework or expectation of marriage becomes devoid of any larger sense of responsibility.

 “[S]o many children are growing up in homes without proper parental guidance, they’re missing out on important lessons about sex, marriage, and family.”

Therefore, teachers have had to take on yet another responsibility that should rest primarily, if not solely, with parents.  Add to this lack of parental involvement the glorification of sex in the media and the general “if-it-feels-good-do-it” philosophy of postmodern America, and you have a recipe for moral disaster.

It’s unfortunate that schools have had to adopt this responsibility, at it suggests a massive decline in the understanding of what parents are supposed to do for their children.

To the point about free birth control in schools, I’ve never really understood this argument.  I understand that the logic goes, “it’s worth taxpayers’ money because it prevents the births of children who would become wards of the state; therefore, it’s ultimately more cost-effective.”  But many forms of birth control are incredibly cheap and readily available.  There’s no compelling argument for why the government should force taxpayers to pay for a box of condoms for high school students.

As far as the birth control pill for girls, it’s actually Republicans who want to make it available over-the-counter, which would further drive down the cost and allow young women experiencing shame or uncertainty to obtain it more easily.

 “[P]roviding birth control pills to minors through public schools introduces a host of sticky constitutional and legal concerns….”

Most importantly, providing birth control pills to minors through public schools introduces a host of sticky constitutional and legal concerns, the biggest being, “what if a family’s faith forbids the use of contraceptives”?  A devout, traditional Catholic, for example, would no-doubt object to being forced to pay for birth control for his daughter and the daughters of strangers.  He would likewise experience a crisis being required to purchase condoms for his or others sons.

Just because most people–including, apparently, most Catholics–are morally comfortable using traditional birth control and contraceptive methods doesn’t mean that we should make those who disagree pay for it.  The need to fund contraceptives becomes even less pressing when the low cost is considered.  Why cause an unnecessary, stressful crisis of faith for millions just to save a kid a quarter on a gas station rubber?

At this point, I would agree with my friend that, unfortunately, schools do have to take some role in sex education, especially given the increased likelihood children won’t receive it at home, since the traditional family unit is on the decline.  If private non-profit organizations want to provide additional information or free contraceptives, no worries–there’s no infringement upon religious liberty via official coercion.  Additionally, schools should stress the moral and financial obligations of parents to their children, especially in those communities where good role models are lacking.

Unfortunately, another government program to hand out free condoms is not a lasting solution to a problem that is one of the soul, not of the pocketbook.  Let civil society address these problems (perhaps with a revival of the good, old-fashioned shotgun wedding).

***
These are certainly thorny problems, and I fully recognize that as a single, never-married man I don’t possess the same perspective as, say, a married couple of twenty years or a divorcee.  Nevertheless, I reject the notion that a lack of personal experience disqualifies one from the discussion (even while acknowledging that personal experience often provides a great deal of clarity).  Besides, I’ve witnessed first-hand the power of strong marriages and stable families.  Indeed, I’m the beneficiary of one such union.

Finally, I appreciate lively (and civil) feedback and discussion, and I look forward to expanding further on this topic on Wednesday.

Reblogs: Of Grills and Men

The Portly Politico4 Comments

Traditional Christian blogger Dalrock wrote two posts Monday about grilling, specifically grilling in the context of traditional masculinity and fatherhood.  The occasion for these posts is the infamous Gillette razor ad, which basically scolds men for not being noodle-wristed soy boys and pliant betas.

I really thought that after 2016, when a swaggering alpha male with a supermodel wife won the presidency, we’d see fewer of these hectoring, pedantic social justice ads.  Sadly, feminized, postmodern Corporate America still allows radical feminists to scare off their customers.

If you’ve seen the ad, you’ll recall there’s a scene with a row of dads grilling in an endless backyard, intoning “boys will boys” while two kids wail on each other (as if that’s an accurate depiction of fatherhood).  Dalrock’s first post Monday, “The symbolism of the line of men grilling in the Gilette ad,” quotes from a piece from Post Millenial, in which the author points out the significance of that scene (Dalrock’s quotation of Barbara Kay’s “‘Toxic Masculinity’ in Advertising:  Keeping Women Scared and Men Shamed“):

For what does a neatly-dressed man standing behind a barbecue signify? Think of every Father’s Day ad you have ever seen. How many of them feature barbecue tools? Maybe 50%? Why? Because when men barbecue, they are usually in a back yard. If men have a back yard, it means they live in a house. If they have a house, they are generally married with children. When men barbecue, they are usually feeding their families and friends and having fun doing it. In other words, barbecue men are deeply invested in family life.

They are, in short, fathers. And what is the easiest way to produce boys who do not understand or respect the boundaries between positive and negative masculinity? Take away their fathers.

…

The barbecue men are the reason most boys with loving fathers grow up to be strong, productive men: men who will never be a threat to anyone—except to bad guys who never learned the boundaries for—or how to positively channel—aggression, because so many of them had no fathers to teach them.

The ad is not just an attack on men, per se, but on married fathers, a key demographic in the war against unruly hooligans.  Let’s be clear here:  the problem isn’t “toxic masculinity”; it’s a lack of masculinity.  Boys without fathers are the major problem.

Consider the male child of a single mother:  outside of an uncle or grandfather, his formative years will be devoid of male influence.  Nearly all of his teachers will be female until at least middle school.  His absent father will be a lingering shadow in his life, unconsciously imprinting him with the idea that men are unreliable and that he has no obligation to his hypothetical future offspring.  Such a child has a higher propensity for loafer-lightening flamboyance (probably).  There are a host of negative consequences of fatherlessness.

Dalrock’s second piece looks at a 2015 Slate “think-piece” about a man who hates himself for loving to grill.  It is painful to read the quotations from the essay.  It affirms a central tenant of postmodern political philosophy, especially radical feminism:  you’re not allowed to enjoy anything.

Dalrock elaborates in that piece that the point is to feminize grilling; that is, to bring women into a traditionally male space, and to make men feel bad if they want to keep it a male space.  This topic is a major theme of Dalrock’s writing:  the forced infiltration of men’s private spaces, such as social clubs, with women, depriving men of any kind of separate world they can enjoy on their own terms.

Check out the pieces linked (caution:  you will cringe incredibly hard reading that Slate piece, but it is from Slate, after all) and leave your comments below.

Reblog: The Normalization Of Ugliness Inevitably Becomes The Denigration Of Beauty

The Portly Politico3 Comments

A piece demonstrating the virtue-signalling of our techno-elites, c/o Chateau Heartiste:  https://heartiste.wordpress.com/2019/01/02/the-normalization-of-ugliness-inevitably-becomes-the-denigration-of-beauty/

In short, Facebook rejected an ad because it either idealized a healthy body type, and/or portrayed flabby abs and belly fat in a negative light.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, to be sure, but there are certainly qualities broadly accepted and recognized as beautiful—so much so that we could reasonably assume these qualities to be universal. The “body positivity” movement, like most such Leftist sacred cows, has a sympathetic appeal at its heart, but is otherwise a potentially lethal lie.

The appeal is simple, and good: we shouldn’t be needlessly mean to people based on their appearance. The lie, however, takes that appeal to good-natured sympathy and twists it into a forced acceptance—indeed, a celebration—of habits and lifestyles that are inherently unhealthy (and, dare I write it, ugly).

As a Formerly Fat American (FFA), I’m not unsympathetic to the difficulty of losing and keeping off weight. I understand that, for some Americans, glandular issues, or weight-gain stemming from other conditions, make losing weight harder than normal.
But these are the exceptions, not the rule. Healthy habits are difficult to maintain, and require self-discipline—a quality once considered virtuous. Now, rather than urge people to stop overeating or to go for a walk, we applaud them for their poor health, or try to make excuses.  I can also safely assert that I was fat for so many years because I lacked the discipline and willpower not to be—it was my own fault!

Beyond physical beauty, I fear this “normalization of ugliness” is prevalent in the arts, notably the visual arts, but also in music, dance, poetry, etc. Any sense of objective standards, of an understanding of and appreciating the great masters that came before, is abandoned for politically-correct drivel. “Art,” in the truest sense of that word, should not be willfully, knowingly ugly. We may produce bad art in the pursuit of learning our crafts, but we shouldn’t set out to create more ugliness (and, by extension, chaos) in the world.

These are some off-the-cuff reflections. Again, my goal is not to get some clicks at the expense of chubby Americans. Rather, we should be willing to recognize that obesity, like many social maladies, should be treated seriously, and should be gently but firmly discouraged, rather than celebrated as a “lifestyle choice.”

Babes for Trump

The Portly Politico5 Comments

We’ve all heard how President Trump struggles to gain support among women, and the clucking classes of SJW harpies certainly exert an out-sized influence on our politics. Feel-good, soft-Left Oprah-ites in tony suburbs represent a larger threat to Trumpism and Making America Great Again than even the boundless seas of lawless, Third World immigrants, at least in the short term.

That said, there is encouraging news: President Trump enjoys a 93% approval rating among Republican women, the Wall Street Journal reports. That bodes well for the President going forward. It also suggests that, contra the radical feminists, women are not motivated politically just by their sex, but that their views, like men’s, are shaped by a plethora of factors.

Readers will recall then-Governor Mitt Romney’s support from married women in the 2012 election. In essence, married women were more likely to support Romney, while unmarried women of the same age were more likely to support President Obama. That the number of young, unmarried women is on the rise—as is the tragic trend towards single motherhood—presents a problem for conservatives, one that has to be addressed culturally before it can be addressed politically.

In the meantime, though, it’s good to know that there are plenty of babes for Trump out there. No doubt the president’s masculine alpha-ness helps.

Logic Breakdown and the Kavanaugh Hearings

The Portly Politico30 Comments

The Internet has been all atwitter with talk of the Kavanaugh hearings, particularly Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s vocal-fry inflected testimony, as well as Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s, and Senator Lindsey Graham’s fiery, righteous outburst.

My general policy with such hot-button current events is to withhold comment until the facts are known.  That’s not a savvy move for a blogger, but it gives me time to make an informed judgment on what the Truth is likely to be.

Below are comments I posted on the Portly Politico Facebook page (which I encourage you to “like,” “follow,” and whatever else one has to do to get notifications these days) about the hearings.  What troubles me the most about the (it seems baseless) accusations against Judge Kavanaugh is the utter breakdown of logical thinking—and the utter willingness of his critics to throw due process and the principle of “innocent until proven guilty” under the bus.

But, we all know it’s political theatre.  The Democrats are attempting to delay or derail the confirmation process until after the 2018 midterm elections.  They could care less about Dr. Ford’s alleged sexual assault.  I also wrote that Judge Kavanaugh would be in for a thorough Borking, so we all knew this was coming; still, I naively did not fathom the depths to which the Left would descend.

As for Dr. Ford, she could very well have suffered some trauma—or some imagined, “recovered” memory.  The old “what-does-she-have-to-gain” defense is as baseless as her claims:  $100,000 (and counting) in GoFundMe money, the kudos of the “Resistance,” probably a book deal, a political career if she wants it—she will be richly rewarded for her role in the potential takedown of an eminently qualified, eminently respectable constitutional originalist.

Submitted for your edification—and the good of the Republic and logical thinking—my reflections:

Some logic re: the Kavanaugh hearings.

1.) Women (and men) are sometimes the victims of sexual assault, rape, etc. That’s bad–evil!

2.) Brett Kavanaugh can be innocent and #1 can still be true.

Just because evil things happen to some people doesn’t mean that Brett Kavanaugh did anything evil, or what he has been accused of doing.

Further:  I keep reading and hearing that Dr. Ford’s testimony is “credible.” Based on what evidence? As far as I can tell, there is NO evidence to support her claim, and a great deal to refute or challenge it. Being emotionally compelling is not the same thing as having substantial evidence.

Maybe something happened to her, maybe not. It’s hard to imagine someone subjecting themselves to this scrutiny for light and transient reasons. That said, the “Resistance” is real. So are recovered memories, or flawed ones.

The Democrats in the Senate don’t care (in general) about Dr. Ford’s allegations or about what’s allegedly happened to other women. They care about delaying the vote on confirmation until after the election so they can scuttle the deal. They’re using women to further their own political agenda, and as much as they’ll protest to the contrary, they know all-too-well the dangerous game they’re playing.

They’ve been running this playbook for decades. Senator Lindsey Graham’s righteous outburst demonstrates that the scales have fallen away from Establishment Republicans’ eyes–the old Marquis of Queensbury rules don’t work when the other side will destroy you when it’s politically expedient to do so.

Baseless, misdirected, and/or politically-motivated accusations don’t help anyone. They harm real victims of sexual assault and rape, as well as men who may be entirely innocent. Further, in the Kavanaugh case, they undermine the legitimacy of our already-ossified institutions.