Your friendly neighborhood Tired Blogger has been blogging (or ranting) about the battle of the sexes and where we have ended up. Here are the posts if you wish to read or reread them.
https://wordpress.com/post/tiredmidnightblogger.com/2408
https://wordpress.com/post/tiredmidnightblogger.com/2481
https://wordpress.com/post/tiredmidnightblogger.com/2537
While I’ve frankly proven nothing, I’ve at least a better grasp on how things are, and hopefully, my thoughts are getting more accurate and cogent as I research and write, sharing my intellectual journey with so many wonderful people.
My last post accrued a thousand views for this site. I’m humbled. In this day of tv, games, free porn, bread, and cigarettes (but no circuses…P. T. Barnum and Bailey was adaptable enough to survive a fire that wiped out their stadium, but couldn’t survive the modern era), forty-seven people are following my crazy ravings, and some of the most important people in my life take the time to read, positively criticize, and share post ideas. While I’m still a long way away from doing this professionally, I can honestly say for the first time in my life, that I’m actually a professional writer, and I can’t thank my readers enough for having patience with my railing.
So we’ve established that the relationship between the sexes has become so adversarial that marriage is at a literal all-time low (except for the demographic of the rich college graduate, but I digress). We’ve established that a great deal of this adversarial dynamic is artificial, as the challenges facing men and women are much more similar than we have been told; specifically “the personal is political” is a valid principle for both sexes. Last of all we’ve established that men have essentially lost the battle of the sexes, at least here in the US.
The last point I intend to make is “The forces of Power not only don’t care about women, they actually hate women more profoundly than the men who have been silenced. And since the Hegemons wield more and more power, but face less and less opposition, the terrible suffering women have just begun to reduce, will instead intensify as the Hegemons use their power to break the spirit of women in general.”
I’ll admit, I’m half tempted to go back and edit my previous posts. After the research I’ve done, I’m not so sure I can back up this point (note to self, just because you are tired doesn’t mean you should get away with making points before you researched them).
But let’s see what we can accomplish here. Maybe I can still make this a worthwhile read for you.
My three points for this post (I wonder if I’ll actually get them all in this post or not):
- 1) So many say Chivalry is dead. I’m going to see if it is, and if so, was it Feminism that killed it, as so many on the internet claim?
- 2) The Hegemony has managed to concentrate enormous power in the hands of a few thousand wealthy people.
- 3) The Hegemony does not care about women’s rights any more than they do men’s rights. All they care about is amassing more wealth and power for themselves.
Technically, chivalry has been gone for quite some time. It’s kinda the point of Don Quixote. But I’m not talking about the code of Knighthood, Courtly Love, or any of the Medieval stuff. I’m talking about “modern chivalry.” And while I can find tons of lists of examples (saying “please” and “thank you,” holding the door for a lady, keeping your word), it is hard to find a good working definition. So for the purposes of this post, my working definition is “mindfully treating a woman with the courtesy you believe she deserves.” I think we can judge modern Chivalry based on three criteria.
- 1) Do you “fight” fair? Is the person you are debating more important than the issue debated?
- 2) Do you protect your life partner, or would you be willing to if you had one? Do you try to shield them as much as you reasonably can from pain and discomfort? Do you think of their wellbeing as being at least nearly as paramount as your own?
- 3) Are you honest with your partner? Do you keep your word?
With that in mind, let’s see if Chivalry in that sense is in fact dead.
Sadly, in every relationship since Adam and Eve, we have been in conflict. We don’t see things the same way, we have different priorities. But the chivalrous man won’t “hit below the belt.” He may vehemently argue his point, but he will do so without the intent to hurt his partner. If Chivalry is dead, you should expect to see some massive fighting, often leading to physical violence.
“Crime statistics indicate that 16 percent of homicides are perpetrated by a partner. Further, the CDC says, 25 percent of women and 10 percent of men experience some form of intimate partner violence in their lifetime.”
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/06/shadow-pandemic-of-domestic-violence/
“The American Journal of Emergency Medicine said that domestic violence cases increased by 25 to 33 percent globally.”
https://counciloncj.org/impact-report-covid-19-and-domestic-violence-trends/
“Based on a review of 12 U.S. studies, most of which included data from multiple cities, shows that domestic violence incidents increased 8.1% after jurisdictions imposed pandemic-related lockdown orders.”
Strike one against Chivalry.
So do we protect our partners?
Gotta admit I’m stumped. How can this be measured? I try looking up “numbers of men who die defending a woman.” I get a ton of statistics telling me how many men murder women, how many women murder men, and crime rates of one sex against the other. But evidently, nobody cares enough to report how many of us die to protect our families. I’ve tried the “number of law enforcement officers who died protecting a woman.” All I can get is the total number of fatalities and a breakdown by gender. For what it is worth, in 2021 417 male police officers died in the line of duty, versus 41 females. But honestly, this tells me nothing, as this could easily reflect women being underrepresented in police academy admissions, sexist dispatchers sending fewer women into harm’s way, or women just being smarter about how they handle life-threatening situations. https://www.statista.com/statistics/584816/law-enforcement-officer-fatalities-in-the-us-by-gender/
And of course, I find the risk of being killed by a police officer. “Police violence is a leading cause of death for young men in the United States. Over the life course, about 1 in every 1,000 black men can expect to be killed by police. Risk of being killed by police peaks between the ages of 20 y and 35 y for men and women and for all racial and ethnic groups.” https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1821204116
While it is all interesting information, it is little more than useless for my purpose.
Hell, I can find information on the numbers of people who are murdered driving a taxi for Chtuhllhu’s sake! But nothing provides the number of men who died defending their families. What is the actual fokken?
I finally found this webpage. It was very useful. For everything except what I am looking for. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-2015/tables/expanded_homicide_data_table_10_murder_circumstances_by_relationship_2015.xls
I can basically give you an incredible wealth of information about who killed who. But how many men died defending their families…
There are no surveys I can find about how relatively safe women feel with their partners. I’ve reached out to law enforcement friends of mine, they are as stumped as I am. I hope I didn’t irritate them too badly…
I try to think but nothing happens…
So the number of homicides involving burglary in 2019 amounted to 84. Assuming most men that die defending their family die in a home invasion (likely a bad assumptoin, but I have nothing to work with really) , that means likely no more than 84 men died defending their homes that year. So out of the 1,117,696 burglaries the FBI website records as being reported in 2019, less than a hundred men died.
So working with this flawed logic, we can assume men do not often die defending their home. So strike two (abritrarily) against chivalry. And mystery solved why nobody is keeping numbers on how many of us die defending the ladies.
I throw up my hands in surrender. I can find no data on men protecting women. Sorry guys. You who died for your woman…in this society, you die unsung. Hell, maybe I should have structered this post differently…
Lastly of all, are men honest with their partners?
Thank God, this topic has some resources I can follow.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/revealed-sex-most-likely-tell-9017534
https://www.scotsman.com/news/uk-news/96-women-are-liars-honest-2509965
So here I have gathered three articles with two different conclusions, but three very different data sets. Two of them claim men are the more honest sex, one claims women are the more honest sex (if you do your own search, I would wager the algorythm knows your biases, and will feed you what you want to see. Or perhaps Google itself has a bias, but that is a topic for another day).
According to frontiersin.org: “The results showed that women were more honest than men in general, but depending on the nature of the dishonest behavior, they could behave similarly or in distinctive ways by graduating their actions.” The cited study is set up to reward people with money for die rolls, but the practioners report their die rolls. Unbeknownst to the test subjects, the scientists know exactly what the subject rolled, but thinking nobody is watching, the subjects can report whatever they want. Men were more likely to lie and report they had rolled a six (higher die rolls = more money, hence more reward). If I’m understanding the report correctly, women were actually nearly as likely to lie, they just were more intelligent about it, reporting a five instead of a four while a man is more likey to report a six. An interesting study, but flawed, I think, because of coarse if you are rewarding bad behavior, you usually get it. Even the study blandly acknowledges it in this statement: “there were no differences when there were no rewards.” So…if I have no incentive to do something, I don’t do it.
So glad we have science to “tell it like it is.”
The UK site, The Mirror, we learn men are the more honest, according to a UK poll. And the same evidently holds true among the Scotts. So…
If this is all to be believed, chivalry is dead in America, but not the UK. Seems apropos.
So if we run on the fuzzy logic that chivalry in America is dead…what killed it? Site after site says it was Feminism. Before I started writing that was my suspicion, but the Contrarian in me hates to agree with so many people without some research.
According to blogger Linda Carrol of the New York Times, it isn’t Feminism, but stupidity, that killed chivalry. While she uses no figures and her logic is nearly as fuzzy as mine, I think she has a point: https://medium.com/linda-caroll/feminism-didnt-kill-chivalry-45c0e4c4fe56
I’m up in the air right now. Do I treat her article with fairness, or do I heap it with scorn and sarcasm that likely she doesn’t deserve. Let’s see what words I vomit forth.
Ok…good Curtis will begin, and evil Curtis will rebutt. You be the judge who won.
To quote Linda Carrol: “Chivalry is “the qualities expected of an ideal knight, especially courage, honor, courtesy, justice, and a readiness to help the weak.”
Oh wait. A readiness to help the weak? Well then, Mr. Chivalry, where the hell were you at the women’s rally? Why weren’t you at pride? Why aren’t you at the head of the social justice movement?”
That is an excellent point. There are definately men who talk about chivalry, but don’t really have a clue what it is all about. It was essentially the Christianization of the Greco-Roman and Nordic-Viking warrior ethos. I have yet to find any movement or ideology that grows past a dozen members without any examples of hypocracy. So well done Linda! You discovered there are hypocritical idiot men!
Now Evil Curtis has some things to say…
Casting fairness aside…well done Linda! That was the best example of immolating a straw man I’ve seen in a long time. Too bad no real man even remotely thinks in the Byzantine, Neanderthal way you accuse us of. I mean…Chtuhllhu bless! Look at this brilliant witticism from her blog! Her responce to why us men are not at the women’s or pride rallies (odd…I’ve seen a few people at some of these rallies that look suspiciously like they might possess a pair of danglers): “Let me tell you why. Because you think chivalry is opening the door for a woman, paying for dinner, and tolerating a “chick flick” all in the name of getting lucky. And if you don’t get lucky, she’s just a feminist bitch.” So…let me get this straight…no man would ever consider being chivalrous unless he thought he had a shot of getting some tonight? Maybe we should all dig out our dictionaries or classical rhetoric text books and look up Ad Hominem. Oh, but if we are as clever as we think we are, we won’t, because the phrase was derived from the Latin for “to the man,” so of course that must be an insult to women. But she ain’t done sticking it “to the man.” She ends her post with:
“If you offer to pay for dinner and she says she’ll pay her share, she’s not cutting off your willy or emasculating you. She’s just letting you know you’re not entitled to sex. Because too many men think paying for dinner equals guaranteed sex and she’s learned that the hard way.
Chivlary was never about things you do in return for sex. It was only ever about standing up for people who are more disadvantaged than you.
Are women more disadvantaged than men? In many ways yes. That’s why there is feminism. Outside of the exceptions like women body builders and Sigourney Weaver, women have less physical strength. We get paid less. Promoted less. Assaulted more. Raped more. Talked over. Abused.
Chivlary means helping us. And I’m just not sure you’re doing that by protesting that you’re not going to open the door because we want less assault and more pay.
Feminism didn’t kill chivalry. Stupidity did.”
Fine! Chivalry is dead, and you women didn’t kill it. It was us men with our violent tempers, our all consuming sex drive, and our vapid selfishness. Compared to you we are mental midgets. Hell, I have to keep my shoes tied because I’m too stupid to retie them. It must be wonderful to know everything about the opposite sex.
This has been a public service announcement from Evil Curtis. I will now put him back in my briefcase. Where I keep my spare pares of briefs as I plot in predatory fashion my next sexual depradation! I mean…Jesus wept! Honestly Linda, likely I owe you an apology, but if those are the kinds of men you go out with, maybe back off on saying yes to the bad boys for a month or two. You might be surprised how happy you might be with a good man.
Fortunately, this good man is already taken.
Ok. I’m gonna call it. Yes, chivalry is dead. After all this research and thinking, I agree with Linda. I know I mocked her in a pretty brutal way, and likely she didn’t deserve that. But I do agree that it wasn’t Feminism that killed chivalry. She is also right that stupidity did have a massive role in killing chivalry. But…please have the intellectual honesty to understand that it is not merely the stupidity of men that applies here.
Let me point out one last thing on this point of chivalry being doa. Is it possible that chivalry served a purpose at one time? Is it possible that it helped channel a man’s natural aggressive energies in a way that would be beneficial to women and would help make us better protectors, better lovers, better husbands? Is it possible that by rewarding some men’s honest intentions with cynisism, scorn, and vitriol, that some women have in fact forfeited the right to chivalrous behavior? Is it possible that the only reward most men really want for their chivalry is a smile and a thank you? Is it possible that, while nearly all men do intensely wish to have sex with a woman, most of us are mature enough to realise that it is no tradgedy to not get laid tonight? Last of all…I thought the whole modern Feminsist movement is about how strong women are, yet when Linda berates us men for being bigoted sex maniac rat bastards with dicks for brains, she makes this telling statement. I know I’ve quoted it above, but read it again:
“Chivlary was never about things you do in return for sex. It was only ever about standing up for people who are more disadvantaged than you.“
“Are women more disadvantaged than men? In many ways yes. That’s why there is feminism. Outside of the exceptions like women body builders and Sigourney Weaver, women have less physical strength. We get paid less. Promoted less. Assaulted more. Raped more. Talked over. Abused.
“Chivalry means helping us. And I’m just not sure you’re doing that by protesting that you’re not going to open the door because we want less assault and more pay.”
Respectfully to Feminists who think this way (and I do know that probably most don’t) you can’t have it both ways. Either you need us, or you don’t. Either you need our protection and self restraint and respect, or you don’t. What frustrates most of us men is not because you don’t want to be assaulted, insulted, and taken for granted. Likely most men do a piss poor job of communicating this, but we actually get that. What frustrates us is the arrogant, self righteous attitude of women who think they are better than us. We are no better than you, fair point, you proved that long ago. Frankly, how do you think chivalry evolved? It evolved in part because men noticed how intelligent and kind some women were, and we thought “ya know…I should really treat her better.” Do you really think it evolved as a way to just get under your skirts?
Grow up.
Ok. Its late. I’ve written 3418 words so far, and while I feel I’ve established that people are terribly disrespectful to each other (and then succumbed to the temptation to be equally disrespectul), I’m tired and I wish to get this posted so I can lose every female friend I ever had.
I will write about my last two points, but that will be my next series, I think I’ve spent all the effort I feel like spending on the feminists. To the smart and kind feminsts, I salute you. Thank you for being the wonderful women you are. To the insulting self rightous ones…look, I know I’ve written about how shaming others is a bad idea, and then spent a great deal of this post essentially berating someone for their Ad Feminem attack on the opposition, but seriously, understand…there is a good and positive kind of pride, and there is a negative, destructive kind of pride. Maybe look up the word hubris. Crap! One of the old Greek meanings of the term is “sexual outrage.” I just can’t win!
Tired Midnight Blogger (What Blogs at Midnight) 