Myth Of Male Power

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Huh? You lost me. Can you elaborate?

NTs are deluded

As compared to what - whales? You might need to read the PPR forum more often.

Can't believe it, the sheep-shaggers are even getting snubbed by people oversees, how did they deserve that? but in general NTs do not have a vested interest in the truth.

Most geeks attempt to search out the truth to the best of their ability. They may get it wrong sometimes. But more likely then not they are not the enemy of the truth. If you follow pack mentality, come to premature conclusions and stick to them without analysis, play on peoples fears, play on their greed then that is being the enemy of the truth.

I dont think male power is a myth in patriarchal tribal societies. Life as a woman must be pretty awful there.

Even in the west, it can be far unsafer for women to walk the street at night. Few people try and rape adult males, though they can get attacked in other ways.

For anyone who is intereted i have a summary of what the book is about

http://www.warrenfarrell.org/TheBook/index.html on edit, there it is.

I agree with some of it. Women do definitely have a dark side. But some of the stuff he says is pretty silly to me. He goes on about men going to war but women have to undergo a pretty bloody, frightening act, several times in their lives- childbirth, which could kill us. He doesnt mention that. I also think a lot of mothers would be pretty annoyed at the part where he says men do most of the housework if they work and the wife doesnt.

I dont agree with circumcision anyway, I wouldnt risk an accident on a baby boy I had and it i plain unnecessary unless the boy has a fused foreskin or something. However female circumcision is different, it doesnt merely remove the outer skin, it removes the clitoris and sometimes the entire labia.

Women in islamic and african countries who have undergone this procedure are often in misery for the rest of ther lives. It is the equivalent to cutting the penis off, plus flesh at the base too.

The thng about men dying earler, I thought that was biological- women are just tougher with a better pain tolerance, where as men are all energy and muscle and burn out a bit faster.

I dont agree they are disposable, they are very much needed and necessary.

However I agree that men are neglected in a way that women may not experience, and likely get a lot of injustice done to them in other areas, I think they would have a lot of issues that women wouldnt understand. i think the higher male suicide rate is due to the fact that males are not taught to deal with their emotions properly, and they are taught that sucess, particularly workplace, money and bedroom sucess is a must-have and if they dont achieve this they are worthless.

Last edited by zen_mistress on 03 May 2010, 11:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The trouble is NT's have a much higher degree of being able to understand their environment and its rules, that perhaps equals and perhaps even surpasses whatever proclivity we may have toward higher IQ - especially when so many of them have that just as much as well.

I hate to bring bad news but I think any attempt to say that we're somehow morally superior, for anyone saying it, is simply stenciling the size and shape of their own blind spots.

Oops I was supposed to provide the link in my post but i didnt, was rushing out the door, the link is to the summary of what the book was about. and that was what I had read and was commenting on in my post.

http://www.warrenfarrell.org/TheBook/index.html

Power comes from the muzzle blast.

Everything else is just joking around.

I read some of that. Every cultural arrangment imaginable and beyond has existed and still exists today, from Lugu Lake matriarchies to Namibian patriarchies. The problem I find when I start reading through that (I am too impatient to do video, I can read alot faster than most people can talk) is that it's eurocentric or whatever and cittes examples based on this primitive and false belief we have in 'progress' that history is bad and just gets better for everyone with time, and nothing could be further from the truth. Some cultures suck and some are great, spanning human history, and some are in between and we don't even know about them all. There have been many cultures that were better for women that pre-date modern culture. One of the strangest manifestations of this belief is that we are getting smarter and more civilized through time when if you look at history with an honest eye you find so much evidence of civilized and advanced cultures being over-run by knuckle-draggers, and human kind has had many more backward steps then it has forward. In particular I think we are coming out of a 'dark ages' for women, because as the author mentions birth control was illegal only 45 years ago. How sick is that. There is evidence of birth control (and abortifacients as a matter of course) in many cultures over time and we live in one that is only a half century out of making it illegal.

Comparing circumcision to FGM is one of the more bizarre things I have heard, that's misguided.

I really don't believe anyone my age or younger can understand the conditions from which feminism arose. I personally did not live through the hardcore economic and social inequities. I think feminism tends to get a bad rap sometimes because it has been successful to a degree in eliminating injustice.

I think though that men have the power to change to a degree the things they want changed. I think the problems lie in the intra-male relationships, the relationship to power, their relationships to each other, etc. As an outside observer it seems to me that men are pretty brutal with men who deviate.

It should be noted that, per the video series, the definition of power in this context according to the author is the power to control one's own life. From that perspective, violence is not power.

Unfortunately, it seems that despite the 'cliffs-notes' page, we're not really speaking from the same idea basis unless we've listened to the videos instead of reading the notes. It's different, and is more elaborated. The concepts laid out are given more support and 'fleshing out,' and have more apparent basis than the crass abruptness of the notes.

Lol, my kind of answer. Any advice on which aught to pick for that one?

I wouldnt call it a cliff notes page, the page comes from his own official website, and he would have to have approved that page so he would presumably be happy with it.

I never disagreed with his basic concept of challenging the idea of male power, and suggesting its basis is not being in a position of power. But I think many of the points in the summary are quite suspect, and innacurate. I think he starts out with a good concept but then throws the baby out with the bathwater.

Yes it is true that there were likely many types of culturethat were better for women. I think that in times of scarcity or war or turmoil perhaps it shifts to a more patriarchal model.. at any rate i think it is an imbalance when one gender dominates at the expense of another.

Yes comparing FGM to male circumcision didnt make much sense to me. Not quite the same thing as what those young girls go throgh, and I wont go into the horrific detail. the saddest thing about it is that it is older women who perform this on other young women- they are brought up to believe that a whole woman is "unclean" and could possibly bring shame upon their family if they are able to feel pleasure. Also a lot of male's families request the young bride to be has this done to them, so the girls family performs it in fear that they wont be able to find a good husband for her. People say "oh well that is happening in the Third World." It actually happens in the first world too.. Australia for example, or wherever else they emigrate to.

Still, if male circumcision was never performed again unless for medical reasons on a male child, I would be very happy.

As for birth control, well many countries which are not Third World as such, it is frowned upon, such as Ireland, and other predomnantly Catholic countries. These countries are behind on women's rights because of the influence of the Vatican.

As for males being brutal to each other I would say absolutely, as are women brutal to each other but in non physical ways. One thing he does not mention in his points about suicie in males is the possibility that many men who commit suicide are gay or bisexual and find it hard to live in a society which can be violent towards hetero males, and off the chart violent towards gay males.