Men are Not Finished

Female chauvinists Hana Rosin and Dan Abrams were recently able to convince an audience that not only is the status and position of men and boys in relative decline, but that men and boys are "finished."  They represented and posed as the intellectual establishment backing the "For" position over the question "Are men finished?" and were able to win a historic percentage of converts in an Intelligence Squared debate. They carried the debate, based on polling done before and after.

So by contending that "men are finished," these two and their recent converts must either be in favor of blatant and unapologetic sexism, OR are willing to personally foot the bill to give the "weaker" side (men) more special protections and affirmative actions that "stronger" females apparently have no need for (by their own arguments). By contending that "men are finished," these self-avowed "feminists" are either dismantling the house of gender equality which has been decades in the painstaking build, OR they are simply trying to advocate for redistributing resources toward the weaker side (men) in order to achieve equality. By contending that "men are finished," our "intellectual establishment" here is either smugly giving up on boys and condemning them to lives of assured and self-prophetic under-performance and hopelessness, OR they are expressing a need to shift our resources and attention back to the "weaker class" (boys) and away from the class (girls) that doesn't appear to "need" so much attention anymore (by their own statements).

The point being, they can not have it both ways. They can not be in favor of gender equality and profess that men are finished, because to do such either solidifies them as personal advocates for promoting the interests of the "neediest" (boys and men) over that of the "well off" (girls and women), OR it solidifies them as sexist bigots, gleefully cheering on the disenchantment of a whole class of people, including every child born male who under-performs. Either they can try to humanize themselves by saying that the down-and-out men deserve "more" (which is not very feminist), or they can solidify their reputation as female chauvinists and gleefully cheer on the evisceration of all things male. There is no in between.

They may in their own mind believe that either of those positions empowers women, or that all they are doing is expressing an inevitability and simply siding with the winners, but they can also still believe they are decent people too. Neither of their beliefs make either statement true. There is a thousand mile difference between saying there are more women in college, and saying that men are an "endangered species"--whether tongue and cheek or not. Men are not a "species." Homo Sapiens is a species. It would seem people of such intellectual or academic esteem should know that. And yet, there is no surprise that Dan Abrams doesn't.

There is a thousand mile difference between talking about trends, and making bold-faced assertions about a group of people having become "finished." The former is a rational, concerned approach, seeking remedies to a real-world social ill, while the later is merely a contention toward a finality--it is a way of saying that solutions are not needed, because the problem has ceased to be a problem. In real terms, saying "boys and men need help" assumes that challenges need to be met with solutions. Saying "boys and men are finished" denies that the problem is a problem, and in so doing, denies the possibility for there ever being solutions.

One wouldn't say "this patient is finished," when all the patient needs is some active treatment to regain their health. One wouldn't condemn a student with a learning disability by calling him "finished," unless one is callous or cruel, and the same should go for those who use that terminology to talk about the well-being of men and boys. An appropriate argument could be worded "the social place of men is evolving," and be perfectly within the boundaries of reality, but no, they choose to focus on "finished," which means there is no evolution, just a dead end and a hopeless future. But let us cut to the main issue---this term "finished" is not meant to rebuild men, nor empower women, it is simply used to weaken the already weakened social resolve (of both genders), by those who have fetishized male social evisceration and humiliation. In any case, gender equality is as removed from Rosin's and Abram's minds as common decency.

Let them and their followers chase after their personal fetishes and "mother complexes" all they want, but leave the future of our boys to people with a sense of decency, please.

Burn the Witch

When a woman rapes a young boy, all we get treated to are statistics. They tend to come spewing from the mouths of apologists and feminists. It's as if we're supposed to throw our heads back and suddenly realize that we made a big mistake in criticizing the rape of a young boy (by a woman) simply because it was an unlikely occurrence. It doesn't follow, and it's horribly insensitive. Yes, it is true that "less women do it," but does that mean the pain of molestation stings a little less for the male victim? I thought not. Does that mean anything as to how we ought to regard and treat the offender? Absolutely not. Statistics don't mean anything to anyone who isn't already sold on some agenda. They are a mere prop used to justify the thoughts in one's own head.

Remember all the righteous indignation about how the "law is the law" and how it is "there to protect minors regardless of the consequences?" Does that ring a bell? It ought to, because that's why society wrote it--to supposedly "protect minors,"--not to judge according to whether the perpetrator belongs to a class we feel is getting stigmatized. If men or women are getting stigmatized as offenders, it's because they went into it thinking "regardless of the consequences!"--so I say to them, enjoy the consequences. If you don't enjoy them though when women bare the bunt of them, you also shouldn't enjoy them when men and children are baring the same bunt.

Statistics here are as meaningless as this: "The main reason [for women's shorter sentences] is that their crimes are objectively less vile..." is insulting. Is "less-vile" child rape more acceptable to us than "more-vile" child rape? I would think not. Rape is rape.

I'm trying to make a broader point with how I express the sentiment and the word choice. I'm parodying how the extremists talk when they vilify men offenders--directing the same moral indignation that society shows toward its scapegoat "usual suspects," towards its so-called "sympathetic offenders" instead, to show how wrong-minded moral outrage is to begin with. The fact that society would be willing to sit down and have a civilized discussion on the statistics when it comes to women offenders and totally ignore all rationality when it comes to men offenders, ought to be the new definition of sexism.

No amount of statistics in the world should justify hating one group over another, but no amount should apologize for the crimes of one over another either. Women are the minority offender, yes, but their crimes need no apology, nor do we need to temper our reservations about them, whether they are "less vile" or not. If failing to reserve contempt for someone's crime is a function of sexism, then one shouldn't be justified in failing to reserve contempt for the next adult man who has sex with a 15 year old and is given the "Amy Gail Lilley" sentence (no prison time, just two years of house arrest and 8 years of probation). If you can't see yourself wanting to gouge that fictional man's eyes out while the very real Mrs. Lilley sits back in her house unfazed, then your whole theory about the sexism against women offenders is thrown to the fire--where true criminals belong.

Washing Out the Sand Lines

I can only imagine the typical conversation between a defender of artificial age limits and a liberationist ending one way--with an enlightened ageist. Those who defend artificial age limits do so because their imagination hasn't evolved past 19th century assumption. As an experiment, if you just present them with this statement by educator and advocate John Holt, you're guaranteed to hear a particular nuanced set of responses and be able to test the limits of their reasoning:

"I propose...that the rights, privileges, duties of adult citizens be made available to any young person, of whatever age, who wants to make use of them." -John C. Holt, "Escape from Childhood"

 
They will remark that children shouldn't have the right to vote, for example, because they lack the "mental capacity" for it. This wouldn't be such a bad argument if they were referring to the potential ways adults could scam children out of their votes without the children knowing it, but this is not how they mean it. They mean it in the most simplistic way possible--that children shouldn't vote because they don't understand politics. The same goes for sex--children shouldn't have sex because they don't understand sexuality.

The liberationist will chide back with the rebuttal: what about a 17 year old one minute before midnight on the day of their 18th birthday (the year a child can vote in the United States)? Are they incapable of understanding politics right up to midnight on their 18th birthday? What causes them to be suddenly blessed with the ability and knowledge to vote? The same argument gets even more confusing with age of consent laws, where there is not just one, but hundreds of different age limits, where suddenly children are capable of having sex in one area, but a mile away across the border, the very similar children over there are incapable. What manner of science could explain this phenomenon of temporal and geographic difference in "mental capacity?"

It will cause the ageist to scratch their head, possibly having never concluded that there's a difference between 2-year-old children and 17-year-old children that the law might have missed. In any case, the ageist will retort that they understand the confusion over the exactness and absolute nature of the "one minute before midnight" scenario, but will usually respond by saying, "it's not an exact science, but there has to be an age limit somewhere even if it doesn't match when a child is capable of voting." One should note that this already flies in the face of their previous rationale.

The liberationist will chide in immediately with an obvious rebuttal. If what the ageist said is true, that there in fact needs to be a set age even if it doesn't correspond to ability (contrary to the reason the ageist had given in the first case), then why does the age have to be 18? Why not move the age of majority in the US up to 20? Or how about 30, or 40? If we understand that the age limit is arbitrary, but also understand that it must exist anyways, why do we settle on 18 definitively?

The ageist will then come back with how 18 is closer to when a person is capable of understanding politics than 40, and will then normally pretend they agree with the liberationist by recalling particular teenagers who are far more politically astute than their own adult colleagues. They usually do this to show that they are not bigoted about young people, but it only adds to the case the liberationist is making. It's simply the point in the argument when the ageist has run out of explanations, just before settling on the "it is the way it is" rationale, unknowingly forfeiting all their earlier assumptions.

Age limitations have nothing to do with human aptitude. They do not legislate human aptitude. They are merely artificial limitations invented by humans to keep other humans from participating in areas of learning and experience they'd rather reserve for themselves. Lifting age limits on children would not impose the weight of the adult world onto them, and thus become its own form of oppression as critics may suggest. Children who do not have the means, the mind, the capability, the maturity, or the motivation, to make use of the rights newly bestowed on them, such as the right to vote, simply would not vote--just as adults do when they have neither the means, mind, capability, maturity, or motivation to vote. Society has already made it such that adults who are deemed incompetent for any reason are not permitted to bare the burdens and responsibilities that would come with competence--there is no reason to believe that the liberated five year old would be treated any differently than the incompetent adult when it comes to running their own affairs.

In fact, what society fears is not that incapable children would be dumped with the pressures and responsibilities that come with human rights beyond their ability, it's that in granting them such rights, many more than previously expected may be found more capable than the adult world ever imagined could be. Adults would be in a real state of cognitive dissonance over their assumptions. While five year olds would be sure to fail a required driving permit written test, for instance, we may just find that fifteen year olds, rather than just sixteen year olds, are competent enough to pass it. Such a thing would be sure to send shock waves of fear through the hearts of adults who would like to maintain the millennia-old belief that they, modern men and women, are special among all living things. It would force them to conclude that they are not special just because they've reach some magic age of human fellowship, and that they spent a good many years squandering their ability in pursuit of a magic number.

Questioning the Amber Alert

You may hear it said that anyone who questions something purported to save children's lives must be in league with whatever band of miscreants don't want children's lives to be saved. But what is a child's life worth to the people who make this broad leap of irrational zeal? Is a child's life a bargaining line against societal betterment? Are children now our excuse for apathy, for maintaining the status quo in a broken system? Does fixing the system's faults mean one is against saving children, and if such is the case, what does that make those who ignore the system's faults? Irrationality over children is the hideous beast that holds children captive if only to make sure no one else gets to set them free first, and it needs to die of a thousand cuts. Here's one cut we can make.

Let's consider Amber Alerts for a moment. Many may be tempted to think that such a dramatic, news-friendly theater narrative system recovers 12 children a day and costs nothing to implement--that its benefits outweigh any possible drawback to such an extent that it's not even worth investigating alternative methods for recovering children from abductions. In reality though, according to their own report for 2009 (the most recent one), out of 207 cases (269 children) nationwide, 45 (59 children) were recovered contingent upon the Amber alert having been posted, at a cost of 25 million dollars per state in federal money (from taxpayers) to pay for implementing the service. The average caseload per state (including three US territories), was about four, an average of one child per state and territory was recovered. So in effect, based on averages, 25 million dollars was spent to rescue about one child in your state in 2009. (Michigan had the highest at 27, but a majority of states had 0 or 1 cases).

The money seems insubstantial though, because if it helped save even one child's life, then it surely must be money well spent? A child's life, a human life, is certainly worth more than any dollar amount. But despite what any politician may say, the money that goes in to setting up the Amber Alert system does not "save children's lives." The Bill itself does not "save children's lives," it simply allocates money for states to set up Amber Alert systems. That 25 million pays for the infrastructure and technology needed to broadcast the Amber alerts--mainly, glowing highway signs, command posts, and emergency alert systems for television and radio. But why should this matter if all that equipment is being used in the service of spreading awareness about children being abducted?

In reality, the effect of these gadgets and special announcements on the police and investigators solving their cases, is minimal. That was the finding in the first independent study on the effectiveness of Amber alerts at the University of Nevada, carried out by a team lead by criminologist Timothy Griffin. Hundreds of abduction cases between 2003 and 2009 were studied, and the finding was that Amber Alerts played little to no role in the recovery of children, despite their glowing reputation in the mainstream media. It was found that the majority of cases deemed successes by the Amber Alert system during those six years were children involved in custody fights between parents where the child was not at risk. In the minority of cases where kidnappers were the perpetrators, Amber Alerts usually failed to save their lives. It would appear that murderous kidnappers are not swayed to spare the child's life when the kid's face and name is plastered on every screen in the county.

Essentially, the Amber Alerts generally help police and investigators recover children from lower risk situations where the child's life is not at least immediately in jeopardy. "The fact is that once someone abducts a child with a murderous intent," Griffin said, "there's really not that much we can do about it."  In 2009, nine children were recovered already deceased, and none were found to be a result of an outside the family kidnapping: 4 children died at the hands of relatives, 5 children died from unknown circumstances. While the Amber Alerts certainly do have the potential to be life saving, to make the assumption that every Amber Alert saves a life, or that Amber Alerts are a life saving operation like the ER, is a gross exaggeration.

One may also contend that Amber alerts in 2009 saved the lives of children at the hands of murderous rapists, kidnappers, and strangers. This is the image glorified in the media, after all. In actuality, of the 170 cases in which the abductor had been identified in 2009, 139 of them were in known relationships with the child, making only 31 cases nationwide where the child had been abducted by some rogue kidnapper. Of those 139 cases, 109 of those known relationships were familial ones. Imagine that, family members are the greatest threat to our nation's children, with 64 being the child's father, and 34 being the child's mother. This means that the number of child abductions in which the offender was the child's own parents vastly outnumbers cases where children were abducted by the rogue slugs that make for such an endearing news hour.

However, none of this is meant to suggest that Amber Alerts be done away with. In fact, one promising thing about Amber Alerts, if not because of the number of children they save, is the speed at which recoveries are made following activation of an alert. Many children with activated alerts on them were recovered within three hours of the alert being posted. In fact, 35 of the 59 children recovered in 2009 were rescued within three hours of the alert being posted, mainly because officers were able to identify the abductor's vehicle as described in the alert. This is encouraging, but once again, when most of the abductors are related to the child, information about the child's parents' vehicle is already determined. While the number of Amber Alerts issued has declined over time, the number of abductions has remained fairly consistent.

How necessary is this measure? One could say society is better off with Amber Alerts than it would be if no such method of alert existed for the recovery of abducted children. But how effective is the measure? Is its efficiency so great that it can not even be questioned--so great that all who criticize it can only be among those "against saving children's lives?" This is hardly an over-statement. I'm more than confident that, seeing how few children are actually recovered (even given that perhaps the numbers have changed since 2009), this is a costly apparatus that could probably be scaled back to something a bit more representative of its effectiveness. All that is made by human endeavor should be questioned, because regardless of whether Amber Alerts ever saved a child's life, ignorance to reality never has.

Ignorance on Display

I found this statement online. How wrong, ignorant, or just plain sexist is it? Shall we count the ways?

And I have to say that maybe if you're a man, you might not quite get the instinctive caution or even revulsion felt when it looks like an adult male is too involved with a child.

The writer is implying that men "may or may not" be capable of feeling empathy for victims of abuse or revulsion towards abusers, or even caution at a child who appears to be slipping into a hazardous situation. Lord help me from slipping into the same trap of sexist ignorance this female commenter has fallen into, and jump to the conclusion that all females are incapable of telling the difference between child abuse and an adult male and child simply spending quality time together. Are not fathers, for instance, supposed to be "involved" with their children? Are they not too "adult males?" Obviously not all females are as ignorant as the ignorant among them imply all "adult males" of being.

And how shall we quantify when an adult male is "too involved" with a child? What precisely is the boundary that causes such revulsion in females who apparently are so adept at deciphering it? If we are talking about real physical, emotional, or any other form of abuse in such a way that there is physical harm, jeopardy, or any kind of marked impairment in the child as a result, then we have something to base our revulsion on for sure--whether or not "feeling revulsion" for the abuser will do any good for the child is another story. If we are talking about a child and an adult male spending a mutually appreciated, non-harmful, parental consented "fun filled" afternoon together, then as the saying goes, "the boredom under peace will spread its own evil" in the popular imagination. Knee-jerked "revulsion" on cue in such a situation will only cause harm, not just to the child, but to everyone involved, and those ripples of negativity will spread throughout society.

Society can either be held together on a platform of trust and responsibility, or it can be held together on one of fear and knee-jerk assumptions. Each of us have to make that choice, and society will either benefit or suffer for it.

And how shall we quantify what is meant by "child," anyway? Are we speaking of a 17 year old, or a 4 year old? What are the circumstances of these encounters? These are all questions that need to be posed and answered before you should be expecting anyone to feel "revulsion" on cue at the mere suggestion of an adult male and a child spending time together. Blanket statements requiring our revulsion toward phantom child molesters and sympathy for phantom child victims do nothing to help real child victims and deter real child molesters. If anything, it hinders our ability to feel empathic or even "cautious" in real life situations, because so much of our emotional fortitude is distracted and divested to feeling "revulsion" or "sympathy" for the shadows in our heads.

Answering the Question

This was spoken by a moderator at work over at a Sarah's Law forum to someone with subversive words that were immediately handed over to the authorities for no particular reason other than to buy up the law's valuable time (it's only human to feel self-righteous). This statement could be the paradigm argument of most ordinary people on the subject of children, and yet, we will see just how flimsy it is:

I ask this question.... should a child not be left alone so that the innocence of childhood can be enjoyed before the realities of adulthood?

1. Should a child not be left alone? I'm not certain. Let's try to lend this concept of leaving children "alone" to intuition. Obviously, by "alone" this person doesn't mean physically leaving the child on their own, but rather, "not being tampered with" is probably a definition closer to what they have in mind. The primary question becomes, "should a child not be tampered with" or at the very least, deviated from their natural starting point of ignorance, egotism, and intolerance for others? Are the traits of the average four year old worth preserving? Should not children, in some way, be educated? Learning by definition, is simply a change, an alteration in behavior in response to the presence of a stimulus. "Leaving the child alone," for instance, would entail there never being a stimulus with the effect of there never necessitating a response. Unless we believe that children should never be educated, we should not believe that they should be left "un-tampered with." This statement doesn't lend itself to intuition very well.

We could also further take this to be a self-defeating ideology if we understand children (just as human as human) to be naturally equipped for learning and changing over time. To manually enforce that children never change, and thus go against their nature, is to be tampering with them--the very thing this ideology suggests we should be avoiding. Self-defeating ideologies do not lend themselves to intuition at all.

2. ...so that the innocence of childhood can be enjoyed? Young children are naturally ignorant of many things, and one of them is the adult concept of innocence. In order to enjoy anything, understanding the thing being enjoyed is a requirement. The rationale for this is that when a person enjoys something they are not familiar with, they are in fact enjoying the "essence" of the thing being enjoyed, and not the thing itself, because the thing itself is unknown to them. A child can not enjoy a concept that adults have invented, because such a thing is purely a metaphysical thought construct within a given culture. What is normally meant by this statement is that a child should enjoy their time alive while they still qualitatively possess the attributes of being a young human being. This makes sense, but should not the same be true for anyone, young or old? It is a mere platitude when in reference to a particular sect of human being.

3. ...before the realities of adulthood? "The realities of adulthood," in the context of this statement, are supposed to carry a negative, harsh tone in conjunction with the "enjoyment" tone of the previous clause to create the effect that children live in a world without "realities" (or at least, the indication that they should not live a world with realities) and that adults live in a world devoid of "enjoyments." Such is just not intuitive. A child's time alive is in fact one that has it's own set of realities, if by realities, this person means to say "troubles" or "hardships", or even "responsibilities." Firstly, if children, by the sake of being children, were never troubled, never had to face any hardships, or carry any responsibilities, we should never to expect them to cry, or to fight, or to revolt against authority, and yet they do these things. Such is wishful thinking for adults who are the authority, but does not mirror reality. Secondly, implied in this statement is that the adult world is one not to be enjoyed, and if such were true, we should expect adults to never laugh or seek out entertainment, for instance. This statement is made simply to justify adult authority over young people, depicting themselves as selfless missionaries and children as noble savages. Such is wishful thinking for the maintenance of the adult power structure, but does not mirror reality.

This is not even to mention that many child "realities" are imposed on them by the very social systems that use this very ideology as their creed for operation. Children can get themselves into very compromising situations when they step out beyond what adults conceive and have established as their reality. For instance, there are many 5 year old Registered Sex Offenders, playing doctor can carry serious penalties for children in some states (Utah). So again we find ourselves asking, should not children be left alone? It seems adults only have definitive answer for this when it suits their purposes of maintaining control, so the seeming contradiction in motivations bleeds this statement dry of any genuine thirst for justice it might have had.

Taken together, this statement does not define what it means by "children." A child, under the law, is anyone between birth and the age of majority (0 and 18 in the US). The statement looses more credibility depending on what type of "child" it is referring to. For instance, if it is suggesting that 17-year-old US minors are should be "left alone to enjoy the innocence of childhood before the realities of adulthood," then it doesn't lend itself to us intuitively in the least, particularly when considering that those 17-year-old US minors who are supposedly "enjoying the innocence of childhood" are going to be facing those "adult realities" in the coming year. This exercise simply illustrates the faulty reasoning of the majority.

In short form, the answer to the question (taking all the reasoning that made this statement into account) is no.