In this column I pose questions and raise issues. I don't always agree with the conclusion, implied or stated. The purpose is to put a slightly different spin on each item and to promote discussion.
- As Warren Farrell has noted: Old paradigm: man pursues, woman resists, man persists, woman accepts or rejects. New paradigm: man pursues, woman resists, any man who persists is a stalker subject to civil and criminal penalties.
- If it's okay for lawyers and politicians to lie, who isn't it okay for?
- If women have higher and higher expectations of men, then it's only fair if men have higher and higher expectations of women.
- When the children of the oppressors are oppressed by the children of the oppressed, who are the oppressors, then?
- Every day of the week I speak with women who believe being the customer gives them the right to be abusive.
- Pop feminists laud the feminine virtue of approaching issues in inclusive terms - i.e., this/and - and complain about the masculine vice of approaching issues in exclusive terms - i.e., either/or. But they use exclusionary terms in the process: your logic is either masculine or feminine, exclusionary or inclusionary, bad or good. Are the pop feminists guilty of masculine logic?
- After AT&T took over TCI, they made a few changes; among them, Pay-Per-View channels for standard cable subscribers no longer list the telephone number to call for the Feature. A man whose wife works for AT&T tells me this is one of the ways the company is trying to force standard cable subscribers to "upgrade" to their digital cable service. Sounds like Ma Bell has been taking lessons from Microsoft: the AT&T death star has returned.
- Many presume polygyny occurs because some guy is keenly charismatic or his wives are mentally deficient, but mammalian polygyny is common in nature. Polygyny is ubiquitous in human history, too. There's nothing unusual about it. Societies which practice polygyny, however, tend to be unstable and slower to progress because their relatively large population of single men have no vested biological interest in the future. The practice of monogamy, which pop feminism has done so much to undermine, leads to social stability and progress by giving most men an interest in the future.
- Women "just don't get it" anymore than men, do.
- Pop feminists are turning sex into a cold war of escalating fears, expectations and hostility.
- Women think things like breast implants make them more attractive to men, but few things are sexier than a woman with a "goofy" sense of humor.
- As the calendar clicks from 1999 to 2000, those expecting apocalyptic events should remember Christ was born more than 2,000 years ago. At the very latest, 1997 marked the 2,000th year since Jesus was born.
- When women have body-image problems, they're the victims of men's unrealistic expectations and the experts call it "anorexia nervosa;" but when men have body-image problems, they're the victims of their own vanity and the experts call it "Adonis complex."
- In an ideal world, anarchy would work. But then, so would communism and socialism.
- America boycotted South Africa, helping bring freedom to Nelson Mandela and an end to apartheid. Meanwhile, American Indian activist Leonard Peltier rots in jail, a political prisoner of the proudly anti-apartheid American government.
- Modern American education teaches kids to see evil without knowing evil.
- Wildlife "encroachments" into neighborhoods occur primarily where leash laws prevent dogs from wandering loose.
- Some of the anarchists who smashed up Seattle say attacking property is not violence and it was okay because they had no say in outlawing attacks on property. They might feel differently if it were their property being destroyed.
- Children want to be needed, they need to be members of the community whose daily contributions are valued; when denied the opportunity to contribute, it is easy to develop feelings both of entitlement and frustration.
- Could child labor laws be used to prohibit chores around the house?
- Do sexually precocious girls grow up to be sexual predators?
- Traditional male socialization taught men it's not okay to bully those who are weaker than they. Traditional female socialization has no precise corollary. If we throw out traditional male socialization, who will defend the weak?
- I've always disliked the idea of wrapping presents in paper: use it, burn it, where's the fun in that? So this holiday season I've wrapped all my presents in festively colored cloth and tied them with yarn so the kids will have something more than the presents to play with.
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