Making Sandwiches

There’s a real spiritual war going on within our culture right now that some may be blissfully unaware of, the battle of the sandwiches. I too was unaware of it until it began to encroach upon my life. The meme about “making sandwiches” is about far more than the superficial, it is an outright attack on women, on marriage, on gender relations, a shaming tactic of feminism.

This little meme I’ve posted is a somewhat humorous look at the nature of the problem and the social engineering underway hoping to redesign culture and relationships between men and women.

Suzanne Venker recently wrote an article,  “Are you weak if you make your man a sandwich?” In it she tells the tale of Maddie, an Australian woman who asked a facebook group for ideas about making her husband’s lunch. The internet response was pretty brutal as it often is, everything from accusing her of being “weak” to being “a 1950’s housewife setting women back for generations.” While this is an extreme example, such shaming tactics are a real thing in the world.

Along with an attack against marriage itself, there is also an attack against the nature of women, against our nurturing capabilities, anything feminine being perceived as an affront, an offense and an avid endorsement of all things evil, oppressive, and patriarchal.

At first glance this can appear kind of dumb, just another bit of the world’s stupidity, until you start to  also read 10-15 articles about domestic violence and abuse, articles in which EVERY woman would fit the bill of victimhood, EVERY woman is an abuse victim of her own husband. I realize this is Domestic Violence Awareness month and IB did spend several years working at a shelter, so it is not as if I am not keenly aware that abuse is a real thing in the world.

I must say however, some of these articles I am reading are not designed to raise awareness at all, they are not designed to help women escape dangerous relationships, they are flat out designed to mess with women’s heads. To convince ALL women that they are victims of oppression and abuse simply by the nature of institutional patriarchy, and the very institution of marriage itself. ALL women.

I’m not going to link to all these articles and take them down point by point, perhaps another day when I have more time, but my point being, there is an agenda going on here that is not interested in supporting and empowering women at all, it is interested in attacking marriage, shaming men and women for being men and women, and redesigning culture. It grieves me to see this, and to see it lurking beneath domestic violence awareness is ugly. Women face a lot of emotional and spiritual attacks from the world already, we have targets on our backs so to speak,  and so to bear witness to this farther exploitation is really frustrating.

Ironically, while reading some of this stuff,  I had the thought that what I was reading is actually a form of gaslighting, emotional and psychological abuse, fear mongering designed to cause her to doubt herself, to doubt her perceptions, to distrust her own observations about her own marriage or her relationship. It was flat out abuse under the guise of virtue signaling compassion for the well being of women.

I don’t have a solution really, but the first step is usually raising awareness, shining a light on the nature of the problem and bringing it to people’s attention. One way I can discern the difference between genuine love for women and a self serving agenda, is the heart behind the words. Is she a beautiful creature made in the image of God, powerful, having innate worth and value, or is she a powerless victim who should be ashamed of her “inherent” weakness and robbed of her confidence, her ability to perceive reality hijacked by those who claim to know better?

The moment I see women being shamed for who and what we are as women, I can usually find an agenda lurking beneath the surface, and that goes for the secular world as well as the Christian one.

Somebody Make Tomassi Some soup...

Seriously, the poor man is now building an entire philosophy around the fact that when men get sick they cannot get women to make them soup! All Women Are Like That, too.  AWALT alert! Obviously this is blatant evidence of  hypergamy in action and  how the Feminine Imperative has now taken over the world….

Reminds of of that Seinfeld episode, no soup for you! Dang soup Nazi’s.

You all should  be proud of me, I made it darn near 14 hours with no sarcasm or satire, but the Infamous Tomassi Soup Lament is just too much to resist.

He says, “No doubt the Jezebel set of the femosphere will either embrace the commercial’s message by parroting the trope that women hate to be men’s mothers, or they will decry it as portraying women as being heartless, careerist bi&%es – they just can’t win.”

Sadly no. No, what will happen is absolutely nothing. As in, not even Jezebel is going to care about Tomassi’s soup issues. Alas, sad but true. I care however, as in it made me laugh. Snorted coffee out my nose actually.

You can reverse the genders, but I’d probably still laugh.

Men going off to work and failing to stay home and make us soup when we’re sick is called…life. That’s what makes the commercial funny, Tomassi, it reverses gender roles. Yes, this great offense, this huge insult, where a man is forced to zap his own can of soup in the microwave…. is  just called daily life for most wives and moms. So routine, so mundane, we think nothing of it.

Now a man that actually makes your soup, that is so unusual and noteworthy one simply must assume that’s true love in action….

Of empathy, Tomassi says, “Women cannot bear to see a Man experiencing negative emotions such as extreme anger, rage, fear, despair, despondency or depression for extended periods of time…”

Well, not the ones we like anyway. The others that aren’t very nice to us? Well, heck I’ll make some popcorn……Let’s get this fear and despondency thing going on…..

Ruthless, I believe he called us. Darn women are all ruthless.

He goes on to speak of vulnerability and women’s lack of attraction, lack of empathy…..lack of providing  a steaming, hot bowl of soup…

“Yes ladies, I understand you’re not like this. I fully anticipate the “not in my experience” personalization each of you will attempt to adopt to placate any bad juju and your solipsistic mental point of origin.”

I’m attempting to concoct a proper “solipsistic mental place of origin” so as to “placate any bad juju” that might come my way.

Wait, juju??! As in a spell designed to create compliance? Like witchcraft? Like…..gaming foolish young women, taking advantage of their sexual inclinations, psychologically exploiting them into believing they are in love with you, deceiving them into having sex with you? Counting coup? Is not juju the entire nature of the red pill beast?

How about relentlessly bullying young men, calling them beta schmucks, labeling them gammas, applying assorted cultian tactics to control them, falsely leading them to believe there might be some kind of biblical backing for this sort of thing? Telling them that if they don’t swallow the red pill they’ll forever be trapped in the matrix? Convincing them that women hate them, have no souls,  and are only ruled by our superficial biological impulses?

That kind of juju? Red pill juju designed to force compliance?

Ai yi yi…

Tomassi continues, “Just remember that this is the messaging your gender’s imperative is fostering.”

Actually I was thinking more along the lines of baking you a batch of  brownies heavily laced with horse laxatives, but maybe that’s just me….

                                  

Why men should not be defining feminism and femininity

Not really directing this towards anyone specifically, there are many, many articles written by so called feminist men. This particular post was just a classic example of what I speak of, “Why it is necessary to challenge parodies of feminism.”

When I first started speaking out against feminism, what I was not prepared for was so much outright hostility from men. That caught me unaware and surprised me. Also, allow me to play the girl card here, but it was also flippin scary, terrifying actually. Kind of blows all my arguments against male privilege and oppression when “feminist men,” start trying to silence you. That is a parody of feminism right there. There’s nothing quite like having men shrieking at you about male privilege and doing their darndest to prove it’s a real thing in the world.

I hardly know where to start on this post, so I’ll just highlight some of the words being spoken over women, “male privilege, you can’t make a proper fist, way down in the pecking order, slut shaming, she is bossy, women are paid less than men, slavery, denied their very humanity, they are dirty, calloused and seemingly incapable of thought, they will be known as chattel, feminism seeks to right the wrongs of millennia…”

No! Just no. Stop it. That is not the world I walk in nor is it how I define myself. I do not “voluntarily surrender (briefly) that (male) privilege when I don those heels, skirts and bras.”  That is just a total parody of womanhood itself. I surrender nothing! I am not chattel, a slave, denied my humanity, I actually enjoy a rather privileged status. Men open doors for me, they stop by to put a light bulb in my car, they help me carry groceries, they drop some encouraging words on me. In the context of marriage, there is a great deal of protection and provision. I am not “chattel,” it is a bit more like being a princess. Yes, a princess! The  never ending slam on Disney movies did not go unnoticed.

Women have immeasurable value in the biological equation, we produce the children, we look out for hearth and home. We encourage and support men, we provide intimacy and companionship. This is hardwired into who we are, reflected in the natural world around us. Men protect and provide, they enable women to be women, they make it possible for children to grow and prosper.

Feminism seeks to not just erase the masculine, but the feminine as well. It is a rather appalling deception because it teaches women that they don’t walk in the world confidently, as a being having worth and value, as someone who can enjoy the love and protection of men, but rather as an oppressed creature having second class status, a slave, a hated and feared creature, a bit of prey just awaiting the hoards of barbarians and rapists.

Perhaps that is how men who don heels, skirts, and bras feel when they walk in the world of men, perhaps they become acutely aware of the sexual dominance at play there, but that is a distortion, a projection. What many feminist men call “sexual dominance,” and sneer at as if it is a very bad thing, an oppressive thing, is not how most women perceive it at all. It says far more about how feminist men feel about their own selves than how women feel about men in general.

Feminism teaches women that they are prey and that men are predators. It creates a victim narrative that rivals that to be found in the worst of the world of patriarchy and misogyny. If you want to get technical about it, patriarchy itself has often been supported and nurtured by women themselves, as the keepers of culture. Patriarchy and many of the ideas therein are actually designed to protect and provide for women and children. Outside of the structure of culture and civilization, we do become prey, forced to compete in a world of might makes right, just as smaller, weaker competitors. We don’t fare so well under that system!

There is always going to be injustice in the world. There are always going to be yahoos that don’t play fair. But are women truly oppressed? Do we walk in the world as chattel, as prey? According to statistics, not so much. Men have far higher suicide rates than we do, far higher homicide rates, they die earlier, and they are far more likely to get themselves maimed and injured than women are. I’m reminded of an experiment on street harassment, a woman who roamed some city streets and bad neighborhoods for 10 hours seeking evidence of the harassment women face. It took her ten hours just to collect a couple of “hey baby’s!” When men walk the streets looking for trouble like that, they don’t fear harassment, they fear death.

“Oppression” is really a subjective thing, often based on our own personal projections and experiences. Sometimes it involves some confirmation bias, because what you seek, you do tend to find. But is it objectively accurate? Not so much.

I really resent many aspects of feminism, because what they seek, they are also compelled to destroy. Feminist men often speak of equality, but what they really mean, is that they wish to pull women towards what they perceive as dominant, as superior, and that no matter how enlightened they claim to be, it is actually going to be the very masculinity they are rejecting within their own selves.

If one is a man attempting to walk in the world as a woman, one’s perceptions of the world of men and women are going to be that of a man, attempting to perceive his own self through the eyes of women. As interesting as that is, it is still the subjective perceptions of a man and how he experiences his own self. Women rarely perceive men this way, we tend to seek their higher selves.

Not to be impolite here, but I rather enjoy being a girl and really wish that the feminists, the feminist men, the lesbians, the gays, the cross dressers, and the transgendered, would stop trying to define womanhood for every born woman on the planet. I do not wish to pull rank here, but when a woman herself is not even allowed to define what it means to be a woman, we have the strangest kind of male privilege going on, one that often seeks to project itself by force if necessary. Yeah, tolerance ain’t always so tolerant.

Reclaiming Femininity

We live in this chaotic world of ever-changing gender roles, built upon one contradiction after another. I’m still trying to understand how gender can be nothing more than a social construct and yet also so important it’s someone’s very identity and they have the right to choose whatever gender they want. So, “no one should ever be defined by their gender” versus “my perceived gender is my entire identity and it is my civil right to make the whole world acknowledge me.” Usually I enjoy a good paradox, but this one just gives me a headache.  

There are many superficial markers of gender. Pink for girls and blue for boys, for example. Not long ago that was actually reversed, so we would dress our little boys in pink, pink being perceived as the juvenile form of scarlet and scarlet was the color of warriors and soldiers. Pink was a power color, vibrant, strong, masculine. In some museums you can still see the pink christening gowns we used to dress our boys in. Blue was the color of water, it was calm, serene, feminine. Also, unpredictable and stormy. Powerful however, as in the power of the ocean. Of course, outside of the Western world each culture has its own relationship between gender and color.

Pink is my favorite color, ever since I was a tiny girl. My grandmother had pink appliances and I used to love pink tights, pink dresses, pink roses. Pink was frowned upon however, it got dirty too easily, it was seen as a negative marker of girls. With the march of feminism, women and girls rebelled against the very idea of pink. I quickly learned to lie about my favorite color. Once somebody asked me what my favorite color was and I said orange. Orange? Orange is ugly! Well yes, but at least isn’t pink! I was judged acceptable at that point.

Pink-shame. It’s a rather silly thing but I hid my love of pink deep within me like a closely guarded family secret. We do this to little girls in our modern culture, we teach them to deny the nature of themselves, as if it is somehow shameful to think like a girl, throw like a girl, dream like a girl. Rather then teaching girls that there is also strength in gentleness, value in softness, glory in the color pink, we tend to promote this idea that all things perceived as masculine are far superior. We somehow manage to do this, not by elevating men and boys, but by shaming them too. They are allegedly hogging all the masculine things that women and girls are told we want.

Do we truly want them, however? We are never really asked nor do we ever really ask ourselves. We tend to march along with cultural expectation and norms, complying in a million different ways. So many little girls who want to have tea parties with bears and dream of white picket fences are steered away from those things in favor of the more socially acceptable, get an education, become a CEO, delay marriage, more girls in STEM, girls in constant competition with men as if we have something to prove, as if we must prove ourselves worthy. Anything you can do, I can do better.

Recently I read an article about men who are allegedly breaking the gender wall and disclosing their secret feminine side. It was full of praise for their bravery. I could not get over the first one on the list, “I like flowers.” Seriously, is that really a feminine thing?? Would you not simply be a rather miserable human being if you did not like flowers? We speak out a lot about the horrors of rigid gender roles, while at the same time assigning gender to every little thing. Naturally the men in the article were being called brave, strong, masculine, for having the courage to….embrace the precise opposite. Believe it or not, in the grand scheme of things, “liking flowers” is really not a significant act of bravery.

Somewhat amusing, but I imagine if those men had said something about enjoying and embracing all things perceived as masculine while rejecting things perceived as feminine, they would have learned a thing or two about bravery and the need to grow a thick skin, at least on the internet. Loving your own gender, living in your own skin, is somewhat frowned upon these days.

I love little boys, snips and snails and puppy dog tails, and I love men too, and the things they like, the way their brains work, how they perceive the world, but I do not really desire those things for myself and never have, because within me is an entirely different world that has a worth and value all of its own.

Gender Fears

Men and women really are different obviously, and that’s a delightful thing. It baffles me why anyone would seek to make us the same. We tend to try to do that all over our culture right now. Recently I’ve been observing this happen to our superheros, we must have a female Thor, so Thor has a sex change. The Green Lantern must be made female, why do we not have a female Green Lantern?? Dr. Watson in Sherlock Holmes must be portrayed by a female, and on and on the narrative goes, the rewriting of cultural memes and the transformation of our icons past.

This is actually kind of lazy and a bit demeaning to women, coming under the guise of feminism or not. I mean seriously, the world needs more superheroes, not recycled ones from long ago, freshly given a new politically correct persona. Not only does that deprive us of new and creative female superheros, it’s boring as heck because it’s been so overdone.

From observing people and reading literature, I’ve come to conclude that what men fear the most is being rendered insignificant. To be edited out of the equation by women and tossed aside in favor of something more appealing. That makes perfect sense within the context of biology and culture, because the role of men and their place in society, in the family, has been getting rewritten for the past 50-60 years. Biologically speaking, that fear of being erased, rendered insignificant, would be innate. It’s cruel and cold and clinical but so much of men’s value in to the biological equation has revolved around their expendability. Men have literally been called to die protecting women, families, children, for centuries.

Personally I don’t want anyone to have to die for me, but this little bit of truth is a good one to be aware of, because women really are called to pour some honor into men, to value them, to let them know they are significant, that they do matter. Not just in the context of husbands and wives, but all over our culture. Men will die for you. We see this all the time in first responders, in our military, in men protecting families, in health issues and early heart attacks from working too hard. There are some real yahoos out there and women sometimes lose their lives protecting others too, but in general, it is men who more frequently lay down their lives. What’s fair, what’s equal, is to let them know their sacrifices are not insignificant. They matter. They are not invisible to us.

What women tend to fear the most is being feared by men. That is an odd one, but it begins to make sense if you consider that fearful men often pose the most danger to women. What you fear, you are driven to control and destroy. Instinctively women know this and most  tend to steer clear of fearful men. Also, when men are scared of us, so much for their ability to protect and provide. If little old me scares you, you won’t be of much use when a saber tooth tiger shows up.

There is a lot of criticism and confusion over women as thug chasers, men who don’t understand why women sometimes pass over nice guys in favor of felons. Because women get broken too! Because the best way to feel better about your own issues is to seek a man more messed up than you are, and because thugs generally appear not to fear women. Heck they don’t even fear social norms. Often dumber than a box of rocks, but no fear. No fear is attractive.

Women also often feel compelled to “fix” broken men and in a healthy context, this is a good thing. Women are designed to bring out men’s better nature, their higher selves. Some men don’t have a better nature, but hey, biology marches right along anyway.

Biology matters. Working within the framework of who we are as people creates a lot more harmony and joy in the world. This little dynamic with our superheros and icons past is really an odd one. It plays into men’s fear of being erased, of being rendered insignificant, and puts women in the position of now being scary. So men fear you, now what? What’s the next chapter in this story??

It is angst and longing and loneliness. Someday our female Thor will get tired of punching men in the face and realize that what she truly desires deep within herself is intimacy with her enemy, but by then it will be too late, because she will have annihilated them all.