Sunday, November 30, 2014

Fifteen Generations

In a discussion elsewhere I happened to mention that my family was already on the North American continent prior to the Mayflower landing in Plymouth in 1640, and was asked to prove it.  This is what I provided as evidence.


The Butler Line of Descent from Gerard Spencer.


First Generation
Gerard Spencer was born on 20 May 1576 in Stotfold, Bedfordshire, England and died before 8 Jun 1646 in Stotfold, Bedfordshire, England.  Gerard married Alice Whitbread, daughter of John Whitbread and Eleanor, on 10 Nov 1600 in Upper Gravenhurst, Bedfordshire, England. Alice was born about 1578 in Upper Gravenhurst, Bedfordshire, England. They had five children: John, Thomas, Michael, Gerard, and William.



2nd Generation
William Spencer was born before 11 Oct 1601 in Stotfold, Bedfordshire, England.  He traveled to the New World as a colonist in 1630 and died in Hartford, Connecticut in May of 1640 at age 39.  William married Agnes Harris, daughter of Bartholomew Harris and Elizabeth Collamore, about 1633 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  Agnes was born before 6 Apr 1604 in Barnstaple, Devon, England and died after 1680 in Hartford, Connecticut. They had three children: Elizabeth, Sarah, and Samuel.


3rd Generation
Sarah Spencer was born about 1635 and died on 3 Nov 1691 in Hartford, Connecticut about age 56.  Sarah married John Case about 1656 in Simsbury, Connecticut.  John died on 21 Feb 1704 in Simsbury, Connecticut. They had five children: Elizabeth, Mary, John, William, and Samuel.


4th Generation
Mary Case was born on 22 Jun 1660 in Windsor, Connecticut and died on 22 Aug 1725 in Simsbury, Connecticut at age 65.  Mary married William Alderman in 1679 in Windsor, Connecticut.  William was born about 1657 and died in 1697 in Farmington, Connecticut about age 40. They had two children: Thomas and William Alderman.


5th Generation
Thomas Alderman was born on 11 Jan 1683 in Simsbury, Connecticut and died in 1715 in Cohansey, New Jersey at age 32.  Thomas married Mary Seagrave on 27 Apr 1702 in East Hampton, Long Island, New York.  They had five children:  Mary, Thomas, William, Daniel, and an Unnamed Infant who did not survive childbirth.


6th Generation
Daniel Alderman was born in 1711 and died before Oct 1785.  Daniel married Abigail Harris, daughter of Nathaniel Harris and Miriam Brooks, in 1740 in Salem County, New Jersey.  Abigail was born on 26 Mar 1720.  They had seven children:  John, Rachel, Mary, Daniel, David, Hannah, and Abigail.


7th Generation
Daniel Alderman was born on 11 Mar 1748 in Deerfields, New Jersey and died on 8 Aug 1824 in Duplin County, North Carolina at age 76.  Daniel married Sarah Newton, daughter of Isaac M. Newton and Jemima Chambers, on 4 Aug 1772 in Duplin County, North Carolina.  Sarah was born on 20 Oct 1757 in Duplin County, NC and died after 1831.  They had eight children: Jemima, David, Rachel, Sarah, Isaac, Mary, Elisha, and Elizabeth.


8th Generation
Sarah Alderman was born on 7 Jan 1782 in Duplin NC and died before 1830.  Sarah married James Newton (her second cousin), son of Jacob Newton and Lois Jones,.  James was born about 1777 in NC and died after 1850 in FL.  They had three children: Martha, Hannah Carolyn, and Jane.


9th Generation
Hannah Carolyn Newton was born on 17 February May 1821 in Edgecombe County, North Carolina and died on 26 Dec 1875 in Calhoun County, Florida at age 54.  Hannah married Ennis Pippin, son of Solomon Pippin III and Milleyas his 2nd wife, on 2 Oct 1841 in Thomas County, Georgia.  Ennis was born on 10 Apr 1810 in Edgecombe County, North Carolina and died on 10 Aug 1892 in Clarksville, Calhoun County, Florida at age 82.  They had 14 children: Daniel Marian, Nathaniel Amos, Nancy Julia, Mary Elizabeth, John B., Amanda Jane, William Ennis, Marrie Nathan, Bennet Washington Pate, Solomon, Martha, Milly Jane, Adah Susan, and Hannah Carolyn.


10th Generation
Mary Elizabeth Pippen was born on 23 Dec 1847 in Calhoun County, Florida, and died on 10 Dec 1925 in Altha, Florida at age 77.  Mary married John Butler, son of William Butler and Ann, on 30 May 1865 in Calhoun County, Florida.  John was born about 1841 in Georgia (his exact time and place of birth is unrecorded) and died on 17 Aug 1899 in Jackson County, Florida at about age 58.  They had 12 children:  Mary Elizabeth, William Ennis, Mary Ann, Hannah, Nancy K., Amanda, John Franklin, Lucy, James Henry, Lovie, Daniel Amos, and Jessie.


11th Generation
John Franklin Butler was born on 20 Feb 1878 in Calhoun County, Florida, and died on 1 Jul 1934 in Orlando, Florida at age 56.  John married Nancy Ann Porter, daughter of William T. Porter and Francis (Fannie) G. Worthington, on 3 Jan 1903 in Jackson County, Florida.  Nancy was born on 10 Aug 1887 in Jackson County, Florida and died on 18 Mar 1943 in Orlando, Florida at age 55.  They had nine children: Matthew Franklin, Parilee, Charles Cartes, William Bertie, Lavada, Rosetta, Vernon Sylvester, Annie Lucille, and an unnamed Baby Girl who did not survive childbirth.


12th Generation
Vernon Sylvester Butler was born in Altha, Calhoun County, Florida on 5 March 1922, and died in Orlando, Florida in 1986.  Vernon married Vinnie Pearl Helms, daughter of Alto Lee Helms and Callie Vedora Campbell, in Orlando, Florida.  Vinnie Pearl was born in Tangerine, Orange, Florida on January 22, 1927 and died in Apopka, Florida in 2011.  They had four children:  Jack V., Patricia, Sandra, and Charles.


13th Generation
Jack V. Butler was born.  Jack married Cheryl Elaine Macfarlane, daughter of Thomas Graham Macfarlane and Ruth Elaine Pinkerton.  They had three children: Jack V. Jr., Aaron and Nathan.


14th Generation
Jack V. Butler, Jr. was born.


Which makes my children the fifteenth generation since Gerard Spencer.  William Spencer, Gerard's son, was the earliest European ancestor I have to live in North America.  And he was here before the Mayflower landed in 1640.

Saturday, November 29, 2014

Let's Look at the Numbers

Got an angry note from Jennell Jaquays, noted game designer, graphic artist, and trans-gender social justice warrior, in regard to my essay on rape culture and why I think its a myth.  I'm not going to quote her, but her anger at me is based on two things.


The first thing she's basing her anger on is that I obviously do not and cannot understand rape culture because I am a white middle-aged cis-gendered male and thus am inherently prejudiced about the subject, what with being a potential rapist myself.


This is funny (as in humorous) to me for two reasons.  The first reason is that being told that I am incapable of understanding something due to characteristics that are inherent to me and that are not under my control at all, especially while being lectured about supposed prejudice, is amazingly hypocritical.  The second reason is because I am a rape survivor, and thus I understand rape and what it means to be a victim of it better than anyone who hasn't been raped, like Jennell herself, could possibly imagine.


Surprise!


Anyway, the second basis for her anger is apparently that women live in fear every time they leave the home because they never know when they'll be attacked because 1 in 4 women and that men need to be taught to not rape because women never know which man will be a rapist and after all because all men are potential rapists and men are just rapists at heart anyway and you cannot trust men to not be overcome by their base urges and women get rapes all the time every time they step out of the house it can happen to everyone all the time as long as they were female.


No, these were not her exact words.


Her exact words were a more flowery version of this message, though, and included a blatantly insulting comment regarding my intelligence and my "obvious anger toward all women," because one cannot disagree with these people without being angry misogynists, obviously.


Okay, Jennell.  I'll bite.


Let's look at these phantom rapists that Jennell says are laying in wait for a random woman around every corner, behind every bush, and in every shadow every time she happens to leave her home.


According to the Centers for Disease Control (who, remember, recently changed their official definition of rape so that it no longer includes rapes in which a woman forcibly causes a man to penetrate her), an average of 90,000 rapes happen every year.  Now, let's maximize the horrific nature of this statistic and assume that each and every one of these 90,000 rapes was a separate incidence of rape perpetrated by a different rapist on a different victim (in other words, we're ignoring the existence of serial rapists, rapists who have raped the same victim multiple times, and rape victims who have been raped multiple times by different people).


Let's also assume that the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network's claim that 54% of all rapes against women go unreported (Note:  this claim is false and has been repudiated by the FBI's crime statistics) is also true.  That would mean that 90,000 is actually only 46% of all rapes committed.  So, a little multiplication later, and we find that, given all our assumptions, the actual number of rapes committed in a year is 195,652.


(I actually rounded to the nearest whole number because the idea of 17% of a rape just doesn't make sense.  And remember, we're assuming that each and every one of those 195,652 rapes is a separate incident with separate victims and separate offenders.)


A quick Google search of the term "Current US Population"gives us a total population of 313.9 million people.  When we divide the number of rapes by the total US population, we find that the percentage of the population who are real and actual rapists is 0.06%.  Now for those of you who are numerically challenged, you read 0.06% as "six one-hundreths of one percent."


0.06% of 313,900,000 is 188,340.


That's a miniscule number compared to the total population, which means that while rape does happen, the chances of it happening to a randomly selected woman at a randomly selected time aren't really worth being overly worried about.  We're not talking lottery odds, but according to the FBI, you've got a better chance of walking into a convenience store robbery when you stop off to by a slushee than you do of being raped by a random man you encounter on the street.


Wait a second.


I forgot something.


Hold up.


The 0.06% figure is wrong.


I forgot one of the most important other claims.  That claim is that 99% of all rapists are men (this claim is based on the fact that 99% of all people arrested for rape are men; 99% of all people arrested for men are male, of course, beause nobody in law enforcement gives a shit about punishing women who commit rape...  but I digress...)


For the sake of argument, let's just round that up and say that all rapists are men.  Just for the sake of argument, we'll ignore the fact that women commit rape all the time.


Anyway, men make up 49.2% of the total US population, which means there are approximately 154.5 million men in this country.  So when we run the numbers, the percentage of rapists becomes 0.1% of the total US population.  That's "one tenth of one percent" for those who don't understand fractions.


0.1% of 313,900,000 is 313,900.  That's certainly a larger number than 188,340, but its still an an absurdly small number of people compared to the entire population of the country.  It still isn't enough people for any given woman to really have anything to worry about, when you look at it from the point of view of probability.


Oh, hold on a second!


Let pretend that the number of rapes that go unreported isn't 54% (a figure that we know is false, remember) but rather 99%.  I've seen certain feminist groups make that claim, despite it being even more ridiculous than 54%.  That means there are actually just under 9 million rapes per year.  When we do the entire math thing again for the whole of the United States population, we get just over 2.8% of the population who are rapists.  When we do the numbers for just the men in America, we get 5.8% of the male population.


2.8% of 313,900,000 is 8,789,200.


Sorry, but even though we're now talking about millions of rapists, compared to the entire population of the country, we're still talking about an infintessimally small chance of a woman meeting a random rapist on any given excursion out of her home.


Also, remember that we arrived at 8,789,200 rapists by assuming the ABSOLUTE WORST CASE SCENARIO.  Meaning that the actual number would be smaller than this.


So, what does all this math ultimately mean?  Glad you asked.


What it means is this.


NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY TO COOK THE BOOKS TO SUPPORT THE IDEA, BEING AFRAID OF EVERY SINGLE MAN IN AMERICA BECAUSE THEY MIGHT JUST BE A RAPIST MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE AT ALL!


The numbers simply do not support any reason for women to fear going out because they might get raped.


So where the hell are women getting the idea that they need to be terrified of leaving their homes?  Where are they getting the idea that they have to be afraid of every man in the country, because any of of them might suddenly leap out of the bushes and rape them?


Where do you think?  They're constantly being told over and over and over again by the Professional Women Are Nothing But Victims Industry that they are likely to be assaulted by men every time they go out their front door.  They have also been convinced that the whole of society is to blame for this terrible problem and that something must be done about it and something must be done about it RIGHT NOW and that anyone who denies this horrible horrible war on women must be nothing more than a woman-hating rape apologist.


If I thought it would do any good, I'd beg Organized Feminism and the Feminist Social Justice Warriors to stop the fear-mongering already.  It serves absolutely no purpose at all except to create a problem that otherwise does not exist.


And before one of you throws Mary Koss and that "1 in 4 women" statistic she cooked up at me in response, remember that I can document how dishonest Dr. Koss was, and how she intentionally skewed the results of her research to reach a pre-determined conclusion by, among other things, applying the "rape victim" label to women who specifically told Koss that they weren't rape victims.  At best, Mary Koss is dishonest and a rape-apologist at worst (she was once asked why she didn't believe male rape victims existed, and her answer was "When it happens to men, its not really rape;"  yes, she really said this).  So Mary Koss is an utterly unreliable source.


I've got an idea.  How about you own up to the fact that feminism invented the "rape crisis" as part of an anti-male political agenda and then move on to a real problem you can really fix.  Wouldn't that be something?

Friday, November 28, 2014

Conservatives Hate America

Let's make one thing tragically clear right now.  Conservatives in general are not patriots, and the more hardcore conservative they are, the less patriotic they are.  The very idea of a "conservative patriot" right now would be a complete joke if it weren't so fucking tragic.  They are far from being patriots.  No, conservatives are too reckless and dangerous to be patriots.  They consistently veer closer and closer to being traitors to this country, and in the last twenty or thirty years they've enthusiastically crossed that line several times.


During the American Revolution, the Conservatives were actually against fighting alongside Britain.  They sided with the British against their own colonies.  They were the "Party of No" way back then, too.  Keep in mind that a conservative is someone who wishes to "promote, preserve and or restore traditional values, hierarchies, and institutions."  Well, in 1776, that meant they wanted absolutely no part in separating from England and the monarchy.  They liked being subjects of King George III.  They were called "Tories" then, and that name is still used in England by the Conservative Party.


Conservatives in this country started on the wrong side of history, and that's where they've been ever since.


After the American Revolution, many conservatives fled back to England, or ended up moving to Canada or one of the Caribbean islands.  Good riddance.  Unfortunately, many conservatives fled to Florida, which at the time of the Revolution was the one British colony (the British having acquired it from the Spanish) that sided with England during that time.  When Florida was acquired by the United States, the US got all those traitors back.


After the Revolution was over, the conservatives in the new United States began predicting the country's demise.  Almost universally, they believed that the "common rabble" could not govern themselves without the entire thing falling to chaos and anarchy.  To a man they refused to call themselves "American", and many vocally expressed anticipation on the British returning to America and "liberating" the colonies from the "barbaric commoners" who had taken it over.  As such, when the War of 1812 broke out, they once again returned to form and supported the British against the nation of which they were supposedly citizens.


That same war was the one that finally dashed the hopes of American conservatives that Britain would come and "liberate" the American colonies.  The conservatives, as I noted, might have welcomed the British with open arms, but their love of the British died when the British began looting, burning, and pillaging everywhere they went.  The British also incited the various Indian tribes to attack frontier settlements, once again stopped trade, and so on. 


This didn't sit well with the American conservatives.  Their supposed saviors turned out to be just another pack of rampaging barbarians, and for the first time the conservatives began identifying themselves as "American."


Better late than never, I suppose.


Make no mistake, though.  The nascent loyalty of the American conservatives to their own country was weak, tenuous, and easily broken.  This was readily apparent in 1861, when conservatives decided that they'd rather betray their country than put up with Abraham Lincoln as president.  They stomped off in a huff so they could form a nation where "states rights" triumphed Federal law, and where all right-thinking, decent Americans were free to own as many other human beings as they could afford.  This act of arrogant conservative ideology run amok killed over seven hundred thousand Americans, and brought about the first assassination of a political leader on American soil.


You'd think that such a shameful chapter in their history would have at least shamed conservatives into thinking before they started talking, but no.  One hundred and fifty years later, the descendants of these traitors are proud of their ancestor's treason.  Conservatives proudly fly the Confederate flag.  Sometimes they actually place that treasonous banner in a place of honor over the national flag of the United States.


Not only that, but many of them seem to be planning another try at secession.  Several Texas conservatives (including Rick Perry, the current governor of that state as I write this) have remarked openly about seceding.  Up in Alaska, former governor-turned-vice-presidential-candidate Sarah Palin belongs to a group called the Alaskan Independence Party, which advocates secession.  Local and state-level conservative politicians from Wyoming, including former Vice-President Dick Cheney, have remarked that the people of Wyoming are actively considering secession.


Ironically, all this fuss and feathers involving secession is once again been caused because these people would rather betray their country than put up with Barack Obama in the White House.  Its the same childish posturing, the same macho angst.  The same bluster.  And it just goes to show how shallow any real patriotic feeling flows among these so-called "conservative patriots."


Conservatives have always wanted to thwart the democratic process, since the beginning.  When the Constitution was being written, it was the conservatives who wanted to restrict citizenship to white men who owned property above a certain number of acres.  They also wanted Senators hand-picked by state office-holders.  The reason for these two measures was simple:  they were "conserving" the aristocracy.


By the way, these same measures are precisely how the old aristocracy has the British House of Lords rigged up.


It is a statement of historical fact that the conservatives in this country have stood in opposition to every effort to expand the vote away from white male property owners.  They have also stood opposed to all efforts to have most government positions, including senators, congressmen, and even the presidency itself open to popular vote. 


They have stopped at nothing, and will continue to stop at nothing, in order to interfere with the popular vote. 


Over the years they have thrown up poll taxes, literacy testing, blatant intimidation, inconvenient and unnecessarily strict ID requirements, setting up onerous and punitive restrictions on voter registration, outlawing voter registration programs, providing insufficient numbers of voting machines, blatantly rigging elections, tampering with vote counting, and even getting the United States Supreme Court to violate a sovereign state's Constitution in order to hand-pick a President, just to name a few of the malodorous and unethical tactics that have been used by conservatives to lower voter turnout among the "common folk".


And do not think that these tactics are things of the past.  Many of them are being put in place as I write this. 


Quite recently as I write this, conservatives such as Justice Antonin Scalia, Governor Rick Perry of Texas, former congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul, Senator Zell Miller of Georgia, and many others have actively pursued the repeal of the 17th Amendment to the US Constitution, which grants the right to vote for their senators to the people of the United States.  Instead, they want Senators to be hand-picked by the state legislatures.  In other words, they want to take power away from the common folk and hand it back to the aristocracy.


Even worse, since the last time conservatives were allowed to nearly bring this country to its knees back in the 1920s, conservatives have deliberately been disseminating propaganda which paints any government that isn't run by themselves as evil, corrupt, and bad for the nation.  When they aren't in control, conservatives do everything they can to disrupt and delegitimize the political authorities of the duly elected liberals who are in charge.  This is a hair's breadth away from High Treason.  K'ung Fu-tzu, the Chinese philosopher and politician known better today in the United States as "Confucius", once said that it would be better for nation to lose its security and all of its food than for the nation's government to lose the trust of the people.  Many otherwise powerful nations over history have fallen apart because such trust was lost.  Once the people lose their trust in their government, civil strife and anarchy are sure to follow.


And do not for one moment think that the conservatives don't know this.  They can read history just as well as I can, and they know what it means.  Why do you think they're trying to undermine trust in the government?  It's a power play.  They believe that once the common people mistrust their government, they'll be able to sweep in, making promises left right and center, and the people will love them so much that they (the common folk) will never know that the conservatives want to bring us back to the days of feudalism.


This nefarious scheme has won conservatives elections, but it has been one of the most disastrous strategies for the country itself of any political tactic in the history of the United States.  This scheme intentionally fosters deep and passionate division among the people, and a divided people are much easier to rule.  Conservatives are gleefully fanning the flames of not just disagreement but outright hatred for all things that aren't conservative, no matter how moderate these non-conservative things might be.  Over the past fifty years, conservatives have spit venomous bile at the likes of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, and most particularly Barack Obama, along with any ideas and proposals they make.


And they do this even when the ideas and proposals were originally put forth by conservatives, like "ObamaCare", which began life as "RomneyCare," a creation of former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts.


This is the point at which some of my Libertarian friends will say, "There is no difference between parties.  They both do these things."  No.  This is a blatant lie.  The vitriol spewed by conservatives for their liberal counterparts are entire orders of magnitude more venomous and hate-filled, and more damaging to national unity and stability than anything coming from the liberal side.


Conservatives value party ideology and dogma over American ideals and values, including the all-important idea that we are one nation, united.  Guided by their disloyalty, conservatives seek to divide and separate themselves, whom they consider "superior", from all others, whom they regard as "inferior."  This naturally pits them in direct opposition to most Americans.  but then, they do not like most Americans.  They demonize and blame the country's problems on the blacks, on the Hispanics, on the poor, on the homosexuals, on the immigrants, on unions, on teachers, on firefighters, on government workers, on lawyers, and naturally, on liberals.  They blame anyone and everyone who is not one of them.  Not a fact in the world can possibly justify this arrogant assumption of superiority, nor support the blatantly prejudicial thinking that supports it, but conservatives truly believe that if you spread a lie wide enough and often enough times, if they spew their prejudicial hate-mongering message loudly enough, just enough gullible voters will believe it, and once enough people believe it, no one will ever remember that it all started out as a big fat lie.


The sad thing is, they're right about this.


So, as they are by nature in opposition to the interests of the American people, a Conservative's only real means of controlling the people is by way of dividing and conquering.  Conservatives know they cannot win by standing on their positions and their true agenda.  Rather, they must lie, deceive, frighten, divide, and subjugate.  The whole idea of a United States of America is contrary to conservative objectives.  What they want is an America divided into a caste system; a distinctive separation into a hierarchy between the politically and economically powerful haves and the utterly disenfranchised and subjugated have-nots.  They want a system of oppressors (themselves) and oppressed (everyone else).  And boy howdy, do they have a real problem with the idea of "We the People..."


To quote William F. Buckley, conservatives stand athwart democracy, yelling, "Stop!"


Conservative politicians wrap themselves in the flag and wallow in false patriotism.  What they are actually doing is everything they can to stop the democratic process while denigrating and foment distrust for the American government.  From Warren G. Harding's corrupt cronyism to McCarthy's witch hunts to Nixon's paranoia to Reagan's blatant disregard for the law to Bush's willful incompetence to the unprecedented obstructionism of today's Republican party, conservatives in America are actively working to murder their own nation.


Because they hate their own nation.

Thursday, November 27, 2014

My Thoughts on "Rape Culture" in the United States

There has been a whole lot of talk about how this country (the United States) is ruled over by a "rape culture," and that because of it, no woman is safe.



Just so we're clear, let me quote Wikipedia:



"Rape Culture is a term which originated in women’s studies and feminist theory, describing a culture in which rape and sexual violence against women are common and in which prevalent attitudes, norms, practices, and media condone, normalize, excuse, or tolerate sexual violence against women. Examples of behaviors commonly associated with rape culture include victim blaming, sexual objectification and rape-apologism."


The problem with the "rape culture" myth in this country is that it is just that:  a myth.  And the primary facet of the myth is that every single woman or girl in this country is in danger from every single man or boy in this country.  And that is just nonsense.



Now, I will openly admit to not reading every single news item that floats down the stream, and I don't watch every single talking head on cable news.  But I do try to pay attention, and I honestly cannot remember ever hearing anyone try to seriously excuse rape in this country.  Not once have I ever heard anyone try to claim that the victim of a rape deserved it.  Not ever.  Not even when the victim was a man.



On the contrary, our society portrays rape as one of the most horrific crimes that can be visited on a woman or on a girl by men and boys.  When people make light if it, they are publicly shamed for their insensitivity and thoughtlessness.



And yes, I specified women and girls as the victims and men and boys as the victimizers specifically and on purpose.  Why was I gender specific?   For a very simple reason.  The myth of "rape culture" in this country ignores the existence of male rape victims.  Completely ignores it.  Of course, male victims of rape not only actually exist despite no one talking about them, they exist in greater numbers than female rape victims.  The people who talk about rape culture as if every female human in the country is an inch away from being raped never ever mention the male victims.



Except when they're making jokes about prison, that is.



But there is a definite double-standard at play here in this country.  Think about this for a moment:  a teen-aged girl is raped by an adult man, society goes ape-shit.  We cannot get that man convicted and in prison (or better yet, executed) fast enough.  But when a teen-aged boy is raped by an adult woman, a lot of people, including people who ought to know better, start snickering to themselves and each other about how the male victim just won the lottery.  I heard one woman actually say that one teenaged male rape victim should "stop complaining" because he obviously "wanted it."



He wanted to get raped by an adult woman?  Really?  And why did he want this?  Apparently because he was male and was a teenager and no man ever turns down sex!  Didn't you know that?



It has been argued that "rape culture" produces the idea that a male victim of a female rapist "got lucky", in the same manner that it produces the idea that a female victim was "asking for it."  I don't think either attitude is systematic of the culture, because the overwhelming majority of people of either gender would consider such attitudes unacceptable if one were to ask for opinions on them.  I think, instead, what is happening is that once again a small number of assholes (again, of both genders) are being used to paint the overwhelming majority of people with a very broad brush.



The majority agrees with neither the attitude that the woman was asking for it, nor that the man was just getting lucky.  The overwhelming majority holds that rape is one of the most traumatic experiences a person can visit on another.  No one with any sort of moral sense or credibility even attempts to excuse away a rape.



That's not a "culture".  That's a logical fallacy.



Though it is interesting that the majority of the assholes who do agree with either of those sentences more often tend to agree with "the man was getting lucky" than "the woman was asking for it."  Just saying.



I mentioned jokes about prison earlier.  Here's the truth.  The number of men raped each year in prison is higher than the number of women who are raped regardless of their circumstances.



Yes, you read that right.  More men are raped in prison than women are raped anywhere.



In 2012, there were approximately 300,000 reported rapes of men in federal and state prisons across the country.  Also in 2012, there were 240,000 rapes of women, either in or out of prison, across the country.  Now, it is true that there are no hard and fast numbers regarding the number of men who were raped outside of prison, but even if it were just one man a year raped outside of prison, 300,001 male rape victims still outnumber 240,000 rape victims.  And no one ever mentions this.



And notable among the people who never mention this are the people who keep talking about "Rape Culture" as something set up to persecute and endanger women.



What's more, when a woman is proven to have made false rape allegations, our culture is quick to make excuses and protect her.  The same people who rant and rave about "rape culture" go to war to defend the woman who made the false report.  Aren't we supposed to protect victims of crime and not the perpetuators of crime?



I know this is going to come as a shock to you, but when a false rape allegation occurs, the victim is the man who was falsely accused, not the liar who destroyed that man's life.  Punishing false accusers will not discourage future rape victims from coming forward, it will discourage future liars from lying.



We don't live in a rape culture.  What we live in is a culture that says that men and boys are criminals because they are men and boys.  It says that violence against men and boys is common and acceptable.  Our culture is one in which the prevalent attitudes, norms, practices, and media condone, normalize, excuse, or tolerate all forms of violence against men and boys.  Examples of behavior commonly associated with anti-male violent culture include victim blaming, sexual objectification, rape=apologism, and false rape allegation-appologism.



The reality is, men have much more to fear from women in our culture than women have to fear from men.



No one would ever think of laughing at acts of domestic violence against a woman or a girl in a movie or television show if they want to keep their jobs, their friends, and their family.  But commercial after commercial after commercial, television show after television show after television show, movie after movie after movie all show men and boys as the proper object of cultural ridicule.  Violence and abuse against men in commercials, television, and movies is so common no one even notices it anymore, and when it is noticed and complained about, apologists leap from the woodwork to defend it.



When was the last time a man murdered his wife and children and then had his crimes excused and explained away by someone because the man in question had been abused as a child or because he suffered domestic abuse at the hands of his wife?



Never, that's when.



Remember the so-called "burning bed" defense?  A woman was acquitted of first degree murder because she said she had been so horribly abused by her husband that the only way she saw to escape the hell she was living in was by setting him on fire while he was asleep?  Lifetime Movie Network made a film about this woman.  She was played by Farrah Fawcett in what many people believed to be that actresses' greatest performance of her life.



Well about that same time that the woman was setting her husband on fire, a man was on trial for first degree murder.  He, too claimed that he was such a victim of abuse that the only way out was to murder his wife.  So he waited for his wife to fall asleep, took her gun (note, it was her gun), and shot her in the head.



The woman who set her husband on fire was found not guilty due to circumstances.  The man who shot his wife was sentenced to the electric chair.



Yeah, sounds like a culture women need to live in fear of to me... 



The pervasive fear of men in our culture is based on nothing.  It is utterly unfounded.  Its bullshit.  It is an intentionally generated product of calculated political theater and feminism, which has become an ideology of hate.  And because there are certain individuals and groups that have profited greatly from perpetuating the myth that men are evil, the myth will, unfortunately, continue.



So now comes the hard part.  Now that we have identified the problem, what do we do about it?



I think the first step is for people (all people, men and women) to realize that life is not a race to see who the biggest victim is.  This is not a "male vs. female" situation where there's only so much care and support to go around.  This is a human thing.  So understanding that neither gender has the high ground (which is a horrible way to put it, but I hope you get what I'm meaning) is the right place to start.



The second step is for people to realize that the "common assumptions" regarding gender relations in this country are, for the most part, cooked up by people who have a seriously financial state in keeping men and women at each other's throats.  I call them the "Professional Women Are Victims Industry,"  because that's basically how they make their money:  convincing women that they are victims, always will be victims, and cannot ever be independent strong human beings, while simultaneously telling men that they are monsters who should be ashamed to exist because they were unlucky enough to not be born female.



This is why I think some of the loudest and most effective voices in the Men's Rights Movement are women, despite the "feminist party line" that all MRAs are hairy-knuckled rapists and misogynists.  These women have taken a look around and seen that the "official party line" of feminism has gone from being a fight for gender equality (a goal for which me must all strive) to a fight to protect and enlarge female entitlement and privilege no matter how much doing so hurts men.



Which brings me to the third thing.



Modern feminist thought must become open to criticism without the critic being immediately lambasted with the misogynist brush.  That's a shaming tactic that needs to stop immediately.  As Carl Sagan once said, "When you are no longer allowed to ask questions, freedom of thought stops."  The idea that the only people who would question the actions and intentions of the modern feminist movement are misogynists denies the existence of women who gladly describe themselves as "anti-feminist" simply because they believe that there is no such thing as an improper question.



We need to stop living in a culture of overblown fear and artificial hysteria.

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Me and My "Attitude"

Recently someone I thought was a friend called me out for being a "woman hater."  She did this because I wasn't letting her get away with enforcing a standard of behavior that was blatantly misandrist in nature.  Specifically, she thought it was perfectly fine for women to beat on men, in public.  In addition, she was bragging about the fact that women could do this without suffering any sort of social consequence.


Her exact words were "Yeah.  I get away with hitting men in public because I'm a girl.  Live with it.  You're only complaining because you hate women.  I've known about your attitude and I've put up with it, but now I'm just sick and tired of you always whining about women and the fact that they're finally getting a little equal treatment."


My "attitude."


I have an attitude.


Okay, let's talk about my attitude and what's behind it.


What drives my "attitude" in this case is this:  I acknowledge that people are not physically, intellectually, or psychologically equal.  We are all different, and those differences are what makes each individual person worthy of consideration. Different strengths, different weaknesses.  That, as they say, is what makes horse races.


But despite our differences, I believe, ultimately, that everyone, be they male, female, old, young, black, white, brown, peach, tan, olive-skinned, gay, straight, bi, trans, cis, believer, atheist, left-handed, right-handed, short, tall, able-bodied, disabled, conservative, or liberal, deserves to be on an equal footing with every other person.


That's what I believe.


I am for ultimate equality.


We all have rights, and those rights should be the same for every person.  If Person A enjoys a right, Persons B through Z and back should all have the same rights.  No one should have an advantage over anyone else when it comes to legal standing, privilege, or civil rights.


If you treat a person one way, you must treat all people that way.


That's what drives my attitude.  So if its wrong for a man to hit a woman, its just as wrong for a woman to hit a man.  True gender equality.  That's what I believe.


"Oh!"  I hear someone asking in the back of the lecture hall.  "That means you're a femini--"


No.


It really doesn't.


Not one damn bit.


I reject the assertion that because I ultimately campaign for equal treatment of all people that I am a feminist.  I am not a feminist.  I am a humanist.


Despite the claims of leading Feminists to the contrary, Feminism is not about "equality for all", but rather is about protecting and expanding the special interests of women, and only women (its in the name, folks).  This is not unexpected, nor is it necessarily a bad thing.  But when someone claims that feminism means "equality for everyone", I call bullshit.


I refuse to believe that feminism really is about "equality for all" until I see actual feminists campaigning for the benefit of male domestic violence victims with the same fervor, strength, and determination that they use when campaigning for the benefit of female domestic violence victims.  Or demanding that female criminals be receive the same sentencing that their male counterparts get for committing the same crime.  When I see them actively fighting anti-gay bills that leave gay women alone because they were written in a gender-specific manner, I might start believing it.  When I see them making an effort to punish corporations who use men as laughing stocks in their commercials.  When they start campaigning against the public use of casual violence against men.  When they start advocating for the punishment of women who make false reports of rape that have destroyed some innocent man's life.  When they start advocating for funding of rape counseling and shelters for male victims.  When they advocate for a level playing field when it comes to child custody laws.  When she show acceptance of men and women who want to be stay-at-home mothers and fathers.  When they stop spitting on women who freely choose to take their husband's name in a divorce rather than retain their own (or rather than using a hyphenated combination).  When they stop condemning women for following the strictures of their religions.  When they stop making excuses for women who do things they loudly and violently react to when a man does it.  When they stop crafting messages that assume every man is a potential rapist, while simultaneously ignoring the existence of female rapists.  When they stop intentionally suppressing statistical information that shows that it is women, and not men, who molest and abuse children the most.  When they stop turning their cheeks and dismiss extremist behavior in feminists with "not all feminists are like that", while simultaneously asserting that any man who speaks out for men's issues (or even a man who asserts that there are men's issues in the first place) must be a misogynist.


And lastly, I'll believe feminism stands for "equality for all" when when Feminists stop calling men who point out their hypocrisy and double standards "misogynist," when all they've done is point out how the feminists in question are being hypocrites and holding double standards, in an effort to silence their critics through shaming tactics.Honest criticism isn't misogyny.


Feminists have not been for just fair treatment of women for quite sometime... they have grown power hungry, hypocritical, and even violent. They don't want equal rights, they want more rights than everyone else. They want better treatment for those on their side. I can't get behind a movement like that after seeing the extremes they take on others, especially men.  "Not all feminists are like that."  Yes, but the extremists are the ones forming the public message of feminism.  The inmates, as they say, are now running the asylum.


So yeah.  There it is.  My "attitude" is all about treating people fairly and equally.


The "crime" I committed that caused her to label me a misogynist isn't actually misogyny, but my lack of support for female privilege.  I openly admit it:  I am not a supporter of female privilege.  Neither am I a supporter of male privilege.


I'm a supporter for "universal privilege."


That is, for equality for all.


As human beings, we're all different, and we all have different physical and psychological needs.  But regardless we all deserve the same fair treatment.


Feel free to disagree, if you want.  Tell me that feminism really is about equality a million times.  Until the actions of feminists match their high-fallutin' ideals, I'll just shake my head and tell you how wrong you are.  Also, if you want to send me hate mail and tell me how horrible a person I am for wanting everyone in the world to be treated equally, feel free to send it.  I'm an adult.  I can take it.  I don't have to silence my critics to win the argument.