Saturday, November 23, 2013

The missing question

Abramovic.
Kazanov.
Eriksson.
O' Mahoney.
Ben Laden.
Mendelssohn.
MacDonald.
Gruzinsky.
Bin Moosa.

Not to talk of
Leninskaya.
Jnsdttir.
Jankowska.
Petrova.


What do all these names have in common?

They are all patronymic.

They all mean 'son of' or 'daughter of' a man. Or a patriarchical community of some sort, as in the case of O'X which could mean either 'grandson of X' or 'from X village'...

In many traditional societies, a person is defined by who their father is.

In the bible for instance, a visitor is always asked... 'who is your father?'
You better have an answer to that question - otherwise, you may never gain entry into anyone's home.
Of note is the reference to 'son of X' ad nauseum in old testament books. No-one is just them. They are always 'son of' someone else...

Even Our Lord was 'son of God', or 'son of Joseph', or 'son of Man'.
He was 'son of someone'.
In keeping with Hebrew tradition.

I am intrigued that at the transfiguration, God chose to say (about Jesus): This is my son...
Why did he not just say, this is Jesus...?

His son.
Even Jesus needed a father?
Fascinating...



I love studying names.
One of my more nerdy endeavours :-)

Even in matrilineal societies (another of my pet geeky loves), patriarchy rules. You may inherit property and titles from your mother, but it is your father who gives you your identity.
Your soul.

Is it any wonder that nowadays with 50% of households with missing fathers in them, there are lost souls in ubiquitous abundance?


Who is your father?

In many ways, there was a time when it was almost always a bad thing to have this question addressed to you, as  a child, if it was asked within your own social circles. It meant you had messed up somehow.
Someone wanted to know who to 'give a talking to' because you had done something wrong.
Because you had been naughty and someone wanted to know whose shame you had come to embody.

Best if you steered clear of this question :-)

But that was then.

Now, no-one asks this question.

When Miley Cyrus was making an exhibition of herself on the world stage a few weeks ago, save for a few Manosphere bloggers who were posing the question, 'Where the heck is Ray?', no-one wanted to know about the father.
I remember when Lawrence Fishburne's daughter started to go down the wrong path. He was ostensily hurt. But that's as far as public fatherly input went.

Non-entity.
Not relevant.
Persona non grata.


Perhaps in Mr. Cyrus' case, this is a good thing. Afterall, he is spared some personal shame, no?
But what does this say about society in general?

This says that we accept the status quo.
That father is no longer the spiritual head of the family.

No-one need know who or where he is.

He disappeared and no-one went looking for him.
Should he come back, no-one would notice.



This is the missing question: Who is your father?




Perhaps I should give due credit to modern society.
Perhaps modern society actually understands the gravity of this question.
Which is precisely why we choose not to ask this question anymore.

Perhaps we are not as dumb as we seem :-)

Excellent.
This then, is in fact a good sign.










No-one is arguing about the sacredness of motherhood. It is plain to see how important a mother is.

But somehow we have forgotten how important a father is.

How did this happen?
And more importantly, how can we restore fatherhood to its former glory?






Saturday, November 9, 2013

Are we in a double bind?

Oh the shattering soul-destroying and wretched sound of abject failure ! I can hear it now as it rings out in every conceivable corner of the room!

After years of 'the search for the truth' I really cannot believe I am back to Square One. Indeed Square zero.

But such is life. I am where I am. What can I say?

Is it normal? Is this the 'who said the path to progress was smooth'? playing itself out?

I had intended to write a post about father figures, but suddenly, there appears this emergency that I cannot ignore for much longer :-)

I honestly thought I'd got it licked in posts like 'What's a woman for' and such like.

But I guess asking 'what's a woman for' is a very different question from 'what do men want'.

Is it just that there is a continuum and every man has his own little 'niche' (unhelpful for the individual woman who needs some concrete advice) or is there a block of basic traits that men want (helpful!) that would enlighten the fairer sex?

I know I am chronically confused about most things, but this particulat question is starting to take the proverbial biscuit :-)


WHAT DO MEN WANT?

Do men actually know? Or are they 'waiting till they see it' sort of thing...

Is part of the problem in the SMP that men are 'undecided' and will take what they can get until the next best thing comes along? Is it as random as that? Or are there definite, solid, unwavering criteria that men will adhere to, no matter what?

In this sense, only MGTOW (and of course happily married men) are doing the 'stoic' thing - for they have 'opted out' until they get what they want, and only what they want, no detours, no compromises. The full shebang, or nothing. But they are absolutely clear on what it is they are looking for, and do get what they are looking for. Are these guys 'luckier' than other men, or do they have a formula that we beseech them to share with the rest of us?


To date, only Grasshopper has been totally honest (as far as I can tell) on this issue.

I tassled with Grasshopper when he declared that he wanted a woman with a job, because he needed his woman to share the financial responsibility of the household. He seemed undeterred that her attention would be divided threeways as a result: childcare (and this may well take priority when the children are young - as it should be), him, and her job.

Other men declare that they want a woman who wants to be 'pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen' but go all shy and refuse to answer the question as to whether they therefore expect to shoulder the full finacial responsibility for the household for as long as it is needed.

Others, like John Galt have choice words for the stay at home mother (SAHM). 'Entitled traditionalist' is the best of them, I suppose.
Is he right in believing that women like that are 'entitled'? Am I missing something in John Galt's message?
If John is right, are we falling for the feminist message that unless a woman is doing paid work, her contribution is useless? We women as a group have generally fallen for that porker, but have men too? Are we wrongly judging women as men, and if so, is it because women have 'asked for it' with the whole 'equality' thing?

No problem if that is the answer. I would just like to know. Yes, the truth hurts, and I am not averse to hearing it :-)
I really do prefer the pain of hearing the 'troof' to the pain of eternal ignorance.



Some men like hardworking women as a rule. M3 recently posted about medical (and dental) women. It was an ode of sorts to the working woman.

I was however at odds with this statement:
I should have asked M3 to elaborate! Perhaps I shall invite him here to do so.

"To the female cardiologist, (who was much older than my image might indicate, as in grey hairs old) who showed a dedication to her profession by not leaving it in order to have children, or if she did have children, stuck it out in medicine, made a career out of it and gave back to the people what she got educated to do."

M3 is praising a woman for abandoning maternity in favour of her job?

Is it any wonder I am confused, when all over the Manosphere 'careerist femc*nts' are being mocked and shamed everyday?
:-)
Or again, am I missing something here? Do I misunderstand M3?


If every woman followed Deti's advice of

1) Be pretty

2) Be thin (and preferably young, as in, younger than  your intended love interest)

3) Be nice

4) Be available


I still suspect that this alone would not be enough.

Is there something my esteemed male readers are not telling me?
Are they hiding something crucial from me?



Or am I just listening to the wrong guys on this? Is John Galt so far out in his own world that I should not take his message at face value, even though he does have a valid point to make?

We discussed the 4 Fs in the post about what a woman is for.

None of these include a 'w' (as in work). And yet, men go in for working women all the time. And certain non-working women are in fact excluded from the dating pool.

This man caused a series of controversies with his 'list'. The bit about the 'woman with a job' went under the radar, but that is the one that interests me on this post. (He caused the biggest controversy when he excluded a certain race from his list of desirables. I am not interested (for the moment) in that racial aspect - just the bit about 'work').

"I will not date a girl that does not have a job or career."

To be fair, most of this list sounds reasonable. The only comment to make about it, in a negative sense, is that it is unusually long for a man's list. It is a bit too prescriptive. It is we women that usually have such lofty aspirations in the dating world :-)
Also, some of the items in the list are rather inconsistent, eg. he wants a feminine and young woman (i.e. in the childbearing age group) but he does not want her to have had children before, or to have children with him. Most feminine women do want children, so this contradiction in the list of desirable qualities may prove fruitless for this man.

Is this man also an outlier?

If the argument is, well we go in for 'women with jobs' because they are all working now! then fair enough. But do you prefer women with more homemaking tendencies?

Or would you rather denigrate them and call them 'entitled b*tches' because they are not out there earning their own money?

It is not that simple, I know. But the inconsistencies make me wonder if men are just as confused about what they want as women are, but are too proud to let on.

Is John Galt an extreme outlier (having arrived there as a consequence of events beyond his control) or is he plum in the centre when it comes to the breadth of preferences professed by men in general?

I am still in the dark here.

I had expected to have progressed beyond this point after 2 years of blogging, but this is a sign for me that I need to be more patient with myself.

In the meantime, if you all don't mind dragging yourselves back to rehash this subject, hopefully you could get me out of the dark abyss of confusion that I find myself in.

Much appreciated.
And please feel free to colour me confused until we thrash this one out until it is clear as glass.

Explain it to me like I am a six year old :-)

Please.