Not for the IDF Alone

Ever since the first day of the current Israeli-Palestinian war on 7 October 2023, Israel’s media have been bristling with stories about heroic Israeli (not Palestinian, needless to say) women. How they received their mobilization orders just as men did. How they took their leave of home and hearth (including, in some cases, their children) just as men did. How they donned uniform, took up their weapons, and went out to fight just as men did. How some of them were killed just as men were. Here I want to say, loud and clear: almost all of it is nonsense. Nonsense in tomato juice, as we Israelis like to say. Nonsense of the kind that, in the long run, will do the IDF incalculable harm.

First, the nonsense. As of the time I am writing this at the end of November 2023, Israel’s mobilized armed forces number about 550,000 uniformed personnel, up from 180,000 in “ordinary” times. Of the latter figure between 25 and 30 percent are women. How many women have been called up and are currently on active service the IDF does not say. However, its official casualty list (in Hebrew) is available here. It shows that, as of 21 November, 392 IDF soldiers had lost their lives. Of those 40, or one in eight, were female.

At first sight one in eight does not appear totally unreasonable, given that most of the troops on active service are reservists and that far fewer female reservists than male ones were called up. However, pay attention to the following. The male casualties on the list are distributed over a period of 35 days. Not so the female ones, all but one of whom lost their lives during the first day of the war. Poor girls; serving as outlooks, insufficiently trained in the use of the infantry weapons with which they had been issued, unsupported either on the ground or from the air, they were in no position either to escape or to fight off Hamas’ surprise attack. Expiring as Odysseus’ maids did (Odyssey XXII 468-73):

[Like birds], with nooses around their necks

that they might die most piteously.

And they writhed a little while with their feet

but not for long.

Shame on you, IDF, for allowing such things to happen. And shame on you, penis-envy driven feminist fiends, for misleading your credulous women followers and pushing them in that direction! The much lower number killed since then suggests that, whatever female soldiers may have been doing from 8 October on, they hardly took part in any serious fighting. Case closed.

Second, the long term harm. It is a truism, observable throughout history and in practically every human field, institution or organization, that wherever women make their entry men leave. So in the case of cashiers, so in that of pharmacists, and so in that of psychologists among many others. In part they do so by default: no two persons can occupy a chair designed for one. But there is more to it than that. To quote Frederick the Great, a commander who knew a thing or two about fighting spirit, the one thing that can make men march into the muzzles of the cannons trained at them is honor. Specifically, I add, male honor, the kind more or less reserved for men that makes them attractive for women. Conversely, for a man to do a woman’s work is not an honor. It is humiliation. Think of Heracles who, at one point in his career, was punished by being made to dress as a woman and acting as a handmaid to the mythical Queen Omphale. Omphale, incidentally, reads like the female form of “navel,” but I’ll let that pass.

A man who competes with (or fights against) a woman and loses, loses. A man who competes with (or fights against) a woman and wins also loses; killing a woman may be profitable, but it is rarely considered honorable. Finding themselves in a lose/lose situation, no wonder many men prefer to withdraw. Supposing only the process goes on long enough, the military will end up by being left with hardly any men worthy of the name at all.

Nor does this warning refer to the IDF alone.

“Unto Him Your Passion”

A good friend has suggested that I write down the shortest possible summary of everything I’ve learnt, or believe I’ve learnt, from my twenty-something years’ worth of researching and writing about, women, feminism, and the relationship between the sexes.

Hardly an easy task, but never was a suggestion more welcome! So here goes.

*

“Everything concerning women is a mystery, and the mystery has one solution: pregnancy” (Nietzsche).

“Men and women are similar in some ways but different in others” (Plato).

Both the similarities and the differences are partly biological, partly socially “constructed.” Any further attempt to disentangle the two will only lead to absurdities,

Attempts to solve the problem by drawing analogies with other animals are very problematic. This is because a. There are so many species, all of them different form each other, with which to compare; and b. The decision as to which ones are or are not relevant is necessarily arbitrary.

No known society treats its male and female members in exactly the same way. Pregnancy and giving birth apart, the most important reason for this is physiological. Even in modern societies many jobs require plenty of strength and stamina. Fields in which men, on the average, enjoy clear advantages over women. 

For over a century now, each generation of feminists has proclaimed its own version of “the new women.” She who smoked like a man, drove an automobile like a man, attended university like a man, wore pants like a man, entered the professions and worked like a man, boxed like a man. and even—would you believe it—ejaculated like a man. All this, under the banner of “empowerment”! But underneath little if anything has changed.

In all known societies, the higher up the slippery pole of power, wealth and fame you climb the fewer the women you meet. Among those you do meet, far fewer have made it by their own efforts as opposed to those of their male relatives.

Furthermore, whatever success career women have enjoyed has come mainly at the expense of other women. Why? Because, for every successful career woman, there are two or three others who serve her in doing household work, minding children, and so on. To this extent, but also because successful women tend to have fewer children, feminism is self-defeating.

Whatever success feminism has had has had is mainly due to the prevalence (in the West) of the so-called Long Peace. It will pass (in Israel, my own Israel, it is starting to pass right now). I am not aware of feminism achieving very much in Russia or Ukraine. Let alone the Sudan.

Last not least: In all known societies, it is what men do that people consider the most important of all (Margaret Mead). This is even more true of women than of men; as the Dutch poet Chawa Weinberg put it, “If men were to bleed, how large and imposing the sanitary napkins.” Hence I do not see feminists’ great successes. All I see is PE; it is like pursuing a mirage.

As the Bible puts it: “Unto him your passion, and he shall rule you” (Genesis 3.16).

When You Go to the Woman—Don’t Forget to Turn on Your Tape!

 

This week something extraordinary happened in Israel. A thirty-something old man was acquitted of having committed rape—would you believe it? As if to make the story more unbelievable still, the alleged victim was 1. Eighty-two years old; and 2.  A Holocaust survivor. Which, in this country and many others, automatically gets her a halloo and turns each word she says into gospel truth.

To make things still worse for the accused, he was an Arab—and thus supposedly more likely than others to suffer from sexual deprivation and commit rape. So how did he and his lawyer get him off the hook? Very simple. It turns out that the couple had been in touch for some time, using the telephone to arrange trysts—more than one—and have sex. She even promised to pay him for visiting her. The tapes were produced in court, and that was that.

As a famous seventeenth-century English lawyer, Matthew Hale, once said, of all crimes rape is the easiest to accuse a man of and the hardest to refute. With this in mind, I decided to repeat my warning by reproducing the list of idiots I first put on this website on 6 July 2018. Who knows: by so doing, I might even be saving a man’s life or two.

Who is in danger?

Any man who Approaches women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Assists women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Associates with women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

.Any man who Befriends women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Believes in women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Buys women a drink, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Coaches women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Dances with women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Directs women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Employs women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Flirts with women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Gives women a lift, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Greets women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Instructs women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Is alone with women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Jokes with women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.
Any man who Looks at women, for whatever reason, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Offends women, in whatever way, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Plays with women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Praises women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Shakes hands with women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Shows affection for women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Sleeps with women (apart from prostitutes, the only honest ones around), for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Studies women, for whatever purpose, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Talks to women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Teaches women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Touches a woman, even accidentally, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Treats women, whether for physical or psychiatric problems, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Trusts women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time.

Any man who Works alongside women, for he will be accused of “sexual harassment” and worse; it is only a question of time

*

Finally: When you visit the woman—das Weib is what the original German says—don’t forget to turn on your tape!

The Curious Life of Violette Morris

Like most people these days, I sometimes feel the urge to spend an idle hour roaming the Net. Either because I have nothing better to do or out of curiosity. Doing so the other day, I came across a post I considered so curious that I decided to share it with you. Text taken from Wikipedia with a few very minor changes meant to make things shorter and clearer. Comments, welcome.

Violette Morris (18 April 1893 – 26 April 1944) was a French athlete and Nazi collaborator who won two gold and one silver medal at the Women’s World Games in 1921–1922. She was later banned from competing for violating “moral standards”. She was invited to the 1936 Summer Olympics by Adolf Hitler and was an honored guest. During World War II, she collaborated with Nazis and the Vichy France regime. She became known as “the Hyena of the Gestapo” and was killed by the French Resistance.

Early Life.

Violette Morris was born to Baron Pierre Jacques Morris, a retired French Army cavalry captain, and Élisabeth Marie Antoinette Sakakini, of Palestinian Arab origin. Morris spent her adolescence in a convent, L’Assomption de Huy. She married Cyprien Edouard Joseph Gouraud on 22 August 1914 in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. They divorced in May 1923. Morris learned how to drive during World War I and during the war she drove ambulances and worked as a courier including at the Battle of the Somme and the Battle of Verdun.

Athletic Career.

Morris played for Fémina Sports from 1917 until 1919, and for Olympique de Paris from 1920 to 1926. She also played on the France women’s national team. She won gold medals at the 1921 and 1922 Women’s Olympiads.

In addition to her football career, she was an active participant in many other sports. She was selected for the French national water polo team even though there was no women’s team at the time. She was an avid boxer, often fighting against, and defeating, men. Among the other sports she participated in were road bicycle racingmotorcycle racing, car racing, airplane racing, horseback riding, tennisarcherydiving, swimming, weightlifting, and Greco-Roman wrestling. Her most brilliant athletic years were considered to be from 1921 to 1924, when her slogan was “Ce qu’un homme fait, Violette peut le faire!” (English: “Anything a man can do, Violette can do!”). In 1924 she participated at the 1924 Women’s Olympiad again taking the gold medal in discus and shot put.

Motor Racing.

Morris had her breasts removed by a mastectomy, which she claimed was in order to fit into racing cars more easily. She mainly competed in cyclecar endurance races and utilized a Benjamin cyclecar. She competed in the Tour de France Automobile in 1923; Bol d’Or 1922, 1923, 1926-8; Paris~Pyrenees 1922, 1923; Paris~Nice 1923, 1927; GP San Sebastian 1926; Dolomites 1934.[10] She won the 1927 Bol d’Or 24 hour car race at the wheel of a B.N.C.

Lifestyle.

Morris’ lifestyle in the 1920s was quite different from the traditional role of women. In addition to her wide-ranging athletic activities, Morris deviated from traditional behaviors of the time in several other ways. She was homosexual, dressed in men’s attire, was a heavy smoker and swore often.

In 1928, the Fédération Féminine Sportive de France (FFSF) (French Women’s Sports Federation) refused to renew her license amid complaints about her lifestyle and she was therefore barred from participating in the 1928 Summer Olympics. The agency cited her lack of morals, in particular, Morris’ penchant for wearing men’s clothing. She had also punched a football referee and had been accused of giving amphetamines to other players. After 1928, her auto racing license was revoked on similar moral grounds and Morris started a car-parts store in Paris, and, along with her employees, built racing cars. The business went bankrupt.

In 1930, Morris unsuccessfully sued the FFSF, claiming damages, as she could no longer earn wages competing as an athlete. During the trial, an obscure ordinance from 1800 forbidding women to wear trousers was used against her. Historian Marie-Jo Bonnet claimed that if Morris’ homosexuality was not directly targeted in the trial, it was made an issue throughout. Ironically, one of the lawyers acting for the FFSF was the noted campaigner for French women’s rights, Yvonne Netter. A quote was attributed to Morris after the trial, but was censored:

We live in a country made rotten by money and scandals, ruled by speechifiers, schemers and cowards. This country of little people is not worthy of its elders, not worthy of survival. Someday its decay will bring it to the level of a slave, but if I’m still here, I won’t be one of the slaves. Believe me, it’s not in my temperament.

 

During her athletic career in the 1920s, Morris became friends and associates with many of France’s artists and intellectuals. She had longstanding friendships with American-born entertainer Josephine Baker, actor Jean Marais, and poet, author, and filmmaker Jean Cocteau. In 1939, Morris, along with her partner, actress Yvonne de Bray, invited Cocteau to stay with them at their houseboat docked at Pont de Neuilly where he wrote the three-act play Les Monstres Sacrés.

Arrest and Acquittal for Homicide.

In January 1933 Morris moved into a houseboat, La Mouette, with her partner, Yvonne de Bray, which was moored on the Seine at Pont de Neuilly in northwest Paris near the Bois de Boulogne. Living off inheritance annuities, she took up lyrical singing and was successful enough in the hobby to be broadcast performing on the wireless.

On Christmas Eve 1937, while having dinner with friends and neighbors Robert and Simone de Trobriand at a restaurant in Neuilly, the trio encountered a drunk and aggressive young man named Joseph Le Cam. The unemployed ex-Legionnaire became embroiled in a heated argument with Simone de Trobriand. Morris was able to calm the man after some time. The following evening, after more drinking in Montmartre, Le Cam arrived at Morris’ houseboat and another argument took place, this time between Morris and Le Cam. Le Cam left the houseboat, but soon returned after seeing Simone de Trobriand, with whom he had been arguing the night before, boarding La Mouette. Le Cam then rushed back to the houseboat, brandishing a knife and threatened both Morris and de Trobriand. Morris pushed Le Cam several times before he lunged at her and she produced a 7.65mm revolver. Morris fired four shots, the first two into the air, the following two at Le Cam. He would later die in hospital. Morris was arrested and charged with homicide and incarcerated for four days at the La Petite Roquette prison in the 11th arrondissement of Paris. She was tried in the cour d’assises in March 1938, but was acquitted when the court accepted her plea of self-defense.

Nazi Collaboration and Assassination.

Morris was invited to attend the 1936 Summer Olympics by Adolf Hitler and historian Anne Sebba stated that Morris was an honored guest.

During World War II and the German occupation of France, Morris served as a collaborationist for the Nazis and Vichy France. The nature of her accused collaboration varies, with some, such as writer Raymond Ruffin, claiming one of her main responsibilities during the war was to foil the operation of the Special Operations Executive, a British-run organization that helped the Resistance. He also suggested that, as well as being a spy for the Nazis, she would have been involved in the torture of suspects, and for all of these activities, she was sentenced to death in absentia. Although Morris sourced black-market petrol for the Nazis, ran a garage for the Luftwaffe, and drove for the Nazi and Vichy hierarchy, others state that this appears to be the limit of her collaboration – and was in any case what she did before the fall of France – and that no evidence exists to support Ruffin’s claim that she was involved either in spying or torturing, but perhaps that she was a suitable scapegoat, especially considering her comments before the war. Whether or not it is accurate, her reputation for involvement in torture and enjoying it led her to become known popularly as the “hyena of the Gestapo.”

On 26 April 1944, while driving in her Citroën Traction Avant on a country road from Lieurey to Épaignes in Normandy with the Bailleul family, who were favorably positioned with the Nazi regime in France, Morris’ car sputtered and came to a halt. Earlier in the day, the engine had been tampered with by maquisards of the French Resistance Maquis Surcouf group. Resistance members then emerged from a hiding spot and opened fire on the car. The three adults and two children in the car were killed. Ruffin claimed that Morris was the target, but Bonnet states this is not clear, given the influence of the Bailleul family with the Nazis. Her body, riddled with bullets, was taken to a morgue, where it remained for months, unclaimed. She was buried in an unmarked communal grave.

When the Guns Fire

Two weeks into the war—no need to explain which war I am referring to here—the situation appears to be as follows.

 

 

General

Contrary to the view of some of us, who considering the military balance predicted a fast and fairly easy Russian Blitzkrieg, this is turning out to be a prolonged and quite bloody war. Unless some miracle happens, it will get worse before it gets better.

Military Operations

Russian military operations are being conducted in full force and with few if any restraints. 

 

Coming from several directions at once, they have succeeded in occupying one important city (Kherson) and are currently besieging and shelling several others. As one would expect from the side that is short of almost everything, Ukrainian resistance, though deserving of all respect, appears to be sporadic and ill-coordinated with each city and each force acting more or less on their own. Though Russian airpower does not play as much of a role as most people thought it would, it does dominate the sky. Still the Russians have not yet got even close to breaking the Ukrainian will to resist and fight. Perhaps, to the contrary.

Spread and Escalation

Contrary to many predictions, too, so far the war has remained inside Ukraine and did not spread to neighboring countries such as Moldavia and Poland.

Nevertheless, spread (“horizontal escalation, as it is sometimes called) and escalation remains very real possibilities. Suffice a single mistake, most likely in connection with NATO aircraft overlying Ukrainian territory (either deliberately or by accident) or with a Russian attacks on NATO attempts to assist Ukraine, to set Europe aflame and perhaps bring it to a glowing end. No wonder NATO is resisting President Zelensky’s calls for the establishment of a 

 

non-flight ban over his country. But it is not going to happen.

The Situation in Russia

The sanctions are really hurting Russia’s population. Not so much because people are starving, as they were during under Stalin in 1930-31 as well as during and immediately after World War II. But because of their sense of being cut off from the world. Including news emanating from any sources except their own government, not known as the most truthful in the world. The oligarchs have also taken heavy losses.

On the other hand, there is no sign of serious opposition to Putin. Claims about him being angry with his generals—at any rate, angry enough for it to make a difference—also seem to be without sufficient foundation in fact.

Economic Impact

The sanctions on Russia apart, the impact of the war on the global economy has been very serious. Production is down, inflation is up. That is especially true for such products as energy (oil and gas) and wheat. Gold is king. As always, though, there are those who prof

 

it. Including, above all, owners and producers of the commodities in question. And including arms manufacturers in many places around the world.

On one hand, the international rating agencies keep announcing Russia’s imminent bankruptcy. On the other, Russia is among the greatest profiteers. Not only is it among the largest producers of both energy and wheat, but it sells them dear to whomever will buy. Primarily, it seems, China. Now even Germany has announced it cannot do without Russian gas. Which of these two trends prevails we shall see soon enough.

As I am writing these lines on 9 March the Euro is slightly up against the dollar whereas gold and gas are slightly down. Are people getting used to the new reality? Again, we shall see soon enough.

International Impact

The Russian attack on Ukraine has brought almost all of Europe’s remaining countries closer together. Countries that always refused to join NATO and/or the EU (which is also an alliance against attack, albeit that it is seldom mentioned) are now actively considering doing just that. Good; but one doubts whether it can last.

Some false prophets notwithstanding, so far the war has not led China to mount an attack on Taiwan. Instead, the Chinese leadership seems to be weighting its options. There is a good chance that, if the war continues as it almost certainly will, China will emerge as the great tertius gaudens. Without firing a shot, what is more.

 

Attempts to End the War

So far, none of any importance. But clearly any solution, even if it does not fully meet Putin’s initial demands, can only come at the expense of Ukraine. Given how fearful NATO is, such a solution is not impossible. But it will take time.

 

Varia

Following decades of neglect, events are forcing Europe’s politicians as well as its populations to take war and the military seriously. There is even occasional talk of a return to conscription. However, it probably won’t happen. Even if it does, putting the necessary arrangements in place, procuring the necessary weapons and equipment, and organizing the necessary training will take years.

Following decades of feminist b.s, it turns out that few if any women participate in combat either on the Ukrainian side or, much less so, the Russian one. Ukrainian men are expected to fight and are barred from leaving the country, which some consider a violation of their human rights; Ukrainian women are not. Had events not been as tragic as they are, one could almost have said, “alles in ordnung” (everything is OK).

To Sum Up

The first casualty is the truth. Which incidentally means that there is no way to verify the casualty figures published by both sides.

Ukraine, Russia, Europe and the world are in an even greater mess than usual.

When the guns fire, the children cry.

Scams

Now that corona has disrupted social life and increased the number of people who are isolated and lonely, the Net is full of sob stories about social media users who were contacted by scammers and, falling for the latter’s pretended interest in them, lost money as a result. To learn more about the problem, I opened Duck Duck and typed in the search words, woman loses, savings to phantom lover. As you would expect, in no time at all I got an avalanche of headlines to explore.

Here are a few examples.

“Woman loses $2,000 to romance scam” (about a New York woman who sent a supposed admirer in Benin $2,076 before she realized she was being milked).  See https://www.wkbw.com/money/consumer/dont-waste-your-money/woman-loses-2-000-romance-scam).

Woman loses $150,000 in online dating scam.” “A woman in Indiana learned that the hard way this month, after losing over $150,000 to an online scammer whom she’d thought was a local man falling in love with her. See https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/woman-loses-150000-in-online-dating-scam-072414.html.

Woman loses £320,000 in ‘romance fraud’ scam. Now she says she fees “violated.” See https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-somerset-54613937.

“Online dating relationship ends badly, $1.3M later.” “Ellen was retired, living a comfortable life in a nice home in British Columbia. In the driveway was a luxury car, and her house was paid for.

And then she joined an online dating site, hoping to find some companionship.

Instead of romance, Ellen says she lost her life savings, and more — over $1.3 million — seemingly taken by an online scam where villains prey on people looking for their perfect partner.” At https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/2013/11/30/online_dating_relationship_ends_badly_13m_later.html.

Since the problem has aimed viagra without rx at quite a large number of male entities, therefore, it has become a huge hit among men with ED. The supplier later admitted overcharging 100,000 customers over 200,000 – the result of a seven-year fault on the company’s Warm Home djpaulkom.tv commander levitra Discount scheme, where they receive a rebate of 120 a year. The side-effects caused by Kamagra Jelly divide into 2 types- cialis online usa common & serious. ED medications contain prescription drugs so they should be taken tadalafil without prescription under proper supervision. This, of course, is just the tip of the iceberg. Not every person who got scammed reported the fact to the authorities. Of those who did, only a tiny percentage made it into the headlines; either because the sums involved were large, or because the victim came to a particularly sticky end. According to the Federal Trade Commission, in 2018 it “received more than 21,000 reports about online romance scams, totalling $143 million in losses. As the number of dating sites and social media apps has gone up, so too has the number of romance scams reported — from 17,000 in 2017, 11,000 in 2016, and 8,500 in 2015. Last year, the median loss reported was $2,600, which is seven times higher than the median loss for other forms of fraud tracked by the FTC. Most affected are people over the age of 70, for whom the median loss rose to $10,000.”

“Online romance scammers,” the report goes on, “work individually and in teams, often creating fake profiles using real people’s photographs in order to form close (if internet-based) relationships with unsuspecting victims, whom they eventually ask for money — because they’re overseas in the military, because they’re sick, because they’re trying to buy plane tickets home, etc. Given victims’ presumed complicity in these scams (because, technically, their money is given voluntarily), and the resulting stigma, it’s likely that online relationship scams are much more prevalent than even FTC reports suggest.”

Back to the headlines. Note that, in them, all the victims are women, all the perpetrators, men. I am not saying that male victims of “love scams” do not exist. As you will discover if you try, though, stories about such people are much harder, sometimes almost impossible, to find. That remained true even when I deleted the original search term, woman, and replaced it by man; indeed many of the same stories kept popping up in both searches.

What is going on here? Surely the problem is not that all women are simple and/or foolish. To remind yourself of that, just think of what Potiphar’s wife did to Joseph, Delilah, to Samson, and Judith to Holofernes. Indeed we have the whole of history to suggest that men are as likely to fall for women’s wiles as the other way around, if not more so.

The real explanation must be as follows. Men on the average are considerably stronger than women. Certainly that is true in terms of physical strength; perhaps, in spite of all feminist attempts to prove the contrary, also in terms of aggression and dominance. As a result, when a woman is victimized by a man she is likely to attract sympathy and even love; she may, indeed find herself more attractive to men than previously.

For men, the situation is exactly the opposite. By presenting themselves as victims, hence as weak, foolish or both, they make themselves less attractive to women. Afraid of being despised, ridiculed or both, they are likely to shut up about what happened. Shutting up, they are much less likely to reach the headlines. As one seventeenth-century English judge put it, it was not his job to help idiots who could not prevent their wives form taking their money from them.

And so the story goes marching on. Wicked men attack poor, weak, witless women; poor, weak, witless women are attacked by wicked men. The outcome? The most intense hatred between men and women there has ever been. One that is bound to end in disaster both for men and for women.

I can see the Taliban laughing.

Its Truth is Marching On

In last week’s post I mentioned PE (penis envy) as one of the most powerful drives that has always made the world go round and will presumably continue to do so until the lights go out. And not for the first time either. Each time I do so, I am sure to get some readers’ reactions. They tell me that modern brain science has not succeeded in identifying any such thing (this is analogues to saying that, since the scientific community has been unable to reproduce God’s results, the world does not exist). That Freud was an impostor most of whose opus, including not just PE but a great many other concepts he used in his decades-long attempt to understand how the human mind works, has been deservedly relegated to history’s dustbin. That he used to “molest” his helpless female patients (the worst thing that can be said about any man). And so on, and so on.

Such being the case, I’ve decided to post a slightly updated version of a post I posted for the first time on 16 June 2016. Hopefully it will tell readers what PE is and why I keep my belief in it; in other words, why its truth keeps marching on.

Any comments, welcome.

 

PE? PE!

 

 

 

 

 

The other day, walking through the Hebrew University library looking for something interesting to read, my eye hit a tome with the grand-sounding title, The Oxford Companion to the Mind. I opened it; a thousand pages. Edited by one Richard L. Gregory, CBE, MA (Cantab), DSC, LLD, FRS, and published (second edition), in 2004. The volume differs from the better known Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in that it is more than just a list of all kinds of symptoms, real and imaginary. Instead it is a wide-ranging encyclopedia. With alphabetically arranged articles about everything from the way the ancient Egyptians understood the mind to something called the halo effect.

How wonderful, I thought. An opportunity to refresh my understanding of a phenomenon which, as readers know, I have long been interested in: PE (penis envy). Full of anticipation, I turned the pages. What a disappointment! PE is just not there. Yok, as we Israelis, using a Turkish word, say.

Yet that is strange. It is not as if the volume ignores Freud and psychoanalysis. To the contrary, both merit fairly hefty articles. PE apart, Freudian and Freudian-derived ideas do figure in the book. In considerable numbers, what is more. Among them are the Oedipus Complex, the Electra Complex, the inferiority complex, and many more.
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I decided to check. On Google.com PE has 1,270,000 hits; not a bad following for an idea that is supposed to be purely a figment of one man’s imagination (he himself has 40,400,000, no less). PE has 19,200, the Oedipus Complex 875,000, the Electra Complex (originally introduced by Carl Gustav Jung) 302,000, “inferiority complex” 8,740,000, and “castration anxiety” 162,000. The corresponding figures for Google.scholar are 52,500, 4,550, 2,600 30,900, and 22,300 respectively. On Ngram as of the year 2019, PE figured far more often than “inferiority complex,” “Oedipus Complex,” “Electra Complex,” and “castration anxiety.” All in all, PE seems to put on quite a respectable showing. Yet whereas the other four do have entries in the aforesaid Companion, PE does not.

What is going on here? Some claim that there is no way to prove that PE exists. That may be so; however, the same applies to all the rest. After all the methodology, which consists essentially of listening to patients in a room called a clinic that may or may not contain a couch, is always the same. So I decided to do a little historical research.

Before we delve into the topic itself, though, it is important to note that Freud, like many male gurus throughout history, attracted female patients and students as a lamp attracts moths. No wonder, that, since he valued them and treated them like daughters. It was to one of these women, a Viennese society lady, that Freud owed his professorship, a position he, being Jewish, might not have got without her help. To another, Marie Bonaparte, he owed his life. In 1938 it was she who paid off the Nazis to allow him and his family to leave Austria. Thus any idea that Freud hated women, or did not value them, or looked down on them, is so absurd that only sexually frustrated, half-crazed, present-day feminists can entertain it.

Freud first postulated the existence of PE in a contribution to the nature of sexuality he published in 1904. Two decades later, in 1925, it became the pillar of a 1925 paper he wrote named, Einige psychische Folgen des anatomischen Geschlechtsunterschieds (“some psychological consequences of the anatomical differences between the sexes;” note the characteristically modest way of announcing a new idea). From this point on it often came up in his famous Wednesday evening seminars where he and his disciples, both male and female, discussed psychoanalysis. Both the men and the women tended to be highly intelligent and quite a few of them later attained fame in their own right. Certainly none was a cretin who simply allowed Freud to overrun him or her.

And how did the women in the company take to the concept? One of the most important, Freud’s own daughter Anna, sidestepped the problem altogether. The rest were divided. On one side of the debate was Karen Horney. Praised by subsequent feminists for having “a mind of her own,” she did not deny the existence of PE. Indeed she called Freud’s discovery of it “momentous.” However, following a then famous sociologist by the name of Georg Simmel, she argued that women envied men their penises not because their biology made them to but because the penis stood as a symbol for the advantages society conferred on men; in other words, PE, and what she called “the flight from womanhood,” was a consequence, not a cause. For expressing this view, Horney ended up by being thrown out of the New York psychoanalytical society.

Several other female members of Freud’s circle disagreed. One was Hermine Hug-Hellmuth, said to be the most biologically-reductionist among all his followers. Another was Jeanne Lampl de Groot. To her, “the absence of a penis could not be regarded as a matter of secondary and trifling significance for the little girl.” Rather, PE was “a central point [from which] the development into normal femininity begins.” “Woman’s wish for a penis is the consequence of a biological datum that underlies her psychic reaction of feeling inferior and is rock bottom.”

More important than either of those was Helene Deutsch. Good-looking, capable and extremely hard working, her Psychology of Women (1944) was considered authoritative for decades on end, Deutsch was one of the first Austrian women to receive a medical degree. She considered herself, with good reason, as “a leader in female emancipation.” Yet this did not prevent her from explaining that the clitoris was “an inadequate substitute” for a penis. As late as 2018, in an article originally published in 1964, a female psychotherapist by the name of Maria Torok wrote that “in every woman’s analysis there is inevitably a period in which appears a feeling of envy and covetousness for both the male sex organ and its symbolic equivalents.” Having made listening to women her profession, she should know.

Back to Freud. Then as today, finding out whether we humans are shaped by nature or nurture was a difficult, very often impossible, enterprise. Perhaps that is why Freud, who sometimes hesitated to tread where his followers romped, never voiced his opinion on the matter. Instead he contended himself with the famous question, “what does woman want?”

I too will leave the question open. I do, however, want to provide some examples of what, in my view, PE is. When women discard skirts and put on trousers, then that is PE. When some women complain (as has in fact happened!) that their daughters are not being diagnosed with ADHD as often as boys are, then that is PE. When women refuse to have children so they can have a career as men do, then that is PE. When women want to follow men to Afghanistan and Iraq so they can get themselves shot to pieces for some obscure cause no one understands, then that too is PE.

When some Jewish Israeli women defy a court order and dance with a Torah scroll at the Wailing Wall as Jewish men have been doing for ages, then that is PE. When famous feminist Betty Friedan says she wants to play in men’s “ballfield,” then that is PE. When feminist writer Jean Sinoda Bohlen says she wants to achieve men’s “potency,” then that is PE. When renowned feminist Naomi Wolf says she wants to see more ads with objects sticking out of “women’s [emphasis in the original] groins,” then that is PE doubled, tripled, and squared. In these and countless other cases, one can only conclude that women do in fact crave “the obvious ‘extra’ that [men] have” (Nancy Friday).

Always focusing on rights, never on duties. Always imagining that men have it better and trying to imitate them. Hardy ever coming up with something really new: not the telescope, not the microscope, not gravity, not the steam engine, not the computer (all the best-known female worker in the field, Ada Lovelace, did was to translate the article of an Italian engineering officer, Luigi Menabrea, and provide it with notes). To quote my wife, Dvora, perhaps the real reason why PE is left unmentioned in the Companion is because it is not a disease.

It is, rather, a normal state of mind.

Is That Clear?

Starting at least as far back as ancient Greece, most thinking people have always been aware that everything around them is subject to change. Starting at least as far back as ancient Greece, most thinking people have always been aware that there are some things that never change but always remain essentially the same (for confirmation, re-read the book of Ecclesiastics). In today’s post I want to focus on the second kind in so far as they pertain to the nature of, and relationship between, men and women.

*

Men on the average are considerably stronger and more robust than women.

Ergo

Without men to defend them against other men, women are essentially defenseless.

*

Ergo

For this and other reasons, men can sleep with women without their consent; the opposite is almost impossible.

Women can have babies; men cannot. On the other hand, men can have far more offspring than women can.

Ergo

Both biologically and socially, women’s lives are more precious than those of men

Lacking physical strength and burdened with young offspring, women are more vulnerable than men.

Ergo

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Starting with war and fighting, in any society it is men who engage in the vast majority of dirty, difficult and dangerous kinds of work.

*

In any known society the vast majority of public posts are occupied by men; the higher the position, the more true this is.

*

Child bearing apart, in any known society both man and women believe that whatever men do is the most important of all. That is why, in any known society women, driven by penis envy, do their best to imitate men in everything; whereas the opposite is rare.

*

Based on these simple premises, any number of different societies can be and have been “constructed” (a term so dear to feminists of all sorts). Some are very small, numbering no more than a few hundred members at most, whereas others are very large. Some live in tiny villages, others in megacities. Some make their living by hunting-gathering, others by engaging in gigantic systems of industry and administration. Some are characterized by approximate equality between their members, others by sharp socio-economic and cultural differences between individual and classes. Some allow a great measure of social mobility, others do not.

Some are so decentralized as to be almost without a government worthy of the name, others highly centralized. Some are monogamous, others (the majority) polygamous, others still (a small minority) polyandrous. Some follow the principle of primogeniture, whereas others do not. Some are strongly influenced by religious beliefs of every kind, others only to a much smaller extent. Some keep men and women more or less segregated, whereas others allow the sexes to mix more or less freely. In all without exception, ultimately it is politics which (to quote Lenin) govern who gets what.

All merge with each other, grow into each other, and, quite often, separate from each other. However much they do so, though, none can escape the fundamental truths as listed above. Not for long, at any rate. And not without triggering processes that, unless they are reversed, may very well end in the collapse of the societies in question.

Is that clear?

The First Casualty

The first casualty in war, I’ve heard it said, is always the truth. Such being the case, I was intrigued by the tsunami of stories concerning all the terrible things the Taliban, following their victory, have allegedly been doing to their country’s women.

Here are a few examples.

 

“Taliban: Women can study in gender-segregated universities”

(https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/taliban-girls-women-study-men-classrooms-79972251); as if segregating one sex does not mean that the other too is segregated).

“Taliban says women are barred from playing sports in Afghanistan”

(https://duckduckgo.com/?q=taliban+women&t=chromentp&atb=v230-1&ia=web)

“The Taliban knocked on her door three times. The fourth time, they killed her.”

(https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/17/asia/afghanistan-women-taliban-intl-hnk-dst/index.html)

“Taliban have started torturing women, Afghanistan witness say.”

(https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/17/asia/afghanistan-women-taliban-intl-hnk-dst/index.html)

“The world must not look away as the Taliban sexually enslaves women and girls.”

(https://theconversation.com/the-world-must-not-look-away-as-the-taliban-sexually-enslaves-women-and-girls-165426)

‘Inside Taliban’s horrifying medieval executions as women are beheaded and stoned to death for ‘chatting to men’.”

(https://www.the-sun.com/news/3467120/taliban-executions-women-afghanistan-stoned/)

“Taliban demands war booty, women aged 15-45, as sex slaves”

(https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/07/taliban-demands-war-booty-women-aged-15-45-as-sex-slaves-in-captured-afghanistan)

You get the idea. Before working yourself into a fury over those inhumane, woman-hating, Taliban rapists, though, you might want to take a look at the past. Not of the Taliban, but of the country in which, thanks to its immense “soft power,” so many of the accusations originate. Such a look will quickly show that the invasion of Afghanistan was not the first time Americans used their enemies’ alleged abuse of women as an excuse for making war on them.

No sooner had the War of the American Revolution broken out in 1776 than the rebels accused the British of engaging in mass rape in Rhode Island in particular. From then on the accusations have been piling up. And up. And up. Indeed it would hardly be too much to say that Americans have convinced themselves that they are the only people who know how to treat women properly and feel duty-bound to oppose anyone who does not do so.

Again, here are a few examples.

  • The Mexican War. As always happens when migrants flow into new territories and start opening them up for settlement, during the middle of the nineteenth century the American West was suffering from a deficit of women. Nowhere more so than in areas comprising the future mining states where, it is said, men sometimes outnumbered women by as much as 200 to one. To help alleviate the situation, the Americans convinced themselves that Mexican women were caught in the clutches of their Catholic priests and tht it was their own duty to rescue them. They started doing so, and the rest is history.
  • The Civil War. Uncle Tom’s Cabin notwithstanding, the primary purpose of the Northern Aggression, as the Confederates called it, was to prevent the South from seceding. Freeing the slaves only came a distant second. By way of useful propaganda, slavery itself was sometimes presented in the form of a chain-wearing, nude and nubile young black woman.
  • The war with Spain. There once was a young and good looking woman by the name of Evangelina Cosnio y Cisneros (1877-1970). The daughter of a leading member of the Cuban revolt against Spain, she was arrested and sent to a camp. There the commanding officer, a Colonel named José Berriz, harassed her and, when she refused his advances, threatened to have her stripped and whipped as so many other Cuban women allegedly were. Or so the story went. Evangelina’s sad fate caused the famous American newspaper tycoon, William Hearst, to send a party that successfully pulled her out of jail, put her in a man’s clothes, and took her to the United States. Once there, properly wined and dined and blessed by President McKinley, she became an active participant in the campaign that ultimately ended in the American “liberation” of Cuba from the Spanish yoke.
  • World War I. Like most wars, this one was launched for the best strategic reasons as understood by the most hard-headed, toughest, statesmen and soldiers of the time. By the time America joined the fray in 1917, though, American propagandists seem to have concluded that, to prepare their public for the butchery to come, it was necessary to take a different tack. Whereupon “poor little Belgium” was drawn in the shape of a half-naked female being caught in the arms of a monstrous, pickelhaube-wearing, salivating, ape-like creature called “Kultur.” The poster became famous and has remained so down to the present day.
  • World War II. I am not aware of Americans claiming to save German or Japanese women from the sexual advances of their equally German or Japanese menfolk. It is, however, worth noting that, in the west at any rate, the Wehrmacht was well disciplined. So well that, according to a document I once saw, once the American troops had landed in France they raped more Frenchwomen in six months than the Germans had in four years of occupation. And so well that, according to Mary Louise’s What Soldiers Do, some members of the liberated French population actually hoped for the Germans to return.
  • I’ve been trying to find material on American troops sent to rescue enemy women during Korea and Vietnam, and the 1991 Gulf War; to no avail. What I did find, though, was something equally interesting: to wit, stories about Saddam Hussein’s men throwing young Kuwaiti babies from their incubators. The following are just a small sample:

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“When contemplating war, beware of babies in incubators.”

(https://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p25s02-cogn.html)

“Saddam and the incubator massacre.”

(https://www.malaysiakini.com/letters/35797

“Operation desert lie; Bush 41, Nayira, and Saddam Hussein.”

(https://midnightwriternews.com/operation-desert-lie-bush-41-nayirah-and-saddam-hussein/)

“The fake news in 1990 that propelled the US into the First Gulf War”

(https://citizentruth.org/fake-news-1990-that-ignited-gulf-war-sympathy)

“Selling the Iraq war to the US.”

(https://www.cbsnews.com/news/selling-the-iraq-war-to-the-us/)

The first casualty, once again.

How those Things Were Handled

Today, for a woman who has been sexually harassed to be deeply, deeply traumatized has become almost obligatory. If, if addition, she takes the case to the police and from there to court, she is considered both deeply traumatized and exceptionally brave. But that is not how things have always been. What follows are a few paragraphs from a famous book (How the Steel Was Tempered) by a young Soviet writer, Pavel Ostrovsky. Published in 1932-36, it sold two million copies, was translated into many languages, and was twice filmed in the Soviet Union. In Communist China it was made into a television series.

*

The cart clattered down the hill and pulled out outside the school building. The janitor had put up the new arrivals and one off to sleep in the hay. Lida and Razvalikhin had just returned from a [Ukrainian Bolshevik Party] meeting which had ended rather late. It was dark inside the cottage. Lida undressed quickly, climbed into bed and fell asleep almost at once. She was rudely awakened by Razvalikhin’s hands travelling over her in a manner that left no doubt as to his intentions.

“What do you want?” “Shush, Lida, don’t make so much noise. I am sick of lying there all by myself. Can’t you find anything more exciting to do than snooze?” “Stop pawing me and get off my bed at once!’ Lida said, pushing him away. Razvalikhin’s oily smile had always sickened her and she wanted to say something insulting and humiliating, but sleep overpowered her and she closed her eyes.

“Aw, come on! What’s all this fancy behavior about? You weren’t brought up in a nunnery by any chance? Stop playing the little innocent, you can’t fool this lad. If you were really an advanced woman, you’d satisfy my desire and then go to sleep as much as you want.” Considering the matter settled, he went over and set on the edge of the bed again, laying a possessive hand on Lida’s shoulder.

As there is very little motion and a great singer kept until in his 1982 album, Thriller became the world’s best selling record of all time, on spreading. cialis tadalafil 5mg In today’s times of stressful lifestyles, fatty fast foods and extensive presence of pesticides and chemicals in food and water, this herb is useful for people cialis prices who do not want to swallow oral tablets. Previously you had to know in advance the skills, experience and authority, he should levitra pill price have to treat your condition. An Effective Solution Available at the Cheapest Prices buy levitra from india was an expensive drug, which was not affordable for all men. “Go to hell!” Lida was now wide awake. “I’m going to tell Korchagin [the local Komsomol official] about this tomorrow.” Razvalikhin seized her hand and whispered testily: “I don’t care a damn about your Korchagin, and you’d better not try to resist or I’ll take you by force.” There was a brief scuffle and then two resounding slaps rang out in the silence of the night. Razvalikhin leapt aside. Lida roped her way to the door, pushed it open and rushed into the yard. She stood there in the moonlight, seething with wrath and indignation.

“Get inside, you fool!” Razvalikhin called to her viciously. He carried his own bed out over the eaves and spent the rest of the night there. Lida fasted the door of the latch, curled up on the bed and went to sleep again.

In the morning they set out for home. Razvalikhin sat beside the old [cart] driver smoking one cigarette after another. “That touch-me-not may really go and spill the beans to Korchagin, blast her! Who’d have thought that she’d turn out to be such a prig? You’d think she was a ravishing beauty by the way she acts, but she’ nothing to look at. But I’d better make it up with her or there may be trouble. Korchagin has his eye on me as it is.” He moved over to Lida. He pretended to be ashamed of himself, put on a downcast air and mumbled a few rods of apology.

That did the trick. Before they had reached the edge of the village, Lida had given him her promise not to tell anyone what had happened that night.

*

Now you tell me. Which of the two methods, the new or the old, is better both for the victim and for society at large?