Adapt or Be Irrelevant

A pitfall of conservatism is when a conservative fails to deal with the reality that things have changed.

I'm not bashing conservatives. Most people would probably classify me as a conservative if I described most of my political and social positions. Obvious exceptions you might have noticed if you've read other entries on this blog is that I warn most men not to marry and I think professional antiporn crusaders are misleading people for personal gain.

I recognize that the truth is the truth regardless of the culture or what is in fashion.

And a truth that conservatives need to deal with is that some things change and if you're going to be effective, you need to meet people where they are.

Let's bring this into the world, to where the rubber meets the road.

Example: State marriage licenses. They are issued to same-sex couples and that's not going to change, unless states cease issuing marriage licenses entirely. Most conservatives have conceded this. Some still appear to be devoting their resources to trying to reverse this shift.

Two talk radio hosts to which I listen via paid podcast subscription, both of whom I think do a lot of good for people, demonstrate the problem with not accepting change.

Dr. Laura, despite what people might think who only know her through what other people say, has always held some positions that go against conservative consensus.

However, she usually refuses to help callers who are cohabitating outside of legal marriage. She usually won't help them with the problem or concern that's coming up within their relationship as it is. Instead, she tells them to either move out or go to the courthouse and get married ASAP. Very few of the callers are going to do either, and dismissing them with that won't help them in their marriage (if they do marry) or interpersonal relationships with each other or others if they do move out from each other.

I am generally against "shacking up" myself. However, most people who marry these days lived together before they did, just like Dr. Laura and her late husband. It's perfectly valid for her to explain why she now opposes shacking up (as long as she doesn't rely on statistics in a misleading way), and she can still do that. But the callers, and a wide swatch of her audience, will benefit more if she deals with things as they are. There are several other examples I could cite when it comes to the Dr. Laura Program.

I don't know of anything more foundational to how Dennis Prager views life and talks/writes about life than the notion that men and women should marry and raise children together, and that it is man's lot in life to financially support a woman. He is so convinced of this he constantly urges men and women to order their life around this. If they aren't married now, they should be actively seeking to marry, including if they've been divorced multiple times. If the Lord Almighty were to part the clouds and boom from the skies with a command to someone walking alongside Dennis that they shouldn't marry, Dennis just might go atheist.

Even though he acknowledges the severe problems with family law and courts, he still urges people to subject themselves to them. He needs to accept that we no longer live in small farming villages on family farms our entire life and don't need to birth our own farm hands. Men and women can both thrive living "alone" or without marriage.

Antiporn crusaders write and talk like scientists who aren't in their tank can't research and network, and that people can't check things out for themselves now. Their claims from forty-plus years ago like porn rots brains and turns people into serial killers are easily debunked now, but they still try to use those scare tactics. Porn isn't going away.

Life has changed, and tactics and positions need to change with it, or someone becomes ineffective.

Dr. Laura Asked If Men Are Idiots for Marrying

On her Tuesday, March 22, 2022 program, Dr. Laura read part of something from Jordan Gray found at Good Men Project. It was titled "I Used To Think That Men Who Got Married Were Idiots."

I used to think that men who got married were idiots.

Or, if they weren’t idiots, they were at least undesirable enough that they just had to settle for whoever chose them… because why else would you tie yourself to someone for life if the reason weren’t that you didn’t have any other romantic options?

I mean, seriously… getting married??

Okay so… you get a couple of months of hot sex, in exchange for a lifetime of indentured servitude to someone who eventually takes you for granted and sees you as a walking wallet and then stops having sex with you and makes jokes with her friends about what a dumbass you are? And that’s if you even manage to stay together… because what’s even more likely is that she eventually leaves you, takes the kids, and steals half of your life savings in the process.

Who in their right mind would sign up for such a thing?

Didn’t these guys realize that, if you really break down the benefits of marriage into their fundamental components, you could hire out all of these needs for way less money than what your lifestyle of snotty nosed kids and inevitable divorce would cost you?

And I’m not speaking hyperbolically here!

Here, I’ll prove it to you…

You could hire someone to come to your house to do a deep clean every other week for, depending on the size of your house, let’s say $200/month.

You don’t want to cook for yourself? Okay, you could hire a meal prepping service who could make your lunches and dinners (you can fend for yourself with a super simple breakfast) for $2,000/month.

Okay, cooking and cleaning are taken care of for less than the cost of your mortgage payment… what’s left? Oh right, the big one. Sex!

Depending on how fancy you are and the legality of sex work in your local area, you could see a sex worker every week for the rest of your life and spend no more than $1-2,000 per month on that expense.

So if you tally up the monthly costs of outsourcing predictable, guaranteed, high-quality cooking, cleaning, and sex… you’re looking at no more than $50,000 per year in total expenses. Now, that might sound like a lot to some in the short-term… but if you compare that to the average cost of raising children, and the amount of money you’ll inevitably have to shell out in your divorce, this is an absolute bargain.

That's where she stopped reading. She took calls from men after that, asking them "Are men idiots for getting married?" At first, she wanted calls from married men, but she had trouble getting enough calls, so she took them from any men (who passed the screeners). The thing is, Dr. Laura promotes marriage. When she deviates from her program's usual format for things like this, she wants a specific answer. It isn't really her trying to give people time to say whatever they want. She will deny anything that goes against her point.

Gray's essay was pretty good up until that point. I waited for her to go back to finish reading the piece, but she never did. Let's see why.

Part of Running Game is Saying No

Men who think they have to jump through hoops for women in order to get what they want from women, saying "yes" to what a woman asks of them, have been misled.

In general, NO works much better.

Unpaid?

"When someone is selling something, they don't like it when other people sell the same or similar product or service for much less." - Me [This entry has been bumped up.]

On Dr. Laura's Thursday, June 18, 2020 show, she took a call from a woman who has had a boyfriend for three years and she called about the possibility of talking marriage. Dr. Laura asked her if they were having sex. Of course the answer was yes. Dr. Laura called her an unpaid whore, which is a term she tends to apply to shackups, which the caller noted because they weren't living together. Dr. Laura went on to say that women like the caller are "giving men sex for nothing."  (I may be conflating the call with another one from the same episode, during which a man challenged the wisdom of marrying without having lived together.)

Aren't they giving each other company and sex? What exactly is he getting out of the relationship that she is isn't?

Again, we see the principle that men are expected to pay for sex, or that women don't enjoy sex.

And, we have no idea what bills of hers he's paying, or what gifts he's giving her. If he's taking her to nice dinners and paying for her vacations, entertainment, recreation, etc., then she is getting paid.

Dr. Laura brought up the white wedding dress and how it's not fair for women who aren't virgins to wear them. Except the truth about white wedding dresses says otherwise.

One Reason You're Not Husband Material

Guys, I often write about how there isn't suitable, compatible wife material for you to marry. But another reason you should avoid marriage (or at least, a reason you can tell others when they ask you why you're not married) is that you aren't husband material. This isn't an insult, mind you.

Below is a list put together through listening to Dr. Laura for many years. She is very pro-marriage and used to do marriage and family therapy.

If a woman is looking for a man to be a husband and father to her children, this is the kind of employment he must have. This is just about his job. This doesn't even cover all of the other qualities he must have. If you don't have a job like this, you're not (first) husband material, and so you shouldn't marry. (And, if you don't marry during the child-raising years, then you're not going to be marriage material later on, because you didn't marry earlier, which means you're not the type to commit to marriage.)

A (first) husband has to have a job that, in no particular order...

Thinking Critically About Cohabitation

Introduction: Is Unmarried Cohabitation Bad?

I've been carefully mulling over just about everything I've accepted about sociology.

Let's look at shacking up (unmarried cohabitation).

Don't misunderstand. I'm against shacking up. But I'm also against misleading people.

Dr. Laura (and many socially conservative commentators) will tell callers that shacking up is linked to negative indicators, such as:

• It makes it less likely you will get married
• It makes is less likely you will stay married
• Increased infidelity
• More abuse
  

When Dr. Laura (or any other commentator) barrages someone with all of this, most recipients aren't prepared for it and don't have the wherewithal or the time to counter the claims. Indeed, as Dr. Laura says, she refuses to argue or debate, which seems strange if she's confident that she's right. She hits her callers with this and that's that.


How Do We Know If It is Good or Bad?

The Marriage Seller Pivot

 

 

 

 

 

 

People who try to convince men to marry (marriage sellers) quite often do a pivot.

They usually start their sales pitch appealing to your own self-interest. They say things like:

Married men earn more money

Married men are healthier

Married men live longer

Married men are happier

Married men have more and better sex

But when those of us who know better point out:

• Married men are also taller, meaning that marriage didn't cause men to be richer, healthier, live longer, be happier, have more and better sex, and get taller. Rather, women are far more likely to marry and stay married to men who earn more, are healthier, are happier, more sexually compatible, and taller.
  
• "Married" men are being compared as a group to all "unmarred" men, which consists of diverse groups, including divorced men and men who can't attract a wife (because they are sick, poor, unhappy, etc.) The stats marriage sellers are trying to use to show marrying benefits men never separate out intentionally unmarried men for comparison, many of whom are wealthier, healthier, happier, and having more, better, and more diverse sex than most husbands.
• Over half of everything a married man earns/owns legally belongs to his wife, who can take it away at any time for any reason, and 80 percent of spending decisions in a marriage are made by a wife, often to buy things a man doesn't want and won't use, so my unmarried counterpart only has to earn 51 percent of what I do to be better off than me.
  
• Men have often been conditioned to think they are losers, failures, or sinners if not married, or that complaining about their marriage is a sin or negative confession, and thus might say they are happy (if husbands) and unhappy (if still looking for a wife) as a result.

...marriage sellers will often pivot. They might try an ad hominem attack, call you bitter, ungrateful (if you're married), selfish, loser, immature, incel, misogynist, or even say marriage isn't a bed of roses for women either (which is an odd way to try to sell it).

The more careful ones, though, will pivot from "You'll be so much better off!" to "You have an obligation to get married." They don't lead with the obligation/duty approach because they know it isn't nearly as appealing as the first approach. With the "obligation" approach, they say things like:

Marriage is good for society
Marriage matures men
The Lord wants you to get married

Those are largely circular arguments or, like the first set, involve supposed correlation rather than demonstrable causation in the direction from marriage to positive outcome. If someone asserts something like "marriage is good for society," ask them to explain how. They'll probably say something about fatherless kids being a problem on society. But if you will not create children and then abandon them, where is the issue? They might say that it's better for a woman to have a husband than depend on government. But those aren't the only options. How about teaching and encouraging women to be truly independent?

There simply is no general Biblical command to marry that applies to every man today, especially not to get a bad contract from a secular state or engage in the common behaviors of today's social concept of marriage. Yes, the Lord, according to the Bible, doesn't want you trying to steal away another man's wife from him, so don't do that. Getting married certainly doesn't stop that! Notice the Bible doesn't tell you what steps to take to be married, as in "Do X, Y, and Z, and then you'll be married." That seems kind of like an important thing to be left out if everyone is supposed to marry.

Prager University even tried to teach viewers that married men are sexier.

Pay attention if you hear someone who effectively dismantles the claims of a marriage seller that married men are better off, and you might notice the marriage seller try a pivot.

Stay free, men.

Running Game Is LESS Work For Most Men

 

A comment was left after this post on how to present yourself when running game:

 

I don't know man. MGTOW seems less work. As they say, the juice is not worth the squeeze. After dating and having a few gals in bed, I just found out that Adult Movies were more easy and clean and less headache. At times I would just pay if I'm in a tough spot. Professionals don't talk about "feelings", they just do their job. So do I.

I understand.

Paying a pro, masturbation (especially with technology), sublimating sexual urges are all ways to deal.

MGTOW and Running Game aren't always mutually exclusive. Some MGTOW date. Others go into "monk mode" or whatever the individual calls it, giving up dating entirely.

Running Game is for men who want "amateur" female company, but do not want to spend a lot of money, effort, time, emotion, or give up their freedom or be mistreated by a woman.

It does take a little effort to set up your presentation, but many aspects of that - like having a Google Voice number or something similar - are probably good things to be doing anyway in order to protect your identity, even if not seeing amateurs. And once your presentation is set up, maintaining it isn't much effort.

One of the primary reasons to run game is to reduce effort and hassles, and once you get past the initial startup, it makes life so much easier. It's definitely easier than marriage or dating with marriage as a goal, or dating in the ways that are promoted by marriage sellers or most mainstream media. It's also not criminalized. It's not for everyone, but it does work for some.

"Why Can't Men Be Upfront and Honest?" - Part 3

Part 1 of This Series

Part 2 of This Series

Women usually know within the first five minutes of meeting a guy whether or not they'd ever have sex with him. But it isn't like they'll tell the man. That would be upfront and honest.

Unless they are asexual or something is wrong with them, men want sex. Depending on their morals, religion, strategy, etc., they might be willing to wait for sex. They might want sex AND [fill in the blank... marriage, family, etc.]. But we all want sex. If we didn't, we likely wouldn't have asked the woman to date, meet us, or let us come over.

"But women want sex, too" you might object.

Yes, most women do want sex, at least for part of their life. But the average woman doesn't want sex as much as the average man. The average man also wants sex with a wider variety of women than the variety of men women want to have sex with. The worldwide history of humanity demonstrates this. It is beyond the scope of this posting as to why that is. But it IS the case. A man would have sex with just about every woman he sees who isn't absolutely hideous.

So... in general, it is the man's role to pursue the sex, as he is more likely to want it, and intercourse doesn't happen if he isn't turned on. (Please note, I'm referring to the initiation of the relationship. Once a sexual relationship is established, of course it's great with most men if the woman takes the initiative sometimes.)

The man wants sex. Otherwise there wouldn't be a date. The woman may or may not want sex. She might be going on the date for freebies, attention, to affirm to herself or signal to others that she's desirable, leverage, or many other reasons instead of wanting sex with the guy. If he runs game, he will either smoke her out as not wanting sex with him, or he'll get to the sex with less effort/time/money/emotion than the man who doesn't run game.

She might want sex upon meeting him, but if she finds out something about him - and it depends on the woman what those things might be - she might not agree to sex. So, for the man who is primarily looking for sex, the less he reveals about his true self, the better. That's the case for most men. There are exceptions (very wealthy men, for example). She doesn't need to know any more about him because he's not there to live together, get married, and have children. He's there for sex. If she finds him attractive enough to have sex with him, between his physical appearance, his behavior with her, and what she thinks she knows about him, he doesn't want to say or do anything to change that.

But if she doesn't want to have sex with him, he wants to find that out as soon as he can so he can stop wasting time, money, and energy. She can be upfront and honest and tell him that right away.

Why would a man have an obligation to spend more effort/time/money/emotion than it takes for him to get what he wants? In these sorts of relationships, it is up to the individuals to seek out what they want, to initiate what they want, and to either agree to, or decline, what the other person initiates. These are not marriages. They are dating relationships, hookups, booty calls.

If the woman doesn't like what he's doing, she is entirely free to stop seeing him. She can be upfront and honest and tell him that it is her intention that she's not going to have sex with him (or have sex with him anymore) unless he spends more time and money on her, agrees to an exclusive girlfriend-boyfriend relationship, or whatever. Maybe he'll agree to wait or change the relationship. Or maybe he'll carry on as he has, and she will still allow him to show up for a booty call, despite what she's said. If she stays true to her word, he can either agree to the terms or move on.

This is a dance. Men will dance in a way that gets them what they want. It's generally women who either reward the dancer or not.


Part 1 of This Series

Part 2 of This Series

Part 4 in This Series

Protect Children By Parenting Your Children

"Protect Children Not Porn" is a false dichotomy.

It is expressed on services like Twitter/X as #ProtectChildrenNotPorn by the usual antiporn crusader would-be censors and the people who make a living grifting off of them, who try to make life as difficult as they can for people who make, sell, and watch any erotica.

Groups like Exodus Cry (originating from an Evangelical church), Justice Defense Fund (which is basically Laila Mickelwait, who was with Exodus Cry but might not be anymore for some still unexplained reason), National Center on Sexual Exploitation (which is a rebrand of Morality in Media) and Fight the New Drug (which insists it is NOT a Mormon organization, and we know Mormons have never tried to conceal their motives and operations before) know that very few people will support a religious crusade trying to ban all pornography, but their core supporters want that. So these groups try to fool people with campaigns that claim to be secular campaigns about children and women being abused. 

Except that we know their campaigns are really about attacking the freedom of consenting adults to make and watch erotica.

How?

1) They claim that porn websites must be shut down if rogue users violated the terms of service by uploading illegal video content, claiming that such content victimizes women and children. But these same people have never called for shutting down churches (or their Mormon equivalents) when staff is is caught making or distributing such material, or actually, personally assaulting a woman or a child. They don't even pressure banks/credit card companies to stop processing payments to/for those churches.

2) They use social media that has far more illegal videos on it than any of the porn sites they target, and they know this.

3) They have attacked OnlyFans, one of the best services for ensuring the women participating are consenting, are indeed women and not girls, and that the people viewing their explicit material are adults (they charge!).  

One of them, let's just call her Mayla Ficklewaste, has let her toddler play with her phone, even though Mayla constantly searches out illegal videos, frequently visits porn sites, and the child was able to access X/Twitter, which has rape and snuff videos. Anyone can upload anything to X/Twitter right now. PornHub only has verified uploads. Guess which service this MF attacks?

It's a RUSE.

It's a SHAKEDOWN.

It's a FUNDRAISING PLOY.

They're NEVER going to ban porn, but they'll keep collecting money from scared, insecure, gullible people who are counting on them to do so. All they can do is shake down what other people have earned, and make life difficult for models and performers. Likewise, they tell the broader public that they simply want these restrictions, but that's a lie. Their crusade would continue.

They haven't prevented one person from being abducted, enslaved, or assaulted. But Laila sure has gotten lots of attention, fed her ego, and lined her pockets.

It is not "defending porn" or "protecting porn" to value freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and free enterprise.

It is not defending porn or protecting porn, and certainly not attacking children, to point out that "leaders" in these "movements" are hypocritical, two-faced, and fleecing the gullible.

They say there's nothing stopping children from viewing porn websites. There is "nothing stopping" kids from walking into traffic, or taking an automobile a joyride, or setting themselves on fire, or burning down their residence.

Except that there is. It is called...

P A R E N T I N G

That's why I use the hashtag #ParentYourChildren

These crusaders are such bad parents that they want the whole world to change for the sake of what they don't want their kid seeing.

Here's what people can do to parent their own child.

1) Don't give your a child a networked phone or tablet. If you do, have controls and monitors on it.

2) Keep any other device that can access online content in common areas of your home, where it will be supervised. Controls can also be used on these.

3) Don't let your children go without your supervision to any residence that doesn't follow these practices.

Good Luck With That

The Institute For Family Studies needs to promote marriage. So Alysse ElHage has this blog entry touting a new book that attempts to address marriage problems through churches. [This entry was bumped up.]

A few years ago, I was scrolling through Facebook to catch up with friends and family when I stumbled upon some news that made my heart sink.

As I've said, Facebook is a front row seat to a train wreck.

A married couple from the church my husband and I had attended for about 10 years had apparently split up since we moved away. Both the husband and the wife were popular leaders in our church and seemed to have a vibrant marriage that everyone admired. But now she was building a life with a new man in another state, while he raised their two children alone. As I was trying to digest this news, I discovered that at least five other married couples with kids from the same church had split up over the past few years. Two of the couples had been married for several decades; one couple less than five years. When I asked our pastor what happened, he was as brokenhearted as I was over the news, but he had no answers. He’d tried to counsel with some of the couples, but the spouse who wanted out (most often, the wife) was dead set on divorce.

Pay attention, men.

1. These were supposedly dedicated, churchgoing wives.
2. They seemed to have a vibrant marriage. You have no idea what's going on behind closed doors.
3. Decades of marriage can mean the wife gets set with alimony for life. In California (I don't know how many other states are the same), ten years of marriage sets her up for life.
4. The women are the ones leaving. YOU CAN'T STOP THEM. And, quite often, the more you try to treat them well, the more likely it is they'll walk all over you and leave.
5. The pastor claimed to have no answers. Most likely, he had answers, but doesn't want to say them.

You Can't Tell She'd Make a Good Mother

If you're looking for "the one," and you shouldn't be, you might ask "Will she make a good mother?"

Now, there are some red flags that indicate she definitely wouldn't be a good mother. But just because you don't see certain red flags (yet) and think she's compatible with you and on the same page when it comes to parenting does NOT mean she will actually be a good mother.

There really isn't any way to know for sure.

In the good ol' days, she didn't have much choice. She'd better do things your way. Things are very different now, with a culture that undermines parenting.

She might SAY she wants to raise children, but just like you, she really has no clue. Being an older sibling, or babysitting someone else's kids can cause someone to legitimately realize they don't want children, but they're not a good way to decide that one DOES want to parent. How can things work that way? Because if children irritate, annoy, exasperate, or otherwise bring you down, that's enough to know you shouldn't raise any, but even if you enjoy being around them, that's far different from being their parent, who is financially, socially, morally, and legally responsible for them 24/7/365 for 18 or more years.

Having a dog isn't being mom to a human child.

There are some definite signs, other than not liking kids in general, she's not mother material. She wouldn't make a good wife. Her career comes first or she has a highly demanding career (long/odd/extra days, frequent travel, instability/having to hop from company to company, emotionally draining/stressful, leaves her exhausted); she's misandrist; she's impatient or easily angered; she needs everything neat and orderly; she's unhealthy; she's mentally ill; she's a substance abuser; she's irresponsible; she's abusive; she isn't nurturing or affectionate.

Other things are harder to discern.

If she already has children, you shouldn't be with her, let alone making more with her or bringing your kids around her and her kids.

You can't tell with reasonable certainty a woman will make a good mother, and frankly, you probably shouldn't marry.

So you probably shouldn't have kids, or if you are going to have kids, you might want to consider not having a wife and keeping control by using a donated egg and a surrogate for gestation.

The Modern Workplace and How It Relates to Marriage

Men are expected to "provide". It isn't just traditionalists like Dr. Laura who say this. Most women seek out and marry men they think do, or will, earn more than they do, even if they claim to be liberated, feminist, independent. Notice Oprah's lack of legal marriage. It would be difficult for her to attract a man who earns more than her.

In order to pay for a family, men generally need stable, well-paying jobs that provide a reasonable level of security. However, our economy has changed.

Men Need To Protect Themselves In the Workplace

 

Don't be fooled, guys.

It doesn't matter how relaxed your workplace feels or seems. It doesn't matter what your boss does, what other men do, or what the women do there.

You must always remember that normal adult behavior, including harmless behavior that has gone on in workplaces for as long as workplaces have been a thing, can now get you in deep trouble. Normal behaviors, normal conversations, can lose you your job, your entire career, and more.

Your job, your workplace, is not a place to find a date, or a lay, or a girlfriend, or a wife. It doesn't matter that people have done that for as long as there have been workplaces and are still doing it now. It is far too much of a risk for you. You need to think about you, and covering your donkey.

No, it's not just crude jokes, or lingering hugs, or cheesecake screensavers, or trading favors. The way you look at a woman, even if she is fine with it, can get you into trouble.

So, how do you prevent accusations?

The best way is to work for yourself, or for very small business at which no women work and no women will ever work. Even then a woman who interacts with you as a customer or supplier or whatever can make accusations, but you have more control and protection than if you're working for a large employer, especially one where misandrist feminists are in control, or at least in control of dealing with alleged sexual harassment.

But if you do work somewhere that women also work, you need to be very careful, deliberate, and consistent in what you do:

Keep your interaction with women strictly professional and to the minimum that is absolutely necessary.

What does this mean in practice?