Explain What You Mean in Telling a Husband to Man Up

I've posed this question before, directed at Dr. Laura, but a lot of people tell a husband to "man up" or "grow a pair" or "use your balls" or something similar in dealing with his wife, usually when there is a disagreement or the wife is behaving in some way that is immoral, irrational, unfair, or destructive. I'd very much like to know what someone who says such a thing means by it. What do you they expect the husband to actually do?

He can assert his opinion or demand. His wife can easily ignore or dismiss it.

Then what?

He can't force her to comply, and even if he can physically take unilateral action, she can use the force of law to stop him. He can't withhold his earnings from her (at least in Dr. Laura's scenario, a first marriage wouldn't have a prenup keeping finances separate). Anything he refuses to do for her, she can pay someone else to do using his earnings.

Running Game - Why Not Be a Romantic Gentleman?

Most of running game involves going AGAINST what you might think, what you've been told, works.

Don't go on dates arranged by coworkers or family members.
Don't buy her gifts.
Don't bring her flowers.
Don't meet her for lunch or coffee.
Don't take her out to a nice dinner.
Don't call her the next day.
Don't shower her with compliments.
Don't make holidays, her birthday, and anniversaries special for her.
Don't seek to make a good impression on her family and friends.
Don't be yourself or be your best self.

It works better for you if you don't show that you care, if you don't tell her everything about you, if you're not agreeable to everything she wants, if you don't show much effort, if you're not available most of the time, if you don't agree to see only her. Refusing to help her with her problems, compromise, or jump through hoops to impress her; acting like you have better things to do; and going after what you really want works.

Why would media lie to you? Because most media tries to appeal to what women want to see.

Why would your mother, grandmother, stepmother, aunt, sister, female coworkers, female neighbors, female friends lie to you?

Few, if any, of them are intentionally lying to you. They will say what they think sounds nice, or think they're supposed to say. But their goal isn't to get you laid, unless you have a very unusual relationship with them. Their goal is to get you paired up with a "nice", agreeable (to them) woman who will be their ally, their friend. The women in your life will tell you what they want men to do when they use those men for finance, labor, status, access, attention. Of course they want to be put on a pedestal and treated well. Oh, sure, they like it a lot when a man takes them out to a nice, expensive restaurant. Wouldn't you like it if someone paid for your nice dinner? Wouldn't you like someone to signal they will make your life financially easier? But that doesn't mean they'll be a great lover to the guy who does those things; usually quite the opposite. Even most articles, books, videos, or forum threads with women giving men advice on how to get laid will tell you what they WISH worked. But what actually works to get you what you want with as little trouble as possible is running game.

Romantic Gentlemen spend a lot of time, money, and effort, and what they get - if anything - is waiting for one woman until she's done "having her fun," is jaded and saddled, often, with debt, diseases, and kids. This woman might be available to him sometimes when it comes to what he wants. She'll always be available to let him pay for things and do chores for her, though.

Meanwhile, the guys running game enjoy the company of many different women without doing or dealing with much they don't want to. They don't spend much time, money, or effort to get what they want, and they do get what they want. Ask me how I know.

Running game works. Being the Romantic Gentlemen might work, if you want to be a doormat, a butler, and walking wallet.

Grandpa Lived in a Different Era

I’m so tired of people asking why husbands and fathers today aren't like their grandfathers or great-grandfathers in terms of leading their homes, tempering their wife when she's way out of line, and keeping their kids in line, etc. The embellished memories of how those men of yore kept everything hunky dory without losing their cool can be entertaining and even amusing to hear once or twice, but the constant extolling of this imagined past familial utopia is irritating.

There are very important things that aren't included in this praise of these "real" men.

Those men could literally beat their wives and children, rape their wives, and kick any of them out of the home without giving them a dime in walking money. If some punk was horning in on one of the girls in the family, the dad could run him off the property with a gun. And none of it was against the law or, even if it was technically against the law, nobody would arrest these men, let alone prosecute them or convict them. Now, not all men actually ran their homes like that, but the general cultural understanding that they could was enough to keep their families in line. Wives and children did run away, facing destitution in doing so, especially when relatives were unwilling to take them in. Many of their relatives would side with the husband/father. Yes, a woman might find that her own father would side with his son-in-law. Just about everyone else did, too... employers/customers, clergy and congregations, mental health providers, doctors, banks, newspaper editors... just about anyone. Wives were told to go back and obey and please their husbands, with maybe doing something on the sly behind his back (like squirreling away some savings if the husband would spend too much or wouldn't let his wife have enough money).

A married woman couldn’t get a credit card or engage in many other financial actions without her husband’s agreement. This is the real reason some women had secret stashes of cash the home. They couldn’t put it in a bank without their husband knowing.

Unlike now, a marriage license was an actual license to live together, have sex, and have children. There could be serious legal consequences if you did any of those things without a marriage license. That license gave a man access to his wife’s body, whether she felt like it at the moment or not. If she cheated on him, not only could be beat her, kick her out, and divorce her, but she could be criminally charged and she certainly wouldn’t get half of everything plus lifetime alimony.

Is that how things should be run? I'm not saying these were good things. But they "worked" in that they 1) kept children from being a disobedient presence in the family home, and 2) kept wives from emasculating their husbands or acting significantly in contradiction to what he wanted. If you can find an acceptable way to achieve those goals now, please share it with us. We’d love to know the secret. And sorry, telling men to “be like your grandfather” ain’t going to do it. You might as well tell someone to fly on a magic unicorn. Grandpa lived in a different era.

The men of today have different dynamics to deal with in the home. They also have different dynamics to deal with outside the home. Every workplace, every institution has been feminized, and most of them have been integrated with women. Most media and most businesses and other organizations seek to cater to feminine sensitivities and priorities when there is a conflict with masculine. Grampa didn’t have to compete with both other men and women in selling his labor. He didn’t have to worry that having a normal conversation with another guy at work could get him fired for “harassment” because someone overhead something they didn’t like.

Sorry, everything else has been changed. You can't expect men to behave as though nothing has changed.

What Honest Messaging Would Look Like From Censorship Crusaders

Whether #Traffickinghub, Laila Mickelwait, Justice Defense Fund, Exodus Cry, Fight the New Drug, or so many others, anti-porn crusaders are desperate to present their attacks on adult media as either an attack on criminal material or only a specific company because of claimed crimes (Traffickinghub/Mickelwait/JDF).

Here's what honest messaging from them would look like.

"We don't like porn, or we like it but wish we didn't."

"Our religions are against nudity in media, erotic images, and sexy dancing, so we try to stop others from being involved with these things."

"Compulsive porn viewing is a common sign someone has problems with compulsive tendencies."

But they want to get people to stop watching all adult media, or at least feel really bad about it, or donate money to them, and they know that if they were honest about that, their messages would only motivate some of the people in their own small religious circles.

So what they do is try to correlate negative indicators with "using porn" in a way that tries to get people to believe that porn caused these bad things.

Quite frequently, they try to portray things true of (even common with) media in general, business in general, organizations in general, or even humanity in general to be unique problems with porn, stripping, etc.

Example: "She's only doing this because she needs money."

Well, yeah, isn't that why almost everyone works a job?

There are countless other examples.

Unfortunately, they push panic on the gullible.

What Should A Rejected Spouse Do?

What are the options when one partner wants sex far more often than the other?

There are people, including women, who point out that spouses are entitled to sex from each other and that one spouse should not deprive the other except temporarily for mutual consent. As such, one account on Twitter cited an instance in which a wife declined her husband's request for sex, only to wake up later in the middle of the night with him doing things anyway.

The law and our culture both say that this is rape.

The person describing the instance says that the wife should give her husband grace.

(I want to make it clear that it is a major turn-off to me if she doesn't want it, so I wouldn't be in this guy's position even if I believed it was OK.)

In the Biblical framework, spouses owe each other sex. General consent to sex is part of getting married. Don't like it? Don't marry. Of course, people who don't consider the Bible an authority can, with integrity, ignore what the Bible says. But someone who claims to care what the Bible teaches can't.

As far as the law, our laws will force the higher earning spouse to financially support the other spouse, no matter what. By marrying, the higher earning spouse is giving general, ongoing consent to this, and crying "slavery!" later or saying "I don't feel like it" won't change it. And although our laws, in some places, still allow a spouse to sue for "alienation of affection" in the event of an affair and "loss of consortium" for any number of things done to their spouse, other than that, the law does not say one spouse owes the other sex. Think about that. If your wife doesn't feel like sex because her employer committed illegal discrimination against her, you can claim "loss of consortium" as one of the reasons her employer owes you money. But you're not owed sex. Laws aren't always consistent.

The woman who said the wife should give her husband grace, and people like her, would also say a husband viewing porn is a terrible sin, even masturbating without porn would be. In their beliefs, a person's sole sexual stimulant or outlet should be their spouse. No sex outside of marriage is acceptable.

When a caller to Dr. Laura presents the situation of a husband wanting more sex and the wife not wanting to meet him at his level, Dr. Laura usually will provide the options as follows:

A) Wife has sex more often with the husband
B) Husband leaves
C) Husband hires sex workers
D) Husband gets a girlfriend on the side
E) Husband masturbates to porn

She says the wife can pick one. Of course, most of the wives don't want any of those. They want option F, which is just that the husband just be completely sexually frustrated. But in Dr. Laura's mind, even though she isn't a Christian nor a Bible believer in the conventional sense, a husband is owed sex because he's paid for it by laying down his life and signing a state contract that financially obligates him.

While sometimes the wife wants it more than the husband, it is usually the husband who wants it more. The norms of various cultures have dealt with this throughout history with polygyny (multiple wives), prostitution, and mistresses. Most American women reject that. Some of them encourage or "allow" their husband or boyfriend to use masturbation, porn, and toys. Other women don't.

Culturally and legally, there is no shame applied at all to men who stay free and run game, who can have sex any night they want. If one woman isn't in the mood, he just moves on to the next woman in his phone's list of contacts, until he finds one who will welcome him. He doesn't need to share his earnings, or run errands, do chores, romance her, go on long walks, listen to her ramble on, or even buy her dinner. He doesn't need to care for her when she's sick, or deal with her parents or siblings, or even her friends. Nope. All he needs to do is text her when he wants some, and show up. He can repeat this with a different woman every night. Meanwhile, the Good Husband can go night after night, for weeks, months, even years, being rejected and going sexless no matter how good of a husband he is. And if he decides he can't take it anymore, he'll have to give up at least half of everything, pay for two legal teams, and likely pay ongoing alimony, maybe even for life.

Which one of those two guys will most men choose to be, if they really grasp that they have a choice? Of course there's always the "monk mode" choice, too, of staying free and not bothering with the sex. We are seeing men make these choices.

I urge men not to assault or harass or otherwise burden women. Only see them when they want you.

Why Married Men Should Have an Affair

To Whom Does Your Body Belong?

Is It OK For a Spouse to Withhold Sex?

Rejecting Your Man

When A Wife Rejects Her Husband

One Flesh or Not?

We Are Not a Project

I found a column by Suzanne Fields at conservative site Townhall. With a headline of "A Good Man Is Still Hard to Find" I took notice. [This entry has been bumped up.]

Women have been complaining since the original Adams family was evicted from the Garden of Eden that "A good man is hard to find."

Whining, complaining, nagging... yep.

Despite radical feminist mockery of the very idea of manliness, that men are natural sexual predators, most women -- with very few exceptions -- still want one.

Of course they do! It's nice to have the cash flow, the bodyguard, an errand boy, and a receptacle for your whines and gripes and thoughts.

The #MeToo movement has nevertheless changed a lot of things in the wake of the sexual harassment-scandal season. One of them is the regard in which men are universally held by women. It often seems we're back to the '80s, when there was a similar assault on the idea of manhood and some women decried all sex as rape.

Radical feminist activists Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin were widely credited with saying that "all sex is rape" and "all men are rapists." They both deny the statements, but Dworkin conceded that she did say, "Penetrative intercourse is, by its nature, violent."

No wonder men are choosing to To Their Own Way (see MGTOW).

Why People Want You To Marry

Men are told to get married.

If it weren't for the constant drumbeat of marriage sellers, there would be even more men joining the marriage strike than have already.

Boys are sold marriage from the earliest ages. It's in the media we consume from the earliest ages.

Why? Why do people want you to get married?

There are many reasons.

Some might have bought into the flawed claims that men are better off if they marry. That's almost never the real reason someone will urge you marry. Let's consider some of the reasons.

The Horse is Out of the Barn and the Robot is Out of the Box

Grab some popcorn and some tea and peruse the panicked, hysterical shrieking of the controlling women and their enablers who can't stand the idea that more and more men will be enjoying robots that essentially amount to advanced dolls and sex toys. [This entry is bumped up because it is as relevant as ever.]

Technology is always going to be applied to sex, if there is any way it can be. This is human nature.

Sex dolls and sex robots or whatever you want to call them will never be effectively banned. Aside from the fact that prohibiting the private ownership and use of personal objects isn't practical, how exactly do you ban these things without banning a bunch of other things? How do you define a sex robot or a sex doll? Some men will stick their penises in knotholes in a plank of wood. Are you going to ban planks of wood? No. So, are you going to ban all robots? All dolls? All sex toys or masturbation aids? Any three-dimensional representation of a person?

Despite the futility, some women (and the men who enable them) are trying to ban these elaborate masturbatory aids.

What Happened Next Door

If you'd told me when I was twelve years old that multiple women who'd appeared in Playboy magazine were going to live in the Playboy mansion, appear in the magazine multiple more times, and be in a "reality" cable television show with Hugh Hefner, I would have known that those women, who were several decades younger than him, were going to expected to be his girlfriends and have sex with him even though he was old and not in the best shape and not committing to any of them, and they would be expected to participate in parties whether that seemed like fun or more work, and that what they were going to get out of this deal was fame, money, access, networking, and visits to Disneyland and wherever else. He's an older man, not in the best shape, and yet these women were going to have to show him a good time.

I would have known that at twelve.

My siblings would have known.

What thinking person over the age of sixteen wouldn't have known this?

But once Hefner was dead, and thus no longer useful, he was cast as a villain by some of the people who used to praise him and cling to him.

Nope. Not buying it.

If you weren't saying this was bad behavior at the time, but rather were profiting off of it, you don't get to bash him now and get any sympathy or points from me at all. Those women knew exactly what they were signing up for. The same goes for anyone going to an adult party at the mansion. Of course staff, such as cooks, cleaners, etc. shouldn't be targeted for harassment, but it was the Playboy mansion; home to a man who built the magazine and brand from the ground up. Nudity and shenanigans should have been expected.

Why Some Men Refuse to Interact With Women in the Workplace

In some places in America, sexual harassment laws and polices have gotten so absurd we may look back someday and laugh at our own stupidity. But it isn't funny for people who have to deal with the problems now. It isn't funny for grade school boys who get labeled harassers for hugging grade school girls. [This was posted here in May 2012. It is even more relevant than ever.]


As with so many other things that involve the government, the cure is worse than the problems.

Imagine three workplaces:

1) A workplace where interaction between coworkers is dull and strained, with little socialization; everyone is fearful of acting naturally.

2) A predominantly male workplace where men talk and bond freely about things like the latest leading lady in the movies and how hot she is, and where women get asked out for dates, and everyone jokes.

3) A predominantly female workplace where women talk and bond freely about things like the latest leading male in the movies, a star male athlete and his physique, PMS, a jerk of an ex, and everyone jokes.

Now, I know those are just three examples and do not exhaust the spectrum, but who really prefers the first option?

Here's where we are in the workplace in some states:

A regular customer comes in, chats with a favorite employee, and hugs that employee before leaving. A different employee, who was on the other side of the room, files a complaint for a "hostile work environment". The customer and the first employee are barred from hugging again.

That is the world that has been created. Normal, harmless (even beneficial) human behavior that has gone on forever in the workplace is now banned. It isn’t by employer choice, really. Since I believe in property rights and freedom of association, I think business owners should generally be able to hire, fire, promote, or demote anyone or any or no reason, and set the tone of the workplace to their liking. Under that policy, if they create a workplace someone finds hostile, that person can take their services or business elsewhere. Guess who loses? The business owner, if that was a good customer or employee. But employers have lost or are losing the freedom to set the terms and conditions and tone in their own workplace, due to laws and court decisions about sexual harassment.

It’s another way trial lawyers and stupid juries are doing some harm. It is another way the Left takes the fun and joy out of life. Yes, this is a Leftist issue. Sexual harassment is something that has been the drumbeat of Leftist feminists. Leftist feminism was, to borrow from El Rushbo, largely about getting less attractive women greater access to the mainstream, and “hostile environment” sexual harassment is their way of punishing men they find unattractive. That is evidenced by the fact that two people can say the exact same thing ("that's a nice blouse") to the same woman in the same tone, and the male who says it is punished while the lesbian who said it isn't. It is also about forcing all workplaces to cater to female sensitivities, even if there are 100 men there and 1 woman. The people who investigate allegations are usually, guess what, women. Leftist women. And men are more prone to violate restrictions because we're visual creatures, we want sex more than women, and we're expected to do the pursuing.

Policy and law about quid quo pro isn't as ridiculous, but even with that, I tend to prefer property rights and freedom of association. If your boss asks for sexual favors, it is time to find a new place to work, if you don’t want to do your boss.

The Left loves to convince people they are victims, and this is just one more way they can be victims.

I know that discrimination and a bad work environment do hurt some people. None of this is to say I think assault, exposure, stalking, or slander/libel should be legal, nor that I think quid pro quo or creating a hostile work environment is morally acceptable. I have a mother, a daughter, sisters, and a wife. I don't want them treated crudely and rudely. However, I'd like to think they all know how to hold their own against rude jerks. But I'm also a man and I have a father, a brother, and a son, and I don't want any of them screwed over with ridiculous laws and polices stacked against men.

Creating a workplace in which nobody will ever be offended in regards to their sex, body, love life, sexual orientation, or delusions about "gender identity" is not possible. I can only conclude that stringent laws and standards regarding "hostile work environment" in regards to sexual harassment are those that everyone knows will not be followed or met most of the time, and are meant to give women an edge over men and to punish employers and reward trial lawyers and government bureaucrats. Employers subject employees to laughable prevention training for the sake of liability issues, though sometimes it doesn’t matter if everyone's been through training – the employer will still get nailed and have to pay out large sums of money.

Why does sexual harassment get special status? If an employee eats bacon in a lunchroom, is that dietary harassment to someone trying to avoid pork products for weight loss, health, or religions reasons? What about if I eat a big, beefy hamburger in front of a devout Hindu? Or if a vegan tells me how wrong I am for eating meat?

Why has the workplace had to conform to female sensitivities, rather than how things used to be when a woman entered a male-dominated workplace or profession: the thickening of her skin, and often sharp wit on her part that disarmed rude men and charmed others? I've personally known women who broke glass ceilings with no help of quotas or sexual harassment polices – they succeeded because they were outstanding employees who knew how to deal with people as adults.

If I invite someone to my home and I want to be a good host, I’ll strive not to offend them. But since when has there been a right to never be offended anywhere, especially if you are a member of a group favored by the Left? (Nobody cares about offending heterosexual white Christian males.)

Why couldn't I run a workplace the way I’d like? As it happens, I would choose to have a policy against quid pro quo harassment and I would have a fairly high standard for decorum. But that should be my choice, not something determined externally and imposed upon me.

What say you?

*****

UPDATE: Post "#MeToo", some men are refusing to mentor or even hire women, or women who are at all attractive. It's sad, but it is an understandable reaction. Saying "Just don't be a jerk" expresses a nice sentiment, but one that doesn't deal with reality. Men could act within the rules of today, only to find in 10 or 20 years that they're being attacked because their behavior or the words they used have since been deemed problematic.

Oh No! Men Enjoying Technology!

I'd probably like most of what Barak Lurie has to say on his weekly radio show. I've never heard it. I'm thinking the vast majority of people in the greater Los Angeles radio market haven't either. That's not a knock on him, but it's just the reality of weekend AM talk radio, especially any English station in this market not named KFI. He was fortunate enough to get on Dennis Prager's national daily show today (Wednesday, October 2, 2019), during the Male-Female Hour, to promote his book Rise of the Sex Machines. [This entry has been bumped up.]

Like Prager, Lurie sells marriage and parenting. These guys want you to get married and crank out babies. They see doing those things as an obligation. Doesn't that sound appealing?

So they are worried about "sex machines", meaning sexbots or sex robots, as if the only choice a man has is being in a marriage with a woman, or having a sexbot, and if we warn against the latter, men will be forced into the former.

Right off of the bat, Lurie said it's much easier not to have a relationship. Exactly! Why make life more difficult if you don't have to???

Prager, for his part, started off saying he was worried about sexbots and he mentioned incels. Again, incels are involuntarily celibate (unmarried). Robots/dolls could disappear and incels would still exist. Most incels don't have one. Very few do.

Prager went to say that loneliness is an epidemic and that the only cures are traditional. However, it is possible to be unmarried and childfree, and not be lonely. As Dr. Laura tells the children of older adults who are worried about those older adults being lonely: Loneliness is a choice.

They didn't ignore the part women are playing in this. Prager said that feminism today means disdain for men. But he quickly went back to saying that he was raised to believe that "being a man" meant taking care of a family, and that getting married was the most important thing to do.

That was a long time ago, sir. And just because someone raised you that way doesn't make it right, especially today.

Lurie did cite that relationships today are considered minefields, false allegations of rape, me too, and all of that. He lamented that the Japanese view children (realistically, I note) as liabilities and that it makes no sense to have children, but Lurie thinks having children is a duty. How nice!

Closer to the end of the hour, Prager said that "winner men" will still seek women instead of sex machines. Sure, if he defines winners as those who seek marriage, but that's circular. The fact is, there are men who are successful, healthy, attractive, and having great lives who are not seeking women, at least not to marry, live with, or to join in an exclusive relationship. Winner men have the most to lose by signing that terrible state contract and engaging in that conflated cultural train wreck.

It says a lot that these guys think men might eschew women because of the availability of sex dolls, including that they think men will perceive that women have less to offer as overall positives in a man's life than a robot. They can't stop progress, so if they're worried, perhaps the answer is working on changing the things that are getting men to avoid marriage (and no, it isn't dolls, robots, or pixels).

We Are Not Going Back

During the first hour of Dennis Prager's Monday, August 19, 2019 show, toward the end of that first hour, he said he "doesn't understand" waiting to marry until establishing or gaining success in your career (succeeding professionally/financially). He claims it isn't rational, and it isn't what people did in history. "Why can't you work on your career while married?" he asked. [This entry is bumped up, and some details of my life might have changed since.]

He says things like this because he is a marriage-seller and because he has no idea what it is like to be a young person today, trying to make their way in this world. He's made it clear that he buys into the idea that man isn't really a man unless he takes on the burden of supporting a wife and children, as if women still don't have access to employment, property ownership, and personal finance. 1) If someone is working on career success, marriage, especially with children, is an enormous disadvantage. Even putting aside the emotional drama and turmoil a wife and family can bring, a spouse and children put a demand on time; there will be days you'll be late for work, or have to leave early, or not be able to work at all due to family matters. You'll get calls and texts that demand your immediate attention, taking you away from whatever you're supposed to be doing. Also, these days, establishing yourself in a career often means long and odd hours, extra days, networking at lunch and happy hours, business travel, moving, and changing employers. None of these are friendly to family.

Motivations Against Adult Media

I don't like it when people aren't honest and upfront about their motivations. I'm much more likely to deal with a salesperson who is honest than one that is pretending to do something out of the pure goodness of their heart or claiming a dire disaster will happen to me if I don't buy from them. [This entry has been bumped up.]

You see this sort of thing all of the time. People say they want to "legalize hemp" for medical marijuana or because practical products made from hemp are so much better than using petroleum. But once recreational pot is legalized these people seem to disappear. Or the "Indian gaming" pushes that say it'll be nothing like Las Vegas, and then once the laws are passed they run ads calling themselves the "shortcut to Vegas!"

This happens constantly when people talk about adult media. So many of the complaints are really about media, masturbation, male sexual nature, the nature of sex, etc. but people choose to only apply their complaint to adult media.

Some people breathlessly pronounce that if you watch "porn" you will become addicted, become impotent, rot your brain, and become a serial mass rapist-murderer. That, THEY CLAIM, is why they constantly warn people and call for restrictions ranging from censor/spyware they're selling to incarcerating people for making or watching video of adults having sex or pretending to. They dupe politicians into passing declarations that such material is a "public health crisis" even though it isn't, and offer a “cure” in the form of a book or “rehab” they’re selling. Or stickers and t-shirts.

Let's get honest about why people freak out about porn.

Dennis Prager on the Burned "Excuse" For Not Marrying

Dennis Prager has one of the best talk radio shows and writes some of the best columns and books. [Update: He is recovering from a serious accident and isn’t doing a show currently.] He is generally a social conservative. He's a religious Jew, and if I understand correctly, he aligns most of all with Conservative Judaism. While many social conservatives rail against divorce, Prager does not. Nobody can accuse him of being a "hypocrite" for being twice divorced. (He is currently married.)

I haven't heard him or anyone else explain why he has been through two divorces, and I wouldn't expect him to. For all I know, he was a great husband in both cases and his wives simply decided to leave. I have not heard him talk about the conditions and results of his divorces, either.

Prager unabashedly promotes marrying.

Here's a disagreement I have with him.

He scoffs at the fear of divorce preventing people from (re)marrying, citing that we don't stop driving because of getting into car accidents.

Well, putting aside that some people do stop driving because of an accident, let's explore this analogy. I've heard Prager cite this analogy when addressing that a man who has been burned by divorce himself - rather than citing the divorce of his parents or siblings or friends - and is reluctant to remarry. I've never heard him ask if the person who is reluctant to remarry has minor children. Chances are, they do.

"Second" marriages with minor children have a 70% divorce rate, and that's only counting the ones that end in legal divorce, not the ones where couple is miserable (or the husband is) or separated or the marriage would have ended in divorce if a spouse hadn't died before it could happen.

Let's say that in buying and driving your first car, that no matter how good you took care of it, no matter how much test driving* you did, no matter how well you drove, it didn't stop someone else who was driving it from crashing it. As a result of that accident, you lost custody of your children, you had to leave your home, you had to pay for two legal teams, you lost half of everything you'd earned, you had to make ongoing payments to the person who crashed your car (and rather than being appreciative and apologetic, that person constantly badmouthed you to anyone who'd listen), and you had to pay a percentage of your salary to children who now hate your guts. You can even remove some of these results from consideration.

Let's say there was a 70% chance of  the same thing happening if you bought another car and let someone else drive it (which is what breadwinning men do when they marry). Would it be a good idea for you to do that?

Now add in that you can either 1) get everything you got by buying and driving your own car without doing so, or 2) live a nice life without those things.

Would it really not be valid to be "afraid" or reluctant to buy another car that someone else could drive?

Prager does acknowledge that some men are unfairly screwed over by family law and courts, and he regularly discusses the difficulties between men and women. But he has this thing about how you should fully experience life, and about how marriage makes people better, and that a guy isn't a real man unless he's supporting a wife. This is despite his insistence that dependency, when it comes to government programs, hurts people. As far as fully experiencing life and making people better, there are people who have, intentionally or accidentally, been left in a wilderness and have had to struggle to survive and make it back to civilization. That was a life experience. That made them a better person. Should we all do that, too?

Prager, at least weekly, says that happiness is a moral obligation. For some people, avoiding remarriage helps them stay happy.



Dr. Laura has taken a different approach. She strongly discourages people with minor children from remarrying, But if someone doesn't have minor children and is reluctant to remarry because of being burned in the past, or is already remarried and is not feeling secure in the relationship because of what a different spouse did in the past, she will point out that they aren't with the same person. True, but there commonalities in the laws, and courts and culture. It's a little like saying "Sure, someone stole your car when you were in that other city, but you're in this city now, with different people." It's not irrational to think there's a good chance the car may be stolen. That's one reason we have insurance. When it comes to remarrying, the best insurance is not to do it at all.



*Test driving can mean any number of things: dating, courting, fornication, shacking up. People can "test drive" without fornicating or shacking up, but others do test drive with those things. I don't recall if I've ever heard Prager's view on the moral status of intercourse, other forms of sexual interaction, or literally sleeping together. But let's not deceive anyone. There have been people who've shacked up and later decided to end their marriages, but there are also people who didn't even fornicate who've gone through divorce, too.

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?

You Can Be Right or You Can Be Married

Have you ever heard that saying I used as the title of this entry?

Have you seen the exchange written in the picture to the left, or anything like it? Or experienced something like it?

When I got engaged, someone gave me a graph depicting a man's chances winning and argument. It starts at 50%, then goes to 25% when he gets engaged, then to 0% when he married.

How many times have you heard men told that the key to a happy marriage is to learn to say "Yes, Dear."?

Consider this letter from a listener to Dr. Laura:

Winning Isn't Everything

I have been married for 27 years, and I have a few thoughts to share about working through arguments with your loved one.

1.You should listen enough to at least let the other person articulate their issue or point of view.

2.Do not force the other person to listen if they don't want to!

3.Listen to YOURSELF so that you are not ever speaking too loudly, with harshness or even a hints of sarcasm.

4.It doesn't matter who wins - it's how both parties feel afterwards.

Sometimes being a good loser makes you both winners.

The letter is really good right up to the underlined part.

I realize that letter is to be considered by both husbands and wives, but the bulk of these things are directed at husbands. We're told in many ways that we're supposed to simply accept and/or announce that we're wrong even when there hasn't been a logical explanation that even demonstrates the possibility that we are. We're supposed to cater to unjustified or even irrational hostility, demands for apologies, and her claim of control, except where she has inconsistently and temporarily (and often silently) ceded some power back to us.

Author of Men on Strike Interviewed at NRO

[This entry is an interesting time capsule from September 2013. I'm bumping it up because it is interesting to me to go back and see what my observations and thinking were, and what was in media, at the time.]

* * * * * * *

I've heard two interviews with Helen Smith about her book Men on Strike, one by Tom Leykis and one by Michael Medved, who have very different goals and perspectives than each other. Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review Online interviewed Smith and the interview is up.

Most men who are consciously on a marriage strike are also going to avoid having (more) children and they will try to influence other men boys to do the same.

Obviously, if this idea catches on and sticks, it means fewer thinking, responsible, productive men getting married and raising children. That's a problem for governments, churches, and all of the people who depend on such men, especially dependent or lazy women, or women desperate to have children who do not want to raise them without a man. So some people have a bit of a panic about this.

Of course, the marriage strike can be ended if there is a successful effort to mitigate the concerns of the strikers. But how likely is that to happen?

Yes, I'm a Christian and I believe the Bible. The most persuasive Biblical argument I've heard that men are required to marry, if possible, and have children, is that we are told to go forth and multiply to spread God's image (that's people) all over the world. However, hasn't that been done? Mission accomplished in that regard. Taking the Bible as a whole, there simply is no requirement that men today marry and have children. What many Christian leaders will say is that men can't control themselves and since fornication is so awful, they should marry. A lot of these same people would tell me I got married with the wrong attitude because I married because I wanted to have sex (and because I wanted to be a father who gave his children the best circumstances I could.)

Some marriage strikers are Christian. Some are atheists, or have some other worldview. Some swear off women entirely, others indulge in fornication. Some have never had a desire to marry. Some have a desire to marry and have children, but that desire is trumped by their concerns about the legal system and culture. Some want to avoid marriage so they can goof off, others want to avoid marriage because it slows down their work as very important scientists. It's a diverse group.

Anyway, here are some excerpts of the interview:

LOPEZ: Who are “White Knights” and “Uncle Tims” and why are they a problem?

SMITH: White Knights are typically conservative men who are chivalrous and always trying to protect women and have no problem with biased laws that punish men while protecting women. Uncle Tims are generally liberal guys looking to get sex or political favors by being male sellouts to their own gender. They are the Bill Clinton types who crack down on their own gender, using biased laws such as sexual harassment while sleeping with women and using them.

Terms like "mangina" and "beta" get thrown around in some circles.

LOPEZ: How has the Obama administration curbed due-process rights of men on campus?

SMITH: The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights sent out a “Dear Colleague” letter in 2011 telling colleges that take federal funds that they should use a lower preponderance-of-evidence standard in sexual-assault cases. Basically it is “50 percent plus one,” meaning that a campus tribunal can decide a young man is guilty with less certainty than is needed in a criminal trial. Read the case of Judith Grossman’s son in the Wall Street Journal to find out more about how young men are believed to be guilty without a fair trial or real evidence.

Outrageous.

Ladies, do you care about your brothers? Your sons?

* * * * * * *

[Now I am more stridently in support of the marriage strike.]

Keeping Boundaries As a Free Man

If you are a Free Man, meaning you don't have a wife and don't live with a woman, I implore you to enjoy your freedom. I also urge you to keep your freedom. 

That might sound easy. I mean, don't you have to decide to move in together and don't you have to ask a woman to marry you?

Sure, but it gets more complicated than that.

Some women literally scheme to get pregnant even though you've made it clear you don't want to have children. Some women incrementally move-in-by-stealth. Some women nag and nag and nag (and even get your family to join in) to get you to "propose".

You need to keep boundaries in order to stay a Free Man.

AVOID POP DNA TESTS. Don't buy them for your family, either. You can't stop them being foolish and taking them, but avoid taking one yourself. No good will come from one of those. The only time you should take a DNA test is through the advice and arrangement of your lawyer.


Monk or Ghost

This is the the most extreme way of staying a Free Man without literally going off to be an isolated hermit. Some men decide to avoid women as much as possible. They don't date, they don't have female friends, they don't work for or with women, and they don't have any professional or financial connections to women (for example, they refuse to have a woman as an accountant or doctor). That is extreme, but for some it works.


Stay Present But Independent

This is the less extreme way. You can still participate in society and interact with women. You just need to be persistent and firm in keeping yourself independent. Let's consider how to do this.

To What Should Males Aspire?

I heard Dennis Prager ask to what men would aspire if not marriage and raising a family. He's repeatedly said that guys are not real men if they aren't husbands and fathers. This is something heard from various corners of our culture, along with other assertion of what makes a guy a "real man". [This entry has been bumped up.]

Notice you never hear what makes a real woman. You never hear "What a real woman does, is..."

What is a guy if he isn't a real man? An artificial man? A transgender man? Of course, that's not what people are talking about. They are saying a "real man" as opposed to a man who is somehow lacking, or, as they might say, a "boy". There's nothing wrong with boys, at least not beyond the general thing of humans being fallen creatures. Again, you don't hear this with women. Women will refer to each other and themselves as girls and nothing negative is meant by it.

A real man is any adult human male who isn't fictional. For example, Prince Charming is fictional. Christian Grey is fictional. Jack Sparrow is fictional.

If there was such thing as a "real man" as opposed to an adult male who isn't a real man, that real man wouldn't give a piece of dung what other people say makes a real man. because when someone says, "What a real man does, is...",  what they're saying is "What I like men to do is..." Because real men urinate unless they have kidney problems, real man have weaknesses, and real men mess things up sometimes. But you'll never hear "What a real man does is urinate." But it's true.

Getting back to Prager's question...

The Priorities of the Professional #Traffickinghub Crusaders

I used to fall for the kind of talking points regurgitated by the professional #Traffickinghub crusaders. Starting decades ago, I was on-board with their alarmism, their insistence that we are/were in a crisis. I've been closely observing the current personalities involved for many years now. [This was originally posted in June 2022.]

On the surface, it seems like the professional #Traffickinghub crusaders are extremely concerned about assault (rape, molestation, etc.). After all, that's one of the reasons for "trafficking."

But when they consistently ignore or refuse to focus on actual cases of rape and molestation at churches, schools, daycares, and other places, and instead take every opportunity to bash adult media, when they constantly use social media services to get attention and donations when those very services have had exponentially more of the very things these crusaders claim necessitates shutting down a porn site and criminally prosecuting its executives, things don't make sense until you consider that perhaps their goal isn't addressing assault, but rather amassing donations by attacking adult media.

It's been years since the "#Traffickinghub" campaign started, and their petition has been online. YEARS. What has happened with all of that time, up until this posting?

• PornHub removed unverified videos (such as those uploaded by users like your neighbor, often videos pirated from other users or websites) and will only allow videos posted by verified producers. Of course the professional Traffickinghub crusaders consider this a victory.
• Credit card companies no longer allow PornHub viewers to pay for their porn (and thereby pay performers) using their credit cards. Of course this has been seen as another victory by the crusaders, although they shifted to complaining that the credit cards are still involved through the ads on PornHub.
• Laila Mickelwait, who was touted as Director of Abolition at Exodus Cry, started something called the Justice Defense Fund.
  
• Laila Mickelwait has gotten a lot of attention from certain journalists and certain government hearings.
• Laila Mickelwait/Justice Defense Fund, Exodus Cry, and other organizations have continued to rake in donations.
• Laila Mickelwait has gotten social media mentions each time someone has signed her petition.
• Laila Mickelwait has broadened from focusing on PornHub to more adult media sites.
  
• PornHub is still online.
• PornHub executives haven't been arrested or charged with any crimes.
• People are still being raped and molested. I'm not aware of a single incident of any such crime being stopped by professional Traffickinghub crusaders.
  
• Videos of rapes, molestation, and "revenge porn" are still all over the Internet. I'm not aware of a single incident of any such crime being stopped by professional Traffickinghub crusaders.
• Performers have been inconvenienced and deprived of money.
• A man went on a mass murder spree at a massage business, and told investigators what sounds like Traffickinghub talking points.
  

Why, it's almost like this is all about lining the pockets and stroking the egos of a few people who have a religious objection to adult media, and not actually helping anyone else.

Laila Mickelwait constantly asserts that PornHub is a "crime scene" full of rape videos (despite the fact that they only have videos from verified producers), tries to harass advertisers and credit card companies, and even tries to get search engines to pretend that PornHub doesn't exist.

Why, considering social media platforms, churches, schools, and other adult websites have an exponentially more serious problem than PornHub ever did? Might it be because PornHub is the most popular and well-known porn site? Might it be that the goal is getting donations, especially from churchgoers and social media users?

It all makes more sense when considering that Exodus Cry's roots are in churches that have a negative fixation on adult media, often to the point of preaching against it more than sloth, envy, greed, gluttony, and gossip combined.