The Ironwood Initiative: Taking Out The Trash (Patriarchy 2.0)

People often look with scorn on the attempts by the MRA community to affect meaningful change.  Considering most of the issues they deal with -- divorce, custody, visitation, alimony -- tend to be narrow and in reaction to their personal experiences, there isn't a lot of room in there for dudes who didn't have a bitter divorce and custody battle.  So while these brave men are hurling themselves at an unyielding system and howling in their frustration, the rest of us who are sympathetic to their cause have little we can do save offer them our moral support.

But there is an issue which MRAs and non-MRAs in the Manosphere can find common ground upon, and, further, it's an issue that affects all men, regardless of their status as parents.  Even better, it's one that men, acting together, can actually have an effect upon without being labeled sexist misogynists just for having a dick and speaking their mind.

Keep in mind that for the last 100,00 years, the physical security of the human race has been the responsibility of men.  Whether we were driving off a cave bear incursion or using million dollar drones to bomb hundred dollar tents, our job has been to first build civilization, and then defend it.  Of course picking up a rifle and standing a post is one traditional way a man can do that, but the fact is that most of the dangers we face aren't from unfriendly strangers with AK-47s.

In the tribal era, in the Time Before Writing, things were simple.  The sacred and biologically-derived division of labor mandated that women stay in the collective safety of the village while men stood on the periphery to guard, hunt, and defend if necessary.  To women was bequeathed the "life magic" that kept the food supply and children supply running, while men held "death magic", the power to take the lives of animals or other men in service and defense of the village.

Agriculture changed that by making violence more efficient through technology and organization, but the same basic division-of-labor remained.  Only when we hit the post-industrial era did this primal element of our masculine souls take a hit.  Military service is now a specialized and highly developed skill, not a basic skillset of every man.  We are discouraged from learning the arts of violence by nearly all women, from our choice of video games to practicing tactical skills during paintball.  Our modern society does not empower us to protect and defend, unless it's in uniform at the behest of the government.  The feminine imperative finds this to be a good thing.  The masculine imperative finds this to be a highly frustrating and angst-producing thing.

A man can see this frustration fester if he does not find other ways to allow his natural impulse to defend and protect to flourish and express itself.  When the most a man can do to protect his family is pay a hundred-dollar-a-month alarm service and stock up on his homeowner's insurance, the psychic frustration implicit in his inability to protect would be as profound - if not moreso - than a woman who was deprived of any opportunity to express her need to nurture. (And yes, I know just like there are men who would rather die than defend . . . anything, there are women who would rather die than nurture . . . anything.  I'm not talking about those contra-survival clowns, just the rest of us.  Our descendants' future ancestors.)

This masculine frustration with the modern age and its limited ability to allow us to feel protective and express our guardianship over what we value is not just a wistful, bitter, "loss of male privilege", it's as tangible as the women who wait at church for thirty years for Jesus to send them a man, when the man never comes.  Men need to feel protective of what they value; it is part of how they assesses and express value.

Many people from outside of the US express confusion over the fierce manner in which we Americans defend the Second Amendment, when we so clearly suffer from its abuses with gory, bloody regularity.  The key to the matter is understanding that the 2nd Am. institutionalizes and ordains with especial protection the masculine need to feel secure in his person, family, and property.  The importance of owning a firearm in America is not the idea that you will be able to protect yourself from a criminal or fend off invaders; it is the feeling of sovereign security such ownership brings.

It was elevated to the status of a "right" by our founding fathers for much the same reason that Roe v. Wade rightly elevated a woman's control over her own body as a sacred right by the Supreme Court: because such a thing is essential for an individual man or woman to feel control over their own destiny.  A woman who cannot freely control whether or not she has a child, or be forced into marriage against her will, is not truly  free.  The man who cannot freely control whether or not he can protect his child is likewise not truly free.

The other Western Democracies guarantee the right to due process, personal security, and (within various limits) private property.  The United States is the only nation in which, thanks to the 2nd Am., those rights are assured.

But the Ironwood Initiative is not a scheme to get dads to buy guns.  The issue isn't gun rights.

The issue is school safety.

Let me begin by saying that I'm not advocating armed guards, militias, etc. patrol our schools -- that's neither reasonable or effective.  In fact, let's take the Lone Gunman totally off the table for the moment and just look at general school safety.

That sounds like a fairly mild issue to most men . . . until you're a father.  Before fatherhood, you think of "school safety" as crossing guards and school buses stopping at railroad tracks.

Once you realize you're going to be a Dad, your entire perspective shifts.  Every news story involving a child getting injured sends a chill up your spine.  Really, your first year of fatherhood is a full-time freak-out.  Once you're a dad, you realize just how vulnerable your children are in a school system long before they ever get there.  School shootings get your attention . . . but so does every child abduction, missing kid, Amber Alert, and savage tale of criminal acts against children.

Your feelings of inadequacy to protect your kids from all manner of dangers when they are supposedly safe at school can lead to insomnia and ulcers.  If you are divorced and your kid is in another state . . . well, that's a kind of persistent hell.

School safety is getting a lot of press, but that's because the spectacular failures end up in the news.  Once you take school shootings out of the equation, then bullying and drugs get the exposure.  My suburban kid learned all about the Crips and the Bloods and how to gang tag an area in elementary school.  He came home terrified the Latin Kings would come creeping through our neighborhood after him for a drive-by.  Gang activity is a serious issue, don't misunderstand me - but your kid isn't nearly as likely to get jumped in or jumped on by a gang in middle school, despite what the Gang Resistance Education program might suggest.

The fact of the matter is, for boys "school safety" isn't just having a good place to hide when the shooting starts.  It isn't just avoiding bullies and telling a teacher.  It isn't saying 'NO' to drugs or watching after-school specials.  When we send our kids to school, the dangers there are real, persistent, and can come from unexpected places.  While we anxiously scan the horizon for armed gunmen and gang lords, we rarely take the time or emotional energy to consider the people who are far more likely to be in a position to hurt your kid: the teachers and staff.

Want to know an ugly Red Pill truth?  If you want to be a child molester in this nation, the easiest way for a free ticket to your fondest dreams is going to college and getting a teaching certificate.  Crimes that would get a crowd with torches and pitchforks on your lawn if you were a mechanic or a systems analyst are heavily protected from prosecution and the consequences of their crimes by the educational and legal bureaucracy.  If you are a child predator, having a teaching license is the equivalent to having a half-price coupon to a strip club.

No one wants to think about that ugly truth.  It's Blue Pill thinking that a teaching certification and an apple on a desk are enough to verify the security profile of the person who's teaching your kid.  Yet every year hundreds of public school teachers are quietly shuffled from school to school after various "incidents", anything from sexting a hot 8th grader to getting grabby during PE, up to and including rape of a child.  I was shocked when I learned just this week that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of child predators in my state that hold valid teaching certificates.  The way that most public school systems are set up the bureaucracy involved is designed to protect the teachers, not the students.  It's designed to protect the teachers FROM the students.

But rarely does the school do much to protect the students from the teachers.

"Passing The Trash"

That doesn't sound like a very big deal, but that's because when there is an "issue" with a teacher and a student, and the police aren't involved, the school's first institutional impulse is to obfuscate, protect, and deny.  If you have a legitimate issue, the bureaucracy is designed to make it go away quietly, bury the parents in pointless paperwork, have a lot of conferences that result in little or no action, and generally protect the teacher, the principal, the counselor, and the school board from any pesky accountability.

Any father who has had to deal with this understands just how frustrating and dangerous to our children it can be.

The Ironwood Initiative is designed to empower men, fathers, and the occasional Black Knight with the knowledge and support to make the issue of School Safety clearly a masculine interest and a goal of Patriarchy 2.0.  The Patriarchy 1.0 was founded on a man's ability to defend his home and family from a threat.  Mature masculinity implies the power to protect and defend with your strength, and no subject will make a father more vicious and angry than the idea that his children are being sent into jeopardy every day.  Patriarchy 2.0 is in part a paternal response to the subtle dangers our children face today.  Everyone does tornado drills.  No one does Child Predator drills.

The dangers faced by our kids are manifold: while everyone dreads the horror of a school shooting, those tragedies are, thankfully, few and far between.  The fact is, your kid is far more likely to be molested by a teacher at his/her school than getting shot by a lone gunman. But while millions of dollars are being dedicated to the study of how to turn our elementary schools into impregnable fortresses, virtually NOTHING is being done about the potential child sexual predators they get locked into that fortress with.  If you're a Dad it should terrify you to know that if your kid is molested by a teacher, then you can pretty much count on the school system covering for them completely unless they got beyond Third Base.

School systems know this is a problem.  If examined in aggregate, the number of reported and unreported cases of sexual impropriety and molestation in our public schools DWARFS the Sandusky affair on an annual basis.  It makes the problems with child predators in the Boy Scouts and the Catholic Church In terms of shear numbers, the number of kids who get molested or preyed upon in public schools is vastly higher than those who suffered that fate in Catholic schools.  The reason you don't hear about it is because the public school system's policies are designed to keep things from being reported to appropriate law-enforcement authorities and handling things quietly "in house" as "personnel matters".

And as "personnel matters", they are naturally cloaked in the kind of secrecy that allows criminal child predators to go on molesting indefinitely . . . and then retire at the public expense.

That is, they use the privacy issue in Human Resources to cloak and obscure any chance of accountability you might have.  "I'm sorry, we can't release that information, it's covered by Privacy laws" is the standard reply . . . which demonstrates, if nothing else, just how unwilling most public school systems are to even deal with the issue.  School systems can feign that they are afraid of being sued over violations of privacy and personnel records by their teachers . . . because they make the process of demanding accountability so complex and obscure, and many such issues are covered by statute that grants schools immunity from liability in a lot of cases.

No one wants to admit that this sort of thing happens.  The fact is, it happens constantly, and the public school system in this country goes out of its way to conceal and obfuscate it.  And because of their unwillingness to keep their own house clean, serial molesters skip quietly from one school to another with the tacit permission of and often a glowing recommendation from their administrators. This happens with such frequency that there's even a an industry term for this transference of child predators from school system to school system: Passing The Trash.  The teacher resigns quietly, the parents are paid off or buried in bureaucracy, and the teacher moves to another school system with a fresh start and a whole new crop of unaware victims.

Unless a child is violently raped on campus in front of a camera, securing a conviction through the auspices of the school system is going to be nearly impossible.  

Even if the offender is caught and prosecuted, in the cases where the offender is female the sentencing tends to be light, and in some cases the teacher doesn't even lose her license, she just goes on "probation".  In fact it horrified Mrs. Ironwood and myself when we learned from an inside source that in our state alone there are around 100 convicted sex offenders who still hold valid teaching licenses in my state, who have managed to hang on to them even while they are in prison, thanks to the rules of the State Board of Education.  Some of these "educators" are even getting continuances on their ethics hearings while they are actively serving prison sentences for their crimes.

Since public school systems get state and federal funds based in part on their reporting of violent crimes and serious issues, the principals involved have a vested interest in burying and under-reporting serious criminal offenses by teachers.  Any time a principal can avoid issuing a police report and treat even serious sexual and criminal offenses by teachers as "internal disciplinary affairs", they can keep their numbers low and their reputations intact.  And if some teacher does get busted en flagrente delicto, then usually the family is quietly paid off through a "secret" institutionalized binding arbitration, and the teacher is not only allowed to resign, they are often given a glowing recommendation by their principal to help get them established in a fresh school system.

No record of the offense or any ethical problems are ever revealed.  Unless the teacher has a criminal conviction and the new school system is willing to check their criminal background history, the child predator can continue with their pursuit in a fresh district with a fresh crop of victims.  Meanwhile, the teacher's previous employer quietly buries all record of it as a "personnel matter", keeping it forever out of the light of day.

There's even an education industry term for the practice: "passing the trash".

This has to stop.  We can stop it.

How?  Here's a list of stuff you can do to help make YOUR kid's school a little safer from the teachers:

1) Run your own criminal background screen on every teacher and staff member at your kids' schools.  It might cost you a couple of bucks, but it's worth it. Call any violations out in writing to the school principal and the school system's HR department.

2) Start attending school board meetings and start putting non-agenda items on that revolve around Passing The Trash.  For instance, ask that the school board require annual criminal screens and fingerprinting of all employees.  They often do it for parent volunteers, but at least in my state they only do them on teachers at the date-of-hire, and then never again.  Or ask for teacher's CVs to be publicly available.  They might say 'no', but other parents and local press might be very interested in their reasoning.

3) Identify possible "passed trash" that has landed at your school.  Common indicators are suddenly leaving in the middle of the semester, frequent moves from school to school, etc.  Often these teachers are extremely popular with their students, as that is part of their MO, so resistance to the very idea is going to be strong.  Remember how many folks were willing to come out in support of Sandusky?

4) Also at the school board meetings, move that the board require special annual instruction of all teachers and staff in the warning signs and indicators of a potential child predator, as well as the laws and criminal penalties involved for failure to report.  The Boy Scouts of America has a twenty-minute video presentation and test online that would suffice, but I suggest you check out parenting.org's list of child predator indicators.  If every employee in your kids' school system isn't required to know this stuff, make it your mission to ensure that they are.

5) Demand accountability.  School systems will bury as much as they can under the obfuscatory blanket of "personnel privacy laws".  They will hide behind policies and pointless grievance procedures.  Teachers are smart, they have protected themselves pretty well from the consequences of their actions.

6) Most schools have an "open door policy" that they love to talk about at the beginning of the year.  Something along the lines of "any parent is welcome to visit our school at any time".  Take them up on it.  Make "surprise inspections" where you essentially walk around the school, recording anything you suspicious you see.  If nothing else, it will make potential child predators nervous.  They work best with inattentive parents (particularly single moms) and often seek out "troubled" kids.  If they see a couple of Dads wandering through, looking stern and menacing, then they might think twice.  And it makes principals nervous, which is never a bad thing.

7) Know the Regs.  Both the local school board policies and the state and federal regulations that regulate your local public school system.  There's nothing a bureaucrat fears more than someone who knows the regs better than they do.  In this case that includes the Safe Schools Act, No Child Left Behind, and FIRPA.

8) Make friends with local law-enforcement over the matter.  Most local law-enforcement agencies already have a touchy relationship with the school system, as "School Resource Officers" or "School Safety Officers" are often stymied in enforcing ANY laws against teachers.  They're there to keep the kids in line, not the teachers.  They see plenty of stuff they'd love to act on, only that's difficult without a parental complaint.  Find a cop who has kids in the same school system, let him or her know your concerns, and be vigilant to any attempt by the school administration to stymie your efforts.

9) Record EVERYTHING.  Check your state's laws for legality, but in many states it's perfectly permissible to record evidence of wrongdoing.  Even if it isn't admissible in court, often it's enough to justify "probable cause" for further legal action.

10) Network with other concerned Dads over the matter.  Not moms.  As much as moms want to be involved and feel strongly about student safety, they're often overly-concerned with public perceptions, reputation, and "making waves".  When the Female Social Matrix is involved, most moms don't want to be "one of those parents".  Dads don't mind making a few waves if their child's safety is at stake, and they are a lot less likely to compromise to the reasonable-sounding suggestions of the school administration.  Dads are also more personally intimidating, in most cases, and while any violent language, threats, or even a raised voice can get you in trouble, being quietly menacing is perfectly within your rights. Dads in groups are even more menacing.  Moms are too willing to "be reasonable".  Dads can get away with being assholes, and aren't nearly as concerned with what the neighbors think.


Now, should the worst-case-scenario occur and you do discover  potential child predator at your kids' school, then the school system often feels smug because they've been through this before, and they feel "protected".  Local DAs often won't prosecute an "internal matter" in a school even if there has been felonious criminal conduct.  State laws often protect local school systems from all liability, or at least most liability.  But there happens to be more laws written about schools than most schools can successfully obey.  Here's a few suggestions about how to put pressure on the school system to make changes:

1) The Press.  There's usually some local newspaper in search of a scandal, some local TV station looking for good stories.  If you can give them one, they might run with it.  "Five Local School Teachers Face School Board Ethics Inquiry" would be too juicy for most to ignore.  There are limits to what the press can do, and "going to the press" doesn't have the same potency that it used to, but raising awareness of an issue is almost never a bad thing.

2) The State Police.  If the local police or sheriff is unwilling to "shit where they eat", involve the state police, highway patrol, and state Attorney General in the case.  They don't have the same vulnerabilities, and busting local corruption is what they're there for.  And no matter how much a school system tries to wiggle around and obfuscate, "Obstruction of Justice" is a lovely one-size-fits-all charge for such maneuvers.

3) Read their email.  Most states provide legal access to all state employee emails with a simple request.  Feel free to request as much email between the school administration and the system administration as possible.  Most teachers and principals never think anyone will read what they write, but unless the email in question is part of an ongoing lawsuit, or it has student names or grades in it, there should be no legal impediment to you seeing them.  And they can be quite revealing.

4) Get the school board to create the position of Omsbudsman.  If you aren't familiar with this obscure legal term, it bears investigation.  An Omsbudsman is basically an official third-party to whom a consumer or stakeholder can register a complaint.  The Omsbudsman then investigates on your behalf, even though they are getting paid by the school system.  Usually an attorney, the Omsbudsman has certain limited powers that can often get things done in the absence of a cooperative administration.  Omsbudsmans can be very specifcally focused, too: a school board can, for example, create the position of School Security Omsbudsman, ADA Omsbudsman, No Child Left Behind Omsbudsman, etc.  School boards don't like to do this, as it takes up time and money when the school board is supposed to be doing everything just perfectly on its own.  But it adds a layer of accountability to the system that most school boards lack utterly.

5) Sue their ass.  It's hard to sue a school system over liability, but there are a number of ways to sue them through proper channels, all good and legal.  Consider a Title IV suit, which involves school security or safety, or if the alleged victim is male you may well have grounds for a Title IX suit, considering the gender disparity in prosecution and sentencing.  Remember, segregation didn't end in the South because of legislation, it ended because of Brown v. Board of Education.

And if you want to be really sneaky . . . you can sue them under the False Claims Act.

This is a little-known provision of law that was written during the Civil War to cover government agencies and contractors who were knowingly providing low-standard equipment (originally blind mules) to a federal agency, essentially defrauding the government.  These suits are usually known as whistleblower suits, or "Qui Tam" suits, from the Latin phrase "Qui tam pro domino rege quam pro se ipso in hac parte sequitur", or "[he] who sues in this matter for the king as [well as] for himself."

Qui tam suits have recently been used against colleges and pharmaceutical companies, and they have a lot of specific restrictions: the plaintiff (called the "relator") must have personal knowledge of a violation that is not general knowlege or discovered through an official audit, they must inform the appropriate authorities of their finding before they file, and they must give the Attorney General the opportunity to investigate and take over the case.  That happens about 20% of the time.  Many states also have False Claims Acts, so the same filing will often work with both state and federal attorneys general.

Now, this might seem a little far-fetched, but the fact is that while local school boards are institutionally prepared for direct legal action against them, the beauty of a Qui Tam suit is that it obligates the state and/or federal Attorney General to investigate the matter automatically to determine the veracity and standing of the relator.  Personnel privacy rules are suspended during an attorney general's investigation.  An attorney general's investigation can go anywhere, look at any document, interview anyone they want without the school system (whom the AG is usually supposed to protect) being able to do anything about it.  Even if you are not granted Qui Tam status as a Relator, the investigation is likely to turn up something . . . or at least make some folks in the school administration mighty uncomfortable for a while.  It's worse than an IRS audit.

But since all public school systems take both state and federal money, they are subject to the provisions of the False Claims Act.  Just as discovering that the school motor pool is paying premium prices for sub-standard gasoline for its buses is grounds for a Qui Tam suit, so is under-reporting violent crimes such as abduction, child endangerment, harassment, etc.  It constitutes making a false report in most cases.  And if the suit does go forward without the State or Federal AG intervening, then the Relator is usually entitled to $10,000 per offense plus up to 30% of all recovered funds.  That's right, you can sue your local school system for fun AND profit!

While no one wants to be the dickhead who lost a couple of million in public funds for a school system, no one wants to be the father of a child who has been preyed upon, sexually abused, and damaged by some trash passed on to your school by another.  Remember, schools didn't do jack about segregation until the courts forced them to.  That's really the only thing they respond to.

MANOSPHERE APPLICATIONS

Now, for those of you non-fathers out there who see this as the impotent pussification of the Manosphere, let me call to your attention a couple of salient details about the Gender War:

1. The teaching profession (K-12) in America is predominantly female, and largely feminist in orientation.

2. The school is where the first serious feminist indoctrination begins for both boys and girls.

3. The feminist-oriented, female-dominated education industry is clearly (by all objective measures) designed to empower girls and punish boys.

4. Elementary school is where the first elements of blanket male disrespect are formulated -- it's a freakin' BETA incubator.

5. The teaching profession (K-12) is the secure backbone of the liberal voting bloc in this country.  Teamsters might change their votes if it's in the interest of unions.  Teachers won't change their votes from a liberal or progressive candidate without divine intervention.

The public school system in this country is where feminist ideas and attitudes get disseminated, largely because feminist teachers understand the Byzantine network of special laws and protections available to them in defense of their "teaching style".  By putting a lot of pressure on them institutionally and administratively, especially in the name of student safety, then they have a very hard time defending themselves.  No one, not even the teachers' unions, want to be on the "pro-child predator" side of the argument.

These are just a few suggestions.  If you have more, please make them.  We all have a stake in this, and as fathers we have a gender-based determination to protect our young . . . even from those to whom we entrust their care.

Let me know what you think.

The Patriarchy 2.0

I've discussed the Red Pill in terms of marriage, relationships, and a general approach to life.  During the last two years or so I have rarely extended the metaphor or the practice into the realm of parenting.  That has been by design - I take great strides to keep my children's childhood happy, that being one of my Wolf Alpha Prime Directives, and discussing them overmuch on my blog endangers that.

However, things have changed in the last few months.  Thanks to some you-wouldn't-believe-it-if-it-didn't happen-to-you events, Mrs. Ironwood and I have been devoting our "abundant free time" to a special project.

We've been fighting crime.

No, really.  The long and short of it is (and about all our lawyers will let us say at this point) is that back in late February, my 13 year old son was abducted by his 23 year old female teacher.  He was safely returned, and was unmolested, but the consequences for my entire family have been fairly profound.  The loss of trust and the loss of security was devastating, and we're still dealing with the aftermath.   If you recall my PLEASE STAND BY post in late February, that was due to the immediate aftermath of the event, and the "Demon's Run" post dealt with the first of several confrontations with various legal and official authorities.

While that battle rages on, another issue was dropped on our doorstep.  The Niece who has lived with us for over a year and acted as our nanny at Stately Ironwood Manor fell in love with a worthless boyfriend with an addiction to that faux canniboid mixture known as "Spice".

Spice is EVIL.   

Unlike the fairly benevolent weed cannabis, Spice is essentially some mildly euphoric herbal base like Marshmallow Leaf or Damiana . . . sprayed or soaked in a number of organic solvents and caustic chemicals.  Touted as being "legal" (it's not - most jurisdictions don't have specific laws making it illegal, but the FDA has - so yeah, it's illegal at the Federal level, but most people don't know this and feel helpless to keep it out of their communities.)and sold as "incense", labeled "not for human consumption" (the Spice industry's equivalent of "For Novelty Purposes Only" or "For The Prevention Of Disease Only")  Spice has become extremely popular in middle schools and high schools because of its lack of regulation and how easy it is to get.

The problem is, unlike pot, Spice (sold under a variety of brand names including BIZZARO and Neutronium) is not only easy for them to get, it's also HIGHLY addictive.  Like crystal-meth/heroin/ levels of addiction, plus a violent change in personality that can resemble schizophrenia. Violent schizophrenia.   Some kids smoke Spice once . . . and just never come back.

My Niece's boyfriend got her and a number of other girls to steal for him from their families and friends to support his Spice habit - and of course he got them hooked too.  In just a few months my Niece dropped out of college and began exhibiting all sorts of other classic addict behaviors.  And then our stuff started going missing.  I'm still pursuing the matter . . . and him.

Since then, Mrs. I and I have been collecting data on local Spice vendors, using our Niece (who is in rehab for it at the moment) to inform on her ex-boyfriend's MO and dealers, and we've turned that information over to local law-enforcement, along with the applicable FDA statutes and potential charges.   Believe me, ask anyone in your local law-enforcement agency about Spice, and they'll be happy to tell you what they've seen.

To quote one cop I've spoken to, "If you catch your kid with Spice just once, go find a way to buy them a big bag of weed.  Kids on weed go to the convenience store at 3:00 am with the munchies. Kids on Spice go to the convenience store at 3:00 am with a pistol.  Weed makes you unambitious.  Spice makes you viciously ambitious in a very negative way."

Spice can destroy you.  It essentially "embalms" your lungs, producing a nasty and distinctive hacking cough, it eats holes in various parts of your brain, and it often leads to seizures and violent psychotic episodes.  If there was ever a case to be made for legalizing pot, Spice makes it.

Why am I bringing all of this up?  Because as the Mrs. and I have been hacking our way through this (and I've been trying to hack my way through getting the Manosphere book out) it has occurred to us, over and over, that in interviewing all the teens we have who are addicted to Spice, in just about every case the kid lacked a strong, compelling father figure.  In many cases these kids were raised by grandparents or single moms who just didn't know or didn't have time to watch and supervise their kids adequately . . . and then their jewelry goes missing, and all the Christmas presents she got her kid are in a pawn shop somewhere and their little girl is having inexplicable seizures at school.

The lack of strong, involved fathers contributed to this problem.  When feminism threw down the Patriarchy, they also threw down the moral authority of paternalism with it, allowing the next several generations of kids to be, as a culture, Fatherless.  Paternal authority is unlike Maternal authority.  Maternal authority can get you to clean your room out of guilt and do your homework.  Paternal authority tells you to stop seeing that boy if you value his life. When we lost the Paternal authority of the Patriarchy in this culture, we also lost its ability to order and regulate our social affairs and expectations.

With the erosion of "patriarchal", traditionally-male values like Family (as opposed to individualism), Duty (as opposed to irresponsibility) and Honor (as opposed to entitlement) feminism broke the shield that once protected our children from such things as Spice and abduction and tried to replace it with Social Workers, Diversity Training, and "Self-Esteem" lessons.  

And I've fucking had enough of seeing our kids' lives get wasted because of such things.  My son told me instantly when he got home what his teacher did, because he knew he could trust me and trust me to do the right thing, whatever that was.  I'd like to think I haven't let him down on this.  Four months into his crisis, we're still grinding away at the various bureaucracies to see justice done, accountability accorded,  and our children protected.  It hasn't been easy, and it's far from over, but he's watching me give it everything I've got, so even if we lose, in the end I've won . . . and so has he . . . just by not giving up.

As we men collectively face the social horror of the 21st century, therefore, it occurs to me that the re-establishment of those sorts of masculine values can only be affected if we re-found the Patriarchy.  

Not the way it was - the pre-Industrial patriarchy won't work anymore, and the post-Industrial model got crippled before it really was firmly developed - but in a new way.  We need "rule of the fathers" if we value our children's lives and futures . . . because the alternative is abandoning them to the whims of what feminism has wrought.  And I ain't got not time for that.

We need Patriarchy 2.0.

So this Father's Day, I'm officially re-founding the Patriarchy in honor of Papa Ironwood and all the other dads who made it through the Feminist Interregnum successfully.  True, most dads out there today feel unempowered and helpless against the giant bureaucracy that has evolved to keep them from influencing their own children, but that doesn't mean it can't happen.  They may feel impotent in the face of domineering wives or baby-mamas who feel that they and they alone have an active say in parenting.

They are Beta dads, and it is because of their inaction and their unwillingness to stand up to their wives or the system on behalf of their children that stuff like Spice happens to our kids.  Only strong fathers can provide the kind of no-nonsense direction and order a developing kid needs.  Mothers compromise, seek consensus, worry about their child's feelings before the other elements of their lives.  Dads Lay Down The Law.  And if you are incapable of that, you need a dose of Red Pill parenting, stat.

Those men who have, by accident or intention, brought another human being into this world have made a pact with their fellow fathers whether they understand it or not.  I've seen, up close and personal, what happens to a kid who is raised by just a mom, or by a strong mom and a weak dad, and the results fill our psych wards and juvenile detention centers.

Patriarchy 2.0 isn't the broad-based Patriarchy of yore; it is the quiet forging of strong bonds between all fathers, local and national, to act as a collective defense of our children.  It has fuck-all to do with marriage, as the shattered landscape of our social system has amply demonstrated that marriage and fatherhood are now well-estranged, in general.  Patriarchy 2.0 is smarter, leaner, and more pissed off.  Patriarchy 2.0 isn't pushing for the return of the Traditional Family as much as it is striving for the survival of the families we have.  

Patriarchy 2.0 is a 21st century response to the problem of child-rearing, with the understanding that the Diaper Years are, actually, the easiest for a dad to navigate.  Patriarchy 2.0 implies a spirit of activism on behalf of all children, not just your own, and a willingness to ignore the "better" approach of feminism and HR departments.  Patriarchy 2.0 is not opposed to MGTOW, PUAs, or any other aspect of the Manosphere.  We're all just Dads, who are worried about our kids, and we need to look to each other for support and guidance because if we rely on the women in our lives to navigate such treacherous waters, then we are risking the lives of our children and abandoning our duties as fathers.

I'm not saying that Fathering is superior to Mothering, or that Dads are better parents than Moms.  What I am saying is that Fathering is important to both boys and girls, and that Dads can do things, say things, and teach things to children of either gender that Moms cannot.  Most Beta dads are content to back whatever their wife decides; Patriarchy 2.0 insists that Dads get to contest that decision if they don't agree with it, and will step in and take charge when they see the need.  Patriarchy 2.0 says dads deal with their business, and get other dads to help if they need it.  Patriarchy 2.0 says if you see a dad in trouble, you help any way you can.  It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes a Father to drag their ass into maturity.

Fatherhood is a universal male value, and a universal masculine issue.  Feminism has tried for years to destroy the Patriarchy by eroding or eradicating the father-son relationship, and poisoning the father-daughter relationship, the removal of family planning decisions from male hands, assorted other attacks on the very institution of fatherhood, and that's what has given us the mess we currently stand within.  We can either accept it or we can fight against it.  I have some ideas how to fight it, and over the next few weeks I'll be sharing some of them.

Father's Day is about honoring fathers, specifically our own, but henceforth I wish it to reflect on the debt we owe to all Fathers, in all times, in all places.  Fatherhood is such a rare and special commodity, thanks to feminism, that when it does genuinely appear these days it needs to be nurtured, protected, and encouraged like a nascent flame during a storm.  And like that flame, it may become the only light and heat we have in the future to get us through the storm.

To this end I am launching the Ironwood Initiative: a series of pro-active instructions and information on what dads can do to help protect their kids - and all kids - from the dangers they face, and how to bring them into manhood or womanhood successfully.  Patriarchy 2.0 needs guidance, and I encourage all fathers out there to join me in giving the advice and support that all other fathers need.  Patriarchy 2.0 is about Red Pill fathering, and while that's still a nascent and nebulous concept . . . it needs to be done.

And the essence of the Red Pill isn't "what can I do?", it's "what needs to be done?"

Happy Father's Day to you all.  Call your dad.  Ask him what he thinks.  Listen.  And then start approaching the entire idea of Fatherhood from a perspective of masculine strength and tenacity.  Raising a kid ain't easy, but it's helpful if you have a couple of other dads around to help.

The Manosphere review over at stagedreality

Wanted to give a shout-out and point out a review (first!) of the Manosphere book, over at stagedreality by blogger Leap of Beta.  I won't add too much to what he's said -- it stands on its own -- but I accept the criticism as eagerly as I do the praise.

While we both come from different backgrounds and we're at different stages in our lives, with different values and different perspectives, we're both men in this century, and by participating in the Manosphere we help bring other men to wisdom and maturity.  And how to get mad poon.

The book really grew out of the 2011 debate that tried to define the Manosphere as either a MRA phenomenon or a PUA phenomenon.  While both had outstanding claims to the role, the fact is that the Manosphere is bigger than both of them, and is inclusive of both of them, plus plenty of other dudes who were some mixture of both of those and more.  The Manosphere exists, and will continue to develop, as a 21st century vault of wisdom and debate about masculinity and a means of the un-fathered to help initiate themselves into the company of mature men.  Or just get mad poon.

Thanks again to Leap of Beta, whose own blog is worthy of checking out regardless of what he says about me.

The Manosphere: A New Hope For Masculinity Is Now Live!

Finally.

The Manosphere book went live on Kindle last night, just before midnight.

The story of how the book came to be, came to be written, and then how it went through a gazillion editions before, alas, I was forced to publish it myself (it wasn't rejected, exactly . . . it's complicated) is freakin' epic.

If I promised you a review copy and you haven't received one, email me.  I'm a little out of it.

The book is not intended to be exhaustive -- it's an intro and a survey, not an in-depth study, even at a robust 270,000 words.  The number of bloggers and experts on various things I mention is vast, yet there is still so, so much more of the perpetually-evolving Manosphere to chart.  This is intended as a place to begin the journey, not end it.

Among the notables quoted within are:

Hugh Hefner
Robert Bly
Camille Paglia
Dalrock
Ferdinan Bardimu
The Society of Phineas
Dr. Albert Mohler
Kevin Deride
William Bennett
Christy Krumm
The Private Man
Hailey of Hailey’s Halo
Deti
TakenInHand.com
Sexo Grammaticus
Cath Eliot
Warren Farrell
The Spearhead.
Manboobz
A Voice for Men
Roger O. Thornhill
John the Other
Jack Donovon
Michael Kimmel
Sam Keen
George Lucas
Badger
Peggy Noonan
Rollo Tomassi
Hugo Schwyzer
Susan Walsh
Dr. Andrea Doulcet
Sara Ruddick
Suzanne Bianchi
Good Men Project
National Organization of Women
Joe Kelly
Jenny Thalheimer
James Poniewozik
Emily Goulding
Chloe Angyal
Neil Shyminski
Dr. Roy F. Baumeister
Average Married Dad
Erik von Markovic
Roissy
Roosh
Neil Strauss
Jonathan Frost
Liza Mundy
Kasey Edwards
Andrea Dworkin
Dr. Philip Zimbardo
Nikita Duncan
Joe Francis
Victor Assange
Tucker Max
John Gray, PhD
Dr. Helen Fisher
Dr. Emily Nagoski
Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam
Dr. Vicki Levkoff
Bill Powell
Marina DelVecchio
Athol Kay
And many more!

So check it out, review it, tell me if you think it sucks, tell your friends if you think it's good, and generally let me know I haven't been spinning my wheels for the last two years on this project.

More promo stuff to come, but I thought I'd at least let y'all know.  Oh, and I uploaded it yesterday in honor of my brother Sylvester's birthday.  Happy b-day, li'l bro!

The POD version should be ready in plenty of time for giving a copy to Dad on Father's Day (fingers crossed) but I will probably release more versions on more platforms as time goes on.

Oh, and very, very little of it is recycled blog content.  Just sayin'.  I wouldn't charge you that much if most of it wasn't new material.

(Oh, and my editor killed a few quotes . . . including John Scalzi's.  The note said (??? Not important or well known enough to be of interest - cut).  Life's hard out here for a Gammarabbit.)

You Know Who Hates Gamma Rabbits More Than The Manosphere? Feminists.

Back in my Blue Pill days, I went through my Gamma phase.  I'm not proud of it.  It only lasted a couple of years before I snapped out of it.  But it happened.  I can admit that now.  In fact, snapping the Gamma was one of the first steps on the road to Breaking Beta.

If you're not down with it yet, go study Vox Day's brilliant Socio-Sexual Hierarchy, listing social descriptions of all manner of men on the hunt for women.  Gammas are the "male feminists", the manboobz, the "I can be manly while I hold my wife's purse at a party while she talks to another guy" dude.  Gammas, in their evolved form, become self-loathing White Knights like Hugo Schwyzer, professional Mangina.  Essentially, Gammas have come to believe that all things male are inherently bad, and that all things female are inherently good -- sacred, even.

Typical presentations of the Gamma include low self-esteem buttressed with a "if I kiss enough female ass I'll be accepted!" attitude that can be pathological in its intensity.  Gammas are the true "Beta Orbiters".  When they do mate, it's usually with the female equivalent or lower -- except in those hilarious cases where a low-number Gamma inexplicably marries a higher-level woman.  Those things tend to be short and painful.

But this guy over at Salon is pitching a particular bitch-fit over the lustful thoughts he has about strange women, and how he feels genuinely offended on behalf of his twin daughters and his Tiger Mom, MD wife.  As he pathetically confesses the righteous indignation he feels at his own penis' mindless objectification of women (let's ignore the fact, for the moment, that a dude usually only gets in such a state when his sex life is in "IV drip mode") his tone is clearly pleading for affirmation and acceptance.

It's the Gamma Rabbit Trap: capitulate to the idea that women are superior to men, in all important ways, under the theory that such sniveling capitulation will gain you acceptance, love, and pussy.

Brother Rabbit, it don't work that way.

The Gamma Rabbits are like Black Republicans: you can't figure out how anyone would labor and advocate for a position so blatantly -- proudly! -- against their best interests.  You see, this obvious ploy of appeasement is designed to make him feel better about his "lustful, sexually objectifying" thoughts, because feminism has told him since birth that such thoughts are evil. Andy has voluntarily confessed and repented of being part of "rape culture", and fervently desires a non-sexist, non-threatening world.  A Blue Pill world, where words like "hypergamy" and "infidelity" never exist.  Where "regular sex" is timed by the moon, not by the clock.

 So . . . this guy should be crawling with feminist support and admiration, right?  Because that's clearly what he expected: affirmation for his progressive feminist views and the acceptance of him as a man because of his recognition of the inherent evils of owning a penis.

Only . . . not so much.  Poor bastard.

Not just one, but two scathing reviews of his Gamma-laden posts were made by feminists.  The thing is, they didn't take issue with his political perspective.  They took issue with . . . him.

In New York Magazine, in an article entitled, "I'm a Woman, I read Slate, I Write Violent Thoughts About A Man Who Writes About Being Horny.  How Can I Stop That?" (when, clearly, she has no desire to stop), Maureen O'Conner conflates her hatred of male sexuality and fatherhood in a screed that - if the genders were reversed - would land her in anger management counseling or fired and escorted from the building by security.  In part Ms. O'Conner's violent misandry over male feminist Andy Hinds' admission that yes, he too has a penis (although he's very ashamed to admit it) goes something like this:

". . . deep in the vaginal recesses of my female imagination, I fantasize about tearing Slate writer Andy Hinds limb from limb. "

"If I had more respect for Andy Hinds, I might indulge my fantasy about punching him in the gut so hard that he doubles over in pain for a moment. "

"Unfortunately, like Andy Hinds, I too am but a prisoner to my instincts, no matter how hypocritical or rude. The heart wants what the heart wants, and my heart wants violence. "

"Sure, I may want to throw Andy Hinds and [professional Mangina] Hugo Schwyzer into a tank full of hungry sharks, but  . . ."

This, Andy, from your feminist "allies".

Oh, but it gets worse.

From Jezebel, the Industry Leaders In Organized Misandry, in a post entitled: "Daddyblogger Controls His Boner With 'Imaginary Burqas'" by Katie Baker, which goes beyond the violent imagery above and just resorts to humiliating, shaming and effectively destroying this man for sharing his confusion about his sexuality in the feminist-approved way:

But it's not sexist to think about boning strangers, and it's horrifying, really, to resort to mentally censoring women so you don't have to consider the possibility that you're not actually as much of an "enlightened" feminist as you think but a dude with a latent Madonna-whore complex (Hinds could ask his wife how she feels about all this, at least?)

This is actually worse that O'Conner's piece, because not only does she emasculate him for self-emasculating, she further emasculates him because he doesn't have his wife's permission to think these thoughts.  And then she goes on to state that she agrees with all the violent misandrist crap in O'Conner's post.

Way to go, girls.  Another win for our side.

See, Gentlemen, when the poor Gamma Male Feminist Rabbits do try to talk about how proud and dedicated they are to non-sexist culture and gender equity, the moment they poke their head up out of their hole the feminist lawnmower rolls over it.  Andy is an almost complete Scalzi, but he's already getting hammered for his "enlightened" attitude by the very feminists he's trying to identify with.

In his own blog, he frets over the comments from the "Men's Rights Movement" and being misunderstood, not quite understanding that it wouldn't matter how clear and concise he had been, any time a "male feminist" says something out loud, he will and is always castigated roundly by a plurality of female feminists.

It's like a law of nature.  Just see how much respect professional Mangina Hugo Schwyzer has in their circles.

Andy, what you have to realize (and probably wont) is that regardless of the kicking-around you feel in the Manosphere among "Men's Rights Movement" and "Right Wing" trolls, the fact is that we're a lot more forgiving than the feminists are.  We're always willing to help a brother out, if he's willing to admit that the bullshit disguised as political theory known as "feminism" has less to do with equality as it does with female entitlement.  The ladies at Slate and NYMag feel utterly entitled to bash you and your life, your lifestyle, even your wife and kids with impunity, because they know you won't defend yourself.  Even that "What I meant to say" pieces will be ridiculed . . .  if it's even noticed.

Here's the thing, Andy: you will never be accepted as a "feminist" by feminism, because you are Male, and therefore part of the "Patriarchy" and oppressive "Rape Culture" that you, yourself, have been trained to loathe.  Fear, guilt, and early indoctrination convinced you that male sexuality was "bad", and feminism has compounded that feeling by publicly ridiculing your sexuality even as you struggle with it.  On the other side, your unwillingness to admit and embrace the fact that a) you have a penis b) there's no inherent shame in that fact and c) any group who espouses equality and then indulges in such nasty bits of misandry is so intellectually dishonest at its core that your "alliance" with them resembles more a prostitutes alliance with a pimp, not the honest and equal intellectual partnership.

Read these posts again, Andy.  Feel how much they scorn and despise you?  You are contemptible to them . . . because you propose to agree with them.  If they were truly dedicated to a non-sexist world they would have applauded your admission, not condemned it.  But they treated you like a thuggish rapist for admitting that you had illicit thoughts.

Here's the Red Pill truth, Andy: illicit thoughts about random women are part of your evolutionary heritage, and attempting to eschew that so you can make a couple of bitter feminist bloggers happy (when they are predestined not to be happy) with you is just stupid.  You really area Beta Dad, and no, I don't mean that in a "good" way.  In fact, you're less Beta and more Gamma.  A White Knight.  Just the kind of dude feminists love to throw under a bus until you howl . . . which they then point to as proof that they were right all along.

Look, I'm sure you have a spiffy marriage and your kids are adorable.  But Andy, if you don't clue into some stuff real quick, I prophesy a divorce or estrangement within a decade, and then you'll be here, bitter, and wishing you had listened to us.

First, ditch the fear of women.  As much as you love your wife and daughters, that does not extend to the millions of women that would be happy to falsely accuse you of rape, take advantage of your gender in the workplace, or yawn with boredom when they hear of your death in an industrial accident on the news.  The idea that feminists have any male's rights or issues in mind is demonstrably false.  Your continued adherence to this self-destructive, genocidal ideal is going to bite you in the ass even bigger than it has, mark my words. (Go ahead.  Mark them.  I'll wait.)

The Red Pill Truth, Andy, is that your wife earns more than you do, which means (if the stats are correct) that despite everything else, you have at least a 40% chance of divorce in the next decade if it continues.  The truth is that feminists will never accept you, they will always reject you no matter how "nice" you are, and in fact the nicer you are, the more they will despise you.  Gamma Rabbits don't fit into their program unless they need votes or someone to take out the garbage.

It kinda sucks you have daughters, because you're all awash in "girl power" feminism.  If you had sons, then you'd have a much different perspective.  One in which you would see your son's achievements and performance retarded and belittled because of his gender.  One in which your son would not matter even in the abstract to most feminists, because he's "part of the problem".

If you're smart, you'll start reading the Manosphere, Andy.  Not the PUA stuff, but the Married Man Sex Life Blog/books/forum by Athol Kay.  No More Mister Nice Guy.  And my own humble blog.  You'll discover that being Beta -- or worse, Gamma -- gets you respect from neither gender.  The only ones who love Gammas are other Gammas . . . until you stop acting like a Gamma.  Then they turn on you and devour you.

Seriously, dude.  You're a good dad, that's obvious.  You want to be a good husband.  Feminism will help you with neither of those things.  Don't believe me?  Count the number of feminists you know who have been in long (15+ years) happy marriages to the same man.  Go ahead.  I'll wait.

Didn't take long, did it?

That's the dirty little secret feminism doesn't want you to know.  Feminism is not a reproductive strategy designed with a long-term relationship, much less marriage, in mind.  In fact, it celebrates divorce and the estrangement of children from their fathers as a matter of course.  You might disparage the "MRAs" as a bunch of bitter boobs, but the chances of you being there someday, if you keep doing what you're doing, are better than hitting the Pick 6. Ever.

So Andy, I invite you to seriously reconsider your position.  In fact, just to be a good guy about it, I'm going to send you a review ecopy of the Manosphere book as an introduction.

But for the love of Zeus and Hercules, stop acting like you raped someone because you popped a boner over some babe.  It's embarrassing, harmful to your fellow men, and even your wife -- as sympathetic and empathetic as she's likely being about it right now -- isn't going to find you any more attractive because of this.  Quite the contrary.

Welcome to the Manosphere, Andy.  Learn how to Break your Beta. We can help you be a better man.  Hell, it might just save you.

Pinterest: What It Really Means

Pinterest, if you are unaware - and let's hope to Zeus Pater you are - Pinterest is a website devoted to . . . well, putting up pretty pictures of stuff you want.  It's a point-and-click coveting scheme, a means of displaying conspicuous consumption of things you wish you had, to demonstrate your good taste.  Needless to say, the site is packed to the gunwales with women who want to impress other women with stuff they don't actually have.

In other words, it's essentially a scrapbooking site . . . for people too lazy to actually take the trouble to scrapbook.  You just point, click, and BAM!  Instant taste and charm.

Now, it's easy to see why this site has a great appeal to women - it's a function of the Female Social Matrix, in which women are positioned in part by the admiration they get from other women.  In the Olden Days, a few years ago, ladies were forced to do this by actually going out and buying things and arranging things and painting things -- remember Trading Spaces?

No more.  Now you just point . . . and click.  Instant taste.  Instant admiration.  Instant gratification.   Of course there is a social marketing component -- you have to share your taste in order to receive gratification.   Your friends, colleagues, neighbors, and strangers on the internet can inspect and approve and compliment you on the stuff you would have bought, if you could have, or wanted to, or had the energy or . . . you know, do anything but sit on Pinterest and mindlessly point and click their way into demonstrating an independent sense of style.  But women actually brag about the "pins" they've acquired and shared.  Think of it as the feminine equivalent of fishing . . . on the Wii.

While I enjoy a good estrogen-fest as much as the next dude who watches porn all day, there comes a point where the chiffon prom dresses and the stylish patio sets with the perfectly-matched picnicware and the luxurious bedroom suite that cost more than your present home just gets to you.  I know it got to me.

So I went down to the dungeon of Stately Ironwood Manor and put the Flying Monkeys on it.  And being bored, and tired of attempting to recreate the complete works of Shakespeare banging on the one sorry typewriter I have, because, c'mon, Amazon?  So they came up with a few small little tokens ("pins") related to the Red Pill and the Manosphere.  Because, y'know, Pinterest should really be introduced to the Manosphere.  I'm sure we'll get along famously.  

Trade 'em, collect 'em, make your own, share them all over the place and watch some folks squirm.  Because a subversive Puerarchy is an effective Puerarchy.

So . . . if you have a Pinterest account, or just want to piss off a bunch of prissy girls who think a pink and teal granite countertop is worth damp panties, then start "pinning" these things and make some of your own.

Really.  The Monkeys assure me it is quite therapeutic. Enjoy.

Male Shaming Our Military

One of the most frustrating and infuriating things about the on-going Gender War is the wholesale male-shaming that occurs when a feminist gets a bee in her bra about something -- anything -- and then tells a man (or, usually, all men) to grow up.  Case in point: this morning's CNN Opinion piece by Pepper Schwartz entitled, condescendingly enough, Can Men Evolve? in the teaser and Soldiers and Sex: Can Men Grow Up? in the article.

The very title is an attempt at wholesale male-shaming, and while the subject matter is very, very serious -- sexual harassment and rape in the military -- the perspective and attitudes Dr. Schwarz espouses show both a stunning naivete about the function and nature of the military and an appalling and misandrist opinion about men and masculinity in general.

Let's start with the issue of shaming: Any time a woman tells a man to "grow up", unless the woman in question gave birth to the man in question this directive is the moral and semantic equivalent of saying "stop being such a bitch" to a woman.  It is openly disrespectful, makes dramatic and erroneous assumptions about the nature of men and masculinity, and more often than not demonstrates the ignorance and evident unsophistication of the woman in question.

Men, that is, mature men who have assumed adult responsibilities (like, say, carrying an M-16 and killing people on behalf of the US Government for a living) should be accorded a level of respect commiserate with that responsibility.  When a woman says "grow up", she is deliberately trying to shame and disrespect a man by assuming a superior moral posture . . . when upon close inspection, that posture is rarely deserved. 

 "Grow Up" implies that the woman in question has a right to judge the actions and behaviors of men -- and in this case, men in a male-originated, male-dominated, and male-oriented profession.  The idea that Dr. Schwarz, for all of her journalistic street cred, is somehow by nature of her gender entitled to judge male maturity without considering the context of the complaint paints the misandrist, sanctimonious condemnations of my daughter's 11-year old friends, not a thoughtful adult perspective.

I'm not denying that the sexual harassment and rape of our women warriors is a tragic and unacceptable situation; it was also quite predictable.  Feminists in particular and women in general see our vast military as just another civil-service job with a really strict dress code, not the organized and institutionalized tool of projecting violence and death anywhere in the world at need that it is and must be.  Minor but important difference.  We take young men who barely know how to eat with a fork and knife and turn them into killing machines . . . so that feminists can have the freedom to condemn them wholesale.

The military is a uniquely male-dominated field for obvious reasons.  Men banded together for mutual defense and to protect their mutual holdings since the Paleolithic, and after agriculture that tribal warrior culture blossomed into the sophisticated and regulated -- and highly efficient -- military system we have inherited today.  Remember 300?  Have you read Anabaxis?  Do you know who Alexander the Great, Sun Tzu and Julius Caesar are?  They are the roots of the modern military culture.  And the needs and necessities of military life - brutal efficiency and absolute discipline - have given similar form to the institution of the military regardless of whether it sprung from the Mediterranean Basin, the Indus Valley, or the Yangzte.  When men organize to kill other men and destroy property, there's a right way to do it.  The ARMY  (or NAVY) way.

Notable exceptions aside, women do not fight in armies or navies, and women do not form armies of women.  There's a reason for that.  Men who are trained to overcome their socially-conditioned hesitation to take a human life, and then be able to do it upon command and live with the psychological aftermath, can only do so through a very strict regime of conditioning their natural aggression into a highly-controlled tool.  That process is military training, in which not just women, but all human beings are by necessity objectified.  If a terrorist in Fallujah can be a woman, then assuming special exceptions to that rule in some misguided application of chivalry is a ticket to a dead soldier . . . and that's not the ARMY way.

Objectification is a requirement for the military, a psychological requirement.  Not just of the Enemy, but of your subordinates, your superiors, and your peers.  If you attempt to subjectify the military experience more than absolutely necessary, the psychological protections military training instilled in you falter.   You cannot -- cannot -- see female soldiers any differently than male soldiers, despite the obvious disconnect implicit with that statement.  The idea that some "girls are special" course is going to work -- or that we'd be happy with the results if it did -- is ludicrous and naive.

Of course, there have always been problems with that process, because men are individuals and the military works best when individuality has been de-emphasized.  Some individuals are just not psychologically capable of accepting that process, and some are perfectly fine until the extreme stress of military life causes a mental switch to flip.  If the most basic human prohibition -- do not kill other people -- can be so summarily removed by the process, there is a natural danger that some will consider this all the psychological rationalization their subconscious needs to abandon others.  Switch flipped.  In some cases, that switch, unfortunately, leads to sexual assault on fellow soldiers or sailors.

This, too, has been a problem that has been around since the Paleolithic.  And it did not start being a problem when women were allowed into the military.  The tie between sex, aggression, domination and submission is well-known, if not well-understood.  The military, by necessity, controls aggression and uses domination and submission implicitly in its organization and culture.  But you can't ignore the sexual component of the equation, like Dr. Schwarz wants to do, or gloss over it with "That's disrespectful!" . . . just because the soldier or sailor who was the victim of the assault happened to be female this time.

It's easy to look at all the fancy equipment, the drones, the planes, the artillery and tanks and all the other ways we've made mass destruction efficient and impersonal and decide that modern military life doesn't need more character or discipline to carry off than, say, that needed to design and produce a video game.  But that mistakes the nature of the military and its job, and glosses over the ugly reality: all of those fancy toys are still just the spear in the hand of one man who is about to slay another . . . and who himself may be slain in turn at any moment.

That kind of constant existential crisis needs release, or tragedy beyond the planned tragedy of war occurs.  Traditionally, wise military commanders made certain that ample camp followers or prostitutes were available to keep this relief at hand.  But even then, when sex was easy, cheap or free, still the mix of aggression, domination, and submission led to abuses.  In the final analysis, the gender of the victims matters less than the issue of sexual abuse over-all; where were Dr. Schwarz's cries for "men to grow up" when an Army sergeant in Korea abuses young men for years before getting caught?  Only when women's virtue is at stake is Dr.Schwarz bothered.  Only when women's lives are affected does Dr. Schwarz see a problem.  Our young men can get butt-raped by their peers and superiors all day long, and Dr. Schwarz and her equivalents are silent, more preoccupied by issues of diversity and equality and finding the perfect match than righteous rage at such offences.

What Dr. Schwarz is doing here is similar to what almost all feminists (with a few gallant exceptions) and most modern women do when it comes to considering the military: they don't hesitate to take advantage of the aggression of our young men when there are Bad Guys around, but otherwise they treat the men who have sworn to protect her First Amendment rights to disrespect them to the death, if necessary, and classed them all as rapists and discriminatory thugs.  She has, like almost all feminists today, exploited the idea that young men are disposable in our society, and she treats them accordingly.

I make frequent exception here because I know many women soldiers who don't feel a bunch of "girls are special!" classes are the answer to the problem.  Indeed, there are many who feel this approach is precisely the wrong way to fix the problem, and since they have more direct experience with it than Dr. Schwartz, I think I'd trust their judgement more.  Coincidentally, NONE of these brave women warriors (some of whom were rape victims themselves) ever made the childish and irresponsible demand that "Men just grow up!".  Because they understand men and the military a whole lot better than Dr. Schwartz does, apparently.

They know that the basis of this behavior isn't a lack of role models, proper instruction, or sufficient diversity training classes.  The men who assault (and despite Dr. Schwarz's contention female perpetrators of sexual assault are "rare, and not systemic in any institution", I would venture to say that it is actually far less rare and simply far more under-reported, due to a number of factors, based on anecdotal evidence) are not "immature", they are not being "puerile", they are not "boys being boys" . . . the men who commit these crimes are under herculean pressures, inadequately supported, and frequently under-supervised.  While rape and sexual assault are tragic results of this problem, they are mere symptoms.

Dr. Schwarz's snit over sexual assault seems trivial and trite when one looks at the suicide statistics for our active military and returning veterans. In 2012, there were 349 suicides among our active-duty military, and around 22 a day among our veterans -- that's around 8,000 suicides last year.  And the vast, vast majority of those suicides were men.

According to the Pentagon's own stats, that means that there were about two and a half rapes for every suicide in 2012.  I suppose depending how you valued the two issues, one could make the argument that
sexual assault on serving female military personnel VASTLY outweighs the petty little problem of our returning veterans chewing on their guns.  At least, that's the argument Dr. Schwarz seems to be making.

I would remind her that for the majority of the history of our republic, much less the histories of other nations, for centuries our young men were subjected to these outrages and indignities without their original consent to even join the military, subject to conscription due to their gender alone.  As tragic as the stories of military rape survivors are, they chose to join the military of their own free will, a luxury generations of young men before them did not have.  Once again feminism overlooks conscription as incidental to the male-female equation, devaluing the lives and free will of men by dismissing an inequity that outlasted slavery and male-only voting rights.  It's bad enough to volunteer to fight and get raped.  To be conscripted against your will to fight, and then get raped, is a horror piled upon a tragedy.  Not a single American woman can complain of that.

Some of the conclusions she makes are correct.  We cannot go back to an all-male military, despite the number of problems we are going to have.  We can't even go back to an all-straight military.  But you
cannot attempt to fundamentally alter a process of psychological conditioning developed over 10,000 years with a couple "girls are special!" classes.  The process of finding a comfortable balance between the necessary aggression needed to fight and win a war and the socio-sexual reality of the mixing of the genders is going to be long, tedious, and fraught with difficulties.  But just as we have (eventually) managed to establish a base-line of behavior in the workplace, it will happen with the military . . . eventually.

Beyond the foolishness of "girls are special!" classes, the notion that male sexuality needs "instruction" from any quarter is offensive.  Do women need "special instruction" about their sexual values, or would Dr. Schwarz see that as a paternalistic attempt to control the sexual lives of women?  Would they be required to challenge and confront whatever ridiculous notions of sexuality they had when they signed their enlistment, and perhaps be forced to change their beliefs and practices to "fit in" with everyone else's?

Somehow I think if the Pentagon started telling women that they needed to be considering what kind of housewives they needed to be after their term of service was up, some folks might get upset.  Telling a young man that he has to be a "gentleman" (without defining the term) or "evolved" (when there is no logical basis equity feminist should be justly angry about.
for the idea that such a change in belief would indeed be an "evolution", and not a "devolution") is an unfair and unacceptable attempt to re-program his sexuality, something any

Part of the problem, ironically, is the very code that once kept such things from occurring in abundance, the Code of Honor or Chivalry commonly adopted by all men in the West over the last few centuries, was sufficiently trashed in the eyes of most men by feminism as to have little or no power, now.  It was a "tool of the patriarchy", and therefore a fair target of feminists over the years.  Now that they have brought down a deluge of disdain and disrespect for the masculine codes of honor, they complain that they are no longer protected by it . . . but apparently Dr. Schwarz considers a couple of classes and some shaming language is sufficient to replace a millenia-old masculine code of conduct.  Indeed, the military is one of the last refuges of such thinking . . . and Dr. Schwarz and her feminist allies seem determined to eradicate it even there.

Of course feminists can't invoke honor or chivalry - because that would empower men to be better men.  And that would be sexist.  Feminism cannot abide anything that empowers men.  Instead of appealing to our better nature and attempting to raise us with respect and admiration by invoking our honor and chivlary, the way her foremothers did, Dr. Schwarz seeks to castigate, demean, and denigrate the masculine impulse toward a warrior code and favors replacing it with an H.R. lecture.  Just the thing to inspire a man to die for
his country.

The idea that men need to "grow up" -- the same men Dr. Schwarz depends upon to defend her -- is inherently disrespectful toward our gender and our military men in particular.  While she states her goal is to turn men into "safer colleagues and partners" -- that is, more useful to women --  one would think that someone with a doctorate in sociology would recognize the inherent problem with attempting to make our highly-trained trained killers "safer".  Her stated desire to "change the hearts and minds" of men in the military -- ALL men -- is condescending and disrespectful to the memory of what we all owe to that institution.

Finally, the most galling thing about Dr. Schwarz's proposal is that it assumes that changing men is even within her purview.  Does she likewise favor any male proposals to "change women"?  Or is she operating from the basic operating principal -- like so many feminists -- that men are inherently broken because we aren't just like women? 

That men are the problem just because we are men?  She bandies about the idea that our sexuality and aggression are tied into dominance and submission, and perhaps someone with a greater background in psychology wouldn't be so naive, but the fact of the post-feminism world is that feminism broke the bonds of gender expectations . . . of both genders.

You can no longer "expect" us to be "gentlemen" anymore than we can "expect" women to be "warm, friendly, and faithful".  Just as women got busted out of their awful gender role of domestic drudgery, men were liberated from the expectation of going and dying on some beach because of some girl back home.  Or treating everything with a vagina as worthy of protection.  And you can expect that the next time you suddenly want to see a lot of young, strong, disposable males ready to line up and keep harm at bay . . . you can send your daughters to face the threat instead.

With this kind of insulting and demeaning attitude prevalent among feminism and women in general, there's just not a lot of reason our boys should pick up a rifle and die to protect the very people who treat him like a retarded child while he does so.  And if that seems somehow unfair, that men would shirk their responsibility to kill and die on your behalf, Dr. Schwarz . . . Welcome to the Manosphere, Cupcake.