I found this T-shirt at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) gift shop, an emporium so quirky I kept expecting Zooey Deschanel to appear behind the counter. On the face of it, “Men don’t protect you anymore” is nonsense. As long as women carry eggs and have children, men will protect them. On the other hand, the shirt’s message is a perfectly provocative message that could get women thinking about armed self-defense. (RISD bans students from possessing weapons in their halls of residence.) Which begs a few questions. Has our “male dominated society” deliberately (or subconsciously) led to female disarmament? If not, why are women reluctant to take up arms in their own defense? Are they?
My wife is from Asia, and is skilled in knife fighting and kick boxing. She was eager to learn about using firearms, but she is from a VERY different culture than the typical American female. Ladies I dated before getting married (this would be about 20 years ago) at best tolerated my firearms hobby as long as it didn’t take away too much time from them.
“Has our “male dominated society””
Have any references for that claim?
“On the face of it, “Men don’t protect you anymore” is nonsense. As long as women carry eggs and have children men will protect them. ”
It isnt nonsense, unless I’m sleeping with the woman, i’m not going to do shit. I know there are only downsides to me getting involved in someone elses shit, and its not like she’ll give me a hand job for helping her out. The most she would do for me if I was in trouble would be to call 911, and since i’m a self described creepy looking guy, she would likely say she thought I was the perpetrator.
Gender roles went away a long time ago, and i’m assuming the only reason RF continues to think they exist is due to his age, and that he has most likely been married for a while. It isnt my job to protect women, since all the ones i’ve dated havent known how to cook, sow, tend a garden, or had any other home economics skills.
“all the ones i’ve dated havent known how to cook, sow, tend a garden, or had any other home economics skills.”
—–
I think you might be running with the wrong crowd. My wife came with all that software pre-installed. She also knew how to operate a manual transmission, clean fish, ride a motorcycle, and has come to enjoy shooting as much as I do. There’s good ones out there, man.
matt,
I agree with you. BTW, there are lots of men 45-60+ years who will agree with you too. Lots of men in that age group who have personally experienced the pro-female and anti-male biased family/divorce and criminal courts. Lots of men have also seen brothers, dads, male relatives, friends, neighbors, and co-workers put through the grinders.
Matt seems to be quite the romantic catch.
It IS a male dominated society, and almost always will be.
Women wear make up and Men don’t. Ask yourself why.
The LPGA wears shorts and skirts, but Men don’t wear shorts. Ask yourself why.
Skirts are appropriate business attire for women, but shorts aren’t for men. Ask yourself why.
I am of the impression that in fact women are far from reluctant to get behind the trigger.Based on m/y own family history id state that women have been as active in the shooting sports as men;they simply never spoke up about doing so as vocally.Guys can’t wait to show off their new gun or new toy,whereas women generally won’t go to such lengths to ensure everyone on the planet knows they are armed or own guns.I’ve met more young women under 30 with firearm experience than men in the same age category.
Id assign the ‘reluctance’ label to the concept that women just prefer to fly under the radar regarding gun knowledge and useage,which is something I believe men can learn to benefit from.
…As long as women carry eggs…
You mean steak, right? I do have some standards.
I don’t know as if it is that men don’t (won’t) protect women any more so much as it is many (most) men don’t feel obligated to do so any more. I suspect this is due in no small part to feminism. If for decades it gets drilled into a man’s head that women are just as competent and capable as men to the point they can now serve on submarines and in combat units in the military the logical extension is that they can fend for themselves. The death of chivalry came with feminism.
Exactly. “You want equality, you got it. And everything that comes with it.”
I think that the best analogy for how women were viewed pre-feminism is like children. You still love your children, and you protect them – but you shelter them, and you treat them at best as second among equals. If women are adults now, they are as responsible for their own safety as men are.
The issue is that we haven’t really adapted fully into the new equality culture. Some women still expect to get the benefits of childhood, and some men still expect to get the benefits of being the only adults.
+1. Got called a “male chauvinist pig” (or similar nasty comment) a few times too often over the last 40 years in exchange for holding a door [a courtesy I do for anyone, male or female, who is close to the door when I go in. It used to be called “common courtesy”.] As an OFWG, I no longer feel any obligation to protect anyone, male or female, who is not a family member or close friend.
And if you want proof of the death of chivalry, contrast the “women and children first” ethos of the men on the Titanic vs. the recent “knock down the women and children” ethos of some of the male passengers and captain on the Italian cruise ship that capsized in the Mediterranean. Feminism has been successful – women are no longer a protected gender. I always was amazed at the stupidity of the anti-gun attitudes of the leftist militant feminists, since it seemed they were giving up their best tool of equality with male rapists/muggers/violent boyfriends. I am a bit surprised that women have finally seen through this leftist agenda, and are taking up firearms for their own defense. About time, too – “God created men and women, but Sam Colt made them equal.”
“If not, why are women reluctant to take up arms in their own defense?”
At the risk of overgeneralizing, women tend to be nurturing by nature which leads to multiple lines of thinking that make guns an unappealing choice. We look at people and think of them as being someone’s son or daughter, and think about how we would feel if someone shot our child. Not to mention that many women see people as “mostly good.” I know quite a few who can’t wrap their minds around the idea that there is even such a thing as an evil person.
This is all in the abstract, of course, because if actually faced with a murderous attacker, those thoughts are likely to be nowhere even close. Even more so if someone is threatening our children. But at that point it’s too late to choose a deadly means of self-defense. That decision is made in the context of safety and the abstract ideas mentioned above, as well as other ideas, including that either their man or the police will protect them.
I was gonna say because women are smarter, but you said it much better with that nurture idea.
Thinking about this some more, and I remembered my mom was the one that initially taught me to shoot. So her generation, at least in the rural area she grew up in wasn’t afraid of firearms. She was a pretty good shot with rifle and pistol. I know that my one grandmother could handle firearms, not sure about the other one as it never came up as a topic of discussion. But ladies of my generation (I’m 55 years old) tend to have a pacifist streak in them that makes them anti-gun at least in my experience. Might be residual stuff from the “flower power” era.
I can’t think of an American society more male dominated than the western frontier, where many women could shoot a rifle or a shotgun as well as a man. It’s not “male dominance” that leads men to protect women; it’s male genetics.
But men’s nature can be overcome. Women are equal now. They can pay for their own dinners, open their own doors and shoot BGs all by themselves.
“Men don’t protect you anymore” is nonsense. As long as women carry eggs and have children, men will protect them.”
— I completely disagree. Many men would like to have a wife and kids yet they can see the realities of modern misandrist society right in front of them so daily there are less and less men being chivalrous and/or seeking marriage or just having kids. Womyn generally have a stronger desire to procreate than men and since the Family/Divorce Courts along with alimony and child support are on their side they are the sex pushing for kids more than men. Men are considered by society, government, and womyn to be disposable commodities sorta like bullets once they’ve shot their load and lost their presumed value, men can be discarded. Consider the recent Italian tourist boat that grounded. The old chivalry standard of letting womyn go first (before kids of course too) didn’t hold up very well.
BTW, on the Titanic, more womyn selfishly pushed their way onto lifeboats resulting in a higher percentage of adult womyn surviving than children! Boys who were thirteen years old and older were told they are men (and should dioe for females) so eighty-five year old womyn lived and fourteen year old boys died. Thankfully those views are changing. Men now increasingly value themselves too.
In ancient times, womyn were vital to re-populate a tribes/clans losses. Today, with @ seven-billion people on the planet, womyn are not an asset for a large nation or community. Womyn are now a social problem since they require and use up far more limited resources than men. Men are usually the ones mining diamonds out of the earth yet it is womyn who are demanding the diamonds. Womyn account for eighty-five percent of consumer spending. Men can live simply om little and be happy and fulfilled.
OK, if it came to protecting a good wife I think most men would still protect her and some foolish men would still protect a bad wife. Let’s face it: in modern society most womyn have been ideologically conditioned to view themselves as victims, and entitled princesses deserving special class status without being held accountable. However, men are increasingly less inclined by old school brainwashing to not value their own life and safety.
“Has our “male dominated society” deliberately (or subconsciously) led to female disarmament?”
Led to female disarmament? Modern society (post frontier) led to a change in roles (for some decades) with the female often living a nice sheltered suburbia life. If anyone still had an interest in the traditions of protecting and hunting (not usually needed for survival) it was the male. Putting the gun ownership burden on men led to men being the sex that sacrificed when danger surfaced. Cultural institutions have traditionally pushed males to be the warriors and females to be the caregivers. Males were conditioned to be the cannon fodder for endless and usually dumb-ass wars that served the wealthy and politically powerful elites, and helped womyn and society too by keeping and expanding America’s political and economic empire.
A society with a relatively small percent of alpha males in key power roles does not lead to or create a society that is pro-male dominant. How the heck are womyn oppressed in our western society? In what ways? In the past men and women somewhat took advantage of each other and ‘oppressed’ the other sex. Society oppressed both. Government and the super wealthy oppressed society and all underneath it.
I think your question was worded or asked incorrectly. A different question that does not assume male dominance and rather asks about gun-ownership with sex-based roles and behaviors would have been more objective.
The t-shirt message: “Men don’t protect you anymore” is in my guess present in a design school’s gift store to encourage womyn to take up self-defense classes, buy guns, and become more ‘individualistic and independent’ than ever. I doubt the t-shirt is there to lament the loss of chivalrous men.
It is amusing to many MRA Men’s Rights Advocates that the more power and influence feminism has gained over society (the past forty plus years) transforming laws, creating social programs, and changing attitudes and lifestyle the more womyn have become less happy and fulfilled. Yet, the path keeps expanding and their control keeps growing over men and our freedoms and assets. Meanwhile kids are increasingly messed up, feeling unhappy and unsafe. Thats an ok price for kids to pay for modern womyn.
Feminism is a capitalist’s wet dream. If you understand supply and demand, you know the effect of doubling the labor pool. Wages and employee satisfaction are driven down, while profits rise. Women are unhappy? Well, so are men.
Ralph, good. Most people can’t pick up on half of what you wrote. Instead of one family one home, now there are two of each to furnish and that means more buying, taxation, and jobs. The Courts give most assets and on-going $upport to women and women spend the most consumer dollars often on bs purchases. Two employees means lower wages and benefits, and more human resources. One exhausted parent needing help with the kids gives ever more control to government to rush in to provide ‘services or solutions’ to problems that it itself created. The sexual grievance industry is big money and big legal power. Now, womyn are unhappy and so are the men true. Sometimes for the same and sometimes for different reasons. We are now in modern Marriage version 2.0 or 3.0. For a man, marriage is a wedded business contract with a female co-worker and the gubermint. Divide and conquer the people and in this context the family unit– pure Machievelli tactics. The Misandry Bubble will pop eventually. It is the granddaughters and great granddaughters of the 1970s or so feminazis who will pay a big price. Men, once they taste freedom, reject notions of chivalry, question the limited roles womyn, society, and government want for us, and start to self-actualize will stop being cooperative puppets in their play.
Perhaps this will provoke a world record for hateful responses, but Chivalry was a custom that needed to die.
By whose standard is it mandated that a man’s life is worth less than a womans? If we are to hold that all people are Equal under God , then it stands to reason we should act like it.This is an issue of equality that mandates a choice-either all people are equal regardless of sex, or we pedestal one party at the expense of the other. If a man is expected to take responsibility for his own defense, so should a woman. I consider it no less foolish for a man to disregard that than a woman.
Going slightly off topic,in my admittedly short time on Earth I would assert that the most common reason men end up dead , injured, or in a jail cell is on account of a woman. Why do street gang bangers post on corners selling drugs & robbing people? Its not because they like being arrested and getting shot. Why do police execute unlawful and illegal orders? Because being fired by the cheif for taking a stand means the wife is leaving for a wealthier suitor. If one were to take the time to do the homework on the matter id bet that a majority of the horrible things that take place in this world can be tracked directly back to a female who wanted a material power or possession for her own uses.
I would assert that the most common reason men end up dead , injured, or in a jail cell is on account of a woman.
ST, that may be true, but you can’t blame women for the fact that guys sometimes act like a$$holes. That’s on the guys.
ST,
Excellent. Go visit these sites: Angry Harry, A Voice for Men, and ManWomanMyth.
Go ahead and diss on women, some of us will take up the slack,.
There are some real whacko He-Man Women Haters Club members that comment here. In my experience they generally turn out to be inept, inadequate, physical abusers who are overall failures, and not just with women.
Ad-hominem attacks FTW! You just beclowned yourself.
Me, I treat folks the way I would like to be treated, until experience shows me otherwise. From women I take as little BS as I would take from any man, and I hold them to the same intellectual and logical standards as any man. As can be easily imagined, this makes me super popular!
Hey don’t be dissin’ on Zoey, man…
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