It is hard to say this - but I wrote it anyway.

Don't wring my neck, kid - I had to say it.

The Irish people voted  for the repeal of Ireland infamous 1983 virtually total ban on abortions. 

On one side, I tend to think that it was somehow overdue.

When a country is willing to force 12 y.o. carry to term the result of an incest rape , and let women die of septicaemia to respect the right of an ectopic pregnancy - no, it won't ever become a live child, sorry - then the law is a bit on the fucked-up side of things.   

At the same time, I recently came to the conclusion that the abortion discourse should be more "symmetrical".

Right now if, be it by way of bad chance or guile, a man incurs in the mistake of fathering a child that he does not want to have, he finds himself rather at the mercy of  the woman.

She may acquiesce and go for an abortion, or carry the pregnancy to term and then demand the clueless "father" for support till the undesired offspring is adult.

Women wants to be able to get rid of unwanted, accidental pregnancies and go on with their life?

OK. I am positively convinced that it is in their rights. Also, they would find a way to do it anyway, so why bother criminalizing it? It's just another "war on" something, and we've seen how well they work.

But it should be in men's right to disown their accidental offspring, too.

Having the right to ask for the abortion of the accidental product of one's  misguided copulation, request to whom the mother may refuse - it is her body, after all - but that would anyway signal the cessation of every legal tie between the father and the future born.

It seems fishy?

OK - we know ourselves, men.

Plenty of asses would exploit it to have sex without rubber, no matter if they trust the woman or not, just because it is more fun.

Some would maybe even argue that these are a kind of men whose reproduction should rather be avoided ...

Leaving aside the vague smell of eugenics emanating from this latter argument - and you may know how much I like eugenic... let's direct our species evolution, because our little brains clearly know which conditions will be around in 25000 years, right? Come on -  I really think that we've all done it, at least once.

Yes, even me... and my list of dalliances can be counted on one hand. 


Let's put some constraints to it, thus - So that the serial philanderers would still get stuffed in the end - what is a reasonable number of abortions, one that covers 99% of women's lives in countries where it is allowed? 3, 4? Sounds about right; let's give men 3 scot-free cards - and make these requests public acts, with information freely available on them.

No no-disclosures agreements, or other such poppicock on this. Let it be publicly known that you are an ass that abuses his reproductive ability.

But I do not see a reason why a 19 y.o. girl that had a fling with a manipulative ass-hole can avoid having her life destroyed by an unwanted pregnancy, and a 19 y.o. boy can't.

Do you? You do? Really? Genderist much, I'd say.

Harsh?

If us men can't have it both way, so shouldn't you, ladies.

If you really care for parity, that is, and that's not just an excuse for some power grab.

Because if it is, then you can't complain that the Trumps of this world get elected.

It is kind of a bad period, for me.

As it says on the tin - these last few weeks, I have been constantly angry, when not depressed or both things at once.

In the pauses, I just cry.

The old joke about getting rich, to buy enough Russian nuclear waste to build a dirty bomb and turn my home-town in a radioactive wasteland for a decade or so, feels much more appealing these days... as a life project.

OK, OK, I know - I won't ever do that.

I am not that.

At the same time, I see the alt-right ass-holes, the Islamic fundamentalist, the neo-fascists and all the other idiots trying to piss against the wind of history and I feel that I get why they do the shit that they do.

Mark my words - it is and will forever be pretty useless in the long run, or worse damaging, but I get why they do it.

In the worse case scenario, they'll manage to snug some power, make a mess of some pretty ugly kind (let's hope, not as ugly as WWII) which will only manage to accelerate the transition to a post-males society that I fear is inevitable.

Fear, or hope - because, if I am right, the inevitable evolution of modern society toward a massively concentrated, hyper-specialized structure will dole higher and higher stresses on the human male, for ever-shrinking rewards.

As I wrote somewhere in this blog, I think that the all-conquering, all-destroying, all-raping and everything-pillaging barbarian horde is the embodiment of the "male biologic imperative" as it can be seen by young, testosterone-filled men.

On the other hand, modern society tends - by necessity - more and more toward a hive-like structure that has little to no relationships with young men core drives (but rewards handsomely the old ones in positions of power... a pity that they can't get the young trouble ones to die in droves during wars, like it was done in the old days, without risking to wipe away the whole shebang).

By the way, here is where the white supremacists and the ISIS idiots delude themselves.

They believe that the evolution of society[ies] toward more inclusive practices is the product of some ideological cabal luring the masses away from a supposedly more moral, older set of ideals and values.

Alas, the reason is probably a much more pragmatic one - nowadays, economy rides on applied talents, and on the occasional moment of brilliance that produces a process improvement, or an entirely new product.

As talent is casually distributed, and the capacity to have a brand new idea probably even more so, the "traditional" society is really one that throws away half - or more - of the goods.

If this is accepted as true(1), then the inevitability of the process toward the post-maleness is total- at best, it can be delayed, and by not much either.

At worst, it can be precipitated, by showing how much of the still existing vantages enjoyed by men are more a feature of cultural inertia than anything worth keeping.



(1) Even giving for sure that men and women have different brain architectures, these seems to matter very little on intelligence and may at most tweak inclinations one direction or the other; As far as ethnic differences go, inter-ethnic genetic difference is actually much less than internal groups variability - ethnicity is little more than culture and maybe a bit of melanin, the first being enormously more significant than the second. So, ideas just pop up in whomever they want, and society needs them.  

Note: I realize that I am not particularly original... much of the same can be found in Aldous Huxley "Brave New World" and in his successive collection of essays, "Return To Brave New World" - which was even more male-oriented than this little piece of mines.

Externalities

It is not true that I hate pregnant women

I read an article on the Irish referendum on abortion.

In it, the writer notes that the current state of abortion in the country - more or less, illegal no matter what - does not produce the outcomes usually predicted by the proponents of its legalization.

While it is true that hardly any Irish woman dies in back-alley abortions, it is a bit of a disingenuous argument in that they simply take a plane, and move to the nearest country where it is legal to have it.

However, the article also notices that the Irish government does something more than just prohibit the medical procedure, in its efforts to convince women to keep their babies - it reaches into its dilapidated pockets and manages to fork out some benefits, a well as some helping labor rules, to try to offset the burden that represents bringing a pregnancy to term.

The Irish government, and the conservative forces driving its policies on reproductive issues, seem to be open to the incontrovertible fact that one can't have something for nothing.

It is a bummer, as it really botches the vision of conservatives as I know them.

As far as I can see in the U.S.A and other  countries , most often than not the same ones  that would punish women for doing the financially sensible thing - cut their losses and move on with their life - are usually also the ones that press to reduce "entitlement programs" like the one that helps cover health care for poor children.

They want women to keep their children - sometimes adducing truly honorable reasons like "we need them kids to work and pay for our retirements" (1)  - yet they refuse to help in the upkeep of the produced offspring.

I realize that wanting the barrel full and the wife drunk is an integral and basic human characteristic, but a bunch that usually complains about the financial unrealism of wild-eyed progressives should really know better.

They want women to have babies - maybe just to put them up for adoption once delivered? (2)

Let's pay them their time and pain, generously - I suspect it would tip the scales in the right direction more than the kind of draconian laws that most conservatives favor.

If they do not want to sacrifice any sizable portion of their wallets for the cause of life - which I suspect accurately describe an awful portion of GOP supporters, even among the fervent pro-life evangelicals - then they should just shut the fuck up.

(1) Which kind of conflicts with the "in the next ten years, as much as 30% of U.S. workforce will be made redundant by automation" - after which, chances are the tech will really improve and all bets are off. If by the mid of the century all but a fraction of the general population is going to be jobless, having more kids to jail for being vagrants is not going to improve things..

(2) That was the way in Causescu's Romania, and the effect of being reared that way isn't exactly genial... a study found that - on average - it resulted in 20 I.Q. points less, when compared to siblings who were raised normally, for those unfortunate enough to receive no maternal cares in their fist three years. It beats the alternative, until you factor in the content of note 1 here above, which leads to a " we could as well enroll them in jails as they are born, it would be more earnest" kind of illumination. .  

Incel

The True Form Of My Mind
And of Toyota's on-board computer code, 
as it transpired from the Bookout case.

Dear Incel,
 
First of all, you should really drop the "in".

You are voluntarily celibate.

In the [western] world we live in, the ones that really can't get any tail are indeed many - usually, persons with physical or mental handicaps that go well beyond being overweight or a mild depression.

And of them, a not small number are women.

If you do not fit this bill, if you have all your limbs and can keep a job for any sizeable amount of time, you are likely able to get laid. If you want.

OK, your most probable partners aren't going to be fashion mannequins or cheerleaders, but that is not a reason to avoid them.

Truth be told, a 40 years old, overweight housewife - one that is looking for a last cock to shag before menopause sets in - may be not a person you would brag about to your pals at the pub - [by the way, you shouldn't - even when the partner was a young Natalie Portman and it is the only thing you did, in the last six months, that proved to yourself that you are alive], but she is also likely to be ten times the sexual prowess of the average model starving on the catwalk.

I cannot quantify with reference to cheerleaders as I have never met one in a biblical way, but chances are they have other priorities beyond sex - alas, that's just being healthy young women in our society - so I would guesstimate a factor 3.

She is also someone that is all too easy to encounter, in our time - they haunt almost every corner of the web, the bars  in downtown, and your church's choir. They are ubiquitous, and ravenous - just give them a chance to prove it, and you'll see.

So, if getting laid was as fundamental for you as you weep that it is, you'd found a way to.

Recognizing that your celibate status is really a choice is a freeing moment, that allows one to ask himself a first question:

"Why do I not care that much to have sex?"

This may have many answers, often more than one at a time.

Some of them could be potentially irksome - "My idea of a fun afternoon could end with her dead, me with a 25 to life without parole, if I manage to avoid insanity [in which case, they may as well throw the key of my padded cell away, as NO psychiatrist will ever stake is or her professional reputation on me being cured], and leave me also unable to look at my face in the mirror".

Some scarier thus - "I do not trust anyone to enter that most vulnerable zone that I call my intimacy".

Some understandable - "I do not have tat much of a sex drive" [unless a board, hammer, nails and a woman's nipples are involved; Too much information, reader? My bad.]

Some may even be almost sweet - " My mother is alone, old, deaf and near blind and she hates the guts of any woman that comes nearer than a mile from me, so any medium to long term relationship I have ever had pained her. Yet I need more than a quickie, to understand and appreciate having sex with a woman!"

Some bring on other questions - "They always tell me that I have to change myself, to get this or that. Change myself into what they want from me, to get a speckle of happiness. Why can't I be accepted and loved as I am?" (Because humans are ass-holes - all of us, that why).

Infinite possible answers, only you know the ones you have to give yourself.

Then you can tackle the other question, the one that has way less numerous answers.

"Why I was so bothered by it, to tell myself that I was alone because women are cruel? Women are no better nor worse than men, each gender has its set of priorities - that changes over time - and that's all".

Why were so bothered? You could stole a page from the pick-up artists - possibly, not one that was cited in Cosmo, be smart - if you really cared about getting laid.

You don't.

And it is your right to not care.

Even when the whole of our culture seems set out to convince you that it is fundamental to your status as a human being - it is not.

That it is central to your worth as a person - it is not.

That good people have good sex - this contrasts with the experience of almost everybody.

That a great man should have a good job and get the high school Prom Queen - Why should he? The job, maybe, but the Prom Queen may as well be asexual and into dragster racing... which would make her a hell of a friend to discuss mechanics with. 

It is time to recognize that, if societal changes affected the rules by which women were expected to live their life, the same must apply to men.

Do not see your celibate state as an external imposition.

See it for what it is: the refusal to commit to your required role in a social order that does not recognize you as more than a cog in the machine - if you are lucky enough to have a place in it at all, which is something we are told that increasingly less of us will have in the future.

Not as a disgrace imposed upon you from the outside, but as a supreme act of civil disobedience.

The definitive form of non-violent resistance to the status quo:

The refusal of participating in its renewal, and the will to let it crumble by old age.