If you read Hugo Schwyzer’s piece titled “Why Men Should be Willing to Die for Women” closely, you’ll see that he’s essentially trying to delink duty from honor in the story three men in Aurora, Colorado. These men, to Schwyzer, are just offering recompense to the feminine for the sacrifice it has made for the sake of humanity throughout history. Schwyzer writes:
All of the chatter about a lost male heroism misses the point. The reality is that these sacrificial gestures, as impressive and touching as they are, belong to a tradition that dates back to an era when far more women died for men than vice-versa. Until the advent of modern medicine, childbirth was one of the leading causes of death for women; a conservative estimate places the historic rate of maternal mortality at 1 for every 100 births. Even now, at least 800 women die worldwide every day as a consequence of childbirth.
…
Every woman who dies in childbirth dies as a result of sex with a man
Schwyzer’s lack of facts and figures aside, scholar Theda Skocpol wrote a book back in the early 1990s called Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States. She argued that the foundations of the U.S.’s welfare state were laid out for the veterans of the Civil War first and then the mothers of the Progressive Era. Both groups are considered by the public to be a certain sort of infrastructure. They are warm bodies sacrificing for the greater good.
But while Schwyzer wants to give the modern woman a ride on the coattails of the traditional, family-oriented women of history, he forgets that women today are fixed with ahistorical freedoms that completely shakes up the sacrificial calculus. I’m talking mainly about abortion but also the fact that the welfare state is centered toward women and children – a perverse incentive which has slowly crowded out the “decision rights” of men. Radicals and social liberals alike have fought tooth and nail to undermine the very calculus that Schwyzer is strangely embracing as justification for men sacrificing themselves.
It’s funny that Schwyzer will draw from history when it suits his argument but then disregard either custom or evolved behavior if it opposes his gender ideology. The mark of a sophist.
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Every woman who dies in childbirth dies as a result of sex with a man.
I’m really starting to think Schwyzer is a performance artist. He writes such stupid shit.
He is really annoying. I’ve never heard of this site before but this was another “article” title on it–”I’m A Proud Fatty Wearing A Mini Skirt And A Crop Top”.
“It’s funny that Schwyzer will draw from history when it suits his argument but then disregard either custom or evolved behavior if it opposes his gender ideology. The mark of a sophist.”
Not ha-ha funny, but yes, funny indeed, like queer.
Like the photo of him dressed up like a swan ballerina or cuddling with his cat “Mathilde Schwyzer”
And no, I’m not making either of those up. Google is your friend.
I don’t know why, but for some reason I have a hard time imagining a guy in a pink shirt and glasses named Hugo willing to die for anything more noble than a pair of tasseled loafers.
the truth is that there are still some things plenty of men are willing to die for that aren’t likely to be contained in Hugo’s dedazzled Kindle bag.
I had a couple of discussions wiht friends about the guys who died protecting thier girlfriends in thtat theatre. My take:
Most of us would probably cover the woman we’re with with our body in a similar situation. It’s instinctive. It just feels right to assume a protective frame over a woman you are with. Here is a mundane example: when there is a fire drill at work, I file out to the stairwell along wiht a couple of girls who work wiht me. I hold the door open for them, and they pass into the emergency stairwell, and I follow them. As I hold that door, I have an alpha smile on my face. This is of course symbolic, as I am not literally risking my life by letting heh girls in my department get ahead of me. But as I said, it just feels right.
Of course, chivalry is transasctional. Men protect theri women and in exchange, women give us their virtue and deference.
In Aurora, we know that men held up thier end of the transaction, since they died protecting their girlfriends. SO teh facts are: that night, three good men died.
And this is important: the three girls they saved, have an immense burden to justify the sacrifice. They have an obligation, for the rest of their lives, to be good women in order to balance out the deaths of three good young men.
Here is the biography of the woman who wrote the article ”I’m A Proud Fatty Wearing A Mini Skirt And A Crop Top”.
“When Jenn Leyva was 16, her dad told her that he’d buy her a car if she lost weight. She cried, finished her calculus homework, and …blah blah blah.”
She would have been better off listening to dad.
“And all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible…We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
– C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
PA,
You might be interested in James Taranto’s tweets and post on the topic (which Schwyzer cites) of those women being worth the sacrifice. I know Ulysses commented on it some.
But yes, it seems like that behavior would be somewhat instinctive. A lot of it probably has to do with the proximity as well. Let’s say you were out of the theater getting popcorn and then heard the shooting. Would most men run back in and then cover their girlfriend in that situation? Or is more likely that they’d rationalize a reason to stay outside the theater (I’ll wait until he comes out and then tackle him; maybe he’ll stop shooting and I’ll just provoke him by re-entering the theater, etc.) I’ve been in close quarter situations where violence has broken out and I know that my first instinct is to shield my girlfriend. But I’ll be honest by saying I don’t know what is the magical number of footsteps between me and heroism. If I’m ten steps away perhaps I think only of myself.
To segue just a little, as you’re describing such instincts – I’m always interested to observe men staking out the periphery of a group. I notice this most (maybe just confirming my own bias) when several men are accompanying several women and walking through a public area. I also noticed this in buffalo last time I was at a wildlife refuge. The males guard the periphery. The females are typically in the center socializing. This could just be me, though. I’m cautious in public arenas; always have been.
@ PA
Well stated.
“Men should die for women, but said act is an obligation rather than a noble sacrifice.”
If there is any statement that encapsulates male feminists more than that, I don’t know what it is.
In everyday life there are so few occasions when women are actually in any physical danger that I think most people have become somewhat unaware that men have a natural protective instinct towards women. It only comes out in rare situations like the Aurora shootings and is not usually seen. I think men have also always acquiesced somewhat to the female centered welfare state because of that same protective instinct. There’s traditionally been more hostility among men to other males collecting welfare and the welfare system was designed to help women and not men. It’s starting to change, though, because men are seeing more and more abuses of the welfare system by women and a startling lack of appreciation or even acknowledgement by women that the welfare system they rely on is largely funded by the taxes of men.
I think it is instinctual. I am naturally protective when I am with my young children or my elderly grandmother. In these situations I am the fittest and strongest of the group. This doesn’t take any credit away from those men, since they paid the greatest price for this protective instinct.
Hugo is right that life is less risky than it once was, but we still face risks.
Not sure it is instinct or culture, but lean toward culture, as developed and perfected by the English and Americans. Recall for example the Gauls tossing their women outside the fortresses while under assault from Julius Caesar because they were running out of food. They did it three times, The Mongols and other tribes of Central Asia would carry harlots with them on raiding excursions. When the going got rough, or food was running low, they put them to the sword.
Schwyzer’s marginalization of men is what is wrong with this country. Within the U.S., U.K. and other Western European countries, there can be no hope of stemming the tidal wave of “underdeveloped” until men reassert cultural control over each country. Feminism may not be the only symbol of a dying nation, but it is the most profound.
Martin B. Lewis
Someone once saved me from getting hit by a bus and most definitely killed. I wonder if he is still glad he did.
But I’ll be honest by saying I don’t know what is the magical number of footsteps between me and heroism.
That’s a good question. If the “footspteps” are few, and danger comes to you, it’s probably mostly instinctual. But with many footsteps, and you are outside fo the action, it would take an effort of conscious will to run into fire. And here a lightning-fast cost/benefits analysis kicks in. What are my odds of dying? How important to me is the imperiled peson? Is there a possibiility of “hero recognition” along with future bragging rights?
Martin,
If food was scare, I don’t necessarily see modern man being willing to do without so a woman could eat. I would say he if he cared about her, he would probably share what was available rather than see her starve. I would expect she would have to do without at least as much as he would.
He’s riffing off Norman Mailer
“Part of the intensity of sex is knowing the woman may die in childbirth because of what you are doing to her.”
Read it somewhere
Hugo Schwyzer should shack up with Krista Jane Heflin.
http://neckbeardchronicles.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/hugo-krista-sittin-in-tree.html
@ CR
I know the point of your post was likely meant as rhetorical, but this info can make a difference.
The number of footsteps have been calculated (yours may be different), its 21 feet… this is drilled into people who come into harms way as a part of the job. The reaction zone, whereby you have time to react to defend yourself from a person who may only have a knife, bat, fist is anything OVER 21 feet. once someone is within this circle you can be attacked and killed before you can get a shot off. 21 feet or 7 yards seems big but someone can cross that distance and strike in a shockingly short slice of time. would i bet my life on it to attack a gunman in that sort of situation, i cant say. But if your going to get shot anyway, likely die. better to die fighting than hiding and waiting for the inevitable. I”m not trying to act like a badass, nobody can say with certainty how they will act when a situation like that happens, i cant. in a life or death struggle people are capable of almost anything.
His entire premise is wrong. Women didn’t die “for men.” They died trying to keep the human race going. Which is essentially the same reason men die — in battle, to protect the weaker so they can survive and for women so they can continue on the species (they have much fewer eggs compared to sperm, so saving them assures the species’ survival).
This is just really poor thinking on his part. This is basic biology. He’s as polluted with sociological BS as the religious nuts on the right I’ll be he hates.
And these girls will forget the men died for them, and will spread their legs to the first bidder, even if he is a NAM.
@Lara
Read this and weep.
http://www.youstupidrelativist.com/11Blog/2Ext/E0019Duncan.html
Most females probably die at delivery from poor health, self-induced or otherwise and not because they were pregnant. In fact, getting pregnant and maintaining that pregnancy is evidence that the body is in creative mode. It is working towards a self-evidently healthy conclusion, i.e., pro-creating.
Schwyzer is a male dyke. His aim is the alienation of man from woman as he hates the obligations that each make manifest in the other.
So he asserts things like woman die from having sex with man and pro-creating and so senselessly dying for your female is really just balancing the “meaningless death equation.”
In reality, we should have sex and reproduce with our HEALTHY woman and annihilate any mortal threat with extreme prejudice.
This is an entirely alien concept to the male dyke mindset.
Please stop acting like Schwyzer is some progressive hero. I’d never heard of him before this site.
G,
you don’t read good do you?
Yeah, you’re advancing some weird, alleged hypocrisy on the part of progressivism as it relates to Schwyzer, who is a moron that only you pay attention to. Maybe you just don’t communicate well, at least to those outside your miniscule echo chamber.
Your use of snark while previously denouncing snark is genius, btw. You truly run circles around me.
Every woman who dies in childbirth dies as a result of sex with a man.
Every woman who dies in childbirth dies because she is trying to pass on her genes.
Also Hugo is a cock sucker. Pure and simple.
G,
radical feminism has given women the freedom to choose whether or not the have children. schwyzer (a professor, a blogger at influential sites, and someone who is covered by many anti-feminists) is arguing that men should protect women because of a historical belief that they carried on the next generation in their wombs. but everything changed when women gained complete control over that decision. the welfare state is secondary, but still important.
keep up. you’re slowing us down here.
G,
Hugo Schwyzer is definitely not a moron. He is probably the top feminist writer today. He is easily talented enough to write for Time magazine.
Dr. Grzlickson never responded when I and others asked him how being a “progressive” today can be anything other than the demolition of society in the interest of NAMs and feminists.
Old school progessives believed in eugenics, technology, and the security of vulnerable working classes. Today, there is not one “progressive” who believes in those things.
He once said he would name several progressives who are not champions of NAM dysfunction. He never did name them. Instead, he wrote that Al Sharpton is his political ally.
Men solved the pregnancy mortality risk for the most part. It’s not an excuse anymore.
lara:
“Hugo Schwyzer is definitely not a moron.”
hugo shyster is either a moron or a troll. he’s not particularly bright, and his writing is second-rate, but as trolls go, he’s up there with the best of them. why? because he’s the most effective of trolls: he believes his own bullshit.
The only distinctions between Anglophone progressives and National Socialists is their position on the Jewish Question and that the former was actually made up substantially by affluent, established people playacting instead of actual revolutionary dissidents.
I should have been more clear. I meant the progressives of yesteryear. The modern progressive project is more or less diametrically opposed to the old progressive project excepting the dream for a One World government.
In other words, there is NOTHING progressive about today’s “progressives.” They are better described as regressives.
CR: Okay I guess, you all are getting very “inside baseball” here. It shouldn’t bother you (all of you) to explain your reasoning to a curious outsider. That is the point of a forum such as this.
@PA
WTH are you talking about? What is your specific question and I will answer it. If it was anything like what you said below, I found the premise ridiculous and decided not to bother with such a bad-faith question.
I generally hate when people say this, but please produce proof of me saying either of those things you are alleging. You are either full of shit, or quoting some dumbass impersonating me.
PA 08/01/2012 at 7:02 am
Dr. Grzlickson never responded when I and others asked him how being a “progressive” today can be anything other than the demolition of society in the interest of NAMs and feminists.
Old school progessives believed in eugenics, technology, and the security of vulnerable working classes. Today, there is not one “progressive” who believes in those things.
He once said he would name several progressives who are not champions of NAM dysfunction. He never did name them. Instead, he wrote that Al Sharpton is his political ally.
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