Response to Thomas Fleming, Deluded White Knight and Misguided Conservative

A reader asked me to respond to the following article:

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/2010/09/25/the-wrongs-of-womens-rights/

So I did...

Thomas Fleming seems to think that men in contemporary western societies should grit their teeth and defend women like males did in earlier, pre-feminist eras, setting them on pedestals and turning a blind eye to their iniquitous conduct. He fails to see that this is not only morally unreasonable, it is also wholly impracticable. Since the late fifties, sixties or seventies (depending on which feminist school you prefer), women have actively rejected conventional males in favor of thugs, deadbeats and sociopaths, along with other ‘cuties’ like violent criminals and swaggering plutocrats. The result is a large rump of sexually and reproductively disenfranchised middle-class males in most Anglosphere societies. These males have followed all the advice given to them by parents, schools, professors and the feminist media and ended up in the living death of involuntary celibacy (or the even worse fate of post-divorce male penury). And still Fleming expects men to view Anglo-American women as Disney princesses above all reproach, as did the bourgeois class in the nineteenth century. Is this man serious? The REAL question American men are asking in ever increasing numbers is: “WHY should I defer to women when all it leads to is false harassment charges, female contempt, involuntary celibacy and, if I’m luck, an icky divorce which leaves me in a trailer-park paying for kids I never see!”


What Fleming fails to grasp is that any complex society is an engine. If one or more components fail, the engine won’t work. Judeo-Christianity is an illogical hotchpotch of competing positions, some of which led directly to the Marxism that most American conservatives claim to excoriate. However, the ancient Hebrews DID realize that monogamy sustains civilization by giving nearly all males a genetic stake in society. This is especially important for the conceptual class, whose cognitive contributions are essential if any advanced culture is to flourish. It is crucial to civilization that genes for intelligence and deferred gratification are maintained in viable quotas, for those qualities ‘oil the wheels’ of civilization, as it were. This is why advanced nations encourage immigration only by cognitive elites – scientists, architects, engineers and other high IQ ‘betas’, seldom criminals or unskilled workers. Unfortunately, unfettered female sexuality prefers layabouts, thugs and sociopaths, leading not only to a sharp decline in collective intelligence and social capital but also a crisis of confidence among middle class males. Are they supposed to maintain their old deference for women, when this results only in female contempt and sexual failure? Are they supposed to lay down their lives for women who despise the very air they breathe? Well, since the feminist/sexual revolution that is EXACTLY what they have been asked to do and frankly, they just aren’t listening any more. In sum, feminism has sabotaged monogamy, THE vital heart of our social engine. All the other components are struggling, as might be expected. Yet Fleming persists in believing that one part of the engine should continue to work as it has always done for no benefit whatsoever, though the rest of the engine does not work at all.

To hell with that! Women cannot shirk their monogamous responsibilities and expect men to respect them on the old terms. In reality, men will only sacrifice for women if there is some genetic payback. Men on the Titanic only sacrificed themselves because their own female kin – sisters, wives and daughters – were in the lifeboats. There is no reason for men to sacrifice themselves when they have no female kin (the lot of a good many pan-Anglosphere males) and most other women actively despise them. The men’s movement has arisen because singleness permits male objectivity on the issue of women. As Camille Paglia once wrote, ‘female beauty is the world’s most potent drug’. Once the promise of sex and beauty is removed, however, men can afford to see women as they really are: grasping, hypocritical, selfish. With many more men single, childless and divorced, there is simply no REASON for widespread male self-delusion or chivalry. Men are now free to rationally criticize women without fear of censure or rebuke, since they are disenfranchised in all senses, anyway… hence, the Men’s Movement. Another interesting expression of this ‘new objectivity’ is a healthy tendency to take women to task for racism, fascism and other forms of intolerance. Until very recently, a ‘blind eye’ was habitually turned to these unlovely female traits – but no longer.

In conclusion, Fleming is suffering from a particularly virulent case of Pedestal Syndrome, a sickness that afflicts many pan-Anglosphere conservatives. Since Anglo-Saxon culture is puritanical and repressive, it reflexively vilifies men as sexual beings while idolizing women as ‘owners’ of sex. This is what renders Anglo-American conservatives so ineffectual in the face of misandrist Anglo feminism; they reflexively defend what they profess to attack, reminiscent of British psychiatrist R D Laing’s concept of the ‘Double Bind’. The reader who has followed me this far can surely see Fleming’s tired formulations as abetting and advancing feminism by vilifying men and idealizing women – in short, defending the puritan cancer that is presently rotting Anglo-Saxon civilization from the inside out. In his warped Anglo-puritan perspective, the female can jettison ALL social responsibilities to men, while men are expected to discharge ALL their traditional duties to women without genetic, social or economic benefit. I wish him luck with that.