Men, Women, Girls and Boys

Risk vs. Control 

Gitabushi says: “One notion I'm working on today is how to demonstrate that although Socialism as sold as a reduction in risk, it actually increases it.”

I think the way to demonstrate it is to actually side-step it. Tangent for another day, but as societies advance, they feminize. We are there.

In simplest terms, a feminized culture acts more like a woman than a man.

WARNING: I WILL BE SPEAKING IN GENERALITIES!

Women more than men bristle at the idea of being controlled.

You can get men to go to war to shake off the yoke of oppression, but not much less.

You can get women to upend their entire personal lives because someone in it may be vaguely "controlling" them.

So, the way to sidestep the risk discussion (which is ideal for a masculine conversation) is to explain how socialism is more controlling than free markets (we must dispense with the Marxist term "capitalism").

This should be easy. The only hurdle is gaining a platform.

Gitabushi: I think women don't like being controlled, but REALLY don't like risk much more.

Women are so risk averse, they outsource that problem to men or, in lieu of men, government. But you can quickly get a woman to take on enormous (and generally inadvisable) risk by drawing attention to the ways in which the entity entrusted to attenuate risk controls her.

I posit that women aren't drawn to "bad boys" as much as they are drawn to risk takers. It just so happens that there is a large overlap between those two personalities.

Picking a mate is a woman's biggest risk. She wants a mate who is comfortable handling all the other risks.

Watch any love-triangle movie. The "no good guy" is always controlling. He may be rich, handsome, stable, etc. but if he's controlling, she'll go with the other guy. (Who is generally hairier and rides whatever the period-equivalent to a motorcycle is.)

Por ejemplo, Lord Farquaad lives in a castle and is ruler of Duloc. Shrek lives in a swamp and crashes the wedding on a dragon. Fiona picks Shrek.*

This occurs in a movie that deliberately sets out to upend tropes.**

Gitabushi: this explains why married women tend to vote GOP. They vote for the policy that helps their husband handle family risk better.

Single women, in contrast, vote for Big Govt to handle their risk for them.

But this doesn't really explain the upper class married women of Manhattan, so...[shrug]

Except that maybe they are beyond risk, have luxury of Virtue Signaling

Au contraire. Like middle class married women, upper class married women also vote for the policy that helps their husband handle family risk better.

Gitabushi: oh. OH!

♂ ♀ ♂ ♀

* Gitabushi: farquaad is "f-wad" isn't it?

Yes, it's very on-the-nose. But the point stands, even when upending tropes, certain tropes are not upend-able.

♂ ♀ ♂ ♀

** PintSizePolemic interjects: Narrator: Fiona is herself an ogre.

Gitabushi adds: self-loathing ogre, if that makes a difference

I reply: Woman learns to accept herself because she finds a man who accepts her flaws is another trope that Shrek fails to upend.

♂ ♀ ♂ ♀

♀ ♂ ♀ ♂ 

The Different Lives of Boys and Girls

Men and women experience opposite trajectories post-childhood. Everybody gets a decade and a half of adoration, about. After that, boys are thrust into existence at their most worthless. Unaccomplished, unlearned, not even yet at their physical peak. 

Girls, on the other hand, are thrust into their most valuable existence. Most attractive, most fecund, most picky (which actually raises their value further). At 15, boys and girls occupy completely different worlds. 

But as boys become men, those that don't die off* do so by correcting their deficits. They become smart, strong, accomplished. Women, whose attributes were innate, haven't felt the same urge to better themselves, so the very act of self-improvement seems to them like robbery.

* dying off in a modern sense includes checking out - there are many ways of doing this