A lack of self-awareness

The problem isn't so much that Women Ruin Everything.  I mean, sure, it's a material problem, but the real source of male irritation is that after wreaking their customary devastation on all that is good, holy, and operative in the name of improving it, instead of demonstraring that they've learned anything from their most recent disasters, they tend stand over the men trying to repair the damage and tell them that they're fixing it incorrectly.

I'm sure this incident was tragic for the families involved, but for everyone else, it's a humorous metaphor for the inevitable failure faced by equalitarian societies.

A pair of hikers who had been rescued after getting lost in the fog and rain inside a Maine state park drowned on Tuesday night when their car plunged into the water off a boat launch as they were trying to leave. Amy Stiner, 37, and Melissa Moyer, 38, were found dead inside a minivan in 20 feet of water about 175 feet from the boat ramp on the edge of Roque Bluffs State Park, the Washington County Sheriff's Department said.

So, this pair of strong, independent women first managed to get lost, were rescued, and then managed to promptly kill themselves by driving directly into a lake.  And how fast was one of them driving to go 175 feet into the lake?  The average minivan go from 60 to zero in 130 feet without the friction involved in slamming into increasingly deep water.  That's also a boat landing, not some sort of immediate drop-off, which indicates that the driver didn't step on the brakes once she'd driven into the lake.

Ye cats.

Of course, it goes both ways. If you don't know what you're doing or something is beyond you for one reason or another, then don't do it and don't interfere with those who can. I'm not terribly dextrous and my spacial relations are literally retarded, whereas Spacebunny is mechanically competent and has long, slender fingers that would be the envy of a high elf.  So, when the bloody clip comes off the mower again, I don't express any opinions about how she should go about putting it back on, I just shut up and hold the cutter however she tells me to hold it.  And if she reminds me to tighten the bolt next time before I start mowing, I don't argue with her or defend myself,  I just agree to do it, because I'm the one who screwed up in the first place.

(NB: or as is more accurate, the second place.  If Honda had more competent design engineers, the wretched clip would not be a problem in the first place.  I notice that their newer models have a modified design to account for this mechanical flaw. But, like it or not, the problem exists, and it's my fault if I don't correct for it since I know that it is there.)

Whether you are male or female, if you get something wrong, for any reason, learn to shut up and listen to those who got it right from the start. And if you break something, then you don't get an opinion on how it should be fixed.

Alpha Mail: Women Ruin Everything: Cosplay edition

The scales are gradually falling from JD's eyes:

I've been really enjoying AG and VP, although in different ways. While reading VP I find myself nodding and saying "Yes, that's what I always thought!" While reading AG I find myself feeling a growing sense of horror at the thorough and complete incorrectness of everything I'd been taught. I believe the truth of your assertions are self evident once one is aware of them and contrasts them with PC assertions and evaluates which better explains reality. I think you're doing a valuable service for people who haven't heard any other view point.

Anyway, I ran across an article that, using my newly scaleless eyes to evaluate from a new perspective, I found interesting. The woman attends sci-fi cons and dresses up in attractive sci fi costumes, then is upset when (a) other women criticize her appearance (b) men compliment her on her appearance. It's the women's snide criticism that really gets to her, so naturally, most of the article is devoted to bashing the male privilege culture at conventions.

Well, naturally.  Because it must be the men's fault that they don't do a better job of protecting her from hearing judgmental and offensive comments about the shortness of her skirt from the obese shoggoths of the sort that can be seen in the background who resent being reminded of what actual human women look like.

SF/F is escapist literature that possesses particular appeal to those with a lot from which to escape.  There is nothing wrong with that, but combined with feminist dogma, the white-knighting gamma males that inordinately attend these conventions, and the aforementioned shoggoths, it's a recipe for the sort of hilarious Red on Red attacks that result in these sorts of articles and left-liberal authors being castigated for Insufficient Kowtowing to one or another sacred cows.

I've attended one convention in my life, and I have never seen a bigger or sadder collection of fatties and freaks anywhere.  The bizarre thing was that for all of their supposed devotion to inclusion, they were also snarkier, more sensitive, and more judgmental about each other than the gay men working out in the gym at the Northwest Target Center.  There was one post-op transsexual there who looked like a lumberjack hippie and all the shoggoths were glaring pure poison at "her" because "she" was using the women's bathrooms.  I'm not all surprised to hear that the entire scene has devolved into a morass of competitive offense-taking.

UPDATE: So far, the registration requirement has prevented 221 Anonymous spam comments from getting through.

Women Ruin Everything: school retreat edition

Make no mistake, some women are absolutely out to destroy everything that does not include them, no matter what the cost to everyone else:

A father-son bonding session planned by a North Island primary school was cancelled after a single mother demanded to be included. Two "Band of Brothers" seminars were arranged by Matakana School to help fathers get more involved in their sons' lives, and as a forum for dads to share their issues. One session was for dads and another was for fathers and sons.  A solo mum wanted to attend but was told she couldn't because her presence would inhibit discussion....

The woman's son was welcome at the second seminar and the guest speaker offered a specific session with her and her son but she continued to insist on attending, Goosen said, so the school board decided to cancel the event.

This is why you cannot back down.  Ever.  You cannot reason with savages or reach an accommodation with them because they simply do not share your values and they do not care about anyone else.  So don't try. Not all women are savages of this sort, but every man has to be prepared to deal with female savagery by ignoring when possible and crushing it when necessary.

The school is planning a "more inclusive" event.  I'll bet the majority of the fathers who were attending the male-only event don't show.

Why do women ruin everything, even for themselves?

This isn't a rhetorical question.  I'm genuinely curious to hear what reasons both men and women would posit to explain the oft-observed phenomenon of women actively ruining things, not only male-dominated organizations and pursuits, but even, as VP commenter AmyJ noted, female-dominated ones:

Women even ruin things meant for women. I've noticed on Pinterest, if someone makes even the slightest negative comment, there are calls for not just banning the commenter, but negative comments all together. The mantra seems to be "I shall not be offended or you will pay"

Is it jealousy combined with solipsism?  That doesn't seem to explain why most women who enjoy diverse interests pursue them in the first place.  Is it simply shortsightedness combined with illogic leading to a failure to grasp obvious consequences?  Is it some sort of Groucho Marx syndrome and being discontent with any club willing to accept them?

I have the vague impression that hypergamy, or at least whatever drives the hypergamous impulse, may be related, but I really couldn't say.  I mean, it seems obvious that the very last thing a woman who enjoys historically male pursuits such as science fiction, video games, or hunting would want to do is drive out the very sort of men who create the things she enjoys in the first place, and yet, we see this same pattern playing out again and again.

Take the example of Pinterest.  I know, as a blogger, that eliminating negative comments will significantly reduce the number of comments that are made because repetitive "yes, I agree" comments are not only tedious, but cannot inspire much in the way of discussion.  So, eliminating negative comments is half-tantamount to eliminating comments altogether.  Do the women who want to ban negative comments simply not understand that or do they really want Pinterest to be a place where no one comments on anything?  Or, are they attempting to create some fantasy structure where the discourse is active, but everyone only has praise for them?

I don't know.  Perhaps the phenomenon is simply the innate female desire to engage with the things they love by "improving" them in some manner.

Women Ruin Everything: Jewish edition

There is literally nothing too holy or sacrosanct for feminists to assail in the name of sexual equality uber alles:

The shrines of Jerusalem’s Old City have been known throughout centuries as, among other things, tinderboxes of inter-religious bickering, violence, and bloodshed. On Friday at the Western Wall, several hundred female Jewish worshipers known as “Women of the Wall’’ were targeted by rock and bottle throwing from a crowd of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jewish demonstrators outraged by their use of prayer shawls and phylacteries traditionally restricted to men.

The image at the Western Wall evoked scenes of civil rights struggles form the 1960s. Some 500 Israeli police officers on hand formed a human barrier between the women worshipers and the surging crush of demonstrators, who taunted the women and blew whistles to drown out the worship.

Police said that about 2,000 ultra-Orthdox women initially arrived at the prayer site at the urging of rabbis in order to block the Women of the Wall group from reaching the massive stones. The peak of tension came after the hour long prayer service, as the women exited the Western Wall plaza and boarded armored buses, which were then pelted by rock throwing and spitting ultra-Orthodox demonstrators.

The worst thing is that you know there is a very good chance that most of the women who were so determined to "worship" there are atheists, or at the most, pagans who don't even believe in the Jewish God.

Mailvox: chess and its consequences

Stickwick is having some trouble figuring out how the act of turning a chess set into dolls could possibly ruin chess:

[T]he clue-meter is still reading zero on this one. I don't understand how marrying chess pieces ruins the game of chess any more than I understand how using dolls to mount an assault ruins doll play. How exactly does chess get ruined? There's some abstract concept here that's going over my head. 

There is. The point is not a material one concerning how the game of chess has been forever ruined by a single improper use of the pieces involved.  The point is a metaphorical and illustrative one showing how the little girls' actions tend to demonstrate a total and characteristic lack of interest in, and respect for, a traditional game created by men and predominantly played by men for centuries.  Now, the chess wedding itself would be no problem at all so long as the little girls happen to be content to leave the boys alone with their chess sets in the future... which we have all learned from experience is very unlikely to be the case.

Consider video games.  As nearly as long as I have been involved in some way with the industry, since 1989, there have been complaints that men simply doing what men wish to do are a problem.  For at least some women, men making games for other men to play is a Very Serious Problem.  Oceans of ink have been spilled and numerous organizations have been formed specifically in order to prevent boys from continuing to simply play chess with their chess sets, metaphorically speaking.

What on the one hand is an amusing little anecdote of a little girl turning a chess set into a marriage ceremony has a direct relationship to Congress imposing laws that have resulted in 75 percent of the men's college gymnastics teams to close and reduced the number of men's teams by 17 percent from 1981-2005.

The reason The Sports Guy's mantra, "Women Ruin Everything", rings so true is because it is so easily demonstrated in everything from gymnastics to demographics, from wrestling to war.  We see it in the military standards.  We see it in the NFL's pink shoes.  We see that we are now living in a world where rhythmic gymnastics and synchronized swimming are Olympic sports and wrestling is not.  If it weren't for the unsustainable nature of equalitarianism and the inevitable collapse, another century would likely see the elimination of fencing, track-and-field, and hockey in favor of medals being awarded for flower arrangement, gift-wrapping, and appearing on the most celebrity magazine covers.

The observable fact that Women Ruin Everything is why men of my generation tend to react to female interest in their activities with much the same sort of horror one sees survivors of the Holocaust reserving for former Nazi death camp guards.  We know perfectly well that it isn't going to be long before that first innocent little suggestion for improvement is made....