Genetic Evolution

Throughout history, boys have undergone rites of passage into manhood that imbued them with knowledge and skills for the real world. Many of these experiences prepared them for combat or a battle for scarce resources. Often it involved testing themselves against their peers in speed, strength, organizational planning, strategic knowledge, developing purpose, the social skills of teamwork, personal integrity or trustworthiness and courage. The stature acquired in these social tests contributed to winning "street cred" and women's favour so they could gain a mate to propagate and ensure their clans continuation and survival.

It is now clear from DNA mapping that we are genetically descended from twice as many women than men. This single under appreciated fact confirms that while 80% of women mated, they did so with only 40% of the male population. These reproductive odds produced well defined behavioural and personality differences. For women the odds of reproducing were pretty good. Taking chances fighting or exploring strange lands would be stupid, the optimal thing to do is go along with the crowd, be nice, play it safe. The odds are good that men will come along and offer sex. All women had to do was select the most promising hunter and mate.1

But for Men it was radically different. They had to compete to win the evolutionary sweepstakes and 60% of them failed. So it was necessary to take chances, try new things, be creative, explore other possibilities. Sailing off into the unknown may be risky but you might strike it rich and have a better chance at mating. The evolutionary odds of success in staying at home and going along certainly weren't great. Risk taking behaviour mattered even from the aspect of sex drive as a man who said "not tonight dear" may have missed his only chance at evolutionary success.

So basically we’re behaviourally descended from women who played it safe and men who took risks. In subjective terms it means that for women, being lovable was the key to attracting the best mate. For men however, it was more a matter of beating out lots of other men even to have a chance for a mate. Men are hardwired to take risks and compete with each other whereas women are predisposed to play it safe and concentrate on suitable mate selection.

Footnotes:
1) The bulk of this Evolutionary Psychology is taken from address of Dr. Roy F. BAUMEISTER "Is There Anything Good About Men?" American Psychological Association Address, June 2007.

Are the courts biased against men?

Women with AIDS guilty of sexual assault gets 1 yr community service?

She had unprotected sex with the man who would become her common-law husband for 5 years before she threw him out with a DV charge. Sometime in the first 6 months of their relationship she disclosed her previously known condition and after that, he took precautions. He has apparently not been infected, although we are expected to "feel sympathetic" for this Quebec women as she must take drugs to treat her AIDS condition. Both identities are protected.

Further west, Trevis Smith (shown), a former-football player has sex with 2 women without disclosing he had AIDS but says he did NOT have unprotected sex with them. One women who was a nurse has tested positive for AIDS and it is not clear if he infected her as she claims. She said she broke off their relationship because Smith was involved with other women. Another women came forward after charges were laid and also testified against Smith. Smiths testimony was ignored by the judge as he was deemed "not-credible" and his appeal was thrown out. His picture and reputation was splattered all over the place, plus he was released from his pro contract once the charges were laid (ok, it was only the Saskatchewan Rough-Riders - but still he is out of a job.)

He gets 6 1/2 years "hard time" (less time served while at trial) - why the difference?

Harsher legal treatment for men than women has long been evident in Canada 1.

• Woman's conviction rates are lower than men (55% found guilty vs 59% for men) 2.

• Women are "half as likely as men to receive a prison sentence (19% vs 38%) and more likely to receive probation (56% vs 37%)" when found guilty of crimes against the person (i.e major assault with a weapon or causing bodily harm) in adult court. This "bias" holds regardless of the severity of the crime.

• Women also receive lower sentences for property crimes such as "robbery (62% versus 76%), break and enter (41% versus 61%) and fraud."

• When found guilty in youth court - regardless of the crime - a boy is more likely to "do time" (24% of males get prison sentence vs 16% of females) than a girl and she will be out in 2/3 the time (average sentences are 48 days for females vs 71 for males).

The question is why?

Footnotes:
1. 2008 January - Female Offenders in Canada, Statscan Juristat - Vol. 28, no 1. Table 5 & 6.
2. Higher conviction rates for men may be related to fact that men face more "multiple-charge" cases than women (52% vs 45%) and as women are more often first-time offenders they receive more lenient treatment.

Male discrimination of Title IX in US Colleges

Recently, Glenn Sacks revisited this issue after being quoted from an article he wrote 7 years ago! [Editorial. Honestly, shouldn't reputable newspapers have a statute of limitations on the use of such attributions to keep lazy journalists honest - quotations of the dead excepted.]

Apart from the "ain't feminism great" tone, Glenn pointed out that Title IX led to wholesale dismantling of many men's sport programs. The Orange County Register article piously points out that "nationally, football has been a major stumbling block to achieving gender equality" without acknowledging that at many US colleges, Football teams are probably the only teams that are profit centers1 and the "social glue" that keep alumni coming back and giving to their Alma Mater! And in many cases, the profits went back into general sports activities - for both genders.

The 7 year old quote was also a "sop", taken out of context. It sounded like Glenn was against women's sports - but he was merely pointing out discrepancies in the California National Organization of Women (Cal-NOW) lawsuit from 1993 and how it has hurt men.

Other points were:

1) Activity bias - more women participate in "personal fitness" activities (jogging, aerobics, dance etc.) than teams sports yet these activities were not included in determining "gender contributions". In addition, more men than women are interested in team activities but the "gender equity" benchmark was based on Total percent Male/Female enrollment and not #athletes or better - "interest". Even at All-Women Colleges, team sports participation would be below the levels that would support Title IX (if it applied). [Studies2 show that female "organized sport" participation is 30-40% versus 50+% for men.]

2) Pink Wash - some very popular women's "activities" like cheer-leading were not counted in the "female sport" ledger. (Hence, we now have both men and women on these university squads.) I find it an eerie coincidence that this discriminatory lawsuit was launched by Cal-NOW in February 1993 - immediately after Superbowl XXVII when the infamous Superbowl DV Hoax was launched and then quickly unmasked.

3) Funding Bias - Similar to Football, Basketball is often a big profit at some US Colleges but the revenue earned is not counted in funding although things like scholarships are. Many women's sports programs athletes have no where to go after leaving the college ghetto - unless they have the orientation to become coaches.

Glenn estimates that Cal-NOW and other feminist organizations have been responsible3 for the elimination of 20,000 male athletic positions since 1993. When Title IX was passed in 1972 it was an important achievement for women's sports but it was never meant to be a sword wielded against men's sports activities.

Footnotes:
1. Football operations contributed an average profit of $1.8 million per school for 322 Div I Colleges. p.25 Table 6 - Overall Revenues & Expenses 2003-4. April 2005 NCAA Gender Equity Report.
2. Cohen vs, Brown 1992. 50% of of male students who submitted SAT scores for entrance to Brown College indicated interest in organized sports versus 30% of female applicants. The Gender Refs 1997 Dec/Nov - Hoover Institute.
3. Estimated loss of Men's Athletic positions for 902 NCAA Colleges from 1994-1997. April 1998 NCAA Gender Equity Report.

[The article was penned by a female journalist, Mary Jo FISHER of the Orange County Register in response to the release of California State University's (CSU) Annual Title IX Compliance Review in June 2008.]

Some additional links of interest.

2008MAY13 USA Today - Title IX Issues Continue

2001APR Reason Magazine - Title IX Pyrrhic Victory

"How my mother's fanatical views tore us apart" by Rebecca Walker

Wow, this article about feminist author Alice WALKER by her daughter Rebecca (and thanks to ProWomenProLife.org) really blew me away. It reads like a black "Mommy Dearest".

This is why, I have almost finished "Spreading Misandry" the first book of a trilogy by Paul NATHANSON & Katherine K. YOUNG (McGill/Queen's University Press). In it they "deconstruct" popular culture in exhaustive detail to dredge up and trace the evolution of the current epidemic of anti-male hatred in pop-culture.

Alice WALKER, famed author of "The Color Purple" figures prominently in it because the movie of her book marked a major misandric turning-point in movie stereotypes. (Of course this is apart from the fact it also launched WALKERS writing career, as it did Opra WINFREY's acting career.) "Purple" was also the first "unvarnished" misandric portrayal of black men in modern film. The wheel had at last turned.

NATHANSON & YOUNG also did a good job in exposing WALKERS feminist credentials but maintain her important role was in shifting the previous white male-only negative stereotypes thereby closed a gaping breech in the gender wall. Until then "racial minorities" had been exempt from feminist misandric derision. They were treated as allies - equally oppressed by the male patriarchy. That characterization changed with the release of "The Color Purple" in 1985 and black/African American men were portrayed as bad or even worse that white men.

In my opinion, once that gap was closed, full "gender-feminism" was possible and the complete de-emancipation of men could begin ultimately leading to VAWA.

Nova Scotia mother charged in daughters murder

A shocking and heinous crime to be sure, but we must wait for the verdict and perhaps some of the truth about Karissa BOUDREAU's terrible death - hopefully to be revealed in court.

As such horrific cases of child murder appear these days there seem to be two sure things which happen. First, both parents (or more often than not the boyfriends and/or step-father) are always Prime Suspects #1 and second, law enforcement agencies appear to accept laying these seriously earth-shattering charges as the first step in breaking a case, regardless of the implications or repercussions on the terribly distressed and grieving families.

Yet such charges against a mother seems to have dredged up an enormous store of contempt and vitriol from the community, one of whom was quoted as saying "stuff like this happens in the big city, not in tiny Bridgewater" (a town of 8,000). Who are these people kidding? In my opinion it is more likely to happen in such a smug, insular and smothering small-town environment than in larger urban area's where many more opportunities exist for anonymity and self-deceptive behaviour.

Add this revelation to the other two recent, shocking multiple-family murders (Joshua LALL in Calgary AB on May 28, 2008 and Dwayne SCHOENBORN in Merritt BC on April 6, 2008) has silenced most parents.

In the case of Joshua LALL, he was extolled as a the "perfect" father who "cracked" for some unknown reason and reputedly (although these quotes are vaguely attributed to "unknown") began to "hear voices in his head" which would indicate some untofor unrecognized severe mental illness. The characterization of Dwayne SCHOENBORN was similar but less glowing as his ex-common-law spouse had left him with their children to "start a new life" six months prior to his sudden appearance. After strangling his three young children, he fled and was found a short distance away in a distressed and greatly weakened state - reportedly showing signs he had attempted but failed at suicide.

Then there is the multiple family murder-suicide of Santbir BRAR an Ottawa Transit garage supervisor who murdered his wife Amarjeet and their two university aged daughters, Manmeet and Dildeep before committing suicide in November 2007. Again, close neighbors expressed disbelief that such a "calm, cool and logical" father could commit such a heinous crime. Perhaps because many of this Indo-Canadian/immigrant family's relatives still lived in India or because it kept a less public profile and was less close to neighbors, this murder ceased to nag public opinion soon after it was first reported.

Men figure prominently as perpetrators in all but the first case, except that Karissa's mother - Ms. Penny Boudreau - has been prohibited from communicating with her boyfriend, a Vernon MACUMBER.

Who is more delusional, these broken parents who have (or are claimed to have) wreaked death on their children or those "happy-faced" individuals who ignore, dissemble and deny that "some problems" exist in close family members and loved ones but do nothing to help? sad Transfer to Personal Qwest

Taking 'equality' too far

Karen Selick is beginning to rival Barbara Kay as my favorite columnist in the National Post. This article deconstructs a Liberal plan for a 'Commissioner of Gender Equality' and explains why how such plans reflect the left's unhealthy obsession with sex quotas. Faulty assumptions have been used to justify what used to be known as "affirmative action" programs in the USA - many that are now canceled due to their overall ineffectiveness or overturned by constitutional challenges.

How boys/men are valued in the "real world"

The National Post (April 29, 2008) had 2 items that highlight the "real value" of boys/men in society and another that merely indicates how misandry is spreading to the less-developed world.

The first was The Eligible-Bachelor Paradox - How economics and game theory explain the shortage of available, appealing men. This "game" has been true since Eve, yet feminists would have us believe that since the advent of abortion and their "liberation" the playing field was levelled. Sorry, you just became less attractive because you are attempting to bend "the rules".

The second was Indian Prime Minister Denounces Abortion of Females noting the recurrent challenge of prenatal gender selection in poor, rural India. In 2001 there were only 927 girls per 1000 boys [Editor: how long does it take to do a census?]. The article claims laws are not being applied and in remote rural locations, many operators adeptly side-step any prohibitions on ultrasound tech's letting them know the sex of their unborn child by giving out blue or pink coloured candles at the end of session "for good luck".

Feminists have been outraged at their "poorer sisters" for doing this for at least 10 years now, which placed them in an unholy alliance with "neo-Malthusian" population control activists. How long before the feminist movement bullies some compliant weak-willed western government (or better yet the UN!) into sanctions against India over such "female atrocities" similar to Arab Muslim female circumcision (aka genital mutilation) - is anyone's guess.

Finally, according to this Reuters article, girls in Mumbai are not seduced by the school attendance payments as they are not "enough", but the school principal Baig Noorjahan, can not understand why they don't target the boys as well as "Their attendance is even worse", she said. One mother planned to buy her daughter a "dress" with the windfall, but the girl sensibly wanted to use it for her next years school fees. She hopes to be a flight attendant, but her teacher believes this is much too ambitious. Again, Barbie 1 - Feminists 0.

Blog Interruption

Last week I did the unthinkable - I accidentally deleted this blog. Stupid, I know. As I have more than 1 gmail account I have to flip between them and Firefox often gets confused. In that process I thought I had retrained the MALEpositive blog to a new email account and then rather rashly deleted that gmail account!

Anyways, everything I had published and in "edit-mode" was irrevocably lost, but luckily Google/Blogger was able to recover everything upto the end of March.

This is in case you saw something that suddenly "disappeared". Sorry, crj

WorkPlace Bullies

Yesterday Brittany McNeil, 18, was sentenced in Dartmouth NS provincial court by Judge Alanna Murphy to 5 1/2 yrs in prison for her leading role in an brutal attack on another teen girl.

This follows another case in Montreal where a family is suing the school board for not protecting their son from a bullying teacher and another on on ABC News for vicious student bullying behaviour. The terrible consequences of neglecting to deal effectively with such behaviours has had tragic consequences many times in the past.

Not surprisingly bullying is now being traced "up the food chain" and into the workplace - as this article in NY Times points out.

Bullying in the workplace is surprisingly common. In a survey released last fall, 37 percent of American workers said they had experienced bullying on the job, according to the research firm Zogby International.

This month, researchers at the University of Manitoba reported that the emotional toll of workplace bullying is more severe than that of sexual harassment. And in today’s corporate culture, supervisors may condone bullying as part of a tough management style.

The New York State Legislature is considering an antibullying bill, and in several other states, including New Jersey and Connecticut, lawmakers have introduced such measures — without success so far.

A large share of the problem involves women victimizing women. The Zogby survey showed that 40 percent of workplace bullies are women.

Researchers at the State University of New York in New Paltz have developed a survey aimed at identifying the full range of behaviors that can constitute bullying.

Here are 10 most common forms of workplace aggression.*

1. Talking about someone behind his/her back.
2. Interrupting others while they are speaking or working.
3. Flaunting status or authority; acting in a condescending manner.
4. Belittling someone's opinion to others.
5. Failing to return phone calls or respond to memos.
6. Giving others the silent treatment.
7. Insults, yelling and shouting.
8. Verbal forms of sexual harassment.
9. Staring, dirty looks or other negative eye contact.
10. Intentionally damning with faint praise.

* Source: Professor Joel Neuman, Center for Applied Management, State University of New York at New Paltz. Data is from samples of more than 600 employees in a variety of work settings.

I question whether "Anti-Bully" programs at schools and elsewhere are merely dealing with the symptoms (i.e "Don't do this!" admonishments) rather than allowing teachers and parents methods of recognizing and dealing with the situations as the arise. These concerns are similar to those I have about SexEd classes and the prevalance of sexual permissive in most of our media.

Divorce, Marriage and the Deregulation of the Family

How could I resist this title? Dubner & Levitt continue to blog on applications of economics to modern day problems - as they did in their bestseller Freakonomics, published in 2005. This follows the topic of crisis articles.

This is a favourite topic of mine - misinterpretation of complex statistics by simple reporters looking for a quick story - like the "historically high divorce rate". In this case Sue Shellenbarger of the 2008 March 21 WSJ writes "On average, 43 percent of first marriages end in separation or divorce within 15 years, a federal study shows."

This presumably refers to last US Bureau of Census data for 2004 which shows that 56.9 percent of women married from 1985 to 1989 had reached their 15th anniversary, and from that, inferring that 43.1 percent had divorced or separated within 15 years of marriage.

Clearly there are a few problems: 1) The Survey took place in the summer so even assuming roughly equal monthly distributions of weddings, 1/10 women would be from 1-6 months shy of their 15th year anniversary! 2) Then there is the fact that widows do not choose divorce but have it thrust upon them and still count as "no longer married".

Adjusting for these facts reduces what should more properly be called the "Womens 15 yr Divorce Marathon Rate" to 33%. The trend for men - not surprisingly - is very similar - 31.2%.

This is also born out by looking at the incidence of US Divorces (rate per 1,000 married couples) which shows the rate of divorce peaked at 22.8 divorces per 1,000 married couples in 1979 and has fallen 16.7 in 2005 - its lowest level since 1970. So marriages that do occur are increasingly more stable and the Divorce Crisis is just a myth. I do not have similar data for Canada - but will make a point to find some soon.

But I think the real crisis is Official Marriage. As Wolfers clearly points out - Marriage incidence is declining and has in fact reached historic lows (with stats since 1860!). Many would argue that marriage has only been replaced by common-law cohabitation, but that is a difficult claim to disprove. The data collection of such statistics is still evolving - in particular as same sex unions become legal in US states.

But it does seem that U.S. couples who cohabit before marriage have been historically more likely to divorce than those who do not. Among those couples who were cohabiting in January 1997, slightly more than half were no longer together five years later and only a quarter had married.

Here is Justin Wolfers excellent academic article on the issue.

p.s The other article mentioned at Freakonomics is not worth agitating over - as mentioned in accompanied comments, Spanish parents merely appear to be "faking" divorce so they can gain benefits for their children.