The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Bad Luck or Bad Judgment?

Posted on | July 26, 2018 | Comments Off on Bad Luck or Bad Judgment?

 

That tweet by Hannah Williams “went viral” and generated criticism that, predictably, Ms. Williams cited as proof of how bad men are:

What is it about women sharing their actual life experiences that leads men to think they can ‘disagree’? I didn’t pluck those categories out my own ass. They are based on years of personal experience, not just mine but friends, family members, colleagues, even strangers on the internet… When something is happening to almost every woman, all across society, that means there is a SYSTEMIC problem. These aren’t ‘a few bad apples’, this is ingrained socialization all across the board, that men will only unlearn if they actively commit to it. . . . Take it from the Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Centre: ‘Men have been taught through social roles modeling and the media that they are entitled to the attention and services of women. Women are required to listen, be supportive, enhance their partners’ status with other men, fulfill the man’s sexual needs, and care for their children.’ . . .
So if you’re a man, and my tweet made you angry — you’re part of the problem.

Actually, no, ma’am, I’m part of the solution. Because I’m teaching my sons to avoid women like you. In fact, I’m teaching them to avoid the “dating pool” altogether — just find one smart, sane, decent woman (sorry, Ms. Williams, you don’t qualify) and marry her. Problem solved!

Our oldest sons (25-year-old twins) are both married with children. Our 19-year-old son is quite serious with the girl he’s dated since he was 15. Whatever their problems in regard to being “entitled to the attention and services of women,” etc., our adult sons found women who meet their requirements, and are not part of “the dating pool for young women.” (Our 17-year-old son has duly been warned.)

You see, there is a selection effect involved here. Being a member of “the dating pool” means either (a) you’re a hopeless loser, or (b) your previous relationships all ended in failure. By the time you get to be 25 or so, if you’re still in “the dating pool,” you have done something wrong — your problem is you. Blaming others for your failure to find the love of your life is irresponsible, and it doesn’t matter whether you’re an autistic Canadian “incel” or an embittered feminist. Scapegoating the opposite sex — pretending that the reason you’re still single is because of them, and not you — is a guaranteed formula for continued failure.

Why are some men “emotionally distant,” for example? Wouldn’t it be fair to say these men may just be cautious? Like, maybe if they meet an attractive but obviously unstable woman, they will be “distant” in the sense of they don’t want to make themselves vulnerable to damage? And guess what? The “dating pool” has a lot of unstable women, one of whom might be named Hannah Williams. Oh, I’m sure she’s charming, but using social media to issue anti-male rants? Warning sign.

Speaking of warning signs, Donald Douglas called my attention to a disturbing article by 29-year-old Caragh Poh:

Until we met in June of 2016, I had been casually dating several men for about two years. I went on so many first dates, and even the bad ones were delightful stories. It was enjoyable to meet new people, to discover new parts of the city. I asked each man to choose his favorite first-date spot, which was such a nice way to relearn NYC. It felt freeing and wonderful to f–k without attachment after an awful breakup with a co-worker I lived with for three months in 2014. We both moved to the city the same month in early 2013 — he was a transfer from another office, I was a new hire — and started dating three months later. . . .

(OK, pause and let’s timeline this: Five years ago, Ms. Poh moved to New York at age 24 and, within three months, was dating a co-worker. This relationship lasted about a year and ended in “an awful breakup.” She then started “casually dating several men . . . without attachment” until meeting a new boyfriend who was perhaps the eighth or ninth guy she’d screwed in the span of three years. But continue, Ms. Poh.)

During my last weeks with him [i.e., the co-worker she dated in 2013-2014], he threatened to shoot himself because no one respected him enough — especially you, he said coldly, sitting across from me in our sunken living room. I stayed for another two weeks until he told me I didn’t know how bad I f–ked up, but I’d know it when it hit me — and motioned to the gun he kept in our closet. He threw my kitten off the couch that night because he was angry at me, and drunk. He was always drunk.
He was fired for misconduct at work four months later. . . .

(She can pick a real winner, eh?)

The man I dated after the alcoholic co-worker was a former gang member.

(Like I said, she can sure pick ’em.)

I still refer to him as the most conventionally attractive guy I’ve ever dated in my life. He was fascinating. He knew every man on every street corner in his neighborhood. He had stories and scars — a long, white slash mark from a knife fight on his lower abdomen made my jaw drop the first time I saw him naked. It was above the “BROOKLYN” tattoo arched over his abs. After his mother got sick with cancer, he’d left his old life. He took up boxing. He traveled to Europe once, to box on a sponsor’s dime. He had a six-pack. I will never in my fat f–king life get to date a man with a six-pack ever again. His trapezoid muscles were mesmerizing. He looked like a Costco Trevor Noah. He was hot! I dated a hot man! . . .

Well, you can read the rest of that but — spoiler alert! — he dosed her drink with a date-rape drug and sodomized her after she passed out.

You were dating a Crip, sweetheart. What did you expect? But they never learn, that type. The boyfriend she started dating in June 2016 strung her along for more than year, borrowed “hundreds and hundreds” of dollars from her and then “dumped me over the phone.”

She’s almost 30 now. She’s wasted five years she’ll never get back. Did I forget to mention that Caragh Poh has a Tumblr blog?

 

 

She’s “worrying about my eggs dying” and you wonder if maybe she should have started worrying before she dated the Crip who raped her.

You see this kind of stuff and all you can do is laugh, because if you took it seriously — the tragedy of once-promising young women, now doomed to a Crazy Cat Lady future — it would make you cry.

This isn’t bad luck, it’s bad judgment. It’s about young women following a script of being “empowered” by “sex-positive” feminism, believing they can all be Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City, and never mind whether their media-scripted life-plan is realistic or practical. Of course, there are plenty of young men following unrealistic scripts provided by Hollywood (or pornography) and wondering why they’re not getting all the thrills and glory they’ve been promised. It’s sad to see someone like Aziz Ansari wreck his reputation over a dimwit like Abby Nierman, but welcome to the age of #MeToo, where your bad date is “rape culture.”

Am I angry? You bet I’m angry. And I’m angry that more people aren’t as angry as I am. We should all be mad as hell at the sorry mess these young people have made of their lives. To quote Rhett Butler: “I’m angry. Waste always makes me angry, and that’s what all this is, sheer waste.”

The alleged glamour of life in “the dating pool” was always a fiction, a cultural commodity purveyed by Hollywood, where the movies and TV shows are written, directed and produced by predatory perverts. How am I, the father teaching his children to avoid all that, “part of the problem”?

It’s not my daughter alone in her New York apartment, shouting obscenities at the walls while “accidentally reflecting” on her regrets. My daughter is living in her own home with her own husband and her own baby. While I don’t remember explicitly telling her, “Never date a Crip,” I’m pretty sure we conveyed the general idea to her.

It is easy to blame others for our own problems, to tell ourselves that life is unfair, to pretend we are victims of society, when in fact our circumstances are the result of our own choices. To say “something is happening to almost every woman, all across society,” as Ms. Williams does, is to suggest that everybody’s following the same script, when even she admits other choices (and other consequences) are possible:

I know that not every guy conforms to the listed behaviours: I have several friends in happy, rewarding, and healthy heterosexual relationships.

OK, sweetheart: Why not you?

What’s the difference between your miserable life in the toxic “dating pool” full of creeps and losers, and the lives of your happy friends? And guys should ask themselves the same question. Why are you even in the “dating pool”? What’s the object of the game? If you could find a good woman, wouldn’t you marry her? So why aren’t you married? You are a Loser, with a capital “L,” and all your Tinder hookups mean nothing.

Worse than that, you’re ruining the game for everybody else, leaving behind a trail of bitter women telling sad stories on the Internet.



 

Category: Sex Trouble

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