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European men II

Too feminine to defend their women

29.01.2016. In this article Iben Thranholm argues that in the west men have been programmed to be feminine, and women to be masculine, and that this is a recipe for disaster, already manifesting itself in helplessness in the face of the immigrant 'rapefugee' phenomenon. Europe's Men Are Too Feminine and Can't Defend Their Women from 'Rapefugees' (link in original):

[...] Pundits and politicians assure the public that refugee males now storming the gates of Europe from the Middle East, Northern Africa and Central Asia will be required to learn that Western women are independent and sexually liberated. Such arguments, however, are obviously too weak to have any impact on the male cultures representative of certain refugee groups.

[...]

Instead of a single-minded focus on imposing liberal feminist values on Muslim males, it might well be much more beneficial for Europeans to consider if the feminist war on masculinity might be the underlying cause of the weakness of European culture - feeble and defenseless as it is - against the culture of immigrants and refugees. The irony is that the vacuum feminism has created means that women become victims of an aggressive male culture.

A recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Centre shows that the number of young men in the US who want to marry has dropped to the lowest level ever recorded.

American author Suzanne Venker claims that the pervasive cultural influence of feminism is the cause. Venker states that men explain their lack of desire to marry with the observation that “women are no longer women”; feminism has programmed women to see men as the enemy. As a result, males have been made redundant in post-modern Western culture. Women no longer need men as a provider, protector or father of her children; an anonymous semen donor can do the job of creating a baby if a woman so chooses.

Since the 1960s, modern mothers have raised their sons to be women, soaking them in feminine values like [...], being caring, understanding and attentive, and bend to every wish of the woman. This has produced a generation of soft, insecure men, who are out of touch with their masculine nature, identity and strength.

Today, many boys also grow up with no father in the home and have no male role models. The average modern Western male has been feminized, with no knowledge or habit of manly virtues like courage, resolve, self-sacrifice, justice, temperance, self-reliance, self-discipline and honour. He has no sense of true expression of manliness. Feminism despises and rejects these virtues, and this has had a profoundly detrimental impact on a European culture, the “battered wife” of a feeble continent.

The massive feminization of culture has had a major impact on politics. The prevailing ideology of Western liberal democracy is secular humanism, which is particularly feminine in character. Policy, especially as applied to immigrants, is a motherly embrace of goodness and overbearing indulgence. One could also interpret it as naivety, weakness and accommodation. As the refugee crisis erupted and overwhelmed Europe, its political leaders - spearheaded by German Chancellor Angela Merkel - acted like timid mother hens, not as strong men responsible for guarding their country from an invasion.

[...]

Camille Pagilla, self-professed “feminist dissident”, put it like this in the Daily Mail: “The entire elite class now, in finance, in politics and so on, none of them have military service - hardly anyone, there are a few. But there is no prestige attached to it anymore. That is a recipe for disaster… These people don't think in military ways, so there's this illusion out there that people are basically nice, people are basically kind, if we're just nice and benevolent to everyone they'll be nice too. They literally don't have any sense of evil or criminality.’ According to Paglia, the results are there for all to see in the on-going dysfunction in Washington, where politicians ‘lack practical skills of analysis and construction’”.

[...]

At the same time, immigration is inevitable in a globalized world. If Europe is to survive in an age of mass migration, there must be a male revolution. This revolution will be as important as the struggle for women's rights in the 1960s. It is vital for Western men to acknowledge this need and start building social, cultural and political capital based on masculine virtues to defend the values upon which Europe is based.

Read the entire article in Russia Insider.

European men I

Have lost their masculinity

29.01.2016. The gender-bending Europeans are finally getting their comeuppance. They are having their asses kicked and their women fondled by normal red-blooded Syrians and Libyans whom they were stupid enough to bomb into total social collapse. [...] Their response has been to cover up the facts, or hand out instructional cartoons to immigrants explaining to them that one shouldn't grope the womenfolk, which most likely simply convinced the immigrants that they can grope all they want because only a wuss would think of something so stupid. Thus writes Russia Insider in Dear European Men: You Are Pathetic Pussies (Video).

HonestThinking comments: The eight minutes long RT interview with Iben Thranholm is highly recommended.

Clever sillies

Why high IQ people tend to be deficient in common sense

17.01.2016. I just came across a reference to Clever sillies: why high IQ people tend to be deficient in common sense, by BG Charlton (Med Hypotheses. 2009 Dec;73(6):867-70). Here's the abstract:

In previous editorials I have written about the absent-minded and socially-inept 'nutty professor' stereotype in science, and the phenomenon of 'psychological neoteny' whereby intelligent modern people (including scientists) decline to grow-up and instead remain in a state of perpetual novelty-seeking adolescence. These can be seen as specific examples of the general phenomenon of 'clever sillies' whereby intelligent people with high levels of technical ability are seen (by the majority of the rest of the population) as having foolish ideas and behaviours outside the realm of their professional expertise. In short, it has often been observed that high IQ types are lacking in 'common sense'--and especially when it comes to dealing with other human beings. General intelligence is not just a cognitive ability; it is also a cognitive disposition. So, the greater cognitive abilities of higher IQ tend also to be accompanied by a distinctive high IQ personality type including the trait of 'Openness to experience', 'enlightened' or progressive left-wing political values, and atheism. Drawing on the ideas of Kanazawa, my suggested explanation for this association between intelligence and personality is that an increasing relative level of IQ brings with it a tendency differentially to over-use general intelligence in problem-solving, and to over-ride those instinctive and spontaneous forms of evolved behaviour which could be termed common sense. Preferential use of abstract analysis is often useful when dealing with the many evolutionary novelties to be found in modernizing societies; but is not usually useful for dealing with social and psychological problems for which humans have evolved 'domain-specific' adaptive behaviours. And since evolved common sense usually produces the right answers in the social domain; this implies that, when it comes to solving social problems, the most intelligent people are more likely than those of average intelligence to have novel but silly ideas, and therefore to believe and behave maladaptively. I further suggest that this random silliness of the most intelligent people may be amplified to generate systematic wrongness when intellectuals are in addition 'advertising' their own high intelligence in the evolutionarily novel context of a modern IQ meritocracy. The cognitively-stratified context of communicating almost-exclusively with others of similar intelligence, generates opinions and behaviours among the highest IQ people which are not just lacking in common sense but perversely wrong. Hence the phenomenon of 'political correctness' (PC); whereby false and foolish ideas have come to dominate, and moralistically be enforced upon, the ruling elites of whole nations.

The entire article can be downloaded e.g. from nih.gov.

For a mixed review, see Does Super-High IQ= Super-Low Common Sense?, by Andrea Kuszewski.

Germany II

On the Brink

14.01.2016. On New Year’s Eve, in the shadow of Cologne’s cathedral, crowds of North African and Middle Eastern men accosted women out for the night’s festivities. They surrounded them, groped them, robbed them. Two women were reportedly raped. Though there were similar incidents from Hamburg to Helsinki, the authorities at first played down the assaults, lest they prove inconvenient for Angela Merkel’s policy of mass asylum for refugees. Thus begins Ross Douthat his NYT op-ed Germany on the Brink. He concludes as follows:

The underlying controversy here is not a new one. For decades conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic have warned that Europe’s generous immigration policies, often pursued in defiance of ordinary Europeans’ wishes, threaten to destabilize the continent.

The conservatives have made important points about the difficulty of assimilation, the threat of radicalization, and the likelihood of Paris-style and Cologne-style violence in European cities.

But they have also trafficked in more apocalyptic predictions — fears of a “Eurabia,” of mass Islamification — that were somewhat harder to credit. Until recently, Europe’s assimilation challenge looked unpleasant but not insurmountable, and the likelihood of Yugoslavian-style balkanization relatively remote.

With the current migration, though, we’re in uncharted territory. The issue isn’t just that immigrants are arriving in the hundreds of thousands rather than the tens of thousands. It’s that a huge proportion of them are teenage and twentysomething men.

[...]

If you believe that an aging, secularized, heretofore-mostly-homogeneous society is likely to peacefully absorb a migration of that size and scale of cultural difference, then you have a bright future as a spokesman for the current German government.

You’re also a fool. Such a transformation promises increasing polarization among natives and new arrivals alike. It threatens not just a spike in terrorism but a rebirth of 1930s-style political violence. The still-imaginary France Michel Houellebecq conjured up in his novel “Submission,” in which nativists and Islamists brawl in the streets, would have a very good chance of being realized in the German future.

This need not happen. But prudence requires doing everything possible to prevent it. That means closing Germany’s borders to new arrivals for the time being. It means beginning an orderly deportation process for able-bodied young men. It means giving up the fond illusion that Germany’s past sins can be absolved with a reckless humanitarianism in the present.

It means that Angela Merkel must go — so that her country, and the continent it bestrides, can avoid paying too high a price for her high-minded folly.

Read the entire op-ed in The New York Times.

Europe

Threatened by sex imbalance

07.01.2016. The recent surge of migration into Europe has been unprecedented in scope, with an estimated 1 million migrants from the Middle East and North Africa this past year alone, making for a massive humanitarian crisis, as well as a political and moral dilemma for European governments. But one crucial dimension of this crisis has gone little-noticed: sex or, more technically, sex ratios. Thus begins Professor Valerie Hudson her article Europe’s Man Problem - Migrants to Europe skew heavily male—and that’s dangerous:

According to official counts, a disproportionate number of these migrants are young, unmarried, unaccompanied males. In fact, the sex ratios among migrants are so one-sided—we’re talking worse than those in China, in some cases—that they could radically change the gender balance in European countries in certain age cohorts

[...]

But fear of terrorism might not be the only reason to be leery of highly abnormal sex ratios among the young adult population. As my co-author Andrea Den Boer and I argued in our book, societies with extremely skewed sex ratios are more unstable even without jihadi ideologues in their midst. Numerous empirical studies have shown that sex ratios correlate significantly with violence and property crime—the higher the sex ratio, the worse the crime rate. Our research also found a link between sex ratios and the emergence of both violent criminal gangs and anti-government movements. It makes sense: When young adult males fail to make the transition to starting a household—particularly those young males who are already at risk for sociopathic behavior due to marginalization, a common concern among immigrants—their grievances are aggravated.

There are also clearly negative effects for women in male-dominated populations. Crimes such as rape and sexual harassment become more common in highly masculinized societies, and women’s ability to move about freely and without fear within society is curtailed. In addition, demand for prostitution soars; that would create a deeply ironic outcome for Sweden, which invented the path-breaking Swedish abolitionist approach to prostitution.

Europe is famously progressive on women’s rights, and some European governments have even created voluntary classes for migrants to understand how the treatment of women may be profoundly different in their new homes. But even with such efforts there is the potential for real regress when the young adult sex ratio is so high. And what is often invisible in the debates over migration is that the women left behind by this largely male exodus are usually left in dire situations: In displaced persons camps in Syria or refugee camps in Turkey, Jordan and surrounding countries, female-headed households live in fear and penury, prey to exploitation and abuse. Sweden’s foreign minister, Margot Wallström rightly emphasizes her country’s “feminist foreign policy”—but can Sweden really consider its migration policy to be feminist?

While the humanitarian needs of the refugees streaming into Europe must be foremost in our minds at this time, policymakers in Sweden and other countries should also think of the long-term consequences of an unprecedented alteration in the young adult sex ratios of their societies. The Canadian approach should be carefully studied, and perhaps adapted by other countries. After all, if the sex ratios of the migrants’ countries of origins are balanced, is it not odd to accept predominantly male migrants for asylum?

As anthropologist Barbara Miller has persuasively argued, a normal sex ratio is a “public good” and therefore deserves state protection. For Sweden—or any other European country—to wind up with the worst young adult sex ratios in the world would be a tragedy for European men and women alike.

Read the entire article in Politico Magazine.

Germany I

German women report string of sexual assaults by 'Arab and North African men'

05.01.2016. Mayor of Cologne to investigate "outrageous" series of New Year's Eve attacks on women by large gangs of men “of Arab or North African appearance”. Thus reports The Telegraph:

Police in Germany are investigating an alarming series of sexual assaults on women trying to celebrate the New Year by large groups of single men “of Arab or North African appearance”.

Authorities in the city of Cologne are to hold a crisis meeting on Tuesday after police described a group of some 1,000 men who took over the area around the main station on New Year’s Eve.

Women were robbed, groped, and had their underwear torn from their bodies, while couples had fireworks thrown at them.

Police have received 90 criminal complaints, around a quarter of them for sexual assault, including one case of rape.

Police in Hamburg say there was a series of similar incidents in the city’s Reeperbahn red-light area. Witnesses described groups of five to 15 men of who “hunted” women in the streets.

[...]

A 27-year-old witness named only as Anne told Spiegel magazine’s website she was shocked by the crowds when she arrived at the station with her boyfriend.

“The whole place was full and almost only with men,” she said. “Only a few frightened women, who were being stared at.”

A short time later, she said, she “felt the first hand on my behind”.

The men began firing fireworks directly into the crowd.

“I saw people jump and run, because a rocket had been fired at their legs,” she said.

“Shortly after midnight, the first women came to us,” an unnamed police officer told the local Express newspaper.

“Crying and in shock they described how they had been severely sexually harassed. We went to look for women in the crowd. I picked one up from the ground. She was screaming and crying. Her underwear had been torn from her body.”

[... ]

An unidentified male witness told WDR television he and his girlfriend had been surrounded in Cologne by “drunk and aggressive” men who threatened them and groped her.

“They weren’t of European appearance,” he said.

“The crimes were committed by a group of people who from appearance were largely from the North African or Arab world,” Wolfgang Albers, the Cologne police chief, told a press conference.

“It is intolerable that such offences are committed in the heart of the city,” he said.

In Hamburg, witnesses described groups of young men who followed women calling out “Bitch! Ficky ficky!”

“Some girls were chased like cattle,” a 17-year-old woman told Bild newspaper. “I’m stunned that such a thing is possible in Hamburg. It makes you scared to celebrate in the neighbourhood.”

[...]

Henriette Reker, the mayor of Cologne, has called an emergency meeting of the city authorities on Tuesday to address the incidents.

“We cannot tolerate a legal vacuum here,” Ms Reker said, describing the attacks as “outrageous”.

The state government of North Rhine-Westphalia, where Cologne lies, vowed to take action.

“We will not take gangs of North African men humiliating defenceless women with brazen sexual attacks,” Ralf Jäger, the state’s interior minister, said.

Read the entire article in The Telegraph. See also The Daily Mail.

HonestThinking comments: It is worth noting that this kind of unprecedented phenomenon (according to German police) appeared simultaneously in at least three cities (Cologne, Hamburg, Stuttgart). It is also worth noting that these outrageous events did not become generally known until today.

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HonestThinking is dedicated and committed to the art of thinking honestly. Yet honest thinking is not the same as true thinking, for it is possible to think honestly, but be mistaken. For the same reason, honest thinking is not identical with objective thinking either. Honest thinking is striving to get things right. This involves being truthful about whatever one publishes, but just as importantly, it involves an uncompromising dedication never to suppress relevant data, even when data collides with dearly held prejudices. Such an approach may sometimes cause hurtful revisions in one’s belief system. That’s what HonestThinking is all about! Read the entire manifesto.

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The current European immigration and integration policy is profoundly disrespectful of both Muslims and Islam, because it is built on the tacit assumption that the Muslims will become like us. One claims to have respect for Islam and for Muslims, but one also expects Muslims to give up their orthodox faith when they come here. At the same time one is assuming that Islam will be reformed and modernized as soon as the Muslims become integrated and understand and appreciate how superior our Western culture is compared to their own. This is cultural shauvinism and arrogance indeed! The unspoken premise for this scenario is that Western socities are superior to Islam. Read more.

Human rights and democracy are under pressure. One threat comes from the Western world, in the form of lack of or dishonest thinking. There exists a peculiar Western "tolerance" which is so "tolerant" that it even tolerates totalitarian or anti-democratic ideologies. A tacit assumption underlying such an attitude is that all cultures, world views, and religions are really equally good. As a consequence of this assumption one is cut off from the possibility of critically examining the above mentioned ideologies. Read more.