ODM and PNU shall pass away but FIDA will never collapse

I never thought the day would come when I would say this. Hear me out.

With great sadness do I declare that chauvinism is ingrained in the minds of men. Go to any male sports team's changing room at man-talk time and you'll get the picture. Go to any bar and listen. Put your ear to the ground soon after any woman declares her desire to vie for the top seat in the country. Expected findings: the only difference between individual men is the amount of training we have undergone in order to act and speak as though the "fairer gender" is equal to the "stronger gender".

For some of us, the training is as rigorous as sexual harassment lawsuits and restraining orders can get. Most of the rest of us simply avoid rocking the boat and get by agreeably. And therein lies the fatal trap: though we act enlightened, and know the science of the gentleman at a theoretical level, useful perhaps for conjuring up tricks on Valentine's Day, we do not otherwise believe it as completely as we should!

The usual gimmicks involving pulling seats and opening doors are not in themselves enough to fashion a liberated gentleman. Yet every mainstream relationship guru with a breath to breathe on the thing will harp on about the necessity of flowers too and then heave off about whispered sweet nothings being the key to her heart. But, alas, it isn't that simple.

To illustrate, if man was not half-expected to be a philistine chauvinist from the outset by default, the current frequency of "gender violence" would be a scandal of crisis proportions. NGOs wouldn't need to "spread awareness" about what is otherwise obviously unacceptable barbarism. And it wouldn't be quite so funny (as it seems to be today) if the occasional man was thoroughly beaten up by his wife or girlfriend, and sat on for good measure, because, in a truly fair world, one might as well beat the other instead, right? But chauvinism goes much deeper than the dry duality of beating or not beating the partner to ICU, nor even treating or not treating the mate to expensive bribes. Instead, it's a whole attitude, a mindset, even a fixation.

You know how, in the thin-walled apartments of nowadays, you sometimes overhear the neighbor "consulting widely" with his wife or girlfriend? That guy's never once dreamed of beating her, and probably never will.

See how widely he consults!

Humor me as I delve into the nitty-gritty. Sex, which is the central basis for gender in the first place, is a very powerful physiological and psychological experience. It even tends to emphasize and distort many accompanying emotions. And it strengthens the bond, even if that bond is "purely physical". Thus, for example, every break-up between sexually-active lovers is always heartrendingly hard, even if the stated couple eagerly wanted to murder one another (B_WTB has more on that here). Unfortunately, at the same time, the current format of the sex act is rigidly rigged to inflate the thoughtless man's ego with notions of dominance, and exponentially grow them, until they expel from his mind anything contrary. Sensationalist mass media and its first cousin, the porn industry, don't help prevailing impressions either. Once a man associates sex with dominance, his girl has a real obstacle to overcome in chauvinism. And men won't suddenly stop having sex to better appreciate the fairer sex; or what are they fairer for?

Sorry, that came out wrong.

Because of this major crack in our thinking, this refusal to acknowledge our chauvinism that stares us in the face, there shall ever be a hapless man, feeling victimized, thinking he did nothing wrong, looking lugubrious, standing in the defendant's box at civil court. And you can put your money on it.