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| Mark Steyn: The Absence of Men |
| 2024-12-14 |
| [SteynOnline] ~Almost every story in the news boils down to the same story: Man is on the endangered species list. A week ago, I wrote about the so-called "Montreal Massacre" - which happened on the scale it did because the "men" walked away and abandoned their female classmates to their fate. You can't discuss that - not honestly - in the Canadian press, but, over at American Thinker, Eric Utter commented: Real men, marinating in their 'toxic masculinity,' will stand up for women and say "enough!" as regards 'trans women' in women's bathrooms and locker rooms. And real men, of the toxically masculine variety, would not ignore the gang rapes of innocent young girls that are being committed by 'immigrants.' No sooner had he written it than a New York jury acquitted of murder 26-year-old Daniel Penny - referred to by the prosecutor throughout the trial as "the white guy". The non-white guy - one Jordan Neely - had entered the subway car and announced to its passengers that "I'm gonna kill everybody". So Mr Penny acted, and prevented that. It is not for the distant authorities to second-guess his actions. The writ of the state does not run on New York public transit. Just this weekend some guy was shoved onto the southbound tracks at Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center Station in Brooklyn. The same day a 74-year-old man was shoved onto the tracks at the 149th Street-Grand Concourse station in the Bronx. The perp yelled "I didn't do it!" immediately after doing it. In Queens an 82-year-old woman was shoved onto the tracks... It is pathetic that in a supposed First World city octogenarian ladies cannot ride public transit without wondering if they're going to wind up under the train, and that "Subway Shoves" is now a news category at The New York Post. But the reality is that you're on your own down there, and you shouldn't have to calculate whether the guy who announces that he's gonna kill everybody is just mouthing off or whether he means it. And, if you're an 82-year-old who was "assigned female at birth", it helps to have a Daniel Penny in the vicinity when what passes for civilisation in the contemporary west suddenly dissolves to nothing. Mr Penny's acquittal is being hailed as some sort of great victory. But, as someone who's been through the New York courts, I wonder. Yes, he's survived and he may even have grounds for "malicious prosecution" - although, like finding any real justice, that's a toughie in New York. But it may well be that the net effect of what happened to the accused is that next time the situation arises there will be those who figure discretion is the better part of valour and maybe they'll sit this one out. I note also that it is Daniel Penny's fellow 26-year-old who is a hero all over the Internet for assassinating a health-insurance CEO on the Sixth Avenue sidewalk. We are approaching the condition of those excitable Mohammedans: as we used to joke in the early years of the (lost) "war on terror" (and probably can't reprise in today's media), a "moderate Muslim" doesn't want to chop your head off, he just wants to watch and cheer the guy who does. In a society that has de-humanised half the population and incentivised violence against them, you're expected to act as that prosecutor asserted Mr Penny should have done: these guys are just blowing off steam. For the most part. The CEO slayer is some valedictorian trustiefundie from a prominent family; c'mon, he's not gonna act upon his rhetoric, is he? Brian Thompson, whose impeccably progressive United Health Care covers both penectomies and phalloplasties (which may be why they've no money left for your cancer), will not be the last to discover too late that it's harder than you think to insulate yourself from the pathologies of the age. To take the two examples of "toxic masculinity" Eric Utter cites above: It is the official policy of almost all the key institutions throughout the United States and His Majesty's dominions that so pathetically mimic it that, as a practical and increasingly legal matter, there is no such thing as biological sex - that a "man" and "woman" are mere social constructs, and "gender" is just something that is "assigned at birth", and can be just as randomly un-assigned. This will not end well. Indeed - unlike disputing, say, the divinity of Jesus - it is increasingly difficult to voice any dissent from this official narrative. In May this year, my old friends at The Spectator published a piece by Gareth Roberts on an appearance by Nicola Sturgeon at some literary festival. The former First Minister of Scotland was, in Mr Roberts' words, "interviewed by writer Juno Dawson, a man who claims to be a woman, and so the conversation naturally turned to gender". IPSO, the UK press regulator, ruled that the words were not "inaccurate" but that nevertheless they should not have been published, and required The Spectator to print their decision. You can't say Juno Dawson "claims to be a woman"; she is a woman - as much a woman, as 100 per cent all-woman as, oh, Jane Russell or Gina Lollobrigida. Read the rest at the link |
| Posted by:badanov |