March 02, 2010,
http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2010/03/02/barbara-kay-how-patriarchy-ran-into-its-own-iceberg.aspx
The Titanic sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg. Of the 2,200 people on
board, 1,517 died. The Lusitania sank in 1915, victim to a German U-boat
torpedo. Of the nearly 2,000 people on board, 1,200 died. In addition to
carrying about the same numbers of passengers, the demographic composition
of the two ships - adults, children, men, women, old, young - was also
similar.
Two stark differences distinguish the tragedies. One was the fact that the
Lusitania sank very swiftly, only minutes after it was struck, while it took
four hours for the Titanic to go under the waves. The other is that on the
Titanic, most of the survivors were women and children: 75% of women and
almost all the children were saved as against 20% of the men, while on the
Lusitania, of the 639 who escaped, it was a question of sauve qui peut. The
fittest amongst both men and women aged 16-35 were likeliest to survive.
According to a new study
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/science/time-crunch-fuels-me-first-survival-instinct-study/article1486354/
published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the altruism of the Titanic
and the length of time it took for the ship to sink are causally linked.
Benno Torgler, study author and economics professor at Queensland University
of Technology in Australia explains that circumstances dictate levels of
altruism. According to the study, since the Titanic passengers had a few
hours to consider their options, "there was time for socially determined
behavioural patterns to re-emerge."
The time factor in determining selfish or unselfish behaviour strikes one as
a reasonable insight. Panic arouses atavistic instincts of blind flight;
more time to consider allows the intellect, the emotions and one's sense of
-- call it what you will: duty, honour, morality -- to surface and in some
cases overwhelm terror.
But now let us consider these "socially determined behavioural patterns"
that allowed so many women and children on the Titanic to live.
The sinking of the Titanic occurred in 1912, well before the emancipation of
women. Indeed, 1912, before the "lights [had] gone out in Europe" with World
War One, may be said to be the last moment when the patriarchy held fairly
complete sway over the lives of women. After the war, a dearth of men,
coupled with women's adventures in autonomy in the work force and taking
charge of their domestic domains, along with the extinction of "honour" as a
viable ideal after an honour-based war's senseless horrors, the patriarchy
was on its way out, gender equality on its way in.
So these heroes who willingly sacrificed their lives for women and children
had been brought up in the very heart of the same robust patriarchy that
feminists today use as a shibboleth to frighten young girls with. According
to the feminist mystique, these men should have been controlling,
egocentric, self-serving bullies, for whom women were nothing more than
sexual and domestic conveniences, little better than slaves. They should all
have been candidates for anger management, not a chivalry so breathtakingly
selfless that they almost to a man went to watery graves in stoic humility
so that total strangers might live, simply because of their sex.
It is precisely in a crisis that we often learn a great deal about what our
values actually are. So this example of male heroism in as indisputably
existential situation as imagination can conceive, and ideally placed to
consider their deepest convictions before acting should, it seems to me,
remain in the forefront of our collective consciousness. For these men were
the product of a particular culture, one that perceived chivalry and honour
and duty as the highest values. And the highest expression of those highest
values was the privileging of women and children's lives over their own. And
they acted on that perception.
Yes, women were infantilized in many ways in the patriarchy, which a cynic
might say was the driving impulse behind the chivalry of the Titanic's men.
But so what? At the moment when it mattered most, the notion that men should
above all act as protectors of the vulnerable in times of danger to all
committed them to death in the service of others. Was there ever a more
noble or selfless act?
The study reminds us that the heroism of the Titanic was a willed
phenomenon, and one that feminists do not wish to discuss (I have tried).
Instead of fetishizing the victimhood of women at men's hands and the
deviance from our cultural norm that Marc Lepine represented with
man-bashing dirges across the land every December 6, would it not make more
sense - and would it not be more ethically fitting and socially unifying -
to celebrate the more representative manliness of men every April 15, the
date of the Titanic's sinking? Still six weeks left to plan it.
_____
Distributed by
Jeremy Swanson
Fathers and Men's Rights Activist
Ottawa, Ontario Canada
"Immo Facta Quam Verba"
ottawaoffice@fatherscan.com
Darrick Scott-Farnsworth
Executive Director www.AChildsRight.net www.daddyblogger.com
Cell 269 209-7144 or Nextel DC ID 130*112*19287
True Conservative: Pro-Life, Liberty and Property
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