As expected, Monday’s Casualties post drew a lot of criticism. As I began with in that post, I had been contemplating whether or not to publish it for a while. I’d kept that article in the can for some time because I have discussed the topic more than once on the SoSuave forums in the past with pretty much the expected responses I got both publicly and privately.

When you link a social dynamic to the death of another individual you’re bound to get input from people who are passionate supporters, and passionate opposers of your assessments of that dynamic. My hesitation in posting this (and other) articles was due to that expectation and how it might convolute my message and intent. That intent  was to draw awareness to the (albeit extreme) dangers of perpetuating a beta-AFC mindset, and the feminine-primary social framework that reinforces, conditions and predisposes men to internalize that mindset.

It’s very hard not to sensationalize life-or-death propositions like this, because readers of either persuasion will have a tendency to emphasize what closest aligns with their beliefs. Granted, I used two personal experiences of my own in that essay, but when I break my rule about using anecdotes, as always it’s to better illustrate the dynamic, not to define a universal truth based on my personal experiences. Be that as it may, the inherent risk in doing so does not come without critic’s speculations about my reasons for doing so.

As I’ve come to expect from past discussions, the first thing critics will do is doubt the veracity of my experience with my sister-in-law’s history. Either I’m lying or embellishing that experience for gratuitousness sake, or the other perspective is to focus exclusively on her duplicitousness and sometimes accusations of outright malice and evil. Both of these are based on offense of personal investments, but these binary responses only serve to convolute the focus I want on the general, not the specific, premise.

And also as expected, the solipsistic nature of women cannot afford frank discussions about a sensitive topic like this.

“What? So now women are evil bitches contenting themselves with the suicides of their husbands and boyfriends?!! NOT ALL WOMEN ARE LIKE THAT! Why are you so bent on making women look evil?”

Besides the go-to NAWALT® boilerplate, I can understand this response (from a reader who will remain nameless). A man so prompted to suicide due to his inability to relate to, or understand the nature of women, reflects badly upon women as a whole – and particularly so in a society defined by the feminine imperative. Isn’t it ironic that the general solipsism and reliance upon individualized, personal experience that define larger, social meta-dynamics for women should be denied to men even for illustrative purposes? In girl-world, only women’s experiences have any bearing on universal truths.

For all of my efforts in taking care to avoid the associations of women’s specific actions leading to men’s suicides, the binary mentality is inescapable.

If you were to discourage a friend from smoking by showing him graphic illustrations of blackened lungs or videos of people having their tongues surgically removed to cut out cancerous lesions, and later it saves his life from lung cancer or worse, you’re a hero.

If you help a friend in rehab off of heroin or meth and you have to do so via graphic, ugly illustrations of the end result of their addiction, you’re a saint, but if you advise him against marrying a woman you know will destroy his life in the long term or maybe due to suicide, you’re a meddling busy-body with nothing better to do than stick your nose where it doesn’t belong. “You’re a misogynist who hates women and casts them all in the worst case scenario through sweeping generalizations.“

Generalizations

generalization

n 1: the process of formulating general concepts by abstracting common properties of instances [syn: abstraction, generalisation] 2: reasoning from detailed facts to general principles [syn: generalisation, induction, inductive reasoning] 3: an idea having general application; “he spoke in broad generalities” [syn: generalisation, generality] 4: (psychology) transfer of a response learned to one stimulus to a similar stimulus [syn: generalisation, stimulus generalization, stimulus generalisation]

Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University

In the same vein as NAWALT® one of the most common fallbacks of women and feminized men is the presumption of generalization. Generalization gets a bum rap. The term really ougt to be used in the way it was actually intended – drawing hypothesis and conclusions from a greater, general whole of observed behavior. Pay close attention to #2 in the above definition,

“reasoning from detailed facts to general principles [syn: generalisation, induction, inductive reasoning].”

I am sorry if this process offends women, but I’m interested in the general rule, since it, – and not the exceptions to it – help to better predict an outcome.

Like it or not generalizations are useful and we use them all the time to see the forest for the trees. It’s not isolated abnormalities in a system that we use to describe the circumstances of that system, it’s the whole. We study majorities to assess overall condition, not isolations. That’s the scientific definition of generalities, but when they refer to things that are close to us we tend to put ourselves into the generalization and cop the “not-in-my-case” menality. We’d like to think that our experiences are unique and special (and they are, to us), but in the generality we’re simply statistics. So the word ‘Generalize’ gets a negative connotation and the person using it is vilified, because it’s an afront to our “special” conditions.

The concept of generalization is the antithesis to women’s innate solipsistic, individualist perspective. That’s not to argue that women cannot be analytical or scientific in various areas, but it is to say that in regards to personal and larger social contexts, thinking in generalities is not their native cognitive process. So when the social implications of a particular dynamic (in this case male suicide) become amplified to life-or-death propositions so too does the urgency for wholesale absolution of the gender become amplified. Collective generalities of this lethal nature become associative personal affronts; in fact so much so that women’s ego-investment in a feminine-primary social framework, and their personal association with it, link themselves personally to the responsibility of these generalized men’s suicides.

Play us out Rhianna:

Story of my life / Searching for the right
But it keeps avoiding me / Sorrow in my soul
‘Cause it seems like one / Really loves my company

He’s more than a man / And this is more than love
The reason that the sky is blue / The clouds are rollin’ in
Because I’m gone again / And to him I just can’t be true

And I know that he knows I’m unfaithful / And it kills him inside
To know that I am happy / With some other guy
I can see him dyin’

I don’t wanna do this anymore / I don’t wanna be the reason why
Everytime I walk out the door / I see him die a little more inside
I don’t wanna hurt him anymore / I don’t wanna take away his life
I don’t wanna be…A murderer

I feel it in the air / As I’m doin’ my hair
Preparing for another date / A kiss upon my cheek
As he reluctantly / Asks if im gonna be out late
I say I won’t be long / Just hangin’ with the girls
A lie I didn’t have to tell / Because we both know
Where I’m about to go / And we know it very well

‘Cause I know that he knows I’m unfaithful / And it kills him inside
To know that I am happy / With some other guy
I can see him dyin’

I don’t wanna do this anymore / I don’t wanna be the reason why
Everytime I walk out the door / I see him die a little more inside
I don’t wanna hurt him anymore / I don’t wanna take away his life
I don’t wanna be…A murderer

Our love / His trust
I might as well take a gun and put it to his head
Get it over with
I don’t wanna do this
Anymore, ooh ohh, anymore

I don’t wanna do this anymore / I don’t wanna be the reason why
And everytime I walk out the door / I see him die a little more inside
I don’t wanna hurt him anymore / I don’t wanna take away his life
I don’t wanna be…A murderer