October 21, 2008

On heroism and feminism

I'm not completely sure what Dave Brown's point is in this recent column. I'm not sure he knows, either, except that the world's gone to hell in a handbasket and it's somehow all those awful feminists' fault. His profile proudly describes him as a 'contrarian,' which, at least in this case, can be defined as "curmudgeon who thinks the world really was exactly like Leave it to Beaver".

At the top of their list of things a man must do was the protection issue. It used to be an obligation of the strong to protect the weak.
This is the basic argument of the article. In "the good old days", men were strong and women were weak, and men were praised and rewarded and given "backpats" for protecting those weak and helpless women from other men.

Now, Mr. Brown is astonished to learn, the authorities encourage people to, er, call the authorities when they see something untoward happen. And to intervene only if they have the appropriate training to do so safely.

I'm having a hard time understanding why this is a bad idea. Does Mr. Brown really think that the world would be a better place if we all -- or rather, all men -- tried to be untrained vigilantes? How many more people would be hurt or killed than if we just let the experts handle the situation?

Now, what Israel Grant Carver did was a very courageous thing: he tried to help another person. I'm sure this is an entirely inadequate "backpat," but I wish more people -- both men and women -- had the courage to intervene when they see someone being attacked...even if their intervention is nothing more than a call to 911. I'd much rather see an assaulter put in prison or otherwise removed from his victim than beaten up -- so that he has one more reason to take out his anger on the victim.

In Mr. Brown's view, this attitude is just a pernicious outgrowth of feminism. "The fishes have come home to roost," he crows -- women, apparently, should just expect to be beaten up now that we're no longer encouraging white knights to rescue us. Or something. The women in the Carver case went on to marry her attacker, so clearly she didn't deserve to be the beneficiary of manly heroism.

And then it turns out that this isn't really about Israel Grant Carver and his lack of recognition at all:
Without fear of being branded cowards, they don't have to face bullies, hijackers or nutbars on buses.
That's what this was really all about. The Greyhound bus incident. Those wimpy, embarrassing men who kept the attacker inside the bus and prevented him from harming anyone else rather than launching heroic charges to try to save a man who was already dead.

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