Examining Crime with a Speculum

The other day Zippy Catholic wrote:

The most primal power of men is violence. Therefore the besetting sins of incontinent men tend to be sins of violence primarily, and to involve sex only circumstantially/accidentally.  A violent man will use violence to get sex that he desires, but he will also use violence to get other things that he desires: money, drugs, prestige, etc.  This decreases as individual power decreases: the besetting sins of incontinent men with diminished capacity for violence will tend to be more effeminate or androgynous sins.

[…]

This is reflected in prison populations, which are mostly men, because our society is willing to punish crimes of violence but is not willing to punish crimes of sex.

This is, basically, what I believed for years and it is what I was taught. However, it is a false–but seductive–dichotomy which is not actually true. And is not actually reflected in prison populations; 66.7% of which are non-violent criminals and only 33.3% are.

Criminals Imprisoned for Crimes of Violence

g	Homicide, Aggravated Assault, and Kidnapping Offenses	5,596	3.20%
k	Robbery	6,565	3.80%
l	Sex Offenses	15,873	9.10%
m	Weapons, Explosives, Arson	29,881	17.20%
			33.30%

Criminals Imprisoned for Non-Violent Crimes

a	Banking and Insurance, Counterfeit, Embezzlement	517	0.30%
b	Burglary, Larceny, Property Offenses	8,171	4.70%
c	Continuing Criminal Enterprise	387	0.20%
d	Courts or Corrections	802	0.50%
e	Drug Offenses	80,585	46.30%
f	Extortion, Fraud, Bribery	11,231	6.40%
h	Immigration	13,227	7.60%
i	Miscellaneous	1,305	0.70%
j	National Security	68	0.00%
			66.70%

In fact, the most primal power of men is the ability to produce work, and the besetting sin of incontinent men is avoidance of productive work.  Here are the same stats grouped to reflect that.

Criminals Imprisoned for Unlawful Gain

a	Banking and Insurance, Counterfeit, Embezzlement	517	0.30%
b	Burglary, Larceny, Property Offenses	8,171	4.70%
c	Continuing Criminal Enterprise	387	0.20%
e	Drug Offenses	80,585	46.30%
f	Extortion, Fraud, Bribery	11,231	6.40%
h	Immigration	13,227	7.60%
i	Miscellaneous	1,305	0.70%
k	Robbery	6,565	3.80%
			70.00%

Criminals Imprisoned for Gainless Crimes

d	Courts or Corrections	802	0.50%
g	Homicide, Aggravated Assault, and Kidnapping Offenses	5,596	3.20%
l	Sex Offenses	15,873	9.10%
j	National Security	68	0.00%
m	Weapons, Explosives, Arson	29,881	17.20%
			30.00%

It would be even more skewed than that if we could tease out from “gainless crimes” those crimes which were committed en route to unlawful gain; murder for hire, murder for drug turf control, assault for intimidation, kidnapping for ransom, sale of weapons or explosives, arson for fraud, prostitution, pimping, etc. The split is probably closer to 80/20 unlawful gain/gainless crime and possibly even 90/10.

What Zippy, tough-on-crime politicians, and my younger self were noticing was not “the most primal power of men”, but the most sensational. Violence can be scary to everyone, but it really scares the hell out of women. And the West is one giant gynecology office where every problem is a pussy problem.

 

When Women Will Loom Large

Yesterday I went to watch Blade Runner 2049.

There will be no spoilers in this post, but I can’t guarantee the same for the comments.

I liked it a lot, and if you liked the original then I will guess you’ll like the new one too. It is a beautiful and legitimate science fiction film. It is not message fiction dressed up in sci-fi garb, but a long (164 minutes) visual question of, “What does it mean to be human?”

One of the themes of the film is that women are big players in this vision of the future (both figuratively and literally), but they are not at the very top. At the top is Niander Wallace, a handsome and white man of science who saves the world from starvation. But the lives of everyone under the very top are ruled, tempted, and overwhelmingly influenced by females, or their form.

I thought it quite probable.

Salesmen and Sissy-Slappers

Repurposed from a comment here:

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There is, in our effeminate consumerist society, this overarching belief that a good man is a successful man, and the successful man is the man who can sell (things, ideas, even truth), and that the way to do this is to be flattering, and even to be pleasing to the things that come out of the hearts of men, and “empathize”. 1 Cor. 9:19-23 is often mischaracterized in just that way…

19 For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. 20 To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. 21 To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. 23 I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.

…so that we are falsely taught that we are to be nice, and that a man who isn’t able to sell the truth to this or that person must have done it wrong. But what Paul said was he became like the person. He did not “empathize”. He lived like those people, and spoke to them in terms they would understand. Well, Wilson is a Christian blogger and his tagline is “Theology that bites back”. What should being like Wilson look like?

We have two problems here. The first is the argument between Wilson and Dalrock. But the second problem is more pressing–if you can believe it–and it is that the great majority of men–especially Christian men–are effeminate consumerists ready to sissy-slap any man who isn’t a nice and empathetic salesman. (Such men don’t sissy-slap women because women are the arbiters of niceness and empathy, and you can’t hit the ref.) Truly it is effeminate and it comes from men. This second problem disgusts me, and I bet I’m not the only one. In fact, I bet that in other circumstances it disgusts some of the very men who are here doing the sissy-slapping.

Over the years I have endured a good amount of criticism and even ridicule, and sometimes from some fairly big fish in our little pond: Novaseeker, Vox Day, Zippy Catholic, Slumlord/Social Pathologist, to name a few. I count those as blessings, and those are all writers I still read because I can learn, and have learned, from them. It would be a gross error to ignore their sometimes rude criticisms of me merely because I felt they were mean to me, or not empathic enough. And the error would be mine; not theirs.

And if I can be foolish a little more: My own criticisms–which have sometimes been rude and bombastic–have cleared the mental landscape for other men to follow behind me, and has allowed them to be more patriarchal with more emotional and mental comfort. You’re welcome.