Friday, July 07, 2017



Shortage of eligible men has left women taking desperate steps to preserve their fertility, experts say

I could summarize the report below very succinctly but with great political incorrectness by saying that, "Fussy bitches won't reproduce" but there is of course more to it than that.  The basics are revealing:  Globally, there are more males than females born (107 to 100) and the male average IQ is at least as high as the female. And given the leptokurtic distribution of female IQ, high IQ males considerably outnumber high IQ females.  So the ladies should have a smorgasbord of able men before them.  How come they do not?

There are two main causes, both due to feminism:  1). The feminization of education has pushed men of marginal ability out of higher education.  That is no hardship for them, though.  They probably make more money as tradesmen anyway.  But that leads to the second pernicious effect of feminism  2). It has given women unrealistically high expectations.  They want men to be all sorts of unlikely things -- willing to do half the housework, for instance.  That mostly won't happen.  And as for marrying a genial and well-off tradesman, that would be just too humiliating!

So the men are there.  It's just that a lot of women are too snooty for them.  So what do the men do?  Some become queer and a lot marry child-oriented third-world women.  So lots of good male genes are passed on anyway -- in Eurasian babies.  It's only the feminist-indoctrinated women who lose out.  They will never discover the joy of children and their genes will not be passed on. And that may be a good thing. Weeding out folly has to be a good thing. 

The women with strong female hormones will always reproduce -- many at a young age -- and I, for one, think feminine females are a great good thing.  I must do.  I married four times.  But men who know about leptokurtic distributions are probably at something of an advantage in that

Another theme below is that some women do find acceptable  partners but getting the partners to "commit" is the big problem.  Look to another feminist inspiration for the explanation of that: Draconian divorce laws.  Divorce is common and it often ruins a man financially.  A man who consents to marriage is simply ill-advised these days. 



A dearth of marriagable men has left an “oversupply” of educated women taking desperate steps to preserve their fertility, experts say.

The first global study into egg freezing found that shortages of eligible men were the prime reason why women had attempted to take matters into their own hands.

Experts said “terrifying” demographic shifts had created a “deficit” of educated men and a growing problem of “leftover” professional women, with female graduates vastly outnumbering males in in many countries.

The study led by Yale University, involved interviews with 150 women undergoing egg freezing at eight clinics.

Researchers found that in more than 90 per cent of cases, the women were attempting to buy extra time because they could not find a partner to settle down with, amid a “dearth of educated men”.

Experts said the research bust the myth that “selfish career women” were choosing to out their fertility on ice in a bid to put their careers first.

They said sweeping social changes meant that many professional women now struggled to find a partner that felt like an equal match.

In recent decades, the gender balance at British universities has tipped dramatically. In 1985, 45 per cent of UK students were female, but by 2000, 54 per cent were women.

This group, now in their late 30s, is finding it harder to find a man of equal status, fertility experts said. And the trend is set to steepen in future generations, they warned, with nearly six in ten current students female.

The research, presented at the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Geneva, was based on detailed interviews with women in the United States, and Israel. But the lead author said similar trends were likely in the UK, where women are 35 per cent more likely than men to go to university.

Prof Marcia Inhorn, Professor of Anthropology at Yale University, said professional women found themselves losing out in a game of “musical chairs” because there were simply too few men of the same calibre to go around. “There is a major gap - they are literally missing men. There are not enough college graduates for them. In simple terms, this is about an oversupply of educated women,” she said.

The former President of the Society for Medical Anthropology said the women interviewed in the study were highly successful, with 81 per cent having a college degree.

“These are highly educated, very successful women and one after another they were saying they couldn’t find a partner. How could it be that all these amazing, attractive intelligent women were lamenting about their ability to find a partner?” she said.

“The answer comes in the demographics - growing disparities in the education levels of men and women.

The anthropologist suggested some women might need to be prepared to compromise some of their standards in order to find love. But she suggested society should act to increase the number of men going into higher education. “It may be about rethinking the way we approach this,” she said.  “Most women who are educated would like to have an educated partner. Traditionally women have also wanted to ‘marry up’ to go for someone more successful, financially well off.”

“Maybe women need to be prepared to be more open to the idea of a relationship with someone not as educated. But also may be we need to be doing something about our boys and young men, to get them off to a better start.”

Some women were paying a high price for feminism, she suggested.  “As a feminist I think it’s great that women are doing so well but I think there has been a cost that has been paid,” she said, warning that many had been left in “sadness and isolation”.

In some cases, the women taking part in the in-depth interviews said they would be happy to be in a relationship with someone less educated, but they felt they were “intimidating” to the men who were available.

Researchers said that until now, many commentators on egg freezing had assumed that it was being driven by a desire to preserve fertilty, while rising up the career ladder.

“I think this is an issue that has been misinterpreted so much - this idea of a selfish career woman, putting her fertility on hold,” said Prof Inhorn.

Professor Geeta Nargund, medical director of UK clinics Create Fertility, said: “It is something to celebrate that more women are going to university and getting educated but, at the same time, when it comes to starting a family it seems there is now a societal problem with these women finding men at the same level of education.

“Women tell us frequently that they are freezing their eggs because the men they meet feel threatened by their success and so unwilling to commit to starting a family together.”

Prof Adam Balen, President of the British Fertility Society, said: “We are seeing some big societal issues, in particular in some social economic groups, with young men not committing.”

One in five women in the UK is now childless by the end of their fertile life - compared to one in 10 a generation before, he said.

Last year less than 105,000 male 18-year-olds started university, compared with almost 135,000 females, UCAS figures show, with more women than men on two-thirds of courses.

The gender gap for higher education is now as large as that between rich and poor people, which was described as a “worrying inequality” by former UCAS chief executive Mary Curnock-Cook.

British fertility experts said the gulf was "terrifying". Dr Gillian Lockwood, executive director, IVI said: "It exacerbates the problem of men not wanting to 'settle down' and start a family until it's almost too late for the woman to conceive naturally.

And if she insists, he's quite likely to leave for a younger woman whose biological clock isn't ticking quite so loudly."

Her own survey of women doing “social” egg freezing found the overwhelming majority of women having their eggs frozen were doing so because they could not find a partner, or because their own partner would not commit.

Typically, it costs around £10,000 to freeze eggs and keep them in storage for 10 years in the UK.

Professor Simon Fishel, founder of Care Fertility, said: “Anthropologically we are always searching, consciously or unconsciously, for like-minded people so it is not a great leap to understand that women are looking for someone on the same level, who is university-educated or a professional.

“This problem of "missing men" is absolutely the case in many situations in the UK, but there is a wider problem behind the increasing desire for egg freezing, not least about men and women being too unaware of their biological clocks.”

“Almost all of the women in the study who employed egg freezing were heterosexual and wanted to become married mothers,” the research found. “Women lamented the ‘missing men’ in their lives, viewing egg freezing as a way to buy time while on the continuing (online) search for a committed partner.”

The study found that more than 90 per cent of those freezing their eggs were not intentionally “postponing” their fertility because of education or careers.

“Rather they were desperately ‘preserving’ their fertility beyond the natural end of their reproductive lives, because they were single without partners to marry.”

“In most cases, these women were unable to find educated men willing to commit to family life - the reflection of a growing, but little-discussed gender trend, with women increasingly outnumbering male college graduates,” the report found.

SOURCE





Trump, Congress Should Halt Transgender Military Policy That Costs Billions

Last year, without any systematic study of the consequences, the Obama administration reversed longstanding policies that excluded those who identify as transgender, on both psychological and medical grounds, from serving in the U.S. military.

The armed services immediately stopped discharging existing service members who suffer from gender dysphoria (unhappiness with their biological sex at birth). Phase Two of this policy—allowing persons who identify as transgender to join the military—was scheduled to take effect on July 1, 2017.

Family Research Council has now calculated both the direct medical costs and the cost of lost deployable time, and concluded that the transgender policy could cost taxpayers up to $3.7 billion over the next ten years.

The Williams Institute, a pro-LGBT think tank, estimates that there are currently 7,300 biological males and 1,500 biological females with gender dysphoria serving on active duty in the military. FRC used data from the National Transgender Discrimination Survey to calculate how many of those would seek surgery. Under the military’s new policy, all eligible service members will receive 100 percent of their “necessary” care—including gender reassignment surgery and hormone therapy—at no cost to the service member.

According to data from the Philadelphia Center for Transgender Surgery, a comprehensive package of male-to-female surgical procedures would cost $110,450, and female-to-male procedures would cost $89,050. Adding the cost of counseling and hormone therapy—which must continue indefinitely after surgery—would result in a total cost of medical interventions for current active duty service members of nearly $1 billion over the next ten years. These calculations do not include additional possible expenses, such as electrolysis (hair removal) and voice therapy or vocal surgery.

Service members will also be unavailable for deployment for several months after surgery—adding $504.3 million in cost to replace them. Service members who have had reassignment surgery or hormone therapy may actually be permanently non-deployable, because they require specialized medical care which may not be available everywhere in the world. Adding on similar costs for new recruits who identify as transgender yields a total estimated cost for the new transgender policy of nearly $2 billion ($1.88 billion) over ten years. (The additional administrative costs of preparing and overseeing individualized care plans for each service member who identifies as transgender, the costs of training the entire force regarding the new policy, and the loss of time associated with that training, have not been included in these estimates.)

Service members undergoing gender transition will also be permitted to take leave from the military for one full year prior to surgery, for a “real life experience” living as the desired gender. The cost of this lost time would total nearly $1.8 billion, for existing service members and new recruits, over ten years.

If these direct and indirect costs are all included, the total cost rises to $3.7 billion over ten years. Consider some examples of what that money could buy instead:

1 AEGIS Destroyer ($3.5 billion)

22 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Planes ($166.7 million each)

116 Chinook Helicopters ($31.8 million each); or

3,700 Tomahawk missiles ($1 million each).

Family Research Council has concerns about the psychological fitness of persons who identify as transgender to serve (because of high levels of psychopathology within that population), and about the effect of allowing people to present themselves as the opposite of their biological sex on good order and discipline, readiness, recruitment, and retention.

However, the financial costs alone are reason enough to put a halt to this policy. Both the Trump administration and Congress should act to postpone implementation of the July 1 transgender recruitment policy, and ultimately roll back a policy that promotes political correctness at the expense of military readiness.

SOURCE






Welfare Currently Punishes Work and Marriage. This Bill Would End That

Sen. Mike Lee   

There is much to celebrate in America today. Americans are, on average, wealthier, healthier, and better educated than we ever have been. We’ve made huge strides in civil rights and racial equality. And we have access to technology that would have awed past generations.

But fundamentally, our culture and way of life has undergone some changes that are not necessarily positive.

As documented in the recently released report, “What We Do Together: The State of Associational Life in America,” Americans’ day-to-day lives have significantly changed over the last few decades—and not always for the better.

Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media. But this can't be done alone. Find out more >>

Between 1970 and 2016, the share of children not being raised by two parents rose from 15 to 31 percent. Over that same time, births to single mothers rose from 11 percent to 40 percent.

And more than half of American children now live with a single parent at some point before they turn 16.

This breakdown of the American family has real economic and social consequences for all of us. On average, children from married households live healthier lives, attain higher levels of education, earn more, and enjoy greater wealth as adults than children from single-parent households.

As the American family has been weakening, our attachment to work has been fraying for many as well.

Between 1970 and 2016, labor force participation for prime-working-age men declined from 96 percent to 89 percent. The fall-off has been worse for men with little education, who now put in 14 percent fewer hours at work in 2012 than they did in the mid-1970s.

There is no silver-bullet solution to these problems. The causes are cultural, economic, and policy related. What we do know is that at a bare minimum, government should not be actively making these problems worse.

Unfortunately, some of our current welfare policies are doing just that, which is why I introduced the Welfare Reform and Upward Mobility Act last month.

Prior to the Obama administration, the size of the federal government’s food stamp program ebbed and flowed with the economy. The number of recipients went up during recessions and fell during recoveries.

But President Barack Obama ended the link between work and food stamp eligibility. As a result, today’s food stamp program foots the bill for 44 million people, compared to just 26 million before the recession.

The Welfare Reform and Upward Mobility Act would restore that link between work and assistance by creating a 100-hour-per-month work requirement for able-bodied adults without dependents.

Single parents with a child younger than 6 would be exempt from penalties, but they would still be guaranteed access to all vocational opportunities offered by the state.

Finally, to make sure that current food stamp recipients are assisted in their search for work, states would also be given $500 million to help develop vocational programs for those who have trouble finding work.

The era of signing citizens up for assistance and then neglecting the next step must end.

The bill would also allow married parents with children to split the work requirement between them, thus making it easier for married parents to balance work and family.

These are admittedly small steps. Much more can be done to end the many ways federal policies currently punish work and marriage through the tax code, health policy, and housing assistance.

But we can start by removing some of the barriers that make family and work life more difficult. And this bill, the Welfare Reform and Upward Mobility Act, would start making that happen.

SOURCE




Even Scripture Makes the Case for Defending Religious Freedom: Paul in Acts

Why should we actively and publicly defend religious freedom? We’ll look to the Apostle Paul for an answer.

In late May, Alan Sears, the founder of the Alliance for Defending Freedom, was awarded the Wilberforce Award for his and the Alliance’s efforts on behalf of religious freedom.

At the ceremony, several speakers testified about Sears’ commitment to securing this most basic of rights, and the example he sets for all Christians.

But there’s another example of the importance of knowing and asserting our rights in matters of faith I’d like to tell you about. It’s an example that predates Sears’s efforts by nearly 2000 years.

I’m talking about the Apostle Paul. On several occasions in the book of Acts, Paul asserts his rights as a Roman citizen to further the work of the Gospel.

The first is related in Acts 16. Paul, Silas, and Luke arrive in Philippi in what is now Greece. While they were there, Paul casts out of a slave girl what Luke calls a “Python spirit,” a reference to the serpent that guarded the oracle at Delphi.

The girl’s owners, angry at the loss of revenue from her fortune-telling, drag Paul and Silas before the local magistrates. The magistrates beat them with rods and throw them into jail.

The next day, the magistrates sent lictors, Roman police, to the jail to tell Paul and Silas that they’re free to go. Paul refuses to leave.

He tells them that he is a Roman citizen, and thus, had the right to a trial before being beaten and thrown in jail. He insists that the magistrates come to the jail and personally release them. Alarmed by Paul’s assertion of his rights as a Roman citizen, the magistrates do just that.

As William Kurz of Marquette University writes in his commentary on Acts, Paul’s assertion of his rights was “important for the reputation of the incipient Christian community as well as for the missionaries’ prospects for returning to Philippi.” In other words, he invoked his rights to protect the Philippians’ religious freedom.

Then there’s Acts 22. Following his return to Jerusalem, Paul’s opponents create a disturbance near the Temple. He is taken away by the Roman authorities to “be interrogated under the lash.” Once again, Paul asserts his rights as a Roman citizen.

This not only spares Paul the beating, it also ensures that he will be judged by Roman authorities and not the Jewish leaders who conspired to kill him.

As Kurz tells readers, “Paul’s recourse to the legal rights available to him sets a useful example for contemporary Christians who encounter discrimination, persecution, or even court trials, imprisonment, and martyrdom … [Paul] used the rights of his Roman citizenship to ensure that witness to Jesus would reach as far as Rome, the center of the empire.”

Similarly, Kurz tells us, “Citizens of democratic nations today also need to avail themselves of every political and legal remedy to fight for religious freedom and for the rights of those who cannot defend themselves: the unborn, disabled, sick, and elderly ... As Paul did not hesitate to use Roman law to protect his Christian mission, neither should we be reluctant to use the laws of our country to protect our freedom to spread the gospel and to defend the human rights of all.”

This is why defending our rights, especially our right to religious freedom, is so important. It’s a gift God has given us to ensure that the witness to Jesus continues, both at home and abroad.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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