In my
previous post I noted the single most egregious assininity in Mr. Fecke's appearance on the Dennis Prager show - the part where he pretended he couldn't remember accusing Dennis of the very thing that got him invited onto the show in the first place. But pointing out that alone does not begin to account for all the bad arguments, stupid points, and general idiocy Jeff advocated in that appearance. It was a truly fiskable event in which one could, if one had a mind to, break apart and mock every single thing he had to say. Including his name.
But that would be unkind. Alright that's not enough reason to avoid it. But it would also take a lot of time and effort, and cause me to listen to the stupidity many more times, and I really don't think that effort would be worth the satisfaction. Therefore, I'm going to cherry pick a few more especially notable items for further comment.
First of all, the main disagreement between Mr. Prager on the one side, and Mr. Fecke and Ms. Carpenter on the other side boils down to one of the fundamental (and widely discredited) assumptions behind modern feminism. That is the proposition that there is no serious behavioral difference between men and women that can't be attributed to learned behavior. The assumption in those circles for decades now, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, is that if you raised girls and boys identically you would see no differences between how they behaved. Therefore, all sex based differences in behavior are, by inference, correctable. More importantly they're inherently naggable and whine-able. i.e. Women don't make googly eyes at every handsome man who walks by, therefore there's no reason men should have any excuse to do so when an attractive woman walks by either. More to the point of yesterday's discussion, women and men are assumed to be completely the same when it comes to interest in sex. Yes that flies in the face of any study, basic evidence, and common sense. But soooo much of modern feminism is founded on that basic assumption one cannot surrender that point without endangering a great number of feminist beliefs. Therefore, though it stunned Dennis, I wasn't remotely surprised to hear Mr. Fecke stand firm on this.
However what surprised me more was Fecke's insertion of his own relationship record into the matter. Jeff was married for, according to him, about two years. Much as I love to poke fun, that's not an area I would normally bring up. Seems unnecessarily personal and none of my business. So I was baffled at why Fecke himself found it relevant to this discussion. It wouldn't seem to help the case that he was making - namely that he had a better idea than Dennis about how to keep a man/woman type relationship in good shape over the long term. (His partner in debate Ms. Carpenter, told us she has never been married at all, but contended she had been in "long term relationships" in general, which was frankly a better response despite the vagueness, as it took the personal experience aspect off the table.) As the focus of the discussion at the time was about married couples wanting to keep their relationship healthy over the long term, one might think Fecke would have some kind of thought about this better than "and I know you've been divorced too Dennis." He didn't. At all. He was intent on repeatedly lecturing Dennis about the nature of male/female relationships by using his own understanding of both sexes and not something like a study... a quotation from an expert... a single concrete fact. It kind of floored me to hear someone walk into a debate about such a thing so obviously unprepared. "Trust me, as someone who managed to stay married for nearly 24 months" is not the most compelling argument from authority one might hope for on the topic of long-term relationship health. But that was exactly what Fecke delivered as the basis for some of his fundamental points. This was how he "knew" Dennis was wrong about the difference between male and female needs in a long term relationship.This was how he knew men and women were equally interested in sex - from his own relationship experience. Period. Next discussion point. Huh? That's all he brought to the table on this?
A "blast from my past" moment was initiated near the end of the discussion. It came when Dennis made the allusion to male sexual nature being more obviously animalistic than female behavior. It's a point Dennis has made and elaborated on a great number of times in the past, but it was obviously something new to Fecke. Getting past the tedious part where Prager had to explain the point clearly in the face of Fecke trying to get it wrong, there came something that sounded like Fecke's "refutation" at the very end. Fecke attempted to make the point that the closest animal in nature to humans is the bonobo chimpanzee, and therefore Prager's whole animal comparison contention has been pwned!!
It was at this point I realized Fecke is no casual convert to modern feminism but probably had once considered taking a minor in Women's Studies at an institution of higher learning. And furthermore it lead me to believe Fecke once participated in a debate team. And I don't think either of those things is much to brag about. I'll explain.
I first learned of the humble and nearly extinct bonobo chimpanzee in college. It was not in a course on women's studies, alas. It was in a course on primatology in the school of anthropology, which happened to be my major. One of the things I liked about the course was something I liked about the field of anthropology itself - it was interested in gathering as much information as possible about a topic before it leapt to making any broad conclusions. From an anthropological perspective, primates are interesting because humans are more closely related to them than to any other animal species. Therefore learning things about primates may be instructive for learning things about human nature itself; at least in a broad sense. Therefore anthropologists study primates with great interest and in great detail. However what anthropologists do
not do is cherry pick facts about their favorite primate species and use them to "prove" contentious points about human nature. That's the kind of thing you need "Women's Studies" for.
So in my primatology class we studied lots of different species, discovering all sorts of interesting behaviors ranging from things that seemed very familiar to quite bizarre. But when we came to the bonobo chimpanzee we learned that "some scholars" used the behavior of this species to draw very literal lessons about the nature of humanity. These "scholars" did this because, unlike every other species of the great apes - that's the primate branch closest to humans - bonobos are (more or less) matriarchal. Little did I know how this simple fact caused spontaneous orgasms in modern feminists, accounting for a great deal of their sexual activity in any given year. Anyway the feminist use of the bonobo was much interested in their sexual behaviors because they supposedly "prove" the animal nature in humans isn't patriarchal (they also like to use bonobos to challenge the norm of heterosexuality, but we'll leave that aside) - and maybe even humans were "naturally" matriarchal like the bonobo. This is a stupid, stupid point for a great number of reasons but I'll only point out the ones relevant to Fecke bringing up bonobos in this instance.
Bonobo chimpanzees are, in case you missed it, nearly extinct. In evolutionary terms this means whatever marks them as terribly different than other primate species - and different from humans - is most notable for being, in purely evolutionary terms, unsuccessful. That's not a value judgment and not useful for making broad moral statements unless you're a hardcore social Darwinian, and I'm not. The point is this is a species with a particular kind of dubious distinction that comes along with any positive lessons one might like to draw from them. Human beings are, again in purely evolutionary terms, a fantastically successful species which covers the entire globe. Bonobo chimpanzees are a tiny branch of the modern primate family confined to a couple of swamps where its most notable activities consist of titillating primatologists and creatively dying off.
More to the point, bonobo chimpanzees are also, one should note, not actual human beings regardless of how fascinated we are by how closely related our own species may be to them. Therefore when Dennis Prager makes a basic point about the general animalistic nature of the male sex drive it is not terribly relevant to talk about bonobo chimpanzees unless one believes:
A. Their behavior tells us something conclusive about human beings that refutes Prager's general statement. Which it doesn't. At all. Because, no matter how much feminists like that whole matriarchal thing, bonobo males and bonobo females
do not exhibit identical sexual behavior, which is the point Prager was making about humans which Fecke was supposedly trying to contend.
or
B. Citing the example of the bonobo chimpanzee is arcane enough to muddle the issue for the average listener so, even if one doesn't know enough to win the point, perhaps he can throw enough confusion into it he won't lose it either.
That latter point is what made me think about debate teams and their damaging effect on certain young minds (not
all young minds, so no angry letters from debate coaches please). Forever after their debate team experience too many alums treat discussions like they're trying to "win on points" rather than get to the truth of a matter. That could be said of Fecke's entire "body of work" relating to Prager. But in case you were actually counting points, he still lost. By a lot.
