Forget about AI. The damage was done in 2008. The iphone, already-lethal 'safetyism', the triumph of feminism – the conspiracy was complete.

Jonathan Haidt's The anxious generation: How the Great Rewiring of childhood is causing an epidemic of mental illness (2024) starts with an arresting metaphor:

Imagine 'they' offered your child the possibility of going to Mars to live. Wow! Your son/daughter is all excited, 'Pleeaassse let me go.' Your instinct/intuition is NO. You learn that the reason for children is they adapt better to the unusual conditions there; their bodies will develop to meet Mars's low gravity. But comsic rays are a killer there and there's no oxygen to breath so they will have to live almost entirely indoors, and surely will die young of cancer. So you were right. But it turns out that Steve Job's 'revolutionary mobile phone' is a poison chalice that has already destroyed many (most?) of the Z generation.ⁱ

The rot set in by the late '80s with the beginning of the transition from a play-based childhood to a phone-based childhood, which culminated in the 2010s with the rapid adoption of iphones around the world, or at least the 'collective West'. Life became increasing life-behind-a-screen, which was bad enough, but with the iphone, the screen was now in your pocket, and with wifi and internetization, children found themselves increasingly wandering through adult spaces, consuming adult content, and interacting with adults in ways that are often harmful to minors.ⁱⁱ

Yes, travelling – with parental permission – to Mars, causing an epidemic of mental illness among children and teens. And, again, as if that's not bad enough, starting in the 1980s, with 1-2 child families, you must make sure this precious 'investment' is SAFE, i.e., no more 6-10 year olds walking to school or the corner store, learning important skills of self- reliance and being useful to the family and community. This safetyism in the new iphone era became a fetish, with many (most?) parents tracking their child-with-iphone, eliminating all personal freedom for the growing child, who needs such freedom to, well, grow up. Sadly it is grounded in real worries, as child abuse has also gone through the roof with the iphone and 'likes'/ retweets. No one is tracking the pederasts, but they are monitoring sites where children and teens gather to chat. And of course 24/7 free porno is breaking down normal inhibitions and ignoring the real need to keep such legal poison out of the reach of children.

I personally would not want to raise children in this lethal environment. Our 'freedoms' are making the Taliban look good, certainly for raising children. That's why I was always attracted to the Soviet Union, as it was a paradise for children (free child care, free health, free education, cheap (month-long) summer camps …). Sadly, now gone, leaving Russia with a demographic deficit, as child-rearing under capitalism is expensive and very problematic, as the iphone 'revolution' shows only too well.

Hence the whammy effect. Safetyism – a culture where safety has become a sacred value, trumping other practical and moral concerns, no matter how unlikely or trivial the potential dangerⁱⁱⁱ – exacerbated by 'free' screentime to play games and have (shallow, mostly anonymous) social interactions. Children/ parents now spend most free time not in face-to-face socializing, but zapped, dumbed down, on their 'smart' phones, scrolling endless streams of shallow, addictive 'news' about nothing, or entertaining themselves on games and 'likes'.

In the real world, relationships are embodied, synchronous, one-to-one or one-to-several communications (NO 'multitasking'), with a high bar for entry and exit, so people are strongly motivated to invest and repair real-time relationships. In the virtual world, relationships are disembodied, asynchronous, one-to-many communications (ALWAYS 'multitasking'), with a low bar for entry and exist, making virtual-time relationships short-lived and shallow by definition.

The older you get, the more you realize that your childhood was the most important part of your life, the most vivid, even if it was troubled or cruel. As you get closer to death, your short term memory goes, leaving only the early years of long term memory, your 'hard drive'. Compare your rich, vivid memories of intense childhood friendships, parental love with what gen Z's memories in 2070 will be.

Sadly, we delegate the vital work of childrearing to ill-prepared newlyweds, who must navigate the perilous journey of their children with little solid support. We can blame the Industrial Revolution for this part of the conspiracy, which destroyed traditional family life/ experience, bringing unwashed masses to grimy, overpopulated cities, which no longer operated according to daily, seasonal natural rhythms, and left them without 'the village' necessary 'to raise a child'. And now undermined by the iphone. Whammy big time.

Zs – unwitting makeover of entire generation

The Machine Age operates 24/7/365 employing people as widgets. Mercifully, our welfare state softened this inhuman regime somewhat, but the human animal has specific needs which we ignore at our peril. Children and teens need 9 hours sleep, which was easily satisfied pre-Edison, but became less and less the norm, until the iphone undermined it completely. An 8-year old can watch porn, play games or post nude photos at Facebook with his/her phone under the covers at 2am. Sleep deprivation, social deprivation, attention fragmentation and addiction (dopamine, gambling syndrome^iv), leaving us anxious, irritable, are serious problems across all ages, and especially dangerous and harmful to youngsters who lack a developed frontal cortex to provide social constraints.

We have farmed out our emotional lives to AI. Epictetus: If your body was turned over to just anyone, you would doubtless take exception. Why aren't you ashamed that you have made your mind vulnerable to anyone who happens to criticize you, so that it automatically becomes confused and upset? That' what we've done, whether you are a boy/man playing 40 hours per week in a game world, or a girl/woman fretting over 'likes' on Facebook.

Some stats: From 2010 to 2020 depression more than doubled for both boys and girls. While boys have always been less depressive, they have now graduated to the pre-iphone girl's level of depression. Ditto anxiety. ADHD has also almost doubled.^v Self-harm for girls has increased 4x, boys by 'only' 50%. Suicide rates increased 3x for boys, girls 2.5x. Girls' rating themselves in good mental health dropped from 70% to 53%.

Free play vs controlled

All animals play. It is essential to learn how to survive, to exercise your muscles, learn coordination, cooperation, fair competition, suppressing the drive to dominate. Playing on a computer alone doesn't really count, even online groups, for the reasons outlined above (disembodied, asynchronous, low entry bar). Turn-taking and good timing are essential social skills. This goes for parents and peers. Half of parents say they are distracted by their phone when spending 'quality' time with their child. Take the child's pov: My daddy is here but still too busy to pay attention to me. I don't really count.

Play is our collective bottom line, along with religious rituals. Precapitalist tribal life was/is especially rich in drumming, chanting, rhythmic music, dance, which renews trust and mends frayed social relations – social electricity.^vi Fascinating how our secular, digital age has reinvented this form of bonding in group unison dancing to rock hits, and at mass sports where fans make waves in unison, rippling around the stadium as they sing or shout in unison. But again, it is shallow and anonymous, whereas the religious rituals are intended to achieve a higher state of consciousness, and have enduring impact. A team winning/ losing just doesn't have the same octane.

We learn either by conforming to the herd or by imitating a role model. Learning must take place during the critical period to work. e.g., language must be acquired before age 5 or not at all, and a second language before age 13 or you will have a thick accent all your life. These critical periods all happen in childhood, and have traditionally been available to the family/ tribe based on tradition.

Social media platforms are the most efficient conformity engines ever invented, doing in minutes what parents spend years trying to do. Now conformity takes place 'on Mars', i.e., on the Internet by total strangers with who-knows what motives. Imitating is less amenable to Internet learning, requires more presence, intimacy. Identity, selfhood, emotions. Gen Z is the first generation to go through puberty and the sensitive period for cultural learning on smartphones.

Our brains contain two systems for survival: the discover mode (detect opportunities, positive emotions, excitement). The defend mode (fight or flight).^vii The default setting depends on the animal's evolutionary history and expected environment. If it's not too risky, the default is discover mode (top predators, big herbivores); if risky, defend mode (rabbits, deer). Guess who's happier, more sociable, more eager for new experiences? And guess which sex is more 'discover' than 'defend'? And what happens to both these modes when everything is experienced disembodied, asynchronously, to a lowest-common-denominator user?

Kids are antifragile

Where are we now? Books, words, speakers, ideas that caused little or no controversy in 2010 were, by 2015, suddenly harmful, dangerous, traumatizing. US college freshmen's diagnosis of psychic disorder increased 3x from 2010 to 2020.^viii Recall Biosphere 2. Without wild nature, the hothouse trees grew rapidly for a couple of years then fell over. Trees are antifragile. They need wind to make strong roots and put muscle into the wood fibre so they can last 400 years. WE are antifragile. We need criticism, cuts and scrapes pushing ourselves to the limit – which limit keeps receding as we develop our muscles and brain, our character, so we can last, say, 80 years, not commit suicide at 16 or end up as cowardly defense-moders, having missed out on crucially windows for learning at the appropriate time.

Antifragility is a common property of complex systems designed to function in a world that is unpredictable. The ultimate antifragile system is the immune system, which requires early exposure to dirt, parasites, bacteria, precisely during childhood. Our mania for safetyism actually seriously harms our children. Ditto the psychological immune system, the ability of a child to handle frustrations, teasing, exclusion, perceived injustices, normal conflicts.

Stoics and Buddhists teach that happiness is not absence of triggers, but learning to deprive external events of the power to trigger negative emotions in you. Detachment, 'cool'. Death to helicopter parenting!

Risky play

Stop micromanaging. Let children play outdoors, unsupervised, like in the good ol' days. Thrills mean heights, speed, tools, dangerous elements, rough-and-tumble, disappearing. They'll get them for themselves unless adults stop them -- which we did by the 1990s. Note that video games offer none of these risks. The playground spinner was a staple of playgrounds in the 1960s-70s and fulfills key thrill features (speed, danger, rough-and-tumble). It allows children to self-regulate, learn how to handle their body, now exteinctdue to fear of lawsuits in litigious US (Canada dutifully follows suit). Safetyism.

Minor injuries should be a feature, not a bug, in playground design. Studies show that risk of injury per hour of physical play is lower than for adult-guided team sports, while providing many more developmental benefits (children making all choices, enforcing rules, resolving all disputes). Keep children as safe as necessary, not as safe as possible.

Let them decide the level of risk they are ready for as they fine-tune their experience-eager brains. Online social relationships are disembodied, asynchronous and shallow. Worse yet, recorded, permanent, amplifying 'mistakes' and criticisms, taunts that have led to suicides. Ironically, online behaviour needs more monitoring than old-fashioned play. Think lethal Mars: a tiny mistake could mean instant death. \you as a parent are always in defend mode.

Women in large numbers have been in the workforce since the 1970s, yet parents report they are spending more time with their children beginning in the 1990s. Why? A combination of safetyism and overinvesting in getting these fewer 'investments' into college, reducing kids' free time, giving them less autonomy. Efficiency! It's as if children are privatized, monetized, neoliberalized. Again, the fear of child molesting means you don't want strangers interfering in their lives. 'Stranger danger' became a meme by the mid-1990s. Stay away from other people's children. Don't talk to them, discipline them if they misbehave, don't get involved. The idea that responsible parenting means continual supervision of children is a peculiarly Anglo-American one.'^ix

Safe Space symbol: An inverted pink triangle, surrounded by a green circle symbolising universal acceptance, to indicate alliance with gay rights and spaces free from homophobia. This symbol was introduced at anti-homophobia workshops from the Gay & Lesbian Urban Explorers in 1989.

Safety used to mean physical safety. By the 1990s, 'emotional safety' became the buzzword. Note that this is also when wokeism took off, featuring 'safe spaces', places 'intended to be free of bias, conflict, criticism, or potentially threatening actions, ideas, or conversations.^x The term originated in LGBTQ culture, and the spaces are mostly on university campuses in the 'collective West', but also at workplaces, as in the case of Nokia, or the classrooms of overzealous school teachers.

Yes, every child needs a secure base; usually mother but it can be any adult who is reliably available for comfort and protection. If safety is the child's only goal, s/he'll stay 'on base' for all of his/her childhood. Good parenting means giving children a clear pathway to adulthood with challenges, milestones and a growing set of freedoms and responsibilities. Smartphones undermine this good guiding, reducing interest in all non-screen-based forms of experience, like the cuckoo that lays its egg in another birds' nests, which hatches early and pushes the other eggs out, eating all the food brought by the unsuspecting parent. 

Spiritual deficit

Haidt is a proud atheist but he longs for the accumulated wisdom of religions. Initiation rites were/are essential for both boys and girls. Durkheim noted the more tightly people are bound into a community that has moral authority to restrain their desires, the less likely they are to kill themselves. Anomie, absence of stable widely-shared norms are now widespread in our secular age, where initiation ceremonies are minimal (or criminal gang rites).

The 'cuckoo' effectively kills the tradition initiation rites for turning a boy into a man, a girl into a woman. Rapid and disorienting changes weaken the grip of traditional religions, foster anomie and suicide. Boys and girls take different paths through the Great Rewiring, yet ended up in the same pit, drowning in anomie and despair. You can't construct a meaningful life on your own with too many dubious influences vying for your attention.

Spiritual practices involve shared sacredness, embodiment, stillness and focus, self-transcendence, slowness to anger and readiness to forgive, finding awe in nature. Spiritual practices improve well-being. We have two lives – profane and spiritual. The most satisfying communities are those that lift people out of the lower level to have powerful collective experiences (synchronous). We have mostly dispensed with our spiritual lives. Rather than everything being spiritual, everything is profane.

Profane, asynchronous, disembodied communities just can't cohere as well as traditional, synchronous ones. You need special times, places, objects as sacred. But online, everything collapses into an undifferentiated blur. There is no real consensual space, no daily, weekly, annual calendars. No consensual structuring of time, space or objects so people can use their ancient 'programming' for sacredness to create religious or quasi-religious communities. Everything is available to every individual 24/7 with little or no effort. Everything is profane. Hence, when a boy is depressed, suffering, he's more susceptible to online extremists, sects which offer moral clarity, community, pulling them further from in-person communities. Sitting alone in your bedroom online, you can't activate the neural circuits that evolved along with spiritual practice.

There is no incentive to be calm, meditate, to self-transcend, though the internet does provide access to such techniques for those with guidance, or who are mature enough to use them. Our brain default mode is all about ego – thinking about what I want/ need, what other people think of me. Social media cranks up this default mode to maximum, feeding the raging ego of adolescence, locking it in, hindering the process of getting out of that rut, encouraging us to make rapid-fire judgments (which we later regret but which are etched in internet memory forever). It's then hard to live them down, to forgive (yourself/ others). As for awe, forget it on a tiny one-dimensional toy. And when we do get out into nature and have that magical experience, we often turn it into a selfie. Haidt agrees with Pascal that there is a 'God-shaped hole in every heart' which we strive to fill. Buddha: We are what we think.^xi

Initiations by definition involve some danger, a challenge that marks the child's sense of becoming an adult, with the dangers and responsibilities that that means. For the past century, the driver's license represented a kind of initiation. 94% of teens got one the 1980s, after which numbers fell to 60% by 2020. Ditto sexual intercourse which fell from 80% to less than 60%.^xii For the anxious Z generation, texting and playing video games has become the de facto initiation rite, which begins much earlier than puberty, and extends, well, forever. And is shallow, hollow, leaving the initiated in a permanent immature state, comforted by 'likes' and pyrrhic video victories. No wonder depression increased dramatically as children/ teens are pushed into phone games/ communication.

Common sense tells us teens who spend more time with groups of young people (sports, worship) have better mental health. The effect of the switch to phone culture is worse among poor, racial and sexual minorities, who have a greater need for safety and empowerment, which the smartphone provides, however deformed. Teens' daily time with friends dropped from 2010 to 2020 from 2.5 hours per day to less than an hour. Of course, Covid made this worse, but there wasn't much recovery in any case. The smartphone is now the centre of your attention. Even when you are with others, it is the constant referent, pinging, throbbing, clutched, god forbid dropped.

End of dimorphism

Only 40% of mammals show marked dimorphism where males are bigger. Dimorphism is high in humans. Men are much taller, stronger, faster, their brains packed with more frontal lobe matter. Men are more aggressive, more active, rational, risk-taking; women more conciliatory, empathetic, less assertive, risk-averse. 

Physiologically and traditionally, the man really is the king of the castle, the woman – mother of his children, helper. That worked for hunter-gatherers, but when agriculture became the main occupation, these characteristics were less important, and with the rise of machines, now not really necessary at all. In fact, males have become the butt of angry feminism, accused of 'toxic masculinity'. That surely is at the heart of our socializing problems. Unless we turn to eugenics to erase masculinity entirely, we have to create ways to celebrate it. Manly strength, feminine grace.

The differences are genetic and are obvious from the start. Boys are more agency-striving, girls communion-striving. Tech companies know this and use them to hook their core audiences. Social media – Facebook started in 2004 – offers easy new connections, seems to satisfy communion needs, but actually frustrates them. It is especially attractive to girls, who more easily share emotions and disorders. Social media became their Petri dish.

*Tourettes' syndrome is mostly a male disorder, but when triggered online during Covid, it spread online among girls. Ditto multiple personalities, again among girls. There's even a name for this: sociogenetics.

*The big scandal has been 'gender dysphoria', which used to be less than 1 in 1000, mostly boys. Now an epidemic and, again, mostly girls.^xiii

*Girls are more subject to predation and harassment.

*Self-satisfaction in the long term has dropped, more among girls.

*Close friends decreased; this time, for both boys and girls, while feelings of loneliness increased.

Mental health declined for boys starting in 2000s, accelerated after 2010. Herein the double whammy: not just the shallowness of the Internet, but something much more troubling – the feminization of society. Boys/men have been pushed away from society with push for female equality. Feminism arrived along with gaylib post-WWII, already bubbling in the 1950s, out in the open by the late '60s, culminating in MeToo, the discourse of 'male toxicity' and wokeness.

Wokeness is not a new ideology, not an outgrowth of Marxism, as touted by postmodernists. It is simply feminine patterns of behavior (emotional attacks) applied to institutions where women were few in number until recently. Law schools became majority female in 2016. In 1974, only 10% of New York Times reporters were female. By 2018, it was majority female, and today 55%. Medical schools became majority female in 2019. University staff is 50% female. More graduates at all levels are now women.

We now are prioritizing the feminine over the masculine: empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition. Only 40% of women say protecting free speech is more important than preserving a cohesive society vs 70% of men. And guess what's happened to 'free speech' with our feminized society? Groups of men and women display consistent differences. Female group dynamics favor consensus and cooperation. Men order each other (and women) around, but women can only suggest and persuade. Any criticism or negative sentiment, if it absolutely must be expressed, needs to be buried in layers of compliments. As for conflict, men wage conflict openly while women covertly undermine or ostracize their enemies. Men developed group dynamics optimized for war, while women developed group dynamics optimized for protecting their offspring.

In Warriors and worriers: The survival of the sexes, Joyce Benenson observes that a group of men given a task will 'jockey for talking time, disagree loudly,' and then 'cheerfully relay a solution to the experimenter.' A group of women given the same task will 'politely inquire about one another’s personal backgrounds and relationships … accompanied by much eye contact, smiling, and turn-taking,' and pay 'little attention to the task that the experimenter presented.'

The point of war is to settle disputes between two tribes, but it works only if peace is restored after the dispute is settled. Men's sociogenetics therefore developed methods for reconciling with opponents and learning to live in peace with people they were fighting yesterday. A corollary here is that men tend to be better at compartmentalizing than women. Females, even in primate species, are slower to reconcile than males. That is because women’s conflicts were traditionally within the tribe over scarce resources, to be resolved not by open conflict but by covert competition with rivals, with no clear terminus. They are more holistic in their thinking.

Of course, male strength and aggression have caused rape to be a problem from time immemorial, especially in the alcohol-loving world, i.e., now, the 'collective West'. But our feminized societies has let militant feminism take control of the narrative. Legal protections around rape accusations were abolished because the people who made these rules sympathized with the accusers, who were mostly women, and not with the accused, who were mostly men.

Such cases as the Epstein scandal become angry evidence of male toxicity. Many men have had their careers ruined by rape charges that were flimsy. Interestingly, the five players for Canada's world junior hockey team accused of assaulting a groupie who offered herself in a hotel room in 2018 in London, Ontario, and the next day decided to accuse them of rape, were acquitted by the female Justice Carroccia, not finding the 'victim's' evidence 'credible or reliable'. The boys' lives were nonetheless cruelly exposed and months of society's precious court time was wasted on something that would never have seen the light of day earlier.

Soon academia will also be majority female, but wokeness is already here and will only get 'worse'. Open debate – and the unfettered pursuit of truth – are already on the chopping block. And if your academia doesn’t pursue truth, what good is it? As Helen Andrews argues, if your journalists aren’t prickly individualists who don’t mind alienating people, what good are they? If a business loses its swashbuckling spirit and becomes a feminized, inward-focused bureaucracy, will it not stagnate?

As I was reading this, it struck me how feminized Soviet thinking became: correct group-think, don't rock the boat, enforced reconciliation, not openly arguing for truth. And we know how that turned out. We are witnessing the artificial result of a similar social engineering experiment (hence the claim that wokeism is cultural Marxism) gone off the rails.

Andrews compares this affirmative action mentality to a merchant with his thumb on the scale. If we take our thumb off the scale, it will collapse within a generation. The most obvious thumb on the scale is the anti-discrimination law. It is illegal to employ too few women at your company. If women are underrepresented, especially in your higher management, that is a lawsuit waiting to happen. The anti-discrimination law requires that every workplace be feminized. A landmark case in 1991 found that pinup posters on the walls of a shipyard constituted a hostile environment for women, but men can’t sue when their workplace feels like a Montessori kindergarten.

Psychology, once a predominantly male field, is now overwhelmingly female, with 75% of psychology doctorates going to women. Institutions seem to have a tipping point, after which they become more and more feminized. What self-respecting male graduate student would pursue a career in academia when his peers will ostracize him for stating his disagreements too bluntly or espousing a controversial opinion? Jordan Peterson is the 'scandalous' naughty boy exception.

Right now we have a nominally meritocratic system in which it is illegal for women to lose. Let’s make hiring meritocratic in substance and not just name. I am the mother of sons, who will never reach their full potential if they have to grow up in a feminized world. 

Feminization + Internet

The digital world took the place of failing society with agency-building activities such as exploring, competing, playing at war, mastering skills, porn. i.e., filling the gap created by feminization. But the cards are now stacked against boys/men. Girls perform better in our industrial age schools, boys tend to exhibit higher rates of externalizing disorders, have higher ADHD, engaging in high risk or antisocial behaviour, such as drunk driving, and are drugged to make them … more feminized. Some boys will have jobs in tech, but most just use computer games as escape from an increasingly inhospitable world, remaining children mentally.

From the 1970s on, physical strength is less valuable, which is worsened by deindustrialization, robots, the rise of the service economy, all biased towards the feminine.. By 2009 the balance of the workforce tipped toward women. 60% of BAs go to women. Black women currently earn about two thirds of BAs, 70% of all master's degrees, and more than 60% of all doctorates. (Gender disparities are smaller the richer you are.) Victory for girls and women? Only if you see life as zero-sum battle between the sexes. What happened to the 'king of the castle'? Good riddance, say feminists, but a world of floundering men is unlikely to be a world of flourishing women. Boys are even becoming complete shut-ins aka hikikomori (Japanese 'pulling inward'). 'Going outside is a prison. But this room is clarity.'^xiv 

In 2010, both sexes shifted rapidly to female-type disorders. Boys exchange risky acting out for depression. They drink less alcohol, have fewer car accidents, fewer physical fights, unplanned pregnancies. Not because they're more mature, but because they are withdrawing from physical world.

40% of internet traffic was porn by the late 1990s. Watching porn, heterosexual men find real women less attractive, including their own partners. Compulsive porn uses, predominantly men, are more likely to avoid sexual interactions and experience lower sexual satisfaction. Porn separates sexual pleasure from its real-world reward (a sexual relationship). Hikikomori with a programmable mechanical girlfriend with ever-more-lifelike sex dolls is preferable to thousands of 'left swipes' you get on dating apps, to say nothing of the social risk of approaching a girl or woman in real life. Double whammy in spades.

Rotten in the 'king'dom

So even the smartphone alone is not the culprit. The Great Rewiring of 2008 really should be called the final stage of the Great Rot, which began just about the time of the American revolution 250 years ago, aka the Industrial Revolution, when people became de facto/ de jure widgets in the Great Machine, toppling the king, abolishing gender differences, making human dimorphism a relic of the Stone Age, leveling men and women. The plus side of this has been women's rights, the downside – the rendering of men (including manly virtues) as irrelevant, impotent.

Technology – Marx's 'forces of production' – really does determine our 'relations of production'. Now technology has penetrated our inner life, bringing us ever closer to widgetdom. Devotion to material mass production occupies our lives, long after we have created the means to produce far more than we need. Instead of moving on to productive use of leisure, to facing the male-female crisis, the Internet crisis, the double whammy, we keep reinventing a society of production, now shaped by smartphone buying-and-selling, coddling of children, adopting the feminized gay lifestyle (shallow, promiscuous, high volume contacts, governed by social media), taking the place of genuine, healthy relations.

Feminism has demanded a flat equality in every aspect of life. I'm puzzled/ irritated that msm seems to require constant reminders that women need more rights, the right to kill as soldiers, that firemen should now be called firefighters, actresses should be called actors, no more Mrs. Women own their own bodies, so there! Abortion is a woman's choice (screw the man in this equation). Wives should be given half the man's estate on divorce, etc. This feminist campaign for equality, the thumb on the scale, has resulted in an imbalance of yin/yang. Which reminds me of another nice metaphor using Mars. Women are from Venus and men from Mars. Vive la difference!

There is nothing inherently wrong or evil about the feminine aspect of the human being. In each of us there is the masculine and the feminine quality. We need balance. The professions are losing their masculine, truth-seeking energy under the stranglehold of feminism. Most feminists (not JK Rawlings et al) – perhaps recognizing the need for yin/yang balance – have advocated for women to become men without penises. If you look at the feminist icons, e.g., Thatcher, Clinton, they are vicious women who exhibit no feminine qualities. Women-without-penises-from-hell. So we get the worst of both worlds – patriarchy without men, matriarchy without women – a stinking, poisonous brew, with the height of absurdity being transgender men (transwomen), men pretending to be women, and transgender women (transmen), women pretending to be men. Both pumping themselves full of estrogen or testosterone and cutting off penises and breasts, a truly mad 'civilization'. And our woke laws penalize us if we find this absurd and protest.

Remedies

*Voluntary coordination of parents/ teachers to ban smartphones till high school.

*Demand better tech solutions (better age verification methods, popularizing simpler, flip phones)

*Government regulations especially for schools. Think of food safety and automobile regulations. Phones that are age-appropriate as a universal rule, like a driver's license, or alcohol-free beer.

*Hold boys back in school. Adjust schooling to fit our natural maturation schedule. Boys need more play. And controlled use of Internet games.^xv It's just not healthy for any human being to have unfettered access to everything, everywhere, all of the time.

*Look for opportunities to frustrate your child every day in little things that s/he can practice overcoming, pushing/ accepting their limits.

*Coordinate with neighbours and parents of your kids' friends to create a playborhood, a term coined by Silicon Valley dad Mike Lana, who made his yard into a gathering place for the local kids.

*Educate your children to look at dangers of addiction, how social media works, hooks and harms. See 'Youth Toolkit' from Lana's Center for Humane Technology.

*High school exchange programs e.g., American Exchange Project. Spend a week with a family in another state or a year abroad with a family.

*Fight back against safetyism. Increase unregulated play. Longer recesses (now often conflated with lunch period, all activities structured). After-school unstructured play. 'Let Grow Project' suggests a list of things for more independence (walk to town, do laundry, ride a bus, play in park without parents). Junkyard playgrounds.

Re feminization,

*Eliminate affirmative action (or legislate a male positive bias in education etc.).

*More 'industrial arts' schools with hands-on experience for boys, apprenticeships.

*Stop promoting gay as a good lifestyle.

*Take a leaf from Islam (banning alcohol eliminates rape) and Islamic gender practices (celebrate sex-segregated activities, stop the feminizing of men and masculinizing of women).

'Growing' your child is not like constructing a bookcase with precise edges and glossy finish, but 'creating a protected and nurturing space for plants to flourish.' Yes, do some weeding, watering, then allow the plants to do their own thing, unpredictably and with delightful surprises.^xvi

It's been so nice getting to interact with you for these past six years. Here's your first device.

(H Lin New Yorker)

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